I saw an ad that just said Obama did not endorse Biden. guess it was from a GOP super PAC?
Of course it’s a weakness. I think the weaknesses of the other candidates are greater.
I disagree. I feel it’s a much larger weakness than almost any other candidate has. The only exception would be Buttigieg because I think there are unfortunately still a lot of people who wouldn’t vote for a gay candidate. (And as I’m writing this post, I see that Buttigieg is no longer a candidate.)
But what weaknesses do you feel candidates like Biden, Bloomberg, Gabbard, Klobuchar, and Warren have that are bigger than being a Socialist?
Not going to spend any effort on Gabbard or Klobuchar, who have no chance left. The following are my best guesses about the weakness of the other candidates:
Warren: I think she’d be the best president of the bunch, but she hasn’t run a good campaign IMO, isn’t great at raising money, frequently uses nuance to the point that she’s very easy to accuse of being a flip-flopper, and doesn’t generate a significant amount of excitement or enthusiasm. She’s still my 2nd choice after Bernie, but I think all these weaknesses add up to more significant than the socialist line of attack on Bernie.
Bloomberg: Just terrible, awful on the stump and in debates, absolutely no excitement and enthusiasm, pisses off lots of Democrats who would then be less likely to vote at all. Last choice for me.
Biden: I think he’s losing it (i.e. he’s frequently incoherent). Not very good at raising money; just not that great at campaigning in general IMO, no enthusiasm/excitement. Has all the weakness of the Hillary campaign (except that the hate campaign against him hasn’t been nearly as long as the decades-long hate campaign against her), plus he lacks Hillary’s sharp mind and debate prowess and is a lot worse at raising money, AFAICT.
And it sucks that this is a weakness, but all of these candidates will likely lead to a significant portion of Bernie voters staying home. That’s really a weakness, even though it sucks that those voters might stay home. They should come out and vote for whomever the party nominates, but lots of them probably won’t, and that’s a big reason why we should nominate Bernie.
I will vote for the Democratic nominee. I think Bernie has the best chance, despite his weaknesses. Bernie’s the best at raising money, has the simplest and easiest-to-explain message, is the best at staying on message and keeping it simple, is the steadiest debater (except for maybe Warren), has lots of enthusiasm and excitement, has “outsider cred” (like Trump did, and thus may attract a chunk of those quixotic voters who just vote against the system) and has a big chunk of voters who probably won’t support any other Democrat.
Joker voice: “So, a candidate is totally gay, no big deal. Guy’s a fucking socialist, everybody loses their mind!” /JV
I can’t believe Gabbard’s name is still coming up, other than in terms of concern that she will mount a Putin-sponsored third party bid.
This is the reason I think Sanders is the worst candidate. Sure there are people who will refuse to vote for any other candidate if it isn’t Sanders. But there are a hundred times as many people who would have voted for any other Democrat but will refuse to vote for Sanders.
As I’ve pointed out before, sixty-three million people voted Republican in 2016 (and that was for Trump!) while only ninety-one thousand people voted Socialist. Choosing a Socialist as a nominee is insane.
And this is all before we even start on all the other issues. It says everything about how vulnerable Sanders is that he’s a 78 year old who had a heart attack four months ago and his health will only be fourth on the list of things the Republicans will attack him with.
Right? If we weren’t going insane as a country, “78 and had a heart attack literally on the campaign trail” would IMMEDIATELY disqualify someone from the race. Regardless of what their persona or ideology was all about.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion. I think it’s a perfectly valid one, even as I disagree. We’ll see who’s right over the next several months.
Repent, Harlequin!
FTR, I never thought Ellison was much of a writer in units longer than a tiitle, but his titles can’t be beat.
Speak of coincidences!!
In another thread I mention that I have 139 Firefox tabs currently open. One of them is an on-line readable of "REPENT, HARLEQUIN!" CRIED THE TICKTOCKMAN by Harlan Ellison, which I’d never heard of until it was mentioned last month here at SDMB.
Thanks for reminding me. I’ll try to speed-read it right now and come down to 138 tabs!
I’m not even sure Sanders is the candidate to accomplish anything progressive. He’s not really a member of the party; he appears to have few allies in Congress, he is a remarkably ineffective and unproductive Senator, and he demonstrates little ability to compromise with his colleagues.
