Super Tuesday Preview

Bernie Sanders is the presumptive nominee, and it’s probably too late to stop him.

Super Tuesday was always important, but this year it will be decisive. Fourteen states and American Samoa will vote. That includes California, which moved its primary date up after the 2016 election. California has 415 delegates out of the approximately 1,350 at stake.

Bernie Sanders has a double-digit lead in California. He’s attracting huge crowds and has been building a movement since 2016. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer both endorsed Joe Biden, but it won’t do him much good. Senator Feinstein couldn’t even win her own party’s endorsement in her last Senate race; the militant, leftist base thinks she’s a has-been. Senator Sanders is reportedly winning among California’s Asian-Americans, Hispanics, and young voters.

Recent polls also show Sen. Sanders winning in Texas; polls disagree only about the size of his lead. He has more than double Joe Biden’s support among Texas Hispanics. The Vermont senator has a lot of Hispanic supporters nation-wide; they just delivered him Nevada.

Senator Sanders is tied for first with Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, her home state. If she loses there, her campaign is probably over. Senator Sanders was winning in Maine while Pete Buttigieg was still in the race. Joe Biden or Michael Bloomberg are not that far behind Senator Sanders, but if they split the ex-Buttigieg vote, Senator Sanders still wins.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders. (Credit Image: © Edward M. PioRoda/CNN via ZUMA Wire/ZUMAPRESS.com)

Joe Biden needs Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia to show that his South Carolina victory wasn’t a fluke. However, Bernie Sanders has a double-digit lead in North Carolina. Joe Biden has a small lead in Virginia, with 22 percent to Senator Sanders’s 17 percent. Michael Bloomberg has 13 percent; these voters would probably support Joe Biden if the former New York City mayor wasn’t running. There are no polls from Alabama.

Michael Bloomberg has already spent almost $500 million, and the Super Tuesday states will be his first state contests. By trying to buy the nomination — and taking votes from other Sanders rivals — he could well ensure Bernie Sanders becomes the nominee.

Vice President Biden could call himself the “anti-Sanders” if he wins Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia, but the time for an “anti-Sanders” threat was weeks ago. Barack Obama hasn’t endorsed his former vice president; he reportedly wants to unify the party after the primaries. Mr. Biden’s most potent weapon therefore remains in its sheath.

After the most recent debates, a plurality of Democrats said Bernie Sanders had the best chance of defeating President Trump. If Mr. Biden isn’t the most “electable” candidate, what’s the point of his campaign?

The Democrat primaries are like 2016’s Republican primaries. The pundits talk about a brokered convention, but I think it’s already too late. I feel like a man watching the tide go out just before a tsunami. I can imagine YouTube clips of President Trump declaring America will never be a socialist country — followed by President Sanders taking the oath of office.

This all looks so familiar. In the 2016 election, a Hillary Clinton campaign memo advised “elevating” “Pied Piper” candidates, including Donald Trump, because they would be easier to defeat. President Trump is reportedly promoting Bernie Sanders because he thinks he can turn the election into a referendum on socialism. He’s underestimating the senator.

Bernie Sanders has a movement. President Trump doesn’t. He has the Republican Party and the Beltway Right: the same forces he defeated in 2016. Conservatism Inc. slogans about “freedom” weren’t enough for Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio to win the primary. Why would they work in a general election?

President Trump could have built a national populist movement. However, he used his GOP majority to push the same Paul Ryan ideas that voters had just rejected.

Exit polls in 2018 show voters were most concerned about health care. In the recent British elections, Boris Johnson defeated Labour by condemning socialism while promising to spend more on socialized medicine. President Trump doesn’t have a clear message about health care. Thanks to the coronavirus and a possible recession, the President can’t say much about the stock market or the economy either. I think the “energy” that was with Donald Trump in 2016 is with Bernie Sanders this year.

In 2016, President Trump was on Alex Jones’s Infowars show. In 2020, CPAC kicks out Infowars. In 2016, President Trump retweeted anonymous followers. In 2020, President Trump is “monitoring” internet censorship and doing nothing. In 2016, President Trump said he was “taking on big business and big media and big donors.” In 2020, President Trump said MAGA stands for Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon, companies that all lean left on everything.

In 2016, President Trump had an army ready to fight for him (sometimes literally). In 2020, the Department of Justice arrests militant nationalists and coddles antifa. In 2016, President Trump had Steve Bannon. In 2020, President Trump has Charlie Kirk.

President Trump’s 2016 campaign did not force the Beltway Right to adopt its ideas. Instead, movement conservatives pledged probably temporary loyalty to President Trump while they purged nationalists.

In contrast, Bernie Sanders is forcing the Democrats to rethink their traditional role as a center-left capitalist party. Avowed communists and socialists can organize and speak on campus, online, in the streets, and in Democrat meetings. They have new ideas, energy, and a bold spirit. Meanwhile, “conservatives” are working with left-wing journalists as gatekeepers against nationalists and Identitarians.

My prediction is Bernie Sanders will win the Democrat primary unless he gets sick again. President Trump will run a defensive campaign against socialism, and we won’t know what he is for. If I had to bet right now, I’d say Senator Sanders would win. Bernie Sanders is beating the incumbent in every recent national poll. The Trump campaign’s complacency is staggering, given the GOP losses in 2018.

Why would America elect a socialist? Demography. In 1972, Richard Nixon decisively defeated progressive George McGovern. Many Republicans and some Democrats seem to think 2020 will be a replay. However, that was a different country. “The scale of race-ethnic transformation in the United States is stunning,” began a 2015 report from three major think-tanks. White voters are dying off, and non-white Democrats are replacing them.

I offer one final prediction. If President Trump does lose the general election, the Beltway Right will blame him personally, rather than rethink its assumptions. But it won’t be his fault; it’ll be theirs.

Patriots warned conservatives that demography is destiny. They didn’t listen. Lenin supposedly said that capitalists would sell the rope with which they would be hanged. Conservatism Inc. seems determined to do just that.