Senate Going Postal: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

It's like, it doesn't make any sense. The political situations are different in important ways. The U.S. doesn't have a strong separatist party that sells rainbows and lollipops, we only have two parties that can gain national office, there is nothing like Brexit, and the PM is elected in a different way than the president. But that doesn't stop Chuck Todd.

 

It's extremely painful for me to say this. But they do have a point. Corbyn is quite obviously the British Sanders, and his devastating defeat is a terrible sign.

 

I wholeheartedly disagree. Corbyn refused to take a stand on the most pressing issue facing the voters.

Sanders - like him, love him, or leave him - would never do the same thing.

That single point of delineation is where any comparison between Corbyn and either Sanders or Warren falls dramatically short.

 

Yeah, but it really doesn't help perception that Corbyn's going around saying "I got my ideas from you" from 2017 (post-2016's Democratic Primary).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ns-corbyn-i-got-my-ideas-from-bernie-sanders/

It's not that out of line -- that the UK looking like it'd do everything to actually avoid Brexit and with a Sanders-like candidate -- for hand-wringing to immediately start here when the exact opposite happened...

 

Corbyn is not British Sanders at all and the situation isn't remotely similar.

This UK election was about Brexit. There is no defining issue like Brexit in the US. All polling showed that the Tories were going to win the election (though labour was catching up a little). The US shows a wildly different picture of Bernie winning against Trump. While it's true that Bernie and Corbyn are the left of their party, Bernie is a straight up social democrat in a country that's being more and more interested in social democracy whereas Corbyn is a hard socialist in a country that is increasingly right wing (England). As Darth_Guy mentioned, the SNP has been eating up Labour votes in Scotland (Labour's traditional base). There's no regional party like that in the US.

It's not a sign at all.

 

Tell me, Vivec, when is the last time that you supported a candidate who ended up winning?

I'll tell you my last time: ******* NEVER. I have never cheered for a winning candidate in my 10 years of political awareness. Not in US, not in Italy, not in any other country I cared about. The closest I have ever gotten to a mild satisfaction in politics has been with Tsipras, just to give you the idea.
So, you have to excuse me if when there is a meaningful reason to be pessimistic, I take it.

 

Actually, AMLO was the last time someone I supported won. But no, you're right. Electoral politics is a sham and in a truly just society you wouldn't need to have elections where ***holes get to vote in their prejudices.

 

Regarding parallels from the UK election to US, I don't exactly buy into the idea that this is a bad forecast for Bernie, because the way I see it, Corbyn's demise was that he allowed the Tories and media to paint him as an inauthentic or uncommitted populist due to his waffling on Brexit. This was an anti-establishment, populist election, and when Labour lost ground on that front they lost big time.

The year-long Brexit standoff between Corbyn and May in Parliament ruined him like it ruined her, showing that neither could create a compromise solution, nor was he the kind of fire-breathing class warrior populist the public wanted. Bernie on the other hand has consistently and clearly positioned himself as a committed populist, something I think the GOP and media will have a harder time disabusing him of than their British colleagues. However, I think the important lesson is that US media will be emboldened by how British liberals sabotaged Corbyn with antisemitism and other spurious issues. They'll want to tank Bernie the same way.

 

Do you think Americans, generally, even pay attention to UK politics? The answer is no. I know people who have never even heard of Brexit, much less Corbyn. Check out the number of Americans who post here vs the number that post in the UK thread.

Disregarding whether it’s comparable, it can’t be used as an example to sway a large number of Americans, because Americans are insular, ignorant, and don’t give a **** about UK election results.

 

If we get to draw predictions based on the UK elections, I think the increase in support for Irish reunification should be taken to mean that soon we will annex Canada and Mexico to become SUPER AMERICA.

 

I think that you are missing the point here. Nobody is claiming that Americans will base their voting to what British people do. The argument is that Corbyn's campaign was a sort of experiment of a Sanders'-like campaign, and if it failed in UK, some people make the case that it would similarly fail in US.
It does not mean that Sanders' supporters will freak out for what happened to Corbyn and move to Biden.

 

We're not annexing any ****hole countries under Trump's watch. And probably not Mexico either.

 

You just need to believe in the dream of a united island. The island of North America.

 

I think that even though people don't necessarily pay attention to a foreign country's politics they still have influence. The right-wing "populist" wave is a global phenomenon and that's not a coincidence. I think if Labour had won or at least forced another hung parliament, then that would have shown that the left was strong enough to overcome even all the obstacles that were thrown at that party by Brexit, Scottish nationalism, anti-Semitism smears, general media bias. Obviously it wasn't strong enough, but the American left doesn't face all of the same obstacles.

Also as an aside the Tories got a majority with only 43% of the vote. The Brits need proportional representation just as badly as we do. Yeesh.

 

Corbyn the British Sanders? What kind of nonsense is that?
Is it because they both have white hair?

 

That's what ultimately made me decide to vote for Bernie, after all. His principles, which he has stuck to all his life.

 

It's rather because they both advocate for an increase in government spending and a consequent improvement in publicly funded programs. I don't know what nuances in their policies make you feel that even comparing them is nonsense, but I'm pretty sure that the average voter is not deep enough to see them.

 

The point you're making isn't really...unique to those candidates.

 

If you've got Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, and you've got Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the US... Corbyn and Sanders are not the ones to compare.

 

To be fair I don't think Johnson and Trump are that comparable either.

 

Tell me that again when Trump gets reelected.

 

I honestly think the only reason they get compared is because they are both pompous and have weird hair. For one Johnson is actually intelligent.

 

Look under "populism".

 

I mean both Corbyn and Sanders are populist... Doesn't really make them that comparable.