will be interesting to see the results pour in tomorrow night and watch, in real time, as the media learns that much of the pro-Bernie vote in 2016 was actually anti-Clinton and that he would have been smoked in the general.
Signed, a WV Democrat who told you that in 2016
— John Cole (@Johngcole) March 9, 2020
As someone who has never thought Bernie’s support was as broad as it was deep, so far this primary has been a validation of, well, my existence. I mean, I live and breathe and talk to Democrats in West Virginia, I’ve watched dozens of progressive candidates flame out and the Mountain Party never do anything other than act as a spoiler if they are even that relevant, and my friends are from West Virginia and I saw and heard the anti-Hillary rhetoric, so it was kind of maddening listening to underemployed neckbeards from Brooklyn writing for socialist magazines telling me Bernie would have won West Virginia in the general election. He wouldn’t have, he won’t in 2020, and Biden probably won’t, either. Also, when I tell you Manchin is the best we can get for now, I am not just making shit up.
For those still in denial, Bernie’s popularity in 2016 was based on decades of anti-Hillary propaganda, a series of media attacks from… the media, residual distaste for the ACA and Democrats in general, her association with the swarthy Kenyan muslim usurper,and a whole host of other things, including her Kinsley gaffe about coal mining jobs. It was not because Bernie was super popular. Indeed, all the folks who were super pro-Bernie in the primary promptly voted for Trump in the general, and now are busy sharing anti-Socialist and anti-Communist memes and discussing his trips to Cuba and Russia and his penchant for flying first class as a socialist and oh the vacation home and did you hear about his wife and that college she ran?
Let me put it this way: If your signature policy proposal is medicare for all, which polls over 50% everywhere and you can not sell it during a global pandemic to the liberal party, maybe it is time to look past the message and focus on the candidate and the strategy.
Again, all of this felt perfectly predictable to me, but the insularity of people on the internet and the actual desperation that so many people are feeling regarding their financial and medical situations can cloud people’s judgment. At this point, though, we have gone from Bernie being the frontrunner to this being Biden’s race to lose, and I don’t see much in the way of opportunity for Bernie to turn things around. There is the debate coming up, and I expect that to be vicious. The Republicans, the Russians, and the Jacobin/Intercept crowd, as well as rank and file Sanders supporters, have spent the last few weeks convinced that Biden is deep in the throes of dementia, so even if the debate is tepid I expect a shitload of made up or exaggerated bullshit about his mental health.
The race can still be won by Bernie- there are a ton of delegates still out there. But really, at this point, Sanders needs a win and the only way for Bernie to turn things around is to go negative. Beyond the fact that this will damage Biden in the general should he win the nomination, there is also the decades worth of research (it really started to pick up in the early 90’s when I was a poly sci major) that shows that negative campaigning hurts not only the attacked, but the attacker, and can often backfire. So while he may be able to slow down Biden, he won’t necessarily be helping himself.
On the other hand, there are lots of fertile areas for Bernie to hit Biden without going negative or being churlish. Joe Biden is straight up LYING about his Iraq war vote, and again, Biden’s entire campaign platform is him standing on a stage next to Trump, pointing at him, and saying “For real? This fucking guy?” Bernie can contrast his popular and transformative agenda without going negative. I have my doubts that he will, but he can.
Two quick things- First, I don’t think Biden has dementia. I watched the interview on Lawrence, have watched him speak, and what I see is the same old Joe Biden, just older. Yes, his response latency is slower, but if you have ever studied aging or read the literature on lifespan communication (again, I have!), this is fairly typical. Bernie, for his part, is also slower than he used to be, although he is less likely to produce the same type of gaffes Biden does because Bernie, no matter what he is asked, always pivots back to the same fucking five things he has been saying for fifty years. Trump, on the other hand, is nucking futz.
Second, I will remind you that Biden was not my first, second, or even third choice in this race when it started. I am all in for the Democrat running against Trump, whoever that may be. If Bernie and Biden both drop dead and the DNC nominates a barely sentient dumpster fire, I will have yard signs that say “Barely Sentient Dumpster Fire 2020” up the very next day.
I am, however, anti-bullshit, and having people tell me what I perceived to be obvious nonsense about the deep support for Sanders in 2016 has driven me mental for quite some time. I mean, am I the only one who remembers watching every Bernie and Trump rally on CNN/MSNBC/FOX in between panels discussing Hillary’s emails and Uranium One?
At any rate, have fun, wash your hands, and don’t look at your 401k if you have one.
trollhattan
I’ve got lighter fluid, now where’s my dumpster?
Mainmata
Right on, John. Your post makes a lot of sense.
MisterForkbeard
Right on.
I can say that the Bernie/Trump alliance to pretend Biden has dementia is having an effect and it needs to get nipped in the bud.
My wife (who does not like Bernie but dislikes Biden immensely because if Anita Hill) told me last night that Biden was in “early stages of dementia”. She’s picking it up from the internet even though she stays away from social media.
More performances like last night will help, but Sanders needs to address this like right now.
jimmiraybob
Dear WV Democrat,
Thank you and the whole team here for what you do.
JRB
dr. bloor
I’m not sure he’s capable of it. His passion for his ideas–far greater than for the people whose lives they will affect–lends itself to the sort of black/white, us/them absolutism that’s kept him stuck between 30-35% forever. He’s harvested all the true believers, and Bernie has never done coalitions or compromise.
I think it’s over. Lotsa delegates out there, sure, but not enough friendly states or potential wins to make up ground, especially since it will be all about Biden’s momentum going forward.
MattF
All this underlines Hillary’s unpopularity in 2016. I’m very unhappy about that, but maybe pundits can now put an end to the ‘Trump’s an asshole, but brilliant’ nonsense. He is, in fact, just an asshole.
Betty Cracker
Dumpster fire! Dumpster fire!
For reals, though, I hope Sanders can be prevailed upon to keep the upcoming debate constructive. His history in that regard isn’t great, but he doesn’t seem to viscerally dislike Biden the way he did Clinton. Plus, he can do math and knows he’s falling short of his 2016 run, and I do believe he sincerely wants Trump gone.
One thing I hope Biden/the Democrats more broadly address: the yoots. It’s true young folks don’t tend to show up reliably (not even in great numbers for Sanders!), and yes they can be dogmatic and unrealistic. But voting habits are formed early, and we’ll need everyone we can drag to the polls in this and future elections to pull ourselves out of the ditch.
I’ve been trying to talk a couple of my yoots off the ledge since last night, and the pain and disappointment is real. Magnanimity is free.
Couch Thing
Maybe I am wrong, but I feel like Sanders’ collapse here was brought on by two things:
1. failure to connect with black voters, especially black voters over 50
2. A surge in older voters
Better outreach to black voters and just a few more young people showing up and this race is very different.
RobertB
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, I’m looking forward to doing that with my daughter, not.
Elizabelle
OT: 23 years for Harvey Weinstein. Justice from New York state.
Still charges in Los Angeles. I wonder what they will do.
schrodingers_cat
Russian contingent on Twitter is now circulating videos of Joe Biden with women implying that he is creepy and inappropriate while an actual predator sits in the WH.
BS has no transformative agenda, all he has are yesterday’s Marxist policies rebranded as Democratic socialism.
The Dangerman
“FR? TFG?” won’t play quite as well as Adam’s “Make It Stop”, but I’m uberconfident in Trump’s ability to continue to fuck up the response to this pandemic; it will be breathtaking (perhaps literally) to watch. He doesn’t have to do anything but point to Trump, make the loser sign with his thumb and forefinger, bring out Barack a few times, and it’s done.
Blue Wave? Yup.
Jim
Indeed, his lack of widespread popularity best explains his polling as the most popular poll in the country back then and beyond at what, 54% approval, and…
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
The problem is, we tried that in 2016. I don’t go to Bernie sites and laugh at them, but I’m also not interested in having us play the fool again.
Unity is a two way street.
Marcopolo
Biden has about a 160 delegate lead atm. After next Tuesday it will be 260 to 300. After each contest the remaining delegate pool shrinks. Even if Biden self-immolates in the debate next week he will still win FL, where early votes are already being cast. Sanders cannot come back from that. The only path forward for him to win the nomination would be if something happened to make Biden withdraw from the race. Unfortunately, with his age & recent heart attack Bernie is in no position to purposefully contract COVID-19 so he can infect Joe on stage in the next debate.
Also, I suspect this is why they don’t want to let Tulsi in the debate, am I right? /s
Jeffro
John just be sure that bumper sticker is Democratic blue, otherwise people will think you’re supporting trumpov, dumpster fire that he is.
PenAndKey
It was also brought on by a winnowing pool of candidates to fracture the vote. There’s a reason his surrogates were crowing on about how the candidate with a “plurality of votes” should win. Their plan all along wasn’t to get above 50%, it was to be the guy with a larger chunk than any one moderate opponent. Any of his supporters who thought otherwise weren’t paying attention.
azlib
Markos Moulitsas over at Daily Kos is saying the same thing about Bernie. His hard core support is around 30% and he could never break out from that level.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MisterForkbeard:
You might want to remind her that Biden co-sponsored the Violence Against Women’s Act.
Nicole
In an earlier thread this morning I predicted 7 to 10 for Weinstein. As I continue to be consistently wrong in my predictions about EVERYTHING, I am now going to publicly say no way we win in 2020, no way we gain in the House of Representatives, and no way we get 60 seats in the Senate. Also, no way the Justice Department goes after Trump and his lackeys starting in 2021.
So, that should help us all sleep a little better at night.?
Chyron HR
@Couch Thing:
Maybe Bernie “woulda” won if he had spent the last three years attempting to reach out to the Democratic voters who rejected him in the 2016 Democratic primary.
But what’s Bernie’s ACTUALLY been doing since November 2016 is jerking off over his brilliant scheme to get a plurality of delegates in a 5-way race and then shout his way to the nomination in a contested convention.
Kylroy
@Couch Thing: Why yes, if Bernie had behaved in ways he never has in a three-decade career in national politics (i.e. actually building a coalition and allies), things would have been different.
schrodingers_cat
@Jeffro: Ivan is mostly likely typing from a basement in Moscow.
download my app in the app store mistermix
I’m just glad we’ll have someone get a delegate majority prior to the convention so we don’t have a food fight there.
eclare
@PenAndKey: Bingo.
rikyrah
This was posted on FB:
Laurie Goff, who is African-American, posted this. She not only gave permission for friends to share it, she wants people to share it … so, I’m sharing:
“Let me explain something to you about Joe Biden and why some of the shit that he’s done in his past doesn’t matter. This old rich white man played second fiddle to a black man. Not just any black man, but a younger black man, a smart black man. Not just for a day. Not 1, not 2 but eight years.
