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With the suspension of Bernie Sanders’ campaign, former vice president Joe Biden is now the clear Democratic nominee.
There is still talk in leftist circles of protesting the DNC come August, or of Sanders’ receiving the Green Party nom. And you can technically write Sanders in for your state’s primary.
But ultimately, these measures are likely to be ineffective. Whether it’s the sting of defeat or the fact that going to Milwaukee to stage a protest just isn’t feasible for the average American, it’s likely Biden will remain the candidate and that Sanders is out for the count.
This is not good.
Regardless of your feelings about him, Biden has been effectively out of the public eye since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. And his few appearances have been…less than impressive. Ol’ Joe seems to be a few cards short of a deck, particularly in comparison to New York governor Andrew Cuomo, whose Stern-But-Loving-Italian-Dad energy has made him the unexpected face of the Democratic party, a cool, competent, yet human contrast to President Trump’s bumbles.
Photographer Pete Souza captioned a photograph of Cuomo and Barack Obama as “A former president with the current acting president”. #draftcuomo trended on Twitter. Think-pieces praising the governor (and, bizarrely, speculating about the state of his nipples) have been popping up all over the place, with little more than a peep on Biden.
Yet it is sufficiently unlikely Cuomo will be drafted as the democratic presidential nominee. He doesn’t seem terribly interested in being president, anyway.
So what are we to do?
Hope people forget Biden’s going senile by November.
Yet by viewing the election as over and done with, we risk a repeat of 2016. Sanders is, in many ways, Trump’s good counterpart—both are political outsiders who are openly critical of the establishment. And there is a segment of Trump supporters who, instead of being taken in by the president’s open racism and xenophobia , were simply sick of being let down and feeling forgotten by establishment politicians. There is a chance that Sanders could sway these supporters, especially as Trump has betrayed them.
Biden couldn’t. And unlike Sanders, he lacks resonance with the youth—who are steadily beginning to outnumber the baby boomers who has social control. This renders him a much less effective candidate in the face of Trump.
Yet if we act like Sanders has already lost, he will. Acting like there’s no point in going out and voting hands the nomination to Biden and potentially, hands the election right back to Trump.
English 3880-Alix's Blog 