Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign megathread

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

As long as he doesn't win the nomination (which he won't), if Sanders can move the party in a more leftward direction like he did in 2016, then I'm glad he's running.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Maybe if Hillary hadn't run a historically awful campaign, it wouldn't have even mattered that a minuscule number of Sanders supporters voted third-party.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Samders never even tried to make a convincing case for Clinton. He constantly repeated that he endorsed her only because Trump was much worse.
Not to mention that a few hours before election day he essentially  signaled to his voters that it's OK to vote for Trump by saying he doesn't believe that whoever votes for him is a racist.

That statement made me sick, I suspect Bernie really does bond with the racists who stormed the Trump rallies. He could never understand the struggles of POC as living in a lilly white state for over 40 something years. This twitter comment will come back to haunt him when Kamala and others start to unleash attacks on his campaign.

Because if there was anyone in America circa 2016 who understood the struggles of POC, it was Hillary Clinton

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I don't want him to be the nominee, but I have no problem with Sanders jumping in.  He'll help hold the frontrunners accountable on economic issues, he won't be the nominee, he'll help energize a segment of the base that can be hard to reach, and he was an exceptionally good team-player after losing last time around (that really impressed me and AFAIK he actually demanded far fewer concessions from Hillary in return than Hillary did from Obama in 2008, to say nothing of Bill's behavior).  I can happily say that I don't regret voting for him in the 2016 primary in the least.  Ultimately, I think Sanders brings an important perspective to the Senate (and Democratic politics in general) – albeit one I don't always agree with – and when push comes to shove, he doesn't seem to be the sort to let petty internal squabbles distract from the bigger goal of defeating Trump in 2020.  

That all being said, I do think that there are some things that Sanders might want to try to improve this time around, although many of them admittedly have more to do with his advisors and more fringy supporters than with Sanders himself.  First, there was definitely a very vocal faction of the Berniecrat crowd in 2016 that could get pretty misogynistic and while I doubt they spoke for Sanders or most of his supporters, he could (and should) have done more to forcefully condemn such behavior.  In fact, this speaks to a broader issue with Sanders' 2016 campaign [albeit one many politicians have]: he was often reluctant to criticize the dark underbelly of his base.  As a result, both the anti-Semitic [irony alert] and misogynistic attitudes his more extremist/whacktivist supporters would sometimes bubble to the surface in a way that gave the false impression that they were reflective of the Berniecrat movement.  This definitely hurt Sanders in 2016 and while it could easily hurt him again in 2020, it needn't do so if he is willing to take meaningful steps to nip it in the bud.  That said, I think the accusations of racism lobbed against the Berniecrat movement were far less damaging in 2016 because while Sanders wasn't the most in-touch with the African-American community he was also pretty clearly not a racist and was running against madame "Super Predator"

Second, I think Sanders needs to be a bit more careful about some of the folks he associates with; while I'm not saying Sanders was a Moscovite candidate, it's an objective fact that Sanders and Trump were the two Presidential candidates whom GRU was actively trying to help in 2016.  Furthermore, Sanders' top campaign strategist was a prominent Democratic political operative by the name of Tad Devine.  During his time as a top media consultant for Viktor Yanukovych, Devine worked so closely with Paul Manafort and Rick Gates that he was among the first witnessed called during Manafort's trial.  Devine's former clients also include such fine gentlemen as current Interpol fugitive Alejandro Toledo, former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, and former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern.  Then there were certain surrogates who would go off and say something crazy on TV; Sanders' campaign needs to keep a tighter leash on some of these folks in 2020. 

Lastly, and I'm not gonna spend to much time on this since I think even most Sanders supporters are already aware this is an issue, the sexual harassment which occurred in 2016 needs to be handled far better if anything like that happens in 2020.  There were clearly plenty of folks in Sanders' campaign who were perfectly willing to look the other way and that's obviously unacceptable.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://www.axios.com/2020-presidential-campaign-bernie-sanders-strategists-7556f833-817a-40e5-9625-b5e67a58f1dd.html

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Good for Sanders!  Devine is a first-class slimeball, to say the least.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The unfortunate thing about Warren is that some voters feel that she probably has the best policies and that she might have been their first choice if they didn’t have electability concerns about her.

It'll be interesting to see if Sanders has improved his debating skills over the past four years.  If nothing else, Warren knows economic policy and I could see Sanders losing some support to her if one of the media narratives (b/c most people obviously don't actually watch these things) to emerge from the primary debates – fairly or unfairly – is that Sanders still can't offer any details on how things like single-payer, free college, etc, etc would actually work.  There was a pretty widely accepted narrative last time around that Sanders was just spouting left-wing buzzwords without explaining how he would actually implement or pay for things like free college (or get them through Congress, for that matter).  Regardless of whether this narrative was accurate or not, it definitely hurt him in the primaries and is something he's eventually going to have to address this time around.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Yes, the debates are the best hope for folks like Warren and Booker to break through. Of course most people watching do not care about the policy specifics being discussed but how the media dissects their performance and if they get good zingers in.

Warren going after Bernie is what I most look forward to.

