From Fox News: Bernie Sanders projected to win Nevada caucuses
Sen. Bernie Sanders will win the Nevada caucuses, Fox News can project, furthering the democratic socialist’s lead over his Democratic rivals and raising the question as to whether he can be stopped on his path to the Democratic nomination.
With four percent of delegates in, Sanders has 56 percent.
According to the early returns, former Vice President Joe Biden is in second place with 19.9 percent, billionaire Tom Steyer has 9.3 percent, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has eight percent, and former South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg has 5.8 percent. Ultimately 36 delegates are at stake.
(Featured image is “IMG_5530” by cornstalker. Used under a creative commons license.)
NBC has a whole stack of charts on the results and entrance polls, if you are into that sort of thing.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-primary-elections/nevada-resultsReport
Without Bloomberg as an option on the ballot or the exit polls, I’m not sure the data tells us as much as we’d like.Report
That hits the radar as wishful thinking. Sanders is what a lot of the Dems want, Bloomberg will have the problem of sharing the sanity vote with Biden and Mayor Pete.
I’d be great voting for Bloomberg but I don’t expect it.Report
I mean the horse-race finishing order isn’t really as meaningful as it should be. If Bloomberg had been in it, would it have flipped the Buttigieg vs Biden order? Would it have sank Klobuchar or Warren even further, or perhaps affected one but not the other? Could Bernie have even gotten a boost from voters who wanted to send a message to the Democratic or media establishment that’s determined to stop both Bernie and Bloomberg? With Bloomberg not available, perhaps some folks opted for Bernie as a slam against the machine.
Or perhaps Bloomberg would instead siphon off support from the centrist lane instead. So many questions could have been answered by better exit polling that included lots of questions about Bloomberg and people’s 2nd and 3rd picks if he’d been it. What I found a bit sloppy about the press is not asking those questions when there’s absolutely no qualification requirements for an exit poll, as if certain somebody’s decided the questions should best be left unasked.Report
An interesting observation:
I think that the proper response, at this point, is to go back to the way things used to work.
If leadership refuses to, I think that it might be okay, at that point, to engage in conspiratorial thinking.Report
“The problem with paper ballots is that there’s no money in it.”Report
At the scale of a precinct, for a caucus, no, probably not. At the scale of a state… I’m sure that someone has made money selling things to Colorado counties for the vote-by-mail system: optical ballot scanners, signature scanners, ballot printers at the vote centers, a ton of software, etc…Report
Admit it, you’ve never seen the two of us in the same place at the same time…
Marchmaine – 2/21:
“Increasingly I’m seeing the parties as empty vessels that we squabble over because we only allow these, on only these two vessels to participate in the Presidential Election. They aren’t parties… and increasingly not even meaningful brands… just vehicles on election rails. If your band of pirates captures the ship, you win the ship.”
Ross Douthat – 2/23:
“The Democratic Party, no less than the Republican Party, looks like a derelict ship awaiting capture by a band of pirates.”Report
As an outsider, the thing that I find remarkable about your parties is how strong and weak they are. Strong in that they have complete control over the electoral system, but are totally lacking any kind of party discipline.Report
The system that makes them inevitable doesn’t account for them and the context in which they were created pre-dates the long lasting, ideologically driven political movements which characterize modern political parties.Report
Yeah, seems like a lot of little changes have added up to a bigger issue. I’m not sure we can “fix” the parties… I think we’ve moved past a two party system, but opinions differ on that.Report
Seriously, they were strong just a couple of decades ago.Report
Adding to this is that the parties are also highly federalized and decentralized plus other aspects of the American system that make it impossible to have the shorter elections you see in Parliamentary systems. Americans always know when the election will be. The First Amendment makes it nearly if not completely impossible to smack down on people from announcing candidacies early. Trying to get the horse race press from covering it too early is a prior restraint.Report
As I once pointed out, in Parliamentary elections nobody can just run for Prime Minister because the job is like being the Speaker, or perhaps the DNC or RNC chair. People in a parliamentary system are already intimately familiar with the various party leaders because they will have been in prominent party positions, and covered intimately by the press, for many years. The equivalent here would be an election where the only people on the ballot were Mitch, Nancy, and Chuck Schumer. They wouldn’t need a long campaign to let voters know who they are, quite unlike Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Beto, and a bunch of other candidates people have hardly heard of. Who is Steyer? Who are Bennett, Patrick, Gabbard, Yang, and Delaney? What are their views? Were do they come from? Do they have voting records?Report
The parties don’t have complete control over the electoral system. We only have two parties because the political system creates some really high entry barriers for new parties and because new parties tend to go about entering it in a very ineffective manner. They focus too much on one particular office, the Presidency, and don’t go for lesser Federal offices let alone state or local offices. Both the Greens and Libertarians engage in behavior that at best seems really unprofessional to the average voter and at worse really weird. They are more like fan conventions than political parties. Slate once reported on the Libertarian convention and it caused the more serious Libertarians that I know to remark “put on suit, put on a suit.” The Greens are still nothing more than a coffee house debating society with a hippie new-age vibe.
As for party discipline. The Republicans have a lot of party discipline. One comment about the current political crisis is that we are having it because the Republicans are acting as a parliamentary party in a Presidential system. The Democratic Party becomes the non-Republican Party and include too many factions to have much party discipline.Report
See…others have noticed too, and now I’m being subtweeted.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsReport
Interesting…
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Carville has covered a lot of ground in five days. Waaaay back then his complaint against Sanders was that he’d “lost his damn mind” for advocating prisoner voting rights. Now the complaint is that he’s a Russian asset working with Putin to destroy America’s institutions from within.Report
BTW, if Bernie wins, people like Carville – Dem operatives who fundamentally oppose his nomination – will have no one to blame but themselves for creating a party in which Bernie and his type of politics could thrive. They’ll become a new political class, the NeverBerners. ANd they’ll share with NeverTrumpers a refusal to admit the role they played in destroying the party the claim to care so much about.
