Via Dave Weigel at The Post:
Sen. Bernie Sanders will seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose 2016 presidential campaign grew from a left-wing insurgency to a force that reshaped the Democratic Party, announced Tuesday that he will seek its nomination for president again in 2020…
“Our campaign is not only about defeating Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history. It is not only about winning the Democratic nomination and the general election,” he wrote. “Our campaign is about transforming our country and creating a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.”
The senator, an independent, cited health care, climate change, student debt, the “demonization” of undocumented immigrants, income inequality, gun violence and the myriad problems of America’s needy as propelling him into his second presidential contest.
If I were curator of Sanders’ political legacy, I would have advised him to take credit for pulling the party leftward and play kingmaker. Losing a second primary contest will take the wind out of the “Bernie woulda won” contingent’s sails and diminish Sanders’ influence.
Sanders will almost certainly lose this primary, IMO. The fundamentals have changed. As we’ve noted here endlessly, he won’t get the kid-glove treatment this time around.
Sanders’ “lane” is ably filled already by Senator Warren, who has a deep understanding of structural wealth inequality and detailed plans to address it. (I’m very much looking forward to Warren being asked to define the differences between her ideas and his.)
After the last Democratic presidential primary and in the run-up to the 2016 election, trillions of pixels were expended on the question of whether Sanders supporters would come around to supporting Clinton or not. Most did, but a critical minority did not.
We probably won’t see much speculation on whether Clinton supporters will support Sanders in his bid for the nomination this time. It should be a hot topic because Clinton supporters are the majority of the party, and many believe Sanders played a role in Clinton’s loss.
In her campaign memoir, Clinton wrote:
“His attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign.”
The lasting damage wasn’t only to Clinton, IMO. Clinton supporters may doom Sanders’ candidacy this time around, and relatively quickly. But they’ll do it during the primary, which is how intra-party rivalries are supposed to be settled.
AxelFoley
Like Jim Ross of WWE used to say, “Business just picked up!”
Oh, I’m gonna enjoy everyone ripping Wilmer to shreds this time around. Fuck him forever.
Princess
Blech
JPL
So we split the vote between the candidates and the Sanders coalition wins… fuckem If there is damaging opposition research, they need to release it now.
marklar
Here’s his new campaign Twitter handle…..#LookatmeToo
Wilson Heath
What intraparty rivalry?
Asshole crashes the party, leaves an upper decker and screams about how it’s lame and he won’t come back as he’s leaving when the hosts don’t want to make him prom king, and he wants back in this year?
Fuck him with all the rusted railroad girders.
Searcher
/unsubscribe
RandomMonster
We should demand to see his tax returns before he’s allowed to run in our primary.
waratah
I think Sanders is more worried about Beto.
PsiFighter37
@waratah: What about Tulsi? /sarcasm
Chyron HR
“Social and racial justice” should not be confused with “identity politics” which is very bad and wrong.
Betty Cracker
@JPL: I’m sure that’s the scenario Team Sparrow is counting on, but I don’t think it’ll pan out. We’ll see.
JMG
He was a strong second horse in a two horse race. Now he’s one of a full Kentucky Derby field of 20. Arithmetic and Democratic Party proportional representation rules say his chances are dim.
Josie
@RandomMonster:
Yes. Every question directed to him should be, “tax returns, tax returns, tax returns?”
Princess
@JPL: I think we already know the damaging oppo research. If people think Northam needs to resign because of a blackface/klan photo on his yearbook page, there is no way this article Bernie wrote when he was in his thirties isn’t disqualifying. It’s not just the rape fantasy stuff, which you could argue is for effect. It’s the deep-seated misogyny combined with the rape fantasy. Plus: he needs to release his tax returns:
Shalimar
Bernie withdrew from the Democratic party again before 2016 was even over. He’s not a Democrat. He shouldn’t be allowed to participate in the debates or run for the nomination.
Mom Says I*m Handsome
… the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce …
Not this time, old man. Not this time.
Bruuuuce
Carpetbaggers gotta carpetbag. This time, we have a plethora of good candidates, so we can elect a Democrat
Kirk Spencer
@Shalimar: yep. Pretty much showed what his word was worth on the subject.
SFAW
Do caucuses count more than primaries or NOT count more than primaries? I can’t remember my official Bernie party line.
I expect the answer will be: whichever path hurts Bernie’s chances more is the one that shouldn’t count.
JPL
@Shalimar: He would then run as an independent, but as @Princess: said maybe they can paint him as trump light in his treatment of women. Also his refusal to release his tax returns..
kdbart
Wilmer produces slogans, Warren produces plans.
SFAW
@Shalimar:
He’s with us on everything but Iraq. And supporting the party’s nominee if it ain’t he.
Jerry
Could someone please explain the ‘Wilmer’ reference for me? I tried to do a web search on it, but me failed bigly.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Wait, seeking the which party nomination? What party does he belong to again? Oh yeah, NOT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!
Bernie, if you really want to make a splash and be all maverick-y, go for the Republican nomination.
Words can not describe how much I want to see him have a “please clap” moment.
Bruuuuce
@SFAW: And gun control. And demonstrating willingness to release multiple years of tax returns. And awareness of the toxic elements of his support. But aside from those, Mrs. Lincoln…
Kirk Spencer
@SFAW: and gun control.
MazeDancer
If he makes it to the debates, think of all the women at whom he can wag his finger.
Pretty sure DNC changed the rules so that yiu have to be a Dem and you have to show your tax returns.
Bernie wants to grift. He also is, unfortunately, likely to run 3rd Party if Klobuchar or Harris gets the nom.
Spoiler scum gotta spoil.
Betty Cracker
Do y’all think Clinton will weigh in on the primary? I doubt it, but it sure would be interesting to know her thoughts.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Jerry: It’s local BJ culture I think. Using his real name brought in outside trolls, so people switched to a pseudonym. There’s a story behind that particular pseudonym but I can’t remember it.
Bruuuuce
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: ISTR it had something to do with Wilmer Flores, the NY Met fan favorite who cried when he heard he was traded (and whose trade didn’t go through for reasons). But I’m old and forgetful.
Shalimar
@JPL: Yeah. That is the problem. He’s a Howard Schultz who more than 4% of people actually like.
Ohio Mom
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: you remember it correctly.
Kirk Spencer
@Jerry: Balloon juice convention. During his campaign, using his name summoned hordes of …intense followers who proselytized.
David Fud
Glad to know Wilmer has decided to re-join the Democratic party. Again. Maybe he could stick around after his inevitable demise this time?
Baud
@Betty Cracker: I doubt it.
ETA: Except to announce she’s running, of course.
Baud
@David Fud: I think he’s said he’ll reject the nomination if he gets it and run in the general election as an independent. Just like what he does in Vermont.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Sanders lost by 3,708,294 votes
Baud
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: What was the difference among voters that matter though?
Kirk Spencer
Ok that’s twice this morning I’m second with the same remarks. I think I need to go get coffee and maybe earn my paycheck, pretending I’m ahead of the curve. Y’all have fun now.
SFAW
@Baud:
12 Billion more voted for the Traitor-in-Chief. Or so we’ve been told.
SFAW
@Kirk Spencer:
Homophobic Balloon Juice convention, by the way, according to one (apparently former) BernieBro commenter
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@PsiFighter37: You forgot
PolandTulsi!/fixed
plato
Fuck the carpetbagging corrupt coward, who lacks the balls to make an indie run.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Bernie and his bros can fuck off. To those Bernie Bros who think we need to be nice to them because we need them: Fuck off and grow up.
oldgold
BS has been infected by a virulent strain of Potomac Presidential Fever. Some individuals with time, rest and distancing themselves from DC can recover, but the only known cure for Senators is embalming fluid.
Brachiator
So, Bernie is running. I ain’t interested.
