16
votes
Did Sanders and the progressives blow it or was the nomination always out of reach?
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- Title
- Did Sanders Blow It For The Democratic Left? Or Was The Nomination Always Out Of Reach?
- Authors
- Perry Bacon Jr.
- Published
- Apr 7 2020
- Word count
- 2392 words
I think the most important point was missed: a US presidential election is all about a single person.
That candidate, the one person who's getting the job, is evaluated for the job. As any other job interview, personality and personal characteristics matter a ton in who gets the job, beyond formal qualifications, strategies and other rational things.
I don't think Sanders, because of his personality, could ever win a Democratic nomination, much less the presidency.
For an election, I'd rather had almost any of the other late runners in the race than Biden or Sanders. They have too much personal baggage and personal stuff surrounding them that will turn off voters no matter what.
Just not being Sanders or Biden would improve getting the Oval office-job.
A pretty long article on the Democratic primary that just ended. It also talks about other candidates that were running and their mistakes to see if Sanders was really alone in bad strategy.
Also, the last part of the article is pretty interesting:
A lot of discussion around this sort of stuff kind of falls down because people conflate strategies being successful or unsuccessful with strategies being good or bad. You can have a bad strategy that pays off and vice-versa. It's like any gamble. Instead of arguing backwards from results, you need to decide who made smart moves and assumptions based on the information available at the time.
Biden's strategy was successful, but it was actively just really really bad. He failed to get anyone excited and all his successes were due to factors outside of his own control. He won because all his opponents stumbled over their own dicks, which is a great position to be in if it works out but also just a dumb thing to bank on. If we're gonna do a blackjack analogy, Biden had a 10 and just sat there hoping everyone else would bust. Lucky for him, they did.
I would argue that Sanders strategy was unsuccessful and bad. He thought he could win with 30% of the vote as a factional candidate and banked on the rest of the field remaining divided indefinitely. And even though this was their plan, he prompted his surrogates to pressure all the other candidates to drop out while antagonizing their supporters. In the process, he functionally alienated all the fence-sitting people he needed to win over in order to broaden his base. It was just really dumb planning from the top on down. There was no world where this was a reasonably assumption to make and it was absolutely bonkers that he would come out of Nevada being a strong presumptive nominee and take that opportunity to declare war on the establishment rather than reassuring them that he's fighting for their best interests so he could coast along to the nomination. This was the blackjack equivalent of having 19 and saying "DOUBLE DOWN!" It's just really stupid and reckless. And that's after he had a heart attack and refused to drop out, giving up the Left's strongest line of attack against both of the other front-runners (Biden and Warren) as being too old.
Pete and Klobuchar had unsuccessful strategies that ranged from good to okay. Pete, in particular, came from basically nothing to briefly being a frontrunner. He didn't get further just because he didn't have enough baseline strength to go anywhere. But nobody can deny he punched way WAY above his weight which speaks to a successful strategy even if it failed. Klobuchar ran about par with what you could expect given the conditions, so I say she did okay.
Warren had an unsuccessful strategy that was kind of mixed. In the broad strokes it was a reasonable bet to try to run as a the consensus candidate who everyone in the party can get excited about. She had trouble closing the deal, though, because she became the designated punching bag for every candidate who wanted to draw attention to themselves from the left, right, and center. It's hard to push through with those headwinds. Back to blackjack analogies, this was the equivalent of having a 16. It's about even odds whether you hit or stand, so it'll either work or it won't.
I've seen a lot of anti-Biden rhetoric on twitter, and I have to say I sympathise with a lot of it. I don't see any of it being about aesthetics, that their 70 year old white haired dude isn't as cool as ours.
It's always been about substantive policy differences, with Biden's detractors pointing out a lot of centrist or even right-leaning policy views in his past. That's the kind of thing that makes a politician completely unappealing to die-hard progressives. I think that's totally fair.
And the Democratic establishment will again suffer this election by running a white-bread establishment representative in an environment where the country wants to burn down the system. It's not that they're equating Biden and Trump to be the same. Rather that the only political party they could have hoped to run a real progressive candidate so terribly let them down, that they don't see any reason to support this establishment.
