Bernie Sanders: The first twelve minutes of his speech have nothing to do with politics. Instead, he opens with a mini-lecture on the dialectic of history: suffrage, segregation, Jim Crow, gay marriage. Once he launches into the political portion of his remarks, the speech has a shape, with themes that flow from one into another: American corporate oligarchy, the hollowing out of the middle class, making state colleges free, universal healthcare, taxing the rich and corporations, overturning Citizens United, the differences between himself and Hillary Clinton. Unlike Clinton, whose stump speech is a trainwreck into a dumpster fire, Bernie has a well-crafted vehicle. And he delivers it like a combination of a beloved Marxist college professor and a zui quan master.
All of which is to say that it immediately clear why so many Democrats have signed up with Sanders. The Clinton campaign is offering eight years of trench warfare. Everything is about “fighting.” Sure, she’s promising to fight the “bad” half of America; those evil, nasty Republicans. But her entire pitch is like a recruiting poster for World War I: Vote for me and we’ll take this country back one hedgerow at a time, whatever the cost! It’s hard to get excited for the political equivalent of the Somme.
Sanders is offering the vision of turning America into Scandinavia. Such a revolution won’t really require much of a fight, though, because once The People become engaged, they’ll easily impose their will on the handful of corporate oligarchs who dominate affairs as of now. In Sanders’ view, outside of the very, very elites, we’re all basically brothers and sisters. And no matter how conservative you might be, the truth is that Scandinavia is lovely. Who among us wouldn’t want paid maternity leave and shorter work weeks and locally sourced dairy products?
Jeb Bush: Bush still hasn’t figured out a way to talk about the dynastic aspect of his campaign. Asked about it, he replies, “I’m blessed. I got no problems with this. And people that do, they either need to get therapy themselves or realize that we can change the course of this country working together to solve problems.”
John Kasich: Kasich spoke for just eight minutes—half of which he spent bantering with a pair of kids who were ready to go sledding—and then took questions from a group of voters who seemed neither hostile, nor enthusiastic. There was no excitement. No real message, even. Except that Kasich is not like any of the other Republicans; he’s a good technocrat. With a heart. He actually says, that, by the way: “Because of where I came from—because if the wind blew the wrong way, people found themselves out of work—you get a good heart because of it.”
He’s such a technocrat that Kasich comes across like a No Labels candidate. Literally. The words “Democrat” and “Republican” pass his lips only once or twice. He never says either “conservative” or “liberal.” He begins his remarks by insisting, “First of all, just to get things out of the way, people talk about ‘are you establishment or anti-establishment.’ That’s kind of what the thing is today. You know, I’m neither.”
So what is Kasich? “I’m an idea person,” he says. He wants to “solve problems.” He wants us to “listen to one another a little bit.” He’s worried about America, but not too worried. “I think the basic strength of our country is good,” he says. “The basics of our economy are very strong.”
Donald Trump: Yet for this—a 30 minute event in which nothing of consequence was said—there were hundreds of people lined up down the block hours in advance. There were protesters chanting. There were police and security out the wazzoo. The only primary campaign I’ve seen which approached the Trump operation in terms of the size of the security force and the militancy of access control to the venue was Obama ’08.
There’s something strange in this dichotomy: On the one hand, Trump is running an unconventional race where the candidate is the campaign and everything, from policy to speeches, is unscripted and improvised. On the other hand, Trump’s organization is running a security apparatus around him like he’s an especially paranoid head of state.
It’s an odd combination. And probably a bit revealing, too. The Trump show isn’t entirely what it seems.
