Tuesday, March 03, 2020

Palace-Court Drama

This morning we are watching a huge power play.  Whether the populist communist Bernie Sanders will prevail against the entrenched in the Democratic party.  There are only four candidates now, and it looks like the institutional Democrats are coalescing behind Joe Biden, while the young upstarts are aligning with the aging socialist from Vermont.

We will learn more after the polls close tonight, but the struggle is real and the battle lines are forming.  What interests me is that it is almost exactly the same dynamic that played out four years ago in the Republican party.  Then, we had a field of institutional Republicans led by Jeb Bush aligned against a rebellious realtor from New York.  The party wanted the solid, respectable Jeb Bush and the people wanted the pugnacious Donald Trump.  Of course, we know how that turned out.  Trump went through the field of candidates like a shredder being pulled behind a John Deere tractor.  He clear-cut everything.

I've never understood why the Democrats let Bernie Sanders run as a Democrat.  He's not a Democrat,   If they wanted to stop him, they could have simply not allowed him to run as a Democrat.  But, they didn't.  Today they have a choice to make, and it may well be out of the hands of the institutional politicians.

As Nigel Farage said recently, "There is a reason why populism is so popular."

1 comment:

Old NFO said...

Yep, got plenty of popcorn for this night.