What is Bernie Sanders even doing?
Based on his divisive and resentful press conference yesterday, Palmer Report expressed fear that Bernie Sanders would start to become particularly toxic with his rhetoric against Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. We’ve seen this before: Sanders starts falling behind in real votes, he can’t admit that he’s only the second most popular candidate, and so he attacks everyone supporting the most popular candidate while floating conspiracy theories about why he’s losing.
After all sixteen Democrats in the Mississippi State Senate endorsed Joe Biden today, Bernie Sanders decided to cancel the public event he had scheduled in the state for tomorrow. Sanders has been doing poorly with African American voters thus far – something he’s simply pretending isn’t happening – even as his surrogate Bill DeBlasio went on MSNBC this morning and floated some rather ignorant theories about Bernie’s struggles with black voters. This has led a number of observers to ask aloud if Sanders canceled this rally out of resentment over the fact that the endorsements didn’t go his way.
I don’t think this is the case. As Palmer Report spelled out this morning, new polling in Michigan has Joe Biden surging into the lead, in what appears to be an abrupt fifteen point swing. Sanders desperately needs to win Michigan, a state that gets a lot of attention in the political world. At the same time, Biden is set to dominate Mississippi, and it’s unlikely that Sanders will even be viable for delegates there. So Sanders is essentially forfeiting Mississippi, in a concerted effort at winning Michigan.
The optics here are terrible for Bernie Sanders. He’s blowing off the black community again, after he just got done skipping the Selma anniversary event, which was attended by just about everyone else in the race. His support among black voters could now drop even further. But when the winds are shifting heavily against your campaign, you end up having to make some desperate decisions that are going to make you look bad. Joe Biden is now up by double digits in new national polling, and he’s up by a stunning forty-nine points in Florida. If Sanders loses Michigan on Tuesday, he could be done. No wonder he’s panicking.
