According to RealClearPolitics poll averages, Bernie Sanders was leading the pack in Iowa and New Hampshire while being 3 points behind Joe Biden nationally as of Monday morning:

And this has sent shivers down the spines of Establishment Democrat powerbrokers, who greatly fear Bernie at the head of the Democrat slate going into November. There have been stories in reliably Democrat media that the DNC is moving to block a Bernie nomination at their convention in Milwaukee 13-16 July. Here is an excerpt from Politico just last Friday:

In conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention. Such a move would increase the influence of DNC members, members of Congress and other top party officials, who now must wait until the second ballot to have their say if the convention is contested.

Then there was the interesting rumor that traitor/fossil John Kerry was contemplating tossing his hat into the ring to “stop Bernie,” as reported here.

Democrats always tell us whom they fear most because they focus their vitriol on that person, sometimes to the exclusion of all else. They did that with Reagan, Bush 43, and other lesser lights such as Newt Gingrich, Devin Nunes, and Bill Barr. Oh, and that Trump guy, too, on whom they have been fixated since he rode the escalator in June 2015 to declare his candidacy:

I like how Donald Trump takes an escalator to the podium. Very classy. #PresidentTrump pic.twitter.com/EKD2AoYWp6 — Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) June 16, 2015

And now, the Democrats have focused their ire on the Communist Bernie Sanders. Somehow, I don’t feel sorry for them. But we’ll get to more on that point in a minute.

The Democrats know full well that Bernie has some serious baggage, but they are squarely on the horns of a dilemma: either they take out Bernie and risk losing a large fraction of his support base – probably even a larger percentage than they lost to President Trump in 2016 – or get on board the Bernie train and risk losing everything in November. And they know full well that Bernie is not only far outside the political mainstream but also has a ton of baggage that will be exposed if/when he becomes the nominee.

For just a peek at the latter, we have Mark Levin’s interview of Peter Schweizer a week ago. Levin hosts “Life, Liberty and Levin” show on Fox News Channel on Saturday nights. He interviewed Peter Schweizer, author of the new book, Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite. During one of the interview segments, they discussed Bernie Sanders:

