Truth!!

McGovern actually LOST the popular vote.

LOL.

No man, liberal Democrats who love the Democratic party and its ideals know that nominating a great liberal Democrat is the way to win and the way to bring progress to the nation.

Populism is toxic and against the liberal values of our party. Populism is a disease and not a cure.

. . . My point is that using 1972 as a yardstick for 2020 is a fool's errand. The country is different -- culturally, politically, socially, economically -- from what it was 48 tears ago.

His name was George Wallace.

Populism was toxic then. And it is toxic now.

"Populist" has become en epithet used by centrists and establishment types, and others who for whatever reason don't want to see Bernie win under any circumstances.

And frankly, to compare Bernie to George Wallace is as specious a comparison as I can imagine!

fully behind Senator Sanders.

Bernie and FDR have some significant differences.

FDR was a consumate establishment insider, a bureaucrat, the 1% of the 1%, ivy league grad, very charismatic and bursting with enthusiasm and an emotional intelligence.

He could galvanize people with hope rather than anger. He didn't scold and shake his finger. He smiled.

He could work with people, and didn't consider anyone who didn't agree with him to be wrong at best and corrupt at worst.

His populism had a very different basis than Trump's or Sanders.'

AND he was a liberal Democrat. You know, what Sanders insisted he's not and never has been?

Populism is real and a serious and growing danger to democracies around the planet. And like extremism, the term is associated with bad things for real reasons.

Every election possesses valid comparisons to every other election, as well as possessing stark contrasts also. I can find valid comparisons between the '72 election and the election of 1868. I can also find dramatic differences.

You fail to examine the specific comparisons made, and simply use an un-sourced aggregate of sentiment to support your premise. That is in fact, the fool's errand.

It's much more conservative than it was back then. And there was no right wing talk radio or Fox News either. We try going full liberal in the General and we'll get our asses handed to us.

The landslide 1984 Presidential election defeat spurred centrist Democrats to action, and the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was formed. The DLC, an unofficial party organization, played a critical role in moving the Democratic Party's policies to the center of the American political spectrum. Prominent Democratic politicians such as Senators Al Gore and Joe Biden (both future Vice Presidents) participated in DLC affairs prior to their candidacy for the 1988 Democratic Party nomination.[8]

The DLC espoused policies that moved the Democratic Party to the centre. However, the DLC did not want the Democratic Party to be "simply posturing in the middle." Thus, the DLC declared their ideas to be “progressive,” and a third way to address the problems of the 1990s. Examples of the DLC's policy initiatives can be found in The New American Choice Resolutions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democrats

overall to its pre-Reagan degree of liberalism. Anyone who denies that is either clueless or lying. There is no "third' excuse for pushing this untruth.

won in 2016...

???

2018

The organization with the best endorsement record in Democratic primaries remains the Democratic Party itself. Candidates who are on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Red to Blue List or endorsed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee7 had a win rate of 95 percent (37 wins out of 39 endorsements). In races where a party-endorsed candidate ran against a progressive-group-endorsed candidate (excluding any races where a candidate was endorsed by both sides), the party-endorsed candidate won 89 percent of the time.

In other words, the best predictor of primary success remains establishment support.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-establishment-is-beating-the-progressive-wing-in-democratic-primaries-so-far/

How candidates endorsed by selected people and groups have fared in open Democratic primaries for Senate, House and governor in 2018

Endorsed Win Percent

Joe Biden - 10 10 100%
Elizabeth Warren - 5 5 100
Democratic Party committees - 39 37 95
Emily’s List - 54 39 72
PCCC - 15 10 67
Indivisible - 46 30 65
VoteVets - 28 16 57
Bernie Sanders - 9 5 56
Working Families Party - 30 15 50
Gun Sense - 192 79 41
Justice Dems - 50 16 32
Our Revolution - 85 27 32

Victory?



Answer.. The Victory candidates were mostly Moderates who Flipped red seats to BLUE. BS didn't even see it coming.

You misspelled racist and misogynist fervor.

Talk about an "anti-establishment" fervor.

Comparing that with the Obama prosperity? I think we are being gaslighted.

Maybe it was trending on Twitter and we missed it.

Those Dems who Flipped Over 40 red seats to BLUE.. that's who



BS didn't even see the Blue Wave coming..

Bernie Sanders casts doubt on blue wave

https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/412535-sanders-casts-doubt-on-blue-wave

But not so much.

Democrats took back the house on the promise of restoring the ACA.

with the Blue Wave Victory.. not the one who "didn't see it coming".

Eleanor Roosevelt
HRC
Barbara Jordan
Abigail Adams....

