David Quiñones: The Democrat establishment is doing everything it can to push away its progressive base. As a progressive, it’s working.

As the Florida Democratic elites and leadership line up behind Michael Bloomberg’s quixotic campaign, don’t count on voters representing the progressive base to follow suit — especially if Bernie Sanders wins the popular votes and loses at a brokered convention.

___

One underreported storyline following Wednesday night’s slugfest Democratic primary debate was the refusal of any candidate other than Sen. Sanders to commit to pledge their delegates to the eventual primary winner.

This decidedly undemocratic stance is profoundly cynical, but also seems to be calculated. A wellspring of support has grown behind Sanders in recent months, making him the current front-runner. Each challenger sees a path to victory in exploiting party rules to force a second vote on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in July, at which point the party’s infamous “super delegates” would come deliver the nomination to a candidate with more institutional support (and fewer votes) than Sanders.

It might seem pragmatic, but it’s not. Rather, it would be a historically bad decision that would alienate millions of Sanders supporters, a multiethnic, multicultural, progressive, young, working-class coalition that is challenging the accepted strictures of politics in the era of Donald Trump. For many, Sanders was an entry point into politics; an earnest voice with common-sense ideas that speak to us. He is far and away the most popular politician in the country and one of the least popular among DC operatives — both good things. He represents a promise for a more just and equitable society.

But what the largest and most diverse coalition of voters since Barack Obama sees as a promise, many in the ranks of Democratic leadership see as a threat.

My congressperson, Rep. Donna Shalala, has already come out strongly against Sanders, stating “[h]e’s not going to be the nominee.” Likewise, Reps. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell — a candidate I vocally and financially supported in 2018 — and Debbie Wasserman Schultz have both refused to pledge any support to the Democratic front-runner. Agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried, the only statewide elected Democrat, has held meetings with all candidates except Sanders, and is expected to endorse Bloomberg because, why else, money. Across the state, Democrats are scurrying away from the most popular politician in the land, ostensibly because of some amorphous “communist” smear that definitely wouldn’t be deployed against literally every other Democrat.

Again, Sanders is the only candidate to boast an electrified base that refuses to budge, and he has almost single-handedly shifted the discourse the past five years to the left on living wage, health care, student loan debt, climate change and many other issues crucial to South Floridians.

If it feels to many of us like the fix is in, party leaders aren’t doing much to assuage those concerns. And that’s not surprising. It’s hard to be a progressive in the Democratic Party these days. While centrist liberals compromise our party’s principles to court the mythical “moderate suburban conservative” (who somehow never seems to show up on Election Day) and co-opt revolutionary language to promote milquetoast conservative agendas, true progressives are slurred as radicals, unrealistic, immature and toxic. We are told to modulate expectations. We are invited to leave if we don’t like it.

Ok. Maybe that’s a good idea. If Shalala, the Florida Democratic Party and the eventual nominee don’t need my vote, maybe the lesser evil is to simply withhold it — this year, in 2022 when Marco Rubio and Ron DeSantis are up for reelection, in 2024 when Rick Scott runs again and Trump decides to become a three-term president, and into the foreseeable future.

I’m not unreasonable. There are several scenarios where I can picture marking the box for someone other than Sanders in November.

Although she has compromised her own values and backtracked on campaign promises, I would still be pleased to vote for Sen. Elizabeth Warren. I don’t like Joe Biden’s long record of being wrong on civil rights, class, immigration and criminal justice, but in the spirit of reducing the harm being wrought by the executive branch today, I would vote for him. Like many my age, I find Pete Buttigieg to be more of an inauthentic branding exercise than a true candidate. He’s shown himself to be a tool of corporate America wrapped in a progressive sheen, and what little he has accomplished as mayor of South Bend is troubling. But again, Trump, corruption, children in cages, etc. …

If any of these candidates were to stage a surprising comeback and earn more votes and delegates than Sanders, I would begrudgingly vote for them. We progressives have held our nose and voted for a candidate we despised (Hillary Clinton, 2016) and had our heart broken by a candidate who turned out to be smoke and mirrors (Obama, 2008), but we always turn out, and we “vote blue no matter who.”

Not this time. Not under these illicit circumstances. And definitely not if the beneficiary would be billionaire recent-Republican and former-New York City Mayor Bloomberg. Although he won’t compete in any early states, Bloomberg has dumped hundreds of millions of his own money into ad-buying his way to the nomination by securing enough delegates to force the aforementioned second-vote scenario.

The problem is that there is no convincing argument made that a Michael Bloomberg presidency would be any better than the disaster Trump is presiding over. Kids in cages? Bloomberg put vastly more black and brown bodies behind bars during his time as New York’s stop-and-frisk mayor. Inequality? During his tenure, Bloomberg made New York a playground for millionaires while households making $250,000-a-year can barely enjoy a decent quality of life. Venality and corruption? Only one candidate’s name appears on Jeffrey Epstein’s travel logs. Cuts to social security? He’s all for it. Misogyny? Transphobia? War mongering? Bloomberg’s record speaks louder than I ever could. True, Bloomberg is much more competent than Trump, but you have to wonder: is that a good thing?

It’s all a moot point anyhow, as Bloomberg is such an uninspiring candidate that he would lose in an Electoral College landslide against Trump.

For elite Democrats, it’s not really about beating Trump. If it was, their support for Sanders — the only candidate who consistently outpolls Trump nationally and in every swing state — would be unwavering. Rather, it is about their quest to retain power and relevance within the party and the state.

This is why you can expect to see Shalala and the Democratic elite of Florida continue to line up behind Bloomberg, Biden or anyone who promises not to upset the status quo that maintains their elite positions, anyone who keeps working people on their knees. That is to say, anyone but Sanders.

And that’s fine. I mean, it’s not, but everyone can support who they like. Still, if their recalcitrance results in a brokered convention that effectively steals the nomination, you can also expect progressives like me to stay home in November.

As the adage goes, that’s not a threat — it’s a promise.

___

David Quiñones is a host of the Miami politics podcast “Bird Road.”