Tag Archives: bernie sanders

Bernie Sanders: Gun Nut – Or Politician?

Is Bernie Sanders a “gun nut”?

As the Vermont Senator’s political stock gains ground, buoyed by rising polling support in both Iowa and New Hampshire, journalists and pundits are beginning to look more closely at his record on the issues. For many progressives, perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this element of Sanders’ candidacy is what they view as his lukewarm record on gun control. Echoing the sentiment of many progressive, the Slate’s Mark Steyn recently blasted Bernie on this issue in a blistering online critique: “[B]efore liberal Democrats flock to Sanders, they should remember that the Vermont senator stands firmly to Clinton’s right on one issue of overwhelming importance to the Democratic base: gun control. During his time in Congress, Sanders opposed several moderate gun control bills. He also supported the most odious NRA–backed law in recent memory—one that may block Sandy Hook families from winning a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the gun used to massacre their children.” As Steyn points out, in 1993 then-Representative Sanders opposed the Brady bill which proposed federal background checks for gun purchasers and restrictions on felons’ ability to own guns. Bernie’s voting record on gun control has also come under attack by groups backing Bernie’s Democratic rivals, including this attack ad aired by the pro-Martin O’Malley Super Pac Generation Forward:

But Bernie’s defenders point out that in recent years he has taken a stronger stance on gun control, including voting for expanded background checks on gun buyers and for a ban on assault weapon in the aftermath of the Newtown school shooting.  The truth, however, as this Politifact story makes clear, is that while Bernie may not be the NRA’s poster child for the Second Amendment rights, neither has he been in the vanguard of gun control.  And while progressives find this troubling, conservative pundits – while no fan of Bernie’s – are finding progressive discomfiture on this issue more than a little amusing.

Taken as a whole, Bernie’s record on this issue is, as Steyn suggests, more conservative than that of his main Democratic presidential candidates with the exception of former Virginia Senator James Webb. Why would a candidate who is staking his campaign on progressive reform be so soft on gun control? The simplest explanation, as my Middlebury colleague Bert Johnson argues, is that, like it or not, Bernie is representing the preferences of a good number of his Vermont constituents. As Johnson notes in his comments to Politifact in its review of Bernie’s record on guns, “As a rural state with a large number of hunters and other gun owners, Vermont has been less liberal on guns than on most other issues, historically…[Sanders] seems to support more regulation of guns than the U.S. presently has, but he recognizes his constituents’ preferences so does not make gun control a priority.”

For the Prius-driving, urban-dwelling, tree-hugging, Chablis-drinking secular humanists among you, it might be difficult to fathom why a former Socialist mayor of Burlington representing possibly the most liberal state in nation could care very much about the political preferences of a group of knuckle-dragging goose-stepping paramilitary neo-Nazi gun owners. But the reality is that those who own guns in Vermont, while predominantly conservative in outlook, are nonetheless a somewhat diverse and, perhaps more importantly, rather substantial group of voters. In 2014, as part of her senior honors thesis, Middlebury College student Brianna Morse surveyed a representative sample of Vermonters to see how many owned guns, and why. Morse found that a substantial number – about 42% – of Vermont adults indicated they owned guns, a total consistent with what other sources have shown. Needless to say, this is a potentially sizable voting bloc.  It is true that gun ownership in Vermont is positively correlated with a more conservative political ideology; Morse found that for every unit increase on a seven-point ideological self-placement scale (from extremely liberal to extremely conservative), the odds of gun ownership increase by 1.2, controlling for education, ideology and income. (Ideology did not seem to affect the number or types of gun owned, however.) Gender also influenced gun ownership, with males five times more likely than females to own a gun, again controlling for socioeconomic status. Lower levels of education also had a statistically significant and positive relationship with gun ownership; Morse found that for every increase in the level of education the odds of a respondent owning a gun decrease slightly as well (with more educated individuals less likely to own multiple guns.) Neither income nor age seemed related to gun ownership, however.