The ultra progs still love him, though. He might be dangerous if he ran as an Independent.
Amir Khalid
@Shalimar:
THIS. He refuses to stay in the Democratic party. He has no business seeking its nomination for town dogcatcher, let alone for POTUS.
waratah
@Baud: I don’t think Hilary will. I think Bill will not be able to keep quiet.
Joey Maloney
This seems unwarrantedly optimistic. Bernie cannot fail, he can only be failed.
Baud
BJ mobile site is down.
@waratah: I was joking.
plato
@Brachiator:
That’s his whole bs grifting shtick. That’s why he will never run as indie.
Kathleen
Still trying to figure out how he moved party “left”. Was it his position on gun control? Immigration? Black Lives Matter? Women? Foreign policy? Health care, for which he had no concrete plan?
MomSense
@Jerry:
We wanted a way to discuss him without attracting the attention of the bros.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Baud: joke detection senors experience a time lag lag when daylight saving is rolled back.
MomSense
@Kathleen:
Exactly. He wasn’t actually to the left or even progressive on some of the issues that matter most to Democrats.
wvng
The Bernie bots are still rampant on social media, still insistent he would have beaten Trump, still deeply offended at any consideration that he might have cost Hillary the win “because if she wasn’t the world’s worst monster then she would have beaten Trump.” You can’t post anything about Bernie without this crap overtaking the thread.
Uncle Cosmo
Wilmer’s best chance of making the world a better place is to wake up dead some morning – yesterday if possible. (At which point the Bros will start shrieking that eeebil Hitlery in ninja gear snuck into his bedroom & held the pillow down on his face…)
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
Some people are hoping shebweighed in yesterday with her President’s Day photo.
RAM
I plan to vote for a Democrat in the Presidential primary. That pretty much leaves Sanders out. He’s made it clear over and over that he’s not a Democrat.
plato
@Kathleen: This. All millyanaires and billyanaires hot air crap. Zero policy positions. Zero legislative achievements worthy of touting.
Leto
@Amir Khalid: Second. We’re a big tent party but we do require you to be IN the tent. All this in/out of the party shit reminds me of what my dad would say when my friends and I came tromping through the house: “IN OR OUT! PICK ONE! TOO LATE, I PICKED FOR YOU; GET OUT!”
Kathleen
@MomSense: Thank you! I want him to be exposed for the grifter he is. He’s a toxic arrogant entitled blight on the body politic.
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: I missed it. What photo did she post?
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
Jimmy, Barack, Michelle, and Bill arm in arm with the caption “Happy President’s Day”
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
She’s popular on the IG with the youngs.
Uncle Cosmo
Fears of Wilmer as a 3rd or 4th party candidate are IMHO greatly exaggerated. There were 4 credible (if sectional) Presidential candidates in the general election of 1860, won by Lincoln (with, it should be noted, absolute majorities in states with enough electoral votes to secure the victory). There were 4 credible (if partly sectional) Presidential candidates in the general election of 1948, when the incumbent Democratic President weathered convention walkouts from both the racist Right (Dixiecrats, US Senator Strom Thurmond – yes, kiddies, he was a registered Democrat then) and the woo-woo Left (Progresives, former VPOTUS Henry Wallace) to win a fresh term.
Wilmer? Daddy Starbucks? Just two more arses to kick on 3 Nov 2020. And that’s presuming BS (FTR more appropriate initials are rarely seen) isn’t sporting an orange jumpsuit by then.
kindness
Bernie has to release his taxes…10 years of them…if he wants to appear on California’s Super Tuesday ballot. I bet he tries to get out of that and California tells him to shove it up his wrinkled white butt.
Kathleen O'Neill
@plato: Plus the non stop attacks on Democratic Party. Plus his disrespect for Obama. I could go on and on. I hope his slimy past is exposed. BLECH. Have stronger words but this is family blog.
JGabriel
@JPL:
Not likely. I can’t speak for the Sanders’s coalition, just myself, but I supported Sanders’s primary run last time around (voted for Clinton in the general) and I won’t be supporting him in this primary.
There are a lot of reasons for that, but ultimately, the most important reason is simply that there are a lot more, and better, choices now. I haven’t decided on a candidate yet, but the candidates in my ‘top tier’ right now – in non-committal alphabetical order – are Brown, Gillibrand, Harris, and Warren.
Plus, Sanders is, IMO, too old for the job (same for Biden), and Sanders’s long-term affection for Russia looks a lot more problematic in the wake of Trump.
I suspect a lot, though not all, of Sanders’s 2016 supporters will be looking at other candidates this time around. The bloom is off, and he has a lot more competition now.
Kathleen
@plato: Argh. Reply to you eated.
SFAW
@wvng:
Similar to the Naderbots who kept insisting that if Gore weren’t such a corp-a-Dem, etc., and “he couldn’t even win his home state!!!!!!!” and so Nader had nothing to do with the 2000 outcome.
Raven Onthill
Sigh. I like Sanders and his politics, but I don’t see how he can win, not even the nomination. If you like, you can set your mind at ease on that score. There is also no indication he is likely to run as a third party candidate – he rejected that in 2016 and the reasons for not doing so are the same now as then.
What I suspect we will get as a Democratic Presidential candidate is some “socially liberal, economically conservative” female person of color. It could be Kamala Harris, but it also could be someone whose name I don’t know yet. I fear a repetition of the mistakes of 2016. I keep remembering how the Clinton campaign thought they could turn the suburban white woman’s vote and – surprise! – they couldn’t.
I want a President who will address the enormous disparities of wealth in our country. I want a President who will regulate the financial services industry and oppose the fossil fuel industry, and I don’t think I’m going to get one.
It doesn’t matter. Whoever the Democratic candidate is, I will work for them and vote for them.
JGabriel
@MazeDancer:
Maybe, but I don’t think so. Sanders didn’t run third party in 2016, knows it would split the vote, and views Trump as an existential threat. He might be a sore loser, like last time, but he won’t split the vote with a third party run.
The Midnight Lurker
Putin wants Bernie to run. Enough said? Or do I have to wait for Jill Stein to announce her candidacy on RT?
She has a green deal too.
plato
@JGabriel:
LOL. Always a safe bet.
SFAW
@plato:
Not his fault. Renaming courthouses and running purity-pony campaigns is higher-priority stuff, didn’t leave any time for getting penny-ante shit like M4A and
gun controlensuring civil rightspreventing Russian interference“stuff” through the Senate.Frankensteinbeck
I am offended by the Conventional Wisdom that Sanders is involved in the Democratic Party’s shift to the left. It couldn’t be the black guy or the woman who did it. It couldn’t be that the party was already there and the anger of women (especially black women) pushed forward the candidates who reflect that shift. Nope, only the white guy matters.
Ohio Mom
@JPL: That is my fear as well. Now it isn’t a top ten fear but I can’t help but think that this is what happened to the Republicans last time around.
They thought they had a marvelous selection of many strong candidates and maybe they did, from their point of view (they all looked rotten to me). They split their votes based on minor differences among the candidates and the rest is unfortunate history.
I’ve been uneasy about how crowded our field is (and it looks like there are more contenders yet to announce) and I’d just as soon not feel vindicated… Please, someone uncover something disastrous about Wilmer ASAP.
Kraux Pas
I supported Bernie in the 2016 primary and this year he’s not even on my radar. Bernie stood out only because the choices were limited. This go around, he’ll have to compete with people who have similarly ambitious goals and a better idea how to implement them. Also, it’s likely that no one running will have voted for the blighted Iraq War.
I still think the vitriol, which runs both ways, is unhelpful.
Raven Onthill
The Sanders-McCain veterans bill was a pretty damn good legislative accomplishment. Can we at least put the argument that Sanders is an ineffective legislator to rest?
