The real spoiler in this race is Sanders. If he got out of the race now, and threw his support

[still_one]

behind Warren, it would be a whole new primary. Unfortunately, I think he will stay in too long, increase the odds for an open convention, which won't help him, and may hurt Warren

[Skittles]

1. he will not get out

[still_one]

2. That is why I phrased it with "IF". I doubt he will do it either, but if he really wanted to have

the best chance to have the issues he campaigns on to become a reality, that is the way to do it I believe

[demigoddess]

3. +100000

I agree.

[JI7]

4. he probably prefers Biden over HER

[still_one]

5. Doubtful, but it could very well end up that way

[boomer_wv]

6. It wouldn't all go to Warren.

Some of his support would go to Warren, certainly, but some number of it would probably go to Biden.

I remember thinking this in 2016, that is some of the Republican candidates got out, their support would consolidate around someone and beat Trumps low ceiling/high floor. However, when they did start dropping it didn't really work that way. A lot of them just got on the Trump bandwagon because he was winning and they wanted to support a winner.

I think that would happen here too. Honestly, most of Warrens rise has been at the expense of Bernie supporters flipping to her. These are likely diminishing returns though, at some point all of the ones who are willing to move to her will have and the rest just don't like her for one reason or another.

[still_one]

8. I think most Sanders supporters would go to Warren, but it is doubtful that will happen

Last edited Sat Jun 22, 2019, 04:14 AM - Edit history (1)

[boomer_wv]

20. misogyny

There was an element of misogyny with Bernies 2016 campaign support. I'm not sure if that is still there now or not since he isn't the male alternative to Hillary this time around, but it is one thing that I think about when dividing up his support.

I think that Biden would collect some significant portion of any candidate who were to drop out. Even if that is just 25%, you're talking 4 point here, 2 points there. Soon enough he's over 50% and basically locks it up.

That's just for today, however. There's no guarantee that Biden will continue to lead in the polls or that his support won't decline. However, there's also no guarantee that he will lose support either.

A lot of people are saying that Biden will say something or do something that kills his chances, and in the past that has been true. But this is a post-Trump world and I'm not sure those rules apply anymore. Is there anything that he can say or do that is worse than what Trump has said or done? There's a playbook out there now. Just refuse to apologize and turn it around on whoever you need to. We just watched that play out this week. I think that Booker actually came out on the worse end of that exchange

[Control-Z]

7. That's what I thought BEFORE he announced.

I kept thinking, I hope Sanders stays out of the race this time.

[JI7]

9. hopefully AOC endorses Warren

[Celerity]

21. that would be wonderful nt

[billpolonsky]

10. Why should Sanders get out of the race?

He is the architect of much of what progressives are fighting for and what the nation is talking about this time around.

Or have you forgotten this fact?

You'll put up with negotiating with Republicans but Sanders is the spoiler?

[link:

|


Really....

[JudyM]

14. Good point.

Openness to this truth is emotionally challenging for some.

[Celerity]

22. one fundamental reason, and also a caveat about Biden

Bernie has the lowest ceiling of any of the top 10 candidates

I have watched multiple panel interviews with a wide, disparate, variety of actual voters on MSNBC in the past several days:

Latinxs in Miami

African-Americans in South Carolina

mostly whites in Pennsylvania and Iowa

all sorts of different age cohorts

The one unifying theme was that the majority said (especially the Miami and South Carolina crowds) was that the one person they would not (some even said they might vote Trump if he wins our nomination) vote for in the general was Bernie.

It is electoral suicide to nominate him, and also he can (and may well) do great damage if he has no path to the nomination, yet refuses to drop out (as he has a fairly large, 'all or nothing' base who will keep pouring in good money after bad to sustain his campaign) and then proceeds to pull a repeat of 2016 and goes full stop scorched earth against the remaining 3, 4 (or even 1 or 2) remaining front-runners.

In terms of Biden, if he is the nominee, he does have the potential to pull in a lot of moderate and older voters, two groups that Sanders has very poor numbers with (in multiple polls he is sub 6-8% with older voter, say 65 and up, including 5% in one that is highly rated). Without those two massive blocs of voters, we lose.

The 2018 elections showed that we need a 50 state strategy and need to tailor our candidates to appeal to vast variety of voters. There is no 'one-size-fits-all' template, that can win nationally, especially a pretty hard core leftist (for the US), 'no compromises' one.

Bernie has committed a long-standing self-inflicted a fatal wound (electorally) in his stubborn and factually incorrect self-labelling as a democratic socialist, when he is simply a bog standard social democrat. He has zero chance to re-define a 200 year old academically and socially defined term.

He does not favour the state taking control of the means of production, nor does he favour an abolition of capitalism (he simply wants to much more highly regulate it, which is quintessential social democracy as espoused by the Nordic Model). Both those goals are absolutely the end-game of almost all basic democratic socialism postulations.

His false self-labelling as a dem soc has opened up boilerplate social democratic programmes to be falsely labelled as 'socialism' in this reactionary nation (and here, for tens of millions of uneducated people, socialism is interchangeable with the dreaded C-word, ie. communism). That is electoral poison.

This false labelling has also allowed the RW to broad-brush damn near ALL of our candidates and their programmes as socialist, when they absolutely are NOT. It is one of the dominant narratives the RW will run against all of us with, and it would NEVER have occurred to anywhere remotely near the level it will now be used if not for Bernie and his insistence on calling a camel a horse, a pear an orange, etc.

[SouthernProgressive]

11. He is a third party agitator and spoiler.

After his long career as a politician, Warren not entering last time gave him his shot. He has banked millions off of it, helped us to lose a Presidential election, and is continuing to foment distrust among voters and the Democratic Party.

[Honeycombe8]

12. Sanders isn't in the race for that reason. He's an activist.

IMO, his goals are twofold: He does want to win; and he wants to further his agenda, whether he wins or not.

[katmondoo]

15. He is an activist? Where was he for 30 years when we heard nothing from him.

[Honeycombe8]

16. If you didn't hear him for 30 years, you weren't listening.

Maybe that's why he decided to take it a notch higher.

[brooklynite]

13. There won't be an open convention...

The candidates in 3rd-4th-5th place will have dropped out and thrown their support to someone else before then.

[kcr]

17. What it will do is give us Biden on a platter.

Biden benefits a lot from Bernie's intransigence. If he repeats his 2016 stunt, it will help Biden coast to a win as it splits the lefty vote. Ultimately it may give us another 4 years of Trump. Deja vu.

[Autumn]

18. Out of a field of 24 he's the spoiler?

Getting afraid? 24 and only 1 is the spoiler Amusing.

[Demsrule86]

19. Biden will win. There will be no open convention...we need to kick Trump to the curb.

[Renew Deal]

24. You're half right

[Renew Deal]

23. Why throw his support behind Warren?

But you have a point. Sanders and Warren both running means that an electable candidate has a better chance to win.