Nate Silver says that Bernie is likely to win the nomination. This is the worst possible news for the Democratic party.
Arguing the merits of socialized health care is beside the point. Even if Bernie were to win the White House -- which he absolutely will NOT -- he could not enact any legislation. Today, Lawrence O'Donnell made a valiant effort to deprogram the brainwashed Bernie cultists:
"Not one sentence of President Sanders legislation can pass without the votes of every Democratic senator who he's decided to taunt as "the Democratic establishment." Currently 14 senators support Medicare For All. Does he plan to insult the rest into voting for it?"Even Trump, the king of kompromat, couldn't get his Wall funded -- not even when his party controlled both Houses of Congress. How the hell could Bernie enforce subservience? The Bros keep talking about how sweet their lives would be if the cat wore a bell, but they have never seriously addressed the question of how to make Tabby don his new neckwear.
Besides, Bernie is a sure loser in November. The only thing Sanders can accomplish is to destroy the Dems' chances of regaining the House and retaking the Senate.
Bernie must be stopped now. Democrats must not be intimidated by the caterwauling of his cultists. When they say "We won't vote for anyone but Bernie in November," reply with an extended middle finger. Battles are won by warriors who have no more fucks to give.
When the Bros yowl and snarl on Twitter -- good. Don't worry about their precious widdle hurt feelings. Embrace their insults. As the old saying goes: You get flack only when you're over the target.
Here's my plan:
1. STOP CODDLING SANDERS and stop attacking anyone else. Warren and Biden should go after him with far greater ferocity than they showed toward Bloomberg. Until the Sanders menace is ended, the entire national debate must revolve around Bernie and his inability to win in November.
Unity is no longer an option. We didn't start this war, but it's war nonetheless. So act like warriors.
Heed your inner Palpatine, Dems: Let hate flow through you. When the Bros hate back...good, good!
Polls indicate that Dem voters care more about electability than about any other issue. Bernie Sanders is not electable in November. That's the message. Keep hammering it.
2. Stop all this talk about "lanes." This superb analysis has it exactly right: Any candidate who destroys Sanders will make his or her own lane.
3. The wealthy candidates must concentrate on ending Sanders. If Bloomberg emerges as the Bernie-killer, people will forget all about that disastrous debate performance. If Steyer emerges as the Bernie-killer, his candidacy will suddenly gain real momentum.
Here's anti-Trump Republican strategist Tim Miller:
If Mike’s goal is to actually beat Bernie—and not just finish Super Tuesday with a gentleman’s 18 percent and embark on a long, losing slog in the hopes something crazy happens—then his paid media needs to shift to targeting Bernie immediately.Here's Democratic strategist Joe Lockhart:
Let me emphasize this: Immediately, today, five minutes ago, right the fork NOW.
With his disastrous performance in the Las Vegas debate, it appears he won't be building any organic momentum in this race. He has to buy it.
If Bloomberg has any chance of winning the nomination, he has to redirect his resources during the primary and run ads against Sanders -- not Trump.
Bloomberg needs to use the next $400 million in ad spending to attack Sanders on his potential weaknesses in a general election and highlight how far left his campaign is. Hitting him on his past record on guns is a must.
Sanders' praise of Soviet-backed regimes is ripe for political attack ads -- and if Bloomberg doesn't take advantage of this, Trump certainly will in the fall.Is it unfair for the billionaires to spend hundreds of millions in attacks on Sanders? No. The Republicans will launch worse attacks in the fall. If Bernie can't stand that kind of heat, he must vacate the kitchen now.
Besides, it's not as though Bernie was Mr. Kindness toward Hillary in 2016. Remember early on, when he announced that he would not use the emails as an issue? He lied. As the campaign wore on, he kept shouting emails emails EMAILS.
Fuck him. Treat him worse than he treated Hillary. It's retribution time.
4. Obama -- no: THE OBAMAS -- must denounce Bernie as a sure-loser candidate. Time for the former president to forget civility and precedent and norms and all of that elder statesman crap.
Mr. and Mrs. Obama, think about your country. Think about what Trump will do to the Supreme Court. Think about what he's doing to all other courts.
Only you can prevent Mr. Sure Loser from gaining the nomination and destroying the Democratic party.
Barack Obama's damnable inaction in 2016 -- his refusal to reveal that Trump was the subject of an FBI investigation -- is what gave us the Trump menace in the first place. Obama can make up for the greatest sin of his presidency by doing everything he can to unmask Bernie Sanders now.
NOW NOW NOW NOW.
