# 2016 Bernie Sanders (D-VT) campaign for POTUS thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [April 28, 2015, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754 "2015-04-28T22:40:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 71
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1401 "2016-05-19T16:28:31Z")
Andrew O’Hehir: [Yes, Bernie’s waging war on the Democratic Party — but if Hillary loses, it won’t be his fault.](http://www.salon.com/2016/05/18/yes_bernies_waging_war_on_the_democratic_party_but_if_hillary_loses_it_wont_be_his_fault/) > [@](#): > > Sanders and his campaign operatives can count. They know that Hillary Clinton is less than 100 delegates away from securing the necessary majority, and that the mathematical possibility behind their last-ditch strategy — finishing about even with Clinton in pledged delegates, and then convincing hundreds of superdelegates to switch sides — has all but disappeared. Sanders knows he will not be the 2016 nominee. He is trying to channel the passion and anger of his supporters into a forceful role at the Philadelphia convention, and then into a different and more open Democratic Party in the years ahead. > > Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein have a point, up to a point: Sanders is using the threat of a discordant and contentious convention to try to break down the walls of the Democratic Party fortress they have constructed, and bring an end to their power. But when they shriek and throw up their hands and say that if we don’t have immediate and unquestioned “party unity” we will get 1968 and President Donald Trump and the opening of the Seventh Seal, that’s disingenuous in the extreme. > > As has been widely observed during this race, the 2008 contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was at least as bitter and vitriolic as the Clinton-Sanders race, although there was considerably less ideological distance between the candidates. I have previously observed that there is no historical correlation between a bitterly disputed primary contest and what happens in November; citing 1968 is no more than fearmongering. Consider 1992, when former (and present) California governor Jerry Brown — perhaps the closest Sanders-cognate of all recent Democratic dissidents — ran clear to the end against Bill Clinton and went to the New York convention with almost 600 delegates, ensuring himself a speaking spot. Brown hated Clinton’s guts and viewed him as a shameless phony (and should get some credit for getting that right). He _never_ endorsed Clinton — not at the convention, not during the fall campaign and not at any other time. Remind me how the absence of “party unity” destroyed those Democratic nominees? > > Every general-election campaign is its own animal, largely determined by its own internal dynamics and by unpredictable news memes or twists of fate. Think of Richard Nixon sweating unpleasantly or Michael Dukakis in that tank (looking, observed David Brinkley, like Rocket J. Squirrel); think of the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry, or the fallout from Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks. This year’s Clinton-Trump campaign will also pivot on unknowable unknowns, but one thing I feel sure about is that they’ll have nothing to do with how a few enraged Sanders supporters misbehaved in May. ---
**Author:** ![Nonsuch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nonsuch/32/2922_2.png) [@Nonsuch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nonsuch)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1402 "2016-05-19T17:29:17Z")
Not sure how much open to debate this still was, but Bernie’s core support is quite definitely [the young, and not the working class as a whole](http://www.vox.com/2016/5/19/11649054/bernie-sanders-working-class-base): > [@](#): > > Low-income white people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s did not break for Sanders. There was little difference in support by income among older voters, with higher-income older white voters actually more likely to support Sanders, according to Grossmann’s Michigan data. > > “My main concern is that the image of Bernie-supporting older poor people who’ve lost their factory jobs to trade is not supported,” Grossmann says. “I’m least supportive of the idea that there’s a population of white, older workers who lost their jobs and are now supporting Sanders. There’s very little evidence of that.” ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1403 "2016-05-19T19:40:10Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Andrew O’Hehir: [Yes, Bernie’s waging war on the Democratic Party — but if Hillary loses, it won’t be his fault.](http://www.salon.com/2016/05/18/yes_bernies_waging_war_on_the_democratic_party_but_if_hillary_loses_it_wont_be_his_fault/) > > > [@](#): > > > > …This year’s Clinton-Trump campaign will also pivot on unknowable unknowns, but one thing I feel sure about is that they’ll have nothing to do with how a few enraged Sanders supporters misbehaved in May. O’Hehir is being either naïve or disingenuous: footage of rioting Sanders supporters will certainly be employed by the GOP to argue for the “law and order” that Trump and down-ticket Republicans will purportedly guarantee. ‘Look \*at what Democrats are like–think about what voting for a Democrat will mean for your safety and the safety of your children’ \*will be the theme. Fascist candidates always do well when there is video of rioters to deploy; ask Richard Nixon, who did well off exploiting fear, with late-60s riots and the August 1968 Democratic National Convention clashes getting plenty of television coverage. Any violence that Sanders supporters have committed or will commit on camera, will certainly be exploited by the GOP. (The same would be true of violence committed on camera by _Clinton_ supporters, of course. If any occurs.) ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1404 "2016-05-19T19:54:54Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Andrew O’Hehir: [Yes, Bernie’s waging war on the Democratic Party — but if Hillary loses, it won’t be his fault.](http://www.salon.com/2016/05/18/yes_bernies_waging_war_on_the_democratic_party_but_if_hillary_loses_it_wont_be_his_fault/) That’s the latest mantra that Bernie Sanders and his fanatics are chanting to themselves. They’re going to do what they can to smear her over the next few weeks, then take their war to the floor of the convention, and make Philadelphia in 2016 look like Chicago in 1968. Bernie can make the entire progressive movement look bad in the same way that he made the Trump campaign look bad when he sent his goons to Chicago to basically bait people into fights, which was the low point in Trump’s campaign. They’re gonna do the same to Hillary, like bums off the street coming in to crash a house party and leaving the hosts to clean up the piss and shit. Before that, Sanders is going to around claiming that the reason they’re losing is because the Democratic party is rigging the election. It won’t matter if Bernie Sanders actually loses races - it probably never did. Any race that Bernie loses is "rigged’. Just like the economy. And they’re just as convinced that the Democratic party deserves to be punished and deserves to lose for rigging the system against the chosen one. Bernie Sanders’ campaign isn’t a campaign. It’s a cult. If he succeeds in helping the republicans win, my voting from now on will probably be based on doing whatever I can to help both parties - republicans and democrats - politically crush the extreme left. Extremism is a goddamn curse on this country and left wing extremism is no better than that of the right. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1405 "2016-05-19T21:00:10Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > Bolted to the floor, I hope. BOOM goes the dynamite! Well played, sir. > [@elucidator](#): > > Even given that we have so little chance against a party with the wisdom and intelligence to nominate Donald Trump, would you mind if we at least go through the motions of some sort of resistance? Heh, nice post/SN match. > [@foolsguinea](#): > > At which point he would largely lose credibility. The Anyone But Clinton vote–pro-labor, anti-free-trade, anti-war, Occupy-sympathetic, ideologically progressive and sick to death of being taken for granted and sold out every time–really isn’t about him; rather he is a vehicle for it. This is true, IME, for only a smallish subset of Bernie backers (including my own mother). Most of his largely young following did not come into this cycle with an axe to grind against Hillary. In fact, as of a year or two ago, she was kind of in the hip, buzzy realm of “the notorious RBG”, thanks to the Tumblr “Texts from Hillary”. It is the Bernie campaign–with help from its older members who have been nursing this anti-Clinton animus for some time–that has engendered the antipathy among the young. Thanks for that. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1406 "2016-05-19T22:07:13Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > Bernie Sanders’ campaign isn’t a campaign. It’s a cult. If he succeeds in helping the republicans win, my voting from now on will probably be based on doing whatever I can to help both parties - republicans and democrats - politically crush the extreme left. Extremism is a goddamn curse on this country and left wing extremism is no better than that of the right. :rolleyes: Oh, what shameless nonsense! Bernie & Co. ain’t even the **extreme** left – that’s those Communist and Trotskyist and Maoist parties that show up on the ballot now and then and never win anything. The Sanders faction is more analogous to Canada’s New Democrats, or a national-level Working Families Party, and neither is “extreme” by any reasonable view, and certainly in no way equivalent to the hard-right in evil or madness or stupidity. There’s a great gaping whole out there in American politics, to the right of the Commies but to the left of the DLC/Third Way/Neoliberals, and representing tens of millions of progressives, and it urgently **needs** to be filled. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1407 "2016-05-19T22:30:48Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > …There’s a great gaping whole out there in American politics, to the right of the Commies but to the left of the DLC/Third Way/Neoliberals, and representing tens of millions of progressives, and it urgently **needs** to be filled. Not if it bases its interactions on a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1408 "2016-05-19T23:31:23Z")
It doesn’t even have an identity, how can it have habits? Though, it is true that the tone has changed ever since the militant wing of extreme Unitarians came on board. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1409 "2016-05-19T23:52:30Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > :rolleyes: Oh, what shameless nonsense! Bernie & Co. ain’t even the **extreme** left – that’s those Communist and Trotskyist and Maoist parties that show up on the ballot now and then and never win anything. The Sanders faction is more analogous to Canada’s New Democrats, or a national-level Working Families Party, and neither is “extreme” by any reasonable view, and certainly in no way equivalent to the hard-right in evil or madness or stupidity. There’s a great gaping whole out there in American politics, to the right of the Commies but to the left of the DLC/Third Way/Neoliberals, and representing tens of millions of progressives, and it urgently **needs** to be filled. His specific policies aren’t extremist. The zealotry of some of his followers is, and so his “I’m the only progressive candidate” and “This campaign is your only hope” nonsense. That’s why I for one could not continue supporting him, even though I’m slightly closer ideologically to Bernie than Hillary. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1410 "2016-05-20T00:16:37Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Even given that we have so little chance against a party with the wisdom and intelligence to nominate Donald Trump, would you mind if we at least go through the motions of some sort of resistance? You had your chance. Absent a total blowout for Bernie in California, it’s over. Hillary was never electable. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1411 "2016-05-20T00:24:50Z")
Bernie isn’t the man to carry the ball, but we didn’t know the ball _could_ be carried, much less needed to be! Hillary isn’t going to ignore the progressive left, she’ll start thinking about her re-election chances the second her hand raises up from the Koran at the swearing in. You want to hear some words you’re gonna hear a lot more? “Small donors”. Words you will hear less? “Citizens United”. Chirp, chirp, the early birds that arise just before dawn… ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1412 "2016-05-20T00:34:21Z")
