The strangest thing about this is that Sanders knows that the only way he’ll ever win the nomination is to win over the superdelegates. So, why doesn’t he even pretend to make an argument that he’ll be a better or even adequate provider?
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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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So if Bernie gets the nom, the Congressional candidates and the state parties will get far less money for the November campaign? No wonder the supers prefer Hillary.
I hope this isn’t the first time this occurred to you.
To be honest, no. I really didn’t consider that a serious presidential candidate trying to lead an ideological movement isn’t doing anything for the downticket races that have to be won if said ideological movement is going to go anywhere. I’ve actually read the complaints about Sanders not helping downticket candidates but somehow it didn’t register because I couldn’t believe somebody in his position wouldn’t be. Seriously, that’s what somebody who was trying to kill the movement towards socialism would do.
If that’s true, doesn’t it imply that all the money Clinton is raising for these entities is contingent on her getting the nom? In which case, she is not really raising money for them, she is bribing them. I doubt that’s how it works, as it would clearly be bad faith on Clinton’s part. The money raised for the party orgs in conjunction with Hillary’s campaign said orgs get to keep, no?
Come on, man, if Bernie gets the nom, he’ll be calling the shots and he’ll support the candidates.
Sanders voters might contribute to an individual’s campaign, but no way do many contribute to the DNC. Any wonder why? Seriously?
The problem here is not that Sanders voters may or may not choose to contribute to the DNC. It is that Sanders himself is choosing to fundraise exclusively for his campaign, and not fundraise for Congressional candidates he would need to pass much of his agenda.
I’ve read many commenters here claim very aggressively that Sanders is the only candidate who is pursuing a campaign which could win back Democratic Congressional majorities. When Clinton is both winning more votes in the primaries and fundraising for Congressional campaigns while Sanders is not, how can Sanders be considered a better candidate to win back Congress?
This is added to the fact that BooMan brings us, that Sanders’ statement here significantly reduces his already thin chance to gain the nomination.
Finally, regarding mino’s comment: It appears we’re asked to infer here that the DNC is a bad organization. Feel as one may, it’s fantastical to believe a POTUS candidate can win the nomination of a Party when the candidate announces that they don’t care to support major Party candidates or their organization. This isn’t complicated, or corrupt.
Er, do you deny there is any cause for Sander’s supporters to be giving the DNC a hairy eyeball?
I certainly don’t. What has the DNC done for Bernie, other than try to stack the deck against him in every possible way to benefit Hillary? Ditto for DWS.
After he wins the nomination, he can concern himself with raising money for the DNC, if he so desires.
But that’s the real point of BooMan’s post: by doing this, Bernie makes it even more likely he will not win the nomination. So saying what he does when he wins the nomination is missing the point, severely so.
I’m reminded of this bit from one of the most consequential long-form essays I have ever read:
http://www.leesandlin.com/articles/LosingTheWar.htm
“In the later years of World War II the bureaucracies of the Axis — partially in Germany, almost wholly in Japan — gave up any pretense of realism about their situation. Their armies were fighting all over the world with desperate berserker fury, savagely contesting every inch of terrain, hurling countless suicide raids against Allied forces (kamikaze attacks on American ships at Okinawa came in waves of a hundred planes at a time) — while the bureaucrats behind the lines gradually retreated into a dreamy paper war where they were on the brink of a triumphant reversal of fortune.
They had the evidence. Officers in the field, unable to face or admit the imminence of defeat, routinely submitted false reports up the chain of command. Commanders up the line were increasingly prone to believe them, or to pretend to believe them. And so, as the final catastrophe approached, strategists in both Berlin and Tokyo could be heard solemnly discussing the immense weight of paper that documented the latest round of imaginary victories, the long-overrun positions that they still claimed to hold, and the Allied armies and fleets that had just been conclusively destroyed — even though the real-world Allied equivalents had crashed through the lines and were advancing toward the homeland.”
One of the more interesting instantiations of Godwin’s law I’ve come across lately.
I can think of an institution that fits that role better than Bernie, judging from the last decade.
Not my intended invocation, at all.
The Axis was made up of multiple national dictators, many, many, many more top leaders, and millions upon millions of citizens. All the dictators, along with the bodies of leaders and citizens, fell to the siren song of their “dreamy paper war.”
of why Godwin’s “Law” is, and always has been, a ridiculous crock.
Thanks for the essay link; I’m reading it now and it’s magnificent.
Ain’t it, though?
I first heard excerpts from this essay in late September 2001 on This American Life:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/195/war-stories?act=3
That was a particularly important moment for more people in the U.S. to be introduced to this devastating historical summary.
It’s downright unsettling how still on point a 1997 essay can be.
And humbling to read; I thought I was reasonably well-informed about WWII but I haven’t even finished it yet (had to break off halfway through) and have learned so much already.
Got the page bookmarked to finish it, and explore more of what’s posted there, and have bought two of his books for my Kindle. The man writes superbly and makes you think about every sentence.
Thanks again!
You’re welcome. Happy to share.
Yes, thanks for posting the link to the essay. A great read I expect to dip into many times.
The DNC has done nothing for candidates I support. I quit giving a very long time ago. I research and give to candidates who espouse causes that mean something to me.
Act Blue has a donation page listing all of the candidates who support Bernie.
To diss him for fundraising for himself is ridiculous. He is showing that someone can be a viable candidate for President without PACs, lobbyists or a personal foundation, which is a sham if there ever was one.
And down ballots might profit from millennials actually showing up. Unlikely to simply do presidential vote and omit the rest, don’t you think?
Don’t bring facts and logic into this, pal.
This doesn’t really apply to me, since I still donate and have donated at least every two years since 2006, but seriously: what, exactly, is the upside to donating to the big organizations? 2010 and 2014 have a huge legacy of downticket failure. And the projected forecast for 2016 and 2018 is even more downticket failure.
You’re whining about people only wanting to donate to Sanders’ campaign and not to the Congressional races, but you haven’t grappled with the fact that there are good, non-ideological reasons not to trust that organization with money. If you want shakily committed people to donate time and money, you need to show or at least convince people that the money will do what they want. You’re asking people to open their wallets to a cause that’s filled with failure and you’re not providing any reason to your clients other than ‘we wouldn’t have failed and you would’ve gotten more of what you wanted if you had given us MORE MONEY’. That might be true. If it is: how much more money did the DNC need? And why should we expect it to be true?
I’m serious. Let’s say that we’re in an alternate universe where the DNC raised 50% more than they did in 2014. How many seats would that have gotten us? What races did we narrowly lose that would’ve been a win? How would those previous questions have changed had we raised 100% more? Or three times as much? If you can’t answer those questions beyond vague generalities, why should I, Joe Q who has political preferences but only voted in one election in my life (and it was Presidential) kick you 20-50 dollars of my hard-earned money?
It’s easy to ask the committed for a blank check. A popular pastor can just tell the congregation ‘we and affiliated churches need to raise 200,000 so we can put these city councilfolk in key spots’ without elaboration. But if the pastor is contacting weak supporters in a non-religious contexts, he’d better be ready with the metrics.
I’ve given you a response in your other post, but the chief thing BooMan’s post is asking us to consider should be taken on as well. Even if we were to accept your premise that giving money to the Party was historically shown to be a poor investment, it is difficult to impossible to win the nomination of a political Party if you refuse to financially support that Party and its candidates. This is true for a number of reasons:
If Sanders wanted to win the nomination, he would have been well advised to support the Party and its candidates.
The sense of entitlement is amusing. ‘Convince your voters to an organization that they’re skeptical of and has a failed track record or we won’t support you!’
By the way, why should we be convinced that organizational support will be that important to how Sanders wins? It’s not like he had a lot of institutional support even in states that he smoked. How many endorsements did Sanders win in Washington?
A form of entitlement: “I disrespect you personally and your Party in whole, but my candidate and his supporters are right, even though we’re getting outvoted at the moment. Give him your Party nomination!”
Endorsements are among the least substantial forms of “institutional support.” Building community support and fundraising, crafting a winning message and targeted voter persuasion plan, GOTV’ing ID’d voters: that’s what wins.
A DNC that recruits recent Republicans is hyperventilating over an Indie who has caucused with them for decades.
Did you forget that the whole reason we’re having this conversation is that the DNC has the stink of failure on them? We’re not talking reciprocity, we’re talking about a bunch of failed contractors wanting a handout despite said track record of failure.
And what do the Democratic Party officers have to do with these things? Why should Sanders or anyone believe that burning his voters’ money and his credibility do these things?
Lordy, that was a low, slow pitch. lol
Democratic House freshman, 2014- One, Gary Peters.
Hustling for the vice-presdency, I presume. (SNARK ALERT!!! for those w/damaged humor sensors.)
AG
They could as well have torched the money and still managed to match their 2014 record in the House–a single member.
In 2006, 2008 and 2012, donators to the DNC and Congressional Campaign Committees were rewarded by net Congressional wins, along with President Obama’s election and re-election. That’s three out of the last five national elections. That’s not a record “filled with failure”.
Donations to the DNC and Congressional Campaign Committees since 2006 have resulted in more cohesive and more leftist Democratic Congressional Caucuses. The vast majority of lost Congressional seats have been those held by the most conservative members of the Dem Caucuses. If the DNC and Chairs of the Campaign Committees were working exclusively or substantially to support more conservative candidates and undermine more liberal candidates, these would not be the results.
The projected forecast for 2016 Dems is downticket failure? No, that simply is not true of the Congressional races. If you’re talking about the State and local races, I would beg to differ as well, but let’s hear the case for this claim.
