FiveThirtyEight: Sanders — And The Media — Learned The Wrong Lessons From Trump In 2016

KHarvey16 · Apr 10, 2020

Fugu said:
Yeah, but there are a litany of explanations that could account for that lack of success, and the fivethirtyeight offering of "votes are won by statistically appealing to the greatest number of this mostly static lumbering mass" is but one of them. Ask a Bernie voter and they'll give you a million examples of media bias and the DNC using their weight to undermine his chances of winning. These are, at the minimum, confounding variables that need to be addressed, but fivethirtyeight doesn't address them; that's not their thing and that's fine, but it makes them limited.

The goal of the article was to take strategies laid out by the campaign (that were built on supposed lessons from 2016) and see if they held up. The conclusion is they didn't work, which doesn't require any kind of reasoning, and the content examines potential factors for why they didn't work with pretty solid reasoning.

If your criticism boils down to the fact it doesn't include your preferred reasons for why he lost, is it fair to maybe ask that if there exists plenty of factors to explain the loss outside your preferred set, are those you like actually true or even necessary?

Deleted member 18944 · Apr 10, 2020

FootChar said:
So the insider baseball lesson to learn is that Sanders ran a terrible campaign because he didn't appease party elites enough. The voter's lesson to learn is the DNC is not to be trusted, and they would rather lose with Biden than win with Bernie.

But wouldn't the entire sentiment of an anti establishment candidate be thrown out the window if he was suddenly pro establishment? How could he run his campaign the ways he's run it if he can't run it with that theme?

Kthulhu · Apr 10, 2020

Hollywood Duo said:
A lot of them have done a ton of good. You know who is an establishment democrat politician. John Lewis.

Who also voted for FOSTA along with a sizable chunk of the party. A ton of good doesn't excuse political voting in favor of harmful legislation to protect their image.

medinaria · Apr 10, 2020

I think there's a conflation, often times, between "he made the argument and people said no thanks and voted for someone else" and "he made a terrible argument and could have won if he wasn't bad at argument-making".

the strategy appeared to have been appeal to your base, solidify 25-30% of the party, and then hope enough things go right that people begin to coalesce around you as other candidates fail. that is, admittedly, a longshot strategy. it requires a lot of things to go right. but is it a bad strategy? I don't think so. I think it's basically the only strategy available to someone who's in a minority faction of the party, and whose appeal is largely centered around ideological consistency. if you try to widen your appeal by "moving to the center", you lose the people who like you for being consistent. if you try to widen your appeal by "appealing to party elites" and "getting endorsements", you lose the people who like you because you don't do that shit - you're an outsider, and you act like it. as such, most of these ideas for like "how sanders could have won" just... aren't workable in practice. he can't do them, because he's bernie sanders, and - for better or worse - he's the kind of dude that's never going to try to be anyone else.

my personal opinion is that sanders' campaign was pretty good. from an organizational perspective, they did a ton of things right. they had a lot of good messaging (although there were some crucial areas where they could have been better, and they probably ought to have gone negative against biden much earlier, if we're being honest - he was always the biggest threat, even when he was performing poorly). they did some truly one-of-a-kind things with regards to reaching out to people in groups that have never even been spoken to before by major parties. (this is in reference to some of the stuff that came out after like the iowa caucus, where they were out talking to like albanian muslims or something that nobody had ever canvassed before) at the end of the day, though, a pretty good campaign wasn't good enough to overcome the structural disadvantages of being a fringe candidate running in a time where people were desperate for normalcy and stability. shit happens. the struggle continues.

ApatheticDolphin · Apr 10, 2020

Hobbes said:
But wouldn't the entire sentiment of an anti establishment candidate be thrown out the window if he was suddenly pro establishment? How could he run his campaign the ways he's run it if he can't run it with that theme?

It's not a binary. There are plenty of people who've run for office and won by being an outsider but not hostile to the party

krazen · Apr 10, 2020

FootChar said:
I think this assessment is pretty accurate. It really was a lot like the 2016 republican primary.

The big difference is the republicans let Trump win a plurality of votes without interference. They eventually learned to fall in line behind Trump and have been riding his populist wave ever since.

The democrats on the other hand were quick to circle the wagons after Bernie Sanders won the first 3 states. The party elites clearly decided to coalesce behind Biden to make sure Bernie did not run away with the nomination. Biden's campaign had been dead in the water prior to South Carolina, and it's polling extremely low going into the general.

So the insider baseball lesson to learn is that Sanders ran a terrible campaign because he didn't appease party elites enough. The voter's lesson to learn is the DNC is not to be trusted, and they would rather lose with Biden than win with Bernie.

I dunno, I find it naive that he felt he DIDN'T have to appease the party elites. The GOP hated Trump but saw him as a useful idiot. Bernie was pretty much, "I am burning this bitch down" to his own party, but demanded their infrastructure, etc.

