SALT LAKE CITY — Why are Democrats afraid of Bernie Sanders?
After finishing in a virtual tie atop the Iowa caucuses, the Vermont senator heads into Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary — a traditional barometer for the presidential nomination — with an 8-point lead in the polls, looking very much like the Democratic frontrunner.
So it’s no surprise Republicans are attacking Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist and lifelong Independent campaigning for the Democratic nomination on New Deal-like social programs and anti-establishment sentiment — as he did in 2016.
But Sanders is taking just as many jabs from Democrats — if not more.
Critics from the left
Polls don’t tell the whole story. Fellow Democrats have attacked Sanders as an extremist. They’ve called him unaccomplished. And much like comedian Larry David, they characterize him as an unlikeable curmudgeon.
“Nobody likes him,” former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton said in a documentary series screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Clinton told The Hollywood Reporter she still feels that way, adding that her disdain isn’t limited to Sanders. “I will say, however, that it’s not only him, it’s the culture around him. It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent supporters. It’s his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women,” Clinton said.
Voters that blame Sanders for Clinton’s electoral defeat to Donald Trump in 2016 may prefer to stay in the corner of the DNC icon by supporting an establishment democrat — say, Joe Biden or Amy Klobuchar.
Don’t count Joe Rogan among them. “I think I’ll probably vote for Bernie,” said the host of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast and former host of “Fear Factor.” “I believe in him, I like him, I like him a lot.”
Rogan’s casual endorsement, tweeted by the Sanders campaign, spurred instant disgust and division among Sanders’ core progressive backers. Rogan — Forbes magazine’s highest earning podcaster of 2019 with $30 million, known for his predominantely male audience disillusioned by modern society — has been accused of making derogatory comments toward the transgender community and more than once has hosted conspiracy theorist and InfoWars creator Alex Jones, according to Forbes.
Author and former Village Voice writer Donna Minkowitz wrote in The Nation that she was “so hurt and angry” after the Sanders campaign turned Rogan’s endorsement to a commercial.
“As a passionate lifelong socialist, I’ve adored and supported Bernie since the 1980s, when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont. I was beyond thrilled to be able to vote for him and contribute money to his campaign in 2016,” Minkowitz said, adding that she would be supporting a different candidate in the 2020 primaries.
Four years after Martin O’Malley called off his 2016 presidential campaign after receiving 0.6% of the Iowa caucuses’ support, the former governor of Maryland still doesn’t believe Sanders — who beat O’Malley in Iowa by 49 points — is right for the party.
“He’s a man who never has accomplished anything in public office, who has I believe demonstrated his inability to forge a governing consensus, let alone hold a governing consensus. And I think he’d be an awful choice as our party’s nominee,” O’Malley told The Guardian.
The party’s divide widened last month when CNN broke a story that claimed Sanders had said a woman couldn’t win the presidential election in a conversation with fellow New England Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Sanders denied the accusations, calling them “ludicrous” in a statement to CNN.
Warren disputed Sanders’ denial the following day at a debate in Des Moines, Iowa. “I disagreed. Bernie is my friend and I am not here to try and fight with Bernie,” she said in the early battleground state.
The split between these two progressives and friends had begun when talking points were leaked from the Sanders campaign, which included the claim that Warren was supported by wealthy voters and would be unable to grow her base of support. Sanders — who touts his base of loyal, small-dollar donors — later pulled the volunteer scripts from the campaign.
Former mayor Pete Buttigieg — who came out on top of the virtual tie with Sanders in Iowa last week, though that result is being reevaluated — criticized Sanders’ federal health care plan on Monday.
“Just so long as we don’t force every American onto that public plan, that’s the opportunity in front of us or the risk, if we take it all the way to the extreme,” Buttigieg said, looking to further separate his own moderate platform from Sanders’ more polarizing position, the Boston Globe reported. The former mayor then accused the senator of overpromising.
“How are we going to pay for it,” Buttigieg continued, “Are we going to pay for it in the form of still further taxes or are we going to pay for it in the form of broken promises?”
Jeers from the right
The spirit of Sanders’ campaign is not that different from President Donald Trump’s outsider candidacy in 2016, even if the two men are ideological opposites. Both have appealed to supporters disillusioned with their party’s status quo, while appearing uniquely authentic and unpolished.