When asked their motivations for owning a gun, respondents gave multiple reasons, but the most popular answer was for hunting. While liberal gun owners were most likely to cite target practice or skeet shooting as a reason for owning a gun, 42% of conservatives cited hunting most frequently, followed by 25% of conservatives citing their Second Amendment rights as the second most popular response. (Morse speculates that liberals are more squeamish than conservatives in shooting living creatures.) This compares to only 6% of liberals and 13% of moderates who listed the Second Amendment as a motivation for owning a gun. (Morse’s survey allowed respondents to cite more than one motivation for gun ownership.) In looking at these descriptive statistics, Morse suggests that, “Conservatives place a higher importance upon the acknowledgement of their rights as a citizen in the decision to own a gun than liberals or moderates… .” But she cautions that because of multiple responses combined with low response numbers for some categories, it is difficult to attribute a primary motivation for gun ownership among Vermonters with any degree of statistical confidence.

Viewed from the perspective of constituent preferences, Bernie’s ambivalence toward stricter gun control legislation is politically pragmatic, even if it seems to clash with his more progressive ideological outlook on other issues. But how will this play at the national level among Democrats? It is doubtful that Clinton or other Democrats are going to make this much of an issue, at least in the early going. The percentage of gun owners in Iowa, at about 42% of voting-age adults, rivals that of Vermont, and New Hampshire’s proportion, while lower at about 30%, is still substantial. Yes, these aren’t necessarily predominantly Democratic voters, but why take a chance on alienating a politically active group of voters? Nationally, support for more stringent gun control has been lukewarm at best, except for brief fluctuations in the aftermath of highly publicized shootings such as Newtown, and it ranks quite low among the issues that concern most Americans. If Bernie is going to lose this race for the Democratic nomination, it is highly doubtful that his stance on guns will be the issue that takes him down.  Most progressives, I suspect, will be willing to look past what they will likely view as an anomaly in Sanders’ record.

http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/k_gwwnq-30i8vmypp8fkag.png

Bernie Sanders. He’s not a gun nut. He’s a politician.

http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2015/07/12/bernie-sanders-parrots-the-nra/jcr:content/image.crop.800.500.jpg/1436791780203.cached.jpg

America, Do You Feel The Bern?

Psst. Hey, you there. Yes, you – the one drinking from the “Bernie Speaks for Me” coffee mug.  Are you like me? Did you wake up this morning, brow furrowed, worried about the future of the “yuman” race? Did you find yourself dropping your “r’s” from the end of words, emphasizing the beginning t of words and generally yelling out everything you said? Did you decide to pluck your hair, dye what was left white and comb the remnants with a battery cable? Did you put on yesterday’s rumpled shirt? Are you constantly barking out the words to “This Land is Your Land” everywhere you go?

Yeah, me too. And do you know why? Because we have Bernie-mentum! We are part of the 99%! Yeah, that’s right – we feel the Bern! And yes, Hillary, you should be afraid – very, very afraid! Two days ago Bernie shocked the world by winning 41% of the vote among Democratic activists in the Wisconsin straw poll, thus preventing Hillary from winning a majority (she only pulled 49%). No other Democrat – not Lincoln Chaffee, not Joe Biden, not Martin O’Malley – won more than 3% of the vote. And this despite the fact that the pro-Clinton booth was stationed right outside the straw poll voting location! Clearly this has become a two-person race, and the momentum is with Bernie!

Oh sure, the media naysayers carp that it was a low-turnout, non-random voting event that’s not representative of the actual Democratic electorate. Heck, Clinton didn’t even bother to campaign there. But what do you expect from the right-wing plutocracy that passes for the mainstream media these days? They have consistently ignored Bernie’s candidacy from the day he announced. In a show of how much they fear Bernie’s candidacy, the corporate lackey New York Times buried its coverage of Bernie’s declaration on page 21. No wonder independent journalists are questioning whether Bernie will get a fair shake with the mainstream media.

Despite this negative news coverage – or perhaps because of it – Bernie is drawing huge, raucous crowds everywhere he goes, beginning with the estimated 5,000 who crowded the Burlington waterfront to see Bernie kick off his campaign. The day after he drew the largest crowd of the current campaign season in Iowa. Standing room only events characterize his campaign stops in New Hampshire as well. And why not? Bernie’s progressive message is resonating everywhere with voters, and it’s forcing Clinton to take notice too. That doesn’t make the crony capitalists on Wall St. very happy; already some are raising the alarm that Clinton will try to adopt Bernie’s common-sense progressive agenda in order to preempt his rising support. As one member of the Wall St. criminal class and former Clinton supporter put it, “My fear is that she is just going to get pulled too far left by people who want her to just hammer the banks and stand in opposition to all these things she’s against.”

