Note the headline and sub-headline of Mr. Shapiro’s essay:

The Gauzy Myth of the Sanders Campaign

If there were ever hidden armies of Democratic voters yearning for a  visionary presidential nominee, then they remain well camouflaged.

Besides the highfalutin headline, Walter Shapiro continues the long New Republic Tradition that dates from Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, and Walter Weyl to Martin Peretz & Michael Kinsley, Hendrik Hertzberg , Michael Kinsley, Andrew Sullivan, etc., etc.,(Not to forget the once very powerful literary editor Leon Wieseltier, now disappeared.) The record of Liberal Mendacity, in its various personages and iterations, is historically well established. But Mr. Shapiro breaks new ground with the closing paragraph of his political funeral oration for Bernie Sanders:

‘For the moment, Democratic voters deserve to take pride in what they have accomplished in the less than two weeks since South Carolina’s primary. They have, in effect, selected a nominee with a minimum of rancor and discord. While there will be bumps ahead on the road to Milwaukee, this quick, de facto victory is the best possible outcome for Democrats hoping for victory over Trump in November.’

https://newrepublic.com/article/156883/gauzy-myth-sanders-campaign

Spoken like a true New Democrat, even if Mr. Shapiro doesn’t consider himself one, he recites the cliche ridden Party Line, as if it were the end of the story, with Senile Old Joe as president! But Shapiro is aware of Biden’s obvious cognitive impairment, but offers this hyperbolic, conjectural use of history : 

What Democratic voters have created by rallying around Biden is the American equivalent of the Popular Front, which, in the 1930s, was a broad, multiparty alliance against fascism in France and other democratic countries. The exit polls from Michigan echo a sentiment found in almost all primaries—voters, by a 58-to-37 percent margin, want a candidate who can defeat Trump more than someone who agrees with them on all issues.

The New Democrats have full control of the Party Apparatus, and with the active  collaboration of Corporate Media, have, again, waged a campaign of defamation against Sanders. Shapiro offers many hypothetical political scenarios, to add an ersatz depth to his essay. His essay reads like what it is, an apologetic for a bankrupt Centrism, made up of Neo-Liberals and Neo-Conservative fellow travelers.

Old Socialist