Sanders campaign was SHOCKED when field narrowed, because they really thought 30% would win it

[Cha]

SNIP//

It certainly wasn’t money that did Bernie Sanders in. In February—the first month of contests, Sanders raised $47 million and spent $45 million. Meanwhile, Joe Biden raised $18 million and spent $13 million—proving yet again, that money isn’t everything in politics.

But how does a campaign that claims to have the largest grassroots army at its disposal, and to have raised more money than any other candidate in the field (not counting Michael Bloomberg, who had just a single donor to his campaign) fail so spectacularly? By truly running a campaign for its 30% supporters.

SNIP//

But beside that, it’s clear as always that this was never a campaign built to expand beyond its core base. You can see it in their excuse for losing.

To recap, the campaign decided early on that it wasn’t going to try and expand its support beyond its core base. “Sanders aides believe, he’ll easily win enough delegates to put him into contention at the convention. They say they don’t need him to get more than 30 percent to make that happen.” The assumption was that the field would remain fragmented.

It was a stupid assumption for lots of reasons But it was their bet, and they were shocked (SHOCKED!) when it didn’t pay out. “In the view of some Sanders advisers, the candidate’s abrupt decline was a result of unforeseeable and highly unlikely events—most of all, the sudden withdrawal of two major candidates, Senator Amy Klobuchar and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who instantly threw their support to Mr. Biden and helped spur a rapid coalescing of moderate support behind his campaign,” the Times wrote. “Mr. Sanders had been ‘on the brink of winning,’ Mr. Tulchin argued, ‘until the most unprecedented event in the history of presidential primaries occurred.’”

MORE..

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/23/1930034/-Sanders-campaign-was-SHOCKED-when-field-narrowed-because-they-really-thought-30-would-win-it

Be sure and read the last two paragraphs.. Thank you! & StaySafe

[OhZone]

1. So basically -

He thought the other moderates had just as big egos that he has, and that they would put themselves over the good of country just like - well you know.

[Cha]

5. "..abrupt decline was a result of unforeseeable and highly unlikely events.."

A good leader and smart campaign thinks outside the box, no?

Mahalo, OhZone.. StaySafe!

[William769]

2. Let's hear it for Senator Amy Klobuchar and Mayor Pete Buttigieg!

[Cha]

8. No kidding! I was in Awe of Pete and Amy when

they did this for their Country and the World! And, it's really good to be reminded how much I, you, and so many Admire them.. and owe them so much Gratitude!

[William769]

9. I'm guessing Bernie not to so much.

[Cha]

12. Uuuuh.. Just the opposite

I would imagine.

" abrupt decline was a result of unforeseeable and highly unlikely events."

Here's to .."highly unlikely events.."

[brer cat]

11. +++

Country before ego.

[Cha]

22. Country and Planet..

Mahalo, brer cat!

[mcar]

15. Indeed!

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Cultish righteousness

doesn't build coalitions. It's inward looking, and doesn't care about, or understand, non-believers.

[Grokenstein]

28. "Join us or die!"

"...Heyyyyyy, where's errybuddy goin'??"

[Cha]

43. lol.. I hear that.

[NurseJackie]

48. LOL!

[Cha]

40. They shouldn't expect to win then.. It should Not be

Last edited Mon Mar 23, 2020, 10:45 PM - Edit history (1)

a "shock"

[relayerbob]

4. He was never on the brink of winning

He was on the brink of maybe having a plurality, but non-majority going into the convention. Fortunately, saner heads (South Carolinian black people, to be specific) prevailed and shook us to wake us the fuck up

[oasis]

24. Memoirs title: "A Funny Thing Happened On My Way To The Nomination".

[calimary]

67. He just THOUGHT he was on the brink of winning.

SHEESH - head in the sand almost as far down as trump's is.

That's what happens when you listen to the sycophants, or when you listen to the "wish sandwich" crowd. (As described in the "Blues Brothers" movie - you got two pieces of bread, and you WISH you had some meat.)

[Scurrilous]

72. He was on the brink of delegate 46+ before SC.

2.2601707684581% of the way there he was.

The base reality checked the presumptive inevitability out of his prehatched chicken counting ass.

[Cha]

82. Exactly.. they just said they were like they say

a lot of things.

