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.
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.
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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.
