US POLITICS XX: Stuck In a Caucus You Can't Get Out Of

[Headache in a Suitcase]

i don't recall being asked prior to this to concede that sanders could tweak his approach a bit, but yes of course he could and he should, especially if he continues to build a lead and has to pivot his message to the general electorate and not just democrats in certain states. what i've been trying to get at today is that the answer on castro wasn't necessarily wrong per se if you get the point he was trying to make, but it was very tone deaf and he'll need to work on that going forward. i'm sure it'll get brought up at the debate tonight and i'm very interested to see how he responds.

 

[anitram]

I concede Biden's and Warren's weakness and fuck-ups all the time. They are just people to me. I have no allegiance. I think it would help more people to approach political figures this way.

I don't typically engage in the Bernie Bros back and forth on this thread because I don't feel like I have a lot to add. Most of my friends are progressive but not Bernie-type voters, likely because of our age, stage in life and so on. So I don't have to contend with rabid people on FB and I have a crazy job + 2 toddlers at home and not enough time to really witness this on Twitter.

But the thing I have noticed is what you point out here - everyone who supports a candidate other than Bernie seems not only perfectly able to point out the negatives or campaign misses, or policy decisions that they are not 100% onboard with, but also perfectly willing to do so. With Sanders it's as if he's the perfect human being without a fault and how dare any of us question anything he says, it must be because we're part of the suburban upper middle class aristocracy that doesn't get it. With him, much of the support appears to be for him, the man, as opposed to him, a cog in the political machine.

Now watch me be told that it's because all of Bernie's stances actually ARE faultless.

 

[DaveC]

I'm going to stop the conversation here, but I'll say this. In retrospect, that was a very bad moment and a bad look for me. I apologized for it as well as my comments the following day. I was going through some personal items but that's not a good excuse. It was unacceptable.

The fact that you felt the need to bring it up again because we disagree on a topic is something that everyone will read and now judge you on.

you're the one who called me a "resident fidel castro fan" and felt the need to dishonestly paint me without provocation as someone who would dismiss the holocaust and defend hitler before i ever mentioned what you did, so don't act like we just had a simple disagreement and you're some kind of bullied victim here bud.

anyways.

 

[DaveC]

With Sanders it's as if he's the perfect human being without a fault and how dare any of us question anything he says, it must be because we're part of the suburban upper middle class aristocracy that doesn't get it. With him, much of the support appears to be for him, the man, as opposed to him, a cog in the political machine.

Now watch me be told that it's because all of Bernie's stances actually ARE faultless.

nobody here is anything like this caricature you're describing.

 

[mikal]

you're the one who called me a "resident fidel castro fan" and felt the need to dishonestly paint me without provocation as someone who would dismiss the holocaust and defend hitler before i ever mentioned what you did, so don't act like we just had a simple disagreement and you're some kind of bullied victim here bud.

anyways.

I'm not perfect and I'm more than willing to own up to the fact that I can get heated and say things that aren't appropriate.

I feel happy for you that you're able to overlook your behavior and always point to someone else. That's probably less challenging.

 

[womanfish]

i don't recall being asked prior to this to concede that sanders could tweak his approach a bit, but yes of course he could and he should, especially if he continues to build a lead and has to pivot his message to the general electorate and not just democrats in certain states. what i've been trying to get at today is that the answer on castro wasn't necessarily wrong per se if you get the point he was trying to make, but it was very tone deaf and he'll need to work on that going forward. i'm sure it'll get brought up at the debate tonight and i'm very interested to see how he responds.

Oy, you make a great point. I hadn't even thought about the obvious, probably first debate question tonight since he is the front runner.

I totally agree that his answer with Castro wasn't incorrect. But I think Bernie, being "not your regular politician", could take the obvious trick on that one and pivot to how he did so well with Hispanic voters, and that he isn't going to re-litigate 40 year old comments, but will do all he can to meet with the Cuban-American voters and tell them what he can do as president.

Pretty easy. I'm sure he will answer well tonight. He doesn't seem to falter too much in debates.

 

[womanfish]

Other obvious question tonight. Amy, why are you still here?

 

[DaveC]

I'm not perfect and I'm more than willing to own up to the fact that I can get heated and say things that aren't appropriate.

