Come on LGM, you are better than this. Yes, those writers are white and privileged, but the majority of Bernie’s support is from the lower economic rungs. There’s one candidate who is really killing it in the upper economic brackets primary after primary.
Her name ain’t Bernie.
*** Update ***
Lot of people saying I am missing the point, which is probably the truth. I understand the writers are all privileged assholes. I just don’t want the conflation of those jackasses with a lot of dirt poor people I know who are supporting Sanders because he actually does speak to their economic issues in a way they do not feel Clinton is.
That is all. If was wrong, my apologies.
Chickamin Slam
It’s ok Cole. Keep cuddling up to Debbie WS. I’m sure she’ll kick a few bucks in if you ran for Congress.
Baud
LGM is now the HRC camp?
LOL.
Betty Cracker
Vox has a tax calculator that gives users a rough estimate of how they’d fare under the various candidates’ stated tax policy. I’m a fool to vote for anyone other than Cruz, apparently. If I vote my economic interests, that is. Which I don’t.
singfoom
@John Cole: I don’t get it. The way I read that LGM post is that they know the stakes. And knowing the stakes, staying home is tantamount to voting for the fascist.
They end the piece with
A bunch of commenters around here have bemoaned Bernie supporters saying they won’t vote for HRC….which as a Bernie supporter who will vote HRC if need be is a view I share..
Plus, the piece they’re talking about makes the point that you gotta vote too…
What the fuck am I missing?
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Even on economic interest, taxes aren’t the whole shebang.
bobbo
???
The privileged white people who ARE voting for Clinton still manage to understand that she is better than Trump. The privileged white Bernie supporters who will NEVER vote for Hillary are the problem.
No one is saying anything about Bernie supporters in general.
Steve in the ATL
Apparently LGM is a big tent. Loomis for Hillary; Campos in deep for Sanders and embarrassing himself in the process.
Baud
@singfoom:
This.
Womansplainer
I think you missed the point, John. That article is talking about the subset of Bernie voters who say they won’t vote for Hillary in November, and saying those guys are privileged in the sense that they won’t be the ones hurt if their staying home throws the race to Trump or Cruz. That is completely true, and it has nothing to do with whether Hillary is “killing it in the upper economic brackets primary after primary.”
jl
” Her name ain’t Bernie. ”
Baud! 2016! is a girl? Ewwwww…
High income I get, Losers can’t afford the daily diet of high quality single malt scotch, champagne and other best, highest quality, the best and most terrific things that start with ‘c’ that any Baud! 2016! supporter demands.
cleek
which could be related to the fact that he has so much support from young people.
but Clinton is getting minorities.
and neither of those groups tend to end up on the top end of the tax brackets.
jl
Does Cole realize that those LGM pieces are damning Sanders supporters who are scribblers trying to persuade people to stay home and not vote if Sanders is not the nominee.
Even St. Bernie damns them, everyone should vote. It’s a Bernie mantra.
Amir Khalid
This post is bullshit, John Cole. Erik Loomis is criticising three particular over-the-top Bernistas who write for Salon, not Bernie voters in general. You’re the one conflating the two.
Eljai
Oh come on. We can go back to Hilz/Berniebro bickering later. Have you not seen the National Enquirer?
lamh36
Is it an attack against HRC for fundraising for Dems? Really?
C.V. Danes
Well, all I can say is I’m pretty solidly in the Bernie camp, and anyone on the left who doesn’t come out and vote needs to have their ass kicked. You don’t like Hillary, then toss your vote to someone else. But chances are there are some downballot progressives that need your vote, so come out for them.
Baud
@Eljai: No shit. What a way to ruin a good day.
gogol's wife
@Eljai:
LOL
Patricia Kayden
LGM’s article is right on point. There are severe consequences for sitting out this election cycle. We can vote for Secretary Clinton or Senator Sanders knowing that the alternative is much worse and that for some of our fellow Americans, the alternative has dire consequences.
NCSteve
Dude. Did you even read the thing? He’s just talking about three idiots at Salon, a thing I barely even realized was still a thing when someone directed my attention to its descent into unparalleled heights of Bernie extremist idiocy. Really not seeing the dig at Bernie’s supporter generally.
JMS
@Betty Cracker: My family pays $20k more under the Bernie plan. That explains why I’m not a socialist, I guess.
jl
@NCSteve: Daming the loony Berniebot sribblers, who fail Berniebotdom by Bernie’s own standards, is almost a daily ritual at the LGM blog. I skip them now for more interesting posts.
Cacti
Yeah…
Those poor oppressed college students.
Why can’t they get $15 an hour to show up for class? Is there no end to the privations they suffer?
FlipYrWhig
I’d kind of like to see that documented, if you please. The majority of Bernie’s support that I personally experience is college professors, writers, and college students from relatively affluent families: “creative class” sorts. I’m not saying it’s not true, I’m saying I’d like to see how true it is.
jl
@lamh36: That is pretty stupid, if they are trying to be clever.
Edward Marshall
I have several potentially fatal, and certainly life shortening genetic mutations. They require (at least) monthly phlebotomy paid for through the medicaid expansion. If Sanders is nominated and loses, the Republicans fulfill their promise to kick me off the medicaid program, I die. In other years I’m exactly the sort of person who would feel the Bern. As is, I don’t really wanna roll the dice on getting behind an old, Jewish socialist from Vermont in the general.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Cole,
Show us on the doll where Hillary touched you
Keith G
@lamh36:
No it isn’t
From The Hill
My emphasis.
Linnaeus
And that’s fine. I feel the same way you do. But that’s not what the LGM piece was doing.
gene108
Most of the Sanders’ supporters objections to Hillary are based on the last 24 years of right-wing smears.
They are not grounded in reality. And these are spread Sanders’ supporters across the economic spectrum.
The actual difference, in policy goals, between Hillary and Bernie ain’t much. There’s just a difference in how to achieve those goals.
jl
@FlipYrWhig: quick search doesn’t reveal anything that I consider very reliable. Here is a magazine article that claims Sanders supporters have lower income on average than HRC. I don’t know how reliable it’s data or analysis are.
The Bernie Coalition
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/bernie-sanders-democratic-president-primary-new-hampshire-iowa-caucus/
Cacti
@JMS:
I’d only get about a $15,800 hike. Good thing I’m “rich” and won’t miss it. ;-)
Under Hillz, my tax bill goes up 90 bucks.
Kazanir
@FlipYrWhig: Check out the demographic split in e.g. Massachussetts and you’ll see it extremely clearly. Hell, you can even see it *regionally* in the MA results due to how concentrated the socioeconomic divide is between Boston and western MA.
Anyway. John is right that its important to separate the majority of Sanders’ supporters — who are not really very economically privileged — from the few idiots Salon is paying to write worst-in-class #BernieOrBust articles every couple weeks. I don’t think the LGM post necessarily crossed the line into hitting Sanders’ supporters in general, but it is still a worthwhile observation.
It’s also worth noting that lately Sanders has spent a lot of time attacking Donald Trump during his campaign speeches, presumably as a way of sheepdogging that broad swath of his voters towards Clinton in an eventual Trump/Clinton matchup. That is to his credit, and I think much the same point as Loomis was trying to make even if he did it slightly inartfully in that post. (In previous posts they have been much more specific in making fun of the individual writers in question, like H.A. Goodman, Walker Bragman, etc.)
singfoom
I’ll just add to the funhouse here
being privileged does not necessarily make one an asshole
being an asshole does not necessarily make one privileged
Cacti
@Keith G:
George Clooney bad rich person. Susan Sarandon good rich person.
