• PugJesus@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    Honestly, even if the DNC was completely even-handed in '16, I still think he would’ve lost. In '20, it was only some clever politiking (which, I must emphasize, is not illegitimate and quite literally part of the job) and Warren doing whatever the fuck she thought she was doing that sank him.

    • LanternEverywhere@kbin.social
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      7 months ago

      The evidence shows the opposite of what you think. All polling at all times showed bernie beating trump by a much bigger margin than hillary.

      And the country was itching for someone who would shake up the status quo. Hillary was the epitome of status quo, while trump and bernie were very much the opposite.

      All evidence shows bernie would’ve done very well against trump.

      • phillaholic@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        the GOP never unleashed their attacks on Bernie, so those polls don’t mean much.

        • deft@ttrpg.network
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          7 months ago

          Bernie won swing states which would be Hillary’s downfall.

          There was a push by the system for Hillary. The DNC ran shit past her campaign to give her the ups and who knows what else, Bernie was grassroots.

          • PugJesus@kbin.social
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            7 months ago

            Hey, man, I’m not disagreeing with that assessment of the general election. But unfortunately, he needed to win the Dem primary to get to that point, and in 2016, it would have taken Hillary dropping the n-bomb on live tv to get Bernie over the finish line. She had a lot of name recognition and organization, her reputation hadn’t been completely cratered by losing to America’s biggest loser at that point, and Bernie was borderline taken by surprise by his success in '16. Man had been preaching the same thing for 30 years and suddenly, almost out of nowhere, interest surged like a wave.

            He was much more prepared in '20 (and had more name recognition to boot).

            • deft@ttrpg.network
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              7 months ago

              I don’t disagree with Clinton coming in with more weight but I don’t think she was ever that ahead of Sanders. The system in place, the DNC and other big players just preferred Hillary and that edge resulted in her win.

              In a more fair race where the DNC was equally kind to Sanders or hostile to Clinton I think Sanders would’ve won it and we’d be such a different political landscape.

              Clinton had a lot of shit that would’ve taken anyone out of the race but was granted extra lives by (what I see as) annoying shitty politicking bullshit.

              • phillaholic@lemm.ee
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                7 months ago

                She had all those advantages in 2008 and Lost to Obama when more people voter for him than her. Quite simply Bernie received less votes than Hillary in 2016, and the endless list of excuses weren’t unique to him. There is a massive bias online that Bernie was more popular than he was. He never beat Hillary in nationwide polls and had major holes in his strategy and campaign that he never over came. He’s a great person, not a great politician.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          But who gives a flying fuck about that? The primary isn’t supposed to be anything more than a means to an end. Winning the general election is the part that’s actually important!

          • PugJesus@kbin.social
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            7 months ago

            Unless you think Bernie could’ve run as a third party candidate and won in the general election, the primary is still incredibly important in any consideration of a realistic scenario of Bernie’s candidacy.

            • grue@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              The second half of your comment does not follow from the first half – that nonsense about Bernie running as a third-party candidate is nothing but a dishonest strawman argument.

              Anyway, nothing about that abosolves the DNC of culpability for tipping the scales to run a candidate without enough across-the-aisle appeal to win the general election. They only have themselves to blame for Trump.

              That goes double when you consider the fact that the people who would’ve provided Bernie’s margin of victor in the general election – those who liked him for his anti-authoritarianism, not his leftism – most likely couldn’t vote in the Democratic primary because they were too busy voting in the Republican one for somebody like Kasich in hopes of keeping Trump off the ballot in the first place.

              • PugJesus@kbin.social
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                7 months ago

                The second half of your comment does not follow from the first half – that nonsense about Bernie running as a third-party candidate is nothing but a dishonest strawman argument.

                But… what? How?

                My point is that winning the Dem primary is important unless you think Bernie can win as a third party candidate. Which is true, because that’s how party nominations work??

    • zzzz@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Warren doing whatever the fuck she thought she was doing

      She was making sure Bernie lost by splitting the progressive vote. That was exactly the intention.

