This is how I view things right now. The Sanders campaign at this point is a 7-8 NFL team whose season is over and post-season chances are eliminated playing a 10-5 playoff bound team in the last game of the regular season, and they are playing the first string and trying to injure the playoff bound team. Even worse, they are still losing and blaming it all on the refs. That’s why I’m so irritated by the nonsense.
And as Josh Marshall notes, it comes from the top:
For months I’d thought and written that Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver was the key driver of toxicity in the the Democratic primary race. Weaver has been highly visible on television, far more than campaign managers tend to be. He’s also been the one constantly upping the tension, pressing the acrimony and unrealism of the campaign as Sanders actual chances of winning dwindled.
But now I realize I had that wrong.
Actually, I didn’t realize it. People who know told me.
Over the last several weeks I’ve had a series of conversations with multiple highly knowledgable, highly placed people. Perhaps it’s coming from Weaver too. The two guys have been together for decades. But the ‘burn it down’ attitude, the upping the ante, everything we saw in that statement released today by the campaign seems to be coming from Sanders himself. Right from the top.
This should have been obvious to me. The tone and tenor of a campaign always come from the top. It wasn’t obvious to me until now.
Steve M. goes one further and predicts not only will he not ramp things down, he will not endorse HRC and will not work to elect her:
When I watch Sanders now, I don’t see a typical politician whose contempt for an opponent is a big act. The contempt Sanders feels for Clinton and the Democratic establishment is now bone-deep. It’s classic male anger, rooted in outrage at being disrespected.
So I’m predicting that Bernie Sanders won’t endorse Hillary Clinton. He’s going to fight to the last primary, then he’s going to try to twist superdelegates’ arms, then he and his people are going to demand a platform that resolves every disagreement between himself and Clinton in his favor. And when the platform fails to repudiate the party’s nominee on every point of disagreement, he’s going to walk. At best, he’ll offer a pro forma endorsement, maybe not until well after the convention is over, and then he’ll sit out the general election campaign. Because this is personal for him. He believes the Democrats won’t win if he’s not the nominee, so he does no damage by withdrawing from the fray. It’s all the fault of Clinton and the party establishment if she loses.
She is a weak candidate, and the party did try to grease the skids for her, but Barack Obama faced the same situation in 2008 and just put his head down and overcame the odds. And the ideas and voters Sanders represents should be in the tent — but at this point I think giving vent to gut-level anger means more to Sanders than either a Democratic victory in November or a partial win for his movement, with the possibility of greater victories to follow. He thinks he’s been screwed. And someone has to pay.
The press release yesterday from Team Sanders confirmed that for me:
“It is imperative that the Democratic leadership, both nationally and in the states, understand that the political world is changing and that millions of Americans are outraged at establishment politics and establishment economics. The people of this country want a government which represents all of us, not just the 1 percent, super PACs and wealthy campaign contributors.
“The Democratic Party has a choice. It can open its doors and welcome into the party people who are prepared to fight for real economic and social change – people who are willing to take on Wall Street, corporate greed and a fossil fuel industry which is destroying this planet. Or the party can choose to maintain its status quo structure, remain dependent on big-money campaign contributions and be a party with limited participation and limited energy.
“Within the last few days there have been a number of criticisms made against my campaign organization. Party leaders in Nevada, for example, claim that the Sanders campaign has a ‘penchant for violence.’ That is nonsense. Our campaign has held giant rallies all across this country, including in high-crime areas, and there have been zero reports of violence. Our campaign of course believes in non-violent change and it goes without saying that I condemn any and all forms of violence, including the personal harassment of individuals. But, when we speak of violence, I should add here that months ago, during the Nevada campaign, shots were fired into my campaign office in Nevada and apartment housing complex my campaign staff lived in was broken into and ransacked.
That was not a condemnation of violence and the behavior of his supporters in Nevada. That was an excuse for why they behaved the way they did- “Nice party you got there, it would be a shame if anything happened to it.” I’m surprised he didn’t include “I only hit you because I love you so much.” And it is all predicated on a lie.
They did not get screwed in Nevada. Hillary won the popular vote, didn’t organize well enough in the first caucus nonsense, and then came strong over the weekend. This was all about defying the popular vote and trying to use the system to squeeze out a couple more delegates. And it was thwarted, and now they are throwing a tantrum and screaming that the system they tried unsuccessfully to game is rigged.
@Johngcole Bernie's down 4 games to 2 in the series, but demands game 7 be played anyway.
— M. Springchicken (@marcusechavez) May 18, 2016
But this should not be surprising. This is what the campaign and Bernie have been doing for months. The Bernie coalition is young, naive newcomers, grizzled old progressives with longstanding issues with Clinton and the DNC, and independents who have no real allegiance to the Democratic party. It’s very easy to lie to the young and the independents, who simply don’t know better and haven’t been in the political process and know how primaries and caucuses work, and the middle group are the nihilists who think we need a revolution and are still kvetching about the fact that Obama didn’t give us single payer.
That’s why these people can convince themselves that closed primaries for the Democratic nominee (where Bernie loses) are undemocratic while the actually very undemocratic caucuses (where Bernie wins) are the people’s will. That’s why they think polling about the general election is what matters when choosing a nominee, and not who the people actually voted for (at this point, three million more have chosen Hillary over Bernie).
It’s why they can, with a straight face, argue that the SuperDelegates are evil and undemocratic, and then argue that they should switch to Bernie even though he has fewer votes, fewer earned delegates, and not realize that what they are proposing would be stealing the election from Hillary and giving it to the loser. Because that is the Sanders team argument. I’m not making that up . That is their plan.
That’s why they think trying to snag a few delegates in Nevada in an attempt to minimize the popular vote choice and being thwarted is a coup led by none other than the odious DWS. It’s a coalition that Bernie and Weaver and Devine are lying to daily, and half of them don’t realize they are being lied to and the rest just don’t care.
I’d like to think I am just being my normal, pessimistic, hyperbolic self, but I’ve seen enough people in the Bernie camp acting this way that I really do think that Sanders, much of his campaign, and a lot of his voters are ready to burn the whole thing down. Or Bern it down, if you will.
*** Update ***
This came across my FB feed five minutes after posting this, and not in reaction to this post. This is what we are dealing with, and it is the fault of Bernie Sanders.
Dog Dawg Damn
I think we’ve been complacent far too long because of Hillary’s example in 2008 without acknowledging that Bernie’s antipathy to the party might produce a different result.
It will be fun watching “progressives” campaign for a neo-Fascist. No, actually, it won’t.
Punchy
Oh JOY! Another Sanders/Clinton smash-up derby. I eagerly await the 429 comments involving 6 trolls, a shit ton of inaccuracies, and some readable tangents involving cats and the possibility of Bishop’s return for Game 3 (perhaps related).
Sigh. See y’all in about 3 threads from now.
Cathie from Canada
So will he keep on running — third party, new party, whatever — or will he just take his ball and go home? Is there anyone he might actually listen to, who could convince him to start acting with some wisdom and grace?
dmsilev
I think, perhaps wishfully, that a lot of this will blow over after June 14th. Even if Sanders throws a hissy fit, the great majority of his supporters will support the nominee, and certainly he’ll find out pretty quickly that the supers won’t give him the time of day if he actually tries to continue campaigning for the nomination. Sure, there will be the bitter-enders, but we had the PUMAs in 2008, and that ended up as a lot of hot air and not much else.
AdamK
But they REALLY REALLY REALLY want Bernie to win, so their votes should count for more!
PNW_WarriorWoman
The Faux Fracas in Nevada: How a Reporter Manufactured a Riot
Robin G.
Glad Steve M. mentioned the white man anger. A few months ago I would have denied that was a driving force of the campaign aside from an irritating subset of Berniebro supporters, but now… the misogyny undercurrent is getting clearer, and very hard to ignore. Viscerally revolting to me.
Edited to add: That being said, I’m still glad Bernie ran. It warmed Clinton’s machine up and got it ready to go for the general. She’ll hit the ground running.
Percysowner
I asked this at No More Mister Nice Blog, but I’ll ask here as well
I’m not familiar with the ins and outs of the Party. I know DWS supposedly likes Clinton, but other than scheduling what at the time was seen as too few debates (boy am I SICK of debates) and then having a wonky debate schedule, I honestly don’t know what else was done to “grease the skids” for Clinton. Can someone (not Bob In Portland) enlighten me?
Gin & Tonic
If he continues like this and, FSM willing, HRC wins and the Senate returns to D control, I have a feeling he will finding himself chairing the subcommittee on scrubbing toilets.
Dog Dawg Damn
@PNW_WarriorWoman: Some people won’t believe there is any problem until the Occupy detritus and former Paulistas cause a fracas on live television at the convention.
PNW_WarriorWoman
Here’s video proof that NO chair was thrown at #nvdemconvention. This is the only clip I’ve seen on the Nevada chair incident. The implication is that every major media outlet in the country is smearing Sanders supporters as violent by repeating the Big Lie that a chair was tossed or brandished. At the same time, the only documented incident of violence comes from Wendell Pierce, a Clinton supporter, who was arrested for “battery” after assaulting a Sanders supporter. A woman, in fact, so there’s a special place in hell for all the soi disant feminists who are silent on this episode. The immediate moral of the story is: Stream everything; streams are your receipts.
Joseph Nobles
As a Democrat who voted for Bernie, I look at all this with horror. Hillary is clearly going to be the nominee. She lacks over 200 pledged delegates to have a majority of them, and there’s no reason for superdelegates to vote against the person with the most pledged delegates. No, I’m not happy about voting for Hillary, but jeezum crow – anyone who thinks Trump is the same as Hillary needs to have someone bringing them jello in a nice padded room somewhere. And she’ll be fine as President. She’ll do some things that will hack me off, but they all have. I tend to put this attitude down to a refusal to understand how our system of government works. Of the three groups you listed, only one has an halfway decent excuse for that. Feh.
Joel
Any chance you caught Drew Magary’s piece today? The guy is pretty good for laughs.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
He has no support outside of his wife and Jeff Weaver, and now he’s got the entire Democratic Senate ready to take him out if necessary. I think being a big whiny baby is not a good look on anyone, especially Grumpy McScoldypants, and he’s engendered zero good will. I don’t think, once he’s officially eliminated and Obama comes off the sidelines, his act will wear well, at all. He’s as thin skinned as Trump, and he’s not really the media darling Trump is. Interesting that if it were Sanders and Trump going head to head, it would involve two thin skinned tax dodging egomaniacs hiding their finances, and one with a wife who may actually end up being indicted for bank fraud.
gex
@Robin G.: Yep. Funny how many of the Never Hillary Bernie supporters are really comfortable calling women b!tches and c*nts on voicemail, texts, and social media over a political dispute.
And as for Hillary being no different than a Republican, they seem not to have noticed that the Never Trump Republicans sure see a difference and are falling in line accordingly. They certainly can’t use that as a cue to question whether maybe their response to her is based on something else.
AdamK
@PNW_WarriorWoman: The problem is not the chair. The chair is not the fulcrum of anybody’s opinion.
dedc79
gvg
we are all nervous about what he will do when he has “officially” lost and how many voters will follow him because Trump and the whole GOP are so scarey and our fellow voters have disappointed us before. None of us know Bernie personally and we have no way to be sure what will happen so we can’t help talking about it over and over looking for reassurance.
Something Bernie should know, being afraid often turns to anger and Bernie is scaring us.
Xboxershorts
Pundits, speculating about pols with unnamed but highly placed sources.
Yup, American politics at its best.
I missed the good ol days when we could just call our opponents immoral hermaphrodites and get on with things.
Dog Dawg Damn
@PNW_WarriorWoman: Is Wendell Pierce a delegate? Was this at a convention? Was he told by Hillary to do this? Let’s not conflate a drunken assault between private individuals as such with delegates causing problems at the convention. The two are very different. And if “no actual physical contact” is your threshold, then it’s pretty weak sauce. A chair was raised (reports say one was flipped as well). People were booing and cursing at a Senator. This is not good. Stop defending it.
I think the most damning piece of information is that the Sanders campaign told the supporters to “take over the convention” and not to leave unless told to do so by the Sanders campaign. They are stoking the fires, and you’re their apologist. Pathetic.
Tegdirb
@PNW_WarriorWoman: Uh-huh. And the death threats?
chopper
it isn’t that. like what i said below, it’s the 7th game and he’s way, way behind and he knows he can’t win, so he’s just trying to put as many of the opposing team on the injured list as possible out of spite.
ETA: or, what cole said
Mike J
I keep hearing this but nobody will point to anything concrete that was done.
Chris
I have no idea what any of this means. #sportsilliterate
(No, yeah, I do get the point).
charon
more from Lets Talk Nevada, worth a read:
http://letstalknevada.com/election-2016-live-thread-fallout-edition-t-175-days/#more-327117
NotMax
Whoops. BJ pre-empted by panties_in_a_wad.com again.
Trollhattan
@dedc79:
Heh!
germy shoemangler
@Punchy:
I saw a video for a proposed new device: the catterbox. It’s a collar for your cat that translates her various meows. Of course, the inventors and people looking for money are full of shit. In fact, I think it constitutes animal abuse. The thing is big and bulky. Looks uncomfortable as hell.
Most cat people know what their cats are telling them. It’s always either “Feed!” or “Pet me!” or “Not now!” or an occasional “I love you.” No need for electronic gimmicks.
AxelFoley
Been saying for a few years now that Bernie was a piece of shit. Glad the rest of you are finally seeing it live and in living color.
Xantar
@PNW_WarriorWoman:
Wait. Your link is trying to make the distinction that the death threat wasn’t a death threat because it said, “You should be hanged” instead of “You will be hanged”? Have I got that right?
Mike J
@PNW_WarriorWoman: you have video of a chair not being thrown?
Chris
Also,
IMO, all of this is survivable, if not good. The only thing that isn’t is if he decides to go full Nader. Anybody with his visibility who runs third party has no chance of winning, but can still count on one or two percent of the vote being drawn off. And in elections as close as those of today, that can be all it takes.
And whether he does that is entirely up to him.
SFAW
Maybe the Party can make Bernie a maharaja, that might soothe him sufficiently.
I’m not quite as annoyed at Bernie as some here, but I’m getting there. That said, I can see a glimmer of hope in his press release. It is possible that his “It can open its doors and welcome into the party people who are prepared to fight for real economic and social change” comment can be construed to mean that he’ll be satisfied with a major say in the Party platform, and certain specific assurances regarding some of his favoritest issues. Of course, if that’s actually the case, one hopes that the Party is smart enough not to send DWS to do the negotiating. But, if handled properly, it might work.
Of course, if the statement I pasted means that the only way he’ll be satisfied is with being given the nomination, then we’re fucked. I’m hoping that his vanity does have limits.
[For what it’s worth, the “maharaja” comment was a paraphrase of some wisdom uttered by Lord John Marbury, may he Rest In Peace.]
Hildebrand
The most frustrating part of this is the way in which Bernie and the old die-hards are screwing those just getting politically active. Seems like Bernie has perfected a way to create cynical, bitter non-voters – enter a race, when you start to lose, blame the system.
germy
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/bernie-backers-reality-check-nevada-violence-video-proves-we-only-lifted-a-chair-in-frustration/
“And now turn to page 27 of your hymnal: Lift Every Chair And Swing”
Mike J
@Punchy:
I saw a press release out of MIT the other day talking about the ability to genetically manipulate the coat pattern of your cat. Keep hoping Tom Levenson will cover it.
Dog Dawg Damn
@SFAW: Well, they should figure out what the hell he wants while he is in the bargaining phase and get him on board pronto.
Iowa Old Lady
Someone on here aptly quoted Jon Stewart yesterday. He was talking about Republicans but if the shoe fits: “I think you have confused tyranny with losing.”
singfoom
The chair exists in a quantum state of being thrown and being not thrown simultaneously.
EZSmirkzz
I think everyone is missing the point of the Sander’s campaign, although I could be wrong.
First off it is a political insurgency to open up the party dominated by party activists, to the will of the people. A more democratic Democratic Party, as opposed to the current configuration of DLC, Third way, Rockefeller Republicans that washed into the party when Nelson and the moderates were driven out of the GOP.
People either forget, or do not remember how the Party was dominated by corrupt political bosses and machine politics in the sixties which led first to the Gene McCarthy campaign and the Kennedy candidacy which suck the air out of Gene’s campaign and left Kennedy in a very similar position of being out of favor with the machine, which would have re-nominated Johnson for a second term. Johnson probably could have handled the McCarthy candidacy, but Kennedy absolutely undermined him with blacks and the youth. Humphrey then became the machine’s first choice, having stayed within the fold and being a reliable liberal to boot. Humphreys problem was being tied to Johnson and the machine.
I don’t think Kennedy was aiming for a political revolution, he thought he could win, but after California that was a pretty dim prospect. He could however open up the doors and let a little sunshine in, even if that had not been his original intent, and reunited the party behind Humphrey if he had lived, which I believe he would have done.
We have a very similar scenario now with Sander’s campaign, although I think he was more about the political revolution than actually obtaining the nomination, even though there was a real chance of him doing so had he got traction from a objective press, which as we know no longer exists in America.
The Chicago police riot was very much a response to the student/civil rights movements march on the convention which in the end resulted in the demise of the student movement, and the opening up of the political process to more primaries and fewer caucuses. The student movement split in apathy and Nixon supporters, (here’s looking at you girl!,) upset about the Vietnam War, which is part and parcel of the current Tea Party/Evangelical/Fundamentalist movements in the GOP, a group of people that conveniently forgot about the war when they were no longer liable to the draft and were then conveniently mugged by real estate while Nixon invaded Cambodia and Laos. Hence the little Davey Horowitz’s of the conservative movement.
I’m fairly convinced that most of the moderate left is missing the forest for the trees, and involving non aligned, and the new and young in their circular firing squad, so they can be right, and on the right side of history with Hillary on this one. Hillary on the other hand is going to need Bernie to bring as much of his movement around to her side as is possible, and he can’t appear to be selling out while doing so.
As far as I can tell, most of this argument and the fee-fees being hurt extravaganza are complete and utter BS. The average American may have a memory of six weeks, but the young will remember how this is handled for the rest of their lives, and would behoove Hillary’s supporters to act like the adults they heretofore have been pretending to be.
dmsilev
@PNW_WarriorWoman: Every time I see a Sanders supporter try to equate the actions of one random Hillary supporter in a bar who has no official connection with the campaign to the actions of hundreds of Sanders campaign delegates at a state convention, I know to disregard or at the very least double and triple check any claims from that person.
