I don’t mean Donald Trump, but I think that Sanders’ success and Trump’s staying close to Clinton is about more than just her weakness. It’s part of a worldwide phenomenon where voters are fed up with typical politicians and want someone genuinely different. In much the same way that politicians of today are not exactly like politicians 100 years ago due to certain behaviors being no longer tolerated, I think we’re seeing a shift in what voters want out of their politicians. 100 years ago politicians could run fairly obvious corruption machines and it wasn’t much of a problem for voters as long as they delivered what voters wanted. We’re a little more high-minded today, but politicians still tend to rely on their networks of special interest groups and donor service rather than a more high-minded ideology. The professionals behind the scenes still feed candidates their lines and put out the messaging and image they want the public to see, and “spin” is both art and science, essential to modern politics. And yet Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have shown that maybe all that stuff isn’t as necessary as it seems, that maybe all the standard bullshit politicians shovel at the public is no longer being accepted with a smile.
Of course, the problem with Sanders and Trump is that they are just not acceptable insurgent candidates. Sanders was just too far left and Trump is just too far arrogant, crazy, mean-spirited, a whole basket of “deplorable” personality traits.
But what would happen if someone who was ideologically mainstream, was a decent enough public speaker, who had a record of accomplishment, but also a reputation as a straight shooter? and not just a Joe Biden/John McCain straight shooter, but one who shunned the traditional political norms the way Trump does? “Go ahead and run hundreds of millions in ads, I’m not going to because I think voters are smarter than that. Go ahead and cater to big donors, I’m not going to bother because my campaign doesn’t need that much money to kick your campaign’s ass. I can cut through your storm of spin with one speech laying out how things really are.”
It seems to me that such a candidate can be very successful if the current environment holds up through 2020. And I think there’s a precedent: Howard Dean’s 2004 candidacy. The man himself was a good enough public speaker, uncomfortably blunt, and was an accomplished executive. His campaign manager, Joe Trippi focused like a laser beam on more modern campaigning methods like the internet. And he almost pulled it off. Dean’s problem was that he blew through all his money too fast(on what I’m not sure), got drawn into a pissing match with Dick Gephardt over Medicare, and also fell victim to Democrats’ rather weird desire to nominate a veteran, thinking that was like Kryptonite to Bush(HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!) But I think a Dean-like candidate would do very well in 2020.
What do you guys think? And what attributes should an insurgent candidate have that differentiate them from more conventional politicians? Are we reaching an inflection point, much like the end of machine politics, where certain assumptions about how politics are conducted are about to change permanently? Or is this just a fad that’s going to fade away and we should see Clinton and Bush-types as far as the eye can see?
And because of this, even if Hillary wins, she will go on to be one of the most despised presidents in history. So bad, that she won’t even try to run in 2020.
I think it’s more that unsubtle appeals to racism can work, as seen in Brexit and the elections in Germany. Trump’s appeal to the unwashed and uneducated isn’t that he’s someone who will fight for them, it’s that he will fight with them and against “the other”.
I think you’re right about that, but also seeing only half the picture. Insurgent candidates generally appeal to those left out of the system. If neither party is addressing an issue of concern, an insurgent can capitalize on that to win votes. and racial resentment is always fertile ground. But there are also more high-minded insurgents who are running because they want genuine change, change that moves us forward rather than turning the clock back. Even Sanders was a “turn the clock back” guy to an extent because he’s pushing an ideology that even the Scandinavian countries have largely abandoned and yet he was using their 1970s era policies as his model.
But imagine a more forward looking guy with a platform centered on genuine change and exposing the casual corruption in the system that we put up with thinking it will never change. Donald Trump has a real shot at winning an election by just saying whatever comes to mind. Imagine someone with a brain and a heart doing that. Someone like Joe Biden or Howard Dean but also willing to shed all the trappings of the modern politician as Trump has done.
