2020 Democratic presidential primary thread, pt 3: life is very long

If I could I'd vote for Bernie, but he just died.

good luck usanders

La Riva/Peltier 2020

Ahem we have unfinished business leftover from prev thread
_-------------------
Milo has herpes?

― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, March 6, 2020 5:10 PM bookmarkflaglink

HPV like Michael Douglas

/lost beastie boys lyrics

I was prepared to vote for Bernie in the CA primary but if I were faced with this choice now I honestly don't know... kinda glad I'm not tbh. Abstaining.

shocked u arent taking the hardbitten strategic sure-loser route

you wrong person you

I think they both suck for very different reasons tbh

🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/486393-trump-calls-inslee-a-snake-amid-coronavirus-outbreak-in-washington

🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍

I appreciate Trump revitalizing the snake discourse!

Did he make a hissing sound?

the hissing of summer pawns

I forgot Inslee was in the damn primary, this shit goes on waaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too long

Holy shit, is that the snake icon?! I swear to god I thought it was a green swan, and I was all, green swan? What's up with that? Green swan event?

over the course of today I went from distant optimism for sanders' prospects to total and complete doom. which is good in a sense cause now I can ~let goooo~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU1knfz15xI

green swan deal

swan green deal

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J-Ctu8lBc-g/UHB0PPr41mI/AAAAAAAAMZs/LEs7V2BswOU/s320/Paul+Williams+as+Swan.jpg

giant swan deal

https://youtu.be/dQm4mxRJgtU

write-in vote for jeb!

Would that it were Inslee!

So what stunt can Bernie pull to get some good vibes at least going again? Cuz he needs one right about now.

This is some pretty good calculus:

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/06/elizabeth-warren-should-endorse-bernie-sanders/

Warren’s longterm threat to Biden and the party establishment is only as strong as her ties to the progressive movement, and the same is true of an eventual endorsement of Biden. Her value in a general election to Biden is her ability to bring Biden the progressive vote and help him unite the disparate wings of the party. Clearly, then, Warren is more valuable to Biden as an eventual endorser if she can actually bring progressives with her, and the most effective way she can do that is if she has endorsed and campaigned for Sanders. The same calculation was true in 2016. Warren’s endorsement of Clinton would have been more valuable to Clinton had Warren originally endorsed Sanders, and would have had more of a unifying effect than it ultimately did. Had Warren endorsed Sanders first, she’d likely have been able to bring more Sanders people with her when she switched to Clinton.

The other possibility — that with Warren’s endorsement, Sanders might surge back and claim the nomination — would also be a boon to Warren, who could name her position(s) in the new administration. And, indeed, with an unstable president and an unpredictable pandemic, any outcome is possible. But given the possible head-to-heads in the general election, and Biden’s demonstrated inability to campaign effectively, there’s more likely to be an administration for Warren to serve with Sanders as the nominee.

But, again, if Sanders falls short, and Warren and Sanders both endorse Biden, she will, paradoxically, have done Biden a significant favor by previously endorsing against him.

I would be delighted to be proven wrong but I really, really don't think that endorsement is on the way.

I was about to read that but the intercept

Ugh. Same here on both counts

Xp

if you can read the NYT/WaPo or watch MSNBC clips you can read the intercept ffs, the bullshit ratio is similar if not better

why in the name of all that’s holy would I watch MSNBC clips?

Did The Nation endorsing Bernie make waves... anywhere? (obv. not in results but it's weird to think about how little anyone pays attention to the only lefty media you could find in most places in the '90s)

I had no idea so I'm gonna say no

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/endorsement-2020-bernie-sanders/

I don't think a Warren endorsement would be that valuable at this point, enough time has passed that anyone who pays enough attention to her to care about her endorsement knows it would be grudging.

I appreciate the 5D CHESS!! of “Warren should def endorse Bernie to make her Biden endorsement more meaningful.”

idk why anyone in Bernie’s camp wants her endorsement. they’ve spent the past couple of months convincing me she’s Not A Real Progressive.

by "his camp" do you mean snotty young supporters or the actual campaign

I was an Inslee stan till last August. Wish it gave me a warmer feeling to see him back in the news.

One of 10 candidates I'd prefer to the current options.

That describes only 5% of the Bernie camp folks I know, but whatever, I feel like we’ve flogged this horse to a pulp in the previous thread

Xp to roger

I don't think a Warren endorsement would be that valuable at this point, enough time has passed that anyone who pays enough attention to her to care about her endorsement knows it would be grudging.

I think a well-timed Warren endorsement could have done a lot to make the Sanders campaign seem less ideologically isolated, which in turn might have helped with the credibility issue, the sense that he's promising outlandish ideas no one else thinks is worth pursuing, that he's not really "serious." It wouldn't just be about bringing her (whatever) % into the fold, it would be to help say, "hey, these views are representative of a certain wing of the party." And most people aren't really paying a ton of attention to the insider beef shit.

by "his camp" do you mean snotty young supporters or the actual campaign

Yeah and also more simplistically sometimes just that shot of juice / endorphins that a symbolic act like an endorsement provides can do wonders for the whole spirit around a campaign . Right now Bernie-land is pretty morose.

Xp again

otm

I almost want AOC to unendorse Bernie so she could re-endorse him again

She should unendorse him go to endorse Biden and then do the "too slow" handshake thing.

why are Sanders supporters so poisonous on twitter

Life is short. Embrace opportunities to imagine the dream of a new possibility.

IT ISN'T "THE PRIMARY," GODFUCKINGDAMMIT! PRIMARIES!

this is the primary thread to discuss Democratic presidential in

I was prepared to vote for Bernie in the CA primary but if I were faced with this choice now I honestly don't know...

― Οὖτις, Saturday, March 7, 2020 9:37 AM (eight hours ago)

IT ISN'T "THE PRIMARY," GODFUCKINGDAMMIT! PRIMARIES!

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Saturday, March 7, 2020 4:19 PM (one hour ago)

that's Shakey telt

Fuck, Bernie is at 1 in 50 chance of a majority in the 538 forecast. Sorry, you can't blame Warren for not wanting to endorse that. This is on Bernie, he lost it.

Also, holy shit you guys talked a lot about Warren through the night, huh? Honestly crazy how much anger there is at her after Bernie fucked this up so massively

at least someone is happy:) ^

More seriously the window for a Warren endorsement is long gone, if it was every really even an option

... she suspended her campaign yesterday

I mean, I don't imagine that she'll expect the louder Bernie fans to be anything but pissy about handing over those votes she stole, but the endorsement is still likely coming.

lol

It was never an option, but yeah it would help even less today than it would have done a week ago

oops that lol was meant for a different thread sorry!

If you're going to endorse anyone it carries more weight if you do it immediately. Biden's endorsers had hardly any time to play with and needed to strike while iron was hot.

(I'm not suggesting Warren is required to endorse Bernie, or indeed anyone else). Bernie needed a lot more than just one endorsment anyway and he should have been hunting down other names to counter Biden's recent set of endorsements, the cumulative effect of which was worth than any specific one

There weren't any other candidates to get, except for Tulsi's dead-enders and their militia already voted.

That's on Bernie, not Warren though

He got Marianne Williamson as a surrogate. She began tweeting about coups...

Warren's failure is her own poor campaign not the lack of endorsement (which she isn't obliged to give)

No one said anything about fault but the narrative of failure to get an endorsement from people whose political aims are opposed to his is dumb. "Okay, so we'll abandon Medicare4All Pete, you in?!"

Fuck, Bernie is at 1 in 50 chance of a majority in the 538 forecast. Sorry, you can't blame Warren for not wanting to endorse that. This is on Bernie, he lost it.

a) nonsense
b) there are still 30 states to go and Biden might accidentally go on TV in the next few days and let voters see him talk

I don't think it's dumb to look at where we are now and say that Sanders strategy wrt m4a was a mistake

I think voters have seen Biden talk, sic...

Assuming you're right Fred, what should Bernie have done differently

a) pre-Nevada
b) between Nevada and Super Tuesday
c) since Super Tuesday

(fwiw i largely agree with you that Warren isn't really a factor)

Abandoning your signature and most popular issue is a strong political strategy.

Most voters do not pay as much attention as the people in these threads and (fingers crossed) now have fewer distractions in the field

I don't think it's dumb to look at where we are now and say that Sanders strategy wrt m4a was a mistake

he near-singlehandedly made it an issue of national discussion and has mobilised millions of young ppl on the issue (many of whom are not able to take eight hours on a work day to caucus or vote in a primary despite now being engaged), and weaponised a slogan to do so which nobody has achieved in seventy years of post-New-Deal politicking. the fact that this has activated multibillion for-profit health"care" corporations, who donate to shitty Dems, against him was not a reason to not do this.

There were no debates between South Carolina, endorsements and Super Tuesday or since. When Biden speaks, it does seem to hurt him (cf. the first three states).

Which is cool because if he wins anyway, it will be fodder for the narrative that Bernie tanked him.

I mean, he should have never run in the first place :)

Who knows what could have been done? What was needed after Nevada was a pivot into becoming a unity candidate, and somehow avoiding getting hurt so bad in South Carolina. The SC thing is just incredible, it killed him four years ago, and he let the same thing happen this year. We don't know who is to blame but that was bad bad bad. The pivot... Does anyone think Sanders could have done it? I know Matt Yglesias wrote that thing about how Sanders was mostly going to govern like every other Democrat, but... That's clearly not what neither Sanders' fans nor the establishment thought.

It's a lot easier for a progressive candidate to win two caucaseses and a very white primary. Though Sanders didn't even do that well in New Hampshire. What the heck do you do after that?

... you realize that whites are not his strongest demographic, right?

Making a litmus test out of something that was never going to be passed is a good way to stand out. None of the other candidates could follow Bernie on M4A. But now he seems alone and isolated instead. So yeah, in hindsight, it worked amazingly for a long time, but then it came back to hurt him.

Lets take those one by one

a) He shouldn't have run.

Who should have run instead?

b) A pivot into becoming a unity candidate.

Agree 100%!

c) hurt so bad in South Carolina

SC was always going to be somewhere he'd do badly. I'm not sure he could have avoided that. Being better prepared for the day after the defeat might have worked. I think pulling some names out of the hat might have helped. Steyer, Beto and Yang isn't the greatest forward line but pulling in some numbers might have helped. Definitely should have really capitalized on that big Nevada win more than he did though

South Carolina is going to be tough every time a progressive runs, but you just have to do better than losing by 30%. You just have to. And if the progressive movement wants to do better next time, honestly they could do worse things than just focus 100% on getting the message to work in South Carolina, and then get it to work elsewhere afterwards.

Who should have run instead

If, as several Liz Lads argued, James Clyburn is that influential (and he probably is, though I don't know what by what percentage), it's pointless concern trolling to even talk about it. He's actively opposed to Medicare For All.

lol @ 7/8 chances of Biden winning the nomination according to 538.

A progressive candidate cannot play by the same rules as the centrists - the Sanders strategy of appealing to the people is the only option. The media and party apparatus managed to form a coherent front at the last second to (probably) stop it again this time but it was getting pretty dicey - what if Biden wasn't able to take the mantle?

Softening or abandoning progressive issues to appeal to the centrists and/or apparatus doesn't work - they jump ship to an actual moderate (much like moderate Republicans just vote for the Republican) - and you lose your base. If it was an effective strategy, Elizabeth Warren wouldn't have tanked after being the front runner.

