Much like 2016, Sen. Bernie Sanders is lurking in second place in the 2020 presidential polls. Unlike 2016, Sanders isn’t exactly perceived as a secular saint this time around.

Exposés by The New York Times and Politico detailed a pattern of sexual harassment on Sanders’ campaign that was ignored.

The Vermont senator didn’t help himself in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper when queried about the allegations.

“Just to be clear, you seem to indicate that you did not know at the time about the allegations, is that correct?” Cooper asked.

“Yes, I was a little bit busy running around the country trying to make the case,” Sanders said.

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To say that didn’t fly in the #MeToo age is an understatement of Brobdingnagian proportions, particularly since it plays into existing narratives that Sanders is too aloof or doddering to take the mantle of the presidency.

While the senator is apologized for not being attentive enough to notice the allegations, NBC’s Chuck Todd thinks that the sexual harassment claims could be a disqualifying factor for him, although not perhaps for the reason you might think.

On Thursday’s edition of “MTP Daily” on MSNBC, Todd played the interview with Cooper and then said he wondered if Sanders’ handling of the situation could “derail his chances of another presidential bid.”

“Boy, that is a tough answer to defend, because of course, if you are running to be the president of the United States, if you can’t manage a campaign, how do you manage the country?” Todd said. “That’s a tough answer to defend.”

“Politically speaking, no potential 2020 candidate has had a worse start to 2019, it looks like, than Bernie Sanders,” he added.

While I would argue that the media are soft-peddling just how bad Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s trip to Iowa was — particularly when it came to the handling of her DNA test — Sanders’ handling of the sexual harassment claims at least makes the top two when it comes to disastertastic starts to the new year.

For instance, take the fact that he says he didn’t know about the sexual harassment claims. All right. How about the fact that one of his top campaign officials paid $30,000 in settlement money after it was alleged in a lawsuit he sexually harassed and forcibly kissed a staffer? That’s what Politico reported Wednesday.

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Not knowing about sexual harassment claims is one thing. Not knowing that your deputy national field director had to pay $30,000 because of a rather foul-sounding allegation that was backed up by numerous witnesses is quite another.

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In 2016, Sanders was hampered by the fact that he came across as aloof. For a relative radical, he seemed flat-footed when confronted by Black Lives Matter activists during a campaign stop in Seattle, where they managed to shut down a rally. He’s not what the media are currently fond of calling “Extremely Online” — his Twitter account seems like it is written by staffers.

And then there’s the issue of age. He’s 77, and he doesn’t come across as a low-mileage 77. Even Sanders admits this could cause a problem. “Look, you’ve got people who are 50 years of age who are not well, right?” he told Politico in October. “You’ve got people who are 90 years of age who are going to work every day doing excellent work. And obviously, age is a factor. But it depends on the overall health and well being of the individual.”

I mention these both because they’re part of an important narrative about Sanders’ capacity to be president in a major way, particularly when it comes to his mental capacity to handle the organizational aspect of the job.

The Vermont senator is very good at making a point and firing people up. In terms of management, well, this is a guy who was allegedly asked to leave a commune in the 1970s because he reportedly was too fond of jabbering about politics and not interested in doing the heavy lifting that makes a commune work. How can we say this has changed in the interim when his campaign is alleged to have been rife with sexual harassment and he claims he knew nothing about it, because he was too busy, you know, jabbering about politics on a national scale?

Since that Cooper clip, Sanders has apologized more fully for the allegations against his campaign.

“It now appears that as part of our campaign there were some women who were harassed or mistreated. I thank them, from the bottom of my heart, for speaking out,” he said. “What they experienced was absolutely unacceptable and certainly not what a progressive campaign, or any campaign, should be about.”

However, Chuck Todd is still right: If you can’t manage a campaign, how do you manage the country?

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