Bernie Sanders As The Left's Barry Goldwater

An optimistic theory that political history doesn't repeat, but it may be rhyming.

Bernie Sanders and Barry Goldwater (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

A new Wall Street Journal story describes Bernie Sanders as a “kingmaker” in the Democratic Party who “has built a formidable political machine to spread progressive policies and support like-minded candidates, many of whom are young and new to politics.”

It’s the latest data point in my theory that if there is a historical analogue for the Vermont senator, it may not be anyone on the left — but it may be a political icon of the right. Call it my optimistic Barry Goldwater Theory:

A decade after Bernie Sanders almost tore the presidential nomination out of the decrepit hands of the Democratic establishment, the party’s old guard, ancient political formulas, and outdated corporate politics seem to finally be facing a moment of comeuppance. The long-overdue reckoning appears to be happening not just in a few predictably liberal locales, but across varied swaths of the country that seem ready to embrace populist politics…

History may not repeat itself, but it may be rhyming. In the 1960s, Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater’s ideological campaign pressing his party to turn the page on its insipid centrism ended in a crushing presidential election defeat — but only 16 years later, Goldwater’s acolytes brought about the Reagan Revolution.

A version of that same saga may now be unfolding in the Democratic Party on a faster timetable. The Sanders campaigns pressing the party to discard the corporate appeasement of Clinton and Obama may have failed to win the presidency, but the crusades appear to have resuscitated New Deal-esque populism among a new generation that understands voters have been radicalized by Donald Trump’s authoritarianism and by the opposition party’s constant capitulations to oligarchy.

Before you insist my theory is a false equivalence between the extreme Goldwater and the comparatively moderate Bernie, here’s how I explained it recently on a podcast:

I am not comparing Bernie Sanders’s message with Barry Goldwater’s. Barry Goldwater’s is a genuinely extreme message. I don’t think Bernie Sanders had an extreme message, but the point is, an ideological, clear, principled message.

He actually wins the primary, loses in the general, but it took 16 years for a different kind of Barry Goldwater with more political assets to take Barry Goldwater’s campaign, essentially, and win the presidency.

My guess is that in 1964, people were eye rolling, right? There was talk about this being the end of the Republican Party. They’re never going to be a party again. That’s it. It’s over. They got destroyed. It was the biggest landslide in history.

Sixteen years later, you have Ronald Reagan. In one scenario—I’m not saying this is going to happen, I’m saying this is one scenario—Bernie Sanders is the Barry Goldwater figure of the center-left in America, of the Democratic Party. I’m not sure who the Reagan version of it is, but I certainly think it’s possible.

To repeat: my theory is optimistic, perhaps unrealistically so. Because there are some obvious caveats:

• Goldwater’s crusade benefited from its ideological congruence with oligarchy. By contrast Bernie’s movement is a direct confrontation with oligarchy, and so in a money-dominated political system, it remains to be seen whether Bernie’s movement can achieve the same victories.

• Relatedly, Goldwater’s ideology was a threat to the socially liberal wing of the old Republican Party, but it wasn’t much of a threat to the economic interests that actually fund the GOP. Bernie’s ideology is a threat to the economic interests of the Democratic donor class — and so the prospects for a Goldwater-esque party takeover are more difficult.

• There’s a good argument that the charismatic Reagan was needed to culminate the crusade of the crotchety Goldwater. In the Bernie version of the story, it’s remains unclear whether there is a left-of-center leader with Reagan’s political skills.

Those caveats aside, I remain cautiously optimistic. Today, you not only see an ascendant progressive wing of the Democratic Party, you also see moderate-coded Democrats running around depicting themselves as Affordability Populists — something unthinkable 20 or 30 years ago when I first worked for Bernie on Capitol Hill in the age of the DLC Democrats.

Today’s “moderates” might deny they like or are inspired by Bernie, but they are politicians chasing what has become the biggest swing bloc of all: anti-system voters. And to reach those voters, many of them now sound like Bernie.

That’s the Barry Goldwater Theory in action.

For a long time the criticism of Bernie was that he hasn’t “gotten anything done.” Beyond that being just a total lie, it misunderstands what doing actually is. Yes, it’s legislating, but it’s also changing the entire political environment that delineates the boundaries of legislative possibilities.

Goldwater did that in the 16 years between his presidential run and Reagan’s ascent.

Bernie has clearly done that, too — and it’s only year 10 in this new 16-year cycle. Stay tuned.