I do consider ‘centrist’ to be, well, at least more of an insult than ‘moderate’. ‘Centrist’ implies a naivete about a nonexistent concord between the two sides that, if it ever existed, has been impossible since 2008. Biden cannot work with someone who doesn’t want to work with him. I think that would be his biggest flaw as a President (as opposed to a candidate): like Obama, he will shift what he is asking for to the right, and will still be refused, and will get a ludicrous charge of ‘why won’t he even negotiate with us?’ in the bargain.
These days, we need someone who will recognize this situation for what it is and fight for achievable progress. We don’t need a ‘centrist’, we need a ‘radical moderate’. The time for cooperation with the swamp creatures is over, but the solution doesn’t have to be huge wealth taxes and elimination of private insurance, although that would of course be preferable to the elimination of democracy.
But YOU. ARE. NOT. THE. PERSON. WE. MUST. CONVINCE. TO. NOT. VOTE. FOR. TRUMP.
I am not that person either.
I live in a small Wisconsin city. So, as it happens, there are twenty people living on my block (of seventy people total) who ARE that person.
That’s unusual. Not many Dopers live close to such a high proportion of the ONLY. VOTERS. THAT. MATTER. when you or I choose between Bernie and Joe during our primary or caucus.
I don’t care what YOU want. I don’t care what I want. I only care what THEY want. Because, if Trump is re-elected, I won’t know what to say to my child, and the world will be measurably worse for millions of people deep into the future.
(I agree with you that Biden’s declining faculties scare me, both in how he would perform as a candidate, and as president. But it’s what we’re stuck with now).
UnreconstructedMan, I agreed with your earlier list of how Biden is weak and flawed.
But your more recent post is just wrong. The “socialist” label really does matter to the twenty people in MY neighborhood (not in yours — correct me if you DO live in a particular swath of Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania) who are the ONLY. VOTERS. THAT. MATTER.
Only five of those seventy will vote for someone labeled a “socialist,” but forty of them will vote for Biden.
That’s the ONLY statistic that matters. MY neighbors, and the neighbors of a few other Dopers.
Correction: My second post should read “seventy votes in my neighborhood,” not twenty. I’m thinking a three-block area. I can give you names, if you don’t believe me, of who: 1. Voted for Trump, 2. Will vote for Biden, 3. Will not vote for a Socialist like Bernie, and 4. REALLY WILL VOTE.
I’m not saying I’m special because of any reason other than where I happen to live at this time. I happen to have neighbors whose votes matter, and most of you do not. It sucks. I hate this system as much as anyone. But these are the FACTS.
As I had posited before, yesterday would be a test of one of the main pillars of the Sanders theory of electability, that he excites unlikely voters to show up. If they did Sanders would have won Texas by a huge margin, and had overall a very good night. Instead it seems turnout was up, but in the demographics that do not lean Sanders’ way, both by race/ethnicity and age, same as in the other primaries to date. That pillar of Sanders’ electability is pretty much falsified.
Bloomberg appears to be flirting near the edge of viability in California. If he ends up below that could make some positive news for Team Sanders. Of course we may wait a while before we know.
This is the main result for me. I was fully willing to listen to the argument that the party had passed my centrist positions by, and that the new wave of voters would carry Bernie to victory both in the primary and in November. But they didn’t show up. The old-school voters did.
Does Biden’s age, some of his past gaffes, and the high possibility of him making new ones scare me? Of course it does. I think if he wins the nomination he goes into the general election at least as a 40/60 underdog.
But I think yesterday should have made it clear that in states that are likely in play (WI, MI, PA, NC, possibly FL) Biden has a stronger chance at beating Trump than Sanders because there is a very large group of voters (like the ones that JKellyMap talks about) that really want to vote out Trump, and will drag themselves to polling stations to do it, but that will not vote for Bernie Sanders.
This is just Democratic bed wetting. OMG, if we don’t pick a genuine revolutionary candidate, Trump will win again.
If anybody needs to have learned a lesson here it’s the revolutionaries who turned their noses up at HRC and stayed home because the smart lady in the pant suit was too establishment for them. That’s how we got Trump. Also, numbers indicate that the “revolutionaries” talk a big game but stay home more than the more moderates. So maybe they need to actually vote more than they whine.
Keep in mind that about half of the electorate that votes (63M at last count) did not have a socialist boogieman to fear and they still voted for Trump. Perhaps (we can hope) some of them have a bad taste in their mouth 4 years later. Perhaps they will consider voting for a traditional moderate Democrat like Biden who doesn’t scare the bejeezus out of them. Perhaps they will just stay home. But they are less likely to do that if they think OMGSOCIALISTSARECOMING!
Did it turn out that the Democratic Party is like what Churchill thought of the United States in general? Always does the right thing after exhausting every other possible alternative?
I’ve been following politics since the 1960s and this has been the most remarkable 3 days that I can ever remember. Everybody was ready to embalm Biden and put him in the ground. Now I dare say he is the prohibitive leader and odds on favorite for the nomination. All without spending much money and winning three states with a total of one field office between them. A lot of it was Clyburn’s endorsement, a lot of it was the well timed exits of Klobuchar and Buttigieg. But I think most of it was the Democratic electorate suddenly coming to the realization that they were in serious danger of nominating a self-described socialist. We may agree with a lot of what Sanders wants to do, but I’ll be damned if I want to saddle every downballot Democrat with a socialist at the head of the ticket.
I don’t care if Biden makes verbal missteps. I do care that he comes across as an authentic caring person. I like some of what Sanders proposes, but he comes across as an angry old coot who can’t work with anyone. Last night he seemed bitter and frustrated. Time for him to pack it in. He will not be president this time, he will never be president.
One bit of schadenfreude: Cenk Uygur won’t make the cut in his run for a House seat. If you ever watch The Young Turks, they’re become unwatchable shills for Sanders. Nice to see them cry in their beers today.
Unreconstructed Man is not American. His thoughts on how Americans think, what they want, or what they need are a mix of idle speculation and wild assed guess.
If you mean “fears of Bernie becoming President”, the timing doesn’t fit that theory – Bernie was perceived as the frontrunner well before last week’s Trump Slump, which was clearly triggered by Schuck l’Orange’s headless-chicken response to the news that coronavirus was definitely going pandemic. If you mean “fears of Bernie getting the nomination and going down in flames”, that might be true.
