Have been laying low both because of a cold and because who needs the grief? But I wanted to come out and say I’m supporting Bernie in New York and beyond.
It makes no sense at all to bellyache for years about what corrupt disasters DW Schultz and Steve Israel and company are and then criticize someone for taking the logical action that derives from that viewpoint. So smart move on Bernie’s part for doing an end run. This was the Democratic Party that has such a reverence for grassroots democracy that it had to be reminded by Howard Dean in 2005 that, yeah, maybe you do want to have a functional operation in all 50 states.
Re people getting all argumentative and some not knowing the rules…who cares? The alternative – people not giving a fuck – is so much worse. Bitching on young people in particular for not knowing the rules stinks.
I’m so grateful to the young people in particular who are getting more active.
And who get that Black lives matter, Iraqi lives matter, also Honduran, Libyan, and Palestinian.
And who also get the basic point that, absent economic justice, there’s no true feminism. (Or other human rights.)
And you know what the biggest magical pony of all is? Thinking that someone can build a Death Star level fundraising machine, thereby enriching herself and her family to the tune of $110MM, without severely compromising her ideals or “public service.”
And that those compromises won’t hurt real live people.
Go Bernie!
redshirt
Here we go!
Linnaeus
Hooo boy…
Michael Bersin
Where am I? I must have accidentally clicked on my social media feed. Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?
rp
What does this mean?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh, Cole… Freddie de B., Bernard Finkel, now this one… Do you give these assholes the keys just to troll your regulars?
Icedfire
Must…resist…urge…to…make…popcorn…
Hillary Rettig
@rp: this for example: https://balloon-juice.com/2015/10/16/time-to-show-the-chair-the-door/
Gin & Tonic
This should be fun.
Hillary Rettig
@Icedfire: popcorn’s good! you might want to make a lot, tho…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Even the Southern ones that don’t count?
cleek
oh fer fuck’s sake… more of this connect-the-dots, Sheeple! nonsense?
this place turned into a.l.t.e.r.n.e.t. so gradually…
Facebones
Well, at least Bernie should. Unless this is all about stroking his ego and not actually getting more votes.
cleek
oh fer chrissake… more of this connect-the-dots! nonsense?
this place turned into Salon so gradually…
WarMunchkin
I guess I can commend your bravery for writing this.
BubbaDave
I like Bernie’s message a lot; I just think he’s the wrong messenger. The big question in my mind is whether he’s paving the way for better left-flank candidates in future, and I think the answer to that question will depend in part on whether he and his partisans stick around to actively support the Dem nominee while also supporting progressives in primaries and general elections over the next 4-10 years. That is, are they willing to do the work of being a force to be reckoned with in the Democratic party, or are they going to pop up every 4 years and then vanish again?
JMG
Ms. Rettig, you want to support Sanders for his good points, that’s fine. They are real. But “Hillary got rich, so she must be corrupt” is destructive, not to mention foolish. Generations of the Kennedy family have devoted themselves to liberal politics. The fortune that allowed and allows them to do this was created by means which do not bear scrutiny. LBJ feathered his own nest as a legislator. Does this invalidate the Civil Rights and Voting Acts?
The Thin Black Duke
Thankfully, this nonsense will be over soon and Bernie can go back to Vermont as a well-meaning but inept and forgotten footnote.
benw
Hillary, it’s not the SIZE of the pony that matters, is the motion of the equestrian!
I’m fired up to vote for Bernie today!
SANDERS 2016
Ella in New Mexico
Thank you Hillary.
Simple. Heartfelt. Optimistic.
It takes courage to say what you did, especially given the current school of sharks those of us who agree with you are swimming with here. Please don’t let them run you off because some how, they decided THEY own this blog.
dmsilev
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Not to mention that a large swath of the Reps elected in 2006 and 2008 were those EVVVUUUULLLL Blue Dogs etc. Somehow, people forget to mention that when singing the glories of the 50 State Project.
Citizen_X
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, pick a 50 state strategy, or get rid of troublesome Blue Dogs. Pick one; you can’t do both.
Icedfire
@Hillary Rettig: No amount of popcorn will salve the pain of the derp this thread will inevitably inspire.
NCSteve
The worst thing about Bernie is that he is building up false hope in the mathematically illiterate when he ought to be preparing them for the inevitable. But then, Hillary did the same thing at this point in 2008 . . .
Roger Moore
Then maybe you should vote for a candidate who has functional operations in all 50 states instead of one who, by the admission of his campaign director, didn’t bother to contest a lot of states.
Arm The Homeless
So does Rettig go back to being our pipeline for funny animal videos after Bernie gets wiped out tonight, or will we be subject to more whining about how unfair it is that her and her friends have to put in work, or y’know, check a fucking box?
Hows all that non-procrastination working out for the Bern fans, Hillary?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh, yes, the courage it takes to type things, and then to swim amongst the fearsome sharks that… type things in response!
Nelson Mandela and the Dutch Resistance could have learned things from people who type things on blogs.
Onward Bernista so-old-jers..
Marching as to War!
With the Cross of Berrrrr-nee
Going on before!
rp
@Hillary Rettig: But what’s the logical action and end run?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Citizen_X: We’ll replaces ConservaDems like Jim Clyburn, John Lewis and Sheila Jackson Lee with Real Progressives!
Yossarian
You could just as easily say that feminism is a necessarily preliminary to economic justice. In fact, I would say that.
Cacti
Bernfeelers believe #BlackLivesMatter.
But their votes are icky and have cooties if they come from the south.
Bostondreams
Except, you know, according to Bernie and many of his supporters, all 50 states don’t count. So why bother?
Citizen_X
I support Napolean at Waterloo and beyond.
Hillary Rettig
@JMG: JMG – thanks for your reply. There’s the matter of degree. As the Washington Post article makes clear, the Clintons took the ordinary fundraising process to entirely new levels. If the Post article is wrong then I would probably rescind that point in my piece. But it was deeply reported and sourced, and I haven’t seen anyone, here or elsewhere, say it is.
Also, there’s the larger point that when candidates use politics to enrich themselves it corrupts them and the process.
gene108
From your “Death Star” link:
If the Clinton’s are the Death Star of fundraising, then Obama is the Force Awakens planet-turned-Super weapon:
778 million raised for his 2008 Presidential run
1072 million in 2012.
And most people on the blog seem to be O.K. with Obama.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
FTFY. In most places, the alternative to Blue Dogs is not True Progressives but Tea Baggers.
Betty Cracker
It’s one thing to take action within the Democratic Party to sideline inept and corrupt elements (DWS, Rahm, etc.) and counter the influence of money in politics. It’s quite another to attack the party — you know, the only vehicle we have to keep Trump or Cruz out of the White House? — in the runup to a critical election. When Sanders was engaged in the former, I was a fan. Now that he’s engaging in the latter, I’m hoping he gets utterly crushed.
Bostondreams
@Ella in New Mexico:
Well, technically Cole owns the blog, so theoretically he could just shut this whole nonsense down and turn it into a ‘Memories of Tunch’ photoblog. Which, actually, would be pretty nice.
Wiesman
I like Bernie. I like Hillary. I agree with Bernie on most issues and I’m glad he is running for president and if he wins I’ll vote for him, but I think it’s a real long shot.
I find the innuendo arguments stupid and destructive. If you are making an evidence-based accusation about Hillary Clinton regarding fundraising and ensuing actions, then make it. Otherwise, stick to issues, as that was supposed to be what this campaign would be about.
Citizen_X
@Yossarian: Similarly, a lot of black activists are saying that racism must be dealt with to achieve economic justice in this country. I’m starting to agree with them.
Roger Moore
@gene108:
That’s Starkiller Base, TYVM.
FlipYrWhig
Bernie Sanders is a one issue candidate, and you’ll think the issue is “economic justice,” but you’ll be wrong, because the one issue is that Bernie Sanders is impeccable, but everyone else is corrupt. He’s a scold and a clown. He’s clean because he represents a state with no people and no businesses. I hope he loses badly then slinks back off to Vermont where he can continue to bleat about how everyone else is unworthy, and his followers can lick their wounds about how THE ESTABLISHMENT got in their way by underhanded tactics like “winning more votes” and “political parties” and “working together.” He went from being sort of quirky-irritating-endearing, like Sponge Bob or something, to being the vessel of a personality cult for affluent holier-than-thou whiners. Using Bernie Fucking Sanders as a conduit to call out _other people_ for insufficient support for Black Lives Matter and feminism is the height of cynical hypocrisy. It’s a movement of well off middle-aged white people lecturing everyone else about “revolution” and shouting down heterodoxy. It’s Pacifica Radio in humanoid form. And it can go away now.
Cacti
Since the NY Bernfeelers couldn’t be bothered to learn the State’s registration rules and deadlines…
Maybe they shouldn’t call anyone else a “low information voter” again.
Kay (not the front-pager)
I’m with you right up to this point:
Everything after that is why Clinton supporters are getting sick and tired of the Sandersnistas’ sanctimonious self-righteousness.
Linnaeus
@BubbaDave:
I suspect that this is already happening (though Michael Lind disagrees with me). Sanders’s campaign may accelerate the process, or it may slow it down, but that remains to be seen.
Hillary Rettig
@Icedfire: I know!
Why is why I’m switching to Nyquil in a bit!
Lots and lots of Nyquil…
Fr33d0m
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That has to Bern.
Keith G
Hillary R, some of what you typed at the top is rooted in important ideas that are shared by many. Those ideas are so significant, and even necessary, that Sanders is precluded from being given the chance to be at the top of our leadership. Earlier I commented:
It’s a weird place for me to be where I am not siding with the revolutionaries – at least not in their choice of candidates. Many of the issues that they are so enthusiastic about are terribly important, but unfortunately Bernie Sanders is not the person that can get them to where they want to be. The sad truth is neither is Hillary Clinton. But, she is a political leader who can keep progress from slipping backwards.
She can hold the Democratic Coalition together enough to be a placeholder until a time when we can get better leadership than we have now. There are a handful of very important long-term conditions grinding down the health of our society. We really do need to deal with these things, unfortunately the political status quo seems to not be up to the task. There is so much that has been left unaddressed. Not only do I understand the current frustration, but I am worried about the growing disenfranchisement and disillusionment which might serve to create future political dysfunction.
While some are very intelligent, none of our current political leadership seems particularly insightful about ways to deal with the long-term issues we are confronting. Like Obama before her, I am counting on Hillary to keep the ball moving until we do get a generation of better leaders. She is up to that very complicated task. Bernie Sanders has not shown that he is.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
What color should I choose for my http://www.Bernieis46.com site?
gene108
@Hillary Rettig:
What about book sales?
Both Bill and Hillary have made millions from book sales. Probably as much or more from book sales than from paid speeches.
TylerF
@NCSteve: at least Clinton was burning corporate cash at this point. Sanders is abusing the faith and trust of his followers at this point.
Bostondreams
I agree on this…but those same young people demanding that the rules be changed because they didn’t bother to actually learn about them also stinks. The New York primary times, for example, have been in place since the early 1980’s for goodness sake. Yeah, they suck, but NOW was not the time to try and get that changed. How about, you know, maybe a year ago?
PhoenixRising
With you til the end.
The biggest, most sparkling pony of all is the one true, non-corrupted candidate who has compromised his ideals, put in a position where all 5 choices are shitty and going to hurt someone, somewhere…having to learn to compromise on the fly.
God, I hope Bernie-uncle doesn’t catch the car, because kind, loving, idealistic liberals will not survive the experience.
FlipYrWhig
@Wiesman: His issue is that he is unsullied. His whole career has been like that. Economic justice is subsidiary to it. All social issues are just distractions. It’s ludicrous. I can’t believe smart liberal people fall for this bullshit routine for more than 11 seconds.
Richard Mayhew
My biggest problem with Sanders is not his goals. I like those.
I just don’t see how his plans actually work even without significant opposition where even harder trade-offs would need to be made.
But to each their own… so vote your conscience and hope the polling place is having a bake sale to fund the senior center at the same time (that is why I am a 100% voter, the little old ladies make the best peanut butter cookies)
schrodinger's cat
Hitlery is ebil
St. Bernard is pure.
Math is an establishment conspiracy
Tofurkey totally tastes like meat you guys.
Prediction: Thread count will be 500+
gene108
@Roger Moore:
Thanks. I don’t know why the name escaped me.
Rommie
Eh, we’ve been scrimmaging against each other long enough that’s we’re in the pushing-and-shoving phase. I’m ready to direct it against the actual opponent(s) and hope others feel the same way. No snark here.
cleek
@Roger Moore:
establishmentalist!
Hillary Rettig
@Yossarian: how are you going to even pass good rights laws in an unequal society? isn’t that what we’re seeing now? the GOP (purchased and paid for by ALEC etc.) chewing away at reproductive rights and others?
let’s say you’re right and feminism comes first…we have the finest antidiscrimination and antiharassment laws in the world on the books. how is someone who is dead-ass broke and reliant on her job going to seek out justice?
also, if you don’t believe me, there’s also this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People's_Campaign
negative 1
@Citizen_X: +1.
I’m voting for Bernie because I don’t believe that there is a level of tax assistance that makes HRC’s ‘regional industrial zone’ work and saying that you won’t count jobs that move to the right-to-work south as part of the plan doesn’t mean that they won’t. There isn’t enough money in the federal budget to close the gap between even $8/hr per worker and .50 per worker per day. And though this is more a criticism of Sherrod Brown’s original version of this plan, doesn’t having one dominant industry per region increase the chances of having technology decimate an area? Basically I think that tariffs need to be on the table to protect US manufacturing. Bernie has indicated he would, Hillary has not.
Additionally, Hillary has no college debt plan. She can save me $2,000!… over 30 years… on $100,000. That’s $5.56 a month! Yeah, that’s not a plan and it luckily comes with a lecture on how nothing in life comes for free, which is why I’m sure she made her own daughter pay for her own education. https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/college/
Now go ahead and call me a sexist bro troll who hates everyone or tell me how naive I am.
WarMunchkin
@Keith G: I amused myself by tl;dr-ing that in my mind as “I want a lefty, just not this lefty.
Gin & Tonic
@Hillary Rettig:
Citation needed.
FlipYrWhig
@gene108:
This is basically “Bernie Sanders has a dumpy suit and an unconventional voice and doesn’t comb his hair, ergo he’s never been corrupted.” It’s so fucking transparent.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@Arm The Homeless: I am sick to death of the snide, condescending Sandersnistas and their nasty attacks on Hillary supporters.
Also the snide, condescending Hillbots and their nasty attacks on Sanders supporters.
Now I’m off to early-vote!
Hillary Rettig
@BubbaDave: I do think these are excellent questions! We need to get traction.
schrodinger's cat
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Red, and may I suggest a spiffy hammer and sickle for the header, and workers of the world unite for a tag-line.
Cacti
@FlipYrWhig:
The NYDN interview was his “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” moment.
The great and powerful Bern was a lot of smoke and mirrors. Good at self-promotion and applause lines, appallingly ignorant on policy.
FlipYrWhig
@Hillary Rettig: Bernie Sanders likes to complain about there being an unequal society. His idea for how to make it more equal is something something Wall Street billionaire class something Mitch McConnell’s window. Total fraud.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Thanks for posting this. An echo chamber gets to be boring after a while. ;-)
From your WP link:
But I must ask, how is raising $110M for a campaign “enriching herself and her family” as you put it?
Obama supposedly raised over $1B for his 2008 campaign. Hillary is going to have to raise at least that much this time. It costs money, lots of money, to run a national campaign.
(Personally, I think that WP post is a hatchet job by lumping in the Clinton Foundation with her political campaigns. Hillary and Bill don’t get paid by the Foundation. It’s not a piggy bank for them.
)
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Either Avocado or Harvest Gold.
Linnaeus
@Keith G:
I think your comment distills it down very nicely. I’m sure I will have my share of disagreements with Clinton as president, but I have no doubts that she can actually do the job. I do have those doubts about Sanders.
FlipYrWhig
@BubbaDave:
IMHO this question only applies to the youngest Sanders supporters. The older Sanders supporters have long since shown they are not at all willing to do that work, and Sanders himself does diddly shit.
negative 1
@FlipYrWhig: I agree, and I think this is the problem. Pulling back all of the insults, there are plenty of single-issue voters in this election, many of them are young, and that is their single issue. They think Bernie is their candidate. Insulting them will make them hate the eventual winner, and seriously undermines the dems supposed demographic advantage in the future. So rather than call them all stupid sexist bros why not point out how HRC is going to help them on their single issue?
Cacti
@FlipYrWhig:
And then at the first chance, he lives it up like the 1% he decries in his speeches:
See chartered Rome flight with lamb and lobster on the menu.
FlipYrWhig
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Not to mention that Bernie Sanders has been bragging about his awesome fundraising haul, which he won’t share because reasons. Who’s personally enriching himself to the tune of millions of dollars, now?
Hillary Rettig
@Keith G: Keith, Thanks for your comment, one of the best pro-Clinton ones I’ve read anywhere. I guess our premises are very different, and there’s nothing I can say that hasn’t been said a zillion times before. I believe the politics of gradualism and holding the center has failed utterly. The evidence is all around us. And I actually believe with a strong liberal president we’ll get more done than many people here think.
One of the major criticisms of Obama (whom I admire enormously even while being disappointed on a few things, live civil rights) is that he was too conciliatory to the right for too long. People said that here constantly! So let’s have someone who will likely not make that mistake.
I also have little respect for Clinton’s shilly-shallying on things like gay marriage and the minimum wage.
negative 1
@Cacti: I knew it! He’s insufficiently pure! The hell with his ideas, I’ll only vote for the candidate dressed in rags!
