HuffPost, via commentor Immanentize:
The presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) submitted a letter to the New York State Board of Elections on Sunday challenging a looming decision on whether to keep him on the ballot for the state’s primary.
Sanders formally suspended his campaign earlier this month, but said that he planned to stay on the ballot in upcoming primaries in order to maximize his influence on the Democratic Party’s platform and rules.
Five days later, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed a budget bill with an obscure provision authorizing the state’s board of elections to remove from the primary ballot those candidates who have withdrawn from the presidential campaign.
Malcolm Seymour, an attorney representing the Sanders campaign, argued in the letter to the board that the provision should not apply to Sanders “retroactively,” since he might have acted differently if it had been in effect when he decided to suspend his campaign…
Governor Cuomo is not, per CNN, a Friend of The Bern:
New York became the first state to cancel its presidential primary over coronavirus fears, the co-chair of the New York State Board of Elections said.
Douglas Kellner told CNN the decision came after Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders suspended his presidential campaign earlier this month, which “basically rendered the primary moot.”
“At a time when the goal is to avoid unnecessary social contact, our conclusion was that there was no purpose in holding a beauty contest primary that would marginally increase the risk to both voters and poll workers,” said Kellner, one of the Democratic commissioners on the board…
[NY Dem Chair Jay] Jacobs had told CNN in a phone interview earlier Monday that he agreed with the decision to cancel the state’s presidential primary contest — calling it a “necessary move” by New York election officials to protect the health and safety of voters and poll workers.He noted that the outcome was essentially “predetermined” since Sanders dropped out of the Democratic race and emphasized the need to protect voters amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’ve stopped all nonessential business. This certainly is a nonessential primary if ever there was one,” Jacobs said.
Both Jeff Weaver and Nina Turner are reported to be “outraged”, but no current Sanders spokespersons had responded, as of 10:54pmEST.
His supporters, however, WILL NOT BE IGNORED!
I wonder if Bernie sometimes regrets cultivating a movement of lunatics. https://t.co/b5knbXjmCp
— Jeni's of Cold Stones (@agraybee) April 27, 2020
for real, a scruffy white guy from vermont named dilan screaming at his senator with a bullhorn for failing to acquiesce to his individual, particular demands is so much more worthy of mockery than literally every winemom on this site combined.
— golikehellmachine (@golikehellmachi) April 27, 2020
i spoke too soon, because "venmo me money for a megaphone to go yell at my senator's house from my car" adds an entirely different level of privilege and grift that scientists are going to have to spend decades studying. pic.twitter.com/MzzWPtgu3a
— golikehellmachine (@golikehellmachi) April 27, 2020
columbusqueen
And some folks wonder why the hell I despise Bernie & his bloody cult so much. Gee, maybe cause they’re overprivileged fuckwits?
Facebones
I don’t give a fig about St Bernie & his cult, but this does set a bad precedent. I don’t trust Cuomo most of the time and I certainly would not put it past him to cancel a primary for a less pressing issue than a pandemic.
The obvious choice would be to conduct a completely mail in primary. That way Bernie can lose 65-35 without anyone getting sick.
Another Scott
@Facebones: Nobody forced St. Bernard to suspend his campaign.
This is all on Bernie and his hangers-oners. (And Donnie, for making the pandemic exponentially worse.). Not Cuomo.
Cheers,
Scott.
different-church-lady
Today has been unbearably depressing.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@different-church-lady: I know what you mean, the Packers drafting a quarterback was the last straw.
cain
I don’t think we should antagonizing people right now. Our focus should be defeating Trump. Some of these people are blaming the DNC on this – it seems that the DNC is root of all evil for these people. While I think they are generally “ok” but mostly I think giving them money is a waste of time and I usually don’t agree with any of their strategems. But I will concede that I am somewhat ignorant and have no idea what they are using the money for…. I wish we could get a status report.
cain
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
I suddenly really want ice cream.. damn.. looks ike I’m going to have to make me some.
Gvg
@Facebones: Maybe, but the fact is, a pandemic of this magnitude IS different. When a politician does try to suspend a primary over some other emergency we will them deal with that. A lot of ink has been spilled over a lot of different pre outrage emergencies being misused by scummy politicians. I don’t recall this one coming up before. Most dramatic plots to “use” an emergency to subvert an election…don’t involve something contagious. This particular emergency actually also makes it difficult to use the army or national guards because those…large live together groups are actually more vulnerable to the problem than most of our population.
