Willie71 wrote:

purplerat wrote:

Byron wrote:

Shrunk wrote:
The worst is that he lost the primaries. I still don't see the logic by which he could lose those, but would have won the general election.

Slanted audience. Many primaries were closed contests, and even open primaries were overseen by a machine to which Sanders was an outsider. In closed primaries especially, a selective electorate has little bearing on the general. If, for whatever tripped-out reason, Clinton had entered the GOP race, she'd have lost every primary by a landslide -- but we wouldn't say that's ruled her out of the general, would we?

Except Sanders did his best in closed primaries and caucuses. Clinton had her largest victories in open primaries.

This has been pointed out repeatedly yet some seem to think repeating this myth will make it true. I'd blame such behaviour on Trumps influence but this one has been going on longer than he's been in charge.

You have to consider where and when he won/lost also. There was also the issue of which states had same day registrations, vs. those with a 6month prior expectation. Simplistic explanations are obfuscations. They prevent nuanced discussions. Don't forget voter purges also. They affected Sanders in the primary just as crosscheck affected Clinton in the general. The issue is complicated. It's hard to argue that Trump would have beat sanders in NY or California, and Sanders message re: working people in the rust belt would have allowed people to not have to hold their nose at trumps racism. Sanders in Florida would have been my biggest question mark.

The only state with such a hard deadline was Colorado. Sanders won that state with 59% of the vote. So once again the obfuscation is on your side.
What is simple is that there is simply no compelling evidence from the primaries that Sanders was hurt by closed races or helped by open races. The bottom line is that he wasn't a particularly good candidate going into the primaries in terms of having a chance of winning the nomination. Which is, like it or not, a de facto requirement for becoming POTUS. Sanders knew that going in which is why he styled his run as a protest campaign.

But whatever, I'm tired of rehashing this whole thing. The point being that while I won't deny that he could have possibly done better than Clinton for any number of reasons he might just as well done worse. It's not possible to know. But the narrative that it was a mistake for Clinton to have been the nominee in some fantasy where Bernie was robbed of it is just that, fantasy.

In much the same way that Clinton supporters/establishment Dems need to stop blaming their losses on Russia or Comey and come to terms with what they did wrong if they want to win in 2018 and 2020 so to do Sanders supporters and progresses further to the left. Constantly blaming everybody else for holding them down or shutting them out rather than trying to fix what they did wrong is exactly why the left has been thoroughly thumped by their counterparts on the right for decades despite having better positions on just about everything.

But hey, Bernie's still real popular

purplerat wrote:Except Sanders did his best in closed primaries and caucuses. Clinton had her largest victories in open primaries.

This has been pointed out repeatedly yet some seem to think repeating this myth will make it true. I'd blame such behaviour on Trumps influence but this one has been going on longer than he's been in charge.

By closed primary I meant closed primary, not closed caucus. Caucuses of enthusiasts are, if anything, even less representative of the wider electorate than primaries. In April '16, starting with New York, Clinton had a string of victories in closed primaries, killing any momentum Sanders had.

Byron wrote:

purplerat wrote:Except Sanders did his best in closed primaries and caucuses. Clinton had her largest victories in open primaries.

This has been pointed out repeatedly yet some seem to think repeating this myth will make it true. I'd blame such behaviour on Trumps influence but this one has been going on longer than he's been in charge.

By closed primary I meant closed primary, not closed caucus. Caucuses of enthusiasts are, if anything, even less representative of the wider electorate than primaries. In April '16, starting with New York, Clinton had a string of victories in closed primaries, killing any momentum Sanders had.

Correct, closed primaries and caucuses (both open and closed) are less representative of the wider electorate. Momentum or not it, it was in those less representative contest where Sanders had his widest margins of victory. Of 22 contest where Sanders won a majority of the vote only 4 were open primaries, including his home state. The other 18 were of the less representative types of contests.

Taken at face value that would seem to indicate he was better off in less representative races and worse off in more representative races. It's one thing to try and rationalize that those numbers don't mean what they would appear to indicate, but to claim that the exact opposite is true is very hard to swallow.

Yes, it would be, good thing I didn't do that. I noted that neither closed nor open primaries are representative of the wider electorate, and didn't even mention caucuses, since their format's so far removed from regular voting.

We know that, in head-to-head polls with Trump, Sanders did consistently well. Sanders is unlikely to run in '20, but what can be taken from this is that, to retake the Rust Belt and beat Trump, a New Deal Democrat who plays well with blue collar voters is the best bet.

For reference here is how Sanders and Clinton fared in contests prior to NY, broken down by contest type.

Open Primary:
Clinton won 10, Sanders 3

Closed Primary or Caucus:
Sanders won 14, Clinton 10

That whopping streak of 5 closed primaries won by Clinton starting with NY were just barely enough to nudge her past Bernie in those less representative types of races.

What exactly are you trying to argue here?

As noted, I excluded caucuses -- which goes against interest, since Sanders won them overwhelmingly -- and said that neither closed nor open primaries are representative of the wider electorate. SFAIK, after the Supreme Court struck down California's "blanket primary" law, no state has a truly open primary, where voters are free to mix both parties.

Unless anyone has a better dataset, the best indication of Sanders' performance in the general vis-à-vis the Don are the polls.

The point is that no matter how popular Sanders or anybody is they aren't going to have a shot at winning the Presidency without first winning a major party nomination via the primaries.

