There’s a lot of negativity about Bernie in the comments, but he’s at a steady 15-25% in the polls and he sure can raise money from his small donors:
Sen. Bernie Sanders raised $34.5 million in the final three months of 2019 for his White House bid, his campaign said Thursday — a massive sum fueled by his online fundraising machine that may send a financial jolt throughout the Democratic race.
Sanders raised more than $96 million in 2019 alone, and his fourth-quarter total is one of the biggest quarterly hauls reported by a presidential candidate at this point in the campaign.
I’m not supporting Bernie, but we need to get real about his candidacy. He is a contender and pretending he’s not, shitting on him because he’s an Independent, complaining about his asshole supporters (there are plenty of them, but ~20% of the Democratic electorate are not assholes), hating on AOC because she endorsed him, etc. is not a strategy for consolidating his supporters after his likely but not inevitable primary loss. A better strategy is to figure out why people like Bernie, and to pick the winners in his positions and rhetoric for the 2020 race. The best strategy is to learn how to raise money the way his campaign has been doing, and adopt that for the general.
If he was polling at 2%, we’d have the luxury of daily ragegasms directed at Bernie and his supporters. He isn’t and we don’t, if we want to beat Trump.
anarchoRex
My door is open if y’all have any questions ;)
Chyron HR
Ah, yes, once again we see the strange power dynamic where a U.S. Senator and repeated presidential candidate can call Democratic voters scum, but we mere mortals must hold our tongue lest we offend him.
khead
Narrator: He’s still not really a contender.
CaseyL
Bernie’s entire campaign is toxic – IIUC, the doctored Biden video came from his shop – and how about you tell his surrogates to stop shitting on the candidates who are actual Democrats?
Quinerly
Fuck Bernie Sanders.
15 flush mistermix
@Chyron HR: Citation needed. Seriously, I don’t hate-follow Bernie’s campaign the way some of you guys do, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.
@CaseyL: I acknowledged in the post that some of his followers are assholes – in fact, it seems like there’s a higher percentage than other campaigns. But 20% of the Dem electorate are not assholes.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
My dumbass 26 year old web-credulous middle daughter delivered the millennial threat this morning – “you’d better vote for Bernie this time, or millennials will give you Trump again”.
Those donations, the things that keep that incompetent, mentally-lazy, nasty old fuck in the race beyond any positive utility should be divided into tranches – which parts are denoted in dollars and which parts started as rubles.
He’s in it to burn down liberal consensus and thoughtful progressivism, and to dumb down an entire demographic of left-centrist younger voters.
rp
His polling is steady, but is that a good thing? He has his die hard supporters, I don’t see any evidence that he can break the 20-25% ceiling. I suppose it’s possible that he can hang around and win a brokered convention, but that’s far-fetched. So I don’t think he’s a realistic candidate.
As to wooing his supporters…not sure what to say. I agree that they’re not all assholes, but the non-assholes will come around without too much persuasion. And I’m not sure there’s anything we can do to mollify the assholes.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
My formerly smart 25 year old beyond woke daughter was appalled when I told her that I was sad that Harris was out.
She bought the “Kamala the Cop” bullshit, hook, line and sinker.
Cheryl Rofer
15 Flush Mistermix, do you have polls showing who supports Bernie and why? I think I’ve seen them, but I haven’t collected them. That would give us some background for figuring out why he’s at 20%.
IIRC, he’s got a pretty broad demographic, even though most of what we see and are irritated by is the Bernie Bros.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
One other thing:
That would require making deals with Russian oligarchs and Putin.
15 flush mistermix
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
That’s funny. She’s sure good at getting your goat, if nothing else.
Baud
I’m happy with a moratorium on bashing all candidates, but this post sounds like another example of special rules for Bernie.
satby
@Chyron HR: this @khead: this @Quinerly: this
kindness
My problem with Bernie is his approach. When asked how he would accomplish all the things he says he wants he replies he expects us, the citizens to be manning the barricades 24/7 demanding Bernie’s things get done.
That ain’t the way it works. I don’t want to trade an awful ineffectual Republican for an ineffectual Independent.
satby
@satby: edit fail, but you all get the idea.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@15 flush mistermix:
It took about a hundred thousand people like her, in a handful of states, to put trump in office. Fucking hilarious.
The best case scenario is that $35M has been set on fire.
Jude
I have yet to figure out how we’re not all fucked. He’s going to burn it all down if he’s not made king and he’s taking it to the effing convention again.
I’ve seen polls that show his numbers with black people anywhere from 6-20%. None of those numbers are high enough for him to win the nom, but that creepy stunt his minions pulled with turning Biden into a white supremacist in a 9 sec clip is how they’re going to try. Remember, Hillary lost WI because Milwaukee PoC stayed home (or were disenfranchised from voting by the Nazi Repugs in my state here).
I guess the strategy is oh, I don’t know, maybe we could start vetting the jerk? We could write Op-Eds and circulate them and force the media to start looking at his weird past? The problem with that is when your name is attached, the Bernie Cult sends you death threats.
Baud
Every Democratic candidate should hate Democrats. It’s lucrative.
Betty Cracker
It’s not just that an online contingent of Bernie’s supporters are toxic assholes who ostentatiously sabotaged the party’s last nominee in a fit of pique — it’s that Sanders hired some of those very same folks (Turner, Gray, Sirota, etc.) for major roles in his 2020 campaign. And the Uygur endorsement/withdrawal was a hugely stupid indicator that Sanders doesn’t get how serious a problem misogyny is among some of his most die-hard fans.
That said, I agree with your basic premise. If we’re supposed to hold our tongues about Biden’s multiple, enormous flaws because there’s a decent chance he’ll be the eventual nominee (I don’t hold with that myself, but it’s not an uncommon view around here), it’s not crazy to argue that the same is true of Sanders.
satby
@15 flush mistermix: actually, 20% of any demographic are highly likely to be assholes. No reason Democrats are exempt.
anarchoRex
@satby:
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
this seems awful grandiose and uncharitable to younger voters.
Josie
I cannot forgive him for what he did last time and expect him to do it again this time. Hopefully, not all 20% of his voters are hard core enough to damage us in the election.
Kay
I’ll support the nominee, but boy Biden makes it hard. I hear him with the coding and the miners and I thought of this:
Biden also supported Theranos. He has a kind of fatal attraction to stupid shit that rich people tell him is a great idea. It matters who you talk to and who you surround yourself with. It isn’t just the donations or the fundraisers. It’s the ideas. The theory. It’s bad. It’s also a loser for Democrats and it was a loser when idiot Arne Duncan was saying the same shit in Ohio in 2010, almost a decade ago. Stop listening to these people. Find new advisers.
JMG
15 flush mistermix
@Cheryl Rofer: This Politico interactive poll widget is pretty interesting. He’s more likely to be supported by 18-29 age group (esp women), Hispanics, college educated (but not postgrad), and under $50K income. His support in the black community is pretty flat but not in negative territory (unlike Pete and Warren). So relatively broad-based.
gene108
Democrats, in 2018, running for Congress and state elections, raised a ton of money from small donors. I’d bet most Congressional candidates forswore PAC money, in their campaign. My candidate did.
And we were able to support them.
I don’t think funding campaigns from small donations is something Democrats aren’t doing already.
Jinchi
I see you wanted to wake up the commentariat on this sleepy Thursday morning.
I predict a 200+ comment thread filled with respectful disagreement with your argument.
dww44
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I came to comments to say almost exactly the same thing but you said it better:
This is what bothers me about his candidacy. Maybe I’m too fixated on this, but we sure do need some liberal elites to start spending their money figuring out how and to what degree our primary candidates are being ginned up by those who seek to weaken our democracy.
Gin & Tonic
@JMG:
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
satby
@anarchoRex: actually, the young Bernie supporters I personally knew last time have all moved on to real Democrats. The current supporters I know now are generally non voters or old mostly white guys. And they’re cultists. Anecdata to be sure.
Gin & Tonic
@Kay:
It’s remarkably easy for people who’ve never written a line of code to tell other people they can learn to do it. Coding doesn’t require genius-level intellect, but it requires your brain to be wired in a particular way that likely would have become evident at some earlier point in your life than after having spent 30 years digging coal.
15 flush mistermix
@Kay: I have a long post brewing about this “miners coding” nonsense, which it is, plainly and simply. We’d be better to just hand them cash than to put them through job training for something they’re not suited to do, in a place that has almost no opportunity for what they’re trained to do. And I don’t mean this in an elitist way – most people aren’t suited to do coding.
Jude
@JMG: Boy, I don’t see it that way at all. His supporters are OBSESSED. Last time around 74% ended up voting for Hillary. We will be lucky to get that number this time. I think what Bernie is doing best is two-fold. Ultimately he’s convinced the people who were with him last time that he, and only he, can save us. He honestly seems like another Trump from my view.
schrodingers_cat
There were two campaigns that were helped by the Russians. One ended up in the WH and the other is destroying the D part from within. Coincidence? I think not
anarchoRex
@satby: my experience in my own bubble is that those who supported him last go round support him again, with more or less enthusiasm. But I haven’t been nearly as involved in this cycle so it’s a small sample size
dr. bloor
Fuck it. I’m ready for him and willing to vote for him. He’s either going to be this generation’s McGovern or Carter; every generation seems to need one or the other.
khead
@Jinchi:
I’ll take the over for $50. I need something to make up for the Baylor loss last night.
Jinchi
@Cheryl Rofer: The Washington Post has a recent article on how Sanders supporters changed between 2016 and 2019.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: A thousand times this.
@JMG: IMO, if it becomes a two-man race between Biden and Sanders, it wouldn’t take some bizarre black swan event to hand the nomination to Sanders. Biden has proved perfectly capable of melting down in a presidential campaign — he’s been doing it since I was a college student.
Yutsano
I can’t support someone who refuses to join and work for the party he’s supposed to head. That’s my Sanders opinion. But he’ll get “cheated” out of the nomination as soon as this contest hits the South.
Eolirin
@Betty Cracker: God help us if it comes down to those two. Equal chance of Biden burning himself down and Bernie falling over dead
Edit: And most worryingly, even after the primary concludes.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat:
Word.
Kay
I think Warren really benefited Sanders because she took the pile-on that would have been directed at him if she hadn’t have been there. But they’ll go after Sanders next. His supporters complain that he doesn’t get any media coverage. They may wish they could go back to no media coverage if and when it starts.
matt
If Sanders wins the primary I’ll vote for him in the general. I have nothing to say to his supporters beyond that.
15 flush mistermix
@Jude:
My GOD let’s never use simplistic language! Only overly complicated, too detailed plans that will be picked apart by every both sides journalist and turn the debates into snooze fests will do. I mean, I want to hear more about the little details of everyone’s M4A plans – we should have full debates about them, not just half of the debates. That’ll keep ’em coming back for more!
Frankly, I hope that this is one thing that Democrats learn from Bernie: hammer away at a few things that the majority of the population wants, without excessive detail.
Scout211
I don’t like the negativity either, but this blog seems to be fine with differing opinions and even some very loud disagreements.
Concern trolling has gotten the Democrats pretty much nothing over the past few decades. It’s a powerful tool of suppression, IMHO.
khead
@Kay:
One would think you might should’ve considered this a while back before you became so resigned to our fate with Uncle Joe.
Betty Cracker
@Jinchi: Saw a poll fairly recently that shows Sanders doing well with Latino voters. Pundits tend to lump Latino and black voters under the POC label, but they’re not a monolith, as we know. Also, Latino voters are projected to be the largest bloc of eligible non-white voters for the first time this year.
