I’m not making up the part about Sanders being a socialist. I remember Sanders way back when he was Mayor of Burlington (I grew up in the area). Sanders was a member of the Socialist Party and ran as a Socialist. It’s not just something the Republicans are making up.
If Sanders had won the primaries and was heading for the nomination, I would be preparing to vote for him and telling other people they needed to vote for him. You can look back at my posts from a few months ago when he was leading the race and I was saying the same thing.
But that’s the past. It’s no longer a case of telling anyone we should support Biden because he’ll get more votes than Sanders. We had the primaries; Biden had gotten more votes than Sanders. It’s no longer just a prediction. Biden ran. Sanders ran. Other candidates ran. And voters picked Biden. So now is the time for the people who supported those other candidates to accept what happened and support the candidate who won. It’s no longer a choice between Biden and Sanders; it’s a choice between Biden and Trump.
Here’s the thing. Let’s say, hypothetically, the democrats could find someone that’s just 1% better than Donald Trump. Easily the second worst possible president of the United States, but just a tiny bit better than Trump. Should we vote for that man enthusiastically? After all, he’s better than Trump.
And what if we did this for 10 elections in a row? They keep fielding a guy who is a bad candidate, who is a bad leader, and will take this country in the wrong direction, but he’ll take the country in the wrong direction slightly less than the other guy? Well, our chess move says that the guy who fucks things up a tiny bit less.
So you can spend your life voting for the guy who’s the lesser of two evils, and consenting to your country being moved in the wrong direction your entire life, because you “have to” use your vote as a chess move at any time.
That gives the people who run the parties, the only people who really have control over what candidate they run, complete control over the direction of the country, and you’re playing into their exact goal and manipulation by continually voting for their chosen lesser of two evils candidate. They can make you move the country in a direction you hate every time, with a series of decisions that, in each one, the “responsible” thing is to vote for the lesser of two evils. And yet the overall result of this series of actions has been the result of evil your entire life.
What do you do? Keep the country moving in a direction you don’t want it to move your entire life, convinced that each vote was the correct chess move? Such a strategy means you’ve been manipulated into going exactly where they want you to go, against your desires, but with your consent.
Yet another thing I hate about Sanders. This whole lie about the ‘party elites’ gathering in a secret lair and anointing a candidate. Sanders has had 5 years to get his stupid ideas out and they’ve been resoundingly rejected. People aren’t buying what he’s selling. We don’t want a fucking revolution no matter how bad you do.
I’ve said that Sanders supporters should support the nominee regardless of who it is. I pointed out that Sanders would have lost the general because he lacks support (or is actually viewed unfavorably) by key groups.
I did NOT say “We can’t nominate Sanders because old people won’t vote for him”. This is now, after the primary process is over. There is no “We can’t nominate…” because the nomination is sewn up.
Had Sanders won the primaries, I would be telling people who refused to vote for him that they should be doing so, same as I’d be doing the reverse. But a number of those people still aren’t going to do so and alienating a major voting bloc like older voters hurts even more then alienating young voters who make it to the polls in much smaller numbers. So, regardless of how many Boomers I say “You should vote Democratic anyway” to, the overall effect would still be a Sanders loss.
More to the point, my bringing up Sanders’ poor showing among key demographics (minorities, older voters, moderates, etc) isn’t “We can’t nominate Sanders!” because, again, it’s over. Done. Not happening. My point was to shoot down the fanciful notion that, just because Sanders lost the primary (twice) , he was totally for-reals going to win in a general election.
Actually voter opinions are dynamic, something you so-called “centrists” never seem to get. Especially in the middle of a campaign, and especially during a big crisis. Candidates that show leadership ability can fundamentally change the dynamic, conversation, and voting patters in a substantial way. “Centrists” seem to believe the American electorate is frozen in place and frozen in time.
Dumb fucking reason but I expect that from this OP.
If you want to get rid of the Electoral College, you want a popular vote to matter. So it’s really stupid to ensure that it doesn’t.
Also, there’s a thing called a mandate: Absolutely blow away your opponent by millions and millions of votes and you not only win the office, it’s hard on the other side to stay the course. A blow out makes it a lot easier to ignore the policy ideas of your opponents. It also makes it harder for them to stay the course: Blowing out Trump makes it a lot more likely the GOP realize Trumpism was a mistake and stop being a party of irresponsible, anti-small-d-democratic racist shitheads and instead merely become an opposition party that has a semblance of sanity again.