He took his cues from this black man who had more power than him and was virtually unknown when he took the presidency, and Joe Biden had been around forever. He was willing and proud to be his wing man. Not once did he try to undermine him, this black man. Instead Joe walked in lockstep with him, he respected him, he loved and trusted him. He was led by him and he learned from him. And Joe did not have a problem with it.
You tell me what 40+ year “establishment” white politician has ever done that. Joe Biden is cut from a different cloth. And black folks understand that and for good reason. He has shown it. This is what showing up and being an ally looks like. When black people say they know Joe, this is how we know.”
– Laurie Goff
You may repost
topclimber
It all comes down to whether Bernie has any diplomatic skills. If he really was the Amendment King in Congress, he must have had some at one time. Please channel those days Sen. Sanders.
I am perfectly fine with Bernie running until he is mathematically elminated. He would be well served to push a few debate differences with Biden (what true universal coverage means, what are the concerns of young voters that Bernie has tapped into while Joe has not, why the way to weed out corporate domination of politics is small-donor funding and overturning Citizens United).
The end game for Sanders is either that he wins, or he arrives at the Convention in a strong position to advance a more leftist agenda. I believe that is Warren’s thinking too (don’t outright reject Bernie but also don’t forgo the option to push the Convention more leftward than Joe might want). The conciliatory words from AOC of late give me hope that either Sanders or some of his key supporters will figure this out.
Or I am way wrong and all the warnings here about Bernie blowing up the party are right. Apologies to that asshole OH, I prefer to be optimistic until proven wrong.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: Chris Hayes, who is almost as kindly as kindly Doc Maddow, who for a long time liked to give entire segments over to Mo Brooks and a couple of other Tea Bagger congressmen– I’ve always suspected this was foisted on him by management, but I don’t know– and treat them with great courtesy, has been regularly giving air time to some pretty obnoxious BernieBros, including Sam Seder, of whom I was a fan for a long time, but who cannot seem to resist making not so subtle allusions to Biden’s alleged mental decline. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Hayes, or Maddow or the curiously Bernie-curious Lawrence O’Donnell– a man who, I suspect, would ghost his own grandmother on her birthday for an invitation to Sally Quinn’s flag day barbecue– mention Bernie’s medical records. And most of MSNBC seems infatuated with Michael Moore, cause he was kind of a movie star 15 or 20 years ago, around the same time he was telling us there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Al Gore and George W Bush.
Baud
@download my app in the app store mistermix: Agreed.
Betty
Some of us who consider ourselves progressive appreciated Bernie’s efforts to push the conversation further left in 2016. I did not believe then he could win a general election. It’s too bad he wasn’t able to pass the torch along to a more viable candidate. As for Biden, my sense is the voters are choosing him out of fear rather than seeing him as a great leader. He seems like a safe choice.
Marcopolo
@Couch Thing: I don’t think we should be calling this a “Sanders collapse.” His campaign’s strategy from the beginning was something like:
1) We have a hardcore base of 25% of D primary voters
2) We can probably bump that up to 35ish%
3) We will win a plurality of the vote with 35-40% in a crowded field
4) We ride that plurality into a brokered convention & win
That is what happened until SC. And because it seemed like a viable strategy & Sanders is ideologically rigid the campaign never took steps to broaden outreach to other segments of the party.
Then SC happened & the moderate lane coalesced to one person & we saw what happened on Super Tuesday. But at no point did Sanders campaign collapse, it just was superseded.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: MSNBC definitely has its blind spots.
PenAndKey
Something tells me that’s not going to stop them from trying. Sanders might pull a ’16 and tell people he supports Biden, but I won’t hold my breath waiting for even a mild rebuking of his more “enthusiastic” supporters. And the media’ll eat it up as their favorite dish: “Democrats in Disarray!”.
I agree with Betty that Sanders has helped push the zeitgeist to the left, and as a liberal I support that, but I’ve never thought he had the administrative or leadership chops for anything more than being an influential elder statesman and role model. If he’d bowed out of 2016 gracefully and stayed in that role you’d have never heard me say a bad word about him. Instead we got the Back To The Future II timeline.
Kathleen
@topclimber: Blowing up the party is his goal judging by his behavior. He will not change.
eclare
@rikyrah: Saw that a few days ago and shared with friends. As a middle age white woman, I’m glad to get her perspective.
Marcopolo
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Nah, just hammer home the next president will be picking RBGs successor on the SC.
Cheryl Rofer
“Biden has dementia” is a disinformation campaign. You can read about it right here on the blog.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jim:
…and yet, despite those polls, Sanders is getting his ass kicked in the primary. As we move into a two person race it becomes clear that even his early successes were because the ‘not Sanders’ vote was heavily split. For such a popular guy, he sure seems to have trouble in elections. His chosen candidates in the midterms went 0-22 as well. Weird!
topclimber
@Nicole: If you start a club for this, many BJers could join.
Immanentize
@Elizabelle:
Although this is a unique case because it is a celebrity case as much as a sexual assault case (see, e.g. O.J), I expect the LA prosecutor will do two things — First, slow walk the prosecution to see what the play in NY is in post-trial motions including bail on appeal. California already has a detainer on him, so I don’t see him getting out during his appeal. Second, after making sure there is no chance of his imminent release, they will probably approach the defense team with a concurrent sentence plea offer. That way, he would be liable to two states for the same number of years, but without the hassle, cost and pain to victims another show trial would cause. (See, Foucault, the spectacle of the gallows….)
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
The problem we’re going to have is that Bernie lied to them and they believed him. He told them that only he had a universal healthcare plan, and that’s not true. Bernie lied over and over again about Biden’s policies and the other candidates, and I’m not really sure how we untangle those lies because they’re STILL being amplified on social media by trolls, dupes, and Russian agents.
I mean BERNIE HIMSELF implied on national TV that Biden has dementia. What the actual fuck? How are we supposed to fix bullshit like that?
Immanentize
@Nicole: Thank you for your service!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
Like this?
Marcopolo
@Jim: IIR those same polls showing Sanders popularity had Biden in a close second. And yet, neither of them were in my top 7-8 in the D primary about a year ago. And though I am still not thrilled by Joe Biden, I will be thrilled to vote for Biden against Trump.
cmorenc
Biden wasn’t my first or second choice etc. either…
But nonetheless, after Super-Tuesday ! (Mar 3) and especially since Super-Tuesday II (last night) – for the first time since the point on election night 2016 it became apparent Trump had won – the persistent dread and revulsion I’ve felt about the country since that time is beginning to break and let a few rays of optimistic sunshine in. Here in North Carolina (and lots of other potential swing states) – there’s a substantial portion of folks who will turn out to vote for Biden for a turn toward normalcy and decency and competence who would have sat on their hands in despair in Nov 2020 had Sanders been the nominee. Yes, I had hoped for someone more progressively transformational who was also competent and decent (e.g. Elizabeth Warren) – but given the existential threat a potential Trump 2nd term represents across the board, I’ll gladly take the decent competency of Joe Biden as enough for now. Winning in 2020 is FAR more important than betting the house on progressive purity ponies and losing.
Omnes Omnibus
FWIW, and it doesn’t really matter, you are wrong about Biden lying. You were wrong on Twitter where people refuted you by citing his remarks from 2003 and you are wrong here.
Marcopolo
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I’m just glad we will probably wind up having a virtual convention so there won’t be able to be any food fights.
Kent
Last night Rachel Maddow was talking about how Bernie should be MORE popular now that we are in a public health crisis. Because Medicare for All!!!
NO, fucking way. She doesn’t understand how people think. I would spitball that at least 95% or more of voters yesterday have health insurance. Maybe even more. The elderly all have medicare and most of the rest are middle class voters who have some type of ACA or employer provided healthcare that may not be great but it exists. The really poor who lack any insurance vote at extremely low levels, especially in primaries.
Bernie is proposing, in the middle of a MASSIVE medical crisis, to tear up our entire health care insurance system, make everyone’s private insurance illegal, with the promise that some non-existent government program will be better. Because the government always does things better. Witness how the government is handling this crisis at this very moment!
That is not going to be a good sell at this moment in time. Not to the cohort of voters who are out voting in today’s primary and who will be voting in the fall. To eggheads like Maddow, M4A might seem the local choice in the face of a crisis like this. But to ordinary voters? Tearing up their existing health care system for some government run thing that doesn’t even exist yet? Not so much.
Another Scott
How someone voted on the AUMF in October 2002 has no bearing on how one should vote in the primary or November 2020. None. The only purpose in discussing it now is to divide the party.
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
They booed Hillary and EVERY speaker at the last DNC, so I wouldn’t get my hopes up about there not being another food fight this year. Bernie’s troll army of Paulites and Gamergaters isn’t going anywhere, and they’re not going to listen to him, either.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: It is the Guardian of shouty cable news TV.
Kathleen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: AMessNBC exec said they ‘d be all in for Bernie. That has been borne out by what I’ve seen in Twitter comments. I refuse to watch that channel.
Barbara
@The Dangerman: Biden’s implicit campaign appeal is that he is a continuation of Obama. And he has put out policy papers. Many people might not really want someone who promises transformation — they might now understand that transformation by itself is not a goal when it is devoid of policy context.
PenAndKey
@Cheryl Rofer: I’ve already seen it swarming on Facebook. Given the post you linked to it wasn’t a surprise, but they’re not even being subtle about it. Case in point? My local rock station posted a link to an article about Biden calling out the gun nut. Within fifteen minutes of posting there were thirty comments, 20 of which were meme images or slurs about “creepy joe”, easily half of which specifically had the word “dementia” in them. It’s like they’re not even trying to hide their influence campaigns anymore. Probably because they’ve learned they don’t have to and the idiots’ll still eat it right up.
wmd
Between sobriety and time passing … well this is not a vicious jackal’s writing. You’ll be plagiarized on some of it.
japa21
In general I agree with John’s post outside of one glaring falsehood which was discussed last night ad infinitum.
I had been hoping Biden would not come into the race, and if Bernie wasn’t in it he probably wouldn’t have. However, once he did, he was my number 1 or 2 choice. He and Warren flipped positions depending on which side of the bed I got out of.
Biden is far more progressive than a lot of people think. I have said before that his time with Obama changed him. And he is also a realist which is critical right now.