[Vogon_Glory]

6. Bernie's Assumptions and Campaign This Year Are An Object Lesson

For left-liberals hoping to shift the Democratic Party further left. Bernie didn’t make friends with other voting blocks, didn’t make compromises, and heaped abuse on other party factions. That is not how you win primaries and clinch the nomination.

I suspect that had Bernie won the nomination, he would have made most of these mistakes on an even larger scale, alienating voters who weren’t already committed Democrats or committed to voting blue no matter who.

Today it looks like Joe Biden will be the nominee, and the Democrats have a fighting chance to be seen as the party that will bring the country out of the train wreck Trump is causing.

[Cha]

32. Well said VG.. Thank you! Not only didn't "make friends"

but it's like BS was out to make enemies. We told him.

Link to tweet

https://upload.democraticunderground.com/1287556741

[DinahMoeHum]

35. Getting rid of Trump is the only "revolution". . .

. . .most Democrats want right now.

And the BS people should have learned from 2018, when voters in the battleground districts chose relatively moderate candidates over the "Justice Democrats/Our Revolution" types in the primaries and then went on to pulverize the GOP incumbents and win back the House.





#newrostrong

[Cha]

44. It doesn't seem like the Blue Wave House Victory

was even acknowledged by some people who should have paid attention.

Mahalo, Dinah StaySafe!

What is #newrostrong?

[DinahMoeHum]

47. #newrostrong refers to New Rochelle, NY. . .

. . .one of the first epicenters of this crisis.

https://twitter.com/hashtag/newrostrong?f=live

Link to tweet

Mahalo to you as well.


#newrostrong

[Cha]

68. Thank you for this explanation, Dinalh! I knew

it was Important!

StaySafe!

#Newrostrong!

[LiberalFighter]

53. It seems BS were only concerned about one thing...

While the rest of the pack were looking at the whole picture. Meaning what is good for up and down the ballot. And the voters too were looking at the same picture.

[pnwmom]

7. I kept saying that 30% wasn't enough, and was met with the argument that it was more

than anyone else had, so it was enough. But that misses the point that, with the possible exception of Warren and Yang, all the other candidates were more like each other than they were like Bernie, so it seemed obvious that they would eventually coalesce around a candidate with compatible views, who didn't appear to scorn the Democratic party.

I was surprised about how quickly it all happened. Thank goodness.

[GulfCoast66]

39. Warren is way more like Biden. She is a member of the Democratic Party. NT

[pnwmom]

41. Her policies might be closer to his than some of the others but, YES,

she is an actual Democrat and she calls herself a capitalist who believes in regulations -- not a socialist.

I wasn't surprised she didn't endorse him.

[unitedwethrive]

10. What he underestimated is how much the other 70% didn't want him to win.

I know that in my circle of friends and co-workers (granted, an older demographic: 35-55ish), people were so turned off by the Sanders supporters and his non-inclusive message that the general consensus for our nominee was 'anyone but Bernie'. I was a devoted Pete supporter, but was able to quickly turn to Biden when I saw that as the only way to ensure that Sanders would not be the nominee.

[Gothmog]

13. rom day 1, Bernie built a campaign to appeal to 30%

Link to tweet

So if, from day one, they didn’t think they needed more than 30%, why would they actually run a campaign and build a culture designed to win more than his 30% ceiling? As that article notes, even way back in early 2019, Sanders was picking fights and creating enemies out of potential allies.

We saw that in Sanders’ refusal to broaden his message to bring in more people. When I said exactly that on Meet the Press, that “the problem with Bernie Sanders is that he has the exact same message he had four years ago” when he lost to Hillary Clinton 60-40, the response from the Sanders campaign was, well, this:

Link to tweet

If your message wasn’t a majority message four years ago, and you want to win, wouldn’t you tweak it? They didn’t. Proudly and explicitly did not tweak it. They had zero intention of growing new support by broadening and expanding their message. (Sanders famously refused to even inject more biography into his stump speech to humanize him more.)

Sanders and his campaign saw that their ceiling was 30%, and they built an entire strategy around winning with 30%. That means that instead of seeing the other 70% of voters as allies, they saw them as THE ENEMY. Even when there was ideological alignment.

[LSFL]

26. He had the same message he had 4o years ago for that matter.

Didn't count on so many middle aged gen xers realizing that he has always been more communist the socialist in his positions. It became more apparent when he was ahead. Millennials and gen z didn't have the hindsight to see it.

