END TO END BERNERS: The Official Bernie Sanders 2020 Crew thread

That usual excuse doesn’t work for you here. Lieberman was important because he could leverage withholding his vote to get his way, whereas the ‘left’ of the Senate were irrelevant - they were voting for the ACA regardless.

LBJ was ruthless and gross -- turpitude in human form -- who saw no point in taking moral stands without (a) making sure constituents are behind you; and/or (b) using the power he accumulated when he saw the moment...and was responsible for getting Congress to pass the fairest, most moral legislation since the 1930s.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

LBJ was an extremely interesting case and, from what Caro writes about him.... fairly exceptional?

I am not sure, really, how much we disagree. It's just, you know, there is that rubicon you spoke of. The Religious Right pole-vault over that threshhold for me. To speak of how "successful" they have been in their goals, which include, to be blunt, killing as many people like me as possible, seems pretty monstrous to me. Aimless did not sound terribly far off from a Wehraboo, to my ears.

I recognize the need, to a certain extent, for compromise, sometimes even for capitulation to power. I ask that you please not take my unwillingness to do so in certain cases for naivete.

and I’m sorry, real quick remind your bonafides?

sorry, aimless I’m going to need to see some “authorities” cited

sorry, aimless I’m going to need to see some “authorities” cited

This past week and a half I've been reading Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch, about the civil rights movement between 1954 and 1963. I'm not going to cite the page numbers or paragraphing for you, but the basic history is this:

Kennedy-Nixon election in 1960 was extremely close. When Kennedy's numbers crunchers analyzed the voting breakdown they realized that blacks (whose precincts were very easy to isolate due to de facto and de jure segregation) had broken for Kennedy over Nixon by roughly 20% more than the voting patterns in the previous several presidential elections, where Republicans had done very well with blacks as "the Party of Lincoln", while Democrats were the party of segregation in the South. This big swing was the margin of victory in some states and the most identifiable single reason Kennedy won.

This was such a surprise to Kennedy that he felt compelled to identify what caused this sudden shift. It turned out to be a last minute massive leaflet campaign among black churches, praising Kennedy for placing a sympathetic phone call to Correta King when MLK was in jail (this happened so often I forget just which instance this was). The leaflet became known as the "blue bomb". This put a different complexion on the importance of the black vote and the issues that were important to black voters.

Thereafter, the Kennedy administration was caught in a constant agony of knowing they just plain couldn't afford to alienate black voters, while still trying not to alienate southern segregationists. In the end, this knowledge forced them to make many concessions they would not have made without their feeling like the political vise they were in was very strong on the side of the black voters, not just the Solid South.

The key piece being this: Kennedy knew who he had to thank for those key votes from blacks and knew the issues had brought him those key votes, consequently he felt pressed to give something in return for them and the civil rights leaders kept the pressure on him to deliver. By forming a suddenly very important bloc, coalesced around very clear issues, black voters gained a much greater leverage when the time came to call out the army to get James Meredith into Ole Miss.

This is not some weird anomaly, either. This is a large part of the mechanics of US national politics.

So he was repaying voters who had not otherwise for people like him before... so votes that were previously withheld and could be again...

that's how politics works

The importance is more in the size of your bloc/coalition and its ability to deliver votes when asked to deliver them. By placing so much emphasis on withholding votes I think you are picking up the wrong end of the stick, but yes, both ends of a stick are parts of the stick.

a vote cast today is a vote you'll lose next week; that's what pressure's for, and it may not even work.

xxp - yes, Alfred, that’s my point...

And Lawrence O’’Donnell’s point.

btw, when your bloc is not among the biggest ones, it is easy enough to miscalculate the strength of your hand, overplay it, and be stuck with nothing. I think Sanders did an excellent job of gauging the strength of his hand in wringing concessions from Biden. What he can't do is lay all this out in stark terms to his followers, who would not understand these kind of necessary machinations. MLK, Jr. was wholly different in the soaring of his oratory and the sordid, but necessary, details of his strategizing.