Roger Moore
@chopper:
Sanders is claiming we have to play game 7 anyway because he’s sure his protest of game 5 will be upheld when he takes the commissioner to court over it.
gwangung
@germy: Um, they don’t think that can be seen a threatening?
peach flavored shampoo
@germy shoemangler: Or “I just crapped in your bathroom and neither flushed or washed my paws, so f#ck off and gimmie some sunrays and yarn”.
Trollhattan
@germy:
Holy shit, it was actually a Jewish wedding!
germy
@PNW_WarriorWoman:
that reminded me of the late, great Patrice O’Neal who always demanded, collected and kept receipts everywhere he went. He’d had a bad run-in with the authorities and knew what it felt like to be the accused.
gwangung
@EZSmirkzz:
I’m also convinced that Sanders is hurting himself and his cause by not paying attention to details. Thinks like showing up, making your sure you have your credentials, etc. Otherwise you just don’t seem serious. The effort is two ways…in order to be taken seriously, you have to take your details seriously.
Dog Dawg Damn
@dmsilev:
This.
Partisancheese
Hillary didn’t concede until the very end in 2008. Not sure why Sanders has to. If you don’t think the DNC establishment has been against Sanders since the beginning and it is just him being sour grapes then you have some massive blinders on. All this looks like is you setting up blaming Sanders if Hillary loses in November. Not because she is a weak candidate with super high unlikeables. Its always someone else. It’s Sanders, its stupid kids, its hippies, its the republicans, its Nader! Its never, hey, maybe our establishment centrist neo-liberal bullshit isn’t working and we need to change things up a bit. No, for you guys, this ideology is considered the only reality. As in, you are so stuck on this shit you cannot fathom anything else being possible or attainable. Just third-way, corporate, I am only liberal on social issues but certainly not economic issues horseshit is the only true way.
Roger Moore
@germy shoemangler:
Especially because it turns out that there’s no standard cat dialect. Researchers tested this by playing recordings of cats’ meows both for their humans and for other cats’ humans. Humans could correctly interpret their own cat’s language but not that of other cats.
DanF
If this primary was a basketball game, HRC was up 25 points at half time. They traded baskets for most of the third quarter. We’re seven minutes into the 4th quarter, and Bernie has only managed to chip a few points from the lead. With five minutes to go, he’s still down 18 points so it’s time to start complaining about the refs.
Of course, in this particular game of basketball, for every point Bernie scores, HRC is going to score .8 points because points are proportional, so good luck in that final five. If this were anything but the playoffs, I would have turned it off and gone to sleep a long time ago.
germy
@peach flavored shampoo: Or “it’s three o’clock on a Sunday morning. My litterbox is clean and my food dish is full, but I still feel like yelling at you. I’m not entirely sure why.”
Aleta
(reposted edited from below)
I think that triumphant look in Sanders’ face is his deja vu delusion about the 60s working out OK this time as long he”s at the wheel.
I used to think one reason for his continuing was his caring about his supporters and contributors. Now I think he’s using any individuals he can for the “greater good” in his mind, the arrival of the revolution. That’s been done before, including by Marxists in the 60s.
Age-wise he doesn’t have time for incremental change or to follow rules that don’t work for him instantly. The age and future of his younger supporters don’t seem to matter to him as much as it does to Obama (who also believes in miracles, but also says: stay positive, act decent, and never give up).
Really disappointed to see Sanders’ detachment from guiding and caring about his younger supporters. I believe he will in some sense walk away from them, too. It’s weird to see in some of his people a sort of libertarian-socialism that does not look out for others.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@germy:
LaLaLa. Oh, sorry. I lost my decent singing voice around 12.
rofl. :-)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
@Percysowner:
The answer is yes..they did try and grease the skids.
The main problem is letting someone who was never a formal Democrat run as a Democrat.
Because, in the end, in 2008, Hillary had to come around, if she was ever to even think about running for anything else. Same for everyone in that race. Because, if she had not, she would have been DEAD in the Democratic Party.
Sanders IS NOT A DEMOCRAT.
THAT is what is different.
so, trying to be too cute by half, DWS let someone who had NEVER been a Democrat, run in the Democratic Party’s Primary for PRESIDENT.
SFAW
@Dog Dawg Damn:
Is “they” the DNC? Or The Sanders campaign? [Serious question, I can read it both ways.]
And I agree about the “pronto” part.
bemused
It’s been a long, excruciating, insane prez campaign so far and there’s still 5 plus months to go. I need to stock up on aspirin, alcohol and beach novels.
Cat48
They think Closed Primaries is “rigging the system”, etc. Things that have existed for years.
Tried to explain each state decides on elections, but no….
eclare
@AxelFoley: So how were you clued in? To be honest, I had never heard of the guy til he announced he was running, but at the beginning of this year I read articles about how he refused to work with anyone, all the while fuming on the sidelines that people were doing it wrong.
germy
@Trollhattan: but no broken glass.
Chris
@EZSmirkzz:
It would be nice if the Bernie Sanders campaign occasionally acknowledged that, while this might’ve been a fair description of the Democratic Party at one point, the Obama era has in fact moved the pendulum significantly to the left. (Not all of that’s due to him – it’s become cliche to point out that OWS changed the national conversation – but stuff like the ACA certainly is).
Hildebrand
@Partisancheese: I can guarantee you, if Hillary loses in the fall, the last thing anyone around here will be thinking about is Bernie Sanders. We will be far more concerned about the coming Trumpocalypse. We will be far more concerned about the fact that our country will be facing a real life version of Idiocracy. Perhaps, if you weren’t so busy pounding nails into your own palms, you would recognize that we have bigger fish to fry.
germy
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: If you’re like me during most church hymns, all you have to do is mumble under your breath. Let the choir do all the work.
dmsilev
@Partisancheese: He doesn’t have to concede, but it would be kind of nice if he would stop acting like an asshole and likewise requested of his supporters that they stop acting like assholes.
rikyrah
@AxelFoley:
Hey Axel :)
Trollhattan
@germy:
The party learned long ago to limit everybody to Dixie Cups and plastic sporks.
Xboxershorts
@rikyrah:
I get what you’re saying but…
And this is important….
Bernie has Caucused with the Dems for 20+ years in congress, chaired committees and more.
To an awful lot of people, literally, Stadiums full, he’s been a far better Democrat than a lot of Dems
That matters to people. Don’t discount that.
Roger Moore
@EZSmirkzz:
That would be easier to accept if he weren’t dismissing the will of the people as expressed by their actual votes. Hillary has more than 3 million more actual votes in the primary than Bernie does. If the goal is to respect the will of the people, shouldn’t that be the most important factor?
Tokyokie
As someone who voted for Sanders in the primary a couple of months ago, I’m appalled that a good number of his supporters seem to have forgotten the lessons of 2000, when, because some thought there was no real difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore that they might as well vote for the more ideologically pure Ralph Nader instead. One costly and disruptive war entered into on false pretenses, one economic collapse, one major city destroyed, and several horrifying judicial appointments later, that premise has been demonstrated to have been absolutely false. But they seem hellbent on helping elect as president a racist neofascist with narcissistic personality disorder because there’s no difference between him and Hillary Clinton. Which is to say that if a candidate doesn’t adhere to their concept of ideological purity (which nobody but Sanders does), that candidate is 100 percent pure evil. Come on, folks. Politics isn’t a binary function. Are you really that simple-minded?
As for Wasserman-Schultz greasing the skids for Clinton, let me just say that my judgment of her competence is such that I can’t imagine her doing so without getting crushed by timber in the process.
SFAW
@EZSmirkzz:
Quite the understatement.
But, on the plus side, the rest of your post reminds me of some of the splendid oratory of Sarah Palin. Proper punctuation, syntax, diction are not your enemies.
Citizen Scientist
I had a day off today to take out my old furnace and prep for the new install. I spent part of my morning arguing with a friend who lives in Seattle that she had to look at the whole story about the NV convention, and actually understand actual facts. But no, she had a video and why couldn’t I understand that what happened was illegal. I just told her that we’d talk about when I come out to the northwest next year. I just can’t do it anymore, and i voted for Bernie in PA’s primary, knowing full well that HRC would win.
PeterJ
@Partisancheese:
Clinton conceded in June, after the last primary, she didn’t spend the time between the last primary and the convention trying to switch super delegates, even though Obama’s lead was a lot smaller in 2008, she was a lot closer in total votes, and the probability of her switching super delegates was a lot higher (I wonder how many of the super delegates utterly dislike Sanders after what he and his supporters have done).
But then that’s just what Sanders is planning to do, run this all the way to the convention, despite the fact that he has no chance of ever switching any super delegates. If you haven’t noticed, more super delegates have switched from Sanders to Clinton, than the other way.
JMG
@EZSmirkzz: The recall of history in your post makes me question the rest of it. Bobby Kennedy WON California. He was shot after a VICTORY speech. He was acceptable to the “corrupt” bosses (although LBJ hated him, he didn’t have much clout by then), and was more likely than not going to be the nominee. Clinton ran hard, but she also prepared herself and her followers for losing before the final buzzer sounded. I don’t blame Sanders for running hard, nor even for staying in until California. But he doesn’t act like a person who knows they’ve lost, and that is troublesome.
Citizen Scientist
@Tokyokie: Honestly, I think many of his supporters don’t remember 2000 because they were too young and don’t care to do the research.
Betty Cracker
@Chris: Thank you! Anyone who smears the Democratic Party as a DLC-3rd Way-Rockefeller Republican organization in 2016 is a Rip Van Winkle-ass blithering idiot.
SuperHrefna
@gvg: I remember being similarly frightened at a similar point in 2008 when HC refused to give in long after the math showed she couldn’t possibly win. By the time she endorsed we were all so riled up that the endorsement wasn’t greeted with much cheer, just exasperation. I think it’s part of the process? It’s hard for the losers to accept they came so close and still lost, and it’s hard for the winners not to feel fear about the damage the losers could inflict in the general
SFAW
@germy:
I do that all the time, and I don’t go to church.
Percysowner
@rikyrah: I’d really like some details of how they greased the skids. I wasn’t paying attention that early in the Primaries, so I’d like some more details if you can supply them.
AdamK
I think you should spell out the senator’s name, not just use his initials, out of respect.
Roger Moore
@JMG:
I don’t blame him for running hard, but I do blame him for running dirty. He’s trying to do as much damage to Hillary as possible and then claim the superdelegates should overturn her victory because she’s damaged goods. It’s not the kind of thing anyone who cares about long-term success would do.
Linnaeus
I posted this in Betty Cracker’s thread, but commenting there has tailed off, so I’m reposting it here. Here is a counterpoint to the argument that Sanders will try to “burn it all down”:
gwangung
@Percysowner: Actually, I’d be interested, too. I still sorta think there was some greasing, but I just like to know (because I think people have invariably assumed a lot more bad behavior…and I mean A LOT….than actually existed).
Emma
@bemused: Am I actually reduced to considering fan-fiction and absinthe.
Roger Moore
@Citizen Scientist:
Or they’re the kind of Naderite who is still claiming Gore lost the election by running a bad campaign and Nader had nothing to do with it.
Percysowner
@PeterJ: Actually she had more votes than Obama and she won six of the final nine primaries. I can’t imagine the outcry if Sanders was losing in delegate count but winning in popular vote. So her case was slightly different.
Betty Cracker
@Percysowner: The debate calendar certainly seemed designed to minimize exposure, which would favor the candidate with the highest profile, i.e., Clinton.
Betty Cracker
@Linnaeus: That’s what compelled me to give Sanders the benefit of the doubt for so long. But that don’t mean shit if he convinces his followers that the party is a corrupt organization that screwed him.
Roger Moore
@Linnaeus:
If he really believes that, he should start acting that way. He’s said a bunch of things that are going to be difficult to take back. If you really believe that your fellow candidate is better than the opposition, you don’t slag them as hard as possible.
Trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
My shiny (okay, not shiny because it’s cardboardy paper) Calif ballot is on the countertop, awaiting my completion and mailing in. I think I’m going to have my kid do this alongside me, so she can fill in the Hillary oval. Next presidential election will be the first time she’ll be able to vote, and at that point she can reelect Hillary.
Xboxershorts
@Emma:
The absinthe alone is worth it
colby
@Percysowner: And the “debates” thing makes no sense anyway, because Clinton is very good in debates.
EZSmirkzz
@gwangung: If you want to discuss the Sanders campaign we can do that.
First off I don’t think he had the necessary organization and infrastructure to cover all the details, which we are going to omit here I presume, as you point out. I don’t think anyone does, but compared to the GOP’s crew, he was better organized with better infrastructure than any of them had. I’m using that in the past tense now, as they will coalesce around Trump and his campaign will move beyond what we have seen so far. Details, like reality, seems to have a liberal bias.
I have nothing to say about Hillary on this topic, although I could very well do so, but I don’t find this vein of conversation to be productive of anything except talking points for the vast right wing original thinkers.
bemused
@Emma:
I thoroughly done with living in a cheesy reality show or the movie Idiocracy.
germy shoemangler
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t know. I got that impression from the GOP debates because we don’t have cable TV. At least Clinton/Sanders were on broadcast television.
Also nowadays people watch things when and where they want to. My wife will listen to a debate on her phone while she’s in her sewing room, not watch it live on TV…
Xboxershorts
@Betty Cracker:
A LOT of his followers are left leaning independent who already think the DNC is corrupt, they believed this even before Sanders got in the race.
Kinda why they’re not registered democrats, ya know?
germy shoemangler
@Emma:
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.
Davis X. Machina
@Chris: Everyone who voted in the 2000 or 2004 election has to be dead before this is generally accepted as true — which is too bad because it’s true today.
Percysowner
@Betty Cracker: Was there anything other than the debate calendar involved? I know about that. It also doesn’t answer if you think this was because Hillary was running or if DWS and the DNC would have done the same if another big name player (Joe Biden for example) was the only announced candidate.
Linnaeus
@Betty Cracker:
It depends on how many of his supporters believe that and believe it strongly enough such that they won’t support Clinton, and I don’t think that describes most of the people who are supporting him. I suspect that Sanders is trying to maximize his leverage going into the convention. I’m not saying that he’s going about it the right way, but I do think that’s what he’s doing.
Davis X. Machina
@Betty Cracker:
I know some of them. Their three-step plan to make American politics work again.
• Get the parties out of politics.
• Get the politicians out of politics.
• Get the power out of politics.
After that comes the millennium — the real one, not the one we just had a few years ago.
EZSmirkzz
@JMG: I’m well aware of Kennedy’s victory in California. It still wasn’t enough to get him the nomination, which would have to have been won in Chicago, from the very people who opposed his candidacy.
As for Sander’s campaign this thing ain’t over until it’s over. I have been very careful this cycle not to get too involved in the nominating process, either for, or against a particular candidate, and for my own good reasons. But rest assured, as I remarked to Peggy Noonan in 2006, don’t bring any guitars, we didn’t come to play.
Linnaeus
@Roger Moore:
I’m willing to give him a chance to start acting that way around June or so. If he does work to undermine Clinton’s candidacy, then I’m done with him.
Betty Cracker
@Linnaeus: I hope to Christ you’re right.
Poopyman
@Betty Cracker:
FTFY
hamletta
AKA people who show up and do the goddamn work. Fuck you.
Betty Cracker
@EZSmirkzz:
Okay, that was good for a laugh.
Canigou
Bernie is not the Pied Piper—–people who have supported him will decide on their own whether to support Hillary. The influence of endorsements is vastly overrated.
So it doesn’t matter whether Bernie makes a halfhearted endorsement of Hillary, or how actively he campaigns for her, or whether he spends more of his time supporting congressional candidates. Whatever he says and does, I’m not voting for Hillary.
Kylroy
@Iowa Old Lady: That was me. And yeah, in a democracy, *sometimes you lose*. Your ability to actually effect change is determined not by not how loudly you whine, but by your ability to come back next time – I don’t see Bernie doing anything that would encourage people to hang around.
gwangung
@EZSmirkzz: I think established organizations responds to focus and competent behavior (for one thing, focus and competent behavior gives something that’s can be discussed, and the organization’s own behavior can be modified). Moreover, both the established party and the upstarts need to realize that the upstarts need to engage in the party to get change done. This is the reason why Sanders ran as a Democrat—they’re pre-existing mechanisms and organizing clout that can be used. You cannot stand apart from it to get change—-you need to put in the work (and it’s going to be MUCH more than what’s been needed heretofore); you cannot destroy it—or you cede power to the Republican party, whose power structure still stands, thank you very much.
My point boils down to is that the realization needs to be done by both, and not just a unilateral capitulation by one side.
The Thin Black Duke
It’s depressing to realize how many people think politics in the real world is a Hollywood movie scripted by Aaron Sorkin.
TG Chicago
Sanders built up a lot of great political capital from last May up until March or so. He could have used that capital to lead a faction in the party to keep up the leftward pressure on President Clinton after she’s in office.
But he’s pissing it all away and getting nothing positive out of it. It’s just sad. I think he can still change course and salvage something worthwhile out of this campaign…. but he doesn’t seem like he’s interested in making any positive changes anymore.
Who knows? Maybe he never was.
hamletta
@Citizen Scientist:
True for some, like the idjit who’s been on MSNBC from Las Vegas the last few days, but many of the real jabronis are old farts.
cleek
@Linnaeus:
he’s been working against her for months. the math hasn’t been in his favor ever and it’s been sharply against him since March. but he’s still out there smearing her and the party and the process. he’s accomplishing absolutely nothing more than driving away voters who should be Clinton’s natural base – along with those who would be, at least, grudgingly-inclined towards her.
he’s not working against Trump, he’s working in parallel with Trump, against Clinton.
he’s literally doing the GOP’s work for them.
Linnaeus
@Betty Cracker:
I hope I am too.
I totally get why you, Cole, and a lot of other people here are very skeptical that Sanders will support Clinton in the general. I can’t say for certain that he will, and if I’m wrong about that, then I’m wrong and I will have zero trouble admitting that.
One reason why I don’t quite agree with the Nader parallel – at least not at this point – is that, unlike Nader, Sanders is a US Senator, will go back to being one after the convention, and will be running again in 2018. He has caucused with the Democrats his entire career in Congress. It would be very much against his interests to refuse to support Clinton. I’m betting that he understands that.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@gvg: That you for stating that very unpleasant truth. He’s got me scared shitless. Seen what happens when candidates do this, in my voting lifetime we got Reagan and Bush II out of these kinds of shenanigans, the two worst presidents in the history of the United States. Scared enough that I want the Democratic Party to tell him to go fuck himself and his delegates at the convention and give him NOTHING. I also support a rules change that’s going to state that any Dem candidate running for the House or higher office must have been a party member for at least ten years. Congrats, BernieBros. I’m scared enough to figuratively lock the doors and buy a gun to keep you fuckers out.
