The only folks who would be more thrilled to see John Kerry jump into the Democratic presidential primary than me are John Kerry and maybe everybody on the Trump campaign. (The Kerry Spot was a lot of fun, kids. Talk about a target-rich environment.) The 76-year-old Kerry is like Biden without the human touch, with less Obama aura, who has already run and lost in 2004. Heck, even Al Gore and Hillary Clinton managed to win the popular vote.
But for once, the Kerry explanation sounds pretty plausible — whomever he was talking to asked him what he would have to do to jump in, and Kerry laid out the considerable personal, financial, legal, and political obstacles.
The filing deadline for candidates running for the Democratic presidential nomination has already passed in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, and Vermont, and I may have missed a few others. Even if Kerry didn’t have that list handy, he undoubtedly knew anyone starting now had missed almost all the opportunities. The 2020 Democratic nominee will be someone already running.*
No, the most important part of NBC’s report was Kerry’s comment that he’s worried about “the possibility of Bernie Sanders taking down the Democratic Party — down whole.” Clearly, not even Joe Biden’s surrogates are completely convinced he can go the distance.
A lot can happen between now and November, but establishment Democrats are not insane to question the wisdom of running on socialism when 75 percent of U.S. adults say the economy is in good shape, the highest in almost 20 years. As David Frum noted, a Sanders nomination represents “a bet that the 2020 race can be won by mobilizing the Americans least committed to the political process while alienating and even offending the Americans most committed to it.”
Sure, American politics is unpredictable, and Bernie Sanders could win. But he could also lose, and lose big, and drag a lot of down-ticket Democrats down with him. Democrats have been obsessed with this rematch with Trump since late on Election Night 2016. The thought of losing to Trump a second time, and losing big, genuinely terrifies them.