Bernie Sanders Will Probably Cause Democrats to Lose Again in 2020

Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks during a entrada rally in June 2016 at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, Calif. He launched a second presidential entrada on Tuesday, with a large burst of donations from supporters, merely new challenges alee. Sandy Huffaker/AP hide explanation

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Sandy Huffaker/AP

Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign rally in June 2016 at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, Calif. He launched a second presidential entrada on Tuesday, with a big outburst of donations from supporters, just new challenges alee.

Sandy Huffaker/AP

Bernie Sanders has over again proved he should non be underestimated in a presidential contest.

Despite talk of his coalition potentially fracturing with such a big Democratic primary field, the Sanders faithful showed they've still got his back. In the 24 hours following the Vermont contained'southward announcement Tuesday that he was over again running for president, he raised a whopping $6 one thousand thousand.

He took in $600,000 from people who signed up to make recurring monthly payments to his campaign. That will give him a guaranteed source of revenue that could help him last for a very long fourth dimension in a protracted primary fight. It'south a model that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who like Sanders identifies as a democratic socialist, also touted.

"Information technology's like Netflix," she tweeted, "but for unbought members of Congress."

Others see Sanders and his 2020 run every bit less Netflix and more than something else.

"Bernie Sanders is the MySpace or the Friendster of the Autonomous left," said Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist, who worked as an adviser to the Democratic National Committee during Barack Obama's presidential run in 2008. Sanders, Simmons noted, is like the startup that had the great idea, merely doesn't go the one to fully capitalize on information technology.

Whichever y'all concur with, Sanders is undoubtedly going to have a major touch on the 2020 race, a far more crowded affair than 2016.

He has several advantages in this entrada for the Democratic nomination:

• A proven ability to raise lots of money
• Back up with a stiff activist base
• A clear sense of what he's running for

But Sanders also has several disadvantages:

• In 2016, he had the advantage of a challenger. Now, Sanders will face up front-runner scrutiny. Zac Petkanas, the quondam director of rapid response for Hillary Clinton wrote Wednesday: "[I]northward truth, the 2016 Clinton campaign never named him in a unmarried negative television or digital advertising. And the media never truly educated the chief voting public with the intensity reserved for candidates seen every bit viable."
• He has to debate with the Democratic instinct to want someone new. Before Hillary Clinton in 2016, the political party hadn't given the nomination to someone in a contested principal who was either a previous nominee or runner-up since Adlai Stevenson in 1956. (Stevenson went on to lose Dwight Eisenhower – and by a wider margin than the beginning fourth dimension). Republicans, on the other mitt, have often nominated the runner-up from a previous principal.
• That also leads to Sanders' age. Many in the restive, younger activist base would rather non vote for someone turning 78 later on this year before voting even takes place in the early states. (That will be a trouble former Vice President Joe Biden would take to contend with, too, if he decides to spring in. Biden turns 77 in November.)
• Sanders is not a Democrat. Though he caucuses with Democrats and ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sanders has declined to officially go one, which has rankled some in the base of operations who are proud to habiliment the label. (The DNC, in fact, will meet with the campaigns at a conference and present them with an "affirmation form" that states that candidates will run and serve as Democrats. "Candidates who have officially announced their candidacy will take a calendar week to return a signed copy of the affirmation form to the DNC," co-ordinate to a political party official. The requirement is office of the party'due south rules this cycle.)
• He's less pop with non-whites, who are and then key in Democratic primaries. In 2016, Sanders only won 21 percent of the blackness vote compared to 49 percent of the white vote, including 54 pct of whites without a higher caste. (Sanders did practise better with younger nonwhite voters.)
• He'll need to explain his "socialist" characterization. Trump is using "socialism" as a cudgel against Democrats, and Sanders' explanation of what it ways to him is going to exist particularly key since Democrats are maxim their summit result in 2020 is nominating someone who tin trounce Trump.

People close to Sanders acknowledge his challenges and the differences with 2016. On the socialism label, for example, Larry Cohen, chairman of Our Revolution, an outside group which grew out of Sanders' 2016 campaign, stressed that Sanders is about "innovation and supporting entrepreneurs."

Cohen noted, for example, Sanders' support for the Vermont ice cream brand Ben and Jerry'south, whose founder Ben Cohen (no relation to Larry) was named 1 of Sanders' entrada co-chairmen.

