Put in Context, Sanders’ Loss is Truly Agonizing

For 5 years Senator Bernard Sanders seemed like a unique expression of public grief. To many, Sanders represented an entirely new yet long overdue political actor in mainstream politics. For others, he was the last breath of ideas from a bygone era of the Democratic Party. In either case, The New Deal Democrats had been gone for 2 generations, and those who remembered them represented a tiny minority in the American political narrative.

In its place the Clinton-era Democrats had risen. Their power over the Democratic party had felt absolute, culminating in the seemingly imminent nomination of another Clinton. One that would bring a historic moment with her, who would help add to the necessary visibility of diversity in leadership. But the ideology, the centrist take on politics, would remain.

So enter Bernie Sanders, the protest candidate catapulted to international fame. His rise and fall were truly history making.

There are the records we’ve heard a lot. Things like “the most volunteers in primary history” or “the most individual donations in primary history.” Records were set for phone calls made and doors knocked. The largest primary upset in the history of the system took place in Michigan in Sanders’ favor, a swing of 20 points from polling the night before to give him the win.

Yet that’s not the full context. Viewed in this lens, Sanders feels like a unique event, an expression of “authentic progressivism” not seen since the days of The New Deal.

This simply wasn’t the case. The Democratic primary since its modern inception has had liberal firebrands, even some who managed to grab the nomination in their time. In essence, there is a story for every possible result of the progressive movement’s push for power and recognition within the Democratic Party. None of them provide much hope.

1968: The Invisible Man

When the Chicago riots of 1968 are looked back on in a mainstream narrative, they’re typically referenced as a general anti-war protest. What took place inside the Democratic convention itself is almost never talked about. Yet this is where the progressive / centrist struggle truly manifests in its modern form.

Following the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the candidate with the 2nd most votes was Eugene McCarthy. McCarthy was staunchly against the Vietnam War, and it was his entering into the primary and surprisingly good performance that caused LBJ to announce his resignation. Once the field was open, Robert Kennedy jumped in, and a struggle for the mantle of the Party’s future began.

Yet despite McCarthy receiving the 2nd most votes in the primary system, the party chose to appoint Hubert Humphrey, LBJ’s vice President, as the 1968 nominee. Humphrey had not even competed in a single primary. Delegates for McCarthy were dragged out of the convention center by Chicago police to allow the “vote” to go forward.

This debacle is was led to the creation of the modern primary system. Prior to this, primaries were only conducted in a handful of States, and the Party was by no means attached to the results. If they wanted to invalidate the primaries they had every right to do so. It was only the loss of Humphrey and the public optics nightmare of ’68 that primaries were spread to every State, and their results were to be adhered to without fail.

Understanding that the primary system did not really exist prior to 1972 and was not fully implemented until 1976 is essential. It is the beginning point that we can think of for direct democracy within the Democratic Party.

1972: If You Win, You Lose

George McGovern has a familiar sounding story with a very different ending. His campaign is often pointed to by centrists as to why the progressive movement is not allowed to gain the highest office in the land. They say that should we take the national primary nomination, we will lose, and then point to the electoral decimation of George McGovern as evidence.

He started as an underdog candidate, one not taken very seriously by the political trackers of his time. Truthfully, Hunter S. Thompson may be the only person who dutifully followed the campaign from beginning to end. He was the liberal candidate, the one advocating expansions of social safety networks and the New Deal Era policies. His campaign sought the support of young people. His primary victories stunned nearly everyone, including his own supporters. When he finally won the nomination, to some people’s delight and other’s fear, it must’ve seemed like the impossible had become real.

The narrative that it was his progressive polices that sank his national campaign is one of the most dishonest and painful when cataloging the progressive attempts at national office. It fails to mention the essential truth: once George McGovern gained the nomination, the centrist ‘unity’ wing of the party utterly abandoned him.

Democrat after Democrat refused his offer to be the Vice Presidential candidate, doing so in highly public ways as a display of their dissatisfaction with the man who’d rightfully won their Party’s nomination. A highly publicized “Democrats for Nixon” group was formed. The media rallied in unanimous disgust at the McGovern campaign.

