Bernie tries to honor MLK, trashes Obama instead

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Oh would you look at that, Sanders was correct about the perilous state of the Democratic Party. Again.

If Bernie Sanders really cared about the Democratic Party, he could at the very least put a (D) after his name. You can't both demand a party reform in your image, while reinforcing your own independence from that same party. It makes no sense.

Sanders is free to have whatever party affiliation he wants.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

~let’s all continue to pretend one of the most inspiring new elected officials in this next generation of black leadership wasn’t there as a joint organizer of the event receiving equal time and making perceptive remarks, since black opinion is 100% uniform and mostly related to Barack Obama ~

[MasterJedi]

Can we start all telling Bernie to go away like everyone does with Clinton?

[henster]

There's a small segment of twitter that has a hate boner for Bernie and inflates anything he says into some big controversy. The speech was well received among the people who actually went and his comments were spot on.

[James Monroe]

Can we start all telling Bernie to go away like everyone does with Clinton?

[Landslide Lyndon]

You know what's funny? Sanders says he is disappointed with the Democratic party of the last 15 years.
So I guess he is yearning for the good old days of Bill Clinton.
Amirite?

[Shadows]

What is wrong to say that despite Obama being a decent person & charismatic leader, Democrats under his leadership got destroyed like they have never been for a century. This is despite him being the 1st Black President & an intelligent, smart guy.

MLK's legacy was not just Civil Rights. MLK was a democratic socialist who championed Universal healthcare, poor people's rights, Anti-war crusades against the Vietnam War & so on. He was killed while being among garbage workers while he was in the process of organizing the Poor people's march of Washington.

And Obama who won with a progressive rising in 2008 solidified the Neo Liberal hold, oversaw record rises in Income Inequality, had 60 Senate votes & has little to show for that & was ready for Bigcuts in SS & Medicare in his grand bargain deal.

Obama if anything, despite being the 1st Black President, was not able to work on MLK's Economic vision & ideas. You can either support MLK or Obama in their Economic vision. If you want to trash MLK's Economic vision, go ahead but have the guts to do so honestly.

[James Monroe]

You know what's funny? Sanders says he is disappointed with the Democratic party of the last 15 years.
So I guess he is yearning for the good old days of Bill Clinton.
Amirite?

Bernie statement sounds off from the way he speaks about the party. If anything he's yearning for the days when Dixiecrats make up the vast bench of the party.

[heatcharger]

...since black opinion is 100% uniform...

It's not. But Barack Obama is extremely popular with African-Americans. His favorability among them is frequently measured between 90-95%, and not to mention he's just very popular with Democrats at large.

I think the bigger issue for Sanders here is that Democratic voters mostly don't want to hear so much negativity about their side. That's been one of my biggest qualms with him as a candidate. Like, has any mildly successful national Democrat been so critical of the party? I really can't think of any.

I think most Democrats know they've lost significant power since 2009, but they either don't implicitly or explicitly fault Obama for it like Bernie does, or they just don't want to harp on it for years after the fact. At least, that's the feeling I've got from Democrats I know.

[Illini Moderate]

This isn't trashing Obama at all? He was simply pointing out the fact that YES the Democratic Party has preformed horribly in down ballot races especially on the local level. Barack Obama WAS a part of that problem in certain ways. Im not a huge Bernie fan, but seriously the fake outrage over a comment that was never meant to be a personal jab is ridiculous

[Landslide Lyndon]

This isn't trashing Obama at all? He was simply pointing out the fact that YES the Democratic Party has preformed horribly in down ballot races especially on the local level. Barack Obama WAS a part of that problem in certain ways. Im not a huge Bernie fan, but seriously the fake outrage over a comment that was never meant to be a personal jab is ridiculous

It's heartening to see that Bernie Sanders cares so much about how many legislative seats Democrats lost under Obama.
Is he by any chance the same guy who said a couple of years ago that Southern states don't matter?

[ProgressiveCanadian]

Landslide Lyndon basically acts like a paid bot from the Clinton campaign. He should at least be getting paid for spreading his garbage.

[Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner]

Landslide Lyndon ProgressiveCanadian basically acts like a paid bot from the Clinton  Sanders campaign. He should at least be getting paid for spreading his garbage.

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

Obama wasn’t perfect but to pretend that a lot of those seats weren’t lost just because the face of the Democratic Party was a black man and nothing else would be intellectually dishonest.

I don't really agree. a big part of Democrats losing so many seats is rural and ancestrally Democratic whites in the South and Appalachia abandoning the party, which has been happening to some degree ever since 1948, but really accelerated with Gore and Kerry.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

...since black opinion is 100% uniform...

It's not. But Barack Obama is extremely popular with African-Americans. His favorability among them is frequently measured between 90-95%, and not to mention he's just very popular with Democrats at large.

