He also said that the danger posed by another Trump term doesn’t excuse Biden from scrutiny but “actually makes him more subject to scrutiny.”
To leftists and progressives fed up with Biden, particularly his commitment to Israel as it continues to bomb civilians in Gaza, the assessment was not just fair — it was obvious. But more centrist Democrats, including those most likely to have appended “Blue Wave” and “Resistance” labels to their social media accounts in the Trump years, were appalled at what they saw as a betrayal by one of their own.
Too fucking bad. They’re accurate and we need to accept them to avoid making the same mistake in the future.
Biden is an absolutely awful candidate, especially if his running mate is Kamala Harris - but if it’s him vs. Trump I’ll vote for him any day.
Democrats need to stop picking the most deeply flawed candidates they can find - Hillary Clinton being such an awful candidate is how we got Trump in the first place.
I think people forget that the Democrats literally chose Hillary instead of Sanders - like, the Democratic Party purposefully chose Hillary despite the fact Bernie was actually more popular amongst people.
Not gonna start saying why because there’s probably a myriad of reasons, but the fact that the Democratic party had a chance to put in somebody who was at least saying really progressive stuff for the people of America that the people really liked and just chose a fucking Clinton instead should say something about the party.
Tell me you don’t remember 2016 without telling me you don’t remember 2016.
Signed, a 2016 and 2020 Bernie voter.
Pretty sure they mean the DNC, not the voters.
As a fellow Bernie bro in 2016, do you not remember how many friggin memes were made with Bernie as Rick from Rick and Morty and how many people were talking about not wanting another Clinton in office? Only for him to pull out of the race and endorsing Hillary because Trump was actually getting waaaaay too much traction? And the fact the DNC also weren’t really jazzed with what Bernie was saying in general?
Tell me you don’t remember 2016 without telling me you don’t remember 2016.
Yeah, you definitely don’t remember 2016. Bernie stayed in and fought up until the national convention, and was widely criticized (unfairly) for it.
That’s vastly different than suggesting that the Democratic Party ‘chose’ Hillary despite the fact that Bernie was ‘actually more popular’.
We failed to get the vote out. We failed to rally voters to Sanders. That’s on us, or, perhaps, our fellow members of the electorate. Bernie was, unfortunately, never in striking range of the nomination, though he did better than almost anyone thought he would, and greatly improved his national profile.
I did forget he fought to the bitter end till the DNC back in 2016 (jfc it’s been 8 years!), but he endorsed Hillary like, 2 weeks before the 2016 DNC.
I’ll leave the Wikipedia link here, but the DNC actively hated what Bernie was doing and basically were pro-Clinton from the start according to that email leak from right before the convention. So the Democratic Party effectively chose Hillary because they didn’t want Bernie on because they actively disliked his campaign. He was more popular than Hillary was, but ultimately Hillary was chosen by the Democratic Party.
It seems like you’re saying his trying to prevent Trump from being president was a bad thing.
I love Bernie, but I literally never would’ve supported a candidate that didn’t commit to support the Dem candidate.
That said, it would’ve been amazing to see Bernie act like Trump and throw major shade at the Dem party, but I genuinely don’t know if that’s have worked. It certainly could’ve but it’s hard to know if it would’ve worked on Dems like on Rs.
what killed bernie’s chances in 2016 was the total lack of grassroots efforts in turning out and supporting viable progressive candidates in 2010, 2012, and 2014. both the party and the base thought that with obama in, everything would be solved and there wasn’t any more work that needed to be done. instead the house got lost in 2010 and the thinking was in order to regain power the dems had to be more like republicans instead of, well you know, democrats. none of the progressive groups ever pushed their people to run for democratic party positions which would have made it easier for a bernie or similar candidate to be taken seriously.
and that’s why we have biden: he’s a known quality, and the black women of south carolina trusted him over the other white old guy who has ideas that would probably benefit them more but were never exposed to in local political races.
if you want the party to start shifting in your political direction, just voting isn’t going to cut it. you’re going to have to actually get involved in the local party. I wonder how many progressives would even do that or once again tune out if their pet candidate doesn’t win.
I think you’re really misinterpreting OP’s argument. When he says the Democratic Party chose Bernie, I don’t think he’s saying “democrats as a whole” chose Bernie, but that the higher-ups in charge of the DNC chose Bernie, and that he lost the primary largely because of that minority.
No, that’s exactly what I’m pushing against. I mean, not that the DNC was against Bernie - it obviously was. But that his failure was due to the DNC’s interference.
The simple fact of the matter is that Bernie was not known or popular enough at the time, and especially not compared to Clinton. We all despise Clinton now for a variety of legitimate reasons, but coming out of the Obama administration, she was pushing 65%+ approval ratings before she actually had to campaign and start talking to us hoi polloi, and had been setting the stage for a presidential run for a decade.
