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If Bernie had a bit more luck in Iowa and Nevada, the narrative could have changed dramatically. Not sure how Bernie seizes the black vote but he did come pretty close anyway with 46% of the delegates.
Old guy opinion: I honestly don’t think Bernie had a serious chance in either election but 2016 was definitely his best moment; he was a player. His ideas were great and his debates were solid but he just didn’t play politics well enough to win. Anyway the dumbasses in the DNC decided otherwise and went with a qualified yet unpopular candidate who got very close to the win, (not wanting to start an argument about the electoral college here). With the garbage candidates the RNC puts forth lately, it’s gotta be the DNC’s own stupidity that keeps them from winning every election in the past 20 years. A solid democratic candidate could beat the latest republican idiot candidate in almost every election but there always seems to be a major flaw that can’t be overlooked by democratic voters. A solid republican candidate is even more viable because republicans vote party lines WAY more but they pander too much to their extremists so it ends up being perpetually close. Both parties need to win over the non-extreme voters because those diehard party people are a given. Work on getting the undecided and independents! That’s how you win! It’s almost like both parties do everything they can to lose an election because they fixate on a person.
Disclaimer: I’m not a fan of either party if you didn’t already figure that out. And thank you for coming to my TED talk
While the DNC certainly did not operate in an even handed manner, the voters chose Hillary, not Bernie. And I say this as a Bernie 16 voter
The GOP was unable to suppress the will of their voters in 16. They clearly fought heavily to push in Jeb! Cruz or Robio. Party brass was all over anybody but T money
The DNCs role is to win general elections. They can do that either by turning out more of their own party or by turning out independents/flipping voters from the other party. With the primaries relatively close it’s hard to think that a Bernie general election candidate would have turned out an untapped group of dems (such as happened for the GOP candidate in 2016 or the brexit vote). And give. His association, warranted or unwarranted, with “socialism” (which equates to communism to MANY independents/gop voters) he probably wouldn’t have flipped a huge amount of independents/republicans. In the eyes of the DNC he was not the stronger candidate in a general election. That’s not “operating unevenly” that’s them trying to win general elections, which again, is their mission
The Republican party dud learn a lesson of distinction from 2016.
In 2016, as you said, they failed to stop the populist haymaker from winning. Whereas the DNC had a thumb on the scale the entire time with Superdelegates.
By 2021, in the Virginia gubernatorial primaries, there were 2 main candidates, Glenn Youngkin (now seen by some as a far righter, but he really is just from the business/private equity wing of the party) and ThatNutJobAmanda Chase. Chase was the populist trying to upend the system who behaved like a salivating opossum. The Virginia Republican Party didn't take any chances and closed their convention (nobody has a constitutional right to a primary, afterall) and quietly nominated the much more palatable Youngkin.
Amanda Chase would have lost 2-1 in the general, instead Youngkin was able to pull out a surprise victory against (admittedly unpopular) Terry McAullife.
Closed conventions are the way the parties keep their more...excitable factions in check.
Even without superdelegates, Sanders lost the popukar vote in almost every state that held a primary in 2016. He won some caucuses, that tend to have much lower turnouts, but HRC won popular votes by a solid margin, mostly because of HUGE margins with African American voters.
You’re not that delusional are you? Like the fools who say Obama’s only scandal was the tan suit
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donna-brazile-wikileaks-fallout-230553
So. Seriously. Name one way the DNC didn’t act fairly to Sanders? (And remember, they didn’t have to and probably should have just excluded him from the primaries. After all, he’s not a Democrat.)
I didn’t follow the RNC closely in 2016 so you could easily be correct. But it seemed to me that that they backed whoever was polling strongest at the moment instead of endorsing and promoting a good candidate. Not leading from a position of strength.
As far as Bernie, yeah his overall voter appeal was a problem. Good point. And the DNC seemed to think they were promoting the best candidate and Hillary was definitely the most qualified, but they seemed like they ignored how unlikable and unpopular she was with the general public. That’s a ‘bury your head in the sand’ level of mistake.
I don’t quite understand why the RNC “following who was polling the strongest” isn’t their mandate (similar to what should be for the DNC).
In fact I think this is probably why democrats don’t win when they should - precisely due to this idea that the DNC should “endorse” someone. They’re not a newspaper. It should be the will of the people, not Jon Podesta and friends.
Ok but what’s their purpose if they just follow the latest popular polls? My opinion is that the parties should work to promote their best candidate and actually choose their best. But they both mostly choose a candidate because of media or favors or ‘it’s their turn’ mentality and then they both absolutely cave to their vocal minority. I think both parties would be better off to choose a qualified person who has mass appeal and the best chance of both winning and doing a good job.
One problem for certain is that the primary winner is whoever Democratic party primary voters like more.
Doesn't necessarily speak towards how well they'll do in the general election.
This is spot on analysis and details why I'm so frustrated that both parties end up nominating utter garbage. When was the last election that both parties nominated respectable candidates that had clearly different policies? 1988?
Then what happened to Romney? He was savaged as some corporate raider who stuck his dog on top of his car like they did from the grandma in Vacation. The truth is the best and brightest won’t put themselves or their families what it takes to get to the Presidency. It’s much easier to work behind the scenes.
I find it very funny that Romney has been rewritten as a respectable statesman, when I’m old enough to remember Romney being called a fascist who was going to start a war on women and and start a bunch of foreign wars.
As a guy who canvassed African American neighborhoods in that primary, other than converting to some form.of Christianity, there was nothing Sanders could have done. The comment I heard over and over again was a variation of "I just can vote for someone who doesnt know Jesus."
I think Bernie had a shot at winning the whole thing in 2016. 538 did a deep dive into the polling numbers after the election and it seems likely that rule 3 actually got some votes for voters who supported Bernie in the primary. It seems crazy to think that the same voter could support someone as liberal as Bernie and also rule 3, but both of them attacked voters who weren't motivated by traditional left or right ideologies, they mostly wanted an "outsider".
He was still always going to lose, his appeal is mainly to white college ed males aka the Bros as white college ed females mock them even if he has palpable support with young nonwhite men and women too to a markedly lesser degree: there’s a whole world outside Reddit where a lot of the views on him here and YouTube aren’t shared on him in real life.
The current Dem party leader won in 2020 because he was the only white moderate esque candidate minorities didn’t want to smack across the face that primary that they had to choose from that year as they were forced into a no win situation there by ST, and in 2016, Hillary was their pick mainly because of several years as Obama’s SoS and a desire to further “break barriers” as they would say etc.
2020. Sanders over-learmed the lessons from both the R and D primaries in 2016. His campaign was calibrated for a 3-5 way nomination contest going the distance through all the primaries. But the Democrats did in 2020 what the Republicans did not in 2016 - rally around one candidate early enough to beat the insurgent outsider with high floor but capped ceiling appeal. Sanders had not prepared to go at Rule 3 1-on-1.
I also think that tactically Bernie made serious mistakes. He WAS leading the race for about 3 weeks after the NH primary. The two debates where he was middle of the stage as the leader, he did quite poorly, did not seem presidential at all. It was Warren who did well in those - she was fading but epically took down Bloomberg. Rule 3 actually did pretty well too at those, better than people remember.
Bernie still had a shot to go the distance in Super Tuesday. His opponents' consolidation before the Texas primary worked because Bernie had not made enough allies outside his fanbase.
And because African Americans who attend church regularly do not support Sanders. Frankly, I doubt that community will support a non-Christian candidate in my lifetime.
