Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign megathread

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

I know that the stereotypical Sanders supporter might be a college kid with no previous investment in politics, but some of us have been involved with the Democratic Party for a while. I've seen plenty of people "loyal to the Democratic Party" fail to deliver on the promise of a progressive agenda time and time again, despite promises to voters.

So, I'm not going to wade through this thread because it's probably the same garbage I've been reading for the last two years, but this post jumped out at me and I wanted to make one point:

I won't speak for other people but as far as the Bernie-sticker-on-a-macbook stereotype goes, I think it's worth distinguishing between Bernie supporters and "BernieBros". Obviously Bernie had a coalition of voters that wasn't made up of a single demographic - it's self-evident that anybody who gets 46% of a nationwide vote will assemble a diversity of supporters.

The difference I've experienced, at least anecdotally in my own life but it fits in with a lot of other patterns, is that although Bernie supporters come from lots of different backgrounds, the intransigent and caustic BernieBro-types are all more homogeneous. This type of person tends to be a white male, predominantly younger (Millenial-age, but not exclusively), and in my experience at least college educated. The non-white, high school educated, and/or female/trans Bernie primary voters I've known were much more likely to accept the outcome of the election and vote for Hillary with little resistance. The obnoxious, aggressive Bernie supporters insistent on ideological purity were overwhelmingly white dudes who weren't used to not getting what they wanted. Spend a day on Twitter and the overwhelming majority of red rose douches you see will in fact be bearded, white-collared white men.

I won't speak for other people but I've never accepted the narrative that Bernie was solely the candidate of college students (although there's a reason why when he campaigned for Hillary he went predominantly to places like Ann Arbor, Madison, etc.) but when you're making the argument you're making it's useful to distinguish between the average Bernie supporter and the Bernie Bro. Same goes, it should be said, for the difference between Trump's Base and Trump Voters.

And for the record I've softened on Bernie in the last three years. Not my first choice for the nomination, and I still find BernieBros cancerous, but I like him more now than I did in 2016.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Interesting how whenever Sanders addresses criticism that he faces (and I'm not saying that he shouldn't face scrutiny; he should), it's never "enough." In his first week, he's admitted some of the mistakes that he made during his campaign four years ago, and is already starting to take a different tone, but his detractors seem to think that we should forgive any mistakes that other candidates made in the past, but that anything Sanders did wrong is unforgivable.

lmao his is true of every mistake that every politician above county commissioner makes and is not even close to a uniquely Sanders phenomenon

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Interesting how whenever Sanders addresses criticism that he faces (and I'm not saying that he shouldn't face scrutiny; he should), it's never "enough." In his first week, he's admitted some of the mistakes that he made during his campaign four years ago, and is already starting to take a different tone, but his detractors seem to think that we should forgive any mistakes that other candidates made in the past, but that anything Sanders did wrong is unforgivable.

lmao his is true of every mistake that every politician above county commissioner makes and is not even close to a uniquely Sanders phenomenon

To an extent, yes, but among "Democrats" who don't like Sanders, they have a very different standard for his previous actions and statements than other Democrats.

When you get truly competitive contests of any kind, this behavior is inevitable. Voter choice involves a lot of confirmation bias and double standards. It is/was true for Bernie, Kamala, Beto, Clinton, Trump, Romney, and countless statewide office seekers. Framing it as a problem that Bernie exclusively is facing reeks of persecution complex.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

You hear Democratic establishment,

Bernie is running a 50-state campaign. The way it should be.

If Bernie wins the nomination, he would be smart to do a Kerry-Edwards train-tour type campaign in the heartland.

You're right. They're secretly socialist, but they just don't know it yet. If only Democrats stopped talking about identity politics they'd come home.

I normally dont watch these kinda things, but Im snowed in and have nothing better to do. So far, Im highly impressed. Didnt expect Turner to be such a great speaker.

She voted for Jill Stein and encouraged others to do so as well.

Turner didn't endorse Stein.

"I'm a Democrat, and that's worth fighting for." - Nina Turner

I have to apologize. She didn't technically didn't endorse Stein. She only campaigned with her and continued to bash Clinton after the nomination was lost.

https://twitter.com/_EthanGrey/status/1098714538118168577

https://twitter.com/riotwomennn/status/1098697195015098373

If you watch the video she introduced Jill Stein as the next speaker at the event she was at and on TV when asked who shes supporting she said the american people so not Jill Stein

Two candidates.

1.) Constantly sh**t on (Hillary)
2.) Hug and make her seem like the best lady ever (Jill Stein)

De facto
 endorsement.

and how many people saw that video or care? literally nobody cares besides you and some people on twitter.

