Enjoy the Democratic infighting over Sen. Bernie Sanders’s primary candidacy while it lasts. The intraparty squabbling over the Vermont senator’s ascent will last exactly up to the moment he wins the nomination and not a moment later.
Unlike the Republican Party, which splintered into warring factions in 2016 over the rise of President Trump, Democratic opposition to Sanders has nothing to do with ideology. Anti-Sanders Democrats do not oppose the senator because he is a dictator-sympathizing, left-wing radical. They oppose him merely because they believe he will make it more difficult for them to become a majoritarian party. As this is their only real hang-up about Sanders, they will all fall into line and support him if he becomes the Democratic nominee. Because it is about power.
Evidence of the Left’s halfhearted, politically expedient opposition to Sanders is never clearer than when it comes from Democrats who previously had denounced either the senator or his brand of politics, all while leaving open the door to supporting him in the general election.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example, was asked recently whether she was comfortable having Sanders as the Democratic presidential nominee in November.
“Yes,” she replied. “I think whoever our nominee is, we will enthusiastically embrace, and we will win the White House, the Senate, and the House.”
But it was Pelosi who said last year in a 60 Minutes interview that Democrats do not support Sanders’s brand of left-wing politics.
“I do reject socialism as an economic system,” she said. “If people have that view, that’s their view. That is not the view of the Democratic Party.”
Failed two-time presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said elsewhere of endorsing Sanders should he win the nomination that “the No. 1 priority for our country and world is retiring Trump, and, as I always have, I will do whatever I can to support our nominee.”
Earlier, however, Clinton refused to say whether she would support Sanders, saying instead in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, “I’m not going to go there yet.” She said during that same interview that it was not just Sanders who was toxic, but also his “leadership team,” his “prominent supporters,” his “online Bernie Bros,” and the “culture around him.”
Then there is Democratic strategist James Carville, who lamented recently in an interview with Vox: “We just had an election in 2018. We did great. We talked about everything we needed to talk about, and we won. And now it’s like we’re losing our damn minds.”
“The Democratic Party isn’t Bernie Sanders, whatever you think about Sanders. … Bernie Sanders isn’t a Democrat,” he continued. “He’s never been a Democrat. He’s an ideologue.”
Amusingly enough, Carville said in the same interview: “If Bernie is the nominee, I’ll vote for him. No question.” Carville also said later in response to Sanders calling him a “political hack”: “At least I’m not a communist.”
In their own words, Sanders is an awful, toxic communist, whose views are not that of the Democratic Party, but they plan to support him anyway if he is the nominee. Square that circle, please.
In the news media, there are similar attempts by once-anti-Sanders voices to warm up to the idea of the senator winning the Democratic nomination.
New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, for example, said last week that the Vermont senator would be an excellent candidate to take on the Russians. She writes:
If Sanders was elected president, that could change. His unlikely ascendance would be a blow against the corrosive cynicism in which authoritarianism thrives. America would be the country where young people of all races powered a campaign that proved stronger than plutocracy, stronger than nationalist demagogy, stronger than any of the tools that men like Putin have used to bring liberalism to its knees. To young idealists around the world, America would look — dare I say it — great again.
Earlier, however, Goldberg warned readers about Sanders and his “legions of trolls” who antagonize Democrats who “stand in their way.” Her article, titled “Bernie Could Win the Nomination. Should We Be Afraid?” ends with her saying she has no idea whether the senator can win the general election. Goldberg comes to that conclusion only after telling her readers that the “Sanders juggernaut still scares me” and that she is “terrified” his polling will not hold up against Republican attack ads.
At MSNBC, anchor Chris Matthews offered a full-throated, on-air apology recently after he compared Sanders’s victory in the Nevada caucuses with the Nazi invasion of France.
“Sen. Sanders, I’m sorry for comparing anything from that tragic era, in which so many suffered, especially the Jewish people, to an elected result in which you were a well-deserved winner,” Matthews said. “This is going to be a hard-fought, heated campaign of ideas.”
The apology came days after the MSNBC host also warned that there would be executions in Central Park if a socialist were allowed to become president of the United States. From warning about public executions to saying it is all just a “heated campaign of ideas.” What an about-face!
Worth mentioning: Many of Matthews’s MSNBC colleagues have compared Trump and members of his administration with the Nazis. No apologies have ever been issued for these comparisons.
Then there is NBC News itself, which agreed recently to feature more pro-Sanders voices on MSNBC after the senator reportedly berated network executives over their negative coverage of his campaign.
It cannot be missed that these changes of heart coincide exactly with the likelihood that Sanders will be the 2020 Democratic nominee.
There will be no “Never Bernie” movement on the Left if Sanders wins the Democratic nomination because this is not about ideology. Democrats do not care whether a left-wing radical takes hold of the party. They care only about political power. If Sanders is their guy in 2020, then so be it. They will support him, even if they think he is a communist.
As always with Democrats, it is about power first.
