#bernie sander 2016

[beggars-opera]

I still find it really, really horrifying funny how many people think that they are going to magic a universally beloved third-party presidential candidate out of thin air and that their revolution is going to sway both the democratic and undecided voters to change their political alliances and vote for this nonexistent mystery person in in *checks watch* the next five months, thus overriding the republican base who has nearly 100% rallied around their one guy for the past decade and show no signs of wavering and, by the way, is also 100% behind funding genocide and various other crimes against humanity along with undoing every single decent thing the other guy has done. But sure. Vive la revolution

[tittyinfinity]

We had a whole year of people trying to hold democrats accountable. So yes people are going to be angry when you're like "Even in the face of genocide, I wouldn't even CONSIDER voting third party. And ill work damn hard to MAKE SURE they never win"

It's simultaneously saying "the only way we can move past this is to VOTE!" But anytime someone brought up voting for someone else you shut it down and said "voting for THAT candidate doesn't work through. We HAVE to choose between the genociders Or Else"

If it's impossible for a third party to win, maybe we should be re-thinking how the system works. Especially if we'll never be able to get the electoral college on that side. Sounds like our electoral system might be a load of shit if it only works in certain people's favor!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Andrew Prokop at Vox:

The left’s hopes for sweeping change from the 2010s have crashed into the reality of the 2020s. The energy of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns and the George Floyd protests is a distant memory. Some members of the Squad have moved toward the Democratic mainstream, while others lost primaries. Several of the progressive prosecutors elected in recent years have been ousted from office (by voters or due to scandals) or appear headed that way. In Democrat-dominated spaces — like cities and mainstream media outlets — there’s been growing pushback against the left. Ambitious progressive rallying cries of just a few years ago, such as defunding the police and Medicare-for-all, are now absent from the discourse. Politicians who assiduously cultivated left activists are now increasingly tacking to the center — most notably Vice President Kamala Harris, who has abandoned many of the positions she took while running in the Democrats’ 2020 presidential primary. Altogether, it’s seemed that progressives have moved from being on the offensive to being on the defensive — in both politics and the nation’s culture.

Of course, it’s not as if progressives’ gains over the past 20 years or so have been entirely wiped away. The Democratic Party remains significantly further to the left than it was a decade ago and certainly two decades ago (see, for instance, my recent article about the rise of the New Progressive Economics). Yet, as bloggers Noah Smith and Tyler Cowen have argued, there are growing indications that the leftward drift of the party and of the country’s culture broadly has stopped. On some fronts, there has indeed been a reversal. “No matter who wins, the US is moving to the right,” Semafor’s David Weigel argued last week, citing “immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, climate change policies, and criminal justice reform” as issues where progressives are on the defensive. Being on the defensive is not new for the left — it’s the historical norm. Bursts of activist energy and successful reform are typically followed by long stretches where either the new status quo persists or a backlash reverses at least some recent change.

[...]

The era of rising progressive ambitions lasted from about 2005 to 2020

Historical periodization is a tricky thing, but here’s a rough attempt at it. From about 1980 to 2005, the left was mostly irrelevant to national politics. The Cold War was over, and capitalism reigned ascendant. The Republican Party moved right, while the Democratic Party moved to the center. The country cracked down on criminals, unauthorized immigrants, and non-working welfare recipients. 9/11 made patriotism mandatory. Same-sex marriage was viewed as politically toxic. But 2005 to 2020 was, broadly, a period where progressives and the left became increasingly influential inside the Democratic Party, in Democrat-dominated spaces, and in the larger culture. Call it the era of rising progressive ambitions. The disasters of George W. Bush’s second term kicked off the shift, discrediting Republican governance. This enabled the election of the nation’s first Black president, Barack Obama, whose agenda was strikingly ambitious and progressive when compared to the Clinton years. Democrats’ leftward shift accelerated in the 2010s, which saw:

The increased cultural influence of the social justice left, which transformed how much of the country thought and spoke about racial and gender issues (“the Great Awokening”)

The launch of viral protest movements like Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Me Too

The nationwide spread and Supreme Court’s protection of same-sex marriage rights, followed by increased advocacy for trans rights

