Thread by @AlexandraErin

This is not going to be a popular thread, but I think it needs being made.

Last night revealed or confirmed a few structural weaknesses in Bernie's campaign that, if he wins in spite of them, would also hamper his presidecy.

Indications are that Warren didn't block him so much as dilute the vote; as I thought, her voters are split pretty evenly between him and Biden/Biden's new surrogates for second choice.

So removing Warren as a factor, Bernie still underperforms while Biden overperforms.

Not at a disastrous, campaign-ending level! I want to stress that Biden hasn't won. This was the opening bell on the primary season proper. There's 2/3rds left to go.

But Biden did better.

Biden's advantage came from two main areas.

One was new voter turnout.

The other was coalition building.

Bernie did get new voters to come out, if you're one of them don't say I'm erasing them, but numbers are numbers and Bernie's just did not materialize.

Meanwhile, Biden saw the kind of surge that I think even Bernie's detractors expected of him.

And then on coalition building... the Biden camp collected endorsements from all of the recent drop-outs.

The Sanders camp got Marianne Williamson, and last night they had to stop her from tweeting right-wing propaganda.

All of this suggests the talk of Bernie having a "ceiling" (meaning it doesn't matter how fast he shoots up, he's going to run out of potential new support too fast) is not overblown.

The voters he needs to beat Biden have to come from somewhere: new voters or new converts.

But forget the campaign and imagine he wins. The nomination and the general.

Once he's in the Oval Office, to actually achieve his platform of sweeping change, he'll need to show skills that the lack of are setting him back here.

Nothing gets done in Washington without a coalition. That's not "civility", that's reality. Present circumstances to the contrary, we don't appoint a dictator. If Bernie can't build a Coalition of the Unwilling with the same sort of people endorsing his opponent...

...he'll be severely limited in what he can accomplish.

For example: he can, with an executive order, end the enforcement of federal marijuana laws, which will really help in states that have legalized/decriminalized.

But he can't decriminalize nationwide on his own.

And the more he leans on the powers of the presidency for progress, the more his progress will be like that of President Obama's: fleeting and ephemeral, leaving the people sheltered by it exposed to the vagaries of whoever comes into office next.

Bernie's legislative record is better than his worst critics suggest. He has, through negotiation and maneuvering, improved bills both good and bad to make them more progressive.

Small, slow, incremental changes.

But who's voting for that?

In the past when I've asked what's Bernie's plan for his plan, how's he actually going to get anything done from the Oval Office if he can't build coalitions with Congress, the answer I was given is: well, he's got this movement. We'll put pressure from the ground up.

And if Congress won't get with his agenda we'll primary them and vote them out, easy as that.

Last night suggests that even if there's a new wave of Justice Democrats or whatever in 2022, Bernie will still need cooperation of moderates.

And the incumbent generally loses seats in a mid-term, an effect that will be exacerbated if the progressive crowd winds up refusing to vote to re-elect the moderates they can't dislodge with primaries.

Meaning Bernie has less maneuvering room the longer he's in office.

Now, my usual caveat applies: I am not an oracle, I can't see the future, this is not set in stone. But there are political realities that I think a lot of Bernie fans are just not prepared for.

There's a reason I'm a Warren Democrat and it's I trust she has factored all this in

Which, again, if we wind up with a President Sanders, I hope all the snake emoji crowd is ready to make nice because no one is going to be more essential to actually passing anything through the Senate than she will be.

But. Back to the Sanders campaign.

Today, on here, many Sanders supporters are making a heartfelt plea to Warren supporters that goes something like:

Your vote belongs to Bernie. It's his, his, his. Why are you stealing his vote? Is it because you're evil?

And I know that Online Is Not Representative Of Everywhere and that there are an army of impassioned and trained organizers and volunteers who are knocking doors and ringing phones and texting for Bernie using tried and true tactics, not angry internet entitlement.

But by the same token that what happens on Twitter isn't representative of the whole, neither is what's happening in the semi-professional lane representative of the whole. They both are having impacts.

And honestly, organizers and volunteers notwithstanding, the message from the top down through the surrogates kind of lands on the "Why are we not winning? Didn't you people get the message? We're the winner. Something must be wrong if we're not winning." side of things.

That approach doesn't win hearts and minds, which means it doesn't win voters, which means it doesn't win votes.

It's great that Bernie is an outsider who eschews politics as usual, but, come on.

A campaign have little a politics. As a necessary tool for winning and governing.

All day yesterday I heard people saying "We vote the platform, not the person." but the person has to implement the platform and the flaws in the Sanders campaign that limited his effectiveness against Biden's rise will not disappear if he takes the White House.

People think I'm posturing to cover up a crime when I say that if Bernie can't get to a majority of delegates he shouldn't automatically be the nominee, but I'm not. That's what I think. If he can't get the majority either by appealing to voters or by making political deals...

