2020 Democratic Primary

[Cristalle]

I'm seeing a lot of people writing Bernie off way too soon.

Seeing the Warren supporters flip to Biden is wild, though. I mean, it shows what they really support, when push comes to shove. They didn't really care about health care. They just wanted the optics of being progressive, which is what Bernie's base has been saying about Warren all along.

I just don't understand old people. They are so crazy. Biden's base is basically people over 70. It's obvious to everybody with a memory longer than 2 minutes that he's racist, sexist, doesn't comprehend basic civil rights, and wants everybody to die in poverty. On top of that, his political theater is the worst. He speaks in word salad, and he just randomly gropes women and kids, and sucks his wife's fingers during stump speeches.

At this point, I have to ask... is the word salad thing some kind of dog whistle to people who took too much LSD back in the 1960s? That's the only way I can comprehend the support for Trump and now Biden. I think Biden's speech sounds like word salad to anybody under 40, but to people who did too many drugs in the 60s, it makes perfect sense, and somehow excuses the horrible things he's done. I must be missing something.

Do you guys really think Biden can beat Sanders in a debate? I mean... Sanders is all about this policy and that, talking wonky details, while Biden would be all, "look here, you raccoon munching prairie cat!" Sanders would have to have a stroke halfway through for Biden to win that argument, LOL.

We may be on the same side but you don't have to be disrespectful to voters like that.

Old people aren't "crazy" but their calculus is very different. Bernie has had to do a better job of making people understand that he's not some radical, to push past the labels. It's dumb that people like his policies but yet would vote for Biden, who has no plans of picking those policies up and is more likely to do another Grand Bargain on Social Security. But it's Bernie's job to educate people about that.

 

[Cristalle]

The Real Losers on Super Tuesday: Urgent Climate Action and Medicare for All. The Winner: Plutocracy | Common Dreams

On three big issues of major concern to the public, Biden ranges from being fairly good to being wholly inadequate. Sanders is superb on all three.

www.commondreams.org

 

[Beebo Brink]

One thing I love about the politics discussions on VVO, is the minute I start to second-guess myself someone writes a post that reminds me EXACTLY why I made my decisions. It's very comforting getting that immediate positive reinforcement.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

One thing I love about the politics discussions on VVO, is the minute I start to second-guess myself someone writes a post that reminds me EXACTLY why I made my decisions. It's very comforting getting that immediate positive reinforcement.

Quite seriously, I read it and thought, "if anyone ever wanted a concrete example of what Beebo just said ..."

 

[bubblesort]

We may be on the same side but you don't have to be disrespectful to voters like that.

Why not? Haven't you heard? We're Bernie Bros. That means that no matter what we do, these Biden extremists will say we are going 'scorched earth' and hyperbolic crap like that. I wasn't being disrespectful, I just think the never-bernie crowd are racist and loony. People here just reinforce that for me. Somebody should tell them that. I mean, look at them, they're all self righteous, like supporting Biden is a great thing or something. This emperor has no clothes. Somebody has to say it.

Has anybody here tried to make the argument that Biden isn't racist? That he isn't speaking word salad? That the Patriot Act was a great piece of legislation that needs to be protected? School bussing is a bad idea? Mass incarceration in private prisons is a good thing? The Iraq war was a great idea? If you can't make those arguments, you don't actually support what Biden does. You oppose Bernie. That's fine... but why oppose Bernie?

 

[Lady Darnk Juniorette]

 

[Lady Darnk Juniorette]

The trump vs biden debates are gonna be looney.

 

[Beebo Brink]

As you may remember, I defended/voted Bernie in 2016 and I’ve since gone 180 on his ass. He does little voter outreach to anyone outside his core and then whines that it’s everyone else’s fault or the rigging of the establishment when he loses.

I've been a long-time admirer of Sanders, since his days as mayor of Bloomington (which was just across the lake from where I lived in upstate New York). What impressed me so much was his grass-roots activism, literally going door-to-door to talk to constituents and ask them what problems they had that the city could fix. And he solved those problems through building coalitions with liberals, business men, Republicans, with everyone within the community. Those traits really mattered to me and I was gung-ho Bernie all through the 2016 election.

But by 2020, I had recognized that the Sanders I remembered from Burlington hadn't scaled well to a national level. I don't know if it's the passage of time, his age, or just that a national level campaign is a different beast entirely from running a community where you can go face-to-face with everyone, but that collaborative spirit didn't make the transition. He TALKS about it a lot, but it's just talk.

I was listening to him tonight on Rachel Maddow, who is always the consummate interviewer. She is respectful, but firm in asking hard questions. And she zeroed in on Sanders' call for an outstanding turnout, that we needed a massive turnout, to mobilize the young and the working class, in order to take back the country. Those young voters didn't show up for Sanders, and the higher voter turnouts ended up voting for Joe, especially black voters. And it was like talking to a brick wall -- Bernie just kept falling back on the same obsessive, repetitive conceptual statements that aren't mapping to what is actually happening. His disconnect from reality is not nearly as bad as Trump's, but it's of the same ilk. Facts that don't fit his narrative simply don't exist and he ignores them.

He can talk about the need for this vast turnout of Dems in one moment and in the other rail against the "Dem establishment" without recognizing that there's a fair amount of overlap. The Dems that show up are the bread-and-butter of the party, and alienating them isn't going to help him. It's what is sinking him, but his rhetoric still doesn't change.

 

[Arilynn]

I’ve been sick on and off since, like, November, and Twitter during Impeachment was unfuckingbearable so I went dark.

Hope you’re feeling better, and glad you dropped in.

As you may remember, I defended/voted Bernie in 2016 and I’ve since gone 180 on his ass. He does little voter outreach to anyone outside his core and then whines that it’s everyone else’s fault or the rigging of the establishment when he loses.

