S.E. Cupp Pushes Back on Never-Sanders Democratic Freak Out: ‘Bernie Is Electable’ Like Trump Was in 2016

CNN’s S.E. Cupp warned Never Sanders Democrats that they can no longer pretend the Vermont senator is not a “frontrunner” and argued that, as an anti-establishment candidate “Bernie is electable in ways that Trump was in 2016.”

Addressing the state of the 2020 Democratic primary on her Saturday evening show Unfiltered, Cupp started by detailing the anti-Sanders resistance that has already begun to show itself among the punditocracy and members of Congress.

“I couldn’t help but laugh this week as countless pundits, headline writers, and Bernie Sanders rivals in the 2020 election tried to spin his win in New Hampshire as somehow not good news for Bernie,” Cupp said. “‘He didn’t win by enough,’ they said. ‘He didn’t bring in new voters,’ they said. ‘New Hampshire doesn’t really count,’ they said. Look, whatever makes you feel better, but after a strong finish behind Pete Buttigieg in Iowa, Sanders is the frontrunner whether Democrats like it or not. And many, it turns out, really do not.”

Cupp then played clips of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews freaking out about Sanders’ rise with a rant about Communist “executions in Central Park” and former Clinton strategist James Carville freaking out that if Sanders is the Democratic nominee the world risks Armageddon.

“The end of days, you guys!” Cupp exclaimed sarcastically. “This all feels very familiar to me,” she added, turning serious.

“There are parallels between the Never-Trump concerns and the growing concerns of Never-Sanders Democrats: ‘He’s too extreme and he’ll hurt the down ballot and he won’t be able to get his agenda passed.’ We said those same things of Trump and we were mostly right. These are good warnings to heed. Sanders is an extreme candidate. He will transform the Democratic Party in ways that likely very few will support. He will not be able to get a lot of his agenda passed, but when it comes to Sanders’ electability, well, a word of caution there, too.”

Cupp then admitted that she was “obviously” wrong about Trump’s electability, even with the caveats that he didn’t win the general election popular vote and that he didn’t even win an outright majority of Republican voters in the 2016 primary. But those factors work in Sanders’ favor now, she noted.

“Here’s the deal. Bernie is electable, in ways that Trump electable in 2016,” Cupp argued. “Bernie, like Trump, is counting, not on the support of a majority of the Democrats to win the nomination, but on just enough of his very loyal base to carry him over the line. Just like Trump, he’s relying on a big field and a divided field to give him the most votes. But he’s also electable because Trump is a very flawed candidate. In virtually every national poll Trump ties or loses to every leading Democratic candidate and if you zoom in on six battleground states, Trump was trailing [Joe] Biden, Sanders, and [Elizabeth] Warren or barely ahead, a trend that’s continued in a couple of swing states poll that also included Pete Buttigieg. That’s good news for all of the Democratic contenders and particularly Bernie. So to Democrats, I say learn from us Never-Trumpers. We were wrong about the kind of candidate Trump was, but we were right about the kind of president he would become.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.