

Imagining a Sanders general election bid. (Photo by Darren McCollester/Getty Images)

The prospect of a Bernie Sanders presidential nomination makes a lot more sense to Democratic voters than to party elites. It's one reason why, quietly, Democrats who panic about a Hillary Clinton loss are nudging Vice President Joe Biden to consider a run. If the "back-up" candidate is Bernie Sanders, the party would march into a general election led by a septuagenarian democratic socialist. Few members of the president's party have even considered such a thing.

That was clear last week, when in an anticipation of a reporting trip to West Virginia, The Washington Post asked the few Democrats who represent Appalachia how a Sanders nomination would play out. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.), Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) all represent large swathes of the region. Manchin, who more regularly breaks from the Obama administration, faced a token 2012 opponent and won by a landslide. Casey and Brown drew flawed but well-funded opponents, and both saw their victory margins shrink, as Appalachian voters bolted to the GOP. None were harsh to Sanders, yet none could seriously contemplate how Sanders would lead the party in 2016.

Casey immediately changed the subject to Hillary Clinton. "Based upon Hillary's performance in the 2008 primary, which gives you some sense of her appeal in the state, I think she has a chance to win a lot of those western counties back," said Casey, who endorsed President Obama over Clinton in 2008. "Part of this is that I have to believe there's going to be an unusual and powerful dynamic with women who are conservative Democrats, who are moderate Republicans."

A Sanders campaign, he said, was harder to game out. "He's never run in the state," Casey said with a shrug. "He might be right about the importance of the economic message. I just can't really evaluate that."

Brown, a populist who's co-sponsored several bills with Sanders -- including a new one to roll back the Affordable Care Act's "Cadillac" tax -- was more bullish on the power of the Sanders message.

"He's right, mostly," said Brown. "We think we win elections nationally, because of changing demographics -- which is true. We don't need to recapture all the working class white voters that we've lost, but we need to talk to them. We do lose some because of guns, because of abortion, because of the ill-described 'war on coal,' and we don't answer with an aggressive, vigorous economic message."

[In rural America, a startling prospect: Voters Obama lost look to Sanders]

What did that mean for a possible Sanders ticket? "I don't think much about this stuff," said Brown dismissively. "I don't think about the candidates much. I think about how we talk to voters. I know I didn't do well in Appalachia last time, when I always had, but that was part of the polarization of a presidential election."

Manchin, who ran 25 points ahead of the president in 2012, agreed that the Democrats could talk more about their economic record. His party had been obliterated in 2014, and he blamed low turnout for part of the loss. Democrats, he said, had a much better story to tell about how to bring back Appalachia.

"It's ridiculous to have this much inequality," he said. "Look, the facts speak for themselves. The only thing Bernie's doing is speaking the facts, that in the last 20, 30 years, wages have been stagnant while people at the top have been doing very well."

The biggest problem Manchin saw with a Sanders candidacy was simple: Coal. The Vermont senator had signed on to every major Obama administration green initiative. Had cap-and-trade actually won a vote in 2010, Sanders had been ready to vote for it.

"Bernie would not play in West Virginia," Manchin said. "His environmental stance? Oh, my, it would be awful."