The six primaries that were held yesterday resulted in Joe Biden winning four, Sanders winning one, with the state of Washington still to be called where the two are tied with 67% of the vote tallied. Biden has increased his lead in the delegate count to 856 to 708 for Sanders. It is hard to see how Sanders can regain the lead.
As I have said before, the popularity of Biden is truly surprising. Of all the candidates who started out, I know that many will disagree with me when I say that Sanders was the most inspiring one. But I think I will get a lot more support for my assertion that Biden was the least uninspiring. Every other candidate who sought the nomination had at least some proposal or characteristic that distinguished them from the rest, even the ghastly Michael Bloomberg. But Biden has nothing. He epitomizes the bland party apparatchik, faithfully subservient to the interests of the corporate interests that dominate the party. His proposals just nodded vaguely at all the progressive goals (such as universal health care, affordable college, student debt relief, living wage, affordable infant and child care) that have now become party orthodoxy thanks to the relentless focus by Sanders on these issues. But whereas Sanders proposed well-defined solutions to all of them (Medicare For All, free college, cancelling student debt, $15 minimum wage, and free universal child care), Biden has only vaguely talked about providing ‘moderate’ versions (which is code for ‘corporate-friendly) of each of those. His main claim to fame is that he was vice-president in the Obama administration.
It seems to me that Biden was successful because of the relentless media focus on the issue of ‘electability’, which is code for saying that Sanders was ‘too extreme’ to be elected, which in turn is code for saying that Sanders was ‘corporate-unfriendly’. In addition, almost all the party establishment quickly coalesced behind Biden after all the other establishment-friendly candidates dropped out and endorsed him. The party establishment fear and detest Sanders because his becoming the nominee would undoubtedly have resulted in them losing their sinecures within the party and with it all the sweet perks they have enjoyed. Along with Sanders’s inability to attract older black voters, that establishment support seemed to be enough to make enough people vote for Biden to make him the leader.
So it seems likely that we are going to see a re-run of the 2016 election with the Democrats fielding a candidate who is more inept and less articulate than their last nominee Hillary Clinton. The only reason for hope is that enough people are disaffected by Donald Trump’s appalling performance in office that some of the people who voted for him last time do not vote for him this time around, and that enough people are so terrified of having him re-elected that those who sat out the last election because they just did not care for Clinton now come out to vote for Biden, even though they may care even less for him than they did for her. That is indeed a slim reed on which to lean but I cannot see any other basis for optimism.
If Biden does end up the nominee, we need to be prepared for an issue-less, insult-ridden, vacuous general election campaign. The corporate media is going to love it because it avoids them having to talk about real issues (which requires work) and can instead focus exclusively on the polls and the horse-race aspects and babble on about the latest scandals and gaffes and speculate on how those will affect the election.
Model and actress Emily Ratajkowski tries to debunk the ‘Bernie bro’ slur against Sanders and talks with Seth Meyers about how inspiring Sanders has been, how his supporters never had any illusions that winning the nomination would be easy, that they are still working to get him elected, and how his ideas will be around even if he does not become the nominee.
It might look bleak, but hey, at least Sanders has the support and endorsement from his longtime friend and closest ideological neighbor in the running, Elizabeth Warren.
Oh, wait.
“Electability” is synonymous with focus-group tested safety. The consultants whittle away, trying to find a combination of traits such that no one will be offended. The flip side is that there is nothing to get excited about either. Imagine these people are bakers. That garlic ciabatta is just too much for some people, as is the authentic rye. What they fail to understand is that no one gets motivated by Wonder Bread.
For all the talk of the need to run a moderate, the dems really haven’t had a lot of luck with them. Everyone points to the danger of another McGovern, but everyone forgets about the worst performance of all, the moderate Walter Mondale. Clinton only won because Perot split the vote (twice). Moderates Gore and Kerry both lost, and Obama at least ran on the slogan of “hope and change”, not as a moderate.