I think the bigger issue for Sanders here is that Democratic voters mostly don't want to hear so much negativity about their side. That's been one of my biggest qualms with him as a candidate. Like, has any mildly successful national Democrat been so critical of the party? I really can't think of any.

I think most Democrats know they've lost significant power since 2009, but they either don't implicitly or explicitly fault Obama for it like Bernie does, or they just don't want to harp on it for years after the fact. At least, that's the feeling I've got from Democrats I know.

I think that's fair, and definitely true of people of a certain age who positively identify as Democrats. I happen to think that that's part of the generation gap, since even the people I know who are my age who plan to be DC Dem operatives don't have that kind of feeling for the party.

What I'm mostly getting at is that I think that the black audience/coalition Sanders is aiming for is decidedly outside of the group of people who routinely show up to democratic primaries. There's at least a strain of black radicalism that is absolutely clear-eyed about the Democratic party, and pretty willing to be skeptical of President Obama. C. Antar Lumumba, while not as radical as his father, strikes me as a pretty important person in helping Bernie put this coalition together and validating him for people who are extremely skeptical (for good reason) of an old white guy from VT.

[heatcharger]

What I'm mostly getting at is that I think that the black audience/coalition Sanders is aiming for is decidedly outside of the group of people who routinely show up to democratic primaries. There's at least a strain of black radicalism that is absolutely clear-eyed about the Democratic party, and pretty willing to be skeptical of President Obama. C. Antar Lumumba, while not as radical as his father, strikes me as a pretty important person in helping Bernie put this coalition together and validating him for people who are extremely skeptical (for good reason) of an old white guy from VT.

Sure, there definitely is a black audience for Sanders' revolutionist message. And I can see why he's trying to tap into that group seeing as a) he won white independents open to a similar message by a big margin in 2016 and b) for him to win in 2020, he desperately needs to find more votes in the South.

But like you said, the people he's trying to reach are outside of the Democratic voter apparatus, and the amount of black people who actually fit in ideological coalition has proven itself to be a very small number. That's why I think this is pretty much bad politics, in addition to me personally not liking the tone of what he's saying here.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

What I'm mostly getting at is that I think that the black audience/coalition Sanders is aiming for is decidedly outside of the group of people who routinely show up to democratic primaries. There's at least a strain of black radicalism that is absolutely clear-eyed about the Democratic party, and pretty willing to be skeptical of President Obama. C. Antar Lumumba, while not as radical as his father, strikes me as a pretty important person in helping Bernie put this coalition together and validating him for people who are extremely skeptical (for good reason) of an old white guy from VT.

Sure, there definitely is a black audience for Sanders' revolutionist message. And I can see why he's trying to tap into that group seeing as a) he won white independents open to a similar message by a big margin in 2016 and b) for him to win in 2020, he desperately needs to find more votes in the South.

But like you said, the people he's trying to reach are outside of the Democratic voter apparatus, and the amount of black people who actually fit in ideological coalition has proven itself to be a very small number. That's why I think this is pretty much bad politics, in addition to me personally not liking the tone of what he's saying here.

Oh yeah it's 100% not going to work that well, or at least it won't without more significant black institutional support (this conversation might change if he got Rev Jackson's endorsement for example, or if Bishop Barber came out for him). But the calculus for the South is also different this time around. There's a pretty high probability that there will still be 3-5 candidates in the running by the time Super Tuesday rolls around. In which case, if he keeps his rump southern coalition together, adds on a bare minimum of traditional black voters, and brings a decent number of young independents in (recall that the Unity commission is trying to get states to reform their party reg deadlines) he boosts his margin up to 30% of the vote or something like it, which looks a LOT better in a 3-5 candidate race than it does in a two candidate race.

[Mr. Morden]

b) for him to win in 2020, he desperately needs to find more votes in the South.

In a crowded field of candidates, he could win the nomination even if he gets exactly the same number of votes he did last time.  I mean, his %age of the vote in 2016 was higher than that of Dukakis in 1988, for example.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

https://twitter.com/briebriejoy/status/981878733224185856

sounds like it played well, so yeah, keep on concern trolling

It doesn't matter what Bernie does, they'll just make up something to attack him for.

[King Lear]

This is the reason I love Bernie Sanders so much, because he's the only Democrat who has the guts to say the truth about what's happened to our Party. Obama may have been a "great orator" and a "nice person", but in reality Obama was an ineffective politician who only got elected because of the financial crisis, and who once elected failed to achieve any of his major campaign promises (the healthcare bill written by the heritage foundation doesn't count), lost the house in his first Midterm, barely scraped by for reelection, lost the Senate in his second Midterm, and did nothing to help his party hold the White House in 2016. Finally, if Democrats want to rebuild their party and start winning elections again, they need to put the policies and strategies of the failed Obama-Clinton era in the dustbin of history (extreme Social Progressivism, Economic Centrism, Military Interventionism, and appeals to identity politics), and embrace the policies and strategies of Bernie Sanders (Economic Leftism, Non-Interventionism, moderate Social Progressivim, and appeals to Class-based Politics), because Bernie Sanders is the only modern politician who can lead the Democrats to victory and create a new Left-wing political realignment if he wins the presidency in 2020.

