Just because the 2020 primary was the most winnable doesn't meant it was winnable. The US left has no power base to counter right wing attacks. Historically leftist power comes from an organised working class with strong unions. A left of centre candidate like Bernie needs to ride a wave of labour activism if he is to defeat the oligarchs and their lackeys.
Yeah, "most winnable" in this context means "for the first time in decades there was a left-ish candidate who may have had a 25% chance to win at the outset of the race." That's better than any other primary in living memory, but it's nowhere near a slam dunk (or even a coin toss).
The most winnable was 2016, that primary was the real missed opportunity.
Good point. If Bernie had gone all-in from Day 1 of the 2016 campaign (instead of initially running just to get healthcare in the national conversation, and because he couldn't talk Elizabeth Warren into running lol) that might have been a real contest. And conservative Democrats wouldn't have had the Trump gun to hold to voters' heads, because no one took Trump seriously at that point.
You mean the one where the DNC literally admitted in court they could rig the primaries if they wanted to? And this was proven legal.
Yes, obviously, but even if that were true, even if corporate media didn't own people's mind, they were gonna just shot him and their whole family and blame it on some Qanon freak that will suicide by five shots in the back; two days later zero news channel would talk about it; and most people would just go with it.
Wait, was the 2020 primary an easy layup that the Bernie campaign incompetently pissed away, or was it full of near-insurmountable structural barriers including stuff like "we'll just murder you if you get too close"?
Bernie campaign did some really stupid shit, but they weren't gonna win anyways. I didn't make the meme, I'm just sharing it cuz it's funny
None of the campaign's mistakes were bad enough to classify as "really stupid shit," and concluding in hindsight that he never even had a chance is just cope.
No, pretty much all of the Bernie campaign was at least defensible -- i.e., stuff you can reasonably argue was a good decision at the time. "Really stupid shit" is stuff that is so obviously wrong that there isn't even a plausible excuse for doing it.
For instance, you can make a reasonable case that going negative on Biden would not have worked. You might still disagree with that assessment, but even if it was a mistake it wasn't so far outside of the realm of possibility that it qualifies as "really stupid shit."
What do you mean "allowing"? Could he have cut Biden's mike? Could he have put on the video evidence right there in the debate? No, the best he could do is reply "that's not true and there's video to prove it, you can go see for yourself" -- which is what he did. I think he would have benefited from a more aggressive tone and a more pointed approach at that last debate, but now we're talking about precisely calibrating the tenor of 90+ minutes of extemporaneous speaking. This is fine detail, not unjustifiable, unforced errors.
"Really stupid shit" is stuff like ignoring important states, making a huge issue out of things people don't care about, being unprepared on major topics, falling for obvious bait (Warren's DNA test comes to mind), etc.
Waiting until the last debate to say anything
Biden was dead in the water before the last debate; this is just hindsight bias. I don't think Biden won a single delegate until South Carolina, and even then it took Obama's coordinated drop out/endorsement ratfucking to revive his campaign. Why didn't Bernie go out of his way to kick Biden in the Nevada debate? Because Biden was a non-factor then.
Biden was a non-factor until the last debate; handling him in literally any way was a defensible decision because he didn't really matter.
Arguing that Bernie absolutely, unquestionably needed to rip a guy no one was voting for is nonsensical.
I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking at here. Those polls only show Biden and Sanders, so they're not an accurate look at the race from about the Iowa caucuses to Super Tuesday. And results matter more than polling anyway, and all the results prior to South Carolina showed Biden dead in the water.
OK, clicking through a bit more I can see the other candidates.
He was losing in early voting rounds and was a nonfactor alone after them, until centrists merged, but he was the front runner out of the gate, and Sanders did not attack him until after the centrist merged.
Agreed on all of this, but I don't see how it makes not attacking Biden indefensible. If anything, Biden polling well out of the gate and then getting nothing out of the first few states suggests the polls overestimated his support, and focusing on him was not needed.
In hindsight it might have been better had Bernie attacked Biden earlier, but his actual approach was justifiable, and the evidence is that he won the first four states while Biden was sagging hard.
Bernie won those early contests in spite of not attacking Biden.
