I can’t blame Sanders for fulfilling a demand among them. Progressive and liberal Millenials were fed up with beigist Boomer Dems pushing Third-Way economic policies that may have worked in the 1990s but were clearly outmoded by 2008.
After that, Millenials understandably favoured Dems who (at least superficially) distanced themselves from the Boomer generation (Obama was born on the cusp of the Boomer/Gen X divide and acted more like the latter than the former) or older Silent generation types like Sanders who at least told them the truth that Boomers wouldn’t: that they were screwed if the Dems continued business as usual. I’m glad he’s continuing to speak up for them, especially since Clinton and her DNC cronies have gone silent now that their votes aren’t needed for another four years (I’d say two years, but the Dem establishment consistently drops the ball on mid-term youth GOTV efforts).
So it’s no surprise that a lot of Millenials chose to vote Green or stay home, given that the DNC was only willing to support a candidate offering more corporate-friendly and Middle-Eastern adventurism business as usual. Yes, some of the Bernie Bros were arseholes in how they rejected Clinton, but that doesn’t mean her failure to connect with the needs of Millenials didn’t happen.
The problem is that they weren’t interested enough to vote for Bernie in the first place (and let Clinton win), let alone vote for the candidate who supported their values far more than Trump.
What the fuck are they going to do, help Stein grift more and continue to not vote to win back congress?
They need us and we need them, when they stop spitting on the DNC they can come up with acceptable inclusion. Or continue stamping their feet looking for blood instead of change?
I spent ~14 hours caucusing for Bernie, I want more than “hahahaha fuck YOU Shillary” from the persons who claim to support Bernie but aren’t willing to do much beyond Internet forum hit & runs.
Yeah. The thing works across both parties. During the 1990s and until recently, one of Wisconsin’s senators was Herb Kohl (of Kohl’s chain money). He famously ran on the slogan “nobody’s senator but yours” on the grounds that he took no money from anyone being rich enough to finance his own campaigns. While he was a reasonable center-left Democrat, it kind of bothered me that he thought his wealth was a positive selling point.
Don’t forget the AP called the election the night before six states voted, of which one very easily could have tipped the scales. (Not disagreeing that voter turnout needs to improve, just pointing out another factor).
Voter turnout, especially among younger people, is a larger problem. The Dems can’t rely on every politician having Obama’s youthful charisma to get a 2008-style turnout, nor can they take it for granted (as they have for a few decades) that young people with automatically turn out to vote for any Dem candidate they offer, or show up at the polls at all.
It’s not what the Millenials are going to do in 2018 and 2020, it’s what the DNC has to do to give their concerns equal weight with those of people over age 55. Until the DNC wises up it deserves to be spit on by Millenials who see the contempt that Boomer establishment Dems have for them.
The good news is, in 8 years age demographics will leave the DNC with no choice but to wise up if it wants to survive. The bad news is, by that time enough damage will have been done to our democratic institutions that it will be too late. If we want to reduce that timeframe, Sanders and the younger progressives he’s bringing into the party (e.g. Tim Canova, Tulsi Gabbard) have to be listened to now.
I find it concerning that Pramila Jayapal has only just been elected and she’s already been elected one of the vice chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Are the Dems really that short of progressives? (Along with two other Rep-Elects)
[quote=“daneel, post:95, topic:90572, full:true”]
Are the Dems really that short of progressives? (Along with two other Rep-Elects)[/quote]
Yes they are, at least at the senior level. But as long as they have candidates who can convincingly say “lemme tell you kids about the '60s, ma-a-an” the party establishment can believe it’s still one big love-in, even if those same flower-child candidates decided to join the DLC in tacking the party to the right after Reagan.
Some Boomer Dems get it: Warren, Franken, Jayapal, etc. But they still don’t have real power to push the DNC where it needs to go.
Did we watch the same election? Sanders (to the consternation of many of his supporters) gracefully conceded at the convention and immediately began vocally endorsing Clinton in no uncertain terms. He also, quite vocally and frequently, strongly discouraged his supporters against voting third party.
It’s telling how you completely relinquish Clinton herself and her campaign of any responsibility for winning them over (which she missed literally every single opportunity to do, opting to instead insult and belittle them, personally and through her surrogates). White sexist naive basement-dwelling spoiled-millenial Bernie Bros. ring a bell?
This is the silver lining of Trump winning. If the Dems were in power for the next 4 years, the results in 2018 and 2020 could have been truly awful. Assuming there’s still a country in 2020, and they sort their act out, they might be well-placed.
Don’t get your hopes up, the fact that a candidate has to win in the EC and cater to the quirks of a very disparate populace has guaranteed it for most elections, and there’s no real way to fix this. The left in the US get bothered by centrists, but they’re also a small minority (and one with a flaky history of getting to the polls), and candidates have to figure out how to get ~50% of the voting populace not %15. There’s no one that can’t be a lesser evil in that situation to some significant segment of the populace. Bernie might (or might not) be your hero, but to many potential Dems voters (the majority of whom voted against him in the primaries) he’d be a lesser evil.
“One of the things I’m trying to do,” Sanders said, “is to figure out a way to radically transform the Democratic Party from a party led by a liberal elite to a party led by working people and young people and people who really want to transform society.”
Did I miss Sanders actually JOINING the Democratic Party?
Until we have something other than first-past-the-post voting, any third candidate will be a ‘spoiler’ and likely guarantee the election of the candidate his followers would least like to see.
I sent a letter to Jayapal mid-November (I voted for her), and told her I expected her to hold the line and refuse to compromise—or even cooperate. I think my letter made all the difference.
Essentially, Sanders is saying that for Democrats, identity politics is a settled matter. They are pro-diversity - race, gender, sexual orientation, all of these things matter. That’s a given for the party, and Sanders thinks it’s correct.
What isn’t settled is the idea of being pro-prole. The “liberal elite” has been able to get away with an economic agenda that actively injures folks aren’t among the economically powerful, they’ve been able to slowly abandon strong Labor practices and anti-monopolist sentiment and they’ve been more able to cater to banks and moneyed interests.
That’s ended with Hillary Clinton losing against Donald Trump. That’s the hard part, in Sanders’s message: getting back to those things that lead us away from the Great Depression, toward the New Deal, that’s the work to be done within the party.
Because that’s what’s going to win or lose elections, now. The povs are speaking louder. There’s more of them. They aren’t going anywhere. And they can’t stomach the idea of someone who does business as usual in office - even if the alternative is Brexit or Trump or some other monstrosity.
So they don’t get set aside. They don’t go anywhere. It’s not a zero-sum game: you can care about race and gender and class and sexual identity and everything else all at once (the educated folks call that INTERSECTIONALITY). The message gets broader.
