OT: The Official Coronavirus thread - Be well, be safe

[HarthorneWingo]

Media bias against Sanders, by the numbers.

Watch on YouTube

[GONYK]

[B8RcDeMktfxC]

I'm lukewarm to both remaining Dems for various reasons but I reject the idea that Biden would be Hillary Part Deux.

Specifically, I think Biden makes a stronger candidate than Hillary in the generals because of his showing in the Upper Midwest. Sanders clobbered Hillary one on one in that region and is being clobbered by Biden there. When you look at the generals... that's where Hillary lost.

With Sanders, you can make an argument that more young people vote in the general elections than primaries. That argument is true imo, but I do think both have a very good shot at the presidency. Especially with such a terrible response to the coronavirus outbreak.

I said this in the Current Affairs sections.

I think both Sanders and Biden have an equal chance against Trump. I will give the edge to Sanders because he's sharper on the stage.

But I'm going for Sanders because he's a high risk/high reward candidate, while Biden his high risk/low reward.

Biden basically Knox. Sanders is Frank.

Spoiler:

Warren was RJ

There is no Mitch in this race, you heretics.

So ... in Knox-years .. how long is it going to take for Biden to become a non-negative NBA player?

[B8RcDeMktfxC]

Guess the draft lottery will be delayed due to this damn corona, only thing I’ve been looking forward to for the Knicks

C'mon. You know you were only going to read the results after the show.

[nedleeds]

Guess the draft lottery will be delayed due to this damn corona, only thing I’ve been looking forward to for the Knicks

C'mon. You know you were only going to read the results after the show.

[Clyde_Style]

I covered the primary number projections in a logical, non-partisan manner so I don't know what you're talking about a particular subset of Democrats.

I'm saying objectively, by the numbers, Bernie had polled with higher favorability than any other politician for the majority of the past five years. Biden slipped past him just after taking a lead and gaining a ton of positive press but that's neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is that Bernie steadily at 70/30 favorability is only disliked by a minority of the people who vote Democrat. That doesn't mean he's their favorite, but the majority of Democrats are completely fine with him.

Yes, there is a trend within the party towards Biden and part of that is the instinct of a large bloc of Dem voters about who they think will beat Trump. You may not have experienced it directly, but a big part of the dynamic right now is the visceral dislike of Bernie by potential swing voters who actually could vote dem or repub in the generals. I wrote recently about the encounter I had at the Apple store with some Trump voters who said they are open to voting against Trump, but man they despised Bernie.

They support Trump because of the economy. Now that that's frayed they are open to switching, but they will not under any circumstances vote for Bernie. Trust me, there are millions of these voters and they are a large reason democrats want to back some they think will be palatable to the fence sitters.

The majority in SC was significant because it was not a predominantly white small electorate like Iowa or NH. Bernie was never the prohibitive favorite in my mind based on the early results (where Pete actually won in Iowa). The NY Times had an actual headline after Nevada saying Is Sanders Unstoppable? It was ridiculous!

So when SC voted it was a much better gauge for people IN the race to drop out and for voters on the fence to pick their horse.

I made sure to say popular vote. Bernie got 2000 more votes than Pete in Iowa. I do think after SC people had a good chance to drop out, I have no clue why Warren didn't.

I see Warren in a way you may not. She's the best dem progressive by far (IMO) and she's also a better politician than Bernie. That's not the same as electability; just that she is a more competent legislator than Bernie by far. Warren can deal with the opposition. Bernie is just a flamethrower. He's roundly dismissed in DC as a bratty, hard to work with malcontent.

Well, I think Warren does not necessarily see Bernie as a close fellow traveler like you may think she does. While they have policy goals in common, they are completely different creatures of politics. And I think Warren values beating Trump more than she does boosting Bernie and that she would have the same calculation about backing Biden as many of us clearly do.

So I do think she stayed in last Tuesday to see if she had a shot, but she pulled out like the others did and was the only one to stay neutral. Why? I think because she really is in a lose-lose scenario backing either of them right now. She backs Bernie she gets vilified for not being pragmatic. She backs Biden shes get vilified by some progressives. So I understand why she sat out and will probably wait a while longer or even just back Biden at the convention by pledging her delegates.