Look, it’s great that you scored those three touchdowns in the final quarter, really, but you still lost the Superbowl.
No client wants to hear that you’re not going to be able to deliver the product on time and on budget. And after breaking your deadline and budget, showing them those sicknasty industry awards and sweet celebrity endorsements you managed to score isn’t going to mollify them if you can’t convince them that this isn’t going to continue to be a thing.
I have no idea what you’re claiming to refute in the quotes you pulled in your 7:24:52 post.
What is the “Superbowl” in your metaphor here?
The metaphorical Superbowl is actually winning Congress, or more abstractly, having sufficient access to the levers of power.
You’re citing metrics like how the DNC increased their margins, but they still didn’t control Congress. And the forecast for 2016 is: ‘probably no House unless the GOP really shits the bed’. The forecast for 2018 is: ‘having either of the two chambers is pretty much out of the question’.
If you, as an organization the people you’re trying to reach to don’t trust, want people to stick their necks out for you you need to A.) convince them that you’ll do what they want, B.) convince them that you have a plausible plan to do what they want, and C.) deliver or at least show promise on delivering on your claims.
When the DNC says ‘donate more money or the GOP will tighten the screws’, It’d be a lot better if people knew where the money was going. It’d be even better if we how much money was needed to accomplish their agenda. And it’d be best of all if they could convince us that they wouldn’t waste our money — this is usually done by showing us recent successes and then just spending banked-up trust, but if you don’t have a good track record then you need to have one hell of a convincing and detailed plan.
That’s why I asked you ‘how much better would the Democrats would’ve done in 2014 if they raised 50% more money than they did’? If you can’t answer a question that a small business owner or minor government procurer wouldn’t allow a new or distrusted vendor to skate by on, why should the voters trust your organization? Republican control sucks, but Republican control and me being out one hundred bucks sucks even more.
The Democrats have won three of the last five national elections. This is relevant evidence of “recent successes”, whether you want to agree or not.
The Democrats have held the Senate majorities in five out of the last eight Congresses- relevant evidence. We held both sides of Capitol Hill from 2006 to 2010. Your critiques of the Democratic Party precede these years, yet you have brushed away these years and their accomplishments by claiming that W. Bush was solely responsible for these many outcomes. That is your opinion, not a fact. It’s an opinion I disagree with.
The GOP’s House majorities this decade have leaned hard on the extraordinary gerrymands which were put in place in many States after the 2010 election. These gerrymands gave the GOP a strong House majority in the 2012 election even though the majority of Americans were persuaded to vote for Democratic House candidates.
There is a growing body of evidence to show that using this method to hold power is severely damaging the Republican Party and warping the views of its base voters. I agree that we should not concede that the House is lost for this decade, but you brush past these gerrymands as if they are irrelevant. They are not.
I absolutely don’t agree that the Congressional majorities are guaranteed to go to the Republicans in 2018. It’s not particularly useful this far out to even discuss the prospects. We have no idea what the national and world circumstances will be more than two years from now; we have no idea who all the candidates will be; etc.
I believe the Super Bowl is the Presidential and Congressional elections. President Obama is wielding plenty of important Executive power which Congress cannot stop, and the President’s growing popularity during this election year is likely to help us win in November.
It’s an odd conceit to claim that regular citizens contribute to political campaigns as if they’re potential investors skillfully analyzing a short-term business plan. Frankly, if they did, Bernie might not be fundraising so well.
None of the above means that I don’t have quarrels with the Democratic Party and its leaders; I’ve got plenty. It often feels pretty irrelevant to discuss those quarrels here, though. I am led to expect that my quarrels would be viewed as insufficient to the moment.
Of course I don’t agree with it, because these wins don’t come with any lasting power. And without any real power the party of government legitimacy is going to be slowly ground down and then overwhelmed by a black swan.
Of course, the standard Democratic line on that is that passive demographic growth will bail us out of the deathgrip the GOP has on the state houses and Congress. Okay, over what timeframe? What are the risks through seeking victory through attrition.
So what if their victory is illegitimate because of political malfeasance? How does blandly pointing out this fact over and over change anything?
If the Democratic Party wants to break the Gerrymander, great. It can either do it by overperforming in unfair elections or break the conditions that led to a gerrymander. Is the Democratic Party going to do that in the 2-4 Congressional elections? If not, then who cares if they would’ve won in fair elections? If you can’t win in unfair contests, can’t change the rules of the contest, and can’t avoid competing then no one gives a fuck about how you would’ve performed.
No, they don’t. When you engage people emotionally and/or prey on cognitive weaknesses, human put money towards all sorts of stupid shit for weird reasons.
But while people are stupid with their money, they’re not that stupid. That the DNC is so thoroughly unconvincing at getting a public who spends their money on idiotic tschotskes to donate to them isn’t an indictment of the public, it’s an indictment of the DNC.
I ask yet again:’how much better would the Democratic Party have performed if they increased fundraising by 50%’? It’s a really simple question. And if you’re having difficulty answering it, maybe you should consider that this is why you’re having so much trouble convincing drop-off voters to open their wallets?
I note the peculiarity of your stressing the need to win the levers of power through elections, while you discount the very point of BooMan’s post.
Sanders’ refusal to support the Party or its candidates guarantees that he will not win the levers of power we want him to win. Your claim that Party leaders and voters are wrong and they should hand the nomination to Bernie anyway is much more irrelevant than you claim this decade’s gerrymands are.
Sanders can be right and lose, or compromise and have a shred of a chance of winning and/or influencing the Party. Your support for his strategy guarantees failure.
So because Sanders is electorally awful and can’t win means that the DNC and related organizations aren’t waste-of-money organizations?
Who gives a shit about Sanders? Again: did you forget what prompted this conversation? We’re talking about the incompetence of the Democratic Party’s organizational apparatuses, in particular the DNC. Sanders did not cause the failures in 2010 and 2014. And Sanders get zoited by space aliens tomorrow, the Democratic Party isn’t going to suddenly be much more favored to win the state houses and Congress in 2016-2020.
Why should Democratic-sympathetic voters spend their 20-50 dollars to prop up an organization that’s filled with political failure and how no short or medium-term plans to pull themselves out of said hole?
That you’re accusing Sanders of not going along with the game plan this rudderless organization is downright bizarre. You’re right, he may not be able to have his revolution without their efficacy. That’s still not an argument as to why people should support these organizations if they continue to wallow in inefficacy.
Again, Republican control sucks. But Republican control plus me out 50 bucks donating to an organization that was doomed to fail thanks to having no clear path to their goals also sucks.
What prompted this conversation is BooMan’s post which heads this thread, about Sanders and his decision. Strange to unilaterally demand that we not give a shit about him.
Yes, and the obvious corollary to that premise was: “what makes you think that the DNC, what with its track record of failure and no real plan for future success, would make a difference either way?”
Even if we flat-out accept the premise that Sanders isn’t doing anything to help the traditional Democratic fundraising apparatuses raise money and that a good fundraising apparatus is a near-necessary condition for his “revolution”, I claim that still doesn’t mean that he should support the fundraising apparatuses. And not because of some weird ideological purity, but because those organizations suck and they’re a waste of money until they prove otherwise. Because if they are a waste of money, then it’s rather pointless to discuss Sanders’ failings in engaging them.
It seemed to be taken as a given with people supporting BooMan’s thesis that the organizations that Sanders is supposedly spurning would in fact be able to have some kind of efficacy if he didn’t. And I claim that that ain’t necessarily so.
That is what prompted this subthread. I am challenging one of the premises in your and BooMan’s post.
The center of the question that BooMan started and I supported is not whether the Democratic Party and its Congressional candidates deserve to receive Sanders’ support. Frankly, he chose to seek the nomination of the 2016 Democratic Party, so the question should not be in play. He knew well enough that he would be unable to wield Presidential power through an independent campaign.
The center of the original question is by announcing he may choose not to support the Party and its candidates, how does Bernie expect this to help him win? That is an unavoidable part of the path to power; does he want it?
Your challenge fails on one of the chief demands you place on the Democratic Party here: what is the plausible plan to win, hold and exercise power?
Sanders’ decision here results in having no plausible plan to win the nomination. Why would one fail to demand the plan from Bernie?
And I say: what does deserving have to do with anything? The Democratic Party organizational apparatus and its Congressional candidates, as long as they run their current Clinton-Obama playbook (suck up to business interests for money, prize fundraising ability above ideological match, protect Dem strongholds over expanding the pap), are a credibility and money pit.
The troops in Iraq deserve to be adequately reinforced, funded, trained, and rotated. And if you don’t approve more funding/troops/contractors you’ll be leaving them in the lurch. That’s still not an reason in of itself to extend/expand this quagmire of an operation, even if it’s the only way to give the troops what they deserve.
Engage the voters. This is literally the most important task you have when trying to build a democratic movement. All that other stuff you talk about like community organizing and institutional support and donations, all that stuff is important but all of those forces combined can’t beat simple voter engagement.
And how do you engage your voters? Give them what they want. How do you know what they want? Ask. What do you do if different voters want different things? Do a demographic cross-sectional analysis to min-max ideological tenets with voter tenets. The best thing is that most of this work is already done for us. We just have to recreate the 2008 Obama Coalition, especially its success with Millenials. There has been a lot of polling done on the policy preferences of a voting coalition able to get large enough margins to break the current gerrymander and win a majority of statehouses. And the Democratic upper management does know about it; it was part of that weird triumphalism even figures like Silver and Chait had between 2009 and 2012.