Frankensteinbeck
I checked out Biden’s web page and his platform. I’d like more, but it’s good. Solidly liberal. No jail time for drug only offenses, massive Pell Grant increases combined with limiting how much people have to pay on student loan debt, stuff like that.
schrodingers_cat
@Cheryl Rofer: That was yesterday, today’s disinformation campaign is Biden is a creepy old man in addition to the dementia campaign of yesterday.
The Moar You Know
@Marcopolo: I know you’re joking but she has always given me some super weird cultoid vibes, and I feel this is the kind of thing she might do without hesitation. So kinda relieved for a few reasons she won’t be there.
Immanentize
@Kylroy: As Robyn Hitchcock sings,
Beautiful acoustic version
She Doesn’t Exist
Barbara
@Chyron HR:
I will give Sanders this, he seems to be very adept at caucuses and conventions. So he think he was probably not wrong to think that he could shout and push his way to the nomination in a truly contested race. E.g., he won North Dakota again, as he did last time, but in other states that have gone from caucuses to primaries, like neighboring Minnesota, which he handily won last time, the weakness of his underlying support has been exposed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kent: yeah, I didn’t want to start a fight with Cole, in case today is the day he reads the comments for 2020, but this:
strikes me as a highly debatable assertion. I know that in a few exit polls in the past couple of weeks, Democrats motivated enough to turn out for primaries have given M4A a bare majority, but I don’t know if BernieCare beyond the slogan, i.e. asking people if they favor eliminating existing insurance, even if it’s corporate insurance, polls that well.
schrodingers_cat
@Another Scott: Agreed. And he was the VP to the famously anti-Iraq war President Obama.
cmorenc
@Kent:
The ACA was an imperfect solution, but turns out it was something a clear majority of folks and the insurance companies could live with as an insurance alternative – it didn’t threaten to abruptly uproot everyone from what they already had. Selling the latter notion is how the GOP successfully propagandized against and derailed the Clinton effort to reform health care coverage in the early 90s.
Much smarter and much easier sell to improve and fix the ACA than to go for uncertain pie in the sky M4 all. What you can successfully sell politically is lots more important than what seems a great idea in principle but is a tough sell that threatens to electorally undermine progressives (see e.g. 2010 midterms and before that the 1994 midterms).
topclimber
@Kent: A Medicare tweak that would be 4ALL would be government negotiating all RX prices and selling at its cost to people in ANY insurance plan or none at all.
I could see that having appeal when besides worrying about catching the Corona virus, folks aren’t sure they can afford a future vaccine.
I mean, besides being good on an ongoing basis. Call it universal health care, call it M4A, let’s just do it.
Immanentize
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Or this!
A Zit!
Kathleen
@Kent: I’d like to know why AMessNBC was/is so anti Hillary and pro Bernie. They have an agenda and it’s anti Democratic Party agenda, as do most media companies.
Marcopolo
@japa21: @Frankensteinbeck: This. The platform Biden is running on is the most liberal platform a major D candidate has ever run on. That’s just because the whole party has moved to the left since 2016 (and Sanders should get some credit for this). I just wish the Sanders folks would take the win, work their butts off to dump Trump, then the day after the election get back to work pushing their policies with a D government.
For folks who watched the debates this reminds me of the discussion between Sanders & Warren on the new NAFTA deal. Warren supported it, Sanders did not. Warren’s comment was it does make some improvements, I will take the win, but the next day I will be back on the front lines pushing for more. Sanders response was it wasn’t good enough so I’ll take nothing instead. Alas, this also encapsulates his campaign & followers.
Mnemosyne
@Betty:
I think some of it is fear, but I think there’s more fear of Bernie leading us to a huge loss than a lot of journalists are acknowledging. It turns out that Bernie himself is NOT popular among Democrats. He was a paper tiger propped up by Twitter and the MSM. He and his staff believed his own hype because the MSM and Twitter kept pumping it higher and higher.
Now the bubble has burst and they’re seeing for the first time that it was all hype on top of misogyny. It’s gonna be pretty ugly for a while as they come to terms with that and decide whether to re-join reality or clap harder for TinkerBernie.
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
Thank you for this. Having seen the derangement effect among many previously race-positive whites when a black man was put in charge, I have been wondering if Biden’s loyalty as a black man’s sidekick was something the black community noticed and liked.
Kent
If I were advising Biden, I’d advice him in the debate to pivot every single question to Trump and the 2020 general election and just refuse to engage in anything tit for tat with Bernie. Just act presidential and like the presumptive nominee. Bernie, bless his heart, can ramble on, but pivot every question to Trump.
For example: If there is a Question on Medicare for all. You answer:
“There are a lot of ways to improve on the ACA. And Americans should have no illusions about Trump. He has spent the past 3 years trying to strip health care from millions of Americans by repealing the ACA and undermining it at every step. Right now Trump is suing in court to have the ACA declared illegal. If they win it will mean millions of Americans will lose their health care and millions more with pre-existing conditions will no longer be able to buy health insurance at any price. That is what you will get from four more years of Donald Trump. And the most horrible thing of all? Donald Trump is continuing his efforts to strip Americans of health care at this very moment when we are possibly moving into one of the biggest health care crises this country has seen in 100 years. Think about that. Right now, today, Donald Trump’s Justice Department is suing to strip health care from millions. Does he no shame? No conscience? Is is putting his right wing ideology ahead of the health of millions of Americans at this moment of crisis?
The Biden proposal is a public option which would be backup public insurance for everyone in America who doesn’t have good private options. But even passing a public option requires that we need more Democrats in Congress. So instead of bickering here about our two health care plans up here on the stage, what we should be doing is fighting to elect Democrats in Maine and Arizona and Colorado and North Carolina, and Montana. And to re-elect the good Democrats we have now like Doug Jones in Alabama. Bernie, will you join with me together in an effort to turn the Senate blue so that whoever is in the White House can actually pass the kinds of change the Americans desperately need! Will you join me on that effort Bernie? (give props to all the senate candidates by name. Will you help me campaign for them?”
You do that again and again with every question You pivot to Trump and the general. And you just refuse to engage in the stupid back and forth things on arcane Democratic policy wonk issues. If Bernie keeps banging away on stuff like that he just looks petty and small by comparison.
The Moar You Know
Also, and if you’re insane and want to google my comment history here: Biden was always my first choice. Precisely because he wasn’t going to try to reform the entire government to some ideological vision; he’ll take stock, fix what’s broken, and then we can figure out where we want to take the ship of state from there.
Because right now that ship of state is broken but fucking good, and while I agree with the need for a profound change of direction – to the left, just to be clear – right now we don’t even have a stable voting infrastructure to do such a thing.
Capri
The view from Indiana is just like that from WVa. No way Bernie can win this state – Biden is a heavy lift.
I can’t tell you how many self-appointed pundits Bernsplained to me that the reason Indiana doesn’t vote for D candidates is that they just aren’t liberal enough to excite them. From talking to my neighbors, even educated suburbanites, I knew that was a crock of shit. Evan Bayh is plenty radical enough for most Hoosiers. Biden is the chicken pot pie to Bernie’s kale salad. The more uncertain the times are, the more people long for the comfortable and familiar.
The Moar You Know
@Kathleen: the answer is contained within your very question.
MCA1
@Kent: I think Maddow was playing Devil’s Advocate and serving up a softball to Joy Reid, who dutifully smacked it over the fence. My takeaway from her response was that in a crisis no one gives a f about legislative agendas and policy dreams. Those things take years. Right now we want reassurance and competence.
We’re in two simultaneous crises here (whereas a few months ago it was just one): the debasement of our institutions and shredding of the Constitution, AND the miserably incompetent federal response to COVID-19. That the candidate who’s spent the latter half of his career in the public eye talking about radical change to our system of medical care isn’t seen as the right guy to step in and get us out of a crisis that revolves around our system of medical care speaks volumes. That was the subtext I heard in that discussion.
different-church-lady
@Couch Thing: HIs collapse was brought on by Bernie gotta Bernie. If he was capable of anything else he’d be the incumbent right now.
Marcopolo
@cmorenc: To be fair, one (or two) of the contributors on the panel with her made just this point. But boy were there some awful segments last night. Sam Seder was a low point; Michael Moore (“I don’t consider myself a Sanders surrogate”) sad sack appearance was the bottom of the abyss. Moore, who couldn’t shut up about Sanders winning WWC voters over HRC was noticeably silent about Biden crushing Sanders with this group in MI last night. Instead he moved onto the youth and latino vote. Okay, yeah, Biden has work to do there. If he wanted to be relevant, Moore could have suggested a few things Biden could do to reach out to those groups. He did not.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
I’ve been lurking on Black Twitter and it’s been quite the eye-opening experience. Propane Jane confidently predicted the blowout in South Carolina and really thinks that Texas has a good chance of going blue IF Biden is the nominee. ?
artem1s
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/11/2020-trump-alabama-sessions-tuberville/?hpid=hp_hp-morning-mix-for-right-rail_mm-sessions%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans&itid=hp_hp-morning-mix-for-right-rail_mm-sessions%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans
another one under the bus. I confess I laughed out loud when I read this. Unfortunately 45s endorsement will be the kiss of death for Session’s opponent.
schrodingers_cat
@The Moar You Know: I agree with you. Big structural change which we certainly need comes after we restore stability. I for one would like to go back to a time when the President didn’t lie everyday.
L85NJGT
@dr. bloor:
He’s a man of his era, very much mid-twentieth century progressive. “Never mind the communities we’re bulldozing, the new highway will lift everyone up!”
Nicole
@Immanentize: With great power comes great responsibility. I live to serve.
gene108
@Baud:
If only someone can explain that to Bernie…
dr. bloor
@Kathleen: Could well be different strokes for different folks. Hayes is clearly a true believer; his bosses might see Bernie as Trump’s easiest prospective opponent.
feebog
I think the worries over Biden’s debate performance this Sunday are somewhat overblown for two reasons. First, he won’t be trying to compete with 9 other candidates to get a word in edgewise. Biden tends to stutter and misspeak when he is in a hurry. In a one on one debate where he will have more time to respond he will come across as thoughtful and measured. Look at his speech last night. Good pace and well delivered. Second, there will be no live audience, so no interruptions from hecklers. If you go back and look at the 2008 and 2012 VP debates you can see how much better Biden is one on one.
Kent
There are a hundred “tweaks” and more major policy proposals that would improve the existing system. An public option would be a absolutely MASSIVE change.
