In the first newsletter I wrote about how Donald Trump was boxed in, with no legislative options at home and few foreign policy options abroad. He is limited to playing up racial resentment through executive orders and throwing stones at Republicans who don’t toe the line. Now I’d like to explore what a Bernie Sanders Presidency would actually look like, because I actually think that there would be some similar outcomes.

Like Trump, Sanders has few legislative achievements. In his political career, he hasn’t successfully built coalitions and that showed during the Democratic primary, the ultimate coalition building exercise (due to the multiple competing factions in the Democratic Party). Sanders didn’t have many concrete plans for his goals , at one point, his campaign claimed that single payer and free college would be paid for by 5% GDP growth annually (a number economists laughed at) and that Republicans would be brought on board with his policies because of youth protests outside their offices.

A Sanders Presidency would likely start with legislation on single payer, the reverse of Trump’s attempts to repeal the ACA. But like Trump, Sanders wouldn’t have the votes to pass his legislation. In the same way that Trump blamed Republicans for the bill’s failure, Sanders would blame Democrats for the failure of single payer, lashing out on television and through social media.

The next major move would be legislation for free college, which would meet the same amount of massive Republican resistance. With the failed single payer vote already sapping his political capital, Sanders might look to shelve free college for another legislative “win” that he could display before the 2018 mid-terms, hoping that he could pick the issue up afterwards. But his lack of experience at building a coalition and passing legislation he sponsored makes that unlikely.

All of this would be done under the dark cloud of an FBI investigation. Jane Sanders is part of an FBI investigation into potential bank fraud at Burlington College, where the school ultimately lost everything in land deals gone bad. The allegations are that Jane Sanders claimed donors would put down enough money for the college to take out a loan to buy more land to expand the school. The donors claim that Sanders listed their donation amounts for more than they actually agreed to donate. The thinking is that the inflated numbers were then used to get the college a loan for the land.

The FBI investigation would influence media coverage and every Democrat would be asked their stance, just as Republicans have to deal with Trump’s Russia investigation. The FBI scandal would threaten to wreak havoc on Sanders legitimacy and his poll numbers, dragging the entire Democratic Party down with him during the 2018 mid-term elections.

The failure of single payer and shelving of free college would likely have turned some of the Sanders true believers at this point. Some would be calling him a neoliberal shill, some would be saying he fell victim to the establishment or Wall-Street. But perhaps his disdain for identity politics and his play for the white working class would help him keep a measure of support, similar to how Trump has about one third of the population who will likely continue to approve of the job he is doing no matter what happens. Sanders would probably take a similar stance to Trump on North Korea — belligerent rhetoric — which would probably erase some of dove narrative as well.

I don’t think Sanders would play up racial resentment like Trump has, but his opposition to identity politics makes me think he wouldn’t exactly be fighting for diversity either. At the end of the day, it is a moot point: Trump’s fiery brand of racial resentment has made him the leader of the homogeneous Republican Party, while Sanders revolution has failed to take over the Democrats (or even get his candidates elected to Congressional seats).

I don’t think Sanders will ever run the Democratic Party — it is simply too diverse, and his brand isn’t winning primary states like Florida, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, or Virginia. But I do think that a Sanders Presidency would be similar to Trump’s in certain ways: a lack of legislative accomplishments, an FBI scandal involving family members, attempts to look tough abroad, and an opposition to “identity politics.”