What Makes Bernie Run?

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

Traditional candidates withdraw hoping to gain favor with the nominee, perhaps secure an appointment, while retaining the respect of deep-pocket donors and the party establishment. The calculus of a movement candidate is totally different.

Sanders is building that movement. His vision and agenda have begun to drag the Democratic Party his way. He has inspired a growing following—notably the young in 2016 and Latinos this year. He has demonstrated that small donors can make a movement candidacy financially competitive, upending the Big Money politics that so corrupts our elections. He has inspired community organizers, grassroots networks, and movement activists to bring their energy into electoral politics and into the Democratic Party.

(snip)

Sanders can use his pulpit—as he did Tuesday night after suffering primary defeats in Illinois, Florida, and Arizona—to lay out a bold agenda for responding to the crisis. The risibly inadequate early responses of the Trump administration, the House, and the Senate demonstrate the need for that. And while both Trump and Biden focus on the immediate future, suggesting that any public provision is temporary and targeted for the emergency, Sanders has a unique opportunity to show how the crisis reveals the imperative of fundamental structural reforms.

Moreover, as Naomi Klein warns, the coronavirus will provide a classic opening for disaster profiteering and for shock doctrine politics, using the crisis to pass a wish list of unpopular policies—from subsidies for big banks and oil and gas companies to hitting working people with the bill for the bailout afterward, including cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Already, companies are lobbying hard for subsidies without conditions or a requirement that any bailout include long-needed corporate reforms. With a live campaign, Sanders has greater opportunity to expose the rip-offs, to lay out the alternatives in the midst of the crisis, and push Biden to a bolder position.

(snip)


https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/bernie-sanders-assess-campaign/

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. If he's so inspiring, why is he getting his clock cleaned in the primaries?

If he inspires young people so much, why aren't they getting off Instagram long enough to vote? His movement doesn't seem to be moving very far. Time for a reality check, I think. If he can continue to advocate for liberal causes in the Senate, good for him, but it's time for him to suspend his campaign and work with the party he doesn't want to be a member of to get Trump out of office.

[William769]

4. He's a legend in his own mind. nt

[LanternWaste]

2. "Imagine..."

[Aquaria]

55. It's the only straw left for his supporters to grasp

[still_one]

3. I can't deal with OPs like this because I am dealing with a fucking global crisis

[William769]

6. ...

[HarlanPepper]

7. It's Sad people think it's still a race.

I’m no Bernie fan but when I see people who think he can still win and believe it with all their hearts, it just makes me feel bad for them now, rather than annoyed.

[Cha]

41. TouFreakingChe'!

[still_one]

49. lol

[brush]

80. Lol, lol, lol.

[polichick]

5. Because of Bernie more people understand the structural issues...

that have led to the sad state of our nation’s people - structural issues enabled by greed for several decades.

[Demsrule86]

8. Trumps approval numbers are up, we have to get to the General...Sanders needs to go...and he

needs to do it today...everyday that goes by is a gift to Trump.

[Demsrule86]

10. And Bernies issues were sound rejected by millions of voters-twice now...16 and 20.

Hillary was our nominee and she won by millions of votes. Joe Biden is our nominee now and he has won by millions of votes.There is no need to him to continue...except for ego or money...I am not saying that is what it is...but what other reason is there?

[George II]

18. As of now, Biden has received 25% more popular votes and 25% more delegates than Sanders.....

....and he's leading by double digits in all the remaining 27 contests.

[Uncle Joe]

11. I agree polichick.

[polichick]

13. ...

[George II]

15. Ah, the ol' "structural issues".

[Aquaria]

56. He didn't tell them anything that most of them hadn't heard

In a high school AP civics or history class.

[zonkers]

66. This.

[Gothmog]

9. Where is sanders magical voter revolution?

How will sanders get anything done or his agenda adopted in the real world without his magical voter revolution?

[polichick]

14. The thought revolution is preceding the vote revolution...

Bernie has changed the discussion in the direction needed to save our planet, our democracy, and our people - and that is a very good thing.

