The Sanders campaign is pissing everything they accomplished all away:
Bernie Sanders predicted Sunday that Hillary Clinton would not win enough pledged delegates to claim the nomination ahead of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, and he delivered his most forceful call yet for superdelegates in states he’s won to consider throwing their support to him.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the Vermont senator argued that Clinton “will need superdelegates to take her over the top at the convention in Philadelphia. In other words, it will be a contested convention.”
Sanders said that in the states where he handily defeated Clinton, superdelegates who aren’t supporting him should reconsider aligning themselves with the will of voters of those states.
“In the state of Washington, we won that caucus with almost 73 percent of the vote there — 73 percent of the vote. In anybody’s opinion, that is a massive landslide. But at this point Secretary Clinton has 10 superdelegates from the state of Washington, we have zero,” Sanders said, offering an example of a state where he won the popular vote but did not collect any superdelegates. “I would ask the superdelegates from the state of Washington to respect the wishes from the people in their state and the votes they have cast.”
Sanders’ comments came just ahead of Tuesday’s Indiana primary, as his path to the nomination has become even more narrow due to recent defeats. The campaign recently laid off a large number of staff members in states that have voted.
Caucuses, we must note, are less democratic than even closed primaries. Yet there he goes. Kthug cuts to the chase:
What we’re getting instead is an epic descent into whining. He dismissed Clinton victories driven by black voters as products of the conservative Deep South; he suggested that his defeat in New York was unfair because it was a closed primary (you can argue this case either way, but requiring that you identify as a Democrat to choose the Democratic nominee is hardly voter suppression — arguably caucuses are much further from a democratic process); then, with the big loss in the mid-Atlantic primaries,he has turned to a sort of fact-free complaint that any process under which Bernie Sanders loses is ipso facto unfair, and superdelegates should choose him despite a 3 million vote deficit.
At this point it’s as if Sanders is determined to validate everything liberal skeptics have been saying all along about his unwillingness to face reality — and all of it for, maybe, a few weeks of additional fundraising, at the expense of any future credibility and goodwill. Isn’t there anyone who can tell him to stop before it’s too late?
FWIW, Nader Be Sirens is an anagram of Bernie Sanders.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
representing iirc almost 80,000 people. in 2008 and 2012, Obama got over 1.7 million votes in WA. Murray and Cantwell (based on a quick look at Wiki) have never gotten less than a million votes.
Gussie
OMG! Sanders isn’t the purist unicorn-riding hobbit I’d been told he is? He’s actually been a professional politician for 30 years, and he’ll try to leverage what minimal power he has toward maximal results, even if it hurts people’s fee-fees? I’m shocked. I thought he was too naive to play hardball and talk bullshit and try to get results from a losing hand.
Why is he doing this to me? Whyyyyy? Why doesn’t he just go away? He’s horrid. He came in here and he trashed the place, and it’s not his place! I really despise that Jewy little golem.
Cacti
Bernie is demanding a coronation. Tsk, tsk.
feebog
What is amazing is that Bernie has gotten any Super Delegates at all. And it isn’t a contested convention if HRC comes in with 2800 delegates, even if some of them are Super Delegates.
Baud
Yes! When the mythical indictment finally comes, the Party will have no choice but to turn to meeeeeee!!!
Nicole
Didn’t Al Franken say Bernie was difficult to work with? And when a guy who had to write for a coked-up John Belushi says you’re difficult to work with…
Seriously, I just don’t get how the guy who has spent decades criticizing the Democratic Party is surprised that superdelegates don’t think he’s the best guy to represent them.
japa21
If he keeps this going he won’t have to worry about the super-delegates. Clinton will have a majority of the pledged delegates. He is turning off voters who were inclined to vote for him.
chopper
oh, this’ll be fun.
Flounder
He needs to keep his crowd fired up and voting until California. Since California is a “top two” primary state, there needs to be large Democratic turnout or they could be cut out of the general election in what should be Democratic-leaning seats.
singfoom
MONDAY MONDAY MONDAY at the COLISEUM: Bernie “BURN IT UP” Sanders vs. Hillary “I killed Vince Foster with THESE HANDS” Clinton in a no holds comments thread CAAAAAGE MATCH.
I predict a convention full of super delegates worth of name calling, goal post moving, strawmanning, TrueScotsmanning and outright not listening to each other. Bonus points for non sequiturs AND deliberate misuse of common political terms!
LETS GET READY TO RUMBLLLLLLLE!
Yeah, I can’t wait for this primary to be over.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
Tbogg unit ! :^)
Eric U.
apparently I’m going to need to install the pie filter
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@chopper: it’s been almost three threads since we did this, we’ve got to keep sharp for Regionals!
OzarkHillbilly
I for one am feeling the Bern. My hemorrhoids won’t shut up.
Mike J
At least one of the supers (Adam Smith, WA-08) has promised to vote for the candidate with the most delegates, so as to not let the undemocratic super delegates decide the election.
If Bernie wants his vote, all he needs to do it get to 2026.
Trollhattan
@singfoom:
Meth and funny cars were never this great!
chopper
in 2008 when obama clinched the nom it was with the supers as well. his pledged total wasn’t a majority of all delegates. yet clinton saw the handwriting on the wall and supported the winner.
should she have kept going? should she have, after that point came and went, said ‘fuck it, O doesn’t have enough let’s have a contested convention’?
Trollhattan
@Mike J:
To be concise, 2026 is an off year. Oh, wait…
JosieJ (not Josie)
When I returned to New York from attending college out of state, I agonized over whether I should register as a Democrat, and thus be allowed to participate in closed primaries, or to identify as an Independent and get shut out. Ultimately, I chose Democrat, but that isn’t the point.
The point is, this was 30 freakin’ years ago! New York hasn’t just switched over to closed primaries; they’ve been that way for quite awhile. Sanders either knows this, and is disingenuously implying he’s been hard done by, or he didn’t bother to inform himself of the process and rules (and nobody on his staff was on the ball enough to pick up the slack). Personally, I’m going with option “A:” he’s whining.
Mike J
@OzarkHillbilly: http://i.imgur.com/w7kJ07v.png
StellaB
@Flounder: No, the top-two primary affects only non-presidential elections. Hillary and Trumpolini will be running on separate ballots.
NotMax
Note to Mr. S:
Winning on the first ballot (whether with or without the votes of superdelegates) does not make a convention contested.
laura
California voter here. I’ll be voting in the primary – and it may matter for the first time in all my voting life. It would be nice if the communitariat would STFU until the convention regardless of the strength of your preferred candidate or weakness of the candidate to do not prefer.
I’ve kept my yap shut about the various caucuses and butter cows and the odious DWS. So if it’s not too much to ask, can you keep it together long enough for the voters to weigh in?
Calouste
Superdelegates in states Clinton has won: 374
Superdelegates in states Sanders has won: 147
I think the most likely reason Sanders hasn’t released his tax returns is because he had to resubmit each of them 3 times after the IRS found basic math errors.
Baud
@Mike J: Oh, that’s a wicked meme.
Trollhattan
@chopper:
It’s abundantly clear the “I” means “I’m happy to take the party’s nomination but I don’t plan on actually doing anything to assist the party, being independent.”
Baud
@laura:
That would be inconsistent with how the blogs treated Hillary in 2008, so probably not. Sanders isn’t dropping out before California anyway, so you’re good.
dmsilev
@StellaB: I think the idea is that a contested Presidential primary will drive up turnout, and hence drive up the number of down-ballot (D) votes.
Jeffro
Thanks Bernie, way to keep the big picture in perspective here. Trump’s about to be nominated by the Berserk Party; you have no path to the nom in your own (temporarily-joined) party; your opponent has already pivoted to the general election; sure, why not do the disgraceful thing and pretend you’re still relevant…wait, BEYOND relevant…you’re. Going. TO. WIIINNN!
This is why we need more younger pols in these races. Bernie knows it’s all or nothing for him – we won’t be doing this again in 2020 (or ever)
singfoom
@chopper:
According to the interwebz, she conceded on June 7th, right after the California primary. I don’t think she should have continued beyond that.
So, I’ll give Bernie up to that date. I don’t think it’s useful and will cause more rancor but it’s only fair that he go through California’s primary. If California tilts the contest even more heavily in HRCs favor, then Bernie should concede before the convention.
That’s my .05 cents. But what the fuck do I know?
Mike J
@Trollhattan: (Pledged delegates, just to be clear.)
All he needs is 677 out of the next 1016, while trailing in CA by 19%
A Ghost To Most
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: LOL
@OzarkHillbilly:
Try Preparation BS.
raven
@laura: you can’t be serious
Calouste
@laura:
No it won’t.
But you don’t have to tell us who you are planning to vote for, that is clear from your comment.
Rick O'Leary
but requiring that you identify as a Democrat to choose the Democratic nominee is hardly voter suppression
That from Kthug is horribly wrong. You can vote in, say, Wisconsin WITHOUT any Democratic declaration, in fact they won’t ASK for it.
redshirt
Sick of Bernie Bros?
singfoom
@laura:
That’s a nice thought, but if we don’t have several threads a day where HRC and Bernie supporters can bash each other, talk about tax returns and speech fees I think the world ends.
NCSteve
The truly hilarious thing has been watching the Berners trotting out every single stupid-ass thing Hillary trotted out in 2008 to justify her continuing on and on after it was over (i.e. after she fell more than a hundred delegates behind in May) becoming as furious as Hillarites did in 2008 when you point out the flaws and watching the 2016 Hillerites get mad.
A Ghost To Most
@raven:
And stop calling her Shirley.
MaxSpeak
Oh fiddlesticks.
retr2327
@laura: As you may have noticed, people have been weighing in on this race before, during, and after the primaries in their respective states. There’s no particular reason you should not have felt free to do the same . . .
Baud
@singfoom: This seems right to me too. So make that $.10.
agorabum
This is a bid for relevancy in the remaining primaries. Making a process argument “superdelagates, vote for me because I think I am better than the other candidate” is actually ok. I don’t hold that against him. If he spends a lot of time talking about how the entire democratic party is corrupt, and especially Hillary, that is pissing it all away.
He’s throwing hail mary’s right now, but he’s staying in bounds. To mix metaphors, he’s pulled the goalie. It should rightly be seen as a desperate act, but it isn’t a dirty one.
Calouste
@Calouste: Addition:
If we follow Sanders-ball rules, he would have 1517 delegates and Clinton would have 2039 delegates, leaving him needing only 79.9% of the remaining delegates to win.
redshirt
@agorabum: He’s accusing her of money laundering now.