> [@Sherrerd](#): > > O’Hehir is being either naïve or disingenuous: footage of rioting Sanders supporters will certainly be employed by the GOP to argue for the “law and order” that Trump and down-ticket Republicans will purportedly guarantee. ‘Look \*at what Democrats are like–think about what voting for a Democrat will mean for your safety and the safety of your children’ \*will be the theme. > > Fascist candidates always do well when there is video of rioters to deploy; ask Richard Nixon, who did well off exploiting fear, with late-60s riots and the August 1968 Democratic National Convention clashes getting plenty of television coverage. > > Any violence that Sanders supporters have committed or will commit on camera, will certainly be exploited by the GOP. (The same would be true of violence committed on camera by _Clinton_ supporters, of course. If any occurs.) Except there is, as TYT keeps repeating, no actual footage of rioting Sanders supporters. So the media will have to make something up. Something\* Democrats \*are helping them do now. So, are Democrats trying to lose, or are they trying to win with Hillary by painting both Sanders & Trump as the candidate of “evil violent males”? Unclear. However, your K’Dickian implication that it is 1968 forever and Dick Nixon can never lose against the hippies worries me. I don’t know whether to thank you for supporting my thesis that the Democratic Party is toast, or say that your near-agreement fills me with self-doubt. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1413 "2016-05-20T00:39:47Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > :rolleyes: Oh, what shameless nonsense! Bernie & Co. ain’t even the **extreme** left – that’s those Communist and Trotskyist and Maoist parties that show up on the ballot now and then and never win anything. The Sanders faction is more analogous to Canada’s New Democrats, or a national-level Working Families Party, and neither is “extreme” by any reasonable view, and certainly in no way equivalent to the hard-right in evil or madness or stupidity. There’s a great gaping whole out there in American politics, to the right of the Commies but to the left of the DLC/Third Way/Neoliberals, and representing tens of millions of progressives, and it urgently **needs** to be filled. It’s nice to know, isn’t it, that a century later, there are still good Yankee souls willing to break out the sort of over-the-top rhetoric used against Eugene Debs and the labor movement? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1414 "2016-05-20T01:59:52Z")
> [@Knorf](#): > > His specific policies aren’t extremist. The zealotry of some of his followers is, and so his “I’m the only progressive candidate” and “This campaign is your only hope” nonsense. That’s why I for one could not continue supporting him, even though I’m slightly closer ideologically to Bernie than Hillary. This is a key insight, which cannot be repeated enough. Bernie’s proposals are liberal, in some cases slightly more liberal than Hillary’s proposals, which are also liberal. But Bernie and his supporters carry on as though she is miles over to the right from him. It’s obvious that the Republicans are way to the right of Hillary, so if we were to take the Bernie crowd’s statements at face value, we would have to assume they are extremely far to the left. Now, I think it’s pretty clear from his past that in his heart of hearts, Bernie really is a radical leftist. But he has decided to make some accommodation to political reality. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1415 "2016-05-20T02:01:39Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > You had your chance. Absent a total blowout for Bernie in California, it’s over. Hillary was never electable. _Hillary?_😕 ---
**Author:** ![Nonsuch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nonsuch/32/2922_2.png) [@Nonsuch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nonsuch)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1416 "2016-05-20T04:20:08Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > _Hillary?_😕 Sanderites believe the current polls that say Sanders outperforms Clinton against Trump in a general election. Evidently allowing opinion polls to dictate your decisions is only bad when a Clinton does it. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1417 "2016-05-20T08:20:57Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Now, I think it’s pretty clear from his past that in his heart of hearts, Bernie really is a radical leftist. But he has decided to make some accommodation to political reality. Indeed. His campaign policies this cycle haven’t been ideologically extremist, but I wouldn’t put it past him to be something other than what his campaign represents. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1418 "2016-05-20T15:43:09Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > Not if it bases its interactions on a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude. And why is it that the Clinton/Obama Establishment is always ready to compromise with the right but takes a “my way or the highway” attitude with progressives? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1419 "2016-05-20T15:45:20Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Now, I think it’s pretty clear from his past that in his heart of hearts, Bernie really is a radical leftist. But he has decided to make some accommodation to political reality. > [@Knorf](#): > > Indeed. His campaign policies this cycle haven’t been ideologically extremist, but I wouldn’t put it past him to be something other than what his campaign represents. :rolleyes: Well, at least we know what Clinton is and ain’t. She’s whatever the polls say they want and she has no other “heart of hearts.” ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/1420 "2016-05-20T15:46:14Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > And why is it that the Clinton/Obama Establishment is always ready to compromise with the right but takes a “my way or the highway” attitude with progressives? I think you misread the post you were quoting. It was criticizing the “my way or the highway” attitude on the _Bernie_ side. Hillary has tried to compromise with that faction, but she just gets criticized for “stealing” Bernie’s issues. :rolleyes: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754.md?page=70) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754.md?page=72)