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Democratic Presidential Primaries & Caucuses |March OT| Last Tuesday was 1000 years ago, old news no one cares about (Discussion Guidelines in OP)
- Thread starter Poodlestrike
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The flaw in this argument is that Bernie and Warren are not the same. Warren is a liar and an ex-republican who has backtracked on a bunch of shit she said this same election cycle.
Her candidacy is not productive for the USA, and it pushes lots more people away (funded by billionairoes )
Socialist = bad has been a messages hammered into the American public for over a 100 years.
It's going to be a problem. Hopefully not a debilitating one, but a problem none the less.
i agree, trump will not be easy to beat
i do think that repeating the 2016 election, by picking the same kind of candidate, would be a bad idea. 2016 showed that one type of candidate can't beat trump. i think it would be smart to try another type of candidate
Agreed. I know we gamers are a competitive bunch but it works wonders to be kinder with your words people!
All this aggression over candidates for a presidency does not bring Americans together. We're all on the same side in the end and we have one common opponent.
I'm sure he'd lose some but there'd definitely be a hardcore contingent of fans justifying everything and pushing him to stay. He's seen as a torchbearer for a movement where a lot believe everyone else is the enemy.
I couldn't because it was over 3 years ago and this site wasn't even made yet, but to give an example, Sander's press sec admitted to voting for stein and people defended her for it and Sanders for hiring her after admitting to such an incredibly stupid thing.
For years Sanders supporters have been furiously against being pragmatic, never settle, always go for the biggest legislation no matter how improbable, anything else is part of the establishment, but now we need to be pragmatic?
EDIT: It's been pointed out to me that this post fits the criteria that mods specifically do not want, so i'm going to apologize for not reading the OP throughly enough and discontinue this line of posts. Appreciate the heads up hydrophilic attack
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Every candidate has not had the right wing media machine go at them yet so they will all see a potential drop. If that's the only argument to be made against Bernie then he has to feel pretty good about that. For one he is not a self described socialist he's a self described Democratic Socialist, and we already live in a country that practices socialist policies and welfare programs (many of which are very popular) and give handouts to corporations and billionaires all the time.
There's also former presidents to call upon as examples of democratic socialism like FDR's New Deal and Lincoln's 40 acres and a mule.
There's also former presidents to call upon as examples of democratic socialism like FDR's New Deal and Lincoln's 40 acres and a mule.
Well it's kinda refreshing that he doesn't shrug off the label. It's fucking exhausting hearing politicians defend themselves with "that's a lie" and "uhh nuh uh!!! COUNTERATTACK"
My 60 something old father in law loves that he owns the label and defines it rather than dances around it. It's proof of honesty to him.
I agree, but I'm hopeful as Sanders has shown he knows how to reframe the socialism thing in a way that makes people agree with his ideas. His "we already have socialism for the rich - why can't we have some for the little guy?" framing is imo the way to approach this and neuter a potential problem.
He will probably need some more coaching on how to handle this going into the GE.
this kind of unsupported metacommentary is not productive and can catch you a ban, the way i'm reading the mod post
Biden did have the right wing machine attack him though, and his poll numbers did slip.
Exactly, and it's this debate jiu jitsu that protects him every time. When he parries like this, you're no longer attacking him or the word socialist, you're out in the position where you're attacking his policies which, are actually very nice and now, you're left looking like the asshole.
Yes, but you can see how other 60 year olds who grew up associating socialism with evil could see this in an entire different way, even if they are Democratic voters, right? We have polling evidence that more people say they wouldn't vote for a socialist than say they wouldn't vote for an atheist.
The dem field pretty much already unearthed everything.
I don't care about the label, I care about the candidates. The reason why I think he's more electable is that Biden at this point is an incoherent mess that has been treated with kid gloves by the media, otherwise he would've gotten hit hard on his lies about his involvement with the civil rights movement or about being arrested in South Africa, moreover in debates he's already shown that he doesn't know how to answer to attacks and you know with Trump it's gonna get really personal. Warren doesn't really matter what she does during the campaign, you're gonna hear "POCAHONTAS" about a billion times while Trump would cruise to victory, and she has bad political instincts as demonstrated with the DNA thing. Buttigieg would depress the black turnout, because he's bad on issues relating race.
