US Politics: Presidential Harris-ment!

[Prince of the North]

38 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

No shit lol

Like, can we even call them dogwhistles anymore? It's loud and clear to anything that has ears. 

I read an article today about this that referred to them as "dog screams" instead of dog whistles.  I thought it quite fitting. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

40 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

No shit lol

Like, can we even call them dogwhistles anymore? It's loud and clear to anything that has ears. 

That ended years ago.

[Week]

UMass poll has Markey +15

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/511752-new-poll-shows-markey-with-wide-lead-over-kennedy-in-massachusetts

[DanteGabriel]

Kind of out of left field, but is there something wrong with the Anti Defamation League? One of the more passionate progressives in my circle (he's been badmouthing the Harris pick) shared some item about how a bunch of PoC groups are calling for people to stop working with the ADL.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Week said:

UMass poll has Markey +15

I'd make a Kennedy nail in the coffin joke but..even over 50 years later, it seems in bad taste.

[Kalbear]

57 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

This is just so wrong. Sanders made big inroads with Latino voters, especially young Latinxs, and among young Black voters. 

He might have, but per his campaign strategist the plan all along was to keep around 25-30% and win with a plurality. That's from them, not me. 

57 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Were strategic decisions made that maybe weren't great in hindsight? Yes. But Sanders had no other choice but to take a run at the inside straight strategy. It even had a decent chance of working, and perhaps would have worked in a year where everyone wasn't understandably terrified of losing to Trump. 

No, he really didn't have that as his only choice. I don't understand this at all. He had massive money, 4 years to work, and he knew more than anyone what weaknesses he had. And he chose to double down on his base and not reach out to, well, most anyone - and ESPECIALLY not the AA voters in the South. 

How does he have no choice here? How is 'whip up your base and hope for a divided electorate' the only option?

57 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

But to act as if Sanders didn't have an establishment hill to climb is just outright wrong.

So did Obama. Difference was that Obama attempted to get those establishment people onboard - he both knew he needed to AND he went and actually did it. Sanders didn't. 

57 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I don't know if it's your dislike of Sanders that turns you off his supporters, or dislike of his supporters that turns you off of Sanders, but your mischaracterization of his outreach strategy is cartoonish.

Again, this isn't my characterization - this is literally what his campaign said was his strategy. he didn't even try to talk to Clyburn for crying out loud - why? 

[Zorral]

Somebody somewhere will surely explain why the deathcultists think they've done a gooder own of Harris by accusing her of having slaveowners way back in her West Indian background.

https://spectator.us/kamala-harris-pay-reparations/

That's the same as France getting reparations from Haiti until just recently for their loss of slave property and everywhere slave owners punishing recaptured self-emancipated for theft -- of themselves -- one the arguments in the Amistad case, which the Chief Justice just couldn't swallow.

 

[Kalbear]

I guess the other thing, @The Great Unwashed, that Sanders counted on was young people turnout, and his outreach towards them. And that I can say is at least some semblance of a strategy idea. It's an incredibly bad one, mind you,  but he was trying to reach out to them and captured more of a % of the youth than anyone else. Unfortunately, the youth turned out less as a percentage than they did in 2008-2016. 

From another article:

Quote

"There was no ability or desire to grow the electorate," a former Sanders campaign official said, requesting anonymity in order to speak freely.

Senior campaign aides acknowledged their initial strategy had rested on the candidate eking out narrow wins over a period of months against a broad field of competitors. The early state success, they said, would create a path to earning a majority of delegates.

"What was clear is that campaign leadership was banking on a brokered convention," the former official continued — suggesting Sanders would arrive at the Democratic gathering in Milwaukee short of the 1991 delegates needed, but with a strong enough plurality that the party would have no choice but to cede him the nomination.

and

Quote

 

Those rough edges may have endeared him to die-hard fans but ultimately proved problematic in wooing converts. Aides admit it was a struggle to get Sanders on the phone to "play politics" and work to secure influential endorsements.

"The moment he understands this is a relationship-building call, and not something where he's immediately accepting the endorsement, he says 'Oh, come on, don't waste my time' and hangs up and keeps moving," a Sanders aide said.

