New York Times' David Leonhardt: Bernie Can Win If He Runs As A Moderate

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How Bernie Can Beat Trump

By David Leonhardt Opinion Columnist

“One of my favorite facts about this election,” the political analyst Harry Enten wrote about the 2016 presidential race, “is Trump was, on average, viewed as more of a moderate than any GOP prez candidate since 72.”

How could this be?

Trump ran “on a platform of avoiding all cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” Vox’s Matthew Yglesias has explained. As Yglesias notes, Trump also:

threw into the mix some skepticism about the virtues of free trade and a little token praise of Planned Parenthood while criticizing George W. Bush’s foreign policy as excessively grandiose and dropping all talk of reversing LGBTQ marriage equality.

President Trump has not governed as a moderate, of course. But he campaigned by trying to win over unexpected supporters — which is how every president of the last three decades has won.

So far, Bernie Sanders has not taken this approach. As I ask in my new column, can you think of any way in which he has tried to appeal to voters beyond his progressive base? I believe he still can, though, especially if he becomes the nominee. The column explains why he needs to broaden his appeal, and what it will take.

For more …

Yglesias in Vox: “For all the agita around Sanders’s all-or-nothing rhetoric, his behavior as a longtime member of Congress (and before that as a mayor) suggests a much more pragmatic approach to actual legislating than some of the wilder ‘political revolution’ rhetoric would suggest.”

Liz Mair in The Washington Examiner: “A big factor weighing in Sanders’s favor is that a glut of centrists remains in the contest, fighting it out among themselves. … Can they change that math? It’s possible. Yet to do so would require making other changes that the collective anti-Trump Republicans mostly failed to do in 2016, and which anti-Sanders Democrats should have begun last summer. … It’s time not just for the moderates to think about consolidating, but also to pick a fight with Sanders.”

Kyle Kondik of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, in The Times: “A consequence of Mr. Trump’s chronically low approval ratings is that even if Americans ultimately decide he’s the lesser of two evils this fall, there may be some voters who back him only tepidly or anticipate his victory and don’t want his party to have total control of the government. Mr. Sanders being a potentially weak opponent doesn’t necessarily make the president a beloved incumbent.”