Sigh, Blue Dogs:
In an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Reagan administration veteran-turned-Democratic senator from Virginia turned short-term presidential candidate Jim Webb said twice that he could not support Hillary Clinton if she won the Democratic nomination for president.
“No, I would not vote for Hillary Clinton,” said Webb.
Pressed on whether he would vote for Donald Trump, Webb said he was “not sure” but had not ruled it out.
“It’s nothing personal about Hillary Clinton, but the reason Donald Trump is getting so much support right now is not because of the, you know, ‘racists,’ etc and etc,” said Webb. “It’s because a certain group of people are seeing him as the only one who has the courage to say ‘we’ve got to clean out the stables of the American governmental system right now.’ If you’re voting for Donald Trump, you might be getting something very good or very bad. If you’re voting for Hillary Clinton, you’re going to get the same thing. Do you want the same thing?”
How do you be so wrong in just such a few short sentences. First, there absolutely is a large racial element to the Trump surge. Second, the reason people are mad at establishment gridlock is because Republicans have blocked EVERYTHING, so to reward them with voting for Trump is insanity. Finally, Trump is completely unqualified to be President.
Jim Webb is insane.
JMG
Southern white men have been dissed long enough by the presence of a non-white man in the White House! A white woman would be even worse for our fragile egos!!
Really, what a bundle of neuroses for a person with genuine accomplishments.
eric
douche is french for Jim Webb.
Luther M. Siler
“Hilljack”?
jonas
Gawd. You’re right — so much derp in so few words from Jim Webb. Trump has said f-all about reforming government. All he does is criticize his opponents as small-dicked liars, hate on Mexicans, and talk about how great and yoooge everything will be when he’s in charge. What “policies” he has outlined are business-as-usual tax cuts for millionaires and safety net slashing that will do absolutely nothing to help the downwardly-mobile white men who adore him. So, Jim, that pretty much leaves the racism as the logical reason to support Trump.
ChrisS
“the only one who has the courage to say ‘we’ve got to clean out the stables of the American governmental system right now.’ “
Says the guy that has spent the better part of his life as one of the horses’ asses in stables of the American governmental system.
eric
“a certain group of people.” I see. who might they be and what characteristics might they share? Occam’s razor: resentful, small-minded people, many of whom are racist and sexist.
MattF
Hillary Clinton is merely ‘qualified’ and ‘able’ to be President. On the other hand, Der Trump is, well, y’know…
A Ghost To Most
Fuck Jim Webb with tRump’s tiny p3n!5 !
Cermet
Webb, like most Southern DINO’s, has small hands and he knows their women folk crave bigger sticks to meet their needs; he also realizes, having been born with the short end of the stick, that he needs to attack the hated female gender since Webb suspects that they are secretly laughing at his tiny hands. Just like tRump.
Xboxershorts
I thought Bernie had a similar message. There was a very heated exchange with Chris Matthews about just that, changing the way out government functions.
Xboxershorts
And Jim Webb needs to loosen his tie every once in a while. He’s cut off a lot of blood to his brain over the years….
over_educated
guys I think we need to address this, he may take dozens of voters with him.
Baud
@Xboxershorts:
Yep. Bernie’s there for the taking if Webb’s people want the change without the bigotry. They don’t.
OGLiberal
I’ve had enough of this guy’s shtick and as long as white Protestants in Appalachia remain unrepentant racists and xenophobes, I will continue to ridicule and not like them – I don’t give a shit how much they’ve contributed to our nation’s history and how patriotic they are. Yeah, most of their ancestors weren’t slave owners but a racist is a racist. I think what was really telling was the video from back in 2008 where a bunch of white, long time Democrats in West Virginia were interviewed – proud Democrats, folks who have always been Democrats, folks who voted for every Democrat on the ticket, folks whose parents were Dems, who could never imagine being anything but….and not one of them said they would vote for Obama. Hmmm….wonder why? So, yeah, fuck Appalachia.
This guy was useful for smacking Bush down in his rebuttal to the SOTU several years ago and getting ACA passed…that’s about it.
dedc79
The Trump administration would make the Nixon, Harding, and Grant administrations look crystal clean by comparison. Anyone who expects otherwise should have their head examined.
benw
Technically true, but I notice that he doesn’t specify the percentages.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Boy, the continuing melt down of the white male ego in public is fascinating to watch. All it took was for someone other than a white male to become president, and they’ve all flipped their shit. We can see you, white males. The angry old racist white guy thing is not a good look. Why do we give a shit about what Jim Webb thinks? Anyone who calls themselves a Democrat or a progressive and would consider Trump, is neither. They’re white first and foremost.
nominus
@ChrisS: That’s probably the most enraging part of it, the assholes who think the government problem is all those other lifetime government leeches. Not him, no, he’s been trying to fix the problem his whole life.
RareSanity
So his logic is that a 50-50 crap shoot of a Trump presidency is a more attractive option than the candidate that would, for the most part, continue President Obama’s agenda (“you’re gonna get the same thing”)?
To paraphrase one of my favorite quotes from the classic, Coming to America: “I don’t know if it’s drugs he’s on, or drugs he needs”.
schrodinger's cat
He should go back to being a Republican.
Jade
I consider John Cole to be the gold standard of human beings. In spite of your minor flaws your humanity comes through very strongly. If the world had 50% more John Coles and 50% less Cruz, Rubio, and Trumps it would be a better place.
For John Cole only (not the Clinton attack dogs). I want to offer a word of caution. The divide between the Sandersnistas and the Clintonistas is starting much earlier than the PUMA revolution and is more vitriolic. The attacks are stronger and more personal. Neither candidate can win without the support of the other candidate’s followers. The Clintonistas assume everyone will fall into line. That is not what I am seeing.
Initially most people I know that are voting for Sanders were ok with voting for Clinton if she won (not me but I have long standing Clinton hatred due to NAFTA, Crime Bill, Glass-Stegall, racial comments, Clenis, Bombing Iraq, etc) . I did not vote for Bill and won’t vote for Hillary and it has nothing to do with Sanders. I made that decision before I knew who else was running.
People are deciding to vote for Jill Stein or Trump because of the personal attacks and the perceived cheating and DNC coronation. My advice (which you are not likely to take is support your candidate without attacking the other candidate. You only hurt your candidate’s chances at election (winning the primary means nothing if you don’t win the general, ask Romney).
I am shocked that the DNC is turning its back on the young to coronate Clinton. They may never get them back.
Alesis
This is easy to explain. Webb won’t dump Trump or admit there is a “large racial component” to his support because there is a “large racial component” to Jim Webb.
In fact it’s his defining political feature.
Miss Bianca
How’s the old saying go? – “With friends like this, who needs enemas?”
@Jade: or in other words, “it’s OK for me and others to spout BS about ‘your candidate’, but don’t you do the same”? ooookaayyy…whatever you say.
Linda Featheringill
I’m the person who used to be welcome on this blog and I know it. However, I have as much of a right to have an opinion as anyone else. [Defensive? Yes.]
But, the man is right. Hillary Clinton is Status Quo. She’s Establishment. She doesn’t want to disturb the upside pyramid that represents the distribution of wealth in this country. The man is right.
Linda Featheringill
?Maybe I should run away now?
FlipYrWhig
I was caught off guard because I thought “Hilljack” was John’s attempt to create the complementary insult to “Bernie Bro.”
hawestile
Someone needs to remind Webb the only reason he even became a senator is because of the George Allen “macaca” incident in 2006 when Allen mocked a young American of Indian descent at one of his rallies.
Sound familiar, Jim?
FlipYrWhig
@Linda Featheringill:
Do you have a basis for saying that? Because I’ve been hearing it a lot, especially as Bernie Sanders loses primaries, and have no idea what it’s supposed to be referring to.
scav
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: For all their preening about hunting! genes (not gathering) and “best of the best competition” blah blah & “if you were so good, then why are all the history books and science records full of the accomplishments of the white mens” droning on, any more than token counterexamples sends them into a piteous crouch of screaming ‘unfair oppression!’ and they’ll shoot the world, nation, wife and kids because their delusion of being sole and necessary provider is so precious.
dr. bloor
@Linda Featheringill: 250,000 jobs a month? Record lows for uninsured? My IRA recovered to the point where mrs. dr. bloor and I can actually entertain the idea of retiring again someday? Marriage equality? Sane SCOTUS nominations?
Fuck yeah, I’ll take some more of that.
slag
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/03/researchers-have-found-strong-evidence-that-racism-helps-the-gop-win/?tid=sm_tw
Baud
@Linda Featheringill:
You can stay or go as you wish, but I’ll gladly pull the lever for whoever the nominee is without reservation. YMMV.
JustRuss
What the hell does that even mean? And how the hell is Trump going to accomplish it? Sure, our government is far from perfect, but Trump hasn’t said squat about how he’d actually fix it, beyond yoooge, vague platitudes.
So, Hillary is just like Obama, who as we all know is the cause of all our problems in DC? FU Webb.
Davebo
@Jade:
While Hillary has long been the presumed nominee I don’t think it’s fair to say she’s been coronated nor do I ee any evidence of cheating and since you mention “perceived” cheating I assume you don’t see any either.
Right now she’s almost halfway to the number of delegates required to win the nomination and it’s a forgone conclusion she will get there barring some truly astonishing development.
I’m not going to claim those who would pick Trump or some irrelevant third party candidate over Clinton are idiots. But I do think they have very short memories.
JMG
@Jade: If you didn’t vote for Bill for any reason except not being of voting age, your credentials to speak on behalf of “youth” are as suspect as mine. Clinton-Sanders race has been a model of decorum everywhere but Internet comment threads, which I enjoy but do not believe are representative of public opinion at large.
slag
@Linda Featheringill: Hillary vs Republican tax plans: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/03/tax-plan-showdown-hillary-clinton-vs-republicans
Not a raging redistributer, but better than the rest obvs.
Felonius Monk
@schrodinger’s cat:
He should go back to being a Republican.
Baud
@JMG: Agree. This primary has been extremely mild in tenor as far as the campaigns themselves are concerned.
Shell
Fuck, the “A new broom sweeps clean” cliche has been around since…forever. And has been just as bogus.
scav
To be gender fair, the desire to shoot the world, nation, spouse and kids if one doesnn’t get one’s first choice is seemingly not limited to the male of the species.
Amir Khalid
Jim Webb must be a deeply confused man. This
doesn’t make sense, nor does it come within ten miles of an argument for Trump and against Hillary.
Davebo
@Linda Featheringill:
Why should you run away?
I haven’t seen anyone try to run you off. It’s almost as if you are trying to goad people into chastising you.
RareSanity
@Jade:
With the exception of voting to authorize the Iraq war, what does Hillary Clinton have to do with the policies pursued during Bill Clinton’s administration? She was the First Lady, not a member of Congress or administration staff.
If you just don’t like Hillary, so therefore won’t vote for her, just state that. Saying you won’t vote for her because of her husband’s record is just a rationalization.
Tenzil Kem
Webb is one of a very small number of people I have ever donated to, and I did not have a lot of extra cash in 2006. I’m grateful to him for casting George Allen out of office but this is too much. I’m very disappointed in him.
Jeffro
@JMG: So true, so true.
I was just heading over here with a link to the TPM version of this info…ah well.
As Alesis put it so well @ #22:
Let Trump…and his supporters…just keep talking all this spring and summer. I have a feeling HC and BS can handle this and point them out for who they really are.
rickstersherpa
One of the ironies of life is that Jim Webb beat George Allen (who had been “Establishment/Neo-Con” Republican favorite for the 2008 election) large part because of the “Macaca” incident which really motivated minority to come out and vote Democrat in Virginia in the 2006 election. And on racial minorities and white male patriarchy there was not much difference between Webb and Allen (there was a big difference on the Iraq war, thank you Jim Webb and that was the other reason he won). Since then he is has been nursing his white, male, Scot-Irish, resentment grudges, but here he is absolutely insane.
The Republican and Village Meme is that Hilary is dishonest. But although they casually call her a liar, they can never cite to any particular lies. That is a lie. That is not her problem. Her problem is that at times her judgment and political skills are sometimes horrible. (See Iraq; See Libya; See Mark Penn;, See Lanny Davis; See Debbie Wasserman-Schultz; See leaving the position of Secretary of State and going on a speaking tour of the Goldman Sachs of the world while thinking you might want to run for President and not realizing that could be a problem; and setting up a private e-mail account for your work as Secretary of State for obscure and obviously not well thought out reasons (if it was to frustrate FOIA requests from her political adversaries tell me how that his worked out). She may luck into the Presidency as the result of Trump Rebellion and hostile takeover of the Republican Party, but it is going to be a bumpy ride.
Chyron HR
@Jade:
Bernie lost earlier, his supporters lost their shit earlier. How is that our fault?
? Martin
Yes, he’s insane, but I wouldn’t dismiss what he’s saying too readily. Dems have something of a similar dynamic going on that hasn’t entirely played out yet. Minority voters are reliable Dems, but they don’t reliably back the Democratic policy agenda, and that disconnect is stable right up to the point that a Trump-like candidate willing to bypass the party apparatus and speak directly to voter needs gets the right attention. That could have been Sanders but I don’t think voters are desperate enough yet to give up a pretty good candidate like Clinton – Obama has delivered just enough to keep everyone on board, and Clinton is smart enough to continue that effort.
But this tendency for parties to get massively out of phase with the voters they count on is a real problem, especially when the parties are losing messaging control to social media. Someone who is legitimately good at social media (and I don’t think anyone questions that Trump is the only candidate running his own twitter account) can make an outsized impact by connecting much better with voters. Now in Trumps case that means turning every disaffected racist into a voter, but in the Dems case it could mean turning every disaffected Latino into a voter. But in either case, the party loses control and will rail against that loss of control, even if the candidate isn’t as unhinged as Trump is.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Jade:
I started off supporting Bernie, but his awful supporters drove me to Hillary. Since Tuesday my twitter and FB feeds have been all hand waving away the results from the southern states – like they don’t really count. It’s really quite amazing. Your anguished entitlement and deep grievance over *those people* voting their real grievances in larger numbers to grant more delegates to Hillary is duly noted.
slag
@Amir Khalid: Especially since all of Trump’s policy proposals are garden variety Republican brand. Such a maverick!
FlipYrWhig
@Alesis:
To be fair (?), Jim Webb also has a record of displaying profound misgivings about women.
LAO
I always, sort of promised to give Jim Webb some leeway, because even though he isn’t my kind of democrat, I appreciated his efforts to reform the criminal justice system. I’m done with that. Supporting Trump, by definition, is an serious position and shame on him for offering “cover” for those who dislike Hillary.
superpredators4hillary
Trump is like a box of chocolates. Hillary is a regifted fruitcake.
Linda Featheringill
@FlipYrWhig:
Do you mean you don’t understand her close ties with Wall Street or you don’t understand the distribution of wealth thing?
Hitless
Let’s just clarify:
Hillary is not the change you want…she won’t move the country towards a social democracy
Hillary is different than what you would get under a republican administration.
Look at the country pre-Obama with a speculative economy ready to crater, ill people without the chance to truly receive healthcare because they have a pre-existing condition. The Republicans will double down on the policies that produced that society. Say goodbye to capital gains taxes and the ability for labor to organize. And however hawkish Clinton is (and that’s issue that gives me pause), you can count on Republicans being more so. Replay what Kasich said last night is you fail to believe it.
So if Hillary is the nominee, count me as a vote. Not voting says goodbye to the gains that have been made. And however insufficient they may be, we should not pretend that losing them is acceptable.
gogol's wife
@over_educated:
You said it best!
Fair Economist
@Linda Featheringill:
Is it too much to ask that you at least read the first few sentences on her economic issues page?
LAO
@Hitless: Amen.
hueyplong
I’m just glad Webb isn’t saying this stuff from a Democratic primary debate stage, which would be tailor made for Both Sider bullshit.
Virginia is trending Democratic (or at least purple) now, so his kind of halfway house to sanity isn’t needed by Democrats anymore. He should probably just rejoin the Republican Party, a place where he’d be more at home anyway.
dr. bloor
@Jade:
I only hope St. Peter judges me by my spouse’s actions when I get to the pearly gates. It will improve my prospects substantially.
Linda Featheringill
@Davebo:
Everyone’s been very nice this morning.
gogol's wife
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh, but Trump will really be addressing that issue ASAP.
Felonius Monk
I think of Jim Webb as more of a HillJerk rather than a HillJack. But still Unrepentant in either case.
nutella
@Jade:
Unless we get a brokered convention, DNC isn’t crowning anyone. They let non-Democrat Sanders into their primary and are now waiting to see which candidate, Clinton or Sanders, gets the most support in the primaries. Your conspiracy theory is stupid. You should be getting out the vote for Sanders instead of whining about how unfair it is that it’s looking like he won’t get enough votes to win.
And if you hate HRC for the crime bill you are obligated to hate Sanders for it even more, since he voted for it and she didn’t.