This actually makes Fox News look substantive.
Citizen_X
Seriously? I’m all for enthusiasm, but this borders on political malpractice. If you’re gonna try to make it in the big leagues, learn the rules of the game or GTFO.
PhoenixRising
@negative 1: You’re not naive, you’re just working with a broken calendar if you sincerely think
this can happen.
We can debate, though I don’t have time today, whether there was ever a way to overcome falling transport costs and the rise of Asian manufacturing in a totalitarian state with no worker protections to maintain US manufacturing…but in 1990 is when that debate needs to happen.
It’s time to look ahead to a UBI. 2 of my grandfathers were coal miners; the 3rd finished HS and became a drafting engineer on the job; I’m one of 17 cousins and all of us have some college and work at jobs you shower to go to.
The question for this election is, Which of these candidates is most likely to keep the ship stable as we come about, an effort that will take another 8-12 years on top of Obama’s efforts in the right direction? Bernie is a nice grandpa man who has proven that all he knows how to run is his mouth. The risk is too profound.
Betty Cracker
@Keith G: Well said. I don’t think our leaders necessarily lack vision, but the political realities constrain them mightily. A realignment is happening, which is probably a good thing in the long run. Maybe that’ll be the catalyst we need. But it’ll take a while to sort out, and we can’t have the Orcs in charge in the interim.
Hillary Rettig
@Bostondreams: meh. that’s what young people (and some old people) do
I’m glad they feel engaged
cleek
@negative 1:
they already hate the eventual winner.
they have a long list of ridiculous reasons for hating her, and they’re happy to run down the list any time they get the chance.
FlipYrWhig
@negative 1:
I really don’t believe that the Bernie Sanders campaign is tapping into a preexisting body of anti-corruption voters. I think the Bernie Sanders campaign is tapping into a preexisting body of young people frustrated at unresponsive politics and lost opportunities to redress genuine social issues. Bernie Sanders tells them that the reason politics is broken is that billionaires broke it, so if we get the billionaires out of the way the good decent people of the world, who are frustrated the way they are, will be able to compel the government to do the things that need doing. That’s just stupid.
Chyron HR
@Citizen_X:
I’m pretty sure Hillary “I’m impartial, dammit!” Rettig meant that the people running the NY election are supposed to not care about someone “not knowing the rules” and just let them vote anyway.
Michael Bersin
@schrodinger’s cat:
I just wanted to add to the comment count so it gets to 500 quicker…
Cacti
@negative 1:
One campaign’s supporters waited to throw dollar bills at the opposing candidate outside of a fundraiser.
It wasn’t Clinton’s.
But I get it. Bernie is the revolutionary leader of the people’s politburo. He and his grandchildren deserve only the best, and it’s different for them. ;-)
cmorenc
@Hillary Rettig:
It’s the subset of Bernie fans who, should Bernie fail to succeed in winning the Dem nomination, fail to understand a bit of apt wisdom from the 1991 Louisiana Gubernatorial election: “vote for the crook – it’s important”. Any hard-core Bernie supporters who are down on Clinton for the sort of reasons Hillary Rettig listed who refuse to vote for her in the general election are chasing “the biggest magical pony of all” – that staying home or voting for some progressive-purity third-party candidate with zero chance of winning is more important than the prospect of President Cruz or Trump if they refuse to see Hillary Clinton as comparatively a vastly better alternative, flawed though she might be.
Hillary Rettig
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: $110MM is the Clinton family’s personal fortune. Nothing to do with what she raised for the campaign.
FlipYrWhig
@Hillary Rettig: But Bernie Sanders’s shilly-shallying on guns and immigration, totally great!
Maybe the person who coined the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy” will run for president one day. I wonder who that was.
negative 1
@Cacti: They threw dollar bills? That must mean his plans are worthless!
Yes, this is exactly what we are talking about when say it’s counterproductive to use character attacks.
Hillary Rettig
@Betty Cracker: But what do you do when the corrupt elements are well entrenched?
FlipYrWhig
@negative 1:
You can’t seriously deny that Bernie Sanders’s schlumpy self-presentation is a key part of the whole Sanders phenomenon. HES SO AUTHENTIC
Jim, Foolish Literalist
How do you define “the right”? Claire McCaskill? Chuck Schemer? Jon Tester? Is St Bernard going to win them over with the blinding light of his purity?
glasnost
I appreciate your post. I think Hilary is fine, and I’m going to look past all the people who are crucifying Bernie over stuff that doesn’t even come close to the level of ugly bullshit that Hilary Clinton and her campaign pulled on Barack Obama in 2008. Fundamentally, most of the entire subject matter area of who does what to each other during the campaign is beyond stupid – it’s trivial. Sometimes you can learn important things, like that Donald Trump is incompetent. But the outrage over an inherently ruthless competition is nonsense to me.
There’s one important thing I want to talk about that’s a major theme, regarding whether Bernie Sanders’ attacks on Hilary from taking all this money from Wall Street prove that she’s corrupt, or if it’s a total red herring. I don’t see any reason to pick a binary choice like that, and I don’t like, and refuse, to take a position on something I can’t really know. I’m personally willing to give the benefit of the doubt to HRC and assume she just thinks she has to work with Wall Street, rather than that she intends to do things that help them. I don’t think Wall Street is why HRC gets up in the morning.
But I also think that Bernie’s critique is still important even when that condition is true. Rather than talk about HRC being corrupt, I think the better critique is simply: taking all that money shows that HRC is status quo oriented. Things aren’t fucked up and bullshit. The American middle class isn’t desperate, and it’s not because of a huge swath of evil predators who actually have to be confronted, targeted, and broken.
This in my mind is a much better critique. HRC taking money from Goldman Sachs indicates that she thinks Dodd-Frank was enough: that the bullshit foreclosure settlements by Obama’s DOJ are fine: that we haven’t learned anything and no one will go to prison the next time they literally steal from Americans and defraud them, day in and day out, as a business model.
Bernie probably doesn’t have any idea how to start his revolution or have any good plans for it. But I think plenty of revolutions have been started under the same conditions. It’s not just one person who solves all of these problems. What matters is that Bernie Sanders would probably go out of his way to help drastic actions from wherever they originate.
HRC won’t. She’s not interested. She doesn’t buy it. She’s done with justice and ready to move on. Most of the Balloon Juice commentariat agree. This will lead to a fundamental failure to solve persistent, ongoing business models based on predation and fraud.
It’s a debate about what matters. Ideally, you’d want both uncompromising, militant hostility AND a bunch of smart plans. But if you have to pick one, I take the former.
FlipYrWhig
@Hillary Rettig: ALL MONEY IS CORRUPT EXCEPT BERNIE SANDERS WHO HAS HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF SPECIAL GOOD DOLLARS HE HOARDS FOR PROGRESSIVE REASONS
Calouste
@Hillary Rettig:
That’s why it’s so good that Sanders has released 25 years of tax returns, or even 8 years, to show that he isn’t corrupt. Except he didn’t, and he is lying about why (it takes 5 minutes to fill out a form to ask the IRS to send you copies of 8 years of your tax returns). Carly Fiorina and Mitt Romney, two of the most dishonest people to run for President in recent years, have released more tax returns than Bernie Sanders.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Sanders talk about everyone else being corrupt is most likely projection. It shows all the classic signs of it.
Ella in New Mexico
I was born in Upstate New York, and grew up in one of those tiny, rural towns outside Utica. My family was half Italian by marriage, half WASP who has lived there since literally the late 1700’s. The city was full of new and first gen immigrants from Italy, Poland, Russia. The restaurants and grocery stores were a literal world market of delicious meats and baked good and the beautiful Adirondacks where I was so fortunate to camp every year are unmatched in their glory. It’s always going to be my soul home.
Right now, my 2 feisty girl cousins are split, one voting for Bernie, one voting for Hilary. Most of their kids are voting Bernie, except for one who keeps telling us he’s voting for Trump which is pissing EVERYONE off. (I think he’s really just pulling their legs, personally.)
No matter what, I’m so proud to be a native New Yorker, even though New Mexico has been the place I’ve lived longest. I think my “New York values” I learned growing up in a truly multicultural, working-middle class part of the country have served me well.
No matter what happens, no matter how looney the arguments get between us on this side, the Democrats have a chance to nominate one of two great and qualified candidates for President. Two serious candidates, people who really DO want to lead and make government better for all of us. Neither one scares the HELL out of me at the thought he or she assumes the Oval Office. Neither one will force me to obtain a passport for my entire family and stash them in a secret place, just in case.
That’s a stark, stark contrast to the people on the other side. Let’s not forget that.
Cacti
@negative 1:
His NYDN interview showed his plans are worthless, or rather, that he has no plans. He has: noun, verb, millionaires and billionaires (wait for applause).
The pass his Bernfeelers are willing to give him for his family luxury trip to Rome just shows that they’re a lot of preening hypocrites. ;-)
schrodinger's cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Has St. Bernard figured out how he is going to break up ebil banks, yet?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@FlipYrWhig:
I want to have this comment’s baby.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: See, Bernie Sanders will point out that they suck, and then THE PEOPLE will show up outside their offices, and they’ll be so scared (on account of sucking so badly) that they’ll do what he wants, because Bernie Sanders is but a humble avatar of the American popular will, and we all need to recognize that, or perish in flames.
gwangung
@Hillary Rettig: I’m still not seeing the connection here. Just insinuations.
Hillary Rettig
@cmorenc: other than making assumptions about me personally, you’re right
Keith G
@Linnaeus: And I am willing to believe that HRC has the potential to be a surprisingly effective strategist for many liberal causes. To me, that is the open question and the place where I am willing to build some HOPE. I like her as a person and really look forward to seeing her put her particular skill set to (hopefully) good use.
Even with the well known weaknesses, I like the fact that she is so different than Obama. I think the two term limit is a good thing as it forces us to tackle issues with a fresh set of ideas and policies.
Emma
@Hillary Rettig: So what can Bernie do faced with a Republican congress? Who will pass the laws he needs passed? What kinds of executive actions can be issued “on day one”? What plans does he have in place to help the millions of people that would be affected if Obamacare is scrapped while the fight for single-payer goes on, or the thousands of people employed in the healthcare insurance business? What political pressures can he bring to bear to change financial laws?
Revolutions are all well and good if you’re not one of those being carried to their deaths by the mobs — whether they are guilty or not. But revolutions without planning require cleaning up for decades afterwards.
schrodinger's cat
@Calouste: He is like the second coming of Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, don’t you know, you corrupt establishment flunky.
negative 1
@FlipYrWhig: Not anti-corruption. A belief (rightly or wrongly) that he will address an unequal economic system. I don’t think most people think it’s corrupt, it’s rather out in the open that if you are born wealthy your life is easier and you will likely die wealthy, and the rest of us work our collective butts off and amass huge amounts of debt for something like a 5% chance at the upper middle class. That’s the single issue. My point is that since it’s likely HRC will win, why not spend some of the furious messaging talking about how she will address it. Bernie gets credit for being better on it because he’s essentially the first mover — it’s been a cause of his for years and he entered the presidential race with that as his message. She doesn’t even mention it on her campaign website. I realize that she has spoken about it in person and in debates, but it hardly seems to be a message priority to her. Hell, she’s going to win barring some kind of dramatic event, even just saying ‘I respect Bernie’s devotion to this cause and in the general I will try and work on this priority’ would count as outreach.
PhoenixRising
@Hillary Rettig:
Watch it. Bernie has out and out lied his grumbly old face off about his position on marriage equality and I’m leaving it by the side of the road instead of using it as an example of how he projects credibility through consistency but in truth–like all other elected Democrats in this country in 2001–jumped on a moving bandwagon.
I was pushing it uphill at the time and Bernie is just another politician. He was indifferent, then he was for not burning our houses down and taking our children away, and then he was for something that sounded like a Honda sedan (WTF is a civil union?) and eventually he was for our full citizenship.
Hillary, in contrast, wasn’t ready to fight for my equality in 2004 but took a political risk to kill DOMA in the Senate. She was openly, aggressively but politely, the engine of ending the Reagan-era military discharge policy that disproportionately affected lesbians of color…when nobody including her husband apparently thought those were Americans worth fighting for.
And that is why you won’t find a lot of politically engaged gay people in Bernie’s corner: he has consistently misrepresented his record on our issues and counted on good liberals who like his ideas on labor and the economy to not give a damn now that we’ve done the work and moved the Democratic Party to where you think it should have been all along.
Hillary Rettig
@Calouste: I agree that he should release his tax forms.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Hillary Rettig: Cite, please. I don’t see that in the WP story.
And even if the number is accurate, you’re aware that they have each made many millions from their book sales, right? (HRC got a $14M advance for “Hard Choices”, WJC got over $10M for his memoirs, etc., etc.)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
horatius
@negative 1: Throwing dollar bills at hillary is like throwing watermelons at Obama. You’ve got to be a Berniebro not to see the equivalence.
Hillary Rettig
@glasnost: a lot of good nuance there, thanks.
WarMunchkin
I do want to thank you for writing this though. Lots of people on this blog seem to see privilege as something only afforded to white people over black people – it’s afforded over brown people as well, especially ones in foreign countries you’ve never heard of. Saying drone strikes are “regrettable” and the best course of action and appropriately used because Obama does it is easy when you’re willing to see other people’s full lives, happiness and families as expendable in your sage determination of who is acceptable for you to kill or not (if you’re a predominantly white member of the interventionist policy center). Same with innocent people in prison at Guantanamo, who are missing a third of their lives, their youth, their opportunities to be fathers for their children for the crime of being brown at the wrong place and the wrong time.
The quote you’re looking for is this:
— Barack Obama
But I also disagree with you on this point. You know who else was a, by this standard, corrupt politician? FDR. He, too, did this. Except that was even less transparent. Hillary Clinton might play the game, but she also maintained the 11th most liberal voting record in the Senate in her time, and I see no reason to excommunicate her for not being the 1st.
FEMA Camp Counselor
You what, I’ve been sitting on the fence about my vote today for ages and I’m still not entirely sure I’m making the right choice here, but screw it. I’m voting for Hillary.
I agree with Sanders on a lot of things, but over the past month his campaign has morphed into a left wing mirror of Ron Paul’s last run. The overzealous internet supporters, the purity posturing, simultaneously insisting that they are the spear tip of a popular movement and that they are willing to rules-lawyer their way to victory, the nigh-messianic terms Bernie himself gets frame in…
Someone else here mentioned a few days ago that there’s this mindset in politics that is based entirely around attacking enemies, ideological purity, and posturing. The longer this campaign goes on the more I get convinced that if Bernie did manage to get into the White House he’d either spend his entire term yelling at people to little effect beyond being red meat for his base, or he’d start having to make compromises and his revolution would abandon him within the year. I just don’t see how he’d make an effective president.
I really wish I could though. I want to push the Dems to the left, I want to see everyone in the US have access to healthcare, the college debt crisis and climate change seriously addressed, and for us to stop over extending ourselves in conflicts abroad. But Bernie just isn’t convincing me, and his surrogates running around calling the ACA “horrible”, dismissing the best President we’ve had in decades, and undercutting the party they want to lead at every opportunity has just drained me of any enthusiasm I might have.
So props to you, Ms. Rettig for throwing yourself to the lions like you have. I wish I shared your enthusiasm about the guy, but he just hasn’t clicked with me.
gwangung
@glasnost:
Generally, the end results were neither expected nor free of unneccessary hardships and injury.
Revolutions, even figurative, are times of great change. Times of great change are opportunities, not just to do the right thing, but to do really, really really bad things. And the folks who do bad things are often more prepared to capitalize on chaos and disruption (see current entrepreneurs and business people) than people who want to “fix” things.
Triggering chaos without a solid plan and contingency plans is a prescription to make things worse.
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: Every time I read someone calling him ‘St. Bernard’, my mind’s eye inescapably sees him bounding up to a podium with a little wooden cask of brandy hanging around his neck.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Emma: John Fuglesang, who I like because he’s smart and funny even if he can get preciously self-righteous, says that Bernie! will govern by executive order and go down nobly as a one term president. I don’t know what was more head-meet-desk absurd, the idea that this is a winning campaign strategy, or the notion that it would work. I think it’s the thing that makes me the most bonkers about the Sanders campaign– besides the relentless sanctimony and sentimentality–, it’s built on cult-of-the-presidency green-lanternism.
BubbaDave
@FlipYrWhig:
I’m more optimistic. I think that it was easy to get demoralized if you were an actual lefty in a Democratic party that was tacking to the center through the 90s; now that someone from the left wing of the Democratic party came this close to being the nominee, I think that’s evidence that you’re not alone and that there are enough of you to make a real difference. It’s a slow process, and the real work will be done in boring committee meetings and primary elections for state senator and other unglamorous areas. But they’ve had a taste of what can happen if the socialist wing of the Democratic Party gets its act together, and I hope that will inspire them.
Hillary Rettig
@PhoenixRising: Thanks for the information / clarification. You raise important points.
Miss Bianca
@Ella in New Mexico: Well…I happen to think theres’s only one *serious* candidate on the Dem side. But at least I don’t think Sanders is going to set out to f*ck shit up, unlike the other side, so…yay?-ish?
negative 1
@horatius: No, I’ve got to be voting for a candidate to ignore what people who are not running are doing.