WarMunchkin
@agorabum: Yeah, agreed, this is fairly mild. The reason why this argument is made is because there’s no likely way for him to become President. No possible way other than that. So the “why are you running for President” question is necessarily going to have stupid answers, unless “I’m running for President as a symbolic vote” is something that we all count as a real answer.
To put this into perspective: we can’t decide whether “symbolic candidacy” or “I’m actually going to become President” is sillier, so you end up with the Sanders campaign both saying super delegates will vote for him and saying that they are there to influence the Democratic Party’s convention platform at the same time.
dollared
The sky is falling! The sky is falling! A politician is arguing his case to the National Press Club! It’s unprecedented! He’s just like Baghdad Bob!
Trump is going to win now fer shur!!
Mike J
@agorabum:
https://berniesanders.com/press-release/politico-exposes-clinton-campaign-money-laundering-scheme/
dollared
@Baud: @singfoom: I’ll chip in. Make it $.15
dmsilev
@NCSteve: Hillary ’08 had a weak case for winning the nomination to make by early May ’08, but it’s still stronger than Sanders this time round. In 08, she was barely behind Obama in popular votes (ignoring, as should be the case, Michigan and Florida) and her pledged-delegate deficit was less than 100, plus she had enough super delegates on her side that if you squinted just right, she was ahead in the aggregate count. Now, it was a weak case. National popular vote is a nice talking point, but doesn’t actually matter in the race, and of course large swaths of her super support eventually switched to Obama as his pledged-delegate lead became apparent.
Compare to Sanders now. He’s got a deficit in pledged delegates that’s nearly three times as big. He’s down by 3 million in the national popular vote total. He’s got an enormous deficit in announced super support, and has been campaigning on a “the Party establishment is evil and corrupt” platform which seems …poorly suited for attracting Party establishment support. He has every right to run his campaign through CA on the 7th and DC on the 14th, but the odds of him winning are far far worse than they were for Hillary at this point in 08.
A Ghost To Most
@agorabum:
To throw another metaphor out there; Bernie is currently in the burning bridges in front of him phase.
Eric U.
@NCSteve: it is funny, I was furious at the HRC campaign in 2008. It was mostly because her campaign was so horrible and I was worried they were going to hurt Obama’s chances. I got over the Iraq vote sometime after she became SoS. At first in the campaign, I was lukewarm to her, but I supported her because she was going to win. Then I had to go reassess my opinion, and realized I like her a lot. Much more than I like Sanders. And now I’m very annoyed with the Sanders campaign because they are trying to hurt the Democratic brand, which is not productive in the current political climate. Saying everyone in the Democratic party is corrupt is a Republican ploy, nobody on our side needs to help them with that.
Cacti
@Mike J:
So much for his “issues-based” turn following his walloping in NY.
Baud
@Mike J: Glad to see he’s focusing like a laser on income inequality.
That’s how Bernie is pissing it all away. That’s what should be in Cole’s post, not the contested convention issue.
Mike J
Vermont joins the deep south.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mike J: @Baud: exactly. if he were staying in on a campaign of a Medicare buy-in, Social Security expansion, I’d be saying go, Bernie, go, but he seems incapable of not being an asshole.
Mnemosyne
@laura:
Unfortunately, the only time California kind of mattered in the primary was in 2008 when we got to vote in April. (Ironically, the state went to Hillary.) We vote so late in the process that it’s all over but the shouting by the time it gets to us.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If it were just Weaver spouting off on the TV machine, I’d maybe feel differently. This is a post on Bernie’s official website, which raises the stakes IMHO.
jl
@Gussie: I agree. Listened to the Sanders press conference and some of this stump speeches after the latest super duper Tuesday. results that put the last nail in his presidential nomination coffin.
Sanders has said that waging his political revolution is just as important as getting the nomination. What he is doing seems pretty much what he has promised to do since very early in his candidacy. If people don’t like it, think it could be harmful, if loyal long time registered or ‘officially’ recognized, or long time self-identified Democrats (which one you are depends on the rules for party registration in your state) are pissed that that independent outsider ass is crashing their party, they have every right to be pissed.
But I don’t understand all the over-analysis by Krugman, or at Talkingpointsmemo blog, and elsewhere. This is the kind of thing he said he would do. I remember an interview from long ago where he said a basic choice was whether to go third party or try to accomplish his goals within the Democratic party, and he said he chose the latter route since he didn’t want to do anything that would help the GOP.
You might not like what he is doing, but I don’t see how this is a surprise. This is what he said he would do. Maybe people thought Sanders saying he would stay into the election until CA was a bluff. It wasn’t. He hasn’t run the sort of campaign where he can fold up his campaign, congratulate HRC and say ‘I throw my support to Hillary Clinton’ and expect his followers to follow. You might not like his ideas on political revolution but he has gotten a lot of support for it, and he is going to see how much impact it can have.
I hope this dance ends up with a nicely unified Democratic Party. I think Sanders’ political revolution wouldn’t last long with him as president. His fans would expect too much too soon. With a president HRC, Democratic Senate, and closer House divide, the revolution might serve as an important political pressure group.
A Ghost To Most
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Given the behaviour of some of his “outreach” agents, is it possible that it’s assholes all the way down?
Miss Bianca
@singfoom: funny, almost sounds like you’re looking forward to the cage match… ; )
Baud
@jl: I think if it were just staying in until California, no one would care that much. The “contested convention” rhetoric suggests that he’ll make a scene at the DNC. And the Waver thing referenced above is beyond the pale.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mike J: OK. THAT made me laugh.
Cacti
You Third Way establishment shills just don’t understand.
Hillary’s only leading Bernie 57.6 percent to 42.4 percent in the primary vote to date.
It’s a virtual tie.
Calouste
@dmsilev: Sanders at the moment needs to win the remaining pledged delegates 65-35 to get a majority. I don’t know exactly what percentage Clinton needed to win at this point, but it was probably 55% (which is the number you get if you move 100 delegates from Clinton to Sanders).
Winning by 10% is an uphill struggle, thinking you can win by 30% when you are behind is delusional. But that is apparently what Sanders believes, or at least it is what he is selling to his marks, uh, supporters.
Miss Bianca
@Mike J: Heh. Like it.
Mnemosyne
@singfoom:
It’s like Cabin in the Woods — if the Elder Gods don’t get their sacrifice, they’ll show up in person. Your Cthulu bumper sticker won’t save you now!
Dan
wordpress keeps eating my longer comment, but the latest polling from California had HRC up 57 to 38. Chill out, y’all. Sanders’ campaign will end not with a bang, but a whimper.
ruemara
Inbetween accusing anyone disgusted by some really over the top conspiracy theories and criminal accusations coming from the Sanders campaign of, 1. Antisemitism and then, 2. Not being respectful of voters’ wishes, perhaps people who really like Sanders could just contact the campaign and ask him to refocus on the issues. Because you’re mad if you don’t think calling HRC a criminal, accusing her of corruption, then saying you’re entitled to superdelegates is not serious ratfucking of the first order. The issues at stake this election are way bigger than Bernie Sanders.
A Ghost To Most
@Miss Bianca: The weather,it has improved. How much snow did you get?
Calouste
@jl:
He has a funny way of showing that.
Staying in the race and talking about the issues is one thing. Personal attacks against the candidate who is the almost guaranteed nominee is a completely different matter.
ASV
It’s almost like a guy who’s never been a Democrat doesn’t give a shit about the Democratic Party, its candidates, or its voters.
A Ghost To Most
@Dan:
He’s welcome to stay in the race, but he doesn’t need to be a counterproductive dick.
Eric U.
@jl: Sanders said he was going to try to burn down the Democratic party from the top? This seems like something we should have known about. Saying that the Democratic party is corrupt puts him distinctly in the “republican tool” category. Like I used to tell my Republican friends, “this is not a game” The way to make the Democratic party less corrupt is to infuse it with people from the bottom up, not try to destroy it. The republicans are doing a pretty good job of doing that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@A Ghost To Most: that has been my working theory, that there’s a reason that from Bernie and his advisory troika, to his celebrity surrogates, on down to his loudest internet supporters, the Sanders campaign is thick with arseholes.
Miss Bianca
@Eric U.: Funny, that describes my arc almost exactly. : )
OzarkHillbilly
@A Ghost To Most: I’ve been using the Preparation BS. I have chemical burns over half my ass.** No thanks, I’ll pass.
** true story: got a piece of metal in my eye once (OK not once, but it was the first time) and was told by the doc to use triple antibiotic ointment after it was removed. had blisters over half my face before I figured out that wasn’t a good idea.
jl
@Baud: I don’t know how it will unfold. Trump is gong to hammer on stuff like the Victory Fund stuff, and much more no matter what the Sander’s campaign says.
At his press conferences, Sander’s plans were embedded in so many hypothetical scenarios, we don;t really know how hard he is going to push his plans to go after the superdelegates. He has been asked whether he thinks the Democratic Primaries were rigged the way Trump has charged that the GOP process was, and Sanders said no, and that he would respect the process, and that he entered the campaign fully aware of how it worked and what disadvantages he would have to overcome. So, I don’t see him making some weird fuss at the convention.
I don’t know how well this will end up, I’m just saying that it should be no surprise to anyone who has listened to what Sanders has been saying since long ago in his campaign.
Baud
@jl:
I don’t either, but people are on edge about the possibility.
Trump will do what he will, but that doesn’t make it ok for someone on our side to mouth Trump’s talking points for him.
The Thin Black Duke
Thing is, the Bernie Sanders that we’ve been seeing for the past few months is the Bernie Sanders that his colleagues in the Senate have seen for years. No wonder they don’t like him very much. I sure don’t. And that’s sad.
Miss Bianca
@A Ghost To Most: Almost a foot, but has packed down nicely and sun is blazing today! Et vous?
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Preparation H, baby… ; )
NR
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: This is the Democratic party’s fault for having superdelegates in the first place. They should get rid of the fuckers.
And no, I don’t want them to ever flip the nomination away from the elected delegate winner.
jl
@Eric U.: You are reading a lot of words and intentions on the part of Sanders into my comments that are not there at all. You are raving nonsense. Sorry you are in such a sad mental state.
If you want to make your case, make it. Don’t read random shit into may comment and expect me to answer you.
D58826
A few more choice quotes from the article that I think Cole started out with
There is a very easy and simple explanation for this. It’s called Calvinball!!!!!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-superdelegates-strategy_us_5727b928e4b0bc9cb0442d87
Barbara
@laura: You don’t have to read commentary of other voters that you find annoying. There are large swaths of the internet where I do not go on just that principle. If we shut up you would have nothing to look at, but it’s a whole lot easier for you to have the same effect by just not looking.