-The Bern
Amir Khalid
@lamh36:
Some Bernistas have been maintaining that Bernie does too help raise money for Democratic campaigns. (That is, he has in the past appeared at Democratic fundraising events.) Does Bernie now renounce these efforts? If so, does he expect the Democratic Congressional caucus to help him with his legislative agenda (and he will have one) when he is President?
FlipYrWhig
@gene108:
That’s the “unlikeable” stuff, I think. But IMHO most of the loudest and most recurrent objections from that quarter are based on guilt by association about “Wall Street” (which is basically Bill Clinton’s “Rubinomics” plus GOLDMAN SACHS SPEECHES aboutwomenandentrepreneurshipshutup) and the Iraq War authorization vote.
chopper
why no “i can no longer rationally discuss the clinton campaign” tag? makes perfect sense here.
Keith G
@Cacti:
.
I do not think that that is the point being made, but I also do not think that that matters to you.
Cacti
@Amir Khalid:
Bernie is opposed to any wealthy 1 percenter type…
Who doesn’t make campaign contributions to Sanders 2016.
That seems to be the dividing line between good millionaire vs. bad millionaire is Bernie world.
FlipYrWhig
@Kazanir: I dunno. It feels to me like there’s a pretty healthy overlap between the demographics of Bernie Sanders supporters and the original Stuff White People Like. But that’s why I was asking for data.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
so this is the headline
referring to the person who wrote this
?
lamh36
@Keith G:
So the attack is that HRC is what exactly? So she and George Clooney are thieving thiefs?
Lolis
@Edward Marshall:
I agree. We still have to protect the gains President Obama has made because they are not yet secure. HRC gets that and has been smart enough to say it over and over. To me it is a compelling argument and earned her my support.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@jl: this is just Cole’s incorrect projection.
LGM did not impugn the rank and file Sanders supporter. Rather they knocked the elite extremist writing clique.
Frankly, I don’t believe these are die hards. Rather they’re just posting inflammatory copy because they love the attention it generates. It’s like Norman Mailer and Larry Flynt — they didn’t believe most of the obnoxious stuff they said, but they loved the attention it generated.
gwangung
@FlipYrWhig:
The war authorization is fairly fair. And the speeches are somewhat fair. But the Wall Street stuff often devolves into a mishmash of stuff that conflates individuals who work for the banking industry with the industry itself, and the policies that worked in the late 90s with the policies that she’s proposing now.
PaulWartenberg2016
So Bernie Sanders can summon birds. Who knew?
cleek
a GOP President would make what just happened in NC look like the New Deal.
you’d think leftier-than-thou Salon would recognize this.
Amir Khalid
@Keith G:
Susan Sarandon, for example, is free to host an event like George and Amal Clooney’s for Bernie’s campaign. As is any other of Bernie’s rich and famous supporters from showbiz. And maybe they should, instead of griping about what the Clooneys are doing.
NonyNony
LGM is mostly a Sanders joint, actually.
But LGM is also a “remember that Ralph Nader in 2000 was a tool of the GOP to get Bush into power” site, and so they are really, really, really heavily invested in reminding people that if your choices get reduced down to two choices that you don’t like it’s in your best interest to pick the one that will do more of the things on your agenda rather than the one that will destroy your agenda.
Honestly anyone who says that if Sanders is the nominee then they won’t vote for Clinton is someone who cannot learn unless they are someone who is a) in a deep blue state where they can safely protest vote or b) young enough not to remember 2000 – 2008.
And anyone with a public platform who encourages Democrats to sit out the vote if Sanders isn’t the nominee is a Republican ratfucker. They may be being paid to do it or they may be stupid enough to do it for free, but they’re ratfuckers and should be treated as such.
Miss Bianca
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
STOP MAKING ME LAUGH AT WORK
jl
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Why don’t they go get a conservative pundit job, then? That pays much better, and you make good bank getting freebies at conferences and ‘Institutes’ and on the TV machine.
Might be some openings soon, Brooks and Douthat have just about wasted themselves out by now. They are dried up husks who look ready to low away in the wind.
Linnaeus
@FlipYrWhig:
Here’s some exit polling from the Michigan primary. Clinton and Sanders pretty much split both college-educated and non-college educated voters: Clinton did better among nonwhites in both categories, Sanders did better among whites in both categories.
AkaDad
I would crawl over broken glass to vote for Trump because I can afford the medical bill.
Mnemosyne
I find it fascinating that this year’s “party unity, my ass!” crowd is coming from the anti-Hillary side. I’m assuming they will be about as influential in the final result as 2008’s PUMAs were, especially since I’m 99.5 percent sure Bernie is going to stump for Hillary once it’s all decided.
Baud
Baud! supporters are too poor to comment on decent blog.
Cacti
Thus far 5 of the 10 poorest states in the country have nominated Hillary and all of them by blowout margins. The other 5 haven’t voted yet.
The story about the Bernie coalition being the downtrodden, salt of the earth, working class is a yarn from the campaign that’s most at home on a college campus.
FlipYrWhig
@gwangung: Oh, yeah, there are certainly valid reasons to chalk up strikes against her. But the Wall Street thing is just such a mess: “she’s too close to Wall Street!” “Really, wow, explain how?” “She gave those big-dollar speeches.” “What did she say in those speeches?” “We don’t know! That’s suspicious, right?” “What if what she said was a boring bunch of platitudes, which is kind of what she said in every other speaking engagement?” “Even so, she shouldn’t have buddied up to Wall Street like that.” That’s a pretty thin gruel, IMHO.
Keith G
@lamh36: IMHO, the named folks are a bit like the children at a drone-interrupted Afghani wedding – collateral damage.
What is being attacked is the system. The process by which a politician’s future depends on the kindness of strange, moneyed elites.
Well, not so much kindness as a purchasing of physical access and other quid pro quos.
It is a bit of a liberal boilerplate attack. One that many here would find comforting if some of the names were different.
Matt McIrvin
Loomis is himself a Bernie Sanders supporter, John. He’s said so on multiple occasions.
chopper
if this is how cole is gonna keep reacting to this sort of stuff it’s gonna be a loooooong 6+ months.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@jl: They eventually do. (see Hitchens, Eldridge Cleaver, Max Eastman, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, most of the old trotskyite left)
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
That makes Baud! the purest and noblest candidate of them all.
Felanius Kootea
@Betty Cracker: I also do best under Cruz and worst with Bernie but I still have a (much smaller) tax hike with Hillary. When I imagine the kind of society Cruz or Trump would create, as John Cole once said, I will crawl over broken glass to vote for either of the Dems.
Betty Cracker
@JMS: My tax hike would be similar, and I’d happily pay it for as strong a social safety net and as broad an array of benefits as Sanders proposes. I just don’t think we’re anywhere near ready as a country to do that, though, which is one reason I support Clinton. But I’m glad Sanders’ proposals are part of the conversation!
FlipYrWhig
@Keith G:
I highly doubt that George Clooney wants “quid pro quos,” though. He’s a liberal dude with scads of money and he wants to use it to make someone he likes have a better chance at getting elected. For Team Sanders it seems like all money transacted in politics is necessarily part of an implicit quid pro quo, hence, unclean. That seems kind of silly.
