It's wasn't a conspiracy or a fluke. The voters didn't want a revolution.

[NurseJackie]

Link to tweet

It's wasn't a conspiracy or a fluke. The voters didn't want a revolution. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/bernie-sanders-democratic-primary-joe-biden-2020-voters-establishment.html …
Why Can’t Bernie Accept Democratic Voters Didn’t Want Him?

Democrats wanted to nominate a moderate. They got one. No conspiracy required.

[mcar]

1. Exactly right

We want calm, intelligent, reasonable leadership.

[NurseJackie]

2. I like Joe Biden because he's honest. He's respectful of others...

I like Joe Biden because he's honest. He's respectful of others, and that means a lot to me. I like that he knows how to listen.

[George II]

3. I read that article earlier today. An excellent read!

[Hav]

4. Right, there wasn't a conspiracy or widespread election fraud as some now claim

Usually, even a 5 year old would understand that more people preferred Biden and that is how elections are decided.
But the BS followers (almost used BSers, sorry) surely make up lots of theories. And none of those deal with the fact that more voters chose Biden. You could explain that to a child...

[Gothmog]

24. 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.

[Indykatie]

26. Bernie Knew His Ceiling Was 30% and Never Sought to Increase It

He had a 30% strategy that would yield him a plurality of delegates but no where close to the 1991 needed to secure the nomination. He based his campaign on the reasonable assumption that the person with the most delegates should get the nomination. He voiced this multiple times as his position. The fact that the person with the most delegates would NOT be him never occurred to him. It would have worked had Amy, Pete and Liz all stayed in the race past super Tuesday. He had to know he was royally screwed when Amy and Pete dropped out before Super Tuesday and Liz right after. Her refusing to endorse him spoke volumes.

[Gothmog]

5. 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.

[Thekaspervote]

6. Sadly & ridiculously so, his ardent followers even aoc are having none of it & think it was a cheat

[Gothmog]

7. In the real world, candidates drop out when they know that they will not be the nominee

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.

[William769]

8. Kick & recommended.

[LizBeth]

9. If Sanders wasn't in the race I think Democrats might well have gotten behind the real progressive

Warren and she would have taken on Biden. That wasn't our primary. We had Sanders in there so we weren't able to allow our primary to play out as it should, with Democrats.

[NurseJackie]

10. That's a real possibility, I believe.

She could have been a much stronger contender, but Bernie's shopworn rhetoric was enough to rally the original members of the faithful flock (who could have found a natural ally in Warren) but they chose to follow someone else instead. It seems to be a sentimental decision based on emotion rather than something that's more practical and strategic in nature.

I do believe, however, that Warren's story is not over. I think she'll have an important role in a Biden administration and that Joe Biden will turn to her for her input.

Bernie has made too many enemies with his smears and attacks on the Democratic party and our leadership, that I can't see any circumstances where Joe Biden would turn to Bernie or "reward his smears" with anything at all.

We're Democrats, not Socialists.

[LizBeth]

11. I agree Warren has respect and will be used and Warren will be good with being used, all in.

Absolutely. Where ever they put her. Biden said Schumers position and never having been impressed with Schumer I would love it. Pelosi, Warren and woman VP. I would feel good.

[BidenBacker]

13. Based on the stimulus packages

I'd say we're ALL socialists now.

RIP, Milton Friedman. But rest assured that we're still all Keynesians...even if we are getting klose to being Kommie ones.

We're all Keynesians - again

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jan/25/wereallkeynesiansagain

2008...on steroids. Sure hope Munchkin is keeping them US Treasury printing presses well-oiled. We don't wanna burn up all them bearings pumping out the Benjies.

[NurseJackie]

15. But that's not really what socialism means, is it?

[BidenBacker]

16. You got me, NJ!

But I just like to say that to make Republican ears burn. They're all supply-siders when a Dem is in office but when they wreak havoc on the economy then all of a sudden they just LOVE them big demand-side government bailouts to keep their rotten economy afloat...LOL.

Seriously, I hope to hell we're all prepared for just how hamstrung Biden's gonna be when he becomes POTUS. Goppers are always pulling this shit. Reagan TRIPLED the national debt in just 8 years, so when Clinton got in there we soon had numbskull Newt with his "Contract on America" and they forced Bill to forego some much-needed Dem policies because all of a sudden it was critical to move towards a balanced budget.

Then Idiot Son Dubya blew about $5 trillion on his Iraq fiasco and trillions more on his reckless tax cuts so when Obama got into office all of a sudden the fucking Tea Party sprang outta the Pubbie hypocrisy muck and every time Barack wanted to implement some liberal spending he had to pay for it outta some other liberal piggy bank.

Now we got the Fuhrer...trillions more red ink thanks to HIS giveaway to the wealthy and corporations. That was supposed to generate what...5%, no 6%, no 8% GDP growth. LOL...2 or 3 years later and we're having to pump $2 or $3 trillion into the economy just to prop up the stock market and counter millions suddenly outta work. And that's probably just the FIRST installment.

WTF do we think's gonna happen when THAT huge bill comes due and Joe's sitting in the White House wondering where the hell he's gonna get the money to fix this or improve that while Goppers are running around screaming "our deficits are too high!"?

Fucking Republicans...I hate those bastards.

[The Magistrate]

18. I Am Something Of A Socialist Myself, Ma'am

At bottom, it is the view that what a society produces ought to belong to the society, and not to private parties who superintend facets of its production, and appropriate to themselves a disproportionate quantity of the society's produce. It does not, and never has, meant either autocratic state control or diveying up everything into equal shares. Capital, the surplus of what is produced over what its production costs, is the engine that drives new economic activity, and would do so whether it was administered by public or private means. Humans being involved, one can expect log-rolling and sharp practice in any case, but with public administration, however contrived within a democratic polity, it ought to be more difficult for a few individuals to extract value in greatly disproportionate share from society's capital.

