Not unexpected, her support on Super Tuesday was really disappointing. I would love to see her endorse Bernie, but I don't think there's any way forward for Bernie to get the nomination, and a...
Not unexpected, her support on Super Tuesday was really disappointing.
I would love to see her endorse Bernie, but I don't think there's any way forward for Bernie to get the nomination, and a Biden/Warren ticket would make me feel something other than a sense of duty for voting in the general. I think it'd be a good nod and an olive branch to the progressive wing of the party, and I would hope she could push Biden's policies further left, and the position would allow her more clout to get some of the things she wants done.
If Biden gets the nom, I'm almost positive he'll choose a high profile female who's a person of color for VP, since that's the demographic he's been struggling with. Also, given his age and health...
If Biden gets the nom, I'm almost positive he'll choose a high profile female who's a person of color for VP, since that's the demographic he's been struggling with. Also, given his age and health is a good way for feminists who might pull a bit more centrist to get on board with him instead of Biden (although it sickens me to hear of any feminists pulling for Biden given his hair sniffing, body groping behavior towards women).
That and by all accounts Warren and Biden don't exactly agree on a pretty critical issue to her either. He might even be the reason she became a politician in the first place. See: The 20-year...
Warren’s quarrel with Biden isn’t personal. It’s about a 2005 bankruptcy bill he supported as a senator. Warren opposed the bill so vehemently that its passage inspired her transition from a Harvard bankruptcy law professor, who studied middle-class economics, to a senator and now a presidential hopeful.
“I got in that fight because [families] just didn’t have anyone and Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card companies,” Warren said after an April rally in Iowa. “It’s all a matter of public record.”
My guess is Biden would choose Harris. And Warren vacating her seat would probably be bad for democrats in the senate as our republican governor would likely replace her with a republican.
My guess is Biden would choose Harris. And Warren vacating her seat would probably be bad for democrats in the senate as our republican governor would likely replace her with a republican.
There is a lot of mutual animosity between Biden and Warren. Warren started paying attention to politics specifically to fight his bankruptcy bill. He was a smarmy, condescending prick to her the...
I would love to see her endorse Bernie, but I don't think there's any way forward for Bernie to get the nomination, and a Biden/Warren ticket would make me feel something other than a sense of duty for voting in the general. I think it'd be a good nod and an olive branch to the progressive wing of the party, and I would hope she could push Biden's policies further left, and the position would allow her more clout to get some of the things she wants done.
There is a lot of mutual animosity between Biden and Warren. Warren started paying attention to politics specifically to fight his bankruptcy bill. He was a smarmy, condescending prick to her the entire time. She was the one fighting the most finance-industry friendly elements of the Obama/Biden administration the whole way through.
I don't think she's going to endorse Bernie unless there is a tactical reason to think it would help. I don't think she'll endorse Biden because it won't matter or have any meaningful impact. At this point, unless Biden withers in a big way under scrutiny he's going to run away with it. He's currently polling at 61% in Florida and leading in Michigan and Illinois. Sanders might win NY and Washington, but not by enough to cancel a 61% lead in FL.
Best case scenario, at this point, is for Bernie to angle for concessions to drop out and then put Warren forward as VP and/or in charge of key personnel appointments in the Biden administration. That's the only way I see the party coming together behind Biden with enough enthusiasm to cancel how manifestly bad he is as a candidate.
I agree. The Bernie or bust camp is probably being underestimated in it's numbers so if biden wins this is probably the best option.
I would love to see her endorse Bernie, but I don't think there's any way forward for Bernie to get the nomination, and a Biden/Warren ticket would make me feel something other than a sense of duty for voting in the general. I think it'd be a good nod and an olive branch to the progressive wing of the party, and I would hope she could push Biden's policies further left, and the position would allow her more clout to get some of the things she wants done.
I agree. The Bernie or bust camp is probably being underestimated in it's numbers so if biden wins this is probably the best option.
The Bernie or Bust camp should have spent all this time making positive cases for their candidate instead of accusing everyone else of wanting people to die and holding a gun to vulnerable...
I agree. The Bernie or bust camp is probably being underestimated in it's numbers so if biden wins this is probably the best option.
The Bernie or Bust camp should have spent all this time making positive cases for their candidate instead of accusing everyone else of wanting people to die and holding a gun to vulnerable communities and shouting "DON'T MAKE ME DO IT!"
Apparently he's going to pivot his messaging, but I'm worried it's too little, too late. He staffed his team full of gadflies and bomb-throwers and they built him a campaign focused on nursing beefs and picking fights with other Democratic candidates instead of Republicans. Whatever you think about the defects of those candidates, you can't win a primary with only 30% of the vote and the fact that they didn't bother to actually evangelize might be what ends up doing them in.
Just a horribly managed campaign with zero message discipline.
Your lens for viewing the messaging must be very different than mine. Bernie's messaging has almost been entirely about substantive policies. Healthcare, prison reform, climate change, free...
Your lens for viewing the messaging must be very different than mine. Bernie's messaging has almost been entirely about substantive policies. Healthcare, prison reform, climate change, free college, student load debt.
Biden's messaging has been, "I was the VP under Obama!" I have seen or read little substantive policy proposals from the Biden campaign nor heard of any from those who choose to vote for him.
If you're in the group that might be it. If you're outside the group the messaging was "You want us to die from lack of healthcare, debt peonage, etc." They were saying this to Warren and Pete...
Bernie's messaging has almost been entirely about substantive policies. Healthcare, prison reform, climate change, free college, student load debt.
If you're in the group that might be it. If you're outside the group the messaging was "You want us to die from lack of healthcare, debt peonage, etc." They were saying this to Warren and Pete people. They weren't out there trying to win converts. It seems like they made huge in-roads with Latino communities, which was a highly encouraging sign and an indicator that he had finally figured out how to expand his base. But then I heard stories like this and it starts to look like this competence just did not extend to Black communities in the South. It's worrying that it seems like the campaign had written this off despite the fact that being trounced on Super Tuesday is what did him in last time.
For people outside the Bernie-sphere, the message wasn't specifically about healthcare. The message was about how only Bernie cares about healthcare and if anyone don't support him they must not care. Everyone else is bad or a sellout and the ones who support them should feel bad for supporting them. This ends up being doubly off putting for loyal Democratic voters for two reasons. One, is it invalidates their desire to hedge their bets and be pragmatic for perfectly understandable reasons and makes you look like a disrespectful jerk in the process. Second, it has you accusing the people you're trying to win over of being the villains in the story. You'e telling them that by supporting you they're "giving up" or being "defeated" which is the last thing you want. You want to make it seem like by supporting you people are ascending or graduating to a higher level of politics, but folks never got that vibe out of the Sanders crew.
This has been my observation as well. I'm not American, and I don't have an in-depth knowledge of the candidate policies because I don't need to. I started out more-or-less ambivalent, but vaguely...
This has been my observation as well. I'm not American, and I don't have an in-depth knowledge of the candidate policies because I don't need to.
I started out more-or-less ambivalent, but vaguely supportive of both Warren and Sanders. The narratives pushed by Bernie supporters have turned me off him. He might have good policies but I don't get a vote on that anyway - I just don't like the guy or his campaign.
This narrative they are pushing where anyone who supports Warren is a monster pisses me off, as does the sheer audacity of insulting her for being in the race in the first place - and all of this just brings to mind 2016 and how a chunk of Bernie supporters became Trump supporters. I've seen first hand how Bernie followers came to despise Clinton and like Trump, I can't help blaming him and his tactics, at least in part, for Trump becoming president.
There's a stark difference in your assertion and your examples. You spoke about Bernie supporters, not the campaign itself. I don't disagree there are some who claim to be supporters whose...
There's a stark difference in your assertion and your examples. You spoke about Bernie supporters, not the campaign itself. I don't disagree there are some who claim to be supporters whose messaging is inflammatory and the campaign does a lot of messaging attempting to get people to be nice, polite, and accepting.
Part of the issue though, too, particularly with healthcare, that there is hardly a "hedge your bet" version of healthcare that would be successful. In order to deliver on the promises of the campaign, it needs to be a single-payer healthcare system. Middle-of-the-line solutions won't solve the problems or deliver on the promises. Most of his other policies there can definitely be compromises.
If you're gonna talk about a people powered campaign and make your slogan "Not me, us" I'm not sure this is a useful distinction. People are basically emotive when they vote. One of the reasons...
You spoke about Bernie supporters, not the campaign itself.
If you're gonna talk about a people powered campaign and make your slogan "Not me, us" I'm not sure this is a useful distinction. People are basically emotive when they vote. One of the reasons Obama won was because he gave people warm, fuzzy feelings about voting for him. He had lots of jerkhole supporters who harassed journalists, but the campaign itself was seen as distancing itself from them and being apologetic for them rather than shrugging its shoulders or ignoring it. That ends up being really important in terms of how the narrative gets managed in the media. It really just ended up being hardcore Clinton endorsers who felt aggrieved by it (like Paul Krugman) rather than literally everyone else in the party.
What's more, the campaign stokes the supporters. They propagate the arguments and lines of attack that supporters pick up and amplify. They might be nice in the volunteer scripts, but they're actively bad at how they engage with activists or the press. From what I've heard, his close staffers don't even talk to people. Journalists' emails can take days to get a response. Apparently nobody at prominent women's groups is getting calls or returned calls from them. So if the campaign itself acts like talking to you is beneath them, and the only things you ever hear from them is online hordes sea-lioning you any time you say anything, what conclusions are you supposed to draw?
Part of the issue though, too, particularly with healthcare, that there is hardly a "hedge your bet" version of healthcare that would be successful.
Not really. Any version of healthcare reform will take time to roll out, but minor tactical quibbles like what order benefits would be phased in or expanded during were blown up as if it was "backing off on healthcare." It's just a really unproductive form of engagement where the goalposts are constantly being moved to where the "acceptable" standard happens to be wherever Bernie Sanders happens to be standing.
It seems clear that this is a weakness and something is up. On the other hand Buttigieg seems to have tried pretty hard to engage the black community and utterly failed?
It seems clear that this is a weakness and something is up.
On the other hand Buttigieg seems to have tried pretty hard to engage the black community and utterly failed?
It's sad that "taking down Trump" is sufficient enough policy to resonate with an electorate. "Taking on" big pharma and "gun control" are hardly policies. They're buzzwords or phrases with little...
It's sad that "taking down Trump" is sufficient enough policy to resonate with an electorate. "Taking on" big pharma and "gun control" are hardly policies. They're buzzwords or phrases with little to no specific action behind it. I want to know what specifically are the actions that are going to happen to deliver on the goal and what methods will support those actions to bring it to fruition. I understand no one can talk in certainties on the how, but some generalities toward it are refreshing. Another reason why Bernie's campaign resonate with me. He has specific policies goals, with specific actions, and he just posted general methodologies to pay for the actions on his website a week or so ago. Does anyone have any of those details about Biden?
Our current president would disagree. Bernie was probably trying to play Trump's meta, and it was working well until everyone but Biden decided to drop out after South Carolina for no particular...
you can't win a primary with only 30% of the vote
Our current president would disagree. Bernie was probably trying to play Trump's meta, and it was working well until everyone but Biden decided to drop out after South Carolina for no particular reason.
This would have been stupid. Trump's meta works in the Republican primary because the GOP gives out delegates on a winner take all basis. You can't focus on early leads and consolidation in the...
Bernie was probably trying to play Trump's meta
This would have been stupid. Trump's meta works in the Republican primary because the GOP gives out delegates on a winner take all basis. You can't focus on early leads and consolidation in the Democratic party, where delegates go out proportionally and leave also-rans in positions to make comebacks if there is consolidation.
I don't doubt this campaign might have been trying to run this strategy, but that's just evidence that his campaign didn't understand what they were doing.
Yes, the same trick often doesn't work again when everyone can learn from it. Although, I am still rather surprised that the anti-Sanders folks pulled it together so neatly. The country is...
Yes, the same trick often doesn't work again when everyone can learn from it.
Although, I am still rather surprised that the anti-Sanders folks pulled it together so neatly. The country is divided, and Democrats are divided. But apparently not so divided that Democratic politicians and a lot of moderate voters couldn't figure something out?
You gotta admit, that was a tricky bit of organizing, not having a charismatic leader (to say the least) and doing it anyway.
