The 2020 Race Is Going Just Like Bernie Sanders Wanted

[Shrek]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/04/bernie-sanders-thinking-he-will-win-it-all-2020/587326/

PITTSBURGH—So far, the 2020 election is playing out exactly as Bernie Sanders had hoped. And that has Sanders thinking with growing seriousness that this could very well end with his election as president.

Still, since some political observers and journalists haven’t wrapped their head around the reality that he could be more than a spoiler who kneecaps the party en route to a complicated convention and maybe another loss to Donald Trump, Sanders has been able to do this without the attention or scrutiny that anyone else with his poll numbers, fundraising, and crowds would face.

The campaign is moving toward its internal $280 million target and savoring polls that have Sanders just behind Joe Biden, who Sanders and his team expect will only go down once he gets in the race. The number of candidates keeps growing, lowering how many people it would take to come in first beyond the 15 to 20 percent of primary voters who will stick with Sanders no matter what.

[Blue_Tires]

1. Tulsi Gabbard? Seriously?

[question everything]

3. At least s/he selected someone

better than Undecided.

[Blue_Tires]

6. If you're trying to say something about me, just come out and fuckin' say it...

Because today is not the day.

[question everything]

8. Not about you. But with such an active site, still puzzled that the majority here

are still undecided. It is not as if a selection cannot be changed..

[Blue_Tires]

11. Since you're keeping score, you'll remember who I initially had before I went back to undec, right?

?

EDIT: This isn't a lottery or a horse race or a March Madness bracket. I'm perfectly within my rights to withhold endorsement until the field of candidates stabilizes and thins out a bit, and the bullshit ratio drops...

[Voltaire2]

16. You're just being baited. Walk away.

[thesquanderer]

42. If they read the question, I don't believe most Undecideds truly are.

The question isn't "at this point, who do you think you'll vote for in 2020?" Rather, the question is, who would you pick if you had to vote for a candidate TODAY? I would bet that the vast majority of Undecideds here would indeed pick someone, if the alternative was to stay home and not vote and thereby increase the chance of a Trump victory.

Simply by virtue of their being here, we know someone is pretty engaged, so if you told them they had 30 seconds to pick someone or else their vote would essentially go to Trump, I bet they could come up with their likely choice at that moment, which is all that is being asked.

So I think most Undecideds either haven't understood the question; or they have chosen to not publicly declare who their choice would be, which is their right (and they may feel the appropriate choice if their level of commitment to that candidate is really low). But I bet they usually do have an answer.

[sacto95834]

29. How about..

While some of us like some candidates more than others, I want to see/hear them debate before making up my mind?? We have a good group of candidates to choose from and to start excluding some until you can hear them debate each other seems narrow minded. What are you going to do if your favorite candidate drops out early or performs poorly?

[thesquanderer]

43. re: "What are you going to do if your favorite candidate drops out early or performs poorly?"

re:

What are you going to do if your favorite candidate drops out early or performs poorly?

Easy answer: pick someone else. You can change as often as you want. he question is only who you would choose if the election were today. It doesn't commit you to who you would choose tomorrow. Heck, I've already changed twice.

[sacto95834]

45. I hear you...

I was responding to someone who didn't understand why there are so many undecideds.

[TexasTowelie]

70. Exactly.

I expect my preferred choice to remain campaigning at least until Super Tuesday, regardless of what the media pundits might say. If he decides to withdraw at some time, then I will reevalute and determine who my next choice will be. It might be someone that I would be reluctant to support currently.

[PunkinPi]

36. The majority of DUers aren't undecided, 43% of DUers are currently undecided. nt

[Lancero]

17. Hilariously, the same same sentiment can apply to your original comment.

[Blue_Tires]

26. Someone pimpin' Tulsi says a hell of a lot more than my undecided...

[Bradshaw3]

10. Why isn't it ok to be undecided at this point?

We haven't even had a debate, some haven't released their tax returns, Biden hasn't announced yet, Mayor Pete is surging in the polls without even putting up any specific policy proposals, and the first voting is what nine months away. I made a choice but think it is reasonable others haven't, especially at this early stage. I also believe it's fine for people to change their selections based on how they perorm in debates, ufnoreseen developments, etc.

