The Democratic Primary is Upon Us! - Biden is the Presumptive Nominee
- Thread starter Tireseas_v1legacy
- Start date
Biden still actually lacks even half the number of delegates he needs to win, so it is not "almost settled".trunkage said:
We are not dealing with incomplete agreement here, we are dealing with people who oppose medicare for all, free college and the green new deal. Sanders wants to get those policies past, and has spoken about his willingness to rally the constituents of these people against them if they won't play ball on those issues should he get elected. They (Pelosi, Clinton, Biden, Obama(?)) are his ideological opponents and pretending they aren't is simply untruthful. Taking on the establishment, their way of funding their campaigns, their policies, their power within the democratic party is a core part of what Sanders is trying to do. If hypothetically he were to get elected, he would likely have to fight Pelosi tooth and nail to get her out of her position as speaker or barring that to get her to put his proposals up for a vote. If that upsets voters, they should vote for Biden. If it turns out I am in a minority then my side loses the election. Sucks but I prefer it to lying to your voters.Tireseas said:
Ugh, you are asking me to consider what the democratic base thinks the rest of the country would vote for. This is one of the reasons why this focus on electability is a mistake. It dilutes any discussion that is to the point. I'd like the democratic process to be influenced by policy debate. I'd also like that debate to include more than two possible positions. Primaries give some room for that, but instead we've decided we'd rather focus on playing game theory about the electorate of the general. This is one were we just really disagree.Tireseas said:
I know you really want to beat Trump, but I would like to beat Trump for specific reasons that are different from yours. American political institutions are grossly flawed and their undermining has been going on for a long time. Trump is merely another republican to me, just a bit more rude. Trumps policy on taxation, climate change, foreign policy, health care and a range of other issues is bad. When it comes to other democratic candidates and democrats in general (though it's just Joe Biden at this point) their policy on those issues is also bad. Less bad than Trump, especially when it comes to climate change. If it is Trump vs Biden that is an unpleasant choice but an easy one. I'd vote for Joe then. The one exception to that is foreign policy where I honestly don't know whether Joe Biden would be much of an improvement over Trump. If the other candidates attack Sanders for saying something nuanced and true about a complete non-threat like Cuba I don't see them ending or even reducing US warmongering. Many of them want to pretend Guaido is the legitimate leader of Venezuela or that we should be terrified of the Russians or that getting all manner of concessions from North Korea is more important than reducing the chance of conflict with them, they voted for the increased military budgets under Trump. etc, etc. So when it comes to foreign policy, defeating Trump simply isn't my top priority. I'd like a reasonable position to be represented in the discussion at all. That'd be a better victory than replacing Trump with Biden from where I am standing. If that loses elections because of the jingoism of some Floridians then for now, all that can be achieved is chipping away at the overton window.
You're going to get on Tlaib's case for booing Hillary Clinton, really? Clinton's been unproductively taking shots at Bernie all race. There is a saying that you should not build bridges towards those that would use them to charge at you. Clinton is at this point in that category. Arguably better to just ignore her (seems to be Bernie's way of dealing with it) but if Tlaib wants to tell her to just fuck off, I'm fine with that too. Let alone Teachout who pointed out correctly that Biden is corrupt, which he is as he takes part in the systemic corruption that plagues American politics and uses it to bolster his own career, whilst allowing it to influence his views. Not only that but though Trump should use proper procedure to investigate such manners, his family enrichment based of the Biden name is shady and unethical even if technically legal. Sanders had no business throwing her under the bus for saying that. I agree that that staffer who made jokes about Buttigiegs husband and other such things was out of line and pointlessly nasty. As I recall he actually was fired from the campaign, and I think that was the right call. I have great difficulty understanding the tweet you linked to, which was Bob Chipman reacting to people reacting to AOC reacting to a meme posting by Warren. If people gave AOC shit for laughing along with a joke Warren made they could stand to loosen up, but I have difficulty understanding just what is going on. Thing is, all I see is a range of anecdotes and they are further diluted by the fact that at least half of them are just not problems from where I am standing. I have no doubt that people were unkind to you on the internet. Hell, I've said things I shouldn't have said in this thread but more on that later. But again, I could show you more convincing anecdotes of Warren supporters being horrible to Sanders supporters. Thing is I recently got told to get cancer over a game of online chess because the guy on the other side thought I took too long on a move. This happens on the internet a lot, and twitter has the reputation of being even more toxic than even most of the rest of the internet. People shouldn't do it at all, but you've presented no evidence that the Sanders campaign is more toxic than others beyond some high level surrogates being mildly but justifiably negative about other candidates and some random assholes on the internet.Tireseas said:
Well, I can explain my mistrust, but I think an apology might be more in order. Your arguments seemed ad hoc smears to me, clearly, they weren't. Apparently you are convinced that this electability stuff matters (way more than it matters to me) and I just jumped the gun and misjudged your intentions there. That was unproductive and needlessly hostile and I shouldn't have done that. Sorry.Tireseas said:
Beyond this some of the reasons for my distrust. Should you care, you can click on it. If you are still just angry with me, better to ignore it.
