DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus ‘Stop Sanders’ Democrats Are Agonizing Over His Momentum

‘Stop Sanders’ Democrats Are Agonizing Over His Momentum

By Jonathan Martin
April 16, 2019

WASHINGTON — When Leah Daughtry, a former Democratic Party official, addressed a closed-door gathering of about 100 wealthy liberal donors in San Francisco last month, all it took was a review of the 2020 primary rules to throw a scare in them.

Democrats are likely to go into their convention next summer without having settled on a presidential nominee, said Ms. Daughtry, who ran her party’s conventions in 2008 and 2016, the last two times the nomination was contested. And Senator Bernie Sanders is well positioned to be one of the last candidates standing, she noted.

“I think I freaked them out,” Ms. Daughtry recalled with a chuckle, an assessment that was confirmed by three other attendees. They are hardly alone.

From canapé-filled fund-raisers on the coasts to the cloakrooms of Washington, mainstream Democrats are increasingly worried that their effort to defeat President Trump in 2020 could be complicated by Mr. Sanders, in a political scenario all too reminiscent of how Mr. Trump himself seized the Republican nomination in 2016.

How, some Democrats are beginning to ask, do they thwart a 70-something candidate from outside the party structure who is immune to intimidation or incentive and wields support from an unwavering base, without simply reinforcing his “the establishment is out to get me’’ message — the same grievance Mr. Trump used to great effect?

But stopping Mr. Sanders, or at least preventing a contentious convention, could prove difficult for Democrats.

He has enormous financial advantages — already substantially outraising his Democratic rivals — that can sustain a major campaign through the primaries. And he is well positioned to benefit from a historically large field of candidates that would splinter the vote: If he wins a substantial number of primaries and caucuses and comes in second in others, thanks to his deeply loyal base of voters across many states, he would pick up formidable numbers of delegates.

To a not-insignificant number of Democrats, of course, Mr. Sanders’s populist agenda is exactly what the country needs. And he has proved his mettle, having emerged from the margins to mount a surprisingly strong challenge to Hillary Clinton, earning 13 million votes and capturing 23 primaries or caucuses.

His strength on the left gives him a real prospect of winning the Democratic nomination and could make him competitive for the presidency if his economic justice message, resonates in the Midwest much as Mr. Trump’s appeals to hard-edge nationalism did in 2016. And for many Sanders supporters, the anxieties of establishment Democrats are not a concern.

That prospect is spooking establishment-aligned Democrats, some of whom are worried that his nomination could lure a third-party centrist into the field. And it is also creating tensions about what, if anything, should be done to halt Mr. Sanders.

Some in the party still harbor anger over the 2016 race, when he ran against Mrs. Clinton, and his ongoing resistance to becoming a Democrat. But his critics are chiefly motivated by a fear that nominating an avowed socialist would all but ensure Mr. Trump a second term.

“There’s a growing realization that Sanders could end up winning this thing, or certainly that he stays in so long that he damages the actual winner,” said David Brock, the liberal organizer, who said he has had discussions with other operatives about an anti-Sanders campaign and believes it should commence “sooner rather than later.”

But to some veterans of the still-raw 2016 primary, a heavy-handed intervention may only embolden him and his fervent supporters.

R.T. Rybak, the former Minneapolis mayor who was vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, complained bitterly about the party’s tilt toward Mrs. Clinton back then, and warned that it would backfire if his fellow mainstream Democrats “start with the idea that you’re trying to stop somebody.”

If the party fractures again, “or if we even have anybody raising an eyebrow of ‘I’m not happy about this,’ we’re going to lose and they’ll have this loss on their hands,” Mr. Rybak said of the anti-Sanders forces, pleading with them to not make him “a martyr.”

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The good news for Mr. Sanders’s foes is that his polling is down significantly in early-nominating states from 2016, he is viewed more negatively among Democrats than many of his top rivals, and he has already publicly vowed to support the party’s nominee if he falls short.

