Bernie Sanders May Not Prevail, But His Revolution Is Just Getting Started

[flamingdem]

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-17/bernie-sanders-may-not-prevail-but-his-revolution-is-just-getting-started

Hillary Clinton’s March 15 sweep of Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio effectively slammed the door on the story that would have dominated this presidential primary season were it not for one Donald J. Trump: the rise of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders to lead a movement that threatened Clinton’s path to the Democratic nomination. A self-styled “democratic socialist” and scourge of Wall Street, Sanders has gone much further than anyone anticipated. His ability to inspire the party’s liberal grass roots—which has delivered more than $100 million in financial support along with its loyalty—means that he could conceivably stay in the race all the way until the Democratic convention in July. But he won’t be the nominee. Clinton’s delegate haul now all but assures that.

Ever since Sanders began drawing massive crowds last summer, pundits have explained his strength as being primarily a product of Clinton’s weaknesses: her trouble attracting young people, her murky ties to wealthy donors and Wall Street, her inability to energize Democratic voters despite what is, after all, an historic candidacy. At the Democrats’ March 9 debate, Clinton herself seemed to accept this critique when she said plaintively, “I am not a natural politician, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Maybe not. But the true basis of Sanders’s strength has been largely overlooked: He gives voice to a set of policy ideas that lie closer to the hearts of most Democratic voters—and especially the Democratic voters of the future—than Clinton’s do. That’s why the “revolution” he’s repeatedly called for won’t be quelled for long, even though Clinton will be the one accepting the party’s nomination in Philadelphia. This is as much a demographic certainty as a political one.

In their 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira predicted that Democrats would enjoy an advantage in national elections because the major demographic groups that make up their coalition (young people, minorities, and single white women) were all growing as a percentage of the electorate, while the groups that Republicans rely on (married white people and seniors) weren’t keeping pace. This proved prescient. In 2008 and then 2012, Barack Obama successfully activated what the journalist Ron Brownstein dubbed the “coalition of the ascendant” to win the White House.