Michael Walsh:
“…As the phantom candidacy of Joe Biden sinks slowly, lifelessly to the ground, the question increasingly on Democrats’ minds is not only which of their shrinking band of candidates can beat President Donald Trump but which of them can even stagger to the finish line. Of their remaining front liners, Pete Buttigieg is too young and cocky, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is too old and phony, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) too dowdy, Andrew Yang too weird. What remains are two outsiders, each of whom bears only a tangential relationship to the Democratic Party: opportunistic plutocrat Mike Bloomberg, a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat; and “democratic socialist” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), with no major party affiliation.
Amazing as it sounds, one of those two is likely to be the nominee…
…In 2016, Trump effected a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, demolishing more than a dozen party stalwarts, including the dynastic hulk, Jeb Bush. Sanders would have done the same to the Democrats in 2016, except that the Democrats rallied around their own Jurassic candidate, Hillary Clinton, and euchred Sanders out of the nomination that rightfully should have been his.
Now he’s back, for what he knows will be his final shot at the nomination. At 78, and having recently suffered a heart attack on the campaign trail, Sanders is five years older than Trump, and would far and away be the oldest man ever elected to the White House should he go all the way. He would also be the first openly socialist—some might say communist—candidate ever to win the White House.
The mainstream Democrats know this, too, which is why the party regulars are so desperately trying to stop him. To them, a Sanders candidacy would be an unabashed disaster, as Americans time and again overwhelmingly tell pollsters that they won’t vote for socialism. Sanders, they think, would get slaughtered by Trump in the general election, especially in the Electoral College. Insiders are hoping against hope that Klobuchar, the least controversial of their mainstream candidates, might turn out to be the silver bullet, but so far she’s failed to catch fire. Nor will she…
…A Trump–Sanders race, however, at least would be honest, and would give Americans a real choice. A stark contrast between gilded capitalism and redistributive “democratic socialism.” America First vs. America Last…”