As a second BTW: I’m continually amazed by the sheer number of ex-Hillary campaign advisers who appear on my TV providing *expert* analysis. Hillary has quite infamously lost two presidential campaigns. You’d think having lost so often would constitute evidence that maybe these people aren’t really “experts”.Report
Both problems are one and the same.Report
There are a handful of positions that make perfect sense to Good Christians that don’t make sense to people who are somewhat more Worldly.
In that same vein, “prisoner voting rights” is one of those things that plays very well with Good Christians. Less well among, say, Methodists.
Arguing that prisoners ought to be able to vote is going to be an uphill battle among the unchurched.
Here’s an example of another thing that makes perfect sense to Good Christians but I am not sure will play well with the Sinners:
Could Bernie win in 2020? I am pretty sure he would have won in 2016 and Bernie 2020 isn’t that different from Bernie 2016, bless him.
But Trump 2020 feels different than Trump 2016.Report
I really don’t see the problem with prisoners voting – it’s not like they can vote themselves early releases.
I get that there is a mentality of vengefulness around imprisonment that makes allowing prisoners to vote unpalatable to some for reasons that they can find justifications but not reasons for. But I don’t get *what the problem actually is* that removing prisoners’ voting rights is supposed to solve / prevent.
And if your prison population is so big an electoral faction that they can vote themselves early releases – well, that’s the problem that needs addressing. In the mean time probably they should be released early.Report
Here’s a hypothetical that strikes me as likely to play well:
“If you kill someone, you take away their right to vote in elections. Therefore, you shouldn’t keep your right to vote in elections following your being found guilty in a court of law.”
It’s the idea that voting is a right and a privilege and we’ve got no problem removing privileges from people who murder others.
“But people who stab other people should still be able to vote! Tax cheats! Violent stalkers! They should all be able to vote!”
See? I don’t see that argument taking off.
I think that there’s more fertile ground in the whole “after you have paid your debt to society, you should be re-enfranchised” argument than in the whole “Harvery Weinstein should be able to vote in the next election!” argument will.Report
I’ve watched Carville’s appearance with the governor of Colorado and think he makes some very good points. He argues that the heart of the party (or a big section of it) isn’t woke millennials, socialists, or communists or Twitterati. It’s old folks on Social Security. It’s union workers. It’s black folks who go to church.
I suppose he’s harkening back to Carter, Bill Clinton, and even Obama, and how they held the Democrats’ vast coalition together. You could consider him an anchor point marking where the party used to be, and that party was pretty close to center. That was back when for most Democrats, being a Democrat wasn’t necessarily an identity but a logical choice.
From that perspective, most of the current field aside from Biden (and Bloomberg and the governor of Colorado) is way to far to the left to win a national election. Hillary and Obama would be to the right of Biden and probably to the right of Bloomberg. Obama won twice and Hillary beat Trump in the popular vote, so that’s evidence that Carville’s position is backed by past results. The current field is positioned more like Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and Lyndon LaRouche, leading Carville to ask “Are you people crazy?!”Report
Boy, if the Democrats could only return to the sensible centrist sort of candidates like the Kenyan Sharia Law loving radical Communist cultural Marxist Barack Hussein Obummer, then, boy, then Republicans would um…
Continue to scream that the Democrats are Sharia Law loving radical Communist cultural Marxists.Report
Yeah, but we’d be screaming it at the Democrat in the White House, instead of having the guy in the White House trolling the pack of left-wing also-rans on Twitter. ^_^
The current field is so far left that I’m not sure Obama would have a shot at the nomination this time around. Bernie, who is leading the pack, just won the all-import endorsement from Maduro in Venezuela.Report
Bernie is currently leading Trump head-to-head in Michigan and PA. People *really* don’t like Donald Trump. 🙂Report
Michigan 2016.
Pennsylvania 2016.Report
In the most recent Quinnepac poll (Feb 20), Trump beats every Democrat in Wisconsin by 7 to 11 points. Recall that he beat Hillary there by less than a point.
Remember, Trump hasn’t tried to destroy Bernie yet. The voters will get a big dose of Trump railing against “the idiocy of electing an avowed Marxist who is being backed by Vladimir Putin because they’re ideological soul mates.”
Things like that are why Chris Mathews will probably vote for Trump.Report
Bernie is currently in 2nd place with black folks and winning union voters, even when the union tells them not to vote for him.Report
Yeah, and he has strong support among Latinos which also surprised me.
I think the whole “Crazy Bernie is unelectable” stuff is probably overblown.Report
Check to see if the people who are saying “Crazy Bernie is unelectable” said the same thing about Trump.
If they did, check to see if they ever said anything to the effect of “Golly, was *I* wrong… here’s what I think I got wrong…” and then read what they said after that. If it was “I was too honest. Too good. Too pure. I believed that the American People weren’t Fascist Nazis.”, you can then dismiss what they’re saying about Bernie.
I’d read the people who say stuff like “For Trump to win, the following things need to happen: (short list) and the following need to *NOT* happen: (short list).” And then a similar paragraph or two for Bernie.
But people who say “X will *NEVER* happen!” should have been pretty rebuked by 2016. If they’re communicating that they haven’t been rebuked, there’s probably a reason. (And given that everybody I’ve seen who says that sort of thing is either rich or in the media (or both), there’s apparently money at stake.)Report
2016: “The GOP needs to stop Trump, even if it means denying him the nomination at the convention, to save the party and have any chance in the general.”
2020: “The Dems needs to stop Bernie, even if it means denying him the nomination at the convention, to save the party and have any chance in the general.”Report
Are you ready to be confused?
Report
How does Senator No have anything to unite the Democratic Party?Report
According to *ME*? I’d say that there are three groups of voters, you start with the map of 2016, and you ask if she gets turnout from Our Voters, fails to inspire vitriol in Their Voters, and can get Either Way voters to show up and vote for her instead of the other guy.
