Not to put a downer on the site after the quadrapedal delights below, but this nugget from the festering gob of one Jeff Weaver caught my attention:
While he was not at Saturday’s convention, Weaver said that based on the account of Sanders surrogate Nina Turner, the reports of a violent atmosphere had been overblown.
“She said, no one went on the stage. No one had the right to feel threatened,”
Oh no — no right at all to think a howling claque might do harm, wasn’t already doing so.
Instead, Weaver argues, it’s all the fault of those facing what he sees as righteous fury:
“What happens is when you rig the process, and you get an angry crowd, you know they’re not used to that.”
Again with the bullshit about a rigged process — one in which Bernie’s folks failed to show up, didn’t register, and all that. But that’s beside the point here.
Rather…what the f**k?
Here’s some middle aged white guy telling those — headed by a women — running a meeting what they get to feel, what they’re allowed to view as a danger.
Makes me weep for my Y chromosome, as well as my party and my country.
I know this is piling on the Balloon Juice Bernie-bile, but I have to say — this one makes the MRA strain in the Sanders campaign shine in high relief for me, and it ain’t pretty. More to the point — it ain’t what Bernie asked folks to sign up for months ago. Power — just the whiff of power — corrupts even (or especially) those convinced of their own sanctity.
Image: Thomas Gainsborough, Study of a Woman in a Mob Cap, undated (before 1788). [Sorry — couldn’t resist the pun]
Baud
Women can feel safe with Baud!
Betty Cracker
The most charitable reading of that account is that Weaver is saying Turner said no one had the right to feel threatened. But it’s still a stupid thing to say, and the campaign, including Sanders himself, have handled the Nevada fracas horribly, which doesn’t recommend their executive capacity. The linked article quotes Weaver as saying, “If people received phone calls that were inappropriate, we absolutely condemn that 100 percent.” “If”? Just go online and listen to the vile, threatening calls. Read the misogynist texts. There’s no “if” about it.
Tom Levenson
@Betty Cracker: I am not in a charitable mood. This despite my usual instructions to my students to always give the opposing argument the most generous reading possible.
Iowa Old Lady
The most revealing part of the events in Nevada is the reaction of Sanders and now Weaver. Those can’t be blamed on a few over-passionate supporters, or mis-reporting, or Paulites who have infiltrated the true believers, or alcohol for sale in the venue (as I heard one Sanders supporter say on TRMS). And every statement I’ve seen has been worse than the previous one.
Joel
What is social justice without empathy?
Betty Cracker
@Iowa Old Lady: Exactly right.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
yet Sanders walks around surrounded by a Secret Service detail.
Of course the only reason they’re there is to stop BLM from taking his microphone, again.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady:
Ironically, I think the corrupting influence of money is partly to blame. How do you keep up fundraising if you’re in Sanders’s position?
Unsympathetic
The process wasn’t rigged. Bernie simply didn’t get out the vote. You don’t represent anything other than yourself when you are not organized.
Berniebros simply don’t respect anyone who doesn’t agree with them – and that’s a fine opinion to have, but it doesn’t in any way represent the majority of Democrats or the majority of people.
I have less than zero respect for fans of Bernie – period.
Either work with the system or GTFO.
Hi, Bernie fans — you’re wrong.
Deal with yourselves. Quietly, in a corner somewhere.
Those of us who actually are interested in the tedious slog of governance will happily move on WITHOUT YOU.
dr. bloor
At this point, they’re the nominally lefty version of sovereign citizens.
Aside from offensive, Comic Book Guy’s insistence on defending those chumps is galactically stupid. The loons are still a small minority of Sanders’ supporters, and he’s pissing away credibility with people who want change rather than to just break shit.
OzarkHillbilly
I am so tired of this latest new and improved Messiah. But what do you expect from an atheist?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Imagine if Trump had wrote lack of sexy time causes cervical cancer. It would be a firestorm.