Let’s also not forget that this was all before the Watergate scandal, and that the raiding of the Democratic Party Headquarters was done during the McGovern campaign. Nixon had a strong hold on public opinion. He was not an easy opponent prior to the scandal he’s become known for. So, rather than sticking with their party, centrist Democrats jumped ship to what seemed to be the more culturally relevant candidacy.

McGovern, deserted and publicly shunned by both his own party and the mainstream media, was crushed in the national election.

When Sanders seemed close to victory, this was always what I feared. Not that he would be a poor or weak candidate on a national level, as mainstream commentators tried to allege when referencing McGovern. Instead, that his party would abandon him, causing the very split they’d admonished Sanders supporters for supposedly starting by voicing their opinions within the Democratic process. Yet one fundamental difference gave me hope: the opposing national candidate.

1976: Moderate for Moderates’ Sake

“What Carter had that his opponents did not was the acceptance and support of elite sectors of the mass communications media. It was their favorable coverage of Carter and his campaign that gave him an edge, propelling him rocket-like to the top of the opinion polls. This helped Carter win key primary election victories, enabling him to rise from an obscure public figure to President-elect in the short space of 9 months.” — Lawrence Shoup, from his 1980 book The Carter Presidency and Beyond.

Carter’s campaign was the moderate choice. George Wallace, a man trying to blend working-class populism with extreme racism and white nationalism, was also in the race. His racist take on working-class politics disgusted and repulsed most Democratic voters outside the deep south, and any language that aligned with any part of his talking points was similarly shunned. This meant that any working class ideas within the primary were framed as being aligned with Wallace, thus sinking the possibility of a progressive breakout candidate.

Carter was the first person to really take advantage of the primary system. He built “momentum” by winning the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire, ensuring his name was next to the word “winner” for weeks leading up to the main nominating contests. In essence, he founded the modern horse race style of politics we’ve come to expect from Democratic primaries.

It’s important to note what the moderate positions were for 1976. Jimmy Carter openly supported moving the US to a universal healthcare system, though his moderate phased-in approach split with more progressive members of his party. He proposed a system in which people who suffered major medical injuries would have a certain level of guaranteed protection, to ensure they weren’t “wiped out”. It was known as “catastrophic coverage.” He also sought an expansion of Medicaid.

It’s also worth noting how close Carter’s moderate approach came to losing. Ford had become widely unpopular following his pardoning of Nixon, and Carter led Ford in national polling even in the early stages of the Democratic primary. However, over the course of the primary and in the run-up to the national election, Ford gained a lot of his support back. In the end, Carter was able to squeak out the victory.

And so it seemed the argument had been put to bed. McGovern had carried the New Deal torch and been crushed for it. Carter had sought a more conservative-democrat approach and been rewarded at every turn, even to the point where it buoyed his candidacy to the finish line. The Democrats seemed to have entered a new age.

1980–88: Maybe Nothing Works

This philosophy, and all understanding of the Democrats’ popularity with Americans, was torched completely in the national election of 1980. Reagan wiped out Carter in a landslide victory, giving conservatives immense power over the country. For 12 years they’d maintain that hold while the Democrats tried to figure out an effective response.

Once again a progressive firebrand tried to seize the reins from the new right-leaning Democrats. Jesse Jackson entered into both the 1984 and 1988 candidate most likely to take the primary system away from the centralized power of Democratic insiders trading it amongst themselves.

Yet Jackson wasn’t perfect himself. His campaign would seem recognizable today in many respects, yet his takes on things like drug addiction might be seen as questionable by the modern progressive movement. He also heavily intertwined his candidacy with his religious status and preaching, further giving the secular humanist section of the progressive movement a reason for pause. Add in to that his being African American in a time of immense racial hatred, and it creates a perfect cocktail for stunted success.

Now this isn’t to say Jackson’s victories weren’t impressive, especially in spite of all the factors lined up against him. A surprise victory in the Michigan caucus (sound familiar?) even boosted him to front-runner status for a brief time. However, in both campaigns, the more mainstream Democratic candidates consolidated support behind moderate candidates before major voting contests had passed.

This was added to by personal scandals being constantly re-litigated in the media, such as his brother’s alleged criminal activity or his overtly antagonistic approach to the Jewish community. The results were nominees Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, two moderates who went down in complete landslide defeats the likes of which conservatives have never suffered in the post-Depression era.

