Posted on 02/05/2020 6:44:58 AM PST by Kaslin
There is no doubt that Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is now the leading Democratic presidential candidate. That's not because his ideas are overwhelmingly popular -- a majority of Americans approve of capitalism, while less than 1 in 5 like socialism; few Americans are on board with total nationalization of health care, even if many like the idea of universal health care; most Americans do not approve of Sanders' anti-American ideology with regard to foreign policy.
But nobody in the Democratic Party can stop Bernie.
There's a reason for this: The Democratic Party has fed off the energy of Sanders' ideology hoping that, eventually, the voters would come to their senses. Leading candidates have echoed Sanders' talking points. Sen. Elizabeth Warren adopted and then abandoned Medicare for All, and former Vice President Joe Biden mirrored Sanders' Howard Zinn historical perspective. Those who have attempted to siphon off Sanders' base and approximate his authenticity have failed dramatically.
Instead, Sanders continues to resonate with the base. After all, if you're going to go with an anti-Constitution, anti-free market, intersectionality-based perspective, why water it down with insincerity? Sanders brags about the fact that his ideology has never changed. He's right. Back in 1976, he suggested that he favored "the public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries." He sounded off for decades on the glories of communist Cuba and the Soviet Union; he basked in the joys of bread lines, saying: "In other countries, people don't line up for food. The rich get the food, and the poor starve to death." Sanders trots out campaign surrogates who openly claim that the United States is rooted in genocide and racism, and that the American system must be fundamentally remade.
This is radical stuff. But radicals have passion. And politicians of the Democratic Party are unwilling to quell that passion -- not when they believe they can capture it and turn it against President Donald Trump. This is the mirror image of the Republican problem with Trump in 2016: Trump ran on a platform of bashing the Iraq War and America's intelligence agencies, blasting free trade, pledging to avoid entitlement program reforms and slamming the door on immigration. Instead of fighting those elements, Republicans decided to tinge their own campaigns with those attitudes and then assume Trump would collapse under the weight of his own personality flaws. That never happened.
Democrats seem to be waiting for another collapse that simply isn't coming. Sanders isn't going anywhere. His floor is high, and his ceiling remains low -- just like Trump. Electability problems aren't going to dissuade his supporters, who believe -- correctly -- that inauthenticity provides its own electoral issues.
There was another path. Some Democrat could have completely and utterly rejected Sanders' perspective on the world. Some Democrat could have rejected Sanders' view that America has been a nefarious force in the world; some Democrat could have argued that America isn't perfect but that it has always been great; some Democrat could have talked about the wonders of the free market while arguing for greater strictures on it. After all, the majority of Democrats count themselves as patriots who don't despise the free market.
But no Democrat was willing to stand up to the Sanders base. They were too greedy for its energy, and too optimistic that the energy was transferable. It wasn't. And so the Democratic Party has been captured by an ideology foreign to it -- the ideology of Noam Chomsky infused directly into the bloodstream of a party that once touted former President John F. Kennedy. Partisanship is a hell of a drug.
Bernie is leading their contest, get more popcorn.
Pet theory: They won’t stop Bernie because he’s the only one who actually wants the nomination. Winning means running against Trump 1:1, which means losing in a landslide, which means ending political career. Bernie is the only one positioned to use the nomination as the goal - to grab the biggest platform personally possible - and subsequently & inevitably retire.
The democrats only hope to win with Bernie, and it looks like a long shot (more like fantasy and wishful thinking, but hay, everyone said Trump could never get elected) is that Bernie has a locked up and fanatical base, but is somehow able to add a lot of groups to it, mostly by using TDS in his favor.
Sanders brags about the fact that his ideology has never changed.
Ronald Reagan was consistent, Trump is consistent.
Ok Folks, what are the other factors of good leadership?
Bernie is not a Rat. Why do the Rats allow him to run in their Rat primary? I sort of see the logic if had no chance of winning and the Rats wanted to keep all the socialists interested. But now that he has a chance of winning, it makes no sense.
The leading opponent to Trump isn’t even a member of the Democrat party.
I don’t know Iowa may have proved they can stop Bernie. They found the sweet spot there. Take just enough votes to keep him from winning without taking so many that it’s an obvious screw job.
Just when we thought the show was almost over we realize it isn’t even the end of the First Act. I need a van full of popcorn.
The icing on the cake is that Hillary is pulling out all stops to crush him - it's a historical popcorn moment.
Remember, they invited him in so it would appear that Hillary actually had undergone a primary process. No Democrat was eager to jump on the “Clinton Body Count”. Then Bernie realized Hillary was such a fetid pile of warm diarrhea he realized he actually had a shot at the nomination. Fast forward 4 years. How can they “disinvite” him?
If the Democrats actually nominate Sanders it will be a debacle for them. Not only will Trump easily win reelection but the Democrats will suffer grievous losses in Congress. The Republicans will have the opportunity to do great things. Yet it incredibly sad that this doctrinaire socialist who avidly embraced criminal communist regimes and blood stained tyrants not only was able to get the nomination of a major American political party but will probably get over 40% of the votes nationwide. It demonstrates just how much ignorance of history and economics exists in modern America and how the country no longer has a reasonable consensus of values to unite it.
Good article by Ben Shapiro. Thanks for posting. Run DNC.
Don’t hang yourself, Bernie.
Sanders ideology has changed!
As an old leftist he wanted to maximize .gov benefits to workers and non workers, American citizens all. He had no intention of “watering down” those benefits by providing them to illegal aliens or non-citizens. He also did not want to lower wages by forcing American workers to compete with cheap foreign illegal or legal aliens. That was the old Bernie.
The new Bernie has caved to the mass media and “woke” crowd and now favors sabotaging American workers by opening the borders (and subsidizing illegal aliens).
Bernie has changed—and it is for the worse!
My theory: The LONG term thinkers in the Democrat party will allow the Leftist Socialist wing(Sanders, Warren, AOC, Omar, Talib)to make a run in 2020 hoping for a crushing defeat which will allow the so-called centrists to bring the party back to mild insanity.
IF Bernie supporters feel shafted they simply won’t vote. They will sit out OR look for a 3rd Party candidate.
I'm not too sure about that. And besides, Democrats have to be motivated to head to the polls at election-time. This means the radical fringe controls the nominating process. That said, I think Bernie will ultimately have the nomination denied to him once again. The Iowa shenanigans are proof of this.
As an old leftist he wanted to maximize .gov benefits to workers and non workers, American citizens all. He had no intention of “watering down” those benefits by providing them to illegal aliens or non-citizens. He also did not want to lower wages by forcing American workers to compete with cheap foreign illegal or legal aliens. That was the old Bernie.
I regularly disagree with Shapiro when he gets “on out there.” But I agree wholeheartedly with this article. (Amazing how when a pundit says what you were thinking, the pundit suddenly seems smarter! LOL)
I just this week stated to friends that the real danger of Sanders is that when the election is over and Trump wins, there will be a much larger and stronger cadre of young idealistic socialists/communists willing to tear down our Nation.
That IS the danger.
Three reasons:
1) He’s the reflection of a trend and not the cause of it. The Dem Party voter base is steadily becoming more and more Socialist. It’s a movement. Getting rid of Bernie won’t end the movement any more than getting rid of Trump would have ended Trumpism.
2) His followers are young and fanatical. The types who would actually be willing to turn Saul Alinsky tactics back on the party that created them (which frankly would be a beautiful moment of schadenfreude).
3) For a Socialist the man can really, really raise some cash. He has shattered records on small-dollar donations. They can’t take him down by threatening a couple of big donors.
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