SUPERTHREAD: 2020 United States Elections

[bilateralrope]

Three weeks to come to a deal where Biden makes some policy concessions in exchange for Bernie dropping out. I'm hoping that happens so the Democrats can shift focus to beating Trump.

On the COVID19 front, it's not something that kills suddenly. If it takes Biden, does it give a chance for him to recommend a replacement nominee ?

[The Romulan Republic]

Three weeks to come to a deal where Biden makes some policy concessions in exchange for Bernie dropping out. I'm hoping that happens so the Democrats can shift focus to beating Trump.

On the COVID19 front, it's not something that kills suddenly. If it takes Biden, does it give a chance for him to recommend a replacement nominee ?

That's an interesting point. I don't think the DNC would be required to accept who he picked as his replacement, its not like he's the President and his VP automatically takes over, but I have no doubt that in that unfortunate scenario his recommendation would be given enormous weight and very nearly would be a shoo-in, given both his status as the frontrunner/presumptive nominee, and the symbolism of honouring a dying man's final wishes.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

The Bern says he is "assessing" his campaign:

https://cnn.com/2020/03/18/politics/ber ... index.html

While he emphatically denies that he is dropping out, a candidate "assessing" their campaign is usually code for "we're dropping out in the next few days", isn't it?

Bernie's got a point, though- he has three weeks before the next vote to see how things are going, and whether he can hope to accomplish anything more by remaining in. Especially with the coronavirus going on, its fair for him to take that time to evaluate what he wants to do next, and not rush to a decision.

At this point, the math is extraordinarily against him. Sanders would need to win 63% of all remaining delegates to get to the magic number of 1991. That's roughly a 32 point gain from his average vote share in the 29 contests already held this season (and a full twenty points above his vote share in the places he won,) and there's nothing left on the calendar where Sanders can pull a Hail Clyburn Mary from his ass and parlay that into the kind of field-shattering seismic shift he'd need to make that happen.

Basically, the only realistic thing really left for him to do is to come to terms with it.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Bern says he is "assessing" his campaign:

https://cnn.com/2020/03/18/politics/ber ... index.html

While he emphatically denies that he is dropping out, a candidate "assessing" their campaign is usually code for "we're dropping out in the next few days", isn't it?

Bernie's got a point, though- he has three weeks before the next vote to see how things are going, and whether he can hope to accomplish anything more by remaining in. Especially with the coronavirus going on, its fair for him to take that time to evaluate what he wants to do next, and not rush to a decision.

At this point, the math is extraordinarily against him. Sanders would need to win 63% of all remaining delegates to get to the magic number of 1991. That's roughly a 32 point gain from his average vote share in the 29 contests already held this season (and a full twenty points above his vote share in the places he won,) and there's nothing left on the calendar where Sanders can pull a Hail Clyburn Mary from his ass and parlay that into the kind of field-shattering seismic shift he'd need to make that happen.

Basically, the only realistic thing really left for him to do is to come to terms with it.

And more importantly, get as many of his supporters to come to terms with it as possible. That's the real question. Not "Will Bernie back Biden", but "How high a percentage of his voters can he bring with him to Biden's camp?"

Which he can best do by letting things play out at least a little longer, and trying to get platform concessions from Joe.

[RogueIce]

So when do we get to call him Sanders the Snake for not stepping aside for the presumptive nominee and ensuring party loyalty against Trump?

Oh wait in Bernie Bro Land somehow the winner has to make concessions to the loser otherwise said loser will no doubt throw a tantrum all the way to the Convention like 2016?

But I guess it's ok when Sanders does it but everybody else needed to step the fuck off back when things looked favorable to the not-even-a-real-Democrat.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

In other news, comedy candidate Tulsi Gabbard drops out.

[Darth Yan]

So when do we get to call him Sanders the Snake for not stepping aside for the presumptive nominee and ensuring party loyalty against Trump?

Oh wait in Bernie Bro Land somehow the winner has to make concessions to the loser otherwise said loser will no doubt throw a tantrum all the way to the Convention like 2016?

But I guess it's ok when Sanders does it but everybody else needed to step the fuck off back when things looked favorable to the not-even-a-real-Democrat.

Okay first off far more Bernie supporters went for Hillary than Hillary supporters went for Obama. Secondly Bernie does have a diverse support base (Muslims younger black voters Latino voters). Third he did more for Hillary than she did for Obama so honestly all this Bernie bro nonsense can fuck off and die

[Knife]

Indeed, all that 'Bernie Bro' shit is as fake and dishonest as the 'but her emails' were to Clinton.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

The Bern says he is "assessing" his campaign:

https://cnn.com/2020/03/18/politics/ber ... index.html

While he emphatically denies that he is dropping out, a candidate "assessing" their campaign is usually code for "we're dropping out in the next few days", isn't it?

Bernie's got a point, though- he has three weeks before the next vote to see how things are going, and whether he can hope to accomplish anything more by remaining in. Especially with the coronavirus going on, its fair for him to take that time to evaluate what he wants to do next, and not rush to a decision.

At this point, the math is extraordinarily against him. Sanders would need to win 63% of all remaining delegates to get to the magic number of 1991. That's roughly a 32 point gain from his average vote share in the 29 contests already held this season (and a full twenty points above his vote share in the places he won,) and there's nothing left on the calendar where Sanders can pull a Hail Clyburn Mary from his ass and parlay that into the kind of field-shattering seismic shift he'd need to make that happen.

Basically, the only realistic thing really left for him to do is to come to terms with it.

And more importantly, get as many of his supporters to come to terms with it as possible. That's the real question. Not "Will Bernie back Biden", but "How high a percentage of his voters can he bring with him to Biden's camp?"

Which he can best do by letting things play out at least a little longer, and trying to get platform concessions from Joe.

This raises a couple legitimate questions:

1) What can Sanders realistically extract from Biden, in terms of platform? I suspect the answer to that question is probably "not much." Biden wouldn't want to alienate the people who actually voted for him in pursuit of people who aren't likely to vote for him. Honestly, I wouldn't be that surprised if this is as far left as Joe Biden goes, especially if he feels he has to tack to center for the general election.

2) How much does Biden actually need Sanders? Again, the answer might be "not much." Biden handily beat him in competitive states the Democrats need to win in November ... i.e. Michigan, Virginia, Arizona, and Florida. Sanders won in places that aren't really in contention this election cycle ... California, Colorado, Vermont, and Nevada are expected to be safe Democratic picks. South Dakota and Iowa are safe GOP picks. Biden's coalition spans the breadth of the Democratic political spectrum, and the breadth of the Democratic socioeconomic and racial base. The only place where Sanders actually has him beat is with young voters.

However, a possible counter to that is: Young Sanders voters have a stark choice in November. On one hand, they can hold their noses and vote Biden ... "blue no matter who." On the other hand, they can stay home and watch Trump get re-elected. And if one thinks Trump is bad now, he'll go into his second term knowing that there is absolutely zero oversight or restraint on his power; especially with Mitch McConnell on-track to maintain his majority in the Senate. Trump would get four more years to pack the Federal judiciary with more young, ultraconservative, and nakedly partisan judges. He will almost certainly get the chance to replace Ginsburg on the Supreme Court; and Breyer is also very old. That would be a 7-2 conservative Supreme Court majority, with the majority of that majority being young, partisan, Trump appointees.

Although the coronavirus pandemic, and the deep global recession it's likely to bring, may do enough damage to Trump that young Sanders supporters can afford to stay home ... but it could just as easily encourage voters to stick with the narcissistic orange devil they know.

