2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumBernie Sanders, zombie candidate
from someone who knows- David Wade, who served as a key member of John Kerry's 2004 campaign, and also worked on the 2008 Obama campaign.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/2016-primary-campaign-bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-2004-lessons-kerry-dean-edwards-gephardt-213884
. . . right now, Sanders campaign is the walking dead: a zombie. And having worked for John Kerry during the slugfest of the 2004 primaries, Ive seen up close how much damage this sort of prolonged "zombie" candidacy can inflict on the eventual nomineeand whats ultimately at stake for the country.
I dont claim that the dragged-out primary made the difference in November 2004; the race came down to the wire, and big forcesincluding post-9/11 anxiety and Swift Boat smearsloomed large. But in presidential campaigns, the one resource thats never renewable is time. Zombie candidates cant win the nomination, but they squander vast amounts of time and slowly chip away at the prohibitive front-runner. . . Its an article of faith in politics that competitive primaries create stronger nominees, and I witnessed this firsthand as well. Kerry grew immensely as a candidate in the course of being tested by rivals from Dick Gephardt to Howard Dean; ditto for Barack Obama in 2008. Healthy competition is a good thing. But continuing to contest a primary after your path to victory disappears is not healthy; it actively hinders your would-be partisan ally.
Before spring began in 2004, it was clear that the process had produced a nominee. But deep into primary season, after a winning streak that knocked out most of our opponents, the campaigns of Dean, Wesley Clark and John Edwards lingered on. Even as they were on life support, their organizations took needlessly hard shots at Kerry at the same time Republicans were inundating the presumptive Democratic nominee with a daily barrage of attacks.By February 15, 2004, 16 statewide caucuses and primaries had completed, and Edwards had carried only his birth state, South Carolina. That evening, Edwards used a debate in Wisconsin to hammer Kerry on trade and spending. When Kerry, who had won 14 of the first 16 contests, started to talk about taking on President George W. Bush in the general election, Edwards pounced. Not so fast, John Kerry, he said. We got a whole group of primaries coming up, and I, for one, intend to fight. Just north of one week later, Bush gleefully made his first public speech attacking Kerry and kicked off the general election with biting television adsall while our campaign was hunkered down fighting in Super Tuesday states that we knew wouldnt be competitive in the general election. On Super Tuesday, we won nine of the 10 statesand spent plenty of money to do it. But thats what you have to do when doomed primary opponents dont accept reality. All the while, the Bush campaign publicized the Democratic attacks on Kerry; they were overjoyed to receive a liberal version of in-kind contributions to the Republican National Committee.
There was something surreal about knowing that doomed campaigns of fellow Democrats were aggressively peddling opposition research, and that candidates whose fates had been sealed were still publicly labeling their partys soon-to-be nominee as the handmaiden of special interests. We were forced to respond. We were forced to spend limited money on the airwaves, buying time to run ads that would be long forgotten by Novemberall while an incumbent Republican president stockpiled resources. We were less than four years removed from watching Ralph Nader and disaffected liberals throw an election to Bush, yet these flailing campaigns seemed incapable of resisting the danger of repeating that mistake by damaging their own standard-bearer. Political campaigns can do many things, but they cannot recover lost time.The friendly-fire attacks compounded the difficulty of responding effectively to the parallel attacks made by Republicans. . . .
In 2004, continued competition after the match was essentially over didnt improve our campaign or candidate. It hurt the Democratic Party. Kerry wouldve benefited from a decent interval to recharge his batteries, reset for the fall, and focus the campaign entirely on the Republican attack machine.Today, with Donald Trump all but guaranteed to be the Republican nominee, the general election electorate is beginning to tune in. At a time when voters could be comparing Trump and Secretary Clinton, the presumptive nominees, theyre instead seeing Clinton take shrapnel not just from the Republicans, but from Sanders.
