his campaign's tactic was to hold his base (these northern white liberals), sweep the states in the north and then do as best as he could by trying to chip away at black voters in the southeast and hispanic voters in the southwest.
i stated from the start that this would fail, especially in the southeast, and that he should have been focusing more on trying to get turnout up amongst white voters in the midwest. he would also then need to find a way to split the vote in the southeast, because they were never going to support him. to be clear: my argument was never that bernie shouldn't want these voters' support. obviously, there's a lot of delegates there, and it would help to not get routed in the south. it's also useful to build an inclusive movement. i even argued that he shouldn't give up on the south entirely. rather, my argument was that bernie had absolutely no fucking chance in hell at succeeding in convincing these people to vote for him, no matter what he did, because they don't support his policies, and they don't like jews. by continuing to focus on the south, despite their repeated rejection of him, he was acting like an obsessive ex-boyfriend that won't take no for an answer.
the sanders campaign ignored my advice, and decided to put all of it's resources into trying to win the south, thereby abandoning the voters that vaulted him into the spotlight, and gave him a chance at a run. to use punk rock terms, what bernie sanders really did in his strategy was sell out - he turned on his hardcore fans to try to build a mainstream audience. as is so often the case, this backfired. badly. and, now we're waiting patiently for a disaster in michigan that will functionally end his political career.
he barely got 50% in vermont. if they can primary him, they will.
in the later stages of the campaign, i began to realize that his neglect of these northern voters had actually opened up serious liabilities in the viability of his campaign, as he was losing tons of support to klobuchar, to warren and most notably to buttigieg. i wondered out loud if he was sure he was going to carry vermont - and he did, but not very convincingly.
the sanders campaign ignored my advice, and decided to put all of it's resources into trying to win the south, thereby abandoning the voters that vaulted him into the spotlight, and gave him a chance at a run. to use punk rock terms, what bernie sanders really did in his strategy was sell out - he turned on his hardcore fans to try to build a mainstream audience. as is so often the case, this backfired. badly. and, now we're waiting patiently for a disaster in michigan that will functionally end his political career.
he barely got 50% in vermont. if they can primary him, they will.
in the later stages of the campaign, i began to realize that his neglect of these northern voters had actually opened up serious liabilities in the viability of his campaign, as he was losing tons of support to klobuchar, to warren and most notably to buttigieg. i wondered out loud if he was sure he was going to carry vermont - and he did, but not very convincingly.
but, none of the other candidates really took off - the vote was splitting up, dramatically. he was getting exactly the split in the south he needed, too. by sheer luck, sanders was still ahead - despite following a hopeless strategy of abandoning his base and carrying out outreach to people that don't like him, and barely getting a third of the vote much of anywhere. it seemed like he was going to win big last tuesday, by sheer bullshit luck.
a series of events happened at the last minute that created a very volatile election on super tuesday, one that i'm not convinced of the fairness of. i feel like we got overwhelmed by a sneaky magician, that this is all sleight of hand. the results are too compact, too clean. it looks like the kind of bullshit election you see come out of russia. but, one thing is apparent from the polling that led up to the vote - sanders' strategy was a catastrophe, and i was right to criticize him for it.
we can't know for sure if abandoning the southeast to focus on building a coalition of white "liberals" and southwestern hispanics (along with young people everywhere) would have been a better strategy - the experiment wasn't done. i can make my case that it made more sense, and was more likely to lead to victory for a candidate like sanders that has essentially no appeal to southern blacks, but nobody can be sure that it was a better path. somebody would have to try it and see if it works or not.
a series of events happened at the last minute that created a very volatile election on super tuesday, one that i'm not convinced of the fairness of. i feel like we got overwhelmed by a sneaky magician, that this is all sleight of hand. the results are too compact, too clean. it looks like the kind of bullshit election you see come out of russia. but, one thing is apparent from the polling that led up to the vote - sanders' strategy was a catastrophe, and i was right to criticize him for it.
we can't know for sure if abandoning the southeast to focus on building a coalition of white "liberals" and southwestern hispanics (along with young people everywhere) would have been a better strategy - the experiment wasn't done. i can make my case that it made more sense, and was more likely to lead to victory for a candidate like sanders that has essentially no appeal to southern blacks, but nobody can be sure that it was a better path. somebody would have to try it and see if it works or not.
but, it should be clear that i was absolutely right to criticize the strategy that he took, which has failed horribly.
and, i will have nothing but vicious and brutal criticism for joe biden, moving forward. i will not form a common front behind a neo-liberal candidate. i will not back the party. i will not fall in line.
and, i will have nothing but vicious and brutal criticism for joe biden, moving forward. i will not form a common front behind a neo-liberal candidate. i will not back the party. i will not fall in line.