“Bernie Sanders believes the most critical mission we have before us is to defeat Donald Trump,” said Faiz Shakir, Mr. Sanders’s campaign manager. “Any and all decisions over the coming year will emanate from that key goal.”

Or, as former Senator Claire McCaskill put it: “One thing we have now that we didn’t in ’16 is the uniting force of Trump. There will be tremendous pressure on Bernie and his followers to fall in line because of what Trump represents.”

But Mr. Sanders is also taking steps that signal he is committed for the duration of the race — and will strike back aggressively when he’s attacked. On Saturday his campaign sent a blistering letter to the Center for American Progress, a Clinton-aligned liberal think tank, accusing them of abetting Mr. Trump’s attacks, of playing a “destructive” role in Democratic politics, and of being beholden to “the corporate money” they receive. The letter came days after a website aligned with the center aired a video highlighting Mr. Sanders’s status as a millionaire.

With other mainline party leaders, he is offering more honey than vinegar.

Last month, for example, he used his first trip to Iowa as a 2020 candidate to quietly meet with Jeff Link, a veteran party strategist, and Patty Judge, the former state agriculture secretary, to discuss rural policy and politics, according to a Democrat familiar with the meeting. Mr. Sanders’s campaign also reached out to Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers and a top Clinton ally in 2016, to have her join them at what they dubbed an “Ohio workers town hall” on Sunday.

“If anybody thinks Bernie Sanders is incapable of doing politics, they haven’t seen him in Congress for 30 years,” said Tad Devine, Mr. Sanders’s longtime strategist, who is not working for his campaign this year. “The guy is trying to win this time.”

But such outreach matters little to many Democrats, especially donors and party officials, who are growing more alarmed about Mr. Sanders’s candidacy.

Mr. Brock, who supported Mrs. Clinton’s past presidential bids, said “the Bernie question comes up in every fund-raising meeting I do.” Steven Rattner, a major Democratic Party donor, said the topic is discussed “endlessly” in his orbit, and among Democratic leaders it is becoming hard to block out.

“It has gone from being a low hum to a rumble,” said Susan Swecker, the chairwoman of Virginia’s Democratic Party.

Howard Wolfson, who spent months immersed in Democratic polling and focus groups on behalf of the former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, had a blunt message for Sanders skeptics: “People underestimate the possibility of him becoming the nominee at their own peril.”

The discussion about Mr. Sanders has to date been largely confined to private settings because — like establishment Republicans in 2016 — Democrats are uneasy about elevating him or alienating his supporters.

The matter of What To Do About Bernie and the larger imperative of party unity has, for example, hovered over a series of previously undisclosed Democratic dinners in New York and Washington organized by the longtime party financier Bernard Schwartz. The gatherings have included scores from the moderate or center-left wing of the party, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader; former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia; Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., himself a presidential candidate; and the president of the Center for American Progress, Neera Tanden.

“He did us a disservice in the last election,” said Mr. Schwartz, a longtime Clinton supporter who said he will support former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in this primary.

But it is hardly only Mr. Sanders’s critics who believe the structure of this race could lead to a 50-state contest and require deal-cutting to determine a nominee before or at the convention.

“If I had to bet today, we’ll get to Milwaukee and not have a nominee,” said Ms. Daughtry, who was neutral in the 2016 primary.

The reason, she theorized, is simple: Super Tuesday, when at least 10 states vote, comes just three days after the last of four early states. After that, nearly 40 percent of the delegates will have been distributed — and, she suspects, carved up among candidates so that nobody can emerge with a majority.

Unlike Republicans, who used a winner-take-all primary format, Democrats use a proportional system, so candidates only need to garner 15 percent of the vote in a primary or caucus to pick up delegates. And even if a candidate fails to capture 15 percent statewide, he or she could still win delegates by meeting that vote threshold in individual congressional districts.

