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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks in Columbia, S.C., January 20, 2020. (Sam Wolfe/Reuters)

On the menu today: Establishment Democrats suddenly realize Bernie Sanders might win the nomination; a lot of ominous signs for Sanders in a general-election matchup; some other observations from the winter meeting of the Stand Together groups allied with Charles Koch; and some little-known sterling organizations making a difference.

The Sudden Democratic Panic about Bernie Sanders

One week before the Iowa caucuses, with Bernie Sanders leading most polls in that state and in New Hampshire, the rest of the Democratic party is suddenly realizing that the Vermont senator could well win the nomination. At NBC News, Politico, and ABC News, the big story this morning is that the Democratic establishment has been caught asleep at the wheel for a second straight cycle.

I know not everyone in the NR audience has such a warm-and-fuzzy perspective about our old friend and colleague David Frum. But Frum is a guy who at least spent some time in the conservative movement and GOP politics, and periodically he reminds the mostly left-of-center audience of The Atlantic of how the world actually works, and when he does, it can turn out to be hilarious. Its like watching a parent try to explain to kids that the coins in their piggy bank cannot, in fact, cover the costs of a trip to Disney World:

Bernie Sanders is a fragile candidate. He has never fought a race in which he had to face serious personal scrutiny. None of his Democratic rivals is subjecting him to such scrutiny in 2020. Hillary Clinton refrained from scrutinizing Sanders in 2016. It did not happen, either, in his many races in Vermont. APoliticoprofile in 2015 by Michael Krusearguedthat Sanders had benefited from an unwritten compact between Sanders, his supporters, and local reporters who have steered clear of writing about Sanderss personal history rather than risk lectures about the twisted priorities of the press.

The Trump campaign will not steer clear. It will hit him with everything its got. It will depict him as a Communist in the grip oftwisted sexual fantasies, a useless career politician who oversaw a culture ofsexual harassmentin his 2016 campaign. Through 2019, Donald Trump and his proxies hailed Sanders as a true voice of the people, thwarted by the evil machinations of the Hillary Clinton machine. They will not pause for a minute before pivoting in 2020 to attack him as a seething stew of toxic masculinity whose vicious online followers martyred the Democratic Partys first female presidential nominee

Trump will terrorize the suburban moderates with the threat that Sanders will confiscate their health insurance and stock holdings, if not their homes. Trump accused Democrats of pro-ayatollah sympathies for noticing that his story about the killing of Qassem Soleimani was full of holes. In 1980, Sanders joined a left-wing party whose presidential candidate condemned anti-Iranian hysteria around the U.S. hostages being held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, suggesting that many of them are simply spies or people assigned to protect the spies, as Ronald RadoshreportedinThe Daily Beast.Imagine what Trump and his team will do withthat.

A lot of stuff that was either no big deal or dismissed as just Bernie being Bernie in Vermont will look really bad in GOP attack ads in all of those swing states. I still cant believe we havent seen a single commercial that even mentions Sanderss otherworldly op-ed about womens rape fantasies. The Sanders campaign will insist it was the foolish ramblings from a confused young man, written many decades ago. The Trump campaign will point out, accurately, that Sanders was 30 years old when he wrote it.

The whistling-past-the-graveyard assessment of Sanders for Democrats is that his particular quirks wont much effect on the overall contours of the race; in a matchup between any Democrat and Trump, any Democrat just has to keep the blue states and flip the big three in the Upper Midwest Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania to win the presidency. But . . . a new poll released Monday measured head to head matchups in Delaware, and . . . Bernie Sanders is ahead of Donald Trump only by a point. Maybe not all those blue states look so secure if Sanders is the nominee.

And did I say flip Pennsylvania? Maybe thats not such a safe bet!

John Fetterman, Pennsylvanias lieutenant governor, and Bill Peduto, Pittsburghs mayor, both Democrats, agree on one thing: a pledge to ban all hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, could jeopardize any presidential candidates chances of winning this most critical of battleground states and thus the presidency itself. So as Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren woo young environmental voters with a national fracking ban, these two Democrats are uneasy.

In Pennsylvania, youre talking hundreds of thousands of related jobs that would be they would be unemployed overnight, said Mr. Fetterman, who endorsed Mr. Sanders in 2016 before Donald J. Trump won his state, pop. 12.8 million, by just over 44,000 votes. Pennsylvania is a margin play, he added. And an outright ban on fracking isnt a margin play.

Ramesh lays out an argument that the Trump campaign, or Trump supporters, will use to sway Trump-skeptical or Trump-weary conservatives if Sanders is the Democratic nominee. Even a minimally competent President Sanders would still make America significantly more open to socialist policies in the long run. The limits of whats politically possible will shift left as the political world adjusts to the new reality. Politicians, strategists, journalists, activists and voters who thought that certain ideas were too far left to make it in America would revise their sense of the country, and of what counts as extreme or as realistic within it. The ground on which future races for president, governor and Congress are contested would move left. That doesnt mean the U.S. would be Venezuela, or even Denmark, by the start of 2022. But it is reasonable to expect that government policy 10 or 20 years from now would be considerably more socialistic than it would be if Trump were re-elected or if Biden were elected.

Signs of Hope for America, Well beyond the Beltway

Various news and notes from this years Koch/Stand Together winter meeting . . .

The Koch winter meeting loves to spotlight charitable and nonprofit groups with new and different approaches to tacking social problems.

As mentioned yesterday, this country is full of good people who want to make a difference. And sometimes these corners of America with good people making a difference feel like theyre light years away from whats going on in Washington.

ADDENDUM: Look, my fellow air travelers. I hate delayed flights and the risk of missed connections as much as the next guy. But the weather is the weather, and if you fly through, say, San Francisco, theres always going to be the chance of fog delaying things. The poor woman behind the counter at the gate cannot control the weather and, in most circumstances, is doing the best she can. It does not matter to the weather if you have a lot of frequent-flyer miles, and the gate agents manager isnt going to be able to change the weather, either.

See original here:
Bernie Is Frightening the Democrats - National Review