Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

It’s a doggy dog world.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Please don’t feed the bears.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2020 / Election Year Open Thread: Congratulations, Joe Biden!

Election Year Open Thread: Congratulations, Joe Biden!

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I’ll admit, while I did assume Joe Biden would/should win in South Carolina, I never imagined he’d sweep the field like this. No matter the surrounding circumstances, no matter what happens next — Biden earned this one, and after thirty years and three valiant attempts, he deserves his victory lap today.

Next on the agenda (and there will be pressure for it to happen before Tuesday) is announcing his vice-presidential pick… which just became considerably more complicated, of course, because so many people who’d written him off will be making a whole different set of calculations now.

Kudos to Rep. Clyburn, also:


Rainbow sprinkles on Biden’s well-deserved sundae…

In retrospect, with due respect:

Reader Interactions

431Comments

  1. 1.

    PsiFighter37

    I took a look at the delegate count after SC – looks like Bernie leads Joe 56-48. If you add in Mayor Pete + Klobuchar’s delegates for kicks (i.e. who would be blocking Bernie from a majority), you get 81 delegates for the ‘moderate’ block.

    I hope this win is enough to help Biden out in 2 days’ time – but I worry that the cake has been baked with all the early voting, and that Sanders could still wipe out everyone on Tuesday. We shall see.

  3. 3.

    debbie

    Next on the agenda (and there will be pressure for it to happen before Tuesday) is announcing his vice-presidential pick

    Really? I think it’s kind of early, certainly if you want a name before Super Tuesday.

  5. 5.

    RobertDSC-iPhone 8

    I’m voting Warren today after work here in California. I will vote for Joe if he is the nominee.

     

    I wish Kamala was still in the race for she was my choice from day 1.

     

    Fuck you, Sanders.

  6. 6.

    lumpkin

    Anyone know if those awful racist tweets came from people actually associated with the Sanders campaign or are they just random assholes or Russian trolls?

  7. 7.

    Sab

    I really wish that super Tuesday voters will vote from the heart and leave the cleanup for the later states. The early voting/caucus was so media managed.

  9. 9.

    Brachiator

    Holy shit, the MSNBC exit poll reports that 47% of SC voters said that the Clyburn endorsement was “important” to them in making their decision on whom to vote for.

    Earlier this month, I heard some well-regarded GOP political strategist say that these kinds of endorsements were unimportant.

    oops.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    @lumpkin:

    Don’t know, but this is a problem Sanders should have responded to four years ago, not just now that it’s become a negative issue for him.

  20. 20.

    zhena gogolia

    I wish Kamala were still in the race, so in her honor I’ll quote her: “Dude gotta go!” We have to get rid of Twitler.

  21. 21.

    Hoodie

    @RobertDSC-iPhone 8: Seems to me that voting for Biden might be the best way to get Harris in the White House.  Warren is on the ropes.  I was contemplating voting for her a few weeks ago after her performance against Bloomberg, but that didn’t seem to move the needle in the polls.  I like her, but voting for her now seems pretty futile.  That said, if she can break 15% in CA, that will hold down Sanders’ delegate haul and thus help Biden anyway.

  22. 22.

    laura

    I filled out my Cali ballot yesterday except for the president to see how SC shakes out. I’m voting Biden as a strategic “not bernie” today.

  24. 24.

    schrodingers_cat

    What are the statistics on early voting. What percentage of electorate  votes early, before the election day.

    Mass has had early voting since 2018. I was waiting for SC and Nevada to vote.

    If the goal is to stop BS from getting the non then the ABB has to coalesce. Of the field left Biden is the best candidate for that role.

    Black women have spoken and I am going to listen.

  25. 25.

    satby

    @debbie: I bet a bunch of Democrats are sorry they didn’t vote for Pete for DNC chair back when they had the chance. He would have been better, though I like Perez. But I don’t think Pete would have given up so much to the “not Democrats excepted four years” gang.

  26. 26.

    Brachiator

    @satby:

    this also probably helped: https://www.theroot.com/every-democratic-candidates-black-agenda-ranked-1841959166

    top three in order: Warren, Biden, and Buttigieg (and the author really doesn’t like Buttigieg but credits where due). Unfortunately the article came out Friday night, so too late to help Warren much. But hope it helps her Tuesday.

    I don’t think this mattered at all. Most minds were probably made up long before this piece was posted. And I don’t think it will have much influence on Super Tuesday.

  27. 27.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Sounds like what they were saying about Sanders in 2016, he does well in a caucus were it’s about supporter enthusiasm but tanks in an actually primary.

  28. 28.

    Baud

    @satby: With respect to what was “given up,” I don’t know how foreseeable it was that it would have led to the situation we have now.  The biggest thing I’d take back is the early, massive, and frequent debate format.

  31. 31.

    debbie

    So, pundits are remarking on the excellence of Biden’s victory speech, noting that he stuck to the teleprompter and didn’t stray into impromptu incoherence. The same has been said about Trump (the few time’s he actually had a teleprompter).

    Wonderful. This will be the national campaign: Dueling teleprompters.  ?

  32. 32.

    debbie

    I’m curious about the low turnout of young voters for BS. This can only be because there were never many to begin with. I wonder if this has been Putin shenanigans all along.

  33. 33.

    Baud

    @satby: It’s hard to say how Pete would have managed the DNC day-to-day or handled Sanders.  One thing that’s clear is that he would have been the best at being an advocate for Dems on TV and in public.

  35. 35.

    Hoodie

    @satby: I doubt it will.  Warren has the problem of being stuck in the valley between Bernie and Biden.  She’ll lose to Bernie in states that are more liberal/latino (CA, TX and even MA), and will lose to Biden in more conservative/AA states (GA and FL).   There is no path to the nomination for her.

    The thing I’ve been wondering is that, if Biden does prevail, would he be better to bridge the gap with Latinx voters by picking a running mate that has ethnic and/or geographic appeal (e.g., someone from the Southwest) or repay his loyal AA supporters by picking an AA running mate from a purple state like FL?  Would a Val Demings goose AA turnout and put FL into play?  I like her, and she has the type of no-bullshit demeanor that could be appealing to a lot of more moderate voters.  Winning FL would be huge in destroying Trump.

    You could do the same analysis for Bernie, but I have less confidence he’ll make the right choice. That’s one reason I prefer Biden, there’s ample track record that he’s willing to shelve his ego for a higher purpose.  I think a lot of his credibility with black voters lies with his being genuinely willing to be a happy and loyal subordinate for a black president.

  36. 36.

    Betty Cracker

    You’re classy as hell, Anne Laurie. I’ve always admired that about you. :)

    @Hoodie: If Warren is still in it when I get to vote on 3/17, I’ll vote for her. If not, I’m not sure how I’ll vote. Game time decision, maybe!

  37. 37.

    Baud

    @debbie: Young people turn out much less.  Bernie gets an extremely large share of those who do turn out to vote in the Dem primary.  It’s a nuance that gets lost when Bernie and others say that he is popular with young people.

  38. 38.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Baud:

    I’d like his [Bernie’s] showing in California to be much lower than what the polls suggest.

    From your keyboard to the FSM’s orecchiette. The polls were off by a significant margin in South Carolina. We can hope that they’re similarly off for California.

  39. 39.

    JMG

    Warren (or her campaign) has said she’s in it through March, but if she doesn’t hit 15 percent in California that idea may be revisited. I have to think Pete and Amy drop out on Wednesday.

  40. 40.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Baud: This why I cringe at Sanders as the nominee; he’s so full of his self righteousness he refuses to see were he’s done offense to others and makes amends.

    Screaming “unfair” only works if you are a white, male Republican.

  41. 41.

    Betty Cracker

    @Hoodie: I like Demings a lot and hope she runs for governor of FL someday (or takes out Rubio or Scott to rep FL in the Senate). But if Biden is the nominee, he’s going to have to build a bridge to progressive voters, and choosing a notably moderate nominee doesn’t seem like an effective way to do that.

  42. 42.

    Baud

    @Hoodie: Biden has to think of swing states first.  My guess is that favors a black candidate and maybe a black woman or, failing that, maybe Amy or Pete who is from the midwest but still would make demographic history as Veep.  But that’s really just a guess.

  43. 43.

    MomSense

    @satby:

    I’ll just repeat what was explained to me about the problem with rankings based on plans.  Black voters understand the sausage making process of legislation so what they value more than plans is relationship.  Does the person negotiating on their behalf have a history of working with them, helping, understanding, etc.  The problem Warren and Buttigieg have had from the beginning was that they went after influencers instead of building relationships with communities over time.  They were doing more telling black communities what they would do for them and not enough what do you need from me work.

  44. 44.

    johnnybuck

    I’m still voting for Warren in the Ga primary, unless she drops out then it’s Biden all the way. I just think that Sanders and Warren have the same natural constituency and he had a five year head start. without Sanders I expect she’d be winning.

  45. 45.

    PsiFighter37

    @Baud:  Harris is the logical pick. Not sure if she wants it, but given the circumstances, I would take it if I were her – puts her in the driver’s seat in 2024 (I do not think Biden serves more than a single term).

  46. 46.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Baud: Friends of mine who are Bernie supporters (not Bros) are convinced that a Bernie candidacy will bring out young and previously disaffected, marginalized voters in droves, leading him to victory in both the primary and the general. I am not convinced and – unless I’m missing something – haven’t seen that happen in significant numbers in the primaries yet.

  48. 48.

    Marcopolo

    Here’s another data point from yesterday: over 500,000 people made donations to campaigns yesterday using ActBlue. That is their largest number ever. Perhaps Buttigieg & Klobuchar folks giving to Biden for the first time was a part of that. God knows, he’ll need it because I bet a lot of those donations were also to Sanders.

    Also, glad to see Steyer out. I wonder where his support would have gone if he hadn’t been running in the first place?

  49. 49.

    Baud

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    That’s their pitch.  It’s largely faith based.  I think you’re right that primary turnout doesn’t seem to support the type of massive increase in turnout we’d need in the general.  Still, the theory isn’t disprovable.

  51. 51.

    Elizabelle

    @O. Felix Culpa:   Please tell your friends that for every new and young voter Bernie might bring out, he will demoralize two or three actual Democrats who have given scads of unpaid work on behalf of Democratic candidates over the years.

    Clue them in that the problem is Republicans.  Not corporatist Democrats.

    I am sick of Bernie and his miseducating young voters about where the real problem lies.  Screw him.

  53. 53.

    johnnybuck

    @Baud: Hunter Thompson wrote a book about it in 1972. He believed it would happen too, until it didn’t.

  54. 54.

    Marcopolo

    @O. Felix Culpa: Correct. The results so far are not showing large increases  in voting by the folks the Sanders campaign said they’d be motivating to get out & vote for the first time.

  57. 57.

    Baud

    @cope:

    Biden started out strong, then floundered, then people started looking at the billionaires, but Warren deflated Bloomberg and Biden has been more focused lately.  Plus, the prospect of Bernie winning has focused some voters’ minds.

  58. 58.

    Eolirin

    @O. Felix Culpa: The Clyburn endorsement significantly changed the situation on the ground in a way that the polls would not have been able to capture. I’m not sure how off they really were. I don’t know that they call the CA polling into doubt either. Especially with all the early voting that’s already taken place.

  60. 60.

    Suzanne

    @RobertDSC-iPhone 8:

     

    I wish Kamala was still in the race for she was my choice from day 1.

    Yes. I am really depressed that we started off with all this fresh and exciting political talent, and yet it’s coming down to three old white dudes whose names start with B.

  62. 62.

    JMG

    Is there any information on just what percentage of voters have already used early voting in the Super Tuesday states? I voted early in Mass. but have no idea how many others did.

  63. 63.

    Eolirin

    @Suzanne: I don’t think Bloomberg is going anywhere, so just two. Only one of them is backed by the Russians at least. So that’s something.

  64. 64.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Has any presidential candidate ever picked his running mate before s/he at least had the delegates to win the nomination?

  65. 65.

    johnnybuck

    @Eolirin: I think the problem with the polling is that the race remains so fluid,  each primary/caucus changes the calculation and that support isn’t nearly as firm as in past contests.

  66. 66.

    germy

    Dan Crenshaw has beaten a millionaire. He’s beaten a professional fundraiser. But he’s never faced a veteran who can hold him accountable for his voting record. I used to hunt submarines, but now I’m after his seat.

    Can I count on you to RT and follow to get us to 60k?

    — Elisa Cardnell (@ElisaCardnell) February 29, 2020

  68. 68.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: The youth vote for BS hasn’t materialized, that’s why he has underperformed his polls.

    I looked at the MA polls BS’s lead comes from under 30 folk so Warren might win in MA or Biden could too. The undecideds  who were more 20% break for Biden

  69. 69.

    Eolirin

    @johnnybuck: Yeah, but early voting can mess with that, as various voters will represent different snapshots of the state of the race, and Sanders has had consistent advantages in CA, so even if something were to change a lot of his support is locked in already. It’ll make it harder for any kind of surge to affect the outcome.

  70. 70.

    Jinchi

    @PsiFighter37: I hope this win is enough to help Biden out in 2 days’ time

    I think this will pretty much kill Bloomberg’s momentum and could easily be worth 5 or more points in the upcoming elections. I wouldn’t be surprised if he takes a few points from Buttigieg and Klobuchar as well.

    Ideally, Bloomberg will perform poorly enough on Super Tuesday that he emerges with no delegates and officially drops out.

  72. 72.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Elizabelle: These friends are good, hard-working Democratic volunteers, among the best in fact. They are well-read, intelligent individuals who have clawed their way into the middle class from nothing. Their preference for Bernie’s policies is based on their lived experience of gross economic inequities. I disagree with them about the candidate who can best achieve their goals and I disagree with their belief in the turnout that Bernie would allegedly motivate, but I won’t insult them.

  73. 73.

    germy

    (1,11) Last night, I decided that the time has come for me to make a decision in the Presidential primary as my vote in Florida is only two weeks away. I have decided to endorse @JoeBiden for President. He again showed this country that he is a fighter for us.

    — Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) March 1, 2020

  74. 74.

    JR

    @satby: Hariott is a good provocateur who necessarily brings a lot of uncomfortable truths to light but he is probably not a pundit that informs voters’ choices.

  75. 75.

    Betty Cracker

    @jonas: I would be VERY surprised if that offer was made or accepted, plus she’s 70 and he’s pushing 80, so that’s a factor. Katie Porter would be terrific, but I don’t see that happening either.

    My guess is if Sanders is the nominee, his VP pick will be a middle finger to moderate Dems and that Biden’s pick may very well amount to telling progressives to go pound sand.

    Both scenarios would be a big mistake from a party unification standpoint, IMO. But on the bright side, we’ll have a good chance of prevailing in November anyway due to Trump’s unique awfulness.

  76. 76.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Hoodie: 

    I don’t understand your take on this. It’s the primary. Vote for who floats your boat. Then vote for whoever wins the nomination. Much more than this, and I think it’s being over-thought.

  77. 77.

    Jinchi

    @OzarkHillbilly: Apparently so.

    In 1976, Ronald Reagan was running for president for the first time and losing the delegate race to then-President Gerald Ford.

    That contest was the last time when a major party’s nominee was not pre-selected going into the convention, giving the delegate count on the first ballot the final say.

    In an effort to gain an edge, Reagan picked a running mate even before clinching the nomination himself.

  80. 80.

    Mousebumples

    @OzarkHillbilly: the GOP had (I think) 2 candidates who did that in 2016,in an attempt to beat Trump. I remember one of them (Cruz?) picked Fiorina. Not positive on the details for a second one, if there was a 2nd one.

  81. 81.

    Suzanne

    @Elizabelle: At least from where I sit, there is a contingent of Dems who are longtime party people who like Bernie, because they’re progressives. The chair of my LD was a Bernie delegate in 2016. She adores him, but will certainly vote blue no matter who, of course. But I’m out here in AZ, where the largest minority population is Latino and the state is actually disproportionately young, despite the stereotype of being full of retirees.

     

    Agree with Betty about needing to reach out to progressives. The voting population who will vote for us has moved leftward in the last ten years. It is critical to build the next generation of political talent, too. I’d like to see Harris or Castro or Abrams or Lieu or maybe Booker.

    Want an embargo on OWGs.

  82. 82.

