Well he already interfered in the Canadian election, so why not interfere in the Dem nomination process as well?
Well, he’s private citizen and a superdelegate. He certainly has the right to speak his mind. As the quote in the OP indicates, Obama is quite conscious of his duty to be a unifying figure. So if he does decide to speak against Sanders, I’m sure it would be after serious deliberation.
We can bring up how lackluster and overall shit Obamacare was. We can bring up the fact he enabled the US to commit regime change wars and justify coups like in Honduras. We can bring up the fact he was deporter in chief, even had his own concentration camps that were so filthy the courts ruled against him forcing him to catch n release. We can bring up the fact he sided with oil companies when it came to Keystone. We can bring up the fact he further expanded upon the mass surveillance state, and further cracked down on whistleblowers by abusing the espionage act.
So go ahead and attack Bernie Sanders. We welcome the attack, because we’ll just throw it back in their centrist bluedog faces 10 fold, and kneecap biden in the process who’ll likely try bringing up his dead child to disgustingly justify his half assed healthcare position.
We’re these concentration camps Obama had anywhere near the pizza place with child slaves? Might’ve been near the time of the Bowling Green massacre and wasn’t reported fully enough. :rolleyes:
We could bring up those things, but since several of them are false, there’s not much point. E.g. the “concentration camp” one that’s been repeatedly debunked, (https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2018/jun/25/blog-posting/did-obama-detain-illegal-mexican-children-experime/), “catch and release” predated Obama by decades,the “court case” nobody can point to, Keystone was repeatedly blocked by Obama and finally approved by Trump (How Keystone XL, the pipeline rejected by Obama, went ahead under Trump | Keystone XL pipeline | The Guardian), etc. It’s possible that some of your points are correct, but they’re hiding in the falsehoods.
Plus…and I shouldn’t have to tell someone with your user name this…Obama isn’t running in the election. You know who currently is? Bernie Sanders, the one person we know for sure was unable to even come close to beating Hilary Clinton. How could he beat Trump, exactly?
Oh who cares. Bernie’s time is done. AND he isn’t even a Democrat. Why should the party give him the nomination?
While most of the invective surrounding Barack Obama’s assertion is ridiculous, the case itself is a second round of the Flores settlement, decided in 2015 and upheld on appeal in 2016.
And Bernie IS a Democrat. And an Independent. Depending on what he’s running for - kind of like his opinion on superdelegates.
Let’s talk substance.
M4A, SS Expansion, Criminal Justice reform, Immigration reform, anything specific you want to talk about in regards to Bernie Sanders? Or are you just going to dismiss him as not electable? If you want to make this about Clinton, she was always a democrat, in fact she’s one of the most established democrats. Bernie Sanders was just some independent from Vermont who kept yelling about war and working class families. He ran, with barely any name recognition, going against the entire democratic establishment, and media. Even despite everything being used against he still came out on top with his policies such as M4A being ran on in later elections. Shifted the entire base left. And has consistently been polling in the top 3 of the race.
Your attacks, like mostly every dopers attacks I’ve seen, have been based on his elect-ability while ignoring his popularity. If you REALLY care about his elect-ability how about not dismissing his merit and actually discuss the policies. When Pete said substance doesn’t matter, he was reflecting the views of the older more centrist democratic voting base which you likely fall under bud.
Where’s the substance?
And is Bernie a Democrat or an Independent? If he’s an Independent, why should Democrats make him their nominee? If he’s a Democrat, why is he running for Senate as an Independent?
Because he’s created a fervor and interest in liberal and leftist policy that was virtually unheard of, and changed the public conversation in a way very few politicians can. Three years ago, “Medicare for all” was a radical fever dream nobody could take seriously. Now, it’s something every democratic candidate feels the need to take a position on. His rallies are packed, he’s been polling near the top of the field basically since the start of the election, and has an extremely active and rabid fanbase. He’s getting more money from small donors than other candidates are getting from small donors and super PACs combined. I don’t know how much more is necessary to show that the man is heading up a social movement that ought to be taken seriously, but I hope that’s enough to show that “his time is done” is an absurd, nonsensical statement. He’s spent the entire election polling right behind Biden, and the only other close contender is Warren, someone who is mostly copying both his style and his policies.