Maybe, as a strategy, it will never work and we'll just keep circling the drain until the seas swallow us up or nuclear hellfire engulfs us all. Maybe it will work at 'shifting the Overton Window' where Joe Biden now has to at least pretend to care about a minimum wage increase. Maybe in 2024 or 2028 (or 2020 after Biden calls a protester an adorable ethnic slur) it just works and we don't have a complete dogshit general election between two people who think poor people in hot countries count as human beings.

who don't think poor people in hot countries count as human beings, obv.

Btw is this thread's subtitle a 'Hollow Men' quote or…?

If, as several Liz Lads argued, James Clyburn is that influential (and he probably is, though I don't know what by what percentage), it's pointless concern trolling to even talk about it. He's actively opposed to Medicare For All.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), 7. marts 2020 12:04 (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

If so, then it's pointless to run on Medicare For All, and was a mistake to do so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't know who should have run instead. Warren wasn't doing better in South Carolina at any point, it's worth keeping in mind. But again, I think the only thing we know about Sanders' strategy for SC was from this article in the Atlantic from april 2019: He’s counting on winning Iowa and New Hampshire, where he was already surprisingly strong in 2016, and hoping that Cory Booker and Kamala Harris will split the black electorate in South Carolina and give him a path to slip through there, too. And then, Sanders aides believe, he’ll easily win enough delegates to put him into contention at the convention. They say they don’t need him to get more than 30 percent to make that happen. That's a bad strategy!

You left out the part where a person actually quoted by name described the entire campaign as a long shot with a 25% chance of being the nominee - which, being down the final two and it took Obama and Reid stepping in to clear the centrist field for Biden...

"Don't run if you're a progressive" is, of course, a much smarter strategy.

Well, yeah, a lot of communist parties agree with that

If so, then it's pointless to run on Medicare For All, and was a mistake to do so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

― Frederik B, Saturday, 7 March 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Why do anything?

Great campaign slogan

Nate Silver would approve

re: Warren's endorsement. It may not do much after all but how about some kind of solidarity with the one person left who is running on a similar platform? But I guess the mental wellbeing of bourgie white women on twitter is also at stake. That also matters, its a tough one.

This is on Bernie, he Democrats voting out of fear like they generally do, they lost it.

fixed

So weird that this article has apparently been deleted.

http://web.archive.org/web/20200118132850/https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-racist-myth-black-parents_n_5e2215a9c5b674e44b980327

(the current amp link still works but it's gone on the site proper)

If Trump hadn’t run on Building That Wall maybe he’d actually be President now. Oh wait

Medicare for all is the main point of the Bernie campaign. Do you know how frightening it is to see a doctor here?

v curious to hopefully someday get some more robust data about SC and southern black dem voter preferences. how many of those who voted biden *also* liked bernie, but just liked/trusted biden more? if that number is high perhaps bernie made more headway than the top-line numbers indicate, and contributed more long-term to the fight for things like m4a (about which sic is thoroughly otm and Fred B is back to being mr smiley troll).

Ban Fred btw

re: Warren's endorsement. It may not do much after all but how about some kind of solidarity with the one person left who is running on a similar platform? But I guess the mental wellbeing of bourgie white women on twitter is also at stake. That also matters, its a tough one.

if you look at SC black voters as a large group of pretty moderate democrats who happen to be black instead of a bloc that can be won over w/ the right appeal to their identity, then the best way to win more southern black support might have been stuff like 'not call for a revolution' and 'register with the democratic party' - ie the same things that would have helped sanders expand his coalition regardless.

In Michigan -- must win for Sanders -- he sounded miffed about Gov. Whitmer's endorsement of Biden: “Well, that wasn’t her thoughts when I came here to help her get elected, as a matter of fact.'' https://t.co/hF3W6UiK0S

— Trip Gabriel (@tripgabriel) March 7, 2020

As noted, before she locked the nomination he actively campaigned for her primary opponent

I guess the mental wellbeing of bourgie white women on twitter is also at stake. That also matters, its a tough one

This is a really shitty take for a lot of reasons.

1. How this race is/was conducted matters to a lot more people than just "bourgie white women on twitter." (About which, gah, fuck you)

2. Calling out and opposing misogyny - in the media, in public discourse, in politics, and yes even online - has downstream impacts quite apart from Warren and her campaign specifically.

3. Look, we get that Warren won't be President. And that probably a woman President is still a ways off, as long as male politicians continue to see good cardiologists.

4. That doesn't mean that the wish for a woman President - of quality - was just a bourgie white concern. The treatment of women candidates 2008-2020 deserves some scrutiny, because the next woman candidate (and the next one, and the one after that) are going to be competing in a landscape that will be shaped by people who are paying attention now. If AOC runs in the future, she will inherit the landscape that Clinton and Warren ran in, and perhaps we can do better?

6. And if now isn't the time to discuss it, when? Maybe the line is "this is not the time to focus on that because the world is on fire." Well, when will the world not be on fire?

If we listen to lots of ilxors the assumption is that there probably won't be a future, and there definitely won't be a future if we don't (insert urgent thing here).

Yeah I dunno. I do have a daughter, but even if I didn't I would like to think that I would advocate for a better atmosphere in which she and her peers might live and conduct a public life in a democracy.

otfm

Voters love being told they dont matter, really earns their support

Berniebros might consider that the reason he’s losing is his supporters are all too happy to alienate constituencies that are critical to Dems winning elections

There’s definitely only one reason and you definitely know what it is

Just like we all know the one particular reason Hilary lost

Hope the civility fetishists like losing to Trump again

we all love it that's why we're here

btw what is it like day four of this shit

Five.

civil wars aren't won in a day or even a week.

just mentally prepare for North ILX and South ILX

Mr. Puffin - if Warren is using online abuse to not endorse Sanders then this is not an excuse. Twitter is used by a small-ish sample of the population for a start and that discourse on this is smaller still. The bigger picture is her policy platform is similar to Sanders, she did not get as many delegates for whatever reasons but she ought to support the person who has more with a similar set of policies and is still in the race. Swallow your pride or whatever and do it.

As it happens your daughter will not get a better atmosphere online. We will not do better here, its brutal out there if you are advocating for the re-distribution of wealth or a planet that might be liveable. That's the bottom line.

i will say it's been rich to see the left who are very immediately dismissive of the idea of "berniebros" or thinking of sanders' supporters as a monolith deriving their idea of warren's base from... her very online twitter supporters

everyone's brain is poisoned, imo

Mine certainly is, I have nothing to do today and I should be reading or something but I’m posting instead and don’t know how to stop

pretty sure if Warren winds up not endorsing Bernie, it's not simply going to be because of Bernie Bros. You can mention a thing without it being "the only" thing. or even the primary thing.

xyzzzz laying on the misogyny gives this thread a boogeyman to unify both opposing factions, sort of like Ozymandias releasing the squid in New York.

Let’s not lose sight of our real enemy, Fred

yeah that was a gross post and i flagged it xp

Fred's more the guy following the generals around asking them to implement his controversial strategies to win the war

I though Warren was a progressive, why are we making excuses for her?

i thought warren dropped out of the race

that was just a headfake

People that drop out of the race could endorse another who is still in the race.

We’re fighting about Liz Lads and Bernard Brothers because we all agree that Joe Biden is an egregious motherfucker and there’s nothing to fight about there.

well what's the point if she's just gonna direct bourgie white women to bernie

to what end?

whoops xpost

Both sides have common goals?

being less bourgie?

We all have to start somewhere.

Xyz, no one has said that online abuse is the reason, or even the main reason. As Neanderthal notes.

That's a really convenient strawperson you have there - that if Warren and her supporters aren't jumping immediately onto the BernWagon, it's just because "someone was mean to me on the twitter" or "eek I saw an emjoi and now I'm gonna vote for Biden."

The people I hear from who are mourning the Warren campaign have a few more concerns. They speak of how all women candidates have been treated and how it resonates with things they see in their own lives. Talked over, shouted down, passed over, ignored.

They speak not just of disappointment that Warren didn't get more traction, but that women in general haven't, and won't, and will have to wait, yet again. This from bourgie and non-, white- and non, even women and non.

But if you prefer to have the narrative be "poor privileged snowflakes saw a snake emoji and bailed on WHAT TRULY MATTERS," whatev.

ymp otm as hell

otm.

fwiw after finding out about the term “bobos” by which Parisians refer to the bohemian-ish bourgeoisie that populate some of their northeastern quartiers I’ve gradually and begrudgingly come to accept that’s the label that best describes my station.

I realize that makes me almost universally contemptible.

imo she’s laying the groundwork for not endorsing Bernie because she is a Democratic Party lifer (post-party switch obv), and that’s NOT meant to be an epithet in this instance. she probably sees many more years of public service in her future and she wants to be in the tent. if the Bernie-sphere can be rendered as toxic as Biden’s public lifetime of unconscionable positions and the fact that he’s very clearly not operating at peak mental capacity, then it’s seen as wholly defensible even as her policies ostensibly align much more closely with Sanders

I don’t actually blame her from a certain standpoint, the party apparatus is very powerful and flouting it comes with a price. but if you think this specific tactic gets us any closer to single payer or a meaningful reduction in carbon emissions, then you have as little claim on political reality as t most pie in the sky Bernie bro.

Puffin otm’ing up the joint

man who could have seen this ‘sanders cannot lose, he can only be betrayed’ narrative coming

Biden's faults have not stopped him from getting endorsements from people who are not white nor male nor straight.

"The people I hear from who are mourning the Warren campaign have a few more concerns. They speak of how all women candidates have been treated and how it resonates with things they see in their own lives. Talked over, shouted down, passed over, ignored."

This isn't going to go away till the world changes, and what we perhaps have is a candidate who may set things on a different path. This is individualizing pain and refusing to look at what's at stake for everyone else. Try to gain power. The moderates totally understand this.

"what we perhaps have" we???

This isn't going to go away till the world changes

Otm, if only there were a way to try to get the world to change. You could call it, I dunno, "tickypols"

man who could have seen this ‘sanders cannot lose, he can only be betrayed’ narrative coming

I dunno. I do have a daughter, but even if I didn't I would like to think that I would advocate for a better atmosphere in which she and her peers might live and conduct a public life in a democracy.

well I don’t blame you will. the gym is the quintessence of individualized pain

xp

my warren-supporting friends are regularly voicing their sentiments this week from what is obviously an endorsement of the premise that she was clearly the best candidate, specifically in the sense of being most intelligent capable and effective. in each case it's that premise that licenses their implying that others are at fault in some way for not sharing their position, because how else COULD anyone reject the best most intelligent etc etc?

i don't think any candidate's supporters have more of an affinity for that pattern of thinking than any other, so it's unfair to insinuate that there is something special about sanders supporters in that regard.

I think Warren’s most objective advantage over Sanders and Biden would’ve been that she’s least likely to be dead soon and that’s hard to campaign on

she probably sees many more years of public service in her future

she's 70

Many (though certainly not all) Warren ppl have long been condescendingly baffled by the concept that anyone could prefer Sanders. She was long branded as "Sanders for adults". Not shocked that hasn't helped with the burying of hatchets. (obviously some bernie folks have uh their own flaws but we've covered that)

big difference between 70 and 79

Yeah but she’s a woman, clearly very sharp, and by all appearances very healthy. She could still be doing this well into her 80s. and I hope she does

x post to morbs

This isn't going to go away till the world changes

Ensuring equality and freedom for women is changing the world. It's not the thing you wait to do afterward.

even as I hurtle towards middle age I will cop to being extremely ageist when it comes to politics, but Sanders (and you some degree Warren) have curbed some of that for me. I mean besides those two, who are the legitimate leftist firebrands in the democratic part older than 35 and younger than 70?