...then he's not going to be a good president. That's the test.

If he can appeal to a majority of voters when and where he needs to in order to get to the majority before the convention, he's got what it takes to wield the power of the office.

If, failing to have appealed to enough voters to secure the nomination, he can still use the leverage of the base of support he brought with him to cut deals and make compromises and build a coalition of delegates that gets him a majority, that, too, shows he's ready for office.

And if it comes down to that... again, snake emoji Twitter had better be ready to hisstle a different tune because no one's going to be a better proxy for him on the convention floor and in the meeting rooms than Elizabeth Warren.

"But he'd only be in that situation because of her meddling!"

No. Her votes don't belong to him. They won't all go to him if she drops out.

At most one vote belongs to a given person, naturally. The rest have to be earned. Unwillingness to do this is a losing trait.

I assume that Warren's campaign has better polling on their voters' preferences than are generally public. If she can see that her dropping out would help Biden more, or both equally, that's the best possible reason for her to stay in.

In that situation, staying in until the convention means she can hand her delegates to Bernie if that helps him win, or use them as a bargaining chip for progressive concessions if he has no path to victory. He benefits from all her votes in that case, just like you want.

But if it's more of a 50-50 split and she fears a brokered convention anyway, stepping out means that she has no control over where her supporters' support goes. She can sway some with an endorsement, but I suspect Warren voters who don't already second-choice Bernie aren't fans.

And the response to all of this is usually stuff like "Well that's stupid, they should all be for Bernie, guess they're not really progressives, vote the platform not the person," and you can insist until you're blue in the face that someone SHOULD BY RIGHTS vote for your guy...

...but that's not going to convince anyone.

Anyway.

This is what worries me from last night, which otherwise I saw as overall a hopeful night. Bernie has weaknesses in his campaign.

Does this mean he loses? Not necessarily. Biden's got a load of weak spots, too.

But those weaknesses in his campaign will follow him to the White House, and... not to go borrowing trouble, but I do worry what halppens in 2024 if the movement that swept him in is disillusioned by four years of small, incremental changes and the concessions he made to get them

Anyway, I just saw in Trends that Bloomberg is out, so enough of the doomberg and gloomberg.

Just... a word more before I go.

Probably if I were to read the replies to this thread (a thing which will, under no circumstances, happen), I'd eventually find people going, "So what's the alternative?" or "And therefore you'll vote against healthcare for all and back Biden. Just say you hate poor people."

Friends, neighbors... here's where I think maybe some of you are not really ready for politics.

Where in this thread did I say there's an alternative? What makes you think having discovered a downside to a candidate means I'm done with him? Is that how you think it works?

I'm still voting for Warren if Warren is still in as of early voting in Maryland. And yes, I'll early vote for her even knowing she might drop out. (Ranked choice voting is the biggest reform the Democratic primary needs, but not the only.)

But Sanders is still my second choice.

And the circumstances of the present suggest that he is more likely to be the nominee than my first choice, that she might not be an option by the time I vote. I'm prepared to support him as my candidate, in that case.

Having identified a weakness in his campaign doesn't mean I can't support him.

More importantly, supporting him doesn't mean you can't identify weaknesses in his campaign.

Treating him as a savior doesn't help him. Doesn't help those people you want to have healthcare.

I'm hoping... hoping-hoping-hoping with all of my heart... that last night could be a wake-up call to people within and around the Sanders campaign and the messaging shifts from "He basically won before he showed up. Hey, who are all these people in his way?" to "Here's my case."

Which, I mean... Bernie himself knows how to make his case in a good way. But his supporters and surrogates talking about "rigged' and "stolen" and hissing and snake emojis and being aghast at politics undermines that in a huge way.

There was a point in the campaign at which, if you couldn't see the future (and no one could), it wouldn't have been absurd for Bernie to drop out and endorse Warren. She was up, he'd had a serious health event.

We don't know how the next three months will go. At all.

I hate to say it but I think a Biden vs. Bernie race comes down to luck. Biden's unfavorables are more unpredictable. With voters flocking to him for a perception of safety and reliability, the wrong episode at just the wrong moment could cost him critical support.

And even if they had identical platforms, or mixed platforms that I liked equally, I would prefer that Biden's fall come during the primary because if it doesn't come sooner it could come later, like, during the general election.

See again: I don't think Trump fears him.

I think Trump's preference is to face a Biden who is dropping shoes left and right and punching above his current weight class, while the Bernie wing is as enraged as possible over a "stolen" election.

I don't think Biden has the staying power.

But the Warren campaign is not standing in the way of the Bernie campaign. The Bernie campaign is standing in the way of the Bernie campaign.

Numbers suggest that Warren dropping out changes nothing except her ability to affect the outcome in July, if it's necessary.