Bernie Sanders could actually win this thing [View all]

[Uncle Joe]

(CNN)With the Iowa caucuses now less than a month away, a realization is setting in among the political class: Bernie Sanders has a very credible chance at winning the 2020 Democratic nomination.

(snip)

Interviews like the one Sanders gave to Cooper on Monday night suggest that he won't make that mistake again. (Sidebar: Campaigns -- all campaigns -- are about choices between candidates. Highlighting your strengths is of value, yes. But so too is noting your opponents' weaknesses -- and why they should matter to voters.)

Sanders has clearly read up on Biden's looooong voting record -- supported the invasion of Iraq, backed NAFTA, advocated for a bankruptcy bill -- and is beginning to roll out the clear contrast between the former vice president's record on those issues and his own. (Sanders is helped in all of this because he was in the Senate contemporaneously with Biden and can point to moments where the two differed.) The next question for Sanders will be whether he puts these critiques in television ads in places like Iowa and New Hampshire as the votes in both of those states near.

Whether Sanders continues to take the case to Biden remains to be seen. Ditto whether he will wind up as the Democratic nominee. But what is less ambiguous is that Sanders is in far better position to become the Democratic standard-bearer than most people -- including most Democrats -- expected him to be even as recently as last fall. And the Iowa caucuses are only 27(!!) days away.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/07/politics/bernie-sanders-joe-biden-2020-democratic-primary/index.html