For three years, Bernie Sanders has been preparing for a return to Presidential politics. He has campaigned for down-ballot Democrats in competitive states like Florida and Ohio, appeared at events in the early primary states of New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina, and has put forward ambitious and lofty bills which he hopes will energize the base of the party like Medicare-for-all. These are natural steps for the second-place finisher in the previous primary. However, Sanders does not fulfill important aspects which are vital to being President such as failing as a leader and as a communicator, along with holding horrid policy positions which should disqualify him from the Presidency, specifically his foreign policy, which is far too reminiscent of Donald Trump’s.
Bernie Sanders was on the campaign trail throughout 2017 and 2018, backing candidates in races nationwide. These stops are where the weakest aspects of Sanders shine through. His inability to lead can be seen in 2017 when Sanders, an ultraliberal, made a stop for Omaha mayoral candidate Heath Mello, a moderate Catholic Democrat. The national attention Sanders brought to the race doomed Senator Mello, as national pro-choice groups attacked him for his moderation on abortion. Sanders handed the GOP their first major win of the Trump era in campaigning for Mello. Sanders should not have campaigned for Mello, the fact he did not recognize his help was unneeded shows he is unable to lead.
This same lack of judgement and leadership caused the Democratic party to lose other important races. The far-left organization, Justice Democrats, formed from his leadership of the progressive movement. The only goal of Justice Democrats seems to be ensuring that the Democratic party loses easy races, like Nebraska’s second congressional district, where it provided the only major endorsement for Kara Eastman, who went on to lose the district by the largest margin for a Democrat since 2010. In Florida, Sanders’s endorsed candidate Andrew Gillum was labeled a “socialist” by GOP nominee Ron DeSantis. Sanders failed to defend Gillum when he came under fire because Sanders has, for no apparent reason, insisted that he is a socialist. In essence, Sanders refusal to accurately communicate his beliefs and his poor judgement of the electorate allowed Gillum to be defeated by a label, which is poison in a state with huge populations of refugees from socialist dictatorships.
These failures of Sanders’s leadership do not even mention the most malicious of them all, his failure to run an effective presidential campaign. Women were paid lower than male staffers for the same job. Sexual harassment towards women by senior staffers was rampant and then covered up, with few to no repercussions for the perpetrators of assault. Sanders’s excuse of “I was busy running for President” is insulting towards the female staffers who believed in him and indicates he had little to no control over the innerworkings of his own campaign for President. Since Bernie Sanders could not lead his campaign, he cannot lead the most powerful country on earth.
Another front which shows Sanders is entirely unqualified for the office of President and shows he should not seek the office is his foreign policy. He is committed to American withdrawal from global leadership, just like Donald Trump. Just like Donald Trump, he supports withdrawing form a wide array of trade deals because they “harm American workers,” despite the lack of evidence for this. Sanders supports withdrawing from Syria, essentially leaving the Kurds to die at the hands of the Turkish and the Syrian government. All of this combined means that Sanders supports, as Trump does, American withdrawal from global leadership on issues of trade and international security.
Bernie Sanders lacks leadership and judgement skills, having caused numerous candidates who should have cruised to victory to be defeated. This lack of leadership put women in peril on his campaign as his inattentiveness allowed abusers to be hired in senior roles. His views on foreign policy would also be as damaging to American leadership as those of Donald Trump. Because of this, Bernie Sanders cannot be President of the United States and should not run for the office.