The Volokh Conspiracy
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Bernie Makes Good on His Promise to Increase Turnout
I cast my first vote in a Democratic primary today
Part of Bernie Sanders' pitch is that by motivated voters to turn out, he can beat Trump. Today, I and quite a few people I know who normally don't vote in Democratic primaries turned out to vote for Biden or Bloomberg because we are so appalled by the prospect of Bernie Corbynizing the Democratic Party. I know other people who turned out to vote for Bernie because they think he's Trump's easiest-to-beat opponent. (I think that's a mistake for the same reason it was a mistake for Democrats to root for or even help Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries.) So mazel tov, Bernie, you increased turnout.
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I’ve given up making political predictions, especially since we are not living in normal political times, but here’s a possibility I’ll throw out:
Bernie is starting to look like Trump in 2016. His party establishment hates him, nobody thinks he can win in November, but the common folk who actually vote in primaries love him. So don’t laugh; Bernie Sanders may be our next president.
In fact, Bernie and Trump are basically the mirror image of each other: Populists who are running on public rage.
“common folk who actually vote in primaries love him”
He has gotten 26%, 25%, 47% and 19% so far.
His supporters are very, very loud, but maybe not so numerous.
That’s in a field with eight or ten candidates.
Did you miss my disclaimer that it wasn’t a prediction?
I am curious (without judging) if you would also support Biden/Bloomberg in the general election should they prevail.
You’re joking, right? Anyone who endorses Trump over Clinton isn’t suddenly going to switch to Biden or Bloomberg.
I’m not the biggest Bernie fan, but I would like to see what Bernstein’s associated book would look like should he win.
Who endorsed Trump over Clinton?
Yeah, I thought I recalled a post of yours doing exactly the opposite.
I apologise, I was going off memory. Comment entirely withdrawn.
To spare others the effort of googling, this is what you wrote:
I’d rather Hillary Clinton win. I’d rather (and I never thought I’d say this) Barack Obama serve a third term. I’d even rather Bernie Sanders win, though if it came down to Sanders vs. Trump it might be time to form a breakaway republic. If Trump wins the nomination, I will actively seek to prevent him from becoming president.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/02/nevertrump/
Realistically, if Biden were to win, we’d be electing his VP. That guy would be declared incompetent through the 25th amendment in his first year, he’s just a place holder.
That assumes he can make it to the general election without stroking out or being found wandering around lost at 3AM with no idea what year it is.
I could see somebody preferring Trump to Clinton, but not Trump to Bloomberg. It would have to be somebody with a serious case of TDS who doesn’t mind control freaks.
That, like impeachment, relies on problems so severe you get buy in from the president’s supporters. Good luck with that drumbeat.
Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that Trump thought he was running for the Senate.
Has there ever been a double standard so blatant?
Can I ask why you voted at all? 🙂
Voting is a waste of time.
Voting is a waste of time.
Says man posting in Internet political forum.
They are equally effective.
Reading and responding here at least can be amusing at times.
Voting can be feel fulfilling, as was discussed above.
“I cast my first vote in a Democratic primary today”
Planning to do the same. Not sure who I’m voting for yet.
I wonder if Repubs are voting for Bernie in CA and other open states. Just desserts for one-party states that did this so Democrats could muck about in Republican primaries.
I know “unaffiliated” voters who already voted for Sanders in CA because they felt a Sanders v. Trump contest would provide high contrast. They cast a long term strategic vote.
They felt that when the long term standard bearer of progressive/socialist views loses to Trump, who any moron should have beaten, it will finally result in the progressive wing of the Democratic party being taken behind the woodshed by Drill Sargent Pelosi and being “reeducated” – basically told to “sit down and shut up or start your own party”.
These voters felt that Sanders being the nominee would result in moving the Democratic party from the far left ledge. In response, the Republican party would have no choice but to retreat from the far right ledge or become irrelevant. Then, the US could return to slightly less partisan politics and no longer have embarrassments like Trump or Sanders or AOC getting any oxygen.
In order to retreat from a position, you have to occupy it first. A communist who calls himself a “democratic socialist” is within striking distance of the Democratic nomination. Where’s the neo-Nazi giving Trump a hard fight for his nomination?
The Democratic party has been moving left so fast they’re leaving a vapor trail, while the Republican party has been pretty much ideologically static. This does open up a widening gap between the two, but doesn’t constitute the Republicans going “far right”.
The GOP has been steadily creeping leftward for over half a century now.
That’s not the GOP, it’s the country, Az. It’s called progress.
The DNC has been supersonic transporting left for eighty years, so there’s a widening gap.
Here’s another interesting what if. Suppose that Bernie wins the electoral college but not the popular vote. That’s a possibility if Trump carries the red states by 90% or so, and Sanders only squeaks by in some of the blue states. I wonder if Republicans will then continue to have the enthusiasm they currently do for the electoral college.
A hypothetical that depends on a 90% to 10% margin is not worth engaging.
You don’t think that if it’s Trump v Sanders, that Trump might carry places like Idaho, Mississippi and South Carolina by 90%? Although even if it’s only 80%, my suggested hypo would still be within the realm of possibility, especially if Sanders then carried Ohio and Pennsylvania by 51% or so.
Try providing actual data and arithmetic.
Meh. It’s theoretically possible. Just change all of the D states to “barely majority” and make all the R states “trounces”, and you get the D candidate winning the electoral college with a minority of the popular vote, just as Republicans have done a few times now.
Likely? No at all. We’re more likely to have both Trump and the D candidate die by strokes of lightning on Halloween then have the D candidate win the electoral but lose the popular. But that’s what makes it a “what if?”, and not a realistic scenario.
“even if it’s only 80%”
No one ever gets 80% in a state in a presidential election. Darn few even 60%.
Utah is the “reddest” state and in 2012 with a Mormon running, he got 71, Obama got the same in Hawaii. That is the maximum outside of DC.
No. Not even close. In 1984, a blow-out election for Reagan, the best he did was 74.5% in Utah, and only 4 states were above 70%. To think that Trump might get 90% in several states is delusional.
If nothing else, once you know your candidate is going to win by a significant margin, then you have no reason to go to the polls. It’s like scoring extra runs in a blowout victory in game 2 of the World Series. It’s an academic exercise that doesn’t change anything.