Sanders has a well-developed platform: https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1097831093959577601
I still don’t think he can win.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ohio Mom: What would count as disastrous these days? I used to think that honeymoon in the old USSR would count against him, but maybe not. With him and Trump both, there’s a cult of personality that outweighs everything else. People project what they want onto a candidate and they’re done.
plato
Just hope mccabe knows his shit.
Brachiator
@Raven Onthill:
He’s got a platform. I don’t know if it’s well developed.
Chyron HR
@Raven Onthill:
What? Not even after god sends another bird down to remind us that Bernie is messiah?
rk
Bernie Sanders joined the democratic party for about 5 mins to run for president. Bitched and moaned about the “rigged” DNC (because of course they were supposed to cater to him). Was an ungracious loser (another anti Hillary male who couldn’t stand that he lost to a woman far smarter than him). Then, after sowing discontent in the democrat voters he leaves the party. He was definitely a part of the reason she lost. Now he’s back for a repeat performance! He couldn’t be more of a Russian stooge if they paid him for it.
Betty Cracker
@JGabriel: My husband is in the same boat — voted for Sanders in the 2016 primary and plans to support Warren this time around. Sanders’ most rabid hold-outs get all the attention, but the vast majority of folks who voted for him in the primary are regular Democrats who went on to vote for Clinton in the general.
Kraux Pas
@Brachiator: It’s better developed than any Republican who has ever run for office in my lifetime.
Small praise, I know. Still, we do have an institution that would be required to implement any such plans, work out the finer details, pay-fors, and mitigating impacts on people who might lose out. This institution is called ::checks notes:: Congress.
Kay
I just can’t get over the impression I get that he has these romanticized notions of white working class that come out of how he has been insulated from them. The whole “working man” thing on the Left is just delusional and soaked in nostalgia for a past that never really was.
The two biggest organized workplace actions of the last 5 years have been 1. teachers and 2. fast food workers. They’re not working in coal mines. He should be talking to home health care workers, who are female and mostly black and brown rather than Trump voters. They’re the working class.
rikyrah
If you need some Bernie receipts…
The People’s View is the place for you.
They had the post already for him…
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
rikyrah
@Kay:
But…but…you mean that the working class is mostly Black and Brown?
Come on, Kay…really?
Kraux Pas
@Kay: Could you please provide an example of him expressing these romanticized notions? I work in the service industry in an increasingly majority female field, but I never got that impression.
You sure you aren’t talking about every Republican ever?
Kay
I hate what I hear as a kind of “insider” code on the Left, too. Sanders goes out of his way to make this distinction between the traditional Right wing and the far and alt Right that makes me think he still believes he has some common cause with the far Right or the “alt” Right, like he’s going to join them with the Left once they realize Trump is cheating them and robbing them. It’s gross and it’s been going on forever with the Left. A decade ago they were convinced they shared some common cause with libertarians, which is delusional.
cleek
fuck this fucking guy
rikyrah
@JPL:
The REAL base of the Democratic Party is not the base of the GOP.
I have no fear of Bernie winning.
My thing is how fast we should lay waste to him.
He, and his Berniebot army online aren’t ready…
They aren’t ready that people don’t give two shyts about them. That we aren’t going to hold our powder, and we aren’t going to tolerate their shyt in 2019-2020.
Bobby Thomson
@SFAW: heh.
Kathleen
@Frankensteinbeck: I want to sit next to you.
Kay
@Kraux Pas:
His whole thing where he’s convinced he would have won over Trump voters. I live in a county that went 70% for Trump, unlike Vermont, and they would jeer at him. They have absolute contempt for Lefties. They don’t even respect them as people, let alone support them. A huge chunk of them are sort of vaguely “religious” or Christian, they all love guns, and they all hate abortion and feminists. This is the reality of these voters. They don’t hide it.
Bobby Thomson
@JGabriel: he effectively ran third party last time by staying in past March and allowing his people to poison the well. At best he’s a narcissistic moron. At worst he was knowingly complicit.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I am Black. I know what the alt-right means.
and, somehow, I’m supposed to find ‘ common ground’ with those muthaphuckas?
Get the ENTIRE Phuck Outta Here!
Kay
@Kraux Pas:
We already tried this once before, the moderate version, with Howard Dean, another hugely overrated person who “won over white working class” only in the imaginary world of alternative scenarios. There was this whole Lefty aura around Dean that was never earned or justified. I mean, NOW they hate him but he was always just like he is now.
It’s something about Vermont, I don’t know.
Yutsano
Yeaaaah fuck Bernie. The old socialist ain’t going nowhere this time around.
And definitely fuck him trying to join the party just to get the nomination. He has done zero work for the Democrats ever.
Kraux Pas
Well, Trump won a bunch of voters who had voted for Obama. I imagine those voters, at least, were gettable. A not-insignificant portion of my friends and family, who ranged from left-wing to simply anti-Republican to not heavily political but displaying clear liberal sensibilities, voted for Trump. One voted for Jill Stein.
I think a lot of Democrats managed to overlook** how much animosity there was toward Hillary Clinton in the general electorate. A lot of it was based on fake bullshit, but maybe it’s good to consider the impression that 30 years of fake bullshit leaves on people. Some of it was real, but was consistently waved away while pointing at the fake bullshit. A two-pronged strawman, that was.
**Either that or Ds pulled a reverse Cleek’s Law that didn’t pay off like it does for the Rs.
Kathleen
@Raven Onthill: No.
Kathleen
@Kraux Pas: Alot of Sanders cultists forget that she beat Slanders by 4 million votes and Trump by 3 million. That’s alot of Hillary hate.
randy khan
@SFAW:
And gun control.
And, let’s be clear, he did a lousy job of showing his support for Clinton once she’d won, including demanding concessions in the platform before he would support her.
jackmac
@Betty Cracker: Same here. Voted Bernie in 2016 Illinois primary and Clinton in the general election. I suspect Bernie won’t even be a factor by the time Illinois comes around on March 17, 2020. Super Tuesday two weeks earlier will mark his demise — if he even makes it that far.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Same in my 70% Trump county, which would have been 70% Trump no matter who the Democratic nominee was in 2016 or is in 2020. The only hope for this county and others like it is to depress Trump voter turnout so a Democrat wins the state.
@Kraux Pas: I think there’s some truth to the notion that the 30-year campaign to demonize Clinton was more effective than anticipated — on non-Republicans.
Kraux Pas
@Kathleen:
Yeah, well, that general election turned on really small margins. It was enough.
rikyrah
Zac Petkanas (@Zac_Petkanas) Tweeted:
As I’ve been saying, Bernie Sanders’s record on gun safety is going to be a HUGE problem for him in this primary.
https://t.co/VrSKA165jt https://twitter.com/Zac_Petkanas/status/1097860236973666305?s=17
Ramalama
I take issue with this Hillary lament:
Her campaign against Obama left no stone unturned. He came out in the general a stronger candidate.
And isn’t Green New Deal a Bernie thing? I don’t think he’ll win the primary. I don’t know why Bernie stopped being a Democrat after Wasserman-Schultz, a totally ineffective crook, stopped heading the DNC. I was glad when Donna Brazile came to the rescue.
Mnemosyne
@Raven Onthill:
Oh, sweetie. You think rhat Kamala Harris is “economically conservative”? You poor sweet idiot.
This is why IMO it was foolish for Harris to tout her support for #MFA, which she did AGAIN just a few days ago. Because you morons are completely incapable of taking “yes” for an answer.
Chyron HR
@Kraux Pas:
So after two years of, “I was just TROLLING when I said I would vote for Trump,” suddenly it’s, “Well, duh, of course Bernie’s supporters all voted for Trump, and you better bend the knee or we’ll do it again.”
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Sanders is a crooked establishment plant sent to take away votes from Warren.