This talk about electability remains alien to me and I don't think it is helpful. If you ask me seriously, we don't know who might or might not beat Trump but the best evidence we has says Sanders has the second best shot not far behind Biden: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-6250.html . Most polls have both Biden and Sanders beating Trump with average leads of six and five points respectively with Warren way behind them with a two point lead. This is guesswork still, but it's based on something. But the evidence is rarely addressed in discussions about electability and is instead replaced by people guessing what the electorate probably likes. I've addressed some of the reasons why I dislike electability talk but one I haven't mentioned so far is that at least some of the time it is an easy way to pass off disagreement as 'something voters worry about'; to make bad points with plausible deniability. When you say 'Sanders said positive things about Castro' there is little functional difference between saying it to discuss his electability and saying it because you think it is actually disqualifying. In both cases what will stick is that Sanders is worryingly positive about the bad people. Well, that is not entirely true, if you had thought it were disqualifying we could have had a discussion about whether it actually is but by phrasing it this way there isn't even a way to defend Sanders straight up. Instead you expect me not even to address the substance and jump straight to discussing what voters far away from me might think about it and whether Sanders should strategically apologize (lie). It's quite ingenuous and it sounds like a cowardly smear to me. Again, I recognize that that wasn't your intention, but this is how at least parts of your argument read to me.
I'm more lamenting the fact that it's likely for the election 2020 you are probably going to have to choose between a racist, homophobic, anti-immigrant, wall builder who uses an army to commit war crimes against refugees, doesn't know much about foreign policy and will probably destroy alliances and his opponent, Trump.Seanchaidh said:
Biden even says stupid things like Trump but at least that's a speech impediment.
My personal favorite is now that Biden has been pretty much coronated, all the Biden supporters are looking at the exit polling and demographics and finally realizing the youth vote has been near-completely suppressed and/or peace'd out, were only turning out to vote for Bernie, a huge chunk of the vote that turned out actually were cross-party "never Bernie" spoilers, the demographic turning out in hordes to vote against M4A is the most vulnerable to the disease, and that the Democratic party has essentially voted itself into extinction inside of eight months. Hell it managed to break in through MSNBC's programming last night, as pundits were tripping over their own dicks to explain why the youth vote's completely taken a shit and how to do "outreach" as if those votes are ever coming back. Word is the Biden groups on social media, and forums/chats, are completely bricking as buyers' remorse seems to be setting in before the primary is even over.trunkage said:
Literally four years. But noooooo, the boomers just had to watch professional wrong people on MSNBC and CNN 24/7 that entire time, get Fox News'ed, and now the Democratic frontrunner is a man whose brains are turning into tapioca before a live national audience and his platform is literally "let's not really do anything, and just go back to pretending nothing was wrong like we did under Obama".SupahEwok said:
I mean we were in clown world four years ago. Now we're in clown world's clown world. Clownception, if you will.
I'm just going to note that the state of the race right now is about like it was near the same time in 2008, when Obama was behind Hillary Clinton. Also, it's very, very strange that the states that still haven't finished counting their votes are all Bernie states. What's going on there? Just (another) big coincidence?
In other news...
[tweet t="https://twitter.com/shoe0nhead/status/1237860040339419137"]
In other news...
[tweet t="https://twitter.com/shoe0nhead/status/1237860040339419137"]
Progressives said they wanted Democrats to adopt more socialist positions, they listened. They adopted Evo Morales' re-election strategy.Seanchaidh said:
Also, lol at more people noticing the monstrous, glaring irregularities between exit poll and announced election results across the country. Thanks, totally-not-voter-suppression provisional ballots!
There's a lot that would say say about individual points in your response, but I think here is kind of the crux of the issue as to why we have such a disconnect that deserves to be explored. I also think a bit of background is going to be illuminating.Pseudonym said:
I study politics and elections in particular. This was the thing I studied in college and I wrote my senior thesis on the potential effect of Xenophobia on general campaigns and their efficacy. I interned for my Congressman in DC for a liberal back-bencher in 2010 during the ACA debate and was part of a program that gave me a lot of exposure to various aspects of the federal political system, including elected officials, chiefs of staff, party staffers, media figures/producers, activists, PACs, interest groups/unions, and political consultants. I currently don't formally study it, but keep an eye on elections and the current understandings of voting patterns in the US.
Currently, I am a self-employed attorney in the Seattle area who runs a single-person business out of a condo with a union husband who works for the county. I serve on the board and once was the president of a small non-profit club that caters to the kink community and tries to lower the barriers of entry for those looking to explore that side of themselves. More recently I came out as queer and trans and am in the process of transitioning, which is difficult even within the fairly trans-friendly state of Washington and is largely possible through my husband's union-negotiated health insurance. Supported Obama in 2008. Supported Clinton in 2016.[footnote]For what its worth, I'm still very very bitter about 2016 and that almost certainly colors my opinion of Sanders and likely informs the below[/footnote] And, as I mentioned earlier, my main preference this year was for Warren, largely due to policy and a sense that she knew how to turn policies from ideas into statutes, regulation, and personnel.
And now for my argument on why electability is a paramount importance.
In my opinion,[footnote]It should be noted that the board strokes of this are not uniquely my ideas, but do parallel with existing theory.[/footnote] there are fundamentally two kinds of candidates in a presidential primaries: actual candidates and issue candidates.[footnote]There's also a distinction between main stream and insurgent candidates which sometimes overlaps with this, but that's a discussion for another time and is mostly about optics and political style. There's also promotional runs that are designed to increase personal prominence, but that kind of falls into the issue candidate category even if one is our current president.[/footnote]
Actual candidates are fairly straight-forward: they're in the race with the intention of becoming the nominee and eventual office-holder. They campaign, fund raise, and try to portray them as disciplined enough to be worthy of holding the office. Both Clintons, Obama, all three Bushes, Romney, Kerry, Dean, Gulliani, Cruz, Gabbard, and Buttigieg are all good examples of Actual Candidates and most candidates are going to fall into this category because most candidates want to win the office (you generally don't campaign for an office you don't want).
Issue candidates are in the race to make a statement and try to have a debate on their pet issue(s). Think Andrew Yang (UBI), Ross Periot (National Debt), Lawrence Lessig (Election reform), Ron Paul (Libertarian economics and regulation) (kind of), and others who usually fade into obscurity fairly quickly. They tend to have anemic fundraising or self-finance, and their primary goal is to qualify for the debate stage in order to promote their ideas and force actual candidates closer to their ideals or at least force a response to them. Most of them know and some will even outright admit that their candidacy is generally a futile effort.
Here's the thing: Issue candidates usually stay small and tend to don't lead their supporters on when reality hits and they have to end a campaign. Meanwhile, actual candidates tend to do everything they need to to win, because their volunteers and voters believe they will be the one best suited to win the general election (why they believe that varies heavily even within campaigns) and, to put it bluntly, it would be a betrayal to not try to win.
Sanders in 2016 is an interesting case that is not particularly unique (particularly in down ballot races where single-issue stances can get you through a primary), but relatively uncommon in a presidential primary. He started out as an issue candidate in 2015, largely based on an small base of support that expanded when Warren declined to run in 2016 against Clinton, making him the only outspoken liberal on the stage when a lot of progressives still disliked her for a myriad of reasons that largely have their root in the 2003 Iraq War Resolution.[footnote]It should be noted that Clinton's positions and voting record put her decidedly to the left of the party leadership as 75% more liberal then other Democratic Senators [https://voteview.com/person/40105/hillary-rodham-clinton], though she campaigned as a center-left establishment leader for the party.[/footnote]. Because a lot of potential presidential candidates did not want to run against Clinton or felt that they would almost certainly lose against the undisputed favorite for 2016 [https://news.gallup.com/poll/181988/hillary-clinton-clear-leader-favorability-among-democrats.aspx], you had a relative dearth of candidates in that cycle, with only five qualifying for the first debate in October 2015, all but one of which (Governor Martin O'Malley) dropped out before Iowa, with him dropping out right afterwords. After that, it was Clinton versus Sanders for the rest of the Primary, making Sanders the de facto vote if you didn't want Clinton for whatever reason you fancied. After a de facto tie in Iowa and a large victory in New Hampshire, the notion of a Sanders nomination was suddenly no longer a pipe dream and he eventually ended up with the campaign infrastructure of an actual candidate with the message of an issue candidate. He lost in the end, mostly due to very poor performances in Southern states and being overly reliant on Caucuses to win larger net delegate gains, but would enter the 2020 cycle as an undisputed actual candidate.
So why am I talking about this? The point is that Sanders knew he was going to enter the race as an actual candidate, which means he needed a plan to secure the nomination. His plan, as he put it, was to secure the nomination by increasing voter turnout among the young and infrequent voters that rarely turn out in large enough numbers in elections and primary elections in particular. While I have qualms about this strategy, it was a theory that could at least be tested in the actual primary elections. And for the most part, it failed. Iowa saw no substantive change in turnout from 2016 to 2020 [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/why-wasnt-turnout-better-in-iowa.html]. New Hampshire turnout was increased [https://www.vox.com/2020/2/12/21134438/new-hampshire-democratic-primary-turnout], but it didn't translate into more than a de facto tie. Nevada was the only state where record turnout translated into electoral success [https://www.vox.com/2020/2/23/21149443/nevada-caucuses-2020-turnout-record], largely thanks to Sanders' outreach to the Latinx community that has a tradition of organizing and economically progressive positions and a splintered field of alternatives.
