The New Yorker Radio Hour - And Then There Were Two

Episode Date: March 6, 2020

Just over a week ago, Bernie Sanders seemed to be the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. Then came some prominent withdrawals from the race, and, on Super Tuesday, the resurgence of Joe Biden’s campaign. (Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii remains in the race, but has no chance of winning the nomination.) But the narrowing of the field only highlights the gulf between the Party’s moderate center and its energized Left.  David Remnick talks with Amy Davidson Sorkin, a political columnist for The New Yorker, about the possibility of a contested Convention. Then Remnick interviews Michael Kazin, an historian and the co-editor of Dissent magazine. Kazin points out that Sanders is struggling against a headwind: even voters sympathetic to democratic socialism may vote for a pragmatist if they think Biden is more likely to beat the incumbent President in November. But Sanders seems unlikely to moderate his message. “There is a problem,” Kazin tells David Remnick. “A divided party—a party that’s divided at the Convention—never has won in American politics.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We have had 28 Democrats vying for the party's presidential nomination. Just over a week ago, Bernie Sanders seemed to be the clear frontrunner after three very strong primary performances. Then came some prominent withdrawals from the race and the resurgence, really the resurrection of Joe Biden, last week's primaries. What will happen next is entirely up in the air. Joe Biden could keep riding this new wave of momentum, or we could be headed for a contested convention, something that we have not seen in many decades. Amy Davidson-Sorkin is a political columnist for the New Yorker, and she's going to help us with a little civics refresher course. You know, there's a lot of states

left to vote, and you've sewn up the nomination when you get 1,991 of the pledged delegates. When you cast your vote in a primary, you're not really voting for the candidate so much as you're voting for a delegate who's pledged to that candidate, as long as that person is still in the race when the convention comes. And then things can get really complex. You go to the convention with a certain number of delegates who are pledged to you. So everybody gets the convention and they vote. If nobody has a majority, then there's a second ballot. But on that ballot, there's another factor, the superdelegates. They don't get to vote in the first ballot.

They get to vote on the second ballot. The superdelegates are Democratic insiders, members of Congress, senators, higher-ups in the party. There are nearly 800 superdelegates at the convention. And if they get to vote, it's a whole new ballgame. Now, Amy, does it go without saying that the superdelegates are going to be in greatest proportion on the side of Joe Biden as opposed to Bernie Sanders? if it was today, but who knows what might happen on the campaign trail? What could be revealed? What could come out?

You know, a lot of the people who are the superdelegates, they voted, in a sense, ahead of Super Tuesday by coming out and endorsing Biden, getting their local networks activated for him. Clobuchar did that, too. Apparently in Minnesota, she didn't just say that she wanted people to vote for him. She helped get out the vote. So is that a conspiracy or is that a party acting like a party and saying, you know, we know this person, we have this sense of how it's going to have this effect on racism, this state, we're making a judgment about what the party stands for as well. Well, in your view, is it part of democracy or anti-democratic in some way? I mean, how purely democratic is it that for states that were in different ways? not entirely representative of the whole country had so much say, we're New Yorkers. We're, it might be, this might be settled by the time it gets to us. So there are a lot of ways that the democracy here is imperfect. When's the last time we had a contested convention? I believe it was 1952 for the Democrats, 1948 for the Republicans. But, you know, both of those nominated candidate on the third ballot,

So it was contested, but it wasn't an epic contest. It wasn't like a Fletcher Nebel novel that goes to the 50th ballot. Yeah, there is a, the classic, the one that, you know, people dream of and this entered the realm of contested convention legend is the 1924 Democratic Convention, which went to wait for it, 103 ballots. And neither one of the front runners got it. What happened? Who was running against him?