But the Democratic establishment largely ignores it thanks to their centrist purity trolling. So rather than going ‘oh, maybe we should step away from the clientelism/warhawkery/neoliberalism if we want to win elections big again’, they double down and convince their subfaction that the best that they can hope for is a long, grinding war of attrition with a demographic light at the end of the tunnel.
Bernie Sanders, for all of his failings (and he does have them) is at least trying to bring forth a coalition that can break the Republican gerrymandering logjam. Hillary Clinton has all but given up on it, praying that the black swans break her way. Because voter engagement is a lot more important than all of that organizational flotsam, we should worry about that first rather than fiddling with all of the electoral variables in an attempt to win with a suboptimal platform.
I seriously can’t believe that you made this argument when we’re in a strategy discussion about the direction of the Democratic Party. That is, the main impetus as to why a weakly engaged potential voter should spend 20-50 dollars on your organization. Would you accept this line of reasoning from a project manager that was way behind schedule and didn’t have a clear plan to get on track? Would you accept this excuse from a general who is locked into a war of attrition but their supplies and morale are dwindling faster than the enemy? Would you accept this handwave from a student who was in danger of failing out of the academy if his grades continued their steady downward arc?
Here’s a dose of reality for you:
Every election in which the Democratic Party underperforms makes it that much harder to dig its way out of the hole the next election.
The lopsided demographics of Congressional and Presidential elections makes it very difficult for the Democratic Party to rely on passive demographic growth to hold, let alone gain Congress. Minority voter % in U.S. Presidential elections has increased by about 2 percent every year since 1988, but it has barely budged at all since 2002.
If you don’t have access to the levers of power, you’re at the mercy of whatever negative black swans come your way.
The Party holding the Presidency, for whatever reason, gets blamed more for negative events than the Party that’s not in the Presidency. The only debatable exception to this rule after WW2 was Truman in 1948.
These things point to failure. These things are why the Democratic Party got creamed in 2014 and why I confidently predict that 2016, 2018, and 2020 will be Congressionally disappointing. So in light of all that, why should someone who isn’t already a political partisan give you their money? Especially when your response to ‘I and many people like me think you’ll continue to lose even if we give you our money’ is some combination of:
Sorry. This:
Should be:
The point is, expecting passive demographics to bail the Party out of its hole isn’t going to get us Congress anytime soon if nothing else changes. The Texas Democratic Party got walloped in 2014 despite being ground zero for ‘Operation: Gringo Humbling’. Not just in minority turnout, but raw preference-%. And Wendy Davis was by no means an incompetent candidate. But that’s how Congressional and state elections are going to look like for the next few cycles unless things change drastically.
Many plans are being made for the 2018 elections. I was responding to your claim that you can predict the total outcome of those many campaigns.
I mean, if you want to go through it, Congressional race by Congressional race, knock yourself out. You will lack the factual information necessary to accurately predict even the broad outcomes, though. That makes predicting 2018 an exercise in position-taking.
Plans. Many plans. Lots of plans. Big plans. Huge, even. We’ll make the Democratic Party great again.
No, we can’t predict specific outcomes. But when can predict general outcomes.
Demographics are destiny. And they ain’t favoring the Democratic Party in off-year elections right now. And since off-year elections determine things like, oh, control of Congress and statehouses — which in turn determine how positive or negative the Presidential administration will be — the outlook ain’t looking too rosy for the Democratic Party right now.
Demographics are destiny only if those demographics’ levels of support for the Parties remain fixed. But that’s the thing, the very thing you have pointed out frequently: the levels of support for various voting blocs never remain fixed.
For example, in 2004, it appeared that the GOP was going to make Hispanics/Latinos and women more substantial portions of their base; W. Bush won about 44% of Hispanic/Latino votes, and 48% of women. The larger portion of their base has since stated ever more loudly they didn’t want Hispanics/Latinos, and they don’t much care for women either.
Will Trumpism still hold the Republican Party in 2018, 2020 and beyond? Who in the world knows? The situation is very volatile right now.
These claims are far too rigid in their determinations to be predictive.
Here’s the other thing: right now, the demographics for the Democratic Party look bad. They look superficially good because of Presidential elections, but if you consider how Congressional/state elections look and then consider their effect on how subsequent Presidential administrations/elections will go, it looks much worse.
The Democratic Party winning the war of political attrition despite being wedded to three low-turnout bases (Asians, Latinos, the youth) thanks to favorable demographic washout is an above-average case scenario. Even if this happens, it will take quite some time before the Democratic Party can win elections by a large enough margin that the Republican Party won’t simply undo any gains in the lower houses in off-years.
The Democratic Party has to keep winning with this strategy for 8-12 years before it’ll bear any fruit. And a lot of shit can go wrong in the meantime. And if anything goes poorly during this timeframe, like say an economic recession or a scandal or a bungled war, the Republicans will have a clean-sweep of government.
The Democratic Party needs to win every major encounter for three or four Presidential cycles before its advantages will permanently crystalize into hegemony. The Republicans, thanks to brutally whupping the Democratic Party in off-year elections, only have to win one of them to attain hegemony. Any demographic progress the Democratic Party makes will thus be meaningless, UNLESS everything goes swimmingly.
And like I said, that’s an above-average case scenario. That is, the demographics remain favorable to the Democratic Party. If they don’t remain monotonically favorable, such as poorer and younger voters continuing to vote in fewer proportion or outright defecting to the Republican Party, it’ll lengthen the timetable and make it even easier for the GOP to win this war of attrition.
That’s why I find the direction of the Democratic Party alarming and that’s why I find the Democratic Party’s denial of its structural weaknesses and lack of any plan to speed up the timetable completely delusional.
Presidential elections and their electoral turnouts are not “superficial” concerns. They’re the most important elections by far, doubly so in 2020, when those who will have the power to control the drawing of Congressional and Legislative Districts will be determined.
Let’s put it in a way which makes it clearer: would we want to trade the positions of the Parties? Would we find it desirable to be strongly advantaged by midterm turnout and strongly disadvantaged by Presidential turnout?
I don’t accept the premise that there is nothing that can be done about our midterm challenges or our ability to have even bigger routs in the Presidential elections, but there are much worse alternatives than current turnout trends.
I didn’t say that they were superficial. I said that they’re superficial when viewed as an end in of themselves. You can rally and kick major ass in the second half of a football game and still lose because you got absolutely clobbered in the first half.
When the Democratic Party sucks at midterms and state elections, it makes it harder to win Presidential elections, demographics be damned. Aside from the fact that it makes it that much easier for the GOP to pull electoral malfeasance (recall the ‘proportional state EV schemes’ and partial repeal of the Voting Rights Acts and voter ID bullshit) it makes it much harder for the Democrats to legislate and please their voters.
This is why I’m openly laughing in your face when you talk about the success the Democrats have been having in Presidential elections. You’re ignoring some extremely basic game theory, which is how previous decision matrices can affect the potential outcomes of future matrices.
Believe it or not, this is a strong ‘depends’ question. After 2010, no. While the hole that the Dems were in was pretty big, it was still fairly recoverable from in a short time frame. I’d have rather been in the Dems’ position even after that year. After the mediocre 2012 and disastrous 2014, I’d rather be in the Republican’s position. Especially since 2016 is projected to be another mediocrity (as I think that Trump is going to go down after his abortion flip-flops and his ‘expand nuclear proliferation’ flaps) and 2018 another disaster.
Upthread, you asked me what needs to be done to get the Democratic Party out of its current jam and I answered. Now it’s your turn. What do YOU think needs to be done? Assuming you think that anything different needs to be done at all?
Personally, I don’t think you have a plan. Or at least an effective one. My biggest reason for thinking it is that you’re not even trying to answer a basic question I’ve been asking you. So I’ll ask you again: If the Democratic Party raised 50% more money in 2014 than it did, what races would it have now won?
I cared for the 50-state strategy that Howard Dean instituted during his term as DNC Chair. I think we should return to it. That will take money, and lots of it, for a strategy which will bring little immediate electoral success. The DNC would need to successfully persuade wealthy people and organizations, along with middle- and low-income Americans, to help fund this strategy, and fund it for decades.
Oddly enough, I think one of the main things the well-funded strategy would be tasked to accomplish is to sink into voters’ minds the fact that it is the conservative movement which has successfully destroyed campaign finance laws and created the absurd and infuriating political atmosphere we suffer from now. It is the conservative movement which seeks to muddy the waters and call Democrats the party of Wall Street; a 50-state strategy should help educate voters how insulting that muddying is to the facts.
The Citizens United effort which violated campaign finance laws was the production and broadcast of an approximately 90-minute movie which viciously attacked Hillary Clinton. Fittingly, she joins Sanders and others in calling for campaign finance reform and the placing of Supreme Court justices who would help pull down the rotten anti-democratic edifices established by the current Court’s Citizen United and McCutcheon decisions.
Your absolutist arguments are unpersuasive to me. The DNC has not been wall-to-wall bad this century, or over the last half-century. The 50-state strategy is one example of the Committee having performed a valuable service. Coming up with new strategies which have successfully established a durable, winning coalition of voters in Presidential years is another extremely important example.
I’m uninterested in pursuing your concluding question. Its very premise demands that I join you in speculating in the overly determined way that is your style. It’s not my style.
If the Democrats and the progressive movement doesn’t sufficiently fundraise to compete with the obscene amounts of money collectively flowing into the RNC, their candidates, their superPACs and other avenues and institutions, the Democratic Party will lose the levers of power. If they come close enough to the fundraising of the conservative movement that they and their candidates can compete electorally, we will maintain and grow our grip on power.
It would be more interesting, and less frustrating, if you were leading a strategy discussion about the direction of the Democratic Party. That isn’t what you’re presenting.
