Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

It's going to take a lot more to convince the Bernie voters on the margin not to withhold their votes.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z),

well, that's their fucking problem

xp

Yeah, I'll vote for Biden anyway because he's not Trump, and Biden will be a better candidate if he's espousing diluted bits of Sanders policy with Sanders approval, so your counter-factual doesn't quite work here.

He's not halfheartedly diluting bits of Sanders policy to earn your vote, though, that's the point.

He's doing it to earn mine.

it's not anyone's problem per se, it's just a tradeoff

If Joe Biden is going to win anyway, it makes plenty of a ense for the most left-wing Sanders voters to withhold their votes, on the theory that it will make the Democrats sweat over the margins and wonder what happened to their under-40s.

i assume this is what the Kerry threads were like in 04?

*sense not a ense

Which is, circling back around once again, that the only power held in our shit democracy for someone without the means to buy influence, is to withhold votes and convince others to withhold votes.

Which, in this moment... and really, every four years of my entire life... results in the emotional blackmail of personally being responsible for awful things and results for using the one bit of power the powerless theoretically hold.

Like the recipient of the electoral college votes in both milo’s state and mine is a foregone conclusion, Joe Biden honestly doesn’t need either of our votes.

i assume this is what the Kerry threads were like in 04?

nah even kerry was less pathetic than biden

i am personally very mad that hillary clinton isn't president right now and it's hard for me not to be at least somewhat mad at people who are at least ostensibly anti-Republican that didn't vote for her, even though i understand the why & that she didn't earn their votes.

to be clear i am even more mad that bernie isn't president right now

Most of my ire in that regard goes towards the slaveowning fucks who saddled us with the electoral college.

(Not to mention the Senate)

true

My ire is apportioned at the slave-owning fucks and Hillary (for choosing Tim Kaine, for being an awful campaigner, for 'America is ALREADY great,' for Iraq...) in equal proportion. I voted for Hillary despite swearing I'd never vote for someone who voted to invade Iraq but I can't ever be mad at someone who's lived under five decades of declining real wages, shit healthcare and no hope for the future who didn't vote for her.

multi-xps

what difference did that vote in the primary make?

It helped to enumerate the amount of support within the party for the candidate who received that vote. Even if Biden isn't a numbers guy, he employs several of them to tell him what those numbers mean. He is now in the 'consolidation' phase. He wants those votes that went to other candidates, but he's playing a game of footsie with dozens of leaders of Dem-aligned voting blocs, trying to pull them in and bring their bloc to him. Their job is to explain who they represent and what their voters want from him. It's a negotiation, but in the end Biden will decide what line he'll walk, and how he'll lean one way or another to accommodate those blocs.

Bernie is actively engaged in that negotiation right now. Your vote for him, and more importantly your volunteering for Bernie, represents a tiny chit in Bernie's bag of arguments he's making in your favor. It's not as satisfying as Bernie being the one the other politicians are courting and coaxing, but the incandescent support he got from people like you is going to make him heard seriously.

Bernie's biggest problem right now is that Biden and his advisors are going to be very skeptical that Bernie can deliver his bloc in November, unless Biden morphs into Bernie, which he won't do. If Bernie's bloc evaporates and sits on their hands, so does the leverage you so earnestly want to exert on Joe Biden. Joe Biden's problem is deciding how much and what kind of concessions he can safely make in search of Bernie's bloc.

My impression atm is that Bernie voters will be seen as only Bernie voters, who are uninterested in any candidate but Bernie. Which may not be as true as Conventional Wisdom says it is, but I'd expect Biden will pick one Bernie issue, water it down some, and offer that as his concession. And Bernie voters will sniff it and each decide for themselves whether to turn their noses up and walk away from Biden. In that game, you sound already primed to walk away. In which case, even if Biden wins, his numbers people will sift out how the Bernie votes fell, and if they disappeared, so does any regard for delivering even that one concession.

At the presidential election level, that's roughly how the game gets played. Make of it what you will.

"...someone who's lived under five decades of declining real wages, shit healthcare and no hope for the future who didn't vote for her."

Some of these people are probably mad at themselves.

They wouldn’t be if we did some more class-consciousness-raising I’ll bet.

(I need someone to explain to me what that is though.)

It helped to enumerate the amount of support within the party for the candidate who received that vote. Even if Biden isn't a numbers guy, he employs several of them to tell him what those numbers mean. He is now in the 'consolidation' phase. He wants those votes that went to other candidates,

He's guaranteed the 'vote blue no matter who' primary votes that went to other candidates... that's the point. He doesn't have to play footsie or negotiate or care about them at all. If the "amount of support within the party" mattered, he could just poll them and establish policies to suit. If a supermajority of the party supports something but will vote for you regardless of your support or opposition... it doesn't matter what they support.

the recipient of the electoral college votes in both milo’s state and mine is a foregone conclusion

the GOP stealing/forbidding vote by mail in up to 49 states is not 100% impossible

especially with a punching-bag sorry-ass party like the Dems ripe for abuse

My state has been entirely vote by mail for years! Our franchise is secure.

I don't really care that much if I die so I'll turn out to vote even if we have an outbreak of the black death

Like I said, you're too smart for me. You've figured out that Biden won't care about earning votes, because he knows it is safe to snub about a third of his party and there will be no price for him to pay. Yup. Them politicians know they can always win by consistently ignoring the desires of large numbers of voters; it's so easy they laugh up their sleeves at them, and use their ballots to light their fat cigars. It's so maddening I could spit.