Although I don’t see this happening, remember that we’ve never had an avowed Socialist running on a major party ticket in modern history. With that situation, much higher margins of victory for Trump in some states could be conceivable – 90% may be a bit out of reach though.
I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 and wouldn’t vote for him in almost any scenario — that scenario being if Sanders is the Democratic nominee and there is even a remote chance that the Republicans wouldn’t hold the Senate.
The only thing I like about Trump is his nominees to the bench (but that’s mostly because he outsources that selection process to others – he would have no idea who to nominate). Oh, wait, there’s one more thing I like — the high blood pressure he induces in liberals who believe that if they can’t win elections they should be able to use legacy judges to achieve their policy goals.
Liberals would win elections if we had elections in which everybody’s vote counts the same, which means no electoral college and no two senator per state rule. If we actually had democratic elections, the Republicans would likely never hold power again.
That being the case, liberals are to be forgiven for using the only mechanism available to them to advance policy goals supported by majorities of the American people.
As the American electorate continues to improve (less rural, less backward, less religious, more diverse, more tolerant) the three pillars of the current national conservative electoral strategy — gerrymandering, voter suppression, structural amplification of backwater votes — will eventually lose effectiveness in maintaining Republican competitiveness in national elections and perhaps national politics.
Over the medium to long term, it appears, Republicans must change or die. A platform of backwardness, bigotry, and superstition will be suicidal not so far down the road.
I’m not sure that works out the way you think it would on all issues. For example, consider abortion. The majority of americans (53% latest Gallup poll on the matter) think abortion should only be legal in certain circumstances. (Never legal and always legal split the remainder pretty evenly). Those numbers have been near constant as long as Gallup has asked (since ’75).
A bare majority thinks abortion is morally wrong (irrespective of legality).
Large majorities think abortion should be illegal after the first 3 months.
A small majority thinks it should be illegal to have an abortion even in the first 3 months if the reason is just because the mother doesn’t want the child.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
Might want to run through a list of policy positions you support, and see how they’d fare if the majority could just have its way on everything. You might be surprised.
It’s not going to work out that way on *all* issues, but it will on a significant number. A majority of Americans supports national health care, for example.
And on the abortion issue, the Republicans aren’t giving us any of the nuanced positions you’ve articulated. They want a flat ban. A majority of Americans may not think it should be legal right up until the minute the baby’s head enters the birth canal, but they don’t want a flat ban either. And much of the country will end up with a flat ban if Roe v Wade is overturned.
Basically every fact-based projection I’ve seen has it that, regardless of who the Democrat nominee is, Democrats are going to have to the popular vote by 4% or more to win the electoral college.
So it’s a pretty huge “what if”.
But sure, if Republicans won the popular vote but lost the electoral college, they’d jump right on-board the “abolish the electoral college!” train.
Doubtful, considering that up until the 2000 election the prevailing predictions were that Gore would win the Electoral College and that Bush would win the popular vote and AFAIK no Republican of any note said anything about how the popular vote should overrule the Electoral College.
I think 2012 is more relevant, don’t you?
A rather prominent Republican said that such a result would be invalid and should be ignored. This prominent Republican went on to become the presidential nominee and eventual victor in the general election in 2016.
“… rather prominent Republican …” in 2000 Election?
Donald Trump was registered Reform party member 1999-2001.
upto 1987 Democrat
1987 – 1999 Republican
1999 – 2001 Reform
2001 – 2009 Democrat
2009 – 2011 Republican
2011 – 2012 Independent
2012 – now Republican
Donald Trump was the none-of-the-above candidate (registered Democrat/Independent/Reform/Republican) who won the Republican primaries in the 2016 campaign because the Republican Party was running the usually bland meh candidates the primary voters did not want any more than they wanted Hillary.
Yes I am aware some Democrats voted for Trump in the Republican primaries because they expected Hillary to beat him. Well, mwah-hahaha on that.
I’m a Democrat who did not vote for Trump in the primary, but in fairness to the Democrats who did, it was not an irrational strategy at the time. They could not have predicted that Jim Comey would release his letter at just the right time to mortally wound the Clinton campaign, after the media had spent most of September and October talking about nothing except her emails and “both sides” nonsense. In a normal year, in which normal standards applied, a dead cat should have been able to beat Trump.
It’s not up to me (declared Independent since mid 2000s) to tell Republicans how to police their borders.
I believe Clinton (Bill) won at least one term while losing the popular vote. I don’t recall a similar energy to burn down the electoral college system that we saw after Trump won. I mean, part of it is knowing how the system works before you participate.
You believe wrongly.
In 1992, the popular vote was 44.9 mil – 39.1 mil – 19.7 mil, Clinton-Bush-Perot. Electoral vote was 370-168-0.
In 1996 it was 47.4 mil-39.2 mil – 8 mil (Clinton-Bush-Perot), with the electoral vote at 379-159.
Google is your friend. Because it’s not even close. He won by 5.8 million in 1992 and 8.3 million in 1996. Sure, they were pluralities, as Perot was running as well. But he won both popular votes handily.
I don’t think Google is his friend, actually.
I believe Clinton (Bill) won at least one term while losing the popular vote.
Clinton didn’t get a popular vote majority in either 1992 or 1996, because Perot drew a substantial number of votes – 19% in 1992 and 8.4% in 1996. In both elections Clinton heavily outpolled his Republican opponent.
Caphon,
You understand that Bill Clinton won a plurality of the vote both times, i.e., he had the most votes of any candidate (he won by 5.6% and 5M votes in 1992 and by 8.5% and 8M votes in 1996, but didn’t win an outright majority in either year because of Ross Perot). That is hardly the same thing as having fewer popular votes as Bush and Gore did (Gore won the popular vote by over 500,000 votes). Why would people be upset that the person (Clinton) who received the most popular votes (by a pretty big margin in either percentage or raw terms) also won the Electoral College? There is no reason there would be “similar energy to burn down the electoral system” after either of Clinton’s wins.
Don’t confuse the concepts of “popular vote” and “majority vote”.
Plurality: the most votes for any choice in an election, but not necessarily a majority
Couldn’t bring myself to vote in the Democratic primary here in S.C. Combination of not liking the idea of screwing with another party’s internal processes, and that there wasn’t anybody in the race I could stomach voting for anyway.
