Cont: 2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker Part IV

Well, at least we have an idea what percentage of Sanders Supporters are brain damaged morons...

From; https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...orters-vote-trump-over-biden-poll/2936124001/
If former Vice President Joe BIden secures the Democratic presidential nomination, 15% of Sen. Bernie Sanders' supporters will vote for President Donald Trump's re-election, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll.

Yup... after seeing what Trump has done for the past 3 years... his racism, his tax cuts for millionaires, and his screw-ups over Covid-19 that will probably result in hundreds of unnecessary deaths, there is still a significant number of BernieBros who would rather pick Stubby McBonespurs instead of a Democrat who does not offer all of Sander's policies, but is sure the heck closer politically than Trump.

(The article does point out that in a similar poll in 2016, the number of Sanders to Trump voters ended up being smaller on election day than the poll selected. But seriously, the number should be 0.)

And please... any BernieBros who will jump in with a "But, but... Clinton supporters".... keep your "what-aboutisms" in your pants.

So they are Trump supporters.

I have it on good authority that it is impossible for people who vote Trump to do so because Biden isn’t progressive enough. This has been a constant refrain. Also, there is no lost tribe, apparently, until there is one then it is “how dare they not vote for the most electable candidate!”

Okay, so why was Bernie so bad? Because if he were the nominee, then Biden fans would perfectly understandably sit out the election or vote Trump, unlike the treacherous Bernie fans who would do the same if Biden is the nominee.
 
So they are Trump supporters.

I have it on good authority that it is impossible for people who vote Trump to do so because Biden isn’t progressive enough. This has been a constant refrain. Also, there is no lost tribe, apparently, until there is one then it is “how dare they not vote for the most electable candidate!”

Okay, so why was Bernie so bad? Because if he were the nominee, then Biden fans would perfectly understandably sit out the election or vote Trump, unlike the treacherous Bernie fans who would do the same if Biden is the nominee.

I think, and this is just my opinion mind you, that Bernie was bad because he couldn't get people to vote for him. Not in 2016, and not in 2020. He gets a few people to make lots of comments on social media, but when it comes to voting for him they either can't be bothered, or just flat out can't. Social media is full of bots and trolls who aren't legal to vote in this country.

We actually have a Bernie fan in another thread today saying that Trump is more progressive than Biden. This after 3.5 years of Trump proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he isn't. I find Sanders to be abrasive, idealistic, and to have caused the Democratic party a lot of problems with his divisive rhetoric and failure to support the party he wants to lead, but I would vote for him in a heartbeat were it Sanders Vs. Trump. For a progressive, or liberal, or even a moderate to vote Trump, or to not vote for the only candidate who can beat Trump, is frankly ******* crazy.
 
I think, and this is just my opinion mind you, that Bernie was bad because he couldn't get people to vote for him. Not in 2016, and not in 2020. He gets a few people to make lots of comments on social media, but when it comes to voting for him they either can't be bothered, or just flat out can't. Social media is full of bots and trolls who aren't legal to vote in this country.

We actually have a Bernie fan in another thread today saying that Trump is more progressive than Biden. This after 3.5 years of Trump proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he isn't. I find Sanders to be abrasive, idealistic, and to have caused the Democratic party a lot of problems with his divisive rhetoric and failure to support the party he wants to lead, but I would vote for him in a heartbeat were it Sanders Vs. Trump. For a progressive, or liberal, or even a moderate to vote Trump, or to not vote for the only candidate who can beat Trump, is frankly ******* crazy.

That's how I view it, too.
 
I think we're in broad agreement. I would argue that people claiming now to have been told something decades ago is evidence that they were, but it's pretty weak evidence.

One reason I tend to discount is that it's so obviously promptable*.

"Hey bro, remember how I told you all about this, twenty years ago?"

"... Oh yeah, I totally remember that! Twenty years ago. Right, right."

There's a reason cops try to question suspects separately, and get a full account from each, before telling any of them what the other versions of the story are supposed to be.

(There's also a reason why unrecorded confessions are also dubious; because cops can do the same kind of prompting, even more so.)

---
*I'm not saying that it was prompted in this case. Just that the promptability is a confounding factor that undermines the evidentiary value of the testimony.
 
