The Week: Democrats ponder a coup d'Bernie

[DanTex]

The author, who is not a Bernie supporter by any stretch, is right. Regardless of how anyone feels about Bernie Sanders, if Bernie gets the most votes, but they give the nomination to someone else, then Trump will win re-election. It might be a fun intellectual exercise for people to come up with rationalizations for party insiders overruling the party's voters. But nobody is going to buy any of those rationalizations, and the party will fall apart.

There are all kinds of reasons to think it would be bad for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to end up as the Democratic nominee. But it would be far worse for the party's superdelegates to deny him the nomination at the Democratic convention in Milwaukee in the event that he ends up the plurality winner in the primaries but fails to cross the majority threshold. That significant numbers of party leaders apparently don't understand this is a very bad sign about what's going to unfold over the coming months.

Believe me, I get it. Sanders, a lifelong self-declared socialist, is at best a nominal Democrat. He has taken positions and said things over the years that would make crafting negative ads for the Trump campaign the easiest job in Republican politics. The faction of the party that's tempted to vote for billionaire Michael Bloomberg might stay home on Nov. 3, or even opt to vote for the president's re-election, when confronted with the prospect of a Democratic nominee who's proposing $53 trillion in new government spending. Sanders' plan for defeating Trump by mobilizing millions of new voters is so far nothing more than a pipe dream with no empirical foundation.

I could go on. Anointing Sanders the Democratic nominee could be very bad. But it wouldn't be as bad as trying to deny him the nomination after he'd won a plurality of the delegates during the primaries. Thinking that the institutional party has the requisite legitimacy and power to pull off such a coup against the plurality winner — especially one with such a large and passionate base of support, and one motivated in part by anger at that very same Democratic establishment — is delusional.

A Democratic Party that nominated Sanders in 2020 could well be defeated. But a Democratic Party that denied him the nomination after he'd won a plurality of the delegates in the primaries would be certain to shatter and nearly guaranteed to lose.

https://theweek.com/articles/898601/democrats-ponder-coup-dbernie

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Another post filled with invalid assumptions and hype

[True Blue American]

3. Some one

Getting nervous?

[bucolic_frolic]

5. Not at all

Bernie is fading fast

[True Blue American]

6. I wasn't referring to you!:)

See the top posts this morning. Biden did something 30 years ago. Better than doing nothing for 30 years! Just sayin’!

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Plurality makes for partial political illegitimacy

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Odd that Bernie can never seem to close the deal

[ehrnst]

11. Even after a 180 on the purpose of superdelegates.

[WhereAmerica]

7. Ridiculous argument

So what's the point of a convention, if anyone in the lead -- even if not a majority -- automatically gets the nomination.

Rules are rules, particularly when Bernie helped make them. The convention is like run-off, when no one has a majority.

A portion of Bernie's followers will bail no matter what. But a much bigger portion of general voters will bail if we've chosen -- with a minority of votes! -- a Socialist.

[myohmy2]

8. nailed it!

...that's exactly what would happen, guaranteed...

...and would probably cost the House and Senate too with a long lasting bitter taste that would cost untold down-ticket and future elections...

...we've got to let Bernie win or lose fairly and perception will be a big part it...

[ehrnst]

10. ....perception....

...

With the potential of a contested convention on the horizon for Democrats, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) last week staked out a notably different position on delegates during the ninth Democratic debate.

Asked if the candidate with the most pledged delegates should be the Democratic nominee — even if that candidate did not have a majority of pledged delegates — Sanders said, “the will of the people should prevail, yes. The person who has the most votes should become the nominee.”

It is the opposite of what Sanders and his campaign said in 2016, even after Hillary Clinton had secured the majority of pledged delegates.

“The responsibility that superdelegates have is to decide what is best for this country and what is best for the Democratic Party,” Sanders said on May 1, 2016.

....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/20/bernie-sanders-pushed-contested-convention-2016-now-he-wants-avoid-one/

........

.... ...

[ehrnst]

9. Told on June 7, 2016, that his superdelegate convention push would defy history and the will of the

voters, Sanders said, 'Defying history is what this campaign has been about.”

.........................

With the potential of a contested convention on the horizon for Democrats, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) last week staked out a notably different position on delegates during the ninth Democratic debate.

Asked if the candidate with the most pledged delegates should be the Democratic nominee — even if that candidate did not have a majority of pledged delegates — Sanders said, “the will of the people should prevail, yes. The person who has the most votes should become the nominee.”

It is the opposite of what Sanders and his campaign said in 2016, even after Hillary Clinton had secured the majority of pledged delegates.

“The responsibility that superdelegates have is to decide what is best for this country and what is best for the Democratic Party,” Sanders said on May 1, 2016.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/20/bernie-sanders-pushed-contested-convention-2016-now-he-wants-avoid-one

[LanternWaste]

12. Morning shift clocking in, eh?

[Tom Rinaldo]

13. Exactly. This isn't simply "what if" talk about a potentially deadlocked convention

I get it. Theoretically, on the first round, if candidate "A" got 39% of the delegates, candidate "B" got 37% of the delegates, candidate "C" got 13% of the delegates, candidate "D" got 5%, and candidate "E" got 2% of the delegates, that is when those same delegates would cajole each other to shift their support until one candidate got over the top with 50% plus 1. That would be the best case scenario for a brokered convention not automatically resulting in a disastrous divided Party going into the fall election. That is NOT what will happen in Milwaukee if no candidate enters the convention with a majority of delegates.

What will happen on a second ballot in Milwaukee, should it come to that, is a brand new team of voters entering the fray; (i think it is) over 500 Super Delegates. It is simply the undisputed nature of the beast that Super Delegates, though no doubt there are exceptions, largely come from well established centers of the Democratic Party. They do not mirror the primary electorate.

I understand the past arguments made that under some scenarios having some well seasoned hands and "party elders" weigh in to break a near tie is a positive rather than negative factor. Perhaps, if it really was a near tie with no candidate close to winning a majority. If a new major scandal should erupt that severely damaged our front runner prior to the convention voting, that might make a case for Super Delegate intervention. But in the real world in which ordinary candidate supporters live and vote, any lop sided intervention by the so-called (with fair reason)"establishment" of the Democratic Party to pull the nomination away from a candidate winning a clear plurality in support of one who clearly failed to run as strongly, would be met by a fire storm of deep resentment if not outright hostility.

[ehrnst]

14. "party insiders overruling the party's voters"

WHAT???? The very IDEA!

On May 29, 2016, Sanders said superdelegates had the “very grave responsibility to make sure that Trump [is not] elected president of the United States. Vote for the strongest candidate.

And even as Clinton secured the Democratic nomination the following week, Sanders continued to push for superdelegates to vote to override Clinton’s pledged delegate majority.

Told on June 7, 2016, that his superdelegate convention push would defy history and the will of the voters, Sanders said, “Defying history is what this campaign has been about.””

Bernie Sanders pushed for a contested convention in 2016. Now he wants to avoid one. Feb 27, 2020.