2020 Democratic presidential primary thread, pt 3: life is very long

The level of antipathy here for Sanders and his campaign has genuinely surprised and saddened me. If he is struggling even here that paints such a bleak picture for the future. It all seemed so different even a week or two ago.

sanders went from winning with 35% of the vote to losing with 35% of the vote

Well yeah. Sanders looked great early on because he had the biggest base in a fractured field. But it was always, always, always a minority of the total field. That's a good place to start from -- everyone would rather start with a locked-in 35 percent than 15 percent or 5 percent. But of course it's not enough and of course you have to build it. It's like starting a poker hand with pocket aces -- it's nice, but if you don't add to it, you're probably going to lose.

The "sudden coordinated push" shouldn't have surprised anyone, because everyone always should have been adding up all of those candidates' numbers as "the moderate bloc" or whatever, and assume that eventually one of them could emerge as the consensus. The consensus happened fast, sure, but you had to be ready for it, have a strategy for it. As far as anyone can tell so far, the Sanders campaign didn't seem to have that strategy.

Lol what on earth could the strategy have been

the "better things aren't possible" message has really won out, I'm starting to grimly believe it

#BeBest

hope your furious children are a comfort to you in your old age Shakey

#NotUsThem

Lol what on earth could the strategy have been

I don't know man, I'm not spending millions of dollars running a political campaign. But if I was, it's the kind of thing I would have planned for.

Tbh i think Bernie ran the best campaign he could have. You can bitch about surrogates and supporters but he was rock solid throughout. I hope it was enough to spark some more AOC types to spring up, that's really the best outcome we could hope for at this point.

i don't know that there was a way to beat such a sudden coordinated push

the way to beat such a coordinated push would be to be a candidate that appealed to a broader spectrum of voters. maybe there was just no way to do that without tarnishing his brand - it's totally possible. but he didn't spend his week-as-frontrunner softening the revolution, he spent it railing on the establishment + putting every florida democratic politician in a spot where they had to publicly disagree with him. maybe he wasn't gonna break his ceiling regardless, and again, maybe the trump-style plurality coup was actually his best shot at getting the nomination so it wasn't 'a mistake'. but he ended up where he was because of a sequence of actions taken by bernie sanders, and the warren betrayal narrative mostly seems like a way to avoid admitting that.

the fucked up thing is I lead an exceedingly comfortable life, I could tune out, not vote for anybody, keep my head down, avoid the 'vid, and be basically fine from now until pogroms break out one of these years or I stop being able to get the pharmacopoeia that keeps me comfortable or whatever, but could I do that while friends start suffering sooner than I do?

Tbh i think Bernie ran the best campaign he could have

for example

If a majority of Democratic primaries voters want what Bernie is selling but not from him maybe a better vector will run next time. If a majority of Democratic primaries voters are better things aren't possible true believers and will stay that way til they die then lol we're all gonna die

I hope Bernie gets enough delegates to extract some useful concessions, whatever those might be.

Ignoring whatever shit everyone's fighting about to publicly complain that there was a debate for every primary/caucus in February and nothing between ST and mini ST. Seems stupid.

It may be true, maybe Bernie has run the best possible Bernie campaign and the reality is that despite fervent hopes of his followers there was just no way to turn him from a cult artist to a mainstream phenom. In which case, you can either say, "Well, I guess he wasn't the figure to lead this particular charge." Or you can say, fuck all these morons who don't know what's good for them. Whichever makes you feel better.

Bernie was never gonna soften his message. That would be a different person. Hence, I repeat, he ran the best campaign *he* could have. Flaws included.

The debate distribution is dumb as hell yes

fuck all these morons who don't know what's good for them

well I wouldn't say "morons"

"fuck all these morons who don't know what's good for them"

This is a great impression of many Warren ppl this week

many x-posts to eephus: David Brooks must have learned it from the Parisians. And if bobos annoy him, I’ll wear the badge proudly.

This is a great impression of many Warren ppl this week

Yep. Losing sucks.

I was a Warren supporter -- she was literally the only one in the field I actually liked -- but it started to look to me last fall like she didn't have her messaging and strategy worked out. That never really changed, and I was disappointed but not surprised by the last few months. It's politics. You have to actually win, everything else is secondary.

"fuck all these morons who don't know what's good for them"

This is a great impression of many Warren ppl this week

On winning: I have a friend whose wife ran for mayor here in my city last fall, and she won in a fairly close race against a businessman who substantially outraised and outspent her. I was talking to my friend afterward about his lessons from the campaign, and one of them was, "WINNING IS AWESOME." When you win, any missteps or second guesses or flops along the way get immediately erased, because you did the one most important thing.