But it may be too late to stop Bernie. As Clinton’s poll numbers founder amidst rising negativity and a growing sense that she is untrustworthy, Sanders has vaulted into second place among Democratic voters nationwide. And if, as polls now suggest, Sanders comes out of Iowa with a top-two finish, who knows what will happen in New Hampshire, which is in Bernie’s backyard?

And while official totals won’t be released until July, early media reports suggest that Bernie’s rise in the polls has been matched by a slew of small donations – average size about $43 – that collectively add up to an impressive $1.5 million within the first day of his formal announcement.  His fundraising totals are all the more impressive considering he is not taking PAC money and has eschewed big donors. Heck, he’s one of the rare elected officials who has seen his wealth shrink while holding office! How can you not support someone who is carrying a debt of between $25,000 and $65,000 on his two credit cards? What is more American than that?

So, go ahead. Pass the mug. Drink in the Bernie-mentum. Feel the Bern, America!

Addendum (1:46 p.m.):  Bernie is kicking Hillary’s …er…derriere on this Daily Kos poll too!

Sanders vs. Todd: Fifty Shades of Bad

Is it time to take Bernie Sanders’ candidacy seriously? Apparently not – at least that’s the impression one might get based on Chuck Todd’s disturbing interview of Sanders on yesterday’s Meet the Press.

Rather than provide any evidence on which to evaluate Sanders’ candidacy, Todd instead reminded us why, as political scientist Tom Patterson documents in his very fine book Out of Order, the media remains ill-suited for covering presidential campaigns. Writing in 1994, Patterson argued that in the post-1972 primary-centered nominating era, the media had anointed itself as the main intermediary between voters and presidential candidates. The problem, Patterson argued, is that the incentives driving media coverage, including the need to draw an audience, maintain ratings and earn advertising revenue, are not conducive to providing the information that can help voters determine whether candidates are qualified for the presidency. Rather than examining the details of candidates’ policy views and qualifications, journalists instead cover the presidential campaign as a horse race, focusing in particular on candidates’ campaign strategy and personalities. And rather than allow candidates to speak for themselves, journalists substitute their own interpretation of candidate statements in the context of the horse race, with a focus on negative reporting and (often media-created) controversy.

Although now two decades old, Patterson’s argument is perhaps even more relevant in today’s era in which the mainstream media finds their election coverage dominance challenged by cable news and social media. As evidence, one need look no further than yesterday’s Meet the Press fiasco of an interview. As one of Sanders’ first nationwide appearances as a presidential candidate, you might think Todd would take the opportunity to probe more deeply into the Senator’s not uncontroversial policy proposals, such as providing free tuition to students attending public colleges, or raising the marginal tax rates, or how he might deal with ISIS. But you would be wrong. To begin, Todd spend the first part of the program discussing the unfolding Dennis Hastert scandal in a not-so-subtle effort to tell us what it says about Congress as a whole. (Answer: nothing, but that’s not newsworthy so….) When Sanders finally made his appearance about midway through the program, Todd begin with one useful question regarding whether the Senator would support the House bill to extend the U.S. Patriot Act then under debate in the Senate. Sanders said he likely would, reluctantly, although he expressed concern about protecting civil liberties.

At that point, the interview degenerated into full horse-race, candidate-personality mode.  Specifically, Todd  sought Sanders’ views on a topic arguably of far less relevance to the Senator’s qualifications to be president: Hillary Clinton. He began indirectly by asking Sanders to weigh the relative merits of Bill Clinton’s presidency versus Barack Obama’s. When Sanders appeared to praise Obama more than Clinton, Todd pressed further: “You singled out President Obama for praise but not President Clinton. Why?” You might wonder why Todd raised this issue, since Bill is not a candidate for higher office, but Todd’s intention soon became clear when he asked Sanders to comment on Hillary Clinton’s apparent leftward movement on a number of issues, including “same-sex marriage, on immigration … on NAFTA, on trade, on the Iraq War, on Cuba. She has moved from a position, basically, in disagreement with you, to a position that comes closer to your view. So I guess is, do you take her at her word?”

