The Hidden History of Sanders's Plot to Primary Obama

[RandySF]

Bernie Sanders got so close to running a primary challenge to President Barack Obama that Senator Harry Reid had to intervene to stop him.

It took Reid two conversations over the summer of 2011 to get Sanders to scrap the idea, according to multiple people who remember the incident, which has not been previously reported.

That summer, Sanders privately discussed a potential primary challenge to Obama with several people, including Patrick Leahy, his fellow Vermont senator. Leahy, alarmed, warned Jim Messina, Obama’s presidential reelection-campaign manager. Obama’s campaign team was “absolutely panicked” by Leahy’s report, Messina told me, since “every president who has gotten a real primary has lost a general [election].”

David Plouffe, another Obama strategist, confirmed Messina’s account, as did another person familiar with what happened. (A spokesman for Leahy did not comment when asked several times about his role in the incident.)

Messina called Reid, then the Senate majority leader, who had built a strong relationship with Sanders but was also fiercely defensive of Obama. What could you be thinking? Reid asked Sanders, according to multiple people who remember the conversations. You need to stop.

Sanders didn’t end up running against Obama. But their relationship didn’t improve in the years that followed. In another incident, in 2013, Sanders laid into Obama in a private meeting he held with Democratic senators, saying that the president was selling out to Republicans over Social Security benefits. (More on that incident, which has also not been previously reported, below.)

Now Obama, the beloved former leader of the Democratic Party, and Sanders, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, are facing a new and especially fraught period in their relationship. To Obama, Sanders is a lot of what’s wrong with Democrats: unrelenting, unrealistic, so deep in his own fight that he doesn’t see how many people disagree with him or that he’s turning off people who should be his allies. To Sanders, it’s Obama who represents a lot of what’s wrong with Democrats: overly compromising, and so obsessed with what isn’t possible that he’s lost all sense of what is.




https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/02/sanders-obama-primary-challenge/606709/

[krissey]

1. I knew it. I had never watched the clip of Sanders wanting a primary of Obama until the other day.

It was so obvious he was trying to get people to jump on the wagon and ask him to primary Obama. It was so pathetically obvious. He was asking people to ask him. He played the same game in 2106 and was able to because there was a vacuum in that election.

[msongs]

2. if he's the nominee will he do like in VT and refuse to accept then run as an independent? nt

[dalton99a]

3. Kick

[Cha]

4. Then Senator Obama campaigned for BS in 2006..

Link to tweet

[calimary]

5. I had heard this before.

Boy, that Bernie fellow is a real peach...

[brush]

6. I almost wish he had. We wouldn't be being divided by him now.

[thesquanderer]

13. Sure we would. Reagan didn't lose support by primarying Ford, Ted Kennedy...

...had his supporters after primarying Carter. Going up against Obama (personally or by supporting someone else) would not have destroyed Sanders. But... he didn't. Regardless of how people here take him to task for even having talked about it.

[SunSeeker]

7. K & R for exposure.

[BlueMTexpat]

9. THIS is just another of the MANY, MANY

reasons that I simply cannot support Sanders!

IMO, it should be a primary consideration for all those who supported Obama, yet who support Bernie now.

[aikoaiko]

10. So anti-Obama that he endorsed him in 2012 as he did in 2008z

So mean.

[rampartc]

11. a "plot?" really? i'd call it a challenge.

many of us were (and remain) dissatisfied with Obama administration response to the wall st bail outs and the brutal suppression of the occupy movement.

the lame response to the deepwater horizon oil leak was very much on many minds.

I was, frankly, surprised that no one challenged Obama in 2012.

[Gothmog]

12. sabders knew that if he primaried Obama, then Romney would be POTUS

Link to tweet

[Doremus]

14. yawn.

[Scurrilous]

15. I remember that....

Scurrilous@Scurrilous15

Replying to @Colettemai

2010 - Obama & Biden are toiling to craft a deal w/ the GOP to get an extension of unemployment benefits by extending parts of 09's 'The Stimulus.' Bernie uses the occasion to again piss on Obama - deal incl. GOP tax cuts (bad!) - filibustering w/ 8 1/2 speech on Senate floor.

Scurrilous@Scurrilous15 and @Colettemai

Obama's deal passes easily, the unemployed keep getting their checks. Thanks Obama! Meanwhile [redacted] Bernie cashes in by turning the transcript of his finger waggering & blathering into a book ingeniously titled 'The Speech.' Makes a little over $30k. [redacted] Bernie. [redacted]


Scurrilous@Scurrilous15
·
Replying to @Colettemai

Bernie made $3k in book sales in 2015. That was from a reissue of 2011's 'The Speech,' basically the transcript of him filibustering an Obama tax deal. Mocking the wealthy who own multiple homes, he wrote "Enough is enough! ... How many homes can you own

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Speech_(Sanders_book)


Scurrilous@Scurrilous15
·
Replying to @Scurrilous15and @Colettemai

2. The usual mob of bash the Democrats from the left take new notice of a guy oft discounted as a just a moldering [redacted] politician, thinking 'Look at this [redacted], shamelessly [redacted] as he kvetches about the rich.' 'We could use such an [redacted].' Fluffers up!


Scurrilous@Scurrilous15

Replying to @Scurrilous15 and @Colettemai

3. 'Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone praised the book saying “Bernie Sanders is such a rarity..'

'100's sign online petitions urging Sanders to run in the 2012 presidential election..' (primary Obama)

'Sanders declined' ...'he would later run in 2016 and again in 2020.' -Wiki



After his loss to Hillary in 2016 Sanders signed a fat book deal to write about his campaign. Got a $795k advance in July and immediately used it to pay cash for a third home in August.

Now he's rich w/ multiple homes, the very thing he targeted w/ 'Enough is enough! ... How many homes can you own' in the 2010 filibuster that got him the notice from the people who urged him to primary Obama, which he declined opting to run in 2016 primary instead, and after which losing quadruples his income by writing a book about his campaign, the Guardian noting 'Throughout the year, both Bernie and his wife, Jane, kept records and notes. Sanders is using these as the basis for much of the text..'

[Tarheel_Dem]

16. In all my years of voting for "Democrats", this could be the first time I had to hold my nose. nt

[betsuni]

17. K&R