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

oooh maybe we'll make some progress this time

sorry but ppl who have some weird allegiance to the democratic party in 2020 like it's a hometown sports team are either just the biggest bunch of rubes alive, or their fortunes are tied directly to Business As Usual.

― A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Chooglin (will)

Cool! Tell it to the minorities who overwhelmingly rejected Sanders.

sorry but ppl who have some weird allegiance to the democratic party in 2020 like it's a hometown sports team are either just the biggest bunch of rubes alive, or their fortunes are tied directly to Business As Usual.

― A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Chooglin (will),

Are you black? A woman? Gay? The awful Democratic Party -- a coalition of grumbling, inchoate forces -- is the only thing mitigating Republican damage.

I keep waiting for someone on this thread to yield to a Trump-in-2016 moment and write, in so many words, "I don't give a shit about stupid minorities; they didn't validate the candidate whose campaign strategies failed to inspire them."

not really convinced the "campaign strategies" were the problem tbh

I am. I see no evidence that the campaign made a dent in the voters who delivered the states to Biden.

what was the problem?

in retrospect I just don't see a winning strategy for Sanders that doesn't involve being a different person

Ah! That's closer.

i'm not saying they shouldn't vote, or that the GOP isn't miles worse. but a party that slavers over Bloomberg money (and thus input)'s idea of "mitigation" for a single mother working full time at wal mart in 2020 is fucking abysmal. and i'm sorry, but just saying 'well the GOP's worse so quit whining' is fucking gross.

in so many respects his campaign was so much better than his last one and it just didn't matter

Can we blame antisemitism? If not, why?

'well the GOP's worse so quit whining'

and to be clear, im not attributing that to anyone here, but i'll abso-fucking-lutely attribute to the party leadership

Someone literally posted the equivalent of “stop whining about how Joe Biden sucks, you might make him lose!” in the Joe Biden thread.

It literally took the weight of the entire party machine at a crucial moment to derail the Bernie train, in favor of a senile sex pest that that machine actively didn’t want to run.

I’ll conveniently forget who for the sake of comity.

There is no “Bernie coulda” that counters that.

joe biden is perfectly capable of losing without our assistance, thank you very much!

It literally took the weight of the entire party machine at a crucial moment to derail the Bernie train, in favor of a senile sex pest that that machine actively didn’t want to run.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z)

You can turn this into a prayer, set to music.

you keep denying voters what we call agency, so bless you

Voters lost much of their agency when the machine forced multiple candidates out of the race for the sake of the machine’s post-traumatic definition of “electable”

literally posted the equivalent

Hmm

Literally shakes

Ah, the machine!

The DNC

Voters lost much of their agency when the machine forced multiple candidates out of the race for the sake of the machine’s post-traumatic definition of “electable”

Once Bernie is finally out they might have one more to push out when Biden gets covid!

Maybe there’s no machine but if there is it protects child rapists and their miserable handpicked successors, I have nothing conciliatory to say about the Democratic Party at this point.

Are you black? A woman? Gay? The awful Democratic Party

The lesson for the left of the party going forward here is "don't run as a factional candidate in a system where winning as a factional candidate is nearly impossible," not "our campaign was flawless but the voters are puppets on the string of The Establishment."

— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) April 6, 2020

I think the lesson is to sap the power of the establishment.

Don’t ask me how I just post online

s foisting upon the nation a senile sex pest who doesn't think abortion is a right, voted for DOMA and opposed same-sex marriage until the last possible moment and is a chief architect of mass incarceration.
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z),

Beautiful use of the passive voice. Again, denying agency to voters who didn't trust a candidate who didn't define himself as a Democrat. I was one of those deluded primary voters too -- I thought he had a chance.

If you need to tell yourself that the guy you weren't going to vote for in the first place is the real villain and it's his fault you're going to gleefully vote for a segregationist bro/alleged rapist... cool, we all do whatever self-care we need.

Cool! Tell it to the minorities who overwhelmingly rejected Sanders.

actually he did quit well with latino voters afaict. and pretty good with minorities all around, except older blacks, partic in the south. which yeah, is bad and going to hobble you in the democratic primary. but my beef isn't really about Bernie; it s about a party leadership that's been fucking over poor & working people for over 3 decades now and you kind of just have to take it bc welp the other guys are worse.

personally I'm not mad at any particular group voters, I'm mad at yr awful system

Again, denying agency to voters

If there is no behind the scenes power that can exert influence, why did Obama and Reid make the calls to get Klob and Buttigieg out? Clearly their words have no power and Klob and Butt's endorsement no effect, right?

