Comment by wrfrmers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wrfrmers | Hacker News Reader

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Bernie Sanders won against Trump in h2h polls in 2016 and 2020, quite strongly. Booker was on his was to something similar. Even 2008 Obama campaigned left of Clinton (we made the correct choice as far as an electoral victory goes, then, if not necessarily policy-wise).

These are realities that the DNC won't face because it threatens their donors. SF is a bad example as a region on a neoliberal stranglehold that is only nominally leftist, but much more concerned with money. The political machine there is adept at crushing upstarts. Nancy Pelosi had a serious challenger several years ago; she refused to debate him, and bad actors with Pelosi connections torpedoed his efforts with specious harrasment campaigns.

Which is all to say that the DNC and its local arms go out of their way to actively scuttle anything that doesn't have their seal of approval. Hope in SF, Kentucky, and elsewhere is not a function of progressive electoral capability, but of establishment Democrats' willingness to play fair or dirty.

Harris beat Trump in H2H polls against Trump in 2024. What matters is likely voters in swing states. Sanders gets crushed across the board when it comes to people actually voting, which is why he lost the primaries. Pelosi gets donors, and her primary opponents don't. No smoke-filled rooms needed.

>Harris beat Trump in H2H polls against Trump in 2024.

Not as consistently, not by the same margins, and with a large amount of ambivalence from swing voters. They liked Sanders in a way that Harris could never emulate. Every election over the last generation, save 2012, was determined by answering the question, "Are you sufficiently different from the last guy?" Obama, Trump, Biden, and, yes, Sanders were. McCain, Romney, Clinton, Trump (ironically), and Harris were not.

Sanders lost Democratic primaries (sometimes in dubious fashion), but kicked our milquetoast candidates' butts with swing voters in swing states, which I agree is what matters (other than not losing the progressive base, which is also something he was good at). He peeled off independents and Republicans who were fed up with Democratic centrism; as with Trump, ANY change would do for them, as long as it was unequivocal. And Sanders had the advantage of not having a history of raping women. Our loss, sabotogating his campaign (literally).

Getting donors isn't a virtue. Several successful Democratic candidates have run on eschewing the wrong kinds of donors. Regardless, she uses the smoke-filled rooms anyway. And then lies about basic stuff like, "This will be my last time running for office." It's no wonder that people on both sides of the aisle hate her. She represents many of the reasons Democrats lose, and only wins herself through momentum and subterfuge.

> Sanders lost Democratic primaries (sometimes in dubious fashion)

No, he lost convincingly in a landslide. There was nothing dubious about the primaries.

> but kicked our milquetoast candidates' butts with swing voters in swing states

In dubious caucuses. If these states had primaries, Sanders would have won even fewer states.

> only wins herself through momentum and subterfuge.

She wins because she drastically outspends her opponents. Your idea of how elections work is completely divorced from reality.

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