Marxism is something different. Marxism is a particular theory of how socialism will emerge from capitalism. Marx saw this as something which would inevitably occur as industrialization reached its peaks, producing of necessity a trained and regimented work-force, who would be subjected to extreme penury owing the concentration of capital in ever fewer hands, and who would come to understand they actually controlled the mines and factories, etc., on which capitalism's profits depended. This he supposed would occur first in countries like England and Germany, France and Belgium. Nothing of the sort happened, and a variety of people enchanted by the theory, and its promise success was inevitable, set about trying to figure out ways to redeem the promise. Lenin's view was that imperial expansion was what was delaying the inevitable emergence of socialism, and he conceived further the idea that establishment of socialism by revolution might be achieved through forcing accelerated development of a backward, largely feudal society such fin de siecle Russia. At this point it should be obvious that Lenin's program had little to do with the original ground of Marxism, and as Orwell observed, 'one does not establish a dictatorship to preserve a revolution, one makes a revolution to establish a dictatorship'.

People once steeped deeply in Marxism have a hard time letting it go, and it is Sanders Marxist background inclines me firmly against him. He continued in Marxist belief well into middle age, and that to my mind indicates questionable judgement, to put it mildly. He seems to have still at that time accepted the equation of socialism with Marxism, and so have taken states established on the bastardized pseudo Marxism of Lenin and Mao as genuinely socialist states, which again calls his judgement into serious question.



"It is nonsense to suppose what benefits the greater portion of society would be injurious to its whole." (Adam Smith)

[TexasTowelie]

22. The only reason to appease Bernie

is if the Democrats end up with 49-51 votes in the Senate. At that point, Bernie's vote in the Senate does carry some weight. If the Democrats end up with either substantially more or substantially less than fifty senators, then Bernie's vote becomes less relevant and he can either vote against the Democratic party line (to demonstrate his independence) or more likely not vote at all.

[brer cat]

12. K&R

[Cha]

14. Hell NO.. We Want the Best Candidate to Be POTUS..

Joe Biden! And, Biden is more Liberal than is being thrown around.. But if Moderate gets him the Votes in the GE that got us the Blue Wave then So Be It.

Mahalo for this, Jackie!

[onetexan]

19. Second the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks NO!

thanks for the good laugh Cha. After all the bad news about the staggering unemployment & COVID19 reports today i needed it.

[Cha]

20. You're Welcome, onetexan!

You're always Good to put a smile on my face! lol

[zackymilly]

17. Bernie's voters didn't even want come out and vote. n/t

[NCProgressive]

21. The last thing anyone would want in the middle of the coronavirus crisis

would be a revolution.

[Gothmog]

23. The Gauzy Myth of the Sanders Campaign

I never considered sanders to be a serious candidate. sanders has zero major legislative accomplishments in large part because none of his fellow Democrats in Congress support his agenda. I do not understand the concept of a voter revolution . Without such a magical voter revolution, none of sanders' agenda could be adopted and I am not comfortable in relying on a magical voter revolution

I am not only one to doubt the seriousness of sanders as a candidate https://newrepublic.com/article/156883/gauzy-myth-sanders-campaign

After Tuesday night, the undeniable truth is that the entire Sanders campaign was predicated on a gauzy myth. If there were ever hidden armies of would-be Democratic voters yearning for a visionary presidential nominee uncontaminated by the compromises of life, then these Bernie Brigades still remain well camouflaged.

Sure, as Sanders stressed in his Wednesday statement, some of his policies are popular with primary voters. In Michigan, exit polls showed that replacing private health insurance with a government program had the support of nearly 60 percent of the people who went to the polls on Tuesday. But since the February 29 South Carolina primary, most Democratic primary voters have been unwilling to buy the entire Sanders package: politically unattainable goals, such as canceling $1.6 trillion in college debt, combined with attacks on corporate interests and the “billionaire class.”

After Sanders’s two presidential runs, voters possess a pretty clear-eyed sense of who he is. He is a gadfly, a goad, and a left-wing Pied Piper. These can be valuable traits in politics since the moderate, accommodationist wing of the Democratic Party sometimes needs outside pressure to force it to focus on causes larger than the next election. But Sanders was never cut out to be a traditional president forging alliances, brokering compromises, and dealing with the messiness of governing in a bitterly divided democracy. That simply isn’t Bernie’s skill set. And his lifelong rigidity would have become an even larger governing problem if he ever succeeded Trump as president.

What Democratic voters have created by rallying around Biden is the American equivalent of the Popular Front, which, in the 1930s, was a broad, multiparty alliance against fascism in France and other democratic countries. The exit polls from Michigan echo a sentiment found in almost all primaries—voters, by a 58-to-37 percent margin, want a candidate who can defeat Trump more than someone who agrees with them on all issues.....

Sanders will undoubtedly fight on in the hopes that he can shape the Democratic platform. The problem with that strategy is that, even if Biden were to commit to supporting, say, Medicare for All, as a price for party harmony in Milwaukee, it would be a meaningless pledge. Currently, fewer than one-third of the Democrats in the Senate support eliminating private insurance. And if Chuck Schumer succeeds in getting the chamber back in Democratic hands, the new additions to their ranks are likely to be moderates like John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Steve Bullock of Montana, none of whom support Medicare for All.

There was never going to be a magical voter revolution and there was never any substance to sanders' campaign or any chance that sanders' agenda would be adopted in the real world

[NurseJackie]

25. That is perfect. Thank you!

[Tarheel_Dem]

27. K&R

[Gothmog]

28. 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.

The vast bulk of the party does not like sanders which is why Joe Biden is going to the nominee

[Cha]

29. KICK!