Dork
Jeff Weaver? See, this is what pitching for the Dodgers will do to ya. Warps the mind, makes one an asshole.
D58826
Let me see if I understand this. Nevada has a three step process.
1. Hillary won the first step in Feb. and came away with the majority of the delegates based on a proportional distribution
2. In step 2 Bernie’s folks out hustled Hillary’s folks in getting a slate of delegates selected for the third step. It was all according to the rules and the fact that it would have reversed the final delegate distribution and the will of the voters did not seem to bother Bernie’s folks.
3. In the 3rd step the Hillary folks, using the same rulebook that Bernie was fine with in step 2, out hustled the Bernie folks and confirmed the voter selected delegate count.
BUT BUT BUT the system was rigged because Hillary out hustled us.
This is Calvin ball!!!!
sunny raines
the purity progressives are an ugly bunch, no different at their core than the fascists on the right fueling trump – at their core, nothing but victimhood, anger, and hatred. Sanders has to lead his cabal away from the cliff he drove them to.
BlueDWarrior
@sunny raines: I’m not convinced that some of them don’t want to jump off the cliff (despite Bernie finding a clue and telling them to stop sometime in the next few weeks) in some misbegotten notion that showing they were screwed by the whole system (somehow) would trigger the Glorious People’s Revolution they have convinced themselves is just around the corner.
dr. bloor
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
If he had written it in the 60’s or 70’s as Bernie did, it probably would have landed him an appointment as a training analyst at a psychoanalytic institute in NYC. Different times.
The Thin Black Duke
Translation: “Who cares if women feel threatened?”
Craigo
A hearty fuck-you to everyone who scoffed at the idea of “Berniebros”. Not only do they exist, but they run his campaign.
cmorenc
It occurred to me that one of the tactical goals of the Sanders campaign in raising ruckus about “opening” the process up so people could participate might have been to try to induce loosening of restrictions on who could vote in the California democratic primary June 7th – but then I found out that California doesn’t actually require voters to be registered ‘D’ to vote in the ‘D’ primary, only that the voter has registered as either “D” or “unaffiliated”, i.e. so long as the voter is not registered with a party other than ‘D’ they can vote in the Cal D primary. Even New Jersey’s purportedly “closed” democratic primary on June 7th is not truly that – any unaffiliated voter can change their registration to ‘D’ at the voting site.
Instead, tactically IMHO the goal of the Sanders campaign at the Nevada state meeting was specifically to create a ransom-type incident to either force the party to fold on who got the extra delegates or else create an ugly protest incident to make the Clinton campaign and state party organization look bad. And so far, news organizations (looking at you CNN and MSNBC) have complicitly gone along with mostly overlooking the facts (e.g. there were in fact substantially more Clinton delegates present than Sanders delegates, even had the 64 denied Sanders delegates been allowed in (of whom 56 didn’t even show up).
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
fascinating account.
BlueDWarrior
@cmorenc: This is just, ugh, I hate this story, I hate it so much. It seems like these people just want the party to bow to them and their incorruptible pure pureness, and if we deny them, then they will get the gas cans and the matches and threaten to burn themselves and all of us with them until we love them.
Yeah I think I’m mixing my metaphors.
D58826
Totally OT but there is a missing airbus over the Med right now. Usually scenario no mayday call, just strange behavior on the radar track. In an emergency pilots are taught to aviate, navigate and the finally communicate. All of which makes perfect sense. My question is, in an airplane loaded with electronics, why isn’t there a switch/button whatever that a pilot/copilot can press with a minimum of effort, while still aviating, that tells ATC ‘hang on I have a problem’. It doesn’t tell us what the problem is but it does serve to communicate while not distracting the pilot from aviating. And it indicates that at that moment the pilot is still conscious.
Aviation experts?
Matt McIrvin
@dr. bloor: Yeah, the idea that negative attitudes or sexual/emotional repression could cause cancer was something a lot of people seriously believed at the time.
