Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign megathread

[Eraserhead]

LOL

Dog sweat all over the place.

[Adam Griffin]

LOL

[Zaybay]

snip

Thanks for the compliment, and I shall explain myself.

I should start by establishing that I am a huge fan of Elizabeth Warren, both as a constituent and Progressive Democrat, and have found her policies, such as those about the Tech Industry, as extremely sophisticated and needing implementation. The real problem is Warren herself, she is rather poor when it comes to driving enthusiasm and generally been considered, since her 2012 campaign, as someone who lacks Charisma and public sway. We have seen this so far with her inability to end the DNA scandal, and in fact you could argue her actions to try to discard the scandal have only made things worse. She had these problems during both her senate campaigns as well, with Scott Brown somehow being able to label himself as a man of the people and the Trumpist Diehl winning one of the debates. Personally, I see her more as a Mitch McConnell, someone who is able to craft brilliant policy and lead the Senate Dems to victory, but her lack of charisma makes it rather difficult for her to be a successful president.

Charisma is the real big factor in presidential elections, for better or for worse. If you cant woo the crowd, then you're going to have some trouble. This has been the way things work since the foundation of the US Republic. Image matters more than policy. While we as Americans may be against it, its just a simple fact that we love charismatic politicians. Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan, even Trump, they all have a form of charisma to them that allows them to win over a crowd. And thats where Sanders comes in. He is rather sparce on the details, in fact, he has been since the beginning of his 2016 campaign. But where he makes that up is in his command over a crowd, his charisma during a rally, the enthusiasm he drives. There is a reason he was able to combat Clinton while being rather unknown to the public, he was a captivating figure. For the presidency, you need to be more of the charismatic type than the policy type. The executive, except for executive orders, doesnt actually write any bills, they set the tone for debate and shepard public opinion. They have to convince the public that the bills being cranked out arent bad, but favorable to the public. That is an office where being charismatic plays to your favor.

Does sexism play a part in this generalization of both candidates? Maybe. But I feel the factors of both candidates play 1st chair in this honestly simplistic look.

[Bumaye]

The Democratic Socialist Party has endorsed Sanders.

https://twitter.com/GideonResnick/status/1105611456702230536?s=19

[Lord Admirale]

If Bernie gets the democratic nomination and Trump is still president, Putin will be a very happy man.

[Jags]

If Bernie gets the democratic nomination and Trump is still president, Putin will be a very happy man.

Because Bernie is a russian agent

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

LOL

If this is the best attack they can come up with now, Bernie's going to cruise to the nomination.

Pathetic!

[Lord Admirale]

If Bernie gets the democratic nomination and Trump is still president, Putin will be a very happy man.

Because Bernie is a russian agent

He's a foreign policy invertebrate. 

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I am too tired to effortpost for the moment so I'll have to only address this piecemeal. Also pardon any typos.

The real problem is Warren herself, she is rather poor when it comes to driving enthusiasm and generally been considered, since her 2012 campaign, as someone who lacks Charisma and public sway. We have seen this so far with her inability to end the DNA scandal, and in fact you could argue her actions to try to discard the scandal have only made things worse. She had these problems during both her senate campaigns as well, with Scott Brown somehow being able to label himself as a man of the people and the Trumpist Diehl winning one of the debates.

I'm not going to argue that Warren is the more electable candidate, because she clearly isn't. Her "electability" is really the only reason I would peal off for another candidate. I will say though that I think that her unfavorables seem to me to be based on a bubble. As soon as she announced, the common wisdom was "Warren won't be electable because a subset of voters won't vote for her. Therefore, I will not vote for her." It's like stock speculation - a self-fulfilling prophesy that is built upon a small, not well substantiated claim. Put another way, I think in 2015 you had a lot of people that chose to believe that Bernie and Trump would both be really unpalatable candidates. It just took a groundswell of people to say "you know what, I don't care what conventional wisdom is, I'm going to support this candidate" and those perceptions vanished. Point being that if people simply decided they didn't care what a likely small proportion of the population of voters thought and were going to evaluate a candidate based on her merits, she could very well be a stronger candidate than people thought.

Obviously as I've already pointed out there's a heavy level of misogyny that also goes into perceptions of Warren but I won't go into those because I've already done that in this thread and probably will at some point in the future.

Personally, I see her more as a Mitch McConnell, someone who is able to craft brilliant policy and lead the Senate Dems to victory, but her lack of charisma makes it rather difficult for her to be a successful president.

