a future to believe in

But today the Swedish Social Democratic Party is facing the opposite direction. Its international officer returned from a recent trip to America and declared Sanders too “radical.” Better to side with the billionaires. Today, the leadership of Palme’s party finds Pete Buttigieg more inspiring. For millions of Swedish socialists, however, Sanders is a role model and an icon. His contributions to the debates and his speeches are distributed on social media and taken up by celebrities. His proud embrace of the term “democratic socialism” still touches the hearts of social democrats, and everyone else who dreams of policies which aim to change the world.

Bluberi wrote:

But today the Swedish Social Democratic Party is facing the opposite direction. Its international officer returned from a recent trip to America and declared Sanders too “radical.” Better to side with the billionaires. Today, the leadership of Palme’s party finds Pete Buttigieg more inspiring. For millions of Swedish socialists, however, Sanders is a role model and an icon. His contributions to the debates and his speeches are distributed on social media and taken up by celebrities. His proud embrace of the term “democratic socialism” still touches the hearts of social democrats, and everyone else who dreams of policies which aim to change the world.

Today’s Social Democrats Should Be More Like Olof Palme

Palme is perhaps better known for the latter. Like Tony Benn, Olof Palme had come from an upper-class background and was a relatively moderate when he emerged onto the scene in the 1950s. And like Benn he was radicalized by the times, and in particular the anti-colonial and anti-war tumults of the 1960s. As Prime Minister, Palme’s internationalism was remarkable — supporting the Vietcong against the United States during the Vietnam War, condemning Franco’s regime in Spain as “goddamn murderers” for executing political prisoners and visiting Cuba in 1975, where he condemned the Batista regime and praised Cuba’s revolutionaries.

Even this wasn’t the height of the Palme government’s internationalism. Under his leadership, Sweden not only supported but funded the FMLN in El Salvador and Sandinistas in Nicaragua during their fights against the US-backed Contra militias. Most famously, it also provided funding the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. Palme was one of the world’s most vocal opponents of apartheid. When he was assassinated, ANC president Oliver Tambo wrote an incredible essay in his memory

“Joe Biden is gonna kick ass here because this is a normal place... I wonder what the incest rate is in Iowa. I bet it’s high! Really high.” — South Carolina State Senator Dick Harpootlian @NYMag https://t.co/0xRXCPOdeH

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) February 29, 2020

Jacobian Magazine wrote:In honor of Eugene V. Debs's birthday, here's Bernie Sanders's 1979 documentary on the legendary socialist and trade union leader.

Djamolidine Abdoujaparov wrote:Big Dick energy!

“Joe Biden is gonna kick ass here because this is a normal place... I wonder what the incest rate is in Iowa. I bet it’s high! Really high.” — South Carolina State Senator Dick Harpootlian @NYMag https://t.co/0xRXCPOdeH

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) February 29, 2020

...
Our data (laid out in an academic working paper here) also found what polls show: that Sanders is similarly electable to more moderate candidates. But, on closer inspection, it shows that this finding relies on some remarkable assumptions about youth turnout that past elections suggest are questionable.
[...]
Despite losing these voters to Trump, Sanders appears in our survey data to be similarly electable to the moderates, at least at first blush. Why? Mainly because 11 percent of left-leaning young people say they are undecided, would support a third-party candidate, or, most often, just would not vote if a moderate were nominated — but say they would turn out and vote for Sanders if he were nominated.

The large number of young people who say they will only vote if Sanders is nominated is just enough to offset the voters Sanders loses to Trump in the rest of the electorate. (Warren appears to lose at least as many Republicans as Sanders but does not seem to benefit from any compensating enthusiasm from young voters.)

Sanders himself has been clear that his strategy for beating Trump is to massively boost turnout, especially among young people — and young people in our data indeed say they would turn out at much higher rates for him.

But for Sanders to do as well as a moderate Democrat against Trump in November by stimulating youth turnout, his nomination would need to boost turnout of young left-leaning voters enormously — according to our data, one in six left-leaning young people who otherwise wouldn’t vote would need to turn out because Sanders was nominated. There are good reasons to doubt that Sanders’s nomination would produce a youth turnout surge this large.
[...]

There are reasons to doubt a Sanders-driven youth turnout surge of this size would materialize. First, people who promise in surveys they will vote often don’t, meaning the turnout estimates that Sanders’s electability case rests upon are probably extremely inaccurate. Second, such a turnout surge is large in comparison to other effects on turnout. For example, Sanders would need to stimulate a youth turnout boost much larger than the turnout boost Barack Obama’s presence on the ballot stimulated among black voters in 2008.

Third, Sanders’s electability case requires this 11 percentage point turnout increase among young voters in 2020 to occur on top of any turnout increase that would otherwise occur if another Democrat were nominated.

If the turnout of all age groups increases from 2016 to 2020 (as happened from 2014 to 2018), then the turnout among young people must increase by 11 percentage points above and beyond this broader trend, and must do so solely due to Sanders’s presence on the ticket. Finally, youth voter turnout doesn’t usually go up or down by nearly as much as 11 percentage points from election to election; the Sanders boost would have to be truly unprecedented.

And this enormous 11 percentage point turnout boost is only enough to make Sanders as electable as the more moderate candidates, given the other votes he loses to Trump. For him to be the most electable Democratic candidate based on his ability to inspire youth turnout, Sanders’s nomination would need to increase youth turnout by even more.

There is no way to be sure whether Sanders’s nomination would produce this historic youth turnout surge — but it seems doubtful. Turnout in the 2020 primaries so far has not exceeded 2008 levels, including among young voters. If anything, research suggests the opposite is more likely to occur: In response to an extreme Democratic nominee, Republicans could be inspired to turn out at higher rates to oppose him.
[...]

In one analysis, we disregard what voters say about whether they would vote, and use their demographics and party affiliation to infer the shape of the likely electorate. In particular, we base their guesses about who will vote on the demographics of the 2016 voting electorate instead of what people tell us about whether they will vote (and assume people who don’t list a preference will vote for their party). With this approach, Sanders trails all three leading moderate candidates in head-to-head polls against Trump.

One concern about our findings is that Republicans who say they would vote for Biden or Buttigieg might not really do so in November, after the general election campaign has heated up. After months of sustained attacks from Trump and Republicans throughout the general election, would the more moderate candidates still be more electable than Sanders?

After showing three attacks against each candidate, we find that Sanders would still need the same large youth turnout surge to overcome his deficit relative to the more moderate candidates against Trump. When we analyze the data using the same approach described above that disregards what voters say about whether they will vote, we find that, after being shown the attacks, Buttigieg, Bloomberg, and Biden still do better against Trump than Sanders does. (Warren still performs even worse than Sanders against Trump in this test. We did not include Klobuchar in this survey.)

Prediction markets have been sounding the alarm, too, as Trump’s probability of winning reelection has steadily risen as Sanders has looked increasingly likely to be the Democratic nominee.

Early polls are never a surefire guide to what will happen in an election months later. But Democrats should not be very reassured by early polls that find Sanders faring as well against Trump as the more moderate candidates: These numbers may only look decent for Sanders because they assume he will inspire a youth turnout miracle. Our survey data reveals voters of all parties moving to Trump if Sanders is nominated, a liability papered over by young voters who claim they would be inspired to vote by Sanders alone.

The gamble Democrats supporting Sanders based on his early polls against Trump must be ready to make is that, despite the evidence to the contrary, the lowest-participating segment of the electorate will turn out at remarkably high rates because Sanders is nominated.