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You are here: Home / 2020 Campaign / Sanders Isn’t Trump’s Challenger So Much as His Sequel

Sanders Isn’t Trump’s Challenger So Much as His Sequel

February 24, 2020 at 11:54 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Terry Sullivan: “We’ve seen this movie before, but for some reason the critics seem convinced it will have a different ending this time: A bombastic septuagenarian political outsider calls out a rigged system to the cheering masses. He finishes second in Iowa and first in New Hampshire and Nevada. He leads all the national polls while the establishment candidates wage all-out war on one another. Meanwhile, the media dismisses his chances and an increasingly worried political establishment convinces itself it’s only a fluke, that the worst case is a chaotic convention that ultimately nominates a mainstream candidate.”

“You’d think we political types would know better by now. The most important thing I learned managing Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential race was that the old political norms were dead. Experts and pundits’ predictions were often no more than guesses based on the way things used to be. Media groupthink only made these outdated and misguided notions more stubborn.”

“Am I the only one who was embarrassed enough at missing the 2016 political movement that elected Donald Trump that I rethought my approach to modern politics?”

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Filed Under: 2020 Campaign


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About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.

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