But Bernie is doubling down on: Make every single existing insurance policy and plan illegal and replace it with a yet-to-be-determined government run health insurance company with very minimal transition period. That might be the most optimal eventual solution on paper from a policy wonk perspective. But it is going to be one hell of a tough sell in the middle of perhaps the biggest public health crisis since the 1918 Spanish Flu. Voters are going to want caution and stability, not a revolutionary disruption of the entire system.
I’m just saying I think this is exactly the wrong time to be proposing revolutionary change and disruption to the health care that most actual voters (especially older voters) already have. And you can believe the GOP will make that point loud and clear with the biggest fearmongering campaign we have ever seen if Bernie wins the nomination.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@feebog: I hope his team is getting this through his head: Speak slowly, be vague, offer bromides about progress and unity.
and I think there’s a good chance that Bernie will get himself all worked up into a lather and Uncle Joe will chuckle give a sort of “there you go again…” response
Edmund Dantes
@Kent: every time you write trump. It should be trump and the gop.
the gop has been trying to kill aca from the start. Trump is just another part of it.
Cheryl Rofer
@PenAndKey: Since I wrote that piece, Dr. Jill Stein has been pushing related hashtags in a big way.
Cheryl Rofer
@schrodingers_cat: None of this is going to go away.
(I think you’re being sarcastic and making the same point, but these days I’m just making sure I understand what people are saying.)
Kent
What Bernie is proposing with health care is that we do a complete engine overhaul on the bus while we are traveling down the freeway at 80 mpg while getting shot at by new and horrible diseases from the side of the road.
That would be a hell of a tough sell for my elderly parents and they are long-time liberals and predisposed to at least be Bernie-curious.
Kent
Yes, of course. Tie every horrid thing the GOP has done to Trump. But also tie Trump to every horrid GOP candidate like Susan Collins. It goes both ways.
artem1s
NO.NO.NO. He can’t win. Stop fluffing this guy. He wouldn’t be in this thing at all if he hadn’t been handled with kid gloves all along. It’s time to stop pretending he represents any voice except himself, and his own frothing at the mouth cult followers. The voters have spoken and they have pretty clearly indicated that if Sanders somehow made it to the convention and tried to spoil the party by claiming plurality win, they would not vote for him in the general. Sanders cannot win the Democratic party nomination because Democrats know he isn’t a Democrat.
Uncle Cosmo
@Barbara: Not too many months back our own Adam Silverman proclaimed in FP articles here that “there is no going back, we have to go forward.” Later to be proved wrong by the Democratic electorate. (ETA: Not that I blame him for that – it was plausible at the time. And he has been correct on many other things.)
Both sides in fact want to “go back;” the only issue is how far. Trumpublicans want to set the WayBack Machine for the good old days of Jim Crow and immigration restrictions. Democrats by & large want to return to no-drama Obama. And that includes a significant number of 2016 Trump voters whose motives weren’t overtly bigoted/fascistic but (because all we “wypipo” have residual bigotry baked into us like burn scars on an old cake pan) tolerated that stuff, who didn’t get what they thought they were voting for & now regret enabling Cheeto Benito & his thugs. Not so much “make it stop” as “please god make it didn’t happen.”
The future may well lie with progressives. But before you can restore to health a patient as severely wounded as the American polity, you have to stabilize them to provide a firm foundation for treatment. Reculer pour mieux sauter. That in a nutshell is the appeal of Joe Biden, and he understands that.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Different context, but Biden’s victory speech last night was excellent.
catclub
the only possible silver lining, assuming that Biden gets in in 2021, is that Trump has highlighted a lot of places where norms can be violated, and we know that the GOP will violate them again if there are not black letter laws stopping them. Appointments and federal workers is one. Whether agencies comply with Congressional subpoenas is two.
Ksmiami
Biden should emphasize the need for competent and good governance and how the GOP is always breaking shit. restore and reassure voters- Bernie gonna burn so ignore his rants
MCA1
@Frankensteinbeck: I’ve been thinking a lot about this over the last week. I think Joe Biden actually has an opportunity to go down as a major transformational figure in American government and politics if he completes that story.
Act One: legitimize the first black president, and normalize the idea that the white guy does not have to be in charge and in front of the cameras all the time, but can be the wing man who trusts his pilot, takes orders and helps out where he can.
Act Two: seed the Executive Branch with the next generation of Democratic leaders and slowly pass the torch, intentionally diminishing the dangerously outsized role the President has taken on in our government.
Act Three: socialize acceptance for the first woman president by appointing one as his VP, putting her more front and center than most Veeps, and providing her a path to getting elected that doesn’t require passing quite as many misogynist roadblocks along the way as others have had to navigate.
Coda: ride into the sunset beloved by both African Americans and women, and seen 50 years later as the counter to every white guy that had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the realities of modern America and did everything in his power to stop the train of demography, and as pivotal in the reemergence of the Legislative Branch as a truly co-equal branch of our government.
He might even be laying the groundwork for this already, with all the talk about being a bridge and praise for the younger talents within the party. Maybe just a pipe dream, but please allow me that pipe dream because the last week has been the only time I’ve felt even vaguely optimistic about the future of politics and government in our country in a long time.
Kent
@artem1s: Exactly. Mathematically speaking Elizabeth Warren could still win too. But it ain’t going to happen. The next five states are: Arizona, Illinois, Florida, Ohio, and Georgia. Arizona is an older state that will favor Biden. Latest poll has Arizona 51-33 for Biden and the other 4 states are even more favorable for him. He will probably win Georgia and Florida by 50 points each. And both Illinois and Ohio by at least 25 points.
This race is over.
trnc
@MattF:
No hes also blindingly stupid.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: it was
and you know who’s really happy with the last few weeks? Mark Kelly
and Cal Cunningham. And Sara Gideon. And Jamie Harrison. And me.
topclimber
@Kent: I don’t think I disagree with you unless you think advocating for universal health care is wrong in a widespread health care crisis. Which I don’t think you are.
Gee, this being BJ I would really LIKE to bash your comment, but so it goes.
catclub
I think the rational, but not clearly expressed part of “I am against single payer because I don’t want my care reduced” is an acknowledgement that they system might be overwhelmed by too many (of those) people.
The overwhelming (the medical system) part is exactly what a hot epidemic of coronavirus would do.
Poe Larity
Two old guys debating to an empty room is going to play well.
Cacti
This x infinity.
Bernie is an intellectually arrested campus radical in the body of a 78 year old man.
He’s good at picking fights, but never learned how to win one.
Also, he brushes his hair with a balloon.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Poe Larity: close your eyes and think of babies in cages and ask yourself if childish pouting is really a thing you wanna do
PenAndKey
@Cheryl Rofer: Well, she always was a fairly transparent Russian asset. Given the photographic evidence of her dining with Putin I’d argue it has every indication of being deliberate. Then again, I could probably say the same of much of Sanders’ online support. It’s…. interesting… that he has such an overwhelmingly loud online presence that never seems to materialize at the polls.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yes. The down ticket situation is the best thing about Biden.
Marcopolo
@MCA1: Let a thousand flowers bloom; let the debate over who would be a good VP pick for Biden commence.
I’ll throw out Harris & Abrams for starters. Theoretically it should be someone who helps with the youth vote & maybe latinos. Too bad AOC isn’t a few years older/more experienced.
Anyone want to argue against picking a woman or against picking a melanin enhanced person?
different-church-lady
It suddenly occurs to me that Bernie is like the Tech-Masters who are always touting “disruptive technology!” and trying to get us to believe society is broken in just such a way that the technology they happen to have invented is the only solution. No wonder that type flocks to him.
Barb 2
The Republicans spent decades building hatred for Clinton. They made up stuff and lied. She was the wicked witch. Then the Russian trolls amped up the war on Hillary.
all that hate can now be spread faster against Biden with the help of the Russian troll factory.
Biden is slower due to aging. That is what happens as we age. But he knows more about politics and how it takes the very best people to run an administration. He is also a grown up person – compared to any candidate fielded by the Republicans.
if he can pull in all his Democratic opponents and put them to work and our use their best ideas – as he seems to be doing then he can steam room over Dump. But he has to act swiftly to counter this current hate lead campaign from the Russian-Repubs .
Dump is the one with cognitive impairment. This meme as Biden with some sort of mental illness is rubbish needs to be tossed right back at Dump.
Biden has fu*ed up with women through the years when he was way younger. He never apologized until recently. And only because he wanted to make this run for Prez. I can never forgive him for his deliberate sexism toward Anita Hill and for that Bankruptcy Bill – a gift to his corporate supporters. In spite of his history if he chooses a strong VP like Harris – he won’t pull that shit again. A strong woman will balance out his MCP tendiencies. He won’t choose a dumb ass like Pense. Women will be watching and waiting to see if he is all not air or if he has really learned as he aged that women remember and expect more respect from a Democratic Prez than that POS now in the White house.
Then there is the global warming emergency. Will he bend to the will of the evil corporations as the earth warms. Does he really believe what he said at the last debate. Global warming – an existential crisis?
Russian Trolls are going to be busy. It will take a village (everyone who hates Trump) to get Biden elected. Thankfully Biden doesn’t have the baggage Bernie comes with. If the worse thing that the Republicans can come up with is dementia – then that can be tossed right back at Dump.
We need to be honest about Biden’s faults (which are minor compared to Dump’s faults).
Dump is a con man.
He is a rapist.
He is a sexist pig.
He is crooked, king of bankruptcy.
the list is endless. Everyone can add more to this list.
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m not sure we’re gonna get the answer you’re implying here.
catclub
Biden was criticized for convincing the others to drop out (to Biden’s benefit). Why couldn’t Sanders convince them to stay in ( to his benefit)? This is part of ‘politics ain’t beanbag’.
Sander has made a virtue of being an incompetent
politician. It nearly worked except for you nosy kids voting.
different-church-lady
@Barb 2:
That’ll be a lot easier to do after he’s seated behind the Resolute Desk.
kindness
Let us not discount money as a motivating factor for St. Bernie. Too many of his campaign’s principle leaders (including Bernie’s wife Jane) have their fingers in the media advertising the campaign generates. They get a cut of every ad, every commercial. I don’t think Bernie does but Bernie has to know his campaign heads and his wife do and it is an ugly look.
Socialists apparently don’t hate money all that much when they are in line for it.
schrodingers_cat
@Cheryl Rofer: Actually I was not being sarcastic, I was being factual. I blocked many handles with Biden dementia posts yesterday. This morning, there are elebenty accounts with zero or less than ten followers pushing Biden is a pervert and a creep in many of the Weinstein threads. It has to be a coordinated effort.
