https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/3/17/21182149/jane-mcalevey-the-ezra-klein-show-labor-organizing Tangentially related, but it's an interview I listened to recently from the Ezra Klein Show from...
Tangentially related, but it's an interview I listened to recently from the Ezra Klein Show from Jane McAlevey and the difference between Organizing and Mobilizing. Her theory is that Bernie and Trump are fantastic Mobilizers that are able to take a group that want a thing and use themselves as a spearhead, where as Biden is better at getting people who don't agree to each other to work for a common cause through Organization. She best described as how a work union doesn't have a common set of morals but they do have a common set of goals.
Toward the end of a primary there is often talk to the effect that even if your candidate didn’t win, he changed the conversation, whatever that means, and might be able to whisper ideas in the winner’s ear or even to hold him accountable, whatever that means. This was a fantasy when it came to Hillary Clinton. It is a joke when it comes to Joe Biden. If Biden were the kind of candidate who could be pushed left, no one in the party leadership would have endorsed him. It doesn’t matter if he makes Free College for Some a plank of his platform, and it doesn’t help that he spent decades cultivating the image of a conservative’s kind of liberal.
This post is too long for me to have the energy to go through point by point, so I'll just address the idea of Bernie's plan being to go through and win 30% of each state. What the exit polls have...
This post is too long for me to have the energy to go through point by point, so I'll just address the idea of Bernie's plan being to go through and win 30% of each state.
What the exit polls have shown is that the Bernie plan was overwhelmingly popular in every single state up to and including Super Tuesday. At each of the primaries[*], entrance polls asked the question: "How do you feel about replacing all private health insurance with a single government plan for everyone?"
"Support": Alabama 51%, California 55%, Colorado 57%, Massachusetts 50%, Minnesota 62%, North Carolina 55%, Oklahoma 53%, Tennessee 53%, Texas 64%, Virginia 52%, Vermont 73%, Iowa 57%, New Hampshire 58%, Nevada 62%, Michigan 58%, Washington 63%, Mississippi 60%, Missouri 58%.
However, mainstream media relentlessly hammered the narrative that Bernie can't win, Bernie isn't electable, Biden is electable. So as for the question, "Rather nominate a candidate who...Can beat Donald Trump or Agrees with you on major issues":
"Can beat Donald Trump": Alabama 53%, California 64%, Colorado 69%, Massachusetts 65%, Minnesota 65%, North Carolina 63%, Oklahoma 55%, Tennessee 61%, Texas 64%, Virginia 58%, Vermont 63%, Iowa 61%, New Hampshire 63%, Nevada 66%.
This shows that although the majority of Democratic voters in literally every state supported even Bernie's most radical idea, people were too scared to vote for him and set aside their own beliefs to vote for Biden instead. He was going for the majority, but there's no beating the media narrative of fear.
[*] They stopped asking this question after Super Tuesday, so only states up to Super Tuesday are included here.
This isn't at all how politics work. The Democratic policy proposals have a commanding lead over Republicans in every election, but Republican candidates tend to win based on random intangibles...
This shows that although the majority of Democratic voters in literally every state supported even Bernie's most radical idea, people were too scared to vote for him and set aside their own beliefs to vote for Biden instead. He was going for the majority, but there's no beating the media narrative of fear.
This isn't at all how politics work. The Democratic policy proposals have a commanding lead over Republicans in every election, but Republican candidates tend to win based on random intangibles like "I trust him" or "he understands people like me" or "he makes me feel safe."
It's not fear, it's literally lack of trust. If you don't talk to key constituencies and do all your organizing online and spend all your time on TV sending out attack-dog surrogates, people aren't going to trust you. And if Sanders couldn't win the trust of Democrats in a Democratic primary, I don't know how people think he's going to dodge Republican flim-flam in a general election.
Perhaps in general lack of trust is a big player in these elections, but I’d disagree that it is wrt Sanders. Even people who hate his guts trust him and trust that he’ll try to do what he says,...