Should no bargain be struck by the time of the first roll call vote at the 2020 convention in Milwaukee — such as a unity ticket between a pair of the leading delegate-winners — the nomination battle would move to a second ballot. And under the new rules crafted after the 2016 race, that is when the party insiders and elected officials known as superdelegates would be able to cast a binding vote.

The specter of superdelegates deciding the nomination, particularly if Mr. Sanders is a finalist, is highly unappetizing to party officials.

“If we have a role, so be it, but I’d much prefer that it be decided in the first round, just from a unity standpoint,” said Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.

That may not happen should Mr. Sanders, sustained by his online fund-raising network, remain in the primary but fail to win a majority of delegates after the last states vote in June.

Yet that result might be not fully realized until later in the primary calendar — well after Mr. Sanders has put his money to work.

“If he is consistently raising $6 million more than his next closest opponent, he’s going to have a massive financial advantage,” said Rufus Gifford, former President Barack Obama’s 2012 finance director, noting that Mr. Sanders will be able to blanket expensive and delegate-rich Super Tuesday states like California and Texas with ads during early voting there.

Mr. Gifford, who has gone public in recent days with his dismay over major Democratic fund-raisers remaining on the sidelines, said of Mr. Sanders, “I feel like everything we are doing is playing into his hands.”

But the peril of rallying the party’s elite donor class against a candidate whose entire public life has been organized around confronting concentrated wealth is self-evident: Mr. Sanders would gleefully seize on any Stop Bernie effort.

“You can see him reading the headlines now,” Mr. Brock mused: “‘Rich people don’t like me.’”

Correction: April 16, 2019
An earlier version of this article misstated the Senate position of Chuck Schumer. He is minority leader, not majority leader.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/us/politics/bernie-sanders-democratic-party.html

These people just can't help themselves! I wouldn't count on Bernie supporters if they do him dirty again. Guess they didn't learn a damn thing from 2016.

I told you this was going to happen.

Is it soon time for an enchilada dinner again?

Nobody has to "stop Sanders".

Bernie deserves a lot of credit for blazing the trail for many of the current Democrat positions. I give him his dues for that. But he doesn't have the momentum he had in 2016. And while people listen to the voices that scream the loudest, a socialist Democrat isn't what the majority of the party wants.

Just look at the polls. Biden leads in almost all of them. In many of them by a wide margin. Pete Buttigieg has came from a complete unknown to surpassing many of the named candidates in almost no time. The Democratic party as a whole, wants a candidate that represents more of America, not less of America.

Biden strikes a chord with working class families. He talks in a way that they can relate to. Pete Buttigieg is an Oxford road scholar who talks and doesn't yell and scream. Well spoken, quick on his feet and articulate. Luckily the Democrats are trending in this direction and every poll in America shows this. Change is something best fed a spoonful at a time. Cramming the entire meal down someone's throat at one time only makes them want to puke.

Bernie lost a lot when he back Hilary after getting robbed. Just felt like more of the same, politicians all being in cahoots.

"Crazy" Bernie is THE ultimate sellout. Not only to himself, but to his thousands of voters.

I don't know why they want to stop him. Doesn't make sense. He's the front runner because he's consistent. he seems to be saying what the Majority of Dems want to hear.

For me, I like Bernie, but I just feel as is he's too damn old.. What I mean by that is he'd be starting out his term at an advanced age.. he'll be roughly 88 years old if he was to win two presidential elections. I'm sorry, but for me, that's just too old.. Age Discrimination? Probably, but with good and sound reasons.

I can see if the Dems wanted him out of the picture because of that alone. They want someone that has a great deal more longevity.

There are 0 good and sound reasons to discriminate against anyone. 0.

Generally I agree with you 100% but it's still my opinion that he's just too old for this job.

So discrimination is ok, as long as you are the one doing it. You see, this is why the left is seen as hypocrites. I may not agree with Bernie on topics, but he seems of sound mind and judgement. His age is not a factor.