Brachiator
Great post.
But this is not true, or should be expanded on.
An NPR story cited an analyst who concluded that about 10 percent of Sanders supporters voted for Trump. Not a staggering number, but a significant one. They weren’t closely connected to the Democratic Party and tended to be sexist and racist.
This just nails it.
Punchy
@Mnemosyne: I have a friend in central Iowa who believes it will go blue with Biden, but only Biden.
satby
@Baud: Agreed. I was accused by one of da yoots in my family of being a secret Trump supporter because I wasn’t bending the knee to Vermont fake Trump wanna be. Not feeling magnanimous at all. They haven’t bothered in four years to learn anything about how the government or primaries or elections work. They can grow the fuck up.
Kent
I actually think M4A is the best solution from a policy perspective. ESPECIALLY because it would replace the absolutely horrid state-run Medicaid program in many southern states where they do everything they can to slow walk and strip coverage from poor people. But what I think is not the issue here.
All I am saying is that Bernie’s M4A is bad politics in the middle of a health care crisis, especially with a fairly elderly electorate that mostly already has coverage. I think this is a particularly bad time for Bernie to be running with that as his keystone platform issue. That is just an observation on the electoral popularity of M4A in this moment in time, not an observation on the merits of the plan. I think Biden has the better plan for winning in 2020.
Geminid
Mnemosyne
@MCA1:
If any of our current politicians could do that, it would be Joe Biden. He seems to have a relatively normal-sized ego for someone who’s gotten as far in politics as he has, and I think the idea of being the elder statesman who opens the door for the younger generation to walk through is very appealing to him. He may even see it as a way to transfer the hopes and dreams he had for Beau to other Democrats and kind of “adopt” them.
One of the things I like about Biden is that he seems to be someone who learns and grows from his mistakes. That is a way more valuable quality in a politician than someone who insists that he’s been right about everything for 50 years and everyone else has to conform to his wishes.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
Neither is Bernie. And ain’t that the whole problem?
Marcopolo
The WHO makes official what we’ve all been thinking for the past week or two or three:
Mnemosyne
@Marcopolo:
Not me. I’m on the Vice President Kamala Harris train — ride or die.
MCA1
@Marcopolo: I’ve been hoping for Harris as VP nominee (for whoever wins) since 5 seconds after she dropped from the race, though every third day I give that up to focus on imagining her as AG. So I’m perhaps biased here.
That said, she doesn’t move the needle much based on demographics or geography. My sense is that, based on the primaries, a black VP candidate isn’t going to help Biden that much, given the support he’s already sewn up among that bloc of voters. And obviously it’s not like Kamala would be delivering California or anything. She could appeal to younger voters, as she gets on their wavelength better than a lot of others I’ve seen. I’ve heard Val Demings’ name floated based in large part on being from Florida, but also based on biography having possible crossover appeal to blue collar and public service folks.
My sense is that it’s a big lost opportunity if it’s not a woman on the ticket with Biden, so would probably count out Pete and Beto and others if I were to be advising Joe. On the other hand, Castro checks your two boxes, and is from Texas.
randy khan
@Nicole:
Thanks. I appreciate your help towards getting the right results.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Damn fine piece of writing, that. And important to hear.
Mnemosyne
@different-church-lady:
Turns out people aren’t nearly as fond of “disruption!” when we’re in the middle of a global financial meltdown and viral epidemic. Who knew?
Kent
BINGO! That’s an excellent way to put it. He has all the ideas but zero strategy to actually implement any of it because that would require relying on the “democratic establishment” that he keeps pilloring
It is a lot like Uber, or WeWork which has all the great disruptive ideas, but absolutely zero idea on how to actually make a profit. So they bring the world down around them while bleeding billions and the only fault is that others lack the courage to trust them.
Juju
You support barely sentient dumpster fire if something happens to Biden and Sanders? I would hope the powers that be would pick Warren or Harris, but if they don’t I would throw my support behind wet sock on the gym floor. I think that has a better look than barely sentient dumpster fire.
randy khan
@Marcopolo:
That definitely is the kind of thing that looks viable in the abstract. In the real world, consolidation happens very quickly, as donors stop supporting candidates who look like they can’t win. Not recognizing that was a big, obvious mistake. (I say this as someone who told all the worrywarts that there was almost no likelihood of a brokered convention, so I didn’t come to this view recently.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: Manchin drives me crazy, but I try to remember that when he came out for gun safety measures after Newtown, I thought he was sacrificing his political career.
And I fully expect Mark Kelly and Cal Cunningham, if they are elected , to occasionally drive me crazy too.
Betty Cracker
@The Moar You Know:
This is true! I remember, and I questioned the soundness of your rationale then and haven’t changed my mind since. But you were 100% right about what most voters want.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
This is the tricky bit, as I understand it. In 2008, about 25 percent of Hillary’s primary voters went for McCain. In 2016, about the same percentage of Sanders primary voters went one of three ways — they voted for Trump, they voted for Stein, or they stayed home. So only looking at the Trump number is a little misleading about the actual percentage of which Sanders voters did not vote for Hillary.
randy khan
@Immanentize:
This wouldn’t surprise me at all as an approach from the prosecution. I wonder if Weinstein would take that deal, even though it obviously would be in his interest to do so, or if he’d insist on a trial.
topclimber
@Kent: Universal health care does not equal M4A, nor even single payer. But you know that.
I don’t care what Joe or Bernie want. I want the Democratic Party, starting in its 2020 platform, to promote universal health care within 10 years are as a goal. We are open to various ways to get there. Voters will maybe trust us to find a good way to do it because Democrats are the ones protecting their healthcare, nobody else. And they know it.
M4A at the moment is a loser. Pushing Universal Health Care in the midst of a pandemic is just the opposite.
Marcopolo
@MCA1: I’ve seen a few folks mention Michelle Lujan Grisham, the Governor of NM. She actually has a decent amount of experience, though not much national exposure. She just turned 60, which while younger than a lot of folks who ran for Prez isn’t particularly young.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Lujan_Grisham
different-church-lady
@Juju: Goddammit, Moldy Bread, and ONLY Moldy Bread has the vision to lead this country into the future!
Poe Larity
@Marcopolo: Who delivers what Electoral votes? It would seem a lot of people here regret having HRC at the top of the ticket in 2016, when we had a real activist and not a poseur.
The real activists fell to the party’s fearmongering about the “obvious” Bernie flop everybody claims to have now. Warren, Kamala should have stayed in. A brokered convention would not have led to Bernie or Biden.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: I was just thinking that same thing about Biden transferring his mentoring of Beau into a more diffuse mentoring of a younger generation of Democrats. Sanders, it seems to me, doesn’t trust that there will be a succession: he finds himself indispensable. I don’t think Biden finds himself indispensable. And IMHO that’s a great quality in a politician.
Kent
OK sure, I agree with you entirely.
different-church-lady
Clean up, aisle 140…
Mnemosyne
@Poe Larity:
Who was that “real activist” in 2016? Because I think it’s pretty obvious now that Sanders was a paper tiger all along.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
Pretty sure the GRU cyber shop is in St Petersburg, actually. I have known the street address, but it escapes me for the moment. I think it’s in the Mueller Report, which is too long to search through for me today.
Immanentize
-Shel Silverstein
Mnemosyne
@Kent:
I don’t think you fellas know what website you’re on. ??
FlipYrWhig
@MCA1: I’m still guessing Beto as VP, not for geography or ideology but because even though in some ways he’s a Generic White Guy he’s good with (1) rallying young people (2) connecting to Mexican American voters. Those are two of Biden’s weaker areas.
janesays
Jesus Christ, bust out the Grover Norquist talking points, why don’t ya?
I’m not a fan of Bernie, but I am a very left progressive who does hope things like Medicare for All come to fruition in my lifetime.
Just curious, do you consider Elizabeth Warren a Marxist, too? On the biggest economic issues, there is barely any daylight between her and Bernie. She’s about ten times closer to Bernie on policy positions than she is to Biden.
terry chay
@PenAndKey: Great observation. The link below goes into that strategy more in depth.
https://medium.com/@chrisb19/bernies-plurality-strategy-is-failing-91cd1c5973fb
Soprano2
He never apologized for this. I cannot forgive him for that. It took what should have been a unifying event and allowed the press to write “Dems in disarray” and “See how unpopular Hillary Clinton is” stories every day of that week. If he cared anything at all about beating Trump, he would announce today that he is pulling out and putting his whole weight behind Biden to beat Trump, but his huuuuuuuggggeeeeee ego won’t allow him to do that. Oh, no, instead he has to stay in and beat up on Biden even more. Perhaps he’ll spread even more lies about Biden having dementia, that will definitely help us beat Trump in November. /s
Marcopolo
@Poe Larity: As a regular reader of the blog I don’t see evidence for this:
I was not excited about HRC in 2016 but still gave her money & knocked hundreds of doors for her campaign. And she did win a majority of the votes, though they were not distributed in the right place.
On the other hand, and it both infuriates & pains me to say this, Biden’s performance last night in MI would seem to indicate that misogyny & anti-HRC bias played a much more major role in her loss in MI, WI, and PA. Biden wiped the floor with Sanders in regards to White voters (both college educated & WWC). Those are folks who also probably stayed home or voted against Clinton in 2016. By the way, this doesn’t necessarily mean Sanders would have won those states in 2016–he had his own issues. What it does signal to me is that Biden has a much greater chance of flipping those states back in 2020. Alas, probably a better chance than a woman, no matter how amazing that woman is because, as the results from last night show, we are country with a political misogyny problem. I’ll repeat, this is fucking infuriating.
negative 1
@Betty Cracker: I’m glad to see that this year seems to be a little calmer. For all of the talk that the consequences of the election are unequally apportioned, that is also true in the primaries. I know people hate Bernie personally, but having no hope of relief on student loan debt, college tuition or hope for universal healthcare or the $20 minimum wage is a bitter pill to swallow. I’m obviously voting Biden, I’ll vote Team D up and down the ticket, but the disappointment that a few of the things that are dying with Bernie’s campaign weren’t quite as important as ‘I hate Bernie Bros so suck it’ was tough to swallow last night on other sites (*cough* LGM *cough*).
Marcopolo
@Soprano2: Honestly, at this point do you really think there will be a physical convention in Milwaukee in July? I suppose it is possible we pull a S. Korea and manage to tamp down our COVID-19 situation by May but our government is showing nowhere near that level of competence or proactivity atm.
And if it is a virtual convention then no food fights.