… I think I will get a lot more support for my assertion that Biden was the least uninspiring.
Not from us grammar/semantics fanatics…
I have my doubts about Biden being elected in the general election. If he picks another milquetoast running-mate like Hillary did in 2016, I say he has virtually no chance. If he is going to be the unifier that he claims to be, then he should choose someone that is somewhat progressive like Warren. Otherwise I sense there will be a significant number of Bernie supporters that will sit this out again or even vote for Trump. I notice many tweets from Trump playing this game where he says nice things about Bernie and how the democratic establishment is fixing it against Bernie and so on. I fear that that is a wise strategy on his part as that will peel some votes away from Biden. Then of course there is this whole x-factor of the coronavirus that may doom Trump if things get really bad and he is at least partially to blame for how he handled it. But yea, I’m bummed about Bernie too.
Cool, good job all those on the left that ran with the misinformation provided to them by the right and center. For some reason, the comments on PZ’s political posts are full of the anti-Bernie storylines, from ‘Bernie didn’t help Hillary’, ‘Bernie Bros threw the last election in a tantrum’, and even dreck like ‘he’s an old man, he should have just let Elizabeth take the progressive torch’. Goddamn idiots doing Biden and Trump’s work for them.
Warren Harding 2.0 for 2020.
I’m not sure the future is bleak for Senator Sanders, personally. Sure he’s probably not going to be President. But, on the other hand, he’s not going to have to be President and be forced to make all those compromises, kiss all that ass, and get all that shit thrown in his face. He’ll go right on being Good Ol’ Bernie and never have to put up or shut up. Not the worse fate.
@ @ jimf
no one gets motivated by Wonder Bread
Hey’ I do. Faced with such a horror I grab flour, yeast, etc. and get baking.
Biden looks like a great candidate: Why would not hordes of people turn out for a seventy-seven year old, dementia-striken, politician with a dubious record, and a slight Ukrainian problem. Ukrainegate , (English sub-titles)
Assuming Trump’s dementia does not get worse and he does not keel over from covid-19 or cholesterol build-up Trump will have him for lunch. The Senator From MasterCard? Joe Biden, your friendly insurance senator?
If Tulsi Gabbard can stay in the race she may be the only survivor by the convention time and blocking her candidature should really build faith in the DNC.
It’s just “older voters” in general. You see the same trends again and again in a bunch of other states, but consider Michigan to begin with (numbers from The Washington Post, 99% reporting).
Statewide, Michigan was Biden 52.9%, Sanders 36.4%
Whites were 72% of the vote, blacks were 18%, and Hispanics/Latinos were 6%. Among whites, it was Biden 51% and Sanders 40%. That’s close to the statewide numbers, which is not much of a surprise because they were a whopping 72% of the people who voted.
Among blacks, it was Biden 66% and Sanders 27%. If Sanders had gotten something in the range of 40% support among blacks, that would be a good thing, but it couldn’t explain the 16.5% margin that we actually see. Even if Sanders had gotten 100% of the black vote, instead of only 27%, that would not have flipped the state in favor of Sanders.
Now let’s it break down in Michigan by age:
— 18-29 are 14% of the vote. Biden 25%, Sanders 70%
— 30-44 are 18% of the vote. Biden 37%, Sanders 58%
— 45-64 are 36% of the vote. Biden 68%, Sanders 27%
— 65+ are 31% of the vote. Biden 81%, Sanders 14%
That’s a big generational divide. For people younger than 45, Sanders had a significant lead, but they were also only about 32% of the vote. For those 45 and up, Biden had a significant lead, and they were about 67% of the vote.
——
Another big one from yesterday is Missouri. The statewide vote: Biden 60.1%, Sanders 34.6%
Whites were 77% of the vote, blacks were 17%, and Hispanics/Latinos were 3% (not enough data for WaPo to give more details). Among whites, it was Biden 59% and Sanders 36%, again, nearly the same as the statewide numbers. Same story.
