I've been watching the political career of Bernie Sanders since I was a kid and he, thirtysomething, still looked like a kid. I'm not sure if there's one word that best describes that career. "Phenomenal" comes to mind, but I'd like a word that also conveys extremely unexpected.
If you took a time machine back to the 1970's, and asked me then what chance I thought Bernie Sanders had of someday representing Vermont in the U.S. Senate, I would have said "zero" - right after I'd finished guffawing. It would be somewhat like asking a Vermonter back in the 70's if they thought someday a supermajority of the Vermont Legislature would vote to allow same-sex couples to marry. At the time, that would have been simply unimaginable.
You see, back in the 70's, Sanders was a perennial candidate for various statewide offices, running as a "Liberty Union" candidate. The Liberty Union party still exists in Vermont, still running its perennial candidates for various statewide offices. They come across as well-meaning but typically not-ready-for-prime-time leftwing folks who, it would seem, are more interested in speaking their mind than actually getting elected. So, back then, I could not have imagined Vermonters ever electing Bernie Sanders - the young Liberty Union candidate with the unkempt hair, high water pants, and thick Brooklyn accent - to any office in state government, much less the U.S. Senate.
I assume that’s why Sanders quit the Liberty Union party. He wasn't interested in just talking. He really did want to get elected in order to get government working for the people. He wasn't a radical, he was a populist progressive. He just seemed radical to folks who had forgotten the ideals of the New Deal. To him, it was clear that the Democratic Party had lost its way. So, when he ran for mayor of Vermont's largest city, in 1981, he ran as an Independent, and, shocking everyone, he beat the Democratic machine which had long ruled Burlington. That's my hometown - the little city where Ben & Jerry's began, and Phish, and Howard Dean's presidential campaign.
And so, not many weeks after Ronald Reagan took the oath of office, so did Bernie Sanders.
I mention them together, because both were a political culture shock. You see, when Sanders ran, a party formed to support him in Burlington called the "Progressive Coalition." (This would eventually evolve into the statewide Progressive Party.) Not only was Sanders elected, but one of the Progressive Coalition members landed a seat on the city council, patriarchally called the "Board of Aldermen" back then. I can still remember a video clip on the local TV news, in the early days of the Sanders administration, showing the old-guard board members with scowling faces and folded arms. It looked like they were thinking to themselves "We won't let these Commies take over our city!"
Well, the Sanderistas didn’t turn out to be Commies, but good managers, and Sanders was re-elected each time he ran, serving four consecutive terms. And the Progressive Coalition won more and more seats on the city council, eventually gaining as much power as the Democrats. After Sanders left, the Progs held onto the mayorship, too, for almost every term of the next two decades, and statewide the Progressive Party has become an influential, albeit still very small, faction within the Vermont Legislature.
Here's how Simon van Zuylen-Wood describes Sanders's mayoral tenure in his recent National Journal piece:
[W]hat got him sent back to City Hall three more times was his reform of a complacent municipal government that had been run by the same political machine for decades. "He totally changed Burlington from a place that was run by cronyism and the old-boys network for the benefit of the developers and the business community," says Ben & Jerry's cofounder Ben Cohen, who opened up shop in town shortly before Sanders assumed office.
To wit: He saved money by opening the city's insurance policies to a competitive-bidding process. He created a spunky economic-development program that has for three decades incubated a vast swath of profitable, socially conscious local businesses. He successfully sued a railway company to wrest control of the Lake Champlain waterfront, which was later developed into an urbanist utopia—bike paths, green space, and so on. His legislative creativity and good-government initiatives in turn helped garner support for more-liberal causes, from creating a perpetual trust fund for affordable housing to keeping regressive property taxes low. Sanders, to use the early 20th-century term of art, governed more as a "sewer socialist" than a genuine radical.