[ToxMarz]

30. And as he lost more and more his message just got shoutier and shoutier

with his fingers stuck in his ears

[mcar]

14. Wow!

He thought he'd win the nomination with only his base? Now he and his supporters are complaining that other candidates dropped out?



Not a good campaign strategy, Senator.

[Gothmog]

18. Bernie's grievance politics consolidated the left to a 30% losing minority

sanders' cap is near 30% https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/5/1924709/-Bernie-s-grievance-politics-consolidated-the-left-to-a-30-losing-minority

Interesting thought, speaking of Elizabeth Warren and her inability to gain traction with the Bernie Sanders left:

Link to tweet

’ve wracked my brain wondering why so many on the progressive left, in this day and age of #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, would align with an old white guy when there were clear alternatives (unlike in 2016), and this makes as much sense as anything. One commenter on my last piece, on why Bernie Sanders fizzled upon contact with actual voters, wrote that, “for Bernie to do some of the work kos is asking, he would have to change his message in a way a dependably left politician will never do.”
Interesting—what made Sanders a “dependably left politician,” but Warren not? Clearly, it wasn’t actual policy or ideology. Krugman’s “grievance” is as good as an explanation as any.

Remember, the Sanders campaign decided early on that his path to the nomination consisted of keeping his core 30% base intact, and nothing more: As The Atlantic noted, “And then, Sanders aides believe, he’ll easily win enough delegates to put him into contention at the convention. They say they don’t need him to get more than 30 percent to make that happen.”
That was important, as we’ve discussed, because it set the tone for the entirety of their campaign—from othering the supporters of other candidates as “neoliberal corporatist shills” (and worse) to sticking with a message that had failed Sanders already in 2016, when only two candidates had been in the race.
And it’s shocking how close to 30% his results have been:

Sanders share of the vote
Iowa 26.5%
New Hampshire 25.6%
Nevada 40.5%
South Carolina 19.8%
Alabama 16.5%
Arkansas 22.4%
California 33.8%
Colorado 36.1%
Maine 32.9%
Massachusetts 26.7%
Minnesota 29.9%
North Carolina 24.1%
Oklahoma 25.4%
Tennessee 25%
Texas 30%
Utah 34.6%
Vermont 50.8%
Virginia 23.1%
Take a guess what his overall percentage is so far.
28.9%

[mcar]

20. Who does that sound like?

[Gothmog]

85. There are a large number of real Democrats who have very good memories

Last edited Thu Apr 2, 2020, 12:00 PM - Edit history (1)

These real Democrats do not forgive or forget

Link to tweet

[MineralMan]

16. So, then, he thought he could follow Trump's pattern?

GOP primaries are winner takes all. Democratic primaries are proportional, with a 15% viability rule. Didn't he remember that from 2016?

[TomCADem]

33. Exactly. He Was Hoping To Follow Trump's Path to Victory

Sell himself as an outsider and bank on the 30 percent of people who will instinctively vote for the most extreme, reactionary candidate.

[Gothmog]

17. Sanders's secret is out: He has no movement

I have never taken sanders seriously as a candidate due to sanders complete and utter lack of legislative accomplishments. sanders has not been able to get his fellow Democratic members of Congress to back his agenda and that is not going to change. As I understand it, sanders is now relying on a magical voter revolution to convince republicans to be reasonable. sanders has no magical voter revolution or movement backing him up. sanders has a cap of around 30% of the Democratic voters and that does not constitute a movement or revolution

Link to tweet

For months — for years, really — the media have reported that the Democratic Party has gone far left. They have treated social media as a barometer of the party’s political attitudes and characterized center-left candidates as out of touch with their own party. They have done so despite the triumph of moderate Democratic House candidates in 2018; despite the failure of left-wing Democrats to flip a single House seat; despite the polls showing a substantial percentage of Democrats consider themselves moderate or somewhat liberal; and despite the failure of super-progressive presidential candidates to attract the most critical element in the Democratic Party (African Americans).

With this faulty premise, the media’s coverage has been at times wildly off-kilter. It was easy for anyone caring to look closely to see that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) did not “win” a single debate, because his ranting and raving merely reinforced the fervor of his own cult while turning off the rest of the party. The media have been obsessed with the “likability” of female candidates, never considering that Sanders’s angry and rude demeanor would turn off women, who make up more than half of the Democratic electorate. A simple question — “Who is he gaining by all this yelling?” — should have been front and center in the media’s coverage. His “movement” was assumed but never examined carefully.....

