Bernie Sanders speaks in Santa Ana, Calif., Feb. 21.
Photo: ringo chiu/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesWe’ve seen this movie before, but for some reason the critics seem convinced it will have a different ending this time: A bombastic septuagenarian political outsider calls out a rigged system to the cheering masses. He finishes second in Iowa and first in New Hampshire and Nevada. He leads all the national polls while the establishment candidates wage all-out war on one another. Meanwhile, the media dismisses his chances and an increasingly worried political establishment convinces itself it’s only a fluke, that the worst case is a chaotic convention that ultimately nominates a mainstream candidate.
You’d think we political types would know better by now. The most important thing I learned managing Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential race was that the old political norms were dead. Experts and pundits’ predictions were often no more than guesses based on the way things used to be. Media groupthink only made these outdated and misguided notions more stubborn.
Am I the only one who was embarrassed enough at missing the 2016 political movement that elected Donald Trump that I rethought my approach to modern politics?
Like Mr. Trump, Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading an insurgent campaign, riding a nationwide wave of discontent as many Democrats no longer think the party represents them. He inspires the most radical and disenfranchised members of his party. Yet he still manages to expand his support among more-moderate voters, even though they disagree with some of his extreme positions. It’s exactly his passionate willingness to defend the crazy things he says that draws broad support. If I had a dollar for every voter I’ve heard say, “I don’t agree with everything Donald Trump says, but I like that he has the guts to say it,” I could buy Trump Tower. Mr. Sanders is benefiting from that same sentiment.
It isn’t policy positions that draw voters to Messrs. Sanders and Trump. It’s their perceived authenticity. At a time when almost no person or institution is above reproach, the electorate craves someone who tells it like it is. From government to churches and from universities to Wall Street, many Americans feel let down and lied to. You can’t even trust baseball anymore. So listening to someone give you the raw, unvarnished truth is very appealing.
This pattern plays out in other elections too. While the establishment politicos of both parties remain convinced that the country if fixated on issues, it’s actually fixated on personalities. That’s why Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Dan Crenshaw are so popular. Put Ilhan Omar and Matt Gaetz into that bucket, too. These rising political stars have developed reputations for speaking truth to power and sticking it to the establishment. Americans in 2020 eat that up.
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In Mr. Trump, the man and the political moment were perfectly timed. Could this be Mr. Sanders’s year to pull off the same trick? The three-term Vermont senator has always styled himself a socialist revolutionary. His cutting rhetoric has alienated him from the party establishment and media. He doesn’t mince words about “millionaires and billionaires,” who he claims have weaponized their wealth against everyday citizens. Their goal, he says, “is not to strengthen the middle class, but continue the trend in which the rich are getting richer at the expense of everyone else.”
That’s debatable, but it reveals Mr. Sanders’s fundamental strategy: He isolates his target group, demonizes it, and relentlessly attacks. Sound familiar? Replace billionaires with illegal immigrants and throw in a huge helping of the “mainstream media is unfair to me,” and you have a perfect match. Mr. Sanders is exploiting the same sentiments that Mr. Trump rode to the presidency on in 2016.
If Mr. Sanders’s momentum continues, he may topple Joe Biden in South Carolina, where the two are now tied. If that happens, it’s hard to see how Mr. Sanders doesn’t end up winning the nomination. He leads by double digits in the most recent national poll and is surging in other state polls.
The funniest part of this blockbuster sequel may be that if Mr. Sanders does win the nomination, those same pundits and politicos will swear he can never win in November. I learned enough from 2016 not to make a definitive political prediction this far out about the final outcome. Maybe we’re watching “Groundhog Day.”
Mr. Sullivan is a founding partner at Firehouse Strategies and was Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign manager.
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