Sanders Is Winning Because He's Popular
Bernie Sanders’s 2020 slogan is “Not me. Us.” The sentiment is uplifting, and it’s good politics—the kind of phrase that makes voters feel as if they’re part of a movement rather than a cult of personality.
It’s also probably wrong.
Sanders’s narrow win Tuesday night in the New Hampshire primary cements his status as the front-runner in the Democratic presidential race. It will inspire many proclamations that a socialist takeover of the United States is nigh. Whether this is deemed a good or bad thing will depend on who’s declaring it. Sanders’s hardest-core backers—young, far-left voters, especially white and in cities—will view it as a new dawn. The senator himself will probably read it the same way. The Trump campaign may welcome it, too, seeing a chance to cast the Democratic Party as a bunch.
