Yeah I think there's no doubt he'll fail at half of what he's going to attempt, but it's not just about getting everything done in 4 or 8 years - it's about laying the groundwork. The movement he's encouraged and the politics he champions will be built on by the next generation of progressives, and that's regardless of whether he even gets into the White House. There's nothing more important in politics than standing up for ideals that you know are good and true and will be to the benefit of the many, not the few.

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

It’s so strange seeing all this Warren snake talk. For a couple of reasons. First, she’s probably written the most extensive policies of any of the candidates. Her k-12 education reform was endorsed as a complete game changer by the American Federation of Teachers yesterday. Her doggedness in going after the banks and insurances companies, and the government agencies that regulated them post 2008 was impressive, particularly in asking both sides to account for why bailouts were so large. She is similarly the only candidate who has gone after big tech, the biggest threat to politics-economy-society (after climate change), golfing companies to account over abuses of monopoly power. Beyond all the superficial election positioning, this is someone with the cred.

As for positIoning, nobody has pivoted more than Buttigieg. He clearly started in the more progressive lane and then found that crowded. He probably had some Woodrow Wilson students run some analyses on the best spot for him to spot into. But he gets no push back for that. Why?

Warren's Big Tech antitrust policy thoughts don't seem to have been mentioned in months—is she still behind that barrow? I thought "Let's break up Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook" was a real gauntlet thrown down, I must admit. At the very least it would mean a brutal pitched battle between the state and the world's largest companies.

Beto O'Rourke comes out endorsing Biden now too The sooner these people fuck off the better. What a horrible, empty lot they are.

Beto's an irrelevance, he's like the Rory Stewart of the Democratic Party.

I think the endorsement comes just in time for Texas though. They're counting on an upswing in his home state.

Such a bland, horrible politician.

Hahaha. Precisely
I hats more interesting is people like Klobuchar. So she was likely going to win Minnesota with Sanders 2nd and Biden 3rd. Will her endorsement be enough to send Biden to first in her state? Or will he finish 2nd? This is where we’ll see if this anti Bernie conspiracy works.

Claudius wrote:

It’s so strange seeing all this Warren snake talk. For a couple of reasons. First, she’s probably written the most extensive policies of any of the candidates. Her k-12 education reform was endorsed as a complete game changer by the American Federation of Teachers yesterday. Her doggedness in going after the banks and insurances companies, and the government agencies that regulated them post 2008 was impressive, particularly in asking both sides to account for why bailouts were so large. She is similarly the only candidate who has gone after big tech, the biggest threat to politics-economy-society (after climate change), golfing companies to account over abuses of monopoly power. Beyond all the superficial election positioning, this is someone with the cred.

As for positIoning, nobody has pivoted more than Buttigieg. He clearly started in the more progressive lane and then found that crowded. He probably had some Woodrow Wilson students run some analyses on the best spot for him to spot into. But he gets no push back for that. Why?

the snake talk has always been out of pocket from bernie hardliners who only want bernie as the progressive leader. my take is that after posting favourable numbers for a chunk of 2019 she saw bernie coming in her rearview in late 2019 and made some choices that struck a few bum notes on advice from some suspect party consultants. the strong talk on breaking up big tech cooled the closer primary season got. now she's flipped on her position to not take PAC money. taken as a whole, i'm not surprised progressives have pulled back as months have gone by

buttigieg is all optics. he'll take his marching orders from donors, and no-one will really make a peep apart from maybe bernie or warren

Hahaha. Precisely
I hats more interesting is people like Klobuchar. So she was likely going to win Minnesota with Sanders 2nd and Biden 3rd. Will her endorsement be enough to send Biden to first in her state? Or will he finish 2nd? This is where we’ll see if this anti Bernie conspiracy works.

tbh i think this will backfire and bernie will win minnesota, but they're willing to live with it to ensure biden makes up the margins in CA and TX

biden already projected to win VA already. i reckon he's run up big numbers in undecided and day-of voting. the days since SC have completely reversed the momentum here.

african american voting bloc has been reliable/loyal for establishment democrats for decades. they weren't having a bar of bernie in 2016, and little appears to have changed. there hasn't been any great surge in youth votes either. those 2 things will torpedoe bernies claims to electability

Sad world.

Sanders is still leading Texas and projected to win California … be interesting to see how this shakes out.

Biden versus Trump would be a slow motion train wreck.

Burnwinter wrote:

Sanders is still leading Texas and projected to win California … be interesting to see how this shakes out.

Biden versus Trump would be a slow motion train wreck.

I genuinely don't know how I could bear it. Such a drain.

Burnwinter wrote:

Sanders is still leading Texas and projected to win California … be interesting to see how this shakes out.

Biden versus Trump would be a slow motion train wreck.

i can see him winning texas narrowly, and winning cali but with biden being viable. in reality he needed a big win in TX, and for biden to be unviable in cali

bernie also got killed in virginia, and has lost minnesota and massachusets

basically everywhere he was polling ahead of the field has been clawed back by biden substantially. once bloomberg drops out, it's over for bernie sadly. then they can roll out barack to put a bow on joe

Yup. Been interesting to watch the press at work since South Carolina, and the timing and decisions re: polling announcements.

Takes a lot to shift a nation.

mainstream media played a part for sure. boomers still watch that crap, and boomers show up in droves at the polls as we all know.

at least it's a reasonably clean loss i.e. no shafting at the convention. some big holes showed up in bernie's armour today that have to give people reasonable pause about his general election chances, the lack of appeal among african-americans being a big one. progressives need to start thinking up other ways to go about winning hearts and minds, and they need a new voice to carry their ideas forward

No. A consistent message delivered with conviction, without compromise, is the only way for any useful politics to gain ground. When you're right, you're right. No point in being wrong on purpose. Change the culture, change the politics. Not the other way around. There is no spending problem, only an income problem. That sort of thing.

i wasn't suggesting compromising ideals. but some tactical tweaks about how those ideals are presented are needed. maybe it's as simple as putting a younger, more vigorous face on the progressive movement. i don't know. but something needs to change because simple being morally and ethically right isn't enough in politics. i always had a feeling bernie's legacy would never be as a nominee or president, but would moreso be remembered as seeding what were previously thought of as politically taboo ideas in the american mainstream for the next generation

as i type that the lead in TX has swung to biden with about 50% reporting. it's a wrap. biden is the presumptive nominee. the screaming for bernie to drop out will be overwhelming from this point