Sanders’s ceiling turned out to be real, because there are generally less than a third of voters in the Democratic Party willing to embrace wide-eyed socialism, venom-filled rhetoric and utter disregard for the demands of governing (e.g. compromise). Michael Moore does not speak for the Democratic Party any more than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) speaks for House Democrats. (I have long maintained that the person who has the best read on the party as a whole is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; get to her left, and you are in no-man’s land.)

The Democratic Party does not live on social media nor does it favor bomb-throwers. If anything, it is desperate to play it safe and find an antidote to President Trump — not an imitation. Voters want the madness, the cruelty, the dysfunction and the stupidity to stop. They have found their safe, reliable and decent candidate in Biden. En masse — in every geographic region and Democratic group — they are telling us that they want the primary to end and the effort to rout Trump to begin. The media might have taken Sanders’s “revolution” seriously, but it turns out that Democratic voters as a whole did not.

[LiberalFighter]

55. Personally I don't think Pelosi has a problem with some getting to her left.

It is just a matter of whether it is feasible.

[NCProgressive]

19. What they are avoiding to say is

that a vast majority of Democrats had already rejected Sanders and were looking for a safe place to put their vote in. If you look at the totals of all non-Sanders Democrats, they always exceeded Sanders' paltry showing.

[ucrdem]

21. Biden outsmarted him it seems.

And it was completely astonishing. MANY thanks to Pete, Amy and Beto for helping Joe pull off the most amazing political hat trick I've ever seen in my life.

[sop]

79. Biden understood the Democratic party primary electorate far better than Sanders, and what

other candidates were likely to do when the people actually started to vote. Sanders doesn't really understand the Democratic party.

[tishaLA]

23. Democrats learned from repubs' 2016 mistakes

the repub party could have avoided the disaster that is tRump had a large number of people pulled out suddenly and thrown their support behind an agreeable someone, but their egos wee too large, the electorate remained too fragmented for too long, and it allowed tRump to pick up steam. Voila! Here we are.

Thank goodness we didn't repeat that.

[exboyfil]

58. Trump drags his cult along

They won't vote in those numbers without him. Add that to the pragmatic voters (on our side those like me that think Biden is acceptable but not the best choice) wanting what the GOP offers (Bibles, guns, restrictive abortion and in some cases restrictive contraception, low taxes, and screw anyone not like them) and you have enough votes with the other factors to push a GOP candidate over the top.

They don't view Trump as a disaster. If nothing more the Judiciary has been changed for a generation and now advancing those stated goals above.

[Turin_C3PO]

25. Dumb strategy.

How did he think he would get the nomination with only 30% of the vote?? It was never gonna happen.

[pnwmom]

42. He thought by sheer force of his personality he could get all the Democrats

to recognize that they were morally obligated to shift their support to the guy with the 30% plurality.

AS IF.

[LiberalFighter]

59. Who was it that said Democratic members of Congress don't like him?

Is that the personality he thought would get their support?

[TwilightZone]

51. He thought the others would stay in long enough that 30% would do it.

Similar to GOP 2016. Candidates wanted too long to get out to solidify behind one anti-Trump candidate. Sanders was banking on the same thing happening this cycle on the Dem side.

[brush]

27. Their so-called strategy was amateur hour. Every multi-candidate field narrows.

[mercuryblues]

29. Nothing shocks me anymore

but this sure did. Bernie's strategy was to go to the convention with 30% and get the nomination that way. No wonder they hate the delegate system, even after the super delegate system was changed to his liking after the last election. At the convention they were basically relying on his surrogates and delegates to pressure other delegates to change over to them.

As the article states Sanders' campaign was shocked when other candidates, who weren't getting many delegates dropped out. Did he really think they would support him after his divisive speeches for the last 5 years attacking Democrats? the very people who he needed to win? Absolutely astounding.

When he did nothing to stop the Warren attacks, he is surprised that Warren did not throw her support behind him. OMG.

He has made no attempt to build a coalition, something needed in Washington if you want to succeed. As a matter of fact he is hostile to the idea.