Last edited:
I think, and this is just my opinion mind you, that Bernie was bad because he couldn't get people to vote for him. Not in 2016, and not in 2020. He gets a few people to make lots of comments on social media, but when it comes to voting for him they either can't be bothered, or just flat out can't. Social media is full of bots and trolls who aren't legal to vote in this country.

We actually have a Bernie fan in another thread today saying that Trump is more progressive than Biden.

This seems to be based on some fantasy that Dolt 45 (who wants to kick 25 million people off their insurance plans, bring back lifetime caps and rescission, and end the medicaid expansion) is going to propose Medicare for all in a masterful move that everyone will believe, while Biden (who has proposed a public option) wants people to die, but was rammed down their throats by "the establishment".

IOW, the Bernie Stans are in their usual frenzy again, entirely unaware that people either don't hear them, or Sanders, at all, or find them repellent to the point they simply refuse to support Sanders out of spite.

This after 3.5 years of Trump proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he isn't. I find Sanders to be abrasive, idealistic, and to have caused the Democratic party a lot of problems with his divisive rhetoric and failure to support the party he wants to lead, but I would vote for him in a heartbeat were it Sanders Vs. Trump. For a progressive, or liberal, or even a moderate to vote Trump, or to not vote for the only candidate who can beat Trump, is frankly ******* crazy.

Same. Hell, I half hoped he'd win, just to see what they do when he fails to geet much done. Would they rage out like they do for Obama, or vote for him again? Neither one would speak well of them, but since I think they suck anyway...
 
Last edited:
Re: Sanders and his supporters...
Same. Hell, I half hoped he'd win, just to see what they do when he fails to geet much done.
I'd be curious about how they would react if he won the Democratic nomination but lost the general election.

Rather than admitting those "lost tribes" of left-wing voters never existed, or that going extreme is not the best choice for an election, would they try to argue that it was still somehow the fault of mainstream/establishment democrats?
 
What is it exactly that people like about Biden other than "he was Obama's VP" and "he's electable"?

Tell me what about him is better than the other 20 candidates that we had because I don't see it other than he is the corporate choice and the corporate media has endorsed him as the candidate to beat trump from before he was even in the race.
 
What is it exactly that people like about Biden other than "he was Obama's VP" and "he's electable"?

Seems like one of the main talking points for him right now is that he's a decent man. Impressive, right?

Tell me what about him is better than the other 20 candidates that we had because I don't see it other than he is the corporate choice and the corporate media has endorsed him as the candidate to beat trump from before he was even in the race.

He was being pushed as the risk mitigation candidate from the start, which is compelling when fear and getting Trump out are the biggest concerns at work. That was always his main selling point.

Warren is better than him in just about every way, of course.
 
Bypassing a few posts of lies about Bernie supporters (but oh no it's the Bernie supporters who are bad people, not the perfect angelic Biden supporters who keep lying about them!) to get to a presumably honest question about us...

Re: Sanders and his supporters...

I'd be curious about how they would react if he won the Democratic nomination but lost the general election.

...would they try to argue that it was still somehow the fault of mainstream/establishment democrats?
Well, it would be, in the sense that any election loss is always partially the "fault" of people who might have been expected to vote for that candidate but didn't... just the same as a Biden loss would be partially the "fault" of Democrats who didn't vote for Biden, and a Trump loss would be partially the "fault" of Republicans who didn't vote for Trump, and a Yyblax of Zebulon loss would be partially the "fault" of members of the Vonla'br'ugk Party who didn't vote for Yyblax...

I don't think I get what point anybody would be making by pointing out such a basic universal thing, though, or what point you would even wonder if we were making. You certainly can't be saying this would be a difference between Bernie and Biden supporters, can you? I see Biden supporters already starting in on that, and he hasn't even lost yet.

Rather than admitting those "lost tribes" of left-wing voters never existed...
Really, we're back to the "lost tribes" mantra now? I thought that might have gone the way of the "we don't need no stinking progressives moderates" and we might have moved on to "You're eating veal! It's veeal! It's made from veeeeeeaaalll!!!!".

...or that going extreme is not the best choice for an election...
Bernie's not extreme. He's the only actual centrist. Without him, we'll get a contest between two right-wingers arguing over which feather on that wing is better. But one of his failings as a campaigner has been not framing it that way enough. (And going too easy on fellow Democrats in general.)

