uran10 said:
That's not entirely correct. Here's why Joe Biden will most likely be the nominee and why Bernie Sanders most likely lost IMO.
Let's start with something these "moderates" in this thread fail to realize. Bernie won the battle of ideas. There is no if, ands or buts about this one. Every debate was about Bernie's ideas, everything was mainstreamed by Bernie except for UBI which we can thank Yang for, and Tulsi, while great on FP didn't get to add enough to the convo to change the dynamic so we still had neoliberal FP going strong. From debate 1 we've had Bernie winning the battle of ideas. He beat Joe 1 on 1 on Ideas cause he beat the others on ideas. It was simple and its true, however that alone cannot win a primary election and this is where Bernie failed.
The Democratic party electorate, the ones that always vote, the normie democrats, while they want these things they care more about getting rid of Trump. They're not really afraid of M4A but they're afraid of the electability of it. They were afraid that these ideas that they definitely agree with, and most of america overwhelmingly agrees with would hurt in a general election and the most important thing was winning that election. They were on board with the ideas, they however above all else wanted to win and the guy running around calling himself a socialist in America doesn't exactly install confidence.
So where did Bernie lose exactly?
1) Being too kind to frauds and duplicates. Some people claim that his staff being mean (literally just calling a spade a spade) was why he fell. They said it was Nina and David Sirota and that they should have been fired a long time ago but its the opposite. If you think its the former you don't understand the age of politics you're in or what won Trump the GE. Bernie needed to consolidate the progressive vote early on and there was 1 candidate who was draining his support. I've seen people I know irl who are posting Bernie this and Bernie that now but were Warren supporters and propped her up. I talked to them and some had the gall to say "she's more progressive". I warned them about her being a snake and some of them still have that love for her still even after everything and I will never understand that but that's besides the point. Bernie needed to go after all of the people pretending to be progressive and pretending to support his ideas or watered down versions of them. He needed to go scorched earth on Liz. Bring up Standing rock, bring up 2016's election, bring up her lies about her job and heritage. Expose her as a liar and link it back to the policy. Show that her character is that of someone who uses whatever is at their disposal to get what they want. Prove to them that you can't trust her. I mean obviously she did that herself later on but that was too little too late. This applies to people who also were claiming they were with Bernie like Kamala, Pete etc. He needed to go in on them and he did not.
2) Being Kind to Joe / fighting on policy not electability. This was the nail in the coffin in all honesty. Bernie had a chance after super tuesday, his momentum was blunted Warren had done her job and had taken enough progressive support away to make him lose states he had on lock and the consolidation of the "moderates" to stop him bolstered that vote. He went and did a media blitz spoke to a ton of people and effectively killed his chance. How did he do this? "Yes, I believe Joe can beat Trump". You just gave the people who were leaning into voting you based off of ideas but worried about electability to Biden. Good job. He didn't do this once, or twice. He kept repeating it which lead to the next massacre. Of course don't get me wrong there's voter suppression and fraud that happened but that doesn't excuse Bernie from this, oh no. He hurt himself hard on this one. He was supposed to go around and remind people of how bad Joe is, social security, the wars, every bad decision where he's right and Biden is wrong. Then turn around and say at the end of it that Trump will use this against Biden and he will beat him. No Joe, you can't win. Your record proves you cannot win. He needed to say this earlier before south carolina, he needed to just outright say it never let up on Joe. He was supposed to just go in not be "nice" and that would have ended it.
3) He gave in to the sjw nonsense. I'm gonna point out something that a lot of you here will dislike. The country isn't culturally left. This huge push for LGBQT and cancel culture, and get this person fired cause he did some bad thing in the past, metoo etc? They may sound good to you but in all actuality the country itself isn't the biggest on them. The way to win the presidency in America is simply. You must be economically left wing and culturally moderate. This doesn't mean you don't support LGBQT+, this means that its not on the forefront of your campaign. When they came at him with the identity nonsense and Bernie bros crap and he played into it remotely he lost a huge segment of independent leaning voters. This was the thing that probably hurt him the least in the primary but if he made it to the general would have wholeheartedly been the thing that Trump possibly would win on.
4) 2016. yep 2016 hurt Bernie as much as it helped. Bernie had a lot going for him in 2016, he had the most hated politician as his opponent, the entire progressive vote and a not so crowded field. He had the anti-establishment vote. So how did 2016 hurt him when you see he still has most of this? He campaigned for her. There are a ton of people I've seen who don't support Bernie but wanted him to win, the thing they most had in common? They supported him in 2016 and couldn't after he campaigned his a** off for clinton. The vote he lost in all honesty, was the big block of anti-establishment voters. They didn't show up in the primary and if they did they went to Tulsi more than him. That's why people like Jimmy Dore were Tulsi supporters because they couldn't forgive him for that and they weren't alone.
All in All, Bernie could have ended this primary in South Carolina if he did things correctly. He wouldn't have won it but it would have been single digits or a virtual tie if he did. That was go for Biden's electablity. Burn Warren as a fraud and go scorched earth on the competition. SC was willing to vote for him, it was clear until Clyburn stepped in. Not only that Nevada gave Biden a boost and because everyone was so focused on Bloomberg because they thought Biden was dead and Bloomberg would step in to take over they missed their mark and let him go by unscathed.
Did they cheat Bernie out of wins? Of course they did, exit polling data being as far off is proof of fraud. We have widespread voter suppression as well especially in college areas. I do think these tactics were enough to make Bernie go from winning to losing however, they wouldn't have been enough if he went scorched earth. He needed to over win, not just win or he would be robbed and he went for a simple win. This turned states he won into losses through voter fraud and suppression and took his momentum and gave it to Joe. Now there's no stopping him unless people actually pay attention to who is fighting covid, whose ideas will prevent another disaster of the same kind from being on the same level, and that these ideas are more important that some fake electability argument.
Unfortunately I don't see that being the case. Bernie squandered his chance and while there's a chance of Joe's corruption or his brain melting happening, the DNC will just hide him away until Bernie concedes. Either way, Bernie wins or Bernie Loses I'm done with him. He's not the fighter we need, but I thank him for making these ideas main stream. Now let's get someone with a backbone to run or start a 3rd party. If they try this nonsensical dem route again I swear to god AOC sit your ass down and let Nina or Rashida run or whatever movement is there in 2024 wont be anywhere near what's needed.
EDIT: Oh another reason he lost was also giving in to establishment talking points. Put that in with the SJW stuff cause that also killed his anti establishment vote.
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