An astonishing leap of either Kierkegaardian faith or Nietzschean will it is. Andrew Sullivan, the moderate American and British conservative, is now pulling for … clear throat … socialist Berne Sanders.
In what manner was his leap taken? In somewhat the majority Democratic manner: "At this point, I don’t care about their policies," he writes; it's only a question of who can beat Trump.
As just noted, most Dems feel the same, which is why Joe Biden's train continues to carry plurality support. And yet this is precisely where Sullivan derails. He surveys the territory and, through an attritional process, comes up in favor of the astonishing train wreck of Bernie.
Elizabeth Warren he dismisses, because she's Elizabeth Warren. I have no quarrel with that. Amy Klobuchar? She "just doesn't command a room." Again, no quarrel — though I do believe she's a good choice as veep. And of Pete Buttigieg, writes Sullivan rather quizzically: "the combination of his perfect résumé … and his smoothness and self-love have begun to worry me." That assessment I'll leave to psychosocial political scientists.
So finally comes the quasi-endorsement of Bernie, which reveals why no political commentator can responsibly dispatch the question of policies while penning a piece on who is most likely to beat Trump.
Sullivan likes that Bernie "seems more in command of facts than Biden" and "more commanding in general than Buttigieg or Klobuchar, and far warmer than Elizabeth Warren." (My bathroom tiles at 4 a.m. are warmer than Warren.) And he likes that he has "a consistent perspective on inequality [with which to] take on a president who has only exacerbated it…. He could appeal to the working-class voters the Democrats have lost."
Here's the rub. Sullivan concedes that "the oppo research the GOP throws at him could be brutal," although the potential oppo research he cites is of a tangential nature at most. He groans at Bernie's one-time association with a Marxist-Leninist party favorable to Ayatollah Khomeini in that wretched, hostage year of 1979; plus "he loved the monstrous dictator Fidel Castro and took his 1988 honeymoon in the Soviet Union."
It's true that such a past is unlikely to get one nominated for the American Legion's Man of the Year award, if there is such a thing. Yet that past would scarcely be the primary target against which Trump and allies would launch their offensive. Two other targets, of the present, would be.
Though Bernie once "loathed the idea of open borders," he now — so as to better fit with the Democratic Party's newfound sensitivities — opportunistically advocates "essentially an end to any control of illegal immigration," observes Sullivan. There go those (white) working-class voters to whom Bernie might otherwise appeal.
But of Bernie's Medicare-for-all policy — which should have been pondered by Sullivan, since he introduced Bernie's fresh immigration policy in violation of his initial, "I don't care about their policies" announcement — Sullivan writes not one word. As informed readers know, the concept of Medicare for all is superficially popular, while its support drops like flies in winter when specifics are explained. Even Warren had the good political sense to back off.
On Medicare for all, all by itself, Trump and the Trump Party would dismember Sen. Sanders' presidential campaign and leave nothing recognizable left.
Thus how could anyone, let alone an experienced political observer, decide that Bernie Sanders is perhaps the best bet to beat Trump? Sullivan writes that his immigration flipflop "is beyond my understanding." The flipflop I understand perfectly. What's beyond my understanding is Andrew Sullivan's concluding remark: "Between the front-runners, Biden and Bernie? Bernie, maybe, but by a smidgen."