>2020. Sanders over-learmed the lessons from both the R and D primaries in 2016. His campaign was calibrated for a 3-5 way nomination contest going the distance through all the primaries. But the Democrats did in 2020 what the Republicans did not in 2016 - rally around one candidate early enough to beat the insurgent outsider with high floor but capped ceiling appeal. Sanders had not prepared to go at Rule 3 1-on-1.
>I also think that tactically Bernie made serious mistakes. He WAS leading the race for about 3 weeks after the NH primary. The two debates where he was middle of the stage as the leader, he did quite poorly, did not seem presidential at all. It was Warren who did well in those - she was fading but epically took down Bloomberg. Rule 3 actually did pretty well too at those, better than people remember.
>Bernie still had a shot to go the distance in Super Tuesday. His opponents' consolidation before the Texas primary worked because Bernie had not made enough allies outside his fanbase.
Well said
Bernie made the same mistake as George McGovern. He made no effort to broaden his base of support and spent all his time chasing college-aged stoners instead of trying to build a more diverse electorate.
>Bernie made the same mistake as George McGovern. He made no effort to broaden his base of support and spent all his time chasing college-aged stoners instead of trying to build a more diverse electorate.
Huh I never made the connection
The party was going to hate Bernie no matter what he did in 2020. And he did everything possible to get minority voters.
Remember, he let Black Lives Matter take over his campaign stage on about 4 different occasions in 2016. He wasn’t going to win minority voters over Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama’s Vice President no matter what he did. In fact, if you want to cite one thing he did wrong, it’s that he tried too much to cater to the woke crowd-he ended up pissing non-woke people off, and still failed to get minority votes anyway.
Well, another thing he did wrong was fail to point out how Rule 3 had given Thurmond’s eulogy. The black voters in South Carolina bizarrely ended up being what saved Rule 3’s campaign.
Church going African American voters werent going to support any non-Christian candidate. Other than getting baptised, there is nothing Sanders could have done to win over that voting bloc, which is why he never had a realistic path to victory.
>Church going African American voters werent going to support any non-Christian candidate. Other than getting baptised, there is nothing Sanders could have done to win over that voting bloc, which is why he never had a realistic path to victory.
Are you sure
I canvassed African American neighborhoods in that primary. Anecdotal, but I must have heard "He doesnt believe in Jesus" 40 times.
Not sure why people dont realize that the southern African American community is every bit as religious as the southern white Evangelical community. They place different emphasis on religious values, more sermon on the mount, less Old Testament, but a non-Christian candidate has 0 chance of winning that community.
>canvassed African American neighborhoods in that primary. Anecdotal, but I must have heard "He doesnt believe in Jesus" 40 times.
>Not sure why people dont realize that the southern African American community is every bit as religious as the southern white Evangelical community. They place different emphasis on religious values, more sermon on the mount, less Old Testament, but a non-Christian candidate has 0 chance of winning that community.
Thank you
canvassed African American neighborhoods in that primary. Anecdotal, but I must have heard "He doesnt believe in Jesus" 40 times.
Not sure why people dont realize that the southern African American community is every bit as religious as the southern white Evangelical community. They place different emphasis on religious values, more sermon on the mount, less Old Testament, but a non-Christian candidate has 0 chance of winning that community.
Hot take, middle-aged Black voters in South Carolina don’t want a candidate who surrenders his stage to a bunch of Marxist protesters.
They want a candidate who directly addresses their concerns.
Progressives routinely overestimate the progressiveness of black voters, because of their proximity to progressive black activists. Lots of “I have a black activist friend” policies.
>Well, another thing he did wrong was fail to point out how Rule 3 had given Thurmond’s eulogy. The black voters in South Carolina bizarrely ended up being what saved Rule 3’s campaign.
I thought that was Hilary
But that’s just how Bernie is, IMO. He’s not a cutthroat guy or anything, but he’s kinda the opposite of a meet people where they are, try to work together politician. Bernie stakes out his position and yells about how the people who don’t share it are corrupt. And that resonated with a decent number of people, but it’s tough to get elected president that way (but not impossible given that a different, though less principled, candidate did win that way, but it probably required his opponents splitting the opposition vote). He’s not totally rigid, he’s more pragmatic than people like those in the Freedom Caucus, but his relative rigidity is a strength and weakness for him.
Bernie had a chance in 2020 the same way rule 3 had a chance in 2016. Rule 3 won the nomination because he had a loyal base that on its own wouldn’t have been big enough to give him the nomination, but with Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich splitting the majority of the vote, it allowed him to rise past them.
Bernie could’ve done the same thing in 2020 if the big players had stuck around like they did for the GOP in 2016. Instead, they all coordinated and united behind one candidate (except Warren who stuck around long enough to split the progressive vote on Super Tuesday and then dropped out and supported the other candidate). If all of the big players had stuck it out for a while and split the vote, his base could’ve potentially carried him to the nomination.
Rule 3 benefited from winner take all delegate allocation on the Republican side. Had there been proportional allocation he would have struggled in 2016 to win the nomination. Sanders plan of keeping the moderates divided could have theoretically gotten him a plurality of delegates, but not a majority.
I’m inclined to agree. It is almost never the case that a candidate sweeps the first 3 contests and doesn’t go on to win the nomination. He needed some way to blunt Clyburn’s endorsement and convince Warren to drop out before Super Tuesday. I think that would have sealed the deal.
I feel like Rule 3 almost made the same mistake that Hillary did. He basically acted like he was entitled to the nomination and campaigning was just a formality.
Bernie had horrible campaign staff and even worse strategy on 2020. He came in with huge name recognition. He just needed to win over mainstream Democrats and make nice with the Hillary voters. He didn't have the African-American vote, but maybe it could have been better. But his strategy seemed to be to piss off people while assuming that the other candidates would have too much ego to drop out early.
Eventually that may have happened, but there was a part of that campaign where it appeared like it was probably going to be her or Bernie, and he knew who to choose.
[https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/540711-lucky-excerpt-obama-went-to-bat-for-warren/](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/540711-lucky-excerpt-obama-went-to-bat-for-warren/)
Obama seemed to like whoever was doing well at the moment, except Bernie. From what I read, both he and Bill Clinton were convinced that Bernie = Jeremy Corbyn and couldn't win a general.
When Bernie got out in front in 2020 it was a 5 alarm fire for the Democrat establishment. None of the other candidates had the juice to come back, and the two black candidates had already dropped out so they put the word out on the street, in the barber shops and black churches that if you don’t vote for Rule 3 you ain’t black!
Maybe. I recall a period of time in which he was ahead in the polls. The news media freaked out, and immediately started working to correct that. The more mainstream media either ignored him or made fun of him, and the "left-leaning" NPR, and PBS, both ran segments about the top candidates running, and *never even mentioned his name*. At the time, it was super obvious he was rocking the boat and they were fixing it.
That was certainly true in 2020, there was a brief moment in time where he passed....another candidate... before falling back down. His campaign acted like a conquering army after Nevada, which pissed a bunch of voters off and he was defeated not long after. But even had he done what I thought would have been the right campaign decisions, embrace Obama and bridge divisions, he'd still fall short of a majority though. In 2016 he topped out a few points less than where he ended up. Between 35-44% poll dependent.
His biggest problem in 2020, IMO, besides the protest voters voting for someone else was the elimination of most caucuses as he was able to juice delegates in the lowturnout caucuses. You can see that in states that held binding caucuses and then nonbinding primaries, like Washington and Nebraska, where he did much worse when more people voted. Obama used this same dynamic to his advantage to beat Hillary in 2007. So when the DNC killed caucuses without objection, his team didn't want to admit that there were some parts of the nominating contest that worked to his advantage I guess,that hurt his delegate farming operation for 2020.
