But it’s not “toeing the party line”. It’s voting the right way. I don’t know if you’ve looked it up, but Sanders is among the most reliable votes on Dem initiatives. I see no hypocrisy in his side pointing out that the “real” Democrat candidate is less reliable.
The article cited by Heffalump and Roo did use the phrase “voting against his own party’s positions,” so yes, I do think that it is being framed as an issue of toeing the party line. Which again, I do think is an odd thing (I didn’t say hypocritical, just odd) for someone who isn’t a member of the party to highlight.
I’m sure that Sanders is a pretty reliable voter for the sorts of things that Schumer and Co. want him to vote for, by the way. I wonder what the overall “spread” among candidates is, though. If we’re talking about most-votes-opposing-Trump, then I believe the “winner” among presidential candidates in the Senate is Gillibrand–but by how much, I have no idea.
I also wonder about the value of an aggregate figure such as “30%,” which may simply reflect genuine regional/demographic differences even among party loyalists. Sanders’s record on guns, for example, has not been especially in line with the rest of the Democratic party, and that’s at least in part a result of representing a state with a high rate of gun ownership. That he is perhaps more Ted Cruz than Elizabeth Warren where guns are concerned may just indicate that Democrats in Vermont do not hold the same views on guns as Democrats in many other areas of the country. Blue state/red state doesn’t mean lockstep; there are other considerations too.
Didn’t a large chunk of Bernie bros vote for Trump in retaliation for the DNC snubbing Sanders for Clinton?
A large chunk of people identifying as “Bernie bros” didn’t vote for anyone, by virtue of being citizens of Russia, rather than the US. Another large chunk of them would have voted for Trump anyway, regardless of who the Democratic nominee was (including Sanders). But the vast majority of Americans who actually supported Sanders voted for Clinton over Trump.
No, I don’t think it does. I don’t see any reason for the Sanders’ campaign to be worried about Beto’s campaign. The polls still show Bernie way ahead.
The Sirota article was written in Dec. 2018, before any of the Presidential candidates announced their candidacy. It was written long before Sirota was added to Sanders’ staff.
If anything, The Atlantic article was trying to bash Sanders because that was written this month. Someone from The Atlantic pulled that article from Dec. 2018 to try to make a point.
Sirota wouldn’t have written the article about anyone else because no one else (except possibly Klobuchar) was close to Beto’s record of voting with Trump. But Klobuchar has been pretty open about being a moderate, so it wouldn’t probably surprise anyone if her score was high. At the time, Beto was claiming to be more of a Progressive, so that score was more surprising. Since then, he’s changed positions on a few things.
Sirota wasn’t writing the article on behalf of Sanders. Even then, Sanders’ record is less than half of Beto’s.
You can check it out for yourself. The link goes to Beto O’Rourke’s record, but you can put any legislator’s name in the search box in the top right and you can find their career record with the last two sessions broken out. Then there are some stats on the side to help determine the expected rate, but I’m not sure how those work.
I was curious about some of the Presidential candidates, so I did a quick search on them. These are their career totals. In his research, Sirota accounted for the regional differences and determined that the 30% was high for the level of blue in Beto’s area. Of the Presidential candidates, no one except perhaps Amy Klobuchar comes close to Beto’s record for voting with Trump.
Beto O’Rourke 30.1%
Amy Klobuchar 29.8% (only 10% in 116th Congress)
Kirsten Gillibrand 11.7%
Elizabeth Warren 12.8%
Kamala Harris 17.0%
Cory Booker 14.9%
Bernie Sanders 14.0%
Tbh, not worried that a Texas Democrat voted more with conservative initiatives than non-Texas Democrats did. Even if he did so more than what one would “expect” for his district… so? It’s fuckin’ Texas, guys and gals.
Beto O’Rourke 30.1%
Al Green (D-Tx) 15%
Joacquin Castro (D-Tx) 16.2%
Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tx) 14.3%
Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Tx) 15.2%
Marc Veasey (D-Tx) 19.1%
Filemon Vela (D-Tx) 20.4%
Lloyd Doggett (D-Tx) 13.4%
Vicente Gonzalez (D-Tx) 29.5%
Henry Cuellar (D-Tx) 58.4%
There’s only one Democrat in Texas who voted more with Trump than Beto O’Rourke, according to that site and that statistic. The Justice Democrats have already committed to primary Henry Cuellar, the Democrat who voted most with Trump from Texas. The other Texas Democrats are more in line with other Democrats.
Thanks for the stats. Interesting that Gillibrand does seem to have the lowest percentage, just as her campaign claims.
Regarding Sirota–I would suggest reading the electoral-vote blurb on him I linked to earlier, if you haven’t already. The link again: ElectoralVote.
Anyway, one concern is that the “30%” article may have been written when Sirota actually WAS working for the Sanders campaign, though pretending not to be. It seems clear that Sirota actually joined the campaign at least a month before he “officially” did so, and quite possibly as early as last fall–that is, before this article was published. As my source says, “Sirota was producing content for some period of time that was presented as the work of a third-party outsider, but was actually the work of a campaign insider. That’s somewhat unethical.”
