What did you think about Bernie’s declining to reveal his tax returns, despite the several times in 2016 he said he would do so?
Follow-up: would you be fine with him declining to do so again?
(If this is too personal, I apologize-- I am genuinely interested in the attitude Bernie fans have on this topic. If you don’t care to offer your own reactions, perhaps you have information you could share on what other Bernie fans have said about his choice not to release returns.)
I hope Sanders releases his tax returns and would be moderately disappointed if he doesn’t but all things considered it is a minor issue in the whole scheme of things.
By whom? If you were paying attention, Bernie Sanders developed a reputation over a fifteen year period by being the only one on any talk show who knew what he was talking about. He was the only articulate person who could tell the truth without one iota of bovine scatology. He didn’t rush to run for president out of a fit of vanity. He was drafted - by us. *We *talked him into running. If you’re saying November 2016 I find it difficult to believe you’re up to speed on the subject about which you’ve chosen to post.
And I’m wondering what’s behind your use of this pejorative term “dopers”, as though you’re referring to a social class, or a nudge-nudge wink-wink “We all know” inference here.
I see, you *DID *miss the boat. None of Bernie’s ideas were “unorthodox” at the time he was saying them aloud. We were amazed that someone had finally come out and SAID IT when we first heard him, and were just continuing to enjoy hearing him speak the truth for better than a decade.
Again, you miss the point. Bernie isn’t working a niche. He’s solidly in the mainstream. I guess you don’t recall a number of PO-ed Bernie voters voted for Trump out of spite for the Democrats who did what they could to torpedo Bernie’s candidacy.
You could seriously ask that after watching what’s in the White House now?
The brothers and sisters with whom I speak say Bernie was an unknown to them then. He isn’t now.
It might behoove you to study a bit more before going off authoritatively about something of which you have but scant understanding.
“Dopers” is not a perjorative. This is the Straight Dope Message Board – we call each other Dopers.
Huh? He asked questions to spark a discussion. Not sure what you’re responding to. Many threads are started by asking questions in order to see what other posters think. He didn’t make any “authoritative” statements.
Its a problem, I’m guessing he took advantage of some tax loopholes that he criticizes other people for using. Has he released any other than his 2014 returns?
No, I wouldn’t be fine with him doing it again, but I don’t know if that alone is enough to make me vote for someone else. There were some things Hillary Clinton and Obama did that I didn’t agree with, but I still voted for them.
He spoke in my town in late 2014, in (of all places) an auditorium at the hospital that held about 200 people, and it was SRO. 
I remember coming home and stating on Facebook, “This guy cannot be our next president. He’s too honest.”
I don’t remember any specifics, except he prefaced the Q&A by stating that he was not going to take any questions about abortion or gun control.
Its been less than a day and I’ve already seen several Dem blue mark twitter accounts tearing each other a new asshole over Bernie.
IF one gives the option of “undecided” his support goes down to 9%. Undecided runs away with it at 48%! Biden is next closest at 12% with Harris close behind at 11%. That 9% is likely solid, but how much of that 48% will he get? I’m guessing not much.
And FWIW this same result also justifies a conclusion that Biden’s early polling advantage don’t mean much either.
Brought up in the Klobuchar/Harris thread - but why don’t the charges of Sanders as an abusive boss get the same attention as Klobuchar’s? They should. Managing people is a key part of the needed skillset.
For what? That nobody bothered to attack him in 2016? Or that there was plenty of material available if someone did?
The former is obvious; for the latter, I’ve forgotten all the goodies that popped up in blogland at the time, but IIRC, Bernie’s got a track record of traveling to hang out with bona fide Communist leaders and stuff like that. I remember thinking that it would hardly take the right-wing noise machine to demonize Bernie; I could have done it with a few million, easily.
She cleared the field on the basis of having raised a shit-ton of money, and having the party establishment behind her as well.
She’s also the only Dem runnerup in recent memory who’s been the nominee the next cycle. John Edwards was the runnerup in 2004. He did worse in 2008, even before his affair came to light. Bill Bradley was the runnerup in 2000; he didn’t even try in 2004. Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown were Bill Clinton’s main rivals for the nomination in 1992; where were they in 2000? Jesse Jackson was the runnerup in 1988; where was he in 1992? Gary Hart was the runnerup in 1984; he managed to self-destruct in 1987, and was a nonfactor in 1988. Ted Kennedy was the runnerup in 1980; didn’t bother in 1984.
IOW, there’s no pattern here of there being an ‘it’s his turn’ deal, the way there is on the GOP side. Just one putative instance that can easily be attributed to more obvious factors.
I think you’ve addressed Bernie’s challenge. In 2016, he was an underdog challenger fighting Hillary’s inevitability. He also positioned himself as being the guy who could take liberalism in a new direction, which Hillary was reluctant to do.
