Bill Sniffin: Craziness at Democrat Ground Zero in National Primary Election Action

By Bill Sniffin, Cowboy State Daily Publisher
 
LAS VEGAS – Wow, Bernie Sanders is taking a pounding here at Democrat Ground Zero. As a Wyoming Republican, this is my main takeaway in watching the national Democrat Party primary election campaign.
 
In the winter, we keep our motorhome in Las Vegas and we recently spent some time there getting away from the snow and cold.
 
We were not the only ones. We were joined in Sin City by all the Democrat candidates. So, what are my conclusions from experiencing this?
 
First, the candidates have been ganging up on Vermont Sen. Sanders.  The 78-year old Independent, running as a Democrat Socialist, won the New Hampshire primary and finished a close second in the Iowa Caucus. Sanders is a big target and Democrat groups are running ads really knocking him.
 
In an ironic twist, most ads argue that the stubborn Sanders is just like Trump, the arch-nemesis of the Democrats. Although the Democrats are claiming unity in their joint desire to defeat the incumbent, the gloves have come off. It is already past the middle of February and no clear-cut front-runner has emerged, with the possible exception of Sanders.
 
Brian Greenspun of the Democrat Las Vegas Sun called Sanders “a party outsider and culture warrior,” which was not a compliment in a city where 60,000 people belong to the Democrat-leaning Culinary Union, alone.
 
We saw just about every Democrat TV ad possible.  This race sure looks a lot different than it looked just before Iowa and New Hampshire.
 
All candidates are spending tons of money on TV ads but billionaire Tom Steyer is spending the most. He will finish strong in Nevada, we predict.
 
Meanwhile, off in the distance, you see billionaire Mike Bloomberg spending hundreds of millions of dollars in other states. He has also hired some of the best talent in the USA in the states where future contests will be contended.
 
My prediction is that come November, folks will be voting between President Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence against a Democrat ticket of Sen. Amy Klobuchar and her vice-president candidate former Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
 
My main reason for anticipating a Klobuchar-Buttigieg ticket is that at some point Democrat voters just might come to their senses when it comes to trying to win a national general election.
 
And another thing, why do all these young Democrat voters support folks so old?  Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Mike Bloomberg are too old to be Baby Boomers, for heaven’s sake.  They are not so old as to be members of the Greatest Generation, but they might be close.
 
Our nation has elected four Baby Boomer presidents over the last 27 years. Surely the party leaders in the Democrat Party can visualize how potentially feeble a ticket featuring former Vice President Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders or former Mayor Mike Bloomberg would look.
 
Often in primaries, the candidates tilt far to the left in the Democrat Party and far to the right in the Republican Party. But the extreme ideas being promoted by the Democrat Far Left by Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren are so out of the mainstream that they make these candidates unelectable in a general election.
 
Critics say what Sanders and Warren are promoting is nothing short of the Venezuelation of America.
 
Plus their approval of late term abortions, super severe limits on environmental issues, and active promotion of Socialism may garner votes in primaries but cannot muster the support to beat President Donald Trump in a general election.
 
I have lots of Democrat relatives and they think Wyoming’s pro-Trump tendency is crazy. They absolutely despise this president. Their only goal is to replace Donald Trump. Period. But they also worry about their ultimate ticket going forward.
 
To their credit, my kid sister Marybeth and my kid brother Jim and their spouses worked hard for the more reasonable Klobuchar during the recent Iowa caucuses. The Minnesota senator finished fifth. Buttigieg and Sanders pretty much tied, with Warren coming in third and Biden coming in fourth.
 
In New Hampshire, again Sanders and Buttigieg topped the ticket but Klobuchar surged to third while Warren and Biden faded.
 
Klobuchar has been endorsed by the Las Vegas Sun in Nevada and the New York Times on the bigger national stage.
 
A Klobuchar-Buttigieg ticket would have an uphill battle against Trump-Pence but at least they would have a fighting chance. The Democrats pushing the radical Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “Green New Deal” agenda along with the Greta Thunberg extreme environmentalism, well, they just have too high a mountain to climb to convince enough independent voters across the USA to win the general election.
 
So what happens if the candidates get to their national Democrat convention without a clear winner?
 
The smart folks in the national Democrat Party already realize that all those voters on the two coasts are locked in.  By putting up two Midwesterners like Klobuchar and Buttigieg as their candidates, they have a chance of winning Midwestern battleground states that had earlier supported Clinton and Obama but favored Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
 
A ticket of Midwesterners would give the Democrats a fighting chance of winning the election.  And although Klobuchar and Buttigieg have both offered a few far left ideas, they are viewed as middle of the road.  This supposedly could appeal to independents and to Democrats who either stayed home last time or even took a chance on voting for Trump.
 
My aforementioned sister is a newspaper publisher in eastern Iowa and she recalled the problems with the Hawkeye State caucus effort.  She said her local caucus was led by an 80-year old gentleman who made it clear he was not going to use some “app” on his phone to report their results. He planned to do it like they always did it – he was going to phone it in. 
 
Iowa has 1,681 precincts and its state Democratic Party only had 16 phone lines ready to take results. Not sure they ever got all the results.  What a fiasco!
 
With the above said, the 2020 presidential race is Trump’s to lose. It is really hard for an incumbent president to lose in this modern era. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all won second terms.  And it sure looks like Donald Trump will win a second term, too.
 
In the face of that inevitability, the only chance the Democrats may have is putting up a ticket like Klobuchar-Buttigieg. You read it here first.
 
Check out additional columns at www.billsniffin.com. He has published six books.  His coffee table book series has sold 34,000 copies. You can find more stories by Bill Sniffin by going to CowboyStateDaily.com.