Super Tuesday is over and the air waves are quiet. As you can imagine, I was very disappointed with the results; both with Bernie’s unexpected losses in Texas and here in New England but also when Pete And Amy precipitously threw their support to Biden along with Betto O’ Rourke. And even more when I heard that there had been a meeting of the party leaders before all that where I’m sure they pressured the moderate candidates to give their support to Biden. And Obama weighed in and Harry Reid and others. Then, in the “unkindest cut of all” Bloomberg bows out and moves to give Biden the use of his money! And now I here that the party is pressuring Warren to stay in to take votes away from Bernie. What kind of an election is this?
The Democratic voters asked for this outcome of course by voting for Biden in the first place believing that he could best defeat Trump in November. And believing that a moderate candidate was the best choice to bring the party and country together right now. I could accept all that because everyone in an election should have freedom of choice in their votes. However, how in the world did Biden win in states like Mass. and Maine where he had never even campaigned? And why did Amy and Pete capitulate before the final votes were hardly even tallied?
So I am trying to understand how elections in democracies are won exactly. Is the strategy to be as innocuous as possible so that the party bosses will unite behind you as the most manipulable candidate and therefore the best party choice? Or is there an element of fate or destiny in the forces that decide who will end up in high places and influence history. We see that hard work isn’t enough ( Warren and Sanders), and that money is not enough (Bloomberg). Charisma and the novelty of the outsider plus a fair amount of money ( about $300,000 in trump’s 2016 election) seemed to get Trump into office plus either arrogance or an enormous amount of self-esteem.
As it is, this time the election playbook looks as though it might have been stolen from one of the banana republics!
What is your opinion?
-Pat
Pat?
Would Pat be willing to give her opinion piece an identifying byline, using his or her last name as well as first name?
This analysis doesn’t hold together, if you think abo
This analysis doesn’t hold together, if you think about it. However many million Democratic voters didn’t decide how they felt about Biden (who was a fairly visible Vice President for eight years) or Bernie Sanders (who has, in a lot of ways, been the most important and visible member of the Democratic Party since his 2016 run) because Buttigieg, Klobuchar, party bosses, or anybody else told them this week who to vote for. They voted by the millions for the candidate they thought would be best — best to be President or best to beat Donald Trump. A lot of them voted for Biden. A similar number voted for Sanders. Smaller numbers voted for Bloomberg and Warren. Whether Bernie or Biden emerges with the nomination, every American of good conscience needs to help that nominee beat Donald Trump — and needs to bend their efforts for the next four years to help that candidate be a good and effective President.