The organizing didn't just crop up out of thin air. The organizing started in the 70s when, as a result of the voting rights act, Black Democrats in the South started being able to exercise...
You gotta admit, that was a tricky bit of organizing, not having a charismatic leader (to say the least) and doing it anyway.
The organizing didn't just crop up out of thin air. The organizing started in the 70s when, as a result of the voting rights act, Black Democrats in the South started being able to exercise political power. They slowly purged the party in their region of Dixiecrats by creating a solid and unwavering voting block that exercised the power to play kingmaker in any nominating contest. They sorted out who their person would be ahead of time, through endorsement networks and internal organizing committees, and then voted for them when it mattered.
If the Left wants to have any power it's going to need to learn to do the same. Pick a candidate with real, hard nosed political skill and insider connections and make them owe something to the Left. No infighting, no tearing each other down, no drama. This practice of trying to pick whichever charismatic leader gives you warm fuzzy feelings out of a lineup every 4 years isn't gonna do it. That process is just too prone to manipulation by the media.
They had an example of what happens when ego gets in the way during a populist revolt, and only Pete really had a shot at dethroning Biden, until Bloomberg took up all the air in the room and...
They had an example of what happens when ego gets in the way during a populist revolt, and only Pete really had a shot at dethroning Biden, until Bloomberg took up all the air in the room and died. The moderates wants a champion too, and if a mechanical system got him in place, then they at least have to know what they're doing.
there isnt. biden has been the choice since day 1. voting doesnt matter. i hate saying it but yeah, it's going to be a contested convention and biden will get the super delegates.
there isnt. biden has been the choice since day 1. voting doesnt matter. i hate saying it but yeah, it's going to be a contested convention and biden will get the super delegates.
Patently false, Bernie is at a much better position today than he was in 2016. If people took that message from 2016 to heart he would not be an actual contender today. Voting always matters and...
voting doesnt matter
Patently false, Bernie is at a much better position today than he was in 2016. If people took that message from 2016 to heart he would not be an actual contender today.
Voting always matters and proselytizing the opposite message is harmful. You're welcome to think and act how you want, but please do not discourage others because you are jaded. Encourage them to do what you cannot.
im just looking at 2016 and the hillary shit the dnc and super delegates did. who knows, yeah im probably wrong, but history repeats itself. one of the reason i play history stuff to help me sleep.
im just looking at 2016 and the hillary shit the dnc and super delegates did.
who knows, yeah im probably wrong, but history repeats itself. one of the reason i play history stuff to help me sleep.
This is a huge disappointment, but not surprising. I still hear Tilders talking about Warren's purported lack of charisma, how she's just been stealing Bernie's program/votes... While I hate to...
This is a huge disappointment, but not surprising. I still hear Tilders talking about Warren's purported lack of charisma, how she's just been stealing Bernie's program/votes...
While I hate to play the sexism card, the absence of appropriate media coverage, the hectoring op-eds, the ingrained biases, and generalized contempt have worked against all of the female candidates in this contest. I see people discovering Elizabeth Warren now!
I've tried very hard to back off from debate and let people arrive at their own decisions. But I deeply regret that I didn't speak up earlier with full-throated support, because Elizabeth Warren really was objectively the best Presidential candidate in a generally flawed field.
I'm grateful she was able to surgically dispatch Michael Bloomberg's candidacy in seconds. I think that one-on-one, Warren would have made Donald Trump look like the barely sentient sundowning yam he is. Deep respect to her both for knowing how to fight, and knowing when to make a retreat for the good of the country.
I hope Warren will fully back Sanders, but I expect she'll devote her intelligence and skill to whichever candidate winds up opposing Trump, as well as serving our country and its people to the best of her ability. As she has always done.
I used to be camp Warren until her response to Clearview AI stating her stance on facial recognition technology. The idea that "guardrails and appropriate privacy protections" would work in...
Elizabeth Warren really was objectively the best Presidential candidate in a generally flawed field.
I used to be camp Warren until her response to Clearview AI stating her stance on facial recognition technology. The idea that "guardrails and appropriate privacy protections" would work in policing either shows a distinct lack of knowledge on how existing framework has utterly failed minorities or is a placating statement designed to draw attention away from her real stance which may be pro a big-brother state.
I hope Warren will fully back Sanders
I really, really hope she does. I don't want to believe that the DNC is that corrupt or that Warren was a shill all along.
I'm with you guys on that one too. I want to see Liz in the administration somewhere. She's done a few things that have made me roll my eyes but I don't doubt her intelligence or her commitment....
I'm with you guys on that one too. I want to see Liz in the administration somewhere. She's done a few things that have made me roll my eyes but I don't doubt her intelligence or her commitment. She's a big value add anywhere she goes.
Barring Biden having a stroke or majorly putting his foot in his mouth, Sanders is going to lose. An endorsement makes no sense. We’re basically banking on the opponent making a mistake in order...
I don't want to believe that the DNC is that corrupt or that Warren was a shill all along.
Barring Biden having a stroke or majorly putting his foot in his mouth, Sanders is going to lose. An endorsement makes no sense. We’re basically banking on the opponent making a mistake in order to win, which is a terrible strategic position to be in.
Yeah. I actually think Bernie has decent odds for just that reason. But based on how badly the Sanders campaign has been controlling message discipline I’m not sure they can hold the line well...
Yeah. I actually think Bernie has decent odds for just that reason. But based on how badly the Sanders campaign has been controlling message discipline I’m not sure they can hold the line well enough. I want to hear about a major staff shakeup in his campaign or I don’t think he can pull it off.
But Biden is polling at 61% in Florida and Sanders is barely at viability based on the last poll (and that poll includes Bloomberg so Biden will probably do even better than that). The Sanders game plan depended on running up the score on Super Tuesday but the lead won’t be wide enough at this point to buffer against Biden in FL. Sanders will have to dramatically overperform in NY, Washington, and all the mountain west states. It’s a pretty grim outlook.
I’m wondering what psychological process was in play here, because it was the same with me. I was also pretty quiet about supporting Warren even though I was pretty full throated in supporting who...
I've tried very hard to back off from debate and let people arrive at their own decisions. But I deeply regret that I didn't speak up earlier with full-throated support, because Elizabeth Warren really was objectively the best Presidential candidate in a generally flawed field.
I’m wondering what psychological process was in play here, because it was the same with me. I was also pretty quiet about supporting Warren even though I was pretty full throated in supporting who I supported in basically every election since I started paying attention.
I think part of it I just actively backed off on Social Media. I also just didn’t feel like dealing with shitty comments from Sanders folks. I didn’t mind shitty comments from Trumpers because I can get as aggressive as I want with them, but since I actually like Sanders I never felt like getting into the fights and just avoided the discourse altogether.
Other than that I don’t know. On some level something made me feel like I shouldn’t be too vocal about it, like it would be indecorous somehow. I volunteered but didn’t talk about it in my personal life and neither did any of my friend. It wasn’t until it was too late that we all started getting actively hyped.
I've got a handful of different reasons: I've spent too much time online arguing rationally with people who aren't prepared to change their minds under the best of circumstances, let alone when...
Exemplary
I've got a handful of different reasons:
I've spent too much time online arguing rationally with people who aren't prepared to change their minds under the best of circumstances, let alone when confronted by a stranger.
I'm still miserable with guilt that I argued with my dying mother, in favor of Obama's candidacy over Hillary Clinton's. In retrospect, I was displacing other emotional baggage that I should have used the time to unpack. Arguing Warren vs. Sanders feels like a reprise of that time.
I know people who've waited their entire lives, in desperate straits, for a progressive voice to address their needs. Sanders got there first. Whether first = best, given sufficient head start, is essentially a VHS vs. BetaMax question. [I.e., once you've chosen to buy in, the advantages are so great over your prior experience that nothing else will have features so persuasive you'd abandon your prior commitment. I know that framing dates me, but it's still one of the best examples I'm aware of.]
Politically, I was content with both Sanders' and Warren's platforms. It's sheer laziness on my part that I didn't want to have to unpack all the reasons I felt Warren would have made a better President. As you indicated, it didn't seem like a useful expenditure of energy to argue with people on the same side. To some extent, I naively thought people would just do the math on Sanders' age, health, and lack of legislative effectiveness.
There are always going to be authoritarian followers. We could argue about their relative distribution on the political spectrum, but the historical evidence is that at least some are followers of communist, socialist, or anarchist leaders. The worst of the Sanders supporters seem to fit this mold - paranoid mindset, eagerness for license to engage in hostile activity towards perceived enemies of the leader, adulation of the leader regardless of objective faults, etc. [Just mentioning this is likely to bring some flak my way, even on Tildes.] I don't think Sanders is actively encouraging a cult of personality, but he doesn't necessarily have incentives to reign it in, either. I just don't have the mental bandwidth to be a target for that kind of hate (again).
I really did not want to start the sexism discussion. That's a massively divisive topic - confronting people's unconscious biases is a job for professionals, and I'm not that.
Anyone I saw on social media express support for Warren got a barrage of mocking replies from Bernie Bros, so I'm not surprised this made supporters more quiet. The Bernie tactics did seem to work...
Anyone I saw on social media express support for Warren got a barrage of mocking replies from Bernie Bros, so I'm not surprised this made supporters more quiet.
The Bernie tactics did seem to work to stifle Warren's campaign - but now that she's dropped out they're going to regret it. I've already seen reports suggesting that Bernie is failing to pick up Warren's supporters.
Not to diminish the bad experiences of people but I still kind of wonder how much the social media played an actual role. As far as I can see the reporting has largely focused on the experiences...
Not to diminish the bad experiences of people but I still kind of wonder how much the social media played an actual role. As far as I can see the reporting has largely focused on the experiences of journalists and a few examples they put together. And journalists are, unfortunately, kind of prone to overemphasize things that happen within their social networks, especially since they tend to follow each other.
Not saying there isn't an issue with toxic supporters on social media, but I'm wondering if the real-world effects on the voters at large are more due to the amount of screentime it gets.
I can only speak from personal experience. I'm not American, and I don't even voluntarily follow the primaries (imo it's annoying how long your elections take). But I follow a lot of people who...
I can only speak from personal experience. I'm not American, and I don't even voluntarily follow the primaries (imo it's annoying how long your elections take). But I follow a lot of people who care about it on twitter, so I've kind of involuntarily been drawn into it all.
I have witnessed a persistent stream of assholish behaviour from Bernie supporters. It was just constant. Any time anyone tweeted anything supporting Warren, no matter how light hearted and jokey, the Bernie bros would be there.
Responses ranged for pointless but obnoxious like 'I <3 bernie', to dumb memeish insults and reaction gifs, to the most obnoxious blame-throwing I've ever read. Just today I read a tweet by a Bernie supporter that claimed Elizabeth Warren and her supporters will have BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS from people dying of poor medical care if Bernie doesn't win.
The barrage of snake emojis also, imo, have heavily sexist undertones. I've only seen women and effeminate men accused of being snakes before. No one's calling Trump or Biden a snake.
I'm sorry you had to go through that, that sucks. But Twitter is an especially bad platform for this because so many of it's mechanics subtly encourage and amplify ganging-up on people. So a...
I'm sorry you had to go through that, that sucks. But Twitter is an especially bad platform for this because so many of it's mechanics subtly encourage and amplify ganging-up on people. So a relatively small group of people can have an outsized impact through a combination of coordination and personal investment.
A lot of really toxic political supporters, not just Sanders', are found to engage in this kind of behaviour, and usually because they associate online they will share and distribute tweets they gang up on through retweets, group messaging, or platforms like Discord. And since Sanders' electorate skews pretty young it means they're going to be more likely to be present on Twitter and have the means and time to share tweets.
Other supporters weren’t engaging in this behaviour at a large scale. Bernie supporters were. The only other support base I’ve ever seen behave this way is Trump’s, and the similarity does not...
Other supporters weren’t engaging in this behaviour at a large scale. Bernie supporters were. The only other support base I’ve ever seen behave this way is Trump’s, and the similarity does not reflect well on Bernie.
It was (is) a systematic issue with his campaign and its grating to now sit back and watch his supporters act like it’s a fake criticism or they are being victimised.
The most annoying part of all of this is Donald Trump sitting on the sidelines encouraging Sanders supporters to hate and blame Warren. This behaviour and in-fighting is helping him and he knows it.
Why is all this vitriol aimed at Warren and not actual ideological enemies like Biden or Trump?