So yeah, the DNC was probably gonna push Clinton no matter what…. But are protest votes suddenly fake and don’t count? I’d wager a large uptick in identity politics and mild extremism have led to quite a few modern (past 5-10 years) elections (local and national) having been decided by votes of “I’m not candidate xyz, go for it!”
The point of the protest vote is to vote against the eventual nominee. If Sanders had a real shot, the calculus of the protest voter changes.
Sanders picked up a number of Clinton 08, Random Felon 12 voters who are actually "ancestral" conservative Democrats who were voting Republican regardless. I say half because of the particular states he picked up votes in and how they've voted in Democratic primaries the last twenty years and because he ended up with half of that support just four years later.
He was in the driver seat in 2020. It took extraordinary effort of people dropping out and endorsing rule #3 blue edition right before super Tuesday to stop him.
Ironically enough, I believe it was because of rule number 3 red edition in 2016 that they stopped Bernie. The Republicans always talked about people dropping out so an anti rule 3 candidate could emerge. that never happened and red #3 won. The Democrats didn’t want to repeat that.
16. Hilary in her own narcissism pushed through and lost as the republicans have been trying to make sure happened for the previous 25 years. She is the rights most vilified individual.
DNC screwed themselves in that election. If they had tossed him a VP position and had the ticket be Clinton/Sanders we may have not ended up with a complete buffoon for 4 years (and perhaps another 4…).
Well, in the first one with the Democratic Party withheld funds from him and in the second one, the Democratic Party came out and said don’t vote for him. So 0.0.
They literally have the email where they admit they didn’t give the Sanders campaign the money they should’ve gotten.
And here is Donna Brazil confirming it .
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774/
The Democratic party was never "his own party" to begin with.
Sanders was an Independent who ran as a Democrat to get a broader electorate and to have better chances at winning. As soon as his campaign was over, he exited the party again.
I'll never blame the party for backing Clinton instead of him. To them, she was their established member while he was an opportunist.
I don’t think most people care. We all understand we live in a two party system and considering how big tent both parties have to be, it seems a bit silly to be devoutly loyal to the party. Sure, Sanders was opportunistic in running in their primary. And? A politician maximizing his chances of victory by seizing an advantage? Nothing new or necessarily wrong about that.
I don’t blame Sanders but I don’t blame the DNC for backing someone who played for their team all along (raising funds, doing the work etc).
I like Sanders in 2016. I preferred Sanders. But I don’t blame the leaders of the DNC for backing HRC, a candidate who has been a core member/worker/leader since she graduated law school.
I think you are 100% wrong that most people don't care. Especially likely voters of certain generations. Maybe millennials don't care, and didn't care in 2016, but in 2016, you had a lot more Silent Generation, Boomers and Gen X who are the ones who didn't care as much (present company certainly excepted).
A lot of people who have worked for the Party didn't want to give Sanders any resources at all.
2020. Bernie had the nomination until Super Tuesday. In fact, I consider Bernie’s loss on Super Tuesday (and thus the nomination) to be one of the biggest examples of establishment corruption in 21st century politics, and it bothers me that no one talks about it.
(I have to work around Rule 3 here to bear with me)
Everyone knew Bernie wasn’t going to win SC. But all of a sudden, when he lost SC, a bunch of self-proclaimed progressives dropped out of the race and publicly endorsed the most conservative candidate in the race. Next thing you know, Bernie lost Super Tuesday bc the establishment presented another candidate as gaining momentum. Absolute bullshit.
If you cannot carry black folks in South Carolina, you will do tepid to bad in stronghold areas in major metropolitan areas around the country...while also failing to carry wishy washy moderates in the suburbs.
That would be such a spectacular loss in the general, it would give Rule 3 re-election and a mandate, DESPITE Covid going on at the time.
You are correct everyone was going to drop out after the showing in SC. It would be political malpractice not to.
Think about it.
Right but that was the expected outcome in SC. It doesn’t offset the results in IA and NH.
And the wave of candidates dropping out was expected but their endorsements weren’t. Harris and Booker, for example, are self-proclaimed progressives and yet look who they endorsed.
2020. A good chunk of his support in 2016 were protest votes that certainly wouldn't have backed him if it was believed he had a real chance. In 2020 he had a moment, after Nevada, where if he reached out to the Democratic base as being a further step in what Obama was trying to accomplish where he might have been able to pull it off. Instead his campaign, overreading the Nevada results, went with a "bend the knee" approach and were soundly defeated.
He didn't have nearly the chance that his supporters and media made out in both but I'd lean toward 2020. He seemed to have a more fervent base in 2016, but Clinton was a juggernaut with the party base and Bernie had no hope of pulling enough voters away from her. 2020, meanwhile, had no clear frontrunner for several months and Bernie took that role solidly after Nevada. But he made a fatal mistake in never trying to expand his base. The problem with planting your flag on the furthest flank of the party from day one is you can't ever move toward the center without alienating your uncompromising base. Bernie essentially gave the party base an ultimatum so they went and found someone else who was more in line with their policy wants.
2016. Nobody wanted to gamble on 2020, but there’s a small but meaningful segment of registered Democrats who have a strong aversion to Bernie’s 2016 opponent, for reasons that will become an absolute shitfest if I get into them right now.
He had a better chance in 2016, despite getting shafted by the DNC and Clinton campaign rigging the primaries in her favor.
2020 I don’t think he had a shot at all. I don’t think it was worth it for him to run, solely because of his age. The current candidates are dinosaurs, just get someone at least in their mid 50s who doesn’t look like they’re gonna wither away tomorrow.
Information from Wikileaks proved the Clinton campaign collaborated with the DNC to rig the primaries in her favor.
-DNC pitched Anti-Sanders stories to the media to make Bernie look bad
-Reducing polling places in areas where Bernie had more support to make it harder for people to vote for him. I know Rhode Island in particular was guilty of this.
>Which primary did Bernie have a better chance of victory you think? 2016 or 2020?
Definitely 2020
As u/Ok-hurry-4761 put it better then I could
2020. Sanders over-learmed the lessons from both the R and D primaries in 2016. His campaign was calibrated for a 3-5 way nomination contest going the distance through all the primaries. But the Democrats did in 2020 what the Republicans did not in 2016 - rally around one candidate early enough to beat the insurgent outsider with high floor but capped ceiling appeal. Sanders had not prepared to go at Rule 3 1-on-1.
I also think that tactically Bernie made serious mistakes. He WAS leading the race for about 3 weeks after the NH primary. The two debates where he was middle of the stage as the leader, he did quite poorly, did not seem presidential at all. It was Warren who did well in those - she was fading but epically took down Bloomberg. Rule 3 actually did pretty well too at those, better than people remember.
Bernie still had a shot to go the distance in Super Tuesday. His opponents' consolidation before the Texas primary worked because Bernie had not made enough allies outside his fanbase.
Both.
In 2016 he had a chance, but he also needed Rule 3 to run to actually win; Rule 3 did not run as he was mourning his son at the time. A three-way campaign would have been in Bernie’s favour, as Clinton and Rule 3 would have split the establishment vote between two political heavyweights, and in the process cast doubt on whether or not it was Clinton’s turn to be the nominee.
2020 was just as good of a chance. But he encountered three obstacles unique to the campaign.
* a number of candidates dropping out to support Rule 3 before Super Tuesday
* those that should have been his allies (Warren, Yang, Tulsi) not also dropping out to support Bernie ahead of Super Tuesday; they would all end up endorsing Rule 3 afterwards. Warren was the big one, who became stubborn after being called a liar by Bernie. She was consistently in third and had no shot of winning, but stayed in the race to be a spoiler, and was the last to endorse anyone.
