What distinguishes Bernie Sanders from Donald Trump?
The similarities of these two candidates is one of the unspoken mysteries of the 2016 campaign. Their outsider status, the overwhelming whiteness of their constituency, their working class support, their unease with immigration, their economic protectionism, the uncomfortable sense of a lurking violent streak among followers, their rejection and resistance from the establishment, the tendency of supporters for the one to pick the other as their next choice, a certain revolutionary veneer — their eerie harmony is so pronounced as to disquiet. Certainly the candidates don’t care to point them out. But the near mirror image harmony between two figures so ostensibly opposed is bizarre. Opponents paint Trump and Sanders as extremists of left and right respectively, but look at them together and you get a harmony that is neither left nor right nor center. What the hell is going on?
One of the revelations of the 2016 campaigns is how The Democrats, Republicans, and media have lashed out at Trump virtually as one single Uniparty. The myth of a political opposition and a free press has been shown to be as empty as the myth of political representation. The closer Trump comes to winning the popular vote, the more the establishment gropes for ways to frustrate it. Sanders would lead the democratic race today, and would have led the Democratic race almost from the start, had he received the super-delagates bestowed upon Hillary as a Party gift.
Sanders’ treatment by the press has differed from Trump’s in its lack of insult and violence, but the substitute treatment –minimal coverage, and repeated repetition of the hopelessness of Sanders’ efforts — only highlights Trump’s and Sanders’ common rejection by that same Uniparty. Both candidates appear to be pitching a message that’s the same in many particulars, and to an audience that is much the same. Both ride a rising popular wave of opposition. But what drives the appearance of that message? What directs it to these two apparently discordant figures? And what character will it assume if this popular groundswell is ultimately led by one man, or his style, rather than the other? The harmony of their positions, and of their opponents, matters. But the things that distinguish them matters too, since they may give the popular impulse supporting them a distinctive future turn.
So what does distinguish them?
First of all, Sanders is serious. Sanders is Trump for adults. Sanders exudes coherence, comprehensiveness, specificity — a sense of tradition. By that I mean the socialist tradition, of course. And it is, supremely, an intellectual tradition. Liberalism is a sentiment; socialism is a program. And it has attracted no few programmatic minds. Bernie appeals to such minds, to planners, practical men, to those dealing with hard data, measurement and the concrete. Ask him about health care, and he doesn’t get sentimental — he points to obviously functional and effective systems in Canada, Sweden, Norway. Of course it can work, he seems to say. Look — it is working.
Sanders will point to self-evident profiteering on the part of Big Pharma, palpable mismanagement and waste, and it’s this ability to combine specifics with an sound overarching framework that gives him his power. What is compelling about Bernie is not simply the man but the method. There is a sense that he is trying to construct something real, that he has worked out its costs and dimensions, that he has successful models to guide him, and has no doubt whatever as to the value and feasibility of his product and goal. He isn’t after high office for his own sake, he’s after it for the sake of his project, a just and needed project. He knows where he wants to go and he knows how to get there.
Trump, by contrast, gives the impression that he has no idea how he’s going to get there, and isn’t even entirely sure where he wants to go. Sanders invariably does better than Clinton when matched against Trump in the polls. Why? The answer is that Trump is Pixar, all elasticity and slapstick and surprises. Trump is fun. Sanders in not fun. He is a man on a mission. (For Hillary, in contrast, the Oval Office is the end goal and end point: she sees her historic role is to be the first woman President, period, just as Obama was there to be the first black President. As with the mediocre Obama, good President Performance is a secondary issue.)
Yet with Trump, paradoxically, apparent directionlessness is in some respects — in many — a strength. When Rubio talks about bombing ISIS or Fiorina says she’ll face down Russia, they’re blowing smoke. They have no idea what the situation is, and they won’t know till they sit down with the CIA reports in the War Room. Talking about what they’re going to do ahead of knowing about what they can do is senselessness, mere theatre for the electorate.
Trump — it’s hard to use this term in respect to Trump, but wisely! — is providing just a few generalities (“Make America Great Again”) and is making just a handful of flat but do-able promises (the wall, pausing immigration), all of which appeal very much to his market. He is asserting that once he’s in power, he’ll assemble a capable team and put them on the Rebuild America project. Hands on, Trump might well be a executive disaster. But Trump has never been a laborer but an employer. Based on the track record of his business operations, I think he quite understands that his role is not to play first violin but to conduct. I have known not a few CEOs who operate just that way, and it is not a poor or ineffective way.