I don’t appreciate being taken hostage, and that is exactly what is going on here.
PeterJ
@Percysowner:
And she is a Democrat who cares about the Democratic Party and wants Democrats elected statewide, to the House, and to the Senate. Really not sure what Sanders cares about more than his ego.
About the popular vote in 2008, it’s all a bit murky, do you count Florida or not, Michigan or not, how do you count the votes in Michigan if you do count them, and what about the the caucuses? But two things are certain, it was very close in 2008, and Sanders is nowhere near Clinton this year.
schrodinger's cat
One of my biggest problems with Bernie is math. His math has been complex, because his numbers are imaginary. From his free college stuff to the delegate math right now. He can’t deal with real numbers because they represent the evil establishment or something.
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
And I mean, it’s not like I’m unsympathetic to the notion that corporate elites and the 1% and the like have too much influence on the party (Obama himself mentioned that, in that passage that was quoted here a few weeks back, the simply dangers of hanging out in an environment where everyone’s above a certain high income level). But yeah, some acknowledgment of the progress made in the last eight years would be nice. Ironically, Sanders is borrowing from the Gore playbook right now, running from the legacy of a popular president in the mistaken belief that there’s anything to be gained by it.
The Thin Black Duke
@cleek: As I said in an earlier thread, how do we know Bernie isn’t cashing checks signed by the Koch brothers?
schrodinger's cat
@The Thin Black Duke: Indeed, release the tax returns.
gene108
I really think there’s a certain group of folks, who are liberals, who suffer from some sort of hostage / abusee syndrome.
They know the only people, who can make things better are the Democrats, so they scream bloody murder at the Democrats for not going all the way into turning us into Denmark.
They also know Republicans will skull-fuck them into oblivion, and bitch-slap them afterwards, so they don’t bother focusing their anger on the Republicans. It’s no use. The Republicans aren’t going to listen or do shit for them. They know they’re lucky, if the Republicans don’t kick them in the nuts on the way out the door.
So they save their venom for the only people, who’ll give them the time of day, which is the Democrats.
Edited for typos.
Bruce K
What keeps getting under my collar and itching is the all-or-nothing, now-or-never attitude I keep seeing from a lot of people. Never mind that at the moment, Donald Trump becoming President is the worst-case scenario – granted, nothing’s a done deal yet, but seeing what HRC did to the Benghazi committee gives me a bit of confidence that she’ll grind The Donald into mince, and I’ve got no such confidence with regard to Sanders, particularly once the GOP’s guns get trained on him…
gwangung
@TG Chicago:
Yes, on the building of political capital. And yes, that he directed all on himself, and not in building structures to bring about the solutions he cared about. Seems to me that he thought that >HE< was the solution to all the problems, which is a little egotistical, ignoring the limitation of any one person.
Xboxershorts
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Bernie’s most strident supporters feel exactly the same way.
Mike J
@Betty Cracker:
Tweets condensed and reordered:
WarMunchkin
@schrodinger’s cat: Cauchy zingers aside, I think everyone knows the delegate math, including Bernie Sanders. It’s fair for him to run, but he doesn’t need a rationale to do it. “I’m running an issues-based campaign” is perfectly fair to say. He’s lying.
Ah yes, the stupid or evil debate, how I missed you, my old friend.
NR
@Roger Moore:
Bullshit. Sanders has pulled a ton of punches that Trump won’t. He hasn’t even mentioned the Clinton Foundation, to give just one example.
maryQ
Anyone see anything about Tad Devine in news or social media? Last tweet is May 6. Wonder what’s going on.
The Lodger
@SFAW: Not to mention what happened to RFK after the California primary. Cheese Louise, how tone deaf can you get?
ETA : I’m ranting at the idiot SFAW was replying to, in case that wasn’t clear.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@The Thin Black Duke: Bernie doesn’t like Millionaires and Billionaires™, haven’t you heard? :-/
Bernie is undoubtedly pretty clean. He’s a true believer, not someone playing one on TV. Sure some Koch money may have reached his campaign in an attempt to keep him in the race to damage HRC, but I’m sure it’s small potatoes. Similarly, some Turdblossom money may have gone to HRC to make sure she was there to run against JEB? All kinds of things are possible, but it’s not the big picture.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Feathers
@gwangung: From the best I can tell, this “greasing the skids” is a typical anti-Clinton ratfvcking. Take something that is being done completely by the books, and describe it in wild eyed terms as being absolutely corrupt. I had a now gone friend who was a muck-raking lefty reporter, experienced and good at it. When he heard about Whitewater, he jumped right on it. He was appalled by what he found. “And then Clinton called Mr. X” “Well, yes, that’s what people do when they are buying property from Mr. X.” “No, you don’t understand, Clinton CALLED Mr. X.” He went through all the Whitewater docs with a fine tooth comb and there was nothing there except a failed land deal involving people who really didn’t know squat about real estate. Needless to say, he didn’t jump on the bandwagon.
It is really sad to see the Sanders folks fall for this kind of shit. Roberts rules of order are a conspiracy! Fundraising following all the current rules is greasing the skids! Complain about the system all you want, but don’t pretend your opponent is some nefarious evil person for following its rules. Or at least make clear that that is your complaint – I hate Clinton because she is a part of the system.
The Thin Black Duke
@Xboxershorts: You mean the loud stupid angry white guys who threw dollar bills at Hillary Clinton? The same Bernie Sanders supporters who called Barbara Boxer a bitch?
Canigou
Hillary is the Ralph Nader of 2016——pursuing the presidency out of vanity and ego, although the continuation of her candidacy is indirectly very helpful to the Republican nominee.
If Nader had dropped out, Gore would have had a better chance to win. Likewise if Hillary drops out, the Democrats (with Bernie) will have a much better chance to win. The polls are not close on this——-Hillary might win a close race, but could lose, while Bernie would likely win big, and might bring along a Democratic House and Senate too.
gene108
@Chris:
To be fair, Gore was in a tough spot. States he and Clinton won, easily in 1992 and either lost or won on smaller margins in 1996, were extremely hostile to Bill Clinton by 2000.
Tennessee and Arkansas, which should have been safe states for Gore in 2000, had turned on the Clinton Administration and VP Gore and I believe went for Bush, Jr.
There’s no reason for Bernie to run away from or bash Obama. The states Obama is bad in aren’t going to go for an atheist Jew from Brooklyn.
terry chay
@PNW_WarriorWoman: I’ve had a chair thrown at me before, and a co-worker had one thrown at him. There’s actually a surprisingly low bar for such behavior among certain people. Not that anyone here cares about Bernie supporters throwing a chair when there is so many worse things (“c*nt”, death threats, video proof that the incitement of the crowd to be a mob came from the top of the campaign, a non-apology apology, etc.).
Personally I’m relishing the collapse of the Sanders campaign given the treatment people who called it for what it was from the beginning. I have a twinge of sadness of how this is going to set liberal policies back a bit in the party and disillusion some(*), but then I think about how short our memories are for Ralph Nader or electoral impossibility of a larger stimulus and the public option and I realize that this is a small price to pay for the lesson that a big tent means a sh*t-ton of patience toward the practical good at the price of an unattainable best. Tribal politics has no place in this party.
(*) But how many these are really people in demos that’d be voting Republican in the 80’s and 90’s but found that they were thrown under the bus for the sake of the 50+1 strategy. Think about it.
The Thin Black Duke
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Then let’s see the tax returns. I’d love to be proven wrong, seriously.
germy
@The Thin Black Duke: The kochs would set up a dummy corp and give it some progressive-sounding name and Bernie/Jane would be none the wiser?
Or are you saying he’s knowingly taking koch money? I’m not sure I can believe that.
Barbara
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: It’s interesting to me that Sanders’ ramped up response, which is getting a lot of press, might be intended to take the focus off of his wife’s rather significant cluster f*ck. It’s bad enough that she made poor strategic calls about expanding the campus by taking a loan that the college could not afford to pay back, but that’s the kind of mistake a lot of people might have made. The fact that she directed $500,000 to her daughter for woodworking classes and that there is evidence that she lied to secure the loan — that’s lack of integrity and possibly criminal behavior that would be a very big deal, on or off the campaign trail. And my personal peeve, why exactly Clinton is the one accused of being dishonest when it’s Trump and Sanders’ wife who are caught in the crosshairs of civil and criminal fraud allegations. At any rate, I simply wonder whether Sanders is releasing a lot of noxious gas to deflect attention from his wife. When his campaign was asked to comment on the situation it refused.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@gene108: Indeed.
Still, it’s frustrating when Bernie and others spend so much time yelling about Corruption™ and Millionaires and Billionaires and our Corrupt Campaign Finance System™ and so little yelling about how the Teabaggers are trying to destroy the national government and turn back the clock to the 1850s… :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Feathers
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: The students of Burlington College would disagree.
schrodinger's cat
@gene108: Denmark has instituted fairly harsh policies in the ongoing refugee crisis. Europe’s social welfare policies are going to be under a lot of stress.
Linnaeus
@cleek:
It’s a competitive primary, though. I expect slings and arrows during the process. Sanders’s campaign outperformed expectations and that’s indicative of something. Sanders decided to roll with that.
Applejinx
@PNW_WarriorWoman: Dude, I saw a chair brandished on video. I’ve been saying that and ‘please show me video of a chair being thrown’ otherwise I wouldn’t go along with the ‘chair throwing’ meme that Hilbots were really, really quick to jump all over.
What I saw was some overexcited bro waving a chair in the air, and then a flurry of Sanders supporters around him quickly getting him to chill out. My take was ‘way to go, Conan, THAT isn’t going to be all over the news’.
On the one hand, I’m annoyed at people ignoring the Sanders supporters who got that situation under control after 16 hours of hell and losing their case. I like the people who promptly shut the bro down, and it sure as fuck wasn’t Clinton people doing it, it was other Sanders people.
On the other, don’t even tell me there was no chair brandishing because I saw one bro doing exactly that, for about two and a half seconds. Chair brandishing (toward the stage, threateningly) was exactly what I briefly saw. Be honest.
The Thin Black Duke
@germy: Remember, Jane says she can’t figure out TurboTax.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@The Thin Black Duke: If he were taking Koch money, it wouldn’t show up in his taxes.
Yes, Bernie should release his taxes. Why he’s not doing so when it should show that he’s not a Corrupt Millionaire™ is a bit disturbing. (I don’t think there’s anything there, myself, and I don’t understand why he won’t do it. Is he that disorganized? He can request copies from the IRS (IIRC), for crying out loud.)
Cheers,
Scott.
MattMinus
@Percysowner:
Superdelegates. The theory, as told in the fever swamps of reddit, is that lifelong democrats could not possibly support another lifelong democrat over a purity elemental who can commune with birds. No, it turns out that the DNC, whose leader is totally in the tank for Hillary, has been giving money to the campaigns of superdelegates! This is not a thing that the DNC would normally do, so obviously, they’re buying off the superdelegates, whose obvious preference would be for Bernie if not for this illicit campaign cash from an organization meant to support Democratic campaigns.
feebog
Bernie is not only going to hang to California/New Jersey on June 7, he is going to hang in until DC votes on June 14. This if fine with me, because he is going to be crushed in all three primaries and HRC will have both the leverage and the momentum. HRC is not the perfect candidate, and in fact I wish we there had been some better choices at the beginning of the contest. But she is what we have and we better work our asses off because if Trump wins we are well and truly fu*ked.
TG Chicago
@gwangung: Yeah, that’s fair. Sadly.
Barbara
@gene108: They don’t understand Denmark. Denmark and other Scandinavian countries are starting to cleave based on racial and ethnic identity and a lot of the welfare state was created when they were very, very homogenous. They have nothing like our own diversity even now — but as a Danish friend once told me, it’s easier to support the welfare state when it seems like everyone in Denmark is related to everyone else.
Chyron HR
@NR:
That’s weird because literally the only time I ever hear about the nebulously nefarious Clinton Foundation is when Sanders volunteers like you make their daily rounds to piss and moan at anyone who doesn’t feel the Bern. Go figure.
The Thin Black Duke
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Thing is, and I’m not trying to be a dick here, but it’s the goddamned double standard that’s infuriating me. Idiots demand that Obama show his birth certificate, Clinton is accused of being a Wall Street sock puppet for doing dull boilerplate speeches to a bored audience of business suits, but it’s O.K. that Bernie Sanders won’t release his tax returns and his wife bankrupted Burlington college. Take that redwood out of your eye, Bernie.
Stratplayer
This. I was an enthusiastic Bernie supporter until, really, the last week. His more rabid backers have come to dominate the movement, with Bernie’s not-so-tacit approval, and they’re ruined it for the rest of us with their belligerence and overweening self-righteousness. I feel totally alienated and basically cast out of a movement that had once given me such joy and hope for the crime of not sufficiently detesting Hillary. Well-played, assholes.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Barbara:
It’s actually worse than that – she induced the bank to lend the college the money by misrepresenting pledges as secured donations, and then got a golden parachute when she left the college when the deal went south because the pledges never materialized into money. She’s got some angry people hot on her heels, and coupled with her refusal to release the tax returns, I think she’s sketchy as hell.
Chris
@gene108:
Fair enough. I do question whether trying to win back these states was a smart move for Gore, as opposed to energizing the people who still liked Bill Clinton. But as late as the nineties I suppose Deep Southern and Appalachian states were still considered in play that aren’t today.
Felanius Kootea
At this point, I’m convinced that the Sanders supporters who are yelling loudest and ready to blow up the Democratic Party were never really Democrats. Ron/Rand Paul supporters and Green Party voters who would never ever vote for Hillary in the general are not going to dictate what I do to prevent Trump from becoming president. Maybe the Democrats should introduce a new rule that a presidential candidate has to have been a registered Democrat for at least two or three years before they run. That would have helped Bernie and his organizers understand the Democrats’ rules, idiosyncrasies and all, without assuming that rules that have been in place for years or decades are being enforced just to trip him up.
The Democrats tried to do a good thing by opening up and allowing someone who has caucused with them for years but only been a Democrat for a year run for President. And all they get for that is grief from people who don’t realize how amazing that is for a political party. Good luck to the socialists, the Greens and the Libertarians in the future. They should focus on winning congressional seats and state government houses.
Chris
@Barbara:
I’ve had a notion for a while that much of Europe is only now entering the Nixonland nightmare that the U.S. dove into fifty years ago.
Barbara
@Chris: If Gore had won New Hampshire he would have been president, even if he had lost Florida and Ohio. New Hampshire was a lot more congenial than Tennessee and Arkansas.
Leland
I just had to post here to basically scream out loud. Turns out my best friend of like 15 years is one of these Bernie assholes. I took hours out of my life a couple weeks ago to explain to him that Hillary Clinton isn’t the maniacal, power-hungry, crooked, criminal bitch he thinks she is; that this comes from 3+ decades of being smeared by the right wing and a basically complicit media; and that, while you might think Sanders is a better candidate (I would certainly have said, at the start of this election, that I was closer to him ideologically although I was a Clinton supporter), Clinton has her own record of accomplishments and fighting for progressive issues as well.
So then last night he sends me this bullshit on Facebook (edited for grammar): “But i guess the way I’d put it is my goal is not to vote for the person I hate least out of two options. And I don’t believe Hillary would make good on things she says she’ll do, so i’m left in a shitty position. I have to either accept the logic of “Well you don’t want to be responsible for THAT guy getting in office, do you?” …or vote based on how my own beliefs align with a particular party/candidate. And i choose to vote based on the latter, because if it’s just going to be about the former, then it would be pretty deflating to me personally.”
Fucking delicate little petunia’s petals are wilting because he doesn’t get his way, so he’s going to take his ball and go home just like that prick Sanders. Almost completely lost my temper with him: “Well at this point IMO Bernie can go fuck himself….he wants the nomination and he’s calling for “reform” of the democratic party’s nominating process simply because he didnt win, and he’s basically crying and threatening to take his ball and go home. The democratic party elected Obama and got healthcare reform done, and it’s full of real progressives who actually make progress on issues, like Elizabeth Warren and Russ Feingold. And every progressive accomplishment of the last 40-50 years, including LGBT protections and civil rights issues for women and minorities. I’ll vote Democrat because I want to see more change, which will by default come incrementally because that’s how change happens in our system.”
I’ve lost my patience with these assholes. It wasn’t some magical brigade of independent unicorns farting rainbows that got us here. It was hard work across literally decades. And so sorry you don’t just get to have Your Way because Your Way is obviously the best and only way. That’s not how America works. You pick the best of the most popular options. And Hillary Clinton is the most popular option on the left. So if you go through with that bullshit and vote for some random Nader-ish third party option to help soothe your fee-fees, then you have to accept 1 of the following 2 options: If progress is made, it happened IN SPITE of you, and if real harm is done, it happened BECAUSE of you. Anyone who wants to know how bad 1 term can be (e.g. that assclown Susan Sarandon), have a look at W. and then imagine it somehow getting worse.
Fucking regressive left.
NR
Oh, and this from Steve M.:
Talk about burying the lede.
Barbara
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I understand that it could be very bad, but it does depend on what, exactly, the loan form stated. Certainly for criminal purposes.
NR
@Chyron HR:
Oh, don’t worry. You’ll be hearing about it a lot in the fall.
John D
@Betty Cracker:
Tuesday 10/13/15 5:30 PM PT
Saturday 11/14/15 8:00 PM CT
Saturday 12/19/15 8:00 PM ET
Sunday 1/17/16 9:00 ET
Thursday 2/4/16 9:00 ET
Thursday 2/11/16 8:00 CT
Sunday 3/6/16 8:00 ET
Wednesday 3/9/16 9:00 ET
Thursday 4/14/16 9:00 ET
What part of that scheduling is designed to minimize exposure? Every single timeslot is local evening primetime except for the very first one, which was west coast fringe time/east coast primetime. I keep hearing that claim, but I’ve never understood it.
gbear
@Xboxershorts:
So, if the party is so impossibly corrupt, why the fuck didn’t you start your own party? How cynical and corrupt was it of you to pretend to join what you perceived as the enemy party? You wanted to be with the popular kids so you could use them to beat them all? That’s a dick move.
