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

I have argued to many people, both Sanders supporters and detractors, that his actual record isn't revolutionary at all and he's much less of a radical than people on either the left or right tend to paint him

the argument I make a lot is that his goals re: healthcare, education, and taxes are arguably less radical than what we were doing during America's "prosperity" period in the 60s, conditions which a lot of old Trump supporters have directly benefitted from

They only look radical because we've moved rightward since 1966.

sanders has repeatedly made the "my policies aren't radical compared to the rest of the world and america's past" point

And he's right. But he's also running on REVOLUTION.

I saw a good post on a friend's FB page the other day by someone saying that it seems like a fundamental difference between Sanders' base and the rest of the Democratic primary electorate is that his base thinks this is a change election -- this is where we finally start to take apart the late capitalist machine, throw all the bourgeois pigs against the wall, etc. And for the rest of the electorate, who probably have a range of feelings about that machine, from rage to affection, it's not a change election, it's three-alarm fire response to get this fucking guy and his whole terrible party out of the White House. Those aren't necessarily conflicting impulses, you can want to do both of them, but they come from different directions and are ultimately headed different places.

I hate to speculate on what he should or should not say, but imo it's not hard to make the case that any attempt to retreat to a bygone era or "restore norms" without serious structural change is doomed to usher in bigger fires later. (In the case of climate change, quite literally.)

Anything’s revolutionary when people are going on about incremental change being the only way forward

Given the gradual rightward drift over the last half century, incremental change has its work cut out to stand still

Well yeah. Be nice to see people drop the ReVOlUtIoN argument in that context...

@tipsy: Yep, I think that's right. It's also the difference between the Democratic and Republican electorates. Dems have more affection for their establishment, so it's hard to make a REVOLUTION message appeal broadly.

Maybe part of the problem is that most liberals can:t imagine anything worse than Trump.

I hate to speculate on what he should or should not say, but imo it's not hard to make the case that any attempt to retreat to a bygone era or "restore norms" without serious structural change is doomed to usher in bigger fires later. (In the case of climate change, quite literally.

The key is to put it in a framework that people feel is consistent with American values and traditions. More New Deal, less Denmark.

i don't understand the dem affection for their useless establishment at all. trump is the most dangerous president ever!!! but also we should try to compromise with him on everything too in the spirit of bipartisanship? as an outsider it's completely baffling

I have to think that at least a few people who aren't up on The Discourse but do know a thing or two about policy must be wondering why there isn't already a loud and proud Warren/Sanders alliance.

I don't know what the Discourse is, but this could once again mark the difference between message and messenger. Warren being the much better merger of the two, but America (and most places) are pretty misogynist.

any attempt to retreat to a bygone era or "restore norms" without serious structural change is doomed to usher in bigger fires later. (In the case of climate change, quite literally.)

True. And that kind of structural change is really hard, for all the obvious reasons (entrenched interests, inertia, inherent fear about change in general). So to make it happen, you need a big mandate. For a big mandate, you need a lot of people with you. Effective campaigns of all kinds are the ones that get that mass of people, which comes through alliances and coalition-building.

I know Michael Harriot isn't popular with everyone, but in his column about black voters and the Sanders campaign the other day, he ended by saying, "You need more voters." You need more voters.

Warren being the much better merger of the two, but America (and most places) are pretty misogynist.

And yet Hillary, who I think we can all agree was a v flawed messenger and also a woman, got 3m more votes than Trump.

and obama solved racism.

and the Electoral College exists.

good thing the establishment is lined up behind someone who wants to get rid of it. oh wait, nvm

most recent episode of Ezra Klein's podcast was v interesting, he and Yglesias envisioned what Sanders and Biden presidencies would actually look like. they didn't say anything particularly surprising but the discussion did crystallize some of the difficulties Sanders might be inviting in terms of compromising not with Republicans but with members of his own party. obviously Bernie has worked on things with his colleagues in the past but not when he's in the position of being the POTUS, and I think there are legitimate concerns Klein and Yglesias expressed that Sanders might have a hard time choosing between compromising with centrist Dems to push his policies forwards vs. having a fight about it.