[George II]

16. Say what?

[polichick]

19. Not a difficult concept - thought changes before actions...

As Bernie and Warren changed the discussion, citizens - and other politicians - have adopted their positions. So far, it’s mostly a thought revolution.

[George II]

27. That's absolutely not true. Let's take the minimum wage, for example. There has been....

...a minimum wage in just about every state since the Great Depression. Arguing that is should be higher isn't "changing the discussion".

Same thing as universal healthcare - we already have the ACA, "medicare for all" isn't a novel idea, it's just a repackaged, renamed ACA.

So what's this so-called "thought revolution"? It's an illusion.

[awesomerwb1]

35. Nothing "revolutionary" at all with Bernie's "positions"

Nothing new. Same old recycled stuff.

But we all have fav movies that we think are trendsetting, innovative and pioneering.........while the next person thinks meh.

So we've gone from revolution to "thought revolution". Next week it'll be something else like "misunderstood revolution", and the week after it'll be "ahead of his time revolution".....etc etc etc.

[Aquaria]

60. I think we can call it the Juicebox Revolution

And give its adherents some of these as souvenirs, if it makes them feel better:

[Kahuna]

39. LOL! You took the words out of my mouth. nt

[Gothmog]

20. This magical voter revolution has been a complete failure so far

How has sanders changed anything in the real world? Biden has been responsible for increased voter turnout

In the real world, sanders has no meaningful legislative accomplishment and it is sanders who is promising a magical voter revolution. sanders fellow Democrats in Congress do not take sanders seriously which is why sanders has no legislative accomplishments in the real world

[polichick]

23. Perhaps you should read more carefully.

[Gothmog]

36. the trouble is that I have read and I understand the concepts

I admit that I never considered sanders to be a serious candidate and never understood sanders appeal. sanders has no significant legislative accomplishments in his time in Congress in large part because sanders never bothered to attempt to get his fellow members of congress to support his programs. In the real world, it takes hard work and getting along with people to get major legislation passed. I was not surprised with sanders admitted that he does not try to get along with his fellow members of congress and that he was not good at pleasantries

Link to tweet

I agree with the NYT description of their decision not to endorse sanders in that sanders is too inflexible and that he is not able to compromise. Compromise is key to getting legislation adopted in the real world

Link to tweet

I admit that i do not understand sanders magical voter revolution that sanders claims will enable him to get his agenda adopted. I do not believe in magic and I have seen no evidence that sanders has a magical voter revolution.

Here is on one more question

Link to tweet

Merely announcing a proposal is meaningless in the real world One needs votes to get a major piece of legislation adopted and sanders has not shown that he can do this in the real world

Again I am well aware of sanders and his complete lack of legislative accomplishments and do not understand why he should be taken seriously on these proposals.

[Cha]

44. Well deserved ouch ouch and ouch!

[polichick]

50. You entirely miss the point of Bernie's message...

which is to get citizens to expect more for their tax monies - and from their leaders.

He worked to change the discussion because even when voters elected a Dem prez and gave Dems both houses, the people did not get the serious structural change that is necessary to put this country back on track.

Sure, Dems throw more crumbs than RepubliCONs but it hasn’t been enough. And that unwillingness to put people and planet above all else has helped create the mess we’re in. Bernie has inspired people to think bigger so that we can solve the enormous problems that face us. Too bad some here don’t get it, but more of the same ain’t gonna dig us out of this hole.

[betsuni]

58. Clinton had two years control and so did Obama, but the Senate for only a few months.

If anyone thinks serious structural change can happen in that short period of time without supermajorities and bipartisanship (Newt Gingrich's politics as war and extreme partisanship by Obama's presidency had become complete obstruction), they don't know how government works.

