Too old, too white, too male. Right message -- wrong messenger. He blew his chance in 2016 by not speaking to or even recognizing the intersectionality of gender, race, and inequality. Not sure he's learned that lesson. Bernie folks want to blame Hillary and the DNC but that's nonsense. He managed to garner 18% of the African American vote. No Democrat can win the primary with those numbers.
23
Lots of negative comments against Senator Sanders...the trolls were just hired, again, full time, by the corporate Democratic Party to smear the ONLY candidate that truly represents the working class. As for the Bernie is too old comments, Nancy Pelosi is in her EIGHTIES and yet she is to become House Speaker for the Party....how come Nancy is not too old?
31
When Bernie received 49.6% of the vote in Iowa in 2016, there was only one other viable candidate in the pool - Hillary Clinton. This latest poll that the article cites has ~10 viable candidates. Thus, it is incredibly misleading to compare the 2016 Iowa democratic primary results and this most recent poll without qualifying that difference. In a poll with US senators, a former vice president, a former mayor of New York City, and others, in what world would a single candidate receive the support of half the participants? Of course Sanders is going to receive less than he did in 2016 with this many choices. The article citing this as evidence of Sanders losing support without mentioning this important difference is unfortunate, and makes me think it was intentionally omitted so as to further the narrative that Bernie is losing support across the board.
21
Sanders is 77 years old, and Biden is 76, for cryin’ out loud! They were born in 1941 and 1942, respectively! Before the middle of the last century! They had their days in the sun, and they should step out of the way and support qualified candidates who are at least a generation younger, whose policies are ones they’ve fought for. In the last 20 years - since they were in their mid-50s - the world has changed, and has continued to change, in significant ways that they may have observed in the lives of their children and grandchildren, but there is a HUGE difference between (a) being an aging spectator, and (b) being one of the much younger women and men in the arena, who have LIVED among those who have struggled, and who have found ways to solve problems in a 21st-century way. Those are the kinds of much younger candidates every party needs in this country, at every level of government.
13
I was a Big Bernie fan in 2016. Now, support for the policy is most important to me. I may be biased but it seemed to me that the NYT and the rest of what economist Thomas Piketty calls the apparatus of persuasion went into overdrive in 2015 when it looked like his message of insupportable and growing levels of inequality was catching hold. This piece is just one more sorry contribution, in my opinion.
23
"... when he was far less of a political star than he is today." Bernie is a political star today? Who knew. Please Dems, do not put out a candidate with far left views. I know the NYTimes will applaud you, as will college kids, NYC, SF, and LA. However, contrary to popular beliefs here, most do NOT want a far right, or far left agenda or candidate. Moderation please, so that maybe something will get done in DC that actually works as intended?
14
Excerpt from The Intercept, Glenn Greenwalds' journalistic home, discusses the reality of Bernie Sanders, a reality corporate America, the Republicans, and the Democrats, do not want the average American voter to know ...
Read and be enlightened -
Link after excerpt.
" ... the case for Sanders in 2020 is as strong as it was in 2016 — if not stronger. He now has much better name recognition, a standing army of loyal and experienced activists, an unrivaled social media presence, an authenticity that cannot be bought or taught, and a string of substantive policy wins under his belt, from big-name Democratic support for his “Medicare for All” bill to the Stop BEZOS Act to the historic Senate voteon Yemen last week.
Will he emerge victorious? In an age of Trump, predictions are a fool’s game. The Democratic primaries will feature more than a dozen talented, ambitious, and experienced presidential wannabes, from a bevy of senators and governors to a popular former vice president.
But ignore the opinion polls and the bogus arguments against him: whether you like him or not, Bernie Sanders is the frontrunner right now."
https://theintercept.com/2018/12/19/bernie-sanders-2020-election/
26
The only thing I want Bernie Sanders to do is go away. When he was running in 2016, I looked up his record to see what he had accomplished during his Senatorial career, and the answer was very little. Like Ralph Nader, he's an egotistical gadfly who can't get off the stage. The only thing I want to hear from him is an apology for helping to put Donald Trump in office.
29
Dear Bernie,
I waited a lifetime for someone like you to come along. I was 12 when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. I so wanted to vote for you for President in 2016. But alas it was not to be. I retired not because I couldn't do the job anymore. I retired because I did my job in training my replacement. I knew it was time to let the young folks takeover. I know you will do what's right for the country. Perhaps it's time to step aside and cheer from the sidelines. I still love you Bernie and wish you well.
Sincerely,
Your Loyal Fan
7
Bernie, Please don’t run. It’s an ego thing I know, but I’m done with old white guys pointing their fingers at me while repeating, ad nauseum, the same old tired promises
15
Pretty early in the 2020 game to start undermining Bernie Sanders, isn't it?
I'm just hoping that the Progressives (and I consider myself one)
will not only be front-runners for domestic policies, but will be very knowledgeable about foreign policy - we are desperately in need of patching up the damage already done by Trump.
And yes, young blood is badly needed.
11
The best thing Bernie Sanders could do now is to put his energy and resources into getting behind a younger and more mainstream democratic candidate that won't further fracture the weakened democratic party. And Elizabeth Warren would do us all a huge favor if she stayed out of the race. Either Sanders or Warren as democratic contenders would almost certainly hand over the election to the republicans. While I may embrace their values, that doeesn’t mean I would vote for them. They could never unite the fractious democratic electorate, let alone win over on the edge republicans, and we don’t need another repeat of 2016.
53
@Martha
Why would you think "mainstream" is a uniting quality? A lot of us are very tired of ineffective mainstream candidates, which is why Bernie had so much success in the first place. And let me remind you that Hillary was mainstream. She handed over the election to the Republicans. Do you really expect different results when you roll the same loaded dice again?
And the way you win over "edge Republicans" is to be more like Republicans. If that's the kind of candidate you want, just vote for a Republican.
Geez, when did we get so off the rails that anyone who stands up for good old-fashioned Democratic values, like Warren and Sanders, is now considered some loony, fringe, socialist nutcase? Just shows how far right this party has really gone.
31
Too old. There’s only one thing that is too old and should be retired; Iowa, New Hampshire.....early primary states deciding who we other millions get to hear on debate stages, vote for. I want to hear ideas, from all the possible candidates. Early. And I want to know their financing base, their past records on key issues. Mouthing a pat phrase comes easy- I want sincerity.
51
I have always wondered why no one noticed that Trump never attacked Bernie during the 2016 primaries, while he (and his Russian friends) pounded Hillary for months.
I have also been puzzled why Bernie's supporters believe that he would have easily beaten Trump in the general election. Do they honestly think that Trump would not have attacked Bernie during a general election? Calling him a "socialist" would have probably been the mildest name given him.
Trump still treats Bernie with kid gloves because he depends on him to divide the Democrats, once again, in 2020. No wonder he congratulated Bernie on winning his re-election to the Senate this year.
20
But without Putin's continued support he's toast....
7
Bernie, who is not a Democrat, is like an old shoe. Best worn when you go fishing. Not worn when you go to the big dance!
17
No Bernie. It would be very nice to have someone who is somewhat presidential next time. He's no trump (but who is?), but he's no jewel, either. We want the smartest, most capable person, right? Okay - no bernie.
13
I am among the 20% of the population that is liberal, So it isn't Sander’s policies that I am against.
Sanders refuses to recognize he is a TOOL for the Republicans, same as Ralph Nader who was responsible for Al Gore losing the Presidency. Imagine if Gore had won-- no Iraq War and working on the environment/global warming issues.
Republican strategists are SMART. They donated free advertising to incite people to vote for him and be angry over Hillary Clinton. Bernie's new supporters saw Sanders as the CANDY man, getting them free new perks.
How do I know? MSN conducted a statistical poll and asked Sander's voters if they were aware under Sander's tax plan a person making $50K would also pay an additional $8K in taxes.
The vast majority were shocked. And 2/3s reported this was not acceptable. That is THEIR taxes could not go up too, to pay for the new social benefits.
So if Sanders won the preliminary election, Republicans would now switch to advertising that Bernie wanted to raise EVERY one's taxes -- followed by FEAR warnings this would dramatically harm the economy and cause unemployment.
You see -- in Europe you can raise taxes because people own small houses and cars. In the US, people tend to have way more debt and consumerism.
Liberals comprise 20% of the population. Far fewer people vote in primaries. In the REAL elections, one must win over the Independents. Only moderates can win Presidential elections.
15
@Thoughtful
Interesting. So Trump is a moderate?
12
I admire Bernie and supported him in the 2016 race but I think his time has come and gone. His nomination for the 2020 Democratic nomination would be a gift for the Trump supporters. Even though his policies are closer to Roosevelt's New Deal than anything else, he still presents himself as a Democratic Socialist. In a presidential race, Democratic Socialist, would morph to Socialist, then to Communist as portrayed by the Republicans. He would do well as a Cabinet Secretary but his candidacy for the presidency would be a disaster for the Democratic party. Let the people choose their candidate in the upcoming primaries and let the Democratic National Committee stay out of it this time.
9
The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.
Ask Howard Dean what that means.
6
Ohhh, this makes me so mad. I just gotta tell everyone here how I feel.
1
The most important line in this piece was about Sanders not being able to mobilize the black vote that came out for droves for Obama and stayed home (now we know in some part due to social media spewing by Russia against Clinton). This needs a lot of analysis and more specific polling, not overall national trends, before I will consider Sanders at all. I can forgive him dropping the Democratic Party the minute the election was over (well, sort of) and his lingering in the ring overlong when he could have done more to campaign for Clinton, but if he can't find a way to get the visible minority voters out for a previously communist party member who is also Jewish there is no point.
9
@E Campbell - I wonder about your reflections had the basis of support you thought you had earned was torn from under your feet by your own people (see Wasserman-Schultz).
5
Bernie and his supporters did more damage than Nader ever did. Shame on them. I will never forgive them. Never.
19
@Bonnie And I will never forgive having Clinton crammed down my throat by the establishment.
22
I'd say nothing changes at the National level....until there is an actual rejection of the DNC corporate leadership that Controls the larger Democrat party. Bernie Sanders, bless his heart, has recently shown he simply is NOT up to task. The DNC political machine broke Bernie's will to live back during the California Primary vote fraud(that simply got swept under the rug by a very compliant press corps, mostly in the pocket of various DNC corporate interests).
Bernie shamelessly endorsed a very corrupt Hillary Clinton. Bernie then went on to announce retirement....
And now this, Bernie running for office anyway.....another fossil refusing to let go of the sceptre of power.
5
It would make me feel better if he was a Democrat seeking the nomination for the Democratic Party.
14
Bernie should not run again. It isn’t his age that concerns me. It’s his mistaken and shortsighted notion that fixing income inequality will resolve racial discrimination. That alone wouldn’t be enough.
6
@Anna R
Yeah, down with income equality! Let us eat cake!
12
When Bernie finds his spine and can stand up against the women who derailed him in 2016, I will consider donating and supporting him again.
4
Bernie only looked good in 2016 because Hillary ought off or scared of all other likely candidates. Bernie was allowed to run because the presumption was that he would be no real threat. As it turned out, Hillary was such a weak candidate that Bernie actually looked like a plausible alternative.
6
@Amy
"Allowed" to run? Wow. That about says it all about today's Democratic party.
15
Bernie has a lot to offer, but being President is not one of them-
11
When I supported Sanders' candidacy in 2016, I did so with the understanding that he would not win the Democratic nomination (it was clear as day that the party leadership was all-in for Hillary that year), and that the best he could do was move the party's platform to the left on core economic issues, which he did. If he runs for the 2020 nomination, he actually has a legitimate chance to win, given the campaign infrastructure from 2020 that is still in place or can quickly be brought up to speed, and (more importantly) given that the field could be historically crowded. It will certainly require a lower share of the primary vote to win in 2020 than it did in 2016.
This is going to sound ageist, but let's face it, he'll be 78 in 2020 and, if elected that year and re-elected in 2024, would be 86 at the end of his presidency. I do think that, physically and mentally, he would probably have one good term in him. I am not at all confident that he could last for two terms. (And yes, the same absolutely applies to Biden too; he should consider not running for the same reason.) If Warren, Brown, Jeff Merkley and Tulsi Gabbard all decide not to run, then yes, I would still gladly support a Sanders candidacy in 2020. But if any of those four do decide to run, then I think that Sanders would do best by not running, by endorsing one of those four and by pledging all possible aid, including (most importantly) access to his 2016 campaign infrastructure and donor list.
7
He is too old.
14
@Michael and Laura
Should he run, it would be important to have a younger running mate like Tulsi Gabbard or Barbara Lee. Keep in mind that Nancy Pelosi is older than he and Sanders has more energy than many much younger.
7
Nancy Pelosi is in her 80s, but I don't hear that she is too old to become House Speaker.
12
I live in Vermont and Bernie is my senator. I raised money for him in 2015 and did my utmost to get him nominated. My heart broke when the DNC cheated him. That said, I think he needs to move over and support someone younger now.
12
@Bronwyn
The DNC did not CHEAT Old Bernie, the non-Democrat.
11
As a Vermonter, and someone who has voted for Bernie repeatedly, I would prefer that he remain our Senator, and instead mentor younger candidates to takeover his Progressive mantle.
13
I have voted happily for Bernie many times here in Vermont.
But I do not want him to run for President.
We need a far younger person, fresher.
We need a new start.
We need to win.
14
The progressive movement is not about a person, it is about policy. No one should be the Democratic presidential candidate because it is their turn (see, Hillary Clinton). We must have a free and fair primary and let the most effective campaigner show herself. If that person is Bernie or Beto or Warren or Brown or someone else, I don't care.
8
It is shallow hit pieces like this, in subservience to Wall Street "centrism" that gave us Trump. As with DNC Democrats, no lessons can puncture the arrogance of the corrupt rule of money. Sanders remains the most popular politician in the country. I only wish he would channel Eugene V. Debs and run either as an independent or as head of a much needed People's Party.
16
As much as I like Mr. Sanders, I think he should step aside and mentor the leaders of the future. Help then hone the economic equality message and the meaning of a social democracy.
I say this still knowing that someone far less capable and meaningful could be selected, but I hope that would not be the case. The Democrats want and need to win. The country needs them to win. Picking a winner, however, without a winning message is a sure loser. It is the message that will be the most important factor in the next election. A younger leader would probably seem more inclusive of the voting public and that would be good, too. If the person comes across as intelligent, caring, empathic, and honest, reflective of the message, I am sure that would carry the day.
The sad thing, though, is that the country has been turned in to a wasteland, and it will not be easy to resurrect it. We need to make an honest appraisal of its weaknesses and address them, beginning with income inequality. Unless we correct the tax reform done by the Republicans, the government will not have the resources to move in to the next century by dealing with need infrastructure that will also bring about the decent paying jobs of the future that need not go to robots.
5
This column is spot on. We Democrats need to stop being mesmerized by the past with support for candidates like Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. They're accomplishments in moving a more progressive agenda forward are considerable. But now is the time for new blood, new faces, new ideas. At this early stage I favor, but want to hear more on a national level from Beto O'Rourke. Sherrod Brown and of course Liz Warren should also be in play. What I don't want to see, though, is 19 Democrats parading across the primary process, as the Republicans did in 2016. Then again, when I consider the results, maybe it wasn't such a bad idea?
6
@Mark - Do you even know how Beto has voted? Look at his Rebpublican-like voting record. Geez. The ignorance of people falling for "charisma" is astounding.
13
Bernie Sanders has credibility that comes with his voting record and a progressive platform. If the democrats throw him overboard for another candidate
that talks a great game but has no real credibility they could blow it again.
19
Bernie Sanders needs to go away. But, like all politicians, he is addicted to adoring crowds. He is not the first or the last. Teddy Roosevelt to the Clintons to former governors, life seems dull when your not speaking to cheering crowds. Perhaps a new doctrine of psychology that deals with crowd addition could be studied. At some party in DC you could say your area of expertise is political addiction and treatment. Cure, spend one week with the humans at United cerebral palsy. Ralph Nader,s ego is the name of the band I am in. We are backing up the Perot,s. And what do you do?
8
"There are just too many Democrats who don’t forgive him [Bernie] for not being a Democrat."
Mr. Abramson's statement says more about Democrats than it does about Sanders. Some Democrats are willing to reject the winning platform in both 2016 and 2020 over the candidate's party affiliation. Eight years of Trump so Democrats can maintain their unpopular party purity. I have to say: Their position smacks of self-righteousness. Democrats need to find some humility in light of their own failures.
That said, I would vote Bernie over Biden but I would prefer a much younger candidate to either of them. Like almost everyone else, I support Bernie's platform more than the man specifically. If we elect any President based on Bernie's values, Sanders wins. The question is can we find a candidate other than Sanders who truly represents his values in that stark, uncompromising way.
So far, the potential bench is filled with potential hopefuls miming the message but without any true conviction. Everyone is wearing the Sanders mantle to hide an underlying agenda. There are of course some who have no other agenda other than to become President. O'Rourke is possibly an exception but we'll have to wait and see.
Regardless of platform though, a young candidate is an immediate advantage to Democrats. To reference Kim Jong Un, Trump is dotard. Putting anyone under the age of 65 on the ticket is going to create an immediate contrast. You don't even need to say anything. Just stand there.
7
Don't count me among Bernie supporters. The main reason is he is simply too old. I am almost Bernie's age, and I know what that means. Diminished capacity, whether admitted to or not. No one his age has the power of concentration, the focus, or the flexibility that's going to be required to repair the damage Trump has done. It's not just domestic issues that will be important for a new president, but repairing the damage done to the international community will be so important.There are many progressives with fresh ideas who are younger and eager to be given a chance. They should be considered. In 2020, Bernie will be 79 years old. The chances he could serve a full term are very slim. If he should become the candidate, his choice of running mate will be of utmost importance, because it's more than likely that person will actually serve as president. You may think your vote is for Bernie, but it will really be for the number two.
11
Bernie Sanders lifted the case for Medicare for all into the heart of the national conversation. Same with the $15/hr minimum wage, which he persuaded Bezos to implement. He points out that in other First World countries, students aren't burdened by higher education tuition debt (and their public schools are better too). He tirelessly speaks up against voter disenfranchisement, cruel and illegal immigration policies, and unholy alliances with dictators. He led the fight for the Senate repudiation of our support for the Saudis in their war on Yemen. He is a tireless, principled public servant who takes no corporate money. He understands the urgency of climate change. And on the night John McCain saved Obamacare with his thumbs down, it was Bernie who went out into the streets at 1:30am to thank the people who'd come on buses from all over the country with their wheelchairs and oxygen tubes to plead for it. He said, This is your victory, we couldn't have done it without you. Everyone else stayed indoors.
If Bernie runs, he has my vote and my active support.
28
@Portia
#Me too!
16
@Portia Me three!
13
If elected as president in 2020, Bernie Sanders would turn 80 in his first year of office. The risk of mental and physical decline at that age, a risk that increases every year, every month, for an octogenarian, is alone disqualifying. The risk would be unacceptable if we were voting for county school board, much less the presidency of the USA.
If he lives to 85 or 90, will he still be the one candidate who can save America from becoming what is increasingly an oligarchy?
Well, Reagan slept through conferences with world leaders and most Americans didn't care. Maybe the country would be as lenient with Sanders as with Reagan. Then again, I don't think anyone thought it necessary to poke to Reagan to see if he was still living.
5
While I like Bernie and appreciate his ideas, he needs to participate this time from the sidelines. Being 74, I can say that there comes a time when you have to stop thinking you are God's gift. There come a time when instead of running you spend more time walking the dog.
Rightly or wrongly, I still place a little blame on Bernie and his inflexible supporters for adding to the incredible confluence of events that gave us Trump.
Please, Bernie, think of Cincinnatus.
9
I don't vote for a person based upon what party they cleave to, nor do I vote for a person because what they 'claim' to believe or promise what they will achieve. Most certainly, I will never, NEVER, vote for a person who is over 60.
I am 68 and in less than 3 weeks will be 69. There is not a day that I get out of bed and not feel bone and muscle pain. My sight, hearing, and dental health are not what they were when I was 35 or 45 or 55. Yes I am still curious, still learning, still trying to achieve what I have yet to achieve; none of that makes me interested in the struggles that younger 20-40 year olds are occupied with. As an explanation, for me I somehow managed to get this old with a life full of stressors and struggles. So the 20-40 year-old-struggle just seems like the norm of any American Life.
At my current age, I am beginning to feel more vulnerable and much less trusting than I was prior to 16 years old. In other words, at this age I am more worried about being able to continue taking care of myself than I am about taking care of my adult children, all of whom are individually living a much better lifestyle than I ever hand.
I will vote for a younger President. One who is able to connect to the young adults and older adults. I will vote for one who is more like Lyndon B. Johnson regarding his efforts to bring everyone in the Senate and House together for the greater good of the common people all over the nation. We must find common ground.
9
I have written before that in describing progressives, it is important to distinguish between "social" progressives and "economic" progressives. Many are both, of course. But it is important to note that while the Democratic Party has gone all in, and laudably so, on being socially progressive (reproductive rights, marriage equality and other LGBTQ rights being at the top of the list), its commitment to being economically progressive (increasing the minimum wage, making it easier to unionize, strengthening Social Security and strongly opposing the excesses of Wall Street and other wealthy interests, among other aspects) has been in question for at least the past 25-30 years. The party leadership has, on many occasions, encouraged the perception that it just doesn't care as much about the latter as it does about the former (Andrew Cuomo being a prime example of this, but not the only one).
Sanders, while not a registered Democrat, is perhaps the most promiment proponent of the notion that the party needs to get back to putting progressive economics on the front and center of its policy agenda. Whether he runs for President again or not (and I have some doubts about this which I will explain in a separate e-mail), I hope he continues hia push for progressive economics. The Democratic Party, I think, will be surprised at how well it can do in red states if it makes progressive economics the centerpiece of its agenda.
10
I was a Sanders supporter in 2018. If he runs I will support him in 2020 despite some qualms about his age and the concern that bitterness over 2016 could make it difficult for him to bring some people who support led Hillary Clinton on board.
No one else has his combination of experience both as a legislator and as an executive—he was a transformational mayor of Burlington, his clear vision and political integrity. I believe that if elected he would do his best to make our society more egalitarian, environmentally sustainable and put us on the path toward a better future.
As for the other candidates, I do like Sherrod Brown and though I don’t agree with her on every issue Amy Klobuchar impressed me with her performance in the Kavanaugh hearings. I’d like to learn more about Governors Bullard and Hickenlooper. Booker, Harris and O’Rourke strike me as not quite ready for the job but could be good VP material. Warren sadly strikes me as politically rather inept and I did not like Gillibrand’s takedown of Al Franken.
Let’s just have an honest, hard hitting primary and let the best candidate emerge battle tested and vetted,armed with vision and ideas and ready and eager to bring a positive argument before the American people.
7
@Brooklyncowgirl.
Responding to my own post.
I forgot to mention Joe Biden. While he’s hard not to like, he has a history of poor decision making—supporting the Iraq war being the most prominent in my mind. Then, as with Sanders, there’s the question of age.
Mind you, despite misgivings about several of the candidates, I will almost certainly vote for whoever the Democrats nominate—something I’ve done every election since Walter Mondale lost to Reagan despite having supported other candidates in the primaries.
I hope that the people here expressing their disdain for Senator Sanders will do the same if he wins the nomination.
3
Sanders is more committed - as he has always been - to a set of social and economic principles than to his own glory.
In his own words, he would run if he thought he was the best candidate and would support another candidate if they were both progressive and stood a better chance than he.
Party insiders who were urging him to withdraw in favor of Clinton last time almost as soon as he announced and the authors of this article miss the point: he will fight for a platform based in social and economic justice and representation of the need for health care, living wages, green energy policy, a return to representative democracy, and so on.
If he is never president but continues to move the DNC away from dependency on big money and the resulting representation of business over working families, he will be happy with his goal.
While this article seeks to discount the contribution and his supporters have made in leading the wave of new progressives, they should remember who brought new voters of all ages - but especially the enormous and until recently dormant youth vote - to the polls in an midterm off-year election.
It is sad to see the establishment press jumping so soon to undermine a major leader of a resurgent blue ripple that could actually become a wave.
19
In 2016, I was a Bernie supporter. In the election, with little enthusiasm, I voted for HRC and her Limousine-Liberal gang. Bernie, I believe, would not have ignored the rust belt and midwest states that handed the election to Trump. I think he'd have been able to win those states and, perhaps, the election. Many Trump voters, in fact, had Bernie as their 2nd choice. The difference is that Bernie's interest in the working class was and is genuine, unlike Trump's. Bernie moved the narrative toward a lot of worthy issues.
But I don't think Bernie should run in 2020. Nor should Biden, Warren or (heaven help us) HRC.
How about Sherrod Brown and/or Amy Klobuchar?
Both have experience without being "old news." They work across the aisle, without eye-bulging yelling and finger-pointing, so they actually act like adults. Refraining from being dismissive and derisive toward working-class voters, they seem genuinely to care about working people, and so would likely return the rust belt to the Dems.
They could win.
8
I will vote for any Democratic nominee, but my strong preference is that the Democrats nominate someone under the age of 70. I am a reasonably healthy 74-year-old and know that someone in my age group is simply not equipped to serve as President. It is simply physically untenable. If the Democrats do, as I hope, nominate one of the many qualified younger candidates in the field, they will have a powerful campaign argument against Donald Trump, who will be 74 when he runs again.
5
@gigi: People who believe that nature has a human personality never cracked into a double digit mental age, no matter the number of years of age they can count.
It's not that complicated for me: give me a candidate who supports universal health care and I will give them my vote. Bernie did that and he got mine, and if he's the only vocal and staunch supporter of it again.. then he'll get my vote again. Dem candidates are waffling on the issue (at best) and it doesn't bode well.
15
@AB
Maybe it is that complicated? Do you really not know? The explicit result of the Clinton 1993 health care plan, coordinated and directed by Sec. Clinton, would have been universal health care.
8
Bernie — step aside and be helpful. Shake off the ego and work with others to put forth a winning Democratic platform.
11
@Mike: Bernie dropped out of his brief tenure in the Democratic Party as its leading candidate of dark money, and returned to his socialist party of one, after failing to get nominated to run for president on the Democratic ticket.
4
Neither Sanders nor Biden should enter the race. Their time has past .
7
Mr. Sanders was a contributing facto in Hillary's loss of the Electoral College to Mr. Trump for which I will never forgive him. He was the first one to describe Hillary as someone who could not be trusted, something the Republicans later used to their advantage. She was able to overcome the ridiculous behavior of her husband's indiscreet meeting with Loretta Lynn but could not overcome the actions of that self righteous FBI Director shortly before the election and her fate was sealed. I also remember Mika on Morning Joe, who claims to be so impartial, stating about the new E mails, "there must be something there". In other words, she could not be trusted. Enough voters who may have been sitting on the fence decided not to vote.
Bernie is an angry man who is delusional. Even if we won the Presidency in 2020, this country is in no mood to revisit healthcare, and Medicare for All which I would prefer, will not become a reality. Neither will free college tuition for most, etc., etc.
You had your 15 minutes of fame, now let go. Like me, there must be thousands out there that will NOT VOTE FOR HIM.
14
@Angelo: The apparent dominant public test of trustworthiness in the US is public profession of fear of post-mortal punishment for sins committed in life.
Bernie would make a fantastic Mayor of Burlington Vt.
8
I love Bernie but (being 72 myself) I have to say that he is simply too old.
9
The comments make me wonder if there aren't a lot of trolls out there trying to break up any coalition that could beat a Republican candidate, by getting them to turn on each other.
9
That’s not accurate. I’m a liberal Democrat who did not support Bernie and neither did a majority of my liberal friends.
11
More evidence of how the *liberal* establishment would rather lose to a reactionary or spray tanned grifter than anyone even moderately tending to progressivism. No war but the class war, indeed.
11
I admire most of Bernie Sanders positions.
But his age is a severe issue (his own words: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/19/bernie-sanders-2020-918609).
--
With literally all due respect; It's irresponsible to vote for a 79-year-old candidate.
--
Old white men fuel politics. That's the way it ever was.
The world changed - and America needs a profound change too.
My New Year's wish is fair enough.
The next president shall be a non-white woman between 45 and 55 years.
--
Cheers :-)
7
@Jayne
Limiting the choices by race, gender and age is exactly what we must fight against, no matter if the race, gender and age are currently fashionable.
12
@Jayne
"The next president shall be a non-white woman between 45 and 55 years."
Limiting the choices by race, age and gender is racist, sexist and ageist, just as it would be if someone insisted on only white 70-yr-old men. Such limitations are also foolish.
We need a candidate who will win. That Might be a 50-yr-old black woman, but if we limit it in such an extreme way, we also greatly limit the chance to win.
I'd like to see a ticket of Klobuchar/Brown, or vice versa. Solid, experienced non-screamers without seeming "old", caring about the working-class, they'd bring the rust belt and working people home.
4
Well, it's good to see that the Times is sticking to form, and running a negative article about Bernie Sanders.
Remember what happened last time, guys? You either ignored him or called him grouchy, and he came from nowhere to almost defeat the well-funded candidate of the Democratic machine.
I don't know what will happen this time around, but I'm not sure I can count on reporting in the Times to give me a sense of it.
18
It continues to amaze me that Senator Sanders, who would be considered a centrist in Scandinavian countries (representing the most advanced countries of the world), does not have the full support of the Democratic Party. Our country is under assault from Republican fascists and some Dem voters commenting here advocate voting Fascist Lite (‘DINO was my favorite Flintstones character!’). Wow.
14
Don’t run, Bernie.
Don’t run.
8
@Rob E Gee
Run, Bernie, run!