And if you think that calling someone a sellout is the same thing as a racial slur I invite you try doing both out in public and let us know what happens.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: I agree with this part of your comment:
Well said. But this part…
I don’t think it’s stupid to point out a very real and critical problem — the out-sized influence of money in politics — but it’s incomplete. Where Sanders goes off the rails for me is in attacking the one party that has actually tried to address the problem and the many others that beset our fair land. He’s inching toward “duopoly” and “not a dime’s worth of difference” territory, and it’s giving me unpleasant 2000 flashbacks.
cmorenc
@Betty Cracker:
A big factor in the GOP’s fierce obstructionism is the realization that the electoral window for reversing social change and progressive achievements in governance is inexorably closing over the next few electoral cycles – and that unless they win now and structurally destroy the very possibility of progressive governance soon through voter suppression, continued control of the Supreme Court, destruction of the ACA etc…they and their hard right-wing vision of conservative governance and society are doomed.
Hillary Rettig
@WarMunchkin: Thanks – good points.
Paul Gottlieb
Right on, girl! I, for one, think it’s outrageous for the Democratic Party to favor someone who is actually a Democrat, instead of a Special Snowflake from Vermont. Bernie’s great performance in 99% White caucuses show that he is the one with the great general election appeal. If those thieving, lying Clintons didn’t get to count Black voters, Bernie would be cruising to a well-deserved victory.
Bobby Thomson
You must have missed the memo, Hillary Rettig. Southern Democrats don’t count.
Camp Sanders is now in anger as reality sets in, and his supporters are finally going off on President Obama.
aimai
@Hillary Rettig: Christ on a pogo stick. The “process” can’t be “corrupted” because politics is never pure. Has never been pure. Is never going to be pure. Politics is how we get things done when we are trying to get shit done. In groups. It takes money, and manpower, and ideas, and foot soldiers, and work applied to a complicated system of bells, whistles, levers, strings, and things that go crash.
The idea that there is some pure realm of politics outside of and beyond human nature, greed, desire, struggle and fear is just ridiculous. Its ahistorical and acultural. Its literally gibberish. Politics is what we do togethr to get things done. Sometimes you work with people who are imperfect. Sometimes you work with people who need to put food on the table, or send their kids to school, or build a multi million dollar effort to do the following
Could you please stop slanging off on a woman who has worked her entire adult life in public service.
Hal
I guess I just don’t care about the speech money. I feel like it’s an issue for people who want to make it seem that it’s a point of corruption with Clinton. I do think it’s something she should have considered long ago and simply been more discerning to which groups she gave speeches to, but what’s done is done.
negative 1
@Cacti: OK, that’s fair. The thing is the first of those two sentences is the only thing in three comments that has actually been a criticism of a candidate’s platform.
The second of those two sentences wasn’t, though. :-(
Mike J
But the southern states shouldn’t count!
I never bought Dean’s shtick, but at least he was trying to work inside the party to build something lasting. Sanders doesn’t have a movement, he has a cult, and wants to destroy the greatest force for good in the US today because it doesn’t agree with him on every detail.
burnspbesq
If you choose to support Sanders, fine–but do it for intelligible reasons.
aimai
@Betty Cracker: He’s not inching towards “duopoly” and “not a dime’s worth of difference” he’s already there. His voters are already there.
Calouste
@Hillary Rettig: Do you also think that we should hold off on making statements about candidates enriching themselves via politics until we have the same information about both sides?
Besides of course that the Clintons enriched themselves via their celebrity, not via politics.
marduk
Nice to see somebody on this site voting for the better candidate. u mad Hillary trolls? Yeah, u mad.
FlipYrWhig
@WarMunchkin:
I wonder how Bernie Sanders voted when it came time to consider closing Guantanamo. Probably he was a great champion for the cause.
Calouste
@burnspbesq: Are there any anymore?
Bobby Thomson
@Roger Moore: that was one of many Sanders lies, though. He had more field operatives in the south and outspent her going after those sour grapes.
WarMunchkin
@Betty Cracker: One catchy phrase I’ve been using with my friends is that “I supported Sanders when he was pushing the Democrats to the left, not pushing the Democrats to the ground”. I’m working on my quipping skills.
Betty Cracker
@Hillary Rettig: You build consensus on the issue and work within the party to address it. For Sanders at this moment, that might take the form of negotiating the terms of support as his already narrow path to the nomination gets narrower. But if you really care about the country and your issues, you don’t burn down the party and hand the White House to the Republicans.
gwangung
@BubbaDave:
Hope so. There’s an inefficiency imposed by party mechanisms….but it’s a necessary one, I think, because a party is an organization built to allow large numbers of people to get things done, and to keep getting things done over time. People can get sick or die, but the party keeps the ideals moving forward, however inefficiently. Hope people new to power keep on being patient.
Tim C.
I’m gonna ask again.
Assuming Bernie can’t get it done and doesn’t get the delegates for the nomination, which is the most likely outcome at this point, what should he ask for to give his full support. Like it or hate it, eight years ago a classic deal got made. Hillary got a prominent cabinet post and enough respect for her and her supporters that she became a powerful surrogate for the President. This is how parties are supposed to work. Different factions get something for their support when you do a deal.
While I get that many people here are in the “NO WAY BERNIE THE SELF-ABSORBED PURITY FREAK WILL BURN IT ALL DOWN IF HE LOSES!” or “HILLARY SHOULD/WILL OFFER NOTHING TO THE REBEL SCUM” Thanks, I get that there’s a lot of people feeling like that now. But that would be epic stupid on both their parts and despite the hate and passion at the moment, I just can’t believe either of them thinks division and chaos that could lead to a Trump or Cruz victory is going to lead to better things later. I *DONT* think that Bernie supporters should just “fall in line” after the primaries just because my candidate gets more delegates. There is a long tradition of coalition and deal-making in political parties
So once again: What should Bernie ask for to make a deal when this is all over?
Betty Cracker
@WarMunchkin: I like that!
PhoenixRising
@glasnost:
Well said, and the kind of substantive debate I used to come to this blog to engage.
Bernie wants them jailed this time, which is unrealistic. That’s not what worries me about him, though. Revolution and overthrowing the broken system to bring power to the people have been empty words in this country for decades. Naomi Klein’s theory that capitalism is structured to benefit from disasters, more than from full employment, seems to be bearing out over this decade.
So maybe you can explain what Sanders’ campaign hasn’t addressed…who is going to be hurt by the revolution? And how can those few be co-opted, in exchange for less pain? Because revolutions involve the city people/elites/rich/royalty going to the ditches/gallows/firing squads/guillotines. And that doesn’t seem to be accounted for in the rhetoric.
Solve that one and you’re the next FDR. Bernie is no FDR. Roosevelt didn’t call for a revolution…he called the banksters into his office and quietly threatened one.
low-tech cyclist
But from your post, I never figured out why. Other than you don’t like Hillary, and you’re for economic justice, and black, Iraqi, etc. lives matter.
Other than the not-liking-Hillary part, I’m for the same things you say you’re for, but I’m supporting Hillary. So I’m unclear about why any of these things, besides not liking Hillary, puts you in the Sanders camp.
Some of the front-pagers have spelled out in some detail why they’ve come down on Hillary’s side. I don’t think it’s necessary for you to be as thorough and detailed as Cole or (IIRC) Anne Laurie, but you’ve gotta make more of a case than this. There isn’t even anything there for me to argue against.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker:
That’s basically the animating cause of his entire career: THE SYSTEM IS ROTTEN BUT I’M NOT, and I’ll help you if I _must_, but not before lecturing you about how awful it is that we even have to be here.
Calouste
@BubbaDave:
Martin O’Malley dropped out ages ago with 1% of the vote.
D58826
. (sigh). The great progressive of the early 20th century T. Roosevelt was rich. His cousin FDR was rich. JFK had a nice bank account. LBJ was a self-made (by cutting a few corners cough cough) millionaire. They all seemed not to have compromised their ideals or public service.
Danny Glover had an opinion in which he said Bernie is the first politician in a long time with ‘no dirt on him’. This time last year 99% of the public had no idea who Bernie Sanders was and he could have had two heads and no one would have notice. He is a backbencher from a small homogeneous state with small media market. The national media could have cared less about any ‘dirt’ that he picked up in Vermont. If he is the nominee that will change. If the MSM doesn’t do it then the GOP will be more than happy to supply the details. Do I think Bernie is a crooked politician, no but does he have some skeletons in the closet – yes. The GOP will make sure that the entire country knows Bernie is unfit to be president because he threw spitballs in the 3rd grade.
tobie
I’m 100% in agreement on all these things, and that’s why I’m voting for HRC. IMO she has articulated a clearer and more forceful strategy for getting these things done. Thank you, Bernie, for highlighting these issues, and thank you, Hillary, for being so wonky as to propose achievable goals.
(I do have a few misgivings about trying to sweep feminism under the rug of ‘economic justice.’ It sounds like responding to Black Lives Matter with All Lives Matter. There are plenty of forms of mysogyny that no amount of economic justice will fix.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mike J: I’ve always been a Dean skeptic. I’m sure he did some good things as DNC chair, but talking about 2006 as if it were the work of one man is just kind of hero-worship that drives me crazy in left-blogistan, the tendency to put all the eggs in one basket because somebody Said Something! or has that One Magic Bill. I remember a brief flare-up of Andrew Cuomo fever because he showed the legendary balls on gay marriage. As soon as Paul Singer told him to. Again, I’m sure Dean did some smart and shrewd things, but 2006 was also about Bush, Cheney, Iraq, Katrina, Abramoff, Mark Foley and Social Security privatization.
WarMunchkin
@FlipYrWhig: He voted against it. He – and other liberal organizations, such as the ACLU – correctly realized that the Administration was trying to maintain a harsher legal structure within the United States for detainees. I support that decision.
Amaranthine RBG
Doesn’t Ms retrograde know this is a blog for moderate to conservative Democrats.
This ain’t no progressive safe space.
Brachiator
Some great posts here and some passionate defenses of Bernie. Mainly I am just going to relax and wait for the primary results. I think that HRC will do well, but we will see, and we will see how Berniacs respond. I will also be curious to see how Trump does. I would like to see Cruz absolutely crushed.
cleek
@aimai:
hear, hear.
aimai
@negative 1: Calling a woman a whore is pretty serious fighting words, actually. Pretending not to see how this works selfish, I won’t say priviliged or entitled but its that too. You are saying that you don’t have to care how people hear your words, all that matters is that you get to say them. That’s a pretty hostile act and its why, as ef goldman pointed out in an earlier thread, people say that berniebros are like gamergaters. First of all they use misogyistic attacks on their female enemies, then they become enraged when they get called on it, and they double down. They never, ever, ever take a breath and apologize. In the context of a primary battle this attitude is extremely destructive.
RareSanity
@Hillary Rettig: The Green Lantern is not running for President, so mere mortals cannot just wish harder and things get done.
So you’re saying that it is entirely possible that Sanders is going to get all of this trans-formative legislation through a Republican controlled Congress, that is going to be (even more) bitter from losing the Presidential Election, again, plus facing down the barrel of a more liberal SCOTUS nominee?
Please stop with the, “we won’t know if we don’t try” thinking. This is not a kid jumping off the high dive for the first time, this is the Presidency of the United States. So if Bernie tries and fails to get his Utopian laws passed, then what? Just throw your arms up and say, “Oh well, at least we tried”?
That doesn’t seem like a very well thought out plan…much like Sander’s proposals themselves.
Amaranthine RBG
@low-tech cyclist: oh look, free homework assignments!
Calouste
@Tim C.: Does it matter? If Sanders asks for something and doesn’t get it, the Berniacs will be upset and not vote for Clinton. If Sanders asks for something and gets it, the Berniacs will call him an establishment sell-out and not vote for Clinton.
negative 1
@PhoenixRising: To be fair so does Hillary: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/wall-street/
It’s one of the things I respect about her. Both are referencing that during the ‘discovery phase’ of the last recession it came to light that plenty of the top executives at investment brokerages knew by the end that what they were selling was toxic garbage, and that basically constitutes fraud. So it’s not exactly revolutionary to point out that fining these firms millions when they made billions isn’t really a corrective mechanicsm, but actually jailing the asshole who committed the fraud rather then let them plead the yuppie Nuremberg defense (‘I have a mortgage — any of my coworkers would’ve done the same!) is a far better way to stop them from doing things.
I think that Bernie has been rather clear that the people who are going to ‘suffer’ (may be a strong word, but hey) are those who represent the top 1% of wealth, as he is planning a progressive estate tax on the top 3% that seems to be fashioned on a wealth tax https://berniesanders.com/issues/income-and-wealth-inequality/ (second sentence of point 1).
aimai
@FlipYrWhig: Bingo!
shomi
imho anyone who still supports Sanders doesn’t have a practical bone in their body. They are no better than the right wingnuts who want to build walls and evict all Muslims.
May as well just Elect Drumpf or Cruz and burn it all down to the ground and get it over with if you are going down that path.
gwangung
@Tim C.:
Yup. I don’t get a problem with Sanders negotiating to get more planks in the platform or a Cabinet post or a bunch of other things. And I (and a bunch of other folks) should probably emphasize that. It’s fair and it’s right. He ran a good race and has large segments of the population as supporters. Not a problem for him to get as much as he can get in negotiations.
And I’m pretty sure Clinton will negotiate in good faith, since she was on the other side eight years ago.
Bobby Thomson
@Roger Moore: ouch.
schrodinger's cat
@dmsilev: St. Bernard doggies has a cute, human St. Bernard not so much. Of course, YMMV.
FlipYrWhig
@glasnost:
He’s been a Senator for 10 years. What “drastic actions” has he gone out of his way to help?
And let’s not even get into how she gave speeches to the International Deli-Dairy-Bakery Association and the United Fresh Produce Association. Probably she’s status quo oriented on food, too.
Hillary Rettig
@Betty Cracker: i think you can negotiate and build that consensus better from the standpoint of strength. problem with dems is that they give in way too easily.
I had the experience here in MI of supporting a decent progressive candidate (House) who had a shot at winning. The local Dem party was feeble, the national wouldn’t give him the time of day (which meant they were implicitly supporting the GOP incumbent). He lost. Here’s Howie Klein’s take on it: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2014/07/dear-nancy-pelosi-youre-letting-steve.html
I honestly don’t know how one works from within with this level of ineptitude and/or corruption.
Genghis
Wow, a Bernie supporter on the front page. Nice to have an option!
It is amazing how HRC supporters can brush off:
1. Wall Street speeches for over $600K, no transcripts available until Republican candidates release their speeches. Meanwhile, her opposition can portray her as giving a tongue bath to Wall Street – which clearly isn’t as bad to her as releasing the transcripts.
2. The judgement thing – multiple scenarios to consider. Today I’d highlight her inability to choose between two warring campaign chiefs in 2008. It’s what cost her (fortunately) the nomination.
3. Handling of the private server. Stonewall, stonewall, stonewall, FBI. I seldom agree with Maureen Dowd, but this weekend’s phrase was HRC “only apologizes at the point of a gun”. She did this all to herself, because, why?
HRC is one seriously flawed candidate and political figure. Her past is inescapable. Somehow a socialist independent from Vermont is within 2 points of her nationally, and the general hasn’t even begun. But, Bernie should back down? Because Trump or Cruz will be so much kinder? If she can’t handle Bernie the problem isn’t him.
Yes (yawn) the numbers, she’s inevitable. I say she’s one horrible news cycle away from a meltdown. Where might the horrible news come from? The FBI? Wall Street insiders? Her husband speaking to BLM? DWS tells all?
Until she’s declared the nominee at the convention, it’s still on. There are too many variables left in play, including the random unfairness of life that we all face.
Best….H
Amaranthine RBG
@aimai: tell us some more about how Hillary was all about supporting the wimmins while she stood beside Bill as he and his surrogates attached and demeaned the women he had raped/harassed over the years
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Bobby Thomson:
aaahhh, now we get to the ugly heart of the matter. Somewhere along the way, he took himself too seriously – maybe when he realized his rallies were popular – and decided he could do what Obama did and take him on. Too much dog whistling has come from the Sanders campaign, and like I said in the 2,875,643rd thread on this topic if he had spent as much energy courting the voters in the South as he did stalking the pope, he would have flipped the script. Instead, he’s spent a telling amount of time flailing around brosplainin’ why those black votes shouldn’t count. Any revolution that doesn’t set out, as a first principle, to include the most marginalized, especially if you’re talking about income inequality, is a total fraud. And the profile of his most ardent online supporters is pretty much all you need to know about why it’s a fraud.
Miss Bianca
@FlipYrWhig: Meanwhile of course, there’s this, but, too little, too late, right? The fact that Senator Sanders voted against Guantanamo closure because “reasons, reasons, *someone* – not me, but *someone* – should be thinking about all these very, very complicated issues but *not me*, is that my job? To know jack or shit about political prisoner transfer?” – counts as nothing against the purity of his future intentions!
burnspbesq
@FlipYrWhig:
Genius. Stealing that.
magurakurin
whatever. New York voters are going to close the coffin lid today. Those in PA, MD, and DE will pound in the nails. California will lower it into the grave.
November is all that matters now. Bernie is a dead man walking.
Michael Bersin
@schrodinger’s cat:
Are we there yet? Counting comments is difficult, sort of like delegate math.
FlipYrWhig
@D58826:
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.
–John Milton, Areopagitica, 1644.
schrodinger's cat
Serious question for Bernie supporters, what is Sanders contribution to Dodd-Frank. Did he offer any amendments, on what he defines as his signature issue.