And actually, I think there is some evidence that having a lot of orgasms lowers the rate of testicular cancer in men (or is it prostate?), but if real it’s surely a purely physiological effect.
NorthLeft12
Hey, here is a general question for the BJ crowd; Is threatening physical harm to people, either in groups or individually, a tolerated part of US society/discourse?
From my perspective from up in Canada, verbal and published threats of harm appear to be a nearly regular occurrence in the US. And it seems rare that the threats are treated with much seriousness. And I’m not just talking about public figures, this seems to be happening between average citizens too.
The story I read the other day about the guy who “joked” about planting a bomb at a Dem town hall on Facebook and then got a visit from the Secret Service/FBI got a lot of play, but I would think this would be happening much more often. Just wondering.
dr. bloor
@cmorenc:
Eh. I don’t think they have the control over their minions or the foresight to use the word “tactically” in the context of anything that happened there. These guys have the self-control and foresight of a band of puppies on a squirrel farm.
D58826
@D58826: OOOPs never mind Cnn’s Miles O’brien just said there is a button on the joystick (AIrbus uses a joystick, Boeing the more traditional control wheel) that can be pushed which basically says ‘mayday’ to ATC.
gvg
Presidents are always blamed for their subordinates actions and results plus some things they actually don’t control. Good ones pick good subordinates and also handle the inevitable some bad results with effective actions and acknowledgements of responsibility. Often they have to apologize for the things they never controlled. I have trouble with that concept myself but I have observed the bad results when an important leader can’t do it. Bernie doesn’t seem to have even thought out what it will actually be like to BE president.
“The buck stops here “ring any bells Bernie?
And apparently my sister is still a Sanders supporter. yeesh.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Unsympathetic: I’d be careful about calling them “fans”. They seem to prefer the term “supporters”. One said to me that “fan” is “dismissive and condescending” (believe it or not). An analogy used was that it was kinda like calling Muslims “terrorists” (believe it or not).
The propaganda on Bernie’s side is turned up to 11 by too many people.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Craigo:
Exactly. The candidate is the prototype.
Tripod
There is no greater tactical or strategic play. These nitwits are situational nihilists, because they are losing to a girl.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Meh. Old people have a history and things change. This is a nothing-burger, just as HRC supporting Goldwater was. Documentation of everyone’s public utterance and writing is getting more extreme with “social media”. Let’s not feed the meme that something said decades ago (and taken out of context) is disqualifying today.
People need to be able to express opinions and be wrong. None of us is perfect.
Cheers,
Scott.
Elmo
@D58826: IANAAA (I am not an aviation expert) but it seems to me that your answer is embedded in your question. The aircraft is loaded with electronics that are designed to keep the bird in the air and on track. Comm is secondary. If I’m designing a plane that I want Delta or United to buy, I don’t put in anything extra that might (a) crowd out more important gear or (b) increase the price for a feature with limited benefit to the customer.
If the pilot gets the bird safely on the ground, he can tell us what happened. If he doesn’t, my flying customers aren’t going to care that my doodads made the investigators jobs a tiny bit easier at the outset.
We’ll find out what happened to the plane. We nearly always do.
ETA aaaaaand just saw your follow up. See? Not an expert, me!
Iowa Old Lady
@dr. bloor: This is damaging Sanders’s support with previously sympathetic people. A couple of days ago, I posted an account from on online friend who was a delegate at the Nevada caucus and was dismayed by the behavior of Sanders’s delegates. I assumed she was a Clinton delegate, but it turns out she was there for Sanders. She was so outraged that she considered changing her support right there at the caucus, but she felt that would betray the people who sent her, so she didn’t.