Goal post moving.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

https://twitter.com/TheStagmania/status/1105255818520350721

Thank you for establishing how Warren is good at drafting policy and writing bills, and how Sanders is able to captivate an audience and sell policy to the public. Thats one of the big reasons Sanders is above Warren in my ranking, Warren is not charismatic but good on policy, shes more suitable for State Senate Majority Leader, and while Sanders doesnt have all the details, he oozes Charisma, which is what you need to win the presidency and govern as an executive.

Zaybay I quite like you and your opinions but this is kind of a bizarre perspective that sounds more like a rationalization than a reason to me. At least as far as who makes a better executive, the claim here is that an ill-prepared but charismatic person would be a better executive than a qualified person who is not charismatic. If you removed the names "Sanders" and "Warren" from that paragraph and showed it to the average person they would disagree. For that matter, what you posted could apply just as easily to Clinton and Trump, no? Worth pointing out here that Liz Warren was the brain child behind, and served as a special advisor to, the CFPB.

It's also worth pointing out that what it means to be "charismatic" and to have several other political leadership traits is HIGHLY gendered. Sanders has a level of credibility because he shows anger and because he gives commanding speeches in front of large crowds. Those are things he is able to do and get away with, in large part, because he is a man. It's incredibly difficult for a female politician to do this and not take flak for it. What the quoted post does is reinforces very masculine-coded forms of leadership which in turn reinforces some misogynistic attitudes about women in government.

Before I get dragged for this: I'm not saying Berniebros are misogynists, or that Bernie is a sexist, or any of those things. This is a societal perception problem that we all have been immersed in our entire lives and all participate in to some degree. I'm just trying to highlight what I think is a very serious issue that transcends Warren/Bernie/Clinton/Trump.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I am too tired to effortpost for the moment so I'll have to only address this piecemeal. Also pardon any typos.

The real problem is Warren herself, she is rather poor when it comes to driving enthusiasm and generally been considered, since her 2012 campaign, as someone who lacks Charisma and public sway. We have seen this so far with her inability to end the DNA scandal, and in fact you could argue her actions to try to discard the scandal have only made things worse. She had these problems during both her senate campaigns as well, with Scott Brown somehow being able to label himself as a man of the people and the Trumpist Diehl winning one of the debates.

I'm not going to argue that Warren is the more electable candidate, because she clearly isn't. Her "electability" is really the only reason I would peal off for another candidate. I will say though that I think that her unfavorables seem to me to be based on a bubble. As soon as she announced, the common wisdom was "Warren won't be electable because a subset of voters won't vote for her. Therefore, I will not vote for her." It's like stock speculation - a self-fulfilling prophesy that is built upon a small, not well substantiated claim. Put another way, I think in 2015 you had a lot of people that chose to believe that Bernie and Trump would both be really unpalatable candidates. It just took a groundswell of people to say "you know what, I don't care what conventional wisdom is, I'm going to support this candidate" and those perceptions vanished. Point being that if people simply decided they didn't care what a likely small proportion of the population of voters thought and were going to evaluate a candidate based on her merits, she could very well be a stronger candidate than people thought.

Obviously as I've already pointed out there's a heavy level of misogyny that also goes into perceptions of Warren but I won't go into those because I've already done that in this thread and probably will at some point in the future.

Personally, I see her more as a Mitch McConnell, someone who is able to craft brilliant policy and lead the Senate Dems to victory, but her lack of charisma makes it rather difficult for her to be a successful president.

Can't agree with this comparison. McConnell is a legislative tactician, not a policy mastermind. McConnell is good at what he does (inasmuch as he runs the Senate to maximize Republican power) because he's willing to push procedure to its limits in order to maximize power. That's not at all Warren's strength. Warren's strength is both in crafting creative policy (something where McConnell is a complete failure FTR) and directing executive action (which is the ultimate role of a President).

It's also worth pointing out that Warren's effectiveness in crafting policy would be totally wasted in the Senate, where it's unlikely Democrats will have a majority, and impossible to have a filibuster-proof majority. Thus her goals would be limited to one (at most, even in the optimistic case) bill passed through Reconciliation per year, and some proposals (like most M4A proposals) would never pass Reconciliation.

Charisma is the real big factor in presidential elections, for better or for worse. If you cant woo the crowd, then you're going to have some trouble. This has been the way things work since the foundation of the US Republic. Image matters more than policy. While we as Americans may be against it, its just a simple fact that we love charismatic politicians. Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan, even Trump, they all have a form of charisma to them that allows them to win over a crowd.

Okay, and most people on that list were horrible executives. This helps Bernie's case inasmuch as electability is important (a point which I concede) but doesn't suggest he'd be an effective President or enactor of the Progressive vision.

For the presidency, you need to be more of the charismatic type than the policy type. The executive, except for executive orders, doesnt actually write any bills, they set the tone for debate and shepard public opinion. They have to convince the public that the bills being cranked out arent bad, but favorable to the public. That is an office where being charismatic plays to your favor.

