The Democratic National Committee has successfully engineered the nomination of the ultimate establishment Democrat, former Vice President Joe Biden. Notwithstanding an early primary campaign in which Biden struggled to gain traction with voters, the establishment Democrats rallied behind the aging former VP. After the Sanders victory in Nevada, the DNC started worrying that Sanders would win the nomination. The DNC then pressured candidates Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to drop out of the race and endorse Biden. Mayor Bloomberg soon followed with an endorsement of Biden while Elizabeth Warren stayed in the race and siphoned off progressive votes from Sanders. Biden then went into hiding and was saved by the coronavirus from having to debate Sanders again. Bowing to immense pressure, Sanders announced today that he was suspending his campaign.
The 2020 Democratic nominating process, thus, mirrored the 2016 campaign in which the DNC conspired to block the Progressive wing from nominating Bernie Sanders, an openly socialist Senator, as the Democratic Presidential candidate. The question now is who will the Sanders supporters back in the 2020 general election. In 2016, 10% of Sanders voters are thought to have backed Trump while another 10% either stayed home or voted for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate.
To get a sense of what Sanders voters were thinking, we went on Twitter and found a lot of very disillusioned voters. The overwhelming sentiment was that the nominating process had once again been rigged in favor of the corporate, globalist Democratic establishment. A significant number of Sanders voters appear likely to either not vote or back the Green Party. Indeed, the Green Party put out an official statement welcoming Sanders voters saying that “We feel tremendous solidarity toward Sanders supporters who have been abused and marginalized by the Democratic Party leadership.” The statement then went on to state that “We admire their commitment to shared goals like improved Medicare-For-All, an eco-socialist Green New Deal to avert climate catastrophe, ending U.S. war machine and dismantling intersectional oppression in our society.” Former candidate Jill Stein chimed in accusing the DNC of sabotaging progressives to maintain power.
Interestingly, most Sanders supporters on Twitter appear ready to back the Green Party. Some trending hashtags include: #NeverBidenNeverTrump, #DemExit, and #GreenParty. Admittedly, Twitter is not representative of all Democratic voters, but the message from progressives (particularly young progressives) is loud and clear: we are ready to bolt the Democratic Party. Others are taking a wait and see attitude to see whether Biden will select a true progressive as his Vice Presidential candidate. Sanders voters favor either Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia Democratic candidate for Governor, or Nina Turner, the Ohio state senator who co-chaired the Sanders campaign. We view both choices as unlikely as neither has national name recognition or the typical experience for a Vice President and we believe that Biden will play it safe and select a sitting US Senator or Governor. Of the more conventional choices, Sanders voters seem to view Senator Harris as their preferred VP candidate.
Biden has his work cut out to unite the Democratic Party which makes a Harris VP selection at least a possibility (we still think he will choose Klobuchar or Whitmer). Look for Biden to also come out with a list of Supreme Court justices stacked with progressives. Indeed, Biden has already pledged to nominate a black female to the Supreme Court and will likely highlight at least three potential choices all of whom will be far to the left. Biden may also announce other choices such as making Elizabeth Warren as the Attorney General to get greater buy-in from Progressives and make additional concessions on the Democratic Platform. Will it be enough to bring the Sanders voters back into the fold? We don’t think so. We expect the Green Party to emerge as a larger Progressive party with greater electoral clout. As Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez famously stated, “In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party.”
NewEnglandPolitics.com 