      • phillaholic@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        Because Bernie was entitled to the nomination? There’s a ton of authoritarian shit coming from Bernie fans. Between this, wanting to change the rules of primaries when he lost, wanting to ignore the popular vote to make him the nominee etc.

        • Doc Avid Mornington@midwest.social
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          7 months ago

          Are you claiming that wanting to make antidemocratic rules more democratic is authoritarian? Who wanted to ignore the popular vote? And how, exactly, does the comment you replied to suggest that Bernie was entitled to the nomination? The voters are entitled to get the candidate they want.

          • phillaholic@lemm.ee
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            7 months ago

            Changing the rules after the fact is indeed anti democratic. I’m referring to all the talk during the primaries of ignoring the voters and pushing for delegates to vote for Bernie instead. Or course this wasn’t endorsed by Bernie. Rhetoric was rampant online at the time, fueled by Bernie refusing to quit after mathematically eliminated.

            The voters are entitled to get the candidate they want, and in 2016 that was Hillary Clinton.

      • PugJesus@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        I understand why some people think that, which is why I mentioned it as the other possibility, but I honestly think it was simply a stupid mistake. People don’t get into politics unless they’re willing, to some degree, to make bets on long odds and embrace their inner ego. Sometimes, as with Warren’s refusal to drop out, that ends poorly.

        • voidMainVoid@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Warren claims that Bernie said something sexist to her, and I’m sure that played into it. At the end of the day, the 1% were able to get their people to drop out and unify behind a single candidate and the 99% weren’t.

    • MonkRome@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I never get the warren hate. Other than her native American gaff, she was a strong candidate and would have made a good president.

      • PugJesus@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        Hate is a strong word. It’s more that she made a decision that made no strategic sense, and was not a stand on moral principles or anything like that. It was just either a dumb choice, as we all make sometimes, or a conscious attempt to crater Bernie. It doesn’t really have a third option that I can think of.

        In either case, it was senseless, and any time the issue comes up, I draw attention to it, because it was fucking disastrous.

          • PugJesus@kbin.social
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            7 months ago

            Oh, sorry, not dropping out on Super Tuesday. She was stayed in as a spoiler candidate on Super Tuesday despite the fact that polling showed that she hadn’t a chance in hell of actually making any progress towards the nomination, and all the other moderates had simultaneously dropped out to support Biden.

            • Heresy_generator@kbin.social
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              7 months ago

              all the other moderates had simultaneously dropped out to support Biden.

              I love this alternative history where Michael Bloomberg doesn’t exist and didn’t take more votes away from Biden than Warren did Sanders.

              Warren should have know it was Sanders’ turn, amirite?

              • PugJesus@kbin.social
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                7 months ago

                Bloomberg wasn’t a moderate, he was a straight-up right-wing twat. But in any case, that doesn’t really take away from the core problem I’m pointing out?

                Warren should have know it was Sanders turn, amirite?

                Man, if you’re at a point in your support and with the polls opening soon and realize you’re gonna be a spoiler candidate, then you have to either accept responsibility for cratering someone, or nut up and drop out to avoid cratering the candidate you’re closer to. She didn’t do the latter, so she has to accept the former.

                • grue@lemmy.world
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                  7 months ago

                  Bloomberg wasn’t a moderate, he was a straight-up right-wing twat.

                  The only charitable way to interpret Heresy_generator’s comment would be as a confession that Biden was also a straight-up right-wing twat, LOL.

                • MonkRome@lemmy.world
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                  7 months ago

                  Anyone old enough to remember Bill Clinton’s campaign knows this is complete hogwash. Clinton had no chance of winning the nomination until suddenly he was the front runner riding a wave of popularity seemingly overnight. No one owes a single candidate their allegiance just because you see them as closely aligned, and they have every right and reason to believe they can win. Additionally candidates also choose to stay in to force their policy positions onto the party platform, something Sanders also did well past a likely winning outcome. I really think you’re only seeing this from a self centered perspective without considering the situation from any other candidates perspective. Its honestly very Bernie bro culty.

