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

This is a disingenuous question but I'll answer it anyway.

Democrats backing Biden believe they will suffer less. It's not rocket science; they think Sanders is alienating and not drawing a large enough coalition to sell his progressive message and they are concerned that the apparatus Sanders wants to put in place is untested, more fragile, and unlikely to materialize. They are voting for what they believe is a tangible, achievable goal rather than a dream.

I disagree with them but I get it.

― totally unnecessary bewbz of exploitation (DJP)

boom -- thanks

yah excellent summary DJP. i've spent some time in recent days trying to summarize yours and alfred's comments on this topic to other bernie stans in my circle who are all "wtf WHO is voting for biden?".

sheesh I need to change my display name

i do think the Biden wild card is how well he performs in states that Clinton lost in 2016, but was expected to win (based on election history favoring the Democratic Party). This isn't an endorsement but as said above (and said about Sanders as well), Biden is markedly more likable than Clinton to many of the voters who probably didn't like her at all. He seems more human and i think for whatever reason people connect w/him on a more personal level, especially maybe voters of a certain age and specific demographic. These may be voters who aren't as much into Bernie. I don't doubt establishment Dems might prefer Biden strategically for this reason. Trump didn't beat Clinton by a massive amount in a lot of these key states, it was a close call.

Of course if Biden accidentally starts making out with his sister during a rally, that might also turn off that key demo.

No one has to read this, but I wrote a piece yesterday wondering what the hell it would've cost Sanders or his surrogates to associate himself/themselves more tightly with Obama or to do away with the silly "Democratic socialist" label which I've spent a hundred hours explaining to POC in this county who've fled totalitarian systems; in politics when you're explaining broad strokes in microscopic detail, you've lost people.

But many of the younger Sanders supporters I know, even the POC, think Obama was as terrible as Bush and Trump.

Any Democratic nominee in Florida running in the era of Trump and Ron DeSantis is fucked, but if Biden's on the ticket Florida has a small chance of emerging blue *shrug*

Of course if Biden accidentally starts making out with his sister during a rally, that might also turn off that key demo.

But it might gain him support in the south! #easyjoke

The South Florida experience of "POC who've fled totalitarian systems" bears almost no relation to the rest of the country for obvious reasons. Again, Sanders has won nationally with Latinx and Asian-American voters (the demographics most likely to have personal or family experience with 'totalitarian regimes').

Nor can he "do away with" the label that he's defined himself with for 60 years, whether you like it or not. That's just not possible, and makes the attacks that would come even worse because now he looks shady.

I'm not even touching on the fact that some people do genuinely like Biden and think he would be a good President, for a myriad of reasons:

- years of Senate experience cultivating relationships with both Democrats and Republicans
- years of national government experience
- 8 years as Vice President

Even given the obstructionist remit of the modern Republican party, there is an argument that Biden is positioned to circumnavigate that in a manner Clinton (woman, most hated person in the universe), Obama (black), Warren (woman), Buttigieg (gay, infant), Harris (black, woman), Sanders (not a relationship builder), Bloomberg (no national experience), Klobuchar (woman, mean as a weasel), Booker (black, affable to the point of buffoonery), Castro (Hispanic), O'Roarke (c'mon), Gabbard (I mean seriously, c'mon), etc are not: he's the old white man who has been operating in these corridors of power for the past 50 years. It's not just that he's familiar to voters; he's intimately familiar with the system. If you don't want to smash the system, you turn to someone who knows the most about it and say "please fix this".

Alfred, did you mean to link this post?

And, on top of that, he matches the identity of people who have been allowed to use/manipulate the system.

brb, changing my display name to "Buttigieg (gay, infant)"

The South Florida experience of "POC who've fled totalitarian systems" bears almost no relation to the rest of the country for obvious reasons. Again, Sanders has won nationally with Latinx and Asian-American voters (the demographics most likely to have personal or family experience with 'totalitarian regimes').

what the hell does this mean?

Buttigieg (gay, infant)

thank you for the lol, djp

lol

well, Biden does have a reputation in Washington as being not too bright, so I'm sure a lot of people like dealing with him as the mark

what the hell does this mean?

more cherrypicked nonsense afaict

milo, I've repeatedly written that Sanders has or had the vote of young Hispanic voters here.

I for one love being told what is a legitimate totalitarian experience

Pete Buttigieg was the drummer for Gay Infant

what the hell does this mean?

That South Florida is not the rest of the country, demographically speaking.

