Supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders are a bit paranoid, and rightly so.
Over the course of the 2016 election, their candidate found himself on the receiving end of a number of raw deals. The most infamous of which was the primary rigging scandal that former First Lady Hillary Clinton was involved in, in which she and the DNC colluded to keep Bernie from earning the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
Now, in 2020, the Bernie faithful have a rightful trepidation about the machinations of the American political system. They are on edge, just waiting for the next shoe to drop against their radical revolutionary.
For some, it appears as though there has been a snake in the grass.
It took Joe Biden’s moderate rivals just hours to unite behind his presidential campaign after they left the race. Bernie Sanders hasn’t been so fortunate.
Elizabeth Warren, one of Sanders’ closest ideological allies, declined to endorse anyone after suspending her campaign on Thursday. She didn’t rule out an endorsement of her New England neighbor but said she wanted to “take a deep breath and spend a little time on that.”
High-profile Warren supporters across the country, particularly women, were also hesitant to race into Sanders’ camp. And on Capitol Hill, where Biden was racking up new endorsements daily, the Vermont senator hasn’t earned a single new endorsement, even among the most progressive elected officials, in two weeks.
The dangerous silence from Warren and progressive officials across the country comes at the worst time for Sanders, who’s suddenly losing momentum in a two-man race with the former vice president as another set of high-stakes primary elections looms. Sanders is moving forward with the same coalition that was beaten soundly earlier this week. And if he cannot find a way to grow, and grow quickly, the Vermont senator’s 2020 challenge will only become more dire.
Sanders will be gaining some momentum as the primary elections begin to head out west, but a Warren endorsement certainly would have gone a long way toward securing delegates…especially after Warren refused to drop out of the race before Super Tuesday, thus siphoning off and untold number of delegates from Sanders.
