For the first time, Sen. Bernie Sanders has overtaken Hillary Clinton in a pre-primary poll, although Clinton still has a comfortable lead in nationwide polls. A new Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald poll released today puts Sanders ahead of Clinton by 44% – 37% among likely Democratic voters in New Hampshire, CNN reported.
That suggests to me that grassroots Democrats are seeking an alternative to Clinton, who has alienated a good-sized chunk of the Democratic base over the years by voting for the Iraq war and cozying up to Wall Street– while Sanders makes economic inequality the centerpiece of his maverick campaign — and has quite a bit of other baggage.
Do I know where this is going? Nah, presidential campaigns are too unpredictable to pick winners this far ahead of the primaries and caucuses. The media establishment still expects Hillary to be the Democratic nominee. I think what we’re seeing is a mini-rebellion within her party against the notion that she is the necessary and inevitable nominee. But can Sanders, an independent socialist who caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate, really win the presidency? Could he govern if he did? The makeup of Congress doesn’t suggest his views on key issues are in sync with a majority of Americans.
The next four years are likely to bring, among other things, a growing military challenge from China, whose leadership seeks to control the South China Sea and chase the U.S. Navy out of those waters. Not to mention Russia’s renewed aggressiveness under Putin, and ISIS’s depradations in the Middle East, and enforcing the Iran nuclear agreement. I think the swing voters who determine the outcome of elections want someone they perceive as tough who will assert American power in the face of those threats, which is part of Trump’s appeal to the Republican base. Sanders is not such a leader; or, at least, he doesn’t have that kind of charisma.
Despite that, I like Bernie and his message. The last thing our country needs is another warmonger or further doses of conservative economic policies. The vast majority of Americans are struggling wage-earners, many of them minorities who bear the additional burdens of racial discrimination and/or single motherhood, and no one except Bernie is really speaking to or for them at this point. He’s filling a need and a yearning, just as Trump is. But like most in the media, I think it’s a longshot that either of them will be our next president. I expect, in the end, that voters will go with business-as-usual, from a sense that we can’t afford not to, now that the sense of crisis which existed in 2008 is mostly gone from our politics.