But South Carolina came and the indicators of a problem started to emerge. He lost the black vote by a wide margin. He didn't break 50% with black voters under 45 in some states [https://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/super-tuesday/]. Youth turnout remained relatively low [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/4/21164479/super-tuesday-results-exit-polls-turnout-patterns]. His strategy was not working.
Here's the thing: if you're an actual candidate for the presidency, and particularly if you're a top-tier candidate, you have a massive operation filled with volunteers and supporters, a large warchest of money from donors big and small, and a small nations' worth of manpower doing what you tell them (explicitly and implicitly) to help you win, both within the campaign and outside of it. That comes with an immense responsibility to use those resources in a manner that helps you win the nomination and general election, because every dollar you get, every volunteer hour spent, and every vote cast for you is a sacrifice someone else made because they believe in you (whether passionately or, in my case, in a disgruntled manner) and in your ability to win. An actual candidate has a duty to try to win until the facts say that it is reasonably impossible to do so. And for the vast majority of primary voters, they're not going to vote for someone who they don't think can win in November [https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/444295-poll-democratic-voters-prioritize-defeating-trump-over-their].
And that is why I'm so frustrated-to-infuriated with the way the Sanders campaign operates and, in particular, communicates. There's nothing in his strategy that required him to paint most of the party as against him as he often did in campaign rallies and media appearances, even if it was true in the sense that moderate/establishment-lane candidacies were his opposition. There's nothing that required him and senior staffers to appear on a sexist and bigoted podcast [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/9/21168312/bernie-bros-bernie-sanders-chapo-trap-house-dirtbag-left]; there's nothing that required him to tout the endorsement of one of the most prominent non-Republican bigots in the country [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/24/21080234/bernie-sanders-joe-rogan-experience-endorsement-controversy]; there's nothing requiring him to endorse (and have to walk back) a blatant sexist for congress to replace a queer woman [https://time.com/5749887/why-bernie-sanders-walked-back-his-endorsement-of-cenk-uygur/]; there's nothing requiring him to have a parade of surrogates who can't seem to stay on message (and yes, if Talib is a surrogate for Sanders, it means not alienating the near-17 million potential voters who voted for Clinton in the 2016 primary [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries#Schedule_and_results] no matter how much it's justified, because you need every vote); it means dropping or obscuring or disavowing or conditioning things that you support or identify or said if they're unpopular with key voting groups; it means registering as a Democrat like you're asking a bunch of your voters to do in states with closed party primaries and the party you're asking to lead. Every single one of these items and more makes it harder and harder and harder for a voter to support his candidacy. Why should a rank and file voter who identifies as a Democrat and might like or, more often, just generally favor Sanders policies over others throw in with a campaign that doesn't seem to care about winning if that's your top priority and he doesn't seem to be positioning himself to unify the party?
For all his faults and gaffs and shitty shitty shitty voting record, Biden actually did know the top priority of the majority of the Democratic electorate: defeat Trump. That's how he announced his campaign, and for decades of terrible votes and policies, his ability to bring rivals on board his campaign sent the message he's about unity and electability. He got the math guy who supported Sanders in 2016 to essentially say Sanders had lost [https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/10/andrew-yang-endorses-joe-biden-125317]. Sanders got failed 1984 and 1988 presidential candidate Jesse Jackson [https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/08/jesse-jackson-backing-sanders-123747]... after blowouts in Super Tuesday and probably too late to dramatically alter the results of the March 10 cluster.
And Trump is right about one thing: people like winning. They don't want to support someone who they think is going to lose whether they're a shrewd political figure trying to capitalize on the campaign or a voter who is trying to decide who they want to support. The Bandwagon effect is real and losing is embarrassing and disheartening. Sanders was riding high after Nevada, but he should have pivoted right away to a unity message, toned down more divisive rhetoric, and reached out to center-left figures who might not have been completely on board with his message, but could give the impression his coalition was growing and make it seem like he was going to be the winner to beat without appearing like a massive threat to the rest of the party.
So while I support him staying in the race after Tuesday, I suspect that by this time next week that gap between him and Biden is going to get a lot wider unless he can pull a serious turn-around in delegate-heavy Florida [https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/fl/florida_democratic_presidential_primary-6847.html] (everybody loves an undergdog), I suspect at that point the campaign is going to be done even if there's enough delegates remaining to technically get the nomination.
