(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Harry Reid has a message for the Democratic candidates desperate to stop Bernie Sanders from winning the nomination. “If you don’t like what Bernie’s doing,” he told me, “speak up.”
With the Nevada caucus looming on Saturday, the retired Senate majority leader’s thoughts and advice are in high demand. When we spoke in his office at the Bellagio in Las Vegas last Thursday, a boom mic from a documentary film crew hovered overhead and his cell phone rang constantly. His recent suitors include most of the Democratic presidential candidates. Reid left little doubt what’s weighing on their minds: the possibility that Sanders, who’s favored to win Nevada, could run away with the nomination.
Reid is coy about whom he supports, offering a kind word for just about everyone. When he cast an early caucus ballot on Saturday, he told reporters that he marked it “uncommitted.” He has also taken pains to prop up the sagging Joe Biden campaign. “People should not be counting Joe Biden out of the race yet,” he said.
But Reid made clear to me that if the moderate hopefuls (and for that matter, Elizabeth Warren) want to stop the Vermont senator, they’ll have to stop shrinking from confrontation and go after him directly. “The American public will make that decision in little bits and pieces,” he said, when I asked him to assess the primary race. “If Bernie is the one that comes out ahead, we’ll just have to see what happens. But if people don’t like what he does, they’re going to have to start saying they don’t like it rather than pat him on the back.”
So far, I noted, they’re not doing that.
“That’s my point,” he shot back. “If somebody doesn’t agree with Bernie Sanders, say something. Don’t hope that somebody else is going to do it.”
Reid doesn’t count himself among the anti-Sanders camp, at least not in any official capacity. Asked whether he’d worry if Democrats went into the fall election with a socialist standard-bearer, he batted the question away. “If you look at national polls,” he says, “Sanders beats Trump in the general election.”
At the same time, though, he seemed annoyed that nobody is exposing Sanders to the kind of tough critique he’s guaranteed to get from Donald Trump. He suspects Sanders’s opponents are too worried that confronting him will backfire, describing their mindset as, “ ‘If I say something negative, maybe people won’t like me.’ ”
This paralysis has so far been a boon for Sanders, who, though he trails narrowly in the delegate race, won the popular vote in Iowa and New Hampshire and will almost certainly pull ahead in both categories on Saturday. At some point, if things continue in this direction, it will be too late for his opponents to stop him.
Four years ago, Republican presidential hopefuls got trapped in exactly this sort of collective action problem when trying to figure out how to stop Trump. At first, the candidates stepped back and waited for him to fail, or toadied up to him in hopes of winning over his voters when he inevitably (they assumed) left the race. Only in late February, when it became clear that Trump was a real threat to run away with the nomination, did opposing campaigns take to the airwaves to attack him in earnest. By then, it was too late.
It’s such an obvious lesson for Democrats, I told Reid, that you wonder how the current presidential crop could have missed it. He readily agreed. As I stood up to go, he emphasized one last thing: “I haven’t missed it,” he told me.
To contact the columnist of this story: Joshua Green in Washington at jgreen120@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jim Aley at jaley@bloomberg.net
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