7
#stillsanders in Grand Rapids, MI
10
Hey, Bernie -
Democrats are not going to be stupid enough to split our votes in two presidential elections!
Pull out now, and throw you enormous political skills behind someone who can win. She also needs to be likable and tell the truth.
6
Bermie, you helped tear down and defeat Hillary for president, and I will never forgive you for it.
17
@Bailey T Dog
Actually, it was the Limousine-Liberal HRC gang that derided and dismissed working people, ignored the rust belt, and managed somehow to lose to Trump.
HRC, along with 30 years of hate and fear preached by the GOP, gave us Trump.
Bernie would have won the rust belt and, perhaps, the election.
12
@Bailey T Dog
I don't blame Bernie for what the "Bernie or busters" did. Bernie supported, and voted for Hillary after she won the nomination. This article, being about Bernie, attracts many comments from lefties who would rather see Trump utterly destroy America than see an ordinary center-left liberal elected. Bernie is a grown up. They most definitely are not.
5
@Longestaffe "no Democratic nominee is going to be as bad". That is not necessarily true. It is not true just because you say it is, either. By the same token, just because a person walks the party line and calls themselves a Democrat does not mean that they actually meet the criteria to be considered Democrat in terms of values, not the least of which is that every voter counts, and leadership is granted by grassroots voters. I think this was the source of much anti-Clinton opposition in 2016. Let's get over the idea that building a resume within the political party and being rubber-stamped for that is a way to win elections. If it is so weak it can't trounce Trump, it's just not a winning strategy.
4
Sanders should run as a Republican. He's not a Democrat.
12
Some good ideas but way too old (my age). Ineffective legislator. Not a Democrat.
9
The oligarchy will stop at nothing to stop Bernie Sanders. But I will put my sweat and tears into his campaign because I have parents who collect social security, children who should expect that their intelligence and hard work will earn them a modicum of security, and family and friends in the 99.9% whose future I care about. I also believe in the bedraggled but honourable notion of a government of the people, for the people, by the people. It will be a fight to get that back, and whether or not we'll win that fight, I'm ready and willing to fully support Bernie Sanders to try. So help me moral compass.
All this said, it's important to look out for the oligarchy's strategy of splitting the ticket, both for the primaries and for the election itself. The common denominator is to get a leader for the people back in the White House (if its still standing once Trump gets done with it.)
18
One lesson of 2016's results in that America failed to vote on issues. Despite Clinton's deep knowledge and frequent attempts to address specific issues, she could never elevate the field to do the same. The Republicans lost any grip on issues early in the debates due to Trump's effective use of personal attacks that brought the whole group of candidates down to his level.
Sanders had some good ideas. I saw his failure as his inability to articulate HOW he'd convert those ideas into executable programs. Clinton had more experience in that area but fell victim to her lack of awareness about how she was being perceived.
Voters must demand better than we got. The litmus test should not be about partisan purity, but about the ability to resist being drawn into a war of sound bites that distracts from discussions of real issues. Whoever runs in 2020 MUST present a fact based plan, that not only includes a focus on specific and relevant issues and policy, but one that describes how they'll implement those policies.
We also must stop reaching backwards for candidates from the past. True, some of the potential candidates are new to the national scene and lack broad name recognition. At a minimum,a Democratic slate, at least, must have new blood and a grasp of real, current issues of importance to voters, not issues presumptively those of "average" members of either party.
So... Bernie and Hillary, please stand down. Thanks for setting the stage, but we must look forward.
5
As there is no rival candidate with Bernie's strength of commitment - & a progressive record going back to the civil rights era - he remains my favorite.
If his age were weighing on him it might be a different matter - but it obviously isn't.
14
Please no more Sanders. I hated his rape essay, written in his early 30’s. He is not a Democrat. He has not gotten any progressive legislation passed in Congress. It took him forever to release his tax returns if he has indeed done so.
He is soft in gun control. PBS’s Frontline did a story in 2011 about how the largest supplier of guns to Mexican cartels was company outside of Burlington (Centennial Arms, I think it was).
He worked to get the f-35 boondoggle built in Vermont. He is good st bringing home the bacon to his state and that is a Senator’s job. I don’t see how that translates into national prominence.
I went to a Sanders rally. People cheered most loudly when he talked about free college for everyone. I think this comment will make people mad. I think Sanders was treated with kid gloves during the primary due to fear of losing young voters.
20
@Anne You really need to check some references about Hillary Clinton and supplying countries all over the world with guns, including those who train their soldiers to use them from childhood. Make sure you check source material as well.
7
It's the donors, folks. Adelson made sure Trump would take care of Israel. But Hillary would have anyway (neocons among the myriad who funded her.) So follow the money when picking your candidate.
There are those beholden to oil & gas (climate change is real,) those funded by big pharma and bioengineering (sans ethics,) and those just against regulations of any kind (think big tech, etc.)
Then there is Bernie. His ideas are catching on, but I don't know of any other candidate who can carry them over the finish line without being hamstrung by one of the above.
We're getting a second bite at the apple of truly progressive politics (that means for the common people.) Let's all get behind it--east, west, north, south and populist (they're for the common people against the elites just like we are.)
12
We need younger leadership. Bernie’s time has passed. He would do the country a huge favor by not running and splitting the party at a time when failure is not an option, given the national security threat currently occupying the White House.
7
There was a reason Russian propaganda bots were so effective in helping to put Donald Trump in the White House, where he has wreaked havoc on our democracy. And that reason is the fact that they had the perfect target in those millennials whom Bernie Sanders convinced all too well that Hillary Clinton was some corporate tool who cared nothing for the progressive agenda. Their votes for Jill Stein or complete apathy once Sanders lost the nomination gave Trump the Electoral College and America a never-ending nightmare. So, no to Bernie.
13
@Lois Murray
"...those millennials whom Bernie Sanders convinced all too well that Hillary Clinton was some corporate tool who cared nothing for the progressive agenda. "
I'm not a millennial and he didn't convince me. I've already known it for decades. Her positions and actions before she ran for office in '16 made it quite obvious, just in case there was any doubt. Are you really trying to say that she's not?
10
@Lois Murray What you stated was completely untrue. Keep in mind, Hillary won the popular vote by three million votes. Had Hillary won in any of the states she should have e.g. Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, she could have won. She did not lose these states because people voted for Jean Stein. She lost because people voted for Donald Trump.
7
@Purple Spain It's Jill Stein, not Jean Stein. Goes to your credibility, which in this case reflects on your assertion that Murray's statements were untrue. Just because you call it untrue, once again, does not mean it is not true, not to mention (but I will) thoroughly documented.
3
Pope John Paul II in 1981 issued an encyclical called Laborem exercens, or “Through Work.”
He called for full employment and a minimum wage large enough to support a family. He called for women who stay home with children and for the disabled to receive a living wage. He advocated for universal health insurance, pensions, accident insurance, and work schedules that permitted free time and vacations to build strong families. He wrote that every profession should be represented by unions with the right to strike. If he had the vote who would he vote for? Easy question.
7
In 2016 I cancelled my subscription to the NYTimes because of biased coverage that I felt was grossly unfair to Senator Sanders. I still believe that if the Democratic establishment had treated him fairly he would have won the nomination, and the presidency. I really hope you are not going there again.
He is a great communicator! His website provides concise and unambiguous information on policies he supports, and why they are important.
15
So he hasn’t decided if he’s going to help Trump get re-elected or not?
5
You harpooned Sanders last time. Remember how that turned out?
9
SANDERS 2020
coming like a freight train
4
I will take a 100 yr old Sanders than any other Dems!
8
I am having a very hard time separating the devotees—not the voters for, the devotees—of St. bernie from Trumpists.
This is because their “analyses,” and their threats look so much alike.
Try this simple trick: when you read their writings, swap out a few names for “Trump,” and “MAGA,” and the like. Limit this to, say, two names and two nouns at most.
It should bother folks more, when they find themselves Mad Libbing the same writing they claim to despise like this.
6
Bernie Sanders is going to be our next President.
6
I hope there are new Dem candidates who will run. Would not support Bernie, or Hillary. PTSD from 2016!
6
Sanders is a left-wing Trump twin, using the same tactics of demagoguery and inflated rhetoric to create a hard-core group of ideologically intoxicated supporters. His self-label of “democratic socialist” is a turn-off for people like me who know socialism’s historical record of misery and violence. The Bernie brigade will tell you that theirs is a “good” socialism and point to the Nordic. Countries, without bothering to inform the American public that the democratic socialist party has 6 percent of vote in Norway. Lies, magical thinking, fudged numbers and verbal violence were the hallmark of the Sanders campaign in 2016. We would not have Trump if it were not for him. So good riddance, Bernie, and please don’t come back.
22
@Mor
Wow-your first sentence nailed it. I went to a Sanders rally and saw how he could stir people up. “Demogoguery and inflated rhetoric”-that was what I heard at the Sanders rally I went to. I did not hear concern for others-I heard anger and self righteous self promotion. He acted the same way in the Senate and was effective only in things like getting a huge defense department boondoggle-the f-35- built in Vermont. He is out for himself.
6
Not sure what the Bernie people are asking for here - puff pieces? That would be a lot more than HRC ever got from the Times. Read the article. Don’t get all riled up just because somebody suggested St. Bernie might have some obstacles to overcome. If he becomes a “democrat” and is the best candidate, he’ll do fine.
9
Bernie Sanders frames the issues and he will have a lot of support from Progressive Democrats. I'm proud to say that I will vote for Bernie and contribute to his campaign.
That said, Bernie faces some powerful headwinds including the Times and other mainstream media outlets. That was true in 2016 and this hit piece shows that nothing has changed.
17
I haven't heard Bernie say a single thing that I disagree with. But I'm afraid he's too old to be a two term president although he's the only candidate I've seen that has the vision to make the democratic party into a decases' long dominating force in politics.
I'm hoping that Bernie will put his support behind a true reformer in the vein of FDR, that will sweep the Democratic Party to power and have the guts to push reforms through the fractured government; like infrastructure including roads that don't ever have to be rebuilt and freight and passenger rail; health-care reform like Medicare for all and ending discriminatory pricing; Trust-Busting; Tax Changes; etc.
5
If one really wants a Democrat in the white house they should vote for the Democratic contender. Any other vote just takes a vote away from the party an insures that the Republican wins.
It really is that simple.
Sometimes one has to face reality and vote for the good of the country. In this case defeating Mr. Trump.
11
“The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.”
-Winston Churchill
Pardon my cynicism but Churchill could have easily been talking about the American voter. Many Americans know that Communism is Socialism but don’t know that Socialism is not Communism.
Bernie Sanders calls himself a Democratic Socialist. Trump and the Republicans will brand him a Socialist alright- the kind that makes Nancy Pelosi look like a fiscal conservative, and the kind who wants a “redistribution of wealth,” wink, wink.
And it will work unless we are all willing to live in a country that wants Medicaid for all and free public education at the college level. No matter what anyone says, Trump’s election says who we are as a country ( even if he lost the popular vote). And if we elect Bernie Sanders, should he run, that will also say a lot about who we are.
5
Bernie has 2 major failings and they caused me to vote Green for the 1st time. His program is strictly domestic, but it's his ignored foreign policy that is eating this country up - from wars to economics to loss of respect. Secondly, his not just capitulation, but very active backing of Hillary that has left the ownership of the Democrat's Establishment in her hands, not his.
In a nutshell, he's been weak and out of balance where strength and a firm hand were needed.
Tulsi Gabbard has exactly what Sanders had plus her head on her shoulders about foreign affairs and she knows exactly what's important. She's acquired experience in a rounded way. Her problem is that Hillary can't forgive her for backing Bernie and in true Hillary fashion will do everything she can to sabotage Tulsi. For me that's a plus for Gabbard, but not for many Clintonites.
1
I'd like to remind everyone on this thread that talk about viable candidates that our President is Donald Trump.
Which proves that all you need is money and a team of fools to enter the White House.
The reality is Hillary Clinton was the worse candidate since Dukakis.
All elections come down to cash, an awesome social media presence, and a candidate with a loud mouth. Would anyone like to argue that?
What won't work is empty promises of free healthcare and college, environmental reforms against carbon burning, and tamales in every undocumented immigrants pot.
USA RIP 2020
3
For me, when it was a choice between Bernie and the pre-selected Hilary, the choice was easy......Bernie all the way rather than the Clinton that was stuffed down our throats
This go around, there is such a wide variety to choose from, at least at this point. I happen to think a diverse field is a good thing this early in the process.
6
To those who have tried before, PLEASE let go. Tame your egos and quietly become part of a TEAM to help a young, wise, fresh, collaborative bridge-builder win.
9
Yes, the political situation has changed. A lot. And Bernie's ideas as proposed then, may backfire. Let the best candidate win, and let Sanders be supportive in the process. Trump cannnot be allowed to cheat on the American people again in 2020 (doubtful, as this crook and demagogue has so much baggage that even his base ought to renegue supporting this fraudster next time around. We need 'fresh blood', and the passion to prove it.
4
Beto almost won in Texas. Not the same as actually winning. I prefer Kamala Harris. Forget Bernie. Just plain no.
11
Have you looked sat Beto’s voting record? Plain no.
8
Out of all the popular contenders for 2020, Bernie Sander's platform and voting record matches most closely to the policies I believe in. If the candidate who wins the Democratic primary veers too far from the platform that I support, then I will most likely vote for the Green party candidate. I don't consider this to be irresponsible for the following reason: because I live in a Democratic stronghold state, I can safely afford to vote for a third party without any guilt (there is just no probable chance that California would be voting for a Republican for president, now or in the forseeable future). Bernie Sanders is the first and only politician to motivate me to vote responsibly, based on the issues but also considering the stakes at hand. He told people to vote along party lines if they lived in a swing state like Iowa, but if not (ie. if in a stronghold state for one party or the other) then he said to feel free to vote according to their conscience or based on the issues that matter to them. That's what I plan on doing in the next presidential election.
62
@Katherine
Rather naive sophistry of the sort that is very typical of Sanders and his supporters. Thanks for explaining how you justify a cop out decision. As the last election showed the total number of votes for the Democratic candidate counts.
38
sadly but true here in Pa people who were normally Dem voters, but rejected hillary were the enablers of a successful Donald trump election , 40,000 votes made the difference. Donald trump thank those that did @Katherine
33
@Katherine why throw away a vote for the sake of purity of platform? It's highly unlikely that anyone can meet every one of your needs, and 7 million people voted green, thinking they were making a "safe" choice in 2016 gave us Trump. Pretty sure none of them believed for a minute that they would throw the country into the abyss we are in now. Every vote at the State or national level does count for something, even for tossing away a chance to vote for a candidate who at least has a chance
46
Deja Vu all over again. My heart sinks as I read the comments and replies. Just as a reminder, Clinton won the popular vote by close to 3 million, and since the election we're learned a great deal of how foreign powers via things like Facebook and then FBI director spread enough false information about Clinton to sway the election via the Electoral College. To hear once again how badly she lost the election is turning a blind eye to what happened. Yes, she could have improved some of her campaign, but she couldn't have changed the impact of those afraid of her as president. As we have learned, Russia feared her in power but didn't fear Bernie or Trump.
9
@DJK. Be that as it may, Hillary was unpopular on the left and right, and was forced on America by a democratic party that only allowed a token challenger, who almost beat her.
Bottom line, Trump got about the same number of votes as Romney did in 2012, while Hillary got 7 million fewer votes than Obama. We need another FDR, not another Clinton.
11
I am so afraid, that even when running against what is arguably the absolute worst President (and human being in general) ever, the Democratic party will figure a way to snatch defeat from certain victory. Where is our new JFK ? Someone who sends excited shivers down the progressive, yet pragmatic, spine. No pie in the sky proclamations that play to the party's voluminous base, but will never come true. But well thought out, AFFORDABLE, policy positions in regards to health care, education, living wage, environmental, and foreign policy that are relatable to the LONG TERM benefit and aspirations of all Americans.
Barack can't be the last of that breed, can he? Stand up, loud and proud, my name is (insert name here) and I am running to be your next President of the United States of America !
1
Bernie Sanders has proven himself to be a complete phony. He raised over $11,000,000 to run for a senate seat in VT with virtually no opponent. Our former Senator Aiken, when he had such a re-election campaign, spent $.17 cents on stamps. His FEC filing shows he spend a tiny fraction of that money here, and instead booked a private plane and flew around the country beefing up his base. And no, that $11,000,000 did not come from a collection of small donors. Bernie's schtick is old. He's never had legislative success because he, like Donald, prefers screaming and yelling over actual work. We Vermonters were robbed of a US Senator, but I offer my fellow American this, if the guy can't make it as a Senator, he's probably not going to make it as a president.
14
I subscribe to Sanders' newsletters, and I just received one today. He predicted such articles as this one in the Times. I might be an accurate report, although Sanders seemed to think such reports would inevitably come along regardless because the powers that be still cannot accept him There are any number of polls that show his policies are supported by the majority of citizens, negating the policies' supposed "fringe" features. It must be very frustrating for him to see this kind of killjoy attitude, although he described being undaunted.
10
Just as the Times did its best to undermine Bernie's campaign in 2016 it is at it again. Bernie's message and his history make him the most qualified candidate to work for the public good. As for his age, judge him by the energy he projects. He's got plenty of steam to make it through two terms
12
And the Russians encouraged the Bernie wave because they knew it would cut into Mrs. Clinton's support and elect Donald Trump.
Congratulations.
5
Face it: Bernie Sanders is a divider, not a uniter. The last thing the Dems need heading a presidential ticket is an "Independent" bloviater who would rather be right than be effective. The Democrats heard his good ideas and have adopted them as much as reality permits. The rest they've shelved for future consideration. Bernie never got close to winning the majority of votes cast in the primaries. His my way or the highway approach to politics mirrors trump's, and we're witnessing how well that works.
17
Got a email from Bernie today saying the attacks will start early and he is right. Yes there will be many attempts at the nomination and a good perhaps most will borrow from Sanders what they claim to believe in, just as Hillary did as that campaign ran on.
The Times will be on some other side for certain as Sanders is a threat to how the game has been played for a very long time.
Did not send in a donation but this article will help change that. Let him go forward and frighten the democratic establishment to good effect whatever happens next.
7
First of all, let's call him by his title. He is Senator Sanders. I don't think he has lost his base. He happens to be second of the most likely candidates. The three most liked candidates are Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders and for now Congressman Beto O'Rourke. This shows that Sen. Sanders has the ideology Americans want and need.
6
Sorry to say, Bernie Sanders is too old.
Same for Joe Biden.
Hey, democratic candidates, if your candidacy is marginal, help the party by quickly getting out of the way and pitching in to coalesce around the leader.
Bernie was indispensable for Trump's victory.
10
Looks like there might already be fake comments trying to divide the Democrats.
Yes, there are still strong Clinton supporters.
Yes, there are still strong Sanders supporters.
But let's try to put the past behind us. And let's not fall for those who want to inflame and divide.
Instead, let's think of the situation at hand, and try to build the future that will be most helpful to us all. All Dems surely agree that that future is a Dem in the White House.
5
The fact is that Bernie's candidacy and his championing of ideas he never fully explained how to pay for both energized new voters that the Democrats need and played a role in weakening the already weak candidacy of Hillary Clinton enough for her to lose to Trump.
There is a reason why Trump harped on how unfair the 2016 process was to Bernie. It was unfair, as the Democratic establishment's collective thumbs on the 2016 scale showed. But Bernie the independent became a weapon in Trump's hands: Bernie's blanket criticisms of all "millionaires and billionaires" and his dismissals of Obamacare did blue America no favors. True, Hillary was an awful candidate. But she might have been an OK president--certainly better than Trump.
5
If Bernie Sanders is the best the Democratic Party can come up with, then I suggest that all progressives in the US begin the Canadian, or Australian, or New Zealand immigration process, because He Will Lose.
5
First, let's call him by his title. He is Senator Bernie Sanders. He has not lost his base and is number two of the most liked of potential presidential candidates. The three are Joe Biden, Sen Bernie Sanders and Beto O'Rourke. Sen. Sanders represents the ideology Americans want and need.
5
I was a strong Bernie supporter years before he considered running in 2016. I followed him because of his principles and unwavering genuineness. He will stand up for all of us and will include us all, every step of the way. There is only one Bernie. What a different country we would see with President Bernie Sanders. We are unaccustomed to the kind of equality he believes in. Bernie 2020!
8
I hope Senator Sanders runs again, he will have my full, enthusiastic support. I suspect he will run into many of the same problems he experienced in 2016 with the democratic party and the major media outlets. If the democratic party selects a more conservative candidate I will put my support behind a third party candidate.
16
@Pat
What's worse: Trump or an imperfect (in your view) Democrat? I will never understand this line of thinking. It will hand Trump a victory and continue the destruction of our county and environment.
4
I voted for Bernie in the 2016 primary and for Hillary in November . Not sure who I'll vote for in 2020 primary, but I tell you this, I'll vote for the Democratic nominee in the general election.
My hope is that all people of reason and good will can find it in their hearts to do the same. We the People need to end this deep national crisis, and decisively.
28
Bernie is the figurehead of what we need as a visionary leader for our country and I hope he remains the visionary for whomever gets the nomination but I pragmatically concede that nominee wont be him. I hope I am wrong. I will vote for him without reservation--I TRUST him.
16
Me Sanders and his positions are untenable. He promises the world and leave out every detail on how he will deliver it. Same tactic as every GOP candidate - just different priorities. You want another four years of Trump - nominate Sanders.
29
@MK
Go to BernieSanders.com/issues to see for yourself how Medicare-for-all, living wages, and other initiatives would be paid for.
For instance, clicking on the "Medicare for All" and then "Read the Full Plan" buttons shows how the following actions would provide money for the Medicare for All initiative (I've left out the tax revenue raised and other details to keep this more readable.):
* A 6.2 percent income-based health care premium paid by employers.
* A 2.2 percent income-based premium paid by households.
* Progressive income tax rates (the tax rates and income ranges are both listed, and the top rate of 52% does not approach the 90% top rate in 1960)
* Taxing capital gains and dividends the same as income from work.
* Limit tax deductions for the rich.
* The Responsible Estate Tax (would tax the wealthiest three-tenths of one percent)
* Savings from health tax expenditures.
12
Personal attacks instead of policy discussions. The powers that be are eager to repeat in 2020 what occurred in 2016. That's why Bernie's movement is called Our Revolution. Take heart active citizens. The people can't be fooled all the time.
27
We're all "the people." Everyone. All of us. Even the people you see as the enemy. Once you start identifying your own base as "the people," you're disrespecting the democratic system that is meant to be accessible to all. Even to people *I* cannot abide.
3
I supported Bernie in VT financially and voted for him in the primary. But I regret it. I thought his voice was a needed pull to the left for Democrats. But when he stopped running against the Republicans and started running against the Democrats, he lost my support forever. He's not a Democrat. Let him run as a socialist and see how far he gets. I felt the same way about Hillary and the shabby way she treated Obama, and so did many others. Run as a Socialist. Let your voice be heard. Don't be spoiler, again.
22
Senator Sanders would shine as an excellent cabinet choice for the new administration.
10
So many outstanding Democrats mentioned in these comments. If Bernie is nominated I will gladly support him, but I think a better outcome would be for Bernie to endorse a younger candidate with similar values early on.
Those continuing to fight over Bernie and Hillary need to stop. That election is over and it was lost for many reasons. Rehashing it and holding grudges accomplishes nothing. Bury the hatchet and focus on the real opponents - the Republicans.
16
Sanders, Clinton, Biden and Warren are way too old. All very accomplished but we do not need the age issue as one more factor to overcome.
21
If Bernie does run, he'd be well advised to do his homework on a range of issues and invest in some anger management.
The last time he ran, he was clearly unprepared to answer journalists' questions that were outside of his pet issues of income inequality and climate change. When asked about other issues, he never (or rarely) provided responses that seemed well thought out or detailed; he usually ended up resorting to his income-inequality talking points.
Anger management coaching would be useful for when journalists ask Bernie questions that challenge his positions or statements. Bernie frequently has a hard time not bristling and keeping his temper under control, evidenced by his giving curt, snide answers and shouting. (Naturally, Bernie's supporters will shrug off his behavior by alleging that journalists are out to trip Bernie up by asking gotcha questions while letting every other candidate off the hook.)
15
Yes, his enabling supporters are another strike against him.
2
So if HRC was one of the weakest candidates because she couldn’t defeat Obama and Trump, what does it say about Bernie when he couldn’t beat HRC.
I hope Biden runs. But no matter who becomes the nominee I am going to vote for him or her over Trump.
10
How could Bernie possibly have won against Hilary when the primaries and the machine were rigged against him? That’s like saying “I went to the casino but didn’t win a million dollars”
7
@MB
And when Independents couldn't vote in many big primaries. Unfortunately for the Dems, they vote, or they don't, in November.
5
@ MB Basta, enough with the "rigging." He lost at the ballot box. No one forced HRC voters to choose her.We did it of our own free will, not because party officials favored the longtime Democrat over the guy who joined 5 minutes ago.
3
My problem with Bernie during the campaign was that he was a one-trick pony: everything, including racism, was reduced to an economic issue. He's the kind of guy I'd like to have in the Cabinet, but not one I'd want in charge.
18
Dems will lose again if Bernie, the most popular politician in the country, is scammed out of the nomination again. Based on this article, neoliberal/centrist Dems and corporate media have still, somehow, managed to learn nothing since 2016. Or is it that they and their donors are scared more of a Sanders presidency than another Trump term?
19
I am a mid-30s leftist feminist who voted for Jill Stein (in Pennsylvania no less) because I simply could not stomach Clinton - way too centrist/neocon for me. In retrospect I overestimated the skill of NYTimes polling/predictions and never thought Trump would win. I hate to say I am prepared to to vote for “anyone but Trump” lest that happens again, but it is probably true. However, from my perspective the dem powers that be would be crazy to nominate a centrist. PLEASE pick someone with a backbone and a plan who responds to the very real crises at hand. I would be thrilled to vote for Bernie in 2020. If forced to vote for Clinton or someone like her I would go to the ballots kicking and screaming and pray the left version of the Tea Party breaks free and starts its own party. I barely support the democratic party as it stands but have nowhere else to turn. Many people I know feel the same way. Bernie was the first major politician I felt like I could actually get behind.
15
So you helped elected DJT. Thank you, I hope you’re enjoying these past two years. All the evidence was there 2 years ago as to what kind of president he would be but you couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
Thank you.
9
Not that it matters since you helped Trump lurch into power, but I guarantee you know zero about Hillary Clinton’s actual history.
10
When Bernie appeared in '16 I was all ears. I preferred Hillary because she was time-tested record, a quick yet deep study, hard worker, worked with both sides when possible, & was liked & respected by Senators on both sides). Mr. Sanders proved to be more or less a one-speech-pony, & showed an increasingly thin skin. He lost me.
His most rabid 'bro' followers were spreading the same slanders as Brietbart was (probably often Russian). The press gave Trump millions in free PR and were unfair, too.
That being perhaps another story.
OK, OK, I don't have to re-run these same postmortems, though the more we find out, the more unfair to her we see things were -
Still in all, she was a doer and he was a talker who seemed increasingly 'thin' as time went along, so I still preferred her. He did some good by airing important ideas (though with incomplete, unrealistic numbers policy). If this pulled Hillary's public positions 'left', all to the good. (They did have very similar Senate voting records).
And my only point in bringing these things back up now is, I hope in retrospect people look back and see HIS faults. I would, again, keep my ears opened for a good progressive, and see if they're qualities, as well as their qualifications, stack up for me. Bernie Sander's - to me - was lacking in the latter department.
Finally, no one knew Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton 2 years out, so ho knows? I do know Sanders is still off my list.
23
It's fascinating how nearly every time I read an article about Bernie Sanders' past or future campaigns, it seems extremely distant from the reality in which I live. Will we ever get to read a non-anti Sanders article in the News section?? Is this 2016 all over again?
22
And with this article, the hit pieces on Bernie has started for 2020. Enjoy the wilderness, DNC, you are going to be there for a very long time.
15
Yawn. This "Bernie is a victim" spiel does get old eventually, you know. But he's not a victim
He took down HRC, which was what he wanted all along.
9
@Patricia
What does get old is repeated Bernie bashing: it appears like you folks have bitten the Russian bot spreading misinformation about Bernie. You are embarrassing yourselves with it. Your candidate and your camp are seriously sore losers for losing to this clown POTUS. But HRC deserved to lose. I say this despite having voted for that loser candidate. Lackluster, idealess, and bitten by a “it’s my turn-itis” she got the snub she deserved. It seems like the Clinton camp isn’t interested in learning from their mistakes.
4
No, no, no. I’ve been a diehard Hillary Clinton fan since I can remember—but I’ve come to terms with reality and I’m looking forward. I implore the left wing of the Democratic Party to do the same with Sanders.
23
May I be so bold as to ask (again) if Mr. Sanders is running as a Democrat, or as an Independent, which he is (again).
12
A socialist who feels entitled to lead the party he constantly criticizes and looks down on.
4
I have been studying presidents since I was nine in 1956, when my daddy explained why, although we liked Ike, we couldn't vote for him after his heart attack, because Richard Nixon was as he put it in three letters, a very bad man.
I worked for Bernie and Love Him. Alone among many, he never flinched or pandered when pressured by a press (even NYTimes) and public lagging behind his insights.
But winnability must be the critical test of all who throw themselves into the ring for 2020. And I fear he is not the sure thing this nation rescue needs.
As a presidential historian, who worked for Jimmy Carter, I view Ike and TR as the last good republican nominees for president.