Bernie is kind of an idiot. Cuomo is not. Bernie is going to lose this primary even if it’s held and LOSE more influence not gain some. His time is past his fad is over etc. also the way to gain influence in the party is make friends and allies not piss off a lot of worried serious people. Last elections scenarios are not repeating, Bernie can’t adapt.
I really don’t think this special event is going to lead to a slippery slope of primary canceling in some other year.
ziggy
Some good news–Pacifica has now become Cascadia–the western states alliance now includes Nevada and Colorado. I’m going to have to rethink our flag to incorporate them.
CaseyL
@cain: The people we’re antagonizing are people who hate Democrats, hate Biden, and won’t vote for either one. I put them right next to Trumpers on “folks I don’t give a shit about pissing off.”
HeleninEire
This makes no sense. There are a bunch of Congressional primaries that day too. In addition, normally NY doesn’t allow no-excuse absentee ballots but they changed the rule a few weeks ago and told us that to request an absentee ballot, tick “temporary illness” on the form as the excuse and we’re good to go.
Then last week Cuomo signed an executive order that said forget all that…NY will send everyone who’s registered an application to request a mail-in ballot. First time that NY would have mail-in that was not absentee.
I’m assuming this is all still true because of the Congressional primaries but it kind of negates the whole “there’s a pandemic out there” excuse for cancelling the Presidential primary.
Something’s fishy.
ziggy
@ziggy: nope, needs a new name also. any ideas?
cain
@ziggy: Wasn’t Cascadia always a thing? https://reddit.com/r/Cascadia – I dont know about adding those folks from Idaho. :-)
cain
@CaseyL:
Yes, but they are loud and obnoxious and they take our focus away from who we should be attacking – all these twitter blue check people should be ignoring Bernie supporters, but yet my timeline is filled with bellyaching. Wasting our time.
cain
Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense.. let Bernie get his ballot item – besides it will help us figure out how much we can push the Democratic party to the left. Something we need to do.
There are still Clinton 3rd way thinkers hanging around.. the ones that want to keep us more centrist and please the Trumpers (eg they rather get their votes from right of center than the moderate left)
lumpkin
This is just stupid. Saying that they are canceling the primary due to the virus is a transparent lie because New York is still having an election. This needlessly alienates people Biden needs as supporters and furthers the “rigged” narrative.
oclib
@HeleninEire:
I read somewhere today that all the down ballot races were running unopposed and a reason for the cancellation….
Jackie
Why not just have voting by mail? Win-Win.
Emma
Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Staatskapelle String Quartet played Schumann a few days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ2ae2QoJBc&ab_channel=DeutscheGrammophon
Daniel definitely still has it. But I love him, Schumann, and
Moments Musicaux(lol brainfart, he played part of the Fantasiestucke), so I’m biased there.HeleninEire
@oclib: No. There are definitely down ballot races that are being contested. There are also some State Senate and Assembly races that are being contested. NY will have the polls open. ETA: If they don’t change it to ONLY mail-in.
James E Powell
@different-church-lady:
I agree. I mentioned in the thread just below that one thought that makes me happy is that Chris Matthews is not around anymore.
Villago Delenda Est
Jeff Weaver, Nina Turner, and Dilan Cook all need to find a fire to die in. YESTERDAY.
danfromny
I was pissed off when I heard that New York did that because that gives the Bernistas the victimization they live for.
karen marie
@cain: They’re fucking morons who can’t even get off their moms’ couches long enough to go vote.
cain
Whelp.. I made ice cream using the double bag method. My flavor is a blueberry mint (I made a syrup out of it) and I added some balsamic vinegar for some extra tartness and black pepper. Unusual, but damn it was good. I put it in the freezer to firm up for a bit.