If only there were more than two choices available. Myself I do agree from a pragmatic point of view picking anyone but Trump is an obvious no-brainer that will avoid further incompetence, corruption, and degradation of institutions. But I totally sympathise with those who are more impassioned ideologues, an important growing and increasingly vocal part of the country, that Biden just isn't a match for their values.
Campaign promises don't matter that much to me.
If someone who has never suggested that they share my values, suddenly starts saying they do, I'd think they're lying, being an opportunist.
The platform doesn't matter when the person running on it hasn't shown they actually believe in it.
Now I see people saying Biden's campaign is to the left of Clinton's in '16.
Biden suggests lowering the ability to get medicare to 60 years old. Hillary suggested 50-55 back in 2016... How's Biden to the left?
There's no reason to believe he will actually fight for any of these new things he's including in his campaign, because he never supported them before. Did he have some sudden turn of heart? Three ghosts visit him? Please...
I'm glad to see Bernie doing this. I hope he is able to push Biden even further left, and that Biden's campaign is able to learn some lessons about reaching younger voters from Bernie's campaign.
This is disappointing. I might have to not renew my DSA remembership for next year. I wish all these groups would suck it up, offer an endorsement of Biden, and then go back to what they were doing before which doesn't really involve the presidency anyway. We need all the help we can get right now to get Trump out.
Anyone who thinks the "liberalism or fascism?" question is worth even a moment's hesitation is basically forfeiting any credibility they might have been entitled to. In 2016 you could at least argue that Trump was full of it and wasn't really going to follow through, or that Hillary is a shoe-in anyway so what does it matter. But now, after these past 4 years, to still fall back on that just makes it clear this was only ever performative wankery and any claims to care about the material well being of struggling people was just a paper-thin veneer.
Why do you feel an endorsement is necessary?
It's not necessary, but if they really don't want to endorse Biden then don't say anything about it at all. Outright saying you won't endorse Biden poisons the well and discourages DSA members from voting for him, which will help give Trump the election. If you're a Democrat or anywhere on the left, your best value is to vote for Biden.
I made up these numbers and a third-party candidate has at least an order of magnitude less than a 1% chance of winning. Unless Trump and Biden are effectively the same, which they are not, you will always have more value voting for the Democrat than voting third-party. Even though Jill Stein got more votes in 2016 in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania than the margin between HRC and Trump, there's no incentive for the Democrats to reach out for the million or so Green voters when there are so many more voters who just vote irregularly and not every single election.
Are there any numbers on this? I feel like someone who's decided to not vote for Biden has already decided so, well before the DSA came out and publicly didn't endorse.
I don't have any numbers, it's just an assumption. But last time around there was a lot of hatred toward HRC by people to her left, and artificial or not it must make some amount of difference. The same thing is going to happen this time.
An endorsement is not necessary, but politically, announcing you are not endorsing is doing more than simply declining to endorse.
It would be one thing if these movements did not endorse because Biden doesn’t shift policy to where they want it. By actively opposing Biden (which these “non endorsement announcements” essentially are), it feels like these organizations are actively hurting their cause.
in what way?
Even though Biden falls short of many of these org's standards, he is infinitely better in pretty much every metric than Trump when it comes to enacting progressive policies. By making it harder or less palatable for die-hard progressives to hold their nose and vote for Biden, they are decreasing their chances of having an administration they can at least work with. The progressive movement will be put on hold for the next decade or two at least if Trump wins another term and replaces RBG on the courts, for example.
Keep in mind too that they literally just had to do nothing in order to not make things more difficult. Instead, they put out a weird 'non-endorsement'.
The most disappointing thing about the Sanders 2020 campaign was how they invested all hope for their political movement in the perceived personal virtues of a single man at the end of his career while alienating or sidelining literally everyone else. They could have used this as a jumping off point to being able to come back stronger next time. Instead they're actively, gleefully rushing themselves into political irrelevancy so they can chase clout on social media and rack up some patreon donors. It just hurts me in my soul to watch this happening.
Some organizations are, but we also are getting a good generation of progressive politicians out of this who do not seem to be imploding over this. I have actually been particularly impressed by AOCs reasoned approach to this whole thing, not to mention any of the other numerous progressives we've seen elected in the past 4 years mostly as a result of this progressive spurt of enthusiasm under Bernie.
