FINAL @bpolitics/@dmregister poll of likely Democratic caucus goers: Clinton 45 percent Sanders 42 percent O'Malley 3 percent
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) January 30, 2016
The final Bloomberg/DMR poll of IA:
Trump 28, Cruz 23, Rubio 15
— Joshua Green (@JoshuaGreen) January 30, 2016
No surprises, which probably qualifies as a surprise at this point…
The @DMRegister poll can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the poll says a candidate has momentum, they get more momentum bc it says so
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) January 30, 2016
Enthusiasm gap! lol pic.twitter.com/An9tPNavyW
— Addisu Demissie (@ASDem) January 30, 2016
Women Under 45:
Sanders 48%
Clinton 33%
Women 45+
Sanders 32%
Clinton 55%https://t.co/AMDkOYxBbA
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) January 31, 2016
can’t say this enough: Bernie is polling way higher in the D primary than Trump is in the R.
— Daniel Foster (@DanFosterType) January 31, 2016
George HW Bush, 1980: 32%, 1st place. George W. Bush, 2000: 41%, 1st place. MT @samsteinhp: Jeb Bush spent $15M in Iowa and is at 2 percent
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) January 31, 2016
redshirt
If Hillary wins Iowa and NH it’s over, right?
What if Hillary wins Iowa but narrowly loses NH?
If she loses both I assume the media will make sure it’s a race, but I doubt that.
buckydoc
@redshirt Realistically, she wins under virtually any scenario. The only question is how painful the process will be.
Lamh36
IDK…but this bothers me…I mean he is neither the first cop convicted of heinous crimes, nor is he diff than any other sex defender…other than being a cop
Former Oklahoma City police officer convicted of sex crimes disappears from prison database
redshirt
@buckydoc: True. I guess I meant more how the media will treat it. They want a horse race and at this stage I assume the media will be completely pro-Bernie.
Compare and contrast 2008 and 2016:
In the runup to each Dem primary, Hillary was the supposed inevitable victor, going up against a grass roots upstart. In 2008 of course that upstart defeated her. In 2016 that seems highly unlikely but it will be a theme the media pushes.
buckydoc
@redshirt: Well, if we take as a given that Bernie wins NH, regardless of what happens in IA, I think it’s a near certainty that the punditry will declare it 2008 redux.
redshirt
@buckydoc: Most likely. An inverse 2008.
Strange that South Carolina has become the Dems true proving ground.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: This.
Belafon
@redshirt:
It’s not really that strange. Of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, which one represents the Democratic electorate more?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@redshirt: No weirder than than two of the whitest and least (at least less) urban states taking up so much of the attention of the Democratic Party for six months
buckydoc
@Belafon: The other interesting bellwether will be the first state with a sizable (organized) Latino population. I think that would be TX and CO in early March.
gf120581
@efgoldman: If Bernie loses Iowa, I consider him done. NH he should win because it’s in his backyard and always favorable to upstarts, but any momentum he gets out of that will be extinguished when he gets slaughtered in SC and what comes after. But Iowa is critical. If he can’t win there, he really can’t win anywhere else, especially given the vast majority of Democratic primaries won’t be lily-white liberal like the first two.
And no offense, but I’m kind of hoping he gets smoked on Monday, if only to enjoy the wailing of the worst of his supporters. I’d like Bernie more if many of his backers, especially on social media, aren’t some of the most obnoxious people around. And I though the PUMAs and Nader folks were bad.
gf120581
@buckydoc: What about Nevada? That comes before those, doesn’t it?
Punchy
@efgoldman: So all 6 Democrats in SC are going to vote for Hillary?
Belafon
@buckydoc: Texas currently does not have an organized voting Latino population. I don’t know about Colorado. California definitely fits the bill, though I think their primary is pretty late.
Lamh36
good night BJ…got another day of wknd work tmrw
redshirt
@Belafon: Oh, I get why. Just appreciating the irony that 1. The leading secessionist state is now one of the pivotal Democratic primaries, especially coupled with 2. It currently is one of the “Reddest” states, and 3. It’s code for the true core strength of the Democratic Party today, and that’s African Americans.
Omnes Omnibus
@Punchy: There is a significant AA population in SC, Just saying.
buckydoc
@gf120581: Fact-checking reveals you are correct, though NV has a caucus. I’d be interested to know how caucus turnout among non-native speakers predicts polling in the general.
redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus: You don’t say!
PhoenixRising
NV is caucusing. SEIU has endorsed…? Anyway, that’ll be the winnah of the first Latino-heavy (iow representative of the demographics of Dem voters in blue & swing states) caucus.
On another note, if we have to put up with the Sandernistas for another whole month I need a hobby. Maybe I’ll learn to juggle.
Mike J
@Punchy: More than twice as many dems in SC as in NH.
Belafon
@Belafon: It does look like Trump may be changing that, though. I’ve heard reports of Latinos registering to vote in large numbers. If that is true, then Trump will succeed in destroying the Republican party. Losing Texas would land a serious blow.
Mike J
@PhoenixRising:
It might depend on if they ask the culinary union.
jl
Sorry to go open thread, but I have to brag. Ha ha, bow down to me, you American football fans. I saw Superbowl City San Francisco 50 today! Bwa ha ha ha!
Well, actually, I shuffled through the free part, after a cop told me I would get to the muni station faster that way than walking all the way around.
The highlight was going through the metal detector. I also saw a bevy of very large men in blazers, slacks and loafers acting very cheerful and upbeat, I guess that was a bevy of broadcasters heading someplace. What else I saw was pretty cruddy, fuddy and duddy. Decided not to spring 35 bucks to see the other stuff.
I’m tall enough to peek over the security fences. Saw the trophy tent, and some guys dressed up as some kind of star wars troopers (?) milling around on a stage aimlessly. And what looked like some mannequins in football suits, people getting pix. I didn’t see anything that looked worth 35 bucks.
But I am the kind of football fan who has not watched a whole game in years. and recently, only watches when it is on at the laundromat. I guess I am not really a fan anymore. So, probably I was not in a mood to be impressed.
redshirt
@jl: Fuck this Superbowl.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: I am not sure your ending makes it a good brag. But good for you?
Mnemosyne
Back from Disneyland, where much fun was had by all (well, if you can count the two of us as an “all.”) It ended up being kind of a foodie weekend since we had drinks and lunch at Trader Sam’s, dinner at the Blue Bayou, and room service breakfast on our hotel balcony. Tomorrow I get to lounge around the apartment on a rainy day while G has to go to work. Too bad, so sad.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@redshirt:
WaPo is already printing even if Hillary wins it’s a lose cuz she didn’t get 100% of the vote.
liberal media bias at it’s best.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s a humble brag. I went to the farmers market at the Ferry Building to get cheap pomegranates and some weirdo exotic greens, some kind of Japanese mustard that is good for salads.
Edit: is what I typed a humble brag? I guess I should have checked first. Anyway, I saw the damn Superbowl city thing and wanted to brag about it. If were not the NFL, it would have been pathetically and hilariously lame. In NY they had a giant football player head in a helmet people could walk through or something. I was hoping for something cool like that, but didn’t have anything similar.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
IIRC, majority white Iowa and Vermont both went to Obama in the general elections of 2008 and 2012, so they’re both loyal Democratic states. I would be more annoyed if majority Republican states were getting the early slots.
buckydoc
@redshirt: The Superbowl bites this year, but… pitchers and catchers report in a mere 20 days! GOMS!
redshirt
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Just like all media was pro-Barack in late 2007, early 2008. Hell, Drudge was shilling for BHO in early 2008.