The rise of more economically progressive and even democratic socialist politicians, as seen in the support for Sanders’s campaigns, the Squad’s arrival in Congress, and party leaders’ embrace of some of Elizabeth Warren’s ideas

A leftward move of mainstream Democrats on issues like immigration and criminal justice, where activists had made the case that status quo policies were cruel and harmful

Increased public discussion about causes like Medicare-for-All, the Green New Deal, and student loan forgiveness

Basically, on a host of issues, the “Overton window” — the boundaries of which political and policy ideas are deemed fit for mainstream discussion, rather than fringe or self-evidently absurd — opened far further left. Trump’s election didn’t stop the left’s rising influence. Indeed, it intensified it, raising the stakes of politics and heightening passions. (Trump’s rise simultaneously opened the Overton window further right on some issues, as leading Republicans increasingly embraced bigotry and flouted democratic norms.) The assumption spread among Democrats that the establishment’s approach had failed and that bold new progressive ideas were necessary. During the party’s 2020 presidential primary, most candidates — including Harris — scrambled to the left, wooing activist groups. Joe Biden, the most old-school major contender, won, but rather than a full-on pivot to the center for the general election, he embraced much of the progressive agenda. It was a political necessity for helming the Democratic Party of 2020.

[...]

The backlash and disillusionment of the 2020s

Things feel different in the Biden years. In part that’s due to the constraints and disappointments that always exist when a party tries to turn a bold campaign agenda into governing reality. Narrow congressional majorities limited Democrats’ legislative possibilities (and then they lost the House). The conservative Supreme Court, meanwhile, blocked some Biden actions like student loan forgiveness and rolled back abortion rights protections. But the trend was broader. Democrats in cities disavowed police cuts as they struggled with rising crime and complained they couldn’t handle a migrant influx. Corporations have laid off DEI workers. Mainstream media companies, increasingly influenced by progressive causes (and sensitive to left criticism) in the 2010s, are now more forthrightly asserting their journalistic independence and challenging progressive ideas. Activism in protest of Israel was met with fierce pushback at universities. Commentators started declaring that “wokeness” had peaked as social justice controversies grew less intense and frequent.

[...]

All of this has happened before

Meanwhile, there’s also been a conspicuous decline of energy and intensity among progressive activists. While many certainly remain committed to their longtime causes, others have disengaged or shifted their focus to opposing Israel’s war in Gaza (an issue that bitterly divides the Democratic Party and where Democratic leaders are disinclined to embrace the left). Perhaps if Trump wins, progressive energy would surge again in opposing him — but perhaps too many people are now burned out and apathetic, and the mobilization won’t match the bygone days of Trump’s first term. And a backlash against Trump’s governance would not necessarily spur the Democrats to resume their leftward march. Activists naturally get disappointed and disengaged when major change proves elusive. “Every major social movement of the past 20 years has undergone a significant collapse,” the activist Bill Moyer wrote in 1987, “in which activists believed that their movements had failed, the power institutions were too powerful, and their own efforts were futile.” Fatigue, burnout, and organizational crisis then ensue; some move on to new causes.

This Vox article explains how the progressive left has been in defense and retreat mode since 2020 after being in the ascendency since 2005 or so.

[originalleftist]

This election feels like it has become a second chance, in more ways than one.

In 2016, we had a battle between the "old guard" of the Democratic Party and the progressive wing, and though the old guard won the primary, the divisiveness and bitterness of it, sometimes spilling over into open bigotry, nearly torn the party apart (I also think there is exactly zero to be gained from trying to rehash which side was more to blame for that, and will delete any comments doing so).

Then after Clinton became the nominee, we had a chance to elect the first female President. Instead, we lost to Donald Trump, and our country plunged into this ongoing existential threat.

Going back further, in 1968 a Democratic incumbent facing backlash from progressives against an overseas war dropped out, and instead of uniting behind an alternative, the party faced a divisive primary, riots at the convention (also held in Chicago, no less), and a loss in November to Richard Nixon.

Now, we have the Democratic incumbent dropping out ahead of the primary in Chicago- but the party has swiftly united around a strong alternative.

