Anyone who was paying attention knows that Sanders spent the fall of 2016 campaigning his ass off for Clinton. I’m not sure why you think people will be fooled by an assertion that’s so easy to fact check.
I have no idea why that rule was adopted. Every news story I have ever seen about it is careful to clarify in the first few paragraphs that the DNC claims it wasn’t directed at Bernie, which leaves me mystified as to what the reason for it might be.
But now that he has declared his candidacy officially, I’m sure the DNC will now step in to demand that he sign such a letter. Do please let us know when that happens.
:rolleyes: Did he or did he not continue to campaign, continuing to attack the party’s (not his party’s) nominee well after the issue was decided? Yes, he did. Did that damage her chances in November? Of fucking course.
538’s take on him is ‘high floor, low ceiling.’ So it’s a question of whether getting 15-20% in most primaries through Super Tuesday leaves him among the contenders, or effectively weeds him out.
This seems right to me. I suspect his most plausible route to the nomination would look something like Trump’s in 2016, where he has only a minority of the vote but his supporters are unshakable, and thus he wins or finishes second repeatedly over a divided field that collectively gets more votes than him but never coalesces around a single opponent.
Fortunately, though, the Democratic primaries are run differently and more, well, democratically, than the Republican ones. Delegates are allotted proportionally rather than winner-take-all, so if you get 30% of the votes, even if you come in first in every State, you’re not going to get more than about 30% of the delegates. If nobody wins a majority, it will have to be hashed out at the convention.
I get that, but if he finishes first in every state then he’s gonna be the nominee even without a pure delegate majority walking into the convention. There are clearly major differences between the Democratic and Republican primary approaches, but I don’t really think that party unity could survive disregarding consistent victories like that. Whether Bernie can accomplish that sort of feat at the end of the day, I have my doubts, but it could happen I guess.
It’s very sad that you feel this way. Bernie’s northern-European/Canadian-style socialism is a much, much lesser threat to America than the promotion of hate and white supremacism that Trump represents. The latter has always been, and still is, by far the greatest threat to America and Americans.
These are specific criticisms of Sanders: that he supported the idea that the election had been rigged by the DNC against him, and that he stayed in the race after it was clear he had no mathematical chance of winning.
On the “rigged” accusation: though he later did make appearances and tweet in support of Clinton, it’s also true that when the topic of the DNC rigging things against him came up (in connection with accusations by Donna Brazile that it was rigged), he did NOT say it wasn’t true:
So despite whatever else he may have said or done later, Sanders had a clear opportunity to say ‘no, the election was not rigged against me’----and he chose not to take it. It’s fair to criticize him for that choice.
Two more specific charges against Sanders. Note that these are not personal insults—they are observations about positions Sanders holds.
And those specific observations are here labeled “vitriol.”
That’s unjustified. It violates the definition of “vitriol.”
…For the next twenty-one months, feelings are going to run high. I hope we can all remember that forces hoping to keep Trump and Trumpism in power will be doing everything possible to get us to do things such as label specific observations about policy positions as “vitriol” and worse. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we thwarted those efforts?
My 19yo son contributed $27 within minutes of Bernie’s announcement, and agreed to automatically contribute $6.60 a month (suggested by the site—presumably an A/B tested ask based on his being a teenage college student?). I have several FB friends who gave a lot more. They held back from Warren, and her money has come in at a relative trickle.
I think Bernie has some juice. I want almost anyone else as nominee, but I have to acknowledge him as a formidable contender.