Perhaps in general lack of trust is a big player in these elections, but I’d disagree that it is wrt Sanders. Even people who hate his guts trust him and trust that he’ll try to do what he says, even if they wholeheartedly disagree with him.
This argument hits the nail on the head, though, for why many of us take such strong issue with Biden. Given his history, it’s hard to trust that he’ll try to push even his already compromised positions.
This just isn't true. Lots of older people absolutely do not trust him. Talk to any Black organizing community and you will find TONS of people accusing him of being an egomaniac and a flim-flam...
Perhaps in general lack of trust is a big player in these elections, but I’d disagree that it is wrt Sanders. Even people who hate his guts trust him and trust that he’ll try to do what he says, even if they wholeheartedly disagree with him.
This just isn't true. Lots of older people absolutely do not trust him. Talk to any Black organizing community and you will find TONS of people accusing him of being an egomaniac and a flim-flam man. And even those who like him might trust that he's honest, but they don't trust that he actually has the competence or skills to actually execute on anything he's promising.
Given his history, it’s hard to trust that he’ll try to push even his already compromised positions.
Biden's history has always been about being a weathervane for wherever the mid-point of the Democratic party consensus is. He's utterly predictable and can be relied on to do whatever will get signature bits of legislation passed with his name on it.
Perhaps I should rephrase. I fully acknowledge that the Sanders' team hoped that a splintered field would help them win, but this talking point implies he was only trying to run a divisive...
Perhaps I should rephrase. I fully acknowledge that the Sanders' team hoped that a splintered field would help them win, but this talking point implies he was only trying to run a divisive platform aimed at winning a minority of the electorate. I'd counter that hoped to win a majority of voters all along, and exit polls show that his platform did accomplish this even though he didn't.
I think the primary way this affected his strategy was not in only trying to appeal to a minority of voters, but instead in that he did not consider the threat from the other candidates seriously enough to attack them. I think the main thing that would have changed if he weren't counting on a splintered field would be that he would've been attacking Biden's record all along, but he didn't want to look like a dick beating on a confused old man who was seemingly going nowhere.
So I agree with you more in fact, but less in implication of the fact.
tl;dr Saying he was trying to run the Trump strategy implies that he was being more divisive to win a minority, when in reality this made him less divisive and do less attacking. If he were trying to win a 1v1 all along he would've been much more divisive and doing much more attacking.
I appreciate your response and willingness to read (most of) the article. I have a lot of respect for you, even though we couldn't disagree more on this. I think it's the exact opposite. If it...
I appreciate your response and willingness to read (most of) the article. I have a lot of respect for you, even though we couldn't disagree more on this.
I think that this lays out that many of Bernie's strongest supporters online don't actually care about policy and are in this for a cult of personality.
I think it's the exact opposite. If it were a cult of personality, then when we would all vote for Joe when Bernie said to. It's much more than that. Many Bernie supporters back him because he has been consistently right on the important issues for his entire political career. He has an authenticity that Biden doesn't have. IMO it's a reaction to the Obama presidency, where we were sold hope and change and the guy couldn't even jail a single banker for crashing the global economy for profit.
I think downplaying the toxicity of online behavior is really disgusting and is a large reason why I would prefer Biden to Bernie.
I think if your thought process is "well, climate change is real and needs to be seriously addressed, student loan debt is a massive problem, wealth inequality needs to be reigned in, and people shouldn't go into a lifetime of debt because they got sick...but some people said mean things online, so actually nevermind" then you were never that progressive in the first place.
At this point the author is just admitting to telling straight up lies without any evidence to back up their arguments. ... Biden is already running on a platform that is left of Hillary in 2020. It is not a stretch to think he would go further left in the convention. Biden is also willing to compromise to a fault
The only reason the party has been pulled leftward is the force of Bernie Sanders and his supporters. Without any real institutional power except for the delegates he won in 2016, he has forced a shift in the party line. That's real leadership. We've seen Joe is absolutely willing to compromise with Republicans, but will he move left? I voted for a progressive Obama and got a president who is to the right of Reagan, who spent 8 years pissing away political capital trying to compromise with Republicans only to get the football yanked away at the last minute. The thought of Biden doing the same thing for another 4 years makes me sick.