[LiberalFighter]

57. Don't you mean the Democratic Establishment?

[mercuryblues]

64. That was the word I was looking for.

it was on the tip of my tongue and couldn't think of it.

[grantcart]

31. Classic addition by subtraction

NYT had a great article detailing all the times progressives begged him to be more inclusive but he listened to the likes of Sirota and Turner.

Nothing shows how bad his judgement was more than putting Turner in charge of his SC campaign except when he rebuffed Democratic supporters who begged him not to praise Castro.

The next day he went out of his way to bring Castro up and the doubled down a few days later.

The theory that you can add to your numbers by attacking (subtracting) your natural allies has an exotic allure but always ends in disaster.

[LiberalFighter]

60. I do hope that Ohio Democrats at their state convention oust Turner as a DNC member.

[iluvtennis]

34. Posting last 2 paragraphs of article.

And so what happened? Sander’s total popular vote count was at around 30% when there were dozens of candidates in the race, and when the field compacted, it was still 30%. Let’s call that unprecedented—how a candidate so alienated the entire Democratic electorate that he picked up no one when everyone else dropped out.

If the left hopes to achieve power in the future, it’ll have to do a better job vetting candidates. Because we are doomed to eternal failure if people keep baking candidates who proudly refuse to build a majority coalition.

I agree with the bold

[LiberalFighter]

61. I don't think that is the problem. They need to put out a better message.

Well in a way they do need to vet their candidates. That is vet them to make sure they come across to the public favorably.

[iluvtennis]

65. + agree. nt

[showblue22]

36. The signs of a failed campaign were there.

They should not have been shocked. I don't understand why they were shocked or how they even thought they were doing good. He basically tied with Mayor Pete in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Nevada was a caucus where only 4% of registered democrats voted so it's not a good metric of strength. On top of that he spent 80 million dollars in those 3 states. That's not strength, it's weakness.

[Cha]

38. It boggles the mind to think that

the BS campaign thought they could win with 30% coalition. And, yes there were red flags all over the place in the first 3 states if they bothered to analyze.

[LiberalFighter]

56. I think you added a word that doesn't belong there.

Not sure who else was part of his coalition except himself.

[Happy Hoosier]

37. Bernie is incapable or unwilling...

To become the politician he needs to be to build a large coalition. He and his supporters mistook the ability to get a plurality of support in a crowded field, with actual popularity.

[R B Garr]

45. It's so good to see that Democrats didn't fall for his

30% hustle. The voters made a decisive decision for the Democrat with a capital D!

Thanks Cha.

[Cha]

84. You're Welcome, RB..

Thank you! StaySafe!

[Codeine]

46. The really interesting part is that

any of the other candidates could have turned a 30% plurality into a win by building a coalition at the convention.

The ONLY guy counting on winning with 30% was literally the ONLY candidate who was incapable of winning with 30%.

Talk about not being able to read the room.

[LiberalFighter]

62. If they wait until convention time it is too late.

Candidates like Biden know how to make sure delegates making it to the national convention support them.

[Hortensis]

73. He has a pattern of planning to achieve by smashing.

The only place it's worked is in VT, where I-Sanders uses a rigged election process to smash Democratic competition on the primary ballot, then run as I-Sanders in the general, with no Democratic candidate for liberals to vote for.

Interestingly, VT's state Democratic party includes many if not a majority of the state's engaged conservatives, who on average pride themselves on being more moderate than the national type. That would be at least some explanation for why Sanders' constant smears of liberal Democrats goes over so well in VT, if not with Democrats in other states. I'm assured by a VTer who sees nothing wrong with rigging Democratic elections -- so that conservatives can cleanse his races of liberals -- that his approval ratings are downright stratospheric.

[Cha]

88. I know.. evidently they thought they

could win dissing Dems all the way to the convention and then win there?!

Unbelievable.. So grateful that "plan" didn't work

[honest.abe]

49. Clueless to how primaries work.

If this is true it shows how ignorant the Sanders campaign is of political reality. Fits in with the other illogical things they were proposing.

[Fresh_Start]

50. The field ALWAYS narrows...it was not an unforseeable event

if their strategy fell apart because the narrowing occurred one week earlier than they expected, it was a failing strategy from the get go

[LiberalFighter]

52. Unforseeeable and highly unlikely events?

What the hell were they smoking? It demonstrates that Sanders didn't have that great of a campaign staff. Sanders likely did himself in with the public appearances of his staff like Nina Turner.

