Progressives (Liberals)

Quote:

...Mr. Bossert, who has publicly warned that as many as 500,000 Americans may ultimately die of the coronavirus, denied on Thursday that he had tried to see Mr. Trump and been unable to, but would not elaborate on his contacts with the White House. Some officials there also denied that he had made extensive efforts to speak with Mr. Trump or Mr. Pence.

Among the advisers who share the president’s more jaundiced view is his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who considers the problem more about public psychology than a health reality, according to people who have spoken with him. Mr. Kushner has gotten more involved in the response in recent days, according to three White House advisers. A person close to Mr. Kushner said his views were being misinterpreted, and that he was focused on trying to find answers to the most immediate measures to mitigate the virus’s spread.

NYT

Kushner's denial isn't terribly credible. The administration's strategy has been to control information and voices so as to forward a particular message or narrative. Given that this narrative is either mostly fact-free or absolutely false pretty much top to bottom and is replete with racist/xenophobic tropes and is marked constantly by suggestions that any reporting/statement contrary to the admin's messaging is false and only intended to harm Trump, that means that their desired narrative is intended to create a particular set of psychological/emotional responses. That's their game.

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Quote:

Reid J. Epstein
@reidepstein
· 2h
Sen Ron Johnson told me there's not enough stories about people who have recovered from the coronavirus.

"All people are hearing about are the deaths," he said. "The flip side of this is the vast majority of people who get coronavirus do survive.”

https://nytimes.com/2020/03/12/us/politics/coronavirus-2020-campaign.html

Oh yeah. And when the tsunami hit Japan in 2011, the important story wasn't the 16,000 deaths and enormous property destruction and the Fukushima reactor disaster, it was the great majority of Japanese citizens who were OK.

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I might be getting carried away with this social distancing thing. Driving home today I found myself making sure other cars weren't near mine.

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@maporsche,

Biden is a fragile person. He could still crumble. Sanders is good on long distances. It's not over untill it's over.

1 Reply

@maporsche,

Oh look, the centrists have started their AOC character assassination program! That didn't take long.

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Anybody have a clear citation of when AOC said Joe beat Bernie because of voter suppression? Cut and paste of the tweet...?

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@snood,

Here it is. Plain as day.

Go to minute 7:00

https://youtu.be/AoESX5CpAtM

She’s not wrong about voter suppression, and waiting 3 hours to vote is nuts.....but this as an answer to “Why did Bernie lose to Biden” is ******* insulting.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Biden is a fragile person. He could still crumble. Sanders is good on long distances. It's not over untill it's over.

Like I said, sounds an awful lot like wishful thinking rather than analysis.

1 Reply

@maporsche,

maporsche wrote:

Here it is. Plain as day.

Go to minute 7:00

https://youtu.be/AoESX5CpAtM

She’s not wrong about voter suppression, and waiting 3 hours to vote is nuts.....but this as an answer to “Why did Bernie lose to Biden” is ******* insulting.

Thanks. I agree with your take that this is insulting. It’s disappointing, too. The black people who turned out for Joe in SC, NC and Texas all endured waits of 3, 4, up to SEVEN hours. The waits are wrong, but this is insulting.

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I would love to see Bernie endorse Biden on live TV at some point during the debate.

He has no clear path to winning given the upcoming states and their current projections. FiveThirtyEight has him at less than 0.1% chance of doing so. Start to unite the party on live TV and show that we can work together against Trumpism.

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@maporsche,

That’d be helpful

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@maporsche,

Quote:

She’s not wrong about voter suppression, and waiting 3 hours to vote is nuts.....but this as an answer to “Why did Bernie lose to Biden” is ******* insulting.

And I don't take it that way. I heard it as an imperfect attempt to shift to a more agreeable line of discussion; him - why didn't the young come out to vote for Bernie? her - look, voter suppression is a problem that effects voter turnout.

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@snood,

It always seems to be outlandish for me that you have to wait such a long time to vote. (If it's more than a couple of minutes, people complain here, and some will go back ... hopefully to return later).

Voting for a new party leader here, however, is just and only organised by the party itself, since only party members vote. (Was done online a couple of months ago in my party, personal voting could only be done in the party offices, otherwise by post.)

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@maporsche,

Yes, he should, that would be a huge statement.

538's numbers seem plausible too. It was Bernie's moment but not his time, and it's glaringly obvious.

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@Walter Hinteler,

It’s not like that everywhere. In most states you can vote early (up to 2 weeks early in Illinois) and you can often get mail in ballots and not have to wait anytime. You can even drop those ballots in the mail the day of the vote, so you can wait to the last minute.

These people waiting often have other choices as well, they just didn’t know about them or for some reason didn’t use them.

