They can be expected to do one of two things:
That thing where you say “I don’t know”? That’s the key. Nobody knows Making either prediction with anything resembling confidence strikes me as a fool’s errand.
I don’t have any confidence that Trumpism will collapse of its own accord with a GOP Senate propping it up for another two years. We need the Senate now. We need to start passing legislation that fix the election processes in this country and make it impossible for a crazed minority to ever hold this kind of power again.
Man, I was almost going to vote for Sanders but then you were mean to me so I’ll just stay home and pout if he’s the nominee. Sorry dude, should have been nicer to me.
You don’t need to convince me. Repeating myself, it appears likely there will be two red Senators from Georgia next year, but Abrams and Winfrey could team up and make both seats blue. I don’t understand why opinionators are not shrieking to do this.
I’ve quoted almost all of this for its truth value. People who think comparisons of the GOP with Mussolini’s Fascists are far-fetched are living in ignorant fantasy.
Romney — the latest GOP standard-bearer — voted to convict. McCain would have voted so also, as would, I think Bush-43, Dole, and Bush-41. (Back in the early 2000’s did any of us think we’d look back fondly on Bush-43 as a “good Republican”? :smack: )
Yet when Susan Collins — supposedly a moderate Republican — was asked whether she would align herself with America and humanity, she said Nay, she preferred to embrace a stinking turd.
… I am naturally indecisive (deficiency of some key neurotransmitter?) and American politics are confusing me more and more. When next you hear from me, I may have become … a Bernie-Bro!! :eek:
Well since directly challenged, I would say that BigT’s post accurately reflects my view of the situation. It is my personal opinion that the set of voters turned off by Sanders will be larger than the set of voters turned on, but I admit that that is just my opinion as gathered by an overall impression of the electorate at large.
It’s funny that you bring this up with respect particularly to California and New York vs. Kansas and Wisconsin. In the 2016 primary, Sanders won the latter states rather handily, I think, and Clinton smashed him in the former two. The “actual voting public” is a flexible thing. Different candidates mean different people turn out. When different people vote, different politics result. Sanders has more appeal in the places that you’re saying are the “problem.”
I think Democrats, by and large, have a really skewed (and, in my opinion, self-serving and solipsistic) perspective on Sanders’ appeal. I have felt this way since 2016 and it sure is true that nothing has happened to convince me otherwise. They look at the people who seem like them, and they say, we’re the people who gotta get Trump out of there, and then they think in terms of what kind of candidate will win over someone like them, and they draw a bunch of lines around that hypothetical candidate. They think of themselves as being in opposition to the “idiot neighbors” who are the problem, rather than thinking in terms of how many people they can convince to be like them, for electoral purposes. And they end up in this crazy double bind where they can’t do things that have demonstrably broad appeal because they’re worried about “centrist” votes, where “centrist” is basically someone just like them but a little bit less so, even though they themselves find those things appealing. Like, you acknowledge you like Sanders’ ideas. But you and septimus can’t risk him as the candidate, because the idiot neighbors won’t vote for him. How do you know? Because they’re idiot neighbors. Why are they idiot neighbors? They won’t vote for your candidates!
Just because it’s something Trump voters like to say doesn’t mean that it can’t be true that liberals are in their own bubble. The SDMB, as an example of this kind of bubble, is almost cheating, but I offer it all the same. This isn’t where you’ll find many articulate Sanders defenses, relatively speaking, but there’s a fucking LOT you won’t find around here.
Democrats seem to suddenly remember that Sanders has the particular appeal I’m talking about when they get angry at him for not campaigning hard enough for Clinton, or when they decry how Bernie Bros. cost Clinton the election by not voting for her. But they forget it again when they talk about electability and beating Trump at all costs. When something happens like Joe Rogan endorsing Bernie Sanders, they don’t think “holy shit that’s a lot of people I personally think are idiots and want to never meet who I would never have tried to embrace but who will vote for my side in this election.” They think “ew gross, idiot neighbors,” and they ask Sanders to rebuke Rogan. And then Trump tweets about how Bernie’s getting screwed again, and then Sanders supporters vote for Trump, and we all wring our hands.