The easy answer is that its because without interference he should have had the votes, but id ask you what alternate dimension of american politics did you teleport in from where that would have happened in a world of gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc.

Mezentine · Apr 10, 2020

FootChar said:
I think this assessment is pretty accurate. It really was a lot like the 2016 republican primary.

The big difference is the republicans let Trump win a plurality of votes without interference. They eventually learned to fall in line behind Trump and have been riding his populist wave ever since.

The democrats on the other hand were quick to circle the wagons after Bernie Sanders won the first 3 states. The party elites clearly decided to coalesce behind Biden to make sure Bernie did not run away with the nomination. Biden's campaign had been dead in the water prior to South Carolina, and it's polling extremely low going into the general.

So the insider baseball lesson to learn is that Sanders ran a terrible campaign because he didn't appease party elites enough. The voter's lesson to learn is the DNC is not to be trusted, and they would rather lose with Biden than win with Bernie.

Bidens campaign was dead in the water before SC. But the DNC didnt do anything to make him win there. As things ramped up Biden's polling began to be neck and neck with Sanders. Yes Pete and the others dropping out did cause a vote consolidation behind Biden, but was Bernies strategy really to assume a fragmented field up until the finish line? And if those dropouts caused all of their support to go to Biden and not Sanders, what does that say about the voters participating?

Activating new voters was a big, admirable gamble. Counting on the field to remain divided was a big stupid gamble

Deleted member 18944 · Apr 10, 2020

ApatheticDolphin said:
It's not a binary. There are plenty of people who've run for office and won by being an outsider but not hostile to the party

Yep, totally agree. But Bernie's premise as a canidate and his campaign, is that he's essentially anti establishment and that include anti DNC.

Does that mean he ran his campaign terribly? No, I don't think so. I think what that means is that his campaign's performance was poor because he had that that theme of anti-establishment. I think they are different things.

Draper · Apr 10, 2020

Everyone claiming he didn't run a great campaign.
I'm sorry, did Biden even have a campaign?

Toxi · Apr 10, 2020

FootChar said:
So the insider baseball lesson to learn is that Sanders ran a terrible campaign because he didn't appease party elites enough. The voter's lesson to learn is the DNC is not to be trusted, and they would rather lose with Biden than win with Bernie.

Who is "the voter" here? Biden had more votes.

Leftists need to stop preaching to their own choir. What do you actually "learn" from that "lesson"? What are you actually going to change in your approach? Or if you think it's only the people who voted for Biden who need the lesson, how are you going to convince them they need it? Their candidate won.

mjp2417 · Apr 10, 2020

medinaria said:
I think there's a conflation, often times, between "he made the argument and people said no thanks and voted for someone else" and "he made a terrible argument and could have won if he wasn't bad at argument-making".

the strategy appeared to have been appeal to your base, solidify 25-30% of the party, and then hope enough things go right that people begin to coalesce around you as other candidates fail. that is, admittedly, a longshot strategy. it requires a lot of things to go right. but is it a bad strategy? I don't think so. I think it's basically the only strategy available to someone who's in a minority faction of the party, and whose appeal is largely centered around ideological consistency. if you try to widen your appeal by "moving to the center", you lose the people who like you for being consistent. if you try to widen your appeal by "appealing to party elites" and "getting endorsements", you lose the people who like you because you don't do that shit - you're an outsider, and you act like it. as such, most of these ideas for like "how sanders could have won" just... aren't workable in practice. he can't do them, because he's bernie sanders, and - for better or worse - he's the kind of dude that's never going to try to be anyone else.

my personal opinion is that sanders' campaign was pretty good. from an organizational perspective, they did a ton of things right. they had a lot of good messaging (although there were some crucial areas where they could have been better, and they probably ought to have gone negative against biden much earlier, if we're being honest - he was always the biggest threat, even when he was performing poorly). they did some truly one-of-a-kind things with regards to reaching out to people in groups that have never even been spoken to before by major parties. (this is in reference to some of the stuff that came out after like the iowa caucus, where they were out talking to like albanian muslims or something that nobody had ever canvassed before) at the end of the day, though, a pretty good campaign wasn't good enough to overcome the structural disadvantages of being a fringe candidate running in a time where people were desperate for normalcy and stability. shit happens. the struggle continues.

Yeah, I think this is pretty broadly fair and accurate

Jimrpg · Apr 10, 2020

Hobbes said:
Nate has some of the worst takes in the game.

edit: I explained further why I think his take is bad below, but the TLDR: there are more important variables that prevented him from being the nominee.

This 100%.

But I think NATE thinks his audience is mainstream-indie, so he's writing to appeal to those supporters. The maintream-indie would eat this shit up.

Bernie lost because he was willing to be part of the democrats, rather than actually fighting against them.

Thinking more about it - the message and its delivery was ultimately flawed. The elites that let him run probably knew this and knew they could turn the election anytime they wanted, because they could just fix the results. Look at it this way, Bernie running in a party fighting against that party, with messages of the powerful elite that were corrupt, but at the same time giving his unequivocal support to Joe Biden, makes people question whether he was the real deal, at least the undecided voters.

KHarvey16 · Apr 10, 2020

Draper said:
Everyone claiming he didn't run a great campaign.
I'm sorry, did Biden even have a campaign?

Not sure why Biden not running a good campaign would impact the assessment of Bernie running a bad one. Besides, what would you call a campaign that lost to...no campaign?

Deleted member 18944 · Apr 10, 2020

arbok26 said:
Bernie lost because he was willing to be part of the democrats, rather than actually fighting against them.

Well, the point I've been making is actually the opposite. He lost because of that unwillingness (until the final moments like in 2016) to be part of power that controls whether he's the nominee or not.

ApatheticDolphin · Apr 10, 2020

arbok26 said:
This 100%.

But I think NATE thinks his audience is mainstream-indie, so he's writing to appeal to those supporters. The maintream-indie would eat this shit up.

Bernie lost because he was willing to be part of the democrats, rather than actually fighting against them.

Thinking more about it - the message and its delivery was ultimately flawed. The elites that let him run probably knew this and knew they could turn the election anytime they wanted, because they could just fix the results. Look at it this way, Bernie running in a party fighting against that party, with messages of the powerful elite that were corrupt, but at the same time giving his unequivocal support to Joe Biden, makes people question whether he was the real deal, at least the undecided voters.

Do you really think that if Bernie had been even more hostile to the party that he would have won?

Baji Boxer · Apr 10, 2020

This wasn't a bad strategy from Sanders, it was the only one that was viable. People kind of forget that as soon as Biden entered the race, the vast majority of people essentially penciled him in as the nominee. If Sanders had tried the more conventional strategy, he wouldn't even have finished 2nd.

There was no way in hell building coalitions with different wings of the party would've worked, especially with Biden in the race. The establishment elites that Sanders would have had to win over would never support him over Biden.

Sanders made the only play he had. Hammer home his anti-establishment message and populist policy proposals over and over again while the mainstream Dems all went at each other. Take the lead, give progressives hope, and take the gamble on acomplishing what everyone else has always failed at: Get large numbers of progressive young people off their asses and to the polls.

Pekola · Apr 10, 2020

Also his team's corona response has been really good.

Things like addressing people through streaming and his sessions with PoC guests/activists, getting donations for corona relief, keeping his staff on healthcare through the crisis. That's all things more politicians should be doing.

Toxi · Apr 10, 2020

arbok26 said:
Bernie lost because he was willing to be part of the democrats, rather than actually fighting against them.

So Bernie would have won the democratic primary by... Not participating in the Democratic primary?

What even is this sort of take? What do you think constitutes "fighting against them"? Going third party? Going Republican (LOL)?

Fugu · Apr 10, 2020

KHarvey16 said:
The goal of the article was to take strategies laid out by the campaign (that were built on supposed lessons from 2016) and see if they held up. The conclusion is they didn't work, which doesn't require any kind of reasoning, and the content examines potential factors for why they didn't work with pretty solid reasoning.

If your criticism boils down to the fact it doesn't include your preferred reasons for why he lost, is it fair to maybe ask that if there exists plenty of factors to explain the loss outside your preferred set, are those you like actually true or even necessary?

The argument is that the strategy didn't work because of factors extrinsic to "campaign strategy". The merits of "campaign strategies" cannot be assessed in a vacuum because of the large role of ideology and the ability of people to be swayed by conviction and a myriad other factors. This is a fact painfully obvious to anyone who doesn't treat politics like baseball (no offense to baseball - I love baseball - but they're not the same) but is something that fivethirtyeight is categorically unable to address.

I'm not American, nor am I particularly invested in American politics, so if you're looking for a big gotcha moment here you're going to be disappointed. I don't know why Bernie lost, and neither does Nate Silver.

Audioboxer · Apr 10, 2020

Draper said:
Everyone claiming he didn't run a great campaign.
I'm sorry, did Biden even have a campaign?

The answer to this is Bernie shouldn't have had a campaign. If he had done less he would have done better.

America had its chance with Sanders, he's gone now, for good. Up next will be seeing how many more times progressive candidates get rejected. Trust the progress.

And if it's relatively simple for a progressive to win in America if they "just run a campaign better than Bernie's", I'm sure that means Warren will smash it on her 2nd try.

In the mean time, the reality is, most progressives in America will have to wait for the Clinton's and Biden's to retire. One would have thought the coronavirus might be the shock the country needed, but even that's looking uncertain.

Best of luck next time! Instead enjoy healthcare if you are 60. That is if your orange dictator doesn't win.

Toxi · Apr 10, 2020

medinaria said:
I think there's a conflation, often times, between "he made the argument and people said no thanks and voted for someone else" and "he made a terrible argument and could have won if he wasn't bad at argument-making".

the strategy appeared to have been appeal to your base, solidify 25-30% of the party, and then hope enough things go right that people begin to coalesce around you as other candidates fail. that is, admittedly, a longshot strategy. it requires a lot of things to go right. but is it a bad strategy? I don't think so. I think it's basically the only strategy available to someone who's in a minority faction of the party, and whose appeal is largely centered around ideological consistency. if you try to widen your appeal by "moving to the center", you lose the people who like you for being consistent. if you try to widen your appeal by "appealing to party elites" and "getting endorsements", you lose the people who like you because you don't do that shit - you're an outsider, and you act like it. as such, most of these ideas for like "how sanders could have won" just... aren't workable in practice. he can't do them, because he's bernie sanders, and - for better or worse - he's the kind of dude that's never going to try to be anyone else.

my personal opinion is that sanders' campaign was pretty good. from an organizational perspective, they did a ton of things right. they had a lot of good messaging (although there were some crucial areas where they could have been better, and they probably ought to have gone negative against biden much earlier, if we're being honest - he was always the biggest threat, even when he was performing poorly). they did some truly one-of-a-kind things with regards to reaching out to people in groups that have never even been spoken to before by major parties. (this is in reference to some of the stuff that came out after like the iowa caucus, where they were out talking to like albanian muslims or something that nobody had ever canvassed before) at the end of the day, though, a pretty good campaign wasn't good enough to overcome the structural disadvantages of being a fringe candidate running in a time where people were desperate for normalcy and stability. shit happens. the struggle continues.

This is the best objection to the article I've seen. At some point, there might just not be a viable strategy. I think you can critique Sanders' campaign and say it could have been better, but to say "This is why he lost" assumes he had a chance of actually winning and that's not necessarily guaranteed. And critiquing a campaign that didn't actually have a chance of winning is just nitpicking.

jimtothehum · Apr 10, 2020

Warren fans were the closest to Bernie fans in terms of ideology and you would think Bernie fans would be spending their time bringing Warren fans into the fold. Yet, online at least, they spent their chastising Warren and alienating her fans. You may feel that you are in the right, but if your message is confrontational and condescending, you might as well pack it up in the world of politics.

FootChar · Apr 10, 2020

Hobbes said:
But wouldn't the entire sentiment of an anti establishment candidate be thrown out the window if he was suddenly pro establishment? How could he run his campaign the ways he's run it if he can't run it with that theme?

I'm not actually saying Bernie should've tried to appease the establishment, I'm saying the real issue is the DNC is snuffing out popular progressives in favor of the establishment.

Mezentine said:
Bidens campaign was dead in the water before SC. But the DNC didnt do anything to make him win there. As things ramped up Biden's polling began to be neck and neck with Sanders. Yes Pete and the others dropping out did cause a vote consolidation behind Biden, but was Bernies strategy really to assume a fragmented field up until the finish line? And if those dropouts caused all of their support to go to Biden and not Sanders, what does that say about the voters participating?

Activating new voters was a big, admirable gamble. Counting on the field to remain divided was a big stupid gamble

It's only a big stupid gamble if you're reading it cynically as Bernie is trying to win at all costs and not legitimately fighting for ideals he believes in. It was always the platform, not himself.

Deleted member 2834 · Apr 10, 2020

Toxi said:
So Bernie would have won the democratic primary by... Not participating in the Democratic primary?

What even is this sort of take? What do you think constitutes "fighting against them"? Going third party? Going Republican (LOL)?

I've been wondering this myself. Coalition building is important in politics. More often than not you won't get away with antagonizing everyone on your way. At the very least you should not be surprised that nobody got your back when it matters, this ain't some grand DNC conspiracy. Sanders is a bad politician with some good ideas. A better candidate with better political instincts will come along. Compromizing and coalising is part of the game, no matter how mad it makes the die hard Bernie fans. At the end of the day the only thing that matters is to get shit done, and not earn purity points on Twitter. Pushing through a watered down bill is probably better than your perfect bill that'll only ever exist on paper.

KHarvey16 · Apr 10, 2020

Fugu said:
The argument is that the strategy didn't work because of factors extrinsic to "campaign strategy". The merits of "campaign strategies" cannot be assessed in a vacuum because of the large role of ideology and the ability of people to be swayed by conviction and a myriad other factors. This is a fact painfully obvious to anyone who doesn't treat politics like baseball (no offense to baseball - I love baseball - but they're not the same) but is something that fivethirtyeight is categorically unable to address.

I'm not American, nor am I particularly invested in American politics, so if you're looking for a big gotcha moment here you're going to be disappointed. I don't know why Bernie lost, and neither does Nate Silver.

I think you want that to be the case more than it is the case. The explanations from 538 and lots of other places seem to reasonably and sufficiently explain the factors leading to the loss without invoking shady dealings or media bias. The fact this can be accomplished isn't a great look for the shady dealings and media bias having been a factor. If you disagree with the argument you can't really start by just asserting those factors must be accounted for without arguing where the reasoning breaks down without them. Which of the given reasons are wrong? Why can't they alone lead to Bernie losing? Where is the actual need for those other explanations?

Aaronrules380 · Apr 10, 2020

FootChar said:
I think this assessment is pretty accurate. It really was a lot like the 2016 republican primary.

The big difference is the republicans let Trump win a plurality of votes without interference. They eventually learned to fall in line behind Trump and have been riding his populist wave ever since.

The democrats on the other hand were quick to circle the wagons after Bernie Sanders won the first 3 states. The party elites clearly decided to coalesce behind Biden to make sure Bernie did not run away with the nomination. Biden's campaign had been dead in the water prior to South Carolina, and it's polling extremely low going into the general.

So the insider baseball lesson to learn is that Sanders ran a terrible campaign because he didn't appease party elites enough. The voter's lesson to learn is the DNC is not to be trusted, and they would rather lose with Biden than win with Bernie.

Bernie's stated strategy was going to be aiming for a contested convention with only a plurality of support, so even if none of the other candidates backed out or coalesced around Biden I don't think he'd have been able to win a majority of delegates and I don't see how he wins a contested convention where superdelegates get involved and could just coalesce around Biden anyways

mugurumakensei · Apr 10, 2020

Fugu said:
I'm not American, nor am I particularly invested in American politics, so if you're looking for a big gotcha moment here you're going to be disappointed. I don't know why Bernie lost, and neither does Nate Silver.

nah, Bernie failed due to factors intrinsic to his campaign strategy.

1) His campaign had anti-DNC messaging
2) We have campaign memos and insiders that state the campaigns approach was to win with a plurality. This strategy has to hope superdelegates coalesce around a campaign that's openly antagonistic to them(See 1).
3) furthermore, his campaign pinned hopes on no one dropping out to ensure plurality win which has historically never happened cause, beyond wasting fundraiser money (it's no surprise that Bloomberg was the only candidate to the right of Bernie aside from Biden stayed in the longest since he was blowing his own money.), it means funding oppo research that could be picked up later by Republicans (and it would not be the first time that the opposing party continued to fund said oppo research ). This is problematic (See 1 and 2)
4) the campaign may no large overtures to one of the biggest blocks of democratic voters (in fact, the campaign skipped the Bloody Sunday anniversary to campaign in Cali). When mixed in with points 1, 2, and 3, this a very fatal mistake which is intrinsic to the campaign ops itself.

GoldenEye 007 · Apr 10, 2020

Toxi said:
This is the best objection to the article I've seen. At some point, there might just not be a viable strategy. I think you can critique Sanders' campaign and say it could have been better, but to say "This is why he lost" assumes he had a chance of actually winning and that's not necessarily guaranteed. And critiquing a campaign that didn't actually have a chance of winning is just nitpicking.

I think the viable strategy would have been to be doing work trying to win the favor of black leaders in the south since 2016. Same for Democratic leaders in general since then. Instead of being combative to "the DNC," but instead share why his vision is better and work on getting those people onboard.

I'm not sure if any of that happened. And yeah maybe he would have lost to Biden or someone else anyway but it would have been interesting to see if he put in that type of work too.

Fugu · Apr 10, 2020

KHarvey16 said:
I think you want that to be the case more than it is the case. The explanations from 538 and lots of other places seem to reasonably and sufficiently explain the factors leading to the loss without invoking shady dealings or media bias. The fact this can be accomplished isn't a great look for the shady dealings and media bias having been a factor. If you disagree with the argument you can't really start by just asserting those factors must be accounted for without arguing where the reasoning breaks down without them. Which of the given reasons are wrong? Why can't they alone lead to Bernie losing? Where is the actual need for those other explanations?

Maybe you find their explanation to be reasonable and sufficient, but I don't. The reason that I don't is simple: They don't address the confounding variables, much less how they've accounted for them. It's not much more than a blind belief, and it's ludicrously unscientific.

As I said previously, the amount of work it would take to tear down the arguments in that article individually when my assertion is that their whole approach is flawed is simply beyond what I'm willing to do for internet points. This is all the more true when you consider that it's much easier to make an argument based on assigning too much weight to statistical evidence than it is to dismantle one, and that he's getting paid to do this and I'm not.

mugurumakensei · Apr 10, 2020

GoldenEye 007 said:
I think the viable strategy would have been to be doing work trying to win the favor of black leaders in the south since 2016. Same for Democratic leaders in general since then. Instead of being combative to "the DNC," but instead share why his vision is better and work on getting those people onboard.

I'm not sure if any of that happened. And yeah maybe he would have lost to Biden or someone else anyway but it would have been interesting to see if he put in that type of work too.

Immediately after last primary, he went back to being "independent" so it's fair to say he probably did not .

FootChar · Apr 10, 2020

KHarvey16 said:
I think you want that to be the case more than it is the case. The explanations from 538 and lots of other places seem to reasonably and sufficiently explain the factors leading to the loss without invoking shady dealings or media bias. The fact this can be accomplished isn't a great look for the shady dealings and media bias having been a factor. If you disagree with the argument you can't really start by just asserting those factors must be accounted for without arguing where the reasoning breaks down without them. Which of the given reasons are wrong? Why can't they alone lead to Bernie losing? Where is the actual need for those other explanations?

The explanation I read from 538 does include shady dealings and media bias. It was shady dealings that got the other candidates to all simultaneously back out and support Biden. Media bias was used to enforce that actually Biden does have support and that it was not artificial momentum coming from the establishment.

Aaronrules380 · Apr 10, 2020

Fugu said:
Maybe you find their explanation to be reasonable and sufficient, but I don't. The reason that I don't is simple: They don't address the confounding variables, much less how they've accounted for them. It's not much more than a blind belief, and it's ludicrously unscientific.

As I said previously, the amount of work it would take to tear down the arguments in that article individually when my assertion is that their whole approach is flawed is simply beyond what I'm willing to do for internet points. This is all the more true when you consider that it's much easier to make an argument based on assigning too much weight to statistical evidence than it is to dismantle one, and that he's getting paid to do this and I'm not.

I mean you have no real scientific evidence that media bias changed anything either. The fact is that, as the article pointed out, scientifically assessing the reasons why any given candidate fails in a given election is impossible because you have a sample size of 1 and no way of isolating variables. This whole article is pointing out that historically, the most endorsed candidate ends up winning the nomination, which has happened long before the current situation

KHarvey16 · Apr 10, 2020

Fugu said:
Maybe you find their explanation to be reasonable and sufficient, but I don't. The reason that I don't is simple: They don't address the confounding variables, much less how they've accounted for them. It's not much more than a blind belief, and it's ludicrously unscientific.

As I said previously, the amount of work it would take to tear down the arguments in that article individually when my assertion is that their whole approach is flawed is simply beyond what I'm willing to do for internet points. This is all the more true when you consider that it's much easier to make an argument based on assigning too much weight to statistical evidence than it is to dismantle one, and that he's getting paid to do this and I'm not.

But the explanation doesn't require any of those variables! If the argument doesn't need them, why must they be included? If a portion of the argument is wrong and therefore there is a need for more variables to explain things, where are they wrong? This isn't a request for a line by line take-down here, it's just a question about what parts you think are flawed enough to remove or modify and add or replace with those other factors.

Jimrpg · Apr 10, 2020

ApatheticDolphin said:
Do you really think that if Bernie had been even more hostile to the party that he would have won?

Toxi said:
So Bernie would have won the democratic primary by... Not participating in the Democratic primary?

What even is this sort of take? What do you think constitutes "fighting against them"? Going third party? Going Republican (LOL)?

I'm saying with hindsight, looking back at the whole campaign, the media narratives, the coalescing of the presidential candidates at the 11th hour for Joe Biden, the disparity in the exit polls vs some of the results, the $500b spent by Bloomberg to distract the fact that Bernie was gaining momentum. The elite knew they could fix the results if they wanted to, probably did if they had to retain power.

Bernie probably knew all of this, and that he was never going to win. He spent all his time talking anti-establishment and then voted for the bill that gave $4T to the corps, the grandstanding speeches by Bernie and AOC but ended up voting for anyway. I know people will say - what did you expect them to do? But it runs counter to their messaging. And makes it clear they are where they are because they can challenge the power, but never actually take power.

Aaronrules380 · Apr 10, 2020

I also think separating things like media bias and DNC preference from his failure to expand his base and build bridges with the rest of the party is dumb in the first place since the latter is what led to the former. It's also why I can't imagine Sanders ever being an effective president since even with a democratic congress I see him having a hard time getting stuff through

and I actually prefer Sanders to Biden and would've voted for him in my primary had I not gotten distracted by the COVID situation

FootChar · Apr 10, 2020

Toxi said:
Who is "the voter" here? Biden had more votes.

Leftists need to stop preaching to their own choir. What do you actually "learn" from that "lesson"? What are you actually going to change in your approach? Or if you think it's only the people who voted for Biden who need the lesson, how are you going to convince them they need it? Their candidate won.

Biden had more votes only after the DNC chose him to be the frontrunner and the media portrayed it as such. But the action I see online from the 'blue no matter who' crowd is to scold everyone to plug their nose and vote Biden. They'll either be convinced when Trump wins 4 more years or they'll never be convinced at all.

As for leftists, I'm seeing more and more pushes for grassroot activism and primarying out the centrist liberals. I'm not sure what other approach they should take, but the DNC as it is clearly does not represent them.

Jimrpg · Apr 10, 2020

Imp the Dimp said:
I've been wondering this myself. Coalition building is important in politics. More often than not you won't get away with antagonizing everyone on your way. At the very least you should not be surprised that nobody got your back when it matters, this ain't some grand DNC conspiracy. Sanders is a bad politician with some good ideas. A better candidate with better political instincts will come along. Compromizing and coalising is part of the game, no matter how mad it makes the die hard Bernie fans. At the end of the day the only thing that matters is to get shit done, and not earn purity points on Twitter. Pushing through a watered down bill is probably better than your perfect bill that'll only ever exist on paper.

The fact that even Tulsi joined Biden. Tulsi the most anti-establishment, talking truth to power (at least in the debates last year), siding with the establishment and not Bernie, shows how influential the elite can be.

As Yanis Varoufakis said " You're either an outsider talking truth to power and the elite will jettison you. Or you can be an insider and make some small change." - That's what ultimately all of the dem candidates ended up doing - all the way from Pete Buttigieg to Andrew Yang.

And while in general I 100% agree that in politics you have to build coalitions, I think the whole democratic primary was a sham (probably has been for some time) and it was all staged. Logic would say the progressives like Warren, Tulsi, Yang, Steyer or even someone like Beto would get behind Bernie IF they wanted their policies enacted. How do you not build that coalition, a child could do it. The other candidates wanted it for themselves and the establishment stopped them.

Kusagari · Apr 10, 2020

I said it back when it happened and it remains as true today.

Bernie running as an Independent again in 2018 was his biggest mistake.

meowdi gras · Apr 10, 2020

Many of my more privileged friends (white, straight, cis, middle class or higher) decided they didn't like Bernie for President because after four years of Trump, they didn't want--to use their own wording--"another angry old guy shouting on TV". In short, they wanted a return to that magical era called "Civility™", where politicians never rocked the boats they floated along smoothly in and, in fact, allowed them to entirely forget about politics 98% of the time.

Essentially, it's a Jimmy Carter 2: Geriatric Boogaloo scenario playing out. (Except they mistake Biden for a decent human being like Carter.)

KHarvey16 · Apr 10, 2020

It gets to be gross when people remove any kind of agency from a person and assign their actions to simply being unduly influenced.

krazen · Apr 10, 2020

arbok26 said:
The fact that even Tulsi joined Biden. Tulsi the most anti-establishment, talking truth to power (at least in the debates last year), siding with the establishment and not Bernie, shows how influential the elite can be.

As Yanis Varoufakis said " You're either an outsider talking truth to power and the elite will jettison you. Or you can be an insider and make some small change." - That's what ultimately all of the dem candidates ended up doing - all the way from Pete Buttigieg to Andrew Yang.

And while in general I 100% agree that in politics you have to build coalitions, I think the whole democratic primary was a sham (probably has been for some time) and it was all staged. Logic would say the progressives like Warren, Tulsi, Yang, Steyer or even someone like Beto would get behind Bernie IF they wanted their policies enacted. How do you not build that coalition, a child could do it. The other candidates wanted it for themselves and the establishment stopped them.

If by Tulsi being Democratic machine anti-establishment means that she's really a moderate member of the GOP, then yes, I agree.

It's politics, you build coalitions quid pro quo, helping with each other's campaigns, etc. Saying 'they are all progressives in policy thus they should all be together' doesn't factor in the very nature of politics.

Fugu · Apr 10, 2020

KHarvey16 said:
But the explanation doesn't require any of those variables! If the argument doesn't need them, why must they be included? If a portion of the argument is wrong and therefore there is a need for more variables to explain things, where are they wrong? This isn't a request for a line by line take-down here, it's just a question about what parts you think are flawed enough to remove or modify and add or replace with those other factors.

I don't feel that there's any value in cherry-picking what can and can't stay if I'm saying that the methodology is flawed.

The argument "needs" to address the other plausible explanations for the events to be of much use as a hypothesis.

PlantedUnicorn · Apr 10, 2020

I keep seeing this sentiment that Biden only won cause the moderates decided to coalesce around him thus propelling him to the front runner and that makes no sense to me.