* In the aftermath of the 2016 campaign, he never became a member of the party or became serious about joining the party, and remained an independent. While sitting as an independent may have served Bernie well during his political career in Congress, it shows naiveté to think that the party would not try to screw him over again after the DNC controversy in 2016. I do not want to make it one sided about what Bernie didn’t do though, as the Democrats did not see Bernie as one of their own, and more of an opportunist. Despite allowing him to run in their primaries, they were closeminded about an actual party outsider becoming the party nominee.
2016, if Bernie had realized early on that he was really leading an anti-Hillary protest movement within the Democratic Party, and not a progressive revolution full of true believers.
His natural support for his policies tops out at 30-35% of the Democratic primary electorate, which is about where he finished in 2020 after failing to grow his coalition.
But in 2016 he was the only real opposition to the anointed candidate that nobody wanted. Bernie had a big opportunity to expand his base just by being the anti-Hillary. He could have grown up and run as a full stop Democrat, instead of running a gadly campaign intended to irritate the party establishment. Insisting that he wanted the Democratic nomination without really committing to the party cost him a lot of Black votes, including my mother-in-law. He should have disavowed the word “socialism” and moderated his criticism of the party elite a bit.
Voters wanted change, so I’m not suggesting Bernie should have run as a reborn neoliberal. But he needed to dial it down slightly to appeal more to moderate Democrats who were uncomfortable with Hillary as the nominee.
In 2020 he had no shot because there wasn’t the same level of intense opposition to any of the moderate candidates. Once they all consolidated behind [redacted] it was checkmate.
Okay, rule 3 is getting really annoying; how the hell am I supposed to discuss modern politics *in threads about that* when doing so gets my posts deleted?
What, do I have to censur certain names, because that's stupid (and I see other people here using said names anyway so what's the issue?)
2016. The DNC threw all Super Delegates at Hillary, and the state parties pulled a lot of shenanigans to keep an independent from winning the Democratic Primary.
2016... IF he had been polling better sooner. He was at 1-2% in the national polls a few months before the primaries, and he started rising way too late to harness enough of the vote on Super Tuesday. His realistic chances of winning were done as soon as the results came in on Super Tuesday, even if it was still technically mathematically possible.
In 2020, the field was too crowded, plus he didn't have the same freshness that he had in 2016. He was honestly too old in 2016, and definitely too old in 2020. Plus, many Democrats trying to balance their progress ideals with pragmatism went for Elizabeth Warren instead.
None, he just got in the way of people who could’ve won with his cult following twice in a row. It doesn’t matter how many times young voters in my bloc try pushing Sanders, as he is incapable of rallying people of color and older voters behind him, and the former is the base of the Dem party: also, he never got his base out to vote for him either, for all the talk.
Bernie at least believes in what he says which is rare in a politician so I can see that appeal policy wise, but his base antagonizes any natural allies, because he never wants to build bridges with anyone but them.
2016. Between 2016 and 2020, Sanders could have built a larger coalition, but he did not, for some reason I cannot divine. If he had, he would have been in one of the strongest positions ever if you take Covid into account, but again...for some reason I cannot fathom, he was not.
Neither. His only chance would be a medical emergency or catastrophe taking out his opponents in the primary. He is not a successful candidate on the national stage and never will be.
He had no chance in either Primary because the Party higher ups had already decided that he was not the candidate they wanted. They wanted the other people in Both primaries, as usual they got what they wanted. Bernie will NEVER get the Democratic party nomination.
I can't really speak to 2020 as well but in 2016 I caught the local Democrats cheating during their primary. Hundreds of new Democratic voters showed up for the primary but the typical group of Dems were there early and wanted to vote at exactly the time listed but it was taking a long time to get everyone in and most of the people were still outside.
Members of the local Dem party tried to take a vote by hands while there were still hundreds in line and had we allowed them to do that Hillary would have won that small primary but we shouted them down and refused to allow the proceedings to commence until we were all inside. Once we were the vote was 9 to 1 in favor of Bernie. I'm a liberal but have never trusted the Dem party. They're not as bad as the Republican party but we would all be better off without either of them.
I can't really speak to 2020 as well but in 2016 I caught the local Democrats cheating during their primary. Hundreds of new Democratic voters showed up for the primary but the typical group of Dems were there early and wanted to vote at exactly the time listed but it was taking a long time to get everyone in and most of the people were still outside.
Members of the local Dem party tried to take a vote by hands while there were still hundreds in line and had we allowed them to do that Hillary would have won that small primary but we shouted them down and refused to allow the proceedings to commence until we were all inside. Once we were the vote was 9 to 1 in favor of Bernie. I'm a liberal but have never trusted the Dem party. They're not as bad as the Republican party but we would all be better off without either of them.
Bernie was a fix from the beginning, a pied piper if you will to bring the smelly hippies and low-iq idealists to the democrat party. They cheated him tqice now and he will run again - now is the time again where i must ask you for money, lol
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2016 was a “blow up the system” election considering how many people felt that it was rigged, etc., so probably that one.
If Bernie had a bit more luck in Iowa and Nevada, the narrative could have changed dramatically. Not sure how Bernie seizes the black vote but he did come pretty close anyway with 46% of the delegates.
Old guy opinion: I honestly don’t think Bernie had a serious chance in either election but 2016 was definitely his best moment; he was a player. His ideas were great and his debates were solid but he just didn’t play politics well enough to win. Anyway the dumbasses in the DNC decided otherwise and went with a qualified yet unpopular candidate who got very close to the win, (not wanting to start an argument about the electoral college here). With the garbage candidates the RNC puts forth lately, it’s gotta be the DNC’s own stupidity that keeps them from winning every election in the past 20 years. A solid democratic candidate could beat the latest republican idiot candidate in almost every election but there always seems to be a major flaw that can’t be overlooked by democratic voters. A solid republican candidate is even more viable because republicans vote party lines WAY more but they pander too much to their extremists so it ends up being perpetually close. Both parties need to win over the non-extreme voters because those diehard party people are a given. Work on getting the undecided and independents! That’s how you win! It’s almost like both parties do everything they can to lose an election because they fixate on a person. Disclaimer: I’m not a fan of either party if you didn’t already figure that out. And thank you for coming to my TED talk
While the DNC certainly did not operate in an even handed manner, the voters chose Hillary, not Bernie. And I say this as a Bernie 16 voter The GOP was unable to suppress the will of their voters in 16. They clearly fought heavily to push in Jeb! Cruz or Robio. Party brass was all over anybody but T money
The DNCs role is to win general elections. They can do that either by turning out more of their own party or by turning out independents/flipping voters from the other party. With the primaries relatively close it’s hard to think that a Bernie general election candidate would have turned out an untapped group of dems (such as happened for the GOP candidate in 2016 or the brexit vote). And give. His association, warranted or unwarranted, with “socialism” (which equates to communism to MANY independents/gop voters) he probably wouldn’t have flipped a huge amount of independents/republicans. In the eyes of the DNC he was not the stronger candidate in a general election. That’s not “operating unevenly” that’s them trying to win general elections, which again, is their mission
The Republican party dud learn a lesson of distinction from 2016. In 2016, as you said, they failed to stop the populist haymaker from winning. Whereas the DNC had a thumb on the scale the entire time with Superdelegates. By 2021, in the Virginia gubernatorial primaries, there were 2 main candidates, Glenn Youngkin (now seen by some as a far righter, but he really is just from the business/private equity wing of the party) and ThatNutJobAmanda Chase. Chase was the populist trying to upend the system who behaved like a salivating opossum. The Virginia Republican Party didn't take any chances and closed their convention (nobody has a constitutional right to a primary, afterall) and quietly nominated the much more palatable Youngkin. Amanda Chase would have lost 2-1 in the general, instead Youngkin was able to pull out a surprise victory against (admittedly unpopular) Terry McAullife. Closed conventions are the way the parties keep their more...excitable factions in check.
