Yup, you better believe it. I’m going to write something nice about Bernie Sanders! To recap, I’ve been critical of his campaign for three reasons:
1) He is only a Democrat when it suits his personal ambitions. As a hardcore partisan working toward a more liberal Democratic Party (and country), I wish he had used his post-2016 influence to help build the party among his skeptical base. Instead, he’s only a Democrat during presidential primary season. Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have the more productive (and far less polarizing) approach.
2) He legitimized Fox by doing a town hall on the network at a time when activists have been making gains in their efforts to delegitimize the GOP’s top propaganda arm. It was a personally advantageous move, no doubt, but one that hurt the broader progressive movement. He’s not always a team player.
3) He’s not interested in broadening his coalition. Attending the She the People forum, one focused on black women, he refused to answer a question on how his policies would specifically help women of color. His “my policies help everyone” message mirrored the Right’s “all lives matter” response to the Black Lives Matter movement. That inability to message past his mostly white (and male) base of support is problematic both as a substantive matter (marginalized communities have challenges that aren’t solved with income equality—just ask the Jewish community, or middle-class transgender individuals), and also because it’s dumb politics. He’s not going to win any nomination with 15% support.
All that said (because I’ve said it before, and I don’t want to pretend that I haven’t), Bernie Sanders has been great for the party for one reason: He has been so effective at selling the “Democratic Socialist” label that he (along with Ocasio-Cortez) has effectively neutralized Donald Trump and the GOP’s single biggest attack agains the Democrats.
First, take a look at the latest head-to-head general election matchups between Sanders and Trump:
Fox News, 6/9-12:
Sanders 49
Trump 40
Quinnipiac, 6/6-10
Sanders 51
Trump 42
Emerson, 5/10-13
Sanders 54
Trump 46
CNN, 4/25-29
Sanders 50
Trump 44
There’s nothing magical about Sanders here. All Democrats beat Trump, with the only variables being the name ID of the particular Democrats (so, for example, Biden always runs strongest, followed by Sanders, and usually followed by Elizabeth Warren).
Now take a look at the GOP’s core messaging. At his campaign announcement in Orlando a couple of days ago, Trump declared that “America will never be a socialist country" because Republicans "believe in freedom." He dug hard into that concept: “A vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American dream."
That “socialism BAD!” message is permeating nicely through the entire party, as typified by this year’s CPAC, the Right’s biggest annual conference. “On both Thursday and Friday, CPAC commenced with a 5-minute video that screamed the word ‘SOCIALISM’ in cryptic font across the giant screens inside the Potomac Ballroom at the Gaylord Convention Center,” reported the HuffPost. “The video featured footage of Democratic Socialists of America members marching in the street, as well as clips of self-identified democratic socialist politicians Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), all set to dramatic music.”
And it’s a message that is now THE refrain from the GOP’s rank and file. Today’s “America will never be a socialist country” is 2016’s “Make America Great Again.” As one reporter noted at Trump’s announcement speech (I can’t find the link, unfortunately), every single attendee he interviewed repeated the exact same words. Fox News is all over it. Every Republican candidate repeats it over and over again. Every internet meme, every story on Breitbart, every corner of the right-wing media machine. All of them, in unison, are braying about “socialism.”
So consider that messaging, that single-minded obsessiveness over the word “socialism.” And then look at that polling again.
The one candidate most identified with socialism, the one who literally calls himself a socialist, is not just beating Trump, but crushing him.
And the reason is that Sanders, despite his various faults, is really fucking good at demystifying what “socialism” means. The one-two punch of him and AOC is educating Americans that socialism is all about policies that, individually, are incredibly popular with the American people.
“Let me be clear, I do understand that I and other progressives will face massive attacks from those who attempt to use the word ‘socialism’ as a slur,” Sanders said, speaking at George Washington University last week, “but I should also tell you that I have faced and overcome these attacks for decades, and I am not the only one.”
He has. Sure, Vermont is friendly territory. But his standing vs. Trump today is evidence that the force of his policies is eclipsing whatever simplistic “The socialists want to take away your airplanes” bullshit is emanating from the Right.
And with this, Sanders has given Democrats a huge gift. Consider:
"’Axios on HBO’ poll: 55% of women prefer socialism: “Socialism is losing its Soviet-era stigma, especially among women. Popular Democratic socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders are bringing new life and meaning to the term.”
“Most young Americans prefer socialism to capitalism, new report finds”: “According to a new poll from Gallup, young Americans are souring on capitalism. Less than half, 45 percent, view capitalism positively … Meanwhile, 51 percent of young people are positive about socialism. This age group’s ‘views of socialism have fluctuated somewhat from year to year,’ reports Gallup, ‘but the 51 percent with a positive view today is the same as in 2010.’”
So when Republicans scream about our nominee, whoever she or he is, being a “socialist,” and when Democrats aren’t just inoculated against those attacks, but find that they actually bolster our candidates, consider why that is happening.
This shifting sentiment on socialism hasn’t happened in a vacuum. And it didn’t happen because the Democratic Party worked to make it happen. It’s happened for one reason: Bernie Sanders.