Discussion: Obama, Dean, McCarthy: What Presidential Candidate Does Bernie Sanders Most Resemble?

system1 · July 7, 2015, 11:12pm

Discussion for article #238224

daytrader · July 8, 2015, 11:36am

Who does Bernie resemble most? Well, to me he most resembles a clean talking older version of Jon Stewart.

ncsteve · July 8, 2015, 12:25pm

One could in theory imagine Sanders so wounding HRC in Iowa and New Hampshire that she drops out and/or other candidates of the “center” or “left”—Biden? Warren? Gillibrand?—drop in.

Because if there’s one thing Hillary’s known for, it’s dropping out when she loses a few primaries.

avattoir · July 8, 2015, 12:37pm

Eugene Debs with Einstein’s hairdo.

You know who Bernie would WANT to resemble? Eugene Debs, regardless the haircut except possibly a mullet.

hellcat · July 8, 2015, 12:42pm

Sanders reminds me of both Teddy Roosevelt and FDR.

ronbyers · July 8, 2015, 1:23pm

Populism is attractive to the Democratic base because rank and file members really want to believe somebody in leadership listens to and gives a shit about them, for that reason a populist like Sanders is a threat to the establishment and someone Party leaders have to stamp out. I hope Bernie goes as far as he can and I hope he scares the hell out of the wine drinking cool kids like Ed who view running the Democratic party as exclusively a marketing campaign.

sharonsj · July 8, 2015, 1:35pm

Well, Ed, I’d say he most resembles FDR, who said of the bankers, “I welcome their hatred.” Why else would 13,000 people show up to hear Sanders while Rick “the sweater” Santorum attracts six people?

darcy · July 8, 2015, 1:50pm

Nice post. Someone was posting about “real Democrats” the other day and I put in my two cents and responded “like Jim Hightower, Michael Moore and Chris Hedges?” I was surprised by the supportive replies I received.

From an old Jim Hightower CD I still play from time to time:

“The middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos.”

“Populists have always been out to challenge the orthodoxy of the corporate order and to empower workaday Americans so they can control their own economic and political destinies. This approach distinguishes the movement from classic liberalism, which seeks to live in harmony with concentrated corporate power by trying to regulate” excesses.

radicalcentrist · July 8, 2015, 1:52pm

Bernie is a great guy and Vermont is a terrific state, in many ways my favorite (I visit there often). But it’s a very white place and Bernie has yet to find a way to appeal to the minorities, who are an indispensable part of the Democratic Party. His positions are certainly ones with great appeal to minorities, but he, personally, for whatever reason, doesn’t poll well among them. Unless he does, he will have limited impact after Iowa and New Hampshire.

george_c · July 8, 2015, 1:59pm

My take is slightly different. In my opinion, Sanders’ candidacy most reminds me of George McGovern’s in 1972. This was at the height of the Vietnam War, and Nixon’s 1968 campaign promise of a “secret plan” to end the war was clearly a lie. The country had had enough of it, and anti-war sentiment among Democrats in particular was at its peak.

Enter McGovern, whose platform was “end the war”. The Dems could not, and did not, pick a candidate who could deviate from that platform by an inch. McGovern (without looking this up) carried DC and Mass. There was nothing wrong with McGovern as a candidate, and the faction of the party that voted in the primaries was highly motivated. But it wasn’t enough.

That’s where I believe Bernie is. I don’t believe an elderly white socialist Jewish guy from Vermont with a Brooklyn accent can prevail in a general election, even though his message is appealing. I only hope that primary voters can put aside their positive view of him enough to take the long view. (And, for what it’s worth, I agree with Radical Centrist, above.)

whit · July 8, 2015, 2:02pm

“Honkified” states. Ed, you asshole! Yeah, Vermont is 95% white (which includes a fair proportion of Abenaki Indians passing). But Bernie started his political career marching in the early 60s in the South. He was going to begin his Southern campaign this time in Charleston, but cancelled because it was to be just after the shooting. His immediate response to the shooting was to email his supporters requesting that we donate directly to that AME church, which I imagine tens of thousand of us did.