In 1988, Vermont's senior U.S. senator, Republican Bob Stafford, retired, opening a Senate seat for popular Republican congressman Jim Jeffords (who would famously ditch the GOP in 2001, tipping control of the Senate to the Democrats.) With Vermont's only congessional seat up for grabs, Sanders ran for it in a three-way race against a Democratic state legislator and a former Republican lieutenant governor. The Republican, Peter Smith, edged out Sanders. Like Staffords and Jeffords, Smith was a moderate Republican in the Vermont tradition; he seemed poised for a long career in the House. But in the wake of the Stockton, California, schoolyard massacre in 1989, where five children were killed and many others wounded by a shooter using a foreign-made semi-automatic rifle, Smith voted for a bill banning import of these weapons, which the first President Bush signed into law. Well, gun-control is still a third-rail in Vermont politics. Our state has a lot of hunters and very little regulation of guns, and Smith had reversed his earlier anti-gun-control stance – all of which made him a prime target for NRA attack ads in 1990, when he once again faced Sanders. Ultimately, it wasn't gun control, but bread-and-butter issues that doomed Smith. He voted for an austerity bill that would would have raised Medicare patients' payments and taxes on gasoline and home heating oil. It was economic issues that Sanders was running on, not guns. But surely Smith's gun-control vote didn't help him. Sanders, for his part, whenever questioned on the issue, stuck to the line that gun regulation should be a state and local matter because gun issues are different in, say, rural Vermont compared to New York City. It seemed like a politically expedient argument to me at the time, and I was pretty disappointed in Sanders. But gun control had never been an issue of his; he was always about bread-and-butter issues. Indeed, his old Liberty Union party, which couldn't care less about political expediency, was itself very libertarian on the issue of guns. Go figure.
So Mr. Smith goes back to Vermont, and Mr. Sanders goes to Washington.
Though not the decisive factor in that race, the gun-control issue helps illustrate an important point about Sanders. In 1993, Congressman Sanders, along with Vermont's senior Democratic senator, Pat Leahy, voted against the Brady Bill, which would impose background checks for handgun purchases and was inspired by the near-fatal assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan which permanently disabled his press secretary, Jim Brady. Their votes had no impact, because the bill passed anyway and was signed into law by President Clinton. Most of us will agree that guns are indeed a serious public health issue in America. But they aren't the only public health issue. I weigh Sanders's vote that had no impact, against the tremendous impact he personally has had on public health due to, for example, his leadership in getting funding for community health centers as part of the Affordable Care Act, and his leadership in the recent passage of much-needed additional funding for veterans care. I may have been disappointed in him long ago, but I've come to realize that to be as effective as he's been, Sanders has had to be focused; he's had to choose his battles. (On gun control, he has a mixed voting record. His NRA rating is "F".)
Sanders was re-elected U.S. Representative again and again, serving eight consecutive terms, even surviving the Republican rout in 1994 when Newt Gingrich became Speaker. His popularity is pretty remarkable, considering that if liberals don't bother to turn out in a non-presidential election, Republicans should have a decent shot even in Vermont. Indeed, we need look no further back than last month's race for governor and lieutenant governor for proof that Vermont can't be taken for granted to elect even very experienced politicians on the left. Our liberal, incumbent Democratic governor, Peter Shumlin, won barely more votes than a mediocre Republican candidate with no political experience. Our incumbent Republican lieutenant governor, a congenial politician perhaps best known to Vermonters as a champion stock-car racer, was pitted against a former Progressive Party state legislator running on a fusion Progressive/Democratic ticket, who campaigned primarily on a promise to help support Governor Shumlin's effort to establish a single-payer healthcare system in Vermont. The Republican won in a landslide.
Now you might think Republicans would have an especially decent shot against someone who is not afraid to label his political philosophy as "democratic socialist."