But, I could work for two this time: Michael Bloomberg or Robert Mueller, especially with Bernie Sanders as their VP in a consensus, recovery, ticket.
I see no Democrats with their appeal across the spectrum.
Warren is not a gifted teacher.
Senator Durbin doesn't have the itch.
Beto, as package and approach, is super. But wouldn't the majority of voters view him as inexperienced and untested -- even before the Republicans' half billion dollars of negative ads?
What we need is an honest problem solver who shoots straight.
What we need -- and this is the way elections usually work -- is the antithesis of what we have now.
Find that candidate.
3
Michael Bloomberg with a socialist VP. Now I'm stuck between laughing and crying. Seriously? Would these two men even be able to remain civil? Not all white men get along!
3
@Patricia. Look beyond superficial labels. There is common ground in their commitment to intelligent government whose priority is serving all the people. They share the same opinions on integrity in government, climate change, need to protect the environment, restricting assault weapons, reducing government waste, reigning in the military...and a more even-handed policy in the Middle East. The obvious drawback is that they are both east coast, Jewish, men...and that's probably unsurmountable. But show me one issue where they could not compromise or think about them among the leaders in a grand coalition against trump, one that unites all educated and progressive forces. We need a real landslide -- like in 1932.
2
I remember being quite spellbound - at the last leg of my May 2016 USA road trip, relaxing in Lake Tahoe - watching live coverage of Bernie Sander’s Democratic candidacy campaign speech in Oregon. He delivered the most coherent, sincere and detailed account of his socially progressive policies, including foreign policy and domestic affairs. I loved his quip about Walmart and how their donation to Hilary Clinton’s campaign would have been better spent on Walmart employees, so they didn’t have to hold down additional jobs to supplement their low paid Walmart incomes.
This was in contrast to Hilary Clinton’s uninspiring, insincere, vague, policy campaign speeches. For her to talk tough (a whisper) on government regulations for Wall Street, whilst accepting lucrative payed speeches from Goldman & Sachs, just smacked of hypocrisy. Seemed to be “rooting” for Wall Street instead of the little guy on Main Street.
If I was an American and a Democrat, Bernie would have had my vote. But, this time round I think time is against him, age wise, and he may have already run his race and hopefully to see candidates of his ilk for 2020.
I revisited the States in May 2017 (trip IV), early days for Trump Presidency and that’s another conversation piece.
7
If Bernie is so honest then why did he leave vacation properties and houses off of his financial disclosure?
17
And we see here why Dems lose. They start fighting amongst themselves even before the race begins. It’s so easy to sow division and lose sight of the threat another Trump win would present. Perhaps the Bernie Bros or seething Hillary supporters live in a world where the horrific consequences of Trump’s win in 2016 don’t affect them the way it has millions of others. Perhaps they can afford to keep heads held high, lose again and have the rest of us pay the price. Have a straight primary and support the winner. Or it’s Trump 2020.
4
I love Bernie but at 79 in 2020, I'm not sure if he'll be the right candidate to win against DJT.
6
That any news media, particularly this, should even attempt to predict what will happen and how Bernie will get by is an exercise in arrogance. Martin and Ember should at best be selling second-hand shoe-laces at some street corner. Virtually every prediction that the media made was turned on its head, the last time around. It would be wise to fire the predictors and stick to reporting the news, after an even't has occurred.
11
If Bernie joins the Democratic Party to run in 2020, he'll just help Trump win.
19
Bernie had a nice run in 2016 (even though he stayed in the race too long which contributed to Hillary's loss), but you only catch lightning in a bottle once.
12
For me, Bernie's biggest crime was endorsing Hillary once he lost the Democratic nomination. To stand for one thing and then pivot to endorse a candidate who represents everything you oppose evinces a lack of conviction. I would not like to see this performance repeated.
Bernie should influence but not be a spoiler again.
11
@Citizenz
What did he spoil? Some people seem not to know how elections work. People run against each other and citizens decide who to vote for. We are free to choose the person we feel would best represent us. I'm sorry it wasn't the same person you chose, but that's how this works.
4
If only someone made a truss for the ego.
4
I like that picture of Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard. She runs for President and picks him as VP. Landslide!
3
@Corbin
Landslide for Trump. Tulsi (I love Asaad) Gabbard one heart beat away from the presidency is as terrifying in its own way as Sarah Palin.
You don't win elections by running against what people want.
The best thing about Sanders, is that he doesn't carry on about gun control.
Anybody, who is serious about winning a Presidential Election in the United States, should keep their mouth shut about gun control.
You don't get to bring about improvements, if you don't get elected.
7
I would like to see multiple progressive candidates run, true progressives; especially Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders. Remember, it was Tulsi who announced on 2/28/16 that she was resigning her position as a Vice Chair at the DNC to campaign across the country for Bernie Sanders for President. She introduced Bernie at the Convention. They make a great team, champions of progressive causes!!!!!
11
Nader and this time Sanders and Jill Stein - will the Dems never learn? Continuing to support third party candidates, refusing to vote after their candidate was defeated in the primary - you are the ones who gave us the current fraud in the WH. Thanks a lot.
17
@anthill .. shaking my head in disbelief at your comment - “I can’t understand why she isn’t first on anyone’s list.”
Thank goodness for that.
It would be nice to insert some new blood and a candidate who can actually win - not some old fossil to hand Mr Trump an easy win.
8
The focus of all Democrats from start to finish (and especially toward the finish) must be on putting the Democratic nominee in the White House.
Take part in positive campaigns, challenge rivals to prove their strengths, vie to influence the party message -- and, when the nominating process is over, go all out for the ticket.
Not all Democrats are going to have full satisfaction. But no Democratic nominee is going to be as bad as the Republican alternative.
102
@Longestaffe
And in 2020 it is imperative that the GOP be voted out of office!
5
@Longestaffe
I will never again support the DemParty. Too middle of the road junk. Old thinking.
We want Bernie, Warren, or Greens.
6
So far, Bernie is the most progressive potential candidate and a person of the utmost integrity. While I'm concerned about his age, I'm convinced he would do a magnificent job moving this country forward towards democracy and justice for all. I would support him and work to get him elected in a heart beat.
7
Look, I supported Bernie through the 2016 primaries and view him as the conscience of the Democratic Party. OK, he's an independent but he's more Democratic than any of the recent Democratic Party leadership.
But at the risk of being accused of ageism (as an octogenarian I think I have earned the right not to), I don't think the Dems should nominate a candidate of his generation in 2020. Not Bernie, not Biden, not Bloomberg. I would rather he took the role of mentor to younger candidates.
Those progressives who want all or nothing should recognize that the Democratic Party at its most successful is a coalition, and this is particularly important for the 2020 ticket. Fortunately there's new blood in the party that has greatly strengthened its progressive wing.
For too long, the Dems have followed the political center, even as that center drifted rightward. It's still necessary for the party to have a progressive wing, but it should never again dominate. Bernie can play a strong elder-statesman role in making sure it doesn't
11
@mancuroc
Didn't proof read properly - for "progresssive" in the last sentence, read "conservative".
5
I wish the Times would feature more, um, news on its front home page, rather than long meandering "analysis" that is neither relevant news or well-argued opinion. There is a lot more going on in the world to which we all could be more exposed. But, ya know, sitting at your desk, making phone calls, and writing a conversation-generating piece is a lot more fun than, I guess, writing hard news about some thing actually new. So it seems.
19
He’s done great things, but I don’t think he’ll win the nomination should he run. If by some miracle he does win the nomination, he’s one of the few I'd wager could lose to Trump (Warren also). His perceived negatives (and hers) are huge. Don’t see that changing.
9
If he has negatives, everybody has negatives.
3
We have a proven winner in Ms. Clinton. I can't understand why she isn't first on everyone's list. She might have won if Mr. Sanders had been more reticent.
11
@Anthill Atoms
"I can't understand why she isn't first on everyone's list"
That's the problem exactly. That's why Trump won.
5
@Anthill Atoms
"We have a proven winner in Ms. Clinton."
Um, she lost twice by my count?
3
@Anthill Atoms
Proven winner? She lost to Barack Obama and then to Donald Trump. The people have spoken. Enough is enough.
3
God bless Bernie Sanders for his candor and hard work, and his dedication to keeping this country a bastion of light in an ever-darkening world.
That said, there's no way the guy could get elected President. His input and insights are valuable and not to be ignored, but nominating him as the standard bearer for the Democratic Party would be a colossal mistake. Ditto for Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren.
The Dems should be able to win 2020 in a walk, but they need to pick someone who is substantive, telegenic, likeable and not super-old. There are more viable, more winnable candidates to be found.
9
By 2020 we shall all be four years older than we were in 2016. When you start at 75, another four years of aging counts for a lot in a presidential sweepstakes.
To think that Bernie Sanders would be 79 entering the first year of his first presidential term should give everybody a hint that younger blood might be better suited to the race.
Bernie Sanders has a constructive role play in supporting a progressive candidate for the presidency two years hence. But he has had his 15 minutes of fame. He came close. Kudos to him for that.
But that was then; this is now.
35
It was interesting to note that after the 2018 mid-term elections Trump made a point of congratulating Bernie on his successful re-election to the Senate.
I am sure that Trump very much appreciates the successful "attack job" Sanders did on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election that made him president.
32
Didn't Hillary attack Sanders in the primaries? Or Hillary was only one who could attack?
7
@yulia
Even worse she attacked his potential voters.
3
I think the biggest negative he has is his age. Sorry to say that but it's a fact. And perhaps the time for old, white men to be in charge is also rapidly changing.
24
Bernie has my vote if he runs.
29
Trump showed how a candidate could come out of nowhere and capture a major-party nomination. The only rule Trump went by was there were no rules. Post-Trump, we can throw out all the rules.
6
Bernie Sanders is the Larry Eisenberg of the campaign pitch. If Larry can make it to 99 years old, Bernie can outlive his 3 consecutive successors after he has led us into a glorious future as the Roaring President of our age's Roaring Twenties. 5% yearly economic growth will turn out to be a child's game or a game of killer IQ and resolve under President Bernie Sanders, the King of our battered hopes aching to be reignited, and of our unbroken lion hearts, the balm for our overburdened shoulders and souls, our trusted friend, our fellow traveler, our kindred soul. I'm half truthing, 3/4th kidding of course, but myth is what gets you into the WH and Mythical is Bernie's middle name by now.
Yes, I can relate to the doubters. Yes, I can see the hopes for a Madam President. Yes, I know there's Beto who'd electrify the young and probably carry Texas, and that there's a clobbering in the making in the wings and the fame preceding its path is that of Amy Klobuchar. Yes, I join Bruce Rozenblit in hoping for Stacey Abrams to run. Yes, we'll have to witness and see who can speech and wow and fill the rows. There will be debates. Let's see who will convince not wince our minds, who will win not pin our hearts, who will soothe not be smug with our souls. Let's not surrender again to the almost irreconcilable divisiveness we got tempted into last time by the Russia bots and trolls and by our lesser selves.
Let's show we learned a thing from our immediate past.
Let's put division last.
9
And how should we do that? Should we massively vote for Trump for the sake of unity? Should we all vote for Sanders, or you have another candidate in mind for whom we all could vote?
2
Go ahead, nominate another corporate Dem. I'll cast my vote for Jill Stein again.
19
I want a genuine competent bold progressive president in 2020, but I would vote for any corporate Democrat over Trump. Having said that, I think every Democrat needs to read your opinion. We can’t survive a repeat of 2016.
4
So you are essentially saying that Trump is no worse than Hillary would’ve been.
God help us in 2020.
1
@Buckeye voter You're from Ohio. Sherrod Brown is an excellent choice from a state Dems have to win in 2020.
1
Bernie and Biden are too old . The Dems need to make sure whoever is the front runner appeals to all voters ; women , sit it out voters ( who need to be enthused about the candidate ) independents , possible crossover voters , urban and suburban . Bernie needs to stay in the Senate and Joe needs to stay retired . Go Beto !
11
"If he does, he will encounter a vastly different landscape than that of 2016."
Well duh!
5
Bernie’s “Best Before” date expired at least two years ago. He is obviously and inarguably unelectable.
If he is truly committed to saving the country from another four years of literal insanity, he must formally and totally renounce any lingering presidential aspirations and free his supporters to support a viable candidate.
Lyndon Johnson showed the way; Bernie has to take the high road.
21
@Norman McDougall
Lyndon Johnson showed the way to Nixon.
1
I don't know why his opponents could not take the high road after they demonstrated that their candidate could not win.
Relax folks, Bernie will only run if no other progressive candidates announce, exactly his stated reason for running for the 2016 nomination.
11
@GM
So true! I wonder why that wasn’t mentioned in the article...
3
I've listened to the wisdom of this guy for decades. So I'll listen some more. So far, I've heard him say he needs to determine if he is, in fact, the best candidate to fill the need. I'm pretty sure he means that in two senses; to win (like was the actual case in 2016) and to move us in the right policy directions (as he has continued to do since then.) When he comes to his conclusion, he has my ear before anyone else does.
24
Time for Bernie to retire and please take Warren and Pelosi
4
Pelosi actually gets things done. I’ll keep her.
8
Ok, how can you compare a two person race poll at 49.6% to how many? Bernie polls higher with minorities than white males. This article smells like a hit piece.
34
@commuted
And yet POC voted overwhelmingly for Clinton in the primary in 2016.
5
Bernie is vital to a Democratic win in 2020, but his vote is needed more in the Senate. He should put all his energies into supporting a candidate that aligns him/herself with some of Bernie's initiatives. Maybe newcomer Beto O'Rourke, who could possibly deliver Texas. It's time for the Bernies and Bidens to recognize that the value of their political capital is better spent in support of democratic youth.
6
@sunrise
Beto's voting record is nothing like Bernie's. The Dem party consultants are excited to jump on the Beto train because Beto excelled at fundraising. Beto has little experience and does not have a progressive voting record.
1
Bernie Sanders single-handedly put Donald Trump into the White House. He could never win a presidential election. He needs to check his gigantic ego and just go away.
57
@Aaron VanAlstine
No, HRC and the DNC did that. Used their media connections to push Trump, one of the "pied piper" candidates. Took all the state money for the Hillary Victory Fund. Used the DNC/media to force Hillary as the candidate and disadvantage Bernie. Any Democrat other than Hillary probably would have won.
8
@Aaron VanAlstine
That's very interesting because Bernie never ran against Trump. Someone else lost that race. Single-handedly.
9
No, it was Hillary who put Trump in the office, and those who could not accept that are bound to repeat their mistakes.
9
All he needs to do is come out For securing the border thhe border and he would easily win the primary because everyone else is going to be pro open borders and that is not what a lot o democratic voters want.
7
@Keith No mainstream politician is asking for open borders.
No sane candidate supports open borders. We haven’t had open borders for many years. More Mexicans move from the US to Mexico every year than from Mexico to the US. A wall would simply keep Mexicans in the Us rather than the other way around. The only solution is comprehensive immigration reform and a major effort at bolstering Mexican and Central America economies.
Can’t we just order our next president online from Amazon, shopping for one again is too tiring.
8
Let the 350k Amazon workers who got a raise from Bernie-shaming decide for us.
1
The headline for this on the front page here is: Bernie Sanders Can’t Keep His Top Supporters on Board. This is of course a flagrant, raging, propagandist LIE.
Bernie Sanders "top supporters" are individuals, nobodies like me. We are all in for Bernie, it's payback time and you will know it.
35
@CK "payback time"???
12
@Matt Threats are always so persuasive . . . that'll get Bernie the nomination!
3
I see the NYTimes is getting an early start on the "He can't win" meme. Keep an eye out for the cutover to phase two: "He's going to divide the party and create the Nader effect"
42
He did it once, why not twice?
1
Tulsi "I love Bashar Assad" Gabbard? Hawaii Five NO.
4
Andrew Yang as president and Bernie as VP !
Bernies' voting record on women's issues is abysmal.
25
@Barbara
Quite the opposite, but everyone has plenty of alternative facts these days...
7
Please detail the facts behind this allegation.
3
Of course his percentage isn't as high as it was in the 2016 primaries-- there are a hundred other people in the field!! That's not an intelligent point of argument, in my opinion. Please, NY Times, it's too early to carpet bomb the electorate with an endless barrage of Bernie hate- that's what Jeff Bezos is for....
19
The Democrats would rather lose to President Trump than let a Socialist win.
25
Good point. Last time I checked there were 16 Democrats in the House that stand for Medicare for all. The left party is extreme moderate right of center and generally intolerant.
1
@Red Allover
The agenda of the far right has much much more in common with the NYT then even a modest social democratic platform does. Because it's not even the individual policies that bother them as much as what they mean. Heavens forbid that democracy apply in any way to the economy. The contempt they hold for average people is so sharp and cruel that can't help but show themselves.
M4A is fine existing elsewhere, but the very idea that people demand it and they get what they want is just a bridge too far. If they 'gifted' it to us they'd be more amenable to it.
3
I’m a Democratic Socialist and I think I’d switch your statement around to say “Bernie Sanders would rather we all lose to Donald Trump and the MAGAts than elect a woman.”
@Guy Baehr
Indeed! Bernie is the most popular and honest politician in the country.
New York Times want another middle of the road person like Clinton and Obama who will throw a bone at the 99 percent and keep the oligarchy intact. High tech, big Pharma, big Insurance, Wall Street, Big Hospitals.... check Pelosi and Schumer’s top donors if you don’t believe me.
31
The New York Times did an e pose of Donald J Trump's shady and corrupt business, a few months ago! WHY didn't the New York Times publish the expose into how Donald and his father made their millions DURING the 2016 campaign season?! Also, the New York Times journalist, often criticized Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton ....while giving candidate Donald a pass!
And now...here we are again with another "hit" piece against Bernie Sanders! Conservatives love to hate the NYT because they are "liberals" but not so, the NYT has lost its ability to stand for liberal ideals.
Bernie Sanders May very well run for President, it matters not how old he is! His ideas are solid, ideas that will buoy up the Middle Class, help the U.S. finally get to universal healthcare, affordable college education, et .,etc.
Don't listen to the naysayers, Senator Sanders, run if you want!
22
Bernie is past his use by date...
15
Shouldn't voters decide it?
2
@njn_Eagle_Scout
I think your stake with has passed its use day
1
Thus the Times begins its Bernie bashing. Can't you wait at least a few more months? Give the various contenders a chance to talk about issues with the American public. Let's hear what people think about the issues that matter.
The Times can provide an invaluable service to democracy by allowing the various contenders to use it UNEDITED as a forum to reach the public.
Or the Times can try, as it did so insistently in 2016, to use its power to impose its own wishes and agenda on its readership.
Which is it going to be? Are you going to serve the readers, or try to serve us up to your preferred candidate?
29
I am Black female Southern Democract and I will NOT vote for Bernie and none of my friends will either
33
Can you explain why? I’d like to know more.
4
Yeah, and there are plenty of people who (and whose friends) will never vote for democrats, does it mean that Dems should not run?
4
Are these Sanders diehards the same people who want Nancy Pelosi to leave the leadership ASAP because she's 70+? Probably there is an overlap. Hypocrisy aka as sexism is alive and well among voters who say they are "progressive" but in fact are regressive. It's a magic trick they pull off beautifully because they also push for free health insurance for all. So do I, but my life is on earth, not in sandercastles in the sky.
21
He was a spoiler in 2016 and look what we got. He made his points and they have been integrated. Now Bernie should bug out!
26
Why no mention that the Iowa polls reflect the fact that Biden has been a presence there for decades and is better known than Bernie?
The NYT's reporting on Bernie's previous bid first tried to ignore him and then tried to minimize the enormous crowds that showed up for his talks.
We realize Socialism, even Democratic Socialism sounds like Communism to the capitalists at the DNC and NYT, but the people will continue to lead until you figure out that what is going on is beyond your control.
The NYT endorsed Hillary and we know how that turned out. We truly had 2 evils from which to choose.
Fortunately Bernie goes directly to the people so the talking heads and pundits can bloviate till the cows come home. They will be clueless to the end.
17
@Patricia Kane Except HRC wasn’t actually evil. Just the victim of a decades-long smear campaign coupled with a few unforced errors on her part. It is sad to see the same words from you as were pushed by the Russians.
4
There are many Not Hillarys this year, most of them actually Democrats. Bernie: thank you for your service. Now get out.
12
Jee, what is the trouble if he tries? If not so many Democrats vote for him, he will not win the primary, but trying to bum him off BEFORE primaries really leave a bad taste and leads to the division that is harmful to the party's chances. Why do you want to do that?
3
I supported Bernie 2+ years ago. The Democratic party apparatus destroyed him with their blatant support of Hillary over the people's choice. Bernie is now a has been and I will no longer support him nor Hillary. We need new blood and Bernie needs to find a younger alternate to throw his support behind and forget about it.
3
@Theni your “people’s choice” lost the primary by over 4 million votes.
1
If he was the people’s choice why did HRC get millions more votes? Yes the establishment preferred HRC (longtime Democrat after all), but the people went to the voting booth and voted freely for Hillary.
1
Bernie Sanders should not run for President. He is too far left to win votes and furthermore he is just too old. Both parties need young blood..
9
As in 2016, if Sanders runs in 2020 his progressive policies will a total a minimum be integrated into the Democratic platform and policies. If you’re for a political/economic system closer to those of the Nordic countries or even our neighbor Canada, support him. If you don’t prefer that direction, then don’t.
And NYTimes, how about reporting things like policies and events that actually occur or exist concerning any Sanders run rather than how you covered his 2016 campaign. Like this Administration, when your bias shows you lose credibility on other reporting, costly for a news organizations.
19
And here goes NYT doing what they did last election. I see they learned nothing. NYT, WaPo, CNN, and MSNBC will once again do everything they can to influence voters away from the one candidate who threatens to stand up against the same billionaire class that owns their organizations. Coincidence? I predict they will get behind a faux progressive like Harris or Booker.
NYT, you are a cog in the mechanism that landed us with Trump via a heavily tilted democratic primary. Here’s an idea: don’t do it again.
36
The Times is owned by, run by, written for those who:
Think Sanders had a lot of gall running against Clinton in the primary
Blame Sanders for Trump
Think Sanders did an underhanded thing in running for the Democratic ticket because he's "not a real Democrat"
Are constitutionally incapable of understanding that it's not a fault, crime, etc that many prefer Sanders over Clinton
30
@Talbot
All supposition. Not backed up by actual facts. So unsubscribe. Or are you insisting that the press is not free? Are they to be beholden to your understanding? Why?
More of us preferred Clinton in 2016. That is just something you will never, ever admit.
15
@Matthew
Not enough people preferred Clinton to make her president. Bernie had nothing to do with that, but a lot her supporters have trouble admitting that.
2
I guess not enough of you preferred Hillary, because now we have Trump. And yes, the news are not free, they are the result of political preference of editors and owners.
1
Sanders is self serving. He is independent when convenient. Democrat when opportune. He just needs to go away.
26
@Joseph
I have a better idea. Stay in Montana and vote for Hillary even if she doesn’t run. Write-ins are even acceptable there!
2
Yes, and it is not his fault that the political system in the US could only accommodate two parties. He is realist and that speaks to his benefits.
1
We progressives smell blood in the water, and we are NOT voting for a corporate neoliberal by virtue of scare tactics over Trump.
We'll exercise our right to vote 3rd party, or stay home. What that means is, we own the next presidential nomination and it had better well be Sanders, for your sake. Or, you get Trump again and can spend 4 more years on your Trump derangement instead of proper SS, universal health care, & tuition free college at public schools.
22
NO NO NO. Bernie Sanders running in 2020 would be yet another gift to the Republicans. If you love your country, step aside for a younger generation and take on a mentor role. Otherwise you are just another selfish, entitled older white male.
And to all the hard-core Bernie supporters: Yes, the DNC shenanigans in 2016 left a bad taste. But Bernie lost to Hillary by millions and millions of votes. And no, it wasn't close. Please gracefully move on.
27
Bernie is simply too old. He won't win. The smart money knows this and is looking at alternatives. Bernies time like McCain's has come and gone.
6
My hopes for 2020
1. The NY Times will not pick its preferred candidate and then hide it behind biased reporting against the other candidates, for at least another 12 months.
2. During these 12 months, NYT will give roughly equal "air time" to all the DEM contenders, giving them the chance to express their views UNEDITED and untwisted by their writers.
3. The Democratic Party leadership will not decide "whose turn it is next" and then undermine all the others.
Here's where it gets positive:
4. All the contenders go around the country hosting town hall meetings in which they talk to, and more importantly, LISTEN to voters, learning about the issues that matter most to the public, a very public and open process.
5. In about 12 months, the contenders winnow themselves down voluntarily to the 3-4 most likely to win a real presidential election.
6. During the primary process, the PRIME consideration among party delegates is to determine which candidate has the most chance of winning. This outweighs any policy considerations. Keep in mind that EVERY presidential election in our lifetimes has hinged on which candidate can be most persuasive with swing voters in a few key swing states. That is where and how elections are decided.
17
Sanders is too old. In fact a bunch of them are too old - it's irrestponsible to run for the Presidency at age 79. There's a limit to everything, including health and life span and he's already pushing the envelope. You'd be voting for his VP, basically and that's not acceptable.
7
Bernie Sanders IS NOT A Democrat. I live in the Midwest and in this part of the USA Sanders is a huge negative.
16
St. Louis is also my home and although I live primarily on the west coast we still have a home there. Sanders will not "fly" as they say in the midwest. His protege Cortez supported some progressive candidate who was soundly defeated in the primary earlier this year. We also have a home on the Mississippi gulf coast. Sanders doesn't exist in that state nor anywhere in the South. The so called progressives need to get out of their bubble and realize most of the country does not support Bernie or his agenda. Oh and BTW he is not a Democrat. Just a reminder.
12
@Connie
Those crazy progressives are actually asking for a fair life that isn't rigged to reward rich campaign donors and make everyone else suffer. They actually want protections for workers and consumers and regulations on people who want to poison us or rip us off! And they want health care and higher education that doesn't threaten to bankrupt people! That's right, they actually want a government of the people and for the people. That just won't "fly".
Something tells me that your brag about owning two homes in different parts of the country means that you just can't relate to any of that. Maybe you're not a Democrat either.
4
Seems like no Dems candidate will fly there. i guess Dems should just give up without trying.
One thing is clear. Sanders attacks on Hillary cost her the Presidency and installed a raging lunatic in the White House. All for his own self aggrandizement. As a former big backer of left wing dictators like the Castros and Daniel Ortega, he pictured himself as the next leader of a big leftist revolution.
All it took was thousands of the social media set screaming for him at his Trump like rallies, and he was off...claiming things that he knew were never going to happen and poisoning Hillary with just enough people to hand the presidency to a lunatic.
He's been in Congress for THIRTY YEARS and I dare anyone to come up with anything substantial that he ever accomplished. Something along the lines of the CHIP program that Hillary made possible that insured 9 million disadvantaged kids. Don't even think of possibly nominating him this time around. We'll lose again.
28
@Bodyman - "One thing is clear. Sanders attacks on Hillary cost her the Presidency and installed a raging lunatic in the White House."
Proof, please?
11
Donald Trump
8
I think the Russians backed Sanders because he is a socialist. The Russians backed Trump because he does what they want with Russian women.
The nation is on the precipice of fascism; absolute corporate plutocracy to be exact. The big-tent Democratic Party will have to win the day, or the American experiment will have failed humanity, and the USA will stand for just another simple strong-man kleptocracy with a few trappings of democracy as a fig leaf. Some how, some way, political fratricide will have to be kept to a minimum. The Republicans mastered the "hear no evil", "speak no evil", mantra to the point where they've managed to deliver a perfectly odious human being to the highest executive position in the land, by hook or crook (heavy on the crook). Democrats have to deliver some decent human beings into the mix, and they have to win.
10
I know the Democrats will be up against Trump, but please, please, can't we have an Obama-like candidate who is not noisy like Bernie or Elizabeth Warren? Don't get me wrong, they have great ideas, and I agree with many of them. I want a candidate with ideas, but also dignity. After all, the President is the head of state. The occupant of the White House needs to have gravitas and radiate intelligence and competence. A progressive-minded Angela- Merkel-like candidate would be my first choice. Is there a male or female in this vast country that matches that description? If there is, they have the vote of this senior citizen.
6
I'm 64 years old. I have nothing against old people. But Bernie Sanders will be almost 80 in two years. Step aside dude! And as much as I like Nancy Pelosi, it's time for the Dems to bring in some new blood.
8
Sherrod Brown 2020. He's an old school, pro-union progressive Democrat who appeals to the blue collar MidWest - the most important swing region.
22
I will not vote for any third party candidate. I will not vote for any third party candidate masquerading as a Democrat (or a Republican). If you want to be nominated as a party candidate, join that party. For real. Not just to disguise your third party Identity
15
@Patricia - I think it's reasonable to assume you are referring to Bernie Sanders, who may not have a DEM Party membership card in his wallet, but who I would say is far more a REAL Democrat than those many cardholders who serves their rich donors first and the rest of us only as an after thought, if they think of us at all.
19
Well, let the primaries decide who should be the Den candidate.
2
I love Bernie, but he's too old! (I'm old myself, so I'm not an ageist.) Let someone else run.
9
You do sound as ageist. Just imagine somebody says I am not against women, but Hillary should not run because she is woman. Would you believe this person is not 'against women'?
1
If Bernie folks are so certain he's a shoe-in, then how come they aren't confident enough to surround the white house and Capitol Hill and demand the ouster of our usurping "president"? The majority of the country is with them, no? Isn't that what they should be doing?? Shouldn't they be the vanguard appalled enough to put their feet forward? Isn't that what ALL of us should be doing? Wouldn't that be a better use of our time than re-ligitaging 2016 for the umpteenth time?