Again breaking it down by age for Missouri:
— 18-29 are 14% of the vote. Biden 25%, Sanders 70%
— 30-44 are 18% of the vote. Biden 37%, Sanders 58%
— 45-64 are 36% of the vote. Biden 68%, Sanders 27%
— 65+ are 31% of the vote. Biden 81%, Sanders 14%
The same pattern: younger people for Sanders, older people for Biden.
——
Another question on the exit polls is revealing too. First in Michigan:
“Healthcare” was the most important issue for 41% of voters. Biden 58%, Sanders 37%
“Income inequality” was #1 for 22% of voters. Biden 40%, Sanders 45%
“Climate change” was #1 for 18% of voters. Biden 51%, Sanders 44%
“Race relations” was #1 for only 10% of voters. Biden 63%, Sanders 23%
Same thing in Missouri:
“Healthcare” was the #1 answer for 47% of voters. Biden 61%, Sanders 34%
“Income inequality” was #1 for 20% of voters. Biden 54%, Sanders 40%
“Climate change” was #1 for 19% of voters. Biden 58%, Sanders 39%
“Race relations” was #1 for only 9% of voters. Biden 64%, Sanders 31%
Biden has two things going for him that Clinton didn’t -- he’s not affected by voter misogyny -- https://www.salon.com/2020/03/11/why-is-bernie-losing-because-hes-not-running-against-a-woman/ -- and he hasn’t had decades of right wing attacks crafting a narrative that seeps into the public consciousness.
Sorry, the age section I gave for Michigan was copied from the Missouri part, and I forgot to correct it. It doesn’t change much, but here are the real figures.
— 18-29 were 16% of the vote. Biden 19%, Sanders 76%
— 30-44 were 22% of the vote. Biden 42%, Sanders 52%
— 45-64 were 42% of the vote. Biden 62%, Sanders 26%
— 65+ were 20% of the vote. Biden 71%, Sanders 20%
On the plus side, younger people have a longer future ahead of us.
On the other hand, there could be a lot of young voters who won’t show up for Biden in the general election, and they won’t be as interested in canvassing and making calls and so forth. If you’re relying on senior citizens to do all of the grunt work that younger people usually do in a campaign….. well, good luck with that, I guess.
yup. Exactly this. Add in that Biden has the advantage of not being a woman.
The question really is, will voters show up to vote against Trump, because there aren’t enough people voting for Biden to beat the Republicans.
It would have been a different question with Bernie -- could he inspire enough people to get out and vote that are normally non-voters? Based on the turnout of younger demographics in the primaries the answer isn’t a clear yes. (lots of reasons for that but this is a long held trend that younger voters have a much lower participation rate than older)
I can’t say I’m particularly hopeful for the USA these days, because there is a lot of material for Republican strategists to use against Biden, and because even if Biden prevails it won’t really change much, especially if the democrats don’t flip the senate. No senate, no SC justices….
#12
Actually, I think the answer is a clear yes. Hillary only narrowly lost to Trump, and since then Trump has alienated voters to a greater extent than he has recruited new votes (at least, from what I’ve seen). Bernie would pick up all of those disgusted with Trump, and also those on the far left… seems likely to bridge that gap.
Now, if only the young demographics would actually vote consistently.
Pierce @#3,
Thanks for pointing out the error.
consciousness razor@#9 and @#11,
Thanks for providing all that useful and interesting data.
After 2016, centrists went on the warpath blaming literally everyone else for their problems. They blamed Putin, and Comey, and sexism, and BernieBros, they blamed everything under the sun. And in doing so, refused to learn any valuable lesson from that defeat. Now they’ve done it again, all of it. Let’s not do that. Let’s look at what Bernie (and his followers) did wrong, either in the hopes of correcting course and save 2020 or to avoid comiting the same mistakes in 2024.
