The Democratic Senators who were also primary candidates

[MineralMan]

have all gotten over their disappointment at their primary results and are back in the Senate, working hard to keep Mitch McConnell from turning the Coronavirus relief package over to corporations and billionaires. Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris are hard at work in negotiations and voting to make that relief focus on middle-class workers and others who do not have vast resources.

I'm as proud of them as I can be. They are on the scene, at their jobs, and working hard for us. That's what they were elected to do.

They are all Democratic Senators we can all be proud of. One of them, perhaps, will be our next Vice President.

Meanwhile, another Senator, who calls himself an Independent in the Senate, is still campaigning for the Democratic nomination, despite his Independent status in the Senate, and despite having no path to the nomination. His absence in the Senate during this period has been noticed, so I don't include him in my praise for our Democratic Senators. The difference is palpable.

[empedocles]

1. BS at his persoal core, seems more like trump than Dem Senators

[MineralMan]

3. I do not compare Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump.

His goals are completely different. However, I do not feel that Sanders has the personality traits needed by a President. The job of President, if done well, requires the ability to remain calm and listen, even in the face of people who have nefarious goals at heart. Bernie Sanders does not have the personality traits that make a good President. He does not mind alienating people he should not alienate.

[empedocles]

8. At the personal ore level, we agree, the personality traits needed by a President are lacking

in BS - and I would add similarly in trump, which was my point. I would add the great self-interest, the aggressive yelling, the extensive alienation of others, the absence of taking care of the job they were elected to do, etc., etc.

[showblue22]

38. Exactly!

They have a lot of similar personality traits. The gas lighting especially.

[pazzyanne]

24. +1 nt

[Turin_C3PO]

2. I'd give Sanders

a pass if he just said, “Hey, I’m 78 and recently had a heart attack. I’m going to lay low for a while”. That would be understandable. But, unfortunately, he’s not being transparent so we have no idea what he’s actually thinking.

[MineralMan]

6. I would not, actually.

If one is not up to the job of campaigning for office, or is unable to perform the duties of elected office, the appropriate thing to do is to withdraw or resign, to let someone more able do the job.

A man who seeks the highest office in the land should be able to constantly demonstrate his capability to perform that job.

I believe it is time for Senator Bernard Sanders (I-VT) to withdraw from the primary race and devote what energy he still has to doing his job in the Senate, the office he was elected to hold. If he cannot manage that job, then he should resign that position. We need all hands on deck in the Senate right now.

[Thekaspervote]

9. +1000

[LakeArenal]

28. I agree to a point

But Bernie could hermetically seal himself and get into the Senate to work. They all have the coverage and the means to do so.
This is a crisis after all. Heroes should step up.

[frazzled]

4. My take on it is this

The unnamed senator isn't in the Senate because he doesn't want to vote on the bill for the following two reasons.

1. To vote for a bill that bails out corporations would ruin his "brand," so he doesn't want to be on record voting for it.
2. To not vote for a bill that extends unemployment insurance for workers would hurt his brand, so he doesn't want to be on record for voting against it.

In other words, it's not his perfect bill, so he doesn't want his vote to be on the record. His brand is ruined whether he votes for or against it, so he's not going to show up.

[beastie boy]

15. His brand is ruined no matter what he does. I would argue Bernie not voting on the bill is the most

ruinous of his choices. It signifies willful detachment in the face of a crisis. No matter the ideology, this is the worst attribute a politician of any kind can possibly project. It does not win sympathy or support, not even among his followers.

Bernie miscalculated again.

[Sunlei]

16. was 4 trillion before they voted out some of the bail out crap amendments-even HR6201...

even HR6201 had several amendments thankfully they were able to remove and Sanders did vote Mar 18, 2020 for this bill (passed)

On Passage of the Bill in the Senate

This bill would guarantee free coronavirus testing, establishes paid leave, enhances unemployment insurance, expands food security initiatives, and increases federal Medicaid funding. For additional details, see the House Appropriations Committee summary. The bill was drafted by House Democrats in collaboration with the White House and was endorsed by President Trump



H.R. 6201: Families First Coronavirus Response Act

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes

Above is where I follow voting records.

[frazzled]

20. I don't care what failed bill he voted for

It's frankly immaterial. Just the same old story: he's unwilling to swallow anything that isn't his conception; he's unable to make compromises. He would rather get nothing to drink at all for the American people than give them half a glass when they are dying of thirst.

[Sunlei]

21. The bills with some corona virus 'relief help' passed.

More needs to be done like Ireland just did. America and Ireland share a very similar healthcare system. some for profit & some similar to 'medicare for all'.

Their for profit insurance corps were just mandated(yesterday) to provide non-profit healthcare to all.


