This is why I don’t think its likely. Obama would have to be really stupid. It’s obvious which way the country is headed. Trashing Sanders would fuck up his legacy even more big time. If Sanders tanks and Biden/whoever loses a lot of people will blame Obama. I certainly will. Whatever blood happens in Trumps second term will be on Obamas hand and the Sanders wing will only grow as the olds die.
Like yeah Obama is shit and pure establishment but I’d have to think he cares about his legacy. I guess you could argue his legacy is going to be shit with the Sanders wing regardless, but right now it’s just kinda shit. If he tanks Bernie he will go from weak president who did a lot of bad shit but tried his best in a hard environment to the last monster of the establishment who enabled Trump to destroy America twice. He already should get blame for not doing more about Trump and Russia in 2016.
It’s honestly a great question. He does seem to be legacy minded, but I think he’s a centrist to his bones. A Bernie victory wouldn’t have been possible without his failures either, I don’t think. Gonna be interesting.
If Hillary is put to the test like a proper candidate and not the Anointed One, we don’t have Bernie like he was in 2016 and we don’t have him in 2020. Mayyyybe we have a viable Warren.
All of the centrists begging off allowed Sanders to fill a space that wouldn’t have been there if the Dems didn’t suck so bad.
It’s an incredible historical accident that we are drawing live for a Bernie Sanders nomination/presidency. I honestly don’t think it could have been anyone but him, and as much as I like him I don’t mean that as a compliment of his political acumen as I think he makes a lot of unforced errors.
As bad as we’re running with Trump, we’re running good with Bernie.
Coincidentally, the latest Citations Needed podcast covered The Economist. Unsurprisingly, you’ll find that going back far enough they were also pro-slavery (masquerading as anti-abolition) because… think of the economy!
The current crop of Republicans definitely don’t. The only exception in that crowd is Mitt Romney and he’s voting for witnesses I’m guessing.
It’s important to note that being a politician hasn’t been a particularly attractive angle for stratospherically talented people over the last 2-3 decades. Nobody with world breaking talent wants to spend 20+ hours a week begging rich people for money just to be personally responsible for helping to keep everything the same.
This is a huge part of why the Gen X and Boomer career politicians suck so much fwiw. Obama level talent isn’t THAT rare, but someone with that talent level looking at politics in the late 90’s-early 2000’s and thinking ‘I want to hold elected office’ sure as shit is.
Like just now, because of the ability to raise money on the internet instead of by enthusiastically blowing rich people, politics is starting to look fun again. Most of us have been on the gifted and talented tracks our whole lives and have at least been adjacent to a few really talented people. How many of those people (or even us) were dreaming of being politicians? In my case it’s fucking zero. Not only did I have zero interest in being a politician, I never met anyone who did.
Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up rich enough. I’m interested to hear what other people experienced for sure.
Politician is a great gig if you don’t have to do any of the work and already have money. Most of these clown show GOP Congress critters are family business fail son losers whose network ensures initial funding and who are chosen precisely because they are so intellectually incurious that they’ll never express an independent thought.
Paul Ryan is basically the model, here.
Like, to their credit, most of these people are well aware they have zero chance of competing economically in a fair fight. Every state legislature is chock full of car dealers for this exact reason.
This is exactly my point. If you could do something else and be a huge success, you do that instead of politics pretty much. There weren’t even any ethical/public service oriented arguments that held water. You were basically guaranteed to do more good in the world doing something else in science or public service, and if you wanted cash there was obviously Wall street or Silicon Valley. Given the alternatives the only argument for politics is that you were a decidedly second/third/fourth rate human being with good connections who wanted to take the easiest road possible.
In an article bursting at the seams with lamentations about marginalized groups, he drops this gem:
The Sanders campaign is a bet that the 2020 campaign can be won by mobilizing the Americans least committed to the political process while alienating and even offending the Americans most committed to it. It’s a hell of a gamble, and for what?