(Yes, she almost certainly would have, along with pretty much every other Democrat, but since she held no elective office at the time it is a fact that Sanders voted for the crime bill and HRC did not.)
Linda Featheringill
@Hitless:
You make some good points.
Bobby Thomson
No, Jim Webb is racist. He’s better than Allen, but that’s a low bar.
VFX Lurker
@Linda Featheringill:
As noted by Richard Mayhew, Hillary intends to use existing law and executive power to get health insurance to millions in non-Medicaid expansion states. That is a massive transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor, and it can be done despite Republican obstructionism in the House.
From my perspective, Hillary will help far more people than Bernie. I will vote for Bernie this November if the voters choose him this primary season, but he’s not my preferred candidate.
FlipYrWhig
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: If Bernie Sanders were winning in the states that were likely to be close, that would at least be a data point, although the larger argument would still be suspect. But he’s not. He lost IA, NV, and VA, all of which were in the 10 closest states last time around. He won NH and CO. Of the next 10 closest states he won MN, which was 53-45 D, but lost SC and GA, which were 45-53 and 44-55. So I don’t see how there’s pattern to suggest that Sanders is winning “where it counts” or some such thing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Sorry to say, I think Webb speaks for a lot voters, and not just white males– though as shouldn’t need to be said about Webb at this point: The man is obsessed with race and tribalism. From Tea Baggers to Tote Baggers, people want simple solutions to complex problems.
Oh, horse shit. Stein maybe, some emo-progs were waiting for something they could hang their “Hillary doesn’t WANT my vote!” excuse to hang their persecution complex on. No one is voting for Trump because of any sniveling about the DNC.
raven
Oh good, I get to post his asshole comment AGAIN!
slag
@Hitless: Plus, and let’s get real here, Supreme Court.
Linda Featheringill
@Fair Economist:
How about private profit and socialized losses? Socialism for the upper crust and hard-assed capitalism for everyone else?
bupalos
@Jade: If people would just stop for a minute and think about how politics actually works, and how you actually achieve political change instead of nurturing one’s own personal conscience and feelings, it would go a looong way towards making for a better party and better world.
Clinton is NOT a principled regressive racist warmonger horrorshow with a bad worldview. She does not love war. She does not hate black people and the environment.
Clinton is a political opportunist. That is to say, Clinton is a politician.
Sorry if that’s shocking. You can use that fact to the good, or use that fact to justify throwing out babies and bathwater and getting in your rib-shot to make her rue the day she didn’t Bernie-up back in 1994 the way any “good” politician did. You’ll at least have the satisfaction of knowing that however much worse the world is when some Republican Troglodite is president than it would have been, you’ll still be eligible for the Purity Ball.
I’m rooting my butt off for Bernie. Win or lose, he is helping channel the right kind of change into the system. But followers who make their disappointment at what is probably going to be an incomplete bid more important than the tangible progress it can represent will cut the legs out of it’s value. So please reconsider that.
Humboldtblue
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
You nailed that one.
Davebo
Regarding Webb. From the West Wing.
Jade
@nutella: Hillary voted for the Iraq War, Bernie didn’t. Hillary campaigned for the crime bill. Super pedator black children who must be brought to heel campaigning.
WarMunchkin
@Jade: Nobody is turning their backs on anybody. Young votes count as much as anyone else’s votes. Young people are just as diverse as any other demographic ever, have unique opinions and views on the world.
I love Sanders. I love his message, and he says things that Democrats need to say – he tells a story that’s important for our party and our country. But you – and to be clear, not all of Sanders’ supporters, you – are so far beyond the reality based community, it is a total fucking embarrassment.
The Democrats should nominate Sanders because Sanders supporters – like yourself – are threatening to not vote? That’s stupid. That’s a temper tantrum that you’re throwing because you have the privilege to not vote and would rather see the country burn to the ground rather than use your voice to elect an imperfect person who at least believes that climate change is real. That’s fucked up. If you waste your vote, that’ll be on you, not on Democrats (both socialists and regular old lefties) who have to clean up the mess, day in and day out, caused by your yearly blackmail.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@FlipYrWhig:
The four words that can describe the states that Sanders won: “lots of white people”.
FlipYrWhig
@Linda Featheringill: Show me her “close ties to Wall Street.” I’ll wait. Then show me her reluctance to redistribute wealth.
If your “close ties to Wall Street” are THE GOLDMAN SACHS SPEECHES, I’ll show you her entire list of paid speaking engagements. You can tell me which other cases are disturbingly corrupt to you. Maybe it’s when she spoke to the National Deli-Dairy-Bakery Association and got paid the same outlandish fee?
If your “close ties to Wall Street” are the campaign contributions from Wall Street _when she was running for Senate in New York_, that basically refutes itself.
danielx
Webb is – surprise, surprise – one of those “straight-talkers” so beloved of Villagers, so long as said straight-talkers don’t get within five miles of actually exercising any power. Since the WaPo is the Villager broadsheet, I can’t say I’m shocked.
One of many things I have found amusing about the current election cycle is the tone of absolute panic/terror/rage evidenced in/on the editorial pages of the Post since the rise of He, Trump. It’s almost as if the interests of the Washington Post, most particularly its ownership and management, and the Republican Party establishment are closely aligned. (Say it ain’t so!) And Republican voters just won’t do what they’re told by their betters…
“Sire, the peasants are revolting!”
“You said it, they stink on ice.”
Linda Featheringill
@bupalos:
That’s an inherent risk of falling in love with a candidate vs falling in line. We’re Democrats. That’s what we do.
Felonius Monk
@over_educated:
I had no idea that his support was that large.
Brachiator
Trump supporters are racists who say “we’ve got to clean out the stables of the American governmental system right now.”
Deal with it.
Racists get a vote, and you can’t write them off or isolate them just because they have cooties. And, worse, you are not going to stop presumably non-racists from jumping over to Trump’s side just because you find his supporters to be unsavory.
Trump is a non-politician who has called the Republicans out on their bullshit. His supporters don’t see him as rewarding the Republicans. You can shout that there is no difference between Trump and the establishment GOP until you are blue in the face and it won’t make a damn bit of difference.
That the GOP is scared shitless by the prospect of a Trump regime should tell you something. And don’t by the bullshit that the GOP is scared of a Clinton victory if Trump goes up against her.
Fuck.. Dubya was completely unqualified. And Republicans flirted with the idea of putting Sarah Palin within a heartbeat of the presidency.
Trump is the Great White Hope of the GOP. Remember back in 2012, a Romney advisor floated the bullshit that the world would tremble at the feet of a Real White Man American President.
Trump jokes that he could have made Romney drop to his knees. This kind of shit thrills his supporters. Don’t bother them with silly little ideas about qualifications.
Webb is just a political bump. His shit is worrisome, but ultimately just more shit that the Democrats should know is coming.
gogol's wife
@Jade:
SUPREME COURT SUPREME COURT SUPREME COURT
slag
@Jade: Ummm Bernie voted for that crime bill.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Really? A whole lot of wealthy people oppose her because she wants to raise taxes. And she wants to expand Medicaid, which is an indirect but significant redistribution of wealth. And she wants tuition at (IIRC) state universities to be determined according to household income, which kind of sounds like redistribution.
I know it’s not as exciting as free college and single payer and “breaking up the banks”.
Chyron HR
@Jade:
She was just obeying Bernie, the man who voted for it. Aren’t we all supposed to obey the progressive decrees of Bernie Sanders?
Rob in CT
Sometimes people throw around “Clinton Derangement Syndrome” to charge anyone who disagrees with Hillary or distrusts her on policy grounds is just crazy (just as Republicans used to charge all liberals with BDS).
This is actual, serious CDS.
Partly it’s about Webb’s personality: he’s always wanted to be the maverick who comes riding in and sorts it all out in his own special (mostly if not entirely centrist!) way. He gets bored easily and quits. This means the both sides do it and do it equally path is easy for him. Shake things up (even if this means breaking everything! Which he flat out says!!!). Christ.
Bobby Thomson
@Jade: so sorry the other Democrats don’t want your guy. You seem to have a problem with democratic elections.
rp
@Linda Featheringill: “Ties to Wall Street” is starting to sound like “Benghazi.” It’s just word salad with no real analysis or thought.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
You mean the minutiae of Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s doings aren’t what’s going to determine the election? You’d never guess from the comment section!
Linda Featheringill
I want to say that everyone has been very nice today but I really must go now because family responsibilities are calling. Even though I’d rather stay and play on the interwebs.
Have a good day, everyone.
Baud
@Linda Featheringill: You too.
Steve from Antioch
@Miss Bianca:
Your summation of Jades post is some Mnemosyne level stupidity.
gogol's wife
@Linda Featheringill:
You too, and
SUPREME COURT SUPREME COURT SUPREME COURT
FlipYrWhig
@rp: GOLDMANGHAZI!
Bobby Thomson
@Linda Featheringill: if you think Trump is going to redistribute wealth TO people who don’t already have it, you’re as much of an idiot as Webb. No one’s telling you to leave but you can’t expect that kind of idiocy to go unchallenged.
Eric U.
I’m not sure knocking over the upside-down pyramid is exactly the right idea either. Hillary is going to play jenga with it like any other Democrat. Revolutions are great, but mostly for the top 1% that manages to survive somehow. Every once in a while we get a candidate like Sanders, and the youth collectively lose their shit when their dream candidate loses, or gets absorbed by the collective like Obama did. I don’t know how to combat this. The truth is, we need more people like Bernie at the local level so that having him at the top actually makes sense. He would get very little cooperation from Congress, we can’t seem to elect enough good democrats for that to be realistic.
Germy
More of the same thing? Thanks Obama!
US agency reaches ‘holy grail’ of battery storage
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/03/us-agency-says-has-beaten-elon-musk-gates-to-holy-grail-battery-storage
Fair Economist
@Linda Featheringill:
High Frequency Trading taxes, restrictions on shadow banking, and closing the Romney loophole mean less socialism for the upper crust. Higher wages, improved overtime rules, and a public option in cooperating states mean less hard-assing on everybody else.
Of course ALL the republicans want fewer regs on Wall Street, less taxes on the wealthy, and an end to health insurance for most irregular hourly workers.
Assuming it’s Hillary vs. a Republican in November, the choice is clear: vote Hillary if you want less “Socialism for the upper crust and hard-assed capitalism for everyone else.”
If you want MORE “Socialism for the upper crust and hard-assed capitalism for everyone else,” DON’T vote for Hillary.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
When do votes matters, and when don’t they?
Rob in CT
@Rob in CT:
Hmm, upon review, I think those of you saying this is White Guy Derangement are probably right. But tied up in that is a portion of Hillary Derangement (since she’s, you know, a she. Seeking power!).
johnnybuck
@Rob in CT: It’s about having a dick mainly.
liberal
@benw: That’s the key thing. You need to look at “risk-adjusted return.”
Even if you believe the crap about Reagan ending the Cold War, for example, it’s pretty clear that he only hastened the inevitable by a couple decades. That’s the “return”. The risk is that his aggressiveness towards the USSR almost led to the immolation of the planet (cf Able Archer, one of our front-pagers apologetics for Reagan notwithstanding). IMHO the return was hardly worth the risk (and that’s apart from whether Reagan made any difference anyway).
So, sure, it’s not impossible Trump could end up being a better president than Hillary. On the other hand, there’s a fat tail of crazy $hit he could unleash, even including a Dead Zone scenario.
gwangung
@Jade: Sanders voted for that crime bill. So did most of the Congressional Black Caucus. It was supported by a LARGE segment of the black community.
Folks should really drop that point.
Fair Economist
@FlipYrWhig:
Hillary Clinton: Agent of the sandwich industry!
Miss Bianca
@FlipYrWhig: @Linda Featheringill:
I have to say, I’m getting tired of the “ties to Wall Street” meme. I got an earful about it at the caucus last Tuesday – admittedly in the context of overall campaign reform and “get rid of big money, period!”
What did the man say? “If you can’t take their money, drink their liquor, scr*w their women, and still vote against them, you don’t belong in politics”? I trust Sec. Clinton to be able to do at least three out four – hey, possibly all four, if at least *some* of the anti-Clinton propaganda is true ; ) – handily. VERY handily.
Bobby Thomson
@RareSanity: Bill invaded Iraq? Did the Republicans change the script from Obama?
lonesomerobot
“If you’re voting for Hillary Clinton, you’re going to get the same thing.”
Unfortunately, this argument is resonating with A LOT of people. The rest of what he said is pure nonsense, though.
Bill
Repeated from an earlier thread:
The Bernie vs Hillary sniping is starting to make the comments unreadable.
Hillbots – You’re going to win. Take a goddamn breath. Not every criticism (and there are legitimate criticisms) of her warrants losing your damn mind. And all the polling data indicates the party – including Bernie supporters – are going to support her.
Bernistas – It’s over. He has no path to the nomination now. Just stop with the conspiracy theories and attempts to tear down the best hope we have to keep an insane Republican out of the White House. I’m left of Hillary too, but for fuck’s sake, there is a world of difference between her and ANY Republican.
gwangung
@Linda Featheringill: What? Don’t you at least want a “BernieBro” slam just to keep your mental balance?
Humboldtblue
@Brachiator:
Deal with what?
Trump is as far from securing the nomination as Rubio or Cruz, at most he’s garnered about 34% of the Republican primary vote and pointing out the fact that he appeals to a base of white Americans who are generally racist is to be expected, that’s a good portion of the party’s base.
Trump may be the great white hope for the GOP but he’s got a long way to go before he becomes their nominee and an even longer and steeper road to go before he gets anywhere near the White House. Rabble-rousing among white supremacists is a tried and true method to gain political power in this country, you’re not bringing anything new to the table by pointing that even racists vote.
What are we supposed to be dealing with that we aren’t already dealing with?
johnnybuck
@gwangung: Well, you know, it’s just not that convenient.
FlipYrWhig
@Eric U.:
I totally agree with this. Now, the thing is, not every local level has Bernies to elect, and most local levels never will. I get frustrated by the ongoing Team Bernie presupposition that liberals are a sleeping giant everywhere and all you need to do is say some magic words and they awaken. The Democratic Party is always going to be an amoeba-like structure that includes a lot of liberals and a lot of moderates. Which explains why pushing things leftwards is difficult–there isn’t a cabal brainwashing or buying off masses of people who otherwise would be liberals, there just aren’t as many liberals as far too many liberals want to think.
Miss Bianca
@Steve from Antioch:
Oh, great! My first insult from you! Wow, I feel like I’ve really arrived. Because, you know YOUR reasoned responses are always so thought-provoking.
liberal
@Fair Economist:
Look, you’re one of the smarter commenters here, and you really believe this bullshit that Hillary’s going to tax the truly privileged?
IMHO she’s going to continue the usual playbook: maybe fight for increased taxes on the upper middle class and the lower upper class, but really socking it to the 0.01%? LOL.
(What would that even look like? Well, for one, abolishing the distinction between capital and wage income in the tax code. Not to mention things like putting a stop to this bullshit of evading the estate tax by wrapping things in insurance.)
Baud
@lonesomerobot:
Resonating or not, the original statement is nonsense too, unless the point is to connect Hillary to Obama.
FlipYrWhig
@johnnybuck: The guy who runs the bar I was at yesterday, before the Republican debate ended up addressing this directly, proclaimed that of the remaining candidates only two had pen1ses: Trump and Hillary.
FlipYrWhig
@Fair Economist: They were obviously trying to butter her up. :P
Baud
@liberal:
Since Congress must pass tax increases, the answer is clearly “no.” Just as it is “no” for any of Bernie’s proposals.
liberal
@FlipYrWhig:
BS. The problem is that true liberals don’t have that much money at their command; faux liberals have the business community’s money.
benw
@Fair Economist: Hillary is going to take away our sandwiches and give them to Wall Street! VOTE TRUMP
lonesomerobot
The real question is whether Ted Cruz is going to survive Boogergate
Starfish
@Linda Featheringill: Stay. You represent the sane branch of the Sanders supporters, and that is a branch that needs more representation.
gwangung
@Bill:
Yeah, the hawkishness and the incrementalism critiques I can take. That really is a danger with her. So is the racist dog whistles from 2008.
But you can’t throw out her long standing relationship with the black community (which is, after all, the bare MINIMUM of how you outreach to POC communities; it’s more of a critique of other politicians that they don’t do that).
liberal
@Baud:
Yawn. You must have missed my allusion to that issue: maybe fight for.
But if trotting out tired and sad rationalizations helps you sleep better at night, carry on.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Egad: MSNBC doing breaking news about OJ Simpson. Is it 1995? Am I in my twenties again? WOO HOO
(a knife found on his former property in LA, apparently, I’ve got it muted)
Baud
@liberal: I sleep fine. And I agree that Bernie will fight for more taxes on the rich than Hillary would, and if that floats your boat, that’s a fine reason to vote for Bernie in the primary. All I care about is the general election.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lonesomerobot: True, and that’s why the Mitch McConnell/Eric Cantor block everything proposal works. Jim Webb was their target Demo.