But now there are non-white candidates who aren’t ‘inevitable’ and they espouse some of the same positions he has.
Well, I’m not counting out anybody who has the kind of passionate, vociferous supporters that Sanders has attracted, along with a fundraising list and machinery that is second to none. Also, when there are a dozen serious candidates, it’s hard to predict what will happen.
But I think it’s gonna be an uphill battle. As others have said, he attracted two kinds of voters in 2016: progressives and never-Hillaries. There are other progressives in the race, Warren for sure, Harris and Booker positioning themselves that way, and of course everybody in the race isn’t Hillary.
More to the point, perhaps, Sanders was the candidate of straight white guys in 2016. Overall he won 41-42% of the vote, but just 37% of women, 34% of gays and lesbians, 23% of African Americans. Obviously there are a ton of straight white guys among the Democratic electorate (and independents who will vote in open primary states). But there are many more voters who are NOT straight white guys. I don’t see that Sanders has done anything since '16 to broaden that support.
And then there’s his age. He’d be 87 when his second term ended. I think that’s going to be tough for a lot of voters.
I don’t know. Maybe the non-straight white guy vote is split so many different ways that Sanders’s core support and fundraising ability wins him both Iowa and New Hampshire. Maybe Warren drops out and Booker drops out and Harris says something dumb and Sanders winds up winning California and next thing you know he’s well out in front. It could happen. But I think it’s more likely that whatever happens in IA and NH he hits a buzzsaw in South Carolina and doesn’t recover. At what point he’d drop out, if any, is another question entirely…
Bernie can still rouse people to action very quickly. In 4 hours, he had already gotten 42,000 people responding with donations.
By the end of the day Tuesday, the day he announced his candidacy, he had 120,000 people responding with over $3.3M in donations.
That’s good for fundraising, but it’s also good for getting a pulse on the people who want to see him elected.
The figures I’ve heard are somewhere around 80-95% of Bernie voters voted for Hillary in the general election. Seeing how Sanders got 13 million votes, that means anywhere from 600k-2.6 million votes were lost for Clinton in 2016.
But anyway, the ‘never-Hillary’ types exist. I’ve met them. But I think there’s 2 types of them. One would be the socially conservative-economically liberal type (aka reagan democrats). The others are hardcore progressives who feel anything other than Bernie wasn’t worth voting for. But evenso, both groups combined at most came to 1/5 of Bernies voters, hopefully a smaller number.
But anyway, when it comes to democratic primary there are 2 major groups of voters:
Bernie had the white liberal vote locked, but Hillary had the black voters locked.
There are obviously other groups, but these 2 groups, combined, probably make up 75%+ of democratic primary voters.
For a wide range of reasons, Bernie never connected with the black community. I don’t know if he will have that same problem this time around. However, if Bernie maintains his lock on the white liberal vote (they do not abandon him for Harris or Warren or someone else like that) and if the black vote is split between multiple candidates, then I could easily see Sanders winning.
Okay, let’s concentrate on just Elizabeth Warren. How many votes is she going to draw from 2016 Sanders supporters?
And if Bernie doesn’t get the nomination, how many of his supporters will sit out the general election? The Democrats might not love him as much this time around.
I like Warren. She has well fleshed out policy ideas. Her ideas for subsidized daycare and ACA 2.0 are both good plans for example.
My concern with her is that being a good president and a good politician aren’t the same. JFK was a good politician, not a very good president. LBJ was an excellent president, mediocre politician.
Warren strikes me as an unremarkable politician. I don’t know if she can build a coalition of 65+ million voters in the right states to beat Trump. I’d love to be wrong though.
But I think Warren could pull some support from Sanders. But IMO, she is the only real threat to Sander’s lock on the liberal vote.
Also Bernie should’ve done more to promote Hillary in 2016. If he pouts again if he loses, I think a lot of his supporters will be quite upset. The vast majority of liberals would rather have an imperfect democrat over Trump. In the long run, it may be better for Trump to have won (because Trump energized the democratic base and made people realize how important voting is). But if Hillary had won we wouldn’t have all these judges, and we wouldn’t have a tax cut on the rich. Also the world would still respect us.
But on the subject of policy, it really doesn’t matter. I doubt the democrats control both houses of congress in 2021, and even if we do I doubt we do anything productive with it.
This:
followed shortly by:
is comedy gold. Can we expect more of the same?
Sanders / Nader
“We’ll see What we can do” - slogan. 
Bernie is being way under-estimated in this thread.
My biggest problem with Bernie is that after 40 years in congress he has no real accomplishments and no foreign policy experience. While I agree with a lot of his message he comes across as someone who has no idea how to implement his agenda.