[The Romulan Republic]

So when do we get to call him Sanders the Snake for not stepping aside for the presumptive nominee and ensuring party loyalty against Trump?

No candidate, ever, is under an obligation to step aside for the coronation until all votes are counted. Not Warren, and not Sanders. Personally, I think it would probably be better if he not continue past April, but he has every right and reason to try to get at least some of what he and his supporters believe in in return for an expedited endorsement of Biden. Demanding that he step aside for Biden is not going to unite the party faster- its going to piss off Sanders supporters who feel (correctly) like we are being pushed aside before the votes are counted by a high-handed, entitled opposition.

Sanders told his supporters to let Warren make the decision of when to drop out in her own time. You, frankly, should show him and his supporters the same respect. And its pretty rich of people like you to constantly whine about our tone, or using nasty names for a candidate, while you...

Oh wait in Bernie Bro Land somehow the winner has to make concessions to the loser otherwise said loser will no doubt throw a tantrum all the way to the Convention like 2016?

Habitually label every single one of us with an insulting name designed to paint us all as violent misogynists and racists (and thereby seek to erase the contributions and opinions of every single woman and person of colour who ever supported Bernie Sanders). But hey, its okay when you do it, right?

Yes, the nominee has to reach out to the losers in the primary and offer them something to bring the party together. That's how it works. It works that way regardless of who the candidates are. And yet you and others like you react with shrill, indignant outrage at the idea that Biden might have to offer anything to Sanders supporters. We're the losers. How dare we think that we have something to contribute to the party? We may have the votes of a third of the party, give or take, but that doesn't matter. We lost, and Biden won, so our sole contribution is to shut our mouths, know our place, and fall in line. We're a third of your party, we have the overwhelming support of voters of all races and genders under 45-ie the future of the party-and you want, you need our votes- you just don't want us to have any voice in shaping the party and policies we'll be voting for.

Oh, and Sanders did not stay until the convention in 2016. That's a flat-out lie, provable with two minutes Googling.

But I guess it's ok when Sanders does it but everybody else needed to step the fuck off back when things looked favorable to the not-even-a-real-Democrat.

Yeah, us nasty Bernie Bros are so horrible and divisive.

If you really gave a damn about unity or civility, you would not be going out, calling Sanders supporters Bernie Bros, painting us all as hypocrites, and demanding that Sanders get out of the race, or attacking him for not being a "real Democrat". That last in particular is absurd- attacking someone for "not being a real Democrat" when half of Biden's argument for his candidacy is that he'll bring in undecided Centrists and independents who are apparently the only voters in America who really matter.

You won, okay? Barring some unpredictable catastrophe, Biden will be the nominee, and given his age, Bernie realistically will not get another chance at the presidency. You won.

Now, a bigger man would take this opportunity to be a magnanimous winner and reach out to the huge chunk of the party who supports Bernie Sanders, people who's votes we will need in November. People who represent the future of the party, if it has one. To live up to all that talk of unity and civility and prove that it is more than just self-serving talk meant to keep uppity progressives in our place.

But instead, many Sanders opponents seem to see this as a time to rub our loss in our faces, and to once again trot out every nasty, divisive old smear from 2016 about "Bernie Bros", and how "Sanders isn't a real Democrat", and how Sanders is obliged to just drop out, and on and on and on- and then blame us for being divisive simply for being in the race. Because its not enough to beat us, no- you have to humiliate us, to gloat at our defeat, to teach us to know our place, so that we will never again dare to presume to have a voice in shaping the leadership or policy of the party that needs and expects our votes. And, perhaps, to try to forget how three weeks ago you were all shitting your britches at the unstoppable Sanders campaign, and/or imagining ways that the convention could be rigged to stop him.

Bernie Sanders may never be President, but he's not going to fade into irrelevancy no matter how much some may want him to, and the movement he helped build is certainly not going away. The demands for more sweeping reform than someone like Biden will or can offer are not going away. The dissatisfaction, the outrage, of tens of millions of Americans under 45 at the world we are being left to inherit will not go away. Dismissing it as merely a few nasty "Bernie Bros" will not make it go away. Biden won on the Boomer vote, and every year, there are going to be fewer Boomers, and more of us. Unless Trump wins again, in which case we're all fucked, expect someone like AOC in 2024 or 2028.

When that day comes, I hope we'll find it in ourselves to be more magnanimous in our victory than you are in yours'.

[The Romulan Republic]

At this point, the math is extraordinarily against him. Sanders would need to win 63% of all remaining delegates to get to the magic number of 1991. That's roughly a 32 point gain from his average vote share in the 29 contests already held this season (and a full twenty points above his vote share in the places he won,) and there's nothing left on the calendar where Sanders can pull a Hail Clyburn Mary from his ass and parlay that into the kind of field-shattering seismic shift he'd need to make that happen.

Basically, the only realistic thing really left for him to do is to come to terms with it.

And more importantly, get as many of his supporters to come to terms with it as possible. That's the real question. Not "Will Bernie back Biden", but "How high a percentage of his voters can he bring with him to Biden's camp?"

Which he can best do by letting things play out at least a little longer, and trying to get platform concessions from Joe.

This raises a couple legitimate questions:

1) What can Sanders realistically extract from Biden, in terms of platform? I suspect the answer to that question is probably "not much." Biden wouldn't want to alienate the people who actually voted for him in pursuit of people who aren't likely to vote for him. Honestly, I wouldn't be that surprised if this is as far left as Joe Biden goes, especially if he feels he has to tack to center for the general election.

2) How much does Biden actually need Sanders? Again, the answer might be "not much." Biden handily beat him in competitive states the Democrats need to win in November ... i.e. Michigan, Virginia, Arizona, and Florida. Sanders won in places that aren't really in contention this election cycle ... California, Colorado, Vermont, and Nevada are expected to be safe Democratic picks. South Dakota and Iowa are safe GOP picks. Biden's coalition spans the breadth of the Democratic political spectrum, and the breadth of the Democratic socioeconomic and racial base. The only place where Sanders actually has him beat is with young voters.

However, a possible counter to that is: Young Sanders voters have a stark choice in November. On one hand, they can hold their noses and vote Biden ... "blue no matter who." On the other hand, they can stay home and watch Trump get re-elected. And if one thinks Trump is bad now, he'll go into his second term knowing that there is absolutely zero oversight or restraint on his power; especially with Mitch McConnell on-track to maintain his majority in the Senate. Trump would get four more years to pack the Federal judiciary with more young, ultraconservative, and nakedly partisan judges. He will almost certainly get the chance to replace Ginsburg on the Supreme Court; and Breyer is also very old. That would be a 7-2 conservative Supreme Court majority, with the majority of that majority being young, partisan, Trump appointees.

Although the coronavirus pandemic, and the deep global recession it's likely to bring, may do enough damage to Trump that young Sanders supporters can afford to stay home ... but it could just as easily encourage voters to stick with the narcissistic orange devil they know.

This sort of arrogant dismissal of roughly a third (give or take) of his own party's primary voters is precisely the attitude that could cost Biden what by all rights should be an easy victory. Of course, like many others, you're already fashioning your excuse for Biden's potential defeat- blame it on the Bernie Bros!

