If you’re one of those people who likes to collect examples of bias in the mainstream media, I have a prize piece for your scrapbook. And it’s been hiding in plain sight for the last five months.
You are no doubt aware that Donald Trump is the face of the Republican party and whether he’s the nominee or not, Trump is going to really hurt Republicans come November. This verdict is everywhere. We know it’s true because Trump’s support in national polls is about 35 percent, near its high-water mark.
But what about Bernie Sanders? Sanders is an actual socialist. Yet he’s portrayed as merely an eccentric, an outlier-just a weird, funky uncle. He’s certainly not the face, or even the id, of the Democratic party. Yet what’s Sanders’ level of support in national polls of Democratic voters? He’s been hovering around a consistent 31 percent. So if you ever wanted to know the precise difference between a fringe novelty candidate and a guy who embodies the essence of a political party, we now have a number: It’s 4 percentage points.
There’s more, by the way. Democrats really like Sanders. His favorability numbers among Democrats are sky-high: 51 percent favorable versus just 14 percent unfavorable. He’s +37 among Democrats. Trump, by contrast, isn’t very popular among Republicans, where his favorability is actually upside-down, with 39 percent favorable and 57 percent unfavorable. So he’s at -18.
Yet Trump-who has never run for office as a Republican and who is barely attached to policies the Republican party has traditionally championed on abortion, marriage, constitutionalism, free-trade, etc.-is (according to the media) the beating heart of the GOP. And Sanders is simply a side-show who says nothing about the ultimate ambitions of Democratic voters or their party’s project.
Funny how that works.
Before we move on, let me be clear: I mean no disrespect to the Trump or Sanders campaigns.
As political exercises I’d argue that they’ve each tapped into something important in their respective parties and that while neither of them represents the actual bulk of their party, they present possible paths forward for both Republicans and Democrats.
Since most of the analysis in 2016 has been on the fight within the Republican party, people have for the most part ignored the extent to which the Democratic party is also at a crossroads.
As it is currently constituted, the Democratic party is no longer an ideological enterprise. Whether you want to call it the party of identity politics, or clientele-ism, or the coalition of the fringes, the Democrats’ embrace of big business and Wall Street, transgenderism and #BlackLivesMatter, open-borders immigration and hostility to all religious beliefs (except Islam) make it unrecognizable from what it once was as the champion of blue-collar Americans.
This is a new development. Forty years ago Jimmy Carter was elected as the tribune of ’70s-era liberalism. Twenty-four years ago Bill Clinton was elected as the third-way reformer who could reconcile progressive economics with the free-market future. It was only eight years ago that Barack Obama jettisoned ideological content so as to focus on identity politics.
And the Democrats don’t seem to know what direction to head in the post-Obama years. They could continue to bank on demographics, identity, and an increasingly tribalistic future. (Though this bet isn’t nearly as sure as some of them believe.) Or they could try to return to a third-way economics that focuses on the middle class. Or they could move on to a different set of ideas. Which is where Bernie Sanders comes in.
Sanders would like to make the Democratic party more like its European analogues. Maybe this would work as an electoral proposition. Maybe it wouldn’t. But it’s an idea. Whatever else you want to say about Bernie Sanders, he has a view for the future of the Democratic party.
I’m not sure whether or not you can say exactly the same for Donald Trump. Certainly, Trumpism has presented an alternative future for the Republican party. It’s a future that abandons the party’s tradition ideological fights-the Ex-Im Bank, abortion, entitlement reform, balanced budgets, social conservatism, you name it-in favor of a robust nationalism that picks and chooses stances on an ad hoc basis without the structure of an ideological framework.
Instead focus is shifted away from ideological concerns about freedom, or the Constitution, or the size of government, to more concrete aspects of national prosperity-bringing a halt to illegal immigration, destroying ISIS, using government action to protect American jobs from overseas competition.
I say that I’m not sure you can credit Donald Trump for presenting this alternative because it’s not clear to me whether this is his vision, or if he just happens to find himself riding the tiger. (As Conn Carroll put it, “A big part of what explains Trump is the natural growing pains of the GOP assimilating big govt whites leaving the Dem party.”)
But whether or not Trump deserves credit for creating this movement is really beside the point. What’s important is that, as my colleague Jay Cost noted, the problem with Trumpism is Trump. As a political commodity, Trump has many strengths, but also many weaknesses. (Beginning with his high unfavorable numbers among Republican voters.)
Whatever Donald Trump’s defects or shortcomings, Trumpism itself really does represent a possible future pathway for the Republican party. As with the Sanders route for the Democrats, this pathway may not be prudent or electorally fruitful. But it’s an idea. And people overlook it at their peril.
From where I sit, the safest path for Republicans would be to figure out a way to fuse Trumpism with traditional conservatism. Maybe call it National Greatness Conservatism? I don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud here.
It’s a difficult task and it would require a boatload of political skill. Fortunately, there are two or three other men running for the Republican nomination who possess a great deal of natural political talent.
