From my new column in the Washington Post Outlook section:
How do you warn your party that its potential nominee is vulnerable in a general election without sinking your own campaign? That question now confronts Democratic rivals of Bernie Sanders, who are realizing that the iconoclastic Vermont socialist might really win the presidential nomination.
In recent days, Sanders has taken a narrow lead in early-state polls and betting markets. Though he attracts support from only a minority of Democratic voters, he could plausibly follow a Trump-like path to the nomination in which multiple other candidates doubt his viability and stay in the race to await his collapse, dividing the vote against him until it is too late.
One factor in Sanders’s success is how little scrutiny he has faced from rivals on the campaign trail and the debate stage. Media accounts that catalogue Sanders’s atypical history and decades-old comments are easy to find for anyone who cares to look. But no one knows how Sanders will fare when Democratic or Republican rivals attack him in a high-profile fashion, which to this point no one has seriously done.
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