Note to Omnes, and others: It’s a ruse. A con. They are simply elevating the challenger in order to bring down the favorite, all in service, of course, of a Republican win.
Emerald
@gf120581:
The Sandernistas ARE the Nader folks. They’ve just had more time to practice since 2000.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@jl: digya see the fireworks? twitter says 15,000 firework shells were fired into the air.
redshirt
@efgoldman: Props to you. I can’t do it. I’m going for a hike instead. Fuck everything NFL until next year (and not the draft, because oh yeah the Pats don’t have a 1st round pick this year because of… reasons).
Omnes Omnibus
@redshirt: Why are you tossing me in there? Are you a dipshit or do you think I am one?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Belafon: CA is back to the traditional early June primary.
jl
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: No. I was there this afternoon. Farmer’s market closes at 2 PM.
I was going to brag about it in the Lord of the Fries thread. But, no offense to Cole, that thread did not seem dignified enough to mention Superbowl City.
redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m sure you already know the answer.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: The Blue Bayou is nice, I’ve had lunch/dinner there many times.
Omnes Omnibus
@redshirt: No, I really wait, quivering, for the answer.
James E Powell
Maybe Iowa & New Hampshire will prove me wrong wrong wrong again! but I’m expecting a split.
redshirt
@James E Powell: Me too, but I wouldn’t be overly surprised if Sanders wins both. Still doesn’t matter in electoral terms, but it will matter to the media.
redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus: You know Latin! Figure it out.
Adam L Silverman
@Lamh36: I would SWAG that he’s both being kept in solitary and they may have made an arrangement to incarcerate him in a neighboring state for his own protection. My understanding has always been that convicted and incarcerated law enforcement are kept out of the general population. In this particular case it might have been necessary to imprison him someplace far away from anyone who’s case he might have been involved with. Or, a relative of one of his victims is incarcerated in the state facility they were going to send him to, so they had to send him somewhere else to serve out his sentence.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
The Sandernistas have been screaming all day over the Times endorsement. The quote above is one of the tamer attacks.
Adam L Silverman
@buckydoc: Florida primary is March 15th.
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: When it was the leading secessionist state it was also a Democratic stronghold. Its like the circle of life or something.
Adam L Silverman
@Belafon: LULAC has been working very hard to register Hispanic Americans by capitalizing on Trump, and the rest of the GOP primary contenders, anti-immigrant/anti-Hispanic statements, positions, proposals, etc.
redshirt
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Why haven’t they cancelled their NYT subscription long before this?
Redshift
@redshirt: Most likely because they don’t actually have one.
redshirt
@Adam L Silverman: Yes but realizing our terms have 180’d. Republicans were once the radical liberals upsetting the existing social order. Democrats were slave loving oligarchs and their redneck red shirts. Fodder and the 1%. As it’s pretty much always been.
amk
@Punchy:
spoken like a clueless bernista.
jl
Good Sanders supporters should be reading The Democratic Left. They should only read the NYT in order to understand the double hermeneutic of the establishment.
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: Tracking on all of that. If you want to see how little has changed, except, perhaps, for the party affiliations, go and read the first two or three chapters of Book One of Catton’s Centennial History of the Civil War. Specifically the one (I think its chapter 2) dealing with the Democratic nominating convention. Aside from the early 1860s vernacular and phrasing, the language of Yancy and the other fire breathers is essentially the same type of rhetoric we have seen for the past eight years.
Librarian
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Yeah, we all know how much the Times just looooves the Clintons.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I’m tracking, see my response to redshirt in comment 64.@Adam L Silverman:
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
They kept using the word “revolution” all day. How is raising the minimum wage revolutionary or accomplish “major wealth redistribution”?
I mean, raising the minimum wage is good policy but it won’t put a dent into the plutocrats and oligarchs.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I read the whole, five volume one. It took several tries. He’s got so much factual material crammed in there and he writes in such a dry manner, that it was a real effort to get through. And I’m interested in the topic he’s written on. My take is if you really want to learn about the Civil War you read Catton. If you want tor read about the Civil War and feel like you’ve learned something you read Foote.
redshirt
@Adam L Silverman: I doubt these behaviors are specific to the USA or the Americas in general; human behaviors instead. Tribal behaviors, and cell phones, really explains all driving and most acts these days. Oh yeah, the Internet, also, too.
Wherever there is a Power elite that seeks to remain elite, there is no doubt an almost/just royal class that might have claim on that Power, and so they’ll compete.
Winners buy history, then hire someone to write the story.
Anoniminous
@efgoldman:
IMO, the most revolutionary of this century is the Patriot Act and it easily passed both houses.
“Revolutionary” is not necessarily “good”
redshirt
@Anoniminous: Today’s “Conservatives” are actually the “Radicals”.
WarMunchkin
@Emerald:
Nader voters were convinced that the differences between Gore and Bush were minute, wanted to vote more progressive and were complacent about the destructive power of the right-wing. That concern doesn’t exist anymore on issues other than national security and civil liberties, and nearly all non-RW voters are engaged and ready to send Trump and Cruz back into the abyss.
@efgoldman:
The supporters of a democratic socialist are going to vote for a billionaire?
Seriously guys, stop whipping yourselves up into a froth. Most Clinton supporters like her and think she’s smart; most Sanders supporters are just frustrated with the rigging of the system and want an outlet. Elections are simple.
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
I’ve been curious about this. One way of increasing the percentage share of the wealth held by regular people is a wealth transfer from the rich, which, I guess, means taxes. Minimum wage being redistributive? I mean, in that case it’s cheaper to just automate more jobs – they’re already doing this with fast food. Another way, perhaps, would be to dilute the wealth held by the wealthy. So I was thinking, maybe, large quantities of deficit spending that transfers wealth equally and directly to regular people without going through an intermediary like a construction firm.
Anoniminous
Foote considered himself a novelist. His works are more like the Icelandic Sagas than history.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I’m not a big Ken Burns’ fan and part of that is the pride of place he gave Foote, which basically snuck a bunch of the Dunning School historiography into the documentary.
redshirt
Are there robot burger flipping machines yet?
Anoniminous
@efgoldman:
Yep and they are wrong.
:-)
@redshirt:
Agree.
ETA:
@redshirt:
There are robot hamburger cookers but they automatically grill on both sides to eliminate the need to flip the patty.
Amir Khalid
@redshirt:
It’s the sort of thing I can imagine McDonald’s working on in some hidden corner of their training campus.
redshirt
@Amir Khalid: How can it not be?
A central chute delivers preformed beef patties that are pressed by the 3D burger printer, which can indeed make it your way if you tell the AI interface properly.
WarMunchkin
@redshirt:
They’re getting there. Here’s an article about automated service in a restaurant. Notably, they haven’t achieved food preparation automation yet, but that’s likely not far behind after replacing the service layer.
redshirt
Note to future Franchises: Not responsible for any future religions.
WarMunchkin
@Adam L Silverman: Since this is an open thread and I can be off-topic and derailing, I feel like you’re the type of person who might be interested in something like this article about the parallels between the Treaty of Westphalia and potential resolutions to the Middle Eastern conflict. It’s probably a little pop-Foreign-Policy, but it’s nice to read something less tabloidy.
Anoniminous
@redshirt:
The secret to good hamburgers is to cook them 90% to done and then put the patties in hot but not boiling au jus; when the order comes in finish over an open flame grill.