If you want to pass, say, Medicare for All, yelling and riling up the Berniebros isn’t gonna get it done because they can’t vote in Congress. Republicans aren’t going to help any Democratic President do anything good; they’re a lost cause right now. I am unconvinced that Sanders could even get DEMOCRATS to do anything.
Heck, someone could argue that this means there’s nothing to fear from him. And that as is by now traditional, his party would get clobbered in the midterm and then he really will be unable to move us towards dreaded socialism.
Sure that means you count on the established Dems to be unlike the established Reps and actually resist their Prez, but that too seems supported by history…
I understand why people keep saying things like “yelling and riling up the Bernie Bros.” I get what is meant by that. But I don’t understand why people keep acting like it’s a poor reflection on Sanders that the (hypothetical) Democratic Congress during a Sanders presidency wouldn’t work with him on ideas that these same people seem to acknowledge are good ideas.
Like, yeah, it’s true that they’re fighting and smearing him on Medicare for All. It’s true that Medicare for All hasn’t happened yet. Why is it a good point against him that he’s the only one in the room on the right side of that issue? Warren just made this point explicit a couple days ago – he tries to stop things that happen anyway (like disastrous wars) and he tries to sell people on good ideas that get killed by the failure of others to buy in.
And what this amounts to is, he sucks?
Yes that’s one common defense of Sanders: ‘don’t worry, his proposals as stated are too unpopular to get through even a Democratic majority Congress, they’ll never happen’. 
Not a powerful argument in a vacuum. But I agree it has some merit though in political reality because one reason to not deny Sanders the nomination is to avoid demotivating his base. There isn’t a comparable base of ‘make Biden [Bloomberg, etc a specific other candidate] the nominee or I won’t vote in November’ people. Although that’s separate from the issue Democratic-leaning people outside the Democratic base who might show up to vote for any Democrat but ‘the Socialist’, and the small but potentially important sliver of the electorate that might vote for Trump instead of Sanders but other Democrats instead of Trump. And also the ‘wholly new voters Sanders (and nobody else) would bring out in November’ theory. But IMO the last one is a little less of an unknown, being less plausible. Whereas the theories of Democrats losing enthusiasm by rejecting Sanders and thus his personal base, or losing non-base voters (to either non-turnout or to Trump) because of Sanders perceived radicalism, are both very real risks IMO. It’s just hard to tell the relative size of each.
I don’t think polls this far out tell you much about any of those theories unfortunately. Base voters say and think things in primary season they’ll take back later. Low/medium engagement voters aren’t paying attention. Some November polls taken now don’t even try to identify likely voters. IOW if somebody links a poll saying Sanders does around the same v Trump as any other Democrat I don’t think it means much. The GOP campaign would have more to throw at Sanders. And it seems even politically aware people who support Sanders aren’t always aware some of Sanders’ proposals like up to 8% pa wealth tax or 77% estate tax are, unlike a generally more socialized health system, not ‘just what other rich countries do’. No other rich democracy has taxes anything like that. You can argue it’s what should be done, that’s a matter of opinion. But you can’t argue it isn’t radical or a leap into the unknown in terms of unintended consequences, because it would be. So maybe back to ‘well but those things aren’t really going to happen even under Sanders’, I guess.
Yeah, that’s pretty much my take as well. If he’s nominated, I’ll vote for him to get Trump out, but he won’t get shit done, and the 2022 midterm would be a GOP landslide.
Of course, that’s likely true of Biden and Klobuchar (what, she hasn’t dropped out yet?) as well, because Mitch McConnell. But they’d likely get more done with the powers that the President has to act independently of Congress. Which SCOTUS seems to have expanded a bit under Trump.
Other than M4A, which is DOA any which way, I think Warren’s demonstrated the ability to work with her fellow 
Democrats to get stuff done, and Sanders hasn’t. That’s why it’s a poor reflection on Sanders specifically.
Well, we agree that Elizabeth Warren’s proven historically much more able to compromise on certain values, but that wasn’t what I asked.
I asked why the fact that Democrats won’t work with him is a poor reflection on him, and not them, where the people making the comparison agree with Sanders’ position on the issue.
Yeah, just because nobody likes him why is that his fault?
OK, cool. Good one.