Sanders's secret is out: He has no movement - The Washington Post

[Gothmog]

I have never taken sanders seriously as a candidate due to sanders complete and utter lack of legislative accomplishments. sanders has not been able to get his fellow Democratic members of Congress to back his agenda and that is not going to change. As I understand it, sanders is now relying on a magical voter revolution to convince republicans to be reasonable. sanders has no magical voter revolution or movement backing him up. sanders has a cap of around 30% of the Democratic voters and that does not constitute a movement or revolution

Link to tweet

For months — for years, really — the media have reported that the Democratic Party has gone far left. They have treated social media as a barometer of the party’s political attitudes and characterized center-left candidates as out of touch with their own party. They have done so despite the triumph of moderate Democratic House candidates in 2018; despite the failure of left-wing Democrats to flip a single House seat; despite the polls showing a substantial percentage of Democrats consider themselves moderate or somewhat liberal; and despite the failure of super-progressive presidential candidates to attract the most critical element in the Democratic Party (African Americans).

With this faulty premise, the media’s coverage has been at times wildly off-kilter. It was easy for anyone caring to look closely to see that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) did not “win” a single debate, because his ranting and raving merely reinforced the fervor of his own cult while turning off the rest of the party. The media have been obsessed with the “likability” of female candidates, never considering that Sanders’s angry and rude demeanor would turn off women, who make up more than half of the Democratic electorate. A simple question — “Who is he gaining by all this yelling?” — should have been front and center in the media’s coverage. His “movement” was assumed but never examined carefully.....

Sanders’s ceiling turned out to be real, because there are generally less than a third of voters in the Democratic Party willing to embrace wide-eyed socialism, venom-filled rhetoric and utter disregard for the demands of governing (e.g. compromise). Michael Moore does not speak for the Democratic Party any more than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) speaks for House Democrats. (I have long maintained that the person who has the best read on the party as a whole is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; get to her left, and you are in no-man’s land.)

The Democratic Party does not live on social media nor does it favor bomb-throwers. If anything, it is desperate to play it safe and find an antidote to President Trump — not an imitation. Voters want the madness, the cruelty, the dysfunction and the stupidity to stop. They have found their safe, reliable and decent candidate in Biden. En masse — in every geographic region and Democratic group — they are telling us that they want the primary to end and the effort to rout Trump to begin. The media might have taken Sanders’s “revolution” seriously, but it turns out that Democratic voters as a whole did not.

[DanTex]

1. Jennifer Rubin is a right-winger who accused Obama of siding with the "Muslim World" over the US.

[Gothmog]

2. Bernie's grievance politics consolidated the left to a 30% losing minority

sanders' cap is near 30% https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/5/1924709/-Bernie-s-grievance-politics-consolidated-the-left-to-a-30-losing-minority

Interesting thought, speaking of Elizabeth Warren and her inability to gain traction with the Bernie Sanders left:

Link to tweet

’ve wracked my brain wondering why so many on the progressive left, in this day and age of #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, would align with an old white guy when there were clear alternatives (unlike in 2016), and this makes as much sense as anything. One commenter on my last piece, on why Bernie Sanders fizzled upon contact with actual voters, wrote that, “for Bernie to do some of the work kos is asking, he would have to change his message in a way a dependably left politician will never do.”
Interesting—what made Sanders a “dependably left politician,” but Warren not? Clearly, it wasn’t actual policy or ideology. Krugman’s “grievance” is as good as an explanation as any.

Remember, the Sanders campaign decided early on that his path to the nomination consisted of keeping his core 30% base intact, and nothing more: As The Atlantic noted, “And then, Sanders aides believe, he’ll easily win enough delegates to put him into contention at the convention. They say they don’t need him to get more than 30 percent to make that happen.”
That was important, as we’ve discussed, because it set the tone for the entirety of their campaign—from othering the supporters of other candidates as “neoliberal corporatist shills” (and worse) to sticking with a message that had failed Sanders already in 2016, when only two candidates had been in the race.
And it’s shocking how close to 30% his results have been:

Sanders share of the vote
Iowa 26.5%
New Hampshire 25.6%
Nevada 40.5%
South Carolina 19.8%
Alabama 16.5%
Arkansas 22.4%
California 33.8%
Colorado 36.1%
Maine 32.9%
Massachusetts 26.7%
Minnesota 29.9%
North Carolina 24.1%
Oklahoma 25.4%
Tennessee 25%
Texas 30%
Utah 34.6%
Vermont 50.8%
Virginia 23.1%
Take a guess what his overall percentage is so far.
28.9%

[at140]

5. Sanders lost badly by votes in each state

however he retained the delegate count difference of 150 delegates behind Biden after yesterday's results.

[OnDoutside]

6. That's only because of the apportionment of the Dem race delegates.

[at140]

12. Well...it is # of delegates is what counts, not how many votes, to win nomination.

Am I correct?