But see that's kind of the issue: social media tends to warp perceptions to an extent where actually understanding the scale of things becomes really hard with anecdotal evidence. 30'000 people on...
But see that's kind of the issue: social media tends to warp perceptions to an extent where actually understanding the scale of things becomes really hard with anecdotal evidence. 30'000 people on Twitter can seem overwhelming but depending on the context it might actually not be at all.
The risk, then, is to repeat the failed analyses produced in the wake of the 2016 election. Because it is much easier, after all, to designate abstract group of people, whose presence in the discourse is the root cause of all ills, than to analyse the larger structural issues that came together to produce Trump's victory.
There is an issue with Toxic Sanders supporters, and how large of a presence they have on social media. There is an issue with infighting in Democratic circles (always has been). He has repeatedly stated he does not condone this, that he is not on bad terms with Warren, Biden, or the other candidates. (Because there is a lot of vitriol reserved for Biden as well) Sanders has made it clear that he does not want his supporters to engage in name calling and character assassinations. His campaign has had to purge multiple staffers with troubling social media histories in part to cement his committent to civility. And he clearly hasn't gone as far as he possibly could, perhaps partially out of fear of compromising the grassroots movement he spent so much time building up. But it hasn't gone ignored.
But the other problem is that even if he cracked down extremely hard on it, how much would it actually solve. It's tempting to posit that the problem with Sanders is Berniebros. Because if it is then the solution is to have no Berniebros. (Just like if the problem with America is billionaires then clearly the solution is no billionaires, right?) But the truth resists simplicity. And by focusing on this one issue we could be missing the forest for the trees and not coming up with actual, system solutions.
The irony is that some of Sanders' Twitter supporters pretty much do the same as well. As it was with the Iowa caucus scandal, and now with the song and dance about Warren voters supposedly being "fake progressives" they seem to have given in to the temptation to blame abstract figures of enemies ("the establishment", "white liberal feminists", "fake progressives") rather than analysing the systemic issues. And it leaves them angrier and with no answer because they can't actually defeat an enemy that exists mostly in their head, but that's what they're laser focused on.
This is an election campaign, Bernie is essentially trying to win a popularity contest, and his followers are trashing his reputation online. I’m not really interested in figuring out how many...
This is an election campaign, Bernie is essentially trying to win a popularity contest, and his followers are trashing his reputation online. I’m not really interested in figuring out how many Bernie supporters are bad and how many are good. Enough are bad for it to be an issue - an issue for Bernie and an issue for the people they harassed.
Sure, a lot of factors come together to win or lose an election. But reports say that Bernie’s bad performance is partly because under 30s didn’t vote, and that’s the demographic that spends a lot of time online.
Bernie could talk more to supporters about what not to do, he could be more specific about the kind of behaviour is bad, his campaign could be active about calling out bad behaviour when they see it. These people adore Bernie - they are worshiping him - if he or his campaign took a more active role in guiding his followers online campaign tactics I’m positive they could change behaviour.
If “good” Bernie supporters actually condemned bad behaviour, and called it out when they saw it, instead of the wide-spread excuse-making and defensiveness I’m seeing online at the moment, the behaviour would stop.
Bernie’s movement is failing to grow enough, his supporters are failing to win people over. It would be wise to take this feedback on board.
Yeah I totally agree with this part, if I'm being honest. Bernie seems either too unaware or too careful in reigning in the worst parts of his base and it's slipping. Other Bernie supporters...
Bernie could talk more to supporters about what not to do, he could be more specific about the kind of behaviour is bad, his campaign could be active about calling out bad behaviour when they see it. These people adore Bernie - they are worshiping him - if he or his campaign took a more active role in guiding his followers online campaign tactics I’m positive they could change behaviour.
If “good” Bernie supporters actually condemned bad behaviour, and called it out when they saw it, instead of the wide-spread excuse-making and defensiveness I’m seeing online at the moment, the behaviour would stop.
Yeah I totally agree with this part, if I'm being honest. Bernie seems either too unaware or too careful in reigning in the worst parts of his base and it's slipping. Other Bernie supporters similarly have become too quick to retreat into the same joke defense of oh I guess you don't support healthcare now just to shut everything down. And that unwillingness to even broach the subject probably creates the vacuum where the worst offenders feel like they can get away with the things they do. You can't have things like what happened with the Nevada Culinary Union happen and then also fail to more broadly contain the toxicity in the movement then some questioning should be in order.
I think there's just a lot of vitriol in general going around these days. While some of the Bernie people I know were harsh on Warren herself as a candidate, I personally never saw them attack her...
I think there's just a lot of vitriol in general going around these days. While some of the Bernie people I know were harsh on Warren herself as a candidate, I personally never saw them attack her supporters (though I'm sure it happened). On the other hand, I did see many Warren supporters dogpile on Bernie supporters, and even Warren herself bashed Bernie supporters on the debate stage (side note: attacking the electorate is not a good strategy).
One Warren supporter I know in real life (so not a Russian bot) bashed a Bernie supporter that both I and she know in real life as being a sexist who doesn't support Warren only because he's upset that he can't get women (though he can and does).
I think all people are just angrier these days, and the internet makes it easy to vent it. But it was advantageous to center this media narrative on Bernie supporters.
Whatever your personal experiences and anecdotes are, it’s easy to see just by comparing the responses to Bernie tweets vs Warren tweets ( from when she was still in the race) that it was not...
Whatever your personal experiences and anecdotes are, it’s easy to see just by comparing the responses to Bernie tweets vs Warren tweets ( from when she was still in the race) that it was not evenly “everyone doing it to everyone”.
Blaming a media conspiracy instead of accepting criticism is straight out of the Trump playbook.
I'm convinced that a lot of Twitter activity is bots at this point, so I don't consider it particularly representative of anything. Twitter is incredibly toxic and easy to manipulate with bots. My...
I'm convinced that a lot of Twitter activity is bots at this point, so I don't consider it particularly representative of anything. Twitter is incredibly toxic and easy to manipulate with bots. My experiences are from a large, apolitical Facebook group of locals who all know each other in real life.
My suggestion that a lot of Twitter activity is just bots is made without specific evidence, but I intentionally avoid Twitter so I can't say I care much to go digging any further.
The way I approached this for Yang was to post links to genuinely newsworthy articles and quotes from them. I think that would work well for any topic where you're interested but don't necessarily...
The way I approached this for Yang was to post links to genuinely newsworthy articles and quotes from them. I think that would work well for any topic where you're interested but don't necessarily want to engage?
Welp, my vote was basically wasted, BUT, I still appreciate what she brought to the table and see good things for her ahead. She knows her policy, how to make change happen both inside and outside...
Welp, my vote was basically wasted, BUT, I still appreciate what she brought to the table and see good things for her ahead. She knows her policy, how to make change happen both inside and outside of government, took down a rich megalomaniac in a debate (I so wish I could see her debate Trump 1v1), and is a humble leader. I'm hoping we can flip the Senate (c'mon, Bullock, run in Montana!) and have Warren step up her work with even more influence now given her now-national reputation.
I haven't paid too much attention to all the debates and whatnot, but my distinct impression of Warren from the various highlights I've seen is that Trump would wipe the floor with her. He'd turn...
I haven't paid too much attention to all the debates and whatnot, but my distinct impression of Warren from the various highlights I've seen is that Trump would wipe the floor with her. He'd turn it into a circus and find some way to mock her (Pocahontas, maybe?) that would overshadow whatever sense she'd try to bring to the table. She doesn't seem particularly charismatic enough to flip a scenario like that.
You should watch more debates then, she wouldn't get shouted over by Trump. There isn't anything Trump hasn't said to her that would be more impactful if he said it to her. Saying it to her face...
You should watch more debates then, she wouldn't get shouted over by Trump. There isn't anything Trump hasn't said to her that would be more impactful if he said it to her. Saying it to her face would just give her the opportunity to respond and she hasn't shown that she'd back down.
She's been able to hold her own very much with other candidates trying to muscle her out. She also verbally eviscerated Mike Bloomberg in his first debate.
Warren has been my just-barely-2nd choice since 2015 (even back when she refused to run). In at least the past 3 debates, she was the smartest person in the room. She would have been a great...
Warren has been my just-barely-2nd choice since 2015 (even back when she refused to run). In at least the past 3 debates, she was the smartest person in the room. She would have been a great President, probably even better than Sanders (my 1st choice, 'cuz I'm a revolutionary).
I really hope she ends up with a prominent position in the next Administration, whoever wins (Biden-cough-Biden).
Add me to the chorus of (probably too quiet) Warren supporters. I was a fan of hers long before this campaign started and will continue to be one with wherever she's headed next. She's smart,...
Add me to the chorus of (probably too quiet) Warren supporters. I was a fan of hers long before this campaign started and will continue to be one with wherever she's headed next. She's smart, principled, and has the exact right temperament I want to see in a leader.
One of the hypothetical, temperature-check questions I always ask myself when vetting candidates for myself is "How would I feel if they were my boss?" Not that any of them will ever be my supervisor, mind you -- it's simply a thought exercise that helps me cut through a lot of the noisy discourse and get down to the core of how I feel about someone. I use it as a heuristic for an overall feel for their leadership -- a high-level view zoomed out from individual policy items or soundbytes or news stories. It's a way for me to get an aggregate view of thousands of little inputs about a person that have accumulated over time.
Clinton, in 2016, was a person I could have comfortably worked for, but my feelings weren't stirred beyond that. Warren, on the other hand, is someone I would be legitimately proud to work for. She might not be everyone's leadership fit, but she's mine. I'm sad to see that her train has stopped short of where I thought and hoped it could go.
So it's finally a 1v1, that took a while. Optimistically this means Bernie now only has one candidate to attack, which is Biden, an easy target. Pessimistically this means that many centrists that...
So it's finally a 1v1, that took a while.
Optimistically this means Bernie now only has one candidate to attack, which is Biden, an easy target.
Pessimistically this means that many centrists that find Bernie too divisive will back Biden.
Both Klobuchar and Buttigieg endorsed Biden on Monday. Warren, a respected progressive leader who has been fiercely critical of the former vice president and, at least until the current campaign heated up, a friend and ally of Sanders, has not yet indicated who she will support moving forward. Sanders said he spoke to Warren on Wednesday, but did not share any details from their conversation.
Well, not technically since Gabbard is still in, but realistically, yes. I'll be honest, while Bernie was my #2 pick initially (#1 being Warren), Bernie is not going to beat Biden for the...
Well, not technically since Gabbard is still in, but realistically, yes.
I'll be honest, while Bernie was my #2 pick initially (#1 being Warren), Bernie is not going to beat Biden for the nomination, bar some outside issue (Biden's health or real scandal). Biden's overperformance on Super Tuesday was the end of hope for Bernie. There are many moderate states left to vote in the primary and not that many very liberal ones (and even ones like Massachusetts went for Biden!), and those moderate states heavily favor Biden.
Even then, Biden won't get more than a vote from me in the general. I can't in good conscience watch the compilation of him creeping on women and children and think, "yes, I want to volunteer my...
Even then, Biden won't get more than a vote from me in the general. I can't in good conscience watch the compilation of him creeping on women and children and think, "yes, I want to volunteer my limited money and free time to help this person become president." Morally, I have to draw the line there, so I will probably focus my efforts on local/down-ballot races that are important to me and key Senate races that could flip control back to the Democrats.
I'm a Sanders supporter first, but if it were Sanders, Warren, or even Klobuchar or Buttigieg as the nominee, I'd volunteer and donate to their campaigns, without a doubt. Can't bring myself to do...
I'm a Sanders supporter first, but if it were Sanders, Warren, or even Klobuchar or Buttigieg as the nominee, I'd volunteer and donate to their campaigns, without a doubt. Can't bring myself to do that for Biden.
Somehow, it appears that essentially nothing on that page involves any political issues at all. Instead, it's a bunch of photographs of senators chosen and edited to be ominous and ugly...
Somehow, it appears that essentially nothing on that page involves any political issues at all. Instead, it's a bunch of photographs of senators chosen and edited to be ominous and ugly (particularly with the ridiculous dark grey outlines and the dismaying fad of using awkward mid-talking photos to make people look bad), along with various hyperbolic and rather childish attacks that have little to do with why the senators are actually problematic.
