Bernie Sanders’ Nomination Would Be A ‘Death Sentence’ For Democrats & Lead To Trump Win, Steve Schmidt Says
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has emerged over the past week as the new frontrunner for the Democratic 2020 presidential nomination. As a result, he has also received increased scrutiny and criticism from the media, with one former top Republican political consultant — who renounced his former party in 2018 — warning on Wednesday that nominating the self-described “democratic socialist” would become “a death sentence” for the Democratic Party, according to a report by Mediaite.
Steve Schmidt, who managed the 2008 presidential campaign of then-Republican nominee John McCain, appeared on MSNBC on Wednesday, discussing Sanders’ announcement that he would not release his full medical records despite the fact that he suffered a heart attack in October, and how he will turn 79-years-old in September this year.
A Sanders nomination, Schmidt said, will lead to the reelection of Donald Trump.
“If he was a woman, he would be finished,” MSNBC host Nicole Wallace said to Schmidt. Wallace appeared to refer to a 2016 incident in which Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton experienced a bout of pneumonia.
The brief illness led to a flurry of media coverage, including by NBC News, raising supposed “unanswered questions” about the former first lady’s “health scare.” But Sanders’ medical concerns have seemingly produced little such coverage despite the fact that, following his heart attack in October, the senator pledged to release his full medical records, only to renege on that promise.
https://youtu.be/3MfyjR0jIGw?t=67
Schmidt attacked Sanders for “breaking promises and shattering norms and being untransparent,” comparing the Vermont lawmaker to the president.
But the former Republican political operative, as seen in the video above, also charged that Sanders’ self-described “socialist” political philosophy would be an electoral loser, saying that the “theory that there is some great base of people yearning for socialism in the United States of America is a fever dream and a fantasy.”
Schmidt claimed that if Sanders were the Democratic nominee, he would campaign against Trump on a platform based on some of the “most unpopular positions” of any candidate in history.
“It is a death sentence for the party and it will lead to Donald Trump’s re-election, in my view,” Schmidt concluded.
Schmidt’s view of “socialism” appears to receive support from an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Tuesday. In that poll, voters were asked whether specific traits made them “very uncomfortable” or at least gave them “reservations” when it came to voting for a candidate.
In a clear warning sign for a Sanders campaign, 67 percent of respondents — two out of every three — named “socialism” as the quality that most made them “very uncomfortable” or gave them “reservations.” Another 57 percent had the same negative reactions to a candidate who has suffered a “heart attack in [the] past year.”