Matt McIrvin
@NorthLeft12: I think joking or bullshitting about fantasized acts of violence is part of what one might call the performance of masculinity here. It’s how men, young men particularly but not just them, claim power and virility. And there are some who get a charge out of actually doing that in the presence of a potential victim. They threaten women a lot, since women are socialized not to threaten back, and power over women is part of what they’re seeking.
gvg
@NorthLeft12: It used to be a lot less common and treated a lot more seriously according to my memory. What changed is the increase in power of the gun nuts and everybody else keeping quiet. I regard that as reason to jail a bunch of them, but I would say outrage hasn’t built up enough yet. I also think we have had a really mean turn where adults are taking kid threats too seriously and over reacting to less dangerous threats in a way that bullys kids. Granted kids have sometimes turned out to be serious and dangerous (Columbine) but it started before that, often seems to be a way for bully adults to express disapproval of some “other” group, and is often seriously stupid. It seems mean to me that kids are being harrased but adults carring guns to scare other adults has to be treated as normal. bullying the weaker.
Betty Cracker
Uncle Joe weighs in:
Hope you’re right, Uncle Joe!
El Caganer
@NorthLeft12: Yes, it is tolerated much too often. I think one aggravating factor is the lack of control we have over who can carry firearms and when and how they can carry them. As an example, there are outfits like the “Bureau of American Islamic Relations,” which consists of a bunch of goobers who show up in front of mosques dressed in camos and openly brandishing guns. They don’t need to say anything – they are obviously threatening, but (depending on what state you’re in) they’re not doing anything illegal.
NOTE – I see gvg got there first.
FlipYrWhig
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: IMHO the archetype for Bernie Sanders is the guy who comes to the weekly staff meeting and says “We never get anything done at these staff meetings, why do we even have them, what a waste of time!” And everyone nods. “Next time, we should talk about important issues and not this penny-ante crap.” And most everyone still nods.
Then next week he doesn’t show up.
Then the week after that he says “We never get anything done at these staff meetings, what a waste of time!” “Why weren’t you here last week, Bernie, I thought you wanted to talk about important issues?” “I decided it wasn’t worth it, since nothing’s going to come of it.” “Do you want to set the agenda for next week?” “Why waste my time, no one ever listens.”
Repeat for months.
Patricia Kayden
Trump’s businesses boom as he runs for President. What a way to grift.
washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-business-booms-as-he-runs-for-president-financial-disclosures-sho…
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
It sounds to me like Biden is signaling to Bernie that he better crack down on this horse shit and that he better support Hillary. Not so much a statement of confidence in Bernie, more of a message to Bernie to shape up.
sigaba
@D58826: Under certain circumstances the pilots change their transponder code, which can be done quickly, but “hey I have a problem” is something of a redundant message and there’s really nothing ATC can do with that. We know the EgyptAir plane had a problem, they didn’t need to tell us that, we can determine that by them not being on radar anymore.
The newer Airbus’s do have a secondary fault reporting system that works completely without the pilot’s intervention- if a pump fails or some sort of issue occurs that maintenance should know about, the plane blasts a little log message over satellite to Airbus and that’s routed to a service center so they know. This is how we knew a lot about what happened to the Air France A320 out of Brazil that ditched (prior to finding the black box it’s all we DID know, for several years). They didn’t radio anyone but around the time it disappeared off radar it’s fault reporting system made it clear they were having avionics problems.
Wyrm1
@NorthLeft12:
Unfortunately it is tolerated, and a huge part of that is the ease with which it can be done. 25 years ago, if you wanted to threaten, browbeat, or otherwise behave like an a** to someone you either had to pick up the phone or send a letter. Sending the letter takes time and the phone is too personal. Most of these internet warriors wouldn’t actually have the guts to even say these things to the people that they are harassing, but the anonymous nature of the internet makes it so much easier to be insulting, threatening, hateful without any real consequences (unless you really go over the top).
The problem is that we are so awash with guns that people who get 200, 300, 1000 threats and abusive comments an hour (as often happens) have to assume that at least a few of those people might be serious, and that threat is what most of these people want. They won’t commit violence (most of them), but the implicit threat gives them the best of both worlds.
