The left-wing energy that is coalescing behind self-described “democratic socialist” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) can’t be denied, as much as those cheerleading Joe Biden’s surprisingly strong showing on Super Tuesday would like to erase it.

It’s becoming clearer by the day that the younger flank of the left wants Sanders as their nominee, and they should have him.

Biden and the Democrat establishment may succeed in ticking off a generation of young voters by outflanking Bernie for the nomination, but I believe there is no better way to smack down the growing socialist movement in the United States than by having its leader humiliated and beaten in a national election by President Donald Trump, the billionaire capitalist who has grown the U.S. economy to heights that his predecessors said were impossible.

The socialist movement has caught on among a large and fairly influential group of disaffected millennials for reasons that are actually pretty understandable. Many have large amounts of student debt that they want Socialist Grandpa Bernie Sanders to pay off.

Never mind that they were lied to by the predatory college system that welcomes them to take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans to get degrees in fields that simply don’t pay. The “eat the rich” pitch of socialism appeals to them because it absolves them of all responsibility for their own lives, which makes sense because socialism is really nothing more than a front for complete government control.

And this kind of control simply doesn’t work. The envious policies of socialism have failed everywhere they have ever been tried.

Don’t believe me? Of course, we’ve all heard the horror stories about Cuba under communism, and are well informed about how it has utterly destroyed Venezuela. But let’s take a look at Sweden, one of Bernie Sanders’s favorite places to describe when he’s making his pitch for a socialist utopia in the United States.

In an early 2019 pitch to Iowa voters, he said he thought “that countries like Denmark and Sweden do very well.”

Well, according to Investor’s Business Daily:

At one time, Sweden, a small nation, had the fourth-largest economy in the world. That was in 1970. Twenty-five years later, the economy had tumbled to 14th and the private sector stopped creating jobs, according to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data.

What happened? Well, as Swedish economist Johan Norberg has explained: “In the 1950s, Sweden was already one of the world’s richest countries, and back then, taxes were lower in Sweden than in the United States.” After that, Norberg notes, Sweden started to expand the government “dramatically.”

Then? In his words: “We started losing.”

Norberg says Sweden only became successful again “after a new reform period, with more deregulation and free trade than in other countries.”

More deregulation and free trade helps run an economy, huh? Imagine that.

Perhaps that’s why America is winning.

We all know the economy is humming, hitting historic unemployment lows in general, and for African American, Latino, Asian American, and veteran employees in particular. We know that the stock market has hit record highs, prior to the coronavirus outbreak. We know that more people are working. We know that capitalism works — and, well, socialism sucks.

That’s why I think that Sanders vs. Trump is the showdown that America needs and deserves at this moment.

The American message of exceptionalism and prosperity needs to face off against socialism so that we can finally relegate it to the dustbin of history, where it belongs.

Socialism is becoming more and more popular not only because most young Americans don’t really know what it is, but also because we’re missing opportunity after opportunity to highlight the American success stories that can happen only via capitalism and the entrepreneurial spirit.

A Trump/Sanders match-up would be American exceptionalism against American whining, a proudly capitalist billionaire against a man who became a multi-millionaire off the taxpayer’s dime. In contrast, a Biden/Trump match-up would be yet another rehash of 2016, and I fear the socialist pushers would just find a younger, fresher candidate to push their agenda through in 2024.

Though Sanders is the most prominent face of socialism right now, young upstarts are taking the mantle and will run with it if it is not defeated, crushed, and humiliated at the polls come November 2020.

Not only does socialism need to be crushed at the top of the ticket with Bernie Sanders, but it needs to damage Democrats all the way down the ticket, to the lowest levels, so that it this generation can bury it forever.

Take note: Trump vs. Bernie is our chance to do it. So let’s not waste the opportunity to put the old dog of socialism down once and for all in November. A generation is depending on us to send the clear message that, yes, socialism sucks.

Rob Smith is an Iraq War Veteran, Contributor to Turning Point USA, and author of the upcoming Always a Soldier: Service, Sacrifice, and Coming Out as America’s Favorite Black, Gay Republican. Find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @robsmithonline.