(in fairness, this was far from a Bernie-bashing exercise, they were quite positive about his foreign policy prospects as a skeptic of American power, though even then they did acknowledge Bernie is going to run into staffing issues exacerbated by the fact that he doesn't have a whole lot of relationships with entrenched government types).

i don't understand the dem affection for their useless establishment at all. trump is the most dangerous president ever!!! but also we should try to compromise with him on everything too in the spirit of bipartisanship? as an outsider it's completely baffling

― ufo, Friday, March 6, 2020 8:27 AM (six seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think it's less about specific Democratic leaders and more about a general faith in norms and institutions, which carries over into the political establishment. Upholding the status quo is a form of #resistance. This is the MSNBC worldview in the Trump era.

i mean if anyone is actively working on the bernie campaign you should listen to tipsy. Although I kind of figure if anyone is actively working on the bernie campaign, you wouldn't be posting here right now.

and there won't be a hint of change under Biden xps

I think if you’re leaning hard on misogyny being the reason for either Clinton or Warren’s losses, you’re only fooling yourself. It’s a factor, but by no means the only one.

The one time Sanders-supporting friends on FB change the subject is when I ask, "Even given how the two campaigns don't want to seen by Alabamans and Virginians working together, will Sanders support Doug Jones in his Senate race or, say, Abigail Spanberger in her House race?"

If I was on the Bernie campaign, I would simply try to get more voters. If I was running for president, I would simply get more votes. Genius analysis. Now, let’s go back to sticking at the same two anti-Bernie points the last few hundreds of replies have circled obsessively.

 it's not hard to make the case that any attempt to retreat to a bygone era or "restore norms" without serious structural change is doomed to usher in bigger fires later. (In the case of climate change, quite literally.)

I think some people see it as retreat to norms is less likely to cause bigger fires later than a guy who will literally spend the next four years pouring gas on said fires

*I voted for Bernie don't cyberbully me

In the absence of a potentially viable left-wing challenger in either case, I don't see why not? xps

Well, on the "more voters," there's an inherent conflict between "we are running to destroy you, the liberal establishment" and "we are running to help you fight those other people you hate." The former works ok for an insurgent campaign up to a point -- the point we are at now, basically -- and then if you want to be more than a leftist splinter movement and take on the mantle of one of the two (very flawed, deeply problematic) major political parties in the country, you have to lean a lot more heavily on the latter. There are probably candidates and campaigns smart and effective enough to do that. We'll see if this is one of them.

I think some people see it as retreat to norms is less likely to cause bigger fires later than a guy who will literally spend the next four years pouring gas on said fires

Many people absolutely do see it this way. The trick is how to convince them that's not at all the case, and I'd be lying if I said I had a good strategy to do it. I do think many of the proposed talking points itt are either misconceived or have already been tried (or both), but I mean, this is the difficulty with running a campaign that is in many ways totally unprecedented. The thing about uncharted territory is it's easy to get lost! And anyone who thinks there's a simple or obvious solution is kidding themselves. (And tbc I don't think a Warren coalition would be a surefire winner or campaign saver, just that it might help allay some people's concerns.)

In re Warren and sexism, this is kind of the same thing. I do think sexism was a huge factor for her to overcome, as it was for Hillary, as it will continue to be for women in leadership roles everywhere for some time to come. But also, that's the landscape, those are the obstacles. You can't wish them away, you have to overcome them. I liked Warren way more than I liked anyone else running for president. I do think her failure is a sad sign of the ongoing strength of sexism in America in general and American politics in particular. But she's smart, she knew that going in. It turns out she wasn't the candidate to break through it. She didn't run whatever campaign would have succeeded, and she didn't get enough votes.

Sanders trying to get more votes is a good strategy, and he should change his campaign to try and do that, instead of, as they said, going for 30% and betting it would be enough in a fractured field. The question is how to do so

I think the other danger of leaning too much on the sexism argument is also that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Any candidate from a marginalised group will have bigotry against them to overcome, but the more people hear that female candidates lost because of sexism the less it seems that they can persevere.

(Not disagreeing with your second point, just thinking).

"Why would I owe anybody an endorsement?" she said. "Is that a question they asked everybody else who dropped out of this race?"

You're right, Liz. They didn't ask Wayne Messam.

Its just pathetic.

Sanders trying to get more votes is a good strategy, and he should change his campaign to try and do that, instead of, as they said, going for 30% and betting it would be enough in a fractured field.

The truth now: do you genuinely believe these words typed in this order to be true, or are you having an aneurysm?

FINALLY

Holy shit he’s REALLY going after Warren now. pic.twitter.com/SoGwLy4vWZ

— Self-Made Debtor (@babadookspinoza) March 3, 2020

Sanders campaign meeting:

"Ok we've decided 30% is our sweet spot. no need to do any further work. everyone can go back to being mean on Twitter"

"Make sure you remind people that they are dumb."

