That poll isn’t of Democratic primary voters specifically, so a lot of the result amounts to the obvious “Republicans are less likely to be Bernie Sanders supporters”.
The content of that post also characterizes the “Berniebro” meme in terms of the views held by Sanders (“the idea that Bernie speaks only to and for white bros”), which doesn’t seems like how that phrase was used to me, I’d thought it was about the motivation of a particular group of Sanders supporters.
Woof, this is McArdle-level of bad take on some random poll numbers.
The problem was never Bernie’s favorables–I would have been more than happy to vote for Bernie, or whoever the Democratic nominee would have been, because I think highly of most all of them. The problem was some portion of Bernie’s fans who weren’t going to vote for anybody but Bernie, and throughout the primary were very glib with false equivalencies between Clinton and Trump. It didn’t take long for people to notice that many of those making the most dramatic arguments also happened to enjoy a level of privilege that would insulate them from the worst deprivations of Trump rule. And when we talk about tendencies of privilege, we’re talking about whiteness, masculinity, and class, right? It’s not always all of those working at the same time, but most of the time there’s a high correlation with one of those ideological poles.
On top of that, you have media that amplifies the voices of those same privileged classes, so you had this inadvertent harmony where the Bernie-or-Bust dramatics rhymed with the persistent grinding misogyny of your Halperns, Lauers, Cillizas, down to self-styled web “underdogs” like Cenk Uygur. Yes, even the web, filled with small fish, manages to replicate the same structures of privilege that you see in old media silos, elevating the voices of mediocre white dudes for some truly awful 2016 hot-takes.
I present to you: the ne plus ultra of BernieBros, Walker Bragman
Mr Bragman, who hails from the Hamptons, made this sort of claim from false equivalency over a series of articles for Slate, before taking a position at Paste under politics editor Shane Ryan. Is it gauche to acknowledge the many overlapping privileges that Walker Bragman and Shane Ryan have as rich white dudes hailing from New York resort towns, or should I just let you Google them yourselves and cringe at their remarkable similarities? Dudes like this are all over media and journalism, because they can afford to lose money chasing their bliss, speaking truth to power while being in complete denial about the level of privilege that was required to get them there.
The point is, there’s a class of Bernie supporters that could afford to set the bar as high as their conscience led them, who deployed a lot of toxic rhetoric in the primary, and were reluctant to follow Sanders in his inevitable endorsement. The record is pretty clear who these people are, using Killer Mike as a shield is only going to get you so far.
Jeez, another shitty writeup from BB.
‘Most viable Democratic candidate’? But the poll actually explicitly asks “Would you be inclined to vote for Bernie Sanders for president, or not?”
The answer is a 39% yes, 55% no.
The highest count is for Joe Biden, at 48% yes, 44% no.
Bernie Bros generally refer to people who like Sanders but hate the other democrats. Sanders support is high amongst black people and women because those people are more likely to be left wing - but those people tend to like Clinton and other democrats as well. If you put Sanders favourables relative to Trump unfavourables, you’ll see that if you are unfavourable to Trump, you are much more likely to to like Sanders if you are white and/or male.
So “Latinx” is that a gender inclusive Latino/Latina term? I do not think I have seen it before (or possibly I have seen but not registered).
Yes, it’s used to avoid dealing with gendered pronouns and has become fairly popular in the last two years.
The flip side is there’s also a class of people that intersect with support for Bernie (and Trump) that is at the opposite end of the scale: they were drowning under Obama, they’re drowning under Trump, and they would have been drowning under Clinton. Some had hope Bernie could change the system and save them, but the next best alternative is that Trump would burn it all down.
News flash, most Clinton supporters would have been happy with Bernie Sanders and vice versa. This is what this poll is showing.
Why the fuck are we litigating this again.
And no, neither Sanders nor Clinton should run for 2020.
The problem is not supporting Sanders. The people who supported Sanders and then figured that Clinton is equivalent or worse than Trump, though, they are either idiots, or racist sexist scumbags.
With the primary political victims being women of all races and people of color, primarily. It’s nice to have apocalyptic fantasies when one isn’t going to be the one most effected by it. It’s much harder to do the work of getting people elected who will make positive change in the world. That’s a long process that doesn’t always bear fruit right away.
In short, people who voted for trump because he would “burn down the system” STILL voted for an out and out racist and misogynist, so they clearly don’t care about those issues enough to vote against them. It might be a calculated vote on their part, but it certainly puts their priorities very plainly out in the open.
Fuck, we don’t need Joe Biden as the 2020 candidate.
Right, such polls at this point are utterly pointless, because the candidate the dems want and need really should be someone with a big number in the Don’t Know column.
Exactly. What the heck has Trump actually “burned down” except the rights of the vulnerable?
Okay, so, I voted for Bernie in the primaries, but I still say the needed to call out the assholes in his base. Especially after the primaries.
Why is only Bernie being held to that standard? He’s not. Does Trump need to call out the racist, sexist loudmouths in his voter base? Of course he does! We just rarely get around to mentioning that, because saying that he needs to stop being a racist, sexist loudmouth himself gets in the way of it.
As others have noted, it’s not a clear cut situation. It’s clear that Sanders resonated with people who weren’t rich across the demographics. It’s really a problem of managing progressive dudebro-types that try to steer the conversation and activism toward them (many times I’ve seen this in supposedly trans-friendly “allies” that I just don’t bother talking to such people anymore…). They’re a minority but they’re a very enabled and powerful minority. So it’s better to take them to task when they (before is preferable) start crap then let them run amok.
As if the rounding up of undocumented wasn’t bad enough under obama, it’s intensified under trump and he’s reversed popular policies under immigration.
I suppose they are right that Trump is revealing the brutality of the system, but if people didn’t know all that already, where have their heads been all this time?
That’s a broad category. Every example I come up with involves exploiting or persecuting something vulnerable, whether a person, a group, a resource, or the environment. His administration is evil.
Assholes in every base. What about BERNIE makes his special.
is it about bernie at all? Honest question!
I just said, everyone needs to call out the assholes in their base. Bernie’s are special because his assholes wouldn’t have been a problem if he had won the primary. He didn’t, and they kept being assholes about Clinton, indirectly aiding a Trump victory. Bernie didn’t call them out. I think his spokesperson said he didn’t want to because it was a “movement” and not something he was a leader of, or some other bullshit.
If Clinton’s supporters had helped tank Bernie in a general election, and she did nothing about it, I’d be mad at her too. That didn’t happen though.
I’m not so sure why you’re so opposed to the idea anyway. I don’t hate Bernie, but he could have done better here. Why get so worked up over saying someone could have handled something better? Is it so wrong to suggest someone manage their base? Is it so terrible to hold candidates we believe in to a higher standard than others?
I’m really just hoping there’s some fraction of those 62 million Trump voters that are in a really bad situation and will be aware of how bad their decision was by the next election.
BTW: the original source and key promoter of the “Bernie Bro” smear appears to have been David Brock. Who was also the source of the “little bit nutty, little bit slutty” attack on Anita Hill.
I have not seen anything to contradict it originating in late 2015 from Robinson Meyer.