                  • PugJesus@kbin.social
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                    7 months ago

                    Anyone old enough to remember Bill Clinton’s campaign knows this is complete hogwash.

                    Afraid I’m not that old. Wasn’t even born when Clinton ran in '92.

                    No one owes a single candidate their allegiance just because you see them as closely aligned, and they have every right and reason to believe they can win.

                    They have every right, but not every reason. A failure to examine the current circumstances and likelihood of success accurately is… well, a mistake. A failure. It doesn’t make anyone a bad person, but it is a bad decision.

                    Additionally candidates also choose to stay in to force their policy positions onto the party platform, something Sanders also did well past a likely winning outcome.

                    Yes, but she dropped out two days after Super Tuesday, so that’s not really applicable here.

                    I really think you’re only seeing this from a self centered perspective without considering the situation from any other candidates perspective. Its honestly very Bernie bro culty.

                    It’s… culty to think that Bernie would have had better chances had the other progressive candidate in the race, who was polling much more poorly, had dropped out when all the moderate candidates dropped out and endorsed the moderate candidate remaining?

                    Man, I’m at peace with what happened. It’s politics, it is what it is. But that doesn’t mean Warren made a good or sensible choice.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Other than her native American gaff,

        It wasn’t any kind of gaff…

        She said that she has a Native ancestor. Which a DNA test can’t disprove because:

        1. Not all of someone’s DNA gets passed on each generation.

        2. Native Americans have a pretty widespread dislike of DNA tests, so DNA tests don’t really know what to look for.

        Also,

        1. Native Americans focus their community on culture, not DNA

        Because of #3, anytime someone from outside their culture talks about ancestry, a bunch of tribes release boilerplate statements about how a DNA test doesn’t make anyone a Native or not a Native.

        I can’t remember how far back she said that ancestor was, but I think it was so far back that statistically the most likely result was going to be no native ancestry. People think DNA is all stamped with ethnicity of origin or something, it doesn’t work like that. There’s just certain mutations that can be tracked to specific isolated populations.

        Most DNA is just ambiguously human.

        So you take that slim chance of an identifiable mutation getting passed down every generation, and the low sampling rate among native populations, and yeah, lots of people will get negative results.

        However, it was extremely disappointing that she hired that ex Clinton campaign worker, and then took their advice and immediately started attacking Bernie. That was never about helping Warren, they were kamikazing her campaign into Bernie’s.

        And it worked.

        • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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          7 months ago

          I can’t remember how far back she said that ancestor was, but I think it was so far back that statistically the most likely result was going to be no native ancestry.

          That’s not how DNA tests work. The experts consulted were confident she had Native ancestry, but it was unclear how far back. The 1/1024th isn’t a chance, it’s people who don’t understand DNA incorrectly converting “on the upper end of 6-10 generations” to 1 out of 1024 ancestors and then to 1/1024 chance. The statistics of it being true were very high even though the proportion of her DNA from the ancestor was small.

        • prole@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          Also, I feel like most of these people are either too young to know life without the internet, or they forget, but this was something white, suburban, middle class people used to say all of the time. It was usually some story (true or not, I don’t know), passed down from their great grandparents or some shit, and probably altered like a game of telephone, until you’ve got a person telling their friends about how they’re “1/32 Cherokee” or some shit.

          There was never any way to check, and nobody really cared. It was a different time.

          I’m not defending what she said, it was a dumb thing to say. But it’s probably just based on some story she was told as a kid that may or may not be true.

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Not to mention, I’ve never heard a person- whose basically white, with no apparent native culture- use “I have Native American ancestry” as anything other than a cudgel to insist they can’t be racist.

          Usually while being racist. (Example: my grandfather.)

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Eh, depends on the area.

            The vast majority of “old family” Appalachians have natives somewhere on their family tree, it’s just most people never really talk about it.