    Jinchi

    @schrodingers_cat: ABB has to coalesce

    It took me a couple of seconds to parse that “Anybody but, .. Biden?  Doesn’t make sense in that comment.  Bloomberg? No. Can’t be Sanders, …. Ohhh Bernie.”

    Needs a better acronym.

  86. 86.

    JMG

    So an article in Politico answered part of my early voting question. In California at least, there have been a lower percentage of mailed out ballots returned to date than there were in 2008 and 2016.

  91. 91.

    Amir Khalid

    Repost from the gardening thread:

    With the focus on, well, other things, I wasn’t able to mention this before. But here in Malaysia we now have a new prime minister. Subsequent to Dr Mahathir’s resignation, the Agong (King) has appointed Muhyiddin Yassin, the number two in Dr Mahathir’s Party of United Native Ethnicities of Malaysia, PPBM (yes, that really is the party name in English).

    I do not like this: PPBM claims to be a less corrupt version of the Malay-supremacist party UMNO, which had dominated the previous ruling coalition Barisan Nasional since before independence. Muhyiddin is notorious for calling himself Malay first and Malaysian second, an obviously divisive sentiment. We have had race-based political parties in Malaysia for too long as it is.

    I also expect the political turmoil to continue. Anwar Ibrahim’s People’s Justice Party, PKR, are going to feel hard done by: the original deal with PPBM in 2018 was for a handover from Dr M to Anwar. There’s going to be a fight over Muhyiddin’s legitimacy as PM, Agong’s decision or no.

  93. 93.

    johnnybuck

    @JPL: Me either. And I don’t think we are all that different in that respect. I really think Sanders is the only candidate with baked in numbers, that’s why polling is kind of all over the place.

  95. 95.

    Suzanne

    @O. Felix Culpa: I know a lot of people like you describe, too. It’s a good reminder that Bernie Twitter is by no means representative of progressive Democrats or even the Bernie contingent. Most of them are good people and they will be important to the Dem coalition in 2020 and future elections. I would love more and better progressive candidates moving forward.

  98. 98.

    Suzanne

    @JPL: I am just astounded that we started off with this great field and as the sieve shook, most of the candidates that I liked fell through and the ones I like the least are the ones who are left.
    I really wish that somehow we could have told all of the candidates who had ever run before to go away.

  99. 99.

    johnnybuck

    @Suzanne: I really wish that somehow we could have told all of the candidates who had ever run before to go away

    I know! Let’s blame Tom Perez!

    .

  100. 100.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: I think it could have been, if we had been more strategic and less factional as a party. Ranked-choice voting in the primaries would have been really revealing. And no more stupid-arse caucuses.

  101. 101.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Baud: Sigh. Same here. I had hoped that folks would coalesce around either Kamala or Elizabeth, but the old white men got in the way and the Democratic electorate doesn’t seem to share my preferences. Not yet, anyway.

  102. 102.

    WaterGirl

    @jonas: I love Warren, but if she can’t be POTUS, we need someone as VP who will be young enough to run in 2024.

    I think it’s now or never for Elizabeth Warren for president.

  103. 103.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Mousebumples: Thanx. It just feels like putting the cart before the horse, that and really weak: “I can’t win on my own so here’s this person who nobody really wants but they are gonna get me over the top.”

    I hope all the DEMs tell those asking for one to go pound sand.

  105. 105.

    Another Scott

    Google tells me that 54 delegates are “available” but only shows 44 being awarded in South Carolina (33/11). A quick wander around the intertubes hasn’t told me what happened to the rest. Will they be awarded at the state convention or something? Anyone here know?

    10 is a small number, but who knows, it might be important…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  106. 106.

    Hoodie

    @Chief Oshkosh:  A primary election has path dependencies that can be very significant.  For example, as some have noted, if the primaries had started with something like Super Tuesday, the surviving candidate pool might look quite different (e.g., Mayor Pete might not be around and Harris might still be in).

    Right now, I would say voting for Warren is mostly voting on principle.  There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but voting is more generally an expression of interest.  Principle is one interest, but there are others, and principles can take many forms other than just one candidate embodying what you believe in personally.  People can do whatever they want, obviously, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with telling folks that their expression of interest may be quixotic and counterproductive.  I have always liked Biden, but I’m well aware of his manifold limitations. I would have preferred someone younger, more energetic, and more eloquent.  However, a person that has such traits and the ability to garner broad support is not currently available or barred from seeking a third term.  Biden will do.  So will Bernie, but I feel less comfortable with his health and the fact that he sits outside an institutional base that will enable him to (1) win and, if he does win, (2) form a robust administration that will respond effectively, including in the case his ticker gives out.  Bernie is also running largely on ideology, and ideologues generally make shitty presidents.  The effective ones tend to be people persons who are flexible.  I have no doubt that Warren fits that description, but Warren is not going to win the nomination barring the simultaneous infection of Bernie and Biden with the coronavirus and, even then, she would still have to contend with Bloomberg.

  110. 110.

    Jinchi

    @Betty Cracker: My guess is if Sanders is the nominee, his VP pick will be a middle finger to moderate Dems and that Biden’s pick may very well amount to telling progressives to go pound sand.

    The VP choices of Biden and Sanders would be particularly important this year, given both men have high risk of not being physically capable of performing the job for a full term, much less two.

    Biden has made lots of indications that he’ll pick a minority woman, so Harris seems a likely choice, possibly Booker. I doubt he’d deliberately tell progressives to pound sand. His nomination would already signal that the party is reaching out to moderates and Never-Trumpers. This is a guy who needs to motivate the base, particularly younger voters.

    Bernie is a different case. He ideologically driven, knows he might not survive to enact his agenda and won’t risk it by picking a moderate to unite the party. Warren would probably be his best bet. She’s young enough that there aren’t the same concerns about her surviving the presidency. It would signal that he wants someone capable and yet shares his desire for fundamental structural change to the system.

  111. 111.

    DB11

    @O. Felix Culpa: I think that this is the real argument about whether a progressive nominee is actually electable in the general — will they turn out enough younger / marginalized / disaffected voters (who normally don’t bother) to offset the potential loss of centrist Dems / WWC  and (mostly mythical) Trump-disgusted Eisenhower Republicans.

    Given that the only available evidence are the primary voting rates by cohort, the progressive case has yet to be made.

    What I found interesting from the SC turnout numbers was that of the 42% increase this cycle, almost none of it came from increased support for the two major ‘lanes’. it was the 100,000+ increase in votes for other than Sanders or the ‘Dem establishment candidate’ (Hillary/Biden).

    Not sure exactly what that means other than that there are a lot of new voters who aren’t excited by the choice of one of these two old white guys.

    Still not enough data to draw any firm conclusions, and I would argue that people asserting how it must play out from this point forward (based on results of 4 un-representative states) are being way too deterministic in their thinking.

  112. 112.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Suzanne: Agreed. I also have to contend with the stereotypical BernieBros, who are as unpleasant in real life as they are on Twitter and Facebook. That said, there are people who support Bernie in good faith and I respect them, even while I disagree (vehemently) with their choice.

    ETA: My Bernie-supporting friends will vote for the Democratic nominee in the general regardless, as will I. An unhappy vote gets counted just the same as an enthusiastic one.

  113. 113.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Hoodie: if she can break 15% in CA, that will hold down Sanders’ delegate haul and thus help Biden anyway.

    And if she can’t, that’s one more vote thrown away could have gone to a real Democratic candidate who might’ve broken 15% (cough cough Uncle Joe cough cough). Aaaaow, I’ll just go ahead & vote for my heartthrob & let the unDemocrat cosplay-Marxist hoover up a whole shitpile of delegates –  WTF is wrong with yinz spozedly intelligent people who can’t seem to grasp the strategy of primary voting??

  114. 114.

    Immanentize

    THREE quick observations:
    1). Some commenter here was emphatically informing us over the last couple of days that endorsements mean nothing. Luckily, I generally, quickly forget who wrote what so no pie for you!
    2). There are some folks (this person I remember) who has been quite AdamAnt about there being no Republican fuckery by cross over voting for Bernie. I think, after reading different things here and there, I have figured it out — if there is a suspicion that the clear Republican intent and effort to support Sanders in the primaries where crossovers are allowed, then his argument that the plurality winner should get the nomination nation collapses completely.
    3. No evidence of a vast new voter revolution, outside, perhaps, of suburban voters (not youth) coming back to their senses. This was the tale of the tape in 2018.

    Now I’ll go back and read the comments. Sorry if others have said the same things.

  117. 117.

    Immanentize

    @MomSense: I agree about relationships versus influencers, although both are helpful.  But this doesn’t explain Harris’s failure to get traction in the south.  She had her whole past working with communities of color as well as her extensive sorority social relationship systems. But it didn’t work out. Still makes me sad.

  118. 118.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Chyron HR: Contrary to the popular opinion I don’t hate EW. I don’t begrudge her winning. I have just been pointing out that her strategies to electoral success haven’t panned out so far.

    She has yet to win a contest or even come second.

  120. 120.

    Jinchi

    @WaterGirl: Can you be VP if you weren’t born as a US citizen? And why pick a VP that could never be POTUS?

    No. The rules for eligibility for the vice presidency are the same as the rules for president. Natural born citizen over age 35.

  122. 122.

    debbie

    @johnnybuck:

    Tom Perez made some lousy decisions which BS supporters are wielding like sledgehammers. And as the face of the Democratic Party, he’s not a great interviewee either. I’m sorry if this hurts your feesfees, but there it is.

  125. 125.

    Immanentize

     

    @Elizabelle: Hi!
    Actually, there is some data supporting the idea that Biden voters who day they won’t vote for Bernie really mean it.

  127. 127.

    Another Scott

    @debbie: Not to pick on you, or anyone else here, but I wish people would show their work when saying that Perez was a tyrant/spineless-mush in running the DNC debates, and all the rest.  Links?

    Democrats.org:

    DECEMBER 20, 2018

    Washington, D.C. — Since his campaign for chair of the Democratic National Committee, DNC Chair Tom Perez has promised to conduct a presidential primary process that is transparent, fair, inclusive, and puts the party in the best possible position to take back the White House in 2020.

    Perez has followed through on this promise by passing historic reforms that have expanded the use of primaries, made caucuses more accessible, reduced the influence of superdelegates, and increased transparency of the DNC’s budget and operations. He is continuing this effort with his approach to the presidential primary debates.

    Perez and his team have held more than 80 meetings over the course of many months with a variety of individuals who have knowledge of and experience with the debate process.

    Today, Chair Perez is pleased to announce the DNC’s framework for several key elements of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary debate process.

    “To win back the presidency in 2020, Democrats must lead with our values. That began with the historic reforms to expand and increase trust in our party, and it will continue by conducting party business fairly, transparently, and inclusively throughout the 2020 primary process,” said Chair Perez. “To that end, we have listened and learned about debate experiences from a wide array of stakeholders.

    “My goal in this framework is to give the grassroots a bigger voice than ever before; to showcase our candidates on an array of media platforms; to present opportunity for vigorous discussion about issues, ideas and solutions; and to reach as many potential voters as possible. That is how we will put our nominee in the strongest position possible to defeat Donald Trump, and how we will help elect Democrats up and down the ballot.”

    KEY DETAILS OF THE 2020 DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY DEBATE CALENDAR:

    The DNC is announcing 12 presidential primary debates over the course of the 2020 cycle, with six debates in 2019 and six in 2020.

    The first two debates will occur in June and July 2019. After a break in August, there will be one debate per month for the rest of 2019.

    The DNC currently plans to hold its last debate in April of 2020. All early-state debates will be held in 2020.

    The DNC will not bar candidates from participating in forums in which one candidate appears on stage at a time. The DNC will ask candidates to refrain from participating in debates other than the 12 debates sanctioned by the DNC.

    In order to give our candidates a platform to make their case to voters, the DNC will seek to maximize the viewership of each debate.

    The DNC will announce specific dates, locations, sponsors and more in 2019.

    Given the fluid nature of the presidential nominating process, the DNC will continuously assess the state of the race and make adjustments to this process as appropriate, and always transparently.

    […]

    (Emphasis added.)

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  128. 128.

    Hoodie

    @Uncle Cosmo: Seems to be quite prevalent.  I totally agree that voting for Warren in CA or anywhere else is not a wise move given what has transpired so far, unless you’re completely agnostic as to whether Bernie or Biden ends up with the nomination.  If you are, go for it, because I’d rather you get Warren over 15% in CA to deprive Bernie of some delegates there.  I know that some hold out hope that she will arise, but that hope is not particularly rational.  Yes, you can’t predict the future, but past performance can provide data that allows you to make an educated guess.

  129. 129.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: only failed candidates like Ted Cruz (Fiorina).  It is a desperation move.

    No Dem. will pick their VP before the convention.  If the convention goes to a second ballot, it is the best chance to force Bernie (if he is ahead) to pick a good, reasonable, helpful second.

  130. 130.

    Jinchi

    @Immanentize: There are some folks (this person I remember) who has been quite AdamAnt about there being no Republican fuckery by cross over voting for Bernie.

    I assume that’s me, and to be precise, I was asking for evidence of significant voting by Republicans for Bernie for the purposes of picking the weakest Democratic nominee, which is what you’ve been alleging.

    You might have noticed that “Operation Chaos” was a bust in South Carolina.

  131. 131.

    debbie

    @Another Scott:

    I’m not sure those debates were successful, to be honest. Yelling, shouting, one liners, and zingers are not replacements for policy statements and platforms.

    Plus, your excerpt is from 2018. Much has happened since then.

     

    ETA: Unfair to characterize what I’ve said as ” tyrant/spineless-mush.” Considering all the potential at the beginning of this cycle, as Suzanne noted, I think he’s been less than dynamic.

  132. 132.

    Elizabelle

    @Immanentize:   I am really hoping Sanders’ (BS’s) health takes him out of the race, and soon.

    Embalming fluid being the cure for presidential ambitions might actually be the most graceful way out.  He and a lot of his supporters are tearing the Democratic party apart.  I am not ready to make nice over this.

    Eye on the real villains, and they are dangerous.  I speak of Republicans and those who support them.

  133. 133.

    germy

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    WTF is wrong with yinz spozedly intelligent people who can’t seem to grasp the strategy of primary voting??

    Ah yes… strategic voting.  That means not voting for the candidate we want, but the candidate the pundits assure us can win.

    Yinz spozedly?  Are you possessed by the spirit of ola azul?

  134. 134.

    Suzanne

    @WaterGirl: Eh, I forgot that Lieu was naturalized. CRAP. I love him.

    In general, I am really concerned about the strength of the Dem party in the next generation. There is much research indicating that if you can get people aligned with the brand early in their voting lives that you have them forever. While the youth vote has never turned out as desired…. those young people are the old stalwarts in subsequent elections and thus getting them into the habit of voting for Dems is critical, IMO.

  135. 135.

    Another Scott

    @cope: Bandwagons come and go, and sometimes make loops around the square.  It was ever thus.  ;-)

    Still, it’s good Biden won.  Stopping Bernie is important.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  137. 137.

    Immanentize

    @Another Scott: people picking on Perez have no clue what they are talking about.  The Perez hate is actually just a hangover from the DWS hate which then carried over to the DNC election which came down to Perez versus Ellison. Those two were basically proxies for Clinton/Obama (Perez) and Sanders (Ellison). It was really close with Buttigieg getting enough votes to give it to Perez. Although Sanders was able to get most of what they wanted in DNC election rules and policies, the hate if Perez lingered despite his best efforts to be an actual honest broker.

    Tom Perez is a smart and honorable guy. Totally honest and above board. His tenure at DOJ was excellent. He stands for all the justice issues all progressives fight for without the revolution as the magic dust. He works hard. It is an impossible job at DNC and he should be sainted for doing it, but first, it seems, he must me martyred.

  138. 138.

    Elizabelle

    @Suzanne:   They are turning out in the midterms and off-year elections, aren’t they?  I see the young people arriving to vote, looking resolute, graciously accepting literature on the Democratic candidates.

    We have so much more appeal for young people than Republicans.

    Which is why the corporate-owned media has to lie so much, and do all the both sidesism.

    Cuz it’s not “both sides” at all in terms of decency, courage, and fairness.

  141. 141.

