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Face facts, Bernie Sanders is electable

It’s well past time to bury the 'Bernie is unelectable' trope. He has a better shot than moderate Bloomberg.
KIRSTEN POWERS

https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/4812232002?fbclid=IwAR0JzuQNa0MZBbQao2tzkU_39g9UmstpbwSsHsVsKf7XBBEKoSCHV-pvh74

It’s A Great Day For American Democracy
Despite the freakout from TV pundits, the Nevada caucuses are a cause for optimism in dark days.

By Zach Carter, Huffington Post
02/22/2020

The results of the Nevada caucuses are, first and foremost, a great sign of hope for American democracy. In an era of rampant corruption and corporate control in both political parties, Nevada handed a blowout win to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) ― one of two candidates in the race who have sworn off the old pattern of billionaire patronage and instead produced a policy platform designed to make this country work for working people of all colors.

The caucus results are also a reason for optimism about the future of the Democratic Party. Despite the best efforts of the party’s power brokers and big donors, voters overwhelmingly decided to back a candidate whose agenda calls for a transfer of power away from those elites and into the hands of the people.

These are causes for celebration. It has been a dark decade for democracy around the world, and the spectacle of Americans coming together to rebuke the Democratic Party’s aristocratic drift, which has driven so much of the turn to President Donald Trump’s authoritarian populism, is both beautiful and profound.

But you wouldn’t know this from the way establishment pundits, including many ostensible Democrats, reacted to Sanders’ win Saturday evening. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews literally compared Sanders’ victory to the fall of France to Nazi Germany. MSNBC host Nicole Wallace, a former George W. Bush staffer, described Democratic enthusiasm for Sanders as “political suicide,” and, puzzlingly, said the supporters of the night’s runaway victor constitute only “a squeaky, angry minority.”

This reaction is yet more evidence of the haplessness of the Democratic elite. It has been clear all year that Sanders is the front-runner for the party’s presidential nomination. And after his impressive showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, the moneyed minds of the party scrambled to get behind untested thirty-something ex-Mayor Pete Buttigieg and erstwhile Republican billionaire Michael Bloomberg. On the debate stage earlier this week in Las Vegas, both men did their best to beat up on Sanders, but failed to deliver so much as a scratch. Meanwhile, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) did as she promised she would, torching Bloomberg in a debate performance for the ages.

In an op-ed for the Tampa Bay Times this Friday, longtime Republican strategist Mac Stipanovich reveals that he has registered as a Democrat in the run up to the Florida presidential primary.

“I and a number of other long-time Republicans have re-registered so we can vote for the candidate closest to the center with the best chance of winning the Democratic nomination and defeating Donald Trump in November,” Stipanovich writes. “Hopefully, that choice will be clearer after Super Tuesday, but it looks like Joe Biden or Michael Bloomberg today.”

Biden’s Inevitable Electability Is at the Bottom of a Crater in New Hampshire
Yet another establishment Democratic frontrunner is failing to get the job done.

By BEN MATHIS-LILLEY
FEB 11, 2020, 11:52 PM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/joe-biden-the-would-be-sure-thing-is-a-distant-also-ran-in-new-hampshire.html
Joe Biden announced that he was running for president in April 2019 and soon led the Democrats’ crowded field by 25 points. His position in the Obama administration gave him instant access to top party donors and campaign operatives. He was endorsed by high-profile New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein before he even entered the race. His name recognition was as universal as possible, and his pitch to voters—he’s Uncle Joe, the hot-headed but trustworthy ol’ rascal who’s just as comfortable negotiating in Congress as he is bullshitting with the boys down at the union hall—was already locked in.

With 75 percent of precincts reporting on Tuesday in New Hampshire, Biden was in 5th place with 8.3 percent of the vote. In Iowa, he placed 4th. He now trails a socialist in national polls and is quickly being caught by a small-city ex-mayor who barely clears the age requirement and a guy who endorsed George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s reelection at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

As writer Jedediah Purdy noted, Biden’s campaign was always about confidence: The confidence that he would be an “electable” candidate because everyone else had confidence in him too. But his campaign rallies failed to generate the enthusiasm or attendance that his rivals’ did, his debate performances ranged from adequate to totally incoherent, and he didn’t even raise that much money. There’s not much for him to fall back on now that the confidence in his collective appeal is beginning to collapse.

Right now, Biden looks likely to become the fifth consecutive Democratic candidate in an open primary who failed to become president despite starting with major support from the party’s most powerful figures. In 2000, designated Clinton successor Al Gore put down a challenge from liberal free-thinker Bill Bradley in the primary—a CNN story from March 1999 described Gore’s “orchestrated rollout of endorsements” demonstrating his clear hold on the Democratic establishment—but lost, as it were, to George W. Bush. In 2004, John Kerry succeeded in reining in outsider candidate Howard Dean—who’d been denounced as an unelectable “McGovern-Mondale” extremist by the Democratic Leadership Council—before Iowa but also lost to Bush. (In the party’s defense, it didn’t necessarily anoint Kerry—Dick Gephardt, another experienced moderate, was also running—but it definitely didn’t want Dean to be the nominee, in part because of his then-radical belief that the Iraq War was a bad idea.) Hillary Clinton started the 2008 primary cycle with advantages in polling, endorsements, and large-donor fundraising, but lost to Barack Obama. She nearly lost an even larger lead in the 2016 primary, and then, in the general election … well, you know.

Now there’s Uncle Joe, who seemed to believe his party connections and public association with Obama would be so strong that he’d be able to coast to a primary win without having to spend significantly on ads, develop any signature proposals, or even appear that often in public. There’s still a little time left to, like, start doing that stuff: Biden’s polling leads in Nevada (Feb. 22 caucus) and South Carolina (Feb. 29 primary) are shrinking, but they still exist, and wins there could help him keep his numbers up in the southern Super Tuesday states where he’s been expected to do well with black voters. But the candidate whose sales pitch was that he came with forward momentum pre-installed is, so far, completely inert. If he still wants to win, he’ll have to earn it just like everyone else, without any help from his important friends.