A 17 Step Path to Victory

I've always thought that Bernie Sanders's main obstacle in this 2020 campaign ordeal was going to be the democratic primary.  Provided he could get through the primary victorious, he would defeat Trump.  Joe Biden it now seems has the opposite problem.  The general election will be a Biden massacre.  It does look more and more, however, like the democratic establishment will pull off a primary victory for him.  1 out of 2 ain't bad, you may say.  Well it's looking that way, but the primary is not yet over.  There is still a way that Bernie Sanders could get over this hurdle:

1. The contrast between the competent, consistent, honest, real, vital and energetic visionary who is Bernie and the degenerating before our eyes, always less-than, conventionally bad Biden, the difference between their principles and the aims of their campaigns, is made patently clear to the American people in their one-on-one debate this weekend.  The earth moves toward Bernie.

2.  Barring that, Biden implodes on schedule in a way that even party establishment types have to admit is unforgiveable.

3.  Barring that, the drip-drip-drip of Biden horribleness finally seeps through the floor of his momentum.

4.  Everybody of voting age in the country reads this, or watches the video.

5. People watch this video of a Bernie panel in Detroit from a couple of days ago responding to the coronavirus crisis and get a taste of what they could be having in a Bernie Sanders administration, and finally grok the notion that medicare for all is not only NOT a crackpot radical idea but the only sane and responsible approach a modern society should take toward the health and well-being of its citizens-- and that we must elect the only candidate who is about making it happen (who happens to be Bernie Sanders):

6.  The sunlight breaks through the Insurance industry funded cloud on the fact that Medicare for All means a smaller family and individual budget for healthcare, more healthcare choices, no deductions, no premiums, no co-pays, no fighting with insurance companies, no paying out of pocket and filing paperwork to recover a percentage of the cost calibrated to benefit the insurance company not the insured, no employers capriciously switching from the insurance policy you supposedly "love" (and would supposedly choose if public heath care funding were an option) to a company you hate with less coverage for even more of your paycheck, no more padding your healthcare budget with the profits of insurance companies, pharmaceuticals and the medical industrial complex, no more hanging on to jobs you hate or people who are bad for you just to keep the insurance they provide you, no fear of losing healthcare if you lose your job.

7. It finally dawns on people that unless Bernie Sanders is the nominee, he cannot win the general, and if he does not win the general, they and their loved ones and those most in need of it will yet again find the no-brainer of universal healthcare deferred indefinitely until the next champion for poor and working people comes along (in another generation at the prevailing rate for these chances).

8.  Ditto for climate change and the green new deal.  No biggie, just the planet we live on, the only habitable world we know, is at stake.

9. Repeat for college debt cancellation; free public college for all; increasing minimum wage to a living wage; decriminalizing poverty; paid family and medical leave; meaningful and sane immigration reform that helps people who want to to become Americans rather than punishes them; prison and justice reform; help for First Nations communities; election reform; tax reform; and a host of other priorities for a more just, equitable and prosperous future for all of us and not just for the donors and the wealthy few.

10. Voters, particularly those affiliated with parties, decide en masse to vote in the interest of society, not of the party establishment.

11. Old people wake up to a realization that they need to start thinking about the future beyond themselves.  They need to vote for their children and if they did not have children, they need to redeem themselves anyway.

12. Young people vote with actual votes, not with like buttons, fire emojis and memes.

13. Campaigns are retroactively equitably funded by tax dollars, not by private individuals or corporations.

14. Democratic establishment figures are miraculously collectively struck with a revelation that they have sold their souls to the devil and that this perhaps explains their fixation on repeating losing backward facing strategies with loser candidates in election after election. In repentance, they begin doubling down on efforts to fix the electoral mess they've made of the primary thus far and to ensure a fair, open and truly democratic vote for the 31 remaining primaries.  (Or are collectively struck mute and catatonic.)

15. People retroactively get their information about candidates from a socialized publicly funded media that has not been coopted by corporate interests.

16. Barring this, people adopt a great deal more skepticism about information, opinions and advice from professional elites.

17. Those who are already skeptical resist cynicism, turn their irritation into anger and their anger into action and refuse to let them get away with this.

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I realize that this could have been a much shorter path to victory if I had included something about Elizabeth Warren putting her vaunted principles before her vanity and joining forces with Bernie Sanders or simply endorsing him to bolster the progressive, future facing wing of the party, but I didn't want to be unrealistic.