You claim that Sanders only won in states that are safe one way or the other, so his supporters don't matter. Well, I think its pretty damn offensive to tell a large chunk of your own party's voters that they don't matter because they don't happen to be in a few swing states (but we can thank the Electoral College for that), but in any case, the reality is quite a bit more complicated. Sanders didn't win Texas, but he came close- on the basis of strong Latino support. Sanders did exceptionally well with the Latino vote in many places. Likewise, among youth, Bernie won across racial and gender lines, just as Biden won Boomers across racial and gender lines. Boomers simply turned out more. Of course you ignore all this, in favor of once more trotting out the tired old lie that Sanders lacks support from women and minorities. But in doing so you are not only erasing the contributions and views of the women and Latinos and other people of colour who support Sanders, you are ignoring an important political reality because it does not fit your argument. Hopefully the people actually making the decisions have more sense. Biden needs strong Latino turnout if he wants to flip Arizona or (somewhat more far-fetched) Texas. He needs that support to help Democrats down-ballot in the South-west. Sanders did very, very well with the Latino vote- won it handily in multiple states. We need those people to turn out. We also need the Sanders supporters in states he didn't win to turn out, especially when those states are close.

You claim that Biden doesn't need to reach out to Sanders supporters because we're not likely to vote for him anyway. Leaving aside the gross insult and slander which that is to the millions of Sanders supporters like me who voted for Bernie, voted for Hillary, and will also vote for Biden, its not a very pragmatic approach a campaign who's primary justification for its existence has been political pragmatism.

For God's sake, we are nominating Biden, in large part, on the argument that he is best able to win over the small slice of undecided moderates and independents who haven't made up their minds whether they're going to vote for the Democrats, or for a rapist climate denier who locks little children in cages. And yet, suggesting that maybe Biden should also try to reach out to the small subset of his own party's primary voters who haven't decided if they're going to get behind him or not is a step too far? The message there is very, very clear:

You care more about the votes, and demands, of conservative independents and moderate Republicans than you do about the votes of progressive Democrats.

[The Romulan Republic]

Seriously, I want an answer here:

Aside from petty spite, what is the objection to giving the roughly one third (probably more) of the party who support Bernie Sanders something to encourage them to not only turn out, but to support Biden enthusiastically, and to show them that they have a place in the party, that all that talk of unity was not just hypocritical and self-serving, and that the party and its nominee care at least as much about what they think as about what Republicans think? Especially when most of our signature policies are things that would objectively benefit the country, and/or are things that most of the First World is already doing?

Yet apparently, even simple respect for our existence or our concerns is too much to ask for, as we are constantly portrayed as just an irrelevant fringe of white male "Bernie Bros" who lack support and aren't even real Democrats.

You can pretend that we're an irrelevant fringe that doesn't matter. But I remember just three weeks ago, when even mainstream news outlets were starting to talk about the inevitability of Sanders' nomination. I remember that we won the biggest state in the Union. I remember that we took the Latino vote. I remember that we utterly dominated with voters under 45, across virtually all major demographic groups.

Centrists don't relentlessly smear and attack us because we're irrelevant. They do it because we matter, and they know it, and that both outrages and frightens them.

[Darth Yan]

Romulan's right. GrandMaster and RougeIce are both being dishonest assholes. Sanders isn't irrelevant and his policy ideas are good. Biden's way needs to die.

[Gandalf]

He's not irrelevant, but why accomodate his policies? Biden is winning the nomination based on being Biden.

[The Romulan Republic]

Romulan's right. GrandMaster and RougeIce are both being dishonest assholes. Sanders isn't irrelevant and his policy ideas are good. Biden's way needs to die.

I'm trying to avoid attacks on Biden himself here because I do recognize that, while he is manifestly unsuited to bring on the systemic reform he needs, he is still manifestly better than Trump, and getting rid of Trump is essential if we are going to retain enough of a democracy for progressives and socialists to get another shot in four or eight years (I do think a primary challenge to Biden from the Left in four years is likely, if he wins). I just wish more of the supporters on both sides would stop doing everything in their power to widen the divide between Biden and the progressives- but its especially infuriating coming from Biden supporters who condemn insults and divisiveness from us while showing zero willingness to lay off the smear campaigns themselves. I realize that I have sometimes contributed to that divisiveness myself- and I realize that sometimes tempers get heated during a primary. But now's the time to put that shit behind us and focus on the real threat, which is the existential threat to life on Earth sitting in the White House.

That does not mean, however, that the obligation to unify is all one way- that Sanders and his supporters have to just shut up and step aside while Biden focuses on appealing to Republicans. It won't work that way. Uniting the party has to go both ways.

He's not irrelevant, but why accomodate his policies? Biden is winning the nomination based on being Biden.

Because Biden can't win the general election with just the people who voted for him in the primary.

Now, most Sanders supporters will probably vote for him regardless, because of what the alternative is if nothing else. But I don't think its unreasonable to suggest that Biden should be at least as concerned with winning over his opponents in his own party as with winning over conservative independents and Republicans, or that unifying the party should involve giving something to all elements of the party.

Edit: Especially since, as the sudden shift after South Carolina shows, many of the voters who are putting Biden over the top are not doing it because they are anti-Sanders or against Sanders' policies, but simply because they believe Biden is more electable (a self-fulfilling prophecy as these things tend to be). Biden's election is in no way a repudiation of Sanders' platform, many elements of which remain widely popular in the party- so why not include them in Biden's platform?

The only reason I can think of is if Biden cares more about the votes and agendas of Republicans and corporate donors than he does those of his own party's voters. Which is a really bad look, and one he should do everything in his power to mitigate.

[The Romulan Republic]

Robert Reich (who previously co-endorsed Bernie and Warren) actually made this argument on Facebook recently, obviously as a pitch to Sanders supporters as to why they should get behind Biden if he's the nominee:

Friends,

Joe Biden is a perfect mouthpiece for wherever and whatever the conventional political wisdom is in the Democratic Party at any given time.

Years ago, when Biden voted for the Iraq war, for trade deals, and for debt collection, they reflected the conventional Democratic wisdom. But now that conventional Democratic wisdom has shifted leftward – due largely to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren -- Biden has shifted, too.

He has shifted his position on free public college – from favoring tuition-free education only at two-year community colleges to supporting it at four-year public universities and colleges as well, for every student whose annual family income doesn’t exceed $125,000. (This was Bernie’s position several years ago.)

Biden also decided to support Elizabeth Warren’s proposal for making bankruptcy far less onerous for middle-class Americans, including making it available for former students facing onerous student-debt burdens and for people facing major medical debts. This marked a major change from the bankruptcy legislation Biden helped turn into law in 2005.

He has shifted slightly on Medicare for All -- now calling for a public option (which had been on the Left of the Obama-era conventional wisdom). He hasn't yet called for a Green New Deal, but I could imagine him doing so if he gets the nomination and if progressives pull the conventional Democratic wisdom to the Left.

If he becomes president, Biden will not lead any progressive charge. He won’t be a Lyndon Johnson or an FDR or Teddy Roosevelt. But to the extent progressives lead the charge and are successful in changing conventional Democratic wisdom, Biden will reliably follow.

RR

If that is true, it would make a strong argument for reluctant Sanders supporters to get strongly behind Biden- while continuing to pressure him to move to the Left, as Bernie is currently doing.

Time will tell if its true.

[The Romulan Republic]

This is interesting, but not terribly surprising to me:

https://salon.com/2020/03/09/there-is-h ... re-a-myth/

Mainstream pundits and politicians continue to obsess over the stereotype of the "Bernie Bro," a perfervid horde of Bernie Sanders supporters who supposedly stop at nothing to harass his opponents online. Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens have all helped perpetuate the idea that Sanders' supporters are somehow uniquely cruel, despite Sanders' platform and policy proposal being the most humane of all the candidates.

