Haven’t I been saying this?
More later.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Our Democratic Party chair shared your post the other day on Facebook about the danger of “irrational exuberance” surrounding Sanders. And it produced one of the more spirited exchanges I have seen there in a while about exactly how to interpret his campaign and whether or not it made any sense to even contemplate the possibility that a major goal of his campaign might be something other than actually winning the nomination.
I got lit up by a couple of Sanders supporters simply for bringing up the possibility that the success of his campaign might end up being measured not by whether he wins or loses, but by the fact that issues important to liberals get injected into the mainstream of our national conversation and actually become a part of the larger message. That hypothesis was met with quite a dose of anger at my even making that presumption. Some people seemed to reflexively conflate his success at drawing those early crowds with his broader appeal outside those largely liberal areas. I tried to explain the gist of what you were saying in your post, but I was told that the tone of your post was “dismissive” and that they were tired of pundits and people like me pushing all this “negativity about Bernie Sanders”. “They said Obama couldn’t do it, either, and he proved them wrong.” When I tried to point out that the comparison was flawed, I was met with more anger about how I was just another one of those “Hillary is inevitable” people.
I am certainly not one of those “Hillary is inevitable” people. But I have learned enough by observing and reading over the years what smart people have to say about the real-life machinations of our political process to be able to sift through the noise and the bullshit that surrounds us. I love the message of Bernie Sanders. If he is still hanging around about the time of our Ohio primary, I might even be making a few phone calls for him. But I understand the epic uphill battle that looms for him when he starts venturing out into some of the nether-lands of our country. He is facing a monstrous challenge. It is simply a delusional fantasy for anyone to deny that. Still, I love what he is doing. Go, Bernie!!!
Make calls now. I say operate under the assumption of victory and if that doesn’t happen use what was done to build up contacts and connections. If nothing else try to take back the DNC because it once again needs fixing thanks to Obama arrogance and timidity.
The DNC = DSCC + DCCC. Period. Its focus is select seats — not all, not most — in the Federal legislature — not state houses, not governors’ mansions.
Democratic Presidents don’t need it, or want it, once elected. In the modern era, you don’t even need it to get elected, or re-elected, president (OFA, anyone?)
It’s not Obama’s arrogance, or timidity.
It’s realism.
Isn’t there a difference between being a “Debbie Downer” and making constructive comments that are also timely? If Sanders’ supporters don’t hope and believe that it’s possible for him to secure the nomination and/or have a serious and positive impact on national politics, why should they bother? Doubt that any of them need others to point out that they and Sanders have a steep hill to climb with a couple of bulldozers at the top prepared to push rocks down on them at various points along the way.
Their time, their energy, and their money. Could they channel all that into something with a potentially higher pay-off? What pray tell. Seriously, if Sanders doesn’t get a certain level of traction, the status quo will prevail in down ticket races.
It’s a lonely place for leftie local DP groups. They get no respect from state and federal DP operations. Nor, unlike the teabaggers at the local GOP level, are they going to see money funneled their way by some wealthy wingers. But they’re also smarter than the baggers that didn’t recognize that they were nothing more than some new hired help for elites.
Enthusiasm for Sanders at this point may only be a step, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.
Sigh.
To paraphrase the title of your most recent post:
Please.
They will leave him alone…maybe even make some money on his rising candidacy by producing breathless stories about it, pro or con…but if he ever looks like he’s going to become a serious threat to upset the fix applecart he’ll be gone as fast as was Howard Dean, and probably by the same general means.
Really.
Ain’t happening.
Now Rand Paul, on the other hand? He has a well-functioning, professional political outfit working for him…started by his father, tempered by several previous runs…and he apparently has a plan other than talking about himself. He is obviously serious and he is no dummy, either. Go listen…listen, not scoff if you are capable of such a thing…to his anti-Patriot Act filibuster. He’s a policy wonk. He knows what is happening and he thinks he knows how to stop it. Politically. On the evidence of his past year of work, he realizes that it is entirely possible that the many various representatives of the numerous headed-for-the-tarpits RatPublican claques are very likely to cancel each other out over a long primary season, each one stealing votes from the others. Meanwhile he is working like a sonofabitch to identify and/or create an entirely new population in that party. Disaffected DemRats, the young, minorities and most importantly, portions of the unaffiliated 40% of American voters (roughly 30% stone DemRats, 30% stone RatPubs…that leaves 40% swing voters) that hold the real political power in national elections. Even if he fails to get the nomination this effort will put him in good position for the next fix period. Four or even eight years of continued failure by whichever fix-winner of either party gets to sit in the White House…and bet on it, failure (at least in the eyes of the voters) will continue to occur as long as the PermaGov is in power because “the voters” are not its real constituency; the .01% is where its interests really lie…four or eight more years of this horshit we have been seeing will find a nerw generation of voters pissed off and ready to rumble. Ready to change.