The biggest mistake he made (and he made it last time too) was conceding to his opponents idea of civility. Talking about his opponents various liabilities was “helping Trump” but talking shit about Bernie 24/7 was perfectly acceptable. To this day, when asked if Joe Biden can beat Trump, Bernie keeps responding “yes”, like a chump (and a liar). The establishment demanded a unilateral disarmament and he conceded, like a chump.
Refusing to attack his opponents (then Hillary, now Joe) is a disservice for the people supporting Bernie. Joe wants to cut social programs, Joe would absolutely nominate a conservative Supreme Court justice, Joe basically pledged to veto Medicare for All even if it passed through congress. To keep treating him with kid gloves in the name of one-sided civility is a betrayal of all of those voters that will go and vote against their own well being.
Even entertaining mainstream media concerns is also a bad idea. Every minute that Bernie’s campaign spent addressing the BernieBro “problem” was both a waste of time and validation for a pile of bullshit. You have MAGA idiots burning synagogues and harassing people on the streets, yet the thing that dominated news cycles was BernieBros being mean on Twitter. On top of that is the fact that nothing Bernie could have done would be enough to placate his critics, the point of that criticism was not to make his campaign better, they just wanted to hit him. And, like a chump, he let them hit him.
One of the weirdest things I have consistently seen across the board is progressives bending over backwards to not freak out centrists. You are all so strongly conditioned to caress centrist sensibilities that you literally can’t criticize any candidate without a long-ass disclaimer of how you’ll vote for them anyway. Why?
As voters the only lever you get to pull, your only real leverage is your vote. Calls to your congressperson are only gonna annoy their secretary. Protests will be met with indifference or violence. The only real chip you get to play is your vote.
Now, I get it, you won’t vote for Trump or sit this one out. They got you by the balls and there is no option to do a real form of protest without harming innocents, so you won’t do it. But you don’t have to pledge your vote publicly. Bluffing is an option. And participating in a mass bluff won’t alter the results, anyone who would actually stay at home rather than vote Biden will do just that regardless of what others think. Anyone who wouldn’t do that won’t magically stop being afraid of Trump just because they participated in a bluff.
If electability was my main concern, seeing every Bernie supporter pledge to throw the election (even if they are bluffing) will not make me as confident in going with Biden. How can Biden be more electable if all of these people are telling me upfront that they won’t vote for him? That’s how you play it. But Bernie and his voters seem to have relinquished their own power. And that’s what’s been going wrong. If you pledge your vote for the party, no strings attached, like a blank check. What does it matter what you think? Why would politicians bother with improving life for you if they know you’ll just vote for them forever no matter what?
Also, since we are on the topic of mistakes that shouldn’t be made again, counting on “Now that people know what a Trump presidency is actually like, they’ll vote him out” is a stupid non-strategy. Everybody knows Trump is corrupt, just like they did in 2016, everybody know Trump is an imbecile, just like in 2016, everybody know Trump is a disaster, just like they did in 2016. We’ve learned nothing about Donald Trump in the past 4 years that fundamentally changes the perception we had of him in 2016. At the end of the day the whole thing about Trump just devolves into a wall of whataboutism, and that’s not strong enough to carry an election.
The latest episode of Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill’s podcast, recorded before the primary results, made a pretty solid case about how lousy a candidate Biden is. And last week’s episode of Useful Idiots, Matt Taibi’s podcast with co-host Katie Halper, had a pretty solid diagnosis of what Sanders needs to do to if he wants a shot at the nomination. In short, Biden’s doomed and Sanders probably isn’t a canny enough politician to pull off what needs doing, which is to reach out to the moderates and start getting them on side. I’m holding out hope for a major gaffe from Biden, hopefully one that can’t be swept under the rug by the mainstream media, during the debate this weekend for example. That might give Bernie the chance, if he’s got his wits about him, to relitigate his candidacy.
If it ends up being Biden, the wild card that may play in his favor is Trump’s absolutely incompetent handling of the coronavirus epidemic. Hopefully it doesn’t get so bad that lives are lost due to his ineptness, but this is the kind of crisis that he won’t be able to lie and bully his was out of, so perhaps that will be laid bare to many Republicans, depressing their turnout in the fall.
