We knew it was coming, and now that it’s finally here — the start of the general election season — we can enjoy one giant exhale (masks or face coverings in place, of course).
“It” was the much-expected suspension of the presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, “suspension” the operative word for pulling the plug on a bold, influential campaign. On Wednesday, in a video from Burlington, Vt., the irascible, disciplined Democratic socialist senator ended a bid for the presidency that had early strength and acquired more over time, thanks to the broad popular support of the Bernie or Bust crowd, which Sanders held mostly intact from his 2016 campaign.
But despite a strong start to the year, the Sanders campaign never gained sufficient traction in the primaries, actually losing ground in terms of actual support, and committing numerous unforced errors, ultimately making Sanders’ 2020 bid more and more quixotic as the year went along.
“I wish I could give you better news, but I think you know the truth. And that is we are now some 300 delegates behind Vice President Biden, and the path toward victory is virtually impossible,” Sanders says in the video. “So while we are winning the ideological battle, and while we are winning the support of so many young people and working people throughout the country, I have concluded that this battle for the Democratic nomination will not be successful. So today I’m announcing the suspension of my campaign.” With that announcement, former Vice President Joe Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee.
In a tweet thread that followed Sanders’ statement, Biden made an early conciliatory move. “I know that I need to earn your votes. And I know that might take time. But I want you to know that I see you, I hear you, and I understand the urgency of this moment. I hope you'll join us. You're more than welcome: You're needed.”
With a first-blush Kum Ba Yah overture like that, Sanders supporters will be hard pressed to sit on the sidelines, marinating in rage. Not that many won’t try.
“There is going to be a significant swath of Bernie's support base who are just not interested at all,” said Brian Fallon, Hillary Clinton’s press secretary for the 2016 campaign. “Even if you start with the inclination to try and win them over, a lot of what attracted them in the first place are completely at odds with what a Biden-led ticket has to offer,” said Fallon, interviewed by Sam Stein of The Daily Beast.
That may have been true when Stein interviewed Fallon; since then, events on the ground, as they say, have changed. On Thursday, in a post on Medium, Biden sent up the first of the olive branches to be extended to Sanders and his followers: support of lowering Medicare enrollment age from 65 to 60, and a full-throated endorsement of student loan forgiveness for those attending HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions. Both issues were pillars of the Sanders campaign; both resonate deeply within Sanders Nation. Biden’s walk in Sanders’ direction deserves to matter too.
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There’s fence-mending and bridge-building to be done in equal measure. If Biden has to seek common ground with Sanders, Sanders needs to do what he can to move his deeply, sometimes angrily loyal supporters toward what for many is anathema: getting behind the Biden campaign, holding their noses if necessary.
Stein recently interviewed a citizen, Mike Ferguson of Los Angeles, who’s prepared to do just that. “I feel hopeless about our government,” he said. “Nothing will change, millions will die unnecessarily because boomers want a tax cut, and the planet is collapsing.”
“At the end of the day,” Ferguson said, “I will probably end up voting for him... I look at this like an addiction. We have to look at this like harm reduction. The only thing that will feel right to me is we have to get Trump out of office.”
Ferguson may be symbolic of other Sanders supporters for whom the words “harm reduction” really mean “the lesser of two evils.” But for whatever reason, Sanders backers who believed their candidate would be the hill they’d die on in 2020 have grudgingly started taking the next step: Finding another hill.
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It’s tempting and certainly satisfying for many in the Bernie or Bust crowd to summon the same intransigent energy to the 2020 general election campaign as that which helped derail Clinton’s chances in 2016, when the same Bernie crowd took delight in scuttling Clinton’s chances to win (maybe by voting for Trump out of spite, or not voting at all). Schadenfreude dies hard.
But those dead-enders have to face the same facts Trump backers must confront: 2020 ain’t 2016. The known quantity of Trump’s style of rule changes the calculus this year. Profoundly. It’s this distinction that’s provoking changes of mind in the cadres of Bernie.
Bernie Backers have to accept that, contrary to their long-held suspicions, Biden doesn’t walk the earth with horns and cloven hooves. Their attempts to vilify him on Bernie’s behalf will fail because, among other reasons, Sanders and Biden have a strong personal history.
“My impression is that Bernie has good chemistry with Biden,” said Tad Devine, a top Sanders 2016 strategist, speaking to Stein. “They have a relationship. It’s easier for them to connect on a human level. I think a lot of it depends on Bernie's messaging to him and on Biden acknowledging that issues like climate and education and student debt matter and affect this voting bloc that is critical to Bernie. I would move on that front by recognizing that Bernie has good ideas.”
Done and done. Biden also benefits from what we know of the Trump administration. The Trump White House’s scorched-earth, take-no-prisoners approach to governance and statecraft has left a long trail of victims, foreign and domestic. That fact calls into question the perils of loyalty for those Sanders backers who decided to back only Bernie for the presidency, and who threatened to stay home if they didn’t get their way. Those Bernie loyalists have to recognize an inescapable equation — not voting at all = A vote for Donald Trump — and act accordingly.