Kathleen
@ruemara: Thank you. You expressed my thoughts much better than I could have.
A Ghost To Most
@OzarkHillbilly:
That musta sucked large. I’ve scratched corneas, but that sounds awful. Poison Ivy in/around the eyes was torture as well.
different-church-lady
Bernie Sanders: President of Washington State.
Bobby Thomson
I look forward to the endorsement of Clinton by Grijalva, Kaptur, and Grayson, but she should throw any Grayson endorsement back.
The math still doesn’t work. Her states have more SDs. When you’re a grifter as Sanders is, though, as long as the mark buys it it’s all good.
retr2327
@Rick O’Leary: Well, it’s not typical voter suppression, at least as that term is generally understood (i.e., keeping some voters, or potential voters, from voting in the general elections). The early deadline for switching party registration in New York is not set by the parties themselves: it’s mandated by New York’s Election Law. It’s now N.Y. Election Law Section 5-304(3), and it has been on the books, in one form or another, since 1976.
It was certainly put on the books at the behest of the parties themselves, through their legislators. It is intended to prevent “party raids,” i.e., switching registrations in large numbers so as to gain control of the opposition’s party. (Yes, it’s a real term; look it up).
It was probably a reaction, to some extent, by the political insiders against the increasing importance of primaries in general. As this primary season has tended to remind us, primaries played almost no role in the political process prior to 1968.
Misunderstandings as to where this requirement comes from, and when it was instituted, feed into the general perception by Sanders (and Trump) supporters that the parties have recently changed these rules specifically to handicap their chosen candidates, which is not true at all. It is, however, true that NY’s election law is uniquely restrictive in terms of the length of time required to switch parties prior to the primary.
To the extent that restrictions on changing party registration tend to favor one candidate over another in the primary process, one might just as well observe that caucuses also tend to favor one candidates supporters over another, as the large investment of time and dedication required certainly tend to interfere with a truly representative process.
Barbara
@Rick O’Leary: It’s the same in Virginia but that is quite a different kettle of fish from voter suppression, in which someone is not allowed to vote not because they have voluntarily chosen not to register with a party but because they are subject to arbitrary voter identification rules that were intended to prevent certain kinds of people from voting altogether. I think the New York law should be changed, but it’s not intended to suppress votes. Anyone can avoid it.
A Ghost To Most
@Miss Bianca:
I’d guess about the same, but it kept melting. My son was able to mow the lawn today. What a country (CO)!
Miss Bianca
@NR: It’s not Bernie’s fault he’s losing by 3 million votes. It’s the fault of the superdelegates! Wow, it all makes sense to me now…not?
Miss Bianca
@A Ghost To Most: That “wait five minutes rule” seems particularly applicable in the spring, somehow…
D58826
@NR: Maybe they should- in 2020 but you don’t demand that the rules be changed in your favor while accusing the party, that you joined as a tactic just to get on the ballot, of being corrupt.
Baud
Long comment got eated. All y’all loss.
Barbara
@dmsilev: Well, he has the right to run it through D.C. the week after California, but he would really have to be something of a masochist, just based on prior results.
Mart
@Flounder: Talk about horrible voting laws that need rescinded. Rumbling thru comments, I do not think most folks get that if Bernie drops out ahead of California, the residents there could be faced with voting between two R’s in November, with no D on the ballot. The whole community should be yelling “run Bernie run” (then drop out after California).
quakerinabasement
Sanders must be awful at math.
Bobby Thomson
@feebog: why are you cock blocking the grift?
A Ghost To Most
@Miss Bianca:
Yeah, I’ve lived on both coasts and all four timezones. People say it all over, but it is especially true here. The hail here is like from another world; it is both amazing and terrifying.
different-church-lady
@Cacti: Well sure, but only if you count the people who didn’t vote for Sanders.
? Martin
Sanders won the Wyoming caucus 156 to 124 votes. Now, Wyoming is a pretty red state, but I’m positive there are more than 280 democrats there, and even the worst political polls will have a sample larger than 280.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
He won’t contest only because there is no way to contest in a 2 person race.
This is just a ploy to gin up fundraising.
His fundraising fell 44% in April. I would imagine donations took a steep drop after the NY landslide, which means he’s raised little the last 2 weeks. So he’s just trying to give people a reason, false as it is, to give.
jl
I took a took at Sander’s and his hacks comments. Seems to me that all this panic is about what their strategy will be if HRC does not have a majority of pledged delegates at the convention.
But HRC will have the majority of pledged delegates with plenty to spare at the convention.
If the Sanders campaign wants to spend time spinning about that they will do in scenarios that have virtually zero probability of happening, I guess they have to do that to keep enthusiasm going to get as many delegates as they can going into the convention in an attempt to have maximum impact on the Democratic platform and HRC campaign.
D58826
@Mart: The entire election process from one end of the country to the other should be reformed BUT you have to win elections to change state/federal laws and put reformers in positions of power in the party. All of that takes time, effort and money. And maybe have a supreme court that isn’t a paid appendage of the GOP.
Miss Bianca
@A Ghost To Most: Oh, AND…we interrupt the Sandernista v. Hillbotz cage match to announce that our local hummie seems to have survived chill winter’s blast! Sighting at the feeder confirmed! I iz relieved – I was worried about the little guy(s)!
Emma
@Gussie: Excuse me. I’ve found the intramural fights mildly amusing up to this moment but suggesting that Bernie’s opponents are throwing around anti-semitic crap is out of bounds, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
dogwood
@Mnemosyne:
In 2008 California was on Super Tuesday in early Fedburary.
DCF
Keep snarking it up, settlers….
In First, Trump Ekes Ahead of Clinton in New National Poll
Latest Rasmussen survey finds that in Clinton-Trump matchup, GOP candidate would claim 15 percent of Democratic voters
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/02/first-trump-ekes-ahead-clinton-new-national-poll
Trump 41%, Clinton 39%
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2016/trump_41_clinton_39
More people think Bernie Sanders has these key leadership traits than any top candidate
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/05/02/more-people-think-bernie-sanders-has-these-key-leadership-traits-than-any-top-candidate/
Mike J
@Barbara:
And once you’ve registered as a Democrat one time, you can vote in the primaries for the rest of your life.
A Ghost To Most
@Miss Bianca:
Excellent. What’s your altitude there?
Barbara
@retr2327: This New York law has been in place since 1892. It was intended to combat various fraudulent Tammany Hall tactics. It was upheld by the United States Supreme Court against a challenge brought in 1972. So, basically, it is a relic of a bygone progressive era effort to limit the power of a political machine, not voters, but it really should be changed.
different-church-lady
@D58826:
Okay. Let’s suppose that.
[Supposes it]
Right. Now that we’ve done that, let’s get back to something resembling reality.
I’m sure all those people who already voted are happy as hell to hear the Sanders campaign claim yet another way their votes shouldn’t matter.
Mike J
@Mart:
No. The jungle primary does not apply to the presidential race.
Cacti
@DCF:
Well, if Rasmussen says so, it must be true. ;-)
jl
@Emma: Thanks. Looks like I misinterpreted Gussie’s comment, and missed that last bit, unless it was added in edit. Can’t imagine i would have missed a slur like that though.
Gussie needs a time out to calm down, IMHO.
Mary
@jl: I missed it too, so I think it was added in an edit. WTF? Completely unacceptable.
D58826
Isn’t that the guy who is still calling the 2012 election for Mittens? Even KOS has a projection of 381 EC votes for Hillary. Their map has Mississippi, Utah, and Arizona going blue
jl
@Cacti: If you look around at poll aggregators, I am sure one of them has a Rusmussen adjustment factor you can use to figure out what an unbiased result would be.
Mike J
@? Martin:
No, those were county level delegates. Actual participation was ~6000, IIRC.
A Ghost To Most
@DCF:
More pointless outreach,I see. Hasn’t St. Bernard done enough damage for the day?
FIDO.
Gex
@laura: So, rather than us getting to do what we’ve always done on Balloon Juice, and you just skipping these posts, everyone else should just shut the hell up so as not to upset you?
You have just now surpassed the Bernie supporter who was actively wishing for a massive market crash as the most obnoxious Bernie supporter I’ve come across.
In the name of you getting to have your say, you only require that EVERYONE ELSE self censor.
That sounds fair.
Emma
@dollared: It’s amazing. He’s gone from “a REVOLUTIONARY, NOT ONE OF YOUR CRAPPY POLITICIANS” to “a politician leveraging his influence, but it’s ok.” Don’t you people get whiplash?
D58826
@jl: maybe a badly worded piece of snark?. The comment
goes back to David Broder in reference to Bill Clinton in 2000
Omnes Omnibus
@DCF: If Democratic voters thought Bernie was the best choice, he would be leading. And, fwiw, I didn’t settle for HRC; I affirmatively chose there as the candidate most likely to be able: first, to protect and consolidate the gains that have been made during Obama’s term in office, and, second, extend those gains. You may disagree my decision, but it sure as hell wasn’t based upon settleng.
different-church-lady
@Gussie: Congrats! You’ve managed to troll both sides with a single post!
I’m just not sure that’s what you intended.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mart:
I’ve read this three times and I don’t understand it. Please to explain.
DCF
@A Ghost To Most:
You’re clearly more comfortable with a mercenary and the dues to be paid…WOOF….
Donut
@Gussie:
You’re a total dick for even suggesting a hint of anti-semitism.
Total. Fucking. Dick.
LesBonnesFemmes
@Mart: No. Jungle Primary does not apply to General Primary Elections. You must be registered as a Democrat, or with no party whatsoever to vote between Hill and Bernie.
D58826
@Rick O’Leary: Wisc. is an open primary. New York is closed. Different rules. Should they all be consistent? Maybe be we still have 50 states each which wants to have it’s share of the glory, no matter how small or fleeting.
Ben Cisco
@Eric U.:
The first person who makes either it or Troll-B-Gone work on Android can have ALL THE QUATLOOS.
AxelFoley
@NR:
Ironic you keep saying this, since it was Tad Devine who helped come up with superdelegates.
Calouste
@DCF: Any presidential poll that has 20% undecided belongs in the trash can.
D58826
@Mike J: There are 6000 democrats in Wyoming? Next you’ll tell me the Titanic didn’t hit an iceberg and sink.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@laura: Seriously? Is this trolling?
danielx
Praise jeebus, after tomorrow the campaign ads will go away for a while. The national ads are bad enough, those for the downticket races (particularly on the R side) are more or less shit on your shoe. The Young-Stutzman race has produced some particularly odious examples – I’ll repeal Obamacare! No, I’ll repeal Obamacare faster!