Is their intention to become enough like Trump to be able to replace him? Are the sorts of people who would be motivated by such a site really the sorts of people who should be "texting and building capacity to win," because they are "angry" and want to "get even," and so want to join a "growing grassroots army on the ground" to go "all in" for "payback", doing more than just "trashing" their "targets"? Is this the modern language of decent politics? That of some sort of team-based militancy and violence, with only a tenuous connection issues?
I can't accept that the best way to confront Trumpian political strategies is to copy them.
If you actually follow these things enough to find that page or know what Indivisible is, you already know why those senators are bad. Not everything on the internet is created with the purpose of...
If you actually follow these things enough to find that page or know what Indivisible is, you already know why those senators are bad.
Not everything on the internet is created with the purpose of informing you, specifically, about things. This is a page for volunteer organizers who are already committed to flipping the Senate for their own myriad reasons.
I can't accept that the best way to confront Trumpian political strategies is to copy them.
If you think the relevant problem with Trump is that he’s impolite or bellicose, that’s part of the problem.
Posting faces instead of a list of names is a big red flag for me, though. It just seems creepy, something out Orwell's 1984, like everyone is supposed to recognize these people's faces and hate...
Posting faces instead of a list of names is a big red flag for me, though. It just seems creepy, something out Orwell's 1984, like everyone is supposed to recognize these people's faces and hate them.
Because I read all my political news and never watch TV news or political video, there are many politicians whose faces I don't recognize and I'm fine with that. I don't think I could recognize Bloomberg, for example.
I figure if they're not going to tell me who they are talking about, this website isn't for me.
This is such a frustrating framing and it's so common. Bernie is divisive, sure. No doubt. But between whom? His rhetoric is mostly centered around helping people who are struggling whether to...
find Bernie too divisive will back Biden
This is such a frustrating framing and it's so common. Bernie is divisive, sure. No doubt. But between whom? His rhetoric is mostly centered around helping people who are struggling whether to make ends meet or some other way.
If that's his side of """being divisive""" who is on the the other side? People who are worried it would cost too much regardless of how under taxes the wealthiest are? People who are sticking up for the profit margins of indifferent multi-nationals?
America is already divided between people who use their wealth and influence to control society and the hapless peons who are supposed to shut up an take it. Why would any one want to be on any side but Bernie's?
I'm not gonna pretend I really know, being a Bernie supporter (Although to be honest, I I'm a big supporter of anyone looking to free up healthcare and colleges and remove US lobbying, along with...
I'm not gonna pretend I really know, being a Bernie supporter (Although to be honest, I I'm a big supporter of anyone looking to free up healthcare and colleges and remove US lobbying, along with at least tripling the number of ballot offices, automating voter registration, increasing the size of the house up to around 1200 and bringing antitrust back, and to be honest if more than one person is promising this, I would just see them as equally good, hence using the word divisive unironically.) Maybe they watch enough cable news to believe it. Maybe they're just old enough to not have needed college when they were young and to be insured on Healthcare, 2 of Sanders' most important policy proposals. Maybe the comments on Castro's welfare programs just went too far, which TBF is more reasonable.
This sounds like something that would happen in the USSR. Like how absolutely DARE someone confront the party big wigs? I don't understand why the democratic voter is so defensive of their...
he is taking on the Democratic establishment
That is divisive for anyone that identifies as a Democrat
This sounds like something that would happen in the USSR. Like how absolutely DARE someone confront the party big wigs? I don't understand why the democratic voter is so defensive of their establishment. Those people are not friends of the working men and women of this nation. It's like dem voters are so wrapped up in the last 20 years of partisan politics that they are incapable to critical self-reflection.
But I guess fuck those of us who worked for that here right because we are not socialists?
Well not really. Most of those things are on Bernie's slate. So I don't see why there is a conflict.
But whatever, since the real issue is the obvious failings of a political system designed by and for capitalists - the historical adversary of the working man and woman.
They hella don't tho. That's (a substantial part of ) why people voted for Trump. Among other things he (shrewdly) voices the anti-establishment frustration and sense of betrayal that most regular...
They hella don't tho. That's (a substantial part of ) why people voted for Trump. Among other things he (shrewdly) voices the anti-establishment frustration and sense of betrayal that most regular people feel. Obviously he personally has no claim to these feelings being a coastal elite himself.
I think people who still go for the "electable" corporate candidate because of the corporate propaganda and fear-mongering on corporate media. That or some sort of mass Stockholm syndrome.
Trump is not what I would call an anti-establishment candidate. He's a cowboy who shoots from the hip sure, but he clearly represents the interests of the established elite. He literally runs a...
Trump is not what I would call an anti-establishment candidate. He's a cowboy who shoots from the hip sure, but he clearly represents the interests of the established elite. He literally runs a corporation.
So far we reject any politicians who actually are anti-establishment in action. We might buy the rhetoric, but by and large Americans vote for leaders who protect corporate interest.
Perhaps you wouldn't but that's because you're operating at a high-enough information level that you didn't but the whole "drain the swamp line." So it's like you said...
Perhaps you wouldn't but that's because you're operating at a high-enough information level that you didn't but the whole "drain the swamp line." So it's like you said...
And "drain the swamp" is generally meaningless. If Trump did things that were actually radical, I highly doubt his base would like it. So far, "drain the swamp" basically means fire any effective...
And "drain the swamp" is generally meaningless. If Trump did things that were actually radical, I highly doubt his base would like it. So far, "drain the swamp" basically means fire any effective politicians who don't fall in line. It operates on a thin layer of anti-establishmentism and anti-corruption which ultimately really is just "All politicians I don't like are corrupt and should be fired".
I guess it depends on how you view anti-establishment. In the sense that the establishment is literally the politicians in DC, Trump has been extremely anti-establishment. But in the sense that the establishment is the modern equivalent of the landed ruling class (high wealth, politically active individuals influencing politics, corporate and special interests who lobby to influence politics) he's done basically nothing, and if anything has supported the de facto establishment at the expense of the more democratic de jure establishment.
Drain the swamp isn't the only anti-establishment anti-status quo theme in the """culture""" building around his personality. There's also "owning the libs," "triggering snowflakes," "coastal...
Drain the swamp isn't the only anti-establishment anti-status quo theme in the """culture""" building around his personality. There's also "owning the libs," "triggering snowflakes," "coastal elites etc etc," and so on and so on.
The reason Trump is so popular among his his personality cultists because he vocalizes the outrage of people who got it into their heads that everything wrong with the world can be traced to a "liberal elite" (an old theme in american politics).
I have listened to a few black Biden supporters and it didn't sound like that piece at all. Where I am from the black democrats embedded in movement are running with DSA. Chicago's Black Caucus is...
Have you talked to like any black people or listened to them on why they are voting Biden over Bernie?
I have listened to a few black Biden supporters and it didn't sound like that piece at all. Where I am from the black democrats embedded in movement are running with DSA. Chicago's Black Caucus is notoriously moderate.
Yeah, idk. I guess from your post I don't think Bernie will win. Hopefully Biden can hold Trump off. God help us all.
Also in Virginia, the Democratic establishment continues to enable Dominion and let them remain unaccountable to rate-payers, failed to legalize marijuana with some weak decriminalization that...
Also in Virginia, the Democratic establishment continues to enable Dominion and let them remain unaccountable to rate-payers, failed to legalize marijuana with some weak decriminalization that preserves unequal outcomes for white and black Virginians, gave a pittance to teachers and haven't restored education funding, and so far is failing to enact Gerrymandering reform. Northam took money out of all of our pockets to give to the world's richest man. I was out there canvassing for Periello, and I remember the only real argument for Northam was that he could work across the aisle. Here we are two years later with the trifecta and no need to work across the aisle. I worry Dems are painting themselves into the same corner nationally, allowing themselves to be governed by fear that is ultimately baseless.
I personally don't want to form a coalition with politicians who suck ass billionaire ass to advance their careers. If you're convinced that concentrating power and wealth in the hands of a few...
I personally don't want to form a coalition with politicians who suck ass billionaire ass to advance their careers. If you're convinced that concentrating power and wealth in the hands of a few mega-corporations in the name of rising GDP is cool then there's nothing I can say to you. I'm not that good at changing people's minds.
If Bernie can't win without their support then that's out of my control. God help us all. The thing I keep in mind through this all is that sometimes things go terrible wrong in history and if this is such a moment then that's what it is.
That may be right but I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't take it to heart. People flocked to DSA in large part because they see politicians like Rahm Emmanuel, the Clintons, Biden etc. as...
My biggest issue with DSA types is that they prefer to be right and focusing on ideological purity rather than actually winning.
That may be right but I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't take it to heart. People flocked to DSA in large part because they see politicians like Rahm Emmanuel, the Clintons, Biden etc. as being too focused on"winning" for the sake of their careers and not willing to take a strong ideological stand.
Creating an insular movement that attacks anyone that does not fall in line is not going to help anyone.
I would describe the way the insiders in the Democratic party and the corporate media circle the wagons against progressives in this way. So again maybe we are at an impasse because the critiques you have for progressives are actually the ones they have of everyone else.
You know, I really liked Warren, but was withholding my full-throated support because of how divisive politics can be, and because I really agree more fully with Sander's vision of where the...
You know, I really liked Warren, but was withholding my full-throated support because of how divisive politics can be, and because I really agree more fully with Sander's vision of where the economy needs to go. However, after reading the NPR piece that listed her platform and accomplishments, I've realized too late that she really was the best candidate in terms of leadership ability, planning, and level-headedness. I especially found this quote telling (emphasis mine):
Being the "woman with a plan" quickly became Warren's identity on the campaign trail. It also became a liability when she started weathering attacks, first for not having a way to pay for Sanders' "Medicare for All" proposal, which she supports, and then over her eventual proposal to pay for that plan. (Sanders, for his part, has not yet released a detailed plan for how he would pay for Medicare for All if he's elected.)
This is the sad state of American politics. I hope Sanders has a plan he's not releasing because he realizes it'd be politically difficult, but (a) he might not, since he doesn't have to, and (b) I wish we weren't at a place where talking about things frankly was seen as a political weakness or disadvantage.
Wow NPR is that sloppy, or dishonest? A user's linked the appropriate page below that has the plan. Also the implication that the richest nation on earth would find it at all difficult to pay for...
(Sanders, for his part, has not yet released a detailed plan for how he would pay for Medicare for All if he's elected.)
Wow NPR is that sloppy, or dishonest? A user's linked the appropriate page below that has the plan.
Also the implication that the richest nation on earth would find it at all difficult to pay for M4A is a bit of a joke. The money is there, more than enough. The political will is missing.
This 10000000%. It really cheese me off when people disagree with it. It's utterly asinine.
Also the implication that the richest nation on earth would find it at all difficult to pay for M4A is a bit of a joke. The money is there, more than enough. The political will is missing.
This 10000000%. It really cheese me off when people disagree with it. It's utterly asinine.
Confirming dubteedub's points - while I have no doubt appropriate taxation could fund these ideas, his numbers just don't add up. He is incredibly generous with how much revenue some of his plans...
Confirming dubteedub's points - while I have no doubt appropriate taxation could fund these ideas, his numbers just don't add up. He is incredibly generous with how much revenue some of his plans will recoup.
Yeah, and that bolded quote is inaccruate. He has an entire page on his website that talks about financing his plans. https://berniesanders.com/issues/how-does-bernie-pay-his-major-plans/
To be fair, releasing plans this early is mostly just performative since nothing will enter the legislative sausage factory and come out the other end in recognizable form. For Warren it was cool...
hope Sanders has a plan he's not releasing because he realizes it'd be politically difficult, but (a) he might not, since he doesn't have to, and (b) I wish we weren't at a place where talking about things frankly was seen as a political weakness or disadvantage.
To be fair, releasing plans this early is mostly just performative since nothing will enter the legislative sausage factory and come out the other end in recognizable form. For Warren it was cool because it pitched her as a thorough and detailed thinker. It also gave us a sense for how she prioritizes things which is also important.
But it’s not really a deal breaker to be vague on these things. In some cases it’s best not to be too specific since very few people in political office are smart enough to be able to defend a policy on its merits once it gets down to that level of detail. Their core skill is management/leadership stuff and they have advisors and staff to do the thinky stuff.
It also exposes you to liabilities. Like Sanders M4A proposal will probably include a shortfall, but that’s just because the real way to pay for it would include the taxes being slightly higher or include fees and copays or constrained options for benefits. Why open yourself up to those lines of attack if you don’t have to?