Mnemosyne
@The Thin Black Duke:
Booing a popular California senator three weeks before you expect California Democrats to vote for your candidate was probably not a good move.
But, hey, we have an open primary here, so there’s plenty of opportunity for ratfuckers to come in, screw with it, and fuel the conspiracy theorists. Yay.
The Thin Black Duke
@NR: Oh yeah, along with Vince Foster, Whitewater and Benghazi, it’s the GOP’s Greatest Hits of the 90s by K-Tel, available on 8-track and cassette.
Bob In Portland
Hey Cole, maybe if you say “fuck you, Bernie” a dozen more times a day and click your heels all those people will disappear. Hey, Hillbots don’t need all those crazy people. Fuck ’em. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Have you seen the list of all the corporations that are sponsoring the Dem convention? I mean besides Comcast.
“Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” – Benito Mussolini
singfoom
@John D: One could argue that the Saturday and Sunday timeslots were designed to lower viewership. I’m a political news junkie, but you know when I’m not paying attention to the news and/or politics?
On the weekend where I’m doing things with my family. Maybe I’m an outlier and a poor representative of the normal populace, but it’s not unreasonable to consider 9PM on a Saturday not the best time for the widest viewership of a debate.
Cheers
SRW1
Bernie Sanders: Glory or Götterdämmerung!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@The Thin Black Duke: Agreed. HRC and WJC have released their taxes going back to 1977 or something. Yet they’re Corrupt™. (roll-eyes) Maybe it’s just the usual “attack them on their strength” GOP playbook stuff (Kerry Purple Heart, Max Cleland weak on defense, etc., etc.), but it’s insane for Bernie to be doing this and not releasing his taxes…
Cheers,
Scott.
singfoom
@Bob In Portland: The villagers couldn’t get outside their neoliberal bubble due to the CIA led (HAVE YOU READ LISTEN LIBERAL YET?) false flag operation that installed the fascist regime in Ukraine.
Why so serious?
Linnaeus
@Chris:
Possibly.
I do think, however, that the claim that European social democracies came about because of their homogeneity deserves a little more scrutiny. My impression is that that claim stems from a tendency to view European political and social history through the particular lens of the American experience of race. But even if race wasn’t an especially salient source of social conflict in Europe, there were (and are) plenty of other sources that are just as strong: religion, ethnicity, language, class, culture, etc. European social democracies grew out of decades of conflict, some of it quite violent. The changing demographics of Europe is definitely a challenge, but there’s a difference between adapting a system to change and building one from the ground up.
JMG
Saturday night is TV death for everything except sports, and the Saturday night before Christmas could fairly be accused of trying to hide an event. But those are the only things. Look, both parties try to wrap up the primary phase as early as possible, for reasons we are seeing right now. But as long as Dems have proportional representation, which IS fair, that’s going to be hard to do. If the states had been winner-take-all, Clinton would already have more than enough delegates to win.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
I have to assume that you’re under 30 since you seem to think that, unlike Travelgate, Rose Law Firm, Whitewater, Vince Foster’s suicide, Benghazi, etc etc etc, the blind squirrels are totally going to find a nut this time. They’re due!
Bob In Portland
@The Thin Black Duke: Here’s that right-wing New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/01/30/clinton-system-donor-machine-2016-election/
Here’s that reactionary Harper’s: https://harpers.org/blog/2015/11/shaky-foundations/
And here, from the grave, is Mussolini’s take: “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” – Benito Mussolini
aimai
@SFAW: But this can never happen, SFAW, because the Bernie and his crowd require something more than inclusion in the platform. They always have. The original story–that Bernie was going to “push Hillary to the left” was superseded by the other argument that Hillary and the Democrats are so corrupt and compromised that 1) none of their assurances matter, 2) nothing they say in their platform can be relied upon and 3) none of them can be permitted near the levers of power because they are irremiediably evil. So even if Hillary came out and agreed to campaign in BERNIEFACE ™ and run solely on his platform they would reject that as insufficiently sincere and trustworthy. Just another DLC trick.
EZSmirkzz
@Chris: Sorry I overlooked your response.
Don’t kid yourself about the Wall Street connections into the Democratic Party. Noting first off that Obama is a pragmatist, and recognized his limitations on assuming office, he kept Gates on at DoD which I supported, appointed Geithner which was more pragmatic in getting anything done than helpful to the working and middle classes, or the lower four quintiles if you prefer, and having pulled the economy back from the brink managed to get the ACA through a Congress hamstrung by yellow dog, aka DLC/Third Way/ Rockefeller Republicans – which I think is whom Trump is appealing to now – (glad to be wrong on that.) Obama was never a Roosevelt New Dealer, like Humphrey, Kennedy and the WWII generation was. He never claimed to be so either. He did in fact articulate that he wasn’t in the DLC.
Obama has in fact, in my view, ( just to piss off the girls) been more interested in achieving goals than building any sort of movement. I regularly get to upset conservatives telling me that we survived eight years of Obama by replying he will probably go down as one of the better Presidents of the Republic, which seems to be a joy denied blue staters.
The fact that I have articulated a point of view which the majority disagrees with, because reasons!, should not obscure the fact that I’m not even a Sander’s voter, much less a supporter, which makes their reactions even more revealing about themselves, than would ever care to notice in supposedly liberal. moderate leftist Democratic activists.
If those of you are so thin skinned about a political campaign I shudder to think what you would say if I were to say that a true feminist can do anything a woman can do except give birth.
aimai
@Xboxershorts: In what way are they being held hostage? Please be specific and show your work.
Major Major Major Major
@Linnaeus: Not to mention that their hard-left is way leftier than our (non-academic) hard-left.
terry chay
@Roger Moore: Those people don’t matter because they are black or in Puerto Rico or something. Get with the program!
Linnaeus
@Major Major Major Major:
Yes, that too.
The Thin Black Duke
@EZSmirkzz: Would you like fries with your word salad?
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: Since 2001 the Clintons have accrued over three billion from the richest of the one percent there could be no hanky panky. I’m sure that there were no quid pro quos. I’m sure that the former owners of that three billion probably thought that H. Clinton is such a wonderful, charitable person that she would spread all that money to make things better. I bet that the half million in jewels from the House of Saud was a show of solidarity for the rights of women and religious minorities in their sunny kingdom.
Applejinx
@gwangung:
Imagine if you’re an old socialist coot, certain that nobody listens, but you run for President anyway just to get your issues listened to. You hammer on those issues every damn speech, over and over until it’s a joke, and at first you’re cooperative with the only obvious winner (which isn’t you), and she takes on board some of your ideas, and it starts out kind of nice.
And then, the crowds get bigger.
And bigger.
And you, the old socialist coot who’s had some success with amendments and things (not as much as the big crook who got more amendments, but defining it narrowly you aren’t doing half bad), now you are addressing goddamn stadiums. And young people are thronging to you and they’re acting like you’re goddamn Jesus… which is pretty funny since you’re a Jew, but they totally are.
A bird flies down and checks you out as you speak. It’s adorable. You will never forget the roar of the crowd, the adulation, the straight up hero worship. It’s like God is sending signs and wonders, and all the while the crowds, the stadiums, the cheers…
I don’t believe there’s a human being alive who wouldn’t lose their perspective. I hope there’s a way out, as this is not actually a recipe for governing or even winning the general election, but if you haven’t been there you can’t possibly understand what Bernie is experiencing. Give him time and quit acting like ‘wicked DNC smiting the righteous’ and above all give him an out, a way to do the right thing that lets him play it out within his movie. Turning aside for the greater good only works if Hilbots aren’t vowing to smite him and everything he stands for, you gotta make the case that someone will be able to carry on the work he originally set out to do.
You’re asking a lot of a fallible old socialist coot of a human being. Those of us who have turned aside and are preparing to support Hillary for President are not asking nearly as much of her as you’re asking of Bernie. “Please don’t fuck us over” is not a big ask.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Roger Moore:
Many of those votes were cast by
black peopleSoutherners, and thus distort reality.It’s been a while since a Democratic candidate for President appealed to the true Left in America. On balance this is a good thing, but I’m reminded that there’s a subgroup of the Left who are not good people – they’re our version of teahadis, and this election is bringing them out of the woodwork.
John D
@singfoom: OK? I watched the debates with my family. Not sure what your response is supposed to mean.
“One could say” a lot of things. The viewership numbers say that the weekend debates pulled in the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 8th most viewers of the 9 debates, so it doesn’t appear to have hurt the total eyeballs much (32 MM on 4 weekend debates combined, 39.8 MM on 5 weekday dates combined).
Linnaeus
@Bob In Portland:
I have a meeting in a minute or two, so I have to make this quick, but even if Mussolini said that, the corporatism to which he would be referring to (and which he did refer to in other quotes) means something broader than the business corporation. It means the idea that societies should be organized along the lines of major interest groups (“corporate bodies”). In a fascist society, the state would do the organizing and directing of these bodies.
Underpaid Propagandist
NR:
If your candidate is such a great fighter for the underdog, why did he leave impoverished, racist, violent Brooklyn and its 3,000,000 souls for all-white, all-rich, low-populated Vermont?
Sanders is a twerp.
EZSmirkzz
@Leland: You shouldn’t take it so hard. People disagree about stuff. There is nothing wrong with your assessment of Hillary or your friends assessment of Bernie. It just isn’t a black and white world, even in politics.
I think people that take politics personally should leave politics alone. None of the candidates is going to give a rats ass what we think in their day to day, and they aren’t going to call in crisis situation and ask our opinions on what they should do. We should be able to match their level of detachment.
Peace
The Thin Black Duke
@Applejinx: Sorry, man, but Bernie can either be a mensch or a putz. His choice. It’s ain’t that difficult. If you’ll allow me to be a sf fan for a moment, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.”
lethargytartare
@PNW_WarriorWoman:
one problem.
The video you posted clearly shows a chair being brandished over head. then taken away from the nutbag by other people. Which, from another angle, would look exactly like it was thrown. receipt indeed.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
It’s not just the math; it’s process issues in general. Bernie is great on the “what do we want” questions, but he’s hopeless on the “how do we get it” part. If I thought we were going to get a Democratic wave that would let us get all the ponies we’ve been asking for, I might go for somebody like Bernie who wants more of what I want. But that’s not the position we’re in right now. We’re fighting like crazy to keep the Republicans from taking back everything we’ve accomplished in the past 8 years- hell, the last 80 years really- and anything we can accomplish is going to be done at the margins and by bureaucratic maneuvering. We need a scrapper who’s going to fight the Republicans over every inch and use every dirty trick in the book to do so. That’s not who Bernie is.
Bob In Portland
@aimai:
What have the Clintonians offered on the platform to Sanders supporters? 15 dollars an hour? Single-payer? Raising the tax rates on the rich? Shutting down those offshore tax havens? Free college? A reintroduction of a welfare program that doesn’t leave people to starve? Please share. Anything in the platform about payday lenders?
Betty Cracker
@John D: The original debate calendar called for six primary debates (as opposed to 11 for Republicans). Many of the debates were on weekends and/or during major sporting events or close to holidays when people wouldn’t be watching. Maybe that’s all coincidental, but I do think the O’Malley and Sanders people had a legit beef over the debate calendar as originally issued.
singfoom
@John D: I’m not sure what’s confusing about my comment. Saturday night and Sunday night aren’t the best time for maximizing viewership of political debates. Especially the Saturday night before the Christmas week.
I don’t think they necessarily hurt the numbers that much, but that’s the general read I get from people’s complaints in reference to:
FlipYrWhig
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Especially when Jane seems rather prone to cronyism and nest-feathering herself. She wasn’t qualified to run Burlington College, she ran it into the ground with a bunch of fluffy promises and ill-advised projects, and appears to have used her position to steer favors to friends and relatives, as cited obliquely by Barbara above. Both Sanderses are egomaniacs and frauds. It was never a movement, it was always a pageant of Bernie Sanders’s wonderful incorruptibility. He’s horrible and if you fall for his shtick you’re an idiot.
Bob In Portland
@Applejinx: Shouldn’t that be, “Don’t fuck us over again”? I want to know exactly what I should be praying for.
EZSmirkzz
@Grumpy Code Monkey: I am reminded of a polisci course where it was observed that the political spectrum was a circle and not linear, so that the further from the center one got the closer to the extremist of the other side on got. Later on, a Libertarian, (of all people,) pointed out to me that perhaps the sphere was a better explanation. YMMV
In any case, all the logical fallacies of the commentariat are still that, appeals to authority, ad hominem, etc are still the sign of weak minds and poor arguments.
Gelfling 545
These people who believe that destroying the DNC is s a worthy goal should do a bit of introspection on whether what they are more likely to destroy is any chance of a candidate with their agenda finding a hearing from the Democrats for quite some time. When people invite you in, burning down the place will probably not result in a repeat invitation. Much could have been built from now to the next election but I’m pretty sure they’re quite ready to flush all that down the porcelain convenience. Sad.
Leland
@EZSmirkzz: Which is fair enough. Mostly venting here so I don’t end up venting at him. The Bush years forced me to be more practical and rethink my ideology (I had a similar arc to John Cole). I voted for that moron in ’04, which was the first election I could vote in, and by ’06 I had switched. The Bush administration caused extraordinary damage across a rather impressively broad spectrum. Watching people threaten to take their ball and go home and help pave the way for Trump while paying lip service to ideology when it’s really about tribalism is both maddening and saddening.
singfoom
@Bob In Portland: The villagers couldn’t get outside their neoliberal bubble due to the CIA led (HAVE YOU READ LISTEN LIBERAL YET?) false flag operation that installed the fascist regime in Ukraine. You couldn’t even hear because the sea lions were so deafening.
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: I was trying to make a math joke! Your point is well taken though.
FlipYrWhig
@Bob In Portland: You fuckwits have convinced yourself that Hillary Clinton is actually running as the person you feverishly imagine her to be. You think she’s going from event to event promising to coddle banks and drop bombs everywhere. You don’t have the remotest idea what she says she wants to do, do you?
muddy
@Underpaid Propagandist: When he moved to Vermont all those years ago, it was not rich. Quite white, indeed, as there was never industry here for people to move here for. Does this disqualifiy any person from Vermont who would ever want to run for president?
There were towns in Vermont that did not have electricity until 1968. They had it in the South way before that. The reason hippies moved here to have communes and whatnot was that it was dirt cheap because there was no money in the state. Vermont is still not a rich state, not sure where you get your info.
ETA: Vermont was always a Republican state until after the hippie period.
Felanius Kootea
@Applejinx: So who is Bernie supporting to keep those ideas going? Did he do enough to support Fetterman in Pennsylvania (Fetterman certainly supported Bernie)? Who are the politician soldiers in Bernie’s army who will transform the House and the Senate and state government to bring those democratic socialist ideas to life? Is he really not thinking beyond the adulation of the crowd? He’s registered to run again for the Senate as an Independent so he does understand math and reality. This makes his current actions so baffling.
The Thin Black Duke
@FlipYrWhig: Women were hung as witches in Salem because of the feverish images in men’s minds.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Canigou: What color is the sky in your world? Bernie would lose CA and NY.
Mike J
SFAW
@The Lodger:
I originally went after you, then re-read your comment. Looks like *I* am the moron here.
Sincerest apologies. My shitty reading comprehension is no excuse.
Xboxershorts
@The Thin Black Duke:
Angry people do irrational things. Mobs have no conscience.
Did Bernie tell them to do that? Unlikely. But I am fairly certain Bernie himself did not know how much anger was out there,
Again, the DNC errs by initially dismissing the depth and breadth of the anger at establishment politics as usual. And doing this pissed off the Bernie Bros even more.
Sure Bernie is hero to these people. Sure, he’d never be able to fulfil any of his campaign promises without a progressive congress. Odds are he wouldn’t get much of that. Don’t shoot the messenger here, I’m just making a point. I am not one of your die hard Bernie Bros. But I’ve been outside looking in at the Democrats for a couple decades now. I’m ex republican, veteran, skilled professional, homeowner, father, grandfather and more. And I am pretty angry about politics as usual. The DNC losses in 2010 were disastrous for this nation. And the DNC kind of chose to run away from the President in those midterms. And that screwed a lot of us. Did it contribute to the apathy that had so many staying away from the polls that year? I think so.
To me, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has not been a good spokesperson for the brand. Nor has she been effective in leading or setting strategy. Sure, she’s beholden to the money bundlers, big donors and super pacs, just like the other party is. But ya know, and this real here…that’s exactly why there’s so much anger at establishment politics. Because that money comes with caveats attached. Caveats that screw us over. Exactly the kind of beholden these Bernie Bros are seeing in HRC
I personally think she’d be a decent president.
But none of that shit makes a difference until we turn congress over.
That’s the REAL fight y’all should be having.
John D
@Betty Cracker: Well, yes, I posted the schedule. I am aware of when they were. I’m looking for the “minimize exposure” part to be justified with something beyond “nobody watches TV on the weekends”.
We’ve had 9 Democratic primary debates – 4 on the weekend, 5 on weekdays. 32 million people watched on the weekend ones for an average of 8 million viewers. 39.8 million watched the 5 weekday ones for an average of 7.96 million viewers. That sure looks like comparable numbers to me.
(I guess what I’m trying to say is that even IF you believed that this was a nefarious plot to minimize viewership, it failed. So maybe we should drop an obviously incorrect talking point once it is refuted by actual data?)
EZSmirkzz
@Leland: There’s a lot of that going on around the intertubes right now, so vent away. In a few years, (decades?) you’ll notice that you’ve gone around this block before and it’s an easier walk. A lot of people never got to do any of this before the internet, and apparently, before Obama. Twenty years on they’ll be old coots too.
Hang in their kid, I wish old age on everyone.
Tom Q
Two things about the Sanders campaign:
1) Though his people seem only to complain about how disadvantaged he was by the voting strictures, as far as I can tell, he’s massively benefited from them: the caucuses exaggerated his showings in a lot of demographically-helpful white states; the vast majority of primaries have been open, allowing Greens/Paulites/ratfucking Republicans to cross over and significantly inflate his vote (Hillary’s margin among Democrats is probably 5-6 million, not the mere 3 million she has overall). OR was his first closed primary win; had the rest all been closed, I’m not sure he’d have won another outside of VT.
2) The thesis these Green/Paulite supporters offer is that the current status quo is UNBEARABLE — not something that could use some work, but something so wholly odious that burning everything to the ground is the only possible action. Which fits not at all with the attitude of Democrats, most of whom consider Barack Obama an excellent president who’s moved the country significantly in a positive direction. So what you have is outsiders — aligned with the traditional more upscale liberal Dem primary vote — advocating for a renunciation of a (within the party) very popular president.