It's important to keep reminding ourselves -- I have to every day -- that the Democratic Party these days consists of everyone who's not a Republican, therefore it has lib, conservative, and moderate wings that it would take an LBJ-esque eminence to straddle.

that's how politics works

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

not sure i agree with the implicit assumption in that statement :(

I wasn't swatting aside objections, and I'm sorry for it coming across this way.

milo is otm. if your argument is that the stakes are too high to play chicken, that's one thing, and make that case. but denying that, assuming you are part of a large enough bloc whose votes a politician needs, threatening to withhold votes is not an effective means to push that candidate, is dishonest. how else do you explain these new proposals from biden? coincidence?

It's important to keep reminding ourselves -- I have to every day -- that the Democratic Party these days consists of everyone who's not a Republican, therefore it has lib, conservative, and moderate wings that it would take an LBJ-esque eminence to straddle.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, April 10, 2020 1:48 PM (twenty minutes ago)

sounds like more bad news for the Democratic party

I’m not sure when those two points haven’t been true of both parties outside the last 25 years of the GOP. Nature of a two party system etc.

We just need a Democrat with a giant hog to step up.

Bernie should have Milton Berled one of the fireside chats.

milo is otm.

For certain.

What remains to be seen is whether the Bernie bloc can stay organized as a movement without the focus of Bernie's presidential campaign to coalesce around. iow, it's not him, it's us.

Also, can it continue to grow itself between elections? Judged by the strength of localized left-progressive organizing and midterm results, the movement got stronger after 2016. Judged by raw primary vote totals in 2020, it got stuck in the zone of 25% to maybe 30%, which is damn good considering, but needs to get bigger to match the breadth of its vision.

I do not think the emergent organized left in the USA will concern itself with any presidential elections that may occur again

my most communist friend has been referring to this as "the last election"

progress happens one funeral at a time

the conclusion being drawn is that electoralism doesn't work

I'd say your communist friend should get out more, but that would be wrong at this particular time.

There was a ‘left’ before Bernie 2016, there will be a left after.

I also don’t think it will be as concerned with the Presidential election (but won’t give up on electoralism elsewhere). Nationally there’s no one who can step into his shoes to run against Tom Cotton in 2024.

my most communist friend has been referring to this as "the last election"

― silby

hate to break it to him but he missed it

or her, or them, or whoever

I'd say your communist friend should get out more, but that would be wrong at this particular time.

― A is for (Aimless), Friday, April 10, 2020 2:28 PM (two minutes ago)

would be wrong to say regardless. They spend a lot more time Doing The Work than I do (zero)

(I only post, out of cowardice and indecision)

I mean I think this particular communist friend is wrong about assorted things but I think they're right that socialism won't be won at the polls, certainly not via the presidency

however I still refuse to find out what "dual power" means

socialism will be won when the masses hunger for it and begin to move accordingly

"the last election"

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/10/wisconsin-voter-restrictions-democracy-coronavirus-primary

I do not think the emergent organized left in the USA will concern itself with any presidential elections that may occur again

― silby, Friday, April 10, 2020

Sweet! These threads will be shorter!

any hopes that people like me will stop flapping our gums instead of building the XIs some of us keep yammering about are doomed to be disappointed, so if you're actually harboring any such hopes best to let go of them now :)

Awright, ladies and gents, it's 6 p.m. I'm knocking off for the day. Martinis?

My friend the communist
Holds meetings with ILXors
He will withhold his votes
Don't mean that much to Jo-ooe

Iiiiiiiiiiiiii'm
Gonna suck aperol

With respect, Kate, if you're putting forward the view (if you are - I may have read you wrong!) that the reason that Biden beat Sanders is 100% the DNC, then I'm not sure I'm the one denying black voters a voice? There have been a lot of pieces by non-white writers, some of them reposted on this thread (and some posts by non-white posters, some of them on this thread) talking about how Biden can feel a more rational choice for them than Sanders.

To be clear (and at the significant risk of turning into Fred), I wouldn't be taking this position if the party had bumped off Biden in some way and coalesced around Buttigieg or Klobuchar, that (if it worked) would be 100% a screwjob. But when someone beats Sanders by 30% in South Carolina and 45% in Alabama...