5
The process I'd like to see
1. for the next 12 months the NY Times does not support any particular candidate but gives equal air time to them all.
2. There are a lot of good people and good ideas. Let's spend the next 12 months exploring the issues before we start with the horse race nonsense. Town hall meetings all across the USA discussing top issues with voters would be ideal.
3. In about 12 months the 3 or 4 real contenders should emerge. These will be the potential nominees most likely to be Trump.
4. 2 or 3 formal debates between the 3 or 4 candidates before going in to the primaries.
5. If the NY Times must back a candidate please do so at the outset of the primary period and be up front about it. There was a lot of what looked like very underhanded reporting in 2016. It weakened the trust of the electorate in the news media.
4
Bernie Sanders, sure. He looks like an old grandpa that needs a haircut and a change of clothes. He's got about 20 sentences memorized that he just keeps repeating. Bernie's like the chicken that plays tic-tac-toe at the county fair; he's interesting for about 10 minutes then you move on to look at the pickled beets.
14
Looks like it's time to recognize that there are two Democratic parties--Progressives (identity politics) and Liberals (formerly known as Democrats). Should this happen, once-mainstream Republicans would probably find a cozy niche for themselves within the new Liberal party. I suspect tRump would win, but there's a fair chance he will against just about anyone. If he's not in jail, that is. But after that rough ride, we might actually have elections with interesting real choices, and quit pulling the imagined lever for "not that one."
1
If Sanders has had the basic integrity to retain his registration as a Democrat, I might give him a second thought. Essentially he uses the Democratic Party as a vehicle for his massive ego and expects a Democrats to treat him as if he cared about the Democratic Party. If he runs he should run as an independent.
12
And so it begins. Looking forward to the piece on Biden being too old, unable to attract the support from progressives needed to secure victory.
1
While the final candidate may or may not be Senator Sanders I will note what some have. It the Ds pull a similar set of shenanigans or candidate is another Third Way centrist I will not vote and will encourage other progressives I know to do the same. It is as easy to fix a damaged house, which Trump has managed, as one that is burnt down. IMHO. No more votes for Third Way neoliberals.
13
If Bernie were really a man of principle, he would have run for president as an independent, rather than free-ride as a democrat.
11
Free rider? I thought you need to win primary at least to ride this horse? Are all Dems candidates free riders or only Sanders?
1
@Brad
Yes, just like that wonderful man of Principle i'm sure you've never said a bad word about before, Ralph Nader.
Just admit, you think us voters on the left shouldn't have a voice, and you preferred us a captive market, with nowhere else to go.
You're mad if they run in the party, mad if they don't, just mad we exist at all. The biggest obstacle will not even be the GOP, it's going to be the Democratic party apparatus and the centrists.
5
At this point who cares about the polls. Sanders deserves credit for initiating the discussion of new ideas for Democrats. But his legislative record is weak, and it's hard to look for leadership in someone who can't even commit to a party.
9
Politics is changing so fast these days, the landscape is different from even just two years ago. Sanders had his shot and he didn’t make it. If he really wanted to be President, why didn’t he run 20 years ago? He isn’t even a Democrat.
Time to give the spotlight to someone completely different than Trump. So no more older white guys. The future has spoken and it is young, female and non-white. That said, Beto could be the new Bernie.
3
Whomever is picked needs the right VP too. The combination must be able to turn out maximum votes across maximum states. This means blue collar, minority, white collar, young, old and former Republican women too. If we want all the Trump damage to be quickly corrected, progressive policies enacted and fair judges to be appointed, a solid senate majority must be won as well. Whether or not you think the nominee is too progressive or not progressive enough, you had better show up in the end. If Trump wins or the GOP holds the senate because you don’t get your way and take all your marbles home, then you’ll simply get the future you more than deserve.
3
I am very concerned about the media coverage of a person who consistently polls higher than any other political figure in America, red or blue. We claim we want our leaders to be straightforward and sincere and yet when we get one (who has been consistently progressive in talk and walk for 3 decades) they are labeled pie in the sky or not realistic. The media plays a major role in this. When was the last time the “liberal media” asked a pro-war politician how we were going to pay for perpetual war or the subsidiation of large corporations gaming the system? And yet health care, a minimum wage consistent with productivity and education are somehow too expensive. Don’t forget the lack of coverage when Bernie was filling stadiums while media outlets broadcast hours of Trump’s empty podium. People took a chance on Trump because they saw their lot as hopeless. Bernie has the experience and record to back up his agenda. It’s shocking to see the Times and other publications already trying to minimize the movement this man has sparked. Learn our lessons from Hillary, who despite a billion dollar campaign couldn’t beat the worst candidate ever put forth. Blame Russia (still no hard evidence), blame Comey, blame Wikileaks, but at the end of the day a candidate with a message of “I’m not as bad as the other guy” is always going to be a losing strategy. Journalists, we need you. Please do some real journalism.
26
As I recall, Sanders got no media coverage. Sanders wa upstaged by an empty microphone that Trump would stand behind, 30 minutes after he was done. This piece, though negative is better than no press at all. I wonder, what policies does Mr. Sanders actually have? That would take energy. Its easier to just report the horse race.
5
@4Average Joe Just like HRC. She got less than an hour of coverages of her (insanely detailed) policies across networks, not counting the debates. Everything was her likeability, her emails, and her pneumonia. Neither Bernie nor Clinton was treated fairly.
The media has a lot to answer for in its 2016 coverage, and I worry they will do it again in 2020.
1
Gee, we're a year and a half away from the convention and already "Bernie Sanders is struggling." I had to check the byline to be sure that this wasn't written by Claire McCaskill or Debbie Wasserman Schultz. It reads less like a think piece and more like wishful thinking. Take a break, folks. He's not even running yet.
I don't really care if Bernie runs again. As long as the Democratic Party moves in the direction of his agenda, and away from the watered down, ineffective, non-offensive, pro-corporate, center-right track they've been on since the Clinton administration, he will have done his job. I'm not holding my breath. They're years behind the electorate and don't seem to have the desire to catch up.
19
I guess the conservative corporatist Hillary Democrats will need to lose the next election before they learn that they are too right wing and that the needs of the masses should come before the needs of the corporations and billionaires. Either the Dems go way more left or I vote for Greens or Peace and Freedom.
14
Unlike the rest of the field, Sanders believes in what he says and is not just an opportunist. Because of him it’s cool to be a social Democrat, but he started the whole movement.
15
Can't think of a single national politician who is getting more shade from the chattering class.
Completely undeserved.
He always said it wasn't about him, it was about improving the future for Americans that Republicans don't care about (my words)
I don't think his ego insists he be POTUS. But he has brought a consistent message that NO ONE ELSE carried as well in 2016. Let the better spokesperson for those values take the Democratic Party banner, carry it to the White House. Bernie is qualified. Who else will rise to national prominence, support? Let every one come forward!
20
I'd vote for him if he ran, but i'd prefer that he didn't. While the Dems seem to be looking for a candidate who can win American Idol as opposed to one who will work in the interests of their donors over the working proles, I'd prefer Sanders threw his weight behind the unglamorous but relatively trustworthy (afaik) Sherrod Brown, Liz Warren, or Jeff Merkley. Face it Dems, neither you, nor i, nor anyone else has any idea whatsoever who's electable. And if the Dems put up a Clinton 3.0, well, Sanders still has that I pasted after his name.
3
Of all the candidates mentioned, Sanders is still the only progressive, as a careful examination of the candidates' voting records and campaign donors proves.
That will undoubtedly become clear to everyone during the debates.
And personally, I'd rather have four more years of Trump than eight years of a neoliberal, pro-Pentagon, warmongering Democrat.
5
@Derek Flint Obviously you are ignoring all of the very real POC and LGBTQ folks who have been suffering under Trump. ANY Democrat would be better than that.
1
Your new Congress hasn’t even sat yet but here you are talking 2020.
American (and Australian but not to the same degree) politics has a problem with money and fundraising rather than focus on working together and passing laws. 2 years is not a holding pattern.
3
As a 61 year old former Republican (until Trump) I would vote for Sanders because I like his ideas and his well thought
out and funded proposals on universal health care (Medicare for All), higher wages (Stop Bezos) and higher education (College for All). What I like is that he has proposed actual legislation that includes actual funding - he doesn't just mouth slogans. Since I'm an Independent who saw Trump hijack the Republican party I couldn't care less if Sanders does the same to the Democratic party. I'm not going to vote for a party, that's what being Independent means. I do care about the details, that's why actual legislative proposals matter. I don't agree with Sander completely but this is politics, not religion.
20
Democratic party leaders have a problem: Sanders is still more popular than anybody that the party will be likely to endorse. Voters in 2016 chose change over "more of the same lip service" and they will do so again in 2020. If the Democratic Party hopes to win back the Presidency in 2020, they will need to put forward a candidate who is not part of the old guard (sorry, but this means it cannot be you, Ms. Clinton----or you, Mr. Biden). Otherwise, we will see a second Trump term, as horrific as that will be.....
9
Thanks for this article. It helped me make up my mind about whether or not to make a contribution to Bernie Sanders, after receiving this afternoon's email from him.
Off to make that contribution now...
17
In the interest of the country, Sanders should get behind a younger candidate and do everything he can to bring his supporters with him.
11
Mark..thank you. If Bernie has the good of the country in mind...helping, supporting, and working for the Democratic nominee is the most important thing he could do.
5
My suggestion, as a Bernie fan for 30, 40 years:
Commit to only serve one term, and groom a younger progressive to succeed you. People will have trouble with your age, though I (at 75) don't, but having Beto or Kamala Harris, etc. as your V-P will kill two birds with one stone, preparing for a progressive future- which you have fought for all your life. They may be seen as too young (though I now see Harris is 54, she looks younger, and not known outside of progressive circles), you as too old.
I repeat: I am not concerned about age, but strategically, you have to deal with perceptions.
8
Bernie awakened my soul to politics when I was 70 yrs old. While massive oak trees have fallen, Bernie's yard sign has weathered all the storms and is still standing. I feel this is a metaphor for who he is and why he can win. There is no way that trump can win a debate w Bernie's knowledge & political history. Though not perfect like any of us, no viable skeletons have been found in any of Bernie's closets. As for age, Bernie Sanders has wisdom which is what will be needed to now actually make America great again after trump has and continues to use his presidency to ruin and destroy what good has gone before. In addition, the US still needs real positive change for all Americans of all age, ethnicity, genders, economic backgrounds. It will need to recover from trump's massacre of the earth, our allies relations et al. It mind boggling how much havoc he has created in just 2 yrs and for sure w more to come even if for a short while.
We need a seasoned statesman for our next president, not a politician. Bernie has proven for many decades that he is a statesman and not a politician.
22
Two questions: Why is it that centrists always tell the progressives that they must compromise and support the Democratic nominee? Why don't centrists compromise a bit by supporting more progressive candidates and policies?
13
@Chris Rasmussen
Because Dems would rather try to pick off Republicans than court progressives and lose the big donors. Result - 100 million tails remaining on couches in November, and Republican wins.
4
@Chris Rasmussen - Every presidential election in our lifetimes has been decided by "swing voters" in a few key swing states. That's part of what gives rise to the idea that it is the Progressives who must compromise.
But the old labels "Centrist" and "Progressive" don't work so well anymore. I'll demonstrate that by pointing out that in Spring 2016, during the height of the Democratic primaries, Sanders, the "Socialist", was out-polling Clinton, "friend of Wall Street and DC insider", in the key swing states Clinton failed to win in Nov. 2016.
Clearly, Sanders was capturing the attention of those swing voters, some of whom went on to vote for Trump when they were denied the chance to vote for Sanders in November.
There's an "economic Populism" that bridges Left and Right, that's at the root of this. Both Sanders and Trump appealed to that and Clinton didn't.
Trump, of course, isn't actually interested in those voters. He just recognized they were there and knew how to sell them his snake oil.
Spring 2016 polling data regarding Sanders/Clinton vs Trump:
https://poll.qu.edu/2016-presidential-swing-state-polls/release-detail?releaseid=2345
4
Love Bernie. Supported him last time. He was the better candidate then - might be again - but I will be looking at all the options.
I want a viable candidate (NOT Hillary) who inspires a wide assortment of people (NOT just elderly feminists) and who brings federal experience (NOT warming a carpetbagged senate seat) and who can follow ethics rules (NOT using their own servers in the basement or cheating their way into the nomination).
Will support an inspirational speaker who unites behind reasonable political positions, who can work across the aisle, and believes in collaboration and negotiation for the good of all Americans. Bernie may be the one. But I'm not limiting myself this early in the race.
9
Whatever you think of Bernie, Clinton is the one who lost to Donald Trump.
19
Talbot, despite getting 3 million more votes. How did the 17 GOP candidates do against Trump?
9
@Talbot Yes. This is the plain truth of the matter. But Clinton supporters, like supporters of the Confederacy, cannot seem to accept that they lost.
8
Putin decided the election. Let's ask him who he wants. Hillary did not lose. The Russians stole the election from her. She should run again.
1
This 2016 Bernie supporter/caller/donor WILL NOT be signing on for 2020 UNLESS Senator Sanders actually becomes a Democrat...rather than staying an Independent-socialist who runs in the Democratic primaries so as not to have his third party candidacy ignored by the media.
Whether he meant to or not, too many of his supporters voted Trump effectively becoming a third-party candidate.
It was Hillary's mistake not to choose Bernie for her veep and deal with the baggage...but there were enough BernieBros in the Rust Belt in MI, WI and OH who clearly put disruption ahead of good government. I think Senator Sanders could have snapped more of them back to reality.
9
@Jack - The key to winning any presidential election is to capture the swing voters in swing states. It's been like that for decades. I really doubt that there were more than a tiny few number of voters who voted consistently Democrat in the past and then chose Trump over Clinton. Rather, I think what we saw is that Sanders appealed to some SWING voters, who then went to Trump when Clinton got nominated.
Clinton needed to persuade those swing voters in states like PA, OH and WI, but failed to. Obama won those states, as did Bush and Bill Clinton.
This is borne out by polling from Spring 2016 which showed Sanders polling better than Clinton in a race against Trump. He could only have done so in the particular states polled if he was capturing swing votes.
https://poll.qu.edu/2016-presidential-swing-state-polls/release-detail?releaseid=2345
5
The comments here make one thing clear: The Democratic Party remains deeply divided. Centrists are afraid that voters will choose a progressive, and progressives will not accept a centrist. Who, if anyone, can bridge this gap?
9
@Chris Rasmussen - The irony about this Centrist vs Leftist issue is that in Spring 2016, when the primaries were at their peak "Socialist" Sanders polled better than "Centrist" Clinton in the various swing states that Clinton went on to lose in the election.
I don't think the old boxes apply very well anymore.
https://poll.qu.edu/2016-presidential-swing-state-polls/release-detail?releaseid=2345
5
@Chris Rasmussen. Articles like this make one thing clear: the media loves to play up any perceived divisions in the Democratic party. I view differences in opinion to be for the most part healthy and appropriate, especially at this early stage.
5
@Chris Rasmussen
Donald Trump.
"But it is not just lawmakers, strategists and potential staff members who are hanging back from Mr. Sanders: Some of his supporters in early nominating states are doing the same, in part because they do not want to litigate the divisive 2016 primary again."
I hope he doesn't run. And I sure hope he doesn't win the nomination, because Donald Trump would eat him alive, and even though he's only 5 years older than the current president, he simply looks and sounds far older.
Please, we need youth--not inexperienced youth, but at least someone seasoned in government, in his or her 40s or 50s.
I also agree with the hangover effect from 2016. I don't think anybody wants that.
Whoever gets the nod must be someone who can suborn ego to appeal to the needs of all Democrats, as well as many independents as possible to win a solid victory.
Nobody should underestimate Donald Trump, even a wounded Trump. It's going to require the organization, discipline, and cohesion of the left to throw him out of office so he can finally face the music on all the litigation facing him.
In the meantime, with 20+ candidate names swirling about, I think Sanders' time has come and gone. I hope he realizes this and has the grace to bow out sooner rather than later.
16
@Christine MCM
If it’s faux rich Queens-raised vs. working-class Brooklyn raised, I got my money on Brooklyn.
1
Sanders candidacy woke the Democrats up. They seemed shocked to see that most of America supports free public college, Medicare for all, strengthening SSI, raising the minimum wage and politicians weaning themselves from corporate and wealthy donors. These are not pie in the sky ideas. Sanders helped workers get a minimum wage to $15/hr at Amazon and Disney It's interesting that at this time the Democrats still have not committed to Medicare for all. The public is fed up with the corruption in Washington. They wanted change and they got Trump. Bernie needs to run if only turn the Democrats left and get them to represent the middle class.
31
@ Your idea of how the Dems win – by offering lots of free stuff – suggests to me that they still don't understand the grievances and aspirations of the working class voters who switched to Trump. They want acknowledgement, respect, to be treated as citizens. A laundry list of goodies isn't going to do it; a winning Dem will have to articulate a vision of the national interest in which all can play a role because it doesn't depend on race, class, and gender.
This isn't going to happen, because no one in the party knows how to do it, and that's because no one believes in it.
4
I don’t know who I am going to support in the 2020 primaries.
But I know I won’t be supporting Biden, Sander, or Warren. The Democrats are at their best when they have a new candidate, with new ideas.
JFK, Carter, Clinton, Obama - all fresh faces, all won.
Sanders is an important figure, with interesting ideas. But for all the rigged system talk of his followers it should be noted he did best in the least democratic processes - caucuses. He also never really spoke to the minority vote.
Not a winning combination for an electoral victory.
I don’t know much about Beto, or Kamala, or Amy, or whoever else throws their hat in the ring. But I will listen to all the new voices.
16
@Blue. Thank you for pointing out that he mainly won caucuses where he could bring in a bunch of college students to intimidate and scream and yell. Until they got word of the freebies they were never interested in politics at all and never understood it and still don't. I am so tired of hearing that he nearly won the nomination. He won far less votes and had far far less support among Democrats. But the mainstream media was excited by reporting on a real contest. They have a lot to answer for in the reporting of the primaries
10
@Blue - "Not a winning combination for an electoral victory. "
Actually what it takes to win is to gain the swing votes in the swing states. That has held true for every presidential election in our lifetimes.
It's shifted a bit over the decades, but only a few states really matter, states where Sanders polled higher than Clinton in 2016.
PA, OH, WI, MI, FL, NC
Capturing the vote of racial/ethnic groups, or groups with specific sexual preferences is not a winning formula for a presidential election. It's all about swaying the vote of that small group of about 7% of voters in those key states who sometimes lean DEM and sometimes lean GOP.
The candidate who can persuade them will win the election.
2
At least you didn't talk about his hair.
But after a headline about him losing supporters you deign, a lot further down, to mention that he is still formidable.
If it weren't for him, the progressive platform would not exist.
35
@Talbot
"If it weren't for him, the progressive platform would not exist."
LOL. O...M...G. Lots of koolaid out there tonight in the comments..
This guy is hardly more than an asterisk on American politics. You're all disgusted that the Times ran this, but they really didn't even have to. NO ONE would have missed it at all one way or the other. You should be thanking them that they did throw him a bone.
3
It continues to amaze me just how much - and how openly - the Times really HATES Bernie Sanders. This article is a perfect case in point.
The overall thrust of the piece is that, oddly enough, Bernie is LESS popular now than when he was an unknown "fringe" candidate with 6% name recognition. They even say that Bernie is "a victim of his own success."
Would the Times really have us believe that after having rocketed to fame, published two bestselling books, conducted incredibly popular town halls and other public fora on TV and the Internet, and by having had his "radical" policy platform now become mainstream among the Democratic base, he is somehow LESS POPULAR?
This argument, which forms the overarching theme of the article, is ludicrous on its face.
In fact, the polls tell us that Bernie is more popular than ever, especially among young people. But instead of marveling at how popular Bernie is among Millennials, they fall back on the despicable ageist rhetoric about him being "too old" to run. This is nonsense, given that there is little practical difference in Bernie's age and that of Biden or Trump, and he is actually much younger than the entire Democratic Leadership team just elected to take over in the House.
They even talk about Bernie being "divisive" - DESPITE THE FACT that all polls show he has the support of > 90% of Democrats.
NO. The only Democrats opposed to Bernie are those miserable, elitist few in the Party Establishment and the Times Editorial Board.
88
@EuroYankee
NO. Rather, the only Democrats opposed to Bernie are the majority of Democrats. It's bizarre that you can't realize that.
10
@EuroYankee
The New York Times seems to be copying the Karl Rove strategy of identifying the political opponent's strongest suit and attacking it. It worked for Bush 43.
2
And here come the hit pieces...
Check the polls NYTimes. Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America.
85
@David
Yes David. You are absolutely correct,
They won’t even print comments critical of their pathological bias and hit pieces.
The Times is run by people who forgot the meaning of the word Mensch.
Bernie is a true Mensch. I want to live in a country run by him. I will support him with words and dollars. My Harvard and Yale educated young daughters were already doing it in 2016. My Professor wife still keeps the Bernie sticker stuck to her wallet.
11
Hmmm, did you read the same article I did? There was no “hit”.
6
Hah. What a stunningly disingenuous article. Please put your assertions in context and back up with real numbers.
Remeber there were two candidates in Iowa, not a dozen or so for 2020.
Bottom line: the establishment ( DC and DNC) is petrified of a true progressive.
43
What a boring concept. Independent-Democrat for a year- Indepedent again. Then democrat again?
It is exhausting.
20
Really? I thought Americans should be used to that considering that the system could accommodate only two parties.
1
Not Bernie. Not then, not now, not ever. He's done enough damage and he needs to go away, forever.
31
@AMM
What damage? Please explain. I assume you mean the "damage" he did by running against Wall Street's favorite candidate? Or maybe you mean the "damage" he did by pushing for an actual Democratic agenda, as opposed to the Republican-lite Clinton agenda?
10
It's very, very early and Joe Biden already said something stupid about cutting Social Security. When the dust settles Bernie will be at or very near the top by the time voting starts. The bottom line is corporate democrats like Claire McCaskill are becoming irrelevant. Working class voters are waking up to Washington corruption. Democrats toeing the corporate "incremental change" line will be challenged hard by Bernie supporters. We have a very long way to go in this country and 2020 won't be the year it all changes but it will be the year we turn away from the hard right.
25
Let's be serious, after his alienation of Democrats Sanders has no chance.
26
@Matt I'm a Democrat and he didn't alienate me. Quite the opposite.
26
@Matt Sen. Sanders caucuses as a Democrat, votes as a Democrat, and has a position in Democratic leadership. It is not his fault that the two major parties have a stranglehold on our government. I give him credit for defying the two-party duopoly.
5
@Matt
I am a Democrat, my wife and two Harvard and Yale educated daughters are Democrats. We have always voted Democrat and Bernie has not alienated us. Au contraire, every word he utters makes us love him more. He is a national Treasure. I would give a lot to see him as President of the USA.
9
Bernie Sanders is a great candidate. Sadly, however, his supporters are sore losers. If he runs and loses a key primary, the Bernie Bro conspiracy theorists will jump on the Russian propaganda bandwagon to undermine the legitimate winning candidate. The result will be more American turmoil under some irresponsible Republican President.
Hopefully that outcome will be nipped in the bud when Sanders decides not to run.
19
@Badger
Anyone who is still using the term "Bernie bro" shouldn't be accusing other people of being sore losers. Stones? Glass houses?
5
@Badger
Man, are you out of touch!
Check who is the most popular and trusted politician in the country.
6
I'm disgusted by this corporate, centrist headline. Its a non-story written by Tom Perez. The health insurance lobby & military industrial complex thanks you for your "synergy."
36
@Eli Interesting you choose those industries considering that in 2016 Bernie received big money donations from both the health care industry and defense industry. If Beto is culpable for taking money from individuals who worked for oil and gas, Bernie should be facing the same scrutiny, right?
5
On the other hand it is too soon to even talk about it. We have too many crises to deal with right now
6
I was a major Sanders supporter but my lack of support for him in 2020 has nothing to do with having lost respect for his ability. He's too old...this is a new world for millineals. America needs a leader who will be around long enough to help them make real differences for real people...not just the rich and connected who provide forthemselves and their friends and not the general public.
9
This articles whole premise is flawed. From the beginning. You say Bernie is polling well below his initial iowa percentage of 49.6. Then they were asking between two candidates, now between 10 or more. There is no way statistically that he could poll as high with so many candidates. Then your identity politics kick in knocking him for his age. Policy is what matters not his age. God forbid he were to pass in office his successor and cabinet will have the same policies. Sanders has led on major victories recently including raises for Amazon employees among others to legislation to end support for killing in yemen. Support among minorites for Bernie is rising along with him being the most popular politician in the country, but ignore that. The hard truth is that Bernie is the only candidate to beat Trump if able to run without articles like this from the "left" knocking him down before he has even made as decision to run. This is what the corporate media/dnc did to him in 2016 and it appears the already have a headstart for 2020. Do you seriously think the multimillionaires running the shows at these major news outlets want Bernie to come in and ruin their cash party. Think about it. Bernie 2020!
38
I will vote for any democrat who runs. Anything is better than a Republican. Liberal or Conservative anything but a Republican.
P.S. I want to see their tax returns. Media: do your job this time
21
@ari pinkus This. I will not vote for Bernie in a primary, but if he is the Dem nominee, I will.
We have to stop the bleeding before we can cure the patient.
1
Must every news outlets, but especially the venerable NYTimes, feed us with a constant drip drip drip of divisive campaign rhetoric and gossip? I still have a political hangover from the last Presidential elections in 2016 and we just wrapped up the midterm cycle last month. Is it too much to ask for a moratorium on the November 2020 cycle until summer of 2019? Seriously
12
Dabney,
Do what I do: don’t read articles when you don’t feel up to it.
Meanwhile, check out the huge number of commenters who claim the media is “ignoring” some story. Invariably, the answer is actually that they never saw the story that ran.
It’s the media’s job to cover as much news as possible; it’s our job to decide what we want to do with it. Feeling fatigued? Catch up later.
1
If the Democrats allow Trump to be elected once again, they should look in the mirror and disband as a party.
10
Whoever is nominated by the Democrats would be well advised not to completely blow off Bernie and his supporters, including myself, with insincere and condescending lip service, the way Hillary Clinton did in 2016. She thought we had nowhere to go, but we do. A lot of progressives and other sick-and-tired-of-being-ignored voters will just stay home if you try to give us another neoliberal centrist. Don't believe that, give it another try and see what happens. PS - I am a registered Democrat and voted for every Democratic presidential candidate from McGovern in 1972 to Obama in 2008 amd 2012.
197
@Guy Baehr, though not explicitly stated, your post implies that you did not vote in 2016. If so, I admire your willingness to admit it. We've now seen what happens when voters stay home. Thanks for helping to elect Trump.
95
@Guy Baehr
You and the the "Bernie and bust" crowd really showed those "centrist" Hillary supporters. I had a roommate who thought like you and refused to compromise her values by voting for Clinton. A few months later she was crying about how awful Trump was and how her father with his preexisting conditions was going to lose his health insurance. When Ginsburg (appointed by a centrist Clinton by the way) gets replace by another reactionary justice and all the progressive rulings of the last 50 years get over-turned, I hope you feel good about how you put the centrists in their place.
124
@Guy Baehr Bernie is toast. Find another non-neoliberal non-centrist candidate... there are PLENTY to choose from... and support him or her.
29
Sherrod Brown is everything Bernie claims to be and unlike Bernie, he doesn't dismiss minority voters.
Bernie fixates on the white working class. Brown speaks of the working class without othering the black and brown people who makes up so much of it.
21
Your untruthful comment is exactly what the corporate Democratic Party wants you to think and feel. The fact is that Senator Bernie Sanders has overwhelming support from POC, especially 18-39 year olds.
6
The idea thst Sanders lacks support from people of color is a pernicious myth. According to a 2017 Harvard-Harris poll, Senator Sanders was viewed favorably by a landslide 73 per cent of registered Black voters. He is now supported by Rev. Sharpton, Dr. Cornel West and many other African Americans . . . .
6
Here we go. This echoes the obvious anti-Bernie bias of 2016. Who can forget the countless backhanded "but he still can't win because SUPERDELEGATES" remarks sprinkled throughout mainstream coverage of his campaign? (Which was blatantly false--numerous superdelegates changed their allegiance to Obama during '08, remember?)
Bernie has an uphill battle? Of course, that's a given. Two years from the election and a crowded field--they ALL have an uphill battle. Why not run stories about the challenges Biden or anyone else faces? Because it doesn't serve the agenda of slowly planting seeds in people's minds that "Bernie can't win...Bernie can't win..." and therefore dissuading their support?
This is nauseating.
Just run a one-sentence piece next time: Guess what, NO ONE is a coronated nominee before the primaries, despite all of the pre-2016 assumptions to the contrary. This article is news to no one.
30
@RLL
"Why not run stories about the challenges Biden or anyone else faces?"
Off the top of my head, check the Dec. 8 editorial, advising Joe Biden not to run.
1
If Democrats couldn't run on giving away money that doesn't belong to them, where would they be? How would they buy votes?
Whoever, you run, they had better be as pure as the driven snow, we will be employing the Kavanaugh standard of justice on them throughout the elections: No evidence necessary and any accusation must be believed until the nominee can completely prove his innocence.
1
Republicans don't give away money that doesn't belong to them? They do worse. They give away money to those who need it least and are less deserving.
3
@Art
What liberals don't understand is that letting people keep more of the money they earned is not the same thing as giving money away.
Sanders v. Trump would be so much fun, plz support him.
8
@Princess Leia
Bernie will win by a double digit margin. Truth and honesty versus lies, lies and more lies.
