The Crumbling Myths of the Viability of Bernie Sanders

(Originally published on Medium - March 5th, 2020)

Since Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, angry and dejected Bernie Sanders voters have been concocting narrative upon narrative to explain how they were robbed and how Bernie Sanders is actually going to be our next president. These have always been myths. Super Tuesday made this clear.

Myth 1:

Bernie Sanders claims to be leading a ‘revolution’, ushering in a new age of socialism, which he says is just about caring for workers (it isn’t). The proof of this theory that Bernie’s relative prominence is based on the ascendance of his ideology was utterly obliterated last night. In state after state that Bernie won over Hillary Clinton in 2016, sometimes by ‘yuge’ margins, Bernie saw 20–40% of his support simply evaporate, as voters consistently rejected him in favor of Joe Biden.

Why would Bernie’s vast army of not-just-yet socialists abandon their Dear, Dear Leader and vote for ‘the establishment’ candidate if they were actually committed to socialist ideals? Well, they wouldn’t. And didn’t.

The truth emerging last night was that in those places where Bernie trounced Hillary, he did so not by his own virtue, but by being the only alternative to the wholly disdained Hillary Clinton. Those voters weren’t enthused about socialism, they were #neverHillary. When they were given the opportunity to propel Bernie to the nomination, they chose not to. There is no other explanation for this.

This simple theory has another strong point in its favor: these same people voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.

Myth 2:

According to polls, Bernie has the best chance to defeat Donald Trump

There are multiple problems here. First, the difficulty of polling. Polling is expensive and complex. Newsrooms lack the resources to handle them as they once did. The most recent polling prior to Super Tuesday was nowhere close to the actual result, almost anywhere. Biden outperformed his polling almost everywhere, and mostly by double digits.

We’re often told that the polling is what gives the Sanders fan’s dream logic some plausibility. We don’t need to pretend that polls are always, or even usually, wrong to see the problem. Even if we grant that polls hadn’t accounted for the dynamic shift caused by the South Carolina primary which led Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to leave the race, we’re still left with the obvious fact that Bernie Sanders doesn’t just remain a static entity from now until the election. The race will change, particularly when it becomes a binary choice between Trump and his Democratic opponent. If that opponent is Bernie, the load of opposition research dropped on Bernie’s head about the degree of his socialism, his past, and what he actually believes, would change his prospects dramatically.

Myth 3:

Bernie’s own strategy for winning the nomination and then defeating Donald Trump is focused on a promise to activate wide swathes of young voters. While he’s favored by young voters, in some cases by huge margins (and of course he is — he’s promising to literally give them money and cancel their debts), there has been absolutely no proof of a surge of young voters turning up at the polls, and even less proof that he’s bringing new voters to the process. There is a reason campaigns don’t depend on this demographic — they never show up.

In his home state of Vermont, the share of the electorate under 30 years old dropped by 50%. New voters went more to Biden than to Sanders.

Beyond that, the smug stance of Bernie and his ‘youth revolution’ that says older voters must simply relent their ground to the ‘new generation’ is preposterous. If you’re 18–29, consider: Do you imagine yourself at thisparticular point in time to be you at your wisest? Do you think it’s possible that you’ll grow wiser with age, or is it all downhill from here? If you plan on becoming wiser, you should project that forward a bit, realizing that older ‘yous’ already exist. They’re called ‘us’. You can’t just say ‘Ok, boomer’ to everything in place of an actual argument, and for the love of everything holy, you can’t tell us how your generation is going to save the world and then not show up.

Young people should take note: they support Bernie Sanders and assent to his socialism because they weren’t alive during the Cold War and haven’t studied it. There is no substantial cohort of people who were alive during the Cold War that supports the socialist.

One might call that wisdom.

Myth 4:

Bernie also believes he’ll have the support of ‘diverse’ voters, meaning people who aren’t white, because that’s how we divide people now. The social justice contingent also believes that it can speak for the wants and needs of these populations because the populations purportedly operate as a monolith, and well, all the bloggers agree.