Bottom line to me: together with the anti-O’Rourke statements we’re seeing here on this board from people who seem to be backing Sanders (“incels,” really??) and the reports of other posters of similar behavior from supposed Sanders backers on social media, an anti-O’Rourke article by Sirota suggests that the campaign really is trying to attack O’Rourke above all other current candidates. Obviously, your mileage varies, and that’s fine. I’d just ask that you not be too quick to assume that an article by Sirota published last December is entirely independent of the concerns of the Sanders campaign.
Yawn. I live in Castro’s district and he could shoot somebody on Guadelupe Avenue and his seat would be safe.
“Beto is more ‘conservative’ than other Texas Democrats” adds to his appeal as a national candidate - it doesn’t detract from it.
A voting record which aligns with your party 70% of the time is a non-issue. Stop trying to make it one.
I wasn’t trying to make it an issue. When you posted that Texas Democrats vote more conservative than non-Texas Democrats, I got curious about the voting record of Texas Democrats, so I looked it up.
Whether voting more with Trump than other Democrats adds to his appeal, I’ll leave up to the elections.
I am getting so fed up with Bernie backers I encounter on social media. They constantly drag Beto and the DNC (and STILL, for some reason, Hillary Clinton) with unabashedly excoriating verbiage. Fans of other candidates should toughen up and not be so sensitive about insults like “corporatist” and “empty suit”, but it’s high dudgeon time if Bernie is insulted. “Bernie derangement syndrome”, they call it.
When I confront them on this double standard, they never have a response. The only conclusion I can draw is that Bernie followers really do feel, when it comes down to it, that their guy is pure as the driven snow, that unlike the “empty suit” corporatists, he is Good and Right and Speaking the Truth, while the others are dodgy, corrupt, typical politicians. So of course it’s okay to disparage them! They are trying to sleaze their typical politician way to the nomination, which might jeopardize Bernie’s chances. So they Must Be Destroyed. Scorched earth!
But My Goodness, if you are a True Progressive, how could you possibly THINK of saying anything negative about our Dear Leader? How could you set back The Cause this way? :dubious:
Cosigned. One of these Bernie-loving Beto bashers posted an anti-Beto hit piece on my timeline and pulled a quote about how Beto is a “masterful politician”. This was intended as an insult! :smack: Goodness gracious, we certainly wouldn’t want to nominate a “masterful politician” to attempt to oust an incumbent president when gas prices and the unemployment rate are low. Another accusation was that Beto might hold different positions in private than he expresses in public! Oh, the horror. :rolleyes:
Is it true this guy served dirt and feces to his wife? Also he was live-streaming a dentist visit? Is this what’s hot in the streets nowadays?
FTR, that “livestreaming his dental cleaning” trope about Beto is basically fake news. He showed his mouth for context for maybe a second or two, and then the whole point was interviewing his hygienist, a Latina immigrant, about border issues.
Political purity tests are so goddamn nauseating.
O’Rourke’s bump in the Morning Consult poll was decidedly meh: He went from 7 percent in the poll the week before his March 14 announcement to 8 percent in the poll the week after. Other polls, however, showed larger gains … Overall, it appears as though O’Rourke has gotten a smaller bump than Sanders and Kamala Harris, but larger than that of other candidates. However, a pair of The Economist/YouGov polls … had disappointing news: O’Rourke’s net favorability rating … among Democrats fell from +45 points before his announcement to +40 after it, although the changes were within the margin of error.
IMO Bernie Sanders is one of the reasons why Trump won. Sanders polarized his voters against Clinton for too long so there wasn’t enough time for the Dems to recognize that with this infight, they were shooting their own foot and allow the other party’s candidate to win the electoral vote.
Yes I am aware that Hillary is not a likeable person for many. But what did they get?
Cory Booker was Mayor of Newark (New Jersey’s largest city) where he enjoyed great success. Amy Klobuchar was County Attorney of Minnesota’s largest county. Kamala Harris was District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco and then the California Attorney General. Even Bernie Sanders was Mayor of his state’s largest city. All four of these are members of the United States Senate, the U.S.'s Upper House.
Beto O’Rourke was city councilman for El Paso’s District 8, with a population less than South Bend, Indiana. His claim to fame was rich and connected parents who let him fail at several “careers” before settling on lower-house Representative from a District which has chosen a Democrat in every election but one since its creation 117 years ago.
Is yours just some kind of joke?
His wiki says his mom owned a furniture store and his dad was a county judge. Maybe connected but doesn’t sound particularly rich.
He defeated an incumbent in the primary, no easy task and something AOC has been feted for in an even bluer district. And he came within 2.6 points of defeating a Republican incumbent in a Senate race, when other recent Senate races in Texas were double digit wins for the Republican candidate.