Not to mention that releasing the specifics, and even having the math checked out, does not mean the narrative of a candidate being prepared and thought-through will catch on. Corbyn's campaign in...
Not to mention that releasing the specifics, and even having the math checked out, does not mean the narrative of a candidate being prepared and thought-through will catch on. Corbyn's campaign in the UK made a big deal of their budget proposal being costed but the mantra that it was unrealistic and poorly thought out still stuck with much of the populace.
Yeah. I wish there was a better way of choosing candidates for an election, and I don't just mean ranked choice voting. We had something like a dozen candidates, which is great, but it was...
Yeah. I wish there was a better way of choosing candidates for an election, and I don't just mean ranked choice voting. We had something like a dozen candidates, which is great, but it was disappointing to me that the left lane consisted solely of Warren, who is now out, and Sanders, who I don't think is the best standard-bearer for the socialist movement.
I am really quite surprised that Warren is popular here on tildes... I would've thought Bernie would be the only reasonable candidate to most here, but perhaps I am under the illusion of my hard...
I am really quite surprised that Warren is popular here on tildes... I would've thought Bernie would be the only reasonable candidate to most here, but perhaps I am under the illusion of my hard leftist bubble. Warren to me embodies this Žižek quote:
The new ethos of global responsibility is thus able to put capitalism to work as the most efficient instrument of the common good. The basic ideological dispositif of capitalism—we can call it “instrumental reason,” “technological exploitation,” “individualist greed,” or whatever we like—is separated from its concrete socio-economic conditions (capitalist relations of production) and conceived of as an autonomous life or “existential” attitude which should (and can) be overcome by a new more “spiritual” outlook, leaving these very capitalist relations intact.
I'm a socialist but Warren has (narrowly) been my #1 for a while this campaign because she's better at working with people and really knows her stuff. I wish her message was less supportive of...
I'm a socialist but Warren has (narrowly) been my #1 for a while this campaign because she's better at working with people and really knows her stuff. I wish her message was less supportive of capitalism, but her and Sanders's policies are really similar anyway. If the primaries aren't over by the time it gets to Nebraska I'll still vote for Sanders though.
Exactly, and I think this is part of what rubs me the wrong way about Bernie and his narrative. He and his followers like to paint themselves as ideologically pure and their political opponents as...
Exactly, and I think this is part of what rubs me the wrong way about Bernie and his narrative.
He and his followers like to paint themselves as ideologically pure and their political opponents as evil. Their narrative acts like compromise is a bad thing - they think it makes you 'unpure' or part of the 'establishment' or a 'shill'.
But that's just not how politics works. You need to work with people that you don't agree with to get stuff done. You need to make concessions. Change is needed, but unless you want to stage some kind of coup - it's going to have to come slowly. You have to build trust and convince people who don't agree with you.
So far, all I've seen of Sanders is the polar opposite of this. He's great at riling up people who already agree with him, but his campaign has literally done the opposite of winning over others who disagree with him - they've driven away Warren supporters who would've otherwise eventually got on board.
It makes me feel like I'm in the middle between the more moderate Democrats and all the anticapitalists, which is awkward considering how much time I've spent on r/enlightenedcentrism. I like a...
It makes me feel like I'm in the middle between the more moderate Democrats and all the anticapitalists, which is awkward considering how much time I've spent on r/enlightenedcentrism. I like a lot of Sanders's policies but god damn have some of his supporters been throwing a fit the last two days.
I think Sanders' strong and consistent rhetoric has subconsciously inspired a lot of his followers to get really deeply invested in following more blindly as a means of strengthening the movement....
I think Sanders' strong and consistent rhetoric has subconsciously inspired a lot of his followers to get really deeply invested in following more blindly as a means of strengthening the movement. When a politics you're invested in is under so much constant scrutiny, especially from bad faith actors, it probably becomes increasingly tempting to be more absolute in adherence as well. Or to quote from an article I posted a few days ago:
Persons of a reflective bent all too often underestimate the enormous strength that truly abysmal ignorance can bring. Knowledge is power, of course, but—measured by a purely Darwinian calculus—too much knowledge can be a dangerous weakness. At the level of the social phenotype (so to speak), the qualities often most conducive to survival are prejudice, simplemindedness, blind loyalty, and a militant want of curiosity. These are the virtues that fortify us against doubt or fatal hesitation in moments of crisis. Subtlety and imagination, by contrast, often enfeeble the will; ambiguities dull the instincts.
Sanders’ problem isn’t really that he can’t work with people who aren’t ideologically aligned with him. His record in the Senate and as Mayor doesn’t indicate that at all, he’s been pretty good...
You need to work with people that you don't agree with to get stuff done.
Sanders’ problem isn’t really that he can’t work with people who aren’t ideologically aligned with him. His record in the Senate and as Mayor doesn’t indicate that at all, he’s been pretty good about helping draft or amend legislation in a bipartisan fashion.
His real problem is that he doesn’t like the horse trading, you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours part of politics. He has a single-minded focus on the politics and the policy to the point where he can’t just let sleeping dogs lie to focus on getting to the destination. But if you don’t want Jim Clyburn to single-handedly crash your campaign, you’d better be good at that!
A good example is the Cuba/Castro thing. Yes he is technically correct that the Castro regime did a lot of good things and most of the demonization of him is overblown. But if you’re running for President and one of the states is Florida, you can just keep quiet about it or obfuscate. There’s no reason to give up strategic ground for a moral victory there.
But a version of Sanders who can shut up about these things or evade them isn’t a version that everyone likes because they think he’s genuine. So you gotta take the good with the bad. Unfortunately, it looks like the bad makes him unable to win a national election.
Warren, for her part, hates that shit too. And she made her anti-corruption (both legal and illegal) agenda the centerpiece of her campaign. But she did it in a subtle way where the people she was fixing to roast didn’t even know they were being put on a spit.
Honestly this Capitalism/Socialism dichotomy is so 19th century and I wish we’d move past it already. Both of these are failed experiments. The whole point of the Hegelian Dialectic is to arrive...
I wish her message was less supportive of capitalism
Honestly this Capitalism/Socialism dichotomy is so 19th century and I wish we’d move past it already. Both of these are failed experiments. The whole point of the Hegelian Dialectic is to arrive at some sort of synthesis, but anyone who wants to criticize the capitalist thesis gets stuck at the anti-thesis.
And they’re both such vague weasel words that people use in ways that clarify nothing. These days, most people can be brought around to think “capitalism” means you get to own the value of your labor. If you can get them there, why care what label they want to put on it?
The more accurate framing for both Sanders and Warren's policies is progressivism, as an updated variant of the Progressive Era that attempted to moderate the capitalist wreckage of the first...
The more accurate framing for both Sanders and Warren's policies is progressivism, as an updated variant of the Progressive Era that attempted to moderate the capitalist wreckage of the first Gilded Age. There wasn't a coherent capitalist vs. socialist dialectic. Nationalizing industry was barely a fringe consideration, but public resources, regulation, health, housing, environmental protection, education, breaking monopolies, the rights of labor, and fundamental human rights were certainly on the table. Even so, it took a generation's worth of political action, a massive economic crash, and a world war before national policy really changed.
I think there's still some value in those words, though. I guess you could have someone say that landlords don't contribute anything to society and still be a capitalist, but I've never seen it.
I think there's still some value in those words, though. I guess you could have someone say that landlords don't contribute anything to society and still be a capitalist, but I've never seen it.
To me, in terms of anti-capitalism, Sanders is really not meaningfully different in the fine print. His rhetoric and history may be peppered with anti-capitalist signifiers but his policies are...
To me, in terms of anti-capitalism, Sanders is really not meaningfully different in the fine print. His rhetoric and history may be peppered with anti-capitalist signifiers but his policies are very clearly designed to work within that capitalist relations.
Not unexpected, her support on Super Tuesday was really disappointing.
I would love to see her endorse Bernie, but I don't think there's any way forward for Bernie to get the nomination, and a Biden/Warren ticket would make me feel something other than a sense of duty for voting in the general. I think it'd be a good nod and an olive branch to the progressive wing of the party, and I would hope she could push Biden's policies further left, and the position would allow her more clout to get some of the things she wants done.
If Biden gets the nom, I'm almost positive he'll choose a high profile female who's a person of color for VP, since that's the demographic he's been struggling with. Also, given his age and health is a good way for feminists who might pull a bit more centrist to get on board with him instead of Biden (although it sickens me to hear of any feminists pulling for Biden given his hair sniffing, body groping behavior towards women).
That and by all accounts Warren and Biden don't exactly agree on a pretty critical issue to her either. He might even be the reason she became a politician in the first place. See:
The 20-year argument between Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren over bankruptcy, explained
My guess is Biden would choose Harris. And Warren vacating her seat would probably be bad for democrats in the senate as our republican governor would likely replace her with a republican.
Ah, hadn't considered that. I would expect her not to be a VP pick then, sadly.
I'd much prefer Warren as a Senator than VP. I'm on the Warren train since 2015, she's still got plenty of time to be elected president.
I dunno about plenty of time, she is still 70. Realistically that leaves 2024 and 2028, and we're pretty well fucked if 2024 is even on the table.
With the interactions Harris had with Biden at some of the debates, I'm having a hard time seeing her being his VP pick without losing some support.
Good point. But I feel like it could all be water under the fridge if a mutual opportunity is there.
With her endorsement since we were talking about this, I'm starting to agree with you.
There is a lot of mutual animosity between Biden and Warren. Warren started paying attention to politics specifically to fight his bankruptcy bill. He was a smarmy, condescending prick to her the entire time. She was the one fighting the most finance-industry friendly elements of the Obama/Biden administration the whole way through.
I don't think she's going to endorse Bernie unless there is a tactical reason to think it would help. I don't think she'll endorse Biden because it won't matter or have any meaningful impact. At this point, unless Biden withers in a big way under scrutiny he's going to run away with it. He's currently polling at 61% in Florida and leading in Michigan and Illinois. Sanders might win NY and Washington, but not by enough to cancel a 61% lead in FL.
Best case scenario, at this point, is for Bernie to angle for concessions to drop out and then put Warren forward as VP and/or in charge of key personnel appointments in the Biden administration. That's the only way I see the party coming together behind Biden with enough enthusiasm to cancel how manifestly bad he is as a candidate.
I agree. The Bernie or bust camp is probably being underestimated in it's numbers so if biden wins this is probably the best option.
The Bernie or Bust camp should have spent all this time making positive cases for their candidate instead of accusing everyone else of wanting people to die and holding a gun to vulnerable communities and shouting "DON'T MAKE ME DO IT!"
Apparently he's going to pivot his messaging, but I'm worried it's too little, too late. He staffed his team full of gadflies and bomb-throwers and they built him a campaign focused on nursing beefs and picking fights with other Democratic candidates instead of Republicans. Whatever you think about the defects of those candidates, you can't win a primary with only 30% of the vote and the fact that they didn't bother to actually evangelize might be what ends up doing them in.
Just a horribly managed campaign with zero message discipline.
Your lens for viewing the messaging must be very different than mine. Bernie's messaging has almost been entirely about substantive policies. Healthcare, prison reform, climate change, free college, student load debt.
Biden's messaging has been, "I was the VP under Obama!" I have seen or read little substantive policy proposals from the Biden campaign nor heard of any from those who choose to vote for him.
If you're in the group that might be it. If you're outside the group the messaging was "You want us to die from lack of healthcare, debt peonage, etc." They were saying this to Warren and Pete people. They weren't out there trying to win converts. It seems like they made huge in-roads with Latino communities, which was a highly encouraging sign and an indicator that he had finally figured out how to expand his base. But then I heard stories like this and it starts to look like this competence just did not extend to Black communities in the South. It's worrying that it seems like the campaign had written this off despite the fact that being trounced on Super Tuesday is what did him in last time.
For people outside the Bernie-sphere, the message wasn't specifically about healthcare. The message was about how only Bernie cares about healthcare and if anyone don't support him they must not care. Everyone else is bad or a sellout and the ones who support them should feel bad for supporting them. This ends up being doubly off putting for loyal Democratic voters for two reasons. One, is it invalidates their desire to hedge their bets and be pragmatic for perfectly understandable reasons and makes you look like a disrespectful jerk in the process. Second, it has you accusing the people you're trying to win over of being the villains in the story. You'e telling them that by supporting you they're "giving up" or being "defeated" which is the last thing you want. You want to make it seem like by supporting you people are ascending or graduating to a higher level of politics, but folks never got that vibe out of the Sanders crew.
