Democratic senator and self-described Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders recently announced his bid for the highly anticipated 2020 presidential race.
Sanders gained traction during the infamous 2016 presidential election, particularly in the Democratic primary. The Vermont senator, who based his anti-establishment campaign around grass-roots donations, resonated with people who felt disconnected from the government. Young people especially followed Sanders’ message.
Sanders was practically turned into a martyr when accusations were thrown at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) for rigging the primary system in favor of Hillary Clinton, a candidate most saw as heavily corrupted by big-money donors and special interest groups.
Sanders may have been defeated by Clinton, but the DNC is responsible for making sure nobody forgot the aging senator.
Sanders has become the embodiment of the new direction that the Democratic Party is going in, and his defeat at the hands of the status quo has only fueled the fire of not only himself but the next generation of Democrats.
With this being said, the tone has been set for the Democrats going into 2020. The party now finds itself at a crossroads, and there really isn’t a way to win from their perspective.
If Sanders loses the primary again, especially to another corporate-bought politician, the DNC will once again look like a complete sham of an organization.
If Sanders wins, the representatives of the status quo in the Democratic Party will lose their power and the Democrats may never win again if Sanders becomes president and fails royally.
Thanks to the DNC’s efforts to squash Sanders a few years ago, the senator has managed to raise over $6 million in barely over 24 hours of announcing his bid for presidency, according to the New York Times.
Sanders is without a doubt the front runner for the Democrats moving forward, as his amount fundraised blew other candidates out of the water, including fellow Democratic heavyweight Kamala Harris’s first-day total of $1.5 million, according to The Atlantic.
The ironic thing is how heavily criticized Sanders was for ruining Clinton’s chances for president. In all truthfulness, regardless of this writer’s opinion of the senator, Sanders would have had a much, much better chance to beat Trump.
Both Sanders and Trump agreed with the anti-establishment sentiments that were all the rage in the U.S. in 2016 while Clinton had the stigma of being the status quo. Clinton showed just how out of touch the DNC was with the American people.
Democrats shouldn’t be rolling their eyes at Sanders’ announcement like they did years ago.
The DNC has two options to consider. The first option is to roll with what the party is becoming and embrace change. The second option would be sticking with a status quo politician, stagnating as a party and eventually dying off.
With Sanders running a second time and Trump running for a second term, I humbly suggest everyone pay attention and vote when the time comes. If you thought the 2016 election was rough, 2020 will be one for the decades.