I definitely agree that it hurts to see progressive orgs shouting themselves into irrelevancy after gaining relevancy for the first time in years.
And people are calling her a turncoat over this! At some point Matt Christman is going to run against her and it's gonna be snake emoji being thrown at her.
That snake emoji really got to you all, huh?
I'm glad they didn't endorse Biden, or I'd probably leave the DSA entirely. I do not think a socialist organization should endorse candidates who do not support a socialist agenda, especially ones with credible accusations of rape against them.
I replied to @gaywallet with a more substantial response, but my issue isn't that they're not endorsing Biden but that they're explicitly saying that. The DSA had its chance to get Sanders the nomination and now that it hasn't happened they shouldn't be shitting on Biden when the alternative is another four years of Trump. I don't like Biden either, but I'm going to vote for him because however much he sucks he's still better than Trump.
I think if Biden wanted to avoid criticism and statements of non-endorsement from left organizations, he should be a better candidate. If his campaign can't deal with that, then why should I expect it to stand a chance against Trump's campaign?
There's a difference between criticism and comparing him to herpes. There are plenty of valid criticisms of Biden's campaign but they're mixed in with a whole bunch of "he's a Republican" and "there's no difference between him and Trump" which is entirely false. I'm all for criticizing his repeated unforced errors in campaigning, and how a public option doesn't go far enough, but that's not what's happening on the left-wing spaces I've been in on reddit and the ratio on Tildes isn't all that great either.
See, I completely disagree. I think the majority of the criticism I see is completely valid and I don't think you're going to change my mind about that.
My point is, if this sort of criticism from the left is so damaging to Biden's campaign that he will lose because of it, then it seems like it would be wise to do something to address the criticism. No campaign should expect voters to vote for them as a given -- that's a big part of why the Clinton campaign lost to Trump in 2016. The same thing applies to expecting endorsements from organizations.
If people are worried about progressives & the Left not showing up to vote, then the Democratic party should have nominated a more electable candidate who is able to address their concerns.
Was Hillary?
Based /s
Problem is, Warren was basically Bernie but wordy and without the populism (read: a progressive incarnation of HRC) and all the other moderates had no support in black demographics, who are important in every swing state except (presumably) Arizona. (And yang was unknown outside reddit.)
I don't entirely disagree, but it goes beyond criticism. There's been lots and lots of evidence that there was propaganda being blasted online against HRC from all sides and there's no reason to think it isn't happening again.
You're not wrong that voters shouldn't be taken for granted, but there were plenty of bigger reasons HRC lost, like the Comey letter, voter suppression, and again the online propaganda operation against her perpetrated by Russia, Bannon, all the other fake news operators, etc.
Flashynuff was talking about the DSA and their non-endorsement, and you've changed to talking about comments in subreddits. I think you've moved the goal posts.
The DSA did not compare him to herpes or say he's a Republican. They have substantive criticisms and it's fair to voice them.
I'm not disagreeing that there are valid criticisms of Biden and his campaign. My initial statement was that DSA is poisoning the well and the conversation flowed from there.
Help me connect the dots in the logic here. It sounds like you're saying that if Biden can't fight a two-front war, then how can you expect him to stand a chance in a one-front war?
That's not quite right. I am saying that if the Biden campaign cannot adequately address these criticisms, then it is not a strong enough campaign to beat Trump. Trump can and will use those criticisms to his full advantage.
What, that his climate change proposal isn't aggressive enough for the Sunrise movement? How do you see that playing with the Republican base?
I think Trump will start out focusing more on Biden's support of cutting Social Security and of NAFTA. That's not to say Trump's campaign won't be able to figure out a way to spin Biden's 75/200 grade from Sunrise, because I'm sure he will. Trump will lie through his teeth and exploit every weakness possible. That is why the Biden campaign needs to address those weaknesses as soon as he can.
I think you underestimate the extent to which they'd be doing this to any Democrat. I also think you overstate the influence of Sunrise. They're actually burning their bridges being this intransigent and setting up an ideological framework that makes them unable to tell the difference between Biden and Trump. A rating framework that can't appreciably draw distinctions between the two is a shitty rating system.