[qazplm135]

12. that's a pretty jerkish comment

and kind of silly to boot.

[BannonsLiver]

20. It is?

Based on what exactly?

[cwydro]

32. What is wrong with undecided?

I don’t get your problem with that.

[doc03]

76. I don't either at this point. To be honest there

is nobody so far that I am excited about. I would vote for almost all of them over Trump but I don't see any of them beating Trump at this time. "It's the economy stupid"

[TexasTowelie]

64. They changed to Seth Moulton.

[brush]

2. Nah, too many others who will pull votes from him. He's got his loyal base but it isn't the base...

of the party. And if Biden gets in, his polling will go down.

[TexasTowelie]

71. Oddly enough, when I checked RCP,

the candidates that have gone up within the past week are the two candidates that everyone was bashing after the first debate. Both Biden and O'Rourke have made gains. Did I miss something that happened during that timespan?

[bahrbearian]

4. Gotta Love Tulsi

[sacto95834]

35. Tulsi is my homie!

good luck to her. stand tall for your beliefs...

aloha.

[bluedigger]

7. "without the attention or scrutiny"

Comedy gold, right there.

[workinclasszero]

14. Right

[WeekiWater]

15. That stood out to me as well.

So did some of the other points. Such a strangely thought out piece.

[Gothmog]

23. No one took sanders seriously in 2016 and so sanders was not vetted

No one took sanders seriously and so he was not vetted. Vetting is important I amso glad that sanders is being vetted this cycle https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/28/why-bernie-sanders-has-an-uphill-climb-ahead/?utm_term=.1b4f90c2a717

Finally, what happens when the oppo dump on Sanders comes? We have no idea, because it never happened in 2016. Clinton was so terrified of alienating his supporters and seeing them vote for Jill Stein in the general election (or not vote at all) that she tiptoed around him for pretty much the entirety of the primary campaign. That doesn’t mean that he’ll be destroyed when stories about the more colorful aspects of his history start cropping up, but there’s just no way to know.

Which is what we could say about the Sanders candidacy as a whole: There’s no way to know how it’s going to go. But he’s got his work cut out for him.

See also https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/19/politics/bernie-sanders-2020-campaign-donald-trump/index.html?utm_source=twCNNp&utm_content=2019-02-20T14%3A52%3A07&utm_term=image&utm_medium=social%C2%A0

2. How will he withstand more scrutiny and more attacks?
One of the secrets to Sanders' success in 2016 was that no one -- most especially Clinton -- thought he had any chance of going anywhere in the race. Clinton largely ignored him for the better part of 2015, allowing some problematic parts of Sanders' record for Democrats -- most notably his voting record on guns -- to go unnoticed. (When the race began to tighten, Clinton gently prodded Sanders on guns and health care.) Sanders, too, largely flew under the radar of investigative reporters for major news outlets who were busy looking into Clinton, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and others seen as more viable candidates. (That reality clearly benefited Donald Trump in the early days of the campaign, as well.)

Sanders will get no pass -- from either the media or his fellow candidates -- this time around. He is among the frontrunners -- and will be treated as such. His wife's time as president of Burlington College could well come up. And his opponents will do a deep dive into his nearly 30 years of votes as a member of the House and Senate. This is all very normal stuff in a campaign. But not for Sanders.

Now we can see how sanders reacts to being vetted

Link to tweet

Among some Democrats, there was a sense of bewilderment that the Sanders campaign had gone—as one operative put it—”nuclear” over a mere web video. One Democratic consultant sympathetic to Sanders described the video as being “like a gnat buzzing around your ear,” one which should not have distracted from the candidate’s Midwest tour.

It also raised questions as to whether the senator was ready for the scrutiny that would come from being a frontrunning candidate, after having run as an insurgent against an ideal foil, Hillary Clinton, in 2016.

