Klaus wrote:

Gazza M wrote:

buttigieg out. the field will thin to bernie vs biden after super tuesday. hard to say where most of those votes will go, but it does open a possibility of biden reaching the 15% threshold in more states on ST

I think this is the main reason Pete dropped out too. In some surveys Biden was polling below 15 percent in California along with everyone else, and the prospect of Bernie getting all 400 delegates there probably gave the DNC a heart attack.

And obviously Pete will be in the good graces of the DNC for 4 or even 8 years time.

Pete's going to have job offers out the wazoo from all sorts of awful places.

jones wrote:

I genuinely hope you're right, was pretty stoked to hear about Sinn Fein's result although I haven't been paying as much attention as a couple years ago. Do they look like a genuine alternative to the Varadkar's neoliberal course?

They almost certainly wont get into government this time round. Varadkars Fine Gael went from the biggest party to 3rd though so he's not going to be Taoiseach again. Fine Fail (very similar to FG but with a little more public spending) will probably lead government with FG and the Greens propping them up. The big shift is that for the entire history of the state its been either FF or FG in government with the other in opposition. They're 2 very similar parties who are differentiated mainly through their history during the civil war. It wasn't just SF either though, the 2 big right wing parties have got a smaller share all round. Labour who are pretty much fake left are being replaced by the Social Democrats and Greens and even the Trots here have done ok out transfers from the SF surge. The hope is that after another year or 2 of FF & FG the left grows stronger and SF can form a coalition out of the other leftie parties. Oh and we had far right parties running for pretty much the first time and they all got obliterated, which was a relief.

arsedoc md wrote:

... And Warren staying in.

I think the big difference is that in the forecasts I had seen, Warren is just above 15% in some states or just below 15%. She was always going to get some delegates and with Pete going out, she should pick up a few more delegates on Super Tuesday. 

Pete on the other hand had no forecasts showing him hitting 15% in any states for Super Tuesday. That Iowa/New Hampshire momentum had completely dissipated. So it made sense for him to bow out. He can paint it as making room for Biden in hope that they take care of him this year with a post or in future by anointing him 

I think arsedoc's point was that Warren's campaign is exclusively about making things difficult for Bernie now. They even admitted as much themselves. She has zero chance at getting the nomination. So much for progressive politics.

I don't know if she sees it that way though. People could equally say that Bloomberg and Klobuchar's campaigns are making things difficult for Biden and they should just step aside. I do think that for a lot of these guys there's ego. They have a little bit of belief in themselves and will push as long as humanly possible. Warren possibly believes that she should be the compromise candidate in the event that neither Biden nor Sanders is appealing. It also goes back to what makes her undesirable to some. That she has positioned herself as not as far left as Sanders. It's partly because she was taking all the early heat for their health policies (and he faced none until the last 2 debates), but also because in the event of a contested convention she might put her hand up and say "choose me!"

Which is going to go down well with Bernie's supporters I'm sure!

The biggest mistake in the history of the Democratic party would be to let the party elite elect a person who didn't get the most votes from the people (let alone has finished 4th or 5th in every state) as the candidate.

Warren might well believe she can become the nominee at a brokered convention.

Under it all, though, is a hardline ideological opposition to ending neoliberal policy, and ending capital-led, market "solutions" to public policy problems.

Buttigieg articulated this extreme distaste for what Sanders represents well with his lines about "burning our Party down" and "the revolutionary politics of the sixties" … with all the unsustainable bad logic partisan opposition to historical achievements like those of the civil rights movement entails.

I predict that Warren and Klobuchar drop out Wednesday morning.

But as much as I like Bernie's policies, he can really behave like a bull in a china shop.
[Twitter]

Again, he's an independent leveraging the Democratic Party. And then he acts irate that everything doesn't mould around him. If he can't learn to work with the party, how is going to learn to work with the Senate, which need massaging even if you have a Democratic majority?

I don't really see that he's said much wrong there to be honest, and wasn't ranting and raving as he sometimes tend to do.

He literally works "with" the Senate every day, don't know how much he needs to learn. You don't make deals with devils, you denounce them, and you don't look over your shoulder.

