He also said that the danger posed by another Trump term doesn’t excuse Biden from scrutiny but “actually makes him more subject to scrutiny.”
To leftists and progressives fed up with Biden, particularly his commitment to Israel as it continues to bomb civilians in Gaza, the assessment was not just fair — it was obvious. But more centrist Democrats, including those most likely to have appended “Blue Wave” and “Resistance” labels to their social media accounts in the Trump years, were appalled at what they saw as a betrayal by one of their own.
Only for him to pull out of the race and endorsing Hillary because Trump was actually getting waaaaay too much traction?
Yeah, you definitely don’t remember 2016. Bernie stayed in and fought up until the national convention, and was widely criticized (unfairly) for it.
And the fact the DNC also weren’t really jazzed with what Bernie was saying in general?
That’s vastly different than suggesting that the Democratic Party ‘chose’ Hillary despite the fact that Bernie was ‘actually more popular’.
We failed to get the vote out. We failed to rally voters to Sanders. That’s on us, or, perhaps, our fellow members of the electorate. Bernie was, unfortunately, never in striking range of the nomination, though he did better than almost anyone thought he would, and greatly improved his national profile.
I did forget he fought to the bitter end till the DNC back in 2016 (jfc it’s been 8 years!), but he endorsed Hillary like, 2 weeks before the 2016 DNC.
I’ll leave the Wikipedia link here, but the DNC actively hated what Bernie was doing and basically were pro-Clinton from the start according to that email leak from right before the convention. So the Democratic Party effectively chose Hillary because they didn’t want Bernie on because they actively disliked his campaign. He was more popular than Hillary was, but ultimately Hillary was chosen by the Democratic Party.
It seems like you’re saying his trying to prevent Trump from being president was a bad thing.
I love Bernie, but I literally never would’ve supported a candidate that didn’t commit to support the Dem candidate.
That said, it would’ve been amazing to see Bernie act like Trump and throw major shade at the Dem party, but I genuinely don’t know if that’s have worked. It certainly could’ve but it’s hard to know if it would’ve worked on Dems like on Rs.
what killed bernie’s chances in 2016 was the total lack of grassroots efforts in turning out and supporting viable progressive candidates in 2010, 2012, and 2014. both the party and the base thought that with obama in, everything would be solved and there wasn’t any more work that needed to be done. instead the house got lost in 2010 and the thinking was in order to regain power the dems had to be more like republicans instead of, well you know, democrats. none of the progressive groups ever pushed their people to run for democratic party positions which would have made it easier for a bernie or similar candidate to be taken seriously.
and that’s why we have biden: he’s a known quality, and the black women of south carolina trusted him over the other white old guy who has ideas that would probably benefit them more but were never exposed to in local political races.
if you want the party to start shifting in your political direction, just voting isn’t going to cut it. you’re going to have to actually get involved in the local party. I wonder how many progressives would even do that or once again tune out if their pet candidate doesn’t win.
I think you’re really misinterpreting OP’s argument. When he says the Democratic Party chose Bernie, I don’t think he’s saying “democrats as a whole” chose Bernie, but that the higher-ups in charge of the DNC chose Bernie, and that he lost the primary largely because of that minority.
but that the higher-ups in charge of the DNC chose Bernie, and that he lost the primary largely because of that minority.
No, that’s exactly what I’m pushing against. I mean, not that the DNC was against Bernie - it obviously was. But that his failure was due to the DNC’s interference.
The simple fact of the matter is that Bernie was not known or popular enough at the time, and especially not compared to Clinton. We all despise Clinton now for a variety of legitimate reasons, but coming out of the Obama administration, she was pushing 65%+ approval ratings before she actually had to campaign and start talking to us hoi polloi, and had been setting the stage for a presidential run for a decade.
Bernie’s campaign was a mess at the start, because he pretty clearly was running to get his views more traction, and was surprised as anyone when he skyrocketed in popularity. He had to build a run from the ground-up, and that’s not really comparable to years of preparation. Clinton had more name recognition, more experience dealing with national political media, and appeal to a more moderate Democratic constituency in 2016 than that has developed since. Things in 2016 were not, and definitely did not feel as, fundamentally fucked that drove the normally right-wing American electorate to something vaguely resembling a center-left position. People forget, or gloss over, the changes in the political environment since.
It was not in the cards. We all want to believe it could have happened, but the fact is that the only ‘what-if’ scenarios where Bernie wins in 2016 are radical changes, and not just “The DNC steps back and lets things take their course”.
Thank you for pushing back against the highlighted narrative. I remember it well, and there was a lot of noise for Bernie online and crickets at the polls.
I think that’s all very reasonable and well-put. That said, I wanna give a little push-back, mainly bc superdelegates.
Sanders lost overwhelmingly on superdelegates, and the difference in number of delegates awarded to each candidate would have been less than half as big if superdelegates weren’t considered (IMO superdelegates were and are stupid).
Also, I recall that for most of the primary, Sanders was usually leading in pledged delegates, but was always behind on total number of delegates due to superdelegates.
I think Hillary got a large upswing of normal voters by the end of the primary bc she was in the lead, voters saw the writing on the wall, and they wanted to make her victory decisive. But I think voting for Bernie would’ve been more palatable if he was the one who constantly looked to be in the lead.
Of course, that’s just speculation. And given that Sanders only got 43.2% of the popular vote (though tbf that doesn’t include lowa/Maine/Nevada/North Dakota/Washington/Wyoming [source] )…yeah, it’s reasonable to say we needed more change than just the DNC stepping back.