But again, the thing about there not being enough voters is kind of built in to the premise of a loss in the first place; it's true no matter who loses or what kind of campaign they lost with. Are you trying to get at the issue of why more people don't vote our way? Again it's a pretty generic idea; one could wonder why more people don't vote any particular way, so again, I'm not getting why you would expect it to be more noteworthy regarding any one candidate in particular than any other, unless it's because Bernie is much closer to what the people want than Biden or Trump. So the question would really be (and already is, even without your hypothetical scenario) why don't people vote for the candidate whose positions on issues are most like their own. And people have tried to figure that out for a long time. "What's The Matter With Kansas" is 16 years old and even that probably wasn't the first. I imagine that the answer is a complex list of answers weighted differently in different people, including the "ELECTABLE!!!!!" myth, the "socialism" myth(s), miseducation or noneducation on what different political & economic systems & theories & their results are in general, mainstream media corporations' hostility to non-corporatists, unawareness of which politician stands for what on which issues, internal machinations within a party, election manipulation both within primaries and in general elections, the huge financial advantages wielded by corporations thanks to our system of legal bribery and private funding of election campaigns, and more that didn't come to mind while I was typing the sentence.

Short answer: every election has a loss, and those losses are determined by... the same old things that have always determined all other losses.

What is it exactly that people like about Biden other than "he was Obama's VP" and "he's electable"?

Tell me what about him is better than the other 20 candidates that we had because I don't see it other than he is the corporate choice and the corporate media has endorsed him as the candidate to beat trump from before he was even in the race.
His personality/style fits in with the overall mentality that people have gotten so used to from Democrats that it feels like home. Unfortunately, that general overall theme is "weak-willed, befuddled, beaten-down; loser", but still, it's so intertwined with the definition of "Democrat" lately that a Democrat who isn't constantly looking for the next opportunity to capitulate just in case they might lose again is an alien concept to try to wrap one's mind around.
 
Last edited:
What is it exactly that people like about Biden other than "he was Obama's VP" and "he's electable"?
Maybe some Biden supporters like his policies.

Maybe his supporters want expanded health care coverage, but they don't think BernieCare is the way to go (given the fact that it has resulted in waiting lists in the only major country that has tried it) and are happy with the idea of expanded coverage through enhanced Obamacare with a public option.

Maybe they think that Biden's plan of providing 2 years of free college (along with grants and other improvements) is a better idea than the more generous Sanders plan, because it provides enough support for disadvantaged students without the higher burden on taxpayers that Sander's plan would cause.

Maybe they are concerned that Sanders might try to implement protectionist trade policies (since he was opposed to things like NAFTA) and they actually prefer more, not less, global trade. After all, we've seen what happened when Trump started messing with international trade... Farmers lost markets, costs to U.S. consumers started to increase, etc.

Maybe they think Sander's policy of national rent controls would result in a shortage of available housing to tenants.

Maybe they favor Biden's policy of more nuclear power use, compared to Sander's plan to end new reactor construction. (Significant, considering both candidates want to reduce carbon emissions, and nuclear power could be a significant factor in reaching emissions goals).

Maybe they think that a strong military (and a willingness to use it) is important and think that Biden would be the best to follow that ideal. (Not that they want the U.S. to get into any more Iraq-style wars, but thing that the U.S. military has a role in addressing situations where oppression and open conflict exists)

Maybe they respect the fact that Biden has actually been a long-term Democrat, and as such would be better able to enact policies with support from other Democrats, compared to Sanders who has adopted the image of the "outsider" and has criticized the "elite" democrats.

Maybe they think that while Biden may not be a perfect candidate (e.g. his history of verbal gaffs, his "touchy feely" habit with women), he still has better political instincts than "Comrade Sanders", who couldn't even recognize that maybe its not such a good idea to talk about how good Castro was on education when he might have to fight an election in Florida.
 
What is it exactly that people like about Biden other than "he was Obama's VP" and "he's electable"?

Tell me what about him is better than the other 20 candidates that we had because I don't see it other than he is the corporate choice and the corporate media has endorsed him as the candidate to beat trump from before he was even in the race.

Don't ask me, since my faves (Harris, Warren, Castro) are all out before I could vote.

Mayor Pete, Andrew Yang, and Bernie Sanders all have massive problems with the Dem's base, clearly - and I said so soon after they entered.

Bloomberg is simply a wooden, stiff authoritarian. He's my one "absolute no" of the bunch.

No particular issue with Booker, although man that guy's corny.