*to some degree Warren

I guess it depends on what you mean by leftist or a firebrand.

or for that matter, llegitimate.

pretty sure if Warren winds up not endorsing Bernie, it's not simply going to be because of Bernie Bros. You can mention a thing without it being "the only" thing. or even the primary thing.

I think losing her own home state -not even the runner-up- had to have been a severe blow to Warren and is also messing with her ability to come to an endorsement announcement either way. I’m just projecting here, as a fellow human being , but when I take a hard hit that shakes my sense of being supported in the world, it’s just hard to come back quickly and make full-throated declarations on behalf of anything or anyone (including myself). And an endorsement is not very credible or useful if it’s not full-throated and delivered with conviction. Just a thought.

fair.

I guess... national profile, generally positive associations, at least within the left of center and further left, and think the GND (or similar) and M4A are as important as every single Republican sees the pro life movement and protecting their read of the 2nd Amnemdnet

Ensuring equality and freedom for women is changing the world. It's not the thing you wait to do afterward.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Saturday, 7 March 2020 bookmarkflaglink

ok, is Warren's silence doing this? Bernie went all out for Clinton, why can't Warren do the minimum?

Just to expand on my point: I think coming in third in Mass. could have sent Warren’s internal political compass spinning to the point where strategic decisions like endorsements will be difficult for a while. Maybe she’s waiting for the compass to settle.

But not spinning out so hard she's avoiding media appearances

not at all surprising to me she did poorly here, she appeals to the same narrow band as anywhere else once you put a bernie to the left of her

my warren-supporting friends are regularly voicing their sentiments this week from what is obviously an endorsement of the premise that she was clearly the best candidate, specifically in the sense of being most intelligent capable and effective. in each case it's that premise that licenses their implying that others are at fault in some way for not sharing their position, because how else COULD anyone reject the best most intelligent etc etc?

i don't think any candidate's supporters have more of an affinity for that pattern of thinking than any other, so it's unfair to insinuate that there is something special about sanders supporters in that regard.

― j., Saturday, March 7, 2020 1:27 PM (fifteen minutes ago)

idk I don't see a lot of sanders supporters openly admitting that their campaign has made mistakes, and while I agree that there's plenty of finger pointing from the warren camp, there's also been a decent amount of talk about the mistakes that were made. maybe the bros are all sitting on their hands waiting until the body is officially declared dead, but I kinda doubt it. and I mean, sanders went from winning with 35% of the vote to losing with 35% of the vote - I think there's a good argument that the campaign actually had a fairly cohesive strategy (trump 2016), just one that was dependent on forces outside of its control.

i don't know that there was a way to beat such a sudden coordinated push

I will say my Warren friends (most tbh, except for the Pete dork) definitely seem to be gravitating towards Joe, mostly bc they seem chastened(?) by a mediaverse that rewards centrism and have been convinced he’s possibly ever so slightly more electable. And yes, a couple are pretty angry and seem to be doing so punitively. I’m not poking the bear, but the latter does seem as futile and wrong-headed as Bernie dead-enders who did the same to Hillary in 2016. I was annoyed by that back then, and it honestly took me 2 solid years to come around to the candidate himself.

That post should have been preceded with:

it may just be online anecdata in the places I check, but it does seem like a lot of Warren supporters have jumped over to Bernie.

fwiw after finding out about the term “bobos” by which Parisians refer to the bohemian-ish bourgeoisie that populate some of their northeastern quartiers I’ve gradually and begrudgingly come to accept that’s the label that best describes my station.

Did French people learn this from David Brooks or was he adopting a Parisianism?

The level of antipathy here for Sanders and his campaign has genuinely surprised and saddened me. If he is struggling even here that paints such a bleak picture for the future. It all seemed so different even a week or two ago.

sanders went from winning with 35% of the vote to losing with 35% of the vote

Well yeah. Sanders looked great early on because he had the biggest base in a fractured field. But it was always, always, always a minority of the total field. That's a good place to start from -- everyone would rather start with a locked-in 35 percent than 15 percent or 5 percent. But of course it's not enough and of course you have to build it. It's like starting a poker hand with pocket aces -- it's nice, but if you don't add to it, you're probably going to lose.

The "sudden coordinated push" shouldn't have surprised anyone, because everyone always should have been adding up all of those candidates' numbers as "the moderate bloc" or whatever, and assume that eventually one of them could emerge as the consensus. The consensus happened fast, sure, but you had to be ready for it, have a strategy for it. As far as anyone can tell so far, the Sanders campaign didn't seem to have that strategy.

Lol what on earth could the strategy have been

the "better things aren't possible" message has really won out, I'm starting to grimly believe it

#BeBest

hope your furious children are a comfort to you in your old age Shakey

#NotUsThem

Lol what on earth could the strategy have been

I don't know man, I'm not spending millions of dollars running a political campaign. But if I was, it's the kind of thing I would have planned for.

Tbh i think Bernie ran the best campaign he could have. You can bitch about surrogates and supporters but he was rock solid throughout. I hope it was enough to spark some more AOC types to spring up, that's really the best outcome we could hope for at this point.

i don't know that there was a way to beat such a sudden coordinated push

the way to beat such a coordinated push would be to be a candidate that appealed to a broader spectrum of voters. maybe there was just no way to do that without tarnishing his brand - it's totally possible. but he didn't spend his week-as-frontrunner softening the revolution, he spent it railing on the establishment + putting every florida democratic politician in a spot where they had to publicly disagree with him. maybe he wasn't gonna break his ceiling regardless, and again, maybe the trump-style plurality coup was actually his best shot at getting the nomination so it wasn't 'a mistake'. but he ended up where he was because of a sequence of actions taken by bernie sanders, and the warren betrayal narrative mostly seems like a way to avoid admitting that.

the fucked up thing is I lead an exceedingly comfortable life, I could tune out, not vote for anybody, keep my head down, avoid the 'vid, and be basically fine from now until pogroms break out one of these years or I stop being able to get the pharmacopoeia that keeps me comfortable or whatever, but could I do that while friends start suffering sooner than I do?

Tbh i think Bernie ran the best campaign he could have

for example

If a majority of Democratic primaries voters want what Bernie is selling but not from him maybe a better vector will run next time. If a majority of Democratic primaries voters are better things aren't possible true believers and will stay that way til they die then lol we're all gonna die

I hope Bernie gets enough delegates to extract some useful concessions, whatever those might be.

Ignoring whatever shit everyone's fighting about to publicly complain that there was a debate for every primary/caucus in February and nothing between ST and mini ST. Seems stupid.

It may be true, maybe Bernie has run the best possible Bernie campaign and the reality is that despite fervent hopes of his followers there was just no way to turn him from a cult artist to a mainstream phenom. In which case, you can either say, "Well, I guess he wasn't the figure to lead this particular charge." Or you can say, fuck all these morons who don't know what's good for them. Whichever makes you feel better.

Bernie was never gonna soften his message. That would be a different person. Hence, I repeat, he ran the best campaign *he* could have. Flaws included.

The debate distribution is dumb as hell yes

fuck all these morons who don't know what's good for them

well I wouldn't say "morons"

"fuck all these morons who don't know what's good for them"

This is a great impression of many Warren ppl this week

many x-posts to eephus: David Brooks must have learned it from the Parisians. And if bobos annoy him, I’ll wear the badge proudly.

This is a great impression of many Warren ppl this week

Yep. Losing sucks.

I was a Warren supporter -- she was literally the only one in the field I actually liked -- but it started to look to me last fall like she didn't have her messaging and strategy worked out. That never really changed, and I was disappointed but not surprised by the last few months. It's politics. You have to actually win, everything else is secondary.

"fuck all these morons who don't know what's good for them"

This is a great impression of many Warren ppl this week

On winning: I have a friend whose wife ran for mayor here in my city last fall, and she won in a fairly close race against a businessman who substantially outraised and outspent her. I was talking to my friend afterward about his lessons from the campaign, and one of them was, "WINNING IS AWESOME." When you win, any missteps or second guesses or flops along the way get immediately erased, because you did the one most important thing.

The corollary of course is that losing always sucks no matter how fierce or noble the fight.

If you're on the left, losing is a major part of life

hell yeah mayor mothra's friend's wife tbh, fuck business guy mayors

also cop mayors

All the Warren ppl in my tl are breaking for Bernie, including multiple ppl who worked for her campaign, and I personally have not seen the "I like Liz because she makes me feel fuzzy but I can't vote for that nasty man because of his nasty supporters" drama that I keep seeing referenced.

I am, however, noting a heavy application of pro-Bernie personal/emotional appeals in all my soc med timelines that use stories of medical tragedy and suffering in direct contrast to people who think Warren looks nice in teal (literally one of them was like, "women like Liz because she looks good in a teal sweater"). I *get* the emotional appeal messaging tactic in organizing, but I don't see the phenomenon that they claim is happening, and I especially object to the trivialization of whatever is being characterized as "women's stupid petty concerns" in this messaging.

hell yeah mayor mothra's friend's wife tbh, fuck business guy mayors

It's true, she's pretty awesome. She was by far the most progressive candidate in the field.

xpost to some post above
I thought Bernie was still very popular here on ilx. I thought the feeling of antipathy was because a few people each day have been obsessively posting about it, I guess trying to figure it out and make people on ilx? outside of ilx? on twitter? people they know irl? feel bad about possibly voting for Biden? I don't know what audience anyone is trying to address here anymore.

Warren die hards who can hop to Biden never cared about politics (or even identity), Warren’s existence flatters their self image, much like Obama’s genius and Hillary’s “MOST qualified EVER” status.

Bernie is going to win the poll on this thread like 100 to 0. Or 95 to 5. He doesn't have to worry about popularity on ilx.

ILX is extremely unrepresentative of the wider world I think we can all agree

should still canvass us just to be safe

There are pragmatic reasons why some Warren people would go Biden over Bernie -- mostly if they think he'd be a stronger candidate in November and their A+ number one priority is getting rid of Trump. You can disagree with the calculus, but it's not immoral or anything.

I suspect at least half of the Bernie voters here will mainly be anti Biden folks, mind. Xps

just opened this new thread for the first time and have to report that it is very aptly named

If Biden’s the nominee and loses, I’m looking forward to four more years of RUSSIA.

It's not immoral to think Biden's the stronger nominee, it's just fuckin stupid.

There are pragmatic reasons why some Warren people would go Biden over Bernie -- mostly if they think he'd be a stronger candidate in November and their A+ number one priority is getting rid of Trump. You can disagree with the calculus, but it's not immoral or anything.

the other pragmatic reason is that many people want this campaign to be over and giving bernie any excuse to drag it out needlessly again is not good for our prospects.

I'll out myself as a warren to biden voter. I suspect it won't matter at all by the time new york votes.

We could’ve guessed, bro

lol

Joe Biden is basically the suburbs embodied in one dying man, what happened to principles iatee

If Biden’s the nominee and loses, I’m looking forward to four more years of RUSSIA.

The fun thing is that no matter what, we can't test all possible scenarios -- Biden v. Trump and Bernie v. Trump -- so no matter who the nominee is, if they lose, the Bernie or Biden supporters can always say, "We told you so," and no one will be able to prove them wrong.

I lean more toward the Bitecofer thesis myself, so I'm not even sure it matters all that much in terms of winning the general. But of course nobody actually knows.

I don't love biden and I think he will be a pretty mediocre president if he wins, and I hope he picks a good vp. I think he won't be a drag down ticket, and might even help e.g. it's not some crazy coincidence that bullock decided to run for senate when he got confirmation that he didn't have to defend whatever sanders said today for half a year.

neither sanders nor biden have plans to demolish all american suburbs unfortunately, which makes them equally bad on my key issue.

I suspect at least half of the Bernie voters here will mainly be anti Biden folks, mind. Xps

― bold caucasian eroticism (Simon H.), Saturday, March 7, 2020 2:45 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

why not both

anyway I don't have the sense that my vote will matter and people fretting about what warren supporters are gonna do are really missing the big picture, which is that there aren't a lot of them and sanders would still lose in a world where he had 100% of them. he lost because he hit his ceiling, and the fact that that already happened makes a comeback even less likely than it would be given the numbers. he had the chance to close as front runner and failed. people across the country had the chance to vote for him or vote for 'basically anything else', and they chose 'basically anything else'. the fact that that biden kinda sucks says something about sanders' appeal.

Many ppl do not think biden sucks

in retrospect the Onion's Diamond Joe bit has a lot to answer for

has bitecofer made a judgement whether bernie is more electable than biden? I'd think they'd get the same number of negative polarization voters, and bernie would inspire non-voters and young voters at a much better rate

biden is such a perfect attack target, the trump campaign can spend all their cash showing how fake his workingman populist image is, along with the three other flavors of bullshit they'll throw at him

the non-voter and youth theory has been disproven by the fact that it...didn't happen

biden is uh totally gonna be a drag downticket. but i get that red state democratic pols don't think so

I feel like people itt are engaging more with the primaries than the candidates are.

don't think primary electorates and general election electorates are the same

I am not an American but Biden seems like a boring/bad candidate even among the moderate Dems. I watched one of the debates and he could barely make a coherent sentence. He'd start a sentence tackling the question asked, then switch abruptly to one of his talking points that says nothing.

https://www.vox.com/2019/4/26/18516645/2018-midterms-voter-turnout-census

Primaries are not the best test to 'disprove' anything about turnout.

We'll see in November! I mean, I might be worried that Bernie almost doubled up on Latinx voters nationally since they're a larger voting bloc than African-Americans and more likely to switch to a Republican.

like until recently 'sanders can make a bunch of young voters and non-voters appear out of nowhere' theory was at least plausible, at this point it's been pretty well tested. it didn't happen. he called for a revolution, nobody showed up. if they're waiting for the general maybe he should have given them better instructions about how this stuff works.

The correct formulation, I'd say, is that youth and non-voter turnout (and turnout among POC) may not "win" elections but it can lose them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5epuPMf-7Y

Warren die hards who can hop to Biden never cared about politics (or even identity), Warren’s existence flatters their self image, much like Obama’s genius and Hillary’s “MOST qualified EVER” status.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Saturday, March 7, 2020 2:42 PM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't know if you actually think this is true, or this is some weird trolling tactic, but either way it's rude and mansplainy and a prime example of how Sanders supporters chase away his potential allies.

the articles i've seen so far about youth turnout in the primary seems pretty misleading because it's all based on proportions of voters rather than absolute numbers.

https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/bernie-sanders-and-the-myth-of-low-youth-turnout-in-the-democratic-primary/

"Warren die hards" isn't a synonym for women - as evidenced by, say, ILX Liz Lads - it is a synonym for 'mostly wealthier white people.'

It’s “the primaries thing” you fucking idiot
― Garu you just posted flange (wins), Saturday, March 7, 2020 1:40 PM bookmarkflaglink

Lol!

the absolute numbers are all that matters though. whether that number is low because they have low turnout or because 18-29 year olds don't make up enough of the population to meaningfully throw their weight around at the polls doesn't change the results.

and while sanders might have been extremely popular with 20 year olds, he was deeply unpopular with the voters who do show up reliably.

I really hate the thing that articles do now where if something is written in bold it must be a very important fact

I honestly didn't see a whole bunch in that article that actually backs up the claims

rude and mansplainy and a prime example of how Sanders supporters chase away his potential allies

Can a mod just autoreplace all milo politics posts w this plz

Frankie Baby!

I been mansplainy baby
Ever since the day we met

If nothing else these threads have proven definitively that no candidate has a monopoly on annoying suppirters

the fact that that biden kinda sucks

Biden absolutely sucks, and his brain was poisoned to uselessness by banks and an imaginary version of bipartisanship even when it still worked

Well, when will the world not be on fire?

If Biden gets the nomination, never.

Berniebros might consider that the reason he’s losing is his supporters are all too happy to alienate constituencies that are critical to Dems winning elections

Which supporters are alienating which constituencies?

Hope the civility fetishists like losing to Trump again

It really is nice that everyone opposed to Sanders is so civil

The people I hear from who are mourning the Warren campaign have a few more concerns. They speak of how all women candidates have been treated and how it resonates with things they see in their own lives. Talked over, shouted down, passed over, ignored

Which other candidates have done more to praise the past record and recent campaigning of Elisabeth Warren than Bernie Sanders?

ok, is Warren's silence doing this? Bernie went all out for Clinton, why can't Warren do the minimum?

it's been TWO DAYS. I personally think she should have been prepared for dropping out and pledging an allegiance (and still wish for her to be Sanders' Treasury Secretary or Minister Of Antitrust if not VP/Treasury) but it has only been TWO DAYS since she dropped out, after 371 days of running.

A deep cut for the moral superiority heads... "Anne Hathaway"

I’m sorry but it’s terribly rich for anyone itt to be talking about mansplaining when the thread diverted into a bunch of “if I had a daughter/my daughter/I don’t have a daughter” comparisons. Either accept that you don’t speak for all women or just leave out the accusations? I wouldn’t even do that, all I am ever presenting is my individual perspective, but it is wild af how the above is completely passable.

"it's been TWO DAYS"

She's had no plausible path to victory considerably longer than that. And if she waits much longer her endorsement won't matter at all.

The Vietnam doc is 17 hours so that might fill some of that quality time this weekend instead of restating the same things here over and over.

milo’s posts are better than shakey’s and sic’s and gyac’s are the best

#JusticeForMilo

her path to victory was a brokered convention, which was also sanders' realistic path to victory

anyway her endorsement already doesn't matter at all, unless she endorses biden just to help wrap this up faster

all the focus on this thing that very much doesn't matter is some weird form of denial to avoid accepting what happened in the last week

xp

Warren and Bernie uniting enthusiastically absolutely could and would make a difference

Again it's not just about math, it's morale and The Narrative

Also, the Biden ppl endorsed immediately upon exiting for the most part

well you guys get to help control The Narrative, will sanders fold up his campaign w/ less of a tantrum than he did 4 years ago, or will you spend the next few months blaming his campaign failures on a woman who credibly believed she would make a better president than he would

the biden people endorsed the guy who was gonna win, which is an easy decision

It may not have been enough to make a material difference in the final outcome, it would have been enough to make some difference... and instead she accomplished nothing by staying in.

I do not blame Warren for anything, I just find her decisionmaking frequently baffling

will sanders fold up his campaign w/ less of a tantrum than he did 4 years ago

Guaranteed that people like you will be blaming Bernie if/when Biden loses in the general, so why bother?

Hey come on guys, throw in a deep cut or something

I recently learned the green party were going to stand down if bernie got the nom

That's actually been the hardest ceiling to break, people whose brains were broken by 2016 and have never forgiven Bernie for forcing Clinton to hire Robby Mook and stopping her from campaigning in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Ok better but I prefer your more obscure stuff

Last I saw the Greens said they were going to run even if Bernie was the nominee and were adamant about it.

Seems like they're openly flaunting Russian 'help' this time.

Lmao

Ok peacing out this set just isn't for me, catch y'all at next gig

I do not blame Warren for anything, I just find her decisionmaking frequently baffling

there is nothing baffling about not wanting to tie yourself to a sinking ship. is it good for her reputation as a politician to endorse a dying campaign and for that endorsement to have no effect? like you guys seem to have absolutely no capability to put yourself out of the mind-frame of 'the only thing that matters in american politics is bernie sanders winning the democratic nomination'.

if biden and sanders were tied and she had the ability to be kingmaker, this would be a very different discussion. but in this world it's just another way for you to avoid putting any accountability on sanders for losing.

wow you're really high on being part of the winning team today, huh

ya it's great

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2020/03/01/11/joe-biden-south-carolina-primary-win-speech.jpg

god i'm so glad that all our worries about accountability for losing have been put behind us

What dire consequence would she face by endorsing a (probably) losing candidate with a platform even her people have always said is virtually identical? She's already old! This was probably her only shot.

yes, who could imagine a 74 year old running for president

This is so much reminding me of my spouse and his colleague discussing another colleague who was accused by two women of sexual harassment and was being investigated. They were focusing on how the women reacted afterwards, because one didn't want to pursue it and just wanted to be transferred and the other woman hadn't directly reported it first, it was another person. So you know, if made their job so much harder to punish the colleague (despite them both being like, yeah, he's totally like that).

I was so baffled about their analytical process. I was so done. Like, it's great that men have finally been forced to maybe become aware of a huge problem in the last 2 years but women have had to live lifetimes of it, working around the problems and reacting in the best way they know without causing what they see as more self inflected harm. We can't ignore human nature in a damaging reality we help maintain.

I am completely fine with Warren taking whatever time she wants to deal with the current state of her own career and goals. She's smart and older and probably over all this shit like everyone else.

A 74 year old woman who came 3rd in her home state, sounds like a winner

The 16D chess of not endorsing because Biden will lose and she can run in 2024.

That would honestly be the most defensible reason for keeping quiet, at least it makes some mercenary sense

That would honestly be the most defensible reason for keeping quiet, at least it makes some mercenary sense

Maybe she is busy attending to the multitude of details required when you are shutting down a hundred-million dollar national campaign with offices and paid staff in 50 states and several territories, plus dealing with the exhaustion of running flat out for over a year and suddenly stopping, and maybe a few emotional consequences as a result. And this is eating into her available time and attention for thinking deeply about Bernie. But this is a weak defense, I realize, compared to what you are calling mercenary reasons.

Attending to details is what the staff is for!

all the other people who've dropped out had campaign organizations IIRC

Lots of vivid Warren fan fiction itt

Credit where credit's due, there have been zero Harry Potter memes

Now that we’re free to speak our minds, I want to say that I’m really impressed by Pete Buttigieg’s commitment to absolutely nothing.

— Max Berger (@maxberger) March 7, 2020

drag him!!

Warren staffers really seemed to hate Petey Butts.

I would never be so cynical as to suggest that it might have been driven by their competition for the votes of rich white people.

You misspelled "Bloomberg"

The by now almost 12-hour posting stamina of some of y'all impresses me.

It's amazing how thoroughly Pete has retreated from my mind, I barely remember his voice other than a faint memory of the Obama attempt

My six month old niece is a shit conversationalist tbf xp

idk I don't see a lot of sanders supporters openly admitting that their campaign has made mistakes, and while I agree that there's plenty of finger pointing from the warren camp, there's also been a decent amount of talk about the mistakes that were made. maybe the bros are all sitting on their hands waiting until the body is officially declared dead, but I kinda doubt it. and I mean, sanders went from winning with 35% of the vote to losing with 35% of the vote - I think there's a good argument that the campaign actually had a fairly cohesive strategy (trump 2016), just one that was dependent on forces outside of its control.

