Jake Tapper says that this election is already starting to remind him of 2004 when Democratic voters coronated John Kerry because they thought he could beat George W. Bush:
I’m with @jaketapper pic.twitter.com/ULDHLurROk
— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) March 11, 2020
Here’s more from Fox News:
During Tuesday night’s election coverage, Tapper made the case why Sen. Bernie Sanders I-Vt., would remain in the race as he later indicated that he would the next day, since he is a “stronger debater” than Biden and will attempt to prove he’s a stronger candidate at the upcoming debate.
Then he drew comparisons between this election cycle and the 2004 election cycle.
“To be completely frank, I’m getting real 2004 vibes tonight, which is, the Democrats want to defeat an incumbent Republican so badly, Democratic voters I mean, that they decide which one is electable,” Tapper explained, “And, they decide, ‘OK, it’s John Kerry,’ or in this case it’s Joe Biden. There’s a huge coalescing around that person, they want to end the primary process as soon as possible and then basically they coronate this person.”
He continued, “Now, what did we learn in the last few weeks? Mark McKinnon, a former George W. Bush adviser told me that, actually, they feared Howard Dean more because Howard Dean, even though he was less predictable, there was a starker difference between Howard Dean and George W. Bush and he was drawing much bigger crowds than John Kerry was able to.”
The CNN anchor even namedropped MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes as “progressive pundits” who may have picked the wrong candidate to support.
“The point is that when you have the Democratic electorate deciding that they are all a bunch of Rachel Maddows and Chris Hayeses and the like, that they’re just, you know, progressive pundits and they’re going to pick out who is the best one, maybe they don’t necessarily always know what they’re doing,” he said.
There is no doubt that Trump is going to be tough to beat in November. There’s also no doubt that if Biden is the nominee, the only chance he’ll have of beating Trump is to ride anti-Trump anger on the left to victory. He’s got no adoring fan base like Sanders – I doubt anyone is really excited by Biden. So anti-Trump anger is all he’s got. Bernie on the other hand does excite people – on the left. But in the general election I think his socialism would do more to turn people off than anything else.
What I’m essentially saying here is that even if it feels like 2004, they are left with two crappy candidates and it probably won’t matter in the end. The anti-Trump anger could be the difference maker, but I believe the pro-Trump sentiment will out weight it and Trump will get another four years.