Claudius wrote:

This is alarmist interpretation.

No, I think it's exactly right. 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?

If someone had done that here they'd be in jail. And I don't mean that as an exaggeration. I mean it literally. This is cartoon villain stuff.

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.

Claudius wrote:

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 groups on the right.

I think so too. I wrote earlier in the thread that I don't think this is going to be an election about how people define themselves politically, but about how much they have in their bank accounts. There are many democrats that are centrists and traditionalists for no other reason than being labelled that way due to a lack of voting options in the past. The idea that centrism defines them to the point where they wouldn't get behind policys that would benefit them seems to me like the kind of misunderstanding of identity politics that has led us here to begin with. Your vote is not your identity.

People are not voting for Bernie because they have any particularly strong views on the tenets of social democracy. They're voting for him because for the last 40 years he has wanted to fix the issues that are now fucking them over to the point where they can barely survive. I hope he doesn't pick Warren as his VP, partly for that reason. I hope he opts for Nina Turner instead, who's co-chairing his campaign and has been instrumental to the grassroots movement.

Klaus wrote:

Claudius wrote:

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 groups on the right.

I think so too. I wrote earlier in the thread that I don't think this is going to be an election about how people define themselves politically, but about how much they have in their bank accounts. There are many democrats that are centrists and traditionalists for no other reason than being labelled that way due to a lack of voting options in the past. The idea that centrism defines them to the point where they wouldn't get behind policys that would benefit them seems to me like the kind of misunderstanding of identity politics that has led us here to begin with. Your vote is not your identity.

People are not voting for Bernie because they have any particularly strong views on the tenets of social democracy. They're voting for him because for the last 40 years he has wanted to fix the issues that are now fucking them over to the point where they can barely survive. I hope he doesn't pick Warren as his VP, partly for that reason. I hope he opts for Nina Turner instead, who's co-chairing his campaign and has been instrumental to the grassroots movement.

Absolutely right on the reasons people are voting. 
It's not unlike what was happening on the right. People started to feel out of place in their own country (even if the reality is the change they thought were experiencing is probably 20 years away). You vote on what is important to you. Can't be spending all your money on healthcare and be paying thousands every year on school loans that don't seem to get smaller. 

As for his partner though, I think he will go for someone in the middle. I wouldn't be surprised if he takes one of the clowns we've seen on stage like Klobuchar or Pete for the sake of unity 

Claudius wrote:

It's not unlike what was happening on the right. People started to feel out of place in their own country (even if the reality is the change they thought were experiencing is probably 20 years away). You vote on what is important to you. Can't be spending all your money on healthcare and be paying thousands every year on school loans that don't seem to get smaller. 

Absolutely, and I think Sanders appeal to some of those people too. I watched the Fox town halls where other democrats didn't even bother to show up, and he got standing ovations from these supposedly radically right-leaning crowds when he spoke passionately about how it's the government's responsibility to take care of veterans, about how people who work hard should be paid fairly for it, and how he wanted billionaires to pay their fair share to the economy.

Once you get past
, and that could end up being a real issue for Trump too.

mdgoonah41 wrote:

His supporters have threatened to "vote for no one if you don't make bernie the nominee"....that is toxic behavior.

Klaus wrote:

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."

I've thought about this since mdgoonah wrote that. Is that toxic behavior? If someone with a policy you don't agree with at all is nominated, I don't see why you should vote for them. America's form of democracy is already a very diluted version, but at least not voting is one way of saying that it isn't good enough. You shouldn't vote for someone you don't agree with just because it may be a slightly better alternative than Trump. As you're saying, it's the party's responsibility to have a candidate people want to vote for, not the voters' responsibility to vote for the party candidate.

Yes. I know it wasn't Mdgoonah's intent, but to me it's the kind of bad faith argument that only helps to keep things static. Take the DNC allowing Michael Bloomberg to buy his way into the primary for instance. Before we even get down to the logistics of gross billionaires or how disqualifying it should be for anyone to have their name scribbled down in Jeffrey Epstein's little black book, how many black and muslim lives has he helped to ruin?

