THE 2020 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Ned Braden wrote:

Ned Braden wrote:Caucuses are dumb as fuck anyway and need to go away. Real winner from this debacle is that most people are probably going to agree with that statement now, and hopefully make it so.

Like, imagine being in an abusive relationship and having to go to a public caucus with your partner who (without knowing, of course) supports a different candidate than you do. This un democratic bullshit needs to get gone.

A good friend of mine is doing lots of phone work for Bernie. Has been for the last...6 mos or so? Super interesting to hear about his interactions. Best nugget was this: He spoke 3 days ago with a man who shares a fenceline with his caucus location. The man is a diehard Bernie supporter, but didn't attend the caucus and couldn't be persuaded to do so. Dude is disabled and has a real hard time standing and walking. Caucus norms (rules? dunno, but he was adamant) require lots of standing and moving around, things that are real tough for this dude. Ultimately, he didn't feel like there was space for him there. We live in a country where braille is required on drive-thru ATMs, but somehow there's this arena at the center of our democracy that allows for shit like this to exist? It's all so dishearteningly broken. My hope is that Bernie is elected, some of these metaphorical buildings get knocked down, and we can kinda scrape up just enough love from the detritus so we can all experience the heat death of the universe together.

Ned Braden wrote:This is actually what pisses me off the most about Yang gang and Bernie bros tbpfh.

Okay. That's fine. But it would be the job of the hypothetical nominee to win these people over in a General Election. The vast majority of Sanders supporters, myself included, not only voted for Clinton in 2016 but urged their friends and family to do the same even though we thought she was a horrible candidate and her politics were shit. Sanders himself went so easy on her in the primary and then actually held rallies for her in the lead up the GE. She fucking lost because she was a historically dogshit candidate surrounded by fucking dipshits who literally forgot that the midwest exists on the map.

In the aftermath, we have all been blamed for Trump's Presidency and Clinton, Obama, and Kerry continue to make shitty comments in the press attacking our candidate and us. So yeah, fuck them.

Like maybe withholding their votes will actually force the party to appeal to its real base of active supporters (which has always been much further left than its representatives) rather than constantly shifting to the right on everything as soon as the General Election campaign starts. It can't hurt to try! It isn't like their strategy has been lighting up the damn board or anything.

I think there's a pretty good chance that by the time of the Democratic convention, Bernie Sanders will be the "presumptive nominee".  Meaning, like Hillary Clinton last time, he will have earned enough delegates to secure the nomination outright.  I believe his support has been underestimated and that he will win most of the primaries, and that the Democrat "elite" / "establishment" has, like the neverTrump Republicans, failed to rally around a single neverBernie candidate because they wall wanted to be the ones to scoop up the Trump voters after he inevitably flamed out.  Which didn't happen of course.  The DNC or whatever has bounced around from candidate to candidate.  They can't decide and Bernie very well may steamroll them for their lack of resolve.

I'm with Duff that the Iowa debacle is more likely due to incompetence and misplaced confidence in tech geniuses, and not so much an anti-Bernie conspiracy.  Not that there isn't necessarily an anti-Bernie conspiracy underway - I just don't think that the failure of this app was part of it.  If they wanted to cheat, they could have designed the app to say that Pete and Amy tied for first so, let's just move on to the next one, and hey give us more money to make the app even better!

If Sanders wins the next couple of these things, we'll know for sure if they're going to try to sabotage him because if there's been anything to learn from 2016, it's that the smart people  of 1992-2012(Carville, Axelrod, Plouff (I don't watch cable anymore, but I haven't heard these guys names mentioned once)) are no longer in control of the Democrat Presidential election campaign.

I started volunteer work for the Bernie text team today. Totally gnarly some of the responses people are willing to write. My two thoughts are 1) it's a scary world out there and 2) the only way to make it any better is to stop operating from a position of fear.

When I get text messages from campaigns, it's actually coming from a real person? I just assumed it was sent out like an email blast to lots of people at once.

I can't speak for the other campaigns, but from the Bernie campaign, it's a real person. I had a couple good convos this AM. Try texting back and see what happens!

First, thanks so much for the work you are doing Michael K. Your other comment is also right on. When Bourdain passed away there was some obituary (or maybe it was just a Tweet honestly) saying that he was the only person on any of the major cable news networks in the United States that showed people the rest of the world without trying to make them feel afraid of it. That's 100% true. I don't blame Americans for operating from a position of fear (and sometimes resentment) given the way reality is presented to them. There are obvious limits. I am not talking about far-right militant racists who want to terrorize communities of color or talk about racial/biological inferiority. Those people exist, obviously, but they represent an incredibly small minority of the population.