Gore had a delicate line to navigate in 2000 — wanting to associate with Clinton’s policy popularity while avoiding his personal negatives — and a lot of think he did a poor job of it. But there’s no excuse for what the Sanders campaign is doing: running against a president close to beloved within the party. It was stupid to start, and it’s now threatening to cost the party an election to a demonstrably dangerous man.
different-church-lady
@Bob In Portland: Bob, just letting you know I’m still thinking over this Bob/Robert/Roberta thing. Bear with me.
FlipYrWhig
@Gelfling 545: Exactly. The complaint from my Facebook friends last night was about how they needed to hold out against Hillary Clinton to prevent her from “moving to the center.” Of course if your whole act is that you refuse to vote for monstrous Hillary Clinton, why should you be surprised if people decide to believe you, write you off, ignore you, and replace your vote with the vote of someone else who isn’t a ravening purist jerkwad? By refusing Hillary Clinton’s toxic embrace, aren’t you _hastening_ the moment when she gives up on reaching you? This is like telling your coworkers that you don’t drink coffee, in fact you really hate coffee because you’ve tried it plenty of times and you’re never going to change, and then being all pouty and hurt that they sit in the breakroom together drinking coffee without you.
Applejinx
@Bob In Portland: No, Bob, it would be ‘don’t fuck us over’.
You might ask a black voter: it’s eye-opening to me how Hillary’s done well among black voters. She doesn’t want them Breitbarting her, but some respect is earned. Hilbots around here have run down a litany of left/progressive accomplishments of various sizes, and I have repeatedly pointed out that ‘gotcha’ (when I was fighting for health care, where was Bernie? Where is heee? THERE he is, right behind you in the photo! you silly!) shows Bernie SUPPORTING Hillary’s first attempt at health care, many years before it was politically possible.
I’ve also pointed out that Bill Clinton ended up with budget surpluses through cranking up the economy. He raised taxes on the rich, but they ended up even richer. The extreme poor were hosed. In 2016, that formula’s gotta be adjusted to bail out the extreme poor, but the Clintons DID IT and it can be done again.
There’s no reason to assume Hillary is going to fuck us over (it’d be politically stupid to do so), and THAT is why ‘please don’t fuck us over’ is not a big ask. It’s a way smaller thing to ask, than what people are demanding of Bernie at this point.
Bob In Portland
@Linnaeus:
Sort of like having corporate lobbyists help to write legislation? How about having wars halfway across the world for energy corporations? Does that count, or are we still believing in the fairy tale of feminism in Afghanistan?
Was Italy attacking Ethiopia different than the US attacking Libya? How?
Bob In Portland
@Applejinx: Great. What will we get?
EZSmirkzz
@Roger Moore: Sorry I missed your response, old geezer’s eyes he plead, I suppose I should ask if the voters of California have a right to express their voices too. It ain’t over until it’s over.
Roger Moore
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
The ironic part is that the accusations of corruption and lack of transparency are only possible because they’ve actually been so transparent. Nobody would know about the Clinton Foundation stuff if they weren’t unusually open about their finances.
The Thin Black Duke
@Xboxershorts: Then tell those loud stupid angry white guys to stop hurling sexist insults at women (and no, I’m not going to pretent that this virulent sexism that Bernie’s supporters have been exhibitng doesn’t exist), get off their asses and vote for the democratic candidate for President. period. And then maybe try voting more often than every four years. I don’t need anybody to hold my hand, pat me on the head and tell me why voting is important. Jesus, that’s the least you can do. The rest is just noise.
Bob In Portland
@Gelfling 545: I’ve been a Democrat since before I was old enough to vote. Maybe it’s time to move to the Greens.
SFAW
@aimai:
You may be right, but it’s not completely clear to me how much is “heat of the battle/campaign” rhetoric, and how much is how Sanders really feels. It may be completely clear to you and others, and I may be proved completely wrong, but I’m trying to be a little less cynical than usual. (Not that being less cynical will do me any good, of course.)
Patricia Kayden
Bernie supporter charged with threat against Congressman McDermott. Sigh.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/crime/article/Threatened-Rep-Jim-McDermott-armed-himself-7381914.php
This has all become very sad. Hope we’re not heading for a Trump presidency with all this foolishness.
FlipYrWhig
@Felanius Kootea: His actions aren’t baffling at all. He wants good things for the world, in general, but ultimately he’s a narcissist. He believes that he’s indisputably right, doesn’t have to change anything about himself, and doesn’t need to persuade anyone. His plan is that millions of people should start saying how much they agree with him.
John D
@singfoom: I was responding to this portion of your comment:
I sat down and watched the debates with my family, which falls into the category of “doing things with my family” for me. I was confused as to how your statement indicated that one could not do both.
Again, I’m not saying that I think the schedule was perfect. I’m saying I don’t care. I’m also saying that the actual viewership of the debates seems to indicate that the prima facie assumption that the weekends are worse slots seems to be incorrect.
Xboxershorts
@The Thin Black Duke:
I do. I tell them they’re playing Karl Roves game. They block me.
I tell similar things to virulent HRC supporters. They block me.
People don’t wanna hear shit. That’s how it is this year.
So, lets just at least make sure congress turns over.
Roger Moore
@Linnaeus:
And quite a bit of it was built after WWII had substantially destroyed their economies and institutions, so that “we’re all in this together” was a plausible rallying cry and defense of existing systems was less of an obstacle.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Tom Q:
Sanders running against Obama and going after the white working class vote while taking the white state caucus path was his plan. He seemed to either deliberately dismiss the numbers behind the winning coalition, or simply didn’t think they mattered, because he only really represents white constituents. Whatever his motivation was, he fell irredeemably behind on Super Tuesday in the delegate rich south. He chose poorly and has been flailing around for justifications/excuses/blame ever since.
D58826
@PNW_WarriorWoman:
You are getting to the point where the true believers should move to Easter Island, one of the most remote inhabited island, in order to maintain your purity.
FlipYrWhig
@Bob In Portland: OH NO BOB PLEASE DON”T GO WE CARE SO MUCH ABOUT YOUR VITAL CONTRIBUTION TO THE WORLD
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: This. I detest almost everything you say, Whig, but fucking THIS, a thousand times over.
What I’m seeing from the bernie-or-busters is HORRIBLE. I don’t admit that it’s characteristic of the movement. At some point people will have to come to terms with ‘quit fucking around and figure out how much we can give to Hillary Clinton in exchange for consideration’, and the vote is the main thing at this point. We need a straight-up landslide blowout that flips Congress, and only then can we start getting things done.
Hillary Clinton has things to prove but they are not big asks. They’re liberal stuff that in many cases she’d like to do if it was practical.
WE have to prove to Hillary that it’s worth leaning our direction or she will be compelled to seek votes elsewhere. It drives me nuts when I see people not understand this.
Bob In Portland
@Xboxershorts: When a conservative Democratic president can blame the Republican Congress for all his/her conservative moves, it’s a lot easier, and the dopes here at Balloon Juice are willing to bite the hook.
The Other Tim
“closed primaries for the Democratic nominee (where Bernie loses) are undemocratic while the actually very undemocratic caucuses (where Bernie wins) are the people’s will.”
Could someone please explain this for me ? Honest question; I don’t understand the primary process (open vs. closed) well enough to interpret Cole’s opinion.
terry chay
@Canigou: Haha. I bet you believe that “generic republican” is actually a real person in the election too. The mistake that even data nerds like Nate Silver make is that when they see what they want to see instead of what the data says. “Trump has high negatives means he has a ceiling” when the data says “he has a high floor also and that primaries are about turnout of your most passionate people so <50% ceiling now doesn't mean that way as the primary wears on and you are left between him and Satan (Ted Cruz as defined by John Boehner)."
Most of the electorate doesn't know who Bernie is so he polls better than Trump or Hillary. Romney was polling much better than Obama at exactly this time and even you know how that election turned out. Bernie's numbers are turning south fast. He's polling with a majority "disapprove" for the first time which will never recover for him nationally. He can’t even win over his own party when he’s been given a ton of money by people who have buyers remorse and spends like a sailor on leave.
Hillary has strong negatives and what you are seeing is her floor because she’s been a politician so long, because she and her husband have been attacked by right wing and media smears for the last 20+ years, and because idiots like you are still holding a candle for Bernie and obviously failed at math. Despite that, she still beats Trump. Bernies floor is much, much lower with the general electorate than Hillary’s. Unfortunately for you ever learning basic math and common sense, but fortunately for the country, we’ll never get to see just how low they are.
Bob In Portland
@FlipYrWhig: What argument are you failing to advance? I can’t tell from your post.
aimai
@Applejinx: Stop with this fantasy that the Hillbots are going to “smite” Bernie Sanders. No one is going to leave a horses head in his bed, no one is calling up Jane and threatening to kill her grandchildren–unlike some fucking people. There is just zero, zero, zero need to do anything to or about Bernie. He’s already lost and is just thrashing around like an angry, bitter, entitled old white guy. He is going to try to take down the Democratic party and the whole fucking country with him because he’s just that selfish. Nice treatment–which everyone including Hillary, Reid, Boxer, Warren and everyone else have tried on him doesn’t affect him at all. He is not climbing down off his high horse until he is knocked down by circumstances, and he won’t go graciously. That’s my prediction and I’m really certain its correct. Bernie has left no pathway back and has burned every friendship he ever had. Clinton isn’t going to do anything–he’s done it all to himself.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Betty Cracker: Dunno. Surely the TV networks had a say on when they were scheduled, too? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that was the reason why so many of them were on weekends during sporting events (or whatever) – “Hey, nobody’s going to watch us then anyway, why not put the debate then?”
DWS on August 6, 2015:
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Xboxershorts
@Bob In Portland: Pretty easy to blame a republican congress that publicly vowed to fuck him over every chance they got.
John D
@The Other Tim: A closed primary is one where only members of the party can vote. A semi-open or semi-closed primary one one where people who are not members of another party can vote. An open primary is one where a registered voter can vote. A caucus is a kefluffle wrapped around an argument, only with more screaming and invective, and far fewer attendees.
Sanders has done very well in the caucus states, and very poorly in closed primaries.
Gelfling 545
@Betty Cracker: and still, it was the debates that switched my vote from Sanders to Clinton. Perhaps he’d have done better with fewer opportunities to harangue. I, for one, found his constant angry old man routine tiresome.
Brendan
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Right. A few Democratic debates happened on the weekend for exactly the reason a couple Republican ones did: they were being carried by major networks who would be loath to give up weekday time. One of those Republican debates was also the night before Valentine’s Day, not a time when many people are thinking politics. I don’t imagine that was a RNC conspiracy in favor their then-frontrunner…
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx:
Exactly! And that’s why the thing to do is get on board, even if it makes you squirm the way I did as a little kid in the ’70s every time I was put into a turtleneck, and let Hillary Clinton go about poaching votes from socially liberal Republican women who detest Trump and business-people who loathe unpredictability, and just extirpate the Republican Party, root, branch, and everything in between. And THEN go back to fighting issue by issue and tactic by tactic and finding each other thoroughly unpleasant, because that’s what coalition politics involves WHEN YOU’RE THE MAJORITY, God fucking damn it. Let’s be the majority again.
Bob In Portland
@terry chay:
As of five minutes ago he was posting 51% positive and 41% negative in the polls. Hillary is coming in at over 54% negative. Huffpost, using 137 favorability tracking polls.
Glad to help you out.
gwangung
@Applejinx: yes, yes and yes. That’s just politics 101; that some people can’t grasp that is maddening.
And some folks should remember that some of us LIKE Sanders’ positions….but feel that we can get closer to them under Clinton. And that we are not evil fir thinking that.
lethargytartare
@aimai:
They asked to come into my house for dinner, I let them, but then I refused to cook them a special vegan meal or let them turn off my TV. And then when they started breaking dishes, I asked them to leave. It’s just like Argo.
terry chay
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: The taxes would, at the minimum, show that he’s in the top 1%. It’s not as hard as you think since its $450k and a Senator’s salary is 40% of the way there. It’s also possible, though slightly less likely, that there are things there that would expose Jane Sanders to lawsuit because of how she ran Burlington College into the ground. In any case, the choice is deliberate and the “blame the wife” thing is wore thin long ago.
He’ll never release his tax forms and the cry will disappear when he loses the nomination. Yet another reason that’s good because its bad enough that Trump isn’t going to do it, but if Both Sides Do It™… *rolls eyes*
As for taking Koch money, I doubt it, and certainly not intentionally. There’s been some fishy stuff in his campaign finances (the number of $27 donations that outpace populations of certain zip codes), but who cares.With so so many examples of hypocrisy and cheating that can be traced directly to him and his narcissism, why bother with the hypocrisy and cheating that is caused by his supporters (or Republican rat-fkers)?
FlipYrWhig
@Bob In Portland: “Maybe I should just go Green.” How can we miss you if you won’t go away, Bob?
Bob In Portland
@John D: True. But he won Oregon by nine points last night. Oregon is a closed primary state. Just imagine if independents had been allowed to vote.
Bob In Portland
@FlipYrWhig: Ask the difficult church lady.
John D
@Bob In Portland: Why?
FlipYrWhig
@lethargytartare: lethargy, you clearly run a shamefully oligarchic, neoliberal house. :P
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: YES. group hug! Right on.
OK, now we can go back to hating each other again, we’ve got that out of the way ;)
Roger Moore
@Applejinx:
That isn’t actually true, though. The extreme poor had a mixed bag under Bill Clinton. Many of the programs that supported poor people were reduced during his presidency, which hurt them, but the good economy meant that a lot of them were finally able to get jobs. One of the things that was a huge deal about the sustained growth during the 1990s was that it got people who had been unemployed for so long that they were assumed to be unemployable back into the workforce. A huge reason that Hillary is doing so well among black voters is that they as a group did so well during Bill’s presidency.
Xboxershorts
@lethargytartare: If you think the big money coming into our elections isn’t put there to influence policy, well…that’s the sentiment among the die hards. Mock them at your own risk.because they are a large enough force to disrupt and they’re not die hard Dem voters.
But you’re going to need a whole bunch of them.
Thus far, the outreach has been lacking
Bob In Portland
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Yeah, that’s the ticket! Don’t give anything to half of the Democratic Party and flip off the independents and then blame Sanders.
Yeah, what could go wrong?
Trollhattan
I’m guessing one of these gets awarded for a daily-double TBogg.
aimai
@Roger Moore: Also there was an enormous counterweight of the USSR. In order to stave off communism lots of countries began to offer socialism or a welfare state. Hell–health care in Germany was the product of Bismarck trying to head off the socialists.
Bob In Portland
@Xboxershorts: Quite an outreach program. So far they’ve got the payday lenders into the big tent. I think that they’re sitting in the Goldman Sachs section, just across from the military-industrial complex section. You know, just past the Big Pharma/Insurance Industry display.
terry chay
@Felanius Kootea:
But the shit-storm that would have ensued if they had prevented him from running? Really? If we’re a big-tent party then letting an outsider run is part and parcel with that. Or are you going to claim that Truman should never have tried to get Eisenhower to switch party ID?
FlipYrWhig
@Bob In Portland: Don’t forget the RAND Corporation operating on the orders of the reverse vampires.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@EZSmirkzz:
I like the take of The Political Compass, where you have two axes – one the traditional Left-Right axis of the role of government in the economy, and the other a Libertarian-Authoritarian axis of the role of government in our personal lives.
Last time I took the test I was just inside the libertarian-left quadrant, which felt about right. They rank Sanders between the Lib/Left and Auth/Left quadrants. Hillary’s near the middle of the Auth/Right quadrant, and Trump, Cruz, et al. are in the most extreme corner of the Auth/Right quadrant.
Although honestly, there’s probably room for a third or even fourth axis (one for religion maybe, one for artistic vs. technical, etc., as all of those ultimately inform our political views). But then it gets hard to draw.
Betty Cracker
@John D: I’m not really interested in re-litigating the primary debate schedule — seems like a waste of time at this point; I was just responding to a question. But if you want to explore it further, PolitiFact has a round-up of viewership numbers plus opinions from so-called experts — poli-sci / comm professors — none of whom bought DWS’s spin, BTW, here.
Applejinx
@Roger Moore: Yeah, but you can SAY ‘Many of the programs that supported poor people were reduced during his presidency, which hurt them’, concede that poor people were hosed but for the strengthening economy, and then say ‘this time the extreme poor will not be hosed at all!’.
It would be relatively easy to do and a huge political winner: kind of like how nobody can promise to destroy Social Security. Especially now, after decades of further destruction for anti-poverty programs and a massive proliferation of the extreme poor, there is no reason not to promise and attempt more.
Put it this way: if Hillary said “this time the poorest among us will NOT be hosed” I would believe her.
Because it’s completely possible. All these cuts to social programs and welfare-type things, are attempts to save pennies while dollars are spent on the military, on corporate welfare, and while dollars can be gained through economic boom times. It’s asinine not to bail out Main Street at this point, it’s relatively easy if you do it the Clinton way, and whoever does so will enjoy an FDR-like legacy.
Trollhattan
@terry chay:
He had no inertia nor national profile prior to filing to run as a Dem, so no shitstorm on NOAA radar.
D58826
@Bob In Portland: Well if he won in a closed primary what is his beef about ‘closed primaries’? Other than he didn’t win any of the others.
Just saw this on my Twitter feed. Bernie said that violence was unacceptable (the person forgot the ‘BUT’ part of the statement). However Hillary has not criticized Wendell Pierce or the office shootings.
This is going off the cliff. Whatever happened in Nevada was part of a political event in which Bernie’s people were participants. What ever Pierce did, he did it as a private citizen so why is Hillary somehow required to make a statement. There is a news item that a Bernie supporter was arrested for threatening a Congressman who supported Hillary. Again a private citizen no need for Bernie to issue a statement unless asked.
And exactly what office shootings? The ones he claimed happened in the statement? Would be nice if a fact checker looked at the Vegas police 911 log to see if it had been reported. Even if it was why does Hillary have to make a statement about a shooting that at the moment falls into the category of person or persons unknown. I certainly would not want to claim that Bernie was trying to link Hillary and the shootings by innuendo. NO that could not be.
gbear
@Bob In Portland:
If Independents had scheduled a primary for their candidates, they could have voted to their heart’s content.
Bob In Portland
@John D:
Why did Sanders win Oregon by nine points, or why should you imagine independents voting?