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
Shhh, don’t tell anyone. We jackals are his base and we aren’t going to get off our couches for pure and noble.
NR
I for one sure am glad that the Democratic Party is about to nominate the only politician in the country who could possibly lose the general election to Donald Trump.
Irony Abounds
This article seems harmless. On the other hand, Chelsea bagging on the ACA just reinforces my extreme dislike for the Clintons and the whole dynastic aspect of Hillary’s candidacy. When Chelsea actually accomplishes something on her own I’ll listen to her (and the same goes for any candidate’s male or female spawn who have gotten ahead primarily as a result of the DNA lottery – Donald Trump’s two sons come to mind as the types you wouldn’t mind seeing make a wrong turn into the bad part of town and getting their smarmy smug selves roughed up just a wee bit).
HRC has consistently shown terrible judgement, from her support for the Iraq war, her push to get the US involved in Libya, her support of a more aggressive stance in Syria, her use of a private email server, her grotesquely over-paid speeches to the banksters, her embrace of AIPAC and overall hawkishness in foreign policy, her choice of campaign advisors in 2008 and to a lesser extent 2016, and her attachment to Sid Blumenthal, to mention several such lapses in judgment. And of course there is her having brain cancer and only having 6 months to live. That certainly wasn’t a smart thing to do.
It is very sad that Clinton is the best the Dems could come up with this year, but of course voting for the Republican, no matter who he or she might be, is unthinkable, so she’ll get my vote. I will, however, be grumbling and pissed off all the while I fill out my ballot.
Amir Khalid
@FlipYrWhig:
Besides, George Clooney is an A-list movie-star and a big-deal activist. Amal was one of the most prominent human-rights lawyers on the planet when she met him. Either of them already has all the access to powerful people that they need for their causes.
Keith G
@Amir Khalid: @Amir Khalid: @Amir Khalid:
Christ on a crouton, man. You just don’t get it.
It is not about who is sponsoring the “party”, it is about that these high dollar shindigs happen at all and the the corrosive effect it has when politicians spend cocktail hours upon hours chatting up (and being chatted up by) the economically greatly privileged.
So yeah, Sarandon could host a Bernie’s Big Buck Brunch, but instead she is visiting with voters in small, face to face get-to-gathers.
Damn her.
MomSense
@FlipYrWhig:
Clooney is a Democrat from Kentucky who knows we need to elect a Democratic President and as many Senstors and Representatives as possible. If the contest to have dinner with the Amal and George causes people to donate and sign up to volunteer it’s a great thing.
Keith G
@FlipYrWhig: Clooney has issues that as a political activist he wants addressed.
That’s cool.
Just because there are times when the “quos” are ones we like does not erase the times when they are not.
Generally, the system is fucking “working America” over even if there are specific times when the “stars” align and money for a good cause is raised.
Amir Khalid
@Keith G:
So the Clooneys raise money for Hillary their way and Sarandon raises money for Bernie her way. I don’t see how one way is morally superior to the other. Unless rich people’s money is tainted, which is not my belief.
Does Hillary refuse to meet regular folks? Does she meet them less often on the campaign trail than she does rich people I have not heard that. Have you?
Smiling Mortician
@JMS: Looks like I’m in the same bracket as you. If I thought Bernie could actually do what my additional $20k is supposed to do — if not only I but EVERYONE had a right to health, education, and well-compensated employment, among other things — I’d happily sign up as a democratic socialist (maybe even with capital letters). But he’d need a Congress of the same philosophy to do it.
Cruz would save me $15k. But both the spouse and I would lose our jobs, since we teach at a public institution, so that’s a bit of a pyrrhic victory, I guess.
Hillz it is.
Applejinx
Meanwhile, Bernie has the sparrow vote.
:)
Ella in New Mexico
If ten idiots out of millions of supporters proclaim they’ll never vote for Hilary if Bernie doesn’t win the nomination, does the falling tree in the forest even hear the bear shitting in the woods?
Or something like that. Anyway, don’t worry because there’s not enough of thozeguyz to effect the damn election either way.
Steve in the ATL
@Amir Khalid:
Because one way is BERNIE’S way, man, therefore it is superior! Have you been paying attention these last few months?
mclaren
@singfoom:
I’m an ardent Bernie supporter and I’m going to vote for Hillary if she’s the nominee.
Can anyone point me to a specific post on Balloon Juice where anyone specifically says they’re not going to for Hillary if she’s the nominee?
I haven’t seen one, and I’ve been looking for months.
FlipYrWhig
@Keith G:
Supreme Court says campaign contributions are free speech. Until that’s fixed, working the system is A-OK by me. I know this is the great cause of Bernie Sanders’s late career but I’m not particularly moved by it myself. If rich people want good things, let the rich people hobnob. If rich people want bad things, that’s a different story. Trying to make hay out of rich people wanting good things strikes me as really sloppy, lowest-common-denominator populism that’s the lefty equivalent of what righties do when they swap stories about people paying for crab legs with an EBT card. HILLARY PARTY FAMOUS hyuk hyuk. This sort of thing is a decent chunk of why I’m not that impressed with Sanders or Sanders’s people. YMMV.
lollipopguild
@NonyNony: This is totally off the subject-do you have Hey Nony Nony-as a backup name?
Keith G
@Amir Khalid:
Okay.
I guess we will have to rest with a disagreement about the corrosive impact of high dollar donations to politicians.
That said, I am very proud of the several “Love Trumps Hate” sticker sets that I purchased at “shop.hillaryclinton.com”.
Baud
@Keith G:
I bought the “Cruz Humps Eight” one today.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
I find it fascinating that you need to tell these kinds of lies. I’m hard-core anti-Hillary but I’m very big on party unity and so is pretty much every other pro-Sanders supporter who posts on this forum.
We all say the same thing: Hillary is vastly inferior to Sanders in terms of policies, but if HIllary is the nominee, we’ll vote for her.
The real anti-unity Democrats are the astroturfers like you, Mnemosyne, you get paid to sow dissension in liberal ranks.
The plain fact of the matter is that the Democratic party is far more unified than I’ve seen it in my lifetime, even more so than 2008 since the Sanders supporters are pretty much all lined up to support Hillary even if their guy doesn’t get the nomination, and that’s a very good thing. Democratic party unity is what will crush the Republicans in this election cycle and fracture and destroy them as a party when they carry their civil war in a leper colony to its logical conclusion.
But by all means keep trying to convince us that the Democratic party is disunited, Mnemosyne. You’re getting paid to say this stuff, so you have to earn your paycheck.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
White dudes on both sides of the political fence are going to be amazed and astonished by how much everyone who is not a white dude hates Donald J. Trump. And guess what? We outnumber white dudes.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
It’s hard to listen to you with a straight face.
debbie
@jl:
David Brooks was really pretty funny on NPR today:
“I’ve been so repulsed by Donald Trump, I’ve forgotten how ugly Ted Cruz can be.”
He also says toward the end of the segment that Trump has shown the GOP that it is a dying husk of the party of Reagan and that it will have to evolve into something totally different.
An entertaining start to the weekend.
Baud
More from the HRC Camp at LGM
Interesting.
Baud
@debbie: That is funny.
mclaren
@FlipYrWhig:
The Supreme Court also says that the president can murder U.S. citizens without a trial or even being accused of a crime. Until that’s fixed, is the president ordering the murder of U.S. citizens without a trial also A-OK with you?
