Bernie Sanders announces 2020 presidential campaign

Regarding age: more young people voted for sanders than voted for Clinton or Trump combined. By a lot.

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See what I mean about relitigating 2016?

THAT DOESN’T MATTER.

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And…?

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Who died and made him the standard against whom everyone gets measured? Oh - that’s right - he’s the white guy progressive.

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And I was looking for this information from someone who put it a bit less acerbically, but, in the meantime, this will do…

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Pragmatism isn’t “ageism.”

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Sanders running in 2020 is not about swaying the conversation and ensuring progressive ideas are heard. It’s about raising old, tedious, toxic, pointless arguments about exactly what happened in 2016. It always comes back to that. The usual suspects have already jumped on that bandwagon.

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well, yes. i agree.

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Well, to be fair, neither does the executive branch if the president is incapacitated. If he dies, the Vice President steps in. When Kennedy was shot, it was a shock, but Johnson was sworn in on the flight back to DC and there was a smooth transition, where he even pushed effectively for Kennedy’s platform. Even if Sanders was sick, the Veep can act as a stand in while he can’t do the work.

Not saying we shouldn’t think about age, but that saying that there aren’t measures that ensure smooth operations just isn’t accurate.

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Or 40+ years of neoliberalism, hand-wringing and racist compromise from the Democratic Party. Let’s drop the narrative that Bernie’s impact came down to white dudes, please. When I saw him in Albany, the crowd was by far the most diverse I’ve ever seen in politics. It’s really dismissive of all of the truly progressive voices that championed him. And, honestly it’s basicaly a Fox News screen tactic meant to build a binary narrative around HRC. “Look, this other white guy is preaching populist rhetoric, too!”

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truth. he draws a far more diverse crowd than he’s given credit for.

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Sorry - questioning why the white dude has to be the standard when you have very progressive women in the race is valid. It’s no longer the default that should be assumed a priori.

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Here’s what I want to think:

It’s a luxurious space we are in… the majority of the country already knows that it’s not going to vote for Trump (his high-octane racist base will still die on that hill, of course, but I don’t know that they’re enough to give him another win). So we’re almost definitely not getting Trump: Part II.

Now it’s just a matter of which progressive/sane candidate we’re going to move forward with, and that could even end up being another Republican… though personally I hope not.

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The reason why Sanders supporters (at least, a lot of very visible ones) are fucking toxic to the party is that they cannot conceive of the possibility that people who genuinely dislike Sanders exist and deserve respect. People who think Sanders didn’t do enough are entitled to their opinion and the democrats need their vote. Sanders, if he wins the primary, needs their vote - and he has to earn it.

2020 does not need to alienate Hillary’s voters by calling them ‘astroturfer worms’.

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Well you seem to have no problem alienating progressives.

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wow. “An already excellent field…” I would say Gabbard is good, Warren is ok, and all the rest of them are fucking awful. It’s pretty clear that the party apparatchiks have already crowned Harris, and it’s pretty clear that they would rather have Trump win again than lose control of their party machine to someone like Gabbard or Sanders, and we need someone to fight that.

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Bernie is the best situated to win against Trump. It was true in 2016 and it is true in 2020. He appeals to the “real” America. If he and Warren team up, they’ll be unstoppable.

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We have measures to ensure a relatively smooth transition of power if the president dies unexpectedly or becomes completely incapacitated.

What we are far less prepared for is a scenario in which the President becomes physically unable to serve for weeks or months at a time due to health reasons, or even worse a scenario in which the President suffers a significant but gradual cognitive decline that he may not be ready to recognize or acknowledge. When do we decide it’s time to take away the car keys? How could we separate such a decision from partisan politics?

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Clinton voters will get in line and support Sanders. It doesn’t matter if you dislike him. You will vote for him over Trump.

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The issues are what matter, as well as who stands the best chance to get in office and to push them through. There will be several well-spoken, legitimately electable candidates who are clearly in the Progressive camp. We should all be very reluctant to start nit-picking on minor differences in the usual circular firing squad kind of way. Bernie doesn’t own the Progressive position by himself any more. And the Party is already on board.

True that.
I love her. I hope she uses her newfound influence smartly.

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