And if that happens and the math becomes inescapable, he should suspend his campaign and try to unify the party. That's the final duty of an actual candidate: when it becomes clear you will not win the nomination, you do what what is needed to make sure the person who will carries your supporters and the policies that they prefer to as close to fruition as possible. Because presidential primary elections are not policy debates, they're debates on who is best positioned to make those policies into law in a system where the president can block every priority that doesn't have a 2/3rds vote in both houses. Every dollar spent, every door knocked on, and every shred of hope that is invested after the point where victory is all but impossible is wasted in pursuit of vanity over substance, wasting it when it could be put to better use in the general campaign, down-ballot campaigns, or outside activities. And if you're more aligned with the likely winner than the opposing party's likely nominee, every day longer in an unnecessary campaign can actively harm the candidate that likely will be most likely to get your policies to reality, as it reduces the time that you and the other candidate can unify disparate internal voting groups to minimize losses.
And while Biden may say he doesn't support XYZ policy, do you really think the man who is claiming he's the guy who can "get things signed into law" is going to turn down signing a progressive bill that makes it through the deadlocked nightmare that is the US Congress even if he has qualms about it? I doubt it. That's why its so important to reach out and play the give and take of politics: endorsements today turn into congressional votes for priories tomorrow. But none of that matters if you don't win. So if it becomes clear that Sanders can't win, his best bet to getting the policies he claims to support is to get Biden onboard and lock him into prioritizing (or at least not blocking[footnote]a presidential stance on a policy can actually make it harder to pass [https://www.brookings.edu/research/going-partisan-presidential-leadership-in-a-polarized-political-environment/], which suggests moving progressive policy through the congress quietly can actually be more effective than presidential leadership.[/footnote]) items like Climate Change legislation, Student debt relief, regulatory reform, gun control, tax increases, etc.
So I feel Sanders has a duty to his supporters to do what he needs to to either win the primary or, in the now-likely event of failure to achieve that goal, position himself and his supporters in the place best suited to bring those policies to a reality, which will be by helping Biden win the general election and focusing on down-ballot races where money and organizing can make a real difference. But his theory of how he was supposed to win failed because those groups didn't turn out in the numbers needed to win more delegates, and when turnout did jump high, they voted Biden almost every time. Sanders is right that he represents the future of the Democratic party in terms of policy priorities (though not likely in tactics) and that youth voters do support him over Joe Biden. So Sanders needs to figure out a way to make sure those policies are most likely to come to fruition, whether that's through building his primary coalition to win the primary or helping Biden in the general, because you don't get policy into law without victory first.
Actual candidates are fairly straight-forward: they're in the race with the intention of becoming the nominee and eventual office-holder. They campaign, fund raise, and try to portray them as disciplined enough to be worthy of holding the office. Both Clintons, Obama, all three Bushes, Romney, Kerry, Dean, Gulliani, Cruz, Gabbard, and Buttigieg are all good examples of Actual Candidates and most candidates are going to fall into this category because most candidates want to win the office (you generally don't campaign for an office you don't want).
Issue candidates are in the race to make a statement and try to have a debate on their pet issue(s). Think Andrew Yang (UBI), Ross Periot (National Debt), Lawrence Lessig (Election reform), Ron Paul (Libertarian economics and regulation) (kind of), and others who usually fade into obscurity fairly quickly. They tend to have anemic fundraising or self-finance, and their primary goal is to qualify for the debate stage in order to promote their ideas and force actual candidates closer to their ideals or at least force a response to them. Most of them know and some will even outright admit that their candidacy is generally a futile effort.
Here's the thing: Issue candidates usually stay small and tend to don't lead their supporters on when reality hits and they have to end a campaign. Meanwhile, actual candidates tend to do everything they need to to win, because their volunteers and voters believe they will be the one best suited to win the general election (why they believe that varies heavily even within campaigns) and, to put it bluntly, it would be a betrayal to not try to win.
Sanders in 2016 is an interesting case that is not particularly unique (particularly in down ballot races where single-issue stances can get you through a primary), but relatively uncommon in a presidential primary. He started out as an issue candidate in 2015, largely based on an small base of support that expanded when Warren declined to run in 2016 against Clinton, making him the only outspoken liberal on the stage when a lot of progressives still disliked her for a myriad of reasons that largely have their root in the 2003 Iraq War Resolution.[footnote]It should be noted that Clinton's positions and voting record put her decidedly to the left of the party leadership as 75% more liberal then other Democratic Senators [https://voteview.com/person/40105/hillary-rodham-clinton], though she campaigned as a center-left establishment leader for the party.[/footnote]. Because a lot of potential presidential candidates did not want to run against Clinton or felt that they would almost certainly lose against the undisputed favorite for 2016 [https://news.gallup.com/poll/181988/hillary-clinton-clear-leader-favorability-among-democrats.aspx], you had a relative dearth of candidates in that cycle, with only five qualifying for the first debate in October 2015, all but one of which (Governor Martin O'Malley) dropped out before Iowa, with him dropping out right afterwords. After that, it was Clinton versus Sanders for the rest of the Primary, making Sanders the de facto vote if you didn't want Clinton for whatever reason you fancied. After a de facto tie in Iowa and a large victory in New Hampshire, the notion of a Sanders nomination was suddenly no longer a pipe dream and he eventually ended up with the campaign infrastructure of an actual candidate with the message of an issue candidate. He lost in the end, mostly due to very poor performances in Southern states and being overly reliant on Caucuses to win larger net delegate gains, but would enter the 2020 cycle as an undisputed actual candidate.