[Landslide Lyndon]

This is the reason I love Bernie Sanders so much, because he's the only Democrat who has the guts to say the truth about what's happened to our Party. Obama may have been a "great orator" and a "nice person", but in reality Obama was an ineffective politician who only got elected because of the financial crisis, and who once elected failed to achieve any of his major campaign promises (the healthcare bill written by the heritage foundation doesn't count), lost the house in his first Midterm, barely scraped by for reelection, lost the Senate in his second Midterm, and did nothing to help his party hold the White House in 2016. Finally, if Democrats want to rebuild their party and start winning elections again, they need to put the policies and strategies of the failed Obama-Clinton era in the dustbin of history (extreme Social Progressivism, Economic Centrism, Military Interventionism, and appeals to identity politics), and embrace the policies and strategies of Bernie Sanders (Economic Leftism, Non-Interventionism, moderate Social Progressivim, and appeals to Class-based Politics), because Bernie Sanders is the only modern politician who can lead the Democrats to victory and create a new Left-wing political realignment if he wins the presidency in 2020.

When King Lear praises you...

[WritOfCertiorari]

This is the reason I love Bernie Sanders so much, because he's the only Democrat who has the guts to say the truth about what's happened to our Party. Obama may have been a "great orator" and a "nice person", but in reality Obama was an ineffective politician who only got elected because of the financial crisis, and who once elected failed to achieve any of his major campaign promises (the healthcare bill written by the heritage foundation doesn't count), lost the house in his first Midterm, barely scraped by for reelection, lost the Senate in his second Midterm, and did nothing to help his party hold the White House in 2016. Finally, if Democrats want to rebuild their party and start winning elections again, they need to put the policies and strategies of the failed Obama-Clinton era in the dustbin of history (extreme Social Progressivism, Economic Centrism, Military Interventionism, and appeals to identity politics), and embrace the policies and strategies of Bernie Sanders (Economic Leftism, Non-Interventionism, moderate Social Progressivim, and appeals to Class-based Politics), because Bernie Sanders is the only modern politician who can lead the Democrats to victory and create a new Left-wing political realignment if he wins the presidency in 2020.

Does Russian not have paragraphs or something?

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

This is the reason I love Bernie Sanders so much, because he's the only Democrat who has the guts to say the truth about what's happened to our Party. Obama may have been a "great orator" and a "nice person", but in reality Obama was an ineffective politician who only got elected because of the financial crisis, and who once elected failed to achieve any of his major campaign promises (the healthcare bill written by the heritage foundation doesn't count), lost the house in his first Midterm, barely scraped by for reelection, lost the Senate in his second Midterm, and did nothing to help his party hold the White House in 2016. Finally, if Democrats want to rebuild their party and start winning elections again, they need to put the policies and strategies of the failed Obama-Clinton era in the dustbin of history (extreme Social Progressivism, Economic Centrism, Military Interventionism, and appeals to identity politics), and embrace the policies and strategies of Bernie Sanders (Economic Leftism, Non-Interventionism, moderate Social Progressivim, and appeals to Class-based Politics), because Bernie Sanders is the only modern politician who can lead the Democrats to victory and create a new Left-wing political realignment if he wins the presidency in 2020.

When King Lear praises you...

It cancels out the Landslide Lyndon endorsement of the other side.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

King Lear has literally never been right in his entire 12 year life. You would think he would occasionally accidentally get something right, but nope, he always manages to be wrong.

[heatcharger]

b) for him to win in 2020, he desperately needs to find more votes in the South.

In a crowded field of candidates, he could win the nomination even if he gets exactly the same number of votes he did last time.  I mean, his %age of the vote in 2016 was higher than that of Dukakis in 1988, for example.

The bolded statement is interesting, the non-bolded is sorta irrelevant, as Dukakis had a comfortable majority of delegates. You can't win a Democratic primary with a plurality if that's what you're suggesting.

Bernie could do about the same in the South with the hope that the rest of the vote is massively fractured. But I don't really see that happening. I suspect if Biden runs, he'll win the South with big margins. If he doesn't, I think the crowded field will consist of a bunch of no-names (plus Sanders) trying really hard to win or do well in California on Super Tuesday, leaving the South to be only be seriously contested by 2 or 3 candidates such as Sanders and Booker and/or Harris.

And this is assuming Bernie holds 100% of his 2016 vote in this crowded field, and more. He still needs a majority of delegates to become the nominee. I don't know, this seems kind of hard.