Well, maybe he would have. After all, Hillary Clinton did … by 2,841,862 votes as of today’s rolling count by The Cook Political Report, whose David Wasserman is updating with new information from the states each day. But, because of an outdated quirk of our constitutional electoral system (initially based on racism and elitism and that has since warped beyond its original purpose), Donald Trump’s winning three medium-sized states by a total of a mere 77,188 votes was enough to win the presidency. Clinton won, but she still lost. Bernie also likely would have won the vote in a similar fashion, but whether that would have led to a different result will never really be known.
But, there are plenty of people convinced that Sanders would have won, and using that idea to force a change in the left and the Democratic Party, but they’re doing so for what I think are faulty reasons. So let’s explore them, not just to be a dick but because it exposes faulty logic in how some liberals think, which has an effect on what they do from here.
Most of the arguments are a variation on a theme: That Sanders and Trump had similar positions, both antithetical to Clinton. People voted for Trump because he wasn’t Clinton. So, if presented with the opportunity to vote for someone with similar policy positions but without the racist and sexist “baggage” of Trump, those voters would have jumped at the opportunity to vote for Bernie instead.
… But is any of that true?
Anti-War
Hillary Clinton was painted as a war hawk over the course of the election. The far left that supported Sanders painted her as the conduit to World War III, as did organizations like Wikileaks and Anonymous, as well as all of the Russian government-funded “fake news” pseudo-left-wing organizations like RT America with its shows like “Redacted Tonight,” whose stories seeped out to other websites, were everywhere on Facebook, and even influenced mainstream news on occasion. The Trump campaign asserted that Clinton was the reason that Iraq and Syria were a mess, blamed her for the rise of the Islamic State and the decay of Libya, and took every opportunity to blame terrorist acts and any other world tensions on her. Neocons like Lindsey Graham and Colin Powell coming out in favor of her only helped to magnify this image in many people’s minds.
So Sanders supporters think that Trump voters wary of U.S. wars would have happily voted for Bernie and his isolationist foreign policy instead …
The problem is that Trump was never an isolationist, he was a unilateralist, even more of a unilateralist than the neoconservatives like George W. Bush and his crew ever were. Trump is cold to Europe and NATO, has talked about killing NAFTA and the TPP (and trade deals are as much about diplomatic and military alliances as they ever are about money and jobs), and has implied that Japan and South Korea are better left on their own for their defense (even with nuclear weapons of their own). And Trump talks very aggressively, but on a smaller geopolitical scale about muslims and the Middle East. And he talks rapprochement with Russia to that end.
During the campaign, Trump proposed killing entire families and other war crimes to punish terrorists, starting a registry of muslims in the United States, suggesting teaming up with Russia to ramp up war in the Middle East, amped up criticism of China, yelled about building a a huge wall on the border with Mexico, and even nonchalantly added that that we should actually be using our nuclear arsenal. Saying that he was against the Iraq War (when we really wasn’t) is not the same as being an isolationist, and there was nothing in any of his statements before the election that suggests he would lean that way.
So why would anyone who voted for Trump rather vote for Bernie on this issue?
Trade
Another argument against Clinton from both Sanders and Trump has been Clinton’s (both Bill and Hillary, because for some reason Hillary is always seemingly responsible for Bill’s choices too) past support of free trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA, the TPP, and letting China into the WTO. The argument is that these agreements have caused millions of jobs to leave the U.S. for other countries. There is, by the way, no real credence for this argument. No, not really. American manufacturing production isn’t actually down, it’s just that there are fewer jobs creating that same output. Increased efficiency and more automation mean that companies can produce as much as they always have with fewer employees. Basically, companies have gotten better as producing their products, and thus need fewer people to do it. There’s nothing surprising about this, it’s what every company is always looking to accomplish.
But the far left and right care nothing for that explanation. Instead, unchallengeable dogma on both ends of the political spectrum is that these trade agreements have stripped away American jobs. Their reasoning for who is to blame matters, and it is this difference that we need to explore.
For the far left Sanders crowd, the villain here are large corporations that bribe politicians here to get favorable deals and then bribe the politicians in the countries where the jobs move to in order to get favorable labor, tax, and environmental standards (or, more importantly, the lack thereof). That way, they get cheap labor with no penalties for pollution like they would in America.
There is a kernel of truth to this argument. While it’s not the real reason that overall manufacturing that dropped (that would be the natural evolution of a first-world economy combined with increased efficiency and automation), it is definitely true in some specific instances. And while the explanation may be a red herring overall, it is a red herring that should be dealt with and corrected in the cases where it is detrimental.
