Sanders and Corbyn: Who has an advantage?

These past few years have seen populist politicians take centre stage.  This is particularly the case in developed nations.  You have Front National in France, the Danish People’s Party in Denmark, Sweden Democrats in Sweden, UK Independence Party in the UK, Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece and Podemos in Spain among others.  The other side of the pond has also seen the rise of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, as well as Donald Trump.  We know what they all stand for.

But let me draw your attention to two politicians.  Both of them represent resentment over the centre-right and even the moderate left wing factions of their respective country’s parties.  You have Jeremy Corbyn of the UK’s Labour Party, and Bernie Sanders from the US’ Democrats.

Corbyn has promised new politics for his party as well as for Britain.  He is however having trouble with his party, let alone the country to get them on board.  On the other hand, you have Sanders who calls himself a socialist.  The word socialist connotes a negative stigma in american politics.  And it will be even more challenging when you are on the verge of having the first Cuban American Republican nominee for US President (whether it be Rubio or Cruz, but that’s a different story altogether).

While I don’t see a smooth road ahead for either candidate, I feel Sanders is at a much greater advantage over Corbyn.  I think of four mostly related reasons are why I think Sanders may have even a slightly easier time securing his country’s vote of confidence:

1. Democrats don’t have the label of the party that crashed the economy.  Whether they actually played a part is a topic for debate but to most voters, what matters is that the 2007/8 financial crisis happened under a Republican President.  While Obama has been given mixed reviews over his economic management, the US economy is improving, even just a little bit.  Labour on the other hand faces this problem.  It was the party-in-government when the financial crisis took an ugly turn.  It provides the Conservative Party more ammunition to tie their ideological pillar of fiscal conservatism to the economic mess they inherited.  The Republicans will have a little bit of a harder time winning on the economy compared to their Conservative Party counterparts across the pond.  Bottom line: a label of economic incompetence and being perceived as radical means something more toxic for Corbyn and Labour.
2. Democrats are still a bit inclined to support the candidate they did not vote for.  Compared to the UK at least.  The problem for Labour is that while 60% of the party members voted for Corbyn, he is not well-received by centrist Labour stalwarts.  While Sanders supporters who would support Clinton and vice versa are far from assured, most Democratic voters think that any Democrat is better and more sensible than a Republican.  Democrats feared the same thing in 2008 but a lot came out for Obama.
3. Republicans have been tied to big money.  More importantly however, more and more Americans think big money in politics is a major issue that needs sorting out fast.  I am not too sure if Brits feel that the role big money in politics is as an urgent issue to sort, even if it may be happening.
4. The media is much friendlier to progressive candidates in the US.  If anything, this is one of the few major industries, which to others, apparently favours Democrats.  We know the usual exceptions: Fox News, talk radio.  Republicans have castigated the likes of CNN, ABC, New York Times, Washington Post as the ‘liberal media’ (or left-leaning media).  You can hardly say the same thing in the UK.  As a matter of fact, some argue that just as much as there is a ‘liberal media’ in the US, there is a ‘right wing’ media in the UK.  The number of outlets favourable to the right vastly outnumber the centre-left friendly outlets in Britain.  It doesn’t help that Murdoch controls a good number of UK newspapers.

Anyway these are my two cents on what structures favour Sanders.  I just wanted to sound them off but I expect to firm this up with more details.  Nonetheless, even if it is easier for one candidate to win his country’s leadership race, it is not the same thing as easy.

MY LONG OVERDUE LABOUR POSTMORTEM: FATE WAS SEALED DURING LAST QUESTION TIME BEFORE GENERAL ELECTION

Author’s note: this was first posted on my Facebook page on 9th June 2015.  Now I choose to share it with a wider audience.

