Bernie-- The Electability Candidate... As Well As The Candidate With The Best Agenda

He Can Do It (detail] by Nancy Ohanian

Tomorrow's the first-in-the-nation primary: New Hampshire. Bernie is looking like a winner there again, something that will be hard for the Establishment to write off as "he's just a neighbor" because of how poorly Elizabeth Warren and Deval Patrick, also neighbors, seem to be faring. The polling pretty much all shows Bernie polling in first place. Yesterday, CBS News released their last New Hampshire primary poll, which reflects Mayo Pete's bounce from Iowa. They report that Bernie is first at 29% support among likely voters (up two points from January) while Mayo Pete is at 25%-- having gained 12 points since then. Mayo's recent gains come at the expense of Status Quo Joe's collapsing campaign; he is now at just 12% and is more likely to come in fifth than third.

• Bernie- 29% (up 2)
• Mayo- 25% (up 12)
• Elizabeth- 17% (down 1)
• Status Quo Joe- 12% (down 13)
• Klobuchar- 10% (up 3)
• Tulsi- 2% (up 1)
• Yang- 1% (down 1)
• Steyer- 1% (down 2)
• Deval Patrick- 1% (flat)
• Michael Bennet- 0% (flat)

The poll shows that Bernie's voters are far more enthusiastic than Mayo's (68% to 47%), which could lead to a blow-out for Bernie, his voters showing up at the polls, while the Pete voters not bothering, especially after the barrage of attacks Mayo has suffered all week.

NPR reports that Mayo is getting beaten like a dusty rug-- and from every direction. Biden and Klobuchar, who are competing with Mayo for the conservative lane, have gone after him with the greatest vehemence, even though the 3 of them all basically stand for the same Republican-light, pro-Austerity agenda. NPR reported that Status Quo Joe "launched the most pointed attacks." This vicious ad-- in which Biden's ad-makers lie about Biden's own record and tell the truth about Mayo's could be devastating-- if Biden had the money to run it on TV; he doesn't.





"[D]uring a rare gaggle with reporters, Biden emphasized the point. 'I do not believe we're a party at risk if they nominate me, and I do believe we're a party at risk if we nominate someone who's never held a higher office than mayor of South Bend, Indiana,' he said. When asked whether it was fair to compare his spat with Buttigieg with Hillary Clinton's similar criticism of Barack Obama in 2008, Biden said, 'Oh come on, man, this guy's not Barack Obama.'"

Mayo had a good comeback on Jake Tapper's show yesterday: "Neither is he." That might be the truest thing Mayo said all campaign. Meanwhile one of his press flacks added that "The Vice President's decision to run this ad speaks more to where he currently stands in this race than it does about Pete's perspective as a mayor and a veteran." No one mentioned "veteran," even though it's becoming more and more obvious to more and more people that Mayo's stint as a Naval Reserve intelligence officer was all about creating a résumé point and not much about serving the country.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who's eager to gain support from the kind of moderate voters who back Buttigieg, also piled on with criticisms of Buttigieg's experience.

"We have a newcomer in the White House and look where it got us," she said on the debate stage Friday night. "I think having some experience is a good thing."

Jason Sattler (@LOLGOP) had a very different take take than most in the mainstream media and he shared it with USA Today readers on Sunday morning: Moderate Democrats have a duty to consider Sanders. He has a clear path to beating Trump. He wrote that Bernie isn't his favorite senator running for the 2020 nomination but that he sees his potential to unite the Democratic Party and oust Trump. Bernie is the most electable and moderates-- if not actual conservatives who get called moderates-- should come out of their self- and media-inflicted delusions. Addressing moderates, Sattler wrote, "If you believe in saving democracy, the courts and the planet, and reversing the unrepentant cruelty, corruption and carelessness that define the current administration, you have a duty to at least consider the candidacy of the most popular senator in America, the top fundraiser in the Democratic primaries, and the man who has generally beaten Trump in head-to-head polls for five years now.