ETA: @Baud: I, for one, can’t wait for St Bernard to start explaining to his audiences in Ohio, Illinois, New Hampshire (will he go back?) and PA: “This is why you need to go out and vote for X for Senate and Y for Congress”, not vague self-aggrandizing drivel about Mill-Yuns and Mill-Yuns and a political revolution that isn’t happening outside Mitch McConnel’s window.
Chyron HR
@liberal:
Apparently another difference is that “true liberals” don’t understand the difference between axioms and arguments.
benw
@Baud: you seem to be losing a little fire for your own campaign and starting to get Dem-curious.
Eric U.
@liberal: Bill Clinton’s big crime was raising taxes on the wealthy. I have always suspected that was one of the most successful aspects of his presidency. Not going to happen again if we don’t get more people elected to congress, but I think Hillary is just as likely to raise taxes on the wealthy as anyone else.
gwangung
@liberal: Anyone who uses “true” anything doesn’t have the nuts and bolts competence to get things done in the real world.
Not having money is a handicap, but you get around that with time and numbers. Sanders can, AND SHOULD, take over the local party mechanism. And that’s a necessary part of the game.
FlipYrWhig
@Chyron HR: I think I’ve heard of a Scot with a similar problem.
Baud
@benw: Losing American Samoa on Super Tuesday hit hard.
gwangung
@Eric U.:
Yeah, that’s more top-down magical thinking. Kinda paradoxical from folks who think they’re being part of a grassroots movement.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@lonesomerobot:
You know what else we’ll get with Hillary? The nailing down of all of Obama’s hard work to get people access to health care, to convert the grid to green energy, to justice reform, to maintaining the relationships in the world that are beginning to bear fruit like with Iran, to turning the Supreme Court into a court that will overturn Citizens United and continue to guarantee women control over their bodies. The inability for so called progressives to see beyond their own noses makes me more and more proud to call myself a liberal Democrat, because they actually are willing to get dirty if it means making progress. Progressives are best at showing up every 4 years, whining, then going home.
Baud
@Eric U.: No, no, no. Only Bill’s bad actions get ascribed to Hillary.
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: Outvote the money, then. Organize. Conservatives did it.
japa21
I am having some identity issues. For 68 years I have considered myself a white male. Yet I enthusiastically supported and voted for a black man twice. And I will enthusiastically support and vote for a woman this November. Have I been wrong in my self identification all these years?
Baud
@gwangung:
Interestingly, I’ve heard that Sanders has raised a ton more money than Hillary. Unless Hillary’s Super PACs are doing a bang up job (and, if so, I haven’t heard about it), or she so far is doing more with less.
Linnaeus
I’d venture that the Jim Webbs of the Democratic Party are 1) more numerous and 2) a thornier problem than any Berniebro.
Baud
@japa21: You are just above average.
Statistics are what they are.
Baud
@Linnaeus: I agree. They are the main reason the Dems aren’t leftier than they currently are IMHO.
Raven Onthill
@RareSanity: Hillary Clinton worked on the policies of William Clinton’s administration, and often claims responsibility for them.
Fair Economist
@liberal:
Heck yes. Both the Clintons have always been really good about keeping campaign promises. All the things people complain about Bill doing? They were what he campaigned on – no surprises. Actually, as I’ve pointed out repeatedly ALL presidents have been pretty good about keeping campaign promises since Bush got burnt for going back on his “No New Taxes” promises. *Whomever* you elect president, expect them to follow through to the best of their abilities.
On top of that the things she wants to tax – the fake charity loophole, High Frequency Trading – are just outrageous things that anybody would wan to close if they didn’t benefit personally.
Linnaeus
@Baud:
Clinton also has advantages and connections (and I don’t mean this pejoratively) that she’s been cultivating for many years now, and she is maximizing the benefit of those.
hueyplong
I actually want “more of the same” from a Democratic White House. What I want fewer of is obstructionist Republicans.
These concepts don’t seem too overly nuanced to follow.
Betty Cracker
@bupalos:
Amen to that and your entire comment — well said.
@Brachiator:
Sure we can. Fuck them. We don’t want their fucking votes. And guess what? We don’t need them. Don’t believe me? See 2008 and 2012.
FlipYrWhig
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: The pattern is fun to observe. Complain that Democrats aren’t liberal enough despite their liberal base, declare that the illiberal not-true Democrats (THE ESTABLISHMENT) are warping the process, and thereby absolve yourself from having to explain why if the base is true Democrats who are liberal that the liberals don’t prevail. It’s self-reinforcing.
It also reminds me of Homer Simpson shooing away the bees from his sugar pile and then saying “Ow! They’re defending themselves somehow!”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: The justification for the Great Culling at MSNBC was that they were going to go back to “hard news”* during the day. They are now breaking from talking-head CW-spewing for the first time in several weeks, maybe months?, to give live coverage of the microphones that will at some point be used by the LAPD to give an update on a twenty year old celebrity murder case (not to minimize what happened, but this isn’t about the victims) and show clips of OJ pretending to try on gloves over and over again.
*and yes, I know it was about paying fewer people for bad ratings.
Baud
@Linnaeus: Absolutely. And I also consider that a plus in a candidate running for president. Obama actually had the best mix of popular support and connections, but it’s hard to match that.
JPL
@rp: Thanks for pointing that out. When everyone does good, wall street does good. Hillary’s tax plan, certainly doesn’t benefit the one percent. I would think it important to mention that.
lonesomerobot
@Baud: Although I’m sure there could be some connecting it to Obama, I think the “anger and frustration” vote has accumulated from more than just the last 8 years. I view it as a far more general statement that sums up the last 30 years of politics in America. Clinton Derangement Syndrome has certainly been around for almost that long, and despite how much we can state the truth, most Americans (with a huge assist to our media) don’t really pay attention to who is causing the problem. They just know there’s a problem, and that problem has to do with always “getting the same thing.” And they want the problem gone. It is nonsense, but that is apparently where a lot of people are right now.
But part of the same thing is that so few Americans actually vote. One of the most spot-on things Obama ever said was, “if 99% of the people voted, what the 1% did wouldn’t matter.” And he’s completely correct.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@japa21:
Just curious – do you know a lot of white men like you? I’m from the boomer generation, and I’m shocked at how many of the liberal guys I knew from my younger days in the 70s and 80s are struggling with the changing world, and by struggling I mean clinging to their white male privilege like a life raft.
scav
Personal Love is all very well, the sparkles in our netherbits, the visions of a cloud-filled dreamy ever after, but marriage / partnership and governing isn’t all just about the sparkles and valentines addressed solely to you and your thrill in the finding something in the mailbox. To switch unexpectedly mid-megaphore, sometimes there’s just no damn icecream, there’s only stewed spinach or Gerber’s Tire Irons and Anthrax. Throwing Cheerios and whining about sweet sweet doilies seems, well, figure it out.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Please to explain. I’m not familiar with this.
Raven Onthill
@FlipYrWhig: Show me her “close ties to Wall Street.”
Does her son-in-law count?
Ba-da-bum!
Also, of course, all those campaign contributions.
For me, Hillary Clinton is a compromised candidate. All those racist dogwhistles back in the 1990s. Welfare reform. (Which kills, by the way.) Kissinger.
I may end up voting for her, but it’s going to be hard.
Kay
I do think this is a problem, though:
I don’t think Democrats should spend so much time on income transfer policy- Medicaid, college for low income people, increasing the earned income tax credit- in campaigns. They can do these things but they need to reach people on the value of the work that people already do, and that’s wages and hours and overtime. Income transfer is so top-down and it sets up such a distance between the politician and the working person. I think lower income people hear it as “what you do has very little value and I have all this power and I’m benevolent so I’ll push some federal money down to you”. In a weird way it leaves the person out of the equation. It’s all either aspirational or remedial for low income and working class people- “opportunity!” or “here, take this, I know it sucks to be you”. If the number one rule is talk to people about where they are we have this huge gap regarding their reality. Most people work, or want to work. Most people take some measure of pride in whatever they do for work. Talk about that. It makes them more equal, narrows the yawning divide.
lonesomerobot
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: And you can certainly direct those comments to Jim Webb if you’d like, I was only making an observation, thank you.
I suppose I did forget my disclaimer, though. I so wanted to not have to need it. Hopefully you understand.
*DISCLAIMER: Any statement made by the commenter known as “lonesomerobot” should be read with the foreknowledge that “lonesomerobot” will be voting for the Democratic nominee, regardless of who that happens to be. The intent of the comment is to make honest observations about political subjects, and not to bash any particular candidate or idea.
Reply
Matt McIrvin
The big panic meme being passed around now is a comparison from MSNBC of Democratic and Republican turnout from Super Tuesday 2008 (when about 5 million Republicans and about 8 million Democrats turned out) and Super Tuesday 2016 (almost exactly the reverse), purporting to show Democratic DOOOOOM from cratering enthusiasm.
It’s remarkably stupid. I bothered to look up the maps. Super Tuesday 2008 was a gigantic event involving 21 states, including California, New York and New Jersey. There were more Democrats than Republicans in the states that participated. Super Tuesday 2016 involved 7 deep-red states including Texas, and 3 deep-blue states of which the largest by far was Massachusetts, and two swing states. The only swing state that had both a D and an R primary was Virginia, and there, the Republican primary was an excitingly close race and the D primary was a blowout.
I think it’s extremely likely that Donald Trump is driving high turnout. But if you compare his actual vote totals to the pre-election polling, they match up pretty closely, which suggests that he’s enhancing turnout of the people voting against him just as much as of the people voting for him. It’s hard for me to imagine that not happening in the general election. It’s not as if Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are tremendously more exciting than Hillary Clinton.
Fair Economist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The key to Romney’s extra-low tax rate is donations to his family charity. These are deductible donations. However, there’s few restrictions on how the money is used (it’s easily routed to pay for “fact-finding trips” aka vacations, etc.) and worse the money can be clawed back after 20 years or so. So, basically, fake – they don’t pay taxes and they can still use the money, as long as they’re patient.
Bobby Thomson
@Fair Economist: I also am in the pocket of Big Sandwich.
benw
@Baud: I know exactly how you feel. I lost a box of Samoas once and all I had left were some of those plain Trefoils.
Raven Onthill
@bupalos: “Clinton is a political opportunist. That is to say, Clinton is a politician.”
She’s an awfully compromised pol, though.
Look, I get that one has to make deals to get things done in politics. But she’s made some awfully dirty ones.
Baud
@lonesomerobot:
With the exception of the brief period at the end of Bush II, many Americans since Nixon have “known” that the problem is Democrats and the people we represent. If Dems do end up nominating Sanders, I’m doubtful he will be successful in overcoming that prejudice.
ruemara
@Linda Featheringill: yes, you should. Because the status quo has been saving lives through the ACA, jobs have grown, pay has grown. So, despite my respect for you, gtfo that a fucking bigot in a time when POC are dying from police and when women are losing their right to choose and when the voting rights act is near decimated; fuck the entire fuck off with that. Your hatred is blinding you. Hillary is not a monster and she isn’t evil. To even begin to side with the fuckery of what Webb said because you have a personal animus against Clinton, you need a moment to step back and consider what you just said.
Christ, people. Webb is less granola Sanders. Your dislike of HILLARY CLINTON IS NOT ENOUGH OF A RFEASON TO COSIGN THIS GARBAGE. What in the ever loving fuck is going on within progressives?
gwangung
@Raven Onthill:
Part of that was a tax increase, right?
@Linnaeus:
Yup. And folks slightly less extreme than that.
A lot of the more liberal folks complain about blue dog Dems, but they forget THEY ARE PART OF THE PARTY, TOO. We have to take them into account, too (and they, us). Dismissing them as being of no account is really a mistake on the part of people.
Linnaeus
@Kay:
I agree with this – or at least the spirit of it. Democrats focus a lot of effort (rightly) on post-tax policies, but I think they could shift some more of that effort to pre-tax measures.
Rob in CT
Nice argument from incredulity, but she’s actually released a tax plan that does that. Specifically: increased capital gains taxes and estate taxes (the two things you mentioned!). Christ.
gwangung
@Raven Onthill:
Which, are mostly from rank and file employees, aren’t they? Which you’d expect from a company based in New York.
Cacti
@RareSanity:
And a pretty damned sexist one at that, unless all of the male candidates are held equally responsible for everything their spouses have done.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: Thanks for that analysis. I’m somewhat concerned about the turnout figures, but a couple of things give me a little comfort. First, the GOP figures are always compared to 2008, but 2008 happened at the end of W’s term, when the GOP was as dispirited as they probably had been since Watergate. Second, despite the Internet fighting, I’m just not sure how many Dems really think (perhaps falsely) that the Dem race is competitive. (I consider it competitive, but I’m risk averse in that way.)
hamletta
Guys, I know the BernieBros are annoying, but it’s important to not judge the candidate when he’s not encouraging their bullshit, unlike Trump.
I was a Dean supporter in 2004, and we had a small cadre of Deaniacs that went around the Web being assholes to everybody. They embarrassed the hell out of us sane people, and IIRC, the campaign even had to put up a blog post reminding everybody to be civil.
I’m still not voting for Sanders myself, but that’s because I think he’d make a lousy president.
Linnaeus
@lonesomerobot:
Is your disclaimer copyrighted?
Fair Economist
@Raven Onthill:
Are you aware his mother sacrificed her political career to pass Clinton’s tax increase on the wealthy and unearned income?
Linnaeus
@ruemara:
I gotta disagree here. Whatever flaws Sanders has as a candidate (and there are several), I much prefer having him in the Democratic race than Webb.
Archon
@Raven Onthill:
25 years ago was a different time, Democrats were on the defensive on all fronts, especially those tied to race. The 85 percent of black people supporting Clinton in these primaries suggest they recognize that times have changed and that Hillary Clinton is about as progressive of a national candidate your will ever see on racial issues.
kindness
Maybe Webb played football too much as a youth and all those concussions are coming back to haunt him. Fuck him, no matter. I remember KOS even pulling for him when he ran for the Senate. And to what avail? Decide he doesn’t like the job and not run again except now against actual Democrats for President.
Waaaambulance Jimmy?
John M. Burt
@scav:
True, but like being a serial killer or a Republican Presidential candidate, it almost completely is.
Keith G
@? Martin:
This is quite a good view of an oncoming issue that will challenge the Democratic Party. There have been several good analysis pieces outlining this.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@FlipYrWhig:
Fixt for accuracy.
justawriter
This is what comes of pampering the Zell Millers and Joe Liarmans (sic) of the world by giving them leadership positions instead of putting them on the subcommittee on postal stamp designs when they go on the teevee saying stupid shit. Webb still thinks there is a constituency for his bullshit beyond K-Street where he is lavished with praise and money. We have to start cutting these assholes off at the knees by taking away their perceived authority and influence so their actual influence of hoovering money out of lobbyists is reduced as well.
I doubt anyone beyond our fearless leader here will bother calling out Webb on this because it will cut into their 48th repetition of why Bernie’s math is wrong.
Chyron HR
@Raven Onthill:
Of course he does–all women should be judged by the men in their lives. What do you think they are, PEOPLE or something?
Kay
@Linnaeus:
I think of it as “talking about the earned income tax credit” as a shortcut, a proxy for this whole thing, and I turned on the radio yesterday morning and there were the liberal policymakers, talking about expanding the earned income tax credit. Subsidizing low income work doesn’t mean people aren’t doing that work. They are. They probably want that recognized.
scav
@John M. Burt: Odds on, yes, 100%, but in this exact immediate thread, it seemed somehow relevant to point out the possibility of exceptions.
hamletta
@justawriter:
Dude, try reading the thread first.
Cacti
@justawriter:
Would that be the same Bernie who drew a red line around states with a heavy black vote, so that he could chase after the Reagan Democrats with a “universal” economic message?
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: it’s not her messaging driving that poll result. It’s millions of dollars being spent to deliver the message that she’s doing the bidding of oligarchs.
If another candidate would spend some of that money explaining why his proposed policies are good, he might actually accomplish something other than being a stealth surrogate for Trump.
Chyron HR
@justawriter:
Oh, I see, THIS Democratic senator going “Democrats bad, Hillary bad” is totally different from YOUR Democratic senator going “Democrats bad, Hillary bad”. That’s very interesting.
lonesomerobot
@Baud: True enough, but I certainly don’t think Sanders gets labelled “the same” in the way that Webb is doing it here. He’d be old, cranky, scary socialist, giver of unicorns.
I do, however, enjoy the irony of the argument that Hillary Clinton is basically a Republican, but Sanders is more likely to get Republican votes if Trump is the nominee. I mean, it could be true, but that’s only because Republicans hate the Clintons so much.
moderateindy
@Linda Featheringill: You are correct. Hillary is the epitome of an establishment candidate, in what is the most virulently anti-establishment atmosphere I can ever remember. The reason both Trump, and Sanders have done as well as they have is because they are both seen as outsiders.
