Sanders & Bloomberg Are Both Right

Bernie says Bloomberg won’t bring enough energy to the 2020 election to defeat Trump.  Bloomberg says that Bernies is bringing the wrong kind of energy.  Both are probably right — and if they are, then Trump wins.

Sayeth Bernie the Red:

Replyeth mini-Mike:

They are probably both right.  Trump is running on a three-year record as President with a laundry list of accomplishments that includes an extremely strong economy.  Democrats have no winning answer to that, only a primal scream that people should not trust their perception of their improved economic circumstance.

Thus the chance of any Democrat beating Trump in the 2020 election, short of the coronavirus trashing the world economy and starting a second black death, is going to be a tall order.  Mini-Mike is right that Democrats need unity if they are to defeat Trump.  As James Pethokoukis writes at The Week:

If not for Donald Trump being, well, Donald Trump, the 2020 race might well be a suicide run for Democrats. The record-long economic expansion is in its 121st month. The unemployment rate is at its lowest levels since the Apollo 11 moon landing. And not only do most Americans think the economy is doing pretty well, more and more are giving Trump credit for its strength. An election forecasting model run by Yale University economist Ray Fair is predicting a near-landslide for the GOP, assuming just “modest” economic growth between now and Election Day.

But that unity is going to be elusive indeed, whether it be with Bernie the Red on top, mini-Mike, or perhaps Buttigieg in a surprise come from behind.

Mini-Mike is generating a lot of buzz in the Democrat Primary — most of which he has shamelessly bought and paid for.  He is spending incredible amounts of money to buy the Democrat nomination for President now that Joe Biden has imploded.  That may be fine for the two-thirds of Democrats who would vote for anyone short of Pol Pot if they thought he could beat Trump.  But let’s say Mini-Mike is able to make it across the finish line and actually win the nomination.  Will the die-hard Sandernistas come over to vote for Mike?

It is difficult to see any situation in which they would.  Those people voting for Bernie the Red to implement socialism in America are pretty radical and such people are never inclined to compromise.  They certainly didn’t compromise or switch their vote over to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Bernie Sanders supporters switched their allegiance to Donald Trump in large enough numbers last November to sway the election for the real estate billionaire, according to an analysis of voter data released Tuesday by the blog Political Wire. Since Trump’s shock victory over Hillary Clinton, much discussion has focused on the degree to which passionate Sanders supporters’ refusal to embrace Clinton led to the Republican winding up in the White House.

According to the analysis of the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, fewer than 80 percent of those who voted for Sanders, an independent, in the Democratic primary did the same for Clinton when she faced off against Trump a few months later. What’s more, 12 percent of those who backed Sanders actually cast a vote for Trump.

I just can’t see many of the Bernie Bros switching their vote to Mini-Mike.  Moreover, assume, as Nate Silver has forecast, that a contested convention comes to pass, where Bernie the Red holds the most votes, but an insufficient number to win the nomination.  If the delegates and super-delegates then hand the nomination to mini-Mike, I’d expect the convention and the Democrat Party itself both to implode in violence.  Bernie Bros are not the most stable of people.

And the flip side is not that different.  Bernie and Fauxcohauntus may be the choice of 36% of the Democrat voters, assuming New Hampshire is a bellwether, but their radical brand of socialism is likely not going to play well with a quarter of Democrats, and not with the rest of the nation.  Indeed, I don’t see Democrats faring any better in the USA in 2020 than the similarly left-wing Labour Party fared in Britain’s 2019 election, regardless of what type of “energy” they end up with.