The pro-Sanders argument is that he only lost the primaries because the DNC colluded against him and because his independent voters couldn't support him in all of the races. To varying degrees there is some truth and some dishonesty in both but as far as I'm concerned those excuses are about as useful as those who say Clinton lost the general because of the Russians or Comey.

If Sanders - or more likely a Sanders-esq pol - wants to challenge in '20 they need to be spending energy on what they can do to win the nomination and not on blaming others for their failure.

My pro-Sanders argument, which I've posted here several times, is that he entered way too late to be a serious contender, because he didn't originally expect to be one. He didn't even join with the Democratic Party until his run, and has now left again. Like England's Jeremy Corbyn entering the Labour Party leadership contest, Sanders hoped to haul the Dem's debate leftwards.

It speaks volumes that, after switching gear mid-race, Sanders came as close as he did. His campaign should've been folded up months before it was. If it'd been a serious run, planned years in advance, with alliances built and media keys courted and won, he'd have had every chance of winning the nom, and then, the general.

Which is exactly why I've said that focus on '20 should begin now. Sounds like our positions aren't that far apart after all.

Shrunk wrote:

OlivierK wrote:

Shrunk wrote:

Byron wrote:What of Sanders? The worst I've been able to find is that, when riled, he's a cranky SOB in Burlington (which everyone already knew), he voted for that crime bill, and he's described himself as a socialist (which, again, everyone knew).

The worst is that he lost the primaries. I still don't see the logic by which he could lose those, but would have won the general election.

There are three groups of voters. Candidates A is slightly ahead of Candidate B in the first group, Candidate B has a large lead in the (similarly sized) second group, and both do equally poorly in the third group. Who will win? Candidate B, right?

The primaries are run amongst only a subset of the population. If that subset of the population is representative of the general electorate, then any advantage one candidate has in the primaries will be replicated in the general, but it's not guaranteed that the primary electorate WILL be representative of the general electorate. That's an assumption that needs to be tested. And it WAS testied in general election polls that broke down results by party affiliation. Clinton's small lead amongst Democrats was NOT replicated amongst independent voters, where Sanders had a huge advantage.

So the simple answer to your question of how a candidate could lose the primaries but do better in the general is that to do so that candidate would have to poll better amongst those voters who didn't vote in the primaries. It's not rocket science.

It's like saying you can't see how a Canadian political party could lose in Alberta but still win a federal election. That's because the Canadian electorate isn't just Albertsa, just as the US electorate isn't just primary voters.

That's not what I was asking. I know that he could have won. I'm questioning those who say he would have. That he lost handily among the subpopulation of voters who would be most likely to support a progressive candidate is an argument against that.

Your contention that Democratic primary and caucus voters, would be the most likely to vote for Sanders against Trump, is an assertion without evidence. Those Democrats are precisely the people who had simply assumed since 2008 that Clinton would be the 2016 candidate. In general election polling in head to head against Trump, those same Democrats went for Clinton and Sanders in equal, high, numbers. That provides neither candidate a general election advantage. But the middle ground broke heavily for Sanders.

I don't get what you're trying to do here. You're using primary results as proxy data for levels of support against Trump. You're using arguments about what sort of policy should appeal to what subset of voters to try to infer on gut feel how that would likely play out, and while doing that you're ignoring the one set of data that directly measures the thing you're interested in: asking people who they'd vote for in a general election, given the choice of Sanders or Trump. Why on earth would you dismiss the one dataset that directly measures the thing in question, but cling to tenuous proxies for the same measure - it doesn't make sense unless you're not prepared to accept the direct measure because it doesn't give you the answer you want.

This will be the eternal argument of egg and chicken and just as pointless.

Yeah. We should move on to a more useful discussion, like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Depends on the size of the angels and the size of the pin head.
In the past it was a serious question.

laklak wrote:Yeah. We should move on to a more useful discussion, like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Since dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire, a horizontal desire that angels lack, none.

If angels don't fuck then whence the Nephilim?

laklak wrote:If angels don't fuck then whence the Nephilim?

Fallen angels of course.

The useful discussion is the one in which the Democratic Party chooses to lose more seats with candidates who work to erode the new deal benefits, or go with candidates who restore the new deal benefits.

Willie71 wrote:The useful discussion is the one in which the Democratic Party chooses to lose more seats with candidates who work to erode the new deal benefits, or go with candidates who restore the new deal benefits.

The can only choose those who will run. According to Ballotpedia a pathetic 37% of Democratic house primaries were contested. Even the GOP managed 46%.

As I said earlier, if these progressives and lefties want to take their ball and go home because they aren't happy with the DNC, fine. But that nullifies any complaints about being shut-out.

Many had given up on both parties. Post-Sanders, re-energized, I expect that plenty will now stand.

purplerat wrote:

Willie71 wrote:The useful discussion is the one in which the Democratic Party chooses to lose more seats with candidates who work to erode the new deal benefits, or go with candidates who restore the new deal benefits.

The can only choose those who will run. According to Ballotpedia a pathetic 37% of Democratic house primaries were contested. Even the GOP managed 46%.

As I said earlier, if these progressives and lefties want to take their ball and go home because they aren't happy with the DNC, fine. But that nullifies any complaints about being shut-out.

The name calling and propaganda by the establishment has already begun.

so more of "we'll take our ball and go home then"?
FFS, if the pathetic Tea Party could do what they did against the establishment GOP (which is a lot though than their Dem counterparts IMO) then why can't progressives on the left?

What actually does piss me off about the constant rollout of these excuses is that it plays right into the right-wing characterization of lefties being snowflakes who can't take personal responsibility.