I mean, you can always say “the people who are never going to vote for a Democrat are never going to vote for Klobuchar!” and you’d be right but there are candidates that inspire the opposition to hold meetings, write letters, fundraise, volunteer, and otherwise oppose and the candidates that don’t really do this as much.
Klobuchar is no Warren. She’s no Obama.
She’s no Clinton.
As for whether this consists of uniting the party… who *WOULD* bring the Leftists and the slightly different Leftists together? And then, once you have that answer, ask “and who unites those two very, very different groups with the suburban wine moms?”
Here’s how the Chronicle put it:
You can almost see Pelosi’s fingerprints on that one.
But we know the truth, don’t we?
Report
“…who *WOULD* bring the Leftists and the slightly different Leftists together? And then, once you have that answer, ask “and who unites those two very, very different groups with the suburban wine moms?”
The 2018 data strongly suggests that Donald Trump has done this very effectively.Report
And now we just get to ask whether Bernie would unite all three groups together better than Klobuchar.
Do we have any reason to believe that any of those 3 groups would find any of Bernie’s policies scarier than Trump’s?
If the answer is “no, Suburban Wine Moms know that Bernie won’t change their lives in any way but good ones and Trump is likely to ban abortion for their daughters”, then that’s the answer.
We probably need to lean harder into how this is the most important election of our lifetimes.Report
If only there was some mechanism by which the Democrats could get together, and indicate their preference!Report
Yeah, who told newspapers that they should butt in before we even really start voting in states that have international airports?Report
I like Amy and think she’d be a great candidate in the general but I am struggling to see how she gets from where she’s at to the electoral nod.
I dunno if it’s time for her to drop out yet but I can see from history that if this handful of moderates go into super Tuesday they’re going to split their support and Bernie will be a serious danger of running off with the nomination like Trump did in ’16. And I just struggle to see how wild haired old Bernie with his insane promises and his cut and paste “revolution” answers is going to avoid taking us down the McGovern route. Perhaps we’re too polarized now for it to be a route but even a Kerry or Dukakis loss means 4 more years of Trump and most likely 2 more conservative Supreme Court justices.
I would hope the institutional party could lean hard on some of the moderates to bow out or at least to play nice with each other. I’d really like to hope that Obama might endorse early (though I know better than to bet on him descending from the mountain- it wasn’t how he liked to operate when he was IN politics, let alone now that he’s out of it).Report
I haven’t seen anything to indicate that Bernie is any weaker against Trump than say Biden or Buttigieg or Warren.
Are you seeing something different?Report
We all know that the Republicans would accuse every Democratic candidate of being a Godless Marxist Socialist out to destroy God, Mom, and Apple Pie with LGBT sex and universal healthcare. The issue with Bernie Sanders is that the Republicans have all sorts of footage of him saying stuff like this rather than just a mere accusation.
So you have Bernie Sanders saying that the Cuban Revolution wasn’t all bad or him standing with Sandinistas or honeymooning in the Soviet Union. We don’t know how the general electorate will take to this once these start getting wide spread play. Sanders sceptics believe that these will all play very badly with many Americans, costing Sanders the election. His fans see them as nothing burgers because the Cold War is over.
At least based on social media, lots of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers are not fond of Sander’s Cold War politics. Libertarians seem to think he is an un-reconstructed Leninist. An immigration lawyer I know thinks that we can’t win Florida because of Sanders comments on the Cuban Revolution.
Sanders mildly unapologetic leftism and belief that the United States done some things wrong during the Cold War is causing a lot of people to be nervous about the general election.Report
If you had told me in 2014 that the Republicans would smirk as the American President meekly bowed to the Russian president;
Or that the head of our national security agencies would be headed by a man who was a lobbyist for East European dictators, I wouldn’t have believed you.
But here we are.
To paraphrase: When the Republicans cut down all the trees of liberal tolerance in pursuit of the leftist Devil, where will they hide when we turn around?Report
In addition to what Lee accurately notes, Bernie has made some very specific promises that are gonna be really tough in the general:
-He’s promised to do his Medicare for all which is an issue that sank Warren and only hasn’t sunk Bernie because the media thinks he’s a funny cuddly old man and haven’t treated him like they treated Warren. When we get to the general and Bernie’s talking about how his revolution is going to take away people’s health insurance whether they like it or not (and then give them a gummint program they’ll like instead, promise) that’s risky as hell.
-He’s promised to ban fracking which is not only knee slappingly idiotic from an environmental standpoint (if I actually wanted to revive coal, banning fracking is the first thing I’d do); but is going to play horribly with the voters anywhere not on a coast.
And those are just two issues off the top of my head.
And yes, I grant that Trump is an incoherent mess of terrible or false ideas but A) the left doesn’t have the same right wing media ecosystem to play Prada for Bernie, B) do we really want to follow the GOP down that path and C) isn’t that really high risk of just being a failure considering the differences between the left and the right?Report
The last election was won by the guy who promised to reopen all the steel mills and coal mines, and provide great insurance for everybody.
Pundits love to imagine that the majority of people are earnestly reviewing candidate proposals and calculating how the budget deficit will react when measured by the long term Treasury yields but…
Naw, none of that it true. We know this from repeated election returns.Report
Yes I know that, you know that. But we’re not talking about Bernie promising that come the revolution everyone gets a chicken in their pot. This is Bernie promising “If I get elected I’m gonna take away your healthcare and I’m gonna take away your job”. Voters can be pretty amiable or blase about politicians promising they’ll do nice things to them but politicians promising to do stuff to them they will hate?
If Bernie was promising that if he gets elected he’s gonna have the Secret Service drive over and put a bullet in Chip Daniels I think it’d probably turn your head even if I was saying “Oh he’d never be able to pull that off.”
And yes, I get the “But Trump, so nothing matters” which again leads to my last paragraph: Do we think the left can do what the right did and win? Do we think it’d be desirable if it did? Isn’t this a really risky move considering the consequences of another Trump term?Report
Can Bernie win?
I don’t know. I don’t think its possible to make any sure predictions about how the general public will react, at this point.
