NEWSFEED TUESDAY: Will Bernie be the Democrats’ Nominee?

J Robert Smith

  • Jan. 28, 2020
  • 3 min read

“Suddenly, we have the Democratic establishment very nervous about this campaign. We got Wall Street nervous,” Sanders told a crowd of roughly 1,100 Sunday night in Sioux City. “They’re starting to think, could this really happen?”

“We are their worst nightmare,” he added.

NBC News, January 27, 2020

THE TAKE

In Bernie Sanders’ race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, he has one big thing going for him. He commands an ardent following on the left. In a weak and fractured Democratic field, Bernie’s minions may just get him to the top. Let’s assume, too, that Liz Warren folds tent. Sopping up her leftist support only strengthens Bernie. Or better positions him to claim the nomination come the summer.

Of course, Bernie – or any of his rivals – may not coalesce enough delegates to win the nomination. That would lead to a brokered convention. The backrooms in Milwaukee would be cauldrons of intrigue. Watch the fur fly on the floor.

The Democratic establishment fears a Bernie nomination. It has election debacle written all over it. Hillary tipped the establishment’s hand. She disparaged Bernie in a recent fawning documentary about her.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, she says in the film: “He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done.”

“He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”

The lines about Bernie being a “career politician” and suckering people are rich coming from a Clinton. Oh, Hillary has since backtracked some. But the cat is out of the bag. The bet is that the Machiavellian Hillary is working behind the scenes with Biden forces to derail Sanders. Don’t forget, Hillary cheated Bernie out of an Iowa win in 2016.

Most of Bernie’s supporters haven’t forgotten Hillary’s and the Democratic Party’s treachery. They’re in no mood for a repeat. Any chicanery in Iowa or elsewhere that denies Bernie legitimate wins will not play well with this faction.

If Hillary bets that Bernie’s supporters would tolerate being screwed again, Democrats may be in for a pounding come November.

Trump hate may not be enough this time to keep Bernie’s voter bloc from defecting to a leftist third party or independent candidate. With leftism in the ascendancy in the Democratic Party, the establishment can’t afford Bernie’s bloc to go its own way in November.

Along with votes, the left brings volunteer and fundraising muscle. Per disclosures, last year, Sanders raked in a lot of money. From Politico, January 2, 2020:

Bernie Sanders raised more than $34.5 million in the final three months of 2019, a substantial sum that exceeds the two other Democratic presidential candidates who have announced their hauls so far in that period.

And this from the Politico article:

The Vermont senator, who disclosed the amount Thursday morning, brought in a total of about $96 million last year from more than 5 million contributions. The campaign’s average donation was $18.

That’s nothing to sneeze at. That sort of money raised from small-dollar donors is grassroots power. Other Democrat contenders simply aren’t matching that.

But if Bernie captures the Democratic nomination, it would be Pyrrhic victory. Sanders doesn’t command anything near majority support among Democrats. His plurality is slight. He’s got a long way to go to consolidate a fractious Democratic base.

Democrats who ran as centrists for competitive House seats in 2018, in particular, are in a bind. Supporting Bernie for president in the General Election is political suicide.

Sanders’ loony socialist proposals – from socialized medicine to the Green New Deal to debt forgiveness for college loans – are poison to common sense independent voters. The price tag alone for Bernie’s socialist stew is a mind-boggling $60 trillion. Realized, those outlays would gut the U.S. economy and rip the nation to shreds. Liberty would be vanquished. Most independent voters won’t go for it.

The Democrats are facing an old Soviet May Day parade sized dilemma. If the establishment indulges in shenanigans to deny Bernie the nomination, they risk splitting their party wide open.

If Democrats play fair and Bernie becomes the nominee, they risk a huge electoral blowout in November. As is, beating Trump is a tall order. Losing Congress to the GOP would give Trump, McConnell, and McCarthy (the presumed speaker) the power to implement Trump’s agenda fully. Democrats must have night sweats dreaming about that.

But don’t pity the Democrats. Their woes may be the best thing to happen to America since Trump’s election in 2016.

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