Imagine telling those people that they're actively supporting Trump if they don't vote for Bloomberg. This happened in 2016, not with those groups specifically, but with an entire middle class that saw their wealth eradicated by the same Wall Street that Clinton received over $100 million from.

The Democrats picked one of the most unpopular candidate of all time, and at the end of the day she still won the election by three million votes over the clown but still lost the presidency because the system they have was something rich southern slave owners came up with so they could count their human property as three fifths of a white person for extra political gain.

At every twist and turn there's a reminder of how antidemocratic the system itself is, and how no one is inclined to change it because both parties draw their power from powerful minorities rather than the people itself. And then they accuse you of doing the devil's bidding because you refuse to give them your vote.

everyone was banging the 'blue no matter who' drum when biden was up in the polls, and warren was surging late around october. you don't hear that phrase so much anymore. if bernie doesn't become the nominee, the DNC need to be asking how they are they going to turn out the voters that have been demonstrated to be favour of bernies progressive policy proposals. engineering someone like buttigieg in a lab somewhere and regurgitating hollow talking points that sound vaguely progressive isn't cutting it at this point

as a side note - does anyone think the burisma stuff actually hurt biden? i recently read that he actually hasn't finished above 4th in any state in any of his previous runs. his campaign never had the juice people thought it had imo

succinctly put. that lack of curiosity - or i'd venture to say wilful ignorance - will bite both parties in the ass

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

mdgoonah41 wrote:

His supporters have threatened to "vote for no one if you don't make bernie the nominee"....that is toxic behavior.

Klaus wrote:

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."

I've thought about this since mdgoonah wrote that. Is that toxic behavior? If someone with a policy you don't agree with at all is nominated, I don't see why you should vote for them. America's form of democracy is already a very diluted version, but at least not voting is one way of saying that it isn't good enough. You shouldn't vote for someone you don't agree with just because it may be a slightly better alternative than Trump. As you're saying, it's the party's responsibility to have a candidate people want to vote for, not the voters' responsibility to vote for the party candidate.

Yes, pretty much. To me it's the kind of bad faith argument that only helps to keep things static, and keeping things static only benefits those already in power. Take the DNC allowing Michael Bloomberg to buy his way into the primary for instance. Before we even get down to the logistics of gross billionaires, sexual harrassment lawsuits and how disqualifying it should be for anyone to have their name scribbled down in Jeffrey Epstein's little black book, how many black and muslim lives has he helped to ruin?

Imagine telling those people, or their children, partners and friends, that they're actively supporting Trump if they don't vote for Bloomberg.

This happened in 2016 too, not with muslims and afro-americans specifically, but with an entire middle and working class that saw their wealth eradicated by the same Wall Street that Clinton received over $100 million from. Obama bailed out all the banks who had created a global recession that doubled the US national debt and plunged over 15 million people across the world into poverty, homelessness and starvation. Some of the biggest villains got new jobs in his administration, and then Clinton buttered them up and took their money with promises of further deregulation behind locked doors.

Before the election cycle in 2016 you had Occupy Wall Street circa 2011-2013, a movement that took hold in literally every major city in America. The post-mortem in American media was so useless that it drove you mad. "What do they want? Where do they come from? Haven't they got anything better to do? Don't these people work?" What did they want indeed. They wanted the crooks weeded out of the fucking economy, not being given new top jobs. It was the first massive sign of a grassroots movement against income inequality and corporate lobbyism taking shape, and no one listened, no one cared, because virtually every single significant person in media and politics across both parties were making their money from that same lobbyism.

Everyone except Bernie Sanders basically, an independent outlier in American politics who had been against those very things his entire life and gotten ostracized for it. And a lot of the Occupy people ended up organising for him. Which only pissed the Democrats off further.

