Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign megathread v2 (pg 77 - declares victory in Iowa)

[Illini Moderate]

Good. He has to do whatever it takes to win.

You don't see Senator Warren play this dangerous game with the voters. The senator from Vermont vows to go against his enemies in the name of revolution. That's not a reasonable rhetoric to go against the other candidates, that is Trumpism in far-left wolf clothing. Bernie has been dipping in the polls since his sexist attitude towards Warren and it's not going to win him any of his critics as it demonstrate this is the true side of his vicious personality. He's a traitor as far as I'm bothered.

Yes, we are the Trumpists for wanting a seat at the table, while the Orwellian operators of the Democratic Party crush all dissenting voices. But only the leftist ones - we need to defend the Blue Dogs and hold the conservative bastions of Chicago and San Antonio.

You want us to become a part of the party? You want Bernie to reach out and become a Democrat? Get off your ****ing high horses and bury the hatchet. If Obama could do what was best for the party and unify it after 2008, I'm sure you people can. 

Bro, the Democratic Party has tried to bury the hatchet with Bernie time and time again.

After Tom Perez became DNC chair he made Keith Ellison co-chair and launched this big unity tour with Bernie where they were going around doing events together and burying the hatchet.  Then after Bernie was still complaining about the primary being rigged, we created a "unity commission" to investigate any unfair rules.  He made a mockery of it by appointing clueless hacks like Nomiki Konst who were openly trying to rig the rules to favor Bernie, rather than actually making it fair.

How did Bernie repay us?  He spent 2017-18 launching his M4A tour where he went around the country lying to people that the Democratic Party, which suffered two landslide elections (1994 and 2010) trying to pursue universal health care, has never stood for universal health care.  In fact, not only have we never stood for it, but we've been part of a conspiracy to stop it.  And then when the midterms came around he went from state to state trying to primary congressional Democrats out of office with his Our Revolution and Justice Dems and Brand New Congress candidates.

But you don't have to go remember 2017 for "burying the hatchet" stuff.  Just look at the most memorable event of the 2016 election, the DNC Convention.  We gave Bernie his prime speaking slot.  We gave Bernie his concessions.  We let him rewrite the party platform.  For christ's sake, the entire first day of the convention was all about Bernie.  And what did we get for it?  Rioting that he did nothing to control.  Then when his campaign inflamed the WikiLeaks Russian cyberop, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (who had done nothing wrong!) resigned as party chair, and what did we get for it?  Nothing.  The campaign was still plotting to try to force Tim Kaine off the ticket during the convention.  Fortunately nothing ever came of that.

I never see Bernie trying to bury the hatchet with Democrats.  He's always the one picking new fights.  It's always the Democrats trying to make peace and unity with him, adopting his positions, giving him concessions, saying nice things about him, refusing to attack him.  I wish Democrats would f***ing learn, after four years, that there's no point.

About time someone said it. Bernie didn't win the primary last time, yet we still adopted a huge chunk of his platform in attempt to unify and appease his supporters (who deserved to have their voices listened to). However, all Bernie and his surrogates have done is trash fellow democrats as "not good enough" and "impure" based on optics rather than hard evidence.

[Illini Moderate]

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/bernie-sanders-electable-trump-2020-nomination-popular-socialism.html
Running Bernie Sanders Against Trump Would Be an Act of Insanity

In the field of political forecasting, almost nothing is a matter of certainty, and almost everything is a matter of probability. If Democrats nominate Bernie Sanders — who currently leads the field in Iowa and New Hampshire, and appears to be consolidating support among the party’s progressive wing, while its moderates remain splintered — his prospects against Donald Trump in November would be far from hopeless. Polarization has given any major party nominee a high enough floor of support that the term “unelectable” has no real place in the discussion. What’s more, every candidate in the race brings a suite of their own liabilities Trump could exploit.

That said, the totality of the evidence suggests Sanders is an extremely, perhaps uniquely, risky nominee. His vulnerabilities are enormous and untested. No party nomination, with the possible exception of Barry Goldwater in 1964, has put forth a presidential nominee with the level of downside risk exposure as a Sanders-led ticket would bring. To nominate Sanders would be insane.

Sanders has gleefully discarded the party’s conventional wisdom that it has to pick and choose where to push public opinion leftward, adopting a comprehensive left-wing agenda, some of which is popular, and some of which is decidedly not. Positions in the latter category include replacing all private health insurance with a government plan, banning fracking, letting prisoners vote, decriminalizing the border, giving free health care to undocumented immigrants, and eliminating ICE. (I am only listing Sanders positions that are intensely unpopular. I am not including positions, like national rent control and phasing out all nuclear energy, that I consider ill-advised but which probably won’t harm him much with voters.)