Great job just completely ignoring the black electorate. Really dig into your ignorance there.
I think they fit into the MSNBC set, Bernie still win among young people of all demographics.
There is so much at stake in this election. The horrific response to the coronavirus so far by the Trump administration is just the latest in a long string of incompetence, negligence, and policies designed to hurt other Americans.
That's the problem. There is so much at stake here, and Biden was forced on us. The party apparatus could have lined up behind Warren, which wouldn't have made anyone overjoyed but who would be able to appeal to both wings of the party. Instead they backed Joe Biden, who has done nothing to earn his wins. He didn't even campaign in most of the states he won. He hasn't offered a bold vision for anything. He just offers a return to the status quo that brought us Trump in the first place, and that's not enough.
If Biden is the nominee in 2020 and you stay home, vote third party, or vote for Trump because you would rather have the country burn down so that some revolution will finally happy in America that will magically solve all your problems. By taking this action, you are saying I don't give a fuck if LGBT continue to be targeted by Trump, I don't give a fuck if muslims are attacked by his polices, I don't give a fuck about migrants, I don't give a fuck about anyone but me.
If you backed Biden, you already made the exact same decision. Climate change is coming for us all, and those on the margins of society are going to feel it worst. By deciding to back the one candidate without a real plan, whose campaign is so enmeshed with Wall Street that Jamie fucking Dimon got floated as Secretary of Treasury, they've doomed us all. You and I don't get to die of old age anymore, we're going to die from climate change. Because some people sent snake emojis to Warren supporters on Twitter.
FWIW I am planning to vote straight ticket D all the way down ballot, but like the article says - it's not about me, it's about that Latino voter with two undocumented parents who's never believed in a politician in their life. I'd wear out a pair of shoes knocking doors for Bernie. Hopefully the old people that voted for Biden are prepared to do the same, because that's what it's going to take.
They hated Jesus because he spoke the truth. We're already locked into catastrophic climate change, we need drastic efforts right now to save what we can of society. That's not just Bernie...
This is a big reason why people disagree with Bernie supporters above and beyond the "snake emojis". Everything is "vote Bernie or you are literally killing me".
They hated Jesus because he spoke the truth. We're already locked into catastrophic climate change, we need drastic efforts right now to save what we can of society. That's not just Bernie supporters saying that, it's 98% of scientists that actually study the climate.
Every other Democratic candidate was fighting for people who reliably vote Democratic in every election. Bernie was out there bringing in completely new voters who are going to be the future of politics.
I think that's the wrong question to ask. Let's ask how well it worked out for Biden on November 4. It didn't work great for Clinton. Like they say, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago -...
And how did that work out for him?
I think that's the wrong question to ask. Let's ask how well it worked out for Biden on November 4. It didn't work great for Clinton.
which is why they've been calling for change for at least 30 years, because it's a transition and not a switch
Like they say, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago - the second best time is today. Unfortunately the lack of action in the past is going to necessitate drastic action. We're shutting down broad swathes of the economy for covid, the only reason we haven't done the same for climate change is that it's more difficult to understand the urgency.
Now those are all extreme acts Bernie wouldn't be able to do without full control of the legislative branch
We've seen the power of the regulatory state and executive power used by Trump. The fact is that a lot of power has been consolidated under the executive branch, and it can accomplish things that really should be only possible legislatively. Previoisly the Democratic Party has focused on the presidency, but Bernie has already inspired a wave of new candidates to run and win seats in Congress and local elections. That was just with a losing primary, a President Bernie would have an even bigger impact.
Just as a aside, Texas, Iowa and Oklahoma are the three top wind energy producers in the nation. I wonder how they got there without a Bernie.