In his own way Trump is as confident as Sanders. The difference being that Bernie’s confidence rests on the track record of numerous democratic socialist undertakings in the past, and Trump’s rests on his surety that he can find the right people to execute his agenda, whatever he feels it should be after getting properly debriefed. Trump may be right. But Sanders has the blueprints in hand, whereas Trump only promises to find men who can assess the terrain fresh and properly draw them up. Both approaches have merit; Sanders’, I think, has more.
In terms of personality, the Sanders persona has a grandfatherly aura that is grievously underrated. We’re an increasingly atomized people, our baby boomers are forever trying to imitate the young, extending their infancy when need for maturity is glaring. Sanders rejects all that. He looks the part of the old coot who’s been there, seen how things operates, and is here to tell you, sonny boy, how it is. I’m not surprised at all that young voters adore him. He’s what they wish they had at home.
Too, Sanders has the ruffled quality of a scholar, which advertises intelligence as surely as Trump’s arm-waving and coiffure murmur, “Buffoon.” Aligned as well is his Jewishness. Sanders never flourishes it, but its quiet flavor appeals to virtually every American of European descent, since every European nation has had its share of Jews, and beloved Jews at that, and Europe has seeped back into the Jewish persona just enough to let it resonate across the board. Sanders’ anger that stems not a little from that ancient Judaic longing for transcendental, apocalyptic justice. He’s angry that people are poor, that they can’t get medication, that they can’t get an education. But it isn’t the anger that gets directed into a bottle of Jack Daniels, where many a Trump supporter puts it, it’s an anger that’s practical and constructive. He’s not mad because there’s a problem. He’s mad because there’s such an obvious solution, and the current venal unnecessary maladaptive system makes it so hard to adopt it.
There’s an interesting contrast here with Trump. Trump is… strange. Everyone is forever repeating that he’s calling up the demons of anger, but why should a politician after votes not probe voter dissatisfactions? Some of his supporters have every reason to be angry. Many are.
But is Trump himself angry? I don’t get that impression in the least. I get the impression that he’s hugely amused. He doesn’t mock his opponents cynically — he really seems to find them genuinely, hilariously mockworthy. I don’t feel an scintilla of black resentment directed to his rivals, to Hillary, to Muslims, to Mexicans. He may say outrageous things about them, but the body language is that of a stand-up comedian waiting deadpan to deliver the killer punch line. The assinine Hitler comparisons could not be more off the mark: stylistically, he’s the opposite of Hitler. Even Bernie is closer to Hitler than Trump is. When Hitler spoke, titanic hatred. livid fury, roared from him like lava. When Trump speaks, he mocks, jokes, imitates cripples, pulls faces, shrugs, rambles. He’s an entertainer, and he is entertaining.
In this, he’s light years from Bernie, who bears the persona of a decent college administrator planning a departmental restructuring, determined to get it right and get it done and who wants to make sure students and faculty benefit as much as possible, cost and bureaucracy be damned. Bernie is formally polite — not the least of his considerable charms — but at the same time there’s a certain intense impatience, even contempt. He knows what we need, and he wishes all the ego-driven power-seekers like Mrs. Clinton and those Republican jackasses would all just go back to kindergarten and let him get down to work.
To me, Sanders and Trump are like father and son — father and wayward son. The father is sound, solid, thoughtful, maybe a bit cranky, but rich with experience and a little saddened at the family irresponsibility all around him. He nags and grumbles a bit, but his family responsibilities are evident, and he strives to execute them well. Trump, the prodigal son, is the feckless, spunky, funny, charming Huck Finn ne’er-do-well who gets himself into one scandalous publicly bemoaned mess after another, and seems completely profligate and even senseless — but who at the same time bears a striking resemblance to Dad; so striking that you can actually imagine him straightening out one day and, just slightly, filling the old man’s shoes.
One or the other has to run the family business right now, though, and the problem is that Dad is getting on, while Sonny doesn’t look like he’s quite up to it yet. So, unsurprisingly, the polls say that the bulk of the voters would vote Dad, given the choice, while wistfully continuing to hope for the best in regards to Sonny.
Of course there’s always Mom too. But she’s just too much of a moralizing nag.