First of all, Rep. Alcee Hastings lost the ability to tell anyone anything a long time ago, and secondly, the question of Bernie Sanders’ electability is something that he can answer in the Democratic nominating contest. We don’t have to assume beforehand that he isn’t capable of beating Ben Carson or Carly Fiorina or Donald Trump, the trio at the head of the Clown Car Grand Prix.
About The Author

BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
This was not unexpected. The narrative will have to change if he wins the first two primaries.
Big surprise, the establishment pulling out the knives in stupid terror. We’ll see if they been weakened like the GOP at all.
Ayeeee! Blasphemy! Heretic!
We must be told whether someone can get enough votes before we decide whether to vote for them!
“Follow the money” — trite but true for Democratic Super Delegates. Liberal/progressive politicians may like everything about a Sanders’ candidacy, but still know that the Clinton and DEM establishment money machines are vital to their continued re-election campaigns.
What does the money show for Hastings this cycle?
This is the sort of bullcrap (and especially the “Sanders” doesn’t know black issues line) that the Sanders campaign will have to deal with until February. The proof will be in the voting, not in the media. Except for periods of feigned niceness, the media will be on Sanders back for as long as he is on the political scene. Just look at the treatment of Clinton, Gore, Obama vs. any Republican. Doesn’t matter now whether it’s Murdoch or MSNBC (even the tokens there have to watch their steps).
Again I say, media as a way of motivating voters is an overpriced contribution to your enemies. A campaign might have to toss a little money there so the media won’t pay too much attention to what is really happening at the grass roots and continues its fantasy narrative.
It’s up to Democrats in this cycle to invent how to break through without the media ball-and-chain weighing them down.
… media won’t pay too much attention to what is really happening at the grass roots and continues its fantasy narrative.
Actual reporting costs serious money — fantasy narratives can be written by unpaid interns. That’s why we get the glut of “reality” shows on TV — cheap to produce and satisfying to enough rubes that ad revenues are robust enough to return a good profit.
Can Bernie answer the electability question? I put it this way:
If Hillary (or Biden) is the nominee, the Republicans will attack her (him) personally and the Obama administration generally. Hillary (Joe) will defend the Obama record and promise more of the same. In other words, the 2016 election is a repeat of the 2012 election. I’m comfortable with that.
Bernie is different. Nominate him and the top of the ticket is to the left of virtually every other Democrat running for office. Will Democrats down the ticket have to campaign for single payer healthcare even if they think it is dumb to reopen that issue in 2016? Will they have to pass on the corporate donations too? Agree that breaking up the banks should be a big priority? If Sanders is the nominee will Democrats get offered any corporate donations? The Democrats are going to try to win the Presidency and Congress on $30 donations?
If Sanders is the nominee, the Republicans will have an actual campaign. The Republicans will run free enterprise capitalism versus big government socialism and they will exploit the differences between the conservative Democrats and Bernie. The moderate Republican versus the extreme Democrat is one narrative. Another is Donald the capitalist (and the Republican billions) versus the socialist Sanders, the people’s pauper. Citizen’s United against the little guy.
All my nightmare scenarios for 2016 involve nominating Bernie Sanders.
The sheer rightness of the move will overcome any obstacles.
The people in their wisdom, and inherent goodness, will notice this, and respond.
iirc — 2014 DEM Senate candidates ran away from Obama’s record and positioned themselves to his right. They lost. That’s still the place Clinton wants to be in her general election.
Would those Senate candidates have done better if they had aligned themselves with Obama? We don’t know. But that would be the bet of a Biden candidacy. Would that be good enough? We don’t know. General satisfaction with the Clinton administration by the 2000 GE was high and that led to a tie and I see no reason to expect that Biden would be a better campaigner than Gore was.
It’s almost always difficult this far out to project if a majority of voters will lean more towards “more of the same” or “time for a change.” 2008 was an exception when “time for a change” was evident three years in advance. Yet, how much change did we really get?
Partisan Democrats overestimate the general satisfaction with the Obama administration and partisan Republicans underestimate that satisfaction. Happens every time it’s an open seat election cycle and sometimes when it’s an incumbent running for re-election. Democrats always also overestimate how repulsive the GOP candidates are and Republicans and Democrats always overestimate how unpopular liberal/progressive economic policies are. Thus we end up with elections based on nothing but a grab bag of hot button social issues. And the “haves” keep winning.