Mnemosyne
@Ella in New Mexico:
Despite Cole’s mini-freakout here, that’s pretty much what the rest of us are saying. These guys are this year’s PUMAs and will have about as much of an effect on the final result.
lamh36
@Keith G: Question…is there not a limit to what goes to the HRC campaign? The rest then goes to Dem party/GOTV…yes?
Did yes that campaign is therefore attacking HRC for fundraising for the party along with herself?
I get it HRC is an elitist fundraising with rich folk. Doesn’t change the fact that the camp is essentially calling HRC a thief with a den of thieves helping her…da rich.
Stupid attack at this time in the game if you ask me, but whatev..
singfoom
@mclaren: Off the top of my head I can’t think of one honestly, but it’s more mentions by other commenters of people in their Facebook feeds of people saying so.
I find myself believing it about the college age Bernie supporters because I would have been the same back then.
I’m sure others can chime in. It’s all anecdotal.
Cacti
@Keith G:
So, what made the rich people at this Bernie Hollywood fundraiser the good kind?
Keith G
@FlipYrWhig:
Who decides?
Is this a recent fly in his soup?
For it to change, many things need to happen. Sanders making a deal out of it is one helpful thing along that process. It will not stop HRC from being nominated and it will not injure her chances in the Fall. This is an issue that adds to a pack of conditions that trouble many citizens.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud:
Consecutively electing the first black, first female, then first Hispanic president would make this middle-aged white man ecstatic
Ella in New Mexico
@mclaren: OMG look what you did–do you know not what you have unleashed?
Now chopper, Cacti, Conster and the gang are going to have to show you what a punk-dumbass rich privileged poser and illegitimate BJ poster you are. It’s gonna get real nasty real quick. I’m still wearing my ace bandages and back brace from my “lessons”. But they were good lessons! I’m no longer a Victim for Bernie!!!
So, sorry dude, as much as I’d like to help you’re on your own. I’m outta here.
And and this was such a nicely homogenized pro-Hilary thread. ;-)
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@NR: Can’t believe you’ve given up on Sanders especially now when he and his supporters insist they’re on a glide path to the nomination with projected landslide victories in NY, NJ, PA, and CA.
Cacti
@Ella in New Mexico:
Our poor lil’ picked on Bernie flower got another case of the vapors from the Clinton meanies.
Don’t go away mad! (just go away)
Soylent Green
@NR:
You guys keep repeating this little gem as though it’s proven fact. But nobody knows which candidate could lose to Trump. I think it would be Sanders, but that’s pure speculation, same as yours.
If Bernie currently polls any better in this matchup, it’s because the GOP noise machine hasn’t yet cranked to 11 the inevitable refrain of “east coast pinko socia1ist commie radical Alinskyite” which would knock his national poll numbers down. Meanwhile, Hillary has weathered their bullshit for 25 years.
Ella in New Mexico
@Cacti:
Ummmmmm…..
No. Not gonna happen. Besides, I was here first. I’m not the type who gives up her seat for anybody, particularly bullies…They just seem to motivate me to beat the living shit out of them with their own words.
mclaren
@debbie:
Tons of entertaining hate-speech about Marco Rubio in various articles around the web and the mainstream media. We learn that Rubio has accomplished politically “something that a reanimated pygmy skink could do, and has done.” Great stuff.
While we’re delectating in all the schadenfreud about Ted Cruz, don’t neglect that delicious collective beating of the dead horse Marco Rubio with verbal baseball bats. And I’m still hoping some journalists will dig up and defile the corpse of Jeb Bush’s political career, because no amount of defilement is sufficient for the Bush crime family.
“…the national Rubio narrative (..) said that he was poised to break out at any second, probably on the basis of the debate he won, or the other one, or the other one. Rubio won debates the same way Hillary Clinton does — by having it be too headachy for analysts to assume a different outcome was possible. The fact that outlets like Politico either got their debate evaluations from party insiders or simply wrote from their mindset didn’t help: If you ask a dog if an ass smells great, it’s going to say yeah.”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/death-of-a-mannequin-marco-rubios-last-day-20160318#ixzz43mvTM7hp
“Rubio has two major political achievements. First, he was speaker of the Florida House of Representatives—an annual beauty pageant of ugly Republicans, by ugly Republicans, for ugly Republicans, so that ugly Republicans shall not perish from the earth. Second, he took an election from political changeling Charlie Crist, something that a
reanimated pygmy skink could do, and has done.”
http://gawker.com/get-to-know-marco-rubio-the-biggest-idiot-running-for-1697567638
Cheryl from Maryland
@Betty Cracker: True that, but Bernie would have me paying $12,000 more a year. That’s almost double what my spouse and I are paying now. Sorry, but not Bernie. Bad enough that my tax rate is higher than Mitt’s under the current system, but double isn’t in order. More reason I’m voting for HRC.
Keith G
@Cacti: Reading the article, the issue was not the quality of the person. The issue was the price of the entry ticket.
I think it is fine if one sees this as splitting hairs. That a good (hair splitting) discussion to have: At what point might a campaign contribution become more than just a “good faith” and “Here you go, friend” action?
Calouste
Cole, you know a lot of dirt poor people who like Sanders because you live in a state with a lot of dirt poor people (49th in GDP/capita).
mclaren
@Cacti:
Poor little picked on loser Bernie Sanders turns out to be a ten-mile-tall giant whose feet raise tidal waves. About that “inevitable” nomination, Hillary…you might want to start writing you capitulation speech now…
Source: “What The Stunning Bernie Sanders Win In Michigan Means,” Fivethirtyeight, Harry Enten, 9 March 2016.
Remember, Democrats, if there’s anything you don’t want to do in the 2016 presidential election, it’s nominate the candidate with the highest positive polling numbers who has raised the most money in this election cycle. No, keep reciting that mindless manta “Sanders hasn’t got a chance, SANDERS HASN’T GOT A CHANCE” even as he racks up big wins in big states and blows the polls into ashes and atoms.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne:
Just between you and me, I would bet that of all the white dudes who are registered to vote, an absolute minority support Donald Trump now and even fewer will support him later.
M. Bouffant
NEVER APOLOGIZE!!
Soylent Green
“…candidate with the highest positive polling numbers…”
It’s the fucking primary. The polls mean diddly with regard to the general.
mclaren
@Keith G:
Yes, the real issue here is the kind of audience Hillary chooses to address.
Given the choice, Hills always winds up giving speeches to a room full of millionaires and billionaires. Hillary’s attitude toward the electorate is indistinguishable from George W. Bush’s: “Some people call you the haves and the have-mores. I call you my base.”
We saw how well that worked out for the economy.
A politician who bases her campaign on french-kissing the bungholes of the super-rich is likely to preside over an economy that crashes and burns, ’cause 70% of the U.S. economy is made up of middle class consumer spending.
mclaren
@Soylent Green:
Permit me to suggest you are incorrect, sir.
When Gallup polls finds that Donald Trump has the highest negative polling ever recorded for a presidential candidate, I would suggest that it implies something significant about his prospects in the general election.
In that event, you really want to nominate a Democratic candidate who does not share that kind of enormous problem, and Hillary’s negatives poll very high.
Source: Gallup polling organization.
Please explain to me why we would want to nominate a Democratic candidate who has almost as high negative polling numbers as Donald Trump’s record-high negative numbers. I’m sure your verbal calisthenics will prove immensely entertaining.
agorabum
Cole: obviously wrong, as everyone else in the thread noted. LGM’s article attacked people who say they are progressive and want to improve America, but will refuse to vote if Bernie doesn’t win.
