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The short answer could have been ripped from Barack Obama鈥檚 2008 presidential campaign: 鈥淵es, We Can!鈥�

The longer answer is more qualified, but it does seem to point to the central question of whether an unabashed progressive such as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders will win over the Democratic electorate and ride that support to the White House.

The Super Tuesday primaries this week point to a qualified 鈥測es.鈥� Sanders certainly has momentum, despite former Vice President Joe Biden鈥檚 comeback, and he could still secure a majority of delegates ahead of the convention in July.

The road ahead can be perilous, however, not least because a contested convention in July could lead to a repeat of 2016. To avoid that debacle, Sanders will need to focus on coalition-building and winning over the leadership of the Democratic Party, or, to use Sanders鈥� terminology, 鈥渢he establishment.鈥�

Which means it may be time to put aside the 鈥� that has come to define him鈥攚hich was literally the subject line of a fundraising email the Sanders campaign sent out Feb. 25. Yes, most party officials aren鈥檛 his fans, and if no candidate wins a majority of the delegates, .

Is fear of socialism driving the older voter turnout?

But for all the criticism Sanders and his supporters have levied at superdelegates, he may need them. That鈥檚 because the key demographic that Sanders says will support him, young first-time voters, haven鈥檛 been showing up in at the polls in numbers that could swing the election.

The , with Sanders winning the 18-29 and 30-44-year-old demographics. But there were a few surprises. Exit polling in Texas, for example, . Biden handily won that age group, carrying him to victory in that state on Tuesday in one of the more surprising upsets.

Two key battleground states in the upcoming general election, Virginia and North Carolina, also contributed to Biden鈥檚 comeback. Virginia, a bluish-but-not-reliably-so state that any Democratic candidate must win, saw turnout rise almost 64% over the 2016 primary. North Carolina, which was won by Barack Obama in 2008 but went for Trump in 2016, saw a primary turnout increase of 11% from 2016, putting the state in possible swing-back territory.

, as did Alabama, where Democrat Doug Jones is considered one of the .

Is fear of socialism driving the older voter turnout? Or is Sanders鈥� revolution not catching fire the way he鈥檇 hoped? Or is it a little of both?

With Super Tuesday behind us, the usual hand-wringing about socialism emerged not just from conservative pundits, but even from .

Bernie Sanders isn鈥檛 the scary extremist his opponents paint him out to be.

That the race has now crystallized into a Biden vs. Sanders competition is a good thing. Narrowing the field to two will allow both candidates to hone in on their central messages both for beating Trump and for how they would govern.

It鈥檚 important to note that Bernie Sanders isn鈥檛 the scary extremist his opponents paint him out to be. In his policies, he鈥檚 pretty much in line with the likes of Franklin Roosevelt, and in Europe he鈥檇 be considered a traditional labor party candidate: left of center, but nothing like the continent鈥檚 old-school communists.

It鈥檚 not particularly useful to debate the semantic difference among democratic socialism, socialism, and communism, primarily because the people who don鈥檛 know the difference don鈥檛 want to know, and Trump surely will smear any Democratic nominee as a socialist.

That was the theme鈥斺�溾�濃�攁t the big Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 27. We should know by now that arguing about labels isn鈥檛 going to have any other result except to feed far-right hysteria. (Biden would do well to heed that same warning.)

Here鈥檚 the kicker: Many polls that are focused on policy proposals reveal that a wide swath of : lowering prescription drug prices (sometimes with government involvement in manufacturing or funding research), paid family leave, clean water, legalizing marijuana, and bankruptcy reform. People like this stuff. They want to keep their health care and Social Security.

The 鈥渟cary socialist鈥� epithets being tossed at Sanders by fellow Democrats aren鈥檛 really coming from a place of ignorance about what the labels mean. All the Democrats are significantly to the left of any Republican in power. Even Michael Bloomberg would be considered a conservative Democrat/liberal Republican in the mold of Lincoln Chafee or Bill Weld鈥� people that today鈥檚 Trump-眉ber-alles Republican Party have all but expelled.