If it’s the latter, then you might remember that the general election isn’t a private clubhouse. Independents get to vote too in that one, and in states where independents get to vote in the primaries they vote heavily for Sanders.
If you’re asking about the former, why Sanders won by nine points in Oregon, I’d say it’s because the people are better informed and much more progressive than the rest of the country.
Glad to help out. Cheers.
John D
@Betty Cracker: I’m just trying to understand why this belief persists is all. The actual number of viewers for the debates averaged out the same whether we picked weekday or weekend nights, so why?
We are supposed to drop hypotheses when they are shown to be false. Is dislike of DWS so ingrained that we have to cling to proven bullshit?
Aqualad08
@Bob In Portland:
I’m sure you can find at least half the answer in your book of fake Mussolini quotes…
Mnemosyne
@Xboxershorts:
Bob doesn’t really understand the whole “three branches of government” thing, much less the part where Congress holds the purse strings.
Bob In Portland
@gbear: See above. They do. It’s called the general election. That mass of voters, around 40%, are dissatisfied with both parties. They’ve voted for Sanders when allowed to do so. I guess they’ll have to vote for someone else.
D58826
@Roger Moore: Were they reduced because this is what Bill wanted or he kept the reductions to a minimum given GOP control of Congress after 1994? Given that they bet the farm on healthcare reform, which would have benefited the poor the most, I’m just guessing that it was the later.
Xboxershorts
@gbear:
Well, that’s been a problem in most states. The state GOP/DEM operations have effectively locked out any 3rd parties at the state level. Running the legislature that gets to set the rules comes with nifty benefits that can be used to lock in power.
Xboxershorts
@Mnemosyne:
Most Americans don’t. And sadly, I think our media plays it that way just to get that result.
gbear
@Bob In Portland: So you actually do understand the difference between a general election and a party primary. It was hard to tell.
singfoom
@John D:
I think DWS is a goddamn scumbag and her support of payday lenders at the expense of everyone else in Florida is enough to confirm that for me. That has nothing to do with the debate schedule.
The answer to your question is “Magical Thinking”. It’s going around. People aren’t perfectly logical or rational units, they’re emotional beings. If you come into the process with the frame that the DNC and the Democratic Party are screwing Bernie in every way that they can, the coincidental timing is proof of your previously held belief/bias.
So that’s why that is hanging around, amongst other fanciful tales….
different-church-lady
@Mnemosyne:
gwangung
@D58826: Heh. That’s a little nuanced look at history for most people.
singfoom
@Mnemosyne:
UNLESS it’s crackpot bullshit that has a tenuous relationship to the argument at hand / reality in general.
Fixed that for you.
lethargytartare
@FlipYrWhig:
and we only eat vegeterian 3 or 4 nights a week.
Betty Cracker
@John D: Did you look at the link I provided? It wasn’t just a weeknights vs. weekdays thing — there were other factors at play, such as the number of debates originally scheduled, whether or not they conflicted with major sporting events and/or were close to significant holidays, etc. There’s no incontrovertible proof that DWS had her thumb on the scale, but it IS an arguable point that the original debate schedule favored the candidate with the highest name recognition. That assertion is not “proven bullshit” by a long shot.
Roger Moore
@The Other Tim:
A closed primary is one that only allows registered party members to vote; an open one allows either independent voters or (in some places) anyone regardless of party to vote in the primary. Sanders has done better in open primaries than closed ones because a big chunk of his support comes from the kind of independents who don’t want to be a member of any party because they think the parties are corrupt.
Caucuses, of course, require people to show up in person and hang around during a whole convoluted process to make their opinion felt. They tend to have very low turnout and thus to reward candidates who has the most committed followers, even if they aren’t the most numerous.
Miss Bianca
@Linnaeus: So far, I have to say, the guy has done nothing at every turn but confirm my worst opinion of him. There does seem to be a stink of entitlement to his posturing that makes me deeply skeptical about his desire or, at this point, his *ability* to play nice when the time comes.
I made the mistake of going onto FB this afternoon and seeing one of the smartest, most thoughtful guys I know repeating, apparently wholesale and with a straight face, all the BS bs about how the shitshow in NV was all about the wrath of the disenfranchised, and therefore, implicitly, justified. Bernie Sanders has a whole lot to answer for, imho, and one of them is, to use the Jon Stewart term a couple folks up above have so helpfully cited, the conflation of “losing” with “tyranny.”
Bob In Portland
@FlipYrWhig:
Scott Harold
– Associate director of the RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy
– Political scientist at the RAND Corporation
– Member of the Pardee RAND Graduate School faculty
– Adjunct Professor of Security Studies, Security Studies Program, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
– Specialties: Chinese foreign policy, East Asian security, and international affairs
– Member of the Council on Foreign Relations
ruemara
Hello, John. Welcome to where I was about 4 months ago. Welcome to what I could see in his demeanor and my dawning realization this was all about it being his moment. Turns out he doesn’t just oversimplify, he has a huge pair of clay feet. Oh well. Don’t worship people.
gwangung
@Roger Moore:
AND they don’t want the bother of hanging around to clean it up…or even take the control of the wheel themselves.
Mnemosyne
@Aqualad08:
I do find it fascinating that conservatives whinged that Obama was “leading from behind” when the French took the leading role in the NATO operation in Libya, and that hands-off approach has now magically turned into the US single-handedly attacking Libya just like Italy attacked Ethiopia.
different-church-lady
a) Cole has a new chew toy. Expect it to be chewed vigorously.
b) With his Nevada statement I officially reached the “Fuck Bernie” point. In an alternate universe where he becomes the nominee I would still vote for him, but I would hold my nose doing it.
c) If, four months ago you had told me I’d be saying (b), I would have called you crazy.
d) In spite of all of the above, I still think he’s going to do the right thing. He may not do any of it with any joy or heart, but he will endorse Clinton and he won’t go scorched earth.
e) I really hope I’m not wrong about (d)
FlipYrWhig
@D58826:
That is exactly the beef of the Sanders campaign: it is unfair whenever they don’t win anywhere and everywhere, because they are the ones who really count. It underlies virtually every Berniac complaint, including the much-favored fable about how Hillary Clinton’s supporters are privileged dilettantish johnny-come-latelies while they constitute “the base,” the _real_ liberals, etc.
opiejeanne
@John D: Sanders’ organization has called for another debate before the California primary
Really.
Another debate.
Good lord ‘n butter, I think I need a drink.
Roger Moore
@Xboxershorts:
Obviously it’s true that the big money being put into politics is put there to influence policy. But a lot of it is intended to influence policy by electing people who already agree with the spenders on policy, not to bribe the recipients into agreement.
Xboxershorts
@Mnemosyne: Remember when the Germans bombed Pearl harbor?
elftx
As I responded to a poster in Betty’s post. I think I now understand why there are ‘flat earthers’. Just don’t ask me to explain it..unpossible.
Mnemosyne
@Xboxershorts:
Forget it, he’s rolling.
FlipYrWhig
@opiejeanne: But there’s so much we haven’t heard yet about the milyonaihs, bilyonaihs, and soopah pacs!
Xboxershorts
@Roger Moore: And it’s ok to hate that money. Sometimes it’s even right to hate that money and the influence it buys.
I refuse to side with Justice Kennedy on this point. And it saddens me that some do.
FlipYrWhig
@Roger Moore:
Exactly, exactly, well said.
les
@Xboxershorts:
And so? Everybody tries to influence policy. There’s pacs and superpacs and then there’s individual millionaires funding individual candidates out of their pocket. Who gets real influence? The generic “all corrupt” is inane–of course Democrats take contributions, you don’t win otherwise. How many Dem appt’d supremes voted for Citizens United? How many Dem congresses or administrations opposed or tried to dismantle campaign finance rules? How did Obama pay off his contributors? How will HIllary–leaving out the “her whole platform is a fake out” crap.
Not saying you personally, but the “of course Hillary is corrupt, there’s money in politics” crowd go beyond the underpants gnome politics to me. I wondered earlier today, at LGM:
Do you even know what corrupt means? Corrupt like an administration whose top members fear to leave the US, lest they be arrested for war crimes? Like steering billions of dollars in US no-bid contracts to companies they are heavily invested in? Like phonying up a war killing tens of thousands, displacing millions and laying the groundwork for ISIS? Like proposing a supreme court justice so absurd it embarrassed senate Republicans?
Or corrupt like giving a speech as a non-member of government to somebody you don’t like, proceeds to charity?
The stupidity of the purity brigade knows no fucking bounds.
The answers I got? Who am I to say what they can condemn!
Sorry, can’t really tell if this rant should be aimed at you; but the whole “they’re all corrupt” schtick is just really worn out for me.
Aardvark Cheeselog
@EZSmirkzz:
The way that works IRL is “the people” become “party activists:” if enough of them show up, they “dominate the party.”
It’s not like you have to be born a millionaire or get an Ivy League scholarship to go to county Party meetings, and if you show up twice and express a willingness to help get Democrats elected, you’re in. Not as sexy as revolution maybe, but revolutions are much overrated.
Roger Moore
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
I think it would be interesting to do a really big questionnaire on people’s views of various issues and then do something like Principal Component Analysis to see if you could sort them into a limited number of important axes. It would at the very least give you a chance to test if liberal/conservative attitudes really are the dominant political distinction.
Xboxershorts
@les: I got my big boy pants on.
I’m left leaning independent …I hate money in politics. But I don’t hate like Bernie Bro hate.
terry chay
@The Other Tim: Closed primaries mean you have the be registered with the party to vote for it, open ones allow people to switch registration that day (and sometimes switch back before the day is over), or allow people registered with no party preference to vote in a primary of their choice by requesting a ballot. My state, California, is a closed primary for Republicans but an open one for Democrats.
The issue is that some believe that you should at least be willing to state your preference for the party to have a role in selecting its candidate while others believe that you should be as democratic as possible in selecting a candidate which means opening yourself to people not registered in your party.
In this particular case there is a large statistical evidence that a non negligible number are voting for Sanders not because of Sanders but to hurt the Democratic chances. This can be more easily accomplished in an open primary. Ironically, the best evidence for this has been in a closed primary state like West Virginia (tons of people who vote Republican but are still registered Democrat. They couldn’t vote for Trump so they voted for Sanders).
Personally, I don’t care one way or another as long as the rules are set and followed well in advance of the primary. The decision for open or closed is one of for the state Democratic Party, not the national one. The decision for primary or caucus is one of the states, nowhere else (states have to fund primaries, caucus are what happens when the state won’t).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_primaries_in_the_United_States
John D
@Betty Cracker: I did read the link. I saw a lot of insinuations, a lot of comparisons to the GOP debates, and a lot of chatter regarding the scheduling. It was also from January, when we had 1 weekday and 3 weekend debates to base the argument on. I found it unpersuasive, because comparing the two party debates when one is still running a fucking junior debate to handle the overflow for candidates still running, and which promised an unadulterated shitshow every single night, to a issues-based debate struck me as ignoring the elephant in the room, but it really falls apart once you look at the next 5 debates.
I know I have seen a lot of complaints about the schedule. Now, after all of them have been done, the numbers say that the weekend debates were seen by as many people as the weekday ones were. Can we shift the argument to “DWS is incompetent”, now? That at least has a basis in reality. The argument that people won’t watch debates on the weekend is false. I’m seriously not defending DWS. But I do not understand the cleaving to this argument about the debates, and I’m trying to.
Betty Cracker
@Xboxershorts: One of the most maddening things about this bullshit internecine sniping is that it obscures the fact that virtually ALL OF US Democrats want money out of politics. Yes, even the pant-suited she devil.
shortstop
@Trollhattan: NO ASSISTANCE WITH FILLING OUT BALLOTS UNLESS VOTER IS BLIND OR HAS OTHER PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS! CITIZEN’S ARREST! CITIZEN’S ARREST!
Since it’s Hillary, though, go ahead, because sketchy and shady is just how we shills roll.
Miss Bianca
@Leland: I feel your pain, friend. I’ve been surprised and disllusioned by how willing my Sandernista friends and acquaintances have been to gulp down right-wing-generated lies about HRC, crap on PBO’s legacy because he’s not “leftist enough” for them, and basically acting like somehow the stakes of this election are all about THEM and how THEY and people like them feel.
les
@Xboxershorts:
Cool; I’ve been wondering what the hell “xboxershorts” are. I couldn’t agree more about money in campaigns; I just can’t deal with the purity parade this time around.
SFAW
@Bob In Portland:
And a pony. (As in: they thought they’d get one.)
D58826
@Betty Cracker: Let’s replace DWS with me as the generic DNC head. I’m looking at the political playing field in Aug. 2015. On the GOP side it looks like a replay of the 2012 clown car convention. It didn’t work out well for them in 2012 and probably won’t in 2016 either. I’m amused by Trump but he will be gone by the time hay fever season starts.
Now I look at my side. I have one candidate who is pretty much regarded as the front runner and a shoe-in for the nomination. I have a few fringe/unknown candidates lining up to run. At this point Bernie is just another fringe candidate.
So why would I plan high stakes/prime time debates and
1. risk a gaffe that could damage the front runner
2. risk something that would give the GOP an attack line in the general and
3. why do anything to distract the public from the circus/food fight that is the GOP debates.
It’s a no brainer : schedule the debates on Christmas eve.
As the DNC chair I would have done the same if Bernie was the front runner and it was Hillary who?
This is not good government 101 but it is hardball politics 101. I now return the gavel to DWS since she is getting bigger bucks than I am for this thankless job
terry chay
@Bob In Portland: You’re right. I looked at the latest PPP poll instead of the tracking polls. My error.
Thank god I didn’t pie you. Nice to be corrected now and again.
Betty Cracker
@John D: Again, you’re conflating “original debate schedule favored the candidate with the highest name recognition” with “no one watches weekend debates.” These aren’t the same assertions, but I’m done here.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne:
That would have sufficed.
Xboxershorts
@les:
They’re made out of Teflon…shot don’t stick to them!
NR
@Betty Cracker: I’ve seen the argument advanced many times here that there’s absolutely no problem with money in politics, it doesn’t buy anything, and big donors having more access to politicians doesn’t mean anything because politicians don’t listen to them anyway.
Like I said: The more one defends Hillary Clinton, the more one sounds like a Republican.
Roger Moore
@Xboxershorts:
I’m not happy with Citizens United, but I think it’s a much tougher question than most people who hate it are willing to admit. Some of the things they’ve said to counter it would be incredibly destructive if implemented. For example, the claim that corporations don’t have a right to free speech would give the government the right to censor most of the big media in the country, since it’s run by corporations, while not affecting wealthy private individuals like the Koch brothers one bit.
That said, I think there’s a plausible legal rationale for preventing unlimited independent campaign spending. I would argue that independent spending that benefits a specific candidate is a donation in kind and thus constitutes a bribe. While I think that’s a plausible argument, it wouldn’t allow the government to prevent people from spending that way in advance, only to prosecute them for bribery after the fact.
D58826
@Roger Moore: And when the Koch brothers make a contribution to help them polute the air that is BAD. When George Soros makes a contribution to a candidate supporting wind farms that is GOOD. Look I don’t like the Kochs but whither political contributions are good or bad does tend to revolve around whose ox is being gored/
BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: IIRC after the 2nd debate a front pager here* titled the debate thread, “Mom and Dad are Fighting Again”.
*I believe her initials are BC.
FlipYrWhig
@Bob In Portland:
Let’s take everything you say here entirely seriously and conduct a thought experiment. If Oregon Democrats are more progressive than the rest of the country, it stands to reason that they are more progressive than the median US Democrat, correct? Why should the preferences of an unrepresentative sub-section of the Democratic Party be considered a window into the views of the Democratic Party _tout court_? Isn’t that a fairly serious data error, like trying to extrapolate the level of Red Sox fandom in the country by polling only Brookline?
Miss Bianca
@Xboxershorts: And would you say that Sen. Sanders’s shenanigans – and yells of “shenanigans!” – and refusal to use the leverage he’s unexpectedly shown himself to be wielding to endorse progressive down-ticket Senate candidates like Fetterman in PA – are somehow *helping* to focus energy on the Senate races? *Helping* to keep eyes on the prize of a new type of politics?
FlipYrWhig
@NR: Whereas your continual kvetching about the poll numbers and unlikeability of Hillary Clinton sound NOT AT ALL LIKE a Republican.
Xboxershorts
@Betty Cracker:
Politics is and always has been about the Art of Compromise.
The hard core Bernie or Bust types don’t accept that.
I like Bernie, voted for him in the Primary here in PA. But I would vote for HRC and even think she’d probably make a good President. My concern is really….turning over Congress.
Left Coast Lefty
@PNW_WarriorWoman: A video of a chair not being thrown is not proof that no chair was thrown. I can’t believe I actually had to type that sentence.
NR
@FlipYrWhig: Nice. What’s next from you? “I know you are, but what am I?”
Jonathan Holland Becnel
So much Vitriol from the Clinton camp over this.
It’s like yall are trying sooooo hard to convince Bernie peeps to drop out over a “BRANDISHED CHAIR”. Yea good luck with that.
Bernies been the same as he’s ever been. You know the DNC is getting desperate when Reid throws his hat in the ring. The DNC and the Shills have declared war on Bernie. ALL AT THE SAME TIME. It’s like yall have released a years worth of toxic sludge all at once. And it stinks.
Like @BettyCracker said earlier, we all want money out of politics.
Clintons all about dem DOLLA$$ yo!
Sure, she’ll fight for the working class, but NOT BEFORE GETTING THE 1% THEIR TAKE.
OBAMACARE: HUGE GIVEAWAYS TO PRIVATE INSURANCE COMPANIES. He didn’t even fight for Single Payer. He compromised it all away from the beginning. I was there. Fighting the Tea Party on the steps of the Baton Rouge Capitol in Louisiana.
What else? TPP: how on this green earth are any of yall for this? This is a bad trade deal for ordinary Americans and a HUGE FUCKING GIVEAWAY TO CORPORATIONS. Luckily, Clintons flip flopped on that issue.
MASS INCARCERATION: Clinton was partly responsible for the Public Schools to Prison Pipeline! Super predators are bad MMmMkayyy
The Clinton Global Initiative: HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DONATIONS MADE TO CGI BY CORPORATIONS WHO RECEIVED GOVT CONTRACTS WHILE SHE WAS SoS!
Bernie didn’t start this. Opinion leaders like Cole have. And Kos. And Marshall. And brooklynbadboy and Maddow and on and on.
