Pro-establishment Democrats think they’ve dodged a bullet by apparently having crushed Bernie Sanders.
Not so fast.
Sanders was just one guy, but he has an army of supporters who, right up until recently, were propelling that guy to the nomination. Do Democrats think those people are going to forget this by Election Day?
The establishment hasn’t shown that it can bury the hatchet — just look at Hillary Clinton — so, why would the Sanders people?
After sweeping up another round of states and widening his lead in Tuesday’s primaries, Biden believed he was doing the gracious thinking by thanking Sanders and his supporters “for their tireless energy and their passion” and asserting that they all “share a common goal, and together we’ll defeat Donald Trump.”
How depressingly wrong Biden is. The goal of Sanders and his supporters isn’t merely to defeat Trump. It’s to remake the country, and they know that, under a Biden presidency, they can hold that wish in one hand and a rare Beanie Baby in the other only to find out that neither is worth much anymore.
Liberal commentator Krystal Ball, representing the social justice-led, far-left wing of the Democratic Party (I.e. its most excitable voters), previewed the coming clash in the online TV show Hill Rising on Wednesday.
“Biden,” said Ball, “would say ‘screw you’ to the entire Democratic Party, not to mention the working class, by vetoing Medicare for All, which again was popular in every single state that’s voted so far.”
She continued, “Joe can say what he wants, and party leaders and the media can line up behind whoever they want, but you’re not going to tell me or anyone else that we now have to vote for that person.”
And, because her commentary was so beautiful, here’s more: “It’s so clear now that the whole ‘vote blue no matter who’ line is a total con job designed to quash any dissent so that they can fully shove any neoliberal, corporatist nonsense down our throats. … We’re supposed to just accept it all because at least it’s not Donald Trump. … If the choice is Donald Trump or Joe Biden, you can mark me down as officially undecided.”
The party establishment can’t possibly believe that Ball is the only liberal who thinks this way. According to the RealClearPolitics national average of polls, Sanders’s support still sits at 36% to Biden’s 53%. And Sanders and everyone else in the party knows that that 36% is vicious.
Other liberals like Ball are upset at what’s happening. They’re not likely to get their government goodies under Biden, whose sales pitch seems to be nothing more than, “Elect me and I will sit still— very still. Actually, maybe somebody should check on me every couple hours.”
Democrats may have saved themselves from a Sanders nomination. But they’ve just put themselves in the crosshairs of something so much worse: his supporters.
