WASHINGTON — When Leah Daughtry, a former Democratic Party official, addressed a closed-door gathering of about 100 wealthy liberal donors in San Francisco last month, all it took was a review of the 2020 primary rules to throw a scare in them.
Democrats are likely to go into their convention next summer without having settled on a presidential nominee, said Ms. Daughtry, who ran her party’s conventions in 2008 and 2016, the last two times the nomination was contested. And Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is well positioned to be one of the last candidates standing, she noted.
“I think I freaked them out,” Ms. Daughtry recalled with a chuckle, an assessment that was confirmed by three other attendees. They are hardly alone.
From canapé-filled fund-raisers on the coasts to the cloakrooms of Washington, mainstream Democrats are increasingly worried that their effort to defeat President Trump in 2020 could be complicated by Mr. Sanders, in a political scenario all too reminiscent of how Mr. Trump himself seized the Republican nomination in 2016.It’s truly remarkable. Elite Democratic donors and apparatchiks are shitting in their pants over the possibility of Bernie’s nomination.
It appears they are taking a brokered convention for granted because of the massive frontloading of the primary season. Then, after the first ballot, the superdelegates can vote. So it looks to be a mess in the making.
But not nearly as much of a mess if Bernie wins the primary in a rout. Then I think it’s a pretty safe bet some of these billionaire Dem donors will back a third-party run by Bloomberg or someone else.
Whatever the cost they will block a socialist from winning the presidency.
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