How a socialist/progressive can win the Democratic nomination in the future

[Blue3]

Even if Sanders loses this nomination in 2020, he has pushed the Democrats to the left in 2016, throughout Trump's first (and hopefully only) term, and again now in 2020.

Unless they change the Democratic primary system (which they should, they either need to decrease delegates in safe-GOP states or scrap delegates completely and go only by popular vote and only primaries)...

Both 2016 and 2020 underline the key to a socialist/progressive victory is earning and being the favorite candidate of the South. Sanders made great inroads between his two presidential campaigns, but when it came down to it, Biden was still the favorite. If a socialist/progressive candidate can become not only acceptable to Southern Democrat primary voters, but their favorite, then that candidate will be the nominee. If someone similar to '88 Jesse Jackson were to run again, that person would probably be the Democratic nominee.

Thoughts?

[PSOL]

The Democratic establishment will not allow for something like the Sanders Campaign to ever rise the way it did ever again. I expect a lot of pushback and expulsions once the party establishment has the room to do so.

[Orser67]

I think Warren probably could have won if Sanders hadn't been in the race. Given that, I think at least three things are necessary:

-Avoid splitting the progressive lane
-Find a candidate who is acceptable (if not necessarily embraced) by the establishment
-Find a candidate who has a significant amount of demographic support that isn't really based on ideology

And I'd probably add:

-Find some way to, at the very least, avoid having African Americans unify behind a rival candidate

[brucejoel99]

It's already possible in the here & now for somebody who champions progressive policies to win the Democratic nomination but they have to be somebody who can actually prove their viability in doing so. What you have to do is build a coalition by constructively articulating your message & being nimble enough to pull in key support from other candidates/internal party constituencies.

Elizabeth Warren's candidacy, over as it may now be, was actually a pretty perfect exemplification of this. As her half-moderate/half-progressive base made clear, she was much better at selling progressive ideals to moderates than Bernie could ever hope to be. If Bernie hadn't run, or if he'd dropped out after his heart attack & endorsed Warren, then she'd be running away with this primary right now on the back of her coalition of progressives (which would now include Bernie supporters) & more liberal moderates.

The simple fact of the matter is that Bernie failed to build a coalition that could win him the primary against a unified moderate lane, & a lot of the blame for this can frankly be placed at the feet of his solid base of nonpragmatic acolytes. You simply can't allow the attitude of your supporters to be hostile, let alone very much so (e.g. calling Warren a "Republican," or implying that she didn't even deserve to run because doing so somehow hurt Saint Bernie, or stating that she's an egotistical full-of-herself hypocrite who's greedy & isn't a real progressive because she dared to run her own campaign - a progressive campaign, nonetheless - that, compared to Bernie's, was based on different policies & different ideas on how to enact those policies). All of that just made it that much harder for potential supporters to feel like they're welcome, & that's not how you win the broad coalition of voters that you need to actually win the nomination.

Also, it wouldn't kill the next great progressive champion to, y'know, do more than barely try to even compete for the black vote, either.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

After 2028, Joe Kennedy whom is the Senator-elect from MA whom is from MA can run as a progressive candidate. But, 3rd term jinx have brought in 3rd party candidates to derail Gore and Hilary. It will be hard for Kennedy to win, but he can be the next in line to Joe Biden, with a female progressive, Baldwin or Donna Edwards

[Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner]

It's already possible in the here & now for somebody who champions progressive policies to win the Democratic nomination but they have to be somebody who can actually prove their viability in doing so. What you have to do is build a coalition by constructively articulating your message & being nimble enough to pull in key support from other candidates/internal party constituencies.

Elizabeth Warren's candidacy, over as it may now be, was actually a pretty perfect exemplification of this. As her half-moderate/half-progressive base made clear, she was much better at selling progressive ideals to moderates than Bernie could ever hope to be. If Bernie hadn't run, or if he'd dropped out after his heart attack & endorsed Warren, then she'd be running away with this primary right now on the back of her coalition of progressives (which would now include Bernie supporters) & more liberal moderates.

