Why trashing Hillary Clinton wouldn't have helped Bernie Sanders

You know things aren't going well when your campaign staffers start talking to reporters about how things might have gone differently. It's usually self-serving on the source's part ("If only he had listened to me and followed my advice, he would have won"), but that doesn't mean there might not be some truth in all the second-guessing. And that's where Bernie Sanders has come: With still a mathematical chance to win the Democratic nomination for president but such a victory looking all but impossible, even his own people are wondering whether he might have been able to defeat Hillary Clinton if he had gone about his campaign a little differently.

But the answer to that question, at least in the way it's being asked, is no. Not only that, it shortchanges what Sanders has accomplished.

On Monday, The New York Times ran a long front-page story based on interviews with multiple staffers and advisers to Sanders trying to sort out where he went wrong. This was the core of the case:

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

In other words: If Bernie Sanders had run a more traditional campaign, one that was a little nastier and a little more cutting, if he had made it less about his own ideas and vision and more about why people should dislike Hillary Clinton, he might be winning.

There were other complaints, too, like the fact that Sanders prefers big rallies to humping from diner to coffee klatch to funeral reception in Iowa. (The truth is that flesh-pressing is not Sanders' strength, because, to be frank, in person he's a little prickly). But it's remarkable that at least some of the people at the center of the Sanders campaign seem to have no idea why his campaign has gotten as far as it has.

Sanders may have started this race more to make a point than to win, but all the success he has gained comes from the fact that he has a combination of substantive and practical purity about him. He doesn't shy away from proposing politically difficult solutions to problems (single-payer health care, free college tuition, public financing of campaigns), and he doesn't campaign like an ordinary politician either. He frequently says proudly that he's never run a negative ad, and one of the key moments of the primary campaign was when he responded to a question in a debate about the controversy over Clinton's emails by saying to her, "The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!" It was interpreted as a gift to Clinton, but it also communicated something important about Sanders: He wasn't interested in scoring cheap points off campaign controversies that have little or nothing to do with what the next president will be doing.

And that's what has attracted those legions of young people to Sanders' cause. He became a vehicle for their idealism, their hopes, their belief that there's nothing necessarily permanent about politics as it is now. Spending a bunch more time criticizing Clinton for taking speaking fees from Goldman Sachs might have gotten him a few extra news stories, but it wouldn't have changed anything fundamental in how voters think about Clinton. It would, however, have undermined the image he had so carefully constructed for himself. When Sanders talks in lofty terms about what's possible, he reminds his supporters of why they were attracted to him in the first place. When he criticizes his opponent — no matter how legitimate those criticisms might be — he just ends up looking like an ordinary politician.

Let's not forget what an extraordinary thing Sanders has already done, even if he were to never get another vote. A grumpy wild-haired 74-year-old Brooklyn Jewish socialist has given the Democratic Party's second most important politician (after the president) a serious run for her money. He brought a new generation of voters into the process (even if whether they remain is an open question). He raised gobsmacking amounts of money from small donors — $44 million just in March, and over $180 million overall. He forced substantive debates on policy options like single-payer that had previously been deemed unworthy of discussion. And he has almost certainly pulled the Democratic Party to the left, which may have been his primary goal to begin with.

If two years ago you had asked a hundred political professionals whether Bernie Sanders could mount a serious challenge to Hillary Clinton, 99 of them would have told you the idea was ludicrous. But he did it, and he did it not by going after her but by being himself. While it's true that being himself might have imposed a ceiling on him that exists below the level of becoming the Democratic nominee, it's still nothing to be ashamed of. And the truth is that no matter what Sanders changed, it could barely have gone any better.