You’re presenting a claim that the Party is a complete and unmitigated failure. That’s not true, despite your worthwhile critiques and concerns.
If we were to see an alternative list of Party policy platforms and strategies, with explanations of why they would be better, it would be possible to see this discussion as an open pursuit of the best strategies. Instead, to me it leans in the direction of simple carping without an attempt to persuade or progress.
I would start by acknowledging that the willingness to engage trade deals which show themselves to harm Americans is something Party leaders need to dump. Hillary’s retreat into TPP opposition is a sign there is some grappling happening with this. Clinton’s past support for TPP is something which will hurt her campaign, but dumping her support is not meaningless.
Er, most of the candidates recruited by those august bodies LOST, did they not? Or there would have been a new spate of Blue Dogs in the House. There certainly were in the Senate. Manchin and Heidi are your progressive torch bearers? Both recruited by Chuck?
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-09/meet-the-paltry-senate-democratic-freshman-cla
ss-of-2014
He doesn’t necessarily have to fundraise for the DNC. He could reasonably fundraise only for sympathetic candidates as long as that’s not defined too narrowly. But he’s doing nothing whatsoever for Congressional or state candidate. That’s not the actions of a real presidential candidate serious about advancing socialism or lefty goals.
Wouldn’t that start after he got the nomination? Isn’t the first order of business to secure the nomination. Them a united party is supposed to go forward. I don’t remember Bill Clinton raising money for Congressional candidates before he won the nomination in 1992. Maybe a sitting President or an annointed Queen does that.
Actually, no, part of securing the nomination is getting support from party officials. That’s part of the point of having supers have votes – you have to do something for the party before the convention. After the convention is actually a bit late for many purposes – there’s not enough time to train people and obviously no chance to help recruit.
There are good reasons traditional candidates for President spend years beforehand helping candidate for their party.
In case you haven’t noticed, Sanders is very busy at the moment running against a juggernaut that has several times as much money to spend than he does, gets at least twice as much and at least twice as favorable free media coverage, and the DNC has been actively thwarting his campaign.
If HRC were raising so much money for the DNC, etc., why are they crying about how broke they are? At this point, we don’t really know where all the big money she’s been raising is ending up because it does appear to be moving from one pocket to another and then another.
However, your comment strikes me as just another HRC/DNC meme concocted to bash Bernie.
Kinda what this whole thread is for, no?
Absolutely. I have given money to the DNC for many years. This year I decided no. Amazingly, they are not even calling me any more. (They used to call constantly.)
They were squandering a lot of that money on crappy candidates, and not giving to good candidates. They do not run a 50-state policy either, not by a long shot.
Cry me a river, DNC. Sanders is a fantastic fundraiser, and they want some of that. But they don’t deserve it. Maybe this is going to be part of his leverage with them.
And remeber, it’s the Washington Post for God’s sake. They go out of their way to paint him in an unsympathetic light. But the fact is, this is not going to hurt him with most voters.
I don’t even understand what good it is to give your money to the DNC. You can easily give your money to any candidate you like, rather than have them pick the ones they like for you.
Because they have too antagonistic of a relationship with power to plausibly seek it?
Yeah, they aren’t seeking to give power away, I think.
How Hillary Clinton Bought the Loyalty of 33 State Democratic Parties
Follow the money! It’s actually worse than I thought it was.
The kicker is how cheaply the state DEM parties (and by extension the SDs in the states) sold out for this deal.
I don’t know which is more ironic: the DNC whining that Bernie won’t turn his fundraising hose their way or Labor in Britain investigating new applicants for being too pro-Corbyn.
That Iron Rule of Institutions is getting a workout this decade.
Finally something the DNC can point to as evidence of superior competence compared to the GOP. “The coronation” wasn’t a figment of leftie’s imagination (or CT, their preferred term to dismiss those that see behind the curtain).
You don’t need fundraising when you have a revolution. Duh.
One man revolution
Sanders can’t give any of his money to the DNC. They’re the bad guys! He can’t sully himself that way.
Now, now. This is strategic. Bernie’s no marshmallow.
The only way he’ll win the superdelegates is to win a clear majority of delegates in the primary. That’s not impossible. He’s got a good four or five percent chance of it happening. But he’s not going to win a single one by promising to raise money for such beloved luminaries as Andrew Cuomo and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Rahm Emanuel.
Of course Sander is trying to hustle the Democratic Party! He identifies the Democratic Party as (a lesser) part of the problem. I mean, speaking of George Clooney, apparently his character was trying to hustle both the casinos and cops in Ocean’s 11. Why didn’t he just play blackjack?
I loathe Cuomo. But he just signed a bill increasing the minimum wage and mandating paid family leave. You think Pataki would have signed that? A functional Left needs to keep some perspective about the fact that even some of our least favorite Democrats are way better for working people than the other side.
The details…
http://www.syracuse.com/state/index.ssf/2016/03/cuomo_announces_ny_state_budget_deal_includes_15_min
imum_wage.html
It appears some animals are more equal than others.
I’d imagine that all of our least favorite Democrats are better than the other side.
That’s some imagination you’re packing.
Where you been the last 40 years?
AG
Ahhh, how sweet the voice of truth.
Sanders should promise that if he should win the nomination he will not use any of the money Secretary Clinton has raised for DNC or the state organizations.
How could Sanders use Hillary’s money?
It’s like this — all monies that are generated at HRC fundraisers get a little “I’m with HER” sticker on them. The first $2,700 goes into her campaign, the next up to whatever the current limit goes to the DNC, and the remainder goes to state DEM parties to distribute up and downstream within whatever rules they currently have to follow. (Some can also be designated for her Victory Fund — Alice Walton dumped $353,000 into it in February.)
Some huge chunk (most?) of the money that hits the DNC goes into the presidential campaign. (Same with RNC. In 2012 that amounted to $292 million for BHO and $386 million for Mitt.) Legally once monies go into the DNC coffers it belongs to the DNC to disburse. But DWS may have a hard time distributing all all those bucks with “I’m with HER” stickers to a Sanders nominee. That would lead to very interesting scenarios.
ALL of that big donor money should be returned. The Dem Congressional candidates should adopt Bernie’s model with the slogan “I can’t be bought”. That’s what America is hungry for, the candidate that can’t be bought. They (I almost said “we”, but I don’t feel like “we” any more) must decry the candidates that rail against the 1% while slipping their bribes into their pockets. You cannot serve both God and Mammon. I’m sure you recognize the idealist that said that and what happened to him. But his followers are still here and the Empire died 1500 years ago. Because, corny as it sounds, ideas last longer than corrupt politicians.
You mean the DNC doesn’t launder that “big money?”
Thought experiment, if Sanders is the nominee, could he accept general election federal campaign financing? That would make a yuuge statement. (If you recall, I pointed out last summer why federal matching funds for the primary wasn’t a viable option.) CU actually makes this a possible option for a candidate like Sanders. (United Nurses has paved the way on how to do it for him.) None of the summary reports for 2008 and 2012 breakout primary and general election fundraising and spending — it all gets lumped together. Not sure why because there are donation limits for each part of the cycle.
In 2008 McCain accepted $84.1 million in federal GE funding and raised $46.4 million for legal and accounting expenses. As the conventions were late that year, both BHO and McCain raised and spent more primary funds. Half of BHO’s $746 million was probably spent during the primary (iirc technically ends with being formally nominated). The conventions are earlier this year; so, that would be a negative factor in accepting federal funding.
yes lets unilaterally disarm and see what happens when we lose.
Is winning everything? What’s the difference if the rich win and YOU lose? You prefer the myth that a person with (D) after his name is for you and a person with (R) after his name is against you while, in fact, BOTH are serving the same paymaster who is your enemy?
winning is better than losing. if you think losing is better than winning please show me when that was true. if we lose this election things will be extremely bad for many people. people will die, more than are dying now because republicans have too much control in this country. i may not be one of them (except i believe the whole earth will suffer if the republicans take the white house) but i have empathy for those who will suffer. thats called checking my privilege.
hillary clinton is not my enemy. dws is an idiot and i want her gone but she is not my enemy either.
the republicans, every last one of them, are my enemy.
the dems who dont get off their asses and vote in the midterms etc……they are damn close to being my enemy. all these people complaining about the dnc etc etc need to go down to their nearest party office and take over. instead of bitching about the super delegates they could BE the super delegates. quit whining and do something.
this is a new troll, Voice. less original in its writing than some of our other trolls, nevertheless, best not to feed
luckily we will never have to deal with this scenario.
i actually like that idea. then we can bury this fraud quicker.
And that’s our Democratic establishment for your in a nutshell… it’s all about the money.
It’s actually a political party for you.
For me? well we can hope. I doubt I fit their donor profile though. Maybe after the next film hits it big at the box office…
Having grown up around machine politics, I’ve never been a big fan of the pay-to-play model of government. Sure it works in a fashion, but I assure you, it’s not the best system in the world for responsible governance.
Except when it’s not — Sanders’ campaign raised $44 million in March. HRC campaign not ready to disclose March numbers, but whatever she collected, they’ll remind us that HRC (and Bill and Chelsea) has to work much harder at fundraising than Sanders does. Her presence is required at those $300,000+ dinner tables. And she’s really pissed that all those $27 “BernieBros” have forced her to remain on the fundraising circuit instead of getting all the predicted downtime after winning the nomination a month ago.
Bernie winning over the super delegates is not the issue, besides it’s still too early for that. The super delegate vote will be an Election Day vote at the convention. Bernie has been winning Election Day voting even though early voting had started before he was introduced, partly due to bad faith on the part of the DNC and the media giving Hillary an early pledged delegate lead.