I think it's less about specific Democratic leaders and more about a general faith in norms and institutions, which carries over into the political establishment. Upholding the status quo is a form of #resistance. This is the MSNBC worldview in the Trump era.

yeah this kept sticking in my mind when all the "Bernie's path to the nom is the same as Trump's" pieces came out. the GOP is more than happy to burn it down. Democrats are not.

some of of the best posts are when Fred lovingly extracts a string of words from his own butt them presents them as fact

That list of Sanders-Warren-Biden policy positions really reminds me of something important, which is that a lot of people, me included, supported Warren because we believe in her competence and intelligence, not because we agree with her on every issue. I don't think college should be free, I don't think we should ban nuclear power, and I don't think we should eliminate private insurance. I still think Warren would have been a better president than the guy who agrees with me on those issues.

i maybe imagine most of my institutionalism is rooted in my feelings about failure mode analyses, by which I mean revolution can either be good, or it can turn out terrible. given the wide range of possibilities in human political order, what we have had has been more stable, tho still v unfair, than usual.

so that said, my support for orderly change is not a devotion to incrementalism at all— rather, “get who you prefer in office. force them to enact what you need. now do it again.” so it is not incremental-“ism,” it is an acceptance of the incremental.

undeniably, it’s also a bit of fearful avoidance of catastrophic disorder. the advantage at that point seems to always seems to go even more abruptly to the privileged and wealthy. NB also, I believe that the benefits of incremental change may often accrue to the privileged and wealthy— hello to the last 40 years of the GOP. we are at the precipice of even worse, at which point who knows what is necessary.

peace to those who are suffering so that “only revolution is sufficient,” I think I understand those feelings, that they are legit and real. i’m still all bernie for his objectives. i don’t think he’d end up as bad at his job as like, a chávez de facto petrogarchy.

my advice is not useful, but I’d focus on persuading people to “you can have it so much better.” Feel like, you get more mileage from “hope and change-y” shit than “eh, we KNEW you are not our allies, we just gonna win without you.”

counterpoint we live in a petrogarchy, he might as well at least be a socialist.

Also, Biden is marked a no on "Focus deportation on criminals and national security threats." This is what it says on his website

"In a departure from their predecessors, the Obama-Biden administration took steps to prioritize enforcement resources on removing threats to national security and public safety, not families. It also issued guidance designed to end mass work-place raids and to prevent enforcement activities at sensitive locations such as schools, hospitals, and places of worship."

and here is a quote from three weeks ago:

"As the Nevada caucus results poured in and the former vice-president’s distant second-place finish seemed imminent, his campaign released a joint statement with Latino Victory Fund, an influential political action committee that endorsed Biden earlier last week, committing to a total moratorium on deportations during his first 100 days as president. This seemed to contradict a claim made just hours earlier by one of Biden’s campaign advisers to BuzzFeed News. “(Enforcement) efforts will be narrowly targeted to those who commit a felony offense in the United States or who present a national security threat,” the adviser reportedly said."

So here I think all three Democrats actually agree, and I agree with them.

eephus! i am kind of opposite. I agree with every single thing on bernie's platform (although I personally have GOP shades of why can't people be responsible and make better choices exasperation) but I know that not everyone was born into the same lot and that makes the ultimate difference. But I still thought Warren was a much better candidate in almost every other way. Hopefully she will back Bernie but I also totally empathize with why she would not.

xp

“You should vote for Trump,” Joe Biden tells @CosechaMovement protester Carlos Rojas at tonight’s town hall in Greenwood, S.C.

Rojas and other protesters from the group were criticizing Obama-era deportations and asked Biden to say he’d end all deportations — which he rejected. pic.twitter.com/od188WIlrQ

— Eric Bradner (@ericbradner) November 22, 2019

I agree with Obama and Biden that we should deport the tiny fraction of undocumented people who are in jail for raping and murdering. So does Sanders, per his campaign manager. "“We’re talking about … violent criminals (sitting) in jail or prison right now, upon their, the end of whatever sentence they may currently have, they would be deported,”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/biden-and-bernie-pivot-on-deportations.html

I do not agree that Carlos Rojas should vote for Trump.

Were there 3 million cases like that?

I highly doubt it.

so presumably his lack of a checkmark there is based on actions not words

"I agree with Obama and Biden that we should deport the tiny fraction of undocumented people who are in jail for raping and murdering. So does Sanders, per his campaign manager. "“We’re talking about … violent criminals (sitting) in jail or prison right now, upon their, the end of whatever sentence they may currently have, they would be deported,”"

A lot of people in the Sanders movement would go against these narratives and say so. Potential of discourse changing around a lot of issues. Its the danger of any kind of shift rather than #revolution.