This has been my observation as well. I'm not American, and I don't have an in-depth knowledge of the candidate policies because I don't need to.
I started out more-or-less ambivalent, but vaguely supportive of both Warren and Sanders. The narratives pushed by Bernie supporters have turned me off him. He might have good policies but I don't get a vote on that anyway - I just don't like the guy or his campaign.
This narrative they are pushing where anyone who supports Warren is a monster pisses me off, as does the sheer audacity of insulting her for being in the race in the first place - and all of this just brings to mind 2016 and how a chunk of Bernie supporters became Trump supporters. I've seen first hand how Bernie followers came to despise Clinton and like Trump, I can't help blaming him and his tactics, at least in part, for Trump becoming president.
There's a stark difference in your assertion and your examples. You spoke about Bernie supporters, not the campaign itself. I don't disagree there are some who claim to be supporters whose messaging is inflammatory and the campaign does a lot of messaging attempting to get people to be nice, polite, and accepting.
Part of the issue though, too, particularly with healthcare, that there is hardly a "hedge your bet" version of healthcare that would be successful. In order to deliver on the promises of the campaign, it needs to be a single-payer healthcare system. Middle-of-the-line solutions won't solve the problems or deliver on the promises. Most of his other policies there can definitely be compromises.
If you're gonna talk about a people powered campaign and make your slogan "Not me, us" I'm not sure this is a useful distinction. People are basically emotive when they vote. One of the reasons Obama won was because he gave people warm, fuzzy feelings about voting for him. He had lots of jerkhole supporters who harassed journalists, but the campaign itself was seen as distancing itself from them and being apologetic for them rather than shrugging its shoulders or ignoring it. That ends up being really important in terms of how the narrative gets managed in the media. It really just ended up being hardcore Clinton endorsers who felt aggrieved by it (like Paul Krugman) rather than literally everyone else in the party.
What's more, the campaign stokes the supporters. They propagate the arguments and lines of attack that supporters pick up and amplify. They might be nice in the volunteer scripts, but they're actively bad at how they engage with activists or the press. From what I've heard, his close staffers don't even talk to people. Journalists' emails can take days to get a response. Apparently nobody at prominent women's groups is getting calls or returned calls from them. So if the campaign itself acts like talking to you is beneath them, and the only things you ever hear from them is online hordes sea-lioning you any time you say anything, what conclusions are you supposed to draw?
Not really. Any version of healthcare reform will take time to roll out, but minor tactical quibbles like what order benefits would be phased in or expanded during were blown up as if it was "backing off on healthcare." It's just a really unproductive form of engagement where the goalposts are constantly being moved to where the "acceptable" standard happens to be wherever Bernie Sanders happens to be standing.
It seems clear that this is a weakness and something is up.
On the other hand Buttigieg seems to have tried pretty hard to engage the black community and utterly failed?
It's sad that "taking down Trump" is sufficient enough policy to resonate with an electorate. "Taking on" big pharma and "gun control" are hardly policies. They're buzzwords or phrases with little to no specific action behind it. I want to know what specifically are the actions that are going to happen to deliver on the goal and what methods will support those actions to bring it to fruition. I understand no one can talk in certainties on the how, but some generalities toward it are refreshing. Another reason why Bernie's campaign resonate with me. He has specific policies goals, with specific actions, and he just posted general methodologies to pay for the actions on his website a week or so ago. Does anyone have any of those details about Biden?
Our current president would disagree. Bernie was probably trying to play Trump's meta, and it was working well until everyone but Biden decided to drop out after South Carolina for no particular reason.
This would have been stupid. Trump's meta works in the Republican primary because the GOP gives out delegates on a winner take all basis. You can't focus on early leads and consolidation in the Democratic party, where delegates go out proportionally and leave also-rans in positions to make comebacks if there is consolidation.
I don't doubt this campaign might have been trying to run this strategy, but that's just evidence that his campaign didn't understand what they were doing.
Yes, the same trick often doesn't work again when everyone can learn from it.
Although, I am still rather surprised that the anti-Sanders folks pulled it together so neatly. The country is divided, and Democrats are divided. But apparently not so divided that Democratic politicians and a lot of moderate voters couldn't figure something out?
You gotta admit, that was a tricky bit of organizing, not having a charismatic leader (to say the least) and doing it anyway.
The organizing didn't just crop up out of thin air. The organizing started in the 70s when, as a result of the voting rights act, Black Democrats in the South started being able to exercise political power. They slowly purged the party in their region of Dixiecrats by creating a solid and unwavering voting block that exercised the power to play kingmaker in any nominating contest. They sorted out who their person would be ahead of time, through endorsement networks and internal organizing committees, and then voted for them when it mattered.
If the Left wants to have any power it's going to need to learn to do the same. Pick a candidate with real, hard nosed political skill and insider connections and make them owe something to the Left. No infighting, no tearing each other down, no drama. This practice of trying to pick whichever charismatic leader gives you warm fuzzy feelings out of a lineup every 4 years isn't gonna do it. That process is just too prone to manipulation by the media.
They had an example of what happens when ego gets in the way during a populist revolt, and only Pete really had a shot at dethroning Biden, until Bloomberg took up all the air in the room and died. The moderates wants a champion too, and if a mechanical system got him in place, then they at least have to know what they're doing.
there isnt. biden has been the choice since day 1. voting doesnt matter. i hate saying it but yeah, it's going to be a contested convention and biden will get the super delegates.
Patently false, Bernie is at a much better position today than he was in 2016. If people took that message from 2016 to heart he would not be an actual contender today.
Voting always matters and proselytizing the opposite message is harmful. You're welcome to think and act how you want, but please do not discourage others because you are jaded. Encourage them to do what you cannot.
the DNC made their choice. I voted, but im not under any illusion that the powers that be hadn't already decided who they wanted like in 2016
im just looking at 2016 and the hillary shit the dnc and super delegates did.
who knows, yeah im probably wrong, but history repeats itself. one of the reason i play history stuff to help me sleep.
The superdelegates didn’t do anything in 2016. They literally just certified the result of the delegate count.
If voting didn't matter Republicans wouldn't be trying so hard to stop people from doing it.
good point
This is a huge disappointment, but not surprising. I still hear Tilders talking about Warren's purported lack of charisma, how she's just been stealing Bernie's program/votes...
While I hate to play the sexism card, the absence of appropriate media coverage, the hectoring op-eds, the ingrained biases, and generalized contempt have worked against all of the female candidates in this contest. I see people discovering Elizabeth Warren now!
I've tried very hard to back off from debate and let people arrive at their own decisions. But I deeply regret that I didn't speak up earlier with full-throated support, because Elizabeth Warren really was objectively the best Presidential candidate in a generally flawed field.
I'm grateful she was able to surgically dispatch Michael Bloomberg's candidacy in seconds. I think that one-on-one, Warren would have made Donald Trump look like the barely sentient sundowning yam he is. Deep respect to her both for knowing how to fight, and knowing when to make a retreat for the good of the country.
I hope Warren will fully back Sanders, but I expect she'll devote her intelligence and skill to whichever candidate winds up opposing Trump, as well as serving our country and its people to the best of her ability. As she has always done.
I used to be camp Warren until her response to Clearview AI stating her stance on facial recognition technology. The idea that "guardrails and appropriate privacy protections" would work in policing either shows a distinct lack of knowledge on how existing framework has utterly failed minorities or is a placating statement designed to draw attention away from her real stance which may be pro a big-brother state.
I really, really hope she does. I don't want to believe that the DNC is that corrupt or that Warren was a shill all along.
I'm with you guys on that one too. I want to see Liz in the administration somewhere. She's done a few things that have made me roll my eyes but I don't doubt her intelligence or her commitment. She's a big value add anywhere she goes.
Barring Biden having a stroke or majorly putting his foot in his mouth, Sanders is going to lose. An endorsement makes no sense. We’re basically banking on the opponent making a mistake in order to win, which is a terrible strategic position to be in.
Yeah. I actually think Bernie has decent odds for just that reason. But based on how badly the Sanders campaign has been controlling message discipline I’m not sure they can hold the line well enough. I want to hear about a major staff shakeup in his campaign or I don’t think he can pull it off.
But Biden is polling at 61% in Florida and Sanders is barely at viability based on the last poll (and that poll includes Bloomberg so Biden will probably do even better than that). The Sanders game plan depended on running up the score on Super Tuesday but the lead won’t be wide enough at this point to buffer against Biden in FL. Sanders will have to dramatically overperform in NY, Washington, and all the mountain west states. It’s a pretty grim outlook.
Dude. I'm depressed enough already
I’m wondering what psychological process was in play here, because it was the same with me. I was also pretty quiet about supporting Warren even though I was pretty full throated in supporting who I supported in basically every election since I started paying attention.
I think part of it I just actively backed off on Social Media. I also just didn’t feel like dealing with shitty comments from Sanders folks. I didn’t mind shitty comments from Trumpers because I can get as aggressive as I want with them, but since I actually like Sanders I never felt like getting into the fights and just avoided the discourse altogether.
Other than that I don’t know. On some level something made me feel like I shouldn’t be too vocal about it, like it would be indecorous somehow. I volunteered but didn’t talk about it in my personal life and neither did any of my friend. It wasn’t until it was too late that we all started getting actively hyped.
I've got a handful of different reasons:
I've spent too much time online arguing rationally with people who aren't prepared to change their minds under the best of circumstances, let alone when confronted by a stranger.
I'm still miserable with guilt that I argued with my dying mother, in favor of Obama's candidacy over Hillary Clinton's. In retrospect, I was displacing other emotional baggage that I should have used the time to unpack. Arguing Warren vs. Sanders feels like a reprise of that time.
I know people who've waited their entire lives, in desperate straits, for a progressive voice to address their needs. Sanders got there first. Whether first = best, given sufficient head start, is essentially a VHS vs. BetaMax question. [I.e., once you've chosen to buy in, the advantages are so great over your prior experience that nothing else will have features so persuasive you'd abandon your prior commitment. I know that framing dates me, but it's still one of the best examples I'm aware of.]
Politically, I was content with both Sanders' and Warren's platforms. It's sheer laziness on my part that I didn't want to have to unpack all the reasons I felt Warren would have made a better President. As you indicated, it didn't seem like a useful expenditure of energy to argue with people on the same side. To some extent, I naively thought people would just do the math on Sanders' age, health, and lack of legislative effectiveness.
There are always going to be authoritarian followers. We could argue about their relative distribution on the political spectrum, but the historical evidence is that at least some are followers of communist, socialist, or anarchist leaders. The worst of the Sanders supporters seem to fit this mold - paranoid mindset, eagerness for license to engage in hostile activity towards perceived enemies of the leader, adulation of the leader regardless of objective faults, etc. [Just mentioning this is likely to bring some flak my way, even on Tildes.] I don't think Sanders is actively encouraging a cult of personality, but he doesn't necessarily have incentives to reign it in, either. I just don't have the mental bandwidth to be a target for that kind of hate (again).
I really did not want to start the sexism discussion. That's a massively divisive topic - confronting people's unconscious biases is a job for professionals, and I'm not that.
Anyone I saw on social media express support for Warren got a barrage of mocking replies from Bernie Bros, so I'm not surprised this made supporters more quiet.
The Bernie tactics did seem to work to stifle Warren's campaign - but now that she's dropped out they're going to regret it. I've already seen reports suggesting that Bernie is failing to pick up Warren's supporters.
Not to diminish the bad experiences of people but I still kind of wonder how much the social media played an actual role. As far as I can see the reporting has largely focused on the experiences of journalists and a few examples they put together. And journalists are, unfortunately, kind of prone to overemphasize things that happen within their social networks, especially since they tend to follow each other.
Not saying there isn't an issue with toxic supporters on social media, but I'm wondering if the real-world effects on the voters at large are more due to the amount of screentime it gets.
I can only speak from personal experience. I'm not American, and I don't even voluntarily follow the primaries (imo it's annoying how long your elections take). But I follow a lot of people who care about it on twitter, so I've kind of involuntarily been drawn into it all.
