It was never going to be easy.

It is understandable that people are afraid, and that their top priority is beating Trump. That’s my top priority too.

It is understandable that a lot of people have internalized the dominant narrative about establishment candidates being more electable, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.

It is understandable that people are longing for our institutions to protect them, and that they would lean on the familiar.

It is understandable that when establishment Democratic leaders consolidated these past few days, that a lot of people would take this as a cue that their candidate MUST be the more electable candidate.

It is especially understandable that people would sway in this direction when the punditry basically just gave an all-network 24/7 infomercial about how Biden is more electable — offering repetition in the absence of any empirical evidence.

When I knocked doors in Iowa I encountered what many people might consider a surprisingly high number of voters whose top two choices were Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. For most of them, their top priority was beating Trump. Many held within them two opposing arguments about electability…

The one argument is the dominant one, the supposed “conventional wisdom”: don’t take risks in a moment like this. Sanders wants big bold things. We should just focus on defeating Trump. We need a candidate who appeals to the fabled moderate suburban voter. Isn’t that how we beat Trump?

But the other truth that these voters knew deeply — they would nod emphatically when I said it — is that the Democratic Party has been bleeding out working class voters for decades, because Democratic politicians (at the national level) have mostly failed to fight visibly and vocally for working people, as they’ve been busy coddling the donor class and ingratiating themselves to the powerful.

Senator Bernie Sanders is bringing working class voters — urban and rural, white, black and brown — back into the fold. He’s especially bringing out young people, who are essential in doing the groundwork to win general elections. He’s doing it by fighting for working people. He’s doing it by showing political courage, by naming powerful culprits and picking big fights.

Senator Sanders is picking long-overdue fights with the big companies and powerful elites that have rigged our economy, broken our healthcare system, destroyed our planet, and corrupted our political system.

That’s why Bernie Sanders is more trusted than any national politician in America.

Many are presently being swayed to not vote for Sanders not because they don’t like him, his vision, or his policies, but because they have understandably become resigned about what is politically possible.

In this context, it is our duty to persuade our fellow Americans. It is our duty to get good at it.

The task at hand is to remind people. Remind people of the track record of the Democratic Party establishment: that every “safe bet” candidate has lost every Presidential general election for the past 20 years: Gore. Kerry. Clinton. Every. Single. One. (And, no, Obama was not a “safe bet” establishment candidate. He may have governed as a centrist, but he ran in 2008 as a long-shot underdog insurgent who inspired masses of working people.)

The task at hand is to remind people. Remind people about the only force that has ever made positive change in this country: the force of everyday working people, organized.

I have little reason to think Biden is a stronger candidate than Clinton was in 2016. And I have every reason to think Trump is stronger today than he was in 2016.

Biden has most of the same liabilities: Iraq War, NAFTA, criminal justice system, symbol of the establishment. In all sincerity, I feel a deep responsibility to warn everyone I know that Trump would destroy Biden in a general election.

And I will take this opportunity to point out that my track record on predicting electability in presidential races is 4 for 4 since 2004. Not because I have a crystal ball, but because there’s a coherent theory to explain these predictions.

But a lot of good it will do us to be right as we lose!

Fuck that.

It is our duty to engage and to win this battle of ideas.

Last night was hard. But I believe that in a Sanders vs. Biden race, Sanders is in a strong position to win the contest.

These two candidates symbolize two poles in a long-overdue fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, and for the direction of the country.

This is exactly the fight we have asked for. It was never going to be easy. Now is our time to win that fight.

The captain is drunk. It is our duty to wrest the helm and to steer the ship away from catastrophe.

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