Bernie's problem isn't 'the establishment.' It's his lack of support.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/2/1923555/-Bernie-s-problem-isn-t-the-establishment-it-s-his-lack-of-support

Bernie's problem isn't 'the establishment.' It's his lack of support

Daily Kos Staff

2020/03/02 · 15:24

I know it must suck tasting victory, with a fragmented field giving him and his hardcore base of support an advantage over the rest of the candidates. But just like in 2016, Bernie Sanders isn’t built for a consolidated field, and the problem isn’t “the establishment.” The problem is that he refuses to do anything to grow his support.

While Sanders has led the field in national polling, he hasn’t been able to crack 30% in the polling composite. When you can’t get a third of the support, you have no business being put in charge.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/2020_democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.html

But here’s the thing: He didn’t need to be stuck at less than a third of the party’s support. He could’ve set the stage to hoover up the support from other candidates the way that Joe Biden appears to be doing. So why isn’t that (seemingly) not happening?

Because when you make a career out of demonizing Democrats and signaling to your supporters to demonize any detractors, well, that’s called “burning bridges.” And burning bridges is a shitty way to rally support. That means insulting and calling any Democrats who don‘t support you “neoliberals” and “corporatists” and whatever other insipid insult isn’t helpful. And yes, while all candidates had overly zealous supporters, only one campaign’s supporters were systematically awful, and only one’s were apparently encouraged to be so by the campaign’s top brass.

Today, former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid endorsed Joe Biden. This is how Sanders’ campaign manager reacted:

    Disappointing. I'll forever have respect and love for Senator Reid. But I'm old enough to remember when he thought Biden's ideas were worthy of being put in a fireplace. https://t.co/eQ4pGjYxiB https://t.co/iWI40OVRim
    — Faiz (@fshakir) March 2, 2020
https://twitter.com/fshakir/status/1234554784948129792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

No other campaign felt the need to take a shot of this sort, but what this did is signal that Reid was fair game for attacks. And it’s not just top Democrats under attack. Last week, Sanders’ press secretary went after feminist writer Jill Filipovic, for some bizarre reason:

    Still not over campaign comms staff who quote-tweet in order to drive pile-ons to anyone who seems to so much as whisper the slightest critique of their candidate. You’re campaign communications staff! It’s so unprofessional & petty & I’m disappointed the candidate tolerates it. pic.twitter.com/x1kuk5xlhz
    — Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) February 29, 2020
https://twitter.com/JillFilipovic/status/1233830645022937088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

There certainly is a sense of bunker “us versus them” mentality, and it does nothing to help build a winning coalition. It builds resentment and anger and enemies, alienating potential ideological allies who simply have decided, for whatever reasons (whether valid or invalid, it’s irrelevant), to support one of the two dozen candidates that were in the race.

From the beginning, this was a campaign that wasn’t interested in building an actual majority, eschewing the hard work and compromises that that might entail. It was literally their strategy from day one, as this April 17, 2019, reporting by The Atlantic shows:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/04/bernie-sanders-thinking-he-will-win-it-all-2020/587326/

    He’s counting on winning Iowa and New Hampshire, where he was already surprisingly strong in 2016, and hoping that Cory Booker and Kamala Harris will split the black electorate in South Carolina and give him a path to slip through there, too. And then, Sanders aides believe, he’ll easily win enough delegates to put him into contention at the convention. They say they don’t need him to get more than 30 percent to make that happen. [Emphasis mine.]

So if, from day one, they didn’t think they needed more than 30%, why would they actually run a campaign and build a culture designed to win more than his 30% ceiling? As that article notes, even way back in early 2019, Sanders was picking fights and creating enemies out of potential allies.

We saw that in Sanders’ refusal to broaden his message to bring in more people. When I said exactly that on Meet the Press, that “the problem with Bernie Sanders is that he has the exact same message he had four years ago” when he lost to Hillary Clinton 60-40, the response from the Sanders campaign was, well, this:

https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1144721204307222528

    We have the same fundamental economic injustices in our system as 4 yrs ago. Bernie has consistent solutions as 4 yrs ago. He says what he truly believes, and he'd act on it as President. https://t.co/4sOFXVv9r3
    — Faiz (@fshakir) June 29, 2019
https://twitter.com/fshakir/status/1144996499010592768?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

If your message wasn’t a majority message four years ago, and you want to win, wouldn’t you tweak it? They didn’t. Proudly and explicitly did not tweak it. They had zero intention of growing new support by broadening and expanding their message. (Sanders famously refused to even inject more biography into his stump speech to humanize him more.)