That and he is also JEWISH and dems are highly anti-semetic just like Hit.....oh nevermind.

How about he was allowed to run on the Dem ticket even tho he wasn't even a Dem ,that puke of Bernie was in on the Hillary fixed election job right from the beginning....WHERES THE OUTRAGE

No it's not Ok,,, and that is NOT WHAT I SAID! I NEVER SAID IT WAS OK.... DON'T PUT WORDS IN MY MOUTH.

I said it was my opinion... Nothing more, nothing less..

I'm still allowed to have an opinion am I not?

And for the record, If it comes down to Sanders Vs Trump, I'm voting for Sanders....

Your side seems to have enough outrage for everyone.

wait wiat wiat, lol..that is literally what you said.





Or do you not believe you own post like the Mueller conclusion?

Also, if your OPINION is that its its "age discrimination, but with good and sound reasons" than that's still DISCRIMINATION! By you.

If I read Daman's original post correctly, he's not saying he shouldn't be allowed to campaign, run, or win because of his age... he's simply saying that he probably won't vote for him and his age is a factor in that decision... and we all get to use whatever criteria we want when determining for whom we will vote.

So you think that saying with your vote you choose not to support a man who will turn 80 as president is discrimination? When does the average life expectancy enter into using logic instead of labeling it as discrimination?

Anyone who votes for a candidate that will be in his late 70's or will turn 80 as president who considers age and strongly consider their running mate when deciding who to vote for isn't discriminating by age. They're using factual science to use as a gauge to draw a mathematical conclusion. But I can see how you may find that confusing.



In 2017 the average life expectancy for a man in the United states was 78.6 years.

Bernie Sanders will be 78 years old in September.

It's math. Try it.

Never. I don't discriminate against age. In my line of work, if I deny a member a loan because of his age, I am fined and fired.

it is a protected class according to the law.

Everything you stated is absolutely age discrimination. You can say "math" all you want, you hate old people.

So voting for someone who statistically is more likely to have died before he takes office shouldn't be a factor in anyone's decision?

This is why using logic with you is futile.

I didn't say it wasn't a factor in someones decision. I said it was discrimination. Doesn't mean you or others are not doing it. Maybe you should stop trying to twist what I stated, again.

Damonshot stated plainly he was discriminating against him because of his age...the dude even admitted it! Then he said....oh well I didn't say that (which is funny, because he calls out trump for saying something and denying it later all the time ).

No, you took someone using age as a factor in casting their vote and claimed it was discrimination. Even when I explained it to you, you accused using logic in your vote was discrimination above. So you can quit pretending now.

If someone according to the average life expectancy is beyond the average age of death it should certainly be something one considers in casting their vote. It is only one of many factors to consider, but certainly one.

That is not age discrimination. Since you're making a feeble attempt to use a law that doesn't apply here, maybe you should look at that law to see what it does and doesn't protect against. We're not debating the merit of a loan here. We're looking at making a decision on who you're voting for. Can you show me where the law says that using that as a factor of whom to vote for is illegal?

Reaching for the gotcha moment...

Doesn't sound like using age as a factor, its literally the only reason he is not supporting him. That sir, is discrimination based on his age.







Age discrimination is the result of actions taken to deny or limit opportunities to people on the basis of age. These are usually actions taken as a result of one's ageist beliefs and attitudes. Age discrimination occurs on both a personal and institutional level.

Soooo, come again?

Not really, I am glad hes not voting for Bernie, I don't agree with about 99% of his politics. I would rather someone else win the nom whom I see more in common.

But discrimination is discrimination. I thought you considered yourself a SJW and a Bernie Bro. You should be outraged by this.

I mean, hard to argue that it's not discrimination if the only reason you would not vote for him is his age.

Would it be discrimination if the only reason someone didn't vote for Hilary was she was a woman?

