You might be interested in this interview of former Chicago Mayor, Clinton spokesman, and Obama Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel from CBS Chicago. Here’s what he says about Bernie Sanders:
“His candidacy is built on a false premise, strategically and policy-wise,†Emanuel, who served in both Clinton and Obama administrations, said of the far left candidate on CBS This Morning.
Sanders, he said, is playing with political fire by dismissing moderate Democrats.
“Bernie Sanders view is, I don’t want these moderate and fickle voters. We just have to turn out our base,†Emanuel said. “His view is, forget the center, we just want to be left. And that’s never been tried.â€
Emanuel pointed to six elections—the four presidential wins by Clinton and Obama and the two midterms in 2006 and 2018—in which a center left strategy and “big urban and suburban turnout†were the keys to victory.
Sanders, who has emerged as the front runner after early primaries, is “an ideological risk policy-wise. I don’t think there are 70 million waiting socialists to be woken, who don’t know they are socialists yet.â€
Clinton political strategist James Carville was even more blunt. He called the theory not just stupid but science denial.
Maybe a Sanders campaign can run the table in the general election and maybe it can’t. The risk isn’t just that they’ll lose the election giving Donald Trump another four years in office but that they’ll lose Congressional seats that they should have won in states that are presently thought of as Blue States and give President Trump a huge Congressional majority, i.e. a re-run of 1972.
If the DNC allows Sanders to be the Presidential candidate, but withhold from him the Dewey Cheatum and Howe playbook to win the election, he hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hot hell.
Using and abusing Steyer and Bloomberg’s money to salvage the downticket federal races (and big ticket state races) IMO are the Democrat’s only chance of salvaging anything in 2020. I just don’t see any good options for them in the Presidential race. If Sanders is denied the nomination, aside from the fiery spectacle Milwaukee may become that will turn off voters, I can’t see enough Bernie Bros supporting his replacement, no matter who it is or who the VP is or how much Bernie exhorts them to vote for them. If it is Bernie, even a POC VP candidate is unlikely to push him over the edge because of the almost utter lack of experience any of the big name possibilities have, and I see no combo of woke and yellow dog voters voting for him because of the confiscatory policies and bloody tyrants he so proudly trumpets and supports. I worry about blood in the streets after he loses, because his supporters won’t ever believe he didn’t win overwhelmingly.
Sanders is a lunatic. Period. Full stop.
Democrats won a large majority in the House in 1972.
The Democrats held majorities in the House from 1954 to 1994. They also held a majority in the Senate over most of that period.