2020 Democratic Primary

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

You are wasting your breath. Dakota posted a similar list. Many, many others have posted similarly.

Amy Siskind's list.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

You are wasting your breath. Dakota posted a similar list. Many, many others have posted similarly.

I'm sorry, Eunoli. That sounded really dismissive of the work that you put into that post. It's more that it was wasted upon its recipient, not the rest of us. Mea culpa.

 

[Eunoli]

I'm sorry, Eunoli. That sounded really dismissive of the work that you put into that post. It's more that it was wasted upon its recipient, not the rest of us. Mea culpa.

Eh. The rest of you didn't need it. No harm done.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

There is a college senior in charge of the White House personal office. A predatory lender and private school investor in charge of the Department of Education. A neurosurgeon in charge of Housing and Urban Development. Oil indusrty execs in charge of Interior and Energy. There are multiple senior positions filled by temps who have conflicts of interest and no Senate approvals. And a spineless hack in charge of the DoJ.

Biden can be counted on to put qualified people in posts that believe in the mission of their departments and who are not set on wholesale looting.

That alone would put Biden or Sanders over Trump even without the damage he has done to this country and the world.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Your question feels a little loaded.

From my perspective, I don't really see the real problem being how Sanders' supporters are going to make other supporters more comfortable in letting them in the circle to vote for Joe Biden. Rejection from establishment was something Sanders supporters dealt with years ago. I think "working together" will resemble trying to get a cat to swallow a pill. It's not impossible.

If by some freak chance that this system falls apart and Sanders becomes the candidate, then there's work to be done. There's personal re-evaluation, education, and compromise. There's also Blue No Matter Who and Trump.

The most important question is : What are the candidates going to do to make someone else's supporters their own? This whole thing could transition amicably if it is placed under proper leadership. The primary has been very clear in highlighting what the vast majority of policy concerns are for the voters. Come armed with some solutions. Come armed with one solution beyond getting rid of the other guy. Good behavior and walking single file is not really the problems we're facing in this country and it's not really the solution.

As to your first point, I think you need to differentiate rejection by the party establishment and rejection by other party members and activists who, nevertheless, expect people who supported other candidates to work alongside them in electing whichever candidates are selected by the party they both support.

There may be distinction between US procedures for selecting candidates and the procedures with which I'm familiar in the Labour Party, in that we wouldn't allow people who weren't members of the party with voting rights to participate in the selection procedures, so we don't have the problem of trying to deal with people who supported a particular candidate rather than the party as a whole (and certainly announcing you would vote for the Conservatives if your candidate wasn't selected would very likely get you thrown out of the party!), so maybe that's something I'm missing.

As to the second point, I really don't see that's the question. All political parties are coalitions of people who, whatever their personal views on particular issues, or particular candidates, are prepared to work together to achieve a particular set of goals, just as the general public cast their votes not because they agree with everything the candidate or the party advocates, but because that candidate or party is the one that most clearly approximates to their views.

That's rather different, though, from working together with people who've recently been telling you that you, or your candidate, are no better than the other side -- it doesn't make for a particularly good working environment, for reasons that should be obvious.

People don't have to be friends, or even particularly like each other, to work together effectively, but going for each other in the way different candidates' supporters in the Democratic primaries have been doing doesn't make for an harmonious and profitable working relationship, which is what the Democrats will need later in the year.

How individuals behave towards each other during the campaign is generally more important than how the leadership treats their sometime rivals' supporters, to my mind.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

There are no substantial political differences between the Democrats and Republicans. We have only the illusion of participatory democracy. The Democrats and their liberal apologists adopt tolerant positions on issues regarding race, religion, immigration, women’s rights and sexual identity and pretend this is politics. The right wing uses those on the margins of society as scapegoats. The culture wars mask the reality. Both parties are full partners in the reconfiguration of American society into a form of neofeudalism. It only depends on how you want it dressed up.

This kind of approach is sure to enamor Democrat voters in some timeline or other.

If participatory democracy is an illusion, why do you want my vote so hard? It is fake and meaningless, after all.

 

[Grandma Bates]

There is a college senior in charge of the White House personal office. A predatory lender and private school investor in charge of the Department of Education. A neurosurgeon in charge of Housing and Urban Development. Oil indusrty execs in charge of Interior and Energy. There are multiple senior positions filled by temps who have conflicts of interest and no Senate approvals. And a spineless hack in charge of the DoJ.

Biden can be counted on to put qualified people in posts that believe in the mission of their departments and who are not set on wholesale looting.

That alone would put Biden or Sanders over Trump even without the damage he has done to this country and the world.

One of the biggest stories to come out of this administration is the list pf positions that have not been filled:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-administration-appointee-tracker/database/

For example, we have not had a confirmed Secretary of the Navy since November of last year.