Sanders and his campaign saw that their ceiling was 30%, and they built an entire strategy around winning with 30%. That means that instead of seeing the other 70% of voters as allies, they saw them as THE ENEMY. Even when there was ideological alignment.

Nothing exemplifies this more than when Sanders’ supporters flooded Warren’s social media feeds with the hashtag #warrenisasnake and a snake emoji:

    all the twitter replies to Elizabeth Warren's posts now are just increasing numbers of snake emojis pic.twitter.com/uk544FqBoa
    — Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) January 15, 2020
https://twitter.com/NathanJRobinson/status/1217323658638778368?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

That kind of personal and mean-spirited manifestation of disagreement might’ve made those people feel better, and Sanders HQ certainly did zero to try to dial it back, suggesting that they actually approved of the tactic. But how did that in any way help build the kind of residual positive feelings that can help rally support down the road? It didn't. In fact, we consistently saw Sanders’ numbers drop from 2016:

Bernie Sanders vote percentage
              2016     2020
Iowa     49.6%     26.5%
New Hampshire     60.1%     25.6%
Nevada     47.3%     40.5%
South Carolina     26%     19.9%

In raw vote totals, Sanders received about half the votes in Iowa and New Hampshire that he did in 2016. For example, in New Hampshire, he went from 152,193 votes in 2016 to 76,355 votes this year. Yes, it was a crowded field, but those aren’t the numbers of a candidate who is growing his base of support and expanding the electorate. If anything, it looks like a candidate who has worn out his welcome and has done little to remain relevant.

So now we see a consolidation in the field. What was a sense of victory and ebullience in the Sanders camp post-Iowa and post-New Hampshire—despite his anemic numbers—has now turned to fear and rage. “The establishment” is trying to stop Bernie and all that. But there was never anything stopping Sanders from building the kind of broad coalition that would allow him to approach an outright majority of the vote. They just never wanted to.

It’s endemic to Sanders’ career: It’s easy to be pure and uncompromising when you, well, never try to accomplish anything tangible that requires compromise. That’s a fine approach to take if you play the role of ideological gadfly, the “conscience of the party” sort of thing. We need people like that, helping ground us ideologically in a world that keeps wanting to pull the country rightward.

But winning a presidential election is literally about building coalitions, and Sanders never bothered to try.

That’s not the establishment’s fault.

Update: Check out top-Bernie surrogate Keith Ellison’s response to two different candidates dropping out of the race, including home-state neighbor Amy Klobuchar:

    ⁦@marwilliamson⁩ is a clear moral voice and wonderful person. So glad she’s endorsing ⁦@BernieSanders⁩ Sanders. #NotMeUs https://t.co/CLSSB881Lv
    — Keith Ellison (@keithellison) February 24, 2020
https://twitter.com/keithellison/status/1231786023581102080?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

    Thanks for your run @amyklobuchar. Congratulations on your participation. https://t.co/0TEDlbU3hO
    — Keith Ellison (@keithellison) March 2, 2020
https://twitter.com/keithellison/status/1234548317998243840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

And it’s not just his surrogates, as the signals come straight from the top. Here’s Bernie himself:

    Bernie responds to the Klobuchar news by saying “the establishment” is getting nervous because “the working class” is coalescing behind him.

    Who does he think just voted against him by 30 points in South Carolina.

    I guess there are no working class people in SC.
    — The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) March 2, 2020
https://twitter.com/HoarseWisperer/status/1234575821458857985?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Why not use this as an opportunity to try and win some of Klobuchar’s support for his candidate? Here’s Warren’s response:

    Thank you to my friend, @AmyKlobuchar. You've been a champion for working families and women in politics, and I look forward to keeping up that fight by your side.
    — Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) March 2, 2020
https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1234551323707744256?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Warren knew that Klobuchar had endorsed Biden, but that didn’t mean that she had to be pissy and rude about it.

But the Bernie side can’t even bother to try, because they are utterly uninterested in growing past 30%.