Wednesday, February 12, 2020

It’s A Start, Not A Finish

The headlines about Bernie Sanders winning the New Hampshire primary make it sound like the next event will be the balloon drop at the convention for him.  But for those of us who remember recent history, he won the New Hampshire primary in 2016 by double digits over Hillary Clinton.  How’d that work out for him?

The headlines also proclaim that he is “staking claim to the Democrats’ left wing.”  Again, not a news flash, but since he finished 1.5% ahead of Pete Buttigieg and ended up with the same number of delegates (9) as Mayor Pete and three more than Amy Klobuchar, it’s a rather thin claim.

I was slightly surprised to see how Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden did — or didn’t — do.  Neither got a delegate out of New Hampshire.  Sen. Warren is a next-door neighbor to the Granite State, as is Sen. Sanders, and former Vice President Biden has been on the ballot and campaigned there since the 1970’s, it seems.  It’s a little much to read the tea leaves and foredoom both of them, but it’s pure punditry to say that a close finish in the first primary is solid evidence of Dems in Disarray.  If anything, it’s clarifying that Andrew Yang and Sen. Michael Bennett dropped out (I had to be reminded that Bennett was even running); I’m gonna miss the $1,000 a month that Mr. Yang was promising me, and Colorado needs Mr. Bennett in the Senate just in case Trumper Corey Gardner wins re-election.

My hope from this point on is that the Democrats will stop their kids-in-the-wayback squabbling and concentrate on the matter at hand: bringing a swift and merciless end to the Trump regime.  That’s it.  I daresay most Democrats, be they Bernie Bros or Klobuchargers or Mayor Pete’s Brigade, want that too, and now it’s time to get on with it.  It will be messy — when is it ever not? — but it’s certainly better than the alternative.

One bark on “It’s A Start, Not A Finish

  1. Please god, not Bernie. If he’s our candidate we’re doomed. There are some who would never ever vote for him – they’d stay home – and if they do Trump wins again.

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