The difference is as president, you have a policy agenda you need to see through. He doesn’t even have support of ‘moderate’ democrats on his policies. They’ll just support him knowing that he won’t be able to get things past Philly Buster and the three fifths majority. He will be the least successful president. Hopefully, he can push some orders through

I dunno. I think all party leaders need to learn to acknowledge the full spectrum of mainstream views within the party. Not because you'll have to work it the corporate element within the party, but because there's a large number of DEM voters who'll identify more with the likes of Pete and Biden and neo-liberalism. When you denounce them you alienate the guys on the ground while preaching to the choir. It's not about changing substance, just tone and rhetoric.

Claudius wrote:

It's partly because she was taking all the early heat for their health policies (and he faced none until the last 2 debates), but also because in the event of a contested convention she might put her hand up and say "choose me!"

She wasn't taking the heat so much as people were trying to nail down her position. Everyone knows where Bernie stands but she's been far less committed to M4A.

Claudius wrote:

Again, he's an independent leveraging the Democratic Party. And then he acts irate that everything doesn't mould around him. If he can't learn to work with the party, how is going to learn to work with the Senate, which need massaging even if you have a Democratic majority?

From the bottom up, the same way he's running this campaign. You get people pushing their Senator in Bernies direction and if they wont come along you get someone else and you try to primary them.

Qwiss! wrote:

Claudius wrote:

It's partly because she was taking all the early heat for their health policies (and he faced none until the last 2 debates), but also because in the event of a contested convention she might put her hand up and say "choose me!"

She wasn't taking the heat so much as people were trying to nail down her position. Everyone knows where Bernie stands but she's been far less committed to M4A.

Yeah, with Warren you'd just get another Obamacare solution, something that doesn't trod too much on the toes of the insurance industry. She lacks conviction and integrity to drive something like M4A through. It's why she constantly tears into Sanders's plan and is sowing skepticism about how he'll possibly pull it off. Americans pretend it's a great mystery how this stuff gets funded, but the rest of the industrialised world are already doing it. There is a literal ocean of tried and tested models to adopt; the rest is just semantics. If she were serious she'd get fully behind the message and aim her attacks at people like Buttigieg and Biden instead who clearly have no intention of reforming the healthcare system. Yet another example of punching left and leaning right.

Claudius wrote:

The difference is as president, you have a policy agenda you need to see through. He doesn’t even have support of ‘moderate’ democrats on his policies. They’ll just support him knowing that he won’t be able to get things past Philly Buster and the three fifths majority. He will be the least successful president. Hopefully, he can push some orders through

I dunno, the idea that a president should be focused on policy to the extent that the rest of their role is subverted by "getting things done" seems deeply problematic to me.

I agree Coombs. There's also the fact that the democrats in the house and the senate aren't voted in for life. Those people are up for election too, and if they don't fall in line with the administration they will get pushed out by more progressive candidates eventually. That's one of the best things about a grassroots movement: it draws its power from the masses, not from powerful minorities. If Sanders gets elected the movement won't suddenly stop. It'll keep gaining traction at an unprecedented rate. Just a couple of years ago someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would have been impossible to elect to congress, especially when challenging an old prick like Joe Crowley who was in deep with the democratic establishment. Now she's the role model for an entire generation of new politicians.

Klaus wrote:

I agree Coombs. There's also the fact that the democrats in the house and the senate aren't voted in for life. Those people are up for election too, and if they don't fall in line with the administration they will get pushed out by more progressive candidates eventually.

Isn't it funny how it's always an issue for left leaning politicians that they won't manage to sway "moderate" elements, both in House and bipartisan, but never the other way round?

It might well be - even be likely - that Sanders would fail as a president. Even if he didn't I still see him as a flawed politician anyway. But this garbage strategy of watering down your policies to cater to the opposition whereas they punch a hole into yours full force every single time needs to stop. It never worked and will never work, other than to further diminish your own position by shifting towards the right election by election.

arsedoc md wrote:

Klobuchar out and endorses biden. At this point you have to respect the republicans a bit more who at least saw the populist support for trump and got behind him.