We had big donors and party insiders try to push Biden out, toss the primary results completely, and hold a "mini-primary" of insiders to pick a presumably corporate-friendly nominee- but instead all major wings of the party have swiftly united around a new nominee with a progressive voting record in the Senate to rival Sentors Sanders'.

Now, we again have a woman running for President against Donald Trump once again. And it remains to be seen if history will repeat... or if we will get it right this time.

So many people were dreading a rematch between Biden and Trump. But it seems that instead, Biden's withdrawal and Harris's extraordinarily strong campaign have given us a rare and precious chance to, in a sense, "rerun" some of America's (and the Democratic Party's) greatest failures.

Let's get it right this time.

[technofeudalism]

i'll be honest. i am feeling bitter today. wall of text coming.

i was going through the "Bernie Bro" tag earlier and sincerely thought about reblogging the most unhinged takes i could find from as far back as 2015 just to prove a point.

but after i started looking at them, i realized that almost all of the users are still active today and making pro-Joe Biden posts as early as this week and i couldn't do it. i don't want those problems.

however... i could not resist sharing a part of one. this is a post from the 2016 primaries. i am 100% not trying to dunk on anyone. i am just trying to show people who do not remember or were not around the conversations that were happening at the time. then maybe you will understand why people to the left of you get so frustrated.

this post is a total of 1,163 words. it is from a fandom blog. you may be asking: is this a story? shipping controversy? it's february 2016... perhaps an appeal on health care policy? here is the title:

and here is an excerpt:

here is the meme that caused the offense:

prefacing this by saying that Bernie has let me down greatly in the last couple of years, especially with Gaza. but that's not what this post is about. maybe another time. i have plenty of critical things to say. but this is genuinely mind blowing to me.

even putting aside the absurdity of it all - making a post about this in the middle of a presidential election where Donald Trump is running for the first time - research at the time and in recent years concluded that, while there were small groups of very online, red pill Sanders supporters that exist in almost every political space (a few of these guys later fell straight down the alt-right pipeline), they were never the majority or even close to being it.

despite the smears, this was not a real issue pervasive in Bernie's campaign. it was pointed out by a diverse group of journalists in 2016 and 2020 that it was an example of the media coaxing the middling progressive movement in the US to start knifing each other so that the Democrats could appoint their corporate-controlled candidate. they had Bill Clinton on CNN saying it!

and it worked. first it was Hillary, then it was Biden. as a bonus, it irreparably stained Bernie's reputation with some women who, understandably, were concerned about things they heard on CNN or MSNBC where this narrative was being pushed around the clock.

this post has over 1200 notes. not a ton. but i found plenty of others about other topics that had tens of thousands. most of them were also very silly. some actually had legitimate criticisms but they were few and far between. same trend i saw in 2024 after Biden dropped out. it feels like nothing has really changed in a decade. not for the better.

i am of the opinion that you cannot spend all of your time fighting ghosts while your opponent is punching you in the face. you will always lose. Bernie may have not beaten Trump - either time. but misogyny, sexism, racism and any other form of discrimination or hate will always be incompatible and will never have a place in a genuine socialist movement. you have to trust that we can hold individuals within our communities accountable for their actions and stay disciplined in our message. there is no other way out of this.

[ourladyoftheflytrap]

I detest the belief that if you think democrats are better than Republicans, you must not care about immigrants or foreign policy. I strongly believe that America should have open borders and should welcome immigrants instead of creating 1000 arbitrary hoops they have to jump through in order to be considered "legal." I also oppose our involvement in weapons dealing and funding militias that wreak hell onto women overseas.

I'm just not a single issue voter. I care about multiple issues, like women's rights, women's health, and diversity quotas. I'm not blind to how callous and racist the democratic party is and has historically been. I'm also not blind to the fact that diversity and women's autonomy is directly connected to democratic policies and democratic leaders, nor am I blind to the fact that the primary campaign points of Republicans are promises to destroy existing civil protections for women and minorities. Promises that they have made good on before.

