Article by Holly Otterbein and David Siders in "Politico":
Suddenly, Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is being taken seriously.
For months, the Vermont senator was
written off by Democratic Party insiders as a candidate with a committed
but narrow base who was too far left to win the primary. Elizabeth
Warren had skyrocketed in the polls and seemed to be leaving him behind
in the race to be progressive voters’ standard-bearer in 2020.
“It may have been inevitable that
eventually you would have two candidates representing each side of the
ideological divide in the party. A lot of smart people I’ve talked to
lately think there’s a very good chance those two end up being Biden and
Sanders,” said David Brock, a longtime Hillary Clinton ally who founded
a pro-Clinton super PAC in the 2016 campaign. “They’ve both proven to
be very resilient.”
Democratic insiders said they are
rethinking Sanders’ bid for a few reasons: First, Warren has recently
fallen in national and early state surveys. Second, Sanders has
withstood the ups and downs of the primary, including a heart attack. At
the same time, other candidates with once-high expectations, such as
Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Beto O’Rourke, have dropped out or
languished in single digits in the polls.
“I believe people should take him very
seriously. He has a very good shot of winning Iowa, a very good shot of
winning New Hampshire, and other than Joe Biden, the best shot of
winning Nevada,” said Dan Pfeiffer, who served as an adviser to former
President Barack Obama. “He could build a real head of steam heading
into South Carolina and Super Tuesday.”
The durability of Sanders’ candidacy
has come as a surprise even in some states where he performed strongly
in 2016 and where he is attempting to improve his standing ahead of the
2020 election.
California state Sen. Scott Wiener,
who defeated a Sanders-backed Democrat for his seat in the liberal-heavy
San Francisco area in 2016, said Sanders has been “more resilient than I
anticipated.”
“But in retrospect,” he added, “he has a very, very loyal following, and people have really stuck with him.”
Sanders is in second place in national
polls, nearly 9 percentage points behind Biden, according to the most
recent RealClearPolitics average. He is second in Iowa and first in New
Hampshire. The latest CNN poll found he has the highest net favorability rating of any Democratic presidential candidate.
While Sanders’ supporters complain
relentlessly that he has received less attention from the media than
other candidates, he has also avoided sustained criticism that some of
his rivals have suffered. That could be helping him, especially compared
with Warren, who has recently come under fire from the left and center
for her health care plan.
“If you really think about it, Bernie
hasn’t been hit a lot with anything. It’s not like he’s getting hit by
other campaigns,” said Michael Ceraso, a former New Hampshire director
for Pete Buttigieg’s campaign who worked for Sanders in 2016.
“You sort of take for granted that he,
like Biden, are institutional figures for very different reasons,”
Ceraso said. “Early in the campaign, Bernie’s people said, ‘Look, this
guy in these early states has a nice hold, and there’s a percentage of
supporters, a quarter of the electorate will potentially go for him.'”
He added, “It waned a little bit because people were looking at other
options … and now they’re saying, ‘Wait a minute, this guy has been the
most consistent of anyone.'”
At the beginning of the year — another
high point for Sanders’ campaign, before Warren surged — some
establishment Democrats talked about how to stop his momentum. Brock,
who has a close relationship with many Democratic donors, said he has
not heard anything like that in recent weeks: “That doesn’t mean it
won’t happen. This is more of an analysis in the political world than in
the donor world.”
Many moderate Democrats still dismiss
Sanders’ candidacy. They believe his so-called ceiling remains intact
and that Warren will depress any room for growth he might otherwise
have.
“He can’t win the nomination,” said
Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left group Third Way, adding that
Sanders’ uptick is simply him “bouncing around between his ceiling and
his floor a little bit more than people had thought he would.”
On the other hand, he acknowledged his
staying power. “Not until the very end will people say to Bernie
Sanders, ‘When are you dropping out?’”
A series of TV segments around last
week’s Democratic debate illustrate the shift in how Sanders is being
perceived. “We never talk about Bernie Sanders. He is actually doing
pretty well in this polling,” former senior Obama adviser David Axelrod
said on CNN after the event. “He’s actually picked up. And the fact is
Bernie Sanders is as consistent as consistent can be.”
The same day on MSNBC, national
political correspondent Steve Kornacki said, “Democratic voters like
him, and if he starts winning, there could be a bandwagon effect.” GOP
pollster Frank Luntz, who conducted a California focus group that found
most participants thought Sanders had won the debate, said on CNBC, “I
think you’re going to see continued movement. Sanders has been gaining
in California over the past two months.”
Larry Cohen, chairman of the
pro-Sanders group Our Revolution, said Warren’s candidacy is not a
problem for Sanders if both of them can — together — amass a plurality
of delegates heading into the convention.
“The math is that if you think of the
voters for Warren and the voters for Sanders as two circles, yes, there
is overlap, [but] most of the circles are separate,” Cohen said. “I
think between them, we can get to a majority.”
If Sanders’ candidacy continues to be
taken seriously, he will eventually be subjected to the scrutiny that
Warren and Biden have faced for prolonged stretches. That includes an
examination of his electability. “That conversation has never worked
well for anyone,” Pfeiffer said.
Former California Gov. Gray Davis
stopped short of saying firm support for "Medicare for All" would be an
impediment for Democrats in the primary but suggested the risk for the
nominee is significant.
“Californians and Americans, in general, like options — not mandates,” he said.
Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign
manager, said political insiders and pundits are rethinking his chances
“not out of the goodness of their heart,” but because “it is harder and
harder to ignore him when he’s rising in every average that you see.”
And he welcomes a conversation about Sanders’ electability, he said.
“We want that,” he said. “I’d love to be able to argue why he stands a better chance to beat Donald Trump than Joe Biden.”