It seemed then that perhaps a new narrative could be built. The Democrats had been able to points to McGovern to dissuade against big changes from people like Jackson. Now, however, progressives had even more ammunition for their side of that argument through the campaigns of Carter, Dukakis, and Mondale. These points rarely made it into the mainstream narrative, but dedicated activists and political observers could now see both sides’ points. It seemed as if the Democratic Party’s future was starting to come up for grabs.

1992: The Forgotten Mess

The field was utterly blank. Jackson and his cohort chose not to seek the nomination. The veterans of the Carter administration were long gone. Anyone considering seizing the mantle of the nomination also had to confront a harsh reality: George H. W. Bush’s sky-high approval rating. SNL joked that the race was to look for someone to lose to Bush. Both the progressive and centrist lanes seemed to had ceded what must’ve seemed undeniable: The Reagan era conservatives rule would last at least 4 more years, if not much, much longer.

Yet some did jump in. Of course Clinton is the one we remember. Yet it’s worth noting that Jerry Brown, former governor of California, also entered the race.

Clinton was presenting himself as the ultimate centrist, the “3rd way Democrat”, and his successful 2 campaigns are largely credited with creating the current idea of the Democratic Party. The progressive movement of the time knew that Clinton wasn’t their guy, but they also looked at the general election ahead with dismay. In many people’s eyes, there simply wasn’t a meaningful opportunity for the Democratic Party to take power in 1992.

Under these circumstances, the American Left entered into a love-hate relationship with governor Brown. He was more conservative than any progressive would want in terms of things like taxation, but he had policies in terms of social anxieties that resonated more than Clinton’s. Brown was described as both the most Right and the most Left person in the primary, creating an obviously frayed relationship with traditional progressive organizations. Coupled with the bleak prospects ahead, Brown was shrugged along.

Yet the conversation between centrist and progressive solutions to the Republican dominance of the last 12 years was quickly silenced. Ross Perot, a third party oil-funded billionaire candidate, entered the race, promising to bring an outsider perspective to Washington to fix it. (more familiarity). At one time Perot polled above both Clinton and Bush. His entrance into the race rewrote the political landscape in a matter of weeks.

His exit from the race did the same. Perot dropped out of the national contest for president in early Summer, only to return back to the race with only weeks left before the vote. His flip-flopping on whether or not he’d run shattered his momentum, though he still carried a respectable percentage in the end. With those voters drawn from a wide spectrum, the plurality went to Clinton, and conservative rule was finally broken.

The Democratic party then made it clear: The 60’s and 70’s were over. Democrats were in a new era, and they pointed to the new president as evidence. Progressive voices shrank to a whisper.

2000: The Centrist Flex

There isn’t much to say about the 2000 primary. Al Gore, Clinton’s vice president, was all but anointed by the party. The era of backroom dealing bein the means of selecting a candidate seemed closer than ever.

Bill Bradley entered the race as a liberal voice, but his candidacy was quickly snuffed out. Progressives embraced him with a futility they’d come to expect. And after 8 years of disappointments from the Clinton administration, progressives were weary of the Democratic party as a whole. It had been a generation since they’d felt their energy might have the ability to direct the national conversation.

Bradley advocated many of the progressive ideals, such as universal healthcare and campaign finance reform. Yet, being the era that it was, he could not advocate seriously for economic inequality or taxation on the wealthy, cornerstones of the grass-roots American Left.

Beyond that, the perceived mainstream success of the Clinton administration made Gore an easy pick for many voters. There simply wasn’t a desire to litigate the issues on a mass scale.

In the end, Bradley didn’t win a single State, dropping out after Super Tuesday. He was Gore’s only competitor for the nomination.

2004: B’yaaah

Following Al Gore’s nail-biting and questionable loss to Bush, the Democrats found themselves in a sudden moment of self reflection. Bush’s popularity was buoyed by a reaction to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, though both were quickly falling from public favor. His propensity for public gaffes and a general disconnection from the public made it seem like he could be a 1 term president if given the correct opponent.

