Yeah, I still see a certain type of liberal still using "Bernie Bros" pretty regularly. Basically the BlueSky set.
I also think the moderates and "Frontliners" (the people in tough districts who are likely to have serious GOP challengers) are doing it wrong, and I think Bernie's popularity in conservative Midwestern towns is evidence of that. What's more, I think if you ran Bernie-style (not AOC-style, but hyper-focused on economic issues) campaign in many districts currently represented by Republicans you could pick up a lot of wins.
But they're not gonna listen to me, and why should they, I won't vote for Democrats anyway. But I would like to see a viable opposition party with actual ideas.
Unfortunately, I don't think he does. I think a lot of people thought that it'd be AOC, but she has a at least three problems:
1) She's nowhere near as good as he is at staying on message.
2) She sees the path towards her ascendance as lying within the Democratic Party establishment, which happens to currently be Dubya-in-'08 levels of unpopular, and even if it weren't, will constantly try to restrain the message. One thing Bernie has consistently done is remain independent of the Democratic Party and its strict control of messaging.
3) Whereas Bernie is broadly popular, AOC is narrowly so.
Bernie is unique, in that he comes from a very small state, where he could campaign for Senate (or anything) without requiring a whole lot of money, so he has been able to operate outside the Democratic Party for his entire career. While we might get some potential Bernie successors (look at Greg Casar, e.g.) who are better at AOC at staying on message, and might be able to gain broader appeal, all of the current stable of young progressive Dems come from bigger districts/states, and operating without the Democratic Party's funding is pretty much impossible.
The hope was to move the Democratic Party towards Bernie, so you wouldn't need a single true Bernie successor, but would have many, and from them you could choose the best/most talented for national visibility, but the Democratic Party has so far resisted any move to the left, even when Biden was doing a few things that were at least in the same area code as Bernie (though I think they were more Warren-type policies than Bernie-type). The push to the center post November 2024 has been even stronger, and is, I have no doubt, responsible for those Bush-like approval ratings.
So yeah, I don't think we're going to get a Bernie successor, and I don't think the party is going to adopt his message. So we get to watch them flail, trying to convince people that actually, with the exception of the Dems needing to be more xenophobic and transphobic, the status quo they've been selling should be enough for everyone.
2025-03-11 08:43:27
There's a guy who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination twice, whose message seems to be really resonating, based on the size of the crowds throughout the Midwest, and his general popularity. I'd go with what he's saying and work out from there.
The commenter archive features may be temporarily disabled at times.
Yeah, I still see a certain type of liberal still using "Bernie Bros" pretty regularly. Basically the BlueSky set.
I also think the moderates and "Frontliners" (the people in tough districts who are likely to have serious GOP challengers) are doing it wrong, and I think Bernie's popularity in conservative Midwestern towns is evidence of that. What's more, I think if you ran Bernie-style (not AOC-style, but hyper-focused on economic issues) campaign in many districts currently represented by Republicans you could pick up a lot of wins.
But they're not gonna listen to me, and why should they, I won't vote for Democrats anyway. But I would like to see a viable opposition party with actual ideas.
Unfortunately, I don't think he does. I think a lot of people thought that it'd be AOC, but she has a at least three problems:
1) She's nowhere near as good as he is at staying on message.
2) She sees the path towards her ascendance as lying within the Democratic Party establishment, which happens to currently be Dubya-in-'08 levels of unpopular, and even if it weren't, will constantly try to restrain the message. One thing Bernie has consistently done is remain independent of the Democratic Party and its strict control of messaging.
3) Whereas Bernie is broadly popular, AOC is narrowly so.
Bernie is unique, in that he comes from a very small state, where he could campaign for Senate (or anything) without requiring a whole lot of money, so he has been able to operate outside the Democratic Party for his entire career. While we might get some potential Bernie successors (look at Greg Casar, e.g.) who are better at AOC at staying on message, and might be able to gain broader appeal, all of the current stable of young progressive Dems come from bigger districts/states, and operating without the Democratic Party's funding is pretty much impossible.
The hope was to move the Democratic Party towards Bernie, so you wouldn't need a single true Bernie successor, but would have many, and from them you could choose the best/most talented for national visibility, but the Democratic Party has so far resisted any move to the left, even when Biden was doing a few things that were at least in the same area code as Bernie (though I think they were more Warren-type policies than Bernie-type). The push to the center post November 2024 has been even stronger, and is, I have no doubt, responsible for those Bush-like approval ratings.
So yeah, I don't think we're going to get a Bernie successor, and I don't think the party is going to adopt his message. So we get to watch them flail, trying to convince people that actually, with the exception of the Dems needing to be more xenophobic and transphobic, the status quo they've been selling should be enough for everyone.
There's a guy who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination twice, whose message seems to be really resonating, based on the size of the crowds throughout the Midwest, and his general popularity. I'd go with what he's saying and work out from there.