WaPo: Bernie Sanders's Trump-like campaign is a disaster for Democrats

[TomCADem]

This was in January and even as his primary losses grew, BS has just grown more desperate and more willing to traffic in groundless smears in order to elevate himself by trying to burn the Democratic party around him.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/27/bernie-sanderss-trump-like-campaign-is-disaster-democrats/

The polar opposite of this is Sanders and his fleet of Bernie Bros who slash and burn, attack and smear other Democrats. The New York Times reports on Sanders’s swarm of online supporters, who have waged vicious and personal attacks on his critics, often focusing on feminist women. “Some progressive activists who declined to back Mr. Sanders have begun traveling with private security after incurring online harassment. Several well-known feminist writers said they had received death threats,” the Times explains. “A state party chairwoman changed her phone number. A Portland lawyer saw her business rating tumble on an online review site after tussling with Sanders supporters on Twitter.”

While he might perfunctorily chide his followers, Sanders hired one of social media’s most aggressive trolls, David Sirota. Sanders cannot possibly mean to control the divisive rhetoric and animosity spewing from his camp while hiring people infamous for such conduct.

Sanders’s denials often strike one as implausible. When a printed, detailed script attacking Warren surfaced and was circulated in multiple states, Sanders shrugged it off as if some low-level employee could have independently drafted and distributed the attack guide. If you have even a passing familiarity with presidential campaigns, as one former staffer from another camp told me, you know some volunteer or low-level staffer in Sioux City, Iowa, is not generating this stuff.

Sanders’s own behavior sets the tone and belies the notion that he is not responsible for the most divisive campaign in the primary. His team’s baseless claim (for which he had to apologize) that former vice president Joe Biden is corrupt was positively Trumpian. The out-of-context clip that Sanders distributed on social media falsely suggesting Biden favored Social Security cuts was slapped down by fact-checkers, but Sanders continued to insist that Biden supported cuts.

[William769]

1. Sanders himself is behind all of it.

And if he's not, that's reason enough he shouldn't be President (not knowing what's going on around him).

[empedocles]

6. BS definitely highers those top, toxic staffers, - for years

[empedocles]

17. BS defintely hires those top, toxic staffers - for years

[TomCADem]

41. Exactly. Like the Script Attacking Warren...

...BS later claimed it was a decision by a low level staffer, yet who hires such staffers who repeatedly push false stories about Democrats?

[onetexan]

31. +1 -K&R. If he would just shut the whole thing down he wouldn't

Look so desperate & be able to maintain some semblance of integrity . at this point its very clear the grumpy man is out for revenge against the DNC. He thinks he's entitled. Where is the damn DNC whose allowing this fool to ravage the party like this?

[captain queeg]

2. It's a disaster for Bernie. I hope he loses his seat in the senate to a democrat

[Cha]

12. That's the way I'm looking at it.. this is on him..

We'll be hard working and Great like always.

BS has already seen how the Democratic Voters have rejected him and his agenda.

And, he thinks Joe Biden is going to "debate" that? No.

[MontanaMama]

21. +1

It’s a disaster for Bernie...who is NOT a Democrat. Not by a long shot.

[trueblue2007]

28. I hope he loses his seat in the senate to a democrat.... you took the words right out of my mouth

[Laelth]

3. Sigh. Isn't this counterproductive at this point?

-Laelth

[George II]

4. Which - his campaign against Democrats or the Washington Post reporting?

[Cha]

13. Thanks. No sense in sweeping what he's doing

under the rug.. People have a right to Know.

[TomCADem]

5. We Should Be Forewarned and Know What to Expect

I see a lot of threads speculating about whether BS will drop out even though he has no chance of winning. The answer is no.

We also see BS suggesting that he is just doing this to bring attention to his platform just in case there is someone living under a rock that does not know he is in favor of single payer. This is also not true, because BS's campaign is so heavily focused on trashing Democrats.

At one time, we could give BS the benefit of the doubt. However, given that BS repeatedly steals from the Trump playbook to trash Democrats or complain about how the DNC or the media are not fair, we need to keep in mind that this is part of his MO.

[emmaverybo]

7. No. Just as attention must be drawn to Trump's lies and smears, any influential person's for that

matter, so it must be that a light is shone on the dirty politicking Bernie condones in his own campaign, especially as it continues, in fact revs up.

Meanwhile, has Bernie taken on Trump for his reckless, criminal neglect?

