AS THE coronavirus pandemic begins to take serious hold here in the US we are also, it would appear, in the waning days of the Bernie Sanders 2020 run. Although on Wednesday his team shot down reports that the Vermonter was suspending his presidential campaign, it was undeniable that he had had another rough night of primary results.

After resuscitating its faltering anointed son, Joe Biden, the Establishment Democratic Party ran a successful scare campaign against the Sanders brand of socialism and is now suggesting he end his run, lest his candidacy further damage the party’s chances in the next presidential election.

Sanders is ever the villain, damned for entering the race and now damned for not quitting it soon enough.

Whether there will in fact be a presidential election in November has been thrown into doubt by the coronavirus outbreak. While a few amongst us suspected that Trump and his cronies would in any case manufacture a crisis whose mayhem would demand he remain in power without a democratic vote, such a scenario has now been handed to him on a plate.

Some are even suggesting that the Trump administration’s failure to act effectively or in time to stem the spread of Covid-19 was a deliberate act to sow further chaos and ensure the election’s postponement at the very least, if not its cancellation altogether.

Sanders has not bowed out of the race yet, but his prospects of survival look bleaker by the day. While it is clear that he is in part a victim of the Democratic Party’s determination to derail him, there was also one key demographic failure on his part; the absence of support among men of his own generation.

In an effort to address this, the Sanders campaign called on beloved actor, Dick Van Dyke — who, at 94 is 20 years Sanders’s senior — to record a supporting video extolling the virtues of “somebody younger” as “the perfect candidate.”

“It just doesn’t make sense to me that he’s not getting my generation,” Van Dyke said. But the reality is, he isn’t. Sanders cannot garner the votes of older white men like himself.

This failure appears to confirm a curious phenomenon that, as our age and experiences increase, our radicalism paradoxically fades. Why is this? And is this even true?

I noticed this anecdotally myself at a recent gathering in London of old, “leftie” university friends, almost all of whom eagerly await a Keir Starmer leadership of the Labour Party. Only two of us were there to hold the left flank — appropriately at the far left end of the dinner table.

My comrade in arms — or, given the state of our finances as seniors, more appropriately “in alms” — is a personal friend of Corbyn’s. During the dinner he was texting with Corbyn who sent encouraging messages back to the gathering. Our mates accepted these graciously enough, but I could see them wincing.

Sanders and Corbyn are exceptions to the trend of creeping to the right as we age. Neither has strayed from their socialist beliefs and that is one reason why young people adore them. But is there a medical or scientific explanation for why their own generation see them as too radical?

The answer, in a word, is “yes.” And also “no.” According to at least one study, which labelled the idea that people become more conservative with age “folk wisdom,” their results “indicate that political attitudes are remarkably stable over the long term.”

But: “We also find support for folk wisdom: on those occasions when political attitudes do shift across the lifespan, liberals are more likely to become conservatives than conservatives are to become liberals.”

So while some of us over 60 are a Sanders or a Corbyn or a Van Dyke, we are not, it appears, in enough numbers to get our heroes elected. The Democrats will scurry once more to the “safe” centre here in the US as we likely will in Britain’s Labour leadership contest. And if we are lucky enough to eventually oust our present incumbents, we can look forward to years on end of middle-of-the-road governance by Joe Biden and Blair II.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the curator and editor of Beyond Nuclear International — @BeyondNuclear.