"Organizing other businesses with social consciousness, that'south been a big part of his life," Larry Cohen said.

Sanders has also changed the business of how the Democratic Party goes most choosing its candidates. The role of superdelegates, for example, has been scaled dorsum because of Sanders and his objection that they skewed likewise heavily in favor of Clinton in 2016. The DNC will besides let candidates who meet a grassroots fundraising threshold to participate in debates, regardless of how they're doing in the polls.

And he is a main reason the Autonomous candidates this year are advocating for progressive positions like Medicare-for-all and a $15 minimum wage. Ironically, Sanders' success in transforming the party may be part of what does him in, because in that location are now more options for the progressive left to choose from than in 2016.

"Does it accept to be him?" Arnie Arnesen, a New Hampshire radio testify host and Sanders supporter in 2016, told NPR's Asma Khalid last month. "I don't recall it does, and I admire him. I admire him to pieces."

Robert Camacho, center, thank you every bit California Sen. Kamala Harris launches her presidential campaign in Oakland, Calif., in January. Noah Berger/AFP/Getty Images hibernate caption

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Noah Berger/AFP/Getty Images

Robert Camacho, center, cheers as California Sen. Kamala Harris launches her presidential campaign in Oakland, Calif., in January.

Noah Berger/AFP/Getty Images

Sanders was known for having a cult-like following and huge crowds in 2016. But many of the Democratic candidates this year are also drawing packed crowds early in this campaign. Sen. Kamala Harris, for example, drew xx,000 people for her kickoff rally in Oakland, Calif.

The big crowds are a likely sign of overall Democratic enthusiasm, with the base itching to take on Trump and try to stop him from reelection. Sanders has to fight the idea that the enthusiasm behind him tin be replicated by others.

He'south also having to fight for the head and heart of his candidacy.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for example, could potentially peel off from the intellectual, ideological part of Sanders' coalition (the head).

And if sometime Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke gets in, he threatens to pull from the emotional, grassroots piece of his base that wants to root for someone (the heart).

Cohen said Sanders welcomes Warren equally an "ally," who is helping to rebuild the progressive base, and his team believes it tin draw distinctions with O'Rourke to paint him as non as progressive, specially on merchandise. O'Rourke was one of just 28 Firm Democrats to support giving President Obama fast-rail authority to negotiate trade deals, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP.

Whether he can hold onto information technology all — and expand to win a majority of delegates is an open question and major challenge.

"That'due south why we take xviii months until the convention to examination that out," Cohen said. "For people like me, it's about what kind of political world nosotros build, non just the White House. It's well-nigh governing; information technology's the nature of the support base that will remain agile, that yous take an activist base, non just a candidate addiction."

As far as competing with those other candidates, Cohen noted, "The facts are quite clear — $6 million, 300,000 individual donors. Add up all the others, yous don't get to that number."

Sanders' path to victory — or defeat

Sanders is one of the large fishes people were eagerly watching equally he deliberated whether to run. And his entry is already giving some shape to how the competition could play out.

The early states, for example, are likely going to have on even more significance at present in winnowing the field. It's easy, for example, to come across Sanders' winning path — and how he loses. Sanders nearly won Iowa, a caucus state, in 2016, and he won the New Hampshire primary handily, by xx points.

And those two early states take on extra significance for Sanders, who is not expected to be a major player in S Carolina, a country where 61 pct of Democratic voters in the 2016 principal were blackness. Hillary Clinton shell him there by almost l points.

This year it's likely to exist a battle between the two leading African-American candidates, Harris and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, and possibly Biden, if he decides to run.

If Sanders sweeps Iowa and New Hamsphire this time, he might exist hard to stop. If he loses i (especially New Hamsphire) or both, Sanders might have the money to go along, but winning a majority of delegates earlier the convention would be much more difficult.

What's more, it'due south easy to see how New Hampshire will be the filter in a potential fight between Sanders and Warren, who are both from neighboring states. Information technology will also hateful higher stakes in Iowa for candidates like Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is from bordering Minnesota, and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, another Midwesterner, to defeat Sanders.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/23/697027833/are-democrats-ready-to-feel-the-bern-or-is-sanders-the-myspace-of-2020

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