One of the biggest unfolding disasters has been the forced move of the USDAs Economic Research Service. People were forced to move with short notice while the school year was in session. The result is that only about 60 people decided to make the move. The whole division is a shell of its former self. The loss of expertise and its impact on agriculture will be felt for decades. The shocking thing is that most farmers know and understand what this means yet still support President Trump because fear and race are more important than their own economic survival as well as basic human decency.

Oh yeah, and the US State Department has basically been gutted.

The saddest part is how little attention this is getting. News outlets would rather report on a few tweets than do their job and report what is and what is not happening. When Pres. Trump was first elected I thought that this would be bad, but I did not understand the near total capitulation that would happen by the gatekeepers.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

White House personal office

This is a pun, right?

 

[Cristalle]

And voting for Bernie Sanders means voting for a man who, even after Sandy Hook, apparently considered gun control a matter for the individual states.

It would, nevertheless, be unreasonable to hold that against him since he's since then changed his position, and good for him.

Is it any less unreasonable, I wonder, to blame Biden for his treatment of Anita Hill or " the assault on public education and the transfer of federal funds to for-profit and Christian charter schools"?

As you'll know, we in the Labour Party here in the UK are occupied trying to elect a new leader at the moment.

All factions are being more or less civilised with each other both since we all want to put behind us the sort of fights we've had for the last five years between Corbyn supporters and the rest and because we know that, whoever wins, all factions in the party will need to unite behind the eventual leader and to work both with him or her, and with each other, to stand any chance of beating the Tories, and throwing insults at each other won't help that any.

I honestly wonder how some of Sanders' supporters (and, of course, some of Biden's too) expect other candidates' supporters to feel about working alongside them later in the year, after some of the things they're saying about each other now.

Save your venom for your real opposition.

I'm not out to denigrate voters. My thing is policy, to try and emphasize good policy and people who believe in them. Honestly? To me, the most divisive thing hasn't been Russia but the home-grown camp that made "Bernie Bros" a thing, a more successful version of the "Obama boys" trope, which is constantly being trotted out to put people on the defensive. Instead of having an honest assessment of why people left the top block blank at a greater rate in 2016, party loyalists have made attacking voters into a thing.

This is a dumb strategy. Not only does it shift blame from the candidate to voters for the candidate's failure to get votes, but it creates a block of people who become Never______. I've tried with policy positions and records of public statements to show why I didn't think others were as good as my choice. I've never gone after their supporters as a group, I have no "venom" like that except for individuals who come after me.

Every candidate has mean people. Cross the K-Hive and you will not get kindness from them. Do you think the people here who eagerly excoriate me care about me joining them to vote for Biden in the primary? Clearly not, but do you see me lecturing them about trying to build coalitions?

 

[Veritable Quandry]

This is a pun, right?

I take credit for all of autocorrect's puns.

 

[Brenda Archer]

Amy Siskind's list.

*infinite scream *

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

*infinite scream *

 

[Cristiano]

Joe Biden Wins Endorsement Of Machinists Union After Rare Rank-And-File Vote

It's unusual for a union to endorse a candidate through such a democratic process.

www.huffpost.com

 

[Salome]

So I'll vote for Bernie in the Primary, because I still want to send a message. That many of Bernie's policies are where we need to head. And a Biden administration needs to heed this part of the Democratic party, also. A lot of progressives are exactly where I'm at, right now. I can live with healing under Joe Biden. He's experienced pain, himself...a lot...and he knows that, as a nation, we need to heal. He can do that. But I want him to know that there are still many of us who want this party to continue to the left. We've come a long way since I was a kid growing up in a household of Blue Dog Democrats, but we have a lot further to go.

Putting aside the fact that the party was continuing to the Left without Sanders and all of Sanders’ policies come from Democrats, I’d like to add something about this strategy for you to consider. In 2016 Sanders justified staying in long after he was mathematically eliminated because people like me made the same kind of strategic votes “to send a message” that you’re talking about here. I deeply regret the naive trust I put in Sanders with that vote. He didn’t take his leadership seriously enough to guide his followers toward reconciling with the Democratic nominee. He has chosen to surround himself with people who loudly went third party in 2016. The division and damage he’s caused may never be undone and I own part of that.

If this primary is anywhere close — heck, even if it’s not — he may do the same thing all over again. Nothing short of a resounding rejection of him will convince him to fuck off. And, for me at least, the reality we’re facing is far, far too serious to risk “sending a message” votes. I don’t think any candidate who has looked over the past few years is unaware that younger Dems are trending more progressive. They look at the same polls we do. So I’m not sure what message those votes would even be sending.