I think clearly the SC voters, based at least on the polling in the couple of weeks leading up to the election which showed a tight race between biden and sanders, showed that they were open to being convinced (as any voter is), but were probably mostly "lean biden" voters given the unmistakable pattern of earlier polls. whether the rapid reversal and then righting of the polling trends, which just happened to coincide with the mobilization of senior party figures on biden's behalf and his two closest ideological rivals suddenly dropping out and endorsing him, was due to these well-documented events, polling error, random temporal variation, or a combination of the three is fundamentally unknowable. intelligent people are free to draw their own conclusions

"why" this happened could be useful to us on the left if we want to avoid something similar happening again, but as far as feeling bitter about it it's water under the bridge, lefties are used to getting kicked in the nuts. I respect the votes of the geezers who made this happen because I believe in one person one vote and voting one's conscience. it sucks that there are more of them than us of course, but I obviously am not going to have the opinions of a bunch of old people in a state like south carolina affect the way I feel about the two candidates. given bernie won the ILX poll 6 to 1 (after SC) I assume most everyone else feels the same way

luv you k3vin

k3vin otm

yeah lock thread tbh

"why" this happened could be useful to us on the left if we want to avoid something similar happening again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlA9hmrC8DU

My one quibble with kevin's excellent post is that my impression was that the coincide-ence (yeah yeah I know) happened after South Carolina.

In other news, Super Tuesday feels like half a year ago, not last month.

Petey Butts and Klob dropped out between South Carolina and Super Tuesday, yes. The party apparatus was already leaning heavily on the electability narrative against Bernie at that point, though.

Voters can be wrong, voters can be mislead - saying that doesn't diminish that what they cast were their votes. The media and politicians have enormous sway in how voters who aren't psychos who think about this shit all the time vote. James Clyburn telling people who look to him as a locus of useful power to vote for Biden can (and did) swing a big percentage of votes.

To suggest - despite his place at the head of a machine dependent on the status quo of the party and his donors from pharmaceuticals/insurance/hospitals - that Clyburn's endorsement was in any way motivated by anything but the best interests of his constituents gets you deluged by the cynical deployment of woke cliches in service of a healthcare system actively harmful to persons of color.

The solution to that... is to diminish Clyburn's power, but if you start talking about that then you get to endure the cynical deployment of woke cliches in service of a healthcare system that's actively harmful to persons of color.

With respect, Kate, if you're putting forward the view (if you are - I may have read you wrong!) that the reason that Biden beat Sanders is 100% the DNC, then I'm not sure I'm the one denying black voters a voice? There have been a lot of pieces by non-white writers, some of them reposted on this thread (and some posts by non-white posters, some of them on this thread) talking about how Biden can feel a more rational choice for them than Sanders.

― Andrew Farrell

yeah, you are absolutely reading me wrong. my politics are not, fundamentally, the politics of conspiracy. i don't think the dnc are actively malevolent, any more than i think kerensky was actively malevolent. all of this talk about "dual power" wouldn't have been necessary or, honestly, possible in the first place if the power institutions in place had adequately addressed the desires of the people who put them there.

because the institutional failure is not just some presumed shadowy cabal that wines and dines rich and powerful abusers, rapists, and pederasts, which is only a very small part of what the dnc does. it's all sorts of institutions. it's a primary system that enforces uninformed herd voting, it's a liberal media infrastructure that bangs the drum on the message that _all_ internal dissent is dangerous. it is, most of all, the incessant drumbeat of fear and shame as not just _a_ motivator, but the _only_ motivator.

anyway, that's kind of a detour from addressing your racial argument, but it's just as well because my point is not to blame you or me specifically, but to say that _neither_ of us are qualified to discuss racial politics with each other. if i were to try to reply to or address your points in any way i would be just as guilty of tokenizing as i feel you are. i am certainly not denying your suggestion that there is an issue here. i'm very, very painfully aware of the issue, i'm very aware of the legacy of systemic racism, aware of my privilege, aware of the ways in which i have, and frankly continue to, perpetuate the problem. i'm also beyond thinking that two white people talking to each other are capable of meaningfully addressing the issue.

According to this the coalition aimless is describing is too distant and not quite applicable.

It’s time for someone much smarter than me to do a deep dive into Southern politics to explain why the Black establishment is so successful at marshaling its voters in primaries but is unable to build interracial coalitions to conquer state elections. Abrams got close, but...

— Brad Jones 🌹 (@joneswb66) April 10, 2020