The simple fact of the matter is that Bernie failed to build a coalition that could win him the primary against a unified moderate lane, & a lot of the blame for this can frankly be placed at the feet of his solid base of nonpragmatic acolytes. You simply can't allow the attitude of your supporters to be hostile, let alone very much so (e.g. calling Warren a "Republican," or implying that she didn't even deserve to run because doing so somehow hurt Saint Bernie, or stating that she's an egotistical full-of-herself hypocrite who's greedy & isn't a real progressive because she dared to run her own campaign - a progressive campaign, nonetheless - that, compared to Bernie's, was based on different policies & different ideas on how to enact those policies). All of that just made it that much harder for potential supporters to feel like they're welcome, & that's not how you win the broad coalition of voters that you need to actually win the nomination.

Also, it wouldn't kill the next great progressive champion to, y'know, do more than barely try to even compete for the black vote, either.

Warren was great at getting votes from white progressives with a college degree and white moderates with a college degree. Other groups, not so much. She got 19% among white college graduates and 7% among everyone else, with just 3% among non-white, non-college graduates. Warren did not have a majority coalition. This was not a problem unique to Warren (Klobuchar and Buttigieg also suffered from it, and a number of early dropouts failed to ever expand their base in any significant way), but there's a pernicious myth floating around that Warren vs Biden would have been an easy win, generally spread by people in the upper class circles where Warren>Biden>Sanders voters exist. In the real world, Warren would have lost to Biden by a lot more, especially given that there's plenty of evidence she was genuinely less electable than Biden.

[Orser67]

Warren was great at getting votes from white progressives with a college degree and white moderates with a college degree. Other groups, not so much. She got 19% among white college graduates and 7% among everyone else, with just 3% among non-white, non-college graduates. Warren did not have a majority coalition.

Yeah, this is a good point. I really liked Warren, but she clearly wasn't particularly strong with non-college-educated voters and non-white voters, and this could have been a real problem in the both the primaries and the general election.

On the other hand, I doubt the moderate lane would have united around Biden nearly as fast as they did if they hadn't been looking at the strong possibility of Sanders winning the nomination in a fractured field. And Warren would likely be a good choice to unite progressive and moderate leaders of the Democratic Party, who could in turn mobilize support behind Warren.

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

Warren was great at getting votes from white progressives with a college degree and white moderates with a college degree. Other groups, not so much. She got 19% among white college graduates and 7% among everyone else, with just 3% among non-white, non-college graduates. Warren did not have a majority coalition.

Yeah, this is a good point. I really liked Warren, but she clearly wasn't particularly strong with non-college-educated voters and non-white voters, and this could have been a real problem in the both the primaries and the general election.

Would this have changed if both Biden and Sanders chose not to run? It's possible that both did better with nonwhite and non-college voters due to name recognition, but it's also possible that either or both chose to run because Warren was seen as a bad fit for nonwhite and/or non-college voters.

I don't follow politics as closely as some of you on here, so I can't say which is more likely. I supported Warren mostly because she's younger and more intelligent/pragmatic than Biden/Sanders, and because I didn't think either frontrunner was better than the other in the primaries.

[jake_arlington]

Warren was great at getting votes from white progressives with a college degree and white moderates with a college degree. Other groups, not so much. She got 19% among white college graduates and 7% among everyone else, with just 3% among non-white, non-college graduates. Warren did not have a majority coalition.

Yeah, this is a good point. I really liked Warren, but she clearly wasn't particularly strong with non-college-educated voters and non-white voters, and this could have been a real problem in the both the primaries and the general election.

On the other hand, I doubt the moderate lane would have united around Biden nearly as fast as they did if they hadn't been looking at the strong possibility of Sanders winning the nomination in a fractured field. And Warren would likely be a good choice to unite progressive and moderate leaders of the Democratic Party, who could in turn mobilize support behind Warren.

We already saw what happened when the establishment figures of that party freaked out once Warren became a frontrunner, so we don't have to even go and dive deep into our imagination to see what happens after a woke, progressive favourite looks to be on the verge of gaining the viability necessary to secure an official nomination: Patrick, and Bloomberg in, debate schedule shifted slightly, etc.

[Orser67]

Warren was great at getting votes from white progressives with a college degree and white moderates with a college degree. Other groups, not so much. She got 19% among white college graduates and 7% among everyone else, with just 3% among non-white, non-college graduates. Warren did not have a majority coalition.