Way slower and smaller scale than they would have if those governments weren't fossil fuel company subsidiaries.
Counterpoint: Yes it is. Every day we go without fixing our broken medical system is a day where more Americans die because of it. Biden simply isn't going to fix it and I doubt he's even going to...
Yes we need to address climate change, yes America needs Medicare for All. No a vote for Biden isn't literally killing people.
Counterpoint: Yes it is. Every day we go without fixing our broken medical system is a day where more Americans die because of it. Biden simply isn't going to fix it and I doubt he's even going to try. I can hardly trust him to not lie for five seconds considering his last debate performance.
And remember that during this entire time we're talking about primary voters. Not general voters. The general is a massively different field compared to the primary and if Biden does zero outreach to the youth vote, he will lose the general.
Again, as I have to constantly repeat apparently: The Primary is not the General Election. They are two separate things. The amount of voters that show up during the GE is an order of magnitudes...
Again, as I have to constantly repeat apparently: The Primary is not the General Election.
They are two separate things. The amount of voters that show up during the GE is an order of magnitudes greater than during the Primary and I would argue that the Primary tends to overvalue older voters. Simply because younger voters (for whatever reason) avoid turning out for primaries but come out for generals.
The 'youth vote' (and the vote Bernie did generally well in) consisting of ages 18-39 was 36% of the total vote. Those people overwhelmingly came out in favor of the democrats, compared to 40+ which was instead in favor of Republicans.
Biden cannot win if he alienates 36% of the voters, full stop.
That is pretty much true from what I've seen. They've all gotten fat on fossil fuel, Wall Street, and health insurance company money for too long. Obama wrote about it (I tried to Google the exact...
Sanders has built a narrative that the Democratic establishment are all corporate shills that can not be trusted. Given this underlying narrative by Bernie and his campaign, it makes sense that so many of them think Biden is all but a Republican and no different than Trump.
That is pretty much true from what I've seen. They've all gotten fat on fossil fuel, Wall Street, and health insurance company money for too long. Obama wrote about it (I tried to Google the exact wording my results are all conservative garbage for some reason) - the process of campaigning necessitates meeting with mainly wealthy people who are insulated from the world the rest of us have to live in. They have a certain mindset that he started to adopt, and there's no real way to fight it.
Biden may not be pushing for as strong policies as Bernie, but I think they are more likely to be passed.
That's even worse - see: the constant battle over ACA when there are more important things to do. If Obama had the political courage to push for M4A, or even just not drop single-payer at the first hint of resistance from corporatist Dems, we'd have a much stronger health system.
He was forced to compromise the remaining 6 years in office as the Tea Party had taken control of Congress.
Except Republicans were clearly acting in bad faith the entire time, for example after making many concessions in the ACA not a single republican voted for it. There was never any need to compromise with them.
What has Bernie done to win over black voters?
What has Bernie done to appeal to suburban voters?
Why are less young people coming out to vote for him than in 2016?
Bernie has strong criminal justice reform policies and would reduce the wealth inequality that disproportionately effects black Americans. Reducing wealth inequality, expanding access to healthcare, expanding access to higher education, all benefit black folks and folks that live in the suburbs, cities, and rural areas.
As for younger people, I think it's a mix of very real voter suppression and many have had apathy drilled into their heads since they were babies.
From what I have seen, the Bernie coalition is not inviting. There is no positive outreach. There is no attempt to bring people in.
I have to say my experience is very different, but it's probably because I'm interacting with the campaign differently. Phonebanking is all about bringing in new people who want to volunteer. Canvassing was first to register new voters, then bring in new volunteers. That's the reason there's any campaign at all, massive effort to bring new people in.
This tactic of Bernie supporters to say that “if you don’t vote for Bernie, then you are literally killing me” does not help your message.
But it's true. These are life or death issues. There are many people who will die because they can't get insulin or because they can't get a surgery they need. Many, many, many will die because of climate change.
