Biden's got this.

In the 5+ years that Bernie has essentially been campaigning nonstop, he has never broadened his coalition ideologically, he never found any allies from within the party (AOC et al. are insurgents too), and he only ever broadened his coalition demographically once (when he started pandering to neglected latinos). No matter how terrible a candidate Biden is, now that the party has circled the wagons around him, he's not gonna lose to such a factional candidate.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 6 2020 12:09pm

while this is true he never had to if his strategy worked. with 13% or so of millennial there was SO much room to move up if he could just mobilize them to vote.

he has however reached out and tried to grab up votes from the black coalition, he's just going up against Biden so it's not really working.

i think moving to center ideologically would have been a bad move, his whole brand is "ive been this way for thirty years".

He could, and should, have reached out to left-leaning party figures like Warren or Stacey Abrams. Moving slightly toward the center ideologically wouldnt have hurt Bernie, but made him more acceptable to center-left voters. The anti-Sanders-backlash that we saw on Super Tuesday (high suburb and college-educated white turnout in favor of Biden) is what killed him. It was never realistic for him to boost the turnout among his own coalition so much that he could overcome this kind of mobilization from the other side. Even if his people had shown up in stronger but still realistic numbers, he wouldnt have gotten the kind of runaway delegate lead out of Super Tuesday that he needed to clinch the nomination.

Say after Super Tuesday Bernie has a 70 delegate lead over Biden because he got 20% millenial turnout instead of 13% (more than 1.5 times as high!) - that would still not have been enough for him. In this scenario, he still would fall short of the 50% goal line, and the margin of his plurality over Biden heading into the convention would still be small enough that Biden comes out of it as the nominee.

bernie risks losing more of the progressive vote than he stands to gain by splitting the moderate vote imo.

to whom did he risk losing the progressive vote? Warren?
I'm not talking about splitting the moderate vote btw, I'm talking about Bernie toning down his rhetoric to the point where he doesnt trigger an anti-Sanders mobilization from moderates.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 6 2020 12:35pm

The progressive vote will just stay home if they don't have somebody to vote for. He risks losing them to lack of hype.

in the early stages yes, risk losing it to warren amid "im the real progressive candidate" narratives.

in recent time losing to people staying home that already stay home at an 87% rate amid "see they're all the same and ur vote doesnt matter" narratives.

and what issues specifically could he have moved on? healthcare? by doing what? admitting his medicare for all plan was never realistic to implement and admitting he's just like Biden? i just dont see it.

Again: I'm not talking about Bernie stopping to be a progressive, I'm talking about him toning down a little bit and reaching out to the rest of the party a little bit.

Essentially, that's my point: in any scenario where the moderates get mobilized against Sanders, no realistic level of hype among Bernie's base could have overcome that. That he did get both, an anti-Sanders backlash AND disappointing turnout from his own base, is just the icing on the cake.

It's the unfortunate consequence of being a genuine candidate. If you tone it down it looks like you're selling out, if you keep going you alienate people who are scared of change, and the latter outweighs the former because that's just the consequences of a first-past-the-post voting system, people have to moderate their votes instead of voting for who they actually want.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Mar 6 2020 12:43pm

firstly, ANY movement to center will be read as the death of his progressive label. his brand is that he's been steadfast for 30 years. he's stuck.

secondly, while it may not be realistic 85% non-voters is a LOT of room for upward movement. a LOT.



we are really in sync today!

This post was edited by thesnipa on Mar 6 2020 12:44pm