Bernie Fans 2020 Hype, Setting Up Potential GOP Dream

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is heading to New Hampshire this weekend for the first time since 2016, as clear a sign as any that he’s still considering a run for president in 2020.

Could this be President Donald Trump’s dream opponent?

“I actually think that Bernie would be easier to beat, even though he shows up a little bit better in the polls,” Trump said on the Jimmy Kimmel show in May 2016.

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“I’d love to debate Bernie,” Trump said the next day at a press conference. “He’s a dream.”

Two months later, just before the Democratic National Convention, Sanders finally gave up the fight to Hillary Clinton after winning 23 primary contests, including in New Hampshire, where he beat Clinton 60 percent to 38 percent. He’d lost to Clinton in Iowa by just 0.2 percent. After New Hampshire, he went on to win Oklahoma, Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, and then Michigan, where Clinton had been widely favored to win.

On Tuesday night, August 28, Sanders appeared at the historic Riverside Church in Harlem, New York, before a wildly cheering crowd to launch his book, the “Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution.”

A week earlier he’d been in Indiana, at a rally at Indianapolis’ Monument Circle with union leaders, telling people that Trump hadn’t kept his promises to keep Carrier Corp. jobs in the state.

On Monday, Labor Day, he’ll do two events in New Hampshire, the first in Manchester, ground zero for most presidential campaigns, where he’ll headline an event for the AFL-CIO. He’s scheduled to do a second in Concord, the capital, hosted by an organization called Rights and Democracy.

Does Sanders have a shot at the presidency?

“No,” says Republican political consultant Jay Townsend, a former Democrat. “He’s too old and cranky, and too far left.”

Sanders would be 78 years old by 2020, but Trump is only five years younger.

A Trump-Sanders race would set up what some see as an epic battle, even more defined than in 2016, between a self-identified democratic-socialist who has not only opposed all efforts to control the nation’s borders but who wants illegal immigrants who have been deported to be brought back to the U.S., and all detention centers holding them opened, and a candidate who pledged in his Inaugural address that he would protect the borders from the “ravages” of other nations and whose signature issue was building a tall and strong wall on the southern border with Mexico — and making Mexico pay for it.

Sanders supporters say they think he’s running.

“For me, the big question is, ‘Will he run as a Democrat or an Independent? Or a Green?” says Phil Ranstrom of Chicago, an actor and avid Sanders supporter.

A Draft Bernie movement is well underway, with almost 50,000 people having signed on to a petition urging Sanders to lead a new party, a People’s Party, that would challenge the two-party system.

But it seems the Democratic nomination could be open to him.

“If there is a leader of the Democratic Party, he’s it,” says Chase Jennings, a spokesman with the Republican National Committee. “And he’s not even a Democrat.”

Sanders would be likely to make government-sponsored health insurance one of his biggest issues, considering the failure of the Republican Congress to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

This week, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) announced that she was signing on to Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill as a co-sponsor, taking many Democrats off guard.

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It’s unknown how voters would come down when faced with a choice between Trump and Sanders — two candidates who are both referred to frequently as “populists.”

But a look at vote totals in the respective party primaries shows far higher vote totals for Trump in some key states than Sanders.

In Florida’s Democratic primary on March 12, 2016, for example, Sanders received 568,836 votes compared to the 1,079,870 Trump got in the Florida Republican primary three days later.

In the Pennsylvania Democratic primary on April 26, 2016, Sanders received 731,881 votes compared to Trump’s 902,593 in the Republican primary the same day.

(photo credit, homepage image: Scott P.; photo credit, article image: Hillel Steinberg, Flickr)