Bernie is no Hillary or Bill. Tainted people who took money from GS (650k for two 45 minutes speaches by HRC and a slightly less expensive one by her husband in Phoenix, Arizona at the Biltmore several years ago which I had attended).
3
@Blunt
And meanwhile Bernie poured over $110k per month directly into the bank accounts of his wife and daughter (over $1.5 million in total), because unlike every other Democrat running in the primaries he actually paid his family members a massive salary. But that was just honest graft and not evil corporate money, right?
And as you keep forgetting, the same year Hillary ave those two infamous speeches to GS for $625k she also donated $3.6 million to charity.
How much did Sanders donate? Oh, that’s right... Bernie refused to release any of his taxes to the public (and no, the one page summary of one year doesn’t count) so no one knows.
Paying his family millions out of those $27 donations and hiding his taxes sounds so very tRumpian,doesn’t it?
@Blunt Oh noes! They gave boring corporate speeches that no one would remember and hour later! And oh noes! They got paid the going rate for people of their stature!
Companies and conferences pay for notable keynote speakers. It is a draw for their events. It is not nefarious. It is normal for big business.
1
The Democratic Party establishment is responsible for the most egregious voter suppression in the country. In terms of REAL change to the country (what the people really want), the general election is of secondary importance to that of the PRIMARIES. It is HERE where true progressive, popular candidates get squeezed out. If state primaries in 2016 were open to new Democrat voters and Independents, Bernie would have won by WIDE margin (and he would be our president now). There are about as many Independents as there are Democrats and Republicans, COMBINED. The justification the DNC uses to restrict primary/caucus participation, namely that Republicans would cast hostile votes is utterly ridiculous - a vestige of bygone, machine days. Suppressing voter participation in about half of the electorate needs a better excuse than this.
13
If you are so worried about who is going to win the Democratic Party primary, I recommend you and anyone like you immediately rush out and register as a Democrat so you can vote in those primaries. The rules in your state about primary participation are not exactly secret.
It would be far better than the route Sanders supporters chose last time: whining that Democratic voters unfairly preferred to vote for an actual Democrat and then using that fact as “proof” that the game was somehow “rigged” against them while echoing Republican troll memes. After all it is the nomination to represent the Democratic Party we are talking about.
But, no, you want to have it both ways: Hold yourself separate in your purity while expecting to tell Democrat’s who to nominate. Then when Democrats don’t take your advice, you go home to sulk, choosing not vote allowing a moron to become president who may actually manage to destroy our Democracy, all our our freedoms, and perhaps the whole planet. Now you smugly brag about your non-participation as if you did something clever.
And NYT picks your comment as a recommended pick. So thanks, NYT for encouraging non-voting as if it’s something to be proud of.
(Or maybe Bernie can run as a Republican this time and screw them over! There’s an idea I can get behind.)
6
@Christine
I don't know how to respond to this. You have a rich imagination - and pretty comfortable with sarcasm. I've been a registered Democrat my entire life. (I'm 54.) In science and other disciplines that pursue truth, critique is a sign of respect, i.e. constructive criticism. What's the point of Democrats criticizing Republicans amongst themselves? This is how we ended up letting Hillary get nominated. The rest of the country could see what she was all about - and were repulsed.
4
As we head into 2020 I could really do with less entrenched establishment opinion pieces being pushed out there -outside of the opinion column-.
In 2016 the DNC coordinated to keep their favored nominee on the top of the ticket and it ended up pushing an idiot into the white house, so I'd really appreciate it if the too-early calls of doom and gloom weren't pushed out as news and we instead had a chance to just let people discuss the merits of contrasting positions.
Personally, I'm in favor of medicare for all and free tuition to public universities, I also think we really need to get our act together and work at combating climate change - and there is a lot to be said about what the gig economy has done to job quality and employment... These are all opinions on policy stances that I personally have - and I'm happy to discuss them at lengths. I'm not happy to begin the process of writing off candidates from the election before the primaries even begin and am very suspicious of the motivations of anyone who does so.
(Also, as a brief aside, Ageism serves no one, but if you're going to be Ageist please stop offering up people who are within ten years of age of the person you're complaining about being too old - there are people in the US that are in fact younger than 60 years of age)
18
Prior to the 2016 election, I read the NYT Arts and Science sections, sought out the work of specific reporters (Maggie Haberman, Jennifer Percy), and devotedly did the crosswords. But in its political coverage, NYT’s extraordinary reporters seem often poorly served by a center right bias, one I thought of as editors using Wall Street as their curatorial compass.
After the election I committed to reading the political coverage from a wider variety of sources. Democracy Now, Radio Free Europe and Asia, and PEN America, Indian Country, Guardian, as well asFAIR, have long been my favored sources, so then I began reading in earnest NYT, WSJ, Post, and lesser known local papers.
I don’t think I’ve seen more than five articles on Sanders in the NYT since Dec 2016, and all seemed to be about his viability as a candidate, not his ideas or legislation.
I campaigned for Sanders, and then as part of that movement campaigned for Clinton, texting to GOTV at Sanders’ campaign’s urging, to the last minute. I was not surprised by the outcome tho mortified. The winner wore Sander’s best ideas hollowly and disingenuously, as a mask.
I talked to so many voters and volunteers who felt shut out by Clinton’s vision. I feel sexism, the disinformation campaigns, and the DNC are responsible for the loss. Not Sanders. He had every reason to turn away from her campaign but chose to champion it for the public good. I remain startled by how comprehensive the NYT blacklist/bias is against him.
29
From Bernie Sanders' email newsletter today:
"Whenever I am asked about running for president in 2020, I answer that if I am the best candidate to beat Donald Trump, then I will probably run. That is the truth.
If that happens, the political, financial and media elite of this country will stop at nothing to defeat us. You know that. We’ve lived through it together once before. Our ideas terrify them. So what they will do is try to divide us up with attacks — some old, some new — and our political opponents will spend obscene sums of money on ads to defeat us.
I just did not expect the attack ads to begin before I even made a decision. But they have…"
Bernie was not speaking about this hit piece in the Times. It has a negative tone from the very beginning. The authors cherry-pick negative quotes to support their negative spin.
To Bernie bashers who have bought in to the media spin: Bernie caucuses with and is highly respected by the Democrats in the Senate, and to have any chance in our two party duopoly system he had to run as a Democrat.
In 2016 Bernie went on the campaign trail and urged his supporters to vote for Clinton, and many contributed dollars and time to her campaign.
He co-sponsored the resolution to halt Yemen funding.
The truth is, Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate. She was despised by a huge percentage of voters and ran a terrible, mismanaged, uninspiring campaign. If the Democrats repeat their antics in 2020 they are again doomed for defeat.
37
Bernie Translation: The attacks on me were all fake news, and all subsequent articles about me that don’t support me are fake news.
This is called a preëmptive strike and it’s a common propaganda technique.
4
@Angelus Ravenscroft
That's not what he said, that's what you said. People gravitated to Bernie in 2016, and still do, because he speaks so clearly.
As for your take on what he said :
"This is called a preëmptive strike and it’s a common propaganda technique."
That is exactly what the the Times piece is, a preemptive strike.
Here is the rest of the proof of his statement(s), from his email today:
"Right now, a group of Wall Street Democrats known as the Third Way is running ads in early primary states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — calling me out by name and saying our ideas, like Medicare for all, are a path to defeat in 2020.
They not only want to discourage or defeat a Sanders candidacy, they want to make sure that the progressive agenda is not advanced by anyone. They want us to go back to their failed corporate approach which has led to a massive level of income and wealth inequality, a bloated military budget and a failure to address the crises of climate change, a broken criminal justice system and inhumane immigration policies.
Ours is not a radical agenda. It's the agenda the American people want.
Their agenda, paid for by wealthy campaign contributors, has led to record levels of inequality, a health care system that costs more per capita than any other developed nation while leaving millions uninsured and underinsured, and grotesque amounts of student debt that rob many of our young people of their futures."
7
One thing I do know is that I do not support multimillionaire O'Rourke. After learning about his voting record which went Republican most of the time, he's a scary prospect. Ms. Warren gets my vote. Democratic Party hacks, do you hear me?
12
Democrats and Independents should be thinking foremost about who can best restore our democracy and rule of law and order in this country. No other issue will matter if we fail on this fundamental point. And please don't forget that we are at cyber-war with our cyber-enemies who our president adores.
2
@a goldstein
Two words: Bernie Sanders.
2
"Bernie Sanders", how that name resurrects the primal fear we saw in 2016 when the Clintons and the wholly corrupt DNC did their level best to co-opt Bernie and bring him into the fold.
Bernie, gentleman that he is, seeing that the electorate was pulled hither and thither, knew he couldn't secure the support of the corrupt Clinton / DNC alliance, so concerned for our dying Democracy, he threw his support in with the corrupt alliance, failing to appreciate how angry the electorate was at the decade after decade game of disenfranchisement this corrupt Democratic party had practiced on the long-suffering poor and decimated middle-class.
Reeling in disbelief, disappointed to distraction, and sufficiently enraged, the electorate gave us the abomination we call Trump, and sent the Clintonites deep into the wilderness of their own minds, from whence they are seeking to return, having had the last two years to hone their deception skills, and hellbent on coming to the fore over the next two years, with nothing more than empty promises of manna and prosperity for all.
And the NY Times, ever the supporter of the liberal elites, publishes the first in what is sure to be a long litany of articles, specifically designed to prevent our only hope for redemption and salvation, the Social Democrat, Bernie Sanders, from finally bringing our corporate owned government to heel, and giving us a true representative government, "Of the People, For the People, and good golly, By The People".
25
Except that Gentleman Bernie didn’t wholeheartedly throw his support to HRC. He dithered and dithered and hurt the cause, seeming like the kid in the Mrs Piggle Wiggle books who tells his parents, “I’ll do it because I want to and not because you tell me to.”
7
@Angelus Ravenscroft
Why is it so difficult, for Democrats, to simply accept that their deception is as evident as the sun in a clear blue sky, at high noon on the summer solstice.
If only that truth had been accepted and faced, two years ago, Bernie Sanders would now be President, and the madness permeating our nation, and infecting the world, would not have occurred.
Bernie would have sought out reasonable talent to assist in governance, and would have engaged allies and the world in finding solutions to our most pressing problems of inequality and environmental issues.
Now we face all manner of uncertainty and unknowns, as the self-styled Emperor Trump, plans whatever he deems to be in his best interest, and be dammed to the nation, and whomever and whatever dares take issue with him.
A fine witches cauldron we have filled, and continue to mindlessly stir.
4
The longer someone stays in the political limelight, the higher their perceived negative numbers. It happened to HRC. And it is now happening to Sanders. Obama somehow made it to the Presidency on his first try while he was still a relative unknown, when his negative numbers were very small. Even Donald, with his personal short comings, was considered positively by the Republican electorate because his other negative qualities, such as the inability to learn anything new, that came to light after he became president were not evident at the time he was running for president.
59
@Who am I
Bernie Sanders has been and still is the most popular politician in the country since before the 2016 election. That has not changed, nor does this article even touch on it. The article makes skewed comparisons with the 2016 primary race in an attempt to undermine him, comparing Sanders' 2016 Iowa numbers to today's Iowa's numbers, completely overlooking the fact that there are more than triple the amount of people in the running (if you rightfully don't count Martin O'Malley and Lincoln Chafee who got -5% of the vote). Sanders and his policies remain overwhelmingly popular and this article is but the first of many that will attempt to chip away at his support, just like they did in 2016.
27
@Matt
"Bernie Sanders has been and still is the most popular politician in the country"
That's not true. Biden places ahead of him and in a poll of Dems and independents 41% don't even want him to run.
23
Two years after Trump’s election. centrist Dems still cite flawed polls. What could go wrong....
4
I like an appreciate Bernie Sanders. He has championed some good public policy over the years. I sincerely believe he's an authentic guy. Unfortunately, having good ideas and being a nice guy aren't necessary for political success. They very well may be liabilities. Just look at who won the last election. What's more, he's simply too old to become president. He will be almost 80 years old if he runs again. Are there no younger men or women capable of leading the U.S.? Are there no liberals who have the courage and strength to stand toe-to-toe against the current "conservative" establishment? Does anyone have others in mind?
7
@mrfreeze6. Quite frankly I like Robert O'Rourke. I find him quite refreshing. He's young. And I think he can go toe-to-toe with Trump. He's also been in politics for quite a few years so he's not a stranger to it
5
I know power is addictive, but it is time for Democratic Boomers to move to a mentoring role for young progressives if they want the party to make real gains going forward. Listening, DNC? I fear not.
4
My Bernie sticker is still on my bumper and my support is still strong. Run Bernie! I know people from all over the country, including the Midwest, who will support you.
17
@Parapraxis
Let me guess: Subaru?
Yes I voted for Bernie, but it was an much a protest vote as an expression of support for his entire agenda. I loved that he was the only candidate on either side who spoke the truth, and it did not escape me, as it did not escape Trump, that a lot of what he said resonated with people who eventually supported the other side in the general election. it made me very proud, as a Jew and an American, to not only vote for Bernie but to see the support he got from literally everywhere and every kind of people in this country, including muslims. This really is a great country. But all that said, I'm not sure he's the guy for 2020. I hate to say it, but 77 is old, it means he would be 81 when his first term is ending.
5
I just do not believe Bernie would be a viable alternative this time around. It is just too scary to think of the Republican alternatives at this moment. Not good.
5
This just reinforces the fact that much of Sanders' support in 2016 was not pro-Bernie as much as anti-(or anyone but) Hillary.
9
Like I've heard so many times recently, the next election is an eternity away, we couldn't possibly know what's going to happen now.
Sanders will run I'm pretty sure, and he will be a great asset to the American people at debates. Even Trump didn't want to debate Bernie Sanders!
7
@C. Bernard No, I am pretty sure Trump would love to debate Bernie.
1
"would he be the strongest candidate? We don't know yet."
Yes, that's why we have primaries.
11
I don't think Sanders should run. But then, I don't think Biden, Clinton or Warren should run either. I'm not saying they should be kicked to the curb. By all means, draw on them for their experience and expertise. But it's time for new voices and fresh ideas, This is not ageist thing. I'm 63. I'd love to see Sherrod Brown (he's 66) in the running. And Beto O'Rourke ... in 2028.
6
@celia. We can't wait till 2028 for somebody like Beto O'Rourke
1
$800 Billion Farm Subsidy. $1.5 Trillion Tax cut for the wealthy. $72 Million EXTRA to the Military Industrial Complex. $5 Billion (TBD) for a portion of a wall. $200 Million for a political stunt at the border. But a $15 minimum wage, Universal Health Care, and reducing tuition is not doable? Sorry not buying it. Go Bernie!
21
I truly respect Bernie. He embodies my ideals. I worked hard for him in 2015-2016.
Time for him to work as a kingmaker, not as a presidential candidate. He cannot win.
Time for him to move on.
Ditto for Hillary and Biden. We need new, younger leaders.
7
Count me as one of those who supported and volunteered for Bernie in 2016, but who will be supporting in the early stages someone else (leaning toward Klobuchar at the moment if she throws her hat into the ring). Sanders chose to market his campaign in 2016 as a "revolution." Be it fair or unfair, he and his team will need to find a way to articulate why the revolution has less initial energy and fire that doesn't come across as just whining about the media or pointing to some corporate establishment conspiracy. At the same time, his supporters would serve their cause best if they tried to avoid bashing those of us turning to other candidates as traitors or stooges. On this last point, I don't have much hope.
110
@Eliot His supporters worry me too. I agree with them, but am wary of demagogs.
3
It would seem those that supported Hillary Clinton and continue to blame Sanders for her loss, have memories that ceased to exist prior to the 2016 election. As time went on and Barrack Obama displayed that he was NOT going to implement "real" social policy change in the government's approach to its citizens, the democratic/corporate establishment so-called "pragmatic, centrist, Republican Lite" approach resulted in the loss of almost 1000 seats at the state and federal levels including all THREE branches of the Executive. Hillary Clinton, despite the excuse of the electoral college and popular vote, still lost to the candidate with the lowest approval rating in history!
If it were to happen, the choice of a corporate/establishment democrat for a candidate over a progressive with REAL policies and an alternative to Republicans , will all but result in Trump's re-election in 2020.
145
@Deus
“Hillary Clinton, despite the excuse of the electoral college and popular vote, still lost to the candidate with the lowest approval rating in history!”
Yeah, and Bernie lost to Hillary. What does that say about Bernie?
16
Progressive populism is still just populism and its solutions are rarely any more real than Trumpian pipe dreams.
8
@Deus Deus seems to argue that progressives will not vote in the 2020 general election if the Democratic candidate is from the establishment. Thus, progressives will insure that Donald Trump will be president for a second term. This will allow President Trump to pack the federal court with judges who oppose a woman's right to choose, to overturn environmental regulations and thereby allow climate change to continue unabated, and to cement the social and political divisions within our country. The first responsibility of all Democrats is nominate a person who can win the general election in 2020 and thereby rid us of President Trump. If progressives don't get the candidate they want and therefore refuse to vote, they will be complicit in the further degradation of our country. Politics is the art of the possible. Grow up progressives!
10
If he ran and won in 2020, Sanders would be 79 years old when assuming office, and 83 when/if he ran for re-election.
The Presidency is a demanding office that ages all of its occupants, even in the best of times. The reality is that the next few years will be a very difficult time--the next President will inherit a deeply divided country, relationships in need of repair and a set of great challenges at home and abroad. This will require a great amount of energy and focus from the next President, whoever he or she may be. Will it really be the best circumstance in which to thrust someone who will be in their 80's?
186
@Want2know
As one who campaigned enthusiastically for Bernie in the 2016 primaries and did the same for the Democratic nominee in the general election, I'm glad to see his ideas entering the mainstream and believe he'd be a viable nominee if not for his age. For that reason alone, the idea of a younger, candidate who promotes those ideas has great appeal. There's Sherrod Brown, and there's Jeff Merkley, both progressives, with their age and other advantages that would make either of them the most comfortable to the most voters. Does either one have skeletons? Because it would be ideal to have a nominee the other team couldn't handily attack. They'd be forced to, you know, campaign on the issues instead of the personalities.
16
@Want2know
According to the Social Security Administration's actuarial tables, at age 79, when Benie would be sworn in, his life expectancy would be 8.77 more years. At 83, it would be 6.75 more years. Just look it up.
As for how demanding the presidency is, that's up to the individual and how he wants to use his enormous staff. It's not as if the president is on his own.
Neither Reagan nor the Bushes worked very hard at it at all. Trump spends all morning watching TV and tweeting. Bill Clinton loved talking policy far into the night.
FDR had polio and JFK was gravely ill. Eisenhower had a heart attack. I don't think one can say they were not effective. Jimmy Carter micromanaged everything in obsessive detail. Was he more effective? He as certainly healthier.
Personally, I'd rather take my chances on an old guy with the right policies than on a young guy (or gal) with the wrong ones.
30
@Want2know Joe Biden is only one year younger than Bernie and Nanci Pelosi is one year OLDER. No one ever talks about their age being an issue.
Corporatists are just attempting to use age as an excuse to dismiss Bernie.
26
I may be wrong, but I think Sanders’ main—sometimes only—appeal was that he wasn't HRC. We'll find out, I suppose.
101
@Mike Livingston - Yes less war, solid SS, universal medical care, tuition free public college, money out of elections, and personal integrity have no appeal.
85
@Mike Livingston I think the fact that his "radical" policies of Medicare for All, college for all, living wage,etc. have now become mainstream is a clear indication of his popularity. All the others who have recently climbed aboard the M4A bandwagon can rightly be dismissed as Johnny-come-lately wannabes.
52
I don't think so. I think his appeal are the new ideas, that nobody in the Democratic Party has guts to promote.
43
What other candidates? Other than Sherod Brown, who's also always been a progressive, I don't see another viable candidate? Beto's voting record is abysmal. While I love Elizabeth Warren's domestic economic policies, she's not a great candidate. All the others are just stealing Bernie's platform and choosing to call themselves a "progressive."
Bernie is the only true and authentic progressive. He's the father of this movement and we need to elect him POTUS.
323
@Harry I always find it interesting that women are never great candidates - Clinton was "flawed" "not perfect" (Though Biden and Sanders both deeply flawed and far from perfect - are saints?), Warren not a great candidate, Pelosi - eew - the worse, and on and on. So many progressives (male and female) give lip service to wanting a female candidate - but just not THAT woman. Hmmmm - I wonder what woman they do find acceptable? Seemingly only powerless, unelectable "safe" women like Stein.
74
@Harry: As you yourself admit, Bernie is not "the only true and authentic progressive."
Sherrod Brown 2020.
31
@Harry
Do you realize that millions of Americans voted for and still support Trump? It must be nice in your bubble, but Bernie will not win the presidency. His candidacy will only hand the presidency to the Republicans, which this country must avoid at ALL costs. The top priority for ALL Democrats in 2020 should be to win the presidency and a Senate majority.
27
While I ultimately voted for Secretary Clinton in the general election, I enthusiastically organized, donated, and voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries. I’m ready and willing to do so again, and so are most of the people in my social circle. When an insurgent candidate can capture 23 states and 43% of the vote with no institutional support running on a message that resonates with a majority of Democratic and independent voters, that’s not something people just walk away from.
Furthermore, the 2020 field may be initially crowded, but it’ll rapidly thin out as the more quixotic candidates run into the harsh realities of fundraising, and the progressive voters backing these candidates will most likely gravitate to Bernie. For all the talk about how divisive the 2016 primaries were, Bernie remains popular with low negatives.
293
@Steve...you might think of a younger person with similar ideas...he is not a DEM...and frankly I did vote for him in the primary but I would never do that again...he could have stayed a Dem and have some credibility with the rest of us...but he didn't...His ego is like trumps...
34
I’m not sure what social circle you’re in, but in MY social circle people would rather have Trump than a “commie” like Sanders. That’s what Trump and the GOP will call him. And they’ll win.
The Bernie/Alexandra/Kamala/Elizabeth card won’t play in middle-America, that’s for sure.
25
@Steve
"...with no institutional support ...."
Not true, Steve; he ran as a Democrat precisely for the institutional support that the party gave him, which he wouldn't have had if he ran as the Independent he has always been.
16
Just thinking aloud at this point, wouldn't it be nice to see Bernie as a working VP (is he allowed to serve as a department head at the same time?) with a younger dem as prez who endorses the Bernie platform of 2016 instead of lumping the bro's into the deplorable category.
My slogan proposal for Obama 08 was "New Foundations" and for Hilary 16, ironically, as it turned out, it was "Build America". For 2020 I propose "Our Common Interest".
I'd like to see the dems get to the point where they can propose a national economic policy that allows factories employing more than, say, 25 persons to be exempt from collective bargaining/strikes if they conform to the national employment policy including health care, livable wage, pension opportunity.
2
While it’s somewhat heartening that so many Pacifica listeners check in with the New York Times, and that there seems to be the same amount of lack of critical thinking on the left as on the right, it doesn’t change the fact that at a critical juncture in our country’s history, Sanders chose to be narcissistic and petulant rather than self-sacrificing and pragmatic.
He - and HRC - are sucking up oxygen and creating a distraction from the single most important task: beating Trump. They both need to keep their heads down and work behind the scenes, united in this goal.
12
@Angelus Ravenscroft
Using Sanders and narcissistic in the same sentence shows you have absolutely no idea what he stands for. He is purely policy substance oriented. He does not care about his standing in congress, which is why he is so disliked by the established types. He cares about his constituents, and the PEOPLE, like politicians should. If you truly believe he is narcissistic, can you tell me how?
He wants the policies, overwhelmingly popular by the way, that he is pushing for to be enacted because they are popular and will bring real change to this country. The way he sees that happening is to become president. If there were more people signing on to bills for medicare for all, green new deal, again overwhelmingly popular, then he would not care for the presidency. That is the antithesis of narcissism.
4
To me it sounds like the NY Times has started its slow drip campaign against Sanders again since 2020 announcements are around the corner. He's the ONLY politician focused on issues that affect majority of working population of this country. Kindly let him be NY Times.
30
If they don't cheat him (or anyone else) out of a legitimate primary this time, I'll vote for him. But if they pull the same shananigans as last time, they won't get my vote. I had to swallow my own v_m_t to vote for Hillary last time. Won't do that again.
17
Sanders is NOT a Democrat. The shannigans were his for trying to use the party to his ends.
Are you denying more people voted for Clinton than Sanders? That's the simple end of it.
4
Please stop with the constant mis-characterizations, NYTimes. It’s become tiresome. It was informative for this member of the younger generation to keenly observe one of the most revered institutions of American “journalism” consistently mis-read an entire cultural movement. And that is what Bernie was and is: A Movement. The natural progression of Occupy.
22
Oh, look the NY Times trying to trivialize Sanders again, while concern trolling him.
Biden is NOT the front runner for 2020 as of later 2018. Sanders is. Like Hillary, Biden is huge friend of big banks, and voted for the Iraq war.
24
If he runs, I’ll send him $$
22
I hope Sanders runs and would love to see Gabbard as his vice president. I don't know him personally at all, but from afar he seems more than anybody else that has run in my lifetime to care more about pushing an agenda forward than his personal success. So if he loses, I won't read all the articles about how he missed his window or treat him like some basketball player, the way the sportswriter debate whether a player can be "great" if he doesn't win a championship. If the choice were between getting Medicare for All, etc. passed by somebody else or him being president but not managing to get that agenda passed, he would choose the former. He doesn't want to start a political dynasty (he won't even endorse his relatives and most probably think that's weird or a front, but I think he's sincere). At his age if he wins the job, he'll do his best with more energy than those half his age. If he loses, he'll probably vent a sigh of relief (especially if somebody wins who is more progressive than Biden, or Beto - a charismatic centrist who almost won statewide office in an extremely conservative state; so does that mean he magically changed a ton of minds or that he's not that progressive - though of course it would have been fantastic to have him as senator from such a state). Gabbard warrants more attention than Beto based on policies, diversity, foreign policy knowledge, non-hawkish veteran, etc.
6
This is yet another Bernie Bashing piece by establishment thinking. Anyone who has been paying attention to what Sanders has been up to since 2016 would know he hasn't been seeking endorsements by the powerful and the rich. But rather he has been fighting for $15, taking on Amazon and Disney; organizing online town halls covering fair wages, universal healthcare, and climate change. He also manages to appear regularly on MSM to talk about issues of concern for average Americans like affordable child care, income inequality, and college debt. The guy has more energy than someone half his age. I challenge the insinuation that he is losing his support from the 2016 primary. The evidence is everywhere, he's enormously popular, look around!
PS all those other "progressive" candidates that you mention will gladly fill his cabinet. Now there's another reason to put Sanders in the White House; you can have them ALL.
30
@WalterZ Notice comments by Randi Weingarten, who endorsed HC; her AFT union would NEVER support a real progressive candidate -- even after the horrible attacks against the nation's teachers stemming from Obama's RaceToTheTop ed policy. While Randi was clinking champagne glasses in the Hamptons with Mike Bloomberg, who implemented a particularly harsh version of RacetotheTop in NYC, teachers were worried sick their livilihoods and pensions would be no more. The attack against teachers, without national aft union chapters fighting back, paved the way for Scott Walker to nearly eradicate workers' rights and their pensions in WI. I was teaching in NY at the time, and from lifelong liberal dem, I became a progressive dem overnight. For me it's only Bernie, the candidate who joinied Verizon strikers marching through downtown Manhattan during the primaries. It was arguably the most thrilling moment of the entire elections.
6
While I value Senator Sanders as a voice in the Senate, he is not a Democrat. He should not run as a Democrat (he switched as a convenience) nor as an independent. Rather, he should bring his ideas—some good, some impractical, some unfeasible—to Congress and fight for them as a legislator.
14
@Wiltontraveler
I agree in principle, but the US has a very strongly entrenched two party system. While VT is wonderful and can elect an independent based on their merit alone, the US at large has a lot of uninformed party line voters and the first past the post based system discourages voting for a third party candidate.
Until the US fixes their voting system Bernie is a Democrat simply by virtue of not being a Republican - similarly Libretarians are Republicans by virtue of not being Democrats. We need to fix it, but we need to be realistic until it is fixed.
2
@Wiltontraveler
"Bernie is not a democrat"
So I presume that you don't really care for independent votes then, right? Let's see how well that goes in a general. Oh wait, HRC lost in 2016.
If you argue "No, but in a Democratic primary, only democrats should run", because that's the common conclusion that I hear from your line of reasoning, isn't that an admission of a failed system? Should we not care about the policy positions, popularity, and electability over semantic word that means so little nowadays?
And if you say that it already is that way, then that would mean the Democrat party is pro-corportist, pro-endless war, pro-status quo, and pro-lobbyist. Is that really the party that FDR championed? No unions, no healthcare, no working Americans. Average Americans need a new New Deal. Wages have been stagnant for decades, despite continual record growth. Unemployment is down but underemployment is an outstanding detriment to our economy. We are in the midst of a crisis of wealth in this country and people keep voting and pushing for the status quo.
3
@Wiltontraveler Bernie’s weak performance as a legislator is one of the main reasons why I lost enthusiasm for him in 2016. I doubt he’d be much more effective as a president, since presidents have to work with legislatures too in order to get things done.
3
Bernie Sanders never had the political courage of accepting responsibility for the narrow defeat of Hillary Clinton in the mid-west. Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania showed 5 times more "Sanders or bust" votes than the number of votes that made up the Trump advantage. Sanders is a divider who went into the Democratic convention with a 4,000,000 popular vote deficit claiming that he had been wronged. The result was narrative of victim-hood that played disastrously on election day. He would do best to stay on the sideline, supporting with all his political weight any , and I stress any, candidate who wins the Democratic primary in 2020.