[OnDoutside]

14. Exactly...the Electoral College of the Democratic Primaries !

[Gothmog]

13. Sanders' campaign plan to win the nomination with only 30% of the vote

This plan never made sense to me

Link to tweet

[OnDoutside]

16. I'm sure we'll find out in time, exactly who thought up that hair-brained plan, but it was at best

ill-conceived, at worst, delusional.

[Gothmog]

19. From day 1, Bernie built a campaign to appeal to 30%

Link to tweet

So if, from day one, they didn’t think they needed more than 30%, why would they actually run a campaign and build a culture designed to win more than his 30% ceiling? As that article notes, even way back in early 2019, Sanders was picking fights and creating enemies out of potential allies.

We saw that in Sanders’ refusal to broaden his message to bring in more people. When I said exactly that on Meet the Press, that “the problem with Bernie Sanders is that he has the exact same message he had four years ago” when he lost to Hillary Clinton 60-40, the response from the Sanders campaign was, well, this:

Link to tweet

If your message wasn’t a majority message four years ago, and you want to win, wouldn’t you tweak it? They didn’t. Proudly and explicitly did not tweak it. They had zero intention of growing new support by broadening and expanding their message. (Sanders famously refused to even inject more biography into his stump speech to humanize him more.)

Sanders and his campaign saw that their ceiling was 30%, and they built an entire strategy around winning with 30%. That means that instead of seeing the other 70% of voters as allies, they saw them as THE ENEMY. Even when there was ideological alignment.

[ehrnst]

61. But mistakenly assumed it was much, much bigger.. Nader made the same mistake.

Those cheering crowds are some strong juju.

[Aquaria]

67. The loonier fringe of self-proclaimed "progressives"

Are very much like the extremes of right-wing groups who think that they are far more popular than they ever actually are, and that all it will take to persuade we mere peons who aren't on board right now is if we would listen to them for a change.

They don't grasp the reality that we've heard them, and still aren't interested.

It will never sink in for them, because they are all deluded about the awesomeness of their snake oil.

[at140]

18. Lots of luck with that

[Cha]

53. I wonder if it makes sense to them now?

[Gothmog]

110. How do you demand concessions when you're getting the brake beat off of you?

Link to tweet

[Cha]

111. They try but they ain't gonna

get it.

[Aquaria]

66. It made sense...

If you were counting on a big field of candidates duking it out until deep into the primary season. The more chaos there was, the stronger his chances of getting a plurality of delegates on the way to the convention.

However, as the candidates started dropping out, one by one, the math got ever dicier for the BS campaign to thread the needle of getting the right number of delegates for a "divided" convention in Milwaukee that would benefit him. The bottom fell out when Bloomberg, Buttgieg, Klobuchar and Warren dropped out at long last, and we were in a political Thunderdome with "I don't need those annoying dumb women or minority voters only my over-privileged white male bros" BS vs. the tried-and-true, "we miss the sanity of Obama" Biden.

It was all over, then and there. Anybody with half a brain knew that, one-on-one, Biden was going to cream BS. Because it turns out that "progressives" aren't the base of the Democratic party.

WOMEN AND MINORITIES ARE.

I've been telling the berners about this reality for YEARS now on other forums, but of course I, a mere woman, couldn't know what I was talking about. Nope. Those bros were ever-so-much smarter than little ole me.

[LiberalFighter]

38. The what? Do you understand how delegates are assigned at all?

[OnDoutside]

8. What Krugman said about Warren was 100% correct and also applies to Harris.

I was attacked for pointing this out 6 weeks ago. It was a massive miscalculation for both when they jumped on M4A so as not to be outflanked by Bernie.

[NNadir]

36. This is an interesting comment on Senator Warren by Krugman. I regret that I will...

...never have a chance to vote for her because in New Jersey our views on the candidates, as always, don't matter.

I am fine with Joe Biden; he's an excellent man and a fine human being, but I think Senator Warren might have been the Lincoln class politician we actually need now that the country has been so viciously raped and pillaged by a criminal traitor.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. That doesn't mean she's wrong about Bernie.

Stopped clock and all that.

[pampango]

20. " Jennifer Rubin is an American conservative columnist who writes the "Right Turn" blog for

the Washington Post.’

Hardly a surprise that she would see a liberal as having no ‘movement’. And why would we care that a conservative does not like one of our candidates?

[Thekaspervote]

29. Right, left, in between ..please point out where she is wrong

[pampango]

75. I don't go to liberal sites to play the 'show me where this conservative is wrong' game.

If I am ever in the mood to play a version of that game I will go to a RW site, post an article by a liberal and dare conservative posters to refute that liberal. Perhaps that might expose some republicans to liberal thought and eventually win some of them over.

[ehrnst]

83. I hear tell Cenk Ugur is now a liberal... along with Joe Rogan.

Is it just men who are capable of seeing the light?

[ahoysrcsm]

104. I said this when Iowa voted, and NH voted.

The Revolution... forgot to vote.

Damn kids... shakes fist at sky...