Are we re-writing history a bit here? Barely anybody wanted to work with Trump. Even his attack dog Lindsay Graham was denouncing him. The republican parry wanted Jeb or Rubio. Trump made the leadership go to Trump tower to grovel before him once he’d won the nomination. He dominated them like an animal in the wild. People started to fall in line once he was in power and realized that Fox News and his followers had a regulating effect that could be catastrophic to your political career

jones wrote:

Klaus wrote:

I agree Coombs. There's also the fact that the democrats in the house and the senate aren't voted in for life. Those people are up for election too, and if they don't fall in line with the administration they will get pushed out by more progressive candidates eventually.

Isn't it funny how it's always an issue for left leaning politicians that they won't manage to sway "moderate" elements, both in House and bipartisan, but never the other way round?

It might well be - even be likely - that Sanders would fail as a president. Even if he didn't I still see him as a flawed politician anyway. But this garbage strategy of watering down your policies to cater to the opposition whereas they punch a hole into yours full force every single time needs to stop. It never worked and will never work, other than to further diminish your own position by shifting towards the right election by election.

Donors tend to fund democrats that offer those watered down policies and status quo positions. Its part and parcel of the current political foodchain. Thats why those behaviors have become so rote in the Democratic party

Democrats are tormented by fear it feels.
After Hillary, the electorate bias is to move towards a white man out of fear that other voters wouldn’t support an alternative candidate.
Meanwhile, the leadership will do anything to prevent a capitalism versus socialism clash in the general election, even if that headline is pure fearmongering .

Gazza M wrote:

jones wrote:

Isn't it funny how it's always an issue for left leaning politicians that they won't manage to sway "moderate" elements, both in House and bipartisan, but never the other way round?

It might well be - even be likely - that Sanders would fail as a president. Even if he didn't I still see him as a flawed politician anyway. But this garbage strategy of watering down your policies to cater to the opposition whereas they punch a hole into yours full force every single time needs to stop. It never worked and will never work, other than to further diminish your own position by shifting towards the right election by election.

Donors tend to fund democrats that offer those watered down policies and status quo positions. Its part and parcel of the current political foodchain. Thats why those behaviors have become so rote in the Democratic party

I know but my question is why should anyone else adopt their lines when they're not part of that establishment.

I don't think Democrats should be considering Hillary an "alternative candidate" simply because she's a women, and it's a shame if any does. Her policies are dead center (for the Dems, if not right) and as such she isn't an alternative candidate.

Anyway back on topic ie the circus that is the US (and yes this is actually real)

centrists are really going to coalesce around biden. i mean, it was always the likeliest outcome as he has the name recognition, but i can see trump making short work of him. the discourse will likely centre around ukraine and burisma again. excitement fuel for voters, that

if bloomberg drops out and puts his funding behind joe, things will really get tasty between joe and bernie. it's already been something of a referendum on billionaires. this would bring that discussion into even sharper relief

Really think Warren should drop out and endorse Sanders if she's got any progressive bones in her body. Imagine how loudly people would have been complaining right now if Bernie had finished 3rd, 4th, 4th and 5th before California and looked like he was about to lose his own home state.

Klaus wrote:

Really think Warren should drop out and endorse Sanders if she's got any progressive bones in her body. Imagine how loudly people would have been complaining right now if Bernie had finished 3rd, 4th, 4th and 5th before California and looked like he was about to lose his own home state.

they were already whispering that he should drop out in september/october 2019 to support warren. lord knows what they'd be saying if he'd posted warrens numbers in the first 4 states and stayed in the race

She’s portraying herself as the moderate progressive. The compromise option.

She’ll be crushed by the patriarchy though.

Wow. Chris Matthews just retired

Poor guy.

Bernie finally drove him crazy

Think it probably had more to to with the sexual harrassment accusations flying around. MSNBC don't seem to have any issues with referring to jewish people as nazis and viruses.

One of the best things with American elections is that you get so many shithouse liberal takes like this:

Come at him? I wouldn't go near him.

Lol. Kornacki acting like someone died