But I have no expectation she ever intended to back Bernie. Sorry, I think that is a bad read if you do think that's where her heart really lies.

It is not a particular kind of person who backs Biden over Sanders based on the odds that is a problem at all, because this is a race about beating Trump and more people think Biden is suited for that job than Bernie and there's nothing we can do about it either way. That's the majority perception coming out of last Tuesday by a significant margin. It wasn't even close. Bernie needed to win big in California and he didn't.

This only manifested due to very specific circumstances which I've mentioned a couple times. It required Warren staying in, Pete and Amy dropping out along with a multitude of endorsements in key states for the numbers to move from Bernie winning to Biden winning on Super Tuesday. If any of those circumstances changes, the SC stuff makes zero difference and we know that because all of the polls said the same thing.

I didn't speak on particular people backing Biden over Sanders, I spoke on particular people who dislike Sanders. That's a key difference that I keep beating on. Most people that back Biden over Sanders are totally fine with Bernie and vice versa.

No, not really, a significant number of democrats dislike Bernie, but like me they'll mostly support him if he's the nominee because Trump has gotta to go no matter what.

I think Bernie is a jackass on a personal level. His personality is toxic.

But I'm not here to argue for or against either them based on personality alone, so that is still secondary.

At the end of the day, I'd willingly vote for him and pray he can become an effective president even his history as a legislator is truly abysmal.

The media narrative flip flops all the time. They are trying to stir up clicks. They loved Trump in 2016 because it drove viewership. Most people in media don't like Trump, but they didn't think he'd win either. Their business is to create a horse race and if Bernie flipped Joe on Tuesday you can bet the media outlets will be pushing the narrative that its a tight race again. They love to do that.

This doesn't actually hold true when people study the coverage. This article is about how their victories were covered by CNN
https://inthesetimes.com/article/22354/cnn-bernie-sanders-joe-biden-media-spin-candidates-negative-mentions

And this one is further back but looks at how MSNBC treated each candidate at that point.


There was also the famous breakdown of 16 negative stories in 16 hours from the Washington Post...this has been the case a long time and one that Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent kinda primed lefties who follow him to be weary of.

You're citing In These Times and Chomsky. I'm talking about the media representations that form the viewpoint of the majority of voters. Leftist publications like that inform a very small portion of the population.

But I was voting for Warren until she dropped out. Many democrats are like me. They were going to vote for her or Pete or Amy or Mike and it would have gone to the convention. But that's not happening now. I don't like this angle that somehow a boring block of moderate democrats are stifling the progressives. I'm a progressive and I'll vote for Biden over Bernie next Tuesday in Florida.

That's cool, I respect your decision. But there is a small army of data that says the second choice for most Warren supporters was Bernie Sanders right up until the point she dropped out. It is what it is.

Well, whether those numbers were ever accurate or not they changed their minds then, didn't they?

Further, I have issues with Bernie I haven't even raised. I have grown not to trust him myself. I don't believe in him as a person or as an effective politician and I do not think he would be very good as president. That's me, a progressive, saying that, not a moderate. I'd vote for Bernie anyway if he were the nominee, but at this point I don't believe in his abilities to get anything done or even to beat Trump so I'm going with Biden.

That's cool, I know some Warren supporters who have fully flipped from liking Bernie. Some are still supporting Bernie because his agenda is absolutely the progressive option to Biden's moderate one. Others feel like you. But when I speak on people who dislike Bernie, I'm going with the data. Most people don't view Bernie with disdain, period. The electability and "doesn't get things done" arguments are subjective and would really get us off the rails. But there are two points I'm making about data...

1. A vote for Biden is not the same as expressing dislike or refusal to vote for Bernie.
2. Most democratic voters aren't put off by Bernie.


I voted for Bernie in the primaries in 2016 and really liked him then. I think you remember that. But I have not brought up the kinds of things I started to encounter as I went down into the rabbit hole to research Trump's connections and I found too much overlap with Bernie to not be alarmed.

I'm not going to get too detailed as I don't want to get into too much controversial stuff, but the Russian backing of Sanders has coincided with the support Trump received. Bernie has been confronted on this issue numerous times and he runs away from it and for me that makes him so deeply compromised that I have not trusted for years now.