But I’m convinced the election won’t turn on conventional models of policy analysis; I don’t think there is a significant portion of the electorate who could go for either Trump or Sanders based on some policy issue.
And I really am convinced that the subtle nuances of M4A versus public option versus more robust Obamacare are virtually meaningless.
And once again, Trump has a way of making every conversation about every possible issue- war, economy, culture- about himself.
This is a man who can make a hurricane into a referendum on his greatness.
Every issue becomes Trump v. Something. Bernie is that Something.Report
Yeah Bernie is something. He has a checkered political past that’d make an oppo-researcher salivate ; his default method of persuasion is red faced shouting at clouds and he still hasn’t delivered any of the revolutionary young voters he promised he’d delivered. He seems like a damned risky bet to put into the Something slot when compared to most of the alternatives (except Bloomberg who’d doubtlessly be worse).
I’ll vote for the crazy old goat if he gets the nomination; let’s be clear; but can’t we agree he’s really high risk?Report
I think it’s very easy to come up with arguments for why Bernie will do well against Trump.
I think it’s every easy to come up with arguments for why Bernie will not do well against Trump.
I see this as a good sign for Bernie.
(I mean, when I tried to come up with reasons that Bloomberg would do well against Trump, I was stuck with “Trump is bad and, therefore, people who voted for Clinton will vote against Trump a second time.”)Report
I’m not saying I agree with this assessment, I’m just pointing it out. I find Sanders promises less troubling than Klobuchar’s gleeful delight in offering nothing.Report
She doesn’t offer nothing, Lee, she just doesn’t offer unicorns and points out those who do.Report
It’s all hands on deck in the battle against emergent fascism and Klobuchar isn’t the one that is going to mobilize the levy en mass. Rank and file Democratic voters like Bernie Sanders just fine. many of them see him as second preference. With his plurality support and the fact that other voters prefer him over others, it would be a mistake not to nominate him.
And yes, Klobuchar literally offers nothing. Very few people across the political spectrum vote based on competent administration of existing policies, programs, and laws. I want every bit of damage that Trump, Sessions, Barr, and company did to the immigration system reversed at least.Report
Kinda where I’m at is if we go down, let no one say we went down without a fight.
If America slides into fascism, let the Republicans own every bitter morsel and make them fight for every inch.
All the sly seduction too-clever-by-half strategies- of putting up hero combat veteran Democrats- putting up Big Bidnessman Democrats- putting up a faithful husband and churchgoing father Democrat- were met with scorn from their side.
Its not who they are, its not what they want.
Trump is who they are, its who they want. We just need to be who we are, and stand for what we want.Report
I don’t view Bernie as making promises so much as laying out various goals. He’s been at this long enough to know that no proposal survives contact with Congress unchanged. I suspect that’s so ingrained in him that he believes everyone else knows it as well.Report
Maybe that nuance will fly. I hope it’ll fly if he gets the nomination. But Corbyn happened. Obviously the UK is not the USA and Corbyn is not exactly Bernie but there’re a lot of chill inducing commonalities and noone can say with a straight face that Mcgovern style left wing wipe outs have never happened in the west in this century now.
*note* If Bernie gets the nomination I will vote for him.Report
What gets lost amid all the conversations about the resurgence of nationalism on the right, is the rise of nationalism+socialism.
That is, the collapse of free market ideology (if it ever really even existed).
The average Trump voter has no qualms about the President ordering the corporations about like a bunch of lackeys.
They have a specific list of orders they want, but the idea that government intervention in the marketplace is electoral suicide seems unfounded.Report
Did I say “He’s proposing to interfere in the market and that’ll produce economic distortions and violate the sanctity of property rights” or similar such libertarian pap? No I did not.
Bernie is proposing to screw with people’s health insurance and jobs and I do not think his shouty red faced angry old man shtick will carry any water in convincing those same people to honestly believe that what he’ll deliver for them in return will be worth it.
This isn’t about deep principles of governance, it’s a question of can he fishing win the general election? If Trump wins the election the supreme court will probably take that as a green light to entirely invalidate the ACA and probably undermine or flat out overturn Roe vs Wade. Hell, if he packs enough conservatives on there they may even reverse Obergefell vs Hodges.
I would very much prefer to run someone with better odds of winning the general than Bernie.Report
What’s interesting is that in the head to head matchups I’ve seen, Trump pulls around 42% no matter who he faces.
And the Dems pull numbers which are tightly clustered together in the 50% range.
Again, this is early, but still I don’t see anyone standing out as an obviously better bet.Report
Yeah Bernie pulls slightly ahead of Trump in an environment where the media treats him as “that cute silly earnest old socialist” and the right wingers haven’t laid a finger on him.
You wanna make the case that after he’s the nominee and the media switches from their current narrative to “Democrats careen to the wild left, same as the GOP careened to the right, raving socialist nominated” and the right wing starts pouring the ample grist Bernie has given them both in his past and current positions and words into their grist mill that Bernie will be unscathed by those attacks? Go ahead. But I am deeply skeptical.
Could he win? Sure. But is it likely? How? How is it likely? His revolution has ~not~ shown up. Iowa, New Hampshire, places where his most devoted supporters had every reason to produce the shining eyed legions of new voters, along with months of prep time and virtually limitless money and Bernie barely moved the needle from past showings where he didn’t backslide.
I am not down on Bernie because I think he’d be a disaster in office. I don’t carry water for pure libertarian nostrums. Can he fishing win? Is he LIKELY to win. More likely to win than the other candidates on offer? I don’t think he can or is. And neither do the people he’s supposed to go up against. Maybe they’re idiots and I’m wrong about it; Lord (lady?) knows I’ve been wrong about elections before. But noones saying how. Just revolution revolution revolution. Some of us have skin in the damned game and waiting for the Revolution or Godot is not very persuasive.Report
From Steve M. over at No More Mister Nice Blog:
“Sanders and his team were complaining about MSNBC’s coverage even before the Matthews incident. You may argue that they were demanding special treatment from MSNBC that they’re not entitled to. But it doesn’t matter — they complained, and it worked. MSNBC is changing its approach to Sanders — just the way any major news organization would change its approach in response to complaints from Republicans.
