What's Bernie's remaining realistic path to the nomination?

Politics & Elections
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Abrams is not seen as minor league in political circles, but it may be true that she would be so seen by the general public. Still, it undersells her to call her experience “just” state rep, when she was the leader of her party in the state legislature. And of course she has become a national leader in combating voter suppression. But I think Klobuchar would be a better pick–and she accidentally called herself part of the “ticket” the other day, which was certainly interesting.

This kind of reductive explanation for Warren’s failure to win is actually quite sexist in its own right. If someone were to make this argument about Amy Klobuchar’s failure to gain more than momentary traction, I could take it a lot more seriously, because Klobuchar has repeatedly shown an impressive ability to win over swing voters in a competitive state. Warren is just the opposite: probably the weakest performer with swing voters who has ever been anywhere near the top tier of a Democratic primary race. But she’s a woman, and people didn’t vote for her because they are sexist. Analysis over, nothing else to see here. :rolleyes:

I think you’re missing that hardcore Bernie stans are none too pleased with the African American faction of the party right now, that faction having stomped on their hopes and dreams bigtime. I’ve been hearing (including, to be clear, from people I personally know–even my own son) that African Americans are “irrational”, “voted against their own interests”, “ungrateful” (because Bernie marched in civil rights protests over 50 years ago), “brainwashed by ‘corrupt’ Jim Clyburn” etc. So the idea that Biden teaming up with Abrams would mollify them seems dubious.

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Yes, I’m aware she’s the darling of certain political circles. Basically a black female Beto. How about someone who didn’t lose their election when they tried to move up the ladder?

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It’s going to be hard but Sanders needs to keep pressure on Biden about his willingness to cut social security

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://theintercept.com/2020/01/25/joe-biden-social-security/&ved=2ahUKEwiKh9CO5ZToAhVScCsKHTKsD_gQFjAIegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw3f5SW6C4Lmme12RAVx6V0V

Alao on Biden saying he’d veto Medicare for all. Medicare for all is very popular among democratic voters, even Biden voters majority support Sanders policies.

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First, Joe Biden said he needed to look at the costs. If that’s him hedging fine, but it’s what he said. Second, and more importantly, almost every poll shows that Americans in general, but more often than not even the Democrats, like the public option more than they like Medicare for all. And guess what Joe Biden‘s platform is?

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She ran as a Dem in Georgia.

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Biden is not now, nor has he ever been in favors of Cutting Social Security. That is a total fabrication made up by Sanders. post 135
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=891266&page=3

No, he NEVER wanted to cut SocSec. That is a base canard spread by the Kremlin, Sanders and Bernie bros.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit…-guide-claims/

Misleading.

*The Bottom Line
Sanders framed this as “40 years of working with Republicans to cut Social Security.” But these statements came during periods when a growing budget deficit was a major concern in official Washington. Biden, like many mainstream politicians, thought action needed to be taken.

In some cases, Biden offered proposals intended to counter more extreme options offered by Republicans. At other times, Biden indicated a willingness to bargain with Republicans, though any deal resulting in spending reductions in entitlement programs was forever elusive. After 1983, the benefit cuts never happened.

In one case — 1983 — Sanders attacks Biden for supporting a deal that Sanders himself had praised. That’s rich.

Also missing from this picture are the many votes Biden took to increase certain Social Security benefits or block GOP plans; the Biden campaign provides a list of nearly 50 votes from Biden’s long Senate career.

Meanwhile, both parties now appear to have abandoned any pretense about caring about budget deficits. Biden’s campaign platform calls for raising Social Security payroll taxes on wealthier Americans and boosting benefits for people who have been receiving Social Security payments for at least 20 years.

Biden certainly could be challenged on why he took these positions at the time, but the snippets cited by Sanders are missing important context."*

.
A couple times he used the thread of a across the board cut in everything to call the Republicans bluff, and it worked- as Joe knew it would. The GOP wanted to cut a few social programs in the interest of “Balancing the budget”, so Joe called their bluff.

Biden vs. Sanders on Social Security and Medicare - FactCheck.org…-and-medicare/
*That’s not what Biden is proposing now. In his 2020 bid, Biden has proposed a plan that would increase revenue for Social Security by eliminating the payroll tax cap and expand benefits for some of the oldest seniors.

“There will be no compromise on cutting Medicare and Social Security, period. That’s a promise,” Biden said at the 2020 Iowa Brown & Black Presidential Forum on Jan. 20, according to VICE News.
*
https://www.politifact.com/article/2...nders-over-so/

*Biden would increase the minimum benefit for lifelong workers and make payments for the oldest people more generous. To shore up Social Security’s finances, he would raise taxes on upper income households, although his plans doesn’t say by how much.