37
@Davide
This is just wrong. Most of that 4 million vote spread occurred AFTER the nomination was effectively over. The (super)delegate "math" gave us the winner. Bernie's support started disbanding, while Hillary enjoyed the well-established bandwagon effect. It happens in ALL nomination contests. Using these numbers is disingenuous. Hillary supporters need to own the election of Trump. She was his ONLY pathway to victory. Even a year before the election, Bernie was the most respected and trusted candidate among ALL the candidates, democratic and republican - and Hillary had the LOWEST numbers... by far (historic levels, in fact). Let's ask the country who played the victim card (in different ways) during the primaries and during and after the general election.
26
@Davide
In the 2016 election Sanders threw his entire support behind HRC after she won the primary - and never during the primary did he suggest people to split the Democratic ticket.
I believe what you're recalling is the fact that the DNC purposefully limited the number of debates and suppressed Sanders' name recognition in order to ensure the anointed candidate won the primary. This process disillusioned many voters and distorted the party candidate choice, leading Democrats to have a much weaker chance in the general election.
Lastly, the US voting system is pretty terrible - I hate that spoiler candidates can happen. So when Democrats had a super majority under Obama why didn't we see any of the voting reform that could have helped this situation. If 2016 had been a ranked-choice based election or even if we'd just gotten rid of the archaic electoral college... then we would've had a decent leader instead of four years of Trump.
10
@Davide
Hillary Clinton neglected the midwest, refusing to even set foot in some states that you mentioned that she lost. And this is Sanders' responsibility? Hillary lacked a clear message and championed status quo, meanwhile the midwest is suffering because of said status quo, and that is Sanders' responsibility? The DNC provably rigged the primary against Sanders, but that's also his responsibility? Regardless of any of that, Sanders fully supported Hillary after his loss. He unquestionably said that Hillary is far preferable to the disastrous Trump and that people should vote for her. After that, it is Hillary's responsibility for getting votes, which she clearly failed to do because of her empty cliches, platitudes, and failed campaign strategy. "Pokemon go go go to the polls!"
Sanders was (and has been since the 2016 election) the most popular politician in the country. He has a clear vision of what he wants for this country, and people want those policies. He knows how to play politics, and more importantly, knows how to beat Trump BECAUSE of that clear vision. He stands for something instead of pouting cliches and platitudes. If anyone has a chance to beat Trump, it is Sanders. Articles like this one are a clear attempt to undermine him and his policies, because it will disrupt the status quo and the elite in this country and actually bring real, positive change in this country. If you can't see that, you're either blind or a member of that elite.
12
Too early to tell. What Sanders has successfully done is help Americans realize the conservative narrative is abusive and the alternatives are really not at all radical, even if "socialism" is a word associated with the alternatives. Sanders' always claimed it was not about him. The "victim of his own success" notion is flat wrong. It should be, what is happening now IS his success.
He should run, if for no other reason than to keep the focus where it should be and not let the message get softened and co-opted back to support of the ultra-wealthy establishment as "centrist" democrats do. I am deeply wary candidates like Harris who have substantial ties and support from Big Money sectors. Similarly, self funded billionaires and former wall street types are deeply flawed as populist candidates from the get-go. What Sanders has that virtually no other candidates have is the credibility of an entire career focused on the same perspective and message, which has been For the average working American and against the abuses of average Americans by the financial elite.
Ending systemic corruption. Remember that? It is Central to real political change. Which candidates put that first? Which are clear that that has to happen before any real progressive redress of any injustice can happen? If the oligarchy retains control over the parties and the media, the only thing that will continue is ginned up conflict dividing Average Americans to prevent change benefiting Average Americans.
19
I like Bernie, but I can never forgive how he refused to truly endorse Hillary after he conceded. His endorsement felt obligatory and hollow and his supporters read it as such and now look what we are left with.
I hope he does not run in 2020 and lets other progressives who are willing to be team players give it a go.
30
@Russell
I commend Sanders for his integrity, and frankly he did the right thing in refusing to become a Clinton lapdog.
I predict we will all see Bernie Sanders being sworn-in as our 46th President and Commander In-Chief, in January 2021.
And as I did in 2016, I will support him wholeheartedly and financially as well.
There are tens of millions of Americans who will also support him, and none will be fooled by any pretenders or Clinton clones.
6
@Russell
Hi Russell,
I really hope that you can realize that many people--myself included--despise Clintonite politics because we consider those people extremely damaging reactionaries. Both of the Clintons were simply purveyors of the status quo. They were, in a word, Conservatives.
I did vote for Clinton in 2016--and I would do it again, albeit with a bitter taste in my mouth--but I cannot in good conscience harbor resentful feelings towards anyone that chose not to. Democrats really need to claw their way to the Left. Democrats in America have never been real Leftists. I think it's time for that to change. Power to the Working Class. Economic freedom. Cooperation.
I hope you'll support Change when the time comes, comrade. Our country desperately needs it.
4
I just don't think Biden has the vision. Beto is untested. Give me Warren -- maybe shrill but she has the sense that time is running out for the 99% and is fearless. We need fearless.
2
@Dimitra Lavrakas
"Shrill" ruined Hillary. Let's not make that mistake again.
2
Bernie is old, it's true, but his ideas are young. Give him a young, progressive running mate (Beto?) and a Democratic Party ready to ignore the big money interests and listen to the people, and they will sweep into power with unprecedented voter support nationwide. It's time to spend what remains of our national wealth on rebuilding the US and unburdening ourselves from foreign military entanglements.
5
The Bernie is old comment is pathetic. The corporate Democratic Party has polls every night on MSM that has Biden on top, but you don't hear that Biden is too old. And if the old comment gets worn out, they turn to "Bernie's not even a Democrat".
Let's get real here....the Party's big money donor class calls the shots. They can't continue to rob the working class with Bernie Sanders in charge. Get it ?
15
It is time for the old timers to withdraw from the field and let younger progressives take over. (I am an old timer and, though we started out trying to change the world I am not proud of what we accomplished.) We need to stop dividing and begin combining our forces. The Sander's supporters who refused to vote for Clinton in the final election in 2016 helped elect Trump. He needs to throw his powerful forces behind someone else and help ensure a Democratic win.
10
@ExPatMX
I wholeheartedly disagree. Age does not matter in this political era. Policy substance is what is going to win voters and Sanders has the competition beat by a mile. If a principled candidate like Sanders runs for president, then yeah maybe, but so far, the alternatives are corporatist status-quo centrists. Maybe Tulsi Gabbard but she has not announced anything. The only other which could beat Trump (aside from Sanders) would be Major Ojeda, since he actually stands for something and is willing to fight for it.
Which candidate would you support that fits the bill?
2
You mean like Beto who is a member of the centrist, New Democrat caucus? Beto's record in the House thus far is voting with the Republican Party on bills that hurt the working class and our environment. I'll take Bernie Sanders all day, everyday, over the corporate Democrats..,young and old.
Sanders / Warren 2020
9
No thanks. He's too old. I'm ready to be completely done with the Baby Boomer generation in American politics. If he wants his movement to flourish he ultimately needs to pass the mantle down to a younger generation.
And he's selfish. He's succeeded in many ways -- the Democratic party has taken up many of Sanders' progressive policies -- but he insists on staying an 'Independent' rather than a Democrat, but then complains when the democratic establishment doesn't embrace him -- well, that's a two-way street.
Finally, in the same way Ralph Nader gave us George W, I do hold Bernie partially responsible for giving us Trump.
12
@Derek Schmidt : I’m a boomer and I agree. It’s time to move on.
2
@Derek Schmidt
Hillary Clinton's campaign is responsible for not earning votes. How often did she visit Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin in 2016? She needed those states didn't she.
2
@Derek Schmidt
There seems to be a huge mischaracterization as to what constitutes a "baby boomer" to many people these days. Baby Boomers were born between 1946-1964. Bernie is OLDER than baby boomers, as is many old people who have messed up our government, economy, and business world.
If one is going to be prejudiced against a whole generation, it may be a good idea to know who those people are.
1
It was obvious to anyone with their eyes open that, in the primary campaigns of 2016, the two candidates that drew the largest and most enthusiastic crowds were the two populists: the true populist, Bernie, and the faux populist, Donald. Unfortunately, the leaders of the Democratic Party--Debbie Wasserman Schultz, are you paying attention?--made sure that the deck was stacked for Hillary; and the media refused to give Bernie any attention for the longest time. Bernie is still the real deal.
24
Bernie Sanders IS the real deal...which is WHY the corporate Democratic Party has begun their 2020 anti Sanders campaign in earnest.
8
I just received an email from Bernie saying that if he determines that he is not the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump, he won't run. Despite the propensity of the news media to portray him as a quirky side show freak, Bernie is a realist. And, he strikes me as being more interested in having his good government ideas implemented than in becoming president himself. Right now, according to his email, Bernie is concerned that the Third Way plutocrats are trying to defeat anyone who embraces his progressive, good government ideas. Apparently, they are already running commercials in early primary states opposing universal healthcare and some of his other policy ideas.
22
@ch
Can you please elaborate on his long association with the NRA, that if you are aware of it?
1
Bernie Sanders got support from Russia in his 2016 campaign. That alone disqualifies him. How is Bernie supposed to help protect this country against Putin's disinformation attacks when he benefited from it.
We are going to spend the next couple of years getting more details about how Russia attacked our democracy and Bernie was one of the weapons in that attack. He's tainted goods and that will become clearer as we get closer to 2020.
6
I wouldn't vote for anyone 70 or older, and I'm 76. Time for someone younger with good experience in government, to reach younger voters.
7
This is a test:
Sanders is a hopeless lost cause because his ideas are destructive to the establishment who manage the political economy on behalf of the populace.
We must admit that running the political economy requires the most intelligent and reasonable people in society who are very well educated and who possess considerable professional experience in law, business and politics. Truthfully, we cannot get all that we want in the criteria for these critically important executive level positions, and all too often ethics takes a back seat to capital accumulation and allocation, perhaps the most important job that is to be done.
We cannot have middling, ordinary or average people in charge of decision making, they'd have no idea what to do running the political economy, and similarly, we cannot have highly educated and competent anti-establishment people like Sanders running the political economy because the effect would be the same. For an analogy, refer to Margaret Atwood's statement that "Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results."
To be clear, we need the oligarchs who have risen to the top of the political and economic structure throughout all time to run and rule things. They won't be content to see their lessers in charge, they will not sit idly by while incompetence and negligence prevails, and it is precisely because they are hard and smart working that they will remain established, being the establishment, no matter their ethical system.
1
@Chris
It is disappointing that you view the oligarchs that run our country as virtuous--indeed, as the opposite of incompetent and negligent, as you say. They would gladly sacrifice your children if they believed it would net them a profit. And you can guarantee they'd perform a very incompetent sacrifice at that.
What we need is Democracy. Not Plutocracy. We need true Consent of the Governed.
If we don't snatch the wheel away from the Plutocrats, they will continue their gleeful mad-dash towards the cliff.
3
Bernie should promoting and campaigning for a young(er) candidate.
2
This is a very positive development for the Democrats. Particularly in light of the racist Mr. Trump it would be a fatal mistake for them to follow Sanders--whether or not he is the candidate--and focus only on economic progressivism at the expense of social progressivism. Moreover, they need realistic economic plans, not the Sanders plans which did not receive the endorsement of a single credible economist. It would be a disaster if Sanders were to win the primary with only a minority of a vote that was splintered among many primary candidates. The vast majority of Democrats agree with the broad aims and values that Sanders espoused. Little would be lost for the party and much would be gained if he were not to run, or, were he to run, not prevail.
2
Doubtless, the campaign supporters' obstinacy during the DNC convention has soured many Bernie allies.
5
The train may have come and gone for Bernie Sanders, but not for his message.
Especially now in this gilded age of Trump and Republican greed when the socio-economic differences within the nation are at an all-time high -- there's no way to dispute his wake-up call to Americans who pay for more, but end up with far less.
Sadly those who dismiss this message of income inequality as some kind of "Socialist" rot are exactly the ones now being taken for a ride with the recent G.O.P. tax bill that grants more riches to the rich, and who are victim to the all out assault on the Affordable Health Care Plan, which while imperfect, at least offered millions the chance to be covered.
But back to Sanders.
It would be an understatement to say that he ultimately did himself and his followers no favors by turning attack-dog against the Democratic candidate even if he did greatly disagree with her. Because ultimately this dispute helped to propel Donald Trump into the White House.
Sanders could've been a Kingmaker, if not King, but the crowd adoration and donated dollars got in his way.
It also says a lot the even Vladimir Putin admitted to liking him, albeit for all the wrong reasons.
So that brings us to the here and now.
Democrats have made inroads by re-claiming the House.
New and younger voices have taken up the call, and finally some semblance of checks and balances will be restored to our government.
It's time for finally move ahead.
And for Bernie Sanders to pass the torch.
2
No, thank you. I’m not in favor of another run by Bernie Sanders.
6
It is time to give Government back to the people. Corporate Democrats won't do it, Republicans definately won't, if not Bernie, than who?
6
Yes I remember it clearly, Senator Sanders speaking to 20,000 in an outdoor arena in California while the candidate of the "stuper delegates" struggled to fill a high school gymnasium in the same state.
Just sayin....
18
@Tim Berry
Bernie Sanders never once, even for a single day, led in the state delegate count. Not. For. A. Single. Day.
It wasn’t Hillary Clinton who demanded that the Super Delegates throw the primary to the candidate with the fewer state delegates, lower vote count, and fewest states won.... that was Bernie.
Remember a few months back when the content of the Russian propaganda campaign was revealed by Facebook, and it came out that the Russian trolls were propping up Bernie as well as supporting tRump, and Bernie’s response to that news was to... attack Hillary.
What a guy.
1
Bernie -a genuine "populist"--should have been the Dem candidate in 2016, and likely would have trounced trump in the general election. His message about the dangers of dark money and income inequality was timely, accurate, and persuasive.
But that was 2 long years and an eternity ago. (Foolish) identity politics aside, Sanders is an old white man whose message has been heard, the torch passed on. He is not the best dem candidate for 2020. Much less so is the old white corporate centrist Biden.
The next generations already carry the enormous burden of trying to survive in a world ravaged by climate change, grotesque income inequality, and the power of the few increasingly being exerted to contain the rage of the many.
The very least we owe those who will carry this heaviest burden is a choice of candidates, at every level of government, who will also be alive for decades, and thus themselves forced to face the consequences of their actions (or inaction).
4
All this debate, even rancor, is vital and productive. However, when the candidates are chosen and the election is at hand, between the Dem and Rep, the Dem is always the lesser evil. Remember also: voting for a third party candidate who has no chance of winning supports the greater evil.
5
@tried
"...voting for a third party candidate who has no chance of winning supports the greater evil."
Won't stop me from voting for them if you keep putting up bought and paid for PINO Dems.
@rtj
Agree! The Democrats always blame 3rd parties when they lose an election because of their ineptitude. So tired of Democrats who speak a good game on the campaign trail, but don't even try to implement progressive policies when elected.
2
@Jeffrey
Since the Depression, name one 3rd party presidential candidate that has come close to being elected, also name one Republican President or candidate who you think would not have been worse on social and economic justice issues.
2
I voted for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary election in 2016. Despite his age, if he runs for president in 2020, I suppose I will vote for him again.
The only reservation I have about supporting Senator Sanders is one ingrained prejudice exhibited by a large percentage of the American electorate.
In 2016, Bernie frequently used a word which rubs many voters the wrong way —> SOCIALISM.
Many Americans carry within them a list of “isms,”
ranked from good (capitalism), to bad (atheism), to evil (communism). It seems a good deal of emotion goes into the creation of a person’s list.
Growing up, in the 1950’s and ‘60’s, I was taught which isms belonged at the bottom of a decent man’s list.
Anarchism
Socialism
Terrorism
Fascism
Cannibalism
Communism
Pointing out to people that the goverment runs the military, the public schools, the post office, the law enforcement agencies, the FDA... The government builds and maintains highways, bridges and dams. It regulates and insures safe air travel. Medicare. Social Security. The FCC. The EPA. At least 17 different intelligence agencies... And on and on.
All of this is socialism in America.
The curious thing is, getting people to agree that it is a better idea to have the goverment in charge of these services is preferable to corporations controlling them, seems to have very little effect on their reaction to the term “socialism.”
Go figure!
Good luck, Senator Sanders! Maybe you can clear up this misunderstanding.
10
The unlikely Sanders candidacy had plenty to criticize, but he's gotten millions of Americans to consider what a robust European style safety net might look like. That's something that didn't seem possible in this lifetime, and he deserves enormous credit for it.
Single payer healthcare is nearly a standard talking point now in Democratic Party, thanks to his 2016 campaign.
23
Agreed with all of those positions, but Bernie is not the one who could get them executed even if won the presidency. He's the flip side of Trump...too negative, doesn't get along with others, has almost no allies in the senate.
Look up his legislative record....its almost non-existent. And "co- sponsoring" only means that he "signed on" to some other senator's legislation. And "signed on" means just that..."added his name to".
He talks a really good game, but unable to actually make it happen.
2
As an early-on Sanders supporter in 2015, there is nothing in this article that bothers me. Bernie never had an ego where everything was all about him. He has walked the walk since he was a student. He understands the peril that regressive Republican politics presents to the concept of our Democratic Republic. He also understands the message is more important than the messenger. So I too will sit back and see who's hat gets tossed in the ring. Who will look like the probable successful carrier of the progressive banner and give that person my support. While this early on I don't see anyone I instinctively like more than Bernie, it's more important that a progressive candidate wins than any individual. If the succesful candidate is Bernie, hopefully the other progressives give their support to Bernie. If it isn't Bernie, hopefully that person will understand that adding Bernie to the ticket will almost certainly guarantee a win. Either way those other candidates will have demonstrated greater executive wisdom than Hillary ever did.
21
"Mr. Sanders may have been the runner-up in the last Democratic primary"
Except he wasn't. There's no such thing as a runner up in a presidential primary. He lost. By almost 4 million votes.
27
The establishment fears Bernie. That speaks volumes.
119
The establishment also fears Trump. Not great company..
6
@Art The imaginary establishment manufactured by Sanders supporters does not acknowledge a campaign based on attacking other Democrats.
6
@Art
Just to be clear. This "establishment fear" has far less to do with to do with Sanders himself, than with the ideas of income inequality that he represents.
7
It's time to "cut bait or fish" Bernie. And right now your only option is to cut bait.
11
I DID, and I WILL AGAIN vote for Senator Bernie Sanders....do you hear that corporate Democrats?
The Party's phony polls and anti Sanders smear campaign by party insiders and pundits featured on MSNBC does not change anything. In fact, it inspires me to work harder for candidates like Bernie Sanders who has spent his every waking moment truly fighting for working people. As for the party's "love" for Biden, a recent excerpt from a Progressive magazine...
"One of Joe Biden’s selling points is that he’s “good old Joe,” the affable, ordinary guy from hardscrabble Scranton, Pennsylvania, who, gee-whiz, found himself in the seat of global power and stayed there for five decades. He’s a “liberal everyman” who still has the common touch and will win back the working class with his “blue-collar roots.” Biden’s blue-collar roots are genuine enough, but it’s been a long time since he was anything close to blue collar.
"Biden is exactly the kind of transactional, Third Way centrist the Clintons faced withering attacks for being, spending years attacking progressive “special interests” while crossing the aisle to vote with Republicans in major instances that were decidedly unhelpful to the working class.
In other words, at a time when both the Democratic party and the country are moving left — particularly on economic issues — Biden is a lingering fragment of the triangulating liberalism that was shattered by the 2016 election, and which helped bring us Trump in the first place".
71
@Abbey Road What brought us Trump in 2016 was a divided Democratic party manufactured by Sanders supporters who thought the best way to win was to attack other Democrats.
17
@Abbey Road
FYI. I am not a "corporate Democrat" -- nor I didn't vote for Sanders.
Why?
Not because I disagreed with the premises of what he was saying when it came to financial inequality -- but
because I saw him as having little or no chance of ever being the Democratic nominee, while the threat of Donald Trump winning loomed very large indeed.
And guess what?....I was right.
9
Corporate media, like all media and internet armies that are funded by the biggest donors, objectively (lol) observes that Bernie Sanders couldn't possibly be voted president, if he were to run in a democratic primary that has not even been announced yet. The most trusted politician in America as the worst bet!
How handy there's already been some polls to cherry pick before anyone campaigns for anything; numbers supporting efforts to divide/conquer, sow doubt, draw false equivalence (NYTimes calls Beto O'Rourke a progressive like Bernie Sanders), create "momentum" narratives ("there has been no rush of new support to Mr. Sanders" as though there should've been by now so...).
Remember when corporate media said Bernie had no support because he was unknown, giving Trump 80 minutes of TV for every one minute given to Sanders?
See the strained, false choices: NYT calls the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic party the opposition to what they deem the "cautious" wing. So "bought" is still used as "pragmatic", if Bernie might run?
Any FDR Democrat like Bernie is the enemy of those wanting to extend an unsustainable status quo (those who brought us kakistocracy).
Enemy of those curing all ills with more zombie 'expansionary' austerianism (keep shrinking the once largest class with protectionist trade pacts, an oversized looting finance sector, privatization, more means testing, etc.), protecting economic incentives purchased, for the past 40 years, to redistribute upward.
63
Oh look, the newspaper that endorses corrupt oligarch-serving political leaders from the Center Right favored by the donor class like Clinton’s and Cuomos is jabbing at Sanders again. Congratulation at being in midsession form already, so early in the 2020 campaign.
Sanders mounted a serious challenge in 2016 despite being ignored, then disparaged by the MSM. No surprise if it’s the same this time around.
118
@Xoxarle
Oh please. You talk about the "corrupt oligarch-serving' donor class without even taking a look at what's happening now with Donald Trump?...
And another thing.
It's not by sheer coincidence that both Trump and Putin (it doesn't get more oligarchic that that) -- both hailed Sanders as the preferred nominee.
It's not just the "MSM" unless you also take into account FOX news.
Open your eyes.
4
Reality Check:
*Bernie's candidacy basically elected Drump.
*Bernie is too old to run for president.
Reality candidate:
BETO 2020
20
@Nancy:
"Bernie's candidacy basically elected Drump."
No, Hillary elected Trump by taking close states she was only slightly favored to win for granted. Camp Hillary was warned by Donna Brazile in the fall of 2016 that they needed a strong ground game in states like Florida and Michigan. Team Hillary (in Brooklyn) ignored Brazile.
Hillary was deeply unpopular candidate, who ran to Trump's right. She promised to do nothing for suffering workers in places like Michigan.
"*Bernie is too old to run for president."
Ugly. Can't say no one tried it in 2016.
7
@Nancy
Agree with your reality check.
But I think Eric Swalwell would have greater appeal than Beto. (Running mates, maybe.)
@Nancy The DNC elected Drumph by having a crooked primary and thus dividing the Dems and Independents that would have voted for any legitimate candidate. Same thing will have with Beto probably.
4
Imagine, a presidential candidate with a 30 year record of supporting the disenfranchised, the downtrodden and the many who have no voice. A candidate whose honesty is so refreshing in a political world where self promotion and lying seems to now be the norm. A candidate whose entire political career has been one of making decisions based on every day people and improving their lives.
I’m not surprised that the NYT has once again attempted to intentionally mislead its readers with a piece like this but it makes me sad to see journalists submit to be toadies for their corporate masters.
I will be proud to support a candidate who puts the interest of the many ahead of the corrupt corporate political system.
140
@Bill
Hear! Hear!
3
He refuses to finalise his FEC filings from 2016.
He refuses to release his tax returns (no, one partial year doesn’t cut it).
The first thing he did after the election was start a PAC.
He’s named as a beneficiary of Russian meddling, and turns out he knew it and did nothing.
He came out of that campaign, surprise, a multi-millionaire. How? He won’t say; see above.
Vastly different landscape indeed. No more kid glove treatment for the hypocrite from Vermont.
39
@Lisa:
Releasing tax returns in not a legal requirement.
"He’s named as a beneficiary of Russian meddling, and turns out he knew it and did nothing."
There was no Russian "meddling", and what you've posted is neo-McCarthyism directed at Sanders, who is Jewish, and that makes your behavior even uglier.
"He came out of that campaign, surprise, a multi-millionaire."
No, he didn't.
"No more kid glove treatment for the hypocrite from Vermont."
Hypocrite?
4
@Yaj
Do you really want to bring that whole anti-Jewish specter into this conversation? PLEASE. Don't make the mistake of thinking anyone who didn't agree with, or vote for Sanders is an anti-Semite...it's not that simple and the country is already divided enough as is.
4
@Yaj
"Releasing tax returns in not a legal requirement."
I wonder, Yaj: have you called at all for Trump to release his taxes? If so, that is indeed hypocritical.
1
You know how everyone makes fun of Trump because he's still saying "Lock her up!" long after the election is over, and he won?
Well, the New York Times does the same thing about Bernie Sanders. After spending the entire 2016 Democratic primary season baldly editorializing against Sanders in your purported news reporting, because it was so important to you to ensure that Clinton won the primary, thereby giving the election to Trump, just as we Sanders supporters predicted, you can't let it go. "Sanders can't win!" was your slogan in 2016, and he didn't, partly through your intervention, and now it's 2018 and all you can think about is trying to ensure that the 2020 primary goes to anyone but Bernie.
Give it a rest, Times. You've done enough harm.
77
I have deep respect and even affection for what Bernie did in 2016. Hillary and the HRC-slanted DNC deserved the criticism he gave them, but not the Russian-aided hacks and brutal social media assaults she got from the Alt-Wrong. Faced with the Trump alt-campaign, Bernie then pivoted to support her with enough real vigor that he cannot be fairly blamed for the disaffection of some of his supporters who felt he had been shafted by the Dems, and thus did not vote or protest voted. Oops, Trump won. (Votes matter.)
Bernie 2020? Is this old white Socialist man really the Great White Hope who can finally pull the Dems together? Em, Bernie, "you're no Jack Kennedy." Time for another young, fresh face less tainted by failures of the past, like that young senator with the weird name who won in 2008. Perhaps a Hispanic or Black woman or a Vet with the Vision Thing. But if the nominee, Bernie has my full support.
7
@Allfolks Equal:
What Russian aide hack?
"Bernie 2020? Is this old white Socialist man really the Great White Hope who can finally pull the Dems together? Em, Bernie, "you're no Jack Kennedy." Time for another young,"
Couldn't stay away from "concern" and ageism I see.
"Perhaps a Hispanic or Black woman or a Vet with the Vision Thing."
Kind of ugly tokenism there Allfolks Equal.
2
Plenty of us who worked on the Hillary campaign remember the deplorable behavior of Bernie and his bros in 2016. Grampa stabby-finger would never get my vote. Just another old white man who thinks he's the savior of us all. Stacy/Beto for me!
23
@ekdnyc:
"Plenty of us who worked on the Hillary campaign remember the deplorable behavior of Bernie and his bros in 2016"
Then cite some.
Hillary's speeches to ibanks were pretty ugly.
"Grampa stabby-finger would never get my vote."
You really have no idea how and why Hillary lost do you?
4
@ekdnyc I guess Hillary wasn't stumping for the votes of older white men, then.
2
@Yaj
Do you actually know who won the popular vote by 3+ million without any Russian interference on social media platforms?
No offense -- But it's you who seems to have "no idea".
4
Here we go again. Time for the NYT to start the anti-Bernie propaganda. Two things to consider here: First, the Democratic establishment is already pushing a potential Beto O'Rourke candidacy. Investigative journalist David Sirota just published a pieced titled " Beto O'Rourke frequently voted for Republican legislation, analysis reveals." It is a great article. Proof of that is that Clintons lackey Neera Tanden went ballistic over the piece.
Second, if the Democratic Establishment puts its finger on the scale for either Kamala Harris, O'Rourke, Cory Booker, Joe Biden or even Elizabeth Warren to be the candidate, they're going to lose again.
23
@Charlie E.
The establishment won't be putting their finger on the scale for Warren. You must have missed all of the hit jobs on her lately, in this very paper, along with her home state paper.
1
@Charlie E.:
I don't imagine Jonathan Martin and the "editors" spend much time considering what the likes of Sirota publish. Yes, I saw the article to which you refer.
2
The NYT attacking Sanders before he even decides to run? What a shock.
Anyway, it would be nice to see a sincere progressive antiwar candidate run, and it would also be nice if we could focus on issues more than all the silly race horse journalism. It doesn’t have to be Bernie, but let’s not pick some opportunist who mouths progressive slogans and then fills his or her Cabinet with Wall Street types.
35
@Donald
"...it would be nice to see a sincere progressive antiwar candidate run..."
Yes it would, and i wouldn't be surprised if we do get one. I would be very surprised if they had a D pasted after their name.
1
Bernie, go right ahead and run... as an independent. Tired of you flipping parties. This lifelong Dem was and is annoyed by you.
21
@Katy :
"Bernie, go right ahead and run... as an independent. Tired of you flipping parties."
Scared of him still be the corporatists I see.
3
@Katy
"Bernie, go right ahead and run... as an independent."
Yes Bernie, please do!
Careful what you wish for.
2
@Yaj
You might want to educate yourself about the difference between the Independent and Republican or Democratic Parties, especially when it comes to voting....Here's a hint:
It varies from state to state.
4
The Times: "Mr. Sanders may have been the runner-up in the last Democratic primary, but instead of expanding his nucleus of support, in the fashion of most repeat candidates, the Vermont senator is struggling to retain even what he garnered two years ago, when he was far less of a political star than he is today."