So why am I talking about this? The point is that Sanders knew he was going to enter the race as an actual candidate, which means he needed a plan to secure the nomination. His plan, as he put it, was to secure the nomination by increasing voter turnout among the young and infrequent voters that rarely turn out in large enough numbers in elections and primary elections in particular. While I have qualms about this strategy, it was a theory that could at least be tested in the actual primary elections. And for the most part, it failed. Iowa saw no substantive change in turnout from 2016 to 2020 [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/why-wasnt-turnout-better-in-iowa.html]. New Hampshire turnout was increased [https://www.vox.com/2020/2/12/21134438/new-hampshire-democratic-primary-turnout], but it didn't translate into more than a de facto tie. Nevada was the only state where record turnout translated into electoral success [https://www.vox.com/2020/2/23/21149443/nevada-caucuses-2020-turnout-record], largely thanks to Sanders' outreach to the Latinx community that has a tradition of organizing and economically progressive positions and a splintered field of alternatives.
But South Carolina came and the indicators of a problem started to emerge. He lost the black vote by a wide margin. He didn't break 50% with black voters under 45 in some states [https://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/super-tuesday/]. Youth turnout remained relatively low [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/4/21164479/super-tuesday-results-exit-polls-turnout-patterns]. His strategy was not working.
Here's the thing: if you're an actual candidate for the presidency, and particularly if you're a top-tier candidate, you have a massive operation filled with volunteers and supporters, a large warchest of money from donors big and small, and a small nations' worth of manpower doing what you tell them (explicitly and implicitly) to help you win, both within the campaign and outside of it. That comes with an immense responsibility to use those resources in a manner that helps you win the nomination and general election, because every dollar you get, every volunteer hour spent, and every vote cast for you is a sacrifice someone else made because they believe in you (whether passionately or, in my case, in a disgruntled manner) and in your ability to win. An actual candidate has a duty to try to win until the facts say that it is reasonably impossible to do so. And for the vast majority of primary voters, they're not going to vote for someone who they don't think can win in November [https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/444295-poll-democratic-voters-prioritize-defeating-trump-over-their].
And that is why I'm so frustrated-to-infuriated with the way the Sanders campaign operates and, in particular, communicates. There's nothing in his strategy that required him to paint most of the party as against him as he often did in campaign rallies and media appearances, even if it was true in the sense that moderate/establishment-lane candidacies were his opposition. There's nothing that required him and senior staffers to appear on a sexist and bigoted podcast [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/9/21168312/bernie-bros-bernie-sanders-chapo-trap-house-dirtbag-left]; there's nothing that required him to tout the endorsement of one of the most prominent non-Republican bigots in the country [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/24/21080234/bernie-sanders-joe-rogan-experience-endorsement-controversy]; there's nothing requiring him to endorse (and have to walk back) a blatant sexist for congress to replace a queer woman [https://time.com/5749887/why-bernie-sanders-walked-back-his-endorsement-of-cenk-uygur/]; there's nothing requiring him to have a parade of surrogates who can't seem to stay on message (and yes, if Talib is a surrogate for Sanders, it means not alienating the near-17 million potential voters who voted for Clinton in the 2016 primary [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries#Schedule_and_results] no matter how much it's justified, because you need every vote); it means dropping or obscuring or disavowing or conditioning things that you support or identify or said if they're unpopular with key voting groups; it means registering as a Democrat like you're asking a bunch of your voters to do in states with closed party primaries and the party you're asking to lead. Every single one of these items and more makes it harder and harder and harder for a voter to support his candidacy. Why should a rank and file voter who identifies as a Democrat and might like or, more often, just generally favor Sanders policies over others throw in with a campaign that doesn't seem to care about winning if that's your top priority and he doesn't seem to be positioning himself to unify the party?