Adam Geffen
@Betty Cracker:
The youth issue is real.
This graphic on the age gaps is eye opening:
https://twitter.com/pklinkne/status/1237548891286851584?s=21
I’m in Michigan and I’m 43 but have a fair number of 20 and 30 something friends and every single one was deeply into Sanders. They are all now in pretty profound despair. Some to the point of lashing out calling Biden a Trumpian plutocrat.
My first choice was Warren (big Warren fan and donated $ to her) so I kinda get it. I ended up voting for Sanders but I found myself excited when it looked like democrats were coalescing strongly around a candidate. I’m happy and enthusiastic to support Biden even though he wasn’t ever going to be my top choice.
I’ve been spending time this morning trying to talk all of my friends through Sanders loss and point out the profound differences between Biden and Trump and how a Biden presidency would allow plenty of opportunities for movement on progressive issues where as another Trump presidency would offer none.
glory b
@MisterForkbeard: If it helps, Anita Hill said she’d vote for Biden.
J R in WV
@artem1s:
And for a tiny few seconds I even thought about sending ol’ Jeff a little donation. Then reality sank in, and I sent another contribution to the Democratic candidate in that race!!!
Maybe Trump actually can re-elect Doug Jones!?!!!
Poe Larity
@Marcopolo: We’ll never know in this managed process
Why not let the cards fall where they may at the convention? Does anybody really think Bernie would have had a chance there? Now the result is just baked-in and we maybe get a vp slot.
Kent
People had no hope of getting those things with Bernie either. None of those are within the power or authority of the executive branch. People here hate Bernie because he is LYING to so many of his young followers in suggesting that it is within the power of the presidency to make any of that happen. Or, as Bernie likes to say in every speech “We can make these things happen if we have the COURAGE to do so.”
Courage has nothing to to with it. And Bernie is lying to you if he is suggesting that it does. It comes down to 218 House Members, 60 Senators, and 5 Supreme Court Justices. In other words, the “Democratic Establishment” Bernie’s plan to tear down the “democratic establishment” only makes his ideas less likely not more.
He is a charlatan.
Biden is more likely to make incremental progress on all of those issues than Bernie. Because he is actually willing to work with Congress and let them take the lead. And will not sacrifice the good for the perfect.
Betty Cracker
@Adam Geffen: You’re doing God’s work then, and I thank you for it. I’ve touched base with fellow disappointed Warren-supporter friends who are also trying to talk Sanders friends/loved ones off the ledge today, so we’re not alone. It wouldn’t surprise me if this is a thing nationwide.
L85NJGT
Biden won all 279 counties in MI, MS, and MO? That’s a….
@Adam Geffen:
If you sort thru the malarky on the Sanders reddit, there are a lot of kids trying to get a start but faced with cost of living issues.
My take is that affordable housing is the crux of the matter.
Eolirin
@L85NJGT: Student loan debt can’t be making that any easier either. Those two things go hand in hand I think.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Not that tricky. The statement that large numbers of Sanders voters went for Trump is not supported by the data.
I’m not sure that assertions about the numbers of primary voters who stayed home instead of voting for Trump are reliable. You can do exit polls and analyses of voter data. I haven’t seen a lot of surveys of people who chose not to vote.
Calouste
He could, but he can’t.
Mnemosyne
@negative 1:
Not to be a jerk, but why do you have no hope for those things? Biden has a universal healthcare plan — it’s not called “Medicare for All,” but he has one. I think that college debt relief is on the table to be looked at. Free tuition at state schools is still on the table. I didn’t realize that a $20 minimum wage is the new floor — I thought it was still $15.
Do yourself a favor: go to Biden’s website and look at his actual policy proposals. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised that 75 percent of what you want is already there. Not 100 percent, but no candidate is going to agree with you 100 percent.
glory b
@Betty Cracker: As a black parent, it is our duty to tell our young people to suck it up and get over it, like we have for centuries//snark/not snark//.
Seriously though, the history of young people voting is that they generally don’t.
Frankly, I tell mine that most white kids have the luxury of taking their ball and going home, chances are good that what comes down the pike from government won’t affect them like it will you, so act accordingly.
Marcopolo
@Poe Larity:
WTF does this even mean. The primary process is well underway. Biden will have a majority of delegates by the time the convention rolls around (barring something dramatic like him dying). The candidate with the majority of delegates becomes the nominee. Them’s the rules, nothing managed about it.
glory b
@dr. bloor: Ever notice that this is perilously close to that oft-mentioned 27%?
schrodingers_cat
@J R in WV: Correction accepted.
@janesays: Nope Elizabeth Warren is not a Marxist. He thinks capitalism is evil she doesn’t. Neither is she on record praising Communist dictators.
Immanentize
@glory b: I’m white and I am definitely going to tell my son what you said about his luck and privilege. Thank you
Mnemosyne
@Poe Larity:
Because we saw last time that “letting the cards fall where they may” means convention goers booing every single speaker and Susan Sarandon screaming in Dolores Huerta’s face about how Huerta is a corporate sellout. ?
We don’t need to open our doors to the asshole disrupters again, thanks. They can’t be won over, so they don’t get to use our megaphone to harangue us.
Marcopolo
@Mnemosyne: Thank you for this reply. From now until the DNC we’ll all be up against folks (real or Russian or Republican) who’re quite happy letting belief in the perfect be the enemy of taking the good in hand & then fighting for more in the next battle.
Nothing good happens with R’s in control of government; in fact, as we have seen over the past 3 years everything only gets worse.
Immanentize
@glory b: Wait! Memes can only be created and used against others by Sanders’ folks. What you did there might violate their rules.
J R in WV
@catclub:
But there is already black letter law requiring the executive branch to turn over tax records to congress when requested. The GOP apparatcheks are ignoring that law, and must be imprisoned for that criminal conspiracy.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
You glossed right over the Sanders voters who voted for Stein or wrote in Bernie.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: I think the # of BS supporters that didn’t vote for HRC was closed 25%.
On the other hand HRC supporters who didn’t vote Obama were between 10 and 12%
Brachiator
@Adam Geffen:
It’s hard to be sympathetic with people who compare Biden with Trump. What kind of pampered world do they live in?
But stepping back, I would point out to them that committed progressives like Warren and others are in the party, and in Congress. And these people have the power to make change by actively supporting a range of candidates who believe as they do, and that maybe it is more effective to elect more people who can fight for you than to pin your hopes on a single candidate who would be blocked if the GOP maintain their hold over the Senate.
I would also point out that the bad people in the Establishment count on younger people not voting. But the numbers are on the side of the younger voting cohort. If they register and vote and participate, they can change the world.
negative 1
I mean, that’s true of any candidate though. Warren couldn’t get universal healthcare any more than Bernie could, should we hate her because she’s ‘lying’? Obviously having the head of the executive branch signal a topic is a priority is a whole lot better than not having that. And as far as ‘who is likely’, neither of us have any way of knowing that. I get it, you don’t like Bernie, but those things are true in any presidential campaign. A candidate signals their priorities and beliefs. Right now, no one believes those things.
mrmoshpotato
Spot on, Cole. Well said.
As I said in the ‘sad circus’, I look forward to St. Bernie getting his ass kicked in Florida on Tuesday.
L85NJGT
@Eolirin:.
Those are deferred costs, but relevant. College room & board outpacing inflation, and eating a larger percentage of those loans is an issue. Even directional universities have gone into rent extraction with on campus housing.
Mnemosyne
@negative 1:
Warren had a M4A plan, with numbers, and a transition plan, and Bernie’s supporters sneered that it wasn’t good enough because it wasn’t as good as Bernie’s half-assed unicorn plan.
If you prefer unicorns to reality, that’s fine, but don’t expect other people to change their votes or plans based on your desire for unicorns. ?
Kent
No, it’s fundamentally different. Warren had a lot of plans and she explained exactly what it was going to take to make them happen. Nowhere will you find her claiming that through sheer courage and force of will she can magically make all the good stuff happen. That is something Bernie pretty much does in every speech.
I don’t quibble with Bernie’s ideas. They are on the left edge of progressive, but not outside the pale. I quibble with him misleading a whole generation of youth into thinking you accomplish these things by creating a movement. Radical change has never happened like that ever, in the history of the country outside a civil war or great depression. And never through an outside movement looking in.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
No. I didn’t gloss over anything. I specifically dealt with the assertion that large numbers of Sanders supporters voted for Trump.
And in 2020, I do not expect significant numbers of Sanders supporters to vote for Trump. I will bet small money on it.
The larger question is what some of the angrier and more stupid Sanders supporters might do. Only vote down ticket, or look for an excuse not to vote at all?
Is Jill Stein or others in the lunatic left running in 2020? I haven’t heard peep about a libertarian candidate.
Kent
And who’s fault is that?
Uncle Cosmo
ME, Monty, pick ME!
All kidding aside –
I will argue that Biden and the Democratic Party should take their good old time selecting a running mate. Absolutely no need to announce one now – except in the minds of Jackals & the like-minded who must know now, now, now (& will be royally pissed off if it’s not a POC &/or woman). And if anything should’ve jumped out at yinz since New Year’s, it’s that your political views are not generally shared by Democrats as a whole, let alone the entire electorate.
I will argue that during that time (roughly up to July 4) Biden & the DNC should identify as many plausible running mates as possible, should conduct background checks, interviews, etc. to identify their possible electoral liabilities as well as benefits, and should assess the impact of such liabilities & benefits by polling the living shit out of the electorate, with special attention to so-called “battleground states.”
I will argue that Joe’s running mate should be selected with an eye to competence & compatibility with him, but also with emphasis on not leaving any votes on the table. For the health of this society we need not merely to turn Orangecandyass out of office but to dropkick his bigoted arse as hard & as far as possible. We need to get as many Americans as possible to stand up & say that the last 4 years’ crap is socially & culturally unacceptable & send the Trumpistas scuttling back under their rocks.
And I will predict that when that intense vetting is done, the selected running mate will be white, male, hetero, and 39-59 – because anyone who doesn’t meet those qualifications will leave votes on the table. The more so in that the GOP will be happy to run against that running mate by claiming that “Biden is on death’s door, & would you trust the USA to that person??” And I predict that once he sees numbers to support this sort of choice, Rep. Clyburn will be OK with it.
I don’t like it – IMO there are a bunch of Democrats out there who’d make fine VPOTUSes (and POTUSes) but don’t meet the criteria – and maybe survey results will prove me wrong. Fine. So long as the vetting is deliberate & intense & thorough.