I can’t really imagine Joe Biden looking for the votes of Sanders supporters for more than four days. Once the heat seems like it’s off he’ll probably be targeting every message at suburban white women.

You've figured out that Biden won't care about earning votes

This is a very strange reading of my repeated assertion that Biden is currently bargaining (or trying to appear to bargain) for the votes of Sanders voters.

which is normal?

There's a chance Biden will travel the well-worn path of Gore and Kerry. He's of that generation. But let us hope he hired some people under the age of 50 to give him better advice. Because while most votes are inherited, the final winning margin must be earned. HRC fell closer to that line of thought in her campaign than Gore or Kerry, and just missed out by a few thousand votes in the upper Midwest.

We'll see.

which is normal?

I've never suggested that it wasn't?

My initial statement that Aimless found disagreeable was that my sole power to influence Joe Biden (or any other politician) is the withholding of my vote. Which, uh, just seems to be verified by all the agreements that he's bargaining for them.

imo, you've turned the logic upside down. There are (quickly calculates) 35% of the eligible voting population that withholds their votes in every presidential election and they exert (quickly calculates) just about zero influence over the candidates.

But let us hope he hired some people under the age of 50 to give him better advice.

like Symone Sanders, lol

Aimless, are there policies that a Democratic nominee could support that would cause you to not vote for them?

If there aren't, if it's inconceivable for a Democrat to ever not be worthy of your vote - how do you think you influence their policy direction?

are there policies that a Democratic nominee could support that would cause you to not vote for them?

Gore in 2000 chose to avoid any clear, strong policy positions at all, unless you count the pseudo-meaningful promise of "putting Social Security in a lock box" as a strong policy position. I waited and waited for him to make any overtures to the progressive wing, literally anything at all. He was steadfastly equivocal and vague. His timidity was his salient trait. I finally voted for Nader.

Nader... who btw advocated for taxing the wealthy at much higher rates, putting a tenth of a cent surcharge on all financial transactions, and instituting single-payer national health insurance. Nader's primary mistake was in not leading the insurgency from inside the Democrats, as Sanders finally did.

I ended up voting for Nader too, and in California it didn’t matter at the time but now I’m a little embarrassed by it

I voted for Nader and I'm still quite happy with it

I will still vote for Sanders in the Oregon primary, unless the SOS removes his name from the ballot.

To go to the point, though, the Democratic nominee never offered you anything and you + enough other voters used the only leverage you had and made it actually painful for the Democrats. Maybe you don't think this withholding of votes had any influence on them but Dean 2004 was a pretty big break from what had come before and Obama 2008 a much bigger break.

A vote becomes useful when it is cast, but nothing when it isn't. Reminds me of a bit of foolery from King Lear:

FOOL: Mark it, nuncle:
Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Ride more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set less than thou throwest;
Leave thy drink and thy whore,
And keep in-a-door,
And thou shalt have more
Than two tens to a score.

KENT: This is nothing fool.

FOOL: Then ’tis like the breath of an unfee’d lawyer; you gave me nothing for’t. Can you make no use of nothing nuncle?

KING LEAR: Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.

I ended up voting for Nader too, and in California it didn’t matter at the time but now I’m a little embarrassed by it

― Dan S, Thursday, April 9, 2020 8:45 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't understand this

t was clear even at the time that Nader was never going to win, realized I was just registering a protest vote

which I will never do again, the stakes are too high

*it* was clear

If you were in California there were literally no stakes.

I don’t think of it that way, I get that other people here do, but it feels personal to me

Nader... who btw advocated for taxing the wealthy at much higher rates, putting a tenth of a cent surcharge on all financial transactions, and instituting single-payer national health insurance. Nader's primary mistake was in not leading the insurgency from inside the Democrats, as Sanders finally did.

― A is for (Aimless), Friday, April 10, 2020 12:42 AM (twenty minutes ago)

i read an interview with nader a while back where the interviewer pressed him about whether he regretted the damage his 2000 campaign had done to his reputation and he did finally say that in retrospect he wished he had run for the democratic nomination. i think it's fair to say that he did end up helping to push the democrats to the left in the long run, but the cost of that ended up being so high that it's very very hard to argue that it was worth it. that said, i doubt any primary candidate would have gotten anywhere running against gore that year.

Nader did not have the advantage of internet-based small donor fund raising, which Dean initiated in 2004 and Sanders took to amazing success. imo Nader's bigger hit to his reputation came in 2004 when he ran a second time.

imo Nader's bigger hit to his reputation came in 2004 when he ran a second time.

2004 was the third time he ran. I was done with Nader when his investment portfolio was made public back then.

I think he's off-the-charts now:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2014/02/24/oprah-for-president-nader-seeks-modestly-enlightened-billionaire-to-run/
https://theweek.com/articles/447342/ralph-nader-wants-liberals-back-rand-paul-dont#axzz33jIdnGQT

imo, you've turned the logic upside down. There are (quickly calculates) 35% of the eligible voting population that withholds their votes in every presidential election and they exert (quickly calculates) just about zero influence over the candidates.

― A is for (Aimless), Thursday, April 9, 2020 8:23 PM (two hours ago)

milo has already proven he's someone whose vote can be had based on the fact that he's turned out for sanders. and he also admitted a couple of weeks ago that he voted for clinton in 2016 because his girlfriend wanted him to, which means he's a big softy, so cut him a break