I don’t ever remember an election being about actual issues my entire life. I don’t see this one being any different
They’re always about actual issues and personalities of the candidates. The issues may not be the most important ones as some of us see them or as reconsidered at a later time, but there are always issues.
That’s because people, especially the VSP and centrists who live in their own little world, conflate ‘issues’ with ‘demographic appeal’.
Every American election since 1932, especially in an era with record-high polarization, is about demographic appeal. Not to say that they are separate beasts, but voters by-and-large vote for people whom they think will best represent their worldview — of which issues is a large but not total part of said worldview. A lot of unrecognized political acculturization goes on between elections (and indeed, it starts well before a voter actually votes) and by-and-large, voters are not persuaded to change their positions by talking about issues. A candidate wins by convincing the electorate that their worldviews sync up more satisfactorily with the voters they’re trying to get than the rest of the competition, of which issues may or may not be a part of that process.
I don’t even think it’s that specific. It’s probably more like they like or recognize themselves in the people who support a given candidate so gravitate in that direction. That plus the candidate’s personal appeal and charisma probably are the main drivers of votes.
I hate Don Quixote.
Neither Sanders or Clinton will produce satisfactory change for you. Neither can. Continued Congressional gridlock will assure that. This election is about holding the White House, defending the Obama gains, pushing the country further to the left, and (perhaps) turning the Supreme Court to the left. If you believe Congress will break up the banks or implement single payer healthcare or change campaign financing laws, or do anything else Bernie wants to do, well, what can I say? Tilt away.
It doesn’t matter which Democrat, just that it is a Democrat. Which one is most likely to win? Hillary and the money? Or Bernie and his political revolution? I can’t see Hillary losing. Bernie Sanders? The Republicans would love it.
I’ll settle for “pushing the country further to the left” from Sanders. Then again, I appreciate how much further to the right Bill Clinton pushed this country and the primary difference I’ve seen between Bill and Hill is that she’s more hawkish on foreign policy. She’ll bring back the old Clinton advisory team (the ones not also hired by Obama). And no liberal/progressive gains will be made in 2016 or 2018 because the Democratic excuse that the “vast right wing conspiracy” is to blame for the failings of Democrats is stale. (Recall that it was Hillary Clinton that pulled out the “vast right wing conspiracy” to defend Bill against charges of an extra-marital dalliance that were actually true.)
Who exactly is going to be excited by another Clinton v. Bush (or Rubio or Kasich)(each with their own big piles of money) election?
Who cares about excitement? I care about winning. I’m worried about whether Bernie can win. He’s going to get outspent by a ton, support from other Democrats on the ticket will be tepid, and the Republicans can actually sound fresh attacking Sanders and exploiting divisions among Democrats.
I don’t care about Bill Clinton or Bill Clinton’s failings. I care about the quality of the decisions the next President will make and I am comfortable with Hillary. She’s clearly the most qualified candidate in the race. Bernie Sanders will accomplish nothing that Hillary would not also accomplish in domestic affairs. For both it will be probably very little.
Risk losing to gain nothing? That’s nuts. You have to convince me that Bernie can actually win without real money and that if he does manage to win, he can get a single idea through Congress. How many bills did he get passed as a Senator?
Risk losing to gain nothing? No, thanks.
Warhawkery and economic centrism will fuck the party over, regardless of how qualified or competent or empathetic the candidate is. It fucked over FDR via the Roosevelt recession, it fucked over LBJ via the Vietnam War, it fucked over Carter due to his incorrect response to stagflation (the correct response would’ve been: stimulus in conjunction with tax and interest rate hikes), it fucked over Obama due to the inadequate stimulus and debt ceiling debacle, and it almost fucked over Clinton with his balanced budget bullshit.
Fortunately Clinton was able to stab Bush with his surplus-induced recession and escaped most of the blame. Unfortunately, the takeaway from that wasn’t ‘wow, we really got hella lucky with that, didn’t we? We need to run continual deficits from then on’ but ‘ha! Bush squandered our precious, precious surplus. Luckily, we can recreate it.’
Money in politics is a Red Queen’s Race. It has bad effects above and beyond the efficacy of campaigning (especially at the Presidential level) but as far as actual elections go, it barely moves the needle. Ever since 1988 and especially since 2000 Presidential elections in the United States have continually regressed to the demographic mean, with unexamined commonsense ‘factors’ like charisma and campaign spending mattering little.
