Super Tuesday put Bernie Sanders’s theory of “political revolution” to the test – and found it wanting. The senator failed to inspire record turnout, and fell Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic primary race. The left must learn from his mistakes. --- Sanders entered the 2020 race with high favorability and name recognition among Democratic primary voters. He could have tailored his campaign strategy to the goal of maximizing his support among rank-and-file Democrats. Instead, he chose to reprise his role as an insurgent outsider, running to overthrow the “Democratic Establishment,” and stuck to that script even after his victory in Nevada made him the race’s overwhelming front-runner. This approach was ostensibly premised on the assumptions that there was a large population of disaffected nonvoters who could be mobilized by an unequivocal critique of creeping plutocracy, or that a majority of Democrats disdain their party’s leadership, or that Sanders could prevail with a mere plurality. […] None of this takes away from Sanders’s genuine achievements. The campaign’s strategic errors wouldn’t be lamentable if his movement hadn’t proved itself so formidable. In states across the nation last night, pluralities of Democratic primary voters expressed a favorable opinion of “socialism.” In revealing that a candidate could secure a hammerlock on 20 percent of the Democratic electorate, and ownership of a historically powerful online fundraising apparatus, by embracing radical social-democratic reform, Sanders changed the ideological incentives facing his co-partisans and the terms of the Democratic debate. In the 2020 field, the “moderate” candidates supported a public option strong enough to undermine private insurers’ business model, expanding Social Security, a $15 minimum wage, and multitrillion-dollar climate plans. Most auspiciously, Sanders and his supporters have ostensibly radicalized the rising generation of Democratic voters. This may not prove adequate to win progressives control of the party in 2020 — but it very well might by the time Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turns 35. […] It is not anti-democratic for moderate candidates to consolidate their support. Yes, the corporate media is biased against the left. But that’s always been a given. Yes, some segment of Democratic donors aren’t sure whether they prefer democratic socialism to Trumpism, while many moderate Democrats on Capitol Hill are less concerned with gauging the popularity of the left’s agenda than maintaining their future employability in the lobbying sector. But many Democrats, elite and otherwise, do genuinely fear that Sanders would lose to Trump. And as tendentious as their conceptions of “electability” may be, Sanders failed to demonstrate his own viability. Over and over, the Vermont senator has insisted that he cannot defeat Donald Trump unless he inspires unprecedentedly high turnout; and over and over, he has not done so. This reality — combined with the failure of Corbynism in Britain — should put to rest the notion that embracing radical economic reform is such an obvious electoral winner only closeted reactionaries could possibly question the near-term electoral wisdom of campaigning on the Sanders platform. […] Mobilizing and realigning working-class voters and other marginalized groups likely requires rebuilding civic and communitarian institutions — above all, trade unions — and enacting laws that offer Americans large incentives to show up at the ballot box. And to do any of that, the left must first win with the electorate it has, not the one it wishes it did. […] Sanders’s base is strongly ideological and weakly Democratic. But the bulk of blue America’s primary electorate is the opposite: weakly ideological but strongly partisan. Median Democratic primary voters like the Democratic Party and its leadership. They may be open to the idea that Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, Nancy Pelosi, and Pete Buttigieg subscribe to a misguided notion of political possibility, but they’re going to be resistant to the claim that they’re all amoral toadies for the billionaire class. Meanwhile, because Democratic primary voters generally like their party, “Beltway Democrats” have a lot of influence over whose side they take in intraparty disputes. Which means that it’s actually important to at least try to cultivate the goodwill of Democratic insiders, rather than actively working to alienate them. […] Which is to say, electoral politics in a modern capitalist society where unions are on life support and social movements are weak is extremely lame! And many radicals may see little point in spending their time and energy on elections, if winning them entails masking one’s contempt for the Democratic Party and mainstream media or outrage over the myriad atrocities that each has abetted. Which is fair enough. There is plenty of vital political work to be done outside the electoral sphere. We have no overabundance of workplace and community organizers in this country. But the stakes of electoral politics at this moment are exceptionally high. And the opportunities for left-wing movements to win and exercise power through the Democratic Party are abundant.

The caricature of Sanders’ vitriolic online supporters has driven political conversations for nearly four years, but at what cost? --- And within mainstream American politics, Bernie Sanders is nearly singular in his sustained resistance to the establishment logic that motivates these disastrous decisions. So the thinking goes: For his entire time as an observable figure, he has been right, and nearly everyone else has been wrong. He has never needed to evolve; his positions were fully formed from the start. This is not exclusively true, but whatever; a record of leftist foresight and nuance that has, on balance, turned out to be mostly correct in comparison to his peers is unbelievably seductive to people cursed with paying attention in a country that broadly does not. If I can pick out a genuinely identifying characteristic among all my friends who support Bernie, from the very online to the very not, it’s that they prioritize this quality. In the context of American politics, he feels like a revolutionary, though of course he is an elected politician. That his congressional record appears middling can be hand waved off with an acknowledgment of his prevailing milieu; it’s not so easy to dismantle institutional power when almost all of your colleagues are dedicated to propping it up. But as president, when public rhetoric and private whipping can force the chains of bureaucracy? Then maybe, just maybe… And with climate change and the endless wars and the brewing pandemics and shoddy health care and all of the myriad afflictions making life hell for a plurality of Americans, the necessity of electing the one candidate who seems to understand the urgency of wrenching back control feels paralyzingly clear to those who’ve done the reading and allowed themselves to feel one flicker of empathy. Hence the Bernie Bro affect: a righteous and logic-driven correctness about the trajectories and realities of American society, because haven’t you been paying attention, coupled with the combativeness inherent to the internet, where everyone likes to believe they are right, all of the time. Social media and all its related platforms offer an incredible opportunity to be correct, in public, and that Bernie’s overall argument looks so good on paper makes it easily repeatable when faced with the truly astonishing amount of stupid, banal bullshit repeated everyday on the internet. There is always someone to argue with. […] That is what I detect most within these collective spasms of Bernie-driven passion: the disbelief at how dumb all of this is, how the evidence for what we need is right there and yet the forces that be (and their followers) believe otherwise. […] But that such a niche phenomenon has captivated political discourse for so long reveals fundamental ideological disagreements about how the internet should be used, cutting across generation and gender and race and so forth with no fixed understanding. It is a real issue that sprawls far beyond Bernie, and can’t be as simply waved off as “old people don’t get the internet” — evidence shows it’s plenty of young people, too. One person’s ingrained harassment is another’s victimless shit-talking is another’s revolutionary action is another’s technically right, but being an asshole about it, and in a world where everyone expresses their opinion all at once, there is no easy way to gain consensus.