That’s what he appears to be thinking, judging by his actions.
Will it work?
Will it happen?
Could be.
HMMMmmmm…
Later…
AG
Arthur, do you not realize that many of us have listened to Rand Paul? I for one am not going to write someone off as an incurable moron just because the PermaGov Boogie Man Secret World Government tells me to. No, I have concluded that Rand Paul is an incurable moron based on statements like the one below. This was his response to Bernie Sanders’s proposition that people have a right to health care:
Now I want to be clear about the nature of his stupidity here. This business about doctors being slaves is utterly cretinous, of course, but that’s not what makes him incurable. It’s how he prefaces the statement: You have to realize… Not just making this indescribably asinine argument, but making it in this tone of patient condescension, as if he’s the only person who’s ever even thought about these things.
He’s a man of meager intellect and lazy habits who’s convinced he’s got it all figured out. That’s the worst kind of idiot.
Hey! I know someone else who does that…..
Oh!!! Have you turned against Barack Obama too!!!???
How time flies!!!
AG
I don’t think he was referring to Barack Obama, wise guy.
Oh.
Nevermind.
Yore freind…
Emily Litella
P.S. If the foo shits, wear it.
You write:
On the basis of most of our previous presidents over the past 50+ years…does this mean that you are you endorsing him?
G. W. Butch
Bill Clinton
Ronald Reagan
Jerry Ford
Possibly Richard Nixon except that he was obsessive rather than lazy.
Meager intellects and lazy habits all. If you were right about Rand Paul he’d be a shoo-in.
The fact that so many truly lazy intellects like those who find safe harbor in typecasted rubrics like “conservative,” “liberal” and “pwogwessive” continue to bump around their own little cages spouting words like “stupid,”, “cretinous,” “incurable” about Rand Paul is a ringing endorsement of his fitness for office here as far as I am concerned. After the almost total failure of Obama to effectively pursue any of his initially expressed agenda (An “agenda” that was simply part of the fix.) while in office for almost almost 7 years, after Clinton basically gave away the store during his own tenure…too busy wid da blue dresses and what lay underneath them, etc…after failures on that level, anybody who thinks an essentially centrist DemRat candidate will be anything but another failure is jes’ plain blind. (If of course those “failures” were not actually part of the overall plan that landed them in the White House in the first place.) Equally so for any RatPubs who still keep the faith after Reagan and the Bushies finished playing their own awful tunes. Blind, deaf and dumb like motherfuckers!!!
You don’t like that characterization?
Lump it.
You wanna call me names too?
Feel free.
Sticks and stones may break my bones but namecalling will only break the U.S. Bank. Eventually. Bet on it.
Wise up.
You been had.
After the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X and the later “assassnations”…media-driven, most of them…of any and all who have threatened to effectively challenged the hegemony of the PermaGov, you are still a true believer!!!???
Go waste your vote on Bernie or some other propped-up strawman/tomato can who’s being used in this latest fix.
You’ll get exactly what you deserve.
Zero.
Minus zero, actually.
Later…
AG
P.S. A little teaching story from the esoteric archives of jazz history:
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A wonderful Louis Armstrong story...
Pops...that's what people called him, because he was the grandaddy of us all...had a valet who traveled with him for 30 years or more. I never met the valet...call him Willie. Willie took care of Pops on the road. Got his food, answered the door, prepared his gig clothes, etc.
One day someone came to visit Pops in a hotel somewhere. The visitor knocked on the hotel room door, and Louis opened it himself.
This visitor said "Oh!!! Hey...where's Willie?" and Pops answered in his inimitable voice "Oh, ain't you heard? Willie's dead."
The visitor said "That's too bad, Pops. What was wrong with him?"
And Louis answered "Man...when you're dead, EVERYTHING is wrong with you!!!"
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Like…minus zero, man.
Minus zero.
Bet on it.
That’s where we are headed if we keep this shit up.
Minus zero.
And when the chickenshit hits the fan…
I hope you and the others like you are awake enough to feel the glorious breeze.
I really do.
That’s OK, Arthur. I didn’t expect you to get the point.
Nor I you.
AG
My sister tells the media have dug upan illegitimate child of Bernie’s from 40 years ago. I knew they would smear him with something. Way to go Hillary! Did you get Stephanopoulos to do the dirty work?