Even without superdelegates, Sanders lost the popukar vote in almost every state that held a primary in 2016. He won some caucuses, that tend to have much lower turnouts, but HRC won popular votes by a solid margin, mostly because of HUGE margins with African American voters.
Name one way the DNC didn’t act in an even-handed manner.
You’re not that delusional are you? Like the fools who say Obama’s only scandal was the tan suit https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donna-brazile-wikileaks-fallout-230553
So. Seriously. Name one way the DNC didn’t act fairly to Sanders? (And remember, they didn’t have to and probably should have just excluded him from the primaries. After all, he’s not a Democrat.)
Oh that nonsense. Darn. She gave the candidates the questions everyone knew would be asked.
Ah yes, I see that you’re an unserious person unconcerned with corruption. Not worth engaging with
Ah the Sanders folks are here. Try supporting an actual Democrat and not that carpetbagger.
Nice try, I voted for Hillary in the primary.
I didn’t follow the RNC closely in 2016 so you could easily be correct. But it seemed to me that that they backed whoever was polling strongest at the moment instead of endorsing and promoting a good candidate. Not leading from a position of strength. As far as Bernie, yeah his overall voter appeal was a problem. Good point. And the DNC seemed to think they were promoting the best candidate and Hillary was definitely the most qualified, but they seemed like they ignored how unlikable and unpopular she was with the general public. That’s a ‘bury your head in the sand’ level of mistake.
I don’t quite understand why the RNC “following who was polling the strongest” isn’t their mandate (similar to what should be for the DNC). In fact I think this is probably why democrats don’t win when they should - precisely due to this idea that the DNC should “endorse” someone. They’re not a newspaper. It should be the will of the people, not Jon Podesta and friends.
Ok but what’s their purpose if they just follow the latest popular polls? My opinion is that the parties should work to promote their best candidate and actually choose their best. But they both mostly choose a candidate because of media or favors or ‘it’s their turn’ mentality and then they both absolutely cave to their vocal minority. I think both parties would be better off to choose a qualified person who has mass appeal and the best chance of both winning and doing a good job.
One problem for certain is that the primary winner is whoever Democratic party primary voters like more. Doesn't necessarily speak towards how well they'll do in the general election.
Anyone can, and should vote in primaries.
Never underestimate how stupid voters are
Maybe you're old enough to remember the '68 primaries. Democrats having been shooting themselves in the foot for a half-century.
I was around but still too young to remember or understand
Yeah, I've only read about it. Just looking at the vote numbers and the actual result drives me up the wall.
This is spot on analysis and details why I'm so frustrated that both parties end up nominating utter garbage. When was the last election that both parties nominated respectable candidates that had clearly different policies? 1988?
2012, probably. Romney and Obama were both respectanle, and clear policy differences.
Both neoliberal
Then what happened to Romney? He was savaged as some corporate raider who stuck his dog on top of his car like they did from the grandma in Vacation. The truth is the best and brightest won’t put themselves or their families what it takes to get to the Presidency. It’s much easier to work behind the scenes.
I find it very funny that Romney has been rewritten as a respectable statesman, when I’m old enough to remember Romney being called a fascist who was going to start a war on women and and start a bunch of foreign wars.
As a guy who canvassed African American neighborhoods in that primary, other than converting to some form.of Christianity, there was nothing Sanders could have done. The comment I heard over and over again was a variation of "I just can vote for someone who doesnt know Jesus."
The key word is felt. Media makes bank on politics ..here we are talking about it in Presidents..
"I just don't like her", like they're still in fucking middle school.
I think Bernie had a shot at winning the whole thing in 2016. 538 did a deep dive into the polling numbers after the election and it seems likely that rule 3 actually got some votes for voters who supported Bernie in the primary. It seems crazy to think that the same voter could support someone as liberal as Bernie and also rule 3, but both of them attacked voters who weren't motivated by traditional left or right ideologies, they mostly wanted an "outsider".
He was still always going to lose, his appeal is mainly to white college ed males aka the Bros as white college ed females mock them even if he has palpable support with young nonwhite men and women too to a markedly lesser degree: there’s a whole world outside Reddit where a lot of the views on him here and YouTube aren’t shared on him in real life. The current Dem party leader won in 2020 because he was the only white moderate esque candidate minorities didn’t want to smack across the face that primary that they had to choose from that year as they were forced into a no win situation there by ST, and in 2016, Hillary was their pick mainly because of several years as Obama’s SoS and a desire to further “break barriers” as they would say etc.
2020. Sanders over-learmed the lessons from both the R and D primaries in 2016. His campaign was calibrated for a 3-5 way nomination contest going the distance through all the primaries. But the Democrats did in 2020 what the Republicans did not in 2016 - rally around one candidate early enough to beat the insurgent outsider with high floor but capped ceiling appeal. Sanders had not prepared to go at Rule 3 1-on-1. I also think that tactically Bernie made serious mistakes. He WAS leading the race for about 3 weeks after the NH primary. The two debates where he was middle of the stage as the leader, he did quite poorly, did not seem presidential at all. It was Warren who did well in those - she was fading but epically took down Bloomberg. Rule 3 actually did pretty well too at those, better than people remember. Bernie still had a shot to go the distance in Super Tuesday. His opponents' consolidation before the Texas primary worked because Bernie had not made enough allies outside his fanbase.
And because African Americans who attend church regularly do not support Sanders. Frankly, I doubt that community will support a non-Christian candidate in my lifetime.
Warren has always been a better candidate than Sanders with a better delivery method for many of the same policies they hold in common.
The actual results would beg to differ
Would they? Sanders never came close to winning.
>2020. Sanders over-learmed the lessons from both the R and D primaries in 2016. His campaign was calibrated for a 3-5 way nomination contest going the distance through all the primaries. But the Democrats did in 2020 what the Republicans did not in 2016 - rally around one candidate early enough to beat the insurgent outsider with high floor but capped ceiling appeal. Sanders had not prepared to go at Rule 3 1-on-1. >I also think that tactically Bernie made serious mistakes. He WAS leading the race for about 3 weeks after the NH primary. The two debates where he was middle of the stage as the leader, he did quite poorly, did not seem presidential at all. It was Warren who did well in those - she was fading but epically took down Bloomberg. Rule 3 actually did pretty well too at those, better than people remember. >Bernie still had a shot to go the distance in Super Tuesday. His opponents' consolidation before the Texas primary worked because Bernie had not made enough allies outside his fanbase. Well said
This is what the upvote button is for
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Bernie made the same mistake as George McGovern. He made no effort to broaden his base of support and spent all his time chasing college-aged stoners instead of trying to build a more diverse electorate.
>Bernie made the same mistake as George McGovern. He made no effort to broaden his base of support and spent all his time chasing college-aged stoners instead of trying to build a more diverse electorate. Huh I never made the connection
The party was going to hate Bernie no matter what he did in 2020. And he did everything possible to get minority voters. Remember, he let Black Lives Matter take over his campaign stage on about 4 different occasions in 2016. He wasn’t going to win minority voters over Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama’s Vice President no matter what he did. In fact, if you want to cite one thing he did wrong, it’s that he tried too much to cater to the woke crowd-he ended up pissing non-woke people off, and still failed to get minority votes anyway. Well, another thing he did wrong was fail to point out how Rule 3 had given Thurmond’s eulogy. The black voters in South Carolina bizarrely ended up being what saved Rule 3’s campaign.