MattF
I see Bernie as a typical alte Kacker. He’s just tiresome.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m well aware of Biden’s flaws and the risks of his campaign, but a Sanders nomination is a gift to the odious Susan Collins– and McSally and Tillis and Ernst. The ads write themselves, “Whoever’s in the White House, I’ll be a voice for common sense…”
rikyrah
Bernie is in the same place that he was in 2016.
He excites a certain group.
But, he is going nowhere fast with Black Southern Voters, and Black voters, in general.
So, he is NOT going to be the nominee. Period.
satby
And certainly without a cogent plan to get any of his wishlist legislatively enacted. Because people eat that up with a spoon, amirite?
satby
@rikyrah: thank heavens!!!
khead
@rikyrah:
It seems a bit like a competition between Bernie, Warren and Mayor Pete to see who can poll the worst with POC.
Kraux Pas
@satby:
This is consistent with my experience, most people I know supporting him this year are young new voters or sporadic (to be charitable) voters.
Also, that real Democrat thing is rude. Just throwing that out there. My sister moved from Bernie to Tulsi. Is that what you mean by real Democrat?
gene108
@Gin & Tonic:
THIS times INFINITY
I took a C++ class in college, and I started getting confused, when we got to functions.
While-loops, I could manage, but Do-While-loops went over my head.
There was enough partial credit for turning something in, I didn’t flunk out.
But there’s no way in hell I could make a living as a programmer.
zhena gogolia
@Quinerly:
Eloquently said. I may have to take a vacation from this blog if this continues. (I mean the OP)
15 flush mistermix
@satby:
It worked for Trump. People don’t vote for policy details. The trick is to be loud and proud about fudging the details. I think that what political junkies take as a weakness (Bernie doesn’t have a lot of details) can be a strength if it is handled the right way. Bernie gives a rough outline about what he wants to achieve, and how he wants to achieve it. But he doesn’t shy away from some tough statements (such as frankly saying he’ll raise taxes). That mixture is pretty effective compared to excessive detail and waffling about how you’re going to raise money for your plan.
But, as Kay pointed out above, he will be getting some media and other candidate heat now that he’s in second place. We’ll see if he holds up.
Amir Khalid
If I voted in America, Bernie would be a hard no for me. His health issues alone are disqualifying. So are his failure to see beyond economic inequality as the sole root of all that ails America, and his laziness about learning the breadth and depth of policy issues that POTUS must deal with. He will not be any better prepared to do the President’s job now than in 2016, and he won’t be in physical shape to deal with its rigours.
zhena gogolia
The great thing about the NYT 1619 project is how it brings into focus the way it’s African-Americans who have been at the forefront of the struggle for equality and justice in this country all along. I hate to say it, but we’re going to have to rely on them to save us again this time. White people are idiots with no common sense. (I say as a white person)
JMG
@Betty Cracker: I don’t see Sanders beating Biden one-on-one. Not at all. And I wish to remind folks that one reason that poll showed a high percentage of Sanders voters going for Trump is that they were always going to do that. Voting for Bernie was a vote against Hillary. He got like 70 percent in the West Virginia primary. He’d get like 30 percent in any general election.
zhena gogolia
Another reason everyone needs to read the Mueller Report. Sanders was a favored candidate of the GRU.
Another Scott
I’m horrible at predicting the future in politics, but I cannot see Sanders being the nominee. He did well in 2016 because he was the Anti-Hillary. There isn’t that dynamic this time, especially since she was Right About Everything™.
I haven’t checked recently, but supposedly ex-Mayor Pete is doing well in Iowa polls. Warren’s doing well in New Hampshire. Biden’s doing well in SC. Where’s Bernie’s breakout supposed to be?
Biden’s health report (3 page .pdf) is a little hair-raising, but all of his issues seem to be well under control. The race to Super Tuesday is going to be a sub-two-hour marathon. Sander’s health report (3 page .pdf) is a little hair-raising as well, but it paints a fairly rosy picture (as might be expected).
It’s still early. I expect Bernie to be around as long as he’s not bed-ridden, but would not be surprised if he were an also-ran by Wednesday March 4, 2020.
Amy may do well (Iowa and New Hampshire are more conservative than much of the rest of the country). Elizabeth may do better than expected, especially if she finds a way to break out of the “too scary-liberal” box that the press is trying to put her in.
Donnie is a wild-card, of course.
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
I’m seeing a number of Bernie supporters online making the same argument some did in 2016: join us BECAUSE, of all the major candidates’ supporters, we have the greatest propensity to sabotage the nominee and reelect Trump if you don’t. It’s a flat-out threat, offered as a recruiting technique.
But I’m asking myself if my distaste for this tactic and tendency to respond with “hell no” is irrational. I mean, if somebody has a gun to your head and asks for your wallet, you hand over your wallet.
Anya
It’s distressing to me that my fellow Millennials are so gullible and can easily be manipulated. We have so much information sources but we’re susceptible to the purity argument and easily casting anyone who is not Bernie as a corporate shill or in Kamala Harris’ case as a cop. what confuses me the most is why do they pin all of their hopes on Bernie? Honestly, I am baffled.
satby
@Kraux Pas: well Bernie makes no bones about the fact that he’s not really a Democrat, he only becomes one to run in the primaries. Tulsi is soon to leave the national stage in politics, though the wingnut Wurlitzer is keeping a seat warm for her, I’m sure.
The kids have pretty much split between Warren and Pete, and either is a huge improvement as far as I’m concerned. But as a parting shot to Harris, too many of them bought the “Kamala is a cop” B.S. that the bros were peddling. So the fucker is still toxic.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
Right.
Kraux Pas
@khead: Umm, I mean Bernie is in (a distant) second with black people and doing rather well with other PoC from what I’ve seen. Just because one candidate has a demo locked up doesn’t necessarily mean that other candidates are doing something wrong or wouldn’t support other candidates if their preferred guy falters.
Kay
@khead:
I did consider it. I once sent faxes trying to stop Joe Biden from voting for the bankruptcy bill. In that case rich people convinced him that “mom and pop” drugstores were going out of business due to Chapter 7 filers. His malleability is a real concern. What makes him likable and easy to get along with also makes him a pushover. His main attraction is also his biggest liability.
If we must have a centrist I prefer Klobachur. She’s tough as nails.
Kraux Pas
@satby: I thought Pete wasn’t doing very well with young voters.
Anya
@Matt McIrvin: the thing is Bernie as the nominee will be slaughtered by Trump. Bernie can’t handle the slightest criticism and he’s been treated with kid gloves in the Dem primary now and in 2016. His candidacy will decimate the Dem party.
15 flush mistermix
@Anya:
I don’t understand this either. My daughter (25 years old) has friends who are hard core for Bernie. And the Kamala is a cop accusation really hit home with this group. (And it wasn’t just superficial – they could quote some accusations about Kamala that were maybe a bit exaggerated but based on real events in the world.)
Matt McIrvin
@Gin & Tonic: Also, the Hour of Code stage where you can write a simple program given friendly development tools is pretty easy for most people, but getting from there to actually being a good software engineer takes years, decades of experience. You’re not going to get that unless you actually like doing it.
satby
@Another Scott: and you’ve just summarized why the vociferous Tweet attacks and false information about all three of these candidates occur.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Only you can decide what threats you are going to take seriously and give into.
But keep in mind that white suburbanites also walk away easily. They’re just quieter about it.
zhena gogolia
If you want to be left of center, why not a sterling public servant, a person of integrity, a Democrat? I mean Elizabeth Warren.
Jinchi
@khead: According to the Washington Post article mentioned above (which separates out blacks and nonwhites) Warren does distinctly better with blacks than Buttigieg and Sanders.
Also, just because you aren’t their favorite, it doesn’t mean they hate you.
*Note I’m eyeballing these from their chart.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: I am going to vote for her in the primaries. Warren has shown that she may have policy chops but her political instincts are awful. Did you see that video where she says that she still supports BS and M4A? Why is she playing second fiddle to him?
15 flush mistermix
@satby:
You’d think this, especially about Pete, but it isn’t the case. This recent polling at Politico shows that both Pete and Warren have relatively less support in the 18-29 demographic than the two who have the most: Bernie and Andrew Yang.
I read somewhere that Pete is an old person’s idea of what young people would like. I think that’s on target.
p.a.
Tangental, and too late for this round of insanity, but we have a constitutional floor for the age of a President; surely the DNC could set a ceiling for Presidential candidates’ age.
Matt McIrvin
@zhena gogolia: The Bernie argument is that Warren’s clearly done, her campaign’s going nowhere, so her supporters should jump to Bernie to stop Biden. Of course, they were saying that before Warren’s surge too.
Cheryl Rofer
@15 flush mistermix: @Jinchi: Thanks for the data.
I suspect that, attitudinally although not demographically, many Bernie supporters are in favor of burning (Berning?) it all down. So maybe not too different from a lot of Trump support. They are tired of the bullshit and want some plain speaking. That was more of a contrast in the contest with Clinton. A number of today’s candidates have incorporated that into their campaigns and position papers.
My own preference for a candidate aligns somewhat with that, but I don’t want an old white man shaking his finger and shouting at me for the next four years.
OTOH, the Biden support indicates that a great many folk want a quiet, let’s get back to “normal” candidate.
What makes all this difficult is that the Democratic Party now incorporates the reasonable parts of what used to be the Republican Party, since today’s Republican Party has gone full nutcase. That’s a wide range to span.
Matt McIrvin
@Jinchi: Sanders has a surprising lot of Hispanic support IIRC.
Eolirin
@15 flush mistermix: Social media usage is different between the youngs and the olds
Edit: For clarity this means they’re being propagandized differently. That they’re Bernie supporters means they’re being propagandized specifically to that as well. The Russians are running a very sophisticated op, one that’s made easier by the way recommendation algos work to move people to more and more extreme and echo chamber like content.
15 flush mistermix
@Jinchi:
This is an important point. Also, the polling moves around a lot because Dems are spoiled for choice and their most important goal is defeating Trump.
Jinchi
Not to mention, simply learning to code well won’t guarantee you a job in your small West Virginia mining town.
I don’t think the skills learned in coal mining are so completely exclusive that there aren’t many other professions these men are already fit for.
satby
@Matt McIrvin: did no one think of Biden’s statement as just an example of something glaringly obvious: coal jobs are going and they aren’t coming back, so if you want to work you need to retrain for something? I doubt any of his audience understood him to mean they all literally should become software engineers.
We work too hard to pick apart every statement they all make (except the saint, evidently) when what people generally take away from these events is whether a campaign will help them.
Matt McIrvin
This is definitely something that reading too much Twitter can give one distorted ideas about.
Kraux Pas
@JMG: God doesn’t hate me enough to make this a Biden/Sanders race. Does it?
ETA: And I second Kay’s motion on Klobuchar. Moderates, can we please do Klobuchar?
BobS
@15 flush mistermix: Sander’s supporters probably skew a lot younger and more racially diverse than Balloon Juice readers/commenters.
Kay
@Gin & Tonic:
My oldest son works in fintech and honestly he’s been “that way” since he was three years old. I would literally rather mine coal than do what he does, even if I could do it, which I can’t.
