Coping with the coronavirus pandemic is a more comfortable task for Democrats than Republicans. Democrats have been the party of government since the days of the New Deal in the 1930s. Their motto might as well be: “The more government, the better.” And at the moment, the government’s role today is at least as humongous as it was during the Depression.
Democrats love to take control at any level of government and spend vast amounts of money. As luck would have it, the pandemic is an opportunity to do both. President Trump may be an impediment, but if he believes that he alone “calls the shots,” he’s mistaken. With Nancy Pelosi at the helm, Democrats have more power than they did as recently as two months ago.
The chance to spend trillions must be thrilling for Democrats. I don’t think a single one in the House or Senate today has ever experienced anything like this, nor has any Republican. For Democrats, there’s the added reward of watching Republicans wince as every spending bill passes. The score is three so far — with a fourth on its way.
The exhilaration of power is being felt by Democrats in state and local governments too. Yes, they’re inclined to overreach. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has put fruit and vegetable seeds and plants on the banned list. Mayor Greg Fischer of Louisville, Kentucky, declared drive-in church services off-limits on Easter. Celebrants in their cars would be subject to arrest. Fischer’s edict was struck down by a federal judge. A special bonus for Democrats may occur in 2021, when something dramatic will have to be done about the most significant deficit since 1943, in the midst of World War II. My bet is that Democrats will demand tax hikes right out of Elizabeth Warren’s playbook. And if Joe Biden is president, they’ll get some of them.
But what might Trump do if reelected? His success so far is the result of his embrace of the conservative Republican agenda — big tax cut, judicial nominees, etc. It’s doubtful he’s adopted the more profound ideology it’s based on. Just a guess, but he was once a Democrat and may act like one again.
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One might have thought that Trump would have grown up in his presidential conduct after three years.
Nope, hasn’t happened.
The daily White House briefings on the virus have been highly credible thanks to the presence of Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx. Trump, however, hates playing second fiddle to anyone. He’s been unhappy with a few of Fauci’s remarks in interviews. “I made him a star,” Trump has said. Hardly. Fauci’s fame goes back to the 1990s, when he was a leader in combating the AIDS epidemic. Firing him would be a disaster for Trump.
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Are Ronald Reagan and Bernie Sanders alike? Not much. Reagan was a Democrat turned Republican who made the GOP more popular. Sanders is a democratic socialist, a wild card. Reagan was a Hollywood actor who became famous as a young man. Sanders’s claim to fame as a young man was being mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and a pal of Ben and Jerry. Reagan was a foe of communism. Sanders has been apologizing for communist countries since his ‘honeymoon’ in Moscow.
Reagan was genial. Sanders is a sourpuss.
Nevertheless, Sam Tanenhaus has a point in calling Reagan “a historical forerunner” of Sanders. In a way, Reagan was. He was an insurgent who challenged the party’s “mainstream” leaders and nearly beat President Gerald Ford for the presidential nomination in 1976. Sanders aimed to swipe the presidential nomination from Hillary Clinton in 2016 and drove the Democrats sharply to the left.
But Tanenhaus, writing in the Washington Post, goes too far in matching Ron and Bernie. He calls them fringe figures when they entered national politics. Sanders may have been, but Reagan wasn’t. His TV speech for presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 gave him a massive conservative following. And he was twice elected the governor of California — no small feat. Sanders was a political outsider even in his initial years in the Senate.
While in their 70s, Reagan and Sanders appealed to young voters. Reagan’s age “made no difference to young voters,” Tanenhaus writes. They weren’t the emotional core of his campaign. Older conservatives were. But the army of youngsters was the heart and soul of the Sanders campaign. Even in South Carolina, where Joe Biden routed Sanders, he won voters under 30.
Tanenhaus, a former editor of the New York Times Book Review, writes that Reagan and Sanders moved their parties ideologically. True. As president, Reagan transformed a moderate party into a conservative one, which it still is three decades later. As for Sanders, what’s impressive about his success in pushing the Democratic Party’s center of gravity to the left is that he’s done it without winning the presidency.
