The conundrum that is the Bernie Sanders presidential bid
by Gabi De Mendonca Gomes ’22, Opinion Editor
Bernie Sanders might win the Democratic nomination, but he will not win against Trump in the general election for a number of reasons.
Simply put, Sanders is not moderate enough to win over all the votes necessary to beat Trump. His talking points have not, and will not, resonate with a majority of U.S. citizens.
While Sanders has policies that voters agree with and support, his incessant self-labelling as a Democratic-Socialist — and — previously plainly as a socialist — is fatal to his campaign. The internet and news are landfills of political information, and misinformation, abundant with clips of Sanders’ self-proclaimed socialism, and an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found that 46% of registered voters would be “very uncomfortable” with a socialist candidate while a January Gallup poll found that a mere 45% of Americans would consider voting for a socialist. These numbers are too high to win a general election.
His inability to stray from the label and his accompanying Scandanavian fantasies — often citing Denmark as a model country when asked about health care and other issues — is damaging to his campaign to more moderate voters.
While all chances of a Democratic victory is dependent on voter turnout, Sanders’ ability to win the popular vote against Trump comes down to his campaign’s ability to get an unprecedented liberal and youth voter turnout in the general election. If they do not show up, Sanders will lose, which will be a bleak prison sentence for the next four years. A more moderate candidate can at least rely more on a larger voting base.
Sanders, according to exit polls and precinct analyses, runs the strongest with young and Latinx voters. For example, in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, he received twice as much support from voters under 30 than his closest competitor; moreover, in Nevada, he had about 70 percent of the vote in mostly Latinx precincts. By that same token, he did not win South Carolina, which is more representative of the Black and the white, non-college educated votes, with whom Biden fares well with.
Indeed, all of the current polling data show Sanders winning the national popular vote; however, there is an argument to be made — and I am making it — that he was only able to do so well when the moderate vote was split mainly between Joe Biden, Pete Buttegieg, and Amy Klobuchar.
Delegates also follow this lop-sided pattern. Before Super Tuesday, there were 155 pledged delegates — indeed a very small percentage of the 1,991 necessary to win the candidacy of the 3,979 pledged total, Sanders was in the lead with 60 pledged delegates, and Biden the runner-up with 54. However, the 33 that Buttegieg and Klobuchar summed between them will now go to Biden since they both endorsed his campaign. Biden, therefore, now has the most, ringing in 87 pledged delegates. Moderate candidates are doing collectively better than Sanders, and with this coalescing of votes to Biden, the moderate’s bid is gaining power and momentum, like a bowling ball barrelling down and making a strike even after hitting the child rail guards, at least statistically.
Also, it must be noted that when Bernie ran against a moderate candidate in 2016 — who did indeed win the popular vote against Trump — the Democratic National Committee organized against him, albeit in a somewhat distasteful way. This negative rapport could recur, preventing his nomination once more.
If he does become the nominee, I predict he would fare well against Trump. He can rightfully continue to claim his political consistency and boast of non-racist or holistically unproblematic political engagements, unlike his opponent who defies both of those concepts. In debates, he can succeed in his unwaveringly Bernie way, like a New-York-Jew-cactus in the Trumpian political desert.
Nonetheless, I posit, like many pundits, that a moderate candidate, or at least a more moderate candidate is what is necessary to win the race against Trump in all respects: the presidency, keeping the House of Representatives, and retaking the Senate. Many moderate Democrats were able to flip house seats during the midterms in 2018, so there is some precedent there. Democrats cannot lose this election cycle if this country wants to stay a democracy, and a moderate candidate seems, right now, the most likely pathway to a necessary victory.
