Bernie Sanders is now dead-even with Hillary Clinton in Iowa, and has what looks even to the mainstream media, like an "insurmountable" lead in New Hampshire. These states have been given a prominent early role in the media circus that presidential elections have become, precisely because their white, rural character helps, it is thought, to weed out leftist candidates. Given this, plus the assumed superiority of Hillary and the low expectations he started with, if Bernie Sanders wins both of these primaries it will be a big thing -- a big media thing, and therefore a big political thing.. Even if he comes in a close second in Iowa, if he wins New Hampshire by double digits, it will be a big thing.
Let's do consider the shitstorm in the Democratic party that will ensue. If Hillary's campaign is tanking, and Bernie has built a powerful momentum, and the media can no longer ignore him, and the imagined black "firewalls" in South Carolina and elsewhere start melting away, 3 what will the Democratic establishment do? It is certain that they will go into full-spectrum attack mode to derail him, but, as with Trump and the Republicans, everything they do or say to reject him will be further proof to the base that he's the real alternative to the status quo. If they have to, they will, of course, go fishing around for another "moderate" Democrat who can put a stop to all this "socialist" nonsense. But who, this late in the game? Who, with enough street cred among the riled-up progressive base to stop the momentum of the Bern? Al Gore? Return of the Living Dead, I'm afraid. Ta-Nehisi Coates, perhaps? 4
For certain, the Democratic Party will do everything it can to prevent Sanders from being nominated, and they will probably succeed. Whatever the party leadership does in that effort, it's going to be too crystal clear that they are acting against the wishes of the party base. It will be too clear that the superdelegates, which Democrats don't like to talk about because they're so, well, undemocratic, are in fact the party's firewall against democracy in its own ranks. As more and more Democratic bigwigs proclaim the need to stop Sanders at all costs, and, in support of that need, their own intention not to vote for him if he's the nominee, it will become too clear to too many of the party's progressive constituents that the Democratic Party will always trash any remotely leftist contender, and will never move in any direction but right.
But what will Bernie Sanders do when it's clear the script no longer calls for him to go gently after being knocked out in a fair fight in the early primaries? When it's clear he no longer has to content himself with being the warm-up act, generating enthusiasm to pass on to the "real" Democratic nominee, but has a shot at top billing himself? Is he going to engage in a knockdown fight with not just Hillary or her replacement, but the whole Democratic party machine that will be out to sabotage him? Because that is what it will take to win the nomination. And if he wins the nomination, will he engage fully in the knockdown fight with the Republicans and the legion of Democratic defectors that it will take to win the general election?
From the second the polls close on a clear Sanders defeat of Clinton, the Democratic Party will begin to split in an obvious and serious way that will intensify exponentially through the primary season, and the general election if Bernie wins the nomination. To be clear: That split will happen, not because Bernie won't support any of the other candidates and the eventual nominee of the Democratic Party, but because a lot (most?) of the Party establishment will not support him.
But everybody knows this -- including, I hope, Bernie himself. Not that it makes a difference. The situation creates the conundrum for him. It is not his message, or anything the Republicans have to say, but that sabotage by the Democrats that can most hurt his "electability." And it can. And he knows it, and worries about it.
Here nub of it: Is Bernie running to win the Presidency or to defeat the Republicans? To start a political revolution or to ensure a Democratic victory?
Does Bernie Sanders want to win the nomination and contest the general election in a fight that will -- even through no fault of his own -- split the Democratic Party, if he thinks that will risk allowing a Republican victory?
Or (This would be the really strong position!) is the 74-year-old Sanders confident that he can win the Presidency against any Republican challenger, whatever upheaval occurs in the Democratic Party, and relentlessly build an administration that will confront and transform Congress, and catalyze a "political revolution?
A Bernie Sanders who answers any of those questions in the negative, and who has defeated Hillary Clinton decisively in Iowa and New Hampshire, will be tempted to start slowing down his own momentum. He'll consider putting feelers out for compromises (increased student aid, assurance of extending Medicare to 55-year-olds, etc.), and look for ways to give that concession/endorsement speech, no matter what Democratic candidate may be standing beside him.
Under any circumstances, it won't be hard for Sanders to lose, and it will be very difficult for observers to discern whether he was just defeated despite his best effort, or let some chances slip away to avoid damaging the party. It would be devastating to his supporters and damaging to the Party to think the latter, or to think that the nomination was stolen from him. This Bernie Sanders would not allow himself to get so far ahead as to engender such suspicions. It will be very important to him, if he withdraws for any reason, to keep his supporters' enthusiasm alive for the Democratic nominee.
This Bernie will drop out for the same reason he did not run as an independent in the first place: because his purpose is to keep discontented progressives in the Democratic Party.
Sorry to say, I think this is the Bernie we have -- a Bernie who is not running to win the Presidency for himself, but to help some other Democratic nominee defeat whomever the Republicans nominate, to get as many of those disaffected voters to pull that lever for Hillary or whoever is at the top of the Democratic ticket. I don't think Bernie Sanders ever wanted to be President, to spend four or eight years managing the federal government and deciding when and on whom to unleash the imperial strike force. I think "Keep the Republicans out" is his sincerely-felt prime directive, and that his campaign has always been about helping the "real" Democratic nominee with that.
I think he, along with those Democrats who belittle him as na????ve, does not understand or accept that there is a fundamental, insurmountable contradiction between even the vague "political revolution" and mild social democratic policies he claims to want, and "keeping the Democrats in." He does not understand or accept that, by choosing to run as a Democrat, and pledging to support Hillary Clinton or any similar Democratic nominee, he has put himself into a political structure that is antagonistic to the social and political policies he espouses.
As Barry Finger put it, in an artcle in New Politics: "The position that the Sanders movement articulates -- of opposition to the prevailing austerity orthodoxy in current disregard for the task of breaking with the Democrats -- is at length self-defeating and cannot be sustained."
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