The thing is, those people exist. The Obama - Trump voters exist. The Sanders - nobody voters exist. The Sanders - Trump voters exist. As wrong as you think they are, as stupid as you think they are, as infuriated as you might be by the fact that they aren’t you, as much as it might chafe that they aren’t even really Democrats, as capital an offense as you think it should be if they would even consider not voting blue, they’re still just like sitting there. And just as soon as an option more in line with their priorities was available, all of this calculus about the voting public would change. If you know that there are people who would vote Sanders, but could vote Trump, and your response is “fuck them for being stupid,” that’s understandable. But it is rather at odds with “defeat Trump at all costs.”
So I’ve been mulling something over about some posters in this thread, the frothingly anti-Bernsters and similar folks on the twitters and such - the people who rant and rave that Sanders “isn’t even a Democrat”, “is trying to hijack the party”, that his ideas don’t represent the Dems or make them look bad and so on, that Bernie cost them the last election (which… they were owed, I guess ? Entitled to win ? WTF ?). Also been mulling how the DNC reflexively turns its own rules into a game of Mornington Crescent whenever it seems likely that he’ll win and so on. And the obvious question that springs to mind is : if you hate the lad so much, and you simply can’t countenance the very thought of him winning… why d’you let him play in the first place ? If, as you guys are so fond of reminding everyone, he’s not even a registered Democrat, why let him run under y’alls banner ?
And the only answer I can come up with is : because you want, nay, **need **his voters, period. Not him, not their ideas, not their wants, just their votes, the energy he brings. You want those guys to vote for your guy(s), while you have no intention of addressing their problems or countenancing their ideas or even understanding where they even come from (hence the whole “it’s a cult of personality” accusation, which… no, it’s not ? And that’s just you pre-emptively refusing to listen to anything they have to say, probably tinged with class spite as well ?) ; you just know that the Democratic party couldn’t dream of beating the Republicans if leftists actually split off and ran independently. You want them in the tent, just not, you know, *in *the tent.
You want election without representation, as it were.
And in this light, not only does it make sense that leftist voters would resent y’alls fuckery because it’s basically a con-job ; but it’s a bit disgraceful to go around calling them a “cult of personality” or bratty children wot should shut up and do what they’re told, or just generally be cunty at them just because they can see through such cynical chess calculations and refuse to play ball with a marked deck.
How would they stop him?
I dunno, flat tell him no ? Change the rules so that non-registered Democrats don’t get to use DNC venues/aren’t invited to D events ? Change the rules so that Jewish men over 75 and a half years of age and whose last name begins with a letter in the second half of the alphabet cannot be presidential nominees of the Democratic Party ?
Granted, I do not know what the specific requirements are to run as a Democrat (that shit probably varies by State too, that’s how y’all do :p) but I would expect not just any random asshole off the street can ask for his name on a ballot, yes ?
Vermin Supreme is running again in 2020. So yeah, any random asshole can get on the ballot (I don’t think you are an asshole, Vermin, just parroting Kobal2). He isn’t a Democrat and I don’t know what those requirements are, but Sanders is a very popular lefty politician. I can see anything short of shenanigans that would keep him off the ballot.
We shouldn’t try to, either. It’s a Republic, folks. Prominent people should not be hamstrung from taking their shot.
I thought Vermin ran as a Libertarian ?
Mr. Supreme (as the NY Times would call him if they wrote about him) is running as a Libertarian, not a Democrat.
If the DNC said to Sanders “sorry, you’re not a Democrat,” that would have put them in an untenable situation with Sanders supporters who already had (mostly illegitimate) beef with the DNC. The outcries of “rigged” happened when Sanders supporters and even staff just didn’t know the rules; imagine how it would be when they were literally told they cannot even run. The Democrats could have made an ethical case for such a decision - he refused to become a Democrat when he was in the Senate again, he spends more time criticizing the Democratic party than the GOP or Russia - but it would be the kind of terrible political choice that would fracture the party forever.