PST
@Kraux Pas:
I know more Obama-Obama-Trump voters than I wish I did. That makes them different from the true Trump base. One common theme among those I know is a free-floating sense of dissatisfaction that draws them to the more outsidery candidate. That should leave them even more gettable in 2020 than 2016. The ones I know are poorly informed and have little understanding of their self-interest. Logic and well defined plans won’t sway them, unfortunately. I wish I knew how to talk to those people.
L85NJGT
Shrug.
The majority of voters don’t like to go back to the well for candidates. Which explains his strength in ‘16 rather than the revolution maaaaan….
Perpetual candidates get addicted to the ego boost and grift, and that inner circle of his seems, um…. cash driven.
plato
@Kraux Pas: More krope a dope krap of 2016?
Mnemosyne
@Kraux Pas:
Here’s the thing: like it or not, Trump ran a hugely racist, misogynist, and xenophobic campaign that white voters responded to because Trump pushed all of their buttons. The propaganda that he and the Russians were pushing out through Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube was specifically designed to make white people anxious that they were losing their grip on society and that they needed to fight back against the ravening hordes.
And even then Trump required massive voter suppression in key states to eke out a technical victory using the plan Karl Rove put into motion in 2012.
Sanders and Trump sang from the same hymnal for 18 months and you don’t think it damaged Hillary for her to be repeatedly attacked in the exact same way by two white guys? Really?
Kathleen
Must also take into account voter suppression and questionable totals in PA, Wisconsin & Mich. I agree though, between 40 years of demonization by right and by Bernie in 2016 there was a lot of Hillary hate but she still beat Trump in spite of all the opposition (won’t even start on media).
Yarrow
Wonder who he’s going to hire to manage his campaign. Tad Devine, who’s such good buddies with Paul Manafort? Traitors of a feather flock together.
Kraux Pas
@Chyron HR: I don’t recall saying I would vote for Trump. I’ve said on this very thread I have zero interest in voting for Sanders this time around. I also said that the vitriol in both directions is unwarranted in a lot of cases.
Now I’m saying you’re 0/3 on listening and I’ll remind you that I was putting up with months of precisely this type of dishonest bullshit before I lashed out.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kraux Pas:
I do remember someone here saying that Hillary sabotaged her own campaign for universal health care in the 90s. It was a bizarre descent into cloud cuckoo land that really impressed on me how some otherwise sane and respectable liberals are deranged about her.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
time for that oppo file to leak
kill it with fire
now
HRC, Reines, Fallon… somebody’s got it, they’ve got to share it
Juice Box
@Dorothy A. Winsor: This exactly. Bernie was a blank slate. After a quarter of a century in Congress, he had few if any accomplishments to point to beyond hectoring Democrats.
@PST: I was talking to one of those this weekend. She wants her life made better and doesn’t know how to do it herself. She was shocked that her tax refund dropped when she thought that she had voted for reducing her taxes. She was disappointed that hadn’t occurred and completely indifferent to all of the rest of the mess.
MazeDancer
@JGabriel:
Hope you’re right about Bernie not wanting to be a spoiler.
But the money is so good.
OTOH, Bernie is going to lose again in Iowa. Get trounced in SC. Possibly, even nose dive in NH. So, he can freely grift for over a year. Then bow out before he has to release his tax returns.
Betty Cracker
Trying to think of one positive factor Sanders brings to the race for the Democratic Party. Maybe it’s this: the GOP is going all-in on socialism scaremongering. It won’t work on high info voters because Republicans have been crying wolf about this for years.
It won’t work on younger voters either, but it is still a potent bugaboo for some older voters and specific populations like (again, older) Cuban-Americans in South Florida.
Warren gets lumped in with Sanders a lot because both focus on economics, but Warren’s ideas for addressing wealth inequality spring from a distinctly capitalist framework. Maybe airing those differences would be a good thing. That’s all I’ve got.
Kraux Pas
@Mnemosyne:
Citation sorely needed.
And again, lots of unfair shots were fired every which way.
Mike in NC
This preening old asshole will do whatever he can to get Trump reelected.
plato
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: it’s interesting that Warren and Booker, both identified by the MSM as part of the ‘far left’ or whatever, have been the ones pumping the brakes on SP, while Harris had to backpedal a bit on what seemed to me her very sincere desire to go full speed ahead eliminating private insurance. Yesterday she said, to applause, that she is not a Democratic Socialist– or whatever undefined-in-this-country term she used to distance herself from Wlimerism.
Barbara
@MazeDancer: I think refusing to release tax returns will do much more symbolic damage than it did in 2016. It puts him in the same camp as Trump — someone with something to hide, even if by wealthy people’s standards he really isn’t that wealthy.
ETA: I also think that his 2016 success was motivated by a “protest factor” that will not recur, because there are too many other candidates to choose from. You don’t have to protest Clinton by voting for Sanders. Yes, Bernie Bros are a thing, but my friends in NJ were not bros, they just wanted to send a message. They also knew f-all about Sanders as it turned out.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yeah. One side helped elect trump, one side tried to stop him. Both sides!
Yup, you’re the real victim here, Sparkles
Jim, Foolish Literalist
In other news, McCabe said this morning that he informed the Gang of Eight about opening the CI investigation in to trump, and no one objected, but…
FlipYrWhig
The fundamental flaw of the Sanders campaign, and the discourse around the Sanders campaign, was the misunderstanding that it had something to do with white working-class anything. He was the youth and left-intellectual candidate. That’s a fine thing to be. But his supporters thought, and he _still_ thinks, that he was connecting with burly white guys who liked his platform to do… something.
Also IMHO if he had gotten the nomination he would have been hammered every damn day about how a fuzzy-headed peacenik like him couldn’t keep America safe, and he would have gotten mad and talked about Henry Kissinger or something. Trump would have run on kicking ass, Sanders would dither his way to Dukakis-dom, and we’d be where we are now anyway.
I don’t think this is a smart move for him. It would have been smarter for him to sit back and play kingmaker.
Kathleen
@Betty Cracker: In theory I agree with you. Unfortunately we cannot expect that our media could be bothered to recognize and parse the nuances you present. You’re making them work too harrrrrrrrd!
tobie
@Frankensteinbeck: In my opinion Bernie ran the first full-fledged Ronald Reagan style campaign on the Democratic side and it’s done lasting damage to the party’s discourse. This is my own bugaboo but I’m still appalled that no one in the Democratic Party is talking about revising the corporate tax code even when news emerges that Netflix, Google, and Amazon (among many others) paid zero federal tax in 2018. I hate to say it but I really don’t care about the millyanaires and billyanaires. Yeah, they’re decadent, they suck but you’re not going to begin to touch their wealth by raising the marginal tax rate. Look at corporate taxes and you’ll actually get somewhere. Rant over.
Kraux Pas
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Right, so refusing to engage voters who disagree with you honestly and resorting to name calling and trying to hold people responsible for what entirely different people had done rather than advocating positively for your preferred candidate didn’t help elect Trump? Okay…
ETA: And to forestall any top 10,000 blog yadda yadda; no, this is not the only place this conversation was being had.
No, just your personal victim. Fortunately, I keep coming back because I like it.
Speaking of which, I’ll report for my flaying by 11, sir, and I’ll pay you Friday for the honor, as the holiday has delayed my check. Thank you, may I have another? ;-)
tobie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think any serious advocate of single payer realizes that it cannot happen overnight and will require a transition period and a well laid-out process. In a weird way Warren, Harris, Booker et. al. are embracing the original idea behind the ACA which was to set up a mechanism with a public option for a transition to single payer. The critique of this from the right was to be expected; the critique from the left was disappointing.
chopper
welp, time to take a break from like half of the left-leaning sites i normally read. they’re gonna be toxic AF for the next year and a half.
