Yes, Bernie Sanders Could Be the Nominee—and It Would Be an Epic Nightmare for Democrats

It suddenly seems that Bernie Sanders—the democratic socialist candidate competing in the Democratic primaries—might actually have a chance of winning a significant number of primaries, thus becoming the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 2020. 

As Holly Otterbein and David Siders write in Politico, the man who was written off by party insiders “as a candidate with a committed but narrow base who was too far left to win the primary” is now forcing the party’s leaders to reevaluate that assumption. The authors argue that “in the past few weeks, something has changed.” 

Dan Pfeiffer, an Obama adviser, told them that Sanders could win Iowa and New Hampshire and create a groundswell by the time the South Carolina primary takes place (which Joe Biden is now favored to win) as well as Super Tuesday. By then Bernie might be an unstoppable force. NBC news national political correspondent Steve Kornacki told Newsweek that “if he starts winning, there could be a bandwagon effect.” 

And on New Year's Day it was announced that his campaign had raked in $34.5 million in the last quarter of 2019. It's the biggest number from any Democratic campaign in any quarter so far. Clearly, enthusiasm for him remains strong.

Should Sanders actually pull off the feat of capturing the nomination, Donald Trump would have been given a gift that almost assures his re-election. Trump already refers to the Democrats as “the far-left Democrats” and has branded all of the potential candidates as socialists. “We will not live in a socialist America,” he said to cheers in one of his rallies, suggesting that such an outcome would occur should any Democrat win the White House. With Sanders as the presidential candidate, he could say without distortion that the Vermont senator’s end goal is a socialist United States.