"He has a very good shot
of winning Iowa, a very good shot of winning New Hampshire, and other than Joe
Biden, the best shot of winning Nevada," said one former Obama adviser.
Sen. Bernie Sanders' recent
surge in national and early-state polls, enthusiastic progressive base, and
resilience in the aftermath of his heart attack have reportedly forced
some within the Democratic establishment who were previously dismissive of the
Vermont senator to concede—both in private and in public—that he could
ultimately run away with the party's presidential nomination.
"For months the Vermont
senator was written off by Democratic Party insiders as a candidate with a
committed but ultimately narrow base who was too far left to win the
primary," Politico reported Thursday.
"But in the past few weeks, something has changed. In private
conversations and on social media, Democratic officials, political operatives,
and pundits are reconsidering Sanders' chances."
David Brock, a Democratic
operative and long-time ally of Hillary Clinton who earlier
this year discussed launching an "anti-Sanders campaign,"
told Politico that Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden have
"both proven to be very resilient."
"It may have been
inevitable that eventually you would have two candidates representing each side
of the ideological divide in the party," Brock added. "A lot of smart
people I've talked to lately think there's a very good chance those two end up
being Biden and Sanders."
Former Obama adviser Dan
Pfeiffer said "people should take him very seriously," referring to
Sanders.
"He has a very good shot
of winning Iowa, a very good shot of winning New Hampshire, and other than Joe
Biden, the best shot of winning Nevada," said Dan Pfeiffer, who served as
a adviser to former President Barack Obama. "He could build a real head of
steam heading into South Carolina and Super Tuesday."
According to Real Clear
Politics polling averages, Sanders is in a close second place in Iowa,
first place in New
Hampshire, and virtually tied with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) for
second in Nevada.
A poll last
week from the UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies showed Sanders
leading the Democratic field in California, a crucial Super Tuesday state.
Sanders' polling strength,
combined with the collapse of "other candidates with once-high
expectations, such as Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Beto O'Rourke," has
begun to change the minds of Democratic insiders, according to Politico.
Faiz Shakir, Sanders' campaign
manager, said figures within the Democratic establishment are not rethinking
Sanders' chances to win the nomination "out of the goodness of their
heart."
They are doing so, Shakir
said, because "it is harder and harder to ignore him when he's rising in
every average that you see."
Shakir went on to tell Politico that
the campaign is eager to have a conversation about Sanders' electability.
"We want that," said
Shakir. "I'd love to be able to argue why he stands a better chance to
beat Donald Trump than Joe Biden."
While Sanders has received
significantly less attention in the corporate media than his
Democratic rivals, Politico noted that a "series of TV segments
around last week's Democratic debate illustrate the shift in how Sanders is
being perceived."
"We never talk about
Bernie Sanders. He is actually doing pretty well in this polling," David
Axelrod, a former Obama adviser, said on CNN following the debate.
"He's actually picked up. And the fact is Bernie Sanders is as consistent
as consistent can be."
Sanders' campaign announced
following the debate in Los Angeles that it raised more than a million dollars
on debate day from tens of thousands of individual contributions.
"The fundraising total
and number of individual donations," the campaign said in a statement,
"was the highest for Sanders' campaign during a debate day in 2019, which
is just the latest sign of the momentum his campaign is seeing all over the
country."
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