But he really needed to attack Biden, and it was a major fuckup not to...? The fact that he swept the early primaries and Biden didn't even get a single delegate means Bernie probably made the right call up to that point. If it takes an rare degree of ratfucking to derail your campaign, your early campaign decisions were at least defensible, if not good.
the REASON that he was not attacked is indefensible, because it was due to their personal friendship and not strategy
We don't really know this. Maybe he thought a collegial tone was a better look than "you're not really a threat so I'm not even going to waste time on you."
Yes, it's cope, but do you really think the powerful were just gonna let him win the presidency?
That depends on how coordinated the powerful were, and how much effort they would have had to put forth to sabotage the campaign. One reasonable takeaway from the primary is that the powerful got really lucky, and that they probably won't be as lucky next time around. Imagine a re-run of 2020 where:
- The pandemic (or another equivalent story) his a month earlier
- The Tara Reade story (or an equivalent) breaks a month earlier
- Mainstream Democrats don't have a popular two-term president with the clout to coordinate a mass drop out before Super Tuesday (historically, this is rare)
Would the party be able to consolidate around a centrist candidate in time? How much (more) ratfucking could they (and would they) pull off? Would any amount of coordination or ratfucking be enough if Bernie had twice as many supporters?
You are forgetting about the GOP, if Bernie won the primary, every single news outlet would somehow suddenly praise Trump, while telling people the country will explode and children will cry blood if evil gomunism won the white house. Corporate democrats would just openly bash Sanders and will talk about not voting or something like that.
Corporate democrats would just openly bash Sanders and will talk about not voting or something like that.
I don't buy this. First, this didn't happen when Obama (painted as an evil muslamic gommunist who wasn't even a real red-blooded 'Merican) won the primary in 2008. Second, no one wants to risk getting frozen out by a winning administration. Third, "Vote Blue No Matter Who" had been drummed into people's brains for 3.5 years at that point, and not even the American propaganda apparatus can erase that kind of messaging overnight.
Meanwhile Biden says children should go bac to school and libs are happy with it. People have a memory span of half second at best
Even if that's true, there are still the other two reasons you wouldn't have seen an open revolt among Democratic politicians.
On the one hand, yeah a lot of the primary was rigged, there was some extremely shady shit going on.
On the other hand, maybe Bernie shouldn't have been calling Joe Biden his best friend throughout the entire race
Scorched Earth Bernie would have been marginally more popular among leftists who might be so far left that they wouldn't vote for him anyway, but he would have been significantly less popular among persuadable primary voters.
Bernie couldn't power through the ratfucking because:
- He didn't get those persuadable voters on his side fast enough, and
- His strategy of reaching out to people who don't usually vote didn't work well enough.
That first group is made up of people like my mom, who would have gladly cast a ballot for Bernie in the general, but who didn't have him as her first choice due in part to turbolib takes like "Mayor Pete seems like a decent candidate to me." That group is not going to be receptive to a more negative version of the talking points Bernie put out. The second group might be more receptive to a more negative approach, but the failure of the Bernie campaign to turn them out should lead us to reconsider how much we rely on them going forward. Maybe a lot of people are going to be apolitical no matter what.
my mom campaigned for buttigieg because of the whole “it’s time for a millenial president, he seems decent, and when he talks it’s inspiring” thing, and it disgusts me.
these mundane liberal subhumans belong in internment camps where they can’t keep killing everyone
Awful, awful take.
Every possible path to socialism in America involves turning tens of millions of libs into leftists. Dismissing them as subhuman is poison to any leftist project. Of course you're wrong on the merits, too, but that doesn't even matter because just entertaining this idea is giving up on any hope for the future.
honestly assessing reality
it is a fact that liberals do not have... minds
get the fuck out of here
I did. You're wrong.
Where are you going to get the tens of millions of leftists we need to bring socialism to America if you're writing off every single lib?
I'm being honest here; you're the one trying to tell me libs don't have minds lol
Again: where are you going to get the tens of millions of leftists we need to bring socialism to America if you’re writing off every single lib?
You're just repeating yourself. I already told you why your opinion is shit.
For a third time, now: where are you going to get the tens of millions of leftists we need to bring socialism to America if you’re writing off every single lib?
"Libs are all amoral, mindless murderers" is lying to yourself. That's just a preposterous take. And if your preposterous take forecloses any path to socialism, maybe you need to reevaluate some things.