I’m most curious to see how O’Rourke does in the debates tbh.  He probably has the most to gain (some strong/well-received early performances could go a long way) and the most to lose (if he bombs in the first couple of debates then that could be the ballgame for him in terms of actually having a shot at winning the Democratic nomination unless he can win Iowa). 

It’ll also be interesting if Sanders can repeat his dominant performance in New Hampshire from 2016 next year against a tougher field.  A weak win there (or worse yet, a loss) would *really* hurt Sanders imo.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/samstein/status/1108013630501650432

Gross

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

but whatever, I'm someone who is considered a horrible racist, sexist bigot by everyone on this board. I think Sanders is a much better candidate than Harris or Gillibrand or Booker. If you want to vote for a candidate I like and convince yourself he's actually the most radical, why should I try to convince you otherwise?

Yeah, I can’t possibly imagine why anyone might consider you a horrible sexist bigot

It's unpopular to say but I really do believe there are a lot of misguided women who would allow themselves to get "raped" rather than just say "no" even though saying "no" would likely stop many of the "rapists" Because if they said "no" and the guy did stop, then they wouldn't be able to complain about the omnipresent "rape culture"

I know it seems weird but my friends post articles on Facebook all the time, I see comments on Jezebel and other websites.

At first I thought they were poorly constructed parodies but everyone appears to be taking them at face value. If anyone is even mildly critical, they are shouted down.

The story is always the same: Girl in college. Guy asks her out. She doesn't want to but agrees out of pity. She allows herself to get drunk. She agrees to go back to his place. She makes out with him even though she doesn't want to, again out of pity. They have sex. She doesn't say "no" but she either doesn't move or she says something like "slow down" or "please wear a condom" It's rape. After the rape, she may agree to hang out with him several more times, again apparently out of pity. She may even get "raped" a couple more times. The writer will then make clear that the worst part is this person doesn't even know he's a rapist! But they are!

I've seen variations on that story so many times over the past couple years.

Also, just to be clear, nothing like that has ever happened to me. I always wait for enthusiastic consent and use a safe word even when I'm not doing anything particularly kinky, just because I'm terrified of these chicks being out there.

Those groups definitely exist but I still do think there are women who seek out the attention that being "raped" brings. I once knew in a girl, IRL, who claimed her long term boyfriend raped her because he got her to go along with sex even though she was sick and didn't feel like it. She admitted she didn't say "no" she just acquiesced to having sex with the guy she lived with and shared a bed with. She kept going out with the guy for 2 years after that also. Of course, after she told that story, everyone in the room told her what a brave, beautiful survivor she was. That's why some women try to read rape into all their past sexual encounters, the attention, it's like Munchhausen syndrome.

Of course, I don't think things like this constitute a majority of rape accusations, but they do exist. People practically brag about their rapes the way people used to brag about their bad childhoods to show how deep and interesting they are.

If a girl agrees to go on a date with you and agrees to go back to your place after that date, that would seem to be fairly clear implied consent to most people. If that's not the case, the girl needs to give a clear "no" to cancel out the mixed messages.

"Do you want to come up to my place for a drink?" = "do you want to have sex?"

Everyone knows that because it's been repeated in every piece of media ever.

Anyone who doesn't know that is either a vegetable or being disingenuous.

Obviously if you agree to a drink and say "NO" you mean "NO"

but if you agree to a drink and you don't say anything, you will come off as being coy, and that's probably your intention unless you're mentally ill or an idiot.

And as a bonus, we also have this gem regarding eugenics:
 

The mentally disabled should not be killed. They are humans. At the same time, they are absolutely a burden to society and anyone who says they are a blessing is clearly just trying to make themselves feel better about the horrible situation they are in. To minimize their burden to society, the government should run care homes where these people can be taken care of. If people want to take care of their own mentally retarded relatives by themselves, they should of course be allowed but if there are quality care homes, very few will choose that option. Also, as soon as a mental disability is diagnosed, a fetus should be aborted.This should not be mandated by law, just encouraged by society. People whose families have a history of mental retardation should also be discouraged from having children, again, not by the law, just by society. Eugenics is fine as long as it's not racial.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

They’re not coming on the 15th. You all can quote this.

Glad I was wrong. Knew he was stalling because he could no longer keep up the facade of "I'm poor!! The returns are VERY boring!!"

You can't even give him credit when he does something you want.

When was the last time you gave Beto credit for something since he announced he was running?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/tommyxtopher/status/1134207499287105537

You didn't watch the video, did you?  Sanders actually comes off really well in it

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Bernie batting out for working class rapists! Good job pandering to female voters.

[tweeet]https://twitter.com/TheStagmania/status/1148703777081450496[/tweet]

In other words, you see the victims of sex crimes as little more than props with which to attempt to smear Sanders and don't give a flip about victims of systematic racism within the criminal justice system?  Good to know.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The Bernie plan is great because David Koch read it, and then he died. Did the Biden plan kill a single fossil fuel executive? No? Case closed.

Silly me, I thought it was basic human decency not to dance on people's graves right after they've died