[ehrnst]

57. Jacobin hates the Democratic Party more than Rubin, and they get LOTS of shares

here...

[treestar]

74. any response to her points?

pretend they were made by someone else.

[pampango]

76. I try not to respond when someone posts an article from a conservative and then expects me to agree

with the writer. That opens the door to RW trolls playing the game of posting conservative articles then asking "What's wrong with this? Look how perceptive this conservative is. Some liberals will agree with us."

When the same points are made by a non-conservative I will respond and have done so.

[treestar]

78. a point does not change no matter who makes it

we usually disagree with conservatives, but it does not mean on every single issue. If a conservative said that water boils at 100 degrees centigrade, you're not going to disagree because they are a conservative.

If Bernie is not doing the things mentioned, you can argue about that whether Jennifer Rubin says it, whether Biden says it, whether Trump says it, or whether the boogeyman says it - it's the same point.

[pampango]

87. The point of posting conservative's opinion to a liberal board in the hope that liberals would agree

with it is, to my mind, questionable.

If I posted a liberal's opinion to a conservative board in the hope that conservatives would agree with it, I know why I would be doing that.

[treestar]

96. That hole need not be fulfilled

Nothing about this board prevents you from stating why Rubin is wrong.

[ehrnst]

84. So it's still just ad hominem, and not an actual refutation of what she said.

Got it.

[pampango]

88. If you consider "ad hominem" to include refusing to acknowledge "Yeah, this conservative is

really good and accurate at nailing this liberal. Conservatives can make some really accurate observations. Food for thought." then yeah it is just ad hominem.

Reading 'accurate' observations from conservatives about Democratic candidates is not why I come to DU. If it works for you, more power to you.

[ehrnst]

92. Here is the defintion of ad hominem

Ad Hominem Fallacy:
the fallacy of attacking the character or circumstances of an individual who is advancing a statement or an argument instead of seeking to disprove the truth of the statement or the soundness of the argument.

https://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/person.html

That is what you are doing.

Is that clearer?

I didn't come to DU to hear liberal praise of misogynists like Cenk Uygur and Joe Rogan, but here we are...



Sanders: I'm 'prepared to work with' Trump

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said Wednesday he is willing to collaborate with President-elect Donald Trump going forward but warned he would "strongly oppose" the Republican should he continue to pursue his most extreme policy proposals.

Acknowledging Trump's success in taping into economic resentment in his astounding electoral win Wednesday morning, Sanders cast Trump's candidacy in a light similar to his own failed presidential run during the Democratic primaries.

“Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media," the senator said in a statement released Wednesday.

Trump And Sanders Try To Show New Hampshire They Can Reach Across The Aisle

In a presidential election season that’s seen plenty of partisan fights, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders were among the candidates in Manchester, New Hampshire, Monday who were promising to reach across the political aisle if elected.

As WBUR's Fred Bever reported both men were out to demonstrate that they are practitioners of the art of compromise.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/9/14/sanders-reaches-across-aisle-at-liberty-university.html



https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/us/politics/bernie-sanders-2020.html

While often viewed as a pesky left-wing gadfly, he is also known to reach across the aisle, working on legislation with Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Senator John McCain of Arizona, both Republicans. He has rationalized voting for the 1994 crime bill, now heavily criticized for some of its draconian provisions, by saying he had favored progressive parts of the bill, including the Violence Against Women Act, while strongly opposing measures that would lead to mass incarceration.

Bernie Sanders’ Republican Buddy Reaches Across the Aisle To Endorse Clinton

Sanders’ longtime friend Tony Pomerleau, a prominent Republican businessman and developer in Sanders’ hometown of Burlington, Vermont, offered his support for Clinton this week, framing his endorsement in a historical context.

Said Pomerleau:

“I am a loyal Republican born in 1917 and the first time a woman could vote was in 1919,” the letter reads. “I will be most happy to cast my vote to the first woman president of the United States of America. I am a loyal friend of Bernie Sanders and in Vermont they call us the ‘Odd Couple.’”

[pampango]

94. I am 'attacking' the idea of posting conservative's opinion pieces to a liberal site and expecting

liberals to agree with how perceptive and on point the conservative is. I understand why a conservative would want to do that - to 'open our liberal eyes' to the wisdom of a conservative columnist.

If I trolled RW sites I might do the same in reverse - attempting to 'open their conservative eyes' to the wisdom of a liberal columnist.

[ehrnst]

97. I suppose you don't trust Warren as a liberal or a Democrat, either?

Another former conservative and Republican...

[Sloumeau]

26. Before Jennifer Rubin became a NeverTrumper, I disagreed with

pretty much everything she said, and I also considered her an idiot. Ever since she became a NeverTrumper, she has produced article after article that have been insightful and interesting. A whole lot of what she wrote here is spot on. The fact that Rubin spent years writing Right-Wing rubbish does not make what she writes here any less true.

[DanTex]

27. LOL

[Thekaspervote]

30. Again instead of LOL, point out where she is wrong

[ehrnst]

55. She's a woman, who is critiquing Bernie.

There you go.