But it's foolish to dismiss the concerns of those who believe nominating a candidate as left as Bernie may hurt in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The problem isn't the popular vote or the viability of a candidate like Bernie in, say, California or Vermont. It's about whether that viability carries over into must-win swing states that have been shifting, ever so slowly, to the Republicans since the 2000s.

Can Bernie Sanders play in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania? Maybe.

But right now, the average lead for Sanders in Wisconsin is just two-points. For Biden, it's nearly 4.

That margin doesn't seem THAT significant but at the state level, it absolutely is because it puts Biden closer to being outside the MOE than Sanders is right now. In Pennsylvania, Biden leads Trump, on average, by 7 points. Bernie leads by only 4%. In Michigan, Biden and Bernie essentially lead Trump by the same amount (6.7/.8 points).

The problem is that the Democrats need to win all three of those states - not just one or two. They need all three or they're going to have to find the electoral votes somewhere else and I am not sure the map favors any of the Democratic candidates enough to bank on that (say, winning Georgia or North Carolina or Ohio or Florida or Texas).

So, I do disagree with those who claim nominating Bernie will be a repeat of '72. I don't see any Democrat losing by anywhere near that margin. The country is too divided, and there's still too many electorally rich states the nominee will win (California, New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey) for that type of bloodbath. But I am not sold that Bernie can build the type of coalition needed to win those three states I mentioned, while also hanging on to Virginia.

Sure, I believe he'll get more young voters out to the polls but we all assume he'll still be able to keep essentially those who got out and voted Hillary in those states and then pad the results with an uptick in youth vote. But the thing is, based on exit polls in Wisconsin, one of the largest shifts from 2012 to 2016 came from moderate voters. In 2012, Obama won moderate voters with 61%. In 2016, Hillary won that same group with only 52%. That decline, more than anything in Wisconsin, shifted the state against her.

My question, and I'm not doing this as a leading question (okay, maybe a bit): Can Bernie win moderate voters by Obama-levels or will he win them by an even smaller margin than Hillary in 2016?

That's a concern. Because if the younger vote turnout (18-29) in Wisconsin rivals 2008, the high water mark, I think, for a Democratic candidate, it will only prove to be a 5% increase over what turned out eight years later in 2016. In 2008, Obama won that vote 64-35. In 2016, Hillary won that vote 47-44.

So, I see two problems here:

1) The youth vote didn't see THAT significant of a decrease from 2008 to 2016 - and an even smaller decrease from 2012 (20% in 2012, so, a three-point decrease).

2) Trump did significantly better among the youth vote in 2016 than either McCain or Romney in 2008 and 2012. Some of this is absolutely Hillary and I think there's a valid point to suggest that Bernie will do significantly better there than she did. But I am skeptical he'll rival Obama's numbers in 2012, as Obama won that vote with roughly 59-60%.

We're dealing with smaller margins here than with moderate voters. In 2016, they made up 40% of the Wisconsin electorate. That was the exact total they made up in 2012.

Again, Hillary won this group 52-42 - ten points. But in 2012, Obama won this group 61-37. Hillary did nine-points worse than Obama and Trump did five-points better than Romney. That's a fourteen-point swing on the largest ideological voting block in either election.

Liberals? In 2012, they made up 24% of the vote in Wisconsin and in 2016, they were 25%. So, there was actually an increase there of a point. Hillary won 86% of the liberal vote, compared to Obama, who won 90%, while Trump did two-percent better than Romney.

This is my biggest concern. It's the game of margins. Is Sanders going to make up the ground in these areas on turnout alone? I think it's possible. I will never suggest it's impossible. But it's a tall order. I think, for anyone who looks at the raw numbers, it showcases what we've kinda known about Wisconsin these last few years - it's a state that is trending more and more conservative.

Moderate voters are going to decide Wisconsin. If Sanders does as poorly as Hillary did with this group, he possibly could make up the margins with a larger younger voter turnout - but if he does worse than Hillary with moderate voters, or those young voters who supported Trump in 2016 aren't convinced to Sanders in 2020, he will lose Wisconsin.

And then he will lose the election.

And it's the same picture in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

The only difference with those two states is that the black population, something that could prove a disadvantage for Bernie, plays a far more significant role in these elections than they do in Wisconsin.

Bottom line: I think Bernie will do great in Colorado and Oregon and Washington and pretty much every state we know a Democrat is likely to carry in 2020. I actually think he might do better in Iowa than either Biden or Warren. But I also know that if we don't win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and even if we hang on to Virginia and win Iowa, we still lose the election. Hell, you can give Bernie Pennsylvania in this scenario and the Democrats are still twelve electoral votes short of 270. That's my fear about Bernie and I think it's well-placed. I think Bernie can absolutely win all three. But I think someone like Biden almost certainly would win all three and I don't see Biden losing any state Hillary carried sans New Hampshire and even then, if he wins those three, he wins the presidency.

