Bernie Sanders' Revolution...

[Galraedia]

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Nailed it.

[NurseJackie]

2. So true and very amusing.

[stonecutter357]

3. Post removed !

[msongs]

4. and he voted for the evil coporate bailout yesterday did he not? nt

[NCProgressive]

5. lol

[oasis]

6. Elections 101: Don't overestimate the impact of young spokes persons.

[BidenBacker]

22. Very punny

Think we have the witty post of the day already wrapped up...and it's barely noon here.

[Gothmog]

7. 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

[Hermit-The-Prog]

21. Sanders will fight on for self-aggrandizement and disruption, just as in 2016.

[William769]

8. ...

[betsuni]

9. Yup.

[Gothmog]

10. Sanders's secret is out: He has no movement - The Washington Post https://www.

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.

[dalton99a]

12. +1

[MineralMan]

11. Oh, Snap!

[Tarheel_Dem]

13. TRUTH!!!!

[Hav]

14. Ouch!

The thing is, there are so many other things that derailed it besides youth turnout. BS' behavior itself, then the lowest of the low that he hired to represent his campaign. Participating in the primaries of the party that you have identified as the enemy is just not appealing for a majority. The unwillingness to grow your base alone had to lead to a doomed campaign sooner or later.

[Politicub]

15. LOL

Bernie or bust your ass!

[Cha]

16. Yeah, that mean ol DNC!

[BlueIdaho]

17. Cracking me up...

Thanks for the chuckle.

[Scurrilous]

18. This caught my eye a while back:

Civic education in the United States

'In the 21st century, young people are less interested in direct political participation (i.e. being in a political party or even voting), but are motivated to use digital media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook).'

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


It's right there in wikipedia for God's sake. The youth don't vote. What was Bernie thinking?

[Gothmog]

19. 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

[sheshe2]

20. Ouch!

[Gothmog]

23. The benefit of the Democrats denouncing Sanders's selfishness

I am tired of sanders and his supporters demanding that we bend a knee and anoint sanders as the nominee. It may be better to simply give up on the 15% who will not vote for any real Democrat and move on

Link to tweet

If you are in the search for silver linings, one benefit of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pointlessly continuing his losing campaign is the freedom for Democrats to denounce him and his anti-party escapades. After years of humoring him, the vast majority of Democrats, from super-progressives to moderates, can now say out loud what they’ve said quietly: It has always been about Bernie. It’s not a movement, but rather a vanity project. ....

The problem, according to many Democrats, remains that 15 percent of Sanders supporters say in polling that they would vote for President Trump over Biden. This nugget actually makes the opposite argument: There is nothing that would satisfy some faction of the Sanders coalition that would rather blow up our democracy and reelect Trump. With people so irrational, the best response is to ignore them. They, like the MAGA-hat crowd, are unreachable and cannot be bargained with (e.g., more New Green Deal talk!). So do not try. No more outreach to Sanders, no more promised policy modifications, no more speaking slot at the convention. Enough

This would have some salutary effects.

First, it would make perfectly clear that Biden is not Sanders and not a crazy left-winger, as Trump would like to paint him in the campaign. Biden makes a sharp distinction between the “democratic socialist” crowd and his own brand of center-left politics. Since he cannot get the 15 percent of “Bernie or Bust” Democrats (or independents), he might as well make a strong play for moderate independents and disaffected Republicans. Cutting Sanders off effectively allows Biden to pitch to gettable swing voters, not waste time on unattainable Bernie Bros.

Second, freezing out Sanders will make governance in a Biden administration much easier and more cohesive. There will be no debt to be paid to Sanders, no advisers taken on to satisfy Sanders, and no weird and distracting policy initiatives to lead the new administration astray. This would be a center-left administration confident of its own governing agenda — and personally cohesive.

Third, it would free up constructive, smart progressive leaders such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to lead that wing of the party. She has already begun that process, contributing bankruptcy and student loan forgiveness plans to the Biden campaign. With a practical, crafty progressive in the Senate (hopefully in the majority and able to lead on legislation), Biden would be able to broaden his appeal and cultivate allies in the Warren wing of the party.

In other words, shoving Sanders offstage opens up room for party builders and party reformers, putting aside unattainable proposals (e.g., Medicare-for-all) in favor of a smarter, more broadly acceptable agenda. (Biden would not need to fend off a Warren primary challenge, as Barack Obama did with Sanders in 2012.)

The party is never going to make the 15% to 25% of sanders supporters happy. 25% of sanders supporters either voted for trump, voted for a third party candidate like Stein or stayed home

Link to tweet

I am tired of trying to appease sanders supporters who are not going to be happy and there are real benefits in moving on and ignoring these voters.

[OnDoutside]

24. Yes, and everything you give into voters who will not vote for you anyway, you lose voters who DO

vote, on the Independent and moderate Republican end.