Cue the horse race! To his credit, Sanders refused to take the bait. Instead, he expressed hope that “the media will allow us to have a serious debate in this campaign on the enormous issues facing the American people” and tried to move the conversation to his policy views. Todd, however, had no interest in having a serious debate on the issues; he followed up with: “Do you trust these changes that Hillary Clinton has made? Or do you think she’s been doing it just for primary politics?”

When Sanders again refused to engage Todd in a discussion of Clinton’s motives, the MTP moderator closed with his zinger: Sanders’ 43-year old essay discussing women’s “rape fantasy.” Naturally, Todd chose to highlight the most controversial portion of the essay, while disingenuously implying it was the only portion he was comfortable reading on air: “I’ll be honest with you, Senator Sanders, it’s uncomfortable to read. The only excerpt I’m going to put up is, you wrote this in February of ’72, was sort of a fantasy of men and women, you said, ‘A woman enjoys intercourse with her man as she fantasizes being raped by three men simultaneously.’ Your campaign described it as satire. Can you explain this essay?”

Sanders explained that it was a poorly-written attempt to discuss gender roles in the 1970’s, and likened portions of it to Fifty Shades of Grey (who says the 73-year-old Bernie is not hip?!) Here is his full interview – his discussion of the essay begins at the 4:38 minute mark:

Frankly, having read the essay, I still have no idea what Sanders’ was trying to say. (You can read it here.) But I am persuaded, Todd’s questioning notwithstanding, that it is far less relevant to Sanders’ candidacy than are his policy views or his voting record from almost three decades serving in Congress – none of which Todd deemed worthy of asking about during the entire interview, save for the opening query about the Patriot Act.

Of course, one needs to be careful about generalizing to the entire mainstream media based on Chuck Todd’s abysmal performance yesterday. To date, Todd has not distinguished himself as moderator of MTP, although he may get better as he gains more experience in this format. And Sanders, unlike former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, showed that he could handle himself on the national stage which perhaps should not surprise us given his years in public office at the national level. Still, as we begin another lengthy campaign season, Todd’s performance does not give me confidence that the mainstream media is any more qualified to cover a presidential campaign today than it was two decades ago, when Patterson concluded that for “an institution that asks so much of others, the press has become remarkably derelict in the discharge of its public duty.” Amen.

From the Green Mountains to the Redwood Forest to the White House: Is This Land Made for Bernie Sanders?

In the wake of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ announcement two days ago  that he will challenge Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, I have been repeatedly asked the same question: “Why?”

To which I respond, “Why not?”

Yes, I understand that Bernie’s not going to win the Democratic nomination. Even his fellow Vermonters, who have supported Bernie in increasingly greater numbers through a succession of electoral contests dating back more than three decades, are expressing skepticism regarding his chances for national office.  Part of Bernie’s problem is that the very factors that make him so popular in Vermont – he won reelection to the U.S. Senate with more than 70% of the vote two years ago – may not help him as much nationally. We Vermonters are used to seeing Bernie, shoulders hunched, white hair askew, marching grim-faced through our town in the annual Memorial Day parade, or holding court in the local diner. He is our eccentric relative, the grumpy uncle who bends your ear every holiday picnic railing in his distinctive Brooklyn accent against the corporations and the 1%, oblivious to the mustard smeared on his rumpled shirt. “That’s our Uncle Bernie,” we say, smiling, before reaching for the potato salad. “It wouldn’t be a real holiday without him.”

But it’s not entirely clear that a nationwide audience will find his eccentricities so endearing. Running for the Democratic presidential nomination, with the intense media spotlight and a much more diverse group of primary voters, is not the same as greeting voters at the annual Addison County fair. Through the years Vermonters have adapted to – even come to love – Bernie’s curmudgeonly personality, but it is not entirely clear how well his rumpled but lovable Uncle Bernie schtick will play on the national stage. Nor does Vermont provide much in the way of a political base from which to launch a national campaign.