The label is gonna be a problem, but not nearly to the extent of anyone else's problems.
When I read those articles these aren't people just going with their gut. It reads as professionals making educated predictions based on demographic data. This obviously has some problems and you shouldn't take any of these predictions as gospel, however, that rates higher to me than just simply looking at a snapshot of polling right now and assuming that it'll be exactly the same many months down the line. For example, if Bernie does amazingly well on ST and sweeps the nomination easily I'm sure his numbers vs Trump would go up. You can imagine the same for any candidate and the inverse for any candidate.
You guys seem to be operating under the assumption that every American is a political junkie who actually pays attention to policy and analyzes debate performance. They'll see Bernie on TV extolling the virtues of the Soviet Union metro system after honeymooning there and talking about how he attended a Sandinista rally where people chanted "here there and everywhere the Yankee will die". If people actually paid attention to policy and arguments, Trump wouldn't be President in the first place. Optics play a huge role and the GOP will absolutely be horrifically disingenuous with him on that front. And yes, they'll do that to all other Democrats on every other front, but once again, we have polling data that shows people have more trouble with the socialist label than they do pretty much everything else.
a big reason trump won is because he had a very clear unified message that was easy to comprehend. it was a horrible message that appealed to horrible people but there was no question what "build the wall" meant in terms of policy direction.
in contrast, it was less clear exactly what hillary was running on. why she wanted to be president. that made it more difficult to stir up excitement and turnout for her candidacy.
sanders, like trump, has a very clear message. "healthcare for all". people shouldn't die because they can't afford insulin. it's much harder to tell why biden is running. what is his signature policy? we already know from 2016 that "vote for me because i am not trump" is sadly not enough
in contrast, it was less clear exactly what hillary was running on. why she wanted to be president. that made it more difficult to stir up excitement and turnout for her candidacy.
sanders, like trump, has a very clear message. "healthcare for all". people shouldn't die because they can't afford insulin. it's much harder to tell why biden is running. what is his signature policy? we already know from 2016 that "vote for me because i am not trump" is sadly not enough
Discourse would improve a lot if instead of talking with strawmen we addressed what other people actually say on this forum.
It's not a matter of unearthing anything.
Bernie has never faced anything close to the kind of assault a national Presidential general campaign will bring. None of the current candidates have save for Biden, and we have literally just seen how damaging the GOP machine can be even when you have been through it before.
"Vote for me because I signifiy a return to the politics of consensus building and common decency" will probably be his message. He'll present himself as a unifier contrasted to Trump's divisiveness. Which will understandably piss off a whole bunch of people here and on Reddit and is probably not a good position to take considering what the GOP has done to this country and the awfulness of Mitch McConell, but I wager this would be the plan.
But that's a nebulous point that works for literally every candidate. Not even Biden has. Old Biden could have maybe hold up against attacks, now he just yells at people to vote for someone else.
Oh of course but their demographic is no longer the majority.
i think it would be a bad idea to run against the guy who won with "drain the swamp" with a message of "let's return things to the way they were"
i mean, we informed people on here all know that trump is a lot more corrupt than the people he was admonishing. but his status as an unconventional outsider was part of his appeal. running against him on a campaign based on being the traditional political insider seems like a bad idea
Biden has been brittle and entitled in the face of criticism throughout this campaign. If he can't handle random voters, Trump and the Republicans will make his head explode in the general.
It's 2020 now, people have had 4 years of the Trump experience, running on "hey, remember how everything felt normal under Obama?" isn't running on being a traditional political insider.
I thought that was mostly Trump going rouge and trying to dig up dirt, but a whistle blower thankfully made us aware that was happening. Then once it was out in public and went to impeachment then the right had no choice but to make it about Biden.
I never said it didn't, whoever gets the nomination will have a serious erosion in their poll numbers. I happen to think Bernie's numbers have more room to fall compared to other candidates, but that remains to proven out in practice.