Basically, ripping unrepentant Nader voters of 2000 who still claim today there was nothing wrong with splitting the vote of the left and helping George Bush win the presidency.
dogwood
According to Cole, poor people support Bernie and the rich elite support Hillary. I guess this is true if you discount the votes of POC. I remember a discussion on one of the Sunday morning gabfests after the 1992 election. The focal point was about how Bill Clinton only won the presidency because he won the women’s vote. This seemed very troubling to these very serious sages. And that attitude about voters who aren’t white males hasn’t changed one iota.
mclaren
@agorabum:
We keep hearing about these mythical creatures. Can anyone give five specific documented examples? Anywhere? On any forum?
The Dubya dumpster-fire of a presidency destroyed the unprepentant Nader voters of 2000. They are now an extinct species. Just as the Dubya malaministration wiped out the Blue Dog Democrats and DINOs who claimed that while we may despise Republican presidents, we must defer to their policies once they get elected because of politeness and bipartisanship.
After the Dubya catastrophe, Democrats realize that they must fight to the death on Hamburger Hill against every single proposal of every single Republican everywhere every time, otherwise America will collapse and be destroyed. If that’s the hill we die on, so be it. If every last Democrat has to get shoveled into a mass trench grave, then we die together.
The Nader 2000 voters are long gone. Say hello to a party made up of the kind of people who climbed up the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc on D-Day under machine gun fire and took the bastards out barehanded.
chopper
@Soylent Green:
at least as to turnout, the correlation between the primary and the general is both weak and negative.
turns out things aren’t as simple as pundits etc like to project. lots of folks have made some pretty butt-ass wrong prognostications, including some pretty overconfident commenters here.
Keith G
@mclaren: Lets pretend that Bernie had been able to gain enough ground to pull off a narrow win of the nomination.
He was then able to win a squeaker in November. He becomes president and the Dems hold a two seat majority in the Senate. The House is still bat shit crazy.
Give me a hint at what the Sanders Presidency is able to do?
Extra consideration: We are past due for a recession. What happens if the economy gets even worse on Bernie’s watch?
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
In 2012, 62 percent of white men voted for Mitt Romney. I think Trump will still get a majority of them, but it probably will be a smaller majority.
mclaren
@dogwood:
See the article “Guess what? Bernie actually has backers on wall Street,” CNBC website, 11 March 2016.
The claim that rich people don’t support Bernie is a canard and a lie. Plenty of rich people support Bernie Sanders because they want to be able to keep their wealth without getting dragged out by a starving mob and hung from the nearest lamppost. The rich people just can’t write big checks to Bernie’s campaign because he won’t accept large donations from individuals.
Source: ” The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats,” Nick Hanauer, Politico, July/August 2014.
The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016
@NR: Clinton’s going to stomp a mudhole into Trump, bears will shit in woods, water will still be wet, and you’ll always be here spouting purity pony bullshit.
NR
@Soylent Green: Oh, here it is again. The argument that since the Republicans might be able to lower Bernie’s favorability numbers, we should nominate the candidate whose numbers are already in the toilet and are continuing to get worse.
But it’s okay. You guys won the primary, so we’re going to find out exactly how low Hillary’s numbers can go.
Nate Dawg
Since when did PURE BRAZEN Ad Hominem attacks count as an actual response to someone’s argument?
This is where the twitter “SJW” vs. AssholeGamer thing really went off the rails.
It is not a rebuttal to an argument to point out the background of the person making it. You certainly can do that to enlighten the context, but it isn’t enough alone to count as an actual response to their statement.
Really sick of it.
NR
@mclaren: Don’t forget, Hillary’s been vetted. Her numbers are baked in and can’t possibly go any lower. The fact that they’re still dropping today is of no consequence, and if we all just don’t think about it everything will be fine.
Mike J
We think having rich people pay more in taxes makes sense. They’re the ones with the money, let them pay. I don’t see why taking their money for a campaign is any different.
Chyron HR
@NR:
No kidding? We never would have guessed.
mclaren
@Nate Dawg:
Oh, please. This is Balloon-Juice, you silly rabbit!
This is the forum on which the late great much-lamented commenter General Stuck, whose political insight is still worshiped and fabled today, demonstrated his supreme acumen by responding to all of my posts with the statement:
“Mclaren has butt rabies.”
Mike J
@Keith G:
Also, who are votes 50, 51, and 52? Remember having to negotiate with Manchin? He’s still there. You could elect Che president, the leftward limit for legislation is the 50th vote in the senate.
NR
@Chyron HR: Wow, your violent fantasies are really creepy. I recommend you seek the help of a competent psychiatric professional as soon as possible.
chopper
@mclaren:
don’t forget the satellite-based mind beams. we’ve been working on getting that shit right for 20 years now.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Sanders made $220,000 last year. By his supporters definition he shouldn’t be running given his high income bracket.
it’s also odd that Sanders refuses to release his tax returns. So far he only released a summary for 1 year. That’s worse than Romney. Mittens only released returns for 1 year, but at least it was detailed.
Sanders hasn’t been pressed on this cuz the media doesn’t think he will win so he escapes all scrutiny.
Why hasn’t he released his returns: I suspect in the aggregate he’s given little to charity over the decades which would be embarrassing considering his calls for redistribution, given his relatively high income.
Clinton on the other hand has released returns for 38 years.
mclaren
@The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016:
Except for the last part, you are correct, sir.
Clinton will beat Trump like a rented mule. A reanimated pygmy skink would beat Trump in the general election. Bernie Sanders, if he’s the nominee, will whip Trump so badly that the Donald will slink away and give up business and public life to wash children’s diapers in an orphanage in Nicaragua for the rest of his life.
Either Hillary or Bernie will pound Trump into the pavement. That’s not the question. The big issue is: faced with a fanatically obstructionist Republican congress, which one do you want as president? Hillary, whose history of triangulation and split-the-difference bullshit capitulation to Republicans will make her likely to give in to insane Republican demands…or Bernie Sanders, who will hold fast and stand firm until voters get sick of the shitshow fail parade misnamed the Republican House of Representatives and vote all the bastards out?
chopper
@mclaren:
to be fair, stuck had a point. the thrashing about, the delusions, it really does make a lot of sense.
burnspbesq
@Keith G:
I will gladly stipulate that our system of campaign finance sucks. However, at present it is the system we have, so the alternatives are grovel, self-fund, or unilaterally disarm. Choose one.
mclaren
@efgoldman:
Well, that’s okay, this is how I envision you.
So I guess we’re even.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne:
I bet that the 62% in question is 62% of white men who voted and not 62% of all white males or even 62% of the white males who were registered to vote.
I bring this up because your original comment was:
With that in mind, my guess is that most white dudes (your criteria) are not fans of Trump. I narrowed in it a bit and said, “White dudes who are registered to vote”. I think that this is still safe. Trump is not all that popular outside a defined range of age, education, gender and race.
Once all those caveats are considered, I wonder if just saying or implying, “White dudes support Donald Trump” is all that accurate.
mclaren
@burnspbesq:
The shit-for-brains tax avoidance lawyer gets it wrong again. No surprise: that’s like saying the sun rose this morning.
