Joe Biden beats Donald Trump, officially making Trump a one-term twice impeached, twice popular-vote losing president

[Jason]

42 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

This is a liability but remember Bernie hasn't been vetted

 

[SaysWho?]

14 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

You're arguing against a point that I'm not even making... I'm not blaming Progressives for the Dems or Hillary losing. I don't even know where that idea is coming from. I've blamed a WHOLE HOST of reasons for Hillary losing and progressives sitting the election out isn't even in my top ten. What I'm criticizing progressives for is not supporting their guy when it counts. If Bernie is the best choice the why isn't that showing at the polls? There seems to be a distinct disconnect between the fervor of his supporters online and what happens at the polls. Bernie's whole argument was that he could mobilize the youth vote and build a coalition of working class folks, minorities and progressives to beat Trump and usher in a new age in this country. Why isn't that happening? 

 

And thanks for the clarification.. I'm not trying to get into any personal back and forths with you or anybody else here so if that's where this conversation is heading, I'll bow out now 

 

You never have to bow out; you're a valuable member of the message board. I'm not getting personal, but progressives continue to be the easiest target despite an overwhelming amount of reasons why Democrats have a hard time retaining power and many times going along with Republican demands/ideas. It does annoy me, and it's going to bleed into the posts.

 

So I ain't going for a gotcha, but if you're not blaming progressives, then what did you mean by this:

 

1 hour ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Because I feel like a lot of "progressives" are more interested in winning arguments and not elections... which have CONSEQUENCES. 

...

Meanwhile The Right regains power, and undos what little progress HAS been made and shifts the country further to the right and the circle repeats. 

 

This sounds like progressives are a key reason to the right regaining power when they've been shunned from the party for decades now and many non-progressives sit out elections, and the structure of the Democratic Party turns off a heck of a lot of people who don't show up to the polls.

 

As far as the coalition, people have many different reasons for voting. Many people have 0 issues with his positions but don't think he can win, so their vote goes elsewhere. His outreach has improved with minority voters (big part of why nobody came close to him in Nevada), but with Trump in power, I know some people just want to get somebody quickly and start the fight against Trump. Some people I know were Bernie voters in 2016 but want somebody younger. And many people who like him are independent and don't want to register for a party in principle, so they don't vote in closed primaries. I know from some really fantastic reporting and my friends that while many young black voters like Bernie and Warren, many older ones have a slew of reasons for voting Biden and preferring him in the general, most of the time pretty well-reasoned (don't hold his votes in the 70s against him now, Obama trusted him so who am I to question it, we're used to incremental change and that's what's actually worked so far, Bernie may have supported Jesse Jackson and protested in the 60s but Biden's been our fighter with Obama the past 12 years). I don't agree, but it makes a lot of sense to me.

 

tbh, I don't really gauge it via primary because Hillary did far better with black Democrats than Bernie yet was mediocre in the general. I don't know if I'm right, but I know the Democrats have a long history of supporting someone like Biden, with no real platform besides beating the Republican, and being wrong.

[Jason]

Remember this story from the end of February? Democratic Leaders Willing to Risk Party Damage to Stop Bernie Sanders

 

They were pretty explicitly blaming progressives for potentially costing the party the general election.

 

Quote

From California to the Carolinas, and North Dakota to Ohio, the party leaders say they worry that Mr. Sanders, a democratic socialist with passionate but limited support so far, will lose to President Trump, and drag down moderate House and Senate candidates in swing states with his left-wing agenda of “Medicare for all” and free four-year public college.

 

[Jason]

Moderates: "we should be united."

[Massdriver]

1 hour ago, SaysWho? said:

 Progressives aren't the ones stifling progress; they're pretty much the ones always ahead of the Democrats on issues as the apparently centrist Democrats eventually adopt the position that was apparently "far-left" at one point when they randomly decided it was far-left just because. 