Like Sanders, the president has momentum. Trump currently sits atop the public’s highest confidence in his presidency— 49% approval, including 94% among Republicans, according to Gallup — emboldened by his recent impeachment acquittal. The incumbent president, hoping to vindicate his popularity, will be a formidable opponent in the November general election. His campaign against Sanders has already begun.
In Trump’s appearance with Fox News’ Sean Hannity before the Super Bowl, Hannity — in the manner of a psychologist giving a word association test — listed names of Democratic presidential candidates as Trump said the first thing that came to mind. “I think he’s a communist,” Trump said. “I mean, you know, look, I think of communism when I think of Bernie.”
The president has referred to the contender on Twitter as “Crazy Bernie Sanders.”
Utah Sen. Mitt Romney called his peer a “curmudgeon” in an interview with The Atlantic last fall, discussing his rookie term. Romney explained that being a politician was only part of his life, and politics was not what made Romney a whole person — unlike Sanders.
“People are really friendly, they’re really nice, except Bernie,” Romney told The Atlantic, laughing. “For Bernie, it seems like this is kind of who he is. It’s defining. It’s his entire person.”
Too far left?
Campaigning on a platform of Medicare, college and housing for all and a “Green New Deal” — reminiscent of President Franklin D. Rosevelt’s social work programs in the wake of the Great Depression — Sanders is certainly left of the Democratic center.
Even independent observers have found something to dislike about that.
Running a candidate such as Sanders — who has “gleefully discarded the party’s conventional wisdom” — against the president would be “insane,” political commentator and writer Jonathan Chait argued recently in New York magazine.
“Sanders combines unpopular program specifics in the unpopular packaging of ‘socialism.’ The socialist label has grown less unpopular, a trend that has attracted so much media attention that many people have gotten the impression ‘socialism’ is actually popular, which is absolutely not the case,” Chait wrote.
As if taking a cue from Trump himself, Sanders continues to drive his agenda — and the Democratic party — away from the status quo of the big tent’s center pole.
2020: Echoes of 2016
If any of this feels familiar, you were probably paying attention to the Democratic primaries in the last election cycle.
Sanders came into the 2016 election season as an underdog to Clinton, the party favorite. He lost Iowa to Clinton by 0.3 points — a near replica of last week’s caucus results, which saw Buttigieg at 26.2% and Sanders at 26.1%, according to The New York Times.
Eight days later — and with a home-field advantage — Sanders hammered Clinton in the New Hampshire primary, 60.4% to 38%.
But again, polls don’t tell the whole story. Sanders’ 2016 campaign electrified certain segments of Democratic voters, drawing huge crowds to typically sleepy primaries in states like Utah — where polling stations stayed open late to accommodate long lines of voters who were “feeling the Bern.”
Still, Sanders and his campaign never stopped being underdogs. He persisted until the Democratic convention before conceding the nomination to Clinton, who was backed by the party establishment. She ultimately lost to Trump.
Trump’s 2016 campaign was similarly launched with a dominant performance in New Hampshire — after a close second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses — taking 35.3% of the Republican vote. That was enough for the Grand Old Party establishment to take him as seriously as the American voters had.
Sanders never seemed to get that kind of support from the Democratic National Committee. Will this year be any different?
Sanders has momentum, but will it matter?
Sanders is again projected to take the New Hampshire primary. A CNN/University of New Hampshire poll published Monday showed Sanders atop the large pack of Democratic candidates with 29% — to 22% for Buttigieg — and 15% said Sanders was their second choice.
How will Democrats respond? So far, the most pervasive criticism of Sanders’ candidacy seems to hinge on his “electability” — whether Democratic voters think he can beat the president. The argument against him says his position is too far left — “too extreme” — for a general election, despite the enthusiastic support he continues to generate in the primaries.
Time will tell if Utahns flood polling stations again for Super Tuesday on March 3. That could be a decisive day, with primaries expected in 15 jurisdictions, according to Ballotpedia. Sanders dominated Utah in 2016, taking home 79.3% of the primary vote.
Sanders — a near octogenarian — is already looking ahead to the next race. He has already filed with the Federal Election Commission to run for a fourth Senate term in 2024, just in case. He registered as an Independent.