There's enough of us who do care, would leave and leave permanently.

No there aren't. DSA membership is three orders of magnitude less than Democratic Party membership, despite the upswing after 2016. It already came out that the DNC was completely in the tank for Clinton in 2016, you already know they will do whatever is in their power to avoid Bernie getting the nomination, and here everyone is back for another go. Look at what happened on the Right, with the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus primarying everyone and then eventually Trumpism. It happens within the major parties because that's the only game in town.

If it was a total rat****ing, like he got over 50% and somehow got shafted out of it, then sure. In the situation I outlined, it would just be that Biden endorses Harris and releases his delegates to vote for her.

Also I can't find the figures but I would be pretty suspicious of the leverage of the socialist left in terms of where they are geographically located. I did find an article from Portland DSA when DSA hit 50,000 members saying that the Portland chapter had over 1,000 members. This is about twice as many as you would expect in the entire state of Oregon if members were evenly distributed across America. I'm not sure the Dems are quaking in their boots at the prospect of losing votes in like California and the Pacific Northwest. Remember that they all have think tanks and **** telling them that going "too far left" will earn them another McGovern, these are the ideas they're working off when assessing what will cause them electoral damage.

Furthermore, is the idea here that people weeping on election night were emotionally shattered because of their enduring and passionate love of Hillary Clinton? Uh, no. People cried on election night 2016 because the country showed it's true face by electing a transparently incompetent and unqualified imbecile strictly because the country is filled with hate. They were crying because their illusion of the US as a nation on the path to a better world was destroyed in one day. On literally the day before the election the general belief was that Clinton had a 90%+ chance of winning - people were virtually certain that their country was too good to do something so obviously stupid as elect Donald Trump. And all of that certainly, all of that opportunity for a better country, gone in an instant. That's why people cried. None of them give a **** about Hillary Clinton specifically.

Economist/Yougov poll of 1500 adults, 10-12 February.

Something to keep in mind over the next year and a half when white women called Jennifer tell you that black people hate Bernie and will never vote for him.

I feel like the current group of Democrats would all have a good chance of losing to Jeb Bush in a general election.

I’m still entirely meh about the whole thing and feel like the only thing the democrats have going for them is Trump. Hopefully that changes. I will reiterate I don’t have some special candidate in my pocket who I feel is being slighted. I am just concerned with how the Democratic Party is proceeding.

I will vote for any if them over Trump but I’m not looking at any of these candidates as strong two term candidates who can help usher in some serious change. Getting rid of Trump is extremely important to me. I am just not seeing much more right now, but there is a lot of time left.

Nah. Bernie is awesome.

Remember in 2016 when these guys were all pro-Bernie? The gaslighting is just transparent.

With the whole China / Europe antagonism and tariffs situation are we going to end up with some significant portion of big business supporting the Dem?

I watched the entirety of his 10 min announcement speech and didn't find myself disagreeing with any of it.

Bernie Sanders raises $4m in 12 hours after announcing 2020 campaign

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Sen. Sanders has officially be christened "Crazy Bernie" by Blobald Dump. I'll probably vote for Bernie now.

Watching this, her Medicare answer is extremely disappointing. Gonna lose my vote pretty quickly at this rate. She tried to say her position is no different from Bernie's, but that doesn't really seem to be true.

Warren could just say she wants something that can pass today and she will keep working toward Medicare. Her ACA 2.0 actually could pass and get a lot more people covered.

Perfect is still the enemy of the good

It's more the fact that she's actively talking about a buy-in for single payer and leading us down the same path to "you can keep your current insurance" BS that Obama got hung up on. Discussing making sure people can have healthcare "they can afford" is ridiculous.

All of that is a nonstarter for me.

ditto.

and my takeaway was also that while the US is ****ed at the moment it has such massive potential if only the right person was at the controls.

For better or worse most Americans are covered by employers and they want to keep their current insurance plans.

So is the bad.

There might be a time during the next 18 months or so that someone can explain to most Americans how moronic they are being. They want to keep their current plan because the alternative right now is nothing. Why would they if the alternative were the same or better care for free without out of pocket expenses etc etc.

Pete Buttigieg in here talking about Court Packing and getting rid of the Filibuster. For the first time I might think about supporting him!

if an alternative is twice as good if not screwed up but there is a perception that there is a 10 pct chance of a screw up most reasonably satisfied people don't want to gamble

nah

only 56% are covered by employer plans and I would guess that not nearly all of those people want to keep their current plan...

plenty of employer insurance plans are garbage that require large amounts of out of pocket spending that would be completely eliminated under a true Medicare for all plan

Donated to Bernie yesterday and set up recurring donation.

Considering matching donations to Cooperation Jackson and Black Socialists as well.

Democrats in Presidential elections are already highly vulnerable to left 3rd party candidates, and Gore lost "because of" one. We can quibble over people "permanently" leaving the party, but if the 40-30-30 scenario played out they'd have to win a nailbiter at best and would be in a lot of trouble short term. And obviously if Bernie runs 3rd party they definitely lose.

DSA membership isn't particularly relevant here; 40% of the base would feel disenfranchised, and a big enough % of them would be pissed enough that it would matter.

I also don't think people would be able to use their logic brains to distinguish the 51-25-24 case from the 45-30-25 case, if you're willing to cede the 51 case.

The perception is the thing that needs changing.

I'm all aboard the YANG train. It still seems to me that he will be running to the left of Bernie and Warren on some issues while still being liberal but in line with the other talking points (of the non-Klobuchar/Biden/Beto types) on most issues. For instance, UBI is a no brainer in my opinion yet he is the only candidate even talking about it much less supporting it.