One of the stories that I hear all the time in the mainstream media is that while Democrats are desperately want to defeat Donald Trump, they fear that the party might nominate someone who cannot beat him. The ‘Democrats are worried’ is a perennial media staple and polls suggest that it may well be true. Even the remotest possibility of a second Trump term is alarming enough to worry any sane person.
The problem with this narrative is the message that is often implicit (and sometimes explicit) is that it is a Sanders nomination that is most likely to lose, even though little evidence is given in support of this position. But when the members of the media do actually talk to ordinary voters, while many say that they want someone who is electable and have concerns on this score about Sanders, they always, always end up by saying that they will vote for the nominee, whoever it is. I have yet to hear a single person saying that they will vote for Trump if Sanders is the nominee. This news report just before the Iowa caucuses is typical.
Moderate Iowa Democrats, including those who support Joe Biden’s bid for president, say they would definitely vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders if he wins the party’s nomination, even as the Democratic Party establishment becomes increasingly concerned about the chances of a Sanders win.
“I would vote for my dead cat over Trump,” said Sandy Stanley, 71, at a Biden campaign stop in Muscatine, Iowa. Stanley said she doesn’t like Sanders but wouldn’t hesitate to vote for him if he does become the nominee.
…At a campaign stop in Muscatine on Tuesday, a reporter asked Biden, “Will the party unite behind Bernie if he’s the nominee? The whole party?”
“We have to,” Biden said, before continuing, “I’m not gonna make judgments now but I just think that it depends upon how we treat one another between now and the time we have a nominee.”
…Other moderate Democrats who are torn between supporting Biden and Klobuchar agreed that despite their disagreements with him, Sanders would definitely have their support if he wins the nomination.
“I would vote for the devil himself if he ran against Trump,” said Alison Gaynor, 66, at the University of Iowa event on Monday. “I think we learned something from last time.”
It is the members of the plutocracy who like to call themselves Democrats because they have some liberal social views, not ordinary voters, who are likely to switch allegiance to Trump if they feel that the Democratic nominee will not protect their interests, like past Democratic nominees have done. If Sanders becomes the party nominee, will they suddenly say, “Hey, Trump’s not so bad. He has some good points” to justify shifting their allegiance? It would not surprise me in the least if some of those people do because class ties are really strong, and the oligarchy has got used to having the president from either major party protect their interests.
Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has already started making the appropriate throat-clearing noises signaling such a shift, starting with the idea that Democrats should not be ‘shrill’, by which he likely means attacking billionaires like him.
“I think I might find it harder to vote for Bernie than for Trump,” he told the Financial Times in an interview published Friday. “There’s a long time between now and then. The Democrats would be working very hard to find someone who is as divisive as Trump. But with Bernie, they would have succeeded.”
He also criticized Democrats issuing warnings about the consequences of a second Trump term after his Senate acquittal, calling them “shrill.”
“Look, I am a Democrat, but they said those things in a shrill way to raise the stakes on the outcome,” Blankfein said. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable or cynical for a legislator to have said that what Trump did was wrong and showed bad character, but it was not at a level where we’re going to overturn an election nine months before the next one.”
The CEO of JPMorgan Chase Jamie Dimon (reportedly Barack Obama’s favorite banker) has issued similar warnings about Sanders and the dreaded threat of socialism..
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) each took shots at Jamie Dimon this week after the JPMorgan Chase CEO derided socialism as something that leads to “eroding society.”
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, two self-described Democratic socialists, pointed to the $700 billion Wall Street bank bailout lawmakers passed in response to the 2008 financial crisis to argue that Dimon’s stance was hypocritical.
“That’s funny. Jamie Dimon seemed fine with corporate socialism when his bank got a $416 billion bailout from American taxpayers,” Sanders tweeted on Wednesday, echoing criticism he’s made before.
Ocasio-Cortez added on Thursday that she was going to save Dimon’s comments for “the next time Wall Street asks for a $700 billion bailout from the federal government.”
…“I didn’t hear Jamie Dimon criticizing socialism when Wall Street begged for the largest federal bailout in American history,” Sanders tweeted last July.