But he keeps winning! He won a closed primary state last night for the first time in the campaign!
Hey, Cole, why don’t you take this ex-lurkers advice and let the people of Cali and Nj and D.C. Have a say before your coronation of the Neoliberl War Mongerer Clinton.
;)
Winky Face
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: I do believe I posted this graphic several years ago. You may have missed it.
Glad to help out.
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: I’ve used something similar. It seems to stop people in their tracks.
“But Bernie is further to the left/more liberal/more progressive!”
“And that is an unalloyed good because…?”
Major Major Major Major
@Jonathan Holland Becnel: You misspelled your insults, dumbass.
Bob In Portland
@Jonathan Holland Becnel: Cole’s gotten worse over the last year and a half. I think he’s having a Republican relapse.
Loviatar
Approximately 5 years ago (Aug 2, 2011) I asked the following question and got shouted at by the
Balloon Juicepragmatic wing of the Democratic party.—–
Approximately a month ago (Apr 27, 2016) I asked the following questions, and again I got shouted at by the
Balloon Juicepragmatic wing of the Democratic party.one-eyed man bitches
Bob In Portland
@Major Major Major Major: Because he actually has concern for class issues and how they affect Americans.
Now I know that after the House of Saud gave H. Clinton a half million in jewels she wasn’t allowed to actually keep it, but do they have it in a vault somewhere where she can take it out and try it on? You know, just for a little while.
FlipYrWhig
@Jonathan Holland Becnel:
Indeed he’s been a cantankerous, demanding, alienating, unlikeable bridge-burner for 50 consecutive years.
les
@Roger Moore:
We’ve managed to distinguish “media” from generic “corporation” pretty much forever. Keep in mind, the “free speech” at issue is “writing checks to politicians,” not “publishing corporate opinions.” Despite what you may have heard, corporations are not people, my friend.
Bob In Portland
@Loviatar: Well, first you have to blame Sanders and his followers for the debacle this fall. That’s a given.
Whatever they decide, it could be worse.
Major Major Major Major
@Loviatar: Well, we needed Lieberman’s vote, and he was quite clearly a petulant asshole, so he needed to be coddled…
FlipYrWhig
@Bob In Portland:
Like fuck he does. What has he done to advance “class issues” one iota? Complain that other people haven’t yet either?
D58826
@Jonathan Holland Becnel: And when you get control of the green lantern you can fix all of that. To take just one point. There were not enough votes for single payer. There were not r the public option. And if the GOP hadn’t driven Spector out of the party at just the right moment there were not enough votes for Obamacare. The uninsured rate has droped below 10% for the first time. Should it be zero, yes but w/o Obamacare it would be back to where it was in 2010. Since poster Richard M has talked about this in many of his posts I assume you rank him as one more Hillary/corporatist shill.
les
@Jonathan Holland Becnel:
Ya know, if you refrained from idiotic statements, fewer people might think you’re an idiot. No one, including our gracious host, has suggested anyone not be allowed to vote. Nor that Bernie should not be on the ballot. Non-idiots have noticed that Bern ain’t winnin’, and maybe should act as such. And really, when you can’t even spell the words you don’t understand, you probably shouldn’t use ’em.
Xboxershorts
@Miss Bianca: I love me some John Fetterman, a good friend of mine hosted a rally for JOhn in Pittsburgh. I would have gone except I’m 4 hours from there.
To answer you, I don’t know….but without superpac funds and DNC support in his campaign, I can kind of understand why he isn’t doing this.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@Bob In Portland:
Nah, he’s probably not getting enough sleep or something.
Bob In Portland
@FlipYrWhig: A few months ago the Balloon Juice Village was touting Hillary’s dynamic victories in the South. When I pointed out that the Dems haven’t won some of those states since Carter I got a lot of shit that I was somehow dissing the black voters there who voted for her. You folks had to jump through hoops to try to make that sound racist.
Oregon has voted Democratic for a couple of decades now. Shouldn’t you at least extend the same courtesy to Oregon voters that you showed to, say, Louisiana voters?
D58826
@Major Major Major Major: And if Bernie is the 50th senate vote in a Hillary presidency he will be given just about anything he wants (except the keys to air Force one)
Andy
@les: Reasons exist for such rude behavior. Slate attempted to explain the phenomenon, but if your gut instincts have told you some element of superiority is involved, your gut was right. Polite, secure people do not correct other people’s grammar. If they have the meaning of what one is saying in conversation, most listeners will overlook slight errors. Unfortunately, we don’t always talk with “most listeners.” Sometimes, in person, online, and against our better judgment, we talk with snooty, self-appointed, and insufferable grammar police.
Douche.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@FlipYrWhig:
And how is this a bad thing? Wages haven’t gone up in the Middle Class for how long now? 35+ years? While the 1% Fucks steal the hard earned capital off the backs and brows of Labor.
Anyways, sounds like your projecting a little bit.
Me thinks thou dost protest too much ;)
Gavin
@Jonathan Holland Becnel:
You lost – because you didn’t get out the vote.
Get over it.
Or, win the hearts and minds of people who vote.
You have lost in every way – both the popular vote and the superdelegates.
Don’t like it? Tough.
Bernie sucks. And more people who vote Democratic should know that after your gratuitous stunt in Nevada.
Deal with yourself.
You clearly have no respect for everyone who votes Democrat but disagreed with your candidate – so you deserve no respect.
SFAW
@les:
Too late for that.
Major Major Major Major
@D58826: Speaking of petulant assholes. I kid, mostly.
Miss Bianca
@Jonathan Holland Becnel: Do you work at sounding like an idiot, or does it come naturally to you?
Bob In Portland
@Betty Cracker:
Which is why she milked the richest of the rich for three billion, I’m sure. And why she’s laundering money through the DNC. God, just think if she wanted to keep money in politics.
Xboxershorts
@Gavin:
All of the above is true. However, We are going to need a very big chunk of these Sanders voters in November.
A very VERY big chunk if we want any hope of turning over Congress.
I wish more people would set aside their anger…on both sides.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@D58826:
It was by razors edge in both the senate and the house. And they had to Deem and Pass it as well.
Davebo
@Bob In Portland:
It’s good to see you still are displaying publicly that you have no idea what the term “money laundering” means.
It’s sort of the conceal carry versus open carry argument. It’s always better if people openly project isn’t it?
Major Major Major Major
@Andy: And Balloon-Juice is certainly known for its polite commenters.
Bob In Portland
@Miss Bianca:
And once more the villagers here at Balloon Juice extend a hand, welcoming those with opposing views to express themselves in an air of free expression.
Gavin
@Xboxershorts:
And they need us to accomplish their professed goals.
Unless, of course, Berniebros don’t give 2 bongloads about anything but themselves and their fee-fees.
I absolutely LOVE the fact that Hillary is the one who is actually practical regarding what can and can’t be done. Bernie has less than zero to offer in that regard. You don’t hire the absentminded professor as the COO, you let him be the guy who teaches theory. You know.. “Those who can’t, teach.”
ruemara
@Applejinx: Breitbarting her? WTF are you talking about? Whatever, ally.
There’s been no greasing of the wheels for Clinton. You can’t seem to find evidence despite months of this being common knowledge. As SoS, she was amongst the most respected women in the world. She had the recognition. She’s strong in debates, so less debates meant nothing. Sanders has had more TV time & positive coverage. He wasn’t an unknown to people on the left and he had a fucking halo on his head when he started.
Roger Moore
@D58826:
I would argue that big money is going to be bad far more often than it’s good. People who are advocating policies that benefit the population at large can generally get what they want by putting some seed money to start a grassroots organization that will advocate for their policies. It’s people who want something that benefits themselves at the expense of the general population who need to pour money into getting it passed.
SFAW
@Jonathan Holland Becnel:
Not since the late 1990s, perhaps?
Bob In Portland
@Andy:
I believe the grammar police today is Major Major.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@les:
Idiot
Moron
Fuck off
Trump Supporter
Paulite
These are just some of the epithets I’ve been called at by the BJ community in the past few days.
Notice, how I have not responded in kind. Ad Hominems are beneath me.
Now issues! Let’s talk!
les
@Andy: OMG. I have been uncivil on the internet. You’re surely correct, accusations of corruption, war-mongering and elitism should be met with the utmost respect, doncha know. I sincerely appreciate your thoughtful, well intentioned reminder that tone is far more important than content.
Fuckin’ idiot.
Andy
@les: —-Which you have neither of.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@Gavin:
Quite the contrary, I respect yalls opinion very much so. This is why I read Balloon Juice. I simply wanted to engage you to show that not all Bernie Supporters are the crazed Greener Naderite Deadended busters you generalize us to be.
Major Major Major Major
@Bob In Portland: ‘Police’ is a collective noun. It takes the plural. Perhaps you mean “representative of the grammar police”?
@Jonathan Holland Becnel: You forgot ‘dumbass’. What am I, chopped liver?
ruemara
@The Other Tim: closed primaries are only allowing registered Dems to vote. Open primaries allow anyone to vote, if they have a ballot. Sanders is largely supported by non-Dems. If the larger primaries were open, Sanders would do better. However, Hillary has won open primaries too.
les
@Xboxershorts:
True. But, really, I don’t hear many Dems telling Sanders’ folks not to vote for the candidate (although I’ve heard “if you refuse to vote Dem, then fuck off”). The anger appears to be that corrupt Dems didn’t let Bernie win, votes be damned. In other words, I’m not convinced it’s a “both sides do it” kinda issue.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@Bob In Portland:
Hahaha, do they know that’s why we keep coming back?
Shhhh, don’t tell them…
Andy
@Major Major Major Major: –He meant douche.
D58826
@Bob In Portland: Bernie won a dramatic victory in Oregon. Satisfied.
The problem was bernie seemed to be writing off those voters, many African American, as being unimportant because their state would not vote blue at the presidential level. Only Fla., N. Carolina and Virginia are in the south and have voted blue in recent history. These states might be red at the presidential level but there are down ballot democrats who get elected. This is the one chance these voters get to weigh in on national issues. They should not have been dismissed so lightly regardless of whither the reason was race, ignorance or just… reasons
NR
So the “pragmatist” argument here goes something like this. We have to get in bed with Wall Street and the big corporations because we can’t win without their money. And when we do win, we have to be careful not to do anything that those donors won’t like, or they’ll oppose us and we’ll lose. The left has to continue to be content with us pursuing center-right policies because if we don’t, we’ll lose and the Republicans are much worse.
So since you are all so pragmatic, consider this. We’ve done things your way for the last eight years, and the Democratic party is the weakest it’s been since the 1920s. The Republicans control both houses of Congress. They have full control of the government in 23 states, and they share power with the Democrats in 20 others. Democrats have complete control in just seven states. The Democrats are one lost presidential election away from the Republicans having a level of power they haven’t had in almost a hundred years, and the Dems have chosen a horrible candidate for that presidential election.
It doesn’t sound like your approach has worked very well, has it? So, since you are so pragmatic, maybe it’s time to consider a different approach, don’t you think? Maybe it’s time to start listening to the people you’ve been shouting down for the last eight years, the people who you insisted that if we did what they wanted, it would lead to electoral disaster?
No?
les
@Major Major Major Major:
Well and widely know as such, sir. Or is it sir sir sir sir?
singfoom
@Jonathan Holland Becnel:
One should expect to be called names here. It’s par for the course. That said, here’s an issue. A coronation is the process by which a country confers the throne to a king or queen.
That’s not what’s been going on here. Over 3 million more people have expressed themselves via primaries and caucuses that they prefer HRC as the nominee. How’s that a coronation exactly?
She was hardly alone. She also wasn’t a sitting member of the government then, just a First Lady and Bernie voted for that crime bill (like VIRTUALLY EVERY ONE).
I won’t say she’s perfect, but you might consider she’s not the monster you make her out to be…
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@SFAW:
Late 70s but nice try.
Thanks for reminding me about the late 90s though. If Hillary and the DNC added in their platform something about reinstating Glass-Steagell that would be fuckin awesome bro!
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Bob, at this point you’re the “houseguest” who moved in three years ago and refuses to leave no matter how much the homeowners beg you to go.
les
@Jonathan Holland Becnel:
When your notion of an issue is “she’s an neoliberal war mongerer,” “idiot” isn’t an ad hominem, it’s a description.
I’m not suggesting your issue should be disregarded because you’re an idiot, I’m saying you’re an idiot for thinking such a worn out shibboleth is an issue.
Major Major Major Major
@les: Oh heavens no, just the first one is the rank. It’s why they’ll never promote me.
@les: Ah yes, there’s a line I’ve been using lately. “Just because I think you’re an idiot doesn’t mean we disagree” and its partner “Just because we agree doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re an idiot.”
Trollhattan
@shortstop:
Heh, if I take out my contacts she’ll have to read the damn thing to me, as well as fill in the little ovals.
les
@Major Major Major Major: Sadly true. Still, they let you set your own office hours. And keep that convenient window.
Roger Moore
@les:
No, it isn’t. There still are limits on direct contributions to politicians. What is allowed under Citizens United is unlimited spending by nominally unaffiliated groups. If you remember, the specific issue in Citizens United was an attempt by an outside group to buy airtime to play an anti-Hillary “documentary”; it was actually intended to tear down a candidate rather than support one. If you want a solid legal argument to overturn Citizens United, you need to be able to distinguish between Vince Offer buying time to run an infomercial selling ShamWow! and Charles Koch buying time to run an infomercial selling Scott Walker.
Bob In Portland
@Davebo: Davebo, since there have been several articles regarding the fiscal hijinks between Schultz, Hillary’s PAC and the State Democratic organizations, and they used the term “money laundering”, your snooty comment only means that you’re playing grammar police today, and not very well. I guess I could say moving money through various accounts so that Hillary Clinton’s financial benefactors could circumvent campaign finance laws. But what the fuck is your problem?
How about Clinton Foundation Money Laundering Scheme? Actually, that’s a different scheme than I was referring to. Here’s the POLITICO article. Not sure if they use the specific term money-laundering, but they describe the process.
Then there’s this story:
But they use the word “funnel”. Is that a proper use of “funnel” or should the grammar police investigate?
Davebo, give it a rest or at least read what the fuck she and her collaborators at the DNC are doing moving all that money between all those accounts.
Trollhattan
@les:
Swear all these putzen (ad hom alert!) are out of work Republican plants. BRINKS TRUCKS! be empty, yo.
les
@Jonathan Holland Becnel:
Really fuckin’ awsome, bro!!!! Platform policies on measures that didn’t contribute meaningfully to the last crash and aren’t applicable to modern financial practices that might threaten the next are exactly the meaningless drivel we should fight to get in the platform to satisfy the Bros!
Idiot.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@les:
Noooo Clinton got way more of the Popular Vote than Sanders. She’s got more pledged delegates. This is NOT the issue.
When over 400 super delegates declare for Clinton before the Primaries even started is the issue! When most of these are lobbyists, State officials, and govt officials high up within the DNC, you shouldn’t be surprised when the opposing team cries foul every now and again.
Some other issues That have happened along the way:
Long ass lines in Phoenix. Why? They took all the voting machines away.
100k+ Voters stricken from the rolls in Brooklyn. Why? HOOCOODANODE
This latest Nevada stuff was nothing new on the part of the DNC.
Clinton won the First round. This is true. But Nevada has a three part process. In the second round, Bernie supporters organized the fuck out of the Clinton camp. So, right before the third round the Nevada DNC decides to change the rules in favor of Clinton.
singfoom
@Bob In Portland: Lol, well Bob, you’ve finally convinced me. I was sure, sure that HRC wasn’t laundering money, but Kevin Jackson, who you linked to with ledes like this:
from here: http://theblacksphere.net/2016/05/liberal-spin-drug-abuse/
really convinced me. Totally not a right wing site or anything. Totally not more right wing talking points.
FlipYrWhig
@NR:
What the fuck are you on about? There’s no pragmatist argument remotely like whatever nonsense you just coughed up. The argument is, rather simply, that “the left” is very small in America, and hence the very small left in America should probably throw in its lot with other groups, like “non-left people of color” and “non-left middle-aged white women” and “non-left socially tolerant white professionals” if it hopes to have anything slightly left-ish ever occur. Or “the left” can stamp its widdle foots and vote for a dreamcatcher with feet and _also_ have nothing slightly left-ish ever occur. Seems like kind of an obvious course of action.
patroclus
@Jonathan Holland Becnel: Well, the push-out provisions of Dodd-Frank, the Volcker Rule and the new derivatives regulations for all OTC’s that must be traded on exchanges and reported to the new FSOC pretty much accomplish the same things as G-S ever did. And frankly, letting investment banks have access to the Fed’s discount window is probably a good thing to avert 2007-08 style crises and regulating the SSFI’s (like AIG) is certainly a good move. But the bright line that G-S was definitely sent a clearer message that commercial banks can’t speculate, so I’d certainly go with an amended G-S.
les
@Roger Moore: Dude. We are and have been capable for a long while to distinguish ads for shamwow v. Scott Walker. Well, maybe that one’s a little close, but…The point is, corporate freedom of speech is not an issue we need to be concerned about in this context.
D58826
@Jonathan Holland Becnel: Well I have no problem re-instating it but the crash of 2008 was largely the result of the shadow banking system, the investment banks, AIG, and the rating agencies, none of which were covered by Glass-Steagell. And to show just how hard this is, an attempt to bring Met Life under Dodd-Frank rules was just shot down by a GOP appointed federal judge. It will probably be reversed on appeal but a conservative SCOTUS might just use a case like that to start the juridical dismantling of Dodd-Frank.o
FlipYrWhig
@Jonathan Holland Becnel: Is this like the Onion article Why Do All These Homosexuals Keep Sucking My Cock? Are you seriously wondering why important Democrats keep supporting the Democrat, instead of the abrasive, unfriendly independent whose whole campaign is predicated on calling the party corrupt?
Timurid
@Bob In Portland:
Carrying water for Bernie Sanders and Vladimir Putin? That is some next level cognitive dissonance…
Bob In Portland
@PeterJ: Do you mean the superdelegaters who are lobbyists for corporations during the day? No, as far as I know they all support Hillary.
Gin & Tonic
@Jonathan Holland Becnel:
And then in the third round *they didn’t show up*. How many Sanders delegates were missing? How many Clinton delegates?
