To watch Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders back to back Sunday on ABC’s This Week was to essentially watch the Democratic Party fall apart before it even gets to nominate a presidential candidate.
The party right now is facing two massive problems: unremarkable voter turnout and no contender who is a clear favorite.
Turnout so far has looked exactly like 2016, despite Sanders promising to motivate a hidden swath of voters who want free health insurance, free child care, and free college education.
The New York Times reported last week:
The results so far show that Mr. Sanders has prevailed by broadening his appeal among traditional Democratic voters, not by fundamentally transforming the electorate.
In other words, there’s no reason to believe Sanders has any better chance at beating President Trump than any other Democrat, even if he is the one with the most votes within his party. At this point, they might as well be nominating Hillary Clinton again.
Sanders himself knows this is a problem. When he was asked about it on This Week, he could only offer a “guess” that his campaign has “an excellent chance to win some of the largest states in this country and states all across this country because of the coalition that we’re putting together, because of the issues that we’re talking about.”
This is what we call wishful thinking.
As for their second problem, Biden, who came into the race with a 20-point national lead, only to see his chances quickly slip away with every poor debate and primary (other than South Carolina, which he won), gave the most uninspiring answer for why he should be the nominee.
“Because I can win and I can bring along Democratic victories up and down the state[s],” he said. “I can keep the United States Senate — I can win the United States Senate at the top of the ticket. I can keep the House and increase the number in the House. I can go into every state in the nation. I can go into purple states, and we can win. I can win in places where I don’t think Bernie can in a general election.”
That’s not a case for why he should be president. That’s a case for why he should be endorsing someone who he thinks should be president.
And this is to say nothing of the growing panic that the party might end up at its convention this year and no candidate has secured a majority of delegates.
It’s a mess, and both Biden and Sanders know it.
