The Sanders Collapse, or, the Spectacular Success of Russiagate

The collapse in support for Bernie's presidential campaign is difficult to comprehend. Yesterday Joe Biden easily won Michigan and Missouri. According to Shane Goldmacher's "5 Takeaways From Tuesday’s Democratic Primaries":

In Michigan, where Mr. Sanders had focused much of his attention in the last week, he was leading in none of the state’s 83 counties as of early Wednesday, and trailing Mr. Biden by double digits statewide. In Missouri, Mr. Sanders was also trailing in every single county in a state where he won dozens of counties in 2016. And in Mississippi, Mr. Sanders was getting thrashed, with Mr. Biden topping 80 percent of the vote.

To put the Sanders collapse in perspective, Nate Silver wrote yesterday:

Biden’s ascent has been so rapid that it’s hard to entirely grasp its scope. Biden’s rise in national polls over the past two weeks — from 15.4 percent on Feb. 24 to 51.7 percent today — has been perhaps the fastest in the history of the primaries. He has massive polling leads in states all over the map that were once expected to be competitive.

With Sanders recently having enjoyed a substantial advantage in national opinion polls, not to mention a robust record of state victories in 2016, his present predicament, 160 delegates behind Biden and fading, seems to me best understood as a massive hack of voter consciousness.

Remember, the Democratic establishment had been freaked-out and wrong-footed for the last year-plus. One neoliberal after the next -- Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg -- was pulled from the pot and tossed against the wall. None really took. All the while Bernie was building strength and, seemingly, broadening his base.

What happened? How did the hack work? I think the correct answer here is the Democratic Party's years-long, gigantic investment in Russiagate paid off. Bernie's post-Nevada wings were clipped by placing him on the wrong side of Russiagate. Putin wanted Sanders, the old Fidel-loving Vermont hippie, to win in order to lock in a second term for Trump, or so the story was told. There went the black vote. There went the suburban vote. There went the rural vote.

One thing I have come to realize over the years of producing this page is that a principal function -- if not the principal function -- of mainstream corporate mass media is to manufacture official enemies. By manufacturing official enemies -- Emmanuel Goldstein of 1984 -- the mainstream corporate press can control opinion.

From the first mention of Russiagate in the summer of 2016 the goal of its manufacture was to staunch the loss of credibility afflicting the Democratic Party. And basically it worked. The Democratic Party has a much more cohesive bloc of African-American and suburban voters now than it did in 2016.

Whether this bloc, with a wilting, addled machine pol as its standard-bearer, can best Donald Trump, with his limitless resources and his state-of-the-art digital attack, appears to me to be a long shot. But Trump was a long shot in 2016, and I didn't think he would win.

The Democratic Party has been reconfigured around Russiagate. It is a thoroughly xenophobic political construct at this point. I hope Bernie stays in the race as long as possible and inflicts as much damage to the organization as he can. If there is to be any hope, the Democratic Party must be destroyed.