That's a different answer at least than your first response.

milo, I've repeatedly written that Sanders has or had the vote of young Hispanic voters here.

I didn't say anything about young Hispanic voters or Sanders. You're "explaining to POC in this county" - a county that is not representative and shouldn't be read as indicative of anything deeper.

I mean, this fire sale of a thread exists:

Fidel Castro RIP

I didn't say anything about young Hispanic voters or Sanders. You're "explaining to POC in this county" - a county that is not representative and shouldn't be read as indicative of anything deeper.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z),

uh you realize there are native born black Americans in MDC and Broward who have the same impressions of Sanders, right? Miami-Dade County isn't all Latin Americans.

uh you realize there are native born black Americans in MDC and Broward who have the same impressions of Sanders, right? Miami-Dade County isn't all Latin Americans.

No, it's not, but the demographics (and overall environment built by those demographics) are still very, very different from the rest of the country.

A tactical problem (I think) with what seems to be the main Sanders attack against Biden — his actual record — is that most people already have a fairly set notion of "Joe Biden" in their heads. He's pretty well defined. As kind of a doofus, granted, but he's a known quantity. If people already don't like him, then attacking his record reaffirms that dislike, which is fine but probably doesn't change many votes. If they already like him, or are at least fine with him, and think of him as kind of harmless dude, dragging out 40 years' worth of votes and Anita Hill shaming and everything else he's done may have limited impact. People either know that and have written it off, or they don't know it and it sounds like homework, and either way it may not change much how they see him.

Which of course gets to the whole idea of him being a "safe" candidate — it's not just his centrist positions that give him that appearance, it's that no matter how much Sanders or Trump beats on him, he will have something of a shield in that he's already defined for people.

You obviously weren't talking about native born black Americans though, given "POC in this county who've fled totalitarian systems."

That's true, those of us still here haven't fled yet

The "totalitarian system" under which they lived was the United States of America through the 1960s and only partially mitigated.

lol Alfred, jinx

;)

also i think while a lot of ppl look askance at Biden there are others who might believe that he has become a better person, either bc they think it's via a deep internal sea change or just a calculated maneuver, or maybe just eight years of chilling with Obama.

i think it's fair to go at him about certain things while accepting that maybe he has changed, especially when it comes time for the GE, if he does wind up being the nominee: maybe he's still going to be a fence-sitting, across-the-aisle, bipartisan-but-too-republican idiot, but there's a chance he wouldn't be, and what's the alternative if that winds up being the matchup?

Every place in this country is very different from every place in this country. That's why people campaign.

Country’s too big and something really needs to be done about it

I mean, if you can convince yourself that "there's a chance" it's probably good for your mental health but there's zero evidence to support that a man changed all of his views (some of which he's repeating on a daily basis about working with Republicans) that he's held for 50 years.

If I've been vehement about posting in the last few days, blame my googly-eyed shock that the Sanders campaign in toto did little to improve its vote totals since 2016. I believed the improvements in youth turnout, the reaching out to small communities of color in these Southern states. I thought the Hispanic votes in Nevada augured still greater totals. And I can see the flailing when after five years of excoriating THE DNC WHOA NELLY as symbol of all things nefarious in transactional politics the campaign releases an ad with Sanders and Obama -- and now my Sanders pals are saying, "Well, Alfred, that's politics"!

He remains my #2, but, goddamn, I've felt like a chump defending him for a year.

I didn't realize Bernie Sanders was in Toto.

my mental health is fine of course, I remain extremely grounded and logical about these things. In a world where Bernie (my preference) isn't the nominee and Biden is, why wouldn't i immediately vote for Biden? There is zero chance he's not better than Trump, especially for the people in communities for whom daily microaggressions IRL and active bigotry have found a "safe space" during the past several years. I mean, more of a safe space than America already was. Biden is far from ideal, and it's fairly exhausting to have him out there again instead of a fresh voice.

I now want Sanders to do a dramatic reading of the lyrics to "Rosanna"

and now my Sanders pals are saying, "Well, Alfred, that's politics"!

The thing you've outlined all the ways you wanted him to do?

He's currently doing better than in 2016, despite the larger field... some might suggest it's like there's nothing the Sanders campaign could have done to actually make you pleased with them.

xp

He'll meet you all the way.

"people are saying...."

I'll be over him.

He will enact M4A as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.

Similieing a mountain to another mountain eh

Are you new to this cutting edge 1982 chartburner?

Oh is that about that meme song, I’ve never really paid attention to it

xpost you misspelled 'turdburger."

I don't even own a Toto