 

30 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

I don't know if I'm right, but I know the Democrats have a long history of supporting someone like Biden, with no real platform besides beating the Republican, and being wrong.

I'm sure you have a long response, and I don't want to get into it too deep, but this is just something I noticed in your replies. You an one hand claim that centrists are wrong and have no platform. Then you claim that centrists eventually adopt the position of the far-left from years past (which you've said more than once here). It can't be both. 

 

Edit: To clarify, the contradiction is clear considering that centrists must have a platform if they adopted positions of the "far left" at one point.

[mrbiggsly]

I did my part and voted for Bernie this morning, not that it'll do any good

[skillzdadirecta]

11 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

 

You never have to bow out; you're a valuable member of the message board. I'm not getting personal, but progressives continue to be the easiest target despite an overwhelming amount of reasons why Democrats have a hard time retaining power and many times going along with Republican demands/ideas. It does annoy me, and it's going to bleed into the posts.

 

So I ain't going for a gotcha, but if you're not blaming progressives, then what did you mean by this:

 

 

This sounds like progressives are a key reason to the right regaining power when they've been shunned from the party for decades now and many non-progressives sit out elections, and the structure of the Democratic Party turns off a heck of a lot of people who don't show up to the polls.

 

Yeah that statement was more talking about the upcoming election and what I'm hearing and seeing online. Bernie supporters are most definitely threatening to sit this one out and you see it more and more everyday that they come to the realization that Bernie isn't the nominee. A lot of my friends on social media are Bernie supporters so maybe my perspective is skewed, but that's what I'm seeing and that's what I was addressing. 

 

15 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

 

tbh, I don't really gauge it via primary because Hillary did far better with black Democrats than Bernie yet was mediocre in the general. I don't know if I'm right, but I know the Democrats have a long history of supporting someone like Biden, with no real platform besides beating the Republican, and being wrong

 

Biden is doing better than Bernie in EVERY DEMOGRAPHIC except for voters under 45 and Latinos... not just Black people and this is why I think Biden makes a better general election candidate than Bernie. Simple reason is that he's not an "other" to Middle America he's one of them and he's a comfortable alternative for a lot of folks who on the one hand, don't like Trump personally but on the other hand, ARE afraid that the country is changing too much too fast and that they and people like them are under attack. 

[SaysWho?]

3 minutes ago, Massdriver said:

 

I'm sure you have a long response, and I don't want to get into it too deep, but this is just something I noticed in your replies. You an one hand claim that centrists are wrong and have no platform. Then you claim that centrists eventually adopt the position of the far-left from years past (which you've said more than once here). It can't be both. 

 

A platform is more than individual issues. Hillary had many ideas and no platform. She was constantly perplexed why her team couldn't come up with something better than Breaking Barriers and Stronger Together to sum up her vision of the future. After all those years, she really didn't have a coherent vision except a bunch of things, many of which were adopted from the "far left" who had them first.

[Massdriver]

1 minute ago, SaysWho? said:

 

A platform is more than individual issues. Hillary had many ideas and no platform. She was constantly perplexed why her team couldn't come up with something better than Breaking Barriers and Stronger Together to sum up her vision of the future. After all those years, she really didn't have a coherent vision except a bunch of things, many of which were adopted from the "far left" who had them first.

Ah ok. I think we define platform differently.

[CitizenVectron]

Bloomberg gives $2 million to boost black voter registration efforts

 

 

[Massdriver]

4 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

Bloomberg gives $2 million to boost black voter registration efforts

 

 

That's it? He spent 500 million on his own campaign and that's it?

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

2 minutes ago, Massdriver said:

That's it? He spent 500 million on his own campaign and that's it?

Turns out bloomy is bad

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, Massdriver said:

Ah ok. I think we define platform differently.

He literally described a platform, and then said it wasn’t a platform 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

9 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Turns out bloomy is bad

OLOLOLOLOLOLOLO

[SaysWho?]