When Biden said “I was in charge of the Obama retraining….” my heart just sank. He’s the culprit! I wondered. He and Arne Duncan. Duncan came to Cleveland during the 2010 midterms and told unemployed machinists they needed to retrain for 15 dollar an hour jobs. I would have paid him to stay away. If it was even dumb AND politically beneficial I could understand it, but it’s dumb and politically tone deaf. They won’t let it go. They LOVE it.
satby
@15 flush mistermix: and the young still underperform in voting with older demographics. Stop trying to make Bernie happen, he ain’t.
Baud
@satby:
I agree.
I’m curious what Warren or Bernie’s message to the coal miners is, if it’s not retraining and not (I assume) promising to mine for more coal.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jinchi:
A very good point. I haven’t seen a “second choice” poll in a while, but if Biden and Sanders are still 1 and 2 with most of their supporters… it just underlines how different we political junkies are from the Normies
Archon
I’d feel much better about the Bernie candidacy if he publicly admitted he screwed up in 2016 and handled his defeat to Hillary Clinton poorly. He can even acknowledge that his behavior was based on the idea that Trump couldn’t win so he could take free shots at the “establishment”, then any type of anti-Clinton malevolence. More a sin of omission or lack of political imagination.
The idea that Democrats would give the nomination to Bernie Sanders without at least a mea culpa from him would be absurd.
FlyingToaster
I’d like to see the crosstabs on Sanders’ support among registered Democrats (ideally, by state, but I don’t think more than a dozen states have polling). Most of what I’ve seen is from up heah in New England, and Sanders has BernieBros (about half of whom are “unenrolled”, not registered democrats), hippies (as in people now in their 70s, majority “unenrolled”), and college kids (about half of whom aren’t registered to vote, at all). It’s ancedata, but I think your “20% of Democrats” is ‘way higher than reality.
chopper
considering how many of his followers acted after it became clear he couldn’t possibly win the primary in 2016, i don’t think there’s any such strategy that could do that.
Scout211
I mostly lurk here, but I would like to add that since I try to avoid the national news and don’t engage in any type of social media, I really appreciate reading the opinions of all the jackals here. I really do want to know what people here really think about any of the candidates, whether those feelings or opinions are extremely positive or extremely negative.
So I vote to keep on keeping on. Carry on, jackals.
15 flush mistermix
@satby:
Maybe – but the history of these retraining programs in economically depressed areas is full of nonsense like coding programs instead of more realistic skills programs.
For example, the local community college here has a great HVAC program. HVAC is a good career for someone who doesn’t want to sit behind a desk. It is both intellectually and physically demanding. Because everyone’s heater is now a computer, they’re a tech job. But nobody talks about a HVAC training initiative because it doesn’t have the same pizzaz that “coding” has.
Xavier
@zhena gogolia: Russian support of Sanders was an obvious way to harm Clinton. No mystery there.
ruemara
@15 flush mistermix: except she’s right, & it now is becoming a thing I’m hearing from Bernie fans. So no. Fuck Bernie.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Sorry, MM – but this is pretty lame.
In summary: Why won’t you heathen neo-lib boomers show due respect to the Bern?
I “pretend” that Bernie does not have a realistic path to the nomination based on my understanding of the Democratic primary process and electorate. What’s Bernie’s path to 50% of the delegates? Which states does it run through? I can’t game out a scenario with that outcome that seems at all realistic, and that’s with Sanders winning California.
When it became clear that my preferred candidate had no realistic path to the nomination, I moved on (and she eventually dropped out). I didn’t have to demand respect for my preferred candidate. She earned it herself.
I don’t trust Bernie’s allyship, or that of his most vocal supporters.
Most importantly – because this is criteria #1 when picking a nominee this year (and I don’t want to have to explain this again!) – I don’t trust that Sanders can win the general election, let alone drive the turnout needed in purple and red states needed to win a solid majority in the Senate.
If Sanders and his supporters want to grow beyond that 20% ceiling, they should be extending a hand to the rest of us.
Maybe running one of the most negative 2020 primary campaigns is not the best way to win friends and influence others.
Another Scott
@Kay:
As others point out, coding is very, very different from working in mining.
Forbes:
It makes much, much more sense to train coal and oil industry workers to work in wind and solar and electrical infrastructure than to imagine that they’ll become coders, or nurses, or home health aids, or UPS and Uber drivers, or …
Plus, far too many coal and oil industry workers are broken from the back-breaking labor. Increasing disability and retirement benefits for those shrinking industries would help the transition and reduce the political costs in those regions.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jinchi
To be clear, that’s the percentage of voters who support each individual candidate. 38% of the 4% of voters who support Yang are 18-29. But that’s still smaller than the number of 18-29 year olds who support Warren.
tam1MI
@15 flush mistermix: Frankly, I hope that this is one thing that Democrats learn from Bernie: hammer away at a few things that the majority of the population wants, without excessive detail.
That seems to be exactly what Joe Biden is doing.
Kay
@Baud:
I don’t think it’s the message to coal miners that people object to. I think people hear it as dismissive of a whole group of people, where “coal miners” is proxy for “no longer useful” and “coding” is proxy for “work we value”. I object to it because it’s facile and dumb. Think of something else. This has never worked in Democratic politics. Not once. Yet they won’t let it go.
It isn’t that difficult. Value the work that people do. All of it. Start there.
khead
@Kraux Pas:
Ummm, Black folks are pretty much the key demo now for Democrats. If you want the nomination you’d better lock them up.
dr. bloor
@Baud: If they’re smart, they’ll just ignore them. They’re not going to flip any of those votes.
I don’t have any problem with Biden’s comments, other than the fact that he painted another bullseye on his ass in exchange for a nonexistent upside.
15 flush mistermix
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
This seems to be taken as given by most of the commenters here, but I don’t see it. I’m talking about Sanders’ campaign, not a few assholes on Twitter.
khead
@Jinchi:
Assumes facts not in evidence. Lol. I like Warren so I am actually happy with this poll. She still lags in support with a key Dem constituency.
cleek
national polls are meaningless. there are no national votes for anything in US politics.
and i got no love for the guy, but he is currently leading in NH and CA. (though CA polls are few and far between)
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
This – much more concise.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Both are talking up green economy jobs — manufacturing, refitting, etc. If it’s bullshit, it’s at least more plausible bullshit than “learn to code,” IMO.
Ohio Mom
I’m skipping to the end of the thread to say, I try to imagine Bernie working the room at the G-8, or huddling with the generals in the Situation Room, or giving a eulogy, and I start cringing.
I don’t think he has the personality to be president. He’s too one-note, and I say this as someone who agrees with most all of his politics (well, except for that discounting the role of racism in everything).
I think he would be a disaster.
15 flush mistermix
@Jinchi:
Agree. Yang is a poor example because he polls so low. But out of the top 4, Bernie has relatively more support among 18-29 than the others.
Also, as others have pointed out, these polls don’t really get to the complexity of the primary electorate, because we all have 2nd, 3rd and 4th choices. For example, I’d rank myself as Warren, Booker, Klobuchar, Biden/Bernie right now.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Thanks. I think that is sensible.
Giant Military Weasel
So “complaining about his asshole supporters” is off-limits? Might want to rethink that.
I’ve encountered Gabbardista-levels of ‘Warren is a Manchurian-Wall-St-puppet-tool’ conspiracy theorizing from Bernie supporters. On the regular.
Maybe some of those “Bernie assholes” I’ve encountered have been provocateurs or mentally-ill individuals who don’t truly reflect the huge majority of Sanders supporters… but none of the real Bernie supporters ever step forward to say, “Tone down the conspiracy theory garbage” to them.
Kay
@Another Scott:
Yes, and OMG, STOP patronizing them by telling them things they already know! He’s not a career coach!
My middle son is an apprentice electrician. They just added a community college course on data systems, because that’s 1/4 of their work. THEY KNOW they have to evolve. They’re AT these building sites. Joe Biden, who has not held a job outside government since he was 28 years old just has no business telling them this! They know the storefronts are empty! They live there.
No one, and I mean NO ONE, wants “advice” from politicians. That’s not what people go to government for. They recognize this as a replacement for actually doing anything. Limit the speeches on “opportunity” to 8th graders. No one else wants to hear it and they will be insulted by it.
Eolirin
@Baud: I’m not sure they have any. Bernie almost certainly doesn’t.
There aren’t any good solutions. You need to invest tremendously in infrastructure in an area with relatively few people, so you need to find a way to bring in more people if you want a self sustaining local economy, so many of the people you’d be trying to help are going to be extremely hostile to you doing so, and there’s little guarantee that they’d be suited to any of the new jobs that are created as a result, which will mostly be retail/service and medical, but maybe some in manufacturing for a few years before that’s all automated. And many of those miners are too old to reasonably be starting a new career especially if they have to wait a few more years before there’s even the possibility of jobs.
You could just give them money, but that isn’t a real solution to the problem of lack of purpose and sense of worth that comes from being unemployable. Not to mention any cultural attachments to generational work in mining. It’s going to be painful in the best case, and devastating in the worst.
ruemara
@zhena gogolia: Nope. We’re done. You guys want workhorses and then want to ignore us as leaders. Nah, tired of doing all the work. This field has done more to cement black disappointment in Dems & the left than anything else. The best candidates have left the field. The hostage takers, billionaires and MEH are left. We shouldn’t be the labour force for any of these candidates at all.
@Giant Military Weasel: His campaign is run by those people this time around. Definitely fuck him and his campaign and his toxic social media people.
khead
So, let’s combine my last two posts. I’m stuck between folks who want to be practical (Biden) and folks who want to be idealistic (Wilmer). They both suck. Y’all can feel free to figure it out – and I will be sure and vote for whoever wins – but I reserve the right to take a few shots at them across all bows here at BJ.
Central Planning
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
So to make sure I understand, your daughter’s preferred list of next POTUS starts like this?
Kids are weird.
Kraux Pas
@khead: I agree they are. But a poll that indicates they have an overwhelming first choice doesn’t mean they dislike the other candidates. Also the polling can change after voting starts.
15 flush mistermix
@Giant Military Weasel:
How about “not characterizing his campaign completely by the statements of his asshole supporters”. In this thread, I’ve asked the Bernie haters to provide links or evidence of the sweeping claims they make about his disloyalty and negative campaign, that are taken for gospel over and over, and have seen little to back it up.
The shots I’ve seen Bernie take at others are the usual primary stuff and similar to what Warren has been doing lately (e.g., wine caves).
Major Major Major Major
I shit on him because I don’t think he would be a very good president, and I say (largely said, before she decided to do her job) mean things about AOC because she was letting her now-fired jackass CoS run everything, with predictably stupid consequences.
Is the purpose of this blog laying the groundwork for consolidating the party six months in advance of his losing the primary to Biden? I didn’t get the memo.
rebelsdad1
27% is the crazification factor across the board. After seeing the Wilmernistas and Tulsistans in action, that’s close to 27% right there. Plus you’ve got the Yang Gang which although he’s polling at like 3%, I can’t imagine his supporters would break for Biden and not the Baron of Burlington.
I think it ultimately will come down to Bernie v. Biden. Biden will get at least some Warren supporters, and probably all of Kamala’s, Buttigieg’s, and Klobuchar’s. Now with Castro out, I don’t see his peeps going to Bernie either. But we will see if the rubles from 5 million “donors” is enough to help Bernie out.
chopper
@satby:
yeah, i mean, it makes more sense describing sanders if you change ‘excessive’ to ‘any’.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: If past is prologue, I don’t expect that we will see that.
Scout211
@15 flush mistermix:
Okay, but does anyone anywhere ever ask anyone else to back up their personal political opinions with links and facts and articles? That may be what the political world in the US used to be, but it’s not what is happening now. The concern trolling is just . . . well, concern trolling.