We need to win, and win big.
(And I’ll take the cascade of rotten tomatoes, fish guts & dog turds off the air… ;^D)
glory b
@Couch Thing: I don’t know, lots of black people know he wanted to primary Obama, and for sure, that doesn’t sit well with us.
Also, he admits he’s not a people person, so outreach is going to be limited. Black people want to see you kiss babies, hug old people, sing with the choir, etc.
We LOVE the pictures of Obama and Michelle interacting with people, a grumpy, standoffish old white guy? Not so much.
Marcopolo
@schrodingers_cat:
Nope. On a percentage basis more HRC primary supporters voted for McCain than Sanders supporters voted for Trump.
The Bernie voters who defected to Trump, explained by a political scientist
I though this was generally known by now.
glory b
@Kent: That’s because it’s something of a cult, I have to think it’s more about him than the policies.
I mean come on, they’re in their 20s and 30s? Never suffered a disappointment before?
grubert
Thank you John Cole. Quite right.
PenAndKey
Between my wife and I our monthly student loan payments come to about $650/mo. That’s more than we pay for our cars, and I can certainly think of a lot of things we could do in life if we suddenly had an extra $7800/yr to do it with.
We’re doing relatively okay for two late-to-college millennials. We have two new cars, a nice house in a quiet suburb with good schools, and are about to have our second child. Honestly short of a picket fence and too little in retirement savings I can’t complain, not like I could before my newest job. Even still, we started our careers at the start of the recession and it took my wife and I until we were in our mid thirties to get as far as we have, and even without college at first the costs of housing, medical care, and… well… life has so vastly outpaced wages that it’s insane.
I got lucky. I had the connections to get a good paying job right out of college. My cohorts? The job offers many of them took were for lab spots making $13/hr if they were lucky. I would know, because I got the same offers and the recruiters acted like they were doing me a favor. I can’t imagine trying to pay back my loans and start my post-college life if I was making that sort of money. So I get where people in their 20s and 30s are coming from because I’m right there with them. If I could get a universal non-employer tied healthcare system and free college with student debt forgiveness guaranteed tomorrow (or next year) I’d crawl over broken glass to do it. That doesn’t mean I can support an inept leader like Sanders who talks a mean game but can’t organize or politic worth a darn. That, I feel, is the big difference. Many people don’t pay enough attention to politics to recognize the difference between a realistic proposal and a pie-in-the-sky promise. Not everyone is like us here at BJ, immersed in politics day in and day out. I’m sure if you checked you’d find that a lot of Sanders’ support is relative low information, because that’s the level he’s at.
Chyron HR
@Marcopolo:
So? Bernie “The One True God” Sanders says that John McCain is a great hero.
negative 1
@Mnemosyne: I have. Extended Pell Grants aren’t doing anything to the price of college, and his 5% discretionary income bit isn’t much different than it is now. I’m not sure exactly how his ACA is different from the ACA now, but it’s not universal. Is it the medicare buy-in? Am I missing something else?
This is going to end up as pile on me because I’d rather have had Bernie or Warren than Biden (my state still hasn’t voted yet, so we won’t have a contested primary in any election on the ballot) and it’s not my intention. I don’t want to re-litigate 2016, it wasn’t fun the first time. But supporting some of Bernie’s policies, which are good, seems to me to be a good thing. I should’ve said that when any candidate drops out, some of their causes drop out with them and some of their supporters are now SOL. Bernie, being the last one ‘left’ (pun intended) means that it’s centrist time all over again, and so some of those priorities are pushed back another decade. Maybe not dunking on supporters of that is a good idea, since we’re all going to vote for Biden anyway.
Marcopolo
@Chyron HR: So what? Ideological issues aside, I’m just trying to make sure that folks here who are arguing points are arguing from factual positions. Is that a problem for you?
mrmoshpotato
@negative 1: 1. Could you please note who you’re quoting? (Kent at comment 159)
2. If Warren (or anyone else but Bernie) suggested universal healthcare, or suggestion X, they’d talk about how to actually try getting it through Congress and the Senate, and how likely that would be. And also how to hold the House and return Democratic control to the Senate
Bernie was just “McConnell will see the crowd outside his window wagging their fingers for free healthcare, free college and a unicorn butler, and Mitch will shit his pants in fear and do whatever I want.”
Mnemosyne
@Kent:
Folks really need to watch (or re-watch) Selma. The whole point wasn’t that MLK and the civil rights movement was working against the political “establishment.” It was that they had backing from the political establishment that needed to be pushed into action, aka passing actual legislation.
So many “activists” decided that they needed to work outside of the system and then were shocked to discover that the friendly politicians they had counted on to pass the actual legislation that would fix things had been replaced by Republicans because the activists had decided that they didn’t need to participate in the system at all by supporting candidates and voting.
John Cole
@artem1s:
This is the kind of closure that doomed the Bernie camp. Yes, he *CAN* win. There are plenty of delegates out there. That doesn’t mean I think he *WILL* win or he is *LIKELY* to win, but he can still win. This isn’t fluffing, it’s math.
Personally I think he is going to be wiped out in the next few weeks, but right now he *CAN* still win. Were he smart, he would start ramping down his supporters and doing what he can to increase his clout when he loses, and he would get more credit for doing that while he still is not mathematically eliminated.
negative 1
Cool man, I guess that’s my point. There are some Sanders supporters, me among them, who were voting on that stuff. Him or Warren, I couldn’t care less how it happened, but Warren dropped out first so Sanders was my last hope (my state hasn’t voted yet, and now there are no contested D elections in my district). I get that most things in a presidential election don’t happen anyway (it’s not my first election cycle). My point was more that maybe taking the ‘in your face’ victory lap isn’t a great look since plenty of people who are going to vote for Biden aren’t getting what they were hoping for. Not you personally.
glory b
@topclimber: Yeah, who called him the Amendment King besides him and his minions?
FlipYrWhig
@Adam Geffen: Another thing you could try is getting better friends.
Juju
@different-church-lady: Moldy Bread is my second choice behind wet sock on the gym floor, then barely sentient dumpster fire. I will not, however, support toilet paper stuck on a shoe. Ever.
Betty Cracker
@Uncle Cosmo: Good thing a VP pick that essentially tells Democratic women to go to hell can’t possibly leave votes on the table. Because that would be dumb!
negative 1
@mrmoshpotato:
That’s not true at all — nor should it be. Rethuglicans talk about their policies like it’s manifest destiny all the time. Remember Paul Ryan’s magic math being picked up and run with by the press as if it was the absolute truth? Meanwhile any kind of progressive policy has to come with a certified actuarial report as well as a door-to-door mailer saying how you personally will be affected three years and 2 days from now down to the penny.
Biden has plenty of policy prescriptions on his web page https://joebiden.com/joes-vision/ that I like — and that I think he has no shot of passing either. That’s fine. I don’t begrudge candidates their chance to talk about priorities and what they’d like to do; it’s rarely up to only them anyway. If anything, Warren’s need to footnote every idea was probably to avoid some combination of sexism and being labeled ‘too liberal and not serious’.
Mnemosyne
@negative 1:
I’m not trying to pile on. I’m pointing out that strengthening the ACA, Medicare buy-in, and a public option gets us 75 percent of the way to universal healthcare coverage almost immediately, with room to grow beyond that. A full and immediate change to M4A was never going to happen for any candidate, ever — there was always going to be a transition period.
And, again, I’m not saying that the things you want are bad. I’m saying that you have a FAR better chance of setting them in motion with President Biden than you do with President Trump. I’m saying that Biden and the Democratic Party are FAR more willing to hear you out and negotiate something reasonable than Trump and the Republican Party are.
We can either continue hurtling down the road we’re currently on, or we can put on the brakes and look at a map to figure out a new course. Bernie told you that he could dynamite a new road through the mountain immediately, but no one can do that without risking a rockslide.
Brachiator
Political strategists often say this, in part to justify their work and fees. They are often wrong.
Sanders has even more to worry about. Bernie going negative ties him to Trump and makes him look even more like another Putin puppy.
It’s like the guy who wanted to blackmail Bruce Wayne in ‘Batman Begins”.
“Bernie, you are gong to try to smear the guy who has beat your ass in every major primary and who enjoys the good will of real Democrats?
Good luck with that.”
mrmoshpotato
@negative 1: Not sure where you got the Republican party from when we’re talking about the Democratic party, but I guess I should’ve been explicit so you couldn’t pull the shit you just did.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I don’t have my unicorn butler yet, and there’s a turtle-faced fascist motherfucker that I need to yell at about it.
ETA – Where’d I put my giant foam wagging finger?
PenAndKey
Like you said, mathematically there are still enough delegates in play that Sanders could pull a surprise upset. It would take him winning nearly every remaining delegate and his chances are extremely, but not impossible. You’re also absolutely right that he could do the smart thing and start to wind down now while it still looks like it was his choice. I don’t see him doing so. It would run completely counter to the messiah complex behavior he’s exhibited for years, but again not impossible.
Both scenarios, however, are extremely low probability. People will differ on where they have their probability threshold for planning. As the primary gets further out, and the probability decreases even more, we’ll eventually get to the point where it’s all over but the shouting.
Cacti
@negative 1: I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it to you now. Had Warren run as an adversary of Bernie, i.e., someone with similar policy ideas, but who could work well with others to get them done, she would likely be in a very different position now.
Running as the Bernie whisperer was a huge strategic mistake.
Barry
@Betty Cracker: “For reals, though, I hope Sanders can be prevailed upon to keep the upcoming debate constructive. His history in that regard isn’t great,…”
We learned that with Trump. Remember people expecting him to ‘grow into the office’?
mrmoshpotato
@Mnemosyne: Everyone knows unicorns prevent rockslides, landslides and water slides (the fun-hating, aquaphobic bastards).
schrodingers_cat
@John Cole: He could win if he had a personality transplant. That is not going to happen.
Cacti
@schrodingers_cat: To borrow from a previous Dem nominee:
There is no other Bernie Sanders.
Brachiator
@Uncle Cosmo:
All right. You keep flogging this dead horse, with the argument that, essentially, the Democrats need to fight the bigotry of the GOP by acknowledging and giving in to it, with respect to selecting a VP.
You have in mind a certain number of votes and a certain type of ideal voter.
But you don’t seem to acknowledge the anger and strong conviction of women, who energized the mid-term elections, and you seem to want to discount the electoral power of black and Latino voters.
You also want the Democrats to pretend to not be the party that they have become. Is that really going to fool anyone?