[Gothmog]

63. sanders has accomplished nothing in the real world

Again, I have never considered sanders to be a serious candidate because I live in the real world where accomplishments matter. sanders is ignored by his fellow Democrats because all sanders does is talk and sanders does not engage in the hard work necessary to get legislation adopted. Even Senator Warren is tired of sanders

Link to tweet

sanders is only appealing to less than 30% of the Democratic Party base and that is not sufficient for anyone to take sander seriously in the real world

Link to tweet

So if, from day one, they didn’t think they needed more than 30%, why would they actually run a campaign and build a culture designed to win more than his 30% ceiling? As that article notes, even way back in early 2019, Sanders was picking fights and creating enemies out of potential allies.

We saw that in Sanders’ refusal to broaden his message to bring in more people. When I said exactly that on Meet the Press, that “the problem with Bernie Sanders is that he has the exact same message he had four years ago” when he lost to Hillary Clinton 60-40, the response from the Sanders campaign was, well, this:

Link to tweet

If your message wasn’t a majority message four years ago, and you want to win, wouldn’t you tweak it? They didn’t. Proudly and explicitly did not tweak it. They had zero intention of growing new support by broadening and expanding their message. (Sanders famously refused to even inject more biography into his stump speech to humanize him more.)

Sanders and his campaign saw that their ceiling was 30%, and they built an entire strategy around winning with 30%. That means that instead of seeing the other 70% of voters as allies, they saw them as THE ENEMY. Even when there was ideological alignment.

I understood sanders' message. I just do not consider sanders to be a serious messenger because I live in the real world

[ehrnst]

70. It seems that many supporters of a particular candidate are forever explaining to those

who don't about what we "don't get" or what we "miss."

[Gothmog]

73. We understand the issues

We simply reject the message and the messenger. Again I am not sure why people consider sanders to be a serious candidate in that he had no legislative accomplishments in the real world sanders is a poor messenger given this lack of legislative accomplishments

[ehrnst]

75. Indeed. "Issues" is something any one of us could run on. We need someone who gets things done. (nt)

[ehrnst]

71. +1000

[Gothmog]

83. Bernie Sanders didn't win any larger argument

In the real world, sanders did not win any major argument https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bernie-sanders-didnt-win-any-larger-argument/2020/03/19/39b9a402-69f2-11ea-9923-57073adce27c_story.html

As pressure mounts for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to abandon his presidential bid, a narrative seems to have taken hold among his supporters and on cable TV, and it goes like this: Sanders may have all but lost the nomination fight, but he won the larger ideological argument, and he’s fundamentally changed the Democratic Party. His movement must be reckoned with.

To which I can only say: If this is what it looks like to win the argument, I struggle to imagine what it would look like to lose. In any way that counts, Sanders’s vision for the party has been soundly and consistently rejected....

This idea that Sanders has somehow won, even while we all thought he was losing, seems to rest on two assertions: one, that exit polls tell us the voters actually agree with his proposal for nationalized health care; and two, that he changed the conversation to the point where all the candidates were forced to adopt his agenda.

Neither withstands much scrutiny.

Let’s be real. Exit polls are all fine and good, but votes are votes. If Democrats really sided that strongly with Sanders on the issue they routinely say is the most important in the campaign, he’d be winning.

A raft of other polls on health care will tell you that it all depends on how you ask the question. According to one conducted last month by the Kaiser Family Foundation, most people who say they support Medicare-for-all also think they’d be able to keep their own insurance. (Under Sanders’s plan, they wouldn’t.)

And if you ask them to choose between building on the foundation President Barack Obama laid or a Sanders-style overhaul, a strong majority chooses the more moderate approach.....

And in his second run for the nomination, Sanders has performed not better but worse, failing to turn out the huge numbers of younger voters he predicted. In fact, you could say Sanders’s trajectory is the exact opposite of Reagan’s; while much of the media (me included) assumed he and Warren spoke for an ascendant wing of the party during the Trump years, it turns out the uprising was more limited than we thought.

Sure, Biden should say all the right things to unite his party. Sure, he’ll be willing to give some things away in the party platform, which has about as much influence on governing as I do on the Yankees’ lineup.

But hard as this may be for some millennials to accept, there’s only one winner here. Sanders doesn’t get a participation trophy.
The only thing he’s owed is a chance to exit with grace.

