Bernie Sanders has made some very big promises when it comes to his legislative priorities: He says he’ll make college free, pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, and institute a generous single-payer national health insurance program. And when he’s asked how he’ll turn these promises into reality, he says that he and his supporters will help bring about a “political revolution.”
That’s a phrase Sanders uses often, but what does he mean by it? Sanders has said that if he wins the presidency, his victory will be accompanied by a “huge increase in voter turnout”—one that he thinks might end Republican control of Congress. But Sanders acknowledges that the House and Senate could, in spite of his best efforts, remain in GOP hands come next January.
Given that likelihood, Sanders offers an alternate means for achieving his political revolution. He says he knows that a Democratic president can’t simply “sit down and negotiate” with Republican leaders and forge a series of compromises. Anyone who's observed the GOP’s behavior over the course of Barack Obama’s presidency would not dispute that, and in any event, no compromise with Republicans would ever lead to single-payer anyway.
So what then? How would a President Sanders get Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to pass any of his big-ticket items? This is the model he proposes:
What we do is you put an issue before Congress, let’s just use free tuition at public colleges and universities, and that vote is going to take place on November 8 ... whatever it may be. We tell millions and millions of people, young people and their parents, there is going to be a vote ... half the people don’t know what’s going on ... but we tell them when the vote is, maybe we welcome a million young people to Washington, D.C. to say hello to their members of Congress. Maybe we have the telephones and the e-mails flying all over the place so that everybody in America will know how their representative is voting. [...]
And then Republicans are going to have to make a decision. Then they’re going to have to make a decision. You know, when thousands of young people in their district are saying, “You vote against this, you’re out of your job, because we know what’s going on.” So this gets back to what a political revolution is about, is bringing people in touch with the Congress, not having that huge wall. That’s how you bring about change.
There’s an initial difficulty with Sanders’ vision here, which is that a Republican Congress likely would never even schedule votes on his proposals in the first place. But let’s imagine that it does, or that Sanders instead calls a People’s March on Washington precisely because Republicans won’t allow his free college plan to come up for a vote.
Let’s further imagine that President Sanders puts his “bully pulpit,” as he phrases it, to daily use—either ensuring press coverage he says is currently lacking, or relying on social media to go around a lazy traditional media. As a result, a million people do indeed show up in DC for a massive rally, and millions more call and email their representatives exhorting them to support free college.
It seems unlikely that McConnell or Ryan would cave at this point. They still would oppose free college on ideological grounds; after all, Bernie Sanders wouldn’t suddenly feel differently about Roe v. Wade even if a million anti-abortion marchers gathered before the White House. What’s more, large protests have seldom brought immediate change. Despite huge rallies opposing the Vietnam War, for instance, Richard Nixon didn't end hostilities until 1973—even though a majority of Americans had concluded the war was a mistake by 1968.
Nor would Republicans sit still. They’d exhort their own troops to bombard their members of Congress with the exact opposite message, something they did with frightening effectiveness during the anti-Obamacare town halls of 2009. They might even call for a counter-demonstration. What if more protesters showed up for their rally than for the president’s?
But Sanders says his revolution has one more card left to play: You vote against this, he says to his fellow politicians, and you’re out of your job. That’s a very big threat to make, though, because it’s extremely hard to follow through on. If Sanders, as the Democratic nominee, isn’t able to sweep Democrats to power on his coat-tails, then why should Republicans feel threatened in future elections?
One could argue that the GOP’s failure to enact Sanders’ desired legislation, in this hypothetical scenario, would endanger the party. But Congress’s approval ratings are already hovering at record lows—16 percent, according to Gallup—and it would be hard for them to go much lower. And it’s not as though Democrats have never tried running against GOP obstructionism in the past, typically with limited success.
Right now, most Republicans in Congress feel very safe electorally, since almost all of them represent red states or red districts that have rarely shown much interest in Democrats in the past. (Gerrymandering is one key cause, partisan self-sorting another.) Yet in spite of this, Sanders is ultimately saying that his is a plan to turn those red states and red districts blue: that under threat of mass protests, Republican office-holders will start behaving like Democrats—or in the alternative, states and districts that previously sent Republicans to Capitol Hill will begin sending Democrats instead, as a result of ballot box backlash against a recalcitrant GOP.
In this sharply polarized age, getting politicians or political jurisdictions to change their stripes—or at least, their coloring—is an incredibly tall task. But Bernie Sanders’ already challenging legislative promises rely on this foundational electoral promise, which will be even more difficult if not impossible to fulfill. Revolutions are never easy, especially when they hinge on getting Republicans to change their minds.
And if Sanders’ model is wrong, and Republicans successfully shoot down his intiatives then go on to win re-election, what then?