Open primaries have been around for a long time.
We’re talking South Carolina; It’s more a matter of the stupid Republicans inviting the Democrats to participate. Why do you suppose we can’t get rid of Senator “Gramnesty”?
In North Carolina, it is up to the political parties themselves whether other voters can vote their primary ballot. Surprisingly (at least to me), the two major parties opened their primaries, but the smaller parties – Libertarian and Green, I believe – kept their primary ballots closed.
I’m with you on both points particularly considering how in 2016 there were more than a few Democrats who voted for Trump in the 2016 in open primaries thinking that he would be the easier candidate for Clinton to beat.
Meh.
Personally, I think primaries shouldn’t be a state activity. If political parties want to hold a primary to determine their candidate, that’s their call, but the state shouldn’t be involved.
The only thing the state should care about is if people meet the criteria to show up on the general. If a party wants to rally around one person to try and make sure they meet the requirements that’s fine, but just having a “-D” or “-R” after your name should be irrelevant.
The presidential election gets weird because who you’re actually voting for doesn’t show up on the ballot, but unless we get rid of the electoral college that’s just something that’ll have to be worked around.
I absolutely agree. The primaries being run by the state governments was just a case of incumbent parties taking advantage of their control of government to offload some of their internal expenses onto the state taxpayers. Parties are private organizations, the government shouldn’t be in the business of running their process for selecting their nominees. The only election the government should be running is the general election.
And it should be open to all comers, instead of using “ballot access” rules to restrict the voters’ choices.
Democrats forced the open primary on everyone they could for the sole purpose of screwing with GOP primaries.
[Citation needed.]
Wait a sec…what is the cause and what is the effect?
From yesterday’s blog, “Antisemitism. . . exists in Democratic and liberal circles. Indeed, the most antisemitic demographic groups in the U.S.–Latinos (especially the foreign-born), African Americans, and Muslims, all vote strongly Democrat.”
And now today, “. . . we are so appalled by the prospect of Bernie Corbynizing the Democratic Party.”
Im confused about your confusion
I’m amazed by how many people refuse to see the similarities between the Sanders camp6and Trump’s 2016 campaign. Even more refuse to see Sanders as having the same.impact on the Dems as Trump has had on the GOP.
I wouldn’t rule out the potential of a Sanders win and frankly if he faced an opposition congress I probably wouldn’t care if he did.
There appears to be a large number of unreasonable malcontents in America.
I hope Sanders supporters do not do to the Democratic Party what the Tea Party and Trump have done to the Republican Party.
I agree with professor bern. Bernie will drive increased turnout from those who want free stuff. Liberal whites and hispanics love him. As do younger blacks.
The GOP would have been wise to promote bloomberg as he wouldve driven minimal turnout. They might be making a huge miscalculation.
On the other hand, they are banking on this being a Boris vs. Corbyn type dynamic where the latter got walloped.
Im not sure which voting bloc will be determinative in this election. Those blue collar whites in places like PA who switched to Trump could possibly turn to sanders. But bernie’s embrace of his parties newfound immigration policies (abolishing ICE, welfare for illegals etc.) as well as his fracking ban proposal, could turn them off.
Trump would be smart to emphasize this. Of course playing videos of Bernie regurgitating Soviet agitprop would be wise, but not enough by itself.
On the other hand, they are banking on this being a Boris vs. Corbyn type dynamic where the latter got walloped.
Corbyn got walloped not just because he was deeply unpopular, but because the opposition to Boris never coalesced anywhere else. That meant the opposition split between Labour, Lib Dem, and SNP, and the Conservatives won a lot of seats just by being the first past the post.
That could certainly happen here, as well, though the correlate would be something like Bloomberg launching a third-party campaign after getting drummed out of the Democratic primary.
I think the GOP is aiming more for the Hillary-Trump dynamic, where Democratic voters are disillusioned, discouraged, and angry at each other, and not really behind Hillary. The Bernie Bros are certainly talking themselves into that corner, at this point on Super Tuesday.
I live and work amongst very establishment beltway dems and most do actually like Bernie and would absolutely vote for him if he’s the nominee even if they are voting for Biden in the primary because it’s the right thing to do. I don’t know of anyone voting for Bloomberg and will be hilarious to see him come in third or fourth after blowing half a billion.
Bloomberg blows half a billion solely if Trump wins. He apparently prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the Democratic cause regardless of whether he concluded circumstances inclined his candidacy.
In part, I sense, he believes Trump is a lousy president. But also, I am told, he and Trump genuinely despise one another. Bloomberg is a self-made man and genuine billionaire who was embraced by Manhattan society. Trump is a resume-faking silver-spooner who was rejected by New York establishment for the same reasons he is offensive as president — vainglorious, vulgar, boorish, cartoonish, selfish, bigoted.
So, basically Trump is Rodney Dangerfield’s character in Caddyshack.
The problem is, your “self-made man and genuine billionaire” is a pathological control freak, the absolute last sort of person who should ever occupy a position of power.
I love how the Party of Diversity’s top candidates are all rich, old white males and they voted down every minority they claim to cherish.
More NIMBY liberalism.
Elizabeth Warren would like to have a word with you. Unless by “all” you actually mean “both.”
“top” excludes her. That’s too bad though, she could’ve been the first Native American President…
No Democrats with whom I am familiar are in the market for pointers on diversity from Republican bigots.
Yuck. I had to look up the word Corbynizing. I found the following. What a disgusting mix of pejorative labels. I feel that I just wallowed into the pig pen.
“Recent events in the UK have resulted in a new word being added to the political lexicon and that is ‘Corbynizing’. This is the label given to the concerted effort orchestrated by the right wing Israel lobby in the UK, the Conservative party, much of the establishment media, and Blairite neoliberal members of the Labour party to discredit and undermine Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn by suggesting that he is an anti-Semite and/or a coddler of anti-Semites, in an effort to remove him from the party leadership and also to distract attention from the progressive platform that the party put forward.”
Stalinization suit you better?
Corbyn is a communist anti-semite, and a wannabe dictator.
I am pretty sure Mr. lunda was not quoting that approvingly.
I rather enjoyed it myself.
