There is One Upside to Bernie Sanders Getting the Nomination: The Nightmare will Finally Be Over
I started out this election ready to support anyone. I had gotten over my anger at Bernie Sanders and so many of his supporters and surrogates who had been absolutely awful in 2016, and tried to tell myself that Sanders is basically a good guy, trying to fight for the people — at the very least, an honest politician. I had always appreciated and respected him as the one senator who could tell the truth. What is so appealing about him right now is that he is the manifestation of our collective rage. He can get mad in a way no woman or person of color can.
But is that enough to win back the White House? No.
I will still support Bernie Sanders or any Democrat because I have no choice and you don’t either. We have to do what we can to defeat Trump, even if it means aligning with the Bernie movement. So I will do everything I can to help him win. But I also know this: if he loses? All of this — THIS NIGHTMARE where Democrats must fight on two fronts at once: against Trump and against socialist ideologues who are trying to dismantle the Democratic party — will be over. Trump will win and they will all finally SEE WITH THEIR OWN EYES what we all have been warning them about. They do not and will not take our word for it, those of us who have lived through the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush eras.
But wait, stop. Please.
No need to argue with me about it. It’s just simple math:
2020, like 2016, is historically the GOP’s to lose. After two terms with any party in charge, good or bad, America invariably chooses the opposition party to take over the wheel and run things. The one exception, after FDR held onto to four terms, was Ronald Reagan passing the torch to Bush 41. Reagan was able to make the case that eight years of Republican greed had been profitable for the country for two terms, so why not keep those policies going with his Veep? That was Reagan/Bush for 12 years — 12 long years. If you lived through that time and you know what it meant, you would never risk four more years of Trump with a socialist candidate.
They will tell you that we ran a centrist last time and it didn’t work. So why not give the Berniecrats a shot at it? Sure, by all means, please proceed, Governor. The Democrats had one play in 2016 to hold onto a third term, Reagan-style — make a case that Obama had been a great president, so let’s keep the Democrats in power for four more years. Bernie argued the opposite, that the Democrats were not doing a good job, so let’s get rid of them. Of course, that simply shifted yet more power to Trump’s side.
We don’t have a play for 2020 because it is nearly impossible to unseat a President after one term if the economy is going well. There is no play for that. We can only make assumptions based on polls. The only thing we know for sure is that socialism is unpopular and Bernie remains unvetted.
Until the Great Lakes run dry and the country is on fire from coast to coast, most Americans will always care more about the economy than they do anything else. More than:
- the climate crisis
- immigration
- terrorism
- healthcare.
- women’s rights
- civil rights
Gallup poll from last May:
43% of Americans say socialism would be a good thing for the country
51% believe socialism would be a bad thing for the country
Americans split on viewing economy as free market or government controlled
And in November:
Positive opinions of socialism steady at 39%; capitalism at 60%
47% desire government to do more to solve country’s problems
Fewer, 25%, favor more government services if paired with higher taxes
The big gamble is that young people — millennials and zoomers — are fine with socialism, because they don’t understand what it really means and why anyone would be afraid of it. What’s so bad about free college and free healthcare they think, as they spend their lives fully immersed in the fruits of capitalism: Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Uber, Grub Hub, Instagram, YouTube — you name it, capitalism built it. And will enough of them turn out to vote to shift America to a socialist economy? Maybe. But probably not.
As long as the economy is humming along, voters will keep Trump in power for four more years — and this time, it won’t be a squeaker of an election. Remember, both Nixon and Bush 43 won very close first elections and decisive second elections because Americans don’t want to change horses mid-stream unless there is a really good reason to do so.
And guess what? There actually IS! Impeachment. Trump broke the law, undermined national security, and brazenly abused the power of the presidency — and the corrupt Republicans looked the other way. Even Mitt Romney was horrified enough to vote to convict.
But Trump’s approval ratings actually spiked after impeachment, as did the GOP’s overall. That is going to make them more emboldened than ever before.
