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

I almost want AOC to unendorse Bernie so she could re-endorse him again

She should unendorse him go to endorse Biden and then do the "too slow" handshake thing.

why are Sanders supporters so poisonous on twitter

Life is short. Embrace opportunities to imagine the dream of a new possibility.

IT ISN'T "THE PRIMARY," GODFUCKINGDAMMIT! PRIMARIES!

this is the primary thread to discuss Democratic presidential in

I was prepared to vote for Bernie in the CA primary but if I were faced with this choice now I honestly don't know...

― Οὖτις, Saturday, March 7, 2020 9:37 AM (eight hours ago)

IT ISN'T "THE PRIMARY," GODFUCKINGDAMMIT! PRIMARIES!

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Saturday, March 7, 2020 4:19 PM (one hour ago)

that's Shakey telt

Fuck, Bernie is at 1 in 50 chance of a majority in the 538 forecast. Sorry, you can't blame Warren for not wanting to endorse that. This is on Bernie, he lost it.

Also, holy shit you guys talked a lot about Warren through the night, huh? Honestly crazy how much anger there is at her after Bernie fucked this up so massively

at least someone is happy:) ^

More seriously the window for a Warren endorsement is long gone, if it was every really even an option

... she suspended her campaign yesterday

I mean, I don't imagine that she'll expect the louder Bernie fans to be anything but pissy about handing over those votes she stole, but the endorsement is still likely coming.

lol

It was never an option, but yeah it would help even less today than it would have done a week ago

oops that lol was meant for a different thread sorry!

If you're going to endorse anyone it carries more weight if you do it immediately. Biden's endorsers had hardly any time to play with and needed to strike while iron was hot.

(I'm not suggesting Warren is required to endorse Bernie, or indeed anyone else). Bernie needed a lot more than just one endorsment anyway and he should have been hunting down other names to counter Biden's recent set of endorsements, the cumulative effect of which was worth than any specific one

There weren't any other candidates to get, except for Tulsi's dead-enders and their militia already voted.

That's on Bernie, not Warren though

He got Marianne Williamson as a surrogate. She began tweeting about coups...

Warren's failure is her own poor campaign not the lack of endorsement (which she isn't obliged to give)

No one said anything about fault but the narrative of failure to get an endorsement from people whose political aims are opposed to his is dumb. "Okay, so we'll abandon Medicare4All Pete, you in?!"

Fuck, Bernie is at 1 in 50 chance of a majority in the 538 forecast. Sorry, you can't blame Warren for not wanting to endorse that. This is on Bernie, he lost it.

a) nonsense
b) there are still 30 states to go and Biden might accidentally go on TV in the next few days and let voters see him talk

I don't think it's dumb to look at where we are now and say that Sanders strategy wrt m4a was a mistake

I think voters have seen Biden talk, sic...

Assuming you're right Fred, what should Bernie have done differently

a) pre-Nevada
b) between Nevada and Super Tuesday
c) since Super Tuesday

(fwiw i largely agree with you that Warren isn't really a factor)

Abandoning your signature and most popular issue is a strong political strategy.

Most voters do not pay as much attention as the people in these threads and (fingers crossed) now have fewer distractions in the field

I don't think it's dumb to look at where we are now and say that Sanders strategy wrt m4a was a mistake

he near-singlehandedly made it an issue of national discussion and has mobilised millions of young ppl on the issue (many of whom are not able to take eight hours on a work day to caucus or vote in a primary despite now being engaged), and weaponised a slogan to do so which nobody has achieved in seventy years of post-New-Deal politicking. the fact that this has activated multibillion for-profit health"care" corporations, who donate to shitty Dems, against him was not a reason to not do this.

There were no debates between South Carolina, endorsements and Super Tuesday or since. When Biden speaks, it does seem to hurt him (cf. the first three states).

Which is cool because if he wins anyway, it will be fodder for the narrative that Bernie tanked him.

I mean, he should have never run in the first place :)

Who knows what could have been done? What was needed after Nevada was a pivot into becoming a unity candidate, and somehow avoiding getting hurt so bad in South Carolina. The SC thing is just incredible, it killed him four years ago, and he let the same thing happen this year. We don't know who is to blame but that was bad bad bad. The pivot... Does anyone think Sanders could have done it? I know Matt Yglesias wrote that thing about how Sanders was mostly going to govern like every other Democrat, but... That's clearly not what neither Sanders' fans nor the establishment thought.

It's a lot easier for a progressive candidate to win two caucaseses and a very white primary. Though Sanders didn't even do that well in New Hampshire. What the heck do you do after that?

... you realize that whites are not his strongest demographic, right?

