waterfield wrote:

But they do sound extreme to Trump supporters. Believe me-I talk to them every day ! It just seems so very simple to me: this is a contest. The idea of a contest is to win. Sanders will not win Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania-game over.

You lost me there. Biden is too extreme for Trump supporters.

Polls show Sanders with the widest margin of polling advantage of all the potential opponents to Trump. But I agree that those polls are not meaningful right now. There are months to go, and…whatever.

I also agree that Sanders is a better debate match up to Trump than any of the other candidates.

That aside…W’s central point is to encourage us to vote blue no matter who because…Trump.

And I will preface what I say by first pointing out that, thanks to the electoral college, it makes no difference whatsoever whom I vote for, or if I vote at all. I am in California, and the corpse of Hubert Humphrey would beat Trump in this state by at least 4 million votes.

I’m not sure where my heart will be on that day, though. It depends in large part on how the nominee gets named.

If it is apparent that the Democrat establishment conspires to prevent Bernie from getting the nomination, that will be the end of it for me. Because if – as polls suggest – Bernie wins the plurality in nearly every state, and the plurality of delegates by a substantial margin – and they deal him out…

I don’t know how I can possibly interpret that other than that the Democrat establishment itself prefers to run the risk of another term of Trump, to running the risk of a Sanders presidency. That conclusion is inescapable because they KNOW what Waterfield knows, that the votes of Sanders supporters are very much in doubt. That will be undeniable proof that they would rather lose to Trump, but retain control of the party (and, btw, wrap their arms around the coffers of money that will pour into the party in opposition to Trump) then to risk Sanders winning, and his likely reconfiguration of the party away from corporate fealty. The Democrats will have told all of us to go to hell. In my view, they will have spit in the face of W’s sentiment: “The stakes are really high here. For some of us older voters its no longer about us-its about our children and their children.”

I am waiting for the articles that say, “Hey, it will be fine. Don’t worry. Sanders won’t get this crap passed, anyway.”

That’s when it’s safe to stop chewing the bedsheet.

wv wrote:

So the media-bias against bernie has made it to late-night comedy. Better late, than never

That’s a popular clip. It’s the same one I deleted above because zn beat us to it. It’s up there ^^^^^^^

Oops. I posted a video zn already posted.

• This reply was modified 6 years ago by Zooey.

Sanders hasn’t done anything…

except change the entire political conversation in this country, dragging the Overton Window farther to the Left than it has been in 50 years.

wv wrote:

That Krystal Ball vid is worth watching. At least the last three mins or so.

What I wonder is, what will the Dem-MSM actually DO, if Bernie gets the Nomination?

Will they torpedo him? Because, think about it — if you are corporate-centrist, whats the best-case-scenario? If Bernie loses to Trump, the Dems will NEVER put up another progressive. At least they wont for the next 20 years.
What we’ll get is ‘fake progressives’ like Warren and Buddachex.

So a lot is riding on Bernie. The whole American progressive movement.

He’s gotta win.

w
v

But…the old guard is over 65, and dying off year-by-year. The young’uns perceive the status quo as an existential threat. Not just a difference in opinions about policies, or philosophy of government. They don’t want to live in a Mad Max movie that starts with a completely trashed environment. The gig is up for corporate polluters. It is. It’s over. So we can either do this peacefully, or those Millennials that everyone thinks are so happy to hang out in Mom’s basement are going to emerge with some baseball bats. I am seeing a most stronger commitment now than I did in 2016. It ain’t a scientific sample. But it’s what I see. It’s a matter of time.

Oops. Maybe this doesn’t belong in this thread. I was thinking of the last point made in the article, though, about how his policies are basically centrist and not radical.

Warren is a Moderate now, btw. I saw something in the WSJ. Looks like some in the media wish they had asked her out on a date earlier instead of flirting with Biden and Bloomberg.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/23/after-bernie-sanders-landslide-nevada-win-its-time-for-democrats-to-unite-behind-him

After Bernie Sanders’ landslide Nevada win, it’s time for Democrats to unite behind him
Nathan Robinson
No other Democrats can beat him at this point. Sill, the liberal establishment is still struggling to come to terms with Sanders’ inevitable nomination

It was a landslide. Bernie Sanders had been expected to win the Nevada caucuses, but not like this. With just 4% of the vote in, news organizations called the race for Sanders, since his margin of victory was so large. Sanders has now won the popular vote in all of the first three states, and is currently leading in the polls almost everywhere else in the country. He was already the favorite to take the nomination before the Nevada contest, with Democratic party insiders worrying he was “unstoppable.” His campaign will only grow more powerful now.

