Should we fear Bernie?

Trump ran his campaign promising things that everyone not blinded by his charm could see he would never be able to accomplish.

It seems to me that many Sanders supporters are falling into the same trap.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Again I get that there is absolutely no way to say this without it coming across as some treacle nationlistic "'Murica! Love it or leave it! Yee-haw!" type screed but again we are sort of reaching the point where if "Well so and so country makes it work" is the answer to everything, questions as to what about America we are trying to save or preserve do start to be put onto the table and... why on a personal level, not as a moralistic judgement but as a simple question of personal effeciency "Well why not just move to Sweden if everything they do there is better then the way we do it here" start to become less avoidable.

I'm being 100% serious here. Wouldn't just moving to Europe just be easier if everything they do is better and nobody is going to fight you when you want to do it that way?
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The American Dream?

At the moment it doesn't happen, wouldn't USA folk want it to be a reality?
 
TragicMonkey said:
See what I mean about crabby bunnies? Gentlements! (And also ladykinds, if any there be), can we not get along politely? Our civilization crumbles beneath the twin scourges of a rampant disgusting virus infecting us with horror, and also a coronavirus. At least we should endure destruction cheerfully and be nice to each other in our limited time remaining.
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Yes, things are looking a bit dire. Sage advice that I believe I can heed. Thanks.:)
 
The question of who will or will not get "destroyed" doesn't really have an easy answer.

I feel like for some Americans just the word "socialist" will be enough to destroy Sanders. Cuba is just a little bit of garnish on top of that. But Sanders is better at defending himself than Biden is.

OTOH, "Sleepy Joe" is a much better bit of branding than anything Biden himself has. It's also going to be effective because he does have problems expressing himself in public (whether that's due to a genuine cognitive decline or is just a symptom of his stutter is irrelevant, as the question isn't about what is or is not true).

I've said before, I think it will likely come down to the youth vote and whether they actually bother turning up - which they thus far haven't.

Biden seems like the candidate who will appeal to people who liked Hillary Clinton, and Sanders seems like the candidate who will appeal to people who like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
 
"Sleepy Joe" is a powerful branding - but not necessarily a negative one.
What Conservatives are most worried about is "Activist Progressives", i.e. those who will go to great lengths to push the envelope on liberal policies.
being called sleepy makes Biden seem much less scary as the Democrat In Chief - unlike, say, Warren, who not only really wants big change but also knows how to achieve it.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
"Sleepy Joe" is a powerful branding - but not necessarily a negative one.
What Conservatives are most worried about is "Activist Progressives", i.e. those who will go to great lengths to push the envelope on liberal policies.
being called sleepy makes Biden seem much less scary as the Democrat In Chief - unlike, say, Warren, who not only really wants big change but also knows how to achieve it.
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We need to sneak her in as Biden V.P.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
"Sleepy Joe" is a powerful branding - but not necessarily a negative one.
What Conservatives are most worried about is "Activist Progressives", i.e. those who will go to great lengths to push the envelope on liberal policies.
being called sleepy makes Biden seem much less scary as the Democrat In Chief - unlike, say, Warren, who not only really wants big change but also knows how to achieve it.
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Yeah, what I was intending to get across was that each of the two candidates could have difficulty getting elected, but for somewhat different reasons. Sanders gets both sides fired up, Biden neither.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Re: Elizabeth Warren...
We need to sneak her in as Biden V.P.
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I'd rather she becomes Secretary of the Treasury.
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I would rather she stay where she is, in the Senate.

Not that she wouldn't be OK as VP or in a Biden cabinet, but the battle for the senate is very tight, and I think the Democrats need every competent senator they can get.
 
Distracted1 said:
Re: Elizabeth Warren as VP...
I would rather she stay where she is, in the Senate.

