BTW, you inspired me to take a look at those poll crosstabs. When more than one in four Democrats, and a plurality of independents, support her nomination, that makes it politically risky to strongly oppose it. The voters who do strongly oppose it are going to vote Democratic come hell or high water; the ones who support it may not.
Fracking is a great example of this idea. A poll of Upper Midwest swing states found that 54% of Democratic voters would like to ban fracking. I myself would be one of those if I were polled. But only 40 percent of swing voters in those states supports such a ban. So Biden opposes a fracking ban, and he is very smart to do so. That’s just Politics 101.
Strongly pushing for policies favored by a modest majority of Democrats, but opposed by independents, is the kind of thing Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren love to do. It’s terrible general election politics, whether in a national election or in a tightly contested swing state Senate race.
ETA: What I hope we do is just let the nomination go through without too much fuss, then admit Puerto Rico and DC as states next year (maybe Guam too). Then pass a lot of legislation to ensure rights we have traditionally relied on the SCOTUS for, like same sex marriage and abortion rights. Then if the Court dares to strike down those laws, it’s time to do some court packing (hopefully not too close to an election).
I certainly wouldn’t call it clear public support, no. Especially as it paved the way for the “Contract With America” bullshit that we are still wading through.
When the majority of the people that you represent oppose it, then supporting it seems pretty risky to me. People can stay home, they can vote third party, they can primary you next go around.
Would your advice to Democrats be to vote for ACB, since you think that she has public support?
You can’t really compare those directly. The ACB poll is basically a binary question - it would add up to 100% were it not for a lot of unknowns/didn’t respond. The Clinton/Dole result you quote was an actual election - there are no unknowns/didn’t respond represented in the number - and it doesn’t add up to 100% because there were other options, primarily Perot.
My opinion is that Clinton did win clear public support in that election, at least by modern standards, but that ACB does not have clear public support to be confirmed. I haven’t bothered to look up the exact phrasing of the question, but it’s not clear how respondents are parsing out “Should Trump have nominated anybody?” vs “Now that she’s nominated, does ACB seem alright enough?”
No. But they should also not engage in chest-thumping theatrics.
BTW, “Contract With America” was 1994, not 1996. I don’t see how Clinton’s borderline landslide win over Dole “paved the way” for any of that. Dole was the one running on the promise to sign all that crap into law. We’re damn lucky we had the charismatic Clinton to hold the line, as the voting public was a lot more conservative then than it is now.
So you think Biden is making a mistake to oppose the banning of fracking? If so, I couldn’t disagree more. You’ve got to pick your battles, choose what hill to die on, etc.
It is as follows: “When the Senate votes on Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court, do you think the Senate should vote to confirm her as a Supreme Court justice, or not?” Pretty clear wording if you ask me.
Are you serious with this? You are pushing discredited Trump talking points. Even your own cite calls this “Mostly False” (only “mostly” because he does call for phasing it out on federal lands, which is only ten percent of all fracking) . Here’s what the Associated Press says:
President Donald Trump is persisting with the myth that Democratic rival Joe Biden proposes to ban fracking. Biden doesn’t.[…]
Biden has repeatedly pledged not to abolish fracking.
It’s not like his win stopped it. Congress has more or less been under Republican control, with a brief reversal after the Republicans ran our country into the ground in 2008.
And had Perot not spilt the conservative vote, and had Dole not been a mannequin posing as a politician, Clinton would not have faired nearly as well.
I don’t think that most people want to ban fracking. They want it better regulated, and they want it phased out as better technologies come online. But a straight up ban would be devastating for our energy needs. That’s pretty much in line with Biden’s position.
Some of the other Democrats that ran in the primary were for banning fracking. They did not win the nomination.
But that’s not because most Democrats are against banning fracking. They are not, as I showed with my cite upthread. It’s because (thank god) Democrats were, by and large, strategic in their voting in this presidential primary. They voted not necessarily for the candidate that represented them best on the issues, but the one they thought was good enough on the important issues but a better sell to people who voted Trump in 2016.
I’m not sure how to parse your double negative across two sentences. If you are saying that most Democrats are against banning fracking, I agree. If you are saying that most are for banning fracking, then I don’t think that your cite actually supports that. Most Democrats are for regulating it, restricting it, and phasing it out as alternatives are available to replace it, but few want to just ban it outright.
Democrats didn’t vote strategically, they voted for the candidate that represented them best on the issues. The centrist, the moderate, the most boring and known quantity won out.
In the poll about banning fracking, were people asked about banning immediately vs phasing out? Because I’d say I’m generally for eliminating fracking, but if asked if I’d support an immediate ban vs phasing out, I’d support phasing out. Are you sure the majority who support a ban are at odds with phasing out?
That was to prevent Bernie, who did not represent their interests from winning. That was not a strategic vote to get the best candidate to beat Trump, as you previously alleged.
And the choice really came down to Biden vs Bernie at that point, and the people chose Biden.
The story there is that people voted for the centrist most likely to beat Bernie, not to beat Trump.
They specifically said that they voted for Biden to keep Bernie from getting the nomination.
Did you read it differently somehow?
That the centrists banded together to keep the hard left faction out is not in doubt. That they did so in order to beat Trump, rather than because centrists more represented their interests is the contention that you are failing to prove.
“I can wait for four more years for ‘Medicare for all’ and the Green New Deal — and go with Biden — just to get Trump out of office,” Ms. Abetti said, “because that’s my number one thing.”
and
The most stark example of Mr. Sanders’s problems with self-identified Democrats may be the Warren-to-Biden voters, people like Barbara Becker and Lisa Stone. These voters, many of whom are older Democrats and college-educated women, chose to support a candidate whose platform was a far cry from Ms. Warren’s promises of “big, structural change,” rather than a fellow progressive, Mr. Sanders — whom they admit they agree with on most policy matters.
The voters said that while they share many of Mr. Sanders’s beliefs, they reject his political style.
Again: you either didn’t really read it, or you struggled to comprehend it.
The only way it would make sense that Democrats voted strategically to beat Trump is if most of us are actually left enough to vote for Sanders, but chose Biden instead to try and beat Trump. That would make the progressives the dominant force in the party. And that just very much is not true.
And only one of your quotes that you’ve put up while I was writing this suggests anyone who was progressive choosing Biden because they thought Sanders would lose. The rest are people saying they chose Biden because they thought Sanders was a bad candidate.
Not that any of this has anything to do with the claim in your OP. If Democrats were willing to vote strategically, that would suggest that your idea isn’t seen as the strategic winner. If you’re right, then this would help the case against you.
Slacker had to give up on his claim in the OP- he was called on it, and his claim turned out to be… well let us charitably say “strained to the extreme”… Now I guess he has decided to hijack his own thread, turning this into some sort of Pit rant against the Democratic party. Fracking, and now Sanders.