D58826
@Elmo: True but in a ‘mayday button’ situation that actually turns out to be a hijacking, being able to alert authorities on the ground that something is wrong might be helpful in getting fighter jets scrambled.
sherparick
@Unsympathetic: Actually, the complaint of Sanders and his people is that they were not allowed to “rig” the process and reverse the outcome of the Nevada caucus where Hilary got the most votes. And she got the most votes because the unions, the folks who represent the workers for whom this alleged revolution is being conducted, came out for Hilary and the majority of the Hispanic, Black, and overall women vote, the groups who make up the majority of the working classes in Nevada, voted for Hilary. But we “white, male, “progressives” know what is in their best interest and we should be allowed to “fix” elections that don’t come out the way we want them to. They really are not to different from Movement Conservative Republicans.
Tripod
The best part is demanding reform to a nominating system that has greatly benefitted his campaign. “Reform” will strangle any future insurgent campaigns in the crib.
OzarkHillbilly
@sigaba: TPM reports it went down in the Med somewhere. FWIW, early reports and all.
sigaba
@D58826: In a hijacking the pilots are supposed to change their squak — their radio code that identifies them on radar. The problem is hijackers are relatively savvy and know about this.
Also in at least a couple incidents of late, including a previous EgyptAir incident, it’s likely a pilot was the hijacker.
msdc
@Iowa Old Lady: This. A fish stinks from the head.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Mondale was a mainline labor-progressive. A protege of Jimmy Carter and Hubert Humphrey. The first person to put a woman on the ticket, he campaigned on raising taxes on the rich, ERA, and low income economics. Yet Sanders is so reflexively hostile to any Democrat, he even hated a rank and file progressive like Mondale.
That’s his political ideal.
FlipYrWhig
@sherparick: Right — as I understand it, the Berniacs were high-fiving each other over how successfully they hijacked one post-caucus level of determining who went to the convention, and now they’re all up in arms that the Clinton campaign reversed their reversal. Because they’ve become deeply committed to ends-justifying-means logic, because they think Hillary Clinton is repugnant.
Immanentize
@sunny raines: in Do It, Jerry Rubin wrote “If the left ever took control in this country they would have people going to thought school five days a week.”
El Caganer
@Wyrm1: The place I see the most dramatic difference is in the online versions of newspapers. When you used to write a letter to the editor, you had to sign your real name; some of the letters were pretty squirrelly, but overall they weren’t over the top. Then, for reasons I can’t understand, some of them started allowing comments under pseudonyms – and everything went straight to hell. http://www.philly,com is an open sewer in its comments sections.
D58826
@sigaba: Yep was aware of that on the air france jet. Obviously there is little or nothing that anyone on the ground can do, other than just knowing something is going on. I guess part of what generated the question is the scene in AIRPORT where the pilot flips the tansponder to 777 and the secondary radar return blossoms into a big blob. Obviously only a movie but it seemed easy enough to do, which begs the question what happened on this plane and MH370 that prevented the flight crew from doing even that in the first few seconds of the incident.
Miles O’Brien also raised the obvious question that in this day and age why are we still using black box technology when real time internet digital reporting of everything the black box captures is available. (Hint – money)
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
In your guts, you know he’s nuts.
FlipYrWhig
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Did you catch the part [in the Nicaragua link] where he says he finds it amusing that half the left spends all its time criticizing the other half of the left, and that he’s similarly amused that they all think they have magical solutions to the problems of the world? Can that Bernie come back and have a little chat with this year’s Bernie?
Craigo
@Immanentize: I think he was overly optimistic regarding weekends.
D58826
@sigaba: also true
Poopyman
@MomSense: Yep, that was a warning shot.
Craigo
@Poopyman: Not that it matters. What leverage do they have over him? He was nothing more than a roster spot in Congress for decades, and you can run statewide campaigns in Vermont for what it takes to campaign for a city council seat in Brooklyn.
rikyrah
On Bob Bennett and Donald Trump
by BooMan
Thu May 19th, 2016 at 01:14:29 AM EST
Bob Bennett died on May 4th from complications after suffering a stroke while trying to fight off pancreatic cancer. He was 82 years old. Until 2010, he was a U.S. Senator representing Utah, but he was bounced out of office at the Republican State Convention where he actually came in third place. His replacement, Mike Lee, is the only known friend of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
Bennett is in the news today because he reportedly told his wife and his son, while he lay stricken in his death bed, that he wanted to apologize to Muslims on behalf of the Republican Party for the coming nomination of Donald Trump.