Not that she wouldn't be OK as VP or in a Biden cabinet, but the battle for the senate is very tight, and I think the Democrats need every competent senator they can get.
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There are a shortage of competent Democratic Senate candidates in Massachusetts?
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I'm sure there are a lot of good potential Democrats in Massachusetts. But, none would have the experience that Warren does in the senate. Plus, even though the state leans Democrat, there is always a risk that the republicans could sneak a victory.
 
Sideroxylon said:
Would you care to address my post, which covers a some of Sanders’ message?
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In your post that I quoted I assume?

To the extent that justice and fairness is being thwarted by not supporting Bernie, for at least some of Bernie doubters, that's due to non electability. It's not because I have a soft spot for billionaires or for status quo in general.

That rude presumption is on par with: You support an unelectable candidate. Hence you're a Trump supporter.
 
Sideroxylon said:
“Castro loving”

You got me in stitches.
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That quote wrote off Florida for him. You might be in stitches but Cubans in Florida aren't. Let me explain how this works. The West Coast, Nevada, Colorado, New England and probably New Mexico are all Blue States. Texas, the Midwest, the Southeast except Maryland, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia are Red states. That leaves Ohio 18, Michigan 16, Pennsylvania 20, North Carolina 15, Florida 29, Wisconsin 10 and Arizona 11 to fight over.

Do you now see why Sander's losing Florida means he won't get the nomination? If a Dem wins Florida that takes him or her to 261. All the Dem needs to do is win any of the other states to make it to 270.
 
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Craig4 said:
Sander's message doesn't matter without a map to the nomination. You really have no idea how our elections work do you?
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Yeah,I noted that about this poster. For all of his blind worship of Sanders, he seems incredibly ignorant of how US elections and US politics in general work.
 
In all seriousness, can someone explain who the Democratic Party establishment is? I mean, what are their names, what powers/controls to they have, and what actions have they actually taken to keep Sanders from winning the nomination?

Every time I see it brought up, it seems to be taken for granted that this person or body of people is a known thing and their actions are obvious.
 
Upchurch said:
In all seriousness, can someone explain who the Democratic Party establishment is? I mean, what are their names, what powers/controls to they have, and what actions have they actually taken to keep Sanders from winning the nomination?

Every time I see it brought up, it seems to be taken for granted that this person or body of people is a known thing and their actions are obvious.
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Subsidiary of "Them."
 
Upchurch said:
In all seriousness, can someone explain who the Democratic Party establishment is? I mean, what are their names, what powers/controls to they have, and what actions have they actually taken to keep Sanders from winning the nomination?
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Democratic establishment consists of the public political figures whom we've seen endorsing Biden in public.

As to how the process works, here's a relevant summary from the book The Party Decides:
The reformers of the 1970s tried to wrest the presidential nomination away from insiders and to bestow it on rank-and-file partisans, but the people who are regularly active in party politics have regained much of the control that was lost. Control rests on their ability to reach early agreement on whom to support and to exploit two kinds of advantage-control of campaign resources (money, knowledge, labor) and the persuasive power of a united front of inside players. Insider control is not unshakable, but it has usually been sufficient to the task at hand for some two decades.
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5312951-the-party-decides
 
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Getting ready for the whiplash of Biden supporters celebrating low youth voter turnout in the primary, bemoaning the same low turnout in the general.
 
Upchurch said:
In all seriousness, can someone explain who the Democratic Party establishment is? I mean, what are their names, what powers/controls to they have, and what actions have they actually taken to keep Sanders from winning the nomination?

Every time I see it brought up, it seems to be taken for granted that this person or body of people is a known thing and their actions are obvious.
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Generally speaking, that would be the DNC - the controlling body of the Democratic Party. They do things like write the official party platform, organize and decide on the rules for debates, allocate party funds, etc. Chairperson Tom Perez, for example, supposedly nixed a debate about climate change policy this election cycle. They tend to have some influence with the press. Tbf, virtually none of the people using the word "establishment" actually have any idea what DNC officials can and cannot do.
 