I am going to try to refrain from posting much in this thread until after the primary is over and Sanders has won the nomination. I've said this before but my goal really isn't to belittle people, prove myself right, or be annoying. I could give a shit about being right. I have moments where the voice in my own head just says "we are fucked" too. The thing that literally gets me out of bed sometimes is this fucking campaign, which represents millions of people from so many different backgrounds truly coming together to stop the pointless cruelty of an economic system that puts private profit over human life. It is about reforming a broken political system so that it responds to our needs. It is about giving people hope that the future doesn't just have to be horrible (and that we can have a future together on a habitable planet). Literally every ideal that I have and everything that I hope to be as a person is represented by this campaign and the people who are making it possible.

Nor is this abstract to me, at all. My uncle got in a horrible car accident about five months back (driving my car). A week after the accident he was admitted to the hospital because he was feeling dizzy and they discovered a severe brain bleed that had gone untreated since the accident. He almost lost his life twice throughout this process and he has been laying on his back for the past four months (much of which was spent in a coma). In the midst of this fucking horrible experience for my Dad and his family, there was a frightening moment where it seemed like the insurance company wasn't going to accept a claim for long-term care and they had literally no idea what they were going to do. It ended up being a fucked up accounting error by one of the doctors and thankfully it wasn't an issue. But obviously, that isn't always the case. A lot of families are forced into insurmountable medical debt because of these accidents or other medical conditions. It is unconscionable. It doesn't have to be this way. It isn't this way in literally every other developed country in the world.

I just want that to stop. What separates Bernie from every other candidate in this race, and any other politician that I have seen in my life, is that he doesn't leave anyone behind. I want to live in that just society. I'll see you all in July.

WP64 wrote:What separates Bernie from every other candidate in this race, and any other politician that I have seen in my life, is that he doesn't leave anyone behind. I want to live in that just society. I'll see you all in July.

I've encountered a version of this three times over the last couple days: in a Chapo podcast, on the Bernie volunteer slack channel, and now here, and it is so true and the reason I'm committed. It was a genuine moment for me when I heard it on Chapo. I'm a new listener and their take on the post-Iowa shit was just...spirit lifting. I dig that Bernie doesn't have veneer: he's not wholesome, he doesn't have cool taste in music, I don't want to get a beer with him. He's just honest about the real problems facing our country - and world - and has at least a first draft of their solutions. It's a step toward a more just and verdant world and I'm fucking down with that. See you in July, WP.

I donated to Bernie’s campaign today! Felt great doing it!

I’m ignoring the cynicism this morning about Bernie’s NH rally last night. AOC was straight fire and The Strokes played NYC Cops in front of like 15k people.

Bernie is going to win.

Who's being cynical about it?

I was under the impression that Amy Klobuchar was throwing binders at her staffers all the way to victory. I hope not!

undo wrote:Who's being cynical about it?

People suggesting the crowd wasn’t indicative of Bernie support but just kids who wanted to see The Strokes for free.

Do kids wanna see The Strokes?

starting to wonder whether they’ll just indict the dem nominee in like september

I have received 5 Bernie texts in the last 2 days including one that came in after midnight.

I will donate again but I cannot do it every day

I'll promise you this much: If it indeed becomes Sanders vs. Bloomberg, I will fight and kill for Sanders.

It isn't July yet but thanks for that post Duff. Sorry for being adversarial about it in the past. Your support will be most welcomed! <3

donated to bernie, going to the rally here in richmond on thursday

If Bernie wins this thing, his team really has to start working the media with broad messaging on this stuff:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/socialism-bernie-sanders-independents-general-election.html

It's really not helping his cause that he's fighting a two front war right now. During the primary, it's sort of inevitable, but tweets about taking down "the democratic establishment" aren't strategically sound imho and will only alienate voters that he relies on. I'd also say any of his people talking about primarying democratic members of congress should stfu yesterday. Instead of having Susan Sarandon (I know she's not actually one of "his people," in any official capacity but…) talk about primarying Pelosi, maybe we can focus on defeating McConnell.

It'd be cool if he won. I'd be ecstatic if any dem other than Bloomberg won. But he's gonna have a lot of work to do if he's hoping to avoid a Shellacking in november.

I agree with a lot of that. The most important thing is winning the White House. A close second is keeping the house. Third is winning the senate. Everything else on our wish list comes secondary to those things.

One of the things we keep seeing in Europe is that the right is willing to consolidate, while the left descends into infighting, allowing the far right to just march right in to power. We need to be united. And yes, that goes for centrists too, perhaps double at this point.

Bloomberg has paid plants in the audience tonight.

It cost $1800 to get a seat, he's not even on the ballot in SC, this is fucking bullshit