Hillary Rettig
@low-tech cyclist: I’m for Bernie because I believe that economic inequality is the overwhelmingly big problem we face now, the one underpinning a lot of others. I also want less warmongering.
aimai
@Tim C.: This is such bullshit. Hillary did not get a cabinet post for being a loyal democrat. The Bernie people keep pushing this line but both Hillary and Obama have said publicly that this is not the case. She is said, by everyone who has reason to know, to have refused the SOS job twice before Obama persuaded her. She and Bill threw themselves into the election fight for Obama because that is what serious political people do. Because its not all about them its all about the Presidency and the country.
Bernie should shut the fuck up with any demands–and if his campaign history is any example any place where HRC met his demands would be treated with derison and contempt because that is the way he rolls. HRC should reach out directly to his supporters and say, simply, “I hear you and I will do my best to fight for you and your concerns.” Bernie should behave like a gentleman. But he won’t.
D58826
FlipYrWhig: from the google machine @
Bernie Sanders attacked Hillary Clinton’s record on the detention center at Guantanamo Bay on Tuesday, just after President Barack Obama delivered his blueprint for the controversial military prison’s closure.
But Sanders himself has voted against shuttering the U.S. military facility in Cuba.
And unlike Clinton, he has not signed on as a cosponsor to legislation that would have led to the closure of the facility, otherwise known as Gitmo.
Do I detect a wiff of hypocrisy and not as pure as I claim?
aimai
@Amaranthine RBG: And the Republican mask comes off!
Gerald
@Betty Cracker:
Well said!!!
Got to keep the Orcs OUT or all is lost!
The GOP/Republican governance is a repeal of 20th Century America and the hard fought progress made.
Iowa Old Lady
Vote your heart out in the primary; support the Democratic candidate in the general. Beyond that, it’s sound and fury.
mdblanche
This is going to be one of those days, isn’t it?
Technocrat
Andrew Carnegie was a straight-up robber baron, but he was also responsible for some serious public works:
Bill Gates was a notoriously ruthless businessman, and yet the foundation he and his wife started does public works:
Twitter was instrumental in supporting the Arab Spring. It’s also a massive corporation, whose founder is worth 1.4 billion dollars. I think there’s a reasonable case to be made that you can’t make change – even positive change – without power, be it economic, or political. Once we start seeing wealth and political power as prima facie evidence of corruption, we’ve added a massive handicap to the already daunting challenges we have to face.
We need billionaires. We just need more liberal ones.
Hillary Rettig
I’m leaving the thread now. Thanks everyone.
cleek
@Genghis:
and she gave dozens of speeches to business and groups that have nothing to do with Wall St.. so we’re supposed to believe that the Wall St speeches will result in nefarious quid pro quo, but none of the others are? or they all are and she’s going to be doing special favors for The Gap and the Vancouver Tourism Board and the US Scrap Metal Assn ?
aimai
@Hillary Rettig: To me this line “I’m for Bernie because I believe that inequality…” makes about as much sense as “Slow Houses Grow Stones.” Its a non sequiteur. Its incoherent. I believe lots of things–and want even more. But I don’t vote for a circus sideshow of a carney barker to get the things I want. If I believe that I have a problem with my kidney I go to a surgeon, not a faith healer. Believe what you want but when in politics, act politically.
burnspbesq
@Miss Bianca:
I’m willing to give Sanders a pass on Guantanamo closure legislation, because it’s always been attached to Defense appropriations bills, which are must-pass. But if there is anyone who was perfectly positioned to cast a purely symbolic “no” vote, you would think it would be Mr. Purity.
gwangung
@Hillary Rettig:
From what I’ve heard, Sanders voted or supported almost all of the aggressive foreign policy actions of the past 10-15 years, and he supports the current administration’s policies on drones. Where is he less interventionist?
Amaranthine RBG
@Hillary Rettig: wait you need a 60 slide PowerPoint deck stating your reasons. You can’t just support someone cueca use he’s for equalit and against war! You need lots of them specifics.
/s
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@mdblanche: until November, or at least the Conventions
geg6
Cannot wait for this primary to be over. So deathly sick of the self-congratulatory wanking of the Bernistas. I’m so freaking insulted by the implication that only the yoots and old lefties are sufficiently pure to count.
And this?
You can stick that right up your fucking ass and spin.
PhoenixRising
@negative 1:
Good point.
The robo-signing alone…no one has gone to jail, even overnight, and they had to know these were criminal acts. One more thing the candidates agree on, though.
I think I just don’t like Bernie’s rhetoric and tone, as I find out more about his specific plans. Purity purges make people dead, if you do them right, and while it’s true that our system is broken and that changes are in order, purity arguments scare me. For cause.
negative 1
@aimai: Dear lord here we go again — I’m saying I’m not voting on a candidate based on who does or doesn’t support them or what those supporters do. I. Don’t. Care. what ‘bernie bros’ or whatever we’re calling Hillary’s supporters do, I flat don’t.
Honestly we all decry that it’s getting so personal and then we debate about how their supporters behave. It doesn’t change their ideas. I’ve had two f*&king comments about the candidate proposed views on issues that site their *actual* campaign literature and the only things we interact with is “yeah well so and so who’s not even running did this”.
FlipYrWhig
@Hillary Rettig:
I dunno, by… showing up? By putting your nose in proximity to the nearest grindstone?
Ever had to deal with a bad policy at your job? I have. I used to kvetch about it, because I was busy. And nothing changed. And then I thought, well, someone needs to put together a fucking proposal to deal with this stupid shit. So I asked to be on a committee, and we wrote up a proposal. People who weren’t involved carped about how it didn’t solve the problem. But they couldn’t get beyond “process” arguments about who was put on the committee and that it should have taken more time and come out differently. So they formed their own committee, which then never met. And then we fed back the sensible complaints into the proposal, and then the proposal got adopted. In this little fable, who sounds more like Bernie Sanders, and who sounds more like Hillary Clinton?
Amaranthine RBG
@aimai: go ahead, tell her she is being irrational, or better yet, hysterical.
aimai
@FlipYrWhig: Beautiful! I’m rushing off to read it finally! ashamed of myself. I think it was one of my grandfather’s favorites.
cleek
@aimai:
he should get down on his knees and beg the Democratic Senate leadership to let him keep his committee spots.
Bobby Thomson
@marduk: scoreboard.
gogol's wife
@NCSteve:
Steel’s heavier.
L Boom
As a Vermonter who’s been voting for Bernie for 20+ years (including this primary), I just don’t think he should be our candidate. Right now, I think the most important thing is building up a strong national Democratic base to continue fighting the Republicans. One that could maybe even win off-year elections.
Bernie doesn’t support parties and absolutely will not build a long-term infrastructure. Vermont actually has a party filled with purity ponies, the Vermont Progressive Party. They have a number of seats in the State House and Senate, along with some mayors and such. And Bernie has next to nothing to do with them. He rarely campaigns with or for any Progressives, and has made no attempt to help them get a better foothold in the state. I just don’t see him doing anything more for the Democrats in the long term.
Mike J
@gene108:
Health, education, economic development? THAT EVIL BITCH!!! BURN HER BURN HER BURN HER!
FlipYrWhig
@aimai:
This, this, so much this. The whole Bernie Sanders campaign is an exercise in collective believing and wanting that appears to have concluded that if enough people believe and want things, they happen, more or less spontaneously, because how could they not, just look at how many of us there are? SMH.
Miss Bianca
@Hillary Rettig: Oooh, “less war-mongering”. That sounds so nice. Who doesn’t want that? Yeah, that warmonger Obama and his minions, negotiating with Iran and all. Trying to clean up messes that previous administrations propelled us into, where there are no easy options and no good guys out there. Oh, yeah, did I mention that I want a pony, a big fat pony,, too?
I’d love to watch Bernie in the hot seat at his first defense briefing, realizing how incredibly more complex the world is from the Oval Office than from the back benches in the Senate, where all he has to do is promote two-page bills that his colleagues igonre. Oh, wait – no, I wouldn’t. Because that would mean that poser would have made it to the White House.
dollared
@gene108: You do understand the difference between running for President and raising money for your private foundation? Just checking, because you just conflated the two.
rp
@low-tech cyclist: Well said. The “logical action” comment bugged me because it’s just an assertion without any explanation or argument. And that’s true of all of her comments about Sanders. I suspect that she, like many Sanders folks, supports him because it *feels* right. It’s all theater and optics.
Calouste
@Genghis: It’s amazing how Sanders’ supporters can brush off him lying about his tax returns.
schrodinger's cat
She starts a controversial topic and then runs away. I can think of so many commenters who would make better front pagers. Did HR unearth the infamous naked moping video of our blog master?
chopper
man, i’m not up for it today. i’ll just say sanders has turned into a real piece of shit and be done with it.
Tractarian
@Tim C.:
Good question. Is there any cabinet post Bernie is qualified for?
(NB: Postmaster General is no longer considered cabinet-level.)
dollared
@FlipYrWhig: At least in Bernie you are voting for someone who actually believes that fixing inequality should be a priority. Not someone who has spent her entire career making it worse.
RareSanity
@Hillary Rettig:
Economic inequality may be the biggest issue to you and other Sander’s supporters, whom are overwhelmingly white, and mostly young, it must be nice to not have to deal with all the other forms of inequality, so you can focus exclusively on the economic one.
Speaking as a 40-something black man, I think there may be a few other pressing concerns regarding inequality that may need to be addressed a little before economic, especially in the South. I’m sure that Latino voters will tell you that there are a few more pressing matters in their community other than economic inequality. Let’s ask the mainly poor, and mostly minority citizens in the states that did not expand Medicaid what their most pressing issue is…hint: it’s probably not economic inequality.
This is what so thoroughly upsets me about the Sander’s supporters, and his campaign itself…the lack of awareness regarding the privileged position one must occupy, that enables them to be primarily concerned with economic inequality, while unarmed black people are worried about being killed during a routine traffic stops.
It must be nice to not have those worries clouding your thought processes.
gogol's wife
@chopper:
That’s been my attitude for a while now. I hope she crushes him in New York so we can stop hearing about it.
dollared
@Mike J: Yup, large donations from very rich people. Who she now counts as friends.
Let’s quote Nancy Reagan on this subject: “Oh, the Marcos? But they are our friends…..”
aimai
@negative 1: I’m not voting for Hillary because of what Bernie’s supporters do or don’t do. That’s not what I’m saying at all. However I also oppose Bernie because I see him as lying to his supporters about what politics is and what it can accomplish. And I think that poses a tremendous danger to the actual people who vote (democrats) and the people who are affected by our votes when we fail and the Republicans get in. It can’t have escaped your attention that Bernie has been tearing down the party and building himself up. His voters are revved to a fever pitch of excitement and rage. That’s a great way to turn out a vote or build up a millinarian cult of personality. But its terrible long term. Because Bernie can’t deliver. He can’t deliver the primary nomination and if he could he wouldn’t be able to deliver on his vague but exciting promises of purity and gold lying in the streets and bankers hanging from lampposts. He won’t deliver even on his soi disant pacifism since he isn’t, in fact, terribly pacific. Bernie is a demagogue and demagogues leave their supporters crying in the dust of the wreckage their losses, or their terrible policies, produce. And you can see what happens after a defeat–these people are not gracious at the best of times. They will not be gracious, or work well with others, after Bernie loses. I, personally, think they will be even worse if he wins and then fails as President. They were pretty shitty to Obama.
Tractarian
@schrodinger’s cat:
Now, now, be fair. She has replied civilly to over a dozen comments.
dollared
@RareSanity: And Bernie is NOT concerned about that? Show me.
aimai
@dollared: Hyperbole is not your friend.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dollared: that’s a very cromulent point.
amk
Can’t wait to see bs bots’
reactionsfoot stomping poutrage in another 9 hours.D58826
@negative 1: It’s a lot easier to say throw the bums are crooks and belong jail than it is to prove it in a court. The recent federal trial of the mine owner responsible for the deaths of 29 miners is a good example. He was found guilty of a misdemeanor and acquired of the more serious felony charges. He will spend a year or less in a federal minimum security country club. A decade or so ago the government went after Microsoft under the anti-trust laws. Several years and a few national forests worth of court filings and the case went no where.
Miss Bianca
@L Boom: Curious – *why* do you vote for him? Is he good at bringing home the (vegetarian) bacon for VT? Or is it that no one will run against him? Not asking for a friend, asking for me.
dollared
@aimai: Yup, Bernie’s entire candidacy is one massive sexist enterprise. Horrible. One week after he’s elected, he’ll reinstate the patriarchy. I saw him waving that copy of The Handmaid’s Tale at his last rally….
aimai
@schrodinger’s cat:
204
schrodinger’s cat says:
April 19, 2016 at 11:52 am
She starts a controversial topic and then runs away. I can think of so many commenters who would make better front pagers. Did HR unearth the infamous naked moping video of our blog master?That’s naked mopping. I hope.
chopper
@gogol’s wife:
oh, we won’t stop hearing about it. NY will have been ‘stolen’, etc etc.
bernietad devine is in this all the way to the convention.at some point someone, hopefully warren, will take bernie aside and have ‘the talk’.
Linnaeus
@Technocrat:
Aye, that’s the rub. I have a hard time seeing how concentrating economic and political power in the hands of a relative few will produce, in the long term, broadly progressive results. We might get charitable activities, but it will of course be on their terms and they will define the parameters of what is to be fixed and what is not. What they giveth they can taketh away.
dollared
@Technocrat: Yeah, we need more billionaires like Bill Gates, using a tax advantaged organization to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to undermine teacher’s unions. Bless his heart…..
gwangung
@dollared: Hm. Are you white by any chance? I’m curious…
rumpole
Sanders served a useful function when he pulled Clinton to the left and kept focus on issues that really matter to large elements of the D base. Had she not tacked that way, she very well might have lost, and he would be toast in the general. She is a talented public servant and lousy candidate.
Dealing with the thrust of his campaign and the simplicity of its message, made her a better and stronger candidate. Now, on the verge of mathematical elimination, he’s trying to make her a weaker one and it seems like his followers are just getting nastier and nastier on flameout. But the rationales for support (other than I believe in his message) are becoming increasingly pathetic. “Clinton’s rich. Screw her!” “I don’t like the fact that she has a fund.” “Southern states shouldn’t go first! We wuz robbed!” (Seriously?).
That is what losing sounds like, and is normal–“the ref cost us the game”. But that’s rarely true, and there comes a point when griping starts to delegitimize the party’s selection process. Having lost the popular vote by a lot, and being virtually assured of losing the delegate count, it’s time for the more sober of Sanders’ supporters to keep their eyes on the bigger picture. Their candidate is going to lose. Grieve, and get ready for the real fight.
Just Some Fuckhead, Clinton Supporter
@Ella in New Mexico: Hear, hear! I’m so fucking sick of Balloon Juice’s regular assholes like Jim, Foolish Lutist (sort of the new Stuck, more sentient but just as uncompromising in his need to drown out anything his beautiful mind doesn’t approve of) that I can barely stand to read this site any more. And I’m a Clinton supporter with little to no sympathy for Sanders.
Even so, as long as there has been a Balloon Juice, there’s been this authoritarian need to crush any viewpoint outside of a narrow range of options determined by our Steely Eyed Centrists, many of whom are former Republicans who consider it a triumph of liberalism to have voted for a black President.
dollared
@Betty Cracker: Within the Party? Did I miss the part where the Party agreed he could be a member and that he could compete on a level playing field with Secretary Clinton?
Like it or not, the Party made itself the enemy to his campaign.
magurakurin
@gogol’s wife: she will. It is amazing how long this threads go on about someone who is not going to be the nominee. Even he knows he is going to lose today. He is in MD. Clinton is having a party in Times Square tonight. This is over. The only question is how long will it take for the losers to admit. That and the wonder over how they will react to the realization that Bernie is never going to be president.
negative 1
@schrodinger’s cat: My actual question, and it is an honest question not a comment with a question mark, is which is the better policy to take on what becomes predatory lending — allowing their to be a national oligopoly of large banks but keeping them from essentially unregulated speculative lending through Dodd-Frank https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/factsheets/2015/10/08/wall-street-work-for-main-street/ or by re-eliminating the idea of national banks and allowing for only state level financial institutions https://berniesanders.com/issues/income-and-wealth-inequality/ (point 13). Both have their merits, and ideally both would work, but each candidate has a proposed method for dealing with the problem so why not argue which is better?
I’ll start — I don’t see why the very easy job of repealing the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 is so controversial. I think that history has repeatedly demonstrated that oligopolies distort a market, and in this case their undue size and influence make it so that they will repeatedly chip away at any regulatory provisions thrown at them. Hence I like Dodd-Frank, I like HRC’s promises about Dodd-Frank, but I think ultimately de-nationalizing banks is a longer-term more permanent solution. Incidentally here’s a funny paper from the St. Louis Fed about how ‘no one knows what will happen when we make banks national’ from 1997 that looks almost quaint: https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/july-1994/going-interstate-a-new-dawn-for-us-banking
gwangung
@Linnaeus: Yes, but in the meantime, why is it anathema to ally with folks who actually agree with you and will support you, but happen to be rich?
aimai
@Tractarian: She did reply civilly. And she’s a wonderful person IRL as far as I can see (I get her wonderful newsletter).
FlipYrWhig
@Linnaeus:
Ask the queer and trans people of North Carolina their feelings about rich corporations these days.
chopper
@Just Some Fuckhead, Clinton Supporter:
i’d expect you to take that title: Just Some Fuckhead, Regular Asshole.
msdc
@aimai: I believe that would qualify as his “whitey tape.”
gogol's wife
@Hillary Rettig:
In the unlikely event that Bernie Sanders could get elected President of the United States, you’d be disappointed in him in about 5 minutes.