Adam L Silverman
@WarMunchkin: Thanks. Considering that in 2013 I wrote a cultural operations report for US Army Central’s (ARCENT) Commander’s Military Engagement Team (MET) – I had designed and oversaw the delivery of their pre-deployment certification course – on Syria’s Civil War, which specifically made the analogy that what we’re seeing in Syria is very similar to a Thirty Years type of war, I’ll give it a read.
BTW: The Director of Policy at OSD-P, who received a copy sent to her by the Director of the Army’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) who got a courtesy copy from my Commanding General, informed me that it was the best report she had seen on the Syrian Civil War. She then asked for a follow up on Iran, which I did. I did a final one in Spring 2014 on Iraq’s renewed Sectarian War and the rise of the Islamic State. Some of these you can find if you google my full name (include the initial) and USAWC. I know that the Iraq one, and one or two others of these are still posted on the USAWC outward facing site as pdfs. They put them up once I demobilized from my assignment there.
Adam L Silverman
And now to bed! G’nite all.
redshirt
@Adam L Silverman: You lead us all into oblivion.
gwangung
Electing Sanders to the presidency and not doing a damn thing about Congress is the epitome of top down change.
Dunno about you, but that don’t look like no revolution to me…..it’s the exact opposite.
Goblue72
@Emerald: Seriously? This bullshit again? Sanders core support is younger voters. Folks 18-35 – the vast majority of whom were in middle and high school (some even elementary school) during the 2000 election.
I really cannot wait for the Boomer generation to croak.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@WarMunchkin:
I have several that I deal with regularly who claim they intend to do just that.
Goblue72
@gwangung: Because electing establishment Clinton is gonna change anything?
Goblue72
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Put the crack pipe down.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Revolutionaries have long enemies lists.
David *Rafael* Koch
Mashable: The bros who love Bernie Sanders have become a sexist mob
BBC: Bernie Sanders supporters get a bad reputation online
Amir Khalid
@Goblue72:
The voice of conciliation.
amk
@Goblue72:
Great positive campaigning for Sanders. Asshole.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Voice of the People
Anne Laurie
@efgoldman:
Nah, remember, Bloomberg’s a numbers guy at heart. Mario was waiting for a sign fro the electoral muses; Mike is waiting for the proper curve on a multiaxial grid. Bloomberg pulled a reverse-Bernie, left his working-class Massachusetts roots for NYC, because he wanted to make a boatload of money and he calculated (correctly) that selling info-tools to finance ‘masters of the universe’ was the modern equivalent of those pioneering California business who got rich selling groceries to Gold Rush miners. Whenever there’s sufficient disturbance in the political force that Very Serious People start crying out for a “centrist”, Mike runs the numbers to calculate his chances of success. He figured — again, correctly — that he could buy three terms as NYC mayor. But the rules for American President are a lot different, and whenever he’s run the numbers on a presidential campaign, his odds for success haven’t been high enough for him to throw good dollars after bad.
He would like to be President — he would especially like to be president if by doing so he could keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office — but so far, nobody except the pundits desperate for A Shiny New Centrist have shown sufficient interest in having a short Jewish New York technocrat finance billionaire in the White House to make it worth Mike’s while to run an actual campaign. And I don’t see that happening before the end of March this year… although given the bad craziness already, who knows for sure?
gwangung
@Goblue72: Snicker. G’wan. You’re making me laugh. At least TRY to make think you’re being serious.
RIght now, you’re just saying you just want a symbol and no real change at all.
Anne Laurie
@WarMunchkin:
Plenty of self-professed Sandernistas have told reporters they’ll vote for Trump if they can’t vote for Bernie. I still don’t think Bloomberg will run, but if he does, won’t he be an even better vehicle for angry none-of-the-above voters than GOP candidate Trump?
My first presidential heartthrob was Shirley Chisholm, but in the first campaign I was old enough to vote, I voted for John Anderson. Carter had just taken a fresh steaming dump on women’s reproductive rights, and I figured that my state (MI) was going Democratic anyway, so I could afford a protest vote. Knowing what we all know now about Reagan, I’ve never repeated that mistake — but I can certainly imagine this year’s new young voters supporting a third-party “protest” candidate if they perceive the other choices as The Hilldebeast and God-King Candidate Cruz.
Emerald
@Goblue72: Oh he has support from plenty of boomers. I know several. And yes, they were Naderites. Hate Obama, hate the ACA. Nothing is pure enough for them. Wait for single payer and don’t care about people dying in the meantime (I’m a bit sensitive about that because the ACA literally saved my life.) Gore was the same as Bush, and Hillary is the same as the Republicans.
Bernie has lots of idealistic younger folks, yes, They’re fine. Plenty of middle aged folks on the left though. Before Bernie came along they were spending their time doing protests on street corners with about a dozen people on a good day, in full belief that they were saving the world. Once Bernie gets crushed they can go back to that. I hope.
bin Lurkin'
B-J has become a joke, I liked this place better before John’s “road to Damascus” moment, it was more honest. Y’all loathed Hillary and loved Obama in 2008, how in the hell has she changed one damn iota?
Here’s Hillary inspiring the youngs with NO WE CAN’T … EVAH!
Hillary, the naive young woman from flyover country, was hoodwinked by the vast intellect and unsurpassed rhetorical skills of C+ Augustus into voting for and vociferously urging others to vote for the worst foreign policy disaster certainly in modern American history and arguably ever. That of course is the charitable explanation of her vote, the less charitable ones make her look far, far worse.
Hilly is going to destroy the Democratic party with her abysmal judgement if she should happen to win the nomination, God help us all.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Anne Laurie: What would even be his agenda? Cut Social Security and nationalize Stop and Frisk?
Anne Laurie
@Goblue72:
See my last comment above. Those 18-35 voters are not the ones who actually voted for Nader, but in my experience, they are the ones most susceptible to casting “protest votes” because Both Sides Have FAILED Us!!!
I did that myself, in my early 20s, even though I was probably more politically sophisticated than the average first-time presidential voter — and from what I’ve seen since then, in both the news & the meatspace, at least some members of every new generation needs to learn the hard lessons by repeating the classic mistakes.
Anne Laurie
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
If I were smart enough to predict Mike Bloomberg’s theoretical campaign promises, would I be writing at this blog for free?
NobodySpecial
You know, if Sanders WAS to pull out the nomination, I have to wonder at how many Clintonites would stay home on Election Day to spite the hippies.
bin Lurkin'
@NobodySpecial: I sometimes read and occasionally post on Democratic Underground, practically all of the nastiest and loudest pro Hillary posters have now had posts from 2008 dug up where they trashed her at least as hard as the Berniebros have been doing, it’s quite bizarre and difficult to fathom.
Here is one fairly spectacular example.
Applejinx
If I wanted to vote for a rich finance candidate, I WOULD vote for Hillary.
Could still happen. I spent a bunch of money I don’t have, and worked until I was sick, to try to see to it that I didn’t have to do that sort of thing again.
Pretty sure that if Hil gets the nomination, she will swing right hard enough to startle the hell out of you, and anybody still all pumped up about her after that will be purely personality politics. She’ll out-hawk Trump, and follow through on it, and she’ll prove to Wall Street that she never really broke faith with them or meant all those hurty words, and it’ll be a lot like W: we’re gonna be seriously fucked. Hillary can be the American Thatcher.
