Democrats still suffering from Bernie burnout 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) may not have accomplished very much in terms of policy in 35 years in Congress and two presidential runs, but Democrats are very much living in a party that is the creation of the independent senator from Vermont.

As members of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) Rules and Bylaws Committee gathered last week in Washington, D.C., to set their 2028 presidential calendar, there’s no sign that Sanders’s name was ever publicly mentioned. But his legacy was written all over the produced results.

The proposed calendar from the rules committee keeps South Carolina first on Jan. 22, 2028. The Palmetto State went to the leadoff spot in 2024, leaving its traditional role as cleanup hitter — fourth in the lineup — at the behest of then-President Biden. He sought to avoid a repeat of his embarrassing fifth-place finish there in 2020. As a weak incumbent in 2024, Biden very evidently feared that Sanders from the state next door might go for a third consecutive New Hampshire win. A victory, or even a close call, by Sanders or one of his proxies could have quickly derailed Biden’s wobbly reelection bid.

As it turned out, Sanders still could have. 

New Hampshire is pretty psycho about the whole “first in the nation” thing. State law requires the secretary of state to set the date of the presidential primary at least seven days before “any similar contest.” New Hampshire’s secretary of state is chosen by its legislature every two years, and whether the Republicans keep control or Democrats recapture at least the lower house, the person they pick for the job is certain to vow to uphold the law.

That’s what happened in 2020. The DNC forbade New Hampshire to go first, New Hampshire went first anyway, and Biden had to mount a write-in campaign to........

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