Importantly, Sanders’ Nevada victory definitively disproved one of the most enduring myths about his campaign: that it could attract left-leaning young white people, but was incapable of drawing in a diverse coalition. In fact, voters of color were a primary source of Sanders’ strength in Nevada; he received the majority of Latino votes. Entrance polls showed Sanders winning “men and women, whites and Latinos, voters 17-29, 30-44 and 45-65, those with college degrees and those without, liberal Democrats (by a lot) and moderate/conservatives (narrowly), union and non-union households.” The poisonous concept of the white “Bernie Bro” as the “typical” Sanders supporter should be dead.

Some members of the media establishment had no idea what to make of Sanders’ Nevada victory. On MSNBC, James Carville said that “Putin” had won Nevada, and Chris Matthews declared the primary “over” (ill-advisedly comparing Sanders’ victory to the Nazi invasion of France). Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post admitted that Sanders had been stronger with nonwhite voters than she expected, and it might now be “too late” to do anything about him.

The other candidates and their supporters did their best to spin a humiliating defeat. Amy Klobuchar said her sixth-place finish “exceeded expectations”—if sixth place is better than you expected, you’re probably not a viable candidate. Biden vowed, implausibly (and for the third time) that he would bounce back. Pete Buttigieg took to the stage to denounce Sanders, who he said “believes in an inflexible, ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention most Americans.” A Warren supporter rather charmingly said that while Sanders had won, Warren had the “momentum,” and the Warren campaign itself said the Nevada “debate” mattered more than the Nevada “result.”

Let’s be clear: the other candidates were crushed, and Nevada was yet more evidence that there is no longer much serious opposition to Sanders. Michael Bloomberg fizzled completely in his big debut, and Democrats would be out of their minds to enrage every Sanders supporter by nominating a Republican billionaire. Joe Biden has lost badly in all of the first three contests, and it’s very clear that he can’t run an effective campaign. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign has nearly gone broke and in desperation she has resorted to relying on the Super PACs that she previously shunned. Pete Buttigieg can’t win voters of color or young people (and has accurately been described as sounding like “a neural network trained on West Wing episodes”). As Matthews says: it’s over. Bernie is dominating the fundraising, dominating the polls, and winning every primary. I am not sure Jacobin is right that “it’s Bernie’s party now”—for one thing, virtually the entire Congressional Democratic party is still opposed to Bernie. But it’s certainly Bernie’s nomination. There is simply no other credible candidate.

Democrats shouldn’t worry, though: Bernie has a strong organization and a lot of money, and can mobilize millions of people to support him in November. He’s exactly the kind of candidate you should want your party to have. And for all the fear of his “radicalism,” he’s really a moderate: his signature policies are a national health insurance program, a living wage, free public higher education, and a serious green energy investment plan. It’s shocking that there is such opposition to such sensible plans. On what planet are these things so politically toxic that Democrats are afraid to run on them? Voters like these ideas, and so long as Democrats unify behind Bernie rather than continuing to try to tear him down, they will have a very good shot at defeating a radical and unhinged president like Donald Trump. The polling looks good for Bernie in November, so now we just need to get this primary over with and focus on the real fight. The other candidates had their shot: they lost. They need to accept it.

One other takeaway from Nevada is that no future election should occur without significant reform to the caucus process. Nevada wasn’t an outright catastrophe like Iowa was—at least we got results on election night. But it was still plagued with “voting rules confusion, calculation glitches and delays in reporting tallies.” And the caucus process can be downright bizarre: tied results in the Las Vegas caucuses are resolved with a card game, and at one point Sanders lost a delegate to Pete Buttigieg because the Sanders team pulled an Ace and Buttigieg pulled a 3. (Aces were low.) From the electoral college to the Iowa caucus, American elections desperately need to reworked from the bottom up according to the simple principle “the person with the most votes ought to win.”

And yet caucuses also produce some truly inspiring on-the-ground stories, from the cab driver who spoke up for Bernie and kept billionaire Tom Steyer from being viable to the guy who switched from Trump to Bernie because he was convinced socialists were good people. Ordinary people gave incredible speeches as part of the caucus process—one reason why it should be fixed rather than ditched entirely. Members of the Culinary Union, whose leadership had prominently opposed Sanders over Medicare For All, ended up defying their leaders and pushing Sanders to victory at a number of caucus sites.