  

1 minute ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

Yeah that statement was more talking about the upcoming election and what I'm hearing and seeing online. Bernie supporters are most definitely threatening to sit this one out and you see it more and more everyday that they come to the realization that Bernie isn't the nominee. A lot of my friends on social media are Bernie supporters so maybe my perspective is skewed, but that's what I'm seeing and that's what I was addressing. 

 

 

Biden is doing better than Bernie in EVERY DEMOGRAPHIC except for voters under 45 and Latinos... not just Black people and this is why I think Biden makes a better general election candidate than Bernie. Simple reason is that he's not an "other" to Middle America he's one of them and he's a comfortable alternative for a lot of folks who on the one hand, don't like Trump personally but on the other hand, ARE afraid that the country is changing too much too fast and that they and people like them are under attack. 

 

Believe it or not, much of this is exactly what Hillary supporters told me in 2008 when I said Obama was a better candidate (and boy, did we get proven right on that one ). Middle America viewed Hillary as one of them, his pastor Jeremiah Wright would scare white people to death, she was doing better with the backbone working class and all the huge swing states (Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, and I'll include Florida even though there was a lot of weirdness around that one and nobody campaigned there), she's got this. But Obama won all of them in the general election and handily won the Rust belt.

 

Bidens doing better with many demographics, but so did Hillary (especially her margins with black voters), and that didn't translate to the general election. 

 

I read a lot of these Twitter threads and FB posts (God help me), and many people are saying, "Oh, Bernie makes it so hard to wanna vote for him. But you know, as Bernie supporters said, maybe it wouldn't be so bad," or, "#NeverBernie," or, "If Democrats select a populist, I'm not voting for them." There was one that went viral in 2018 or 2019 of a guy with a decent amount of followers who scolded some of Bernie's supporters for not voting for Hillary, a vote not for Hillary is a vote for Trump, and then said he wouldn't vote Bernie! And it's not even for issues; it's just sour bloody grapes on the candidate. In my view, it's even worse, even if they both lead to the same result.

 

1 minute ago, Massdriver said:

Ah ok. I think we define platform differently.

 

A platform is going to consist of issues, sure. But look at the difference:

 

Bernie says the system is rigged for ordinary Americans and has benefited the top 1% for ages. And because of this, they've toppled the system, gotten bailed out by poor and middle-class Americans, and now the banks continue to grow. We need to break up the banks and have real universal health insurance so the working class isn't bankrupted by things out of their control. The laws rigged to put poor people in jail and give rich people a slap on the wrist needs an overhaul. 

 

Biden's is that he will beat Trump like a drum. He has positions -- don't legalize marijuana but expunge records, public option -- but what's his actual platform? Beating Trump can't be a platform, but he's going all-in on this. I guess restoring decency?

 

3 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

He literally described a platform, and then said it wasn’t a platform 

 

Hillary's campaign staff disagrees with you.

[skillzdadirecta]

7 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

Believe it or not, much of this is exactly what Hillary supporters told me in 2008 when I said Obama was a better candidate (and boy, did we get proven right on that one ). Middle America viewed Hillary as one of them, his pastor Jeremiah Wright would scare white people to death, she was doing better with the backbone working class and all the huge swing states (Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, and I'll include Florida even though there was a lot of weirdness around that one and nobody campaigned there), she's got this. But Obama won all of them in the general election and handily won the Rust belt.

You know what else Obama won before he won the general election? The Democratic Primary. He proved he was a better general election nominee than Hillary by beating her in the primary... what does that have to do with what is being discussed now? 

 

59 minutes ago, Jason said:

Remember this story from the end of February? Democratic Leaders Willing to Risk Party Damage to Stop Bernie Sanders

 

They were pretty explicitly blaming progressives for potentially costing the party the general election.

 

 

 Maybe "They" were... I wasn't.

[SaysWho?]

5 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

You know what else Obama won before he won the general election? The Primary. He proved he was a better general election nominee than Hillary by beating her in the primary... what does that have to do with what is being discussed now? 