Sanders has a stake in this. I hope he sees it. Sanders needs to think long and hard about the big cost of criticizing the now-prohibitive Democratic front-runner. He didnt set out to become Trumps best ghostwriter for the general election, but that is the role continued attacks on Clinton risk earning him.. ..
Without math or momentum on his side, isnt it better for Sanders to finish the campaign as a happy warrior and build a long-term movement for campaign finance reform? Or would he rather be remembered for damaging the Democratic standard-bearer when we have to crush Trump and win back the Senate in November? . .
Sanders has already changed the political conversation in 2016. . . . .If he is serious about creating lasting political changeand I believe he ishe should start a national movement to drive money out of politics. Sanders could harness his enormous grass-roots fundraising network and the cash it has stockpiledand can replenish repeatedlyto elect candidates from the White House to the Congress to the state and local levels who are committed to repealing Citizens United.
He could target Senate Republicans in states like New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania . . He could hold those new senators accountable and enlist them in his quest to rid big money from the political system. He could help Hillary Clinton win big and sweep in a Democratic majority in the Senate. He could become a powerful committee chairman. He could return to the next Senate as one of its most influential players.And for an Independent socialist from Vermont who started this campaign as an asterisk, thats a political revolution in itself.
Lizzie Poppet
(10,164 posts)Merryland
(1,134 posts)GreatGazoo
(3,937 posts)Millions from SuperPACs and wall street but still losing everywhere outside of the MSM bubble.
Joob
(1,065 posts)Keep up the good work!
ScreamingMeemie
(68,918 posts)...they're doing it wrong.
Hare Krishna
(58 posts)Go bother Trump and his supporters with crap if you think Clinton is the candidate. The tortoise will eventually win.
MoonRiver
(36,926 posts)Hare Krishna
(58 posts)MoonRiver
(36,926 posts)CentralCoaster
(1,163 posts)I suggest you do too, then these threads will get no attention.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)She can certainly go after Trump aggressively already.
But she and the Democratic Establishment are just itching to shed the need to seem progressive and "pivot" to the right.
She's itching to get back to the politics of personal destruction against Trump, while presenting "moderate' conservative positions, with some "socially liberal" flavoring....And close the door such pesky things as Corporate Power, Wall St. Corruption and Concentration of Wealth, Unfair Trade Policies and Universal Health Care.
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Sid
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Nice.
Sid
peace13
(11,076 posts)It looks less and less like President.
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)Armstead
(47,803 posts)DemocratSinceBirth
(99,719 posts)LexVegas
(6,121 posts)MBS
(9,688 posts)But for the sake of the Democratic party's chances in November, I hope he does so soon.
And that he takes Wade's advice to work not only to channel his efforts into a long-term national movement, but also to help with the 2016 down-ballot races, too. We need to take back Congress!
Fawke Em
(11,366 posts)Something y'all need to face up to.
Many are either young and/or liberal Independents who couldn't care less about "The Party" and will see no need to prop up a corporate-owned war hawk who is under an FBI investigation in the Fall.
peace13
(11,076 posts)What...no one told her it wouldn't be easy? It is insulting to all women when she is not treated like an equal candidate. Quit babying her.....no offense to babies!
DookDook
(166 posts)I know that one of the things that HRC is saying is that she'll be willing to release as much information about Area 51 as she is allowed.
I wish I was making all of this up.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-shostak/will-hillary-clinton-unma_b_9573640.html
So I thought from the title of the thread that Senator Sanders was going to be releasing all the information he has on Zombies or our Zombie prep plans or something. Maybe something about Golems, I know, not zombies, but still constructs that are reanimated by magic...
Smarmie Doofus
(14,498 posts)Unassailable circular logic.
And, added bonus: it provides the DEM establishment for a rationale for hanging on to control of a party, the membership of which has passed it by.
Fawke Em
(11,366 posts)tonyt53
(5,737 posts)lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)... then he needs to take his supporters to the convention to press for meaningful change in how we elect presidents, starting with getting rid of superdelegates.