Starker on 5/3/2020 at 10:59
Hmm...
Quote:
(
https://www.newsweek.com/voter-turnout-higher-2016-all-super-tuesday-states-one-despite-young-voters-sitting-out-1490595)
Former Vice President Joe Biden's successful night in the Super Tuesday Democratic primaries was helped by high voter turnout, which exceeded 2016 levels in every age group except for young people.
Turnout was higher overall in every state except for Oklahoma, but the percentage of voters who were 17 to 29 years old was lower than in 2016. Senator Bernie Sanders does particularly well with younger voters, and the lack of turnout for the group likely contributed to his underwhelming results. Conversely, younger voters are the group who favor Biden the least.
In some states narrowly won by Biden, youth turnout decreased from when Sanders faced former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton four years earlier, according to exit polls. Young voters made up 20 percent of the electorate in Texas in 2016, but only 15 percent in 2020. In Massachusetts, the group dropped from 19 percent to 16 percent.
The Sanders campaign was said to be developing a plan to encourage college students to vote despite possibly being on spring break when the next batch of six states have their say on March 10. The senator also acknowledged that the underwhelming youth turnout had not helped him on Super Tuesday.
"Have we been as successful as I would hope in bringing young people in? And the answer is no, we're making some progress," said Sanders at a press conference Wednesday.
"But historically everybody knows that young people do not vote in the kind of numbers that older people vote in," Sanders added. "I think that will change in the general election. But to be honest with you, we have not done as well in bringing young people into the political process. It is not easy."
[...]
Quote Posted by Pyrian
They'll attack Biden over this, Sanders over that. They'd attack a turnip for secretly being a fruit.
Oh, I'm sure they will, but which one will fire up the crowds more and stoke more hatred? With Clinton they reaped the benefits of the GOP trying to destroy her for 30 odd years. Compared to her, Biden projects an image of a goofy lovable grandpa. Of course, I might be quite wrong in this, but it seems to me Biden is much more immune to the sorts of attacks that would cast him as an evil mass murderer or a pedophile satanist or whatever they come up with. With Bernie, they'll compare him to Stalin and whatnot and demand he apologise for the crimes of communism.
Starker on 5/3/2020 at 16:40
Elizabeth Warren is apparently planning to drop out: (
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-drops-out.html)
Only three candidates left in the race now. Don't get me wrong, I like Warren, but I can't see it as anything else but a good thing for the Democrats. Her candidacy would accomplish little else but hurt one of the frontrunners when she could be supporting them instead, and a long drawn out fight will only serve to exhaust the eventual nominee.
Tony_Tarantula on 5/3/2020 at 17:01
Milwaukee in july:
Inline Image:
https://i.postimg.cc/0jqNc9M7/Bernie-Antifa.jpgQuote Posted by catbarf
At the very least he's going to have absolutely no enthusiasm among younger voters. From his condescending attitude towards the economic struggles of millennials/gen z to his characterization of game developers as 'little creeps', I've never seen a candidate so perfectly represent the out-of-touch boomer stereotype.
But hey, a platform of 'not Trump' worked so well last time, might as well give it another go.
For a moment, try mentally inhabiting the brain of a Democrat Political Strategist:
"Last time we actually won because Hillary won the popular vote! This time we've got some states that have flipped blue because of immigration and birth rate demographics that favor us. We also have a candidate who is more likeable than Hillary and our friends at Google have the algorithms locked down to prevent fake news " (e.g. any news damaging to Democrat establishment candidates whether true or not) " from being seen by swing voters. And now that Trump has been in office four years now everyone KNOWS how terrible he actually is and he's incredibly unpopular!!! We're SURE to win!"
Quote:
For Biden, the "leaked Burisma emails" are going to undoubtedly show the direct participation of Biden in shutting down the corruption investigation in the Ukraine against his son's company. The beauty of that is, most Russian agitprop is easy to spot because Russians tend to botch English articles (a, the) and plurals, but in this case the emails are going to be "written" in Ukraine or by people already writing in bad English.
There are no such emails. Joe and Hunter Biden were using Teneo Blackberries that operate on the JWICS network, which means that they're virtually impossible to hack and there's no open IPv6 communications out there to leak.
jkcerda on 5/3/2020 at 18:10
if Mike was not able to buy the nomination with 1/2 a billion dollars HOW did the Russians manage it for 150k?