For those who side with Trump, the emphasis is less that companies are taking advantage of the gullibility of America, but that the PEOPLE of THOSE countries are. THE MEXICANS are taking OUR jobs. THE CHINESE are taking OUR jobs. If these people were a bit more cosmopolitan and knowledgeable, they would add THE VIETNAMESE, THE CAMBODIANS, THE BANGLADESHIS, and THE INDONESIANS to that list as well. It’s not a question of companies; it’s a question of labor. Which why it fits Trump’s worldview that one way to make Americans more competitive is not only ripping up trade deals and hiking tariffs, but also that getting rid of the minimum wage and environmental standards to make American workers “more competitive.”
Why does this matter? Because the solution to a problem are always dependent on the assumptions of its cause.
For the far left and Sanders supporters, blaming multinational corporations would actually mean more trade agreements, larger trade agreements, and farther-reaching agreements, replacing the agreements we have now with labor-centric ones built on “better” terms for workers across the world. The only way to actually reign in a corporation that operates all over the world is to have effective enforcement of them ALL OVER THE WORLD. This means more agreements, more international cooperation, more regulations, more international labor unions, more taxes, more government. Not less.
For Trumpistas, on the other hand, blaming the OTHER PEOPLE leads to a desire to punish them for taking what is RIGHTFULLY OURS, not to work with them to create a more equitable situation for everyone. That would mean fewer trade agreements but more trade barriers, more tariffs, more enforcement, more penalties for workers in other countries, combined with fewer regulations and restrictions here. Companies who help THOSE PEOPLE would then get punished, while companies who stay or move here would get massive tax breaks and fewer environmental and labor restrictions as a reward.
So, one of these solutions is a difficult, large network of political levers all designed to help workers in the face of an oppressive worldwide group of corporations, and the other one is an insular nationalistic chest-thumping of US against THEM. When presented with these two options, do you really think people who fall for the latter story are really just sitting there waiting for someone to offer them the former instead?
Scapegoats
So, really, this is a story of scapegoats. One side blames the rich and corporations for our problems. The other blames other countries and, specifically, the workers in those countries, for our problems. But these scapegoats are not equal.
While the far left and Sanders supporters blame the wealthy, corporations, and the growing gap in the distribution of wealth, the solution Sanders was offering wasn’t a pure Marxian punishment of the rich to benefit the poor. While his policy solutions were weighted heavily against the rich, his solutions did involve everyone paying more taxes (increased taxes for all, albeit distributed very progressively); a gas tax or a carbon tax to tackle climate change that would affect everyone and hurt the poor disproportionately, as would taxes or penalties on heating oil, the cessation of fracking to get natural gas, and additional regulations against nuclear power, all of which would have combined to make energy prices higher; and a proposal for a national health care, which would have hit all employees and their employers in their paychecks.
And while Americans have a love-hate relationship with the rich (most dislike the wealthy, are jealous of them, and fear the power of the faceless corporations, and yet their animosity is also held in check because they dream of one day being a member of the country club ranks and are thus hesitant to be too hard “on their betters”), nearly all Americans do universally hate higher taxes and higher prices for things they buy.
Trump’s platform, on the other hand, promises the return of jobs with high wages; lower taxes for everyone (poor, rich, and corporations); protecting Social Security and Medicare; and an expanded military coupled with a promise of no more foreign entanglements. Basically: Everything you want, for free. “Take back The American Dream from Those People who took it from you.” That’s what we was selling, and that’s what his voters decided that they wanted to buy.
Given that, why would those voters choose the harder path? The one that requires more global cooperation? The one that requires more personal sacrifice?
There are, of course, lots of little things that could have affected the election and could have swung the tiny amount of votes needed to win in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin to Sanders. A few more independents and young voters could have been convinced to come out to vote; the Russian government could have chosen to release the data they hacked from the Trump campaign and the RNC in addition to what they stole from the Democrats (or have released none of the info they hacked from either campaign); and, yes, maybe enough people who held their nose and voted for Trump because they believed the bogus anti-Clinton stories would have changed their votes. There’s no way to tell if that would have happened or not.
But the idea that there would have been a mass evacuation of voters from Trump to Sanders is a fantasy. If you voted for “Take back The American Dream from Those People who took it from You,” then you weren’t doing so out of a lack of a socialist, decent, humanitarian option that came with an expensive and complicated shared solution. You did so because you believe that your personal economic and cultural pain is Someone Else’s Fault and because you want to pinpoint that blame and to Punish Them.