Looks like we deserve that, though. Remains to be seen at this point.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@NobodySpecial: Name one person who has said they won’t vote for Sanders in the general? Meanwhile, the Sanders DudeBros™ are running around the intertubes screaming they won’t vote for Clinton.
Amir Khalid
@NobodySpecial:
That would depend on how many Clintonites think Sanders no better than a Republican. Not many, it would seem, judging from the commenters here. In fact, the prevailing view among Hillaristas (my preferred term) seems to be that Bernie is far better.
Frankensteinbeck
I find it very, very interesting that Clinton supporters are more enthusiastic in the poll. They’re just not screaming about it online. Shades of Obama mid-late term, there. Which leads to…
@gf120581:
Honestly, I think they’re a tiny fringe. Most of Sanders’ supporters like his simple, idealistic message, and the Naderites he’s inherited are tiny in number. They just shriek and spew bile, especially online.
@Anne Laurie:
Again, I think this is a tiny fringe, the protest voters who have never been useful to Democrats. You can always find somebody who will say something like that, and reporters love, love, LOVE some both-sides shit. ‘Bernie and Trump voters are the same’ fills that gap.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
This is all academic. If Sanders can’t win an all white, rural, farm state (that looks like Vermont) where nearly half the population openly calls themselves “Socialists”, then he really is unelectible.
Okay.
Amir Khalid
@Applejinx:
Based on what?
bin Lurkin'
@Amir Khalid: Based on Clinton will do and say anything to get elected, she wants her place in history as the first woman President, hard working white people get this.
Frankensteinbeck
@bin Lurkin’:
So, based on your own gut feeling.
If Clinton only wants to win, she’s going to talk up minorities like she has been doing. Going for the white vote will do nothing for her.
Amir Khalid
@bin Lurkin’:
No. On what does Applejinx base their belief that Hillary is further to the right than anyone knows? I am aware of nothing that she has done or said, as a public figure, to justify such a belief.
bin Lurkin'
Y’all may want to consider what this video might do if say Trump were to air it during the general, Bernie don’t play that game but Trump certainly will.
Hillary WASN’T LYING! Bosnia gunfire footage discovered…
bin Lurkin'
@Amir Khalid: You do know that the Clintons and the Bushs are best buds now, yes? Brother from another mother and all that, Hillary is an honorary Bush.
bin Lurkin'
@Frankensteinbeck: As I pointed out in an earlier post, Clinton’s judgment is truly awful, she chased the white vote before, the only reason she won’t do it this time purely out of political calculation. I doubt she takes a dump without polling on what brand of bumph to use.
Amir Khalid
@bin Lurkin’:
Tell me, do you shun your Republican friends and family?
redshirt
@bin Lurkin’: Oh dear, Hillary is Jeb by yet another name!
magurakurin
@Punchy:
This is a really dickish thing to say on a lot of levels, but probably mostly because of how fucking wrong it is.
Neither South Carolina or New Hampshire break out their voter registration roles by party but in the 2012 election there were:
767,000 in New Hampshire
2.7 million in South Carolina.
The 2012 election went this way:
South Carolina
Obama 44% Romeny 55%
New Hampshire
Obama 52% Romney 47%
Translated into voters
in New Hampshire 330,000 people voter for Obama
and in South Carolina 866,000 people voted for Obama.
So, there is every reason to expect that, yes, there are many more Democrats in South Carolina than in New Hampshire.
That many of them are African-American and that you toss them off as insignificant blips speaks volumes as to why the Sanders campaign has almost no traction among that voter demographic.
Or, maybe you are just an asshole.
Here is the real deal, though, boss. The vast majority of the people at this silly little blog who are supporting Clinton in the primary will also vote most willingly for Sanders in the general. Without reservation or hesitation. Yes, Clinton is preferred for various reasons, but if Sanders wins, all able-bodied personal will be moved to the front lines to support good ole Bernie in his quest to stop Trump.
And God willing, or the fates, or whatever, Sanders will prevail and we will all breathe a sigh of relief that Trump was defeated and the Republic spared for another four years.
But you, you’ll still be an asshole.
Kay
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
If Clinton wins Iowa, are they back in the club? I can’t keep it straight. They were good when Obama won, then bad when Sanders was closing a 50 point lead, and when Clinton wins they’ll be good again I guess.
I guess younger voters are out completely?
This is looking less and less like a “coalition” and more and more like some kind of strange referendum on the relative value of Democratic voters. I think it’s supposed to work the other way- they’re not running for election.
bin Lurkin'
@Amir Khalid: @Amir Khalid: I find most Republicans too unpleasant to spend more time with than I absolutely have to, all my Republican family have basically washed their hands of me because I refuse to allow them to browbeat me, they can’t shut up about politics and get angry at me when I show them facts to prove them wrong. As the eldest in the family I should be shown a little respect for my opinons but I get none even from people whose asses I once diapered.
bin Lurkin'
Retreating Clinton Campaign Torches Iowa Town To Slow Advance Of Sanders Volunteers
Kay
@Amir Khalid:
He thinks she’s further to the Right than she says she is. He bases that on the fact that she actually supported several things but now says she no longer supports them.
I can think of three- invasion of Iraq, NAFTA and TPP. These are not small things, not minor details. On Iraq and NAFTA she had plenty of company, but there were only 13 Senate Democrats who voted for fast track on TPP. The thing was carried by a GOP majority.
She’s overwhelmingly likely to be the nominee so in a way it doesn’t matter but it is true that she supports this stuff and then says she shouldn’t have, or didn’t really, or won’t in the future.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Kay: I. Am. Not. Voting. For. Clinton.
amk
@Kay:
“I guess younger voters are out completely? ”
It wholly depends on them, isn’t it? What with their my way or high way stand and all.
Kay
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
I don’t care who you vote for. I’m wondering why Iowa voters are great and visionary progressive leaders when they’re voting for Obama but somehow no longer pass muster when Sanders closes a 50 point gap with Clinton.
Huge rallies with young people were “the rising electorate” in 2008 and crucial to the coalition and now they can all be dismissed as not representative? Democrats have been courting the youth vote since 2004. They’ve always been college students and they’ve always been sporadic voters. Have they somehow lost value? Of course they’re not “representative”. They’re a specific group of people. Unlike people in Iowa though, Democrats will need them in every state.
bin Lurkin'
The very fact that Sanders is considered “unelectable” makes it clear that many people think there are Clinton voters who won’t vote for Sanders.
Clinton has had the advantage of inevitability so it’s been easy for her supporters to say they’ll vote for Sanders if he gets the nom. From what I’m seeing on other more mixed and active sites that dynamic is starting to change the closer together the candidates get in the polls. Sanders has been called white supremacist, sexist, gun loving tool of the NRA and and an amazing list of whacko insults by people who swear up and down they will vote for him if he gets the nomination.
Actually I suspect it’s a matter of honesty, the Bernie supporters are being honest while the Clinton supporters emulate their candidate’s lack of candor.
amk
@bin Lurkin’:
the clinton supporters are loyal to the party and are being pragmatic while the sanders supporters are the ones being stupid to the point of crossing over to the other party if they don’t get their pony.
fixed for ya.
Keith G
@Goblue72:
We have had our disagreements, but this Boomer is coming around to supporting this. Problem is, there will not be a lot of relief found in the tender mercies of the Xers (or whatever the fuck they should be called).
bin Lurkin'
@Kay: I’ve been thinking for some time now that the Democratic party power structure would rather have a Republican President over Sanders, they know how to deal in the first scenario, the second one scares the bejabbers out of them because their comfortable sinecures may be threatened.
