Thread by @BlueSteelDC

Why I unfollowed @Toure

We listen to punditry because the opinion is suppose to be smart and informed.

But we are 2 yrs out from 2016 and if you are asserting Bernie had you are deaf to news and impervious to facts

https://twitter.com/bluesteeldc/status/1070623508688977920

First let’s tackle Bernie’s so call appeal.
Bernie lost by 4 mil votes.
He lost more open primaries than Clinton
He lost the nonbinding primaries of Nebraska and Washington State when he won the Caucues showing more ppl voting is a problem for him @Toure

Bernie consistently lost:
African Americans
Latinos (possibly never winning more than 1 location)
Union households
Voters making under 50k
And for the small amount of data Asian households

Knowing that someone (Bernie) consistently lost w/ all these categories of voters and still consider him viable - is just being an asshole and the type of erasure that pissed POC off.

What they are saying is - if he made it to the General these ppl would be forced to vote 4 him

And that is exactly they are saying. It’s white people who have to be convinced as swing voters. POC have no choice.

We will have to vote for Bernie to have stopped Trump.

And there is so many levels of wrong - what amounts to fuckery.

In 2016 data, we have enough information to show Bernie would not have won. He had hard time w/ the actual base and although most of those voters “ would vote to stop Trump” he didn’t invoke any level of trust or competence to demonstrate high turnout. But we also know

We also know a lot of those so call “swing independents” didn’t vote for him but against Clinton.

How do we know:

They said it, exits in WV/ Indiana
They ignored similar liberal candidates. See Feingold
Bernie now polls horribly w/ this group.
In 08 Clinton won similarly

In 08, Hillary Clinton performed well with swinging independents in the late half of the primary against Barack Obama.

This is more about Sandbag who the obvious nominee is than demonstrable support for Sanders or similar candidates.

The only evidence Berners have that Bernie would have won - is how well he did with “swingy independents” in the primary. But there has been little to no support of him or similar candidates from the same group in any other electoral setting.

None

@SallyAlbright

So if you are still yammering in 2018 that he might have won in 2016 - you are dense as a stack of bricks.

Because now we have years of data to show there is no genuine support of Bernie w/ indies or swing voters.

We know now what we actually knew before.

That these voters although not a monolith tend to skew a little to a lot right.

And when they do go for Democrats it tends to be the Jim Webb or Dan Lipinski types.

They also vote more against things than for.

HRC presented a target for them but so would Bernie Sanders.

In 2018 Bernie Sanders has been up there in how often he is used in negative advertisements. And may have cost a candidate or two an election by having a close association with socialism.

Bernie doesn’t exist outside the context of running against Hillary Clinton.

He has recently spoken to empty chairs, in places like Florida, OH and Pennsylvania- those are swing states. He lost all of them in primary and those exits why were telling.

Bernie and Berners have tried to make their argument of why they should be centered in the party on the crux that they would have the broadest appeal to the white working class.

But there has been less and less evidence to support this veiled racist argument.

The 90 million white Americans without college degrees have a grievance with America.

But Bernie represents parts of those grievances. His policies even more so. publicbooks.org/the-invention-…