Except he has largely failed at that task. We are left with a large gig economy population where they have to do 2 jobs to make ends meet and are losing healthcare and other government subsidies.
Again I am not saying he has been successful. I was only pointing out how he targeted rural and mid sized towns in fly over states and what his appeal is and has been. For example immigration. People who are from the coasts and larger cities view it as removing long term peaceful residents and as racism. That is not how many blue collar voters view it, to them it is primarily an economic issue. They have lost jobs and have seen their communities suffer. They blame illegal immigration in part and politicians that are out of touch and don’t even consider the interests of middle America. Do you think a pipe fitter or laborer in Scranton gives a damn about climate change? Especially if he goes to church and it is mocked by the preacher? It is why having a candidate vow to ban fracking in a state the Democrats need like Pennsylvania is incredibly arrogant and stupid. Fracking brings jobs. No one blue collar in Pennsylvania that is blue collar I’m their right mind would support a candidate that wants to take jobs away. Where Sanders does have some bonafides that other candidates don’t have is with poor and blue collar voters in more democratic or urban areas. He has devoted him entire life to the little guy and has relationships at the local areas. He can likely win more Northern states like Michigan. If he would back off fracking he would win Pennsylvania. It isn’t that all the Trump voters trust him or believe he is a great person. They support him because he at least makes them part of his narrative and doesn’t look down on them.
Sanders is not appealing to moderates. Period. And a liberal democrat hasn't won a national election since Jimmy Carter. @rocketsjudoka is right - this country is split into 3's - the left, the right, and moderates. The reason Clinton and Obama won was because they were moderates. They moved the party to the middle to make a coalition beyond liberals. Sanders would pull the party to the left and shrink that coalition, and thus jeopardizes victory. He'd be relentlessly attacked as a socialist who would take away independence and choice. It would be easy to defeat him and they would attached the Jimmy Carter label to him. If you want to win you need Sanders as the VP, or at least Warren. My guess right now is Bloomberg wins the nomination. Buttigieg simply has too much baggage with race and he poorly handled race relations while at South Bend. It's puzzling to learn that he wasn't very friendly to the African American community in South Bend even during his presidential campaign. That will cost him the nomination. Moderates will rally behind Bloomberg as they find Sanders distasteful. We know the far left will vote for a moderate. History has shown us moderates don't vote for extreme candidates.
That's a well articulated position. However, Biden, Bloomberg, etc are not the ones who will get it done. Again as I've said before, if there was an Obama type leader who naturally rose to the top of this race, then what you are advocating would be the way to go. However, Biden, Bloomberg, etc are weaker candidates than Hillary who was a political titan in the party. Your argument has great truth and merit to it, but the moderate candidates in this field are not up to the task. They will turn away just enough progressives to lose close races to Trump in swing states again. Yes, that is the sad state affair of things right now. Moderates can't stand Bernie and progressive feel the same about these weak moderate candidates. As a progressive, I will still vote for whoever rises to the top and secures the nomination in a fair process. However, I draw the line at oligarch Bloomberg who should have been shown the door long ago.
Hillary wasn't the "moderate" of a life time otherwise she wouldn't have been so unpopular. You confuse "moderates" with "establishment" which is understandable.
As several people told you, his messaging is populist while his actions are a mix of GOP dogma and (deregulation, supply sides) economic nationalism (trade war). The latter is what won him the election and where there's overlap between the far left and far right.
If Bloomberg becomes the best option, what would you do? I ask out of curiosity, no agenda. I think Bloomberg might be the DNC favorite and that's who ends up being up against Trump. He might be able to go toe to toe with Trump in the trash talking department, although I'm sure Bloomberg won't quite be as belligerent. If the DNC 'wills' Bloomberg as the candidate would you not vote for him? I didn't vote last election because I couldn't believe Trump was the candidate and I couldn't vote for Hillary.
No we haven't. You keep losing the messaging battle and blaming the moderates. The GOP has traditions on their side while you are offering "change". They turned Obama's center left agenda into a "Muslim, communist, socialist" agenda rather deftly.