You’re just repeating yourself. I already told you why your opinion is shit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/lg53e2/trump_turned_red_when_staffers_said_he_had_missed/
go ahead, take a look at some perfectly average liberals. see for yourself that they are not people with minds.
I see one :LIB: without a mind, and they keep replying to me
No, you're right, I'm not saying Bernie should've gone scorched earth, but I think Bernie was definitely too friendly and gracious with Biden.
I remember after super tuesday happened, exit polls came out showing that Biden won among people who supported things like medicare for all, raising the minimum wage, and other core parts of Bernie's platform. The problem was that Bernie did not do enough to draw contrasts. Polls showed that the most important thing to primary voters was beating Trump, and yet Bernie did not cast significant doubts about Biden's ability to do that. He did the opposite, and said Biden was a fine choice for that.
So why should people vote for Bernie if Bernie himself thinks Biden is nearly as good a choice? That was the thought process of many lower information voters I talked to throughout the primary. They really thought Biden was going to deliver on some portion of Bernie's policies. Letting that assumption go unchallenged I think was a huge mistake Bernie made.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I can't help but thinking it's easier said than done, though, especially if we start talking about low-information voters who tune this stuff out until a week or two before the vote. I'm trying to think of how Bernie could have better distinguished himself from Biden in a way that (1) would have made it through to people not paying close attention and (2) wouldn't have been perceived as overly negative. It's hard to thread that needle.
Yeah definitely, in actuality Bernie needed to straddle a very fine line. I was posting going along with the assumption of the OP that the 2020 primary was actually extremely winnable, and Bernie simply fumbled it.
IF that is the case, then I think the problem was Bernie going too soft on Biden. But that is a big if.
I think the meme is conflating "most winnable (for leftists) in living memory" with "good odds."
That first group is made up of people like my mom, who would have gladly cast a ballot for Bernie in the general, but who didn’t have him as her first choice due in part to turbolib takes like “Mayor Pete seems like a decent candidate to me.”
These people would have never voted for Bernie in the primary (idk about your mom specifically, but this type of person). They will always find an excuse to not vote the socialist. Bernie's only path to victory was activating people who don't vote and a lot of those people fucking hate politicians. I don't know if this would have worked, but I think convincing Buttigieg voters is a waste of time for any socialist electoral strategy.
That first group of people is basically "libs who are not hardcore capitalists, and who aren't terminally online enough to obsess over every primary candidate." You're right that it can be difficult to convince them to vote for a Bernie-style candidate in the primary, but it's far from impossible. I remember walking to go vote with someone like that, and asking them who they were thinking of voting for. They said they liked some other candidate but also Bernie, and that they thought the other candidate was proposing some of the same things as Bernie. I mentioned that Bernie "seemed a little more serious" about those policies, and that's all it took to get them to vote for him. This lines up with polling suggesting that most primary voters had Bernie at least in their top two.
Now if someone's a Buttigieg voter, as in they have a Rat Boy sign on their lawn, yeah, appealing to them is not a great use of time. I'm thinking more of libs who haven't committed to a candidate yet.
Primary election, but you let the conservative states vote weeks/months before everyone else and guide the conversation. When you definitely have a democracy.
I think everyone dropping out at once was definately some rat fuckery too.
the closer he got, the harder he would have had to push, right up to the point of carrying around an AK-47 and defending off right-wing attacks that the news media would both-side. the fact that he is still alive is actually kinda amazing
if Bernie somehow became president, and then the capital riots happened, the liberal media would have sided with the rioters
Zero chance of this. Libs would still hate Trump, and would have still been outraged at the transparent attempts to overturn the results of the election. The media would have milked this Trump outrage in exactly the same way, and of course they would be gunning for access to the new Sanders Administration. Plus, a lot of them think believing in institutions and the rule of law makes them a good person, and that's what was at stake in the capitol putsch.
