Well not just that, but the whole “we not I” stuff was said when President Obama was running. There was definitely an undercurrent of this is a movement ‘of the people’ in Obama’s campaign.
I think this movement has even less of a chance of developing into anything lasting.
Out-polling Clinton according to which poll? When? Why didn’t we see the results nationally? Are you trying to peddle the argument that the elections were held at the wrong times? Bad luck, Bernie?
Well, leaving aside that fact that lots of African-Americans would piss themselves laughing at the utter stupidity of the idea that Sanders represented more of a movement beyond his campaign than Obama did, who represented the culmination of dreams of millions upon millions of people over the course of centuries as opposed to salving the egos of a bunch of underachieving, over-educated, entitled white folks pissed off that the Democratic party didn’t listen to them as much as it used to, Sanders doesn’t represent a new movement.
His so-called “revolution” failed because he never managed to reach beyond his base of pissed off white, college educated lefties who turned out in previous elections for Jerry Brown, Paul Simon, Dennis Kucinich, and of course Howard Dean, and in each case, when their candidate left the field, had a brief pity party where they unleashed some impotent ranting(which is quite normal for anyone who’s invest a lot of time and energy in a candidate one genuinely loves) but then they got over it and supported the Democratic candidate over the more loathsome Republican alternative.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/04/there_is_no_bernie_sanders_movement.html
According to Evil Captor’s link, a CBS News poll earlier this month.
Good question – to ask the mainstream media, which have been ignoring Sanders whenever possible since this campaigning season started.
No. The difference is that primaries are Democrats-only. That poll is not – and neither is the general election. As Evil Captor noted, independents – who do get to vote in November – like Sanders but not Clinton.
Oh, please, those polls you’re referring to are utterly useless. None of the people responding to them have seen Sanders take serious attacks from Republicans or seen how he’ll react to them.
In another thread you said you thought it was no big deal that in his past he had written whacko essays about how if girls in America didn’t having a lot more sex at much younger ages they were in danger of getting breast and cervical cancer and that we needed to start encouraging girls to start having lots of sex well before 18 and even seemed to savor the idea of American females taking such advice, but I seriously doubt most people who aren’t already hard core supporters will like hearing such lunatic advice. All joking aside, I’m pretty sure you’d agree that assuming that Bernie Sanders will react well to questioning about those articles he wrote for the Vermont Freeman and the American public will probably not react well to them either.
William Saletan of Slate outlines all the baggage and skeletons in his closet that could be used against him that the people who were being polled are almost certainly unaware of.
If he got to the general they wouldn’t be unaware of them for very long.
[bolding mine]
Okay, then I don’t get what you’re saying. Earlier in the thread you said “Not all the independents got to vote for Bernie.” Later, you said “You are responding to my counter to the idea that support of the people can be determined by the number of votes when all the people are not allowed to vote.” If this is not a reference to closed primaries, I’m not sure I understand what it is.
Certainly this is a pretty standard complaint in Sanders’s campaign, that independents can’t vote for him in some states because of closed primaries.
If you weren’t talking about that, what do you mean? Are you talking about the general election, where everyone can vote?
I guess Sanders could’ve run as an independent. If he is that appealing to the “people,” and it’s just that the big bad Democrats have left no stone unturned to stop him from getting the nomination, then he might have won, right?
Look, in the 21 or so states with primaries where independents have been allowed to vote (approximating as nearly as possible the situation in a general election), Clinton has finished with more votes than Sanders two thirds of the time (and because of the relative sizes of the states they’ve won, has picked up more than two thirds of those delegates). It doesn’t make any difference whether Sanders is “surrounded by the people”–whatever “people” are surrounding him don’t represent close to a majority.
No one who calls Sanders that has any credibility. It is not even defensible as hyperbole. Calling Trump a fascist would be defensible as hyperbole. Calling Sanders a Communist is a category error.
It’s been a thing since 1992, arguably earlier. It’s some different people having it right now, but the originals will be back in the game as soon as they settle their own pillow fight.
The Bernie Movement can simply combine with the Nader Movement, the Perot Movement, the Anderson Movement, et al. This stuff happens every few cycles. It’s a rite of passage for undergraduates just discovering the world, and for the low-information alienated who think clean hands indicate moral purity rather than lack of accomplishment.
As Ulf the Unwashed has demonstrated, open primaries don’t appear to prove that. So what does?
Bolding mine.
Could you expand on this? Specifically in a way that doesn’t sweep a broad generalization over a good ~40 percent of primary voters? To me, it seems the equivalent of saying “Hillary is the candidate for those low information black voters who don’t know what’s good for them.” I have seen that attitude on this board, and as a Sanders supporter I was disgusted by it. Can you explain perhaps how your apparent generalization is different?
Also, cite that the Sanders campaign is a bunch on white people angry that they no longer have the Democratic Party under their thumb, please.
I’m a Clinton supporter, and I don’t think it’s different.
And why did Obama’s revolution fail? Why did we get so little hope or change? Why have things not improved much for African-Americans or anybody else? Partly because of Pub obstructionism and racist backlash, of course, but also because he never meant to do the things we allowed ourselves to imagine he was promising between the lines. But Sanders speaks it plain and we need not doubt he means it.
No, Sanders doesn’t represent a new movement. American progressivism already was there – partly or mainly as a disillusioned and untapped voting bloc – before he riled it up. And after he steps off the stage it will remain riled, and, for the first time in a long time, aware of its strength.
No, it doesn’t. Perot and Anderson represented completely different political factions/traditions from left-progressivism. Nader’s campaign was a gasp of left-progressive frustration, and, since it could be blamed for W, rather soured the left on electoral action for years. This is different. Sanders is not playing a spoiler role, he is showing progressives that there are more of them than they realized and that they can have some success within the Democrats and perhaps even transform the party.
Its the first trimester of the movement - but a lot of movements are miscarried before they are delivered. Don’t tell your mom that grandma-hood is imminent.
Bullshit. Sanders is smart enough to know he has absolutely no chance of accomplishing anything he promises, he also knows most of his voters are not.
They missed this one: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/bernie-sanders-vermont-119927
He doesn’t know that and neither do you. Nobody knows what the next Congress will look like.
It doesn’t matter one tiny bit what the next Congress looks like, he could pull off a miracle and win the house and 60 seats in the senate and he still wouldn’t be able to do the things he wants. And yes i do know that, and you damn well should too.
Same wine, new label. And I’m waiting to hear your explanation for how Sanders’ revolution is going to carry on and thrive while Howard Dean’s — a man with a proven (and much more impressive) record of organizing for liberal causes against the Democratic Party mainstream — remains a political backwater.
At this point, yes, yes he is.
Nader voters thought so too.