What is most bizarre is when some voters say that they think Michael Bloomberg (!) is the most electable person against Trump. Nathan J. Robinson exposes the sheer lunacy of this position and says that you could make a much stronger argument that Bloomberg is the least electable. Robinson argues that Bloomberg is likely to alienate vast droves of people who are likely to sit out the election because he represents the very things they hate and it would be just too much.
If you thought Hillary Clinton turned off the Democratic base, consider just how much worse Bloomberg would be. It’s one thing to tell leftists they have to hold their nose and vote for a centrist liberal like Clinton. Most of them will, but some of them will vote third-party or won’t show up. But what about telling them to hold their nose and vote for a Republican billionaire who bought the nomination and has a long record of racist and sexist remarks? Many millions of people will find a Bloomberg nomination a huge slap in the face. They will be outraged to have their values treated as insignificant. They will resent being told to shut up and rally behind some rich asshole who thinks he can buy their support. They will not only refuse to vote for Michael Bloomberg, they will do so proudly, because by doing so they will show that they can’t be bought or cajoled. It will feel good to defy the party’s demand that they swallow their vomit and vote for whoever has the most money.
How many voters will be like this? I am not sure, but I think it will be far larger than the number who voted for Jill Stein over Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton was far more palatable to people on the left than Michael Bloomberg, and far more obviously better than Trump.
Krystal Ball also attacks the idea that Bloomberg is the most electable.
CNN – New Day – 2/20/2020
6:09pm@krystalball(Sorry about the seemingly random zoom at the end plus the black bar at the bottom, I'm boxing out pop-up Trump ads as I copied this from YouTube this time) pic.twitter.com/REulJubIkl
— J̶O̸N̶ (@Bern4Bern) February 20, 2020
But as Sanders keeps doing well, the panic is becoming more palpable.
In this video clip Eddie Glaude, chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, makes the excellent point that if Sanders becomes the Democratic nominee, it will be a real test for all those people who have been making the case that Trump is a real emergency that requires everyone to get behind the Democratic nominee, whoever it might be (even Bloomberg), and work hard to get that person elected president. It will expose if they really believe that and support Sanders or were only saying that assuming that some establishment-friendly milquetoast like Joe Biden or Bloomberg or Amy Klobuchar or Pete Buttigieg would be the nominee. (You can see when someone is becoming desperate about Sanders’ rise because they start making the most ridiculously extreme charges. The bald guy at the end says things so outlandish that even the panel moderator has to call him out on it and ask him to dial it back.)
I think this is why many Dems who oppose Sanders will ultimately come around. Either Trump is an emergency or he's not. https://t.co/SvFWFhK808
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) February 20, 2020
Meanwhile, New York Times columnist David Brooks, a bellwether of establishment thinking, seems to be all but conceding that he thinks Bernie Sanders will get the nomination. Since he also thinks that Trump will lose the general election whoever the Democratic nominee is, he goes into damage control mode to burnish the image of the very class he belongs to that has driven the country into an abyss.
David Brooks, in today’s NYT column predicting with thinly disguised panic that Bernie will be the Democratic nominee, definitively proves that he does not know what a “myth” is: https://t.co/MDLZWbJP2m pic.twitter.com/vgZsnxobTI
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 21, 2020
Tonight’s Nevada results will be interesting in the light of this week’s events. There will be another debate in the coming week.
Bloomberg is apparently not contesting in the Nevada ballot or in next Saturday’s South Carolina primary, staking everything on a massive ad blitz in the many Super Tuesday contetsts on Tuesday, March 3.
I know a few Republicans and right-leaning centrists who voted for Trump, but are so fed up with him now that they might be tempted to vote for a centrist Dem. I also know anecdotally that there are plenty of “change voters” out there who will vote for whomever they think will shake up the system the most. I have no idea which group is larger in the swing states, but I do note that candidates who ran against the status quo seem to have done pretty well in most contests except for 2004, so I’m guessing the change voters have the edge. I wish I could be certain of that, though.
I’m in a Super Tuesday state with an open primary and no Republican contest, so theoretically, all the Republicans could show up on March 3 and vote for their favorite Democrat. (Hopefully Donald Trump has squashed “strategic voting” forever — that is, voting for whichever candidate you think will be easiest to beat. I know a few Democrats who did this in the Republican primary four years ago, and now are Very Sorry.) So I hope that anti-Trumper Republicans do show up and vote for whichever candidate they think would do the best job, even if it’s a centrist. If Sanders still wins in open primary states where cross-party voters have a chance to vote against him, that ought to answer the question of his overall electability decisively, I think.
