James Carville, the Democratic Party guru, was speaking atJohns Hopkins University several years back and mentioned an Israeli political campaignin which he was hired as an outside consultant.
“The first thing you gotta do,” Carville said he told Israelipolitical leaders, imparting to them his great wisdom and insight, “you gottafigure out how to get the Jewish vote.”
The line is not only funny but fundamental. In politics, certain things are obvious, even in the midst of heated, complex campaigns. It’s this way today, Mar. 11, the day after former Vice President Joe Biden handed Sen. Bernie Sanders at least four Democratic primary defeats.
Here’s today’s obvious fact: It’s time for Sanders to tossoff every pugnacious instinct in his repertoire and end his campaign for president.The game’s just about over, and he’s very unlikely to win.
I say that as someone who admires Sanders because I believe he articulates the pain and frustration of working class Americans -– those who have been left behind, and those who fear they’re next to go under -– better than any other candidate in the 2020 presidential race.
But the longer he stays in the Democratic primaries and continues to take shots at Biden, all Sanders does is help Donald Trump stay in the Oval Office.
We started last evening with news that Sanders had gone hometo Vermont. There, he’d wait out the results, we were told. This is only partof the story. The rest is that he saw the handwriting on the wall, and he wouldhave nothing to say at the end of the evening.
Apparently, he’ll have more to say this weekend when he and Biden go at it in a nationally televised debate on CNN. Against whom does Sanders go after? Biden, or Trump? And there are four more primary votes next week, all of them expected to lean Biden’s way.
By night’s end Tuesday, Biden was making a peace offering toSanders. He praised the hard workers in the Sanders campaign, adding, “We sharea common goal. And together, we’ll defeat Donald Trump.”
He also talked about restoring “decency, dignity and honorto the White House.”
It’s time for that kind of language among the Democrats, not the kind of intramural sniping that allows this president to rub his hands in glee while watching them attack each other and provide fodder for the general election.
So here’s the big question for today: who among all the Democratic leaders trying to hold together the fractured pieces of the party will be phoning Sanders and applying the necessary pressure to step aside?
It has to happen. The longer Sanders stays in the race — as he did four years ago, and slowed down Hillary Clinton in the process — the more he gladdens whatever passes for Trump’s heart.
Some things in politics are that obvious.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” was reissued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
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