TenuredVulture wrote:The whole strategy of trying to appeal to mythical swing voters is dumb. You win by mobilizing a base. Trump might win this thing, but not because he's trying to appeal to swing voters.

89 percent of the Democratic vote gain in 2018 was from swing voters. That’s just one set of numbers, one way to slice the pie, but it does raise questions about the progressive insistence that partisan turnout and a surge in new voters, attracted by bold policy positions, is the path to victory in 2020.

TenuredVulture wrote:That's why Bloomberg is terrible--he doesn't motivate the Dem base, but he very well may motivate Trump's base--especially because gun control is a central part of his campaign. (And yes I know he's talking about environmental issues, but if he really cared about that, why did he do almost nothing to prevent mass transit in NYC continue to crumble?)

Of the roughly 90 candidates on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list of 2018 challengers with some hope of turning a red House district blue, just two made a big pitch for single-payer health care. Both lost. While first-time candidates endorsed by the progressive groups Justice Democrats or Our Revolution certainly won House elections last year, not one flipped a seat. The party did pick up 40 seats overall — just not with the most progressive candidates.

(And, by the way, the NYC MTA is run by New York State, not by the City.)

TenuredVulture wrote:He's opposed minimum wage, he's pro harassing people of color and has in fact been pretty terrible to women he's employed.

I don't have an electability ranking, but if I did, Bloomberg would be at the bottom.

Lauren Underwood in the exurbs of Chicago, Xochitl Torres Small in southern New Mexico, Abigail Spanberger in the suburbs of Richmond, Va., and Antonio Delgado in upstate New York — these four defeated Republicans in districts where Trump had prevailed by four to 10 percentage points just two years earlier. None of them ran on the Green New Deal, single-payer health insurance, reparations or the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The young progressive congresswomen in the squad?

The House members they replaced were Democrats, not Republicans, so their campaigns weren’t lessons in how to move voters from one party’s column to the other.

It’s valid to question the extent to which these results from a mid-term election will or will not translate to the 2020 elections (which, after all, include Congressional races, too) but they are facts, stubborn as they may be. And one thing is for sure: The 2018 results do not support "the progressive insistence that partisan turnout and a surge in new voters, attracted by bold policy positions, is the path to victory in 2020."

I don’t want to continue to go round and round debating the unknowable. I will say yet again that if and when Bernie (or whichever other Dem candidate) gets the nomination I’ll support him or her robustly and, frankly, wholeheartedly, despite whatever things he or she may have done in the past — whether it’s Bloomberg’s stop & frisk policy or Bernie’s troubling votes against gun control or Elizabeth Warren having been a Republican or Amy Klobuchar being mean to her staff.

It troubles me deeply that I hear so much equivocation coming from Progressives about supporting anyone else but Bernie. Support Bernie to the nth degree by all means, but stop forming a circular firing squad which can only hurt our chances in November whoever the nominee may be.

Feels like we could collectively use a laught, and I am not sure the Floridea thread gets enough looks, so this can work here: Florida man complains after dialysis center prevents him from bringing Trump cutout to treatment

This goes on too long, but its funny and poignant.

russian bots have turned their attention to bernie again

must've gotten someone's attention

"I had dinner with Mark Zuckerberg the other day, and he said, 'I'd like to congratulate you,' in front of a large group of people. So I'm not — but he said, 'I'd like to congratulate you. You're No. 1 on Facebook,'" Trump said.

Trump made the claim on Monday on the Rush Limbaugh's show.

The Indian press jumps on Trumps claim to be sure to point out the Modi has almost twice the likes, and neither are #1

td11 wrote:I can’t believe people think Bernie can’t win or would be a “bad” president after living through Donald fucking trump as president.

Elected republicans will be obstructionists no matter who the dem president is and I think he understands that. Most of his policy priorities individually poll well and I think he can make a case about his agenda to all kinds of regular Americans, from rural voters in WV to urban voters in cities.