I might eat it with a bit of the balsamic vinegar on top of it. I found out that something like this really goes well as a drinking vinegar. Living the covid life!
karen marie
@cain: Who is this “we”? And who is this “us”? Bernie can get stuffed.
karen marie
@danfromny: Are you kidding? They don’t need any help. Their timelines are full of Tara Reade. If they can’t have the ball, they’re going to burn the house down. Fuck Bernie, fuck his supporters.
oclib
@HeleninEire:
A clarification: “The Democratic primary will be held for other races, but because of the board’s decision, voters in about 20 counties with no other contests will have no need to go to the polls, and no choice for president will appear on ballots in the remainder of the state’s 62 counties.”
I think it was Raw Story where I read unopposed….sorry for that….
ema
@HeleninEire:
I agree. We are all supposed to get mail-in ballots, so the pandemic excuse doesn’t make sense. “Trying to save some money due to the looming budget deficit” would have been better but, still, this cancellation is dubious.
cain
@karen marie:
Ah yes, Tara Reid – their hopes and dreams to take back the reigns using a poor woman’s tragedy (alleged) is sad. Bernie will very unlikely be choosen at that point.
I know that Tara’s recollection has changed many times, but I think we should believe accusers and it should be pursued and settled before the convention. I don’t want this to be attack again..
Anya
Not a Sanders fan by any stretch of the imagination but Cuomo is wrong here. He is unnecessarily picking a fight. What’s the point of this move? I mean, we know that Sanders has a huge ego and wants to continue to accumulate delegates so why not let him?
We really don’t want to start another “Sanders was cheated” stupidity.
HumboldtBlue
Some of the best pork I ever ate came from a roadside-carnitas-vat-of-Mexican-deliciousness during a road trip from San Diego to San Felipe, Mexico.
Carnitas Autenticas de Michoacan De Mi Rancho A Tu Cocina.
Mnemosyne
@ziggy:
You guys can mess around with the other stuff on the new Cascadia flag, but the bear stays. ?
Signed, A California Resident.
Mnemosyne
Okay, there seem to be a couple of misconceptions here:
– The law saying that they can take candidates who have suspended their campaigns off the ballot was passed BEFORE Sanders dropped out. Cuomo didn’t sign it until about 10 days after the bill passed, and Sanders dropped out in the meantime.
– The primary election is STILL HAPPENING. Please don’t let NY voters get confused. Other primaries are still going. It’s just that Biden will be the only name on the ballot for the presidential primary because everyone else has suspended their campaigns and endorsed him.
Can we please not spread alarmist half-truths? Thank you.
ema
OT but good news: Winston, A NC pug diagnosed with COVID-19, has recovered. (I am not familiar with veterinary testing but it would be interesting to know the sensitivity and specificity for their tests.)
smike
@James E Powell:
True, that.
anarchoRex
@karen marie: yeah! Fuck all those 8 million voters that make up a third of the Dem primary electorate!
Mnemosyne
@anarchoRex:
If they didn’t want to make themselves irrelevant, they shouldn’t have spent the past three months screaming that Biden is demented, dead, and/or a rapist. It kind of makes them look like they may not be operating in good faith.
Emma from FL
So did anybody bother to read Mnemosyne‘s comment? No? Did anyone checked? No? Lordy, we can be as addicted to drama as anybody else. Mind you, I’m of the political bent of preferring elections even if the point is pretty damn much moot since the other guy quit. But it wasn’t a conspiracy and Mary Mother of God and her secretary St. Jude aren’t going to change the outcome.
Kent
How does Bernie staying on the ballot after he has already dropped out do anything to push the party to the left?
Explain it to me without talking about the party platform which is utterly irrelevant as a governing document once the elections are over.
As far as I know. the only way to push the party to the left is to elect more Democrats across the country so that Joe Manchin isn’t the deciding vote on anything. I’m not sure how Bernie staying on the NY ballot does any of that.
Doug R
@ziggy: It’s Weedwestia. Or the Cannabis Coast.
Steeplejack (phone)
@ziggy:
Ecotopia? Some guy wrote a hippie speculative novel years ago with that title about the West Coast splitting off. Don’t remember much about it except there was a lot of drum circles and nudity.
ETA: I may be retconning the drum circles to substitute for ’70s stuff I can’t remember.
Baud
@Mnemosyne: Thanks for this.
lumpkin
Does anyone know if Sanders officially withdrew from the race? Does New York have a process whereby a candidate requests that their name be removed from the ballot? I know he said he was suspending his campaign but that’s a lot different than actually removing his name from the ballot.
