At this point, the only way that Sanders could win would be if Clinton suffered a campaign-ending calamity. Such events are inherently unpredictable, but could include a major health issue, death, or some major scandal coming to light. None of these is particularly likely, of course, but likewise none can be ruled out entirely.
Sanders is not continuing his campaign in case of such an event. He’s continuing his campaign for the sake of the publicity that he’s bringing to his causes, which was the reason that he started running in the first place, back before that time when it appeared that he might even have some chance.
Yes, I wouldn’t mind seeing Sanders’ activists starting low-level progressive campaigns at the local level across all states. Let that build for the eight years Clinton will be in office, pull the center of the party somewhat leftward and emerge as a serious national consensus in 2024.
The building process is essential. You can’t throw a charismatic candidate at the top and expect to govern. There are no local Trumps in the offing and if that meteor hits and he is elected, the Republican party in, say, Kansas or Mississippi won’t be changed. Howard Dean had a 50-state strategy. I have no idea what Wasserman Schultz has as a strategy, if indeed she has one.
I completely agree that building is essential. But Sanders has seemed uninterested in developing or even encouraging low-level progressive campaigns, which surprises me. Many of his supporters don’t seem all that interested, either: it’s Bernie or nothing. The impression I get is that this is not a bottom-up movement, nor even a top-down movement; it’s a top-only movement.
In some other thread, I asked which congressional candidates, which state-level candidates, Sanders has been supporting whether with money or with rhetoric, and whether any candidates he does support are different from those championed by Clinton. I didn’t get an answer. So I’ll ask again here. Are there any? Who?
Here’s a suggestion. Zephyr Teachout, who in addition to having a perfectly wonderful name is a law professor and politician, is running for the House in an NY state district beginning about a mile from where I live. She ran against Andrew Cuomo in the gubernatorial primary last time out and did a lot better than many people, including me, expected. She is quite far to the left and has gone on record as being very enthusiastic about Bernie Sanders.
She is getting no notice from the Sanders campaign (I’m on her email list; she’d tell us if she was :)), despite the fact that she is EXACTLY the kind of person Sanders should want in Congress and truly NEEDS in Congress if he hopes to get anything accomplished. She’s got an uphill battle in her race, not least because it’s a pretty Republican upstate district.
Will Sanders help her through funding or shout-outs? If so, when? If not, why not? And if not Teachout, then who?
I teach college classes in Minnesota, and like you I have some evening classes. In Minnesota, it’s the law that public colleges (like mine) have no activities after 6:00 PM on the day of the caucus. Because of that, my class didn’t meet that week (well, I have an afternoon section and an evening section, and only the evening section didn’t meet, which means the two sections got out of sync, but that’s my problem to solve).
The next week I asked my students if anyone had attended the caucus (which was held here at the college in the cafeteria). No one did.
My son and I attended a Bernie rally the weekend before. I was out of town, but my wife and son both went to their caucus sites, and as reported the school parking lot was packed. They parked nearly a mile away, walked in and voted, and walked out. It was terribly organized and terribly inconvenient to many. I heard many people intended to participate but the congestion and time issues drove them away.
I too would prefer that they use a primary for president races, but I think Bernie still have won Minnesota with a primary. Hey, we voted in Jesse Ventura and Al Franken, so don’t look at Minnesota as “normal”.
At least in the DFL, you must be physically present to vote on the Presidential Preference Ballot. You can still suggest resolutions, sign up to be an election judge, and be nominated as a delegate or other party official absentee but that’s all the crap no one but the real wonks want to do anyway.
Um no, Sanders is a one trick pony and would be an awful president although better than Trump. If Sanders could, he’d destroy the economy just because of his hatred of Wall Street. But, he wouldn’t be able to get anything through congress so he’s spend 4 years enjoying the ceremonial aspects of being president.
That’s right. He’d blow that motherfucker up! Tyler Durden in Fight Club? Times that by seventeen! No, make that eighteen!
For god’s sake, man. Have you seen his plan for taxing wall street? Why, if you did that, you’d almost-but-not-quite take us back to Reagan’s time in office. But that’s not all.
Universal healthcare? We’re going to be worse than that anarchist wasteland called Canada.
Paid college? Where has that ever worked? What the hell do those socialists in Germany know anyway?
Maternity and paternity leave? Just because literally every single developed nation but us has it doesn’t mean it could work here too. Those other countries were just flukes. Fads. They’ll see the light soon enough.
Yeah. Tax everyone so much it all collapses and we roll around in the rubble of the lost economy and switch to the more stable Zimbabwe dollars. That’s why I’m voting for Sanders.