One criticism I hear often from the Sanders-averse is “He’s not even a Democrat.” Well, I don’t know of a single Democrat who’s successfully worked the media refs in my adult lifetime, and I’m nearly old enough for Medicare.
Democrats, take note: The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Complain. Act self-righteously angry. Fake it if necessary. As Republicans know, and as Bernie Sanders just demonstrated, it works.”Report
I think it’s good general advice but you have to be “cute” in some way for it to work and it has it’s limits.
It works for Bernie now. With the other side eagerly aiding and abetting him. When it’s Bernie and his believers against but the MSM and the RWM? Gerbil in a blender. But it’ll be too late then.Report
Also too, Brian Klaas writing in WaPo:
In short, the Democratic candidate was a heavily decorated combat veteran who had fought terrorists in Iraq and was pushing for open markets so that farmers wouldn’t need to rely on government bailouts.
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He lost because Republicans absurdly branded him an anti-American, Soros-funded socialist and criticized him for being an unpatriotic American who supported terrorists. In attack ads, Feehan was criticized for two tweets he posted in support of Colin Kaepernick. “Tell Dan Feehan,” one ad concludes, “real patriots stand together.” Apparently two tweets can cancel out two tours in Iraq when it comes to that warped version of patriotism.
“This is a choice between whether or not we support our country, defend everything we believe in, or we turn it over to the guys who want to transform America into some European socialist state,” Hagedorn said in his closing pitch to voters.
Voters narrowly elected Hagedorn.”
In other words; This is going to be a tough bitter fight using every tool of political advantage where the rules and norms get thrown out the window.
The Democrats can win, but they have to understand what they’re confronting.
There is no “safe harbor” where a Democrat can win. There isn’t some sly magic tune you can play to seduce the Trumpistas.
Pro-free enterprise? Doesn’t matter; Combat veteran? Doesn’t matter. From The Heartland? Doesn’t matter.
All the Democrats can do is say who they are loudly and proudly, and let the pieces fall where they may.Report
Sure, and Bernie says loudly and proudly who he is and where he is. Is he in tune to what the electorate wants? Please. He isn’t even in tune to what the majority of the Democratic Primary electorate wants.
Could he be elected as a Democratic President? Sure.
Does nominating him increase the odds a Democrat will be elected President? I don’t see how.
The Dems put up a lot of candidates in ’18. The ones that were like moderates did well, there was a big Democratic win over all. The ones that spoke and looked like Bernie? They did terribly. It’ll be an awful fight, agreed, so maybe tying an arm behind our back is a bad idea.Report
The majority of Democrats are NOT the sort of people who point to communist countries burning down their economies and proclaiming that’s a good idea.
The Democrats are a grand coalition. Part of that is jobs. The communist/socialists have a well deserved rep for burning down economies, i.e. destroying jobs.
Yes, there’s a wing of the Democrats who seriously believe “this time it will be different and Marxism will work!” However that’s not the bulk of the coalition.
This is like the GOP putting a Klan guy at the top of the ticket.Report
“This is like the GOP putting a Klan guy at the top of the ticket.”
Then we’re a shoo-in!Report
That’s just you virtue signalling. Since every GOP President is accused of being a Nazi there’s no weight to it… unless you can put up photos of him in white and can showcase his activities burning crosses.
The comparison would be if Trump admitted, and had for years, that he was a Klan member and was attempting to lay out why they’re right.
Bernie has never hid what he is, that’s why the socialist wing of the Dems support him so much. The Democratic Socialists have a fishing website which lays out exactly what they’re trying to do.Report
Yes, they openly admit they’re going to provide universal preschool.
The horror.Report
And gulags, if you ask the right campaign staffers.Report
How many sectors of the economy does he want to nationalize? What’s the current price tag on what he wants to do? 90 Trillion dollars or so?
You sure you want to spin all that down to “universal preschool” and claim there’s no issues?
Go with Pete. He’s minority enough to virtue signal progress for the progressives. There are enough gay GOP members (or their families) that it would split them. Trump will mishandle it, take the low road, and it will blow up on him.
The GOP will waste time focusing on his sex life just like the Dems waste time with “Trump is Vile”. It will be a repeat of Obama, the country is ready for it.Report
Nope. The GOP will waste very little time on Pete’s sex life because he doesn’t have one. They’ll focus on Pete being as much a communist as Bernie, though one who isn’t as up front about it and who at least can sound reasonable. But he also talks in empty platitudes.
Pete’s big problem is that he apparently won’t get any minority votes because he doesn’t resonate at all, plus BLM absolutely hates him. A large swath of minorities might jump to Trump and then go GOP for a couple generations, in which case the Democrats are going to go the way of the UK Labour Party under Corbyn, or the way if the Israeli Labor party which dropped from it’s dominance with 55 seats down to its current six.
Both paths are bad, if not disastrous, which is why Hillary is no doubt plotting nefarious maneuvers and Blumberg is looking to blow even more money to buy the nomination.Report
Catherine Rampell in the WaPo makes the case that the election in November will be a chouce between two socialisms.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-socialist-is-likely-to-win-the-2020-election-no-not-bernie-sanders/2020/02/24/d5053fba-5747-11ea-ab68-101ecfec2532_story.html
The exploding deficit, the farm bailouts, the propping up of failing industries for political benefit, the use of government as a tool for crony enrichment- and all of it with the express approval of the Republican party has made government control over the economy an entirely acceptable idea to America.Report
This is kindergarten reasoning. “If I’m a jerk, then you’re a jerk too!”
Lowering the bar so that all bad economic policies are “socialism” is an attempt to paper over just how terrible socialism is, and just how extensive it’s track record.