Are you kidding me? Another hit-piece from The Times on Bernie Sanders? You people just don't give up, do you!
The Times abandoned journalistic ethics in 2016 to go all-in for Clinton, while pulling out the stops to slime Senator Sanders week after week. Yet not only did The Times not apologize for its shamefully biased coverage, but it's doing it again this year.
The Times should be ashamed. Absolutely ashamed.
49
No. The NY Times was first to break Clinton's email "story" and kept the story on the front page for months. The NY Times then falsely equivocated the Clinton email story with Trumps' endless history of corruption and greed.
I think Sanders had some good ideas but he doesn't know how to implement them. That was just one of the problems i had with him. Now at 77 I really think he is too old to run again.
3
lol.
All you corporatists are so desperate.
Bernie2020 and Medicare For All!
~
29
@ifthethunderdontgetya "Corporatists," "MSM" and "neoliberal" are terms used by Sanders supporters that are no different than white supremacists using the word "cuck."
3
Please please anyone but Bernie!!!
19
I'm shocked, shocked I say, to see the NYT printing a negative article about Bernie's chances to win the nomination.
You folks overdid this kind of piece in the run up to 2016.
Time to give it a rest now.
28
@Michael
Woe is me. The NYT is being mean to Bernie. And the grievances fly.
Just like Trump. Whine, whine, whine.
There is a saying, coined by a Democrat: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."
5
Looks like you have spawned some little monsters, eh Bernie...
1
The NYT doesn't want to waste a nanosecond in Bernie Bashing. Mustn't let a politicical leader who's got the working class's interests at heart gain a foothold. As Barney Fife said, "NIP IT! NIP IT IN THE BUD!"
24
@Lifelong New Yorker If Barney Fife ran against Trump, he'd get my vote. But hopefully it will be Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a true champion of the working and middle classes.
Wpw. With apologies to Yogi Berra, it's deja vu all over again for the New York Times, damning Bernie Sanders with faint praise before he has even declared his candidacy. Never mind that most of the policies he campaigned on in 2016 -- poo-poohed in these pages back then as too wishful and pie-in-the-sky -- have now become entry-level positions for anyone wishing to be taken seriously as a Democratic contender in 2020.
23
I, a 60 yr old southern white woman, will vote for Bernie Sanders anytime, anywhere, even if he were 100. It is his MESSAGE that is most important. I WANT Medicare for All. Bernie Sanders is the one who I know will FIGHT with every breath of his being for it. The others won’t fight as hard. Sure, they will say they support it, but will they fight? I don’t think so, at least not like Bernie.
Bernie calls out the corporations that are robbing us blind. And he backs it up with actions. He calls out the billionaires, the oligarchs who are trying to run this country from behind the scenes. I have nothing against people who have made their money, but I darn well want them to pay their fare share in taxes, and more, to help us become a country where everyone has a chance to live a relatively comfortable life.
And to those who say because of Bernie, we have Trump. NO WAY is that true. 88% of Bernie primary voters voted for Hillary in the general election. I am one of those 88% who happily voted for Hillary. The other 12% were NEVER going to vote for Hillary. They, unfortunately, hated her for years before most of us were even aware of Bernie Sanders. If anything, Bernie helped Hillary get MORE votes in the general election.
Why should we limit who should run for President? I would be so happy if there were a lot of younger Bernie’s out there, but there just aren’t - not yet. Bernie is the one who will fight like hell for a true progressive America.
65
This is headline must have Editorial salivating. It's always open season on Bernie at the paper of record.
21
Face reality, Bernie. You have no chance. Spend your time keeping your wife out of jail.
5
@Jackson
I think "Doctor" Jane has already gotten a get out of jail free card.
3
Bernie is still the most popular politician in the US. And if you examine the other candidates, they are all less progressive.
I'm all in again for Bernie 2020.
30
Bernie Sanders was unique: for a Socialist, he was non-doctrinaire and “program”- based. The programs (domestic and foreign) had an underlying holist-humanist morality. They were already worked out in detail and were fiscally responsible. He spoke passionately about his programs --- no personal attacks on opponents. He compromised with Hillary Clinton after the primaries and worked hard for her. His was a 50-State campaign.
That his programs (e.g. “Medicare For All”) have become main-line Democratic and appeals to many GOP-Independent voters and that so many younger Democratic candidates are inspired by his message is a tribute to his 2016 candidacy.
Whether he or one of his clones is the Standard-bearer in 2020 is immaterial.
15
@T. Ramakrishnan Bernie is not unique as a democratic socialist. Democratic socialism is a well founded political philosophy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism
3
When Bernie threw his hat in the ring for 2016, I was incredulous that an independent, socialist Senator from Vermont could be nothing more than a Don Quixote candidate. But he soon won me over with his moral passion and clear vision of what America should be. And now, as I see him take the lead on a host of issues ranging from climate change, health care and the terrible plight of the people of Yemen, my belief in him is stronger than ever. I've got thirty bucks in my pocket right now which I am dying to donate to his campaign. My guess is that there are lots of people like me who still feel the Bern.
26
No. We don't need Bernie running for 2020. We need a candidate that actually will get votes.
21
Botton line here if the democrats want to win in 2020.
Run a moderate progressive candidate(s) that appeal to issues that a majority of Americans support like national health care, no wars, no corporate welfare, reeling in Wall Street, common sense trade agreements, sensible tariffs to protect rust belt job loss etc.
Don't run identity obsessed, fringe issue obsessed, never met a war, trade agreement, wall street banker I did not like, anoint me present because I am a woman candidate like Hillary.
2
I didn't vote for him last time and I would never vote for him this time. Many of his "fans" decided they would not vote (or vote for Stein) rather than vote for Clinton in the general election after he lost the primary. That may very well have cost us the election.
I will vote for a true Dem in 2020. NOT SANDERS.
27
Everyone should support a ranked choice system, so that people like Sanders aren't forced to play the two-party game to get any chance on the national stage.
As long as independent candidates are treated as "spoilers" and their supporters are told they're "wasting their votes," we'll continue with the same dysfunction that got us where we are now.
9
I'll support Bernie if it turns out he is the best candidate. I supported Hillary in 2016 and felt resentment over Bernie supporters who allegedly switched to Trump because of their own resentment. For me that is water under the bridge. I'm not going down that rabbit hole again, it's not worth it.
4
@vicki
"felt resentment over Bernie supporters who allegedly switched to Trump because of their own resentment."
A barely existent voter.
Hillary elected Trump by running to Trump's right. And by taking close states for granted.
3
The Times continues its pro-centrist line, even though it's become apparent to anyone watching that centrists (in both parties) have run out of ideas. Or, maybe more accurately, centrists are afraid of promoting ideas lest they lose funding.
Money doesn't talk, it swears.
Of course Bernie is not a shoo-in. We'll see what candidates we have, centrist and progressive, and try to chose the best from among them. But Bernie started something (or at least continued something already begun elsewhere) that can't be put back in the bag.
Oligarchs have bought our government, and we want it back.
15
The moneyed elite that make up the corporate Democratic Party are in the process of implementing their anti Bernie smear campaign ....NY Times, MSNBC, CNN....it is so obvious.
6
Bernie is a good man with good values... but he's too old and inarticulate to be President. He has zero charisma. Democrats need to step up their game with smart, articulate, bold, charismatic candidates who can garner the support of swing voters. There is a reason Beto O'Rourke did so well in a red state.
11
@Tom Had Beto won in Texas he would be the odds on favorite... but he lost, convincingly.
@Tom How bizarre that an inarticulate man with no charisma, was filling stadiums and getting more contributions than an opponent known as a money machine. And consistently polls as the most liked politician in the country.
1
"Rather than being the only progressive opponent to an establishment-backed front-runner,"
I think people understand that while Bernie championed policies which were considered radical at the time, current candidates rally behind proposals accepted among a majority of American people. This is not the same!
3
Big money has finally figured out that Bernie can never win and they refuse to throw money away on him. The Dem party has moved so far left they they are un electable in National elections. The leaders of the Dem party are now those of "Who can promise to give away the most free stuff with no way of paying for it" crowd
@Roger
So, that's why the Dems lost the House in the last election?
Time for a new generation of politicians. All the old guard should step aside.
7
Bernie's age is a factor but Bernie's message is on point. The status quo fears him. That's good enough for me.
13
If he were a woman - -as in Nancy Pelosi -- you can be sure you'd have placed Sanders' age MUCH higher in the story. And that's where it belongs -- male or female, Democrat or Republican, Trump or Sanders.
5
While I appreciate Mr. Sanders efforts in getting important issues out in the public forum, he is not electable. If the Democratic party is to have a real chance of making Trump and Friends a one term phenomenon, a candidate with broad appeal is essential to put forward. Swallow hard Democrats and make the necessary tough decisions.
9
Bernie enjoys Michael Jordan like status as a cultural icon. Editorials against and comments in support of a Sander's 2020 candidacy ring familiar kinda like "here we go again". Having "woke" so many, you'll have to forgive the immense goodwill he continues to engender.
2
The Bernie Bros. like to look back with rose-colored lenses. However, the fact is that Bernie has never been a Democrat and doesn’t seem to like the party. At the end of the campaign, he begrudgingly conceded and then many of his supporters did their best to ruin the convention with their disruptive behavior. How does his incessant “release the transcripts” diatribe sound now that Trump is President?
9
@Craig She should have released the transcripts. Maybe then we'd not have thought so poorly of her. Irrelevant though, because Bernie will win this time, despise the tepid democrats wishing their game was still the only one in town.
2
@jules
And do you feel the same way about Bernie's taxes, which he has also not released?
2
This is the way the Democrats lost last time. The establishment, status quo NYTimes and supposed liberal, P. Krugman ran hit pieces on Senator Sanders. These weakened his support to the point we were left with the albatross Secretary Clinton as the Dem nominee. And, we all know how that worked out.
I suppose the Times is fine with President Crazy Pants for another four years.
12
@stewarjt He does get a lot of clicks. Heck he probably still sells a few newspapers.
1
@stewarjt True--and by attacking Sanders, they actually undermined his ability to help Hillary.
Sanders did what he could to support Hillary, but after he'd been attacked so viciously by the centrists and the press, it was difficult to generate enthusiasm. Hillary got the Sanders voters, but she needed their enthusiasm.
How could they be enthusiastic about a candidate, and a party that, even after the primary, continued to attack them?
The center, in other words, played itself.
3
This is a decent article with a misleading headline. While the text does a good job of describing the many ways in which Bernie is "one of the most formidable candidates," the headline writers seek instead to convey the NYT's general bias toward him as somehow facing obstacles that other candidates don't, like putting a strong campaign team together. For my part, I don't need a younger Bernie. The "old" one suits me just fine.
6
Mr. Sanders is an old fashioned demagogue. That has become crystal clear over the past two years. His "promises" never did add up. Not even close. His irresponsible accusations against Hillary Clinton in 2016 helped catapult the most incompetent and corrupt person in the nation to the presidency. He was used by the Russians gleefully to undermine the Clinton candidacy from the start.
All the "election was stolen or rigged" or whatever, was created by the Russian security services and parroted by Trump and the Sanders hardliners.
Look, I'll vote for a dead squirrel over Trump in 2020 without a second thought. But is it my strong opinion it is WELL past time to move on from the Senator from Vermont.
25
@Will. In reality, Bernie was so gentle to Hillary in 2016 that we all wished he would take off the kid gloves and get to talking straight, but he was a gentleman to an actual fault. As for Trump - if you tepid dems want to run another tepid candidate, well.... You will get what you get.
5
Are the people conducting these polls the same people who told us that hillary would win by a landslide?
6
Bernie can be seduced by the magnetism of running the Oval but he must be a man of the Senate as long as Russia funded McConnell runs the room. Bernie’s a working person, not a permanent candidate. He’s been doing his damndest in DC making heartfelt sense instead of campaigning for the 2020. Now, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Sharice Davids, Aryana Pressley and Jahanna Hayes are joining the righteous us in our House who must fight our fight in the 116th Congress. Nancy Pelosi is ready to dance with them. As the saner party they can put some brakes on Trumptydumpty’s unbound Executive Branch and the entire military industrial complex. Bernie can go fishing or run for president when Senate membership turns blue. I hope Bernie agrees.
2
He's STILL not a Democrat.
12
@Kathleen Warnock
Thank god!
4
Are they really comparing Bernie's Iowa polling numbers, a year and a half out, with his final vote tallies there?! So begins the propaganda.... It's tiresome.
17
If Bernie Sanders runs for the 2020 Democratic nomination, I very likely will support him, and every other eligible voter should consider doing so, as well. Among the potential candidates, Sanders has among the best experience (e.g., he a good mayor of Burlington for 8 years, was in the US House from 1991 until 2007 and has been in the US Senate since 2007).
Sanders also has one of the best records in public life of all the candidates (e.g., he helped write a law that improved health care for many veterans, he voted against the Iraq and Persian Gulf Wars, he voted against welfare reform, he voted against the recent $716 billion defense appropriates bill, and he voted against DOMA).
He also would run on one of the best platforms, including ending US support for the Saudi war in Yemen and ensuring that every person in the US has an improved version of Medicare (without no premiums, co-pays or deductibles) funded partly by a more progressive federal tax code.
Finally, Sanders has some good personal qualities for being President, including being honest, being fairly good at reasoning publicly, being a good communicator and being deeply committed to using government to help the people in the world who are able to make the fewest choices, for instance, the children of poor people.
24
This revelation is not surprising that Sanders appears to be losing support. In this regard, one need only look to the election evidence for Wisconsin, Michigan to understand why.
It's a well-known fact Trump won these states by a combined total of 77,000 votes. What is less well known, is that it was disgruntled Sanders supporters who voted for Trump in these states that made him president. (See www.vox.com August 24, 2017: 12% of Sanders supporters voted for Trump in 2016 election.
23
Richard. I completely share your sentiments and reference to the facts re Wi and Michigan. Bernie and his whiners helped elect Trump. Period. He’s another Nader and I refuse to vote for him in 2020. I’ll stay home or write in Hillary if I have to do that. He’s an arrogant old white guy who refused to join the Dem party, expected the party to crown him THE holier than thou progressive, and whined the entire year. He can stick it where the sun doesn’t shine!
10
@Richard
OR maybe, as Donna Brazille's book confirmed, because Hillary only visited these states ONCE during the primary,
she thought Wisconsin and Michigan were "in the bag".
It wasn't Bernie, many in these states thought that Hillary just didn't care.
3
The same proportion of Hillary supporters refused to vote for Obama in 2008, but that did not prevent Obama from winning, because he was not the most popular Democratic presidential nominee since polling on this subject began.
You need to stop making excuses and admit that she was just not strong enough candidate to win—- Or else your overweening arrogance will hurt the Democrat party again in 2020
Not in a million years, Bernie.
I’d actually prefer Republican government (albeit not Trump) than Mr. Sanders.
6
@David G
Why?
I am just curious if there is logic behind such a categoric statement.
3
@David G Oh gross! We will never move the country forward with that kind of thinking!
1
@David Gi
After all the damage the Republicans have done to this country and its citizens?
Oh dear; your opinions are based on what some people think and polls that oversample older registered Democratic voters. Why don’t you ask millennials, where he retains massive support and won more votes from millennials than any other candidate? You folks are truly terrified of a Bernie Sanders presidency, because your owners and of course the rest of the establishment class will finally be made to pay up in taxes the way it should be. Bernie is the most popular politician in the country by a mile and retains massive grassroots support from the progressive base; which is why he is actually considered the favorite for the nomination. And in every poll dating back to 2016, he beats Trump by double digits.
80
@Edson González We democratic voters assumed incorrectly in 2016 that the a larger percentage of the 'well informed' millennials would still come out and vote for the democratic candidate. But no, less than 20% of eligible millennials even bothered to vote knowing full well that a republican win could be so damaging to the country. Plus an important enough % voted for jill stein and gary Johnson.
Don't think I will depend on or trust that generation for political advice. Trump is their president by their 'self absorbed actions and protest vote decisions.
10
@Fillmore
Yeah, I don’t get it. It seems that many millennials would rather protest than vote...
1
I worked for Bernie's last presidential campaign and I will do it again.
You can't make Bernie younger but neither can you make any of his competitors smarter and/or better prepared to lead US and really, the world!
38
Bernie Sanders STILL remains the most popular politician in America, yet, despite the negativity of this column(much like those written about him before in this publication), clearly, at this stage, it is not his ideas that are an issue, it is more than likely his age.
We are still two years away from the next presidential election so any assessment now is virtually meaningless. One thing is for sure, if the democrats put forth another batch of corporate/establishment centrist candidates instead of progressives with similar ideas to Sanders, they will all but guarantee another four years of Trump chaos.
48
@Deus We are NOT two years away. People don't understand how presidential election cycles work. We are in the 2020 cycle and formal announcements will start in March and April.
@Deus no shortage of negative press in the nyt for bernie.
6
@Deus Well, not with black people. The starry-eyed bros keep forgetting that it's African-Americans, particularly women, who win races for Democrats. And he's not a Democrat. (Though he will take their money.)
7
As much as I support a progressive movement I can not stand behind a 77 year old white male with decades of "establishment" experience. He failed in 2016 (for whatever reasons, we don't need to rehash) and he will fail in 2020. We need a young strongly left-moderate candidate to bridge the gap between the hardcore socialist millenials (who have the loudest voices but poorest voting turnout) and more moderate independents. The GOP went with a hard right tea-party revolution and have nearly destroyed their party by doing so. Let's not do the same... We've already lost so much progress from the Obama administration due to excessive division among Democrats. Let's not fuel the fire...
36
Bernie’s tired campaign won’t last in the 2020 primaries. He only got so far in 2016 because he was a fresh face to the general population. We have other new candidates like Beto to fulfill that role in 2020. Quit while you’re ahead, Bernie.
19
I don’t buy this. If he runs, and there is no corrupt interference, he will win.
24
@grey reale
Many, including the media(and corporate/establishment democrats), refuse to accept the ongoing fact that Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America.
8
@grey reale EXACTLY!!!!
5
Why nominate the only honest candidate who also happens to be the most popular politician ion the country hands down? I mean why win elections when Democrats have so many ways to lose?
81
@Ignatz Farquad.
Most popular? You must be living in Bernie’s world.
11
@Ignatz Farquad
Just curious, why would the "most honest" candidate only release one tax return, and that reluctantly?
Actions speak louder than words. Clinton released decades of tax returns.
Age discrimination is probably the last acceptable form of bigotry embraced by people on the left and right. Why would you want to disqualify someone who has an immense amount of experience, wisdom and knowledge? It speaks to our society’s superficiality that we judge a book by its cover. Or maybe it’s just gamesmanship. I don’t know. Beto O’Rourke? What has he done other than be defeated in a Senate race? Although Bernie has been somewhat of an outlier in the Senate, he knows how the federal government is run. Combined with his idealism and pragmatic progressive agenda that hasn’t changed with shifts in the political wind, he’d be a superior president. So what if he’s old. We’ve had quite a few, very flawed presidents who happened to be young.
34
@AlNewman Sanders actually has a very good record of effectiveness in the senate. There were several articles in the last cycle pointing that out. He was known as the 'king of amendments' or something to that effect.
15
@AlNewman I'm old and every single president in my lifetime has bee deeply flawed. Humans are always flawed. Bernie isn't even a Democrat. His ideas are nice but not realistic. I hope he has enough sense not to run. I'd vote for Biden or Beto or Booker any day before I'd vote for Bernie. In fact, I'd vote for just about any Democrat before I'd consider Bernie. And do you honestly think that someone like Bernie could win over enough Republicans and swing voters to beat Trump or Pence? I sure don't.
239
@Fred
With all due respect, pointing out that he isn’t a registered Democrat as an argument not to support him is fatuous. That he’s an Independent speaks more to Vermont’s peculiar politics than it does to his political philosophy. Bernie literally walked alongside MLK during the March on Washington, was a political organizer during the civil rights movement, and has moved the Democratic Party to the left on economic issues. We can afford Medicare for All as long as we can afford to drop bombs on other countries.
13
Bernie is not a Democrat. Beto is. Kamala is. The list goes on even including John Delaney is a Democrat. Bernie is not.
25
@VisaVixen Exactly. Because being a Democrat is the Only thing that matters. File this under "Why Democrats Lose. Reason #46"
7
@VisaVixen
Probably the least important reason one could give for not supporting Sanders is that he is not a Democrat.
8
@VisaVixen" Bernie is not a corporately owned Democrat. Beto is. Kamala is. The corporately owned Democratic list goes on including John Delaney". There....Fixed it for you and.... your welcome.
6
Sanders is tone deaf on feminism and has done terrible damage to the advancement of women. After the grotesque spectacle of 2016 I resolved not to vote for a man again until after a woman has served two terms in the White House. If you want my support, nominate a woman. If you don't, you'll be on your own.
9
@Joe Excellent strategy. Keep the oligarchy in place until your specific notion of injustice is healed.
Here is a hint: while the oligarchy rules, NO injustice will be healed. Enjoy your wait.
4
@Joe Well then you won't be voting for a long time because it is going to be a while until a woman gets in. 2020 won't be the year and it has nothing to do with misogyny. It has to do with the Views of to many other women and how they feel about having a woman president.
2
@Joe
That's funny? If people like yourself are so concerned that a woman get's elected, why then did Hillary Clinton support the ultimate corporate/establishment and corrupt government incumbent in NY, Cuomo over Cynthia Nixon?
4
Bernie Sanders is a courageous and honest man. The Democrats ripped him,his supporters,and the American voter off in 2016 with that crooked Primary system. 2020 is a chance to remedy that wrong. I love you Bernie. Run Bernie Run! Go Bernie Go!!
33
Bernie changed the trajectory of this election when he ran in 2016, and in that sense, I think he won the war, even if he lost the battle. But I don't think he should run this time. Sherrod Brown is progressive and completely electable. We love him in Ohio, which means they'd likely love him in PA and MI. That's all he needs to win, along with the states carried by Clinton. Brown is progressive and can win, and we'll have Bernie to thank for it.
15
Sherrod Brown, with Kamala Harris as VP, would crush Trump (or Pence if he's in the Oval Office by then). Brown has a proven progressive record, and has also proven he can carry crucial swing states which will decide the Electoral College.
20
@Baxter Jones
Harris is toxic to any candidate after her Kavanaugh smear tactics. She is unelectable outside of California.
1
@Baxter Jones Kamala Harris is an unknown; her reputation in a short stint as Attorney General is California was not excellent; the more progressive staff in the AG's office were frustrated by some of her policies; she has no international experience and her policies on american intervention and foreign adventures are unknown.
3
@Baxter Jones I don't know why dems can't get this. Kamala is not ready to run for prez. She is a corporate donor suck up and she has only one term in the senate. She also has scandals from her time as CA AG. However, she should be made Attorney General in the next democratic administration...full stop!
1
I am a diehard Bernie supporter. I voted for him in the 2016 primary (and yes, I did vote for Hillary in the general). I have nothing but respect for his record in the Senate, and I stand 100% behind his policies.
And yet, I do not want him to be the 2020 Democratic candidate. I fear he carries too much political baggage. I fear he has already been maligned by the political establishment to the point where his name carries too much weight.
I hope that Sherod Brown wins the nomination. From what I've read, he seems like he could unite many factions of Democratic voters. I think Sherod Brown/Kamala Harris would be an excellent ticket.
133
@Margaret If Sanders were the nominee, all the GOP would have to do is say socialism, socialism, socialism, and it would all be over.
10
@Margaret
Or Sherrod Brown/Amy Klobuchar.
The battleground in 2020 is going to be the Midwest, and Trump needs to be crushed at the ballot box, not just squeezed by in a squeaker. Candidates like Warren, Booker, or Harris at the top of the ticket run the risk of being tarred as "coastal elitists," giving Trump (or Pence) too much leverage in appealing to the "heartland" working class. Democrats need to make a strongly progressive appeal to working people.
6
@Margaret Sherod would be great, but he's not the only one. How about Jay Inslee (not to stoke the Washington/Ohio tensions too much ahead of the Rose Bowl)? And I think Warren would be a fine candidate and a better president.
I'm not sure how progressive Kamala Harris is, but if we're including her, we might also think about Christine Gregoire (there I am supporting the homey again).
And don't forget Deval Patrick.
1
I fear the Republicans will move further to the Right and the Democrats will move further to the Left and they will divide the country even more.
If that happens, perhaps a ticket with a moderate Republican & a moderate Democrat will come into the middle a gather enough support to win.
3
This isn’t 1994 anymore. Centrism gave us Trump and now it’s dead. We’re living in a populist era as of now.
8
@Bob in Pennsyltucky
That would be great - we can add them to the list of all great moderate middle-of-the-road presidential candidates. What could go wrong?
4
@Bob in Pennsyltucky
If you say Flake/Koons three times fast, like beetlejuice, maybe they will be a thing in 2020.
I agree with most of Bernie Sanders proposals. At 77 he is too old to run for President. He should put his support and his organization behind Democrats who can defeat the Republican nominee - Trump or someone else.
18
@robert zitelli Unfortunately, Bernie Sanders doesn't care about the party or the country. Bernie cares about Bernie.
15
@robert zitelli
Hillary Clinton 71
Joe Biden 76
Bernie Sanders 77
Donald Trump 72
John McCain 2008 run (71)
Notorious RBG 85
President Reagan (73 at the time) famously put the age issue to rest in 1984 by telling voters during a debate with Walter Mondale that, "I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."
But suddenly, because reasons, 77 is too old. No known medical issues. No slowing of intelligence. Energized young people throughout the US. Quicker than other candidates to recognize own bias and open his campaign to more ideas...and many decades of experience working for civil rights, economic rights, and patient rights.
Show me candidates with proven progressive track records and let's talk. Real progressives get maligned and sidelined over silly and meaningless reasons (Kucinich) but rarely lose solely over policy.
7
@Felix
And Reagan finished his term with dementia. Thanks but I am not interested in a rerun of that.
3
Sanders' achievement was to bust open the attack on the establishment no matter where the conventional wisdom got the wrong answers and solutions wrong, and his importance and legacy are just that. After a disciplined and ethically determined political career he capped it with an extraordinary wake up call for so many others to rise up and carry forth the effort. That is what the news is, not that he might have completed his run at 77 years old.
Yeah, thanks to Sanders we now have begun to normalize the ethics of prioritizing the welfare of the masses over the welfare of the plutocrats and oligarchs. Even the Trump base, wrong about the solutions as they are, want their welfare prioritized, and some of them will flip to the left easily as they did to the Trump.
41
What a surprise, a NY Times hit piece against Bernie Sanders. That was one of the most predictable things that would happen as soon as discussion of 2020 began. However, unlike the people quoted in this piece, I believe Sanders is the only person with remotely the bold, progressive vision we need in this time of growing crisis. The other people mentioned don't even compare. And I know many people who feel the same.
390
@Kathryn Levy: You sound like Trump, whining and blaming the media. This wasn't remotely a "hit piece."
32
You are delusional to think Sanders could ever be a successful presidential candidate in this country. The folks he needs to convince are on the right of the political spectrum, so, since he gloms onto a party as is convenient, let him run as a republican this time. Democrats should shun him like a plague.
17
@Kathryn Levy This "the only person" rhetoric is part of the problem. It sounds exactly like how Trump speaks. We don't need another empty cult of personality.
22
The Independent bernie "I am not a Democrat! I am a socialist!" sanders should just stay where he is. He helped get trump's electoral college majority by being selfish and thinking real Democrats would abandon a Democrat for him.
The idea that he thinks real Democrats would support him in the next presidential election, even as he still remains an Independent, just shows how little he cares about the party and what it stands for.
161
@Norma I agree with you. As I said in an earlier post, Bernie doesn't care about the party or country. Bernie cares about Bernie. He'll burn the country down if he doesn't get his way and win the primaries...
21
@Norma Bernie Sanders caucuses with Senate Democrats, votes with Senate Democrats, and even has a leadership position among Senate Democrats. So, I think you are wrong when you say that "real Democrats" want nothing to do with him.
22
@Norma
Up until this recent mid-term, in the last 8 years, "real" democrats lost almost 1000 seats at the state and federal levels and all THREE branches of the executive. They preferred money to actually winning elections and millions of "former" "real" democrats didn't vote for Hillary because they feel the party no longer represented their interests.
"Real" democrats espouse "real" policy, not that of "Republican Lites". Bernie Sanders continually espouses that policy, corporate/establishment democrats do not.
18
This paper has never run proper stories on the fixing of the primary by the DNC last time around, though it was the biggest election fraud in US history. Instead it's jumped onboard the whole cloth invention that Clinton's loss had anything to do with Russia, one of most well studied false conflations of the modern era up there with UFOs and the Second Coming. On the one hand this disqualifies this paper from opining on the next primary, on the other hand it suggests they are very qualified, depending on if you view it's irresponsibility in reporting as either incompetent, or intentional.
At any rate, Bernie is "The Candidate" because he is the only politician of national standing who gets past the single greatest qualification for a modern liberal populist: no corporate money.
I am blessed to work with numerous Trump voters, blessed because I am free of the Trump derangement suffered by my liberal fellow who can only wonder why the man won. I know why, I work with good Americans who were so sick of the status quo they took a gamble. The salient detail inside this is what I've learned speaking with them: about a third say they'd have voted for Bernie. Think about that landslide and where we'd be now, including quite a way down the road to repealing corporate citizenship and fixing the carbon emissions problem.
101
@CK white mansplaining in all its glory.
8
@CK: The DNC owes Bernie nothing. By his own choice, he isn't a Democrat.
You aren't a Democrat either, obviously. Republicans like you support Bernie because you think he's a weak candidate who will lose to Trump.