 

Again, this is just what Sanders is like. It's not a particularly negative thing, but it's also not that surprising that his most vehement fans take a similar tack towards getting endorsements and getting compromise along the way. 

[TrackerNeil]

From the article to which @Kalibear linked:

Quote

She said Sanders is only talking about the procedural dynamics of winning with a plurality because the party establishment has been so transparent in its desire to stop him at all costs.

This was the reason I just couldn't get behind Sanders in the primary, despite the fact that I agreed with him on the issues, like, 95% of the time. The guy was running against the party he proposed to lead, and in my view, that was going to lead to a very fractious general election. There would have been endless grudges and purity tests and who knows what else, and I'm not using my vote to bring about that kind of mess. 

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

He might have, but per his campaign strategist the plan all along was to keep around 25-30% and win with a plurality. That's from them, not me. 

No, he really didn't have that as his only choice. I don't understand this at all. He had massive money, 4 years to work, and he knew more than anyone what weaknesses he had. And he chose to double down on his base and not reach out to, well, most anyone - and ESPECIALLY not the AA voters in the South. 

How does he have no choice here? How is 'whip up your base and hope for a divided electorate' the only option?

So did Obama. Difference was that Obama attempted to get those establishment people onboard - he both knew he needed to AND he went and actually did it. Sanders didn't. 

Again, this isn't my characterization - this is literally what his campaign said was his strategy. he didn't even try to talk to Clyburn for crying out loud - why? 

You're just wrong; and you're taking comments out of context to support your argument. His campaign could be pursuing a narrow win strategy and still reach out beyond the base. One doesn't cancel out the other, especially just on your say-so.

I know for a fact that they were reaching out beyond the base because I was talking to some of the organizers when I was helping out in the primary here. Narrow win =/= base-only.

I would look up articles proving that Sanders did do tons of outreach to the South over the past 4 years, but I know you won't read them anyway. Suffice to say that you're just wrong.

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, The Great Unwashed said:

You're just wrong; and you're taking comments out of context to support your argument. His campaign could be pursuing a narrow win strategy and still reach out beyond the base. One doesn't cancel out the other, especially just on your say-so.

I think you're probably more right in that regard. I'm sure he did some outreach to other groups. At the same time, his head to head against Biden actually dropped him with most groups. And while he did do outreach - to Hispanics, to Native Americans - he did not do particularly much outreach to the AA community, at least to the extent that they felt like he did. Either effectively ignoring or simply not doing a good job with 25% of the voting population of the primaries is probably not that great.

Perhaps that's the real rub - while you can say that they tried, I would indicate based on their results and the comments by their campaign that it was not a particularly wholehearted effort to do so. 

1 minute ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I know for a fact that they were reaching out beyond the base because I was talking to some of the organizers when I was helping out in the primary here. Narrow win =/= base-only. 

But they weren't trying for just a narrow win, and that's my point. They were always trying for a plurality, not a majority. That's kind of a big deal. And your calculus changes a lot when you're saying that 30-35% is good enough. 

1 minute ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I would look up articles proving that Sanders did do tons of outreach to the South over the past 4 years, but I know you won't read them anyway. Suffice to say that you're just wrong.

If he did, apparently it didn't do a whole hell of a lot of good. And he made some pretty big tactical errors, like campaigning in California instead of going to Selma. I guess ultimately I don't really care if you're right and that he did something, because the end result was that it effectively worked like it didn't exist at all. His performance actually went down compared to 2016. And things like 'we're coming after Republicans - AND the Democratic establishment" didn't really perform a lot of outreach towards, well, the Democratic establishment.

Heck, I'd imagine the organizers were frustrated as fuck when he said things like that.

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

When I saw this thread had popped since I last looked, I figured it was this. It didn't even get mentioned.
 

 

1 hour ago, JEORDHl said:

No shit lol

Like, can we even call them dogwhistles anymore? It's loud and clear to anything that has ears. 