. . . and I'm sorry to say, have a number of Trump supporters among my family. I'm telling you, going after them is a lost cause. They are much too emotionally invested in their vote for Trump to be able to admit to themselves what a terrible mistake they made.

If you want to win in November, focus on inspiring the 18-45 demographic. Oh, and before anybody even says "they don't show up to vote," I would point out that they outvoted their elders in 2018! (See https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/29/gen-z-millennials-and-gen-x-outvoted-older-generations-in-2018-midterms/?fbclid=iwar161z9paqba44cdf_n-ex8xzwb6ceyvo_b8fzmmw9mhd-wyd1xyuakzhvk ).

If you alienate even more moderate voters, people who reluctantly supported Hillary in 2016 because they were terrified of Trump, but are generally conservative-leaning, it's going to be a tall task to make up those margins with other voters.

In Pennsylvania, in 2016, moderates made up 40% of the vote (just as they did in Wisconsin). Hillary won this group 53-43 (almost exactly like she did in Wisconsin). In 2012, moderates made up 40% of the vote, just as it was in Wisconsin. Obama won that group 57-41. It's the exact same trend we saw in Wisconsin - moderate voters remained the largest ideological voting block in both elections in Pennsylvania and Trump did better than Romney and Hillary did worse than Obama.

Now I agree that it's going to be a tall order to win back many of those moderate voters.

But the concern isn't necessarily winning 'em back. Hillary barely lost Pennsylvania. The concern is that Bernie may alienate even more moderate voters and we lose ground on that group of voters who make up the largest ideological voting block in the election.

It's basic math. 18-29 turnout in 2016 in Pennsylvania was 16%. In 2008, which I think, again, was the high-water mark for candidates, as Obama did exactly what you're suggesting, and history was being made, the 18-29 voters made up 18% of the electorate in Pennsylvania. There was only a two-point difference from 2008 to 2016. Now to be fair, Obama won that vote 65-35 and Hillary won it 52-43 in Pennsylvania, but again, we're talking about a much smaller segment of the voting population than moderates. Frankly, it's hard for me to believe Bernie would do that much better among the younger vote than Obama in 2008 and get 'em out there at a far higher rate than what Obama saw in his first election.

So, it comes back to the basic question: what happens if Bernie actually does worse among moderate voters than Hillary did in 2016?

If Bernie does about as well as Hillary, you're 100% right - the margins will be made up with the youth turnout.

But if moderates spook on Bernie, and he does five-points worse, I don't know if you're going to find the support needed among those younger voters to make up for that loss.

. . . it confirms my point. Moderate Democrats did indeed go for Hillary in those critical states she lost. Now, unless those moderate Democrats are going to go for Trump in 2020, I don't think those are the voters we need to worry about. (And if they are, then all this rhetoric about the need to unify around a particular candidate, which has been thrown mostly at progressives, has been sorely misdirected.) There may be a few independent/unaffiliated Trump voters who can be won back to the Democratic side, but as I said, most are too heavily emotionally invested in their vote for Trump to admit they made a mistake.

If we want to win, we should focus on the 18-45 demographic, among whom both Sanders and Warren (Sanders especially) have very strong support.

So, your point is wrong. Hillary did fourteen-points worse among moderate voters, who made up 40% of the electorate in Wisconsin in 2016.

In 2012, moderates made up a total of 1,227,373 voters. That was out of 3,068,434‬. Of those voters, Obama won 748,697.

In 2016, moderates made up a total of 1,190,460 voters. That was out of 2,976,150. Of those voters, Clinton won 619,039. Total, she received 129,658 fewer moderate votes than Obama in 2012.

Hillary lost Wisconsin by 22,748.

Focusing solely on that 18-29 vote is risky because it's smaller and it's more fickle. Plus, I don't know if there's a guarantee that Bernie can do as well as Obama did among this group. If he does even minimally worse, and does worse among moderate votes, even if he does better than Hillary in 2016 among these younger voters, it might not be enough to win a state like Wisconsin.

It doesn’t bring 1972 to mind. Take it back to 1968. Humphrey could have shortened the war by 8 years but the left had to have their own way and threw it all away. But gosh we were all very passionate.

but why do people, on DU of all places, pretend that Hillary did so badly? It was down to a system that bizarrly values the votes of the people in some states higher than of those living in other states. She won the damn election by 3 million votes despite all that was thrown against her. In a democratic system she wins. In another scenario without Comey, people voting for Stein out of spite and foreign interference she wins as well. Running candidates like Hillary (who by the way was the by far most qualified candidate in most of our lifetimes) works under normal circumstances.