[IluvPitties]

47. She's right about Bernie, that we know.

[ehrnst]

54. LOL. That's rich coming from a regular poster of the Democrat-hating Jacobin articles.

A woman is criticizing Bernie, and thoughtfully, so that CANNOT go unanswered!!

[Thekaspervote]

28. She maybe be.. point to where she is wrong

[George II]

39. Rubin's politics have swung 180 degrees since November 2016.

[DanTex]

41. LOL. No they haven't. She's still a right-winger.

[ehrnst]

58. But you just can't articulate how this woman is actually wrong in this article.

You just "lol" and attempt to derail by ad hominem, lacking anything else to offer....

Why don't you just share another Jacobin screed? You could keep the thread kicked that way, too.

[Cha]

108. Yes.. by all means keep the thread kicked..

it's killer! I excerpted a couple of paragraphs in my posts.. I didn't even notice it was JR till I saw this sub thread. lol

[ehrnst]

81. LOL. You certainly assumed that Cenk's GOP RW views have....

Along with Joe Rogan's misogynist screeds - or perhaps those things aren't that really bothersome in men?

[trueblue2007]

112. i call BULL on that. she is on msnbc all the sound and she does not sound like a right winger

[NCProgressive]

40. awwww.. a woman called your "revolution" small

ouch .. that ought to hurt

[NYMinute]

43. LOL

[ehrnst]

56. Bravo!!!

[ehrnst]

52. You post Jacobin articles, and they have trashed the Democratic party - CURRENTLY -

more than Rubin ever has, especially now that she's a never Trumper. I think that someone who doesn't consider the Democratic Party to be as bad as Trump is preferable to Jacobin.

But, Rubin is a woman critiquing Bernie, so that's worse to some than Jacobin trashing Democrats, isn't it...



I know some people think that people don't actually change, but they'd be wrong.

[ehrnst]

62. Cenk's GOP past misogyny isn't an issue for you now since Bernie endorsed him...

I guess men can 'evolve," but women can't?

[treestar]

73. that does not make her wrong here

[ehrnst]

100. But an anti-semite is OK?

[Gothmog]

102. Women are rejecting Sanders

sanders is losing in the recent primaries because he has pissed off women voters.

Link to tweet

For all the talk about Sen. Bernie Sanders’s diverse coalition and progressive outlook (and all the questions about the “likability” of female candidates), it should not escape notice that the biggest group of Democratic voters — women — overwhelmingly rejected the Vermont independent.

In Michigan, women made up 54 percent of the electorate; former vice president Joe Biden won 58 percent among these voters, compared to 35 percent for Sanders. In Missouri, women also accounted for 54 percent of the electorate; they chose Biden 64 to 32 percent. In Mississippi, 58 percent of the electorate was female; women chose Biden 83 to 12 percent.

Go back to Super Tuesday. Biden’s median support among women was 12 points higher than Sanders’s (37 to 25 percent) but only four points higher among men. In all Super Tuesday state exit polls, women made up more than 50 percent of the electorate — reaching roughly 60 percent in some cases (e.g. 58 percent in Minnesota, 61 percent in Alabama, 59 percent in Maine). That reflects the huge gender gap between the two parties that has only widened during the Trump era.....

Women’s aversion to Sanders may also be a rejection of the Bernie Bros phenomenon — the obnoxious harassment and even threats directed at women (including journalists and union leaders, as was the case in Nevada). Plenty of women did not think it was the least bit improbable that Sanders told Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) he did not think a woman could win. The only other candidate whose campaign ethos is so infused with testosterone is Trump.

The degree to which Sanders has turned off women is a fundamental problem for the left, which contrary to its self-conception is largely white and male. It is hard to present oneself as the vanguard of a diverse party when your coalition on race and gender (but not age) looks like a Republican coalition. Moreover, it is impossible to win as a Democrat without the support and enthusiasm of women.

[William769]

3. Kick & recommended.

[Xipe Totec]

4. Metamucil might help. nt

[Wellstone ruled]

7. Yup,extra large glass full.

[emmaverybo]

10. MSM has really been taken in. They propped up the idea of a non-existent revolution and a

Last edited Thu Mar 12, 2020, 06:31 PM - Edit history (1)

candidate who was the least accomplished despite his fervor. They are still doing so no matter the
voters or the majority of significant democratic players, including 26 members of the CBC, who have endorsed Biden, a man widely respected here and throughput the world.

Excellent article!

[samnsara]

11. i always wondered why he waited until 2016 to start this all important 'movement'

..he had been in office how long before that??

[Gothmog]

17. sanders pushed his theory in 2018 but no one paid attention to it

It was moderates who flipped control of the House and sanders and his Our Revolution candidates did not fare well

Link to tweet

[Thekaspervote]

32. Thank you Gothmog. The voters spoke in 18 and are speaking again. Big NO to our revolution

[LiberalFighter]

46. He began his career at the University of Chicago in 1962 with a segration protest

But....... instead of staying in Chicago when he got his BA or going back to Brooklyn to continue supporting desegregation, he went to Vermont.

