Tucker: Democrats know Bernie Sanders can win and they're scared
This is the nightmare scenario for the Democratic establishment.
It is here, the night Democrats in Washington honestly have been dreading for weeks. Impeachment has obscured this, but trust me, in the mind of every Democratic consultant and office holder in D.C. has been the Iowa caucuses, the first voting of the 2020 primary season.
As is so often the case, pretty much everything the illiterates posing as "political analysts" you see in your television screen once predicted has turned out to be wrong. Remember when they told you the Bernie Sanders had no chance to win? That the race was really between Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O'Rourke and Kamala Harris? It all sounds pretty amusing now, now that Beto has gone back to skateboarding and Harris has dropped out.
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Warren is still in the race, but is now plummeting toward Earth. Joe Biden has wandered off to find the dessert cart. "Why the hell can't a man get a decent slice of rhubarb pie in this place?" he is wondering.
Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, is actually now the frontrunner in the Democratic nomination race, and this is the nightmare scenario for the Democratic establishment in Washington. They're suddenly hoping against hope that Amy Klobuchar gets some gravity and some votes. And in the meantime, they're putting in frantic calls to a certain authoritarian New York mayor, who also happens to have $60 billion in the bank. "Save us, tiny billionaire, save us!"
The rest of us have a lot to enjoy this primary season. But there's also a lot to learn by watching it, so watch it.
Sanders is running on a premise that you might recognize, actually, if you voted for Donald Trump in 2016. The system is rotten and corrupt, elect me, and I will fight for you. Except in this case, with Bernie, there's some evidence that he will also tear down a lot of it -- maybe all of it.
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So far, Sanders has promised to use executive orders to open the borders, just in case you didn't think the country was changing fast enough already.
Sanders wants to ban hydraulic fracking, which would shutter America's most productive economic sector and make us once again dependent on Middle Eastern theocracies. Sanders promises it will be fine, though, because of the Green New Deal, which, not incidentally, will give him total control of a huge portion of the American economy. So there's that.
And then he says he would nationalize our health care system and make private insurance illegal. He would hike the top tax income bracket, he'd impose a wealth levy on those who he thinks have too much, and that's just for starters.
No matter where he places in Iowa, Bernie Sanders is not going away and neither are his supporters. The Democratic Party is going to be dealing with these people for months and months, if not years.
So the Democratic Party's funders on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley don't like the sound of this, the new taxes especially. They love lifestyle liberalism when it means legal weed and raunchy halftime shows and non-binary bathrooms. That stuff is free, and in fact, you can make money on the weed and they are.
But tightening the tax code? No. No, thanks. They're not into that at all. So they just called their friends over on CNN, the digital bodyguard of the ruling class, and they begged for help, and CNN delivered as it always does.
Just days before the last debate, CNN ran an utterly unproven hit piece on Sanders, calling him a sexist, and then they went further.
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Abby Phillip, CNN White House correspondent: Sen. Sanders, I do want to be clear here. You're saying that you never told Sen. Warren that a woman could not win the election.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.: That is correct.
Phillip: And Sen. Warren, what did you think when Sen. Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.: I disagreed.
"See? He is a sexist, just like Donald Trump!"
And that was the signal to all the other establishment toadies to pile on, which they obediently did. Paul Krugman waddled out from his cubicle at The New York Times to call Bernie Sanders a liar.
Craven hack John Chait of New York magazine did what he was told, as he always does, and he called Sanders' surge an act of insanity. David Frum at The Atlantic reassured his panicked readers that Bernie can't win.
But of course, none of them really believed that; they wouldn't be writing these pieces in the first place. They know Sanders could win, and they're worried about it.
And honestly, on some level, you can't blame them for being worried about it. Sanders is a human bug light. Every lunatic in the Democratic Party seems drawn to him inexorably. They can't stay away.
Most of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "Squad," for example, has endorsed him. They are on the road for him. Just the other day, his surrogate, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib reminded the country how she earned her reputation as the single most unappealing member of Congress.
Dionna Langford, moderator of Bernie Sanders town hall event:You guys remember last week when someone by the name of Hillary Clinton said that nobody -- we're not going to boo. We're not going to boo. We're classy here.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.: Oh, no, I'll boo. Boo!.
Tlaib: You all know I can't be quiet. No, we're going to boo. That's all right. The haters -- the haters will shut up on Monday when we win.
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Well, Monday has come and we're going to find out if they have won -- not that it really matters. Because no matter where he places in Iowa, Bernie Sanders is not going away and neither are his supporters.
The Democratic Party is going to be dealing with these people for months and months, if not years. And you can't say it's not deserved, because it is.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Feb. 3, 2020.