Winning Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, 78-year-old Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) looks ahead to South Carolina and Super Tuesday, March 3, where he’s poised to win the lion’s share of Democrat Party delegates. Yet, behind the scenes, just like in 2016 with DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fl.), Party bosses work feverishly to sabotage Bernie’s campaign, it’s happening again. When Bernie took the debate stage in Charleston, S.C. Feb. 25, Bernie’s rivals pounced on him. Long ago, when 77-year-old former Vice President Joe Biden jumped into the ring April. 25, 2019, Party bosses did everything possible to sell him as the anointed one. One May 8, 2019 Biden led Bernie 41.8% to 14.6%, attesting to the Party’s decision to hand the nomination to Joe. Democrat Party bosses concluded the Biden was the best candidate to run against 73-year-old President Donald Trump.
Joe disappointed Party bosses, stumbling, mumbling and bumbling on the campaign trail, leaving him today at 18% with Bernie at 29.2% in aggregate polls. That’s a drop of nearly 22% indicating the Biden’s message fell on deaf ears. Biden no longer has the air of inevitability for the Democrat nominee, unless Party bosses play with the so-called Super-delegates, those delegates not awarded in primaries but to Party bosses behind the scenes. Super-delegates helped former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton beat Bernie in 2016 on her way to the Party’s nomination. Hillary lost to Trump in the General election where Trump won 304 Electoral College votes to Hillary’s 227. Fast forward to the days before the Feb. 29 South Carolina primary where Biden’s supposed to eke out his first win. Biden counts in S.C. on some 60% African American primary voters to pull it out.
Looking beyond S.C. to Super Tuesday, Bernie’s slated to do much better than Biden, winning California’s big prize of 416 delegates, though, like other states, delegates are proportionally allocated to Bernie;s rivals. Democrat Party officials think that Bernie will drag down all down-ballot r races, thinking he’s too leftist to beat Trump in the fall. What’s ironic is that Bernie’s shown the kind of rhetorical flair that separates him from the rest of the Democrat pack, leaving him actually the best person to run against Trump. Now that Bernie’s the front-runner, the GOP has been running attack ads around the country. If the GOP didn’t think Bernie could win in November, they wouldn’t waste millions on attack ads. Yet Democrat Party officials think they have a more competitive candidate than Bernie. Certainly Biden’s 22% drop in national polls shows he’s not the one.
Real Clear Politics associate editor A.B. Stoddard thinks Democrat Party leaders have panicked over Bernie’s rise. You’d think they’d be thrilled that any candidate could command sufficient interest to run competitively against Trump. Yet for more theory than fact, they’ve decided they must put a stop to Bernie’s candidacy. It wasn’t that long ago that Hillary said Jan. 21 that “nobody likes him,” referring of course to Bernie. Watching Bernie win in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, Democrat Party bosses, including Hillary, recognize that Bernie’s the leading vote-getter. “They’ve found themselves now with a strong movement leader who’s amassing a lot of upport and is marching towards the nomination,” Stoddard said. “It’s clear they’re making plans to stop him, but it’s going to cause chaos and much more division that the party is suffering from now.”
Whatever Party bosses are doing to undermine Bernie, they’re shooting themselves in the foot. Bernie’s loyal following won’t take lightly any attempt by the Party to sabotage his 2020 run. When you consider how many are behind his campaign, it would be suicide to undermine him. Democrat Party bosses know that the lion’s share of Bernie’s following won’t vote for any other Democrat candidate. There’s reason to believe in 2016 that the same thing happened, when Bernie’s supporters go wind that the DNC sabotaged his campaign. When it came to Election Day, they either sat it out or voted for Trump. The same or worse would happen in 2020, if Democrats Party bosses deal from bottom of the deck. “Do these plans involve people like former President Bill Clinton, former President Barack Obama?” Judge Andrew Napolitano asked Stoddard, prompting a yes response.
Talk of Bernie hurting down-ballot Democrats candidates makes zero sense. Local races are shaped by local politics, not what happens in a national level unless there’s a negative coattail. If Bernie were to beat Trump, he’d more likely carry Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-types into Congress. If the Democrats Party sabotages Bernie, it will have far more disastrous consequences to down-ballot races than Bernie winning the nomination. Democrats “panic about a Bernie Sanders nomination and down-ballot massacre that would follow,” Stoddard said. But if Democrat Party bosses sabotage Bernie with Super-delegates or any other shenanigans, it would have far greater consequences on down-ballot races than Bernie winning the nomination. Looming behind the scenes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) fears what would happen if the GOP takes back the House.