Kent
I don’t think any candidate officially withdraws from the race. They suspend their campaign. The distinction is to allow them to continue fundraising and other activities to retire any debts that they may have. So, for example, Warren, Harris, Klobuchar all suspended their campaigns.
In any event, it is up to each state to define their own ballot rules. As has been pointed out above, NY’s rule is to remove candidates from the ballot who suspended their campaigns. Which makes a lot of sense because why confuse people by keeping Warren, Booker, Klobuchar, Castro, etc. on the ballot when none of them are continuing to campaign.
Bernie wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to suspend his campaign because he was obviously going to lose big (as WI showed) and had no path to the nomination. So continuing to campaign and fundraise would have been pointless and make him look more and more like a Hitler Downfall parody. But he still wants to collect delegates without actually being in the campaign? For what? To just make mischief in the convention?
If you want to say in the race, stay in the race. If you want to get out, get out. But don’t play some damn cleverer-by-half game with the nomination by trying to collect a few more delegates when you aren’t even a candidate anymore and have endorsed Biden. The primary is about choosing a nominee. We aren’t spending all these hundreds of millions of dollars on primaries just so that a few Bernie faithful can play pointless games at the convention and sidetrack the proceedings.
TriassicSands
@Gvg:
In all likelihood, the day Bernie conceded, he lost all leverage to gain more influence. It’s hard not to think Bernie just can’t stand being out of the spotlight.
Maybe Trump will let Bernie share in the “briefings” and help misinform the American people.
(Full disclosure: I opposed the nomination of bot Biden and Sanders, but if it has to be Biden, then we should be worrying about beating Trump, not about Bernie’s hurt feelings.)
trnc
@Villago Delenda Est:
Is it possible to venmo someone a bag of flaming dog poop, perhaps strategically placed in the megaphone?
Geminid
U.S. Representatives Jerry Nadler, Caroline Maloney, Tom Suozzi, and Elliot Engel face primary challengers from the left in the June 23 NY primary. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez faces challengers from the right, including former CNBC anchor Michelle Cabrera. I don’t know if Cuomo moved with this in mind, but I’m guessing the Democratic Socialists of America and left democrats were hoping a big Bernie vote might help put their challengers over, and are angrier than usual. But anything can happen in a low turnout primary. AOC beat the complacent Joe Crowley in the 2018 primary ~17,000 votes to ~14,000. By contrast, two weeks before Abigail Spanberger won a 5-way primary in the Va. 7th with 35,000 votes; the runner up had 20,000. Unlike AOC, Spanberger did not shift any “Overton Window,” but she and 40 other successful nominees in red districts did make the Democrats the majority in the House. That shifted a real window.
TriassicSands
@cain:
Dear Cain,
Please send me 5 gallons of your homemade ice cream. I promise I’ll let you know what I think of it after I get back from the ER. Thanks in Advance!
TriassicSands
@lumpkin:
I don’t know if anyone ever outright “quits” a race anymore. They all seem to “suspend” their campaign. Do they think that will make it easier to reenter after their miracle occurs? Or do they just think it’s defeatist to admit they quit? I don’t know the answer.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: That bear is extinct in the state it represents. That always made me sad, even though I’m terrified of bears.
TriassicSands
@karen marie:
That kinda sounds like poetry. Nice.
trnc
The platform isn’t binding, but it’s not nothing, either. It’s supposed to be a set of guiding principles. There was a pretty big stink when DT’s minions insisted on only one specific change to the repub platform in 2016 – weaken support for Ukraine.
At any rate, I’m happy to see candidates come off the ballot after they’ve dropped out. Bernie and his flying monkeys are just making more noise -they know as well as anyone that he’s likely to be apportioned more delegates by whatever method the committee comes up with than he would get from the primary because idiots like Dilan are the only people who would mark Bernie’s name AFTER he dropped out and endorsed Biden.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: Thanks for the clarification. I only got a little whiff of this tonight, Twitter was having fun with it, and I didn’t dig out the details.
trnc
@ema: @HeleninEire:
There’s a lot of info flying around, but my understanding is that the primary is only being cancelled where there are no contest at the state or federal level – IIRC, 22 counties. Hard to believe 22 counties have no contest, but I assume if there were, we’d be hearing from those contestants (the ones who haven’t already dropped out, of course – thanks, Bern).
