One problem may be that Sanders has no heir apparent.

[gulliver]

Bernie's movement is not Democratic Socialism, it's "the Bernie movement." It's centered on him personally. When he drops out of the primary (or loses), his movement currently has no place to go.

Who takes over the dream for 2028 when Sanders drops out or loses? If his followers had a fairly solid idea of who that is (AOC?), they and Sanders himself might be more likely to give up. They've lost this primary, but maybe they want another match down the road. If they don't have at least the possibility of one, they might be less willing to leave the current one.

[OnDoutside]

1. Which is why he's hanging on as long as he can...well that's one reason.

[NurseJackie]

8. The "brand" is tarnished, and he needs more than the faithful flock.

I really can't see him trying to run again in 8 years in opposition to VP Harris' bid to become President.


Joe/Kamala or Biden/Harris 2020!!
Jump on the Biden Bandwagon & abandon the revolution!!

[OnDoutside]

13. His high point was 4 years ago, and Hillary still put him away fairly handily. His "gameplan" for

this cycle was both surprising and ill-advised. It could well be that he is hanging on in there because he knows that's it for him. Joe is doing the right thing in moving on.

[brush]

21. Chances are he'll be gone and forgotten by then.

[Gothmog]

2. I see nothing wrong with this

[Squinch]

3. Totally not a problem.

[William769]

4. Nope.

They are all in on a mission and it's not to win.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. It's become a personality cult, so of course there is no successor.

[NCProgressive]

6. It is all about him and his ego.

He feels he is entitled to the nomination.

[NurseJackie]

11. As do many of his faithful followers. "It's his turn" or something...

As do many of his faithful followers. "It's his turn" or something, seems to be the general sentiment. But, that's not how it works.

[Rebl2]

20. Yes and

who does it remind you of? I think he feels entitled to it as well.

[stopbush]

7. True. It's difficult to find a Leninist these days, even in Russia, let alone the USA.

😀

[Todd79]

15. LOL

[NNadir]

9. I'm sure Susan "Trump isn't that bad" Sarandon will take up the Quixotian Lance. n/t.

[Laelth]

10. Under the right circumstances, Joe Biden can be a transformative, liberal President.

I have every reason to believe that the vast majority of Bernie’s followers are more attracted to his policies than they are to Bernie, himself. Give us Democratic control of the Senate and eliminate the filibuster. If we can do these two things, Joe Biden can be our new FDR, and Bernie (while deserving credit for pushing us to the left) will be little more than a memory.

-Laelth

[Indykatie]

12. 2 Reasons for No Heir - Few Politicians Identify as Democratic Socialists & Bernie is No Mentor

He made the movement all about him. Rather than pushing for Universal healthcare he only pushed for his specific solution M4All even after seeing it lacked the support to ever become a reality. Rather than making Democratic Socialism more mainstream he has made it more of a fringe movement. Him being unable to rally the young to the polls as part of his "revolution" should have been embarrassing for him but yet he persists and refuses to leave the stage.

[LiberalFighter]

14. Nina Turner will demand to be the heir apparant.

[comradebillyboy]

23. A proven vote getter is Nina

[CTyankee]

16. Maybe Ocasio-Cortes?

[ehrnst]

17. Yep. I don't think that he really has thought what happens after he's gone. It's about him.

People who knew him in Vermont back when he was a congressman stated that he had no interest in endorsing any other progressives candidates unless it would benefit his interests.

After discussing his favorite issues — corporations, government reform, health care and the like, I asked about his unwillingness to endorse his fellow progressives. He said it wasn't his role. I suggested voters might expect him to weigh in. He disagreed, clearly annoyed at the persistent questioning. Finally I suggested that he had a larger moral responsibility to the progressive movement.

At which point he jumped out of his seat, told me to go f*** myself and stormed out of the edit board meeting. OK, maybe my persistence bordered on hectoring. But I felt he ought to provide an honest answer. My suspicion was that he resented others for assuming his mantle of progressive leadership and wouldn't acknowledge them.

Bernie has not ever shown any interest in supporting a progressive movement that doesn't center on him leading it, and everyone walking in absolute lockstep with his words and ideas.

[BidenBacker]

18. Hopefully once Bernie finally exits stage left for good

most of his saner rational progressives will rejoin the conservatives, moderates and run-of-the-mill liberals and work within the party to help influence and shape policy. The few % remaining that refuse to do so can go pound sand(ers).

[relayerbob]

19. Will end up much as the Occupy movement

(Which really is his base)

empty and forgotten, chances wasted due to lack of leadership

[Hav]

22. That's pretty much the hope

He has caused enough damage. One can only hope that when he finally concedes and goes away, that he takes the toxicity and division with him that he infected the Democratic Party with and that the people he chose to lead his campaign will be recognized for who they are: Lowlifes who don't care about the party and its principles or even the policies their candidate stands for.
His policy ideas will live on without being represented by him and many existed before him. His problem isn't that he is an ideologue, it's the belief that only he can be the one to implement them.

