Is it just me or does anyone else find it odd that a distinctly conservative website is being used by the OP as the central argument on what Democrats need to do to save their party?
Good points may or may not have been made in the article but anyone should find it deeply suspicious that a self described conservative publication seems so intent on making Democrats a better party.
All of your bullshit meters should be twitching pretty strongly and the prescriptions offered should be eyed with deep suspicion.
Not sure I get your point, aren’t the other candidates free to collect endorsements from other elected officials and have them stump for them? Bloomberg has Lucy McBath’s endorsement, after all.
Yes, it’s a conservative website–a NeverTrump conservative site. Its raison d’etre is to oppose Trump, and to seek any way possible to remove him from office.
Examples:
These are the kinds of allies we should be welcoming with open arms. They have the most credibility of all, because like Mitt Romney, they can’t be dismissed as partisan Chicken Littles. They have burned many professional bridges because of their “disloyalty”, and their predilections are shared with many of the educated suburban voters–who were for many years rock-ribbed “Main Street Republicans”–who swung the House so dramatically in 2018.
And they are not swayed by dreams of gaining this progressive advance or that one (you may consider that a bug, I call it a feature). Their contempt and white-hot hatred for Trump and singleminded determination to get him out of office, uh, “trump” all other considerations. I feel sure that if they thought Bernie was the one most likely to take him down, they would be all for it. But like James Carville and Jonathan Chait (and, supposedly, most Democratic primary voters), they just want to maximize the chances of defeating him, whatever it takes.
ETA:
I’m quite sure you don’t get my point, because I (and the author in the OP) are advocating just that: a collection of powerful, well-timed endorsements. The person I was responding to saw these as illegitimate “back room deals and bigwig machinations”.
I live in a party of the country that gets fracking-induced earthquakes. Some people have serious water supply contamination from fracking. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
You know what the Plains have lots of, & have lots of even when the market shifts & the oil & gas cease to be profitable?
WIND.
Renewables are the future. Fracking was a desperate grab for continued relevance by a dying fossil fuel sector.
Been a while since I looked at a new Pew Typology. But the GOP base has probably been significantly larger than the base of the Clinton Democrats for a generation. Maybe 9 or 10 points larger?
Someone has to expand that base. Maybe someone who did Spanish-language ads in Iowa, instead of assuming that the latino 6% of that state wasn’t worth picking up? What do you want to bet Bernie does Spanish ads in Kansas (12% latino), Nebraska (11%), etc.?
I mean, the old boy’d better, I want to win. I don’t just mean the nomination, I mean the general. You add that many new voters, you can flip the Senate with coattails.
Foolsguinea, where was this tsunami of new voters in 2018, when none of Bernie’s candidates flipped seats? What about in the primaries so far?
Yes, absolutely! In 2020. Then I assume they are hoping to bring the GOP back to sanity eventually (or create some new center-right party that believes in respecting small-d democratic norms). They’re not behind the Democrats for the long haul. But in this fall’s election? You better believe it.
Yes, the path to victory will rely on creating new lifelong young democrats, not by trying to court fickle Never Trump conservatives or moderate republican suburbanites. These people will immediately go back to voting for the GOP once Trump is gone, or they will split their tickets and vote R downballot this November. Obama brought new young folks into the party, and Sanders has the potential to do the same. Someone has to expand the eloctorate anyway- boomers are finally starting to die out and need to be replaced in the voting booth. Just bite the bullet and step aside- we are in a new era of partisan populism and the old way is dead.
From the second-oldest piece on the site, in early January 2019 (the oldest was still nursing a dream of getting Trump out via GOP primary challenge):
ETA:
I’m not disputing that they may well do that. But the first order of business is getting rid of Trump ASAP, while we still have a democracy. Then you can run AOC or whomever in 2028 and good luck to you. Maybe with eight more years of replacement of the oldest voters with the youngest, that might actually work. It’s too soon now though, and the danger is too great to take a flyer on it this time. Again: those young progressive voters went 0-41 in targeted House races in 2018. They aren’t ready yet.
Bernie has always been an independent, & he’s not a great party leader.
The other Democratic candidates are, right now, doing worse at bringing in previously unreached minority demographics.
Both things can be true.
Btw, I don’t actually expect Bernie’s campaign to flip the Senate, because I think he’s actually kind of bad at party politics. I do think his popularity offers a chance to do it with coattails that no one else has right now.
A problem with a Stop Bernie Movement is: WHO should the Ds coalesce around? Each of the other candidates still on the stage is also deeply flawed.
The Bulwark makes another suggestion: Romney-Bloomberg running together as an independent “unity” ticket. It would be interesting to predict the results. Would anyone get an electoral college majority? How would the House of Reps vote, given that many Congresspeople would have been asked to endorse this “third way”? (Instead of Romney-Bloomberg can a pairing be found more palatable to liberals? Nah — the whole premise is that liberals won’t get off their train to Fantasyland.)