I will never see Elizabeth Warren as the primary conservative candidate, because her values fundamentally oppose conservative values. But i might see her as the primary democratic candidate, if the leftists who do share her values ever decide to actually participate in the government and support a candidate they agree with, instead of abstaining from making a choice entirely and then refusing to vote for the representative that other people picked for them. But it seems like most american leftists are more interested in taking advice from people who don't know shit about the US government than they are in listening to the people who have dedicated their lives to trying to make our government less evil, callous, and racist 🤷‍♀️

[deadpresidents]

Do you think Biden would have beaten Trump had he run in 2016? I know Biden stepped aside because because of his son, but it also seems likely he stepped aside for Clinton.

Yes, I do think that Biden would have beaten Trump in 2016. I don't know how Biden would have handled a campaign at that time with the death of his son having taken place much more recently, but if he could have emotionally handled the rigors of a full-on Presidential campaign at that time, I think he would have beaten Trump in the general election.

The question to me is whether or not Biden could have won the Democratic nomination in 2016 if he had run against Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Obviously, Biden was younger at the time than he is now and still a much better retail campaigner than Hillary ever was, but I don't know if a Biden campaign in 2016 would have had the same energy as the Sanders campaign that year -- either from the grassroots or from the top-down. It would have been a much different campaign than 2020, as well, because that one took place during the pandemic and Biden was able to run against an historically unpopular incumbent in the midst of botching the worst public health crisis that every voter in America had ever lived through.

The other big question if Biden had run in 2016 is the role of Barack Obama. In 2016, Biden was the incumbent Vice President, finishing his second term of a partnership with President Obama that ended up being one of the closest personal and political relationships that a President and Vice President ever had. But it is no secret that President Obama did not believe that then-Vice President Biden was the best choice to succeed him. Biden's emotional well-being after the death of his son in May 2015 certainly worried Obama, but in books and reporting since that time, it's been apparent that Obama believed that Hillary Clinton made more sense as his successor in 2016 than Biden for a number of reasons. That ultimately resulted in some hurt feelings on the Biden side at the time when Obama seemed to be urging Biden to step aside in 2016 while the Vice President was still considering a potential run. It never impacted Biden's loyalty to the Obama Administration or truly got personal, but it was especially troubling to Biden because he still had not made a final decision about a potential 2016 campaign and one of Beau Biden's dying wishes was that his father would run for President. Obama never directly discouraged Biden from running in 2016; he thought that Biden earned the right to make his own decision about the race, but he was worried about Biden's emotional state in the wake of Beau's recent death, he worried that Biden wasn't the right candidate to defeat Hillary or Bernie for the nomination, and he worried that a potential Biden loss -- either in the primaries or the general election -- would tarnish Biden's overall political legacy and possibly come across as a repudiation of the Obama Administration eight years in the White House.

Of course, Trump's victory over Hillary in 2016 gave Obama's successor the opportunity to immediately start reversing many of Obama's accomplishments and reset the hope and change represented by Obama's successful 2008 campaign. And the irony is that the crucial, traditionally-Democratic blue-collar voters that Hillary Clinton's campaign tended to overlook in 2016 are the same voters that Biden has spent a significant portion of his political career representing and connecting with. So in 2016, Trump won battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Ohio that Obama had won in both 2008 and 2012. Without those states in 2016, Trump wouldn't have defeated Hillary Clinton, and when Biden did run against Trump in 2020, his victories in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania (Trump once again won Ohio and Iowa) were crucial in the Electoral College.

[uncivildiscourse]

Vintage 2016 Photoshop I did for the election out of the Clash at Demonhead videogame box art (1989)

[liskantope]

Three not-so-great takes I've heard since the bombshell of Biden dropping the nomination that I want to grumble about here and may as well roll into a single post.

The first one was in the wake of the breaking news on Sunday, within literally the first minute of Cenk Uygur's immediate comments:

I will say this: as the self-appointed leader within the rebel forces of the Democratic party to oust Joe Biden, I declare victory.

