These results mean Bernie Sanders needs to step aside. It’s painful but it’s true

It’s not fair. It’s not inspiring. And it could have all been different in 2016. But America has changed now – and we can’t afford to pretend that it hasn't

Bernie Sanders at a rally in St Louis, Missouri, on Monday (AFP/Getty)

We thought 2020 would be Bernie Sanders’ year. It was owed to him, we reasoned. He deserved it. It was his time. The nomination was denied him in 2016, when Democrats decided to put a “safe pair of hands” from the establishment up against the preposterous, unelectable Donald Trump and the strategy backfired enormously. Surely now we could right a wrong by giving him the chance he should have had four years prior.

But Democratic voters don’t want that – or at least, most of them don’t. They told us that in South Carolina. A fair amount of them doubled down on Super Tuesday. And tonight, March 10, they sealed the deal, as Joe Biden walked away victorious following a slew of endorsements from his former rivals in the race for presidential nominee. Missouri, Mississippi and, most devastatingly of all, Michigan went for Uncle Joe.

Because we are where we are now. It’s not 2016. The appetite for a shouty maverick is not what it was. The “burn it all down” style of politics doesn’t inspire so much as it provokes fear. America feels much less secure and much less confident after four years of Donald Trump. A healthy subset of its population just wants to retreat to its place of security and appoint someone to clean up the damage the hurricane did to the house.

Perhaps, if Bernie had been allowed to go toe-to-toe with Trump four years ago, he really could have won. The landscape was different then.

And it’s not fair, not remotely. Sanders had a slew of excellent policies and they are policies that most people outside of the extremely conservative confines of America would agree with: a free-at-the-point-of-use universal healthcare system; a commitment to slowly moving towards 100 per cent renewable energy; forcing businesses to have an actual reason if they fire someone; a proper minimum wage for everyone; free childcare for pre-schoolers; banning assault weapons; working to eliminate medical debt that drives families into bankruptcy.

Democratic socialism is not a scary term to most people in western Europe, where I’m from, and where we have public healthcare, a minimum wage, no guns and stronger employment laws. It’s a shame that America fails its citizens in this regard. It is sad (not Donald-Trump-on-Twitter “SAD” but actually sad) that women struggle back to work days after giving birth; that some people drop dead on the job because they can’t afford not to turn up; that people have become so disconnected from their government and the rest of the world that they profess not to believe in climate change and think the coronavirus might be a Democrat hoax.

Nevertheless, the non-conformers and the progressives have been defeated one by one in this race. Andrew Yang wanted a universal basic income. Elizabeth Warren (my personal favourite) wanted Medicare for All. Cory Booker wanted to raise taxes on the wealthy and expand social security. Julian Castro wanted paid family leave and a commission on reparations. Kirsten Gillibrand wanted to abolish ICE and strengthen abortion rights. Hell, even Beto O’Rourke wanted to take away your AR-15.

One by one they fell. “We don’t want a revolution,” said the people looking up at them from the seats beneath the debate stage. “We want to feel normal again.”

It doesn’t make for an inspiring tale. It’s not a slogan you’d want to write on a placard. But that’s just how it is.

Few people could make Joe Biden’s candidacy look new and exciting – not even that team of campaigners who sang “Biden’s back” to the tune of Backstreet’s Back on a video circulating round Twitter a few weeks ago. When that abomination appeared on my computer screen, I clicked off it after a few seconds and said to my colleague sitting beside me, “Yeah, he’s done”. Nobody wants the old white man on his third presidential run whose most viral contribution to the current cultural lexicon is a song from the mid-nineties, surely. Surely they at least want the other old white man with the merchandise that tell us all to “feel the Bern”. No, I don’t want a coffee mug that says “No malarkey”. Even Michael Bloomberg had Instagram influencers!

I hate to say it, but I’ve realised we no longer have the privilege of dreaming; we just have to be pragmatic. Bernie Sanders, a longtime Independent and a shouter from the sidelines, has a lot in common with Jeremy Corbyn. I watched crowds of twentysomethings sing “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” jubilantly at festivals and political events before he led the British Labour Party into its worst defeat for decades. I voted for him in the original Labour Party leadership election. Then I watched him refuse to “be a politician” about it when he was asked questions his rival Boris Johnson, a man I personally and viscerally hate, could have knocked out the park: Why did he meet with former members of the IRA? (“Remember that talking to former members of the IRA – with certain, strict preconditions – is what brought peace in Northern Ireland,” he could have said, “and by the way I still condemn terrorism in all its forms.” But he didn’t.) Why did he once refer to members of Hamas and Hezbollah as “our friends”? (“For God’s sake, this is the sort of diplomacy we do in the pursuit of peace every day as high-level politicians so we stop actual people dying,” Boris Johnson might have blustered. “And it’s very easy to sit on the sidelines and cry about someone saying the word ‘friend’ to people who, yes, are bad, evil terrorists, but at the end of the day we sometimes have to swallow a bitter pill in order to achieve great things, don’t we, chums?” But, of course, Corbyn couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t.)

Sanders similarly could never just “be a politician”. When he was asked about Castro’s literacy program, he should have met people where they were at, rather than expecting them to come to him. Did Cuba work hard to achieve good literacy rates? Yes. Is there much to criticise about Fidel Castro and a huge swathe of Cuban Americans living in the States who have very little time for communist apologism? Yes. And therefore, was the question he was asked in front of the nation really only about literacy programmes, as he chose to interpret it? He should have known the answer.

These disappointing primary results are a blow for young people, or indeed any people, who wanted – and deserved – change. But if Bernie continues on now, injured, with an angry mob behind him, things will only get worse. The progressive arm of the Democratic Party will be painted as radical, aggressive, and out-of-control. Instead of compassionate and sensible, policies like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal will be considered the domain of the “dirtbag left”. They will not be picked up again in 2024. They will die a death with Sanders’ failed candidacy. We tried “Bernie or bust” in 2016, and we got bust. Was it worth it?

The best way forward for Bernie – and his supporters – is to bow out now and to back Biden in a way that looks sincere. With Hillary Clinton, it was all too little, too late, and ultimately, everybody suffered. Not just Americans, either.

I know it’s painful. And I know those who truly feel the Bern were hoping to right a wrong from 2016 this election cycle. The truth is that they still can. It just isn’t the wrong they were hoping to right.