Incidentally, I don’t know about the “massive Bloomberg ad blitz” in Super Tuesday states. I haven’t seen any political ads for him yet (or anyone else either, for that matter). I don’t watch much commercial tv, but then, who does these days? I don’t do any social media, either — maybe that’s where they are? I don’t use ad blockers online and frequently visit political sites, but still…nothing.
I live in the NYC area and have for several decades. I knew about both Trump and Bloomberg long before they had any national aspirations. NYC has a reputation for being “liberal,” but it has a history of loving right-wing egotistical bullies, e.g., Giuliani, and voting them into office if they have half a chance. The fact that he’s a liar and a scam artist and a cheat just makes him more “lovable,” apparently. I wonder how many people outside the USA Northeast voted for Trump because they weren’t familiar with what he really is.
If it came down to Trump vs. Bloomberg, I think I’d probably hold my nose and vote for Trump. Bloomberg has the same bigotries and inhumanity as Trump, but I fear he would be far more effective at implementing them (Trump’s incoherence is the closest he comes to having a redeeming quality.) I suspect a lot of us feel that way.
If it came down to Warren or Sanders, I’d definitely vote Democratic.
If it came down to Buttegieg or Biden, I don’t know. I suspect if either of them won, they’d do what Obama did — maintain his predecessor’s policies while claiming he wasn’t.
Bloomberg is running a massive TV campaign in Texas. His ads are everywhere. Personally, I’d rather vote for an actual toad over Bloomberg, but if he somehow gets the nomination, I’ll hold my nose yet again and vote for a Democrat I don’t like.
If it came down to Trump vs. Bloomberg I am serious considering sitting out. I would not vote for Trump, but I’m also not going to vote for a damn billionaire who is trying to buy the election. I’ve been a long-time, card-carrying, Democrat. I’ve served for twelve years as an Township Trustee, running as a Democrat.
I’m not all that enthused about Sanders, but I would vote for him if he’s the nominee. I just don’t believe he will be very effective in working with even a Democratic controlled congress. But Bloomberg turns my stomach.
Bloomberg is apparently not contesting in the Nevada ballot or in next Saturday’s South Carolina primary, staking everything on a massive ad blitz in the many Super Tuesday contetsts on Tuesday, March 3.
As a non-USian this sounds bizarre. Are we sure Rube Goldberg did not design the Us electoral system?
@6, if only Rube had invented our electoral system, it may be convoluted, but at least every component would carry a distinct function. It is an ugly rotten mess. I would love a single national primary for parties in November, vote in December for the candidates on a recognized national holiday (to minimize lame duck time), and have the entire thing done with 28 days time.
That would be a sensible, non-massively time wasting exercise. We could focus on candidate plans instead of all the trite horserace drama. US politics is just the absolute worst.
Allison @3:
Bloomberg has one thing positive over Trump: He actually accepts that we are in (still early stages) of a climate crisis. No idea what he plans on doing about it, but he won’t be just ignoring it.
jrkrideau @6
Sam N @7
LOL!
I could eagerly vote for either Sanders or Warren. I can’t imagine that any other candidate would do anything at all about what I think our main goal should be: moving away from oligarchy.
I could hold my nose and vote for anyone other than Bloomberg. I couldn’t possibly vote for Trump since he obviously has no agenda larger than himself; but if Bloomberg is the Democratic nominee, I might consider abstaining as an option…not a very attractive one, but I’d be thinking about it. It’s possible that Bloomberg might be marginally better than Trump as regards some social issues, at least in public.
This is Bigger than Bernie. Most Dems would vote for a lawn chair if he/she could be Trump. There is validity to the concern that his Socialist past would be used against him. An equal concern is that we don’t pick up enough Senate seats if Bernie is the Candidate. Whether we like it or not, the middle of the country, both Dems and GOP alike are conservative. If you vote for Bernie in the primaries, then you are voting for Trump and whatever GOP Senate seats up for grabs to win. By the way Bernie is as establishment as they get. Look at his voting record. He only voted the way Vermonters leaned so he could keep his job.