So now I am concern trolling your concern trolling . . .
chopper
@15 flush mistermix:
democrats are not republicans.
zhena gogolia
@15 flush mistermix:
Just out of curiosity, have you read the Mueller Report?
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Kay:
Wow – that’s pretty disingenuous inference, please be careful. Makes it sound like he was on the board or something, like Mattis was.
Here’s the extent of this very limited “support”:
Biden, who was Vice President of the United States at the time, and leading the Obama admin’s anti-cancer health technology initiatives, was clearly acting in his appropriate role as cheerleader for USA innovation, when his “supported” Theranos…
…in that he said nice things about them, just like the US VP would and should say about any US technology firm that was engaged in this new area of digital diagnostics (which is a real area of new tech – just in Theranos’ case, the technology was bullshit – but that was not widely known yet).
Read the article, to see what this “support” entailed. Theranos gets VP Biden’s Support (2015)
Christ on a cracker! This is going to be the Solyndra, isn’t it. And Theranos didn’t even receive any government money – just encouragement and (temporary) good press.
To the disinformation ramparts, friends! – We can at least keep each other honest.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: I have said this before, but most M^2 posts on BS can be summarized in one sentence.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Matt McIrvin:
Its more like they have a suicide vest strapped to their chest. Trump wins and they suffer too. Of course, if Bernie wins and given my view of how he’ll perform in office, its like the suicide vest was homemade and could go off anyway, even if they don’t detonate it deliberately.
different-church-lady
Ah, I think I see the flaw in your theory…
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic:
Yes, yes it does.
I think it’s even possible to cultivate that, or at least encourage that, with early training. But you have to start with the aptitude and a certain frame of mind.
Both of my sisters are very smart, but neither of them could program or troubleshoot, not even to save their lives.
Betty Cracker
@15 flush mistermix: Sanders hired some of the worst Bernie or Busters for his 2020 campaign, e.g., Sirota, Gray, Turner, etc. Also, the Uygur endorsement — hugely clueless. The way candidates manage campaigns provides the best insight into how they’d handle the POTUS job, IMO, and Sanders’ decisions tell me he’d be a disaster who’d set back progressive politics in this country for a generation. That said, if he’s the nominee, I’ll vote for him. Le sigh.
khead
@Kay:
Uhhh, who’s doing the patronizing here? You say that your son and THEY know THEY have to evolve. You admit it. Yet you keep coddling them. Sorry, I grew up in coal country and have faced the same frustrations as you. At some point these folks have to accept that shit changes. Maybe when their water gets cut off. I dunno. Someone mentioned cutting them a check earlier. I’d be all for that. Every time some shitty ass grant for roads or water is given to southern WV I start counting houses and realize it would just be cheaper to cut them a check.
I mean, Joe Biden has no business telling them that the party is over? Really? How about you tell me who CAN do it then? You can’t. I can’t. Who can? If they “don’t want to hear it” I don’t care.
Kay
@Another Scott:
Obama keyed in on something else that is true of working class and which Democrats have apparently forgotten. They are aspirational as far as their children. THEY don’t want to go to college, but they are sure as hell proud as punch when their kids go. This is relevant to them. Mayor Pete is wrong when he says they view college programs as something THEY won’t use and will therefore resent. They flock to college programs. Not for them! For their kids. It is the height of elitism to think they are working class and hope to stay there for generations. That’s not true. It was the mistake Sara Palin made, her idiot assumption that working class people don’t aspire for their children. Obama knew better. That was how he reached them. They’ll figure out their own situation with things like health care and shoring up SSI. What they want is some hope and help for their children – they might like coding. That’s the apsirational hook for Democrats and it is true of all parents.
Starfish
@anarchoRex: I went to a Warren organization event, and a lot of people who had supported Sanders were supporting Warren. After releasing details on her healthcare plan, she lost a lot of support. I am not sure where her supporters went though. Did they go to Biden or to Sanders?
The online behavior has been very bad. There is a lot of terrible behavior towards women that includes a lot of gaslighting and abuse. It feels very GamerGate.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
That’s one hell of a caveat. But it didn’t stop them from publishing the first paragraph of analysis based on this shitty data.
15 flush mistermix
@Major Major Major Major:
Point out what’s changed since she canned him. As far as I can tell – and I do follow her closely because I think she’s onto something good – she’s doing pretty much the same things as she was 6 months ago.
After time has passed since she fired him, treating him like some kind of Svengali / puppetmaster was simply a sexist/ageist attack on a good natural politician. He got too big for his britches and she canned him, because she has good political judgment.
As far as whether there was a memo on consolidation, there wasn’t, but I think a lot of commenters are blinded by their Bernie hate, so I wrote the post.
Nelle
@15 flush mistermix: Didn’t he say that one of his goals was to take on the Democratic party establishment? It wasn’t eons ago he said that…more like a week or two. To me, that is disqualifying, if nothing else was. I’m not a big on the bigwigs, but damn, you want the party to support you when you want to be that explicit about using the party to get what you want and then screw them? Do you have the same attitude about the Russian support you got in 2016? I want that support acknowledged by him, even if he didn’t solicit it or know it at the time (though if he didn’t realize it, I’m concerned about his blinders).
Starfish
@15 flush mistermix: This is why Yang’s “$1000 will solve whatever issue” plan is working out really well for him.
satby
@Betty Cracker: @Baud: Was on my way to answer you with links to their policy positions when my Kindle shut down, which allowed Betty to answer more concisely than I would have. And both are remarkably similar in their prescriptions for improvement, go figure.
@15 flush mistermix: Pete was identified early on by the Sanders team as a threat and they’ve worked hard to put out the kind of disinformation they tried last night with Biden, I assume with the same help from St. Petersburg as last time. Including an awesome disruption of an event here in South Bend of African-American Pete supporters by a bro. See that lady trying to club the guy with her cane? That’s Ms. Bernice, she’s been an activist in this area for a long time. And the brother of the guy who got shot by the police was there and helped restrain the Bernie bro before the bro got thrown out. Democracy, it’s only for Bernie stans.
chopper
@Archon:
the idea that the democratic party would make their standard-bearer a guy who has spent the last 30+ years calling the party a ‘failyuh’ and refusing to join the party except for short bits to try to win a campaign is also pretty insane.
Kay
@khead:
Ok, I guess as an issue of principle we will continue to scold “coal miners” (who are really proxy for a whole group of people) and it will continue to tank politically but it’s so vital that we say it we must roll it out every cycle and watch it crash and burn. Can’t he just talk about Medicaid? How now they get health care and they never did under Republicans? Too easy?
15 flush mistermix
@Betty Cracker:
Yes, good point. Sirota is terrible.
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
Yeah, that whole Bump piece isn’t very good. It is a worthwhile question to see where Sander’s support went from ’16 to now, but it can’t be answered by ’16 polls compared to current, because Sanders and HRC were the only choice. Bump seems to have his conclusion (Bernie’s base hasn’t changed) and worked the numbers to get it there.
Anya
I am honestly disillusioned with this whole primary and it fills me with dread for what to come. It’s weird that Bernie and Mayor Pete are better candidates than Harris and Castro? like, WTF, Dem primary voters (who are being polled)?!
WaterGirl
@ruemara: I hope we never get there, but if we do, I hope the young pups who feel that way enjoy watching their future burning down right in front of them.
Gin & Tonic
@khead:
Funny, today’s On The Road post is about Newfoundland, where the Canadian government is doing precisely that. Isolated villages that depended on a cod fishery that no longer exists have become economically unsustainable, so the government is buying people out and saying that they will be completely cut off from all utilities and services (i.e. they move.)
Betty Cracker
@15 flush mistermix:
For what it’s worth, I’m glad you did, if only to illustrate that there’s a huge double standard around here on speaking ill of candidates with a non-zero chance of winning the nomination. Goose, sauce, gander, etc.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@15 flush mistermix:
last week Bernie lumped the “Democratic Establishment’ in with the list of enemies he and his cultists are going to “take on”. He spent much of 2017 telling his arrested adolescent supporters that the Democratic party was a “failure”. He refused to join the Democratic Party but is now running for its nomination for the second time. All these things strike you as a positive, unifying politician? Nina Turner, David Sirota, Cenk Ugyur, Jeff Weaver… all fine, upstanding, eyes-on-the-prize people ready to crawl across broken glass to support a non-Bernie nominee once the party’s voters (again, the party he refuses to join) have spoken?
I don’t get the group psychology that causes so many people who could, if you asked them, probably cogently explain how bills become law in this country (RIP Jack Sheldon), to suddenly believe Bernie will bring about the Revolution through righteous bellowing, but that seems to be what they think. And they’re wrong. And he’s wrong. And he encourages the stupidity and infantilism of his supporters. And that frustrated infantilism becomes toxic hostility. You can’t honestly separate that toxicity from the man in whose name it has infected Democratic politics.
Matt McIrvin
@Starfish: Warren’s drop in support coincided with a rise for Buttigieg. I think her more economically moderate supporters who were with her mostly for cultural-affinity reasons went to him. (And there was a lot of counterproductive gloating from Sanders fans on Twitter about how Warren supporters had been revealed as shitty neolibs.)
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah, I remember when he torpedo’d Obama’s election and re-election because he melted down.
Oh wait… He helped Obama kick the Repubs ass, espec. during his debate with Paul Ryan.
Oh, you’re talking about the primaries.
Being a Tim Ryan also-ran in multiple primaries is not the same as melting down. It’s not like he blew a lead in any of those primaries – he just never broke through.
I bought into the flame out hype. I was waiting for it. The gaffes came (as expected), but the flame out? I have yet to see any evidence that it’s coming.
Fuck – I hate having to defend Joe Biden so vigorously. He’s never been my favorite. But he’s earned a lot of loyalty from folks I respect. So now I’m here to help.
Major Major Major Major
@15 flush mistermix:
I said nothing of the sort.
This is a much more reasonable interpretation of what I said, and is what I meant.
“You like comic books? Yeah right. Name three!”
Surely something must have changed or you wouldn’t agree that firing him showed good judgment. She’s been less of an intraparty shit-stirrer and has been doing her job, which I appreciate.
bjacques
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: just call her bluff. If Trump gets back in, she’ll (likely) have it worse than you and her cohort will catch most of the blame as well.
johnnybuck
@Baud: seconded!
khead
@Kay:
Oh please. C’mon now. I’m not scolding anyone. Is that REALLY what you would tell your son? That he’s being scolded for ignoring reality? You never answered the question. Who gets to tell certain parts of the country that – sorry – your town is dying?
Eolirin
@Kay: It isn’t true of all communities. There’s plenty of hate toward kids going to college or bettering their situation in certain subcultures in the US.
That’s still probably the best pitch we can make though because it at least captures more people than the alternative, and those communities where it is going to be met with hostility are never going to vote Democratic anyway, so we have to write them off politically.
But it isn’t universal. You do need to know where you’re standing when you say it.
Jim
Oh the poor, poor Bernie haters. They are the orange Fuhrer’s best allies be they witting or unwitting troops. That’s what they are, but perhaps the focus should be on what they aren’t, which is a threat to Trump. Oh that’s right, my bad, that’s the same thing, ain’t it, and totally just like what the “Wilma” supporters use to say about BS supporters. The orange stable genius will no doubt thank them for cooperating with his divide and conquer…
joel hanes
My expectation is that on the day after Super Tuesday, it will once again be mathematically impossible for Sen. Sanders to be the Democratic nominee for President.
