Agreed, and it’s really frustrating and counterproductive to normalize Trump by describing him as just another bad Republican president. This does a lot of the heavy lifting for the Trump side, framing opposition to him as mere partisanship.
I was very active in Missouri politics for twenty years. I met Claire four times, including hosting her on my property on the same day (possibly the exact moment, depending on what time the interview was recorded) Todd Aiken made his infamous “legitimate rape” comments. And 538 documented that she outperformed her state’s partisan lean by double digits. Missouri has just become too red outside of St. Louis, Kansas City, and Columbia. You are telling a narrative of Democratic corruption, but it is the Missouri GOP that has been as nakedly corrupt as any state party I know of, yet they keep on winning. Missouri has gotten whiter and whiter relative to the rest of the country, in part because of a lot of old conservative white people retiring to the Ozarks and the Branson area.
ETA: I agree BTW that Inslee, Hickenlooper, and Booker would have been much better choices (not Yang though, WTF). Bullock would have been the best of all. But my top 12 choices (literally) were all out of the race before the end of 2019, or asterisks in the polls, so I have to make do with what’s left.
I can show you ten articles from 2016 about how Trump is unelectable, dude. Dunno what the point of this is. If Sanders doesn’t get a single Never Trump republican vote, good riddance.
Bernie will be the nominee because the Democrat party is a mess. It’s too late to stop him. This is what happens when you let dinosaurs run your party and cultivate leadership that completely ignores voters under 60- they rebel and reject the establishment. Gen Z, Millennials & Gen X are getting the candidate they want, and boomers need to kindly get over it and “vote blue no mattter who” like they’ve been shrieking for 4 years.
I’m thoroughly unconvinced that’s true–but let’s say it is.
Let’s say you’ve got 1000 voters. 450 will vote for Trump. 400 will vote for any Democratic candidate. 150 will only vote for the Democratic candidate if it’s Sanders.
How the fuck do you use this scenario to recommend against nominating Sanders?
The problem is you didn’t fulfill your end. Millennials are have been unenthusiastic election participants. So you’re right, maybe it’s the older generations’ turn – to say fuck it and stay home.
What you have is 1000 voters, 325 are rusted on any GOP, 215 are rusted on any DEM and 110 are Bernie or the Highway (numbers for illustrative purposes only).
Your scenario comes into play if the only available demographic to pitch to is the activated DEM base. Is that really the case?
By the same principle that you shouldn’t encourage hostage-taking by negotiating with hostage-takers. To prebut an anticipated response: it’s not the same when you try to appeal to centrist swing voters. Those voters are sincerely torn between voting for a right of center party or a left of center party, finding both sides too extreme and weighing which compromises are tougher. For the far left to play “Chicken” by threatening to sit it out unless they get to control the party forevermore (and it would be forevermore if we encourage them) is just flat-out extortion. They aren’t genuinely torn between the parties. It’s totally disengenuous, “take my ball and go home”, completely opposed to any notion of coalitionbuilding.
Have you seen the studies about how strong the norm of reciprocity is in social psychology? In studies, people get so angry about any perceived violation of it that they will sabotage themselves to punish transgressions. For instance, researchers will tell someone that a stranger in another room has chosen to keep 75% of some sort of cash prize (like $15 out of $20). Then they can choose to take the $5 that’s left, or torpedo the whole thing so neither of them gets anything. People will most often choose to get nothing rather than let the other person make what they see as an unfair division. Same principle applies here.
If Bernie wins the nomination, I will vote for him, but for the first time in over 20 years, I won’t canvas or phone bank for the presidential election, and I won’t speak up for him (nor against him) online. I can’t bring myself to be that disingenuous. If some wavering voter expresses concerns about Bernie, I won’t be able to convincingly assure them it’s all fine. (I know this is a different standard than I expect from candidates, but I would admittedly be a bad politician.)
Dude, I read the link. Who said moderate candidates aren’t allowed to accept the endorsements of Democratic grandees? What your article is promoting is some Dem demigod that can move all of these established Democrats around like chess pieces to jointly pull a Tonia Harding on Bernie. I’d call that a machination:
Put their thumb on the scale? Change the balance of the race? Jeb’s former staffer should spend more time asking these prominent Dems if they want to endorse candidates in the way he suggests. I’d wager they don’t, since they haven’t, and maybe for the kinds of reasons the author describes, because the Dems still have some American values while the Rs have squandered theirs in the hope it gives them an advantage.
Look, I’m like you, I have a union job where there are enough Trumpers around. I get it. I also get the arguments about Bernie’s electability and his effects down ticket. Still, demanding that some Dem grandee swing their reputation like a club at Bernie’s kneecaps is going too far.
Still, if Liz can get Obama to give one of his fiery speeches for her between now and Super Tuesday, that’s totally legit. It’s fine if the author wants to give out some free campaign advice, like this:
If you were an employer looking to hire someone to advocate for “X” and you showed up saying the things you have said about Sanders in opposition to “X” would you hire you?
I sure wouldn’t.
So yeah…if you cannot get on board then sit it out. Or pull the lever for Turmp…as you like.
I’m offended by that last part. Nothing I have EVER said should provide anyone with any reason to think I would vote for Trump for any reason short of some maniac holding my wife and kids hostage. Nor would I deny the Democratic nominee my vote. When I participate in the primary process I believe it’s an implicit contract to vote for whichever nominee wins, even if it is the second-worst candidate running (the worst being Tulsi Gabbard). Nor do I think it’s right to shit-talk that nominee once there is no possibility of denying them the nomination. Once Bernie has 1,991 delegates, I will observe the Thumper rule, go quiet, and then quietly, privately go vote for Bernie and the DFL slate on Election Day.
ETA: Upon a moment’s reflection, I don’t want to state as some inviolable principle that someone who participates in a party’s nominating contest must always vote for ANY nominee. I think it was honorable for instance for NeverTrumpers to refuse to vote for him in the 2016 election. But I do then believe if that happens, you need to leave the party and cannot in good conscience come back and vote in that party’s primary four years later. You gotta sit at least one round out.
But I’m not there with Bernie. I will vote for him unless he does something I can’t even conceive of (and I think I know him well enough for that to be unlikely). If OTOH Gabbard had somehow won, that might have been enough to make me quit the party.