Indeed, I'm sure there are Vermonters still stuck in the "Bernie's a Commie" mindset. A few times I volunteered on Sanders campaigns, usually just distributing campaign literature, but once I did cold calls to help identify potential Sanders voters. As I recall, the script had us introduce ourself as a volunteer for the Sanders campaign, mention a few issues, ask the respondent if any of these issues was a priority for them, and then ask if they were considering supporting Sanders in the election. I remember after reciting my little spiel about the issues, a woman replied, with seething anger: "I know who Bernie Sanders is and I – am – outraged – that you would call me!" Hokay then. We knew enough not to argue with anyone. I politely apologized and wished her a good evening.
And yet Sanders just keeps winning.
When Jim Jeffords retired, leaving an open Senate seat in 2006, Sanders ran for it against a very well-off Republican businessman named Rich Tarrant. (The irony of the populist Bernie Sanders running against a fellow aptly named Rich still makes me chuckle.) The national GOP was determined to take back this seat. The ads they ran against Sanders were slimy. Sanders not only beat Tarrant – he trounced him.
How does he manage this? Zuylen-Wood's National Journal article portrays Sanders as a pedantic, uncharismatic speaker, cocksure of his beliefs, often gruff and dismissive of the press. Now, such a description would also fit, say, Newt Gingrich - but despite having strongarmed his way to the speakership, that petulant little fraud never achieved anywhere near Sanders's political popularity and longevity. Dime-a-dozen politicians like Gingrich are all about themselves, while it's clear that Sanders truly is fighting for the people. It's much easier to excuse someone like that for having a prickly personality.
The thing is this: Love him or hate him, Sanders always comes across as genuine. His rhetoric hasn't changed over all these years because his core values haven't changed. And he's proven that those values have pretty broad appeal.
He's sharp on the debate stage and can be a damned good campaigner. There was one series of commercials he did - I can't remember which race, but probably his second or third race for House - which were the best I've ever seen from any politician. It was just Sanders, against a black background, talking about what motivates him to run, who he's fighting for. The man behind the gruff exterior.
While he certainly isn't your traditional charming, baby-holding politician, I think if you're not a journalist asking him a stupid question, he can be as friendly as the next guy, in person. He doesn't know me, but I've bumped into him a few times. Some years ago, we arrived at the same time at the order counter at Bruegger's in downtown Burlington (the national bagel chain's headquarters is located above this shop). I smiled and said, "After you, Congressman!"
"No, no, no!" he grinned, "You go ahead. This is a democracy!"
Zuylen-Wood writes:
[I]t's easy to dwell on the obvious characterological traits, and whether they will prove off-putting or, in some bizarre way, endearing. But perhaps the most important question is whether Democrats will, or should, give serious consideration to Sanders's central theory: that their party could successfully woo working-class white conservatives. ...
In Vermont, Sanders has shown that some of these voters are perhaps more persuadable than is commonly thought. By conducting endless town halls and visiting countless farms over the last 40 years, he has built up a level of trust that has allowed residents to shrug off his "socialist" label. "I think what he has the unique ability to do is frame the problem so the common person can understand the problem," says Sanders ally Jim Coots, who runs a health clinic north of Burlington and describes himself as a tea partier. "I haven't seen Patrick Leahy in Franklin County in five, six, years. ... Bernie stands out because he gets back and visits. In the trenches with a farmer today, maybe a student at UVM the next day."
After running and winning four times for mayor, eight times for U.S. Representive, and twice for U.S. Senator, I think you can safely say he knows a thing or two about running and winning.
Sanders is a seasoned campaigner. By comparison, Elizabeth Warren has run for office and been elected only once, Hillary Clinton twice - though of course Clinton also has had the experience of being on the national campaign trail both in her husband's presidential campaigns, and, more importantly, as a presidential primary candidate herself.
I'm not suggesting that Bernie Sanders wouldn't be the underdog in a primary race against Hillary Clinton. Of course he would be. She's Hillary Clinton. She's eminently qualified for the presidency and she'd be a formidable candidate. Probably unbeatable.
I’m just saying: don't underestimate the man with the Brooklyn accent.