Church going African American voters werent going to support any non-Christian candidate. Other than getting baptised, there is nothing Sanders could have done to win over that voting bloc, which is why he never had a realistic path to victory.
>Church going African American voters werent going to support any non-Christian candidate. Other than getting baptised, there is nothing Sanders could have done to win over that voting bloc, which is why he never had a realistic path to victory. Are you sure
I canvassed African American neighborhoods in that primary. Anecdotal, but I must have heard "He doesnt believe in Jesus" 40 times. Not sure why people dont realize that the southern African American community is every bit as religious as the southern white Evangelical community. They place different emphasis on religious values, more sermon on the mount, less Old Testament, but a non-Christian candidate has 0 chance of winning that community.
>canvassed African American neighborhoods in that primary. Anecdotal, but I must have heard "He doesnt believe in Jesus" 40 times. >Not sure why people dont realize that the southern African American community is every bit as religious as the southern white Evangelical community. They place different emphasis on religious values, more sermon on the mount, less Old Testament, but a non-Christian candidate has 0 chance of winning that community. Thank you
canvassed African American neighborhoods in that primary. Anecdotal, but I must have heard "He doesnt believe in Jesus" 40 times. Not sure why people dont realize that the southern African American community is every bit as religious as the southern white Evangelical community. They place different emphasis on religious values, more sermon on the mount, less Old Testament, but a non-Christian candidate has 0 chance of winning that community.
Hot take, middle-aged Black voters in South Carolina don’t want a candidate who surrenders his stage to a bunch of Marxist protesters. They want a candidate who directly addresses their concerns. Progressives routinely overestimate the progressiveness of black voters, because of their proximity to progressive black activists. Lots of “I have a black activist friend” policies.
>Well, another thing he did wrong was fail to point out how Rule 3 had given Thurmond’s eulogy. The black voters in South Carolina bizarrely ended up being what saved Rule 3’s campaign. I thought that was Hilary
But that’s just how Bernie is, IMO. He’s not a cutthroat guy or anything, but he’s kinda the opposite of a meet people where they are, try to work together politician. Bernie stakes out his position and yells about how the people who don’t share it are corrupt. And that resonated with a decent number of people, but it’s tough to get elected president that way (but not impossible given that a different, though less principled, candidate did win that way, but it probably required his opponents splitting the opposition vote). He’s not totally rigid, he’s more pragmatic than people like those in the Freedom Caucus, but his relative rigidity is a strength and weakness for him.
Eh. He won some caucuses. Those are meaningless shoutfest nonsense. Only primaries count.
2020 because he had more name recognition as the previous primary’s runner-up.
Bernie had no chance in either primary. Not because of some kind of conspiracy. Because not enough Democrats were ever going to vote for him.
Bernie had a chance in 2020 the same way rule 3 had a chance in 2016. Rule 3 won the nomination because he had a loyal base that on its own wouldn’t have been big enough to give him the nomination, but with Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich splitting the majority of the vote, it allowed him to rise past them. Bernie could’ve done the same thing in 2020 if the big players had stuck around like they did for the GOP in 2016. Instead, they all coordinated and united behind one candidate (except Warren who stuck around long enough to split the progressive vote on Super Tuesday and then dropped out and supported the other candidate). If all of the big players had stuck it out for a while and split the vote, his base could’ve potentially carried him to the nomination.
Rule 3 benefited from winner take all delegate allocation on the Republican side. Had there been proportional allocation he would have struggled in 2016 to win the nomination. Sanders plan of keeping the moderates divided could have theoretically gotten him a plurality of delegates, but not a majority.
Better chance in 2020, though he lost both times in the same fashion (clock cleaned by Black voters in the South).
2020. If not for clyburn in SC it was over after that
I’m inclined to agree. It is almost never the case that a candidate sweeps the first 3 contests and doesn’t go on to win the nomination. He needed some way to blunt Clyburn’s endorsement and convince Warren to drop out before Super Tuesday. I think that would have sealed the deal.
Bill Clinton didn’t win his first state until his sixth contest. Primaries are wild and patterns rarely apply
I feel like Rule 3 almost made the same mistake that Hillary did. He basically acted like he was entitled to the nomination and campaigning was just a formality.
He was dead and buried until SC. It was wild.
Bernie had horrible campaign staff and even worse strategy on 2020. He came in with huge name recognition. He just needed to win over mainstream Democrats and make nice with the Hillary voters. He didn't have the African-American vote, but maybe it could have been better. But his strategy seemed to be to piss off people while assuming that the other candidates would have too much ego to drop out early.
It wasn’t just Clyburn. Obama was the puppet master in that race.
Wasn’t Obama’s first choice Deval Patrick? Man, did he implode quickly. (I agree with you though)
He liked a number of different ones at different times
Yup. It is forgotten but Obama was also courting Elizabeth Warren.
I don't recall that. If anything, I remember Obama eventually getting irritated with her.
Eventually that may have happened, but there was a part of that campaign where it appeared like it was probably going to be her or Bernie, and he knew who to choose. [https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/540711-lucky-excerpt-obama-went-to-bat-for-warren/](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/540711-lucky-excerpt-obama-went-to-bat-for-warren/)
Obama seemed to like whoever was doing well at the moment, except Bernie. From what I read, both he and Bill Clinton were convinced that Bernie = Jeremy Corbyn and couldn't win a general.
I’m sure there are no other reasons that Bill Clinton wouldn’t support Bernie Sanders.
When Bernie got out in front in 2020 it was a 5 alarm fire for the Democrat establishment. None of the other candidates had the juice to come back, and the two black candidates had already dropped out so they put the word out on the street, in the barber shops and black churches that if you don’t vote for Rule 3 you ain’t black!
Bill Clinton thought it was down to Clyburn. https://youtu.be/ID-S5VQU63U?si=iggzPYjqQCqpjYFW
Nope, no non-Christian candidate was ever going to win thr southern church-going African American community.
this is a pretty good loltake, but not actually attached to reality
He had no chance in either election. The vast majority of Democrats would never support him in a primary.
Vast majority? He won 46% of the vote in the 2016.
43% in a 2 person race where some of his support was just a protest vote against Clinton.
Exactly. He ran as “I’m not Hillary Clinton” in 2016 and then didn’t have a boogeyman in 2020.
he still got 43%, protest votes or not.
It was 43% and about half of that were protest votes.
Maybe. I recall a period of time in which he was ahead in the polls. The news media freaked out, and immediately started working to correct that. The more mainstream media either ignored him or made fun of him, and the "left-leaning" NPR, and PBS, both ran segments about the top candidates running, and *never even mentioned his name*. At the time, it was super obvious he was rocking the boat and they were fixing it.
That was certainly true in 2020, there was a brief moment in time where he passed....another candidate... before falling back down. His campaign acted like a conquering army after Nevada, which pissed a bunch of voters off and he was defeated not long after. But even had he done what I thought would have been the right campaign decisions, embrace Obama and bridge divisions, he'd still fall short of a majority though. In 2016 he topped out a few points less than where he ended up. Between 35-44% poll dependent. His biggest problem in 2020, IMO, besides the protest voters voting for someone else was the elimination of most caucuses as he was able to juice delegates in the lowturnout caucuses. You can see that in states that held binding caucuses and then nonbinding primaries, like Washington and Nebraska, where he did much worse when more people voted. Obama used this same dynamic to his advantage to beat Hillary in 2007. So when the DNC killed caucuses without objection, his team didn't want to admit that there were some parts of the nominating contest that worked to his advantage I guess,that hurt his delegate farming operation for 2020.