[NCProgressive]

28. ....

[ehrnst]

38. So, where has that "vote revolution" been hiding during the primaries?

[Aquaria]

57. Oh please

He's rehashing tired ideas that have been around for decades now.

Rage Against the Machine was advocating those very things, in that very manner, all the way back in the 90s.

[MyNameGoesHere]

65. Cool! Thought revolution rocks!

Votes win. It's like, I am thinking about voting, hmm wait, what was I thinking? Thoughts. Yeah that's it.

[nolawarlock]

67. hahahahaha

That's the best one yet.

[George II]

12. In just one day (yesterday to today) 538's forecast of delegates increased Biden's by 47.8 while...

...Sanders has dropped 22.9, a change of 70.7.

The longer he waits to drop out, the deeper the hole becomes.

[Cha]

43. Thank you for those stats, George.

[The Magistrate]

17. Narcissistic Delusion, Sir, Seems A Fair Enough Reason

Others do suggest themselves, ranging from the 'tear it all down; nihilism of the 60s radicals to the simple grift of campaign contributions.

"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

21. A point-by-point rebuttal in this op-ed.

It's from the Washington Post, which of course is part of the evil Establishment Corporate Media, so I guess it doesn't count, but:

As pressure mounts for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to abandon his presidential bid, a narrative seems to have taken hold among his supporters and on cable TV, and it goes like this: Sanders may have all but lost the nomination fight, but he won the larger ideological argument, and he’s fundamentally changed the Democratic Party. His movement must be reckoned with.

To which I can only say: If this is what it looks like to win the argument, I struggle to imagine what it would look like to lose. In any way that counts, Sanders’s vision for the party has been soundly and consistently rejected.

On the one central question facing Democrats this year — a choice between a Trump-like ideological upheaval on one hand, and a return to stability on the other — the verdict has been emphatic. Ever since the South Carolina primary, when non-Sanders Democrats were able to winnow their field enough to present voters with a mostly binary choice, Democrats in every part of the country have made clear that they’re not looking for the revolution Sanders has been prophesizing.
...
But hard as this may be for some millennials to accept, there’s only one winner here. Sanders doesn’t get a participation trophy. The only thing he’s owed is a chance to exit with grace.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bernie-sanders-didnt-win-any-larger-argument/2020/03/19/39b9a402-69f2-11ea-9923-57073adce27c_story.html Media

[MineralMan]

25. Yes. Thank you for that!

[Gothmog]

68. sanders concepts have been rejected in the real world

Thank you for posting this article. In the real world, one does not win a debate by having your ideas rejected

[NurseJackie]

22. It's over.

[MineralMan]

24. How about if we let the majority of Democratic voters decide on

the direction of the party and set its platform? You see, that's how it's going to work. At the convention this summer, the new platform will be adopted and voted on by the delegates at the convention. A majority of those delegates will be supporting Joe Biden, who will become the head of the Democratic Party when he is elected as President.

Bernie Sanders will lose the nomination. He will not be the nominee, and his delegates will not be the majority at the convention.

So, where does Bernie Sanders get off "pushing" the party anywhere? He has tried twice for the presidential nomination, and will have lost twice. Why does the loser get to "push" anything at all?

I think you may be confused about how the Democratic Party works. It works in a democratic way, and the majority decides on all issues having to do with the party's positions.

Why are you still pushing Sanders' positions, as though he were still a contender for the nomination?

[PubliusEnigma]

26. Bile

[ucrdem]

29. He was bitten by a zombie?

Hard to eulogize the undead.

[msongs]

30. when one is used to being a big fish in a small pond the attention is hard to lose nt

[NCProgressive]

31. Such OPs are not helpful for a Democratic victory in November

[Paka]

32. K&R

Spewing hatred against Senator Sanders may make some folks inner demons feel good, but his ideas have taken hold with an entire generation that are the future of the country. I'm older than the Senator, so I won't be around to see the results, but it brings me pleasure to know that I was part of the movement. Thank you Bernie!

