Why Bernie Sanders’ “Political Revolution” Doesn’t Have a Chance

Hillary Clinton and Sanders need to give plans for executive branch action, given gridlock in Congress. In response, on Twitter, some Sanders supporters said this was wrong: That Sanders—with a long career in lawmaking—could win Republican support; that Sanders would use the bully pulpit to rally voters; and that a Sanders win would necessarily bring the kind of wave that would give him votes for his policies.

But this is blind to reality. Compromise is a distant shore. The Democratic Party has moved to the left, and the Republican Party has made a sharp turn to the right, guided by two generations of conservative revolutionaries, from Newt Gingrich to the Tea Party tidal wave of 2010. If you watched the Republican and Democratic debates back to back, you’d be forgiven for thinking they described two different countries. What’s more, as demonstrated by the GOP presidential race—as well as the leadership fracas in the House of Representatives—many Republicans (57 percent, according to the Pew Research Center) reject compromise full stop. The world where Donald Trump and Ben Carson lead the GOP presidential race is not a world where Republican voters would support a Democratic president or assent to his policies.

The presidency is polarizing. When you step onto its field, you become a polarized figure. Indeed, the “bully pulpit” does more to tear people apart than bring them together. For all of his legislative success, President Sanders would be just as divisive as President Obama, who was just as divisive as President Bill Clinton. You can’t avoid this; it is baked into the cake of ideological politics. Conservatives are just as sincere with their beliefs as liberals. And they’ll reject a Sanders agenda in the same way that liberals would reject Sen. Ted’s Cruz’s plans.