22
@Carson Drew - You should buy a lottery ticket if you are that good a guesser. I'm a democrat, you are a neoliberal.
7
Sanders is a problem. Sanders is not even a democrat and his legislative record was always suspect. Also his ego is as huge as a baby-boomers brain, and we know what an ego like that can do to a country like ours. Also, Sanders who has been nearly asleep for the last 4 years is too old. Of recent he only ventured out, with an aide by his side, to make vain attempts to get his friends elected, yet most of those friends went down in flame.
But remember, Sanders played the straw-man to pull votes from any democrat that was challenging HRC. The better candidate he drew off was Governor Martin O’Malley. Research the solid democratic record of O’Malley, like getting rid of capitol punishment in Maryland, expanding education, healthcare and balancing that states budget, with a surplus, twice over. Read the text from his primary speeches and also look at how the DNC power-heads rigged the debates to prevent coverage and limit exposure for O’Malley. Sanders doodled about before
giving a weak response.
HRC was afraid of the good youthful governor and Sanders came to her rescue to draw-off democratic primary voters and pave a way for her to snag the nomination. Sander’s it could be argued gave us Trump. No I give the finger to Sanders and wish him a peaceful retirement from presidential politics.
21
@SenDan Your suggestion that Sanders ran as a "straw man" in order to deliver the 2016 Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton is inaccurate. I like Gov. O'Malley, but his campaign went absolutely nowhere, and Hillary Clinton hardly needed to be "rescued" from him. The animosity between Clinton and Sanders was palpable--read her cutting remarks about him in her book, "What Happened." Sanders's unabashed progressivism, which offered a stark alternative to Clintonite centrism, proved much more popular than even he expected.
12
@SenDan Sanders gave us Trump? That's a delusional position. HRC and the Dem leadership handed Trump the election, and oh yeah, ps, HRC won the popular vote.
7
@SenDan I agree with you!
2
I'd much rather Bernie stay in the Senate. His contrarian voice is needed--and makes the most sense there.
I don't understand the people who think a President Sanders would swoop into the White House and single-handedly solve all the country's problems. The president doesn't have the power to end income inequality on his/her own. The president can't launch Medicare-for-all on his his/her lonesome. That's what Congress is for.
The president appears to wield imperial powers, but he/she isn't an emperor. The fact is, a president has a pretty hard time getting good things done, even if he/she has plenty of power to make mistakes and hurt people.
Trump's supporters made the same mistake about their guy (and so did Trump). But look at how that has worked out. He can't even get his wall built and the courts have blocked many of his executive actions.
A President Sanders would just be a negative image Trump, facing all the same obstacles. You can't be a rebel in the White House. You have to be a coalition builder and have allies in Congress.
Frankly, I don't understand why we aren't holding Congress to the same standards we set for presidents. These days, people seem to focus all their hopes and dreams on the White House. They want their president to inspire, and be cool, and be a nice person to have a beer with, and be successful, and make their enemies look bad. But Congress should be where all the action is.
44
@Jeremy I agree that the election of Sanders "wouldn't single-handedly solve all the country's problem"; that's a given, there is Congress, the courts and the electorate; however, electing someone like Sanders would provide the bully pulpit to BEGIN to bring change" and to present proposals (that may not always be accepted or that have to be watered down); I think it was Sanders who frequently stated that real change comes from below, not the top; as far as building coalitions and starting to bring about real change have you missed the last two years in which many candidates have adopted the positions first advanced by Sanders; who else among the candidates has had the guts to actually seriously question the repeated interventions by the US in other countries?
8
@peter s Yes, well, doesn't that prove my point about Bernie being essential and effective right where he is?
He has already succeeded in generating ideas and pushing the Dems to accept them. That's not the same thing as being the best person to try to push them along from the executive branch. That takes a manager, not a cantankerous rebel.
We need to start thinking of the president as a mere project manager rather than a messianic emperor. Bernie doesn't strike me as the manager type.
3
Bernie has very few allies in Congress and in fact does not get along with very many people. He truly would be the progressive but negative image of Trump if he were elected President.
For the most part, all Bernie has accomplished as a senator is the naming of four post offices in Vermont. Not much more. He doesn't seem to be able to get anything done in Washington even though he does talk a very very good game.
I fully support all of his positions but not him. He's just not the guy to get a progressive platform executed. He's just the guy who can talk about it.
4
I had a favorable impression of him early in '16 but quickly soured & his embrace by people who continue to think that having voted for him or Stein was a good thing despite what we have been left with revolts me &, by association, sets me dead against him.
138
Count me as one of the unforgiving Dems. Sanders failure to get behind HRC for the general election led directly to the situation the USA is in today. Sanders is no team player, and politics is a team sport. I agree it was time for a readjustment in Washington, but he wanted the support of the establishment while doing all he could to destroy it. As far as I’m concerned Sanders is just another entitled condescending old white man convinced only HIS opinion matters.
279
@Annie Fitt Except that he did get behind her for the general.
52
@Annie Fitt The claim that Bernie Sanders "failed to get behind HRC for the general election" is a complete falsehood. He campaigned frequently and enthusiastically for Clinton, and rallied his supporters, though deeply embittered at her and her primary campaign, to vote for her.
Sanders did everything he could for Clinton. That's the truth. And Clinton supporters should start acknowledging that truth.
109
@Annie Fitt HRC blew it by ignoring the upper and industrial midwest. To call Sanders an entitled condescending old white man is to engage in the lowest common denominator identity politics a person can muster. Good luck with your ideological blinders! Bernie has done more for this country than 95% of establishment Dems.
63
Sanders is not a Democrat; he is what establishment Democratic politicians in Washington would be if they had 1/10 of his vision, clarity, integrity, courage and consistency.
Today's Democratic establishment is the establishment which helped elect by far the most unqualified, ruinous and shameful president in US history.
As many of those quoted in this article and commenting here have said, it is too early to be speculating on who the 2020 presidential candidates might be. And most importantly so because we have far more urgent priorities which are sorely in need of closer attention, despite being deeply and widely denied.
Rather than debate which placebo chief executive might inherit the tarnished and tattered US presidential administration in 2021, we need to focus instead on how to rid our wounded system of politics of the two-party duopoly disaster which has led to the wreckage of American democracy and rule of law, and has been making a shambles of the country's international reputation, moral leadership and practical effectiveness.
16
@Sage
Sage,
Easier said then accomplished,
please, money OUT of politics.
Money corrupts. We all suffer the consequences.
4
@sage. Right on Sage!
2
Bernie is still the only strong candidate that the Dems have.
40
He's an old man. His time has come and gone. Time for the next generation. We need someone young, charismatic and energetic. Sanders is none of those things.
56
@AV In my estimation, Bernie is 2 out of those 3: charismatic and energetic. As for age, the ageism stuff is old.
I can't wait for him to run. I will support him 100%, as will many that I know.
3
@AV
Wow ageism and sexism just what Democrats need.
2
No we need a candidate who is going to fight for what’s important. Age, ethnicity, gender are all of secondary importance. Fight for common people.
2
I'd be more than happy to support Bernie again in 2020, ESPECIALLY after seeing who the corporate media (including the Times) seems to favor/push--typical pro-corporate establishment Dems like Booker, Biden, O'Rourke, Harris, etc. Others are simply weak e.g., Klobuchar. I will not vote for any Democrat that takes corporate campaign contributions in the primaries.
52
@Percy Your expected use of the terms "corporate media" and "establishment Dems" just makes me afraid. Sanders will never win in a million years if his followers repeat their mistake of thinking they can "take over" the Democratic party by attacking prominent and long-time party members. Remember how ineffective (as well as callow and unrealistic) it was when his supporters all thought Clinton was hiding her speech transcripts because they were supposed to betray some plot by her and bankers to destroy the country. A lot of good that did you.
7
Corporate media? Then why are you reading it? Cry me a river...
5
@Percy Beto doesn't take corporate campaign money.
3
Old Bernie is not a Democrat.
He promised pie in the sky, but didn't even deliver on his promise to support the Democratic nominee. Too churlish. Too Trump-like.
Eric Swalwell would be a good choice for our nominee in 2020.
21
That is a lie. Bernie campaigned hard for Hillary from the convention through Election Day. Over and over and over again he begged all of his supporters to vote for Hillary because the most important thing was to defeat Trump.
It is not fair to blame him because a small fringe of his supporters, less than 10%, disobeyed his recommendation.
BTW, a similar fringe group of Hillary supporters refused to vote for Obama in November 2008.
12
@We the Pimples of the United Face" wrote:
Your claim (below) is not correct. As reported in this paper, more than 20% of Sanders did not vote for Clinton. About half of that number voted for Trump. The other half voted for a third party candidate or did not vote at all.
"We the Pimples of the United Face" wrote:
"... It is not fair to blame him because a small fringe of his supporters, less than 10%, disobeyed his recommendation …"
5
@Pimples
Uh, no, Old Bernie did not campaign for Hillary. Like Trump, Old Bernie has a big problem with women in general, and he couldn't bring himself to try to help Hillary. Look at his angry mug at the convention. Etc.
5
I admire Bernie and I'm grateful to him for helping move the dialogue to the left of where the Clintonista corporate Democratic establishment held it for so long. Especially everything Bernie has done to support Medicare For All and affordable college. Thanks Bernie!
But I'd like to see a younger candidate who'll have broad popular appeal to both older folks and especially to all the voters under 30 who didn't vote in 2016 because they didn't like either candidate.
I'm most interested in Beto - - but enthusiastic about Amy Klobuchar, Sherrod Brown and Kamala Harris.
Joe Biden is too old & Elizabeth Warren has too many negatives and is increasingly viewed as strident. I hope they won't run or wash out early.
I will never support Kirsten Gillibrand after she hung the great senator Al Franken out to dry without a hearing. I'll consider an argument for anyone but Gillibrand -- she's kryptonite. I actually wish Al Franken would shock us all and run himself...
35
Ohio Native here. I'm with Sherrod Brown, all the way. The only question for me : Who will be his running mate ??? Stacey Abrams. Think about it, a Black Southern Woman, intelligent, outspoken and very relatable. Just like in a Hollywood Movie : " Norma Rae" meets " The Silence Of the Lambs ". With the part of Hannibal Lecter played by Trump.
Just saying.
9
@Phyliss Dalmatian I love Stacey, but I doubt she wants to take on that role this early in her political career. She's amazingly intelligent, and while she's very progressive, she's pragmatic and knows how to work with both sides of the aisle. We Georgia Democrats were heartbroken when the election was stolen from her by her crooked, incompetent opponent.
I hope she runs for the Senate and gets more experience before she considers taking on more responsibility.
3
@Phyliss Dalmatian: I'm with you. I love Sherrod Brown. The choices for running mate are numerous and exciting: Stacey Abrams, Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, Adam Schiff and Julián Castro, just to name a few.
7
I supported Bernie in the last election. Not this time. Politicians need to learn how to step aside and let other people take the lead. Nancy Pelosi experienced pushback because of her age, her stubbornness, and her refusal to loosen her grip and groom a successor. It does not matter how many decades of experience you have. New generations of voters do not want the same people in positions of leadership year after year. Bernie had his shot. He had his time. Now it is time for someone under the age of 50 to run for POTUS.
9
Let’s see... A crowd of candidates splitting allegiances and votes. This is precisely how Trump won 30 states in 2016.
And if that primary produces another Clinton relic (Biden), Trump may win 35.
12
Beat Trump is the national imperative! Bernie has the right message, but his age and the fact that he is an independent claiming to be a democrat for convenience, will again limit his chances for the democratic nomination. It was naive of Bernie and his supporters to expect the same treatment as a life long democrat like HRC from the super delegates. This time will likely be no different, if he faces Sherrod Brown or Beto O'Rourke. The question for independents, Bernie supporters, green party supporters and sane republicans is do you want to risk 4 more years of this mess and destruction of our country. I will vote for anyone of them who I believe can beat Trump. Let the jousting began!
8
Charisma = Bernie = the young vote = free public college & Medicare for all and the resurrection of the environment. No other candidate has those issues burned into their heart, only Bernie! FEEL THE BERN!
21
@kirke Bernie has lots of talking points but no realistic plans. I hope he has enough sense not to run.
7
THE BERN is pretty lukewarm now. Not gonna happen.
6
Right, because it was easy for him to do well in 2016...
7
Biden, Beto, Booker, Harris, Gillibrand et al will mostly pull from the Clinton half of the party. 2020 will be much easier for Bernie than 2016.
15
Ughhhhh...
No. Just No.
Not a Dem.
Too old.
Will be seen as a commie and won't get votes in flyover country.
Dems need someone who can win in between the coasts.
Sanders is NOT that guy.
36
As much as I like some things Sanders says, I voted for him in the primary, I am going to scream this from the rooftops until the Democratic party listens:
NO MORE OLD WHITE MEN OR WOMEN! Enough of the people and ideas that have gotten us into this mess. Time for real change to go with our hopes.
And just to be clear, I am an old, white, liberal as they come, woman.
7
The NY Times has never written a positive article about Bernie Sanders and they are not about to start now. In 2016, the NY Times wrote article after article about how Bernie Sanders was a "fringe" candidate, a socialist, maybe even a communist! (gasp).
What the NY Times should have been writing about was how he could win the primary, be a formidable opponent to her highness Hillary, a viable third party candidate. The Times chose to gloss over how although Bernie won West Virginia, Vermont, New Hampshire and a slew of other states on the primary, the DNC chose to still support Hillary. The Times failed to seriously report on how Bernie Sanders may have won the borough of Brooklyn in NYC as there may have possible been vote tampering (Hillary's campaign headquarters was in Brooklyn).
I have been reading the NY Times for nearly thirty years and it is truly sad to watch its decline from an objective daily to a opinionated center right tabloid. Apparently, propaganda comes from both sides.
200
I'm not sure why referring to Bernie as a fringe, self described socialist is wrong. He claims to be an antiestablishment fringe member of Congress who supports large aspects of socialism...
20
It’s only propaganda because it doesn’t match up with your agenda.
I think The Times is spot-on about Sanders.
14
@Michael Anthony
Vote tampering in Brooklyn lol! You Bernie supporters can't admit that he LOST in the primaries, wouldn't concede defeat and went on to be a sourpuss during the general election. We have him to thank where we are now.
14
We're more than a year away from the earliest primaries and already the mainstream media is attempting to delegitimize Sanders' campaign, just as it did in 2016. We saw what the smear campaign conducted by the self-appointed political pundits of the Fourth Estate brought us that year: an establishment Democratic candidate who was so disliked by the actual voters that she paved the way for the worst president in U.S. history (including Martin Van Buren). Stop putting your thumb on the scale, NYT. In this same article, you have a photo of Senator Jeff Merkeley and describe him as a "long-shot" candidate. Says who? The same experts who told us Hillary Clinton was destiny and Donald Trump was a long-shot? If the mid-terms taught us anything, it's that voters like all kinds of candidates, depending on the district. It's useless this early in the came to predict who will catch fire. Articles like this aren't taking the pulse of the national electorate; that pulse hasn't even begun to beat. They're reading the pulse of the members of the NYT editorial board and the "power brokers" with whom they hand out.
22
Electing anyone who is almost 80 to any political position, let alone president is ridiculous. Too many of politicians (and supreme court justices) are too old. Sanders (and Ginsburg) may be amazing individuals, but their egos are out of control if they believe there are not younger people capable of replacing them.
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No one but Bernie gets my vote..Period..
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@isaid dilligaf ~
"No one but Bernie gets my vote..Period.."
That's what a lot of disaffected Bernie supporters said and did in 2016. And it did contribute to trump's win.
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@isaid dilligaf
Thanks for the large deficit. Thanks for the removal of SALT deductions. Thanks for Obamacare being attacked. Thanks for 2 Supreme Court Justices we didn't want. Yeah, you showed us all.
The Democrats won the House only because suburban moderates and former Republicans overwhelmingly rejected Trump and his radically stupid & hateful nonsense.
The only way the Democrats will win in 2020 is to appeal to those same suburban moderates & former Republicans. Sorry as I am to to say it, Bernie is not the best choice to do so.
Bernie was perfect for 2016 when many wanted a radical to shake things up. If Bernie had run he would have won the “angry white men” in MI, WI & PA who instead put Trump over the top. Many were never Democrats to begin with, they just wanted a bomb thrower —- any bomb thrower. We all know people like that. They preferred Bernie because he is a decent man with good ideas (unlike Trump). But since Bernie was not on offer, they went for the other bomb thrower with the result we have today.
But 2020 will be very different. The Independent & ex-GOP voters who decided the midterms are clearly sick and tired of radical bomb throwing. They want a centrist and a return to normalcy.
So I support Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown for president. He’s moderately progressive but eminently sensible and hopefully could deliver Ohio to the Dems and thus insure victory. Please recall that no Republican in modern times has ever won the White House without winning Ohio.
I’m a “Bernie bro” who voted for Hillary in November as did all of my friends. But it’s best not to get married to any specific candidate, however. Every election has its own specific needs.
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@We the Pimples of the United Face I am sorry. Moderates are yesterdays news. The middle doesn't really exist and if dems use the same 80's convert former republican strategy again in 2020 Trump will get four more years.
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Don’t do it.
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Ah, the weekly anti-Sanders screed. Give it up, NYT, you think voters aren't on to you? Look what happened the last time you tried stuffing a DLC-handpicked candidate down our throats.
Whether Sanders runs or not (and I hope he does, for anyone despairing about the future), we need his message -- despite and because of the Times' ridiculously misplaced hysteria.
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No Bernie,your time as a rebel rouser is past..Back a possible dem winner and campaign for all you're worth. We need a shooting star who can handily beat Trump, because in the real world we can not afford to have Trump around at all and hopefully pray to god he will not last this term!
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Bernie, the real deal.
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What's the saying?..."There's no fool like an old fool."
Sanders is a very divisive politician and only resonates with the far left; he'll guarantee another four years of Trump.
Please, step aside and let someone new and fresh lead the Democratic Party back to mass appeal...a real Democrat, not an off/on opportunist.
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Sanders should be shamed into releasing his past tax returns before he even thinks of running against Trump.
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The premise of this article is that Bernie came from nowhere to almost win the Democratic nomination because of his aides and advisors. Nothing could be further from the truth. He went from polling 6% in my state to winning the primary by 12% because of hundreds of locally organized volunteers doing the work that wins elections by phone banking, canvassing and GOTV efforts. And because he inspired thousands to turn out for his rallies to support his vision. He has virtually single-handedly reformed the primary election process and the platform of the Democratic Party into something resembling a truly progressive political party. If he runs he'll have my vote and I think many, many others regardless of who is on his staff.
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As an unaffiliated voter, I applaud Sanders’ presentation of progressive ideas and ability to energize the disaffected, especially young people. Of course he would be vastly preferable to the incumbent. But I’m looking for a candidate who not only presents ideas, but also has a sound sense of realism. Talk about expanded, universal access to health care while also giving us a sense of the practical, incremental steps that can move us toward that laudable goal. I don’t get that from Sanders. There needs to be a candidate that can unify both progressives and reasonable centrists to ensure 2020 is a resounding defeat of the incumbent, with election results that ensure there is no doubt about the legitimacy of the results. That candidate does not seem to be Sanders. Who will it be?
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@CK Um, that would have been Hillary Clinton but for Bernie’s interference. It is my everlasting heartache that a Vermonter was instrumental in giving this abomination to us as president.
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It's Sherrod Brown. He can win it.
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This article shows how pervasive personal and party politics are in the mindset of the establishment. By all measures, the progressive wing of the Democratic party has already won. The positions Bernie took in 2016, the same positions HRC claimed to be pipe dreams, are already mainstream. If you have a narrow outlook then you can think of this as a loss for Bernie. But if you actually care about the country, its citizens, its workers, then you know its a massive win. Bernie's influence on the Democratic party is welcome. Its a better off because of it and most importantly, so is the country.
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The best results require acceptance and cooperation rather than all out competition between candidates. Bernie had better be a "king maker" than attempt to be King, at his age and current position. He is a fine, sensible seeming, orator with many of the right ideas, but should put all his assets to use in enabling his ideas, supporting others. The younger, newer, candidates should also wait their turn. It is also past time for a female President. We need Bernie and the others to get behind a ticket of WARREN-O'ROURKE. Then, Bernie should be placed in some high position of influence in the new government.
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@Hanrod ... and, WARREN / BROWN is also a good option!
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Sanders has some great ideas. However, he is not a Democrat. Why should I consider him as a Democratic candidate when he doesn't support the party to which I belong? Time for a Democratic Progressive candidate. One who support fairness and freedom. There seems to be a substantial list from which to choose.
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@dearworld2 Sen. Sanders caucuses with Senate Democrats, and that they are quite happy to have his vote. Also, Sanders's popularity in 2016 was rewarded with appointment to a position in Democratic leadership in the Senate. So, while Sanders may not be a registered Democrat, but he usually votes with the Democrats. It is hardly his fault that the two major political parties, which are not part of our Constitution, have virtually cemented their power in the U.S. Government. I give Sanders credit for bucking the two-party system at least a little bit.
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@dearworld2
Beats me why you think saying "Bernie is not a Democrat" is a winning argument. It just gets me to thinking that maybe I'm not a Democrat, either.
Frankly, it's time we broke the lock that the two mega-donor-supported parties have on our political system. Then maybe we can actually start debating policy rather than obsessing over which team is "winning."
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@dearworld2
Remember how HRC didn't bother stepping foot in the state of WI during HER general election campaign in 2016? Bernie was there in October rallying support for her. He was all over the country working to get her elected. Blaming him for HRC's defeat to Trump is laughable. He is what a true Democrat (and small "do" too) is.
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Speaking for myself, I'll never forgive him for being an indispensable element in the election of Donald Trump. If he hadn't run, Trump wouldn't have won. Period. He was getting what I assume was unsolicited help from Moscow (I make no such assumption for Jill Stein), and he's still failed to properly come to terms with that. Nor did he ever release most of his tax returns, as Hillary did, and we have a much better idea now why that is.
And his lukewarm stance on gun control is even more of a problem now than it was two years ago.
If he were thirty years younger, he'd still be yesterday's candidate. He shouldn't run. If he does, that just proves it was always about the spotlight, and never about us.
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@Christopher Lyons I will agree that Sanders dented Hillary Clinton a bit in the campaign. But politics is competitive, and the nomination did not belong to her--she had to win it. As for blaming Sanders for Trump's election, I think it is possible, though not certain, that Sanders may have defeated Trump had he been the nominee. Many factors contributed to the unlikely result in the 2016 presidential election. but only one person can plausibly be named most responsible, or the "indispensable element," as you put it, for the Democratic Party's loss in 2016: Hillary Clinton.
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Well, this time around we could blame your inability to forgive Sanders for reelection of Trump
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@Christopher Lyons Oh stop with this nonsense. Bernie's supporters were much nicer to Hillary in '16 compare to the way Hillary supporters treated Obama in '08. That's a fact. Look it up.
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He should just pick the younger candidate he wants to support, then support that one. Which is exactly what Hilary should have done. Voters transfer hope and high expectations on to newcomers.
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@pointofdiscovery - There is no "younger candidate" who is not a corporate neoliberal, attached at the waist to Big Lobbyists.
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@pointofdiscovery
Voters are more likely to support candidates who they feel have earned their vote rather than by the endorsements they have.
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"“There are just too many Democrats who don’t forgive him for not being a Democrat. I don’t want to go through the same type of divisiveness again that we saw.”"
Sen. Sanders might better have retained his registration as a Democrat if he thought he'd run again, rather than switching back to Independent after campaign 2016. Some of the resentment stems from his being viewed as a bit of a carpetbagger. I think his best time has passed.
"Time flies never to be recalled." ~ Virgil
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@Mary Ann Donahue He's more of a Democrat than all of those neoliberal democrats put together. He's the closest thing we have to an FDR.
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Do Democrats really want him to run as an independent? Do they really believe in this case they will have better chance in winning?
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@Mary Ann Donahue, Bernie won, then refused to accept the Democratic US Senator primary here in Vermont. He ran as an Independent/ Progressive because he didn’t need the Democratic Party for our local election. But still his supporters believe he was cheated by the DNC in 2016. Who is the cheater here?
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Please God, no. Isn’t four years of Trump enough?
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Wasn't that Hillary who lost to Trump?
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@Paul in NJ
"Please God, no. Isn’t four years of Trump enough?"
That's the comment I'd make if Hillary announced her candidacy.
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@yulia
And wasn't that Bernie who lost to Hillary?
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I wonder how much the clumsy attacks on Democrats by Bernie's stooges is affecting his polling numbers. The melt down of these "democratic socialists" is going to be glorious.
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@Jake
Interesting that several Commenters to this article seem to have a crystal ball.
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@dwalker The jig is up.
Boy, you people are truly terrified of Sanders, aren't you?
Look, the sheep dogging--the pretense that opinion-shaping is simply reporting the facts ("What--us at the NYT try to shape opinion in our news pieces?")--will probably work on the subclass to which I am a traitor, happily: the radical-centrist, Ivy-ish-educated corporate-professional types.
Great--who cares? Sanders doesn't need them or their money.
The second he announces, if he does so, I work 20 hrs a week for him, and I and my wife (another apostate) donate the max. If he doesn't run, then Warren. If she doesn't run, then I'll choose from the remaining based on policies, not "advertising or PR qualities." Like, I don't care if Beto was in a punk band, or whatever. I'm not a child and he's not Leo in Titanic.
Meanwhile, keep it up. Sanders, and his supporters, know how to pivot off of establishment disapproval. It helps with those who can predict what and who the NYT will support.
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@Doug Tarnopol That ship has sailed, buddy. He's not winning black voters and white liberals are abandoning him in droves. You might as well go sweep Ocasio-Cortez's porch and call it a day.
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@Doug Tarnopol
Once you abstained from voting in '16 your threat to now work 20 hours and donate to the max are of little interest. Also not scary. Sorry.
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@Doug Tarnopol: I'm vehemently opposed to Sanders, and I'm not "establishment." Millions of other Democrats feel the way I do.
Bernie believes that registering as a Democrat is beneath him, yet he somehow felt entitled to highjack our party's infrastructure to promote his policies and his ego. He is weak on some important issues, for example reproductive rights and gun control. In his lengthy Congressional career, he has never proposed a single piece of legislation that has been voted on and passed. He's all talk. Trump and the Republicans will savage him mercilessly.
Sanders doesn't need "them or their money"? Fine. If he wants to run again, he should do so as an Independent. And you, your wife and his other diehard fans should go right ahead and waste your time working for his campaign.
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As it stands now we're on a trajectory where the two dominant political parties will likely give us a choice between authoritarianism and socialism. There must be a better option.
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And what could it be? Authoritarianism and capitalism? Last time when it happened authoritarianism won.
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@Robert Winters
If the majority of voters support more socialist policies like Medicare and Social Security, let's try it out.
I'm tired of unfettered oligopolism / centrism and its resultant inequality and scared of Trump's and the GOPs vision of authoritarianism.
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@Robert Winters What about socialism are you scared of? Universal Healthcare. Education reform, criminal justice reform, cutting corporate welfare, raising taxes on the rich? What?
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I was willing to support Bernie or Hilary and was very disappointed when Bernie promised to do everything in his power to keep Trump out and support Hilary. Well, if that was everything in his power - he didn't have much power. Take a look at Jeff Merkley. He is one of the most courageous and active senators ever. Well spoken, tireless. Worth a look.
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@Candy Neville I think Sanders acted honorably and very, very reasonably, given that Hillary and the DNC had been caught rigging the primary against him.
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Once again: there were two documented cases of “rigging” in the 2016 D primary contest.
1. Bernie Sanders hacked into HRCs database. When they got caught, they filed a bogus lawsuit, crying victim.
2. Bernie Sanders delegates tried to overturn the results of the Nevada caucuses. When they couldn’t, they got violent, sending death threats to the state chair and her grandkids.
That’s the record.
We now also know that Bernie benefitted from Russian interference, that one of his tech people informed him of it, he’s admitted he knew of it, and he did nothing about it. He refuses to finalise his FEC filings, after the FEC flagged hundreds of pages of suspect overseas donations. There’s a 10 mil dark money donation that Bernie refuses to explain.
That’s all also on record.
People like you are perfect fodder for Bernie and the Russians — lazy, gullible, mindlessly adoring minions, happy to repeat any fact-free calumny that falls from the master’s mouth.
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No one should be told not to run but, like in 2016, Bernie Sanders will never have the full coalition of the democrats. In defeat, their only explanation for Sanders losing the all important Southern black vote was "oh well, they're conservative states." They blamed the DNC for his inability to connect with black voters, which was, and remains, important for any candidate seeking to win the nomination. He will have the same problem in 2020. He never had the Obama coalition. And in fact, he was most useful in turning voters away from democrats and towards Trump. Sadly. He is and remains a strong influencer but he'll never land the nomination.
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@Sasha Stone
“They blamed the DNC for his inability to connect with black voters, which was, and remains, important for any candidate seeking to win the nomination. He will have the same problem in 2020.”
Actually, Sanders polls high among nonwhite voters:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/243539/americans-maintain-positive-view-bernie-sanders.aspx
https://gritpost.com/bernie-sanders-approval-nonwhite/
“And in fact, he was most useful in turning voters away from democrats and towards Trump.”
Evidence for this?
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it was not his task to attract black voters. It was the task of Hillary, after all she was the candidate, not Sanders. Funny, how Hillary's supporters could not accept her responsibility for the loss, when she was not able to attract black voters and turned the white voters away.
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@Sasha Stone
If Congressional Democrats don't stop wimping out on impeachment there might be no nomination to "land" in 2020.
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