MATTHEW CONTINETTI: It’s the Age of Sanders, Too.
Indeed, in one respect, Mr. Sanders’s achievement is more historic than Mr. Trump’s. Not that his electoral record is better. Not that his proposals have become law. What makes Mr. Sanders significant is his novelty. He alone is responsible for bringing socialism into the political mainstream.
By contrast, Mr. Trump swims in the deep currents of American life. Populism predates 1776. Nationalism is rooted in our history. America is the exemplary capitalist nation. Mr. Trump has been a fixture in popular culture for 40 years. He embodies aspects of U.S. identity: glamour, spectacle, volume, braggadocio, success and excess.
Nor did Mr. Trump build his movement from scratch. He seized an opening. He used political tools that others had left to rust: immigration restriction, tariffs, traditionalism, confrontation over gentility, social media, tentpole rallies that married Tea Party populism with the concerns and attitude of blue-collar Reagan Democrats. Mr. Trump’s genius was to bring these tropes and tactics under his inimitable personality. The Republican Party wouldn’t be the same.
Mr. Sanders’s task was harder. His socialism put him at odds with the Democrats, a party to which he has never formally belonged. In 2010, according to Gallup, 50% of Democrats had a positive view of socialism. President Obama distanced himself from the term.
Mr. Sanders’s campaigns tapped a reservoir of youthful antagonism toward the American system. When acolytes took up his message, they found that hostility to Mr. Trump was driving the Democratic base to the left. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ousted a 10-term Democratic incumbent in 2018. She formed the socialist “Squad” with Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley.
Mr. Sanders’s causes—Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, Abolish ICE—set the party’s agenda. In 2020, Joe Biden had no choice but to absorb Mr. Sanders’s movement into his campaign and presidency. The rest of us had to live with the consequences.
Some much more so than others: A Bernie Bro Shot Steve Scalise.
Scalise was the victim of a Democrat terrorist who, inspired by the apocalyptic rhetoric of Bernie Sanders, that millions would die and the planet was in peril because of Republican policies, shot up a Virginia baseball field full of Republican lawmakers in June of 2017. Scalise spent six weeks in the hospital fighting for his life after the Bernie Sanders–supporter decided to save humanity by shooting Scalise and other Republicans.
A few years later: Bernie Bro with Van Full of Guns and Explosives Plotted to Assassinate Biden. Media Buries the Lede, as Usual.
What was Treisman’s motive? He must be one of those evil Proud Boys or crazy QAnon freaks we keep hearing so much about, right?
Wrong. But to find out the actual motive, you have to go all the way down to paragraph 15 of the WaPo story (emphasis mine):
The 19-year-old’s focus on Biden started in the spring, according to the order… Days after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) suspended his presidential campaign, Treisman, who had suggested in a Reddit post that he had to “save bernie,” posted a meme with the caption questioning whether he should kill Biden.
Oh. He’s a Bernie Bro. He wanted to kill Biden to somehow help Bernie.
And then there’s the man who’s a Totenkopf stan: “Mr. Platner’s success is a reminder that Mr. Trump and MAGA aren’t the only actors in this drama. Running parallel to the Trump Era has been the Sanders Era: The rise of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders from socialist gadfly to Democratic Party kingmaker.”
Actually, as Kevin Williams noted a decade ago, Bernie signed his own personal Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact long ago: Bernie’s Strange Brew of Nationalism and Socialism.
