John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign manager Steve Schmidt said Wednesday on MSNBC if Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is the 2020 Democratic Party’s nominee, President Donald Trump will be reelected.

Schmidt said, “When we talk about vile online supporters and breaking promises and shattering norms and being untransparent, remind you of anyone? And that’s a big problem for Democrats. What I would say about all of this is we all sat here in this room on election night, and we were shocked. The world was shocked when Donald Trump was elected. We saw millions of people take to the streets.”

He continued, “We’ve watched for three years the shattering of norms, the attacks on the institutions, and at the end of it now, about ten months out from the election, what the Democratic Party has produced is a 78-year-old socialist from Vermont who is picking up steam and is going to be an unstoppable force before very much longer on the way to the nomination. And so the theory that there is some great base of people yearning for socialism in the United States of America is a fever dream and a fantasy. And here’s the deal. There’s literally no one in this country who interacts with government — not at a local level a county-level a state level, not at a federal level — who comes out of that experience saying, ‘God, that was great. Terrific. I want to put these people in charge of more stuff, give them more money, more power, more control.’ And he will be carrying forward into this election some of the most unpopular positions on issues that any candidate ever has. He wants to take away private health insurance from 150 million people. Go tell those union workers in Michigan and Pennsylvania, those union men and women that they’re going to lose their private health insurance. It is a death sentence for the party, and it will lead to Donald Trump’s re-election, in my view.”

He added, “Donald Trump’s re-election will have profound consequences. And it will forever, forever change this country in a bad way. And so there is a profound institutional responsibility for Democratic voters, for the Democratic party I think to face reality on some of this.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN