Category: Electoral Politics Page 8 of 30

Bernie Sanders

Yeah, not much to say right this moment. I think this is a mistake; there’s a lot of flux right now. This isn’t an ordinary season, and he might have made it in, though, obviously, the odds were against him. I suspect part of Sanders’ reasoning is that, unlike Biden, he wasn’t willing to urge his followers to go vote during a pandemic and many states were making mail-in voting impossible.

Biden was always most likely to win, alas. There are a lot of people who want a return to the old normal, and Biden, for all his flaws, symbolizes that. Plus, for most people, he’s best known threw memes showing him as Obama’s best buddy (thanks, Onion).

Biden won’t be President for long, if he wins. He’s clearly in decline, even if he’s a figurehead, someone else will be running the show. Or they’ll just hand it to the vice president. His vice president pick is incredibly important, since that person may well be who is actually being elected as President.

As for Bernie, this was his last hurrah. Warren is seen as having betrayed the left; she won’t be able to win if she runs again. I would guess AOC is the heir apparent, but we will see.

Bernie lost because Democrats are actually conservatives (Republicans are reactionaries). Independents tend left, but don’t vote as much as registered Democrats. Likewise, the old vote more than the young, and there was heavy-handed engineering to shut down the votes of poorer or younger people. (For example, shutting down polling places in poorer neighbourhoods, leading to massive lineups in the few that remained. Same with campuses.)

Bernie was the only chance of having a good government in charge in the United States for the next four to eight years.

If Trump wins, we have another four years before a chance at someone decent. If Biden wins, it will be eight, as even if Biden’s VP loses in 24, he still takes up the running slot.

Either way, we’re out of time on things like climate change. We were already past the point of no return, we’ve now lost the serious possibility of mitigation.

So be it. Be well, all and take into account that, no matter who wins, the 20s are not going to be a good time unless you’re already quite well-off.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

We have Idaho primaries (25 delegates), Michigan primaries (147 delegates), Mississippi primaries (41 delegates), Missouri primaries (68), North Dakota caucuses (18 delegates), and Washington primaries (107 delegates).

The polling on this is terrible, it went very south Sunday. Expect bad news tonight.

Fortunately, this is not a big mess of primaries, and there will be a chance to turn it around later, but some luck is going to be required. Perhaps Sanders can take Biden down clearly in the next debate (or, more likely, Biden’s senility will take him down). Perhaps a Biden senile-moment blows up past the media’s ability to filter it. Perhaps something else; obviously no one wants the Coronavirus to decide the primaries or elections, but Trump, Biden, and Sanders are all in the very vulnerable class, and politicians are still exposing themselves to people.

If you’re working to get Bernie elected, I’d suggest you keep working. It’s impossible to know what will happen, but also be prepared for the bad news which is most likely coming.

(Aside: To me it looks like Warren’s repeated attacks on Sanders had the effect of estranging various of her followers from Sanders. She’s not stupid enough not know what she’s doing. So be it.)

Feel free to use the comments to discuss the results as they come in, and so on.

Edit: Corrected the number of delegates Missouri offers.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Warren Elizabeth

There is another set of primaries tomorrow. Bernie and Biden are neck-and-neck in current total delegates, with Biden taking the lead in polling for tomorrow.

Warren has spent a week not doing anything but complaining about Bernie and going on a comedy show.

Today is the last moment Warren can endorse either Bernie or Biden and look like she means it. If she endorses today she can claim it was for impact on the next set of primaries.

If she doesn’t do it today, she clearly dithered.

The case for her endorsing Sanders is simple. His policies and politics are far closer to hers. So much closer that there is no comparison between Sanders and Biden in this regard.

But more than that, and perhaps worse, is that the bankruptcy bill Biden championed and helped force through is why Warren claims she went into politics. It is her political raison d’etre. It is her origin story as a politician.

If she doesn’t endorse Sanders, not only is she not supporting the politician who wants to do most of what she wants to do, she is failing to oppose the politician who she claims has been her nemesis.

On top of that, she will be forfeiting a leadership position in the left-wing progressive movement, a movement large and powerful enough to challenge the Democratic political machine.

In 2016, she slid on not endorsing anyone, but this time tens of millions of passionate Sanders supporters, many of whom feel they need universal health care to survive, student debt relief not to be poor, and a vigorous climate change plan to have a future, aren’t going to forgive sitting on the sides.

If she sits this one out, then she’s just a Senator again. Plus, she’ll probably be primaried.

I also keep seeing arguments that Warren owes no one anything, and I find that strange. She’s a sitting Senator whom millions of people supported in the primaries. It seems to me, at least, that she owes those people something; that if she believed in her policy platform, if she believed those policies were good for the country, that she owes her supporters an attempt to get something similiar through with Bernie, because Biden isn’t going to do it. Heck, he’s floated Jamie Dimon and Bloomberg’s names as potential cabinet members.

Meanwhile, we’re coming up on another finanical crisis, thanks to the Coronavirus and Russia deciding to crash oil prices at the same time as demand is already slumping. The big banks are going to need another huge bailout–again, Warren’s reason for being in politics.

She won’t fight to have Sanders in charge, so that Wall Street isn’t bailed out while ordinary people aren’t?

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that if Warren doesn’t endorse Bernie, it looks like she has no principles and doesn’t care about her followers. (No, don’t use electability. Sanders polls better against Trump and doesn’t have dementia.)

It makes it appear that she’s primarily concerned with only one person: Elizabeth Warren.

I hope that isn’t the case, but she’s running out of time to prove it isn’t. In fact, if you read this post by email tonight and she hasn’t endorsed him by then, she’s probably too late.

I confess to some anger over this, but I also feel sadness. When a politician who had a chance at greatness proves that they are primarily moved by self-interest, not by the principles they espoused, it is a cause for sorrow. We sneer at politicians precisely because so many of them seem to have no real beliefs, but it is ennobling when we find one of the few who aren’t like that.

I had hoped Warren was among their number, and my anger is genuinely partly moved by sorrow. As I said repeatedly throughout the primary, though I preferred Sanders I would have endorsed Warren if she were the nominee.

And everyone knows that if Sanders and Warren’s positions were reversed, he would have already endorsed.

May Warren prove her that followers were right to trust her, that her origin story was real, and that she stands behind her plans.

(If anyone else is getting bored of “all primary all the time,” yeah, posts on other subjects soonish.)

Edit: I changed the wording from “neck-and-neck” in first paragraph after commenters pointed out I obviously hadn’t read the polling from today and yesterday. Yup, Biden’s pulling ahead substantially, my bad, I had only looked at current delegate totals. Guess Americans really do hate the ideas of universal health care, their children not being debt slaves, and not dying like flies to climate change.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Warren Elizabeth

So, Warren has been the second most progressive candidate in the primaries on domestic issues. But now she’s dropping out, and she has a decision to make: Should she endorse Bernie, endorse Biden, or stay neutral?

Back in 2016, Warren declined to endorse anyone during the primary, even though she and Sanders were closer politically than she and Clinton. I assumed then that she believed Clinton was likely to be President and wanted to not estrange her. Clinton is famously vindictive.

That time, her endorsement only really mattered in Massachusetts. This time, she’s a former front-runner with a stack of delegates. She’s been hitting Sanders for a few months, trying to find a road to victory, but now her campaign is over.

I said in 2016 that Warren had shown she wasn’t an ally, that she put herself and her own viability before the movement.

I hope I was wrong, or that I was right and that she feels that she has a future on the left to protect. This, after all, is Sanders last Presidential run, he’ll be too old next time. She can be the heir apparent if she moves hard behind him.

Alternatively, she can try and get the VP slot with Biden. He’s clearly got dementia, so she could wind up as the power behind the throne or even as President, if he declines fast enough.

Finally, she could decide to stay in the Senate, and she might be thinking that Biden is likely the next President and wants to be able to work with him.

This is a close race, however, and her endorsement could make the difference between who wins. Bernie will do far more of what she says she believes in, so much so that there is no comparison.

