Your next 2020 Democratic presidential primary thread: Now we're serious

ha I don't talk politics w T1nker really. Saw him a couple weeks ago at a friends' 50th bday party, all music chatter

he is a very diligent poster of Berniebro memetic content

The gotcha can, of course, be reversed - how many people saying "I thought you had to EARN their votes" were (and are) mad at Stein voters in 2016 and now carefully not applying that logic to voting for an irrelevant candidate? Plenty of ILXors certainly fall into that camp.

i for one appreciate that k3v has returned to political threads on ilx just to call us nut jobs

Letting Trump in because it's not specifically against your own interests to let him in is a massively shit move, no matter your bank account.

anyway if Socialist Alternative has a presidential candidate on the WA ballot I'll vote for them

Even poorer people have been killed because of Trump

the same way endless media coverage of Biden's failures as a campaigner and pathetic showing in Iowa/NH and Sanders establishing himself as the clear front-runner led Sanders to an upset victory in South Carolina

media was chockfull of "Sanders November disaster feared" during this period, from the elite court stenographers

do you want me to go back to the 2016 primary thread?

Were all these "twitter Berniebros" you're seeing on the 2016 ILXor thread? That would be weird.

Warren on Super Tuesday hurt Sanders

show me the states in which Warren's votes - had they all gone to Bernie - would have closed the gap and put him ahead of Biden.

xps

one thing that will definitely make this thread more pleasant and useful is psychoanalyzing faceless bernie bros from twitter!

lol I was remarking on Berniebros that Shakey and I know personally ... obv not all Bernie supporters have the same social media output

also this is to nobody in particular but the biggest negative impact of twitter on ILX is that we're now constantly arguing about things written off the cuff by dumbasses we don't know in a stupider, less discursively rich or considerate part of the internet. or making claims as to how these dumbass comments match up to things other dumbasses wrote, with the dumbasses sometimes conflated to form unitary and hypocritical straw-asses, or vague demographies of dumbasses sorted according to idiosyncratic categorizing systems with no mutual agreement on same.

these are just bozos jamming half-baked moron thoughts into their phones! it's like if we'd all agreed to start reading local newspaper comments sections again and spent half the day performatively rolling our eyes at the moronic shit some uninformed and venom-filled insurance salesman in topeka just posted under the local news's reporting about the closing of the Gadsden Galleria Mall. like wtf are we doing here? who cares what these people think? why are any of them being invoked to win arguments? we're smarter than that! ilx can be a space to... not do that!

Voting Jill Stein because of your conscience means you are a shitty person. Voting Warren because of your conscience is good and right. I don't see the hypocrisy.

dunno why you're bringing up Stein - I don't care about her and never have, and that was in the general, not the primary, which is totally different anyway.

xps

I do think blaming Warren for cutting into Sanders's support when she is running against him in the primary is at least more tenable than blaming Sanders for cutting into Clinton's support in the general when he was not only not running against her but endorsing and campaigning for her (notwithstanding unsupported nonsense arguments about whether he was sufficiently enthusiastic or whether the damage had already been done).

Were all these "twitter Berniebros" you're seeing on the 2016 ILXor thread?

I was trying not to be a dick by outing ppl but yes some were

All I know for sure, is that Warren had a lot of support in California, the largest state with the most votes, and Bernie won, and got all those votes. So, while before, I was Team Warren or Bernie, now I'm on Team Bernie.

doc casino is just otm all over this fuckin thread

but yes, point taken, Doc!

xps

we're smarter than that!

doc I'm an emotionally unstable idiot

the berniebro people on this thread are their own little terrors.

some normally even keeled progressive friends of mine went a little bonkers over bernie. It's exhausting. i am not on twitter at all.

some of you guys need to find a dog to pet, regroup and figure your shit out.

don't like dogs!

these are just bozos jamming half-baked moron thoughts into their phones!

All except Dennis Perrin who is a genius and a prophet and generally too good for this world.

I engage with twitter to the same extent that I engage with tv news, which is to say 'barely if at all'. It's how I manage to keep what little remains of my sanity/hair.

Were all these "twitter Berniebros" you're seeing on the 2016 ILXor thread?

I was trying not to be a dick by outing ppl but yes some were

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, March 4, 2020 10:23 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah lol one of them even lost his fucking mind and left ILX because he was not sufficiently rewarded for his anti-Hillary trolling leading up the to general election.

don't like dogs!

― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Wednesday, March 4, 2020 10:25 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

restraining myself from the fp

show me the states in which Warren's votes - had they all gone to Bernie - would have closed the gap and put him ahead of Biden.

Which states were winner-take-all again? Percentages matter, and given that her voters' second choice option was Bernie twice as often as Biden the delegate hit is against Sanders.

This keeps getting framed as absolutes when really, no one is saying that - Warren hurt him, it's playing dumb to pretend otherwise.

dunno why you're bringing up Stein - I don't care about her

It's almost like it's not about... you?

xpost! ha, I almost suggested dog petting *or* I would send reusable shopping bags to morbs.

