IMHO, it doesn’t matter what they do as far as the results of the election. Bernie has already cost them the election unless he voluntarily drops out or drops dead.
As far as doing the least damage to the party, they would be better off letting him go with the nomination. As others have said, Bernie’s supporters might just be pissed off enough to split off on their own. Not enough numbers to make a huge difference for themselves, but more than enough to kneecap the DNC for the foreseeable future.
I tend to agree. The candidate who enters the convention with the most delegates is the presumptive nominee and his or her supporters have a right to feel entitled to the nomination.
The only scenario in which I feel the convention should consider bypassing the lead candidate is in the unlikely case of there being some significant change between the primaries and the convention and the committee arguing that the voters wouldn’t have voted the way they did if this change had occurred before the primaries.
Yes, I’m afraid this is correct. The D’s will need 51 Senate seats to salvage American democracy, but I’m afraid that with Sanders heading the ticket this may also be impossible.
People overlook that Putin and the GOP are trying their hardest now to ensure Sanders is the nominee. Once he is the nominee, they will reverse course 180-degrees and the biggest Propaganda Blitz in human history will go into gear, trying to crush Sanders in a landslide.
So it seems there is no consensus, which is exactly what I was afraid of, other than saying the Democratic Party is in a terrible spot here, practically a Kobayashi Maru for other ST nerds.
Everyone is saying “it’s bad if they do this” or “this is bad because it will lead to this” but I see very few suggestions of what they should do to try to mitigate the problem.
To me, the least bad situation seems to be to let Bernie run with it and give him the best support we can and help shape his message to appeal to middle America. Hope he chooses a running mate with mass appeal too.
What they should do, in the scenario you’re describing, is see it coming in advance and broker it as soon as it looks like the most likely scenario.
There should be an agreement prior to the convention that, to avoid the disaster of a controversial contest of the nomination, the candidate is going to be X, who has the full support of the party in exchange for measures ABCYZ, which are being mutually agreed upon simply to obviate the need for prolonged debate and internal conflict.
So, like, Bernie, if it’s Bernie, you got the keys, and the party is out in force behind you, in exchange for which you give a minimum of 2 cabinet positions to this list of people, and we agree that your VP is going to be whoever your VP is going to be, and, I don’t know, you don’t support primarying this list of 5 important centrists or something.
And everyone should come out and very publicly say that they’re on board with that, and that it in no way compromises the leader’s position, because the leader has agreed to it all to ensure unity as soon as possible, etc. So when the convention rolls around, and the leader gets a plurality but not a majority, the brokering is a fait accompli. And then, from as early a date as possible, the general election should begin and there should be a multi-pronged, suddenly very strong in fact, assault on Trump. Literally. Just kidding, not literally.
This certainly will not occur, but that wasn’t the question.
Source of this “rule”?
It’s not in either the Call for the Convention or the Delegate Selection Rules.
The only rule concerning pledged delegates is: “All delegates to the National Convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”
Some states may have their own rules; California, for example, has them for the Republican convention, but none for the Democratic one.
The convention rules can be changed “on the floor,” but that requires a 2/3 vote of the delegates, and that includes the superdelegates.
Why blame Bernie? Isn’t the party to blame for allowing him to use their brand in the first place? If they didn’t intend to support him as the candidate, why let him play?
Yes, but Sanders is uniquely vulnerable. As one article put it, “There’s a difference between having a Republican attack ad run against you, and running on a Republican attack ad.”
Well, if you’re that resigned to the U.S. becoming a vassal state of Russia that you’re just going to roll over and let Putin do whatever he wants, pass the vodka, tovarisch.
“SOCIALISM! SOCIALISM! SOCIALISM!” Yeah, everybody has already heard of that in connection with Sanders. This isn’t new information. Yet he’s still popular.
Under ordinary circumstances, I’d give Trump the electoral college edge over Sanders, and I predict he’d probably win a minimum of 279 delegates and perhaps getting closer to 300, give or take a few.
But if coronavirus starts weighing down the economy and if Trump is perceived as having failed in his response to the virus and the economic fallout, then that obviously changes the dynamics. There is a scenario in which Sanders wins; it’s probably an extraordinary set of circumstances, though.
The problem the Democrats are in is that the establishment had 4 years to go out and find another Obama, but that Obama was never found. They needed someone who had some progressive street cred and someone who could be a recognizable figure among different groups of people, yet someone who would still pledge to work within established frameworks. That candidate, as it turns out, doesn’t exist.
It’s looking like Bernie is what we’re stuck with, and the reason for that is that, like Trump, Bernie has tapped into intense anger at the system. The moderates have dismissed Bernie’s harangues as crazy talk since 2015, but millions of voters don’t think he’s crazy. Rather, they think the establishment is conspiring against working class people, and that now is not the time to be told to shut up. Bernie’s voters aren’t going to stand for it if the establishment Dems pull his nomination from him. They will burn down the party on their way out.
If moderates are so worried about Sanders, it might actually make sense to accept the inevitable and try to steer their influence from within his organization. Moderates might be able to dilute some of his campaign’s acidity a little.
He’s popular with the segment of the population who has a terrible record of turning out to vote in November.
I’m not giving up yet. Bloomberg is in free fall and I think many of the Biden supporters who flirted with Bloomberg are coming home. I think a big win Saturday will lead to a good Super Tuesday with a 1 on 1 Biden-Bernie show the rest of the way. The pundits are all reading too much into the first 3 contests, much like the sports announcers who when the Kentucky Derby is at the 1/2 mile point start with “OH HE’S IN THE LEAD? WILL HE WIN THE TRIPLE CROWN? TRIPLECROWNTRIPLECROWNTRIPLECROWN!” All this when the freaking first race is halfway done.
I’m going to vote for Sanders if he’s the nominee. But they’re only going to let me vote once. What do you suggest I do beyond voting so I won’t be rolling over?