This is a really dangerous view of what the President does - it elevates display of raw emotion over actual policy directive. Of course if you take the Schoolhouse Rock view of how policy is enacted, yes the President doesn't propose bills, he/she signs them. But it's pretty naive to assume that the average President and his/her cabinet isn't going to be heavily involved in the policy-making process. Viewing the Presidency solely as a bully pulpit and moral enforcer (especially when 35-45% of the country is going to be a bad-faith negotiator in any policy discussion) really sells short the power and responsibility of the office.

It's also a problematic attitude because only a hot-button subset of issues really need someone in the bully pulpit. Anti-trust initiatives are a great example - the average consumer isn't going to care one way or another. Whether or not it's Sanders or Warren or Biden, their cheerleading on a specific cause isn't really going to have much sway on the Democratic base that the rest of the party apparatus isn't already exerting.

--

I'll add as a final salvo that ever since 2016 I've held essentially the opposite view - Bernie Sanders's best position is within the Senate. He's largely acted on the party by refocusing it's moral compass and shifting the Overton Window. And that's great! It's one of the major successes of his campaign and the reason why I think the 2016 primary was, in the long term, a good thing for the party even if it may have led to Trump's election. But Bernie can (and already has) done that effectively in the Senate when he's been given a platform and a megaphone; he can use his position to essentially whip and bully other Senators into adopting his platform. It's what he's already done with Medicare for All and we're seeing it (slowly) operate on foreign policy e.g. with Israel/Palestine. He's demonstrated that he can do this effectively in the Senate. All of the things you are arguing that he would have the power to do as a President, he is already doing. So with that in mind, why elevate him over other people who have a comparative advantage in actual policy finesse?

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

I'll add as a final salvo that ever since 2016 I've held essentially the opposite view - Bernie Sanders's best position is within the Senate. He's largely acted on the party by refocusing it's moral compass and shifting the Overton Window. And that's great! It's one of the major successes of his campaign and the reason why I think the 2016 primary was, in the long term, a good thing for the party even if it may have led to Trump's election. But Bernie can (and already has) done that effectively in the Senate when he's been given a platform and a megaphone; he can use his position to essentially whip and bully other Senators into adopting his platform. It's what he's already done with Medicare for All and we're seeing it (slowly) operate on foreign policy e.g. with Israel/Palestine. He's demonstrated that he can do this effectively in the Senate. All of the things you are arguing that he would have the power to do as a President, he is already doing.

Err yes, only since he made a relatively successful run for President in 2016. He didn't have any policy influence whatsoever with the Democratic leadership in the Senate until he won millions of votes running for President. The only way for Sanders to keep the Democratic Party moving to the left is to win the party's nomination for President to show the 'establishment' that his policy preferences have the largest constituency.

In a Sanders vs. Biden race, yes I agree with that. In a Sanders vs. Warren race (the context of that post) you're getting policy proposals to the same end. Ignoring high school level analysis like "But Bernie is a socialist and Warren is a capitalist" you aren't going to get very much difference in the values that the two candidates are trying to achieve. In a choice between these two I'd absolutely rather have the policy crafter instead of a motivational speaker as President.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

The Boston Bomber thing is going to have no effect.

Nobody is going to flip their vote because of that. The universe of people who are simultaneously in support of M4A, tuition-free college, banning fracking, etc. but offended at the idea of a criminal voting is very small. The universe of people who feel as strongly about the latter that it would outweigh their support for the former is empty.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Voting is a way for people to participate in society and again one of the point of prison is to lock them away from normal society so they should not have the right to vote in prison. In prison many of your rights are taken away and voting should definitely be one of them

Why?

In normal society many people wear shoelaces. People in prison should be locked out of a normal society and as punishment for their crimes should not be allowed to have shoelaces.
 
The decision to strip people of their voting rights is just as arbitrary.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Voting is a way for people to participate in society and again one of the point of prison is to lock them away from normal society so they should not have the right to vote in prison. In prison many of your rights are taken away and voting should definitely be one of them

Why?

In normal society many people wear shoelaces. People in prison should be locked out of a normal society and as punishment for their crimes should not be allowed to have shoelaces.
 
The decision to strip people of their voting rights is just as arbitrary.

That is not why people in prison are not allowed to have shoelaces. They remove those to prevent suicide attempts.

Yes, poor example on my part. I was trying to think of something incredibly arbitrary and must have subconsciously associated shoelaces and prison for this reason.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

It was an incredibly cringe-inducing moment but it sounds like other than that one stumble the crowd was largely supportive of what he was saying. IDK seems like a sort of manufactured controversy that if any other candidate had said it wouldn't really be a big deal but because Sanders has a history of tonedeaf comments it gets blown up into something larger than it actually is.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1122656750744801281

But I was told that Bernie doesn't actively stoke anti-party rhetoric?