With your dumb protest vote, it won’t make the Democrats suddenly decide to get more progressive, and it will do nothing to make the Republicans less terrible.
It’s honestly not even a question until a “true progressive” actually manages to win the nomination and you can tell someone to “fall in line” and vote for them. Plenty of people said during the primaries “I don’t care for Sanders at all but I’ll vote for him if he’s the nominee because fuck Trump.” If you want to flip that around, first get a progressive candidate who can seal the first half of the race.
Sanders didn’t lose because mean ole establishment whoevers said he won’t appeal to older voters. Sanders lost because, in the four years in his last run, he failed to increase the size of his support at all or make any inroads with the groups he’d need to win in a general election (or win the primary, for that matter). His campaign felt that he could win with 30% and it showed. Maybe he should have actually, you know, tried to appeal to those other groups just as progressives demand that every other candidate carry their platform.
Thanks for the opening kind words Septimus, but I take great issue with your assertion that a “secret cabal” wouldn’t rather lose with Joe than win with Bernie. The cabal isn’t all that secret, it consists of all the “third-way”, “moderate”, and “centrist” conservative pro-Wall Street Democrats who are in positions in the DNC or otherwise might hope to be considered for a cabinet or other position in a Democratic administration. These people, along with their Wall Street backers and allies in the corporate-owned media know that a Bernie victory would result in them being shown the door very quickly. Frankly in is stupid and naive in the extreme to believe that many of these self-serving assholes would willingly relinquish their positions with a Bernie victory instead of keeping them with an expected Biden loss. They know a Bernie victory would result in a transformed party they could never hope to be a part of again.
Obama was that kind of leader. Hillary Clinton was not. Neither was Bernie Sanders. He inspired many. But not nearly enough to win. Stop trying to make Bernie Sanders happen.
No, I get it - if Sanders were nominated, you’d be telling old scared people to vote him. I understand. You’re not getting me. I’m talking about the nomination process.
A lot of people say “we can’t vote for Sanders, no one should nominate Sanders, he’ll scare away ‘moderate’ voters”, and that’s part of the reason Bernie couldn’t get nominated. The idea that he’d scare away too many voters being parroted from everyone in the democratic party and the media.
But the reverse never happens. No one ever says “we can’t nominate Biden, he’ll alienate the progressive voters”, they say “fuck those stupid ass Bernie voters, they’re going to have to get over their purity contests and fall in line and vote for our candidate”
Progressives or people who are traditionally not enthusiastic about politics but who liked Bernie are just expected to fall in line and be good little democrats even if they never get anything they want, and at the very suggestion that they might not, a torrent of hostility is released. Progressives are always expected to bend over and lose everything they want and yet faithfully support a party they don’t even like and doesn’t care about them.
But “moderate” democrats are never treated in this way. Everyone always babies them. If they get scared by some guy who wants to give them better health care, they might defect to the republicans! We better tiptoe around them and do everything we can to avoid spooking them.
There’s a built in double standard where progressives are expected to get nothing, love it, and maintain loyalty to a conservative democratic party, and if they don’t, fucking unleash hell on them. But “moderates” are never criticized for their lack of support for a potential progressive candidate or hated or expected to vote blue no matter who. They’re treated like royalty whose ass must be licked at all times lest we lost them to Trump.
This very attitude presented to us by the party, the media, and a lot of conservative democrat supporters in this thread is a reason why we’ll never have a progressive candidate. They’ve so indoctrinated the idea that progressives should fall in line and never get what they want, and that moderates should always be catered to and never criticized or expected to vote blue no matter who. And so when that idea permeates the electorate, everyone is forced to take the “reasonable” choice of nominating the moderate, and anyone that’s unhappy with that gets an extreme amount of vitriol.
Anyway, I’ve tried to convey this idea several times and it doesn’t seem to be registering, so I may just not be explaining it well. Ah well, I’ll stop repeating it now.
I wonder if my secret Democratic cabal member check will arrive before my Trump stimulus package check. Never mind. I think I’ll vote for the side which sends the greater amount.