Too late for that. Every day that it continues to spread and grow while Trump acts like a self-obsessed dipshit — who let’s not forget is responsible in the first place for gutting the programs that were meant to respond to this kind of thing and installing his cronies to run them — that means more deaths (now or in the next few months).
It has already been [checks notes] a bunch of days full of dipshittery. The question is just about when it will dwarf the numbers from Hurricane Katrina or the 9/11 attacks or what have you. Fortunately, various state/local institutions, as well as other countries, are picking up some of the slack for the federal government.
I’m sure a lot of Trump’s people are too far gone and won’t vote against him because of it. They’re already trying to blame China, Democrats, the media, or all of the above. They may as well start parodying MSNBC and blame the Soviets for everything. (Or has MSNBC been doing a parody of Cold War conservatives? No way to tell.)
@Tadas
Actually the Coronavirus might end up helping Trump. The disease is deadly among older people so there is a non-zero chance that the boomers in the inner city and the suburbs that are carrying Biden into the nomination will be too sick (or too dead) to get him through the general election. Contrasted with the boomers that back Trump, who mostly live in secluded, rural zones with little risk of infection. Young people aren’t voting and y’all might need them soon.
What’s surprising to me is how blind to what’s going on around you you’ve seem to become, Mano. I used to really enjoy this blog. But lately it’s been a lot of disappointing head-in-the-sand garbage. I think back a number of weeks ago where a post included a Tweet mocking the notion that Bernie was only getting 30% of the vote against a non-existent candidate. I recall posting a comment there that that should be concerning and not mocked. I don’t know if I was the only one who did so, but a few posts later, you were talking about people using bad math and pointing to polls showing Bernie did well in hypothetical one-one-ones against the likes of Biden and Klobuchar. That was a depressing moment because someone like you with a scientific background should have known that was bad reasoning. But maybe you’re not as knowledgeable about politics as you think you are. Maybe you’re suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect. There are a number of problems with such hypothetical polling. One is that many people, in primaries like this, don’t make up their mind until the last minute. (Admittedly, I know this from canvassing experience as well as talking to others who canvass. That is experience you may very well lack. I don’t know.) So right away these polls are bad predictors of what people are actually going to do. Add in a second problem in that they don’t know how endorsements are going to impact results and these polls become essentially useless. (For example, the results from those polls in comparison to actual voting results would suggest that Bernie might be the second choice for both Biden and Klobuchar supporters. But how did a Klobuchar endorsement of Biden influence people’s final decision? It is unlikely the polls would take this into account.)
And then the continued denial of the BernieBros…why? OK, I’ll be honest here: Since Bernie has more support among younger, tech savvy voters, he’s bound to have disproportionately bad supporters on the Internet. That said, there is a real problem there. What good is denying it? I’ve noted before that gaslighting people is just going to piss them off. But then I guess part of the issue here is I’ve noticed you engage in BernieBro-ish behavior. No, I’m not talking about the abusive behavior. I’m talking about the damn near worship of Bernie as a sinless man and, therefore, the Second Coming. I include those people in my definition of BernieBro. That attitude toward Bernie is sad for an atheist…but here we are! I think back, as my main example, to the controversy as to whether or not Bernie told Warren in private that he thought that a woman could not win. Of course Warren had to be the liar because sinless Bernie would never do such a thing! Oh, sure, you tried to hide your Bernie worship with the excuse of multiple reports that said Bernie didn’t say it. As I noted, though, it was said to have been a private meeting, so all these reports would have been second-hand accounts at best and, thus, not really reliable. Again, with your background in science, you should have known better.
With that, I’d like to link this video of Krystal Ball bashing Warren and her supporters. I would ask you read some of the comments as well. Can you seriously say the video and those comments are not problematic? Or, if you can admit them as problematic, will you just make the “every campaign has bad apples supporting it” excuse?
