General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: AOC: Why do we listen to people who lost elections as if they are experts in winning elections? [View all]ehrnst
(32,640 posts)Seriously?
We lost Miami Dade, and Florida, because the GOP managed to convince Cuban immigrants that Biden was simply a front for the "far left Castro praising socialism/communism" of Bernie Sanders who would "turn us into Venezuela."
Biden's more centrist appearance gave us an edge with independent voters who were tired of Trump's drama and extremism. We didn't need someone yelling from a podium about revolution- people on that edge wanted needed someone who would restore some semblance of order to our institutions that have been so dismantled, someone who is steady and sure. Our population who wants a change from Trump wants that sense of strength and calm who can get the ship back upright before making a 90 degree turn, Change, yes - but not a "revolution." Not until we are simply back online in terms of the pandemic and health care, the economy, and the racial reckoning with our white supremacist police.
Many who voted for Obama thought that HRC was going to be this leftist feminist harpy who was going to put abortion clinics on every corner and turn all the bathrooms co-ed and voted for Trump. She wasn't centrist appearing enough for them.
I really disagree that right now a hard push to the left will work to get us into office - 2018 was a road map. Restore the groundwork first. Obama did not get his social justice accomplishments in place with his fist in the air. Americans don't self-identify by class, they identify with concepts like race, ethnicity, gender identity, region, educational background, occupation...
Sanders had success in shifting the Democratic Party in his direction on policy. But the strategy for winning power embraced by his partisans depended on a mythologized and out-of-date theory of blue-collar political behavior, one that assumes that a portion of the electorate is crying out for socialism on the basis of their class interest. Identity, in all its complexities, appears to be far more powerful in shaping voters behaviors than the material interests given pride of place in Marxist theory.
The failure of this approach meant that Sanders needed to rely heavily on the second prong of his 2016 coalition, young voters, turning out in large numbers. This too is consistent with the socialist theory of victory, which would expect young people who have faced precarious employment and a lower standard of living than their parents would find left politics appealing.
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Second, it seems that Sanders and his campaign assumed that his popularity with the white working class in 2016 was about him and his policies when, in fact, it wasnt.
The white working-class voters that Sanders won were mostly anti-Clinton voters, McElwee tells me.
A regression analysis by FiveThirtyEights Nate Silver finds support for this theory. Silvers data shows that Clinton-skeptical Bernie supporters in 2016 were not progressives who opposed Clinton from the left, but from moderate or conservative Democrats who tended to have right-leaning views on racial issues and were more likely to support repealing Obamacare. These #NeverHillary voters also tended to be rural, lower-class, and white.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/4/10/21214970/bernie-sanders-2020-lost-class-socialism