No, mongoloid idiot, the choices aren’t “grovel, self-fund, or unilaterally disarm,” you’ve left out choice number 4:
[4] Bernie Sanders has raised more money than Hillary Clinton but entirely from ordinary citizens in small donations.
As usual, the anacephalic tax-avoidance lawyer arrives at a conclusion foolishly false and laughably opposite to the observed facts. What else is new? We have come to expect no less from burnspbesq, the gold standard in getting things wrong for the last 9 years. The Republicans have William Kristol; Democrats have burnspbesq.
burnspbesq
@mclaren:
The last five words are where you go astray. There are more things in Heaven and on Earth, dear Horatio, than are dreamt of on Balloon-juice. You should see my damn Facebook page. Bernie-or-Bust nonsense lands there about once an hour from 7:00 a.m. to midnight, each and every day.
Keith G
@burnspbesq: Oh I am not choosing, I was originally just pushing back against the notion that Sanders was wrong or out of bounds for bringing up the issues therein as something that was a problem.
Betty Cracker
@mclaren: Bob in Portland has said repeatedly that he won’t vote for Hillary. But to be fair, he’s an addled nitwit who sees Ukrainian fascists in his cornflakes, so he’s hardly representative. Your point — that the Bernie or Bust movement is vanishingly small — stands, IMO.
burnspbesq
@mclaren:
One outlier doesnt disprove jack shit. Prove that that’s scalable or reproducible, or shove it up your ass.
mclaren
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
You know the answer to that: Sanders was too busy strangling corporal Malvoli in that pavilion in North Korea.
mclaren
@burnspbesq:
Magnificent. You should write that up for Yale Law Journal. They’d be impressed by the elegance of your legal reasoning.
C’mon, burnspbesq, come clean…you’re actually a performance art satire of a lawyer, right?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Mike J: the irony: most of the whiners worship at the alter of a rich patrician, who owned multiple mansions, a yacht, and worked on Wall Street (photo).
dogwood
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
If Sander’s became the nominee and a good share of the middle class got a look at the tax increase he proposes, his unfavorables will be extremely high. Bernie’s revolution means lowering my standard of living. I couldn’t afford to keep up my home and pay that higher rate without giving up other things that are important to me. And I’m sure I won’t be the only middle class American who will be asked to do this without accruing any direct benefit. Free health care and free college are not pertinent to me.
Davebo
@mclaren:
[4] Bernie Sanders has raised more money than Hillary Clinton but entirely from ordinary citizens in small donations.
NR
@Betty Cracker: Agreed, the number of people who will vote Trump out of spite for Bernie not getting the nomination will not be statistically significant.
The people we really need to worry about are the ones who genuinely think that Trump is a better option than Hillary. I’ll say it again: Trump is going to run to Hillary’s left on issues like reining in Wall Street and US foreign policy, especially in the Middle East. He’ll attack her for being too close to Wall Street and too hawkish in the ME. For voters who care the most about those two issues, Trump is going to look very appealing.
I think Hillary will have a very hard time dealing with those kinds of attacks. She and her supporters seem utterly clueless about the absolutely massive political liability that her Wall Street ties create.
mclaren
@burnspbesq:
I’ve seen my friend’s Facebook page. Hillary is about to be indicted for her “email scandal” which was actually a murder-for-hire plot instigated by Bill Clinton to cover up Hillary’s lesbian sex orgies, Barack Obama was teleported to Mars by the CIA in the 1970s, chemtrails are a plot by the NSA to mind-control us into accepting a black helicopter U.N. government, and Donald Trump is the only person who sees through the alien UFO conspiracy that has taken over America’s elites.
Facebook is an open sewer. If your argument is based on stuff that bubbles to the top of the rancid sink of delusion misnamed Facebook, you’re making a very weak argument indeed…because Facebook as far as I can tell is all outliers and no substance.
My friend occasionally asks me if some silly crap he read on Facebook is real and I tell him to google snopes and it’ll show up as debunked. But then, my friend is a naive person who thinks that when a computer message pops up on linux and tells him he has a virus and needs to phone a 1-800 number and give his credit card info to unlock his computer, he thinks that’s legit.
As soon as someone uses the word “Facebook” in a sentence where we’re supposed to be talking about representative Americans with some minimal amount of common sense, their entire argument has gone south and must be thrown out. Facebook abounds with fringe bullshit because, let’s face it…on Facebook, what matters is whether a post gets upvoted, not whether it bears any relation to reality. Inside the sealed-off hermetically closed walled garden of Facebook, bizarre bullshit flourishes because that’s what gets the pageviews and the upvotes, and in order to google snopes to debunk it, you have to go through a message saying ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO LEAVE FACEBOOK? [YES] [NO] so most people don’t bother.
Talking about the behavior of denizens of a rarefied walled garden like Facebook is as fallacious as Maureen Dowd’s claim that she couldn’t believe George W. Bush won the 2000 election because “No I know voted for him.”
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
Sorry, the original comment may have been a little oblique. I was thinking more of the white dudes in the MSM (and probably on quite a few blogs) who are going to be freaking out and convincing themselves that Trump Is Inevitable because they are also prone to falling for that white dude dick-swinging. Meanwhile, those of us who are immune to it (a group that includes some white dudes) are going to crawl over broken glass to vote against Trump.
It was more of a sneer at the MSM and some blogs than at voters per se.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@dogwood: What surprises me is how he focuses on redistribution instead of bringing back good manufacturing jobs by ripping up NAFTA and the China trade deal.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
Dare I reveal that it’s a quote from you-know-what?
dogwood
@NR:
And when a single person making 50,000 a year’s finds out he/she will be coughing up another 5,000 for Bernie’s revolution, his Wall Street schtick will start to fall on deaf ears.
Chyron HR
@NR:
It really, really is.
mclaren
@NR:
Maybe. But Trump has no real policies. He’s all over the place. He switches his position 180 degree between speeches. First he was in favor of a wealth tax on wall street, then he wasn’t. First he supported planned parenthood, then he says he’s going to defund it. First he says he didn’t want to abolish the ACA because he didn’t “want to see people dying in the streets,” then he says he’s going to shut down the ACA and replace it with “something great.” WTF are Trump’s policy positions? No one knows. He doesn’t even know. He’s an easy mark for a takedown by any pol who isn’t batshit insane (as Cruz and Rubio are).
Moreover, what Trump has said economically is so crazy and 1-percenterish that Hillary will stomp him hard. All she has to do is replay clips of Trump saying “The minimum wage is too high” and you can watch Trump’s middle class support melt away.
Have you gone to Trump’s website and read his policy positions? I did, and suffered the frontal cortex damage to prove it.
That last line is not a punchline, folks. I repeat: NOT A PUNCHLINE.
Hillary will wipe the floor with this maroon.
Source: Donald Trump’s website,
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/tax-reform
mclaren
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
You mean “altar.”
But go ahead, keep trying. We’re not laughing at you, we’re laughing with you.
mclaren
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
It shouldn’t surprise you. Automation destroyed those good manufacturing jobs, and they’re not coming back. Bernie Sanders isn’t stupid — he knows this.
Source: “Manufacturing Jobs Are Never Coming Back,” Fivethirtyeight website, Ben Casselman, 18 March 2016.
Bob In Portland
@Betty Cracker: What’s wrong with supporting someone who supports your interests?
