If, after the Nevada caucuses a week ago, you said that Joe Biden would wake up on the day after Super Tuesday with a pledged delegate lead of 80 votes, you would have been placed in a straight jacket and taken away. It looked like Bernie Sanders was leading a run away train after Nevada. I was reconciling myself to his probable nomination, accepting as perfectly fair that if he, Sanders, was the pledged delegate leader despite not reaching a majority, that he should of course be the nominee.
Indeed, Sanders and his supporters are now likely regretting that they laid down that marker as the determining factor as to who should be the nominee. Biden now looks like he will build an insurmountable pledged delegate lead over the course of the coming contests in March and April.
Next week, we have contests in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington. Joe Biden has the lead in Michigan in a poll you will see later today in the Campaign Report, and should probably be considered the favorite in Mississippi and Missouri. Sanders may be the favorite in Washington State and Idaho, and who knows about North Dakota.
On March 17, you have Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio. Sanders may be the favorite in Arizona, but Biden will destroy Sanders in Florida and will likely win in Ohio and Illinois.
Then comes Georgia on March 24. Biden will win big there. So as we leave March, it looks like Biden will be the pledged delegate leader with probably a good 200-300 vote lead that is insurmountable.
I am not telling anyone to give up on Bernie or any other candidate and ordering them get behind Biden. Hell, if Elizabeth Warren is still in the race on April 28 when Delaware votes, I am still voting for her. You must vote for your candidate. But just as I had to reconcile myself to a Bernie nomination a week ago, so must Bernie voters start reconciling themselves to the fact that this race is likely over.
Biden, of course, must avoid the acrimony and spitefulness that Hillary Clinton had for Bernie Sanders. He, and we, need to be kind and welcoming to leftists and Sanders progressives during the course of this race and when this race is over. We all need to be on the same team for November, and it helps in the grieving and mourning process for your candidate if the victor who vanquished your hero is not rubbing your nose in it.
Knowing Biden, I don’t think we have to worry about his repeating Hillary’s mistake.
Hard agree. On all fronts. No civil war this time.
Agreed, but I think it is slightly early to call it. End of the month will tell the tale.
Not posting this to continue the Civil War, but posting because this is genuinely informative and points out the fatal flaw that is core to the Sanders campaign better than I’ve been able to articulate. It’s from Ezra Klein so it’s sharply thought out:
“That he’s an insurgent facing down a corrupt Democratic establishment is core to his identity, and to the bond he’s built with his staunchest supporters. But to win the Democratic primary and govern as a Democratic president, you need to win over Democrats who aren’t your natural allies, who didn’t start out in your corner. Biden knows that and acts accordingly. The Sanders campaign is going to have to learn the same lesson, and fast.”
I truly appreciate your magnanimousness (is that a word?) here…. but i think it’s over.
I voted for sanders in 2016… am STILL a warren supporter with sanders as my #2 now… and it’s over.
youth turnout was 13 fucking %. 13. ball. dropped.
Bernie’s whole sale was that he would bring unprecedented numbers of young people out. He failed hard. He’d fail in November. He is a bad figurehead for the progressive cause. Had he taken the loss from last time ans stayed out, Warren could very well have the nomination locked down. Instead he hoarded his following and gleefully participated in this cult-of-personality style politics i detest so much.
My allegiances shift based on beating trump. Bernie is now a liability to that goal.
Once again the Dem establishment has screwed us.
By establishment, you mean voters.
I am so over this BS narrative, and I’m not even a Biden supporter. The biggest problem Bernie had was that his biggest claim of a surge of new, young and past non-voters didn’t materialize. Stop blaming people who actually showed up to vote.
That said, this primary isn’t over.
It’s always someone else’s fault with these people. Today turned me solidly anti-bernie with their pissy pants blaming of Warren for his failure to deliver a youth vote surge.
Biden will lose to trump because these people who are desperate to be victims (and are very very white) just flat out dont understand, or want to understand how the world works.
No, its not. We get to watch Bernie and his mouthbreathing supporters (Hi Rev!) spend the next three months writing material for Trump’s campaign as they try to tear down Biden. Then if we get really lucky Bernie stays in it until the convention and maybe we get some real Chicago ’68 action. Nice.
Bernie bro’s think they are the only true progressives. Anything else is a conspiracy.
There’s nothing progressive about shitting all over the people you want to vote for you.
Just a question based on that early post about Bernie being the nom, RE: what if he loses to trump. Does the same hold true for Biden if he loses to trump? Will it be the death of some faction of the party, like it was for Bernie and progressives?
I really hope he beats trump, of course we all do and i hate that we have to add disclaimers to every post. I just also hope that the progressive drum keeps beating in all these states AFTER trump.
My next biggest fear after trump winning, is that the status quo will come back and we all are in deep crap as major issues like climate change, economic inequality, and healthcare do not have the same pressure for substantial action taken in a rapid form. As much as I hate trump, he has been able to do extreme things with little involvement from congress, I hope Biden, Bernie, whoever can do the same, but for the good of our nation and planet, rather than to its detriment.