For all his faults and gaffs and shitty shitty shitty voting record, Biden actually did know the top priority of the majority of the Democratic electorate: defeat Trump. That's how he announced his campaign, and for decades of terrible votes and policies, his ability to bring rivals on board his campaign sent the message he's about unity and electability. He got the math guy who supported Sanders in 2016 to essentially say Sanders had lost [https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/10/andrew-yang-endorses-joe-biden-125317]. Sanders got failed 1984 and 1988 presidential candidate Jesse Jackson [https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/08/jesse-jackson-backing-sanders-123747]... after blowouts in Super Tuesday and probably too late to dramatically alter the results of the March 10 cluster.
And Trump is right about one thing: people like winning. They don't want to support someone who they think is going to lose whether they're a shrewd political figure trying to capitalize on the campaign or a voter who is trying to decide who they want to support. The Bandwagon effect is real and losing is embarrassing and disheartening. Sanders was riding high after Nevada, but he should have pivoted right away to a unity message, toned down more divisive rhetoric, and reached out to center-left figures who might not have been completely on board with his message, but could give the impression his coalition was growing and make it seem like he was going to be the winner to beat without appearing like a massive threat to the rest of the party.
So while I support him staying in the race after Tuesday, I suspect that by this time next week that gap between him and Biden is going to get a lot wider unless he can pull a serious turn-around in delegate-heavy Florida [https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/fl/florida_democratic_presidential_primary-6847.html] (everybody loves an undergdog), I suspect at that point the campaign is going to be done even if there's enough delegates remaining to technically get the nomination.
And if that happens and the math becomes inescapable, he should suspend his campaign and try to unify the party. That's the final duty of an actual candidate: when it becomes clear you will not win the nomination, you do what what is needed to make sure the person who will carries your supporters and the policies that they prefer to as close to fruition as possible. Because presidential primary elections are not policy debates, they're debates on who is best positioned to make those policies into law in a system where the president can block every priority that doesn't have a 2/3rds vote in both houses. Every dollar spent, every door knocked on, and every shred of hope that is invested after the point where victory is all but impossible is wasted in pursuit of vanity over substance, wasting it when it could be put to better use in the general campaign, down-ballot campaigns, or outside activities. And if you're more aligned with the likely winner than the opposing party's likely nominee, every day longer in an unnecessary campaign can actively harm the candidate that likely will be most likely to get your policies to reality, as it reduces the time that you and the other candidate can unify disparate internal voting groups to minimize losses.
And while Biden may say he doesn't support XYZ policy, do you really think the man who is claiming he's the guy who can "get things signed into law" is going to turn down signing a progressive bill that makes it through the deadlocked nightmare that is the US Congress even if he has qualms about it? I doubt it. That's why its so important to reach out and play the give and take of politics: endorsements today turn into congressional votes for priories tomorrow. But none of that matters if you don't win. So if it becomes clear that Sanders can't win, his best bet to getting the policies he claims to support is to get Biden onboard and lock him into prioritizing (or at least not blocking[footnote]a presidential stance on a policy can actually make it harder to pass [https://www.brookings.edu/research/going-partisan-presidential-leadership-in-a-polarized-political-environment/], which suggests moving progressive policy through the congress quietly can actually be more effective than presidential leadership.[/footnote]) items like Climate Change legislation, Student debt relief, regulatory reform, gun control, tax increases, etc.
So I feel Sanders has a duty to his supporters to do what he needs to to either win the primary or, in the now-likely event of failure to achieve that goal, position himself and his supporters in the place best suited to bring those policies to a reality, which will be by helping Biden win the general election and focusing on down-ballot races where money and organizing can make a real difference. But his theory of how he was supposed to win failed because those groups didn't turn out in the numbers needed to win more delegates, and when turnout did jump high, they voted Biden almost every time. Sanders is right that he represents the future of the Democratic party in terms of policy priorities (though not likely in tactics) and that youth voters do support him over Joe Biden. So Sanders needs to figure out a way to make sure those policies are most likely to come to fruition, whether that's through building his primary coalition to win the primary or helping Biden in the general, because you don't get policy into law without victory first.
Coronavirus and Joe Biden's cognitive decline are both making it clear that we don't have time for voters to indulge this bullshit electability astrology. Biden is not more electable, he has not made a case that he's more electable. Polls don't show he's more electable. He's benefited from unearned positive media coverage and a whole host of very well-timed endorsements from a party establishment that is beholden to the corporate elite of this country. Mr. "You're a dog-faced pony soldier" and "All men and women are created-- you know-- you know the thing!" is neither up to take office and do what needs to be done nor defeat Trump in the first place. He doesn't have a policy agenda that is appropriate for this moment nor does he have the stamina to make it through a general election campaign. The strategy has been to hide him from view-- and having all that centrist chaff in the race until just before Super Tuesday aided that quite a bit. The benefit of that to him is going to wane; it'll be gone by the end of the primary.