[TomCADem]

10. Is There a Mutual Non-Aggression Pact Between Trump/BS on Ads?

Last edited Fri Mar 27, 2020, 10:46 PM - Edit history (1)

Biden, Bloomberg, etc. have run very specific ads targeting Trump. For example:

Link to tweet

?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1242967501442412544&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fbiden-ad-hits-trump-downplaying-coronavirus-us-cases-climbed-2020-3

BS, on the other hand, has runs ads that just generically target billionaires while he complains that his Democratic opponents are supported by billionaires, which undercuts the attack on Trump. Has BS run any ads comparable to Biden's ad attacking Trump?

Meanwhile, Trump has defended Bernie multiple times. Is their a tacit understanding between the campaigns where they both get what they want, BS as the Democratic nominee.

[emmaverybo]

16. Some have wondered. It is strange that Bernie has not more consistently criticized Trump,

especially now.

[OnDoutside]

30. The Campaign financial numbers are due next week, which will make for interesting reading.

[TwilightZone]

9. Yes, his campaign is quite counterproductive at this point.

In fact, it serves no purpose.

[NCProgressive]

19. Bernie should make it productive and tell the bros to shut up

and fire the bros who speak for his campaign.

After doing that, he should drop out of the primaries and congratulate Joe.

Those who are governed by ego to protect their legacy are left with neither ego nor legacy.

[Hekate]

26. Yes, sadly. What Bernie is doing right now is very counterproductive for Dems & the country...

Every smear against Joe has a way of discouraging real Dems by creating a false equivalency between Trump and Biden.

Trump -- we know damn well that Trump is mentally disordered and showing signs of dementia. So hints about Biden like: "Senility? Or just slowing down?" make undecideds shrug their shoulders and wonder why it matters which of them is POTUS. Lies about a rape, disproven but still circulating in Bernie-land make those same voters inclined to say "they all do it," so what's one pussy-grabber more or less matter.

Same with Bernie's lifelong rage at the Democratic Party, and his recent rant that he has "a message for both the GOP Establishment and the Dem Establishment" -- thus drawing a false equivalency between the Parties, right from his own mouth. Those same undecideds, again -- what are they to think?

The undecided voters that worry me are not Bernie's hardcore fans. They keep telling us they are not going to vote for a Dem anyway. The ones we need to capture (or recapture) are the ones who are not Trump cultists and who can be persuaded that Joe Biden is (yes) a return to normalcy and is what he looks like: a decent and intelligent man.

From where I stand, what Bernie Sanders is doing by dragging out his ego-driven campaign has become very harmful.

[sop]

8. Bernie speaks with a forked tongue.

[Scurrilous]

11. Denials implausible? I'd say.

The coordinated 'Biden senile' campaign of March 2nd onward came with a supplementary 'Biden bubble wrapped; shielded because debilitated, appearances kept brief' which Bernie co-opted and played into when he claimed that week (amidst the seated debate kerfuffle) that Biden was unable to go 'toe to toe' with him in a standing debate.

Make no mistake, Bernie isn't above it.

[showblue22]

14. Look at the replies from Bernie supporters on Swalwell's tweet.

Any time someone says something nice about Joe, they get swarmed with nasty comments.

Link to tweet

[karin_sj]

24. Wow

I just checked that Twitter link and saw a ton of vile, untrue, disgusting comments denigrating Biden: calling him senile, a rapist, etc. These people are truly disgusting. I wonder how many are really Bernie supporters and how many are Russian bots following the same playbook they had so much success with during the 2016 election.

[showblue22]

25. There is a forum for former DU people

made for Bernie supporters. They're DU posters but left here.. Someone posted a link to them here about a month ago. You can find the same vile comments there. Those are Bernie supporters that came from here.

[Skittles]

15. the qualifier "Trump-like campaign" is not needed

no indeed

[TomCADem]

18. Daily Beast: It's Over. Bernie's Push for a Trump-Like Takeover Is Done.

I think it is vitally important to recognize what Trump did to turn the Republican party into a Trump worshipping cult so that Democrats avoid the same fate. This point is discussed in the following Daily Beast article. If anything, Democrats were saved by the diversity. As Republicans increasingly built and catered to a homogenous constitiency, they set themselves up to be taken over by someone who would pander to the base's increasingly racist and resentful beliefs that had been honed for years by right wing media.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/michigan-helped-democrats-stop-bernie-sanders-from-a-donald-trump-like-takeover

First, Democrats benefited from having witnessed Trump’s takeover. They realized that you can’t ignore a problem like Bernie.

Remember, Trump’s Republican adversaries assumed he would eventually flame out (while also hoping they might inherit his rabid supporters). Conversely, Democrats harbored no such illusions about Sander’s potential for collapse. Indeed, his big victory in Nevada seems to have provoked an overwhelming response. (Related, it’s possible that some of Sanders’ success in 2016 had to do with Hillary Clinton’s unique weaknesses as a candidate, not least with some of the Democratic base.)

