I don’t go on Twitter or listen (watch?) the Chapo Trap House dirty left nonsense. But I have plenty of people on my Facebook feed or people I know on Discord who are all in on the DNC Establishment Conspiracy angle and the “I can’t vote for Biden because it’s not a vote for real change, man” thing.
I have to shake my head when people say that all this stuff is from Russian Troll-bots and the like. Russian must have been playing the long game to plant people a decade ago just so they can call me a Poor People Hating Neoliberal Corporate Establishment Democrat for not supporting Sanders ten years later.
The link is to a 47 minute video produced by the New York Times about a Russian project/tactic that’s been around for more than 50 years now and has been and still is having a huge effect on world politics (as well as domestic Russian politics; no society is safe from this effort). The project is a perpetual campaign of disinformation designed to disrupt the social fabric and keep it frayed. It is hugely successful and on-going.
Sure, but you understand that I was talking about old college friends being supposed Twitter bots, right?
If your point is that my Sanders supporting old college friends were brainwashed into their current state by Russian propaganda, then you might be on to something.
There are rules to this game. If you entered this game, you know the rules. Actions that are taken that are in accordance to these rules are fair, by the “rules of the game” definition.
If Joe Biden had surrogates that were powerful and convincing enough to convince several opponents to drop out and endorse him, that’s fair according to the rules of the game. Bernie Sanders was equally free to bring out his strongest surrogates to ask opponents to drop out and endorse him.
If he didn’t have surrogates with that kind of clout, it’s a weakness in his game. Every player has weaknesses. Seasoned politicians risk being labeled “Washington Insiders”. They risk having every vote they’ve cast in their lifetime subjected to after the fact analysis. They are often older and risk having age become an issue. But sometimes they can use the incredible depth of the relationships they’ve developed over the years to advance their campaign. Like Joe did last week.
It’s a different set of strengths and weaknesses than other candidates might have. But every candidate needs to advance their strengths and play down their weaknesses.
I kind of wish that the Bernie camp could’ve succeeded. I would’ve LOVED to see every previously unregistered voter under 40 turn out for him. Heck, I’d love to see a candidate that could turn out EVERYONE that never voted before- it’s an epic recipe for victory.
It was an interesting strategy. But it looks like it didn’t work.
No; I don’t understand that because that isn’t what you wrote:
They have been. They did. They are. Based on what you wrote, you seemed to be completely unaware of the campaign and in complete denial of it’s existence. I was trying to help you out by providing information and corroborative evidence supporting that information.
If you knew of the Russian project, it’s unclear to me why you would have written what you did.
People rarely need to be brainwashed; they just need their biases confirmed. The disinformation campaign does that; it is part of the core of the program’s strategy and effectiveness.
ETA: As this is a hijack from the purpose of the thread, I’ll stop posting about this here. It was just me trying to be helpful by providing information that you might not have known.
Just prior to that, I wrote: *But I have plenty of people on my Facebook feed or people I know on Discord who are all in on the DNC Establishment Conspiracy angle and the “I can’t vote for Biden because it’s not a vote for real change, man” thing. I have to shake my head when people say that all this stuff is from Russian Troll-bots and the like. *
I thought the context was obvious but apparently it wasn’t since you were confused. My apologies.
The thing is, what you wrote suggested that you didn’t believe or know of Russia’s decades-long program directed at causing disruption to the social fabric, part of which causes you to see posts accusing you of being a <long, complicated derogatory term>.
They do.
The fact that some of the people you see saying those things are people you know IRL doesn’t alter the fact that Russia has this campaign.
Can we drop this now and return to the purpose of the thread?
No, what I wrote suggested that the people saying these things were real, breathing people who live and vote here in the United States and not anonymous AIs or Russians working in the Twitter mines as often gets claimed by Sanders supporters. It really wasn’t that hard.
I’m willing to admit observer bias: I see a lot of Sanders support, but no Bernie Bros. But then, (1) I’m in Canada so I miss 95% of what happens in the US media, and (2) I don’t do Twitter, so I miss all of the pointless ragefests.
What I mean is that I see so much anger on here towards Sanders, and that anger is justified by what kind of supporters he has. I don’t see the need for the anger at Sanders (with the exception of the point raised above that there may be some under-the-table encouragement of Bernie Bro-type actions… I would like evidence, as it seems a strategically poor choice, but if so, that SHOULD inspire anger).