He said in an interview once that if local congress members were not getting on board with his agenda, he will fly Af1 out there and hold a mini rally. Would be incredible to see

Plus one

And moderate Democrats lost four key Senate races, helping the Republicans pick up two seats. This is much more analogous to a presidential election because you have to win statewide.

Gains or losses in the House are always going to be driven by swing voters, since there are so few competitive House districts thanks to partisan gerrymandering. Also, I’m curious how swing voter is defined. Turnout in 2018 was over 50%, unheard of for a midterm election. Many of these so called swing voters are likely people with weak party identification and a spotty history of showing up to vote, not high information moderate regular voters. Others are the Obama-Trump voters, and I’m very confused on how Bloomberg is the guy to win these people back.

Winning back the White House means reaching and turning out key constituencies in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan. We tried the “Let’s ignore the African American and working class vote and just win the rich suburbs” thing in 2016; it didn’t work on either end. The former groups are too vital a part of the Democratic coalition and there is just a cap on how many prosperous suburban white people are going to vote for a Democrat. Winning 55% of the Philly burbs cannot overcome black voters staying home and the white working class defecting to Trump.

JFLNYC wrote:It troubles me deeply that I hear so much equivocation coming from Progressives about supporting anyone else but Bernie. Support Bernie to the nth degree by all means, but stop forming a circular firing squad which can only hurt our chances in November whoever the nominee may be.

J-Fly, I love you brother, but you seem to be weirdly insistent on taking exception to a position nobody here is taking. Primaries, as pacino has rightly pointed out, are indeed for debating the merits of the various possible nominees for one’s own party. Partially because Bernie Sanders is unusually lefty for a major, national candidate in America, and partly because Michael Bloomberg is unusually <checks notes> clearly a “liberal” Republican under normal circumstances for a Democrat, there is an unusually wide gulf between a couple of the front runners here, and it is sparking legit debate.

But I don’t see that anyone has said they wouldn’t vote for a Bloomberg over Trump if it came to it, or even knock doors or do whatever else for him. I personally would vote for a sentient pile of dog shit before I would vote for a Trump: but the fact that he is indeed that bad does not mean that anyone the Democrats throw up there is therefore good, or that we should be equally happy with Sanders or Bloomberg, because in any other knowable universe including the one we lived in not 15 years ago, they would be “caucusing” with different parties.

The more you insist on having this strawman debate, the more stridently you will see people making the case that Sanders > Bloomberg. Not because any of us will vote for the asshole, or not the Democrat, but because it’s weird that this is the debate you want to have. We’re all blue no matter who. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t, or shouldn’t, matter who the blue guy is.

Yes, it’s a legit debate and I’m arguing one side of it and I’m trying to do so in as calm, reasonable and factual manner as possible. I don’t always succeed, but that’s my goal. Those of us who have been on this Board from or near the beginning remember that one of the principles upon which it was founded was making arguments based on facts and analysis rather than unsupported opinion. I’m trying my best to bring that same ethos to this discussion.

I agree that primaries are for debating the relative merits of the candidates but when I see the vitriol hurled at moderate candidates (and please, let’s not pretend it’s not here), when I see a person’s life and career reduced to a one sentence sound bite, when I see the argument referred to as a “myth” — against the most recent set of data available to us —that swing voters must be motivated and addressed, when I see my own arguments referred to as “strange” or “weirdly insistent” or “a strawman debate,” I wonder why the notion that primaries are a time to consider and debate the candidates doesn’t seem to apply to all positions.

Even you, my friend, wrote: “This [i.e., the argument supporting Bernie] is all so obvious to me as to be alarming that anyone disagrees.” Stating that it’s alarming that anyone disagrees with you doesn’t exactly sound like an invitation to debate on the respective merits of the candidate. It sounds a lot more like a stubborn refusal to even consider other positions.