It was William McAdoo. versus Al Smith. And there were a lot of issues, you know, Prohibition, a lot of other issues. But the thing that broke the convention was the Ku Klux Klan. Macadu wanted the clan's support. And he basically killed an anti-Klan plank in the party's platform. And that caused a shift where there are people who were opposed to him but might have reached some sort of deal, became just opposed to him on principle, and rightly so. And they just kept going until they finally, both of them withdrew. Who won the nomination? How did it end up in the general election? John Davis, congressman from West Virginia, who lost badly to Calvin Coolidge. But it was probably better for American

history that the Democrats didn't coalesce around somebody who was sort of cozy with the clan. You know, even if you're going to go into the election divided but believing something you actually believe in, that's worth it. I'd hasten to say that that's not the case with any of the candidates on the Democratic side right now. Unless you really, really, really, really feel strongly about democratic socialism, they're not, the party's not at a point where the divides are like so, so existential, so much about the fundamental values of the party.

Biden's argument is, I'm the guy that can unite the party, bring in independence, win those counties that went over to Trump, I can do it. Maybe he can. Because I'm embracing. Sanders' argument of the case is I will expand the electorate, that I will bring in new voters, many of them young. What do you think of those two cases? Both of them have things to recommend them.

I wouldn't mock either of them. Even in states that Biden won significantly, Sanders did well with younger voters, and those are going to be the voters who inherit the parties. They can't be alienated. Biden is going to have to make some choices about how he talks about Bernie. Remember, he's going to be propelled forward,

possibly by a lot of money from Mike Bloomberg, a man who on the debate stage called Bernie akin to a communist and a threat to the country. Which was ridiculous. So is that what he wants the ads that are going to be in every state paid for by Bloomberg to be saying that the choices? How does Biden now talk about democratic socialism? It's not going to be enough now to just be the decent kind human being

who you'd rather have in the White House than Donald Trump. This is not going to be an easy election. No, it's going to be hideous and ugly. Yeah, and it's just, we're still in a quite uncertain period, I think. This is not just going to be cruising along until November, and then people decide whether they like the excitement of Trump or the niceness of Biden. It goes in a more fundamental way to what people want from politics and their tolerance for discord.

Amy Davidson, Sorkin, thank you so much. Thanks. Amy Davidson Sorkin is a staff writer and a political columnist for the New Yorker. More in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. The possibility of a contested convention highlights the longstanding state of tension in the Democratic Party between the moderate center and the more progressive left wing. We have on the one hand Joe Biden who touts his ability to work across party lines. And then there's Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who identifies himself almost defiantly as a Democratic socialist.

I'm joined now by Michael Kaysen, a historian at Georgetown University. Kaysen has written extensively about the labor movement and populism, and he's the author of America Divided, the Civil War of the 1960s. Michael, how do you interpret the pretty bad results for Sanders on Super Tuesday through the prism of his declaration of himself as a Democratic socialist? Does that hurt him, what seemed to be an asset for me? many voters initially, and particularly his core supporters, is that turning out to be a detriment to his campaign? Well, the problem is that he has an identity, which is very strong, which attracts a lot

of people, and authenticity, which attracts a lot of people, but that's also a drawback because he is a protest candidate, a protest candidate against his party's establishment, a protest candidate against the establishment of the country, the economic establishment, the media establishment, the political establishment. And protest candidates, of course, demand that you do a lot. They demand that you believe that their protests can be turned into effective governance. And in this situation, of course, as we all know, Democrats are primarily concerned, whatever their views, even if a lot of people who call themselves socialist,

primarily concerned with the short-term aim of making sure Donald Trump doesn't get a second term. And that's, I think, the primary reason why he has, so far at least, topped out at about 30, 35% of the Democratic electorate. He says the theory of his case is that he will grow the electorate in ways that haven't been seen before. Is he floundering in that attempt? So far he certainly is. So far he's getting no greater number of young people voting for him this year, as did in 2016, for example. and older people are pretty much flocking to other candidates, especially Joe Biden. You're a historian of the American left through the 19th and 20th centuries.