Okay, Cenk, I get it: you ran for president in the Democratic primaries (sort of, and you would have had to win some court cases even to be deemed eligible due to your national status) explicitly to get Joe Biden off the ticket. But this isn't about you or your tendency to talk as though your role in the national discourse and political battleground is more central than it is. This is a product mainly of prominent Democrats pressuring Biden to quit and donors pulling out, not your crusade that ended a good while back and barely seemed to garner attention anyway.

(Sorry, but this is the guy who -- to take just one example I recall from 4+ years ago back when I used to watch The Young Turks all the time -- reacted to Bernie Sanders making the old "Republicans believe in small government only until it's something intimate like your own body" point that I'd been hearing since high school with "Oh my God, he must have been listening to our channel, because that's the exact point that I was the one making recently!")

I'm probably being uncharitable toward Uygur, as he may have been speaking a bit tongue-in-cheek. But still, can you think of a far more prominent figure in current politics who loves making himself sound like the center of every new movement or idea, but might be speaking trollishly or tongue-in-cheek?

The second take, which I'm much more bothered by, is one I heard in person a few hours later, by a mother to her 13-year-old son, in a confident tone: "We're still going to lose with Kamala Harris, because there are a lot of racists in this country and a lot of people in this country who think a woman shouldn't be president."

I don't think she was entirely wrong about racism and sexism giving Harris certain disadvantages (although that's ignoring that her race and gender will directly work to her advantage as well among a different set of potential voters, and I'm not sure it won't cancel out). But, casting aside racism for a moment, this whole "America still isn't ready for a woman president" thing I hear from time to time from feminists is really frustrating, and in my opinion it's not the greatest thing to children (especially not to girls, arguably, but not to any children). I find it both defeatist and reductive in a way that doesn't reflect evidence coming from reality. Hillary Clinton basically did win the presidency eight years ago, in that she got several million more votes than her opponent and would have probably won the electoral college if something James Comey announcement something something. In fact, I bet that if Hillary had won the Democratic primary eight years before that, in 2008, she could have beaten John McCain given the circumstances and current unpopularity of neoconservatism, even if she couldn't have won as handily as Obama did. And while I personally suspect that a lot of the anti-Hillary hatred that seeped through too many of the voters has to do with misogynistic biases that warp people's perceptions, there's a difference between acknowledging that and making out like some major portion of the country doesn't believe that women should be presidents (I would explain sexism the latter way to a 6-year-old maybe, but not to a bright 13-year-old).

(Of course, the "America isn't ready for a woman president" thing is an uprightly feminist thing to say until it's said by Bernie Sanders, and then it's obviously sexist.)

As far as I'm concerned, Harris has at least a substantial, if less than 50%, chance of winning, and a lot will be up to chance circumstances that tip things one way or the other over the next three months.

And the final take I want to gripe about this evening is this fairly popular Tumblr post. Note particularly:

If you continue to argue for anyone other than Kamala, you want Trump to win.

My tentative position on the spectrum of ways of dealing with picking our nominee is that I think there should be some sort of actual contest (at least on the level of open debate) but that I think Democrats should have the nominee picked out (who in turn will have a VP pick) by the time of the convention. I definitely not down for decreeing within a couple of days of Biden's dropping out that, okay, there's only one viable candidate, there is because I say so, we must all fall in line with total unity immediately, anyone who disagrees with me is not only declared wrong by my own authority but declared to be in league with the enemy. Why do so many people struggle so much with theory of mind to not understand (or performatively appear not to understand?) that "those people are in favor of X, which is a thing that I believe will lead to undesirable outcome Y" does not imply "those people are in favor of Y"? I'm pretty sure I've ranted about this before, when it came to rhetoric surrounding a much more contentious cluster of issues, but it applies to a very wide variety of struggles.

[thedarkmongoose]

don't play with us like that, mr. sanders 😭

[violentdevotion]

there was a moment in 2016 where we were full of hope

[hotgarbagejuice]

The DNC and their superdelegates are partly to blame for the rapidly-worsening dystopia the USA has become. Bernie Sanders should have won the primary and been the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016. He was the choice of the people. That was his nomination, not Hilary's. Talk about a rigged election.