    Immanentize

    @Jinchi: Was it?  How can you say that?  By your own standards of no proof means anything, it is possible Bernie would not have come in second if it were not for Republican crossover votes. So, not a bust at all. Win!

  142. 142.

    Chyron HR

    @Uncle Cosmo: 

    WTF is wrong with yinz spozedly intelligent people who can’t seem to grasp the strategy of primary voting??

    Not to be outdone by the Berniebros, the Bidenbros go all in on their own “You’re too dumb to vote the right way!” strategy. Let’s see if it works any better for them.

  144. 144.

    Immanentize

    @Elizabelle: Max Planck:

    Science progresses one funeral at a time.

    I often substitute “legal education” but “politics” works too.

  145. 145.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Hoodie: I think a lot of his credibility with black voters lies with his being genuinely willing to be a happy and loyal subordinate for a black president.

    Don’t take this wrong, because I don’t want to single you out, but the first words that leapt into my head when I saw this comment were Light dawns over Marblehead. This old white guy has been saying this for months. Uncle Joe’s willing, nay, enthusiastic embrace of his role as Barack’s wingman solidified his credibility with the key AA women bloc (who everyone here said we needed to listen to & then tuned out when what they said didn’t fit the listeners’ agenda).

    All “wypipo” are bigots to some extent – it’s kind of baked into the Murkan experience – but for many of us,  that (residual) bigotry rarely if ever breaks into the top 5 of attitudes that motivate us. There is a fundamental divide between that “many of us” & the hardcore Trumpistas who were seething in their swastika-festooned rec rooms just waiting for the antifascist presumption of democratic culture to loosen the pressure so their noxious stench could bubble up to the surface.

  146. 146.

    Immanentize

    @Suzanne: I think our next gen batch of Dems is powerful.  Lots of good governor’s in the generational pool.  And the Young’s have been turned off by the Republicans who seem to do everything they can to screw them over (forever).  I think the future is pretty bright.

  148. 148.

    Kraux Pas

    @Elizabelle: We have so much more appeal for young people than Republicans.

    Looks like Dems are trying real hard to change that tho, to their own detriment.

  149. 149.

    MomSense

    @Immanentize:

    He is also first DNC chair to invest in voter registration and protection, hiring organizers and funding local groups who are already doing the work and have the infrastructure.  Also consistent with his excellent tenure at DOJ.

    One of the DNC co-sponsors of the unity commission and all the rigged BS is a wicked pain in the ass pol from Portland, Maine, initials DR. The local Sandernistas are an arrogant, churlish, and ridiculous bunch of cultists.

  151. 151.

    DB11

    @Immanentize: Given that Sanders support dropped by 2-3% from the pre-vote polling average and Joe gained ~10%, if there was any significant Operation Chaos impact (which I sincerely doubt), it certainly didn’t redound in Sander’s favor.

  152. 152.

    Immanentize

    @johnnybuck: I don’t think Harris is the best option.  Not because I don’t think she is the best candidate, but she doesn’t bring much with her.  California is going to go with Biden.  He has great inroads in the black community.  I expect Biden, if he gets the chance, will choose a Hispanic partner from the southwest.

  153. 153.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    chris evans@notcapnamerica
    If SC and NV went first, @KamalaHarris would still be in this race and Pete Buttigieg would’ve fallen off the radar 6 months ago.

    A lot of people blaming Tom Perez for this mess, in part I think because people have really skewed ideas about the power of the DNC in general and the chair specifically. That said, I don’t know what he could have done to change the order of the contests, but I’ll blame him to the extent he didn’t do what he could. In 2021, reorganizing the primary calendar should be a top priority for the party.

  154. 154.

    schrodingers_cat

    Please watch what Modi is doing in his second term. If the Orange Glow wins that’s what we are in for. He must be defeated and BS winning the nomination not only makes defeating Orange difficult but makes down ticket races harder to win. The House majority is at stake as is the fate of the senate.

  155. 155.

    Cacti

    Every poll had Bernie trending upward in SC before his 60 minutes interview.

    New strategy for every Bernie opponent:  attack every communist dictatorship he ever defended, and goad him into defending them still.  He’s incapable of admitting an error in judgment.

  156. 156.

    germy

    Sanders is a faux-socialist populist demagogue, surrounded by grifty hangers-on (sounds vaguely familiar!), who has a great fondness for the filibuster, and no track record of significant legislative accomplishment. You add all that up and he’ll pass no legislation, do a bad job of staffing the executive branch, and basically spend all his time giving speeches, which is frankly the only thing he’s particularly good at.

    He’s still preferable to Biden: an old confused man who LAST WEEK made up a crazy story about getting arrested trying to free Nelson Mandela, either because he’s a pathological liar or frankly delusional (People talk about how “gaffes” don’t count in the Age of Trump. I don’t know about you but I still consider pathological lying and/or frank delusion to be disqualifying for a presidential candidate. And Biden has a LONG track record of this kind of crap, although this was a particularly egregious example, probably because he’s starting to lose the limited number of marbles he once had). Biden is also a guy who IN 2018 was taking big bucks from Republican donors to help a Republican get re-elected in a very winnable congressional seat. Seriously? – Paul Campos

  157. 157.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @JMG:

    So an article in Politico answered part of my early voting question. In California at least, there have been a lower percentage of mailed out ballots returned to date than there were in 2008 and 2016.

    That’s interesting– MSNBC had me convinced most CA Dems had already voted.

  159. 159.

    Baud

    @germy:

    Campos can support Bernie if he wants, but that seems like an odd calculation if he thinks Bernie would actually do a worse job as president than Biden.

  160. 160.

    Immanentize

    @DB11: How do you know Clyburn didn’t shave 10% off Sanders which was then replaced by Republican votes?  You can’t.

    This is my point about the Republican efforts.  Whether they are effective as vote totals is a different question than whether they are effective at undermining the faith in the outcome.  Which is just another way of saying that now changing the rules to make a plurality candidate the ultimate candidate is not a reliable method as it increases the desire to cross over vote by Republicans for Bernie Sanders. Sanders and ratfucking Republicans share the same agenda re: primary outcome.

  161. 161.

    Another Scott

    @Cacti: “Bernie” on SNL last night:

    “No Purell! I’ve got a bottle of that junk, and on the label, it says it kills 99.99% of germs. What happens to the top .01%?! Why are we protecting them?” David, as Sanders, said. “I say enough with the potions!”

    “Just use good ole’ fashioned bar soap and scalding hot water,” he continued. “Now, I might get in trouble for saying this, but you know who’s great at washing his hands? Joseph Stalin! Just sayin’ just sayin’…”

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  163. 163.

    Omnes Omnibus

    A few observations:  I’ve been saying that dancing on anyone’s grave was premature; this is still the case.  That being said, as a low key Biden person, I am enjoying this.  I started out as a Harris supporter, and, once she dropped out, I sort of backed it supporting Biden.  I think that Biden is easily the strongest candidate on international relations, and I think that it is vital that we start doing what we can to start  turning around our international reputation.  I also think that Biden is the most likely to have coattails down ticket.  Warren is easily the strongest domestic policy president but I think that domestic policy will flow from a (hopefully) Democratic House and Senate – which is why coattails are important.  There is nothing that will come out of a Democratic Congress that any of the Democratic candidates would not sign.

    I said a while back that I didn’t want to saying anything bad about any of the D candidates because I did not want to have to eat my words later.  Yesterday was good for Biden.  We’ll see what happens next.  My primary isn’t until April 7; I will vote for a Democrat then and I will vote for the Party nominee in November.

  164. 164.

    Elizabelle

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:   I don’t watch MSNBC for just that reason.  Too much punditing, and NBC corporate during the daytime.   Will watch them for live speeches if cannot get it via C-Span.

    And not surprised at all that a lot of Californians are holding their ballots to see what South Carolina did.  Pretty sure they have filled out the downballot stuff carefully, but will mark their final choices over the weekend/Monday and Tuesday.

  166. 166.

    johnnybuck

    @debbie: It doesn’t hurt my fee-fees sweetheart, my point is that bashing the DNC head is  a sport around here regardless of who they are. Frankly it’s a thankless job. YMMV

  168. 168.

    schrodingers_cat

    To those who say vote your heart. Math doesn’t care about your heart. The primary election is a zero sum game. A vote for the candidate your heart desires is taking away the voter from the No BS candidate.

    Which after last night is Joe Biden.

  169. 169.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Immanentize: I wonder if we should move from the traditional geographic calculations for VP to demographic calculations. If African Americans are our strongest sizable constituency, perhaps an AA VP choice would boost the ticket across the board, especially in places like Wisconsin (Milwaukee!), Michigan (Detroit!) and Pennsylvania (Philadelphia!).

    I don’t know who a good southwest choice would be. Michelle Lujan Grisham is a good governor and I’d hate to lose her. I also don’t think she has enough national pull yet. I like the idea of Castro more than the reality of him. He’s got the charisma of soggy cheese. I think HRC made a mistake with her choice of Tim Kaine, who brought bland white niceness to the ticket and not much more. The eventual Democratic nominee will hopefully find a sweet spot between Kaine and Palin (quelle horreur!) for their VP choice.

  170. 170.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: I think Compos is a Warren fan, in truth.  It’s that Loomis guy at LGM that’s all in for Sanders.

  171. 171.

    Suzanne

    @Kraux Pas: Agree. The YOOT are more progressive and are not exceptionally impressed by statements like Biden’s about those halcyon days in which he worked with racist Republicans to do stuff. I agree that there’s no reason for most young people to ever vote for the GOP, but plenty of them just don’t show up if we only offer them moderate candidates.

    I just don’t see the impulse that I see here to say, “We built this party, we don’t want your lefty candidate!” to be exceptionally helpful. Even though it’s reasonable. But I used to work in marketing and I still think that way.

  172. 172.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @germy:

    Biden is also a guy who IN 2018 was taking big bucks from Republican donors to help a Republican get re-elected in a very winnable congressional seat. Seriously?

    That’s a half-truth about the paid MI speech where Biden praised Upton, and Biden plays the bipartisan card really badly, but it crosses the line into lie the way he implies Biden held a fund-raiser for Upton; and the Mandela thing is troubling for a couple of reasons. I’ll still take him over “Yes, I’m gonna raise your damn taxes and take away your health insurance. AND IT’S FOR YOUR OWN DAMN GOOD!” Bernie’s right. But the politics of it don’t work

  174. 174.

    Elizabelle

    @Immanentize:   Yes!  Eliminating caucuses.  And then Iowa went and made the case for that all by their little selves.

    It makes me nervous that California is going so early, though.  Especially with the drumbeat that Bernie’s gonna swamp the state.  I   kind of wish they were the Tuesday after Super Tuesday because they’re too decisive to be too early.  Absolutely see why they did not want to be in April or May, but early March is just too damn early for such a huge state with such expensive media markets.

  178. 178.

    Kraux Pas

    schrodingers_cat: To those who say vote your heart. Math doesn’t care about your heart. The primary election is a zero sum game

    So are you saying that I should vote for Bernie, even though he’s near the bottom of my list, just to stop Biden?

  179. 179.

    MomSense

    @Suzanne:

    How do you feel about targeting CBC incumbents and primarying them?  How do you feel about calling Planned Parenthood the establishment?

    We are not saying we built this party we don’t want your lefty candidate.  We are saying that if you want to benefit from the party infrastructure we have been building for decades, don’t be an asshole.

  181. 181.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: Yes that is true.  I am addressing those who want to stop BS but are voting for EW on Super Tuesday.

    I am voting for my survival. I have seen this movie before, lefties fight with each other. Right wing emerges as the only game in town and lo behold 6 years later there is pogrom in the nation’s capital.

  182. 182.

    DB11

    @germy: I find myself surprised to be agreeing with Campos on this… and I think Bernie is fundamentally and temperamentally unsuited for the job.

    With Bernie, the question is his physical health (i.e. heart issues) but there is no question that he remains mentally much sharper than Joe.

    With Biden, the age-related cognitive decline is too pronounced to ignore. And not-withstanding his SC win, the public evidence of his deficits is going to get worse, not better, as the campaign unfolds

    For the record, I think either one represents a huge risk in the general — and serves to hold the party back from the generational renewal that is long overdue.

  183. 183.

    Immanentize

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    I like the idea of Castro more than the reality of him

    Best description ever of my feelings about Castro.

    A Hispanic VP candidate could certainly help with the purple states of the 3 corners (I of course am cancelling Utah).

    But increasing rust-belt city votes is critical too. Booker? He seems to be a buddy of Clyburn’s so that could help both in the South and in the Dem. caucus

  184. 184.

    Chris Johnson

    @schrodingers_cat: No. A vote for Warren is a vote for Not Sanders. They either split the left, or Sanders gets all of it. Trashing Warren is supporting Bernie, Warren dropping out would be throwing it directly to Bernie.

  185. 185.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Baud: Do you think over-confidence is why HRC chose Kaine? My inference based solely on inference was that she selected a nice white male to reassure the traditionalists, similar to the way Obama chose Uncle Joe B. for his ticket.

  186. 186.

    James E Powell

    @germy:

    Harris would destroy Pence in a debate.

    I agree, but how much will the VP matter? Bentsen humiliated Quayle and it didn’t matter. Palin? I don’t know if that hurt her & McCain as much as the Katie Couric interview and other appearances.

  188. 188.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    My sister lives in Illinois. I think it was in 2017 that the Dem primary was between a billionaire– Jay Pritzker, I think, definitely a Pritzker– and a youngish state legislator named Daniel Biss (from memory) who could probably be described as a Social Democrat, an appealing guy, Bernie without the bellowing or the history of just plain weird comments. My tail-end boomer, Hillary-supporting sister worked for the campaign. Under-30 turn-out in that primary was 3%. Pritzker is governor today, having beat the almost billionaire whose name escapes me but who shot “I’m just a regular guy” ads wearing a denim shirt in his home workshop that looked like it probably cost more than my house.

    Anecdote about the Pritzker family, who I think own among things the Hyatt hotel chain, and include Obama’s Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, sister or cousin of the incumbent gov: A pair of younglings who had lost their parents sued their aunts and uncles when they reached majority because their trust fund was only worth $4B, when it should, they felt, have been worth $5B

  192. 192.

    MomSense

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Once black women expressed views white women didn’t like, we turned on them.  It proves it was always about validation and never allyship. We white women have a terrible record on allyship with black women.  Same as it ever was.

  193. 193.

    Hoodie

    @Uncle Cosmo: no disagreement here, it has been pretty obvious for a while that candidates like Mayor Pete and the SP just weren’t going to do it, and, as some here explain, they do not appear to understand  how to do it.  If there is one thing that Joe excels at, it’s relationships.

  199. 199.

    DB11

    @schrodingers_cat: It’s not propaganda, it’s observation (and a concurring opinion with Campos).

    I was an early Harris supporter, now Warren.

    As for the unknown nym, I’ve lurked here for well over a decade — I found Ballon Juice sometime after Steve Giliard passed. I have tended more towards observation than participation online… but I’m not a troll if that’s the inference.

  202. 202.

    Jinchi

    @Immanentize: By your own standards of no proof means anything

    No. By my standards, you can make predictions based on a hypothesis. Failing them is called a null result.

    Originally the trolls were supposed to propel Tulsi to the leader board in New Hampshire. If she had polled in 3rd place, there that would have been pretty good evidence for your theory. She came in 7th, just ahead of Andrew Yang.

    The simplest prediction is that Sanders would perform better than his polling. He didn’t. The next is that he would do unusually well in conservative districts. He didn’t. In South Carolina, he should have done better with voters in rural districts, but the few districts Bernie won were all in the suburbs. Biden won moderate voters, conservative voters, older voters and minority voters. All exactly as expected based on polling and interviews on the street. Almost as if the overwhelming majority of voters were people simply picking their preferred candidate, and not a collection of MAGA trolls.

  203. 203.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Baud: My sense was that she was trying to placate the white male sector and both of us could be right. Kaine probably would have been a good VP for her. :)

  204. 204.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @MomSense: And yet I see people in this thread who had promised to do as Black women do pledging to vote for Biden.  Mnem for one.  Not every voter who comments here made that promise, but I am not noticing anyone I remember having done so who is reneging.

  205. 205.

    WaterGirl

    @Immanentize: Thanks for writing that.  I feel the same way but didn’t speak up because I didn’t have all the facts and details to back it up.

