Progressives (Liberals)

This "growing buzz" has already subsided, if it ever existed. As you must be aware, a "buzz" can be faked, whipped up by a few posters.

Today's top Twitter trending United States topics are #SCprimary2020, #WeLoveBenSolo, #IfTwitterEndedTomorrow, #LeapDay, and #hoax. Thoughts? 

Like Gabbard.

Or Kucinich.

Otherwise his base will be threatening to walk.

Bernie Sanders Meets His Biggest Threat

Sanders’s biggest obstacle is not any one of his opponents but a party establishment that remains nervous about his potential nomination.

RUSSELL BERMAN, FEBRUARY 29, 2020, THE ATLANTIC

Senator Bernie Sanders knew he wasn’t going to win South Carolina, and he knew he didn’t need to win South Carolina. So by the time polls closed today, he was long gone.

As the Democratic front-runner, he had that luxury.

“You can’t win ’em all,” Sanders told a rally in Virginia tonight before congratulating former Vice President Joe Biden on his first primary win.

The real march to the party’s presidential nomination begins on Tuesday, when 14 states vote. More than one-third of the delegates who will convene at the national convention in Milwaukee this summer are at stake Tuesday. The biggest prizes include California, Texas, and Virginia, where Sanders had already flown to tonight in a bid to make sure that his blowout loss to Bidenwas merely a hiccup, and nothing more.

Sanders remains well positioned in the Super Tuesday states, and unlike Biden, he has the money to capitalize on his narrow victory in New Hampshire and his much larger caucus win in Nevada last week. He also is benefiting from early voting: More than 2 million people have already cast ballots in Democratic primaries in Super Tuesday states, potentially limiting the bounce that Biden will pick up from South Carolina. Nowhere is that more significant than in California, where Democrats have been voting for nearly a month and where polls show that Sanders is leading by as many as 20 points. The senator from Vermont is also up, though by a narrower margin, in Texas, and victories in those two states, along with strong results elsewhere, could ensure that Sanders emerges from Tuesday with a significant lead in overall delegates.

A split among the moderate candidates—Biden, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg—is also helping Sanders maintain his perch atop the field. Although Sanders is likely to cross the 15 percent threshold needed to collect delegates in virtually every contest on Tuesday, none of his opponents can say the same—at least according to the polls. ...

Indeed, Sanders’s biggest threat is not any one of his opponents but a party establishment that remains nervous about his potential nomination. Within minutes of the polls closing in South Carolina tonight, pressure was building for some of the lagging candidates to drop out and rally behind Biden. “I’m hoping some of the candidates tomorrow get out,” former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a previous chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said on CNN as he endorsed the former vice president.

Sanders, however, would rather most of his rivals stay in for now—even if that means he takes a few losses on Super Tuesday. “A lot of states out there,” he said tonight. “That will not be the only defeat.”

In a sign of the increasing urgency of the calendar, Sanders devoted part of his speech to imploring young people to vote and to rebutting critiques of his electability in a race against Trump. Sanders needs a larger turnout among young voters to hold off his rivals and convince Democratic skeptics that he can win in the fall.

His double-digit defeat in South Carolina was a shellacking. If his landslide in Nevada suggested that Sanders had made deep inroads among the Latino community, the result in South Carolina is a reminder that he has a much tougher challenge in winning over African Americans, and particularly older voters.

More important, however, Sanders must hope that South Carolina is not the first sign of a broader national reconsideration of his candidacy. The answer to that question could be clear by Tuesday night.


https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/607288/

Not to mention Dem primary/caucus voters who remain nervous about the same thing (and/or other things).

My thoughts on this post are that I will still probably be seeing an occasional post of yours, if someone else quotes you in their response. And that other than that, you will be my first addition in years to a small group of posters that, all things considered, I will henceforth gladly ignore.

It is sort of funny how the "party establishment" and the "DNC" are always presumed to be behind every indication that the voters might not quite be ready to join the Sanders crusade.

Yeah. It's a simple binary conception. Handy for the marketing game Sanders is counting on and also very handy for Putin's goals.

The point made being that for now, Bernie is quite safe on that front because none of the other candidates is intent on dropping their campaign, in favor of say, Biden. Unless opposition to Sanders coalesce around one single challenger, he will easily stay in the lead.

Elizabeth Warren has shown her true colors for anybody still in doubt of what she is.

She’s not projected to win or place second in any contests, but last night, she told Texans that she’ll grasp for any delegates she can get and take them to the convention floor.

She’s probably pre-sold her delegates to #Bloomberg money.

A great champion of progressives.
#LyingLiz true to the last lie.

#DropOutWarren

You asked for thoughts on something, I gave you my thoughts. I don't see what your problem is.

For the record, my thoughts are that what's being discussed on Twitter should not necessarily drive what's being discussed here -- because A2K is not some annex of Twitter and because 'buzz' is fleeting and easily manipulated. The hypothesis of a Biden-Harris ticket is pretty remote at this point so any 'buzz' about it amounts to quite little.

Of course, circumstances will force others to drop out. We don't know how this will go exactly, of course, but winnowing is inevitably in the cards.

The wisdom and honesty of Donald Trump

As noted, he's been talking about contagion coming from the southern border. Yet Mexico has seen 2 or 3 instances of the virus so far and while we have now 16 in Canada.

Not that the Trump folks or the GOP are steeped in racist notions though. I mean, where's the evidence for that?

TRUMP on Afghanistan:
"Oh", says Liz Cheney. "I didn't know about the pledge. And it's a strong one. Well then, that's sure a relief to me. Well done, Mr President!"

Memory lane.



Digby

The thing about Biden’s SC win that should worry Bernites is that Black voters under the age of 45 and liberal black voters—including those who said they’re very liberal—all backed Biden over Sanders. The Bernites like to claim that all blacks who aren’t old or older are strongly in their crusade.

Maybe so, but maybe not so much. We’ll know soon.

Helping the left to win the election.

The irony inside that sentence is funny.

Irony? What irony? We need to keep an open mind - the Republicans might actually be trying to advocate for fairness for Crazy Bernie; and maybe even Pocahontas Liz and Sleepy Joe! We’ve got to give them the benefit of the doubt.

One can only hope so.

Which is something not devoutly to be wished. Our goal is to beat Trump, not just to be in a primary. If Amy Klobuchar and Buttigieg really do want to beat Trump, and if they really do believe in what they campaign in a more moderate approach to governing, they should drop out.

Bernie really does not have a big as following to appeal to all democrats or left-leaning independents as you may believe. So, if those two stays in, it will mean Bernie wins with low numbers forcing democrats to have to fall in with Bernie Sanders and vote for him. Unlike Bernie's followers, we will do it but we won't like it. I doubt Bernie will have a lot of democrats doing an about-face and supporting everything Bernie says or does just because he is Bernie and his supporters will kill them (not literally) if they disagree. If they actually do just that, then we will another despot Presidency. Not a happy thought.