But YOU haven’t supported Biden, because you didn’t want Biden…what do you do now? You have less than 8 hours before the polls opens and less than 24 hrs to decide who it is you are going to cast your vote for…or worse, you already early voted and its too late to change your vote. Here’s a breakdown of what I think most people in your situation would do based on existing polling research.
All is not lost and if we continue to fight hard, the Chief Cheeto won’t win. Keep enough anxiety to never get comfortable, but don’t let it paralyze you. We need everyone to get us through the November election, it is all hands on deck!
Why would Pete drop out 36 hrs before Super Tuesday if he did so well in the first two states? Why would Amy Klobuchar drop out less than 24 hrs before Super Tuesday?
Last night, when I heard Mayor Pete dropped out of the race and wasn’t even going to try despite his name already being on the ballot in all the Super Tuesday States…I was really pissed for the Pete supporters…especially the early voters that already cast their ballots for him and now can’t change it. I’m sorry this happened to you, it sucks and you were essentially disenfranchised at the last minute. My feeling is that he should have dropped immediately after South Carolina if he was planning on it.
Then before my lunch time, the news broke that Amy Klobuchar dropped out less than 24 hrs before the vote. Amy did not have a good night in Minnesota last night, because protesters hindered her rally from launching 1. I posed the question, “If Amy can’t even hold a rally in her own State is she really going to survive Super Tuesday enough to go on to the next race?” I was kind of expecting her to bow out before Super Tuesday because of the protest…if it was further spread in the media beyond Minnesota, it would have basically destroyed any percentage of the Black vote she already had and would have probably ensured she wouldn’t be able to build it. Yes, the reasoning for the protest was THAT bad2.
However, all the Amy drama aside, it turns out that there were some back room deals going on to put all the Moderate candidates behind Biden. I don’t know who or how they paid everyone off, but I honestly think they absolutely chose the wrong candidate to put their efforts behind. I think this was a dire mistake and it shows that the DCCC is ready to bungle the next General election when they honestly were in a position where they were going to have to try really hard to lose. Biden has not performed well in any sense of the word, except in the one South Carolina election.
Bernie Sanders was projected to win by a great deal if the Moderates did not consolidate their efforts into one candidate. The DCCC got nervous, because they don’t want to be taxed and they still have not gotten over their George McGovern PTSD where they lost dearly to Nixon. Thus began the climb to move the party more Center…which only lead to more Presidential campaigns lost. We will get more into this when I talk more about how Biden measures up.
So, Pete and Amy try to consolidate their supporters behind Biden…the next natural question is…
If the Moderate candidates are rallying their supporters behind Biden, why hasn’t Elizabeth Warren dropped out yet?
Good question. She hasn’t won a State yet and isn’t projected to win any State (not even her own)…so why isn’t she getting behind Bernie? This is the question of the hour among Bernie supporters. Elizabeth and Bernie have always been friends, wouldn’t it be the best of both worlds to consolidate their votes and run on the same ticket? To us, it would. Elizabeth Warren has been loved by most Bernie supporters almost as long as we have loved Bernie. Some of us heard of Elizabeth years before we ever heard of Bernie.
There’s a few opinion pieces on this at the moment and none of them say anything good about Elizabeth Warren’s motives. If the opinions and rumors are true, she has fallen even farther down the “out of touch,” “delirious,” and “sell out” rabbit hole. I don’t think we will find out the whole truth before the polls open tomorrow, so all we can do is speculate based on the facts we do have.
Fact 1: Elizabeth Warren has the largest Super PAC behind her for a candidate that hasn’t won anything…the Persist PAC 3.
Fact 2: The donors in this PAC will not be disclosed until March 20th…will there be billionaires and corporate donors she swore off at the beginning of her Presidential bid 4? You Betcha!
Fact 3: They said the quiet part out loud to a reporter…she is still in the race to blunt Bernie’s momentum 5.
Fact 4: Elizabeth Warren has been Bernie bashing at the end of every rally she has held lately, the gloves are so far off no one knows where she flung them 6.
Fact 5: Her campaign strategist said they were holding onto the race to the Convention in hopes of a contested convention where no candidate has more than 51% of the delegates, so she can court super delegates and make her case 7.
I speculate that she is doing this to get on the good side of the DCCC and will ultimately end up supporting Biden. I think it is a stretch to expect that she will be able to convince enough delegates to vote for her when she couldn’t capture enough of the vote to even come close to a majority herself.
If I was a Warren supporter, I would be getting off her train right about now and get behind the next progressive candidate…because to me, the issues that I want fixed for everyone outweigh how much I love the woman. It doesn’t make sense to support her anymore if you want Medicare for All, Climate Change, Free Childcare, Student Loan Forgiveness, Prison Reform, Keeping Corruption out of Politics, and holding big banks and corporations accountable. These things are just not going to happen in the magnitude that it needs to happen if you throw away your vote to Warren instead of giving it to Bernie. Biden might implement a fraction of each thing, but not nearly enough.