Indeed not. But what "electable" means in media and political discourse (see also "credible") is usually closer to a whispering campaign to undermine a candidate.Seanchaidh said:
After all, if enough people spend enough time asking whether someone is "electable", what it does it create a constant drip-feed of doubt that induces people to think there's something wrong with that candidate, without ever having to assess their policies and popularity.
Naturally the media tend to be full of comfy, middle class, mostly white folks who are used to moderate politics working a certain way with a certain type of politician (which is to say, people who are and think similarly to them). I am not sure they know what to do when something different comes along, and I think their gut response is to think that if it's different, it won't work. Even when Donald Trump has won and run the country for three years, they still can't shake themselves out of the mindset that there's some "normal" candidate that's going to take everything back to that comfortable status quo.
Unfortunately, despite being experienced, broadly effective and a potentially powerful compromise candidate between the centre and left of the Democratic Party, she had the disadvantage of being a woman in a country that doesn't look much ready for a female president.Tireseas said:
Yes.Agema said:
Voters interested in "electability" should probably just do the opposite of whatever the dominant narrative on CNN or MSNBC happens to be.
https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/03/12/sanders-most-popular-democratic-candidate-in-exit-polls-among-swing-voters/
She also made some extraordinarily poor choices about optics and strategy, driven in part by many of the same people who directed Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign into a sewer.Agema said:
Yeah, the Primary in general and Michigan and Missouri in particular [https://www.salon.com/2020/03/11/why-is-bernie-losing-because-hes-not-running-against-a-woman/] has kind of been a depressing pair of experiments on likely sexism in the Democratic primary electorate.Agema said:
Are you holding up the Biden campaign as a pillar of campaign competence? Because that is fucking laughable.Seanchaidh said:
Warren ran a good campaign that was more liberal and had less baggage than Clinton, albeit certainly not perfect (that Cherokee DNA test was one of the biggest unforced errors and will probably be spoken about in the same tone as Ed Muske in the Snow [https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2008/01/17/72-front-runners-tears-hurt]). You don't need to run a perfect campaign to be a front runner (both Biden and Sanders have ran deeply flawed campaigns) and she was, by far and away, "the ideas candidate." She barely had viability in many states. With the massive caveat that November 2016 remains a fucking awful trauma event for a lot of Democrats that likely made it harder for them to support a woman running for the nomination just as a gut reflex in this particular cycle, it's kind of clear that sexism likely played a substantial role even if not definitive (Sanders taking the progressive lane and getting progressive endorsements right after his heart attack to assure his supporters he was still in it, likely was the point where the race could have shifted substantially but didn't), and denying it kind of is a slap in the face of a lot of democratic women who feel they are held to a higher standard [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/are-female-presidential-candidates-held-to-a-higher-standard-than-males].
I've seen you assert that, but I'm still waiting for an argument either for the idea that electability should dwarf all other concerns with a candidate, or that we could even know who and what is electable and who and what isn't. The closest you've come is:Tireseas said:
Which is questionbegging. Granting for the sake of argument that more support for your campaign means you have a more specific duty to get it right to the supporters, still leaves the identification of getting it right and doing everything you can to win, disregarding anything else needs, as the assumption you were supposed to argue for, not use for further argument. A voter or supporter might feel more betrayed by pivoting away from certain talking points than they'd do by Sanders not sacrificing everything to win. I don't think we are going to agree on this. I have little more to say at this point than that I will not vote based on electability and I don't want campaigns run that way, because that leaves the overton window in the shitty place it is. If you think winning or beating Trump specifically is more important than that, I have nothing for you, and judging by your last post, you have nothing for me.Tireseas said:
The only other thing that might be useful to mention is that I simply don't believe that we know who is electable and that the reasons for being electable are far too complicated, and far too susceptible to personal biases, to make theorizing all that useful. The only thing I give any trust to on this are polls and I still don't trust those very much either (they tend to change by the week, and have a faulty track record). Besides polls, I have some trust that the incumbent has an advantage particularly if the economy does well. How confident are you really that touting an endorsement of the most popular podcaster there is harms Bernie's chances? How confident are you that people know or care what Chapo Trap House is? How sure are you that a remotely significant part of the electorate dislikes Cenk Ugyur enough to change their views on Bernie over his endorsement of him? Are you sure you haven't just assumed it will hurt him electorally because it annoyed you for other reasons, because that is certainly what it seems like to me. I'm inclined to say, for example, that touting the Rogan Endorsement more likely increased his chances of winning than decreased them, but I don't really know either. I'm also inclined to say that almost all of these examples are small fry anyway which make at best a tiny dent in the considerations of the average voter when they are asked who to vote for. I could be wrong, I've had wrong expectations of the electorate before as has almost everyone. Trump beat Clinton and most people who analyse this stuff for a living didn't see it coming. Why do you think you know better?