That’s not to say that political influence over the economy is a good thing, or that political corruption is a good thing. However none of that is new for Washington. Trump was able to run for office in 2016 as the cleaner candidate; Against Bernie he’ll be able to run for office as the saner candidate.
Bernie is not the left’s equiv to Trump, he’s the left’s equiv to David Duke. He has a seriously henious ideology, unlike pure corruption, it attracts followers.Report
But Corbyn was running for PM — head of the government and far fewer constraints by the legislature. For the most part, the PM controls what things Parliament can vote on. Boris just replaced much of his Cabinet w/o Parliament having any formal role. Compare what actually happened in the US in 2017 with what would probably have happened if it was just Trump and Paul Ryan’s House.Report
It’s also worth noting that for all of Boris’ idiosyncrasies he’s part of the UK political establishment in a way I’m not sure Trump is even after a full term as president. One of the possibilities that really interests me is who wins (Bernie v. Trump) in a low turn out election. I could conceive of plausible arguments in either direction.Report
Yeah, the PM and all the members of the Cabinet have to be MPs. Most of the parties’ leadership selection involve a party’s MPs whittling down the candidate list before the rank-and-file members get to vote. It seems unlikely that an outsider like Trump could win the leadership position of a major party.Report
The PM doesn’t actually have to be an MP, but it’s very rare. Sir Alec Douglas-Home would be an example. He was Lord Home (serving in the House of Lords) while PM, and then stayed PM after giving up his title. Not having a seat in Parliament was considered really odd, so an MP stood down to let him win their seat in a quick by-election.Report
Ok, so what’re you trying to convince me of? I agree that if Bernie got into office he probably will be a mostly harmless if not beneficial president. He’ll be a sight better than Trump and on foreign policy he could be a real improvement over most of the alternatives. All well and good.
But does he have the best odds to win the general election? I don’t think he does. The right certainly doesn’t think he does.Report
The main argument that I see bubbling up over and over again is some variant of “sure, that used to be true… but is it still true?”
An immigration lawyer I know thinks that we can’t win Florida because of Sanders comments on the Cuban Revolution.
Sure, this used to be true… but is it still true? Maybe the Cuban Floridans have lightened up?
him standing with Sandinistas
Wouldn’t Central American-Americans prefer the Sandinistas to the Contras? (googles) Oh. Well, is that *STILL* true?
honeymooning in the Soviet Union
The argument I saw against this said something like “oh, and I honeymooned in South Florida which is even crazier than the Soviet Union.”
Which, honestly, didn’t move me much.
One of the best arguments that Modern Social Democrats have is that “Socialism” doesn’t mean Soviet-style socialism or Central-American-style Socialism or Southeast-Asian-style Socialism but Scandinavian-style Socialism.
But for that argument to hold up, YOU CAN’T DEFEND CUBA AND THE SOVIET UNION JESUS CHRIST DOES ANYBODY KNOW HOW TO PLAY THIS GAMEReport
In 2011 Bernie was talking up Venezuela and how we should be emulating their economic “reforms” which I described then and now as “burning down the economy”.
Under his Green New Deal plan, he would nationalize most of the energy sector.
Under his Medicare for all plan, he would nationalize or eliminate the medical insurance industries.
In the 1970’s, Sanders reportedly embraced nationalizing most major industries in the US, including the energy industry and banks, as well as telephone, electric, and drug companies. https://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-in-1970s-pushed-for-nationalization-of-major-industries-2019-3
“Democratic Socialism” is thinly disguised communism. They have a website where they talk in glowing terms on how the various communistic ideas have never seriously been tried before, especially in the communist countries.
Yes, the GOP would demonize whoever ran against them, but it’d be harder to demonize someone who doesn’t have a 50 year history of being the real deal. If you’re going to point to the dumpster fire that was Venezuela’s economy and proclaim that’s how to run things, then you’re in “unreformed communist” territory, not mild left or left leaning.Report
I’m going to change my vote because of him and I didn’t vote for Trump last time. If I’m 3%(?) of the board that’s a problem. If I’m one data point then it’s not.
Bernie would let Trump run as the saner, more stable, less risky candidate. That’s an amazing accomplishment, we haven’t seen anything like it since HRC let him run as the less corrupt candidate.
IMHO Buttigieg is your best option at this point. The only thing against him is he’s gay, but that lets him reach across all shores and stir up a gay movement like Obama did for the Blacks. Trump will try to use that against him, and it would blow up on him.Report
Jimmy Carter is still eligible to run, and is it too early to urge Damon/Affleck 2020?
The nation has already spent billions rescuing Matt Damon from every conceivable situation, so putting him in the White House and surrounding him with Secret Service agents would probably produce a net savings, or at least allow us to rationally budget Matt Damon protection/rescue expenditures.Report
Well, yeah, but you gotta admit that “I’m a Republican who will vote for the Republican, Trump, unless the Democrats also nominate a Republican, Bloomberg” isn’t exactly a persuasive case.Report
Aside from the fact that Carville is explicitly saying there is no conspiracy, it’s pretty rich for the Justice (sic) Democrats to be accusing anyone of peddling dangerous conspiracy theories. Their whole ideology is a dangerous conspiracy theory. They also spread a great deal of misinformation.Report
Bernie fans vaguely irritated about Iowa should be able to get a big chuckle out of this:
Report
Oh, and one thing that everybody needs to keep in mind is that Super Tuesday ain’t for more than a week and California is part of it.
Who’s voting that day, you ask?
Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia.
Sure, Bernie’s likely to win but I look at that map and see a couple of Biden wins, a Warren win, maybe a Buttigeig win, and a Klobuchar win on top of everything.
But 5 people claiming big wins on Super Tuesday means chaos.
And chaos benefitted Trump more than anybody else in 2016.Report
I thought clearing the field and annointing a candidate without sufficient input from the base was what benefitted Trump in 2016.Report
In the general, sure. Not in the primary, though. In the primary, I recall hearing that “everybody but (insert name here) should drop out, then they can win the primary!” about multiple candidates but Cruz was really the only one who came close to challenging Trump.