But who doesn’t agree? Jim Clyburn. The House Majority Whip gave Joe Biden his endorsement in South Carolina, knowing full well the sway that his nomination would have. Clyburn played kingmaker. According to Clyburn, Bernie didn’t so much as bother to court his endorsement. Clyburn is one of the most respected politicians in the country. Does anyone really want to claim that Clyburn is a corrupt establishment hack or that he’s clueless about what real black voters actually want? What is the Sanders camp’s explanation for this?

In state after state on Super Tuesday, and in Clyburn’s South Carolina, Biden won the votes of around and even above 60% of African American voters. Bernie lagged behind, often as much as 40–50 percentage points. People talked about Buttigieg and Klobuchar being unable to connect with this group. Bernie doesn’t either. At all.

Bernie did do well with the young Latino population, particularly along Texas’ southwest border with Mexico and in California. Bernie’s immigration policy allows for, essentially, open borders (a total reversal of his lifelong stance for the sake of woke electoral viability now) and giving undocumented immigrants access to free health care, schooling, etc…

The country’s vast Latino population has a diverse range of beliefs, but in places where illegal immigration is a major issue, it’s not unrealistic to expect this result on the left.

Myth 5:

Bernie is being prevented from winning by ‘millionaires and billionaires’ or ‘monied interests’. This, again, is wrong.

Tom Steyer has spent upwards of $200 million. Michael Bloomberg spent $600 million in a matter of a short few months. Steyer was a complete non-entity and Bloomberg fizzled out as soon as he stepped into the public spotlight.

Bernie’s campaign is flush with donor money.

Joe Biden won Elizabeth Warren’s home state, Massachusetts, after spending eleven thousand dollars there. Massachusetts shares a border with Bernie’s Vermont. Trump, for his part, didn’t outspend his rivals in 2016.

Campaign finance is reforming itself.

Myth 6:

Bernie believed that his 2016 loss was a result of the DNC ‘rigging’ the primary against him. This has always been nonsense. The DNC’s job is to win elections for Democrats everywhere. They were actually too nice to Bernie by allowing him to co-opt the nearly five months between his Super Tuesday thrashing in 2016, after which it was clear he had almost no chance, and the Convention in July.

Again, Bernie’s voters are saying it’s rigged because two candidates dropped out and endorsed his opponent. If that’s not fair, why does Bernie accept endorsements from former opponent Marianne Williamson, or even from AOC or Ilhan Omar? Is Clyburn also a part of the rigging?

Bernie finished with nearly 4 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton in 2016 and complained. He’s not being beaten by the Democratic Party (of which he still is not a member) he’s being beaten by voters.

In 2016, it was considered a democracy in crisis when Trump refused to say he’d accept the results of the election. Now we’ve spent four years with someone who says the same and we’re forced to pretend it’s righteous.

He blames the establishment as if they’re all against him for nefarious reasons. No, they’re against him because he’s not a Democrat, doesn’t have the best chance of winning, could destroy their candidates down-ballot, and because they disagree with him.

Bernie could have run as an independent, as he always has prior to 2015, but he didn’t. Why? Because then we’d see how little support he actually has when he can’t claim the roughly 40% that each party’s general election candidate is sure to gain, not to mention the party’s resources.

Myth 7:

“Yeah, we did so well by running a centrist last time.”

This is a constant refrain from Bernie’s campaign and his voters. They’ve been saying it for nearly four years. The Democrats could’ve beaten Trump in 2016 if only they’d run further left. Super Tuesday proved this ridiculous notion false as well. It’s as wrong now as its been since November 2016.

The simple truth is that the overwhelming majority of Americans want absolutely nothing to do with socialism, or even the ‘progressive’ left. In 2018, the ‘blue wave’ was not some dramatic victory for Democrats in races where they ran far left candidates, and losses everywhere they tacked toward the center. It was the exact opposite. Centrists won Democrats the House in 2018. Not uber-progressives.

Centrists came out on Super Tuesday as well, with many crossover Republican voters out supporting Joe Biden. These are exactly the voters Democrats will need if they plan to beat Donald Trump in 2020.

I would be crazy to think any of this will slow the proliferation of anger, vitriol, and victimhood among Sanders’ contingent. It will not. But it should.