The Democratic Party will struggle to bring its factions together after the cutthroat debate on Wednesday night, according to former House Speaker John Boehner.
Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, argued that the far-left wing of the party and the centrist Democrats would struggle to close the divide within the party after several brutal exchanges took place during the Las Vegas debate. He said the 2020 election will reflect the 2016 election in that supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders may stay home if he isn’t the candidate.
“The Democrat Party has a serious problem,” Boehner explained on Fox and Friends. “You’ve got the whole progressive wing represented by Bernie and Elizabeth Warren, and then, you’ve got what I call the more practical wing with Mayor Pete and Bloomberg, Biden, Klobuchar. And this divide continues to grow. At one point, they are going to have to have a nominee. And whoever that nominee is, you’re going to have a hard time bringing the party back together.”
He continued, “Donald Trump won in 2016 because a lot of Bernie supporters did not show up to vote for Hillary Clinton. You’re going to have the same problem in this coming election.”
Boehner said Sanders’s supporters won’t support any candidate coming out of the centrist pool of the party, adding, “If he doesn’t get the nomination, people will sit at home.”
The former speaker said President Trump was likely “very happy” with the aggressive debate that took place on Wednesday night. Several of the candidates dogpiled on Michael Bloomberg, who was competing in his first debate, but there were plenty of attacks to go around.
The divide has been represented in election forecasting models. FiveThirtyEight’s models show a contested convention in July is becoming increasingly likely.
