The Democratic Party elite are unhappy. Their frontrunner, Joe Biden, who was never really their frontrunner since they prefer a Pete Buttigieg or a Kamala Harris, is flagging badly, and the only viable options remaining, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, are considered beyond the pale because of their anti-plutocratic rhetoric and their "tax and spend" policies.
So what is a Democratic Party elite to do? Jonathan Martin explores the question this morning in "Anxious Democratic Establishment Asks, ‘Is There Anybody Else?’" The answer appears to be a hope that a late entrant to the primary appears. With the exception of Sherrod Brown, the elite saviors mentioned -- Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg and Michelle Obama -- are all ridiculous.
At this point in the national polls, there are three top candidates -- Biden, Warren and Sanders -- and a slew of also-ran contenders -- Harris, Buttigieg, O'Rourke, Booker, Klobuchar, et al. -- who all practice a neoliberal orthodoxy that a majority of the Democratic Party electorate has given up on.
Right now in the national polls the combined totals of Warren and Sanders surpass that of Joe Biden, something even more pronounced in polls from early primary states. And what's particularly worrisome for Democratic Party elites is that voters appear to be migrating from Biden to Warren.
The firewall for the elites will be the same one as last go-round -- South Carolina. But what is different this time is that California has moved its primary up to Super Tuesday, March 3. So, if Biden loses California, it's going to be hard for him to bury the Warren/Sanders challenge in the same way that Hillary did to Bernie in 2016.
A fail safe is likely being designed to deal with this outcome. But when you tick through the options the only one that makes sense is insane -- a kamikaze attack in the form of a third-party campaign a la Ross Perot by billionaire Mike Bloomberg.
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