Current Events > Why did Bernie lose twice?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Delirious_Beard posted...

embarrassing that there are people in 2024 still parroting this nonsense

Hey, remember time there was a plurality of democratic candidates for president, and Bernie started to edge out Hillary, and all the other candidates quit to get behind Hillary? What a coincidence that was, am I right?

Sad_Face posted...

Warren staying in only benefited Biden.

I honestly don't get how some people simultaneously say, "the moderates were broke and had no chance they absolutely needed to drop out immmediately" but also, "Warren was just trying to win, no reason for her to step aside" when she was also low on money and lacked any path to victory at that point, having done worse in the first 4 states than even Buttigieg.

And for whatever reason Warren wasn't getting the flood of calls from donors and elites telling her to drop out. Even Bloomberg was getting these calls ( https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/looking-obama-s-hidden-hand-candidate-coalescing-around-biden-n1147471 ); he was just able to ignore them because he's a billionaire.

Curious how these supposed party unifiers tried to bully out of the race a known scumbag plutocrat who was obviously gonna laugh them off, one of the most effective legislators in the country (Klobuchar), and one of only 3 candidates to have actually won a state (Buttigieg), but for some reason lost their nerve against Warren.

On the contrary, a random super PAC showed up in mid-February to spend $12 million to boost her campaign purely in Super Tuesday states ( https://time.com/5792563/elizabeth-warren-super-pac-support/ ).

There's only so far you can stretch plausible deniability. Donors had a preference and threw their weight in that direction. As always.

Three simple reasons.

-his supporters aren't reliable voters.
-progressive Democrats appearing is the only time a conservative Democrat will actually go all out.
-people still don't realize the importance of voting in the primaries.

nocturnal_traveler posted...

Three simple reasons.

-his supporters aren't reliable voters.
-progressive Democrats appearing is the only time a conservative Democrat will actually go all out.
-people still don't realize the importance of voting in the primaries.

I'll add you two more.

People still don't realize the importance of voting at all, in all elections. Local, House, Senate, etc.... consistently.

With brings us to the second problem of people not understanding how the United States government works and how laws are passed. Virtue signalling acts of staying home, isn't helping you get the policies you want.

Hell, we still have genuine people who are proud of themselves for voting once or twice, but baffled and confused why Presidents cant wave their magic pens to make problems go away, or confused states passing laws to the contrary whoever they voted for federally (see those who blame Biden for things like abortion because "it passed while he was President")

Sad_Face posted...

A bunch of candidates dropped out at the last minute while one candidate who had no chance of winning stayed behind.

"A bunch of candidates". 3. 3 dropped out. Steyer polling at 2.6%, Klobouchar at 4.3%, and Buttigieg at 10%. if Sanders, who at one point was holding a 10% lead as late as Steyer dropping out only a few days before ST can't hold the lead or siphon enough of those 17% to keep the lead then he was a shit candidate.

It's one part Bernie failing to build coalitions with establishment Democrats and one part establishment Democrats doing whatever they could to nuke his chances.

It's strange, when I pointed out Bernie could skip the primary and win with ranked choice voting everyone just went back to talking about the 2 party primary.

The primary system is bad just like the electoral college is bad. They both favor conservatives.

Bernie starts strong but loses in the end. This last time, he was beating everyone but then the Dems starting dropping out and championing Biden. Then DNC championed Biden and that was it. More Dems kept dropping until it was gonna be Bernie vs Biden. I recall at one time where Dems started attacking Bernie calling him an Atheist. It's sad people still use that as a marker for not voting for someone. 99% of Congress identifies as Xtian and they're some of the worst people.

ButteryMales posted...

It's strange, when I pointed out Bernie could skip the primary and win with ranked choice voting everyone just went back to talking about the 2 party primary.

The primary system is bad just like the electoral college is bad. They both favor conservatives.

Agreed

ButteryMales posted...

It's strange, when I pointed out Bernie could skip the primary and win with ranked choice voting everyone just went back to talking about the 2 party primary.

The primary system is bad just like the electoral college is bad. They both favor conservatives.

I agree with you. Ranked choice would help things a lot.

However, no matter what we do, any system that chooses candidates is probably always going to skew conservative. This is because they always get less people voting than the general elections. And conservatives always vote more when turnout is low.

That's the real reason Bernie and Warren couldn't win. The people who support them just don't vote in primaries. The only way candidates like that have a real shot at making it to the general election is if the democratic party's center shifts far enough left that even counting conservative and centrists they have a majority, or young people and progressives start showing up in much bigger numbers.

aarrgus posted...

"A bunch of candidates". 3. 3 dropped out. Steyer polling at 2.6%, Klobouchar at 4.3%, and Buttigieg at 10%. if Sanders, who at one point was holding a 10% lead as late as Steyer dropping out only a few days before ST can't hold the lead or siphon enough of those 17% to keep the lead then he was a shit candidate.

He's not a "shit candidate" for losing the lead to a guy with 100x more endorsements than him. That's just politics.

He couldn't siphon the votes because the candidates literally endorsed someone else. Voters are mostly gonna follow their candidate. For a frontrunner Bernie got basically no endorsements.

The party had been promoting a message of unity all election cycle, and voters really wanted to stop Trump, so they're not gonna stand by the candidate getting virtually no support from his colleagues. They're not gonna rock the boat with infighting.