Sander’s “success” involved losing the primary. Which I think is the problem with a lot of these “year of the anti-establishment candidate” narratives. Hillary, who is about as establishment as can be, won her primary and is likely to win the General Election.
But a non-far left Sander’s would just be a standard Dem politician. And a non-crazy Donald Trump would just be a Forbes or Fiorina or another of the dozens of bored millionaire candidates who decided to run for political office as a vanity project. In other words, they’d be normal politicians. The things that keep them from winning are the things that make them unusual.
Which is why the “norms” are, well, norms. The majority of the voters like them, and so no matter how passionate a minority following you can get by breaking them, you won’t get the majority of the vote.
Actually, that was how Obama beat Clinton, by pretending to be a reformer whereas she practiced the “old politics”. Looking at Obama in 2008 logically, all he was was a standard Dem politician with less of a resume. That’s not what brought out all the young voters. It was seeming to be different, to be a reformer.
The desire for an insurgent has been there for awhile, it’s just that true insurgents have often been lacking a few of their marbles and conventional politicians have been able to co-opt insurgent messaging long enough to get elected. But once in office they play the game just like everyone else.
Running as an outsider or a reformer isn’t exactly a new political innovation. I’d say its more common than not. And it doesn’t make one an “insurgent”. Hell, even Jeb Bush was trying to portray himself as an “outsider” during the primary.
(and I don’t think its really just “claiming” either, I think most politicians do want to reform the things they see wrong with the political system. They just don’t make much progress since the status-quo is generally the status-quo for a reason, and political positions, even that of the Presidency, just aren’t that powerful relative to the strength of those reasons).
Insurgent parties are going to continue to fail as long as they continue to try to start at the top. They need to build their base first by winning local races and speak with a unified voice. Instead, the same 3rd party will run with multiple candidates, and the only thing they have in common is that they aren’t part of the two major parties-they really don’t have a unified party platform of their own. I have seen and listened to a multitude of Johnson ads, and most of them boil down to “Vote for Johnson, because he isn’t Clinton or Trump!” Well, guess what-my next door neighbor isn’t, either, I know more about her positions than all the ads have revealed about Johnson’s.
This is it exactly. And it’s the reason I wouldn’t vote for Bernie Sanders in the primary even though I agree with 95% of what he believes. Change has to start at the bottom for it to actually succeed. Bernie winning the nomination and presidency would have been the worst thing possible if you want to see serious change take place in our political system, and it would have been devastating for progressive policies.
I think it’s reasonable to say that Sanders (no apostrophe) did far better than anyone could have expected. He didn’t win the primary, but he did win a lot of votes and a lot of delegates, especially for a self-identified Democratic Socialist who wasn’t even a registered Democrat until the primary. And I do think that much of that can be traced to ‘anti-establishment’ feeling.
So: The anti-establishment Democrat got something like 40% of the primary vote, against a very capable candidate. The anti-establishment Republican won the primary. Anti-establishment feeling doesn’t have to get that much more widespread to start deciding elections.
Just out of curiosity, did you predict back in 2008 that Obama would be leaving office with one of the highest approval ratings since such things were tracked? Because if you made that prediction, I’m very impressed with your forecast powers!
Actually, an apostrophe goes at the end i.e. “Sanders’ campaign”.
ISTM, the OP was talking Presidential election and likely about an insurgent hijacking a main party nomination not running a insurgent party campaign. So objecting that insurgent parties can’t start at the top is a little offbase.
Then isn’t the OP talking about Trump, an outsider with little in common with the Republican Party hijacking said Republican Party to run his campaign?
Yes? I think so anyway because he only mentioned people who have worked through the main parties and didn’t bring up Perot. But more a Trump or Sanders 2.0. I was half joking, but Cuban described himself as someone who wishes he could be a libertarian but thinks the government still has important things to do. He’s abrasive in some ways but not quite the complete jackass pandering to racists that Trump is. Depending on how he changes over the next decade, it’s not completely unrealistic that he could mount a similar hijack of a party and be a much more neutral figure in the general.