I will be honest, and state for the record that I do not want Bernie Sanders, a Democrat only when convenient for himself, to mount a 2020 presidential campaign. I'm not alone in this opinion. Indeed, recently, the Barrie-Montpelier, Vermont Times Argus ran a main editorial begging Bernie Sanders NOT to run for the White House in 2020. Here are some highlights:
Bernie Sanders should not run for president. In fact, we beg him not to. That is an unfavorable opinion, especially among most Vermonters and progressives who support the platform that has come to define him. But at this point, there are more things about another Sanders run at the White House that concern us than excite us.
We fear a Sanders run risks dividing the well-fractured Democratic Party, and could lead to another split in the 2020 presidential vote. There is too much at stake to take that gamble. If we are going to maintain a two-party system, the mandate needs to be a clear one. There is strength in numbers, and if anything has been shown in recent years, it is that unless tallies are overwhelming, there can always be questions or challenges raised over what “vote totals” really mean: popular vote vs. Electoral College results.
For us, this comes down to principle over ego. It is one thing to start a revolution, but at a certain point you need to know when to step out of the way and let others carry the water for you.
[T]here have been progressive candidates, many of whom have been running under Sanders’ “revolution” banner (and with his endorsement) who are spreading the tenets of Sanders’ decades-old agenda: Rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure; reversing climate change; creating worker co-ops; growing the trade-union movement; raising the minimum wage; pay equity for women workers; trade policies that benefit American workers; making college affordable for all; taking on Wall Street; health care as a human right; protecting the most vulnerable Americans; and tax reform.
As a platform, it is massive. As a candidate, Sanders is exhausting.
[H]is personality is abrasive. He is known to be difficult to work with. The 77-year-old can be bombastic and prickly. He can be dismissive and rude in his arrogance. You are either with Bernie Sanders or you are not.
That no-nonsense approach and his politics are endearing to many. But it is as extreme, on the other end of the spectrum in its policy elbow-throwing and idealism, as what we face today from the right in their standard bearer, Donald Trump.
Taken together — ego, electoral math, a tired message and a prickly media darling — Sanders is convincing himself that he’s the person who can win the White House in 2020. We are not convinced he should.
As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) weighs a possible second bid for the White House, his political standing has grown shakier amidst an account of alleged sexual assault and accounts of alleged misconduct by staffers on his 2016 campaign.
Some former aides to that campaign had already balked at joining another run. And while outside groups are actively drafting him again—with meetings scheduled across the country this weekend—Sanders remains notably behind some of his Senate colleagues in the process of launching or preparing to launch a presidential bid. Even some of his former aides acknowledge the worsening political conditions.
“I think he still runs and I do think it’s going to be a lot harder,” a former staffer, who had decided not to return to the campaign prior to the surfacing of any of the allegations, told The Daily Beast.
For weeks, former staffers had been having private conversations about allegations of sexual harassment and unwanted advances on female staffers by Robert Becker, the head of Sanders’ Iowa operation. Those conversations primarily centered around ways to ensure that another bid didn’t bring the same problems as the previous one, including naming the 2016 bad actors and establishing a better structure for dealing with any such claims in a 2020 campaign.
On Thursday, a Politico story aired some of those claims about Becker, who has denied them, including allegations of forcible kissing, ogling prospective hires and a $30,000 settlement stemming from a federal discrimination complaint.
Masha Mendieta, a member of Sanders’ 2016 Latino outreach team . . . . said she was upset that the women making accusations hadn’t yet heard directly from the senator or his team. Last month, she had penned a Medium post expressing outrage that another 2016 campaign alum, Arturo Carmona, had been photographed at a Sanders Institute gathering in Vermont. Mendieta had accused Carmona, who ran for Congress in a special election, of sexual harassment, an allegation that he has denied.
Mendieta and another staffer also said that they had concerns about Rich Pelletier, Sanders’ former national field director, remaining in the senator’s political orbit. The New York Times reported that Pelletier allegedly failed to act swiftly after Giulianna Di Lauro, a Latino outreach strategist on the ‘16 campaign, complained to him of harassment by a campaign surrogate in Nevada.
Additionally, Jeff Weaver, the former campaign manager, said this week that he will not reprise his role should Sanders run again in 2020. The decision had been previously in the works and was not in response to the surfacing of harassment and assault allegations, sources said. But Weaver did acknowledged that a future prospective campaign needed more diversity.
“Was it too male? Yes. Was it too white? Yes,” he told The New York Times. “Would this be a priority to remedy on any future campaign? Definitely, and we share deeply in the urgency for all of us to make change.”
I support many of the policies Sanders talks about, but I simply do not believe he can win in 2020. Thus, the question is whether Sanders will put the best interests of the policies he espouses first or will he put his ego ahead of them? I hope it is not the latter. The Democrats MUST win in 2020.
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