Bernie is on a roll. Hillary is still refusing to debate, even though more debates are her only real hope to change that, sort of an unforced error. If early voting in the Deep South is Hillary’s only strength plus she continues to lose the support of non-white communities, the Establishment will start to worry and they should. All Bernie has to do is beat or tie her in the rest of the contests, most of which happen to already be favorable to him. No big wins except where establishment voter fraud was present along no real enthusiasm for her, as she continues to lose blue states, the Establishment Democrats who should be afraid of a Republican winning the general will start to worry.
Adding fuel to the fire, if Trump is not the nominee, most any of the other choices would make it an even closer race for Hillary, especially since those other choices are already polling even or ahead of her while Bernie continues to beat them all. Republicans will go first so lot can happen in that following week. I think the real choice is being made in the last part of this primary campaign, something Hillary and Debbie went to great lengths to avoid.
We may get to see if the Iron Law of Institutions prevails or not.
I think DNC would rather set themselves on fire than support Sanders. There is a reason it is called the “Iron” rule.
Any wonder why? Seriously?
Nope. “The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution “fail” while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to “succeed” if that requires them to lose power within the institution.”
That is because too many of them, especially in the leadership would be set on fire, politically speaking if Bernie wins the Bully Pulpit in pursuit of his political revolution. This is first and foremost about Establishment Democrats who abandoned the interest of the people for the interest of their corporate masters. No more sitting around talking only to the wealthy professional meritocracy elite but instead they must talk to the people. Do you have any idea the profound change that would occur swiftly if the Democratic Establishment only had access to an average contribution of $27.00? It could get really uncomfortable if Bernie calls them out from the Bully Pulpit with their ass in the air and their head up to their neck in the special interest corporate money trough while refusing to do the business of the people. Bernie would remind them to take that famous look out the window.
If this were to happen the economy would boom and once the Democrats returned to being the party of the people, the Democrats might wind up with another New Deal coalition (without the racism) that lasts at least another 40 years.
Sadly no, they would probably rather destroy the Democratic Party than give up the power they have accumulated. They have done it before but maybe on not this large of a scale. I really hope they are not as corrupt and stupid as I presently think they are. One can only hope.
If the Democratic Party Presidential and Congressional candidates had lost each of the last five national elections, and the Party maintained the same leadership throughout in the face of those results, then you would have evidence for your claim.
The Party’s POTUS candidate has won the last two elections and the majority of Congressional campaigns in three of the last five national elections. Hell, the top DNC, DSCC and DCCC leaders have each changed multiple times since 2006. These facts weaken your argument.
You can keep trying to push this lame ‘we don’t suck THAT much’ talking point all you want, but since 2010 the outlook has been ‘Republicans have the country by the nuts in the federal and state government’ and under our current demographics and ideology, that’s not looking to improve until… what? 2022?
You’re reminiscing about past victories and trying to handwave away more recent failures. It ain’t working.
Does it? While plenty of Democrats go on-and-on about the awfulness of Dems like DWS, most complaints are targeted at the organization and its strategy, not the leaders.
If the 2nd Continental Congress insists on invading Canada during the Winter, it doesn’t matter if they assign great tacticians like Daniel Morgan or expert organizers like Thaddeus Kosciuszko or inspiring-ass bastards like Benedict Arnold; they’re going to fail and they’re going to continue to fail as long as they’re wedded to that dumbass strategy.
You are wrong about the 2nd Continental Congress not being able to invade Canada in the winter.
In fact, Peyton Randolph was on Meet the Press with Russert last Sunday. He said “My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . weeks rather than months.”
lol
I don’t normally link Politico, but this one nails the situation…
Barack Obama took office in 2009 with 60 Democrats in the Senate–counting two independents who caucused with the party–and 257 House members. Today, there are 46 members of the Senate Democratic caucus, the worst showing since the first year after the Reagan landslide.
Across the Capitol, there are 188 Democrats in the House, giving Republicans their best showing since Herbert Hoover took the White House in 1929.
This is, however, the tip of the iceberg. When you look at the states, the collapse of the party’s fortunes are worse. Republicans now hold 31 governorships, nine more than they held when Obama was inaugurated. During the last six years the GOP has won governorships in purple and even deep blue states: Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio. In the last midterms, only one endangered Republican governor–Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania–was replaced by a Democrat. (Sean Parnell in Alaska lost to an independent.) Every other endangered Republican returned to office.
Now turn to state legislatures–although if you’re a loyal Democrat, you may want to avert your eyes. In 2009, Democrats were in full control of 27 state legislatures; Republicans held full power in 14. Now? The GOP is in full control of 30 state legislatures; Democrats hold full power in just 11. In 24 states, Republicans control the governorship and both houses of the legislature–giving them total control over the political process.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/democratic-blues-121561#ixzz44cubBBmb
Facts that DEM Party partisans have been denying since 1994. This has also led them to over-rating both WJC and BHO as a party leader. WJC inherited a Congressional DEM majority (to be technically correct, DEMs lost nine House seats in 1992 and no change in the number of DEMs in the Senate). The GWB disaster paved the way for DEMs to win the majority in 2006 and 2008 was at least partially a continuation of that trend.
Unfortunately, DEMs weren’t well positioned early for 2006 and 2008 and therefore, ended up with too many DINO candidates that struggled to win or lost their 2010-2014 re-elections. That was aggravated by the large number of Senators that BHO appointed to his administration. The current situation wrt a DEM bench remains weak which is why no gains are projected for the House in 2016. They expect to fare better in the Senate, but that’s mostly because several GOP first-term Senators are craptastic and not because DEMs have fielded strong candidates.
This is evidence, this current snapshot. We need to seek ways to win despite the Congressional and Legislative gerrymands; the DNC has primary responsibility for that. I’d like to give more consideration of these points.
Unfortunately, a substantial portion of the comments here and in other threads are conducted in ways that are destructive to good faith dialogue. Increasingly and perhaps unsurprisingly, everything has become a proxy for the Clinton/Sanders race.
All factual counter-evidences brought up by multiple commenters, from the strategy BooMan posts here which essentially guarantees that Sanders will not gain the nomination and would not have a strong Congress if he did, to President Obama’s winning and executing the unique powers of the Executive in ways that are helping people, to the factual successes of the Party and more, are treated by many here as if they were untrue or not worth considering.
A simple question: does Sanders’ unusual decision to refuse to fundraise for the Party and its Congressional candidates hurt his chances of winning the primary? I’d like considerations of that question without these many prevarications.
Governors are elected at large. So you might want to find another reason than–GERRYMANDER!!!
If that’s the case, then Democrats like you sure aren’t holding them responsible. When an organization has a track record for failure, has a projection of future failure, and they ask for more money because it would avert these failures, the proper response isn’t to go ‘oh, okay, here’s the money you asked for’, it’s to make them fight for every dollar.
I don’t know if Sanders’ plan of ‘ignore the traditional Democratic apparatuses, then blackmail the Democratic Party with legions of drop-off voters that the Democrats need for short-term hegemony’ will work. But I do know that as things stand, the DNC and related organizations are a failed money pit with no clear direction or budget.
yes it hurts his chances of winning the primary. no one else here is going to make that statement evidently. bernie knows he isnt going to win. his campaign staff all know he isnt going to win. at this point he is just defrauding people. but they will keep that cash cow going as long as possible.
Nope. Franken couldn’t take his seat until he was finally declared the winner on June 30.
Cheers,
Scott.
Very much agree with your comment.
I believe if Trump is the nominee, the Super Ds will not go with Bernie, even if he has the majority of earned delegates. It would be too juicy for them to pass up, knowing that Clinton can squeak into office vs Trump, even though she is a wounded candidate.
If it is Kasich for the GOP, and Bernie has the earned delegates, going with Clinton would be a suicidal demonstration of that Iron Rule of Institutions I just learned about. In that case I think they go for Bernie.
If it is Cruz, the Trump rule applies. Wow, I just realized that the Super Ds are going to fuck Bernie over bigtime.
I really think they might lose me forever if that happens. I started a hashtag:
#OnlyBernieInspires
Shouldn’t that count for something?
“I really think they might lose me forever if that happens.”
All of what you said counts for something, maybe everything.
The Democratic Establishment thinks this is just another political contest soon to be over so we can all just forget about our little primary fling then get back to reality where we choose the lesser of two evils even if it is getting harder to tell one from the other.
The reality is the Democratic Establishment is staring straight into the face of a real rebellion, one that will not go away even if they fuck Bernie and manage to squeak Hillary into office. Because the inequality and corruption will only get worse with another round of Clinton style neo-liberalism, people will lose hope that things will ever improve especially if the Establishment digs in even deeper so they don’t have to ever put up with a future Bernie. At that point the question becomes; will the rebellion stay within the political process or will it move into the streets? The best we can hope for if it comes to that is the rebellion stays in the political process.
Right now is the last shot the Democrats have to hold on to an overwhelming number of Democrats under age 45, the very future of the Democratic Party. Same as you, the Democratic Establishment might lose most or all of them forever if they use their super delegate poison pill to flip the nomination. This is why I say this situation is extremely dangerous for the survival of the Democratic Party.
I keep trying to sound the alarm that if Democrats do the wrong thing they might find themselves in a worse situation than the Republicans facing their own impending fracture. The Democratic rump could wind up looking like a much smaller party of old people with a Deep South base that is always ignored.
Maybe the time is near for a clean break to form a new party along the lines of what the New Deal Democratic Party once was, of course, without the racism. Bernie has already shown us the way by remaining an Independent unapologetic Democratic Socialist for a very long and quite effective political career. The Democrats would then be faced with earning the support of our new party, begging any candidates we could get elected to caucus with them, that is, until we are strong enough so they have to caucus with us.
