Why Bernie Sanders will win in 2020, no matter who gets elected

Last but by not least, US foreign policy is going to move in Bernie's direction no matter who ends up president in 2021. Foreign policy was never Sanders' primary concern, but he called for an end to endless wars, the need for greater congressional involvement in the conduct of foreign policy (and especially decisions for war), a halt in our support for the Saudi intervention in Yemen, a more sensible defense budget, the resumption of the Iranian nuclear deal, and "support for democracy, human rights, diplomacy and peace, and economic fairness."

At the most general level, COVID-19 will inevitably restrain US ambitions abroad. Compared to the need to protect American lives and rebuild the US economy, determining who gets to govern in Kabul or Damascus or Tripoli will matter even less to Americans after 2020 than it does today.

Spending hundreds of billions of dollars every year to safeguard the country against distant, weakly armed terrorists or third-rate rogue states, or to continue our ill-fated efforts to "spread democracy" with military force, is going to be a much harder sell: More masks, ventilators, and a well-funded public health infrastructure would have kept us a lot safer than a few more F-35s.

Similarly, hyper-globalization was already on probation before the pandemic hit; it's a safe bet that the United States (and others) will be wary of returning to the same levels of interconnectedness and supply-chain vulnerability that were present before the crisis hit.

Autarky is not an option and globalization will not end, but a more cautious approach to trade, investment, and population movement is inevitable. Sounds a lot like Bernie to me.

To be sure, some elements of Bernie's foreign policy are unlikely to be implemented if Trump retains power. Trump won't start prioritizing human rights or democracy in a second term, and he won't embrace Bernie's views on Palestinian rights or climate change. But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is likely to leave office after November (to lay the groundwork for a presidential bid in 2024), and the departure of Mr. "Maximum Pressure" would open the door to a new arrangement with Iran at a moment when Iran may well be receptive.

Moving toward Sanders' position on Iran would allow Trump to claim a rare foreign policy victory. And I wouldn't rule out Trump turning on his former pal Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who did his US patron no favors by decimating the US fracking industry. Bernie would no doubt agree.

Should Biden win in November, a resurgent Democratic foreign policy elite will undoubtedly try to turn the clock back and pretend that Trump's tenure was just a four-year national nightmare. Expect to see a renewed commitment to those old foreign policy institutions (NATO, multilateralism, the G7 and G20) and lots of talk about the need for US "leadership."

Bernie's call to emphasize climate change, democracy and human rights will resonate well with this agenda, and his idealism will be consistent with the bipartisan desire to confront China and Russia on a number of fronts. A Biden administration will be softer on America's Middle East clients than Bernie would have been, but US support for these increasingly dubious friends is likely to be more limited and conditional in the future than it is been in the past.

"Maximum pressure" against Iran will be abandoned, no matter how loudly the Saudis, Israelis, or their lobbyists in DC keep calling for war. Biden won't be Bernie, but any attempt to return to "Liberal Hegemony Lite" will be more rhetorical than real.

I'm hardly the first person to conclude that Bernie is the real victor in 2020, a triumph due as much to the global pandemic as it is to Bernie's charisma, organizing ability, or political acumen.

Nonetheless, timing counts for a lot in politics, and some key parts of Sanders' message were perfectly aligned with this unexpected and unfortunate turn of events. His name won't be on the ballot in November, but he'll still be the biggest winner.

In case you haven't noticed, the US government has basically taken over the task of keeping the economy afloat and guaranteeing incomes. It's not doing communist-style central planning, but it sure ain't neoliberal "let the free-market do whatever it wants" either.

We still have a market economy, but the government's role in keeping it afloat (barely) is increasing steadily. As Howard Fineman (who is hardly a radical) wrote recently, "now even most conservative, libertarian-minded Republicans have publicly tossed aside their claimed objection to Big Government. They have supported and voted for massive new spending on basic income support, health care and more, and probably will do so again in the near future."

This tendency for states to assert greater control should not surprise us. In any serious emergency — wars, natural disasters, financial panics, etc. — citizens everywhere turn to the state to provide security, order, and the resources needed to survive and then recover. Why? Because public institutions are the only ones that can draw upon and mobilize the entire society, impose the necessary restrictions on individual behavior, and guarantee public order.

That does not necessarily mean that they will do so effectively — as the Trump administration's hapless response to COVID-19 is demonstrating daily — but the point is that there is no real alternative. Private corporations, churches, charities, and other groups can help at the margin, but they lack the scale to confront a crisis effectively.

That is why Americans didn't turn to Amazon, the MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, or organized religion to protect them after 9/11: It was the federal government that had to formulate a response. Similarly, the only entity that could bail out the US economy after the 2008 financial crisis (or today) was the federal government; not even Warren Buffett had the resources or the authority that was needed.

Given that the scale of the present disaster exceeds either of those events, it is inevitable that public institutions are playing a bigger role in our economic life than at any other time in American history. If you don't like the word "socialism," feel free to call it a new form of "state capitalism" (with the emphasis on "state").

And by the way, that's yet another reason why re-electing Trump would be a disaster: The greater the role of the state, the greater the potential for corruption and self-dealing, which is basically the Trump family business.