You edit dissent, which is a left-leaning political and cultural criticism magazine. You understand this field in its history. Is Bernie Sanders a socialist, and what does that mean? I think he's part of the socialist tradition. That is, he identifies with the idea that workers should have a lot more power, that the government should help them get more power, that there should be as large a welfare state as possible. His hero used to be Eugene Debs,

the socialist who ran five times for president on the Socialist Party ticket. But really, more and more as he's evolved from his youth when he was a young socialist in the 1960s, he's become more of what Europeans would call a Social Democrat, though that term has never been really popular in this country. That is, he is not in favor of, of doing away with capitalism, with entrepreneurship, even with all rich people, though he doesn't

like billionaires very much, but millionaires he's probably okay with. He's a millionaire himself, actually, because of his book publishing. And I think he really wants a larger welfare state. He wants stronger trade unions. He wants the kind of thing that he said often that citizens of Denmark and Finland, Sweden, and Germany take for granted. Now, you mentioned that Eugene V. Debs was his hero. back when, the figure that he alludes to now all the time, even when he gave a kind of keynote address on

socialism and democratic socialism, is none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Now, my understanding of Roosevelt, we could probably argue this all day and night, is that Roosevelt was not only a member of the Democratic Party, but he was a liberal. That's quite true. Really, it's from the New Deal that modern liberalism, which has a much larger role for the central government in the economy, It's from that point that we think about a definition of modern liberalism, which still has right now 80 years later. So I think by evoking FDR, Sanders is trying to identify himself with what was a very popular current in American political life. The idea that government should take care of people, should help them find housing, should help them find a job if they need one, should cover them with health care. And so even though he called himself a socialist, he's able to identify.

with the closest thing as we've ever gotten to a social democratic politics. But why if his hero is FDR does he refuse to identify himself as a liberal if FDR did? Is it a matter of branding in a sense or is it a matter of firm ideological conviction? Good question. I think liberalism has become associated since the 1960s with a very defensive kind of politics, especially a politics which is more identified with helping racial minorities, LGBT people, with feminism. And Bernie is very much about economic uplift, economic power for working people. Identity is not his main concern. No. In fact, one of the reasons why in Super Tuesday he won only minority of black votes, I think,

is because he is not identified with primarily focusing on issues that. perhaps are most important to black people especially. And also I think, you know, he's also somebody who wants to have his own identifier. He wants to popularize the idea of democratic socialism. And if you're a liberal, then historically you see yourself as opposed to democratic socialism. That's going too far. And he wants to go far. Now, when I was in college, I was very fond of a political.

organization called the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, as if Irving Howe or Michael Harrington were somehow going to become president. It seemed a very marginal and distant thing and maybe a relic of the age that had come before me, which is the kind of 60s and 70s era. And now you see polls that particularly among young people, not only, but particularly among young people, that words like socialism and democratic socialism are attractive to, you to a great number of people. Why is that? Well, there's a lot of reasons, I think.

Part of it starts with the Great Recession, certainly, which made young people especially feel that maybe capitalism not so great after all. Part of it, too, ironically, I think, is the fact that Barack Obama, who a lot of young people liked, at least in 2008, young people on the left, was called a socialist,

and there's all these memes about him and images on the internet of Obama standing next to Lenin and Marr, and Lenin and... But one thing Barack Obama never called himself was a socialist. No, but... He was called a socialist by his enemies. I know, but language and political identifiers work in unusual ways sometimes.

And I think the fact that Obamacare specifically was called socialism by a lot of Republicans made some young people say, well, you know, Obamacare is not enough, but we certainly like the idea of national health insurance, which Obamacare is supposed to institute. So let's go further. And also I think there's a sense really, in this is true in Europe as well as the United States, that the more traditional kinds of political philosophies, whether they are conservative republicanism of the Reagan era, or a kind of liberal, democratic view that Obama had, that they have failed. And so a lot of young people want something which would really be a break with a system they feel has not served them,

which they feel, you know, they, of course, are very critical of what's happening with the environment and the idea that capitalism is not going to solve the problem of climate change. You need a much more collective, government-driven set of solutions to that. So a lot of young people say, well, let's try something different. Let's try something really different from capitalism. And if we can get a president elected like Bernie Sanders, who agrees with those aspirations, that'll be wonderful. Let's look to the future now. you wrote an op-ed in the New York Times where you said that Bernie Sanders has already won, arguing that whether he captures the White House or not, he's transformed the Democratic Party.

