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

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https://twitter.com/adamkelsey/status/1178972826792943623?s=19

#SandersDropOut

Impressive. Just like when President Jeb Bush raised $130 million last cycle and flattened his rivals for the nomination.

The difference is Sanders' support is built on small-dollar donations, while Jeb! got most of that money from the wealthy GOP fundraising class.

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Not sure what this is all about-

https://twitter.com/MediumBuying/status/1179403871229267974

It's kind of disappointing that his campaign is doing this when he has plenty of cash to flood the airwaves Iowa. Could they be waiting to go on air at a later date?

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This is unfortunate. I hope Sanders has a speedy recovery.

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Official AOC endorsement video:

https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1185640849054556160

Compelling stuff.

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And here's a picture of the #BerniesBack rally today:

https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1185676033695109124

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Dump Trump!

Flush Trump!

Traitor Trump!

Or anything besides their tired old sh**t.

Mirroring Democratic rallies after the Magat Nazi sh**tshows is not a good direction to go in I think.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287334579#post17

Yikes. This is a big reach.

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Sanders has had a relatively higher floor compared to other candidates (staying around the same level as the rest of the field fluctuates in support). He has one of the most fervent sand loyal base of supporters, and I wouldn’t count him out for that reason alone.

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This whole "controversy" is pretty stupid and overblown. Obviously, two candidates whose support bases overlap were going to have to spar at some point for one to get ahead, and Sanders' team at least presented their argument against Warren in the most objective way they could.

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This whole "controversy" is pretty stupid and overblown. Obviously, two candidates whose support bases overlap were going to have to spar at some point for one to get ahead, and Sanders' team at least presented their argument against Warren in the most objective way they could.

You don't attack another candidates' supporters. The attacks on Biden and Buttigieg in the script were at least about policy. The sad thing is that Bernie was in the same position in 2016 where their supporters were disproportionately white and they got the same criticism so they must know it's a BS argument. Besides, there are plenty of working class supporters of every candidate and to erase them with stereotypes is foul.

They weren't attacking her supporters. His campaign was questioning her ability to build a broad enough coalition to win both the primary and general election - and it was true since Warren's support base is much more limited than Sanders' (there has been a ton of polling done that proves this). And just as all candidates have plenty of working-class supporters, Sanders has plenty of college-educated and upper-middle-class supporters himself so I doubt those comments were meant to alienate an entire cohort of voters.

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I don't understand why Sanders keeps getting criticized for not doing enough for Clinton on the stump. In my view, as a Sanders 2016 supporter, he did far more than he needed to to make a case for her. The audience Sanders was addressing was not going to be won over by gushing Clinton's personal attributes or centrist positions that were popular within her wing of the party. The fear of Trump was probably the most potent force he could have tapped into, and I think it was effective in getting a good number of his supporters to turn out for Clinton or at least not vote third-party. She didn't win, of course, but to pin a big part of her loss on Sanders' supposed lackluster campaigning for her is ignoring the flaws that were innate to her candidacy from the very beginning - particularly the left's distrust of her on various issues. Sanders also could have very well just stayed on the sidelines during the general election (which I'm sure many Clinton supporters would have been similarly angry about), but he didn't because he knew what was at stake.

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He's criticized for it because 25% of his supporters ended up not voting for Clinton, in an election she lost by less than 1% of the vote in three states.

A good chunk of those supporters were never going to vote for her, to begin with. I mentioned this several times in other threads, but a large number of those Sanders/Trump voters were people who had been registered as Democrats but were effectively Republicans based on their voting history at the presidential level - and their vote was mainly done out of protest. Not to mention, a politician with Sanders' idiosyncrasies probably attracts a lot of people who do not strictly ID as Democrats to vote for him in open primary states.

You're entitled to your viewpoint, but there is far more that he could (and should) have done, during both the primary and the general, to avert the end result.

Like what? He campaigned in several key states for Clinton - making the pitch that a Trump presidency would be dire for our nation and that while not explicitly part of his wing, Clinton would be the President closest to his values. There was no benefit in trying to renounce his past criticisms of Clinton because many of his supporters would not see this as sincere. It's also not Sanders' fault that he had to defend a candidate who had low favorability ratings compared to previous Democratic nominees, and was widely seen as untrustworthy. This was the case before the primary began in earnest, and you could argue that her relative weakness as a candidate helped Sanders do as well as he did in the first place.

Yes, and how did it get to that point.  Because Sanders trashed Clinton on literally every aspect of her record, platform and personality, and tarred her as corrupt and a puppet for billionaires, while also declaring war on the Democratic Party and asserting that they rigged the primary and were similarly corrupt and owned by billionaires.

Then in the general he did little to nothing to take back those assertions or counteract them, while the movement he was so proud of spent the entire election screaming them from the rooftops, which he did nothing to stop.

What you're describing happens in pretty much every party primary. What's the point of trying to run a winning campaign if you don't attack your opponent on their record and present yourself as an acceptable alternative? And again, I doubt that actively trying to counteract his past statements would have made much of a difference in the general election when most of Clinton's detractors were set in their disapproval.

Then after Trump won, he went back to that movement and fell in with those exact same people who had just spent the last six months trashing Clinton and supporting Jill Stein.  Cenk Uygur spent all of 2016 trashing Clinton at every opportunity and giving a platform to insane conspiracy theorists like Jimmy Dore.  And after 2016 Bernie was back on his show, teaming up with him for Justice Dems and now endorsing him for a house seat.

Idk what this has to do with my initial point, but it may surprise you that your average Sanders supporter doesn't care much about Cenk Uygur or Jimmy Dore. Not to mention Sanders denounced his endorsement of  Uygur.

How many times does this strawman need to be burned down?  No Clinton supporter on earth, except for some lunatics on Twitter, is saying that Sanders is the only reason Clinton lost.

You might want to reread my post because I didn't make that argument, either. I never said that they think he was the only reason that Clinton lost, just that many of her supporters see it as a big part of her loss and overestimate the effect his campaigning had (clearly, as you decided to write a multi-paragraph polemic to my initial post that caused you so much rage that you misread my exact words).

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Hopefully, this ad gets spread far and wide.

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The fact that progressives haven't done as well in swing districts/slightly more conservative districts is also partly attributable to the DCCC and similar organizations being unwilling to invest in candidates that are perceived as too far left for said district. They consistently favor moderate candidates in the primary, and as such gain much of the party infrastructure and money that would help them win both the primary and the general election. It's hard for a more progressive candidate to win when the party establishment is largely behind someone else. It's not so much that candidates that are farther left can't win, but that structural barriers prevent them being the nominee in the first place.

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https://twitter.com/ryanstruyk/status/1227440624586149892