I have to admit that I held up some hope that the Labour party would take power back from the Conservatives. The polls suggested a neck-and-neck race. In fact, I thought it could be 275 each.
But those exit polls came out and the Tories came out well above 300 seats: 316 in fact. To put it in perspective, an analyst said that 290 Conservative seats would make the path to Downing Street tight for Labour. And if that wasn’t enough, the man who might have been Chancellor, Ed Balls lost his own seat. More on him later.
Now either the Tories have been their usual shy selves in the polls or pollsters didn’t apply crucial methodological techniques properly. In fact, 316 seemed too generous to Labour in the grand scheme of things. Now that I think about it, it wasn’t a complete surprise that the actual result was far from the polls. You have to rely on gut instinct to smell blood in the water called the polling business. I mean the presence of two issues – a strengthening economy (never mind perceptions of Labour crashing it in 2008-2009) and serious issues about Ed Miliband and his team (again never mind perceptions of his party crashing the economy) – should make you surprised that Labour was at least competitive.
Let’s give the benefit of the doubt to the pollsters and accepted their findings as robust. If so, I am convinced that what happened was that Ed’s fate was sealed during the last Question Time before the General Election. If you will watch the video below, you will see that he was asked the question “Why should we trust you?” at least three times. Sufficing to say that he did not answer the question satisfactorily, if he was trying to answer it at all. Ed acted defensively the whole time around. I was surprised he was out-maneuvered by such tough questions given that he overcame them well during his bout with Jeremy Paxman just over a month before this event.

Even the gestures and mannerisms spoke more convincingly than the explanations out of Ed’s mouth. David Cameron earlier showed the letter from an ex-Labour Treasury Secretary that no money was left. And I could see the chuckles in Ed’s face as he referred to it as a “prop”. That coupled along with allegations that the other Ed’s (Mr Balls) “joke” comments left a bad taste in the audience’s mouth. And then we saw the slight stumble as the Labour leader exited the stage. That was perhaps a sublime symbol of what Mr Miliband’s party was going to face a week later.
A flash poll came out asking who was the better performer. It showed that Mr Cameron was ahead of Mr Miliband by 6 points. What was interesting about this gap was it was almost exactly in line with what would become the nationwide share of the popular vote in the election a week later.

Simply put, I think Labour lost because during this Question Time, Ed has simply not convinced the audience that they could be trusted with the economy. And it seems as if other postmortems agreed.
Late Sunday night I read a piece on the Independent where Harriett Harman, who became Mr Miliband’s deputy, said that Labour voters were actually relieved that their party didn’t get power. She also told us what we were already suspecting: that the party thinks the public wasn’t convinced they would do a good job with the economy.
Coincidentally earlier that day, I read an article that tries to make sense of the Nuneaton result. Nuneaton was the quintessential bellwether for election night. It was supposed to be a relatively easy pick up for Labour; not only did Labour fail to cut the Tory share here, the swing was in the Tories’ favour. The same pattern happened for seats across the midlands and most of England (except the London area). And the reasons voters in that constituency voted for the gentleman in the blue rosette were not so far off from what I thought was the reason: Tories could better handle the economy.
Now back to the other Ed (Mr Balls). If his dismissal wouldn’t convince you that your party headed for a disaster, I don’t know what else could. Interestingly enough, he was kicked out from a constituency in the Leeds area. This was the same city which hosted that fateful Question Time. Perhaps the answers of Mr Balls’ boss continued to resonate with residents there.
The BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson said at the moment Mr Balls lost his seat, Labour’s punishment from the 2010 financial crisis could have been delayed for now. And here’s the thing I have: the Tory’s majority is currently just 12. Even if it is unprecedented in modern times that a party gains seats three successive times, the Tories still have a lot of room to gain. They are still 66 seats short of their all-time high of 397 seats set in 1983. So to go further than Mr Robinson, perhaps Labour’s punishment could be staggered, given in instalments.
They can happen if Labour does not sort its economy image NOW. So rather than be bogged down of choosing who would lead the party, it has to sort out what they stand for, what their economic message is. So Labour, please sort your economy image NOW.