Bernie seems to be Trump this time around. The unstoppable juggernaut that you’d think would lose if only everybody but (insert name here) dropped out.
And the fact that there will be multiple people winning multiple delegates on Super Tuesday will probably benefit Bernie because instead of everybody but (insert name here) dropping out, there will be two not Bernies dropping out. Maybe three. With the explicit goal of making it to the convention and having the Superdelegates, what’s left of them, broker a deal.
But with so many of them still in the race (and many of them likely to outright win one of their states), there’s going to be chaos.Report
Oooh, maybe I’m wrong.
For about 20 minutes in 2016, there was an argument over how we just need to keep Trump under 1,236 delegates. Just keep him under that many delegates, and it doesn’t matter if his nutterbutter fans have him show up at the convention with 1200.
There are 3979 pledged delegates at the Democratic convention and Superdelegates are no longer allowed to cast decisive votes…
So that means that Bernie needs to win 1990 pledged delegates to mathematically avoid a contested convention (which, I assume, would end up with Warren or something).
But if he’s winning California and Texas and Massachusetts, then we’re on track to avoid a contested convention entirely.
Which will avoid chaos entirely.Report
Maybe, but keep in mind that the divisions within the Dems are pretty soft.
From the polling I’ve seen the main goal of most Dems is to vote against Trump, regardless of who the nominee is.
And most aren’t firm in their choice; They might like Bernie or Warren, but could without too much effort support a Biden or Buttigieg.
What I’ve become aware of is the gap between the extremely online people and the actual voting base. The extremely online people dominate the Twitterverse and headlines but that’s not where the votes are.
Like I said, what caught me by surprise is not just that Sanders got a big chunk of Latino vote, but he got them to turn out. This is new. Latino turnout has always lagged far below where it should.
So in conclusion…I just don’t know. And I doubt anyone else does either.Report
Maybe, but keep in mind that the divisions within the Dems are pretty soft.
They are?
Because if I’m remembering the last Democratic Convention correctly, there was evidence of non-soft divisions.
While I would be delighted to entertain the argument that Trump has succeeded in getting the Democrats to agree that it’s time to Vote Blue No Matter Who, I’m going to wonder if we’re not in a “differences have merely been papered over” situation until I see what the next two weeks hold.
They might like Bernie or Warren, but could without too much effort support a Biden or Buttigieg.
I would have added “or a Bloomberg?” until that debate last Tuesday but he seems to have evaporated? (People with televisions: Can you confirm?)Report
Revenge Of The PUMA!Report
I believe the objection there was Pre-clearing the field such that it wasn’t really possible to ascertain HRC’s weaknesses.
After 3 primaries its probably a little early to pull the plug on few candidates, but March 4 should see some clarity there.
Still, the issue is that there’s no real party, no real “factions” no greater good, only personal ambition and each has a secure political base that is only enhanced by continuing to run… everyone has “why not me” as a mantra. Why not Biden? Why not Buttigieg? Why not Klobuchar? Why not? What do they get for dropping out? And then there’s Bloomberg.Report
I’m not sure how this is any different than any other election in modern history. Elections are always contests between ferociously ambitious people with their own cultivated base.
I personally think the differences between the two parties are as stark as I’ve ever seen in terms of their goals, their general outlook and desires for the future.Report
It isn’t a problem if one doesn’t care if a plurality candidate becomes the nominee.
Its only a “problem” if you don’t want that plurality candidate to be the nominee but won’t downselect to consolidate against the plurality candidate.
You could compare how we deal with plurality issues vs. how French Presidential elections do. Its trivially easy to mitigate plurality issues… but if you don’t care about them, then no need to care about them.Report
Yeah. One wants to keep the economic boom going, and the other wants to turn us into the next Cuba or Venezuela where we end up eating our pets within the first three years. Sander’s first SOTU speech. “My fellow Americans, we’re out of bread.”
This is not lost on older Democrats who remember communism, and it’s not lost on all the American immigrants who came her fleeing a “socialist paradise.”
Things like that are why Chris Mathews and James Carville are in full freak-out mode. They’re seeing what they think is the death of the Democrat party and modern liberalism, as its taken over by Russian-backed communist revolutionaries who will hand the GOP 70-30 and 80-20 victories from here on out.
Given that, the party elite’s opposition to Bernie might be incandescent, where they’re will to throw out the entire rule book to stop him, or have Hillary arrange a convenient accident. There may not be any healing from the rift that would cause.Report
Unfortunately the process takes decades rather than months. Chávez took power in 1999. Ten years later he was winning “great man” type awards. In 2011 Sanders was breathlessly talking about his accomplishments and how America should strive to emulate them.
In theory Sanders could eat the rich, nationalize industry, throw a really great party, and then retire and be thought of as a great man. Even if his successors can’t supply toilet paper, people will still be pointing to Bernie and saying all we have to do is make it work is be like him. The US is richer, there would be a lot more resistance and thus implementation would be imperfect, I can easily see it taking us 30+ years to run out of bread and whatnot.
Socialism is an info-plague or religion, despite its history it tugs at the heartstrings of a lot of people.Report
A trenchant insight from this guy, of all people:
Report
Good point… if a big part of what you are doing is “building your resume” or your brand or, these days, upping your social network and influence… then there’s little reason to negotiate your exit for political/party goals.Report
If you want your team to win, you have to know when to pass the ball to someone in a better shooting position instead of standing there running out the shot clock.Report
Sure, that and other political malpractices are what enabled Trump to overtake the Republican party. Its what happens when there aren’t political parties… only ships you commandeer for electoral purposes.Report
Well, politically, the GOP was a team of Ivy League white guys from the 40’s encountering their first orange player, one who could dunk the ball leaping almost from the foul line. They all pretty much just stood there as he ran the court on them. Kasich and Cruz just argued with each other over who should go sit on the bench to give the other one more floor time.
