February 06, 2016
Okay, I’m not going to get in the habit of responding to everything Paul Krugman writes on Bernie Sanders, but there are a few quick points worth making about his latest post on Sanders’ electability.
1) Krugman is raising an entirely reasonable point that voters should consider, so no one should be upset at him for putting the issue on the table. (No, he is not looking for a job in the Clinton administration.)
2) We should be clear on the question being asked. If the issue is keeping the Republicans out of the White House, then the question is not whether Bernie Sanders could beat the Republican nominee. The question is how likely is it that Sanders could defeat Clinton for the nomination, and then lose a general election that Clinton would have won?
In this respect, it is important to recognize how much the nomination process is stacked towards Clinton. It is not just a question of her having the vigorous support of a former Democratic president and largely controlling the Democratic National Committee. She is also likely to have the overwhelming support of the super-delegates (Democratic members of Congress, state office holders, and other prominent Democrats).
The super-delegates are just under 15 percent of the total number of delegates. If Clinton wins this group by a margin of 80 percent to 20 percent (she has more than 95 percent of the super-delegates who have already made a commitment), then Sanders would have to capture more than 55 percent of the elected delegates to get the nomination.
This means that Sanders could not get the nomination just by scraping by in the primaries; he would need a decisive victory. The question then is, if Clinton were to lose decisively in the primaries to a candidate who has all the weaknesses touted by the experts to whom Krugman referred us, how likely is it that she would have been able to win the general election if Sanders had not gotten in her way?
The point is important, because if the argument is that Sanders can’t win an election that Clinton would not have won either, then we aren’t arguing over control of the White House, we are arguing over who gets to make the concession speech on November 8th. There is the issue that the margin would be smaller with a Clinton candidacy and this would help Democrats lower down on the ticket. This is an important issue worth considering, which is point 3).
3) The political scientists interviewed for the Vox piece cited by Krugman agreed that a Sanders candidacy would be an advantage to the Republicans, although they did not agree on how much of an advantage it would be.
“Seth Masket, a political science professor at the University of Denver, said his best ‘ballpark estimate’ is that Sanders would cost the Democratic Party 2 to 3 percentage points in a general election compared with a more conventional nominee.
‘It’s not as big an effect as flipping a growing economy to one in recession,’ Masket said. ‘It’s more like flipping a growing economy to a stalled one.’”
Masket’s point of reference is useful in light of recent economic news. The Commerce Department reported the economy grew at just a 0.7 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter. The most recent data show the trade deficit increasing due to a rising dollar and drops in both equipment investment and non-residential construction. In other words, we may be seeing a flip from a growing economy to a stalled one.
Whoever your choice for a Democratic nominee, the conventional wisdom in political science circles is that a weaker economy will be some serious bad news for the Democrats come November. While there is not a lot that Congress is likely to do in the next eight months to boost the economy, the Federal Reserve Board can act through its interest policy and other measures to promote growth.
There is already a campaign involving labor unions and grassroots organizations to pressure the Fed to try to boost growth and employment, and at the very least not to try to slow the economy more with further interest rate hikes. The “Fed Up” Campaign is being led by the Center for Popular Democracy and has organizations in cities throughout the country.
So, the main reason to pressure the Fed is of course to try to increase employment and give workers more bargaining power so that they can get wage increases. But, if you want to keep a Democrat in the White House, it might be worth your time to look them up.
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