Gabbard is practically a conservative - she even goes on Tucker Carlson's White Power Hour - and I'm...not.

And the rest...um, who even were they? Never mind, nobody cared.

So, since I get to pick Biden vs. Sanders, and Sanders (and his loudly ignorant supporters) are both repellent to the dem's base, and unable to explain how they're going to make their "revolution" work, it's Biden. Frankly, I expect people like Rev. Barber have better odds of pushing through radical change by organizing from the outside in, in any case.
 
Last edited:
What is it exactly that people like about Biden other than "he was Obama's VP" and "he's electable"?

Tell me what about him is better than the other 20 candidates that we had because I don't see it other than he is the corporate choice and the corporate media has endorsed him as the candidate to beat trump from before he was even in the race.
At this point, why?
 
...Bernie's not extreme. He's the only actual centrist. Without him, we'll get a contest between two right-wingers arguing over which feather on that wing is better. But one of his failings as a campaigner has been not framing it that way enough. (And going too easy on fellow Democrats in general.)
This is in the past. The primaries are effectively done. Sanders is effectively done. How do you intend to vote in the general?
 
Re: Sanders and his supporters...

I'd be curious about how they would react if he won the Democratic nomination but lost the general election.

Rather than admitting those "lost tribes" of left-wing voters never existed, or that going extreme is not the best choice for an election, would they try to argue that it was still somehow the fault of mainstream/establishment democrats?

Oh, in that case, I expect that to be a disaster in any case.

Course, I (correctly) expected the same in 2016 if Dolt 45 won, but I'd expect a far larger disaster if he does again.

The main problem with the Bernie Stans is that, like the far larger group of Fox/Limbaugh lunatics who make up the GOP base, they're prone to conspiracy theory, purity tests, and disasterbation. I dunno what they're doing now that they have an actual disaster that they helped cause, and I don't really care - they have no understanding of voting strategically, so they just freak out and either don't vote at all, or vote third party. And while I said I'd never vote Bloomberg, Maryland is very safe in any case. Cheeto Benito has been plainly the worst possible choice since he started pushing birtherism. In another state, the math would change, although either would be awful.


But hey, they now have their planet-wide disaster they wanted to wack off to. And White PeopleTM, the brand name not every white American, got it as well.

Have y'all collectively thought about not voting? You seem to like putting people who want you dead and the US economy ruined into power, and nonwhite people...well, we don't, and you're getting worse. Maybe White PeopleTM just should be banned from voting until they can figure out what the hell is going on.

;)
 
Maybe some Biden supporters like his policies.

Maybe his supporters want expanded health care coverage, but they don't think BernieCare is the way to go (given the fact that it has resulted in waiting lists in the only major country that has tried it) and are happy with the idea of expanded coverage through enhanced Obamacare with a public option.

Maybe they think that Biden's plan of providing 2 years of free college (along with grants and other improvements) is a better idea than the more generous Sanders plan, because it provides enough support for disadvantaged students without the higher burden on taxpayers that Sander's plan would cause.

Maybe they are concerned that Sanders might try to implement protectionist trade policies (since he was opposed to things like NAFTA) and they actually prefer more, not less, global trade. After all, we've seen what happened when Trump started messing with international trade... Farmers lost markets, costs to U.S. consumers started to increase, etc.

Maybe they think Sander's policy of national rent controls would result in a shortage of available housing to tenants.

Maybe they favor Biden's policy of more nuclear power use, compared to Sander's plan to end new reactor construction. (Significant, considering both candidates want to reduce carbon emissions, and nuclear power could be a significant factor in reaching emissions goals).

Maybe they think that a strong military (and a willingness to use it) is important and think that Biden would be the best to follow that ideal. (Not that they want the U.S. to get into any more Iraq-style wars, but thing that the U.S. military has a role in addressing situations where oppression and open conflict exists)

Maybe they respect the fact that Biden has actually been a long-term Democrat, and as such would be better able to enact policies with support from other Democrats, compared to Sanders who has adopted the image of the "outsider" and has criticized the "elite" democrats.

Maybe they think that while Biden may not be a perfect candidate (e.g. his history of verbal gaffs, his "touchy feely" habit with women), he still has better political instincts than "Comrade Sanders", who couldn't even recognize that maybe its not such a good idea to talk about how good Castro was on education when he might have to fight an election in Florida.