I mean it's par for the course for US media to support antidemocratic right wing putsches in other countries, but maybe a domestic one is a step too far even against a "socialist" president
Liberal media wouldn't support an antidemocratic right-wing putsch in the U.S. because (in the context of U.S. politics) their audience is not right wingers, among several other reasons. It's a really silly idea to even put out there. Even if MSNBC did a 180 on their coverage and started to put out a bunch of pro-Trump pieces (again, a silly idea to even consider), Trump would fuck it up. He'd keep getting in Twitter slapfights with blue check libs, his press secretary would still keep harassing reporters, and he'd keep doing and saying outrageous shit that libs can find out about without needing to get it through cable news. And of course you'd have all the street-level open fascists making it a hard sell to libs, too.
If the CIA supported it, the media would absolutely fall in line. They probably wouldn't pick out trump as the puppet though, lmao
Trump is strong evidence that the CIA can't just pull something like this off whenever they want. We know what the CIA's ideal president looks like -- George H.W. Bush -- and Trump is pretty far from that on about every conceivable dimension. He would have never made it into office if the CIA had the type of power you're suggesting.
Bernie winning was always predicated on activating working class folks who don't vote and/or have largely given up on thinking anything good can come via politicians and legislation that will improve their lives. That didn't happen, at least not to the degree it needed to happen. I don't blame Bernie for that, and I definitely don't blame the non-voter working class. I guess I take a little bit of comfort knowing that if Bernie just happened to have eeked out a primary win and defeated Trump, without a mass movement behind him he'd probably have 4 years of frustration and not get anything accomplished.
We need to seriously scrutinize the strategy of activating non-voters. Bernie leaned hard into that and the results were not enough to be decisive. So did it work OK, and we can get more out of it going forward? Did it work about as well as it'll ever work, and what we got in 2020 is about all we can expect to get from that approach? Or were the results not worth the investment, and we should lessen our focus on that in the future?
I can't help but think about people who lived through actual wars basically just grill pilling. Maybe they favored one side or the other, but they didn't act on that because they just wanted to get through another day. There are a lot of people like that, and a lot of them are going to stay like that no matter what's presented to them.
Bernie is not my hand he's a hand of the bourgeoisie.
Well I knew it was over when he got the heart attack, but I didn't say nothing because you guys looked so happy, and I didn't want nobody to yell at me
The heart attack had at best a marginal effect on his campaign. It happened in October 2019, three months before the first primary votes were cast.
When it happened two members of family who never usually engage or talk about politics texted me to say "hey did you hear that bernie guy had a heart attack" and a couple weeks later I find out my mom actually thought he died lol, after that my instincts told me he was going to lose, turns out my instincts were correct
When the only exception in the media blackout between the summer and new years of 2019 is a heart attack, there's just no way to build momentum among people who don't engage with politics, even if you do win Nevada
Results say more than anecdotes, and the results were that Bernie started off the primary with an unprecedented streak of wins. There's just no plausible way to square that early primary success with the theory that the heart attack doomed his campaign.
And that person you know who doesn't pay attention to politics probably didn't even remember the heart attack by January 2020.
I didn't claim his heart attack doomed his campaign, I'm claiming his heart attack was a major SIGNAL that his campaign was doomed, and as far as "unprecedented wins" goes I guess that's true, I'm not a wonk, electoral primary history isn't my strong suit
But as far as I could tell, Iowa was a complete shitshow, New Hampshire was a "duh" as far as bernie taking it, and Nevada was the only real surprise, after that pictures of Lenin started showing up on the sub and that was hilarious
It wasn't a signal that his campaign was doomed either -- his campaign did quite well when it came time to actually cast votes. He didn't have any other health issues during the campaign, and his heart attack wasn't even a major issue by January.
It had as much of an effect as Biden's "uh uh I guess I'll just stop talking" debate gaffe, which is to say almost none.
If it wasn't a signal then the people in my life couldn't have mentioned it.....or believed he was dead...and if his campaign "did well" then he wouldn't have got gotten washed after Nevada
and his heart attack wasn’t even a major issue by January.
Signals don't have to maintain relevance past whatever it is they're signaling, that's why I used the term "signals" and not "long term trends"
It had as much of an effect as Biden’s “uh uh I guess I’ll just stop talking” debate gaffe
Nobody noticed biden's debate gaffes, people DO notice when a major candidate for the US presidency has a heart attack, the media made sure of that, and impressions like that can outlast even their initial period of relevance, especially among people who aren't as obsessed with politics as we are
yeah it sucks, but the mass murder probably would have continued even with him as president. evil won a long time ago.