Obama was already part of the Democratic establishment when he ran so of course enthusiasm from the youngs was good, it wasn’t threatening the establishment.
Amir Khalid
@bin Lurkin’:
Isn’t that story from The Onion?
What has this to do with anything?
Kay
@amk:
I think it’s pretty cynical for a political party to court younger voters when that political party slips with older voters, and then when they have a candidate who is ten points up with older voters all of a sudden young people are no longer necessary because the older voters are back and a 50% turnout of a certain 10% is of more value to that political party than 20% turnout of a different 10%.
bin Lurkin'
@amk: I care about the Democratic party as much as it cares for me which if you are even infinitesimally to the left of the party establishment is basically not at all.
At this point the Democrats are not as bad as the Republicans but that’s bar you would need heavy mining equipment to even find.
bin Lurkin'
@Amir Khalid: You were the one who brought up my family, if you didn’t want to know then why bother asking?
Amir Khalid
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
@Kay:
I tend to agree with David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch. If Bernie can’t win where Democratic voters are most sympathetic to him and his message, it’s hard to see him winning nationwide.
Kay
@bin Lurkin’:
I’ve been thinking for some time now that the Democratic Party power structure needs some overarching, coherent vision on economic matters, because promising to raise the minimum wage and telling people who are in college that they don’t have the skills to compete in the 21st century probably isn’t going to cut it for another cycle.
Maybe some of the highly paid strategists could ask young people what it is they find appealing about Sanders’ message? They’re following a 75 year old socialist. Why is that?
Baud
@bin Lurkin’:
Every candidate has a share of supporters who are loyal only to that canddiate and not to the party. Both Bernie and Hillary have them. The fear with Bernie, right or wrong, is that he won’t get independents in the middle and won’t be able to stand up once the media and the GOP start to attack him.
Amir Khalid
@bin Lurkin’:
I asked if you shun your Republican friends and family. You replied that they disrespect your opinions. That was not the question I asked.
bin Lurkin'
@Kay:
It’s got a lot more to do with the candidates, if young people were behind Clinton they would be welcomed with open arms.
“No matter how cynical you get it is impossible to keep up” -Lily Tomlin
Just One More Canuck
@Goblue72: Take your own advice
Baud
@Kay: What’s appealing is he’s anti-establishment, and that can’t be replicated by the establishment.
bin Lurkin'
@Amir Khalid: I answered your question and added a little detail. My Republican family shuns *me* because they can’t handle the truth.
Aren’t you in some other country? Deprogramming Republicans is damn near impossible and a lot of them simply cannot shut the fuck up about politics while simultaneously having amazingly delicate fee fees.
satby
@bin Lurkin’: No , Sanders is considered unelectable because vast majorities of this country are moderate voters who aren’t interested in a “revolution”. Clinton is presumed to have crossover appeal to women and has AA support where Sanders doesn’t. Those two demographics are needed for a Democratic win and Sanders lags there. I know how sucky those kinds of facts boomers trot out are, but there it is.
amk
@Kay:
Has clinton or any other dem has said they don’t need the young voters? They are doing their best to listen to them. So for you claim that the young voters have already been thrown under the bus is a bit disingenuous isn’t it?
bin Lurkin'
@Kay:
They won’t because of who owns them, or at least who has a long term lease on them.
Kay
@Amir Khalid:
I think Democrats are making the same mistake they made in ’14 if they ignore Sanders’ appeal. They made a conscious decision in ’14 to go with an “opportunity” message rather than a populist economic message in 2014 because the establishment members of the Party are uncomfortable with the kind of economic populism Sanders’ exemplifies. They can’t ignore it because it makes them uncomfortable.
These people no longer believe a “rising tide lifts all boats”. They haven’t see evidence of that in their own lives. The people who are now 25 entered adulthood in the worst economy in generations. They literally had a different experience and that had an effect. Democrats can’t just blithely move on without addressing that.
Amir Khalid
@bin Lurkin’:
I’m starting to suspect that it might be something about you and not so much your politics.
amk
@bin Lurkin’:
so you (and your hero sanders) are here in/with the dem party just for the votes then? and yet you claim – rather stupidly – it is the clinton voters that are being dishonest while painting your opportunistic selves are as pure as white snow?
No wonder sanders own campaign chief had to publicly beg the sandernistas to be civil and not say stupid things.
bin Lurkin'
@amk: They party is doing their best to act like the are listening to young people and other disaffecteds on the left but they really really don’t want to act on anything they might accidentally hear.
They remind me of nothing more than Steve Buscemi in 30 rock saying “How do you do fellow kids”.
bin Lurkin'
@Amir Khalid: Where did I insult you that you feel the need to descend to that level?
bin Lurkin'
@amk: We will know in literally hours who is right.
Telling that you haven’t responded to any of my points regarding Clinton’s atrociously bad judgement.
amk
@bin Lurkin’:
you sound just like a teabagger with the lefty version of poutrage. at least, the fucking teabaggers turned out to vote and made their vote count. no pol, including saint sanders, will ever a shite about taking my ball and going home idiots.
Baud
@bin Lurkin’: all we’ll know is who won iowa.
amk
@bin Lurkin’:
telling what? that you live in and poutage over the past and I don’t give a shite about that?
Applejinx
@Kay: Specifically, what I see happening is this:
The Clinton people, and Clinton herself, want VERY VERY BADLY to first get rid of Bernie, and then pretend he never happened. He becomes an un-person, never a real Democrat, representative of nothing, and when I say she swings hard to the right I mean she swings hard to the right OF BERNIE.
Does that make more sense? It’s like Kay says: the Democratic Party is more comfortable with a sort of Liberal Jeb approach. As long as you take care of the wealthy they’ll take care of you, and the world’s a very big complicated place that the peasants shouldn’t concern themselves with. Look at them, trying to vote for Trump and Sanders etc. which only proves how unserious they really are.
The Democratic party IS like this. DWS would happily have switched off Bernie’s campaign and just sat there well satisfied, had Hillary not been shrewder than that and saw the downside of unilaterally cancelling the primary and declaring her Queen. It IS a coronation: would be on the Republican side, except they’ve broken down even worse than we have.
When I say Hillary Clinton will swing hard right and try to govern much as Jeb might have done, I’m not joking nor exaggerating. Know what you’re buying. This is not hard to predict, listen to yourselves.
Who among you is ready to rant about how impossibly unrealistic and flaky Bernie’s policies are, and yet turn around and say that Hillary should take that on board? The only reason you hear her even PRETENDING to nod to any of that stuff is that she’s losing to him. The second he goes away, guess what happens?
I won’t say ‘the real Hillary stands up’ because I’m not sure that’s a thing.
I’m calling it now: Hillary pivots to try and attract disenchanted Republicans and peel what passes for moderate Republicans away from the expected Trump. She can’t do that on social issues without endangering her standing with women, blacks etc. so she will do it on economic issues.
And it will kill this country fucking dead, in an amazingly short time. We’re on the verge of more stock market and banking crashes. Bail them again and we’re not coming back.
Betty Cracker
@Keith G: I don’t know why you’ve come around to supporting such a stupid and childish pronouncement; you’re usually more sensible than that.
satby
@amk: I’m starting to think that a lot of the most vociferous online Sandernistas are either ratfuckers or the teabaggers of the left. I know people who sincerely are voting for him and his platform but they all have no real problems with Hillary either. But in cyberspace a lot of the Berniacs really hate Clinton.
bin Lurkin'
@amk: I always count personal attacks as an admission of having no better ammunition.