My guess is that a lot of loyal Dem voters who aren't political junkies were frankly relieved to be able to contract their decision-making out to someone they trust and respect and get on with their lives.

I really think this is a huge part of what's happened in the last few days, not just in South Carolina.

From the AP:

The late deciders helped Biden win Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia, among several other states. In some states, they made up roughly half of all voters, according to AP VoteCast surveys of voters in eight state primaries. And the surveys show they lined up behind the former vice president. In Virginia, where nearly half of the voters waited to make up their minds, Biden won two-thirds of the late deciders.

Why did so many of these late deciders break toward Biden? Let's ask one of them:

"I saw all these people dropping out and they were all endorsing Biden, and I thought, 'Biden is the one who can be elected,'" said Badon, 57. "So I did not mail in my ballot. I went to vote today, tore up my ballot, and voted for Biden."

Or:

One interpretation of what we're seeing: A supermajority of Democratic voters do not want an intra-party fight right now, and were ready and willing to do whatever party elites told them told would end the primary asap.

— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) March 4, 2020

Additionally, Derek Thompson makes the point that most rank-and-file Democratic voters just aren't turned off by the party establishment. He compares Biden to Jeb Bush in 2016: a defender of the old guard, closely tied to the party's last president, who led in early polls but underperformed in debates and in IA/NH. Ultimately, Jeb! couldn't survive his association with the establishment when so many GOP voters wanted to burn it all down, while Biden largely benefits from it among a Democratic base that still reveres Obama.

osita writes for the new yorker

I guess SA is backing Bernie until further notice

I'll figure my shit out in Shithead's second term, when the ACA is repealed and I'm dying rapidly

[redacted], kill yourself.

ooh who could that be

The psychoanalyzing and eye-rolling at those damned Berniebros would probably not go over so well here doing the same about why Warren's base might be more comfortable with any outcome.

i'll be in I Love Baseball

go to hell, rationalizers

osita writes for the new yorker

― global tetrahedron, Wednesday, March 4, 2020 12:27 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't know what this is in reference to, but Osita Nwanevu is now at the New Republic.

Which states were winner-take-all again? Percentages matter, and given that her voters' second choice option was Bernie twice as often as Biden the delegate hit is against Sanders.

This keeps getting framed as absolutes when really, no one is saying that - Warren hurt him, it's playing dumb to pretend otherwise.

the point is Warren's percentages were generally miserable across the board! Not enough Warren voters to make up for Bernie's deficit or the swing of Klobuchar/Buttigieg/Bloomberg voters

anyway, the "Bernie is the only acceptable candidate" people have plenty of reasonable points. I'd've been fine with Warren but everything from the DNA test to having been a Republican to the squish on Medicare for All to the Harry Potter-based support she got turned lefty-types off of her and I won't hold it against them. Biden is a multi-time loser who is evidently liquefying.

so good luck to the Democrats, whoever they are

I mean just do the math, the delegates Bernie could've conceivably gotten if nobody voted for Warren would not have put him in a different position than the one he's in now

xps

the Harry Potter-based support she got

....................

If we're just talking delegates then Warren taking even a few delegates away from Biden is helping Bernie, not hurting him. Biden is the favorite to get a plurality / majority of delegates.

silby i understand your position but that is absolute twitter brainworms nonsense

I'm just reporting back

... when it's not "winner take all" they don't have to "make up for."

Biden wins 30, Bernie wins 20, Warren wins 7. 5 of her 7 go to Sanders, 2 go to Biden (which would be in line with polling and it's "leftist brainworms" to suggest she wouldn't endorse Bernie when dropping out, per yesterday). Her presence hurt Sanders, however you want to frame it.

In New Hampshire, the only other primary before South Carolina changed the game, Bernie and Warren got 35% of the vote combined. Bernie was never close to getting a majority just from Warren dropping out.

And if you want to frame it as Bloomberg's presence did the same on the other side, cool! Biden supporters on their AOL bulletin board would be right to have the same conversation. Candidates drawing from the same pool of voters hurt each other.

to having been a Republican

oh right, you are too young to remember when Republicans weren't all horrible sociopaths! ... half of the Democratic primary candidates are more conservative than Eisenhower ...

Which states were winner-take-all again? Percentages matter, and given that her voters' second choice option was Bernie twice as often as Biden the delegate hit is against Sanders.

The latest Morning Consult poll (conducted Feb. 23-27) showed Warren supporters' second choices at 40% Sanders, 16% Biden, 16% Buttigieg, 12% Klobuchar. In other words, that's 40% Sanders and 44% Biden or candidates who endorsed Biden.

If Sanders suffered on Super Tuesday from Warren's continued presence in the race, I think it was probably fairly minimal. (I agree with whoever said upthread that her attacks on Bloomberg helped Biden more.)

It definitely hurt Sanders, but not anywhere near hurt him enough to meaningfully impacting his chances of getting a majority.