I feel happy for you that you're able to overlook your behavior and always point to someone else. That's probably less challenging.

maybe next time don't essentially call someone a nazi without provocation, and then they won't have a reason to come back at you with your own shitty behaviour.

 

[mikal]

maybe next time don't essentially call someone a nazi without provocation, and then they won't have a reason to come back at you with your own shitty behaviour.

You got it. Thanks so much for your advice. I've learned a lot about your character throughout this today so I'll make sure to keep that in mind moving forward.

 

[DaveC]

lmao at the hubris of the bloomberg people going around pre-debate harping on bernie's college stories and voting for the crime bill.

 

[DaveC]

https://twitter.com/steve_vladeck/status/1232290724110008321

 

[anitram]

nobody here is anything like this caricature you're describing.

Do you really not see that there is a much greater reluctance on the part of Sanders supporters to criticize him?

I mean honestly it feels like anytime something like this is observed we're told nobody here is a caricature that we apparently created in our minds which at some point truthfully feels like gaslighting.

I think that you will agree that I have really not participated in any caricature-making of the Bernie Bros but I can't even make an observation before being ridiculed. So ok, we're all crazy then...

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

other obvious question tonight. Amy, why are you still here?

right??

 

[womanfish]

Something to remember:

https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1231083444463120384

 

[anitram]

right??

Amy is going to go nuclear tonight. She saw what it did for Warren so she's gonna give it a go. Let's see how good her aim is with a stapler.

 

[deep]

It seems like we have two sides in here, the same two sides that exists in greater population.

One side that feels passionately about Bernie and his agenda for America
the other the wants 'anyone but Bernie'.

This debate tonight, is the last best chance to influence the outcome, aside from the 500? million onslaught from Booomberg for super Tuesday.

I can't say what is the best outcome for those that want to beat Trump in November

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Amy is going to go nuclear tonight. She saw what it did for Warren so she's gonna give it a go. Let's see how good her aim is with a stapler.

I don't think she can do it. She comes across so stiff. Her dad jokes are worse than mine.

 

[Moonlit_Angel]

Trump openly commented that America has done just as bad things as those dictators and didn't face any backlash for those comments. Of course, the plays by different rules. So do the GOP.

They're the party that can storm into a SCIF with personal devices and face no penalty, where if the Dems (or any of us) did that same move, you bet we'd all face some form of legal consequence.

This is the part that's frustrating me the most about all these constant debates over what the Democrats should and shouldn't do and say going forward. On the one hand, people complain that they're not tough enough, that they care too much about what everyone else says, or will say, about them and need to just be more bold and honest and own whatever shit the GOP tries to use against them.

But then when they do actually try and do that, then it's, "Oh, but they have to be careful, they need to not say this or do that, it'll totally blow up in their faces and the GOP will use it against them and so on."

So what the hell are they supposed to do, then, exactly? It seems no matter what they do, in somebody's eyes, they've totally fucked up their chances.

Speaking in general terms, I'm frankly well beyond sick and tired of the constant bickering and debating about what the Democratic candidates should and shouldn't be doing, and the whole "They need to do this/not do this" back and forth. It just turns into yet another argument that goes nowhere and seems to help nobody.

I'd like to discuss more about what we voters can do from now until November. Clearly we know our Congress doesn't seem to give a shit about protecting us from voter fraud, so is there, say, anything we can do to help encourage individual states to try and protect us? Any tech-savvy groups that can organize to do their part to help out on that front? What can we do to help get more people signed up to vote, and most importantly, how can we help those who are at risk of being purged from the voter rolls (if they haven't been already)? I'm seeing people marching in India in protest of all the shit that government's pulling there. What more can we do to try and fight back against what the GOP keeps pulling here?

That's the sort of stuff I'd much prefer to be discussing right now, both here and in the political discussions in this country in general, instead of this constant sniping back and forth and hand-wringing and defeatism. By constantly fighting among ourselves, congratulations, we're playing right into Russia's hands, and definitely doing our part to ensure Trump gets four more years.

 

[Irvine511]

sir, this is a Wendy's.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Bloomberg needs to rebound after last time or he should just call it a day as well. If he gets pistol whipped by Warren again he shouldn't even try for Super Tuesday and just give all his funding to her.

