Bernie Sanders scored his first victory of 2016 over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire — before the primary.
If Sanders didn’t prove he was a serious challenger to Clinton in Iowa, where just two-tenths of 1 percent of the vote separated them, he did when he appeared on the stage with her in Durham, N.H., for a party-sanctioned debate that was never supposed to happen in the first place.
It was a powerful concession for Sanders to extract from Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. They had previously rebuffed even Clinton supporters who felt the Democrats were giving up too much by letting the Republican presidential field get the debate ratings for themselves. Only six debates were originally sanctioned, with just four before Iowa. Most of them appeared on weekends or other times when they were unlikely to draw a large audience.
But Sanders had already changed the terms of the debate. The Republican presidential race has often been seen as a clash between the party establishment and Tea Party conservatives. The Vermont senator has introduced a similar dynamic into the Democratic primaries as well.
Asked about Clinton’s formidable list of endorsements from Democratic elected officials, Sanders attempted to parlay it to his advantage by painting the former secretary of state as a tool of the Democratic Party establishment.
“[Y]es, Secretary Clinton does represent the establishment,” Sanders argued. “I represent, I hope, ordinary Americans, and by the way, who are not all that enamored with the establishment, but I am very proud to have people like Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva in the House, the co-chairmen of the House Progressive Caucus.”
Clinton, in his telling, is the establishment candidate while Sanders is the true progressive. This kind of discourse is ubiquitous among Republicans, who argue about whether Donald Trump is an authentic conservative or Marco Rubio is part of the establishment. But it’s far less common among Democrats, even in races where ideological disagreements exist.
Sanders has gotten Democrats talking this way in the primaries this year and it’s evident that Clinton doesn’t like it. “Sen. Sanders is the only person who I think would characterize me, a woman running to be the first woman president, as exemplifying the establishment,” she shot back. “And I’ve got to tell you that it is … it is really quite amusing to me.”
Just as the Republicans who are labeled part of the establishment frequently accuse their critics of being back-bencher Senate blowhards who give a good speech but have never accomplished anything, Clinton is trying a similar line of attack against Sanders. He may know how to make expensive taxpayer-funded promises, but she knows how to govern.
“I am not going to make promises I can’t keep,” Clinton said. “I am not going to talk about big ideas like single-payer and then not level with people about how much it will cost.” This wasn’t the race Clinton, who lost the 2008 Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, was expecting to have to run this time around.
Sanders, age 74, doesn’t have Obama’s natural political skills. He is becoming a more effective communicator, but his approach is professorial. Sanders has replicated Obama’s success with young progressives, but not minority voters. In fact, African-American Democratic strategists complain about the lack of diversity in his ads.
If Sanders somehow won the Democratic nomination, it would actually be the first time he was the party’s official nominee for any office. While Sanders caucuses with Senate Democrats and the party has finally stopped running candidates against him, the socialist has always run as an independent or as the nominee of obscure left-wing third parties.
Sanders wants an even less conservative Democratic Party than currently exists. Yet his campaign sounds a lot like the Tea Party’s fight against establishment Republicans, except from a different perspective.
