By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Could Bernie Sanders put Mitt Romney in the White House?
I haven’t gotten my 2012 and 2016 wires crossed; I have a theory that’s
slightly more realistic than a Donald Trump presidency seemed a year ago.
As it stands now, it seems almost inconceivable that
Sanders could become the Democratic nominee — unless the FBI indicts Hillary
Clinton before the convention, or she reveals herself to be some sort of
animatronic device sent from the future to bore us to death (which would make
her ineligible under the “natural born” clause of the Constitution). The former
seems about as plausible as the latter, given that Trump’s nomination makes it
even less likely the Feds will risk interfering with the election.
But by staying in the race, Sanders is clearly hurting
Clinton. A raft of new polling has Trump either tied or beating Clinton. If
Sanders got out and supported Clinton, many of the “Never Hillary” liberals
would come home to the Democrats, just as many anti-Trump conservatives have
made peace with the presumptive nominee. The polling suggests that a unified
Democratic party would give Clinton a daunting lead over Trump.
And yet Bernie just won’t go. Why?
Part of the answer is personal: He’s simply having the
time of his life. This is a man who was kicked out of a hippie commune in 1971
for talking about politics too much when people were trying to work. The young
socialist liked chatting about revolutionary labor more than actually laboring
for the revolution.
After spending decades as a gadfly on the periphery of
national politics, suddenly he’s the belle of the ball. Millions of people are
hanging on his every word rather than trying to escape the conversation. That
has to be a heady thing for someone so in love with his own voice. It’s like he
spent all his life hanging around minor-league baseball and, in his golden
years, somehow become a sensation in the majors. Why quit? To preserve his
viability to run when he’s 78 or 84?
More important, he really believes in his “political
revolution.”
As a result, it looks like Sanders is creating a liberal
tea-party movement within the Democratic party. He’s endorsed the primary
opponent of the hapless, pro-Clinton chair of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman
Schultz. He’s sharing some of his dragon’s hoard of campaign cash with
handpicked progressive candidates. And he’s encouraging his supporters to
harden their animosity toward Clinton.
At this point, the smart thing to do from the purist-progressive
perspective would probably be to continue fighting within the Democratic party
for ever more leverage over the Clinton campaign and in Congress, while the
best thing for the party would be for him to fold up shop immediately.
What if Sanders does neither? What if he concludes that
the party rigged the game against him and bolts to run as the independent he
is? Would the Green Party — which ran Ralph Nader to disastrous effect for
Democrats in 2000 — nominate him at their August convention?
One might assume that the obvious effect of a Sanders
independent bid would be a Trump victory in November. Indeed, Trump, with his
trademark subtlety, has encouraged Sanders to run as an independent for the
obvious reason that doing so would doom Clinton’s candidacy.
But in this season where the standard playbook is as
outdated as the instruction manual for a Commodore 64 computer, Sanders’s
third-party bid could well encourage a fourth-party bid from an authentic
conservative, such as Romney or Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse. And in a four-way
race (or five-way, if you include the Libertarian party), all bets are off.
Theoretically, a winning share of the popular vote in a four-way race could be
26 percent. In a five-way race, 21 percent (which is where Romney is polling
right now). States that haven’t been competitive in decades would suddenly
become battlegrounds. Of course, if no one gets a majority in the Electoral
College, the decision goes to the House, for even more exciting postseason
drama.
Trump just wants to win. Sanders wants to smash the
status quo in both parties. The opportunity is staring him in the face.
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