[NurseJackie]

24. Honestly that's not a problem for me.

[TomCADem]

25. Because Bernie Burns His Proteges. Look at Beto O'Rourke and AOC

A lot of younger leaders were inspired by the idea of Bernie in 2016 and probably bought into the decades long efforts to portray Hillary Clinton as conservative or corrupt. Many of these folks ran on a progressive platform. However, when they actually had to deal with Bernie, they got burned. Beto O'Rourke at one time tried to fashion himself as a Bernie protege. However, after he started looking like he might cut into Bernie's youth support, Bernie's campaign smeared him. Not surprisingly, Beto O'Rourke endorsed Biden.

Likewise, you have AOC who Bernie heavily leaned on as a surrogate. However, when she tried to actually do her own job representing her constituents, Bernie's campaign started to leak negative stories about her suggesting that she let Bernie down:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-bernie-sanders-campaign-rallies_n_5e6ade51c5b6bd8156f44356

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) turned down repeated requests from Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign to appear at events promoting the Vermont senator’s candidacy in recent weeks, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

After the Iowa caucuses, Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir asked Ocasio-Cortez to stump for Sanders in New Hampshire, according to the sources. The campaign prepared a model schedule to highlight the kind of popular support she would expect if she attended, one of the people familiar with the talks said.

Ocasio-Cortez resisted the entreaties until a few days before the primary on Feb. 12. She ultimately spoke the day before the election at a Sanders rally in Durham, New Hampshire, where the rock band The Strokes performed.

“It was like pulling teeth to get her to New Hampshire,” said a second person who knew about the discussions.

I used to like Bernie prior to the 2016 election. However, that he is a very vain, thin-skinned, narcissistic man who can't stand other folks getting the credit or the attention, particularly younger proteges. The falling out with Beto O'Rourke is instructive.

[Cha]

28. And, Pete?

[Gothmog]

26. 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.

[Polybius]

27. Kshama Sawant

How come no one ever brings her up? She's pretty hard-left, and is still in office.

[killaphill]

29. She's not a national figure

And not even a state official. She'll have to find a venue bigger than Seattle before she can claim that mantle.

[NCProgressive]

33. lol Kshama won't win anything higher

[hack89]

36. She rejects both the Democratic and Republican parties

Sawant is a member of the Socialist Alternative party, the United States section of the British-based Trotskyist international organization the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI).[32][63] Sawant has stated that she does not advocate for any system like the "bureaucratic dictatorship" of the former Soviet Union, but for democratic socialism meaning "the society being run democratically in the interest of all working people on the planet, all children - everybody who has needs, and all that being done in an environmentally sustainable manner."[64]

Sawant said she rejects working with either the Democratic or the Republican party and advocates abandoning the two-party system.[8] She has called for "a movement to break the undemocratic power of big business and build a society that works for working people, not corporate profits—a democratic socialist society."[65]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshama_Sawant

She can only exist in a hot house political environment like Seattle. She has no national appeal or base.

[MineralMan]

30. Really, There Is No Movement.

There is only dissatisfaction. Bernie is the leader of the dissatisfied. Or at least of some of them.

[NurseJackie]

37. Many are malcontents that appear to not want to work toward solutions...

... and instead try to inflict as much damage as possible (for punishment? as retribution? revenge?) against those whom they believe are the cause of their problems.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/malcontent

[MineralMan]

38. Sanders' Coalition of Supporters

is not uniform in any way. It includes malcontents from every corner of the political spectrum. From anarchists to extreme libertarians, his followers are united in only one way - they are discontented with the entire society that makes up the United States. So, it's no wonder than when Sanders fares poorly in elections, it is largely because his supporters simply do not participate in elections. They see elections a part of the broken system they want to disappear.

If they vote at all when Sanders is not on the ballot, they vote to disrupt the process. That is why Jill Stein and Gary Johnson got as many votes as they did in three hugely important states. Those votes came from the discontented.

Normally, they don't make up enough of the electorate to actually affect outcomes, but in 2016, they did affect the outcome, leading to the disaster that is the Trump administration.

Many of Sanders' supporters don't really support the Senator from Vermont. They support chaos. We see some such discontented people here at times, too.

[dalton99a]

31. There is no 'movement' behind the leader worship

[NCProgressive]

32. It's a good thing so that the "movement" will end with him

Although, there will be a fight over who gets the fundraising mailing list between a few people. That list would be a gold mine to sell memorabilia, books etc. and/or to raise more money from the donors who are easy to persuade of Sanders' greatness.

[Politicub]

34. I think most people are over the notion of destroying everything as being

a peachy keen idea. I welcome a competently run government based on fairness and progressive principals. That’s what we will have in a Biden presidency.

Bernie’s utopian dream sounds seductive, but that’s how populists always campaign, brothers and sisters.

The progressive movement will move forward under Biden. Bernie would be so divisive with daily tweets from Nina Turner and David Sirota attacking people who are not doctrinaire socialists.

[Tarheel_Dem]

35. What about Killer Mike?