Since my name was mentioned, I get 45 seconds to respond. 
I’ve always said I admired Bernie Sanders. Upthread it was I — not one of the “Bernie Bros” — who pointed out that Bernie was a real activist as a student, chaining himself to Black women. (@ Margin — do you really think that’s a lie?)
I certainly consider Bernie an “Honorary Democrat” — far more of a Democrat than Scum like Joe Lieberman ever was. (Or than Bloomberg really, though I also admire Bloomberg.) I do get angry at Bernie Bros with their holier-than-thou “My way or the Highway” attitude.
If Bernie is the nominee, of course I would want him to win. (My promise to vote Sanders would be unimportant … unless a Doper can figure a way for me to vote legally in a swing state instead of California.)
I had worried about Sanders’ electability, but at this point I’ve decided that I do not know who is most electable. I do believe that a moderate (e.g. Biden, Klobuchar, Bloomberg) would make a better President than a radical (especially an aging radical who’s had a heart attack), but if Bernie is a dream-come-true for intelligent young Americans, well, that’s important too.
(A moderate in the White House is better even if we want a very progressive agenda! I’ve explained this before: Presidents need to command the respect of Congress and others; they can’t do it all just with executive orders.)
I’d like to see Bloomberg on the ticket so he could spend a few billions pulverizing the wicked GOP. A Sanders-Bloomberg ticket? :eek: It might seem a dream ticket … but I fear the blogs would erupt in flames if both D slots were taken by ethnic Jews: America is focused on its Hatreds these days.
Upthread, when I said I might turn into a Bernie Bro, I was not joking. Warren has fallen; Biden is still too old and inadequate; Klobuchar looks good but is a longshot. If the choice ends up between Sanders and Bloomberg, I think Sanders might be the more electable.
I think my 45 seconds are up.
Trump will never round up and shoot his ‘enemies’ . . . because Trump’s enemies are too busy forming circular firing squads.
FOR MORE YEARS!
CMC fnord!
Jimmy Chitwood, good points. Sanders was indeed more popular than Hillary in places like Kansas and Wisconsin. Of course we’ll never know if he would have beaten Trump in her place, but it’s not as far-fetched as most seem to think.
Things are a bit different in 2020. There isn’t a single, obvious rival to Sanders this time, and the one who comes closest to this role, Biden, has (many have long assumed, perhaps wrongly) special appeal to swing voters in places like Wisconsin.
I guess I should talk to a few Trump-leaning-but-not-full-Trumpian neighbors about what they think of Sanders and his ideas.
I say “Sanders AND his ideas,” because it’s CRITICAL to maintain this distinction. If Sanders doesn’t get the nomination, the nominee must convincingly show that he/she is fully committed to pushing for at least a couple of Sanders’ best ideas — and Sanders has to show he’s fully on board with this. Not a tepid endorsement — a full collaboration, before and after (we hope) the election. It’s a good thing for everyone (even if the ideas are diminished by congressional compromise, or worse)…but it’s equally important that, STARTING NOW, Sanders’ supporters see how they can and must back away from the cult of personality — to stop lionizing Sanders the man, and get back to emphasizing his IDEAS.
I agree, especially considering that he’s gonna be 80 and I think has said he wouldn’t stand for reelection. Although I don’t think Sanders himself is particularly dynamic or interesting so I don’t know how much he’s really being lionized qua Bernie Sanders; I think he’s just the only proxy for hard leftist American labor politics that has gained any currency recently. I have supported his candidacy a bunch, but I don’t know that I’ve ever felt moved by him, personally. I think that’s another convenient myth – that it can’t be that Sanders voters don’t flow neatly to a different Democratic candidate because that’s genuinely their preference based on rational (or rational as any other voter) preference, and that there is no substitute for him on policy grounds, so it must be that it’s just a personality cult. I think that’s kinda absurd on its face. What even is Sanders’ personality? Cranky Jewish grandpa?