Bernie’s campaign was a mess at the start, because he pretty clearly was running to get his views more traction, and was surprised as anyone when he skyrocketed in popularity. He had to build a run from the ground-up, and that’s not really comparable to years of preparation. Clinton had more name recognition, more experience dealing with national political media, and appeal to a more moderate Democratic constituency in 2016 than that has developed since. Things in 2016 were not, and definitely did not feel as, fundamentally fucked that drove the normally right-wing American electorate to something vaguely resembling a center-left position. People forget, or gloss over, the changes in the political environment since.
It was not in the cards. We all want to believe it could have happened, but the fact is that the only ‘what-if’ scenarios where Bernie wins in 2016 are radical changes, and not just “The DNC steps back and lets things take their course”.
Thank you for pushing back against the highlighted narrative. I remember it well, and there was a lot of noise for Bernie online and crickets at the polls.
I was all-in for Bernie, but there’s often a difference between what we want and what is happening. It was honestly a miracle that Bernie ended as well as he did in 2016.
Now, 2020? 2020 we had a shot, but we were out-politiked. Not illegitimate, since politics inherently involves politiking, but I am salty about that still.
I think that’s all very reasonable and well-put. That said, I wanna give a little push-back, mainly bc superdelegates.
Sanders lost overwhelmingly on superdelegates, and the difference in number of delegates awarded to each candidate would have been less than half as big if superdelegates weren’t considered (IMO superdelegates were and are stupid).
Also, I recall that for most of the primary, Sanders was usually leading in pledged delegates, but was always behind on total number of delegates due to superdelegates.
I think Hillary got a large upswing of normal voters by the end of the primary bc she was in the lead, voters saw the writing on the wall, and they wanted to make her victory decisive. But I think voting for Bernie would’ve been more palatable if he was the one who constantly looked to be in the lead.
Of course, that’s just speculation. And given that Sanders only got 43.2% of the popular vote (though tbf that doesn’t include lowa/Maine/Nevada/North Dakota/Washington/Wyoming [source] )…yeah, it’s reasonable to say we needed more change than just the DNC stepping back.
Losing by less is still losing. And the superdelegates have always just been a sneaky way to run up the numbers. They switched to Obama when he won more delegates to make it look like the party is united behind its nominee. We can’t know for sure they’d have done that with Bernie, but that’s because he didn’t get more pledged delegates.
This was never true, just more of the misinformation that was rampant in the Bernie political spaces. Clinton won most of the early states, and where Bernie won was usually not by much while Clinton had some southern blowouts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2016_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
Sorry… you’re basing this all on memes?
There is no more reason in morally characterizing a political party than in morally characterizing a corporation. A party is a tool, a lever of political power. Look at how Trump has taken over the Republican party. They were terrible before, but he made them worse. The Democratic party used to be the party of slavery; then it was the party of FDR and a coalition driven by socialists; now it is the party of capital and neoliberalism, but still the one most capable of being taken back by the left. Organize, communicate, educate, and never give up. Control of the Democratic party can change hands again.
Got a minute (literally a minute)?
Lawrence O’Donnell and William Greider describe the calculations of the Democratic party in “An Unreasonable Man”
Edit: Voting blue no matter who is what keeps us stuck in an endless loop of presidential election cycles with candidates most people don’t want. Some people don’t get that, and probably never will.
speaking of which…
How the Hillary Clinton campaign deliberately “elevated” Donald Trump with its “pied piper” strategy
I just read that article and that’s literally why I never wanted that stupid goddamn monster in the race. It wasn’t her fucking turn and she created so much of this mess…it was her goddamn ambition that created and fostered that orange goddamn abomination so she could get her place and turn. Fuck her… Sanders should have been nominated but her bullshit super delegates ruined the country by assuming we’re morons.
Turns out the country is significantly dumber than anyone considered unfortunately…
Whoever leaked those e-mails performed a valuable public service. Unfortunately, they were demonized for it.
I’d never vote for Biden. But I’ll vote against Trump any chance I get.
voting for Jill Stein or Cornel West is voting against Trump AND Biden
Voting for YOUR MOM is also voting against Trump AND Biden.
Except not in a first past the post system. Voting 3rd party is just a vote for whichever of the two main parties you like least. Sucks, but that’s reality.
this is election misinformation. votes for so-called third parties are counted as votes for those candidates. only votes for Republicans get counted as Republican votes and only votes for Democrats get counted as Democrat votes.
It’s not misinformation to state how things end up functioning in practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger’s_law?wprov=sfla1 It’s a well known thing for anyone who’s studied the tiniest bit of political science (or you know, was around in 2000 for that US election).
The way the votes get counted only matters insofar as their tangible real world outcome. The fact that your individual vote went to a specific third party or even abstaining ends up being irrelevant. The outcomes are the same and the party you prefer least is more likely to win. Again, I’m not advocating that this is a good system, but it is our current reality and stating that to be misinformation is ignorant at best or straight up manipulative propaganda at worst.