I have witnessed a persistent stream of assholish behaviour from Bernie supporters. It was just constant. Any time anyone tweeted anything supporting Warren, no matter how light hearted and jokey, the Bernie bros would be there.
Responses ranged for pointless but obnoxious like 'I <3 bernie', to dumb memeish insults and reaction gifs, to the most obnoxious blame-throwing I've ever read. Just today I read a tweet by a Bernie supporter that claimed Elizabeth Warren and her supporters will have BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS from people dying of poor medical care if Bernie doesn't win.
The barrage of snake emojis also, imo, have heavily sexist undertones. I've only seen women and effeminate men accused of being snakes before. No one's calling Trump or Biden a snake.
I'm sorry you had to go through that, that sucks. But Twitter is an especially bad platform for this because so many of it's mechanics subtly encourage and amplify ganging-up on people. So a relatively small group of people can have an outsized impact through a combination of coordination and personal investment.
A lot of really toxic political supporters, not just Sanders', are found to engage in this kind of behaviour, and usually because they associate online they will share and distribute tweets they gang up on through retweets, group messaging, or platforms like Discord. And since Sanders' electorate skews pretty young it means they're going to be more likely to be present on Twitter and have the means and time to share tweets.
Other supporters weren’t engaging in this behaviour at a large scale. Bernie supporters were. The only other support base I’ve ever seen behave this way is Trump’s, and the similarity does not reflect well on Bernie.
It was (is) a systematic issue with his campaign and its grating to now sit back and watch his supporters act like it’s a fake criticism or they are being victimised.
The most annoying part of all of this is Donald Trump sitting on the sidelines encouraging Sanders supporters to hate and blame Warren. This behaviour and in-fighting is helping him and he knows it.
Why is all this vitriol aimed at Warren and not actual ideological enemies like Biden or Trump?
But see that's kind of the issue: social media tends to warp perceptions to an extent where actually understanding the scale of things becomes really hard with anecdotal evidence. 30'000 people on Twitter can seem overwhelming but depending on the context it might actually not be at all.
The risk, then, is to repeat the failed analyses produced in the wake of the 2016 election. Because it is much easier, after all, to designate abstract group of people, whose presence in the discourse is the root cause of all ills, than to analyse the larger structural issues that came together to produce Trump's victory.
There is an issue with Toxic Sanders supporters, and how large of a presence they have on social media. There is an issue with infighting in Democratic circles (always has been). He has repeatedly stated he does not condone this, that he is not on bad terms with Warren, Biden, or the other candidates. (Because there is a lot of vitriol reserved for Biden as well) Sanders has made it clear that he does not want his supporters to engage in name calling and character assassinations. His campaign has had to purge multiple staffers with troubling social media histories in part to cement his committent to civility. And he clearly hasn't gone as far as he possibly could, perhaps partially out of fear of compromising the grassroots movement he spent so much time building up. But it hasn't gone ignored.
But the other problem is that even if he cracked down extremely hard on it, how much would it actually solve. It's tempting to posit that the problem with Sanders is Berniebros. Because if it is then the solution is to have no Berniebros. (Just like if the problem with America is billionaires then clearly the solution is no billionaires, right?) But the truth resists simplicity. And by focusing on this one issue we could be missing the forest for the trees and not coming up with actual, system solutions.
The irony is that some of Sanders' Twitter supporters pretty much do the same as well. As it was with the Iowa caucus scandal, and now with the song and dance about Warren voters supposedly being "fake progressives" they seem to have given in to the temptation to blame abstract figures of enemies ("the establishment", "white liberal feminists", "fake progressives") rather than analysing the systemic issues. And it leaves them angrier and with no answer because they can't actually defeat an enemy that exists mostly in their head, but that's what they're laser focused on.
This is an election campaign, Bernie is essentially trying to win a popularity contest, and his followers are trashing his reputation online. I’m not really interested in figuring out how many Bernie supporters are bad and how many are good. Enough are bad for it to be an issue - an issue for Bernie and an issue for the people they harassed.
Sure, a lot of factors come together to win or lose an election. But reports say that Bernie’s bad performance is partly because under 30s didn’t vote, and that’s the demographic that spends a lot of time online.
Bernie could talk more to supporters about what not to do, he could be more specific about the kind of behaviour is bad, his campaign could be active about calling out bad behaviour when they see it. These people adore Bernie - they are worshiping him - if he or his campaign took a more active role in guiding his followers online campaign tactics I’m positive they could change behaviour.
If “good” Bernie supporters actually condemned bad behaviour, and called it out when they saw it, instead of the wide-spread excuse-making and defensiveness I’m seeing online at the moment, the behaviour would stop.
Bernie’s movement is failing to grow enough, his supporters are failing to win people over. It would be wise to take this feedback on board.
Yeah I totally agree with this part, if I'm being honest. Bernie seems either too unaware or too careful in reigning in the worst parts of his base and it's slipping. Other Bernie supporters similarly have become too quick to retreat into the same joke defense of oh I guess you don't support healthcare now just to shut everything down. And that unwillingness to even broach the subject probably creates the vacuum where the worst offenders feel like they can get away with the things they do. You can't have things like what happened with the Nevada Culinary Union happen and then also fail to more broadly contain the toxicity in the movement then some questioning should be in order.
I think there's just a lot of vitriol in general going around these days. While some of the Bernie people I know were harsh on Warren herself as a candidate, I personally never saw them attack her supporters (though I'm sure it happened). On the other hand, I did see many Warren supporters dogpile on Bernie supporters, and even Warren herself bashed Bernie supporters on the debate stage (side note: attacking the electorate is not a good strategy).
One Warren supporter I know in real life (so not a Russian bot) bashed a Bernie supporter that both I and she know in real life as being a sexist who doesn't support Warren only because he's upset that he can't get women (though he can and does).
I think all people are just angrier these days, and the internet makes it easy to vent it. But it was advantageous to center this media narrative on Bernie supporters.
Whatever your personal experiences and anecdotes are, it’s easy to see just by comparing the responses to Bernie tweets vs Warren tweets ( from when she was still in the race) that it was not evenly “everyone doing it to everyone”.
Blaming a media conspiracy instead of accepting criticism is straight out of the Trump playbook.
I'm convinced that a lot of Twitter activity is bots at this point, so I don't consider it particularly representative of anything. Twitter is incredibly toxic and easy to manipulate with bots. My experiences are from a large, apolitical Facebook group of locals who all know each other in real life.
My suggestion that a lot of Twitter activity is just bots is made without specific evidence, but I intentionally avoid Twitter so I can't say I care much to go digging any further.
The way I approached this for Yang was to post links to genuinely newsworthy articles and quotes from them. I think that would work well for any topic where you're interested but don't necessarily want to engage?
Welp, my vote was basically wasted, BUT, I still appreciate what she brought to the table and see good things for her ahead. She knows her policy, how to make change happen both inside and outside of government, took down a rich megalomaniac in a debate (I so wish I could see her debate Trump 1v1), and is a humble leader. I'm hoping we can flip the Senate (c'mon, Bullock, run in Montana!) and have Warren step up her work with even more influence now given her now-national reputation.
I haven't paid too much attention to all the debates and whatnot, but my distinct impression of Warren from the various highlights I've seen is that Trump would wipe the floor with her. He'd turn it into a circus and find some way to mock her (Pocahontas, maybe?) that would overshadow whatever sense she'd try to bring to the table. She doesn't seem particularly charismatic enough to flip a scenario like that.
You should watch more debates then, she wouldn't get shouted over by Trump. There isn't anything Trump hasn't said to her that would be more impactful if he said it to her. Saying it to her face would just give her the opportunity to respond and she hasn't shown that she'd back down.
She's been able to hold her own very much with other candidates trying to muscle her out. She also verbally eviscerated Mike Bloomberg in his first debate.
Warren has been my just-barely-2nd choice since 2015 (even back when she refused to run). In at least the past 3 debates, she was the smartest person in the room. She would have been a great President, probably even better than Sanders (my 1st choice, 'cuz I'm a revolutionary).
I really hope she ends up with a prominent position in the next Administration, whoever wins (Biden-cough-Biden).
Add me to the chorus of (probably too quiet) Warren supporters. I was a fan of hers long before this campaign started and will continue to be one with wherever she's headed next. She's smart, principled, and has the exact right temperament I want to see in a leader.
One of the hypothetical, temperature-check questions I always ask myself when vetting candidates for myself is "How would I feel if they were my boss?" Not that any of them will ever be my supervisor, mind you -- it's simply a thought exercise that helps me cut through a lot of the noisy discourse and get down to the core of how I feel about someone. I use it as a heuristic for an overall feel for their leadership -- a high-level view zoomed out from individual policy items or soundbytes or news stories. It's a way for me to get an aggregate view of thousands of little inputs about a person that have accumulated over time.
Clinton, in 2016, was a person I could have comfortably worked for, but my feelings weren't stirred beyond that. Warren, on the other hand, is someone I would be legitimately proud to work for. She might not be everyone's leadership fit, but she's mine. I'm sad to see that her train has stopped short of where I thought and hoped it could go.
So it's finally a 1v1, that took a while.
Optimistically this means Bernie now only has one candidate to attack, which is Biden, an easy target.
Pessimistically this means that many centrists that find Bernie too divisive will back Biden.
😑? Seems strange.
Well, not technically since Gabbard is still in, but realistically, yes.
I'll be honest, while Bernie was my #2 pick initially (#1 being Warren), Bernie is not going to beat Biden for the nomination, bar some outside issue (Biden's health or real scandal). Biden's overperformance on Super Tuesday was the end of hope for Bernie. There are many moderate states left to vote in the primary and not that many very liberal ones (and even ones like Massachusetts went for Biden!), and those moderate states heavily favor Biden.
While I agree with you, I will continue to support Bernie until Biden actually is the nominee, at which point I will switch.
Even then, Biden won't get more than a vote from me in the general. I can't in good conscience watch the compilation of him creeping on women and children and think, "yes, I want to volunteer my limited money and free time to help this person become president." Morally, I have to draw the line there, so I will probably focus my efforts on local/down-ballot races that are important to me and key Senate races that could flip control back to the Democrats.
Yep, and I think people are struggling to understand that is an option.
I'm a Sanders supporter first, but if it were Sanders, Warren, or even Klobuchar or Buttigieg as the nominee, I'd volunteer and donate to their campaigns, without a doubt. Can't bring myself to do that for Biden.
The Payback Project might be relevant to your interests.
Somehow, it appears that essentially nothing on that page involves any political issues at all. Instead, it's a bunch of photographs of senators chosen and edited to be ominous and ugly (particularly with the ridiculous dark grey outlines and the dismaying fad of using awkward mid-talking photos to make people look bad), along with various hyperbolic and rather childish attacks that have little to do with why the senators are actually problematic.
Is their intention to become enough like Trump to be able to replace him? Are the sorts of people who would be motivated by such a site really the sorts of people who should be "texting and building capacity to win," because they are "angry" and want to "get even," and so want to join a "growing grassroots army on the ground" to go "all in" for "payback", doing more than just "trashing" their "targets"? Is this the modern language of decent politics? That of some sort of team-based militancy and violence, with only a tenuous connection issues?
I can't accept that the best way to confront Trumpian political strategies is to copy them.
If you actually follow these things enough to find that page or know what Indivisible is, you already know why those senators are bad.
Not everything on the internet is created with the purpose of informing you, specifically, about things. This is a page for volunteer organizers who are already committed to flipping the Senate for their own myriad reasons.
If you think the relevant problem with Trump is that he’s impolite or bellicose, that’s part of the problem.
Posting faces instead of a list of names is a big red flag for me, though. It just seems creepy, something out Orwell's 1984, like everyone is supposed to recognize these people's faces and hate them.
Because I read all my political news and never watch TV news or political video, there are many politicians whose faces I don't recognize and I'm fine with that. I don't think I could recognize Bloomberg, for example.
I figure if they're not going to tell me who they are talking about, this website isn't for me.
Agreed, and I will be doing the same. Just preparing myself for what looks to be the inevitable.
This is such a frustrating framing and it's so common. Bernie is divisive, sure. No doubt. But between whom? His rhetoric is mostly centered around helping people who are struggling whether to make ends meet or some other way.
If that's his side of """being divisive""" who is on the the other side? People who are worried it would cost too much regardless of how under taxes the wealthiest are? People who are sticking up for the profit margins of indifferent multi-nationals?