FlipYrWhig
@dollared: SO UNFAIR THAT DISGUSTINGLY CORRUPT PARTY WONT EVEN LET ME LEAD IT
gwangung
@dollared: Like it or not, Sanders own worst enemy is his own lack of ability at management and campaigning. Blaming others is a mark of a loser.
Elizabelle
@Iowa Old Lady:
Should be a tagline.
Is a plan.
Ella in New Mexico
@negative 1:
I think the tone here has gotten so personal and mean-spirited because the weight of the commentariat has shifted towards what could be called “professional” Democratic Party activists vs. those who are less invested in the inner workings of the political party system. People in that culture–paid or unpaid campaign professionals or political advisors– are supposed to be as aggressive and cynical and in-your-face as possible because, hey, it’s politics and hey, we’re supposed to win, and if the other side flinches, well, go in for the kill or you’re a sucker.
I get it, I really do, but it it is kinda disheartening, especially since BJ used to be one of the best places to come for a great discussion among friends, whether we agreed or disagreed. There’s no common ground allowed here anymore.
RareSanity
@dollared:
Do you mean how he dismissed the entire South as being unmportant, mainly because the foundation of Hillary Clinton’s support was from black people? Gee, I don’t know…whatever would give me that idea?
Voting for legislation is a completely different matter than actually having to earn someone’s vote. It takes work to earn votes.
mdblanche
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s times like this I wish I were a drinking man.
negative 1
@D58826: I don’t disagree, but I like both candidate’s insistence that it should change. After all, two points — 1.) Sure Don Blankenship deserved worse, but he still got more jail time than anyone for the 2007 crash got and 2.) It’s easy to say 6 mos. to a year isn’t a long sentence, but that’s only in the context of what they usually deserve. You’d probably be singing a different story if you were facing it. I once had 3 months threatened at me and I’m not too proud to say I shat bricks.
marduk
@Bobby Thomson: Show us on the doll where Bernie touched you.
Just Some Fuckhead, Clinton Supporter
@chopper: You’d say that, being exactly one of the assholes I was referring to.
Shygetz
Remember when we all used to sit back and chuckle at the roaring dumpster fire that is the Republican primary? Ahhh, good times.
dollared
@aimai: You do understand that the kind of fundraising that most people do these days was illegal 30 years ago? You do understand that in the 1970s no candidate with her pattern of sucking up to foreign kleptocrats for donations would ever have been elected?
Maybe you’re too young to understand how different our country was before Reagan. But I remember. And it is a good thing that Bernie hasn’t spent the last 30 years soliciting tens of millions of dollars from really horrible people.
aimai
@negative 1: I can’t answer your question in any detail. I’d just say that I don’t think any particular choice, within a political system that makes some votes literally impossible because of the many chokepoints and stakeholders who don’t want any regulation, can be the only right choice. There are just versions of attempts at regulation–once you have one (like Dodd Frank) you can improve on it. Its much harder to start again from scratch. There are just too many people whose interests have to be served in a Congress that is so big and a Senate that is, by design, so conservative and retrograde.
Despite all the Bernie handwaving I don’t see him and HRC as at all far apart politically on this issue. When asked he couldn’t tell the NYDN what he would do differently than Dodd Frank, and he was clearly relying on it. He doesn’t have any better legislative plans. So for me, I’d rather go with someone who is going to work at the margins on lots of legislation trying to ameliorate things than someone who talks big but doesn’t seem to understand the details.
Aqualad08
The only surprise in this “allegation” is that Bernie decided to burn his bridges with the DNC BEFORE losing New York.
Those super delegates must be REALLY impressed by him now…
Kropadope
@Just Some Fuckhead, Clinton Supporter:
Just bears repeating. For my part, at least I recognize when I’m being an asshole.
glory b
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I know, right? My folks, who were active in the south in the 50’s just stand in awe of this level of bravery.
Amaranthine RBG
@Just Some Fuckhead, Clinton Supporter: hear, hear!
Comments are dominated by a very cramped and contorted worldview. KLike a well meaning grammdma on Facebook trying to explain to the kids how to be a good democrat
I had one prolific commenter maw-lain to me the other day that another commenter couldn’t possibly be racist because he was ghey.
Bizarre.
Mike in NC
Bernie Sanders = zero electoral votes
Linnaeus
@gwangung:
It’s not anathema. All I’m saying is that we need to recognize the larger structural implications of these alliances and be prepared to deal with them.
aimai
@dollared: You do know that I’m 55 right? And hyper political and from the left of the aisle going back four generations to literal anarchism, right? Oh, and one more thing. I’m not in the least interested in your incredibly stupid and ill informed political opinions. You aren’t even wrong. You left merely wrong so many, many, comments ago.
D58826
@gwangung: Bernie is a less hawkish candidate than Hillary. Well maybe but the problem is there are a lot of bad folks who would dearly love to attack the US and they don’t much care that Bernie isn’t a hawk.
geg6
@Tim C.:
Ambassadorship to Denmark? He seems to like it so much more there that I would think he’d jump at the chance.
negative 1
@aimai: “It can’t have escaped your attention that Bernie has been tearing down the party and building himself up.”
I don’t care if he takes the Democratic party logo and dry humps it on the stage, or Hillary does it for that matter. I care about what each candidate says they will do once in office. In 250 comments we’ve had like maybe 20 that have to do with that specific point. In reality I think the most naive thing is to think that any campaign will somehow have lessons beyond that campaign, other than ‘what I did worked and I won’ and then watch it get repeated until it doesn’t work. People don’t pay that close attention. We, here, don’t represent the public at large — we’re actually reading about politics in our spare time. The sad thing is that we’re supposed to represent the ‘well informed’ voter. Look above you — looks pretty sparse on the information, doesn’t it?
chopper
@Just Some Fuckhead, Clinton Supporter:
http://pbfcomics.com/99/
FlipYrWhig
@Ella in New Mexico: See, I think the tone has gotten so personal and mean-spirited because the entire Bernie Sanders campaign is devoted to condescension and prog-splaining. REAL LIBERALS are for Bernie, see, and if you aren’t, well, probably you’re a bank-loving neoliberal neoconservative who thinks America is doing just great, not like us, who care about black people (sort of) and “income inequality” (which is?) and imperialism.
dollared
@RareSanity: What bullshit. He said the primaries were frontloaded with states that would not actually end up being electoral votes for a Democrat. True statement.
The rest is the Clinton campaign screaming “racism” against a guy who has fought racism all his life.
That is despicable. Slimy. Disgusting. Please feel free to add yourself to that description if you must buy into it.
Genghis
@cleek:
She’s been called out multiple times on the Wall Street speeches because of the incredible fees she was paid and because she hasn’t released transcripts. Let’s look at what’s in them please. Hiding behind “let the Republicans release all of their speeches first” and “she spoke to other organizations as well” doesn’t answer the central question in an election that is taking on the moneyed class’ control of the government.
Thinking Trump or Cruz won’t mention the speeches is dreaming. If she waits too long to release them, she’ll be called a liar, even if they are innocuous. This should have been dealt with months ago – instead she’s handing a cudgel to her opponents. I see it as amazing short-sightedness or more poor judgement, trying not to think of it as arrogance.
I think there is probably nothing in the speeches she can’t survive. I’m sure they are like many other corporate sponsored dog and pony shows, rah rah etc. We all be over it if she had released them in a timely manner. Waiting until the general or thinking she won’t have to release them at all is playing with gasoline and matches.
Off to work…
Best…H
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Keith G:
THIS! you can close the thread now
glory b
@FlipYrWhig: Yep, my neighborhood hasn’t recovered from the LAST revolution we tried to pull off.
aimai
@Ella in New Mexico: Nonsense. Its shifted because after weeks of perfectly ordinary citizens who support HRC being afraid of being swarmed and attacked at dkos or on social media people are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. The Bernie people were on a mission to convert and people who are missonizing are damned annoying, insistent, and agressive. I don’t know any HRC supporters in real life who were campaigning to convert anyone as hard as the Bernie people. And so, for the most part, we sat back and sniped and snarked. Its only recently that people have just gotten fed up with Bernie’s willingness to see the house burn down if he can’t own it.
chopper
@Genghis:
and let’s see obama’s school transcripts while we’re at it!
Linnaeus
@FlipYrWhig:
I didn’t say that a corporation could never do anything that’s socially constructive. What I am saying is that expecting concentrated economic and political power to effect positive economic, political, and social change in the long term is not a reliable strategy and comes with its own considerable social costs.
gwangung
@Linnaeus: I think a lot of people do think it’s anathema, but given the current environment I’m not sure there’s an alternative.
I agree that there are dangerous long term problems, but that does mean being clear eyed about all the potential options.
guachi
I’ve considered myself a Democrat since I was about 10 way back in 1984. What disappoints me most about Sanders is his selfish opportunism in joining the Democratic party with no desire to enhance or better that party.
How hard would it have been to, as primaries approach in various states, to promote candidates in those states and ask his supporters to kick them $27? He’d likely be doing much better in these upcoming closed primaries.
But, no. It’s all about Sanders.
magurakurin
@negative 1: what information do you need? Bernie isn’t going to win. Your vote that will matter will be a choice between Clinton or Trump or maybe Cruz. Not much to think about there, is there?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Heavens to Mergatroid! Well, at least you recognize my beautiful mind.
RareSanity
@negative 1: Except that the manner in which a campaign is run is a direct reflection of the candidate. If the South is wholly unimportant during the campaign, am I supposed to just trust that after being elected, it will somehow magically become important again?
I hope the irony is not lost on you that, if you substituted “Republican” for “Democratic”, and “Hillary” for “Cruz”, this is a statement from a Trump supporter .
aimai
@Genghis: You must have been asleep for the last thirty years. She will be attacked for what is in those speeches no matter when she releases them, and not matter what is in them. The smart move is to delay until the heat of the general election. She can’t innoculate herself against the accusations that Sanders, Trump, or Cruz will lob at her because the amount of lying slime they can generate is literally infinite. She can only counterpunch and control her own message. Because she’s a god damned professional fighting for the job of President.
dollared
@aimai: Thanks for your incredibly nonsubstantive response.
I’ve known your commenting for five years. That’s what makes me respond to your comments. I have long respected you.
I am a year older than you. I also was politically active through the 70s and 80s. And you are wrong. Anybody with her fundraising background would never, ever gotten the Democratic nomination at any time before she and Bill made it OK to be venal, back in the 90s.
FlipYrWhig
@dollared:
Oh, indeed? So, in that case, what do you make of this? I posted it on Washington Monthly a few days ago.
negative 1
@aimai: I don’t think that Dodd-Frank is any easier to uphold than the Bank Company Holding Act would be to tear down. Both would face MASSIVE resistance from a banking industry that has an incredibly well-financed lobby. The thing is this is my argument as to why the Bank Company Holding Act repeal would be better — because if you manage to make it go away then so does the idea of 10 banks with that much power to chip away whatever new regulation follows it.
Glass Steagal was about the pinacle of financial legislation in my opinion, and after the depression it was so universally recognized as necessary that it was all but iron-clad. But the financial industry still toppled it, and only after they were allowed to totally consolidate and nationalize in the late 90’s.
gwangung
@D58826: He’s SAID to be less hawkish than Clinton, but I do know he’s been quite hawkish in defense department votes. I’m curious in seeing how he’s less hawkish.
Kropadope
@FlipYrWhig:
Can’t even take responsibility for your own part…tsk,tsk
Calouste
@Shygetz: The Republican primary is still a roaring dumpster fire, but it has been burning for quite a while, and the explosions are still a while off, so we need something to talk about :)
Trump is going to sweep New York and most of next week’s primaries, and neither Cruz nor Kasich look like they are going to drop out.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
And yet says his caucus victories (field goals) in Utah, Idaho, Alaska and Wyoming prove that super delegates should award him the nomination in spite of Hillary’s primary touchdowns. Curiouser and curiouser.
dollared
@aimai: HRC people are the model of rationality and decorum? So you haven’t been on this blog the past month?
Go reread your last response to me.
dollared
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yup, sounds like normal politicking. What’s your point?
Miss Bianca
@Ella in New Mexico: Ella, you’ve certainly been witness to my heart-burnings about having seen first-hand what passes for “discourse” among Bernie Sanders’s most ardent fans. And you and I can agree to disagree about how representative they are of all Sanders supporters (#notallBerniefans, etc). But what you are seeing as enthusiasm I am seeing as Dear-Leaderism, and yes…it alarms me. It alarms me because I think Sanders is pushing a line that is going to be difficult to pull back from – that he is the Great White Hope, and that he is somehow going to be able to accomplish miracles and wonders in office that have eluded a *far* more able and amiable leader than he is. That really worries me – he is establishing a cult of personality not unlike Trump’s – and it is eliciting a response not unlike his followers’. It’s not as physically violent – yet. But it is hectoring, impatient of process, and far too apt to mistake symbol for substance (the whole “rules” kerfuffle at the Convention is a perfect case in point. They were cheering their heads off at completely empty, symbolic, non-binding resolutions that weren’t even addressed to the appropriate body). That’s the American way naturally – I don’t like to see it encouraged.
starscream
The great irony is that Bernie himself used the Death Star to get elected in 2006.
Bernie’s greatest trick has been convincing people like the author that he’s something other than a run of the mill politician. He’s not. He might appear that way because he represents a state with like 15 residents and almost no businesses. But it’s why he’s consistently done the NRA’s bidding, dragged his feet on gay marriage, worked hard to get more F-35’s built, voted against closing Guantanamo, and given friendly speeches to fat cat donors at Martha’s Vineyard. He does what it takes to stay in power.
The thing is, I don’t begrudge him any of this. Sometimes you sacrifice a bit of your soul for the greater good. What I absolutely can’t stand is him acting like he’s the one incorruptible person in Washington, and the way his annoying fans eat this shit up.
chopper
@dollared:
least they can do some basic math.
FlipYrWhig
@Linnaeus: Fair enough, but taking everything “corporate” and jamming it into a box labeled “conservative” isn’t an accurate reflection of the state of play in 2016. Even obscene profit-seeking, under the right circumstances, can conduce to progressive ends.
cleek
@Mike in NC:
3 – i expect he’d win VT
aimai
@Linnaeus: There’s really no alternative short of an actual revolution. So moaning about it isn’t going to fix anything. Corporations are here to stay. I don’t like it, but I’m not under any illusions that anyone is going to be able to do more than merely regulate them at the margins, or bargain with them. They are just too powerful. The days of the nation state are over and the rise of the multinationals is well under way. Anyone who tells you that this can be reversed is lying to you. Absent a strong and scary USSR/Communist China there is simply nothing to counterbalance them or make political actors fear internal revolt enough to make concessions to workers. Russia (hey, thanks Jeffrey Sachs!) was given over wholly to the robber barons and oligarchs. China is its own set of problems. Neither Bernie Sanders nor anyone else can do anything about this.
elftx
I’ll be happy to take any dollar bills all those Berniebots who can’t afford college want to throw at me. I sure as shit can’t afford to be tossing them around. Bonus, go ahead call me a whore. At least I can get a gallon of milk with them and I don’t have to prove how pure I am by picking them up.
Or maybe I can get some Ivory soap..they tell me it’s 99% pure.
Mike J
@dollared: “The Clintons” [1] have taken over two billion dollars away from the ultra wealthy and spent it on making the world better instead of laying in a vault. I don’t see how that’s a bad thing.
[1]nearly always a tell that you’re dealing with the deranged.
dollared
@FlipYrWhig: I don’t disagree that the argument is flawed. But I don’t think it’s racist. But that’s the poo that the Clintonites flung.
cleek
@Genghis:
there’s one up on YouTube. go watch it.
Linnaeus
@gwangung:
I agree. Do what you can in the context in which you’re working, but also work on changing the context itself.
Berto
I’m loving the irony of HRC needing the votes of the people her husband ran out of the Democratic Party to win the general election.
Oops, not ‘irony”, I meant “karma”.
gwangung
@dollared:
A lot of black civil rights people do not think so. Could you document his leadership in the years following his move to Vermont?
glory b
@gene108: Enriching themselves? Tad Devine and $800,000 per month isn’t? Wonder why he wants to take this to the bitter end/ Based on the results, Tad is phoning it in.
I would hope someone with Bernie’s alleged integrity would wonder about taking money from people who are getting it from their unemployment checks or working for tips and using it to pay him.
Or to throw it away. Nothing says concern for the poor and downtrodden than throwing money away in the street.
chopper
@starscream:
i’m just wondering where all these people currently freaking out about fundraising were when obama was raising metric shit-tons of cash in 08 and 12.
aimai
@Miss Bianca: Actually a reporter who questioned Sanders numbers/ideas has been receiving death threats via twitter, was doxxed, and his wife was threatened. So: not so very untrump at all.
negative 1
@RareSanity: I disagree with your first sentence. Evidence to that? We’ve got plenty of massive shitheels in congress that run sterling campaigns, has nothing to do with the candidate. What did Lindsay Graham do wrong in his presidential run? You think Bernie’s worse then him?
Or the better argument — Hillary has now been down this road twice, and there’s no PUMA bullshit this time around so how is that a reflection on her? She’s the same person now, as then. Also her supporters were the ones that started the whole Rev. Wright dog whistle — so what changed (yes that was the primary it started in)? Maybe it’s just that sometimes people do repulsive shit. You haven’t proven causation. I don’t hold a candidate’s supporters against them. I argue the ideas.
