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

It’s kind of funny that the conventional wisdom even when he was considered the presumptive front runner was always that Biden was going to struggle in the first few states and then mount a comeback in SC. Then exactly that happened and everyone was dumbfounded.

this doesn't seem exceptionally complicated to me:

1) Democratic black voters in the South are generally part of political machines which, for good or ill, are perceived by those voters as a lifeline to political power
2) Running a campaign that threatens to tear down those machines/vilifying them as "establishment" makes those voters nervous, they see that as a threat
3) Gambling that you can win the presidential nominee without those votes implies that you don't need them and/or they aren't worth getting
4) Black voters (like any other voters) tend not to react well when your approach implies they aren't needed, and some are going to interpret that as racist
5) This conclusion stems from the historical experience of black people being shut out of the political process because they are black

xps

5 ) wrt negronis, I will have one this weekend!

or six but who's counting?

this thread today makes a lot of sense if you assume all the fighting is just getting the sad feels out through what must seem to most ppl petty asinine bickering about nothing

this thread today board, everyday

ftfy

it is possible to mount criticisms of sanders or his campaign without every single post reading like you just don't like sanders and are excited to be handed new clubs with which to beat him. when on earth did sanders indicate he didn't want or need the state's black voters? i saw *clyburn* signalling to voters that he didn't feel like he'd been aggressively courted by sanders. how much are the statements of people campaigning for rival candidates supposed to tell us about the feelings of voters on the ground?

the argument that black voters are for good reason skeptical of anti-"establishment" candidates is viable and interesting. but i think it would require some nuance about the word "establishment." the establishment sanders rails against is "millionaires and billionaires" and "drug companies" and "huge corporations." he's grumbled about the DNC a bit but it's not like he's running on a "all democrats are crooked, throw the bums out, and we need to clean house of all these political machines" platform. that doesn't mean it's impossible for him to offend, alienate, or push away black voters! obviously he has not attracted as many as he needs or as he tried to (though far more than zero).

....but idk tbh i'd be more interested in being talked out of my pov here by someione who's not posting like he's back in the elton john ballot poll thread trolling with play-dumb readings of beloved songs. talk about insulting and dismissing people!

this has been your "commuting home and the train was too crowded to grade midterms standing up" political argument post series from dr casino. i will now log off and seek out a round of frosty painkillers with seafood and wings, xoxo

I’ll say it again, I absolutely do not begrudge older black voters for sticking w Biden out of concern for “electability”, even as I’ve become hostile to the concept myself.

But I wouldn’t mind hearing from Rep Clyburn which of Joe’s specific policies are designed to help poor and working class black voters in the south. I mean, a “return to decency” doesn’t really get you insulin.

wtf re: defining the "establishment" I was just responding to what silby and milo z were posting eg

he's [Clyburn] been in his seat for a quarter of a century, is that not "established"?

Sanders is attacking The Establishment because The Establishment doesn't support Sanders and therefore are, yes, his enemy, for the time being

friends, we all want the same things. not us, thus, and such

I have a feeling age is being discounted as a factor here. Older Democratic voters have been around long enough to distrust the electoral prospects of wide eyed revolutionaries. It just so happens in these southern states that lots of these older voters are black.

how much are the statements of people campaigning for rival candidates supposed to tell us about the feelings of voters on the ground?

considering a large majority of his constituents (61% iirc?) followed his lead, I would say a fair amount

xps

The Shaddock for the 1:1:1:1 win -- genever, Aperol, elderflower, lemon juice.

Whoa, I have all of those at home. Going to make one when I get there.

Corpse Reviver #2 is also A+, can confirm.

Can we just trade cocktail recipes for the rest of this thread?

This corpse of a thread needed a reviver eh

responding to what silby and milo z were posting eg

Weirdly you quoted something I didn’t say?

I quoted silby and then got sick of trying to scroll above the fold

this thread is infected, someone find a vaccine plz

but since you asked here's one where you equate Clyburn with the establishment/machine politics and how Bernie is explicitly a threat to that

Or Clyburn, as a leader of a political machine, saw more advantage (for his constituents, for the machine) in continuing to support the existing party power structure rather than bet on the guy who campaigns on breaking down those structures.

