Joe Biden will be the Democratic presidential nominee to take on Donald Trump but the ghost of Bernie Sanders will continue to haunt him despite Sanders quitting the race.
In order to defeat Trump, Biden needs to win over the army of young voters — the so-called Bernie Bros — that backed Sanders and his democratic socialist platform.
While the vast majority of these voters will prefer Biden over Trump, the risk for the former vice president is that they will not bother to vote if Biden’s agenda is too centrist for their left-leaning views.
Biden will come under pressure to move further to the left in order to entice the Sanders army to the voting booths. But if Biden moves too far to the left he will give Trump ammunition to portray Biden as a left wing progressive who has caved to the demands of the party’s liberals.
Biden’s challenge is to win over Sanders loyal supporters without shedding his label as a moderate Democrat.
And to Bernie’s supporters: I know that I need to earn your votes. And I know that might take time. But I want you to know that I see you, I hear you, and I understand the urgency of this moment. I hope you'll join us. You're more than welcome: You're needed.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 8, 2020
As soon as Sanders announced he was quitting the race, leaving Biden as the presumptive nominee, Biden promised Sanders’ supporters that “I’ll be reaching out to you. You will be heard by me”.
Although Sanders has suspended his campaign — only because simple maths suggested he could not win — the 78-year-old Senator intends to continue to pressure Biden and the party to move further left.
Sanders says he will remain on the ballot in the remaining primaries and will use any extra delegates he gets to help influence the party’s platform at the Democratic National Convention in August where Biden will be crowned as the nominee.
Today I am suspending my campaign. But while the campaign ends, the struggle for justice continues on. https://t.co/MYc7kt2b16
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 8, 2020
Biden has already made some concessions to Sanders’ platform. Although Biden has rejected Sanders’ sweeping big government agenda including his medicare-for-all plan, Biden has moved to the left on a range of key issues. He is far less moderate than he once was.
He has already proposed a version of Sanders’ proposal for free college tuition and has adopted more liberal positions on gun control, environmental regulations and immigration.
“We have won the ideological struggle,’ Sanders says about his success in pushing the Democrat party to the left since the Obama era.
Trump wanted Sanders to win the nomination because he believed that Sanders’ left wing agenda would alienate the moderate voters that Trump needs to win re-election.
Biden is a tougher opponent because he appeals to moderate voters, especially in the vital swing states of the midwest.
Trump even claims that he may be able to attract some Bernie Bros and tweeted that “The Bernie people should come to the Republican Party”.
“There is a sizeable chunk of Bernie voters who just like the Populist appeal,” Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said. “Now that Bernie is no longer in the race, those people may be looking for a home.”
As recently as late February, Sanders was the frontrunner to claim the nomination, holding mass rallies across the country and winning the New Hampshire and Nevada primaries and also the popular vote in the deadlocked Iowa caucus.
But Biden’s stunning comeback in South Carolina stirred moderate Democrats who feared Sanders was too left wing to win an election against Trump.
Biden’s moderate rivals, including Pete Buttigieg, Mike Bloomberg and Amy Klobuchar, dropped out and endorsed him. On Super Tuesday, March 3, Biden swept the country and the subsequent primary races have made it all but impossible for Sanders to catch him.
Sanders’ failing was that while he retained a large and loyal army of supporters, he was not able to grow his base in the way he hoped. He struggled to attract older voters as well as African-Americans and his young supporters did not vote in the numbers he had hoped for.
Although Sanders says he will continue to try to influence Biden in the months ahead, his decision to pull out of the race now makes it easier for Biden to unite the party.
Sanders claimed he could not “in good conscience” continue in the race if he knew he could not win. Yet that did not stop Sanders in 2016 from continuing to challenge Hillary Clinton all the way to the party’s convention, despite knowing months earlier that he could not win.
But Sanders and Biden get on, whereas the animosity between Sanders and Clinton was palpable. Sanders’ decision to stay in that race divided the party and undermined Clinton’s ability to defeat Trump.
With Sanders out of the way, Biden now has a clear run at Trump. His challenge in the short term will be not to undermine his own electoral prospects by lurching to the left to attract the now-leaderless Bernie Bros.
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia
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