            At most it’s offhand mention at family gatherings, which was exactly the context Warren said she heard. Her grandparent or whoever could very well had it and shown up on a test, but it gets exponentially harder the more generations go by

            Warren just happened to mention it on the campaign trail, and a bunch of people jumped on it.

            • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              At most it’s offhand mention at family gatherings, which was exactly the context Warren said she heard. Her grandparent or whoever could very well had it and shown up on a test, but it gets exponentially harder the more generations go by

              it stopped being family history discussions when she mentions it on the campaign trail or on job applications. (I understand there’s conflicting evidence as to the Harvard thing, but, lets be honest here, it’s probably true).

              such things coming up in the context of family history makes sense and wouldn’t (necessarily) be racist. But Warren went beyond that… when it’s usually pretty evident if someone’s family is Native American when they’re talking about it. the handful of soundbites I caught were very much in the manner my racist grandfather used to justify his angry bullshit screeds against Native Americans. that said, DNA tests are definitely never going to be conclusive about that. it’s patently ridiculous to think one’s heritage is genetic- heritage is a matter of culture; and culture is learned… distilling your heritage to a percentage based on DNA is a scam to get your DNA.

              • prole@sh.itjust.works
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                7 months ago

                (I understand there’s conflicting evidence as to the Harvard thing, but, lets be honest here, it’s probably true).

                Lol really giving the benefit of the doubt, huh?

                • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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                  7 months ago

                  Not really. She annoys me though, so I’m probably biased or something.

                  But I really wouldn’t expect there to be any evidence either way, so pick your poison. She has used it in her stump speeches, and that’s verifiable

          • prole@sh.itjust.works
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            7 months ago

            People used to say shit like this all of the time before the internet. It was usually just someone trying to sound cool, or set themselves apart from other kids in some way.

            If they weren’t just making it up whole cloth, It was usually some story passed down from their great grandparents that they’re repeating (probably inaccurately) about how someone x generations ago had a Cherokee father or some shit, then they do the math to claim that means they’re 1/32 Cherokee or whatever.

            Back then, I don’t remember it being used in any way as an argument against being racist. It was usually just people trying to be cool or different, or telling a boring story about their family that they think is true.

            I’m not excusing what she said, it was a stupid thing to say. I’m just not sure if it deserved the criticism it received.

    • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Honestly, even if the DNC was completely even-handed in '16, I still think he would’ve lost.

      Right. They pulled all the fuckery they pulled when they didn’t even need to and alienated voters they needed. Then didn’t even try to get them back. I worry they’re repeating the same “write off voters you need because you can blame them later” mistake now.

      In '20, it was only some clever politiking (which, I must emphasize, is not illegitimate and quite literally part of the job) and Warren doing whatever the fuck she thought she was doing that sank him.

      He got outmaneuvered in 2020, yes. The field narrowed to his disfavor and Biden got a key endorsement in South Carolina. This was probably due to some shrewd politicking on Biden’s part and I very much doubt it was the massive conspiracy that some of my fellow progressives allege.

      There are other factors, like how the press hated Sanders. I remember the lead up to South Carolina. They were just openly asking “how do we stop Sanders?” There was CNN’s “how did you feel when he said you couldn’t win because you’re a woman” at that one debate. May as well have just spat on him and called him a liar. You had Chris Matthews saying a Sanders presidency would result in public executions in Central Park. He sounded like he was on Fox News and not MSNBC. Chuck Todd’s “brownshirts” comment was disgraceful. He was kinder to the January 6 insurrectionists than he was to Sanders and his supporters.

      I think the party had its thumb firmly and unapologetically on the scale in 2016, but not 2020. Sanders just got outplayed in 2020.

      • DrPop@lemmy.one
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        7 months ago

        The press consistently put out interviews during the prelims about people wanting Sanders but voting for Biden because he’s more likely to win. Bernie could have generated a ton of public and young support. I do think the corporate Dems didn’t want him to take power.

        • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          I do think the corporate Dems didn’t want him to take power.

          Corpodems would prefer a Republican to a progressive in any given office.