By the way, I missed the Portland rally for Sanders today. Heard it was jumping. I’m in Florida visiting some seriously ill relatives. Driving around today I saw three different roadside stands selling Trump t-shirts. Scary. Did you know that Trump partied with Hillary?
mclaren
@dogwood:
There’s a logical problem with your argument. On the one hand, anti-Sanders proponents say that Bernie Sanders can’t deliver on any of his promises because a fanatically obstructionist Republican-dominated House of Representatives will prevent any of Bernie’s proposals from becoming law.
But on the other hand anti-Sanders proponents also say that Bernie Sanders’ tax rate increases will take so much money from middle-class people that they won’t vote for him out of fear of being impoverished.
But in order to take money from the middle class, Bernie Sanders tax proposals would have to pass the House — which you’ve said they won’t do.
So which is it? Will Bernie’s legislation pass congress, or won’t it?
If it doesn’t, why should we care about his proposed tax increases?
If it does, Democrats will control all three branches of government (what with the inevitable appointment of a progressive Supreme Court justice by the next Democratic president, whomever that is) and we’ll all be too busy celebrating to worry about a minor tax increase.
Either way, your anti-Sanders argument is self-contradictory and makes no sense.
mclaren
@Bob In Portland:
There’s nothing wrong with supporting a Democratic pol if you’re a Democrat.
There’s a lot wrong with refusing to vote for a Democrat (even one you deeply dislike) if a batshit insane cryptofascist like Donald Trump is the alternative.
I urge you with the deepest sincerity: if Hillary becomes the Democratic nominee, please swallow your disgust and vote for her. I beg you…don’t help set up a repeat of the disastrous 2000 election.
Davebo
Sanders would have to win in order to even get a chance to pass his proposals.
Are you assuming the average voter won’t spend 10 minutes on Sander’s website before making a choice who to vote for?
dogwood
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Redistribution is popular with Sander’s and his voters because it is sold as retribution. We take the money from the bad guys and give it to the good guys. What these people haven’t figured out is that the bulk of the money that Bernie promises to raise will come from middle and upper middle class taxpayers, not the 1%. He’s just promising to move money around. And when single payer comes to America under Bernie, corporations will soon figure out that they can shake off the burden of providing healthcare for employees and use that money for higher salaries for CEO’s and higher returns for investors.
Cacti
@Ella in New Mexico:
You never answered my question the other day.
When you’re nailing yourself to that martyr’s cross, how do you get the last one pounded in?
Bob In Portland
@Betty Cracker: Oh, and in case you never read the article when I linked to it in 2014, here it is again. You know where I see Ukrainian fascists? Not in my cornflakes, sweetie. I see them in Ukraine. You know, the guys that the US put in power in a coup. Ask Gin & Tonic how things have been going in Kiev under the jackboots.
dogwood
@mclaren:
I’m not at all worried about Bernie’s tax plan because it wouldn’t pass a Democratic Congress. You can’t be so stupid to think that Republicans would ignore Bernie’s tax plan, and not use it to scare the hell out of voters. If you read or listen to voters, you’d understand that few people on either side of the spectrum seem to know how government works. We have created a cult of the presidency. People believe that you elect a president and this “most powerful person in the world” enacts his/her agenda. Voila! And democrats are more guilty of this than republicans. Republicans seem to have more voters who understand that Congress matters. If you don’t understand the difference between how campaigns operate and how government operates, you really are lost.
JMG
Dear John: At least here in Massachusetts, which admittedly is a very prosperous state, especially compared to yours, Clinton won the urban centers where we have the most poverty. I’m sure there were poorer Sanders voters, but not as many as relatively well off ones. And I’m sure that doesn’t hold everywhere, but it was the pattern here.
George Hayduke
@gene108:
A couple hundred dead Iraqi citizens beg to differ with your assessment.
redshirt
@mclaren:
One of the most remarkable replies in BJ history.
redshirt
@George Hayduke: Hillary killed hundreds of Iraqis?
dogwood
@redshirt:
After she killed Vince Foster Hillary got the taste for killing. A couple hundred Iraquis was the next step. Obama killed even more. He doesn’t get blamed as much because he’s not so shrill about it and he smiles when it’s over.
Bob In Portland
@mclaren: No. I will not vote for Clinton.
Bob In Portland
@dogwood: Ask Madeline Albright how you kill a half million Iraqis.
Sad_Dem
The long lines in Arizona and the way the anti-LGBT bill was passed in North Carolina make it clear–the Republicans aren’t even pretending to care about democracy anymore. Vote!
redshirt
@Bob In Portland: Is it just women politicians you dislike?
Eric U.
it is amazing how the anti-Clinton propaganda spewed by the MSM in their role as republican tools can have such an effect on some fairly smart people. If Hillary is the second coming of the Bill Clinton presidency, we will have a pretty damn good 8 years.
Soylent Green
@Bob In Portland: You won’t vote for the Democratic nominee? In that case, fellow Portlander, fuck you and the Russian bear you rode in on.
Elie
@redshirt:
Leave him alone — he just knows what he knows….
I have to figure he would have better things to do with his life than talking to people who clearly do not share his point of view and criticize his judgement. Alls I can figure is that he must not have. Its like practicing your tennis with a brick wall. Yes, the ball will come back but nothing is really happening on the other side except that the mass of the tennis ball hit the other side and the law of physics bounced it back to you to smack again. Nothing more boring to me, but others may differ. There has been no impression made on the wall.
The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016
@Bob In Portland: Well, there are a distinct lack of polling stations in Moscow.
mclaren
@dogwood:
Once again your arguments make little sense. You’re telling us that if Sanders is the Democratic nominee the Republicans will have lots of scare stories to tell about him. But the Republicans tell scare stories about Democrats regardless of the facts.
If you don’t realize that the Republicans have been scaring the electorate (or trying to scare ’em) with tall tales about how Obama is: a Mooslim, a Maoist, born in Kenya, a fascist, a dictator, a radical Marxist, an Islamic fundamentalist religious fanatic eager to establish a new caliphate in America, a destroyer of American culture, a mad-dog hippie, a radical Unabomber-type acoylte of 60s lefists…then I feel sorry for you. Because you have no idea how American politics works today.
The Republicans will scream scary fables about Democrats. The Republicans will lie. They will do this regardless of whom Democrats nominate.
Changing our behavior as Democrats because Republicans might scare voters with tall tales is as pointless as a dog hiding under the bed in the vain hope that he can prevent the sun from rising.
It makes absolutely no sense to nominate or not nominate a Democratic candidate out of fear that the Republicans will be able to scare the electorate. The Republicans will scare the electorate regardless. It’s in their nature, like the scorpion on the back of the frog.
different-church-lady
@mclaren:
Based on the established record, I’m not sure why you don’t understand that a batshit insane cryptofascist would be Bob’s first choice.
Miss Bianca
@mclaren:
You really, *honestly*, see shit shaking out that way? Wow. Just…just…wow.
I’m not sure which of your posits strikes me as more…oh, dear. I’m not sure I know the word for it! That either Sec. Clinton would prove to be such putty in the hands of the Republicans, or that..OMG, I’m sorry, but I can’t help laughing a little…Bernie Sanders is going to somehow ROUSE THE WHOLE FREAKING COUNTRY – when he can’t even rouse a plurality of *Democrats*, for all love! – to “vote the Republican bastards out!” I wish I had your faith in the efficacy of scolding and railing.