“When you’re leading in the polls of president of your party you should expect investigative stories to hit at least once a week and to be attacked by your opponents every day,” said Ben Labolt, who served as press secretary to Barack Obama during the 2012 campaign. “An attack on something like ThinkProgress is the sign of a super-narrow-minded campaign that isn’t actually thinking of how the election will be won... They have chosen an establishment force that no one outside of the Starbucks at 16th and K would recognize.”

I am glad that sanders is being vetted

[TexasTowelie]

73. I'm glad that all of the candidates are being vetted.

I want the eventual nominee to be well vetted and with great policy proposals. O'Rourke was vetted strongly in his senate campaign and his policy proposals regarding Social Security have answered many of the questions that I posed here on DU within recent weeks.

[Gothmog]

80. Vetting is a good thing

[Hortensis]

9. No, a number of other things are going on. But #1

is that Sanders stands out, a group of 1 radical, oppositional candidate who is disliked and distrusted by many and ardently supported by his followers, which makes for lots of opportunistic press coverage.

The others so far are seen as two or three clusters: The good, solid Democrats toward the top from whom our next president will likely come, their worthy colleagues in the middle to lower strata who probably won't be able to pull up into competition, and a handful in the bottom stratum who are not good ideological fits for the party and are presumably in, or possibly will be in, for self aggrandizement.

Sanders great success is that his success means he is not classed with the others in that last group. In being a controversy-stirring populist leader, Sanders is benefiting from the example of Trump, who is his counterpart on the right.

[qazplm135]

13. it's not really even started yet

Things are going to look different in multiple ways, some we won't have predicted, come this time next year.

That may, or may not, result in Bernie winning the nomination, but it's way early in the game.
Heck, it's preseason still.

[Gothmog]

22. sanders supporters think that sanders can win nomination with 30% of vote

Link to tweet

[TexasTowelie]

74. Check further down the thread.

Some Sanders supporters believe he can win with 15-20% of the vote.

It reminds me of the discussion in one of my math classes that if you walk halfway across the room, then walk halfway of the remaining, then keep repeating that process, you will never completely get outside of the room.

I guess that some people believe in miracles though.

[Gothmog]

79. That is not going to happen

[artislife]

27. Or Biden's base

They seem very loyal and convinced he is the ONLY one who can win. Or at least the most of them who post here.
If we follow the logic that Bernie isn't going to win the primary, shouldn't all the trailing candidates, including the two I am vacillating between, also just throw in the towel now?


Full disclosure, I would choose Bernie in a heartbeat if he were at least 5 years younger but he and Joe are too old. I think Liz can make it because on average women live longer.

[Gothmog]

21. sanders is counting on splitting African American vote

This is from the article cited in the OP https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/04/bernie-sanders-thinking-he-will-win-it-all-2020/587326/

“There’s a three-out-of-four chance we are not the nominee,” Faiz Shakir, Sanders’s current campaign manager, says he tells the senator, “but that one-in-four chance is better than anyone else in the field.”...

He’s counting on winning Iowa and New Hampshire, where he was already surprisingly strong in 2016, and hoping that Cory Booker and Kamala Harris will split the black electorate in South Carolina and give him a path to slip through there, too. 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.

[booksandpencils]

37. He needs a new plan then

I have a fondness for Booker, but he isn't making it to South Carolina.

Also not sure I love the idea of assuming the AA vote will automatically be split between to AA candidates. Seems kind of simplistic and prejudiced to think that.

[TexasTowelie]

75. You are correct.

Some of those votes will not go to AA candidates. It looks like Biden is reasonably popular among the African-American candidates in several of the southern states including South Carolina.

[MFM008]

24. And infighting

Is just what the Republicans want.
A repeat of 2016 is what Republicans want.

[Gothmog]

49. Bernie is hoping for a brokered convention.

Link to tweet

[samnsara]

25. 'stick with sanders no matter what..? i hope that means they will support the dem nom..???

....whomever it will be? I sure hope so!

Im pretty sure he wont be the nom anyway...

[BlueFlorida]

28. Yes .. he has consolidated his devotees

to get to 22% of the Democratic vote.

That is his ceiling though. It ain't gonna get better than that.

