Similar to Corbyn & British Labour, Bernie Sanders Could Mean Disaster for Democrats Jared Townsend Follow Jan 29 · 5 min read

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]

Acknowledging that there was a “real similarity” between what Jeremy Corbyn was trying to do with the British Labour Party and what he was trying to do with the U.S. Democratic Party, U.S. Senator and democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders lavished praise on the British leader of the opposition in 2017. “He has taken on the establishment of the Labour party, he has gone to the grassroots and he has tried to transform that party, and that is exactly what I am trying to do,” Sanders stated at the time while promoting a book at the UK’s Brighton Festival.

Just one week later under Corbyn, Labour would go on to pick up 30 seats in the British House of Commons — a positive performance many didn’t expect, albeit Labour still lost the election to Theresa May’s Tories. Fast forward more than two years later to the snap election called by Boris Johnson amid Brexit uncertainty and the result for Corbyn’s party was absolutely catastrophic: The Labour Party under Corbyn lost 60 seats — a result that was the party’s worst performance in a campaign since the 1935 general election.

The Labour Party wasn’t just rejected over its questionable Brexit stance — but failed to convert voters based on its Manifesto as well — which has become increasingly radical since Corbyn’s ascension to party leader. According to polling from Deltapoll commissioned through the Blair Institute leading up to election day, by a 2 to 1 margin (52% to 26%), Labour defectors agreed that “many of Labour’s policies in the current election are too extreme.”

Sanders, like Corbyn, is a self-described “democratic socialist.” Like Corbyn, Sanders is also popular with younger voters in his country. The two have taken on their so-called respective party establishments. For Sanders, that meant taking on Obama — who Sanders called for to be opposed in the 2012 Democratic primary — and Clinton, the Democrats’ long-heralded successor to Obama’s legacy. For Corbyn, it was about transforming his party in a radically different direction from New Labour which had occurred under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Both Sanders’ and Corbyn’s supporters have laid blame of their respective party losses on an establishment that they perceive as being too moderate to properly energize young voters. In the U.S., Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even tied her own politics to Corbyn — endorsing him for prime minister right before the 2019 British general election. “The hoarding of wealth by the few is coming at the cost of peoples’ lives. The only way we change is with a massive surge of *new* voters at the polls. UK, Vote!,” she posted on her Twitter account — right before Labour’s monumental loss. The new voters she was talking about? They didn’t show up — or at least not enough of them.

For both sides, unfortunately, there’s not much evidence to back up the thesis that the more radical a candidate is, the better they do at the polls by energizing the base. In fact, history has shown quite the opposite. In the U.S. in 1992, a young upstart governor from Arkansas known for more moderate views, Bill Clinton, defeated an incumbent GOP president in George H.W. Bush after the White House had been under GOP control for 12 years. In the 2018 elections, Democrats took back the U.S. House of Representatives by beating GOP incumbents in swing districts with candidates who were perceived of as more moderate. In instances where progressive candidates were able to run, they fared much worse. In districts that went for Trump in 2016, candidates recruited to run by Our Revolution, a political action organization that spun off from Sanders’ 2016 campaign, went 0–22 in 2018.

In Britain, the Labour Party finally won under Blair in 1997 after he transformed his party towards a more centrist approach; previously, the Tories had ruled for 18 years.

Despite all their similarities, there are distinct differences between Sanders and Corbyn. The 2019 British general election occurred under the uncertainty of Britain’s exit from the European Union. Corbyn, for his part, is also more radical than Sanders — promoting public ownership of utilities that are privately owned, and was dealing with an antisemitism scandal in Labour.

Much of Sanders’ agenda, despite public proclamations of Sanders to the contrary, is quite unpopular among Americans. “Medicare-For-All,” as it’s been dubbed, has done quite well at times as a catch phrase in opinion polls. However, when pollsters actually specify that it means the complete elimination of private insurers, its popularity plummets. Meanwhile, other Sanders proposals such as decriminalization of border crossings, tax increases on the middle class, voting rights for felons currently incarcerated are just as unpopular if not more. Sanders isn’t necessarily alone in these positions, however — as another candidate, Elizabeth Warren, has assumed similar positions on some issues.

For his part in the United Kingdom, Jeremy Corbyn boldly declared after the general election that his party had lost the race, but “won the argument” and said the campaign had “become mainly about Brexit.” But perhaps Corbyn and even Sanders — should he win the Democratic nomination only to lose to Trump in the general are ignoring what history clearly also shows: More radical candidates tend to struggle more than their moderate counterparts. In Britain, 56% aged 18 to 24 voted Labour; 54% aged 25–39 voted Labour. While the party had indeed energized the youth, beyond that demographic, it was an utter failure. Just 28% between the ages 50 and 59 voted for the party. In America, a Bernie-led Democratic Party could be vanquished with similar results — even without the baggage of Brexit and perceived antisemitism. Simply stated, building a movement off of youth enthusiasm alone is doomed to fail.

Additionally, Sanders — like Corbyn — is all too quick to associate himself with some of the more extreme elements of the left. Sanders previously endorsed California Congressional candidate and Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur only to backtrack after backlash to Uyguyr’s past sexist comments on women. Sanders also has campaign surrogates including the likes of actor John Cusack and director Michael Moore, both of whom have had past associations with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (albeit to his credit, Moore has since condemned Assange).

While public polls show many younger people are indeed excited about progressive proposals, those who are older — and happen to be reliable voters — are not as enthused. That’s why building movements based on broad coalitions is a good idea — and that typically means proposals that are designed to appeal to larger portions of the electorate, which tend to be more successful. If in fact democrats do risk nominating Sanders and he does lose, he could find himself in a similar position to Corbyn: Claiming he won the argument but lost the vote. If that turns out to be the case, the answer as to why he’ll have lost might be pretty evident: He’s just too extreme for many voters.