That is a fair argument in comparison with Sanders that I can see some people supporting. Though many of the things you mention were also promoted by other more centrist candidates with less baggage.
 
That is a fair argument in comparison with Sanders that I can see some people supporting. Though many of the things you mention were also promoted by other more centrist candidates with less baggage.
True there were other candidates with similar policies and less baggage. (Personally I might have preferred Booker.). But at this point it's a 2-person race, so the comparisons to Sanders is most relevant.

Sent from my LM-X320 using Tapatalk
 
His personality/style fits in with the overall mentality that people have gotten so used to from Democrats that it feels like home. Unfortunately, that general overall theme is "weak-willed, befuddled, beaten-down; loser", but still, it's so intertwined with the definition of "Democrat" lately that a Democrat who isn't constantly looking for the next opportunity to capitulate just in case they might lose again is an alien concept to try to wrap one's mind around.

Yeah, that's exactly the phrase I think of when anyone mentions Obama. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Jesus, Delvo, try visiting Planet Earth once in a while.
 
Hmmm, Tara Reade's accusation of Biden sexually assaulting her has fallen on deaf ears at fake news. If only she had two front doors or had personally attended ten gang bangs she would be believed.
 
How do you intend to vote in the general?
Probably not at all.

For one thing, if my state is ever in danger of going red so it really needs all the extra blue votes it can get to avoid the flip, it won't matter on the national scale because we'd already have about 47 other red states by then anyway. A bunch of us here could even vote for Trump just to try to make a point and New York would still be blue; the only difference would be how wide the margin was.

But, on the premises both that Biden is the nominee and that my vote could possibly contribute anything to a real-world outcome...

There's no way I could vote for Trump. But I'm also far from convinced to vote for Biden either. There just isn't a single positive thing about him. His established pattern is exactly that of a Republican oligarch and nobody's come up with a reason to think he'll suddenly reverse that now, especially not when he keeps telling us himself that he won't. So either way I'd be participating in doing harm to my country, just not in the same ways, in the hope that maybe the guy I'm voting for might continue sinking us slightly slower than the other guy will continue sinking us.

If the next term of office that's being voted on right now were all there were to it, then yes, I'd vote for the lesser of the two evils without hesitation. But there's also a bigger picture. There are a lot more trumps, and even worse, out there for the Republicans to throw at us in later elections. The only real question is what kind of "opposition" party we will have against them, and I don't want to vote in a way that weakens their "opposition" in the long run. Stopping this one short in a way that ushers in the next several more after him is a net win for trumpiness.

Yeah, that's exactly the phrase I think of when anyone mentions Obama. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Picking an example that stands out from the crowd does not redefine the crowd as being like him; if it were, he wouldn't stand out from it. And even aside from that, his real separation from a standard Democrat is limited. He made speeches that sounded bold in tone (and won the elections that way), but were short on detail of how he was going to actually govern to match that tone, and they didn't match. (And even just looking at those assertive-sounding speeches themselves, they involved a pattern of limp, naïve idolization of bipartisanship with a party that has no interest in bipartisanship.) And his signature domestic policy achievement was the opposition's bill, resulting from a process in which he started off at the already-compromised position and then still ceded more ground after that, yielding something which now serves in politics primarily as the biggest obstacle to real universal health care.

* * *

Bottom line about not only Obama but also my response to the previous quote: one party in this country has learned that sticking to your base and actually fighting against the other party wins. In order for things in this country to not just get better but even just quit getting worse, the other party needs to learn the same fact. Right now, they're insistent on kicking their own base while it's down and rolling over for the other party to kick all of us, and that's what a Biden win will only encourage more of. Biden is clearly not as awful as Trump, as individuals, so I'll be happy to vote for Biden... as soon as I'm convinced that his win wouldn't actually end up pushing the country even farther in Trump's direction in the long run.
 
Probably not at all.

For one thing, if my state is ever in danger of going red so it really needs all the extra blue votes it can get to avoid the flip, it won't matter on the national scale because we'd already have about 47 other red states by then anyway. A bunch of us here could even vote for Trump just to try to make a point and New York would still be blue; the only difference would be how wide the margin was.

And this, in a nutshell, is why I don't take seriously the "hIlLaRy wOn tHe pOpUlAr vOtE" meme. The way the US election system works, there are too many confounding factors to derive any kind of majoritarian legitimacy from the "popular vote".
 

Back
Top Bottom