Obama ran as a progressive though. He did not run as a moderate. He ran that he was going to change Washington and at the time people thought HE...OBAMA...was too liberal. Here is an article from 2007... https://www.politico.com/story/2007/12/liberal-views-could-haunt-obama-007312 This was the same thing people said of Obama, that he was too left to win...and oh yeah, they called him a socialist for most of his two terms. Moderates fall into this trick where anyone on the right calls anything left of center radical socialism, when it's really just standard fare liberalism that exists in many other countries and works fairly well. With that said, a while ago I had a rant about the true value of the moderate in national elections...it just doesn't really exist. True moderates are so rare that they don't actually matter, data backs this too, I'll pull it out again if I have to, but the idea that there's just a ton of people sitting around in Michigan that MIGHT vote red or blue doesn't really exist. Sure, there are some people that truly sit in the middle but most independents lean one way or another...and the campaign is more about getting them out to vote, not trying to win them over to your party. Biden or Klobuchar isn't convincing any one that leans right for voting for him. Not enough to matter anyways, he can try to convince them to NOT vote for Trump, that's the best the Democrat can do. Most of the country doesn't actually vote, a little over half of the country votes, so...that means any election is about getting most of your supporters off of their ass to vote. This is what Trump did, he energized the right into voting, while Clinton did the exact opposite. People on the left thought it was a sure thing and she just promised more of the same...and her campaign didn't highlight WHY people should have voted for her other than she wasn't Trump. I KNOW there were massive policy differences, like her stance on education...but she didn't make it a big deal.
And it didn't work. Obama served two terms because he promised change and reform and that he would tackle Washington to get what the people wanted which was at the time healthcare reform. I'm telling you guys, put Pete out there as the candidate, he's going to lose. That's my prediction at least. Oh...and you know what? They are still going to call him a Godless (since he's Gay...) communist, socialist... Even Pete says this every debate. Stop worrying about what they label democrats, the right wing party labels EVERY democrat a socialist, without fail. Let them, I don't think the word has any bite to it anymore, which is why so many young people are craving more socialist policy.
Obama ran as a pragmatist and touted how he wanted to work with Republicans as well. He wanted to find solutions and wasn't opposed to Republican ideas. He was not a populist and definitely ran on a moderate platform. He had liberal ideas but was very much still centered in many ways. I'm a moderate and I voted for him over Clinton in the primary. It was because I thought he had a better ability to work in the middle than Clinton otherwise I felt they had a very similar platform.
You see, you say you're a moderate but I bet many posters here on the right would disagree with that. People say they are moderates when they really lean left or right just a little less than full blown liberals and conservatives. Obama's campaign slogan was "Hope and Change" he ran on big ideas that he was going to change Washington and he was very much pretty close to being a populist. Once he got into office he urged people the "Be the change you want to see" basically that if people voted and voiced what they wanted, he'd make it happen. "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." This is the candidate that won two terms in office. No one was calling Obama a moderate when he ran for office. We can say that now, but in 2008, it just wasn't the case. Part of the hate Obama gets from the left is that people felt he duped them, that he wasn't the progressive force he promised to be.
Again. People can point to Obama or McGovern or anyone else but at the end of the day Sanders would be the most radical Democratic nominee in America history. He in the past was too liberal for the Democratic Party. His platform calls for increased spending of 100 trillion dollars. He would triple the size of the federal government and he has no clear avenue how he will get it financed. Perhaps he IS a fire brand and breaks through like a Roosevelt or Jackson but those men are rare.
The left did feel duped because they weren't really listening to his platform and what he was saying. He always stated he was willing to compromise and that's exactly what he did. He said he'd run the country listening to both Republicans and Democrats and that's what he did. These days a moderate is considered conservative by the left and a liberal by the right, that's the bucket I fall into. My liberals friends don't consider me a liberal, and my conservative friends think I am a liberal. I used to vote for more Republicans but that was before they went cuckoo. When I lived in PA I voted for Arlen Spectre for instance. A great Republican senator forced out by the radical right. People can say Obama was a liberal and I am sure he is, but he convinced moderates he would run the country in a pragmatic way and that's why the middle supported him. They will not support Sanders. Also keep in mind the economy was in the tank.
