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).
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.
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"?
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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OK, clicking through a bit more I can see the other candidates.
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.
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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.
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."
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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:
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.
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.