THE BIGGEST national political story of the holidays was a sleeper: the resilience of Bernie Sanders.
After flirtations with various new flavors and saviors — Beto O’Rourke, Kamala Harris, to name two — the two old white guys are still standing and, in polling terms, stronger than ever.
Even the promise of Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg has faded.
But whereas Joe Biden seems permanently diminished by his own verbal and intellectual confusion and by his son’s self-dealing, Bernie is getting stronger.
He has raised the most money of all the Democratic candidates, by far — some $95 million in 2019 from 5 million donations — though the average contribution to Bernie is $18. He raised $34.5 million in the last quarter alone. He got 40,000 new donors on the last day of the year.
When Mr. Sanders renounced bundlers and PACs it was said that he had unilaterally disarmed himself in the money race. Instead he is killing it.
Mr. Sanders is also raising money in the 200 “pivot” counties Barack Obama carried in 2012 and Democrats lost to Donald Trump in the swing states in 2016.
And he is not only acceptable to but well thought of by an astounding 75 percent of his party.
Those are singular metrics.
He is also the only candidate in a position to take either first or second in the first contests — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina.
He polls as well as Mr. Biden in a direct matchup against Mr. Trump, though surely, as Mr. Sanders says, Donald Trump could eat Mr. Biden’s lunch on his votes in favor of NAFTA and the endless and futile Iraq War.
The money race and the size of his crowds show that Bernie Sanders is connecting, just as they show Joe Biden is not. His resilience is no fluke.
The people who “know” did not see this coming.
The theory of the Biden candidacy was that the country would pick a beloved grandfather or uncle figure who would serve as a respite and a restoration for four years. The dependent, secondary theory was that concern for Donald Trump’s nature and tone would override a strong economy. It’s a notion both plausible and dubious. But I wonder if Bernie will not be the vehicle of any mass instinct for reassurance rather than Mr. Biden. I wonder if he is not the Konrad Adenauer — the wise uncle. And it is hard to see how, or where, Mr. Biden gets stronger going forward.
Mr. Sanders’ enduring strength comes, first, from authenticity — the quality that was supposed to help Mr. Biden. But Mr. Biden is, it turns out, mostly an authentic lifetime pol — weighed down by contradiction and a lifetime of deals, even if legal. Bernie Sanders is rooted in a set of values and he has been utterly consistent about them for 40 years. You may not agree with him on everything, but you can respect his sincerity and rootedness. He’s like Ronald Reagan that way.
He also has character. He’s not for sale. He’s not afraid to stand alone. He will take on the establishment in his own party, as Mr. Trump has.
And he is, as well, a very different person in one-on-one interviews than when on the stump, when he is often a hectoring, shouting bore. We don’t need that guy. We don’t need more anger and yelling at this stage of our history. We don’t need class warfare.
But I have seen this other quiet, reflective Mr. Sanders several times. The best recent example is an interview with Joe Rogan. Here the interviewer was thoughtful and clearly did his homework, but Bernie came off as unpretentious, thoughtful, and intellectually honest. And also as a person who is interested in people and their stories.
Again, he is, oddly, like Reagan: He knows who he is, he likes people, and he believes in the country. Not politics, in D.C., by the elites, but the country.
It will be said that Mr. Sanders is too extreme and uncompromising. Maybe. But watch the Rogan interview. Mr. Sanders is well to the right of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.
He was once a mayor and had to get streets paved and cops paid. He did both. Mayors have to be pragmatists.
The socialist label will be flung, and Mr. Trump will talk about “Crazy Bernie.” But Mr. Sanders’ positions on some things — corporate greed, gun control, the environment, and health care — would be acceptable, even laudable, to a thinking conservative.
Most of all, on de-industrialization, trade and the hollowing out of the great American heartland by globalism, Mr. Sanders touches a deep nerve, as Donald Trump did. He is in a position to take on Mr. Trump on this issue, which Mr. Sanders will argue is his issue. Let’s think about those counties that flipped to Mr. Trump in 2016 again, and the people who are sending Mr. Sanders $18 checks. Bernie Sanders seems to grasp why Donald Trump won in 2016. He actually talks about our devastated American towns and the link between rural poverty and urban poverty — the first politician since Robert Kennedy to do so.
I am not sure most of his Democratic primary colleagues know there is rural and small-town poverty. But many Americans do. They get it because they have lived it. They see that their economy was exported. They see how communities and families were destroyed. And they never voted for this. They never voted to make Europe, or China, or Brazil rich and rural Ohio or Pennsylvania poor. They never voted for an economy of despair. They want a Marshall Plan for the American heartland.
So Bernie has not only a solid and loyal base but also the ability to grow his base because he has touched on something deep and real: Wall Street and average 401(k) holders may get richer, but small town America continues to atrophy.
And his socialism may, may not be scary, depending on how he campaigns, because we know this guy. He does not have to be Jeremy Corbyn. He can be Harry Truman.
That brings me to something else that Democrats may be sensing: It will be very hard for Donald Trump to get under Bernie Sanders’ skin, or intimidate him in debates. Mr. Sanders is an uncoached, unprogrammed politician who knows what he thinks and why. He seems pretty fearless and at ease with himself. And that may intimidate Donald Trump.
Keith C. Burris is Editor and Vice President of The Blade and editorial director of Block Newspapers (kburris@theblade.com).
First Published January 5, 2020, 5:00 a.m.