Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and a liberal voter’s dilemma

A question: In politics, when should you compromise, and
when should you stick to your principles?

We’re watching that issue play out in the Republican Party
right now, in Congress and in the party’s presidential campaign. But Democrats
– in particular, liberal Democratic voters – have to deal with it, too. At some
point, liberals – and many moderates – will have to decide where their
allegiance lies: with Hillary Clinton or with Bernie Sanders. And for some,
that decision won’t be easy. Because it may involve choosing
between principles and pragmatism.

As a friend of mine put it the other night, “My heart is
with Bernie, but my head is with Hillary.”

Any of the Republican candidates would move the country
sharply to the right. On health care, foreign policy, wealth disparity, climate
change, workers’ rights, gun control: A Republican president would lead us in a
dramatically different direction on key issues. And a Republican president
would strengthen the conservative weight on the Supreme Court when a vacancy
occurs there.

The key outcome of the Democrats’ presidential primary process
has to be nominating the person most able to defeat the nominee of the Republican
Party as it is now.

But many of us aren’t happy with Clinton,
the Democrat everybody seems to assume is the most electable. Wall Street’s
influence, the Clinton Foundation, her tendency to embrace military solutions
to conflicts: those are just some of our concerns. Bernie Sanders has managed
to pull Clinton leftward, but I wouldn’t count on her staying there. Conservatives
aren’t the only ones who worry about her trustworthiness.

And so the dilemma regarding principles.

Ensuring a successful democracy is a balancing act. And in
this country, clearly, we’re out of balance. Too much wealth, economic power,
and political power is in the hands of too few people. Too many people are
poor. Too many people lack affordable health insurance and affordable, quality
education. We don’t adequately finance our infrastructure, our scientific
research, our education.

The United States is not an example of capitalism at its
best. Far from it. And Sanders has been doggedly pursuing
reform in key areas for years.

But is he electable? In part, that may depend on how
effective his critics are at using labels to scare voters.

Sanders is a democratic socialist.
And the way some of his critics talk, you’d think that means that Vladimir
Putin himself is pulling Sanders’ strings. So it would be good to keep in mind
what socialism is, and what democratic socialism is. A recent Washington
Post article by Max Ehrenfreund has a neat
analysis.

“Socialists,” Ehrenfreund writes,
“believe that the government should provide a wide range of basic services to
its citizens free of charge or at a discount, typically including university
education and health care as well as child care, housing, telecommunications,
energy, and more in some countries. They believe that these services should be
available to everyone, not just the neediest.”

As with democracy, different socialist countries have
adopted different forms of socialism. And, Ehrenfreund
notes, there’s a difference between socialism and the democratic socialism that
Sanders embraces. Sanders isn’t proposing doing away
with our representative form of government. He doesn’t want the government to
take over a lot of the private sector. But he does want to end the influence by
the wealthy over what government does. And he, like many of us, believes that
things like health care are a right, not a privilege.

Socialism “isn’t just a list of economic prescriptions for
government,” Ehrenfreud writes. “Perhaps above all,
socialism is a moral view. It is the idea that people share something,
that we’re all in this together, that we’ve got to help each other out.”

The United States already has plenty of socialist programs,
and Americans seem quite fond of them: Social Security, Medicare, the federal
highway system, unemployment insurance, federal dams, public libraries….

I grew up in the headquarters town of that huge socialist
program, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and I’ve seen its impact first-hand:
providing power to rural areas, preventing disastrous floods, boosting the
region’s economic development, improving farming methods, and providing amazing
recreational resources. And yes, during the debates about creating TVA,
opponents fumed that it was a socialist program.

Now a democratic socialist is running for president, and he’s
considered unelectable. Despite the success of existing socialist programs,
apparently a lot of the public can be cowed by the same scare tactics used
against TVA in the 1930’s. But there’s an important exception: young adults,
who have ignored the label twisting, are paying attention to what Sanders has
said, and think he’s describing the kind of America they want to live in.

The country would certainly be better off with Hillary
Clinton as president than with any of the Republican candidates. But the need
for reform – of the kind Sanders talks about – is enormous. How much compromise
should we agree to? How much compromise is conscionable in areas like campaign
finance, energy policy, and financial industry regulation?

Against enormous odds, President Obama has managed to
initiate critical changes in foreign policy. Clinton’s record is one of
supporting aggressive US military involvement abroad. Given the conflicts in
the world right now, it seems more than a small possibility that with a Clinton
presidency, we would find ourselves drawn into more war – possibly involving
Russia. How much compromise should we agree to?

Increasingly, the voices and interests of the average person
are overwhelmed by the people with money and power. That’s simple fact. Clinton
talks like a progressive, and I think she does care
about the poor and the middle class. But – not to echo Donald Trump – she has
some other people to answer to. When big donors call, she’ll listen.

The only power voters have is their vote (which is also, of
course, increasingly under attack). So: pragmatism or principles? At what point do liberals compromise?And
at what cost?

This article appears in Oct 21-27, 2015.