Let’s set the scene:
Former GOP senator Bob Bennett lay partially paralyzed in his bed on the fourth floor of the George Washington University Hospital. He was dying.
Not 48 hours had passed since a stroke had complicated his yearlong fight against pancreatic cancer. The cancer had begun to spread again, necessitating further chemotherapy. The stroke had dealt a further blow that threatened to finish him off.
Between the hectic helter-skelter of nurses, doctors and well wishes from a long-cultivated community of friends and former aides, Bennett faced a quiet moment with his son Jim and his wife Joyce.
Here’s what he told them:
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So it’s all about appearances with Sanders than practical results.
Tripod
@FlipYrWhig:
Amanda Marcotte made a good point that as the Sanders campaign augers in, many of his less passionate supporters won’t show up for multi-tier cacauses. What’s left will skew loud mouthed asshole.
NCSteve
Sanders campaign, in cooperation with the Busterboys, have already managed to rewrite and mythologize the the Nevada shitshow the way some unnamed persons in the twenties to whom I am totally not comparing them because that would be wrong did with the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. It’s already become a central part of their grievance narrative, with their own ignominious conduct scrubbed clean and turned into a tale of sacrificial heroism and victimization. The part about not being able to find parking spaces is especially heart-rending.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@MomSense:
I doubt that Biden or the Democratic Party has any leverage over Bernie. This was a go for broke move on Bernie’s part and he’s prepared for the broke outcome. Bridges already saturated with accelerant and ready for the match.
WaterGirl
@Poopyman: @MomSense: Biden coming out with this statement to Bernie seems like the cop on TV who says, “look, you haven’t killed anyone yet, you can still come back from this”.
MattF
@dr. bloor: It’s late in the day for this, but someone should have looked at Bernie’s beliefs in Wilhelm Reich’s theories. A habit of chasing crackpot psychological theories is amusing, but it also shows a certain frame of mind.
D58826
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: The fact that Bill Clinton smoked pot (but didn’t inhale) as well as his interactions with his draft board was a major issue in 1992, was long before social media. Rightly or wrongly the GOP will make an issue out of everything Bernie has said since he first learned to say Mama. Supporting the Sandinista and a group that supported the Iranian hostage takers in 1979 will require a lot of explaining. If Rev. Wright running his mouth and a casual connection to Bill Ayers could almost sink Obama, imagine what Bernie’s seeming support (or at least acceptance) of the hostage takers would do. All things being equal it would be a deal breaker for me absent the fact that the GOP is crazy.
Gin & Tonic
@OzarkHillbilly: A friend who is a journalist in eastern Europe and central Asia noted how the first to clearly blame terrorism were the Russian government and Donald Trump.
rikyrah
The patience is wearing thin, folks. I know…party unity…hold back because of party unity…..
But, he’s GOT.TO.GO.
Bernie Sanders faces a ‘then what?’ problem
05/19/16 08:53 AM
By Steve Benen
It’s safe to say May hasn’t gone quite as well as Bernie Sanders and his supporters had hoped. He needed landslide victories in several primaries, and he came up short. After steadily gaining on Hillary Clinton in national Democratic polls for months, the senator has seen his support slip in recent weeks. In Nevada, Sanders’ supporters caused a near-riot at the state Democratic convention, based on allegations of party wrongdoing that have struggled to withstand scrutiny.
Sanders’ candidacy has had some highs and some lows, but all things considered, this hasn’t exactly been a month to remember. For his legions of supporters, it’s no doubt discouraging.