Trump is counting on the DNC successfully screwing Bernie.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1122337243744497664

Serious question: what does a primary where Sanders loses but the DNC isn't "screwing" Bernie look like to you?

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Serious question: what does a primary where Sanders loses but the DNC isn't "screwing" Bernie look like to you?

The DNC as an organ is largely powerless when it comes to these matters but it's hard to argue in good faith that a candidate whose mere presence in the campaign has led to senior party officials (including the top Democratic parliamentarians in both houses of Congress) attending private events to co-ordinate efforts to sabotage their candidacy is not having the decks stacked against the, from the start:

[img snipped]

We can argue back and forth about whether or not it's fair that elements of the party apparatus coalescing around other candidates (and that's an interesting and important discussion I'm willing to have in good faith!) but that's not what I was pointing out.

I'm more interested in the fact that, whenever pressed on the fact that Bernie is sewing disunity towards the party, there's tons of pushback denying that that's even happening, citing a dumb and meaningless pledge he signed (before all other candidates!!) or some lame-ass deflection to PUMAs from a decade ago. But it's happening and this is a clear example.

And yes yes I'm going to get people and/or ferns crying to me about "but Bernie is being attacked and that's unfair!" and I don't really care because that's beside the point. We can have that argument one people admit that Bernie is actively partaking in stoking antipathy towards the party and this isn't the first time he's done so.

But I was told that Bernie doesn't actively stoke anti-party rhetoric?

"Establishment" =/= party.

Within this discussion that's a dumb and pedantic distinction and you know it.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Bernie stans need to realize that the issue moderates/establishment people have with them isn't do to policy. The issue is that they are incompetent and the campaign is amateurish. Like yesterday, Bernie is at Clyburn's Fish Fry and does a speech on the third way think tank. How many voters do you think knows and actually cares about some DC centrist think tank? Warren is no moderate herself and you see some Democratic hacks warming up to her and it is in part because she doesn't do stupid stuff like this.

Nailed it.

When you run an insurgent campaign, you're going to make people upset because you're an insurgent no matter what you believe.

Plenty of people were mad at squishy "centrists" like Seth Moulton and Tim Ryan for trying to mobilize Congressional Democrats to go scorched earth against Pelosi in December 2018. If the movement stayed relevant for longer than ten days then these dudes' names would be mud right now rather than punchlines.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

As far as the bigger picture, this seriously introduces the idea of debt forgiveness into the public sphere outside of bankruptcy. High levels of private sector debt are crippling to economic mobility  and inflate asset prices in general, contributing to inequality. Debt cancellation forces society to recognize the costs of debt and provides a way, other than disastrous bankruptcy or inflation, to get rid of it. It also recognizes debt for what it actually is (or has become): Not a moral obligation but a way of greasing the wheels of the economy.

This is the only reason I'm even remotely sympathetic to the idea of debt forgiveness. I think lording "people are in debt due to their bad decisions" is a little misguided, considering 1) professional degree programs (not just four-year college) serve as gatekeeping mechanisms for several professions which are needed for higher income and 2) many people saddled with debt are effectively preyed upon and abused by lenders.

With that said a blanket forgiveness seems like a blunt and ineffective way of addressing the problem, and I would be very disappointed if more sophisticated and effective plans (yes, that most likely includes some means testing) got shouted down by purity-mongerers. And yes this is by far my least favorite of all Warren's proposals.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Bernie has a 0% chance at this point.

The only question at this point is whether he will do so badly (less than 10% in the first four states) that he'll basically have to drop out or if he will be able to scrap up 15% everywhere and justify symbolically staying in until the convention as he has announced his intention to do.

We saw the Bernie playbook in 2016. We heard his one speech. There are no tricks left in his bag and even the old tricks don't work as well because all the other candidates are doing them too. Nothing is going to save him.

I don't see him dropping out though. He might even stay in until the convention again.

He didn't drop out in 2016 because he knew Clinton would pivot to the center the moment he was gone. That won't be the case this time.

He "knew" something would happen that ended up not actually happening?

Clinton adopted much of Sanders's platform. Say what you want about whether or not you think that was sincere. If you think it's not sincere, then stop acting like there is anything she could have actually done to appease Sanders voters on "the left" because there's no way she could falsify the belief that she was actually going to govern like a progressive.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

This is such an... interesting exchange.

Despite being absolutely the right position, saying we wouldn't ban fracking "overnight" would get any other candidate destroyed by Bernie world. But then of course he pivots back to his stump speech saying the climate crisis is an immediate threat. Then why is banning fracking overnight not viable? Such a bizarre answer.

But assuming he's serious about not implementing an immediate fracking ban (whatever that even means... pretty obviously this wouldn't be legal), good on Sanders for taking the sensible position. Ya hate to see Bernie taking a more sensible and feasible position than my girl Liz.

I haven't listened to this interview yet but I'm looking forward to it!