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The Bernie Sanders Paradox

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Had things worked out a little better for him on Tuesday, Bernie Sanders would be in a position to regret his participation in the last round of Democratic Party rule making.

There is a paradoxical tone to the situation that I have not seen anyone in print pick up on yet. So I guess I'll have to do it. Sanders is the most Rawlsian candidate in the race. Yet though the Rawlsian notion of justice works for him, the Rawlsian notion of a social contract that depends on a veil of ignorance works at the expense of a procedural position he has taken.

To get this, we have to distinguish those two parts of Rawlsian social theory: the idea of the social contract, with of course traditional Lockean roots but filtered through game theory; and the suggested content of the contract, which the contractors supposedly agree to in the Rawlsian model. [That's a portrait of John Locke you're looking at, BTW. ]

As to the contract: Rawls said that justice should be understood as the set of rules to which we would agree (as rational people) behind a "veil of ignorance."

As to the content, Rawls said that they would agree to a difference principle:  that is, differences between my wealth and comfort level and yours have to be justified. If I'm on the losing end of those differences, the extent of the difference has to be justified as something that benefits me.

The paradox, then, is this: it is Sanders, more than anyone else, who sees it as his duty to lessen the wealth disparity in the US, and who might well if asked (I don't know that anyone has asked him) say that Rawls captures the reasons why that is an imperative -- that the inequality has gotten far beyond what such justification allows).

On the other hand, should Sanders avail himself of Rawlsian reasoning, he could be hoist by his own petard. One key issue facing the convention may be: should the selection process be bound by the rules adopted soon after the last nominating convention, a rule-making process in which Sanders actually (not just hypothetically) participated? Isn't that a social contract by which he should be bound? After all, he WAS ignorant in 2016-17 of where he would be at this moment, in the spring of 2020. He could not have known whether he would be the one with a delegate lead, but no majority, or the one behind in delegates, working to deprive someone else of a first-ballot majority.  Behind that "veil," he agree to rules....

What Rawls gives, Rawls takes away.

So, IF Sanders were still in the lead in delegates, he would have to advance rather anti-Rawlsian procedural arguments. Since he is no longer in the lead, that has become more deeply hypothetical.
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