A simple example will suffice: How many Bernie supporters understand that his chief campaign strategist in 2016 was Tad Devine, one of Manafort's key operatives in the Ukraine campaign to elect a pro-Putin candidate? Devine has continued to advise Bernie until just weeks ago. Manafort was installed on the Trump campaign by Russia. How did Devine also end up in the same position with Bernie?

That, plus I think Bernie is almost always grandiose and lacking in specificity. I find him usually overall hysterical and lacking in the substance that will be required to convert big dreams into actionable legislation. Warren I see as capable in those terms. Bernie, I do not.

I see him as a weak candidate for President at this point and I think he would get eviscerated by GOP operatives as the nominee. Some of you think Biden is going to get torn apart. I think it is Bernie who be at greater risk. They have not gotten their knives out for Bernie, because they want him to beat Biden. If had won the nomination, then they would have gone for the jugular. So if you think there's dirt on Biden, you would've gotten a load on Bernie once the nomination was won.

Replies are in bold for convenience (quotes inside quotes start to make my eyes blur and head spin)

[robillionaire]

I'm lukewarm to both remaining Dems for various reasons but I reject the idea that Biden would be Hillary Part Deux.

Specifically, I think Biden makes a stronger candidate than Hillary in the generals because of his showing in the Upper Midwest. Sanders clobbered Hillary one on one in that region and is being clobbered by Biden there. When you look at the generals... that's where Hillary lost.

With Sanders, you can make an argument that more young people vote in the general elections than primaries. That argument is true imo, but I do think both have a very good shot at the presidency. Especially with such a terrible response to the coronavirus outbreak.

I said this in the Current Affairs sections.

I think both Sanders and Biden have an equal chance against Trump. I will give the edge to Sanders because he's sharper on the stage.

But I'm going for Sanders because he's a high risk/high reward candidate, while Biden his high risk/low reward.

Biden basically Knox. Sanders is Frank.

Spoiler:

Warren was RJ

There is no Mitch in this race, you heretics.

Yeah warren was RJ, the Massachusetts mamba Ssssssssssss

[robillionaire]

on a side note has anybody in the city tried to get groceries today, i'm about to hit the stores

I saw pictures from a friend of cleaned out stores

So yeah Whole Foods, no meat, no bread, nothing in cans, not much that wouldn’t spoil in a week. If it’s the apocalypse I’m finished

[HarthorneWingo]

A summary of Biden’s history of appeasing the right.

Watch on YouTube

[Clyde_Style]

Mods could we have a political primary thread? I know political topics have been banned in the past, but considering most of us will be stuck indoors? We need something lol And considering half the talk in this thread has been political...

Maybe we can just focus on the primary (Biden & Sanders) and try not to talk about Trump?

One last comment about this primary

Let's just see how the debate goes this Sunday

Anyone who is willing to be open-minded can also report back what their impressions were

If Bernie does well, I'll certainly acknowledge it

I don't believe it will change the outcome much, but I think is fair play to say let's see how it goes. Crazy things do happen

I don't think it will change the outcomes either. Not sure how serious people will take this debate either since there's no audience and it will shadowed by the coronavirus news.

Even if Bernie by some surprise comes out swinging and tries to take down Biden, I don't think most people will want to see that during these times. They want assurance that we are going to be ok, not doomed. The opportunity to take down Biden was missed, and it wasn't entirely Bernie's fault. He never had the chance to take on Biden 1 on 1.

But he has to keep laying the stepping stones for progressives of the future. So I see him continuing to be persistent and get his message across, but I don't see him going all out on Biden.

Let's have a thread for it for sure.

We all get along. Should be fine.

[Clyde_Style]

I'm lukewarm to both remaining Dems for various reasons but I reject the idea that Biden would be Hillary Part Deux.

Specifically, I think Biden makes a stronger candidate than Hillary in the generals because of his showing in the Upper Midwest. Sanders clobbered Hillary one on one in that region and is being clobbered by Biden there. When you look at the generals... that's where Hillary lost.

With Sanders, you can make an argument that more young people vote in the general elections than primaries. That argument is true imo, but I do think both have a very good shot at the presidency. Especially with such a terrible response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Yes, exactly right. And you can add in how strong Biden should be in Florida vs. Trump whereas Sanders will probably lose to him here.