You also assert that you “don’t see that anyone has said they wouldn’t vote for a Bloomberg over Trump” and you’re probably right. People have assiduously avoiding saying so for fear, I suspect, of being accused of indirectly supporting Trump. But other than this most recent post of yours, I also haven’t seen many, if any, posts from the most progressive among us stating that they *would* definitely vote and work for a moderate candidate such as Bloomberg or Biden or Buttigieg. Instead we’re issued these infantile challenges — including from those who have asserted that primaries are a time to debate the candidates’ relative merits —that it’s time *right now* to unite behind Bernie, even before the NH primary. That’s not exactly an invitation to meaningful, if any, debate about the candidates.

And, although I’m sure you didn’t mean it this way, your assertion that you “would vote for a sentient pile of dog shit before I would vote for a Trump” doesn’t exactly instill confidence in your opinion of and commitment to a more moderate candidate. In fact it makes me wonder which side of the great “sentient pile of dog shit” continuum you place moderate candidates.

I’m 65, retired and very well off. Last year under a Trump Presidency our investments returned over 30% and our home rose significantly in value. In at least those respects my wife and I (and many of our similarly-situated friend) have profited from a Trump Presidency. Further, at my age (and especially with my recent cancer diagnosis), I’m unlikely to live long enough to experience the long-term fallout from Trump’s cynical and dangerous policies.

Yet I and many of my similarly-situated friends want to defeat Trump every bit as much as you do and return the country to a more progressive direction, even though doing so stands to cost us lots of money. We feel the way we do because we believe it’s the right thing to do (in the best sense of the word) and because we want your generation and those who come after you to experience the same or better opportunities and benefits we have.

So if we’re going to have this debate about the candidates during the primaries, let’s have it. But don’t think of us moderates as some cartoonish old farts who vote only for own pocketbooks and don’t support a progressive agenda. Many, many of us do but, in our judgment and experience, we see a different, longer, patient and more long-lasting path to achieving that goal. And I don’t think it serves anyone’s interests to attempt to cut off the debate after one or two primaries by calling for a pledge to support one candidate nor is it helpful to characterize my position (or anyone else’s) as “strange” or “weirdly insistent” or “strident” or “a strawman debate.”

I am so sorry about your diagnosis, JFLNYC, but my Mom, thank heavens, went through cancer at age 67 5 years ago and is still here to tell the tale and doing fine. It’s scary, but do what your doctors say and keep up the faith - we need you here!

I am sorry if I have given off the impression that I hate moderates or think less of them somehow. I find that I am, more than anything, a contrarian. At work, all day I spend my time around ultra-left people - the type of people who will openly say they will vote for Trump over Bloomberg - and then I am an active part of the Bucks County Democratic Committee (I was just out getting signatures and knocking doors yesterday like a good committee person), which is chock full of moderate Democrats, including the one we just endorsed to run for the first district in November. I voted for that endorsement, even though there were more liberal candidates running, and giving her the endorsement all but seals the deal for her. I did this partly because she is a friend, but also partly because of cold political calculus: a hard lefty just isn’t beating the moderate Brian Fitzpatrick out here, it is not happening.

Indeed, when I ran myself up here last year, I didn’t exactly run around screaming about “Medicare for All,” and I sometimes wonder if my lefty friends quite realize that “Medicare for All” does not mean “free health care.” I firmly believe politics is the art of the practical, and in selecting a candidate to support I always begin with, “Who can win?” Here, in arguing for Sanders, I have not particularly emphasized his policy proposals - which, truth be told, are long on promises and short on practical details, and are dead letters for the most part anyway with a Republican Congress, and maybe even a Democratic one - instead trying to make the argument he is actually best positioned to win, which I believe he is.

For the record, I voted for Hillary in the primary in 2016, because at the time I believed she was better positioned to win. In retrospect, and considering how instinctually I understood even in April of that year how a Trump win could be assembled, I feel I was wrong. I don’t know if Sanders would have won in 2016, but I think now he would have been the better choice; it’s terrible about Beaux Biden, not just for the Biden family but for the country, because Joe Biden surely would have won in 2016, had he been the nominee.