Then there’s the always-popular “He’s not a politician! He’s a businessman! He’s one of us!” Particularly ripe in the case of Trey Hollingsworth, who moved to Indiana from Tennessee seven months ago with his $58 million net worth in tow. Makes me want to scream at the television to the bright shiny (white) faces declaiming all this bullshit – “Did I miss something? You people are morons! Of course he’s a fuckin’ politician, he’s running for office and spending a shit ton of money, his own and his generous daddy’s, to get elected!”
WaterGirl
@ruemara:
Exactly. I bow to you, ruemara, for your first sentence. The perfect summary of the situation, even if it doesn’t quite fit on a bumper sticker.
dollared
@Emma: Sorry, I didn’t make the first representation. I realize he scared the shit out the Clinton supporters. Given her weaknesses, I’d be nervous too. But he has always been the same guy – a passionately liberal politician with a very small coalition behind him and a fairly simple style of campaigning that has limited appeal. He has a great set of policies that would really benefit our country, but which are opposed by Pharma, Med insurance, Wall Street, the Tech Giants and traditional Republican sectors, and so his campaign is about getting those ideas forward into that headwind.
Nothing has changed. And he’ll drop out on his way east after Califoornia. End fo story. The end. I’m sorry if you took a fright along the way. Maybe you’ll persuade your candidate to work a little harder for the American working class because of the fright you all took. Probably not. But that’s all of the story.
Schlemazel Khan
Ya know, I may have given up the ‘parmesan rancor’ too soon
dollared
@Donut: Right. Agist, absolutely. But anti semitic, not overtly. But taking offense now, after every male Bernie supporter has been stereotyped and labeled both a sexist and a racist? For months?
Deal with it.
WaterGirl
@The Thin Black Duke:
Well said. Seems like he soared beyond his wildest dreams, was seduced by the excitement and power, and now is flaming out, leaving only disappointment in his wake.
I say this as someone who planned to vote for Bernie Sanders over Hillary.
D58826
@dollared: Hmmm Obama did pretty well getting his ideas across/passed in the face of
. But Obama isn’t really a favorite of Bernie or his followers. One columnist on Salon referred to Obama as Bush-lite.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@dollared:
Another idiot tries to diagnose why the working class doesn’t vote Democratic, try again moron.
Omnes Omnibus
@dollared:
That ain’t anti-semitic?
DCF
@dollared:
Maybe you’ll persuade your candidate to work a little harder for the American working class because of the fright you all took. Probably not. But that’s all of the story.
Mike J
@Ben Cisco:
I’ll take a look at it.
WaterGirl
@NR: I’m not a big fan of superdelegates, either, but if the Republicans had them they wouldn’t be stuck with trump. There’s a reason they came into being.
NR
@Miss Bianca: Please at least try to comprehend when you read. Sanders trying to flip superdelegates is the fault of the Democratic party for having superdelegates in the first place.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@DCF: Same with you too, idiot.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
The more we get to see him, the more this becomes his legacy. Apparently he doesn’t care. His Senate reputation all makes perfect sense now, as does the kind of diehard supporters he attracts.
dollared
@D58826: Yeah. Let’s see. Obama has agreed not to negotiate with Pharma and he gave Big Insurance the entire US population. No bailout for homeowners, but repeated assistance to Wall Street. Tech Giants have had zero antitrust enforcement. I love what he’s done on many fronts, and I recognize the need to compromise, so I largely stay quiet. But no, to protect his gains he made serious compromises that further lock in income inequality for decades. Sooo….. yeah, I admire what he’s done but there is no crime in saying that in the long run some of these comprsomises will have to be undone.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Same thing happened to me earlier today. Mine was a heartfelt comment after reading that the poorest kids in 7th grade are 4 (FOUR!) grades behind the richest kids. How fucked up is that. This country throws away poor kids like they don’t even matter.
les
How much time do you suppose DCF spends each day to find disreputable sources that agree with his ignorant, unrealistic preconceptions? Or is there an idiocy aggregator? S/he is absolutely the most reliable commenter here; every link will be simultaneously unreal, biased, and inaccurate even in its unreality. Amazin’.
D58826
@NR: Bernie is trying to flip super delegates because he is losing. Plus his definition of how the super delegates should vote is rather self serving. If he was winning and Hillary tried to flip the delegates he would be yelling corruption and the fix is in. Change the system for 2020. He knew the rules when he started and if he didn’t then that is one more reason to say is unprepared for the Oval Office.
Trentrunner
In the past 24 hours Donald Trump was asked ON FOX to defend his claim that Hillary wouldn’t get 5% if she were a man, and Donald’s entire defense was that “Hey, Bernie has said WORSE, that she’s not even QUALIFIED, look at what he said.” And this went on some time.
So, yeah, Sanders (and his still unreconstructed Berniebros) can just fuck right off. We have an election to win, and if you’re hurting, you’re not helping.
msdc
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: A fish stinks from the head.
Smiling Mortician
@different-church-lady: Bernie Sanders: President of quite a few of my students, who had nothing better to do than spend all day yelling at Clinton supporters on caucus day in Washington State.
Ella in New Mexico
@Gussie:
Up to the “Jewy little golem” you had me in stitches.
Anyway, maybe he is “pissing everything he accomplished” away. Sanders knows how the rules work, and if he doesn’t win a majority of the votes he doesn’t win a majority of the Supers.
I just see this rhetoric as a campaign tactic, a way to remain salient and keep his supporters going out to the polls through June. I mean, why should they vote if he says he won’t even try to fight–if there’s a chance, mind you–at the convention? Which is all he’s saying. And at this point there’s almost no chance. So he won’t.
Everybody can just CTFD now. You’re welcome.
WaterGirl
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
You said that earlier, and I didn’t understand it then, either. Can you say more?
Emma
@dollared: Actually you can take your fake sweet understanding and naff off. I’ve been a member of the working class from birth, and one half-baked socialist doesn’t scare me one bit. I’m possibly to the left of Sanders in a number of issues. I just prefer a competent administrator to a crank. (added later) Ad I don’t think a man who shoots himself in the foot by dismissing southern votes the way he did has the chops to lead a coalition.
Calouste
@dollared:
You mean slogans, not policies.
D58826
@dollared: You make the compromises in 2009 to get Obamacare past. Then go back in later years and fix them when you have the votes. Politics is the art of the possible, even when it falls short of what I might like. And yes he did fall short on help for homeowners.
Nick Reynolds
Cole, you have lost your fucking mind. Seriously, anything Bernie related is just neoliberal fucking gibberish. Look, Bernie moved the conversation further left than Hilary could ever do. If he doesn’t admit defeat to the shit sandwhich of a candidate in Clinton on your time line…Boo fucking hoo. He’s made more of an impact on this race than Clinton will do as a president. And no matter of villager whining can do a god damn thing about it.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Someone will necessarily get a majority of the votes.
dollared
@Omnes Omnibus: I think it was a sarcastic accusation that opposition to SAnders is anti-Semitic. Which I don’t agree with, although a large amount of the anti-Sanders commentary is clearly age-ist.
Dan
guys! guys! I’ve got a GREAT new way that we can pass the time, waiting until the end of the primary cycle.
ready?
BERNIEBRO VS. HILLBOT BINGO
we’ll make up cards with squares that say things like “unicorn”, “Republican lite”, “corrupt”, and “ratfvcking”. we can start to play in each and every thread about the primary! please help me brainstorm more square names – the only thing I know for sure is that “outrage” is always the center square
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Nick Reynolds: Horseshit, he didn’t move anything. Obama did all the heavy lifting, I am so sick of this little nugget of conventional wisdom.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Duh. I didn’t think about it that way. I was thinking of “contest” as in disrupt and make a fuss, and I was thinking Bernie could do that anyway. But now I get it, thanks.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Nick Reynolds:
How old are you?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Dan:
neoliberal
money laundering
centrist
corporate whore
war monger
Wall Street
dollared
@D58826: Agreed. But there are plenty of unforced errors – dropping union card check, all the trade deals, no Wall Street perp marches, no homeowner bailout, mistreating all of the federal employees.
I’d definitely give him a B+.
redshirt
@Nick Reynolds: New Bernie Bro registered.
dollared
@Calouste: no. Policies. You just don’t think they can be implemented in 8 years, so to you they are invalid. I think they could be implemented in 20, so I think they are worth putting forward and fighting for.
ruemara
@dollared: except between Democratic whores, Berm the witch, blahs are low info, you have been racist & sexist in this campaign. No one is being antisemitic criticizing such failing, tone deaf, messages. Deal with it.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
Obama has accomplished more in 7 years than Sanders has done in his entire life. Obama did all the heavy lifting and then Sanders wanted him primaried, and is now using his surrogates to do his Obama shit talking for him. Leadery!!!
Dan
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
transcripts
revolution
cosplay
con
birdie
fraud
eclare
@Mary: My mouth dropped wide open when I read it, wha?????
dollared
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
neoliberal – TRUE
money laundering – ARGUABLE BUT LEGAL
centrist – TRUE
corporate whore – NOT PROVEN – and never should have been said.
war monger -NOT PROVEN but clearly more prowar than Sanders
Wall Street – NOT PROVEN BUT CLEAR GROUNDS FOR Suspicion
different-church-lady
@dollared: After months of WE BERNIE-LOVING YOUTHS ARE THE FUTURE OF POLITICS, SO YOU ESTABLISHMENT-LOVING OLDS MIGHT AS WELL JUST DIE ALREADY! I find your comment unintentionally hilarious.
Matt McIrvin
@DCF: Check out the last few polls on HuffPo.
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-general-election-trump-vs-clinton
In the last several days we have Clinton +8, +11, +3, lots of +7… and two where Trump is tied or ahead, both from Rasmussen, a company that’s been notorious for a Republican house bias in past cycles.
D58826
@Emma: A good bit of the arguing has been about how the democrats have abandoned the working class. Couple of toughs on that. A Good bit of the working class bailed on the democrats because of the civil rights legislation. Many whites in the north were/are just as racist as in the south. Second the ‘working class’ in in 2016 is not the same as the working class of 1965. It’s fun to beat up on Wall street or big Pharma but a lot of just plain Jane’s and Joe’s work in those industries. Between the financial sector (approx 33%) and the heath care sector (17%) of the GDP you are talking a lot of jobs, must of which are not in the robber baron category. .
dollared
@ruemara: Sorry, that’s all bullshit. Show me a Sanders campaign message that said any of those things.