[Kentonio]

38. You're aware he got 43% of the primary vote in 16 right?

[BlueFlorida]

39. Like I said somewhere else

Sanders has lost 50-60% of his supporters.

His core devotees is all he has got now.

[Kentonio]

40. We'll see.

I feel pretty confident you will be proven extremely wrong about that.

[BlueFlorida]

41. The proof is in the polls

People who have analyzed Sanders and questioned his effectiveness have left him.

The devotees who worship him remain.

[Kentonio]

44. The polls show him in the lead amongst announced candidates.

So it's pretty hilarious that you take that as evidence that he's doomed.

[BlueFlorida]

46. From 43% in the primaries in 2016

to struggling to stay above 20% now.

He has lost all supporters except fervent devotees who don't see any flaw or weakness in Sanders whatsoever. He is perfect in every way.

[Kentonio]

47. Pretty nonsense analysis to be honest.

But you'll see that as the primaries unfold.

[still_one]

30. A lot of assumptions there. Leaving out Biden and Sanders, the cumulative support for the other

candidates in the race is about 36%, and that number doesn't include the undecideds

Before and up to Super Tuesday, a good number of those candidates will drop out, and assuming the supporters of those candidates will "flock to Sanders", is a self-deluded fallacy

[David__77]

31. I do think it looks reasonably good for Sanders.

The dynamics aren’t presently favorable to non-Sanders consolidation, and those dynamics could become major faultlines.

[Gothmog]

34. You do know many real democrats have long memories

Many real Democrats have very long memories and we will not forgive or forget

[Gothmog]

33. sanders wants to repeat 1984

Link to tweet

?s=20

[Gothmog]

48. Nate Silver- Sanders Can Win, But He Isn't Polling Like A Favorite

Nate thinks that it is possible for sander to win the nomination but this is not likely. sanders is not going to be the nominee of the party. sanders thinks that getting 30% of the primary vote is sufficient which means taking the fight to the contested convention. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-can-win-but-he-isnt-polling-like-a-favorite/

Historically, though, candidates who are polling at only about 20 percent nationally despite the near-universal name recognition that Sanders enjoys don’t have a great track record. From our research on the history of past primary polls, I found 15 candidates from past nomination processes who, like Sanders, (i) polled at an average of between 15 percent and 25 percent4 in national polls in the first six months of the year before the Iowa caucuses5 and (ii) who had high or very high name recognition.6.....

Achieving a delegate majority could be hard for Sanders
You could also argue that the three winning candidates from the list — Barack Obama and John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 — aren’t good comparisons for Sanders, especially from a “The Party Decides” standpoint where preferences among party insiders and activists are leading indicators of voter preferences. Romney, for instance, had the backing of the GOP party establishment as a potential consensus choice, whereas Sanders largely lacks it from Democrats. Obama was a rising star, rather than someone left over from a previous cycle, and gained a lot of momentum among party elites as the 2008 cycle wore on, even if they also liked Clinton. McCain, who ran against the party establishment in 2000 but was someone the party could live with in 2008, is in some ways the most favorable comparison for Sanders.

In many respects, however, Sanders is more similar to Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988, George Wallace in 1972 and 1976 or Ron Paul in 2012, candidates who represented important constituencies within their respective parties but who didn’t have an obvious way to unite the rest of the party behind them or to win a delegate majority.

At times, Sanders’s strategists actually seem to be leaning into the strategy of being a factional candidate. The Sanders campaign may have all kinds of reasons to feel aggrieved by how the party establishment has treated it, especially when it reads articles like the one in The New York Times that suggest the establishment is out to get it again! Nonetheless, the campaign hasn’t sought to mend fences when conflicts have arisen this year. Instead, Sanders aides told The Atlantic’s Edward-Isaac Dovere that they think they can win the nomination with as little as a 30 percent plurality of delegates. That’s a risky strategy since it would necessarily entail a contested convention, where party insiders would play an outsized role. Nor would Sanders, a 77-year-old white man, reflect the various constituencies of the Democratic Party (and the demographics of the delegates themselves) as well as someone like Harris might.

sanders will not be the nominee if sanders only gets 30% of the primary vote. There are too many real democrats who have long memories and who will not forgive or forget. If this gets to a floor fight, the delegates for the other candidates will not support sanders and the super delegates will get to break any deadlocks after the first ballot.

