Post by Old Badger on Apr 12, 2020 12:01:43 GMT -5
Democrats look at the presidential contest with a new sentiment: Optimism
What's the difference this time? "President" Donald J. Trump:
The failure of many to see the threat Trump posed in 2016 allowed too many to sit home or, like West, vote for the Green or Libertarian candidates. No doubt the misleading early-fall polls, showing a lopsided race because the Republicans had not yet coalesced behind Trump, made it seem safe at the time. But after four years we all know better--I hope.
Harvard philosopher Cornel West, a prominent champion of Bernie Sanders’s presidential ambitions, defiantly threw his support to the Green Party when Hillary Clinton, a politician he called a “neoliberal disaster,” sealed the Democratic nomination in 2016. Four years later, in a clear sign of all that has changed, West says he will support the probable Democratic nominee Joe Biden as part of an “anti-fascist coalition” against President Trump in November, despite his concerns about the former vice president’s ties to “Wall Street and militarism.” “Biden is better than Trump,” West said. “There’s no doubt about it.” Comments like this have gone a long way in shedding the shell of anxiety and fear that has long enshrouded a Democratic Party still shattered by its unexpected loss to Trump in 2016. In the past month, amid the worst public health crisis in a century, the party has coalesced around a single candidate far earlier than most expected, and set aside many of the divisions that hobbled Clinton in 2016. WP article
The long-feared contested convention has been forestalled. A traditional, cast of thousands party gathering that would have given Biden opponents a nationally televised forum for protest appears less and less likely to occur. Allegations of intraparty rigging that defined 2016 have been largely quarantined in Trump campaign news releases. Already Sanders and Biden are engaged in mutual public praise that eluded Sanders and Clinton four years ago and delayed his endorsement until July. And for the first time in 16 years, a non-incumbent Democrat has sealed the presidential nomination in early April, providing an extended runway to prepare for the general election. “There is a presumptive nominee which every other contender for the nomination now acknowledges, and that was not clear like this in 2016,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said, echoing the new mood among party leaders. “That gives us months to not only define the stakes but to also define the contrast.” Former senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota also expressed confidence about the prospects for party unity, saying the tone she detected from Sanders since his Wednesday departure from the race was markedly different from 2016. “When you look at this, Senator Sanders immediately coming out and saying Joe Biden’s a decent person, a great human being, that’s an endorsement I think Secretary Clinton didn’t exactly get,” said Heitkamp, adding that Democrats have another advantage they lacked in the last election: “What Hillary Clinton didn’t have in ’16 is she didn’t have President Trump. And President Trump may be the single most significant unifying factor in the Democratic Party.”