Howard Dean, the progressive pick, was actually the early front runner. He’d eyed the possibility of running before and the progressive movement largely trusted him. His national profile also helped him bridge the “too liberal” gap back towards the new centrist block that Clinton had founded. His candidacy really did seem inevitable for a time, much to the chagrin of the Clinton alumni.

Then, while attending a rally, Howard dean yelled along with a crowd. The moment was recorded, yet because the mikes were only facing towards Dean and not the crowd, it isolated his audio, creating an awkward clip of footage.

Mainstream media pounced, playing the clip over 400 times in the 2 days leading up to the Iowa Caucuses. Public opinion quickly turned, viewing him more in terms of an oddball moment as character defining instead of focusing on the policies he was running on. He went on to lose to John Kerry, the centrist choice.

Progressive hopes had been raised for the first time in decades, only to be dashed by a moment that should’ve amounted to an inconsequential shrug. Instead, it showed how fragile the progressive movement truly was once it found itself in the lead.

2008: Is progressive enough progressive enough?

The 2008 primary was a moment of immense opportunity. Bush Jr. was unpopular, and Democrats widely expected to take the Whitehouse in the coming general election. The field quickly became crowded with a litany of candidates, and it led to the closest primary results in the modern system’s history.

Hillary Clinton was widely expected to win early on. Yet, as we all know, a young first-term senator from Illinois was about to change the game.

Barrack Obama quickly rose in prominence, fighting out the primaries with Clinton all the way up until the convention. The vote totals were roughly a single percentage point apart, with Obama holding the sliver of a lead at the end.

Yet it’s important to note that Obama was seen as the alternative to Clinton in terms of ideology. Both represented a first-time candidate in terms of identity, so the argument there was somewhat moot. Once again, the “progressive” option was a little known candidate named Mike Gravel.

Gravel was almost a collection of all the problems the progressive movement had in mainstream politics. He released an awkward campaign video that he quickly became known for. His political history was a scattered mess, with his time in the Libertarian Party a particular eye-brow raiser. He seemed committed to progressive ideology in the primary, but his lack of charisma mixed with his questionable record meant the Left weren’t too keen to attach their image to him.

Instead, the progressive movement made a relatively logical choice: embrace the alternative to the centrist that actually has a chance of winning.

Obama made this embrace an easy decision. He used big (if vague) language to describe both America’s problems and their potential solutions. His policies felt distinctly to the Left of Clinton’s, and he had a natural charisma and historical opportunity as the first potential black president. So abandoning the old white guy with a not-so-spotless past wasn’t a tough call for most.

It’s important to note though that the general primary isn’t what gave Obama the nomination. It was his convincing of the Democratic Party’s super-delegates, or at least a majority of them, that ultimately handed him the victory. The fact that he had received just barely enough votes to overcome Clinton in terms of totals was simply a nice affirmation.

Obama’s general election then did something no Democrat had done since the days of FDR: it brought the mainstream liberals and grassroots Left of the country together. In complete unison they marched, knocked doors, donated, and ultimately, celebrated. Obama’s victory felt like a legitimate win for many progressives. They had dethroned what seemed like the establishment’s destined pick for someone fresh, new, and speaking in a language that meant something to their daily lives.

Simultaneously, his ability to convince the super-delegates and reluctance to frame things in terms of class or inequality helped calm any lingering fears from mainstream Democrats and their various mouth pieces. Obama took plenty of Wallstreet cash, his policies for healthcare were short of universal (though it’s worth noting the original plan did include a public option until Democrats killed it), and his candidacy did not make a target out of the wealthy or the powerful. For the first time in 70+ years, it seemed that all the factions from limousine liberals to lifelong progressives were satisfied.

The result was a knockout. Obama took home plenty of electoral college votes, and news of the night had to restrain itself (for hours) from calling the election for him before the official pole closings on the West Coast. His candidacy proved to be a rising tide, as Democrats would go on from that election night to take a strong 59 seat majority in the senate and a strong majority in the House.

Democrats seemed to have finally found their footing in the modern American landscape. Their victory was tremendous, both in terms of scale and in terms of the amount of relief both liberals and progressives felt at his inauguration. This would be no Clinton presidency, but it also wouldn’t be a McGovern one. What that truly meant was fuzzy in the moment, but for many, it felt as if a new era had truly begun.