The party may do better playing to their strengths than trying to accommodate conservative weakness.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yeah, when was the purity test updated?
schrodingers_cat
@Marcopolo:
This is where I got the 25% number from. He used to be an FPer here.
mrmoshpotato
@schrodingers_cat: On top of that personality transplant, how many people will have to have part of their memory selectively erased (especially memories of Pouty Not-A-Democrat Asshole at the 2016 DNC)?
Adam Geffen
@Brachiator:
Yeah tbh I was surprised. I mean the person in question is a part-time wage worker not a trust fund socialist by any means. It seems to be a function of purity politics?
Your points are well taken. Thank you for the additional talking point ideas.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@negative 1:
if your only acceptable outcome on these issues is Sanders-style maximalism, then you’re right, there is no hope. At least not now. If you understand that, just for starters, “universal healthcare” and “Berniecare” are not necessarily synonyms, there is.
negative 1
@mrmoshpotato: “Pull the shit I did” — what, point out that having to get a CBO score for an election year idea is only a prerequisite for Dems? And bemoaning that? Yes, I disagreed with your criticism of me. And I didn’t attack you — imagine that.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Another day, another 1200 point drop in Dump’s stock market
negative 1
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Or, you know, hope for a raise. https://epionline.org/oped/the-fight-for-15-sets-its-sights-on-a-20-minimum-wage/
It’s not a Bernie thing, though he did endorse it. It comes from the idea that $40K a year is about the minimum to realistically live on, although I admit I live in the northeast so that may be only around here.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@negative 1:
I think part of the problem is you’re confusing the center of the Democratic Party with the center of the electorate as a whole.
One of the reasons it’s so hard for me to take Sanders, and Sanderism, seriously is I have never heard a strategy, or even discussion, of the other branches of government more detailed than “Look out the window, Mitch.”
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
RE: They weren’t closely connected to the Democratic Party…
Yep.
negative 1
@Cacti: I don’t know, I disagree a little I guess. I feel like that was her message, or maybe how I interpreted it. I’m not sure what she could have done, honestly, her campaign seemed pretty flawless to me. No one could possibly attack her on the merits of her positions as they were popular and she meticulously detailed how she’d get them done. She had experience in the executive and legislative branches. She even had a cool campaign slogan (“I’ve got a plan for that”).
Her dropping out was probably the most dispiriting. Bernie is/was never going to win — he calls himself a socialist for gosh sake. Warren was like all of the policy positives of Sanders without the name-recognition negatives. I never saw her make a single mistake. If it’s not just because people won’t vote for a woman, I don’t actually know what it is.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@negative 1:
with everyone you know
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Sanders lost every county in both Michigan and Missouri last night
?
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
News that Dump may address nation tonight adds to market’s tailspin, now down to new lows, over 1500 points
Eljai
@schrodingers_cat: Thanks! I knew I had seen something about that recently, but I could not remember where. In any case, It does appear that Sanders voters switching to Jill Stein (or Trump or Gary Johnson or not voting at all) in crucial swing states had a bigger impact on the electoral outcome than Clinton to McCain voters in 2008.
glory b
@Kent: Exactly. I said in an earlier dead thread, the number crunchers say he can’t just win, he needs multiple blowout wins, and there is nothing indicating he can do that.
Brachiator
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
Damn. This actually says something good about Biden’s potential strength in the general election.
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
In a way, the Dow is relatively unimportant. It is an indirect reflection of what is happening in the economy.
The disruption of supply chains, loss income of workers who stay home or get laid off, business owners facing loss of customers, import and export being sidelined, vacation travel and tourism losses. It’s still early, and the impact has already been tremendous.
Hopefully, containment and mitigation efforts will prove effective, because otherwise, the world might be in for a hell of a shock.
But Trump’s focus on maintaining a semblance of order in the financial markets is misguided. I’m looking to Pelosi and others for a more comprehensive vision of what needs to be done.
Barry
@Marcopolo: “That is what happened until SC. ”
Let’s improve that: ‘that is what happened in the first two, teeny, tiny, unrepresenative states, where no contenders had yet dropped out, and where the frankly arrogant, smug a-holes who live there expect to be [REDACTED] every single day to get their precious vote. And where one of them is a frikkin’ caucus.
The minute it hit a medium-sized state which was at all representative of the US population, it disintegrated like a spun-sugar Titanic vs. a steel iceberg.
Miss Bianca
@Cacti:
OK, I am petty enough for that to be a LOL for me. I still remember Awesomely Luvvie, back in the halcyon days of 2016, talking about Bernie’s “struggle hair” and the comments from the ladies on that post made me weep with laughter.
That’s probably the last time anything about Bernie actually made me laugh instead of froth with rage.
Mnemosyne
@negative 1:
IMO, a lot of good candidates’ campaigns were severely harmed this year by an underlying assumption that Sanders’ voters are policy voters who could be persuaded to switch with a better or more workable policy. Harris, Castro, and Warren all ran aground on that assumption that turned out to be false. I think that Warren would have done much better if she had opposed Bernie more. She ended up coming across as Bernie-lite to Democratic voters across the spectrum.
Also: Black voters. There are things you MUST do in order to win Black voters, and many of them have to do with showing up and demonstrating support for several years BEFORE you run for office, or else you look like a carpetbagger. Sadly, Warren listened to Bernie’s advisers and neglected this important duty while Biden was making appearances on behalf of Black Democrats in every podunk town in the country. That shit MATTERS when you’re trying to build a coalition.
Last thing: Republicans vote in lockstep for fear and hatred. Democrats vote for hope and unity. You can’t use Republican tactics on Democratic voters because we HATE divisive politicians and will tune out if things get too ugly. That’s what happened in 2016 with the help of Russian active measures, and we run a risk of that happening again if we’re not vigilant.
And I’m not even getting into how far off the polls were before the voting even started. I hope those polling organizations are trying to figure out how they got everything wrong this year, because it’s remarkable how bad the polling was.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
“Mister Sanders! You don’t have a day pass!”
?????
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Couch Thing
@PenAndKey: yes, but I think that he could have gotten to 50+ with better outreach to black voters and better GOTV among the youth. It didn’t feel like he ever really tried, though. Which is a shame.
Uncle Cosmo
I had no intention to “keep flogging” my argument (which IMO is very far from the glue factory) until Marcopolo specifically asked in #109 supra, “Anyone want to argue against picking a woman or against picking a melanin enhanced person?” If you’re tired of it you are cordially invited to scroll right by, or invoke the pie filter. Your choice.
I also never said Democrats should “acknowledge and give in to bigotry.” We should leave no votes on the table that we could gain without compromising our core principles.
I have in mind” a very uncertain number of votes from a “certain type” of very non-ideal voters, who voted for Trump for reasons only thinly related to bigotry and hatred; who aren’t consciously comfortable with bigotry & hatred but aren’t yet able to acknowledge the residue that lives within them; but who sense they haven’t gotten what they thought they were voting for. (E.g, the night manager at a local supermarket, AA about 50, who told me he voted for Trump to “shake things up in Washington.” Anecdote, of course.) My argument is that a significant chunk of Trump’s 2016 vote came from this type of voter & that those votes are attainable if we stand by our principles but avoid screaming YOU’RE A FUCKING BIGOT! in their faces. If Paris was worth a Mass to Henry of Navarre, a vote for the Democrats ought to be worth a slight bit of reticence. (We can engage with them, calmly, afterwards.)
I acknowledge the “strong conviction” of AA women who were solid for Biden that defeating Trump is the one essential task & who were not going to be diverted by the will-o’-the-wisp candidacy of a woman of color (Harris) who they seem to have felt would alienate too many voters. I acknowledge the real disappointment of many Democratic women that one of their own was not nominated & their conviction that female candidates didn’t get a fair shake.
But I also acknowledge that there were some real deal-breakers buried in those candidacies for voters who could otherwise be persuaded to vote Democratic. I was skeptical of Warren because I know that many if not most midlevel voters are skeptical of “plans” – and because of the “schoolmarm” presentation. (I conjecture most female Juicers were inspired by their women teachers & that many of both genders were “teacher’s pets.” IMO the electorate as a whole is not inclined to recall these teachers – many of whom might quite justifiably have felt stuck in their jobs – all that fondly. YMMV )
Are AA, Latinx, and LGBTQ voters going to stay away from the polls because Joe’s running mate might not look like them, speak like them, love like them or gender-identify like them? Any of them who don’t fully understand the existential threat of a Trump second term hasn’t been paying attention. And I firmly believe that of all our countrymen, they pay attention – they’re in the front line of those at risk.
Other things being equal, the AA women of SC might have preferred to support one of their own for the Presidency. Other things were not equal, and they chose to support a white male whom they trusted and who could tap into a much larger group of voters. IMO too many Juicers ignore or dismiss this.
Last I looked, the Democratic Party still had a sizeable contingent of white male (& female) heterosexuals. That group is moving out of its comfort zone as the Party moves toward diversity, but to talk about “the party that we have become” is to regurgitate GOP talking points that that’s all we are, a bunch of hermetically sealed interest groups held together by a lust for power.
It might. And it might not. I think we should do as much as possible to find out before committing to a running mate that checks off a particular set of boxes. I think we ought to gather everyone we can into a movement to do what has to be done ASAP – remove Trump – & sort the rest out later.d
Again, YMMV.
Couch Thing
@Chyron HR: I didn’t say he “woulda won”. I said the race would look different right now. I was in fact bemoaning the reality that his campaign didn’t do things that seemed, to me, obvious.
Couch Thing
@glory b: I get that. Maybe it just isn’t in his DNA to be able to do the kind of outreach that was needed. I feel like if you actually go to voters and talk to them, they will listen and maybe come along with the journey you propose. I think that’s true of all Dem voters. Sanders never really seemed to try.
I supported Warren (since I am in KS I have not gotten to vote yet). When she dropped out I switched to Bernie. Ideologically he is the best fit. I am gonna break my back for Biden, but I will feel blah about it.
Brachiator
@Uncle Cosmo:
Bottom line is that white, male, hetero checks off a particular set of boxes that you prefer. You have stated before that you think this is necessary. I will take what you say here as “let’s think about it” as opposed the the stance that you previously took.
Morzer
@Uncle Cosmo: I remember back in the day when we were told that Latino voters would not vote for Obama because of some alleged differences between the Latino and African American communities.
We should pick the best, most effective politician we can find to be Biden’s VP. If that person is white and male and straight – so be it. Politics is about winning elections. No win, no nice things.
Summer
I love this post.