The only problem? The evidence that Sanders supporters are uniquely cruel online, compared to any other candidates' supporters, is scant; much of the discourse around Bernie Bros seems to rely on skewed anecdotes that don't stand up to scrutiny. Many Sanders supporters suspect that the stereotype is perpetuated in bad faith to help torpedo his candidacy.

A few weeks ago I penned a story for Salon attempting to qualitatively disprove the Bernie Bro myth by pulling from psychological theory and the nature of online behavior. To summarize my conclusions: First, there is a general tendency for online behavior to be negative, known as the online disinhibition effect — but it affects all people equally, not merely Sanders' supporters. Second, pundits systematically ignore when other candidates' supporters are mean online, perhaps because of the aforementioned established stereotype; in this sense, the Bernie Bro is not dissimilar from other political canards like the "welfare queen." Third, Twitter is not a representative sample size of the population, and is so prone to harboring propaganda outfits and bots such that it is not a reliable way of gauging public opinion.

Now, to add to this qualitative assessment, there is quantitative evidence, too — reaped from studying hundreds of thousands of interactions online — that reveals the Bernie Bro myth as, well, a myth. Jeff Winchell, a computational social scientist and graduate student at Harvard University, crunched the numbers on tweet data and found that Sanders' supporters online behave the same as everyone else. Winchell used what is called a sentiment analysis, a technique used both in the digital humanities and in e-commerce, to gauge emotional intent from social media data.

"Bernie followers act pretty much the same on Twitter as any other follower," Winchell says of his results. "There is one key difference that Twitter users and media don't seem to be aware of.... Bernie has a lot more Twitter followers than Twitter followers of other Democrat's campaigns," he added, noting that this may be partly what helps perpetuate the myth.

I interviewed him about his work and his results over email; as usual, this interview has been condensed and edited for print.

First, for those who haven't heard of this technique, what is a sentiment analysis?

Sentiment analysis summarizes human expression into various scores. Most commonly the score is how negative or positive it is. But it can also be used to evaluate subjectivity (for instance, is a politician's statement factual or mostly opinionated?). Even taking the simpler text analysis, there are multiple challenges due to sarcasm, negations (e.g "I don't like their service", "After what he did, this will be his last project"), ambiguity (words that are negative or positive depending on their context), and [the fact that] texts can contain both positive and negative parts.

How are sentiment analyses used? What are other examples of this technique being used?

The overwhelming application of sentiment analysis is in e-commerce (for instance, scoring how positive/negative customer feedback is). Customer service surveys are often analyzed this way. Marketing uses sentiment analysis to test product acceptance.

Other commercial applications are in recommendations. While a system may have the user given an overall rating, analyzing the comments they provide can identify the sentiment on subtopics within.

So tell me about the sentiment analysis script that you wrote to study online behavior among different politicians' followers. How did this work?

I downloaded all the followers of the Twitter accounts of the nine most popular Democratic presidential candidates and the president ([around] 100 million Twitter accounts). I then randomly chose followers from them and downloaded all their tweets from 2015 to the present.

I have run two different sentiment analysis algorithms on these tweets. So far, nearly 6.8 million tweets from 280,000 Twitter accounts have been analyzed out of the 100 million-plus tweets I currently have downloaded (I continue downloading more).

One sentiment analysis algorithm uses a well-regarded example of grammar/word dictionary sentiment rules that were popular 5 to 10 years ago before deep learning became popular. This one is identified by the Python libary's name, Textblob.

The other algorithm is Microsoft's supervised deep learning-based algorithm with default parameters. To those unfamiliar with deep learning, the number of parameters in this model is in the millions, and no human can be expected to understand them. The deep learning model learns/generalizes from examples of text given sentiment ratings by humans through millions of trials, each time evaluating how well it predicts the results and passing that model and accuracy to the next iteration.

The categories of negative and very negative are based on ranges of values in the two algorithm's outputs. Textblob generates a number from most negative (-1) to most positive (+1). I classified scores of [below] -0.75 as very negative and -.75 to -.5 as negative. Microsoft's algorithm predicts the chance that some text is classified as positive. Based on the frequencies of a specific chance, I separated the lowest 1.5 percent of tweet ratings as very negative and the lowest 1.5 percent to 5 percent of all tweet ratings as negative.

What did your results find?

The chance that some tweet is negative when it comes from a follower of candidate X is pretty much the same as if it came from a follower of candidate Y.

This uses two different algorithms, once very sophisticated (Microsoft's supervised Deep Learning-based model), the other a good algorithm based on the algorithm standards of 5 to 10 years ago (Textblob's grammar/dictionary-based rules). Microsoft's algorithm calculates the chance a tweet is positive. Textblob's rates the tweet from most negative (-1) to most positive (+1). But the variation of these measures changes little among tweets from followers from different candidates.

I deliberately round my numbers to 1 digit for smaller samples (negative or very negative percentage) or 2 digits if it's about an average over all the tweets. I don't like false accuracy and it is rampant in the political media. Any NLP [Natural Language Processing] expert will tell you that reducing a tweet to a single number denoting its negativity/positivity is not an exact science. So the rounding reflects that uncertainty.

Given this data, what do you think of the "Bernie Bro" narrative about his online supporters?

Bernie followers act pretty much the same on Twitter as any other follower. There is one key difference that Twitter users and media don't seem to be aware of. Bernie has a lot more Twitter followers than Twitter followers of other Democrat's campaigns.

People responding to hundreds of millions of people online tend to dehumanize others. They remember that someone is female/male or follows some candidate or is of some race, but they frequently don't pay attention to differentiate actions of one member of that group versus another. So rather than consider how frequently an individual of some group acts, they think of how frequently the group acts as a whole. If they interact with many more members of one group than another, that perception of the group is magnified by the number of members they see.

Interesting. Did your opinion change after doing this little analysis?

Yes. I believed that Bernie's followers are more likely to like him because they are more likely to experience the very negative life circumstances that Bernie Sanders wants to fix. People in a negative situation are more likely to interact negatively with people, particularly those anonymous online people that they have no in-person relationship with. So I had anticipated that Bernie's followers on average would have a much higher chance to be negative. This does not appear to be the case or at least not as much as the claims I read on Twitter, political media reports or on TV.

Is there actually any difference between different candidates' supporters online behavior, based on this?

As a data scientist, I am usually skeptical of any result. So I'll say maybe not or at least much less than claimed.

I still would like to dig deeper into this. This analysis looks at all tweets. I would like to look just at twitter interactions between candidate's supporters, look at tweets responding or mentioning media professionals. I want to use some algorithms in the research that evaluate hate speech, racism, sexism. I'd like to look at specific topics of discussion, and possibly evaluate the influence of negative tweets (eg. retweets and number of followers who could see a tweet/retweet).

What is your academic background?

I have a bachelor's degree in math from Northwestern. I then worked in healthcare analytics with very large databases, branched into other applications of large scale data analysis before recently returning to grad school at Harvard to study data science. While there my interest in psychology and sociology has led me to pursue applications of data science in the social sciences to help people.

This story was updated on March 10 with additional interview questions to add context.

I'd like to see further research, not focussed on just Twitter, to corroborate or disprove this, and to see if certain kinds of negative or hostile posts (threats, racist or sexist attacks, etc) are more common among certain candidates' supporters than others. But this certainly fits with what I'd expect, from my own experiences.

[The Romulan Republic]

Tulsi Gabbard has dropped out, endorsed Biden:

https://cnbc.com/2020/03/19/tulsi-gabba ... imary.html

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race on Thursday and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden.

“Today, I’m suspending my presidential campaign, and offering my full support to Vice President Joe Biden in his quest to bring our country together,” she said in a video announcing her decision.


