There have been many posts at The Moderate Voice which create a false equivalency between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, calling both extremists, or which erroneously frame the Sanders campaign as an attack on moderates. Fortunately moderates who have turned out to vote do not see it the same way. It is Bernie Sanders who is bringing independents into the Democratic Party while Hillary Clinton has a declining base of support from hard core Democrats over the age of 65 who back party over principles. Sanders’ margin of victory among moderates was almost identical as it was among liberals in the New Hampshire primary.
Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, had this to say about this type of misinterpretation of the primary battle:
You will hear pundits analyze the New Hampshire primaries and conclude that the political “extremes” are now gaining in American politics – that the Democrats have moved to the left and the Republicans have moved to the right, and the “center” will not hold.
Baloney. The truth is that the putative “center” – where the Democratic Leadership Council and Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” of the 1990s found refuge, where George W. Bush and his corporate buddies and neoconservative advisers held sway, and where Barack Obama’s Treasury Department granted Wall Street banks huge bailouts but didn’t rescue desperate homeowners – did a job on the rest of America, and is now facing a reckoning.
The “extremes” are not gaining ground. The anti-establishment ground forces of the American people are gaining. Some are so fed up they’re following an authoritarian bigot. Others, more wisely, are signing up for a “political revolution” to take back America from the moneyed interests.
That’s the real choice ahead.
Reich also recently wrote that, “Bernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to create the political system we should have, because he’s leading a political movement for change.” Perhaps not the most “moderate” viewpoint, but it is the pragmatic view.
Related Post: Lacking A Message, Clinton Again Relies On Misinformation In PBS Debate