This is starting to sound like Teddy Roosevelt and the progressive Bull Moose Party except that break was with the corporatist Republicans. That situation ended with the other party in power, a Democratic President.
Yes thanks for responding.
I believe flipping it will be suicidal, given where the young people are. But, I am also starting to think that all of the voting problems and weird post-primary delegate shenanigans (real or imagined-seems real to me) are starting to make people very angry. If Bernie comes up just short, yet wins most of the remaining states by margins that were too small, many Berners will blame cheating, and will be just as pissed.
Forget about Bernie voters, I think I just discovered the new Democratic Party Slogan: Bernie or BUST
the majority of dem voters under 40 so far have not supported bernie. not even the under 30s. only white males under 30 are supporting bernie. the majority of millennials that are either female or minorities are voting hillary. bernie won the millennials in a few caucus states but overall millennials are not voting for bernie.
i seriously doubt the super delegates will vote hillary if bernie wins the popular votes. i seriously doubt it will ever come to that. and quite frankly many of these sanders supporters dont vote or dont vote in mid terms and they will be no loss. i find it very amusing that some of the discussion in this thread keeps talking about how the dnc keeps blowing mid terms and lost dems in office considering its the non voting dems who make that possible. when more than half your eligible voters, most of them millennials, dont bother to vote, you lose. so thanks for nothing.
Maybe it is them thanking you for nothing.
Maybe let’s wait to see who wins pledged delegates before we start fantasizing about how the super delegates “screw” Bernie. i think the winner of pledged delegates will be clear. 2008 was much closer and none of this nonsense happened.
Now that we’re getting closer to the end of the primary cycle more people are paying more attention. The Bernie media blackout is becoming less effective with Bernie gaining momentum every day. I thought he was going to win those last states but not by that much. This is getting interesting.
There has already been considerable establishment voter fraud so the Democrats are still in trouble unless Hillary wins the pledged delegates by a significant margin, just so we understand what a `clear’ win means.
Maybe I’m too optimistic or even naïve but I think the Democratic Party is like the organizations that bristled when Bernie referred to them as the Establishment. Their leadership wanted to be on the winning side if Hillary was going to be the nominee for political reasons but nowhere near loyal enough to follow the Iron Law of Institutions that would destroy the Democratic Party. I’m not so sure what those super delegate lobbyist will do.
So, I disagree with you. It’s exactly the right time to discuss exactly what the destruction of the Democratic would look like, you know, before it’s too late.
Or it is some deep 11th-dimension chess from Republicans to dangle such a flawed candidate out there for Dems to feel safe about. Safe enough to run someone with HC’s numbers (about the same as T’s) and actually WIN in 2016.
Setting up 2020 and the census. I won’t faze them to court pack the SC if they manage the trifecta.
Naw, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and again.
You’re putting the cart before the horse, Booman.
I bet you he’d be more generous to a party in which he and his umpteen million supporters would really have some clout. Which is what you say you want. Oh wait, no, you said incrementally … we would hardly notice it ast first … wouldn’t be satisfied …
At least none of my money will go up in smoke when they set the fire.
“Superdelegates are undemocratic and should not decide this race, unless my candidate loses the pledged delegate battle! Then they should flip it!”
“And also, too, and such as, apart from Iowa, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Nevada and Virginia, she never wins in any relevant states!”
So far Hillary is very happy with super delegates saying this happened long before me and is what we have.
I expect Bernie will have more pledged delegates or the pledged delegate totals will be very close. In that case the question of which candidate is the strongest will be the overriding question. If Hillary still has a slight lead in pledged delegates and they see the risk is too great knowing who she’s up against they might flip the nomination to Bernie. If it’s the other way and they flip the nomination to Hillary, she will likely lose the general. If it is flipped Bernie’s way I’m sure we could count on her support to get rid of the voting super delegates returning democracy to the Democratic Party, something we would all like to see. Once Bernie is the head of the Democratic Party the super delegates would be history anyway.
That’s what I’m talkin’ about.
…is Poe’s Law-type stuff you’re typing.
In early 2015, DWS/DNC announced that there were would six presidential primary debates and remained adamant that there would be no more.
Bernie and MOM requested more and were told to go fly a kite. Supporters were furious that the debates were scheduled in low TV viewership slots and DWS gave them the finger.
After HRC’s poll numbers in NH tanked, she demanded a second NH debate. Being a gentleman, Bernie said fine, but it will have to be four more and not just one. He also agreed to hold one in Flint MI where team Clinton had finally planted a flag over the poisoned water. HRC has yet to agree to holding the one in Brooklyn that Sanders requested.
couple extra debates before the NH primary after her polling tanked? Being a gentleman, he agreed. Didn’t she
Being a gentleman is dumb. He should have put the boots to her.
No, he played that right. First, it’s consonant with his general style. But, more importantly in this contest, he appreciates that to go as hard against HRC as might any other candidate increases the empathy vote for HRC. ie. he’s being mean to a helpless girl. (She gets to be both Wonder Woman and Annie depending on the situation, etc.) Look at how hard her campaign has worked to stretch his neutral statements into being racist, sexist, anti-choice, etc.
HRC expected a second NH debate to cut deeply into Bernie’s polling numbers. That didn’t work out well for her, but Flint would secure a MI win for her. (The FL debate was in the original schedule but her team had the old Bernie interview that was introduced to blindside him.) She expected Bernie to be out after SuperTuesday which meant she’d never have to deal with the NY debate. Or out after ST2. Now she just looks like an ass for not accepting the Brooklyn debate site. (Rich because her campaign HQs is in Brooklyn.)
Rich indeed.
Cool use of consonant.
concordant or congruous might have been better.
“All Bernie has to do is beat or tie her in the rest of the contests, most of which happen to already be favorable to him. “
BLAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I like Sanders but I will vote for whoever is the Democratic party candidate via a straight Democratic ticket. My concern is that so many seem to vote from the perspective of emotions and not the reasonable picture. The current makeup of Congress is the problem. If voters decide to pull another 2010 based upon emotions it will trash the Congress and possibly the Presidency for Democrats.See the GOP understand the game. They know the point is to WIN and to do that they need VOTES! Thus thy vote and vote in force.
If there is one main reason to vote for Democratic Party members it is the current SCOTUS situation.If the GOP remain in control of congress only God knows when we will have the justices we may need, for the GOP has made it clear. They will not allow any by Democrats to be put appointed. Thus it is fine to support your candidate of choice but please do not lose sight of the BIG picture do to disappointment.
It would help a lot of supporters would be respectful of each other, but for some that appears to be to hard a task.
You are the reason that the Democratic party ignores you sheeple.
Someone says we should be thoughtful and respectful, and you insult them?
When it gets down to survival of my family, I get downright homicidal.
It’s absurd to compare a mid-term election like 2010 to a high-stakes presidential election like 2016.
Why is it that Sanders is now resorting to blackmail to try to win over superdelegates that his campaign says are un-democratic??
You have a very broad definition of blackmail. Most people would call it a negotiating stance.
Booman writes:
Because he’s based his campaign on the perception that he is telling the truth, and that would be an easily observed, barefaced lie.
Not that he doesn’t stretch the truth once in a while…after all, he is a politician. But a whopper like that? Suicidal as far as his supporters would be concerned.
AG
Arthur, I’m surprised at you. Judging from his fundraising ability alone, Bernie Sanders would be an excellent leader of the party than the people in charge of it now. Ask Vermont. Let’s just say he probably has somewhat different ideas about how to allocate that money.
Bernie’s fundraising prowess is because people want the system changed, not to perpetuate it the way it is. If he did that he would be just like them, losing his magic.
On the other hand, if he doesn’t become President he could start a New Deal Democratic Socialist Party. Especially if the Clinton Machine stays in power, getting some congress critters elected under that banner who may (and I said may) caucus with the Democrats with some strings attached might contain enough leverage for it to be worth it and for the right reason. This ain’t beanbag.
So you really don’t want him to have any influence in the Democratic Party? And remember, we are where we are right now.
I didn’t say anything “bad” about him, priscianus jr. But…he is a politician, and a fairly practical one at that on the evidence of his success and longevity. Lies…evasions might be a more accurate word…are part and parcel of his gig. That’s just the way the game is played. Absolutely refuse to play it that way? Prepare for a short and failed political career.
Bet on it.
The best I can say about Bernie is that he is a well-meaning, principled and honest prevaricator, and I wish him all the success in the world.
AG
Isn’t an insurgent campaign (ideologically driven or not) against an entrenched establishment going to be beset with the response Bernie Sanders has been getting from the DNC and establishment spokespeople (Krugman, Frank, and so on)?
Insurgent campaigns build on insurgent Congressional and Senate campaigns at first that break new geographical ground or aim to unseat establishment incumbents. Bernie is not likely to get the critical mass to do that this year unless there is a lot of pent-up frustration about the party establishment among heretofore silent incumbents. If Sanders gains momentum through stunningly unlikely wins like New York, Pennsylvania, and California, those silent incumbents will surface. It is interesting that no one has analyzed the primaries so far to see if there is any movement there yet.
It is very clear that anyone connected in any way with the business that goes on in Washington does not want to see a Sanders victory with a Congress that can deliver on policy. Too many Washington jobs would be in danger. If it improbably happened, would there be Democrats now branded as New Democrats who would move quickly or slowly to rebrand themselves as allies of Bernie Sanders in the same way they have insisted that Progressives toe the neoliberal line? It seems that the fear of having to do that is palpable in the Red Smear language being applied to Sanders. To hear the current analysis of Sanders’ chances, that particular fear is overwrought, but Hillary Clinton popping off did not seem to me to be totally a calculated move. It’s a shame to believe that one is inevitable when it is only a carefully cultivated campaign narrative. The frustration there seemed to be a matter of being a little high on one’s own supply. There is the smell fear of repetition coming from the Clinton camp.