I don’t think this is an issue – at least not a separate issue from the main one of winning enough contests. The Superdelegates will, barring some major wild-card event (health crisis, public display of barking madness that makes Donald Trump look like Mr. Spock), go with whoever has the most elected delegates.
That’s not true. Why do people keep saying this? There’s little evidence all of the superdelegates would do this. In 2008 the primaries essentially ended on 6/7/2008, at that point Obama had a lead in pledged delegates of around 100, he had 478 superdelegates and Clinton had 246.5 superdelegates. Obama’s total reflects about 50 who had switched from openly supporting Clinton to openly supporting Obama. But Obama actually had a lead among superdelegates independent of the switchers.
Early in the 2008 primary cycle when Obama was winning way more than expected, but there was still a “general feeling” that “come on, Hillary has all the advantages, she’s gonna be the nominee” she had a lead of like 150 superdelegates and articles started to come out wondering if the superdelegates would “throw the election to Clinton” against the wishes of the electorate. This didn’t happen, but what also didn’t happen is that lead didn’t last–even without the people switching Obama had built up 400+ superdelegate commitments all on his own. Bernie has 26. Hillary never had 400+ committed at any point in 2008.
[As I like to point out if you look at the actual vote on the first ballot way more superdelegates than listed here voted for Obama, that’s because Hillary released her delegates in an act of party unity so that Obama’s first ballot nomination was nigh-unanimous. Some of her supers I guess had problems with Obama and on their own initiative still gave Hillary their vote, and then some state delegations I believe were still required to vote for Hillary as I think the rules for releasing them are different.
People always say the superdelegates have never thrown the election one way or another, but since 1980 (superdelegates were put in after the election of 1980 when Ted almost unseated Jimmy Carter, largely to prevent a popular uprising against a sitting President in his/her own party primary, and to give the party leaders a voice generally) there’s only been one election in which a candidate didn’t win pledged delegates on the first ballot. That was 2008, and no one in that election ever had such a large number of superdelegate commitments until the very very end.
I don’t think you can make assumptions off this one election’s result about what would happen if Sanders somehow ground out what would be a super small pledged delegate win.
See post #28. As for the chances of Sanders v. Trump in the general, come on, seriously?! Practically all Dems, including centrists, will vote for Bernie because Trump is utterly abhorrent to them. Most independents will vote for Bernie. Same reason. Almost certainly the only Pubs to vote for Trump will be the plurality – not majority – now supporting him in the primaries; of the rest, any who can’t stomach Sanders will leave the line blank or write in Ryan or Jeb or the Lizard People or somebody.
I don’t think they will. In addition to being the party faithful and rewarding faithfulness, there is also the issue of party diversity - Clinton has gotten overwhelming support from the African American community. If its close, and the Supers throw it to Sanders, that may look like disenfranchisement. She’s also doing better (arguably) with Hispanics and women over 40.
Brian, I know you know that the concern was not over current responses regarding hypothetical future match-ups, but actual votes after full frontal assault Swiftboat attacks.
But sure, accepted that some here would have loved to have seen a President Bernie Sanders. And again that his getting the nomination is not literally impossible.
I think however that you can accept that his winning 58% plus of the pledged delegates from here would be … improbable … even if he was well ahead in overall popularity (instead of the 12 to 18 points down that three separate polls placed him at today). And if he was not polling an average of 34.5 points behind in the two fairly recent NY polls. And if California was not demographically more similar to Arizona (except more Clinton friendly) than to anywhere that he has won.
Again, not impossible. And maybe decent showings in the latter portion will advance his message.
And I also think you accept that the number one most important thing is to maximize both the odds of the Democratic presidential candidate winning in November and of any possible Congressional Democratic-ward movements.
I am happy to have him continue his quixotic quest. Bring along a whole cadre of knights who say ni. But given that the odds are at least great that Clinton will bear our banner into the field of general election battle, and a unified party maximizes the odds of victory both at the top and all across and down the ticket, I am hoping that he just stops farting in our general direction, which he’s been doing a lot of lately and it is stinking up the place. Clop coconuts together instead, kay? Maybe he’s not quite dead yet but you are not being oppressed.
Well, I hope he doesn’t shut up until the convention (and, then, endorses Clinton). His message cannot get too much exposure, and this kind of opportunity to mainstream it does not come along every cycle. I’m not thinking of this year, I’m thinking down the road, of a potential movement that does not end this November and might ultimately take back the Democratic Party for the progressives.