Not much substance to the article. I do think Obama would like to prevent a Sanders nomination which would not only guarantee a loss but would be devastating down ballot as well. If you look at the 1964 and 1972 landslides, there wasn’t much down ballot effect. If we want to call 1980 a landslide, that did affect the down ballot as many liberal senators were defeated with Reagan winning.
But, I just don’t see Sanders getting the nomination. He’s got a hard floor but also a hard ceiling. There’s plenty of Dems (including myself) that would never vote for him in the primaries. This election is very different than 2016, it’s not a one on one matchup and likely won’t be for a while. There are also fewer caucuses which works against Bernie. It’s remarkable that the heart attack didn’t seem to affect him, but one more health scare certainly will.
Q4 fundraising will be interesting as it’ll incorporate the heart attack. I think his huge Q3 fundraising was boosted by all the college students returning to school, maybe I’m wrong and it’ll stay strong in Q4.
Sanders doesn’t have a chance due to the aforementioned hard ceiling. The best he could hope for is to keep all his 2016 voters while everyone else splits up the 2016 Clinton primary voters. Even in that scenario (which won’t happen because some of his voters will likely flip to Warren) the next best he can hope for is that he can be a kingmaker by presumably putting Warren over the top. I’m not sure how long ago Obama made those comments but they’re not helpful. I assume he knows comments like that can cause CT types to think the fix is in against Bernie, and then lose faith in the process and not vote in the general election. Bad move on Obama’s part.
Don’t fall for this click bait pot stirring. Obama hasn’t done anything at all. These are second hand reports of private conversations. Even if true, it’s not a “bad move”.
Near the end of the article:
It’s a bullshit story.
Well, even if the story is just based on rumors of secondhand conversations, the point that Bernie Sanders doesn’t have even 40 votes in the Senate or 40% of the House for the major points of his agenda is a real point that a Sanders presidency would accomplish nothing.
And Warren doesn’t either. Even if the Democrats magically get the Senate, that wealth tax is DOA in a senate with Durbin and Schumer in control.
Because the last time they tried to shut him out, Trump became president. The DNC is every bit as responsible as culpable for Trump being president as Hillary.
Having another politician publicly take a stance against him because of his electability is not like trying to torpedo him with a whispering campaign about his religious views or giving his opponent the questions before a debate. There is nothing sneaky or shady about Obama making public statements questioning Bernie’s electability.
Yes. Electability is the only fucking thing that matters. If you can’t prove his viability then we should dismiss him. This election is a redistricting year election. Our candidate’s coattails in swing states is going to shape elections for the next decade. I don’t care about policies, noone on that stage has policies worth losing for.
Right now Bernie looks reasonably electable and time will tell. But if it becomes clear that there is another candidate that is clearly more electable, we should go with that candidate.
I have no interest in winning a close race with a candidate with more progressive policies. Folks who think politicians like trump are a viable road to victory have to experience a defeat so complete and thorough that people in their own party will laugh at them for suggesting nominating anyone like Trump again. The defeat has to continue to be overwhelming. Shaving off moderates in an attempt to move further and further to the left will create room for future Trumps.
This is not necessarily a good thing.
I didn’t realize Pete said that. I will have to start taking him more seriously.
If Bernie polls better than trump by bigger margins than any of the other candidates in the swing states, then he has my vote.
Things I don’t care about:
How well a democrat polls in California or any other state that Hillary carried by more than 10%
I’m not typically one for conspiratorial thinking, but in this day and age, we have to at least consider the possibility that this is intentionally leaked misinformation intended to sew divisions within the Democratic party.