It read like an Onion article, the headline of which was, “Local antisemitic Corbyn supporter upset that Corbyn is accused of supporting antisemites.”
Your assumption is that Sanders is competent enough, intelligent enough and hard working enough to actually do the things he talks about.
No one makes that assumption about Trump of course.
Not that it really matters, but what is so appalling about the Democratic Party being “Corbynized”? That’s to say, what’s so wrong about about the voters having the option to choose a party that clearly states that they are pro-labor, pro-environmental protection, anti-austerity, and anti-war – and possibly actually means it? You already have a major party that strongly supports the inverse of those principles. Perhaps voters should at least have the option to support a party that does not reflect the preferences and values of the George Mason faculty.
I mean yeah, they lost, but as your comment notes, the vote was about Brexit, not Corbyn’s economic or social policies. Corbyn’s core programs were popular in the UK, just as Sanders’ are here. Plus, Sanders is a far more competent politician than Corbyn was.
“what is so appalling about the Democratic Party being “Corbynized””
The Jew hating.
And they do that by nominating a Jew for president? Makes sense
And Trump has a Jewish daughter and Jewish grandchildren. That doesn’t stop him from pandering to, normalizing and empowering the Jew-hating wing of the Republican Party.
Trump is no antisemite. Sanders is, if anything, less so. But like Trump, he turns a blind eye to antisemitism among his followers. A Sanders victory wouldn’t mean the full Corbynization of the Democratic Party. But if it normalized left-wing antisemitism only as much as Trump has done for antisemitism from the Right, that would be bad enough.
LW antisemitism is already normalized among the left. Quite dramatically. Witness Ilhan Omar.
Yeah maybe ask more Jews about what they think was going on there.
They think she’s being antisemitic.
Not that I heard. All cringed, but whether it was antisemetic or not was a partisan question. Which sucks, but then look at the partisan BS you pull with it.
“Not that I heard”
I’m just paying attention to Omar’s twitter feed, where she said she was told by Jews that she was being antisemitic.
But hey, whatever.
She repeated two antisemitic tropes. That’s troubling, but it could mean she’s an antisemite or that she’s ignorant. She apologized, which is helpful. It also distinguishes her from the typical Trumpist antisemite who defiantly doubles and triples down.
“The typical Trumpist antisemite”
Like who? Pick someone Trump hasn’t condemned.
Pick any of the find people who posted death-camp images of Julia Ioffe.
FINE people
David’s real motivation is stopping Trump, at all costs. This prevention of Corbynization stuff is a ruse.
Allow me, please, to quote David from the Washington Post in May of 2016:
“I’d rather Hillary Clinton win. I’d rather (and I never thought I’d say this) Barack Obama serve a third term. I’d even rather Bernie Sanders win, though if it came down to Sanders vs. Trump it might be time to form a breakaway republic. If Trump wins the nomination, I will actively seek to prevent him from becoming president.”
Read the whole thing:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/02/nevertrump/
So, the Volokh Conspiracy has become a place for blatant electioneering? What does David’s post have to do with the law?
Or, maybe, he’s changed his mind since 2016?
Nah, go with the secret agenda he’s lying about thing.
You, Baldar, are the one afflicted with self-righteous indignation; you go off the deep end because of a parenthetical I threw in at the end, and miss the primary point of my post, which is that David doesn’t care about the Corbynization of the democratic party, or anything else about the party, except that as an extreme never-Trumper, he will do or say anything to see him defeated, even as a supposed republican and conservative to have a democrat – a socialist, or a totalitarian, or even an old man in his dotage – win the presidency.
The charge is that he is disingenuous. I charge that he voted for the democrat in the primary who he feels has the best chance of beating Trump.
You “charge” it, do you?
Well. That’s awfully serious. J’accuse and all. Good of you to give fair notice, so Prof. Bernstein can begin planning his defense in Clown Court.
The best thing about your “charge” is that despite it having been pulled straight out of your ass, like all allegations of bad faith it’s unfalsifiable.
“You say you oppose Corbynization? I say you lie! Prove me wrong!”
“So, the Volokh Conspiracy has become a place for blatant electioneering?”
Do non-stop partisan polemics with a scant academic veneer constitute “blatant electioneering?”
At 10:00 a.m. this morning, at my regular polling place in SW Houston (Sharpstown), the volunteer poll workers by far outnumbered the voters, and at the 100-feet boundary there were zero campaign volunteers.
Bernie already won. He push the Democrats so far to the left that they are virtually indistinguishable. Bloomberg, for whom I had very high hopes, instead apologized for his record and proposed tax increases along with a bunch of other nonsense to pander to the primary. What is he supposed to say now, “no I didn’t mean it when I said I didn’t mean it”, lol.
Nobody wins a general election on a promise to hike taxes. Obama was smarter than that, he suggested cutting corporate taxes in 2012.
Biden will lose for sure as well, but the only reason to vote for Biden is to save the house majority. Lose the presidency and the house with Bernie, or just the Presidency with Biden.
Could you show the math on how, after four years of demographic change that favors Democrats later, Trump is a sure thing to sink another three-cushion trick shot at the Electoral College?
Or do you believe the electorate has become more white, more rural, more religious, more bigoted, and more backward since 2016?
lol. Assuming everyone will vote a certain way because of skin color, race, or culture is in fact the definition of racism.
First, if Biden (or any moderate) is the nominee, I am skeptical that the Bernie crowd will show up to vote.
Second, people will vote their pocketbook. If the economy remains strong in Nov and the coronavirus recedes from memory, Trump will win re-election by a comfortable margin. I can tell you for sure, if the Democrats plan is to raise taxes and ban fracking, which is the direction they are heading, they will lose by a landslide.
There is a reason that after running for Pres three times, Biden only won his first primary a week ago. Biden wont win. He is simply foisted on people as the best shot to block Bernie and save the House majority.
Honestly, I think that the best thing that can happen to the Dems is that they lose in a landslide with Bernie. With Biden as the nominee, the Bernie crowd will simply say “if we only had Bernie…”
This generation of Dems need a McGovern to prove that the Warren/Sanders brand of socialism is still a big loser.
The Dems wandered in the wilderness for 12 years, giving us successively horrible candidates like Mondale and Dukakis … until Clinton came along (whom I voted for).