This is not a conflation, you literally replaced one word, age for woman and said it's not discrimination when the same exact principle was cited for both. Same group absolutely outraged by Pete Butt is being discriminated against.

So using the fact that the average life expectancy as a consideration on greatly reducing the odds of them living out the next four years is discrimination? No,it's not.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older. It does not protect workers under the age of 40, although some states have laws that protect younger workers from age discrimination.

People use credit for many aspects of life, like buying a car, financing an education, or purchasing a home. ... The federal Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) prohibits creditors from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, age, and applicant's use of public assistance.

Nowhere, anywhere in any law does it say you can not use age as a guide in deciding who to vote for. I don't have any clue why you just make this BS up.

Ageism is used constantly to describe a form of discrimination.


On a separate note, under 40 not protected is horse crap. I have been discriminated for being young in my field for as long as I can remember. People twice my age being promoted over me despite being a fraction as good and productive.

We should all be willing to vote for people that the odds are they won't live out their presidency without that being a factor in whether we vote for them or not.

You do realize just how crazy that sounds don't you? And there is no law that says people can't base their vote on any measure they deem fit. Even age.

So if someone didn't vote for Obama simply because he is black, that's not discrimination to you? Or if someone doesn't vote for Pete simply because he is gay, that's not discrimination?

Was segregating discriminating before there was a "law" that stated so? You don't have to have someone tell you what is right or wrong you know. I know its hard for some of you who have to follow others lead all the time, but you are allowed to decide for yourself.

I'm saying, in virtually any other scenario the left would consider this discrimination. I can't even think of a single scenario where the ACLU would not fight this line of thinking.


I completely agree, but I don't think that's the point. I think the point willi is making is the hypocrisy. If I said I wasn't voting for Hilary because she was a woman, what would Daman call me? 100% he'd call me a sexist. While that doesn't negate my right to do so, which is your point, it is hypocritical.

Is anyone you mentioned considered too old to live through their presidency?

Are the odds their vice president will be the president before their term is through? You seem to wish to ignore the obvious.

John McCain when he ran. Don't know what the odds are, as each human being is different. RGB - is she too old then to serve on the SC? If Bernie is too old to run the country, surely RGB needs to step down according to you.

You're changing the discussion. Bernie isn't too old to run the country. Nobody has said that during this entire thread. We're talking about electing a man who will be beyond the average life expectancy on election day of 2020. Anyone using any common sense should understand that's a logical factor.

RBG was appointed to the SCOTUS when she was 60 years old. Not when she was 79.

The odds are obvious. that's how they arrive at the average life expectancy to begin with.

As you should be.


Hate? I hope he doesn't even dignify that with a response..

Well I'm already 60 and getting older every day. So no, it doesn't deserve a response.

The thing I learned from Bernie on FOX the other night is that he is the only Democrat who has ideas and proposals.

One after another he tells you what he thinks and how he would fix things. He is a thinker.

Not that I agree with him, but at least he has ideas.

Beto and Buttigieg are just platitude spewing libs.
Buttigieg is gay so he now trumps Beto with the emotional Left, as Beto, the once new Bobby Kennedy, fades away.

I do believe Buttigieg was created in a lab at CNN.

Bernie rules until a moderate comes along and knocks him off the pedestal.

"Moderate"? That is a four letter word to a democrat, i.e., socialist.

Its going to take a moderate Dem to beat Trump.

Not an extremist.

Yes, agreed but you just watch what happens if one of the Dems finds the guts and decides to go the moderate route. They will not only take the lead but I would say they would knock Bernie out of the way as well.

Most Dems in this country are moderates but for now the squeaky wheel that is the far left get all the attention.

There is no "moderate" democrat. Look what the Dems are doing to Biden (not that he is Mr. Moderate, but closest thing the Socialists have), basically saying please do not run.

Seeing what the Dems are showing as potential candidates, I pray Trump wins.