Will the #neverbernies and #bernieorbusts hand the election to Trump?

Probably.

The Bernie or bust people don’t make up a sizable enough part of the Democratic party to disrupt an election. They weren’t the cause of Trump being elected in 2016. And, Bernie won’t be the nominee.

No. Not if they are in their right minds. But there will always be those who opt to make a political statement, come hell or high water, rather than do what should be done.

There’s no way of predicting. Regarding 2016, it pays to remember that Bernie himself tells us that the democratic party’s theft of his candidacy was preferable to a Trump Presidency. And who can argue with that?

I think Bernie will crush Trump in the General. FL and TX won’t matter. What matters is the rust belt. Democrats need to win that or Trump will win. I think Bernie is the only Democrat who is very likely to win the rust belt. Many (such as Biden) would lose and there are a couple candidates who are 50%/50%.

No.
The people who will vote for Drumpf will be at fault.

Well if he is the best they have to offer & are bigging him up that much, then yeah, they’re handing it to Trump on a tray.
Reminds me of Corbyn over here, the young vote for him in large swathes but he’s just not up to the job of actually leading the country.

Warren is the most qualified to be president. If she is nominated, it will be quite a campaign. She is intelligent, articulate and able to connect to people.

I have almost no contact with #neverbernies… the people I have who might be labelled such, were either Republicans, right-wing, Trumpers and/or anti-“socialist” people who mostly seem like they’ll almost surely vote Republican anyway, or they were people reacting to and/or trolling Bernie supporters.

Therefore I don’t think #neverbernies would “hand Trump the election”.

I have seen quite a few people say they won’t vote for a corrupt DNC candidate, meaning most of the Democratic nominees other than Sanders, Gabbard, Yang, maybe Castro or Warren.

I see that as a problem with the DNC being a corrupt corporate-pocketed gang that thinks it owns the non-Republican part of American politics no matter how centrist and corrupt it gets. That might allow Trump to win (if America doesn’t realize in time that Trump is a demented criminal scumbag_). But that’s not a problem with Bernie or his supporters – it is a problem with the corruption (and not being very good representatives of actual public interests) in the established Democratic Party. Bernie and his supporters (as well as Gabbard) just tend to make such things more clear, by actually speaking truth to power and being interested in the actual public good.

I don’t think he has that kind of following.
Biden lost power when he said the rich kids and kids of color.

@LostinParadise could be right about Warren having a strong following.

I don’t think anybody has the support to remove President Trump from office.

@Patty_Melt You missed the House of Representatives ! May not happen but they have the power to start the removal.

Been thinking about this some more. I have never come across a Democrat that was a “neverBernie”, only Republican corporatists.

“I think Bernie will crush Trump in the General”

Prepare to be wrong. If it comes down to Bernie vs Trump people who were not going to vote for Trump again will do so. The key to ousting Trump is not moving further left. May as well be a linear polling gauge. More left on the democratic ticket = more likely Trump wins again.

Ditto^^^

So if the Democrats run a centrist, they lose, and if they run a progressive, they also lose.

I think the Democrats are just going to have to accept losing. :)

To answer the question, no, I don’t think these groups will “hand Trump the election”, but just about everyone and their mother will hand Trump the election if the Democrats do not nominate a viable alternative. I’ve yet to hear who exactly that Trump-trouncing alternative is, aside from clues from a few mild Trump supporters I know who say they would vote for Gabbard if it was between her and Trump.

If they run a centrist they’ll likely win.

You mean like last time.

Last time they ran on “first woman president” and did not care for her politics. She was also extremely unlikable and grating to most people.

I can’t stand Bernie, but if he’s nominated I will have a Bernie lawn sign.

Trump isn’t going to win so there’s nothing to worry about.

Dems have to get behind one person and rally like hell for that one person. Last time, it was arguing about Hillary vs. Bernie up until the very end. People on here were rabid for Bernie, arguing non-stop, and look what happened.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I think you’ve got an oversimplified mental model of the American electorate. Yes there is the left and right, but what you’re ignoring is that there’s a second axis of top vs. bottom. The establishment lead Democratic party has largely ignored the working class (really since Reagan—especially after Clinton). It left this group vulnerable to populist messaging from Trump and many voted for him. Bernie does incredibly well with working class conservatives. Look at how the crowd loves him in a FOX NEWS town hall. This is a video discussing a 2017 Bernie Sanders town hall in West Virginia where his populist message connects with Republican voters.

Centrism is a losing strategy—Dems lost over 1000 seats during the Obama administration with this strategy. It’s not like most Americans are in the center between the left and right—that’s a myth. If that were the case, a play to the Center would be effective. The reality is that the majority of independents are either further to the left or further to the right of the 2 major parties. For example I refer to myself as an Independent and I would never vote for a Republican (at least as the party currently is). I did vote for Jill Stein though, and would do so again. Also only about half of all eligible Americans bother to vote at all. Bernie’s message is a winner, and if the DNC doesn’t sabotage his campaign, he stands the best chance vs. Trump.

Furthermore, if we define the center not as the midpoint between the two parties, but based on the sentiment of the majority of the American people, then Bernie is the most “centrist” of all of the candidates. Policies like Medicare for all are incredibly popular—even among Republican voters. It’s actually a “fringe” position to want a for-profit, insurance-based (i.e. middle men), healthcare system that is 2x as expensive and has worse health outcomes than other developed countries with universal healthcare.