I follow this(LINK) to see voting records, both house and senate are there. on their government websites senators and congress persons frequently explain why they voted (or didn't vote)
IMO I'm happier to just view the plain facts instead of message board/media story 'opinions'

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes

[bluestarone]

26. EXACTLY! It will be like the War Bill

I hear him now. (I didn't vote for the stimulus bailout)! You know, i like him BUT he's NOT ending this like a TRUE Patriot should!

[The Magistrate]

5. The Sooner People Get It Through Their Heads, Sir

That Sanders campaigns not to gain the Democrat Party's nomination for President, but to weaken if not wreck the 'Democratic Establishment', and that for him ousting Trump and ending the Republican majority in the Senate is barely an afterthought to this long-standing purpose, the better off we and our country will be. Once Sanders' supporters face this fact squarely, they may be able to decide honestly what their best course in this election is: voting against Sanders in any future primary, and for Mr. Biden and Democrats all down the ticket to the lowest office on the ballot.

It is probably true that Sanders sees destroying the 'Democratic Establishment' as an essential precondition to defeating Trump et al, and so by his own lights he means it when he says he will do all he can to defeat Trump. But that belief is so self-serving and delusional it deserves not just scorn but contempt.



"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."

[MineralMan]

7. Very well considered and stated, Sir.

[Sunlei]

18. OMG! welcome back The Magistrate, you were so right about Ukraine! its been 4yrs

about 4 years, a long time. You were right, Russia had just invaded Ukraine, Obama still in office and you said they wouldn't be out of Ukraine. Russia hadn't even been accused of hacking our government when you last posted.


I hope you're well have missed your posts and gosh Hillary and everyone could have used your help to keep Trump out of the White House.

Yeah, I love both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, don't worry I'll cast my vote for Biden if he wins the primary

[The Magistrate]

19. Thank You Very Much, Ma'am

I appreciate your welcome, and your sentiments.

[BlueIdaho]

25. Sander's Pyrrhic Victory

His insane attempt to destroy the thing that makes his campaign possible will end in his political destruction.

[mcar]

10. And they are acquitting themselves admirably

Klobuchar's husband is very ill with C19, but she's there working on our behalf. Harris and Booker have been working on our behalf. Warren, apparently, helped to re-write the bill to include way more for us.

The difference is palpable.

[MineralMan]

12. I forgot to include Booker. I've edited the OP to add his name.

[George II]

11. I would like to know where the delegates that would get him to 1991 are - which states?

He has to get 64% of all the remaining delegates. That means if he falls to 55% in any state, he has to get 74% in an equivalent size state.

As of now, with more than half the states/territories voting, Sanders has gotten as high 64% of the delegates in only three of them - Vermont (his home state), Nevada, and Northern Marianas, which gave him only 4 delegates. His AVERAGE in the first 30 is only 36%, his average since Buttigieg/Klobuchar dropped out is still only 39%.

If he's only done that in three of thirty contests, how is he going to do it in all the remaining 27? Answer - he's NOT.

Where are these magical delegates going to come from?

[MineralMan]

13. We know that. Sanders knows that, too.

He has other motives, I suspect. Motives which I do not trust one bit.

[NCProgressive]

14. It is appearing that he cares only about himself and his ego

and doesn't care what he is putting people through.

It is also politically unwise because this was the moment he could have shined as fighting for the people by being on the floor and working hard, making the Democratic positions clear - he lost that opportunity entirely.

[MineralMan]

17. Well, I believe he cares about some ideas, as well.

Unfortunately, those ideas do not have the support of US voters to get him into the White House.

His unwillingness to adjust his ideas to better suit voters has cost him two attempts at the presidency. Being unbending and rigid about such things makes him unsuitable as a leader for 50 very diverse states in this country. The voters, once again, have rejected him as even a candidate for President. Democratic voters are not rigid in their views. They expect their leaders to adjust to conditions as they are, not to focus solely on ideology.

Sanders cannot accept that sort of flexibility. So, his appeal is limited, even to Democrats.

[Ravenspace]

22. Bernie is single-handedly responsible for bringing the issues that now define Democratic values

into the mainstream. Medicare for all, $15 minimum wage, restructuring the American economy around working people not the 1%, bold climate change action, etc. Biden, still after all we've seen over the past 30 years, does not understand the nature of our opposition across the aisle. He thinks they can be worked with as though we all share a common understanding of reality. We should all know by now that as soon as Bernie Sanders is out of the race, Biden will pivot back to his happy place - compromising core principles for "unity" and giving republicans just about everything they want. Essentially rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. He will accept their framing of the economy (as though they have any credibility here) cutting "entitlements" and imposing austerity on everyone who isn't rich because, all of a sudden once a democrat is in the white house, the deficit matters again.

Bernie does not have a path to the nomination, but he is still trying to have a positive impact on the national conversation and Democratic party in general. And it is to the benefit of us all.