Obviously, you must vote your conscious and your judgement. I’m just explaining why I deeply, deeply regret making the same choice you’re now contemplating.

 

[Aeon Jiminy]

As to your first point, I think you need to differentiate rejection by the party establishment and rejection by other party members and activists who, nevertheless, expect people who supported other candidates to work alongside them in electing whichever candidates are selected by the party they both support.

There may be distinction between US procedures for selecting candidates and the procedures with which I'm familiar in the Labour Party, in that we wouldn't allow people who weren't members of the party with voting rights to participate in the selection procedures, so we don't have the problem of trying to deal with people who supported a particular candidate rather than the party as a whole (and certainly announcing you would vote for the Conservatives if your candidate wasn't selected would very likely get you thrown out of the party!), so maybe that's something I'm missing.

As to the second point, I really don't see that's the question. All political parties are coalitions of people who, whatever their personal views on particular issues, or particular candidates, are prepared to work together to achieve a particular set of goals, just as the general public cast their votes not because they agree with everything the candidate or the party advocates, but because that candidate or party is the one that most clearly approximates to their views.

That's rather different, though, from working together with people who've recently been telling you that you, or your candidate, are no better than the other side -- it doesn't make for a particularly good working environment, for reasons that should be obvious.

People don't have to be friends, or even particularly like each other, to work together effectively, but going for each other in the way different candidates' supporters in the Democratic primaries have been doing doesn't make for an harmonious and profitable working relationship, which is what the Democrats will need later in the year.

How individuals behave towards each other during the campaign is generally more important than how the leadership treats their sometime rivals' supporters, to my mind.

I understand your point as best I can.

I think the reason there isn't a good working environment between party members is that the party hasn't fostered a harmonious and profitable working relationship with at least half of it's voters in a long, long time.

 

[Cristalle]

He already outed himself weeks upon weeks ago. I've been saying that for days in this thread as he already did in one of the others, which was addressed there, as well. Despite one other member claiming she didn't see it even though she responded to it there, she, and no doubt far too many other Bernie supporters,still consider him an ally.

Jolene, you don't remember most of the stuff I write anyway. I don't recall reading it and didn't stick with me that he was going to vote for Trump, it happens.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

With the Republican Party aging out of existence, of course the Democratic Party needs to be smashed in half for that extra 20-30 years of looting.

 

[Salome]

Are they finding it's the policies that are the problem, or is it something about the candidate, or his campaign, or what? And what, if anything, have people found they can say that helps allay voters' particular misgivings?

These are certainly things I'd be considering if I were an activist campaigning for Sanders because I'd want to know how best to win the support of people who I'd expect to be supporting my policies and whose votes I'd need in order to see those policies implemented for what I viewed as the good of everyone, and I find it a bit surprising that this discussion -- which must be going on somewhere -- isn't more public.

A lot of boots-on-the-ground progressive activists (one or two of which I've shared here) have been explaining these problems. They’ve had the same four years and many have done better in bringing in votes for their local candidates and policies because they have rejected the urge to force purity politics on who they contact and placed an emphasis on intersectionality instead of spurning it as “identity politics.”

 

[Salome]

At least it wasn't "Those People?"

Is this aimed at me?

 

[Salome]

And voting for Bernie Sanders means voting for a man who, even after Sandy Hook, apparently considered gun control a matter for the individual states.

This is the really insidious part of the lies and attacks on Biden for some of his past comments and votes. Take the Social Security nonsense. Sanders made many of the same comments and has even expressed praise for Reagan-era cuts. Neither he, nor Biden, are going to cut SS benefits. But Sanders pretends, lies, and insinuates otherwise because Mr Rape Essay anti-immigrant has never had to face full scale national vetting and thinks the past only counts against those he deems as “establishment.”

Is it any less unreasonable, I wonder, to blame Biden for his treatment of Anita Hill

Biden needs to do way, way better in addressing the Anita Hill issue and sexual harassment concerns. His non-apology apologies suck. The problem, of course, is that Bernie is no better. And Antia Hill has already said she’d consider voting for Biden. Because as women we’ve learned we have to make the better of bad choices without whining about it ad-infinitum.

I honestly wonder how some of Sanders' supporters (and, of course, some of Biden's too) expect other candidates' supporters to feel about working alongside them later in the year, after some of the things they're saying about each other now.

Sanders had four years. He did fuck all outreach to minority voters and Clinton voters. His campaign deliberately devised a strategy to use a crowded field to circumvent the will of a majority of Dem voters and now that Dems recognized it for what it was and unified against it, all he’s got is blowing smoke against the establishment. He should have been doing this work for the last four years. He couldn’t be bothered, but he still felt entitled to run against younger and more qualified progressives.