Blocking Sanders in the primary only postpones the inevitable for the Dems. The socialist wing of the Dems needs to face the voters directly in a general election and experience the wipeout, thats the only way to put them down.
Ew, David.
I voted for Biden by way of compromise with #NeverTrump Republicans like Mr. Bernstein, even if I might prefer more progressive policies.
Not happy about my vote, given Biden’s seeming mental decline, but seems less bad than nominating Bernie and alienating huge swaths of country. Bloomberg may be better as president, but at this point have to unify the non-Bernie camp, and most of that camp seems to prefer Biden…
So, Prof. Bernstein, this is what you said about Trump in May, 2016. Do you still stand by this (rather insulting) characterization of him?
Has he done anything to redeem himself, in your view, since then?
Do you believe there hasn’t been a concerted effort by the deep state take him down, thwart him?
Do you believe the Russian collusion narrative? The Stelle dissier?
Do you believe Comey, Brennan? Hillary Clinton?
Do you think Hillary Clinton would have done a better jib so far – on the economy, border, cutting federal regulations, reducing federal employment, 2nd Amendment, resisting sanctuary municipalities?
For many of us, he has delivered.
120 posts and counting. Summary: What flavor of cheese sprinkles does everyone have for their popcorn tonight?
Oh, I expect Bernie hate threads to attract more than this should he get the nom.
Because that’s basically what this is. A post saying ‘I really don’t like Bernie’ and then the Reason comentariat trying to keep a lid on.
I’m enjoying the delicious mix of corruption and hypocrisy coming out of the Super Tuesday primaries. With a little bit of pure buying the election mixed in for flavor.
I think you meant to write ‘motivating’.
If Trump regularly says the same things about Jews that he says about “shithole countries”, and black people, women, and “bad hombres”, David would be voting for Sanders for a different reason. But David’s not dark skinned, female, Hispanic, so . . . F—k em, who the hell cares, right?
Technically, he does say bad things about shithole countries, and anybody who denies that shithole countries are a real thing is pretty ignorant of world affairs.
I don’t recall him saying bad things about black people. Or women.
Bad hombres are, by definition, bad, and having bad things said about them is just honesty, right?
That’s about a 2 on the sycophancy scale. Ardently sycophantic, but unpersuasive, easily refuted fealty.
Maybe you were too busy looking for Obama’s birth certificate to mount a strong defense of your hero?
I agree, Brett, There are, indeed, shithole countries, and the people who come here and fail to value U.S culture and assimilate bring those shithole social habits with them: crime, poor sanitation, rudeness – even just obliviousness to others’ personal space, comfort, and safety. Even shitty driving! Have seen women abroad just go to the side of the road, hike up their skirt and shit in the gutter, and wipe their ass with their bare hand, I know what I’m talking about.
I agree with David that it’s a mistake to root for the opposing guy you think will be easier to beat.
But, as I think about it right now, if I had to choose between President Biden and President Sanders, I just might go with Sanders. Maybe this is foolish and would probably crash the economy, but my thinking is as follows. It appears I agree with Sanders on topics such as interventionist wars and trade deals with China.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/03/democrats-are-learning-the-wrong-lesson-from-2016-gop-primary/
While I abhor Sanders’ quasi-communist ideology and domestic agenda, it’s unlikely he would be able to get very far at all with it, due to Congress. On the other hand, the President has prerogative in foreign policy and trade. Joe Biden, meanwhile, is senile. He would be a terrible, weak figurehead while others run things less visibly. Special interest groups would have a heyday and run rampant through his administration’s policies. Oh, and the likes of James Comey and the gang would mount their comeback.
I’m open to being convinced otherwise.
I have been thinking about this all day, and I agree. Bernie could do almost nothing that required legislation, so his damage would be limited to foreign relations, etc. But Biden would become a powerful puppet of the Democratic party and progressive movement, and could set the country back 100 years (from a conservative’s perspective).
If it has to be a Democratic president, I’m with Bernie.
I would also add, though, I think Bernie would have a better chance of beating Trump than Biden. The conventional D.C. establishment wisdom to the contrary is just wrong.
I completely agree with that. In fact if Biden is the nominee, I would be willing to bet big money that Trump will be reelected. I hope I’m wrong. And I thought 2016 was a depressing choice!
Recent evidence suggests otherwise…
Um, current and last election both provide evidence to the contrary.
I think Trump has become a religion in a way that no Democratic candidate ever could. He could crap on his desk in front of television cameras and his base would say he’s making America great again.
I believe Michigan allows an early voter to show up in person on election day, “Spoil” their early ballot, and cast a more informed vote on election day. But, yes, I agree: Early voting really is a bad idea.
Something ranked choice voting would solve.
But for now, it is a risk that the early voter assumes for the convenience of early voting.
“has become a religion in a way that no Democratic candidate ever could”
Yes, Obama never existed.
“He is a community organizer like Jesus was,” Sarandon said Tuesday night on the bright blue carpet leading into the Creative Coalition’s 2009 Ball at the Harman Center for the Arts in Chinatown. “And now, we’re a community and he can organize us.
Yep…no religion there.
I’m reminded that when Hillary Clinton lost, it was as though her followers’ Messiah had been crucified. Hence the “resistance.”
Is Trump considered Messianic by his followers? I’m holding off on a conclusion until I see how they respond to a somewhat more moderate, traditional Democrat.
The difference is that Trump would say it, but it’s not true, while Obama wouldn’t say it, and it was true.
There’s definitely a level of delusion about Trump’s character and intelligence that is not present with even the most fervent Obama support.
Of course you could solve that by not starting the voting until the previous primary has been held.
Meanwhile, voting on Tuesday is a really bad idea. At a minimum, the polls should be open Saturday through Tuesday.
Might be a recipe for fraud, (Though no more so than is already inherent in absentee ballots.) but they do in fact hold onto the ballots until election day, in sealed envelopes. I was wrong about being able to spoil them ON election day, however; From Michigan’s SOS office:
“Spoiling an Absent Voter Ballot
If a voter has already voted absentee and wishes to change their vote (because the candidate has dropped out of the race, or for any other reason), a voter can spoil their ballot by submitting a written request to their city or township clerk. The voter must sign the request and state if they would like a new absentee ballot mailed to them or if they will vote at the polls. This request must be received by 2 p.m. the Saturday before the election if received by mail. An absentee ballot may be spoiled in person at the clerk’s office until 4 p.m. the Monday prior to the election. The voter can obtain a new absentee ballot there or vote at the polls. There is no option on Election Day to spoil an absentee ballot that has been received by the clerk.”
