Sanders’ surge worries some Democrats
Top Democrats are increasingly alarmed that Sen. Bernie Sanders could gain unstoppable momentum from the primary voting that starts next week, but they also fear that any anti-Sanders effort would backfire, and that has sidelined any significant stop-Sanders effort for now.
Even the hint of an organized anti-Sanders movement would risk alienating the Vermont senator’s sometimes belligerent supporters and play into claims that the process is “rigged,” many Democrats say privately. Democratic House candidates in swing districts say they are nervous about running on the same ticket as Sanders, but they, too, are reluctant to say so publicly.
That’s leading some Democratic centrists to warn that the silence carries a risk of waiting until it’s too late.
“People need to start taking Bernie pretty seriously — there is a really substantial risk of him becoming unstoppable if he wins these early states by large numbers,” said Matt Bennett, vice president of Third Way, a centrist Democratic group.
But despite “some discussions among people wringing their hands,” Bennett said, “it’s not like our phone is ringing from people saying, ‘Let’s do something.’ ”
Third Way blasted out an email to Iowa Democrats on Tuesday saying that Sanders has a “politically toxic background” and “his far left positions will repel swing voters.” And Democratic Majority for Israel, a group of pro-Israel Democrats, has reserved $700,000 in television ads that will begin airing Wednesday, apparently the most concerted effort on television so far to attack Sanders.
But those moves remain the exception within the party. Some Democrats say they erred in 2016 by antagonizing Sanders and his supporters, and they are loath to risk doing so again. Others warn that treating Sanders too gently, however, could repeat the Republicans’ experience of 2016, when they underestimated Donald Trump until it was too late to stop him. Either way, the anxiety is palpable. “If Bernie is on the ticket as the nominee, I have no chance whatsoever,” said one Democratic House candidate in a swing district, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of antagonizing Sanders supporters. “And if you wrote that, it would blow me up in the primary.”
The candidate added, “Bernie has a real following. But it’s a minority, and he turns off a whole lot of people.”
This account of the growing angst inside the Democratic Party over the risks of nominating a socialist to take on President Donald Trump is based on interviews with two dozen officials, strategists and leaders. They say Sanders could get crushed by the Trump machine if he were the nominee; at the same time, they fear taking him on would rile up his fierce and loyal army.
Sanders’ supporters — and there are many, including such influential figures as Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez, D-N.Y. — argue that the critics have it exactly backward. The Democrats’ real mistake, they say, would be nominating a candidate who fails to excite the base, while a Sanders candidacy would not only energize Democrats but draw new voters to the party.
But others say Sanders, for all his success, has never faced tough scrutiny, and that the Trump campaign would eviscerate him if he were the nominee, unearthing all manner of dubious or impolitic statements from the 78-year-old senator’s long, unorthodox political career.
“Sanders would be uniquely problematic as the nominee,” said Ben LaBolt, a former aide to President Barack Obama, because he is a “largely untested candidate.”
That point was made even more bluntly in the message Third Way emailed Tuesday to Democrats in Iowa.
“If Bernie Sanders becomes the nominee, Trump’s odds of winning a second term go up dramatically, which is why Team Trump has labeled him their ‘ideal’ nominee,” reads the two-page document. “Iowa Democrats: Please don’t do what Trump wants you to do.”
Sanders’ opponents have so far failed to coalesce around a clear alternative to the Vermont senator, leaving the centrist vote splintered among a handful of candidates, each of whom has vulnerabilities.
Some voters are concerned about former vice president Joe Biden’s age and acuity — he is 77 — while others worry that former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, 38, is untested. If Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., or Mike Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, gains strength, that could further muddy the waters.
Meanwhile, Sanders has shown signs of consolidating support from the party’s liberal wing at the expense of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. And even Sanders’ detractors grudgingly acknowledge that Sanders is drawing large, energetic crowds and bringing new faces into the party. Republicans have been watching warily, too, concerned that Sanders is tapping into a strain of the electorate similar to the bloc that bolstered Trump four years ago.