Trump the other day was on tape saying he'd cut SS. That's going to be on a political ad loop in Florida, guaranteed.

[Clyde_Style]

Report from Florida

Still has not sunk in to everyone here what is happening

Just got back from Walmart where you could buy almost any product though a few things were almost cleaned out. I wanted zinc tabs and they were gone.

But plenty of fresh veggies and fruits.

The rice was almost all gone. Lots of pasta sold

pretty busy, not panicky, just everyone was super conscious of not bumping into each other

[Clyde_Style]

I'm honestly and truly enjoying this discussion. I hope there is no hard feelings setting in here. I just think we can dissect this through and through, but the bottom line to me comes down to this:

1. Very few people outside of Bernie's base are prioritizing policy over beating Trump. Whether or not they like the policy is somewhat irrelevant to this.

2. Bernie claimed he would bring in new voters. This did not prove to be true. He had a plurality when there were 10 candidates, but the majority was always against him. As the field winnowed, his share didn't go up. We can talk about all the nuances to this, but once again, this is the bottom line. No matter how many people were in the race, 51%+ of the voters never said he was their choice. Like I said before, all the polling in the world is meaningless once the votes start coming in. All the people who liked him as a person or felt drawn to his policies did not put their money where their mouth was.

3. Democrats have overwhelmingly chosen to trust Biden over Bernie when it comes to the question of electability. A much broader coalition sees Biden as the more sound candidate from a strategy perspective. So for all the electability arguments Bernie put forth, and whatever the polling was, it does not seem that he convinced anyone outside of the 25-30% he cultivated in 2016.

Now, I'm not conflating this with a rejection of progressivism or a rejection of Bernie. I'm definitely saying that progressive policy and Bernie Sanders proved to be not what the majority voters wanted to counter Trump with this time around. You can say that's only because the establishment backed Biden. Fine. But the people overwhelmingly chose to trust the establishment.

I think the best way to put it is that even if people think the package of Bernie and progressive policies is a better product objectively, it's not what they were in the market for.

The quality of the product is irrelevant if people don't buy it.

Hell nah on hard feelings, you know me fam, I'll go in on this stuff all day (I do just in other places generally0.
1. We mostly agree here. I actually would argue even Bernie's base mostly prioritizes beating Trump but thinks that Bernie is the better option for a myriad of reasons. Most of the more extreme Bernie supporters peeled off to Tulsi and Yang (not saying that's all their support, I like a lot of Yang Gang heads and rock with UBI though not his version).

2. 50/50 here. Super Tuesday saw voter surges in a number of states. Some where the race was close (Texas), some where Bernie dominated (Utah) and some where Biden dominated (Virginia). I think the surprise here is that in some places where Biden didn't even campaign, he still saw a surge of support. Why that happened? I go back to negative partisanship. I'd generally guess that those people followed the horse race coverage and went with what the story was which informs my theory that endorsements have had outsized impacts this primary season. But this whole bit is pure speculation.

3. I think you're short selling Bernie and overselling Biden a bit. Bernie hit about 48% when the field was still full. He broke 30 in plenty of Super Tuesday states including Cali and Colorado. Most of the states Biden has won, he's polled similarly in that 30-50% zone as well. Where we see the more dramatic leads are basically all Red States which is where I get a bit frustrated. Biden's getting an exaggerated bump from states he doesn't have a prayer to win in the general. So while Biden does have some blowouts, it's mostly been close races and he's built his margins in places the Dems typically pay no mind in a general.

I think the key distinction here is that Biden's "dominance" is overstated to me. Not in that he has the numbers, but in that the numbers are far less static than people have implied. Bernie and Biden are the only two candidates who had true "sticky" support to begin with but a huge chunk of the electorate was up for grabs and could still be. The rush to push him out is more narrative building but it ignores some signs...
1. A huge chunk of Biden's support came thanks to the behest of others rather than his own campaigning.
2. That the support came from a group that bounced around multiple candidates throughout this process (From Harris to Warren to Pete to Biden).
3. That Biden when he has been prone to missteps when he does campaign (From lying about being arrested fighting for Mandela throughout February to cursing out that Union member and telling multiple others to go vote for someone else).

