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Bernie Sanders Searches for Answers, Makes Rambling Excuses for Falling Poll Numbers

Bernie Sanders Searches for Answers, Makes Rambling Excuses for Falling Poll Numbers

Though there’s plenty of time between now and when the primaries start for Sanders to regain ground, recent interviews and tweets indicate the pressure is starting to get to him.

https://youtu.be/kdyjWtDwRBA

After months of campaigning and coming in second place in most presidential polls second to only Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has started to see his numbers slipping. In fact, over the last several weeks Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has either made it even or overtaken Sanders’s second place standing in some polls.

As Fuzzy noted last month, once Sanders began to notice his numbers sliding, he started cozying up to fellow socialist and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), because the perception in Democratic circles is that an endorsement from the freshman Congresswoman would be a feather in the caps of many of the presidential contenders.

Well that didn’t work, because she’s made it clear she isn’t ready to endorse just yet. And as Sanders’s numbers continue their downward spiral, he is desperately searching for answers and making rambling excuses for why his campaign appears to have fallen off track.

On Wednesday night, Sanders told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that he believes the reason Warren is surging ahead of him might be, in part, because she’s a woman:

“Well, I think we are running against a lot of problems,” Sanders, who represents Vermont, told CNN host Chris Cuomo.

“I think that there are a certain number of people who would like to see a woman elected, and I understand that,” the senator said. “There are people who would like to see somebody who was younger, and I understand that also. There are a lot of factors out there.”

Sanders also insisted on Thursday that he and Warren are friends, and that they planned to run a campaign based on political issues.

“Elizabeth is a friend of mine, I think she’s running a good campaign,” the senator said. “But at the end of the day, Chris, whether it’s Biden or Warren, Elizabeth Warren, or anybody else, what I believe is that in fact I am the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump, and I think some of the polling shows that,” he asserted.

Sanders, who some view as Warren’s ideological twin, also posted this tweet on Wednesday. Some speculated it might be a shot at Warren’s campaign:

He clarified later on Cuomo’s program that Warren was not the target of his ire in that tweet:

But Sanders himself says the tweet wasn’t a dig, at least not at Warren.

“That tweet was not about Elizabeth Warren at all,” he told CNN’s Chris Cuomo in an interview Wednesday night. “Not at all. Elizabeth is a friend of mine and we’re going to run, I hope, what are simply issue-oriented campaigns.”

Instead, Sanders said the tweet was a “very strong statement” about the self-described “center-left” think tank Third Way, who he called a “Wall Street-funded group” that had been willing to support any Democrat but him. Additionally, Sanders questioned the centrist group’s allegiances in the 2020 general election if he were the nominee.

Watch the segment below:

Leaving aside the fact that Sanders’s suggestion that one reason for Warren’s momentum might be because she is a woman has caused some indignant feminists to reach for the fainting couch, I believe one big reason Warren’s numbers are rising is because the amount of favorable coverage she’s received in recent weeks.

Female Democratic strategists and commentators like Alexis Grenell and politicos like Ocasio-Cortez and others began complaining in mid-March about what they believed was a lack of equal-time favorable coverage being given to Warren in comparison to Biden, Sanders, and Beto O’Rourke at a time when Biden had not even yet entered the race and at a time O’Rourke had only been in the race for a few weeks.

As the complaints continued, the media dutifully signaled that it got the message. Not long after, we started seeing Warren’s campaign and trillion-dollar policy ideas painted in flattering lights. To be fair, she’s traveled to a lot of different states to make her case, but the shift in media coverage certainly has not hurt her.

It also hasn’t hurt her that the more Sanders appears on TV for interviews, the more he comes across as the “angry old man” candidate in contrast to the rest of the field.

One thing Sanders has in his favor, however, is recent polling that suggests picking a minority candidate is not on the top of the list of priorities for Democratic voters. Rather, they’re looking for someone they believe can defeat Trump which, in their eyes, may or may not be a woman. Their base voters have been consistent on the “electability” factor going back several months now.

Of course, polling numbers tend to fluctuate wildly in the months leading up to the start of primaries, and there’s plenty of time between now and January for all candidates including Sanders to gain ground. But recent interviews and tweets indicate the pressure is starting to get to him.

— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —

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Comments

Batty ol’ Marxist Bernie is so irrelevant there’s not a single comment on this post, save moi.

Treat yerself to a pudding cup, Bernie.

He is no longer the Hillary opponent. He is back to being just another crazy old white Democrat.

2smartforlibs | June 21, 2019 at 7:51 pm

Look at the war chest these losers are accumulating. Great way to make a bucket load of cash fast.

Could never be old, failed, tired, recycled communist-socialist ideas aren’t a winning “platform”…. eh

    LeftWingLock in reply to LisaGinNZ. | June 22, 2019 at 10:00 am

    No that couldn’t be it. I think it has to do with voters being like racist or ageist or something-ist.

Bernie’s best supporters went to DJT after Hillary’s campaign so obviously stole the nomination. DJT is keeping his promises. They aren’t going back.

a “Wall Street-funded group” that had been willing to support any Democrat but him.

Or perhaps they’re just willing to support any Democrat. Which Bernie isn’t.

It is simply anti-Semitism, why else would anyone not vote for a Jew for nominee or president?

