This is real dumb. The article–and a handful of other rightwing hit-pieces along the same lines–are based on a line from a late-night show, immediately following which he talked about possibly “planepooling” with Klobuchar and Warren.
Modern campaigning involves keeping a grueling schedule of going from event to event. It’s not possible to keep a modern campaign schedule using commercial airflight, much less eschewing air travel entirely.
The complaint boils down to, Ha ha, Sanders refuses to torpedo his campaign in order to hold to our misunderstanding of his principles! It’s ridiculous.
In looking for more information, I ran across this article from last year. My main takeaway is, Christ Almighty, there’s some bad blood between Clinton and Sanders staffers, on both sides. Neither side comes out looking good.
In the current spat between Clinton and Sanders, Sanders is winning the only way he can: he’s refusing to play. As such, he comes out clearly the better person.
A few months ago, Bernie and Warren twitter warriors were slinging shit at Pete for using chartered jets even though they very well know that getting to and from South Bend is a bitch. So, I’m glad payback is a bitch.
And, no, I haven’t forgotten the 2016 Sanders chartered jet to Rome so he could ambush the pope.
I don’t much care for Sanders but Trump is throwing away environmental protections left and right and Sanders, despite his use of a plane, probably isn’t going to be doing the same thing. Or leaving environmental treaties or telling audiences that the endangered wildlife can go fuck itself when it’s in the way of his precious wall.
My point is that as democrats we’ve heard for years that we have to appeal to moderate republicans because maybe if we water down our beliefs enough, they maybe will vote for a democrat once in a blue moon.
My point is that there is an entire generation of new voters willing to vote for democrats who act like democrats. Moderate republicans may play a role in the democratic party, but the real reason the democrats won is because young people showed up to vote.
There was some political realignment in 2016. Republicans who score low on bigotry and authoritarianism switched and became democrats, while democrats who score high on bigotry and authoritarianism became republicans. But each group was about 10% of their respective parties, and I think they mostly cancelled each other out.
Watering down democratic agendas to appeal to moderate republicans (in geographic areas where the cook ranking is fairly leftist, or on the national level) carry its own risks. It could make blacks, labor unions and liberals stay home and not vote, not volunteer or not donate money. It isn’t a risk free political strategy. A third way democratic party unwilling to take on the oligarchy, unwilling to stand up for minorities and unwilling to address economic inequality that still wants high levels of turnout, volunteerism and donations from democratic base donors is going to run into issues.
Hint: It would have been more convincing if you’d linked directly to the right-wing site (motto:“The News the Liberal Media WILL NOT Report!”, rather than to the Snopes page debunking the claims made there. I mean, not much more convincing, but…
Also, in order for “payback” to be “a bitch”, you would have to provide a cite that anyone other than you and a few other Twitter trolls know or care about this.
I’m not a Democrat so I’m not usually in the business of advising Democrats on how to get votes–as I’ve usually wished to see them lose elections. So I can’t speak to this. I would suggest that you win in politics at least Federally by fielding a coalition that can win the Senate and Electoral College. I’m not convinced a far leftist idealogue will be able to build such a coalition due to the geographic realities of the sort of people who support that sort of thing.
I would also say that you should appeal to a majority of Democrats for sure, I don’t think you should worry about appealing to Republicans–you can win without us. But Bernie and the far leftists advocate policies that are unpopular with significant portions of Democrats, not just Republicans. I feel like you’re almost saying the only “real” Democrat is a far leftist, and somehow the millions and millions of Democratic voters that aren’t far left but are centrists or moderate left, aren’t real Democrats. I’d argue in a two party system it’s much more likely that in fact, most Democrats are moderate left / centrist. In a different system maybe they’d be in the CDU and you guys would be Social Dems, but we don’t have a system with that level of party granularity.
So you’re defining “act like Democrats” to mean act like Bernie Sanders (not a Democrat), or Ocasio-Cortez? Someone at the far end of the political spectrum.
I’m skeptical very many of us “switched” to being Democrats, we voted for Hillary as a countervote to Trump, we did not ideological align with leftism.
I’d agree, but you seem to conflate “moderate Republican” and “moderate Democrats”, one of those I agree you can do without, but I don’t think you win national elections in America appealing to roughly 1/3rd of the Democratic voting base with policies outright disliked by the remaining 2/3rd (those numbers are just conversational, I have no idea what % of Dems are “progressive”, but I know it’s not a majority.)
Bush/Cheney is what switched me to the Democratic side. Nothing since has persuaded me the Republicans are anything close to the party I first joined. Trump is less evil than Cheney but far more embarrassing to the country and insane.
Trump lying and saying that he didn’t say something that we all heard him say is not exactly the rock solid proof of his innocence that you think it is, counselor.
I do think Twitter is very powerful. The Warren campaign made a huge blunder by thinking the wine cave crap being spewed by Bernie and Warren stans mattered and bumbled December and the debate on it.
I get that concern. As a Warren/Sanders supporter (order changes day by day), that freaking terrifies me. And someone who supports Biden because they think he’s more electable? Totally a reasonable position.
At the same time, I worry that that’s the sort of thinking Republicans had in 2016 about Trump, during the primary; and I worry that’s the same sort of thinking that Democrats had about Sanders in 2016, during the primary. Democrats chose the electable candidate. Republicans chose the immoderate blunt-talking populist candidate, the clearly unsafe, unelectable candidate.
And Republicans won with theirs, and Democrats lost with theirs.
Real Clear Politics shows that Sanders beats trump by an average of 3.5 points. Biden’s got a 4.6 spread. Warren’s got a 1.0 spread. Those are all pretty close to one another, especially the Sanders and Biden.
I hear from a lot of midroad Trump supporters a complete disgust with politicians in general, a belief that they’re all liars in it for themselves. I think that there are some establishment Democrats who feel the same way about Sanders, but there are also some voters who see Sanders as more honest than Biden, or even Warren (as someone who likes Warren a touch more than Sanders, I’d agree Sanders is more honest than Warren).
The polling is complicated and fraught. Anyone who’s claiming certainty about how a Sanders/Trump matchup would go, especially compared to how a Biden/Trump matchup went, didn’t learn the fundamental lesson of humility that 2016 tried to teach.
So when he says fine people on both sides, and then clearly says that he was only talking about the people wanting to keep confederate statues, and then expressly disclaims that he is talking about neo-nazis, then that clearly means he was talking about neo-nazis?
I linked his actual words. Maybe you think he was lying and really did want to praise neo-nazis. Fine. But what he did not do was praise neo-nazis and he specifically disclaimed that he was referring to neo-nazis.
The Trump Derangement Syndrome is strong with you guys, and what is does is make people disbelieve everything else you say about him when you are willing to take a statement where he condemns neo-nazis and turn it into a statement that he supports neo-nazis.
If Trump said, “There are fine people on both sides of the abortion debate, but not those who bomb abortion clinics, they should be condemned” some of you would write headlines saying “Trump says abortion clinic bombers are ‘fine people’” Where is the reality in any of this?
The reality is that Trump praised white supremacists, then lied and said he wasn’t praising white supremacists. It’s quite simple. He lies blatantly and openly and brazenly, and tons of Americans buy it because they can’t conceive of someone lying so brazenly and so openly.