As far as the establishment’s thumb on the scales, my sole point of evidence is that it seemed incredible for Klobuchar and Buttegieg, and to a lesser extent the Billionaire Boys, to back out between South Carolina and Super Tuesday. If one or two had come following SC, and then the others AFTER Super Tuesday, I wouldn’t call behind-the-scenes shenanigans. It may be all “rules of the game,” as you say, but it’s bad optics. I mean, it’s not like anybody thinks DNC actually wants Sanders to win, is it? And they have a sterling example in Trump of what happens to a party when the weirdo outsider gets the nod, so I don’t blame them for doing everything they can do prevent it from happening to them. But as a voter, I’d rather they didn’t.
Well, Bloomberg dropped out after Super Tuesday (and it would have been far better for Biden if he dropped out prior since he was the only guy besides Biden & Sanders to get appreciable delegates).
But, beyond that, why does it have to be something hinky? If you’re running for president and your internal polling is telling you that you have 4% support and might get 3 delegates for the night, What are you staying in for? Pride? Campaigning is expensive and hard. Campaigning for zero chance of success is dumb. Maybe you stay in to “make sure your message is heard” but, if someone else has essentially the same message and is possibly going to win, why wouldn’t you throw your support behind them?
It feels like the expectation for “establishment tinkering” is that you need to wait until you’re utterly humiliated before you drop out instead of making a rational choice to end it now, get behind the guy who most supports your vision and hope he beats the other guy who has a significantly different vision.
Oops, you’re right. My bad for relying on fallible memory.
Yes, but we’re talking about 48 more hours, where 98% of the campaigning and spending and much of the voting had already happened. Dropping out at that point just tarnishes your brand with the people who did vote for you. And it wasn’t so much that they dropped out, but they dropped out and endorsed Biden in that very narrow window.
“Hinky” goes too far (and “conspiracy” way too far). It just appears manipulative. It’s not unethical or anything, but it’s alienating.
I think in the Midwest we call it “Not Bad Tuesday”.
I did see someone call it “Big Tuesday”, but more delegates are up for grabs on March 17, so maybe today is “Don’t Make a Big Fuss Tuesday”.
Anyway, I wanted to be able to vote for Warren, but I voted for Biden instead. I’m on the fence between Biden and Sanders, and I’ll happily vote for either in November. I’m probably closer to Sanders ideologically, but I think Biden will get more money and more enthusiastic backing from party regulars, so he’ll be in a better position to beat Trump. Of course, that’s why I voted Clinton in 2016, and look at how well that turned out.
I mean, yeah, I don’t doubt that the people who endorsed Biden did so because they want him to win. After they determined that there was zero chance of them winning. It’s not as though they don’t have pollsters and stuff working for them – they knew there was no chance after South Carolina that there’d be a path for them. Prior to S. Carolina, they could have hoped for a Sanders win or some Biden fumble or other route to victory.
But that didn’t happen. Biden crushed it in South Carolina, came roaring out and a couple of the candidates realized that splitting the vote at that point was going against their vision for the nation and that they had no chance of being the standard bearer.
Don’t get me wrong; I absolutely believe that they contacted Camp Biden and said “Hey, I’m going to drop out” and Biden’s people said “Can you wait until this day and come to this rally to endorse”? But that’s different from the theory floated by some Sanders supporters that they got pushed out and forced to support Biden or that it was some plot to run a campaign for a year and fracture the vote, only to drop out right before Tuesday.
As for their supporters, since Biden likely picked up the vast majority of them (why else complain about the endorsements?) I assume they also would prefer Biden over Sanders.
This primary cycle was just weird and the billionaires definitely fucked it up along with the heavily front loaded primary schedule with CA and TX being on Super Tuesday. I’ll speak to South Carolina. You couldn’t go 5 seconds from September on without seeing or hearing a Steyer ad.
With no Steyer in the race, Pete finishes a strong third and probably sticks around. But, a weak 4th in SC and now Pete is looking at 2nd and 3rds at best for Super Tuesday. Steyer, looking down at Bloomberg’s money machine also realizes he’s done as he won’t be making the debate stage again. It’s also no secret that Pete’s fundraising was drying up quickly after Nevada. Presidential primary campaigns don’t tend to keep a rainy day fund, Pete’s got a huge future and realized going forward all he could do was play spoiler on a shoestring budget.
So, it’s not always ‘the establishment rigging things.’ There’s a lot wrong with 2016, the billionaires sucking up all the ad time along with the front loaded primaries are probably the biggest. A Joe Biden, with 100% name recognition and a good reputation among Dems is always in a stronger position than a Pete Buttigieg or an Amy Klobuchar.