No! No! It was Sid Blumenthat. It’s always Sid Blumenthal!
Not to defend team Clinton if they, and not a reporter, dug this up and handed it off to the media, but Sanders had to know that it couldn’t be excised from his bio. He really should have been open about it. Even if there is bad blood between him and mother of his son. A son that has always been Levi Sanders and appears to be close to his father. Even if the situation had been messy over four decades ago. He and his first wife remain friendly and she supports his candidacy. Plus, Sanders hasn’t been some personal moral hypocrite and scold. He’s not a Sarah Palin that shows up with a pregnant, unwed teen daughter that after that became a virgin again.
The US public has become reasonably tolerant of those that once or one time behaved badly as long as the behavior wasn’t criminal — and sometimes even if it was criminal. Sherrod Brown has never been able to fully shirk off his unacceptable behavior during the divorce with his first wife. Doesn’t seem to matter enough that she and her second husband (that she married immediately after the divorce was final) have supported Brown’s political campaigns and held fundraisers for him. Or that many years later he married the well regarded Connie Schultz.
You know how it goes, IOKIYAR.
Not really. Many factors including when the scandal becomes public knowledge. Some DEMs and some REPs go down and some in both parties don’t.
unless Bernie didn’t pay support for said child, I don’t care.
Even that’s okay with me if it was done as an agreement as opposed to being a dead beat.
Where’s Paul on umions? the graduated income tax? Minimum wage? Universal health care?
There’s a reason he is running as a Republican. He’s all for freedom. Freedom to pollute. Freedom to exploit. Freedom to discriminate.
I am Black.
Rand Paul, like his Daddy,
has made it clear that he wouldn’t have voted for the Voting Rights Act or Civil Rights Act.
At every turn, Rand Paul, from his own mouth, supports STATES RIGHTS.
American Apartheid – aka as Jim Crow – was not some theoretical exercise for my ancestors, who lived in the Police States known as Jim Crow Tennessee and Mississippi.
I don’t need any ‘PermaGOV’ anything to inform me that Rand Paul is my enemy.
His own words make that clear as day for me.
You tell it, sister. I’m one of the dreaded old white men, but I tell you we have a common enemy. Unfortunately, more enemies than friends.
Bernie Sanders’s value proposition to the Democratic Party as a candidate within the party is that he can expand the voters and the map into working class and middle-class constituencies because that is what he has done in Vermont. And that they will come back each cycle because he delivers for them.
BooMan’s point is correct. Until he is drawing those new constituencies to his rallies outside of Democratic comfort turf (and Madison WI is very much that), he has not proven his viability to win. As long as his viability to win is unproven, people will ask why is Bernie really in the race. And they will come up with the usual “sending a message” explanations, which in themselves are a way of marginalizing his candidacy as just being another DFH gonna-fail candidate.
The only way that this gets put to rest by Sanders’s campaign is going into seemingly hostile turf, turning out white, black, and Latino workers and having them cheering wildly his economic campaign platform. BooMan grants that we are in an unusual moment that is unpredictable by the anointed experts. So dismissing this as not gonna happen is potentially a false prediction out of cynicism and from the media more frequently a message supportive of another campaign to seek to marginalize “the socialist” as being unacceptable in American politics.
If US politics is going to grow up, it needs its left wing returned to legitimacy. Otherwise the right-wing-only eagle flies in ever decreasing counterclockwise circles until it flies up its own ass. The state of the debate so far in this runup to an elections shows very dangerous signs that we are already looking at eagle cloaca. Feathered and full of shit.
It is the dysfunctional political process and the way we conduct political discourse that we must break out of if we are to deal with the issues this country faces.
The campaigns are still young and finding their stride. Putting Bernie Sanders’s campaign under a microscope and continuing to ask the viability question might not be a great idea unless you like the conventional policies. In fact, it is too early to tell what will happen on most of the supposedly long shot campaigns.
But if the surge in support depends on media or marketing, it most likely will not be the sort of transformative politics that we are seeking. There is some fundamental political process that connects the grassroots to candidates and allows the informed thrashing out of issues instead of manufactured consent. No candidate has discovered or invented that yet although many have provided that patina on their otherwise mass marketing campaigns. If Bernie Sanders and his staff have figured out how to do this, we should watch it unfold. If they are relying on consultants, experts, media gurus, and other elements of mass marketing, they likely do not have the resources to break through.
They really have a greater burden right now. They must show working people something enough different to wake them up and at least get them to pay attention to what Bernie Sanders is offering.