Put it this way: Biden has a comfortable lead the same way teams get a comfortable lead in the modern NBA, you're always a couple of three pointers away from watching the lead evaporate fast. The key now for him is to cling to the narrative and not make any mistakes, that's why we've barely seen him outside of one prepared speech. I don't trust that kind of strategy holding up in a general when people pay more attention and if they tune in any time soon than Bernie can make a come back. The South is a killer though, that Southern Wall is real.

Joe is showing strength in BOTH the South and the Midwest. Hard to not see that as critical right now. Trump would be more competitive in those states vs. Bernie, that's what this primary is already telling us. I do think it translates in a big way. I still think Bernie might be able to win. I'm not totally selling him short like that, but my eyes see the trends and they tell me Biden is the one with the real juice right now.

One thing to keep in mind is these are things that jell in a particular historical moment. It looks like this is Biden's moment, not Bernie's. I wish for everyone to see that these kinds of forces are not fully explainable by any one set of logic. It is just how big pivot points in history happen where one person gets the support and becomes the top dog. It really is not so much about policy this time around, though I do think Biden will have a much better mandate to do something relatively progressive than you may be accounting for.

Either way, we need a democratic controlled WH, Senate and House to clean up this disaster. I hope every Sanders supporter believes this by November. To me, this is the end of our civilization if Trump and the GOP stay in power. That's how I see it. To me this is breaking the chains of impending fascism or going down into pure chaos where the checks and balances of our system are destroyed by a heartless autocracy.

[Clyde_Style]

I think Trump is going to die. He looks sick as hell. Both him and Pence were exposed and they both refused to get tested.

I'm guessing he's not going to make it to November

Just a hunch, but I think he's the very example of the kind of host this virus strikes down

Maybe they all die, Bernie looks like a mummy, Biden looks like a derelict at the end of a Panama City bar who is still trying to snag 30 year olds and Trump looks like shoe leather given life and a funny wig. At least then I could vote for Tulsi Gabbard or somebody sane and not a complete communist who will obliterate any incentive to create a small business.

It's the Monster Mash with Biden as Dracula, Sanders as the Mummy and Trump as the Blob.

Lucky for us Tulsi will never get that chance so I'll spare you my spiel on how ludicrous I find her.

[Clyde_Style]

People are literally panic-shopping and hoarding like the bubonic plague has returned. It's quite the overreaction really.

It's difficult to find even toilet paper or bread in highly populated areas.

My theory: People are using the bread as backup asswipe

I just discovered the joys of baby wipes this past year. I'm in love.

[Clyde_Style]

Media bias against Sanders, by the numbers.

Watch on YouTube

This is mostly BS IMO

Before SC, Sanders was being talked about by the mainstream media as the frontrunner. After Nevada, the question was can anyone stop Sanders? The question was not can Joe Biden stop Sanders, but anyone

So then Biden won SC and they flipped the script, because that's what these MFers do for a living.

Again, Bernie was never the front runner in my mind. I actually thought it was going to end up being a mash-up between Bernie, Joe and Mike heading into the convention. I had no idea Joe would win in SC in such big terms.

The media did NOT FORCE Bloomberg, Buttigeig, Klobuchar to drop out. So what is it? A media conspiracy, a DNC conspiracy? or maybe it is just they saw no path to the nomination and they decided they wanted to get out of Joe's way to make it easier for him to beat Bernie

So, yes, it is perfectly accurate to claim those three dropping out was a conspiracy to help Joe Biden. OF COURSE IT WAS! They want him, not Sanders to win the nomination. They are not only more centrist like Biden, they also made the calculation that Biden would be able to win the nomination outright and not have a contested convention if they got out of his way.

But to pin that all on conspiratorial media elites is hokum

[HarthorneWingo]

Here’s Medhi Hassan from The Intercept going over all of Biden’s lies in this campaign. These too will be fodder for Trump and the GOP.

Watch on YouTube

[Daaaarryyl]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/white-house-set-fail/607960/

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/peter-wehner-trump-presidency-over/607969/

[KnicksGadfly]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/white-house-set-fail/607960/

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/peter-wehner-trump-presidency-over/607969/

This is pretty optimistic. I think we're gonna see if people can actually look beyond Faux News right now.

[Zenzibar]

Who'll win this Democratic race, is anyone's guess.