Major Major Major Major
twitter dot com slash davidsirota
ETA: I see many others beat me to it.
Kay
@15 flush mistermix:
I don’t think I’m a Bernie hater and I’ll give you something. His campaign is using impeachment as an example of how grass roots pressure can effect change. Bernie was AWOL on impeachment. Harris and Warren were the lead candidates who stuck their necks out on it and PELOSI and Democrats in swing districts took all the risk. Bernie is in Vermont. He was safe as houses and still too cowardly to come out strongly because it might have failed .
If it HAD failed Bernie and his supporters would be smugly opining on Trump Derangement Syndrome and Democrats obsession with Russia. Impeachment was a test to me. I was wary of it because I’m generally fairly risk averse but I deferred to Pelosi. If they can’t play on the team for something like impeachment they’re useless. That was an issue where you hold hands and jump off a cliff. They stood back, fingers in the wind. For people who love “labor” so much they don’t know shit about solidarity.
Freemark
Shitting on Bernie only hurts the Democratic Party. The youngs like him a lot because he has been correct about almost everything from banking, to climate change, to LBGQT issues and he has been correct for a long period of time. Young people see what is obvious; small incremental changes won’t be enough and he has been the only one consistently stating that fact. Most of the griping here about him is true but completely ignores that the guy has been on the right side of most issues longer than anybody and, most importantly, has never been afraid to say so which is the primary reason so many like him.
I personally prefer Warren. I don’t mind someone evolving over time and she would be a much more effective President. But actual Democrats like Sanders. He is second in polling of Democrats and over 30% of Biden supporters like him as their second choice. Pretending his supporters aren’t Democrats is ridiculously stupid and will do the exact same kind of harm you gripers complain Bernie Bros caused.
Jinchi
The polls I’ve seen have all four candidates in striking distance of winning Iowa and New Hampshire. Biden, Sanders and Warren are in contention for Nevada. I expect Buttigieg to fade pretty quickly after that, unless he does spectacularly well in both, at which point it becomes a 3-candidate race.
Biden is so far ahead in S.C. that if he loses there, he’s probably done.
The real contest is between Warren and Sanders. Whichever one does well in those first few states will probably take a lot of the other’s voters. (That’s why Warren still supports Bernie and M4A btw.)
Biden’s best hope is to either, sweep 3 of the first 4 states, which would make him the clear frontrunner. Or have Warren and Sanders split wins in the other states. Either result will keep both of them in contention well past Super Tuesday, and neither will be able to gain the advantage of consolidating the left wing of the party.
As long as 3 or more are still in the race, Biden doesn’t need to expand much beyond his current ~30% support. If either Warren or Sanders does poorly in all 4 states, it becomes a 2-person race. Biden still has a clear pathway in that case, but it’s probably closer to a 50-50 shot.
satby
@ruemara: that doesn’t seem fair when Biden’s support is so high among African-American voters. They’re the ones boosting Biden, not white liberals. We’re pretty meh about him.
mvr
@15 flush mistermix:
I’m not a Bernie supporter (though I did send him 25 bucks in 2015 figuring he’d push Clinton the the left). But I think the one attractive feature that isn’t hard to see is that he’s been who he is for a long time without much change of mind for politics sake (except on guns). He was a socialist when I was in college 30+ years ago, and he is one now. And I think that means he will look best to those who care about purity, and who will also be most likely to dislike Harris for old then politically expedient but no longer so positions. Relatedly, his reluctance to declare himself a Democrat (though he did in March) looks like a matter of honesty and principle to those who have long supported him. So I think that explains a lot here.
Oddly enough, several of my friends in their 40s to 50s seem to like Bernie quite a bit, but I don’t think they’re stupid. And they certainly would not vote for anyone but the Democratic nominee in the general election.
schrodingers_cat
It was worse than that they were out there critiquing every D move. Going on and on about terrible Nancy Pelosi was.
Baud
@Freemark:
@mvr:
I understand why people like him just like I understand why people like Trump. I just refuse to treat him more favorably because some of his supporters can’t deal with the opposition.
joel hanes
@Kraux Pas:
that real Democrat thing is rude
Sen. Sanders has already filed for the 2024 Senate race in Vermont.
As an Independent.
Kay
@Eolirin:
Most don’t though. It’s been the entry point for Democrats for decades. Bill Clinton got it, too. IMO, in Ohio, Obama didn’t reach white working class through himself. He doesn’t have anything in common with them. He reached them as a father. That’s what white working class men responded to. I don’t think it was a tactic, either. I think that’s a central part of how Obama sees himself. Maybe THE central part.
15 flush mistermix
Thanks to the people who gave examples of Bernie’s staff issues (Sirota et al) and his weakness on impeachment. Hard to link to all of them here.
Major Major Major Major
If the current state of the industry is any indication, this is alas not necessary to become a senior engineer.
schrodingers_cat
@joel hanes: He is in the race to destroy the D party from within. The only real remaining threat to Putin’s dominance of American politics.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: @schrodingers_cat: to those points I would add: The courts. What if Bernie had gotten his cultists as worked up about the courts as he did about “TPP”? an issue I suspect most of the kids waving signs in Philadelphia three years ago couldn’t explain today, if they ever could.
joel hanes
@zhena gogolia:
it’s African-Americans who have been at the forefront
Watched the movie Marshall, a fictionalization of Thurgood Marshall’s early days with the NAACP, last night with the fam.
Recommended. Some fine acting, and some vivid reminders of what the US was in 1960 in terms of race and gender. The arc of history really has bent toward justice in some ways.
Released in 2017. Subtle slap at Republicans in the voice-over on the credits.
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: I hate programming and coding. I have done it when I had to but it was as enjoyable as pulling teeth. I have worked with Basic, Fortran, C and C++. Not everyone who can code loves it.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Exactly. There are times where you have to risk being wrong. They weren’t wiling to do that.
It also hasn’t escaped my notice that all the people who ran the risk were women and Bernie and his supporters refused to give them even the credit that they might know how to to do their jobs.
In fact, if we’re going there, ALL the men in the senate have been a huge fucking disappointment on Trump. I think they’re scared of him. The best and most effective opposition to Trump has been overhwelmingly female. I’d like to see some analysis of that. THAT’S weird, right?
joel hanes
@Kay:
Klobachur
Kay, I love you, but you consistently misspell this.
Her last name is Klobuchar. Ends in “char”, like burnt.
satby
@Kay: except that’s a a statement he made about paying for college, not going to college. This is directly from his website:
But he also says this, and this is important, because not everyone wants to or has the ability or desire to go to college:
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@15 flush mistermix: While Bernie talks about free college (and its implication of 4-year University and Grad School), Biden gives lots of lip service to the very same types of Community College programs you just cited.
But does he get any credit for this? No. We focus on his stupid comment about coding, rather than the actual (and achievable, btw) policies he would push for and the real difference they would make in peoples’ lives.
joel hanes
@Kraux Pas:
Pete is doing very very well in Iowa, and may win the Iowa caucuses. I have grown to dislike him, but I think he’ll have the sacred “momentum” in the early primaries.
Kay
@joel hanes:
Thanks. I know I should look it up but I’m too lazy.
Jinchi
Put me down as someone who believes that the VP choice has never had a decisive impact on a presidential election. If HRC had been Obama’s pick I might have agreed with you, but nobody was voting for Biden in 2008.
Biden was on the ticket. But the win was all Obama’s.
satby
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think I love you.
Giant Military Weasel
@15 flush mistermix: who’s “characterizing his campaign completely by the statements of his asshole supporters”?
I’m not. I noted that there were Gabbardista levels of conspiracist thinking amongst Bernie supporters I encounter online. That is, of course, a subjective impression. How could I prove it, short of hiring a survey firm to comb through all the political arguments on Twitter for a week.
But thinking back to all the 2016 arguments of ‘Clinton stuffed the ballot box/rigged the voting’ from Bernie supporters (think the Nevada Dem convention riot by Sanders supporters), we can agree that there’s a perception of Sanders supporters being prone to conspiracy theories. Sanders has never addressed that & never made any effort to rein it in. http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff-weaver/allegations-fraud-and-misconduct-nevada-democratic/
If you want me to post links to twitter arguments w/conspiracist-prone Sanders supporters, I can do that… but what’s the point? What will it prove to you?
zhena gogolia
@ruemara:
I was for Harris (that’s where my donations went), but the AA support for her didn’t seem to materialize. I’m in one of the states where my vote doesn’t count either for primaries or the GE. So all I can do is donate and try to spread positive energy about the Democratic candidate. And pray that that candidate is truly a Democrat and not the candidate for Russian military intelligence.
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: To be fair, he said “good engineer” not “senior engineer.”
zhena gogolia
@joel hanes:
And sainted Poppy replaced him with Thomas. The single most cynical political move I have seen in my life.
Betty Cracker
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Is being forced out of a race due to plagiarism a meltdown or flame-out? You’re right, though — all but one of Biden’s previous primary campaigns were short-lived because he never caught fire, not because of scandal. I guess that’s something!
joel hanes
@15 flush mistermix:
I don’t see it.
No, you don’t. I wonder why?
I’m currently in Iowa, and seeing Sanders ads on TV. Every one contains a gloved slap at the other Democratic candidates. He’s not attacking Trump as much.
Gin & Tonic
@mvr:
I don’t understand this. He owes his career in politics to the NRA, and I don’t see where much has changed.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
David Sirota, “Kamala is a Cop”, etc. He keeps it at arms-length for PR and CYA reasons, but his strategy has always included a dark side.
But you don’t “hate-follow Bernie’s campaign” the way some of do. Actually, it sounds like you’re just looking the other way, and conveniently “not seeing” this dark side.
Kay
@satby:
I don’t think they have to opine at all on these issues. Lots and lots and lots of people train for skilled trades and have for a hundred years. They’re not asking for advocates for welding. They’re asking for funding for the “4 county vo tech” up the road from me that is oversubscribed with high school students. George W Bush promised to fund it, Obama promised to fund it, and now Pete promises to, I don’t know, promote it. He doesn’t have to tell an electrician that it’s honorable work. They assume that. Why doesn’t he assume it? This idea they have that “no one respects” people who don’t go to college is a tell- it says more about them than “people”.
low-tech cyclist
Eventually.
ShadeTail
Bullshit, mistermix. Last time in 2016, Bernie was treated with that kind of respect. And when his primary win became mathematically impossible, he and his supporters spent the next several months shitting all over Hillary Clinton and her campaign. They refused to concede even though Hillary had it all wrapped up after Super Tuesday, and spread lies started by Russia and Faux “News” in a blatant effort to weaken her polling. That was a material part of how Trump managed to get the electoral college even after his very wide loss for the popular vote.
I refuse to give those self-absorbed assholes the benefit of the doubt this time. They’re moral traitors to the USA for what they did in 2016, and they have the burden of proof to show they’re better than they were. Early signs point to a very resounding NO.
joel hanes
@Ohio Mom:
this.
Being an effective President requires building and maintaining a network of allies, co-operation, compromise, listening, adapting, and learning
These are not the skills I associate with Sen Sanders
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: That’s what I was getting at, being a good engineer is not a requirement for being a “senior software engineer” at a billion-dollar company, to say nothing of e.g. freelance web development.
Matt McIrvin
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: In this one way (and no other), Biden ’20 reminds me of Trump ’16. People keep waiting for him to flame out and denying that he’s the front-runner for good pundit-y reasons and the end just never comes.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I said the same thing, that Biden is a horrible candidate because he always has been, but doesn’t he seem weirdly “teflon” this time?