“After Tuesday’s primary results, it is clear that Democratic Primary voters have chosen Vice President Joe Biden to be the person who will take on President Trump in the general election,” Gabbard said.

Shortly after Gabbard announced she was dropping out of the race, Biden congratulated her and accepted her endorsement.

“Tulsi Gabbard has put her life on the line in service of this country and continues to serve with honor today,” Biden tweeted. “I’m grateful to have her support and look forward to working with her to restore honor and decency to the White House.”


Biden is close to sealing up the Democratic presidential nomination as his rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, mulls his options.

The former vice president has clinched victories in most of the nominating states so far, giving him a boost just as it looked like his campaign was about to collapse.

In endorsing Biden, Gabbard has shown that she has no interest in being a third-party spoiler.

Her 2020 campaign received a flood of attention in October when 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton suggested on a popular podcast that the Russians were grooming a third-party candidate, apparently referring to Gabbard, whose candidacy had been promoted on some Russian websites linked to 2016 election interference.

“I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate,” Clinton said. “She’s a favorite of the Russians.”

Gabbard dismissed the accusation and vowed not to run as a third-party candidate against Trump. In January, she sued Clinton, alleging defamation.

Her decision to drop out of the race comes in the middle of the coronavirus outbreak, which has roiled markets and infected hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Gabbard, in an email to supporters on Thursday, addressed her role in the outbreak, saying “the best way I can be of service at this time is to continue to work for the health and wellbeing of the people of Hawaii and our country in Congress, and to stand ready to serve in uniform should the Hawaii National Guard be activated.”

The 38-year-old congresswoman officially jumped into the race in February 2019. Even after more than a year on the campaign trail, she never gained traction in national polls and lagged in fundraising.

Yet she was the last woman standing in a race that saw a record number of woman candidates.

In the Iowa caucuses, the first contest in the 2020 primary, Gabbard received 0% of the vote, NBC News reported. She had similar results in the New Hampshire primary, the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primary.

Despite her poor showing, Gabbard stayed in the race, outlasting former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who had each performed better than she did.

Gabbard has said she will not seek reelection to her congressional seat in 2020.

On and off the campaign trail, she has long been seen as a controversial figure in politics, often at odds with her own party.

During her candidacy, Gabbard highlighted her record as an Iraq War veteran who would fight for well-paying jobs and affordable health care.

Early on, Gabbard’s campaign came under fire for her past work with her father’s anti-gay advocacy group. Her decision in 2016 to join Republicans in demanding that President Barack Obama use the term “radical Islamic terrorism” and her 2017 trip to meet with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad received renewed criticism on the campaign trail.

Gabbard apologized for her past anti-LGBTQ remarks and said her position on Assad was misunderstood. She moved to the left on social issues such as gay marriage and supported “Medicare for All” and a $15 minimum wage.

But she managed to have a standout moment during the first presidential debate, when she corrected Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan after he claimed that the Taliban committed the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

“The Taliban didn’t attack us on 9/11,” Gabbard shot back. “Al-Qaeda did.”

Her last debate performance was in November.

— CNBC’s Jacob Pramuk contributed to this report.

I honestly didn't expect this, especially since as I recall she held out until fucking August on endorsing Clinton in 2016.

Ah well. One step closer to unity. Maybe it'll bring a few of the "anti-establishment" crowd over to Biden.

I just wonder what Biden offered her to get her to do it.

[The Romulan Republic]

Coronavirus is kicking Trump's election strategy in the balls:

https://politico.com/news/2020/03/19/tr ... rus-136197

President Donald Trump’s top political advisers in recent weeks envisioned unleashing a massive advertising campaign against Joe Biden to define him for the general election before he had a chance to recover from the primary.

Then the novel coronavirus arrived.

With the death toll rising and daily life grinding to a halt, Trump’s sprawling political operation has put on hold any plans to use its nine-figure war chest to unload on the former vice president. The strategy, mimicking the playbook of Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign against Mitt Romney, was aimed at crippling the lesser-funded Biden before he could unify the Democratic Party behind him and marshal his forces for November.

The reprieve is a blessing for Biden: Rather than spending valuable time fending off an assault, he is free to present himself as a steady leader amid a national crisis and to regroup for the general election.

The Trump operation’s reassessment underscores how the pandemic has disrupted virtually every element of the campaign for both parties. With less than eight months until Election Day, Trump and Biden are being forced to rethink their plans on everything from fundraising to field operations to staffing.

“With Biden running away with it now, this would have been a good time to define him right off the bat. But it won't break through now, nor would it look good,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary in the George W. Bush White House. “This hiatus in many ways helps Biden.”

Club for Growth President David McIntosh, whose pro-Trump group has aired a series of TV commercials bolstering the president, said he would be temporarily shelving any plans to take down Biden.

“The response to the coronavirus has pushed the whole election off the front page,” McIntosh said, “and it will restart and readjust once the immediate crisis is over.”

The Trump team isn’t completely backing down. The reelection effort has gone after Biden on Twitter the past few days, including on his response to the pandemic. And Trump couldn’t resist getting his licks in during a coronavirus news briefing Wednesday. The president noted that he was “beating Sleepy Joe Biden by a lot in Florida” and “in other states.”

But Trump allies say that, for the time being at least, his reelection hopes hinge almost entirely on his ability to manage the crisis. While they acknowledge his initial response was lacking and that the virus poses a mortal threat to his 2020 prospects, they foresee a possible silver lining. If the virus passes and businesses and schools reopen before the election, they say, the president could present himself as the protagonist in an American comeback story.

“If President Trump manages the pandemic well and gets the economy restarted he gets reelected,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally who is currently residing in coronavirus-devastated Italy. “If he fails to do so he probably gets defeated.”

“The Trump team should focus on communicating about the virus and the economy,” Gingrich added, before noting that there would be “plenty of time for Biden later.”

While the crisis has impeded Trump’s ability to damage Biden, it's also hemmed in the former vice president. Biden has scrapped campaign events and isn’t attending fundraisers, which could hamper his efforts to narrow Trump's massive fundraising advantage.

The Biden campaign itself isn’t running ads against the president, though two liberal super PACs — Priorities USA and American Bridge — have recently gone on the air against Trump in battleground states.

Senior Biden aides are clear-eyed about their financial deficit compared to Trump but they insist they’ll have the necessary firepower to combat whatever is coming. At the same time, they’re unconvinced that Trump will refrain from attacks even in the face of a pandemic.

“The American people know who Joe Biden is and what his values are,” said Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates.

The aides note that Republicans launched ads critical of Biden as early as last fall in early primary states and the former vice president has still emerged the presumptive nominee.

Still, Biden is “definitely getting a break,” said Pete Giangreco, a Democratic strategist who worked on Obama’s presidential campaigns. “Right now, [the Trump campaign] can’t drive any of the contrast [with Biden] because it’s all, ‘What is the president doing about the coronavirus?’”

Indeed, the Trump campaign has been essentially frozen in place by the virus, and they say there are currently no plans in place for a pricey anti-Biden ad campaign.

“Americans want to see their president taking action to protect this nation, which is what President Trump is doing. At the campaign we just amplify that,” said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the reelection effort.

The idea of a post-primary Biden takedown has its roots in the 2012 campaign. With Romney reeling after a costly and divisive primary, the Obama campaign unloaded on him with an ad campaign that painted him as a cold-hearted ex-venture capitalist who slashed working class jobs to make a profit.

In one ad of several ads savaging Romney from the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA, a laid-off factory worker declared that he "made over $100 million" by shutting down his plant.