These last five months or so have caused me to become disillusioned with many progressives. I may have noted this before, but I had started noticing parallels with the atheist movement. Back 10 years ago or so, I remember an atheist movement that was critical of religion and used the treatment of women as an example of how harmful it is. But then many of those atheists disappeared when women asked to be treated better at conferences. Feminism wasn’t an atheist issue, they said to the women. It turned out a lot of that concern for women and other people was just moral grandstanding. I started noticing much the same with progressives. Actually, Krystal Ball was a key contributor to my disillusionment as she’d claim to be so concerned about the health and wellbeing of people while simultaneously mocking others. She, and a lot of the terrible commenters on those videos, helped me to realize just how fake many progressives apparently are and that their concern about people was probably, just like all those atheists, about portraying themselves as morally superior. After Bernie didn’t do well on Super Tuesday, I discovered even more supporters to be like Ball. I saw a good number write screeds about how the planet is going to die because Bernie won’t be there to save it. I saw numerous posts, much like Ball’s video, suggesting that people who don’t support Bernie don’t care about the poor or the sick. This is to say the moral grandstanding has been turned up to 11.
And, of course, I’m not saying all progressives are bad. Just like there are atheists who do care about feminism and think it should be included with atheist issues, there are progressives who are out doing good. But, damn! It seems like we have a lot of housecleaning to do and denying our house is messy does no good. Let’s do what A Lurker from Mexico is suggesting, but actually do it…instead of suggesting the problem with the BernieBros is that they weren’t mean enough and/or asserting that “nothing Bernie could have done would be enough to placate his critics.” *sigh* (Very last thing — I don’t know if I’ve said this before here, but, sorry, A Lurker from Mexico, if Bernie’s supporters are going to be claiming moral superiority, don’t be surprised when they’re asked to actually demonstrate morality and address the BernieBros. It’s not just a mainstream media concern. It’s an actual voter concern. Why should I, as a voter, believe Bernie is the moral choice, which is how he’s being advertised, when no one, not even Bernie, seems to want to address the BernieBros???)
I’m just thinking of The Doors’ lyrics: “The old get old And the young get stronger May take a week And it may take longer They got the guns But we got the numbers Gonna win, yeah we’re takin’ over Come on!”
The “young”, that’s us, now voting for Biden!
Oh dear, oh dear!
😉
@20
Because nobody but terminally online donut twitter weirdos actually gives a shit about whatever animal emoji Bernie fans are posting on twitter this week. Why should people competing for one of the most powerful political positions in the world waste the time addressing something so utterly trivial? Do you actually believe middle-american working class swing voters care about whether or not @berniefan2994 made a mean tweet to Elizabeth Warren last week?
If that at all affects someone’s decision of who to vote for, rather than the actual issues being stated by the actual candidate, they’re an aesthetically-motivated idiot and no amount of actual argument will sway them, because there’ll always be one mean person on twitter they can use to justify their aesthetic preference.
@Leo Buzalsky
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone (including Mano) denying that there are toxic and mean people among Bernie supporters. What I deny, vehemently, is that they are somehow more concerning that anyone else’s toxic support. After seeing Warren and Biden supporters publicly wishing that Bernie dies from a heart attack, after a 4 year long barrage of dismissive and scornful comments against them as people and the policies they support I don’t think anyone gets to claim moral superiority over BernieBros or whatever.
Trump supporters have burned synagogues and ran over protesters, and yet the news cycle has been all about BernieBros tweeting snake emojis or some nonsense. Did they plug your outrage module backwards when they were building your brain? I thought you people hated “false equivalences”. The media clearly wanted to propagate that false equivalence, and they clearly wanted to make a big deal out of the bad actors on the one group, but not the bad actors in other groups. Humoring that nonsense was never gonna lead anywhere.