America is already divided between people who use their wealth and influence to control society and the hapless peons who are supposed to shut up an take it. Why would any one want to be on any side but Bernie's?
I'm not gonna pretend I really know, being a Bernie supporter (Although to be honest, I I'm a big supporter of anyone looking to free up healthcare and colleges and remove US lobbying, along with at least tripling the number of ballot offices, automating voter registration, increasing the size of the house up to around 1200 and bringing antitrust back, and to be honest if more than one person is promising this, I would just see them as equally good, hence using the word divisive unironically.) Maybe they watch enough cable news to believe it. Maybe they're just old enough to not have needed college when they were young and to be insured on Healthcare, 2 of Sanders' most important policy proposals. Maybe the comments on Castro's welfare programs just went too far, which TBF is more reasonable.
This sounds like something that would happen in the USSR. Like how absolutely DARE someone confront the party big wigs? I don't understand why the democratic voter is so defensive of their establishment. Those people are not friends of the working men and women of this nation. It's like dem voters are so wrapped up in the last 20 years of partisan politics that they are incapable to critical self-reflection.
Well not really. Most of those things are on Bernie's slate. So I don't see why there is a conflict.
But whatever, since the real issue is the obvious failings of a political system designed by and for capitalists - the historical adversary of the working man and woman.
People seem to like the party big wigs. They keep voting for the people who support their power.
They hella don't tho. That's (a substantial part of ) why people voted for Trump. Among other things he (shrewdly) voices the anti-establishment frustration and sense of betrayal that most regular people feel. Obviously he personally has no claim to these feelings being a coastal elite himself.
I think people who still go for the "electable" corporate candidate because of the corporate propaganda and fear-mongering on corporate media. That or some sort of mass Stockholm syndrome.
Trump is not what I would call an anti-establishment candidate. He's a cowboy who shoots from the hip sure, but he clearly represents the interests of the established elite. He literally runs a corporation.
So far we reject any politicians who actually are anti-establishment in action. We might buy the rhetoric, but by and large Americans vote for leaders who protect corporate interest.
Perhaps you wouldn't but that's because you're operating at a high-enough information level that you didn't but the whole "drain the swamp line." So it's like you said...
And "drain the swamp" is generally meaningless. If Trump did things that were actually radical, I highly doubt his base would like it. So far, "drain the swamp" basically means fire any effective politicians who don't fall in line. It operates on a thin layer of anti-establishmentism and anti-corruption which ultimately really is just "All politicians I don't like are corrupt and should be fired".
I guess it depends on how you view anti-establishment. In the sense that the establishment is literally the politicians in DC, Trump has been extremely anti-establishment. But in the sense that the establishment is the modern equivalent of the landed ruling class (high wealth, politically active individuals influencing politics, corporate and special interests who lobby to influence politics) he's done basically nothing, and if anything has supported the de facto establishment at the expense of the more democratic de jure establishment.
Drain the swamp isn't the only anti-establishment anti-status quo theme in the """culture""" building around his personality. There's also "owning the libs," "triggering snowflakes," "coastal elites etc etc," and so on and so on.
The reason Trump is so popular among his his personality cultists because he vocalizes the outrage of people who got it into their heads that everything wrong with the world can be traced to a "liberal elite" (an old theme in american politics).
I have listened to a few black Biden supporters and it didn't sound like that piece at all. Where I am from the black democrats embedded in movement are running with DSA. Chicago's Black Caucus is notoriously moderate.
Yeah, idk. I guess from your post I don't think Bernie will win. Hopefully Biden can hold Trump off. God help us all.
Also in Virginia, the Democratic establishment continues to enable Dominion and let them remain unaccountable to rate-payers, failed to legalize marijuana with some weak decriminalization that preserves unequal outcomes for white and black Virginians, gave a pittance to teachers and haven't restored education funding, and so far is failing to enact Gerrymandering reform. Northam took money out of all of our pockets to give to the world's richest man. I was out there canvassing for Periello, and I remember the only real argument for Northam was that he could work across the aisle. Here we are two years later with the trifecta and no need to work across the aisle. I worry Dems are painting themselves into the same corner nationally, allowing themselves to be governed by fear that is ultimately baseless.
But then again... it totally does because """moderate""" is corporate media spin jargon for big-business status quo friendly.
For Sander too though!
I personally don't want to form a coalition with politicians who suck ass billionaire ass to advance their careers. If you're convinced that concentrating power and wealth in the hands of a few mega-corporations in the name of rising GDP is cool then there's nothing I can say to you. I'm not that good at changing people's minds.
If Bernie can't win without their support then that's out of my control. God help us all. The thing I keep in mind through this all is that sometimes things go terrible wrong in history and if this is such a moment then that's what it is.
That may be right but I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't take it to heart. People flocked to DSA in large part because they see politicians like Rahm Emmanuel, the Clintons, Biden etc. as being too focused on"winning" for the sake of their careers and not willing to take a strong ideological stand.
I would describe the way the insiders in the Democratic party and the corporate media circle the wagons against progressives in this way. So again maybe we are at an impasse because the critiques you have for progressives are actually the ones they have of everyone else.
You know, I really liked Warren, but was withholding my full-throated support because of how divisive politics can be, and because I really agree more fully with Sander's vision of where the economy needs to go. However, after reading the NPR piece that listed her platform and accomplishments, I've realized too late that she really was the best candidate in terms of leadership ability, planning, and level-headedness. I especially found this quote telling (emphasis mine):
This is the sad state of American politics. I hope Sanders has a plan he's not releasing because he realizes it'd be politically difficult, but (a) he might not, since he doesn't have to, and (b) I wish we weren't at a place where talking about things frankly was seen as a political weakness or disadvantage.
Wow NPR is that sloppy, or dishonest? A user's linked the appropriate page below that has the plan.
Also the implication that the richest nation on earth would find it at all difficult to pay for M4A is a bit of a joke. The money is there, more than enough. The political will is missing.
This 10000000%. It really cheese me off when people disagree with it. It's utterly asinine.
https://berniesanders.com/issues/how-does-bernie-pay-his-major-plans/
Confirming dubteedub's points - while I have no doubt appropriate taxation could fund these ideas, his numbers just don't add up. He is incredibly generous with how much revenue some of his plans will recoup.
Yeah, and that bolded quote is inaccruate. He has an entire page on his website that talks about financing his plans. https://berniesanders.com/issues/how-does-bernie-pay-his-major-plans/
Well color me corrected! Thanks @Kenny and @wycy. I don't know what NPR might've meant.
As a sidebar, I LOVE the favicon :)
To be fair, releasing plans this early is mostly just performative since nothing will enter the legislative sausage factory and come out the other end in recognizable form. For Warren it was cool because it pitched her as a thorough and detailed thinker. It also gave us a sense for how she prioritizes things which is also important.
But it’s not really a deal breaker to be vague on these things. In some cases it’s best not to be too specific since very few people in political office are smart enough to be able to defend a policy on its merits once it gets down to that level of detail. Their core skill is management/leadership stuff and they have advisors and staff to do the thinky stuff.
It also exposes you to liabilities. Like Sanders M4A proposal will probably include a shortfall, but that’s just because the real way to pay for it would include the taxes being slightly higher or include fees and copays or constrained options for benefits. Why open yourself up to those lines of attack if you don’t have to?
Not to mention that releasing the specifics, and even having the math checked out, does not mean the narrative of a candidate being prepared and thought-through will catch on. Corbyn's campaign in the UK made a big deal of their budget proposal being costed but the mantra that it was unrealistic and poorly thought out still stuck with much of the populace.
You know -- that's a fair point. Δ
(Oh wait; wrong site!)
It's too bad, she was my favorite. It seems like she's not a great campaigner but she would have made a great president.
Kind of sucks how that always seems to be the choice we are presented with. You can either back someone good or someone who can win.
Yeah. I wish there was a better way of choosing candidates for an election, and I don't just mean ranked choice voting. We had something like a dozen candidates, which is great, but it was disappointing to me that the left lane consisted solely of Warren, who is now out, and Sanders, who I don't think is the best standard-bearer for the socialist movement.
I am really quite surprised that Warren is popular here on tildes... I would've thought Bernie would be the only reasonable candidate to most here, but perhaps I am under the illusion of my hard leftist bubble. Warren to me embodies this Žižek quote:
I'm a socialist but Warren has (narrowly) been my #1 for a while this campaign because she's better at working with people and really knows her stuff. I wish her message was less supportive of capitalism, but her and Sanders's policies are really similar anyway. If the primaries aren't over by the time it gets to Nebraska I'll still vote for Sanders though.
Exactly, and I think this is part of what rubs me the wrong way about Bernie and his narrative.
He and his followers like to paint themselves as ideologically pure and their political opponents as evil. Their narrative acts like compromise is a bad thing - they think it makes you 'unpure' or part of the 'establishment' or a 'shill'.
But that's just not how politics works. You need to work with people that you don't agree with to get stuff done. You need to make concessions. Change is needed, but unless you want to stage some kind of coup - it's going to have to come slowly. You have to build trust and convince people who don't agree with you.
So far, all I've seen of Sanders is the polar opposite of this. He's great at riling up people who already agree with him, but his campaign has literally done the opposite of winning over others who disagree with him - they've driven away Warren supporters who would've otherwise eventually got on board.
It makes me feel like I'm in the middle between the more moderate Democrats and all the anticapitalists, which is awkward considering how much time I've spent on r/enlightenedcentrism. I like a lot of Sanders's policies but god damn have some of his supporters been throwing a fit the last two days.
I think Sanders' strong and consistent rhetoric has subconsciously inspired a lot of his followers to get really deeply invested in following more blindly as a means of strengthening the movement. When a politics you're invested in is under so much constant scrutiny, especially from bad faith actors, it probably becomes increasingly tempting to be more absolute in adherence as well. Or to quote from an article I posted a few days ago:
Sanders’ problem isn’t really that he can’t work with people who aren’t ideologically aligned with him. His record in the Senate and as Mayor doesn’t indicate that at all, he’s been pretty good about helping draft or amend legislation in a bipartisan fashion.
His real problem is that he doesn’t like the horse trading, you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours part of politics. He has a single-minded focus on the politics and the policy to the point where he can’t just let sleeping dogs lie to focus on getting to the destination. But if you don’t want Jim Clyburn to single-handedly crash your campaign, you’d better be good at that!
A good example is the Cuba/Castro thing. Yes he is technically correct that the Castro regime did a lot of good things and most of the demonization of him is overblown. But if you’re running for President and one of the states is Florida, you can just keep quiet about it or obfuscate. There’s no reason to give up strategic ground for a moral victory there.
But a version of Sanders who can shut up about these things or evade them isn’t a version that everyone likes because they think he’s genuine. So you gotta take the good with the bad. Unfortunately, it looks like the bad makes him unable to win a national election.
Warren, for her part, hates that shit too. And she made her anti-corruption (both legal and illegal) agenda the centerpiece of her campaign. But she did it in a subtle way where the people she was fixing to roast didn’t even know they were being put on a spit.
Honestly this Capitalism/Socialism dichotomy is so 19th century and I wish we’d move past it already. Both of these are failed experiments. The whole point of the Hegelian Dialectic is to arrive at some sort of synthesis, but anyone who wants to criticize the capitalist thesis gets stuck at the anti-thesis.
And they’re both such vague weasel words that people use in ways that clarify nothing. These days, most people can be brought around to think “capitalism” means you get to own the value of your labor. If you can get them there, why care what label they want to put on it?
The more accurate framing for both Sanders and Warren's policies is progressivism, as an updated variant of the Progressive Era that attempted to moderate the capitalist wreckage of the first Gilded Age. There wasn't a coherent capitalist vs. socialist dialectic. Nationalizing industry was barely a fringe consideration, but public resources, regulation, health, housing, environmental protection, education, breaking monopolies, the rights of labor, and fundamental human rights were certainly on the table. Even so, it took a generation's worth of political action, a massive economic crash, and a world war before national policy really changed.
I think there's still some value in those words, though. I guess you could have someone say that landlords don't contribute anything to society and still be a capitalist, but I've never seen it.
To me, in terms of anti-capitalism, Sanders is really not meaningfully different in the fine print. His rhetoric and history may be peppered with anti-capitalist signifiers but his policies are very clearly designed to work within that capitalist relations.