The thing that's telling and exasperating about the centrist "Biden must drop out" calls is that... this was their guy! They act like the left insisted on him! But Biden was the guy they were saying Democrats should instead rally around when it looked like we might pick Bernie!
Dude, it never looked like we were going to pick Bernie. He had no chance whatsoever with the majority of the actual Dem base, whose concerns he dismissed as "identity politics."
Bernie wasn't able to break 30%, & ironically for a socialist, didn't realize he was presenting his opponents with a very simple collective action problem.
bernie was beating biden in one-on-one polls a few days before that happened. it was obvious they could do this, but what surprised me was the dramatic effect it had on polls between like friday and monday.
He actually wasn't, is the problem. Biden took a big jump as he absorbed Klobuchar, Buttigeig, & O'Rourke's supporters (& also much of Warren's) but he was already leading Bernie. Also you need to ask yourself why all those millions of voters switched to Biden instead of Sanders in the first place.
Bernie as I said couldn't break 30% but then all the shitlib voters worked collectively towards their "Bernie Sanders shouldn't be the nominee" goal & decided on a single candidate to vote for & now Biden is president.
yes, and as i said, the surprise on my end at the time was not that they might do this, but that it would so effectively sway their voters, given previous head-to-head polling.
Also bears saying that Sanders could have cut Buttigieg and Klobuchar into his coalition if he'd anything to offer and were constitutionally capable of that sort of dealmaking
I think the real issue was the clear ceiling of support he had. He wasn’t making any inroads or increasing his share, despite having plenty of resources.
It’s not clear to me that even if Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Warren endorsed Bernie that they’re supporters would have transferred en-masse.
Chicken and egg problem there to a point, but your bigger point is well taken; my point is as much about his elite coalition building skills as the voters who may or may not have come with
they would not have transferred en-masse in the way that they did with biden, because there would not have any equivalent media push around unity in that case. however, without any endorsements at all, he would be in a favorable position, as is indicated by prior polling.
yeah. i would hope for a more influential left media ecosystem to have a similar organizing effect, but haven't seen any progress there in the last four years. of course the money isn't going to be there, but this recent interview with Ryan Grim enumerates a few things they could do better.
ryan grim's latest book notes that they had two campaign offices in burlington, a larger real one, and a smaller one to take bernie to so he would not freak out about how many staff they had hired. he was not running that show i think.
but a hostile media environment which amplified his negative supporters meant that he was the only candidate seemingly expected to answer for random people on twitter.
hey Harris started off calling Biden racist and now she's VP. Bernie has never been anything but respectful. Warren read too many articles about mean tweets i guess.
The campaign was friendly with the podcast leading that charge. Sanders might not have realized how enmeshed his batshit hires were with the dirtbag left, but I think that's a *terrible* reflection on the guy running to staff the executive
if you believe he said that a woman can't be president, i would think that is much more disqualifying than if he lied about having said it, so i am surprised that this is the concern.
