Bernie Sanders wades into Florida Senate race with endorsement for Angie Nixon

Alex Vindman had the money, the resume, the retired-colonel gravitas Democrats usually love to trot out, and Angie Nixon beat him by double digits anyway. That should tell national Democrats something about where their base actually is right now, and instead the answer from Bernie Sanders was to show up and endorse the winner. Fine. But let's not pretend this was some obscure state legislator sneaking through a low-turnout primary. Florida voters looked at a vindicated war hero and picked a self-described socialist by a landslide.

Sanders wading in isn't surprising, it's just confirmation. He's been trying to drag the Democratic Party his direction since 2016 and here's a Senate race in a state Republicans have been winning comfortably where his brand of politics just crushed the "electable" moderate. Nixon's people will call it grassroots energy. Fair enough, it is energy. The question is whether it's energy that plays statewide in November against whoever Republicans put up, because Florida hasn't exactly been rewarding candidates who run on Sanders-style platforms.

There's also something a little rich about a decorated lieutenant colonel getting steamrolled by the further-left option in his own primary. Vindman spent years positioning himself as the credible, institutional alternative to Trump-era chaos. Democratic primary voters in Florida looked at that and said no thanks, we want the socialist. That's their right, but it's also a preview of the fight national Democrats keep pretending isn't happening inside their own party.

We'll be watching how this plays out in the general. Nixon now gets to test her platform against a Republican in a state that's trended red for a decade, with Bernie Sanders as her most visible national booster. That's either a bold bet on where Florida voters are headed or a gift to whoever the GOP nominates. History says bet on the latter.