2012: Rumblings

There was no Democratic Primary in 2012, but it is worth mentioning in brief.

During the 2016 primary, Sanders was continuously questioned on conversations he’d had in 2012 where he’d felt that Obama should face a primary challenger. Sanders would point to the fact that no challenger ever emerged as proof the idea didn’t hold weight for him, but it lingered in the public discourse as a means of trying to discredit Sanders’ loyalty to Democratic politicians and their policies.

What’s left out of that narrative though is why Sanders was having these conversations. The Obama presidency was far from the Obama candidacy. And while mainstream media narratives played up his administration, Sanders and other progressives inside the chambers could see what was happening. Obama had co-opted progressive messaging while managing to make corporate donations to his campaign, militarism, wealth inequality, and so much more a non-issue for most Americans. Obama benefited from being identified with progressivism without actually legislating it.

Sanders was a member of that McGovern-era leftism. He sought policy achievements and meaningful change for working class people as paramount above all else. The policies coming out of the Obama Whitehouse weren’t achieving this, and he sought desperately to provide a more ideologically dedicated progressive as an alternative option.

He also wasn’t blind to the reality of the Democratic party as a whole: That it was operating as a center-right party under most contexts. Its disgust at the idea of universal healthcare, its oceans of dark money, its reluctance to even address the word “capitalism”, its role as a corporate appeaser, and so much more. To allow the Democrats to operate in this way would essentially cede any mainstream American Left movement to those who used it in name-only in order to gain power.

Yet Sanders was also no novice in terms of political maneuvering. Obama was a powerhouse candidate and leader of the Democratic party. And when other progressives and liberals bristled at the suggestion of challenging him, he backed off the idea.

That tension would remain, both with Sanders and those progressive voters who felt as he did, for another 4 years.

2016: If You Build It, Will They Come?

It’s important to note the context of 2016’s primary before diving in.

The Democratic party was coming off of 8 years of presidential power, and there was a precedent that they were quite vulnerable for the national election. No Democrat had followed a previous Democratic administration since LBJ, and only one had done so on the Republican side in the form of Reagan → Bush Sr.

This meant the nomination was far less coveted than in 2008, as few wanted to enter what they saw as a field tilted against them. This was added to by the wider understanding that Hillary Clinton saw this as her moment, and the precarious political atmosphere combined with her dominant strength within Democratic politics seemed to all but assure her the nomination. The fact that she would be the first female president was an enormous opportunity, and there was a hope that she could harness some of that same history-making energy that Obama had so successfully wielded.

Yet Clinton was not Obama in terms of policy or charisma. She’d ran to his right in the Democratic primary, and it seemed she planned to hold those same core beliefs as part of her policy platform. Progressives were no fan of the Clintons, and the feeling that Clinton was inevitable only added to their frustration.

Sanders initially didn’t want to seek the nomination. He didn’t believe in the possibility he could actually win, and he began to test the field by approaching senator Elizabeth Warren to encourage her to seek the nomination instead. His initial hope was that he could channel that history making opportunity into a combination with progressive policies, something he saw as Obama failing to have achieved.

Once it became clear that Warren wouldn’t join the primary, Sanders decided to announce his nomination. He fell into a group of mostly disconnected Democrats, people not well liked to the party machinery. The stage was set for the first debates, showing Clinton at the center flanked by two white men on each side. The imagery was clear.

Yet Sanders quickly gained traction in the polls, climbing to numbers pundits continuously looked at with dread. His policies and memorable personality helped separate him from the other candidates, and once it became clear he meant to offer a meaningful challenge to the Democratic method of politics itself, a new excitement began to form.

The fact that more people liked Sanders the more they came to understand who he was certainly wasn’t lost on his campaign. Though Sanders’ loss on Super Tuesday made ultimate victory seem like the longest of long-shots, there was a defiant optimistic rebellion taking place. Logic seemed to follow that, if they kept it up, maybe those polls would just keep rising.

It’s also here where we need to acknowledge how much Sanders achieved in terms of uniting the American Left. While previous primary contenders had tried to hold the progressive mantle, Sanders had lived by it. His campaign was the first in modern primary history to accept $0 from corporate donations. He had brought seemingly separated issues like climate change and wealth inequality under the same roof by showing their very interdependence. And he’d managed to grasp on a growing youthful frustration and unite it with those people left waiting for decades to see a true Leftist alternative in mainstream politics.