― iatee, Saturday, March 7, 2020 1:54 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think your last sentence is really the best explanation, though similarities to trump are few and artificial: media narrative, supporter enthusiasm, and a substantial but ultimately static base of support. I am disappointed that we e reached this point but I am not sure I can think of many “mistakes” the campaign has made. your earlier point about progressives and south carolina was a good one too. I suppose he could have not run on his platform, but then why run?

I'll out myself as a warren to biden voter. I suspect it won't matter at all by the time new york votes.

― iatee, Saturday, March 7, 2020 2:49 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

bernie made church street in burlington pedestrian-only. biden seems like the kind of guy who has a car collection

The Trump strategy worked because of Republicans' primary rules, tho. It could never have been a winning strategy in the Democratic primary. From the outside it looks like the strategy was basically, a surging tide of young/Latino voters plus Bernie's post-16 base would materialize at the polls and push him to a majority (or at least plurality). Which basically everyone said was a long shot. And everyone could have been wrong! Everyone has been wrong a lot lately. It just turns out probably they weren't.

a surging tide of young/Latino voters plus Bernie's post-16 base would materialize at the polls and push him to a majority

I feel like this did happen in California, which Bernie won.

well now that we’re writing fanfic - sanders’ leftist credentials are well established and he might have been able to spend the last few years being a good party munchkin similar to bush era mccain. he had free wins here - register as a democrat. who knows, maybe everyone sees him as a sellout, surely he loses the morbs vote, maybe warren eats his lunch. but he had ways to frame himself as a team player both before and during the campaign and he didn’t choose that path. he doesn’t have to substantially change his actual platform in this world.

like I said I’m not actually sure the trump-2016 strategy wasn’t actually his best bet, it got him pretty far. until two weeks ago he was gonna show up to the convention with the most delegates and a bunch of bros in suicide vests. but he at no point had a campaign that was going to win majority support.

xps

and like, the nature of long shots is, they might not work out. but a long shot was all he ever had the option of taking, and up until the amy/pete drops, it looked like a long shot that might actually work out.

Attending to details is what the staff is for!
all the other people who've dropped out had campaign organizations IIRC
Lots of vivid Warren fan fiction itt

Damn! Delegating some personal assistant of hers to call up dozens of her loyal, state-level campaign workers to thank them for putting in so many long hours on her behalf would be some ice cold shit if you ask me. But, thank god, you set me straight and I'll just have to face up to the truth.

All the Warren ppl in my tl are breaking for Bernie, including multiple ppl who worked for her campaign, and I personally have not seen the "I like Liz because she makes me feel fuzzy but I can't vote for that nasty man because of his nasty supporters" drama that I keep seeing referenced.

in orbit otm

is it good for her reputation as a politician to endorse a dying campaign

Eight days ago Biden's was the dying campaign, then a neolib war criminal made a couple calls

he had free wins here - register as a democrat

you're an ill-informed self-anointed pundit shitburger

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2019/03/05/sen-bernie-sanders-signs-pledge-declaring-democrat-2020/3074461002/

ive voted for a lot of fucking Democrats, asshole

and i'll be voting for another on April 28

"I am a member of the Democratic Party," the document signed by Sanders reads. "I will run a Democrat, accept the nomination of my Party, and I will serve as a Democrat if elected."

No damage endorsing a loser could ever remotely compare to eating shit in your home state directly following a Hail Mary move where you reversed course on a foundational principle of yr campaign

yeah don’t think his begrudging mandatory pledge is the same thing as being a team player on the team he wants to captain

anyway gj for occasionally pulling a two way lever in the right direction instead of yelling at it

xp

a bunch of bros in suicide vests

Maybe she gets the VP nom, they win and she gets to cast the deciding vote on Biden’s bargain with the GOP to reestablish debtors prisons.

you forgot the mic drop

xp whoa dude. don't you have a gun collection to clean and polish or something?

I also think the “I hate Bernie because of his supporters” thing is likely exaggerated. People often look for post hoc justifications of their politics, their gut feelings about someone, or whatever motivates their vote. I think a majority of those “but the bros!” people are concern trolling.

iatee is writing for him

CNN reports:

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Friday that his campaign raised $22 million in just five days following a remarkable comeback in the Democratic primary, nearly matching the same amount he raised in the last three months of 2019.

Biden — in a phone call to supporters at a Bethesda, Maryland, fundraiser — also warned against negativity that could come from what he referred to as “Bernie brothers,” saying that the primary cannot become a “negative bloodbath.”

let's do the bloodbath

The filing documents show $2700 donations from 90k extended relatives of Mike Bloomberg.

Eight days ago Biden's was the dying campaign, then a neolib war criminal made a couple calls

this is what makes most of the armchair quarterbacking itt this week so bonkers

That Biden warning makes me wanna go full-on BernieBro mode, I am that fucking immature

I know I'm treading old ground here but I fuckin hate Joe Biden.

The Onion and doddering failure until recently made it easier to forget that he’s been a cruel and vicious lizard for decades.

Nicely put, srsly

Lol sarahell

Xps

there is nothing baffling about not wanting to tie yourself to a sinking ship. is it good for her reputation as a politician to endorse a dying campaign and for that endorsement to have no effect? like you guys seem to have absolutely no capability to put yourself out of the mind-frame of 'the only thing that matters in american politics is bernie sanders winning the democratic nomination'.

if biden and sanders were tied and she had the ability to be kingmaker, this would be a very different discussion. but in this world it's just another way for you to avoid putting any accountability on sanders for losing.

― iatee, Saturday, March 7, 2020 3:40 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is pretty much the same conclusion I came to when I was thinking about this earlier today. I don't necessarily think she is planning as far ahead as 2024, but keeping her options open now may give her more influence in the party down the line (say, in a potential Biden administration).

Yeah, she's in a different position than Buttigieg and Klobuchar. Their maximum leverage was before Super Tuesday, because they both knew they were going to have to drop out afterward. They both got whatever they could from the Biden and party people, while their endorsements would still mean something. But Warren has already dropped out, so she has no leverage over anything by dangling it -- which, if she was really going to be manipulative or cunning or whatever, she totally could have. "I'll drop out if you xyz." But as far as we know, there was none of that, she just did her own math and quit. So I suppose she's figuring out what she actually wants out of all this -- personally or policy-wise or whatever -- and then she'll do her own math again.

But regardless, I seriously hope she does not run again or even make noises about it. I was on her side, but this was her best shot.

I know I'm treading old ground here but I fuckin hate Joe Biden.

My cousin's wife had the honor of making the first "you may hate Biden, but think of the Supreme Court" FB post I've seen in 2020. One of her friends replied, "How could anybody hate Joe Biden?"

btw "you may hate *****, but think of the Supreme Court" has replaced "Happy Days Are Here Again" as the Democratic Party anthem

most ppl i know like him including a number of republicans but most ppl's concern seems to be mental acuity & if the democratic party can cyrano de bergerac him into the wh somehow i'm sure biden will sign whatever legislation pelosi can manage to send to him

oh, Pelosi's gonna be back as Speaker, eh? til she's 90, maybe? Christ, I wish I had money to send to her primary opponent.

we can always hope she'll step aside for Jayapal next year.

The silver lining of Shithead's second term.

Biden will pick Mondale for veep, right?

I, personally, am hoping he picks the Northeast Regional

xp silby, I think you've mentioned Jayapal before as a possible Pelosi replacement. Is there reason to think that she's interested in or has the support for the speakership?

She is cochair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, lead arm-twister on Medicare for All in the House, likely to keep her seat for decades if she wants it, an effective and diplomatic interface between the CPC and the present house leadership, and can’t run for President as a naturalized citizen. And if the generation between her and Pelosi has a standout leader I haven’t heard of them. But I admit I hear about Jayapal more than most bc she’s my rep lol

I don’t think she’d be so bold as to start mooting her own name for the gavel without Pelosi announcing her intention to step aside but she’s made the most of her first two terms and I get the sense she has at least something of a national profile, by the standards of House members

Yes, I'm aware of her and like her! She was interviewed on Pod Save America last summer lol.

quick question, do ye spell dennis one n or two

what is the difference between life and this thread?

life doesn't go on forever.

Mark Pocan, the other co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, is 55 and would be a superb Speaker.

Maybe they’ll Rock Paper Scissors for it

Nothing to see here pic.twitter.com/Qyu7S5XaFA

— Benjamin Dixon (@BenjaminPDixon) March 7, 2020

Warren was on SNL

so still kiiiind of a Republican

...because she was on SNL??

yes everyone who is on snl is a republican

This made me look up Victoria Jackson to see if she was still out there Trumpin' it up and yep

Bernie’s been on SNL

That's (legitimately) disappointing (as a matter of taste).

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/dallas-county-asks-to-recount-super-tuesday-election-results-after-44-thumb-drives-discovered/ar-BB10SAMK?ocid=st2

We are the dumbest country on Earth, it's a miracle we've never accidentally nuked the Florida Keys.

btw "you may hate *****, but think of the Supreme Court" has replaced "Happy Days Are Here Again" as the Democratic Party anthem

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Saturday, March 7, 2020 10:16 PM (yesterday)

So? Imagine if they'd hummed, sung, or played this tune in 2016. You're so silly.

Jesse Jackson has endorsed Bernie Sanders #breaking pic.twitter.com/ScNyu8gAZX

— David Caplan (@DavidCaplanNYC) March 8, 2020

Imagine if they'd hummed, sung, or played this tune in 2016.

I see you focused on the wrong half of the joke.

the other tune didn't really work for HRC did it

Brad didn't get my Lorne is a scumshit line either so i'll show myself out

did she ever get Henry Winkler on stage with her?

Jesse was MeToo'd, correct?

Candidate's Twitter followers don't differ much in the chance someone's tweets are negative.

New Update: Adds Microsoft's Deep Learning-based sentiment analysis algorithm. It predicts the chance of positive text. Textblob's algorithm rates tweets from -1 (neg) to 1 (pos). pic.twitter.com/1tIyoRI5g2

— Jeff Winchell (@CompSocialSci) March 7, 2020

SNL appearance kinda undercuts some of the earlier speculative Warren fanfic lol

is textblob's mascot the blobfish?

Breaking: Dallas County officials are seeking a recount of the March 3 primary results after discovering that an unknown number of ballots were not initially counted. https://t.co/Ws5dhcQMwX #txlege #texasprimary #texas2020

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) March 7, 2020

milo just posted this less than a dozen posts back??

okay that's two

don't worry, it's not like they might have someone going door to door and collecting people's ballots to send to the haw river algae board of elections

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746800630/north-carolina-gop-operative-faces-new-felony-charges-that-allege-ballot-fraud

🍩 👏🏻 🍩 👏🏻 🍩 👏🏻 🍩 👏🏻 🍩

Gather round everyone, come learn the story of the donut emoji, the mocking symbol you won't hear about MSNBC. In 2017, the DNC held a meeting to discuss the election and possible changes going forward. Nina Turner and a delegation of Sanders activists traveled to the meeting... https://t.co/3avmwrPQEc

— Respectable Lawyer (@RespectableLaw) March 7, 2020

Donuts and corncobs and snakes oh my

milo just posted this less than a dozen posts back??

― sarahell, Sunday, 8 March 2020 bookmarkflaglink

okay that's two

― j., Sunday, 8 March 2020 bookmarkflaglink

We need more posts, quiet weekend

no good way to work in the blood-and-teeth emoji Warren people unfortunately

Btw is this thread's subtitle a 'Hollow Men' quote or…?