    It is truly a job where people who are only looking at one part of the elephant will always think you have done the wrong thing.

  206. 206.

    Suzanne

    @MomSense: I agree with you. But it’s not my vote that needs to be won.

    The Millennial and Gen Z vote is the one that’s up for grabs, and they, quite frankly, do not seem to feel that participating in the party apparatus is especially qualifying. I have to say that I can see why they feel that way. The problems that they are facing are absolutely enormous, and while I think that Joe Biden is a good guy and very competent, I really don’t think that he conveys that he gets it. I think they feel like the house is on fire and that the Democratic Party showed up to help with a squirt gun.

    In the world of marketing, they look at successful competitors are try to tease out why they’re successful and emulate that. There has been a lot of talk on this blog about STOPPING BERNIE!!!, but I think the best way to have stopped him was to have made a strong play for his base and peel some of them off, rather than trying to marshal enough other voters behind one other candidate.

  207. 207.

    Baud

    @WaterGirl:

      I feel the same way but didn’t speak up because I didn’t have all the facts and details to back it up.

    You realize this is the internet, right?

  208. 208.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: Pritzker campaigned– according to my long-distance view– on preserving public pensions and creating a public option in Illinois. I don’t really know what he’s done since– my sister is my source and she is a bit soured on politics these days– but people seem to like the preservation and extension of the social safety net, but they get nervous when people start talking about burning the village to save it. A lot of people live in a carefully created and somewhat precarious equilibrium, and “jump out of the boat and swim over to mine! we’ll be good” is a tricky message.

  209. 209.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Immanentize: Me too. I’d be thrilled with Kamala or Stacey if they’re interested. I’d also be happy with Cory. Folks have mentioned Val Demings, but I’m not sure she has sufficient national prominence to be a difference-maker. That said, if she could bring Florida into the fold….

  210. 210.

    debbie

    @Elizabelle:

    If MomSense is referring to the PUMAs of yore, I don’t disagree, but I think it’s wrong to smear all white women with the taint of PUMAs.

  212. 212.

    WaterGirl

    @Immanentize: First and foremost, though, you need to pick someone that you can work with.  Someone who shares your values, down to the core. Someone you completely trust.

    It can’t all be strategy.

  213. 213.

    Kraux Pas

    @Baud: I just don’t know if enough voters care about fighting billionaires and corporations.

    Yeah, let’s instead spend our votes on too-clever-by-half notions about what voters will accept so we can spend the fall re-litigating Hunter Biden rather than Trump’s corruption and corrupt way wealth is privileged in the US.

  214. 214.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    rather than trying to marshal enough other voters behind one other candidate.

    To be fair, we’re doing that now because of the position we currently find ourselves in.  Few think this is ideal.

  218. 218.

    Kraux Pas

    @Immanentize: Which makes him about 100 times sharper than Trump.

    I don’t think the slightly addled v completely addled distinction makes for a winning argument in the Fall.

  220. 220.

    Baud

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Yeah, I think the message of “I’m not going to let billionaires and corporations stop me from doing these great things” is a better one than “let’s fight billionaires.” For non-liberal voters.

    YMMV.

  221. 221.

    WaterGirl

    @O. Felix Culpa: I may be in the minority, but I think Kaine was an excellent choice for Clinton’s VP.

    In terms of ethics, values, standing up for what is right, and understanding that his role is to serve the people, I would put Kaine in the same class as Sherrod Brown and Doug Jones.

    In short, I see Kaine as a statesman, and there is far too little of that these days.

  222. 222.

    Immanentize

    @Jinchi: On the evidence side, not the pundit poll side, the South Carolina vote was whiter than it was in 2016:

    For one, unlike 2016, when both Democrats and Republicans had competitive primaries, there was no GOP primary this year. South Carolina has open primaries, meaning Republicans and independents could vote in the Democratic contest. That may have contributed to the 2020 primary being a bit whiter than it was four years ago.

    My point is that the effect of cross over votes, which we know happen, is unknowable but ONLY tilts toward Sanders (by design).

  223. 223.

    Baud

    @WaterGirl:

    Kaine is a good man, but his selection didn’t involve electoral considerations IMHO.  He would have been an excellent Veep.

  226. 226.

    Elizabelle

    @Suzanne:

    I think the best way to have stopped him was to have made a strong play for his base and peel some of them off

    Excuse me?  Do you think that nobody did this?  Really?

    Further, online universe is not what you find at the doors.  Twitter … is twitter.  Maybe it’s an early warning system; maybe it’s distortion; maybe it’s noise.

  227. 227.

    Another Scott

    @schrodingers_cat: You realize your single vote doesn’t matter in determining the outcome.  Right?

    Mine doesn’t either.

    What matters is that people use their vote to express their personal preference.  That’s what voting is for.

    Polls and polling coverage are answers to counter-factuals.  And are subject to spin.  You shouldn’t let them determine how you vote.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  229. 229.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @WaterGirl: I’ll confess I was a bit let down by the Kaine pick, because I didn’t know he’s been one of the strongest voices for restoring the balance of power between the Executive and the Legislative branches– my fault. He’s a good, solid, principled and thoughtful person. If only that sort of thing excited people.

    My what-if counter-factual was Xavier Beccera, but that’s pointless now

    ETA: I forgot you were in Illinois. I can rarely keep the bios and the nyms together.

  233. 233.

    Kraux Pas

    @Baud: Red herring.  I’m making an observation about what motivates voters.  If you disagree, fine.

    I think what is motivating a lot of voters is a vague conception of electability informed by the conventional wisdom of our braindead media. A pattern of voting that has never failed us. Wait, sorry, I meant always. It always fails. Electability is the ultimate red herring.

    We aren’t gonna get any reward by being risk-averse and we aren’t going to fix the disfunction in our government by turning it over to people who where there helping the disfunction along as it developed.

  234. 234.

    Jinchi

    @Kraux Pas: so we can spend the fall re-litigating Hunter Biden rather than Trump’s corruption and corrupt way wealth is privileged in the US.

    We’re all clear that, whoever the nominee is, we’ll be battling some BS sludgefest that the Republicans dream up, right? The advantage with the Hunter Biden story is that you can’t start talking about it without reminding everyone that Trump was impeached for extorting a foreign government and has been using the DoJ as his personal dirty tricks squad.

  235. 235.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: I think Warren had a great angle emphasizing expanding workers’ voices within corporations, and increasing corporate accountability, but I guess those proposals didn’t excite twitter

  236. 236.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud:   HRC may have chosen Tim because he’s the essence of decency and she hoped he might appeal to some the white males tuning her out.  Disagree that he was not a choice made with electoral considerations in mind.

    Tim earned his seed money for a political career by litigating an extremely lucrative settlement on behalf of low income housing in Richmond.  He was a missionary and is a committed Catholic who lives his faith, albeit not the cultural Catholic stuff like abortion and women stay in your place.  His son was on active duty in the military.

    I think Tim was a great VP choice.  There were others out there too.

    I don’t feel like blaming a candidate who did the very best she could, in an unbelievably distorted election season.  I know you usually feel  like that too.

    Mostly I think Trump ended up in the White House through cheating and lying on a still undetermined scale.

    Our problem is not that our candidates are idiots.  It is that we are up against criminals and those who would use the middle class as lip service.  And who see the poor as losers who deserve nothing, and refuse to see the structural disfunction of our country and economy.  It is so skewed.

  237. 237.

    MomSense

    @debbie:

    Not referring to PUMAS especially since the whole listen to black women and vote for black women wasn’t a thing then.

  238. 238.

    Citizen Alan

    @WaterGirl:

    And why pick a VP that could never be POTUS?

    For what it’s worth, in 2016, the VP nominee for the Party of Socialism and Liberation (i.e. the people who think Bernie Sanders is a neoliberal sellout) was Eugene Puryear, who was only 30 at the time. Yeah, I didn’t understand the point of it either. 

  239. 239.

    DB11

    @WaterGirl: As I amended to my previous comment, I was an early Harris supporter, and now believe that Warren is the best remaining choice.

    I’ve always thought Liz would make the best president, but I thought Harris has more charisma and potentially broader appeal to different party factions — making her a possibly better choice as a candidate to actually win the presidency.

    Bloomberg would be surrendering the party completely to the oligarchy, and America won’t survive another Trump term — in fact I’m not certain it will ever fully recover from this one.

    Clear enough for you, or do you want to cast more aspersions?

  240. 240.

    Suzanne

    @Elizabelle: No, I don’t think that any of them made a genuinely strong play for Bernie’s base. I saw lip service but much more criticism of “soci-alism”, which is a word I put in quotes because it doesn’t really seem to mean anything anymore. Warren especially waited far too long, IMO, even though I love her.

  241. 241.

    Another Scott

    @Chris Johnson: Not quite.  The 15% threshold does have an impact – in that sense SC has a point.  But it’s not determinative, IMHO.

    The assumption that Warren’s voters would go for Sanders is badly mistaken in my view.  I would not be voting for him if she were not in the race.

    People should vote for whoever they think would be the better candidate in the primary.  A single vote is unlikely to determine the outcome, and with proportional voting if things are that close then the delegates are going to be split anyway.

    That’s what the process is for – to figure out preferences.  If everyone stampedes to Biden out of fear of Bernie, what does that mean for the party in 2022 and later?  (“Well, we tried women and minorities last time and they were a bust, so we have to nominate 75 year old white guys going forward…”)

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  242. 242.

    Baud

    @Kraux Pas:

    I wish progressives had joined me in favoring Warren, but it didn’t happen.

    As a general matter, I’d feel better about taking progressive risks if progressives had a better track record of success outside of solid blue states and districts.  But I haven’t seen enough evidence of that to try it out at the presidential level against Trump.

  243. 243.

    WaterGirl

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: A lot of people didn’t trust Clinton, but I’ll bet those people trusted Kaine.  Kaine certainly made me feel better about Clinton as President.

    Even with my concerns about Clinton in 2016, I remember tearing up at the grocery store on election day, with the realization that we were about to have our first female president.

    So much hope in the afternoon, followed by a horrible, horrible night.

  244. 244.

    Jinchi

    @Immanentize: My point is that the effect of cross over votes, which we know happen, is unknowable but ONLY tilts toward Sanders (by design).

    See but it’s that last part you haven’t convinced me of. All evidence points to Biden picking up the crossover vote in South Carolina, which is what you would expect if whiter, moderate and conservative voters were picking the candidate they most closely aligned with, and not picking the socialist in hopes that he’d lose the general election.

  245. 245.

    schrodingers_cat

    @MomSense: Critiquing EW’s electoral strategy has earned me a lot of epithets and condescension from the cohort you mention.

    Loon, classless, streams of fuck you etc .

    She was 5th in South Carolina. Her electoral strategy is not working. That much is clear.

  246. 246.

    Elizabelle

    @WaterGirl:  I remember being in a grocery store in North Carolina the day after the election and wondering who were the pod people.  It felt like being in a movie set.

    I don’t think any of us ever want to relive those days.  Someone here brought up some voters suffering PTSD and that sounds possible to me.

  247. 247.

    Citizen Alan

    @Elizabelle:

    Heh. I’m presently on the last day of a 6-day Twitter ban for espousing that viewpoint (admittedly, with less delicacy than you have here).

  248. 248.

    Baud

    @Elizabelle:

    I don’t blame Hillary at all.  Her mistakes (and everyone has some) pale in comparison to the worldwide pile of bullshit leveled against her.  In the end, we were not a strong enough party for her.  That’s not on Hillary.

  249. 249.

    WaterGirl

    @DB11: I wasn’t casting aspersions, or at least that wasn’t my intention.

    After all the doom and gloom about Warren today, she had actually fallen out of my head as still being considered in the running.  (Even though she is my top choice!)

    So at that moment it appeared that the remaining choices with an actual opportunity to win were Biden, Bernie and Bloomberg.  And Trump.

    How fucked up is it that we can get so distracted by the horse race that I could momentarily forget that my preferred candidate hasn’t lost yet.

  250. 250.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    as far as “lanes” and where X’s voters will go if s/he drops out, I think this is a good snapshot

    Jon Favreau @jonfavs
    In SC, Joe Biden won liberal voters 43-29 AND voters who prefer Medicare for All 44-28. In NV, Bernie Sanders tied Biden among moderate and conservative voters. Political coverage is probably too focused on lanes and ideological differences. Voters are more complex.

    For a long time, Bernie and Biden were each others’ voters’ second choice– I don’t know where that stands now. For all the hoopla about Bernie’s narrow pluralities, in IA and NH he was neck-and-neck with Buttigieg, whose campaign went from “they’re gonna call us socialists anyway…” to “my midwestern cornfield out the window values say don’t go crazy…”.  And I kind of doubt that all the people carping about “the DNC” and “the Establishment” think they’re talking about African-America voters in South Carolina.

  252. 252.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Just saw Bernie carping about “the corporate wing of the Democratic Party”. Can anyone explain to the old fool who voted for Biden yesterday?

  254. 254.

    Kraux Pas

    @Baud: As a general matter, I’d feel better about taking progressive risks if progressives had a better track record of success outside of solid blue states and districts.

    Yeah, the last time we chose a riskier more ambitious candidate was Obama. Sure wouldn’t want to repeat that experiment again…

  255. 255.

    oldgold

    Super Tuesday to is too soon and too much.

    Months and months spent in the corn fields and Biden is going to spend one day in California?!?

    What a shit-show our process for naming a nominee is. Our party, that celebrates its diversity, after a month of voting/caucusing will have boiled the field down to three 78 year old white males.

  256. 256.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @WaterGirl: I agree that Tim Kaine is a good man for all the reasons you cite. I also think he was not additive to Hillary’s ticket and did not bring in the votes or energy that could have helped her. His one debate with Pence was surprisingly disappointing, although I doubt it made much of a difference in terms of votes

    Or what Baud said at #223.

  258. 258.

    Baud

    @Kraux Pas:

    Obama was in the mainstream of the Dem party on policy (including race policy).  He was risky because of white identity politics.  That has nothing to do with ideological risk when we talk about progressive vs. moderate candidates.

  260. 260.

    Fair Economist

    @laura: Warren was 17% and Biden 8% in Cali in a recent poll, so Warren is a much more likely anti-Bernie vote. Biden will probably get shut out given that so much of the vote is already in.

  261. 261.

    germy

    @Kraux Pas:

    “A black guy with Hussein for a middle name?  I like him, but he’ll never beat the war hero.  So I won’t vote for him in the primary.”

  262. 262.

    DB11

    @WaterGirl:OK, no hard feelings.

    I’ve just been overwhelmed by the warm embrace and inclusion in the community as a former lurker outing themself. (though I do get the basis of the suspicion of unknown commenters). But there is nothing I’ve said that would suggest that I would ever support Bloomberg, let alone Trump — so it sure seemed a cheap shot.

    The fact that so many are reacting to the facts on the ground from the POV of their political PTSD is what is distorting the dynamics of this race.

    It’s way too early to assert that there is zero possibility of a path for Warren to the nomination. She has the longest odds of the remaining candidates, but I think she’s the only candidate left that has the ability to heal the huge rift in the party between progressives and moderates. (and I think she’s taken out Bloomberg at the knees for the remainder — yeah Liz!)

  263. 263.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @schrodingers_cat: his hedgehog nature will always come through, anyone who opposes him is stupid and/or corrupt

    ETA: which is of course is a big part of his appeal. Self-Righteous adolescents of all ages (see Moore and Sarandon) also like to think anyone who disagrees with them is stupid and/or corrupt.

  264. 264.

    Kraux Pas

    @WaterGirl: So at that moment it appeared that the remaining choices with an actual opportunity to win were Biden, Bernie and Bloomberg.  And Trump.

    How does Bloomberg have more of a chance than Warren or anybody else when he literally hasn’t gotten a single vote yet?

  265. 265.

    Chyron HR

    I think I’ve finally figured out what the anti-Warren gang’s pathology is: They (rightfully) hate Bernie, but he’s currently winning the primary which dulls the thrill they get from dumping on him.  So they have to invent this strawman caricature of Warren as “Mrs. Bernie” and then shit on her for being one of the runner-ups.

    And once you’ve convinced yourself that Warren is Sanders’ unofficial running mate, then obviously people who vote for Warren are morally equivalent to Berniebros, right?  They DESERVE abuse!