Can't agree with this comparison. McConnell is a legislative tactician, not a policy mastermind. McConnell is good at what he does (inasmuch as he runs the Senate to maximize Republican power) because he's willing to push procedure to its limits in order to maximize power. That's not at all Warren's strength. Warren's strength is both in crafting creative policy (something where McConnell is a complete failure FTR) and directing executive action (which is the ultimate role of a President).

It's also worth pointing out that Warren's effectiveness in crafting policy would be totally wasted in the Senate, where it's unlikely Democrats will have a majority, and impossible to have a filibuster-proof majority. Thus her goals would be limited to one (at most, even in the optimistic case) bill passed through Reconciliation per year, and some proposals (like most M4A proposals) would never pass Reconciliation.

Charisma is the real big factor in presidential elections, for better or for worse. If you cant woo the crowd, then you're going to have some trouble. This has been the way things work since the foundation of the US Republic. Image matters more than policy. While we as Americans may be against it, its just a simple fact that we love charismatic politicians. Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan, even Trump, they all have a form of charisma to them that allows them to win over a crowd.

Okay, and most people on that list were horrible executives. This helps Bernie's case inasmuch as electability is important (a point which I concede) but doesn't suggest he'd be an effective President or enactor of the Progressive vision.

For the presidency, you need to be more of the charismatic type than the policy type. The executive, except for executive orders, doesnt actually write any bills, they set the tone for debate and shepard public opinion. They have to convince the public that the bills being cranked out arent bad, but favorable to the public. That is an office where being charismatic plays to your favor.

This is a really dangerous view of what the President does - it elevates display of raw emotion over actual policy directive. Of course if you take the Schoolhouse Rock view of how policy is enacted, yes the President doesn't propose bills, he/she signs them. But it's pretty naive to assume that the average President and his/her cabinet isn't going to be heavily involved in the policy-making process. Viewing the Presidency solely as a bully pulpit and moral enforcer (especially when 35-45% of the country is going to be a bad-faith negotiator in any policy discussion) really sells short the power and responsibility of the office.

It's also a problematic attitude because only a hot-button subset of issues really need someone in the bully pulpit. Anti-trust initiatives are a great example - the average consumer isn't going to care one way or another. Whether or not it's Sanders or Warren or Biden, their cheerleading on a specific cause isn't really going to have much sway on the Democratic base that the rest of the party apparatus isn't already exerting.

--

I'll add as a final salvo that ever since 2016 I've held essentially the opposite view - Bernie Sanders's best position is within the Senate. He's largely acted on the party by refocusing it's moral compass and shifting the Overton Window. And that's great! It's one of the major successes of his campaign and the reason why I think the 2016 primary was, in the long term, a good thing for the party even if it may have led to Trump's election. But Bernie can (and already has) done that effectively in the Senate when he's been given a platform and a megaphone; he can use his position to essentially whip and bully other Senators into adopting his platform. It's what he's already done with Medicare for All and we're seeing it (slowly) operate on foreign policy e.g. with Israel/Palestine. He's demonstrated that he can do this effectively in the Senate. All of the things you are arguing that he would have the power to do as a President, he is already doing. So with that in mind, why elevate him over other people who have a comparative advantage in actual policy finesse?

[Statilius the Epicurean]

I'll add as a final salvo that ever since 2016 I've held essentially the opposite view - Bernie Sanders's best position is within the Senate. He's largely acted on the party by refocusing it's moral compass and shifting the Overton Window. And that's great! It's one of the major successes of his campaign and the reason why I think the 2016 primary was, in the long term, a good thing for the party even if it may have led to Trump's election. But Bernie can (and already has) done that effectively in the Senate when he's been given a platform and a megaphone; he can use his position to essentially whip and bully other Senators into adopting his platform. It's what he's already done with Medicare for All and we're seeing it (slowly) operate on foreign policy e.g. with Israel/Palestine. He's demonstrated that he can do this effectively in the Senate. All of the things you are arguing that he would have the power to do as a President, he is already doing.

