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WASHINGTON – Last month, when Leah Daughtry, a former Democratic Party leader, approached a hundred wealthy Liberal donors in San Francisco, it was enough to revisit the 2020 primary rules for scare them.
Democrats are likely to attend their convention next summer without selecting a presidential candidate, said Daughtry, who led her party's congresses in 2008 and 2016, the last two times the candidacy has been challenged. . And Senator Bernie Sanders is well placed to be among the last candidates, she noted.
"I think I panicked them," Daughtry recalls with a chuckle, an assessment that was confirmed by three other participants. They are barely alone.
From fundraisers filled with couch couches to Washington locker rooms, traditional Democrats worry more and more that their efforts to overthrow President Trump in 2020 may be complicated by Sanders, in a scenario a policy that is too reminiscent of the way Mr. Trump himself seized the Republican nomination in 2016.
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Some Democrats are beginning to wonder how to thwart a 70-year-old candidate who is not part of the party structure, immune to intimidation or incitement, and relying on an unshakable foundation, without simply reinforcing his words. "Message – the same grievance that Mr. Trump used with great success?
But arresting Mr. Sanders, or at least preventing a controversial convention, could prove difficult for Democrats.
He has enormous financial advantages – already much higher than those of his Democratic rivals – which allow him to lead a major campaign during the primaries. And he is well placed to benefit from a significant number of candidates who would split the vote: he wins a significant number of primaries and caucuses and ranks second, thanks to his strong base. Voters deeply loyal in many states, he would pick a formidable number of delegates for the nomination.
This prospect not only scares the establishment-aligned Democrats, but also creates tension on what should be done to arrest Mr. Sanders.
Some party members still harbor anger over the 2016 race, when he opposed Hillary Clinton, and his persistent resistance to becoming a Democrat. But his detractors are mainly motivated by the fear that the appointment of a declared socialist will give Mr Trump a second term.
"It's becoming increasingly clear that Sanders could end up winning this win, or certainly that he's staying so long that he's hurting the winner," said David Brock, the Liberal organizer, who said he had discussed with other agents of a campaign -Sanders and feels that he should start "sooner than later."
But for some veterans of the still raw primary school of 2016, a brutal intervention can only embolden him, as well as his fervent supporters.
RT Rybak, the former mayor of Minneapolis who was vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, complained bitterly of the party's bias towards Mrs. Clinton at the time, and warned that he would turn around if his fellow Democratic Democrats "were starting from the idea that you" are trying to arrest someone else.
If the party breaks again, "or if we even have someone who raises their eyebrows:" I'm not happy about that, "we'll lose and they'll have that loss on their hands," said M Rybak about the anti-Sanders forces, begging them not to make him a "martyr".
For a not insignificant number of Democrats, of course, the populist program of Mr. Sanders – especiallyMedicare for all "and the focus on working families – is exactly what the country needs. And he proved himself, coming off the margins to mount a surprisingly strong challenge for Mrs. Clinton, getting 13 million votes and capturing 23 primaries or caucuses.
The good news for Sanders' opponents is that his vote is down sharply in the first states named from 2016. The Democrats regard him more negatively than many of his main rivals. He's already publicly committed to supporting the party's candidate if he falls short.
"Bernie Sanders thinks the most critical mission we have before us is to defeat Donald Trump," said Faiz Shakir, Sanders' campaign manager. "All decisions in the coming year will come from this key objective."
According to former Senator Claire McCaskill, "it's something we do not have now in 2016," it's Trump's union strength. Bernie and his supporters will be under tremendous pressure to line up because of what Trump represents. "
But Sanders is also taking steps that indicate he is engaged for the duration of the race – and that he will attack aggressively when he is attacked. Saturday his campaign sent an unfaithful letter to the Center for American Progress, a Clinton-aligned liberal think-tank, accusing them of supporting Trump's attacks, of playing a "destructive" role in democratic politics, and of being accountable "Money companies" receive. The letter arrived a few days after a website aligned with the center released a video highlighting Mr. Sanders' millionaire status.
[Read more: The blowup between the Center for American Progress and Mr. Sanders’s campaign reflects ideological divisions among Democrats.]
With other party leaders, he offers more honey than vinegar.
