As the year of 2019 begins, so does the race for the U.S. presidential election that is to be held the following year. Republican incumbent, Donald Trump, has already made it clear that he is planning to run for reelection in 2020.

    The Democratic party is currently split between a progressive wing and a neoliberal wing. Democrats on the neoliberal wing of the party have been known to take large campaign contributions from wealthy donors, support right-wing economic policies such as free trade, and ‘cooperate’ with Republicans in the policymaking process. By comparison, Democrats on the progressive wing of the party want elections to be publicly funded only, support popular left-wing economic policies such as Medicare-for-all, and refuse to give in to Republicans in the policy-making process.

    Numerous Democrats from both wings of the party have already announced their campaigns for president, from progressives such as Elizabeth Warren and Tulsi Gabbard to neoliberals like Kamala Harris and John Delaney. However, the one individual who would be the best candidate to take on Donald Trump, who isn’t even a Democrat himself, hasn’t announced his 2020 campaign yet. However, this man needs to be the one to defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. That man is Vermont senator, Bernie Sanders (I).

    Bernie Sanders was the main opponent to former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries and caucuses. While Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton (who herself would go on to lose the general election to Trump despite winning the popular vote), Americans are now very well-aware the primaries and caucuses were rigged in many ways.

    They ranged from a media blackout for the Vermont senator to mass meddling of the vote in many states. “Concerned Sanders would win Nevada, Sen. Harry Reid, the former Senate Majority Leader and most powerful elected official in Nevada, as it later emerged, arranged a plan with owners of Las Vegas casinos, where many caucuses were being held, and other employers, to ensure Clinton would win.

    The Nevada caucuses were then rigged with massive voting irregularities such as casino owners orchestrating which workers would be allowed to vote and, in clear intimidation, openly monitoring how they voted.” says RoseAnn DeMoro of Alternet.

    Had it not been for the presidential primaries and caucuses being rigged in favor of Clinton, not only would Sanders have been nominated, but he would’ve also won the general election against Donald Trump. Many polls from the 2016 primary season showed Sanders beating Trump by double digits, with one poll held by Bloomberg from March 19- 22, 2016 showing Sanders beating Trump by 24 points. Even a poll held by FOX News from February 15-17, 2016 found Sanders beating Trump by 15 points.

    Many of the neoliberal Democrats who have either entered or are likely to enter, have a slim chance of ever exciting the Democratic party’s base. The main three of this wing are freshman senator of California, Kamala Harris, former vice president, Joe Biden, and former Texas Congressman, Beto O’ Rourke. Some in the Democratic Party establishment have tried to present Kamala Harris as a progressive, as she has taken the pledge to not take any campaign contributions from corporate PACs, supports raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, and so on.

    However, her record in California has been very questionable at times. “Trump’s now Treasury Secretary, Steve Minuchin gave her campaign cash after she made that decision [to not prosecute Steve Minuchin’s One West Bank for foreclosure violations], says Emma Vigeland of Rebel HQ.

     Beto O’ Rourke, who lost to Republican Ted Cruz in the 2018 U.S. Senate election in Texas, is also given similar treatment by the Democratic establishment as O’Rouke stuck to his promise of not taking any PAC money during his 2018 Senate campaign. Soon after a ‘Draft Beto’ campaign was launched, though, O’Rourke’s name was removed from Oil Change USA’s ‘No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge’ List since it had been discovered that. “

    According to Sludge‘s Alex Kotch, a close look at campaign finance records shows that O’Rourke violated the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge dozens of times, receiving $324,650 total in donations of over $200 from executives and other individuals in the fossil fuel industry throughout his unsuccessful campaign to unseat incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).” says Jake Johnson of Common Dreams. When former vice president, Joe Biden, was a senator from Delaware, he helped Republican Clarence Thomas get onto the Supreme Court by not letting three female witnesses come forward to give their testimonies during the Anita Hill hearings. “Had he [Joe Biden] acted in a more competent and responsible way, it might be the case that Clarence Thomas, a very conservative Supreme Court Justice, wouldn’t be on the Supreme Court right now.” said Mike Figueredo of The Humanist Report.

    There are other progressives running for the White House aside from Sanders, including Tulsi Gabbard, Elizabeth Warren, Richard Ojeda, and Andrew Yang. However, Ojeda has the baggage of voting for the Republican presidential candidate throughout much of his life. It’s unknown if Yang supports student debt-cancellation.

     Warren may lack the political courage needed, such as when she back-peddled after originally saying that the 2016 Democratic primaries and caucuses were rigged. Gabbard has ties to right-wing Hindu nationalists in the nation of India and used to be a homophobe, whereas Sanders, when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, supported the city’s first ever parade for gay pride in 1983.

     While Sanders isn’t perfect, he is the individual who has the decades of experience, the political courage, and progressive policy positions needed to defeat Donald Trump and save the United States of America from falling to corporate authoritarianism and climate destruction.