Remember when Sanders was the front runner in the 2020 Democratic primary about five minutes ago? That ride appears to be not just over, but the car is being driven off a cliff. While it was always assumed that Biden would take 1st place once he entered the race, most pundits felt Sanders had the staying power to bounce around just a few points below him.

Well, so much for that. I took a look at the latest polling and it’s absolutely brutal for the resident communist.

Here’s the five polls taken since Biden entered the race per RealClearPolitics.

Here’s a live look at Bernie Sanders after seeing these numbers.

Not only is Bernie getting blistered by 20+ points in every single poll, his baseline numbers are sinking to the point where Elizabeth Warren is leading him in one sample.

Elizabeth freaking Warren.

I’m not sure what Bernie’s path is from here. He hasn’t shown any ability to grow his vote share, as it appears a majority of the Democrat party have no interest in the self-avowed socialist. His base is strong, but it has peaked at a number too low to bring him to victory. Does he try to play the long game and hope the rest of the field splinters? That seemed like a good idea a few weeks ago but the way things are falling now shows Democrats want the most electable candidate and Biden (at least in their minds) appears to be that person.

While the “fresh faces” of the Democrat party, such as AOC and Ilhan Omar, keep pushing socialism as the wave of the future, it seems the actual voters in their party aren’t too keen on it. Not yet at least. That’s actually good news for the country. If the race comes down to Biden and Trump, they’ll still be real downsides if Biden wins, certainly for the conservatives among us who actually care about accomplishing things and not just virtue signaling. But, as a worst case scenario, Biden is far less worrying than Sanders.

That’s really the issue for Donald Trump though. While he’s playing up the idea that he’d love to run against Biden, it’s the worst possible match-up precisely because Biden is such a goofball. To a lot of Americans, including some who disagree with his politics, he comes across as harmless. I suspect even many Republicans see him as someone who’ll simply propagate the status quo. Without a great foil across from Trump, i.e. Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, his path does get more difficult in the mid-west, where he absolutely has to do well to have a chance.

With that said, it’s really, really early. Biden could implode in the primary, although it’s highly unlikely. He could have some scandal take him down during the general. The American people could smartly decide that a booming economy is worth putting up with Trump’s rougher edges. No one really knows how it’ll fall if that’s the match-up.

What I do know is that Bernie Sanders is in big trouble and it’s way too early in the game to get floundering already. I expect the politics of all of this to get really dirty as we head into the first debates. Sanders isn’t going to roll over this time. It’s going to be great entertainment.

BTW, given that Kirsten Gillibrand is now polling below someone named Inslee (seriously, I have no idea who that is), perhaps somebody should pull her aside and let her down easy.