EDITORIAL: Going south with Sanders

OPINION:

“To everything there is a season,” it is written. Everything but socialism, that is. Democrats competing to win their party’s nomination for president have finally, reluctantly, spoken out against far-out views that for most Americans, goes without saying. Given the candidates’ own progressive bromides, there is ample reason to suspect their newfound preference for red, white and blue over red is simply their desperate attempt to halt Bernie Sanders and his socialist bandwagon. Primary voters vetting the choices shouldn’t be fooled.

It was six against one on the debate stage in Charleston, South Carolina, on Tuesday night as survivors of the long road to the Democratic convention in Milwaukee attempted to paint the frontrunning senator from Vermont as odious as their Republican nemesis, President Trump.

“I am not looking forward to a scenario where it comes down to Donald Trump with his nostalgia for the social order of the 1950s and Bernie Sanders with a nostalgia for the revolutionary politics of the 1960s,” said Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. It was a clear reference to a CBS News “60 Minutes” interview Sunday night in which Mr. Sanders coldly lauded deceased Cuban dictator Fidel Castro for implementing a literacy program following his murderous 1959 takeover.

He could have added — but didn’t — the classic wordplay reserved for those blind to their own callousness: “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg reminded the audience of news reports that Russia is attempting to interfere in the upcoming election on Mr. Sanders’ behalf: “Vladimir Putin thinks Donald Trump should be president of the United States and that’s why Russia is helping you get elected so you lose to him.” It’s an irrational analysis, though. If birds of a feather flock together, reason says leftists like Messrs. Putin and Sanders do, too.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and billionaire activist Tom Steyer defended their positions like drivers overtaken by road rage, but no one matched Mr. Sanders’ knack for drawing attention with waving arms and bulging eyeballs. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s stern demeanor would make her a formidable monitor for a high school detention room. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, by her account, has a bill somewhere on her desk to solve every ill known to man, perhaps including coronavirus.

Mr. Trump may vow at virtually every rally that “America will never be socialist country,” but the records of the Democratic contenders reveal little of the president’s revulsion for society caught in the grip of state control.

Indivisible, a left-wing policy organization that ranks the candidates based on their progressive views, provides a more candid display of beliefs than the scripted blather unleashed during debates and town halls. Naturally, Mr. Trump earns a zero on the progressive scorecard. Mr. Biden, apparently uninterested in the Indivisible beauty contest, only earns an “under 50 percent.” Slightly more likely to get with the progressive program, Ms. Klobuchar scores 57 percent. She is passed on the left by Tom Steyer with 75 percent and Mr. Buttigieg with 77 percent. Bernie would top the list with 89 percent and earn the right to plant a kiss on Castro’s casket were he not beaten out by Ms. Warren and her 95 percent score. By contrast, Barack Obama would have been ranked a relative moderate, placing somewhere in the 60s. Latecomer Mr. Bloomberg has not been rated.

Tuesday’s candidate forum may not prove to be a game-changer in affecting the outcome of Saturday’s South Carolina primary, but South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn might. The third-most-senior member of the U.S. House of Representatives announced Wednesday his choice for president: Joe Biden. Mr. Clyburn has the ear of the state’s African-Americans community, which is heavily Democratic and comprises nearly two-thirds of the state party’s membership.

With 1,991 delegates needed to clinch the party’s nomination, the balloons and confetti to shower the winner in July are a still long way off. Thus far, Mr. Sanders has captured 45 delegates, Mr. Buttigieg, 25; Mr. Biden, 15; Ms. Warren, 8; Ms. Klobuchar, 7; and the billionaires, fat zeros.

It is not his tendency to cling to fantasies about the virtues of dead socialist dictators that makes Mr. Sanders the wrong choice for president. It is the likelihood that he would usher in a new season of socialism for the 21st century. America should not go south with Bernie.