Michael Cohen:
So here’s my suggestion [to Bernie]: Don’t end your campaign, re-frame it. Rather than talking about Hillary Clinton’s speech transcripts like you did yesterday in Pennsylvania, and rather than boasting about how you don’t have a Super PAC and your opponent does, focus on the issues that got you into this race in the first place. Keep talking about inequality, reforming campaign finance, and making the rich pay their fair share, but shift the focus away from Clinton.
Rather than raising money to run more ads that likely aren’t going to move the polling needle, start raising money for liberal Democrats in swing districts, Democrats who, with that little extra boost from your supporters, might be able to win in November. After all, if you want a political revolution, don’t you need to elect a few more like-minded Democrats to Congress? And with Trump as the likely GOP nominee, the chances of a Democratic wave in the House and the Senate are that much greater. Maybe focus on local races in places like Florida or Ohio or North Carolina, where Republican-dominated state legislatures are putting up restrictions on abortion rights, voting rights, and LGBT rights. You have the megaphone and the money to get your supporters involved in the nitty-gritty of local politics that Democrats have ignored for far too long. You want to beat the Democratic establishment? Become the Democratic establishment.
Jonathan Cohn:
Where Bernie Sanders’ Health Care Crusade Might Go From Here
Single-payer can’t pass anytime soon. But maybe components of it can.
That one was personal for me.
Daniel Schultz (our own pastordan):
Sanders already has a very strong base among the non-religious, for example. Drawing in faith-based voters around populist themes would extend the strength. Likewise, Sanders has done very well among white voters, but had a tough time attracting blacks and Hispanics away from Clinton. Create a way to let the people [Rev. William] Barber represent feel their issues are being taken seriously, and you have a very durable coalition in the offing.
To shorthand things a bit, but find the common ground between Raleigh-Durham or Greensboro and Portland, Oregon, and you’ve got political dynamite.
Hans Noel:
In many of the coming primaries, including most of [yesterday’s] contests, independents will not be welcome at the polls. And Bernie Sanders supporters are not happy about that.
Last week, New York's closed primary and early deadline for registration came under fire from Bernie Sanders supporters who think that non-Democrats deserve a bigger say in who the Democrats nominate for president. Clinton won the primary, just as she has won every closed primary so far.
Sanders supporters will point out that closed primaries put them at a disadvantage, because their candidate is more popular with independents. And they are right. Very right.
Indeed, Sanders owes a lot of his delegates to the non-Democrats who have voted for him in open primaries. In exit polls, Sanders does well with the groups you have heard of. He does better with liberals, with young people, with white voters, with men. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, does better with older voters, with nonwhite voters, with women.
But the divide between independents and self-identified Democrats is among the largest. Only Clinton's support among blacks is higher. In states where there are not enough black people to estimate their vote separately, like Massachusetts, Clinton still dominates among partisans.
C’mon. Where are the stories about depressed D turnout in primaries?
Julia Azari on the question of open/closed primaries:
The latest round of "who should be in charge of parties" has begun. While candidates and some of their supporters decry the undemocratic nature of the superdelegates, closed primaries, and even delegate allocation formulas, parties have a few defenders.
One of the commenters on the FiveThirtyEight liveblog did a nice job articulating the opposite view — closed primaries require that decisions are made by people who have "skin in the game." Elaine Kamarck explains this argument in a phenomenal interview. Jonathan Bernstein, a skilled defender of parties, also draws out the case for why parties should choose their own nominees, partially in response to Ezra Klein's take here at Vox about the 2016 "legitimacy problem." Bernstein writes, "The real problem isn't that people can't accept certain party procedures, whether closed primaries or the caucus system or superdelegates. It's that a century after the Progressives preached against political parties, many in the U.S. don't really accept the parties themselves as legitimate."
This has long been my view, more or less, too. You can trace the thread of anti-partyism (as Nancy Rosenblum does in this book) from the American founding to the frontier spirit of independence to the Progressive Era and beyond. I've written quite a bit about how incomplete reforms have screwed up the party system, how 20th-century reforms in particular have destroyed formal decision-making mechanisms, and how the idea of making parties truly democratic is missing some foundational thinking.
But I'm starting to think we've lost the battle. Wishing that progressive anti-partyism never happened is a pointless exercise.
Philip Bump:
The blurry lines between ‘independents’ and partisans are on full display in 2016
Lucia Graves:
Bernie Sanders is right: poor people don't vote and it's a problem
Bernie Sanders said something he wasn’t supposed to say: that poor people don’t vote. Although it’s true that voter turnout is inversely correlated with income, all anyone wanted to comment on was that Sanders looked defensive and deflated on Meet the Press, where he made the statement on Sunday. Lost was the fact that this is a truth we should be struck by, ashamed of even, and should do more about.
The impolitic remark came in response to a question about why the candidate had been losing so much in the places he should have been winning (he’s lost 16 of the 17 states with the highest levels of income inequality). The most straightforward thing for him to say would be to acknowledge that he hasn’t performed well with minority voters who tend to be less affluent. But he didn’t want to say that on television. Instead, he decided to talk about something else that’s actually more important than where he, personally, is up or down.
He said: “Poor people don’t vote. I mean, that’s just a fact. That’s a sad reality of American society”. He also noted that “80% of poor people did not vote” in the 2014 election.
Comments are closed on this story.