I’m sorry – but when it comes to dealing with a Republican Congress I think I’ll take Sec. Clinton’s “I’ll see your Benghazi and raise it ON BEYOND YOUR ABILITY TO PAY, mofos” to Sen. Sanders’s “I’ll just splutter at you till you see things MY WAY” any day of the week.
cokane
i dunno, i think LGM makes a perfectly logical argument about the general election…
they’re not calling for Sanders to drop out? Just that liberals should support the liberal candidate
“But alas, the idea of voting as a consumer choice that defines you as a moral individual is a cult that will not go away.”
Truth
chopper
@mclaren:
first off, you don’t have any friends. the voices in your head don’t count. second, “I’ve seen my friends Facebook page” is the lamest attempt at a stretch of an anecdote I’ve seen in months.
chopper
@Ella in New Mexico:
oh, boo hoo! oh, boo fucking hoo!
chopper
@mclaren:
you mean “unrepentant”.
but go ahead, keep trying. we’re not laughing at you, we’re laughing with you.
chopper
@Miss Bianca:
hey, it worked for president nader, amirite?
Bobby Thomson
Christ, Cole, you’re nowhere near the point. The guys at LGM are all Sanders supporters and don’t like Clinton anymore than you do. They’re mocking the dipshits Salon keeps on retainer to write the same column every few days about how true progressives – the kind who support Jim Webb – refuse to vote for Clinton in the general. They’re either Republican ratfuckers or mentally incompetent. And they’re rich AF.
redshirt
Damn, chopper laying down some rhymes!
Ella inNew Mexico
@Cacti: please go fuck your lonely, nasty, little self, Twatty Spice.
While the rest of the grown ups take care of the important stuff that takes neurons to deal with.
chopper
@redshirt:
quick, beat box my blog-core. uhn-a-tiss uhn-a-tiss
Ella inNew Mexico
@chopper: Oh hey there, Mr. Predictable! How’d you get so easy to reel in?
chopper
@Ella inNew Mexico:
sorry, I don’t speak blubber. come again?
Daulnay
@mclaren:
small correction, it’s ‘batshit insane fascist like Donald Trump’. No matter how appealing his policies might be, no decent citizen who values our republic could vote for him. Likewise, no matter how much you might hate the Democrat he runs against, it’s too dangerous to not vote against him.
Luigidaman
So, I’m retired and my students all live on their parents dole and/or work. They are mainly Bernie Bros and I, naturally, being of sound mind, know that the ONLY real candidate this year is HRC. I’m broke, they’re not. There goes your theory.
Bob In Portland
@gene108: Actually, that’s not true. To say it means you aren’t listening.
Bob In Portland
@Luigidaman: Because you’re acquaintances represent the entire country.
Bob In Portland
@redshirt: Well, I wouldn’t have voted for Carly Fiorina either. Maybe you’re on to something. Yeah, not Bill’s administration, not her history of warmongering, not her votes as a senator, not the hundreds of millions she’s received from the 1%. Not her stand on issues. Yeah, it must be that she’s a woman.
You see, redshirt, when you say stupid things like this I realize you’re trying to get a rise out of me. But in the process you might actually believe that, which isn’t good for you, if you want to understand the world around you.
When Clinton supporters claim that there is no difference between her positions and Sanders’ it shows that they either don’t understand Sanders’ positions or they don’t recognize Hillary’s track record. That’s rather unfortunate. I’d rather someone say I don’t want Sanders because he’ll raise my taxes or screw with my Wall Street scam than this empty bullshit that most BJers hack.
So keep hacking. Sanders is the candidate who best represents the bottom 90%, and I’m among them.
Bob In Portland
@Soylent Green: @Soylent Green: Well, I guess that if the Democratic Party no longer represents me then I’m not a Democrat. Clinton does not represent me. Sanders does.
Did you notice what happened in the Moda Center yesterday? You’re in the minority in Oregon. A minority that gets smaller every day. So, when you tell Sanders supporters to fuck off, you better keep it on the down low.
Bob In Portland
Betty Cracker, since you misrepresent what I say about Ukraine and the fascists, I’ll include the link again.
This is why I talk about Ukrainian fascists.
You’ll note that the title calls our nation’s relationship with fascists “America’s dirty little secret.” So I guess it’s still secret to you. Consider how wed you must be to your version of reality to not want to see what secret has been kept from you. You’ve become your own censor. The best way for censorship to work is to have the people do it themselves.
All other BJers who don’t understand the US post-war history with Ukraine should read it too. And really, The Nation isn’t that radical a publication.
Cleos
@chopper: That might be too late: we’re at the “throw everything at her but the kitchen sink” stage.
Bob In Portland
@Cacti: You know, I would have thought that bullies like you would have been Trump supporters.
This place used to encourage political discourse. Now it’s a regular church service and if you don’t have the correct hymnal you get stones thrown at you. Too bad Ella’s leaving. She was another opportunity for you to understand Sanders, which you guys apparently don’t.
Bob In Portland
@Luigidaman: How much do you make a year, roughly?
Bob In Portland
@Miss Bianca: If the shit isn’t shaken out, you’re happy to be in it for the next four years?
Cleos
@PaulWartenberg2016: Judging from the breathless reactions in other venues, somebody has the bird vote all sewn up.
Ella inNew Mexico
@Bob In Portland: I’m not leaving BJ. Like I said above, I don’t take well to attempts at bullying. The “Gang” is gonna have to put up with cognitive dissonance as long as it pleases me.
But seriously, last night it occurred to me that these guys–the venomous and hateful Clinton supporters showing up here lately to feed on whatever chum they can find–act like people who are afraid, not confident in their choice. .
Could the superficial smugness and sarcasm and ad hominem attacks be the way they mask deeply suppressed misgivings–fear?–that their candidate is actually flawed enough that Sanders could prevail? I mean, that’s what all the demands in the Clinton camp for Sanders to just drop out because he can’t possibly get the number of delagates he needs to win—take him out NOW, before half the nation sends its message about what kind of Democratic Party we want, what kinds of policies we want her to take on if she does win.
So, like all bullies, they’re motivated by insecurity, not strength. I’m not afraid to discuss my candidates flaws, or the fact that I will happily vote D in the general regardless of the candidate. Ironically, because I can acknowledge and speak to her flaws, I’ll be a better supporter of Clinton in the general with my Friends who now feel they might just stay home if it’s her.
Spending time insulting people who are white, college students, environmentally concerned, or who just want to see this country go back to its policies of economic fairness and justice–you know, the FDR America–might seem fun now but it’s gonna blow up in your face in the general.
So, unless these folks are professional political shills who care more about the “horse race” than anything else, they’d better humble up and stop treating a large portion of their own party like crap if they want them to vote for their candidate.
Cleos
@lamh36: Somebody had better get off their butt and raise money for the party. One of the major drawbacks of Obama’s two terms is that he did little of that and the scarcity of a new generation of Democratic candidates overall is the result.
Cleos
@dogwood:
We’re seeing the same thing this year with older citizens’ votes. If you’re not young, your vote somehow invalidate a candidate.
Cleos
@Ella inNew Mexico: No.
Ella in New Mexico
@Cleos: perhaps If it wants more money, maybe The Party needs to catch up on what the people feel about how it has conducted itself lately, specifically under DWS.. Most of us now donate directly to a candidate, or their supporting organizations, or our state Party.
@Cleos: Hmmm. Same thing my 2 year-ol kid repeated over and over right before he had to take his medicine.
Cleos
That’s nice, dear.