Because Bernie unapologetically embraces the label “democratic socialist” and then goes on to explain his position, he can go on the offense vs. Trump. He can accurately call out Trump as a corporate socialist without having to play defense. Biden, Warren, and the rest are going to be so terrified of being labeled a socialist, that they’re going to spend the entire election playing defense with their policy proposals: “Here’s my plan, but it’s not socialist because…XYZ.” Meanwhile Trump is going to be on the offense, name-calling and bullying them.

Socialism is hard to beat—at least that’s what Trump is worried about.

@gorillapaws I’ll say it again: If the Dems run Sanders watch Trump win another term. It takes serious mental gymnastics to say working class conservatives will be ok with Bernie. I live in a conservative hotbed and Bernie is very unpopular. Many actually still like Trump. It was the working class left (generally rust belt union members) who flipped and voted Trump that will head his way. It won’t be enough. You cannot win the conservative vote using left wing politics. That’s not how it works.

I feel bad for those rust belt and coal mining people who thought Trump was going to bring back factories and coal mining.

Me too, really nobody is going to help them because none of that is coming back. Anyone who promises that to them is lying to their faces.

@jca2 “People on here were rabid for Bernie, arguing non-stop, and look what happened.”

I know right? Everyone ignored our warnings, wagged their fingers at us, Clinton cheated, got caught, nominated a centrist VP and lost to a guy who had the lowest approval rating at the time of his election, a guy caught talking about “grabbing women by the pussy.” Then afterward they tried to blame us (and still do apparently).

Let’s try it this way: Clinton supporters need to shut up this time around and fall in line behind those who would have beaten Trump in 2016. Clinton supporters need to understand that their political instincts about who is “electable” and who isn’t are horribly miscalibrated. They need to look in the mirror and realize that if they’d rallied behind Bernie in 2016 (the politician with the highest approval ratings in the country at the time, and polled much higher vs. Trump than Clinton did), Trump would have lost—badly.

It’s hard to argue about what would have happened. Hillary didn’t lose just because she running on a centrist “status quo” platform (though certainly that is part of it), she was also unlikable and embroiled in a scandal that was revealed shortly before the election. It’s not easy to quantify how much that contributed to her loss.

@ARE_you_kidding_me “It takes serious mental gymnastics to say working class conservatives will be ok with Bernie… You cannot win the conservative vote using left wing politics. That’s not how it works.”

Watch Bernie convert a Trump voter from “Trump Country” in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

@Demosthenes “It’s not easy to quantify how much that contributed to her loss.”

Bullshit. Hillary lost because people didn’t turn out for her. Period. Full-Stop. This is basic data analysis. 4.5 million Obama voters simply stayed home in 2016. It’s not that they voted to Trump, or Jill Stein, or Mickey Mouse. It’s that they weren’t inspired enough to make the effort to vote.

People don’t turn out for lukewarm, tepid messaging. People don’t wait in long lines at the polls in excited anticipation of marginally expanding the number of people covered under the ACA. People don’t scrape together pennies to hire childcare so they can go vote for a $0.75 increase in the minimum wage. People don’t wake up 2 hours early to go vote before their first job begins so they can have a minor improvement in the CO2 emission standards (but will still fall far short of what’s needed to prevent the disasters of climate change). And not nearly enough are willing to go through the hassle of voting, just because they don’t like Trump. Don’t you dare fall into that trap…again.

When given the choice between an actual Republican and “Republican Lite” a lot of Democrats just don’t even bother. When given the choice between doing nothing, and doing something (even if it turns out to be terrible), voters gravitate to the candidate that APPEARS to be taking action over the one doing nothing.

That’s not really Trump country it’s rust belt country and she is exactly the type who I have suggested that would flip to Sanders. For those people who flip to Sanders there will be those instead of being a no show will be casting a vote the other way because of Sanders.

@ARE_you_kidding_me “As many people who flip to Sanders there will be those instead of being a no show will be casting a vote the other way because of Sanders.”

There is 0 evidence to support this claim (unless you’re willing to provide some). You’re just making that up. Conservatives already have high turnout for one thing.

“That’s not really Trump country”
https://brilliantmaps.com/did-not-vote/

The map would disagree

President Bernie, lord I can see it. His state of the union address would be uncle Bernie’s fireside chats. He would sit in a high back leather chair with a tall glass of musalix and tell stories of how things used to be in the thirties, and remark how much has changed since then.

On Thanksgiving he would get confused and pardon the Byrds.

I don’t see him causing anything more that a ripple. Trump would crush him.

@gorillapaws No matter how you try to spin it you simply cannot win over conservatives with left wing politics. Just wait and see how that plays out.

@ARE_you_kidding_me We have a fundamental disagreement on this. I think you can win over working class conservatives with working class policy.

52% of Republicans supported Medicare for all for example.

56% of Republicans with annual incomes of less than $40,000 say they favor raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. As another example.

You guys can bicker over centrist vs. left and argue and who caused what all you want. The bottom line is that Trump is a national disgrace and whomever is running against him must win for the good of all of us. I literally don’t care who. I’d even vote for Marianne Williamson. Okay, maybe not her.

Lo and behold: Trump and COVID-19 handed the election to Biden!