If they thought they were on the brink of winning it must of been based on getting to the convention with just a plurality of delegates instead of the 1,991 required. And then demanding to be the nominee.

Reading the last 2 paragraphs claiming that it was unprecedented for the outcome. Sure it was. Only because we never had a candidate run a campaign the way Sanders did. But there was nothing unprecedented about supporters of candidates that dropped out all going for one candidate over the other. Sanders wasn't expecting them to support him in the beginning so how did he expect them to support him when it was just him and Biden? And considering their differences overall are minimal with Biden's. Besides, voters tend to go with someone they know and trust over someone they know and hasn't had much experience.

[LiberalFighter]

54. Others here pointed out that Sanders was relying on the 30%.

The problem I see it with the data I looked at. He was doing worse than he did in 2016. If he couldn't win then why the hell was he going to win now?

[TheFarseer]

63. To play Devils Advocate

I think they were counting on getting the Warren supporters at some point which looked to be over 50% when combined with Sanders supporters and Yang and Tulsi supporters- it obviously didn’t work out like that.

[The Magistrate]

66. That Would Have Been A Very Foolish Assumption, Sir

Even leaving aside the bad blood stirred by his coterie in attacking Professor Warren and her supporters, especially women who supported her, support for Professor Warren was in almost all instances a rejection of Sanders from the start. It was not a rejection of 'policies', but a recognition that 'Bernie' was not an effective politician, and had no chance of actually getting anything passed into law, whereas Professor Warren had demonstrated, by her campaign for the Consumer Protection Bureau, that she was capable of effective action, and given greater power, could be counted on to achieve even more. This view contained the understanding that Sanders would be an abject failure in a nationwide general election, as that is a test no one who is not an extremely effective politician can possibly pass. Once Professor Warren gutted Mr. Bloomberg before a live audience, the only candidate of national prominence left standing who was an effective politician was Mr. Biden. Hence he has inherited the great preponderance of her supporters, and for very obvious reasons.



"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."

[Hekate]

69. "...the most unprecedented event in the history of presidential primaries occurred.'"

Seriously?! Then why did seem like a perfectly normal event to me?

People drop out of presidential campaigns quite routinely for the usual reasons: not enough votes and/or not enough money. Often enough they endorse someone else. It didn't feel anomalous to have Amy and Pete do what they did.

The anomaly is Sanders, with his dog-in-the-manger behavior and lifelong attacks on the evil Democratic Party.

[Cha]

71. They were "shocked".. We were full of Gratitude.

Aloha, Hekate, StaySafe!

[NurseJackie]

74. I wish I could have been a fly-on-the-wall...

I wish I could have been a fly-on-the-wall in the room when Bernie and staff first learned that he could no longer count on the "real world" Democrats having their votes split and diluted. I can easily imagine "smoke blowing from his ears" like in an old Looney Tunes cartoon. I'll bet he was furious and fit to be tied.

[Gothmog]

75. Bernie Sanders clings to a fantasy campaign

Link to tweet

[Gothmog]

76. Insiders recount how Sanders lost the black vote -- and the nomination slipped away

Link to tweet

The campaign had other big problems, according to current and former officials and allies. The team was caught flat-footed by how quickly the Democratic Party establishment united behind Biden, after the campaign executed a plan that rested heavily on a divided opposition. Sanders has a tendency to micromanage, some said, slowing big decisions. And aides’ efforts to get him to criticize Biden more directly fell short.

[sheshe2]

77. "they really thought 30% would win it"

Oh my!

[NBachers]

78. Well written article- thanks for posting. Let's see- who else plows ahead with a 30% die-hard cult?

[Cha]

80. You're Welcome, Bachers.. I like it, and we can read the whole

thing.

Oh, they're plowing but the headwinds are too strong. They already lost and spent 4x More $$$ than Joe Biden who WON.

[Gothmog]

81. Why Can't Bernie Accept That Democratic Voters Didn't Want Him?

Link to tweet

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/bernie-sanders-democratic-primary-joe-biden-2020-voters-establishment.html

Sanders advisers told the New York Times they believed they had been on the precipice of sweeping to victory on Super Tuesday, until Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg dropped out and endorsed Biden. Ben Tulchin, a Sanders pollster, claimed the candidate was “on the brink of winning until the most unprecedented event in the history of presidential primaries occurred.”

