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.

If Warren wanted to define herself in opposition to Sanders, she wouldn’t need to tie herself in knots. Where Sanders talks about revolution, her description of the American economy amounts to a restoration. She wants to return to another era, when the economy (and government) was less captured by Big Business. Her scourge is corruption, and embedded in her incessant denunciations of it is the hope that the system can be salvaged by extrication of that tumor. Where socialism imagines greater concentrations of power—greater state planning, greater public provisioning of goods—her vision ultimately points in the direction of a more decentralized, more competitive economy. Sanders’s keyword is equality; her best speeches have extolled liberty. By contrasting herself with Sanders, she could press the case for her electability. Donald Trump has already begun to portray socialism as a foreign incursion, but Warren’s populism is in the American grain. It draws on a political vocabulary that traces back to Thomas Jefferson. She wants “structural change,” but her changes are premised on principles that are deeply familiar.

I don’t agree with this completely, but it’s a solid argument. More broadly, the political problem of the Democrats is that they’re a party of capital that has to pretend for electoral reasons sometimes that it’s not. All the complaints that liberals have about them—their weakness, tendency to compromise, the constantly lamented lack of a spine—emerge from this central contradiction. The Republicans have a coherent philosophy and use it to fire up a rabid base. The Dems are afraid of their base because it might cause them trouble with their funders. Romney believes in money. Obama believes in nothing. Most liberals want to write off Obama’s bad performance as a bad night. It’s not just that. It’s a structural problem.

I asked a question and it got answered: "The rally, hopefully, will get a lot of people who have become frustrated with the political process engaged again. To the extent that it succeeds in that, I’m for it. If it does it while being entertaining, I’m doubly for it."