In a matter of weeks, Bernie Sanders has skyrocketed by nearly 10 points nationally to unseat Joe Biden’s lead in the race for the Democratic nomination. His strong showing in New Hampshire and Iowa has bolstered the Vermont senator’s state polling, providing him a tangible path to the nomination.
Sanders is the front-runner and provided that the rest of the relative moderates in the race continue to engage in a circular firing squad, he will win the party’s nomination. If the week’s campaign drama has provided any preview, the rest of the 2020 hopefuls seem keen on making it happen.
Rather than attack the man who knocked him out of first place, Biden has set his sights on Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire who bought his way to the double digits in Super Tuesday and national polling. So what if Bloomberg is a sinophilic authoritarian with a dump truck full of #MeToo and business-related baggage so big he makes President Trump look like a moral paragon? Biden has spent his final hours before the Nevada debate firing at Bloomberg.
Welcome to the debates, Mike. We have a lot to catch up on about Barack Obama’s record. pic.twitter.com/bMYPLYwnfQ
— Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330) (@JoeBiden) February 19, 2020
One could argue that Biden, as the former leading centrist, has a specific ax to grind with noncentrist Bloomberg’s claim to the moderate mantle of the race. What makes zero sense is why Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the last losing leftist of the race, is targeting Bloomberg instead of Sanders.
It’s a shame Mike Bloomberg can buy his way into the debate. But at least now primary voters curious about how each candidate will take on Donald Trump can get a live demonstration of how we each take on an egomaniac billionaire. https://t.co/H02radEZcv
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 18, 2020
.@FredTJoseph personally knows the damage that Mike Bloomberg’s policies and agendas have caused. He knows that our party deserves better. pic.twitter.com/2sJEJ7crCf
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 18, 2020
All the while, the biggest winner of this strategic error is Sanders.
Consider, Bloomberg provides Sanders the caricature of an evil billionaire his campaign could only dream of campaigning against. By Sanders and every other candidate in the race targeting him, Bloomberg gets to suck all the air out of the campaign, suffocating arguably more electable candidates such as Biden and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. If this weren’t Sanders’s dream scenario, then why would he direct his top campaign surrogate to expend all their energy on Bloomberg?
The Democrats’ impending anti-Sanders problem is following the playbook of how anti-Trump Republicans lost to a T. Rather than focus their fire on Trump, long the 2016 primary’s front-runner, Republican contenders attacked each other. This included Chris Christie’s infamous murder-suicide of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and the establishment’s refusal to pick between Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and John Kasich as the last-ditch attempt to defeat Trump. Democrats learned nothing from 2016, and their refusal to either coalesce around one candidate or attack the front-runner proves it.
Every candidate on tonight’s debate stage ignores Sanders at their own peril. Otherwise, we’re stuck in an even more tawdry reboot of 2016 for the next nine months.