Renzatic on 5/3/2020 at 18:29
The Russians spent millions on their disinformation campaign back in 2016. Plus, their not running for a campaign. What they're doing is more like spreading rumors among people already predisposed to believe it, who then go around, and repeat them to all their friends on social media. Their job isn't to win followers, but to poke a bunch of angry badgers with a stick.
They're big among the antivaxxer crowd, hardcore Trump fans, and the Bernie Bros. Hell, TennGOP, which was heavily quoted in my neck of the woods, had something like 4000 followers linking stuff to them to post on the local news sites on Facebook.
Starker on 5/3/2020 at 18:36
Easy...
1. The race was incredibly close -- at the end it came down to razor thin margins in a few key states.
2. They spent way more than 150k. And the GRU doesn't work pro bono either and likely they had other operations going as well. The troll factory is just peanuts compared to the things the Russian government doesn't do out in the open.
3. There are quite a few unanswered questions that haven't been made public and we won't learn any time soon, though US intelligence agencies probably know the answers to a lot of them from the mole they had in Putin's inner circle. For example, why did Lord Dampnut's campaign suddenly refocus all of their efforts on voter suppression in some swing states? Did it have something to do with Cambridge Analytica or the data Russians stole from the DNC server?
heywood on 5/3/2020 at 19:02
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Why should anyone think "excited young voters" would enable Sanders to beat Trump in the general election if they're not enough to win the Democratic primary? The latter should be a smaller hill to climb.
Indeed, and Bernie doesn't disagree. He was just saying yesterday that he hasn't gotten the turnout from young voters that he expected and needs.
Quote Posted by Starker
Hmm...
Oh, I'm sure they will, but which one will fire up the crowds more and stoke more hatred? With Clinton they reaped the benefits of the GOP trying to destroy her for 30 odd years. Compared to her, Biden projects an image of a goofy lovable grandpa. Of course, I might be quite wrong in this, but it seems to me Biden is much more immune to the sorts of attacks that would cast him as an evil mass murderer or a pedophile satanist or whatever they come up with. With Bernie, they'll compare him to Stalin and whatnot and demand he apologise for the crimes of communism.
The Republican fake news and meme factories will be going regardless of who is nominated. Even Obama was accused of being a Muslim with fraudulent citizenship when Americans were paranoid about Islamic terrorism.
Bernie would have an uphill battle, not so much because of the “S” word, but simply because the economy has been doing pretty well, which fuels voter apathy, and a lot of people are afraid of tipping the apple cart when the job market and stock market are hot. Especially boomers, who are enjoying their Medicare and their inflated retirement accounts. The 2008 election happened in the worst recession most of us have seen, so people were open to a change candidate then, but not so much now.
Biden does have some positives, most notably his experience in both the legislative and executive branches, and his relationships within the party and with Congressional leaders.
Since you asked, here’s why I think he’s weak:
He’s a lousy fundraiser
He’s not very good on the stump
He embodies “the establishment” when the voters who are up for grabs probably still lean populist
He’s carrying baggage from all those years in government
His constituency and appeal is in the party mainstream; I don’t see him bringing new voters into the party
He doesn’t have a movement or enthusiastic base behind him. Overall, his support seems soft, they walked away from him before in this campaign, and could do so again.
If he wins, what’s he going to do with the office? He hasn’t really articulated a vision for the country. What does he stand for? What are his priorities and agenda? Can he give people positive reasons to vote *for* him, or does he simply expect people to vote for him because he’s not Donald Trump?
His mental fitness seems legitimately questionable.
I would say something about his tendency to BS and spout nonsense, and his history of acting creepy around women. But having Trump in the race neuters those criticisms.
Democrats are so fickle this year. Before Saturday, most people were ready to write him off. Then after one victory, everyone was back on his bandwagon. Now a few days later, all the potential alternatives to Biden have dropped out. I don't understand how in just 4 or 5 days, the party became so confident in Biden that they don't even want to contest the ~2/3 of the primaries we still have left to go. If he screws up, which seems likely given history, or his shine simply wears off, there's no fallback option.
jkcerda on 5/3/2020 at 19:29
non biased sources please, last I heard it was just 150k.