[ehrnst]

63. Yes, that hotbed of civil rights activism, rural Vermont.

Revolutionary....

[Scurrilous]

71. He didn't get noticed until he did that 8 1/2 hour filibuster in 2010 & put out a book about it.

By noticed I mean noticed by a handful of assholes who ratfuck from the left who encouraged him to primary Obama in 2012. He declined that but went the following cycle with their support.

[treestar]

80. very true. Maybe it was opportunistic in that Hillary didn't have

a lot of opposition and he managed to get in as giving her some and the party thought that would be a good thing. He managed to get more attention that way. Had he run against Hillary, Obama and the rest in 2008 he would have been one of the crowd (likewise had he waited for this year).

[dalton99a]

15. But revolutions are cool

And the raised fist! He should have trademarked it

[Gothmog]

103. The Gauzy Myth of the Sanders Campaign

I never considered sanders to be a serious candidate. sanders has zero major legislative accomplishments in large part because none of his fellow Democrats in Congress support his agenda. I do not understand the concept of a voter revolution . Without such a magical voter revolution, none of sanders' agenda could be adopted and I am not comfortable in relying on a magical voter revolution

I am not only one to doubt the seriousness of sanders as a candidate https://newrepublic.com/article/156883/gauzy-myth-sanders-campaign

After Tuesday night, the undeniable truth is that the entire Sanders campaign was predicated on a gauzy myth. If there were ever hidden armies of would-be Democratic voters yearning for a visionary presidential nominee uncontaminated by the compromises of life, then these Bernie Brigades still remain well camouflaged.

Sure, as Sanders stressed in his Wednesday statement, some of his policies are popular with primary voters. In Michigan, exit polls showed that replacing private health insurance with a government program had the support of nearly 60 percent of the people who went to the polls on Tuesday. But since the February 29 South Carolina primary, most Democratic primary voters have been unwilling to buy the entire Sanders package: politically unattainable goals, such as canceling $1.6 trillion in college debt, combined with attacks on corporate interests and the “billionaire class.”

After Sanders’s two presidential runs, voters possess a pretty clear-eyed sense of who he is. He is a gadfly, a goad, and a left-wing Pied Piper. These can be valuable traits in politics since the moderate, accommodationist wing of the Democratic Party sometimes needs outside pressure to force it to focus on causes larger than the next election. But Sanders was never cut out to be a traditional president forging alliances, brokering compromises, and dealing with the messiness of governing in a bitterly divided democracy. That simply isn’t Bernie’s skill set. And his lifelong rigidity would have become an even larger governing problem if he ever succeeded Trump as president.

What Democratic voters have created by rallying around Biden is the American equivalent of the Popular Front, which, in the 1930s, was a broad, multiparty alliance against fascism in France and other democratic countries. The exit polls from Michigan echo a sentiment found in almost all primaries—voters, by a 58-to-37 percent margin, want a candidate who can defeat Trump more than someone who agrees with them on all issues.....

Sanders will undoubtedly fight on in the hopes that he can shape the Democratic platform. The problem with that strategy is that, even if Biden were to commit to supporting, say, Medicare for All, as a price for party harmony in Milwaukee, it would be a meaningless pledge. Currently, fewer than one-third of the Democrats in the Senate support eliminating private insurance. And if Chuck Schumer succeeds in getting the chamber back in Democratic hands, the new additions to their ranks are likely to be moderates like John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Steve Bullock of Montana, none of whom support Medicare for All.

There was never going to be a magical voter revolution and there was never any substance to sanders' campaign or any chance that sanders' agenda would be adopted in the real world

[NurseJackie]

21. Both candidates claim to be 6-feet tall.

That photo says differently.

[George II]

44. I was watching that during the last debate - Biden looked about 2 inches taller.

[NYMinute]

45. Sanders has a stoop

[Hekate]

50. Yes, & it makes him look his full age

[MiniMe]

22. Sanders is not a Democrat

I've said this many times, There are many things I agree with him, but he is not a Democrat.

[AlexSFCA]

23. his movement is online hoax inflated by russian intelligence service

and gop propaganda. He is the weakest dem candidate ever to seek nomination since McGovern.

[marble falls]

24. Just because Bernie is not going to the White House doesn't mean he's not needed in the Senate.

[aikoaiko]

25. Jennifer Rubin

Seriously, no main stream media ever said a majority of the party had gone so far left that a majority would vote for Bernie.

There were a lot of Democratic voters interested in Bernie, but he had to earn the majority.

She sets up a nice straw man only to knock it down with her brave exposition.

[Thekaspervote]

33. Like her or not... point to where are article is wrong...I will wait

[aikoaiko]

35. I did - her premise.

[ehrnst]

82. Her premise is supported by the data.

[aikoaiko]

85. I don't think so.

Here is here premise:
For months — for years, really — the media have reported that the Democratic Party has gone far left.