“We should be increasing, not decreasing, Social Security,” Biden said at an AARP Iowa forum in July.*

https://joebiden.com/older-americans/
*III. PRESERVE AND STRENGTHEN SOCIAL SECURITY

Social Security is the bedrock of American retirement. Roughly 90% of retirement-age Americans receive Social Security benefits, and one-in-four rely on Social Security for all, or almost all, of their income. The program has not only ensured that middle-class workers can enjoy the sound and secure retirement they worked so hard for, it also lifted over 17 million older Americans out of poverty in 2017 alone.

The Biden Plan will protect Social Security for the millions of Americans who depend on the program. With Social Security’s Trust Fund already in deficit and expected to be exhausted in 2035, we urgently need action to make the program solvent and prevent cuts to American retirees.

But the Biden Plan doesn’t stop there. As president, Joe Biden will strengthen benefits for the most vulnerable older Americans – including widows and widowers, lifelong workers with low monthly benefits, and old-age beneficiaries who may have exhausted their other savings. Specifically, the Biden Plan will:

Put Social Security on a path to long-run solvency.*

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Beto ran as a Dem in Texas. They are both flavors of the month from two years ago. It is beyond ridiculous to annoint either of them the 2024 Dem nominee.

Full disclosure: at one point I thought Beto might be a decent veep choice because the tireless campaigning and fundraising he showed capable of. But he’s a spent force now.

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Just to be clear, Beto O’Rourke has spent his time since losing the election smoking pot, hanging with his family, and staring wistfully out the window for Instagram pictures. Stacey Abrams on the other hand has set up an organization to fight voter suppression. While she’s a longshot for a 2020 for nomination, she works her ass off, and we’ve seen stranger things happen.

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No, Sanders plan is not that popular, what is popular is UHC. They are not the same, and Sanders plan has nothing whatsoever to do with Medicare.

In any case, here is what Joe said:" Biden stressed he does not object to the idea of universal health care. He even echoed Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., by saying that medical care “should be a right.” Rather, he does not see how the program would be feasible.
…
“I would veto anything that delays providing the security, the certainty, of health care being available now,” Biden told MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” Monday. “If they got that through and by some miracle, there was an epiphany that occurred, and some miracle occurred that said ‘OK, it’s passed,’ then you got to look at the cost. And I want to know how did they find the $35 trillion? What is that doing?”
Biden went on to say that it would “significantly raise taxes on the middle class.”

And note the source:

See, these two lies being spread by Bernie bros are exactly the kind of thing that will but trump back in the white house.

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Sanders supporters- Bernie has lost. Attacking Biden with lies and fabrications will not help your candidate win, in fact it will hurt.

Savage attacks by Bernie Bros pissed Warren off, and Warren supporting Sanders and throwing her delegates to him was his last and only chance.

*In the interview, Warren showed palpable anger with the online Sanders army’s treatment of her and other progressives.

“I think there’s a real problem with online bullying and online nastiness. I’m not just talking about who said mean things; I’m talking about some really ugly stuff that went on,” she said. She expressed particular concerned about threats, citing the publication of phone numbers and home addresses belonging to two women who worked for the Nevada Culinary Union after it produced a fact sheet critical of Sanders’s health care plan.

Warren’s reaction illustrates that these tactics make it at least somewhat harder for Sanders to build allies in the Democratic Party. And this failure of elite backing has real repercussions.

Maddow asked about Sanders’s disavowal of his supporters’ attacks on her, and Warren seemed not to find it very persuasive. “We are responsible for the people who claim to be our supporters and do really dangerous, threatening things to other candidates,” Warren said. Then when asked if “it’s a particular problem with Sanders supporters,” the senator replies bluntly: “It is. And it just is. It’s just a factual question.”*

**So congrats berniebros- you LOST the election for Sanders. Now it appears you want Biden to lose and us get four more years of trump.
**

"*The purported aim of all the pro-Sanders trolling, the snake emojis directed at Warren on Twitter, and the vitriolic attacks on the Nevada Culinary Union is to shame or bully the targets into getting behind Sanders. Judging by this interview, it seems to have had the opposite effect on Warren.

Online anger and abuse may not filter down to the ordinary voter directly, but it shapes the way Democratic Party elites see the Sanders campaign. If they see it as a font of negativity and anger or a source of direct attacks on them and people they admire, they’re less likely to see it as something they’re comfortable lining up behind. And these sorts of endorsements can matter in primaries; support from Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) seems to have really helped buoy Joe Biden in their respective states.

Fundamentally, if Sanders and his movement want to succeed in remaking the Democratic Party in their image, they can’t just drive out every person in a position of power right now. To go from insurgents to party leaders, they need to figure out a way to court the people with influence in the party. Right now, it seems to be the case that the pro-Sanders online brigades are making that harder."*

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She’s certainly done more than Beto, but her playing footsie with the two Georgia senate races hasn’t helped her standing. Also, she seemed a bit less than subtle with Bloomberg about really wanting the VP slot.