Democrats just want to win. I think he could set himself on fire and they’d be like “well, he’s the front runner!” :)
I find it encouraging. It really is Anyone But Trump. We’ll see if the cats can be herded. As you know they bolt if anyone picks up a laser pointer.
patroclus
Cool! A potential T-Bogg thread! As a Senator, I like Sanders. A lot. He’s a reliable member of the Democratic Caucus although, under McConnell for the last 10 years, the Senate rarely votes on anything substantive (other than judges), so like all Senators, he’s been saved from having to take difficult votes for a decade or so. He’s been useful on the Budget Committee whenever they actually comply with the Budget Act of 1974.
As a President, he’d be okay and I’d certainly vote for him as the nominee, but he’s been wrong on trade and guns (he’s come around lately on guns) for decades and MFA and free college aren’t realistic and, unlike Warren, he’s been far from specific about how he would finance either. And, although he’s been on the right side on civil rights and women’s liberty forever, neither are emphasized by his relentless economic focus. Although many of his supporters didn’t, he eventually came around and supported Hillary in 2016 – it was later than I wanted, but not fatal.
So I don’t “hate” him, but he’s like 8th on my list, behind everyone else (other than Gabbard and Steyer). I favor Klobuchar right now, but her path seems very narrow.
GC
The two candidates I’ve donated to in 2019 were Warren and Sanders; slightly more to Warren. I’m expecting Biden to be the nominee. He represents the Delaware kleptocracy. But beggars can’t be choosers.
I suppose I would even vote for Tulsi if she got the nomination, though fortunately I won’t need to think about that.
joel hanes
@Baud:
message to the coal miners is
There’s an enormous amount of mining-adjacent work to be done in environmental restoration of the areas that have been environmentally devastated by coal mining. Only the government could fund such an effort.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: true, it ain’t.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: my theory is a lot of liberals like Bernie because even though they’ve reluctantly accepted that he can’t win a general election, they wish they lived in a world where his platform were a winning one, so do I. This is how I explain Chris Hayes’ segments with him. So they look the other way on the ways he’s been pissing and shitting in the Democrats’ pool ever since he picked up Chuck Todd’s suggestion that Wall Street Speeches! were an important issue
Kay
@GC:
I wouldn’t. It’s the only time I’ve ever gotten a real sense of malice from a candidate in a D primary. She’s bad news. I know it in my bones. She’s a Trump-level catastrophe.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: A. Freaking. Men. I’m baffled by the fact so many don’t get this.
Baud
@Kay:
Yep. I’m not that yellow a dog. She’s trouble.
Nelle
@Kathleen: Sitting with you in the Amen Corner.
joel hanes
@Kay:
it is true of all parents
maybe close to all Democratic-leaning parents
not all Republicans
I know some deplorables whose attitudes are more “it was good enough for me and it damned well will be good enough for my kids” and “who does my kid think he is, better than me? like hell! I’ll beat that attitude out of him”
Particularly among the fundagelicals who are wary of education because their progeny might encounter ideas or learn to think
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Betty Cracker: It’s something. But it’s not the meltdown/flame-out that the narrative says is coming.
That’s why I have changed my mind and now think the narrative is wrong. Folks anticipating Biden’s flame-out (whether anxiously or gleefully), may be kept waiting…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: also, don’t discount the Obama connection.
In 2012, Bubba gave a speech at the DNC convention that a lot of pundits said was the defense of Obama’s first term that Obama couldn’t or wouldn’t make. I didn’t hear him say anything that Obama, and Biden, and Michelle and…. hadn’t been making (except for that great aside about “now that’s brass”. To me, Bubba’s speech landed because he was the (white) guy from before everything went into the crapper. People were willing to listen. That’s how I explain Biden’s appeal to Dems– and not just Dems– to myself.
Also all that regular guy, have a beer with shit that is like a foreign language to us, but is how a lot of people make their voting choices.
mrmoshpotato
@JMG:
Oh how optimistic you are. Do you think he’ll scowl at the DNC this year?
Will he fail to tell his supporters, “Thanks for the support, but you must vote for the nominee if you want anything close to my proposals.”
15 flush mistermix
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
Actually, I don’t give a shit about Bernie’s campaign, and don’t have any desire for him to be the nominee, as I have said about umpteen million times. Others have politely pointed out Sirota and some of the other problems in his campaign, and I appreciate and accept that.
@joel hanes:
I don’t watch commercial TV so I haven’t seen a Sanders ad (or any other). But, through the work of the Google machine, I found this very anti-trump Bernie ad airing in Iowa: https://blog.4president.org/2020/2019/11/bernie-sanders-tv-ad-in-iowa-belongs-to-us.html
And I also found this: “Billionaires” is Sanders’ seventh ad to run in Iowa, following “Fights For Us,” “Belongs To Us,” “Hope,” “Iowa First,” “Big Us” and “For All.” All seven ads have been produced entirely in-house by Bernie 2020 staff.
How are those anti the other candidates. Also, why can’t Bernie criticize other candidates?
schrodingers_cat
@Kathleen: Sanders promises that you can eat candy and cookies and still lose weight, so that can be attractive to those whose lives are not on the line if Orange wins again.
planetjanet
@gene108: The key idea of the coding for miners was to find a way for them to telework. Coding was a natural, but maybe there are other segments. Customer service? Why contract out oversees if you all you need is a Skype connection and an computer.
Ksmiami
@joel hanes: fuck Bernie he will never get my vote – Sorry
low-tech cyclist
@Freemark:
Warren hasn’t?
Warren was second in polling too, until the rich people who are OK with Dems like Biden and Buttigieg decided to dump on her because she was going to take 2% of their money, and seemed to have a better chance of winning the nom than Bernie did. Now they’re belatedly realizing that Sanders is still in the game, and they’re gonna throw shit at him too.
The only magic Bernie has that Warren doesn’t is that up until now, people didn’t really see him as being a threat this time. That’s all.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@15 flush mistermix:
because he’s already shown the damage his political persona and followers can do when he starts bellowing?
Kay
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Dude. WTF. We just spent the thread pointing out that you’ve got your blinders up to the exceptional and unusual negativity that has been spewed from campaign-adjacent actors (usually kept at arms-length). I’m not talking about his TV ads.
Stop looking the other way. If you want to opine about the Primary in a top-10000 blog, then start paying more attention (or stop using that excuse).
Eolirin
@planetjanet: What competitive advantage is there for a teleworking ex-miner versus whatever people are already hiring? Doesn’t sound like it really works to me. You could subsidize employers that hire them, I guess, but I don’t think anyone has suggested that and I’m not sure it’d go over well.
joel hanes
@Ksmiami:
If Sanders is the Democratic nominee, I will absolutely vote for him. Glumly.
If Gabbard is the Democratic nominee, (NARRATOR: she will not be the Democratic nominee), I will vote for her and then vomit.
planetjanet
@Jinchi: One immediately thinks of construction as a job skill miners could switch to. But having robust construction jobs, means there is local wealth leading people to invest in buildings. It just is not there. We need to find a way to move money into the area. I recently had renovation work on my grandfather’s house. My contractor said most other construction companies had left because there was no money in the area. He has trouble finding people.
Kay
@joel hanes:
Well, I know it’s not 100% but this strikes me as churlish. To “show” the 5% of asshole parents we’re not going to offer a hopeful view for their children? This is what I mean. They can’t be in the punishment business. This whole “tough love” tone is just a disaster. There are people who can deliver messages to other people and then people who can’t, or shouldn’t. It’s not like if the President doesn’t do it no one will ever tell them coal is no longer king. No career advising. It’s always dumb and faddish anyway. Just get out of that whole line of work and promise to fund guidance counselors. Delegate.
Here’s the test. Is it something David Books would say? Yes. Then don’t say it. Let him say it.
Kathleen
@Anya: That’s the point.
Richard Guhl
@15 flush mistermix:
If he’s the nominee, I’ll hold my nose and vote for him. But I think he’d be an absolute disaster for the Democratic party if he’s elected.
Yes, he sets grand goals, which has a great appeal. But if he says he wants X, he also says X-1 is just a neoliberal sellout.
Moreover, I think his ideas about governing are as bullsh1t as Joe’s kumbaya GOP shtick. But I think Joe knows his shtick is nonsense. With Bernie, I get the feeling he believes it. And that’s a huge problem.
I also want to puke every time I see that Not Me, Us slogan, because, to hear a lot of his supporters, he is the One, the indispensable leader to save us.
Lastly, I get the zeal to reform the awful kludge that is much of our system. What I don’t get is the willingness to bulldoze people’s livelihoods and lives in the name of The Greater Good.
To my mind, Bernie carries the stench of self-righteousness.
cleek
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m a C/Go/Java programmer, these days. 85% of my time is spent fighting the various build and deployment systems my company has set up. I’ve spent the last four working days trying to push a 10 minute fix through a Gerrit system that’s hooked into Jira but is misconfigured for the track I’m working in. And nobody knows how to fix it except, they say, to put a bogus Jira story ID on my commit msg, which sounds like a good way to piss off some bean counter.
Fuck this career.
Kay
@joel hanes:
And it’s SUCH a missed opportunity to bash Trump! He hasn’t delivered on those jobs. None of them. Not coal and not manufacturing. Just attack him! Biden isn’t the incumbent. He doesn’t have to defend.
Another Scott
@joel hanes: I think Susan Collins goes after Donnie more than St. Bernard does. Listen to what he actually says, rather than what his anonymous Twitter poster says. He’s very, very easy on Donnie.
Oooh. That hurt.
(groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
Yeah, it’s clear who St. Bernard views as his enemy.
Cheers,
Scott.
Richard Guhl
@patroclus: Bernie sees the world through a Marxist lens where everything is economics. He once said, “Yes, we must defend women’s rights and civil rights, but ordinary people don’t care about those things, so….”
That but effectively negates what he said before, and who are these ordinary people of whom he speaks?
tam1MI
@Kraux Pas: that real Democrat thing is rude.
Betty Cracker
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Folks who predicted that Biden would be an awful candidate weren’t wrong, IMO — he is an awful candidate. He’s made horrendous gaffes that would have landed anyone else in Palookaville. But he’s led the pack all along. So, maybe you’re right and he won’t flame out. I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, but it’s a possibility.
15 flush mistermix
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
Dude, I was replying, specifically, to someone who said that his TV ads in Iowa were hitting other candidates. I couldn’t find any.
I’ve also agreed that Sirota, et. al. are assholes, and spew garbage.
Raven Onthill
I’ve written extensively about this. It doesn’t help. Look, Sanders has been right about many issues for a very long time. He has also shown considerable courage and integrity. That’s a big part of what his supporters see in him.
BUT, he has been as thoroughly smeared as John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. Many women are convinced he cost Hillary Clinton the election. He is a light-skinned secular Jewish man and is therefore held to a far higher standard than a white Anglo-Saxon protestant. He’s also 78. A healthy 78, but also a man who has had a heart attack.
I don’t see how he can win, and he may be the nominee. It seems to me that the same tactics that worked against Corbyn in the UK will also work against Sanders. On the other hand, Trump won. So who knows?
I am pessimistic about the chances of any Democratic candidate. It’s going to be hard to win against the reactionary tide, the character assassination, and the bullying. Of all the Democratic candidates, it seems to me that only Harris – who everyone here knows I did not support – understood these things.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: I wonder why media are hammering her over M4A and giving Bernie a pass as always. I’m not supporting her for the primary but I still think treatment is unfair. I might have answered my own question. She’s a she.
joel hanes
@Kay:
churlish
I do not advocate saying publicly/politically that deplorables do not have aspirations for their kids. That would be politically dumb.
