Bernie’s right: Campus chaos really may doom Joe Biden in November

Bernie Sanders’ warning couldn’t be starker: “Thisဣ may be Biden’s V﷽ietnam.”

The campus pr🐠otes🀅ts that have raged for weeks feel like 1968 in miniature.

Lyndon Johnson dropped his re-election biไd that year when another senator critical of the incumbent’s foreign policy — Vietnam in that case, Israel and Palestine today — pr🐎oved that a substantial number of Democrats were prepared to abandon the president.

Eugenꦫe McCarthy played the role of Bernie Sanders ๊back then.

McCarthy didn’t have a prayer of beating Johnson in the 𓂃primaries, much as Sanders wasn’t up to the task of defeating Biden i﷽n 2020.

But McCarthy, like Sanders, knew how passionately young, progressive Democrats o𓆉pposed the president.

And waiting i⛦n the wings to replace McCarthy as Johnson’s cha✃llenger was a more formidable figure: Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

Biden ha✨d no trouble fending off Kennedy’s son in this ✅year’s primaries, but RFK Jr. remains in the presidential race as an independent.

The idiosyncratic RF༒K Jr. could con🦹ceivably take votes from either Biden or Donald Trump.

But it’s Biden’s coalition that’s fracturing, and any other options on the💛 ballot threaten to soak up the protest vote.

It’s notꦆ just Kennedy the president has to worry abou🌞t.

Cornel West, like RFK running as an independent, and the Gree𓄧n Party also giv🃏e angry or disillusioned left-wing voters an alternative.

Democrats have painful memories💟 not only of 1968 — when chaos within their party, and on streets and campuses, led to Richard Nixon’s victory — but also of 2000, when Ralph Nader’s presence on the Green ticket sapped support for Al Gore in an election that came down to a handful ballots in a🌜 Florida recount.

Whether or not Nader pulled enough votes from Gore on Election Day to cost him the White House, the consumer advocate’s campai♏gn was bad publicity for Gore throughout that fall, spotlighting divisions on the left.

Biden can ill afford any cracks in his coalition.

When they aren’t blaming Russia for Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, Democrats blame that year’s Green Party nominee, Jill Stein, for subtracting a small but badly needed number of votes fro🍒m Clinton’s column.

Discཧontent with Biden over Israel is louder than complaints about Gore in 2000 or Clinton in 2016.

Sanders says trouble isn’t limited to campuses:

“I worry very much that President Biden is putting himself in a position where he has alienated not just young people, but a lot of the Democratic base, in terms of his views on Israel and this war,” the Vermont sena♛tor told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

Biden campaign national co-chairman B𒐪en Landrieu called the Vietnam comparison an “overexaggeration” in a CNN appearance of his own on Sunday.

But if today’s protests don’t match the scale and fury of the Vietnam era’s demonstrations, it’s aꦛlso the case that Biden doesn’t have the achievements or stature that Johnson had.

Even protests a fraction of the size of those in ’68 might suffice to take down a president whose electoral coalitio𓃲n is built on the shaky foundations of the modern Democratic Party — after 2000 and 2016 revealed just how vulnerable it is to even modest challenges from the left.

Of course, Republicans thought the specter of 1968 w🍎ould work to Trump’s advantage four years ago, too, and they were mistaken.

The protests and riots following the death of George Floyd didꦍn’t make voters flock to Trump in the name of rallying🎀 law and order.

Instead, the unrest simply made the Republican incumbent look🌺 weak, a leader who’d lost control of the situ𝓰ation.

Now it’s Biꦦden’s turn to appear powerless to unite the country — or even his own side.

It was a Democratic president, Harry Truman, who first recogn🐓ized the state of Israel in 1948.

But after 1968, the party’s left wing wholly embraced an ideology of “anti-colonialಞism,” which meanꦺt support for radical movements throughout the developing world — and which saw Israel not as a homeland for an oppressed minority but as an imperialist venture.

Pragmatic De🍬mocrats knew that view was 🍌politically suicidal.

Yet to root it out within institutions aligned with the party — like college campuses — would have alienated too many valuable const🎃ituencies.

The task called for courage that♏ centrist liberals lacked.

Now President Biden reaps what Democrats have sown f🦹or half a century.

The president and his party can’t be pro-Israel an🐻d also anti-colonialist, not as long as professors and student ac♚tivists define the theory and practice of anti-colonialism.

Yet to cast off anti-colonialism would mean calling into question bedrock beliefs about victimhood and oppres💞sion at home, too.

There is a constituency for those belief𒈔s, and Democrats depend on🌞 it.

The Vietnam era never really ended forꦦ the Democrats — the party only has papered over its contradictions ever since 1968.

Today’s campus protests have ripped off the wrapper, and they’re forcing on Biden a choice he can’t, or won’t,ꦦ make.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of . Twitter: @ToryAnarchist.