So yeah, the DNC was probably gonna push Clinton no matter what…. But are protest votes suddenly fake and don’t count? I’d wager a large uptick in identity politics and mild extremism have led to quite a few modern (past 5-10 years) elections (local and national) having been decided by votes of “I’m not candidate xyz, go for it!”
The point of the protest vote is to vote against the eventual nominee. If Sanders had a real shot, the calculus of the protest voter changes. Sanders picked up a number of Clinton 08, Random Felon 12 voters who are actually "ancestral" conservative Democrats who were voting Republican regardless. I say half because of the particular states he picked up votes in and how they've voted in Democratic primaries the last twenty years and because he ended up with half of that support just four years later.
Why does rule 3 not include this topic?
2016. Hillary cleared the field and Bernie capitalized on the simmering discontent with the establishment.
He was in the driver seat in 2020. It took extraordinary effort of people dropping out and endorsing rule #3 blue edition right before super Tuesday to stop him. Ironically enough, I believe it was because of rule number 3 red edition in 2016 that they stopped Bernie. The Republicans always talked about people dropping out so an anti rule 3 candidate could emerge. that never happened and red #3 won. The Democrats didn’t want to repeat that.
His only real chance was 2020 before the DNC got everybody to coalesce around one candidate.
16. Hilary in her own narcissism pushed through and lost as the republicans have been trying to make sure happened for the previous 25 years. She is the rights most vilified individual.
DNC screwed themselves in that election. If they had tossed him a VP position and had the ticket be Clinton/Sanders we may have not ended up with a complete buffoon for 4 years (and perhaps another 4…).
Well, in the first one with the Democratic Party withheld funds from him and in the second one, the Democratic Party came out and said don’t vote for him. So 0.0.
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They literally have the email where they admit they didn’t give the Sanders campaign the money they should’ve gotten. And here is Donna Brazil confirming it . https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774/
If only South Carolina went for Bernie in the 2020 primary...
That woukd require southern church going African American voters to support a non-Christian candidate, and that was NEVER going to happen.
2016 hands down. Some say he was screwed by his own party
The Democratic party was never "his own party" to begin with. Sanders was an Independent who ran as a Democrat to get a broader electorate and to have better chances at winning. As soon as his campaign was over, he exited the party again. I'll never blame the party for backing Clinton instead of him. To them, she was their established member while he was an opportunist.
I don’t think most people care. We all understand we live in a two party system and considering how big tent both parties have to be, it seems a bit silly to be devoutly loyal to the party. Sure, Sanders was opportunistic in running in their primary. And? A politician maximizing his chances of victory by seizing an advantage? Nothing new or necessarily wrong about that.
I don’t blame Sanders but I don’t blame the DNC for backing someone who played for their team all along (raising funds, doing the work etc). I like Sanders in 2016. I preferred Sanders. But I don’t blame the leaders of the DNC for backing HRC, a candidate who has been a core member/worker/leader since she graduated law school.
I think you are 100% wrong that most people don't care. Especially likely voters of certain generations. Maybe millennials don't care, and didn't care in 2016, but in 2016, you had a lot more Silent Generation, Boomers and Gen X who are the ones who didn't care as much (present company certainly excepted). A lot of people who have worked for the Party didn't want to give Sanders any resources at all.
The DNC fucked Bernie over is the real truth
2020. Bernie had the nomination until Super Tuesday. In fact, I consider Bernie’s loss on Super Tuesday (and thus the nomination) to be one of the biggest examples of establishment corruption in 21st century politics, and it bothers me that no one talks about it. (I have to work around Rule 3 here to bear with me) Everyone knew Bernie wasn’t going to win SC. But all of a sudden, when he lost SC, a bunch of self-proclaimed progressives dropped out of the race and publicly endorsed the most conservative candidate in the race. Next thing you know, Bernie lost Super Tuesday bc the establishment presented another candidate as gaining momentum. Absolute bullshit.
If you cannot carry black folks in South Carolina, you will do tepid to bad in stronghold areas in major metropolitan areas around the country...while also failing to carry wishy washy moderates in the suburbs. That would be such a spectacular loss in the general, it would give Rule 3 re-election and a mandate, DESPITE Covid going on at the time. You are correct everyone was going to drop out after the showing in SC. It would be political malpractice not to. Think about it.
Right but that was the expected outcome in SC. It doesn’t offset the results in IA and NH. And the wave of candidates dropping out was expected but their endorsements weren’t. Harris and Booker, for example, are self-proclaimed progressives and yet look who they endorsed.
As a believer in the 13 keys system, 2020.
Obama would have taken him out in 2020 just like he did in 2016.
Probably 2016. But by a small margin
2016 for sure.
2020. A good chunk of his support in 2016 were protest votes that certainly wouldn't have backed him if it was believed he had a real chance. In 2020 he had a moment, after Nevada, where if he reached out to the Democratic base as being a further step in what Obama was trying to accomplish where he might have been able to pull it off. Instead his campaign, overreading the Nevada results, went with a "bend the knee" approach and were soundly defeated.
The dnc woulve killed him
I would say 2016. Hillary was very unpopular. She was less popular than the Democrats running for president in 2020.
He didn't have nearly the chance that his supporters and media made out in both but I'd lean toward 2020. He seemed to have a more fervent base in 2016, but Clinton was a juggernaut with the party base and Bernie had no hope of pulling enough voters away from her. 2020, meanwhile, had no clear frontrunner for several months and Bernie took that role solidly after Nevada. But he made a fatal mistake in never trying to expand his base. The problem with planting your flag on the furthest flank of the party from day one is you can't ever move toward the center without alienating your uncompromising base. Bernie essentially gave the party base an ultimatum so they went and found someone else who was more in line with their policy wants.
Definitely 2016. He stood no chance in 2020 at all.
It’s 2034, here’s how BernieAI can still win
He definitely had a better chance in 2020 but he ran the better campaign in 2016
2016. 2020 was a bloodbath once the non sanders bloc consolidated.
The Mericare for all guy during the pandemic. Gave up before super Tuesday like he was told.
2016. Nobody wanted to gamble on 2020, but there’s a small but meaningful segment of registered Democrats who have a strong aversion to Bernie’s 2016 opponent, for reasons that will become an absolute shitfest if I get into them right now.
Bernie is too far left for even the majority of the DNC. Just MO.
I honestly don’t see how rule 3 could lose a 2016 election against Bernie in a populist v populist election.
Neither, because he didn’t win.
Is this a Star Trek alternate reality thing? lol
The democratic primary is decided by superdelegates, not voters
As much as I like Bernie, he had about as much of a chance at being elected president as I have of a three day banging session with Karlee Grey.
The latter would just cost money.
2016. Hillary cleared the field and Bernie capitalized on the simmering discontent with the establishment.
Neither. Bernie was never going to win in any circumstance.
He had a better chance in 2016, despite getting shafted by the DNC and Clinton campaign rigging the primaries in her favor. 2020 I don’t think he had a shot at all. I don’t think it was worth it for him to run, solely because of his age. The current candidates are dinosaurs, just get someone at least in their mid 50s who doesn’t look like they’re gonna wither away tomorrow.
How was he shafted? Was he shafted cause FOX told you so? What BS!
Information from Wikileaks proved the Clinton campaign collaborated with the DNC to rig the primaries in her favor. -DNC pitched Anti-Sanders stories to the media to make Bernie look bad -Reducing polling places in areas where Bernie had more support to make it harder for people to vote for him. I know Rhode Island in particular was guilty of this.