“Honkified” is a slur. But it does raise an interesting aspect of Bernie’s campaign. He appeals strongly to those with military background because of his strong advocacy for them in committee, and he appeals strongly to those of labor background who’ve voted Republican the last few decades - two groups Hillary has little appeal with. Bernie can speak to Blacks and Latinos just fine. He grew up a poor Pollish Jewish immigrant. He knows the view of the outsider, the minority. He marched with Dr. King. He marched in the South when Jewish boys from the North were getting killed for it. Are you just being obnoxious because you’ve decided to be a troll on this?

chuck_voellinger · July 8, 2015, 2:09pm

One of the most poorly written articles TPM has published. Using the term “wound” right after mentioning RFK’s assasination? And, what does this gem mean, “And the answer the pundits crave cannot be found in his biography or his campaign message, but involves the precedent we can use to understand what he represents.”?

ralph_vonholst · July 8, 2015, 2:16pm

Socialist, Schmocialist; Bernie is a “New Deal Democrat”. In some ways, he comes very close to Hubert Humphrey, especially in the latter’s early years in the late 1940s and 1950s [Vietnam War, notwithstanding. H^3’s loyalty to LBJ was a mistake].

ajm · July 8, 2015, 2:18pm

This contempt for marketing is dangerous to our country – ultimately succeeding in implementing policy depends on selling your candidate to a majority of the voters. Currently, the mainstream media is doing their best to sell Sanders – partly because they like a horse race and partly because their masters recognize that Hillary would be harder to beat because she has broader appeal and because their masters regard splitting the Democratic party as always good. But the very second that Sanders were to win the nomination, the mainstream media would turn on him and the vast majority of voters who don’t vote in the primaries would be presented with a phony picture of a dangerous old socialist crank who is wildly extreme. Depth of support is no substitute for breadth of support if you are actually trying to win an election.

The McGovern election is the outcome I most dread and I worked on the McGovern campaign. I carried a sticker that said don’t blame me I voted for McGovern but it was small solace for having Nixon in office.

bearpaw · July 8, 2015, 2:19pm

First, Sanders is running as much against Obama’s legacy …

Given that much of Obama-the-President’s legacy looks like it’ll be at odds with what Obama-the-candidate ran on, I suspect that a lot of Sanders’ support will come from Obama ’08 supporters. Especially the ones – like me – who were unimpressed by Obama '12.

What’s more is that – unlike Obama – Sanders has a decades-long history of walking the walk.

ralph_vonholst · July 8, 2015, 2:19pm

Ditto!

ajm · July 8, 2015, 2:20pm

Most probably Ed is doing this because he has looked at polling results. Perhaps Bernie could turn it around as his history becomes more widely known or if he’d been able to campaign in Charleston but so far not.

brooklyndweller · July 8, 2015, 2:24pm

Hypothetically, if Sanders were to win the Dem nomination, he’d get most of the Northeast and CA. And we’d be looking at a Rethug president. So I agree with George_C above.

leftflank · July 8, 2015, 2:30pm

Speculation like this is worth peanuts and is basically fluff and filler.
Bernie is a good dude, special possibly even and that is not something that can exactly be measured, the it factor. Bernie has ‘IT’.

Hillary has been hit with ‘it’ before. Barack has ‘it’ and came out of nowhere with no real comparison to be made. He just touched the people. Bernie has this but the timing isn’t nearly the same and I think that the nation is more than ready for our first female President. Bernie is the right guy at the wrong time, at least for him. If he were in his 50’s or early 60’s even, I believe that there is no doubt that he would eventually be President.
But the reality is, this is his only shot and although he is a great candidate, he is up against another very popular candidate that has been working towards this for just as long as he has and has way more and a way wider backing.

Bernie could pull it off, his chances are far from zero but it would be the second miracle candidate in a row and as a rule, miracles don’t happen with regularity or the whole idea of miracle just becomes meaningless.

ralph_vonholst · July 8, 2015, 2:32pm

What’s beginning to worry me is what appears to me to be a kind of personality cult surrounding Bernie, especially on sites like the Daily Kos which has turned into a sort of Bernie Sanders Marching and Chowder Society, and legitimate questions about Bernie’s position and policies, views on gun control, foreign policy, racial diversity; are received as an “attack” or “hit job.”

I don’t like personality cults. They are inherently destructive to both the subject and the proponents. They beget intolerance. Remember the PUMAs. If Bernie does not win the nomination; are we going to have a replay of that sort of thing. I love Bernie, but I’m becoming nervous.