Bob Kerrey, a Democrat, is a former governor and U.S. senator from Nebraska, and a board member of the Renew Democracy Initiative.
Self-delusion is a necessary survival instinct. I believe it is likely that researchers studying human DNA will find a base pair that instructs all of us who have been candidates for office to be about 25 percent more self-delusional than all others. Bernie Sanders is living a fantasy if he still thinks he has a “narrow path” to the Democratic Party nomination. But the party itself is delusional if it believes that its current approach to the nominating process isn’t courting disaster in November.
The fiasco of the run-up to Tuesday’s primary in Wisconsin, with desperate wrangling over in-person voting despite a coronavirus stay-at-home order, is the latest evidence that the Democratic Party needs to face reality: This is a political emergency.AD
Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic
The solution: Hold all the remaining 20-plus Democratic contests on the same date, with the vote by smartphones and computers. It is an extreme answer, but this is an unprecedented moment in American history.
The party’s business-as-usual-as-possible approach during the pandemic has amounted to allowing state parties to shift the dates of their primaries and switch to mail-in ballots if they like. Oh, and moving the nominating convention from mid-July to mid-August. The idea seems to be that Democrats can muddle through until delegates show up in Milwaukee.
Meanwhile, Sanders and Joe Biden, with a big delegate lead but far short of what he needs for the nomination, are stuck at home, issuing campaign videos they hope someone will watch, while President Trump, with the GOP nomination sewn up, dominates the public’s attention with his daily reality-TV-show news conferences at the White House. And this could go on for months.
