PBS Democratic Debate: Live Coverage

About a year ago, political scientists Matt Grossmann and Dave Hopkins published a paper arguing that Democratic voters base their decision on which party is better for different social groups (“group benefits,” in polisci speak), while Republicans vote more based on ideology. This thesis, like several important political science theories, isn’t an obvious fit for what we’re seeing in this nomination season. What’s interesting in the Sanders-Clinton contest is that the terms of debate seem to encompass both ideology and group interests. Sanders invoked ideology when he said that you can be either a progressive or a moderate, but not both. This kind of impulse toward ideological purity is what Grossmann and Hopkins identify as being far more common among Republicans. But there’s been a lot about group benefits too. Obviously, which candidate is better for women has been the subject of hot debate – Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright’s controversial comments are the most prominent but hardly the only ones in that vein. Two top African-American intellectuals, Michelle Alexander and Ta-Nehisi Coates, weighed in for Sanders this week, citing their experience as black Americans. In the opening statements, Clinton drew on pretty standard Democratic group benefits language. Sanders invoked group benefit language in a slightly different way – talking about ordinary Americans and the abuses of the campaign finance system. This is a different kind of group benefit, but it also invokes the ideological purity point that he keeps raising against Clinton. One thing I wonder going forward is whether these two streams of argument – group benefits vs. ideologies – merge or remain distinct.

Having either a woman president or a Jewish president would be a first for the United States — but fortunately, these characteristics may no longer be as much of a barrier to being elected. According to a 2012 Gallup poll, only 5 percent of Americans said they wouldn’t vote for an otherwise well-qualified female presidential candidate, while 6 percent said that about a Jewish one.

Sanders said earlier that a Sanders presidency would be historic, too. This isn’t mainly what he meant, but he’d be the first Jewish president, and the first with a home state (but not birth state) of Vermont.