  268. 268.

    DB11

    @O. Felix Culpa: I think that her choice of Kaine as VP was indicative of her political PTSD — she was afraid of making a choice that could be remotely controversial (and maybe wanted to be lock down Virginia).

    But Sherrod Brown would have been a much more inspired choice all-around — and had the possibility of garnering some small enthusiasm from the progressive wing for the ticket. Plus Ohio was always going to be more significant than Virginia in the final outcome.

  269. 269.

    WaterGirl

    @DB11:

    I’ve just been overwhelmed by the warm embrace and inclusion in the community as a former lurker outing themself.

    Serious or sarcasm?

    I always like it when lurkers de-lurk.  I’m sorry if my comment made you feel less than welcome.

  271. 271.

    WaterGirl

    @Kraux Pas: Maybe you missed the rest of my comment at #249?

    After all the doom and gloom about Warren today, she had actually fallen out of my head as still being considered in the running.  (Even though she is my top choice!)

    So at that moment it appeared that the remaining choices with an actual opportunity to win were Biden, Bernie and Bloomberg.  And Trump.

    How fucked up is it that we can get so distracted by the horse race that I could momentarily forget that my preferred candidate hasn’t lost yet.

  273. 273.

    Kraux Pas

    @WaterGirl: Sorry. Not so much that I missed part of the comment but I was understanding something in present tense that you had written in past tense and it affected my understanding of what you meant.

  274. 274.

    DB11

    @WaterGirl:  Sorry, that was unnecessarily sarcastic.

    I know that you’re a pillar of the community here and that it would never be your intention to dissuade de-lurkers.

    One of the reasons I’ve not de-cloaked before now is that I have observed how (unintentionally) exclusive and hostile the community can be to newcomers, and it never seemed worth the potential abuse.

    But I have a thick skin and forgiving nature ( I lack the required energy to hold a grudge :) — and this political moment requires engagement rather than detachment, so here I am!

  275. 275.

    Bill Arnold

    @DB11:

    if there was any significant Operation Chaos impact (which I sincerely doubt), it certainly didn’t redound in Sander’s favor.

    Have to say that this surprised and pleased me. (To be clear, that overt Republican ratfucking appears to have fizzled.)

  276. 276.

    Cacti

    @Chyron HR:  Warren made the choice to tie herself to Bernie for the past 4-years.

    She’s the frog that decided to give the scorpion a ride across the pond.

  277. 277.

    the Conster

    @Suzanne:

    I am so puzzled by this whole *the youth* being disaffected by Democrats.  If they’re white and complaining about student debt, climate crisis and the wealth gap, they should look to who caused it, which is the high probability that their parents and grandparents and the white majority voting bloc they belong to have been voting GOP and tax cuts for billionaires since Reagan, because of the white supremacy.  Do either of the populist candidates ever emphasize that?  I never hear Sanders or Warren calling out the nativism and xenophobia of white America and their reliable votes against *big government* (that helps “those people”) as THE explanation for the cause of all their ills.   I will not vote for a populist.  I’m in MA and voting for Biden because he gets the support of the Dem base – the party faithful who are Democrats because of civil rights, and not markets.  Warren’s BIG STRUCTURAL CHANGE is impossible as long as the systemic racism that keeps the status quo in place isn’t identified as such.

  278. 278.

    Chyron HR

    @Cacti:

    Yes, that’s right, Bernie is all WARRENS fault!  You should dox her campaign staff, that’ll show her!

  279. 279.

    DB11

    @Bill Arnold:  I agree.

    I thought there was a non-zero possibility for serious interference in open primaries. Plus the media keeps telling us how motivated Trump’s base is, and how much better Republican grass-roots organizing is, so it had to be a potential concern.

    This time at least, those prognostications have fizzled and — fingers crossed — hopefully their ongoing attempts to O’Keefe future Dem primaries will be similarly futile.

  280. 280.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @DB11: FWIW I have been a regular at two blogs, this one and Eschaton.  When I first started commenting, I made a point of choosing a few of the more innocuous threads as places to begin.  It seemed to work as a way of introducing myself.  OTOH as fraught as 2008 (when I started here) was, people may be more wound up and there may be no easy way to break in as a commenter.  That would be sad.

  281. 281.

    Bill Arnold

    @DB11:

    And not-withstanding his SC win, the public evidence of his deficits is going to get worse, not better, as the campaign unfolds

    DJT is very vulnerable to relentless messaging in this area, almost certainly substantially more so than Biden. Bloomberg’s social media operation would be able to(/be expected to) contribute here if Biden were the nominee. And we could expect Biden as POTUS to assemble a top-notch non-pathological leadership team/cabinet, which would be extremely competent and ethical relative to the DJT administration. Running mate selection will be absolutely key though.

  282. 282.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: We tend to do better in general elections when we nominate fresher faces. Which is much of why this primary has me sooooo bummed out.

  283. 283.

    Elizabelle

    @DB11:

    how much better Republican grass-roots organizing is

    I take that to mean the evangelical churches, and I guess the media and mouthpieces can’t say that, because they’re not really supposed to be doing that, being tax-exempt and all?

    Cuz I sure don’t see many Republican canvassers when I am out there. I truly think we outwork them every single election.

    Rumor had it McCain’s NoVA campaign office was closed on Sundays, late in the election. Never did find out if that was true or not.

    I do see the GOP literature at the doors. Wonder about the “mixed marriages” out there.

  285. 285.

    Chyron HR

    And Re: Cacti & Friends, I’ll reiterate a rhetorical question I had from several months ago: What possesses someone to act like a deranged screaming moron in support of Joe Biden?

  286. 286.

    Suzanne

    @the Conster: I agree with you on Sanders not speaking to the issue, but Warren has been pretty explicit about how minorities have been screwed over even harder by trickle-down crony capitalism.

  287. 287.

    the Conster

    @Cacti:

    Honestly, promoting herself as I’m with Bernie for months, then last night she goes hard after him as being ineffective while he’s holding rallies in her home state.   I have no idea what her goal is, or her strategy.  Seems like she doesn’t either.

  289. 289.

    Bill Arnold

    @WaterGirl:

    I always like it when lurkers de-lurk. I’m sorry if my comment made you feel less than welcome.

    This place has a lot of lurkers, FWIW.
    And thanks for de-lurking, DB11.

  290. 290.

    DB11

    @Omnes Omnibus: Ya, I get it. People are wound up and they therefore project insinuations onto comments that don’t necessarily deserve them. And it can take a good number of comments before you can minimally infer someone’s actual intentions.

    I’ve lurked at a bunch of different sites (since the 2000 cycle), so I fully understand the heightened vigilance against the very-real possibility of newcomers being trolls, rat-fuckers or bots — especially since the 2016 CA / FB / Russian interference.

    But communities, like parties, need to be renewed with fresh blood from time to time (and not in the tree of liberty / blood of patriots sense!)  So it can be important for a community to be aware of how it treats its newcomers if it wants to continue to thrive in the future as it has in the past.

    Maybe this moment isn’t the ideal time to de-lurk, but WTF!

  291. 291.

    Kraux Pas

    @Chyron HR: What possesses someone to act like a deranged screaming moron in support of Joe Biden?

    No candidate has a monopoly on asshole supporters. And some people are steadfast in their resolve that Democrats will lose elections if they propose doing anything remotely ambitious, no matter how many we lose trying to avoid scaring the bourgeoisie.

  292. 292.

    Geminid

    @WaterGirl: I remember seeing Tim Kaine on a Sunday show October 2016 and hearing him pounding the infrastructure issue. “We proposed in our platform the biggest infrastructure program in American history.” I remember saying, “Yes! They’ve got it.” But they didn’t get it. I watched TV then and the ads I saw were all about what an asshole Trump was. If Hillary had toured Pennsylvania talking about restoring highways and commuter rail and rebuilding bridges “with American engineering and American workers, the best in the world!”, she would have given her campaign the positive theme it needed. I am not sure she made the most of Tim Kaine. He was Governor and Senator and helped turn a red state blue. Did the Clinton campaign encourage and value his input on issues and messaging?

  293. 293.

    Cacti

    @Chyron HR:  Elizabeth Warren is not a talented political strategist.

    It hurts the feelings of the Warren faithful to hear this, but there it is.

  294. 294.

    the Conster

    @Suzanne:

    She’s a better learner than Sanders, that’s for sure, but her praxis around becoming a Democrat is her belief in fairer markets.  Her low polling with black Dems is not because they don’t agree that the markets aren’t rigged but that the existential threat isn’t coming from billionaires, it’s coming from the white majority who gave us Trump.

  295. 295.

    Kraux Pas

    If 2016 was Dewey defeats Truman for the digital age, is Elizabeth Warren the new Adlai Stevenson?

    “All the thinking people support you.”

    That’s not enough.

  296. 296.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @DB11: Also, just so you feel welcome here:  Fuck you.  You fucking moron!

    If that doesn’t make you feel like a regular, I don’t know what will.

  297. 297.

    Barbara

    Lucky for us it’s enough for most of the ardent Trump supporters to vent their suck it libtard fantasies on-line. The good news here is that most people are fundamentally lazy.

  298. 298.

    Emma from FL

    @schrodingers_cat: I am still doing it and have been saying it since the primary season started. That hasn’t changed. Would Biden be my first choice? No. But if he comes out of the melee as our candidate, I’m in.

  299. 299.

    Kraux Pas

    @the Conster: Her low polling with black Dems is not because they don’t agree that the markets aren’t rigged but that the existential threat isn’t coming from billionaires, it’s coming from the white majority who gave us Trump.

    Those billionaires and Trump’s support are part of a feedback loop that’s crushing regular folk of all races. One that Biden seems willing to do nothing to fix.

  300. 300.

    J R in WV

    We have early voting here in West Virginia, have had for years. But wife and I have never taken advantage of it, we prefer to go to our polling place, the gym at the K-8 combined elementary school – middle school, former high school nearby.

    A couple of years ago was the first time we had to wait… after checking in and signing the “book” we sat down on the bottom seat of the pull-out bleacher at the back of 30 or 40 people ahead of us, and then scooted to our left as people got up to go to one of the voting machines. Perhaps the least terrible way to wait to vote, indoors, seated with neighbors.

    Pretty nice, actually.

    As of right now, I intend to vote for Senator Professor Warren, but our primary is way late in May… so I may be voting for Joe Biden.

  301. 301.

    LC

    @schrodingers_cat:

    She may also have simply not had any electoral strategy that *would* have worked. This may well be the best she was going to get.  You can’t underestimate how much “baked in loyalty” matters, I think. “That person has put in the time and we know them” has a lot of appeal to people.

    Biden has a huge reservoir of that with a lot of standard D voters. Sanders has spent the last 4-5 years consolidating his base that thinks he is the one who has always been there for them.

    Thus the whole “she’s really good, we like her, but not our first choice” vibe for Warren.  Flat out showing she is better at it may have been the only way to get to the solid showing she has had. We don’t know. She spiked when Sanders had his heart attack but when he came back the crowd went back to who they knew mostly. (Not entirely.)

    Would she have done better attacking Bernie straight up? Impossible to say. If she had done that early the snake emoji brigade may have stomped her out of existence back when she was polling in the sub-10s. She wasn’t denting Biden’s support back then.  I do think she probably should have been willing to go after him when he made it obvious he was happy to blow up the non-aggression agreement and attack her. But even then, I’m not sure how much it would have actually helped her vs just tank them both.

  302. 302.

    debbie

    @the Conster:

    Her goal was not to alienate his supporters. They’ve shown they’re willing to stay home on Election Day if they don’t get their way. Doesn’t that seem like a reasonable strategy?

  303. 303.

    janesays

    Next on the agenda (and there will be pressure for it to happen before Tuesday) is announcing his vice-presidential pick…

    Ummm… what?

    No candidate has ever announced their VP pick only four contests into the primaries, so I’m not exactly clear why you would would assume this would be “next” on the agenda. I mean, there’s certainly no rule against doing so, and while I could see some potential upside to such a bold move, I think there’s also a reasonable chance it would get serious blowback. I’m glad Biden won SC, and I’m glad he won more convincingly than the polls were suggesting he would, but this race still has a long way to go. He opened up a good opportunity to prevent Sanders from running away with the nomination, but this was far from a knockout blow. Sanders is still going to win California by a pretty substantial margin, and odds are that he’ll pick up more delegates Tuesday than Biden overall, largely thanks to early voting. What’s important is that there’s now at least a chance Biden can keep himself within striking distance of Sanders after Super Tuesday, which is all he needs, since a number of states after Super Tuesday look very favorable to him.

    Anyway, I wouldn’t hold my breath on a Biden VP announcement happening anytime in the next 48 hours. Or even the next month, really. I imagine a number of potential VP picks would be a bit hesitant to accept such an offer just yet, since Bernie is still at least a slight favorite right now to win the most delegates overall. The only example we have of any candidate trying such a move in the primaries is Ted Cruz (who did it much later in the primaries than this), and the move reeked of desperation. I think if Biden followed in Cruz’ footsteps, it would more likely come across as a Hail Mary pass from a guy who doesn’t think he can win the nomination without some weird stunt.

  304. 304.

    Cacti

    @the Conster:  At this point it just looks like she’s flailing.

    Had she taken this tack from the start re:  “Bernie has good ideas, but doesn’t get anything done” she might be in a very different position now.

  305. 305.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @the Conster:

    Her low polling with black Dems is not because they don’t agree that the markets aren’t rigged but that the existential threat isn’t coming from billionaires, it’s coming from the white majority who gave us Trump.

    I did not know  until this very thread that black Democrats in the South are “the bourgeoisie”

  306. 306.

    the Conster

    @Kraux Pas:

    Yet, in an actual diverse state like SC, he won overwhelmingly, and all age groups.   His popularity *such as it is* stems from the fact that as a white man, he modeled how to be a true ally to the first black president without stepping in front of him or throwing shade at him.   That’s a big fucking deal as he once said.

  307. 307.

    DB11

    @Bill Arnold: I agree with all of that Bill — if he can navigate the general without incident.

    I think he’s way too cozy with Republicans — bi-partisan comity and all that rot — and doesn’t recognize, as Liz does, the degree of change required if the republic as-dreamed is to survive. But with someone like Harris as VP and with the people that would surround him in Cabinet, I’m not worried that he would do something actively stupid as President.

    The larger problem for the general is that the public reaction to Trump’s far-worse decline is already baked into his numbers. Whereas for non-political junkies, the contrast between 2016 Biden and 2020 Biden on the campaign trail will be shocking to witness, so the media will play that way up.

    Imagine a key campaign event where Biden loses the plot (which he has often done throughout his career). He used to bluster his way through, piling paragraphs atop one another until he — and they — couldn’t breathe. Now he’s just a likely to stand there looking confused and clueless.

    A single major zone-out like that, played on a YouTube loop and propagated through Twitter and FB could end his electoral fortunes and return Trump to office.

    That’s the (considerable) risk the party plays with Biden. He’s a well-known, well-trusted and well-liked quantity in a time of political and existential despair — but let’s not mistake him for a safe choice.

  308. 308.

    Kraux Pas

    IJim, Foolish Literalist:  I did not know  until this very thread that black Democrats in the South are “the bourgeoisie”

    No the bourgeoisie are the comfortable a-holes who all this tactical voting are meant to placate. The intended audience of the electability argument.

    Doesn’t matter how many times we lose playing this game, we keep deciding to play it every four years.

  309. 309.

    the Conster

    @Cacti:

    I would have been her biggest fan if she had come out of the blocks to put that lazy ass fraud Sanders in his place, and I kept waiting, but she let M4All get wrapped around her axle then walked into the wine cave trap she set for Pete.  Then she promptly ran out of money.  She went hard after Bloomberg for NDAs, and let Sanders stand there scot free about his campaign’s NDA hush money payoffs to the sexually harassed women.   Bloomberg is Biden’s problem, not hers.

    I don’t know why all the candidates let the old fraud get away with being a nasty POS for so long.  No one has yet to demand he answer for being in the Mueller Report,- what he knew, when he knew it, and why he never said anything to his cult of gullible dopes who hang on his every word.   There are still so many ways to go after him, and only Bloomberg seems willing.

  311. 311.