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d4m10n said:
Democratic establishment consists of the public political figures whom we've seen endorsing Biden in public.
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That suggests, at this point, that “the Democratic Party establishment” is simply people who don’t support Sanders. In other words, Sanders’ more zealous supporters are complaining that Sanders isn’t winning because not enough people want him to win.

d4m10n said:
As to how the process works, here's a relevant summary from the book The Party Decides:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5312951-the-party-decides
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Sure, but that’s “involved people are involved”, right? The corollary being that “people who aren’t involved aren’t involved”. Sanders has spent most of his career as an independent, not a Democrat.

But back to my question, has the DNC been doing anything to specifically harm Sanders?
 
Upchurch said:
But back to my question, has the DNC been doing anything to specifically harm Sanders?
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I wouldn't say so, but then I wouldn't put forward the DNC as the actual nexus of establishment power. They were bound to publicly maintain an appearance of neutrality between two dozen candidates.

Instead, I would refer to the "persuasive power of a united front of inside players" who have lined up behind Biden, thereby signaling to the core party faithful whom they should support at the polls. Of these significant players, I would say Clyburn, Buttigieg, & Klobuchar probably tipped the balance.
 
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Upchurch said:
That suggests, at this point, that “the Democratic Party establishment” is simply people who don’t support Sanders.
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Sanders has received at least a few endorsements from Democratic Party figures with some clout (Congresswomen, etc.). They just happen to be vastly outnumbered, and that imbalance serves to signal to voters where the mainstream of the party wants to go.
 
d4m10n said:
I wouldn't say so, but then I wouldn't put forward the DNC as the actual nexus of establishment power. They were bound to publicly maintain an appearance of neutrality between two dozen candidates.
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Ugh. Sorry. My brain merged your post with Shadowdweller's.

d4m10n said:
Instead, I would refer to the "persuasive power of a united front of inside players" who have lined up behind Biden, thereby signaling to the core party faithful whom they should support at the polls. Of these significant players, I would say Clyburn, Buttigieg, & Klobuchar probably tipped the balance.
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I wonder how they decide who to endorse and how much influence endorsements actually have.
 
Upchurch said:
I wonder how they decide who to endorse and how much influence endorsements actually have.
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Normally, individually, not that much. Collectively, they serve a signalling function. There's more to it than endorsements, of course. I strongly recommend this book if you're interested in a thorough and expert analysis.
 
Again.. what do people think Political Parties are?

"Political parties are going to push candidate who will win and not fundamentally change the nature of the party" is one of those things I simply can't imagine what people keep having trouble with.

If someone walked into... Ben and Jerry's right now and told Ben and Jerry that he could make them more money if he turned Ben and Jerry's into a multinational chemical manufacturing conglomerate he'd wouldn't be welcomed with open arms despite being technically correct.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Again.. what do people think Political Parties are?

"Political parties are going to push candidate who will win and not fundamentally change the nature of the party" is one of those things I simply can't imagine what people keep having trouble with.

If someone walked into... Ben and Jerry's right now and told Ben and Jerry that he could make them more money if he turned Ben and Jerry's into a multinational chemical manufacturing conglomerate he'd wouldn't be welcomed with open arms despite being technically correct.
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Winning and staying the same sometimes come into conflict.

If this was the re-election campaign for Hillary, the tone would be very different.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Winning and staying the same sometimes come into conflict.

If this was the re-election campaign for Hillary, the tone would be very different.
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Yes and if in 2016 we had lost to a... normal, sane (within their context) mainstream Republican instead of... *gestures broadly at Trump* that it would be as well.

You're stuck in your mindset that we lost 2016 by not being progressive enough despite literally every single piece of reality saying otherwise.

A racist, xenophobic, pandering to the working class demagogue did not seize power of a populace that was angry, frustrated, and disaffected with the fact that progressivism wasn't happening fast enough.
 