― romanesque architect (pomenitul), Saturday, March 7, 2020 6:20 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this is the way the world ends

Headpiece filled with straw alright.

Hillary Clinton: Joe Biden "is building the kind of coalition that I had" https://t.co/MTzU5mXIDY pic.twitter.com/e76UNM5b9j

— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) March 8, 2020

When posting flags while we enjoy our weekends, it's good to know someone can post a Clinton quote or interview to shake up the citizens.

Clinton is wrong Biden is doing better with wwc voters than she did

The effort to PROVE WITH DATA that Betniebros are a myth is p hilarious. I guess it keeps intact the storyline of media/DNC conspiratorization that everyone can retell around the fire. Because surely neither the candidate nor his acolytes could have run a better, purer, more open and loving campaign. Indeed, no one ever has. He was just too good for this world.

Universal healthcare, tackling climate change and taxing the shit out of 1%ers are hills worth dying on, hic et nunc. Everything else can wait.

there are seriously so many things more interesting and worthy of discussion than whether bernie bros are mean on the internet and I am judging those on all sides of this debate who engage in it

Before you ask, no this thread does not deny the existence of bros

I cried myself to sleep last night.
Thinking about Warren’s interview on Maddow, and how much time she spent focusing on the “Toxic Bernie Bro” issue.
I cried myself to sleep last night. Thinking about the 500,000 people who sleep on the streets every night: so many are women...

— Nurses for Bernie Sanders (@Nurses4BernieWI) March 6, 2020

feel like this convo always gets derailed because someone brings up the toxicity of some supporters and then gets pummeled with a barrage of "OMG YOU'RE NOT GOING TO VOTE FOR BERNIE BECAUSE OF HIS SUPPORTERS" which usually, that person hasn't even said or implied.

granted, there are some people that are that stupid out there, but they usually have silly reasons for choosing their candidate to begin with.

and that's my last engagement on this topic.

More of this pls

Joe Biden, today in Kansas: "Tell her to be quiet for a second! This is not a Trump rally, okay?"

Tiana, who has cancer and got evicted from her home: "Might as well be."pic.twitter.com/cBe1dJ5gEx

— Tommy 'Elena' Kombuchar (@ThomasIsOnline) March 8, 2020

Bernie doesn't have the stones to really take Joe to task so I guess it's up to regular folks.

^ Bernie is too civil

unironically!!

Twitter-speculation: Perhaps older voters stay at home on tuesday because of Corona? Might be what Sanders needs to pull of the upset he needs

Voting by mail is a thing. Nothing will stop the olds.

Are any bookies taking bets on the exact day when Biden refers to Trump as President Cornpop?

Or talks about Cornpopa Virus

it's good to know someone can post a Clinton quote or interview to shake up the citizens.

The old bitter asshole still has plenty of cache with the rank-and-file.

Clinton is wrong Biden is doing better with wwc voters than she did

Do they really need more wrestling fans though?

My personal, limited experience is that gay men who are in love with Auntie Hillary and/or Bootyjudge are the biggest pricks on the interwebs.

cough cough

I regret that already. like dunking on a 5-foot rim.

Lol

it’s morning and time to be sad that homo derpiens are not entirely (perhaps not even _primarily_!) rational beings, but instead are intensely emotional and social mammals who act steered mostly by feelings. It is infuriating how often they construct not-credible narratives to hide the true basis of their “decisions.”

Time to take a sip of coffee and read this:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/03/26/democratic-party-cannot-hold/

Hilarious how out of date so much of this already is, and isn't. I like Tomasky, he should do stuff for the nyr daily blog.

And while the Vietnam debate was shattering to the party for a few years, wars eventually end

lol

A good summary of the weekend.

If you went from supporting Warren to supporting Biden, you didn't want a feminist president. You just wanted a woman. It's not the same thing. https://t.co/3AABgPTvDq

— Sarah Jones (@onesarahjones) March 9, 2020

new polls in Missouri, Mississippi, Arizona, and Michigan all show Biden at least +20. those first two are expected, but I gotta think Sanders had some hopes in AZ especially with the large Latino population, and Michigan seems practically must-win for him. if he gets blown out there tomorrow, I don't see how this thing isn't over.

The fivethirtyeight guide to the calendar is pretty clear that tomorrow is his best states: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-the-rest-of-the-primary-calendar-looks-for-biden-and-sanders/ There's a giant loss in Florida looming, and not a lot of hope after that. But he had worse odds in Michigan four years ago, so fingers crossed!

What happens if a nominee dies during the campaign?

You've seen Weekend at Bernie's, right?

(Don't be fooled by the title, the strategy can be applied to either candidate.)

in other news, the Working Families Party has switched their endorsement to Bernie, for whatever that's worth.

What happens if a nominee dies during the campaign?

If it's after the convention the VP pick would most certainly be the nominee

Very cool!

Biden’s team is considering Bloomberg to head the World Bank & Jamie Dimon for Treasury. Incredible https://t.co/ozKxkJMNMI

— Ibrahim (@ibrahimpols) March 9, 2020

fucking hell

top sources tell "Axios on HBO."

yeah ok sure

Really pushing the "can't be worse than Trump" card to the limit I see.

ffs!

Lmao axios is garbage

*If true*, as surprising as the sunrise.

When you let the Dems know you'll vote for ANYONE, you're gonna get the second-worst possible president.

there will be plenty to complain about in a biden administration we don't need to start with poorly sourced clickbaiting

millions of dems will think it’s safer than my number current number one candidate. feel the bern.

sorry if Axios is considered exceptionally dodgy, I guess we'll find out soon enough whether it's whole cloth BS or not xp

I’m not scrolling back to find who posted it here, but that sentiment analysis thing that purports to prove anything about the meanness of Bernie bros or anyone else Is absolute dogshit and it’s embarrassing to see otherwise rightly tech-skeptical people share it.

are we still arguing about this?

Axios is not trustworthy, but just in case it can never hurt to let everyone know Bloomberg is awful

This November, the stakes are too high. My presidential campaign is over, but I’m not about to sit on the sidelines. That’s why I’m supporting Collective Future in registering 500,000 Black American voters in 8 crucial states. This can be a game changer. https://t.co/gnT6Ni9NC9

— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) March 9, 2020

I would walk through a blizzard just to vote against Trump, I just personally hate that big stupid sack of shit with such blinding fury and the whole culture he stands for so much that it would give me so much pleasure to see him lose

Good on Bloomberg (never thought I'd type that phrase).

Would have had a head start if you had done that from the beginning dipshit xp

^^^

Bloomberg does do good stuff with his money (not always), he's just a shitty presidential candidate that shouldn't have that much money

same goes for Steyer, although he hasn't done nearly the shitty number of things Bloomberg has.

it's over:
https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/03/09/polls-joe-biden-holds-lead-over-bernie-sanders-michigan-primaries/4994142002/

If true, do you (does anyone?) think Sanders will just pull the plug after this week, or is he sticking it out to the bitter end?

“Something happened on Super Tuesday with (other) candidates getting out and people are all of a sudden questioning Bernie’s positions on issues,” said Bernie Porn, pollster for Lansing-based EPIC-MRA, which conducted the survey of 400 likely Democratic primary voters between Wednesday and Friday. “If anything, it may be low in terms of the percentage that Biden may get.”

Biden now 24/25 according to 538.

or is he sticking it out to the bitter end?

well let's see based on past behavior...

If true, do you (does anyone?) think Sanders will just pull the plug after this week, or is he sticking it out to the bitter end?

more delegates = more of a case that a significant chunk of the Dem electorate wants at least *some* progressive policy/representation. winning ain't everything. (this is why Warren not backing him bugs me, not because I think she could make the difference btwn winning and losing.) if he's not torching the bridge - he's been steadily calling Biden his friend, saying he could "absolutely" beat Trump etc - why not stick around?

anyone who thinks Bernie won't endorse Biden when it's all over (as I've seen some worry about) hasn't been paying attention

Yeah but what if the bros end up voting for Trump instead, like they did last time, amirite?

I have no doubt Bernie will endorse and campaign for Biden

Well, let's see, polling in Michigan has been bad.

I mean, he eventually endorsed Clinton, but there was a feeling (or probably more accurately, an accusation) he did so reluctantly or half-heartedly. That feels like a million years ago now, though, and for all we know his support *did* help her and she would have done even worse without him.

he made clear in an interview last week (Maddow?) that he would support the nominee 100 percent

He'll be accused of that no matter what he does or how enthusiastic his support is. xp

Wait, no, his polling in Michigan is worse than last time... Sorry...

going Joe Biden is like going to 100% treasuries. not an “investment”… but looking for _any_ harbor. that’s where we at. it ain’t my vote but it ain’t on me kiddos.

fwiw in the same article:

Four years ago, the Free Press and EPIC-MRA reported results of a poll the weekend ahead of that year’s Democratic primary that showed Hillary Clinton with a 25-point lead on Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont. It was one of several late-breaking polls that showed the former secretary of state with such a lead, though calling on the Free Press' poll concluded about a week before that election.

Sanders went on to win a narrow 1.4-percentage-point victory in the primary, however, as younger voters, who overwhelmingly supported Sanders, came out in much greater numbers than expected and he ran up large vote totals outside metro Detroit compared with Clinton. It was a signature surprise win for Sanders and one that Nate Silver, the founder of FiveThirtyEight.com, which analyzes statistical and polling data, said could count among “the greatest polling errors in primary history.”

lol buy gold liquor and tobacco and weed

I feel pretty safe in saying it's not gonna happen this time.

Okay, another attempt at a bright side: If Sanders loses as badly as it looks like he will be losing, that makes it harder to paint him as a spoiler!

maybe not. (fight fight fight) xp

stfu fredz

Sanders Did Black Magic To Make Joe Biden Say "Shylock" That One Time, Say Sources

I mean, he eventually endorsed Clinton, but there was a feeling (or probably more accurately, an accusation) he did so reluctantly or half-heartedly. That feels like a million years ago now, though, and for all we know his support *did* help her and she would have done even worse without him.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, March 9, 2020 12:10 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the whole reluctantly or half-heartedly thing is so fucking dumb. like he wanted to win! i don't think any endorsement is this emotional full-hearted thing, like why the fuck would it be??? and who cares what it *truly means* in their heart, it's a political act and he did it.

Fox News got the idea that Biden is senile from Berniebro twitter accounts (with six followers).

Fred, I don’t dislike you, but there is something really fucking infuriating about someone in Denmark, with Danish healthcare, rooting against the American candidate who wants to provide healthcare to ordinary Americans.

This has never been about Bernie as a person.

I like that (for a specific irritating subset of commentators) Warren staying on way after she had any viable path was just her being a Fierce Queen but Sanders sticking around in a two-person race last time was heretical.

And vice versa

It’s fucking stupid. If warren was the one with a path to the nomination, I would have wanted Bernie to drop out and endorse her. It’s not about these people as individuals, it’s about advancing progressive causes, which are badly and desperately necessary right now in America. They’re not dreams, they’re emergency provisions for securing a decent society

It's a different calculation when your policy goals have another champion sticking around imho but clearly mileages vary xp

This has never been about Bernie as a person.

this true and false just as “ceci n’est pas une pipe”. it’s like, the treachery of images, man.

Bernie is the shape of the Bernie-shaped hole in politics.

And only he can fix it!

I'm fixing a hole

where the Bern gets in

64 is young now.