Betty Cracker
@tobie: Warren has plenty to say about corporate taxes and the entire shareholder-focused business culture.
Kraux Pas
@tobie: Truth. And while I love that candidates are pushing for true universal care and the various means of doing so, a public option coupled with a restoration of the stripped parts of the ACA is an excellent compromise position and should also be debated and fleshed out.
satby
Fuck that guy.
tobie
@Betty Cracker: I know she does and I really like it when she gets into the weeds about tax policy. I’m of two minds about the wealth tax, on the other hand. I understand its motive, but I think it creates incentives for bad behavior (new forms of corruption and new ways to hide wealth) and, judging by France’s experience with it, leads to capital flight. It surprises me that at a time when many of us are seeing our tax bill rise, the primary candidates are not banging the drum daily about the injustice that big corporations generally don’t pay federal tax and certainly not after the GOP tax bill. As I said, this is my personal bugaboo…
Kraux Pas
@tobie:
People will find a way to abuse any new policy. That’s not necessarily a knock against the policy. This just means we should take time during the campaign and, if all goes well, through the legislative process to foresee potential abuses and deal with them before passing the law. Then, after passing the law, we see what happens and adjust the law.
ETA: I recall Hillary having some good ideas on disincentivizing the quarter-to-quarter focus of the financial sector. Short-term gains being placed over long term health, whether at the level of individual business or the nation, is another problem that needs to be addressed.
schrodingers_cat
Orders from Putin? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@tobie: IANAL but I’ve been persuaded that Warren’s wealth tax brings up Constitutional issues, and those issues won’t be resolved by Lawrence Tribe but by John Roberts. HRC had an idea that she, mystifyingly, didn’t make more of about increasing the EITC to benefit the middle class. As for the “pay-fors”, I would offer up a return of the estate tax (and another round of corporate tax reform), but OTOH it is amazing how easily the upper-middle classes are bamboozled on that score.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Harris/Warren 2020
(Or the other way around – may the best candidate win!)
Brachiator
@tobie:
Very provocative, even though I am not quite sure what you mean by this. Care to expand.
The Republicans re-wrote the entire tax code, from top to bottom. The Democrats will have to do the same thing. However, the average citizen just wants to hear that you are going to cut their taxes and grow the economy. Everything else is noise.
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t think there is any way to know how Sanders would have done. Did Trump ever say anything about him at all during the election campaign?
gwangung
Sanders’ view on modern civil rights is a match for Howard Schultz’s.
I don’t think that’s the common ground he wants to find.
Similarly, his handling of sexual harassment problems in his campaign is disappointing; a chance to be a real progressive leader was wasted.
His management of his campaign in 2016 was sloppy and of questionable ethics (only one campaign stole from the other’s files and used them); it gives little confidence that he would be effective in a larger arena.
These are all shortcomings that SHOULD give folks serious pause about Sanders. If they don’t, I’m not sure why I should take YOU seriously.
columbusqueen
@gwangung: Exactly. The number of Wilmer supporters who refuse to see the truth about that sleazy old prick amazes me.
tobie
@Brachiator: A Reagan-style campaign is one that’s big on slogans (small government, fiscal conservative, death tax, state sovereignty, etc.) but short on policy and creates bogeymen (e.g., welfare queens) instead of addressing structural issues. Sanders did that, and much to my dismay, it worked in the face of a candidate with far more substance.
@Kraux Pas: No doubt, people with wealth will find ways to hide their wealth from tax authorities. I just think the proposed wealth tax will be easier to cheat. A case in point is the provision that Warren added to tax anyone who changed their citizenship to avoid paying the tax. This could create an international row. Is it worth it?
Richard Guhl
Gadflies make ineffective leaders. Or perhaps, more accurately, they provide a leadership of vision that does not translate well into to the sort of leadership skills it takes to be President. Bernie strikes me as being afflicted with the Green lantern theory of the Presidency, that all it takes is to shout loudly enough or insistently enough to get things done.
He makes a big deal of how well Medicare for All polls, as if that tells us much.
In fact, when people are told it will mean scrapping their private health insurance, it becomes quite unpopular. And I don’t see Bernie as being constitutionally capable of navigating that.
Brachiator
@PST:
This is very true, and one of the many reasons I reject the idea that Trump voters have cooties and should never be courted.
The idea should be how to peel more voters away from Trump. Even the Deplorables.
Very interesting point, well said. Yep. That is the question. How to reach people who don’t seem to respond to rational attempts at persuasion.
Ksmiami
@rikyrah: exactly- as a pro-choice, pro-diversity liberal, I have no interest in finding common ground with a bunch of troglodyte racists. I want them utterly defeated and their candidates ground into dust along with their ignorance and hatred.
Kraux Pas
@columbusqueen:
This goes beyond missed opportunity. Even if he sincerely apologized, only showing up an hour for a day-long meeting doesn’t suggest the level of engagement required to deal with this issue.
kindness
Bernie got a gold ring riding a Merry-Go-Round last time and thought it was his pass to the Democratic nomination. When told it was just a (fake) gold ring, Wilmer’s help tried to burn the whole thing down and blame Hillary for it.
Fuck those guys…again.
Bernie….release your tax returns or forget about appearing on California’s Super Tuesday primary. 10 years of taxes. Which we all know ain’t gonna happen. Bernie will kvetch and threaten law suits. Let him sue.
Immanentize
@randy khan:
Yeah, why didn’t he bring home the WWC for Hillary? Huh?
Because:
1) HE DIDN’T TRY and
2) He has no power with them at all.
wonkie
I was a Bernie supporter who voted for Clinton and did so without a lot of heartburn. I am amazed and saddened by the continued levels of acrimony coming from Clinton supporters. I remember the Obama/Clinton rivalry. And the Clinton people engaged in all kinds of hating on Obama including repeating rightwing memes while blaming him for their own incompetence. Now I hear HRC supporters claiming that Bernie supporters smeared her and cheated and are responsible for her loss.
There was a lot of crap that either came from Bernie supporters or Russian bots. I spent a lot of time on the internet correcting the record with Bernie supporters–but most of the dirty Hilary labelling came from years of Republican malice, not the Bernie campaign. She started out with a fifty percent disapproval rating. Sanders and his supporters were not responsible for that. The Republicans in Congress smeared her. She entered the race pre-smeared.
My point? I am very very sorry that she lost. And angry. But I am also frightened by the levels of animosity aimed at Bernie supporters. We can’t afford to be shooting at each other. Bernie’s campaign was not responsible for her loss. His campaign will not catch on. There’s too many other good candidates. All of them will be smeared by the Republicans. We don’t need to join in.
Can’t we just keep our eyes on the prize and kick rightwingers out of office?
Mike Adamson
As a Canadian political junkie I find this all fascinating. Not to mention that the future of your nation may well be riding on what happens in 2020. I don’t expect Sanders to win the nomination but if he does, will you folks vote for him in the general?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Why don’t you address that question first and foremost to the man who has spent a good chunk of the trump administration stomping around the country telling his armies of children of all ages that “the Democratic Pahw-ty is a fayl-yuh!”
So he decided to help the cause by spending six months bellowing about WALL STREET SPEECHES and the rigged system of counting votes?
FTR, I think Sanders has no chance of winning the nomination, but he is a toxic presence who can fuck things up royally. Again.
Brachiator
@tobie:
Ah, OK. Makes sense and I agree.
I agree that a wealth tax is easier to cheat, and is generally a bad idea, which is probably why most other countries that had it eventually abandoned it.
Kathleen
@Mike Adamson: I will not.
Brachiator
@wonkie:
I rejected Bernie early. I have no particular beef with Bernie supporters, apart from those who want to keep insisting that the nomination was stolen from him.
I am annoyed with purity progressives who keep looking for reasons to reject any candidate who is not Bernie or equally pure for 2020.
