Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) has momentum that is unmatched. He came out neck-and-neck with former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg in Iowa, although Buttigieg ended up with one more delegate. He won by a razor-thin margin in New Hampshire, although he came out with the same number of delegates as Buttigieg. And he absolutely crushed it in Nevada, with practically no competition.
But why is Bernie seeing such a surge? A large part of it has to do with the fact that average, working-class Americans are disenfranchised by the Democratic Party. In a lot of ways, Bernie is an insurgent candidate who is making things a little messier than they should be. The party big wigs immediately told Americans former Vice President Joe Biden was their guy, that he was the one who was going to take back the country from President Donald Trump, because, you know, Orange Man Bad. But state after state has shown us that Democratic voters are bucking that narrative.
Following the Nevada Caucus results, former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang pinpointed the issue with the Democratic Party: their lack of appeal to the very voters who should be their base.
"This is why I ran. When I went around to Democrats – actually, no, not Democrats – working-class Americans across the country, if you have a 'D' next your name, it's like a Scarlet Letter. Like they do not [let] Democrats speak to them," Yang explained. "I was talking to truck drivers and waitresses and I was like, theoretically, aren't you who the Democratic Party should be speaking to and standing up for? But they thought the Democratic Party wanted nothing to do with them. And that, to me, is a real problem with the Democratic Party. You have to do some real soul-searching if working-class Americans is not their party."
According to the entrepreneur, this was the very essence of why he ran for president to begin with. He saw the "underlying economic issues that have been building up in our communities for years and decades." Yang said those issues are the reason President Donald Trump was elected to begin with.
Democrats claim to be the party of working-class Americans and minorities. It's hard to make that argument when the majority of the people running for president are old, white, men who are millionaires and billionaires. It's antithetical to everything the party stands for.
Americans have absolutely no incentive to elect a Democrat. Why would they boot President Trump out of office when the economy is booming, unemployment is at record-lows? Why would they get rid of the man who is responsible for unemployment being at historic lows for Hispanics and African Americans? Why would Americans oust Trump when the Tax Cuts and Job Act put more money in their pockets?
The answer: they don't.