There's a Bern in daddy's heart where all the money goes,
Jesus Christ died for nothin I suppose.

There is a Bern in everything
That's how the light gets in

It's better to Bern out...

nah, not gonna go there

Treeship I am completely and unironically rooting for Sanders, and you need to calm down

keep calm but actually pay attention to the words, fred, because treesh is right

He is literally wrong. I mean this with all the best wishes, but yesterday he was defending threats against another poster, and today he flips into the red because he misreads what I write. He needs to calm down for his own sake, this board is not worth it

Uh, carry on then, I guess

Treeship I am completely and unironically rooting for Sanders, and you need to calm down

― Frederik B, Monday, March 9, 2020 1:42 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Fred, I don’t dislike you, but there is something really fucking infuriating about someone in Denmark, with Danish healthcare, rooting against the American candidate who wants to provide healthcare to ordinary Americans. quoting Taylor Swift.

Gonna be interesting to watch Trump run against Biden from the left on criminal justice issues. https://t.co/qqX62LvQYU

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) March 9, 2020

Saving the usual suspects time: “Doug Henwood is a moron etc etc. etc.”

I would make the argument that maybe, just maybe, someone might not have the exact same opinion about something that they had 50 years ago, but then I look at the posters in the thread...

i promise you i had no opinions 50 years ago

Like Dennis Perrin, my only exposure to Doug Henwood has been on ILX politics threads.

Gonna be a lot of “he had a change of heart” excuses right up until mid-2019 when he finally gave up the Hyde Amendment. A callow young man of 77, people learn!

Re Warren, she stayed in a grand total of 31 days after the Iowa caucus. Dropping out before Super Tuesday might have helped Bernie a bit, or maybe it would have just made things look about the same if her supporters really split between Biden and Sanders. In any case, I think the concern about Bernie seems to be more like, don’t stay in it until July like last time. Which I’m guessing he probably won’t.

Gonna be a lot of “he had a change of heart” excuses right up until mid-2019 when he finally gave up the Hyde Amendment. A callow young man of 77, people learn!

He's still attacking his "friends" on the far left with bullshit claims of their outrageous positions though. And he's still invoking black men as signifiers with his stupid cornpop story, so in 50 years I guess he's learned... to tone it down?

unperson setting new standards in handwaving

xp. listen fat: corn pop was a bad dude, jack

whenever I see Doug Henwood tweets I think for a second that thar "Super High Me" comedian has cleaned up and turned into a pundit

Pete Buttigieg has a new gig lined up this week: taking over late-night hosting duties for Jimmy Kimmel https://t.co/zTjFvWr3GY

— Vulture (@vulture) March 9, 2020

glad they were able to track down an equally funny substitute

Pete's been on a roll since dropping out. He even sent me a private OKCupid message on Sunday.

trying to figure out if i would rather have pete the fucking mayor or amy fucking klobuchar rather than joe fucking biden as democratic nominee. grim

Klobuchar’s brains aren’t melting.

Pete and*

(jihad >>>>>>>) klobs > biden > pete imho

Uh, have Butts or Klobs suddenly aged to their mid-70s? Because if not, no thanks!

I want a president who I can imagine being spoonfed a jello cup by his live-in nurse before being helped into a tepid bath.

And yes, it's called a fetish, and I refused to be shames.

John Delaney dropped out quite some time ago, unfortunately.

whenever I see Doug Henwood tweets I think for a second that thar "Super High Me" comedian has cleaned up and turned into a pundit

I just picture this guy:

https://images.thestar.com/oW33akddP-azSt0VvHFzHqdem-Y=/1086x1075/smart/filters:cb(2700061000)/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/news/gta/2010/10/18/magicians_family_vanishes_from_walk_of_fame_guest_list/henningjpg.jpeg

I’m not scrolling back to find who posted it here, but that sentiment analysis thing that purports to prove anything about the meanness of Bernie bros or anyone else Is absolute dogshit and it’s embarrassing to see otherwise rightly tech-skeptical people share it.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, March 9, 2020 11:10 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I figured as much, and my prior is that I don’t really care about the truth one way or another as it is probably unknowable and subjective, but could you explain why?

xp Neil Peart?

"sentiment" is a very reductive measure of something completely unrelated to whether people are being nice. it's kind of a joke in the machine learning community. but even if it weren't, out ability to measure anything related to human language in a reliable, automated way using machine learning is dubious at best, not least because if you show two _people_ the same document they won't agree about the answer.

This past week politico had a story about Bernie staring into own grave and one about how Michigan could be his burial

Very normal

Obi-Wan Bama hovers in the b.g.

pic.twitter.com/J9pR69N6dh

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) March 9, 2020

lol i also kept thinking y'all were talking about Doug Henning, who i know only from revelations about some of his famous (?) illusions in classic 80s bathroom reader /Bigger Secrets/

"sentiment" is a very reductive measure of something completely unrelated to whether people are being nice. it's kind of a joke in the machine learning community. but even if it weren't, out ability to measure anything related to human language in a reliable, automated way using machine learning is dubious at best, not least because if you show two _people_ the same document they won't agree about the answer.

I buy this; at the same time, "bernie has much more twitter followers than other candidates" (and more online supporters more broadly) makes more sense to me as an explanation than "bernie's big bad mean man behavior uniquely unleashes the ids of leftists" or whatever

are there even primaries today? turnouts are going to be horrible.

good luck usa

538 has Biden over 99% to win, we're doomed

it would be really really funny if (redacted) got (redacted) and just dropped (redacted)

I had a dream the other night that a doddering Trump dunked hard and consistently on an even more doddering Biden during a debate. Maybe it was actually a premonition, who knows.

almost certainly tbh

sorry I don't know why I censored that last post, the redacted words were "Klobuchar", "a record deal" and "a sweet mixtape"

the small but real possibility that something could happen to render Biden incapable of continuing his campaign is probably just about the only real reason for Bernie to stay in the race if he gets throttled today.

If something happens to Biden, pledged delegates have discretion in how they align themselves.

You are, I hope, also aware that "something could happen" to render Sanders incapable of continuing his campaign, and the same applies.

yes we all know that thx, we're speculating about nice things that could happen, for kicks

yeah of course i am.

certainly all of Biden's delegates could jump to someone new at the convention but I guess at least Bernie would have a case if he'd amassed a good number himself, anyone else would be just parachuting in

I hope that we, as a country, are taking serious stock of the current situation so that we can avoid having an all-septuagenarian slate of presidential candidates in the future. 100% octogenarian or gtfo, imo.

I'm sorry, that fact just keeps smacking me right in the face and it seems more patently absurd every fucking time.

younger candidates could help by sucking less next time

I don't think Castro sucked, but he never really had a chance.

The party bosses should start setting more standards about who can run. Perhaps a prequalifying questionnaire could focus on potential candidates' stances on the issues that are most relevant to Cranky Olds: the early bird special at Denny's c/d. Sandals with socks y/n. Kids on lawns y/n. t/s Dentucreme vs. Polident. Depends vs. Pampers.

clouds: to yell at or not to yell at?

I like the "draw a clock" idea.

younger candidates could help by sucking less next time

it seems to me that the desire to be POTUS is usually a red flag that a person should not be considered

I just finished writing a really long thing that I intend to post on FB prior to the Ohio primary next week on why I am voting for Sanders. The older members of my family who are Democrats are all ride-or-die for Biden now and I'm trying to convince them otherwise.

the lord's work

The older members of my family will die.

it seems to me that the desire to be POTUS is usually a red flag that a person should not be considered

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, March 10, 2020 2:11 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

There's a sci fi short story where a guy tries to get his drivers' license but they make him watch movies or do some VR thing of tragic car crashes. At the end it turns out that anyone who still wants their license is disqualified from getting one. I think about that story a surprising amount.

See also: Groucho Marx's "I would never belong to any club that would have me as a member."

Jay Inslee didn’t suck and wouldn’t have been septuagenarian until three weeks after inauguration

100% octogenarian or gtfo, imo.

Biden 2028

inslee might be a good candidate for the 2024 primary that will happen no matter who wins. people will at least hopefully recognize his name enough to keep him afloat for the early part of the primary

Yeah, that's one thing I keep coming back to. All other arguments against elderly candidates aside, should we not be nominating/electing someone who we believe has a reasonable chance of maintaining their wits and their life for another eight years? Like, if Uncle Joe is elected, what kind of state is he gonna be in come 2024?

i'd say no way he'd run for reelection, but the shamelessness of the 'pragmatic' Dems prevents me

"bernie has much more twitter followers than other candidates" (and more online supporters more broadly) makes more sense to me as an explanation than "bernie's big bad mean man behavior uniquely unleashes the ids of leftists" or whatever

That's probably part of it, and a predictable part given the demographics of his supporters. And I don't think many people have said -- here or elsewhere -- that there's something about Bernie personally that either inspires or encourages bad mean behavior. It seems to me it's more that his campaigns have been -- **AMONG OTHER, LARGELY ADMIRABLE THINGS** -- vehicles for an emergent group of online Angry Young Men (not all of them necessarily young or men, but mostly) epitomized by the Chapo gang who would have probably latched onto any candidate running a populist progressive campaign, especially one with Bernie's career bona fides.

I think a lot of Bernie supporters have heard criticism of "the bros" as criticism of the campaign, and of course some of it has been and in any case it's hard to completely disentangle them. But I think the real-if-exaggerated phenomenon we call "Bernie bros" is more a free-floating subset of contemporary American progressivism, in the same way the 4Chan crowd is not in an official part of the Trump apparatus. And I don't think they're equivalent, I'll take mean people on the Internet who support m4a over mean people who want poor people to die, any day. For that matter, I'll take them over civil people who want poor people to die.

But thinking about it as a phenomenon separate from Bernie that has essentially used his campaign as a vehicle for their grievances also highlights the reality that they will continue to be a presence for at least the near future, and future progressive candidates will probably have to reckon with how to handle them.

if a left-wing candidate ever gets a big enough coalition to actually win, "the toxic online discourse" will be shown to be the non-sequitur non-issue (as in, not an issue that actually impacts turnout or results, not to say no one gets harassed etc.) it actually is imho

like, in all the polling that's ever been done of what voters care about / vote for / vote against iver the course of these primaries, has "bernie bros", "civility" or some variant thereof ever turned up?

weird how this became a big issue with the media but not Trump supporters literally sending death threats to journalists on a regular basis

I interpret voters' interest in "climate change" as a desire to change this climate of vicious disagreement and online gif hurling

Family update: teenage son still all in for Biden, preteen daughter, who was a Warren booster with me, is now Biden, not sure how my wife is leaning

lol the Bernie bros shit is an almost exact copy of the “so much for the tolerant left!!!” shite that accompanied Corbyn being elected leader of the Labour Party. It is and always has been a distraction and clear attempt at delegitimising the politicians in question.

Like you had people with high-profile public columns engaging in fake outrage at some rando twitter account while at the same time calling people who were excited about a left leadership “thick as pigshit” (Janan Ganesh) and utterly refusing to discuss policy or the reasons people might have voted for Corbyn. The fact this is so prolonged and just fucking refuses to die is just so damning and everyone giving this oxygen is following the exact same path.

weird how this became a big issue with the media but not Trump supporters literally sending death threats to journalists on a regular basis

Biden now at 99/100 according to 538.

I wonder if there's a way to measure whether the online discourse of the Bernie Brothers is more or less toxic than that of the current President of these, our United States.

