Since his convincing primary loss to Hillary Clinton in 2016, Senator Bernie Sanders has been planning for 2020. His closest campaign advisors teamed up to create Our Revolution, an organization which operates as an extension of his political will. Sanders allies also created The Sanders Institute, which acts as a sort of jobs program for a few loyalists and family members. These institutions serve two purposes — to help build a political coalition loyal to Sanders, and to provide organizational and logistical support for 2020. Their political performance is largely irrelevant; it is about building an infrastructure for the next big Sanders run. However, Our Revolution, along with scattered 2020 polling, did provide us with some important information that will be pertinent to the next primary election:

1. Our Revolution (and the associated Justice Democrats) did not flip a single House seat from red to blue.

2. Sanders’ base of support has shrunk considerably

3. Young voters are increasingly looking at other candidates

The first point is critical because it cuts to the heart of one of Sanders’ biggest arguments — that his brand of populism will flip the white working class. If the narrative was correct, one would expect a number of Sanders-backed candidates to beat Republicans using his platform. That didn’t happen, and it means the argument about whether Sanders can expand the Electoral College map is largely over. The second point refers to Sanders own base of support. He claimed around 40% of the popular vote in 2016. Many supporters and pundits thought that his support was solid, and that this number would only increase as more people heard his message. Instead, the opposite has happened. 2020 polling has consistently found Sanders’ 2020 support in the teens. That means his base from 2016 has essentially been cut in half, at best. Not exactly what a supposed front runner wants to see. The third point is about Sanders’ strongest demographic the last time around — young voters. Sanders knows that losing these voters would spell the end of any run, as he won nearly 70 percent of the under 30 vote in several states. This time around, polling has Joe Biden slightly outperforming Sanders with voters aged 18–34. Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke helped to increase early voting from Texans under the age of 30 by over 500 percent, and a potential Presidential run would likely see him siphon off even more young voters from the Sanders camp.

Putting 2016 In Context

To understand the 2020 environment, we also need to put Sanders’ 2016 performance in context. Sanders’ performance in 2016 was bolstered by several factors:

1. He did extremely well with young voters

2. He won big with independents

3. He dominated in whiter caucus states

4. He won white voters overall

Each one of those factors shifts significantly in a hypothetical 2020 contest where the field is crowded and Sanders is no longer the unknown anti-establishment outsider. The youth voter seems to be fine choosing Biden over Sanders, and the number of caucus states will shrink considerably for the next primary race. The party becomes less white each year too. Even if Sanders won independents at a similar rate, it wouldn’t be nearly enough to win with other factors in the political environment shifting against his favor.

To me, all of this suggests that, despite the media narrative of the past several years, Sanders’ rise has not been about a large ideological shift in the Democratic Party. Instead, he over performed in the 2016 primary mainly because he was the sole opposition candidate. This allowed him to consolidate support as the “outsider.” This played to his advantage with white conservative Democrats in place like West Virginia and in the mountain west states, because Sanders was viewed as someone outside of the multiracial, urban, and suburban coalition that now dominates the party. It also played to his advantage with young voters who are always looking for the next inspiring, charismatic, “outsider” candidate. However, his 2016 performance has not led to a shift in the views of the white working class. One of Sanders’ (and allies) biggest talking points in 2016 was his supposed ability to improve the Democrats’ performance with the white working class. His populist vision was supposed to be more tempting than what Republicans were offering. 2018 put that argument to rest, as Sanders remains underwater with white voters personally and his political organizations were unable to flip any red districts at the Congressional level. I could talk about Black voters, and how a UMass poll has Biden nearly doubling Sanders’ support among that demographic (he’s also behind Warren there). I could talk about how the increasingly Black Democratic primaries in the southern states decided the last two primary contests, and how they are likely to do the same for the foreseeable future. But that would be too easy, and it is something that I’ve talked about at length for the past 18 months. So instead I’ll get to the point.

The Sanders 2020 Primary Strategy

The Sanders team might have an exaggerated view of Sanders’ political stature and his importance in the party. They very well may believe that they can defeat the rest of the field. Their actions show that they are not stupid, they can read the polls and the political moment. They understand that many of the factors that boosted Sanders in 2016 (youth voters, caucuses, etc.) are now moving against him. That is why they have engaged in an all-out war against any candidate that is viewed as a political threat. The tactics are the same regardless of the political enemy; brand them as a corporate traitor who hates the poor. The tactics that have become famous for being deployed against Beto O’Rourke have previously been used against Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, and even Oprah Winfrey. Their record doesn’t matter, and any supposed misdeed is sufficient because, well, they’re not Bernie. The overall strategy is essentially this:

1. Drive up the negatives of Sanders’ biggest political threats by a variety of means

2. Stay close to the top in a crowded primary race

3. Go to a brokered convention and demand the super delegates vote for Sanders

We’ve already seen the first point, and we should expect it to get much worse as the primary season nears. Any candidate who can win Black voters or young voters will be viciously attacked and called a neoliberal, corporatist, shill…blah blah you’ve heard it before. The second point is to remain close to the top of the primary race. If Sanders has rock solid support of 25 percent or something, this might seem like a possibility. However, the Democratic primaries are proportional, not winner-take-all like on the Republican side. In addition, the race will not remain crowded for long, and by South Carolina there will likely only be two to three viable candidates. Sanders’ level of support is probably closer to 15 than 25, which means that as candidates drop out, that percentage of support will not be sufficient to be a plurality in a primary. For the sake of the argument, let’s assume that this works and he can make it to a brokered convention where the super delegates are forced to decide. The majority of the delegates remain party loyalists who will have seen this entire strategy play out. Many hold disdain for Sanders after 2016, and this strategy will only deepen their emotion and their resolve to see him fail. How will he convince these people to swing a close election in his favor? We’ve already established that he doesn’t expand the Electoral College map and that his pull on the youth vote is waning. Why would these party loyalists vote against their conscious and potentially even damage their standing with the Democratic loyalist base to throw the election to someone who they don’t even like, and who has been working to (in their eyes) damage the party?

The Sanders’ strategy is something like walking a tightrope on the windiest day of the year. There are so many variables going against you that it probably is going to end badly. There’s no evidence that going negative this early works at all, as Joe Biden’s favorables have surpassed Sanders fairly easily. There’s also no guarantee he can stay close to the top of the race as the primary thins out even if he has a solid 15%, as he clearly hasn’t been able to expand his base of support in the past two years and his name ID is near universal. The superdelegate stuff was silly in 2016 and it will look even worse in 2020 (Especially after all of his complaining about them, to the point of a rule change in his favor!). This isn’t even talking about Sanders biggest weakness and the most important region in the primary, Black voters in the southern states. The strategy itself is beyond a long shot, but if Sanders’ allies are going down this road now it means they don’t believe they can win a conventional race. It’s like the less talented basketball team who tries to win by being physical and slowing down the game. It is particularly dangerous for him as well because it only makes party loyalists and core Democratic voters harden their opposition to him personally over time. There’s a reason why you can’t remember the last Democratic President who went nuclear on all their opposition during the primary. It’s because, even for politicians far more talented than Bernie Sanders, it doesn’t work.