I understand that people view the election as a horse race and the "winners" want Bernie to go away and shut up. But when Joe Biden implodes and loses to the monster in the white house (very real possibility), or squeaks out a win but does not address any systemic issues in America (remember that he promised CEOs that with him as president things would not fundamentally change), it will have been a tremendously missed opportunity for the country.

For the life of me, I don't understand the Bernie Sanders hatred I see on these forums.

[MineralMan]

23. I don't hate Bernie Sanders, but I do understand him.

I know why he does not succeed as a presidential candidate, too.

[Gothmog]

40. From the Hoarse Whisperer

Link to tweet

[Demsrule86]

27. His campaign continues to attack Biden ...sowing division even as I write this ...so he is not

helping anyone...and I believe he has hurt those policies that he supports as people will reject them out of hand based on their dislike of Sanders.

[LakeArenal]

29. None so blind as he who will not see.

[marble falls]

31. No he's not. These have ALWAYS been Democratic Principles. I don't understand people ...

who act like Bernie Sanders invented the Democratic platform all by his lonesome.

Biden is not the enemy, TRUMP is, dammit.

[ehrnst]

32. So why do you think he was a no-show for the first vote on the emergency funding bill?

One would think that he would feel the need to be "single-handedly responsible" for acting on those ideas to help our nation right now.

Or at least tack on an amendment...

[George II]

33. Yes, he's trying to have a positive impact but his tactics are backfiring. As they say....

....you attract a lot more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

You don't spend decades bashing the Democratic Party and then want to have an impact on it. You don't equate Democrats with republicans in the course of running for the Democratic nomination.

If you think Biden will "implode" in the General Election, since so many more Americans want him than Sanders, what do you think Sanders would do in the General Election?

[NurseJackie]

34. "I'm not gonna be ignored, Dan."

Bernie does not have a path to the nomination, but he is still trying to have a positive impact on the national conversation and Democratic party in general. And it is to the benefit of us all.

Nonsense! What an absurd thing to say. There is NO "benefit to us all" in the path that he's taken. There is nothing at all positive in this type of behavior... demanding attention in such a compulsive and destructive way... refusing to let go in spite of the the obvious rejection.

It reminds me of a tragic character from cinema who also wouldn't let go... no matter what the cost. No matter how dangerous the game. No matter the damage caused. No matter the personal risk. It's all very sad and so predictable. It needs to end now. Stop defending this type of destructive behavior.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287686694

What Bernie is doing now – through his own words, actions, and the conduct of his campaign – is a deliberate attempt to undermine the man who IS the presumptive Democratic nominee. And one can only wonder what he hopes to gain by doing so.

The party’s coalescence behind Biden was Bernie’s golden opportunity to be true to his word that defeating Trump in November was his ultimate goal. This was Bernie’s chance to shine – by getting behind Joe, and encouraging his own supporters to do the same, in order to accomplish exactly that. He could have been the hero who ensured that the Democratic candidate had everyone behind him, including those disappointed that their candidate-of-choice didn’t make the final cut.

Instead, Bernie has chosen to spew the most outrageous lies about our chosen nominee – and is doing so knowing that he is discouraging voters from getting behind that nominee.

“Feel the Bern” has now become “burn it all to the ground if I’m not the nominee”. The only role Bernie is playing right now is that of the woman who encouraged Solomon to cut a live baby in half to settle a dispute between herself and another woman who claimed to be the child’s mother – in other words, “if I can’t have the nomination, no one should have it.”

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287686694

[Gothmog]

39. Bernie Sanders didn't win any larger argument

In the real world, sanders did not win any major argument https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bernie-sanders-didnt-win-any-larger-argument/2020/03/19/39b9a402-69f2-11ea-9923-57073adce27c_story.html

As pressure mounts for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to abandon his presidential bid, a narrative seems to have taken hold among his supporters and on cable TV, and it goes like this: Sanders may have all but lost the nomination fight, but he won the larger ideological argument, and he’s fundamentally changed the Democratic Party. His movement must be reckoned with.

To which I can only say: If this is what it looks like to win the argument, I struggle to imagine what it would look like to lose. In any way that counts, Sanders’s vision for the party has been soundly and consistently rejected....

This idea that Sanders has somehow won, even while we all thought he was losing, seems to rest on two assertions: one, that exit polls tell us the voters actually agree with his proposal for nationalized health care; and two, that he changed the conversation to the point where all the candidates were forced to adopt his agenda.

Neither withstands much scrutiny.

Let’s be real. Exit polls are all fine and good, but votes are votes. If Democrats really sided that strongly with Sanders on the issue they routinely say is the most important in the campaign, he’d be winning.