Trump also has a populist economic message. Trade is a huge thing in a lot of working class people’s minds. Trump is a person that says he’ll bring back jobs through tariffs. Hillary is associated with NAFTA.
I doubt many regular Dem voters will cross over to Trump, but some may just stay home. On the other hand even Repubs that dislike Trump will crawl over broken glass to vote against Hillary.
I actually hope the GOP doesn’t vote for Obama’s SCOTUS, so that apathetic dems will be motivated to turn out.
But do not underestimate the anti-establishment mood of the country. Particularly if our candidate is the poster child for the status quo
lonesomerobot
@Linnaeus: No that’s totally Creative Commons
LAO
I see Trump dropped out of CPAC. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/donald-trump-cancels-cpac-speech
Baud
@lonesomerobot: Hard to know. This year is too crazy to make anything other than speculative predictions. I don’t think the voters even know at this point.
Linnaeus
@lonesomerobot:
Cool, thanks.
Just One More Canuck
@Fair Economist: yeah sure , she saaaaaays those things, but our sooper dooper decoder rings say that she would give billions to Wall Street while starting wars with everybody
japa21
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Well, let’s see. My older brother, my one year older brother-in-law, a few friends. But actually, and this is undoubtedly due to self-selection of my social circles, I know few of the raving racist, ultra conservative types.
I have two sons, 39 and 38. One is an unabashed Bernie supporter, but is rational about his approach to both Bernie and Hillary. The other is quite conservative and at one time was a Ben Carson supporter.
My wife and I are still trying to figure out where we went wrong.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
There is only guilt-by-association, there is no virtue-by-association.
and thanks for the info on the charity thing.
Cacti
@ruemara:
Couldn’t agree more.
While they differ in how they’d do it, both believe the Dem Party needs to spend more time chasing the disaffected white male vote.
I do wonder how much of that is Bernie vs. Tad Devine being perpetually stuck in 1984.
Kay
@Bobby Thomson:
Well, I’ll pass on that, thanks. I don’t think it’s Sanders fault that Clinton isn’t pulling in big numbers on the all-important “people like me” question. Obama was criticized by liberals for years leading up to 2012. Years. Look at his number. There wasn’t just a gap with Romney. Obama had a high number.
Baud
@japa21:
WHY COULDN’T HE DO DRUGS LIKE OTHER CHILDREN?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Or because outside Virginia, the Beltway and the Blogosphere most people think Jim Webb is the guy who played Dragnet?
also… who is Jim Webb lobbying for? just curious. His personality suggests he’d be worse at lobbying than at campaigning, and that’s saying something
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
This.
Raven Onthill
And what were the Clintons doing in that period? Blowing the racist dogwhistle.
And, yes, it was part of Biden’s awful omnibus crime bill. It was passed as a compromise. I’ll let both the Clintons and Sanders off for the vote, but the racist dogwhistles, no, the Clintons don’t get a pass on that. Nor on the toxic 1997 welfare “reform,” which Hillary Clinton was very proud of at the time.
In any event, in the crunch, I am likely to vote for Clinton, but I am not at all sure this is different from Republicans who will in the end vote for Trump.
agorabum
Everyone else is saying it too…but fuck Jim Webb. The simple and direct way to clean out the stables of government is to get rid of Republicans. They are the ones who have been filling the place up with horseshit.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT:
ruemara
@Linnaeus: I never said he wasn’t preferable, but when you dismiss southern black voters, cannot pivot and have the campaign strategy of targeting white blue collar Dems who have been voting republican for years, you’re embodying Webbs strategy of chasing white blue collar males who have been voting republican for years.
FlipYrWhig
@moderateindy: If there was a virulently anti-establishment atmosphere, and Hillary Clinton were identified with that establishment, why would Hillary Clinton be winning? It doesn’t hold up. If the mood is anti-establishment and Clinton is winning, why do you think that is? Doesn’t it have to be either that the mood isn’t really anti-establishment, or that Clinton isn’t establishment, or that Democrats don’t really give two shits about who is or isn’t “establishment”?
“Anti-establishment” is a bunch of bullshit that the media cooked up to explain why Republicans didn’t like Jeb Bush. And then the Sanders people latched onto it because they think Hillary Clinton is boring and corporate and they want to make their cause seem grander than that. And then the Hillary-hating media got a big smile on their faces and started using the same term for the Democratic race even when it didn’t apply.
Rob in CT
@Raven Onthill:
Two words: Supreme Court.
I’m pro-Bernie too (mildly, though).
This is not, or should not be, a hard decision.
Now, if you live in a state that’s a lock to vote one way or the other, whatever. I’m actually in that spot – if CT is in play, all is lost anyway. If you’re in a swing state, for the love of all that you apparently believe in, vote D.
scav
@japa21: Two kids — practically inevitable (well, more likely than not) that they’ll be as opposite to one another as possible.
FlipYrWhig
@Raven Onthill: I ALSO ABHOR THE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT AND AUTOMATIC WEAPONS BAN
Rob in CT
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
No Fucks to Give Obama is the best Obama.
Raven Onthill
@Fair Economist: “Are you aware his mother sacrificed her political career to pass Clinton’s tax increase on the wealthy and unearned income? ”
She sacrificed her political career for a Republican cause. Color me not impressed.
Cacti
@FlipYrWhig:
In the “virulently anti-establishment atmosphere” Clinton has received the most votes of any candidate on either side, and beat the “anti-establishment” Dem candidate by a whopping 1.3 million votes on Tuesday.
If Sanders is going to be some great driver of new voters, where are they?
FlipYrWhig
@Raven Onthill: A tax increase on the rich was a “Republican cause”? Good God you’re a lunatic.
gwangung
@Raven Onthill:
Which is more than fair. It’s what they actually did and have no excuse for (except perhaps the “unintended consequences part”. Maybe).
On the other hand, the black community knows this as well, and they’ve turned out for her despite those flaws, knowing that she’s consistently tried to engage the black community for 30+ years (something few politicians do) and she’s done some real substantive work beyond votes for much of those 30 years. It’s like having friend who’s crapped on you several times, but still has done you lots of good turns. You might be pissed at them, but you’d still be willing to support them.
boatboy_srq
Remind me again why Webb hasn’t flipped his party affiliation already… DINO, thy name is Webb.
scav
@Raven Onthill: Gotta watch out for those sneaky cooties. If a single republican joined forces, there’s gotta be something wrong with the proposition. No wonder we’ve got to drop the recent improvements in access to health care — I hear some repubs are even in favor of SSM. Roll that sucker back into the closet! But, don’t worry, I’ve some extended family members that vote R, my opinions tainted too so you can ignore it.
JMG
Evidence suggests they’re on Internet comment threads.@Cacti:
Kay
@Bobby Thomson:
Raising the minimum wage would affect 35 million people. It’s not high schoolers babysitting. This is the work they do. Don’t talk about it like the wage is a gift. They earn it.
It’s home health aides and pre-k assistants and factory workers and all kinds of work. Because it’s only valued at 8 dollars an hour doesn’t make it any easier or less important to all of us and it doesn’t change the fact that this what they get up and do most of every day.
John D.
@Matt McIrvin: I went and crunched the numbers yesterday.
2008 had the second largest primary since 1972 (30.2% vs. 30.9%). The Dem primary was 19.3% of that, the GOP 10.8% — which makes perfect sense given the shape of the Dem primary. I really wish people would get this. 2008 was massive for the Dems in terms of primary turnout. 23 of 34 states that held primaries set all-time record turnouts. You will not get that every year. Using 2008 as your baseline for comparison will inevitably show a dropoff. Which is kind of the point for our media.
You make a great point about tracking the performance vs. the polling. If all of the increased turnout was going for Trump, it would be reflected in his share, and he is, if anything, slightly underperforming his pre-primary polls.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
So now, because you found a blind quote that says the Clinton tax increase was actually a Republican idea (hey, just like Obamacare!) you don’t care about income inequality and benefiting the one percent? It’s hard to follow the zig-zagging and hopping of the purity bunnies, an altogether not-rare-enough creature.
Rob in CT
@Raven Onthill:
OMFG.
Do you remember the early 90s?
That was a tax increase, specifically targeted at those at the top. The GOP line was that it would destroy the economy and everything. It passed (by the skin of that congresswoman’s nose), and no such thing happened. Instead, there was a boom (admittedly one that became a bubble). The last time there was actually a rising tide that lifted most boats, in fact. It was not, in fact, “80% Republican ideas.” Republicans were totally against it. [edit: I suspect the former congresswoman’s point is that Republicans in congress at the time were ridiculously anti- the plan even though it was far from communist. She… badly overstated things with the 80% line]
Look, this is sort of like the whole “the ACA is Romneycare” or “Heritagecare” thing. Romneycare was actually something passed by Dem supermajorities in the MA legislature. It is, as I understand it, broadly similar to the ACA. “Heritagecare” was a bullshit fig leaf that happened to contain an individual mandate. The rest of it was pretty much garbage and thus bears no real resemblance to the ACA. Still, centrist types and people trying to appeal to centrist types (plus leftier-than-thous who can’t accept less than perfection) make the comparison because it suits their biases or the biases of their intended audience.
Gravenstone
@Luther M. Siler: A portmanteau of Hillbilly and … Jackass?
Linnaeus
@ruemara:
There are qualitative differences between Sanders and Webb. Sanders is much more explicit about trying to connect economic problems to racial problems. Now, there are limits to that argument (which Clinton has done a much better job of articulating), but it’s not the same as Webb’s (affected) blue-collar populism.
Compare Webb’s campaign website with that of Sanders. Webb doesn’t mention race, while Sanders addresses it specifically. That doesn’t mean that Sanders campaign on racial issues has been sufficient (it hasn’t) or that he couldn’t do a lot better job connecting with minority voters. But he’s no Jim Webb.
Mike J
@Cacti: OT, but did you say you live in Seattle now? Wanted to remind you to pre register for the caucus at the King County Dems web site, kcdems.org
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
rofl!
I think Jim is trying to find a way to be the “contrarian conscious” of the Democratic party. Or something. I don’t think he necessarily thinks he’ll be a great success at it, but maybe he thinks it will help raise his stature in some areas and sell more books.
He had some good ideas (normalizing relations with Vietnam, the New GI Bill, work on criminal justice reform, etc.) and was a crucial vote on many of Obama’s successes, but he’s been an odd duck for a very long time with many far too conservative ideas to have a national platform in a modern Democratic party. Resigning in a huff over not getting his 600 ship Navy under Reagan, his opposition to women serving in fully equal roles in the military, thinking he was entitled to bring a handgun into DC and even the Capitol, his monomaniacal focus on the Scots-Irish, etc., etc.
Cheers,
Scott.
Timurid
@rp:
Pretty much every politician who can compete at this level has “ties to Wall Street.”
Including Trump.
Cacti
@Mike J:
I’m actually in Pierce County. Do they have a similar procedure?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
When people like you stop saying mean things on the internet!
lonesomerobot
@Cacti: To be fair, most of those Super Tuesday voters were in states that no Democrat will be winning in November. That’s why the Democratic party weights those delegates lower than delegates from states that vote reliably Democratic in general elections. The candidate that does the best in OH, PA, FL, CO, NV, IA, NH, MI, and WI is the one with the best chance to win. Sanders does drive voters – millennials. But he doesn’t much anywhere else. And I don’t think it could be said that Clinton drives new voters. I suspect the candidate that will drive the most new voters is Drumpf… both for and against him.
*DISCLAIMER: Any statement made by the commenter known as “lonesomerobot” should be read with the foreknowledge that “lonesomerobot” will be voting for the Democratic nominee, regardless of who that happens to be. The intent of the comment is to make honest observations about political subjects, and not to bash any particular candidate or idea.
Raven Onthill
@ruemara: “Hillary is not a monster and she isn’t evil.”
After all the racist dogwhistles? After the welfare reform which kills people?
Perhaps no-one could do better. But that’s a hell of an argument to have to make.
BTW, Sanders was supporting gay rights back in the 1970s. He supported gay marriage in 2009, before Obama or Clinton.
Look, I get you support Clinton. I get you have reasons. But your slams at Sanders are wrong and, frankly, I am not nearly so forgiving of the Clintons.
Miss Bianca
Just out of curiosity…is a “hilljack” a portmanteau term for “hillbilly jack*ss”? As in the term “hipneck”, which we use in our parts to denote a “hippie redneck”? Or does it have something to do with Hillary and jackboots? Is it a Colean neologism? Or is it a pre-existing term I’ve just never heard before?
justawriter
Sorry, I should have added, present company excepted, Cacti. I meant other leftbloggers, not the commenters here. And Chyron HR, I want to see my senator threatened with losing her seats on her two plum committees relating to ag and armed forces if it will get her dial back her anti-environmental bullshit.
japa21
@Baud: The irony is that we are so proud of every other aspect of his life.
The younger son is an interesting case. Though liberal for the most part, in general he doesn’t make a big issue about it. He teaches HS history at a private college-prep school. In both 2008 and 2012 he obviously spent a lot of time covering the elections. After it was over, he asked his students to guess who he supported. In both cases it was evenly split, half thinking he supported Obama and half thinking he supported McCain/Romney.
gvg
Webb had a history of writing fiction I think in the 70’s and 80″s that was extremely sexist. This was brought up as a concern when he ran for senate, but the need to get Maccaca guy out was pretty high, plus we knew we were real close to getting to 60 in the senate and every viable Dem was valuable so we all took what we could win. Because he was one of those last few Democrats that got us a Dem majority, he was given a lot of flattering attention and viewed as a hero.
Since then we lost the majority in both houses and he became yesterdays news. I think that may have stung a bit. He really did write some stuff about women characters in his books that was offensively stupid. Many men who used to be sexist, have learned better since. I don’t think he has. Now Hillary is getting a lot of atttention…..aww. Oh and nobody thought he was a good Presidential candidate. He lost to Hillary personally, not Trump. Sore loser guy IMO.
Mike J
@Cacti: I don’t know if they have pre registration, but they do have a tool to find your caucus site. http://www.piercecountydems.org/
Sad_Dem
Shorter Jim Webb: I value my racism and sexism above my country.
Chyron HR
@Raven Onthill:
Bernie Sanders claims that he will improve race relations by “creat[ing] millions of jobs for low-income kids so they’re not hanging out on street corners” thereby enabling them to “end up in the productive economy”, and not by doing something about the problem of low-income kids of a particular hue being summarily executed by the police.
But, yeah, clearly Clinton is the one who the African-American community should revile, and the only reason they don’t is because
they’re modern-day slaves on the Democrat plantationof the very progressive reasons I can’t go into right now.hueyplong
Being less experienced than many, it takes me a while to identify the day’s Commenter Who Will Post a Dozen Separate Reasons for Why The Most Demonized Democrat Other Than Obama is Actually a GOP Mole.
Well, “most demonized” until that happy day when we’re arguing about the Warren campaign.
Mr. Twister
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Kinda goes along with the whole KKK is a leftist thing. This person has seriously lost the thread.
Linnaeus
@Cacti:
I believe preregistration is statewide. Check here.
Raven Onthill
@Fair Economist: Oh, by the way, this from David Dayen on one hopeful for Hillary Clinton’s economic team:
I think she’s talking out of both sides of her mouth on this one, just like she’s done with African-Americans in the South: doing all these supportive things at the local level while blowing the racist dogwhistle at the same time.
So, no, I don’t believe her on Wall Street regulation. She’s going to make some inadequate gestures and then it will be business as usual.
ruemara
@Linnaeus: Let me amend that for you. In your opinion, he’s no Jim Webb. Within much of the active online community, he is Jim Webb in Birkenstocks. I’m not going to change your mind, I am going to challenge that others see him as you do.
@Raven Onthill: I don’t FUCKING SUPPORT CLINTON. Goddamit, will you nitwits get that you can support neither in the primary? I support myself. The only one treating my community & myself as if they are important to their cause, is Clinton. And like many, I’m waiting to see if she’ll win. You are not capable of considering where I am. Edited to reflect the fact that you can say he supported gay marriage, which means he evolved, but you can’t even say Clinton has improved from 1994 when she was FLOTUS, is hubris.
? Martin
@FlipYrWhig:
I think it’s an inaccurate description, but it’s not far off. Clearly conservative voters and the GOP are out of phase on policies and priorities. Trump is exploiting that, and no republican candidates are bridging that divide.
The Dem side is in better shape for a few reasons:
1) Obama’s campaign in 2008 was much more responsive to voters, so Dems have an 8 year head-start on how to operate in this new environment.
2) Big Dem donors aren’t asking for the kinds of voter-hostile things that they have in the past – they realize that they no longer can overpower the electorate and the death of the DLC is evidence of that – and that leaves Clinton and other Dems some room to work. Just look at the backlash that Wasserman-Shultz is receiving for getting that wrong.