Electability is not a concern for Democrats. They firmly believe that they have never legitimately lost an election save for “voter suppression” (see Stacey Abrams and Robert O’Connor and their recent hapless claims that they actually won elections they clearly lost).

After Obama won in 2008 the Democrats’ preferred template for Presidential campaigning became (1) nominate a “first” candidate (first black, first woman, first Hispanic, first Muslim, first homosexual, etc), (2) have xim/xer run a vague, squishy, above-the-fray campaign, and (3) relentlessly demonize and dehumanize as a KKK-style bigot anyone who dares to utter even the tiniest criticism. It worked like magic in 2008 and 2012, and almost worked in 2016.

This is why neither Biden nor Sanders will be the nominee. Pushing toxic identity politics (with just a hint of genocide and race war) is the Democrats’ preferred campaign strategy. The fact that a depressing number of suburban #NeverTrump Republicans went along with this strategy in the 2018 elections means Democrats have no incentive to abandon it anytime soon.

2020 is going to be epic. If bernie were to win the democrat nomination, it would be a gift to President Donald J. Trump and the GOP. None of the other dem candidates are viable either. Duke Nuke ‘Em swalwell, Sparticus booker, America hating harris, beta hit-and-run o’rourke. I’m just hoping the GOP takes the House back and increases the margin in the Senate.

    tom_swift in reply to CKYoung. | June 22, 2019 at 9:48 am

    I’m just hoping the GOP takes the House back and increases the margin in the Senate.

    We’ll need a lot more than that. A House and Senate both controlled by the Republicans will likely be as useless as it was from 2016-18.

Maybe Democrats are tired of self-loathing white men too? It’s RACISM grandpa! Or maybe you can change your gender to female! An epiphany!

Well, you know it’s bad news for his internal polling if he even combed his hair.
When all this was starting out I said Biden wouldn’t last, he wasn’t the choice of the two factions in the National Socialist Party that are warring with each other for supremacy. Obama didn’t endorse his “BFF”. My guess is Harris is Obama’s racist/sexist pick.
Clinton is against Plugs as well.
Now we see the propaganda machine has gone all in against Plugs. He had been warned by early shots across his bow, but ignored them. The longer he stays the worse it will get for him.
Now on to Crazy Uncle Bernie. The DNC allowed him to run last time thinking he was not going to gain traction in the party. He is an outside pretender to them, and Hillary gave him traction because Hillary isn’t likeable. With Hillary not being in, at least so far, Bernie is falling flat. He is even more the old coot pull my finger uncle who is invited to the family outings because he has to be, but the kids have grown up a little and no longer want to pull his finger.
He has already had some of the propaganda machine’s warning shots across his bow with the fiscal issues of his wife and his being this poor socialist/communist who is (oops) wealthy. The machine has it’s pecking order to take out those who are not the choices of elite overlords. Biden has to be first because without doing a thing he was in first place by a large margin. And Biden is the easiest target, far too much baggage, and many know the only reason he was chosen by Obama as his running mate was to appeal to the racists in the leftists party and as impeachment protection.
Bernie was number two, and a more subtle approach to taking him out was needed. He lost some of his crazy supporters who flocked to AOC as the shiny new old leftist crazy. She will help pick who will represent the National Socialist ideology in this race. (She won’t pick the nominee, but she is too narcissistic to see it yet.)
Warren is more in line with the optics the left wants. Though she is like Hillary without so many wrinkles. She is about as likeable though.
The party is going to burn through the top two first. When Warren comes in first place she will get burned, though she has more chance of getting the nomination.
Female, black, gay, or trans is what the overlords of the party want. My guess is Harris is the real choice, but she is tanking. I think the real desire of Obama is that Michael gets drafted in, to give him, and really Jarrett, another term in office.

“It was those gol-dang clouds! Hey you clouds! Get offa my lawn!”

The bottom line Barney, is socialism sucks!

I loved this comment from the old socialist:

“There are people who would like to see somebody who was younger, and I understand that also..”

Sanders is 77. I guess at 70 Warren is a young whipper snapper?

The two of them look like relics you’d find in the archaeological collection in the Moscow Museum of Marxism.

And according to Politico centrists are congealing around Warren as the alternative to Sanders. What kind of centrists are these? Members of the central committee of the North Korean Communist Party?

She is now insisting on gay reparations, for chrissakes. There’s a real divide in the Democratic party with 54% saying the party needs to be less liberal and 41% saying it needs to be more liberal. Warren may win the nomination with her vote-buying scheme of “You get reparations, and You get reparations, and YOU get reparations,” add infinitum. That may work with the Dems. But I don’t see you win in the general election with just over forty percent of Dems while disgusting and alienating over fifty percent of the more moderate Dems (yes, there are such critters but you’d never know it what with AOC, according to the reporting above, the party’s king/queen/whatevs maker), the vast majority of independents who hate the direction the Dems want to take the country, and over 90% of Republicans who’d rather throw themselves on a grenade than see any of these train wrecks become President.

BrokeGopher | June 23, 2019 at 5:06 pm

In 2016 Bernie had the novelty of being the only socialist in the race. Now the socialist voters have at least 15 or 20 to choose from in a variety of colors and sexualities. No need to go for plain vanilla Bernie anymore.