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2016 Democratic Primary Results by Primary and by Convention Roll Call (source: Wikipedia)

Last week, Bernie Sanders of Vermont declared his candidacy for the 2020 US presidential election.  As in 2016, rather than bypass the primary process and run as an independent (as Starbucks billionaire and political dilettante Howard Schultz says he will do),  Sanders, who has caucused with the Democrats for as long as he has held national office, has again entered the Democratic race.  As in 2016, the candidacy of this unapologetic Democratic Socialist is a thrill for many, a muddle for some, and a threat to an influential group of others.  What the muddled and the threatened have in common (other than perhaps unfinished business with regard to events of 2016) is an argument that perhaps the Democratic race should be confined to actual Democrats.

An example of this is this brief commentary by John Stoehr at Washington Monthly.  The title of the piece is the first sentence:

Bernie Sanders is still not a Democrat. Now that the independent senator has made his run for president official, that fact bears repeating. When you want the nomination of a political party, your commitment to that party matters, especially to its members who are going to select their nominee.

Because Sanders is not a Democrat, he must find a coalition outside the party that is of two minds: those who are attached to the Democratic Party for arbitrary reasons, and those who are hostile to it. I’m not talking about Democrats who want the party to go in new directions. I’m talking about voters with weak ties to the party, who may have a history of supporting its nominees, but who are generally hostile to the very idea of political parties.

The kernel of Stoehr's argument is in this paragraph:

I could be wrong, but I don’t think there are enough voters outside the party who want what Sanders is selling. If there are, I don’t think they are as mobilized as Democratic partisans in the current anti-Donald Trump climate. Partisan commitments are categorical. I suspect there aren’t enough voters inside the party to lift Sanders to the nomination, because, really, why vote for him when you can vote for [Elizabeth] Warren? 

Shouldn't we welcome the opportunity to give primary voters the chance to answer that question for themselves?

I'm not a political scientist, but it seems counterintuitive to me to say that there is not a constituency for Bernie Sanders' message either inside or outside the Democratic party, presumably drawing voters in.  Using data from Wikipedia on the 2016 Primary, I created the table below.  Recalling that there was a concerted effort against Sanders on the part of party officials in the primary to such a degree that when it was outed by Wikileaks in the heat of the Democratic National Convention in July it forced the resignation of the head of the DNC following Clinton's nomination, Sanders' performance was extraordinary.

2016 Democratic Primary Results

		Clinton		Sanders
Primary Results	Primaries won (Convention roll call-- NH declared a tie)	34  (40)	59.65% (70.17%)	23  (14)	40.35% (28.07%)
	Votes Cast (excluding results of closed caucuses and non-binding primaries)	16,847,084	55.20%	13,168,222	43.14%
Votes Cast in Primaries by Primary Type* (percentages are of votes cast for either Clinton or Sanders) *excludes caucuses	Semi-open	696,681	56.55%	535,395	43.45%
	Open	6,363,700	57.13%	4,776,063	42.87%
	Semi-closed	4,942,794	53.42%	4,310,674	46.58%
	Closed	5,177,733	58.70%	3,643,322	41.30%
	Totals	17,180,908	56.43%	13,265,454	43.57%
Delegates	Delegates needed to win nomination	2,382
	Pledged Delegates (from Primary Votes)	2,271	55.51%	1,820	44.49%
	Unpledged (Super-)Delegates (Party VIPs)	571	92.69%	45	7.31%

In spite of Clinton's inevitability* going into the race, Sanders acquitted himself repeatedly.  He performed equally well in open and in closed primaries (i.e., those in which registered voters of any party are able to vote for their choice of Democrat versus those in which only  registered Democrats may vote for the nominee.)  Tellingly, the map of wins by state reveal a North South polarity with Sanders making almost a clean sweep across the open primary states of the north including what turned out to be the all-important Wisconsin and Michigan, compared to the familiar coastal-landlocked polarity of the general election. Sanders, who takes no corporate money, did worst among the unpledged Super delegates-- the party apparatchiks and VIPs beholden to the moneyed interests that donate heavily to Democratic war chests to keep its agenda in the center.  His performance in general voting belies the notion that voters ostensibly selecting their preferred Democratic nominee rejected Sanders' strictly on the basis of his Independent affiliation.  Sanders' presence on the Democratic ballot was considered a novelty at the time, but it provided a bookend to the hiatus from politics as usual that Donald Trump's steamroller represented on the hyper crowded Republican end of the spectrum.  Something was in the water.

Sanders is going into the 2020 race with a great deal of momentum carried over from his 2016 effort as his record breaking fundraising on the day of his announcement demonstrated.  By many accounts if Joe Biden enters the race, the very wide field will narrow quickly to essentially just the two.  Setting aside my own violent intestinal reaction to the idea of Joe Biden (busing opponent, plagiarist, mandatory drug sentencing proponent, Clarence Thomas enabler, Thurmond and McCain acolyte, constituent glommer) as nominee let alone president, if he insists on running why shouldn't he, too, be given a run for his money in the rigorous trial by primary and caucus that Sanders is volunteering himself for.

This is the delicate dance that must happen in primary season.  The perpetual tension between the party old guard and challenges to the status quo from the upstart avant-garde seem always to favor those whose "time has come", whose "dues have been paid"-- the hand-picked, the inevitable-- over fresh blood, new ideas and threats of actual change that matters, but primary season is a waste of time if it doesn't infuse each campaign with the dreams of its constituents.  The American political system is a two party system-- all other voices are shut out after Labor Day when all that are left are the two major party nominees from whom only one will be chosen by voters in November and the spoilers for the one who will lose.  The system is resistant to change and yields almost no opportunity for coalitions to be forged.  This hardly mattered when business as usual was good enough.  Now the stakes are too high for partisan politics to trump (pardon  the expression) voting for the future of the planet.  Partisan politics is nothing more than an obstacle to the task at hand, and sadly it's all that we have to work with.

Perhaps Bernie Sanders has found a way around this. The party lost me for 20 years starting in the Bill Clinton years due to a steady course of triangulation, stagnation, corruption and retreat from progressive action.  Bernie Sanders brought me back.

(Source: Wikipedia)

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* There is undoubtedly lingering (misplaced) resentment directed at Bernie Sanders and his supporters for what happened after Clinton won the nomination.  For a vivid analysis of why democrats would do well to learn from what Clinton herself could have done to tighten the screws on her own campaign (regardless of any and every force-- real or imagined-- beyond her control you could name that was against it) and why failure to do so is asking for a repeat of history in 2020, this lengthy piece by Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs rewards the read.