The Bros -- both the born-in-America True Believers and the made-in-Russia bots -- will return fire, denouncing Obama as an Establishment pig. The Bros always resort to juvenile insult as their first and foremost weapon, even when doing so works against their interest. It's in their nature.
Good.
Strategically, we want the Bernie cultists launch an anti-Obama online jihad. When they pile on the former president -- whose approval ratings remain high -- not a single black voter will pull the lever for Bernie in future primaries, and many white Obama fans will be similarly repulsed.
It's a trap! And the Bernie Bros will fall right into it. Again: It's in their nature. Trolls gotta troll.
To spring the trap, Barack Obama must describe -- with force, logic, evidence and precision -- the weakness of Bernie Sanders in the general election. The trap will prove doubly effective if Michelle speaks up as well, because the Bros will inevitably barrage her with the sort of misogynistic insults that Bernie's female supporters will find impossible to rationalize or to tolerate.
5. USE THE FORCE. By "the force" I mean: Oppo. No more free rides for Bernie.
This is the most important step in the process.
Anti-Bernie Dems should read and re-read and memorize this November, 2016 piece by Kurt Eichenwald.
I have seen the opposition book assembled by Republicans for Sanders, and it was brutal. The Republicans would have torn him apart. And while Sanders supporters might delude themselves into believing that they could have defended him against all of this, there is a name for politicians who play defense all the time: losers.Eichenwald went on to outline some of the plays that would have been available to the Trumpers, some of which are quite familiar -- such as the 1972 "rape" essay. Here's the one that really counts:
Worst of all, the Republicans also had video of Sanders at a 1985 rally thrown by the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua where half a million people chanted, "Here, there, everywhere/the Yankee will die,'' while President Daniel Ortega condemned "state terrorism" by America. Sanders said, on camera, supporting the Sandinistas was "patriotic."The Sandinista video will eviscerate Bernie in the general election. Any Bro who thinks that Bernie will be able to rationalize or justify that image is completely delusional.
The Republicans had at least four other damning Sanders videos (I don't know what they showed), and the opposition research folder was almost 2-feet thick. (The section calling him a communist with connections to Castro alone would have cost him Florida.) In other words, the belief that Sanders would have walked into the White House based on polls taken before anyone really attacked him is a delusion built on a scaffolding of political ignorance.
So the time to use that video is now.
What's that? You say that we can't use the video because it's in Republican hands and has not been released? (They probably got it from the Russians.) If that's the way you're thinking, you're not thinking strategically.
Attack ads and memes should quote Eichenwald and reconstruct the video. Make that footage the most famous unseen video in the history of visual media. Remember: The Democratic electorate cares more about Bernie's electability than about any other factor. Bloomberg and Steyer should continually remind the voters that Trump has this video.
There's also strong evidence that Bernie participated in anti-American rallies held by Iranians during the hostage crisis. I've heard that video exists.
Keep talking about this video evidence. VIDEO VIDEO VIDEO. Shout the word "VIDEO" like a broken record.
Yes, the Bros will attack Eichenwald, as they did in 2016. They always resort to ad hominem when the facts aren't on their side. Doesn't matter: The point is to force Bernie to address the issue.
Force Sanders to deny or to confirm the existence of this video. Force him to talk about his participation in such rallies. Force him to try to defend his actions on those occasions. Force him to defend his presence at gatheriongs where people screamed Death to America.
Keep on hammering that theme: VIDEO VIDEO VIDEO. The evidence is damning. It'll hit Bernie in the Fall. There's no escaping it. Bernie will lose. THERE'S FUCKING VIDEO.
6. All (ALL) the other Dem candidates should start talking about a third-party run, due to THAT video and America's antipathy to socialism. The Bernie cultists keep issuing this threat: "We'll just stay home." Well, turnabout is fair play. That threat is more forceful when it comes from the anti-Bernie Dems, who are far more numerous.
The strategy is to emphasize Bernie's inherent unelectability. The average voter must be forced to understand that Bernie is simply too divisive. Too chancy.
7. Pay for a brigade of trolls to pose as BernieBros online. They've earned a reputation for obnoxiousness; we must make their obnoxiousness seem truly unforgivable and unendurable by turning it up to twelve. Here's an example: We've seen too many Bros (real ones) describe Warren and Kolbuchar as "cunts." Keep sounding that theme. Keep putting that word into the mouths of the Bernie cultists. Create BernieBro personas who sneeringly refer to the Obamas as "negroes" and "Establishment house slaves." Make sure that the Bernie cultists are known as intemperate zealots who use that sort of language all the time.