I was pushing back on your happy assertion that *all* parents do.
I may in fact be a churl: I have a wide stripe of that engineer thing where one corrects tangential points with a reply that begins “Well, actually …” No one really likes that, but when one has spent forty years largely in the company of computer engineers, one gets used to it.
Thanks for your reply.
joel hanes
@Kathleen:
I wonder why media
Seven letters, four syllables
Starts with M I S
Ends with G N Y
Raven Onthill
@Kathleen: Sanders isn’t getting a pass as much as being buried. And, yeah, everything that can be is being deployed against Warren, who the very wealthy regard as a threat.
joel hanes
@Raven Onthill:
he has been as thoroughly smeared as John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.
I cannot agree.
As far as I can tell, he’s gotten a pass on some fairly large oppo things that the Republicans will certainly use.
15 flush mistermix
@Kathleen:
Warren’s my #1 pick but the reason she’s getting this hammering is because she was cagey about whether and how she would raise taxes. The media loves, loves, loves chasing Dems when they waffle about something, because they think that making a candidate uncomfortable is doing their job. (Well, it is, kind of, but you need a sense of perspective.) Also, yes, because she’s a woman.
Bernie just says he will raise taxes, and they (for now) ignore him. It’s a bit like Trump’s trick with the media, which is to admit everything bad up front, so they can’t chase him for days making him uncomfortable.
schrodingers_cat
@Kathleen: She is a she and she is a D. And doesn’t shit on Ds at every opportunity.
planetjanet
@Another Scott:
There is a lot more limited use for solar in the mountain areas where the miners live because of the shadows of the mountains. So moving to clean energy sounds great, but how will it work in these particular communities. There was an effort to install a couple of windmills in one remote area, but it did not succeed. Windmills are not a continuing source of income after they are built.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Maybe he’s not such an awful candidate, then, if he’s so teflon.
“Just win, baby.”
Another Scott
@Raven Onthill: Bernie has some good sound bites on a few topics, but his history in the Senate shows that he cares much, much more about being Pure™ and bashing the Establishment™ than actually getting anything meaningful done.
We’re not electing a benevolent despot. The President can’t do much of anything productive simply on their own. We’re voting for a President. St. Bernard, and Donnie, don’t seem to understand that.
Grr…
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@planetjanet: When I googled “farmers making money from hosting wind mills”, I found some interesting results that may surprise you.
Elie
Bernie (my opinion), is a ratfucker for the Russians, par excellence. He will stick around to screw the Democrats again, unless somehow we can get rid of him in the primaries. I have no idea why people buy his shtick but it worries me to no end that he could again have a huge hand in delivering Trump to us. I can’t stand him and if he is the nominee I will have a tortured night of the soul. Yes, I would vote for him but also expect that we would lose and lose badly. And that of course, is his game.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Another Scott: In school, they used to teach you about the Constitution, and separation of powers, and how the President isn’t a king, etc.
I guess they had to drop that in favor of more STEM (or less school).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Raven Onthill:
fascinating to see the through-the-looking-glass POV
Kraux Pas
@tam1MI: Yes. And when someone shows up here doing that, I’ll call that person out too.
Another Scott
@planetjanet:
NAWindPower (from May 2019):
It’s not huge, but it’s a growing sector that benefits the state (and the nation).
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
And then she came out with the proposal to “just” triple her wealth tax. Like you said, at least Sanders has been up-front about the funding realities. For me, this was an important test which she failed.
tam1MI
@Elie: Worse, he’d discredit everything we stand for in the process.
schrodingers_cat
@Elie:Word!
joel hanes
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
I suspect there’s a problem in that the owners of West Virginia ridgelines may not be the farmers and coal miners whom we hope to help.
I have no data, and would welcome some actual information.
schrodingers_cat
@tam1MI: Bingo. He will destroy D chances for a generation
Starfish
@satby: Telling everyone to be a software engineer is a stupid thing that technocratic assholes do.
There are a ton of code schools training people badly. Companies are whining about a lack of tech talent and also not opening up positions for junior candidates. It is all a huge scam, and it needs to be called out for the huge scam that it is.
When spending retraining dollars, should we be retraining 50-year-old coal miners or saying “You did well, and we are going to give you health insurance and whatever you need until you can cross the line into social security?”
Pivoting when someone has spent a considerably long career doing one thing is really hard. Pretending it is not hard is tone-deaf and ignores the realities of people who are not employed.
planetjanet
@Eolirin: You can pay a teleworking ex-miner less than an urban worker due to cost of living differences and still improve the economics for the ex-miner.
planetjanet
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: How much time have you spent in the mountains.? Farmers in the plains of Nebraska are much different than Appalachia.
Cacti
Bernie’s sole purpose in the race is to assist Trump and harm the eventual Dem nominee.
If by some fortuitous accident he managed to win the nomination, he’d get buried in an oppo research dump that’s been held back by the Rs for the past 5-years, and the loss margin would be in McGovern/Mondale territory.
Seek deprogramming for your cult loyalty, MM.
planetjanet
@Another Scott: So how many jobs do these windmills sustain after construction? Yes, windmills are needed. Yes, every little bit helps. But we need reliable, continuing jobs for ex-miners and all the other blue-collar workers of Appalachia.
Kraux Pas
He keeps saying he isn’t supporting Sanders but keeps gettijg things like this. Who’s the cult?
Raven Onthill
@joel hanes: True enough. It could get worse, though that is true of every Democratic candidate. There’s usually something in a candidate’s background that can be turned into a smear. If there is nothing, something can still be made up.
Cacti
The median life expectancy for patients having a first heart attack after age 75 is 3.1 years.
Nelle
@Cacti: That may be without the rigors of running a political campaign and running the White House, though the current occupant is showing us that you don’t really have to work at it.
15 flush mistermix
@Kraux Pas:
Good question. There are a few commenters here who are just feral on the Bernie issue and I would like them to tone it down, thought it’s probably too little too late since the reasonable Bernie supporters have all gone elsewhere due to the persistent troll like behavior of a few loudmouths. I think there are a lot of reasonable critiques of Bernie, I’m not going to vote for him, but “fuck bernie” and “you’re a cult member” are not reasonable.
chopper
@Raven Onthill:
wait, sanders has been as thoroughly smeared as hilz? the fuck is this shit?
BobbyK
@15 flush mistermix: I acknowledged in the post that some of his followers are assholes – in fact, it seems like there’s a higher percentage than other campaigns.
Do you have any data to support this claim? I’m a supporter of Senator and am decidedly NOT an asshole, nor are any of his supporters that I am friendly with.
Elie
And I gotta say Elizabeth made an unforced error on herself, boxing herself into a Bernie Minnie me. No easy escape now. I wonder how she missed the boat not to get so tightly affixed to Bernie. They even had a mutual no attack policy that she is STILL following as he poll numbers continue to slide. She got suckered but good. She needed to whack that old man between the eyes (figuratively). Instead she echoed him and let him roll over her without a whimper, also watching as the moderates hemmed her in on her various policies. Tsk tsk. I thought she was supposed to be so smart.
15 flush mistermix
@BobbyK:
I have no empirical data other than my experience in Twitter, which is certainly not a good sample. Some of my daughter’s friends support Bernie and they’re great kids, for example. So, I’ll modify my statement to say “some of his supporters are assholes, as is true of any campaign.” Thanks
Soprano2
The idea that everyone who needs a job should learn to code is as insulting as the idea that everyone should study engineering in college if they want to make a bunch of money. Both things assume that there aren’t any special skills or abilities needed for these professions, when nothing could be further from the truth. I guarantee you that, although I was a magna cum laude graduate of my college, I would fail miserably if I tried to do either of these things. It’s not the way my mind works, and I think it’s insulting to those who are good at these things to imply that anyone can do them.
15 flush mistermix
@Elie:
I think the strategy was to be around to pick up the pieces when Bernie’s campaign imploded, which was worth a try, but doesn’t seem to have worked. But the campaign is far from over…
Kraux Pas
@Soprano2: The notion that we need to prepare people to move past dying sectors of our economy so they can get satisfying, lucrative work holds true.
satby
@Kay: as we do often do, I disagree with this take almost entirely, and it’s interesting that you want to ding Joe and Pete for doing what all candidates do. Warren and Pete use almost identical wording, for instance. But if you think that the average blue collar or service industry worker thinks their labor is valued or their upward mobility is desired by the people who write the laws, you’re very much mistaken. That’s what our candidates are speaking to there.
Barry
@Chyron HR: I may not be up on Bernie’s sayings and doing as well as you are, but do you have a site for Bernie calling Democratic voters scum? When did he do that?
Captain C
Given that he had a chance to bring huge crowds to Mitch McConnell’s office to oppose, say, the Trump tax travesty, the destruction of the ACA (which thankfully just barely failed), and Kavanaugh, and he didn’t lift a finger, I think we can see just how little this is actually worth in real life.
Another Scott
@Elie:
I don’t think Warren’s Bernie’s mini-me at all. Sanders.senate.gov:
It’s a popular position within the party. She fleshed out how she would get there over the long term while St. Bernard still has magic, impossible, asterisks.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@15 flush mistermix:
This info is very useful and illuminating. Thanks.
Love him or hate him, I think we need to see how Sanders actually does in the polls before making any predictions about his decisions. A chunk of his supporters, on the other hand, may say or do stupid stuff without regard to reality.
VFX Lurker
I lost people I thought were friends in 2016 because Wilmer gave them tacit permission to let their misogynist freak flags fly. A friend pulled me into secret Facebook groups about politics because Wilmer’s flying monkeys routinely divebombed our open conversations with Republican talking points.
I keep my distance from the Wilmer cult. I don’t write much about Wilmer online, but I do judge people based on how they regard Wilmer. It’s a good gauge for how they regard me.
WaterGirl
@joel hanes: The Pod Save America guys got some yucks from saying that Amy Klobu-charred some of the other candidates in the last debate.
Ksmiami
@Richard Guhl: he also will destroy the Democratic Party and ensure Trump’s re-election
tam1MI
@BobbyK: I was called a c*nt to my face by a Bernie supporter when I said I supported Hillary. I know people who were driven off social media by the unending tide of abuse and harassment they received from self-proclaimed Bernie supporters. I don’t care how much his supporters now try to gaslight people into believing it never happened, IT HAPPENED.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This:
And especially this:
Suzanne
@15 flush mistermix:
Yep. Spawn the Elder, who just turned 16, felt much the same. And I will give him credit…. he was incredibly specific about why he thought so. He will be a good voter in 2024.
I think that the primary difference among Da Yoot is that they don’t really see much value in being “in the room where it happens”, and the compromises that it takes for someone — anyone — to get to be in that room. They don’t just find most older politicians to be compromised or corrupt. They see the entire system as broken and suspect anyone who played the game to advance within it. This is why many of them find Bernie’s message of revolution affected from the outside very appealing. Those of us who are older usually have a different perspective on that, even if we don’t really have a difference of political opinion.
I am old enough that I don’t think much change is affected from without. But I admit that I did not feel the same at 20, even though I still hold the same political viewpoints.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: Ha! Well done.
Kraux Pas
@tam1MI: I mean this site is the only thing I do that arguably qualifies as social media and I didn’t use the behavior of people here to extrapolate that Clinton supporters were mostly abusive assholes (though many here were).
