The Biden camp is making a mistake in snubbing Bernie Sanders

For petty factional reasons the Biden campaign isn’t making use of the most popular figure in US politics.

People like Bernie Sanders; he’s rated in terms of polling the most popular political figure in the States, and that obviously counts for something. People know who he is, they trust him, and they like his ideas. You wouldn’t've guessed by looking at the Biden Harris campaign.

The other day Biden put up a video with some of his primary challengers, you had Mayor Pete, Liz Warren, Cory Booker, etc, but no sign of Senator Bernie Sanders, the primary challenger and someone far more likely to fire up the base than any of those candidates. Even Elizabeth Warren, a sworn progressive and proponent of Medicare For All got through, so it feels like a direct shunning.

The Biden campaign seemingly thinks to show too much of the man who had a stronger chance of beating Trump last time around (according to Trump’s pollster) and who has far better approval ratings than Biden himself, would be politically risky. Biden has spent much of the campaign trashing progressive ideas; and their appeal has shrunk among the Democratic base. It isn’t worth jettisoning and discouraging the core you need to turn out (that Hillary couldn’t get out) in the chase of a few wavering Never Trumpers; and that’s essentially what team Joe is doing.

It shows, as usual, this: establishment Dems would truly rather loose without Sanders than win by ceding the party (or any credit) to Sanders. They don’t want to challenge the way things are; they want to maintain them.