Within a mere week, and apparently magically, the Democrat presidential primary race is down to two really old white guys (although a part-Samoan woman is still hanging on for some unknown reason since she hasn’t got a chance in hell). Except I don’t believe in magic – or coincidence, for that matter – when it comes to politics. Everything happens for a reason and, in the case of Democrats in particular, for personal or party gain (or both). Democrat operatives have been bleating the conventional wisdom throughout the Democrat-media echo chamber that Biden has “pulled off one of the most spectacular turn-arounds in presidential primary history,” but how did he manage that with a gaffe a day and the complete absence of any discernible enthusiasm for his campaign until the day after the South Carolina primary? Although Biden consistently stated that South Carolina was his firewall, the reality is much bigger, i.e., that Biden himself is the Democrat Establishment’s firewall against Bernie Sanders.

To understand the present state of the Democrat race, there are a few questions that must be answered before one can believe that either Joe Biden – the resurrected front-runner – or the Communist Bernie Sanders will obtain the Democrat nomination for president at the Democrat National Convention in Milwaukee in July.

1. Will the party that touts identity politics be sanguine with either as their standard-bearer?

2. Will the Democrats run someone years older than President Trump after snidely arguing for four years that he is “old and fat”?

3. Is either capable of uniting the Democrat Party and energizing the Democrat base?

4. Can either stand on the presidential debate stage and hold his own with a successful president with a string of accomplishments that cannot be countered by their rhetoric?

5. Can either withstand the onslaught of negative ads that will surely be broadcast against whomever gets the nomination?

Those are just a few of the questions, and the short answer to all is “no,” but when viewed as a whole, the resounding answer is “no” for both candidates. It’s possible that the Democrat Establishment could swallow hard and convince their base that questions 1 and 2 are unimportant in this particular election, but the other three questions are death for Biden and Bernie. A Biden nomination will turn off the radical Bernie bros while a Bernie nomination would move moderate Democrats to vote for President Trump.

Each would be destroyed on the debate stage, but for different reasons. Who knows what would come out of the demented Biden’s mouth in a one-on-one debate with President Trump? Certainly he’d be worth a few gaffes which, in comparison with the President’s onstage presence, would sink his campaign. As for Bernie, he has no record of accomplishment in the Senate whatsoever. Zip, zero, nada pieces of Bernie-sponsored legislation that have made their way into law, and he’s never run any political entity larger than Burlington, VT (population 43,000). In addition, his inherent rage and negativism contrast very poorly with the President’s positive charisma and ability to relate to average Americans.

As for the negative ads against either that will ensue? For Biden, there are the zillion gaffes, the girl-sniffing videos, and the Ukraine corruption (about which we’ll know even more after Sen. Ron Johnson’s committee proceeds further in investigating Burisma and other Ukraine-related corruption). And there is the Chapter 3 of Peter Schweizer’s book Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite, which contains 45 pages on Biden family corruption, the center of which is Joe Biden himself. Their corruption would not have been possible without Joe Biden, the front-man, and his ability to leverage political power and taxpayer resources for 50 years.

For Bernie, his public statements in support of Fidel Castro and other Communists/dictators/anti-American regimes over the years, his anti-woman statements, and his honeymooning in the former Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War make perfect fodder for campaign ads. And Schweizer has a chapter in his book about Bernie, too. Chapter 7 contains 38 pages that detail how Sanders and his wife accumulated their multi-million-dollar net worth over the years. Even the Bernie bros will be shocked to find out those details.

The Democrat Establishment has known the preceding for a year at least – if not from even before any Democrat candidates declared for the presidency. Accordingly, they have led their voters down a primrose path that leads to a brokered convention because their Establishment will never let either of these two old white guys with a TON of baggage win the nomination in Milwaukee, for the above reasons and much more. While their strategy has shifted based on primary results and polling over the past few weeks, the objective remains the same: orchestrate a brokered convention that results in the selection of a consensus candidate whom they believe actually has a shot at defeating President Trump in November.

At first, it seemed like merely splitting the vote among the declared candidates would achieve that goal by depriving any single candidate of the 1,990 delegates necessary to win the nomination outright. But the Bernie momentum after Iowa and New Hampshire created panic among the Democrat Establishment, and that’s when things suddenly changed for Sleepy Joe Biden, as the Establishment endorsements for Biden started rolling in, concurrently with the resounding attacks by some of those same people on Bernie Sanders. It wasn’t magic that vaulted Biden to his Super Tuesday victories; rather, it was the Establishment’s fear of Bernie Sanders and a decision that he had to be stopped at all costs before gaining sufficient momentum to garner the necessary 1,990 delegates to win outright.

The Democrats’ top priority has become to stop Bernie. Here is the real reason why Bernie will never be the Democrat candidate (besides the fact that he’s not even a Democrat).

The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll spends a lot of time sussing out American voters’ views on President Donald Trump’s impeachment and the 2020 election. …. Fifty-two percent of those polled said they viewed capitalism positively, while just 19 percent said the same about socialism. In an almost mirror flip, 18 percent had a negative view of capitalism, while 53 percent viewed socialism negatively. The poll of 1,000 registered voters was conducted last week (and has a 3.1 percentage point margin of error). “Democratic primary voters have a net-positive impression of socialism (40 percent positive, 23 percent negative), and Dem voters ages 18-34 view it even more favorably (51 percent to 14 percent),” reports NBC. “But key general-election groups like independents…suburban voters and swing-state voters have a much more negative impression of socialism.”