Mary
@eclare: Off topic, but “eclare” is the screen name I use on a bunch of other forums, so I did I double take reading your comment, thinking “why did I respond to myself? I don’t remember doing that.”
dollared
@D58826: The problem is that we’re talking about 150 million people. And you’re still mad at the Reagan Democrats, who are in Florida if they are still alive today.
We need to f-in care about every working person. Period. Help them all, and live with the fact that you might help some bigots.
eclare
@WaterGirl: Samantha Bee had a great segment on this, the John Edwards rule. News of his affair broke on the eve of the convention, if he had been leading in the delegates, that is where supers come in. Not to override the will of the people, to prevent a tremendous loss in November if something breaks late.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@D58826:
90% of poor Southern whites vote for tax cuts for billionaires. The white working class abandoned the Democrats and is voting against its economic self interest in favor of its racial privilege self interest.
dollared
@different-church-lady: Really? Campaigns can be impolite to each other and argue on grounds that are best avoided? Now you tell me……
Meg
@WaterGirl:In a sane case, if there are only two candidates, one of them bounds to end up with majority of the delegates, one with 50%+x, the other with 50%-x.
Bernie seems to include super delegates when counting the final goal, but wants Hillary to reach that goal without them, so she will need to win way More than 50% of pledged delegates to win. Talking about having it both ways.
D58826
@dollared: I agree that dropping the ball on homeowner bailout was an unforced error. A stronger push there might have given him more support on main street to get other things done. But a president has only so much political capital and he has to chose his battles wisely. Given what Obama has done and the opposition he has faced I don’t think his choices have been so bad.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@dollared: Jim Webb is that you ?
eclare
@Mary: Wow…first inital E, middle name Clare, hence eclare. That is a huge coincidence, don’t know your name’s origin.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and you’ve known what that means for almost two hours1
Calouste
@dollared: Policies require details. The NYDN interview showed that Sanders doesn’t have a clue about any details that would turn his slogans into policies.
D58826
@dollared: I have no problem helping all of the working class. But a good bit of Bernie’s campaign has been that the democrats abandoned the working class in favor of Wall Street. Maybe the Reagan democrats are in Fla. enjoying Rick Scott’s paradise but they have kids and those kids do not necessarily vote for the democrats. Arguing over who lost a ‘working class’ that in large measure no longer exists is pointless. I would not say that Bernie is a Marxist but some of his rhetoric does sound like ‘workers of the world unite’. It doesn’t appear like it is selling.
dollared
@Calouste: Well, I disagree. The NYDN interview was a triumph of Clintonian attacking. I hope she does as well in the general.
Mary
@eclare: That’s my middle name, too. :)
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Dan:
[[[cringe]]]
starscream
“He’s made more of an impact on this race than Clinton will do as a president”
hahahahhah
hahahahh
haaahahahah
ha!
that was too good.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
good god
dollared
@D58826: It still exists. Frankly, saying it doesn’t exist is a bit racially tinged. There are somewhere around 150 million Americans that make +/- 20% of the median income. They are probably majority minority now, just barely. And yes, it is our job to help them. Even if some of the white ones don’t vote for us.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He’s lost the thread.
Emma
@D58826: I understand that a large part of the working class hasn’t been paying attention to their own welfare. But people don’t think about what would happen — the social disruption — if we went after, say, Wall Street firms without a good plan of action. Me, I wouldn’t care if the firms were pulverized but we need to consider what we’ll do with all the suddenly unemployed. Until I see an actual plan, I’m not buying.
Mike J
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cg6JahaWwAArmvy.jpg
Uncle Cosmo
@Rick O’Leary:
No, it’s totally fucking correct. We do things right in Maryland (closed party primaries)–it’s Wisconsin that’s fucked up beyond all recognition.
I’ve been working in Democratic Party politics since 1970 & a registered Democrat since I reached voting age. If you want to have a say in who my party nominates, you can fucking well register as a member of that party. For free. No salesman will call. (They reserve most of the annoying gimme-silver junk mail for those of us foolish enough to have somewhere, sometime, contributed to some candidate.)
But if you’re too fucking pure–or more likely, too fucking perverse–to associate yourself with whichever party best represents (or best accommodates) your values & beliefs, then you get NO SAY. Period.
eclare
@Mary: This has no relevance to anything, but cool! Not many of us.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Uncle Cosmo: Right on.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Mike J:
LOL
singfoom
@dollared:
Um, what? I remember reading that article and when Bernie couldn’t name fraudclosure, or title fraud or the allonges, or robosigning even as a one word answer to specific illegal things that happened during the meltdown, I knew it was over and I’d have to vote for HRC.
That was the point for me personally when I was just done with him. I don’t know how you turn his being unable to rail about specifics about his signature fucking issue into Clintonian attacking. Did she hex him and cause him to forget?
Seriously, Obama Derangement Syndrome is a thing, I think Hilary Derangement Syndrome is a thing. I’m not hating because I appreciate passion, but there’s a point at which it becomes hilarious. She had nothing to do with his poor performance in that interview..
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Uncle Cosmo:
BUT THAT’S NOT FAIR TO ME AND THAT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ALL THE TIME
Jim, Foolish Literalist
It…. is….. ALIVE!!
Mary
@eclare: Especially not many of use who spell it right! :) Of course, my extended family still insists on adding an i whenever they write my name.
Calouste
@dollared:
Clinton is so crafty in attacking that she made Sanders admit that he doesn’t really know what he is talking about.
burnspbesq
@Cacti:
I’m envisioning a Three Stooges sort of coronation, with a chamber pot for a crown.
Uncle Cosmo
@Nick Reynolds: (1) Welcome to BJ!
(2) You are cordially invited to shove your imbecile attitude up your arse far enough to keep your head company, TL;DR version: Go fuck yourself.
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He’s the Jennifer Rubin of this cycle.
Calouste
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Never heard of that guy, so I did a quick search and guess what showed up as one of the first articles by this “author”?
I’m a Liberal Democrat. I’m Voting for Rand Paul in 2016. Here Is Why.
D58826
@Emma: Just think about what would happen if on inauguration day Bernie announced that he was going to breakup the 5 biggest banks. He would be a lame duck before sundown. The law suits would outlast his administration. The only people rushing faster than the GOP to condemn his action would be the democrats. The Microsoft antitrust case was dropped in part because Microsoft had as much legal firepower as the government, maybe more. Same with the big banks. A perp walk for the bankers might be emotionally satisfying but unless the government had a case strong enough to win at trial, then it is just the prosecutors/government abusing their authority. Look how well the government made out with the W.VA. coal baron whose actions killed 29 miners. A one year sentence on a misdemeanor charge. The jury acquitted on the felony charge.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Calouste: He’s a columnist at Salon, so embarrassing Joan Walsh and other former editors are publicly announcing their disgust with their former publication.
(I’ve got the Hayes show on mute, but he’s pimping a one-on-one with Jane Sanders like he got JD Salinger to come on live TV. Jesus, she must be their most frequent guest after Rick Tyler and Michael Steele)
D58826
@Calouste: Edgar Bergen used to make Charley McCarthy say the darned things. Hillary must have been taking notes.
Matt
You know what the Democratic Party isn’t afraid of…the left…because apparrently the left is a bunch of milquetoast do-nothings who don’t show up to vote and become WATBs when there is the least bit of conflict, and don’t primary the centrist alternatives because that would cause division…
So let me just say this, let Bernie go to the convention, and let him contest the election, I am so sick of people wondering why the left never gets anything it wants…I think the reason is this….we don’t take on the fucking centrists and center-left people who run the party, we don’t threaten their hold on power, and we don’t fight them tooth and claw for every vote…Bernie is doing what a left-liberal running this election should do, fight and claw to the end, and make the other person see you’ll be right behind them when they move right, because people don’t respect you if you don’t try, and people don’t fear you if you don’t show them how close they are to losing….the only time Bernie should give up is if Hillary won with pledged delegates alone, if she’s less than that, then take it all the way home and see what happens, I”m sick of the liberal left not fighting the centrists in the party for control of the party establishment and we definitely need to keep showing that the monied interest wing of the party that it has a strong challenger to contend with. If Hillary can’t beat Bernie, she can’t beat Trump, end of story. And if Bernie comes close to Hillary the left may feel better in knowing that she’ll not be able to deviate too far to the right because her coalition is dependent on the left.
Ruckus
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
He has never had this or any other thread.
D58826
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: H. A. Goodman wrote a piece on Salon demanding that the FBI and DOJ return indictments ASAP in order to save the republic. mercy.
Did Roger Ailes secretly buy Salon and turn it into a Trogen horse for GOP causes?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Why hasn’t she been asked about her little bank fraud investigation? Why all the delays in financial disclosure documents? Now I can see clearly that it was a tell when Bernie’s first instinct was to throw Jane under the bus when the subject of tax returns first came up – he said that Jane takes care of that. I guess she does, and now I think we know why.
Cacti
@D58826:
You’ll be shocked to learn that prior to being a Bernie Bro, HAha Goodman was a Paul tard.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@D58826: i do wonder who’s paying for making the decisions at the on-line train wreck
i remember when they used to advertise on TV
Kay
@D58826:
“Working class” just means people who are paid hourly rather than salaried – paid hourly, no college degree. Not only do they exist, they’re the majority of working people in the country:
I don’t recommend Democrats (or any political Party) give up on the economic interests of 62% of people. Call them whatever you want but they exist.
Ruckus
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I know, I know, call on me, call on me, furiously waving hand.
Is it because while she can’t seem to figure out how to print a prior yrs tax filing, he can’t even figure out how to start Turbo Tax and anyway doesn’t know the username and password?
Cacti
@dollared:
Money laundering is a federal crime, ergo, there is no such activity as legal money laundering.
So, the above makes no sense.
Percysowner
@Mike J: OTOH, getting Democratic voters out and encouraging down ballot voting is really, really important. Says the woman from Ohio who has seen her state legislature taken over by Republicans.
dollared
@Kay: Thanks. Always there with the facts.
Ruckus
@Kay:
This.
Even if manufacturing is a smaller part of the labor market, we still do a fair amount of it. I seem to remember that you son is a welder or going to trade school to learn welding. I still work in mfg, standing at machines most of the day, making pretty things out of various metals. Some of it to rather extreme tolerances. Not everyone sits at a desk and runs a computer all day. Although I still do that occasionally with very sophisticated design software.
And that doesn’t count the construction, or service industries. The working class is not dead, not in the least. It is different than it was 50 yrs ago, but what isn’t?