[Uncle Joe]

34. Thank you for sharing Paka.

[George II]

45. Americans expect their Senators to be ON THE JOB, doing the work of Senators @$15,000 a month.

[Paka]

47. I'm not sure what that's about.

I haven't notied that Senator Sanders wasn't on the job. He is daily reaching out to the people with his Corona Virus videos and doing an excellent job.

[Aquaria]

59. Telling the truth isn't spewing hatred.

It's telling the truth.

Do you understand the difference?

[Aquaria]

61. Also: You could have been part of the "movement"

Back in the 90s, when plenty of liberals were saying all of the same things.

So why did you sit that out?

[Paka]

64. What movement are you talking about?

The neo-libral movement to get rid of Glass-Steagall to set us up for the 2008 crash? I've been a progressive all my 70+ years of life. Don't accuse me of sitting anythig out!

[Happy Hoosier]

33. What leverage Sanders had is gone.

He is longer a serious contender.

After a series of crushing defeats, he doesn't have a lot to offer.

[NurseJackie]

42. Voters agree.

[FloridaBlues]

52. Yes voters have already spoken in every county

[MrsCoffee]

37. An ego the size of the titanic.

Him, not us.

[George II]

46. His campaign suffered the same fate as the Titanic.

[W_HAMILTON]

40. Running for the Democratic nomination has proven very profitable for him and his family.

That is the reason why he runs.

[Aquaria]

62. Taxes and upkeep on three houses

Doesn't come from thin air, ya know!

[XRubicon]

48. Grifting?

[Squinch]

51. Hubris

[zackymilly]

53. Lots of fiber in his diet? n/t

[NNadir]

78. Best answer. n/t.

[sop]

54. I believe the only way Sanders' "movement" can survive and grow is if Trump wins in 2020.

All the economic and societal ills Sanders constantly cites to rile up his followers will only improve if Biden wins. And without his followers' anger and frustration, Bernie's "revolution" would be starved of oxygen.

[ucrdem]

69. This.

They all leap into the limelight when a RWer wins the WH; under Barack and Clinton, they withered and pined. So one has to wonder.

[TwilightZone]

79. They thought the same thing in 2016. Didn't work.

People like Sarandon were just positive that Trump would win and usher in a revolution for the Bernie movement.

Didn't happen. Won't happen in Trump wins again, either.

[wyldwolf]

72. Ego.

[Gothmog]

74. The NYT has an interesting article

Link to tweet

[NNadir]

77. The same thing that made Trump run: A massive ego and a claim that only he can save the world.

He is obviously intellectually incapable of doing so, but so is Trump.

[LizBeth]

81. "What Makes Bernie Run?" Ego and a lifetime chip on the shoulder as the picked on class.

[Gothmog]

82. sanders sent Nixon to Florida to deal with Castro mess?

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[Gothmog]

84. Bernie Sanders didn't win any larger argument

In the real world, sanders did not win any major argument https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bernie-sanders-didnt-win-any-larger-argument/2020/03/19/39b9a402-69f2-11ea-9923-57073adce27c_story.html

As pressure mounts for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to abandon his presidential bid, a narrative seems to have taken hold among his supporters and on cable TV, and it goes like this: Sanders may have all but lost the nomination fight, but he won the larger ideological argument, and he’s fundamentally changed the Democratic Party. His movement must be reckoned with.

To which I can only say: If this is what it looks like to win the argument, I struggle to imagine what it would look like to lose. In any way that counts, Sanders’s vision for the party has been soundly and consistently rejected....

This idea that Sanders has somehow won, even while we all thought he was losing, seems to rest on two assertions: one, that exit polls tell us the voters actually agree with his proposal for nationalized health care; and two, that he changed the conversation to the point where all the candidates were forced to adopt his agenda.

Neither withstands much scrutiny.

Let’s be real. Exit polls are all fine and good, but votes are votes. If Democrats really sided that strongly with Sanders on the issue they routinely say is the most important in the campaign, he’d be winning.