Not to mention that Biden does in fact have a climate plan and I believe he would listen to the experts and pass real climate legislation if we are able to take back the Senate and maintain the House.
I'm glad you are still capable of being optimistic, I think that faculty has been beaten out of me these last 11 years. I think it's more likely he'll listen to the fat cats with secret climate change bunkers and make some tepid actions that might marginally help but won't accomplish much in the grand scheme of things. Also importantly, I think we're less likely to win back the Senate with President Biden. People who voted for him are reliable Dems who will show up and vote for any D. Bernie's voters are new voters, who'd be easily convinced to vote down ticket to help him enact his policies.
I really do think the number of Bernie or Busters is tiny. Most of us realize what's at stake here and I'll vote D just for the judges.
I just worry that too many will take Bernie losing as a less a short-term setback but instead will make them cynical and disillusioned.
I would just say that the second outcome is exactly what the establishment wants. They don't want us to be involved. They want us to sit back and vote in rubber-stamp elections.
https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/3/17/21182149/jane-mcalevey-the-ezra-klein-show-labor-organizing
Tangentially related, but it's an interview I listened to recently from the Ezra Klein Show from Jane McAlevey and the difference between Organizing and Mobilizing. Her theory is that Bernie and Trump are fantastic Mobilizers that are able to take a group that want a thing and use themselves as a spearhead, where as Biden is better at getting people who don't agree to each other to work for a common cause through Organization. She best described as how a work union doesn't have a common set of morals but they do have a common set of goals.
This post is too long for me to have the energy to go through point by point, so I'll just address the idea of Bernie's plan being to go through and win 30% of each state.
What the exit polls have shown is that the Bernie plan was overwhelmingly popular in every single state up to and including Super Tuesday. At each of the primaries[*], entrance polls asked the question: "How do you feel about replacing all private health insurance with a single government plan for everyone?"
However, mainstream media relentlessly hammered the narrative that Bernie can't win, Bernie isn't electable, Biden is electable. So as for the question, "Rather nominate a candidate who...Can beat Donald Trump or Agrees with you on major issues":
This shows that although the majority of Democratic voters in literally every state supported even Bernie's most radical idea, people were too scared to vote for him and set aside their own beliefs to vote for Biden instead. He was going for the majority, but there's no beating the media narrative of fear.
[*] They stopped asking this question after Super Tuesday, so only states up to Super Tuesday are included here.
This isn't at all how politics work. The Democratic policy proposals have a commanding lead over Republicans in every election, but Republican candidates tend to win based on random intangibles like "I trust him" or "he understands people like me" or "he makes me feel safe."
It's not fear, it's literally lack of trust. If you don't talk to key constituencies and do all your organizing online and spend all your time on TV sending out attack-dog surrogates, people aren't going to trust you. And if Sanders couldn't win the trust of Democrats in a Democratic primary, I don't know how people think he's going to dodge Republican flim-flam in a general election.
Perhaps in general lack of trust is a big player in these elections, but I’d disagree that it is wrt Sanders. Even people who hate his guts trust him and trust that he’ll try to do what he says, even if they wholeheartedly disagree with him.
This argument hits the nail on the head, though, for why many of us take such strong issue with Biden. Given his history, it’s hard to trust that he’ll try to push even his already compromised positions.
This just isn't true. Lots of older people absolutely do not trust him. Talk to any Black organizing community and you will find TONS of people accusing him of being an egomaniac and a flim-flam man. And even those who like him might trust that he's honest, but they don't trust that he actually has the competence or skills to actually execute on anything he's promising.
Biden's history has always been about being a weathervane for wherever the mid-point of the Democratic party consensus is. He's utterly predictable and can be relied on to do whatever will get signature bits of legislation passed with his name on it.
