Most folks thought Trump had no chance for victory in 2016. It was common knowledge. After he won, people started looking at what he had tapped into. Basically people have said variations of this: He tapped into white, particularly male, fear that they were losing their power in the US and that they wanted the lost respect they deserved as people.
And now that Bernie is winning, pundits and party leaders are echoing the mainstream Republicans and Democrats of 2016 as well as pundits then: Bernie has no chance of winning.
But I would suggest that he's appealing to the same sort of despair that Trump tapped into. He too is talking about the problems of government (similar to Trump's swamp). He too is talking about making America great again - but by reestablishing the values of democracy and human dignity for all humans, not just one subgroup. He's talking about the excesses of capitalism and how the price of things in dollars has been applied to every part of our life to the detriment of all other values. He wants to realign the structure that allows Wall Street bankers and brokers to earn significantly more money per hour than most other people. And all the other structures that mean minimum wage people are blocked from what used to be thought of as the American Way of Life. (However, exclusive that ideal was in terms of race.)
Sanders is tapping into the same vein of despair that Trump found. But he's doing it with a message of love rather than one of hate.
Can the Sanders campaign overcome the forces that are working to disinform people, to purge voters and to make voting more difficult for those who can't be purged, and to find ways to hijack voting technology (from computer based registration lists, to voter registrar computers, and to voting machines? I don't know.
But I'm with Anand on this.
Part of the campaign to discredit Sanders involves smearing him with the label socialist. Socialism is also a key basis for people's belief that he can't win. Americans will never accept a socialist president they argue. As if socialism wasn't already well embedded in our nation and in our most cherished government programs.
There's a meme on socialism that quotes President Harry S Truman. Tomorrow I will look at the authenticity of the meme.
Steve, I listened to the clip and must say that Coolidge's (attributed) axiom 'the business of America is business' would need to shift so far & wide in the USA (I once knew) to give Bernie a win.
ReplyDeleteOf course, we have the new normal of 'That's what they said about Trump' but he was an effing game-show host, for crying out loud. What don't Americans understand about name-recognition?
Are there really enough voters in the USA who will vote with Bernie once the many guns open fire on his belief in democratic socialism, misrepresenting more often than explaining it?
Yes, countries are different but please look at recent results in the UK with a proud socialist Labour candidate. Even with a majority of voters in our country against leaving the EU, Boris Johnson and his Tory party won a 80-vote majority in parliament.
I should remind you we're a country with nationalised health care.
Good luck, everyone. Perhaps America is different. I truly hope so.