    Kraux Pas

    @the Conster: Yet, in an actual diverse state like SC, he won overwhelmingly, and all age groups

    And he lost similarly in an actual diverse state like Nevada. Or does diversity only count when a group is doing what you want?

  312. 312.

    Anya

    @debbie: I think Perez prioritized to pacify the Bernie faction and that was the expense of what was good for the party as a whole. In his defense, I think he wanted to ensure that the 2016 fracture would be prevented. Let’s see if that works if Bernie loses the nomination.

  314. 314.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kraux Pas:

    Doesn’t matter how many times we lose playing this game, we keep deciding to play it every four years.

    the bourgeoisie derailed the Bill Bradley Progressive Juggernaut?  Howard Dean could have beat Bush in ’04? Other than the childish fantasy that Bernie Sanders could have beaten trump, in which other cycles does your cos-play radical bleating about “the bourgeoisie” obtain?

  315. 315.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Anya:

    I think Perez prioritized to pacify the Bernie faction and that was the expense of what was good for the party as a whole

    I agree, but in fairness, he was far from the only national Dem to wander into that thicket

  318. 318.

    Kraux Pas

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Well I was kinda young for the 2000 election, I don’t remember the primary but 04 would be a perfect example. The media did everything they could to hamper any candidate campaigning against our misbegotten military mistakes. Dean was portrayed as wild and scary. Kerry was safe.

    Then Kerry lost because he had no credibility criticizing (or dissembling) Bush for his most serious mistake.

  319. 319.

    DB11

    @Elizabelle: I’m not saying I think they actually have that grass roots, on-the-ground support — but that’s the media myth.

    What they do have is a far more extensive (bilionaire-supported) party and communications machinery, and they fight harder and dirtier for lesser office: starting with the school boards, through municipal offices and especially at the state level.

    (Prime examples were Kemp’s GA electoral fuckery that stole the governorship from Adams and Gillum’s near loss in Florida.)

    The number and quality of actual ground troops though is highly questionable. Might be like the white nationalists: they talk a great game and get disproportionate and weirdly sympathetic media coverage, but turnout at real-world events is usually a joke: a few lame losers looking lost and forlorn, wandering around and wondering what to do.

  320. 320.

    Kraux Pas

    @the Conster: Primaries are way more representative than caucuses.

    True, but that’s not what Nevada has and it doesn’t change the fact that Nevada is diverse.

    Do you think Biden or someone else would have won Nevada if it was a primary? CA seems ready to go for Bernie. That’s a diverse primary state.

  321. 321.

    Tom Q

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yes. Much of Hillary’s VP strategy was hamstrung by the fact that so many governorships were held by the GOP. This meant both that the pool of governor choices was limited (basically, Dayton of MN was the only one who qualified) and that there were few appealing Senators who wouldn’t have cost the party a seat if they won VP. Kaine was the best choice in that narrowed field.

    I think Hillary saw the fact that she was female as mold-shattering/threat to the system in the same way Obama’s candidacy had been, and she was looking for a Biden-like reassuring figure as Veep. I agreed at the time, but now I wonder if choosing a minority man — like Julian Castro — might have juiced minority turnout enough to erase those miniscule WI/MI/PA margins.

    Of course, none of us could have foreseen Wikileaks/Russia/Comey. Drawing any lessons from a black swan election like 2016 is probably futile. (I agree with the person who posted the other day, that if people could have re-voted two days later, Hillary would have won comfortably. Trump was beneficiary of the most perfect storm: everyone thinking Hillary had it nailed, even while Comey was changing the calculus. Brexit on steroids.)

  324. 324.

    the Conster

    @Kraux Pas:

    I think white people are gonna white people and not vote like black women.  Anyone still falling for an unaccomplished socialist 80 year old cardiac patient being boosted by Republicans and the Russians are just being clueless dumbasses.

  325. 325.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kraux Pas: so for the last six presidential elections, you have one not very convincing example– nothing about Howard Dean’s post-’04 career suggests he would have been a particularly strong candidate, and the Iraq War wasn’t nearly as unpopular in ’04 as it was two years later– to support “we go through this every four years and lose”.

    and you still have to explain how African-American voters in South Carolina are part of the “bourgeoisie”, or are they unwitting victims of false consciousness?

  326. 326.

    Chyron HR

    @Tom Q:

    I agree with the person who posted the other day, that if people could have re-voted two days later, Hillary would have won comfortably. Trump was beneficiary of the most perfect storm: everyone thinking Hillary had it nailed, even while Comey was changing the calculus. Brexit on steroids.

    And yet the UK voted for Brexit again the second time around.

  327. 327.

    WaterGirl

    @Bill Arnold:

    This place has a lot of lurkers, FWIW.

    I figured that out when several lurkers volunteered to help with testing.  Now I am reminded of that happy fact when lurkers use the site feedback form to report issues.  We have way more lurkers than commenters, I think.

  328. 328.

    WaterGirl

    @DB11:

    So it can be important for a community to be aware of how it treats its newcomers if it wants to continue to thrive in the future as it has in the past.

    For a little while, I would post a “welcome!” comment whenever I approved someone’s first comment.  But I stopped because maybe it seemed too hokey.

  329. 329.

    Kraux Pas

    @the Conster: Maybe it’s the age difference, but every black person I know, including my ex and my once-and-future roomie,  are supporting Sanders or Buttigieg. Black people aren’t the monolith of your racistish fantasies.

  330. 330.

    Chris Johnson

    @the Conster: That or they’re very very VERY serious about the progressive agenda to the point that they are willing to overlook almost anything.

    I get that. I’ve been on that path, still am, considering that I am all in for Warren (in Bernie’s home state). This is literally life and death: on the one hand we have billionaires trying to buy the Presidency outright, on the other we have climate change driven by the ultra-wealthy, and on some third extra hand we’ve got the economy finally cratering as the non-moron ultra-rich figure out that you can’t tax cut a virus, and that all their shit is about to fall apart.

    Trying to be centrist right now is literally death.

  331. 331.

    johnnybuck

    @Kraux Pas: Howard Dean was never going to win the nomination. Full. Stop.

    It was going to be an uphill battle to beat Bush, regardless the candidate, in the middle of a fucking war no matter how badly it was going.

    We’ve won the popular vote in 6 of the last 7 Presidential elections, held the office 16 out of the last 27 years. The last status quo ‘loser” was Michael Dukakis in 1988. Possibly before you were even born.

  333. 333.

    Kraux Pas

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Well, I think a lot of Democrats could’ve won in 16. Tho if there were any others likely to lose, Bernie def made that list. I never had the impression that Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter were deemed safe picks. They won. Obama won. He certainly wasnt deemed the safe pick.

  334. 334.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @schrodingers_cat: But this is something that many people don’t want to hear.

    And many Jackals didn’t want to hear what AA women were telling them when they not only preferred Uncle Joe to Kamala Harris, but stayed that way when the Senator from CA went after him figuring they’d fall to her after he was discredited:

    • Jobs 1 through 5 (maybe 1 through countable infinity) this fall is to stomp Agolf Twitler & remove as many Trumpistas from government as possible; everything else has to wait
    • Biden is the surest bet to win: He does not drive away potential voters due to latent racism or misogyny, is a calming influence who can be forceful without being strident or threatening, and is trusted by the AA community after his faithful service as Obama’s second banana

    This old white coot heard that loud & clear after Harris charged into SC, took aim at Biden’s support among AA women & did more damage to her own campaign than to his.

    IMO Kamala Harris would make a fine POTUS. So would Elizabeth Warren, once she ran her plans through the pragmatism shredder. (And I would take great amusement from a VP debate in which either one took Mikey Dense’s empty suit apart with a pipe wrench.) But Democrats have had no shortage of outstanding Presidential material who couldn’t work out a path to the White House: Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hilary Clinton – hell, throw in Fritz Mondale, Mike Dukakis and even George McGovern (one of the decentest persons ever to hold high office)! It’s just that sometimes you can’t get there from wherever you started out.

  335. 335.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Chris Johnson:

    Trying to be centrist right now is literally death.

    how many of the 41 House seats Dems flipped in 2017/18 (I’m including Connor Lamb) were flipped by “centrists”? One of the stories I’m hearing from last night (that I haven’t seen data on) is that Biden did very well with Joe Cunningham’s voters in a traditionally red area. Is Mark Kelly a ‘centrist”? How about John Hickenlooper? Barbara Bollier?

  336. 336.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kraux Pas:

    Speaking from inside California, I wouldn’t put it into Bernie’s bag just yet. Warren has some pretty strong support and we have enough African American voters that Biden will probably have a better showing than polls currently indicate.

    The wild card is the Latinx vote, which is much more consequential than it is in other western states like Texas. Our Latinx voters are a powerful political block, so I’ll be interested to see if the Bernie phenomenon is a Nevada-only thing or if it’s going to hold true in California.

    As Omnes alluded to above, I will be keeping my word to listen to Black women and marking my ballot for Biden, but my husband and many of my friends will be voting for Warren. I think I only know one Bernie voter IRL, and she’s a nurse who lives up north.

  337. 337.

    Bill Arnold

    @DB11:

    The larger problem for the general is that the public reaction to Trump’s far-worse decline is already baked into his numbers.

    Disagree. There has been a kid-gloves treatment of DJT’s cognitive dysfunctions/decline in the US media. What should be broadcast as alarming is being treated as normal, as Betty C said yesterday re post-media analysis of a DJT press conference:

    And when I say “interesting,” I mean in the sense that watching someone shape fresh dog turds into little squares, frost them with dumpster slime and serve them as petit fours would be “interesting.”

    This gentle treatment of DJT by the media could undergo a rapid phase change, especially if justifiably pushed.

  339. 339.

    Kraux Pas

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: nothing about Howard Dean’s post-’04 career suggests he would have been a particularly strong candidate

    Well, he was in charge of the DNC in 06 and I remember that being a pretty good year for us. I think his strategy of “if you run in more places, you’ll win in more places” had some legs.

  340. 340.

    the Conster

    @Chris Johnson:

    so sick of this purity progressive bullshit that calls me *centrist* when I’ve been voting for the most progressive candidates every election since Carter.  When Reagan won, then won again, I realized that white people don’t want progress, they want whatever privilege they get from keeping the status quo in place and to keep as many of “those people” down that they can.  When Obama got elected, legitimately, in landslides, twice, it broke the brains of whites to the point that they prefer treason with Russia to sharing the country with women and POC.

    Go talk to the MAGAs as a white man (assuming you are one) and convince them, because I’m not your problem.  I’ve grown up since the days I was shop steward for a public service union organized by a Trotskyite and come to see white people for what they are – and progressives are full of shit.  I’m a liberal Democrat, from the accomplishment wing of the coalition party that works to secure the rights of first class citizenship over economic populism for the white working and middle class.

  342. 342.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Uncle Cosmo: a couple of points on Harris: Her fund-raising was slowed, I think, by the Buttigieg boomlet, and then Steyer and Bloomberg screwed the whole field, so she couldn’t put together the ground game she needed, and she named her sister her campaign manager, something that always makes me nervous.

    Much is being made of Jim Clyburn’s apparent telling of Biden to put his house in order. I wonder if part of that is his campaign manager who is… his sister. That may have worked in homey old Delaware, but the national campaign suggests maybe a new hand is needed. Ron Klain comes to mind. And the Biden campaign is saying they have been seeing some money roll in, but I haven’t seen numbers.

  343. 343.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kraux Pas: Well, he was in charge of the DNC in 06 and I remember that being a pretty good year for us.

    Yup, there were no other factors in that cycle. What is it with a certain kind of Very Online Leftie and White Guys Who Shout?

    Like “Medicare For All”, “Fifty State Strategy” is a fine slogan. A fine slogan indeed.

  344. 344.

    Chris Johnson

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    So fine, get elected.
    Then what are you going to do?
    You’re not going to tax cut your way out of climate change. It will not give a FUCK whether you look ‘bipartisan’ and we may already be out of time.
    Post-Reagan economics has given us total vulnerability to any pandemic that comes along: people CANNOT get health care or even get tested, they cannot afford it.
    Go ahead and redefine centrism as something ready to deal with any of this: please. I don’t care what you call it, we have to deal with it.

  345. 345.

    Suzy

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bernie carping about “corporate democrats” is a sign for what’s to come. His attacks against Hillary in 2016 will pale in comparison with what he is going to unleash against Joe Biden. NOT looking forward to that.

  346. 346.

    the Conster

    @Suzy:

    I don’t think he’ll pull the same shit on Joe Biden that he did on Hillary.  He has a big problem with women in his way.

  348. 348.

    Chris Johnson

    @the Conster:

    When Reagan won, then won again, I realized that white people don’t want progress, they want whatever privilege they get from keeping the status quo in place and to keep as many of “those people” down that they can.

    Then we are strangely on the same side. Fine, call it what you like, but we have to STOP exactly that privileged status quo and elitism you’re complaining about. How much more obvious can it even be that we are hitting a wall with that stuff? Status quo is ready to kill us, real literally.

  349. 349.

    the Conster

    @Chris Johnson:

    White men voted for Trump at the rate of 67%.  White women at 53%.  If you want progress, go talk to all the MAGAs you know.  If white men voted GOP at the same rate as white women, we’d have Dem mandates every election.  Maybe look around you.  I’m in Boston, surrounded by MAGAs, and they’re fine with everything that’s going on, so you’ve got your work cut out for you.  You’d better get started.

  350. 350.

    DB11

    @WaterGirl:  At DK they post a welcome and Rules-of-the-Road reply to every first-time commenter (as I’m sure you know). Not sure if it has any real value, but an acknowledgement and welcome can’t hurt. Or just take OO’s approach and tell them to FO!

    The bigger issue is to not default to a reflexive assumption that a new commenter is ill-intended if there’s the slightest ambiguity to their first few comments.

    There is a fragile period as a de-lurker before you’ve established some trust and credibility — and ill-founded, aggressive attacks during that ‘probationary’ period are a sure turn-off for many first-timers.

    Like I said, my skin is pretty thick and I anticipated the possibility of a suspicious reaction like I received from SC and you, so it didn’t dissuade me from persisting. And the fact that you both backed off immediately (once ascertaining where I was coming from) certainly helps.

    But a more timid or introverted lurker might be one-and-done in a similar circumstance. And I’ve observed that happen here more than once.

    What I would hate to see happen here is what happened at Pharyngula for example: where the rabidness of the regular commentariat scared off most of the new potential community members, and as those regulars slowly drifted (or died) off, the site became a shell of what it once was. (Not saying it’s ever been as bad here as there, but the point remains)

  351. 351.

    Kraux Pas

    @Mnemosyne: Speaking from inside California, I wouldn’t put it into Bernie’s bag just yet. Warren has some pretty strong support and we have enough African American voters that Biden will probably have a better showing than polls currently indicate.

    Well, the polling I’ve seen, including a fresh one someone posted last night, suggested a strong Bernie win with Warren as the only other potentially viable person. Things may move, but they have a long way to go.

    I’m still going to cast my vote early for Warren tomorrow, as much as I think stopping Biden is important. I’m not into that whole cast your vote to spite the candidate you hate the most game.

  352. 352.

    Chris Johnson

    @the Conster: I’m in Vermont. I’m surrounded by Bernie-ites. I’m doing the best I can to prevent them from flipping tables and going home if he doesn’t get the Presidency on a silver platter, and it’s not looking real promising. Got to hand it to Putin, it’s amazing how fucked we are given how great the danger and damage is. I’m not sure whether you expect me to get MAGAs to go for Biden, I’m very much a Warren supporter and the only thing I really like about Biden is that he’s stopping Bloomberg from getting any further.

  353. 353.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Chris Johnson: I share your general frustrations, but bashing “centrism”, pretending that the American electorate, and electoral college, and Constitutional system are something different than they are, or that they’re going to change dramatically in the next eight months isn’t gonna change much.

    I see a lot of people here say things like “Biden doesn’t get it” and “Biden won’t change things”. I’ll ask for the nth time: Does anybody think President Biden is going to veto progressive bills sent to him by a Dem House and Senate, or that Majority Leader McConnell is gonna tremble when President Bernie tells him to look out the window?

  354. 354.

    Kraux Pas

    @the Conster: Oh well, just hand wave away the SC results, as *progressives* are so good at doing.

    I literally saw you handwave away the results of another contest upthread. The hypocrisy is strooooong with you.

