This, this, a thousand times
this. The only candidate I have less faith in winning against Trump is Buttigieg, an amoral careerist that seems like he stepped off a Super PAC assembly line and (deservedly) has zero support from the black community.
The people who are telling us that we can't go too far left because "look what happened in the UK"? They're the same people that said Clinton needed to be nominee because Sanders was too radical and beating Trump was too important to risk nominating him. You know, even though polls in the winter / spring of 2016 showed that Clinton was basically doomed if she was running against any Republican besides Trump (who she fucking lost to anyway) and that Sanders polled well against all of them. The "we can't go too extreme, winning is too important" crock spewed by establishment Democrats is bad faith nonsense that disguises their inability to accept genuine leftism as strategic pragmatism, but in my opinion, it's clear that A) a leftist candidate is the best chance at beating Trump and B) the Democrats would rather have 4 more years of Trump than a leftist President who risks dismantling the Democratic party's cronyist hierarchy and the corrupt institutions they depend on. The fact that it has been reported that Obama, who has done basically nothing except sign lucrative Netflix deals and attend corporate speaking gigs since leaving the office to the Orange nightmare,
said he would "speak out" to stop Sanders becoming the nominee if he made headway is the perfect illustration of how establishment liberals prefer fascism to socialism. If the UK election proved anything, it's not that leftist candidates lose - it's that the media and establishment institutions make it their job to ensure they do.
The people trying to spin the results there as an indicator that centrism is the way to win are either ignorant or being deliberately misleading. The whole election was voted into existence by the Lib Dems based on a spurious poll lead and guess what? They did horribly too, and their own leader is set to lose her seat. Like Clinton, Jeremy Corbyn was unpopular, and also like Clinton, Corbyn had to deal with a media that was excessively critical and negative considering his opponent. However, as much undue focus as the media placed on Clinton's email scandal compared to the ocean of unacceptable Trump represented, this was a woman who was under FBI investigation (which always had the potential to screw her but everyone in her corner just shrugged off the danger of that possibility because self-interest trumped responsibility) and she got a much fairer shake from the media than Corbyn did. Clinton had a whole lot of baggage to be picked apart, a good portion of it justifiably, but the negative media blitz against Corbyn was largely just alarmist nonsense. For the past few years the blatantly xenophobic racists that comprise the Tories have blasted Corbyn with accusations of antisemitism nonstop, one of their favorite tactics against anyone who speaks up for Palestinians, and, perhaps more significantly, the media (including outlets like The Guardian seen as generally reliable and nonpartisan) and the Lib Dems carried water for them the whole time and never questioned the obvious bad faith these accusations were made in. Brexit and Labour's soft position on the issue played a role too, of course, but it's important for us to recognize how scorched-Earth the media goes against anything legitimately left-leaning.
It's a dire time. Whatever you think of him, of all the candidates Sanders still polls best nationally against Trump and stands the best chance of beating him in areas like the Rust Belt that we need. Even more importantly, if any worthwhile society is going to survive the climate catastrophe we are watching unfold in slow-motion, if any meaningful steps are going to be taken to stop refugees from being abused and tortured and imprisoned, if we stand any chance of mitigating what is happening to our country and the world, we need radical change. We need to dis-empower capital and the plutocracy it powers, the plutocracy that keeps things from ever improving, and Sanders is the candidate I can come closest to trusting will at least
attempt this. And he's the candidate that a lot of Democratic politicians would prefer four more years of Trump to. Honestly if he somehow got the nomination I wouldn't even be surprised if rank-and-file Democratic figureheads defect and try to get the public to rally behind a third-party Bloomberg campaign. It would guarantee another term for Trump but they'd rather have that than an improved world where they don't hold the institutional stranglehold that they do now.
/rant. Sorry to vent. I just feel like we're all fucked.