Democratic Primaries

After Tuesday night, the undeniable truth is that the entire Sanders campaign was predicated on a gauzy myth. If there were ever hidden armies of would-be Democratic voters yearning for a visionary presidential nominee uncontaminated by the compromises of life, then these Bernie Brigades still remain well camouflaged.

Sure, as Sanders stressed in his Wednesday statement, some of his policies are popular with primary voters. In Michigan, exit polls showed that replacing private health insurance with a government program had the support of nearly 60 percent of the people who went to the polls on Tuesday. But since the February 29 South Carolina primary, most Democratic primary voters have been unwilling to buy the entire Sanders package: politically unattainable goals, such as canceling $1.6 trillion in college debt, combined with attacks on corporate interests and the “billionaire class.”

After Sanders’s two presidential runs, voters possess a pretty clear-eyed sense of who he is. He is a gadfly, a goad, and a left-wing Pied Piper. These can be valuable traits in politics since the moderate, accommodationist wing of the Democratic Party sometimes needs outside pressure to force it to focus on causes larger than the next election. But Sanders was never cut out to be a traditional president forging alliances, brokering compromises, and dealing with the messiness of governing in a bitterly divided democracy. That simply isn’t Bernie’s skill set. And his lifelong rigidity would have become an even larger governing problem if he ever succeeded Trump as president.

What Democratic voters have created by rallying around Biden is the American equivalent of the Popular Front, which, in the 1930s, was a broad, multiparty alliance against fascism in France and other democratic countries. The exit polls from Michigan echo a sentiment found in almost all primaries—voters, by a 58-to-37 percent margin, want a candidate who can defeat Trump more than someone who agrees with them on all issues.....

Sanders will undoubtedly fight on in the hopes that he can shape the Democratic platform. The problem with that strategy is that, even if Biden were to commit to supporting, say, Medicare for All, as a price for party harmony in Milwaukee, it would be a meaningless pledge. Currently, fewer than one-third of the Democrats in the Senate support eliminating private insurance. And if Chuck Schumer succeeds in getting the chamber back in Democratic hands, the new additions to their ranks are likely to be moderates like John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Steve Bullock of Montana, none of whom support Medicare for All.