  355. 355.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kraux Pas:

    I think his strategy of “if you run in more places, you’ll win in more places” had some legs.

    And one of the big ways you win in more places is by running — wait for it — more centrist and even conservative Democrats to match those communities, rather than assuming that they’re champing at the bit to vote for a fiery leftist.

  356. 356.

    Chris Johnson

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s why I will absolutely vote for Biden if he’s the nominee, plus make exactly those arguments to my hippie friends and berniacs, PLUS remind them how much Biden will owe Liz Warren for the kamikaze attack on Bloomberg which Biden wasn’t capable of doing himself. Biden does not blow off shit like that, and I’m really glad Warren helped him. Which she totally did.

  357. 357.

    Another Scott

    @Kraux Pas: A 60-something male AA friend from high school in Ohio who is reasonably well plugged in (he had Obama’s cell phone number) said he would never, ever vote for Kamala because of her record in California.  I tried to argue with him about it, but he was adamant.

    People are different and not monoliths.  It is indeed always good to remember that.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  358. 358.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Robby Mook actually did a great job in 2016 and got Hillary the popular vote win. I always feel bad that he’s been demonized for his “failure” in a black swan election.

  359. 359.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Another Scott: damn

    I’ll admit, I sometimes forget that there are more people that Rose Tweeters who have problems with KH’s record as AG. I think one of our lawyer-regulars here said they hear the same from colleagues

  360. 360.

    Kraux Pas

    @Mnemosyne: And one of the big ways you win in more places is by running — wait for it — more centrist and even conservative Democrats to match those communities, rather than assuming that they’re champing at the bit to vote for a fiery leftist.

    Do you think those centrist and conservative candidates won by proposing concrete solutions to real problems their constituents were facing or by running ads full of hazy nostalgia for a bygone era of bipartisan comity?

    Moderates had a good candidate too. Klobuchar. They didn’t pick her. Wonder why…XX

  361. 361.

    Mnemosyne

    @the Conster:

    I’m so spoiled to live in La-La Land, where even most old white guys hate Donald Trump’s guts. I won’t lie, it’s pretty magical.

  362. 362.

    Another Scott

    @Suzy: Bernie has his 2016 stump speech.  That’s all he has.  That’s all he talks about.  Expect him to say anything different, at any time, under any circumstances, is a way to be continually disappointed.

    My $0.02.  YMMV.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  363. 363.

    wmd

    Anecdote (as a Warren supporter I’m not super excited by this one).

    Costco yesterday I overhear  conversation between a product demonstrator ( 60 something free sample person). Her friend talks about voting, she says it’s hard – she’s in Santa Cruz and has been a Republican all her life. She’s not a Trumpster, but she absolutely cannot become a socialist.

    I did not engage with her. As an anecdote it makes me that the Republican attacks will be jingoistic. I’m concerned that code words will substitute for informed and thoughtful consideration of policy – this particular voter seems indicative of a sizeable portion of “I’m team red” voters.

    How much that labeling works; and if it helps turnout younger demographics is an open question.

  364. 364.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kraux Pas:

    “Concrete solutions for real problems” on the local and state level are usually more along the lines of repairing roads and improving schools, not Medicare For All or climate change. And they’ll be slightly different for each community, which is why it’s important to let Democrats run on what their constituents find important, not what national candidates find important.

    Like it or not, most Democrats like Obamacare, think it saved lives, and want it to be improved, not repealed. That’s why the M4A message is not resonating — they don’t understand why we have to start all over again from scratch when we have a perfectly good law that needs some repair work after the Republicans tried to destroy it. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how people who are not terminally online think about these things. 

  365. 365.

    tam1MI

    @MomSense:Once black women expressed views white women didn’t like, we turned on them.

    This white woman got the message loud and clear. I’m voting for Biden.

  366. 366.

    DB11

    @Bill Arnold: When I say his numbers are baked in with the public, I’m talking about that 40-42% floor that his approval rating never sinks below (beyond maybe a single outlying poll), regardless of how egregious his latest outrage — or how incoherent his latest speech.

    There has been a kid-gloves treatment of DJT’s cognitive dysfunctions/decline in the US media. What should be broadcast as alarming is being treated as normal

    This is incontestable and I fully agree with this statement, however I see little evidence to-date for your following statement:

    This gentle treatment of DJT by the media could undergo a rapid phase change, especially if justifiably pushed

    It could and should, but the fact that it hasn’t yet lends pause: how bad will things have to get for the media to change their tone?

    And even then, what gives you any confidence that Dean Baquet (as a prime example) will allow any change of the extreme ‘both-sides’ journalism that the Times has become so wedded to under his tenure — and this while the republic is rapidly falling into outright authoritarianism, and white nationalist cruelty is celebrated and propagated from the highest office in the land.

    I hope you are right, but facts-on-the-ground to-date don’t yet suggest even couched optimism for that necessary change. I see it far more likely that the media will continue to give Trump a pass, but will pile on Biden with all guns blazing: just like the Times coverage of the HRC email story — while they concurrently spiked and refuted any suggestion of Trump’s Russian collaboration.

  367. 367.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Kraux Pas: Eh. Picking between two candidates you can stand (or better) and trying to give one of them a shot vs the candidate you think would be a disaster isn’t “spite voting”. It’s intelligently thinking through your options and picking the course of action that best fits your desired outcome. Risk management. :)

    Interestingly, the polling averages in CA have Biden slightly above 15% and Warren slightly below. Both Warren AND Biden have gone up a few percentages points in the last couple days at the expense of Bernie & Bloomberg.

    The week prior to that saw Sanders gaining about 7% support after his wins and the emerging “inevitable” narrative. That’s started to drop a bit.

    Basically: Both Biden and Warren have a decent shot to reach 15% in CA. But at this point, Biden seems to be doing well and will have some momentum going into Tuesday. Strategically it’s probably more important to vote Warren and keep her above 15% if you want to lower Bernie’s overall delegate count.

  369. 369.

    WaterGirl

    @DB11:

    At DK they post a welcome and Rules-of-the-Road reply to every first-time commenter (as I’m sure you know).

    That’s an interesting thought.  Not for everyone, because everyone here gets to do their own thing, but I might think about doing that when I am the one who approves a first comment.

    P.S. I didn’t back off when you said more about where you were coming from.  I tried to explain that in that moment, I had it in my head that Biden, Bernie and Bloomberg were the only Democratic candidates that have a real shot.

    How I could have forgotten Warren in that moment, when she is my top choice is a testament to how much the nay-saying can impact our views of the race.

    Even so, I was a bit short with you in the way I asked my question, so I’m sorry about that.

  370. 370.

    Hoodie

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    The irony is that Biden probably “gets it” better than most of the people saying this.   Joe has long been in the same game as legislative warriors like Pelosi and Reid. Do you really think he believes that Republicans will be happy going along with him?  Hardly.  It will be hardball negotiation 24/7, like the stuff he was involved with in the tax and shutdown standoffs with McConnell during the Obama administration.  It may be of marginal help to be “friends” with some of those guys because at least you can get some sense of their pressure points and how they think tactically.  One thing these guys are not going to do is wilt in the face of Bernie’s finger wagging or the brilliance of somebody’s health care plan.  They have far more leverage than that because Trumpism represents a solid at least 30% of the electorate and have allies of convenience that push that to the low to mid-40s,  and they get a lot of money from people who want things to go even further backward, like building more coal-fired plants because they own coal mines.  Some of these guys are now even willing to take help from criminal oligarchs.

    A lot of progressives are big on bringing up FDR as an icon of progressivism, but what was the famous saying about FDR, a mediocre intellect but a first rate temperament?  There’s a bit of that in Biden. Not to say he has anywhere the chops of FDR, but he is a guy with a fair level of emotional intelligence, which can be useful if it’s complemented by a good electoral strategy, a strong staff (including a well-chosen running mate) that makes up for his weaknesses, and a bit of good luck. The thing that a lot of progressives don’t seem to get is that Biden will be relatively easy to lobby if you can generate grass roots support for whatever issue is your focus because he isn’t particularly ideological.

  371. 371.

    Kraux Pas

    @Mnemosyne: Like it or not, most Democrats like Obamacare, think it saved lives, and want it to be improved, not repealed. That’s why the M4A message is not resonating

    Believe it or not, I like Obamacare. I agree that it saved lives and want to see it improved, not repealed. M4All is not my preferred solution. That doesn’t mean I can’t embrace a candidate that supports it, especially if that candidate demonstrates a realistic view of the hurdles to navigate and an openness to compromise.

    The main things drawing me to Warren are her anti-corruption and anti-monopolist agenda and ideas to give workers more input in corporate decision making.

  372. 372.

    Geminid

    I read some broad based exit poll results after the the 2008 election and was struck by the finding that 7% of Obama voters described themselves as “conservative.” Polls after the 2012 election showed a similar result. These were self descriptions, and the polls did not say why these people called themselves conservative or why they voted for Obama. Politics is simple in some ways, complicated in others. I remember talking about log cabins one time with my boss, a masonry contracter. I remarked, “people are funny about log cabins.” He  said back, “People are funny.”

  373. 373.

    Bill Arnold

    @DB11:

    It could and should, but the fact that it hasn’t yet lends pause: how bad will things have to get for the media to change their tone?

    Treat it as a goal. The future behavior of the media is flexible, and depends in part on how it(they) are nudged. That’s a large part of how the DJT campaign and allies won 2016; they dominated the media cycles. (There are however some bylines at the NYTimes that I’d very much like to see disappear.)

  374. 374.

    Kraux Pas

    @MisterForkbeard: Eh. Picking between two candidates you can stand (or better) and trying to give one of them a shot vs the candidate you think would be a disaster isn’t “spite voting”

    But it may be if you can’t stand either of them and no one has been numerically ruled out.

  375. 375.

    Hoodie

    @Kraux Pas: Yes, those are great things, particularly good ones to pursue in Congress as the senior senator from MA, following in the footsteps of your predecessor, who was a legislative lion but a lousy presidential candidate.  The president will have very little to do with that until it becomes law.  Obama was pretty hands-off in the creation of the ACA; he just wanted something passed.  He only stepped in to protect it as “Obamacare” because that’s what a chief executive does, you take the heat for your people.

  376. 376.

    Kraux Pas

    @Geminid: I read some broad based exit poll results after the the 2008 election and was struck by the finding that 7% of Obama voters described themselves as “conservative.”

    This number should be higher. If you’re literally conservative you try to be non-disruptive and think through the consequences of action.

    How the Republicans get away with calling themselves conservative is a crime against the English language.

  377. 377.

    Kraux Pas

    @Hoodie: The president will have very little to do with that until it becomes law.

    There’s a lot the president can do about the issues I described if they’re willing to aggressively enforce anti-trust legislation which has been basically ignored for decades.

  378. 378.

    DB11

    @WaterGirl:

    Even so, I was a bit short with you in the way I asked my question, so I’m sorry about that.

    No worries — I know you to be a well-meaning person from having read you here for so long, and I also realize that the current climate has everyone frazzled. I was also unnecessarily confronting in my final sentence of my reply, so my apologies for that.

    A big part of the issue is the toxic effect that purely on-line interaction has: eroding the basic civility and default respect that we would normally accord any stranger on the street.

    I try to keep that in mind when responding, but it’s not always easy to convey written tone properly at the best of times, let alone in the heat of the moment when responding to a perceived insult / aggression.

    Oh, and I would encourage you not to waver in your Warren support: it’s easy to conceive of possible scenarios where one or both or the front-runners fall — literally or figuratively — which would then re-set entirely all of the odds-making that people are currently asserting to ‘prove with math’ that she has no path.

    Odds, by their very nature are not so deterministic and must be recalculated with every new event. Sometimes the least likely possibility is the one that prevails in reality — that’s how Trump got elected in the first place!

  379. 379.

    Another Scott

    ICYMI:

    Thank you to our grassroots donors for a record-breaking February: more than $29 million raised! You’re helping build this campaign for the long haul. Take a look at what your support is building. https://t.co/JbcckLfKy1— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) March 1, 2020

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  381. 381.

    the Conster

    @Mnemosyne:

    You’d think downtown Boston is a safe blue dot of Trump hate, but it shocks me to hear the middle aged white guys – well paid professionals – normalize him and excuse him.  It’s fucking sickening.

  382. 382.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @lumpkin:

    Random assholes. And they’re not even tweets. I couldn’t find a couple of the accounts on Twitter, and it turns out @tepsac1 was dredging up the quotes from some reddit shithole. Extremely misleading.

  383. 383.

    Hoodie

    @Kraux Pas: Do you understand how vague anti-trust law is?  The courts will have a lot to do with any attempt to enforce existing anti-trust legislation, and the situation there is pretty grim.  To make much in the way of inroads there, you’d probably need new, more precise legislation and, even there, it could be tough sledding with this SC, which brings up another point.  One of the most important things the president does is appoint justices, which also doesn’t really have that much to do with what ideological stance you take.

  384. 384.

    Kraux Pas

    @Hoodie: Well, Biden has come down on the wrong side of these and other issues far too many times. I don’t trust him to improve any of it.

    Speaking of the SC, nice of Biden to clear the landing pad for Clarence Thomas, huh?

  387. 387.

    DB11

    @Bill Arnold:

    Treat it as a goal. The future behavior of the media is flexible, and depends in part on how it(they) are nudged.

    It’s a worthy goal and therefore not wasted effort, however improbable the desired outcome seems at the moment.

    It seems to me that one of the main reasons that we’ve arrived at this place has been the media’s widespread abdication of their prime journalistic responsibility of holding power to account.

    This generalized failure of the Fourth Estate is not surprising given today’s extreme concentration of media ownership in the hands of some of society’s wealthiest individuals (Murdoch / Zuckerberg / Bezos / Bloomberg amongst others) but it will become fatal if they continue to fail in playing their necessary role in our democracy.

    So yes, let’s push them in the required direction, and may Democrats begin to acquire the same skill of working the media refs as the Republicans have had for decades (since Regan).

  388. 388.

    Hoodie

    @Kraux Pas: Biden voted against Thomas.  He bungled the Anita Hill part, true, but I recall at the time that he thought the better reason for refusing Thomas was his ideology.  Hindsight is always 20/20.

  389. 389.

    LC

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’ll ask for the nth time: Does anybody think President Biden is going to veto progressive bills sent to him by a Dem House and Senate,

    This is something I used to swing over my parents and even myself. Biden isn’t the way forward by any means, but he isn’t going to go around trying to sabotage progressive stuff that lands on his desk. He won’t be pushing from the bully pulpit, but he isn’t going to stand in the way, either.

  391. 391.

    Kraux Pas

    @Bill Arnold: What about them? Do you think someone who enabled R politicians for decades while they turned into the threat to modern society they are now is suddenly going to fix the problem?

  392. 392.

    satby

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: the rich guy is doing pretty well actually:

    (And crossing two threads as Covid-19 is confirmed in IL)

    Gov. J.B. Pritzker has requested that hospitals across the state implement additional testing to improve surveillance for the virus, officials said. Illinois was the first state to provide for testing, and the governor had announced Friday that two more labs in Springfield and Carbondale, in addition to the current state lab in Cook County, will be able to provide testing next week.

  394. 394.

    Immanentize

    I want Steyer to announce he is supporting Warren.  I also want a 1971 Volvo P-1800.  Easier to get the latter, I suspect.

    It would be cool if Harris endorsed Biden, too.

  396. 396.

    WaterGirl

    @satby: So glad we have a Democratic governor for this.  (And everything else.)  This is one more way that people who live in states with R. leadership get screwed.

  397. 397.

    Eljai

    @Another Scott: That’s very encouraging.  You can’t tell by watching the news, but Warren is the only candidate besides Bernie with a polling average above the threshold in California.  And she’s closing in in Texas.  If she gets above 15% in both, she’s back in the game.

  399. 399.

    Immanentize

    @Kraux Pas: I think if all the chips were on the table, Joe Biden has done way more to stop, stymie, and improve right wing agendas that Sanders could ever claim.  It is no contest whatsoever.  Unless ineffectual bloviation counts as critical effort against the right wing agenda.  Except the NRA, of course.

  400. 400.