Levin: … We have Bernie Sanders, who calls himself a Democratic Socialist. He’s really an out-of-the-closet hardcore socialist when you look at his career. He hasn’t done anything in the private sector that’s been productive, but he’s a multi-millionaire. Schweizer: That’s right, and it’s interesting, and you’re right, he describes himself and his policies are certainly hardcore socialist. If you look at his investment portfolio, this will surprise a lot of people. He’s invested in Fortune 500 companies; he’s not invested in renewable energy companies or socially-responsible investment funds. And when you look at his pubic career since the 1980’s as mayor of Burlington [Vermont], and then a congressman, and then a senator, and then a presidential candidate, it all revolves around bringing money into the family. So, go back to Burlington, VT, he is the mayor … One of the first things he does is he says, “I’m going to hire my girlfriend and put her on the city payroll.” Jane Sanders, who is now his wife, was put on the payroll. And you go back and look at the local press accounts, and you realize the city council said, “Wait a minute! You’re giving her a job that we didn’t actually create, we haven’t funded, and if this position were to actually exist, you never advertised it. You never gave other people the opportunity to apply for it.” And Bernie just blew them off, so Jane had a paid job throughout his tenure. When he ran for Congress, he discovered a secret that a lot of Washington insiders know, which is you can make a lot of money making media buys for political campaigns. So, for example, if you were a candidate for the US Senate, and you wanted to buy a million dollars in advertising, and I did that purchase, I would get the million dollars, but the standard practice is that I would get to keep about 15% as a commission. You can make a lot of money doing media buys. So what does Bernie Sanders do, as he’s running for congress from Vermont? He makes his wife Jane responsible for media buys. And we estimate based on the number … Levin: The family get’s the 15%… Schweizer: Absolutely! And the family set up an LLC, which they registered at their home in Vermont, and the owners were his wife Jane Sanders and their two children. So it’s quite a cozy setup. So we estimate they probably made $150,000 off of that arrangement. … Yes, he’s quite the crony capitalist. The big question mark that we don’t know the answer to comes with the 2016 presidential race. We’re not talking about small media buys now; we’re talking about his campaign spending $83 million on media buys, which means the commission is somewhere around $12 million. Where did that $83 million flow? It went through this company called Old Towne Media. Now you look up Old Towne Media … it is registered to a suburban Virginia home on a cul-de-sac. Then you find out who owns this entity, and it happens to be two individuals who worked with Jane Sanders doing media buys when Bernie was running for Congress. Now Jane was asked about this by a progressive reporter, actually, from Vermont during the 2016 election: what did she know about Old Towne Media, did she have any involvement in it. According to the reporter, she hung up the phone. [There is a LOT more on that story in this article.] So the question is, where did that money go? It certainly fits the pattern that we’ve seen with Bernie Sanders, who for decades, for about 36 years by our accounts, used the phrase, “Our politics should not be dominated by billionaires and millionaires.” About three years ago, he dropped the reference to millionaires because he’s now one! And I think the big surprise that a lot of supporters will find is, this is an individual who talks about socialism … certainly has not conducted himself, his investments, and his family life not being interested in material things. Levin: Isn’t this typical of oligarchs in the Communist, socialist, and fascist regimes … it’s one thing for the people, but it’s another thing for them? So this is an area that the media and Bernie Sanders’s opponents should really pursue. Schweizer: Absolutely they should. You know, the other thing that comes through this is if you look in the Vermont press and the interviews, Bernie Sanders does not dislike or hate all rich people. He only dislikes and hates rich people who are opposed to his agenda. So you find that there are very prominent and wealthy people in Vermont who have vested in interests, and he goes to bat for them all the time at the expense of local people. For example, there is a gentleman who is creating these large-scale industrial wind farms … where they put these big windmills … dozens of them … and people that live next door to them. Suddenly, you’ve got these huge windmills all around you. Those landowners sue trying to stop him from building these. Which side does Bernie come down on? On the side of Mr. Blittersdorf who is doing this. Why? Because Blittersdorf backs him and is supportive of his campaigns.

[End of Schweizer’s remarks on Bernie Sanders.] It makes me wonder if any Bernie backers watched that interview, and if so, whether at least a few seeds of doubt were planted in their minds. But that is just a taste of Bernie’s crony capitalistic instincts. Chapter 7 of Schweizer’s book contains 36 pages that every Bernie backer should read (and the rest of us, too, for that matter).

Let’s return briefly to the Democrats’ “problem.” With Bernie Sanders, they have fallen prey once again to the law of unintended consequences. For decades, the Democrats – and the Left in general – have thought their ticket to perpetual political power in America was to take over her cultural institutions: media (control of the political narrative), Hollywood (propaganda), non-profit foundations (sources of limitless funds), unions (campaign contributions and labor), federal and state bureaucracies (corruption and control of government behind the scenes), and – most importantly – academia (to manufacture new generations of leftists). And this they have succeeded in doing over the past 60 years or so. Except the Democrat Establishment didn’t plan on being shoved out the door by young upstart radicals like The Squad and their Communist Pied Piper Bernie Sanders. Laugh out loud! The Democrats’ problem with Bernie is of their own making.

The Democrat Party is cruisin’ for a bruisin’ at their national convention in July, particularly if they slip a mickey into Bernie’s campaign again this year. It’s going to be fun to watch the coming Democrat civil war.

The end.

Stu Cvrk served 30 years in the US Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. An oceanographer and systems analyst through education and experience, Stu is a graduate of the US Naval Academy where he received a classical liberal education which serves as the key foundation for his political commentary. He threads daily on Twitter on a wide range of political, military, foreign policy, government, economics, and world affairs topics. Read more by Stu Cvrk