Those polls never did catch up though. Despite shining moments, like his beating of the polls by roughly 20 points to win the Michigan primary, the delegate math was against him. The Democrats’ proportional allocation of delegates meant that States that he won by small percentages still split their actual delegates for the convention roughly evenly.

This was added to by the constant stain of the superdelegates, a group of roughly 500+ Democratic Party insiders who each hold a single vote within the primary system. So if a State had 32 votes for its primary, a single person could hold a single vote as well, giving them magnitudes of influence above ordinary voters.

They were also announcing their choice for the nomination, almost universally Clinton, far before the primaries actually took place. This led to a situation where Sanders might win a State with a respectable margin, yet news would show him with a smaller number of delegates since it was adding that States’ voted delegates and super delegates together without providing the viewer with a distinction.

Added into this equation were the same obstacles previous progressive candidates had faced. The media showed either a joking dismissal of Sanders’ candidacy or bitter attacks on his campaign.

In the end, Sanders was forced to cede the nomination to Clinton. He received over 45% of the vote and a 5+ minute ovation from his supporters at the convention before he could even speak. His brother cried as he read off his delegates from Democrats Abroad. Supporters walked out once Clinton had been inaugurated.

In the midst of this much had been revealed. Wikileaks had shown massive insider efforts within the Democratic Party to help ensure Clinton’s nomination. (This led to 2 DNC chairs resigning in quick succession). Media’s bias was comedically overt. The Iowa caucus released the results without showing the actual vote totals, leading some to speculate Sanders had won the popular vote there. And on and on it went.

The general election would prove a nightmare for Democrats, as they lost the Whitehouse and were forced to keep their minority status for both the House and the Senate. State House and Senate races were similarly terrible, handing Republicans local control of many States as well. Their loss was total. Clinton would never take credit for it.

2020: Shadow, Inc.

The Trump presidency had made history of its own. Any prior understanding of politics seemed absurdly outdated. His constant lies and general inability to complete sentences never seemed to hurt him with his base. His draconian policies went largely unchecked. He became America’s definition of polarization.

Yet Trump also offered a unique weakness. Previous incumbents had been able to cling to a sort of “everything is normal, why change it?” narrative. Trump had erased this completely. His 4 years in office were marked by chaos, story after story of personal scandal or national atrocity. It became almost impossible to keep up with everything, from tax give-aways to the wealthy to environmental de-regulation to exploding racial inequality and deficits and so much more. He’d managed to transcend all meaning of right-wing talking points by seizing on its core: tribalism.

For progressives the time felt right. It had been 4 years since their defeat in 2016, and their preferred candidate was back for one more attempt at the presidency.

Sanders was joined by a large primary field. The debates began with over 20 candidates, making it hard for lesser known names to break out. Yet as actual voting began, the field quickly thinned. Soon Only Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar distinguished themselves as the only serious candidates.

This field was advantageous to Sanders in a number of ways. Several of the candidates were self-ascribed moderates, and were thus splitting that voting block by staying in the race. Sanders also had the benefit of having an alternative narrative from the defeats of 2016. The progressive movement felt a true sense of understanding of the why Trump had won, and they pointed to the 2016 election results as proof that the centrist model wasn’t the safe one.

Though Sanders was a well known public figure by the time the 2020 primary had begun, his poll numbers followed a similar trend to 2016. Following a heart attack and a quick recovery in October, Sanders’ return to the primary race seemed to spark renewed interest. His poll numbers steadily grew leading into the Iowa caucuses. While many thought he’d be unable to clear the first voting contests, he would again go on to become one of the contests’ most formidable candidates.

When the Iowa caucus came, it brought with it a carnival. The main newspaper of Iowa, which released a final poll right before the vote every year, was suddenly scrapped. It would later show Sanders with a commanding lead.

When the vote totals were to be published, they were nowhere to be found. Onlookers waited until 5:00pm the next day to get a vote that amounted to little more than half the tiny State’s total. In quick succession it was shown that a company with the cartoonish, villainous name of “Shadow Inc.” had been put in charge of an app for the counting of caucus votes, and that the system had completely collapsed.

