US Democrats getting ready for election campaign
In the US the campaign for the 2020 presidential elections is gaining momentum. On the Republican side Trump announced that he would run for re-election when he first took office. On the Democrats' side there are already several applicants for the post of lead candidate, with Bernie Sanders becoming the latest to announce his candidacy on Tuesday. The press sees plenty of movement in the Democratic camp.
Sanders tipped for success
This time Bernie Sanders has a better chance of becoming US president, writes Ivan Jakovyna in Novoye Vremya:
“Sanders lost to Hillary Clinton in the last election only because of fraud committed by the Democratic Party leadership. ... Now he no longer has this problem. Sanders also has every chance of being nominated by the Democrats and driving Donald Trump out of the White House. ... Sanders has won an entire army of admirers since 2016. After the start of the campaign they gathered a million dollars for their candidate in just four hours - a crowdfunding record. Sanders himself said that he will build up a campaign network of a million (!) volunteers in the US. ... If he succeeds he has great chances of being elected president!”
The spectre of socialism
Kauppalehti criticises the Democrats for shifting ever further to the left, citing as an example Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal:
“In Trump's world socialism is a dirty word that above all evokes memories of the 1950s McCarthy era. Trump feels sure he can eliminate his rivals with this card. And he may be right. The Americans are perhaps not yet ready to swap capitalism for socialism, even if the Green New Deal looks more like the Nordic welfare state than centrally governed China or Russia. But the idea that a deficit plays no role at all in economic policy sounds pretty radical even to northern European ordoliberals.”
Who can unite the Democrats?
The Democrats could be facing a new split, US correspondent for La Repubblica Federico Rampini warns:
“The high number of candidates for the Democratic nomination is a sign of the vitality and robust state of the opposition. But it could also prove difficult to unite all Democrats behind one strategy, one government programme and one canon of values. ... If the 'socialism' the elderly senator of Vermont explicitly refers to caused a stir in 2016, nowadays it is shared by other candidates like Elizabeth Warren, the senator of Massachusetts. Two other senators, Kamala Harris of California and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, are seen as left-wing radicals compared to the party's tradition. Far fewer candidates represent the moderate centrists so far. ... But the risk of a split between the two souls of the party is by no means negligible.”