It’s 2016. Bernie Sanders captures the Democratic nomination and wins the presidential election. The House and Senate, however, remain in Republican hands.
How would the political situation in America under President Sanders be better/worse/different from what we had under President Obama?
To be honest, the pot of hate was boiling and we were going to get a flare up reactionary republican at some point. We probably got it out of our system at a pretty good time, because if things didn’t go perfectly for theoretical President Bernie he could’ve gotten replaced after 4 years easily under building conservative rage, and it would’ve likely been seen as a referendum on the viability of Democratic Socialism or leftist movements in general.
It’s not as big of a problem as if, say, Hillary would be ousted because of her popularity issues it wouldn’t be seen as “Democrats are unviable” so much as “Hillary was poorly liked”, but Bernie losing his second election would’ve caused a huge image problem for leftist policies in general.
We’d probably largely have political gridlock, but I’d expect him to continue a lot of social reforms. I doubt he’d be able to get congress to get anything passable w.r.t. college tuition or healthcare through, though he may be able to take some much smaller steps in that direction. He may have made some inroads on helping working class Americans, in that he could probably get at least a few Republicans to defect for that sort of legislation using the bully pulpit (if such a thing even still exists in the clickbait internet news spin era).
It likely would’ve been largely the same as an Obama presidency, but with even less movement on issues (especially since I don’t think Sanders possesses quite the political aptitude of Obama).
We can *hope *we did. But I don’t think the evidence supports that.
That, and it’s stating the difference mildly.
Given the assumption of the OP that Congress would still be Republican, I think it would be pretty much like the same hypothetical for Hillary that I discussed in the other thread.
There would be legislative gridlock, with neither side able to advance any substantive legislation.
Although he would be, at least early in his term, somewhat less vulnerable to this than Hillary, the Republicans would desperately be trying to manufacture “scandals”, complete with bogus Congressional hearings and possibly even an impeachment proceeding, in order to reduce his popularity and distract the populace.
In other words, things wouldn’t be much different than they are, except that in our world the scandals aren’t bogus and the failure to pass legislation is due to incompetence rather than partisan gridlock.
The one interesting question IMO is what would have happened with the Supreme Court seat. Would McConnell have the nerve to just leave it empty for four years?
However, I can’t resist fighting the hypothetical a bit; at the time the Democratic race ended, polls were showing that Sanders would beat Trump by about 10% of the vote, while predicting (correctly, as it turned out) that a Clinton-Trump race would be very close. Obviously, there’s no way to know if that lead would have held up through the general election campaign (despite the fact that many posters here seem to hold it as an article of quasi-religious faith that it would not have), but it seems clear that, at the very least, Bernie had a higher upside. If he was on the ticket, possibly Democrats might have won one or both houses of Congress, at which point things would have gotten really interesting. At that point the success of his Presidency depends on how he would have been able to work with Democratic Congressional leadership…well, we’ll never know (unless we find out in 2021).
Sorry, not trying to threadshit but I don’t buy the premise. For Sanders to win it would mean a very different vote result in the EC and popular vote.
For an unabashed Socialist to win at least one house, probably the Senate, would go to the Democrats.
A Sanders presidency would have looked very different from an Obama one in one key regard: He would go up against the Republicans head-on, instead of trying futilely to work with them.
And would therefore be even less successful than Obama.
This is fortunate, since Bernie’s budget proposals would have led to an increase in the national debt of somewhere around $21T. Add to that the fact that Bernie doesn’t seem ever to have shepherded a major bill thru Congress, and gridlock is a generous overstatement of his ability to effect legislation, let alone a major rewrite of the economy.
Trump can’t seem to manage a repeal and replace of Obamacare, and that’s with his party (more or less) in control of Congress. I seriously doubt if Sanders could succeed in pushing thru his “free healthcare/free college/free everything and soak the 1%” with the GOP in the way.
TANSTAAFL, even if a socialist were to get elected with “let’s soak the rich and we’ll all be living in clover” as his platform.
Regards,
Shodan
You can’t get any higher than 100% obstruction. But there were a few cases where Obama could have pushed something through over the heads of the Republicans, if he hadn’t been trying for bipartisanship. For instance, in any of the cases where the Senate refused to even vote on something, he could have had the President of the Senate call for a vote. Yes, that’s unusual, but it’s also pretty clearly in his powers, and the situation is also unusual.
The one area in which presidents have a relatively free hand is foreign policy.
If I recall correctly, though, Sanders was not particularly knowledgeable about or interested in foreign policy. When asked about international affairs, he usually turned the conversation back to income inequality.
This sounds like Biden should have forced a vote on the Garland nom. Is that what you meant?
Regards,
Shodan
Phew! Glad we dodged that bullet. It would be horrible to have a President who isn’t knowledgeable about foreign policy!
Sanders would be crippled by the FBI investigation into bank fraud by his wife and perhaps his undue influence. Sanders, by running against the Democratic Party in the primaries won’t find he has too many friends on the Hill. He will quickly find, just as Carter did, that he has to work with congress to get anything done. Bernie hasn’t distinguished himself as a deal maker, despite serving in the House and the Senate since 1990.
Since Sanders spends all his time thinking about how to break up big banks, he’d be clueless in dealing with North Korea and the Qatar situation.
However, one thing Sanders would have done better is that he’d have appointed a more competent cabinet. He’d also have filled the numerous executive positions that Trump hasn’t.
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And he given that he would be unable to do anything other than complain about Republicans stalling his agenda (without really any clear mandate) he would be forced to do one of two things: complain and hope the country prefers Democrats in the mid-terms, or compromise and work with Repubs where possible, which might in the end subject him to criticisms from his own purists. It’s easy to campaign on purity; it’s almost impossible to govern on it.
He had virtually no positions on foreign policy, and he has very limited knowledge of economics. He’s a social justice candidate.
Don’t get me wrong: I think there’s a place at the table for a social justice candidate, but governing requires a lot more than that kind of narrow focus. I welcomed a lot of what candidate Sanders had to say, but his supporters engaged in subjecting Hillary Clinton to false equivalencies and he really did nothing to discourage them. They become like his little pet mob.
I agree that Bernie would have had gotten just as much obstructionism as Obama, and would have had just as difficult a time getting anything done. He looked like a great alternative to Hillary during the campaign, but the Republican “alternate facts” machine wasn’t targeting him at that time. They welcomed the distraction and potential liability he posed for Hillary. Had he been the nominee, they would have turned their guns on him, and we would have seen a lot more hate whipped up for a Socialist/Jewish candidate who vacationed in Vietnam and had (allegedly) questionable financial dealings. The hate might not have reached Obama levels, but it could have approached Clinton’s. We’d be in for another four or more years of obstructionism and demonization of a President by a resentful Republican party.
I think the difference is that Obama was a relatively callow, kind of arrogant, who’d been in Washington only a few years, and his staff reflected that attitude; and he was a centrist for the most part. Sanders has been in Congress for decades, and is further to the left; his staff would have been even more ragtag, but the man at the top might actually have been a better leader.
I agree that he would have had a really hard time, with one big party and part of another big party against him.