Dispatches from the front tell of Bernie Sanders surging into the lead in the New Hampshire polls. From the time he began what was then viewed as a quixotic campaign for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination, Sanders’s chances have been laughed off and his successes explained away. He is, after all, not even a Democrat. Which, come to think of it, might count solidly in his favor with many voters, not a few of whom are Democrats.
It might be tempting to write off Sanders’s good numbers in New Hampshire as owing to the fact that the state shares a border with Vermont, Sanders’s home turf. But a lot more than the Connecticut River separates Vermont from New Hampshire, where they still occasionally elect a Republican. In Vermont, Republicans are an endangered species, though the many and manifold blunders of the Democrats – most conspicuously a failure to pass single-payer health care – have improved the Republicans chances of survival. Hope for much more than that, however, is chimerical.
New Hampshire doesn’t even like taxes and the one thing that the Vermont Democrats accomplish routinely and effortlessly is the raising of taxes. New Hampshire’s disinclination to tax is an incentive for Vermonters who live on the eastern side the state to cross the river to do their shopping. Especially for liquor. New Hampshire’s mall parking lots are always full of vehicles bearing Vermont plates. A Vermonter who buys, say, a washing machine at a New Hampshire Lowes, is required by law to pay his home state an imputed sales tax. This law, needless to say, is universally ignored.
If it can’t be said that New Hampshire is Sanders’s natural habit and that this explains his success there, then it will be suggested that he still has no chance since he appeals only to older voters.
But this, too, fails to hold up, as this writer discovered months ago, before Sanders became a formal candidate, by attending a standing-room-only event at a college campus on a night when the temperatures were well below zero. The school was the University of Vermont, but college kids are the same all over. If Sanders can wow them in Burlington, he can do it in Ann Arbor, Iowa City, and other such venues.
Then, there is the Sanders problem with minorities. Which is a fact and one that he and his supporters might not be able to do much about, in spite of his unblemished civil rights record. Vermont is the whitest state in the union and though he is originally from Brooklyn, Sanders is pure contemporary Vermont, right down to his Birkenstocks.
Still, the numbers suggest he could go far, even without minority support.
What this, in turn, suggests is a deep, abiding unhappiness among Democrats with … a Democratic administration. Sanders, after all, is running hard against the status quo and entirely on pocketbook issues. No voter is much motivated by Sanders’s positions on the Iran deal. (He is for it, now let’s talk about income inequality.)
President Obama says he believes he could win if he were to run for a constitutionally prohibited third term. Polling suggests he wouldn’t. The rise of Sanders screams it.
If Sanders (with help from a federal prosecutor) damages Hillary Clinton to the point that Joe Biden gets into the race, then the Democratic primary will come down to a referendum, of sorts, on the Obama administration. Biden, of course, will be obliged to defend it.
Which would make for a very entertaining primary season and debates that will be almost as much fun as those the other party puts on, with or without Donald Trump.
