I'm sure Bernie will role out his 2020 presidential campaign carefully and on his own time table. In 2015 Blue America was the first independent PAC raising money for his 2016 campaign and this year we are the first independent PAC raising contributions for the 2020 campaign. You can contribute here. Disclaimer: No one from Blue America has talked with him about 2020. One of his top advisors did tell us to move forward-- though perhaps not as top as Jeff Weaver, who was on C-SPAN Tuesday morning talking about the "possibility" of a Bernie run. He didn't mention a Bernie-Elizabeth Warren ticket... which is what I've been told is pretty much set.
"He is considering another run for the presidency and when the time comes I think we'll have an answer for that. But right now he's still considering it."That's both a) not terribly surprising and b) extremely important.Not surprising in that Sanders has never really stopped running a national campaign since his primary loss to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Extremely important in that Sanders is-- and is likely to remain-- the prime mover in the Democratic presidential field.That's not to say Sanders is the current frontrunner for the nomination. He's not. Former Vice President Joe Biden is-- as CNN's Harry Enten argues convincingly. What Sanders' status as the prime mover in the race means is that he will set the terms on which the race is likely to be fought. He will set the margins-- in terms of policy-- for what Democrats are willing to say and do. He will be the person who the race revolves around-- either in agreement with or reaction to.It's already been happening. Earlier this month in a speech at the Brookings Institute, Biden used Sanders as a foil-- promising an alternate vision for both the problem and the solution to what ails the country. Here's the key bit from Biden: "I love Bernie, but I'm not Bernie Sanders. I don't think 500 billionaires are the reason we're in trouble. The folks at the top aren't bad guys. But this gap is yawning, and it's having the effect of pulling us apart. You see the politics of it."And, following the 2016 election, a parade of would-be 2020 aspirants-- Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand-- signed onto Sanders' "Medicare For All" single-payer health care proposal. It's a role he played in 2016, albeit a somewhat unlikely one. Clinton, once she realized that Sanders posed a real threat to her chances, moved hard left on virtually every issue-- ensuring there was no space between her and the Vermont senator.
Rest assured that it won't be easy as pie for Bernie to win. If not Biden, there will be another conservative status quo Democrat pretending to be "progressive" while working for the special interests-- Cuomo, Gillibrand... perhaps something worse. Multimillionaire John Delaney is already in the race. You know who Delaney is? This is the kind of Democrat who will fight hard to keep Bernie away from the nomination. Is their any difference between Biden and Delaney? Not on policy; not on political values. Before Delaney decided to leave Congress so he could run full-time for Congress, one of his colleagues told me he is the "poster child for what's wrong with the Democratic Party. Recruiting clueless, rich people who have no real values is almost always a failure."Meanwhile, Bernie and Elizabeth Warren continue doing what they do: talking about policy with the American people. Biden and the rest of the establishment Democrats who want to be president keep endorsing crappy Democratic House candidates all over the map on policy-- anti-healthcare conservatives, for example, while Bernie is fighting for candidates like Randy Bryce (WI) and Chuy Garcia (IL), progressives who he knows, when they get to Congress, will continue fighting for working families, not for Wall Street banksters, the way Joe Biden always has. Biden, for example just endorsed Darren Soto, lump on a log do-nothing Orlando seat warmer and longtime anti-Choice legislator and NRA ally who is in a contest against Alan Grayson. That's how Biden rolls. Is he as bad as Hillary? Worse.