Which is to say, Clyburn was always lost to Bernie but it was ever to be thus because it’s not a matter of wining and dining, it’s about the underlying relationships of power.

xps

but yeah we're just going around in circles

i mean it's not like there aren't a lot of things being written today by black people about how black people voted.

at least try to remove 3-4 kevin bacons to figure this shit out.

otm

ive been f/ing with aperol spritz since visiting bologna last summer fwiw

here's one where you equate Clyburn with the establishment/machine politics and how Bernie is explicitly a threat to that

is that incorrect?

or rather, are either sides of that conjunction wrong?

you're gonna have to work pretty hard to convince me the third-ranking House Democrat isn't part of the Democratic establishment

Doc Casino seemed to think so, do you guys even read other people's posts

it's not like he's running on a "all democrats are crooked, throw the bums out, and we need to clean house of all these political machines" platform.

xps

Sanders definitely railed against the Dem establishment, not just millionaires and billionaires:

I've got news for the Republican establishment. I've got news for the Democratic establishment. They can't stop us.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 22, 2020

it's almost as if different people interpret Bernie's rhetoric differently

this thread is infected, someone find a vaccine plz

50 ccs of Negroni, stat

Also, anyone interested in hearing Clyburns explanation: He did a half hour interview as part of the 538 podcast

No vaccine for a year, year and a half, or so I heard.

Shakey, you realize that me, silby and Doc Casino aren’t the same person, right?

drinking red wine right now wondering what Biden was doing the past couple weeks

does he have another job somewhere?

jfc do I have to draw a diagram for everything.

Doc posted: the argument that black voters are for good reason skeptical of anti-"establishment" candidates is viable and interesting. but i think it would require some nuance about the word "establishment." the establishment sanders rails against is "millionaires and billionaires" and "drug companies" and "huge corporations." he's grumbled about the DNC a bit but it's not like he's running on a "all democrats are crooked, throw the bums out, and we need to clean house of all these political machines" platform. that doesn't mean it's impossible for him to offend, alienate, or push away black voters!

this implies that I was misreading other posters' (and Bernie's) statements about what constitutes "the establishment", in the context of James Clyburn.

I posted that I was just responding to what you, silby and milo, had said, which included the quoted posts that directly implicate Clyburn as the establishment that Bernie was explicitly threatening. Why don't you three go to the Bernie thread and work out what you think Bernie is talking about when he says "establishment", whether Clyburn is included in that equation, and whether he (and his black constituents, who followed his lead in the primary vote) was right to feel threatened by Bernie's rhetoric.

this is getting really fucking boring.

lol "getting"

tfw you post a lot and the thread gets boring

Fun fact: three of Clyburn’s top five donor industries per OpenSecrets: insurance, doctors, pharmaceuticals.

Hard to imagine how Bernie as party leader could endanger those relationships.

lol

now do Cedric Richmond

“What this campaign is increasingly about is which side are you on,” Sanders said. “There has never been a campaign in recent history to take on the entire political establishment, an establishment that is working furiously to try and defeat us.”

“I didn’t know African Americans in the South are considered part of the establishment,” said Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-Va.), a co-chairman for the Biden campaign and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Black people aren't interchangeable, Shakes.

Honest question. It's often mentioned that Biden winning big in a state like SC is meaningless, because the Democrats won't win there anyway. That seems valid. But is it any different than Sanders winning big in California, a state the Democrats will win no matter who's running? Isn't there an equivalency there?

I think the main disconnect here is that clyburn and now Richmond said that Bernie called African American voters in SC "the establishment" which he didn't. He just didn't court their votes by kissing up to clyburn. Bernie's campaign is focused on convincing voters themselves, not on making deals with political power brokers to win votes. That approach didn't work in SC, but it certainly doesn't mean that he has disrespected African American voters as "the establishment" and therefore, "his enemy". In fact, it could be taken as the opposite - he respects them enough to let them decide themselves if they connect with his message rather than just aligning himself with a power broker to pull them in by proxy. Again, I know that didn't work for him, but it seems like some folks are trying too hard to connect the dots of his losses in the south to some sort of implied racism on behalf of him and his supporters.

Biden campaign is obviously using this rhetoric as a wedge issue/trap, but Bernie (and apparently some of his ilx supporters) walk right into it. You wanna call Richmond and Clyburn etc the "establishment", you're writing off their voters, feeding a narrative of being divisive/non-inclusive and yes opening up the campaign to accusations of racism. This is the drawback of trying to run an insurgent campaign against an "establishment" in a party that is built on coalitions - you alienate factions of that coalition who (either rightly or wrongly) see attacks on the "establishment" as attacks on *them specifically*.

xps

yes opening up the campaign to accusations of racism

"If I accuse you of racism, you've opened yourself up to accusations of racism."

Taking kev's advice with your bad faith trolling.

to sum, clyburn and his voters are not the establishment, but “taking on the establishment” is disrespectful to clyburn and his voters