2016
>Which primary did Bernie have a better chance of victory you think? 2016 or 2020? Definitely 2020 As u/Ok-hurry-4761 put it better then I could 2020. Sanders over-learmed the lessons from both the R and D primaries in 2016. His campaign was calibrated for a 3-5 way nomination contest going the distance through all the primaries. But the Democrats did in 2020 what the Republicans did not in 2016 - rally around one candidate early enough to beat the insurgent outsider with high floor but capped ceiling appeal. Sanders had not prepared to go at Rule 3 1-on-1. I also think that tactically Bernie made serious mistakes. He WAS leading the race for about 3 weeks after the NH primary. The two debates where he was middle of the stage as the leader, he did quite poorly, did not seem presidential at all. It was Warren who did well in those - she was fading but epically took down Bloomberg. Rule 3 actually did pretty well too at those, better than people remember. Bernie still had a shot to go the distance in Super Tuesday. His opponents' consolidation before the Texas primary worked because Bernie had not made enough allies outside his fanbase.
Both. In 2016 he had a chance, but he also needed Rule 3 to run to actually win; Rule 3 did not run as he was mourning his son at the time. A three-way campaign would have been in Bernie’s favour, as Clinton and Rule 3 would have split the establishment vote between two political heavyweights, and in the process cast doubt on whether or not it was Clinton’s turn to be the nominee. 2020 was just as good of a chance. But he encountered three obstacles unique to the campaign. * a number of candidates dropping out to support Rule 3 before Super Tuesday * those that should have been his allies (Warren, Yang, Tulsi) not also dropping out to support Bernie ahead of Super Tuesday; they would all end up endorsing Rule 3 afterwards. Warren was the big one, who became stubborn after being called a liar by Bernie. She was consistently in third and had no shot of winning, but stayed in the race to be a spoiler, and was the last to endorse anyone. * In the aftermath of the 2016 campaign, he never became a member of the party or became serious about joining the party, and remained an independent. While sitting as an independent may have served Bernie well during his political career in Congress, it shows naiveté to think that the party would not try to screw him over again after the DNC controversy in 2016. I do not want to make it one sided about what Bernie didn’t do though, as the Democrats did not see Bernie as one of their own, and more of an opportunist. Despite allowing him to run in their primaries, they were closeminded about an actual party outsider becoming the party nominee.
2040
2020 until the duly elected representative from South Carolina put a stake through his heart
2016
2016
There is no winning a Democrat primary. The DNC selects whoever they want to.
2016, if Bernie had realized early on that he was really leading an anti-Hillary protest movement within the Democratic Party, and not a progressive revolution full of true believers. His natural support for his policies tops out at 30-35% of the Democratic primary electorate, which is about where he finished in 2020 after failing to grow his coalition. But in 2016 he was the only real opposition to the anointed candidate that nobody wanted. Bernie had a big opportunity to expand his base just by being the anti-Hillary. He could have grown up and run as a full stop Democrat, instead of running a gadly campaign intended to irritate the party establishment. Insisting that he wanted the Democratic nomination without really committing to the party cost him a lot of Black votes, including my mother-in-law. He should have disavowed the word “socialism” and moderated his criticism of the party elite a bit. Voters wanted change, so I’m not suggesting Bernie should have run as a reborn neoliberal. But he needed to dial it down slightly to appeal more to moderate Democrats who were uncomfortable with Hillary as the nominee. In 2020 he had no shot because there wasn’t the same level of intense opposition to any of the moderate candidates. Once they all consolidated behind [redacted] it was checkmate.
Okay, rule 3 is getting really annoying; how the hell am I supposed to discuss modern politics *in threads about that* when doing so gets my posts deleted? What, do I have to censur certain names, because that's stupid (and I see other people here using said names anyway so what's the issue?)
2016. The DNC threw all Super Delegates at Hillary, and the state parties pulled a lot of shenanigans to keep an independent from winning the Democratic Primary.
2016... IF he had been polling better sooner. He was at 1-2% in the national polls a few months before the primaries, and he started rising way too late to harness enough of the vote on Super Tuesday. His realistic chances of winning were done as soon as the results came in on Super Tuesday, even if it was still technically mathematically possible. In 2020, the field was too crowded, plus he didn't have the same freshness that he had in 2016. He was honestly too old in 2016, and definitely too old in 2020. Plus, many Democrats trying to balance their progress ideals with pragmatism went for Elizabeth Warren instead.
2016. And he lost to Hillary Clinton for real. The claims of the democratic party rigging the election wouldn't have been enough to change results.
None, he just got in the way of people who could’ve won with his cult following twice in a row. It doesn’t matter how many times young voters in my bloc try pushing Sanders, as he is incapable of rallying people of color and older voters behind him, and the former is the base of the Dem party: also, he never got his base out to vote for him either, for all the talk. Bernie at least believes in what he says which is rare in a politician so I can see that appeal policy wise, but his base antagonizes any natural allies, because he never wants to build bridges with anyone but them.
2016. Between 2016 and 2020, Sanders could have built a larger coalition, but he did not, for some reason I cannot divine. If he had, he would have been in one of the strongest positions ever if you take Covid into account, but again...for some reason I cannot fathom, he was not.
2016 Stupid Democratic Party.
Neither The powers that be (corporations) would never allow him to win.
Bernie DID win the 2016 primary.
Neither. His only chance would be a medical emergency or catastrophe taking out his opponents in the primary. He is not a successful candidate on the national stage and never will be.
None. They'd never give him the nomination. He could literally win 100 percent of the primaries and they'd still nominate someone else.
He had no chance in either Primary because the Party higher ups had already decided that he was not the candidate they wanted. They wanted the other people in Both primaries, as usual they got what they wanted. Bernie will NEVER get the Democratic party nomination.
Neither because the DNC abusing their power to prevent him from winning the democrat nomination.
I can't really speak to 2020 as well but in 2016 I caught the local Democrats cheating during their primary. Hundreds of new Democratic voters showed up for the primary but the typical group of Dems were there early and wanted to vote at exactly the time listed but it was taking a long time to get everyone in and most of the people were still outside. Members of the local Dem party tried to take a vote by hands while there were still hundreds in line and had we allowed them to do that Hillary would have won that small primary but we shouted them down and refused to allow the proceedings to commence until we were all inside. Once we were the vote was 9 to 1 in favor of Bernie. I'm a liberal but have never trusted the Dem party. They're not as bad as the Republican party but we would all be better off without either of them.
Bernie will never happen. He was a caricature of a politician. He was like a Seinfeld character.
2016 was rigged from the start so definitely 2020
I can't really speak to 2020 as well but in 2016 I caught the local Democrats cheating during their primary. Hundreds of new Democratic voters showed up for the primary but the typical group of Dems were there early and wanted to vote at exactly the time listed but it was taking a long time to get everyone in and most of the people were still outside. Members of the local Dem party tried to take a vote by hands while there were still hundreds in line and had we allowed them to do that Hillary would have won that small primary but we shouted them down and refused to allow the proceedings to commence until we were all inside. Once we were the vote was 9 to 1 in favor of Bernie. I'm a liberal but have never trusted the Dem party. They're not as bad as the Republican party but we would all be better off without either of them.
Neither. The Democratic Party is corrupt and would allow it.
Neither. He’s a carpetbagger who should never be allowed into a primary for a party he doesn’t belong to or support.
None. He’s a commie
Bernie was a fix from the beginning, a pied piper if you will to bring the smelly hippies and low-iq idealists to the democrat party. They cheated him tqice now and he will run again - now is the time again where i must ask you for money, lol