Bernie addressed the “problem” repeatedly. The fact is that anything short of personally going to his supporters computers and shutting down their Wi-Fi was not going to change anything on that front (and that’s just for the ones that were his ACTUAL supporters, and not people who were either mischaracterized or were pretending to be his supporters to stir some shit up). “Addressing it” did nothing.
I got plenty of racism and mean spirited bullshit from Biden supporters, but he doesn’t have to address that because the powers that be decided that toxic online behavior is only relevant some of the time. He shouldn’t have to. Because stopping everything in a national conversation because someone was a dick on Twitter is insane. And saying that we are gaslighting you because we don’t go DEFCON 1 on Bernie supporters being dicks on Twitter would set a funny standard. You are not going DEFCON 1 on Biden and Warren supporters being dicks to me on Twitter. Are you gaslighting me? Are we all gaslighting each other? How does that work?
It’s funny that you mention “worship” of Bernie. I heard a lot of that from the idiot right wingers (mostly panistas) here in Mexico. They called AMLO “messiah” mocking his supporters. You really don’t want to sound like panistas. Those guys are nazi sympathizers.
It’s not a religious sentiment. They are looking ahead of the immediate problem, and his response is the one that makes more sense. It’s not that Saint Bernie will come down from the heavens and fix the environment. It’s that anything short of swift action is as bad as doing nothing. The time to incrementalism your way out of climate catastrophe was 30 years ago, there is no time anymore. Saying “but Trump is worse” won’t magically make your inadequate half-measures work, we have a deadline, the permafrost is melting and when the pockets of warehouse gases get released into the atmosphere none of this bullshit will matter anymore. Saying “Trump is worse” will bring no peace to the families that were left out of obamacare and will be left out of bidencare, the lesser evil or greater evil was no different for the people who didn’t get included either way. Clinging to the one dude who is presenting a plan that does include you is not fanaticism, it’s just common sense. Specially considering that many of the issues Bernie tried to address with his policies are matters of life or death. You wouldn’t dismiss BLM activists who want stronger policies to address racial equality as fanatics, would you? You probably wouldn’t feel inclined to be nice to people who would dismiss them either. Maybe we could regard matters of life or death across the board with the seriousness they deserve and put “people being mean on the internet” on it’s rightful place on the priority list (very VERY low).
I believe you care (for some reason) very deeply about BernieBros tweeting mean things. I don’t believe you care more about it than you do about:
1-People in debt.
2-People without healthcare.
3-Abolishing ICE.
4-Ending the wars.
5-Investing in infrastructure.
Unless BernieBros take precedence over those other things in your priority list it would be a mistake to derail conversations about those other things in favor of talking about BernieBros. And by letting that topic take as much of his time as it did, that’s the mistake Sanders made. Imagine if Warren stopped talking about her plans or her economic policies to talk about her native american heritage, for days and weeks. Wouldn’t that be increasingly frustrating? Isn’t the other stuff WAY more important to talk about? Why is so much time and energy invested on an absolute non-issue? That’s BernieBros. Warren made a small mistake by even entertaining Trump with the DNA test, but she got better, she barely addressed it later on because literally everything else was more important. Failure to do that was Bernie’s mistake.
@Leo: as a cynical Dutchman I enjoy to point out that in a few respects you are still as naive as 10 years ago. Yes, I’m referring to “I remember an atheist movement that was critical of religion and used the treatment of women as an example of how harmful it is”. It’s your naivite that causes your disppointment.
1. Mano’s political and economic views always have been marred by his ideological prejudices, which immunize him against evidence. Had you noticed this before you now would not have been “surprised how blind to …..”
2. In the same way you would have focused on Sanders’ political program, not on his character.
3. You (and also Mano) would have understood from the beginning that Sanders only could win in the beginning because Democratic opponents were divided. Now there’s only one left -- and even Warren would not have been much better -- things become far more difficult.
While I’m not exactly sure I would not be surprised at all if Biden becomes the Democratic candidate and then loses to Donald the Clown.