It is clear that Bernie Sanders is worrying the Democratic party that he might win the nomination. While the stated reason for their concern is that he is too ‘left’ to be elected, I think it goes further than that. I think they are more concerned that if he does become the nominee, he will dislodge the entrenched neoliberal control of the party. It seems like the establishment sees Barack Obama as their main weapon to stop them and are waiting for the right moment to ask him to stop progressives from gaining ascendancy, a skill that he has displayed in the past. Back in November of 2019, when Sanders’ campaign seemed to be waning, Obama seemed willing to stay out of the picture.
Publicly, he has stated that he won’t intervene in the primary for or against a candidate, unless he believed there was some egregious attack. “I can’t even imagine with this field how bad it would have to be for him to say something,” said a close adviser. Instead, he sees his role as providing guardrails to keep the process from getting too ugly and to unite the party when the nominee is clear. There is one potential exception: Back when Sanders seemed likely to be a threat than he does now, Obama said privately that if Bernie were running away with the nomination, Obama would speak up to stop him. (Asked about that, a spokesperson for Obama pointed out that Obama recently said he would support and campaign for whoever the Democratic nominee is.)
Obama has already made clear his concerns about the party going too far left, a criticism that both Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have rejected.
Democratic 2020 presidential candidates have rejected criticism from former president Barack Obama, after he warned the field of White House hopefuls not to veer too far to the left because it would alienate voters.
Though Obama did not mention anyone by name, the message he delivered before a room of Democratic donors in Washington on Friday was a clear word of caution about the candidacies of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who are seen as two of the top-tier candidates in the crowded field.
…Addressing Obama’s comments over the weekend, Sanders told a forum in Long Beach: “I’m not tearing down the system.”
“When I talk about health care being a human right and ending the embarrassment of America being the only major country on earth that does not guarantee healthcare for every man, woman and child, that’s not tearing down the system,” he said, according to the New York Times. “That’s doing what we should have done 30 years ago.”
…As for Warren, the candidate who has tried to bridge the worlds of Sanders and Obama, Obama’s relationship with Warren is famously complicated. Back in early 2015, when Warren was considering running for president and started to excite progressives, Obama said privately that if Democrats rallied around her as their nominee it would be a repudiation of him—a clear sign that his economic decisions after the Great Recession had been seen as inadequate. There are very few former senior Obama officials in Warren’s campaign.
The recent rise of Sanders just before the Iowa primary may change his calculation. Fox News is goading Obama to get involved.to stop Sanders.
It is interesting how when the Democratic front runner is a center-right politician like Joe Biden, the party establishment says that the most important thing is to quickly close ranks and unite behind the nominee so as to achieve the main goal of defeating Donald Trump. But they then become coy about this when it looks like Sanders may be the nominee.
Fox News is goading Obama to get involved.to stop Sanders. So far, he seems to be resisting the push.
Not surprising but I guess worth reporting: actual sources in Obama world are giving a collective LOL to the idea that he is considering putting out a statement warning against Bernie.
— Sam Stein (@samstein) January 23, 2020
Democratic centrists say nothing is more important than defeating Donald Trump. That’s their argument, again, for why progressives should support a centrist Democratic nominee. But it’s not like progressives suffered when Hillary Clinton lost or that they would be better off if Hillary Clinton were running for reelection today.
This is sheer insanity. Even if President Hillary did absolutely nothing but continue Obama’s policies, or just twiddled her thumbs for four years, she would be immeasurably better than the systematic destruction of the Federal government that Trump is overseeing. At the bare minimum, she would have
-maintained alliances
-allowed the EPA to protect the environment
-not attempted to allow private schools to get public money
-not left the Paris accords
-not attempted to dismantle Obamacare
The list goes on and on.
I also highly doubt she would have reversed Obama’s accord with Iran, since the only reason Trump had to do so was pettiness. And attack Russia? Really? This doesn’t even make sense as exaggeration.
The right has been dishing up vitriol about Hillary for the past three decades. Apparently it wasn’t just their own side that was eating it with a fork and spoon.
Twitter just banned, without explanation, the MSDNCNews parody account along with another lesser-known pro-Sanders parody account and a slew of ordinary Sanders supporters. (And yes--that is, in fact, an outrage irrespective of whether Twitter is a private company. Free speech is a fundamental democratic principle, it wasn’t just stuck into the Bill of Rights on some whim. Political censorship is still political censorship whether it’s being perpetrated by a government or a tech monopolist.)
“It is interesting how …..”
It’s uninteresting, because it’s exactly what I expect from a right wing party posing as centrists like the Democrats. Hence Barack Obama is not to be taken seriously anymore with his “concerns about the party going too far left”.
What do they want, nobel prizewinner crimes against humanity guy to slap Bernie with a missile?
@brucegee1962
Surely this isn’t news to you? I have seen some on the left, particularly those who engage in conspiracy theory type thinking and even more so those who are sexist on top of that, eagerly eat it up! I remember a guy I knew who was a Sanders supporters who stressed that James Comey had described Clinton as “extremely careless.” That must have come from this press release. Never mind that it also stated, in the very same sentence, that there was no evidence of intent to violate law or that, later, it noted that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring forth charges of a crime. The narrative he wanted to hear was that Clinton was careless and that’s what he focused on.
Where I’m going with this is that I see a problem with some on the left that any Democrat to the right of them is Enemy #1 and must be stopped at any cost. While I sympathize with the idea that we won’t be able to achieve real progress in this country with centrist Dems in the way, we’re also not going to achieve it if we allow ourselves to fall victim to right-wing propaganda and consequently helping to legitimize that propaganda.
Clinton was calling for the US to unilaterally impose a no-fly zone in Syria at a time when Russian aircraft were flying combat missions at the request of the recognised Syrian government. That would have been an act of war under international law. So no, it’s not an “exaggeration”, it’s an accurate description of her declared policy.
One thing Sanders and Warren and their supporters have to be careful about is that Obama is still very popular with black voters and without the black vote their chances of winning the presidency is zilch.
What the centrists haven’t figured out yet is that the number of moderate republicans they can win over is somewhere between 0 and 0. What they should have realized from DJT’s win in the electoral college is that republicans, no matter how repulsive the republican candidate, will still vote republican. The only hope for democrat victory is to get more voters out. That means improving low turnout rates in younger people that overwhelmingly support democrats. If they choose a person that can motivate people under 40 to get out and vote, guaranteed the democrats take the presidency (I have no idea if they can ever control the senate again based on the system of electing senators). If they choose a centrist, young voters won’t come out. Obama was the proof that centrists couldn’t be trusted. He bailed out banks, not people. He made temporary tax cuts for the wealthy permanent. He accelerated the surveillance state and drone killings. He spoke of hope, and delivered GWB 2.0
It’s not that they haven’t figured it out, it’s that winning elections and advancing a Democratic agenda is less important to them than maintaining their own status and position within the Democratic Party. Once again, I must refer to Jon Schwartz’s classic 2007 post on Democrats And The Iron Law Of Institutions:
[Emphasis original]
Understand this, and a great many otherwise confusing things become clear. (And not merely in American politics.) Schwartz also presents a number of recommendations as to how to leverage this principle which are well worth considering carefully. Read the whole post.
Dunc @#9,
Thanks s much for pointing me to the Schwarz article which captures sp much of my own thoughts so precisely. The link you gave is broken but I found another one here.
Thanks for the catch Mano! That’s the intended link target.
Dunc @9
Yes, thanks for the heads up (followed Mano’s link) but now I am thoroughly depressed that there is no hope for humanity