Second, Democrats retain some semblance of adult leadership. Whereas rank-and-file Republicans had largely turned their backs on their standard bearers (George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney) in favor of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, “establishment” Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama still command a lot of respect from their rank and file. We don’t know what Obama said to Mayor Pete during their pre-Super Tuesday phone call, but we do know that Buttigieg promptly got out of the race and endorsed Biden.

Of course, and this is reason three, the real credit belongs to the sane and normal Democratic voters (most of all African-Americans) who joined hands to become Biden’s firewall.

Because of the diversity in the Democratic Party, winning the nomination requires stitching together a diverse coalition—a project that tends to have a moderating effect.

[NCProgressive]

20. Bernie is the man

I mean bro ... all the smears and negativity originates with him and he relishes it or he would have put a stop to it a long time ago.

[Hortensis]

29. Yep. I've come to believe he can't help it.

That IS a big part of The Real Bernie Sanders.

Jennifer Rubin has his number, including noting various such similarities with Trump, even if they seem only dim reflections in comparison to the big, deranged populist cheese.

Same here.

[TomCADem]

34. BS Likes to Make Everything All About Him

Case in point is the stimulus. BS hid out in Vermont while other Senators like Warren took an active roll in trying to shape the bill, then when it was all said and done, BS swoops in and his campaign tries to claim credit for key portions of the bill even though he did not do squat without any acknowledgement of the hard work by Democrats.

[Hortensis]

36. Extremely sleazy, unprincipled behavior, and I've

more than once wondered if there were limits to his ruthlessness, but he's so uber righteous I doubt he sees it at all that way. He's famous for accepting only in-line agreement from colleagues with whatever he says, and that massive, boorish contempt he displays toward almost everyone is real.

So, in a messed up world where everyone else is always wrong and usually corrupt and he, not at all secretly, believes "only he can fix it," to borrow a phrase, mightn't almost everything he's involved in really come down to him? Even confer a right to take over?

Whatever, the sooner he's retired back to a lone 1 in 100 in the senate the better.

[NurseJackie]

38. I believe Hillary's recent comments to Hulu about Bernie were correct.

According to Hillary's recent Hulu documentary: "Nobody likes him..."
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hillary-clinton-debuts-hulu-doc-at-sundance-addresses-bernie-sanders-comments-1272839

Shortly after THR's in-depth interview with Clinton was published on Tuesday, her comments about Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders — "Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done," she says in the documentary — prompted the hashtag #nobodylikeshim to quickly became a top trend on Twitter.

[Hortensis]

40. :) Barney Frank long ago described the pleasures of

trying to work with Sanders. Frank's funny and brilliant and once was named the person DCers would most like to sit next to at dinner. But Sanders frustrated him way beyond his normal humor.

One story I read is that when Sanders was first sworn in as a new house member in 1991 the progressive caucus had been really looking forward to getting another member. That didn't survive the first, truncated meeting between Sanders and the progressive chair, who was apparently livid in amazingly short order. That was just the beginning of Sanders' self-fulfilling belief that being in congress was a waste of time.

[The Magistrate]

39. True, Sir

The sooner people, especially Sanders' well-meaning supporters, get it through their heads Sanders is not running for our Party's nomination for President, the better it will be for our people and our country.

The fact is Sanders campaigns not to gain the Democratic Party's nomination for President, but to weaken if not wreck the 'Democratic Establishment'. For 'Bernie', ousting Trump and ending the Republican majority in the Senate is barely an afterthought to this long-standing purpose. Once Sanders' supporters face this fact squarely, they may be able to decide honestly what their best course in this election is: voting against 'Bernie' in any future primary, and for Mr. Biden and Democrats all down the ticket to the lowest office on the ballot come November.

It is probably true that Sanders sees destroying the 'Democratic Establishment' as an essential precondition to defeating Trump et al, and so by his own lights he means it when he says he will do all he can to defeat Trump. But that belief is so self-serving and delusional it deserves not just scorn but contempt.

As with Trump, the only real cure is to deprive the man of the oxygen of worshipful attention. The effect would be that of a bucket of water on the wicked witch of Oz....





"From Bernie’s perspective, dropping out of a race once you have no chance of winning is peculiar behavior that can only be explained by the work of a hidden hand. For most politicians, though, it is actually standard operating procedure. Only Sanders seems to think the normal thing to do once voters have made clear they don’t want to nominate you is to continue campaigning anyway."





"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."