Ella in New Mexico
@Just Some Fuckhead, Clinton Supporter: It would be a fun, entertaining enterprise to compile the A list of assholes on this site. Then just keep repeating their names, over and over, like they’re on Arya Starks kill list.
Just for fun.
dollared
@Mike J: They didn’t TAKE it Mike. They BEGGED, PLEADED, WHEEDLED and WINED and DINED it away from them. And then they stuck around and had a fun party together.
Taking is what Bernie proposes to do. There is a difference.
aimai
@Berto: This is absolutely impenitrably stupid. Bill left office with incredibly high approval ratings. People were not “run out of the Democratic party” by the Clintons at all. I can’t even fathom what history you are reading.
Miss Bianca
@chopper: Oh, and don’t forget those tax returns. Oh, wait – let’s forget them. Whatever’s in them can’t be *nearly* as scandalous as what’s in Those Speeches!
Kropadope
@dollared:
I think the bigger issue there is the interplay between regional homogeneity and the momentum narrative. Look at all the states Bernie won in the mid-West and West. If we started right out the gate with OK, KS, CO, UT, NE, and WY and Bernie wound up with boosted national numbers and favorable TV narratives because of it, it would likewise be arguable that the primary scheduled had a distorting effect.
Technocrat
@Linnaeus:
That’s true. But somebody gets to define the parameters of what is to be fixed and what is not. Democracy distributes this choice, yet democracy over the last 30 years have given us Republican rule at nearly every level of governance.
And while it’s true that the system as a whole perpetuates certain types of injustice, an honest evaluation of the system has to include the aggregate choices we’re all making. Wal-Mart didn’t get to be a behemoth on it’s own. Fox News didn’t become propaganda central in a vacuum. We (collectively) created those monstrosities.
I don’t see any evidence that distributed power is more reliable at producing Progressive change than empowered individuals are.
dollared
@chopper: You mean as in settting a record for small donations online. In a presidential campaign. From US citizens.
As opposed to raising $10M donations from foreign kleptocrats for a personal foundation.
FlipYrWhig
@Kropadope: I know you always squirm at the rhetorical move I’m about to do, but, so be it. There’s a colleague/friend of mine on FB who’s 40-something and whenever he posts Bernie-friendly content he often ends with a statement about how Hillary Clinton supporters should “get out of the way.” I think that typifies the campaign, at least the more mature demographic subset within it: this feeling that the larger number of people should give in to the smaller number of people because they’re unworthy, lesser, insignificant really. (And it doesn’t help matters that this person is a lapsed Mormon, thus IMHO prone to dramatizing his own chosen specialness and his involvement in a higher drama.)
glory b
@negative 1: Gee, just the other day you were so thoughtful and beseeching, what happened to that guy?
aimai
@negative 1: She isn’t the same person now as then. If she were I wouldn’t be supporting her. She’s changed and grown a lot. And so have her supporters who are now comfortably in the Obama coalition.
low-tech cyclist
@Hillary Rettig:
I know economic inequality is Bernie’s #1 issue, while with Hillary it’s got to share time with other issues. But I don’t see how Bernie could actually make more of a dent in income inequality than Hillary would.
I agree with you about the ‘warmongering,’ but damn, seeing that word reminds me of what seems like another lifetime.
chopper
@Miss Bianca:
the black guy has to release two birth certificates. the woman has to release every speech she gave after being SoS. the white man doesn’t even have to release his taxes.
wonderful system, innit.
RareSanity
@dollared:
You can rationalize it any way you want. You can name call all you want. The fact of the matter is that the Sander’s campaign made a conscious decision that states where Democratic primaries occurred, weren’t important to his Democratic campaign. Before he can worry about electorial votes, he needs to win the nomination. The nomination is won through the primary process.
He basically said, “I don’t need your votes to win Democrats in the South, so I’m not even going to attempt to earn them.”
Nice strawman you got there. I said that the subject of economic inequality is probably NOT the most important issue of inequality with the groups Sander’s is lacking support in. You ever think that may be why his support is weak in those groups, and not just because Blacks, Latinos, and women are stupid sheeple that don’t know what the hell they’re talking about?
dollared
@gwangung: Voting record. 100%.
Facts, very inconvenient.
Ella in New Mexico
@FlipYrWhig: Absolutely, how could I be so blind because your side NEVER DOES THAT
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@FlipYrWhig:
HEY NOW! This is politics, lets not let reality get in the way.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Well, see, the places I win are good the places you win are unworthy. Same as it ever was
Linnaeus
@aimai:
I don’t see voicing concerns about corporate power and trying to come up with ways to countervail it as moaning at all. Do I think corporations are going anywhere? No. Do I also think we are facing the rise of the multinationals? Yes. But if we’re facing a brave new neofeudal future, we should try to do something about it, however limited that turns out to be.
cleek
@Berto:
i’m loving the irony of the people who claim the mantle of the uncompromisingest progressivesest Pure threatening to throw things to the GOP if they can’t have their pony.
Miss Bianca
@aimai: Well…color me sad but not surprised.
chopper
@Ella in New Mexico:
can i be on your guys’ “kill list”? that’s way better than “regular asshole”.
Paul in KY
@negative 1: Chelsea was a straight A student and received all kinds of scholarship offers. If she hadn’t, I would assume the Clintons would have paid for her education.
gogol's wife
@Amaranthine RBG:
And ageism and sexism are so cool these days.
FlipYrWhig
@Kropadope:
Under that calendar, I’m sure that the Bernie Sanders campaign would be saying, “Ya know, you’re right, it isn’t really all that representative, let’s call it a tie and see what happens the rest of the way.” And definitely not WE WIN FOREVER STOP IMPEDING PROGRESS YOU OLD HAG
glory b
@negative 1: Didn’t we try that with you already?
cleek
@dollared:
dishonest conflation of a charity and a presidential candidate’s campaign fund or personal account is dishonest.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Ella in New Mexico:
It would be much easier to compile a list of people who are not assholes at one time or another on this site. Here, let me do that for you:
.
gwangung
@dollared: May I suggest that’s a low bar? Is there more?
FlipYrWhig
@cleek: Well, to be fair, the Clinton Foundation did take in millions of dollars and used it for various good things, while the Sanders campaign has taken in millions of dollars and used it for itself, which is obviously far more virtuous.
Paul in KY
@Hillary Rettig: I do agree that Pres. Obama was a little too optimistic for me about the general ‘non-evilness’ (for lack of a better word) of the Republicans.
I fear, Hillary, that your fellow travelers do not really understand the commie-boating Sen. Sanders will receive if he’s the nominee. I just think Hillary is a better general election candidate, even though I’m closer to Bernie on most issues.
RareSanity
@negative 1:
What does Lindsay Graham’s Republican campaign have to do with Sander’s Democratic campaign? I’m not a Republican, so I didn’t follow his campaign. I have no idea what Republican voters didn’t like about him.
Whether or not Sander’s is “worse than Graham” is an irrelevant, subjective, red herring of an argument. I wouldn’t vote for Lindsay Graham in a primary, first because I’m not a Republican, and second because I don’t agree with anything he stands for. Although I’m a Democrat, I won’t vote for Sanders because I believe Hillary Clinton to be the best candidate to build on President Obama’s administration.
Very simple.
Barbara
@dollared: The fact that someone is committed to gender and racial equality, as I believe Sanders is, does not give them a completely free pass to avoid examining how they interact with and talk about the opposite gender and people of other races. When an actual black person or woman asks you to consider how Sanders’ comments came across to them, to empathize with their understanding of those comments and the experiential context in which they heard them, we should listen instead of trying to explain how we heard them. I am white, living in the South, but I could not — still can’t — believe how Sanders could keep saying either that the South is irrelevant because it won’t vote for Dems in November, or that he lost it because Southern voters are really conservative. That’s like whitewashing the southern electorate, and making the African Americans who vote there irrelevant and invisible. It’s shocking to me, okay? I don’t think Sanders is a racist but it shows me he lacks empathy. We all empathize with people we identify with the most. That’s easy. It’s harder to bridge divides with people who aren’t like us, so maybe Sanders’ lack of empathy is more general than it is related to racial or gender categories, but it still rankles.
Paul in KY
@Michael Bersin: Thank you, sir! Just doing my part, as well.
Berto
@cleek:
“Ponies”. Such a funny name for charging, prosecuting, and imprisoning felons, instead of whistleblowers.
John D
@dollared:
You know, it really, really, really pisses me off when people make this rhetorical construction (“True statement”) on easily checked information and get it wrong. It means they are lying.
Here are all the Dem primaries through Super Tuesday, which we will call the “front” for “frontloaded”:
IA, NH, NV, SC, AL, AR, CO, GA, MA, MN, OK, TN, TX, VA, VT. I’m skipping American Samoa and Democrats Abroad.
Dem. Dem. Dem. GOP. GOP. GOP. Dem. GOP. Dem. Dem. GOP. GOP. GOP. Dem. Dem.
8 Dem. 7 GOP. Both of the last 2 elections.
Fuck off.
Linnaeus
@FlipYrWhig:
They can, but “the right circumstances” is pretty much the game right there.
cleek
@Paul in KY:
for example:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/maryanngeorgantopoulos/sanders-lawyers-do-not-like-these-bernie-is-my-comrade-t-shi#.qj1lZKxVl
Kropadope
@RareSanity:
Still better than the other Republicans by a wide margin. Not that that is difficult.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Paul in KY:
Typical {fill in the blank} supporter!
Why aim so low? 500 should be the entry point not the end goal!
parmesan rancor
Ella in New Mexico
@Miss Bianca: I am really confident that like I said the other day, those people you had to deal with Saturday are a fractional subset of the broader, nationwide population that supports Sanders in the Primary. No offense, but its why I stay the hell away from inside party activism. Gives me chills. ;-)
Really, I don’t see the catastrophic stuff happening you do, mostly because I have the lucky perspective of not being on the inside. Really, NOBODY I know will put up with the kind of shit you’re worried about if it comes from Sanders himself or his closest advisors. The stuff he’s saying now about taking donations from Wall Street and their potential to sway her–that’s all just an attempt to differentiate himself from her. It’s really not that bad, but being a little more concerned than the average Bernie supporter, I bothered to email the campaign the other day to remind them that we’re trying to win a Democratic Primary, not destroy Hilary Clinton.
So as frustrating and irritating as it is to hear his schtick if you support Hilary, it’s peanuts in the overall scheme of political campaigns. It was far, far worse between Obama and Clinton in 2008–I really thought that things were going to go too far to ever repair between them, and yet, look how it all turned out.
Berto
cleek,
You would have been a hoot, back in the day, telling Susan B. Anthony to sit down and shut up about ponies, because we don’t have the votes for women’s suffrage.
Paul in KY
@horatius: I disagree. Throwing the dollar bills is making a political point. The watermelons would be just flat out racist.
Maybe you were tongue-in-cheek there? Sometimes hard to figure out in here.
dollared
@John D: In an election year where the Dems expect to win 60 percent of the electoral votes, the R states are frontloaded if it’s 48% R. And the specific suggestion was in response to the HRC campaign talking about her 2M votes, which was because the southern states voted, rather than caucuses. So the VOTES were massively frontloaded.
Math. And whether or not I fuck off is my business. Learn some fucking manners.
Miss Bianca
@chopper: Yeah, but Bernie’s *totally* the guy to tackle systemic racism and sexism. Because he leads by example.
John D
@dollared: You got caught lying on what you assured us was a true statement. You don’t deserve any sort of manners other than the kind I’m giving you. Fuck off.
Kay
@Paul in KY:
I do too, although this worries me:
I think one of the things that is being missed in the whole “Sanders supporters don’t care if people suffer and die” argument is that (many) Sanders supporters don’t think she will win the general. That’s why it’s not effective. You have to believe she’s the better choice for the general to make that argument. They don’t. I believe it but it’s just a “belief”. There’s not overwhelming evidence on this point.
Celticdragonchick
@aimai:
This times a thousand.
Ex-fucking-actly.
Ella in New Mexico
@chopper: I’m not sure. I’m looking for top quality candidates, people who really TRY to be assholes. An “A” list is not just a list, you know.
gwangung
@dollared: This is not terribly convincing. In a sample size of 15, its within the margin of error.
Technocrat
@Linnaeus:
Doing something about it should include at least the option of co-opting it. But we seem to have ruled that out completely.
ETA: The Montgomery bus boycott was one effective model of co-opting the economic power of a business. Not that they all need to be adversarial.
Bobby Thomson
@Paul in KY: you really don’t understand what it means to throw dollar bills at a woman? I doubt it.
Culture of Truth
Muammar Gaddafi was on the brink of killing hundreds of thousands of Libyans. Since the U.S. intervention, the death toll in Libya has been a fraction of that in Syria.
Paul in KY
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He’d get at least one Supreme Court nominee. How about Dr. Cornell West on the SC. Now that would be cool just for the sheer gnashing of teeth & general wailing that would emanate from the wackos.
Linnaeus
@Technocrat:
In the long term, distributed power and collective action are vital components in producing lasting progressive change. It’s not a perfect process – progress does ebb and flow – and it can move slowly, but the end result is something more solid than relying on a few people to do the right thing.
Regarding empowered individuals, I’ve been hearing that more lately, but I’m not really sure what that means. How are they empowered? To whom are they responsible?
schrodinger's cat
@aimai: Good catch! That’s what I meant to write anyway.
dollared
@John D: the 2M votes argument is lying. And again. Learn some fucking manners. Join the human race.
opiejeanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That is so fitting despite his being Jewish.
satby
@aimai:
And has been slandered and harassed for almost that entire time because she correctly called out the “vast right wing conspiracy” that has actually poisoned our political system years before anyone recognized it.
Paul in KY
@aimai: Hillary was a high priced lawyer for awhile, so it’s not been her entire adult life.
Pendant out!!
cleek
@Berto:
it usually helps if these kind of replies have anything, really anything at all, to do with what you’re replying to.
Brian
Well said, OP. It’s sad to the see how this blog I loved is such a fan of the establishment now. So Sanders isn’t perfect? So what. At least is heart’s in the right place.
RareSanity
@dollared:
front-load
verb
past tense: frontloaded; past participle: frontloaded
distribute or allocate (costs, effort, etc.) unevenly, with the greater proportion at the beginning of an enterprise or process.
If in the beginning of the primary process there were more ‘D’ states than ‘R’, then by definition, wasn’t the process front-loaded by ‘D’ states and not ‘R’ states?
Definitions, how do they work?
I always go back to the saying about trials in court…if the law is on your side, bang on the law. If the truth is on your side, bang on the truth. If neither is on your side, bang on the table. You and other Sanders supporters are merely banging on the table now.
Don’t worry, close your eyes and rest, it’ll be over soon.
amk
@dollared:
do you even know who and how the calendar is fixed? assuming bs knew beforehand and accepted it, why whine now?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@opiejeanne: I was thinking more of the Cross his supporters imagine themselves to be nailed to
(and it seems I’m the chief Centurion in that martyrdom scenario. Color me shocked)
chopper
@Ella in New Mexico:
damn. how about i throw dollar bills at a woman after calling her a ‘whore’? would that put me on the asshole A-list?
Miss Bianca
@Ella in New Mexico: I wish I felt as confident as you seem to be that Bernie Sanders would be as gracious either in defeat as HRC, or in victory as Obama. Obama, for example, would never have put up with this kind of shit even from his most ardent supporters, and the PUMA stuff was part of what turned me off HRC in the first place. But at their worst, the PUMAs and HRC weren’t attacking the *Democratic Party* – the vehicle by which Bernie Sanders is launching himself onto a national stage. He and his supporters are snapping and snarling at the hands they are expecting to feed them later. Good for grandstanding points, lousy for policy.
Chris
@Ella in New Mexico:
Was neutral for most of the primary, moved to Clinton in the last few weeks. But yeah, this has basically been my mental response to most screeds against Berniebros since last spring.
Aqualad08
@dollared:
Before I ask you to learn some fucking math, what’s your number at? ;)
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tim C.: I think Bernie should (and I expect he will) stay in the Senate. It’s quite likely to flip this fall and he would be in a good position to have a decent Chairmanship. He knows how to legislate and I think that’s a better fit for his personality. (Plus, if the Senate flips back again in 2018 or 2020, he would have some signature legislation and be able to retire with some (more) accomplishments without having to run for re-election in 2018, or handing off the seat in 2020.)
I expect he’ll want a good speaking time slot at the convention, to be able to push some planks in the platform, and maybe will strongly recommend some people for HRC’s cabinet and under-secretaries and the like. Will he get all he wants, no, but he didn’t win so that’s the way it works. But I think HRC will be happy to give him his place in the limelight and be willing to be magnanimous at the Convention.
I don’t think HRC will have to “buy” his support. Either he will give it willingly or there’s nothing she can offer him to get it. Bernie needs to be careful about climbing out too far on a limb so that he can’t climb back…
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
L Boom
@Miss Bianca: Honestly, he’s an institution in and of himself, and I think this is why he’s running nationally in the way that he is. He operates in sort of a vacuum apart from any party mechanisms or centers of power outside himself. I have some personal ties to him, as well, as his former chief of staff is an old professor and friend of mine, plus some connections through my wife. It’s a small state. Part of it is VT identity; we enjoy having a gadfly in the Senate.
The other thing is that really the only people running against him are assholes. The Democratic Party has agreed not to run anyone against him because he caucuses with them, so they’ve only been Republicans, and “Take Back Vermont”, liberal-backlash Republicans at that.
Again, he’s an institution that won’t live past him. Once he retires, a Democratic will most likely take his place, unless the Progressives get their shit together at the state level. This isn’t likely to happen because, well, purity.
