Bernie, Biden, and the Fantasy of Purity.
Bernie is struggling to expand his coalition. That cannot be blamed on others.
The following sentence should not be controversial:
“I want Bernie Sanders to be president, but I also recognise that Joe Biden would be better than Donald Trump.”
The fact that to some people that is a controversial statement, even an inflammatory one, speaks to the level of passionate support that Bernie Sanders generates, but it speaks to something else, something much darker, and something that could be dangerous, even fatal, to the efforts to remove Donald Trump from office.
It is the fantasy of purity.
This is usually something we see in religion; the religion’s central figure is the very embodiment of perfection, something for the followers of the religion to aspire to, always falling short of course, but never ceasing to strive for that ideal. I don’t trespass on religious questions (though I think if we look through history, the idea of a “perfect” person hasn’t always led to the most peaceful outcomes) but I do know a few things about politics, and I can tell you that the idea of a “perfect” leader is, without question, always a truly terrible idea.
I am not speaking about the perfect leader in the sense of a dictatorial future such as Hitler, Stalin or Kim Jong-Un. Such a comparison in this context would be appallingly offensive. The idea of perfection I am speaking about is one where the supporters of the politician refuse to accept any criticism of their candidate, and of course refuse to criticise them themselves. This is very dangerous, and can be politically fatal for the left and other progressives.
We saw this recently in the UK with the disastrous leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, who presided over two electoral defeats in a row, but who is still esteemed by many as the greatest leader the country never had. In the narrative of his fans, he was the victim of a hostile media and a disloyal party (it’s a good thing no other politician in history has ever had to deal with either of these things), rather than a weak and dim man with utterly ossified views and an appalling record of sharing stages with Holocaust deniers and other cranks, all in the name of a very narrowly defined “anti-imperialism” (except when it’s Russia). His calamitous leadership is not to be blamed on him, his advisors, their policies, or their campaigns. It is to be blamed on… absolutely anyone else. Anyone that helps them avoid the reality of having chosen someone so clearly to be the leader of a country.
I do not think that Bernie Sanders is in any way comparable to Jeremy Corbyn. Bernie is smarter, kinder, funnier, more consistent, a better and more successful politician. However his supporters do risk falling into a a very similar trap that many in the UK fell into with Corbyn. Like Corbyn, Bernie has built a massive and impressive movement of supporters. They have organised an amazing campaign for president that has seen him perform brilliantly time and again.
And yesterday we saw the limits of that campaign. Bernie won just four states, compared to Joe Biden’s ten, capping a remarkable comeback for the former Vice President. This relatively poor showing by Bernie has demonstrated what many fear about his campaign; that Bernie has a ceiling of support that he will always struggle to break through. His campaign has struggled, and seems to continue to struggle, to broaden his appeal to assemble the necessary coalition to remove Donald Trump. Meanwhile, voters whose chief aim is to remove Trump seem to be backing Biden as the best person to do that job.
This failure to expand your base is almost axactly what we saw with Corbyn in the UK. Under his leadership, Labour’s membership exploded to the point where it was the biggest party by membership in Western Europe. And Labour lost two elections in a row. His supporters – and advisers – looked at this massive boost in membership, and automatically believed that it would translate into success in a general election, a fatal error in judgement that has resulted in five more years of Conservative rule. They constructed a massive echo chamber, and just kept on howling into it, all agreeing with each other on why Corbyn was great, and the Tories were terrible. But they did nothing to bring alongside the millions more who didn’t share their enthusiasm.
If Bernie’s campaign cannot appeal to more moderate voters, to African-Americans, older voters, soft Republicans, then that cannot be blamed on anyone but his campaign. In an election your job is to convince people that you are the person to back. What we are seeing with the Biden surge is not some vaguely-defined shadowy campaign by the Democratic “establishment”; it is people making a choice on who is best planed to defeat Trump. In politics you may think your candidate is perfect; but just saying that doesn’t make other people believe it.
If the Democrats wish to avoid the kind of sickening feeling I got in December when the first exit poll in the UK came in, then Bernie’s fans must recognise that Joe Biden would make a better president than Donald Trump. A refusal to campaign for Biden, to support him, donate to him and vote for him is a tacit act of support for Donald Trump, a candidate whose electoral path is so narrow that only a few thousand people need come out and vote to remove this revolting, lying, corrupt racist.
America’s minorities – the very people the Democratic Party, and especially Bernie Sander’s supporters should feel duty-bound to protect – cannot afford another four more years of Trump.
The fantasy of purity is just that: a fantasy.
But it can have very real consequences.