It is hardly unprecedented for the fifth- and sixth-place candidates to drop out of a race after four primaries. Yet Sanders himself has fixated on this decision as evidence of an Establishment conspiracy. Appearing on ABC’s This Week several days later, he described it as “the power of the Establishment to force Amy Klobuchar, who had worked so hard, Pete Buttigieg, who had really worked extremely hard as well, out of the race.”

From Bernie’s perspective, dropping out of a race once you have no chance of winning is peculiar behavior that can only be explained by the work of a hidden hand. For most politicians, though, it is actually standard operating procedure. Only Sanders seems to think the normal thing to do once voters have made clear they don’t want to nominate you is to continue campaigning anyway.

Sanders campaign spokesman Mike Casca argued, “Because of the agenda that he’s putting forward, a lot of super wealthy forces are aligned against him.” But Sanders has enjoyed a wide spending advantage over Biden, who at the key juncture was operating on a shoestring budget. If Michael Bloomberg had won, it would have been fair to wonder if he had bought the nomination. Biden’s appeal to the electorate was authentic, not purchased.

[Gothmog]

83. How 'Never Bernie' Voters Threw In With Biden and Changed the Primary

sanders was appealing only to 30% of the party and after South Carolina the rest of the party moved to Joe Biden to stop sanders.

Link to tweet

Rarely has political momentum flipped as quickly as it did in the first half of March, as Mr. Sanders lost serious ground to Mr. Biden before the coronavirus slowed their race. There are well-known reasons for the shift: Moderate candidates like Mr. Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota rallied around Mr. Biden. He enjoyed demographic advantages, particularly with black voters. And turnout among young voters and liberal nonvoters did not surge, failing to reshape the electorate as Mr. Sanders had hoped.

But beyond ideology, race and turnout, a chief reason for Mr. Biden’s success has little to do with his candidacy. He became a vehicle for Democrats like Ms. King who were supporting other candidates but found the prospect of Mr. Sanders and his calls for political revolution so distasteful that they put aside misgivings about Mr. Biden and backed him instead.

In phone interviews, dozens of Democrats, mostly aged 50 and over, who live in key March primary states like Massachusetts, Virginia, Michigan and Florida, said that Mr. Biden’s appeal went beyond his case for beating President Trump. It was his chances of overtaking Mr. Sanders, the only candidate in the vast Democratic field they found objectionable for reasons personal and political.....

These voters’ willingness to unite against Mr. Sanders helped Democratic Party leaders stave off his insurgent campaign and has made Mr. Biden the all-but-certain Democratic nominee. The convergence behind Mr. Biden also highlights a critical difference between this year’s primary and what happened to the Republican Party in 2016. Four years ago, establishment Republicans were openly skeptical of Mr. Trump after his victories in early primary states, but a fractured field and split primary vote allowed him to amass an insurmountable delegate lead, reshaping the party in the process.....

Ahead of Mr. Sanders’s presidential run in 2020, his campaign did not concern itself with smoothing tensions among voters who supported Mrs. Clinton in 2016. He did not seek the endorsements of many party leaders, who were always unlikely to back him, but could have been swayed from being openly antagonistic to ambivalent.

As a result, after a strong finish in Iowa and wins in New Hampshire and Nevada, Mr. Sanders did not benefit from an assumed truth of presidential campaigns: that early-state victories help bring in voters from other factions. Instead, people like Lori Boerner of McLean, Va., said Mr. Sanders’s performance sent them searching for a candidate who could stop his rise, and after the South Carolina primary, they landed on Mr. Biden.

Relying on the vote of 30% of the Democratic Party did not work when the rest of the party disliked sanders and so selected a candidate who would stop sanders from being the nominee

[Hortensis]

87. "Never Bernie" were just sensible mainstream progressives,

large majority liberals but some moderate conservative. It needs to be pointed out that mainstream Dems did NOT "throw in with Biden" just as a negative move against Sanders.

Sanders lies that we have no beliefs and stand for nothing, mindless fodder for demagoguery.

Reality is that, whether we had Biden as our first, second or 8th choice, as Democrats we were always headed our way and not to be derailed by whatever Sanders deluded himself into thinking would accomplish it.