The race for the Democratic nomination, however, still has about a month to go, and the New York Times reports that Team Sanders isn’t backing down, delegate arithmetic notwithstanding.
Defiant and determined to transform the Democratic Party, Senator Bernie Sanders is opening a two-month phase of his presidential campaign aimed at inflicting a heavy blow on Hillary Clinton in California and amassing enough leverage to advance his agenda at the convention in July – or even wrest the nomination from her.
It’s at this point when Sanders and campaign operation start to run into a “then what?” problem.
According to the Times’ piece, for example, Team Sanders believes it may yet win the California primary, where polls show him trailing, which might have “a psychological impact” on Democrats. OK, but then what? If the idea is that Democratic insiders will ignore the will of the voters and the delegate count because of one primary result, awarding Sanders the nomination despite his second-place finish, there’s no reason to believe such a scenario is plausible.
The same article said Team Sanders is willing to hurt Clinton, on purpose, even as the general-election phase gets underway. OK, but then what? There’s still no reason to believe this will prompt party officials to override the primary and caucus results.
Humdog
Thom Hartmann had Nina Turner on and they were agreeing that there was nothing violent at all going down inNevada and Thom used the crap line of “they are passionate about saving their country!” I yelled at the radio in the car. Maybe no one threw a chair, but if I was prepared for a meeting, a convention, and people on the same team, Democrats, rushed the stage to retake barricades and shouted down speakers with profanities, I would feel afraid and not prepared. A meeting should be different from a rally or a sports event. I was truly disappointed that Thom would draw such a narrow circle around what is threatening to people just to protect his chosen candidate. It reminds me how we all make excuses for what should not be excused when we think our side is right. And it reminded me yelling at the radio only accomplishes raising my blood pressure.
rikyrah
U.S. District Court judge orders Kobach to register thousands of Kansans
Injunction blocks enforcement of Kansas’ proof-of-citizenship law for voting in federal races
By Tim Carpenter
[email protected]
A federal court judge ordered Kansas officials Tuesday to register thousands of people to vote in federal elections who had applications derailed for not showing documentation of citizenship when registering at one of the state’s motor vehicle offices.
Dale Ho, director of the Voting Rights Project with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the ruling required the state to begin registering on June 1 people hampered by the proof-of-citizenship requirement at the motor vehicle offices operated by the Kansas Department of Revenue.
“This ruling lifts the barrier that the state illegally imposed on Kansans who were trying to register to vote. It means thousands of people who could have been sidelined during the upcoming primary and general election will be able to participate,” Ho said.
Mark B
@rikyrah: There is a devoted core of Bernie believers who are in the ‘Bernie or Bust’ camp, who are perfectly willing to burn down the Democratic Party if they aren’t awarded the win, regardless of the rules or who got more votes. I don’t think it’s a majority of the Bernie voters, but that’s who’s driving the bus now. If Bernie doesn’t take control of his own campaign and work towards a Democratic win in November soon, he’s going to become as reviled as Nader was in 2000.
NonyNony
@rikyrah:
Every single poll that I can find from the last month has him trailing – some of them are within a few percentage points but none of them have him leading. Every. Single. One.
I’m starting to get angry about this. His team is basically stealing money from idealistic kids – lying to keep them donating money to keep his campaign staff paid. I laugh about Ron Paul and Palin and other Republican grifters stealing money from Republican rubes but his team is straight out lying to a bunch of idealistic kids to get them to fork over their extra money.
I’m really sorry I gave him any money and my vote. He’s a bigger disappointment than Ralph Nader or John Edwards ever were. You’d think I’d be too old to lead with my idealism but damn once again I get snookered by a slimeball who says what I want to hear.
srv
All this moral superiority over true believers won’t change the outcome:
It may be over before the convention is.
rikyrah
The media’s latest Trump ‘narrative’ is plainly wrong
05/18/16 12:45 PM—UPDATED 05/18/16 12:57 PM
By Steve Benen
Some of the political media establishment has apparently settled on a new “narrative”: Donald Trump will appeal to Democrats by breaking with Republican orthodoxy and endorsing some progressive goals. It might be a compelling thesis, if it were in any way true.
