{"id":1864,"date":"2020-03-31T09:21:50","date_gmt":"2020-03-31T08:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=1864"},"modified":"2020-03-31T09:21:50","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T08:21:50","slug":"democrats-in-disarray-as-trumps-popularity-soars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/democrats-in-disarray-as-trumps-popularity-soars\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats in disarray as Trump\u2019s popularity soars"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The coronavirus pandemic has created a new reality in the United States, as it has all over the world. And coming as it has during a presidential election, it has completely upended the political map.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just\na month ago, Bernie Sanders was the leading Democratic candidate and\npolls showed him defeating Donald Trump in November. Joe Biden\u2019s\ncampaign was sputtering along, as he polled poorly in early primary\nand caucus states. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\non 29 February, Biden won the South Carolina primary as expected. \nBiden\u2019s campaign roared back to life. Three days later, on \u201cSuper\nTuesday\u201d, though Bernie Sanders won the biggest prize (California),\nthe headline news story was just how well Joe Biden did elsewhere. \nSoon afterwards, all the other defeated Democratic candidates with\nthe exception of Elizabeth Warren quit the race and endorsed the\nformer Vice President.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernie\nSanders, declared all the pundits, was finished. It was time to pack\nup and go back to Vermont. According to the mainstream media, Biden\nhad momentum and Sanders did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden\nwas nearly 800 delegates short of the majority he needed, and Sanders\nwas 300 delegates behind Biden. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was where we stood in the beginning of March. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But everything has now changed \u2013 again.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden has largely disappeared, self-isolating and producing insipid videos from his basement that no one pays attention to, while Trump has the full attention of the nation. For several days, the hashtag #WhereIsJoe was trending on Twitter. And Trump, despite an endless string of mistakes in his handling of the crisis, is soaring in the polls, never more popular than he is right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats\nhave become so worried about the likelihood of a Trump victory that\nall kinds of ideas, including a movement to draft New York governor\nAndrew Cuomo, have been floated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nremember that Biden \u201cmomentum\u201d? It\u2019s completely evaporated as\nstates push their primary dates further back in the calendar. As a\nresult, a space is opening for other candidates to challenge Biden,\nor even to persuade him to drop out of the race. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders been busy in Washington, helping to craft the compromise relief bill that just passed both houses of Congress. Sanders has been taking a leading role in the fight to ensure that \u2013 as much as possible \u2013 the federal government\u2019s response to the pandemic is a fair and just one. And he\u2019s put forward the most comprehensive progressive response to the crisis.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does\nthis mean that Sanders still has a shot at winning the nomination?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Democrats are serious about their desire to take back the White House from the corrupt gang of criminals currently in charge, they need to re-think whether Joe Biden has what it takes to defeat Trump. Many now accept that he doesn\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe it\u2019s time for another look at that socialist from Vermont, who may very well turn out to be their only chance of victory in November.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

This article appeared in this week’s issue of Solidarity<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The coronavirus pandemic has created a new reality in the United States, as it has all over the world. And coming as it has during a presidential election, it has completely upended the political map….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1865,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solidarity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1866,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864\/revisions\/1866"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}