Anyway, 80% of Sanders was always a media creation, not ours, extra lift provided by Repub-Russia. The vulnerable minds they prey on fell to them, not people who are genuinely concerned about protecting liberalism and progressivism in government. From those who threaten both.

[Gothmog]

86. Sanders is under 30% in this poll

Link to tweet

?s=20

[Gothmog]

89. Nate has some great comments

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[Gothmog]

90. 10 Lessons The Progressive Left Can Take From Bernie Sanders' Campaign

You cannot win a race with 30% of the vote https://medium.com/@jeremynfassler/10-lessons-the-progressive-left-can-take-from-bernie-sanders-campaign-97003bbec52c

While I was never on board the Sanders train, I feel bad for his supporters — not the bros, mind you — but the honest, hard-working people who want to see the Democratic Party move further to the left. It sucks when the candidate you support loses, and you are entitled to your hurt feelings. But I hope that by analyzing why Sanders lost, we can all gleam valuable lessons about building build a better mousetrap not just for Progressives, but for anyone who hopes to work on a campaign or run for office someday.....

FIVE: HAVE A BACKUP PLAN.
Prior to Super Tuesday, pundits assumed Sanders would win the nomination the same way Trump did — by amassing a plurality of delegates despite only getting about 30% of the popular vote. Given how many candidates were in the race at that time, this strategy seemed sensible, but they were thrown off course when Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropped out and endorsed Biden. According to one aide, the campaign never developed a backup plan to win with an outright majority. This goes back to lesson two: if Sanders had courted them, perhaps they might have endorsed him. Instead he blamed their decisions on “the Establishment [wanting] to make sure that people coalesced around Biden and not me” and not his campaign’s failure to plan out alternate paths to the nomination.

[Gothmog]

91. Why did Bernie Sanders drop out? The progressive majority he needed doesn't exist

There was no magical voter revolution

Link to tweet

Biden’s vision has now won out: He is the apparent Democratic nominee after Sanders suspended his campaign Wednesday following a mid-pandemic Wisconsin primary marred by vast polling site closures and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that effectively invalidated many absentee ballots. (Sanders said Monday, given the risks to voters, his campaign would not engage in traditional efforts to get them to the polls.)….

And in particular, his decisive win over Sanders in the primary — without even campaigning in many states — further highlights the limitations of progressive politics in America, at least in winning a national campaign.

Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, made a bad bet on the existence of a national progressive majority (as did Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who ran as a progressive populist but dropped out after Super Tuesday). It turns out there's nothing even close.

In fact, it’s not even clear that a progressive majority exists within the Democratic Party. What does exist is a moderately center-left party with a vocal progressive element.

Sanders frequently said on the campaign trail that he was leading a “multigenerational, multiracial movement,” pledging to mobilize an army of new, young voters. But it turns out older and moderate voters are the ones that grew as a share of the Democratic primary electorate since 2016 — and they favored Biden by a wide margin.

Take the South Carolina primary on Feb. 29, which Biden won, or the 10 of 14 states he captured on Super Tuesday: In all, he appealed to the same coalitions that boosted Democrats so strongly in the 2018 midterm elections, turning out large numbers of suburban voters, while maintaining support from longstanding elements of the Democratic coalition, particularly African American voters.....

Still, with the 2020 Democratic primary process essentially over, it’s clear that the hard-core Democratic left was deluded in their assertions that they were the new Democratic majority. They are going to need a better grip on reality if they are to be successful at the national level moving forward

[Cha]

92. Thank you for this, Goth.. looks interesting.

and we have to hurry bc this is soon to be "archived".

BeSafe!

[Cha]

93. I just want to make particular note of this long sentence!

Take the South Carolina primary on Feb. 29, which Biden won, or the 10 of 14 states he captured on Super Tuesday: In all, he appealed to the same coalitions that boosted Democrats so strongly in the 2018 midterm elections, turning out large numbers of suburban voters, while maintaining support from longstanding elements of the Democratic coalition, particularly African American voters.

Thank you!

[Gothmog]

94. Biden is relying on same set of voters who were responsible 2018 midterm victory

I agree that this was a smart strategy

[Cha]

95. The House Victory in 2018 has only been our Lifeline to

save our Country and Planet!

Those Voters are Serious about it!