The Democratic Primary was really over after former Vice President Joe Biden won nearly all of the Super Tuesday states. But if that wasn’t clear enough to Senator Bernie Sanders, then the results on March 10thshould have been. Yet here we are, with another primary Tuesday in Florida, Illinois, Ohio and Arizona, all states that are leaning strongly towards Biden in the polls. If this plays out as predicted, then it should be really put the crown firmly on Biden’s head. But it could also be the moment that Sanders declares an all-out war against the Democratic Party.
There is plenty of evidence the shows that Sanders has no intention of backing down. He certainly didn’t do so in his race for the nomination against Hillary Clinton in 2016. In fact, while there is a slight variation in states, at this same point in 2016 Clinton had 24% more pledged delegates (those that are chosen by voters) than Sanders. Right now, Biden has about 17% more pledged delegates than Sanders.
But more than numbers and history, Sanders own words tell us what his intentions are. Let’s start with the speech he gave last week after a disastrous set of results on March 10. Instead of a concession speech that many Democrats, he instead talked about how “poll after poll, including exit polls, show that a strong majority of the American people support our progressive agenda.” He also argued that his campaign is winning a generational debate in that young voters are largely supporting him over Joe Biden and advised the “Democratic establishment” to take note of this. While he acknowledged that he is losing the electability debate, he posited that his campaign has “won the ideological debate” and offered a series of questions that he’d be asking Joe Biden in Sunday’s debate.
Before we discuss the debate itself, it’s important to note the significance of Sanders’ ongoing talk of and railing against the “Democratic establishment.” This is where he is somewhat comparable to Trump, being an outsider to the party who was able to get into the primary because American political parties run exceptionally open ones. Before Sanders ran in 2016, he had always run for congress as an “independent”, meaning that he didn’t run with a party at all but generally voted with Democrats in Congress. He was able to do so in Vermont because he has built a strong reputation over the years there and everyone knows him. But in 2016, he concluded that he could run as an independent if all he aimed to do was call attention to some issues. But as a Democrat, he could actually have a shot at the White House.
Yet while Sanders has run for the most important job in the Democratic Party—representing it in the presidential campaign—a big part of his campaigns both in 2016 and 2020 has been about criticizing the so-called “party establishment.” His assertions that the party was unfair to him during the primary, even insinuating that the party tipped it towards Clinton in some way had a profound effect on his supporters. When he held a meeting for his supporters at the 2016 Democratic Convention, his supporters actually booed him when he asked them to support Hillary Clinton, who was then the nominee. Last time around, the stakes were high, yet many Bernie supporters voted for Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee, or just stayed at home. Many in the party wonder what Sanders voters will do this time around, now that we actually know what four years of Trump has done to the U.S. and the world.
Sanders also didn’t show any sign of relenting in the first two-candidate debate on Sunday. While it kicked off with both criticizing Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, it quickly turned to their policy differences, which of course, is the whole point of having such debates. Showing that he had no interest in limiting any damage he could do to Biden, Sanders asked him if he had called for cuts to social security, Medicare and veteran’s programs from the floor of the Senate and when Biden denied doing this, he asked viewers to “go to the website right now, go to the YouTube right now.” They also clashed on healthcare, bankruptcy, the 2008 bank bailout and much more. A Democratic National Committee member told me on condition of anonymity that “yesterday all he [Sanders] did was make it more difficult to unify our party.”
There’s an argument to be made that by staying in the race a little longer, Sanders might be able placate his supporters and convince them that his loss is not because of some Democratic Party conspiracy. Perhaps. But given the current climate of Trump’s tepid response to the coronavirus and the tanking economy, voters have zero interest in a prolonged policy fight within the party. Yet, it is entirely possible that after losing four more states Sanders will press on. If he does, he’ll not only effectively declare war on the party but also show himself to be a man who puts himself not only before his party but before his country.
This op-ed was published in Spanish in El Español.