I have mixed feelings about this idea — it seems like the way to suddenly re-invigorate the Republican Party. OTOH, if it’s true that, as seems very likely, Sanders has no chance in November — times are very desperate.
Lol. Nobody wants these Never Trump losers, thanks. These people are a vanishingly small part of the electorate. Why do you think they were never able to stop Trump, who remains wildly popular among his party? Because despite being overrepresented in the pundit class and among urbane millionaires, Never Trump republicans are so few in number that they have way less influence then they’d like to admit. They failed to stop their own party’s descent into madness (and in fact used and cultivated the madness for their own plutocratic, Christian supremecist desires for decades before it got out of their control) and now they want to fuck with another political party? Hard pass. These people are not allies. They are enemies looking to hijack the opposition and use them to remove the lunatic in charge of their old party, and then they will simply turn around and remold the GOP back into the cheerful, polite pack of authoritarian scumbags it used to be, instead of the more vulgar, overtly evil cabal of weirdos that we have now. What a victory. I’ll take finally activating the youth & Hispanic vote over making a pact with these losers any day, thanks.
He’s really not. I’ve listened to his candid conversation so many times on the Pizza Tapes that I almost feel like I know the guy, and I feel confident that he and I would get along splendidly.
I *wish *something like that could work, but the most likely outcome is an immediate overwhelming Electoral College victory for Trump. The second-most likely outcome is that the House votes to reelect Trump. Any other outcome strikes me as vanishingly unlikely.
Right now, we need to try to stop Bernie, even if the chances are slim. If that doesn’t work, downballot Dems need to run against Bernie and try to hold on. An analysis at RCP the other day gave me hope that even if suburban moderates vote against Bernie, they may still vote for moderate House Democrats–especially if they see Trump as highly likely to win, in order to provide a check against his having too much power. That’s probably our best case scenario. It sucks if we don’t have the Senate and he can keep getting judges confirmed, and obviously the House investigative power is increasingly toothless; but as long as Trump depends on the House for the power of the purse, he can still be kept somewhat at bay. (Still, I’ll be glad to be in a blue state where the entire executive branch is run by DFLers, and I’d recommend others take refuge in such places to the degree possible.)
You’re giving the opposite of good advice, SlackerInc.
I wrote the following just to say the opposite of what you’re saying:
You want the coattails of the man with the votes. The Dems should be nominating Berners everywhere. Not “everywhere they can.” EVERYWHERE.
The big knock against Bernie is not that his ideas are bad. They’re mostly good ideas, actually. The big knock against him is that he can’t get them past the present Congress. So he needs like-minded candidates running up and down the ballot (everywhere) so he has a chance to succeed. This makes him more credible because he has support; it makes the Democratic nominees more credible because they are with the leader of their party. And nothing succeeds like success.
Is that the ideal advice? I’m not sure. But I bet my way would work better, if only because of that word EVERYWHERE.
Dude. Bernie’s Our Revolution PAC tried that in 2018. They *utterly *failed. Not a single GOP incumbent was defeated by one of the candidates they backed.
They can win in deep blue districts like AOC’s, but without the moderates that’s a ticket only to being a permanent minority in the House. And in the House, if you’re in the minority you ain’t got shit.
ETA: So let’s say they managed to win in every deep blue seat (they wouldn’t, particularly not in many CBC seats, but just for the sake of argument). The moderates in swing seats would **never **go along with anything those progressives wanted to do. And without the moderates, the progressives wouldn’t be able to do anything. So what’s the point?
The biggest knock against Bernie is that his core supporters are really want to tear down the traditional power centers. Maybe not the best allies for a voting block that wants to govern.
I laugh when I see people thinking Bloomberg is the Dem version of Trump. That’s obviously Sanders. The not really party guy who gets the fringe people out voting for him. Yeah, he’s better than Trump but catering to the demanding “enthusiasm” of Bernie supporters is going to bite the Dems in the ass.
Okay, and democrats like Donnelly & Mccaskill lost while cosplaying as Republicans. There is no magic formula- but ultimately Sanders has a wildly enthusiastic base of support, something the other candidates lack. His Hispanic outreach will pay dividends in the general election, and the youth vote turnout be will be at it’s highest level in years. I voted for him in 2016 but he was not my favorite or even 2nd favorite candidate this time… and yet I see that has run a good campaign and his base just seems to grow & grow. The writing is on the wall and he will be the nominee.
And the point is to invest in the future. Again, Sanders creates millions of newly-minted young Democrats. These are people who will continue to vote D once Sanders is long gone. Maybe he won’t get much done, but no Democratic president would under Mcconnell’s reign anyway. People just want an advocate for normal people in the White House until the boomers finally die out and we can start fixing the mess they’ve left us.
A Sanders nomination is a high risk / high reward strategy sure, but at this point there’s not much left to lose. The planet is one fire, the fake economy will collapse soon, and white Christian supremacists & their oligarch allies will continue to destroy our norms & institutions even if one of the other democrats manage to win. It’s time for something radically different, and if it doesn’t work oh well at least we tried.