My guess is that like last time, they have forgotten that they are dealing with Democratic voters in the primaries and don’t get a shot at independents and Republicans until the general election. Nor do they understand how frustrated Democratic and Progressive voters have become.
…stupid. Isn’t that how it goes? Win, lose or draw Sanders is doing Democrats two monumental favours; firstly by convincing a new generation of voters that they belong somewhere in this party and can probably carve out a piece of it for themselves if they stay in solidarity. But by no means the lesser favour, Sanders has begun to erect a levee against the rising tide of populism while appealing to Democratically-inclined voters impatient with the status quo. It is coming.
People wondering from where Trump arose are asking all the wrong questions. “It’s the economy… Bubba,” and Trump’s and Sanders’ are the only fundamentally economic campaigns. Their respective success would seem to be making at least that obvious point.
Trump’s rise has very little to do with the economy and a lot to do with being an absurdly racist and bigoted freakshow who appeals to voters who are absurdly racist and bigoted freaks.
Read the polling on Trump people. They’re not unified on issues like trade. They just hate brown people.
Why people keep trying to excuse the disgraceful behavior of this large chunk of people — largely that wonderful white working class crew that moronic shitbags like Mudcat Saunders are always beating-off to — as being a function of economics, I don’t know, but it’s complete nonsense.
Don’t say you weren’t warned. Just because they’re racists doesn’t mean they aren’t also rejecting the supply-side snake oil. Watching Trump’s pitch during his live events he never misses this angle; China, Mexico, jobs shipped overseas. It’s almost Ross Perot redux. That’s his pitch. All the rest, foreign policy, values issues, the Bible, are a hand-wave. When he says “Make America Great Again” his supporters are thinking “Make Me Rich Again”.
You might almost say that Trump and Sanders are dividing the economic populists between them, with Trump getting the racists and Sanders the non-racists.
There’s also the fact that Trump’s economic populism is largely imaginary, though that seems almost beside the point in the context of campaign politics.
Has been a one-man prosperity cult for some time (Trump U) but now he’s taking the show on a national tour which happens to be a presidential campaign. Who needs policy? Just believe and you will be free.
Looking at history, it seems that this level of hatred is usually brought out when the economic situation is not only bad, but when an entire segment of society sees no hope for the future, and needs someone to blame.
I’m supporting Hillary because I think she has better experience and connections and will be better able to make the necessary changes, but I agree that it is, in the end, all about the economy.
Better “experience and connections.” Yes, she is connected to all of the people who crush progress and enable corporate polluters and Wall Street predators at every turn.
I don’t think it’s about the economy at all, tb.
I think what we have is a portion of the base of the GOP that is utterly vile — that has had enough with “losers” losing to the Dems in general on policy, and the black guy in the White House specifically, however modest and moderate those wins may be.
It’s been said by many others better than I can say it, but: Trump’s support is not a policy thing. It’s not economic. It’s not ideological. It’s an attitude thing. They’re losing. We passed health care reform, America continues to have a growing Latino population, and black folks are standing up and challenging institutional racism. They’re losing, and they know it. And they can’t stand it.
Again, reading the polls on issues would cure anybody of the notion that this is an economic thing, and that Bernie and Trump are thus fishing in the same pond, no matter what nutcases like Marie and TVITW say.
Gosh, I hope all you smart people here who have so many arguments and reasons and knowledge of history, and know how everything works and should be done — I hope you run for office and start to be “the bench” for the new revolution that’s coming. Super-progressives unite.
If things don’t change, the Democratic party will “cease to exist”–that is, it will be basically powerless in many of the states and have inadequate power at the national level. It’s a scary thought for someone like me who was “born” a Democrat over 6 decades ago. At times, I hardly recognize my own party.
There’s the rub, it ain’t your Democratic party, unless you work for Monsanto or GS.
Agreed. And lets see how things go if we all ditch party money. Purity is important folks, and accepting campaign funds from rich people is bad. The 800 million the Kochs are going to spend will not be enough to stop our revolution!
So you’re willing to lose this election for the sake of purity?? Admirable.
It isn’t an admirable quality, which is why we should be questioning the Democratic Party leadership’s strategy to dogmatically run a strategy of ‘economic centrism/social liberalism’ despite said strategy leading to the megaton losses of 2010 and 2014 and an inadequate victory in 2012.
There are purity trolls in the Democratic Party, a faction of people so dedicated to pushing their ideology that they’re willing to lose winnable elections. We call them centrists.
I don’t know. If Bernie wins, he’s going to disappoint once he starts having to do national budgets with Republicans in the House and dealing with a right leaning press tearing him a new ass (this is to say nothing about the hits he’s gonna take in the general). If he can’t cultivate friends in Congress, he’s going to be isolated. We’ll get angry then, and lots of the left will sit out the Congressional elections because he let us down. Dems are going to go into the defensive crouch then and we’ll bitch about how they’re not inspiring us. Isn’t it how we role?
Which has what to do with centrist purity trolling exactly?
Hillary Clinton, Obama, and other national Dems are intentionally pursuing an ideological strategy that’s been shown to make it difficult, if not impossible, to keep electoral gains earned in Presidential years thanks to the lopsided drubbings the Party receives in Congressional ones.
Just because Sanders sucks doesn’t mean that the Democratic party elders don’t suck even more. Even if Sanders has a successful two Presidencies, it won’t mean jack shit if the Clinton-Obama wing resume their strategy of centrist purity trolling via clientelism, neoconservatism, and neoliberalism.
This is a mixed bag, right? I mean, a lot of congressional Dems put their careers on the line voting in favor of Obamacare, while many of us bitched it didn’t go far enough. In the meantime, Republicans built a successful campaign on claiming Obamacare was socialized, kill-your-parents by denying them treatment, medicine. I voted in 2010, but several friends didn’t bother, so disheartened by Obama’s “sell out” were they. When Obama tilted right after the election, they got angrier. But what are Dems going to do when the biggest piece of legislation since the 1960s is passed and your voters don’t show up? Let’s be honest, there is a bubble on the left that can be just as strong as the one on the right sometimes.
Okay, first off, that doesn’t have anything to do with my point that neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and clientelism are centrist hobgoblins that end up hurting the Democratic Party. Sometimes there are Morton’s Forks where the centrist positions and liberal positions are equally alienating. But the existence of a particular Morton Fork does not negate the fact that are positions in which the centrist position is clearly more alienating.
That said:
See, this is one of those weird occasions where the centrist compromise ended up politically worse than the extremes. Health Care Reform was going to disillusioning and difficult. If you were going to get creamed in the press, you may as well go with the UHC scheme that would’ve created the most benefit so you’d have something to show long-term after the furor died down and you were licking your wounds. If for some reason that was impossible, I wouldn’t have even done health care. I would’ve placed all of my chips on more immediate and visible government benefits: bigger minimum wage increases, even economic stimulus packages, tax cuts, Social Security expansion, etc.
Weird? All too common. Centrist compromises are becoming notorious for creating kludges that hamstring proper function.
https:/www.newamerica.org/economic-growth/kludgeocracy-the-american-way-of-policy
. . . any of that will be different . . . how, exactly?
I keep seeing this “point” about what a rough row to hoe Bernie would have to get anything done (absent a massive Congressional realignment accompanying his election) . . .
. . . while ignoring that the situation would be virtually the same if Hil won (absent that same realignment). At least I can see no reason to think otherwise.
So go with the one whose policies/proposals/values (mostly “aspirational” in both cases! — i.e., likely to be enacted only very partially even in the best plausibly imaginable scenario) best align with yours. (For me that’s Bernie, though that’s not the point here.)
I just never get why anyone thinks Bernie’s likely difficulty getting his program enacted is an argument for Clinton: she’d have all the same difficulties! (Again, unless Congress flipped pretty drastically, which seems immensely unlikely to me.)
Clinton supporters know how obstructionism has played out during Obama’s two terms and expect it to continue; by and large, I believe, they’ll be glad of whatever incremental progress the Democrats can extract from the gridlock.
The Sanders campaign is drawing in, we’re told, armies of young voters fired up with enthusiasm for his political revolution. What happens when his grand plans slam headlong into the DC reality? When little or none of them are enacted? When Sanders has to compromise (sellout! sellout!) to get anything done? How many of that army will turn on him as bitterly as Obama idealists turned on him? How many will give up politics altogether, retreat into cynicism, and let another midterm go to the Republicans? What would that sort of backlash do to his vaunted movement?
Maybe all or most would stay committed to the cause. Maybe not. But I keep seeing all these arguments that enthusiasm is vital to the cause, and no consideration of what happens when those enthusiastic hopes are dashed.
supporters (at least some of the more idealistic/naive among them) end up disillusioned to some degree.
Hil gets elected, they start out that way.
Still not seeing much, if any, advantage to the latter scenario. (In fact, I see significant advantages to the former.)
At least in the former, those supporters get the payoff of Bernie attempting what he’s proposing. Even, in some cases, maybe the get the experience of activism in support of such efforts. Yeah, they’ll get an instructive lesson in the limits of Presidential power/prerogatives, especially in the face of a wingnut obstructionist Congress, in the process. A lesson they’re set up to experience either way.
So, again, I see no basis for this argument being decisive re: whom you vote for in a primary.
