Sanders may be country’s best hope for real change

To hear the pundits and political insiders tell it, Hillary Clinton is the Democrats’ safe bet for 2016. Yet their prognostications are routinely undermined by the polls, which show Sen. Bernie Sanders performing better than Clinton in head-to-head general election matchups with potential GOP nominees.

The most recent poll on the subject, from Quinnipiac, had Sanders outpacing Donald Trump, who remains atop the Republican field, by 13 points, compared to Hillary’s seven points. It’s much the same with other candidates in the GOP contest.

While most Americans have really yet to tune in to the debate, there’s an argument to be made that Sanders will connect far more effectively with voters in a way that Hillary Clinton never could. Oddly, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who supports Clinton, made the point himself earlier this year, noting that Sanders routinely drew far more support than Dean whenever both were up for election— and he did remarkably well in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, an isolated region full of conservative, rural voters.

While Sanders is certainly identified as well left of center, he reflects a far more traditional and populist strain of leftist politics than Clinton— and it’s a strain that built a Democratic coalition that used to include most white Americans and dominated American politics for more than a generation.

In many ways, Sanders is a throwback to the era of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, and a time when Democrats and their supporters were far more focused on big picture economics than most Democrats today. Sanders focuses relentlessly on income inequality because he sees the growing imbalance of wealth as driving both the dismantling of the middle class as well as our democracy. You could call him a radical, in the sense that radicals focus on root causes, rather than symptoms.

In a recent interview, Sanders described his frustration back in the 1960s, when he couldn’t understand why his fellow political activists on the left didn’t make these connections. Back then, those on the left were transitioning to what has since come to be known as identity politics, which left many in the party focused on the rights of individual groups, or identities, such as women’s rights, gay rights, abortion rights, environmental rights, minority rights, etc.

While Sanders supports these causes, he sees them as symptoms of the larger economic inequality that inevitably marginalizes more and more Americans and their common interests.

Early organizers of the union movement understood this dynamic as well and they attracted broad support from the public, then mostly white, because they were seen as advocating policies like the minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, and unemployment insurance, that benefitted the vast majority of Americans, even those who weren’t members of unions. As their once broad vision narrowed primarily to the interests of their own members, they became just another interest group and lost much of the support they once enjoyed from the public.

These days, with the Democratic establishment heavily dependent on Wall Street for campaign cash, too many in the party are content to avoid meaningful discussion of the imbalance of wealth and power in this country. Instead, the party has come to rely on an electoral coalition of interest groups, mostly women, unions, gays, and minorities, to stay in power. In the process, they’ve seen a dramatic erosion of support from whites, particularly white males, who see themselves as left out entirely from the Democrat’s political calculus.

It’s a political reality that Republicans have routinely exploited, by targeting voters who have no business supporting the Republican economic agenda with appeals around divisive social issues. Like the Kentucky woman I heard interviewed recently on National Public Radio. She was a beneficiary of that state’s expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and yet she voted in November for the Republican gubernatorial candidate who promised to take away the health insurance she said she so desperately needs. She did so, she said, because the Republican was opposed to gay marriage.

Hillary Clinton, quite simply, has nothing to say to this woman. Not only do the two disagree on social matters, but Clinton has no intention of implementing the kind of economic change that could truly improve this woman’s life. Sanders, on the other hand, has proven he can connect with such people because while that woman may identify as a social conservative, she also sees herself as someone who has been left behind by an economic system that increasingly directs virtually all new income to the very top. Sanders has a lot to say about that, and our Kentucky woman won’t hear anything coherent on the subject from the GOP.

This is how Sanders regularly taps support from non-establishment conservatives. They see him for what he is, a guy who truly fights for the little guy, rather than simply pretending, like Clinton, when the campaign season rolls around.

Not surprisingly, Sanders has faced some backlash from those on the left wedded to identity politics. This fall, activists from Black Lives Matter interrupted some of his rallies, complaining he was insufficiently attentive to their single issue.

Sanders, as usual, responded with insight and a broad vision, essentially arguing that black lives will only truly matter in America when our economic system begins to create the kind of jobs that can truly lift blacks and other minorities into the middle class. A higher minimum wage, free access to a public college education and health care, and an end to the disproportionate incarceration of drug offenders, are all central to the Sanders agenda. But such policies don’t just help African-Americans. These are big picture solutions that will create a better future for the vast majority of Americans who are struggling today. That’s the best response to the problems faced by African-Americans today.

Sanders is already extremely popular, and he’s shown a remarkable ability to attract donations and enthusiasm from average people, particularly young people. Sanders has the potential to create the kind of groundswell that this country really needs if the people are ever going to break up the unholy alliance of our political and billionaire classes that is currently destroying the country.

That’s why I think the conventional wisdom, as usual, is wrong. If Democrats want to really win, and by that I mean bring millions of new voters to the polls who will help them recapture the U.S. Senate and make gains in statehouses around the country, Bernie Sanders is their best bet. Sanders cannot only win, he could bring the kind of change this country so desperately wants and so desperately needs.