Absentee ballots are not processed until election day, and the envelope has to include the voter’s name and signature, I believe, to prevent fakes. Presumably the ballots are removed and counted separately from the envelopes.
Oh he existed, but the delusion required to think that he is a religion to his supporters in the same way Trump is to his is just staggering.
Ok. Talk about a delusion.
Obama was (and still is) every bit as much of a cult as Trump, if not more.
The Nobel Peace Prize was an excellent indication of Obama worship.
Both Trump and Obama suffer from forms of self obsession like most politicians. But I discern slightly different flavors, Trump is an egotist, Obama an narcissist.
Well, the press comparing Obama to Jesus repeatedly in late ‘08 and 09 was frequent enough that one might be forgiven for thinking people had a pretty inflated view of him early on. I’m not sure it had the staying power that Trump’s following does, but part of that defensiveness in re Trump has been calcified by the relentless institutional and press attacks on Trump that Obama never put up with. I’m not sure if Trump will have the same level of support in year seven as he has in year four though (assuming there is a second term).
Y’all had school children singing odes to him.
That’s just for an absentee ballot. But I can’t picture how a voter who showed up at the polls to vote early could then change his mind and show up again on Election Day. At least in Maryland, the board of elections would have no way to verify that. The early ballots are just in the same machine, with the election day ballots piled up on top.
I also voted early in North Carolina in the Democratic primary as an unaffilitiated voter, and my candidate has since dropped out. Oh well.
Well, of course it depends! If some lunatic tried to assassinate him on 5th avenue, his Secret Service agents got taken out, and he capped the guy himself, would that be wrong?
I had no love of Obama, and I would have droned them too.
If they are waging war against the US, it would be disrespectful not to wage them back. If they are really American then they would understand.
I never voted early in Michigan when I lived there, but I believe they just hand you an absentee ballot to fill out.
So at best its like sports rooting. But without the good feelings.
I don’t think my tax paying gives me a “sense of ownership” either.
Sure, Bob. Next tell us Obama was more narcissistic than Trump, he obsessively used the vertical pronoun, etc.
Patriotism has nothing to do with “government”.
Ownership implies control. When I drive by a Planned Parenthood clinic, and reflect on my tax dollars going there, my thoughts are more about how I’ve been robbed, than “I own a share of that!”
If that was sarcasm, well played. No known memory hole is deep enough for that one. See, e.g., here:
Isn’t it though? We already know he has more likely than not sexually assaulted someone given his stated views on consent, and people let that slide. Why wouldn’t they do the same for murder?
Sweet Jesus.
Obama wasn’t a savior, but he was a fine extemporaneous speaker.
Do you think he was Kenyan as well?
He graduated Harvard Law with honors was on law review. He knows how to spell. He does not think he knows more about weather or vaccines than actual meteorologists and doctors. He knows how to stay focused in conversation, whereas Trump does not. He also has the social/emotional intelligence that Trump completely lacks. For instance, he knows you don’t go to visit shooting victims and smile and talk about your rally sizes. Or to say he doesn’t think brain injuries are a big deal.
Also as far as character goes, he’s clearly better than Trump. He never cheated on his wives and is an engaged and caring father. He never implied he sexually assaulted anyone. No one has come forward to accuse him of that credibly. He doesn’t lie about the most mundane things every day. He doesn’t have a history of cheating at golf.
Oh for Pete’s sake, m_k. Get over the teleprompter. Was Obama really the only speaker who ever used one? What’s the BFD, anyway?
Oh, snap, good comeback.
No, actually not so good. See below.
Truly, the only explanation for that Prize.
Obama didn’t earn it, I grant you. But you’ll need to show more work than that.
I brought up character because it goes to the delusion of Trump supporters. But you’re also dodging the fact that Trump can’t spell. Obama can spell.
Obama stuttered like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar
OK, dude. Obama did say uhh a lot. But your pretty delusional if you don’t think he was a fine speaker in press conferences and other nonscripted events.
Also, as noted below, your teleprompter thing is very dumb.
Trumps ex wives all seem to think highly of him, which is pretty good evidence that he was a good husband. Not a faithful one, but each after the first knew that walking in.
Which aren’t so much jokes as they are testing the waters.
No, Trump wasn’t talking about legitimate self defense, which is why I said that Trump would say it, but it’s not true.
The people who are talking about legitimate self defense are the Trump supporters who say that it would depend on who he shot.
Personally, if he murdered somebody? I’d pull the switch on him myself.
If Trump isn’t a narcissist, nobody is.
That’s a thing that hasn’t actually happened. For that matter, even if it had, it wouldn’t be the “deep state”, it would be Trump’s appointees. And would have put Pence in office.
As is clear from the thread, the specific laughable double standard is:
[Biden] would be declared incompetent through the 25th amendment in his first year.
Brett has really outdone himself.
Well, the press comparing Obama to Jesus repeatedly in late ‘08 and 09 was frequent enough
Check your confirmation bias. ‘Everyone on the right said everyone on the left said it’ isn’t really great evidence.
Saying that Trump supporters are crazy but it’s justified because everyone keeps attacking Trump is also not a great defense.
Well, I guess if it’s good enough for BuzzFeed and Rachel Maddow, it’s good enough for me.
But seriously (because you were being serious, amirite?): your argument is that in an unapologetically cherry-picked set of transcripts, Obama didn’t “obsessively use[] the vertical pronoun” because he used it ever-so-slightly less than several other unapologetically cherry-picked presidents?
And since Buzzfeed hasn’t bothered to refresh the study since Trump took office, odds are the results aren’t favorable. In fact, this study analyzed Trump’s weekly addresses to date and found that he used “we” and “our” nearly 3 times as often as he used “I” and “my.”
Other than all that, great point.
Yeah, those damn leftists.
The argument is
1) without a baseline, that metric is not real. It’s propaganda with a quantitative patina.
2) Trump makes everything about himself, so shut up.