Congreve: “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned”….
Oddly enough, Twitter just dropped this into my email inbox:
TheObamaDiary.com @TheObamaDiary
Oh gawd, my TL is full of Berniebros who claim they voted for O but will never forgive him for not turning water in to wine. Dog walky time.
said ” . . . if Hil wins the nomination instead, despite ending up with fewer pledged delegates than Bernie . . . “
That’s the scenario (unlikely, imo) that I had in mind that would start out those Sanders supporters in disillusionment, to the significant detriment of Clinton, Dems, the nation, the world, and everything.
If the result of Republicans’ refusal to compromise is that nothing gets done … AND that a lot of Dems are convinced Obama is a sellout …
Then the result of Republicans’ refusal to compromise PLUS Bernie’s refusal to compromise would be that nothing gets done … BUT a lot of Dems would view him as a hero.
I just never get why anyone thinks Bernie’s likely difficulty getting his program enacted is an argument for Clinton: she’d have all the same difficulties!
Wouldn’t that depend on what she wants to get done? My fear isn’t that she wouldn’t get anything done, but that she would and do so much like Bill did: right wing policies passed by the GOP (she’ll need fewer of them than Bill did because most congressional DEMs have become subsidiaries of the Clinton machine).
I’d take gridlock any day over Hillary with a Republican Congress. Jesus, we never learn.
It was snark of DFH punching by a loyal Clinton/Third Way DEM. Weirdly, it’s the center right DEMs that stand for the purity of neoliberalism.
Re KC2669 : SNARK ALERT!!!
About the little bit of money Sanders has managed to amass? Of course you don’t.
You just think, still, that it means something. When, you know, the rest of us, without much money, nor hope any more for getting it, still care.
I voted today. In Wisconsin. Mailed in my permanent absentee ballot. I voted in the Democratic column, choosing Sanders rather than Clinton. Eliminated all the Walker-appointed challengers for Circuit Judges where I live, and voted for their opponents (Kloppenberger, Dugan, and Kies). Likewise voted against the guy running for School Board I asked once whether he signed to recall Scott Walker said he wouldn’t tell me and suggested I was rude to ask. Don’t know any of them personally; hope I made the right choices.
The best Democratic candidate the Democratic Party has running this year isn’t a Democrat. It’s not his fault.
Crowdfunding Bernie Sanders as the Democratic Party power brokers look on aghast!
bernie sanders is a fraud. his followers know nothing about him. he is losing and he will lose in the end. voted against the brady bill 3 times, voted for aumf, voted to give bush power to do anything he wanted in iraq twice, voted for war in serbia, supports expanded war in syria, voted to send nuclear waste to a native community in texas, voted against stem cell research and therapeutic cloning several times. real socialists dont even consider him a socialist. im tired of constantly having to do the research on sanders and send his supporters links to educate them on their candidate. they are either lazy or willfully blind. im not saying any candidate is perfect but at the very least sanders supporters should educate themselves about their candidate and stop lying about his record. and stop insisting he is better than clinton. or that he must be winning even though he is behind by 2.7 million votes. or that he is just like obama in 2008 which is completely laughable. its time to put this fraud to bed so we can focus on the general.
You are the problem, and if Clinton loses in November, as she already polls behind Bernie, I will expect you post a long apology for backing a flawed and corrupt candidate who’s insistence that the primary be rigged in her favor will open the door to GOP dominance across all three branches.
Funny though, I expect all the Clinton lovers to BLAME Bernie when she loses in the fall. It’s part of the GOP/DLC “we are always right and you are always wrong” ethos.
better not to feed the trolls; we have a pretty high level discussion here at booman; trolls trying to disrupt it
I usually take everybody here at face value…So young…so naive…. Thanks for the heads up. I love this place.
You should continue to take people at face value, even when you disagree with the positions being stated, and disregard the accusations of trolling. Errol’s generally a good guy, based on my observations over several years here, but in his passion for the Sanders cause he’s gone off the rails on this topic and wandered into “Burn the witch!” territory. I’ve seen plenty of trolls over the years at various blogs, and I’m not seeing the indicia in the people Errol is accusing.
A qualified “yes” to all of this.
But…and it is a big “but”…here is the qualification.
Given the power of the Goverrnmental Media Complex to control people’s minds…power that is waning in the face of mounting evidence that what it is saying (and has been saying for decades) is basically full of shit, but is still strong…Bernie Sanders (voting record and all) is about as far “left” as will pass through the current media sieve and into public consciousness. Did he vote the way you reference as a long-range plan? Was it the act of a practical politician? (Read: Someone who has at least a chance to get something done?) Did he simply progress in his understanding of what is happening in this currently Permanent Government-ruled nation during his time in office? Or is he just another IQ-limited hustler who is running a leftiness hustle? Damned if I know.
I do know this, however…he’s the only extant national pol w/even a small shot at winning the presidency who is saying things that I want to hear.
So I continue to support him.
End of story.
AG
Praise indeed. LOL
Bernie Sanders is not conducting business as usual. Supposing he gains a majority of pledged candidates or a very significant percentage, he may be operating on the assumption that super delegates wil increasingly go his way, whether out of their personal conviction about democracy or because of pressure from voters. If he wins the nomination he will then turn to congressional candidates. I would very surprised if his campaign didn’t have a plan in place which can be immediately activated. A Republican majority in both houses of Congress wil certainly make it difficult for him to govern. But his detailed knowledge of the workings of both houses and presumably a lack of illusions about Republican obstructionism will certainly stand him in good stead. Anyway, up to 2018 he can work on getting Democratic majorities in Congress by making the Republicans explicitly own their treachery, a tactic which Obama couldn’t employ because of his oddly accommodating character. Sanders has shown himself capable of driving a point home: Clinton says I lie, well I’ll show Clinton. The worst case scenario is that the super delegates are seen as undemocratically tilting the nomination to Clinton. Rage will ensue and voters will sit the election out with the result that Congress becomes overwhelmingly Republican from November until the cows come home and a Republican occupies the White House and the Supreme Court falls to the party too. This election cycle has destroyed the Bush family’s dynastic ambitions. May it also put an end to the Clinton family’s too.
If Bernie wins the nomination, I will happily vote for him. But a lot of people, once the voice overs of “revolution” and images of Marxist dictators start hitting the airwaves, are going to get skittish. Republicans are not going to be nice, and they’re going to blur the lines with his voting record when he screams “Wall Street bad!”–Commodity Futures Modernization Act anyone? When dark Republican money starts in, he’s going to need help to compete in multiple states at once. Competing in a primary, where the candidate in the lead has to play somewhat nice to ensure unity if they win, is one thing. Competing in a general, against people who want nothing more than to run against and destroy a leftist candidate, is another. I appreciate parts of his message, but pissing on the hands of people who you are going to need help and support from, including our sitting president, is not always the best way to play the game.
The only way he can get the nomination is by playing it the way he is now. By the way Bernie Sanders isn’t pissing on anyone’s head. What a curious image. Then I’d say instead that a lot of people are pissing on his head because he refuses to OBEY them.
So how are you going to feel when he goes wandering back to the DNC and the Clintons when he realizes it’s going to be tough to win once a billion in dark Republican money starts pounding him in states? Will he be a sell out? Would the win-at-all-costs primary, where he’s held himself up as the gold standard of purity, hold up well when Republicans force him into an argument about his own hypocrisy? People are kidding themselves if they think this won’t happen.
He’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it. You don’t get it. This is not business as usual. You have valid points which paint a bleak prospect. His only chance of getting the nomination is going on as he is. What would have him do? Capitulate to Wall Street and the Clintons and end his campaign. The objections to his strategy are either hypocritical or disingenuous. The Clintons and the Democratic Party machine take no hostages. My question is how did the Democratic Party ever let him in the door in the first place. Obviously they must have thought he’d be an amusing distraction, this kind of shoddy Brooklynite from Vermont who wants to be president. They may have shot themselves in the foot because of their arrogance. I can’t imagine that the Clintons weren’t consulted on the matter. A gray man as a foil to the stylish and cosmopolitan brilliance of the Clintons. What better way to make her shine. Does anyone know how this happened?
Um, I think your point suggests things aren’t so corrupt and horrible, right? I mean, Bernie’s running as a Democrat and has a lot of support. Nobody stopped him. DWS isn’t an awesome, spectacular, person, we all agree, but candidates who could run, did.
My point suggests no such thing. You’re projecting or whatever. The DNC and the Party are spectacularly arrogant, evidently thinking that Bernie Sanders was a bit player. Why did they think that? As I said earlier, the super delegates better not be seen as corruptly tilting the nomination to Hillary Clinton for their good and, more important, the good of the country. It might be that the Democratic Party is in more trouble than the Republicans.
My question is how did the Democratic Party ever let him in the door in the first place. Obviously they must have thought he’d be an amusing distraction …
Rikyrah (not a Sanders fan) had an interesting comment on that last week. ” Everything that makes Hillary unappealing as a candidate in 2016, was present in 2008….
“Which is why so many in the DNC ‘ proper’ tried to set up a Coronation, but wanted to be too cute by half, which is why they ‘allowed’ Bernie in.
“That he has become the vessel for those who saw the flaws in Hillary in 2008; never saw any repentance from her in the 8 years for her behavior in 2008….and still think she sucks in 2016- well, the incompetent DWS should get fired for that too.”
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2016/3/27/10136/0930#79
They didn’t “let Sanders in.” They’d locked all the entrances to the DEM POTUS sweeps after admitting the hapless MOM for show. Sanders merely took advantage of the open space that always exists but has never before been of much use to anyone.