It was also shown that, while the State found a way through kafka-esque interpretation, allocate a larger number of delegates to Pete Buttigieg, despite Sanders have actually earned 1000’s of more votes in the State. The narrative that Democrats had pointed to about the popular vote from 2016 was nowhere to be found.

Sanders would go on to win the New Hampshire primary by a small margin, with Buttigieg just behind. It was the third contest in Nevada where Sanders’ biggest win came. The contest was looked at with dread from mainstream observers, with newscasters visibly sighing as the results were being announced on some channels. Between his victory and the divided field, Sanders was leading in the polls, and finally took the place of the Democratic Party’s frontrunner for the nomination.

South Carolina was the last State to vote before Super Tuesday. The debate for the State was stacked with high-level donors who’d payed 1000’s just to sit in the room. They were naturally unfriendly to Sanders’ messaging. It was also where Joe Biden declared to much fanfare that he would nominate a black woman to serve on the supreme court, a moment that stood out to many as definitive for the debate.

After a strong victory in South Carolina, it seemed that the Super Tuesday only a couple days after would still deliver Sanders a strong victory. Polling looked to give Sanders the edge in most States, and national pollsters were beginning to predict his eventual nomination victory.

However that weekend would be the end of the Sanders campaign. Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropped out of the race immediately following the South Carolina primary victory for Biden, and giving the former Vice President their endorsement in the process.

This meant that Super Tuesday voting was narrowed to four candidates. Centrists were split between Biden and Bloomberg. Progressives had also failed to consolidate, with major publications failing to make an endorsement until just days before the voting. With Elizabeth Warren refusing to concede without having won a single State and with no path to victory, she remained as a dividing force for the progressive vote.

Super Tuesday wasn’t the worst possible result for Sanders. His strong showing in California, which had moved its primary date up from 2016, meant that he and Biden were roughly tied in the delegate count when the math was done. Yet many of these States were ones Sanders had hoped to perform well in in order to buoy support in future contests where he hadn’t been polling well. The narrative of his loss to Biden emerging as the earliest talk of the night meant that this hope for a boost to the finish line was shattered.

It is worth noting as well that the crowded Democratic primary and the reluctance for candidates to bow out had led to a problem. The Democratic Party’s system required that a candidate have an outright majority of delegates to become the nominee. This meant that, should someone receive the most votes, say 40% of the total, and another candidate 30%, another 25%, etc.; the person with 40% doesn’t automatically receive the nomination. Instead, the decision would go to the Super Delegates, who would vote to decide who the nominee would become.

As the possibility of this no-majority situation became more and more glaring, a question emerged. Should the person with the most votes be the person who becomes the nominee?

This is the question Chuck Todd asked at the end of the NBC debate in Nevada. And there, every single candidate except Bernie Sanders said “no.”

Luckily for them they would not have to test out the question of how this would sit with the public. Once Super Tuesday had passed, Sanders faced a serious of defeats. It became clear following votes in Florida and Michigan that his candidacy was lagging. Even States that seemed like natural pulls for his candidacy like Washington failed to deliver victories. With the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic also just beginning, Sanders chose to bow out much earlier than he had in 2016, dropping out in April.

Biden would go on to win the national election, defeating Trump in what would end up somehow still being a disappointing night for Democratic onlookers. Polls had massively overestimated Biden’s and the Party’s strength, and the Democrats failed to take the Senate as they’d been expected to and lost seats in the House, where they had been polled to gain.

Biden’s presidential victory was also surprisingly narrow. States that had been labelled toss-up like Florida and Ohio where colored Red early in the night. It would be several days of mail-in vote counting later when the country would discover Biden had managed to scrape an electoral college victory away from Trump by winning Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and in a surprise to most, Georgia.

While many had predicted a possible Biden landslide and a Democratic Party roaring back into power, that wasn’t what they received. The election would drag itself into January as the Party sought to flip the Senate by taking 2 seats up for special election in Georgia. They managed this same victory by similarly slim margins to those they’d found in the State for the national election, handing them control of a Senate divided 50–50.

Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on January 6th, just before the inauguration, after hearing following the November vote that the entire process had somehow been rigged. No evidence of this supposed rigging ever came to light, all related court cases were thrown out due to lack of evidence, and recounts done in the most important swing states consistently turned up the same results. Despite this mountain of evidence, Trump’s mob defaced the Capitol in a mob assault, shattering windows and leading to the deaths of 6 people.

Joe Biden went on to be inaugurated in the midst of the Pandemic. There were no great crowds to see the ceremonies. Lady Gaga sang in a surreally empty moment. Sanders looked on from a blue cotton mask. The Capitol itself was bathed in soldiers: national guard who’d been called up following the attack. The scene was eerie, though many did credit Biden with a reassuring speech.

2021: And Beyond

The Sanders candidacy was historically unique. It brought together a fractured and lost American left into a single political goal. It helped seemingly single-issue activist blocs to see themselves in each others’ struggles. It gave voice both to a newly dawning age of suffering, and a bygone desire for meaningful working-class politics in the Democratic Party. It walked what it talked, taking in no questionable money and being represented by a man who’s political past was honest and consistent. It was pitted against the most perfect of opponents, the oligarchic Trump organization who’d been known long before the election for its fraudulent practices and adoration of pure capitalistic greed. The stage had been set as well as any progressive could’ve hope for since the days of FDR.

And he lost. Twice.

With Biden’s inauguration came a simple truth: The centrists could still win. The unshakable reality of Clinton’s loss was now replaced with Biden’s win.

Meanwhile those progressives who’d followed in Sanders’ wake, new congress members like AOC or Ilhan Omar or Jamal Bowman, would find themselves voting along party-line votes. They wouldn’t flex progressive power, to challenge centrist domination of the House through Pelosi, to fight for $15 federal minimum wage to be kept in the Covid relief bill, and beyond. While each victory had seemed transformative in their various districts, their ability to coordinate and exercise power as a meaningful political bloc went either forcibly or willingly un-exercised.

It is impossible to tell the future, but I will speak from a personal standpoint as someone who knocked doors, donated money, made calls, texted, and did whatever they could as an everyday person part of the Sanders campaign.

The future is genuinely bleak in political terms for progressives. Biden’s model has cemented itself in leadership, and progressives are unable to exercise even basic demands despite the Democrats holding a trifecta of power. The nuances of the progressive movements also seem lost in terms of voting results, as both centrists and progressives lost house races in 2020 with no discernable trend in terms of policy. This means their identity as progressives or centrists likely didn’t affect the outcome of their races. The national political narrative did.

And this narrative really is the great winner of the whole primary story. Biden had very little grassroots activism on his behalf in the primary. Meanwhile, Sanders set records for most volunteers, most doors knocked, most calls made and texts sent, individual donations collected, and on and on. Yet in States he lost to Biden, he lost by far wider margins than when Biden lost to him. So despite Biden not having a single campaign office in California, he managed to gain a respectable percentage there, eating into the delegates Sanders needed for the nomination. Meanwhile, in States like Florida or Alabama, Sanders was routed completely, in some cases not even gaining enough votes to get a single delegate from the State.

The Sanders candidacy was a test. It was basically the question of “have progressives not won the presidency because they’ve never been offered something authentic?” Sanders was authentic. He was a bit grumpy, but it gave him a certain charm. His personality was a seller for some, a put off for others, but not his most definitive feature. His policies were. His history of supporting those policies was. And he was the first person to come to the stage of the Democratic primaries to give the progressive and American left movements something they could fully, proudly, joyfully embrace.

With the progressive movement seeming lost in its messaging and the centrist domination of the Democratic Party undeniable, progressive political leaders are stagnated. There is nowhere to point to show the effectiveness of their policy positions. There is nowhere to point to show the villain of capitalism save for the flailing of Trumpism and the generic GOP. And the Republicans’ refusal to separate from Trump or attach themselves to anything in terms of policy leaves the centrist Democrats as a reasonable alternative to most.

Where we go from here is impossible to say. But, if we hope to have different results, to bring about the Green New Deal and minimum wage increase and police reform and so much more, then we have to reflect. We need to be open and honest about the opportunity that came and went. We need to look at it from a larger perspective, in the hopes of learning a new way to go forward.

And on we go.