I have never seen "the media" say the Party as whole (either elected officials, power elites, or voters) had gone far left.

Yes, in 2016 and 2018 we saw more leftier politicians get elected or run and have voter support, but not the party as a whole

[ehrnst]

93. About that...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287662122

Link to tweet

Why have Democratic voters gone with Biden, if what you say is true, that the majority has "moved to the left?"

[aikoaiko]

95. When I used the word more I meant "increase in number"

Not majority.

Sorry for the confusion.

[ehrnst]

64. Well, Cenk and Joe Rogan sure got some cheers here on DU for their recent words

of praise for Bernie.

[NNadir]

31. Beautiful. n/t.

[HarlanPepper]

34. She's spot on

The movement didn’t show up for Bernie. The results are clear. So there really isn’t much of a movement. I could sit here all night tallying up all the races lost by Our Revolution candidates as well.

The would be president has no clothes.

[burrowowl]

37. Kick

[betsuni]

42. The cat's out of the bag.

The movement has no clothes.

[Cha]

107. lol.. oooops.

About friggin time.

[FrozenMoonage]

48. Jennifer Rubin is a terrible person to take advice from

she's super Islamophobic, a normal conservative pundit, no one here should take her seriously.

[ehrnst]

60. Sources more hateful than Rubin has been (especially lately) are praised here on DU.

Jacobin and the Intercept to name two.

BTW - people can change. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

I suppose you have nothing to say to rebut her points, other than an ad hominem?

[FrozenMoonage]

65. i literally joined like an hour ago so idk what the precedent here is for bad sources

it also doesnt matter at all as this is about Rubin, not those others.

the broad assertions that Bernie's demeanor in debates were "ranting, raving" and the extremely suspect criticism of him "yelling too much" just serves to sound super biased. I also don't think that really manifests much in public discourse? I've yet to see a Biden supporter say "Bernie sucks cause he's loud". So yeah Bernie is loud I guess? but he's not abrasive towards anyone, he's not running a campaign in which he gives playground bully nicknames to everyone else. His responses in the debates aren't really ranting or raving he's been pretty articulate. I just don't see how this point really contributes to the supposed major turn-off of dem voters.

When she runs down why voters don't like him in the third paragraph she seems to once again assert a bias that his policy is straight up socialism, has "venom-filled" rhetoric, and the talking point of how he's "not willing to compromise". The last one specifically has always been a weird one to me as I don't particularly think that having ideas that are different than the status quo means he's not one for compromise? I guess when it comes to m4a he's making the demand of no american lacking healthcare, I'll give Rubin that much even though her weird conservative slant towards implying it's socialism is stupid.

I agree with her on how social media shouldn't be used as a barometer for public perception yeah thats always been dumb.
Also she's not wrong about how dems going towards Biden want a safer option but that's not really a new idea, is it?

I'd say the progressive movement (as to include Warren as well because she did a whole lotta legwork) was a success on influencing the public discourse of the democratic primary, and by extension the general election. Also her claim that all demographics within the dem party agree to go with Biden is wrong. Younger voters (aged 18-44) prefer Bernie and tend towards being progressive, so in a sense the future of left leaning discourse has been influenced greatly.

So yeah Rubin's assessment of Sanders not having a movement seems pretty shaky and is filtered through a generic conservative lens so she's still awful in my book. Sure he's probably not gonna be the nominee but progressive ideas are becoming more and more commonplace among dem voters. We'll see how history turns out.

[ehrnst]

72. The assessment of Sanders' demeanor has been made by others, including his workers, for years.

https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/anger-management-sanders-fights-for-employees-except-his-own/Content?oid=2834657

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/us/politics/bernie-sanders-image.html

https://www.lansingcitypulse.com/stories/the-trouble-with-bernie,4622

Welcome to DU.

[dalton99a]

79. +1

[Rilgin]

98. As you can see, the Bernie hate is strong on site.

Welcome to DU, I have been on this site for years and years but post infrequently.

In this primary, I started to respond to the inauthentic and daily attacks on Bernie but have pretty much given up because there is no interest in actual unity, only in exercising the hatred that some posters here have against Bernie. Your post will probably go into the same Vacuum. I would not worry about it. The posters on this thread who assert that Bernis is this or Bernis is that are not representative of the Democratic Party as a whole who like both Biden and Bernie.

One of the attacks of this thread is a consistent point of attack with Bernie Haters that somehow he is unlikeable or abrasive or hand gestures when he talkss (ignoring of course the fact that Biden does the same as does Amy and Elizabeth in debating). With respect to whether people want to work with him, Bernie was one of the founders and the first chairman of the Progressive Caucus of the House appointed by fellow House Members. After the founding, more and more house members joined a group chaired by Bernie. He was then the chairman for the next 8 years till going to the Senate. My guess is that they must have made him chairman of the house caucus because no one could work with him and no one likes him and because he is abrasive to work with. EXTREME SARCASM IN THE LAST SENTENCE.