 

That was also a very close race where she once again won the popular vote.

 

The assumption here is Trump was a better election candidate because he won the primary. Yet everyone else was pummeling Hillary in the polls and getting more of the national vote than she was, and he won in an election not even in the top half of closest elections in the US. Who wins the primary =/= who's the best in the general. Many people vote for who they think can win, not who is definitely going to win. Hillary won the primary, partly because of me, and I look back and think Bernie would have been a better general election candidate.

 

I also don't believe Kerry was the best general election candidate in 2004.

 

It has a lot to do with now because many of your arguments applied to who she was winning and where she was winning. "He's one of us" is a movie we've seen before. Past is prologue.

[skillzdadirecta]

2 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

Hillary won the primary, partly because of me, and I look back and think Bernie would have been a better general election candidate.

I keep asking this question... BASED ON WHAT?

[SaysWho?]

1 minute ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I keep asking this question... BASED ON WHAT?

 

His Rust Belt appeal, superior polling, and actual clear platform.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

  Hillary's campaign staff disagrees with you.

What does that matter? A platform is simply the collected policy ideas that a person stands on. The individual ideas are the planks that build the platform, so when you say somebody has individual ideas you are describing a platform.

 

Whether the platform is good or bad, coherent or scatterbrained, it is still a platform.

[SaysWho?]

3 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

What does that matter?

 

Because people in politics get what a platform is and you seem to just like drive-by one-liners at me.

 

If it makes you feel better, replace real platform with real, tangible, coherent platform, and act like you're not talking to a room full of morons.

[skillzdadirecta]

Just now, SaysWho? said:

 

His Rust Belt appeal, superior polling, and actual clear platform.

So let me make sure I understand exactly you're coming from. If Bernie loses the Primary to Joe Biden even WITH all everything you listed here, you would still make the argument that he's the stronger general election candidate? And your calculus wouldn't change if Bernie loses to Biden in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin? ( I think he wins Wisconsin but loses the other three personally)

So anyone who isn't voting for Bernie for whatever reason is just...wrong?

[Guest]

Just now, SaysWho? said:

 

Because people in politics get what a platform is and you seem to just like drive-by one-liners at me.

I didn’t give you a drive by one liner in this post that you are replying to and you still won’t engage with it, so what difference does it make when your in one of your moods?

[SaysWho?]

5 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

So let me make sure I understand exactly you're coming from. If Bernie loses the Primary to Joe Biden even WITH all everything you listed here, you would still make the argument that he's the stronger general election candidate? And your calculus wouldn't change if Bernie loses to Biden in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin? ( I think he wins Wisconsin but loses the other three personally)

So anyone who isn't voting for Bernie for whatever reason is just...wrong?

 

I think they are, yes, just as they think I am. Bernie's Rust Belt appeal went further than wins in Michigan and Wisconsin as it wasn't a uniform win there (Hillary won some of those states as well). For me, I think a lot of people just want to get on with the general since they know Trump isn't an easy target this time, they're unsure about Bernie, so they're consolidating around Biden. At least a significant amount is based on what I'm seeing.

 

Or maybe Biden is better than I think, but so far, he shows plenty of signs of what hasn't worked for Democrats before. My hope is Biden is better at connecting with voters than Hillary and that his favorability pushes him over so we can get more state legislatures and governors' mansions for the census, but I'd be mistaken not to see the same things that haven't worked before repeating this year.

 

5 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

I didn’t give you a drive by one liner in this post that you are replying to and you still won’t engage with it, so what difference does it make when your in one of your moods?

 

Except I did.

 

You did go for a one-liner, and let's not pretend you haven't gotten unnecessarily frazzled over movie discussions. At least I'm in the ballpark right now!

