Sanders Must Now Choose His Battlefield [View all]

[RandySF]

Bernie Sanders is at a crossroads, facing a tough choice about the future of his political movement. The coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing economic chaos it is bringing make Sanders’s program more urgent than ever. A pandemic is the strongest argument for universal health care. The severe recession that America is likely to endure in the coming months will exacerbate all the social problems that Sanders has spent his career fighting.

But if Sanders’s message is more resonant than ever, his presidential bid has stalled. He lost three more primaries on Tuesday night, in Arizona, Illinois, and Florida. Joe Biden is now close to having 300 more pledged delegates. Sanders faces a steep and unlikely path to victory, barring a radical change in events. Further, there’s an ethical dilemma that has been troubling the campaign: Is it justified to continue during the height of a pandemic, when voters are risking their lives to show up at polling stations?

A Sanders aide told Yahoo, “Tonight is hard and it’s also time for some hard decisions.”

It’s striking that the Sanders campaign released a video where the candidate didn’t talk about the election but focused instead on the pandemic. “Our country and our world are facing an unprecedented series of crises,” Sanders said. “We’re dealing with the coronavirus, which is spreading throughout this country and throughout the world. We’re dealing with a growing economic meltdown which will impact tens of millions of workers in this country.”





https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/sanders-coronavirus-congress-presidential/