    Immanentize

    I know this thread is dead, but I just checked on some math thing that has been itching the back of my mind.  I can quite certainly report, with overwhelming certitude, that there is no Sanders revolution whatsoever.  There is not one state yet where he earned a larger percentage of the vote in 2020 versus 2016.  He has a ceiling and it is, seemingly state by state, his 2016 ceiling:

    State — 2016 % / 2020 % (going backwards)
    SC. — 26.2 / 19.9
    Nevada — 47.3 / 46.8
    N.H. — 60.1 /25.7
    Iowa — 49.6 / 26.5

    Nevada is his closest so far. The crowded field is helping him by splitting the “nope, not-Sanders” votes. Sanders gets votes from no one new compared to the votes he had four years ago. That is pretty scary pathetic.

  401. 401.

    Hoodie

    @Immanentize: Yeah, this is the thing that bothers me about a lot of the anti-Biden stuff.  He’s made mistakes, but he was a pretty solid liberal Dem senator for a long time, and a good VP to Obama, who he significantly aided in dealings with Congress.  I can understand that people have problems with his gaffes and his age and, if there was a younger, more progressive option that could figure out how to get elected, I would be for that person.  Harris offered some promise, but her campaign was train wreck.  Warren did better, but she isn’t getting there and I don’t see how she can given the current field with Bernie soaking up so much of the progressive vote.  She would have been very acceptable to a lot of folks, even those to the right of me, if she had displaced Bernie.

  404. 404.

    the Conster

    @Immanentize:

    The youth vote has been mythical since LBJ.  I don’t understand how anyone who knows anything about politics thinks it’s sufficient, unless you’re bamboozling them with half baked pie in the sky and they’re low info enough to fall for BS.  When Tad Devine devised the Sanders 2016 campaign strategy, it was to carve off the college age vote of the Obama coalition by pushing Everything is Going To Be Free Sanders and demonizing the Dem party using racism and misogyny- *identity politics* – as the way to attack Clinton and Obama as corrupt tools of corporate centrism whatever tf that is.  They happily emptied their pockets for him and got Trump in return.

  406. 406.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Immanentize: Your 2016/2020 comparison provides another indicator that the yoots and disaffected masses are not turning out for Bernie in droves. It doesn’t matter that there are more candidates running this time around: he has the advantage of being a well-known national candidate with a familiar brand, and if he and his brand were all that popular, he would not only have retained his support from 2016, he would also have added to it. That hasn’t happened – in fact the opposite – which belies the notion that the masses are yearning for a socialist savior in the form of Bernie Sanders.

  407. 407.

    Elizabelle

    WRT Sanders:  and let’s not forget the charming folks who are his brand:

    FTF NY Times link:  The Pied Pipers of the Dirtbag Left Want to Lead Everyone to Bernie Sanders

    Many listeners would never repeat what these podcast hosts say. So why do they desperately want to hear from them?

    It’s about Chapo Trap House, which appears to be mostly mouthy hipsterish males, with a few women in the mix.

    I put up a long excerpt from this article on the Wheels Keep Turning thread, comment 52.

    One of the money quotes:

    During the three-hour show, there is little vision laid out for what they want, beyond a Sanders presidency. There is a vision for what they want destroyed and how good it will feel to do that. The idea of actually taking power is terrifying, and they say so.

    The excerpt has a lot of the ugliness Chapo House directs at Democratic candidates and the party.   Watch your blood pressure.

    Obviously this is not all Sanders supporters.  But this appetite for destruction is out there, and the Sanders campaign does not disavow this rhetoric.  In fact, it is using the podcast as an organizing tool.

    And the Sanders campaign maintains a close relationship with the podcast. His senior adviser, David Sirota, and his national press secretary, Briahna Joy Gray, have also been on the podcast. At the Iowa show, a Sanders volunteer stood at the door with fliers and pins to hand out and an email list to gather names.

    Their followers — on the night in Iowa City more than 700 strong — come to hear them rage for three hours against the student debt, the high rent, the dead-end creative class jobs, and the feeling of hopelessness fighting against a liberal political establishment that seems polite when they are angry.

    They were promised a better life, a more dignified life, and they are done waiting for it.

    We all feel they (and we) deserve better.  It’s just that one candidate is pretty much rage and anger theatre, and they are hissssssing at the candidate who could build alliances and solutions.

  409. 409.

    Another Scott

    In other news, BlueVirginia.us:

    Federal District Judge Rules that Former Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli “Not Lawfully Appointed” as Acting USCIS Director

    “Policies that were put in place under Cuccinelli are now void”

    By lowkell – March 1, 2020 0

    This would all be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. Maybe “tragicomic?” Basically, anything and everything former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli touches turns to s***, just like with his incompetent, corrupt boss Donald Trump. Check it out, below, and also here, here and here. For more on Cuccinelli’s illustrious history, see The Video Is Clear: Ken Cuccinelli’s Been Cuckoo and Extreme Forever, Basically.

    […]

    Good, good.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  411. 411.

    Chris Johnson

    @Elizabelle: Yeah, because they’re being told to by the Russian trolls that inhabit that very subreddit mentioned in the NYT article. That whole article is what I’ve been trying to tell you folks. It’s a picture of a genuine left being subverted by Putin operatives. The Chapos are going to end up telling all their people to vote for Trump or some such thing.

    This, because (note the NYT-ness of the article!) Putin’s people always work both sides at the same time. This would not have got into the NYT if Putin wasn’t ready to start shivving Bernie. He’s got to set up the attacks in advance, and that provides an opportunity. Bernie is not being set up to win any more than Trump was being set up to win: he’s there to cause damage.

  412. 412.

    Elizabelle

    @Chris Johnson:   It’s not just Russian trolls, although I don’t doubt there are some participating.

    This is homegrown ugliness.  It’s been around a long time, in different guises.

    It’s id.  It wants what it wants, now.  It wants to destroy. And punish.

    It does not want to do the hard work to change and build.  It does not know how to get from A to B to …

  414. 414.

    Elizabelle

    @Hoodie:  Jagoff, you say?  From “Pittsburghese”:

    1. (chiefly in western Pennsylvania) a stupid, irritating, or contemptible person.

  415. 415.

    grandmaBear

    Today’s LA Times has a full-page ad by the ACLU in the first section basically promoting Bernie. There’s a table with candidates on 6 issues 1) Mass incarcerations: cut incarceration levels in half, 2) reproductive rights: prevent states from shutting down abortion providers, 3) criminal justice: decriminalize drug use and provide treatment over prisons, 4) immigrant justice: reduce the number of immigrants in detention by at least 75%, 5) voting rights: protect the right to vote for all Americans, including those incarcerated, and 6) national security: prevent CIA drone strikes that often kill civilians.  Bernie gets a yes on all but the drug one, Warren & Buttigieg get a no on 3 of them, Klobuchar on 4, Biden and Bloomberg aren’t on the chart because  they have “declined to take clear positions”. Misleading and cherry-picking chart.  I didn’t know the ACLU was promoting candidates for the primaries – it seems really dishonest to me and I expected better of the ACLU. And it’s really too late to rebut this in the newspaper before the primary on Tuesday.

  416. 416.

    Chris Johnson

    @Elizabelle: That’s the fatal flaw. It’s a huge problem, agreed.

    Raw id tears stuff down. It’s not about community-building. We have to do better than that.

    I just had a bernie-ac friend I’ve known since junior high, asking on Facebook sincerely why Bernie voted against the Magnitsky Act. Silence, of course, until I answered. I said, he’s not a Russia hawk, even though there’s reason to be: not paranoid even though they’ve been up to some SHIIIIT in recent years.

    Friend replied, I think it’s because the ability to ban people from the country could be abused.

    I went, that too, but bottom line is he’s not paranoid about Russia. And should be.

    Got a like from my friend on that last reply. Every little bit helps. My friend now has half a clue that Bernie is not suspicious of Russia being up to some shit, and didn’t balk at the notion of them being up to stuff.

  417. 417.

    the Conster

    @grandmaBear:

    Did they have a list of all the legislation Sanders has accomplished to do any of those things?  His gun votes?  His support for the fascist minuteman border thugs?  His Crime Bill vote, and touting his tough on crime pro-cop stance?  No?  Oh.

  418. 418.

    JanieM

    @grandmaBear: Any chance you could take a snapshot of it and make it available somewhere…..? I’ve poked around a bit online and can find anything, but I would love to have the evidence that the ACLU is doing that.

  419. 419.

    Bill Arnold

    @grandmaBear:

    I didn’t know the ACLU was promoting candidates for the primaries – it seems really dishonest to me and I expected better.

    Likewise. I’m sad if true; have been happily giving them donations for a couple of decades. Unless there is a good explanation, never again.

    @JanieM: yeah, want to see a screencap or something.

  420. 420.

    grandmaBear

    @JanieM: I’m having trouble figuring out how to make a copy of the whole page – it’s on page A7, if anyone else can see it.

  421. 421.

    Another Scott

    @Bill Arnold:

    Agreed it would be good to see the ad (I haven’t seen it online either). Mobilization for the 2018 Midterms:

    […]

    We, therefore, make the following commitments about our electoral work going forward:

    The ACLU will not endorse or oppose specific candidates for elected office. Our goal is to ensure that voters are educated about the potential consequences of an election, not to support specific candidates. Therefore, you will not see the ACLU setting up a PAC or independent expenditure arm.

    The ACLU will not tell people to vote for particular candidates. Educated voters can make their own decisions. The ACLU’s job is to provide voters with the information they need to know about what is at stake.

    The ACLU will not coordinate with any partisan organization. While the ACLU believes deeply in working in coalition with other non-profits, we have no interest in partisan coordination. Our aims are different from those of a political party, and are driven by issue-based goals. (We know, for instance, gerrymandered political maps that disenfranchise voters have been drawn by both Republicans and Democrats.) We welcome coordination with any and all groups who share our goals and our desire to engage in issue advocacy.

    The ACLU will let civil rights and civil liberties issues drive its electoral work. The ACLU is not doing electoral work to affect the balance of political power, but to drive concrete policy outcomes that matter for people’s lives. We will choose to engage in electoral races where important civil rights and civil liberties issues are at stake. And we aim to establish a mandate for politicians to enact policies that expand rights and freedoms for all.

    The ACLU will aim to educate voters about the consequences of specific elections. This could include issuing scorecards, hosting ACLU-sponsored issue-based town hall meetings, doing issue-focused radio ads or TV, mailers, or window and yard signs. The goal is to infuse a discussion of civil rights and civil liberties into a political race and to communicate to the public how the choice of elected officials leads to differences in policies and impacts on people’s lives.

    The ACLU will urge voters to go to the polls. It does not matter how much voters understand about an election if they do not vote — in the end, the choices that people make on Election Day have great consequences. The ACLU will encourage voters to make their voices heard. We’ll also campaign hard to pass ballot initiatives that would expand the right to vote, and we’ll look to defeat ballot initiatives that encroach on individual liberties.

    Electoral work like this is a new and exciting venture for the ACLU, but in many ways it is a natural extension of the work we have been doing for almost 100 years. The ACLU has never shied away from a fight when civil liberties were at stake, whether that fight was in a court room, Congress, or a state legislature. In 2018, we add one more venue. We ask you to join us in this important endeavor.

    If this ad in the paper is doing more than this, then they risk angering people who support their important work…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  422. 422.

    JanieM

    @Bill Arnold: I gave them $ years ago because I value some of what they do, but quit because I thought their fundraising was both dishonest and too breathlessly self-important, not to mention far more naggy than that of any of the other organizations I was giving to.

    I started giving again after Clickbait was elected, but right away got into the same soup about their fundraising. I gave $ in late January 2017, and they wanted me to “renew” in October of that year.

    When I objected, they gave me some blather about not wanting me to risk having an expired membership. They assured me that if I gave in January ’17 and they nagged in October ’17, and I responded by sending $ right away in October, they would not nag to “renew” again in July.

    I waited until January ’18 to give again anyhow. (Once a year is my rule, except in extraordinary circumstances!) The following year they started asking me to “renew” in September. By then I was retired, and sick of their schtick, so I gave them only a fraction of my former contribution. And even then I thought of it as an experiment. If they still wait until September or October to ask me to “renew,” then they were at least honest about that, and I might donate again. My intention had been that if they asked me even earlier, I would be done with them.

    If they’re shilling for Bernie, I’m done anyhow.

    But here’s the thing. Dishonest fundraising (e.g. UNICEF: “Time to renew” six weeks after I gave the first time; and what does “renew” mean? it’s not like subscribing to a magazine) erases my agency. It says that their judgment about how I should spend my money trumps my own, so it’s fine to lie to me about it.

    It’s not like there aren’t plenty of other outfits doing good work that need the cash.

     

    ETA: I lost a year somewhere in that accounting. I kept giving in January until this past autumn, when I gave “early” (by my tally) as an experiment to see when they would ask again.

  423. 423.

    grandmaBear

    The ad links to the address https://www.rightsforall.org/questionnaire/ which has most of the information and refers to a questionnaire they sent out, but the ad seems to be more clearly promoting Bernie in my opinion. They are not supporting a PAC or specifically endorsing any candidate, however.

  426. 426.

    WaterGirl

    Oh, wow.  According to John’s twitter feed, Pete Buttigieg is suspending his campaign.

    Anybody who thinks Buttigieg is Republican-lite or not a team player for the Dems is dead wrong.

  427. 427.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @germy: Yinz spozedly? Are you possessed by the spirit of ola azul?

    Um, not hardly. Every time I hear Pittsburghers referred to as “yinzers” (& I hear this fairly often on the Ravens fansites) I am reminded of my godmother, Mom’s favorite sister, who spent her whole life in north-central W-by-doG-V & used that term for the 2nd person plural. I interpret it as a slight slurring of “you’uns” which IMHO beats the living shit out of “youse” or “you all” or “y’all.” Brings back some good memories of my misspent yoot (that wasn’t half misspent enough).

    “Spozedly” – well, OK, ya got me there. But unlike most Baltimorons of WWC ancestry, at least I kept the “s”. :^p

    (FTR this is quite late, but death literally intervened.)

  428. 428.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Immanentize: But I would REALLY prefer a woman.

    As would I, but I’m having a frustrating time finding one who’d go out with me who’d I’d want to go out with. :^p

  429. 429.

    Suzy

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: A lot of people live in a carefully created and somewhat precarious equilibrium, and “jump out of the boat and swim over to mine! we’ll be good” is a tricky message.

    That is exactly what candidates like Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar understand. They propose less drastic change, not because they are corporatists or corrupt, but because they have a good instinct about what the majority of voters are able to deal with. In those swing states at least…

  430. 430.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Kraux Pas: Thanks for reminding us that your nym formerly ended in DOPE. At least that was truth in advertising. Though it’s about the only halfway positive thing anyone can say about your posting career here.

  431. 431.

    Suzy

    @Kraux Pas: I think that in the beginning of his campaign, Joe Biden was rusty, and was very, very nervous in the debates. And he is sometimes handicapped by his stutter. More than we had ever realized. When he is nervous, or when he talks all day on the campaign trail, it can leads to a loss of focus, or him making ellipses in his talking that can be misinterpreted.

    In my opinion, saying he has lost cognitive abilities is a pretty rushed judgment.

    That being said, it also could be the case that Mr. Biden entered this campaign not realizing how much work he had to do on polishing his propositions, preparing his speeches, sharpening his message. Maybe he counted too much on his knowledge, his experience, and his talent at retail politics. But a presidential campaign is an exercise of virtuosity, AND a lot, a lot of work.

    I think as the campaign progresses, he is getting  better. He has been better in debates, he has been better at messaging.

    What can I say… I love the man, and for years I’ve thought that he is underestimated, because he isn’t the best public speaker.

    I love watching his interviews. He doesn’t always talk fluidly and goes on tangents (again getting better at this as weeks go by), but if you go past that and really LISTEN to what he’s saying… he’s very knowledgeable, he’s pragmatic, he is authentic and never plays games, he wears his heart on his sleeve, he is resilient and courageous. He criticizes the IDEAS of his opponents, not the person. He is reluctant to disparage the character of anyone, with the exception of Trump because, well, Trump is a real asshole.

    A very telling moment in the last few weeks… in the debate before the Nevada caucus, a moderator asked Bernie how he felt about Hillary Clinton saying that nobody in the caucus liked him or liked working with him. Joe Biden immediately, spontaneously, sincerely gave him a smile and a comforting hug. That’s Joe Biden for ya.

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