Progressive American Thought: April 2016

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Bernie Sanders is a stronger Candidate for President than Hillary Clinton

With his landslide win in Wisconsin yesterday, Bernie Sanders now has won more of the popular vote in primaries outside the South than has Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s leads in both the overall popular vote and pledged delegate count are due to her huge wins in southern states, most of which will not vote Democratic in November.

With the votes not completely counted in Wisconsin, Sanders has 4,144,651 votes in the 10 primaries outside the South to Clinton’s 4,096,209. In the 22 states outside the South that have had primaries and caucuses, Sanders has won 638 delegates to Clinton’s 531.

Clinton’s lopsided victories in 11 southern states have netted her 4,640,859 votes and 736 delegates to 1,795,355 votes for Sanders and 376 delegates. Hillary won every former state of the Confederacy but the only states Democrats have a reasonable chance of winning in November are Virginia, North Carolina and Florida. While Bill Clinton carried some southern states in his elections, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana, Hillary does not have the same kind of popularity in those states that her husband did. The Republican Party also is more firmly entrenched in most southern states than it was 20 years ago.

Clinton’s victories in the South are mostly due to her popularity with blacks who represent high percentages of the Democratic vote in those states. Even though they only represent about 13 percent of the national electorate, blacks are a major contributor to Democratic victories in general elections because they vote Democratic in overwhelming numbers. Thus, even though Sanders lost the black vote in the South by high percentages, it is extremely unlikely he would lose it in the general election.

Each of the candidates has won five primaries outside the South. Clinton narrowly won Massachusetts, Illinois, and Missouri but Ohio and Arizona by good margins. Sanders won Michigan narrowly but had landslide victories in New Hampshire, Vermont, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. Sanders has proven that he can compete effectively with Clinton and he has shown much greater support among younger voters who clearly are not enthusiastic about Clinton and who have a record of much lower voter turnout when they are not inspired by an election, or a candidate.

The Democratic superdelegates, who represent the establishment of the Democratic Party and have an enormous duty to Democratic voters, and to the nation, to ensure that there is a Democratic victory in November, should consider these numbers carefully. That victory depends on the Democrats winning outside the South. Bernie Sanders has shown he can do that. Every poll shows him running stronger than Clinton against every potential Republican candidate.

Sanders is a stronger candidate for President than Clinton. Furthermore, he is more likely to inspire a Democratic voter turnout that will return control of the Senate to the Democrats, and maybe the House as well.

Robert LaFollette

Click on his photo to see a film, with sound, of a campaign speech of Robert LaFollette in 1924, when he ran for President on the Progressive Party ticket, urging the people to be “aggressive” in resisting corporate power and influence. He received 17% of the vote and carried only Wisconsin. He died the next year. The father of Progressivism, Robert LaFollette was the first to use the word “Progressive” to describe the movement he started in Wisconsin. He first was Governor of Wisconsin and then was a Senator. From Wikipedia: “In 1957, a Senate Committee selected La Follette as one of the five greatest U.S. Senators, along with Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and Robert Taft. A 1982 survey asking historians to rank the "ten greatest Senators in the nation's history" based on "accomplishments in office" and "long range impact on American history," placed La Follette first, tied with Henry Clay.”

Definition of Progressivism

In using the term “progressive” I mean what it meant in its early years, a philosophy of government, or governance, of the proper role of government in a democracy, and how public officials carry out their responsibilities to the people. Progressive government can be a force for good when it limits its activities to doing those things that need to be done but cannot be done by the people for themselves. The duty of public officials is to all the people, not to special interests.

Progressivism is not a synonym for liberalism, as it often is used today. Today's progressives probably are liberal in many, if not most, of their beliefs, but not all liberals are progressives. Although a descendant of classic liberalism, true progressivism is not ideological. It is pragmatic. It is neither liberal nor conservative, nor Democrat nor Republican. It is not capitalistic, nor socialistic. It seeks to make the existing system work, and that sometimes means protecting capitalism from itself by taming its most aggressive features through legislation and regulation.

Most of the early Progressives were Republicans; the later ones, Democrats. Progressives are problem-solvers and they will borrow ideas from both political parties, as well as from any other source, if the ideas present a practical solution to an important problem.

Basic pragmatic progressivism is more consistent with the American character than any other governmental philosophy, and its historic leaders have been - sometimes, for other reasons, only briefly - among the most popular leaders the nation ever has had. We can solve our major problems with another progressive period of government. I believe this can be made to happen with the right kind of leadership, programs and strategies, which I describe in this book.

- Introduction, Let's Do What Works and Call it Capitalism, by Dan Riker. Excerpts of this as-year unpublished book are posted on this blog, on http://www.danriker.blogspot.com and on http://www.dailykos.com.