The reason why Sanders brings in these groups of people you mentioned, who usually don't vote, is because he speaks to people who have been ignored by the major parties and who have otherwise given up hope on the political process. Because these people have seen little difference between the two parties of the duopoly and that neither party would fight on their behalf for economic justice and against the power of the rich and corporations.

Notice how none of the other Dem candidates will even mention poverty in America and even Bernie says little about it either. Shows how much the Dems have moved away from their historical role as the party that was on the side of the poor and working class. Nowadays the other Dems only mention the middle class, nobody else, in their speeches as far as economic classes. This began with Obama.

Many centrists are now uniting behind the front runner. The only candidate people would tend to stay home over is Bloomberg.

Most Sanders supporters will, however reluctantly, vote "blue no matter who", if Sanders was not the nominee. The only partial exceptions are Bloomberg (just another plutocrat like Trump anyway -- possibly even worse in the long run) or if Sanders has a majority of delegates and doesn't get nominated anyway.

@mordant
What you are saying is about hope. What I am saying is based on what happened in 2016 and what is most likely to happen based on that fact.

@St-Sinner Yes Sanders gives me hope, but also, he gives me substance, a consistent record, and honesty.

What facts are you basing this on? In '16 Sanders polled better than Clinton against Trump. Clinton was the nominee and lost. In '20 Sanders polls better than any of his opponents against Trump. And you're arguing for ... the same failed strategy? Ignoring the polls? Sounds hopeful to me.

@mordant
In Nevada, Biden was polled to win but Sanders won. Oops. Polls are often wrong. We must sense what the sentiment is on the ground.

@St-Sinner Polls are not perfect, this is true. This is why you look at the aggregate of polls and when results are outliers you look at the wording of the questions and so forth.

I am not aware of any poll post-NH and probably further back than that, which predicted a Biden win in Nevada, though. Sanders had a lead there for a long time, including in a plurality of polls.

In SC he closed what used to be a 35 point gap with Biden and is now in the margin of error to win. That is going to be a tougher contest but the most Biden can probably hope for is to eke out a squeaker victory.

The reason for closing that gap is in part that black voters are increasingly finding out that much of Biden's narrative about being with them back to the civil rights movement days are fabrications and tall tales, whereas Bernie's more modest claims are truthful AND he has policies they agree with (MFA, racial justice and so forth, as opposed to Biden's record on mass incarceration and drug criminalization). Also Bernies is pulling in their young people in droves.

Meanwhile Biden made matters worse for himself the other day by pulling out of his dusty rectum a new lie about being arrested in South Africa in the apartheid era in an effort to visit Mandela in prison. He said he was arrested along with Andrew Young, who says that in fact it never happened.

I don't know what's going on with Biden beyond him being an old fashioned retail politician but he certainly lives up to his own self-labeling as a gaffe machine, and then some.

So ... who IS your favored candidate against Trump, and why?

Bernie is not hijacking anything. He took the same loyalty oath as all the other Democratic candidates did in order to run. He has the same right to be an independent as any other independent. He has caucused very effectively with Democrats his whole political career but remains a reform candidate with respect to the Party. He'll be the best leader the party has had since FDR, in my view.

Sanders represents the anti-Trump so if you're really concerned about points 3 thru 11 above, then support a candidate who is the polar opposite of those things.

@mordant
I cannot support Bernie because DEFEAT is written all over him in November 2020

@St-Sinner That's just an assertion until you back it up with objective facts.

@St-Sinner

As to your points:

1. Bernie will not be elected president. Trump will floor him in the first debate.
   (45 will floor him? Seriously? No he will not. 45 couldn't floor the floor.)
2. A lot of Democrats will stay home on the election day
   (No they will not. I consider myself an average Democrat. I will vote for WHOMEVER will defeat 45.)
3. It will be a defeat for the history books.
   (WOW. That's what we thought about 45 getting defeated. Have 'we' not learned anything can happen?)
4. The defeat lesson will be taught in political science class in Harvard
   (I seriously doubt this. Perhaps they will also teach how a bias, racist, bigot, idiot became our 45th President too.)
5. Democrats will change parties in droves
   (No. No. No. The Democratic s want 45 out. That is or should be the primary focus of everyone who is a Democrat.)
6. It will be embarrassing to be called a Democrat in streets
   (Again, no. It's embarrassing to be called an American who has 45 for a President.)
7. The Republicans, religious right and religion will have a grip on Washington for the next 30 years.
   (Surely you have reviewed your history. When one party is extreme, the next to be voted in will be polar opposite. )
8. Our grandchildren will be saying morning Christian prayers in schools. Lessons on intelligent design would be text books and Darwin would be removed
   (Uh....not sure where you are going with this statement.)
9. Government funding will increase to religion at home and abroad
   (I don't see this in any way being accurate.)
10. Anti-abortion will be the law of the land
    (Good grief.)
11. The religious right will call Trump's victory as the second coming of Jesus
    (They already think that. It's time for another major change in our political history.)