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Yeah, no way anyone could have seen this coming. ?
This crap is starting to make me feel stabby!
anarchoRex
Yes, 8 million people were saying that, not just the same thousand people on Twitter you see over and over.
Pretty classy you engage my comment while ignoring the appalling comment I was responding to.
And P.S. he did rape her. You guys sound like Kavanaugh supporters rn, it’s honestly depressing to see the people here do it.
mrmoshpotato
Haha, right there with you.
opiejeanne
@mrmoshpotato: Me too..
Amir Khalid
@anarchoRex:
Do you have proof?
John Revolta
@anarchoRex: Proof, pfffftt. That’s not how we do it now. Way it works now, Biden has to prove he didn’t do it. 27 years ago. Or else.
clay
@anarchoRex: I believe Reade:
Do you believe her when she said “It’s not him” and “he should have know what was happening” and that her criticism is “he could have been a little more in touch with his own staff”?
If not, then why are you calling Tara Reade a liar?
EDIT: Huh. The comment I responded to has disappeared.
SFAW
@anarchoRex:
He didn’t just rape her; he raped her whole family as well, then killed them and cut their bodies into little pieces. Then pissed on their graves
I mean, if you’re going to go with bullshit, why not go whole hog?
SFAW
@TriassicSands:
The answer I have heard is that “suspending” a campaign allows said campaign to continue to collect donations, (primarily) in order to pay off campaign debts/expense. Ending a campaign outright precludes that.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@ziggy: yay! Also flag pics!
Chyron HR
@clay:
No, see, that was when Bernie just needed a small scandal to keep Biden from getting a plurality of delegates. Now he needs a much bigger scandal to overturn the primary results entirely.
Uncle Cosmo
@Emma from FL: Major props for knowing to specifically cite St. Jude – the patron saint of “impossible or desperate causes” – out of the thousands of known & unknown who make up the communio sanctorum. ;^D
Don Quijote
@Mnemosyne:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbgyHqKAVEk
Here he is being interviewed on Morning Joe, his wife is answering the questions and he looks lost. Can’t answer a simple question with a simple answer, his mind wonders all over the place…
It’s very likely that Jill Biden will end up being President…
SFAW
@Don Quijote:
Because I don’t have a lot of time/energy to wade through the thing to find your “OMFG Biden is as demented as the most dementedest person EVAH!” moment, I skimmed/skipped, and saw the interviewers asking Jill Biden, not Joe, the various “when can we hug our grandkids?”-type questions.
I’m sure that makes me a bad person, or a Joe-bot, or a Bernie-hater, or something.
Whomever
@HeleninEire: if you actually read the details, it’s ONLY in counties where there are no other races. Where they are it’s still on. Poor messaging though.
kindness
I question the motives for those people pushing the Biden rape thing. I question that these people are Democrats or even citizens in many cases. It would seem the idea is to get Biden dumped from the nomination. Then what? Some of those folk are BernieBros, some are Republicans, some are Russians and some are bots. None want to elect a Democrat for President (Bernie is still at this point not a Democrat). I do not believe there are 8 million Democrats who believe the Tara Reade evolving story.
Call it what it is, a rat-fuck operation.
Chyron HR
@Don Quijote:
A month ago you idiots were claiming Biden was secretly dead.
stinger
Which one of Bernie’s houses is that? Summer cottage? City pied-a-terre? Vermont house-to-establish-residence? One of the others?
ema
@Don Quijote:
I watched it: Q#1 to Dr. Biden, Q#2 to him, Q#3 to Dr. Biden. He’s not answering all the questions because, you know, they are not all addressed to him.
Lumpy
It’s irrational to root against what’s good for the party, because you hope it stings Bernie at the same time.
Canceling the presidential primary is bad for NY Democrats because it’s going to lower turnout. There’s still going to be an election on that date, just no presidential primary. Lots of state and local seats are in play. When Democrats vote, Democrats win. Low turnouts benefit Republicans. Some people who planned to vote for Bernie will no longer vote on that day; I don’t know if it will be enough to lose local races, but Democrats need every single vote they can get. That is, if you care about winning, and not just getting some digs in.
Anne Laurie’s PUMA grudge is tired.