3) Because Obama has delivered a fair amount for Dems and been so strongly attacked by the GOP, progressives/liberals aren’t nearly as disaffected as conservatives, who have gotten nothing out of the last 8 years except more permissive gun laws and a few closed abortion clinics. So voters on the left are more open to supporting party priorities because their personal priorities aren’t nearly so far out of step.
But we’re seeing even more of a shift from top-down, party driven politics because they could control the message to more bottom-up, voter driven politics because of social media. Look specifically at young people that are most in open revolt. None of them watch traditional media. The parties have almost no messaging going to these voters – they get nearly all of it through their social graph, from their friends and people they trust.
Clinton doesn’t disprove the theory but supports it. All of the criticism I see of her is based on her positions from 10, 20 years ago. Nobody is leveling any serious criticism of her current policies and positions. She’s responded to the electorate rather than the donors. That’s an anti-establishment move (in moderation). Look at how angry conservatives are at Fox News – they’re holding the establishment line by promoting the party and donor priorities and being punished for it.
Another Holocene Human
@scav:
True, but in the annals of “family annihilators” far more men have earned that badge than women. Maybe it’s socialization, maybe it’s testosterone, maybe it’s entitlement, maybe it’s something we haven’t thought of yet.
FlipYrWhig
@Chyron HR: See, if not for billionaires and Wall Street cooking up racial division as a distraction from social class, there’d be no racism anyway.
FlipYrWhig
@Raven Onthill:
An alum of Digby and Greenwaldia being gloomy and paranoid about The Clintons? Surprising!
Rob in CT
@Raven Onthill:
Let’s assume you are correct about that. I think you very well might be.
By all means vote Bernie in the primary – I’m going to!
But in the general your choices will be:
Hillary Clinton, D vs. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio (most likely Trump), R.
Which of those choices is the best choice? It’s not even close. Hillary has several deficiencies. For me, these include her hawkishness and likely insidery/Wall St. friendly tendencies. All of the GOP candidates are worse.
kwAwk
The question isn’t whether Trump is insane, it is whether he is saner than those who he is running against.
Trump is is ginning up racial resentment, but so are the others. Trump is just more open about it. Trump wants to build a wall, you telling me that Ted Cruz and Ben Carson don’t?
Enacting a temporary ban on muslims entering the US isn’t all that crazy. I mean it is crazy, but it’s not as crazy as permanent bans on muslims and trying to get those here to self deport.
Trump wants to go after the families of terrorists. But isn’t that exactly what Israel does? If I remember correctly if a Palestinian blows himself up as a suicide bomber the Israelis find the parents home and blow it up. People don’t want to talk about that though.
gwangung
@Raven Onthill:
Personally, for all your talk about this, you’re not spending that much time actually listening to African American in the South. I mean, she did damn near sweep the black vote in the south.
Raven Onthill
@gwangung: “On the other hand, the black community knows this as well, and they’ve turned out for her despite those flaws, knowing that she’s consistently tried to engage the black community for 30+ years (something few politicians do) and she’s done some real substantive work beyond votes for much of those 30 years.”
But so has Sanders. Heck, he participated in a sit-in to break a Chicago housing color bar back in the 1960s, back when Mayor Daley’s cops would as soon beat you up as look at you, even if you were white. He just didn’t do it in the South, that’s all.
I think this is much more to do with name recognition and cultural differences than with Sanders being white, white, white.
Jade
@Davebo: The Iowa caucuses with the Chairwoman HRC 2016 license plates refused to release the vote totals. The Des Moines Register which endorsed Clinton did a series and said the “close” vote was shady based on their reporting. Bernie likely won that close one. Nevada was shady, red shirts, lies by supporters, etc. Dirty Harry Reid pulling the casino levers for Clinton.
Always a lot of dirty smoke around the Clintons..
Another Holocene Human
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Don’t be so sure. There are anti-Semitic attacks on DWS bubbling up from the cesspits of Twitter. They throw other Jewish names in there as well, relevant or not. (I can’t stand DWS personally but this stuff is gross, and even if she was trying to stick her thumb on the scale for Hilary, a repeated Berniac claim, she fucking sucks at it.)
Not coincidentally Virgin Ben just stepped in it big time on twitter taking on the alt right. He has been flirting with the racists for weeks but is shocked, shocked that they are calling him “kike” and so on.
You know how when they ask those race questions there’s always that n% of Democrats who give the racist answer?
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker: RE: Racists get a vote, and you can’t write them off or isolate them just because they have cooties.
You must have missed my posts where I pointed out to Berniebots the importance of black and Latino votes in 2012.
But the insistence that Democrats don’t need Trump voters at all is premature and just plain dumb. This is not the same thing as saying that you are going to give in to their racism, but votes is votes.
The morning BBC News report interviewed a Trump supporter who also likes Sanders. He likes them because he perceives them as not being a part of the political establishment.
Reporters have also noted a big enthusiasm gap at work here. From an NPR story:
Poster John D has noted that you cannot make a simplistic turnout prediction about the general election from primary voting. NOTED.
But consider this. The establishment GOP is willing to piss off enthusiastic Trump supporters in order to stop his march to the nomination. Where are these people going to go instead?
The Democrats would be fools to dismiss any votes they might get.
I’ve also noted that 2012 might see ugly gender gaps in the white vote, magnifying what you saw in 2012.
Again, Democrats would be fools to dismiss any votes they might get.
Also, if Trump rolls up the primary vote and the enthusiasm level stays high, the GOP will kiss his ass and forget all the attempts to stop him.
Again, Democrats would be fools to dismiss any votes they might get. And votes is votes.
pamelabrown53
@Linnaeus:
Well, I do agree that Bernie is a gazillion times better than Webb. I also agree with ruemara that both are chasing after the long gone “Reagan Democrats”. Maybe that is why Bernie isn’t succeeding very well with people of color? Consciously or subconsciously, he appears to be elevating the white working man and their experience as the most important, superseding the issues of an important part of our Big Tent base.
Linnaeus
@ruemara:
I don’t doubt that there are lot of people who see Sanders as a Webb in Birkenstocks. I also think that that is a mistaken perception of Sanders. But this is where the flaws of Sanders’s campaign comes in – they haven’t done nearly as good a job with outreach as they could have, especially with minority voters. We’re seeing Sanders’s general inexperience with dealing with the broad Democratic coalition, and that’s seriously harming his chances. Clinton is doing much, much better and that is one reason why she is the stronger candidate in this race.
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: you gotta be kidding me. Offhand criticism of Obama /= a well-financed propaganda campaign specifically designed to drive the message that he DIDN’T “care about people like you and me.” Including ads paid for by Republican superpacs.
Rob in CT
@? Martin:
Speaking of DWS, yeesh:
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/democrats-debbie-wasserman-schultz-111077
Some knifing in that article. Starting to think she will be ousted.
Rob in CT
@Rob in CT:
Bah, bad linky, old article. Ignore.
FlipYrWhig
@? Martin: I just don’t think “establishment” means anything on the Democratic side. An “establishment Republican” supports big business and other WASP priorities. Chamber of Commerce stuff. What is the Democratic “establishment”? It’s all a muddle. Does it mean power brokers? Special interests? Labor? “Big government”? Does it mean something ideological?
Wall Street Republicans are establishment Republicans. Is Wall Street “establishment” _for Democrats_? I don’t think it makes sense. It’s a category error.
I still say, and I have been saying this for months, that Bernie Sanders isn’t the “anti-establishment” anything. He’s running as the more liberal candidate. He’s running as the scourge of big finance. Big finance isn’t the Democratic “establishment.” It’s just rich. I’m not saying anyone has to like it, but it’s not “establishment” in this party’s context.
gwangung
@Raven Onthill: I think you should spend less time talking about Sanders’ work 50 years ago and spend more time listening. I don’t think you know nearly as much about the Clintons and their relationship with the black community as you think you do.
Jade
@? Martin: Her current position, based on the released emails is that she remains a war-hawk and neo-con dream. That is her most dangerous position and it is current.
FlipYrWhig
@Raven Onthill:
And then a mere 50 years later he took an interest in the African American population again! So with notably rare exceptions he’s been energetically fighting for that cause his whole life.
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: when did Clinton EVER describe wages as a gift? Have you even read her position statements?
John D.
@lonesomerobot: It’s not quite correct to say that they weight the delegates from a southern state lower. Every delegate counts the same. The *number* assigned to a state is relative to the democratic votes from the last 3 elections. The exact formula is 1750*((state dem vote)/(national dem vote)+(state electoral votes/538)). So a state like Georgia that, while red, casts a shitload of Democratic votes, gets a fairly hefty allocation of delegates.
More importantly — and this is something that has been drawing my ire in other threads recently — the notion that the southern states are somehow not representative of the Democratic Party is awful. The *voters* in these states are among the most reliable Democratic voters anywhere. And since Democratic voters are the voters who are picking the Democratic nominee, their vote counts just as much as anyone else’s. It’s frankly rage-inducing to see people try to act like the Southern states don’t count. (Not saying you did this, just using you as a jump-off point for this.)
scav
@Another Holocene Human: Hence the original statement, then the qualification.
Merely noting the existence of exceptions is not a both sides do it equally proclamation. Women get to be — no are, it’s not a question of awarding them new privileges — potentially as messed up as the menfolk.
Chyron HR
@Jade:
Nnnnnnnnope.
Chris
@raven:
Ah…
You know more about the military in general and the Vietnam generation in particular than I do, but would I be wrong in calling “bullshit” on this survey?
moderateindy
@FlipYrWhig:
Hillary is winning a because she has a huge edge in minority voters, and she started with such a huge lead. The fact that Sanders, a virtual unkown is even in sniffing distance shows how much people view Clinton as part of a status quo. 6 months ago did anyone think Clinton would be challenged at all?
Also, don’t be so myopic to think that the average primary voter is the same as the average GE voter.
One truly troubling stat that came out of the first primary, which Sanders won, was the working class types that voted for Hillary in 2008, went for Sanders. My guess is because Sanders had an economic populist message, and even Obama’s decent economy isn’t working for them, and they aren’t alone. In a general election that same demographic, that aren’t necessarily loyal Dems could easily glom onto the outsider in the race, especially one that also happens to have a populist economic message. That may put states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Florida in play. Illinois is usually a predictable blue state, but we did just recently elect a Republican hedge fund billionaire as governor.
You are deluding yourself if you don’t think that there is currently a huge backlash against the political status quo in this country.
MomSense
@Germy:
YES! How the “stimulus” took the green energy sector from zero to hero in such a short time has been completely ignored.
Jade
@RareSanity: Hillary and Bill were 2 for 1, remember. She campaigned, lobbied, gave speeches for all of his policies. She defended them when she ran in 2008 she defends most of them now. In her own words she was not at home baking cookies.
Rob in CT
@Jade:
This is true, and relevant in the Dem primary.
In the general, not really.
Bobby Thomson
@Jade: sorry that labor was allowed to vote in Nevada. Actually, I’m not. Why do you hate unionized Latinos being given time off to vote?
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Here’s where I stopped reading your reply:
You’re moving the goal posts. I was specifically responding to your contention that we don’t get to write off racists. There is significant overlap between “racists” and “Trump voters,” but the two groups are not the same. We DO get to write off racists. We have since 1964.
Bobby Thomson
@Brachiator: anyone who chases racist votes is a de facto racist.
Elizabelle
Never forget that MSNBC wants to subject you to another hour or more of Morning
RepublicanJoe, so you will have ever more opportunities to see hilljacks, retrogrades tut-tutting, maybe even more of Andrea Mitchell Greenspan and that darling Ron Fournier.MSNBC thinks they have the electrolytes you need.
msdc
@Jade:
In 2008, about 69% of Democratic primary voters said they would be satisfied with Obama as their candidate. In 2016, that number is 79%. So no, the divide isn’t nearly as bad.
Obama went on to win 89% of the Democratic vote in the general election. This too shall pass.
Linnaeus
@pamelabrown53:
I think Sanders is chasing a larger group than the (yes, long gone) “Reagan Democrats”. Some of those so-called Reagan Democrats might find his message appealing, but Sanders’s vision (such as it is) is much bigger than that. Webb’s vision is more specifically tailored to the mythical Reagan Democrat, and I think that’s a big reason why he was out of the race so early.
But again, that doesn’t mean that Sanders hasn’t made some missteps and miscalculations in this race, and now we’re seeing the results of that. For me, Sanders’s candidacy isn’t so much about the race now (which he won’t win), but what could be done with his message in the future. Of course, that’s easier said than done.
MomSense
@japa21:
You’re just one of the good guys.
ETA: Just got my ’16 election slogan. Only thing that stops a bad guy with a vote is a good guy/gal with a vote.
Kay
@Bobby Thomson:
Is that a joke? You’re expecting people to read her “position statements”?
I would submit that this is an example of the problem :)
I don’t think it’s hard. Stop treating them like charity cases with “transfer payments”. Most people don’t make a lot of money and a huge group of people make hardly any at all. They do work. It has value. Talk about that.
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: so the answer is “no, she’s never described wages as a gift or a transfer payment and I’m just talking out my ass.”
Raven Onthill
@FlipYrWhig: Hey, get off it. Publishers are where you find them, and Dayen is one of the best reporters on banking issues from the perspective on the 99%: does his homework and puts it across in clear effective prose.
@Rob in CT: yes. And it lost the Democrats the House. The Clintons have a record of strategies successful in the medium-term and failures in the long-term. That budget surplus? It eaten up by the next Republican administration and that was completely predictable. It didn’t help that the House had become Republican.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: the quote was from the originally linked article. Hardly blind. Balancing the budget has been a conservative priority for as long as I can remember. See, far as I can tell, the Clintons actually believe in conservative neo-liberal economics: balancing the budget, “no handouts,” and so on. But if you believe this, racist and classist policies follow, even without personal bigotry.
@gwangung: I’ve listened, I just don’t understand. A lot of the objections to Sanders are based on things that are simply not true and their falsehood is easily verified and the Clintons have done some awful things. So then, why…? It is somewhat the same way I listen to white conservatives and don’t understand. Seriously, why does anyone in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Kansas, Michigan vote for their Republicans? They’ve trashed the place. And yet they still win elections.
@ruemara: “I don’t FUCKING SUPPORT CLINTON. Goddamit, will you nitwits get that you can support neither in the primary? I support myself. The only one treating my community & myself as if they are important to their cause, is Clinton.”
Hmmm…why do you think that? Serious question.
Look, if it comes down to it, I probably will vote for Clinton as the lesser evil. But it’s going to be hard, I fear making a bargain with the devil, and, meantime, I want everyone pulling for the most good possible.
Matt McIrvin
@John D.: Those are for the whole primary season, right? Obviously, 2008 was going to be comparatively enormous because the primary was actually competitive for most of the season. People turned out to the late primaries because, for once, their votes actually mattered. The primaries that get the lowest turnout overall are in years when the party has an incumbent President.
I wonder what the percentage turnout for just the early primaries was.
hueyplong
I consider Andrea Mitchell to be Morning Joe in mummy’s clothing.
Sondra
@ChrisS: Amen brother. I get the feeling that one of his fellow horses kicked him in the head. After all , he was a member of the GOP for years and only changed affiliation recently when we helped him win the seat he values so little.
Apparently his fee fees were hurt that the party as a whole didn’t jump on his bandwagon for President. Can’t think why he thought this race was his to win against Hillary and btw, as a Democrat he should be proud of Obama’s achievements in spite of an intractable GOP. Instead he disses him? Some team player he turned out to be.
Matt McIrvin
@Sondra: I was just talking to my daughter about also-ran Democratic candidates from this cycle. She actually remembered Lawrence Lessig’s weird campaign to be elected President to pass one law.
But I’d completely forgotten until now that Jim Webb was even in it.
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: out of the box, that’s what she was doing.
John D.
@moderateindy:
And?
All that tells us is that their hypothetical preference is Sanders > Hillary > Obama. Why is that troubling?
You cannot discern general election intent from primary voting. You cannot discern general election intent from primary voting. You cannot discern general election intent from primary voting. You cannot discern general election intent from primary voting. You cannot discern general election intent from primary voting. You cannot discern general election intent from primary voting. You cannot discern general election intent from primary voting. You cannot discern general election intent from primary voting.
Can we please finally put this to bed? This is by far the most irritating part of this election season, even more than the “My candidate rocks! Your candidate sucks!” sniping here. You are looking at 8 year old vs. current data with only one common candidate between them and trying to draw conclusions for November. You are off into fairy-dust territory. This goes for the “minorities aren’t voting for Sanders” folks, too. They rank him second behind Clinton. Whoop-de-fucking-do. If Sanders pulls out the nomination, they will turn out in droves for him in November, because Trump is infinitely worse.
johnnybuck
@Baud: 2008 primary turnout broke a record that was previously set in 1988, when record primary turnout brought us president Michael Dukakis.
John D.
@Matt McIrvin: Google is your friend.
It wasn’t just early primaries. Montana, the very last one, had over 30% Dem turnout.
