The Bottom Line on a Cool Socialist!

Bernie Sanders, Your Cool Socialist Grandpa


How is a 74-year-old self-described Democratic socialist from one of the least populous states in the country turning the Democratic primary upside down and proving an adept challenger to one of the most established candidates in modern politics?

Easy, supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders say: He represents an unyielding crusader who will restore decency to American politics. Mr. Sanders is ideologically pure at a time when everything and everyone else in Democratic Washington seems to revolve around compromise. And as this primary is proving, many Democrats (and even some Republicans) are frustrated with compromise. In some way, Mr. Sanders’s appeal stems from his own un-electability.

But first, an exploration of the facts: Before Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy, political observers expected her to run away with the Democratic nomination. And that conventional wisdom appeared to pay off, at first. Mrs. Clinton still leads Mr. Sanders by roughly 25 points in national polls — the same spread that there is between Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner, and Mike Huckabee, the trailing former Arkansas governor. Still, the gentleman from Vermont has succeeded in neighboring New Hampshire, where he is virtually tied with Mrs. Clinton.

To understand how Mr. Sanders has outperformed expectations in the Democratic primary, you have to look at how he’s long been outperforming expectations in Washington, where he first arrived after winning a seat in Congress in 1990.

“Bernie Sanders surprises people,” said Harry Jaffe, an editor at large for Washingtonian magazine, who wrote an unauthorized biography of Mr. Sanders, to be published in mid-January. “If I would boil down his political career, it comes down to surprising people and exceeding expectations.”

Since winning his Senate seat, Mr. Sanders has held on to it by keeping his constituents, not his colleagues, in mind.

“This is a man who goes home to Vermont almost every weekend, and he famously said a number of years ago, ‘I work in Washington, but I live in Vermont,’ ” Mr. Jaffe said.

The national voter base is much different from Vermont’s, but Democratic politics have become more Vermont-like in recent years. It’s safe to say that Mr. Sanders’s candidacy would not be taken as seriously if the 2008 economic recession hadn’t lit a fire under progressive Americans’ seats. The same plutocratic disaster that inspired Occupy Wall Street also helped push progressives like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts into office.

It’s also what has filled a new generation of young Americans with righteous rage. Compared to the baby boomers, millennials earn less, have more student loan debt, and can’t afford to buy homes.

Young people appear to be warming to socialism in ways their parents probably never would have considered. A 2011 Pew Research Center study found that just 31 percent of the American public had a positive view of the term “socialism,” compared with 50 percent for “capitalism.” But among 18- to 29-year-olds, 49 percent had a positive view of “socialism,” while 46 percent had a positive view of “capitalism.” Trust in capitalism was further eroded among black and Hispanic respondents.

Enter Mr. Sanders, an almost painfully earnest politician seemingly burdened with the ambition and moral certitude of Joan of Arc. Liberal millennials are flocking to him, their Cool Socialist Grandpa. A recent McClatchy-Marist poll found that Democratic voters ages 18 to 29 favored Mr. Sanders over Mrs. Clinton by a margin of 58 percent to 35 percent.

But Mr. Sanders is also a politician, and a pragmatic one when he wants to be. When he was mayor of Burlington, he made sure allies were elected to the City Council.

“He’s like a stealth politician because people think he’s just this guy who has super-liberal, i.e., socialist tendencies, but at the same time he is a brutally successful political knife-fighter,” Mr. Jaffe said. “He doesn’t get elected because he’s a nice guy. ”

And, like any good politician, he has changed his mind. Same-sex marriage and gun control are two subjects where his past positions have come into conflict with modern Democratic politics.

“Bernie Sanders has played both sides on gun rights and gun control,” Mr. Jaffe said. “If you don’t think that’s a political calculation, you’re crazy.”

Mr. Sanders may be effectively playing to his strengths, but his campaign is not without its weaknesses. His foreign policy chops are lacking, a fact that may damage him as fears about terrorism are renewed. And the nation’s major unions — still a force in Democratic politics — appear to be coalescing around Mrs. Clinton, not him.

The senator from Vermont has said he is not running a negative campaign, but he has started to be more vocal in criticizing Mrs. Clinton for the campaign donations she’s received from corporate interests — a line of attack that should sound familiar to anyone who paid attention to the 2008 Democratic primaries.

Recently, Mrs. Clinton spoke to Lena Dunham, the star and creator of the HBO show “Girls,” and in explaining her record on Wall Street reform gave an illuminating view into how she approaches politics.

“I like to have plans for what I do. I may not always be the stemwinder about these things because I think it’s important, and I’ve been around Washington long enough to know, you’ve got to get people to agree if you’re going to get something done,” she said. “Trying to get bipartisan agreement is difficult, but often it’s essential.”

That is what seems to separate Mrs. Clinton from Mr. Sanders: a willingness to sacrifice ideological purity in order to get things done.

A thirst for a different kind of ideological purity is what helped propel the Tea Party wave in 2010, and it’s what’s helping raise Mr. Sanders aloft now. But in the blood sport of two-party politics, purity is still a less desirable quality than ruthless electability.

“The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that when Republicans get power, they know how to use it,” Ed Schultz, a former MSNBC host and a personal friend of Mr. Sanders, lamented. “When the Democrats get power, they want to negotiate with everybody.”

And would Mr. Sanders know how to wield that power, if it were given to him?

“Absolutely,” he said.