Sanders is Wrong Again

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are playing to sell out crowds on their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. God help us.

And, speaking of God, at their first stop in Kenosha, the show included a transgender singer whose lyrics included the line, “Your God has a big, fat…” According to a press report: “In addition to an oft-sung chorus suggesting that God was ——-ing the singer, the song’s verses also contained strong sexual references to the God of the Jewish-Christian Bible and to his Son. Furthermore the chorus was picked up by many members of the cheering crowd – as its simple, repetitive nature suggests it was meant to be.”

To his credit, Sanders immediately disavowed the lyrics, And the singer, as far as I can tell, has not been invited back to other stops on the tour. But what were they thinking? This is precisely the stuff that creates an image of the Democratic Party that has its approval rating at an historic low.

But aside from that, I think the whole concept is off. First of all, who thought to call the thing “Fighting Oligarchy”? I don’t think the average American cares about “oligarchy.” I, myself, don’t like oligarchy. That’s why I insist on real dairy products. But this whole thing is set up to appeal to what has become the base of the Democratic Party: college educated liberals who use words like “oligarchy.”

Sanders’ argument is the one he uses every time Democrats do poorly in an election: the party isn’t as hard-left as he is. If only Democrats were socialists everything would be fine. But there’s little evidence of that.

Democrats lose elections because they’re seen as way too far to the left, not as insufficiently so. That’s true on social issues — which is why the transgender singer was such a tone deaf choice. But it’s also true on economic issues. Sanders thinks the problem is that his message of hating rich people isn’t getting through. But the problem is that blue collar voters don’t hate rich people. They want to be them. Or they appreciate the jobs they think they create. Sanders seems to have a world view still rooted in the Pennsylvania coal mines of the early 20th century.

Sanders keeps missing the mark because he won’t talk about values. People think the Democrats stand for giving away their hard-earned tax money to people who don’t deserve it — and, yes, there is an element of race to that, but that doesn’t explain all of it. As J.D. Vance pointed out, back before he lost his moral bearings, the lower middle class people he grew up with resented those just below them on the economic ladder — and everyone in his community was white.

The Democrats need to talk about the virtues of hard work and merit. But in a party where the social activists view these things as tools of the oppressors he can’t. So, instead he leans into resentment of “the one percent” and into policy arguments as opposed to values arguments.

Nobody who shows up at these rallies is a persuadable voter. It’s all college-educated, relatively well-off, white liberals. Now that the transgender singer has been banished, they could whip up the crowd by playing reruns of “This American Life.” The crowd would go nuts at the sound of Ira Glass’ voice.

The answer to Trump’s hard-right nationalist populism is not Sanders’ hard-left economic populism. In fact, populism isn’t the answer to anything. Populism, of any kind, is a disease. Populism is about scape-goating, finding a group to blame and then piling all of your resentments on top of them. Populism is all about who you hate. For Trump the targets are migrants and intellectuals. For Sanders it’s “the oligarchs”.

A successful Democratic Party would reject populism altogether. It would certainly — Sanders has this part right — emphasize economic issues and drop the radical social policies. Instead, it would talk about traditional American values like hard work, merit and fairness.

And, by the way, the bizarre social positions, like allowing men to compete in women’s sports, can’t just be swept under the rug; they need to be actively disavowed by the party.

But Sanders isn’t going to do any of that. He’s got the wrong prescriptions, the wrong message and he’s setting the wrong tone. If there is a God and He cares about freedom and democracy, He should have a big, fat problem with that.

Have a nice weekend. My plan is to do some trout fishing on the Wolf River.

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