Soaring Sanders: The candidates who tried to imitate him are failing fakes

The Democratic race is shaping up as most of the candidates expected, with the campaign appealing to the most fervent progressive wing of the party showing formidable strength. It's just that Bernie Sanders is the one running that campaign.

At the beginning, everyone wanted to hug Bernie in the hope of replacing him. They'd be younger, more diverse, fresher, more acceptable to the Democratic mainstream or more electable than the old, white, male ­socialist standard-bearer.

Who could resist getting everything that Sanders stands for in a more politically palatable vehicle? The answer seems to be Democratic voters.

The would-be Bernies, who became uncertain over time whether that's who they really wanted to be, have dropped out, or, in the case of Elizabeth Warren, lost altitude, while Bernie has a serious shot. The Bernie model is working for Bernie where it failed everyone else.

The foremost reason is authenticity. No one believed that Cory Booker — who the day before yesterday was the pragmatic mayor of Newark, championing charter schools and teaming up with then-Gov. Chris Christie and Mark Zuckerberg on an education initiative — was a progressive warrior.

No one bought into Kirsten Gillibrand, the erstwhile moderate from an upstate New York House district, as a left-wing purist.

Yet all of them stood with Bernie and endorsed his version of Medicare for All.

The plan would require massive taxes, entail huge cuts in payments to doctors and hospitals, forbid private insurance and impose a more restrictive and generous government-run health-care system on the US than exists in European social democracies. It's not something you endorse lightly, but Booker & Co did. They all wobbled, hedged their bets or flip-flopped, demonstrating, if there were any doubt, their insincerity on a key issue with deep philosophical implications.

Warren has suffered from the same disease. She has lasted much longer than the others and is still on the hunt in Iowa. She also has gone further down the Sanders path. She unequivocally stated, "I'm with Bernie on Medicare for All" in one of the early debates. Then, she got tangled up on the question of financing, because the part of her brain worried about the general election didn't want to admit she'd have to raise taxes on the middle class.

This led to an agonizing climbdown. She settled on the implausible compromise position that she'd initially pursue incremental health-care policies until passing Medicare for All in the third year of her presidency, when presidents aren't at a high ebb of their legislative power.

It's no accident that the candidate thriving in the Bernie lane is the only one who is still a full-throated proponent of Medicare for All, namely, Bernie himself.

Warren's struggles with Medicare for All played against a backdrop of other authenticity issues, most famously her purported Native American heritage. Bernie has no such issues, in fact, the opposite.

No one can match his socialist cred, built up over decades. Only Bernie honeymooned in the ­Soviet Union. Only Bernie has videos out there praising Castro. Only Bernie for years refused to join the Democratic Party. Only Bernie took on the party establishment single-handedly in 2016 and almost won.

Sanders says things that are fantastical and untrue all the time, but out of sincere belief in his program. He has shifted on issues like guns and immigration over the years but still gives the ­impression more than any other major politician of simply being incapable of going out and mouthing poll-tested bromides.

His grassroots army and small-donor fund-raising give him an independence from traditional donors and their world that no other major candidate has.

If Bernie is going to win the Democratic nomination, it is going to be, like Donald Trump in 2016, as a total rejection of every aspect of his party's establishment — its preferred policy mix, its traditional strategic thinking and its personnel.

This politics of disruption necessarily entails avoiding half-measures, compromises or inhibitions. With Trump, this meant staking out stark positions on trade and immigration and never toning down his personal outrageousness. With Bernie, it means never bowing to conventional Democratic thinking; he, too, is always doubling down, although on substance and political strategy rather than tweets.

The clear message, from Trump in 2016 and Bernie now,, is that the old rules don't apply, not even a little bit.

You can't adopt this posture ­occasionally, or while trying to keep a foot in both camps, or with an eye to a pivot in the general election. You have to be all-in. If you want to be Bernie Sanders, you have to be Bernie Sanders.

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