Raven Onthill
@FlipYrWhig: “And then a mere 50 years later he took an interest in the African American population again! So with notably rare exceptions he’s been energetically fighting for that cause his whole life.”
He’s been fighting for African-Americans for his entire political career. Look at his opposition to shutting down the Pell Grant program in the prisons back in the 1990s. He was one the few “white” people in the House who did; he was fighting alongside the Congressional Black Caucus. And that crime bill? He said at the time that he supported it because of the Violence Against Women Act and that he hated mass incarceration. (And, by the way, that may also have been Clinton’s motivation; I’ll give her that.)
Raven Onthill
@ruemara:
Can you talk about what she’s done for you and yours? I suppose I am not aware of it, or perhaps I don’t understand it the way you do. (I have another comment stuck in moderation; this one is an attempt to get the questions out.)
Daulnay
@Raven Onthill:
I think Sander’s initial misstep with the BLM protesters matters a lot too. His initial response was typical privileged white male; subsequent reaching out can be chalked up to damage control, and his initial response probably reflects his genuine character. I think he’s the best of the two choices, but he’s definitely flawed. I can see that for some African-Americans, that flaw would be a complete deal-breaker.
For the people arguing that Trump and the rest of the Repub. field are the same, I call BS. Trump oozes dictator, and his appeal is the strongman’s – his policies don’t matter to his followers, except that he’s going to ‘fix’ the policial system. The rest at least adopt the pretense of beliefs and consistency of character that limit them, and many Repubs are genuinely horrified at the Trump-supporting Repubs who really don’t care about beliefs, morals, and conservative ideology.
As for Jim Webb, he has a point. The political system is very corrupt, and Hillary is a poster child for that (my god, 2.9 Million in bribes, er fees for a few speeches?). Not so long ago, I could see supporting Trump, or at least sitting on my hands, if the race went Trump/Clinton. But his strong appeal to authoritarians, and his matching Il Duce personality make voting Trump way, way too risky. No matter how flawed any of the other candidates are, a corrupt politician is better than a would-be dictator.
As the French did, put a clothespin on your nose, and vote for keeping a Republic, however flawed. Then you’ll get another chance to fix the system in two years.
moderateindy
@gwangung: I really am curious why the AA community supports the Clinton’s. The crime bill, welfare reform, even NAFTA hurt the black community. The racist dog whistles from 2008 against O’Bama.
You say she engaged the community. Talk is cheap. How exactly did she work for minorities? What legislation did she ever champion? Other than Bill locating his office in Harlem, I can’t really point to any high profile things that she has done to garner so much support. You’re probably closer to that community, and thus have a better handle on the specifics, so please give some context.
John D.
@Daulnay: Here are the speaking fees paid to Hillary Clinton, organized in descending order, stopping at the first item with “bank” in the name that paid her to speak. Can you explain why these make her History’s Greatest Monster as well?
Company Amount Date Location
Biotechnology Industry Organization $335,000 6/25/2014 San Diego, Calif.
Qualcomm Incorporated $335,000 10/14/2014 San Diego, Calif.
Cisco $325,000 8/28/2014 Las Vegas, Nev.
eBay Inc. $315,000 3/11/2015 San Jose, Calif.
Nexenta Systems, Inc. $300,000 8/28/2014 San Francisco, Calif.
GTCR $280,000 6/26/2014 Chicago, Ill.
A&E Television Networks $280,000 2/27/2014 New York, N.Y.
The Vancouver Board of Trade $275,500 3/5/2014 Vancouver, Canada
Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal $275,000 3/18/2014 Montreal, Canada
Canada 2020 $275,500 10/6/2014 Ottawa, Canada
Cardiovascular Research Foundation $275,000 9/15/2014 Washington, D.C.
Massachusetts Conference For Women $265,500 12/4/2014 Boston, Mass.
Let’s Talk Entertainment Inc. $265,000 4/10/2014 San Jose, Calif.
Let’s Talk Entertainment Inc. $265,000 6/2/2014 Denver, Colo.
Advanced Medical Technology Association $265,000 10/8/2014 Chicago, Ill.
tinePublic Inc. $262,500 1/21/2015 Winnipeg, Canada
tinePublic Inc. $262,500 1/21/2015 Saskatoon, Canada
American Camping Association, New York Section $260,000 3/19/2015 Atlantic City, N.J.
Deutsche Bank AG $260,000 10/7/2014 New York, N.Y.
(In case you missed it, I’m mocking you.)
Raven Onthill
@Daulnay:
I think his initial response had a lot to do with being shouted down at his own rally; one doesn’t need racism to explain it.
Daulnay
@Sondra:
Webb is and has been for his team, Appalachian whites. Some of the people here were scornful of his plea to not ignore them yet again this election cycle (though it may have actually been a plea to not ignore him just as much). A lot of Appalachian whites are racist, but they’re also working-class people. The DLC/Clinton/Republican corporatist policies don’t give them anywhere to turn (except Trump and Bernie).
Chyron HR
@John D.:
Well, they made all those Nemesis zombies that take like 50 shots to kill.
Daulnay
@John D.:
You got me, she didn’t sell out to just the banks. She’s sold herself to lots of businesses.
Daulnay
@Raven Onthill:
Yea, politicians should take offense at being shouted down by people whose children and friends are getting gunned down in the streets. Yep. It shows a lot of compassion.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
About 90 minutes, actually several weeks, since this question was first asked, and still no answer. Bernie is like Linus in the pumpkin patch, someday the Great Pumpkin will come.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@moderateindy:
You Sandernistas are something else, really. The AA community has known the Clintons for a long long time. Bernie has not bothered with them in the last 50 years – his constituency is rural whites from a small liberal state, so his message of income inequality as being the root of all evils that befall the AA community is just not resonating. To be perfectly honest, Bernie’s supporters are the most condescending, dismissive, tone deaf group about race there is, and their online presence has been an incredibly negative experience for anyone not a Bernfeeler. The fact that 80+% of AA voters are rejecting him is all you really need to know.
John D.
@moderateindy: An interesting comment on Reddit from a member of the AA community explains a lot of the support, especially item 5. The views in the 90s and the views now are not necessarily identical.
FlipYrWhig
@John D.: Re: Let’s Talk Entertainment, see Hillary Clinton Speaking Tour Tickets Selling Quickly, Reuters 3/3/2014. That story says “Let’s Talk Entertainment Inc., … is promoting the speeches.” When I’ve looked at the list before it seems to me that an entry for Let’s Talk is probably a bookkeeping error: the event for which she got paid was before an audience listed elsewhere, and Let’s Talk had something to do with the planning. (I think it would be like saying the Rolling Stones performed at Ticketmaster.)
Raven Onthill
@moderateindy: “The crime bill, welfare reform, even NAFTA hurt the black community.”
The crime bill seems to have been largely because it contained the VAWA; the same reason Sanders voted for it. Welfare reform and NAFTA were popular neo-liberal causes and they really do, as far as I can tell, believe in neo-liberal economics. Problem is, if you believe that, you will make racist policy, even if you are not personally a bigot.
“The racist dog whistles from 2008 against O’Bama.” Yeah. I’d forgotten, briefly, that they racist dogwhistles didn’t stop in the 1990s.
My impression of Hillary Clinton is of a tough fighter. Problem is, I think she’s a too focused on what will win the immediate battle, and forgets that there’s going to be another battle, and another after that.
FlipYrWhig
@Daulnay: The American Camping Association is particularly egregious, amirite? And don’t get me started on the Massachusetts Conference for Women!
John D.
@Daulnay: Yeah, the Massachusetts Conference for Women is the gravest threat facing us today. I hear they are using bioweapons from the Biotechnology Industry Organization commissionsed by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation.
Those amounts are set by her fucking agent and are that high because everyone wants a well-known speaker. Jesus. It’s like nobody has ever heard of economics 101.
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Though I agree with you on a lot of stuff, 80% of AA voters are not rejecting Sanders. They just prefer Clinton.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@John D.:
OK – Sanders was their 2nd choice out of 2 choices.
FlipYrWhig
@Raven Onthill: My impression of Bernie Sanders is that it never stopped being 1963 for him, and his one answer to American social problems is that the establishment fed the masses a steady diet of false consciousness but the people can wake up, rise up, and make it stop. I have known a fair number of Old Left characters and their hearts are in the right place but they’re very stuck on the idea that the only real issue is the economic structure and all else is fluff–race, gender, ability/disability, sexuality, etc. It puts so much faith in the essential goodness of the people and the power of collective action. But what if the people are assholes? If there’s any politician who knows well from hard experience that the people are assholes and enjoy being that way, it’s Hillary Clinton, the one who originally diagnosed the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy.
Mr. Twister
@Raven Onthill: One game at a time. The immediate battle needs to be won first, before other battles are fought. If we loose the next battle we’re done and there won’t be another in my lifetime. GET A F*CKING CLUE.
pseudonymous in nc
@hueyplong:
Well, I just hope so. Is there a ‘Trumpf Democrat’ cohort in Appalachia that voted for Obama in 2012 but won’t vote for Hillary in 2016? In raw numbers, more Virginia primary voters were GOP than Dem, as they have been in lots of states, but that doesn’t necessarily say anything about the turnout in November.
As for the ‘status quo’ question, well, what’s wrong with some status quo and incremental consolidation? Obama is a ground-breaking president as a person, but he’s an institutionalist and a small-c conservative, and Ta-Nehisi Coates and others have noted that the first black president probably couldn’t be anything but that.
As someone said on the Twitters, putting your dog in the driver’s seat of your car is breaking with the status quo.
moderateindy
@John D.: The question is why would someone that voted for Hillary before, change? Could be simple racism. Could be people are sick of what they see as the political establishment/ status quo. Could be a populist economic message that Sanders has. Just because each primary year is different, and primaries don’t exactly translate to the GE doesn’t mean that there aren’t parallells to be considered.
The troubling part isn’t that those that came out, and voted Sanders won’t vote for Clinton. It’s that from a socioeconomic perspective in a GE there are a lot of that same demographic that aren’t partisans in the important large swing states. Politically trends do matter. If people in a primary that once voted for Clinton voted for Sanders because he was viewed as an outsider, or because of his economic populism, Trump ticks off both of those boxes.
It stands to reason that the same type of people that are looking for an alternative to what they perceive as an entrenched Washington political elite, may well vote for Trump instead of the candidate that embodies 25 years of Washington politics.
Chyron HR
I’m intrigued by this new position coming out of the Sanders camp that every member of Congress gets 1 free bad vote that they’re not allowed to be criticized for. I think it’s safe to assume that Clinton will be applying that to her vote on the Iraq war, so I guess we won’t be hearing the Berninators bring it up ever again… right?
John D.
@moderateindy: OK, so point to some data that answers those questions, rather than just saying “troubling”.
Given that Bernie’s message is *explicitly* economic populism, I find it not at all surprising that the 2008 working class voters for Hillary are switching. That is aimed squarely at them. Have you any indication that this group is switching en masse in the general, or is this just the primary voters indicating a preference between two candidates?
Sanders?
Daulnay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Really? Worse than Trump’s people? Or Ron Paul’s? A few Bernadistas were, but not all of ’em.
Why are you jabbing at people who are potential allies? People, especially young ones, don’t have a lot of experience seeing other peoples’ points of view. I can see wanting to dismiss them as just more of the same empty white leftist promises, but they can’t see that, they don’t have any history yet. Help them understand, or at least point them at Coates’ stuff. Then you have allies for the long haul.
Rob in CT
@Raven Onthill:
You are incoherent. You move the goalposts with each and every comment.
You went from being “unimpressed” by the 1993 tax increase passed by Democrats & signed by Bill Clinton “because it advanced Republican goals” (which it really didn’t, as evidenced by the opposition of actually existing Republicans) to “yeah, well, and then the Democrats lost elections!”
Raven Onthill
@John D.: Those are all conservative arguments. Told ya that blacks (except for the socialists) are lot more conservative than most liberals give them credit for.
@Daulnay: Sanders has a decades-long honorable record as an ally, sometimes standing with the Congressional Black Congress when almost no other whites would; the protesters blind-sided him, that is all. He was also the first Presidential candidate to say “black lives matter.” But, no, because he wanted to continue his talk at his own rally, he’s an entitled white person. Total failure of communication, and now AAs are supporting Clinton, with far more deeply flawed record on race.
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: “his message of income inequality as being the root of all evils that befall the AA community is just not resonating.”
He sees income inequality and racism as inextricably entwined, and I think he is right: it has been so since the first African slaves were brought to America to work the fields of a would-be new feudal nobility: the economics has never been separable from the racism. And with AA unemployment rates through the roof at this time, seems to me that addressing inequality would be a huge boon to AAs, and Sanders, with his socialist history, is much more likely to do so that Clinton, with her history of neo-liberal policies.
Raven Onthill
@Mr. Twister: But you can lose the war by concentrating on the immediate battle, too; the Clintons and their “centrist” faction have a long and depressing history of it.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Daulnay:
Have you seen what goes on, on twitter? Have you read through Joan Walsh’s, or Joy Reid’s, or Goldie Taylor’s, or Imani Gandy’s, or Propane Jane’s timelines? These are not people who are interested in being helpful progressive allies, they’re basically online harrassing bullies with a Bernie avatar, and no different than the gamergate/Paulbot/Greenwald flying monkeys. You can miss me with that OH NOES POOR YOUNGSTERS. They’re too certain of things to listen to anyone.
Mr. Twister
@Raven Onthill: Anyone who would post this “She sacrificed her political career for a Republican cause. Color me not impressed.” has no grasp of contemporary American politics. You are incredibly ignorant. Your opinion should count for zero around here.
Miss Bianca
@John D.:
Careful, Mister. Don’t give yourself a stroke. We need you here to combat our general innumeracy. : )
And seconded on the irritation at lumping “Southern votes” and “Southern Democratic votes” together. Altho’ I forget which thread that came from.
Daulnay
@John D.:
In 2008, we had a choice between more of the same (Clinton/DLC/Repubs. pro-corporate) or someone else. We as a nation and as a party chose someone else. Obama put Clinton’s people at the economic levers, unfortunately. He put one or two economic liberals in place, but they quickly got shut out- I remember my dismay at the time.
A lot of us are still waiting for a candidate who will break out of the pro-corporate, pro-wealthy corrupt mold. It sure isn’t Clinton. Bernie and Trump are the only candidates obviously selling this. I’ve seen several anecdotes of newly active voters, interviewed at Trump rallies, saying they were interested in both.
In the meantime, Hillary has burnished her populist credentials through allies like the Debbie W S the DNC chair, who just went to bat for the payday loan-sharks. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Raven Onthill:
Sandernistas keep humping that paternalistic Bernie knows better shit, and dismissing the fact that the AA community isn’t buying what he’s selling. When Chris Rock who’s a multimillionaire keeps getting pulled over for driving while black, and Sandra Bland who had a college education and a job dies in custody, and on and on and on, maybe you should consider that racism isn’t a result of economic inequality, and rather that income inequality can be explained by racism. Just a thought for you to dismiss out of hand.
John D.
@Miss Bianca: Meh. I leave for a vacation tomorrow, my blood pressure is just fine!
(I think it was Bob in P calling the Super Tuesday states “not representative of the Democratic Party”)
Miss Bianca
@John D.:
Figures it would be BiP. That’s all I’m a-gonna say. : ) Have fun!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Assuming this is true,c what vote in Congress was different because of this?
I find Sanders’ hedgehog-like focus on Wall St irritating. His followers’ cult-of-the-presidency is sometimes maddening, sometimes depressing.
FlipYrWhig
@Daulnay:
Anyone who tells you that what he wants by electing Donald Fucking Trump is a candidate OUTSIDE the “pro-corporate, pro-wealthy” mold is bullshitting you something fierce. He’s taking a stand against the corporate and the wealthy by voting for a billionaire who slaps logos on everything? Come on, man, you’re getting played, and you’re getting played in exactly the same way as the people who said in 2009 that Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party had a lot in common because both are angry at banks.
John D.
@Daulnay: You keep trying to build a narrative that suits your point of view.
I don’t give a flying fuck about narrative. I want data.
You viewed 2008 as a battle between more-of-the-same and something-else. Bully for you. Other people viewed it differently. Black vs. white. Young vs. old. Others had even more nuanced views, balancing issues across the board, and selecting that way.
Simplistic bumper sticker bullshit is invariably missing the point. 2008 was never a fight between 2 competing statements that fit on a single line. It was between 2 people who represented so, so, so many things to so many people. It was between 2 human beings with both good and bad bits to them — and nobody actually agrees on exactly which bits were which.
At the end of the day, the politician I wanted to win did, and I was thrilled. I fully expect in 50 years historians will view him as one of the greats. But at no point, then or now, was Hillary Clinton a Republican. Take your ratfucking elsewhere.
