Hey Xeno,Xenophon wrote: ↑Thu Jul 28, 2022 2:38 pmInteresting question, honor.
I'd start by saying that I'm pretty doubtful that had any of the other candidates been nominated that the result would have been the same. Far too close a race in some areas to suspect that a whole different candidate gets Democrats there. I also think that putting an early end to in-fighting and focusing on non-primary messaging was critical to Biden's win. That said, that wasn't the question you asked.
I think in your scenario we have to imagine Sanders gets the nod as opposed to anyone else, he had the highest delegate count by far and I'm hard pressed to imagine another in the moderate wing of the party responding too terribly differently. To the domestic agenda, I doubt Sanders would have gotten much more than Biden has. Perhaps he is just the greatest statesman of all time but I'm not optimistic he'd be better at consolidating the party, especially given his "outsider" feel (fair or not). You've already highlighted the difficulties presented by how narrow the margin of victory was and that doesn't go away if you change the leader of the party.
You've presented some different strategies you'd have liked the Biden admin to take, namily breaking these huge bills into smaller, more easily managed, chunks on popular topics (infrastructure, child care, health care, family leave, etc.). I see the wisdom in that approach and its possible that would have been easier to get through, folks are way less likely to block a bill dedicated exclusively to a popular topic. I'm not sure if any other President would have tried that though, especially since that doesn't seem to be the direction Congress is moving.
The only area I suspect Sanders might have had notable impact would be on inflation. Not that the current result would have been different, just that I can easily see his admin being less tone deaf on the topic.
I wanted to raise the question as a way of examining how much we really think the person occupying the White House matters, where it matters, and to what degree. For sure, had the other Democrats not rallied around Biden it's very likely Sanders would have won the nomination with a completely unpredictable general election result. I genuinely don't think the Senate would have flipped because at least Georgia and probably Arizona would have gone red in response to the fear over extremism coming from the White House. Biden sold predictability, stability, centrism and rationality. Sanders would have been an entirely different direction that might have fired up some, but it might have meant more split ticket voters who didn't want Trump but preferred to see a check against extreme leftward shifts so they would have voted for a Republican in the Senate or House. Who knows.
Anyway, I don't see Sanders outperforming Biden on most metrics. I don't think Joe Manchin would be closer to Democrats were Sanders in the White House. I don't see Sanders handling Russia or China better than the Biden admin has. He has no where to go but up on the Afghanistan withdrawal so there's that. Would Sanders have solved immigration and persuaded Congress to act? I don't think so. Would he have honestly handled inflation better? I'm not sure how. He would have entered into the same mid-COVID situation where there was a need to inject money into the economy. Would it have been less liquid and instead been better tied to services that pulled wages up faster and more broadly to cool off price inflation? Don't know.
It seems we are witnessing a harsh reality about the White House as a job that has influence on what conditions the next person gets to deal with.