Establishment Democrats seem to live in terror of reliving the 1972 presidential election, when a triangulating Richard Nixon crushed lefty George McGovern. But two much more recent nightmares-- 2000 and 2016-- are far more instructive. When Democrats fail to bring their left-most flank into the fold, Republicans are able to swipe elections.

Beyond his ability to woo the party’s most reluctant supporters, the best case for the strength of Sanders' candidacy is that pretty much every argument against him ends up pointing to why he may be uniquely electable.

Claims that “Nobody likes him” in Washington, or that he can’t overcome his socialist branding, ignore what sets him apart from others. Brian Fallon, former spokesperson for the Hillary Clinton, calls it an “authenticity factor.”

Nobody likes politicians; this is why they play the foil in ad after ad, even in ads for career politicians. Bernie may be a lot of things, but he’s no one’s idea of a Capitol Hill slick.

Yes, Sanders is not a Democrat. Neither are most voters. Independent is the most popular party affiliation in America by far.

Last year Pete Buttigieg himself made a solid yet obvious point. “If we embrace a conservative agenda, you know what they're going to do?” he said. Republicans will say "we’re a bunch of crazy socialists. So let’s stand up for the right policy, go up there and defend it.”

If every Democrat is going to be called a socialist, maybe the one who has spent decades dealing with this charge is our best choice. And given that four in 10 Americans can’t afford a $400 emergency, you can argue that the best candidate to run against Trump-- a walking monument to the dangers of inherited wealth-- is a candidate who has spent decades warning against the evils of an economy where the top 0.1% own as much as the bottom 90%.

Perhaps the most ridiculous claim is that Bernie hasn’t accomplished enough.

This ignores the more than 200 bills he’s co-sponsored that became law-- including the 2014 Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act he negotiated with conservative lawmakers John McCain and Jeff Miller to reform the Veterans Administration. (Trump loves that law so much that he often takes credit for it himself.)

2020 Democrats:In New Hampshire primary, could Pete Buttigieg end Joe Biden’s 50-year political career?

And it's practically libelous to disregard Sanders' transformative impact on American politics. He has helped lead the Democratic Party into a renaissance of fighting for big things for working-class Americans. He’s one of the greatest champions of the $15 minimum wage, a movement that has swept many states and helped drive income gains among the poorest workers.

Claims that he promises too much “free stuff” ignore that Democrats have failed when they’ve promised too little.

Supposed big ticket items like free college and universal pre-K may seem overly generous, but they’re just rounding errors compared to the recent increases in the defense budget combined with the massive tax cuts for corporations passed by Trump’s GOP. And while Medicare for All’s popularity rises and falls in polls, it would be a strong selling point if the entire Democratic Party got behind it and made the case that it would lead to higher wages.

None of this is meant to endorse any sort of hostage-taking “Bernie or bust” mentality.

His followers’ occasional threats to withhold support for their non-preferred nominee are as unconscionable as they’d be from anyone who should oppose Trump, given the purposeful damage this president gleefully does to the most vulnerable. This spite-- along with a sometimes creepy hostility toward “normie” Democrats and a willingness to traffic in conspiratorial thinking that invests mystical sway in a sometimes comically inept Democratic National Committee-- offers some evidence that this movement may lack the coalition-building potential necessary to defeat Trump.

From now on, anything goes: Senate acquittals of President Donald Trump leave a damaging legacy.

But this divisiveness does not often appear in Sanders himself, who has a proven distaste for distractions like Hillary Clinton's “damn emails.”

Like the vast majority of Sanders supporters in the 2016 election, I’d gladly vote for any Democratic nominee over Trump. This senator isn’t even my favorite senator running for the nomination. Yet one reason I have to seriously consider Sanders is that he has the clearest path to uniting the Democratic Party and ousting the evil clown in the Oval Office.

And if you only care about winning, you can’t ignore that.