This blog was solidly for the black guy with the Islamic sounding name in 2008, I know it because I was here reading Clinton getting trashed regularly.
Applejinx
@satby: Is it unrealistic to say she can’t wait to swing hard to the right of Bernie? In what world is that a shocking observation?
If there’s hate, it’s over (a) being conned that it’ll be in any way different, or (b) getting told that you had better be more rightwing than Bernie if you know what’s good for you. Or possibly (c) hey look, we turned your access to your databases off, and maybe we’ll turn it back on again if we feel like it. Or maybe it’s (d): it’s all about being a Real Democrat and all that matters is if our side wins, don’t ask questions.
Hate’s a strong, hurty word. Try not to earn it, OK?
amk
@satby:
amazing how they expect the entire dem base to worship johnny come lately saint sanders without any questions or they can all go die.
Betty Cracker
@Applejinx: I think if Hillary wins, she’ll govern much as Obama has for the past seven years. I worry that she may have more interventionist instincts abroad than Obama has (Syrian no-fly zone, etc.), but she’s no Jeb Bush. She won’t try to dismantle the ACA, interfere with end-of-life care, overturn Roe vs. Wade, etc. When you rant about HRC being Bush redux, you sound like Nader circa 2000. And we all got a real-world demonstration of what a steaming load of horseshit that was.
amk
@bin Lurkin’:
you mean like “while the Clinton supporters emulate their candidate’s lack of candor ” ?
Applejinx
@Betty Cracker: Jeb Bush would never try to overturn Roe vs. Wade, or dismantle the ACA. Point taken about the Terri Schiavo thing, though, you got me there.
I agree that she wants to be more interventionist than Obama, which is one reason I see her as Thatcherish: I don’t think there’s any chance we’ll get through a first woman Presidency without major war to assert her cojones. I hate that on humanitarian grounds but in power politics terms I’m not sure she or Obama are wholly wrong about that sort of posturing: they’re presiding over a declining empire and inaction is seen as weakness.
I don’t think Hillary will want to govern more to the left economically than Obama, and that’s a primary issue for me (obviously). It’ll be fine to have a Dem president that’s not tacking hard right on social issues, and that alone could justify a nose-holding lever-pull, but both in foreign policy and macroeconomic issues, Hillary wants to tack hard right from what Bernie Sanders represents.
bin Lurkin'
@amk: Let me show you one of the Donald’s Clinton ads again.
satby
@Applejinx: you would hate me for commenting on my own observations? Well alrighty then. I embrace your hatred.
bin Lurkin'
Clinton could take one of her husband’s best lines and make electoral hay with it if anyone actually believed her..
“It’s the economy, stupid”
Elizabelle
@satby:
Yup. Agreed. I’m finding several of the NY Times Bernie supporter reader comments to be suspect. You can support Sanders without tearing Hillary to bits, but what better guise than a ratfucker posing as a Bernista? Twofer. The slime gets out there, and the Bernie supporters look mean and frothing at the mouth.
Mind you, there is a lot of genuine support for Bernie among NY Times readers. Many readers discuss issues and the economy. A lot point out how inadequate the Times coverage of candidate Sanders has been (true).
But some of the “Bernie” comments are just flat out assaults on Hillary. And most Bernie supporters are wise enough to know that we’re better off with Hillary than any Republican. Why would you tear her to bits for the general?
On the internet, no one knows you are a
dogratfucker.Kay
@Applejinx:
You see Sanders as more of a threat to Clinton than I do, which is fine- you want to win and maybe you will and you should absolutely believe you can. You could be right – I don’t have some lock on predictions.
However, because I don’t see Sanders as that big a threat I don’t believe they’re terrified of him, so I wouldn’t go along with your theory of motive.
I do think it’s absolutely true that the Democratic “establishment” is really, really uncomfortable with economic liberalism. They can’t deal with it at all. When the Washington Post feels they have to publish editorials neutralizing what I consider the minor threat of Bernie Sanders? Christ almighty. It’s over-kill.
Betty Cracker
@Applejinx: You don’t think Jeb Bush would pack the Supreme Court with as many Alitos and Scalias as he can cram in there? You don’t think that would have implications for ACA, Roe vs. Wade, Citizens United, etc.. etc.? I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that, then.
I’m on the fence with Clinton vs. Sanders. But it’s perfectly obvious to me that there is a huge gulf between either one of them and whichever hairball the GOP eventually horks up.
David *Rafael* Koch
casino
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Kay: UR just making stuff up now. Now UR making laugh.
Show me where I’ve said something negative about Iowa or young people or how they don’t count. Considering I’m young, why would I say something negative about myself.
The only thing I’ve ever said, from day one, was that Sanders would win IA & NH but wouldn’t win elsewhere because their demographics are homogeneous and populist. That’s not a knock, that’s statistics.
You know who else said that: this guy
I guess UR gonna have to add him to the enemies list.
Betty Cracker
@Kay:
That I agree with 100%, and though they make more noise about it these days in response to Sanders’ surge than they used to, they need to get on board heart and soul, hopefully before another recession comes along to wallop the already reeling working / middle classes.
Kay
@Applejinx:
I’m not doing anything in the primary, other than voting, eventually, but I think Sanders made a big mistake early on.
I don’t know why he didn’t highlight the role of the executive and a more liberal agenda. In response to “you won’t get anything thru Congress (which is also true of Clinton, BTW) I think he should have focused on what an executive can do, which is a lot.
“Personnel is policy”, as they say, and Elizabeth Warren just said it in an op ed :)
He would be hiring hundreds of people and appointments galore. He could go quite far Left just on that. Instead of “the revolution” (or in addition to) he could say “look, I’ll be a really liberal President, and the President has a ton of power, Congress or no Congress.” Clinton actually hits this aspect in her speeches.
Princess
@Kay: I agree with every word you say about this, and it is a huge elephant in the Democratic room. Whatever happens to Bernie, his voters and their concerns have to be reckoned with, preferably in a structural party-level way. I am not confident that is going to happen.
At the same time, with respect to your earlier post about Hillary’s votes, Bernie has a bunch of similar problems with old votes on different issues that are enormously important to democrats: notably on guns, and even more importantly his vote against comprehensive immigration reform in 2007. I don’t see how he could overcome that one with Latino voters. He can’t really overcome it with me, frankly.
They both wiggle away from old, unpopular votes. They are both politicians, which is fine. But it isn’t the case that one is pure as snow, while the other is dirty.
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: young people are needed. They also deserve to take a raft of shit because they are the ones who gVd ux a Republicsn congress. Fucking assholes.
Kay
@Princess:
I think he’s been downright dodgy on the gun liability vote, so I agree with you there.
I think that’s more complicated. I think a lot of people believed the Kennedy/Bush deal was a bad deal. It was my understanding that it would have protected the 12 million here but made profound changes to WHICH immigrants and countries got preferential treatment going forward and those changes were GOP/business interest priorities.
It was also my understanding that Kennedy agonized over it, and had a lot of trouble bringing Democrats on board. They thought he gave away too much to Bush because he was so desperate to fix the immediate problems for those who were here undocumented.
I saw this documentary about it. They gave the two filmmakers a lot of access. “The Senator’s Bargain” refers to Kennedy’s deal with Republicans, which was problematic for a lot of Democrats.