JoeMorgue said:
A racist, xenophobic, pandering to the working class demagogue did not seize power of a populace that was angry, frustrated, and disaffected with the fact that progressivism wasn't happening fast enough.
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As to labor issues? Yeah, that is pretty close to how it all went down. Trump was the culmination of the GOP campaign that the liberals were hypocrites that did nothing to help working people and just wanted your vote so that they could tax your employers out of business and give the money to inner city minorities that do nothing but sell crack.

Democrats fought against this by supporting NAFTA and otherwise not bothering except to show that they could be racist by supporting draconian criminal justice policies for drug crime and gutting welfare programs.
 
Upchurch said:
In all seriousness, can someone explain who the Democratic Party establishment is? I mean, what are their names, what powers/controls to they have, and what actions have they actually taken to keep Sanders from winning the nomination?
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I won't go into the level of detail (names, actions) you're asking for, but this is how I see it:

In government, the Democratic establishment consists of those Democrats in the legislature who collectively choose the Majority/Minority leader in their chamber. This faction, collectively, wields their majority in the caucus to set the Democratic agenda, reward the productive, and punish the counter-productive. They decide which among their members get which committee seats, and which of the bills put forth get their support.

Outside of government, the Democratic National Committee obviously sets primary campaign rules, and probably does a lot of other less visible stuff in terms of raising money, setting agendas, picking winners and losers up- and down-ticket, etc. In addition, the DNC Superdelegates, as a class, can have a lot of influence over who gets what quid pro quo. You remember how Hillary Clinton made an effort to woo Superdelegates before the primaries had even started? That's because they're part of the Democratic establishment.

Finally, no discussion of an institutional establishment is complete without at least mentioning money. The biggest fundraisers, and the biggest donors, are going to have a lot of influence over the party. The owners and mouthpieces of the biggest media outlets on the left are probably also part of this category, but I'm not prepared to defend that bit.
 
theprestige said:
I won't go into the level of detail (names, actions) you're asking for, but this is how I see it:

In government, the Democratic establishment consists of those Democrats in the legislature who collectively choose the Majority/Minority leader in their chamber. This faction, collectively, wields their majority in the caucus to set the Democratic agenda, reward the productive, and punish the counter-productive. They decide which among their members get which committee seats, and which of the bills put forth get their support.

Outside of government, the Democratic National Committee obviously sets primary campaign rules, and probably does a lot of other less visible stuff in terms of raising money, setting agendas, picking winners and losers up- and down-ticket, etc. In addition, the DNC Superdelegates, as a class, can have a lot of influence over who gets what quid pro quo. You remember how Hillary Clinton made an effort to woo Superdelegates before the primaries had even started? That's because they're part of the Democratic establishment.

Finally, no discussion of an institutional establishment is complete without at least mentioning money. The biggest fundraisers, and the biggest donors, are going to have a lot of influence over the party. The owners and mouthpieces of the biggest media outlets on the left are probably also part of this category, but I'm not prepared to defend that bit.
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That's the detailed version.

In any large entity there is a critical mass that will resist change and will benefit from the status quo. They are, well, established and somewhat entrenched. Which is morally neutral but obviously can cause that entity to be alienated from it's supposed purpose when it fails to change.

The objections from Sanders supporters is mostly just complaining that the establishment is going to as an entity be hostile, and those who feel served by it will join together in defense. Which is why they are all supporting Biden against him.

They find this nefarious, but really without a core establishment no institution would be stable enough to ever be of practical use.

(I'm all for challenging the establishment, but not whining about the nature of establishment itself.)
 
applecorped said:
Nothing to fear from Dead Man Walking
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Not so!

b0d01a142ae824abc9eb59e56dea2541.jpg
 
Upchurch said:
In all seriousness, can someone explain who the Democratic Party establishment is? I mean, what are their names, what powers/controls to they have, and what actions have they actually taken to keep Sanders from winning the nomination?

Every time I see it brought up, it seems to be taken for granted that this person or body of people is a known thing and their actions are obvious.
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In the south, it's everyone who got the **** kicked out of them for walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. That goes a long way to explaining why Sanders did poorly with Black voters in the South.
 
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