I won’t pretend I’m not disappointed by the “Super Tuesday” results. All night, the thing that kept ringing in my ears was the memory of Tom Brokaw back in 1984 saying, “Looks like another good night for Walter Mondale,” and just how nauseating that moment felt. Tuesday was a similarly nauseating experience, except that, if anything, I have less confidence in Biden as a candidate than I did in Mondale. I should say here that I am no stranger to political disappointment; very, very rarely does my first choice candidate rise to the top. That’s partly a function of my being to the left of the Democratic party, but it’s also due to the fact that I do not have a deep connection to the party as an institution.

Like most institutions, the Democratic party favors some people over others for leadership positions within the party. That dynamic pushes forward senior, well-connected, establishment politicians – people like Biden, Hillary Clinton, Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, etc. – regardless of their relative talents, ability to connect with voters, etc. With regard to the presidential race, more often than not, they prevail, and when they prevail, more often than not, they lose in the general. Obama was an insurgent who became the establishment – he didn’t start at the top. Hillary was favored to win in 2016 because it was her turn; she lost on her own merits, or lack of same. Biden is being advance for the same reason – it’s his turn. It’s far from obvious that he’s the strongest candidate to go up against Trump, but that, it seems, is an afterthought for party leaders.

All that said, Bernie should have performed better Tuesday night. Which proves the obvious: grassroots organizing is hard, tremendously hard. No one even pretends that Biden has a grassroots activist organization – nothing of the sort. Bernie does, but they missed the mark on Tuesday, for the most part. A candidate like Bernie can only prevail if he has a mass movement behind him. What he’s proposing from a policy standpoint is reliant on the existence of such a movement. Bernie is quite frank about that. Without the movement, there’s no Sanders presidency and no Sanders agenda. So these primaries amount to proof of concept at some level. If he can’t build the support now, it wouldn’t be there for him later. His agenda cannot succeed on the basis of a narrow win against Trump. We need a progressive wave, and thus far, it hasn’t materialized.

My hope is that the movement does rise in time to put Bernie over the top. But if it doesn’t, make no mistake – we will still need the movement for what’s ahead of us. Our survival as a species depends on it.

luv u,

jp

New podcast drops

I’ve launched a new political commentary podcast called Strange Sound. It’s free, it’s brief, and it’s available now at anchor.fm/strangesound.