It’s January 20, 2017. Bernie Sanders has just completed one of the most monumental upsets in American political history by first denying Hillary Clinton the Democratic nomination she twice sought and then besting his Republican challenger by vowing to ferociously fight against the insidious influence of money in politics. He’s moved into the White House and now it’s time to get to work. What next? How realistic is it to expect that a President Sanders will be able to deliver on promises of reforms that critics from both sides of the aisle claim are too radical for even some Democrats to stomach, let alone the vast and powerful obstructionist wing of a Republican party still stinging from last November’s defeat?
For clues, look no further than the eight years of gridlock, deadlock, interference and roadblocks perpetrated by Republicans in Congress against President Barack Obama’s mildly progressive agenda. As current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly told Vice President Joe Biden after Obama’s historic 2008 presidential election, “we can’t let you succeed in anything, that’s our ticket to coming back.”
If the ‘party of no’ absolutely refused to work or compromise with Obama, how on earth could it ever accommodate a president whose democratic socialist agenda makes Obama’s presidency look like a third George W. Bush term? If conservatives truly believe, for example, that the Affordable Care Act is destroying American health care, is there any hope at all that they would embrace Sanders’ promised single payer universal care system, which unlike Obamacare really would be socialized medicine?
“While Sanders’ agenda is attractive, it’s wise to calculate whether it’s at all practical,” leading political commentator Bob Cesca asked in a Huffington Post blog. “Sadly and regrettably, I’d argue that none of it is, given the political climate today.”
Besides—or perhaps because of—rampant Republican obstructionism, President Sanders will find it incredibly difficult, even probably downright impossible, to govern effectively without jettisoning some of his more courageous agenda items and compromising some of his more radical values. He’ll also have great difficulty convincing even fellow Democrats to sign on to some of his bolder plans. Returning to our health care example, there were dozens of Democrats who voted against Obama’s watered-down health care reform bill. It doesn’t take much imagination to forecast scores of Democrats, especially the ones from more conservative states, roundly rejecting any sort of socialized health care plan.
Taking on Wall Street and greedy corporations as promised will also prove a tall order for Sanders.
“If elected president, I will reign in Wall Street so they cannot crash our economy again,” he pledged in a recently-released campaign ad. “Will Wall Street like me? No! Will they begin to play by the rules when I am president? You better believe it!”
But will they? As a candidate, Barack Obama also vowed to hold Wall Street accountable. What followed was impunity for those responsible for the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s and an administration that was nearly as Wall Street- and corporation-friendly as its Republican predecessor. Big banks and multinational corporations wield enormous power. It is highly unlikely that even the crusading Sanders will prove much more than a speed bump on their superhighway to ever-increasing profits. Having made mortal foes out of them, these special interests will open the floodgates to an unprecedented deluge of anti-Sanders campaign spending, all perfectly legal thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling.
If all else fails, there’s always the “how will we pay for it?” argument. According to the Wall Street Journal, the price tag for Sanders’ sweeping progressive proposals could top $18 trillion, or more than the entire annual US gross domestic product. Much of Sanders’ agenda is to be funded through tax increases, which would further anger both conservatives and the public as a whole, galvanizing even more opposition to what will be seen as a radical socialist transformation that makes the Obama years look downright centrist by comparison.
There’s also the issue of Sanders’ relative lack of executive experience. Being the mayor of a city of 40,000 people isn’t the same as leading the most powerful nation in human history. Team Clinton and other critics accuse Sanders of being full of slogans and revolutionary idealism but lacking in details of how he would actually achieve his agenda.
“Sanders finally released his single-payer health care plan, which is all of eight pages and provides little detail on how he’ll implement a complete restructuring of the US health care system,” wrote Michael Cohen in the Boston Globe after the last Democratic debate. “That’s at least an improvement over his plan for breaking up the banks, which is four pages and just as short on detail.”
These and other challenges await Bernie Sanders should he somehow improbably ascend to the highest office in the land. While supporters of Clinton present her as a more moderate, pragmatic choice who would be more likely to break up impasses and break through ideological lines to accomplish her goals, many Sanders supporters counter that Clinton’s pragmatism would only allow most of the biggest problems facing the nation—chief among them the influence of money in politics—to continue to fester.
This article is the second in a two-part Digital Journal series. To read part one, click here.