Brachiator
@Mike Adamson:
I don’t know. I tend to want to say NO, but then again, there is no way that I want Trump to win re-election.
Canada, eh? What’s the deal with the supposed scandal that may envelop Trudeau? Will he be hurt politically by what is happening?
NotMax
@Mike Adamson
1) Step outside.
2) Pick a tree, any tree.
3) That tree stands a better chance of being nominated than does Wilmer.
Scotian
@wonkie:
I watched closely that campaign, and I also watched which side was the one bringing the poison and the heat, and it was lopsidedly the Sanders campaign and supporters. They built this antagonism in 2016, so sorry, expecting it to just fade away when the lying liar Sanders (Remember his pledge of being a Dem party member from that point onward forever once he entered that primary? Remember how long that lasted after the Nov 2016 election? I sure do, as I expect do most people who are ACTUALLY Democratic party members/supporters) tries again now, well that is simply unrealistic.
General:
To those that have a hard time with the Clinton complaints about how Sanders poisoned the well in the latter parts of the primary by staying in, and how is that different from Clinton/Obama 2008, I have a simple answer for you. When Clinton saw she might lose to Obama she moderated her rhetoric in those last few months before she finally lost numerically. Sanders on the other hand when it was MUCH clearer by April he had no path to victory ramped UP the “rigged” rhetoric. This is a marked contrast and one that clearly made it far harder to try to bring the two wings together in 2016 than it was in 2008. I would also note that HRC did FAR more to make it (unifying the wings of the party they represented) happen from the moment she lost to Obama, Sanders, not so much if really much at all. So apples to oranges trying to make that argument.
No, Sanders was a spoiler last time, his campaign and supporters went out of their way to alienate and denigrate, and the stain of that does not wash away so easily. He helped enable Trump both in the dividing of the Dem party AND with his “rigged system” rhetoric in particular enabling Trump to make it appear that this was founded on not just his side but both sides and therefore gave it far more credence in the process. Not an unforeseen outcome given there were people in the Spring of 2016 trying to make this point to Sanders and his supporters to jeers and worse for doing so.
All in all, this is a pure vanity project and anyone giving it any weight should be ridiculed. Sanders was Vlad’s opening weapon against HRC before he saw that Trump actually could become the GOP nominee and then the President. One of the things I am wondering about is whether there will be a Sanders section in the Mueller Report given his mandate is to expose Russian interference in the 2016 election and there is real questions about Sanders’ and his campaign’s role in that effort. It would be more than a little problematic for the Dems is that report shows Sanders culpability while he is currently running again for the party leadership, yet another reason why he should not be running if he actually cares about anything other than his own ego and self gratification.
In point of fact it was Sanders’ campaign that first showed me the Russian involvement because I could not understand why I was hearing 90s GOP rhetoric about HRC coming out of the far left, only to discover anti-Clinton Dems working at RT and spreading former GOP anti-Clinton memes there that made their way right into the Sanders campaign and rhetoric. Sanders was the first clear indication for me that the Russians were interfering in open ways unlike anything prior. So there is still some outstanding questions there too, let alone his domestic corruption questions. So I am not pulling that concern about his campaign having a section in a Mueller report. I also, being Canadian, care far more about all of this because of the national security issues it raises for me than narrow partisanship within a political field, so I would ask that people read my comments on this topic with that in mind. My problem with Sanders does and always has had to do with the threat he aided against not just your nation, but the rest of the western world, not least us up here in Canada.
Elizabelle
LOL. Came here to comment, but I see there are already 15 uses of the word “fuck.” Which is the first that came to mind when I heard this news confirmed.
As usual, cleek said it best:
Wishing Bernie a clusterfuck that descends on him this time.
Aleta
He cannot give it up. Once he got the crowd size and the Political Phenomenon headlines in 2015, he felt the power and knew he belonged to that drug.
The media helped him a lot — he had the ingredients to disrupt Clinton.
I mean, just scan through these 11 pseudo headlines and magnetic photos that appeared in one Dec 2015 article at Rolling Stone.
(I liked him too then. At the time I thought he was doing it to get coverage for the information and the outrage, and that was good. Iana political analyst, but I thought he changed his horizon when he saw the contender would be Trump. He believed T’s obvious insanity was his shot at his lifelong dream of reforming US-America.)
But he couldn’t give up the drug even when his using was causing damage to the party.
Aleta
@Scotian: well said
Betty Cracker
@Mike Adamson: If Sanders wins the Democratic Party nomination, I will definitely vote for him in the general.
J R in WV
@rk:
Why, oh why, do you think Bernie Sanders’ tax returns aren’t public information right now?
Do ya think there’s any chance there’s a bunch of unexplained income in there from Uncle Vlad??? Ya think????? ‘Cause I think just that, exactly that!!
Kraux Pas
@Betty Cracker: And if rainbows rained gold, I’d travel with a bucket.
Aleta
This. And cleaning and maintenance staff at hotels, resorts, athletic clubs, office buildings.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I suspect those are Tad Devine’s tax returns, though it wouldn’t surprise me if Jane had in the last couple years received some hard to explain income from an unsavory source suggested by Devine. I think the story with the Sanders’ returns is that they look like those of any other moderately wealthy couple who took advantage of every loophole and advantage they could get
I think the idea of a two-way trump-Wilmer election is as unlikely as time travel enabling Bernie or Stein protest voters to undo their votes, but in that unlikely eventuality, yes I will vote for the Lesser of the Two Assholes.
Aleta
@Mike Adamson: If you don’t expect it, and no one else does, why the question? A political junkie with outside perspective can offer better questions and insight. I hope.
JustRuss
Bernie, thanks for your service, now please go away.
Mnemosyne
@Kraux Pas:
Look, I realized that you swallowed whole all of the bullshit about “crooked Hillary” being dishonest and “corrupt,” but it was not true. None of it.
Hillary didn’t “steal” the nomination. She won it fair and square. And yet Sanders’ repeated whining about “corruption” and cheating opened the door for Trump to OPENLY CHEAT because, hey, Hillary cheated in the primary, so it was okay for Trump to cheat, too. How dare Hillary complain about Trump cheating when everyone knew she had cheated to get the nomination, amirite?
Look, if you don’t take the time NOW to examine how you fell for Russian anti-Hillary propaganda in 2016, you’re going to get rolled by them again in 2020. Where do you think the “Kamala is a cop!” bullshit is coming from? Hint: it ain’t her actual record.
Kraux Pas
@Mnemosyne:
Citation again needed. I did not question the legitimacy of her nomination. I lamented that more better candidates didn’t run leaving the only other plausible option to be Bernie Fucking Sanders of all people. I suggested that elected officials hold too much sway in the nominating process and this needs to be reformed.
I did not say she stole the nomination.
I continue to say that I am not to be held responsible for every intemperate Twitter comment and treating people that way contributes to the toxic atmosphere that resulted in Hillary Clinton’s loss.
J R in WV
@Mike Adamson:
I doubt he will win the nomination. I would personally have a really hard time voting for a Russian stooge for President, no matter his party identification.
Make no mistake, Sanders IS A RUSSIAN STOOGE, today, yesterday, tomorrow. Bought and paid for.
Why do you think his tax returns are TOP Secret? Russian monies arriving, or otherwise mysterious funding, arriving.
Mnemosyne
@wonkie:
Here’s the thing: no one really cares who you voted for in the 2016 primary. We really don’t.
What we’re pissed about are the Wilmer dead-enders who are CURRENTLY spending a lot of pixels to drag down any candidate who isn’t him. The ones who are spreading memes about any candidate who looks like they could beat Wilmer, which at this point is all of them.
Those assholes looked at 2016 and decided that the real problem is that ordinary Democratic voters refused to bend the knee to them, and now we all have to be punished for not accepting Wilmer as our new God.
glory b
@Yarrow: Friend of Konstantin Kilimnik too.