[cfcreative]

Tried to go to bed early tonight. Slept for a little bit and then I woke up with my heart racing. I am struggling now to get it to calm down. I took a melatonin. My anxiety is off the charts. I had been struggling with it before the election. It’s so much worse now.

I’m in a cis-het looking marriage. My spouse and I have stable jobs and a healthy cat. We’re going to likely come out then other end of this 4 years fine by merit of being white and well-off. But I’m going to watch people I love suffer from policies that target more vulnerable people like LGBTQIA+ and PoC folks. I’m going to watch environmental protections stripped and consumer protections slashed. I’m going to see union-busting and workers rights rolled back.

And if I don’t see these things, If they’re really too fucking inept to make any of it happen, then what I NEED to see the left get its fucking shit together and work for the people, not the billionaire class.

[deadpresidents]

Do you think Bernie Sanders would have been able to beat Trump in either 2016 or 2020?

I do think Bernie Sanders would have defeated Trump in 2020 if he had been the Democratic nominee. I'm less confident about how he would fared in a general election in 2016.

[evilmark999]

"Hey, Bernie Bros and Black Women, I'm going to hacksplain to everyone why your two selfish groups were foremost examples of why Trump got elected his first go around." And align "perfectly" my ass! I was there...

Please STOP taking all blue voters for granted! Clinton characterized Bernie as do-nothing and, like you, expected everyone to simply vote for her and in MUCH the same fashion that Conservatives simply fall in line...

Biden did a MUCH better job with his messaging to ALL voters not already firmly committed to him...

Stop lecturing like Hilary. Be more welcoming like Joe. You win WITH people!

You’re seriously still blaming Trump on “Bernie Bros”? Time for democrats to start taking responsibility for putting up shitty candidates and deflecting blame toward everyone else, for once

Trump was elected by a very narrow margin. And there was a ton of polling and data crunching and statistical modeling going on during and after the election, so we actually know what the factors that tipped the needle Trump's direction are.

One of the biggies is leftists who thought Hilary was insufficiently far left. If every leftist who loved Bernie and disliked Hilary because she wasn't perfect enough had held their nose and voted for Hilary, Trump would have lost. They're not the only demographic that's true of; there are a number of others who, if they had turned out in force, would have turned the tide of the election. For example, if a higher percentage of Black women had voted, Trump would also have lost. You know what the difference is between your average Bernie Bro and your average Black woman? Your average Bernie Bro is white and thus a hell of a lot less likely to have his vote suppressed. He is a hell of a lot more likely to find it easy to vote. This is not me saying this because I don't like them, or because I think Hillary was a perfect candidate. This is me saying that when you look at the actual numbers, leftist ideologues who refused to vote for a candidate who was not their perfect choice was one of the main reasons Trump got four years in the White House.

In general, regardless of the candidates involved, if 55% of American adults vote in a national election, the Republican wins in a landslide. If 60% of American adults vote, the Republican wins by a bare margin. If 65% of American adults vote, the Democrat wins by a bare margin. If 70% of American adults vote, the Democrat wins by a landslide. If 75% of American adults voted--and voted regularly in every election--the Republican party would cease to be a significant force in American politics.

This has been known for decades. Republicans will show up and vote no matter what; a very high percentage of Democrats and left-leaning voters will only show up if the candidate in question is perfectly in line with their views. That's why we have a Congress that is dominated by Republicans despite most of the country not liking them, and that's why we have most of the political problems that they do. By waiting for a political candidate who is good enough, you are directly ceding power to the people who are making the world worse.

Elections are decided by the people who show up. If you do not show up to vote, your vote does not get counted. If politicians want to get re-elected, they have to listen to the people who will vote for them. If they try to listen to the people who don't regularly vote, they are far more likely to lose re-election than if they listen to the people who show up every election. And conservatives show up every election. If liberals and leftists changed our voting habits and voted in every single election--voted for the furthest left candidate in the primary, and whoever got the Democratic nomination in the general election--we would prove ourselves to be a voting bloc worth listening to and the party would move left in response.

You want a candidate who perfectly fits your vision and ideals for what America should be? That doesn't happen in a vacuum. That takes work, and the most basic level of that work is showing up to vote now and every time there's an election to vote in.