Didn't this guy write an article in 2016 about how he desperately wanted Trump to be the republican nominee because he would be guaranteed to lose?

Seriously, most of the people writing "Sanders is unelectable!" pieces right now have such a track record of being dramatically wrong i'm not sure why anyone pays the smallest bit of mind to them.

One time being wrong doesn't constitute a "track record."

[Illini Moderate]

If you guys really think that any president, including Sanders, would completely fail to get anything done, and therefore it doesn’t matter how outlandish their legislation is, why are you constantly demonizing Democrats for not supporting Sanders' legislation?

It's a matter of principle. You know, that thing of which you and the rest of the centrist bots seem to lack even the most basic of understanding.

Just because some of us don’t agree in $60 trillion in new federal spending over the next decade doesn’t mean we aren’t principled. Such a typical mindset of someone who only looks at issues as “my way or the highway”. Get off your moral high horse. People will always have different ideas. Calling people bots and acccusing them of lacking principles isn’t going to help your cause. It’s rude and divisive.

[Illini Moderate]

Just when you think the next attack can't possibly be more pathetic, desperate and misleading than the last...

Not a good look for the establishment. :/

The Washington Examiner posted this latest news and that is a right-wing publication. Not exactly a DNC establishment. If Bernie Sanders is the nominee and can't handle Trump's attacks, then he is toast.

If that is the best they can throw out there, then I suddenly feel very confident about the general election. Half joking of course, but these attacks are coming off as increasingly desperate and meaningless.

They're going to crucify Sanders if he is the nominee. He's one of the only major candidates who hasn't been subject to a major attack campaign.

[Illini Moderate]

If he retired to his lakehouse tomorrow and I never had to hear again about how awful and evil the Democrats are

You don't seem to get it. The Party has been horribly mismanaged by a cavalcade of shameless hacks and incompetents for over a decade. Years and years of neglect have led us to abysmal results across the country. The Party apparatus needs serious overhauls or we will continue to see our hopes dashed year after year.

We won in 2006, 2008, 2012, and 2018.  We lost in 2010, 2014, and 2016.  That's a 4-3 record for the last 7 cycles including the most recent one.

On the surface, this sounds good, but diving beneath the surface unearths some truly horrific developments over the course of the past 14 years.

The Party's successes towards the end of the Bush Administration were never fully utilized. Despite back to back victories, Obama and the Party leadership failed to use their new power for anything beyond watered down healthcare reform, despite having the ability to accomplish much more. Certainly these problems were exacerbated by the Blue Dogs, but they were not the fatal flaw; that lay in the Senate. The sheer number of bills passed by the House that went onto die in the Senate is staggering. Card check, Cap and Trade, the Public Option...I could go on, but you get the picture.

Then 2010 happened and that was the ball game. Seriously, the Party's failure in 2010 cannot be understated. This was the election. Redistricting was up for grabs and the Party blew it. By losing that election so spectacularly, it ensured long term disaster in many key areas.

Whatever success has occurred after that is irrelevant. Nothing has gotten done since.

Do I think the party needs to make lots of improvements?  Absolutely yes.  I think DWS was one of the worst party chairs in living memory. 

But it's not just DWS. It's the entire Party leadership and culture. The Party has deliberately chosen to invest more in media consultants than in the state parties and it shows. Many of the state parties are total jokes and can't win races at the local level. 2016 was a complete f[inks]cking disaster, in part because the leadership and ClintonWorld turned the primary into a coronation rather than an actual contest.

I think Obama neglected party infrastructure and lost touch with the fundamentals of on-the-ground retail politics. 

This is true; the problem here is that down ballot races don't get as much attention as they deserve. You end up with Presidential campaigns telling the state party what to do, rather than working with them. This was especially true in 2016, when the Clinton campaign effectively took control from the state party and failed to communicate with local leadership.

I think Democrats have repeatedly bound their hands and shot themselves in the foot on issues where Republicans continue to take political advantage, especially data mining and social media.

Eh, data isn't the big issue. People have crowed about Trump's data operation, but I don't think that's why he won. Handing control over to the RNC and state Republican parties really helped him out.

None of these problems will be solved by nominating a self-proclaimed socialist who aggressively espouses widely-unpopular policies, lies about the party's priorities and accomplishments, and condemns the entire party and its entire history leading up to his political awakening.

Sanders is crucial because he has the potential to provide much needed reform to this systemic failure. I don't think he's going to single handedly 'fix' the Party, but the shock is necessary. You would think 2016 would be that shock, but apparently the leadership still doesn't get it. It's an absolute joke and things need to change, fast.

That "watered down healthcare" is the only reason I'm alive right now you purist...