So why should we fear a socialist nominee? Because voters have been warned that the Democrats are actually socialists for decades. It has never been really true, but now it finally will be if Bernie wins the nomination. How do you think Americans are going to respond to that? Anyone who was sick of Trump will suck it up and vote for him JUST to block a socialist.
Part of how the Tea Party infiltrated and captured Congress in 2010 was because billionaires spent millions to convince gullible ill-informed conservatives that Obama was a closet socialist. Of course Obama wasn’t a socialist, but that was how they fanned the flames and rallied troops.
Bernie is not only an actual socialist but he’s on video praising the Communist Castro regime in Cuba and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. How do you think that’s going to go over in Florida? Elizabeth Warren is also someone pushing for “big structural change” like Bernie is. There is no precedent for this being a good argument when the economy is doing well, none whatsoever (and arguably this holds even when the economy isn’t doing well).
Bernie has never been vetted by the GOP. Trump left him alone because the better Bernie did, the worse Hillary did. Hillary couldn’t vet Bernie. She couldn’t even say a word about him or else she was immediately attacked. Just look at how bad it got when she dared to actually give her opinion about Bernie recently in a documentary. Boy, that didn’t go over well. The Squad led rounds of boos and Michael Moore backed it up. Unity? What unity?
“None of that matters,” Bernie fans say. “So what?” they say. “But millennials and zoomers love Uncle Bern,” they say. But remember, young people also drove McGovern fever in 1972, and people believed the youth vote would turn out to redeem the future (they didn’t). But trust me, if the Democrat nominee is a socialist, voters will turn out in droves to stop him. Republicans, moderates, even some Democrats will abandon the Democratic party for good.
Wait, wait, don’t yell at me — I know already what you’re going to say. I heard it all in 2016.
“You’re a neo-liberal,” is the scarlet letter they want me to wear. At their kindest, that’s what they say.
But here’s the thing. I’m not here to argue.
At this point I’m not even trying to stop Bernie Sanders. No, there’s only one way this ends, and that’s to let the catastrophe unfold so they can see for themselves that Bernie can’t win.
Trump isn’t worried about Bernie. He’s already gleefully taunting the Democrats as he did in 2016 with his “poor Bernie” stuff. Only he doesn’t have “mean old Hillary” this time around. The only candidate Trump fears — or feared — was Joe Biden.
What can we offer voters to replace a lying, corrupt president? Someone who will not upset the apple cart too much, someone who has been fully vetted and can be president on Day One. That remains Joe Biden. Republicans, moderates, and Democrats will vote for Biden. Trump knows this. Steve Bannon knows this. Kellyanne Conway certainly knows this. Biden had to be stopped — and look at how easily that happened. From the right and the left, just like in 1972 with Ed Muskie.
All I want to tell you is: That’s just great. Bring it on.
It took Democrats one shit sandwich after another to finally extinguish the big change the Kennedy presidency promised them. For years after Kennedy, Democrats aimed for a perfect utopian ideal of equality for all. Then came Nixon and 1972’s landslide loss with McGovern. But Democrats weren’t done aiming for utopia. After Nixon’s resignation, Democrats elected Jimmy Carter, whose presidency tanked so hard Teddy Kennedy primaried him. He might have won had Democrats not played along. By the time charismatic centrist Bill Clinton came along, Democrats had long since abandoned that Kennedy utopia and now just wanted to win.
President Obama started the whole thing rolling again. A utopian vision of equality — for women and people of color, for the LGBTQ community. The ACA, gay marriage, potentially gun control. Now Democrats do not want to give all of that up and so we keep reaching for ways to match Obama, like we looked for ways to match Kennedy. We will be brought to our knees if we keep pulling to the left, as we did in 1972.
We’ve already lost two Supreme Court seats — hey, so what if we lose one more? Climate scientists warned that, maybe just maybe, we could afford four years of Trump. But not eight. So fuck the climate.
Let’s have it then. Let’s have ALL OF IT. Serve up our shit sandwich, steamy and hot. By the end we’ll have lost three Supreme Court seats and who knows what else. But at least it will be finally over. At least we can finally come together and take back our government.
