The Daily 202: Bernie Sanders is more pragmatic than you may think

Packing the Supreme Court remains as radical and unrealistic an idea in 2019 as it was when Franklin Roosevelt tried it in 1937, derailing the start of his second term, but several of the liberals running for president have jumped on this bandwagon as they lurch leftward and seek to pass unexpected new purity tests.

Not Bernie Sanders.

The senator from Vermont might be the only Democrat running for president who doesn't need to pander to the left to be able to win the nomination. He has credibility with the base, he's near the top of the early polls, and he doesn't need to climb out on limbs to get coverage in a crowded field. His campaign announced this morning that it raised $18.2 million during the first quarter from 525,000 donors - who gave an average contribution of about $20 - and that it has $28 million cash on hand.

All of this liberates him to be more circumspect.

Sanders was one of eight presidential candidates who appeared on Monday at a forum in Washington that was sponsored by a coalition of labor, immigration, environmental and abortion rights groups. It was the largest cattle call thus far of the 2020 cycle.

Ebony Wiggins, a Planned Parenthood activist from Nashville, Tennessee, expressed concern that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade after Mitch McConnell blocked Merrick Garland from getting a hearing and then changed the rules of the Senate to confirm Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. She wanted to know what Sanders will do "to restore legitimacy to our federal courts."

"Some people have said that maybe we need to increase the seats on the Supreme Court from nine to 11 to even maybe 13 to bring that balance back," said Wiggins, 27.

"Here is my concern about expanding the numbers," Sanders responded. "My worry is the next time the Republicans are in power, they will do the same thing. So I think that's not the ultimate solution."

He nodded to Wiggins' concerns by suggesting that perhaps justices could be cycled onto appellate courts after a certain number of years, but then he said the only real solution is to increase voter turnout to take control of the government democratically.

- Sanders' answer was startling on a day when all his opponents appeared intent on telling all their questioners exactly what they wanted to hear. "Every candidate who was asked expressed support for abolishing the electoral college, restoring voting rights to felons and naming Election Day a national holiday," the Post's Matt Viser observed. "They all agreed to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and end privately financed prisons. And they all pledged to reenter the Paris climate accord on their first day in office."

Other senators in the race, including Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, have said they are open to adding justices to the court, in contravention of a long-cherished norm that dates to the dawn of the republic. Moderates like Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, who is returning to New Hampshire this weekend and is expected to formally launch his campaign soon, have said it's a terrible idea.

- In recent weeks, Sanders has also bristled at the push from the left to get rid of the filibuster that requires 60 votes to pass major legislation, and he's declined to join the parade of candidates calling for reparations.

During a televised town hall on Feb. 25, a woman asked Sanders whether he supports reparations for the descendants of slaves. He said he supports a plan by Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., to focus more federal resources on "distressed communities with high levels of poverty" and "to do everything we can to end institutional racism in this country."

But Bernie wouldn't be baited into backing reparations. When CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer told Sanders that Warren, Harris and Julián Castro all support reparations, the Vermonter shot back: "What does that mean? What do they mean? I'm not sure that anyone's very clear. . . . Again, it depends on what the word means."

On Feb. 19, he said the focus from activists on ending the legislative filibuster is a distraction from more systemic problems. "I'm not crazy about getting rid of the filibuster," he said on CBS. "The real issue is that you have in Washington a system which is dominated in Washington by wealthy campaign contributors."

- Sanders' unwillingness to follow the herd on the filibuster and court-packing reflects an abiding respect for governing institutions, guardrails and the rule of law, as well as the wisdom that comes from serving 28 years in Congress. He won a House seat in 1990 and a promotion to the Senate in 2006. The 77-year-old has served in the majority and the minority in both chambers, so he understands the long-term value of protecting the prerogatives of the party that's out of power when the pendulum swings. Sanders pointed out on Monday that he also knows what it's like to lose and that this indelibly shaped his worldview: He joked about the early races in which he garnered just 1 or 2 percent of the vote as a third-party candidate before pointing out that he just got reelected with 67 percent.

- To be sure, Sanders has certainly evolved on some major issues as he turned his attention from rural Vermont to the national stage.Gun control and immigration are the two most notable examples.

- Contrary to his public persona, however, GOP lawmakers who have worked with Sanders - including John McCain before he died - have often described him as a results-oriented realist and a savvy negotiator. Sanders has said that he sees the job of a legislator as lawmaking, not protesting. He's voted for many bills that he complained didn't go far enough on the grounds that incremental progress is better than nothing. As chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee in 2014, Sanders negotiated a bipartisan VA overhaul with House Republicans.

- As the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, for eight years, he talked a lot about international issues but governed as a pragmatist. Sanders filled potholes, rebuilt the downtown and worked with Republicans to advance his agenda. In one famous episode during the 1980s, he supported the arrest of antiwar activists who were blocking the entrance to a General Electric plant that made Gatling guns in his city because he wanted the unionized workers to be able to get to their jobs.

- In his stump speech, Bernie now makes the case that neither he nor his ideas are radical, but that he's just been ahead of the curve and the time has finally come for Medicare-for-all, tuition-free college and a $15 national minimum wage.

- Make no mistake, Sanders really could be the Democratic nominee in 2020. He has a path to victory at the convention in Milwaukee. His second bid has gotten off to a much stronger start than many expected.

- Sanders' willingness to call it like he saw it during the forum on Monday, even though he knew what his questioner wanted to hear, did not hurt his standing with the crowd. He received the longest applause, the loudest cheers and the most spirited chants of anyone who spoke at the Warner Theatre. More than 100 people streamed out of the ballroom as soon as he finished speaking, even though two more presidential candidates were waiting in the wings to speak.

Warren probably got the second-best reception of the eight candidates. Organizers started playing Aretha Franklin's "Respect" to force her to wrap up her speech, but the senator from Massachusetts kept talking. "They're going to play me off here, but I'm going to say two more things," she said, undeterred but talking a little faster. It just so happened that one of those two points was about the importance of organized labor. The union activists in the room lapped it up. The moment made Warren look like a fighter, and she got a big standing ovation.