The corollary of course is that losing always sucks no matter how fierce or noble the fight.

If you're on the left, losing is a major part of life

hell yeah mayor mothra's friend's wife tbh, fuck business guy mayors

also cop mayors

All the Warren ppl in my tl are breaking for Bernie, including multiple ppl who worked for her campaign, and I personally have not seen the "I like Liz because she makes me feel fuzzy but I can't vote for that nasty man because of his nasty supporters" drama that I keep seeing referenced.

I am, however, noting a heavy application of pro-Bernie personal/emotional appeals in all my soc med timelines that use stories of medical tragedy and suffering in direct contrast to people who think Warren looks nice in teal (literally one of them was like, "women like Liz because she looks good in a teal sweater"). I *get* the emotional appeal messaging tactic in organizing, but I don't see the phenomenon that they claim is happening, and I especially object to the trivialization of whatever is being characterized as "women's stupid petty concerns" in this messaging.

hell yeah mayor mothra's friend's wife tbh, fuck business guy mayors

It's true, she's pretty awesome. She was by far the most progressive candidate in the field.

xpost to some post above
I thought Bernie was still very popular here on ilx. I thought the feeling of antipathy was because a few people each day have been obsessively posting about it, I guess trying to figure it out and make people on ilx? outside of ilx? on twitter? people they know irl? feel bad about possibly voting for Biden? I don't know what audience anyone is trying to address here anymore.

Warren die hards who can hop to Biden never cared about politics (or even identity), Warren’s existence flatters their self image, much like Obama’s genius and Hillary’s “MOST qualified EVER” status.

Bernie is going to win the poll on this thread like 100 to 0. Or 95 to 5. He doesn't have to worry about popularity on ilx.

ILX is extremely unrepresentative of the wider world I think we can all agree

should still canvass us just to be safe

There are pragmatic reasons why some Warren people would go Biden over Bernie -- mostly if they think he'd be a stronger candidate in November and their A+ number one priority is getting rid of Trump. You can disagree with the calculus, but it's not immoral or anything.

I suspect at least half of the Bernie voters here will mainly be anti Biden folks, mind. Xps

just opened this new thread for the first time and have to report that it is very aptly named

If Biden’s the nominee and loses, I’m looking forward to four more years of RUSSIA.

It's not immoral to think Biden's the stronger nominee, it's just fuckin stupid.

There are pragmatic reasons why some Warren people would go Biden over Bernie -- mostly if they think he'd be a stronger candidate in November and their A+ number one priority is getting rid of Trump. You can disagree with the calculus, but it's not immoral or anything.

the other pragmatic reason is that many people want this campaign to be over and giving bernie any excuse to drag it out needlessly again is not good for our prospects.

I'll out myself as a warren to biden voter. I suspect it won't matter at all by the time new york votes.

We could’ve guessed, bro

lol

Joe Biden is basically the suburbs embodied in one dying man, what happened to principles iatee

If Biden’s the nominee and loses, I’m looking forward to four more years of RUSSIA.

The fun thing is that no matter what, we can't test all possible scenarios -- Biden v. Trump and Bernie v. Trump -- so no matter who the nominee is, if they lose, the Bernie or Biden supporters can always say, "We told you so," and no one will be able to prove them wrong.

I lean more toward the Bitecofer thesis myself, so I'm not even sure it matters all that much in terms of winning the general. But of course nobody actually knows.

I don't love biden and I think he will be a pretty mediocre president if he wins, and I hope he picks a good vp. I think he won't be a drag down ticket, and might even help e.g. it's not some crazy coincidence that bullock decided to run for senate when he got confirmation that he didn't have to defend whatever sanders said today for half a year.

neither sanders nor biden have plans to demolish all american suburbs unfortunately, which makes them equally bad on my key issue.

I suspect at least half of the Bernie voters here will mainly be anti Biden folks, mind. Xps

― bold caucasian eroticism (Simon H.), Saturday, March 7, 2020 2:45 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

why not both

anyway I don't have the sense that my vote will matter and people fretting about what warren supporters are gonna do are really missing the big picture, which is that there aren't a lot of them and sanders would still lose in a world where he had 100% of them. he lost because he hit his ceiling, and the fact that that already happened makes a comeback even less likely than it would be given the numbers. he had the chance to close as front runner and failed. people across the country had the chance to vote for him or vote for 'basically anything else', and they chose 'basically anything else'. the fact that that biden kinda sucks says something about sanders' appeal.

Many ppl do not think biden sucks

in retrospect the Onion's Diamond Joe bit has a lot to answer for

has bitecofer made a judgement whether bernie is more electable than biden? I'd think they'd get the same number of negative polarization voters, and bernie would inspire non-voters and young voters at a much better rate