Emma
@D58826: Exactly. I think we could do it — rein in all the financial crazyness –but I’m not savvy enough to figure it out. But I bet it would start with ELECT MORE DEMOCRATS dammit. At all levels of government.
D58826
@Kay: I’m not saying the democrats should give up on them. I’m saying the idea that the democrats abandoned them is a lot more complicated and the divorce was from both sides..
And I suspect that the working class and those of us living in cube ville have more in common then we might think
dollared
@D58826: See, who’s talking about not understanding how to do it? The mechanism is in place. Bernie pointed it out very obliquely, because he doesn’t want the battle before the election. If the Secretary of the Treasury determines that any bank poses a systemic risk, then the bank has to break itself up. It’s already the law.
Shocking, I know. But Bernie knows exactly how to do it.
Ruckus
@Cacti:
His point of course is that Hillary Clinton is a money launder. Like every other point he makes it is all conjecture without fact one in evidence. I wonder what his life would be like if people like him lied so much about it?
dollared
@Cactiso who’s the foolish literalist now?
dollared
@Ruckus: No, his actual factual statement, which is true, is that Hillary goes up to the limit of the campaign laws, which includes collecting money at one level or through one vehicle, and transferring it to the campaign via a different vehicle. That second vehicle would not be allowed to collect the money directly, so it is a form of cash transfer informally known as money laundering.
It’s dirty but it’s legal. Just as I said.
D58826
@dollared: Oh yea I can just see the CEO of Chase asking how high when the government says jump.
Kay
@Ruckus:
One of my sons is an apprentice electrician. He’s the BernieBro. He just got a 3 year project so he’s happy right now. They’re building (what else!) a giant medical facility. He’ll get enough consistent hours by the end to finish the work hours and he’s fine in the classroom component. They go to class one night a week. He’s in the IBEW program.
This is kind of amazing:
Vocational training never “died” where I live. We have a vo-tech high school that is competitive to get into (certain programs) and always over-enrolled. It isn’t disrespected or considered “lesser”.
Ruckus
@dollared:
What color is the sky in your little world? The one where someone does something that you say is not illegal and yet you still get to call them a criminal.
Enjoy the bakery.
Just One More Canuck
@singfoom: need a “like” button just for that
Ruckus
@Kay:
That was a short reply.
OK now the real one.
I lived/worked in OH for 11 yrs, and most of the people I worked with had reasonably sized families and while many of them had a college degree, many/most did not. They worked in mfg, at Honda, in construction, etc. They were and are working class. I worked as a manager but most of the people I worked with were and are working class people.
D58826
@Ruckus: I stand corrected. I guess maybe its age but when I think ‘working class’ its the steel workers or auto assembly line workers not the service workers at Walmart. My dad was white collar and so am I but I had an aunt and uncle who were union to the bone.
John D.
@NR:
My problem is not that he’s trying to flip the superdelegates — that’s not happening, they are the very Establishment he calls corrupt.
My problem is the rank hypocrisy involved in his trying to swap them after railing and ranting against them for months. That’s where I’ve totally gone cold on him, after voting for him in my primary. He’s left his principled campaign behind and gone into a smear campaign, and I’m not willing to go with him.
D58826
@Kay: Wow a lot that flies under the radar.
Cacti
@dollared:
Yeah, no.
Money laundering is a defined legal term under 18 USC 1956, which designates it as a crime.
Activities involving money that are not against the laws of the United States, can’t be money laundering. Period. You and the esteemed Senator from Vermont are talking out of your backsides.
Your tortured explanation doesn’t even match the colloquial definition of money laundering, which is converting the proceeds of a crime into legal income.
CDS has made you stupid. In Bernie’s case, the NYDN interview showed he already was.
dollared
@Ruckus: Did I call anyone a criminal? Didn’t I say that it was legal? What world do you live in, where you can put words in other people’s mouths and expect to be taken seriously?
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@dollared: Everyone knows what you and your dear leader are implying, stop with the bullshit.
D58826
@dollared: If it is legal then why are you and Bernie complaining about it
dollared
@Cacti: Fix the block quote. I live in a world where there is a technique called money laundering, which is meant to evade laws, regulations or people’s reasonable expectations. There is a subset of the use of money laundering techniques that is illegal. You have quoted one of the laws that makes a particular type of money laundering illegal. There are probably dozens of other statutes that you missed. However, the technique still has a commonly used name, whether it is legal or illegal. And that’s what the Clinton campaign did.
And yes, you are being an ass, and deliberately missing the point because the truth doesn’t matter to you.
Cacti
@dollared:
Stating or printing that someone has committed a crime is per se defamatory unless they’ve been convicted of the same in a court of law.
But in the case of public figures, it has to be both false and malicious, so you’re off the hook with your apparent ignorance.
Kay
@D58826:
I think it’s a weird thing to say, especially combined with the Democrats minority vote, because it implies our voters aren’t working. Sure they are. In 2012 we had elaborate analysis on how Obama was drawing working class younger women. The nail techs! They’re working class- they just don’t wear hard hats and beat up hippies :)
This discussion is to me weirdly old-fashioned. Go to Target. The cashier? She’s working class. I don’t know who she votes for but IMO she should be voting for Clinton. She may well do that but not if we insist she belong to some identifiable “class” of people who don’t vote for Democrats because…. it’s not 1961.
dollared
@D58826: Because it is an abuse of the campaign finance laws, and Democrats should not be doing the dirty things that Republicans do. At least for those people who object. I don’t really care. I was just pointing out that the allegation that the money is being cycled in a manner designed to evade reasonable regulation of campaign is, in fact, true. But probably is legal. And all of you are whining like butthurt children about a factual statement about your candidate. Which should tell you something about her, and you.
But I really don’t care.
Retr2327
@Barbara: @Barbara: well, that is interesting. McKinney’s Consol. Laws has 1972 as the enactment of the current statute, but that doesn’t mean prior versions haven’t been on the books for a lot longer. If you have a source for that, I’d be interested in learning more. It’s an odd law, really.
D58826
@dollared: I’m sure the legal community can argue the fine points of money laundering just like the clergy can argue about the number of angels on the head of a pin. For the average voter when you say ‘money laundering’ the first thing they think of is laundering drug money. I know Bernie didn’t ‘say’ that but he knows as well as any one that is the image that pops into peoples mind when they here the term. So if Hillary is using techniques that can be called ‘money laundering’. albeit legal, most people will assume that it is illegal
dollared
@Cacti: No, you just made all this shit up. I said at the beginning that it was legal. So you are making a false accusation. You are now crossing the line into total idiocy. It’s unnecessary – and again, it says a lot about how nervous you are about your candidate’s questionable practices.
Applejinx
Meanwhile, Republicans. http://i.sli.mg/euHfi7.gif
So freakin’ settle down people. At least our battling nominees aren’t aliens.
Kay
@D58826:
I think the mistake you’re making (steelworkers and auto workers as “working class” but not Wal Mart) has to do with steelworkers and autoworkers making more so people started calling the whole group “middle class”, which included salaried workers with college degrees. You’re really talking about a level of income. Now we call a lot of working class “low wage” :)
gwangung
@D58826: In other words, another dishonest argument. IOKIYASB
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@D58826: Character assassination pure and simple.
dollared
@D58826: C’mon, most people would think Hillary is dealing DRUGS? Rather than doing shifty campaign financing, which everyone in the US knows occurs?
Again, why are you guys trying so hard to make stuff up ?
D58826
@Kay: Guilty as charged.
Nice thing about BJ is that even an old dog can learn something new or see it from a different angle.
gwangung
@dollared:
Then it’s intellectual and legally dishonest to use the term “Money laundering.” Stop making shit up.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@dollared: Project much ?
Ruckus
@D58826:
Well a lot of the working class is no longer unionized, which is one reason why I think a lot of people don’t realize how big the working class is. That job in OH where I was a manager? I got my hands dirty quite a lot and had about 100 people working for me, with 5 leads or foremen. Not even all white collar jobs are desk jobs. In this country we often forget all the people that are working class. Take entertainment. Watch all the credits on a TV show or movie some day. A lot or even most of those people are working class. Look at @Kay’s: comment. I know people who taught at CalTech and MIT and others at USC/Berkley/Stanford and yet by far most of the people I know are working class. Some make pretty good money at it but they are still working class by pretty much any definition.
dollared
@gwangung: Bullshit. People refer to money laundering all the time, and any smart person knows that there has to be a specific law to make it illegal.
And if you don’t want to hear the term, tell your candidate to stop moving money around with the specific intent of evading campaign finance regulation.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dollared: People refer to money laundering all the time,
it’s a very common expression, every where I go I hear people saying, mr trump, what about this money laundering
Bob In Portland
@dollared:
John D.
@dollared: Shut the fuck up, you ignorant turd. I’m so very tired of you in particular.
McCutcheon v. FEC. Go learn something.
HVF is set up *under the auspices of the FEC*. It is legal. It is above-board. It is the very opposite of dirty. The FEC filings show exactly where the money is disbursed. If the FEC doesn’t think this is above board, where is the fucking FEC demand to stop?
Now, if you want to make the argument that our current campaign financing system is fucked, I’m not gonna argue. But in the era of Citizens United and McCutcheon, it is going to take a Constitutional Amendment in order to fix it, and that’s not happening under a Republican Congress. So shut up, get to work, and elect Democrats everywhere. In the interim, stop spreading lies.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@gwangung:
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
Character assassination by insinuation.
D58826
@dollared: 1. No its not that people are going to think Hillary is dealing drugs, it is that non-lawyers associate the term with illegal activity like the drug trade so what she is doing must be illegal also.
2. I picked the drug analogy for another reason. Every one just ‘knows’ that the Clinton’s ran drugs out of the Arkansas governors mansion. It was in all of the papers in the 1990s.
Kay
@Ruckus:
Right, I agree. The lines are clearer in manufacturing and construction, so it’s easier to define who they are. It starts to blur in office work, but of course non-degreed hourly in offices are “working class” too. You could probably define it as “people who are paid for overtime” here- that would be a division that would mostly apply.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@dollared:Someone posted this at Wonkette, but it applies to you.
gwangung
@dollared: Bullshit yourself. A smart person knows how to be precise. And a smart person knows how to use a smear by being imprecise. Particularly when its for tactics that are, by your own admission, within the rules.
You are a dishonest person. No getting around it.
J R in WV
I haven’t read the comments, and I have to start dinner pretty soon, so I’m just going to make this comment.