Last night Trump held a rally in India with about 100,000 people in the stadium and perhaps several million coming out to see him. The speech was so gushing with praise for them that you could’ve thought he was running for Indian PM. He could probably pick up three or four hundred million votes there pretty easily. He’s a natural at it.
The appearance is likely to be of historic significance because he’s pulling India further into the American embrace, and the amazing closeness he and Modi shared about our two countries will probably send cold chills down China’s spine.Report
Stop, Trump took down the equivalent of the Sick Old Man of Europe… with help from the Sick Old Man.Report
Florida Democrats: Not Helping.
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If there’s one thing Floridians can’t stand, its a cranky old Jewish guy from the northeast.Report
Florida Democrats haven’t helped…by being the worst Democratic Party in the country per capita for the whole time I’ve cared about politics.
I’ll say this about Donald Trump – at least he was never fined hundreds of million of dollars in Medicare fraud by current Florida Senator and former Florida Governor Rick Scott.Report
Vox goes into some hard data on whether Bernie Sanders is electable or not.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/25/21152538/bernie-sanders-electability-president-moderates-dataReport
Where do they get their funding from?Report
Russia.Report
um Vox is venture capitol and NBC funded, not russia:
Funding
In December 2014, Vox Media raised a US$46.5 million round led by the growth equity firm General Atlantic, estimating the media company’s value at around $380 million.[23] Participants in Vox Media’s previous rounds include Accel Partners, Comcast Ventures, and Khosla Ventures. Other funders are Allen & Company, Providence Equity Partners, and various angel investors, including Ted Leonsis, Dan Rosensweig, Jeff Weiner, and Brent Jones.[24][25] According to sources, the Series C in May 2012, valued Vox Media at $140 million.[26] A Series D valued the company north of $200 million, raising an additional $40 million.[27][28]
In August 2015, NBCUniversal made a $200 million equity investment in Vox Media, valuing the company at more than $1 billion. Comcast, which owns NBC, additionally already owned 14% of Vox through other subsidiaries.[29]Report
So, Russia.Report
2007-8: Obama is unelectable. (Black dude)
2015-16: Trump is unelectable. (Amoral criminal degenerate)
2016-17: Bernie is unelectable. (Communist)
Tho I will say that by voting for Bernie in the primary but not in the general Jaybird is helping to reinforce the “Bernie can’t win” narrative.Report
Hey, I wanted to vote for Yang in the Primary *AND* the General.
I didn’t leave the party, the party left me.Report
From LA Times:
Bernie Sanders has broad support in diverse California communities, new poll finds
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-02-25/sanders-has-broad-support-in-diverse-california
“Sanders dominated Nevada’s caucuses on Saturday, largely on the strength of his support among Latinos, and he’s hoping to upend Biden’s campaign in South Carolina this Saturday by winning over African Americans.
In California, Sanders has significant support among both those groups, the poll indicates.
But all racial and ethnic groups in the survey showed a sharp division by age. That reflects other surveys around the country that show Sanders, 78, with overwhelming support among younger Americans, but much lower levels with people his own age.
Among Latinos younger than 50, for example, Sanders enjoyed roughly a 3-1 lead over Bloomberg when poll respondents were asked whom they would most like to see as the next president. Latinos 50 and older were divided closely between Sanders, Biden and Bloomberg. Similar age divisions showed up among blacks, Asian Americans and whites in the poll.”
Couple thoughts: “50 and under” doesn’t seem like a “youth vote”; a lotta these yoots are balding.
Which is to say the conflating of “young people never vote” and “50 and unders are the youth brigades” seems unsupported.
It also reinforces that Bernie’s support isn’t just college bros but middle class parents and working people.
It also seems that the “Socialist!” label isn’t a scare word.Report
If Bernie can wrestle California from the Republicans, he’ll have accomplished something that no man has done since Obama.Report
Ex-Hillary staffers who appear on my TV: “If I were on Bernie’s general election team I’d be advising him to campaign aggressively in Califorinia to run up the popular vote totals, to make it mathematically impossible for Trump to catch up…”Report
Well, there’s more FNORDs on the front page of the newspaper than ever before and I’m wondering if the Coronavirus is another WWIII (remember WWIII last month? Good times) and thinking about hitting Costco on the way home and getting a bag of rice, just in case.
Anyway, I seem to recall FNORDs electing more Republicans than Democrats but that might only be in the last 20 years and maybe it’s different this time.Report
Don’t forget beans! I’m thinking that it might be wise to pick up a case of Zatarain’s rice and beans, plus a bunch of Lipton pasta sides (along with butter and ultra-pasteurized milk).
But I’m betting most people will forget those little things they usually buy every couple of days at the gas station, like snacks, beer, and tobacco products.
In most ways the US should be the most able to skip the store for a month, but we also have a generation of young people who couldn’t cook a can of soup, and who have never gone three consecutive days without ordering a pizza.Report
and who have never gone three consecutive days without ordering a pizza.
“Order two medium Dominoes pizzas and two Pepsis for $10.99 and get our Coronavirus-free guarantee!”
Dominoes shares go through the roof. American Young People receive Presidential Medal of Freedom for saving Our economy.Report
A woman in Wuhan posted videos of her Internet-controlled food-delivery all-terrain toy truck zipping through the city. She will probably own much of the city, if not most of China, before it’s over.Report
Ehh, Bernie’s support in California is meaningless. Bernie needs to win WI, MI, PA, AZ, FL, …. Those are the only polls that matter.Report
Is there polling showing what’s happening in those states?
I know that Sanders is narrowing the gap with Biden in So Carolina, so he must be gaining strength in the black community.Report
The most recent polls I’ve seen have him leading among Democrats in head-to-head with Trump in MI and PA, but getting crushed in WI.
That may be confusing: in MI and PA he’s beating Trump by a wide margin while also leading the Dem field in h-to-h margin.Report
There have been recent favorable and unfavorable polls on Wisc. I believe it was all based on sample weighting.Report
From your link, basically a description of where my head is at.
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.Report