Sadly, its probably true that this election will hinge on how bad coronavirus and the subsequent recession get, and how Trump's handling of it is perceived. Which means that we are basically facing two possibilities: either this gets much much worse, and stays that way for many months... or America is a fascist nation.

[Darth Yan]

It’s gonna be bad for at least a few months. And I’m pretty sure the recession is gonna be godawful. Trumps gains are already being wiped out

[The Romulan Republic]

On that score, some good news for Democrats- Polls show both Sanders and Biden handily beating Trump:

https://newsweek.com/both-joe-biden-ber ... ws-1493436

According to a new poll, Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders would beat President Donald Trump in the general election.

The poll, which was conducted The Economist and YouGov, surveyed 1,500 U.S. adults from March 15 to March 17, and has a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points.

For the poll, the surveyed adults were asked who they would vote for if the Democratic nominee was Biden and the Republican nominee was Trump. About 48 percent of U.S. adults said they would vote for Biden, while 41 percent said they would vote for Trump. Meanwhile, 4 percent answered with "other," 5 percent said "not sure," and 2 percent said they would not vote.

In a nearly identical question, the poll asked the 1,500 adults who they would vote for if Sanders was the Democratic nominee against Trump. The results were similar as well, with 48 percent saying they would vote for Sanders and 41 percent saying they would vote for Trump. Additionally, 3 percent answered with "other," 6 percent said, "not sure" and the remaining 2 percent said they wouldn't vote.

The results of the poll comes just days after Tuesday's Democratic primaries in Florida, Illinois and Arizona in which Biden went on to win all three of those states. As of Friday, he has 1,184 pledged delegates while Sanders has 885. The Democratic primary in Ohio was originally scheduled for this past Tuesday, but it was postponed after Governor Mike DeWine ordered polling stations to be closed in an effort to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Biden also had a dominant outing during the Democratic primaries on March 10, winning five out of the six states, compared to Sanders one state.

There are still a number of other Democratic primaries for these two to compete in. But as the coronavirus continues to spread, several states were forced to reschedule their primary elections. Louisiana's primary was set to take place on April 4 but was moved to June 20; Georgia changed its primary date from March 24 to May 19; Kentucky has now scheduled its primary from May 19 to June 23; and Maryland moved its primary from April 28 to June 2.

While the two Democratic presidential nominees scored well in the The Economist/YouGov poll when U.S. adults were asked who they would vote for in the presidential election, the results became slightly different when they were asked "who do you think will win the 2020 presidential election." According to the poll, when the 1,500 U.S. adults were asked this question, 49 percent said they think "the Democratic nominee," will win. On the other hand, 51 percent said they think Donald Trump will be re-elected president.

CORRECTION 12:56 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to correct Biden's current delegate count to 1,184, from what was previously stated as 1,811.

And this poll says only 37% feel that Trump is the candidate who cares about their problems the most:

https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-america ... ares-about

But of course, as 2016 made horrifyingly clear, nation-wide support doesn't decide who wins in the American oligarchy- the support of swing voters in a handful of swing states does. However, this breakdown of 11 swing states, while a little older, ain't much better for the Donald:

https://minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/202 ... -weakness/

It’s way too soon to start overreacting to polls of November match-ups between the incumbent president and his likeliest Democratic opponents. But I just spent a couple of hours looking at such polls and was pretty dang surprised at how dire things look for President Trump whether he ends up facing Sen. Bernie Sanders or former Vice President Joe Biden.

We were forcefully reminded in 2016 that neither national poll numbers heading into Election Day nor even the final national popular vote numbers matter, compared to the outcome in the relatively few swing states.

So I spent some time looking at statewide poll numbers, as recorded and adjusted by the obsessive political number-crunchers of FiveThirtyEight.com, the site founded and run by Nate Silver. I was pretty shocked at how bad the situation looks for Trump. I certainly don’t want to preach complacency, and who knows what tricks he has up his sleeve to change things over the next eight months. But, according to the latest FiveThirtyEight.com average of state-by-state polls, focusing on an inclusive list of 11 states that are considered to be somewhat “in play” for 2020 — including six that Trump carried fairly narrowly in 2016 and five that he narrowly lost to Hillary Clinton — Biden is currently polling ahead of Trump, some narrowly and some by margins approaching 10 percentage points, in nine of those states, trailing in one, and tied in one.

Sanders is tied in two of the 11 states, trailing in one, and leading in the other by margins ranging from 2 to 10 points.

Here, per FiveThirtyEight.com, are the actual numbers, although some of them are based on polls that are a tad old. First, in the famous big-three swing states that enabled Trump to shock the world in 2016:

Pennsylvania: Biden is tied with Trump, 47-47 percent. Sanders leads Trump, 49-46.

Michigan: Biden leads Trump, 47-43. Sanders leads 48-41.

Wisconsin: Sanders leads Trump, 48-46. Biden ties Trump at 47 percent.

In Florida, which Trump carried by a little more than 1 percentage point, he now trails Sanders by a whopping 49-40 percent and Biden by an even more whopping 51-40. If Trump loses Florida, which recently passed New York to become the third most populous state, his path to 270 gets a lot harder.

In Ohio, a traditional swing state but one Trump carried by an impressive 8 percentage points in 2016, he trails Biden by 48-46 in the FiveThirtyEight.com average of recent polls, and is tied with Sanders, 47-47 percent.

In Arizona, which Trump won by 3.5 points in 2016, he trails both top Democratic contenders by 1 point in the 538 averages.

One of the shocks of the 2016 election night was that in Minnesota, which hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential nominee since 1972, Trump came within 1.5 percentage points in 2016. And he is supposedly targeting us as a potential pickup for 2020. According to the 538 averages, that won’t be easy. Biden leads him in the RCP average by a whopping 50-38 percent, and Sanders by 49-40.

Similarly, in Maine, Trump lost narrowly (48-45 percent in 2016), but now trails both Biden and Sanders by identical 52-42 margins, according to FiveThirtyEight.com.

New Hampshire was a squeaker in 2016, with Clinton edging Trump by half a percentage point. The 538 average suggests Trump is tied with Sanders there at present, 46-46 percent, and leads Biden by a within-the-margin-of-error 2 points, 46-44.

Colorado was close in 2016 (Clinton by 5 percentage points) and looks close again, but both Democrats lead Trump, Biden by 46-43, Sanders by 48-43.

Both Democrats are polling ahead of Trump in Nevada, but Sanders by a solid 52-41 percent, Biden by a margin-of-error 44-41.

The FiveThirtyEight.com general politics website is here.

A caveat about some of the data cited above. FiveThirtyEight.com relies on and aggregates the most recent reliable polling. States that are generally regarded as key swing states are much more likely to have an updated average based on recent polls. For some of those (like the best state, Minnesota), that are not yet considered major swing states, the averages may not have been updated for weeks or months.

In either case, as the Democrats get closer to a final choice of nominee, Trump will attempt to work his black magic on that candidate’s record, reputation, wardrobe and hairdo.

One politically smart friend to whom I spoke about this piece warned me that the poll ratings of either Biden or Sanders were subject to change, especially once Trump focuses his attack on that candidate. Of course, now that the field of likely nominees is down to two, Trump might start trying to savage them both or, more likely, focus his attack on the one he would rather not face. I don’t like to assume that many Americans outside the 40 percent who are already Trump loyalists are likely to be persuaded by such nonsense, but it’s possible.