 

[DaveC]

Do you really not see that there is a much greater reluctance on the part of Sanders supporters to criticize him?

I mean honestly it feels like anytime something like this is observed we're told nobody here is a caricature that we apparently created in our minds which at some point truthfully feels like gaslighting.

I think that you will agree that I have really not participated in any caricature-making of the Bernie Bros but I can't even make an observation before being ridiculed. So ok, we're all crazy then...

i apologize if you felt like i was ridiculing you, that was not my intention whatsoever, nor is it ever. you're one of the smartest people here and i value and respect your thoughts and opinions, even though i don't always agree with them.

and honestly, sure. i've been more defensive and less critical towards him than i maybe ought to be. this is the first time i've ever really been on the "non-mainstream" side of this forum and it is exhausting sometimes. it reminds me a bit of the NBA thread when the raptors were in the finals. when four or five people respond in entirely different ways to one of my posts i usually feel the need to reply to them all and defend my stances, which then generates its own flurry of varying responses, and so on. it's tough for me not to reply when someone directly quotes one of my posts or says something directly to me - truthfully, i've gotten very little work done today (entirely my own fault) because i've been so distracted with replying here. i probably ought to take a step back a bit, but there's so much going on and so much to talk about right now that it's hard to do.

i don't think you're all crazy and i'm not trying to gaslight anyone. i truthfully don't see anyone here as the stereotypical fanatic bernie bro that keeps being brought up here. yeah there are a lot of genuinely messed up people on twitter and other forms of social media. harassing and threatening people or doxxing them or vandalizing their property or whatever is never okay no matter why it's being done, whether you think you're helping a political candidate or getting revenge on someone or whatever. i wish those people had nothing to do with the sanders campaign.

but i haven't seen anything here approaching the kind of batshit quasi-religious behaviour that you described in that post, nor have i seen sanders people attack you as being "part of the suburban upper middle class aristocracy" (the only people i've seen doing that are orgorp and garrison over on the other forum, who are definitely not sanders supporters lol), and the assumption before you even posted that you'd be attacked by someone here who thinks "all of Bernie's stances actually ARE faultless" rankled me a bit. who actually would do that? i certainly wouldn't, and i'm pretty sure none of LN7 or vlad or peef (or any other regulars i may be forgetting) would either.

anyways i got off on a bit of a ramble there. i apologize again if you thought i was ridiculing you.

 

[Irvine511]

One side that feels passionately about Bernie and his agenda for America
the other the wants 'anyone but Bernie'.

i'm kind of the side that thinks "Bernie has the right intentions, but his weaknesses are considerable and generally unprecedented, although maybe so are his strengths, however i don't believe in the magically materializing youth vote, so another candidate who can continue to win the suburbs won in 2018 so we keep the House and maybe make gains in the Senate would be preferable"

here's why i think that:

Why does Sanders look similarly electable to leading moderates in polls against Trump? We fielded a 40,000-person survey in early 2020 that helps us look into this question with more precision. We asked Americans to choose between Trump and one of the leading Democratic candidates: Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, and Mike Bloomberg.

So that respondents would not strategically claim to only support their chosen candidate against Trump, we only asked each respondent about one Democratic candidate. The surveys were fielded by Lucid, an online market-research company that provides nationally representative samples of Americans.

Our data (laid out in an academic working paper here) also found what polls show: that Bernie Sanders is similarly electable to more moderate candidates. But, on closer inspection, it shows that this finding relies on some remarkable assumptions about youth turnout that past elections suggest are questionable.

We found that nominating Sanders would drive many Americans who would otherwise vote for a moderate Democrat to vote for Trump, especially otherwise Trump-skeptical Republicans.

Republicans are more likely to say they would vote for Trump if Sanders is nominated: Approximately 2 percent of Republicans choose Trump over Sanders, but desert Trump when we pit him against a more moderate Democrat like Buttigieg, Biden, or Bloomberg.

Democrats and independents are also slightly more likely to say they would vote for Trump if Sanders is nominated. Swing voters may be rare — but their choices between candidates often determine elections, and many appear to favor Trump over Sanders but not over other Democrats.