Unethical, you say? Consider: Bernie has benefited from a Russian troll brigade, and he damned well knows it. He was briefed on that fact -- and he kept the information secret, even though he should have and could have revealed the truth. So screw him. All is fair. All.
(By the way: It should be particularly easy to trigger Bernie spokesperson David Sirota into saying something damaging to his own cause. I know Sirota of old. His prickliness and insecurity make him manipulable.)
And that will be it. Game over for Bernie Sanders.
No more Mr. Nice Dem. No more coddling the cultists.
Hit hard, Dems -- and hit now. If we don't, Trump will.
17 comments:
Still the best way to defeat Sanders is to concentrate on educating people about him. I mean by that his abilities ( lack of) to deliver anything other than speeches and dreams. His history how he became a millionaire by denouncing them,sitting on the Senate for decades not launching a single battle on behalf of those idiots who are following him now. The list goes on and on. People should start to take this seriously. Don't worry about what RS would do if he is the nominee, we should work so that we don't have to, I hate that man.
The talking point shouldn't that carp about socialism but about his character as a person and a politician, he fails on both.
So you think the Clintons were so good for the Democratic Party? What planet do you live on, dude?
I'm old enough to be able to say, proudly, that I voted for George McGovern in 1972. McGovern didn't lose because he was "too far left" or a "peacenik." He lost because the elites of the Democratic party were pissed at him for his alleged disrespect for Lyndon Johnson. And the labor unions of the time preferred Dick Nixon because Nixon was a racist and the union leaders wanted to keep the unions white. McGovern's general election campaign was a mess, in part because he got no help from the Dem establishment. The elites all let him twist in the wind so that Nixon could stay in the White House. And if Bernie Sanders is the nominee and loses the election, it will be because the Dem and "liberal" media establishment are still angry with him for being insufficently respectful to the Clintons. Get over it and stop helping Trump, please. Thanks much.
This post should be sent to all the candidates still running except of course Sanders. The biggest problem here is we have too many candidates splitting up the anti-Sanders vote.
Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Steyer, and Bloomberg all need to drop out and support Biden who by far has the best shot of beating Trump. Bernie would be relegated to 2016 levels if these other candidates weren't pulling votes away from the most electable person running. I honestly don't know why Sanders is bothering to run--no sane person would do this knowing he is as radioactive as this. The ONLY accomplishment Sanders has achieved in his thirty years in Congress is in proposing names for a couple of post offices. He never has gotten any major legislation passed. He signed on to what others have done. It is like this man, years ago, decided he didn't want to get a regular job at all but instead loaf off the taxpayers and get a fancy pension in the end. He is the very definition of a do-nothing public official.
maha: YOU are the one who is supporting Trump, you dumb motherfucker. A vote for Bernie is a vote for Trump. BERNIE CANNOT WIN. PERIOD.
"And if Bernie Sanders is the nominee and loses the election, it will be because the Dem and "liberal" media establishment are still angry with him for being insufficently respectful to the Clintons"
You are mentally sick. You are deranged. You are disgusting. You have an all-purpose excuse for wallowing in your delusions. The "Democratic elite" to which you refer is nearly powerless -- but it become omnipotent in the Bernie Bro mind because that image gives those sickos grievance fuel. They, and you, are all grievance junkies.
The reference to McGovern proves my point. I admired McGovern, but the fact is that he was the weakest candidate at that time -- and the Nixon forced did everything they could to make sure that they ran against him, not against a stronger candidate. Read up on the history of Roger Stone, who got his start during that cycle. Read about the dirty tricks that kept Muskie from the nomination.
A vote for McGovern in the primary was a vote for Nixon, just as a vote for Bernie in the primary is a vote for Trump.
You are literally doing Putin's work for him, asshole. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that you are sitting in St. Petersburg right now. God, I cannot STAND delusional BernieBro pigs like you. You will never be published here again.
Joe Biden is not the best candidate. At 77, he has trouble staying awake after his two brain aneurysms.
Now in his fourth try, after presidential primary runs in 1984, 1988 and 2008, Obama's VP has never won a single state primary. So Biden may be Trump's best opponent to guarantee a Bozo victory. The 2020 Democratic candidate cannot be Sanders or Warren - if the NeverTrumpers are going to be helpful in the real election.
Big money supporters have been deliberately made persona non grata so all campaigns except Sanders and the self-funders (Bloomberg and Steyer) are hurting for cash. So candidates gotta go away before Super Tuesday unless Bloomberg is the answer. Even a Sanders defeat at the Milwaukee convention wastes valuable campaign time for the main event.
what I've noticed in the Bernie supporters I know is they seem to have swallowed a dreamy/delusional & totally false characterization of the man, & NOTHING seems to pierce the delusion. in a couple of cases I know, their 30'ish kids have bought into the Bernie dream world & convinced them that Bernie = some kind of alternative utopia to REALITY.
