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Originally Posted by rubecube
Either way, the moderate wing of the DNC not making any concessions to the progressive wing and opting to just vilify them for potentially handing Trump a victory is just as dumb and petty as progressives staying home. Both approaches end with Trump back in the White House.
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Yeah, I'm sure the progressive wing never does any vilifying of the rest of the party, they are always trying to build unity and never accuse anyone who isn't 100% in lockstep with Bernie's policies of being a quasi-Republican...
...speaking of that, photon kinda mentioned this, but this tweet after Bernie won Nevada aged rather poorly, and it spoke to Bernie's unwillingness to try and coalition build.
https://twitter.com/user/status/1231021453270769664
The notion that it was the DNC alone that was expecting others to fall in line also ignores that this was literally the Bernie campaign's strategy. This article from April last year has the Bernie campaign spelling out that it intended to win the nomination with a plurality around 30%, not a majority, and that a fractured field with his hardcore base was the path to victory.
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The senator from Vermont’s pitch is a mix of idealism and a shouting anger about the system, but at its heart is a hard-nosed math: He’s the only candidate with a sizable chunk of the electorate that won’t waver, no matter what, so a field that keeps growing and splitting support keeps making things easier.
He’s counting on winning Iowa and New Hampshire, where he was already surprisingly strong in 2016, and hoping that Cory Booker and Kamala Harris will split the black electorate in South Carolina and give him a path to slip through there, too. And then, Sanders aides believe, he’ll easily win enough delegates to put him into contention at the convention. They say they don’t need him to get more than 30 percent to make that happen.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...l-2020/587326/
And that second paragraph really sums up why he lost. He kept thinking he could win with minimal black support, that he could ride his hardcore, but capped at ~ 30% base to victory, while completely ignoring who the Democratic base really is. If this cycle has taught us anything (although I think we all knew this anyway) it's that Iowa and New Hampshire should be removed as the first states to vote. Winning the nomination without black support is basically impossible. South Carolina might not be the best representation of the Dem base (somewhere like New York is probably better), but it's significantly closer to what it is than Iowa and New Hampshire and their combined 14 black people.
In the end the party platform is more progressive now because of Bernie, even if it's not 100% his platform. And even if Biden literally ran on Bernie's platform verbatim the progressive wing would whine that if you're just running Bernie's platform, why not just nominate Bernie? I know I keep saying Twitter isn't really life, but Twitter is where the hardcore Bernie or Bust people are, and that's pretty much how they look at it. At some point you just gotta take your chances they understand the magnitude of this election, that if they ever want an AOC or whoever they deem a true progressive in the White House, having a SC that isn't going to overturn every piece of legislation they pass is pretty damn important.