Since the 1970s political and economic decisions have been hurting ordinary people’s economics and transferring their incomes and wealth to big businesses and extremely rich people. Ordinary people – voters – are angry about what they have been suffering.
Many of President Bill Clinton’s policies had already showed his utter subservience to those economic elites, and Hillary was cashing in and perpetuating that cozy subservience by raking in millions of dollars for speaking to groups of elite bankers and Wall Street wheeler-dealers. Both Bill and Hillary did many things that hurt ordinary people and the labor movement.
In 2016 many millions of voters supported Bernie Sanders for president because he understood the problems and proposed sensible, compassionate solutions. Bernie was a genuine progressive populist with huge support from voters.
But in 2016 the institutional Democratic Party used several nasty methods to sabotage Bernie’s campaign and force the Party to accept Hillary Clinton as the presidential nominee. Hillary was one of the nation’s most unpopular politicians – a huge supporter of Bush-Cheney’s endless wars who – as Obama’s Secretary of State – pushed Obama into several more wars. In 2016 Hillary campaigned in support of the status quo, even though most voters were angry against the status quo, and Hillary kept telling people that the economy was very good, even though most people knew they were suffering. Hillary’s economic elitism blinded her to ordinary people’s realities.
During 2016 the Democratic Party did several things to help Donald Trump win the Republican nomination because they thought he was such a clownish goofball that he would be easy to beat. But Trump did recognize that the voters were angry, so he resonated with that anger and fed it back to people. People felt that finally a politician was listening to them. Trump – who is actually a very privileged, rich, racist, sexist bully – only pretended to be a populist, but he fooled many voters, especially because Hillary was so dismissive of ordinary people’s suffering. Trump won the 2016 election.
Over the years the institutional Democratic Party (the Democratic National Committee, DNC) has become subservient to powerful economic interests and negative toward the working class. The top donor to Obama’s 2008 campaign was Goldman Sachs, so Obama appointed many people from Goldman Sachs, etc., to his cabinet and other positions of power, and he bailed out the banks that had committed many crimes, and he refused to prosecute any of Wall Street’s crooks who had crashed the economy.
Now for 2020 Bernie Sanders has even more support than he did in 2016, and his support extends even more broadly across demographic variables, including race and the working class. Once again Bernie is inspiring millions of grassroots people to start voting, start donating, and start working on electoral campaigns. Bernie’s campaign message explains that the status quo is horribly dysfunctional and cruel, so he proposes a “revolution” of bold progressive changes. People understand and agree.
The institutional Democratic Party and the other economic elites (big business, mainstream media, etc.) feel threatened so they have been viciously attacking Bernie.
Joe Biden has decades of experience in Congress being utterly subservient to big banks and big business. He also has a history of wanting to cut Social Security benefits, supporting the Bush-Cheney endless wars, and other horrible things. Biden’s 2020 campaign is totally based on three absolute falsehoods:
(1) Trump caused our nation’s problems, so if we merely replace Trump everything will be OK;
(2) The status quo was OK before Trump caused problems; and
(3) Republicans will want to cooperate productively with President Biden.
All three are blatantly false. Biden utterly fails to recognize or respond to the public’s outrage about the decades of economic decline we have been suffering under both political parties. Also, Biden has some political skeletons in his closet, which Trump would easily expose and destroy Biden’s electability. Biden’s mental functioning has seriously declined, so in a face-to-face debate with Trump, Biden would look weak and foolish. (Trump’s dysfunctional mental problems do not matter to his political base.) In contrast, Bernie Sanders is mentally sharp and physically vigorous, and Bernie would utterly destroy Trump in a face-to-face debate.
Public opinion polls keep showing that Bernie is the MOST electable! In head-to-head polling contests, voters choose Bernie over Trump by a wider margin than any of the “centrists.” The Democratic Party keeps saying that massive turnout is necessary, so they should appreciate the Bernie inspires a HUGE turnout of enthusiastic voters, including those who are otherwise hard to reach (young, minority, first-time, rare voter).
The institutional Democratic Party is committing suicide. The Party would rather nominate Biden and lose to Trump than to nominate Sanders and have him challenge Wall Street and the Military-Industrial Complex. But the Dems apparently think 4 more years of Trump’s abuses would be worth it if it would spare the elites from a wealth tax, spare Big Pharma and insurance companies from Medicare for All, and spare the oil companies from a Green New Deal.
If the Dems nominate Biden, expect Trump to win – and expect Trump to claim he has a mandate – and expect Trump to impose outright fascism upon the USA.