Err yes, only since he made a relatively successful run for President in 2016. He didn't have any policy influence whatsoever with the Democratic leadership in the Senate until he won millions of votes running for President. The only way for Sanders to keep the Democratic Party moving to the left is to win the party's nomination for President to show the 'establishment' that his policy preferences have the largest constituency.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

I'll add as a final salvo that ever since 2016 I've held essentially the opposite view - Bernie Sanders's best position is within the Senate. He's largely acted on the party by refocusing it's moral compass and shifting the Overton Window. And that's great! It's one of the major successes of his campaign and the reason why I think the 2016 primary was, in the long term, a good thing for the party even if it may have led to Trump's election. But Bernie can (and already has) done that effectively in the Senate when he's been given a platform and a megaphone; he can use his position to essentially whip and bully other Senators into adopting his platform. It's what he's already done with Medicare for All and we're seeing it (slowly) operate on foreign policy e.g. with Israel/Palestine. He's demonstrated that he can do this effectively in the Senate. All of the things you are arguing that he would have the power to do as a President, he is already doing.

Err yes, only since he made a relatively successful run for President in 2016. He didn't have any policy influence whatsoever with the Democratic leadership in the Senate until he won millions of votes running for President. The only way for Sanders to keep the Democratic Party moving to the left is to win the party's nomination for President to show the 'establishment' that his policy preferences have the largest constituency.

In a Sanders vs. Biden race, yes I agree with that. In a Sanders vs. Warren race (the context of that post) you're getting policy proposals to the same end. Ignoring high school level analysis like "But Bernie is a socialist and Warren is a capitalist" you aren't going to get very much difference in the values that the two candidates are trying to achieve. In a choice between these two I'd absolutely rather have the policy crafter instead of a motivational speaker as President.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I'll add as a final salvo that ever since 2016 I've held essentially the opposite view - Bernie Sanders's best position is within the Senate. He's largely acted on the party by refocusing it's moral compass and shifting the Overton Window. And that's great! It's one of the major successes of his campaign and the reason why I think the 2016 primary was, in the long term, a good thing for the party even if it may have led to Trump's election. But Bernie can (and already has) done that effectively in the Senate when he's been given a platform and a megaphone; he can use his position to essentially whip and bully other Senators into adopting his platform. It's what he's already done with Medicare for All and we're seeing it (slowly) operate on foreign policy e.g. with Israel/Palestine. He's demonstrated that he can do this effectively in the Senate. All of the things you are arguing that he would have the power to do as a President, he is already doing.

Err yes, only since he made a relatively successful run for President in 2016. He didn't have any policy influence whatsoever with the Democratic leadership in the Senate until he won millions of votes running for President. The only way for Sanders to keep the Democratic Party moving to the left is to win the party's nomination for President to show the 'establishment' that his policy preferences have the largest constituency.

In a Sanders vs. Biden race, yes I agree with that. In a Sanders vs. Warren race (the context of that post) you're getting policy proposals to the same end. Ignoring high school level analysis like "But Bernie is a socialist and Warren is a capitalist" you aren't going to get very much difference in the values that the two candidates are trying to achieve. In a choice between these two I'd absolutely rather have the policy crafter instead of a motivational speaker as President.

Just because Bernie and Warren agree a lot on Wall Street doesn't mean that they don't have significant policy differences on things like how big the military should be. Warren voted multiple times to increase it under the Trump administration.

[Xing]

Well, looks like Nina Turner might be an Atlas user, since she literally used the words "freedom fighter" to describe Sanders.

[Mr. Smith]

I'll add as a final salvo that ever since 2016 I've held essentially the opposite view - Bernie Sanders's best position is within the Senate. He's largely acted on the party by refocusing it's moral compass and shifting the Overton Window. And that's great! It's one of the major successes of his campaign and the reason why I think the 2016 primary was, in the long term, a good thing for the party even if it may have led to Trump's election. But Bernie can (and already has) done that effectively in the Senate when he's been given a platform and a megaphone; he can use his position to essentially whip and bully other Senators into adopting his platform. It's what he's already done with Medicare for All and we're seeing it (slowly) operate on foreign policy e.g. with Israel/Palestine. He's demonstrated that he can do this effectively in the Senate. All of the things you are arguing that he would have the power to do as a President, he is already doing.

Err yes, only since he made a relatively successful run for President in 2016. He didn't have any policy influence whatsoever with the Democratic leadership in the Senate until he won millions of votes running for President. The only way for Sanders to keep the Democratic Party moving to the left is to win the party's nomination for President to show the 'establishment' that his policy preferences have the largest constituency.

In a Sanders vs. Biden race, yes I agree with that. In a Sanders vs. Warren race (the context of that post) you're getting policy proposals to the same end. Ignoring high school level analysis like "But Bernie is a socialist and Warren is a capitalist" you aren't going to get very much difference in the values that the two candidates are trying to achieve. In a choice between these two I'd absolutely rather have the policy crafter instead of a motivational speaker as President.