Bernie versus Joe Biden
If you want status quo and establishment, Joe is your guy. He will deliver that, but we will be right back to where we were in 2016 when people voted for Trump. We want to beat Trump, and I think Biden could definitely beat him, especially if Trump bungles the Coronavirus Pandemic as badly as I think he is going to. Trump has always barked about his precious economy, but he can’t control what the Coronavirus has done to it and the more he contradicts the Health Experts and mixes the message, the more nervous shareholders get.
Joe Biden’s platform looks very similar to Hillary Clinton’s in 2016. It was a good platform, more middle of the road than progressive…but it would have been better than what we have now. Hillary won the Primaries, won the popular vote, but ultimately lost the Electoral College. I think Joe might do a bit better than Hillary and would even win the Popular vote…but I don’t see him winning the Electoral College. If he reminds people of Obama (I’m talking the Democrats that voted for Obama and then went around and voted in Trump), I think it might backfire on him. But most importantly, I don’t see progressives lining up to vote for him like they do for Bernie 8.
I mentioned George McGovern earlier because he was the last truly progressive candidate that the Democratic Party rallied behind full force 9. This was the guy that ran against Richard Nixon on a progressive campaign and lost by 23 points. After McGovern, the party started running ever more Centrist candidates because they feared that huge loss, but it didn’t really work after Jimmy Carter and even he didn’t get 2 terms. The next President to get through after 3 more General Election loses was President Clinton, a more progressive candidate than the prior 3 Presidential bids. After 2 more General Election losses of running a Centrist candidate, we get a much more progressive Obama and he wins. However, Obama was not able to get most of his progressive ideas into fruition and this is where the progressives felt like they were duped…and putting Hillary up next was holding up the establishment that wasn’t working for them. So, they just didn’t show up for her…they voted Jill Stein or they voted Trump (as a signal that they were fed up). Joe Biden is going to face that same struggle, because the progressive voters are hip to the establishment game. Establishment doesn’t work for any family whose combined income is less than $200k. It doesn’t work for the unions, it doesn’t work for the non-union labor, it doesn’t work for single parents, it doesn’t work for struggling students, it doesn’t work for small businesses, and it certainly doesn’t work for the Midwest. It works for the Managerial class, pundits, billionaires, and large corporations…which most Americans are not.
If you are nodding your head and you know that Biden wasn’t what you wanted, you might want to consider Bernie. He isn’t Establishment, but he will fight for you even if you won’t fight for him. He has your best interests in mind, he sees you struggling and he wants to make it better. Bernie has new ideas that aren’t really new (see FDR), that are good solutions to the problems we all face now and in our future. He isn’t going to see the benefits of any of it himself, so his Presidency will be a pretty selfless one. When our grandparents are talking about the end of social security, medicare, and a habitable planet as “not their problem,” because they will be long dead before it can affect them….Bernie is saying the exact opposite. He wants to leave future generations a better future than is projected right now.
Bernie versus Mike Bloomberg
You couldn’t get more far off from Bernie than Bloomberg. If Joe Biden is Centrist, Bloomberg is a Republican wearing Democrat clothes. Republicans don’t vote for Democrats when they could just have the Republican…so I really don’t know what Bloomberg is thinking. Electing Bloomberg is like saying the Democrats would be wearing the red MAGA hats if The Donald ran as a Democrat. I don’t think this is true just from Stop and Frisk alone. If you don’t know what that program was, it was when as the Mayor of NYC, Bloomberg expanded a program that would randomly stop young Latinx and Black men on the sidewalk, cuff them, and slam them up against the wall for a search in the vein of preventing crime…but all it did was terrorize young men and make them and their families fear their safety every time they set foot in public 10.
If you were going to vote for Pete or Amy, I really don’t think you were even going to entertain voting for Bloomberg…I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am. I think you found him just as disgusting as we did. The polls all say Bloomberg would beat Trump, but I think the Democrats will have even less of a progressive base show up and support him. I know we are all saying, “Vote Blue no matter who,” but I don’t see progressives voting for him at all. To them, there’s almost no difference between him and Trump, except that Bloomberg is a little smarter and therefore has a capacity to be more intelligently malicious about his moves.
I also think Bloomberg has spent a lot of money to consistently lose and I’m pretty sure he is only doing it to try to slow down Bernie. He has a lot to lose if Bernie wins…he might have to dare I say, pay taxes! Can you imagine how many cool programs we could have funded for a year based on how much Bloomberg spent on television campaign ads? That money would have been better served as taxes.