1. It's a fucking election, endorsements happen all the time
2. Didn't these endorsements happen after Biden won South Carolina convincingly?
3. After what happened in SC. Pete and Amy legit had absolutely no shot to the nomination seeing as more southern states were coming up? What do you want them to do? Stay in and keep burning money for an election they were not going to win.

If Bernie winning the nomination hinged on him coming out of a crowded field? How strong of a nominee was he anyways?

Lastly this portrayal of the DNC and the "establishment" as shadowy figures that could steal elections is still weird. No one stole the primary from Bernie in 2016 and no one stole it from it now. His message just didn't resonate with the majority of the people that vote in the Democratic Primary and that's it.

BlastProcessing · Apr 10, 2020

arbok26 said:
I'm saying with hindsight, looking back at the whole campaign, the media narratives, the coalescing of the presidential candidates at the 11th hour for Joe Biden, the disparity in the exit polls vs some of the results, the $500b spent by Bloomberg to distract the fact that Bernie was gaining momentum. The elite knew they could fix the results if they wanted to, probably did if they had to retain power.

Bernie probably knew all of this, and that he was never going to win. He spent all his time talking anti-establishment and then voted for the bill that gave $4T to the corps, the grandstanding speeches by Bernie and AOC but ended up voting for anyway. I know people will say - what did you expect them to do? But it runs counter to their messaging. And makes it clear they are where they are because they can challenge the power, but never actually take power.

Disparity in the exit polls? Are we peddling conspiracy theories here?

KHarvey16 · Apr 10, 2020

Fugu said:
I don't feel that there's any value in cherry-picking what can and can't stay if I'm saying that the methodology is flawed.

The argument "needs" to address the other plausible explanations for the events to be of much use as a hypothesis.

An argument is free to not address factors that aren't required to successfully make the argument. There needs to be a shortcoming or flaw with what's been presented if your idea is that some element is missing. And therefore it's just circular to argue the problem is the missing elements. You're not describing an inherent flaw of the explanation so you're not presenting any reason to introduce additional elements.

FootChar · Apr 10, 2020

KHarvey16 said:
It gets to be gross when people remove any kind of agency from a person and assign their actions to simply being unduly influenced.

Not a sentiment I see very often when it comes to those influenced by Fox News or facebook feed

Zornack · Apr 10, 2020

arbok26 said:
the $500b spent by Bloomberg to distract the fact that Bernie was gaining momentum.

hahah so the guy who took voters away from Biden was actually hurting Bernie's campaign?

excelsiorlef · Apr 10, 2020

Hobbes said:
Off the top of my head, it would be Carlos Maza and Ezra Klien. There's a few others that I'd have to pull up but it's certainly not Nate.

Almost like the article has been up for almost 4 hours now. But keep trying, I'm sure you'll figure a way out to get the "gotcha" moment off.

Part of my issue with Nate's take is that he is assuming that Sander's didn't learn from 2016's presidential election, and that cost them. He notes that Sandra's got stuck in a lane, and that lane cost him. That "lane" is that Sanders decided that he needed to be even more progressive than he was in 2016. But that progressiveness, coupled with the hate for Trump, paved the path for more progressive candidates to take office in other areas, it raised up a huge sign to other interested parties like Andrew Yang that YES, you can totally begin making these policies like UBI more prominent in the American people's minds by starting a presidential campaign.

Most of these candidates know they aren't going to win. Part of them doing these races is to bring attention to their platforms, which they hope eventually gets adopted by maybe the more mainstream candidate.

And if you think about how far left Bernie is, I'd say its a safe bet that he knows he's not going to win, but knows its important to keep these types of platforms and policy changes active in people's head. He's going to fight to win, but he's not going to take the L like it's a big problem. Biden has already slowly adopted some stances on student debt and medicare for all.

I don't think Sanders learned the wrong lessons. I think he knew exactly what he was doing by running the campaign that he ran. Did it cost him? Absolutely. But there are more factors at play for why Bernie isn't the nominee than just being stuck in a lane, and heavily relying on a fixed based of voters, and some of the other points made in the article.

Namely, I think what cost him the most, his that he's very much not a proper, party aligned democrat.

Wait your argument is Nate's take is bad because Sanders never planned to win?

KHarvey16 · Apr 10, 2020

FootChar said:
Not a sentiment I see very often when it comes to those influenced by Fox News or facebook feed

The point of that type of argument is to be denigrating. I think it's just an oversimplification when talking about racism and hate, but it's gross when used to dismiss something so comparatively benign as an endorsement.

krazen · Apr 10, 2020

excelsiorlef said:
Wait your argument is Nate's take is bad because Sanders never planned to win?

LOL. I read that too and got confused.

FiveThirtyEight: Sanders — And The Media — Learned The Wrong Lessons From Trump In 2016

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