I haven’t waited to vote more than 10 minutes in the last 20 years.

1 Reply

@blatham,

blatham wrote:

Quote:
She’s not wrong about voter suppression, and waiting 3 hours to vote is nuts.....but this as an answer to “Why did Bernie lose to Biden” is ******* insulting.
And I don't take it that way. I heard it as an imperfect attempt to shift to a more agreeable line of discussion; him - why didn't the young come out to vote for Bernie? her - look, voter suppression is a problem that effects voter turnout.

Come on, man. She said it on Fox News. Totally cognizant of the implications of what she said and where she said it. You’ve always regarded her as exceptionally smart and savvy. How could she not know the impact of suggesting Biden beat Bernie because of voter suppression?

1 Reply

@maporsche,

Quote:

Supporters distrust the Democratic party and are frustrated with an election system they say works against their candidate

An interesting longer report in The Guardian: Bernie or Bust: the Sanders fans who will never vote for Biden

Quote:

[...]
Okonkwo is not alone in her unequivocal and uncompromising support for Sanders. She is part of a loosely connected but vocal group, sometimes uniting under hashtags like #BernieorBust or #NeverBiden who say they will not vote for Biden if he wins the nomination. While it’s nearly impossible to know how large the group is, hundreds of people have shared this sentiment, including progressive political candidates.

It may be impossible to quantify their number, but not their influence. Those Democrats who will not yield to a moderate and vote for Biden if he wins the nomination are the same group who are sometimes blamed for Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 when disappointed Sanders fans sat out the general election.

nd the past few weeks have been hard to swallow for Sanders fans. After a strong early showing in Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire his star faded on Super Tuesday. Supporters were left disappointed again this week when he lost to Biden in Michigan, where he edged out Hillary Clinton in 2016. This poor performance is partly due to an unexpectedly weak youth vote – despite Sanders’ vaunted ability to mobilise younger Americans.

As the Sanders campaign reckons with the fallout, and former Democratic candidates rush to endorse Biden, the #BernieorBust fans are grappling with a repeat of 2016. It’s hard to tell how their decision could affect the election, but in 2016, a similar group of people who boycotted Hillary Clinton on election day contributed to her loss in swing states like Florida, where more than 200,000 people voted for independent candidates such as Gary Johnson or Jill Stein.

“If you distrust something, you are more likely to opt out of it,” said Rashawn Ray, a governance fellow at the Brookings Institution. And Sanders supporters don’t trust the Democratic party. “They think its political sabotage, and not allowing Bernie to have a fair shot. So what do people do? They opt out.”
... ... ... ... ...

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@blatham,

Man, that’s a bit of a stretch to me.

Black people are the usual targets of voter suppression. They turned out. Record numbers of voters in some of these states, people are turning out.

Also, Biden is winning in states where people aren’t waiting 3, 4, 7 hours to vote. This isn’t happening everywhere.

1 Reply

What does really really piss me off is this Politico piece

Quote:

A 'Never Biden' movement vows not to vote for Joe

There is not a single acknowledgement of the role being played here by troll brigades and bots driven by a strategy/intention to set one side against the other so as to damage Dem cohesion and, ultimately, activism and voting. This drives me ******* crazy. We know the Russians are doing and we know (unless we're really stupid) that Parscle and other GOP entities are doing it as well.

It won't be the case that all voices labeling themselves as Sanders supporters are fake of course but the goal of bad players is to influence the thinking and emotions of the Sanders crowd, to push ideas and rhetorical styles in damaging directions. And efforts will be put into encouraging Biden (or Warren, etc) supporters to go to war with Sanders supporters.

For a political reporting site like Politico to ignore this stuff and act as if this is all just some an internal Dem squabble is just shallow and lazy. Or uneducated or all those things. As I've written before (so many times my ******* head hurts) this was manifest in the McCain/Obama contest and such bad players don't just stop doing these divide and conquer activities. They just get more sophisticated. And this cycle like the last has a huge Russian involvement.

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@Walter Hinteler,

To be honest, I’m not the slightest bit worried about Bernie Or Busters. Couple reasons.

1) there aren’t very many of them today and there will be fewer of them once the pain of losing the primary is over and 7 months pass
2) they didn’t show up to vote anyway, so they could never be counted on
3) record turnout in primary elections to vote FOR Biden (new, first time, voters are voting overwhelming for Biden). Much of this is driven by a rightful disgust of Trump, but they’re voting for Biden regardless.
4) they literally do not vote anyway. If the top 10 trending hashtags on Twitter decided an election, I’d be worried.....thus, not worried one ******* bit.

This is NOT 2016. Not even close.

Biden is winning overwhelmingly right now, only the delusional will try to paint this as anything but the will of the voters themselves choosing their candidate.

1 Reply

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