Does that matter to her? Do her principles come first? Does she care about the policies she says she believes in and the good of Americans (because, yes, Bernie will help far more Americans)? Is she an ally, a member of the progressive movement, or just a politician, maneuvering for advantage and ambition?

We’ll see.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

So, Pete and Klobuchar have dropped out and endorsed Biden. (I’m hearing unconfirmed rumors that Buttigieg had to have his arm twisted.) The lastest polls show Biden up slightly. Warren has stayed in, and yeah, it’s credible that the reason why is because more of her voters would go Bernie. Wonder if she was offered Biden’s VP slot?

Biden is very clearly senile. Sounds like he has dementia.

Use the comments to this thread to discuss, as this will be the story of the day.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Bernie Sanders

Sanders supporters have a reputation for being passionate. Some of that reputation is unearned, a simple attempt by the establishment to pretend they are uniquely aggressive.

But some of it is true, and it’s true for a simple reason.

Sanders followers believe he is the only candidate who will fight to get them universal health care and student loan relief, They feel their lives are at risk, because they can’t afford health care, and student loans are so heavy many of them, or their children or friends can never expect to have a good life.

In other words, Bernie’s followers are scared for their lives, and of having terrible lives, and when someone gets in the way of what they see as their only real chance of not having to be scared, they get angry.

This is exactly what you would expect. “Oh, I’m sorry you might die because of lack of healthcare but other issues are more important” is the sort of argument which doesn’t fly. “Your death and miserable life matter less than my pet issue.”

This is why, in particular, many Sanders followers are angriest at Warren, who has recently repeatedly attacked Sanders.

This is normal behaviour for a politician in a race, but they don’t see it first as a race where people are competing to become president. Instead it is a movement to get people health care, cancel student loans and tackle climate change. Warren was seen as part of that movement, as an ally, and the competition was only to see whether it would be Warren or Bernie as the nominee.

For Warren to attack Bernie is to say “my personal ambition is more important than saving all of these lives and making so many lives better.”

That’s the Sanders supporters emotional logic. Especially since it often reads as “you need health care or you might die, but I think something is more important than whether you live or die.”

Every candidate has an emotional message. Sander is “not me, us.” It’s not about him, it’s about saving other people. So to attack him, as someone who is an ally, isn’t an attack on Bernie, it’s an attack on those who support Bernie’s plan to save lives.

Thus the anger at Warren.

Warren’t emotional logic is “I’ve got a plan for that.” Her claim is that she’s the most competent candidate (the logic that Hillary ran on, actually). She appeals to technocrats and many women who find her journey resonates with them the same way Clinton’s did.

Biden’s emotional logic is “back to the Obama administration, life was more or less OK then, right?” Plus a bit of emotional appeal as the inappropriate but essentially well-meaning uncle. Yeah, he puts his arm around everyone, but he doesn’t mean anything by it.

Warren and Biden are competing on who is the best candidate, Sanders is leading a movement to save lives and make a lot of lives much much better. Warren was seen as an ally, she is believed to have equivocated on the most important goals like Medicare For All and Student Debt Relief, and she then attacked Sanders, as if they weren’t on the same side.

Such people, emotionally, are considered traitors, and traitors are always despised far more than honest enemies.

Bernie leads a movement, not a political campaign. His followers are angry because they are literally scared for the lives and the lives of those they love.  His movement is about other people, not about his ambition.

Remember that Bernie asked Warren to run in 2015 and only ran when she, triangulating, chose not to. If she had accepted, she’d be where he is, because she didn’t, he is

Sanders ran for other people, not for himself.

So when Warren or anyone else attacks Bernie, it’s seen as an attack on “us” and our odds of living and having decent lives, not as an attack on Bernie.

That’s why attacks on Bernie are taken personally by people other than Bernie.

They aren’t attacks on Bernie, they’re attacks on the movement he leads.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Early numbers coming in indicate that Bernie is crushing the field. This is what he needs to keep doing, so the DNC et al. can’t steal the nomination at the convention.