Last month, for example, he used his first trip to Iowa as a candidate for 2020 to discreetly meet Jeff Link, the party's experienced strategist, and Patty Judge, former state secretary at Iowa. 39, Agriculture, to discuss rural politics and politics, according to a Democrat familiar with the meeting. Sanders 'campaign also helped Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers and Clinton's ally in 2016, join her alongside what they dubbed the "Ohio Workers' Hall" on Sunday.
"If anyone thinks that Bernie Sanders is incapable of doing politics, he has not seen it in Congress for 30 years," said Tad Devine, longtime strategist of Sanders, who will not work for his campaign this year. "The guy is trying to win this time."
But such contacts matter little to many Democrats, especially donors and party leaders, who are increasingly concerned about Sanders' candidacy.
Brock, who backed Clinton's previous presidential candidacy, said "Bernie's question is raised at every fundraising meeting I do." Steven Rattner, one of the Democratic Party's major donors, said the issue was being discussed "endlessly" in its orbit. and among the Democratic leaders, it becomes difficult to block.
"The buzz has become a rumor," said Susan Swecker, president of the Democratic Party of Virginia.
Howard Wolfson, who spent several months immersed in polls and Democratic discussion groups on behalf of former New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, sent a direct message to Sanders' skeptics: "The people under -the possibility that he becomes the candidate at their peril. "
To this day, the discussion about Mr. Sanders is largely limited to a private setting because – like Republicans in the establishment in 2016 – the Democrats are reluctant to Idea of raising or alienating his followers.
The question of what to do about Bernie and the larger imperative of party unity, for example, hovered over a series of hitherto unknown Democratic dinners organized in New York and Washington. and organized by the long-time financier, Bernard Schwartz. The rallies included scores from the moderate wing or center-left party, including President Nancy Pelosi; Senator Chuck Schumer, Majority Leader; former Governor Terry McAuliffe of Virginia; Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, in Indiana, himself a candidate for the presidency; and the President of the Center for American Progress, Neera Tanden.
"He did us a disservice in the last election," said Schwartz, a longtime Clinton supporter, who said he would support former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in this primary.
But it's not just Mr. Sanders' critics who believe that the structure of this race could lead to a contest of 50 states (like the two previous primary democrats) and require cuts to determine a candidate before or at the convention (unlike the previous two primary democrats).
"If I had to bet today, we will go to Milwaukee without a candidate," said Daughtry, who was neutral at the 2016 primary.
The reason, she theorized, is simple: the super Tuesday, when a minimum of 10 states vote, comes just three days after the last of the first four states. After that, nearly 40% of the delegates will have been distributed – and, she suspects, distributed among Democratic candidates so that no one can go out with a majority.
Unlike Republicans, who use a win-win primary format, Democrats use a proportional system, so candidates must collect only 15% of votes in primaries or caucuses to recruit delegates. And even if a candidate fails to capture 15% of all states, he can still win delegates by respecting this voting threshold in the various districts of Congress.
If no negotiations were to be concluded at the time of the first roll-call vote at the 2020 convention in Milwaukee – for example, a one-to-one ticket between two of the main winning delegates – the battle for the nomination would take place in the second round. And under the new rules developed by the D.N.C. after the 2016 race, it is at that time that insiders and elected party officials, called superdelegates, would be able to express a binding vote.
The specter of super-delegates who decide on the nomination, especially if Mr. Sanders is a finalist, is very appealing to party officials.
"If we have a role to play, that is, but I would much rather have it decided in the first round, only from the point of view of unity," said Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.
That might not happen if Mr. Sanders, supported by its online fundraising network, stays in the primary but does not win the majority of delegates after the last state vote in June. If he is unable, for example, to broaden his appeal to non-white voters, he could accumulate hundreds of delegates but still would not live up to the candidacy.
However, this result may not be fully realized by the end of the primary calendar – long after Mr. Sanders put his money to work.
"If he regularly raises $ 6 million more than his next opponent, he will have a huge financial advantage," said Rufus Gifford, former president Barack Obama's finance director in 2012. , noting that Mr. Sanders could cover onerous expenses and delegate – Rich super Tuesday like California and Texas with advertisements during early voting.
Gifford, who has become public in recent days with dismay at key Democratic fundraisers on the sidelines, said about Sanders: "I feel that everything we do puts him in the hands. "
But the danger of rallying the party's elitist donor class against a candidate whose public life has been organized around the confrontation of concentrated wealth is self-evident: Mr. Sanders would happily seize any initiative of Stop Bernie.
"You can see him reading the headlines now," said Mr. Brock: "Rich people do not like me."
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