In fact, Bernie works well in coalitions with other people as pointed out by Hillary herself when he worked with her on Health Care (one that failed unfortunately). However, they find a person or article that asserts that a person does not like Bernie and claim that applies to everyone.

He is indeed on the left and most of his accomplishments are incremental by amendments of bills passed by the more corporate democrats and republicans. However, his issues constantly poll as popular amongst the electorate. So why did his bills not pass. Not because of the general support for the substance of his bills in the general electorate but because moderates and conservatives really don't want M4A or big changes to our society even those changes wanted by the electorate. However, because many people like and respond to him and his issues and moral tone (not the few one track haters who post every day) his issues have gained ground and at least are gaining ground in the general electorate who do ask, why do not have universal health care or a economic system that has such wealth disparity. This growth is not obviously him alone but he has helped rather than hinder such progress towards a better society. Hopefully eventually we will reach those goals and have the changes to our economic and political system that would make us a much better society.

Now, welcome to DU. Do not expect that your moderate post will have any affect on the attacks you see in this thread. if you continue to read DU, you will see the same attacks by the same posters day after day, hour after hour, and minute after minute. However, know that you are not crazy in your thoughts. DU's general hatred for Bernie is way out of step with the Democratic electorate. That hatred does exist in the Democratic Party electorate but it is a minority, not the majority as claimed by the people here.

Biden looks like the candidate and hopefully will be a good candidate but it is not because people hate Bernie or some characteristic as asserted by the active posters in this Thread. By all counts, the voters view Biden as a good man and more electable than Bernie and we can hope that the general electorate has judged correctly in giving Biden their vote to get Trump out.

[Aquaria]

68. Her loathsome positions on other issues have ZERO bearing

On whether or not her assertions are correct in THIS article.

Because they are.

When all you have is ad hominem as a refutation, you lose.

[Hekate]

49. Thanks, Gothmog

[Legends303]

59. She is right about Sander's supporters

They wanted someone to channel their grievance politics. The Sanders supporters online barely talked about policy and tried to sow dissent among the democratic voters about the party and anyone that disagreed with him was a neoliberal corporate shill controlled by Tom Perez and the media.

[Cha]

109. Yep!

[Tarheel_Dem]

69. K&R

[calimary]

70. I can't see myself being able to tolerate being scolded nonstop for the next four years.

Sheesh - it'd feel like I moved back in with my unpleaseable mother. I'm sure she wanted the best for me, but Lordy! NOTHING I did was EVER good enough. Bernie strikes me as a grouchy old scold, whose demands are so extreme they can never fully be met. I'm sure he means well, but CRIMINY...

[Blue_Tires]

77. I tried to tell y'all that ages ago

[NurseJackie]

86. His movement is swirling the drain... so to speak.

[dalton99a]

89. I think it will live on as a purity testing service named The Bernie Center for Progressive Politics

or some such

Founder: Bernie Sanders
Executive Director: David Sirota

[NurseJackie]

90. Heaven help us.

[BComplex]

91. Sounds like a lot of conservative wishful thinking to me.

The USA is far more to the left than the conservatives want it to be. But since the Reagan era, liberals have been shamed, shot, spit upon, and hounded by the right. There is more to come from the liberal side. Liberal policies are better for small businesses, which employ the greatest number of people in the country. Liberal policies put money into the pockets of the people who spend that money, and keep it circulating through the economy.

It is conservative policies that strangle the average person.

[Gothmog]

99. LOL Then sanders needs to say in the primary and lose some more primaries by large margins

sanders not dropping out may help Biden. sanders keeps on losing primaries by large margins nnly strenghten's Joe's position https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/11/no-surprise-bernie-sanders-is-still-all-about-himself-never-party/

Sanders’s remaining in the race should serve several salutary purposes for the party and the country. First, seeing him lose overwhelmingly week after week will dispel the notion that the Democratic Party has moved left, or that he is in a dominant position to negotiate with the overwhelming winner. It’s not clear why the Biden camp should “give” Sanders anything.

Second, it is good to keep Biden in fighting form, continuing to boost turnout and showing, as he did in Philadelphia, how presidential he is. Biden can pivot to the general election, essentially ignoring Sanders. (His planned speech on the coronavirus is the perfect opportunity to leave Sanders out of the discussion entirely.)....

Whoever is to replace Sanders as the standard-bearer for the left — hopefully someone as smart and wonky as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — will need to learn how to win elections. (Hint: It is not by scaring voters or attaching oneself to the socialist label.) When in office, a new generation of leaders on the left will need to learn the art of deal-making rather than waste years, as Sanders has, rabble-rousing but accomplishing nothing. Unlike Sanders, Warren (or whoever else takes the reins) will not be burdened by a record of reflexively praising dictators nor be driven to attack fellow Democrats.