Daulnay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
And that’s the crux of the problem. Clinton is uninterested in broad economic reform, because she’s in the bag with the corporate/wealthy elite. Bernie sees everything through a socialist (or maybe even Marxist) lens that Capitalism is at the root of all problems. Both are problems, and fixing the economic shit sure as hell won’t stop police from gunning down innocent black kids. Bernie really doesn’t come across as understanding it, either. I’m a supporter, and I can see that.
On the other hand, the Clinton/DLC/Republican corporatists have put us all in a zero-sum barrel of rats fighting each other. Until we break that system, any gains for one part of the working and middle class will come straight out of the income of the other parts. That pits us all against each other, economically. If you say you’d rather have that, why should I support your candidate?
moderateindy
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
First off screw you. I live in a neighjborhood on the west side of Chicago that is predominantly black. I worked in a place for years where I was literally the token white guy.
Second, you didn’t address the actual question of what legislation has either Clinton ever championed while they were in power that was a huge benefit to the AA community? It’s not about them rejecting Sanders it’s that so far, they have turned out in force for Hillary, and I just don’t get the love.
I’ve talked to a few neighbors casually, and they love the Clintons, but don’t really articulate any concrete reasons why.
johnnybuck
@Daulnay: Just keep throwing shit up on the wall… maybe some of it will stick.
Ruckus
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Just curious – do you know a lot of white men like you?
You know at least two. My bet would be that there are quite a few more here on BJ. Of course there seems to be a lot more people in this country to whom their whiteness and their ownership of a dick are their defining features, rather than just they were born.
Mr. Twister
@moderateindy: I think the answer to your question “I just don’t get the love.” resides in the post itself. Read it a few times and see if you can figure it out.
Chyron HR
@moderateindy:
“And yet they still refuse to listen to me when I tell them what they’re supposed to think.”
WaterGirl
@Jade: I don’t like Hillary Clinton at all and I have reservations about her as President, but she is 1 million times better than Trump or anyone else on the Republican side.
Since you have shared your advice for us, allow me to share some advice with you. In the general election, not voting or throwing a vote to someone who cannot possibly win isn’t making a meaningful statement, it’s being short-sighted and throwing a tantrum. Democrats not voting may well bring us Donald Trump as president, and if people think that’s a reasonable choice, then they have lost sight of the big picture.
Raven Onthill
@FlipYrWhig:
Debs is one of Sanders heroes and one of his models as an orator, which something Sanders doesn’t get enough cred for.
We are, I think, in many ways in agreement. I’d say though, that the explosion of inequity, the racist backlash, and youth support for Sanders show that the issues of 1963 are not done. And, hey, just because some people are assholes doesn’t mean we have to make them wipe their asses with sandpaper. Sanders is getting a lot of good out of people; I’d like hang on to that, if it is possible.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Such as?
FlipYrWhig
@Daulnay:
I guess saying it repeatedly is a KIND of argument…
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@moderateindy: One of the explanations I’ve read that makes sense to me, viewing this from the outside, as to why Hillary is more popular than Bernie is:
Most AA voters are necessarily pragmatic. They know that peoples’s lives are at stake in very real ways. (Look at CDC data on Black Male life expectancy under Carter and Clinton compared to Reagan-GHWB.) They can’t take a chance on blue-sky promises of a long-shot “political revolution” to upend the status quo when the uncomfortably strong Teabagger competition will make things much, much worse.
That’s why they do things like vote for less-insane Republicans in Mississippi to defeat more insane Republicans rather than vote for the occasional liberal Democrat who propose better policies. When one doesn’t have the votes, one has to pick the lesser evil to prevent the greater evil from winning.
This makes eminent sense to me. YMMV.
Being pragmatic and realistic is a sign of maturity, not a sign of being misinformed or deluded.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Daulnay
@John D.:
Data? For the last 35+ years, the bottom 80+ % of Americans have seen zero improvement in average real income, while the economy grew. All of it, every penny, went to the top, Most of it to the 0.1%. For every person in the bottom 80% who gained, another lost. Yes, this is a Republican meme – ‘the xxx took your jobs’. But it’s actually been true, because that’s the math of averages. If one value in an average goes up, either others went down, or the average rises.
Coates recently commented that he’d rather honestly face truth, however bleak, than embrace a false hope. He’s right. America is full of very racist people who won’t change soon. It’s baked into the culture, and change will be very slow.
It’s also true that we’ve been shoved into a situation where we have to hurt each other if we want to get ahead. You can hold out hopes that it’s transitory (for nearly 4 decades?!?), but they’re false. This happened because a whole bunch of people, some of them well-meaning, decided to promote business interests. They passed laws, tore down other ones, and didn’t bother to enforce others (notably anti-monopoly laws).
The DLC and the Clintons, with their business-friendly alliances with ‘moderate’ Republicans, share a lot of responsibility for putting this into place. NAFTA, deregulating banking, the bankruptcy bill (thanks Joe Biden), and a host of other pro-business policies have given us a regime where only the wealthy see benefit.
If you want, you can call it ratfucking. You can call it playing both sides of the culture wars against each other, so that business can benefit, too.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Daulnay:
Every single one of those words is doing some very heavy lifting, in service to running the 2016 election narrative you’ve decided on.
Ruckus
I’ve said this before. I’ll say it again.
Most of the people who are denigrating Clinton seem to have gotten most of their talking points directly from the MSM, which is idiotic, seeing as how the MSM have spent the last nearly 30 yrs trying to denigrate both Bill and Hillary, successfully I might add. Some Sanders supporters take his words as absolute truth but will not listen to a word that Clinton says. I think you should make a choice based on what you hear the candidates themselves say and have said for decades, not what people who despise them say they have said. You may still dislike one or the other of them but at least you’ve made a realistic choice, which is what democracy is supposed to be about. We aren’t electing our friend to be Jr High School class president, this shit actually matters, as demonstrated so aptly by our last president.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
The AA community votes for survival in every single election, which is why they’re such committed voters. It would seem to me if progressives were serious, they’d be listened to closely as to their concerns about what happens to the undervalued members of society in a “revolution”.
Daulnay
@WaterGirl:
100% this. No matter how condescending, obnoxious, or nasty Hillary’s followers are, I will pull the Hillary level rather than staying home or voting Trump.
moderateindy
@John D.: don’t be disingenuous. Sanders is perceived as an outsider and you know it. How many times have you seen people on this blog cry that he isn’t even a Democrat.
I’ll vote for Clinton in the general but I think against Trump Bernie is a better candidate. Because both have populist economic messages and both are seen as outsiders. So Bernie cancels out what I perceive as Trump’s biggest plusses when it comes to non partisan voters in large swing states in a GE. When it comes down to it my first priority is not who’s ideology I like better, it is who is more electable.
Of course the one thing that hangs out in the ether against Bernie is a Bloomberg run. That would be an unpredictable wild card. I don’t think that Bloonberg runs if Hillary is the nominee, because they are pretty much the same candidate, and he would probably not want to give Trump any help.
Daulnay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Yep. Keeping your kids from getting gunned down or thrown into prison for nothing is a whole lot more important than much of anything else.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yes, I’m waiting for the answer to that too. All evidence to the contrary.
FlipYrWhig
@Raven Onthill: I think Sanders has a deceptively easy theory of everything that is well-intentioned but wrong, and that he couldn’t do it even if it were right, which it isn’t; and I think he’d be a lousy president because all of the things he’s good at as a person aren’t things that making him president would actually make happen. If he wants to make happen what he says he wants, what he should be doing is making himself a one-man Rock The Vote operation and inspiring the people who like him to vote, volunteer, and take up careers in public service, including municipal government. Now, I realize that in the US we have an issue where the only exciting form of politics is presidential elections, which is why he set off on this course in the first place. So I’m not saying he shouldn’t have run for president. But it’s obvious to me that the much smarter thing for the future of the Democratic Party and liberal politics would be for Hillary Clinton to be the bureaucrat in chief working from the inside and Bernie Sanders to be the rabble-rouser working from the outside _knowing that he will lose a lot_ and being cool with that because it changes the calculus.
Honestly, anything that helps make future national elections about something other than tax cuts and old people’s med1cations is a positive development.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
I’m not moving the goal posts at all. Very few posters here have tried to separate Trump supporters from those who are racists.
And you have been attacked, and I have defended you, when you have suggested that not all Trump supporters are xenophobic yahoos.
But what’s the litmus test and how do you apply it to filter out those you like and those you think are undesirable?
John D.
@moderateindy: I don’t care how he is perceived. He has served in Washington for 25 years. He cannot have it both ways. Either he is a Democrat, with long-time service in Washington caucusing with the party, or he is the outsider working against the Establishment forces. He doesn’t get to only have the good bits.
? Martin
@Jade:
And I would argue that her positions are not very far out of step of the majority of Democratic voters. I would argue that you are asking Democrats to take up a position that is impossible for them to take up (and mischaracterizing them in the process – Hillary is no neo-con). I appreciate where you are coming from, I really do, but Democrats cannot move that far from the mainstream. You’re asking them to do what the GOP has already done, but in the other direction.
FlipYrWhig
@moderateindy:
If the election were solely based on populist economic messages and outsider-ness, sure. Thing is, though, there are a lot of other things that inform the election. I could well say that I think against Trump Hillary is a better candidate because both have a reputation for toughness (which Bernie Sanders emphatically does not), and Trump has no experience and Hillary has a bunch of it. Hillary can make insider-ness into an advantage. Bernie cannot. We can play this all day. The most important point is that there’s no reason to presume that the election will turn on populism or outsider-ness. Which is why I’ve been so irked by what I think is a very sloppy interpretation of the concept of “anti-establishment” both in the alt-media and in the mainstream media.
Raven Onthill
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: “Sandernistas keep humping that paternalistic Bernie knows better shit, and dismissing the fact that the AA community isn’t buying what he’s selling.”
I’m not dismissing it: I just don’t understand it.
“When Chris Rock who’s a multimillionaire keeps getting pulled over for driving while black, …” Sanders has been opposed to racist “tough on crime” policies for decades. He was the first candidate to say Black Lives Matter. He gets it. What’s your point? What do you want him to say that he hasn’t already said?
“racism isn’t a result of economic inequality”
Hunh? Wasn’t slavery was an economic institution? Nor has racism ever, in US history, been separated from inequality. Jim Crow protected white employment. Redlining raised white property values. Is not white supremacism exactly the ideology of a class system?
I seriously do not understand how you can separate racism and economics. What am I missing here?
Darkrose
@Raven Onthill: I’m so tired of hearing about what Sanders did in the ’60’s. Since then he’s spent 30 years as a politician in one of the whitest states in the country. And frankly, it shows in his attempts at outreach.
moderateindy
@Chyron HR:
Screw you too a**wipe. I spent years working for a community agency in Chicago that served almost exclusively the AA community. In doing so I sacrificed quite a bit of economic security. So you can take your stupid BS, and shove it right up there along side where you obviously have your head firmly planted.
FlipYrWhig
@Raven Onthill:
Um, no?
For Sanders, and it’s obvious in almost everything he says, economic distribution is the real issue and racism is just one of many epiphenomenal effects. I think in an America where people of different backgrounds were economically equal, racism would still be extremely bad, inequalities in law enforcement would be extremely bad, etc.
? Martin
@FlipYrWhig:
It certainly doesn’t mean as much, but it does mean something. Democrats big support – both financial and otherwise comes from labor, is increasingly coming from environmental groups, from certain corners of the financial industry (though far less than before), and from tech.
None of these groups is particularly aligned with the needs of minorities. In fact, historically it was the GOP big business that was pushing harder for immigration to break unions and drive down wages and unions that were opposing it. There’s a reason why Rubio and Bush were pushing for immigration reform – that was the establishment goal. Now Dems are listening more to the voters than the establishment and are much more open on immigration.
Dems always benefitted from african american voters but none of the establishment was pushing directly on civil rights and it was always a back-burner issue. It required people like John Lewis and the caucus to push those things. The party wasn’t opposed to them, but they’d gladly trade them away for some financial bill. There’s no establishment backing for BLM other than Obama’s presence.
Free trade has proven to be the most effective way to get the poorest people on earth out of poverty and into more stable governments. But the Dems oppose what should be seen as a mechanism for social justice because it undermines the power of unions. And it pushes Dems to back these absurd notions that trade and not technological change are the drivers of job loss in certain industries. It doesn’t serve the party well to be doing this.
So yes, there are establishment forces on the left. They are weaker than on the right and weaker than they were 10 years ago, but they’re still here.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Actual work, cleaning, moving, repairing, making, serving, delivering, building and on and on, is what makes the world go round. That work should be paid for properly instead of as a disastrous afterthought. But if you look upon everyone who isn’t rich as beneath you then you won’t see any value in that work.
Moving money from one pocket to another, grifting, etc isn’t valuable to society. That just makes a few people wealthier and it not only adds no value, it is negative for society.
IOW you are 100% correct, work has value, as do the people who do that work.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Raven Onthill:
Our class system reflects the ideology of white supremacism. White America is running a racist operating system that confers unearned privilege to whites, which is why they’ll vote their white tribal interests before their economic self interest, in overwhelmingly large numbers. 90% of poor whites in the south are Republican.
Raven Onthill
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: well, for one thing, by shutting down the discussion of Benghazi and Clinton’s e-mails. For another by getting people thinking about the long term and by getting young people engaged in politics.
@FlipYrWhig: “I think Sanders has a deceptively easy theory of everything that is well-intentioned but wrong, and that he couldn’t do it even if it were right, which it isn’t; and I think he’d be a lousy president because all of the things he’s good at as a person aren’t things that making him president would actually make happen.”
There’s something to that; Representatives and Senators are expected to compromise; Presidents are expected to lead and, facing a Republican House and, possibly, Senate, no Democrat is going to be doing much leading.
“what he should be doing is making himself a one-man Rock The Vote operation and inspiring the people who like him to vote, volunteer, and take up careers in public service, including municipal government. ”
It seems to me that he is doing that. But no-one is going to take up public service if it is in the service of nothing. Isn’t that what heads of state are for? To provide that something?
“But it’s obvious to me that the much smarter thing for the future of the Democratic Party and liberal politics would be for Hillary Clinton to be the bureaucrat in chief working from the inside and Bernie Sanders to be the rabble-rouser working from the outside _knowing that he will lose a lot_ and being cool with that because it changes the calculus.”
Maybe that could work. I worry about Clinton, though; her neo-liberal economics is out of touch with reality and her militarism is troubling. Maybe, though.
“Honestly, anything that helps make future national elections about something other than tax cuts and old people’s med1cations is a positive development. ”
Yes!
moderateindy
@John D.:
John perception in politics may be the most important component to winning.
W’s biggest personal asset was that he was a regular guy that you want to get a beer with. Cause all regular guys have trust funds and went to Andover, and were legacies at Yale.
Among Trump’s biggest assets is the idea that he is a great businessman.
The truth is not in facts for pols it is in how the public at large perceives the truth. Al Gore never claimed that he invented the internet, but that is most people’s perception.
Brachiator
@Raven Onthill:
No. American apartheid is a caste system.
Everything.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
That was a great line, but 1) did he even mention Benghazi? seems to me HRC did that lifting all on her own; 2) it hasn’t shut down either conversation. And he’s more than made up for whatever good he did by demagoguing about the Goldman Sachs speeches (and now playing footsie with FoxNews)
Any evidence for that? Any polls in senate or congressional races?I know he tells a lot of college kids that the corrupt Witch of Wall St is the only thing standing between them and Free College. And if there’s any evidence that Bern Feelers have gone to work for other campaigns (say, Maggie Hassan in his best state, or the former Lite Guv who’s challenging Grassley) I haven’t seen it. Seems to me you and yours would be trumpeting that if it were out there. I’d be happy to be proved wrong.
what does that even mean?
Raven Onthill
@FlipYrWhig: “For Sanders, and it’s obvious in almost everything he says, economic distribution is the real issue and racism is just one of many epiphenomenal effects.”
Then why has he fought so hard for racial justice? This is not a transitory thing for him; he’s been doing it all his adult life.
“I think in an America where people of different backgrounds were economically equal, racism would still be extremely bad, inequalities in law enforcement would be extremely bad, etc.”
I don’t see how that is possible. How could an equitable distribution of wealth be maintained in the face of pervasive racism? I can see how racism might be maintained in the face of an equitable distribution of wealth, but I suspect it would not last. The two things still seem to me inseparable and attempts to separate them seem to me doomed.
Ruckus
@Chris:
You might not be all that correct on the bullshit part. I spend a fair amount of time at the VA and the discussions there are not all that far off of this. A poll like this has to have very well written questions or the answers are not going to be readily usable, especially if it is multiple choice, which most are.
OTOH
showed that 91% of those who went to Vietnam were “glad they served their country,” 74% “enjoyed their time in the military” and 89% agreed with the statement that “our troops were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would not let them win.”