***braces for impact as a result of posting***
oh relax, champ
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Yes. When Biden loses to trump, we can call it the death of yellow-bellied centrism.
The progressive movement died last night. A new leader will have to emerge from what will be the wreckage of the general election.
My prediction is that the dems keep the house. Come within 1 of the senate (they would win it outright, but will lose alabama) Biden wins the popular vote by >5Million, but Trump squeaks it out in the EC after losing Michigan and PA.
We will rightly be able to tell moderates to fuck off forever. And if there is an election in 2024, a young progressive who doesnt shit all over everyone that isnt in lock step agreement with them will hopefully win in time to save some part of this earth from climate catastrophe.
jfc, i may need to up my meds dose.
Losing to Trump will be the death of everything. I am a Blue No Matter Who voter. I said this weeks ago when Bernie was in the lead. I say it today, and I’ll say it next week if this race changes again. I’m really not sure why people think this is over.
The status quo only comes back if we let it. We can’t view elections as the end of our fight. (I’m well aware you don’t view elections this way, Dustyn. Thank you for all you do!)
Also, those wanting a revolution can’t stop in November. Even if Sanders doesn’t succeed, there’s nothing stopping him from continuing to push his revolution from the Senate. If he can convince people to pass M4A I imagine a President Biden would sign it!
Any faction of the party survives because it has an active constituency that wields enough influence to remain vital. I don’t think it is correct that a loss by Bernie to Trump would be the death of progressives. It *would* mean that progressives will need to find a new leader *and* a new approach. We should pay attention to the fact that very many progressive ideas poll well across the board. That isn’t likely to change. A new messenger will be important. The only thing that is a real problem is deciding to fight Democrats while asking them to vote for you.
The center-left part of the party isn’t going anywhere because that is the current heart of the party. It, too, will need new leaders and a sharpened message if Biden loses to Trump. I was around when GWB won by literally stopping the count of votes in Florida. There was a period of time when Dems went into hiding, and then there was Howard Dean who called the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party to its senses.
My theory (FWIW) is that you can change government or you can change politics. There’s some overlap (getting rid of Citizens United). And you are in a cycle where people urgently want Trump to be gone. Plenty of those folks are just not going to hear about changing politics or even much of government. But where there are Dems running government, you have a chance of pushing them to take your issues seriously. It may not be as fast as necessary, but you will have people who will try to work with you. Even if Bernie was President, you have two Senators who won’t vote for a ton of his agenda, which suggests that the real work is otherwise.
Warren was successfully doing this with her “I have a plan for this” until she got derailed with the M4A pay-fors (which Sanders and Trump never had to answer). The progressive coalition will keep growing and keep pushing the party to the left. I think it will he led by AOC. She’s much better at coalition-building than Sanders (despite some early stumbles).
I think you are correct, UI — and she was providing a solid intellectual and political bridge between the center-left and progressives without going to war with the constituency she needed to win. The M4A thing is also how she lost some of her progressive base. But she was planning to do exactly the thing that would need to happen — grab as much progress towards M4A while massively expanding coverage and lowering costs until you run up against the hard stop of what Congress will vote for. AOC wrote a great tweet yesterday about coalition-building that was very hopeful.
@cassandra: I think this is exactly right.
Biden VP pick is really important to me since she will be the president-in-waiting. (Go Kamala!)
I’ll vote for Bernie if he is the nominee. But, here are, IMO his flawed take on both our Party and this root causes of two of his key issues. This party has always been a coalition, which includes diverse ethnic groups but also diverse economic views; this party welcomes fiscal conservatives and moderates. And our fiscal history proves we value low deficits while being willing to incur them during urgent economic crises. He neither works with this faction nor addresses our commitment to fiscal sanity.
Regarding healthcare……a democratic government does not forcibly rip employer insurance away from employees…..it offers better options voluntarily (and I detest health insurance company behavior); further, look at the history of healthcare inflation…..the big gorilla here are hospitals; we had very controlled healthcare inflation before Reagan who deregulated state regulation of hospital costs, investments unneeded facilities/services via abandoned certificates of need. Finally, re: the massive inflation of public college costs/charges. While remedies are needed for students, the root cause lies with malfeasance of public college trustees who allowed runaway spending and were not overseen by governors/legislators who allowed their malfeasance. Until that is dealt with, we will have to continue forgiving college student debt. Bernie, seems to not acknowledge the role of states in causing some/much of the economic distress we are experiencing..
Some of the university inflation is due, not to wasteful spending, but to falling public subsidy. Cuts to higher education began to accelerate around CA’s passage of prop 13. Cutting taxes was all the rage. Education went from being a process to a product. Falling public subsidy didn’t start with the states, it started with the feds.
Agree with Point of Order SOME of college cost inflation is due to both reduction in state subsidies, but those same Trustees, largely conservative business types, were seldom heard from in objection to subsidy reduction.