“He does not think he knows more about weather or vaccines than actual meteorologists and doctors.”
“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
Let’s revisit this in a year, and see if people still think Biden is mentally competent.
Biden’s made some very odd statements lately. We’re not talking about forgetting the President of Mexico’s name. We’re talking about him forgetting that he’s running for President of the US.
Since candidates don’t usually actually “withdraw” from the election but merely “suspend” their campaigns, how would the election officials decide who was “out” of the race and that those voting for such candidates would have second (third, fourth…) choices counted instead?
Yes, this could be solved, but it would require a formal process (not just interpreting a candidate’s speech or Facebook posting that appears to be “official”) including verification. No vote counts should be reported (although ballots could be scanned) until that process was complete.
It also doesn’t solve the problem of people who voted today for Warren as choice 1 and Sanders as choice 2 when Warren “suspends” her campaign tomorrow. Their vote was still “wasted”.
Of course, since primaries are just party circuses that have nothing to do with governance, the state should just stay out of the primary game entirely. If government must be involved, just set a limit on how many “ranked” votes each voter can cast (perhaps four?) and publish all the ordered combinations that received votes and the count of voters selection each such combination — let each party decide what to do with that information and when to do it.
A politician thinking he knows more about politics than other political operatives is not even in the same league as Trump thinking he knew more about Alabama weather than Alabama meteorologists. Or about vaccine research than actual doctors. And you know it.
At least Obama‘a comment was about his own field. Trump’s hurricane sharpie thing or vaccine comments are a whole different level of delusion.
Plus I would think you’d appreciate Obama’s comments anyway. Since you know more about who’s Jewish than the Jews.
Ted Kennedy, calling, line one.
Bill Clinton, calling, line 2
LawTalkingGuy wrote: “We already know he has more likely than not sexually assaulted someone given his stated views on consent,”
I think this going on and on (and on!) about what was basically locker-room boasting and myth-making is part of why so many have stopped listening to Democrats’ claims about Trump. And I write this as such a Never-Trumper that I crossed party lines in the Virginia 2016 primary just to vote against him.
I’ve got no delusions. He’s a fool of questionable character, at best.
But, that was better than the alternative (in the general election at least).
Why is voting on Tuesday a bad idea?
It is very inconvenient for many people and unnecessarily so. I doubt it will last much longer, at least in modern states.
Do you still think Obama is a Kenyan socialist Muslim?
Susan Sarandon though.
So, Susan Sarandon is not an Obama supporter? Or does something else disqualify her?
Perhaps you’d like Jamie Foxx instead, who referred to Obama as “Give an honor to God and our lord and savior Barack Obama”
Perhaps Spike Lee? On Obama “He Was The Savior, Black Jesus”
Perhaps Barbara Walters. On Obama ” “We thought that he was going to be – I shouldn’t say this at Christmastime, but – the next messiah”
Or perhaps my favorite. The Obama Messiah Watch. “https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2007/01/the-obama-messiah-watch.html”
But sure…no religion at all.
“Unneccesarily so”
You’ve got to pick a day to vote. Tuesday is a day. There are pluses and minuses to any of the days. For the sake of argument, we’ll break down the days to M-F, Sat, or Sun. People have responsibilities on all of these days.
Many companies and governments will give people time off Tuesday to vote (which encourages voting), where if it was on the weekend, it would be on their own time, and they might have other plans, including potential travel. Other companies have the people continue working. This can also occur with jobs that require people to work weekends. Jobs that require people to work weekends probably won’t give people the day off.
There are other factors as well. Many polling places are in churches. That would tend to rule out Sunday as a good day for voting. Saturday might be better (Except for Temple…)
As I said, there were plusses and minuses on all of these days. But it’s far more complicated that it seems at first look.
You’re forgetting that the Obama administration played this neat trick where they automatically classified all adult males killed by drones as ‘terrorists’ without bothering to check if that was true, all to decrease the number of innocent victims in official reports.
So if Obama did drone an innocent american civilian, they would have classified that person as a terrorist anyway. Now that’s disrespectful.
Well you fail to see the distinction. A narcissist like Obama delivers his speeches calmly, coolly just like he practiced them before his ultimate audience, himself in the mirror. Obama doesn’t need the crowd, he has himself.
Trump on the other hand is needs the crowd and the adulation to feed his ego.
There was the Lightworker column by a staff columnist in SFGate that got a lot of attention at the time:
Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment.
For the most part the Americans were specifically targeted, and i endorse that, but there does seem to be at least one case where a 17 year old American was collateral damage in a strike. The teenagers father had been droned weeks before, so he wasn’t the target, so it was probably someone else in the same cell.
You mean like the innocent* American citizen who was specifically targeted** and assassinated?
*Innocent until proven guilty, and since the guy wasn’t in a war zone (where the Congress has lawfully declared war) you can’t argue that he was a legitimate military target
** not knowing the intelligence leading to it, I might have done it myself, but I accept that at least our last several President should have all be impeached and executed as war criminals, and that would probably be my fate too in that office
What other explanation do you suggest, that doesn’t still boil down to the same thing?
I could see an award to the US, for sufficiently overcoming our legislative racism in only half a century to elect a black man President over a war hero, showing what progress can be made as an inspiration for other countries with their own sectarian problems.
But for President Obama himself?
mmm, mmm, mmm
It was because Obama wasn’t Bush. This was pretty well understood at the time.
Ah. One is based on evidence and the other is based on speculative telepathy,
Yes, this seems like mainstream liberal stuff. Not nutpicking at all.
Your post is self-refuting.
I never thought he was a Kenyan, just that the birthers were entitled to their day in court, to have their case against Obama decided on the merits. Which were few and far between, but generated by Obama himself. The whole thing got started because his own promotional material said he was born in Kenya, after all.
And to be a Muslim, he’d have to worship something other than himself.
Your blizzard of anecdotes is extremely unconvincing. Look at who you’re posting – artists, Hollywood folks who are by nature melodramatic.
On the other hand, actual religious folks invoking the Bible to argue Trump is chosen…
Trumps ex wives all seem to think highly of him, which is pretty good evidence that he was a good husband
You’re pretty funny.
Also Ivana Trump kinda called him a rapist.
