Opinion | Bernie Sanders Scares a Lot of People, and Quite a Few of Them Are Democrats

Daron Acemoglu, a professor of economics at M.I.T., who has thought deeply about global and domestic inequality, draws a clear distinction between socialism and social democracy. In Acemoglu’s view, which he expressed by email, Sanders’ “economists don’t understand basic economics. They are not just dangerous, they are clueless.” Socialist regimes “from Cuba to the eastern bloc have been disastrous both for economic prosperity and individual freedom.”

Acemoglu questions Sanders’ economic sophistication, arguing that social democracy, when practiced by competent governments,

is a phenomenal success. Everywhere in the west is to some degree social democratic, but the extent of this varies. We owe our prosperity and freedom to social democracy.

The trick, though, Acemoglu argues, is that social democracy “did not achieve these things by taxing and redistributing a lot. It achieved them by having labor institutions protecting workers, encouraging job creation and encouraging high wages.” Sanders does, in fact, often define his vision in these terms, but apparently has failed to persuade many economists (although he has persuaded some).

Jagdish N. Bhagwati, an economist at Columbia and an expert in development economics and international trade, who likes Sanders and supported him in 2016, is critical of Sanders’ policies. In a phone interview, Bhagwati described Sanders’ thinking as “a little bit naive,” displaying little “understanding of the complexity of the issues he raises.” Sanders, Bhagwati says, is in great need of “first-rate people to sort things out.”

In Bhagwati’s view, if Sanders continues to propose solutions to major problems “from the heart and not the head,” he will “not get anywhere other than shadow politics.”

David Autor, who is also an economist at M.I.T. and who specializes in technological change and globalization, described Sanders’ platform as

chock full of fuzzy math and wishful thinking. But that seems to be a sound basis for electoral platforms these days, especially when proposed and enacted by Republicans.

Autor continued:

Bottom line: I don’t think this election will turn on policy ideas, factual claims, or even thinking of any substantive kind. American electoral politics has become purely expressive: how much do I identify with my candidate? How much do I hate yours? The balance of these competing forces seems to determine the winner.

A third M.I.T. economist, Erik Brynjolfsson, one of the foremost scholars on the effects of information technology on employment and productivity, wrote me:

Advocates for Bernie Sanders often argue that ‘socialist’ policies have worked in places like Denmark. That’s half right. While Denmark provides a generous welfare state its model can better be described as progressive capitalism.

He pointed out that Denmark has no minimum wage and

takes a “flexicurity” approach to labor markets which allows entrepreneurs to hire and fire people easily, boosting dynamism and new business creation. Meanwhile government health care and other benefits means even people who are laid off aren’t destitute.

Sanders, Brynjolfsson wrote,

is right that many Americans have seen their real wages fall or stagnate over the past 20 years, but successful nations have maintained the right mix of capitalism and public investment needed to create more widely shared prosperity.

At a more subjective level, Sanders’ rhetorical tone of righteous indignation has served him well with Democratic voters, but it remains untested among the independent and swing voters who cast ballots only in the general election.

Democrats are banking on making the 2020 election a referendum on Trump. How likely are the more controversial aspects of Sanders’ politics to blunt that strategy and turn the contest into a referendum on both Trump and Sanders?

A March NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 50 percent of all voters described themselves as “very uncomfortable” with Trump’s bid for re-election, and another 9 percent said they have “some reservation.” None of the Democratic candidates were viewed with the same level of discomfort, but Sanders had the highest percentage of voters, at 37 percent, who were “very uncomfortable” with his campaign, along with 21 percent who said they have “some reservations.”