I think I can safely say most Vermonters are probably chuckling at the St. Bernie image that you see sometimes on the internets. He’s notoriously as cranky with his staff as he is on the campaign trail, prone to yelling, and doesn’t pay his own staff the $15/hr he’s advocating for on the trail. If you’re interested, Seven Days (the Burlington-based alt-weekly) has some really interesting articles with lots of nuts-and-bolts details of the Sanders operation. http://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2015/07/27/sanders-touts-15-per-hour-wage-but-doesnt-pay-it
For many of us, he’s our grumpy old uncle who we love partly for his ideas and partly because we’re stuck with him.
Paul in KY
@PhoenixRising: Commenting on this quote: ‘Because revolutions involve the city people/elites/rich/royalty going to the ditches/gallows/firing squads/guillotines. And that doesn’t seem to be accounted for in the rhetoric.’
Unfortunately (or maybe, fortunately), that shit ain’t gonna happen here anymore (absent Mad Max conditions). We’re too civilized & the police forces too comprehensive for that. Problem is, the rich know that too & it informs the decisions they make or don’t make.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Aqualad08: He’s right, Nate Silver (I think it was) factored in caucus goers and her lead is 2.4 million.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Hi there! ::waves::
D58826
@gwangung: I should have put that in quotes. He can be less hawkish in committing troops overseas but still be quite hawkish when it come to DOD money being spent in Vermont. All politics is local and Bernie is just as much a politician, for better or worse, than any of the others. He doesn’t walk on water.
Paul in KY
@D58826: He & his wife freaking honeymooned in the USSR. Back in the 70s! Man oh man, what they’ll make of that.
I bet the best/most fun beat right now in Rat-Fucking Land is coming up with anti-Bernie commercials for if he gets the nom.
opiejeanne
@PhoenixRising: Hey, last night I answered you but you might not have seen it. It;s all good. I misread your post. BFFs?
Babs
@aimai:
This. This right here. All of it.
Paul in KY
@Amaranthine RBG: Certainly not for shitheads like you.
Aqualad08
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
Considering Washington, hands down the largest caucus state, estimated their participation at 230,000, I would believe Mr. Silver would be correct…
gwangung
@D58826: Got it. Though there’s this general air that he’s less hawkish, and the more I read and hear about, I suss that it’s actually only to a minor degree. Again, not too different from Clinton.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kropadope: Banging your head against the wall again, huh? I guess it feels so good when you stop.
glory b
@Tim C.: I would like to think there is a deal to be made, but by constantly calling Hillary and now the DNC corrupt and making a serious accusation of violating the law and threatening lawsuits (multiple), hasn’t he painted himself into a corner? Giving her a full endorsement would seem to damage his aura of integrity.
Barbara
@dollared: You can engineer statistics to support this point in so many different ways. But mostly, I object because this same calendar — minus Florida and Michigan (making this year’s actually more representative of D’s) was exactly the one that Clinton and Obama contended with. It doesn’t become unfair just because it disadvantaged Sanders. And the overall objection is that WE ALL KNOW that the people who are voting in the Democratic primary in a red state (whether it’s the white people in Kansas or the black people in Alabama) are not the reason that state is red. 90% of them will vote for the Democratic candidate in the general election. The thing that bothers me the most is that the first two primaries are so front-loaded with demographically unrepresentative states, both in terms of race and population. It’s so easy to object on a variety of grounds.
Technocrat
@Linnaeus:
That is one of our truisms. I’m just not sure what data would support it. Proposition 8 was upheld by 52% of California voters. I’d argue that a much smaller number of committed activists got it overturned:
Regarding empowered individuals, I’ve been hearing that more lately, but I’m not really sure what that means. How are they empowered? To whom are they responsible?
In the sense I’m using it, they are people with significant levels of power to effect change. A President is an empowered individual, as it a billionaire, and to a lesser degree a Senator. Some of them aren’t “responsible” to anyone in the literal sense. SC Judges, for example, are every bit as unconstrained as billionaires.
ETA: Not going to beat a dead horse here. I’d just like us to think about our relationship to power a little more dispassionately.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Brian:
I agree that his heart is in the right place & it is what drew me to him in the first place. But it requires more than good intentions to be President & I do not believe Bernie has what it takes. “The Interview” exposed that completely. Despite the polling I question Bernies electablity (the wingnut Wurlitzer has hardly started pumping out tunes on him) and if he were elected I now question his ability to deal with the world as it really is, particularly given his lack of a specific plan to deal with the one great issue he has harped on for years – wall street/big banks.
I expect another Obama in Clinton, some progress and a lot of fighting to prevent the worst the GOP can do. I don’t like it but it beats a wingnut President or a floundering, flailing liberal President at this moment in time.
Bobby Thomson
@dollared: well, he’s had opportunities to catch up. Like March 15, which was an epic fail for him. And he’s certainly not going to catch up in votes. There are 16 primaries left. Based on current polling, she will get more votes in NY, PA, MD. DE, NJ, CA, and DC. He’ll get more in WV, OR, MT, and SD. CT, RI, IN, KY, and NM could maybe go either way, but the biggest states left on the map are all Clinton country. So that “front loading” crap is silly. It’s no longer the second month of the season and Sanders has repeatedly stepped on his own dick.
Tractarian
@Culture of Truth:
But it would be better for 100,000 Libyans to die at the hands of Gaddafi then for 1,000 Libyans (and 0 Americans) to die from American bombs because DRONEZZZZZ
FlipYrWhig
@Barbara:
Of course if not for the “front-loading” of IA and NH, Bernie Sanders would be a footnote next to Jim Webb and Linc Chaffee in the Wikipedia article about the 2016 primaries.
satby
@aimai: you’re on fire today!
This
has bothered me the most too, and I’ve mentioned it before. I forsee his followers getting disillusioned and checking out, just like so many non-voters already have.
D58826
@Paul in KY: I tought I remembered one the of the Clinton ‘scandals’ in 1992 was a trip to the USSR as a yound man. Well according to the great god GOOGLE
The GOP will have a grand time with the honeymoon story
John D
@dollared: What do you think I am, if not human?
I don’t like liars. I’m no longer coddling them, nor granting them any benefit of the doubt. So you are getting exactly as many manners in exactly the proper fashion as is appropriate. Want my response to not include “fuck off”? Stop doubling down on the lies.
Fuck off.
Miss Bianca
@L Boom: Oh, Lord…thanks for that. I’ll check out that site! Quick question, if you don’t mind: do you see a scenario where he *would* actually be primaried by a Democrat? Particularly if he berns down his relationship with the Democratic Party as a result of campaign shenanigans?
See, where I choke is where my friends describe him all misty-eyed as (I kid you not) “Grandpa Bernie”. Like they want to crawl into his lap or something. And I’m all like, “shit, he ain’t *my* grandpa.” Cranky old uncle who likes a Scotch or two, starts ranting about the Establishment and reminiscing about how he and the SDS totally got it on back in the day, till he’s led away with a “now, now, dear” by Aunt Jane…yeah, I can see *that* ; )
Technocrat
@Paul in KY:
I don’t think you even have to take it as far as police power. We’re entwined with the “establishment”. I know children who can’t walk, but can find Netflix on a tablet. This infrastructure we rely on is no longer optional. People consider Twitter unfettered speech, notwithstanding the tens of thousands of little hard drives whirring away that support it, and the megacorp that pays for it all.
Paul in KY
@Linnaeus: We ain’t gonna get more liberal billionaires & we need less billionaires, period.
The way to fix matters is thru repealing bad laws & enacting better ones. That’s the only way. the Repubs understand this, which is why they have geryrmanded so much & have all these BS voter ID laws.
Miss Bianca
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Hi, girl! Listened to that Dave Rawlings Machine vid you posted last night…whew, JPJ on mando? *that’s* some high-flyin’ company!
FlipYrWhig
@Technocrat:
And the ores that have to be mined to build those devices.
satby
@FlipYrWhig: I know I don’t take it at all personally when I’m told that I am an establishment tool, not very progressive, or too old to see the glory that will be the revolution.
Especially since I first canvassed in an election in 1971, before I was old enough to vote. And have worked in almost every election since then, including Obama’s. I guess that proves I’m establishment.
Technocrat
@Paul in KY:
Repubs have mastered effective deployment of the billionaire. ALEC?
D58826
Just saw this on twitter from Little green meatballs. Bernie hasn’t read the infamous 28 pages from the 9/11 report. His reason is from WTF land – if asked about he he can honestly say he doesn’t know what it says. If he read the secret document then he would have to lie and he doesn’t want to lie. Does that mean as POTUS he won’t read the nuclear codes so he won’t have to lie if asked about them. That answer is beyond weird
Mike J
@Aqualad08:
That was down 20k from 2008 when we held the largest caucus in history.
horatius
@negative 1: I’m sorry, but casual sexism is way more prevalent and accepted in this society, as your attitude so amply demonstrates. Every man-splaining of sexist incidents like this only adds to the culture in which this is acceptable.
Technocrat
@FlipYrWhig:
Or the 4.5 billion joules of electricity consumed every day.
horatius
@marduk: The projection. It’s strong with this one.
chopper
now i haz a sad. i don’t get to be on ella’s kill list! now my day is really shot to hell.
Paul in KY
@cleek: After seeing the shirt, I can see why he’s suing. Thanks for the link!
Paul in KY
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): Only 99 to go! Forward, comrades!!
horatius
@D58826: So, what dirt, according to Danny Glover, did Obama have in his past?
Or is his definition of “long time” only 7 years?
cleek
@D58826:
saw that yesterday. it’s totally baffling.
it sounds like he simply doesn’t want to expose himself to having to answer the tough questions everybody seems to know those 28 pages raise.
Paul in KY
@Kay: Hillary is going to have to sell herself hard in the general election to show any reality-based voter that she’s the logical choice.
horatius
@Amaranthine RBG: Oh look. Another purity troll!! Isn’t it cute!!
Technocrat
@Ella in New Mexico:
I saw you mention this the other day, and I meant to applaud it. Also sorry you’ve been catching hell on here the past few days.
Michael Bersin
@Tractarian:
But, but the Post Office is in the Constitution…
cleek
@Paul in KY:
copying the logo so closely was a dumb move.
horatius
@Hillary Rettig: This is what is called “bully-pulpiting the overtone window” and if you are a regular reader of LGM, there’s plenty of evidence from Scott Lemeiux and gang on how this hasn’t ever worked in the past and how it just plainly doesn’t work.
Paul in KY
@Bobby Thomson: It’s still a political comment: ‘You are corrupt, due to you getting/chasing all that money’. Compare that to the comment of throwing watermelons (which I will not repeat here).
Has to be taken in context. Without the political context, the throwing bills would be closer to the watermelons deal (IMO).
Michael Bersin
@rumpole:
“…That is what losing sounds like, and is normal–“the ref cost us the game”. But that’s rarely true, and there comes a point when griping starts to delegitimize the party’s selection process….”
This.
Paul in KY
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I still would like to see him as the Veep nominee. If Kennedy & LBJ could do it, Hillary & Bernie can.
Paul in KY
@Technocrat: You can still have all that without billionaires. The people at top take less money & pay out more to their employees. Also, marginal tax rates are increased for top earners & investment taxes increased.
It can be done, just very hard now given composition of House/Senate.
Michael Bersin
@negative 1:
“….The sad thing is that we’re supposed to represent the ‘well informed’ voter. Look above you — looks pretty sparse on the information, doesn’t it…?”
We share our wisdom with those who seek it. It’s a life of quiet dignity…
Technocrat
Holy shit. 0.826 of a T-Bogg unit, during the day!
Peale
@Kay: Yep. The enduring “obama coalition” isn’t really that enduring. It served to get Obama elected but has been proven to be worthless in off-year elections. With polls like that, it looks like it is done when he is gone. I think there’s more to those polls than just Clinton Fatigue, and they don’t exactly point to a population that is secretly liberal and just waiting for a true progressive to carry us forward.
slag
Voting Bernie in the primary? Good on you. Not voting for the Democratic nominee in the election? Go fuck yourself. That is all.
Michael Bersin
@cleek:
Oh, wait, you’re talking about 2016, not 2018….
negative 1
@horatius: How is calling a candidate a sellout for taking corporate money sexist? Can you please mansplain it to me?
Uncle Cosmo
@BubbaDave: I don’t necessarily believe Bernie was “the wrong messenger” when the campaign opened. So long as it was clear to him that there was little prospect of his being nominated, let alone elected, he could run on principles, stay mostly above the fray, & lead the Party toward a Democratic-Socialist Promised Land he’d never live to enter.
But once he was convinced (with major assists from Head Dreamer Weaver & Grifter-In-Chief Devine) he might actually be able to enter that promised land at the head of his army, he allowed ambition to overwhelm him. HRC & the Democratic Party machinery stand in the way of that ambition, therefore they must be destroyed.
The problem with that is that he already had the votes of everyone who hates Hillary & everyone who believes the Party itself is irredeemably corrupt–& he’s going to piss off people like me whose hearts are “democratic socialist” but whose minds understand we have waaaay too many urgent issues to deal with while we’re on the way there.
I’ve seen this movie before, & it doesn’t end well. I just don’t recall whether it was in 1968, when the regulars denied the antiwar insurgents at the convention & the latter went home muttering “not a dime’s worth of difference between Humphrey & Nixon”, or in 1972, when the insurgents prevailed & the regulars went home to concentrate on downballot races & leave George McGovern (FTR one of the most decent & upstanding men ever to be nominated for the Presidency) to his electoral fate.
negative 1
@Kay: I’m not sure how predictive hypothetical head-to-heads are. The problem is that people are still emotional about their primary pick, so even being given a hypothetical that they’re not there allows a person a moment of hypothetical revenge (“oh yeah? well if you don’t pick my candidate i’ll route for the other side!). I’m not sure it actually follows that they do, or even how much people will change their mind once the hypothetical becomes an actual choice.
Peale
@negative 1: Ummmm….I believe it was that “throw the dollar bills and call them “whores.”” part of the stunt. Calling a woman a whore? Yeah, pretty sexist.
Ella in New Mexico
@Technocrat: Thanks! Appreciate the kind words, whether you agree with me or not. :-)
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@FlipYrWhig: Brilliant quote. Thanks very much.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Paul in KY:
Which would be fine if people didn’t already have such strong opinions about her. Because of that I think she’ll be mostly depending on the horribleness of the GOP candidate, which is okay but not ideal because then she has little or no control over events. I worry too that it will be a “base” election with a dispirited base. I hate those. So grim.
Paul in KY
@Uncle Cosmo: You maybe could throw 1980 in there as well. I sure hope not.
Linnaeus
@Technocrat:
Here in Washington, our marriage equality referendum, i.e., that established marriage equality, passed 54-47.
Regarding the small number of activists working to overturn Prop 8, one could argue that this also works in the nonprogressive direction, e.g., activists working to undermine labor and reproductive rights. My point, though, isn’t that powerful individuals can never make a positive difference or that distributed power always produces good results (indeed, in a liberal democracy, we put certain limits on what even a democratic government can do). It’s that distribution of power is important for constraining the potential abuses of power by, well, empowered individuals. The president, a senator, and a Supreme Court justices are all empowered individuals, but they are all, directly or indirectly, empowered by our consent, which can be taken away. What’s more, they’re constrained by each other, explicitly so, which serves to distribute power within the federal government.
Empowered individuals can do a lot of good, but even when they have done good, they’ve never been enough.
horatius
@Kropadope: If California and New York held their primaries on Super Tuesday, Bernie campaign would have been over months ago.
Technocrat
@Paul in KY:
I would first point out that not all billionaires are American citizens. So, assuming you can somehow eliminate every billionaire in this country, what? Rupert Murdoch gets more relative power?
Second, most of the “billion” in billionaires doesn’t come from salaries. Are we going to sell shares of their stock (and buy it back) as the market rises and falls? It’s collateral even if it’s unsold.
Third, nearly half the country would have a coronary at the very idea of what you’re proposing. Is an anti-billionaire push worth losing what little legislative representation we still have?
Even if I were open to the idea that fewer billionaires would be a good thing (in and of itself), I have never seen a plausible path to that situation. Not a remotely plausible path.
Paul in KY
@Kay: That’s why she’ll really have to do a great job. She’s going to have to campaign like LBJ in 48. If she’s not ready to do that, then she’ll lose, IMO.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@PhoenixRising: There has been a conviction and jail sentence for Robosigning.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who agrees that many more people should have been convicted and sent to prison for those actions and more.)
Paul in KY
@Technocrat: Did I say it would be easy? Also, this would/should never be framed as ‘get rid of billionaires’.
glory b
@Just Some Fuckhead, Clinton Supporter: I’m hardly a centrist. Hell, I liked the Black Panthers (I was just a kid, but had a friend with an older sister who would come back from college and tell us about the coming revolution).
I like all of Sanders’ ideas. I don’t like Sanders.
opiejeanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Did you enjoy rolling the bones?
horatius
@Paul in KY: You can make political points with watermelons too. The kind of political points the Republicans have been making since Obama got elected President. The bar for sexist behavior is far lower than the bar for racism.
I’m astounded that you think throwing dollar bills at a woman is not sexist. Why don’t you throw dollar bills at a woman and see how she takes it.
horatius
@Paul in KY: I don’t get why you think the Republican party can’t wait out 4 years of a Bernie Presidency with an 8 member Supreme Court.
Technocrat
@Linnaeus:
You’re right. And in fairness, this is the exact argument I use when my conservative (small “c” thank god) friends talk about how government is evil and big business is wonderful.
