Via Dave Weigel at The Post:
Sen. Bernie Sanders will seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose 2016 presidential campaign grew from a left-wing insurgency to a force that reshaped the Democratic Party, announced Tuesday that he will seek its nomination for president again in 2020…
“Our campaign is not only about defeating Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history. It is not only about winning the Democratic nomination and the general election,” he wrote. “Our campaign is about transforming our country and creating a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.”
The senator, an independent, cited health care, climate change, student debt, the “demonization” of undocumented immigrants, income inequality, gun violence and the myriad problems of America’s needy as propelling him into his second presidential contest.
If I were curator of Sanders’ political legacy, I would have advised him to take credit for pulling the party leftward and play kingmaker. Losing a second primary contest will take the wind out of the “Bernie woulda won” contingent’s sails and diminish Sanders’ influence.
Sanders will almost certainly lose this primary, IMO. The fundamentals have changed. As we’ve noted here endlessly, he won’t get the kid-glove treatment this time around.
Sanders’ “lane” is ably filled already by Senator Warren, who has a deep understanding of structural wealth inequality and detailed plans to address it. (I’m very much looking forward to Warren being asked to define the differences between her ideas and his.)
After the last Democratic presidential primary and in the run-up to the 2016 election, trillions of pixels were expended on the question of whether Sanders supporters would come around to supporting Clinton or not. Most did, but a critical minority did not.
We probably won’t see much speculation on whether Clinton supporters will support Sanders in his bid for the nomination this time. It should be a hot topic because Clinton supporters are the majority of the party, and many believe Sanders played a role in Clinton’s loss.
In her campaign memoir, Clinton wrote:
“His attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign.”
The lasting damage wasn’t only to Clinton, IMO. Clinton supporters may doom Sanders’ candidacy this time around, and relatively quickly. But they’ll do it during the primary, which is how intra-party rivalries are supposed to be settled.