FDR, Ike, Bill Clinton, and Reagan were not policy people. Hoover, Carter, Nixon, and Bush Sr were.

The evidence for motivational speakers over policy people couldn't be more clear.

[Shadows]

I'll add as a final salvo that ever since 2016 I've held essentially the opposite view - Bernie Sanders's best position is within the Senate. He's largely acted on the party by refocusing it's moral compass and shifting the Overton Window. And that's great! It's one of the major successes of his campaign and the reason why I think the 2016 primary was, in the long term, a good thing for the party even if it may have led to Trump's election. But Bernie can (and already has) done that effectively in the Senate when he's been given a platform and a megaphone; he can use his position to essentially whip and bully other Senators into adopting his platform. It's what he's already done with Medicare for All and we're seeing it (slowly) operate on foreign policy e.g. with Israel/Palestine. He's demonstrated that he can do this effectively in the Senate. All of the things you are arguing that he would have the power to do as a President, he is already doing.

Err yes, only since he made a relatively successful run for President in 2016. He didn't have any policy influence whatsoever with the Democratic leadership in the Senate until he won millions of votes running for President. The only way for Sanders to keep the Democratic Party moving to the left is to win the party's nomination for President to show the 'establishment' that his policy preferences have the largest constituency.

In a Sanders vs. Biden race, yes I agree with that. In a Sanders vs. Warren race (the context of that post) you're getting policy proposals to the same end. Ignoring high school level analysis like "But Bernie is a socialist and Warren is a capitalist" you aren't going to get very much difference in the values that the two candidates are trying to achieve. In a choice between these two I'd absolutely rather have the policy crafter instead of a motivational speaker as President.

I think both have very different approaches & priorities. Not only is Warren not that good in terms of foreign policy, there are massive question marks over her capability to implement policies. Coming up with some random obscure policy doesn't mean you should be President. FDR, Reagan weren't policy wonks & they were transformation figures. Warren is 2 tier below Sanders & may not be able to implement policies which Sanders has fought for his entire life & has brought into the limelight from obscurity.

Warren likely voted for freaking Reagan in the 80s & didn't support any version of Universal healthcare till a couple of years ago. She is not a visionary. She is not charismatic or inspiring. Transformation Presidents have not just incredible political acumen, vision but an incredible grassroots support & connect with people.

No President, not Sanders nor Warren can implement these incredible changes w/o massive grassroots public support !

[henster]

With his age in constant spotlight, stuff like this will get more coverage than it should.

https://twitter.com/rubycramer/status/1106602122085322752

[Hindsight was 2020]

With his age in constant spotlight, stuff like this will get more coverage than it should.

https://twitter.com/rubycramer/status/1106602122085322752

Which is why picking 71 year old Warren as his go would be stupid

[Pyro]

With his age in constant spotlight, stuff like this will get more coverage than it should.

https://twitter.com/rubycramer/status/1106602122085322752

The man goes immediately from getting stitches to a scheduled town hall about healthcare.
That's top-shelf leadership material if I've ever seen it.
Just imagine if this happened to Trump - He'd spend the next six months at Mar-a-Lago.

[Xing]

I bet a lot of people won't mention the "given a clean bill of health" part.

[henster]

I bet a lot of people won't mention the "given a clean bill of health" part.

At least that's what his campaign is saying, they also said they'd be releasing his tax returns 'soon' for the past two years. The whole way they describe it sounds bizarre, seems more likely he had an elderly fall in the shower which is more damaging to reveal.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

I bet a lot of people won't mention the "given a clean bill of health" part.

Nope.  They don’t have much to cling to other than their shrieking about Bernie did this and Bernie said that.  Sad state of affairs, folks.

[Rookie Yinzer]

I bet a lot of people won't mention the "given a clean bill of health" part.

At least that's what his campaign is saying, they also said they'd be releasing his tax returns 'soon' for the past two years. The whole way they describe it sounds bizarre, seems more likely he had an elderly fall in the shower which is more damaging to reveal.

[Sestak]

https://twitter.com/aseitzwald/status/1106664010429140994?s=21

[RI]

It's admirable, but a bit empty. It's not like there's any real chance his campaign will go on strike at an important time.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

It's admirable, but a bit empty. It's not like there's any real chance his campaign will go on strike at an important time.

Are you saying that police and firefighter unions don't do anything? Because they typically aren't allowed to strike.