Gin & Tonic
@Timurid: Not really. Tad Devine worked to elect Viktor Yanukovych before going to work for Bernie Sanders.
patroclus
@FlipYrWhig: Well, my “pragmatic” view differs with both of your summaries. In my view, neither we leftists nor our center-left allies turned out in either 2010 or 2014 and we constantly got shellacked, with each side blaming each other rather than the Republicans. Which is why we need to unify this year and turn out in November to take the USSC, re-take the Senate and reduce the margin in the House as well as begin to change prospects at the state and local levels.
EZSmirkzz
@Grumpy Code Monkey: Sorry to be so slow Grumpy Code Monkey, had to stuff my face.
Yeah I took the test when Digby had it up on her blog and ended up in the leftern libertarian quadrant, due I suppose to my civil liberty views, which aren’t as intense as Greenwald’s.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@les:
Hah! Me thinks you’ve been reading too much Krugman! The deregulation of commercial banks able to recklessly gamble with public pension funds, etc led directly to the toxic CDOs that laid low the world economy! AIG was one of those insurance companies and Bear Stearns and Lehman bros and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and Citi Bank!
Tell me, les, can I call you les? Matter of fact my favorite college football coach is Les ;) why weren’t there any great depressions/recessions since 1929? Could it possibly be Glass-Steagell in the 30s until 99??
FlipYrWhig
@Gin & Tonic: See under Simpson, comma Homer:
Major Major Major Major
@Jonathan Holland Becnel: Well, there was 1973.
And the 90’s in Asia.
Bob In Portland
@Timurid: You know, when I point out that the US is backing the same Nazi movement in Ukraine that killed millions of Jews and Slavs in WWII and the best response I get from the villagers here is that I must be carrying Putin’s water, do you know how bad you sound? Read this.
By the way, Timmy, why do you think we’ve been waging war in Afghanistan for fifteen years? To catch bin Laden?
Read the article or read a few books. Then we can talk.
FlipYrWhig
@patroclus: I’ll take that as a friendly amendment.
patroclus
@D58826: I’m hopeful that it will be overturned because regulation of the SSFI’s is a key part of Dodd-Frank and, indeed, when Gramm-Leach-Bliley was enacted, it was with the understanding that insurance companies (that affiliated with banks) would now be subject to regulation by the banking regulators. If upheld, that would render Dodd-Frank ineffective AND give the lie to Gramm and Leach and Bliley’s stated reasons for that Act.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: And the CIA overthrew the elected government in Ukraine. Who do you think the CIA is working for in this election?
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@patroclus:
Sounds well to me, Patroclus!
Another thing that bothers me is the fact that not one Wall St. CEO has gone to jail yet or even been indicted. The SEC and treasury are stacked with former corporate attorneys from Citigroup and BoA, so it’s no wonder they all got off Scott free. Well except for those NDAs and billions of dollars worth of fines without admitting culpability.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: I don’t know, Bob, why don’t you tell me?
Loviatar
@Xboxershorts:
I’m directing this at you, but I keep seeing the following repeated so I have to ask is this true?
At the presidential level Sam Wang forecasts the Democrats with approximately 262 electoral votes before the general election campaign has even begun. He gives Hillary Clinton an over 99% chance of victory. Bernie Sanders’ voters are needed at the State and Local level and are definitely required to swing the Senate, however their votes at the presidential level is greatly overrated. I think the Sander’s voters are overplaying their hand and are in the process of losing any kind of leverage they may have gotten from their primary victories.
However, as I’m known as a perfectly reasonable commentator, let me propose a compromise for the General Election; Bernie or Bust voters do not vote for Hillary Clinton, however do vote for down ticket Democratic candidates. This will give you the satisfaction of not having voted for Hillary Clinton, but will allow you to help further progressive causes.
see its a win, win
FlipYrWhig
@patroclus: Lost time to edit my comment above. I was going to add this: Some of the people who call themselves “left” see themselves as beyond liberal, and far beyond center-left. And yet, notwithstanding all that, I get the distinct impression that they see themselves as The Base of the Democratic Party. And that’s the profile of the most ardent Berniacs I know.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@D58826:
FlipYrWhig
@Loviatar: BUT PEOPLE WHO AREN”T BERNIE ARE SOOOO BORINNNNNG WHY FIGURE OUT WHO THEY ARE
See under Kloppenburg, JoAnne.
NR
@FlipYrWhig: Except people here have made that exact argument multiple times. I saw the “we can’t win without their money” argument made here today.
And like I said, your approach has failed. Are you ready to consider another approach, or will it take Hillary losing in November for that to happen? Or will that not even do it?
D58826
@Jonathan Holland Becnel:
Hate to break it to you Bro but the only commercial bank on that list in 2008 is Citi. the rest are investment banks not covered by G-S.
The deregulation of the financial industry has been a major problem that goes back before G-S was repealed. The S&L’s went belly up in 1989 after St Ronulus the Unready signed the law to deregulate them.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@FlipYrWhig:
You mean all those important Democrats losing to the Tea Party Right Wing in state after state after state? Tell me, why is it that the DNC has allowed the Republican Party to run rough shod over Democrats?
Bob In Portland
@singfoom: Depends on how you define liberals, I guess. I was merely googling the term “money-laundering” and “Hillary Clinton”. I got 775,000 hits. My use of the link was to only to demonstrate to the use of “money-laundering” and “Hillary Clinton” in the same article. As it was, I kept coming up with that other “Clinton money-laundering” scheme, regarding the the Clinton Foundation. Please forgive me. Or don’t.
Is this a political correctness intervention or are you a subsidiary of the Village grammar police?
CLINTON MONEY-LAUNDERING.
NR
@Loviatar:
Then why all the wailing and gnashing of teeth here about what they’re going to do in November?
Which is it? Are Sanders voters irrelevant, or are they single-handedly going to throw the election to Trump by refusing to support Hillary?
You can’t have it both ways.
Admiral_Komack
@rikyrah:
“Sanders IS NOT A DEMOCRAT.”
“THAT is what is different.”
“so, trying to be too cute by half, DWS let someone who had NEVER been a Democrat, run in the Democratic Party’s Primary for PRESIDENT.”
-and THIS is why DWS should have been fired a LONG time ago.
What’s the difference between a sunshine soldier and a progressive?
Sunshine soldiers fight sometime.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@Gin & Tonic:
ummm yes they did.
patroclus
@Jonathan Holland Becnel: You’re partially right, but it was more than Gramm-Leach-Bliley – it was a combination of that, a series of deregulatory moves made by the Fed (and other agencies) in the 1980’s (and upheld by the courts), interstate deregulation in 1994 (Riegle-Neal), the CFTC Modernization Act of 2000-1 and, most importantly, the failure to regulate or even require the reporting of derivatives trading by banks in the 1990’s that caused the problems. Merely re-instating G-S wouldn’t be enough, we need Dodd-Frank to be vigorously enforced (and upheld by the courts) as to ALL of its provisions, we need stricter capital adequacy rules (Basel III) and we need to break up the massive oligopolies that resulted from all that de-regulation. 4 big banks (Citi, WF, Chase and Bof A) is not competitive enough – we need large regionals and super-regionals to counter-balance their power and influence.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@Major Major Major Major:
14 Trillion $ is a lotta dough!
1973 and 90s Asia, did 14 trillion $ vanish too?
NR
@Admiral_Komack: Hey, that’s a good one. I’ve got one for you too. What’s the difference between a sunshine soldier and a “pragmatic” corporate Democrat?
Sunshine soldiers actually fire some shots before surrendering.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@Bob In Portland:
Obama, which I don’t think is 100% to blame at all, has been at war longer than any other president in History.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@Gin & Tonic:
I think it’s fairly obvious who the CIA supported in its Fascist Coup against the people of Honduras.
patroclus
@D58826: Well, they were covered by G-S in that they were investment banks that were supposedly regulated by the SEC with after-the-fact-only prosecution rather than before-the-fact prudential regulation. But in fact, they weren’t regulated by the SEC or anyone else, their entire model failed and they literally had to affiliate with the commercial banks in order to survive 2007-08 and have access to the discount window. Which, given the paradigm change, is probably a good thing. But Dodd-Frank dealt with that with the push-out provisions and the Volcker rule. Which is why it needs a ringing judicial upholding.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@D58826:
Agreed. I’ve read that it started in the early 80s right before the S+L scandal.
Loviatar
@NR:
I don’t want it both ways. I’m on record on calling for a more streamlined Democratic party with less tolerance for assholes. If that means we do without the Bernie or Busters then fine, fuck you guys. In a two party system, you’re either with us or you’re against us. Right now you seem to be leaning towards against us.
For the ones who are soon going to get on me by yelling purity pony, the Republicans have proved over the past 7+ years that within our governmental structure a determined minority makes a hell of a protective cup. I’ll take that for the next few years if it wakes up the Bernie or Bust assholes to the damage their doing. You Obots should be happy with this scenario; Nader got you Obama.
Gin & Tonic
@Jonathan Holland Becnel: That wasn’t the question, was it?
Roger Moore
@patroclus:
With banks, though, it’s not just competition that’s important when you have a few behemoths; there’s also the question of TBTF that doesn’t really affect other businesses the same way. Dodd-Frank does quite a bit to help deal with TBTF, both directly by making failure of a big bank less damaging to the economy as a whole and by discouraging size in general, but IMO directly breaking up some of the big banks would be a good idea. Of course I’d also like to see the FTC (and other government regulators) take a more generally skeptical view of consolidation in every industry.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@Admiral_Komack:
We called EM Flashlight Rangers where I come from!
Who do you think is in the trenches fighting for Climate Change and LGBTQ rights and Anti-Citizens United? These are the people backing Sanders. Why you wouldn’t want to piggyback onto this infrastructure of activists is beyond me unless you consider Clinton tacking to the right, which she will, and punching those Dirty Fucking Hippies in the mouth again Circa 2010, which she is.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@patroclus:
YES YES YES
Well said.
columbusqueen
@NR: Gee, what about all the punches Hillary has pulled? She’s barely laid a glove on Bernie & is beating him. If she chose to, she could turn Bernie & Jane into mincemeat, esp. with the Burlington College mess boiling over right now.
patroclus
@Jonathan Holland Becnel: Then we’re on the same page – more than merely G-S is needed. (But it actually started in the 1970’s with the creation of MBS’s and ABS’s and the use of monetarism as an instrument of policy, as well as the series of de-regulatory moves in the 80’s, Riegle-Neal, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the CFTC Modernization Act and the failure to even attempt to regulate or require the reporting of derivatives).
Jonathan Holland Becnel
FWIW, Cole, Die Hard is the shizznet!
YIPPEE KAYAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Roger Moore
@Loviatar:
Not really. You can’t obstruct your way to a better functioning government but you can obstruct your way to a broken, disfunctional government. Since the Democrats want a better government and the Republicans want to destroy government, obstruction works for them but not for us.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: Why do state Democratic Parties do what they do? Because they think it gives them the best chance of winning. What you are trying to propose is that state Democratic Parties should adopt a wholly different strategy _that they are sure is likely to fail_ because a very small group of very pissy people vaguely might bitch about it slightly less vocally. Why would they do that? What sense does it make? The way to teach them to do something else is to show them that _something else works_. Not that something else TOTALLY WOULD WORK BUT NOBODY DOES IT BECAUSE CORPORATE CORRUPTION. Just show up AND WIN, and the party will morph to adopt your excellent winning strategy. But I’ll tell you, if TERRY FREAKIN’ MCAULIFFE, who nobody even likes on any level and carries no symbolic value whatsoever, can run the Obama playbook in a purple state like Virginia and win, Democratic candidates in purple states are going to keep trying to run the Obama playbook for the next 20 years, which is what Hillary Clinton is attempting to do. And they’re sure as hell not going to rush to trash that, their only new playbook since 1992, by copying the inept, bullying, snit-based, process-obsessed campaign Bernie Sanders has been running AND LOSING ON.
FlipYrWhig
@columbusqueen: Whyever would you think a story about a badly run Vermont institution that couldn’t solve its budget woes with borrowed money after a lot of hoopla about the arrival of a new leader would reflect poorly on the Bernie Sanders campaign? :P
Loviatar
@Roger Moore:
I willing to bet you’re coming from a point of never having to protect your existence. Sometimes you just have to play defense.
NR
@FlipYrWhig:
If they think that, then they’re idiots, because they’ve been utterly obliterated at the state level over the past eight years.
They can think whatever they want, the objective reality is that their strategy over the last eight years has led to electoral losses that are nearly unprecedented in the last hundred years.
patroclus
@Roger Moore: Exactly. The Fed, the FDIC, the OCC, the FTC, the DOJ, the CFTC and every other governmental approval agency need to start to execute their existing authority to disapprove proposed mergers and acquisitions and other growth applications on competitive grounds. Especially in the banking industry but in other industries as well. It used to be that getting such approvals was hard and took months or years to accomplish; in recent years, they’ve been approved as a matter of course. The decline in anti-trust enforcement since Reagan has been appalling. It must stop.
Mnemosyne
@Jonathan Holland Becnel:
Do you really not understand that you’re coming across as exactly the stereotype you claim to be defying? If that was your aim, you have failed completely.
SFAW
@Jonathan Holland Becnel:
And this is why you don’t get taken seriously. Real wages were in decline during Reagan and Bush I, and increased during the Clinton Administration. I’d provide links, but surely someone as smart as you seem to think you are can find them yourself.
Bob In Portland
@Jonathan Holland Becnel: Within is an article on CIA participation in bank scandals, to include the S&L scam.
SFAW
@Major Major Major Major:
You weren’t originally named Caleb, perchance?
Bob In Portland
@Loviatar: Earl Blumenauer is my congressman. Vote for him. Shit, I may marry him.
Bob In Portland
@FlipYrWhig:
You mean “monied.”
FlipYrWhig
@NR: And we’ve been over this before, but stay with me: the way to woo them into a new strategy is to run the new strategy AND WIN DESPITE THEIR MISGIVINGS, not to moan about how it’s so hard and they’re so mean. Because politicos and their consultants are copycats, not innovators, and they will _always_ incline to fighting the last war.
Let’s use a sports analogy. Think of the career of Steph Curry. Think about how he was supposed to be too small and his style of play too unmanly to cut it in the NBA. Until he started torching everybody and created a new style of play that has kids on playgrounds wanting to mimic him, creating a paradigm shift in basketball. Some team has to embrace the style _and ride it to unexpected success_, and spawn imitators, who are in turn successful. And right now in politics the obvious lesson is that the Bill Clinton ’92 playbook is played out, the Obama ’08 playbook is taking root. Terry McAuliffe ran it, and Hillary Clinton is running it. Maybe someone will run a modified Sanders ’16 playbook in 2032 and win, and then local Democratic Parties will try to roll out their own versions, just like today’s 11-year-olds trying to sink long threes will by then be the best and most famous players in the NBA. You can’t preempt that political development by frowning really hard.
FlipYrWhig
@Bob In Portland: You mean “moneyed.”
J R in WV
I think Bernie should be hoping Jane doesn’t have to fight for her freedom in court, as opposed to just looking dumb enough to kill off a promising college.
Is there anyone else who could be responsible for this? Why did Jane insist on buying real estate the college obviously couldn’t afford? Was there money for Jane in the deal? Was she beholden to the RC organization that owned the property?
I have plenty of questions, none of them about Bernie and his political ethics…
Plantsmantx
@Cat48: They think closed primaries is “rigging the system”…in cases where they didn’t win them.
J R in WV
@Bob In Portland:
Nothing like the Koch brothers and the GOP, though! Right? Right!?
FlipYrWhig
@J R in WV: I know what you mean, the Sanderses don’t seem like the kind of people who’d be so sure of themselves and their great ideas that they’d make many embarrassing mistakes and flail around as the imminent failure became clearer.
Major Major Major Major
So close to 500.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Let it go. The dream is dead.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Due to his age, long term thinking probably never enters Sanders mind. He doesn’t win this time he has positively, absolutely no chance. Whose going to vote for a 78 yr old for president? 12 people? Yeah, he’s had this one chance and that’s gone now. Clinton needs 90 delegates to win, Sanders needs 850. There are 781 left to win. So he’d have to basically win every remaining delegate and then get 70 supers to flip or some variation. It will go to CA but Clinton will probably have it sewn up by noon on June 7th.
HA
Maybe it’s time for a Bust Bernie movement. Let him know that if he and his followers continue like this, regardless of what Hillary says, we won’t vote for him. He’ll be responsible for electing Trump.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Omnes Omnibus: Church Lady didn’t put this one over the top? I am disapoint.
Cheers,
Scott.
opiejeanne
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Not there yet? Here’s my contribution.
opiejeanne
@Ruckus: New Jersey will put her over the top, we think.
eemom
John Cole
eemom
is ranting the righteous rant
eemom
again Bernout and his dumbass bernedtard acolytes
eemom
who are trying to fuck us out of
opiejeanne
@J R in WV: The idea was that the new property would attract more students and faculty. She is said to have presented “pledged” donations as if they were actually in hand when she talked to the bank. There is something about hiring her daughter to work at the college, maybe it was in the woodworking lab?, at a cost of $500k, and when the board finally decided it was time for Jane to go there was a $500k Golden Parachute for her.
She has been a paid member of a board that exports radioactive waste to a facility in Texas. Sierra Blanca. Sanders voted for the deal. What about Sierra Blanca, Bernie?
eemom
the victory that fucking SHOULD be fucking OURS in November
eemom
so, Yay Cole
eemom
and fuck Bernie
opiejeanne
@HA: Bust Bernie.
I like it.
opiejeanne
@eemom: Amen.
eemom
Did my part for a TBogg unit. The end.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
ye of little faith.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
oh no….
eemom
it ain’t.
opiejeanne
@eemom: Is that all there is?
opiejeanne
If that’s all there is my friends
Then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is
redshirt
It does seem a shame to come so close and not push for that last little bit.
TheWatcher
@NR: And YOU are going to hear A LOT about the Trump casino in Dubai. You are a jacka$$.
AxelFoley
@eclare:
I got clued into him when I’d see him downplay just about every one of President Obama’s achievements during his first term.
AxelFoley
@rikyrah:
S’up, boo? ;)
Big Picture Pathologist
@Roger Moore:
He didn’t. Gore won, despite the best efforts of Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush.
different-church-lady
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Jesus, I’m not a machine.
different-church-lady
@Bob In Portland:
I just Googled the terms “Bob” “Portland” and “Idiot”. I got 1,120,000 hits.
BOB-PORTLAND-IDIOT
Dennis
Sanders has already said he’d support the Demo nominee. You’re inventing something he might do and saying he’s a real dick because he did that. I’m sure you’ll apologize when he does support Clinton in the fall.