The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Bernie Sanders Wins Nevada Caucus; MSNBC, #NeverTrump Hardest Hit

Posted on | February 23, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

First of all, the Nevada caucus still had only half their precincts reporting as of 8 o’clock Sunday morning, so it’s another Iowa-style clusterfark. The party that can’t even count caucus votes wants to run your healthcare. The numbers with 60% reporting:

Bernie Sanders ………… 46.0%
Joe Biden ……………….. 19.6%
Pete Buttigieg ………….. 15.3%
Elizabeth Warren ……… 10.1%
Amy Klobuchar …………. 4.8%
Tom Steyer ………………. 4.1%

This is a decisive victory for Sanders, who more than doubled Biden’s total, and a major setback for Warren and Klobuchar, both of whom needed to show some kind of momentum to keep their campaigns viable. While it is possible that Biden could still bounce back with a win next Saturday in the South Carolina primary, even the most enthusiastic supporters of Warren and Klobuchar must see they now have no path to the nomination. Their money is running out, whereas Buttigieg (who at least got a narrow win in Iowa) could continue if he does well on Super Tuesday. Unless two or three of the non-Sanders candidates drops out before Super Tuesday, however, there will still be multiple candidates splitting the “Anybody But Bernie” vote with billionaire Mike Bloomberg, and that means Sanders could emerge with an insurmountable delegate lead after March 3. And this means . . . panic time!

“I’m reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940 and the General Renault calls up Churchill and says ‘It’s over.’ And Churchill says, ‘how can it be? You got the greatest army in Europe. How can it be over?’ He said ‘It’s over.’ So I had that suppressed feeling. I can’t be as wild as Carville but he is damn smart and I think he’s damn right on this one.”
Responding to James Carville, “‘You’re describing what sounds a lot like political suicide,’ said ‘Deadline: White House’ host Nicolle Wallace. ‘I think we need a psychologist to understand that.’”

 

 

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) The Daily Caller provides even more highlights of the MSNBC meltdown:

Matthews also wondered on air if it would be better for moderate Democrats if Sanders didn’t win in the general election.
“I’m wondering whether the Democratic moderates want Bernie Sanders to be president. That’s maybe too exciting a question to raise. They don’t like Trump at all. Do they want Bernie Sanders to take over the Democratic Party in perpetuity?” he said.
“I mean, he takes it over, he sets the direction of the future of the party — maybe they’d rather wait four years and put in a Democrat that they like.”
In another viral clip, MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace compared President Donald Trump and Sanders, accused them of using “dark arts” on the media, and called supporters a “squeaky, angry minority.”

Why are the MSNBC talking heads so despondent? Because they are convinced that if Democrats nominate Sanders, they’ll alienate middle-class moderate voters and thereby guarantee Trump’s re-election. I wish I believed this as much as they do, but can we trust the conventional wisdom dispensed by cable-news “experts”? These are the same people who thought Trump could never win the GOP nomination, and then believed Hillary Clinton could easily defeat Trump, so when they start predicting future political events, my hunch is they’re wrong again.

Glenn Reynolds seems to share my concern: “You can assume that Trump would crush Bernie, and you’re probably right. But any major-party nominee, however lame, has a nonzero chance of becoming President, and that’s bad when we’re talking about a commie.”

As much as I want to believe Trump would score a slam-dunk victory over Sanders in November, I’m disturbed by the fact that MSNBC talking-heads have the same opinion. Maybe I’m just being a worry-wart about this, though. In an all-out battle between a socialist Democrat and a capitalist Republican, Trump wins — if the American people are still the American people. If Bernie were to win, we might as well call ourselves “Southern Canada.” Meanwhile, Bill Kristol and the cruise-ship contingent of #NeverTrump ex-Republicans have reached a fatal reckoning; having committed to 100% opposition to Trump, they must now find a way to make the “principled conservative” argument for Bernie Sanders. They didn’t have much credibility left to lose, but once you sell your soul to Pierre Omidyar, you must pay that debt in full.

If you don’t get that joke, “The Lincoln Project” is an anti-Trump super PAC whose principals include George T. Conway III, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson. There is so far zero evidence that they have influenced anyone’s opinion about anything. Least of all have they been able to convince Democrats to support the kind of “moderate” candidates they believe can beat Trump. So now, like the MSNBC pundits aghast at Bernie’s victory in Nevada, the #NeverTrump crowd is in a panic at the prospect of another four years in the wilderness. They are a spectacle of frustrated impotence. And let’s hope their fears are fully realized.




 

Category: Democrats, MSNBC, Nevada

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One Response to “Bernie Sanders Wins Nevada Caucus; MSNBC, #NeverTrump Hardest Hit”

  1. Bernie Sanders Is Throwing A Party...
    February 24th, 2020 @ 12:22 pm

    […] * The Other McCain: Bernie Sanders Wins Nevada Caucus; MSNBC, #NeverTrump Hardest Hit… […]