There may be a little bit of genuine misunderstanding around the label in the Democratic electorate, but the policies themselves just aren鈥檛 the issue. The fear-mongering intent of the 鈥渟ocialist鈥� label seems to stem primarily from anxiety that Sanders couldn鈥檛 beat Trump.

There is a path forward for progressives even if Biden wins the nomination.

Mostly, skeptics point to Sanders鈥� more divisive proposals, such as free college education, eliminating private insurance, and a housing guarantee for everyone, regardless of income. These are what puts Sanders鈥� campaign firmly on the left end of the spectrum, and which any reasonable observer knows would be unlikely to pass a Congress controlled by a politically diverse Democratic coalition without major changes.

This is assuming Democrats even manage to flip four Senate seats without losing any, such as Doug Jones鈥� seat in Alabama. The down-ballot races matter just as much as the presidential race. Even if Sanders wins, if U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell remains the majority leader, the 鈥渞evolution鈥� stops cold.

The worry about beating Trump is real. If Trump wins a second term, the American experiment with democracy is likely to be finished. But, again, any of the Democrats can beat Trump, and that includes Sanders. Trump has the potential to be his own worst enemy, if only the Democrats would get out of the way and let him.

That means moving beyond the 鈥渃ircular firing squad鈥� stage of the Democratic primary, and making the focus of the race about Trump. It鈥檚 his reelection. Saying he lacks the qualifications and character isn鈥檛 enough; it didn鈥檛 work in 2016, and like bad software coding, with Trump鈥檚 supporters, his unfitness is not a bug, it鈥檚 a feature.

The election has to be about what Trump has done and plans to do: , (or render it toothless), (this part is easy for him, since ), continue to , , , and on top of all that, simply .

Sanders can do this and sell his domestic agenda, because his domestic agenda promises the polar opposite. All Sanders has to do is overcome his own weaknesses.

It may be too much to expect him to stop explaining that democratic socialism isn鈥檛 socialism, which isn鈥檛 communism or authoritarianism. But he does need to show he can work with the Democratic Party he wants to lead.

Sanders has spent his career giving a Bronx cheer to the Democratic National Committee, something for which鈥攕urprise!鈥攎any Democrats aren鈥檛 rewarding him. His promise to mobilize millions of new voters to his cause hasn鈥檛 been reflected in turnout yet, and he needs to start running as if he wants to lead a coalition party, which is what the Democratic Party is, with progressive, mainline liberal, and moderate factions, of all ages, ethnic groups, genders, and sexualities.

Insisting everyone but him is wrong about everything, and that everyone must sign on to his revolution, is a recipe for schism, and he may find that the if his delegate count falls short at the convention.

Plus, Sanders needs to stop making his own boneheaded goals, such as . Cuba鈥檚 not an issue in this election, and all Sanders did was give many people in a key swing state one more reason not to like him. The truth is the truth, as he said, but if the election comes down to a debate about whether or not Cuba or the Nicaraguan Sandinistas or the Soviet Union did good things in addition to bad things, Trump will win, and win bigly. The election is ultimately about Trump, and if Sanders wants to win, he needs to keep that front and center鈥攚hile providing a clear, focused, coherent alternative to what four more years of Trump really looks like.

The primary鈥檚 not over yet, but it will likely wrap up soon. In less than two weeks, half of the 3,979 delegates to the Democratic National Convention will have been assigned. The party鈥檚 accelerated primary schedule is doing what it was designed to do and avoid a repeat of 2016: not just the extended intraparty conflict between the Sanders and Clinton camps, but also what happened with the Republicans, in which the non-scary candidates split the vote nine ways, allowing a scary extremist to win the nomination without ever getting a majority of the total votes.

There is a path forward for progressives even if Biden wins the nomination, but if Sanders wins, progressives need to show the rest of the country, especially all the swing state voters, that he鈥檚 not a scary boogeyman, and he really can represent all Americans. He can do that without watering down his platform, but he needs to show that everyone is welcome to his party.