[betsuni]

23. The time he said he loves the word "spoiler" says it all.

[Cha]

37. Did he like it when Joe Biden "spoiled" the Super Tuesdays

for him? hmmm?

karma. :grouuphug:

[Hortensis]

27. Forked tongue is a mess on our ballot all right, but in one respect

Sanders constant dirty tricks and virulent nastiness do us a favor -- by mitigating his own damage.

The Repubs, with Russian augmentation, have been trying their very best to cast Sanders and his extremism as the face of our party -- and of the liberalism he and the Repubs all despise and fear. Sanders cooperates synergistically with them against us in seemingly all else, but he can't, or won't, suppress his lifelong hostility and apparently daily need to attack long enough for the Repubs and Russia to brand our party, even to some gullible Democrats, as the Sanders party.

So thank goodness he lacks the self discipline to seize the opportunity these giant enemy powers tried to give him and run it as far as he could take it.

"I am not now, nor have I ever been, a liberal Democrat." Yes, and every day you underline that you are not us to the nation.

[Cha]

32. Well well well.. And, there you have it .. the final word..

Sanders’s own behavior sets the tone and belies the notion that he is not responsible for the most divisive campaign in the primary. His team’s baseless claim (for which he had to apologize) that former vice president Joe Biden is corrupt was positively Trumpian. The out-of-context clip that Sanders distributed on social media falsely suggesting Biden favored Social Security cuts was slapped down by fact-checkers, but Sanders continued to insist that Biden supported cuts.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/27/bernie-sanderss-trump-like-campaign-is-disaster-democrats/

Thank you, Tom

[dalton99a]

33. Well, Bernie doesn't have gold faucets

That pretty much nullifies the hypothesis

[BidenBacker]

35. I'm starting to look at Sanders as a vaccine

By the time Biden gets to the general election campaign he will have been inoculated against much of the same bullshit the Orange Virus will throw at him so hopefully he will have developed some immunity.

Doctor Bernie the Inoculator. Along with Nurse Nina.

[Gothmog]

42. The benefit of the Democrats denouncing Sanders's selfishness

I am tired of sanders and his supporters demanding that we bend a knee and anoint sanders as the nominee. It may be better to simply give up on the 15% who will not vote for any real Democrat and move on

Link to tweet

If you are in the search for silver linings, one benefit of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pointlessly continuing his losing campaign is the freedom for Democrats to denounce him and his anti-party escapades. After years of humoring him, the vast majority of Democrats, from super-progressives to moderates, can now say out loud what they’ve said quietly: It has always been about Bernie. It’s not a movement, but rather a vanity project. ....

The problem, according to many Democrats, remains that 15 percent of Sanders supporters say in polling that they would vote for President Trump over Biden. This nugget actually makes the opposite argument: There is nothing that would satisfy some faction of the Sanders coalition that would rather blow up our democracy and reelect Trump. With people so irrational, the best response is to ignore them. They, like the MAGA-hat crowd, are unreachable and cannot be bargained with (e.g., more New Green Deal talk!). So do not try. No more outreach to Sanders, no more promised policy modifications, no more speaking slot at the convention. Enough

This would have some salutary effects.

First, it would make perfectly clear that Biden is not Sanders and not a crazy left-winger, as Trump would like to paint him in the campaign. Biden makes a sharp distinction between the “democratic socialist” crowd and his own brand of center-left politics. Since he cannot get the 15 percent of “Bernie or Bust” Democrats (or independents), he might as well make a strong play for moderate independents and disaffected Republicans. Cutting Sanders off effectively allows Biden to pitch to gettable swing voters, not waste time on unattainable Bernie Bros.

Second, freezing out Sanders will make governance in a Biden administration much easier and more cohesive. There will be no debt to be paid to Sanders, no advisers taken on to satisfy Sanders, and no weird and distracting policy initiatives to lead the new administration astray. This would be a center-left administration confident of its own governing agenda — and personally cohesive.

Third, it would free up constructive, smart progressive leaders such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to lead that wing of the party. She has already begun that process, contributing bankruptcy and student loan forgiveness plans to the Biden campaign. With a practical, crafty progressive in the Senate (hopefully in the majority and able to lead on legislation), Biden would be able to broaden his appeal and cultivate allies in the Warren wing of the party.

In other words, shoving Sanders offstage opens up room for party builders and party reformers, putting aside unattainable proposals (e.g., Medicare-for-all) in favor of a smarter, more broadly acceptable agenda. (Biden would not need to fend off a Warren primary challenge, as Barack Obama did with Sanders in 2012.)

The party is never going to make the 15% to 25% of sanders supporters happy. 25% of sanders supporters either voted for trump, voted for a third party candidate like Stein or stayed home

Link to tweet

I am tired of trying to appease sanders supporters who are not going to be happy and there are real benefits in moving on and ignoring these voters.