Summary: Bernie does significantly better in the Midwest aside from Ohio (where Biden is marginally ahead while Bernie is tied), and does better in Nevada (where Biden is within the margin of error). Biden does better in Florida, but they're both owning Trump there (yes, even Bernie "I'm capable of admitting that literacy is good even if Castro did it" Sanders), as well as in Minnesota and Maine. They're both ahead by one point in Arizona, and by a few points in Colorado. The odd man out seems to be New Hampshire, which after going to Hillary by a hairsbreadth, is now leaning Trump if he's against Biden, and a tie if he's against Bernie.

Of course different polls show different results, and its early days yet, but this is overall very good news.

Edit: I do think its sad that probably the biggest and most influential argument for nominating Biden over Bernie, that he's "more electable", seems to be based on little empirical evidence as far as the general election is concerned. Biden is the likely nominee based in substantial part on a false assumption (that a Centrist with a long resume is inherently more electable), on misinformation, and on the resulting self-perpetuating momentum. His campaign has always been a paper tiger, one which never really had any substance, but is electable because people think he's electable.

Let's hope he can keep up the illusion through November.

[The Romulan Republic]

Some more on the internal debate in the Sanders campaign:

https://washingtonpost.com/politics/ber ... story.html

Sen. Bernie Sanders has convened a series of weighty discussions about the future of his presidential campaign with his closest confidants, according to two people with direct knowledge of the conversations, and at least three potential paths forward have come up in the private talks.

One option that has been raised: keep the campaign technically active with a goal of winning votes and accumulating delegates to the July nominating convention, but forgo attack ads aimed at delegate leader Joe Biden. Another: stay in the race and aggressively compete for the nomination. A third choice: end the campaign.

The people with knowledge of the talks spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive conversations. They cautioned that other options or nuances may also be on the table and stressed that Sanders (I-Vt.) had not made up his mind as of Friday evening. A campaign spokesman did not dispute their account.

After suffering decisive losses in three more primaries Tuesday, and standing almost no chance of catching Biden in the race for the Democratic nomination, Sanders decided to return home to Vermont to assess his future.

The senator is expected to reach a decision about the way forward in consultation with his wife and closest adviser, Jane Sanders. Campaign officials have signaled that he is not in any rush.

Outside supporters have publicly suggested a range of different options, underlining the difficult dilemma Sanders is confronting.

Larry Cohen, a close ally who helms a nonprofit aligned with the senator, is advocating that Sanders do three things: push for mail-in balloting for the remaining primaries to curb the risk to voters from the coronavirus; stay in the race to accumulate enough delegates to influence the party platform; and forge a working conversation with Biden that acknowledges that the former vice president, not him, has the path to a majority of pledged delegates.

“Just a dialogue with Biden, not attacks,” said Cohen.

RoseAnn DeMoro, a close Sanders friend and former nurses’ union head, said Sanders should not approach the race as a done deal and ought to treat a come-from-behind victory in future contests as a possibility given the volatility of the times.

“I think there’ll be openings that we don’t know” about, said DeMoro, warning that it would be foolish to concede to Biden.

But with Biden staked to a solid lead and the future of the remaining primaries in doubt, many in the party are calling for Sanders to bow out, in the name of unity and in recognition of the divisions that could deepen if he sticks around. They are eager to pivot to a general election posture against Trump and want to empower Biden to get started as soon as possible.

Biden has made entreaties to Sanders and his supporters, embracing policies the senator has championed and nodding to his youthful movement in recent speeches. Aides from the two campaigns have been in close touch over the coronavirus, officials from both sides said this week, outlining a potential path for negotiations that could lead to an exit more acceptable to Sanders.

It’s not clear he would take it, however. Sanders appears as keen as ever on using his platform to advance his own ideas about how to combat the impact of the coronavirus, as he did Friday evening when he convened a virtual discussion.

“This a moment that history will look back on and say: How did the people of the United States respond?” Sanders said in his opening remarks. He has put forward a plan that draws on his longtime calls for a universal health care system and calls for sweeping new protections for working-class people.

Those close to the senator say that in recent days he has immersed himself in finding solutions to mitigate the crisis. Many of his supporters point to the economic and public health problems arising from it as justification for the far-reaching reforms he has long advocated.

In other words, they say, it’s a moment that calls out for Sanders to stay onstage, not exit.

Some in the senator’s orbit pointed out another potential thicket: the disconnect between the officials spearheading the campaign and the legions of fans who have powered a movement that started when he rose to prominence in the 2016 campaign.

The two domains don’t always operate on the same wavelength, and in this case, some feel, there is far more passion among average supporters for him to stick around than there is among the campaign professionals around him.

At 78, Sanders might well be in his final national campaign. Unlike four years ago, when there was a clear incentive to keep running against Hillary Clinton and build a still-budding movement, he came into this race as a known entity with a proven following — making his current political aspirations less clear.

I do think that it would be a terrible error for him to go all-out attacking Biden now. Even if we imagine a miraculous last-minute turnaround for his campaign is possible, going at Biden like that will deeply damage the party going into the general election, and given everything that's happening right now, appear deeply self-serving at a time of great national and indeed global crisis. It would not save his campaign now, I think- it would just mean exiting the race on an ugly and shameful note that would leave a black mark on his legacy.

I think doing more or less what he's been doing is smart- focus on Coronavirus, use his platform in the most effective way to address that crisis, avoid going all-out to attack Biden, but push Biden however he can to adopt progressive positions. Whether he drops out before the next round of voting in a couple weeks- honestly, I think the determining factor there should be whether those states institute mail ballots or postpone their primaries. If his staying in will greatly increase the risk of people spreading and being exposed to COVID-19, then on that basis the ethical thing to do is to bow out.

[The Romulan Republic]

https://newrepublic.com/article/157007/ ... ie-sanders

In the face of a pandemic that could kill more than a million Americans, overwhelm our health care system, and tank our economy, Democratic leadership in Congress has stood firm in one demand: Let’s not get too crazy with the free stuff, guys. While members of Congress from both parties have proposed immediately stimulating the economy by sending money to Americans, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s staff confirmed that she shot down proposals to send stimulus checks without some manner of means testing getting applied to the process, because such funds “MUST be targeted” based on “need.” Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted his big blue-sky idea: Low-interest loans for small businesses. What better time for business owners staring down the barrel of pandemic precarity to take on additional debt than right now?

These baffling moves are common symptoms of Democrat Brain: Obstinately adhering to an understanding of politics shaped by no events later than 9/11; believing that singing from the right pages of the Republican hymnal, on fiscal responsibility or border security or the magical power of the free market, will earn them points with their opponents; or, worse, genuinely believing those things matter more than the crisis to which they’re meant to be responding. The mewling response from Democratic leaders made the other major political story of the week even more depressing: Another slate of primary wins for Joe Biden, the consummate centrist Democrat, all but assuring that he will be Democratic nominee for president. While Bernie Sanders hasn’t officially dropped out yet, his campaign is over.

Bernie Sanders lost the essential part of his argument: the one in which he, in particular, should be president. Sanders will turn 80 in September of next year; his days as a presidential contender are functionally over. Now his movement must reckon with the mistakes that were made in order to remain on track. There is, nevertheless, some comfort to be taken. Two successive presidential campaigns have wrought some essential changes in the political landscape. Arguments that Democrats had previously treated as either politically impossible to make or simply incorrect are suddenly viable. There’s no reason in the world to reverse course. Indeed, the present crisis suggests that doing so would be unthinkably irresponsible.

When Sanders announced his campaign for president in 2015, it was just five years after the signing of the Affordable Care Act, and only a year after the last of its provisions were implemented. The ACA was meant to provide a permanent and robust fix to health care in America; in fact, it was supposed to provide “universal” health care. This was the Obama administration’s signature achievement, crowned a “big fucking deal” by the then vice president and now presumptive nominee. It shouldn’t have been possible for a Democratic presidential contender to emerge, running on the argument that this success was not enough, that gaping wounds remained.