Biden on MSNBC last night said of his vote for the Iraq War, "I didn't believe he had those nuclear weapons. I didn't believe he had those weapons of mass destruction."

He said his vote was for inspectors to prove they didn't have WMDs.

This isn't backed by our reporting. pic.twitter.com/O3Tq0Ihzxt

— andrew kaczynski🤔 (@KFILE) March 10, 2020

I think the toxic behavior of Trump supporters, online and off, has been a central recurring media narrative about him basically since the beginning.

Cool, must be imagining the dozens of concern trolling messages in these and other threads.

I think the vast, vast majority of people don't pay attention to either.

Like, Trump has, what, 70 million twitter followers? And that's for a free global platform that one can just sign up for and follow passively.

I think the vast, vast majority of people don't pay attention to either.

f a left-wing candidate ever gets a big enough coalition to actually win, "the toxic online discourse" will be shown to be the non-sequitur non-issue (as in, not an issue that actually impacts turnout or results, not to say no one gets harassed etc.) it actually is imho

That hypothetical candidate might also have figured out a strategy to deal with/minimize the fallout from such discourse, rather than pretending it doesn't exist.

Neither this candidate we actually had nor anyone itt denied that it existed!

many people commiting themselves to spending months denying things like "the Iraq War vote was a vote to invade Iraq" and "the Obama administration proposed cuts to Social Security"

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) March 10, 2020

unfortunately for my sanity I am "in my 30s" and "was paying attention" and "remember stuff"

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) March 10, 2020

Anyway I agree that Bernie is not going to be done in by any of this. If his base was bigger and broader, it wouldn't matter. If his strategy had worked the way he thought it would, it wouldn't matter. Basically if he won, it wouldn't matter. And it's not going to be the reason he doesn't win. It hasn't helped him IMO, but it's not why he's not going to be the nominee.

xp this is hilarious because this exists for literally every candidate to a greater or lesser degree - the only difference is the amount of coverage. So why would that be? Are they uniquely vicious? More so than the people flinging around racist comments and death threats? Why is Bernie held to a higher standard, especially when he’s consistently discouraged abuse both in his speeches and own actions and when nobody is queueing up to ask Joe Biden about all the racists who seem to be fans of his?

well this is a great time to log off for a week

Kind of a rude way to describe eephus' family xp

Hi ILX, could you plz help me decide between Bernie and Biden? My head spins whenever I try to meditate on it. Thx.

gotta be biden, he stood right next to obama

I'm still voting Bernie next week, idgaf. I'll cross the Biden bridge when we're inevitably nudged hard in that direction half a year from now.

Shocking development

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/10/21169166/elizabeth-warren-working-class-women

I'll vote Bernie later today. It won't slow Biden down, but it'll be a "consider the left, you doddering old fool" message.

you should vote loud then

shout at every boomer you see just to be safe

I think if you feel very strongly they let you vote more than once. Couldn't hurt to ask.

vote or die!

Biden now at 99/100 according to 538.

― romanesque architect (pomenitul), Tuesday, 10 March 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Going the way the wind blows, with data

eff 538

https://images.45worlds.com/s/78/harry-roy-and-his-orchestra-sky-high-honeymoon-parlophone-78-s.jpg

we regret to inform you that Mr. Ketchup sucks ass:

I asked @JohnKerry today about whether he agreed that @BernieSanders Cuba literacy comments were the same as Obama’s 2014 remarks about the island’s education system in 2014. Here’s what Kerry - Sec of State during rapprochement - had to say: pic.twitter.com/rrkjsL6SFb

— David Smiley (@NewsbySmiley) March 9, 2020

swiftboat him

It’s been fun, campaign trail: @latimes has suspended work-related air travel and is prepping the newsroom to work from home to help slow the spread of coronavirus.

— Matt Pearce 🦅 (@mattdpearce) March 10, 2020

We gotta figure out what it means. (We can still drive and will still go into dangerous situations etc.) But given the trend of things, I also don’t know how much longer they can keep holding huge rallies without becoming a threat to public health. https://t.co/uePGFdYk4a https://t.co/CpbTycjUwZ

— Matt Pearce 🦅 (@mattdpearce) March 10, 2020

OMG, is this the beautiful denouement that four years of deplorable rallies have been leading up to?

if bernie doesn't suspend his campaign after tonight they'll be blaming him for spreading the disease by holding rallies/making people vote

oh nice, maybe this will lead to an increase in online political engagement!!

Maybe this will lead to the cancellation of political reporting!

if bernie doesn't suspend his campaign after tonight they'll be blaming him for spreading the disease by holding rallies/making people vote

something like that is almost inevitable, i think. #trumpdemic and #trumpcrash are both trending on twitter, despite (for once) these things not being caused by trump. who knows who the fuck is tweeting that, but it's inevitable that the right will come up with their own, only 10x louder and wronger, and amplified by fox

Maybe this will lead to the cancellation of political reporting!

fingers crossed!!

remember when real political reporters would scoff at people writing about politics at home in their pajamas

Now the real political reporters will scoff at voters while they sit at home in their pajamas.

I grudgingly give Biden a little credit for not taking any shit here:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/486812-biden-tells-man-confronting-him-about-2nd-amendment-youre-full-of-shit

Yeah, was gonna say. Not really sure cranky, yelling Biden is exactly a turn-off to a specific subset of voters, et al.

"Don't tell me that, pal, or I'm going to go outside with your ass."

There's full-throated response to gun nuts, but also... "civility"

wtf I love Biden now

whoa now. that's like loving Trump for saying "not drinking alcohol is the only good thing about me"

(and he did)

Trump acts like a mean habitual drunk anyway, so what's the difference?

'wtf I love (x) now' is a dumb meme and I'm unreasonably fond of it.

xp

“I support the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment — just like right now, if you yelled 'fire,' that's not free speech. And from the very beginning — I have a shotgun, I have a 20-gauge, a 12-gauge. My sons hunt. Guess what? You're not allowed to own any weapon. I'm not taking your gun away at all."


A clear message from a coherent man.

I am not a Biden-watcher, is his tendency on the campaign trail this year to aggressively confront people part of a long pattern of behavior or is it new? If the latter, in the clips I've seen it doesn't seem so much like a strategy as a knee-jerk response. Which could raise still more concerns about his overall level of control and situational awareness.

Otoh if he's always done this then I guess it's just his thing.

Blunt, forceful messages delivered in muddled fashion but carry with them the basic underlying negative-emotional alignment one naturally agrees with ought to appeal to any Fight Club stan.

Honeybunch.

he challenged someone (Trump?) to a push-up contest already, right?

maybe he could change his name to Jack Palance

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaign-tantrums-bidens-1988-white-house-bid-derailed-after-he-unloaded-on-new-hampshire-voter%3f_amp=true

Not so new

i don't think he's a satirist, lambchop. xxp

get a room guys

I mean we all find your pet names adorable but

Well, all but one of us do.

Not so new

Well, I guess that's a relief?

turning on the cable news and you'd have no idea it was a primary Tuesday.

I'm going to go outside with your ass

New thread title imo

for the gay thread

Well, all but one of us do.

― crusty but malignant (Eric H.),

Poor little flower. Just dropped her petals and folded her tent.

Well, reporters will not generally report on the 9,000 bland generalities uttered by a candidate for the thousandth time. Workers! People! My upbringing! America! Motherhood and pie!

But if a candidate calls one person a smegma-slurping guttersnipe, or a contumelious jackanapes, well, that's news.

An industry has evolved to supply the sort of thing it thinks we want to know about. Which, inevitably, affects what we think you want to know about.

Every time we prove them right I cringe a little, but I don't have a surefire prescription for what to do about it. Biden isn't helping matters, but he's also not the source of the trouble, he's a symptom.

Shakey, my little peachpit, I wonder what kinda plagiarism Joe will try this year

or will it be just lying about his record

https://i.redd.it/a9cpqys4try31.jpg

"How fast could I KO this chickenshit hillbilly?"

Already lying about his record re: Iraq.

Well, reporters will not generally report on the 9,000 bland generalities uttered by a candidate for the thousandth time. Workers! People! My upbringing! America! Motherhood and pie!

But if a candidate calls one person a smegma-slurping guttersnipe, or a contumelious jackanapes, well, that's news.

totally agree. it's amazing how much would be solved by just making election season 2 months long. that way, the bland generalities are squeezed into a short time period and we don't have to come up with side games to entertain ourselves on year 3 of the campaign

She slurps smegma by the seashore

A clear message from a coherent man.

I just watched the Biden clip and--let's be fair--you're conveniently leaving out his emphasis on the word "any": "Guess what? You're not allowed to own any weapon. I'm not taking your gun away at all."

With emphasis added, it makes perfect sense (which I say as someone who wishes all guns were indeed taken away).

Makes sense on its face.

v nice uppmiss, do u have jaymc's dossier outta the liberry

“I support the second amendment” followed by literal nonsense is good now, what a fuckin world

tbf by Biden standards this is perfectly lucid

idk i understood it

Don't think it matters tbh, not at this point and a lifetime of making fun of presidents from Reagan onward to no effect. Ezra Klein (god) otm:

Biden has lost a step rhetorically. In debates, his answers have, to put it gently, a meandering quality. He loses his place, says the wrong thing, mixes up words, free associates. Without engaging the question of whether this reflects a lifelong stutter or a more worrying decline, the simple fact is that Biden performs worst on the metric that media professionals judge most harshly, and most confidently: clarity of communication.

But over and over again, we’ve seen that voters just don’t care that much about malapropisms and meandering rhetorical styles. Books — yes, plural! — were published mocking George W. Bush’s garbled sentences. And Bush looks like Cicero compared to Donald Trump’s word salad.

...Journalists who’ve based their professional lives on clear, crisp, stylish communication find it shocking when candidates get lost in rhetorical mazes of their own construction. But both Bush and Trump won the presidency. And Ronald Reagan won reelection in a landslide, even though he couldn’t recall what city he was in during the first presidential debate and admitted to being “confused.”

Biden’s most visible weakness in day-to-day campaigning, in other words, is a weakness the media consistently overrates, at least when it comes to election outcomes.

trump was more lucid than current biden when he ran for the presidency in 2016

tbf by Biden standards this is perfectly lucid

Sadly otm.

trump was more lucid than current biden when he ran for the presidency in 2016

― COVID and the Gang (jim in vancouver), T

Oh? From the same Klein piece:

Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, okay, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, okay, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right — who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.

If you think Trump has declined mentally that’s probably because of how your media bubble is filtering Trump stories (same w Biden)

well I just remember Trump actually landing blows on Clinton in the debates, Biden is just a disaster

Clinton "won" every debate. It just didn't matter.

Trump's stuff written down often made no sense and much hay was made of that, but in real time you got what he meant most of the time.

it's kind of hard to compare the two since lying and getting facts wrong is Trump's "style", it's hard to count these things as "gaffes" when the man is just a liar who will say whatever he has to say to make himself look better

Clinton "won" every debate. It just didn't matter.

I keep reminding ppl of this and they seem to keep forgetting.

Trump's stuff written down often made no sense and much hay was made of that, but in real time you got what he meant most of the time.

it's because of all the hand gestures and the way he varies the space between his hands, measuring the problem and approximating the size of it for the audience

she also "won" the election. it just didn't matter.

tbf by Biden standards this is perfectly lucid

idk i understood it

I think we can all agree that there's literally nothing that sounds lucid to the ears of raging #2A supporters so this is all just splitting hairs.

otm xpost