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: I think that’s overblown. Probably 90% of appointments for either Sanders or Clinton would be drawn from the same pool of former Obama and former Clinton appointees. Especially with a Republican Senate, nobody noticeably outside the mainstream is getting confirmed. If you want to rage on someone, hit the DSCC. They deserve it.
Princess
@Kay: You may well be right, or maybe the law would have been one of those imperfect first steps that you can work on improving. In any case, I wouldn’t want to run on his record while trying to get Latinos out to the polls, even against Trump. There was an interesting segment on (the very small number of) Latino voters in NH, in which some were saying they had no plans to vote because they didn’t feel the Dems had done anything on immigration that made me first think of this.
Matt McIrvin
@redshirt: The irony is one of the central ironies of America, really. All those things come from the same cause, which is the slave system that put a huge number of people descended from Africans in the southern US, and also begat much white racism. The Presidential primary system is one of the ways that those Southern African-Americans can have a significant voice in US politics even though most of them are effectively shut out of the presidential general-election vote.
South Carolina was, if I recall correctly, one of the states that was actually majority-black in the 19th century.
Kay
@Princess:
The general outlines of the bill were a “pivot” from Mexico and Central American countries to countries that GOP + business interests wanted more immigration from. It was a trade-off. Protect the undocumented Latinos that were here in return for a focus away from allowing more in, lawfully. Democrats would have had to explain why this “pivot” was okay or even fair to prospective Latino immigrants.
Matt McIrvin
@WarMunchkin:
If Hillary Clinton is the nominee, I think Bloomberg is a rounding error. The Sanders folks are not going to vote for him. If anything the really loud dead-enders who write the Bernie-or-nobody articles in Salon will go back to Jill Stein; many of them were the same people who were voting for Jill Stein in 2012. Another rounding error.
Where he might be a danger is more the reverse: Sanders gets the nomination, Bloomberg thinks he can actually win, and he pulls off just enough votes from the respectable totebagger crowd to throw the election to Trump or Cruz.
Kay
@Princess:
I think Democrats could start by making some effort to find out who Sanders’ supporters are.
If this hold up in the voting it’s interesting for a couple of reasons, one of which may be a Democrat can’t reach both sets of voters (affluent and less affluent) with a populist economic platform.
FlipYrWhig
@satby:
Don’t forget the paranoid idiots!
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: These are also the voters who it’s hardest to unite in a coalition with minorities. They may be the actual Sanders-or-Trump voters.
tybee
@bin Lurkin’:
that’s fairly amusing coming from you and your poor little offended fee fees
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Kay: I am shocked, shocked, that the paper owned by noted friend of labor Jeff Bezos would be against Sanders’s messages.
That said, you’re agonizing over the Democratic Party not embracing Sanders’s message when Sanders’s message amounts to “I AM ANGRY AND OUTRAGED OVER INCOME INEQUALITY.” Well, good, but if you’re coming at the king, you better not miss. And Sanders’s plans are bringing doubts from Even The Liberal Paul Krugman. Its all outrage and little substance.
If Sanders’s message was coming from someone with plans that stand up to scrutiny and someone willing to work on getting more downticket Democrats elected, I’m certain the party would be far more willing to embrace said message. All Sanders is doing is stoking up the youth and leftist vote to be angry and outraged and after that a miracle happens. Or something. I can’t blame the party if they’re not entirely enthused by this.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Agreed, but we knew that, and this particular analysis is about white voters and class.
I wonder if affluent liberal whites drop off if there’s a Bernie-like platform. The conventional wisdom alawys is less affluent whites won’t vote for Democrats. What if it’s instead that they might, but if the platform appeals to them then Democrats lose affluent whites. Flip the “What’s The Matter With Kansas?” idea and look at it from the other direction?
No one likes to talk about it but one of the reasons Obama went out of his way to NOT change anything for people who have health insurance is high turnout affluent Democrats have health insurance.
The class part of the health care debate was studiously avoided. It wasn’t all about Big Insurance. It was about Democrats keeping things the same for a group of voters they rely upon. Obama spent half his time soothing comfortable people who were afraid they would lose what they had.
dogwood
@Kay:
The fact that Sanders is fairing better among less affluent whites than Obama shouldn’t be surprising. If Democrats want the votes of less affluent whites who are attracted to populist movements, they shouldn’t nominate a black candidate. Pretending that race had or has nothing to do with this avoids the elephant in the room. I think Obama tried to win over the Harriet Christianson dems, and he certainly didn’t accuse them of racial bias, but I’m pretty sure he knew they weren’t in his primary wheelhouse. Many of them came on board after the fact because they are democrats. The problem with this demographic across the political spectrum is that too many of them are unwilling to join a political coalition that includes non-whites.
Keith G
@Betty Cracker: Maybe a bad morning pushed me into a brash over-generalization. Nonetheless, I’ve never been overly infatuated with the political beliefs of many of my age cohort since 1979 and 80 (and beyond) when so many of them embraced Reaganism.
Instead of being a firewall against retrenchment, they became enablers and abettors. And yes many were not, but way too many were.
And besides, I’m truly worn out with the political blog commenting that I’ve been reading over the last several months. So much of it seems to stem from a real perverse tribalism: Drawing lines and marking sides and the self comfort through the diminishment of others. Under circumstances such as this it’s easy to forget oneself and join in.
Since this thread seems to be experiencing death rattles, let me know if you see this.
Amir Khalid
@bin Lurkin’:
This started when you noted, with some disdain, the friendship between the Bushes and the Clintons — based, to my knowledge, on the fact that Bill and George HW Bush have been friendly terms since they travelled to Haiti together. Which they have every right to be, and which Bill may do without betraying his political ideals. I asked if you shun your Republican family and friends, to hint at that point; at which juncture you were off to the races.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
This does worry me, not just for the not-terribly-likely case of a Sanders nomination but as a longer-term concern. These are my people, a lot of my friends and coworkers and such, and they sometimes have this “socially liberal but fiscally conservative” thing going that bugs the crap out of me.
A lot of them have a visceral suspicion of labor unions that seems to have escaped any basis in reality long ago (or if there is a basis, it has to do with some anecdotal thing–getting into a fight with Teamsters over who’s going to carry a box, or being ordered to cross a picket line at a company that has, say, union truck drivers and non-union software developers, and getting spit on and yelled at by the strikers, and not pausing to consider who put them in this position in the first place).
They also still subscribe to the whole technocrat-centrist notion that partisan polarization is very bad, and what we need is for the smart people to just get in a room together and hash things out.
The interesting thing is that a lot of them actually like Bernie, nevertheless. But if he started sounding more starkly after their wallets they might be attracted to some Third Way type.
Matt McIrvin
I also think that those less-affluent whites who are now moving to support Sanders are not the same people who write the dead-ender Berniac Salon articles. The latter are the Nader/Jill Stein voters.
Kay
@dogwood:
Democrats have been losing non-affluent whites for a long time. Obama probably wasn’t the candidate to attract them, but he didn’t drive them away either.
The comparison wouldn’t be between Bernie and Obama. It would be between Bernie and someone like Kerry.
In addition, and to your point, Clinton attracted non-affluent whites vs Obama. If they’re moving towards Sanders in a Clinton v Sanders race (and I don’t know if they are- no one has voted yet) that’s interesting to me for two reasons- neither one of them are black and they both have nearly identical approaches to issues that go around around race in the D Party- justice reform, voting rights, etc.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for the pointer.