It’s like Clinton’s corruption: The very fact that Republicans mention something negative about a Democrat makes it psychologically impossible for Democrats to admit it’s true.
We could say “Bernie has bad hair, and looks like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.” and Democrats would start raving about his glorious locks.
You’ve got this bizarre idea that unless actual pastors call Obama Jesus, then it’s not people treating Obama like a religion.
Then you claim “religious folks” in response to Trump, but I see no evidence….
ROTFLMAO = Obama was a fine, extemporaneous speaker. Uh, no.
Horndog Clinton and Reagan were fine extemporaneous speakers. Their communication skills were far superior.
The alternative was a run of the mill Democrat who wasn’t going to shake things up. But she was also a woman. Which was probably a big deal for people, even if they won’t admit it to themselves.
No – my idea is that your cherry-picked quotes are tellingly from a sample biased population.
Y’all have a narrative, but it’s not pushing very well.
This says more about you than it does about Obama.
Clinton and Reagan were better than Obama, but theirs is an extremely rarefied cohort.
Making that your bar is pretty ridiculous. But you’ll need to be ridiculous to shore up your narrative.
Thanks for the psychoanalysis.
‘The disparaging things I say about the other side’s guy are true, but they say they aren’t. It must be due to a deep seated need in them to ignore the true things.’
This is rationalizing nonesense.
14 Oct 2011 – President Barack Obama ordered a predator drone missile attack on Ibrahim al-Banna, a senior operative of Al-Quaeda, at dinner at a restaurant in Yemen. The attack killed nine people including Abdulrahman An sl-Alaki, born in Denver, Colorado, the 16 year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki an operational leader of al-Qaeda.
The target Ibrahim al-Banna was not killed and was an on-going threat. Abdulrahman An sl-Alaki was unintentional collateral damage, along with others at that restaurant, justified rather flimsily after the act. Democrats denounced Anwar al-Awlaki as a bad father and blamed the death of his son on his bad parenting.
3 Jan 2020. President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike on Iranian Qud General Qasem Soleimani which killed Soleimani and nine Iranian militia supporters meeting at Baghdad airport after Iranian missiles killed an American contractor and Iranian supporters attacked the U.S. Embassy.
Democrats denounced Trump as a war criminal for killing a sworn enemy general at a meeting of international terrorists. The target Soleimani is dead. No restaurants with collateral damage were destroyed. I suspect Trump did the Iranian establishment a favor; Soleimani was an embarassment and threat to them in the long run.
Oh geez. Not THAT again!
Please move away from these talking points. Hillary Clinton ran a crappy campaign and demonized her opponent’s supporters. She was also harmed by that idiot James Comey, who re-introduced her email peccadilloes late in the campaign. No one denies all that. Yet she won the popular vote fairly comfortably. Just let it go.
Hang on, there. The original comment was “I think Trump has become a religion in a way that no Democratic candidate ever could.” There is absolutely zero support offered for that statement.
Bob from Ohio (whom, FTR, I generally disagree with), responds with a reference to Obama. What follows is a series of comments from others in which people talked about Obama in spiritual or mythic terms or bestowed him with awards before he did anything. You discard them all as one-offs and say that the comments aren’t pushing a narrative very well.
But they weren’t pushing a narrative. Krycheck was, and he was doing so without ANY support. All the comments were doing is pushing back on that narrative by giving concrete examples where people did treat Obama in spiritual terms — thereby showing that a democrat could be treated that way.
Yet I’ve not seen any criticism from you of Krycheck, nor any evidence to support his position. If you’re going to be critical, be critical to both sides of the argument.
I do think there’s a faith in God Emperor Trump you can find that does not exist in the reverse. If you want me to dig up evangelicals citing Trump as fulfilling prophecy I can.
But your defense of AL is tu quoque. That does not absolve AL of providing a foolish defense.
But your defense of AL is tu quoque. That does not absolve AL of providing a foolish defense.
It’s not tu quoque. That would be me saying that it’s invalid because Krycheck is a hypocrite. I’m saying that giving lots of counter-anecdotes to rebut a claim that is, at best, supported by unstated anecdotes is good rebuttal to a claim that Trump is somehow unique.
My comment directed at you isn’t to say that pointing out that the points about Obama isn’t to say your criticisms aren’t valid. It’s to say that you’re ignoring that the original claim wasn’t supported and the responses weren’t given to push a narrative as you claimed. They were anecdotes to contradict assumed, but unstated, anecdotes that Krycheck was relying on to push his narrative.
“I do think there’s a faith in God Emperor Trump you can find that does not exist in the reverse.”
Good god, how out of touch are you? Even the most fervently religious Trump supporter would openly marvel about what a flawed vessel God has chosen to do his work.
The rest of us roll our eyes, and mutter: “what an ignorant asshole, but you can’t argue with the results.”
“I do think there’s a faith in God Emperor Trump you can find”
And yet…you haven’t.
” If you want me to dig up evangelicals citing Trump as fulfilling prophecy I can.”
I do. Please, go ahead.
In Maryland, and now in North Carolina, early voters fill out the same ballot as voters on Election Day, and then feed it into the same optical scanner as voters on Election Day. That machine dumps the ballot into the same bin as all the ballots inserted on Election Day.
I can’t speak for Michigan’s process, but handling all early voting as absentee ballots would be a huge amount of work for boards of election. Much easier just to set up the equipment you already have for Election Day, whatever that is.
That doesn’t really explain why Armchair and others would think a “fool of questionable character at best” was better than a run-of-the-mill Democrat.
Well at least you do have admit that the evidence shows Trump is not a narcissist.
That’s something.
On the contrary, Kazinski. The need for adulation is a definitive feature of narcissism.
Well i also remember someone saying else saying something along the same lines with a Messianic flavor: “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
That’s a helluva reach, dude.
Because she wasn’t a “run of the mill Democrat.” She was a corrupt-as-hell Democrat with the FBI and DoJ in her back pocket (which was a big part of the problem).
Listen, if she’s just corrupt, but the FBI and DOJ investigate and prosecute the corruption that’s one thing. But when the FBI and DOJ find clear evidence of lying to FBI agents and go “eh, nah”…
Or to use an analogy, I’d rather have a fool running the police department than a mob boss.
You don’t approve of poor women having access to reliable birth control?