So: Your recommendation to Sanders for getting his ideas to the forefront of the debate and to attract enthusiastic young people to progressive causes was … to pursue a path that would lead to him being an ignored laughingstock and avoid enthusiasm. Got it.
If you’re thinking of a career as political consultant, my advice is: Don’t give up your day job.
In a very academic sense, I think that a voting block that leans almost 100% towards a party in the general seemingly regardless of candidate and leans 90% to one candidate in the primary for what seems like fragile reasons is not a block that is helpful to have when it comes to picking the strongest candidate. If your goal is to game the general election as a Dem, certain voting blocks like blacks and LGBTQ will almost always swing to you regardless of who you are simply because of the (D). This means, picking a candidate who has strong support in these fields is simply shoring up an already assured set of votes. In 2016, Sanders attracted voting blocks that were less directly tied to the Democrats, like first time voters and independents, as well as political outsiders. Hillary was propped up on the base and managed to win because of it, but while I’d bet most Hillary voters would’ve shown up to vote for any Democrat, I would be surprised if the average Sanders supporter showed up at all. Of the ones that do, the more anti-establishment ones might easily swing to trump or 3rd party. I think Sanders was a stronger general election candidate if he could maintain his enthusiasm in his base while getting a midline level of support from the core Democrat demographic. Hillary seems headed for run of the mill support from hardline Dems but she seems to be getting out paced by Trump when you compare who has the most enthusiastic supporters. Trump supporters are high energy, ready to show up on election day in droves for the guy. Trump supporters are also not part of the Republican main line who will also show up on election day. Trump managed to get “trump people” + “republican people” while sanders got “sanders people” + “democrat people” but it seems like hillary is going to have to get by on “democrat people” alone
So in the most objective way I can phrase it, I think that the Black voting block (and southern Democrats) have both weakened the party in the general. But obviously black people should be allowed to vote.
A thinly-veiled line separates Sanders and Trump supporters.
Oh, no. Sanders absolutely did what was politically best for him. He went with the route where he could glom onto some legitimacy and save him a shit load of money in trying to get signatures for ballot access. If my job was giving political advice, I would have picked that option in a heartbeat.
That expediency came with a price though and it’s not anyone’s doing but Sanders’ that he picked that route. It’s not as though the DNC was begging him to join the race under the Democratic banner so they could catch him in some nefarious trap. He had options and he picked “Join under the Democratic Party system”.
Did you know that Bernie Sanders has spent less money and killed less people than Hillary has?
And that’s just this week!
Do me a favor, will you? Compare the influence that Sanders is having this election cycle with, say, Jill Stein. Or Nader in 2000. Sanders has caused a major shift in the discussion. He’s energized the progressive base and shifted the democratic nominee to the left in a serious way, and he’s done so largely without kneecapping the party. Nader? He had next to no actual policy impact, but he did manage to hand the election to Bush. Nice going, jackass. Stein? Who even gives a flying fuck about Jill Stein at this point, other than to lament the fact that she still exists and is still failing civics 101?
No, Sanders absolutely and undeniably did it right. In a two-party, first-past-the-post system like the USA, running a polar third party electoral bid is likely to get you exactly one thing: the scorn of the vast majority of progressives with whom you just split the vote. If you want change, you have to do it from within the party. Sanders came infinitely closer to winning the presidency this way than Ralph Nader or Jill Stein will ever get.
I don’t see where we disagree. Sanders’ took the route of political expedience to get his message out. Not the route to get ballot access, not the route to ensure that independents could vote for him but the route that would give him the largest microphone for the least cost. He did it right for what his political goals were: promoting Sanders and his message.
Perhaps this is the naïve idea of some of you Westerners.
It is not in fact the actual approach of the politics in the region - in fact it is the OPPOSITE.
The approach of the inclusivist and democratising politics of the Morocco and the Tunisia is not to “let the Islamists come to power” to exclude them, but to remove the easy-never governed mystique that applies to the opposition party never responsible for real political action.
The long process in the Morocco has been to include the Islamist party that was and is willing to play by the rules of the Parliamentary democratic system. It is similar but self-imposed process in the Tunisia with Ennahda.
These are the cases where the approach is to give the carrot to a normalizing of the democratic exchange inside of the Islamists parties - this is the successful policy. Instead of throwing the rocks from the inside and making the easy and magical promises of the radical activists, working for their views of change inside of the system. It is a process that makes for the adult politics - and has been useful and more successful than the exclusion politics or the “setup to fail”…
This is not Leninism it is the very opposite of Leninism.
The only place where a Leninist type approach has been used is in the fiasco of the Egypt, but then the Egypt has been infected with the cancer of the “arab socialism” and the failed model of thinking of the Soviet military autocracy since the days of Nasser. They are now worse off for this idiocy (of course besides the mamalik jdad of the military it is also the Ikhouan who are at fault).
Of course, she got “outpaced” by Sanders regarding enthusiasm of supporters, at least open and obvious enthusiasm, and still beat him by 3+ million votes.
Huge rallies and supporters who crank it up to 11 don’t necessarily translate to more votes on election day.
Huge rallies and outpouring of support from a demographic that doesn’t vote is a big deal though. The people who voted for Hillary don’t actually matter because they’ll vote Dem no matter what. The people voting for Sanders are people who don’t care about the party and aren’t at all tied to voting for democrats or voting at all. In an election where 3 or 400 people can decide who wins, being able to get any demographic that isn’t under your umbrella is huge.
