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Cathedral City, March 17, 2020 –- Resurgent candidate Joe Biden swept the three Democratic primaries that were held tonight in Florida, Illinois, and Arizona. Not only did he sweep the primaries, he did so by margins that were not even close. In Florida, Biden carried every county in the state and cleaned Bernie’s clock 62 to 29. In Illinois, Biden romped away, 59-36 with every county in the state except Champaign County, where the University vote gave Sanders a small, three-point lead. In Arizona, Biden’s margin of victory was 42-30, with the former Vice President carrying 12 of the state’s 15 counties, all of them except the relatively small population counties of Coconino, Apache, and Yuma.
In short, Bernard Sanders crashed and burned tonight as Biden cemented his status as the prohibitive front runner for the Democratic nomination. For Sanders even to be able to recover, he would have to be able to win every upcoming primary by close to 60%, a mathematical impossibility. In short, the Democratic primary campaign is as good as over, and Joe Biden will be the nominee of the Democratic Party.
But, while Joe is certainly at this point the prohibitive front runner, there is a certain risk that an extreme element of fringe Sanders supporters will continue the struggle run up to the convention, and perhaps beyond. Like Japanese holdouts on Pacific islands, continuing the Pacific War long after the Shōwa Emperor’s Gyokuon Hōsō surrender broadcast, these intransigents, these #neverbiden, #bernieorbust bitter-enders will never be reconciled to Joe as a candidate, and may very well throw their support to that horrid, Cheeto-faced, ferret-wearing, Russophile Shitgibbon Donald Trump.
Other Sanders supporters, however, may conduct themselves like the vast majority of the population of Japan, who, after Shōwa’s Gyokuon Hōsō surrender broadcast, reconciled themselves with surprising equanimity both to military defeat and American occupation. While the Japanese certainly did not fall in love with their tall, somewhat aromatic, somewhat uncivilized-by-Japanese-standards American occupiers, they did fall into line as the Emperor had instructed them to do, and with increasing mutual familiarity came increasing mutual respect. Indeed, the special relationship between the United States and Japan was largely formed out of the adversity of the American occupation and the generous American assistance to Japan to enable the Empire to rebuild.
This should be the model for how the Biden campaign brings into the fold those members of Sanders nation who are willing to fall into line behind the standardbearer. Now it is been common, on both sides of the Biden-Sanders divide, to nurture a certain measure of animosity across that divide. If it is now time for pragmatic Sanders supporters to get behind Joe in our struggle against incipient American fascism, it is just as much the time for Joe and his supporters to be conciliatory and magnanimous.
Indeed, the Biden campaign has tracked very closely what Winston Churchill described as “the moral of the work” in his magisterial six volume History of the Second World War:
In War, Resolution
In Defeat, Defiance
In Victory, Magnanimity
In Peace, Goodwill.
Indeed, the history of the Biden campaign thus far has been remarkably similar to the history of the Allied effort during the Second World War. After the early caucuses and primaries, many had been prepared to write off the quondam Vice President. But then came South Carolina, which was in every way Joe Biden’s Alamein. And as Winston Churchill put it, “before Alamein, we never had a victory; after Alamein, we never had a defeat.” So, too with Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.
Now, however, as the tide turns inexorably, inevitably, and ineluctably in Joe Biden’s direction, the work of unifying the Democratic Party must begin to take precedence. It will be important to concede to Sen. Sanders a certain measure of space within which to pass through the five Elisabeth Kübler-Ross stages of grieving. Biden supporters themselves must find a magnanimity of spirit to recognize that it is given to very few to put themselves into the arena of an American presidential contest.
Speaking at the Paris Sorbonne on April 23, 1910, former Pres. Theodore Roosevelt delivered what is perhaps the most famous speech of his career. In the seventh paragraph of his address, Roosevelt spoke of the man in the arena:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who ‘but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier.’”
More than a century later, we may speak thus of all of our Democratic candidates who have placed themselves in the arena of a presidential contest. We can appreciate the willingness of the Kamala Harris, a Pete Buttigieg, an Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren, or any of the other Democratic candidates this year, including Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, or Andrew Yang, to name just a few.
And now, as we prepare to say goodbye to Bernard Sanders as a presidential candidate, let us remember that he, too, has been one of those courageous men and women in the arena who strove valiantly.
All of our candidates have striven valiantly, all of them have erred, all of them have come short, but all of them have displayed a kind of bravery and fortitude that many of us would quail to try to summon. As the struggle winds down, and as the party prepares for what may well be the most consequential election our history, an election that may well determine whether this nation, under God, lives or dies, we can afford to tender thanks to our Democrats and independents who offered themselves to the vortex of public debate in the conviction that America needs, that America wants, that America deserves a president who will honor her values, her commitments, and the nobility of her revolutionary democratic-republican heritage.
So, let us be prepared, when Bernie Sanders bows out of the race, which he must shortly do, to be magnanimous to him and to his followers whom it is incumbent upon Joe Biden and his supporters to welcome into the fold as part of a unified effort. As Paul Henried, playing Victor Laszlo in Casablanca, said near the end of the movie to Humphrey Bogart, playing Rick, “Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win.” In unity there is strength.
“L’Union fait la force. La révolution americain continue. L'Edifice commence à craquer. Tout le monde à la bataille!”
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Paul S. Marchand, Esq. Is an attorney who lives in Cathedral City and practices law in the adjacent Republican retirement redoubt of Rancho Mirage. The views expressed herein are his own, unless you find them congenial, in which case, they can be yours, too.
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