At any rate, while I do understand not wanting to take a risk with Bernie, I’m baffled why you think that Clinton wouldn’t be as big of if not a bigger risk. A lot of Clinton supporters these days have completely given up on the idea that Clinton might break Congressional gridlock by appealing to white women with nothing but the power of ‘look, I’m a white woman!’ and are trying to convince us that USSC appointments are where it’s at. Without even getting how her worldview can fuck the party over, what exactly is safe about gridlock for four years while economic indicators continue to worsen? The Obama Coalition is a majority-coalition, but it’s not big enough to survive a recession.
And just how the fuck would a Clinton Presidency get us closer towards those goals?
No, seriously. Say Clinton warms her ass in the seat in 2016 with no House of Representatives. What the fuck is she supposed to do from then on? She’s going to lose the Senate in 2018 by a combination of Obama Coalition demographics and the Democratic Party overperforming in 2012. Then from 2018-2020, the Democratic Party continues to get nothing done. Meanwhile the economy continues to stagnate what with rising income inequality and the establishment wing under the delusion that a declining deficit is a good thing. Does 2020 after four years of that look like a good year for a counterattack for you?
Maybe Sanders can’t break the logjam either, but by at least trying to ramp up voter turnout and reaching out to the white working class with economic leftism, he’s at least trying. The Clintonites keep trying to convince us that a war of attrition from 2016-2020 will eventually work out in our favor, seemingly not comprehending the fact that the Democratic Party will lose a war of attrition in 2018 and 2020.
And that’s not even getting into how Clinton’s economic centrism and warhawkery can fuck the party over above and beyond the intractable gridlock. Dumbass praised EU austerity after all. I’d sure love to replay 2011, where Obama and the Democratic Party’s debt and deficit obsession nearly cost him his Presidency.
If you guys get your way in the primary, I hope for the future of this country that you get those USSC retirements in the first two years. Otherwise we’re just completely fucked, aren’t we?
No, seriously. Say Clinton warms her ass in the seat in 2016 with no House of Representatives. What the fuck is she supposed to do from then on?
Say Sanders warms his ass in the seat in 2016 with no House. What the fuck is he supposed to do from then on? He – the Democrats – will be in exactly the same position no matter which one of them wins. How are we better with Sanders? He’ll try really, really hard? Please. We gain nothing with Sanders even if his unprecedented political revolution succeeds.
Gridlock is going to be with us until the Republicans are crushed. It is not a good reason to nominate Bernie Sanders.
I’m worried Bernie would lose against either Bush or Cruz. I’m not afraid if the Republicans want run against the Obama record or Hillary Clinton. I am afraid if the election is about whether America wants to do that European socialism shit Bernie loves.
Losing? That would give the Republicans all three branches and the Supreme Court for the rest of my life. This is a terrifying thought. This is an important election.
Risk losing to gain nothing? Not me.
Here’s the case for his candidacy:
A.) He will rally Democratic demographics better than Hillary Clinton will with his popular positions on the economy and welfare state, encouraging turnout. The Obama Coalition is a natural majority but there are still weaknesses. For example, Asian/Latino turnout is still pretty pathetic, hovering around 45% of registered voters for the past three Presidential elections.. The 18-29 turnout rate dropped a whopping 6% between 2008 and 2012.
B.) Appealing to people outside of the Obama coalition with economic leftism. Like it or not, unless the Democratic Party wants to get destroyed in midterms indefinitely, it needs to improve with the white working class. Improving with this segment by a mere 7% gets us the House in 2016 even if the Democratic Party doesn’t do any better with turning out the Obama Coalition in 2012.
Would a Sanders candidacy be able to do these things? Honestly? I don’t know how it will perform. We’ll see how things go in the primary. But personally, I would rather take a chance and set up a counter-attack in 2020 if we’re wrong rather than march off to certain doom between 2016-2020. Just in time for redistricting, too, oh joy.
Deathtongue, your opinion. Personally, I think you’re wrong. Very wrong.
I don’t know if Bernie can be elected. I have my doubts ,but if he wins the nomination … so be it.
But your argument about the next cycle??? Fuck 2020. Scotus will certainly have one new member 16-20. Quite likely have two new members by 2020. It is certainly not hard to conceive 3.
Do you have an actuarial analysis that shows that this will be the case?
If there isn’t one, then all else being equal I’d rather win 2020-2024 and lose 2016-2020 than win 2016-2020 and lose 2020-2024. Especially if winning 2016 means losing the Senate in 2018 — which is all but assured to happen if we keep running the Clinton-Obama playbook of social liberalism + economic centrism.