[skillzdadirecta]

7 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

I think they are, yes, just as they think I am. Bernie's Rust Belt appeal went further than wins in Michigan and Wisconsin as it wasn't a uniform win there (Hillary won some of those states as well). For me, I think a lot of people just want to get on with the general since they know Trump isn't an easy target this time, they're unsure about Bernie, so they're consolidating around Biden. At least a significant amount is based on what I'm seeing.

 

Or maybe Biden is better than I think, but so far, he shows plenty of signs of what hasn't worked for Democrats before. My hope is Biden is better at connecting with voters than Hillary and that his favorability pushes him over so we can get more state legislatures and governors' mansions for the census, but I'd be mistaken not to see the same things that haven't worked before repeating this year.

Thanks for the clarification. I think Bernie is losing for different reasons than you do and I think those reasons would be exacerbated in the general election where he would be under full on attack by the Trump campaign and the RNC and its allies. Whatever Bernie supporters think they're getting now is NOTHING compared to what he would get hit with in the general and because of that, I personally think he would be a riskier and weaker candidate in the general.  

[SaysWho?]

15 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Thanks for the clarification. I think Bernie is losing for different reasons than you do and I think those reasons would be exacerbated in the general election where he would be under full on attack by the Trump campaign and the RNC and its allies. Whatever Bernie supporters think they're getting now is NOTHING compared to what he would get hit with in the general and because of that, I personally think he would be a riskier and weaker candidate in the general.  

 

I understand and I respect your opinion. And believe me, I'm not just saying it to save face: I want to be wrong so bad if nothing else than the census and the Supreme Court. Like I want to be here on election night, and I want to quote my own March posts here talking about the problems with Biden and go, "Haha, this nitwitted shitforbrains's post didn't age well what a loser," and then I want @SFLUFAN to change my name to HerpyMcDerpington and never change it back as the final name change

[Keyser_Soze]

8 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

I want @SFLUFAN to change my name to shitforbrains and never change it back as the final name change

 

I'll be the judge of what @SFLUFAN changes your name to.

[SaysWho?]

2 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

I'll be the judge of what @SFLUFAN changes your name to.

 

HerpyMcDerpington only to appease @Kal-El814

[Kal-El814]

5 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

 

HerpyMcDerpington only to appease @Kal-El814

Thank you. 

[SuperSpreader]

HerpyTheLoveDisease 

[GeneticBlueprint]

 

 

Now listen here you mcguffin lovin bucket scrub

[Anathema-]

3 hours ago, Comet said:

You say this as if the left has found any meaningful and/or reliable way to do this. 

 

They haven't, but it's all they got.

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

 

 

Now listen here you mcguffin lovin bucket scrub

Is it bad that my real reaction to that exchange is annoyance that Biden repeated the incorrect “You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater” thing?

[TwinIon]

I do think it's possible for a person to be a better candidate for the general than for the primaries, but I don't think it's really possible to prove it. As we saw with Warren, so many people wouldn't vote for her not because they didn't like her, but because they thought someone else had a better chance of winning in the general. I think that's a huge part of Biden's support. 

 

If you remove that calculus, and you just have two candidates, I think a bunch of people suddenly become much more viable. I think Klobuchar would be a better candidate in the general than she was in the primaries. I could see the same being true for Booker. I think a lot changes when that goes away.

 

I personally don't think Bernie would be a better general election candidate. His platform, so much more than Biden's, is targeted at the most progressive voters. If his message doesn't resonate sufficiently with Democrats, I don't see why he'd have better luck with the entire population. With Warren out, I'll happily vote for him, but I haven't seen a lot of proof that his campaign can rile up a wider base of support. 

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

I do think it's possible for a person to be a better candidate for the general than for the primaries, but I don't think it's really possible to prove it.

The reason the debate always rages on amongst the party that lost the general is that you can’t actually be proven wrong, so people feel more free to speak with certainty about the outcome if their preferred candidate would have been the nominee.

 

But I agree that it is possible that a candidate could be worse in a primary than a general, mostly due to the types of voters who vote in primaries vs those who vote in the general.