I don't care what Trump would be saying about any other Democrat, because no other Democrat is the presumptive nominee. Biden's campaign has many glaring weaknesses and if he is going to win he needs to address those weaknesses before Trump can exploit them. Just saying 'Well, I'm not Trump, so endorse me' is not good enough.
Why not? Why isn't "I'm not a fascist" a good enough standard when running against a fascist? Sure it's not ideal, but certainly it's good enough.
A detailed comment on why this is not hyperbole in case it's needed.
It is lazy and ignores the conditions that lead to the growth of fascism in the first place. Anybody hoping to defeat fascism must offer a coherent alternative political framework / ideology that addresses the material concerns of the working class, which existing liberal policies have not done. The criticisms the Left is making, if addressed, will help the Biden campaign offer this.
This doesn't happen in the electoral arena. Electoral politics is downstream of the kinds of worker organizing and consciousness raising that would actually create a coherent alternative political framework. All the electoral system exists to do is make it safe for that alternative framework to take shape by creating and protecting legal systems for unionization, worker ownership, mutual aid, etc. It expects too much of politicians to move that boulder all on their own with no mass movement behind it. The Presidency is an executive management position. He's a chief administrator. If your sympathies are towards anarchism or socialism then you shouldn't want change to come down from the top like that. It's supposed to flow up.
I completely agree with what you've said here, and I'd argue that Sanders' campaign was able to start building that mass movement, and that Biden's campaign should try and leverage that movement as much as possible. It sounds like this may be the direction his campaign is going with the policy working groups announced yesterday, which is good.
My point is that "I am not Trump" is not good enough of a message to warrant blanket endorsements from socialist & progressive organizations. It doesn't address any of the valid concerns of these groups and it doesn't address any of the conditions that led to Trump.
I would prefer it if that movement shifted its orientation towards electoral politics to be more tactical than emotive. By that I mean approaching these races as a test of organizing capacity rather than a thing to pin all our hopes for progress on. The real work happens between elections. The elections are just a metric to track how well we're doing at it.
So are you going to stay home / vote third-party?
November is a long way away and a lot can happen between now and then, so I'll just say that if the Biden campaign wants to be sure of my vote then they need to earn it.
Is the prospect of Trump replacing RBG (who's 87) and Breyer (who's 81) with 50-year-old conservatives who'll be on the court for 20+ years not enough of an incentive? If those two aren't replaced with liberals it will be almost impossible to retake the court in the near future and any progressive policy passed will have to deal with lawsuits heard by a 6-3 or 7-2 conservative court.
The Supreme Court reason for voting didn't work in 2016, why do you think it would work in 2020?
It worked for Republicans. Also, hopefully people will realize after four years of Trump just how awful he is.
I'm not sure how that's relevant to my main point, which is that the Biden campaign has numerous weaknesses that it should address if it wants to beat Trump. If you'd like to know my opinion on the courts and how to unfuck them, I'd be happy to continue that conversation, but if you want to know how I'm going to vote in November you should ask me in November.
I'm not disagreeing with you on the Biden campaign's weaknesses. I don't like him either and I think he's really going to have to work for it to win. I'm addressing your point that Biden has to earn your vote. I'm not interested in talking about how to unfuck the courts here, but I'm open to talking about it elsewhere. My point is that two of the four liberal justices are above 80 years old which means it's possible one or both of them doesn't make it through the next four years and if Biden is in office he wouldn't replace them with 50-year-old conservatives like Trump would. Regardless of the court's flaws, we can't fix them without having some power in the three branches and if Trump wins re-election the courts are lost for a generation. That means we have to make gains in both the executive and legislative branches, and the Senate is becoming more difficult for Democrats to take/hold.
The fate of the Supreme Court is absolutely a major issue that I will take into consideration along with every other issue when I vote in November. I do not think the Biden campaign should take for granted that that's enough.
With a DSA endorsement now it's really Jill Stein's year /s
Technically, the green party candidate this year is Howie Hawkins. He has won the Socialist Party USA nomination and is now working on securing the green party's nomination. I know you had an /s tag but I just wanted to share!