Hence my repeated snark that the Democratic Party better hope that those USSC replacements happen in that limited window of two years. That’s not just snark, that’s a dire warning of the significantly above-average case scenario if the Clintonites get their way. That’s a very specific prediction if you ask me, one that begs for empirical support.
yeah. Ginsburg is 82 NOW. She has/had 2 different kinds of cancer (pancreatic and colon). Her family history is riddled with cancer. She looks like death warmed over. Furthermore “Ginsburg, for one, has hinted that she intends to match the court tenure of the late Justice Louis Brandeis, a goal that, if held to, would have her retiring in 2015. That’s within the next presidential term.”
Roberts has had at least two episodes of seizures indicative of onset epilepsy.
Sotomayor has type 1 Diabetes. By no means a death sentence or even a significant debilitator. But it has the potential to become one overnight (my nephew has type 1 Diabetes.).
Kennedy, Breyer and Scalia are 80. This day and age, that’s the new 70. But its still old as dirt. Old people die.
So YES, Deathtongue, I HAVE analysis that indicates that at LEAST 1 and potentially as many as 4 supremes will need replacing in the next for years.
Now, WHAT if any, ANALYSIS (pulling feelings out of your ass doesn’t count) do YOU have to support your contention that reshaping the progressive left will lead to electoral success …. AT ANY TIME????
So you have Ginsburg for sure. And pretty much just her. Roberts would be more disconcerning, except for the fact that he’s just 60 years old.
USSC candidates get replaced all of the damn time. I’m not saying that 2016-2020 will mean no replacements, it’s just that it’s not looking any worse than 2008-2012 or 2012-2016.
Because as of 2008, it has already happened?
The Democratic Party shed its ideological mismatch states at the Presidential level in 2000. Indeed, in 2012, the only state the Democratic Party won by less than 3% was Florida — which is becoming a naturally Democratic state by raw inertia. Aside from North Carolina, the second closest state the Democratic Party lost by 7%. What’s more, this is not an outlier: 2000 -> 2004 -> 2008 -> 2012 follows a raw demographic trajectory. It’d actually go back to 1988, but Perot’s candidacy requires a couple of unfalsifiable assumptions — such that while 1992 Perot took away from Clinton and Bush 50/50, in 1996 it was more like 70/30.
Nonetheless, this points to one conclusion: the country is extremely polarized and short of recession, scandal, or one of the other parties completely alienating its demographics, elections are going to look like that for the next few cycles. The Democratic Party, assuming that the white working class can’t be wooed with economic leftism, has to rally its own demographics rather than worrying about some kind of cross-country appeal. And as we can see from the drop-off in non-black turnout between 2008 and 2012, the Clinton-Obama playbook of social liberalism and economic centrism ain’t cutting the mustard.
He will rally Democratic demographics better than Hillary Clinton will with his popular positions on the economy and welfare state, encouraging turnout.
If the Obama campaign is the model, you drive turnout on the ground with organization, technology and professional people. This costs money.
Like it or not, unless the Democratic Party wants to get destroyed in midterms indefinitely, it needs to improve with the white working class.
I disagree. The Democratic party has to do a lot better getting out the vote in the midterms. In any case, Hillary has a better chance with this group of voters. It is hard to improve with the white working class with Bernie’s message because this is the group that responds to dog whistles about welfare queens. They probably don’t even realize Bernie is Jewish yet.
If that’s the case then it’s a poor model. The 2012 Obama campaign definitely increased the turnout of the black and Asian vote over 2004 Kerry, but they barely moved the needle with Latino turnout and lost a big chunk of turnout rates of 18-29 year old whites. Note that I said turnout, not voting %.
If the 2012 Obama organizational apparatus is what’s supposed to carry the party over the finish line, why did it barely do better than 2004 Kerry’s?
I agree, but the gap between midterm and Presidential elections is immense. And no matter who our standard-bearer is, you’re asking something literally unprecedented: an across-the-board turnout increase of 15% in 2-10 years. The gap between 2000 black turnout and 2012 black turnout was ‘only’ about 10%.
And it’s not like it’s a new problem. It’s been that way for decades. What’s different is the demographic composition of the modern Democratic Party which makes us vulnerable to these kinds of midterm routs.
The Democratic Party needs some kind of demographic stopgap. And just blandly going ‘let’s increase turnout!’ is not an adequate solution. The Democratic Party has been struggling to do that with Presidential elections.
I think it’s too early to tell. She might. She currently is. If it is, it won’t be because she’s ideologically a better fit than Sanders — it’ll be because of other factors.