Sanders will end the race at some point, a diminished figure. In retrospect, his wins in 2016 will be seen more as an anti-Hillary Clinton vote than a pro-Sanders vote. How he behaves at Sunday’s debate will determine whether he leaves a bad taste in the mouths of Democrats.

[Gothmog]

101. The Establishment Didn't Destroy Bernie Sanders-He destroyed himself.

I never considered sanders to be a serious candidate. sanders has zero major legislative accomplishments in part because none of his fellow Democrats really want to support his agenda. I do not understand sanders' political revolution and how this revolution would somehow force congress to adopt his agenda. The only thing that is clear is that sanders attacks on other Democrats and the Democratic Establishment have backfired

Link to tweet

If you look back at Sanders’ share of the vote in each primary, he hasn’t actually lost ground. In Iowa and New Hampshire, he got a quarter of the vote. In Nevada, he got a third. In South Carolina, he got a fifth. On Super Tuesday, he stayed in the same range, drawing about a quarter of the vote in the states he lost and a third of the vote in the states he won. What hurt him was that Biden increased his share of the vote, while Sanders didn’t. As other candidates dropped out, their voters went to Biden, not Sanders. And one reason for this pattern is Sanders’ constant message of antagonism. He has cultivated enemies instead of friends. Now he’s paying the price. …..

Sanders’ first defeat, on Feb. 29 in South Carolina, was a warning that he needed to assuage fears about his candidacy. Instead, he celebrated those fears as proof of his success. On March 1, he proudly told a crowd in San Jose, California, that the turnout at his rallies was alarming the establishment. The next day, in St. Paul, Minnesota, he repeated that message. When Sanders was informed that fellow candidates Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar were dropping out and endorsing Biden, he said it was no surprise, since the corporate elite was out to get him. And when Maddow asked Sanders whether he was specifically running against “the Democratic Party establishment”—not just a generic “political establishment”—he replied: “Democratic establishment. Yes.”

At his rallies, Sanders has continued to call for a “political revolution.” And he has added another villain to his list of enemies: the stock market. When the market surged after Super Tuesday, Sanders, far from welcoming this news, cited it as evidence of Biden’s corruption. “We’re taking them all on,” he said of the companies whose valuations had increased. “The stock market went up this morning ’cause they thought that Biden did well.” Sanders told Maddow that “the health care industry and the drug companies did very well” because “Biden had a good day.” And he warned these companies that if he got his way, their stocks would suffer. “I got some bad news for those guys,” he said. “Don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched.” ….

Meanwhile, Sanders has escalated his talk of conspiracies. On Sunday, he claimed that “the establishment put a great deal of pressure” on Buttigieg and Klobuchar to “force” them out of the race. “What was very clear from the media narrative and what the establishment wanted,” he told George Stephanopoulos, “was to make sure that people coalesced around Biden and try to defeat me.” On Wednesday, after his defeats, Sanders again rebuked “the Democratic establishment” and insisted that “our campaign has won the ideological debate.”

What Sanders fails to understand is the connection between his defeats and his rhetoric. It wasn’t the media or the Democratic National Committee that turned Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and millions of voters against him. It was Sanders. His relentless message of conflict, along with his expanding list of putative enemies, attracted a fraction of the electorate but alienated everybody else. As the primaries narrowed to a two-man race, his base was no longer enough to win. The establishment didn’t destroy Bernie Sanders. He destroyed himself.

[Cha]

105. Retweeted! TY Goth.. this is a killer read!

Link to tweet

What Sanders fails to understand is the connection between his defeats and his rhetoric. It wasn’t the media or the Democratic National Committee that turned Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and millions of voters against him. It was Sanders. His relentless message of conflict, along with his expanding list of putative enemies, attracted a fraction of the electorate but alienated everybody else. As the primaries narrowed to a two-man race, his base was no longer enough to win. The establishment didn’t destroy Bernie Sanders. He destroyed himself.

[Hortensis]

115. Sanders never could do anything BUT "destroy" the chimera

of his promises of everything and ability to accomplish nothing.

Nothing is more believable than that he doesn't understand the connection between his defeats and his rhetoric.

Without Russia's help, I feel sure he would have killed himself off in 2015, early 2016 latest. There's never been any there to his promises. All he could ever do with his one talent of self promotion was to sow conflict, and that only with enormous help from Repub-Russia.

[Cha]

106. The Democratic Party does not live on social media nor does it favor bomb-throwers

The Democratic Party does not live on social media nor does it favor bomb-throwers. If anything, it is desperate to play it safe and find an antidote to President Trump — not an imitation. Voters want the madness, the cruelty, the dysfunction and the stupidity to stop. They have found their safe, reliable and decent candidate in Biden. En masse — in every geographic region and Democratic group — they are telling us that they want the primary to end and the effort to rout Trump to begin. The media might have taken Sanders’s “revolution” seriously, but it turns out that Democratic voters as a whole did not.

Mahalo Goth!

[onetexan]

113. K&R

Hi Cha

[Cha]

114. Hey Aloha, onetexan!