Yeah, this is a good point. I really liked Warren, but she clearly wasn't particularly strong with non-college-educated voters and non-white voters, and this could have been a real problem in the both the primaries and the general election.

On the other hand, I doubt the moderate lane would have united around Biden nearly as fast as they did if they hadn't been looking at the strong possibility of Sanders winning the nomination in a fractured field. And Warren would likely be a good choice to unite progressive and moderate leaders of the Democratic Party, who could in turn mobilize support behind Warren.

We already saw what happened when the establishment figures of that party freaked out once Warren became a frontrunner, so we don't have to even go and dive deep into our imagination to see what happens after a woke, progressive favourite looks to be on the verge of gaining the viability necessary to secure an official nomination: Patrick, and Bloomberg in, debate schedule shifted slightly, etc.

Patrick and Bloomberg jumping in was really more about Biden's perceived weakness than Warren's perceived strength, though admittedly those two things are related.

But either way, the massive difference in the response to Warren's emergence as a co-frontrunner as compared to Bernie really illustrates my point. The response to Warren was for two fairly weak candidates to jump into the race, further dividing the moderate lane. The response to Sanders was for two candidates from the moderate lane to drop out (three if you count Bloomberg), uniting the moderates around Biden. One of these freak outs was clearly a bigger deal than the other.

[jake_arlington]

Warren was great at getting votes from white progressives with a college degree and white moderates with a college degree. Other groups, not so much. She got 19% among white college graduates and 7% among everyone else, with just 3% among non-white, non-college graduates. Warren did not have a majority coalition.

Yeah, this is a good point. I really liked Warren, but she clearly wasn't particularly strong with non-college-educated voters and non-white voters, and this could have been a real problem in the both the primaries and the general election.

On the other hand, I doubt the moderate lane would have united around Biden nearly as fast as they did if they hadn't been looking at the strong possibility of Sanders winning the nomination in a fractured field. And Warren would likely be a good choice to unite progressive and moderate leaders of the Democratic Party, who could in turn mobilize support behind Warren.

We already saw what happened when the establishment figures of that party freaked out once Warren became a frontrunner, so we don't have to even go and dive deep into our imagination to see what happens after a woke, progressive favourite looks to be on the verge of gaining the viability necessary to secure an official nomination: Patrick, and Bloomberg in, debate schedule shifted slightly, etc.

Patrick and Bloomberg jumping in was really more about Biden's perceived weakness than Warren's perceived strength, though admittedly those two things are related.

But either way, the massive difference in the response to Warren's emergence as a co-frontrunner as compared to Bernie really illustrates my point. The response to Warren was for two fairly weak candidates to jump into the race, further dividing the moderate lane. The response to Sanders was for two candidates from the moderate lane to drop out (three if you count Bloomberg), uniting the moderates around Biden. One of these freak outs was clearly a bigger deal than the other.

a) Petrick was from his own home state, lol. It was clearly a reluctant bid he mounted, but definitely the establishment and hoped to eat into her support there and in the surrounding region of neighbours, so yeah of course she did have to like respond in kind by recruiting him out of the race in the first place.

b) That's only because this happened during the voting process and just as the primary elections were beginning to ramp up and starting to gain some steam while heated attacks really flew for the first time. Point being, the clock had ticked far faster than the old guard had anticipated, because it was already the middle of February and not October the previous year when some time still remains to get her down if not out.

Besides, it's customary for candidates who did as poorly as Amy, Pete, or yes even Bloomberg, to start getting out at that stage and around the same time they ended up doing it for things to be so, as such. Just obviously a coincidence of course that they occurred in such close succession of each other and lent to Biden's rising image as a comeback. But what *is* unusual is for anybody to get in so late, especially with a person as poorly funded and unknown as Deval must have known he would be.

Also, Warren never took the lead nationwide but Bernie did steal that mantle from Biden, and by high single in not already double digits nationwide in some numbers for the national primary that came out in the run up to that calendar date and an early sign of trends signalled of this harbinger throughout on. It's the same if you look at the prediction markets, who ended up installing Sanders a huge and heavy favourite on his post-nv "honeymoon" peak, whereas Warren never reached anywhere near those same heights during her own rise.