But that’s why we campaign even in an era of high polarization. To force a political regression to the mean to see which candidates are truly a better fit.
The white working class, despite what establishment Dems want you to believe, aren’t uniformly whites who prioritize sublimated WASP privilege, especially racial privilege, above all else. That describes the majority of them, even a super-majority, but not all of them. And if we can get 10% more of their votes, it’s game over for the current incarnation of the Republican Party.
Here’s another statistic for you: the Republican Party has been steadily slipping with non-Southern whites since 2000. Even though 2012 Romney got a sky-high percentage of the white vote, he uniformly lost votes with whites in the Midwest and Northeast (and to a lesser extent the Rockies and West Coast) compared to 2000 and 2004 Bush.
Your argument just got binned tonight. Why? #Piggate.
Can you translate that for those of us that haven’t a clue as to what you’re talking about?
According to Lord Ashcroft, a Tory mind you, his new book claims Cameron(The PM) stuck his winkie in a pig while in college. As some sort of fraternity initiation type thing. The book is being serialized in the Daily Mail, which is a right-wing Murdoch-owned rag. Remember that Cameron went to the elite schools.
Oh, thought it had something to do with US political parties.
Don’t we already know that disgusting things occur in frat initiation rites? And as a woman, I don’t want to know what they are (as long as it doesn’t involve any person outside the frat group). A good reason not to vote for men that were in fraternities.
This would be troubling if the Democratic Party was already in sync with how the Democratic Party demographics (urban professionals, racial minorities, educated white women, LGBTers) on the economy. The thing is, they’re not. Polls show that the Democratic rank-and-file is significantly more to the left economically than the Democratic establishment would have us believe.
The question isn’t whether the Congressional candidates will be forced to betray their Presidential nominee in order to better serve their base. The question is whether the Congressional candidates will be forced to betray their Presidential nominee and the base in order to serve… who, exactly?
Some people just can’t understand that the Democratic Party as of 2008 forms an ideologically coherent natural majority and we don’t have to appeal to phantom moderates and independents to win Presidential elections.
Some people just can’t understand that the Democratic Party as of 2008 forms an ideologically coherent natural majority and we don’t have to appeal to phantom moderates and independents to win Presidential elections.
This may be true, but Bernie Sanders is not at the center of that ideological coherent majority. I say it may be true, but the Democrats in 2008 had the best candidate of my lifetime and he ran a great campaign. In 2012 the Democrats ran the best President of my lifetime, and he ran another great campaign. In both campaigns he raised and spent a ton of money.
The candidate isn’t as good in 2016, the campaign probably won’t be as good, and Bernie can’t raise anywhere near the money. It takes a ton of money to reach that majority and it takes a ton of money to make sure they vote. If that was easy, the natural majority would control congress and the states too.
Who cares if he’s at the center? How about whether his positions sync up better than the competition within and without the party?
It’s no secret that the Democratic establishment and the Democratic voters have a pretty big gap when it comes to the economy. It syncs up pretty well with social issues (and sadly, foreign policy) but on the economic there’s an ideological gap.
I want you to understand something: Going by exit polling proportions, if 2012 Obama had faced 1988 Dukakis’s electorate, he would’ve lost and by similar margins. If 1988 Dukakis had faced 2012 Obama’s electorate, he would’ve won and by similar margins.
That’s right: slick, smooth-talking bastard Obama would’ve still gone down in flames in 1988. Milquetoast, inept Dukakis would’ve won comfortably in 2012.
I won’t deny that Obama ran a great campaign. But great, even pitch-perfect campaigns don’t win elections. They help on the margins, but elections are won years in advance of the actual campaigning. What really matters in the end is brute demographics. And since parties can’t (short of Pol Pot-style cultural revolutions) directly adjust demographics on a dime, what matters is how much they can convince voters that their issues sync up with said demographics.
Folks need to be reminded that we’re all socialists.
I earnestly believe that anyone who ever utters the word “electability” should be smacked in the face with a war hammer swung by Hafthór Júlíus Björnsson. Several times if necessary.
Misleading headline. As many Dems quoted saying Bernie is electable as doubters. And among the skeptics, a couple of certified conservaDems with predictably conserva attitudes, and a disgraced FL rep with little clout.
Meanwhile the Sanders camp should take heart from the couple of prominent Hispanic reps’ comments about his positive effect on the race. Could be signs of a beginning of a breach in Hillary’s strong minority and congressional support. And of course the positive remarks on Bernie from Boo’s favorite congressman.