No poll is a perfect predictor of anything, but to me this is the ONLY sort of poll that matters. I love Sanders for many reasons, and agree with just about everything he espouses, but that DOESN’T. F*#%^ING. MATTER. This is a chess move, not a valentine.
(Interesting that Bloomberg doesn’t match up at all well against Trump in these battleground states.)
Bernie can always do what Obama did and choose Biden as his VP.
If all the polls showed one candidate doing significantly better that the others against Trump, nationally or in swing states, then I’d reconsider my electability estimate that currently has Bernie on top. But from what I’ve seen, the polls on this vary quite widely - sometimes Biden looks strongest, and sometimes Bernie looks strongest (I think those are the only two that have been looking best in various polls). So I don’t think the polls alone yet tell us who has the best electability argument (in addition to how early they are).
Just thought this was interesting.
Yes. Biden could be the Grover Cleveland of vice presidents!
Pfft. Everybody knows Jackson, Mississippi is a stronghold of white communist teens with Masters degrees.
So…while we’re calling out Bernie on his past statements I guess we should also:
[ul]
[li] Call out Biden for buddying up with segregationists and speaking at Strom Thurmond’s funeral.[/li][li] Call out Elizabeth Warren for lying about her own race and calling herself American Indian when she actually belongs to the race who massacred the American Indians.[/li][li] Call out Mike Bloomberg for telling a pregnant employee to “kill it” and get back to work.[/ul][/li]
And that’s just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head. You think the Republicans won’t run all that shit into the ground? Because they will. You think they can’t make any of that sound as bad, or worse, than this Bernie stuff? Because they can!
The only difference is that, when they’re put under pressure to defend this stuff, Biden, Warren, and Bloomberg will do what moderates always do. They’ll either lie, or they’ll bow and scrape and beg forgiveness until the people they’re trying to impress just think they’re weak. Meanwhile, Bernie will be like “Yeah. I said that shit. So what? Hands up if you can’t afford your health care.”
Not only have other candidates said and done things which are as bad or worse than Bernie, but they, unlike Bernie, don’t have a coherent message with which to reframe the conversation after a Republican attack. Bernie can just keep bringing everything back to health care. What can Bloomberg bring the conversation back to? When he’s on stage debating Trump and the moderators ask him why Black people should trust Mayor Stop ‘n Frisk what the fuck is he going to say? Some anodyne pablum about how dangerous Trump is? Yeah. That worked so well in 2016, didn’t it?
And that’s another thing. We let you people pick the nominee four years ago and you chose wrong. Maybe, before pontificating on “electability” - a subject which history has proven you know nothing about - you should let the people who didn’t make the wrong choice last time have first pick?
Basically, terribly thought out stuff like this:
"Sens. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) introduced legislation that would tax nonqualified stock options at vesting, rather than at exercise, for employees making at least $130,000 per year.
The big picture: Select employees at private companies would be taxed on monies that they hadn’t yet banked."
This is a tax on money that these employees, who are by no means wealthy, do not have and may never have; they very well may end up paying huge taxes for money that they never get a dime of.
Taxing wealth is the right thing to do, but maybe we should do that by taxing the actual wealth of the actually wealthy rather than the imaginary wealthy of the middle class.
So you think if posters on the SDMB refrain from bringing up things that Bernie did in the past, then the RNC won’t get wind of it and won’t be able to use them against Bernie in the general election?
Negative campaigning, including bringing up past writings and assertions, is good for the party and will, ultimately, give us a stronger candidate. I will rebut the criticisms of my favored candidate (Bernie) that I think are wrongheaded, but I think it’s good for the Bernie campaign and the party in general to bring these potential lines of attack now, since they’ll certainly be brought up later if he becomes the nominee.
Typical Bernie-Bro nonsense, designed to put Trump back in Office, just liek they did in 2016.
Let’s just take one piece of Typical Bernie-Bro propaganda: "Call out Biden for buddying up with segregationists and speaking at Strom Thurmond’s funeral." Yep- Joe, as a senior member of the Senate was called upon to give a eulogy for Thurmond. And he did what any decent human being would do- he talked about the good things. Because if you are a decent human beings- that’s what you do. Apparently, the point here is the Sanders **isn’t **a decent human being, but all that sez about Joe is he is a decent human being that shoulders his responsibilities (and if you actually read his eulogy, it’s pretty clear he was damning with faint praise- since faint praise is about the most anyone could muster). So- thanks for telling us Biden is a decent responsible human being but Bernie isn’t. Because that’s exactly what that says.
And you know who "picked’ the candidate in 2016? The voters. So apparently the Bernie-bros dont like democracy either. They want us to ignore what the people want, and go with whom they want. Maybe that mean Bernie is a commie after all, I guess is what they are saying.
And bernie-bros wonder why we dont like Bernie- this is the reason. YOU are the reason Dems dont like bernie.
Congrats, you just lost bernie a bunch of votes- and picked up a few for trump.
Now see- this is one of Sanders current policies/platforms/ideas, so this is a totally legit complaint. Not crap from 40 years ago that has been disavowed.
The RNC and the Kremlin will do their best to spread lies, disinformation and meaningless crap from 40 years ago that is no longer valid and has been disavowed.
Why help them?
Really- why help the kremlin and the RNC re-elect trump? ** Why** spread their propaganda?
Only reason i can think of-* is to re-elect trump. * Is that what you want? 
Nobody in this thread is bringing up any lies or misinformation. And although you may think that some of the things that Bernie said 40 years ago are “meaningless crap” they are thinks which will resonate with voters.
Like taking his honeymoon in the Soviet Union. Sure, you can say that it was a business trip that just happened to occur directly after his wedding, and that explanation may satisfy you. But how it is wrong to bring it up as a negative that will impact many swing voters?
Shhhhh. If we don’t say anything about it, maybe Bernie can tiptoe into the nomination and the Republicans will forget about all that stuff.
This may not be a great political strategy, but it’s not the disaster you’re making it out to be. The idea seems to be to treat generous stock options as income for people who are already making a good salary. You also didn’t mention that the tax would only apply to vested options above $100,000 per year. The first $100,000 is tax exempt. So while I’m not fond of the plan, someone receiving, say, $200,000 in vested stock options in a year in addition to a decent salary would not suffer too much hardship if they had to sell some of it to cover income taxes on half of it. But I’m sure this will upset a fair number of supporters in places like Silicon Valley who would be directly affected.
The idea of taxing “putative income” that you don’t actually have is not new. It applies, for instance, to strip bonds in both the US and Canadian tax systems. Strip bonds are zero-interest bonds from which all the interest-bearing coupons have been removed, and are sold at a discount well below face value. But the IRS treats them like interest-bearing bonds; they divide the price differential (your profit at maturity) by the number of years to maturity, and each year you owe taxes on that amount of putative interest even though you never see a dime.
I assume that under such a law, if you don’t get the income you don’t get taxed.
That is the same as the witholding on all americans paychecks.
Dude. Donald Trump literally married two… not, one, but two… Communist prostitutes. What the h*** are you going on about?
Yes. Yes, it is.
Because going to the Soviet Union with a 12-person delegation to establish a sister-city relationship between Burlington and Yaroslavl as a gesture of goodwill was not a honeymoon and should not be falsely presented as a negative. His wife was there in her official capacity as the director of the Mayor’s Youth Office. The couple had an actual honeymoon the following year, in St. Lucia in the Caribbean. The only way this will negatively affect swing voters is if it’s misrepresented, the way it consistently has been in right-wing media.