It's pretty sad to pretend that there are no outside influences because it suits the narrative you need to believe right now.

when the machine forced multiple candidates out of the race

Lack of votes was kind of a problem for them, iirc. Their whole strategy had been to run strong in IA, NH and NV, so they'd have momentum going into Biden's polling strongholds in SC and Super Tuesday states. They weren't in a position to overtake Biden or Sanders, so they settled for looking like heroes to Dem moderates and gaining some chits they could redeem for cool prizes.

Anyway I look forward to having this exact conversation every week for the next four years

Of the Trump administration

The lesson for the left of the party going forward here is "don't run as a factional candidate in a system where winning as a factional candidate is nearly impossible"

good luck being principled without being deemed "factional"

It's clear he means "don't antagonize the voters whom you'll need to woo."

that NYT Sunday piece made it clear that Sanders and his wife decided not to bash Biden

ffs, why not

(also i'm getting a leeetle closer to saying X voters can be just as clueless as Y voters to break the circle of demographic condescension)

right but he didn't actually *do* anything to antagonize them, other than not being a "rank and file" Democrat. (of course, he generally voted with them and helped plenty of Dem progressives get elected, but who's keeping score) xp

Sanders is not going to go properly negative on Biden ever. the irony of his toxic "not a Democrat" brand is that he's a very good soldier at the end of the day

It's clear he means "don't antagonize the voters whom you'll need to woo."

i did see antagonization of actual voters on the campaign trail, but it wasn't from Bernie.

if you mean don't antagonize the media or party leaders, then yeah, that's actually a fair point. a sad point, but fair.

I don’t hold it against Biden or Obama or any politician for not supporting same sex marriage before we caught up. My father died in 2012 and I remember watching Biden on the tv in his hospital room advocating for gay marriage. I was in an emotional state anyway but I thought it was really moving

also, not "clear"

I don’t hold it against Biden or Obama or any politician for not supporting same sex marriage before we caught up.

What about Biden supporting the Hyde Amendment until like 12 minutes ago?

When do the "times were different" excuses stop?

Obama obv more egregious than Joe there, for him it was clearly a political calculation and nothing more.

The endless handwringing over Sanders campaign from this ever shifting bingo board of nebulous fallacies is tiring and laughably condescending considering the fact that Joe Biden didn't even campaign in like 90% of the states he won. It's disingenuous, to say the very least, to brazenly claim that Bernie would've won if he had shamelessly pandered to black SC voters a bit more vs. the guy being endorsed by Clyburn and under the table by Obama (people who parrot this trash doin a great job of denigrating and minimizing Latino Americans like they aren't a minority population in this country btw!). Or if he'd run more attack ads vs. Biden... as you're simultaneously handwringing over him being some adversarial "Factional" candidate like the democratic party is some autocratic hivemind entity with no variance in opinion or belief like fictional sci fi robots.

Biden ran an absolutely terrible campaign that had absolutely terrible messaging, terrible fundraising, terrible polling, and terrible results for the first three primaries. Then he got his former president pal to convince his insipid, shameless milquetoast ideologues competing against him in the race to drop out and immediately endorse him in the span of about 12 hours. Then he won one state and was immediately crowned the presumptive nominee by every major news outlet that had already been devoting 90% of their previous primary coverage to nothing but having lowlife pundits like Carville lambast Bernie's success as the impending end of Western civilization at every possible opportunity... and that was effectively it. Didn't need any kind of presence to beat rival candidates like Warren in their own home states. And it isn't "denying agency to voters" or whatever other disingenuous nonsense being regurgitated to acknowledge that. The only "lesson" to be derived in losing the way Bernie has this primary (2016 isn't the same story at all for those crying "rigged" back then) is that this country's election cycle, like 99% of it's political, corporate, and bureaucratic machinery, is stupid, broken fucking nonsense (never the more evidenced in unprecedented times like this...) and that anyone making an honest effort at changing such things faces an insurmountably hopeless battle to do so.

What about Biden supporting the Hyde Amendment until like 12 minutes ago?

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Tuesday, April 7, 2020 12:56 AM (eight minutes ago)

biden had a bad position on something, he came under intense pressure from the democratic base, so he...changed his position? i don't like biden any more than anyone else here does, but he's clearly a political weathervane, not an ideologue.

Or perhaps pouring huge amounts of money and effort into Iowa and New Hampshire isn't really a winning strategy, and what we consider a good campaign is quickly becoming outdated.

xp