The fight for the Democratic soul reposes in two distinct groups, the young and the old.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on March 9, 2020.

OTTAWA—It is the American battle of the ages.

The fight for the Democratic soul reposes in two distinct groups, the young and the old.

The young have the energy, and social media savvy to make their presence felt. They are behind Bernie Sanders in unprecedented numbers.

Sanders is encouraging them to dream and dream big. Free post-secondary tuition, and a message that is unmistakably anti-capitalist.

He wants the bloodsucking on Wall Street to stop and has been keenly focused on taking down “the most dangerous president in the history of the country.”

Bernie’s message is sharp and focused. And he has been able to reach out to those millions of Americans who want to reignite a fairer America.

But Joe Biden has been able to convince the rest of battle-weary Democrats that the way to the White House is not through revolution but evolution. That was clear in the Biden bounce.

Sanders says the party should not challenge Donald Trump with a Washington political insider. The place needs an explosion that he will administer.

Although political polar opposites, Sanders and Trump actually have the most in common.

Trump rode to victory on the notion that the capital was a swamp that needed to be drained. He promised to do the draining, attracting millions of disenchanted citizens who believed that Trump would be the one to upend the cozy capital and its entitled residents. Trump was even dubbed the blue-collar billionaire in honour of his commitment to get industrial jobs back into the American rustbelt.

He captured and solidified the blue-collar vote in states that had always been solidly democrat.

That is the same group that Sanders message appeals to.

In addition, Sanders has galvanised the left wing of the Democratic Party who have not had a champion in the White House since Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. That was introduced before the Second World War as a way to lift the country out of the Great Depression.

Since that time, all successful Democrats have leaned into the centre. That’s where the votes are.

Sanders will ignite the young, but in general, that demographic has the worst voter turnout.

Successive political parties try to inspire the young voter, but the bottom line is, the older you are, the more likely you are to actually get out and vote.

And the less likely you are to support revolution over evolution.

Raging Grannies are generally in the minority because as people age, they become more comfortable with the art of the possible.

In the current, divided American political climate, the Democratic nominee can only win the presidency by convincing some Republicans to switch sides. That moderate path leads directly to Joe Biden.

Biden, weighed down with Washington baggage, has not been the kind of inspiring candidate who could rivet the country.

But he doesn’t need to be. He needs to be unthreatening enough to convince moderate Republicans that they can switch to the Democrats.

Super Tuesday applied a tourniquet to Biden bleeding. His campaign has certainly been dull and lacklustre. In the early days, he came across as out-of-touch, arrogant, and a Washington insider. Those early stumbles at the gate cost him dearly. When confidence ebbs, uneasy supporters quickly move into more winning camps. And the money follows.

But Michael Bloomberg’s bomb out and Amy Klobuchar’s surprise endorsement of Biden led to the Biden bounce and injected new life into the Biden campaign.

The race is not over. But the momentum is certainly in Biden’s direction.

And notwithstanding Trump’s tweets about Bloomberg, he obviously is very afraid of Biden as an opponent.

Otherwise, why would he waste political capital trying to tie Biden up in his Russian/Ukrainian shakedown scandals?

From this vantage point, it looks as though the Democratic nomination will be Biden’s to lose. Along with the delegates elected in primaries across the country, he can count on the majority of super-delegates, those who get to the convention because of their status in the party as officials or former office holders.

They represent almost 15 per cent of all delegates. Under new rules established in 2018, super delegates cannot vote on a first ballot.

In the Super Tuesday post-mortem, it was clear that Biden got overwhelming support from African Americans, and older, moderate voters.

Sanders continued his groundswell with young people, and Latinos, leading to his capture of coveted California.

The path ahead is clear. Democrats will elect Biden. He is the best hope to beat Donald Trump.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By SHEILA COPPS

Published in The Hill Times on Monday, November 28, 2016.

OTTAWA—Charlie Angus is being heralded as the Canadian Bernie Sanders.

His decision to resign as chair of the New Democratic Party caucus to explore his leadership ambitions was wise and welcome.

Angus is a solid parliamentary performer who is well-respected for his understanding of rural, northern and aboriginal issues. He stands up for the marginalized, which puts him in sync with Sanders’ Democratic primary campaign message, but the comparison stops there.

There are two key reasons why the political gulf between Sanders and Angus is so wide.

First, the urban-rural split in the United States is quite different, and the bizarre electoral college system proffers disproportionate influence to certain states, which happen to have more small town voters.

Canada is a more urban country. In the most recent Statistics Canada data, more than 80 per cent lived in urban centres. Similar American statistics put the number of their urban dwellers at 70 per cent. Ten per cent doesn’t seem like a lot but a comparison of the two systems of voting will yield more clues as to why the Sanders-Angus comparison will not fly.

In Senator Sanders home state of Vermont, the capital city boasts a population of 7,855 which swells to 21000 during the day because of an influx of government workers from neighbouring bedroom communities.

Angus lives in Cobalt, Ontario’s most historic town, with a population of 1,133.

His Timmins-James Bay riding includes 83,104 people. The riding represents one seat in a House of Commons with 338 members.

Sanders’ state of Vermont has a population of 626,042, the second smallest in the union, and get three electoral college votes. With only 278 electoral college votes determining the presidency, the relative importance of Vermont voting patterns looms much larger in the race for the presidency.

The United States has more rural and small town voters, but most important, the electoral college system skews the influence of votes disproportionately toward those voters.

The second major difference between Angus and Sanders is that Sanders voting base exists within a party that has formed government. During the primary, Sanders’ message appealed directly to disaffected Democrats who felt they were being left behind by globalization and international trade deals.

From the rust belt through to the Midwest, Sanders attracted a swathe of voters similar to those who ultimately switched to Donald Trump. They included disaffected union members, the less educated and the kind of Flint, Michigan working-class voter documentarized by filmmaker Michael Moore.

For the most part, Angus’ New Democratic Party is already the home of that demographic. The leadership of the majority of Canadian public and private sector unions is formally, constitutionally tied to the NDP, with specific voting privileges at national and regional conventions.

Unlike American unions, Canadian labour leaders have sacrificed leverage by supporting only the NDP at a national level.

Some provincial trade unions have broken from that tradition.

The Working Families coalition in Ontario was formed to fight anti-union policies from any party. In the lead up to the provincial election that elected Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne, they waged a vocal anti-Conservative campaign. The group including teachers, nurses, and construction workers, campaigned to vote strategically in ridings to defeat anti-union candidates.

The result had the effect of driving New Democrat voters over to the Liberals to stop Tim Hudak.

In the United States, labour unions can decide elections. In a few Canadian provinces, Quebec and British Columbia to be precise, labour plays a similar role. But those examples are rare, and generally flourish in two-party provinces.

Angus has a formidable challenge. He was quoted last week as saying he wants to build a bridge between the dreamers and the doers in his party. That will be no mean feat because the hard-core NDP membership is bound together by the ideology of socialism.

An ideologically based party is much harder to shift than a party shaped by the art of the possible. The historical strength of the Canadian Liberal Party has been based on a guiding set of principles tempered by political realism.

Governing has an abrupt way of snuffing out ideology. That doesn’t mean cabinets don’t care, but rather they are influenced more by what is done than what is dreamed. If the possibility of defeat looms, it has a way of focusing your attention. If a party has never actually formed government, it is much easier to promote idealistically unachievable goals.

Angus’ potential candidacy is good news for the NDP. But he is no Bernie Sanders.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.