Dude you just convinced me to vote BERNIE.

Obama campaign official says talk of brokered convention must stop

[wsj.com]

@mordant

That great news. He has a lot of clout. I hope they don't try it.

@RoboGraham I can't see any upside to Obama coming out against Sanders at this point. It will only tarnish his legacy more than Biden already has.

You'll note he didn't endorse Biden either, under the pretext of not putting his thumb on the scales. But he could have easily done so back when Biden looked strong. That he chose not to speaks volumes. Obama is a lot of things but he's politically astute. He knows Joe made a good veep and a good personal friend but that doesn't translate to a good Presidential candidate in a critical election. He did not want to hurt Joe's feelings by publicly discouraging a Biden candidacy, but he obviously did not want to lift Joe's chances by endorsing him either.

The best thing Obama can do now is to let this play out. He's already established a remarkable degree of aloofness, indifference or restraint (depending on how you view it) concerning Trump and the other Democratic candidates. To suddenly violate that now for a popular front-runner would be Stoopid in the extreme.

In light of what I've said here, it'd be a fair question to ask, why didn't Obama endorse Sanders?

The answer is that Sanders is also a repudiation of much of the Obama legacy. Not his classiness or integrity, but his centrist elitism, his neglect of the DNC and the Democratic downballot races, his total failure to check rampant GOP gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression. The GOP overran statehouses and state legislatures pretty much unopposed and unchecked during the Obama administration.

Sanders is also a repudiation of the surge in immigrant deportations and the drone strike "hit list" and a lot of other things Obama can't disassociate himself from or pretend that it was unavoidable.

Lastly, Sanders is a rebuke to what in my view is Obama's greatest tactical blunder, which was to not be "organizer in chief" as Sanders promises to be; it's particularly incomprehensible given Obama's background as a community organizer. He should have known better. The Obama presidency, in light of the Sanders presidency, will constitute some pretty huge blown opportunities, and he knows it.

So yeah he would rather not have Sanders mopping up after his mistakes, and highlighting them even indirectly. But at the same time he's not going to oppose the people's candidate, either.

@mordant Bernie is a repudiation of how lame Obama was as prez. Even when he had a supermajority in congress, Obama didn't even try to pass legislation on card check, which would have made it so much easier to join a union in workplaces, which tells you all you need to know about whether Obama was on the side of workers or instead was on the side of business and the rich. Bernie was actually thinking of running against Obama in 2012 in the primaries because of how much of a corporate sellout Obama was.

@TomMcGiverin

Obama gave us Romney care. Obama used our money to bail out the banks and too big to fail businesses after their risky practices crashed the economy.

@RoboGraham Exactly. He was a moderate Repub pretending to be a Dem. As Bill Maher rightly said about Obama, he was W in blackface...

@TomMcGiverin I can't really see much of a difference anymore between a moderate Republican never-Trumper and a Democratic corporate centrist.

In reality, ask any European and they'll tell you: the GOP under Trump is what they would call a right wing nutjob party that would have trouble hoping for power via a coalition in a paliamentary system ... at best. The Democratic centrists would be equivalent to what Europeans (and Canadians) would term a "conservative" party. And Democratic progressives would be what they'd consider "liberals" and in many cases kind of weak-sauce liberals by their lights.

My prediction is that in the next cycle or 3 the GOP will no longer be viable at the national level and the Democrats will likely split. The Democratic party may become the new conservative member of the US duopoly system, and a new Progressive Party will become the new left. Much depends on whether centrists unite behind the front runner in 2020 or not. It looks like they are finally starting to.

Whether it's a formal or de facto party split, I think that is how it will end up. We really ARE out of step with the rest of the free world.

@mordant I would like to see those changes you are predicting because we really need a major party in the US that is on the side of workers. You're right that Europe is so much more rational and lefty than the US. My guess is the reason for that is Europeans are better educated and more politically conscious than Americans, along with the fact that their media is more diverse and less of a corporate propaganda machine than we have here. Hence, they are harder to fool into voting against their own class interests.

It is because millions of Amerians are against Bernie and his socialist misadventures.

@St-Sinner

And millions more support him.

@RoboGraham
That is called polarization. Not uniting like Obama did. That is exactly what will cost Democrats presidency in 2020 with Bernie as the nominee. A dreadful thought.

@St-Sinner

The country became polarized because the neoliberals in both parties ignored the needs of the working class. It will continue to be polarized until a leader is able to fix it. There will be some divisiveness along the way but it can't be avoided. With Trump in the white house, polarization is the norm.