A raft of other polls on health care will tell you that it all depends on how you ask the question. According to one conducted last month by the Kaiser Family Foundation, most people who say they support Medicare-for-all also think they’d be able to keep their own insurance. (Under Sanders’s plan, they wouldn’t.)

And if you ask them to choose between building on the foundation President Barack Obama laid or a Sanders-style overhaul, a strong majority chooses the more moderate approach.....

And in his second run for the nomination, Sanders has performed not better but worse, failing to turn out the huge numbers of younger voters he predicted. In fact, you could say Sanders’s trajectory is the exact opposite of Reagan’s; while much of the media (me included) assumed he and Warren spoke for an ascendant wing of the party during the Trump years, it turns out the uprising was more limited than we thought.

Sure, Biden should say all the right things to unite his party. Sure, he’ll be willing to give some things away in the party platform, which has about as much influence on governing as I do on the Yankees’ lineup.

But hard as this may be for some millennials to accept, there’s only one winner here. Sanders doesn’t get a participation trophy.
The only thing he’s owed is a chance to exit with grace.

sanders has had little or no effect in the real world on the issues you raised.

[Gothmog]

41. 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

Even many progressives who accept Biden’s nomination as a conscious, non-flukey choice by Democratic voters have insisted on portraying the Sanders agenda as the true winner. Many of them have cited polls showing a majority of Democratic primary voters favoring Medicare for All.

It is certainly true that most Democrats would prefer a single-payer system. I would absolutely prefer a single-payer system, and would happily pay higher taxes to say good-bye forever to employer-sponsored insurance. But Democrats are not unaware that Biden opposed this policy. It was heavily — nay, obsessively — litigated throughout the campaign. The topic consumed large portions of almost every single debate. If Democrats overwhelmingly chose Biden anyway, perhaps they bought his argument that the political barriers to full single payer are prohibitive, and that building on Obamacare to expand coverage makes more sense.

The Sanders campaign was highly successful in turning the race into an ideological referendum. What Sanders failed to anticipate is that doing so would ensure his defeat. Asked last year if they “would rather see the Democratic Party become more liberal or become more moderate,” Democrats chose more moderate by a 54-41 percent margin. Slightly more than half of its voters identify as either moderate or conservative, and slightly less than half identify as liberal. And Biden ate heavily into the liberal vote, dominating among those who identified as “somewhat liberal.”

The Democratic Establishment certainly played an important role in the contest. Its party elite helped coordinate the non-Bernie vote, foiling his plan to capture the nomination without expanding his share much beyond a third. The Sanders movement has remained genuinely indignant that it was unable to win the nomination and steer the party in a direction opposite of the desire of most of its voters by exploiting a divided opposition. But the Sanders plan for minority-faction rule, while it briefly seemed likely to prevail, always required denying the rest of the party a chance to vote up or down on his revolution. He lost for one simple reason: The process gave the voters, right or wrong, what they wanted.

[lapucelle]

42. No he isn't.

[Gothmog]

43. Sanders's secret is out: He has no movement - The Washington Post

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.

[Gothmog]

44. Really???

Link to tweet

[LizBeth]

30. The way he has run campaign, who he has hired, his supports have consistently shown the difference

from our Democrats. I agree with your post.

[NurseJackie]

36. Exactly. The hiring of JILL FUCKING STEIN supporters to run his campaign...

Exactly. The hiring of JILL FUCKING STEIN supporters to run his campaign was an obvious middle-finger directly squarely at the Democratic party. No other candidate campaigns against the Democratic party, just Bernie.

He hired some really deplorable people to be the faces of his campaign. He made the Democratic party (our leadership and some of our best politicians) his enemies who "conspire" against him.

The rhetoric coming from him and from his campaign has a toxic and erosive effect. He deliberately plays that dangerous game and is fully aware that campaigning like this will turn his supporters away from the Democratic Party if he doesn't win the nomination.

No other Democrat behaves like this and it creates frustration and anger among Democrats because we've been through this before. It contributed to getting Trump elected and despite all that, BS doesn't care about it and still plays the same game.

All I'm trying to say is that it serves NO GOOD PURPOSE for his quixotic game to continue. It's divisive and it harms the party, it weakens the party. Negativity generates apathy. Apathy discourages voter turnout. Low voter turnout gives Republicans a chance to steal the elections.

[LizBeth]

37. Right on. And he wanted to be President. What kind of thinking does it take to hire anti the people

you are wanting the vote from. What kid of thinking does it take to sit at the table and look at hires and when brainstorming to get Democratic votes, you get people that voted against our candidate in the GE just before. Is it an arrogance? Is it just an inability at being realistic? Is it an illusion from ego that he is so special, Democrats would ignore his insults to Democrats?

I like Biden saying no more debates are needed.

I like watching Sanders becoming more and more a distant voice that cannot be heard, that is ignored, because of his irrelevance.