I think the idea that Bernie and his staff are not in the race to win is pretty dismissive and insulting. One cannot sustain the level of activity required in a campaign without the very strong conviction that you can indeed win and that it is just a matter of figuring out the how and doing it.
The question facing progressive Democrats right now is how exactly do they plan to get their policy perspectives honored and their policies implemented any time in their lifetimes. Really the amount of dorking around that has gone on since 1968 is kind of amazing. And the crisis keeps building with no policy realism in sight while political realism is equivalent to capitulation to the drift that is the status quo.
My position is that it is the Congress, the legislatures, and the governors that are the important elections in 2015 (who is paying attention to those) and 2016. And then again in 2018. But once again, the entire Democratic blogosphere is fixated on thinking that the President can very easily fix everything if only that candidate can be elected.
Quite frankly, if Bernie doesn’t have a Congressional coattails strategy, his campaign is going to be worthless even if he wins the general election.
But ooooooh, wave elections are hard. We’re up against all this money and pre-positioned media. Well yes. But what are we going to do about it. Amuse ourselves by figuring out more reasons that Bernie Sanders can’t possibly win or snickering at the huge clown car that is going to deal out the Republican candidate?
We have a broken political process, serious international, environmental, and economic crises on the horizon and an absolute paralysis of will to deal with these amount even the informed electorate.
As a well-known progressive blogger said a decade ago.
Tarheel, I just wanted to complement you on your graphic adaptation of the ancient world’s Ouraboros to an American context – an Eagle flying up its own ass.
“Putting Bernie Sanders’s campaign under a microscope and continuing to ask the viability question might not be a great idea unless you like the conventional policies. In fact, it is too early to tell what will happen on most of the supposedly long shot campaigns.”
That’s it exactly. Fuck the tea leaves.
agree with you and Tarheel dem! and, just to remind, Bernie said before entering, he would only enter if he thought he could win.
Best thing about the article is making a lede out of Bernie’s careful distinction between “liberal” and “progressive” (I’m pretty sure most of the two or three dozen living Americans that understand this are members of the Frogpond). This could be the start of something big.
“Candidates” (if there are such things) are, as you point out, devices for shaping intraparty discourse.
As such, they do not work very well, but the task is a nearly impossible one.
From a psephological standpoint, “candidates” do not exist.
Everyone votes party affiliation, regardless of individual candidates.
We might as well conduct all elections by giving people a choice of red or blue balls. (No other colors; a decision that is not binary is not a decision.)
The corollary is that is a waste to speculate about what candidates “believe”, as there is no way to determine what they (as individuals) believe and it doesn’t matter.
“Everyone votes party affiliation, regardless of individual candidates.”
Not true. In Illinois, at least, there is often substantial crossover. This is how statewide Republicans exist despite the massive numbers of Democrats in Chicago. Some Democrats just can’t pass the smell test. If they live in their little 90% ethnic community, they do OK in local elections. And I’m specifically thinking about white conservative Eastern Europeans in IL-3, a hereditary fief that requires a “ski” at the end of candidates’ names. IL-3, nominally Democratic but the Lipinski’s, pere and fils, regularly voted with Republicans (and still do) and specifically on the Hyde Amendment and “religious freedom”. As an aside, something must have changed radically in the Cathlic Church that all these devout laity suddenly are more Catholic than the Pope.
I know this is a side issue not central issue re Sanders electability, but anyone else here freaked out by hearing Bill Clinton give a speech about Bosnia anniversary. eventually, I hope, we’ll have an amendment like after FDR that a is not eligible – it’s just going to be Clinton term III as far as I’m concerned.
should read: a spouse is not eligible
sorry.
How about a son not eligible?
At some point you can’t protect the electorate from themselves. “Guided democracy” is just oligarchy.
Relevant text of the Twenty-Second Amendment:
(LBJ could legally have served as POTUS from 11/63 through 1/73 (nine years and ten months). Ford was limited to 8/74 to 1/80 (six years and five months). Could that explain why DC DEMs seemed so unprepared for the 1976 election? That they liked their chances better against a non-incumbent opponent in 1980?)
How about: No person shall be elected to the office of the President if a parent, grandparent, parent-in-law, aunt, uncle, sibling, child, cousin, or spouse has served in the office of the President at any time in the preceding twenty-eight years.
That would have precluded RFK from running in 1968. However, in 1992 he would have been younger than Hillary Clinton will be in 2016. And Ted Kennedy would only have been 60 years old in 1992.
GWB, Hillary, and Jeb(!) would obviously have to have waited for many more years before they would be eligible.
What evidence is there that they were so unprepared for the 1976 election?
