It's Time for the 2016 Primary to End. Bernie Sanders Is the Clear Frontrunner for the [View all]

[Autumn]

2020 Nomination.

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
FEB 23, 2020

A very good read.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a31064861/bernie-sanders-wins-nevada-caucuses-frontrunner/?fbclid=IwAR3yUqhOo3CYcd0jIwztrc-HnATfITLfoRWw5odyxH53Dj5cNNL0JvtGLRk

OK. Hug your kids. Walk your dog. Have a drink. Smoke some weed. Eat some edibles. Gobble some ‘shrooms. Meditate. Contemplate. Ruminate. Calm down. Find peace. Take a breath. Take a pill. Take a break. Calm down, Ringo, and, for the love of god, chill the fck out, Yolanda. Bernie Sanders won the Nevada caucuses. He won handily. He won easily. As a matter of fact, he probably won Saturday night last week, when 75 percent of the voters cast early ballots. Bernie Sanders is the clear frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. He is the clear frontrunner because he and his people have been developing a strategy for five years and they have been executing it splendidly. Those are the facts on the ground and they are incontestable.

(One solid indication of the depth of his appeal is that, almost immediately after the New Hampshire primary, the culinary workers union in Nevada slammed him over Medicare For All—but, on Saturday, the actual membership of that powerful union turned out for him in droves.)

Meanwhile, Pete Buttigieg, the man who will unify us to turn the page to a bright new day in which we will galvanize and not polarize, gave a speech early in the evening that, for sheer optimistic inspiration, lacked only a bell and a guy intoning, “Bring out your dead.” (There was one great moment on MSNBC when Steve Kornacki told the panel that, according to the network’s entrance polling, Buttigieg didn’t register among black voters. At all.) On the other side, the Sanders people have started measuring the drapes already. People supporting other candidates are being told to get in line or get the hell out. (In fact, that he has managed to get to this position with a national staff containing some people whose only apparent political skill is being pissed on television and snotty online is a further measure of what a formidable candidate he is.) This prompted pushback, and the pushback prompted more pushback, until the desert itself was a’light with the fires from a thousand flaming heads.

Going forward, here’s what I think. It’s time for both billionaires to get out. They’re not going to be president, either one of them, and they’re not helping anyone else who might be. Tom Steyer’s campaign is utterly pointless and seems dedicated at this point only to mucking up the South Carolina primary. If the Democrats nominate Michael Bloomberg, they’re taking a bigger risk than they ever would by nominating Sanders because given what we already know about him, and anticipating that we’re going to learn even more—and worse—stuff as the campaign grinds on, he’s the only candidate that could give someone in the vote-blue-no-matter-who crowd the same pause that the aforementioned 53 percent of Sanders voters have. Plus, my god, he’s a terrible candidate.