The game now is three states. Three states where a Trump is likely stronger today than he was in 2016. The question now is how best to win them. (1)Who brings something to the table that Hillary did not, (2) who avoids bringing to the table what Hillary did, and (3) who will people make a special effort to come out and vote for, and work for? Enthusiasm matters.

Bloomberg might excite some Jewish vote, and might scrape back some Jews who went Trump for some reason in 2016, because he will be considered reasonably strong on Israel. Sanders, though Jewish, is almost a wash there. In PA, this could matter. In WI and MI, less so.

Outside of that constituency, to whom, exactly, is Bloomberg exciting?

The enthusiasm Sanders generates is obvious to anyone looking.

Neither is an ideal candidate. An ideal candidate would be a non-white, male Elizabeth Warren with a great voice, if we are going strictly demographics (and I am sorry to the women on the board, but I am simply bowing to the misogyny in America; when a woman is elected president, I feel confident it will be as a Republican). Ironically, I think it is entirely possible Sanders could win the EC and lose the popular vote, as some of Hillary’s big numbers in places like NY, CA, and NJ may not be repeatable with Bernie because wealthier people are going to be suspicious of him, but he’ll still win those places.

Whoever the Dem nominee is, the path is narrow. But The argument here so far as I and others have made it is not so much, “Sanders has better policies,” it’s that “Sanders is the right candidate for this moment and is best positioned to win.” That is why I have called your concerns about specific people on this board being unwilling to vote for moderates a “strawman” argument - no one I have seen here is saying that.

Dang JFL. Sorry about your diagnosis. Hoping for the best.

Thanks for the good wishes, Moz & Bucky. I am very confident I will be fine and I look forward to driving you and everyone else here crazy for a long time. It’s a special place. In the meantime, let’s move forward together to reclaim the dignity, decency and progressive values which truly make our country great.

About the investments, though. Something that frustrates me is that trumpers constantly point to their 401K as evidence that orange baby is worthy of reelection.

So in about 2 minutes last night I found this chart of the S&P 500 over the last 10 years. What does it show? That the last 3 years are just a continuation of the trending in the prior 7 (when some other guy was president). I even had my crazy (ex?) aunt trumper comment "it could be going the other way!".

Excellent point. IIRC investments have invariably done better under Dem administrations. I realize I may have given the impression I credit Trump for the rise in our investments. I don’t. As far as I’m concerned we are reaping the benefits of the Obama recovery and if the Republicans hadn’t been so intransigent about making an even greater investment in the recovery we’d all be enjoying an even better economy.

Bucky wrote:About the investments, though. Something that frustrates me is that trumpers constantly point to their 401K as evidence that orange baby is worthy of reelection.

So in about 2 minutes last night I found this chart of the S&P 500 over the last 10 years. What does it show? That the last 3 years are just a continuation of the trending in the prior 7 (when some other guy was president). I even had my crazy (ex?) aunt trumper comment "it could be going the other way!".

I have an independent friend who said well my 401K has gone up, so he must be doing something right. I showed his this chart.

And I also reminded him the four largest companies in the S&P 500 (Alphabet, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft) have a larger combined market cap than the next 13 largest companies in the S&P, combined.

How did he react? I suspect that most just use this argument as an excuse to justify why they worship at the altar of the devil.

I have a very wealthy, very intelligent, very good friend who uses that argument exactly. Facts, context and the like are of no consequence. Dems, and Obama in particular, are the devil and bring only crime, a bad economy, high taxes and open borders with them when they are in power.

JFLNYC wrote:I have a very wealthy, very intelligent, very good friend who uses that argument exactly. Facts, context and the like are of no consequence. Dems, and Obama in particular, are the devil and bring only crime, a bad economy, high taxes and open borders with them when they are in power.

If Dems are the devil, how does he rationalize his friendship with you?

Dunno. One of life’s little contradictions. Maybe he thinks that one day I’ll come to my senses.

Edit: We’re also allowed to associate with members of other tribes.

Mike Bloomberg helped get Pat Toomey elected