I’ve been studying college loans and that debt, and how Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton talk about college loan debt. I was fortunate enough to receive VA GI Bill benefits for most of my final college career, that led me to a career that lasted until 2008. My wife had a small loan, a personal loan from a local bank, based upon her income while working while a student at WVU.
I have come to some conclusions about college loan debt that some here may agree with.
First, I think loans to students who are doing well at a reputable college should be non-profit, interest free loans. There is no reason for people to make a profit off the backs of students. Especially when the loans are government-backed loans.
I think the only charge on top of repaying the loan amount should be a tiny processing fee, less than one percent. Payments on these loans should start when the student has graduated and is employed in the field they studied for. Not when they get a job at Starbucks. When they get a job in a science field if they got a degree in physics.
The payments on the loans should be a very small proportion of the student’s salary, like 5%, tops. I gotta go… but I’ll be back……….
Applejinx
Guys, I actually want Clinton to fight Trump this hard. So this is kind of distasteful but not exactly convincing me Hillary doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s fighting to win. If she fights half so hard for the platform we’ve all hammered out for 2016, that would be a very fine thing.
I don’t even want to see the rest of the thread. It’s like watching Carly and Ted pretend to be human D:
gwangung
@John D.: Well, that’s not going to do. That requires expertise and knowledge. Anathema to a dishonest person.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
The Pope tried to tell them that some of them might need to see a psychiatrist. Literally.
Bob In Portland
Balloon Juicers, just so sensitive. Hillary launders money through her Hillary Victory Fund. Lots of money from (mostly) rich people, the class she is indebted to. What’s the big deal? We’ve been complaining about this for a long time. You just don’t want to acknowledge it. Too bad.
Oh, any day now.
D58826
@Kay: Well since the bank recently reclassified all of us programmers as hourly and eligible for OT, I just that makes me working class too. And I don’t mean that as snark or being a wise ass, just that if the dividing line is being paid OT then there are a lot new members in the working class.
Cacti
@dollared:
And I’m reiterating that you’re stupid.
There is no such thing as legal money laundering in the United States of America. No matter how much you wish it was so.
Cacti
@Bob In Portland:
And the other shithouse lawyer for Bernie checks in.
Ruckus
@Kay:
And yet in OH I was salaried and did not receive OT. And if that is your only way to separate working class from white collar, I was not working class. But by all other ways I was. What about that cashier at Target who works less than 30 hrs a week on that job and has to take a second one to make ends meet and hasn’t seen OT in forever. Or the fella that I work with who works at Costco and picks up work in a machine shop to make ends meet. Costco pays reasonably well, according to all that I’ve heard but he works at a non union store (I had no idea that Costco had union and non union stores but he assures me that they do) so they do rotate his hours and work him less than 40 a week. No OT for him and yet he is working class by any other definition.
dollared
@gwangung: I’m not a dishonest person, I assure you. But you would rather slander me than accept the common meaning of words, or accept that your candidate pushes the envelope. I told you a dozen times it’s legal. AND I DIDN’T MAKE THE ORIGINAL ACCUSATION. I just pointed out that it is factually correct. Now leave us honest and intelligent people alone.
smith
@D58826: Wasn’t there a recent executive order that expanded the definition of who was entitled to OT?
Here’s a link.
D58826
@Ruckus: Hmm. maybe the way the labor force is divided up today the terms are losing some of their traditional meanings. White collar, pink collar, blue collar, no collar, working class or middle class the 99% are being screwed by the 1% no matter what your job title.
D58826
@smith: Not sure but as an executive order I suspect it would only apply to federal workers.
Cacti
@dollared:
Said every liar ever.
Kay
@D58826:
I’m glad you’re eligible for over time. See how it goes. In my experience people do better w/OT than with a moderate salary and tons of hours. OT also juices employment, because if they have to pay OT they’re more likely to hire more people instead of working their existing people to death.
Nurses would be another group who have a degree but are paid hourly w/OT, so my division isn’t perfect. Teachers would be in the group but they’re mostly ineligible for OT, which is why they had such tight union contracts. There’s a history to these things- they make sense.
Omnes Omnibus
@dollared: I’ve engaged with you for years and I would agree that you have engaged in good faith, but I think you are wrong here. I think money laundering automatically conjures up thoughts of illegal activity in the minds of most people.
smith
@D58826: See my edit above — it applies to 5 million workers, not all federal. Guess this time we can really say thanks, Obama.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Just an obsessive crank, but sincere? duly noted
Kay
@Ruckus:
Oh, it’s just one way to divvy them up. I agree it doesn’t always work as a clear division. It gets complicated. We have two assistants in our office, one has an associates degree and the other has a high school diploma and they do the same job. They’re both paid hourly.
D58826
@Kay: We are eligible for overtime but have to get management approval before working the extra time. approval is never granted but somehow it is expected that the job get done anyway. Some of it is for want of a better word ‘snob appeal’. Our working class 1950’s/60s parents pushed us to go to college to become middle class so being reclassified as hourly seems like a demotion. The only good thing that came of it was the reclassification was retroactive to 2009 which meant all of the OT I put in during the merger was now due. So I got a 9k check one week.
In the end they can call me anything they like (including late for dinner) as long as the Benjamins show up every two weeks.
I worked with a college guy who looked down his nose at the union folks stocking the shelves at the local grocery. I always looked at it this way – Ben Carson may have had gifted hands in the operating room but if it wasn’t for the electrician who kept the lights on and the plumber who kept the water running, Ben would have just been another guy with a useless degree.
Ruckus
@D58826:
This.
You have latched onto the supreme concept of working in the US. It’s why Sanders has made any ground at all. It is of course not the only issue and solving it will not correct the million pound elephant in the room, racism, or even bigotry in all it’s forms. We fought a war over racism and slavery and really, does it look like we won? Nearly 700,000 died but it took another 100 yrs for the civil rights act and now 50 yrs after that and we still are a nation with a huge racial problem. People vote against their own best interests for the idea that they would rather suffer than someone of a different colored skin might get ahead of them in line. Nothing, not one thing that Sanders wants to accomplish will go in any way towards fixing that. Nothing.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Ruckus: Thank you for this comment.
Kay
@Ruckus:
The class divisions are endlessly fascinating to me because they’re so clear in a small town. They run thru everything. High school wrestling is the working class sport here. I don’t know how or why that happened but it’s true, year after year. Baseball is upper-crusty – my clients insist their children are excluded from baseball. WTF?
I love that stuff. It’s like cracking a code.
D58826
@Kay:
Most things have a history and when you understand that history it makes more sense as to how we got from point a to point b.
D58826
@Kay: Evern in my 1960’s white suburban high school there was college prep (male and female), commercial (almost exclusively female) and general for the losers and thugs. At least that was the pecking order whither the mostly guys in general deserved it or not.
D58826
Hmmmm up to 301 comments. Will B-I-P joining annoy enough people to reach 500 comments. Only time will tell.
Ruckus
@Kay:
With the way many corps are working these days I think we have to come up with a better standard way of defining working class.
I’ve owned 2 businesses and still you would call me working class and so would I. My sibling, who had degrees and taught elementary school for a time and when died, had been teaching part time at USC and owned a business, was working class by any definition other than OT.
dollared
@Omnes Omnibus: Perhaps. And I would take your counsel on common people’s perception. But I would remind every person on this thread that I didn’t make the original accusation. In fact, a pro HRC person said BBs had used the term. I’m on the phone, but any one of you can go to Wikipedia and read.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Probably harder than cracking the enigma code in WWII.
Elie
@laura: You could also not “tune in” to sites that potentially offend your sensibilities. Since its a conscious choice to tune in. Or just decide to be strong against the heathen…
If this is your “first time”, you need to realize anyway that life doesn’t give you quiet and purity to deliberate during any election. Part of the role of the citizen (IMHO) is to figure out what to ignore and what to credit in evaluating your choice.
dollared
BTW, Wikipedia focuses on criminal money laundering. Urban dictionary is more broad about using financial transactions to hide or change the regulatory outcome.
dollared
And you all should pay more attention to the discussion between Kay and Ruckus, because it is more important to the Democratic Party’s future.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Ruckus:
Exactly, and thank you. That’s what white people work is now – making this point over and over and over to other whites, because we will not have shiny socialist things in this country until we learn how to share with others.
Kay
@D58826:
“Tracking”. It’s hugely controversial. I don’t think it has to be but you have to make sure they have a real choice and they’re not being shifted off an academic track because of preconceived notions about what they’re capable of doing based on whether their parents went to college or not. If it’s done poorly it can just cement “privilege”. People judge other people for all kinds of reasons. My son who is an electrician is inarticulate. His older brother did very well in school and was identified early as “smart”. They’re both smart. One of them is just very quick and adept verbally and that’s valued as an indicator of “smartness” in school.
Omnes Omnibus
@dollared: The fact that some of us are not commenting on it doesn’t mean we aren’t paying attention. I have very little to add to it.
D58826
One of the things that runs through all of this is why do people vote the way they do. My sister and BIL are very very conservative, hate unions and taxes and big government. They hate the socialized Obamacare. They are also ex-military lifers with access to a military pension, socialized VA care and heavily subsidized Tricare. My sister’s second career was in a nursing home that received large amounts of government money thru soc. security, medicare and medicaid. They knocked on doors to support a local school tax increase when funding cuts threatened their kid’s education. Two of their three daughters work for the federal government and the third went to a state college. At one point they were going to vote for the liberal Joe Biden because he delivered the pork to Delaware. And one winter Chuck was very upset because the city didn’t plow the roads quickly enough. But they are small government, low taxes, anti-union, anti-tax and spend Reagan Republicans.
Please someone tell me what am I missing here? Other than the American voter is a strange and mysterious critter who follows no logical path when voting.
Kay
@D58826:
There’s ways to control for bias. The “advanced” program at the middle school here used to go by teacher recommend and grades. They weren’t getting many lower income kids and a lot of people thought it was skewed towards richer kids. They added a third measure, a standardized test, so there would be an objective measure. They got more lower income kids with the addition of the objective measure which means to me there was some bias, some assumptions were operating.
D58826
@Kay: and your other son is ‘smart’ with his hands. I have a college degree and still can’t figure out how to ‘change’ a circuit breaker when it trips.
patroclus
Well, I haven’t read the comments, but I actually watched the press conference and it didn’t seem to me that Bernie said anything all that egregious. The superdelegate argument is farfetched but not outside the realm of plausibility. It’s just basically something a candidate says to convince supporters that there’s still a chance, so that money can still be raised and turnout isn’t depressed. And California, New Jersey and D.C. are still six weeks away, and bills have to be paid in the meantime I want Bernie to stay in until June because it creates excitement and interest and turns out voters, which will help down ballot races. Moreover, he seems to have toned down the really critical stuff, so this seems more like click-bait to generate a T-Bogg unit. He’s basically out of it, but he might win a few more states. What exactly are we arguing about?