Cheers,
Scott.
James E Powell
@Princess:
Whatever happens to Bernie, his voters and their concerns have to be reckoned with, preferably in a structural party-level way.
Voters who have to be reckoned with are the ones who donate money and show up to vote. For every election, like for midterms, and for whoever is running.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Amir Khalid: Her off-hand remarks about “the Iranians” being among the enemies she’s most proud of in the first debate could certainly lead one to believe that she’s hawkish (certainly much more than Obama) in her proposed foreign policy. Things like that trouble me, but when she’s not speaking off-the-cuff she seems much more measured.
We’ll see soon enough, I think. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
DCF
@Betty Cracker:
I believe the Democratic establishment is uncomfortable with anything more than incremental change. To wit:
Hillary’s Mean Scream: “NO WE CAN’T”
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017325445
DCF
Clinton to Obama: ‘Shame on you’
This is called a ‘juxtaposition’ (2008 vs. 2016): http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017325445#post1
DCF
The Democratic Party has proven what a gutless mess it has become http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511100000
State Sen. Nina Turner crushed it on MSNBC in support of Sen. Bernie Sanders!
http://www.msnbc.com/up/watch/nina-turner-the-black-vote-should-be-earned-612763203706
J R in WV
@bin Lurkin’:
Eldest doesn’t win a tiny grain of respect from anyone, if you act like a hateful person, no matter how many baby butts you diapered. If you want respect, act respectably, try that out for a few years and see if things change.
My brother and my father were both strong republicans. Instead of yelling about politics with each other, we agreed that we would never change the other’s opinions, and except for the odd remark here or there, we were family and got along well until my father’s death. I still get along with my gun-nut Texan Bush 2004 brother.
He once said “I know Obama is your guy, but he hasn’t been good for my finances” and I replied “If you have trouble making money during a period when the stock market went from 7500 to 17000 you probably need a different investing philosophy and a new financial advisor.” That’s the only political conversation we have had in 20 years. He can still afford to take trips to Europe and cruises to Alaska with flights over Mt McKinley and train rides, etc. so Obama hasn’t trashed his finances yet.
Our dad died in hospice care on election day 2004, and my brother managed to not say a word about W Bush’s re-election. I only said how stunned I was, and went to bed.
That’s how a family behaves, with respect.
You, on the other hand seem to work hard at being an ass to everyone, whether they agree with you or not. Good luck with that family thing with the attitude that being old should earn you respect on its own.
Amir Khalid
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
We could all certainly benefit from remembering to think before we talk.
DCF
@J R in WV:
As the old saying goes, ‘…respect is something earned, not simply given…’
More than once, following a Presidential address, I have said and/or thought to myself ‘That’s my President’…voted for Obama twice, and have no regrets in hindsight…I make no bones about being a member of the ‘Warren wing’ of the American political spectrum – a tradition harkening back to the legacy of FDR….
Having said that, it is also clear that this country has missed opportunities to further itself for the sake of ‘bipartisanship’ (with Republican True Believers) and/or political expediency. Can the United States afford to continue to embrace incrementalism in the face of issues like climate change and accelerating wealth redistribution?
Obama’s true heir is Hillary Clinton. But that is a blessing for Bernie Sanders
Kim Phillips-Fein
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/31/hillary-clinton-barack-obama-bernie-sanders-us-election-2016
Amir Khalid
@DCF:
Phillips-Fein seems to assume that Hillary intends to sit on Obama’s legacy, rather than extend it where she can. She has said that she means to do the latter. This is really the same old battle between Bernistas wanting to go for the long bomb and Hillaristas talking about gaining yards at a time.
WarMunchkin
@James E Powell:
I mean at one level, sure. But that’s a small step from voters to interest groups in Washington. Something like: In order to pragmatically increment progressive goals, one has to have enough money to maintain re-election and have conservative enough candidates to get elected in swing districts. This means recruiting the support of Super PACs and appointing people friendly to people with money so they won’t run from Democrats. Personnel is policy, and if the personnel appointed are willing to go after political donors in the name of progressivism, then we won’t get re-elected and won’t be able to protect progressive goals.
DCF
@Amir Khalid:
Two things:
1) I don’t believe that I can trust HRC to stay strong/consistent in her pursuit of the ‘Obama legacy’ – let alone anything approaching progressive goals; and
2) Referring to your football analogy, I’d be encouraged if I felt HRC would seek significant yardage – a first down, if you will, on a second-and-six…in baseball terms, are we to be satisfied with repeated ‘bunts’ when a full swing could result in a single, double or even triple? No delusional home runs (grand slam?) here, but our aspirations/plans need to be greater in order to achieve more significant results….
DCF
@WarMunchkin:
And so the cycle continues – until it is broken. When – and how – will that occur if the SOSO approach (Same Old Same Old) is endlessly implemented in the vain hope that the results will somehow be different?
Amir Khalid
@DCF:
I have often asked where this distrust of Hillary, so prevalent among Bernistas, comes from — and not yet had an answer.
DCF
@WarMunchkin:
The issue of money is central here; you and I agree on that point. Citizens United must be overturned, and Federal campaign finance reform (publicly-funded candidates) made a top priority.
DCF
@Amir Khalid:
The answer is simply that HRC is a corporate-friendly politician whose expedient approach to issues promotes her tendency to ‘flip flop’ on topics of central importance to her constituency (i.e., universal health care), and refrain from supporting/implementing others (e.g., Glass-Steagal, raising the income cap on Social Security contributions, etc.).
Amir Khalid
@DCF:
And Bernie’s mouth is writing cheques his political resources can’t cash. How is he any more trustworthy?
DCF
@Amir Khalid:
I believe he has explained his plans to finance the programs he advocates:
Where does Bernie Sanders stand on the issues?
http://feelthebern.org/
https://berniesanders.com/?nosplash=true%2F
Amir Khalid
@DCF:
I’ve seen his campaign website and Hillary’s, and it seems to me that Hillary thinks through the issues more deeply than Bernie does. I’m aware that you see it differently.
Applejinx
@Matt McIrvin: I’m a Sanders folk, and I would vote for Hillary just to be voting against Bloomberg.
different-church-lady
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: At this point I’m kinda hoping Bernie doesn’t run the table — for Bernie’s sake. They’ll rip him limb from limb when all the banksters aren’t in jail and revolution hasn’t come by month nine.
different-church-lady
@WarMunchkin:
You’re correct: today they’re convinced Hillary is to the extreme right of Hitler.
different-church-lady
@Goblue72:
Me too, but I ain’t so keen on what I see replacing them either.
different-church-lady
@magurakurin: Clean cuts, each organ separate and laid out by size, no blood on the carpet… bravo on a surgical take apart.
different-church-lady
@bin Lurkin’:
Holy God, you’re an idiot.
DCF
@different-church-lady: @different-church-lady:
I believe what we’re witnessing, at this point of the campaign, is the DLC ‘hangover’ – the rejection of the ‘Republican-lite’, move to the middle initiated by Bill Clinton in 1991-92. I don’t believe that the Democratic party power structure ‘…wants a Republican President over Sanders…’, but I do believe they want a Wall Street-friendly candidate who will not significantly alter the dysfunctional MO of current politics/policies….
different-church-lady
@DCF: I believe what we’re seeing at this point in the campaign is “I’ve got student loans out my private parts and I think the 22nd Amendment ought to apply to family members” stage.