Klaus wrote:

What would you call it when an oligarch buys his way into a primary, then uses his own media empire and his fortune to generate good press for himself, and lastly pays a small number of party elites to override the public vote?

Italy?

Qwiss! wrote:

Klaus wrote:

What would you call it when an oligarch buys his way into a primary, then uses his own media empire and his fortune to generate good press for himself, and lastly pays a small number of party elites to override the public vote?

Italy?

Exactly. Imagine supporting the American equivalent of Berlusconi fascism and then having the audacity to claim that you're any better than Trump. What a pathetic, pointless party.

I don't think he'll get the nomination but if he did I think it'd destroy the democrats and that may be a positive thing.

Bernie blowing up a few narratives in nevada. Winning with moderates, winning the majority of culinary union workers after the CU bosses attempted to steer members away from him in recent weeks, winning the hispanic vote by almost 40 points. M4A proving to be popular among nevada voters as well

What a weirdly specific thing to think happens so much that it actually affects polls.

Indeed.

Chris Matthews is on MSNBC now comparing Sanders's victory to the, um, fall of France in 1940. Because a jewish man who had most of his family eradicated by the nazis winning a caucus is the exact equivalent of Hitler marching into Paris.

Good to see a decent margin for Bernie in first round. Hopefully he does better in second rounds than he did in Iowa. I worry Pete will pick up Klobuchar votes in second round

It's kinda amazing that there's no accountability for stuff like this. There's not even the pretense of fairness anymore, they're just a sheer propaganda outlet, every bit as bad as Fox News has ever been. Their one mission is to stop the candidate who'll tell their owners to pay their due in taxes.

Its got to the point that even CNN called MSNBC for their hysterics

Watching this election is fascinating. Good to see Warren do well in a normal state. Shows the thoughtful part of the electorate is significant.

I think the Democratic Party is ‘losing’ the electorate the same way that the Republican Party lost the electorate in 2016. The parties try to squeeze to the center and a plurality of voters are saying we want the ‘social democrat’. And Bernie can take comfort in the belief that he should gain some of the Warren supporters once she drops.

Again, given that the party needs to win 3 races, it should be looking to end this early. The leadership should caucus soon about not appearing to be at war, else they will break apart the party. Better off winning with Bernie. Taking his young supporters and getting them to mobilize more youth. Old folk will vote regardless. And then going after Trump.

Claudius wrote:

The leadership should caucus soon about not appearing to be at war, else they will break apart the party.

A bit late for that!

What's more important: voters uniting around a candidate or the party doing it? Genuine question, because a lot of people seem to mistakenly think the latter matters more, and it strikes me as sort of antithetical to the whole point of representative democracy. "Fuck off with your concerns, if they're not in alignment with the party's goals we don't want you."

Especially in a two-party country, that's how you end up with systems of government that are actively antidemocratic - they work for the benefit of almost no one - and at the same time nearly impossible to change through the one mean at people's disposal: their vote.

Maybe the democratic party should try to represent the actual people instead of itself for a change, see what happens. 45% of the country doesn't vote in any given election. Go figure why.

Hope he picks Warren as VP if he gets the nomination.

Klaus, the voters have likely already decided. If you look at current forecast models, they predict that either Sanders wins a majority or no candidate wins a majority. And in the event that no candidate wins a majority, Sanders is most likely going to end up with a plurality. So the voters have decided.

Now the party can behave like the Republican Party in 2016 and resist. Or it can embrace the voters. In this instance, the party is going under the premise that Sanders’ politics are polarizing and will lose the middle. I think the party has incorrect framing. First, there is a false idea of the left versus the middle and increasingly Sanders vs everybody, which is just an unfair comparison. Then there is this false notion that the traditionalist Democrats will just abandon the party when general elections come because moderates and socialists cannot form a coalition like the white evangelicals and the far right. Again, if you turn around the question to say how do you extend the voter base via Sanders, you get a different answer, especially after his Nevada performance.

But the problem, Klaus, is the media and moderate candidates like Manchurian Pete are conditioned to ostracize the frontrunner. So this is why the the party needs to take leadership. The convention is going to be nasty otherwise.

I don’t think that it’s accurate to say they are conditioned to ostracize the front runner. I mean just look at the msnbc hosts. There is indeed a narrative and an establishment and the Democratic National Committee is a big part of it, and the truth is that they are scared silly of Bernie and his “socialist” ways. It’s all well and good claiming to be a progressive and saying on the cable networks that things need to improve, but when you actually get a candidate that seems to want to truly move the country in that direction, panic breaks loose.

Ultimately, it boils down to Bernie vs Capitalism.

He’ll win the battle in the Democratic primaries, I’m not sure Bernie can win the war in the general election.