2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: In 2012 Third Way was promoting Martin O'Malley as a "hot prospect" [View all]cascadiance
(19,537 posts)... to provoke a split in votes that might otherwise go to Bernie. I'm not saying that I wouldn't support O'Malley at some point. I might. But I feel I know Bernie from his years on the Thom Hartmann show and in other contexts, and I feel he's someone I can trust and support.
Even if O'Malley's rejected the Third Way and might be a decent person to support as well, let's not discount that perhaps the Third Way is facilitating publicity in such a way to foment this kind of 'fight' in places like here between our two different campaigns so that we can be less of a threat to their candidate Hillary for the nomination. I think we maintain the healthy respect, and try to find out more about each others' candidates to see how strongly we support our own versus the other's stances on issues, and if they are very close, then perhaps we can fall back to the other's candidate when one of them drops out later if and when that happens.
I think personally that Bernie has many other benefits by being careful NOT to take too much campaign money from other sources and getting a LOT of grass roots money support, to help him maintain his image of honesty and integrity. That's hard to replicate, especially when coupled with his ability to speak to many different issues that he uniquely does more than just about any other Senator when having his weekly town halls on the radio.
I will always be leery of any candidate that has Third Way ties, but I won't jump on to public bandwagons against people unless I feel I know them to be compromised.