Bernie versus Donald Trump
This is where the lynch pin is for the General Election. No one on the TV wants to admit that a Moderate candidate does not excite the progressive base to get out and vote. There’s been plenty of modeling showing that if the Democratic Party wants to win this without much of a contest, they need to stop apologizing for being Democrats and run a truly progressive candidate. The same modeling that predicted the Midterm House flip predicts that Bernie would slaughter Trump in the General Election given the DCCC gets behind him and fully supports him like the RNC did for Trump. The DCCC also needs to send volunteers to canvass in the States that flipped for Trump…as well as the States that are the most swingable in this election. Hint: Its not the same States that flipped Red in 2016. So far the DCCC has not been amenable to looking at the new modeling, but Bernie’s Campaign has been well aware of it and working it to their advantage already 11.
We win with big numbers in voter turnout. Did you know that the Republican Party has an 85% participation rate in voter turn out? The Democratic Party has 40% on a hot election and either barely wins or barely loses. This means we need to get more of our people out to vote 12. The other team is voting like its a war and we are voting like its a fun little scrimmage in comparison. The other Party declared war on us…when someone declares war on you, you are in one whether or not you want to be…so show up like your life depends on it, because it truly does 13. If you are still unsure of who to vote for and you definitely don’t want Biden, please vote Bernie…its the most sensible choice you can make without tossing your vote to the wind. I also think Biden’s polling research is wrong and that most of you had Bernie as your second choice anyhow…go with your gut, not with what you never wanted to consider 14.
Photo by quicksandala at Morguefile.com – https://morguefile.com/p/950888
Further Reading
- Bakst, B. & MPR News Staff. (2020, March 1). Protesters force cancellation of Klobuchar campaign rally in St. Louis Park. MPR News. Retrieved from: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/03/01/protesters-take-stage-at-site-of-klobuchar-campaign-rally?fbclid=IwAR007TyVaHWmePL1P5Hou7EOPqtylBEpYzY7WepPYeoB4goLTkLfBJXOkiQ[↩]
- McDowell, R. (2020, January 28). In Klobuchar’s past, questions linger about a teen jailed for life. MPR News. Retrieved from: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/01/28/in-klobuchars-past-questions-linger-about-a-teen-jailed-for-life[↩]
- Goldmacher, S. (2020, February 27). Elizabeth Warren Gets Giant Lift From Persist PAC. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-super-pac.html[↩]
- Merica, D. (2020, February 28). Warren super PAC won’t disclose donors early despite candidate’s request. CNN Politics. Retrieved from: https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/28/politics/elizabeth-warren-super-pac/index.html[↩]
- aishaismad. (2020, February 29). The cat’s outta the bag “One person close to (Warren’s campaign) said that tonight is about blunting the momentum for Bernie Sanders”. Retrieved from: https://twitter.com/aishaismad/status/1233899739906813952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1233899739906813952&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pastemagazine.com%2Farticles%2F2020%2F03%2Felizabeth-warren-hurt-bernie-sanders.html[↩]
- Ryan, S. (2020, March 2). Elizabeth Warren’s Campaign Is Now About Keeping Bernie Sanders From Winning. Paste. Retrieved from: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2020/03/elizabeth-warren-hurt-bernie-sanders.html[↩]
- Basau, Z. (2020, March 1). Warren campaign makes case for path to nomination. Axios. Retrieved from: https://www.axios.com/elizabeth-warren-campaign-super-tuesday-nomination-25c790fa-1b50-45ce-a984-36d1a05e26e7.html?fbclid=IwAR0zm1ZC1RuztyHDzTfGHo5-mxG53CoUrvVBPgmefaYQgy98GO0cI2cDKGY[↩]
- Cesca, Bob. (2020, February 25). Can Bernie win? Absolutely — and I don’t even support him. Salon. Retrieved from: https://www.salon.com/2020/02/25/can-bernie-win-absolutely–and-i-dont-even-support-him/[↩]
- Spross, J. (2020, March 2). It’s not 1972 and Bernie Sanders isn’t George McGovern. The Week. Retrieved from: https://theweek.com/articles/898851/not-1972-bernie-sanders-isnt-george-mcgovern[↩]
- Badger, E. (2020, March 2). The Lasting Effects of Stop-and-Frisk in Bloomberg’s New York. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/upshot/stop-and-frisk-bloomberg.html[↩]
- Freedlander, D. (2020, February 6). An Unsettling New Theory: There Is No Swing Voter. Politico. Retrieved from: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/06/rachel-bitecofer-profile-election-forecasting-new-theory-108944[↩]
- Kroll, A. (2020, March 2). Democrats Have a Turnout Problem. Rolling Stone Magazine. Retrieved from: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/2020-democratic-primary-turnout-problems-960784/[↩]
- Berman, A. (2011, August 30). The GOP War on Voting. Rolling Stone Magazine. Retrieved from: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-gop-war-on-voting-242182/[↩]
- Zhou, L. (2020, February 28). Bernie Sanders narrowly leads Joe Biden in a national ranked-choice poll. Vox. Retrieved from: https://www.vox.com/2020/2/28/21156380/bernie-sanders-joe-biden-ranked-choice-poll[↩]