All I am saying is that at the time no one was calling Obama a moderate. Of course he's going to say in the general election that he's going to appeal to both sides, if Bernie wins the primary he's not going to say "I'm not going to work with Republicans." Not even Trump outright said that, even Trump says he's willing to work with Democrats in the house and senate...he just uses the caveat that he's willing but the Democrats won't play fair. This is politics as usual though. Obama's 2nd term he HAD to work with the GOP anyways, seeing as how they held house and senate. But when he ran for the nomination no one was calling Obama a moderate. No matter who wins the primary, their message is going to get toned down. Unless its Bloomberg then it would be complete chaos when it comes to messaging and national debates... Also, on the global scale of politics, anyone in the middle in America IS a conservative. That's because the past generations, the ones who control most of the country (not unfairly, just their time to run things) are mostly conservative. That's changing though and I would warn and be careful of ignoring the young base and the energy behind it. People mention the Iowa caucus turn out, what isn't mentioned though is that Bernie DID turn out young voters, a lot more than 2016. We'll see how that plays out as also Iowa Caucus is probably not the best future predictor of turnout nationwide... But I fear that people don't really understand the democratic base or where it is at right now. A lot of people hate the DNC but will vote blue just because...but many people will not, they will sit home and say they get what they deserve and they want to burn the party down and hope that in its ashes a more representative party rises. It's much like where the tea party was during Obama's term and that's why you saw Trump continue to run through the GOP primary despite...well, most of the exact same complaints Bernie is getting. One thing Bannon, Steve Bannon, is right about is that there is this elitism that has run rampant through politics, globally, and people are sick of it.
Obama was a self described "New Democrat" with a pro-growth economic policy. I am not sure how someone who positions himself as a new democrat is seen as part of the left wing. Bernie would be one of the most left-wing candidates ever to win the nominee for the party. The man is a self-described socialist. I don't have any desire to see him as president. Would I vote for him against Trump? Yes, but I wouldn't be happy about it and I am telling you I know a lot of moderates who would just stay home.
I showed you an article at the time that explained this. I could find more later, they are not hard to find. No one at the time thought Obama was a moderate, plenty thought he was pretty far left...and of course he got into office and people were still calling him a socialist far left guy. No matter who wins the nomination, they are ALL going to get labeled socialist. They will even label Biden one if he wins, Pete definitely will get labled it, for them anything left of center is socialism. The labels don't matter in the end. Do you support free healthcare, do you support affordable education? People don't care about the labels in the end, if they did, Trump wouldn't be president. People on the left labeled him a racist, misogynist, would be dictator...doesn't matter. People latch on to big ideas and hope that the president they elected can enact those ideas. At the end of the day it's about selling your policy ideas to the public...and if your reason for running is "We gotta beat Trump," and "At least I'm not Trump," and I honestly hear a lot of that from Biden, Pete, and Klobuchar again. That they are better than Trump because they are more sensible and Trump is a crook and Trump is despicable and...I just don't see that working again. They need to sell something to the public other than removing Trump. The reason Bernie is so popular is because he does that.
I agree with you that no one in the current Democratic field is Obama. All of them have weaknesses and I personally have not committed to supporting any particular candidate. I am leaning towards Klobuchar but I fear that it's too late for her. That said I think one of the problems of our political culture is waiting for the Messiah. Someone who is very charismatic and promises radical change. Frankly that's the attitude that got us Trump and anyone who remembers me during the 2008 primaries I was suspicious of Obama too for that reason. At this point I'm looking for a President that will follow Constitutional norms, not profiteer off of the office and constantly pick fights online and offline. I admit it's a low bar but if we can't even reach that low bar there is no hope for this country.
Just imagine what could have been .... Goldwater , Reagan , Daddy Bush .... I wouldn't have complained.