Sanders nevertheless ran on Medicare for All in direct response to the inadequacies of the ACA, as well as its underlying assumption that market-based health insurance was a workable and just way to provide health care. He railed against the drug and insurance companies who partnered with Obama in the passage of the ACA in order to break off their own sweetheart deals. Sanders shaped his argument outside of Beltway conventions as well. He went to Canada with diabetics who had no other way of purchasing insulin. Often, he simply asked voters what they spend on health care. Sanders helped ordinary people come to learn that they weren’t alone in these struggles. Even in an election cycle that’s run against his electoral ambitions, the fruits of these labors are evident: In every primary state in which exit polls have been conducted, majorities of Democrats consistently affirm their support for Medicare for All.

There are dozens of Sanders policies that are left-wing and bold in scope, from his climate change policies to the plan to put workers in charge of their companies. He took many unpopular-seeming positions, like giving prisoners the right to vote or instituting a moratorium on deportations. But perhaps the most significant and long-term valuable argument Sanders made—and one that seems horribly relevant now—was advocating for generous and universal, not means-tested, government programs. Sanders tells voters that health care is a human right, and his plan proposes to provide the same generous health care plan to all. When Joe Biden expresses the same sentiment, it rings false because his plan pointedly excludes 10 million Americans from its benefits. Biden has not yet ventured an explanation for why such a significant portion of the population will remain uninsured and cut off from the same level of care if he’s elected. He’s not been asked why his plan goes to the lengths it does to ensure the ability of wealthy people to continue to be able to purchase better insurance, or why his plan financially incentivizes them to do so. It is offensive to the ears to hear Biden, or Hillary Clinton, cynically co-opt revolutionary rhetoric to sell these miserly ideas. Perhaps Sanders has made it impossible to do it any other way.

Sanders’s plans to forgive all student debt and all medical debt, and to provide free college for all, regardless of income, directly challenged the Democratic orthodoxy pushed by candidates like Pete Buttigieg, who argued that the children of millionaires’ college education shouldn’t be subsidized by the taxpayer. This was a politically difficult argument to make—it is much easier to pretend that means-tested programs only hurt the megawealthy—but nevertheless, he persisted, knowing full well that the way Washington does business necessarily excludes a sizable portion of the needful population. As we face the maddening spectacle of Democratic leaders proposing to means test relief from the most sudden and damaging economic collapse in a century, Sanders deserves credit for sticking up for universal programs over the past five years.

Sanders has had to contend with his own imperfections, some of which almost certainly impeded his efforts to reach the White House. The Bernie Sanders of 2020 was much more humane and correct on immigration than any of his earlier iterations, where his rhetoric on immigration was far more shaped by concern over the wages of Americans than for the plight of immigrants themselves. On guns, Sanders belatedly supported stronger action in 2020 than he had in the past, when his record was decidedly spotty—he often contended that this was the product of representing a “rural” state. He was behind the curve on the rights of sex workers, at a time when movement on the left is toward liberalizing sex-work laws.

But Sanders proved himself able to be pushed left, even on signature issues. The Medicare for All bill he introduced in the last Congress was better and more generous than his previous one, thanks to his willingness to listen to and respond to the disability rights community, who have long pressured lawmakers to prioritize long-term at-home care for the elderly and disabled. His most recent climate change plan was broader and more ambitious than his 2016 plan: In four years, he went from calling for an 80 percent reduction in emissions by 2050, to proposing to “fully decarbonize the economy” by 2050 and “100 percent sustainable energy for electricity and transportation” in 2030. After running an unprecedentedly successful campaign as a socialist, his strengthening of the outsider left pushed his own campaign in 2020 even further left. It is a shame that environmental activists will have to expend the effort pressuring the next president to simply get in line with planetary realities when they could have been starting in the right place on day one.

Sanders’s age was often brought up as a criticism of his candidacy, but those decades of consistency made him an authentic and trustworthy advocate for left-wing policies. The current bench of left-wing candidates that will follow in his footsteps won’t be able to say that they defiantly cast a vote against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1993 or signed a Gay Pride Day proclamation in 1983. They won’t be able to take credit for opposing America’s foreign policy misadventures of the 1980s. They won’t be able to point to the way they supported nationalizing utilities in the 1970s. Sad to say, but it’s not likely we’ll ever have a presidential candidate again who was arrested for publicly protesting on behalf of black civil rights in the 1960s. The idea that young people would find his advanced age alienating clearly proved wrong; the fact that he advocated for unpopular causes decades before those positions came to be understood as correct was part of his appeal. Sanders’s history represents a kind of political capital that will be hard for his successors to capture.

But Sanders and his supporters are not the totality of the left; the left will not disappear without his presence on the political scene. And as much as his long history provided him with the bona fides necessary to lead a radical presidential campaign, he was as much shaped by the times in which he emerged as he was a shaper of those times. His unlikely presidential runs might never have been possible without the emergence of movements from the rack and ruin of the economic collapse, such as Occupy Wall Street; they might never have been sustained without other Americans—striking teachers, environmental defenders, and justice-seekers of all stripes—becoming a force in American life. These are the seeds of what will come after Sanders, the proof of his credo: “Not me, us.”

[The Romulan Republic]

Sanders campaign has raised over two million dollars for coronavirus relief:

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... ief-effort

Sen. Bernie Sanders's (I-Vt.) campaign said Saturday morning that it had raised more than $2 million in the last 48 hours for several charities that are working to combat the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S.

The money raised will go to No Kid Hungry, One Fair Wage Emergency Fund, Meals on Wheels, Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund and the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the campaign announced.

"What we've seen in the last two days is the definition of fighting for someone you don’t know," Robin Curran, the Sanders campaign's digital fundraising director, said in a statement.

"The people supporting this campaign have made more than 50,000 donations to help those most impacted by coronavirus because they understand that now more than ever it is important that we are in this together," Curran added.

There have been more than 19,600 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and at least 260 deaths, according to John Hopkins University.

[The Romulan Republic]

Interestingly, FiveThirtyEight does show some very slight movement towards Sanders lately. Its probably way too little too late as far as winning the nomination is concerned, but maybe something Bernie can point to to pressure Biden to give him something in exchange for not drawing it out to June?

A few days ago, and for some weeks' time IIRC, they had been projecting Biden as the favorite in every remaining race (Sanders' win of the Northern Mariana Islands caucus bucked this, but given its miniscule size, that's not hugely significant). However, of the next three states to vote on April fourth, Bernie is now narrowly favored (51-49) to win Hawaii again, and Wyoming and especially Alaska are looking fairly close (Alaska they give Bernie a 46% chance, Wyoming 33). Rhode Island on April 28th is looking fairly winnable too (38% odds), and Bernie's jumped a point or so in the last day or two in nation-wide support. That's not huge, not the seismic shift he needs to win the race, but it seems odd at a time when you'd expect the party to be solidifying behind Biden.

The obvious explanation, to me, is that this is a consequence of coronavirus, and the subsequent recession, demonstrating very clearly the fundamental failings of the current system in a way that is undeniable to everyone. I'm sure its the last thing Bernie's worried about when it comes to coronavirus, but had this crisis hit a month earlier, I suspect we'd be looking at presumptive nominee Sanders right now.

If this movement continues, there's Bernie's justification to stay in. Hope Hawaii/Alaska/Wyoming are going to allow mail ballots.