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Vox has, what seems to me, an embarrassingly written story about Sanders finally being declared the winner in California:

It’s not happening, guys. No one is suddenly going to say “Holy shit, Sanders won California! Feel the Bern!” I know Vox is left-leaning and they need to keep a horse race narrative going but… no. Just no.

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I know I am the #1 Bernie hater on here and not the best person to give advice but I will.

  1. STOP the conspiracy theories. Every time Bernie loses, it’s always the fault of someone else.

  2. You can’t just primary any one you disagree with and expect it work. AOC was a fluke, a primary with sparse turnout and she caught a congressman who may have spent too much time admiring himself in the mirror. These things have happened in the past, see Eric Cantor for an example.

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Especially as it looks like Biden will WA. That’s a very Bernie Bro state. Sanders certainly benefited from early votes in CA for candidates that had dropped out.

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and - altho he came in first by a decent margin, Sanders will only get 209 delegates and Biden gets 159. So “winning the state” doesnt mean that much when it’s 34% to 27% . 5%, not much.

It was hardly the big win like Biden got in Mich. 52% to 36% .

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Bernie’s path to the presidency:

  1. Biden keels over.
  2. All Biden delegates go for Amy.
  3. Amy takes convention.
  4. Amy picks Bernie as Veep.
  5. Amy keels over.
  6. Bernie has it!
  7. Trimp wins.

Oops. Maybe that’s the wrong path. Try another.

I) Biden keels over.
II) Putin bribes delegates.
III) Bernie takes convention.
IV) Trimp wins.

That’s not so great, either. How about this?

a) Biden & Bernie swap bodies.
b) Biden (actually Bernie) takes convention.
c) Biden-body campaigns with Bernie-rhetoric.
d) Trimp wins.

So Bernie has paths to the nomination but not the presidency. Ratz.

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LOL, Rico.

She and Beto have done far more to demonstrate their potential strength in a national general election than Warren has. People need to get more sophisticated than this black-white win/loss metric. We know better in baseball to think the relief pitcher who comes in with his team down 4-2, only to see the team ultimately lose 4-3, is more impressive than the one who comes in up 8-0 and hangs on for a 12-10 victory. Same goes in politics.

Wowww. :smack: That really is embarrassing, even for Vox. WTH

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On February 5th, 2019, Stacey Abrams — whom Rolling Stone recently profiled — gave the official Democratic response to President Trump’s State of the Union address to Congress. Within minutes of her finishing, Biden’s campaign tweeted that Abrams, who had lost her campaign for Georgia governor in 2018 by the narrowest of margins and amid accusations of fraud and voter suppression by her Republican opponent, had achieved “in a matter of minutes something Donald Trump failed to do in over an hour — to embrace and give voice to the spirit and core values that make America great.”

Let us look at that again- a Black, female Democrat almost won in Georgia.

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More than once, I’ve read bitter Sanders supporters say things like the Dems “ran” Joe Biden or that they “installed” him. Or that they “conspired” against him when the other candidates all dropped out and endorsed Biden.

I don’t know…I try to step outside of my anti-Bernie Bro bias, and when I do, a part of me gets it. When middle age and older Americans supported Trump in 2016, they did so because they feared that they were about to lose the America they grew up with forever.

When Bernie-or-Bust types vow to never vote for Joe Biden, I suppose it’s probably because they’re living a nightmare of six figure college debt that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy and can end up being socked by usurious penalties that result in their wages getting garnished if they start falling behind on payments. Or maybe they’re worried about the ability to afford healthcare. And let’s face it: like Schumer, Clinton, and many of the Senate Democrats over the years, Biden was a friend of big financial firms and healthcare providers. I personally think this election is too important and the politics of the past are too complex to vote for anyone other than Biden, but I will concede: if you’re in fear of being tormented by bill collectors or if you pay almost all of your disposable income to creditors…then you’re confronted with the fact that you’ll probably never have an American dream of your own. When these voters look at Joe Biden, they see someone who has at times been an ally of their tormentors, and that’s a hard thing to forgive, I guess.

The only thing I can say to them is, Donald Trump isn’t just an occasional ally of rapacious capitalists; he is the very personification of capitalism’s evils. He’s not just a capitalist, but a gangster capitalist. Joe Biden is not that. And I think there are ways that Bernie’s supporters can influence Biden in ways that may ultimately benefit them (and us). Biden knows that 2020 is a different political landscape than in 1980, 1990, 2000, or even 2010.

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Current events are also a case in point. I dare Busters to say with a straight face that Biden, and the people appointed by him, would’ve handled this whole thing exactly the same or worse than Trump.