Perhaps I should rephrase. I fully acknowledge that the Sanders' team hoped that a splintered field would help them win, but this talking point implies he was only trying to run a divisive platform aimed at winning a minority of the electorate. I'd counter that hoped to win a majority of voters all along, and exit polls show that his platform did accomplish this even though he didn't.
I think the primary way this affected his strategy was not in only trying to appeal to a minority of voters, but instead in that he did not consider the threat from the other candidates seriously enough to attack them. I think the main thing that would have changed if he weren't counting on a splintered field would be that he would've been attacking Biden's record all along, but he didn't want to look like a dick beating on a confused old man who was seemingly going nowhere.
So I agree with you more in fact, but less in implication of the fact.
tl;dr Saying he was trying to run the Trump strategy implies that he was being more divisive to win a minority, when in reality this made him less divisive and do less attacking. If he were trying to win a 1v1 all along he would've been much more divisive and doing much more attacking.
I appreciate your response and willingness to read (most of) the article. I have a lot of respect for you, even though we couldn't disagree more on this.
I think it's the exact opposite. If it were a cult of personality, then when we would all vote for Joe when Bernie said to. It's much more than that. Many Bernie supporters back him because he has been consistently right on the important issues for his entire political career. He has an authenticity that Biden doesn't have. IMO it's a reaction to the Obama presidency, where we were sold hope and change and the guy couldn't even jail a single banker for crashing the global economy for profit.
I think if your thought process is "well, climate change is real and needs to be seriously addressed, student loan debt is a massive problem, wealth inequality needs to be reigned in, and people shouldn't go into a lifetime of debt because they got sick...but some people said mean things online, so actually nevermind" then you were never that progressive in the first place.
The only reason the party has been pulled leftward is the force of Bernie Sanders and his supporters. Without any real institutional power except for the delegates he won in 2016, he has forced a shift in the party line. That's real leadership. We've seen Joe is absolutely willing to compromise with Republicans, but will he move left? I voted for a progressive Obama and got a president who is to the right of Reagan, who spent 8 years pissing away political capital trying to compromise with Republicans only to get the football yanked away at the last minute. The thought of Biden doing the same thing for another 4 years makes me sick.
I think they fit into the MSNBC set, Bernie still win among young people of all demographics.
That's the problem. There is so much at stake here, and Biden was forced on us. The party apparatus could have lined up behind Warren, which wouldn't have made anyone overjoyed but who would be able to appeal to both wings of the party. Instead they backed Joe Biden, who has done nothing to earn his wins. He didn't even campaign in most of the states he won. He hasn't offered a bold vision for anything. He just offers a return to the status quo that brought us Trump in the first place, and that's not enough.
If you backed Biden, you already made the exact same decision. Climate change is coming for us all, and those on the margins of society are going to feel it worst. By deciding to back the one candidate without a real plan, whose campaign is so enmeshed with Wall Street that Jamie fucking Dimon got floated as Secretary of Treasury, they've doomed us all. You and I don't get to die of old age anymore, we're going to die from climate change. Because some people sent snake emojis to Warren supporters on Twitter.
FWIW I am planning to vote straight ticket D all the way down ballot, but like the article says - it's not about me, it's about that Latino voter with two undocumented parents who's never believed in a politician in their life. I'd wear out a pair of shoes knocking doors for Bernie. Hopefully the old people that voted for Biden are prepared to do the same, because that's what it's going to take.
They hated Jesus because he spoke the truth. We're already locked into catastrophic climate change, we need drastic efforts right now to save what we can of society. That's not just Bernie supporters saying that, it's 98% of scientists that actually study the climate.
Every other Democratic candidate was fighting for people who reliably vote Democratic in every election. Bernie was out there bringing in completely new voters who are going to be the future of politics.
I think that's the wrong question to ask. Let's ask how well it worked out for Biden on November 4. It didn't work great for Clinton.
Like they say, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago - the second best time is today. Unfortunately the lack of action in the past is going to necessitate drastic action. We're shutting down broad swathes of the economy for covid, the only reason we haven't done the same for climate change is that it's more difficult to understand the urgency.