I don’t know about “never been enough”. No one, and no group has ever been enough. But I think there’s a case to be made that EI’s aren’t going away, regardless of what we want. If that’s true, why treat all of them as enemies, instead of trying to create allies?
FlipYrWhig
@Kay:
The dispirited people will be the hardcore Sanders folks, but that’s not the base, so.
redshirt
@Tractarian:
I agree with your point, but.. ahem… have you so soon forgotten about Benghazi? If so, don’t worry, the Republicans will be reminding us all about it in the coming months.
DCF
@Ella in New Mexico:
HR,
Thanks for your words here…what few of the BJ commentariat have acknowledged over the course of this primary season is the twenty-five year shift the Democratic Party has taken – to hard starboard. The party of FDR has, over that period of DLC-inspired ‘Third Way’ policies, become – to a significant degree – a timid, neo-liberal, corporatist-enabling interventionist party that is, for all intents and purposes, ‘Republican-lite’.
The irony here is that – should HRC win – I’ll benefit significantly with regard to my finances. However, I am not willing to become a ‘myopic mercenary’ in the pursuit of self-aggrandizement, or surrender to my amygdala at the expense of my conscience….
The die are cast; the progressive movement will continue to expand its influence in the future, and the pablum and platitudes of the Democratic center-right contingent will wane in tandem with that transition….
Rosario Dawson, Linda Sarsour & Nomiki Konst – Full TYT Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ6NRFQ-jUY
Technocrat
@Paul in KY:
Fair enough.
horatius
@negative 1: How can throwing dollar bills at a woman or watermelons at an african american not be sexist/racist? Explain that to me Einstein!
Do you really need to throw dollar bills at a woman to call her a sellout?
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
Yeah, I disagree. I don’t know what the Sanders supporters will do but elections about Fear of the GOP are never fabulous. I look forward to useless scolding about (alternately!) “complacency” and “enthusiasm”.
“Love wins”, as they say. I don’t see a lot of love, so that means it’ll be fear.
Uncle Cosmo
@WarMunchkin: Pas mal, as they say in the home of 500 varieties of fromage, but I’d suggest “pushing the Democratic Party to the left, not running it off the road” as a slightly more felicitous formulation. And in that form I shall steal it, thanky kindly!
Miss Bianca
@Ella in New Mexico: Seconded on that effort, btw.
Miss Bianca
@DCF: Oh, the party of FDR? Who passed Social Security by specifically excluding African-Americans, so the Dixiecrats would vote for it? Oh, yeah – that was the party of FDR. Won World War II? Ask some Japanese-Americans how they felt about FDR. Funny how pure our Democratic Heroes become after they’re dead. Except for Bernie Sanders. He gets to be all pure and assume the mantle of FDR – Great! Uncompromised! uncompromising! Hero! without any of the icky squishy *actual compromises involved*, because…reasons?
Chris
@DCF:
I would say this is a critique better directed at the Democratic Party of the nineties and early 2000s than the present one – under Obama, it’s shifted significantly left and not just in cultural terms, and if nothing else, the ACA has been the first really major achievement in economically activist governments since LBJ.
Since Hillary Clinton came onto the national scene during the nineties and early 2000s (and her husband was the guy who told us “the era of big government is over”) – I understand why people are concerned about her being a step backwards. But I’d also say that regardless of her own preferences, she’ll have to govern to the left of the nineties Democrats. It’s not even Bernie Sanders “pulling her to the left” – the Obama coalition, most of which she’s inherited, isn’t the same party her husband led.
DCF
@Miss Bianca:
How PC of you…no one is ‘pure’ here, MB…and you truly do NOT want a ‘purity comparison’ between HRC and BS, I can assure you…$Hillary made her choices, and they are revealing to anyone with eyes to see (and ears to hear)….
Aimai
@redshirt: you dont think they ate just as afraid of advertisements showing clinton from the hearings? It was an incredible eleven hours. I dont think benghazi is a good line of attack. It wont affect hrc’s support at all. Her hard core enemies will never vote for her. But i dint think drms/independents see those hearings as detrimental to her.
Technocrat
@Kay:
I don’t think we were ever going to hit the GE with a unified, energized base. This primary has very much been a fight between different factions of the party, and it was destined to leave a lot of bruised egos on both sides. Clinton seems to be winning, so it’s natural to talk about the disaffection of Sanders supporters. But if Sanders pulls it out, I think it’s just as reasonable to assume Clinton supporters would be apathetic.
Maybe 2016 is just a fault-line year for both parties.
redshirt
@Aimai: Oh, Benghazi is a giant nothingburger. Doesn’t mean the Repubs won’t run with it till they’re red in the face.
Technocrat
@Chris:
I agree with this. And just as importantly, she was a member of his administration, which opens the hope that she will take some lessons from it.
Paul in KY
@horatius: This woman is a candidate. You can throw dollar bills at a man, for the same reason. Please explain the political point of throwing watermelons at a black candidate.
I eagerly await your answer.
DCF
@Chris:
Chris,
I hope – sincerely – that you are correct in your assessment. Unless there is a dramatic shift in the Congressional balance of power come November – and without consistent/focused pressure on her from the ‘Elizabeth Warren Wing of the Democratic Party’ – I have grave doubts as to her ability (or willingness, for that matter) to ‘steer to port’….
I hope I’m wrong in this evaluation/perspective. Time will tell….
Paul in KY
@horatius: I think that would be a bridge too far for them to throw a 4 year hissy fit at a person who was elected President. They would certainly wish to do that, but the Senatortise knows when to hold em & when to fold em. I’m also assuming that Dr. West would not be the nominee.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: I’m pretty sure that the GOP nominee will make our base pretty energized. Also assuming the GOP nominee will be Der Trumpenfuhrer or Darth Creepy.
Linnaeus
@Technocrat:
Correct. It’s an ongoing struggle.
I’m all for creating allies. It’s important to recognize the difference between structural/systemic critiques and individual ones. If say that wealthy people and business have too much power in our society, that’s not the same as saying that Bill Gates is evil (he may be, but I don’t know him and can’t say). It’s saying that our social and political structures are skewed in favor of wealth and that accrues to wealth disproportionate influence that is a net negative for our society. If a wealthy person wants to ally with me on an issue (without hijacking the effort), great. If not, then it’s important that I find other allies to act as a countervailing force.
FlipYrWhig
@DCF: I can see why you’d be both suspicious that someone could become more liberal over time and also a fan of Elizabeth Warren, who became more liberal over time. You’re a very astute political observer.
John D
@Paul in KY: But they didn’t. They threw it at a woman. The day after the speaker at a Bernie rally referred to her and her allies collectively as “whores”.
This shit doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The optics on the money-tossing were horrific.
Paul in KY
@Aimai: I’m not sure what good commercial you can get out of those Benghazi hearings. She whupped their asses, that’s for sure, but how do you show that in a 30 sec (at most) commercial? I think she’s going to eviscerate whatever ratturd they nominate in the debates.
Plus our negative commercials will be great! just think of some great anti-Trump ones! I just thought of 6 right now. How about an anti-Cruz one that is just his nasty face for 30 secs? With some kind of scrawl that shows how evil he is.
Technocrat
@Linnaeus:
Agreed, but I think the rhetoric in this campaign has moved well past that. I understand it’s a contentious campaign, but I hope we can normalize somewhat in the fall. We’re going to need some corporate money in the GE.
Chris
@Technocrat:
I hope so. She at least has learned enough not to run from his record during the primary – hopefully, not during the presidency either.
@DCF:
The issue I had with your comment was less with the shot at Hillary specifically and more with the point about the Democratic Party in general. It’s become cliche at this point to complain that it’s no longer as committed to economic justice as it was in the New Deal/Great Society years. But under Obama we have, in fact, had a shift back towards economic justice and away from the “era of big government is over” spiel that was mainstream under Clinton, and even to some extent Carter. It’s nowhere near perfect, and lots more work needs to be done. But it deserves acknowledgment…
… and, on a bigger scale than just Balloon Juice, it’s kind of a problem that Sanders has also completely ignored this.
dollared
Damn. 462. How can we get to 500? Ask for the speech transcripts again? Talk about killing every 3rd banker on Wall Street?
And Richard’s at 14 for his intelligent post on risk corridors.
glory b
@Berto: “Ran out of the party,” or just disagreed with?
How, pray tell, was anyone run out of the party? There’s a lot of dems I didn’t/don’t agree with (like Leiberman before he left), but none of them ran me out of anything. I figured I could wait them out instead.
Kay
@Technocrat:
Republicans are better at energizing their people to vote against something than Democrats are.
We vote “for”, not against, IMO.
Paul in KY
@John D: It is a nasty political point to make: That you will sell your principles to the highest bidder. Just like a whore might sell his/her body to the highest bidder. That accusation has been said about various candidates for 100s of years. Sometimes it is true.
However, (IMO) there is no ‘political’ point to be made by throwing watermelons at a black candidate. Again, I say, what would be the political point of that? If you can come up with some kind of political point on the watermelon thing, please share it.
L Boom
@Miss Bianca: Nah, I really don’t see any Democrats primarying him without pissing off good chunks of the state, There are a whole lot of Bern-feelers who live in such a bubble that they’re just flummoxed when they talk to people who aren’t totally on board. My sister-in-law (who also lives in Washington County/Montpelier area) was phone-banking over the weekend and was genuinely surprised that she talked to Hillary supporters who weren’t supporting Bernie. As in, surprised that there were actually people who weren’t top hat and monocle-wearing Wall Street caricatures who would actually choose to support Hillary. without a gun to their heads. Lots of anti-vaxxers and weird patchwork lefties who end up in that intersection between the left- and right-wings with their obsession with purity (grain alcohol and rainwater!), living close to the land, etc.
And as far as Jane goes … Jane sucks. She has personally driven not one, but two small Vermont liberal arts colleges into the ditch: Goddard College and Burlington College. Maybe five years ago, when she was president of Burlington College, she bought a huge building from the Catholic diocese for an outrageous amount of money for reasons that no one could quite understand. So BC laid off a bunch of adjuncts, cut back on classes, and did all the stuff that educational institutions with huge budget crises are forced to do. And five years later, Burlington College is falling way behind on their loan payments (over $1 million overdue last time I checked) and is only using half of the building. No evidence of kickbacks, or wrongdoing, or anything like that (and people have very definitely looked), just a really terrible and totally unnecessary decision. So yeah, fuck Jane Sanders. Read more here: http://vtdigger.org/2015/12/23/catholic-church-nailed-in-loan-settlement-with-burlington-college/
Michael Bersin
@horatius:
“…Why don’t you throw dollar bills at a woman and see how she takes it….”
Danger, Will Robinson!
Michael Bersin
@dollared:
“Damn. 462. How can we get to 500?”
Working on it.
FlipYrWhig
@L Boom: One thing I’ve wondered is why Burlington College would have made Jane Sanders president of their college in the first place. I see that she has “a doctorate in leadership studies in politics and education from Union Institute & University,” per her Wikipedia page, but I feel like most college presidents have more of a background in academia than that. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was hired because of her connection to one Bernie Sanders, but I don’t have any evidence for it, and it’s not quite fair for me to take issue with her hiring and/or qualifications without having more to go on.
DCF
@FlipYrWhig:
Elizabeth Warren has become increasingly progressive over the years. HRC has – historically – become less so….your sarcasm is noted, but misplaced and incorrect….
But why take my word for it? Read this (newest) Thomas Frank book, and you may well agree – it’s worth the time….
IMV, we are at an inflection point in our history, both economically and environmentally…incrementalism is not a luxury we can afford in either sphere of concern….
Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Liberal-Happened-Party-People/dp/1627795391/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1461093623&sr=1-1&keywords=Listen+LIberal
FlipYrWhig
@DCF: Frank is a boob.
Peter
This is supposed to be an argument for Bernie, the candidate who completely conceded every state below a certain latitude?
Forget the voters – I mean, don’t, but put them aside for a moment. The more important question is what does it say about the Sanders CAMPAIGN that this is a problem they’re having? These aren’t new rules. They weren’t put in place to specifically screw with Sanders. Part of campaigning is getting out your voters and preparing them to vote. Getting them registered and educating them on the rules they need to follow. And do it BEFORE the deadlines pass. That Sanders dropped this particular ball reflects really poorly on them and doesn’t bode well for how Team Sanders would handle the general.
Miss Bianca
@DCF: Oh, pointing out some uncomfortable truths is “PC” on the left, now? I thought that was a right-wing jibe – guess I was wrong, and NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME, evidently!
And Bernie is pure as the driven, Vermonty snow…because he’s hardly done anything significant *since* leaving Vermont. Hard to be sullied when you don’t get out there and get your hands dirty, eh?
John D
@Paul in KY: I don’t CARE what point they were trying to make.
They threw money. At a female candidate. The day after referring to her and her allies as “whores”.
The optics on that are so abysmally bad that they defy comprehension. All the “but we *meant* to say …” excuses don’t fix it.
(ETA: I do not advocate throwing watermelons at black candidates either. That is unbelievably stupid. Not quite sure why you keep harping on it.)
J R in WV
@negative 1:
Funny, when you first showed up, you said you were a union guy seeking help with ideas to bring your fellows over to Ms Clinton… yesterday.
Today, you’re hating Hillary – what happened??
O – yes, you’re a troll, that happened!
different-church-lady
Can anyone explain to me why I read this thread?
May
@L Boom: I am also a Vermonter and agree that Bernie is cranky in person and that the internet cult of personality that’s been built around him is a little silly. But I would walk through fire for that man because he does stuff like this: http://www.addisonindependent.com/node/37147
John D
@different-church-lady: Boredom? Masochism? Stuck PageDown key?
L Boom
@FlipYrWhig: I’m sure her connection to Bernie helped, but she was also an interim President at Goddard for a while, too. They’re both similar schools serving a similar demographic, and there’s kind of a revolving door for faculty and staff between the two. I don’t think there was anything nefarious going on, just serious incompetence.
gwangung
Are we getting to a TBogg unit?
Technocrat
@John D:
Watermelons are a delicious fruit, especially in the summer. It’s one of the great tragedies of our nation that they are so racially charged.
Brussel sprouts. Why couldn’t brussel sprouts be the racist vegetable?
Bob In Portland
@DCF: When I recommended the book here a week or so back people acted like I was asking them to be innoculated with the Plague. You can lead a horse to water…
Don’t worry. They may be partly up to speed in a few years, but remember that it’s hard to be on the cutting edge while remaining in ignorance.
J R in WV
@PhoenixRising:
You quote someone saying: “HRC taking money from Goldman Sachs indicates” blah blah blah.
I think Hillary taking money from Goldman Sachs indicated that she felt like that money would do more good in her hands than in GS hands, where it would become bonuses used for yachts, or hooker and blow, or whatever.
In Hillary’s hands that money will at least partly be used for the greater good of people both here and abroad.
Think about it – who would you rather have that $650,000 – Hillary or some broker ???
Also, if you were offered big money, real big money, to visit with and talk to a crowd of folks you could barely stand to be polite to, would you accept the gig? I would even be mostly polite, at least until I cashed the check.
Bob In Portland
@Tractarian: The magical smoke of fear. Over and over.
Bob In Portland
@J R in WV: Great logic. Where’s the line?
When Goldman Sachs hands out money then never expect a return? Are you really that naive?
FlipYrWhig
@L Boom: Likely so, but I’m still kind of surprised that someone who hadn’t had much of a background in higher education — which is a peculiar sort of hothouse — was tapped to be a college president. And when we here at [Redacted Two Name College] had our president deposed by the board, the person the board turned to instead was someone with political connections in our state capital. So this situation at Burlington has a whiff of that one to me…
tweedstereo
@Emma:
What can Hillary do? It’s not as if the GOP is enamored with the Clintons…
FlipYrWhig
@Bob In Portland: Also the International Deli-Dairy-Bakery Association. Only a hopeless naif would deny the favors THAT racket demands!
tweedstereo
@May: Another Vermonter here..I was surprised to learn our state isn’t real thanks to many other commenters on BJ threads.
gwangung
Hm. I seem to recall a certain sitting president that managed to work around the edges and do bits and piece that advanced the ball.
I can easily see Clinton doing this. I am uncertain Sanders can do that (either in politicking ability or in temperment).
Technocrat
@FlipYrWhig:
Come on now. Do you really want someone beholden to Big Buns?
A Ghost To Most
@tweedstereo:
But they’re gonna love the atheist jewish socialist, amirite?
Eta At least with Hillary,we know she’s gonna work her ass off. I have not seen that from BS
Miss Bianca
@Technocrat: I like Big Buns…
A Ghost To Most
Come on, people. Let’s see the second tbogg of the day.
gwangung
Tbogg!!!!
Oh. Wait. Does that count?
Technocrat
@A Ghost To Most:
Ask and ye shall receive!
ETA: dammit!! [[shakes fist at gwangung]]
A Ghost To Most
I guess shortly we will have back to back tboggs. That’s been awhile.
FlipYrWhig
@Technocrat: If I said you were beholden to Big Buns, would you hold it against me? :P
Technocrat
@FlipYrWhig:
Heck no! As long as you don’t accuse me of being in Big Pita’s pocket.
Paul in KY
@John D: If you can’t figure out the nuance there, then I can’t help you anymore.
I also note you have never answered my question (asked multiple times): Explain the political point of throwing watermelons at a black candidate. I explained the throwing of the dollar bills (my take on it).
No One You Know
@glasnost: In other words, you’d rather be with the armed idiots than the thoughtful money? The Trump campaign is THAT way. Where so many other Berniebros say they’re going, for Purity.