Chris Hayes Addresses Democrats ‘Freaking Out’ About Sanders’ Rise: ‘This Is What Democracy Looks Like’

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes offered up a long monologue to start his Monday night show addressing Democrats who are “freaking out” about the rise of the party’s current 2020 primary frontrunner Bernie Sanders: “This is what democracy looks like.”

Hayes’s targeted his argument at anxious voters who are worried about Sanders’ electability, but his comments also seemed not so subtly be aimed at fellow members of his network, who have claimed Sanders would amount to an electoral “death sentence” and have issued an apology on Monday night for a bizarre, panicked analogy comparing Sanders’ surge in the 2020 primary to the Nazi blitzkrieg into France in 1940. Earlier this month, Hayes performed a similar therapy session for anxious Democrats — and network colleagues — when he gave a compelling argument about the inherent electoral vulnerability of President Donald Trump.

“We are one week and one day away from super Tuesday, the biggest day of the 2020 primary season,” Hayes noted. “The latest national polling shows Sanders is in the lead. Nothing in this is set yet. People with my job have a tendency to overreact to every new, incremental movement and declare: “It’s over! It’s finished!’ before it is'”

“It seems like there are many people inside and outside the Democratic Party who are shocked Bernie Sanders is doing so well,” Hayes explained. “His success, though, should not be that surprising.”

“If you want to win the Democratic primary in 2020, there are three fundamental things you need to do to get on top. Win more states and get more votes than any other competitors because you have to get more delegates than the people running against you.”

“Two, you have to have an organization and crucially money that can allow you to play in a dozen different states at the same time. Because Super Tuesday is so massive this year and comes so early.”

“Three, this is crucial, you need to have a multi-racial coalition in the diverse, heterogeneous Democratic Party of the 21 century. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who is checking all those boxes.”

This last accomplishment, Hayes pointed out, was what eluded Sanders in 2016 and provided the edge that Hillary Clinton needed to win the nomination.

“Bernie Sanders has huge name recognition in the country. He was just running for president four years ago. He was on the ballot. He got tens of millions of votes. He spent years campaigning. He has high favorability ratings. Sanders’s campaign has gotten to this point and it’s not by accident,” Hayes continued. “That’s why Bernie Sanders is currently the front runner in the race. To Democrats who are freaking out, I’d say: ‘This is what democracy looks like.’ It’s what primaries are for. So far Bernie Sanders has the most support of any of his come at the time torres and somebody is going to have to beat him to stop him.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.