We've seen the power of the regulatory state and executive power used by Trump. The fact is that a lot of power has been consolidated under the executive branch, and it can accomplish things that really should be only possible legislatively. Previoisly the Democratic Party has focused on the presidency, but Bernie has already inspired a wave of new candidates to run and win seats in Congress and local elections. That was just with a losing primary, a President Bernie would have an even bigger impact.
Way slower and smaller scale than they would have if those governments weren't fossil fuel company subsidiaries.
Counterpoint: Yes it is. Every day we go without fixing our broken medical system is a day where more Americans die because of it. Biden simply isn't going to fix it and I doubt he's even going to try. I can hardly trust him to not lie for five seconds considering his last debate performance.
And remember that during this entire time we're talking about primary voters. Not general voters. The general is a massively different field compared to the primary and if Biden does zero outreach to the youth vote, he will lose the general.
Again, as I have to constantly repeat apparently: The Primary is not the General Election.
They are two separate things. The amount of voters that show up during the GE is an order of magnitudes greater than during the Primary and I would argue that the Primary tends to overvalue older voters. Simply because younger voters (for whatever reason) avoid turning out for primaries but come out for generals.
The 'youth vote' (and the vote Bernie did generally well in) consisting of ages 18-39 was 36% of the total vote. Those people overwhelmingly came out in favor of the democrats, compared to 40+ which was instead in favor of Republicans.
Biden cannot win if he alienates 36% of the voters, full stop.
He literally said that he has no empathy for our struggles. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/joe-biden-no-empathy/
Bernie's failure to swallow his pride and suck up to Jim Clyburn is the "Hillary should have campaigned in Wisconsin" of 2016.
That is pretty much true from what I've seen. They've all gotten fat on fossil fuel, Wall Street, and health insurance company money for too long. Obama wrote about it (I tried to Google the exact wording my results are all conservative garbage for some reason) - the process of campaigning necessitates meeting with mainly wealthy people who are insulated from the world the rest of us have to live in. They have a certain mindset that he started to adopt, and there's no real way to fight it.
That's even worse - see: the constant battle over ACA when there are more important things to do. If Obama had the political courage to push for M4A, or even just not drop single-payer at the first hint of resistance from corporatist Dems, we'd have a much stronger health system.
Except Republicans were clearly acting in bad faith the entire time, for example after making many concessions in the ACA not a single republican voted for it. There was never any need to compromise with them.
Bernie has strong criminal justice reform policies and would reduce the wealth inequality that disproportionately effects black Americans. Reducing wealth inequality, expanding access to healthcare, expanding access to higher education, all benefit black folks and folks that live in the suburbs, cities, and rural areas.
As for younger people, I think it's a mix of very real voter suppression and many have had apathy drilled into their heads since they were babies.
I have to say my experience is very different, but it's probably because I'm interacting with the campaign differently. Phonebanking is all about bringing in new people who want to volunteer. Canvassing was first to register new voters, then bring in new volunteers. That's the reason there's any campaign at all, massive effort to bring new people in.
But it's true. These are life or death issues. There are many people who will die because they can't get insulin or because they can't get a surgery they need. Many, many, many will die because of climate change.
I'm glad you are still capable of being optimistic, I think that faculty has been beaten out of me these last 11 years. I think it's more likely he'll listen to the fat cats with secret climate change bunkers and make some tepid actions that might marginally help but won't accomplish much in the grand scheme of things. Also importantly, I think we're less likely to win back the Senate with President Biden. People who voted for him are reliable Dems who will show up and vote for any D. Bernie's voters are new voters, who'd be easily convinced to vote down ticket to help him enact his policies.
I really do think the number of Bernie or Busters is tiny. Most of us realize what's at stake here and I'll vote D just for the judges.
I would just say that the second outcome is exactly what the establishment wants. They don't want us to be involved. They want us to sit back and vote in rubber-stamp elections.