I believe that’s what’s called a category error.
WaterGirl
@low-tech cyclist:
You forgot to add:
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Well, we’ve currently got a malevolent despot.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@low-tech cyclist:
I’ve been wondering when that would happen. In 2016, he didn’t get much vetting or much negative attention. So far, he has skated by again without much attacking by either the other candidates or the GOP. Everyone else has been taking a beating. I keep wondering when the pundits are going to start zeroing in on all of Sanders many past issues and flaws.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
Yep. Da Yoots are outside the system, and a lot of them think it easy to create a new system that works exactly like they want it to. They don’t always see the continuity, or that they are inheriting a system that they have been part of, even if they were not active participants.
Kayla Rudbek
@Gin & Tonic: and it’s not even a skill that carries over to all of STEM. We need people (of all backgrounds) who are willing and able to go into the laboratory, the shop bench, and/or the manufacturing floor, people who are tinkering with, doing, and making real things, and more people who are educated in and/or can follow science. And speaking as a Gen-X STEM major, I personally found that coding was solely boring and frustrating.
sgrAstar
Just want to weigh in on the subject of reviving coal country economies. West Virginia is effing *gorgeous*! They have world class whitewater, rockclimbing, and more. Those assets could be leveraged to build a new economy focused on global tourism. This is happening in Southern Utah, where incomers and locals have developed restaurants, guide services, breweries, and other successful small businesses to serve RedRock tourism. It can happen. It’s slow, but doable. And there are cultural assets to illuminate, as well. It just takes big vision and backbreaking work. So…I think its possible.
?
Mo MacArbie
To go way back to the impeachment thing, I don’t think anyone’s congratulating Bernie. They’re congratulating themselves for boldly shouting that Pelosi was doin it rong until she heard The Will Of The People and relented. Moved mountains, they did. Clap. Clap. Clap.
Am I dripping with enough sarcasm? I can never tell anymore.
Suzanne
@satby: Agree. I meet blue-collar workers all the time with a huuuuuuuge chip on their shoulder about the perceived “respect” that they don’t think they get anymore. I am on construction sites all the time, and I can tell you that there is, for example, a huge current of resentment between the construction side and the design/engineering side. Many of the construction guys seem to think that the designers and engineers are silly and impractical and wasteful and get too much money for what they (we) do. There is also a perception that we make a lot of money. But the richest people on the job site are the office staff of the General Contractor, who are usually college-educated dudebro frat types who haven’t built a damn thing since middle school wood shop.
Construction is increasingly professionalized and requires much more technical and computer skill than it used to. It is not the industry that will absorb the out-of-work coal miners.
Mo MacArbie
Damn, can’t stop now. It’s only #296. Gimme a T! Gimme a B!
Mo MacArbie
Gimme an O!
Suzanne
I have to say that Kay’s experience doesn’t match mine. I’ve met plenty of parents who don’t really want their kids to go to college, or don’t see it as anything to be proud of. There are a lot of people who say that they want “respect” but what they really want is admiration. I think there is a sense that, if their kids go to college, their kids won’t admire them anymore, or that their kids won’t come back to their birthplace afterward.
There’s a lot of validation that comes from seeing other people follow the same path you took, and if other people stop doing that, that can feel like a rejection. I remember my grandfather being incredibly hurt and pissed off that I didn’t want to join the military (like he did) or become an office admin/secretary (like my grandmother did) after high school. FFS, I had a full academic scholarship. And he was proud of me, in his way…. but he also thought I was too big for my britches and yes, he used those exact words.
Another Scott
@Mo MacArbie: Isn’t a TBogg 500 comments?
Inquiring minds…
Cheers,
Scott.
Mo MacArbie
Huh. I thought we graded ours on a curve, but I may be remembering wrong.
Mo MacArbie
Here’s a 300, but perhaps we can dispute the point for many more just to be sure.//
Starfish
@Soprano2: I have several engineering degrees and a programming job, and I am so fed up with this behavior.
It is driven by a lot of engineers wanting to believe they are self-made (They are not), and the sexism and classism of devaluing other work.
Starfish
@Kraux Pas: We can, but we choose to give VC money to people already in the tech sector to run code schools that are scamming money from people not in tech who will never get tech jobs.
tam1MI
@Kraux Pas: “No True Scotsman…”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@sgrAstar: I’ve always thought that this is the future for old coal country.
taumaturgo
@Betty Cracker: Is a known fact that Mr. Uygur has denounced his writings many times and many years ago. It would be the height of unfairness to hold a man to some self-admitted and publicly disavowed misogynist writings and the same time pretend to ignore and forget Biden’s actual actions against Ms. Hill.
@Betty Cracker:
Kathleen
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: They won’t. They hate Dems as much as he does. That’s how he lands on TV so much. They want to see Democratic Party destroyed as much as he does. It’s the party of the wimminz and the blahs after all.
.
Azhrie139
I really don’t have much to add to this discussion except maybe to drop a quote from Carlos Maza who pretty much encapsulates the headspace of most young people:
“One good thing about living through humanity’s final chapter is that it imbues everything with chaotic “fuck it” energy.”
As a millennial I coming closer and closer to this stance and working more with older generations is not helping.
taumaturgo
Anything more unreal and stupid that Biden saying we will consider a Republican for VP? How senile is Biden to forget he is 78 years old and unless he names Bob Dole as the VP candidate, if anything prevents Biden from performing his duties, we would have voted for a Republican to run the country?
@Brachiator:
Raven Onthill
@chopper: as a racist and sexist when he has been a reliable ally of women and African-Americans for his entire political career. (Watch. Now the smears will be repeated.) If he becomes the nominee it will be worse, and not only from Republicans.
Understand, I don’t think he is likely to win the general election should he become the nominee. I voted for Clinton in the last election and I’m a Warren supporter this time around. But I also think that Sanders is getting a bum rap.
Raven Onthill
“Something was in Debs, seemingly, that did not come out unless you saw him. I’m told that even those speeches of his which seem to any reader indifferent stuff, took on vitality from his presence. A hard-bitten socialist told me once, ‘Gene Debs is the only one who can get away with the sentimental flummery that’s been tied onto Socialism in this country. Pretty nearly always it gives me a swift pain to go around to meetings and have people call me comrade. That’s a lot of bunk. But the funny part of it is that when Debs says comrade it is all right. He means it. That old man with the burning eyes actually believes that there can be such a thing as the brotherhood of man. And that’s not the funniest part of it. As long as he’s around I believe it myself.’” – Heywood Broun, quoting an unnamed socialist in It Seems To Me, 1925‑1935 (1935), p. 38
UncleEbeneezer
Problem is, as far as I can tell, hatred of the Democratic Party, is one of (maybe THE) most common reasons. Not sure how we use that to help elect Dems-not-named-Bernie
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
I know! Let’s find out why Jeremy Corbin’s supporters are so loyal and copy that strategy!
Oh wait.
Betty Cracker
@Elie: “Warren is Sanders’ Mini-Me is a great example of sexist framing, so thanks for providing that!
@taumaturgo:
Who’s ignoring Biden’s actual actions against Anita Hill?
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Mnemosyne
@UncleEbeneezer:
Yup. I’ve seen a whole lot of folks declare on social media that they support Bernie BECAUSE he will destroy the Democratic Party. There is no way to “win” those voters to a different Democrat unless they make a similar pledge to destroy the party.
Seanly
I’m not a Bernie supporter, but I will vote for him or any other Democratic Party nominee for President. That would be against Trump or against anyone else in the next few cycles. I’m not going to pout and withhold my vote as some meaningless message against the eventual candidate. We can’t ever have a Republican as the President again.
And don’t get me started on Biden being Republican VP curios. F**k that noise. All D’s in the cabinet and nominate the most liberal judges possible.
artem1s
FFS, once the Iowa caucus is over Wilmer won’t be even in the race. He isn’t going to pull AA women away from Biden or anyone else. Plz stop trying to make bernie happen. It’s a waste of Putin’s rubles.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
My Google-fu is failing me. Does anyone else remember the specifics about women’s issues being a distraction from what really matters? I can find lots of people talking about it, but no direct quote.
And of course we won’t bother to get into the whole thing about being too busy to be aware of sexual harassment complaints within his 2016 campaign. He apologized, so we should forgive and forget it ever happened. Right?
This is why the Uygur misstep was not a surprise to me.
Yutsano
So…we’re really gonna T-bogg over Bernie eh?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Seanly: Reporter asks Biden stupid question about Republican VP.
Biden tries to turn it around to criticize Republicans. “I can’t think of one right now.”
Idiot media reports it as the second coming of No Labels.
J R in WV
Bernie is still a Russian stooge, just as he was a Soviet stooge for 20 or 30 years earlier, while there was still a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I won’t give him a penny, he can subcsist on Rubles. I won’t lift a finger to help him.
I will vote for him against Trump next November, if God forbid, that turns out to be our choice. But it will be hard, because both candidates will be Stooges of Putin in that case. The choice will be between a really stupid puppet or a slightly less stupid puppet.
Search Results Web results Gracchus Babeuf
Perhaps we should come to terms with the fact that Sanders is doing so well because he is a genuinely good candidate. I never thought I’d be saying this but, the more I listen to him with an open mind, the more I’m liking what I hear. I don’t see why we ought to go through the trouble of copying his winning positions and fund raising techniques when we could just support the man himself.
He has the momentum. He is shattering records. I for one am ready to jump on board.
UncleEbeneezer
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: In the same couple of days that he said Hillary was the most qualified candidate ever and that he’d nominate Obama to SCOTUS…but yes, we should all worry about him nominating a Republican (none that he can think of) as VP….
Elie
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Totally agree and wonder — when is Bernie gonna get what he deserves: effective scrutiny and some challenge. Everybody leaves him alone..
Elie
@Betty Cracker:
Whoa there. I needed to be more careful maybe but I can’t hide my disappointment in her decision to hug him so close. I was not trying to disparage her in a misogynist way but I can see how someone would think that. I will be more careful in the future but it doesn’t change 1) my contempt for Bernie and 2) my disappointment in her strategy.
Raven Onthill
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Except…it’s not clear he said that. The sourcing in that article is two unnamed people. Other people say he just wrote on a pad. Still other accounts of that meeting say nothing about those remarks at all.
I dug into a number of these, and came up with “possibly he made a clueless remark, but he may not even have said it.” After a while I stopped digging.
And all the while Democratic leaders were making overt public appeals to white anxieties, and pursing racist policies, and they get a pass.
Sanders gets slagged for every possible ambiguous remark while party candidates get unlimited do-overs for explicit unambiguous racism.
Citizen_X
Boy, if they like seeing a social/political system collapse, they’re gonna looooooovvvvve seeing the global climate system collapse. Nothing overturns the established order like a mass extinction!
No One You Know
@gene108: God knows I’m inundated with them. The emails get longer and more desperate every couple of days.
Nevertheless, I keep microdonating. I’m trusting that enough of us will make a difference. One of us can’t buy a senator; but all of us can buy the Senate.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Raven Onthill: Is there something wrong with you? If you bothered to read the article, instead of Rose Twitter propaganda, you would have seen it clearly contained his admission. He wrote Buzzfeed and said: “I clearly misspoke and had more to learn with regard to the causes of this problem.”
Case, fucking closed.
A 78 year old crackpot from the whitest state looked a couple of Black activists and spit at them, telling them Blacks are drug dealers and, as unusual, he refused to admit he was wrong even when confronted with statistics.
He’s a Disgusting pig.