^ This. Sanders never took a step beyond his core, which is both foolish and reinforces to me that he is a rigid ideologue. I can’t imagine him getting anything done with the GOP as POTUS or anyone in the GOP thinking they have adequate political cover to parlay with him.

That said, ugh about Biden.

On a positive note, I salute Bloomberg for his wealth redistribution activities. It didn’t make a dent in his treasure trove, but hopefully it buoyed lots of local news outlets.

 

[Pamela]

About why old people vote like they do (ie Not for Bernie)

From a Post article by Joe Klein.

“We were counseled by our elders: Vote the lesser of two evils. But Humphrey’s kindness and humanity simply didn’t register. We saw only this wimpy, old guy who was probably lying about his newfound opposition to the war. And it didn’t really matter if Nixon won: We were young; we had a world to win, an establishment to overthrow. We had a plenty of time. Four years of Nixon would bring the country to its senses. What was one election?

It was more than 20,000 American deaths in Vietnam and uncountable numbers of Vietnamese people killed and wounded. It was the onset of a politics — Nixon’s Southern strategy — that began the process, which continues to this day, of white racial backlash. It was a descent, by many of us, into a reflexive, silly left-liberalism that caused the Democratic Party to suffer more than 20 years of defeat before being hauled back to reality by Bill Clinton in 1992.

In 2016, I asked Hillary Clinton if the 1968 version of herself — the antiwar civil-rights crusader — would have voted for Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary. She made a brave attempt to argue against a vote for Bernie, but we both knew the real answer.

We also knew what the 1968 versions of ourselves had learned in the 50 intervening years. We had learned the importance of stability, especially in a democracy. In Beirut in 1978, I had seen a sophisticated city ripped to shreds by tribalism … and had learned how fragile a civilized society can be. We had both learned how hard it is to make a difference, that the best change comes incrementally and only with a national consensus. We had both learned that idealism needs to be enhanced by civility and some institutional memory”

 

[Salome]

The Dems that show up are the bread-and-butter of the party, and alienating them isn't going to help him. It's what is sinking him, but his rhetoric still doesn't change.

Early in the 2016 cycle, Bernie was still relatively normal. I recall the “everyone is sick of your emails” debate comment which was a unifying moment. Then he took on a few dodgy advisors and the campaign tone turned nasty. He’s only gotten worse from there. Both Bronx and myself expressed huge misgivings about his lack of minority outreach and lack of foreign affairs experience. They are still huge weaknesses. He makes no attempt to reach those who aren’t already in the bag for him. And while no candidate can be held responsible for all their supporters, many of his official campaign surrogates are divisive and toxic af. I also hold him accountable for allowing divisive false narratives to fester which he could easily put to rest. The “rigged” and “she was just a bad candidate” rhetoric benefits him, so he just lets his followers parrot them and doesn’t seem to care about the really serious harm it does to our national security or election integrity efforts. My position now is just fuck him. Forever.

And as for the examples of his supporters like a few in this thread provides...well...their behavior factored into the losses the Sanders campaign endured yesterday:

 

[Beebo Brink]

About why old people vote like they do (ie Not for Bernie)

Nailed it.

 

[Cristiano]

I think the angriest I've been about stuff is seeing black voters that are not feeling the Bern being described as low information, unintelligent, on the plantation, etc...I want to throat punch every asshole spreading bullshit like this.

 

[Salome]

I think the angriest I've been about stuff is seeing black voters that are not feeling the Bern being described as low information, unintelligent, on the plantation, etc...I want to throat punch every asshole spreading bullshit like this.

Dude. Black progressives have had to spend all day today checking white progressives about their racism and dismissiveness toward civil rights leaders and elder voters who have faced the poll violence of our not so distant past. That kind of disrespect and toxicity is a top-down problem in the Bernie campaign and it’s repulsive to watch.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

This was probably THE deciding factor in my shift from Sanders to Biden, if it came down to a choice between those two (which apparently it has). If it matters (which often it doesn't), my vote in the primary -- when it finally rolls around to my state -- will be for Biden. And pretty much every speech I've heard from Sanders over the course of today has solidified that decision as the right one for me.

That's pretty much my line of thinking. I voted for Warren yesterday, but if/when she drops out, I am hoping Biden wins the nomination. But that decision was a hard one to make. I really, really wanted Warren to do well.

 

[Arilynn]

Seriously and for real -both Ishina and Charlemange are long time posters and as such are welcome to post any damned place that they like.

Wait, Charlemagne is here?

 

[Pamela]

I like Bernie, I like his policies, He has certainly moved the Dems leftward on several issues. I even like his personality.

I voted for him because of polls showing him doing best against Trump in Texas, but since Biden

I think the angriest I've been about stuff is seeing black voters that are not feeling the Bern being described as low information, unintelligent, on the plantation, etc...I want to throat punch every asshole spreading bullshit like this.

I would add the old, too. They know how sideways things can go because they have seen it. They are cautious, not stupid.

 

[Salome]

He has certainly moved the Dems leftward on several issues.

No. Dems have moved Dems leftward. A ton of work by generations of women and POC and other Dems have moved Dems steadily leftward. There have always been progressives in the Dem party. Giving Bernie credit for their work is wrongheaded.

*Edit To Add: If you want to include him in the work, that’s fine, obviously. My issue is attributing the labor of many others solely to him.

 

[Cristiano]

Wait, Charlemagne is here?

Charlemagne Allen

They are in the VVO Discord server too.

 

[Pamela]

No. Dems have moved Dems leftward. A ton of work by generations of women and POC and other Dems have moved Dems steadily leftward. There have always been progressives in the Dem party. Giving Bernie credit for their work is wrongheaded.

Not Bernie alone but I give him credit for helping move ideas into mainstream consciousness