The Democratic Party is at a crossroads. As the primary season heats up and as we look toward the convention, the DNC has 2 choices, and neither of them are ideal (assuming Bernie stays on his current pace). On one hand, they can accept Bernie Sanders as their guy and go to battle behind the crazy old Marxist. The other choice they have is to attempt to force a moderate such as Mike Bloomberg across the line at the convention. It’s all about damage control at this point. If they had a decent “moderate” candidate, this wouldn’t be as big of a problem. No matter what, the chance that anyone in the Democratic field can unseat Donald Trump is slim.
If the Democrats ride with Sanders, there is speculation among many pundits on both the left and right that a far left nominee will hurt down-ballot Democrats, and could flip the House red once again. This has to be a legitimate concern for Democrats.
Mayor Pete has a good point here. Bernie has extremely enthusiastic supporters, but his politics are a major turn-off to most of the country, even a heavy percentage of Democrat voters. Even Democratic candidates for Congress who are moderates are still tied to their party’s nominee, fair or not.
The DNC stepping in to thwart Bernie’s bid for the nomination (again) would bring its own risks. Bernie supporters were pissed when Hillary colluded with the DNC to steal the nomination in 2016, and rightfully so. If this happens again, a large number of people will lose faith in the electoral process. That could be a disaster, especially considering how some of Bernie’s staffers feel about this whole subject.
When people’s voices aren’t heard, AND they’re blatantly told that their votes are irrelevant, democracy no longer exists. Violence seems inevitable. The result would likely be a fracturing of the party. Is the Democratic Party going to be the party of “the Squad” and other radical leftists? Will people like Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg be able to share a party with the AOCs of the world? Seems kind of crazy when you think about it.
The best hope for the DNC is that one of the “moderates” gets some more traction, and other “moderates” (Bloomberg and Klobuchar are the closest thing to moderate in the field, but are any of them actually moderate?) drop out so that the non-Bernie voters can coalesce around 1 candidate. I don’t find this likely given the egos at play here. These people aren’t team players until their funds dry up.
I predict that Bernie will be the guy, and the DNC will bite the bullet and support him. Honestly, they probably should given the circumstances.
Any thoughts?