Petty Officer 2nd Class Ernesto Hernandez Fonte / Public domain

The Democrats and their allies in the Mainstream Media outlets have spent the last quadrennial trying to maintain a narrow balancing act. On one hand, they want Bernie Sanders, avowed socialist and Independent Senator from Vermont to be a viable politician and treat him as a strong voice on the left. On the other, they are doing everything they could to ensure that Bernie would not be the Democrats’ nominee in either 2016 or 2020.

This ambivalence betrays the Democrats’™ tolerance for socialist ideas. If they desired Bernie to be cast out entirely, they have always had several options. They could have demanded that their candidates actually be members of the party. Sanders is affiliated with the party in his runs for President, but not for his Senate career. Even in 2018, his Senate bid was as an “Independent”, though the Democrats nominated him, anyway. Certainly, he could have joined the Democrats at any point to keep his Senate seat, but his appeal would have waned. Democrats otherwise enforce party discipline like a scene from 1984. For instance, Hillary Clinton got almost 95% of the superdelegates to vote for her in 2016. Democrats aren’t afraid of Bernie Sanders or socialism, they just see him as too much for the moment.

Democrats’ posturing against Sanders and socialism is equally obvious in another way. Vocal opposition has only come when Sanders appeared to be the front-runner and most likely to win the nomination. The New York Times (the former newspaper) has reported the Soviets’ plan to use Bernie Sanders as a propaganda mouthpiece as he sought a sister-city in the communist state. The Times even reported that this was not even secret or hidden material. It had just never been requested until 2020. Surely this information would have been useful in 2016 as well. The simplest answer is that the Democrats want Sanders as a far-left mouthpiece in Vermont and in the US Senate, but no higher.

Several campaigns’ recent suspensions screams a powerful need to isolate Sanders. The timing tells us that this ins’t ideological, but electoral. Up to the South Carolina Primary election, Bernie was looking like a world-beater. He had essentially tied in Iowa, won New Hampshire, and even had a solid win in Nevada. If he could break through the Joe Biden southern firewall, he would have been unstoppable. The Joe Biden firewall held firm; he won the South Carolina by a large majority. He then proved he had a strong base to work with if unhampered by other Democrats working his “moderate” lane. Several important candidates agreed to play ball. They dropped out almost simultaneously and endorsed Biden in time to influence the “Super Tuesday” primaries. With this Biden won a massive number of states and took the delegate lead. We can only conclude that Bernie is only poisonous as a potential presidential nominee. His House and Senate career don’t panic Democrats and their friends in the mainstream media. This shows that his politics aren’t generally hated or feared by party at large.

Don’t Democrats or their buddies in the Mainstream Media fool you: they’re afraid of Bernie and his policies. They could have ruined his political career long ago. They could have isolated him politically. They might have denied him prime committee positions and chairmanships. They could have at least enforced party membership over the decades. Their failure to do so have been the reason that Bernie and his poisoned message has thrived over the years. Had he come around twenty years later, he might be the true and valued leader of the party. Democrats just don’t want him now, because it’s clear that he’s a loser in the general election.