The Harrowing Chaos of the Democratic Primary – The New York Times

Although Im a pessimist by nature, deep down I think I always believed that the Republic would survive Donald Trump.

The majority of Americans have never accepted him, and his ascendancy fueled a nationwide civic awakening, starting with the Womens March and proceeding through airport protests, health care town halls and finally the midterms. Its been devastating to see how quickly so many American institutions have been corrupted the Department of Justice turned into an engine of Trumps paranoid vendettas, the State Department purged of nonpartisan professionals, evidence of Trumps Ukraine extortion scheme buried by his Senate lackeys. Its outrageous that the countrys being forced to endure four full years of lawless kakistocracy, but surely, I thought, the majority would put an end to it in the next election.

But now that election is approaching, and the debacle of the Iowa caucuses only highlights how the Democratic Party is threatening to fracture. In its aftermath, were left with a national race led by two very old and extraordinarily risky general election candidates whose weaknesses were underscored by Iowas results, muddled as they were.

Bernie Sanderss supporters have argued that he can expand the electorate to make up for the suburban moderates hes likely to lose, moderates who were, incidentally, responsible for many of the gains Democrats made in 2018. But while Sanders claimed a popular vote victory in Iowa, there was no surge in voter turnout since the last election, and an NBC News entrance poll showed that the number of first-time caucusers actually went down.

Sanders still has the advantage of energy and ardor; young people are overwhelmingly on his side, and his campaign will be carried along by the same sort of ebullient cultural ferment as Barack Obamas. (When the pop megastar Ariana Grande met Sanders in November, she wrote on Twitter, I will never smile this hard again.) I try to talk myself into believing that his passionate base, combined with a polarized electorate, will be enough. Still, with the survival of American democracy at stake, it seems like a wild gamble for Democrats to turn the fight against Trump into a referendum on Democratic socialism at a time when Americans personal economic satisfaction is at a record high.

Heres the place for disclosure: My husband is consulting for Elizabeth Warren, the candidate I believe in more than any other. But I recognize that Warren has electability challenges of her own, and the truth is Id be fine with any nominee who could generate enthusiasm without scaring suburbanites, if I could only see who that was.

Im not the only one feeling panicked. The recent rush of mayoral endorsements for Michael Bloomberg is partly just a function of the money hes poured into cities through his philanthropic work, but it also indicates a worrying lack of confidence in the existing field.

Michael Tubbs, the innovative mayor of Stockton, Calif., who pioneered a universal basic income experiment in his struggling city, became a national co-chair of Bloombergs campaign in December. Every candidate at this stage of the primary has real serious questions about how theyll bring the party together after they become the nominee, he told me.

How did it come to this? Mostly, I blame Joe Biden and those in the Democratic establishment who pushed his campaign. Its been obvious for some time now that Biden is not nearly as vigorous as he once was. While hes always been gaffe-prone, his speech has grown tentative and meandering in a way that engenders sympathy but also profound anxiety. In Iowa, where voters had a chance to see him up close, the most recent results show him with a distant fourth-place finish. Even if he somehow limps to the nomination, the general election will be a grim slog, like racing on a wounded horse.

Yet with his unmatched biography and name recognition, he deprived younger center-left candidates like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Michael Bennet of oxygen even as he failed to consolidate centrists himself. Thats left the erstwhile novelty candidate Pete Buttigieg as Bidens strongest competitor for moderate votes, but while hes shooting up the polls in New Hampshire, he has virtually no support among voters of color.

According to the polling experts at FiveThirtyEight, Sanders now has a 1 in 2 chance of winning the majority of delegates in the Democratic race. The next most likely scenario, with 1 in 4 odds, is that no one does, which would spell a contested convention.

Should that happen, there will be forces in the Democratic Party that try to block Sanders. (A few members of the Democratic National Committee have already discussed rule changes meant to thwart him, though so far its just been marginal chatter.) But if Sanders emerges from the primaries with a plurality of votes, denying him the nomination would be not just unfair but potentially suicidal. I worry about Sanderss chances against Trump, but a candidate foisted on the party over the furious remonstrances of a disempowered base would almost certainly fare worse, while permanently alienating the young people who should be the Democratic Partys future.

The way things are going, the fate of American democracy could soon be Bernie or bust. I envy those who find that exhilarating rather than terrifying.

View post:

The Harrowing Chaos of the Democratic Primary - The New York Times