And there was evidence of that fact in Super Tuesday exit polls and selected media interviews of Democrat voters who said they “weren’t ready for socialism” (although those could have been manipulated to showcase Biden at Bernie’s expense). And the fact that the race now pits an avowed socialist versus a supposed “moderate” reflects the reality of what most Americans still think about socialism (less the Bernie bros, Justice Democrats, Indivisible, and other radical groups). And stop Bernie they shall, as the national and state polls are starting to move in Biden’s direction.

What about Biden? I am convinced that Biden’s candidacy served two purposes for the Democrats. The first and perhaps the main reason was to set up the Democrats’ first article of impeachment against President Trump. Recall that “Trump asked a foreign government for dirt on a political opponent” was their narrative throughout the impeachment farce. The second important reason was to suck enough of the oxygen out of the other declared candidates in order to preclude any of them from gaining the traction and momentum needed to get enough delegates to seal a first-ballot nomination vote in Milwaukee.

It is no coincidence that Biden declared his candidacy on 25 April 2019, which was exactly one week after the Mueller report was publicly released. The Democrats thought Mueller was going to provide the goods to impeach President Trump, and when that failed, they quickly moved to concoct the Ukraine conspiracy. Biden served that purpose (the first article would have been much weaker without the involvement of a “Trump political opponent”).

As a previously failed presidential candidate (twice over), the Democrat Establishment knew that all of the skeletons in Biden’s closet (i.e., plagiarizer, gaffe machine, girl-sniffer, and corrupto-crat) would eventually sink his candidacy. And they can’t trust him to keep his mouth shut about all he knows about Democrat corruption during the Obama years.

Neither Biden nor Bernie are electable, and the Democrat Establishment has known that from the very beginning. We have been watching a political farce play out on the big screen, so-to-speak. So how do the Democrats get the candidate that they obviously want – since they don’t want Bernie, and Biden has too many skeletons? There are several possibilities:

Option #1. Bernie wins the most delegates, but not enough to win the nomination on the first ballot. The Super Delegates weigh in on the second ballot, and a “compromise candidate” is nominated. Least likely, as the Democrat Establishment won’t risk taking the nomination away from the candidate who earned the most delegates.

Option #2. The delegates are split such that neither has enough to win on the first ballot, but Biden has a slight edge, opening the door for the Super Delegates to take over the process beginning on the second ballot to select a “compromise candidate.” Unlikely due to the potential for open violence if the Bernie bros think their guy has been cheated again.

Option #3. As the Democrat primaries conclude, Biden garners the most delegates, and Bernie caves like he did in 2016 when he was bought off with a “third house.” He’s already publicly stated that he’d withdraw if Biden has a plurality of delegates after the primaries are over, as noted here. That would lead to a first-ballot nomination by acclimation at the convention. Possible, but still unlikely to occur, which leads us to the final option.

Option #4. This is option #3 with a twist. With Bernie bowing out, Biden has the nomination in sight but suddenly withdraws because he is “on medication” for dementia or has been diagnosed with first-stage Alzheimer’s disease or some other malady. The Democrat Establishment – having the goods on his family’s corruption and knowing where all the bones are buried – would force his withdrawal announcement, opening the way for the designated outsider to swoop in and “save” the Democrat Party. Biden would play on the sympathy vote and implore Democrats (and Americans in general) to back the consensus Democrat candidate drafted during the convention. This is the most likely option.

There is no way that the Democrat Establishment will let either Bernie or Biden lead the Democrat ticket in November for the reasons cited above, and the selection of an outsider candidate in a brokered convention has been their strategy all along. Who are the possible candidates? There will be various unity candidates floated like Eric Holder, Deval Patrick, or even Michelle Obama (unlikely) representing the Obama wing of the party. Representing the Clinton wing would be someone like Terry McAuliffe … or Hillary herself.

I believe that the Clintons have been pulling the strings behind the scenes from the beginning: orchestrating the media takedown of Bernie, coalescing Establishment support behind Biden at the propitious time, and strategizing for a brokered convention that would save Hillary from having to aggressively campaign through a grueling primary this year and hide any health frailties from which she may suffer.

Two recent failed Democrat presidential candidates got ever-so-close to the Oval Office when each ran previously: John Kerry in 2004 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. Both thought they should have won. In Hillary’s case, she still thinks she won! And although she has chastised Bernie Sanders in recent public statements, she has NOT endorsed Biden, which is an YUUUUGE tell. If she’s truly NOT thinking about running, there is no reason whatsoever to avoid endorsing Biden when the fate of the nomination is at stake.

Sporadic news reports continue to dribble out that both are interested (although both have “declined” but not to the point that they would turn down being drafted by the Party if offered the nomination). They would make a dream Democrat Establishment ticket. Each has a lot to gain by winning; each has a lot to lose if President Trump wins reelection.

The conventional wisdom is that it will be either Bernie or Biden since the Democrats are down to two main candidates. I’m not buying it. The Democrat Establishment will never nominate an outsider who isn’t even a Democrat, and Biden was set up as a strawman candidate from the moment he declared last April.

Neither Biden nor Bernie will be the Democrat nominee for president this year.

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