All of these answers seem to me to be genuine and none of them showed that the people were in favor of the war, even the last one. That was a pretty commonly held concept from military people, including real life stories from people who fought in Vietnam, that I met while in a military hospital. Well not so much that that Washington would not let them win but that so many decisions were directed by bean counters or politicians, not military warfare strategists. I will also say on a personal note, I hated most everyday in the military but I’m glad I served. Some of the memories are cherished, some I’d like to forget, it for sure made an impression on my life.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Raven Onthill:
I keep hearing this canard. Vermont’s African American population is disproportionately incarcerated, and the African American advocacy groups that have tried to take their concerns to him, have routinely been, what’s the word… dismissed. They’re not his constituency, really.
Vermont’s Black Leaders: We Were Invisible to Bernie Sanders
The AA leaders are telling you what we’re telling you, and the hand waving away is the response.
moderateindy
@FlipYrWhig:
Actually, I think that there is clear evidence that the electorate is clearly in a foul mood when it comes to what it sees as the status quo. That is entirely my point. It explains why Trump is doing so well. That sentiment has already reared it’s head in the primaries. The other Repub candidates are just as anti-muslim, anti- mexican as Trump. yet he is the outsider. Likewise, Bernie is offering a different view from the center right DLC policies of the last 25 years, and he has become a credible threat to what should have been a total cakewalk for Hillary. I see no reason why that trend won’t continue when we get to the GE
In poll after poll people express that they think Washington is broken, and they lay the blame on both parties. They don’t believe that doing the same old thing is the way to go; and Hillary certainly represents politics as usual. I fear that in a GE that sentiment will be a problem for Clinton, and Trump will be seen as the only alternative to the status quo.
Raven Onthill
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: he did it at the Democratic debates; Benghazi and the e-mails were both brought up by the “moderators” and he just shut them down. it has taken a lot of the wind out of the media pundits on those issues.
I don’t have evidence that he has catalyzed support for other campaigns, only hope; he has at least got a lot of young people out for his own.
As for thinking about the long term, at the first debate, when he was asked about the biggest issue facing the USA, he immediately said “climate change.” He followed that up with a series of answers which showed a grasp of history and a vision of the future. Clinton, on the other hand, consistently focused on immediate history and immediate consequences. It’s the difference between grand strategy and battlefield command.
FlipYrWhig
@moderateindy:
Yes, I know, and your point is very wrong.
ETA: OK, let me expand on that. No one ever likes The Status Quo (except maybe Cliff Richard).
FlipYrWhig
@moderateindy:
“Looks like those clowns in Congress did it again. What a bunch of clowns.” 1994.
FlipYrWhig
@Raven Onthill: The debate I watched, I think he said the biggest problem was campaign finance reform.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
On that, we agree absolutely: St Bernard is a movement of one (futile) campaign.
Raven Onthill
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: That’s a reasonable criticism, though it doesn’t invalidate his work in Congress. Reading down into the article his local African-American supporters are also quoted, but it’s at least evidence that he may not be taking African-American issues seriously enough. Is there more?
@Darkrose: hey, come on, you don’t get to slam him for living where he does. He’s stood with African-Americans in Congress when he had no reason to, when it probably cost him votes. “It shows in his attempts at outreach.” So how would you improve his outreach? What would you say he might have done instead?
@Brachiator: Tell me how you separate race and class. Please?
moderateindy
@FlipYrWhig: Here’s where you’re wrong. There is a difference between being disgusted by congress, and Washington, and being really PO’d. The country is genuinely angry.
Give me another reason for Trump’s success. Why has Sanders got the support he has, not just in the primaries, but in national polls that take the public opinion at large, and not just those with partisan leanings?
I could be wrong, but I think you under-estimate just how angry this electorate actually is.
Raven Onthill
@FlipYrWhig: Sorry; my memory was fuddled. When Sanders was asked what the greatest threat to national security, he said, “climate change.”
Davis X. Machina
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
It doesn’t matter if you’re not interested in the dialectic — the dialectic is interested in you.
FlipYrWhig
@moderateindy: The primary reason for Trump’s success is that Republicans are angry at Obama, think he’s a wuss, and want the vicarious thrill of a tough-talking bully. The reason for Sanders’s success is that many liberals hold a grudge against Bill and Hillary Clinton. If Biden, not Sanders, had run against Hillary, I think he’d be having the same level of success–and it couldn’t be rightly called “anti-establishment” because Biden was a senator for 36 years, followed by 8 years as VP. People might _say_ it was “anti-establishment” because the word is chiefly a fancy way of saying uninhibited and anti-Clinton. If Democrats were truly anti-establishment why didn’t they choose O’Malley, the youngest and least Washingtonian of the 3 leading candidates? My answer to that is that Democrats aren’t in an anti-establishment mood but divided roughly 60-40 about one particular person, Hillary Clinton. And I know I’m repeating myself but I’m very sure that “anti-establishment” became the phrase du jour because it was a convenient shorthand for “both frontrunners, Bush and Clinton, are struggling.” But Clinton isn’t struggling anymore. Ire at the establishment was a Republican thing all along. Ideological ire was the Democratic thing.
FlipYrWhig
@Raven Onthill: You don’t separate race and class. What Bernie and many Old Lefties do is reduce them to one real thing, class, and one or more distractions, like race, gender, and sexuality, that would get solved more or less instantaneously if class were solved.
Davis X. Machina
@FlipYrWhig: ‘More or less instantaneously’ is a bit optimistic, even for Marx. Cf. the Preface to the Critique of Social Democracy
The basic idea holds, however, and this has been an issue since W.E.B. DuBois and E. V. Debs were casting shade at each other a century ago.
FlipYrWhig
@Davis X. Machina: I get to teach DuBois in the Fall!
Sad_Dem
Or could it be that Sanders endorses policies that liberals agree with?
FlipYrWhig
@Sad_Dem: Well, that too.
@moderateindy: I just saw this on Washington Monthly, citing Dana Milbank:
The 34% of Democrats who think things are going the wrong way tracks pretty closely with the percentage that supports Bernie Sanders, doesn’t it? I think we’re making a mistake to take the 89% of Republicans and 34% of Democrats as manifestations of the same “public mood” that is “anti-establishment.”
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Davis X. Machina:
What was the demographic makeup of the society Marx was writing in? I often wonder how his critique of capitalism would have incorporated race, if he’d been writing in the London of today.
Chyron HR
@Sad_Dem:
Yes, obviously people unironically stating, “I have long standing Clinton hatred,” are expressing their agreement with the policies Bernie Sanders endorses and not hatred of the Clintons. Good call.
mclaren
@Linda Featheringill:
No, please stay and vividly make your arguments, because your contribution to the discussion is valued…then vote for the Democratic nominee in November.
mclaren
@Chyron HR:
Actually, I think Sad Dem is making a very good point here. Sanders’ support overwhelmingly from young people, and they don’t know from Hillary. They don’t care about her past, they’re not interested in all that ancient history crap that has the rest of you riled up.
People under age 25 see Sanders talking about the vital issues that matter to them, and they’re jazzed, and they’re coming out in record numbers to support him. People under age 25 are getting crushed under the boot heel of oligarchy right here, right now, with those goddamn undischargeable college loans that have trapped them in a life of penury. Sanders is speaking to them. People under age 25 know that the job market is shit because America is shipping all our jobs overseas or automating ’em out of existence, so Sanders is speaking to them. People under 25 have never lived in an America not mired in endless unwinnable wars, so when Sanders says we need to end that stuff, he is speaking to them.
Raven Onthill
@FlipYrWhig: “What Bernie and many Old Lefties do is reduce them to one real thing, class, and one or more distractions, like race, gender, and sexuality, that would get solved more or less instantaneously if class were solved.”
People keep asserting these things about Sanders, and so far I can’t find the evidence to back up the assertion. It’s not his record in Congress – the NAACP and many other civil rights organizations have rated him highly for a long time.
BTW, one problem here is that Sanders history once he went from young activist to elected official is mostly buried in the Congressional Record, and it takes some effort to dig it all out and summarize it; so far I haven’t found a whole lot of summaries.
mclaren
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
There, fixed that for ya.
mclaren
@Raven Onthill:
The Hillary supporters are trying to set up a Catch-22 for Bernie Sanders — if he focuses on economic issues he’s a one-trick pony and a lightweight and can’t be taken seriously, while if he talks about issues other than economics, he’s diffuse and unfocused and can’t be taken seriously. Heads, Hillary wins, tails, Bernie loses.
Let’s turn that around to try the Catch-22 on Hillary Clinton for size, shall we?
If she talks about race and feminist issues she’s an identity politics maven who has fallen for the trap of chasing side issues instead of the really big ones that are destroying both the white middle class and single mothers and impoverished black women whose men are in prison: oligarchy and the limitless growth of corporate power in a military-industrial-police-prison-surveillance-torture complex where the police and the military are used to crush the middle class and keep Wall Street crime lords in power…so we can’t take Hillary seriously.
If, on the other hand, Hillary tries to talk about oligarchy, she’s as fake as a three-dollar bill because her daughter is married to one of those selfsame Wall Street crime lords, a hedge fund trader who works in the belly of the beast, Goldman Sachs itself, so we can’t take her seriously either.
See how it works?
The Catch-22 scam is easy to set up. All you need is some dishonesty, and lots of determination.
Don’t fall for it.
Sanders and Clinton voted the same way in the senate 93% of the time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@mclaren: aaaaawwwww……SNAP!
Raven Onthill
What would help would be independent neutral political biographies of both Sanders and Clinton. Does anyone know if they exist?
@mclaren: Senate votes are choreographed so Senate voting histories don’t mean very much. You have to look at the bills Senators proposed and contributed to and at things like committee minutes, and that information is a lot harder to come by.
mclaren
@FlipYrWhig:
ModerateIndy is completely right when he says “Actually, I think that there is clear evidence that the electorate is clearly in a foul mood when it comes to what it sees as the status quo. That is entirely my point.” and you are completely wrong when you demur.
Once again, look at the hard data.
Source: “Poll: Americans Are Fleeing the Political Status Quo,” 2016.
Also see:
Source: “Americans Are in a Foul Mood — Survey finds deep dissatisfaction with way country is heading,” U.S. News and World Report, 30 December 2015.
This is the central issue in this election among both Republicans and Democrats.
You are not just wrong, you are wilfully wrong, you are ignorantly wrong, and you are perversely bullheadedly 280-degrees-out-of-sync mulishly wrong. Your judgment on this issue makes the Wrong-Way Corrigan of American politics. It’s as if you set out in a biplane to travel from America to Australia, and wound up on Mars instead.
Peale
@FlipYrWhig: yep. If you believe that the country is moving in the right direction are you just a tool of the establishment? A deluded fool? What if you look into populism and decide it’s not for you? Or just don’t like rocking the boat if it’s taking on water? Are people who want to continue not counted because young people discovered socialism and evangelicals are pissed that gays are getting married?
Technocrat
@Raven Onthill:
I’m not sure independent evaluations do much good, given how subjective politics is. There’s no truly objective way to evaluate the 1994 crime bill, for example – it saved a lot of black people’s lives, and put a lot of us in jail. You can’t give something like that a Pass/Fail.
mclaren
@Peale:
No, you’re just a military contractor giggling as you count those fat stacks of hundred dollar bills you earn for building Rube Goldberg weapons that don’t work, or a prison guard laughing as those $100,000 paychecks roll in on the backs of a slave population imprisoned in the War on Drugs, or a Wall Street crime lord chortling as you steal billions and pay a few million per year in fines as the cost of doing business, or you’re one of the inside-the-beltway parasites who snickers as you watch the lobbying bucks pile up for legislation written by school privatization Ponzi schemers and big pharma thieves.
Trouble is, that’s only about 20% of the population. The rest of the population of America is getting fucked hard up the ass with the Big Bertha tunnel boring machine they used in the Big Dig in Boston.
mclaren
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
[1] Sanders is pushing Hillary to embrace more populist issues of greater concern to the general population than the niche issues of feminism she started out with, and this has made Hillary Clinton a better candidate.
[2] Sanders highlights the incredible wealthy and insularity of the Republican candidates by constantly inveighing against oligarchy, and the media has started to pick up on this. It’s not just a concidence that media outlets are starting to mention Piketty’s book as Sanders rises in the polls.
[3] Sanders has energized young voters for Democratic issues at unprecedented levels.
[4] Sanders has got turnout out across the board. Hillary’s supporters are turning out at higher levels, Sanders’ younger supporters are blowing out records for their turnout.
[5] Sanders has shut down criticism of Hillary for worthless bullshit like the Benghazi & email non-issues, and in doing so Sanders has raised the tone of the entire Democratic campaign. Compare with the shitstorm in a sewer that the Republican primaries have devolved down into.
[6] Sanders is widening the range of issues from just economics to America’s endless foreign wars and the corrupt way in which Wall Street has captured and now controls congress. These are basic issues of governance, and before Sanders no one talked about ’em except a few fringe writers like Chuck Spinney and William S. Lind and Olivier Blanchard. (Of whom you’ve doubtless never heard.)
[7] Sanders has raised the tone of the entire political discussion on the left by focusing relentless on issues that matter. Compare with the bullshit nattering in previous Democratic primaries about whether Gore sighs too much, or how much he allegedly paid Naomi Wolf to advise him on his wardrobe.
[8] Sanders has solidified the Democratic party by making clear that he will support Hillary if she’s the nominee, and asking his supporters to support whomever the Democratic nominee is. Compare with Trump splitting the Republicans by refusing to promise he won’t run as an independent if he feels he is “treated unfairly.”
I could come up with 10 more ways in which Sanders has improved the entire election, the Democratic party, mainstream journalism, and the electorate in general in this election cycle…but people already complain my posts are too long as it is.
mclaren
@? Martin:
There, fixed that for ya.
FlipYrWhig
@mclaren: Whoops, Micky, I already cited that little finding for ya. Republicans pretty uniformly hate the way things are going. Only 34% of Democrats feel that way. This is why saying the mood of the country is anti-establishment obscures that the mood of REPUBLICANS is that way but the mood of DEMOCRATS is a different story. Do you think the Republicans who think the country is going in the wrong direction are eager to make common cause with the Democrats who feel that way? I do not.
Monala
@Raven Onthill:
Google the “looking for Bernie Sanders” series, which is an overview of Sanders’ political career. He has been tone-deaf or dismissive of the concerns of people of color on a number of occasions throughout his career. He has also tacked to the right on several occasions (including gun rights and the war on drugs). Overall, his record is more good than bad, but still, he is an imperfect politician who has made compromises, just like Hillary Clinton.
moderateindy
@FlipYrWhig: and you totally miss the elephant in the room, that I’m not talking about partisans. Most Dems will vote for Hillary. But there are huge swaths of the electorate that aren’t D’s or R’s, and see the entrenched powers on both sides as the problem. Trump is the alternative to that established Washington power elite. That is why he is so dangerous in the general.
He isn’t just doing well in the primaries because Repubs hate O’bama. He’s doing well because the base is sick of the party’s leadership.
And while the numbers on the D side aren’t as drastic, that’s only because people see the right track /wrong track question as a referendum on O’Bama, and they like BO.
Raven Onthill
@Monala: Thanks. For anyone who wants to look, it’s by Aphra Behn (probably a pseudonym) of Shakesville and it is at http://www.shakesville.com/search/label/Looking%20For%20Bernie, a Clinton supporter. So far I’ve only made a quick pass over it; I’m tired now & will have to read more carefully tomorrow. Still, my brief look leaves me wanting more of Sanders legislative career, which after all was his job for over 30 years, and less of Aphra Behn’s opinions of Sanders.
Ah, well. Like I said, I am a very tired bird right now. Tomorrow, I may well have different opinions — it’s happened before.
Raven Onthill
@Technocrat: I’d settle for a complete legislative biography, which I haven’t seen anywhere.
BTW, there has been an independent evaluation of welfare reform by researchers at the Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. That one shocked me to my back teeth, and birds don’t even have teeth.
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: Obama has done a lot to raise people’s actual wages. Despite the GOP, even.
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: Somebody volunteered to me just the other day how much the EIC and other child tax credits meant to them in the 1990s. He was struggling, and it came at just the right time.
Older
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “There is only guilt-by-association, there is no virtue-by-association.”
Not so; there’s an exception for mothers. In that case it’s not “association,” it’s nurture.
Due to vigorous nurturing, my kids all vote the way I do.
Older
@Raven Onthill: “Look, if it comes down to it, I probably will vote for Clinton as the lesser evil.”
If it comes down to it I will vote for Clinton. But not as the “lesser evil”, rather as the “lesser good.” And I’ll be sad, but I will do it. Because the difference between Hillary and Bernie is as nothing, compared with the distance between either of them and Trump. Trump scares me. And I can’t plan on leaving the country, even if that were a responsible thing to do.
Bob In Portland
The one thing about Clinton is that she has haters across the political spectrum.
Some people say, “Well, if everybody dislikes her that must mean she’s doing something right.
The only thing right that she’s doing is absorbing Sanders’ stump speech at this late date in the campaign season.
Jim Webb is the kind of politician, who if you live in a purple state, may be the best choice of a bad lot. That’s his ceiling.