But his problems run deeper than his prickly personality and small-state base. For starters, Bernie’s trade-mark “democratic socialism” likely does not have a very big constituency within the Democratic party.  The last Vermonter to undertake a similarly long-shot quest for the Democratic nomination was the former Governor Howard Dean in 2004. He also sought to position himself as the progressive alternative to the establishment candidates (notwithstanding a rather moderate record as governor in Vermont). Despite an impressive early fundraising campaign and some initially positive media coverage, fueled by polls that for a time put him ahead of the Democratic field, Dean never attracted much more than 25% of the Democratic vote, and his candidacy was essentially dead after the Iowa caucus. (Contrary to myth, Dean’s celebrated “I have a scream” speech merely confirmed his political death – it did not cause it.) Bernie, with his soak-the-rich explicitly class-based pitch, is not likely to expand Dean’s coalition.

Sanders’ strategists undoubtedly hope that if he does well during the early caucuses in Iowa and Nevada, which typically attract more activist, ideologically-liberal delegates, as well as garnering some favorite-son support in neighboring New Hampshire, the media might anoint him as a viable alternative to Hillary. That, in turn, could enable him to bring in the money he will need to stay in the race for the long haul. It is true that the media loves a horse race, and is not averse to fabricating one if none exists. Still, if Hillary shows signs of faltering, it’s hard to believe the Democratic Party will allow a 73-year old former Socialist mayor of Burlington to be their standard bearer in 2016. Bernie will also be hard-pressed to match the Clinton money machine. Dean gained early attention in 2004 for his ability to bring in money online, and he ended up raising more than $50 million, much of it in small donations, in his presidential bid. Bernie is going to need at least that much just to remain competitive coming out of the February 9th New Hampshire primary. However, although he had a very successful first day of fundraising, it is not clear that relying only on small donors, as he claims he will do, is a viable strategy. He may also need a Sheldon Adelson-type sugardaddy if he hopes to compete past the February 27 South Carolina primary marking the end of the first month of the nominating campaign.

None of this paints a very optimistic picture for Bernie’s chances. So why run? I can think of several reasons. First, as former Governor James Douglas noted when I asked him about the psychology that might drive someone like Bernie to undertake such a quixotic endeavor, “Bernie is a man of strong convictions.” Running for president will give him a very visible platform for airing those convictions. Chief among them is his belief that the growing income inequality between the 1% and the 99% is both immoral and unsustainable. His strategy will be to paint Hillary as in hock to Wall Street and big money, and thus unable to truly fight for the middle class, whereas he has been fighting on their behalf for three decades. At the very least he hopes his candidacy will force Hillary to move the left on economic issues. (It is, of course, also possible that this strategy might instead strengthen Hillary’s appeal by making her appear more moderate.)

Of course, there are more self-interested reasons as well. Bernie already appears for an hour every week on progressive Thom Hartman’s call-in radio show,  and he has likely taken note of how former presidential candidates like Mike Huckabee have parlayed a failed nomination bid into a successful career as a well-paid talking head. Moreover, with more than two years to go before his next Senate election, it’s a low-risk time for Bernie to run for President. If he loses, he can always return to the Senate.

Finally, we shouldn’t discount the ego factor. Douglas likes to recount a story former Vermont Governor Dick Snelling told him regarding how easy it is to succumb to the blandishments of acquaintances urging you to run for higher office. “Twenty of your friends will tell you that you should be governor, that you can do that job as well as anyone else, and you begin to believe it. But these are your friends telling you this!” No doubt Bernie has his supporters who truly believe that he would make a great president, and have told him as much. And he may believe them. So why not run if he believes he could do the job?

More than the general election, presidential nominating contests are difficult to predict, especially this far out. Who really knows what will happen next year? Maybe there’s a smoking email waiting to be uncovered that will drive Hillary from the race! In any case, this isn’t the first time Bernie took a chance on making a fool of himself. In 1987, while serving as Burlington’s mayor, Bernie recorded an album of folk classics. Unfortunately, as Tom Lockwood – the musician who came up with the idea for Bernie to cut a record – recalled, “As talented of a guy as he is, he has absolutely not one musical bone in his body, and that became painfully obvious from the get-go… This is a guy who couldn’t even tap his foot to music coming over the radio. No sense of melody. No sense of rhythm — the rhythm part surprised me, because he has good rhythm when he’s delivering a speech in public.”

Harsh words! But you be the judge. We all know This Land was made for you and me – but was it made for Bernie too?  We are about to find out…in the meantime, sing it Bernie!