From my perspective, it really is just as simple as Sanders having politics that cut across the axes that American politics are aligned on. There are a lot of positions that are neither Democratic nor Republican positions, or where the average Democrat and the average Republican are so closely aligned relative to a genuinely radical position that it is reasonable to consider it a distinction without a difference. It’s just that an American liberal and an American conservative identify so closely to the positions along those axes that (at least it seems to me) some people forget there could even be another political axis. Or they identify so closely with, for example, the c. 2016 Democratic foreign policy as the good version of foreign policy (because there is a relatively much worse one) that they feel immune to the criticism that their own position on that spectrum is not a “far left” one, and that many people would like a far left one.
Long story short, I think if you talk to somebody about the rights of working people, about health care and landlords and corporations and tax havens, and then separately, maybe, about drone strikes and detention facilities and militarized policing, you can put very demographically different people into that conversation and it’s the same conversation. A rural Pennsylvanian truck driver, an immigrant laborer in the southwest, and an anarchist teenager in New York feel super differently about a lot of things, I’m sure, and they’d all tune out about different ideas, but I bet you could have the same conversation with them about what they think about how they’re treated by the people who own their employers.
I thought your exchange with margin was really interesting and telling in a couple different ways. I understand the electability concern, even though my position, like I said, is that in the general election Sanders is the only one with even a ghost of a chance. What I don’t understand is this notion that a moderate is better at enacting a progressive agenda than someone more progressive, when the progressive ideas in question have popular support. It is counter-intuitive on the face of it, and I can’t think of any historical examples to bear it out. It just feels to me like a very comfortable and convenient thing to believe that is just demonstrably flawed.
But I really think margin’s response is a great example of that bubble I was talking about. You provided evidence of the extremely well-documented and uncontroversial fact that Sanders has really, actually, swear to god, been a civil rights advocate for a long time (and in fact connects the civil rights movement to something much broader than just a decade a long time ago about a few specific issues, which includes all the issues he’s still talking about today). margin said ehh, no thanks, doesn’t seem important. It seems clear margin just knows Sanders is a fringe lunatic, so even if their specific dismissal of him wasn’t technically accurate, we can just substitute a different one.
It is fair for Democrats to say that they stand for certain things, and if Sanders’ politics don’t align, then he doesn’t get to claim the mantle of “The Democrat.” It’s fair to say that Sanders’ lack of flexibility and the fact that (like Klobuchar says) other Democrats aren’t following his lead could be signs of difficulty getting legislation accomplished. And it’s for sure fair to say that Sanders’ obnoxious supporters are obnoxious and off-putting. They are.
But, I think, it’s a lot less fair to dismiss Sanders as a candidate because he’s supported by people who aren’t Democrats, make clear that his politics are unwelcome, and then decry the “Bernie Bro” who doesn’t subscribe to voting blue, no matter who. It seems to me like a lot of Democrats want that person to understand that he or she is not welcome in the party, but want to retain the right to tell that person that they’re morally wrong to have their own priorities when it comes to deciding how much better Biden would be than Trump, and how much they care about that. After all, if we were all purely rational actors, and we all knew that more Sanders supporters would defect than other Democrats, because all other Democrats are “Blue no matter who,” then we would all support Sanders. That is essentially solved, from a game theory perspective. But many, many Democrats do not subscribe to this position, and find it utterly repugnant. So, it turns out, we’ve all got some other priorities rattling around up there.
Drole. Except not a single non-Bernieber has declared that they would stay home, or vote for Trump, if Bernie got the nomination. Can the same be fairly said of the Bernie Bros?
This paragraph seems to suggest that democrats and liberals who are not explicit/avid Bernie supporters, should acquiesce to the Bernie or Bust campaign, but that Bernie Bros are justified in their reluctance to be “Blue no matter who”. Seems to me like an extortion sitch.
The gun to the head is another term for The Orange Anus (R - Impeached).
That’s the bottom line.
You would think that’s all the motivation non-deplorables would ever need. Yet, here we are. Another liberal purity litmus test.