A raft of other polls on health care will tell you that it all depends on how you ask the question. According to one conducted last month by the Kaiser Family Foundation, most people who say they support Medicare-for-all also think they’d be able to keep their own insurance. (Under Sanders’s plan, they wouldn’t.)

And if you ask them to choose between building on the foundation President Barack Obama laid or a Sanders-style overhaul, a strong majority chooses the more moderate approach.....

And in his second run for the nomination, Sanders has performed not better but worse, failing to turn out the huge numbers of younger voters he predicted. In fact, you could say Sanders’s trajectory is the exact opposite of Reagan’s; while much of the media (me included) assumed he and Warren spoke for an ascendant wing of the party during the Trump years, it turns out the uprising was more limited than we thought.

Sure, Biden should say all the right things to unite his party. Sure, he’ll be willing to give some things away in the party platform, which has about as much influence on governing as I do on the Yankees’ lineup.

But hard as this may be for some millennials to accept, there’s only one winner here. Sanders doesn’t get a participation trophy.
The only thing he’s owed is a chance to exit with grace.

[Captain Stern]

85. Facts.

Facts make Bernie run.

They make him run far away, and fast.

It's a fact that he's not going to be our party's nominee. But, he refuses to recognize/believe/accept/acknowledge that.

It's his right to do that. To each, his own. But, I'm personally having a hard time thinking of Bernie Sanders as being aligned with the Democratic Party. In my opinion, Bernie Sanders is aligned with Bernie Sanders only.

In my opinion, Bernie Sanders is Jill Stein...with more exposure.

[Gothmog]

86. How 'Never Bernie' Voters Threw In With Biden and Changed the Primary

sanders was appealing only to 30% of the party and after South Carolina the rest of the party moved to Joe Biden to stop sanders.

Link to tweet

Rarely has political momentum flipped as quickly as it did in the first half of March, as Mr. Sanders lost serious ground to Mr. Biden before the coronavirus slowed their race. There are well-known reasons for the shift: Moderate candidates like Mr. Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota rallied around Mr. Biden. He enjoyed demographic advantages, particularly with black voters. And turnout among young voters and liberal nonvoters did not surge, failing to reshape the electorate as Mr. Sanders had hoped.

But beyond ideology, race and turnout, a chief reason for Mr. Biden’s success has little to do with his candidacy. He became a vehicle for Democrats like Ms. King who were supporting other candidates but found the prospect of Mr. Sanders and his calls for political revolution so distasteful that they put aside misgivings about Mr. Biden and backed him instead.

In phone interviews, dozens of Democrats, mostly aged 50 and over, who live in key March primary states like Massachusetts, Virginia, Michigan and Florida, said that Mr. Biden’s appeal went beyond his case for beating President Trump. It was his chances of overtaking Mr. Sanders, the only candidate in the vast Democratic field they found objectionable for reasons personal and political.....

These voters’ willingness to unite against Mr. Sanders helped Democratic Party leaders stave off his insurgent campaign and has made Mr. Biden the all-but-certain Democratic nominee. The convergence behind Mr. Biden also highlights a critical difference between this year’s primary and what happened to the Republican Party in 2016. Four years ago, establishment Republicans were openly skeptical of Mr. Trump after his victories in early primary states, but a fractured field and split primary vote allowed him to amass an insurmountable delegate lead, reshaping the party in the process.....

Ahead of Mr. Sanders’s presidential run in 2020, his campaign did not concern itself with smoothing tensions among voters who supported Mrs. Clinton in 2016. He did not seek the endorsements of many party leaders, who were always unlikely to back him, but could have been swayed from being openly antagonistic to ambivalent.

As a result, after a strong finish in Iowa and wins in New Hampshire and Nevada, Mr. Sanders did not benefit from an assumed truth of presidential campaigns: that early-state victories help bring in voters from other factions. Instead, people like Lori Boerner of McLean, Va., said Mr. Sanders’s performance sent them searching for a candidate who could stop his rise, and after the South Carolina primary, they landed on Mr. Biden.

The vast bulk of the party does not like sanders which is why Joe Biden is going to the nominee