Jimmy Carter — no name and no DC nor liberal base support. “Jimmy who?” after Iowa. And “Jimmy who?” after NH.
George Wallace. 17% in the 3/2/76 MA primary that along with VT were the first two after IO and NH. Second at 31% a week later in FL.
Scoop Jackson a uber-hawk (among his aides: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Charles Horner, and Douglas Feith.)
ABC (anybody but Carter) emerged much too late.
Early on the liberal vote was split between Birch Bayh and Mo Udall. MA put an end to Bayh’s campaign. (Imagine that in 1976 being a strong advocate for women’s rights became a giant negative.)
Udall as a Mormon wasn’t “electible.”
Frank Church (another decent and good man) was a late entrant.
To come up with any similar to 1976 for the GOP, imagine that Gore resigned as VP and Cliton appointed Gephardt VP. Then Clinton resigned and Gephadt was the incumbent in 2000 and running for election. On the GOP side, there would be a wheel-chair bound Perot, Jim Jeffords, and William Weld.
What happened in Boston in 1975/76? I wonder? (I’ve got Southie relatives.) Anyhow, you can basically throw the Wallace vote out. That’s the last gasp of the Dixiecrats.
In a way, Carter was too — he was the respectable face of the old, white-dominated Democratic South. Carter’s election and Wallace’s run, were both pieces of the larger realignment story
I worked on Udall’s MA primary campaign in the central part of the state, and only very rarely heard people comment on Udall’s Mormonism. No more than people had him confused with Stuart, whom they knew from Kennedy’s administration — in MA, that didn’t exactly hurt.
Udall’s religion would only have become a factor at that time outside of the mid-Atlantic and northeast states. Evangelicals didn’t consider Mormons Christians. And further west, people had more familiarity with Mormons; their tribalism and proselytizing.
heh — while purely anecdotal and based on my personal experience, Greek domestic and foreign businesses were always great. The only demographic that caused more than a single problem for me were Mormon businesses. So much so that I implored my last boss to assign Utah to someone else.
You probably were in CA and Davis was probably in MA. But in 1976, I was in VA. You can’t comprehend how giddy even Southern-born normally conservative civil servants were about Carter. They practically floated on air regarding a possible Southern President. Carter had a base. It was one reason that I thought Edwards might be able to dent the Southern base. That accent which set my teeth on edge would be good there. ever notice how Bill Clinton’s accent changed with latitude?
I voted for Carter too, another “lesser evil”. I do have to say that he was very good to the Navy. Maybe his continuing relationship with his old mentor, Admiral Rickover, had something to do with that.
I remember being interested in Udall, but he went nowhere.
VA voters may have been “giddy” with enthusiasm for “one of their own” in 1976, but not giddy enough for the Democrat Carter to carry the state. The last Democratic candidate to carry VA before Obama was LBJ and he was the first one since Truman in ’48.
Historically, it’s never been a good idea for liberals/progressives to go soft on the south. They always seem to muck things up in the long run. While in many ways a decent man and not devoid of vision, Carter introduced acceptable “Bible thumping” for national politicians and gave a big boost to the deregulation/oligarch agenda.
I didn’t plan to vote for Carter in ’76. Until a dear friend told me that he’d sent in his absentee ballot and voted for Ford because “he seemed to be doing a good enough job. My response, “Damn, now I’ll have to vote for Carter to cancel your vote.”
I did live in NoVA which is more Democratic. I’d hate to live in “deliverance” territory. I don’t think I could.
An unelected incumbent in 1976. By the name of Jerry Ford. Representing a rather tarnished party at the time. Who’d also recently pardoned Nixon.
Not exactly the kind of stuff that should scare off anyone.
Maybe the so-called DC Dems realized it was going to be a time for reformers, outside the Beltway insurgents.
Too many liberals and mod-libs and late entrants from that quarter diluted their strength in the primaries, and then Carter, at the time, seemed like a fresh face representing the New South. A ridiculous TIME cover story about him from a few yrs prior had him as The JFK of the South.
Well, not quite. And even with a lousy pardon and terrible debate for him and his VP, Ford and Dole still nearly won the election.
I’m feeling good about America. I’m feeling good about me …
’76 (like ’88 and 2008) was the Democrats to lose. And they did come surprisingly close to doing so, but also sowed the seeds for their decimation four years later.
son and brother are not the same as spouse. with spouse we are electing the same nuclear family as prev admin
In the case of the Bushes, it’s the same nuclear family.
nonsense. the test is the principals in the receiving line at a state dinner. In Clinton III it will be the same as Clinton I and II.
What would Paul Wellstone do?