>The way the votes get counted only matters insofar as their tangible real world outcome. The fact that your individual vote went to a specific third party or even abstaining ends up being irrelevant.
this sounds like misinformation AND voter suppression: telling people their vote won’t count.
shame on you.
I won’t disagree with you that it is voter suppression in the sense that it supresses votes for third parties, but I didn’t set up the system so maybe channel your anger towards more productive means other than shooting the messenger. The way things stand today, that’s how the math works out if you care to check the link I shared.
i’d say telling people their votes won’t count is shitty, especially when they are literally counted.
We’re not talking “literally” a vote for the major candidate you like least. We’re talking “mathematically” a vote for the major candidate you like least.
Since FPTP voting systems like the US employees do not require any candidate to achieve a majority, FPTP systems eventually decay into two major parties, and voting for a third party after that decay is a vote against your own interests.
Here’s a young CGP Grey explaining it beautifully 12 years ago.
mathematically, the vote goes +1 to the candidate for whom you vote. the rest of this is storytelling.
No shit the +1 goes to the candidate for whom you vote. No one is disputing that. The problem is, the third party candidate will not win.
In a FPTP system that has devolved to two parties, without a major political upheaval bringing about the death of one of the two parties, there are, realistically, only two candidates who have a chance of winning the election.
If you vote for neither of those two candidates, the candidate it benefits the most is the major candidate you agree with the least. This is called the “Spoiler Effect.” This is Nader taking sufficient votes from Gore in 2000 to hand the election to Bush, because Green Party voters would have, given something like the Alternative Vote or Ranked Choice Voting, ended up mostly being Gore votes.
This is Teddy Roosevelt running independent in 1912 and getting Woodrow Wilson, an extremely racist shitbag, elected president by taking Republican voters away from Taft.
And we all understand this effect, because when it looked like Trump might lose the primary in 2016 and was threatening to run anyway, Democrats were thrilled because it would guarantee a Democrat win by splitting the conservative vote.
This “Spoiler Effect” is what is meant when someone says that voting third party is a vote against your own interests in a FPTP system. It’s the major reason FPTP is a terrible voting system.
>This is Nader taking sufficient votes from Gore in 2000 to hand the election to Bush, because Green Party voters would have, given something like the Alternative Vote or Ranked Choice
Voting, ended up mostly being Gore votes.
gore won that election. the supreme court appointed bush.
>This “Spoiler Effect” is what is meant when someone says that voting third party is a vote against your own interests in a FPTP system.
voting for biden or trump is explicitly voting against my interest. my interest is in neither of them having power.
>the third party candidate will not win.
where did you get your crystal ball?
So is setting yourself on fire, and it’s an equally bad idea.
self immolation is not voting
No, it isn’t. It’s abstaining.
Congrats, you were able to exercise your free will and feel good about it. Hope you enjoy the consequences.
He isn’t a HORRIBLE choice. He has a good chance of beating Trump and hasnt done a lot of bad things during his time. I would like someone younger and more progressive, but both sides edge towards the center.
He had a surprisingly productive term but he’s clearly showing his age and should be stepping back as he promised during the last election. I love the shit out of Bernie Sanders but at this point he’s too old to hold an office like president… this is a hard job and both the candidates in this cycle are clearly not as sharp as they once were.
His term has been wildly productive and done more good than any president in my lifetime.
But he’s also taking the exact wrong stance on Israel right now, combined with the typical democrats being fucking garbage at messaging, and the media helping Trump every step of the way.
I disagree with Biden about Israel, but it’s genuinely a hard decision. He thinks it’s more important for the US to be seen aiding an ally who suffered a sneak attack. Disagree with him about it, hate him for it, but he has a very good point.
Contrast that with Donnie’s declaration that he’d let Russia attack Europe.
We should have been harsher on Israel for the apartheid government starting decades ago. Many presidents and many congresses are to blame for that failure.
“I sat it out when asked, It’s my turn now”
Unfortunately it’s not exclusive to one party, (un?)fortunately the election cycles hasn’t made us pick the winner of the “Nth Generation Political Hack” bracket yet
Biden’s been a great president. I talk to young Democrats who dislike him. They don’t know anything about his accomplishments. Judging him in that fashion isn’t even on their radar. They are expressing a vibe they get from those around them.
Biden’s a hero. He beat Donnie and he made the win stick after the election. That was harder than he made it look. If the president of the US is staging a coup he’s got a lot of strings he can pull, and even a dumb guy like Donnie understands that much.
And Harris, the young men dislike her and they don’t know anything about her. Anything. They’ve never even heard her talk. It feels suspiciously like attitudes towards Hilary Clinton, except at least people had seen Clinton in action.
Biden has been a great President and really seems true to what he said he would do. My biggest complaint is also Harris - as in Biden said he would be the centrist attempting to bring things together (and he tried harder than I would have) but the goal has to be to help establish a new generation of leadership, including actual liberals and progressives. Yeah, it not all on him but I don’t see how any have stood out. Harris had the home court advantage but why aren’t we seeing her as the presumptive heir?