Despite losing these voters to Trump, Sanders appears in our survey data to be similarly electable to the moderates — at least at first blush. Why? Mainly because 11 percent of left-leaning young people say they are undecided, would support a third-party candidate, or, most often, just would not vote if a moderate were nominated — but say they would turn out and vote for Sanders if he were nominated.

The large number of young people who say they will only vote if Sanders is nominated is just enough to offset the voters Sanders loses to Trump in the rest of the electorate. (Warren appears to lose at least as many Republicans as Sanders, but does not seem to benefit from any compensating enthusiasm from young voters.)

Sanders himself has been clear that his strategy for beating Trump is to massively boost turnout, especially among young people — and young people in our data indeed say they would turn out at much higher rates for him.

But for Sanders to do as well as a moderate Democrat against Trump in November by stimulating youth turnout, his nomination would need to boost turnout of young left-leaning voters enormously — according to our data, one in six left-leaning young people who otherwise wouldn’t vote would need to turn out because Sanders was nominated. There are good reasons to doubt that Sanders’s nomination would produce a youth turnout surge this large.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...sanders-electability-president-moderates-data

 

[deep]

I imagine all his ad buys are in for Super Tuesday now, awhile back I moved from CA to a small Super Tuesday state with 29 delegates, there have been tons of Boomberg ads on TV, radio, social media, electronic billboards up and down the freeways

 

[anitram]

it reminds me a bit of the NBA thread when the raptors were in the finals. when four or five people respond in entirely different ways to one of my posts i usually feel the need to reply to them all and defend my stances, which then generates its own flurry of varying responses, and so on.

The Raptors were controversial? I'm not sure if I'm glad or sad to have missed that...I will keep you in mind next time I have Rap tix to unload!

It's all good. I didn't mean you, but just generally it seems like non-Bernie voters tend to have a healthy dose of cynicism (and negativity) about whoever they happen to be supporting whereas the Bernie folks are all in. I'm not even saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes it can read as absurd.

 

[DaveC]

The Raptors were controversial? I'm not sure if I'm glad or sad to have missed that...I will keep you in mind next time I have Rap tix to unload!

most people in there were very much against the idea of the raptors winning, and i was the only raptors fan, so it got pretty tiresome. some of it was just straight-up trolling directed right at me. good times.

and yes please if you ever have raptors tickets you need to get rid of i'll take them every single time unless i physically cannot attend the game, or they're like courtside seats that you want $2000 each for

 

[anitram]

and yes please if you ever have raptors tickets you want to get rid of i'll take them every single time unless i physically cannot attend the game, or they're like courtside seats that you want $2000 each for

3rd row behind Raps bench. (free)

I almost never take them anymore b/c my husband doesn't like basketball so I fight for the Leafs tix instead.

 

[deep]

i'm kind of the side that thinks "Bernie has the right intentions, but his weaknesses are considerable and generally unprecedented, although maybe so are his strengths, however i don't believe in the magically materializing youth vote, so another candidate who can continue to win the suburbs won in 2018 so we keep the House and maybe make gains in the Senate would be preferable"

here's why i think that:

I can see the logic in that line of thinking


aside from peoples strong personal feelings about the many distasteful behaviors by Trump, all the positives on other polling about the economy, satisfaction, direction of country being at high levels give re-election on those points reasonable

in 2016 after the election I thought the economy might keep going up under Trump, but a good chance he might break it like Bush-Cheney did,
If one wants to argue that Warren and the Dems kept him in check? perhaps

 

[DaveC]

3rd row behind Raps bench. (free)

i will make sure my PM box always has room for at least one new message.

 

[womanfish]

Amy is going to go nuclear tonight. She saw what it did for Warren so she's gonna give it a go. Let's see how good her aim is with a stapler.

I thought she would at the last debate. But she really kind of faded into the background. Especially as Warren mowed everyone down with verbal AK-47,

What will be interesting to me is if Biden goes more on the attack on Bernie. He and Bloomberg need a good performance more than anyone since they really are the only ones with any prospects of moving on after SC.

Also, will Warren finally hit Bernie? In Trump's words, What do you have to lose???

 

[deep]

Dave, this would be a good time to admit, these Bernie Bros really are a disappointment and Sanders needs to reign them in.