[TexasTowelie]

50. This thread didn't age well. nt

[Tiggeroshii]

51. It's aged just fine.

He has a solid 15-20%, where the other candidates will lose all their support overnight and gain it back.

[TexasTowelie]

52. Being consistent at 15-20% of the vote won't win the nomination, particularly if there are other

candidates that are getting 20-30% consistently. If the percentage falls below 15% in a state, then he won't get any delegates either. Bernie has his dedicated supporters, but he doesn't appear to be attracting the voters to get above 20%.

Fluctuations will occur as the race progresses and other candidates leave the campaign; however, I think the race will have a frontrunner by the end of the mid-March primaries and I don't believe that Bernie will be the person in that position.

[Tiggeroshii]

53. It will when there are 18 other canidates vying for the same kind of support

There are a lot like Biden vying for the middle. There are only two who are truly vying for the progressive wing. It is only a matyer of time before the middle is spread out among the rest of the candidate and bernies 15-20 is well ahead of everybody else.

[TexasTowelie]

54. LOL.

When the voters in the middle coalesce behind one candidate, they won't be behind Bernie.

[Tiggeroshii]

55. Agreed.

They will be behind Castro, Biden, Harris, Hickenlooper, Bullock, Gillibrand and O Rourke

[TexasTowelie]

56. Perhaps you misunderstood my comment because we aren't in agreement.

When the voters in the middle coalesce behind one candidate, they won't be behind Bernie.

One does not equal seven.

My BS in mathematics occurred before the adoption of new math and Bernie math too (or is that two).

Oops, I typed BS.

[Tiggeroshii]

58. Perhaps you misunderstood mine

The fractured center is too fractured to coalesce around anybody.

The left is well united around Sanders and Warren. The center is united around... nobody.

[TexasTowelie]

59. That's a bold statement

considering that Sanders and Warren are behind Biden in nearly every poll. It ranks up there with the claim that Bernie is the most popular politician ever which is ironic since he never has been the Democratic presidential nominee. But there is always Vermont.

However, I will say that my enthusiasm for Elizabeth Warren is much greater than my ambivalence for Bernie. I'll actively support Warren if she wins the nomination. I'll vote for Bernie if he is nominee only because I despise Trump, but I won't go out of my way to do anything else for him since he lost my respect many years ago.

[Tiggeroshii]

60. Polls rght now are as accurate as polls were at this time in 2015

Bernie won 23 primaries in 2016. Biden has lost over 100 -not winning a single one in all that he ran in. I have my money on the one who can actually win primaries. Also what did the polls say about Bernies ability to win ANY primary in 2016? Do you really want to put your money on those same polls?

[TexasTowelie]

61. I don't bet on any political races

because I am not blindingly loyal to any politician.

[Tiggeroshii]

62. ...

cheers!

[George II]

65. Biden never lost a single primary.

[TexasTowelie]

68. Why would anyone make such a claim when is knowingly false

and can be confirmed with searches on the Internet?

[Cha]

63. That's what I

was thinking!

[sheshe2]

66. Oh my

[TexasTowelie]

69. Yes, as discussed above some people believe that 15% is greater than 25%.

I might need to return to college and develop a proof that the new math is correct. I always hated my hated my class in Real Variable Theory. We spent an entire semester getting to page 47 of the textbook.

[sheshe2]

72. Lol

That is way way beyond my reach. TT.

This is an interesting thread, I missed it the first time round.

[lapucelle]

77. Many expect the situation only to get worse now that the BS campaign is embroiled

in a dispute with its union members.

[TexasTowelie]

78. Yes, I agree.

Leading by example is a priority. Hypocritical behavior is a deal breaker.

Based upon the recently released CBS News/YouGov poll Sanders does not meet the 15% threshold to receive any delegates and most of that was poll conducted prior to the release about Bernies's campaign dispute.

[Gothmog]

57. If sanders is the nominee, trump will win 45+ states