Instead of listening they went and picked one of the most unpopular candidates of all time, the literal embodiment of a career politician with zero integrity, and at the end of the day she still won the election by three million votes over the fascist horror clown, but ended up losing the presidency anyway because the electoral system they have is something rich southern slave owners came up with so they could count their human property as three fifths of a white person for extra political gain.

At every twist and turn there's a reminder of how antidemocratic the system itself is, how it's always been rigged for the wealthy, and how no one is inclined to change the state of things because both parties draw their power from powerful minorities (i.e. the One Percent) rather than the people itself. And then they accuse you of doing the devil's bidding because you refuse to give them your vote. Like Gazza says, things are awfully quiet right now from the "vote blue no matter who" crowd, and no surprises there.

Pete is a lot

Klaus wrote:

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.

I agree and maybe the solution to that is the Democrat party should split? Quite clear there are parts of the party who will never get behind Bernie and some who will never get behind someone like Biden. So long term how can they ever coexist?

The best thing would have been for the US to be a normal country instead of a two-party state, but it is what it is. There's a reason why the Democrats haven't forbidden him to run on a democratic ticket. Him taking the grassroots movement and the progressive flank and going independent would effectively end their party.

To me it looks like they both sides would not be in any position to compete with the Republicans without each other. Bernie has used the Democrat platform to propel himself, as an independent he would be irrelevant too which is why he won't leave. Like a toxic relationship...

Sanders is the only non toxic part of that relationship ffs. There used to be a home for his policies in the Democratic party it's only in recent years and decades that the US has two right wing parties to choose from.

That's the thing about toxic relationships, both sides think the other is toxic....

Not going to argue with you if you know your way around one

There is one thing that is undeniably true, and that is that voter demographics change. There is no reason to think a centrist or a neoconservative more accurately represents the democratic voters than a progressive. In fact there is more and more evidence each day that this isn't the case. According to all the surveys Sanders has by far the biggest pull among any democratic voters below retirement age, regardless of gender and ethnicity.

On that note, here are two Bernie Bros speaking out about the kind of attacks they've endured:

I thought this was a good read: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/moderates-cant-win-white-house/606985/

Moderate Democrats also lost presidential elections in 1980, 2000, 2004, and 2016. Since McGovern, moderate Democrats have a losing record in presidential elections: six losses to the five wins by Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama (who ran a more progressive primary campaign than Hillary Clinton in 2008.). But this history is lost in discussions of electability. It is as if moderate nominees are undefeated. It is as if the last time a Democrat lost was when the party nominated McGovern in 1972.

Moderate Democrats blame progressive candidates for losses, but they can’t seem to blame moderate candidates for losses. Moderates can’t seem to reflect on the historical electability of their candidates, as they implore progressives to reflect on the historical electability of their candidates. Moderates recognize how progressive candidates alienate certain voters, but they can’t seem to recognize how moderate candidates alienate certain voters. Moderates implore progressives to give moderate candidates a chance, but they can’t seem to give progressive candidates a chance.

Moderate Democrats have been consistently inconsistent for decades. They have been rightfully critical of the prospect of a progressive presidential nominee: A progressive could alienate centrist voters, drive up voting rates among conservatives, and imperil the reelection chances of House Democrats in districts Trump won in 2016. Moderate Democrats have wrongfully refused to be self-critical of the prospect of a moderate presidential nominee: A moderate could alienate progressive voters into not voting or voting third party, drive down the voting rates of the party’s younger and nonwhite base, and fail to win back young or liberal white working-class swing voters who swung from Obama in 2012 to Donald Trump in 2016. To be a progressive in a party with a moderate is like being on a team with someone who sees all your deficiencies and does not see any of his own deficiencies, who always takes the credit when he wins, and never accepts blame when he loses.

...

How are these moderate Democrats running on their electability in 2020 when a moderate Democrat lost to Trump in 2016? How is the electable moderate reborn when it has died so many times in recent presidential elections? Simple: When moderate Democrats lose, they blame everything except the party’s decision to nominate a moderate for president of the United States.

Ffs