Ryan
Yep you’ve pretty much captured me. I want to love Bernie. I loved him early on. But the more realistic his long shot candidacy gets, the less I like him.
D58826
And with that I will leave it to those in the later time zones to push on to 500 comments and keep dollared and B-I-P entertained. . Getting late here in the ET zone and I need my beauty sleep. Night all
J R in WV
@Barbara:
But?!@!…
Exactly why should people who are NOT Democrats be allowed to have any say in who is running in a general election on the Democratic ticket?
Because as a person who has been a Democrat since the very first time I registered to vote, I’m not interested in what independents and kinda-Republicans want the Democratic party to do. At All.
J R in WV
@Mart:
And so we are to believe that you really believe that Hillary Clinton would come in third in a race with 2 Republicans and her? Because I’m thinking that she would be on top, and that if she and Bernie were in that sort of contest, those two would be the only two running in the general election.
Duh!
Kay
I;m so glad this is now up for discussion. Imagine someone this reckless and stupidly, tragically wrong, as President.
patroclus
@J R in WV: Well, here in Chicago, we’ve had multiple parties ever since I moved here, including the Solidarity Party, the Chicago First Party, the Harold Washington Independent Party as well as Socialist Workers, Libertarians, Greens, Constitutionalists, Reform etc… Several of those were break-off’s from the Democratic Party because the party did something stupid (like nominating LaRouchies or racially opposing Harold Washington). Almost always, I’m a regular Democrat, but when the machine makes its usual mistakes, it is often helpful to have other options and I am not interested in what machine Democrats want the Democratic party as a whole to do. At all. Open primaries (like Illinois’s) allow flexibility and choices. Having lived in closed primary states, I much prefer it this way.
Miss Bianca
@A Ghost To Most: possibly dead thread but in case you’re still around…about 8900 feet.
Ruckus
@patroclus:
It seems now we are arguing with a couple of Sanders supporters who seem to really be republicans in disguise. They are still preaching republican talking points and calling for the jailing of that non criminal Hillary Clinton for legal things that she has or hasn’t done. Makes it sort of difficult to be all sunshine and candy when that happens. We won’t convince them and there are a number of ways of dealing with them. First ignore them. Take away their audience. Second, heckle the hell out of them. None of them are smart or well informed enough or even speak the truth to have any usable comebacks. Your choice as to which is more fun and better for your blood pressure.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: ah. nice. needs said. thanks for that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Typos. And I was completely sober when I typed it.
Miss Bianca
@NR: Little creature, why don’t *you* try taking a good long look at what you’re saying. You are really too ridiculous to argue with.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: eh? y’are bit cryptic. Remember whom you are dealing with: Bear. Very Little Brain, etc. Are you picking on me, or yourself? ; )
patroclus
@Ruckus: Oh. Well, I’m gonna be sunshine and candy. I don’t think dollared or Bob are Republican trolls – they’re just leftists who are (naturally) for Bernie. I want to see the minimum wage increased, the Dream Act enacted, a comprehensive immigration bill enacted, a stronger Dodd-Frank, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act enacted, the Waxman (California) energy conservation act enacted, Merrick Garland (or other liberal) confirmed, GITMO closed, Citizens United overturned and a LOT more and I expect that they would agree with (most) of that. Super-delegates? Campaign finance? Those are mostly process issues, which I consider of lesser importance. I guess this isn’t going to T-Bogg after all.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: The post was full of typos. I am a poor typist, but a tough critic. Hence, my post.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: Ah. Do you know, you made me *go back* to see if I could see them? For I did not notice them at all, at all, and normally I do notice such things. Content, dear sir, on the Internet *must* trump spelling, else, as Hamlet says, “who shall scape* whipping?”
Not a typo. Original spelling.
agorabum
@Mike J: Welp. There you go. He couldn’t resist. Not cool.
The sad / dumb thing is that the fund is called the “Hillary for Victory fund.” And we are supposed to be mad that it is giving money to Hillary and to the DNC? That’s exactly what I’d expect from a fund called the “Hillary for Victory Fund.” Also, news flash: general elections are expensive.
J R in WV
@D58826:
This is true, but I must point out that the judge (and perhaps the lawyers associated with the trial) determined that the jury should not know which charges were misdemeanors and which were felonies, and what the penalties were for the different charges.
I suspect that the jury would have believed that the charge that Blankenship was convicted of (conspiracy to violate safety laws) was much more serious than the charge he was found not guilty of, stock fraud. After all, the stock fraud didn’t kill anyone!!
But the avoidance of safety laws killed the 29 miners, even though it was not a serious felony charge – amazingly enough!!!! There’s the amazing fact, killing the miners was a misdemeanor, and stock fraud was a felony. Killing 29 miners was a misdemeanor, and stock fraud was a felony. Imagine the way the jury felt when they discovered what they had – in complete ignorance – what they had done!
daves09
@Trentrunner: Sanders defense was that Trump certainly has his own opposition research team hard at work on it.
I guess his logic is that if Trumps going to say it, he, Bernie, might as well say it first. And of course this is not intended to actually hurt the probable nominee.
Sanders really does believe that if he does it it can’t be wrong.
NR
@Miss Bianca: Your lack of reading comprehension skills is your problem, not mine.
Ridiculous, indeed.
PatrickG
@D58826:
Personally, when Bob in Portland shows up, I tend to stop reading*. It guarantees that at least a full third of the remaining thread is either him bloviating about things he doesn’t understand or people responding to him with (well deserved) mockery**.
Of course, dollared is now right on Bob’s heels in the field of “I’m less pro-Bernie than I am virulently, rabidly, and irrationally anti-Hillary”. DCF (stage name: The Uncut***) runs a distant third so far — can they pull an upset? Only time will tell!
* This should concern everybody, because I am obviously representative of all semi-lurkers at Balloon Juice.
** I mean no disrespect to those doing the mocking. You’re all doing yeoman work there. If anything, I’m concerned for your health — idiocy is contagious.
ETA: *** Slogan: Randomly linking things is easier than thinking!
J R in WV
@dollared:
If it is money laundering, it is illegal. If it is legal, it ISN’T money laundering.
It really is that simple, and you apparently really are that stupid…
Miss Bianca
@PatrickG: heh heh heh. Oh, dear. ZAP. Check out NR, too, for the non-lulz.
Ruckus
@patroclus:
Their disguise may be as Sanders supporters. I don’t really know if they are or are not republican trolls. Dollard rants on and on with talking points that make no sense and are some of the same ones that republicans use. BiP is just, I have no idea, and I’ve blocked both of them for being useless for furthering any dialog. And being fucking annoying.
I think that Sanders has had his day in the sun and it’s not looking good for him now. He got to make his points about the economy and all but now it’s time for the adults to get on with the governing. And when I say adults I’m going with the anyone over 18 who votes definition. I’m an old, not as old as some but still in the old side of the equation. Those who are just getting started in adulthood (and those even younger!) are going to hopefully be here for a long time and I for one would like to leave them with a better place to live. All of them.
amk
my bit for tbogg unit.
daves09
@J R in WV: Talking to people who are independents many of them say that they don’t want to have to vote for democrats. Or they say that they vote for the candidate not the party. When I tell them party affiliation doesn’t mean you can’t vote for anyone you want to, they act surprised. Yes the ways, and thoughts, of american voters are strange and wonderful.
dollared
@Ruckus: Nope. Not a Republican plant. Just not a blind stupid Balloon Juicer, terrified that HRC is going to lose. Note how many times I’ve told you that I think what she did is legal. (well, not really legal, but they simply don’t enforce campaign finance laws at all). And you still think I somehow said she was going to be arrested or whatever. Use your brain.
Gex
@different-church-lady: What I like about the argument about how late states should carry more weight (because of MOMENTUM!) is how it dovetails with their argument about how Southern states shouldn’t have had their votes early in the process because it gave them undue influence.
dollared
@J R in WV: No, really, it’s not that simple. You can use financial manipulation to hide or sanitize a large number of things:
1. sanitize a majority foreign interest in a US flagged vessel with special privileges under the Jones Act.
2. Move profits to a low tax offshore location.
3. Sanitize a majority non-disadvantaged investment in a minority owned business (be very careful with that one)
4. Hide ownership of a privately held entitiy or trust
5. Change the domicile of an entity to :”move” operations to a lower cost workers’ comp state.
6. Change the source of campaign contributions from a non-permitted recipient to a permitted one, and then have the permitted one transfer the funds to the non-permitted funds.
All of these, in the business vernacular, could be called money laundering. But you are correct, only money laundering as defined by a statute is criminal, and that is usually directed at money that originated from an illegal business or a crime.
The business term is broader than the criminal term. As Omnes points out, it all has a negative connotation, but that’s it.
Etc, Etc.
That’s just a
Omnes Omnibus
@dollared: Stop it. You know what you are doing. Just stop it.
ETA: Never mind.
dollared
@Ruckus: What Republican talking point have I used?
amk
@D58826:
talk about delusional. mark penn 2016 version.
different-church-lady
@dollared:
YOU ARE A NORMAL HUMAN TYPING WITH YOUR HUMAN HANDS!
Tegdirb
@laura: So you didn’t vote in 2008 or you’re another 20-something who thinks the rules should be changed for you?
Tegdirb
@Bob In Portland: Do you actually thoughts of your own or do you wait for Jeff Weaver to tell you what they are?
maryQ
@D58826: I despise Sanders, but I actually think Devine makes a decent argument there. But, you know, it’s not gonna happen.
D58826
@maryQ: Dividing up the SD on a proportional basis may well be a good idea. Or eliminating them entirely. Whatever is done is for the 2020 election. Bernie doesn’t get to change the rules in his favor in midstream. He knew the rules when he started.
Paul in KY
@laura: Uh, laura, you may want to not visit this place until after the California primary. Just saying…
Paul in KY
@Rick O’Leary: KY has a closed primary. One of our few similarities to New York, it appears.
Paul in KY
@Uncle Cosmo: Nice rant! Agree. Democrats (registered) pick Democratic nominees.
Paul in KY
@Calouste: She’s diabolical!!!
Flounder
@StellaB: I was referring to turnout.
Raven Onthill
Do you really want to shut all of Sanders California supporters out of the primaries?
You do want the Democrats to win the Presidency, right?