What did you mean by that specifically in policy terms? Well, I think you look at the debates that the Democrats have had, these long, somewhat boring debates. There will be too many more of them, I hope. You find that on health care, for example, every candidate on the stage, even the more conservative ones, like Michael Bloomberg, were saying they were for a robust public option or Medicare for all. All of them wanted some debt relief. All of them supported laws to make it easier to organize labor unions. All of the talk about taking much more aggressive action about climate change.

So in these ways, I think the kind of platform that Bernie Sanders ran on in 2016 and is running on this year has moved the party to the left. It's made the party, gotten the party closer to what a Social Democratic Party, in Europe would stand for. And in that sense, as the headline, which I didn't write in the Times, said he's already won. He's already transformed the party. The only way I think he won't transform the party is if he gets nominated and loses the way George McGovern lost in 1972. It gets wiped out. It's wiped out. I don't expect that to happen because we're a very different country than 1972. There are states which will never vote for a Democrat and states will never vote for a Republican like California, like Maryland, like New York State, for example. And he's

going to win those states. Even if he lost by 10 points in the popular vote, he'd still win those states. So it wouldn't be a blowout the way it was for McGovern. I won't reduce you as an esteemed scholar to a pundit in my realm. But after Tuesday and going forward, do you expect him to get the nomination? I like to say, as in the story, I don't have to predict the future. So I only have to explain the past, which is difficult enough. You're ducking it. I think, look, I think that both Sanders and Biden are weak candidates in many ways. Unfortunately, I say as a Democrat.

And they both have many liabilities. And I really don't know. I mean, after all, there have been close races in the recent past Democrats have had where we didn't know whether, in 2008, whether Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton who were the nomination for a while looked like Hillary Clinton would, and then Barack Obama started winning some primaries and caucus, then Hillary Clinton came back and won some. I don't really know, David. I think that we'll have to see what happens with these larger states.

And we'll have to see also if Elizabeth Warren supports British Sanders in a major way. And that could help convince some people on the progressive side who have been leery about Bernie Sanders, perhaps partly because he called himself a socialist, to be more supportive of him. Given Super Tuesday, where does Bernie go from here, do you think? I think he has to enlarge his base. How does he go about doing that?

When his message is so consistent, his style is so consistent, you can't fault him for being all over the map. How does he broaden his base? I think he has to assure people. I think he has to find some way within himself, and this is not really part of his personality, to make people feel that he is not going to, do away with things they care about. For example, he could talk about a transition to Medicare for All, rather than saying Medicare for All is all we're going to say.

We're not going to ever compromise with it. But then you, forgive me, but then you're talking about Medicare for all for those who wanted or whatever Pete Buttigieg used as determined. And he goes back on his consistency. Yes, but I think his core followers will go along with that. His core followers are, especially when, the two candidate race between Bernie and Joe Biden, they're not going to go to Joe Biden. So they trust him enough, I think, to make certain changes. They realize, you know, he's running for the most powerful

office in the world, and he's going to have to compromise to a certain degree. The question is whether he compromises on his ends, as opposed to how you get to his ends. Will Bernie Sanders embrace Joe Biden if Joe Biden wins and vice versa? They've both said they'll support whoever the candidate is. What's really matters, of course, is where their supporters will. Yeah. And there is a problem. A divided party, a part of this divided at the convention, never has won in American politics. And that's a real problem.

Michael Kaysen, thank you so much. Thank you. Historian Michael Kaysen of Georgetown University. His book, America Divided, about the 1960s, is now out in paperback. I'm David Remnick, and that's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for listening. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts,

with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riannon-N-Corpi, Cala, David Krasnow, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Alison McAdam, Morgan Flannery, Meng Fei Chen and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.