Mike Adamson
@Brachiator: I hope you keep your eye on the prize. As for Trudeau and the Liberals, it’s always the cover up, right? Nobody knows what’s at the heart of it and the longer it simmers, the more the Liberals will be affected. There’s an election this fall and the timing really couldn’t be worse.
glory b
@wonkie: No, when she stepped down as Secretary of State, her approval ratings were around 70%.
Mnemosyne
@Kraux Pas:
You say all of that, and yet you still find it impossible to make the connection between Sanders complaining about the Democrats being “corrupt” and Trump making THE EXACT SAME POINT with his “crooked Hillary” claims being similar in any way, or contributing to the election results in any way.
If you can’t add up 2 and 2, then there’s not much I can do to help you.
ETA: You know who did repeatedly say that she stole the nomination? BERNIE FUCKING SANDERS.
Elizabelle
@Aleta:
Not his party. And, so, acceptable collateral damage.
Again, fuck this guy. Do NOT let him run as a Democrat. He used the party solely as a vehicle for his personal gratification and returned to independent scold mold immediately after.
Listen to Maya Angelou. He showed you, Democrats. More than once. Also, nobody runs without disclosing years of tax returns in a timely fashion.
Kraux Pas
@Mnemosyne: Not quite. He said the process was “rigged” which is a pithier, but more loaded, way of saying that elected officials hold too much sway in the process and it needs reforming. A little too loaded, perhaps, and that’s a decent chunk of why I’m not even considering him this go around.
Mike Adamson
@Aleta: It’s my polite way of gauging the relative strength of those whose priority is kicking Trump to the curb versus those whose priority is maintaining their party in a preferred state. I’ve been voting strategically for a while in Canada and I’m a curious guy.
gwangung
@Kraux Pas: Unfortunately, this has degenerated among his supporters into direct accusations of rigging for Clinton.
And that’s sort of accusation is, indeed, fallow ground for Trump.
Mike Adamson
@J R in WV: Yikes!
Kraux Pas
@gwangung: Well, the Dems actually proceeded to reform the primary process and this primary is clearly not going to come down to just 2 and 1/2 choices with a clear favorite among elected officials. Maybe this will help things.
ETA: He’ll also be required to release his tax returns, so we’ll see how that goes.
Kay
Lefties have this kind of insular self-consciousness that never used to bother but me now does. Sanders has this too, where to someone who isn’t familiar with the code he sounds “bold” because he’s against the political establishment but really he’s inside a different political group with their own rigid rules. That means he can recklessly go after Democrats but he takes care not to offend the sensibilities of the group he belongs to. It’s not the Democratic Team, but it’s a team nonetheless. It bothers me now where it didn’t before because they’re so wedded to the idea that they’re all free thinkers.
Brachiator
@Kraux Pas:
He should have done it when he announced. Fuck him.
gwangung
I think one thing that SHOULD be discussed about Sanders supporters is their susceptability to being used by third party actors. Whether they’re Russian or Republican rat-fvcers, I think there should be some soul searching on how best to advocate without being manipulated.
Raven Onthill
@rikyrah: It turns out that the black working class in the North Midwest loved Sanders — he spoke the language of the unions. If the Democrats had campaigned to the black working class in the North Midwest, they might well have won the Presidency. This was a failure of both Sanders and Clinton.
As it was, on the one hand we had the racist and sexist vote, energized by years of attacks on Hillary Clinton and Trump’s promises to the white working class. On the other hand, we had the African-American working class, worn down by years of bipartisan anti-union policies and the crash of 2008, the foreclosures and the years out of work. There was the extensive Russian propaganda to aggravate the conflict; to support the bigots and discourage the African-Americans. In northern states like Wisconsin, the white working class turned out for Trump and the black working class stayed home.
(I wrote more about this with, like, cites and everything at this link: https://adviceunasked.blogspot.com/2018/11/2016-black-working-class-vote.html.)
janesays
On the one hand, I agree that the Democratic primaries should really be reserved exclusively for Democrats.
On the other hand, what’s more likely to fuck up our chances of winning in 2020? Sanders running in the Democratic primaries and quickly losing and fading into irrelevance, or Sanders mounting a run as an independent in the general election where he would almost certainly siphon votes away from our eventual nominee?
If the choice is Sanders running as for the Democratic nomination and not being on the ballot in November when he loses in the primaries or Sanders skipping the primaries entirely and getting himself on the November ballot as an independent to really fuck things up for all of us, I choose the former every time.
This is hopefully a nothingburger. He’s gonna lose the New Hampshire primary to Warren, at which point it will be all but impossible for him to win the nomination, and then he’s going to get absolutely crushed on Super Tuesday a few weeks later, effectively ending his candidacy. The only concern I have is whether or not he will leave the stage when it becomes obvious to everyone but his most devoted worshippers that he has no realistic mathematical path to winning the nomination.
jl
Thanks for reasonable take on BS’s announcement. Whether it is good or bad depends on his intentions, what he’ll do if/when he loses, but we observe those now..
If he is running to solidify the push in Dems towards more progressive policies and firm measures are taken to reform a very corrupt system, and will support the eventual winner, then his candidacy is OK with me. He does have a hard core of fanatic supporters, and he has responsibility to steer them in a useful direction. We have to trust right now that he has the best insight into how to do that. If he has bad intentions, or has gone insane from a political ego trip (not a rare thing among politicians), or doesn’t understand what he is doing, then we need to nominate an ace politician who can get as many ‘purity ponies’ on board as possible.
As a candidate, BS has some serious problems, but also one or two big advantages, but several Dem candidates have both of those.
One thing that I do not blame BS for is the ‘crooked HRC’ meme. That smear long predated BS’s candidacy, and IMHO, anyone who thinks BS played a big role in that mess is just fooling themselves. It would have been there anyway with equal intensity.
jl
@janesays: ” I agree that the Democratic primaries should really be reserved exclusively for Democrats. ”
Not picking on you particularly, but whenever I see this comment, I have to ask what has anyone done over the last two years who believes this to keep people like BS out of the Dem primaries? Call state committee, get a group to advocate for it, anything?
Not a snarky question. I am curious about what could be, or could have been done. And since VT Dem party seems ready to certify BS, even after he repeatedly punks them, what could be done is an interesting issue. I don’t believe VT has partisan registration, so need some other criteria.
Xavier Onassis
@Kraux Pas: Trump and Sanders both said that the system is rigged against the little guy. They were both right.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
in other peeing-in-the-pool news, Kirsten Gillibrand is campaigning on her Franken stance
I was and remain ambivalent about the whole Fraken case, and I think Gillibrand’s long and admirable fight for holding sexual aggressors responsible, especially in the military, discredits the whole Machiavellian theory on this. But I think this is dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
(Is this a facebook thing or a twitter thing? I’m not clear on what “served” means)
Kraux Pas
@Xavier Onassis: Many politicians would agree with this. Only the Democrats want to do anything to stop it.
jl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thanks for info. My personal hunch is that to get big voter enthusiasm, a candidate must put bold simple, broad, and firm policies forward on a few critical issues on economics and social justice for the ‘lesser people’ (middle class and on down to poor). They really have to lead with big specific policies on big issues.
I don’t think this is a good place for Gillibrand to start, particularly because I don’t see a specific policy she’s pushing, but if she follows up with real policy proposals on this and other issues quickly, might be OK.
I don’t think that candidates who lead with image, or personality, or just ID themselves with causes with no specific policy proposals will do well. Right now that group includes Biden, Booker and Klobuchar. Not sure what is up with Gillbrand yet. She started with some good strong progressive policy proposals on issues that could make her a strong contender, is she following up?
