The Left’s Fantasy World Just Exploded.
Sanders did more for socialism than socialism did for Sanders.

A mirage just disappeared in Michigan — the mirage of a resurgent socialism in the U.S.

The notion that socialism was making a comeback took hold after Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 primary campaign. A self-described “democratic socialist” won 45 percent of the vote all told. In the years since then, young Democratic politicians who have also adopted that description have won elections and become media sensations, none more so than Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

They seemed to be the wave of the future. They certainly thought so themselves. When Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic senator and 2000 vice-presidential nominee, cast doubt on that prospect, Ocasio-Cortez snapped back: “New party. Who dis?” As Sanders racked up victories in the early contests of the 2020 primaries, the realignment on the left seemed at hand. America could see a socialist presidential nominee, and even a socialist president.

The idea that Sanders could win was far from crazy, given his dedicated fan base. But the larger story line of socialism’s coming triumph was based on one misreading of political events after another.

In the first place, socialism hadn’t spiked in popularity. In 2010, Gallup found that 36 percent of the public embraced the label. Eight years later — following Sanders’s first run for the presidency, and in the same year Ocasio-Cortez got elected — that number had climbed up all the way to 37 percent.

Left-wing Democrats misunderstood the reason Sanders did so well in 2016. It was because Hillary Clinton was the front-runner. Few Democratic heavyweights were willing to take her on, and he was an idealistic alternative. He did more for socialism than socialism did for him. A poll taken that January found that Sanders’s supporters were less likely than Clinton’s to want a higher minimum wage or bigger government.

Clinton’s defeat that November further fed the myth. Sanders’s supporters instantly concluded that “Bernie would have won.” Many Democrats wondered whether Clinton had erred by not taking a tougher line on Wall Street or offering populist ideas on trade………….