Like, guys, I posted about this a week ago, in the last thread, or maybe the one before. This is obviously one of his fear lines to be used for the next three months. “Them Democrats are going to build massive housing projects in your lily white suburbs and destroy everything you worked your whole life to build”. The only thing that surprised me today was that he prefaced his comments with “30% of the people who live in the suburbs are PoC, I think it’s actually more, like 35%, but if I use 35% the fake news will attack me, so I’m going to say 30%, more than 30%, of the people who live in the suburbs are PoC”.

[Guest]

29 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

From the article to which @Kalibear linked:

This was the reason I just couldn't get behind Sanders in the primary, despite the fact that I agreed with him on the issues, like, 95% of the time. The guy was running against the party he proposed to lead, and in my view, that was going to lead to a very fractious general election. There would have been endless grudges and purity tests and who knows what else, and I'm not using my vote to bring about that kind of mess. 

Look, I'm not saying that you're necessarily wrong, but it could just as easily be said that most definitely the media, and to a lesser extent the Democratic party, explicitly ran against him.

When it looked like Sanders had a shot, the knives came out hard. I'm not disputing the outcome, or saying it was rigged, and I've also said here that, whether I like it or not, Biden is practically tailor-made for this moment in history (even if Sanders was right about the lengths to which we must go to effect real change), but it was made very clear that Sanders, and by extension his supporters, were "dangerous" and therefore only allies of convenience to the party. I'm not sure if the larger party "establishment" appreciates just how potentially dangerous that whole period was, and could be if the left isn't taken seriously after this election; I'm not sure people realize how difficult it is to convince a not-politically savvy 22 year old non-voter that their vote actually counts and that an establishment media (and to-a-lesser-extent party establishment) freakout at the thought of an anti-establishment figure actually winning the nomination isn't the same thing as the nominating process being rigged. I'm not 100% sure what would have happened if Trump hadn't epically fucked up the coronavirus response, but so far Sanders' base is still backing Biden to an overwhelming extent.

[Kalbear]

And to pile on that, here's another article that must have made Ro Khanna pissed off;

Quote

 

Khanna said it would be wise for the campaign to distinguish its criticism of the “establishment” as clear attacks on “special interests” — including the insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry — and not the Democratic Party writ large.

“The Democratic Party has been an extraordinary force in American politics, it’s helped defeat Jim Crow, it’s helped give people voting rights,” he said.

 

And like in the very next bit Sanders said he was coming for the establishment. 

[JGP]

Yeah, hence my directing the tweet at you, @Fragile Bird

While it's was all laughable [and still scary] the Booker part got to me the most. Sure, Don, suburban housewives are going to have an issue with Cory fucking Booker, one of the nicest guys in politics pretty much ever lol

[Fragile Bird]

2 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

Yeah, hence my directing the tweet at you, @Fragile Bird

While it's was all laughable [and still scary] the Booker part got to me the most. Sure, Don, suburban housewives are going to have an issue with Corey fucking Booker, one of the nicest guys in politics pretty much ever lol

Like I said, I so wanted to throw a shoe at my tv!

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

 

Like, guys, I posted about this a week ago, in the last thread, or maybe the one before. 

That tweet is from today.

Quote

This is obviously one of his fear lines to be used for the next three months. “Them Democrats are going to build massive housing projects in your lily white suburbs and destroy everything you worked your whole life to build”. The only thing that surprised me today was that he prefaced his comments with “30% of the people who live in the suburbs are PoC, I think it’s actually more, like 35%, but if I use 35% the fake news will attack me, so I’m going to say 30%, more than 30%, of the people who live in the suburbs are PoC”.

Sigh, it's sad that I have to agree with this, considering most things I write here I don't actually post and I wrote a much bleaker version of this....

[Fragile Bird]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

That tweet is from today.

Trump talked about it today, but he tweeted about it last week, when I posted about it. The thread didn’t blow up then either.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Like I said, I so wanted to throw a shoe at my tv!

@Ran, I finally figured out why Canadian abuelas like to visit Cuba! 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Trump talked about it today, but he tweeted about it last week, when I posted about it. The thread didn’t blow up then either.

Was his, god we're talking about the President's rage tweeting like he's not a child that needs to be slapped, was his last tweet that authoritarian?