Hate to Say I Told You So, Bernie Bros, But…

Published at 19:51 on 3 March 2020

I’ve been pointing Sanders’ weak aspects out for well over a month, now. His poorer-than-expected showing tonight is therefore not a huge surprise.

Part of it has been a lousy turnout by younger voters. Again, that is not a surprise. Young people did not do a very good job of turning out this year in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina either. By contrast, tonight older voters turned out in even greater numbers than usual, and voted for the grandpa’s favorite. This is many things, but a “conspiracy” to “steal” votes by the DNC it is not.

I will note that the states where Biden was most favored tend to be in the Eastern time zone, so the final results will probably be more mixed than the Biden blowout that’s currently being reported.

As I have pointed out before, it is far better for Sanders’ weakness as a candidate to manifest now, in the primaries, than for it to manifest when running against Trump. If Sanders crumbled under the relatively low-grade red-baiting he received in the past few weeks, he would have been reduced to a radioactive cinder by the barrage of it Trump would have aimed his way.

Being aware of Sanders’ faults results in an ultimately more hopeful outcome for those who dream of Left success via electoral politics: it suggests that a less-flawed progressive candidate might prove significantly more viable. If media bias or dark forces in the DNC can doom any leftist, then there is no hope for a leftist candidate. It is only if there are faults on our side we can address unilaterally that there is significant hope for improvement.

I say this as someone who, believe it or not, has always admired Sanders ever since he first won election to the House of Representatives in 1990. He’s done a tremendous amount of building visibility and awareness for Left politics. It will soon be time to move on.

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