The Bernie Bomb Anyone who donated $20 to the Sanders campaign should ask for a refund. By Kimberley A. Strassel
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-bernie-bomb-1444948564
If Sanders devotees took a momentary break from their adulation, they’d realize they have good cause to get their money back. Most of Mr. Sanders’s low-dollar donors dug deep to send that $20 or $50 in the belief that their candidate is in it to win.
Mr. Sanders must be in this race for something, but it can’t be the Oval Office.
A candidate who was in it to win wouldn’t have given Hillary Clinton an assist with her email problem, or ignored her Clinton Foundation entanglements. Mr. Sanders radiates that he is too pure of heart, too sincere a liberal, too focused on “serious issues,” to deign to address Mrs. Clinton’s ethics. He brags that he doesn’t run negative ads; he deplores “political soap opera.” No doubt many of his supporters admire him for that. Mrs. Clinton certainly does. ( Bill Clinton will too, once he stops laughing.)
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But that isn’t admirable high-mindedness; it’s a sellout that undercuts the core of Mr. Sanders’s message. The senator’s biggest attraction is that he promises to end business as usual. Mrs. Clinton is business as usual. She believes she is not bound by the same rules as the 99% of Americans Mr. Sanders claims to represent. She and her foundation are tied into, and daily profit from, the “billionaire” class that Mr. Sanders claims is the country’s biggest problem. So does he mean it?
Precisely because Mr. Sanders is high-minded (go read his September speech at Liberty University on the importance of a “moral life”), how can he be blasé about the prospect of a low-minded, crony-connected, morally flawed opponent ascending to the presidency? It would seem he’d have some obligation to his supporters to address that question.
Not that Bernie had to go full negative on Mrs. Clinton during Tuesday’s debate. But he might at least have noted that she has some explaining to do, or said that he was reserving judgment on the email matter until the FBI finishes its probe. That’s a far cry from what he actually did: undercut a legitimate investigation by offering Mrs. Clinton pre-emptive absolution.
A candidate who was in it to win also wouldn’t have turned in what can only be described as a lazy debate performance, redolent of Donald Trump’s first effort. Mrs. Clinton may have problems, but she at least came ready to make everyone forget them. She was honed and focused—triangulating here, delivering set-piece lines there, ready with answers to tricky questions.
Mr. Sanders sounded the same way that he always does—on the stump, on the Senate floor, at dinner. He coughed out his usual lines on billionaires and global warming but was stunningly unprepared for obvious questions on obvious topics. He remarkably allowed Mrs. Clinton to get to his right, with little more than an easy promise that she won’t turn the U.S. into Denmark. He even more remarkably allowed her to get to his left with an unanswered claim that he was a National Rifle Association toady.
Mr. Sanders stumbled through all this with incoherent meditations on “rural” states and the problems with “shouting,” and promises to educate the country on the achievements of Sweden. By the end, he looked to be pitching himself primarily to that core voting bloc of anti-gun-control socialists. All 211 of them.
Sanders devotees will claim this is all part of his charm—he’s the same guy, wherever he shows up. But it takes little effort to gin up giant pep rallies that teem with idealistic youngsters (who may or may not bother to vote) on friendly turf (Portland, Boston, Los Angeles) in states that Democrats already own. The rest of the voting public—including the swing-state independents whose support decides elections—expect a candidate who can deliver a coherent and consistent message on his feet in a debate.
Liberals keep claiming that Mr. Sanders is the stealth Obama of this race, the underdog who will beat expectations. But the better comparison may be Bill Bradley.
Mr. Bradley was also an idealist who drew big crowds. At this stage in the 2000 Democratic nominating process, he tied or led Al Gore in Iowa and New Hampshire. Mr. Bradley appealed to a certain liberal, white voter, but he never could, and never did, look like a winner to the power players and unions that drive voters in the Iowa caucuses. They rallied for Mr. Gore, who decisively beat the former basketball star and sent Mr. Bradley’s campaign into collapse. He didn’t win a single primary.
Perhaps Mr. Sanders doesn’t believe he can win. If his only goal is to pull the Democratic field left, he (as a proxy for Elizabeth Warren) has succeeded. But he arguably owes more to those he’s telling he can be president. It’d be nice if he meant it.
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