NOTHING about Bernie's actual record, age, health issues, Russian meddling, or the goods on him that will eventually hit the fan, is able at this point to penetrate the dreamworld/delusion.
in that sense, Trump/Russia's gaslighting is working overtime - or perhaps Bernie is better at gaslighting generations of honest hard working Americans than we've ever seen before. but combine the gaslighting & dreamy/delusion with Russian meddling & I fear Joseph is right.
McGovern was an unwitting tool for Nixon's gang. This has been proven to be a FACT. Much of what the Watergate "dirty tricks" was about was to use dirty tricks against the Democrats to get out the more electable candidates, namely Edmund Muskie, even though the tricksters were shocked it worked as well as it did. George McGovern was a decent man and a good senator, but at the time he was basically a one-issue candidate. Nixon WANTED to run against McGovern because he knew he was the easiest candidate for Nixon to beat. This is all true and been borne out over the years.
As we also should know, Nixon had a reason for wanting to rig the 1972 elections, and that was to prevent being exposed for his violation of the Logan Act by subverting, via third parties, the Paris Talks of 1968. Nixon (and Kissinger) literally dragged the Vietnam War out for four more years, costing tens of thousands of lives, to ensure his re-election. He should have been tried at The Hague for war crimes.
Biden is the best, most qualified candidate we have. There is no one else in the field running who can get the swing states. WHAT else was the reason for the Ukraine scandal? Trump and Putin wanted to get the strongest candidate out of the way.
The rest of them have utterly no chance of winning. None, zip.
This is reality.
Yeah he should have given a speech to the Contras.Those guys who were filling your neighborhood with crack. You got nothing but panic dude. Panic and the uneducated.
The fascist la cosa nostra Batista refugees have aged out, Leftist Puerto Ricans and Haitians have replaced them.
Ah. It has been a while since this blog was important enough to warrant trolling. I suppose I should be grateful.
"Yeah he should have given a speech to the Contras.Those guys who were filling your neighborhood with crack."
Unlike you, I'm old enough to have marched against Reagan's planned war in Central America. And I corresponded with Gary Webb, whom I admired. But here's the thing: I knew at the time that, if I were filmed amidst a crowd of people shouting FMLN slogans, I could never run for office.
Like most idiot progressives, you fail to understand that most people do not think like you. You're the opposite of a paranoid: You go around with the delusion that people LIKE you.
The other Anonymous: Your analysis of Florida demogragphics is very cute. And it's largely based on fantasy. Being a person who prefers science to self-serving delusion, I take my information from polls, not trolls. The polls indicate that Florida is now largely a red state; not long ago, it was a blue-purple.
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/289686-crystal-ball-florida-a-swing-state-no-more
Florida belongs to Trump, and so does Ohio. Bernie Sanders will never win Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
But listen here, my trollish friend -- if you really do believe in the power of delusional thinking, if you really do accept the proposition that wishes can remake reality itself, then why not convince yourself that you have the power to fly? Simply go to the top of a skyscraper, stand at the edge, flap your arms and leap... "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..."
What gets me is sites like Democratic Underground are full of what I would term Russian bots in their utter ignorance of how radioactive Sanders is.
No sane person thinks Sanders has a chance in hell of being elected.
These people are there to create nothing but trouble.
"You're the opposite of a paranoid: You go around with the delusion that people LIKE you."
https://i.imgur.com/uQa1fG4.jpg
Awww, I forgot this bare-bones format doesn't automatically make links.
Click here.
I'm voting for Bernie and IF HE DOESN'T MAKE IT I'll VOTE Green again.
All the serious contenders for the Dem-prez nomination last time and now (except Bernie) have long since groveled before the AIPAC crowd and pledged their one-thousand percent support (employing various euphemisms) for the Oded Yinon plan to keep destabilising Israel's enemies via American sanctions, dollars, bombs and blood seemingly indefinitely.
And Bernie's two-state solutional "hesitation" is but a transparent sham, permissible to the donor class only because of his in-your-face, tribal identity.
Since this blog is now the semi-official home of hopelessness and resignation to the Fascistic Future of another ghastly Trump Term, why not admit that THEY'RE ALL WARMONGERS, and that the Donors ALWAYS hedge their bets?
Exhausted Andrew
Why are the Democrats fraid Sanders will just do what they have been doing all these years? Sandes belongs in the mental ward not the Oval office
Post a Comment