StringOnAStick
I voted Wilmer in the caucuses, and I’m embarrassed to say that I did so because my next door neighbor, a good friend, made such an impassioned appeal in the caucus and I didn’t think he’d win the state (he didn’t). Now I’m pissed that I let social pressure goad me into doing that. She’s from VT and I think it’s his “Vermontness” that she was voting for since she misses the green hills of home, and she had projected all her liberal ideals as a mom and school teacher on a guy who didn’t deserve it. The person up above who noted that a lot of voters project what they stand for onto a candidate based on how the candidate makes them feel was dead on. I didn’t hear any “Wilmer waz robbed!” from her, but I sure heard it from another couple who’ve been voting since I was a toddler and it saddens me that so many people fell for the Russian and Bro-based propaganda.
I will never, ever vote for him again in a primary. If he ends up as the D candidate it will be because Vlad pulled out all the stops and decided to really go for it this time. And that will make me hate Vlad even more because I really don’t want to ever vote for Wilmer again, period.
wonkie
@glory b: I am sorry but you are mistaken, I mean in terms of her running for President. It is true that she was popular as Sec. But she was an unpopular Presidential candidate right from the get-go. https://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/hillary-clinton-favorable-rating
Kraux Pas
@jl:
Klobuchar’s announcement, aside from standard D boilerplate, had its longest segment on internet privacy, access, and net neutrality.
Xavier Onassis
@Kraux Pas: Obviously Trump’s statements were disingenuous. As someone said, he campaigned like a populist and governed like a, well, like a Republican. And Democrats want to do something about the system being rigged but they come at the problem from different directions, depending on what they see the root of the problem being. I guess that’s mostly what is being argued here, too. I do wish–as you do too I think–that the argument here was more civil.
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It is dumb. It is polarizing, at best, and it opens wounds and makes a lot of people feel bad, even those like me who are ambivalent about the whole episode. Maybe she thinks it makes her look tough, the kind of person who doesn’t let feelings get in the way of getting things done. At the end of the day, the candidate has to be the person who brings people together.
Gex
@wonkie: What are your thoughts about Bernie saying that Trump voters aren’t racist?
What are your thoughts about Bernie saying that it isn’t racist to refuse to vote for a black candidate because of their race?
What are your thoughts on how he has talked about all the other candidates as tokens and spoken as though the rest of us are only aligning with our preferred candidates because of identity politics?
Because it is the way he is treating me, as a voter whose vote he wants to win, that is making me hostile towards him. It’s not coming from nowhere, and it’s not residual from 2016. It’s how he’s campaigning now.
goblue72
Sanders announced his campaign manager will be Faiz Shakir. I eagerly await the peanut gallery accusing Shakir, one of the most experienced progressives in the Democratic Party, of not being a real Democrat.
https://www.aclu.org/bio/faiz-shakir
Miss Bianca
@StringOnAStick: Were you in Colorado at the time? Because Wilmer did, in fact, win the CO primary/caucus.
I was at the state convention, so I have reason to remember. The behavior of the Wilmer fanbois and girls disgusted me so much that I’m still not over it.
Aleta
@Mike Adamson: thanks for explaining. Canadians have good insights. (I’m biased because my father was, and the only good things he passed on were when we were in Canada. They were very good things.)
However, I don’t understand the dichotomy you set up of
“those whose priority is kicking Trump to the curb versus those whose priority is maintaining their party in a preferred state.” It seems some other question might be more accurate in gauging that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@goblue72: Dwight! Trying your cosplay trolling costumes on for 2020 already? The primary season is way too long.
@Barbara: so dumb I briefly wondered if might not be a fake-book ratfuck
Mnemosyne
@Raven Onthill:
Stayed home, or were taken off the voter rolls by Republican authorities?
You may want to take a look at what the Brennan Center for Justice and the ACLU have to say about voter suppression in Wisconsin and other states before you confidently assume that those voters stayed home voluntarily. Many of them did not.
different-church-lady
He’s just being an asshole now.
jl
@jl: typo, again. “but we observe those now.. ” was supposed to be “but we can never observe those…”
Msb
What Mnemosyne said. All of it.
Ithink
@Mike Adamson:
Aloha from a progressive in Deep Red Texas!
Honestly, I will support him but much more reluctantly than I did when I voted for him in the primary as a sort of progressive party booster but happily supported Hillary in the general!
I should’ve campaigned more for her retrospectively as was the case with Beto’s Senate bid last Fall in the midterms, but this Electoral College fuck up may have been inevitable no matter what for her considering the Russian rat fucking all around, McConnell’s intransigence in refusing to alert the public with Obama, and the completely gratuitously treasonous Comey letter just a short week plus prior to election.
Hillary made mistakes but nothing she has said or done in her lifelong political career disqualified her from becoming POTUS #45. Trump’s entire earthly existence is a goddamn disgrace to humanity but how Bernie acted after she secured the nomination along with his supporters at the convention just burned too many damn bridges IMHO, even though I’m in theory closer to him ideologically minus the aversion to so called identity politics…
I doubt he’ll make it that far given its no longer a zero sum choice and there are too many alternatives with strong fundraising credentials that have gotten on board with his better ideas, specifically with health care and education costs. I’ll pull the lever unexcitedly if he somehow pulls it out to get rid of the shitgibbon but I won’t speak of it until that crude fantasy passes into a burdened reality!
Tommy T
@Ithink:
I was a delegate at the Texas convention, and I’ll never forget the shenanigan Sanders delegates pulled.
After losing floor vote after floor vote after floor vote, in the last hour of the convention, when people were leaving for the long drive home, sending word to their delegates to NOT leave, but instead to wait in the corridor outside the main room so it LOOKED like they were leaving as well, then rushing back into the almost empty hall and pushing through a rat’s nest of resolutions and platform amendments,
Frankly, it’s the kind of shit that Republicans pull when there’s not enough of them to win.
anarchoRex *formerly known as furiosoateo
@Tommy T: I was also at that convention, and this is a horse-shit depiction of how it went. The most contentious votes at the Texas convention were over caucus leaders, and most of the platform amendments and resolutions were decided long before at the county level conventions. There were three or four resolutions that some organizers spent the entire convention gathering enough signatures to bring them to the floor, and they all passed with a majority vote of the entire convention. Hardly a rat’s nest. Your description of the events doesn’t even make sense. The convention followed Robert’s Rules, and you can’t just reopen the floor and pass more shit after the Chair had adjourned. And why on earth would anyone leave before then?
Tommy T
@anarchoRex *formerly known as furiosoateo:
Whatever you say.
https://www.texasobserver.org/live-texas-democratic-convention/
anarchoRex
@Tommy T: You might want to read that timeline again. It doesn’t mention any of the things you talk about. Curious that the article you linked doesn’t say anything about Bernie delegates “LOOKED like they were leaving then rushing back.” Oh, also, looks like the platform was passed unanimously both in committee and on the floor. The only contentious vote mentioned in the entire timeline was one about limiting superdelegates, which passed and the only ones griping about it were Hillary delegates that forced a badge count, because they were pissed it passed on a voice vote. But please, provide more sources that contradict your narrative.
And you still can’t explain how your imaginary hide and then rush the hall scenario would work if the convention had already been adjourned.
Tommy T
@anarchoRex:
“if the convention had already been adjourned.”
It hadn’t. and it looked like everyone was leaving, because a lot of people were. Some of us (like myself) had a 6 hour drive home.
As for the rest of your denial – bless your heart.
anarchoRex
So the convention had not been adjourned, but everyone was leaving? Yes, that makes a lot of sense, and is very common in a parliamentary setting, for people to leave and allow the opportunity for others to change the results of a congress. You know your link doesn’t support your version of events, so you’re just sticking by shit you made up. “Bless your heart”, lmao, thanks for leaning into some of the worst Southern stereotypes, and thanks for confirming you can’t be taken seriously.