I think I agree with the people who say that republican's have cried wolf on the big bad socialism for so long that it no longer has any effect. When you call everyone from Obama,Biden, Hillary and Sanders a dirty socialist, it's just going to pass through peoples ears as a general insult and not mean anything.
That, plus going, "Do you like driving on roads? Social Security & Medicaid, The New Deal? FDR, etc, etc, etc? Democratic Socialism." (of course saying this in a more elegant way than I know how)
I think my proof is already evident in looking how Sanders is doing in polls plus how M4A is doing. Both finally more favorable than they ever have been. That's because the scare mongering insults lost their effect, and everything we have now is straight up destroying the country.
But it's the demographic that most reliably gets their ass off the couch and votes. If they stay home because they can't be bothered to vote for a socialist, that's a problem because then you have to compensate for that with youth turnout.
I think people are really underestimating what it's going to be like when the GOP take every policy proposal Bernie has and takes the cost and then goes "Americans, this guy wants to spend X amount and make your taxes go up by X amount!".
I don't even see this as some silver bullet attack, but I feel like the next election will be very contentious and closer than some people seem to think.
I don't even see this as some silver bullet attack, but I feel like the next election will be very contentious and closer than some people seem to think.
You don't have to be a political junkie to watch a debate and notice that "hmm that's interesting that they keep saying Bernie is a radical when his ideas are those I agree with"
They don't have to use critical thinking when it gets that far. If the buzzword socialist was enough to flip their wigs though, then I certainly hope the majority are above that and well, demographics in mind, most people who grew up during the red scare aren't the majority anymore so hopefully this word doesn't have as much weight as the media hopes it does.
In the end, you and I just have differing opinions on the weight of the word "socialist" and we won't really know til this is all said and done. Either way, I want you to know that I'm your neighbor in this fight and I want to get to a good place together, regardless of our positions on the matter.
OK, poor wording of post and too short, but she's lied multiple times, has no support from anyone really (look at her results) Apart from massive corps or billionaires. Yah, she can just piss off
There is very little reason to think that. Even in the best case scenario, that attack won't have "[no] effect." We can just hope it'll have a limited one.
I think this is true if Biden gets it as well but not for the same reason. How many young people energized by how far Bernie has gone will be depressed as fuck their guy lost to the total opposite of him and his positions.
i think polling has shown that the people who voted for trump haven't been turned off by his performance in office
the status quo under obama hurt a lot of people. (even if the trump admin is hurting people even more.) i'm not sure that the people who failed to turn out for clinton's "let's keep up obama's normalcy" would instead turn out for biden's "let's return to obama's normalcy"
Oh, absolutely. If Warren were surging and Bernie, after not winning a single state, outright said he was trying to lead to a brokered convention in the hopes of getting the nomination, I'd tell him to fuck off. Because not only is it a stupid plan, but It will also ensure Trump coasts to victory because why would anyone come out to vote after just being told their vote didnt matter?
It's all good, I just think sometimes people who are really fired up about Bernie tend to dismiss the concern some have about his viability in a general election. It's all speculation and no one can know for sure, but I just think the polling data we have right now makes it easier to foresee the GOP atacks on him having an effect than it does for most other candidates. Yeah, maybe his message resonates enough that he successfully flips the attack on his head and the "socialist" label doesn't make a dent in his prospects, I just think we shouldn't count on that.
Because now people have actually seen what that lack of normalcy entails. Besides, Hillary had a host of other problems as a candidate, from her gender to an active FBI investigation and she still lost by a very narrow margin while winning the popular vote. 2018 also showed that a moderate, non-radical Dem message could still resonate. It's all speculation, I just don't think a Biden campaign on those terms would be dead in the water, or that 2016 shows no moderate can beat Trump.
I have serious reservations about the impact "young people" will have in the election either way.
Which positions of Biden's are the "total opposite" of Bernie's?
If Biden is the "total opposite" of Bernie then what is Trump?
Man, Bernie and Biden aren't opposites, come on. They're even friends with one another, let's not start up this narrative.
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