Making a litmus test out of something that was never going to be passed is a good way to stand out. None of the other candidates could follow Bernie on M4A. But now he seems alone and isolated instead. So yeah, in hindsight, it worked amazingly for a long time, but then it came back to hurt him.

Lets take those one by one

a) He shouldn't have run.

Who should have run instead?

b) A pivot into becoming a unity candidate.

Agree 100%!

c) hurt so bad in South Carolina

SC was always going to be somewhere he'd do badly. I'm not sure he could have avoided that. Being better prepared for the day after the defeat might have worked. I think pulling some names out of the hat might have helped. Steyer, Beto and Yang isn't the greatest forward line but pulling in some numbers might have helped. Definitely should have really capitalized on that big Nevada win more than he did though

South Carolina is going to be tough every time a progressive runs, but you just have to do better than losing by 30%. You just have to. And if the progressive movement wants to do better next time, honestly they could do worse things than just focus 100% on getting the message to work in South Carolina, and then get it to work elsewhere afterwards.

Who should have run instead

If, as several Liz Lads argued, James Clyburn is that influential (and he probably is, though I don't know what by what percentage), it's pointless concern trolling to even talk about it. He's actively opposed to Medicare For All.

lol @ 7/8 chances of Biden winning the nomination according to 538.

A progressive candidate cannot play by the same rules as the centrists - the Sanders strategy of appealing to the people is the only option. The media and party apparatus managed to form a coherent front at the last second to (probably) stop it again this time but it was getting pretty dicey - what if Biden wasn't able to take the mantle?

Softening or abandoning progressive issues to appeal to the centrists and/or apparatus doesn't work - they jump ship to an actual moderate (much like moderate Republicans just vote for the Republican) - and you lose your base. If it was an effective strategy, Elizabeth Warren wouldn't have tanked after being the front runner.

Maybe, as a strategy, it will never work and we'll just keep circling the drain until the seas swallow us up or nuclear hellfire engulfs us all. Maybe it will work at 'shifting the Overton Window' where Joe Biden now has to at least pretend to care about a minimum wage increase. Maybe in 2024 or 2028 (or 2020 after Biden calls a protester an adorable ethnic slur) it just works and we don't have a complete dogshit general election between two people who think poor people in hot countries count as human beings.

who don't think poor people in hot countries count as human beings, obv.

Btw is this thread's subtitle a 'Hollow Men' quote or…?

If, as several Liz Lads argued, James Clyburn is that influential (and he probably is, though I don't know what by what percentage), it's pointless concern trolling to even talk about it. He's actively opposed to Medicare For All.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), 7. marts 2020 12:04 (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

If so, then it's pointless to run on Medicare For All, and was a mistake to do so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't know who should have run instead. Warren wasn't doing better in South Carolina at any point, it's worth keeping in mind. But again, I think the only thing we know about Sanders' strategy for SC was from this article in the Atlantic from april 2019: He’s counting on winning Iowa and New Hampshire, where he was already surprisingly strong in 2016, and hoping that Cory Booker and Kamala Harris will split the black electorate in South Carolina and give him a path to slip through there, too. And then, Sanders aides believe, he’ll easily win enough delegates to put him into contention at the convention. They say they don’t need him to get more than 30 percent to make that happen. That's a bad strategy!

You left out the part where a person actually quoted by name described the entire campaign as a long shot with a 25% chance of being the nominee - which, being down the final two and it took Obama and Reid stepping in to clear the centrist field for Biden...

"Don't run if you're a progressive" is, of course, a much smarter strategy.

Well, yeah, a lot of communist parties agree with that

If so, then it's pointless to run on Medicare For All, and was a mistake to do so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

― Frederik B, Saturday, 7 March 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Why do anything?

Great campaign slogan

Nate Silver would approve

re: Warren's endorsement. It may not do much after all but how about some kind of solidarity with the one person left who is running on a similar platform? But I guess the mental wellbeing of bourgie white women on twitter is also at stake. That also matters, its a tough one.

This is on Bernie, he Democrats voting out of fear like they generally do, they lost it.

fixed

So weird that this article has apparently been deleted.

http://web.archive.org/web/20200118132850/https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-racist-myth-black-parents_n_5e2215a9c5b674e44b980327

(the current amp link still works but it's gone on the site proper)

democracy briefly returns to NY

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/politics/judge-restores-ny-democratic-presidential-primary-on-june-23/2403840/

hope this inspiring figure can get back in the game :(

Black lives depend on whether America can be what we want to believe it is. What we need it to be. What it could be. Systemic racism is so woven into the fabric of this country, facing it will take action, honesty, listening, and deep, deep change. And for many of us, humility.

— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) May 29, 2020

white noise of the softest kind