Here is the thing about women - you see a lot of Bernie supporters on the internet. You see them on facebook, you see them at rallies.
Women who speak out get shamed. They get publicly humiliated. They get told they are fake geeks, that they don’t belong in gaming, that SF has become too PC, that catcalling is a compliment, that all they need to do is lean in at work, but not too far or you are bitchy and aggressive.
We’ve learned not to speak up. We’ve learned not to go into public places with crowds where we might get groped. We’ve learned not to paint a target on ourselves.
We are not the silent majority - but we are the quiet significant population.
Young women support Bernie. Young women who have not been rubbed up against in crowds or harassed on their twitter account. Young women who haven’t been caught between “you need more feminine qualities, you aren’t assertive enough to get promoted” at work. I know a number of women - myself included - who didn’t support Hillary eight years ago - but the past eight years have added to a depth of experience that says “fuck it” - but very quietly.
We wouldn’t PUMA - the Supreme Court is too important to us. We are pragmatic - women usually become pretty pragmatic. But we are also sick and tired of it. Forty, fifty years worth of sick and tired of it. Quietly, but - fuck it.
No offense but women kind of fall under the Democrat umbrella too. Unfortunately the American political game is trying to convince various flavors of white guy to vote for one party or another
And so do progressives. Yeah, progressives are more likely to stay home, because they skew young, but that has always been the case. Women vote. Middle age women vote. Middle age right of center women are the most likely swing voters - the easiest for the Democrats to bring over. (Laura Bush and daughters have signaled they are supporting Hillary, so has Barbara) - that’s a better deal than courting Progressives - court Progressives you get one vote. Court right of center women and you deprive the GOP of one vote and get one vote.
Actually, married white women tend to vote Republican (that latter group went for Romney 56-42). Single women vote for Democrats.
Republicans know that. They’re also worried about Trump losing that demographic as well.
Maybe the part where you said the exact opposite, saying he should have run as an independent? The part where you think he should have run in a way that would have guaranteed that none of the people who wanted to support him would have had a voice.
More people were able to vote for him as a Democrat than could ever vote for him as an independent. You might as well not vote than vote for someone who obviously can’t win. There’s a reason I tell everyone that, if they want to stop Trump, the only choice is to vote Clinton–no one else has a chance to win besides her. Those protest votes will accomplish nothing.
If Sanders ran as any third party, that’s what he’d be. A protest vote that would accomplish nothing.
Forget ballots–more people were able to vote for him this way than ever would have been able to as an independent.
There’s an argument that he should have done more, like trying to set up coalitions on a local level, and work within the party, so that his movement would last beyond him. But there’s no good argument that he should have run as an independent.
If Sanders’ primary concern was giving independents the chance to vote for him, to not have superdelegates, etc then the correct choice would have been to run as an independent.
That wasn’t his calculus. He ran because he wanted a spot on the stage to preach his message. It’s blindingly obvious that he didn’t go into the race expecting to do half as well as he did; he went into it just to get some time in the spotlight. From THAT perspective, judging based on the reasons Sanders was in the race, he made the right political call to glom onto the Democratic party to try and get some legitimacy and chance to preach his message at the debates.
Sanders made the right call to run as a Democrat but that’s because it was a politically expedient call that had nothing to do with giving a shit about primary voting rights or superdelegates or what a big meanie DWS is.
I’m still convinced he was actively recruited by the DNC to be Clinton’s sparring partner, and to bracket her from the left, during the primaries, after they finally accepted Elizabeth Warren’s refusals to play the role. But at some point all the adulation got to Sanders’ head, and it’s still there.
I don’t feel like breaking down every single voting demographic that swings hard to one direction or the other sorry. The point was more that demographics in the US tend to vote pretty consistently based on race and age. The elections mostly come down to whichever candidate can get the highest turnout in their demographic. Obama did this by encouraging record black voter turnout, 04 Bush with conservatives on a patriotism high, etc. Getting people to actually switch sides is hard, getting people who already agree with you to show up is hard too but way more practical.
I guess I just have to chuckle when I see the shock and horror that the Democratic establishment supported Hillary over Bernie. SHOCKING! HORROR!
Yes, it turns out that Hillary Clinton had the support of the Democratic establishment. So much so that no other Democrats even bothered running against her. So somebody who wasn’t a Democrat joined the Democrats just to run against her, and it turns out the Democratic establishment didn’t support him.
Hillary has been working for this for 10 years. The Democratic establishment was behind her all the way. Bernie did a lot better than expected, but he didn’t actually win more votes than Hillary, or get more delegates. We’re not talking superdelegates here, we’re talking just plain delegates. The superdelegates switching to Bernie was always a fantasy. Why? Because the superdelegates are the Democratic establishment, and they supported Hillary.
If you claim to be a progressive, and then vote for Trump, well, I guess I reserve the right to not quite believe you when you say you’re a progressive. You’re not a progressive. You’re just an asshole.
Anyone and everyone who voted for Trump, or will vote for Trump is an asshole. It’s a scientific fact. You could look it up. Donald Trump is a flaming garbage pile of a human being, and if you’d just as soon see Trump in office as Hillary, then so are you.