And please just stop with this bs of "the party's insistance on going with an establishment favorite". First, Hillary won the nomination because a majority of actual Democrats wanted her to be their candidate. The party leadership didn't go against the wish of the voters. Secondly, of course Hillary was well liked in the party. She was a part of it for decades, built a network and friendships over all these years. You need to work with other people to get things done.

I have no argument with the statement that "Hillary won the nomination because a majority of actual Democrats wanted her to be their candidate." The problem is that those "actual Democrats" ignored Hillary's historically high disapproval ratings among independent/unaffilated voters, who are a critical constituency that Democrats need to draw significantly from if they are to win national elections..

As though us 'actual democrats" didn't have not a clue what they were doing when they chose her by nearly 4 million...

I presume you know better.

. . . But that's the system that was in place when Hillary entered the election (and is still in place now) Any Democratic candidate has to beat Trump with the system that is in place, whether that system is fair or not. Hillary didn't do well enough in place where she needed to in order to win the election. That's the bottom line.

despite Russian interference, misogyny on the right and left, the statistical improbability of a party keeping the WH for more than two consecutive terms, and targeted voter suppression of Democratic voters in the key three swing states where she lost by a sliver of a percent..

But sure. She was a poor choice...

And it means absolutely nothing if the votes are not distributed geographically where they need to be in order to win the electoral college.

Russian interference,
misogyny on the right and left,
the statistical improbability of a party keeping the WH for more than two consecutive terms,
and targeted voter suppression of Democratic voters in the key three swing states where she lost by a sliver of a percent...

So yeah, that and was pretty damned impressive, however much you want to try to dismiss the reality of what she accomplished.

You're welcome.

"Means absolutely nothing.." because she lost three key states by a sliver...and did better than any candidate not named Obama. If it "meant absolutely nothing," why do Trump and the GOP harp on how she "cheated?'



Math doesn't know "raw," honey. It just is or it isn't. I don't recall anyone dismissing Obama's numbers at the polls as simply "turnout and raw numbers"



That resentment of HRC's actual vote tally win sounds familiar...

Are you sure you're on the right board?

Certainly not Gore - and she did better than he did.

That's the bottom line. She was robbed.

You really have some issues with people saying that she wasn't a mistake for the Democrats to have chosen by nearly 4 million, don't you?

Gonna fuck shit up will win again.

When I hear "people say...." I think of a FoxNews headline.

ratings were in the 70%s both as U.S. senator and Secretary of State, and she was repeatedly voted the most admired woman both in this nation and on the planet. Everyone knows that, and you can look it up in the history books if you've forgotten. What we don't know is why any Democrat would deny that. She's still alive, you know, and both she and WE deserve much better than hostile 2016 smears repeated in the 2020 primaries.

1972 was also the beginning of the end for Unions. Prosperity and propaganda color the perception of what was needed. Young couples right out of high school got married and lived alone and bought new cars. Now couples with college degrees can only get minimum wage jobs and live with their parents buying used cars. Guarantee that 4 more years of better dead than red without drastic help will only worsen the current conditions.

We heard repeatedly that Corbyn would win in a walk, his policies were popular etc. He got crushed. To be fair, he had and still has an anti Semitism problem that Sanders doesn't have but otherwise it is hard to separate the two. I also think you are delusional if you think the press will cover Sanders 2020 like it did Trump 2016. There won't be hours and hours and hours of Sanders rallies running uninterupted on the news networks. The press will discover the ability to cover issues again, you can count on that.

I guess we hear what we want to here when we want to hear it.

I heard that labour was in disarray.

...when we won the House with moderate-left candidates in suburban districts, while hard-left candidates all lost.

Everything else is commentary.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

The thing about the 2016 election is that a lot of people just don't like Hillary Clinton. Maybe it's for all the wrong reasons, but it is what it is.

Look, Democrats get accused of hating Trump all the time, but we don't hate him in the same way that Republicans HATE Hillary Clinton. Having her on the ticket basically ensured that Republican voters would show up to vote against her. The thing is, even a lot of Democrats don't like her. Anecdotally, I've heard from plenty of people that almost always vote for the Democrat, but either refused to vote or voted for Trump in 2016, specifically because they didn't like Clinton.

So in my opinion, you can't really look at 2016 and try to predict if a centrist or left-wing candidate will do better or worse in 2020.

For what it's worth, I think any of our candidates can win in 2020, it's just some will have a little easier time than others. I actually think Biden and Sanders have the best chance, with Biden having a bit of an edge.

for 2020 then 2018 was.

Centrist won 2018, OR and its ilk turned zero federal offices.

A good reminder after reading through OPs about statements from 1972 and 1975!

Thanks for the thread markpkessinger.