All in all, Nevada was an inspiring moment for American democracy, proof that ordinary working people of all races and incomes and genders can come together around a robust progressive agenda. Democrats need not worry: this is a good thing. It’s a night to be celebrated. The primary is not completely over, but hopefully it is now clear to every sensible observer that Bernie is cruising toward the nomination and needs to be supported rather than torn down.

Nathan Robinson is a Guardian US columnist and the editor of Current Affairs

No, and this is really the serious, open question about Sanders. The centrists are adding up all the other candidates against Bernie, suggesting that their backers could all consolidate behind whichever centrist survives, and beat Bernie, but there are also polls showing Sanders leading when everyone’s 2nd choice gets factored in. So who knows.

The thing is, though, that 28% is a lot higher than anyone else. Almost 50% higher than Biden who is 2nd in support.

Right now, there are a lot of candidates, and the big question is…where will their support end up as they drop out?

Looks to me like Warren, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar can’t make it past March 3. Maybe not Biden, either. They are all running out of money, so whoever takes 2nd today in Nevada might survive to fight a little longer, but nobody is going to send any more checks to candidates who finish 3rd or lower after today, I wouldn’t think, unless their numbers look good in South Carolina. I read somewhere that Warren and Buttigieg aren’t even going to campaign in California and Texas, hoping to make a dent by winning some of the smaller contests. Like American Samoa, maybe. That would leave Bloomberg.

I don’t know. My track record reading political tea leaves isn’t great, but that’s what I got.

BERNIE SANDERS LEADS ALL DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES IN SUPPORT FROM NON-WHITE VOTERS, NEW POLLS SHOW

JASON LEMON

https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-leads-all-democratic-candidates-support-non-white-voters-new-polls-show-1486807

Senator Bernie Sanders leads all the Democratic presidential candidates in support from non-white voters and has gained 10 points among black voters, according to new polls released Tuesday.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has long touted his support from minority–and particularly black–voters to demonstrate his electability for the Democratic party’s nomination. But the candidate’s support has appeared to slide dramatically among all demographics since his fourth-place finish in Iowa last Monday. Meanwhile, Sanders appears to be surging.

The independent senator from Vermont is backed by 28 percent of black, non-white Hispanic and Asian voters, according to the latest polling data from Monmouth University. Biden came in second with support from 20 percent, or 8 points less than Sanders.

A separate by Morning Consult, Sanders has gained 10 points in support among black voters, with 27 percent saying they now back the senator, as opposed to the 17 percent who were before the Iowa caucuses. Meanwhile, Biden’s support from the vital demographic has dropped to just 35 percent, which still puts him ahead of Sanders by 8 percent.

During the 2020 Iowa Brown & Black Presidential Forum held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Biden insisted that his support from black voters was solid. When one of the interviewers from VICE News noted that Sanders also had significant support, particularly from young black voters, Biden argued this was incorrect.

“Look, all I know is I’m leading everybody combined with black voters,” the former vice president said.

But VICE and Ipsos had recently released a poll suggesting otherwise. Their survey found that Biden and Sanders were in a statistical tie, with Sanders slightly ahead. In that poll, 56 percent said they would “consider voting” for Sanders, while just 54 percent said they would “consider voting” for Biden.

Following Iowa’s problematic results, which led Sanders and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, to both declare victory in the state, Biden has seen his support slide in state level and nationwide polls. Sanders now appears to be the national frontrunner, according to the polling data from Morning Consult and Monmouth.

Monmouth has Sanders leading Biden by 10 points, or 26 percent compared to Biden’s 16 percent. Buttigieg and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts tie for third, with 13 percent. Morning Consult’s data also shows Sanders in the lead, albeit narrower. The senator has 25 percent compared with Biden’s 22 percent. Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman, comes in third with 17 percent.

As voters in New Hampshire cast their votes in the first primary of the 2020 election season on Tuesday, Sanders is in the lead in all the most recent state-level polls, while Buttigieg is about 7 to 8 percent behind. If either Sanders or Buttigieg manages to pull ahead and win the state by a substantial margin, history shows they stand a chance to be the race’s early frontrunner.