Democrats Have a Real Problem, Part III
Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders is the Democrat’s strongest option to face President Donald Trump in the general election. This shouldn’t be a controversial statement.
While it’s true that most of the party’s electorate falls more towards the ideological center than the far left, it’s also true ideological alignment isn’t the most valuable political commodity these days. Senator Sanders is the only candidate still standing who possesses the credibility to upend the status quo that American voters have so obviously been searching for since Barack Obama abandoned his message of hope and change after winning the presidency in 2008. This pseudo-populist uprising is the most obvious animating factor that connects Obama’s rise, Occupy Wall Street, Sanders’ own sudden arrival at the front of the Democrat Party in 2016, and even President Trump (given how many anti-Trump voters stayed home). There are other commonalities, to be sure, but outrage against a system perceived to be rigged for the few against the many is the most fundamental.
Nobody remaining in the left-leaning scrum promises to throw as big a wrench in the system as Sanders. Elizabeth Warren had a bit of the disrupter mojo, but she squandered it with her Medicare for All waffle-turned-faceplant. Joe Biden never had any and neither Pete Buttigieg nor Amy Klobuchar nor any of the other centrist-darling wannabes pretend to want it. Andrew Yang might qualify as someone who would upset the apple cart, but it’s tough to get a read on him and, besides, he’s got the snowball’s proverbial chance in hell at the moment.
So that leaves old Bernie.
Additionally, Sanders can point to how admirably he and his team performed four years ago with the decks artificially stacked against them and facing Clinton World, arguably the biggest and richest political machine ever built. He can point to formidable grassroots fundraising and an advocacy infrastructure that are both battle-tested and ready to hit the ground running. Most importantly, he can point to a strong showing in Iowa’s dysfunctional caucuses as well as a probable win in New Hampshire’s onrushing primary.
Of course, calling Sanders the Dems’ best bet to dethrone Trump is controversial because what Bernie definitely doesn’t have is a lot of love emanating from party loyalists. Particularly Clinton diehards (or dead-enders, depending on your perspective).
While Sanders and his allies have been busy building a coalition consisting of young, diverse voters—the voting demographic supposedly most coveted by party power brokers on both sides of the aisle—party leadership and their proxies in the media have stood by unimpressed. Now that the septuagenarian has begun to surge in the polls, many are actively working against the Senator from Vermont. Traditional Democratic powers-that-be are notably absent from Bernie’s list of backers while numerous glitterati have jumped aboard his opponents’ bandwagons in an effort to derail him. Most recently, John Kerry (no, seriously, John Kerry) was overheard kicking around the idea of jumping in at the last minute to save the party. Simultaneously, stories have begun popping up in the mainstream media shedding an unflattering light on Bernie. The most bizarre strain of these stories tries to draw parallels between the not-so-pseudo-socialist and President Trump, who the same media has been painting as a proto-fascist for the last four years. I dunno, something about people being angry and liking their candidate a lot.
None of the above is coincidence.
His anti-establishment supporters might cheer all this and there is some truth to the idea that strong pushback from bastions of the status quo could actually help the Sanders campaign.
On the other hand, that’s a hell of a lot of headwind to overwhelm for a 78-year-old democratic socialist who recently had a heart attack. It’s a headwind exacerbated by the reality that millions of Clinton supporters from ’16 still blame the man for Hillary’s ultimate humiliation at the hands of Trump in the general election. Worse, Clinton stooges like Neera Tanden, Paul Krugman, David Brock, Joy Reid, Jennifer Palmieri, John Podesta, and various others are well-positioned on both social media and cable news to keep Sanders’ alleged sins front and center in his detractors’ minds. The most ardent of these simply will not vote for Bernie Sanders under any circumstance; they won’t vote for Trump, either, but as we saw last time around, not voting for the Dems’ official candidate ends in the same outcome.
If you don’t buy that argument, remember that something in the neighborhood of 25 percent of Hillary supporters refused to back Obama in 2008, voting instead for John McCain. In their minds, Obama’s only sin was robbing their woman in the primary; Sanders robbed her in the general and helped elevate Trump. And if you think the specter of Donnie will scare them straight, then you haven’t listened much to what they’ve been broadcasting (which is, admittedly, understandable) and you’re underestimating how much McCain was reviled at the time, not to mention Sarah Palin.
Nor is this number likely to get smaller after Sanders’ latest kerfuffle with Warren in which she accused him of saying a woman couldn’t defeat the Orange Combover for POTUS. A charge he denies.
Oh, and there’s the matter of Hillary, herself, out there kicking up a hornet’s nest and directing it at Bernie and his bros.
All of which means Bernie Sanders is the Democratic Party’s strongest option to face down President Trump in the general election, but millions of Democrat loyalists won’t vote for him. This is a real problem.