The Washington Post got the ball rolling last week with a provocative, attention-getting headline: “How Donald Trump is running to the left of Hillary Clinton.” As proof, the article noted, among other things, Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, and his willingness to shift “to the left on the minimum wage and tax policy.”
The problem, of course, is much of this is factually incorrect. Given its historical underpinnings, there’s nothing liberal about Trump’s “America First” vision, and the media hype surrounding Trump’s purported shifts on the minimum wage and tax policy turned out to be completely wrong. The Post’s entire thesis struggled under scrutiny.
And yet, there it was again in the New York Times yesterday.
Again, if these observations were rooted in fact, the thesis might have merit, but it’s important not to fall for shallow hype and bogus narratives. Trump did not endorse a minimum-wage hike; he actually said there shouldn’t be a federal minimum wage at all. He did not call for higher taxes on the wealthy; he proposed literally the exact opposite.
TylerF
Then what indeed. How does Sanders plan to woo the Clinton voters in the almost impossible event that he wins California and NJ by 40+ points? We promise not to yell threats at you anymore?
My understanding is that unless Clinton personally visits each and every Sanders supporter and promise to run as his sock puppet, no dice.
And if he does loose CA and NJ by current polling margins, how badly does that affect his opportunity to impact the platform at the convention? I think it would decimate it. A month ago he could have gotten out with dignity and would have maxed his leverage to get his ideas in the platform. After Nevada, he may end up having very little impact all while destroying his standing in the senate. Sad. I thought he was better then that.
schrodinger's cat
Bernie supporter cut me off on Main Street this morning and then proceeded to drive at 5mph. (VW with at least 5 Bernie stickers) idiot.
Redshift
@NonyNony:
And even if he pulls out a narrow win, it won’t get him anything but bragging rights. He has to win CA by thirty points (and every remaining contest, too) to take the lead. Not even his blatantly dishonest campaign manager claims to have seen polls that predict that.
dr. bloor
@schrodinger’s cat: Prius?
NM. Missed the “VW.” Beetle?
D58826
@rikyrah:
Yet if the primary results mean anything, i.e. Bernie’s oft repeated let the voters decide, then most democrats do not buy into Bernie’s vision.
Look the young whippersnappers are the future of the party and it’s old codgers who have to accept that and begin to hand over the reigns of power. But I don’t think there are anywhere near as many progressives out there as the Bernie folks think. On yesterday’s threads there was a number of comments that the current democratic model has not been overly successful at the congressional/state /local levels. I agree. But lets get real, Mary Landriu was not defeated because an unsuspected group of progressive voters would have preferred a more progressive candidate. She was defeated by a hard right conservative Republican. Elizabeth Warren would probably have trouble getting the votes from her extended family if she ran in Louisiana. That is just a hard fact of political life in 2016
schrodinger's cat
@dr. bloor: Actually I has a Prius, Bernie person was driving a sporty VW. I think he was looking for a parking spot.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@NCSteve:
You’ve just described Shaun King. It’s like he’s the reincarnation of Madame Mao. I have to say the willingness by so many – including a couple of older women friends – to become so propagandized and deluded has been fascinating to watch in real time, but now I’ve seen enough.
schrodinger's cat
@dr. bloor: I am thinking a Golf, looked smaller than a Jetta.
Andy
@schrodinger’s cat: OMG, it’s devolved into “Rant and Raves” on Craigslist.
Redshift
@rikyrah: Our media are very bad at dealing with bullshit, and continue to interpret events through The Narrative (Trump and Sanders mean that angry populism is sweeping the nation!) long after it should be obvious that it’s wrong.
We’re in for a long campaign season.
D58826
@TylerF:
He diodn’t even need to get out. All he had to do was talk about his issues and that sometimes you have to take smaller steps to get there. He could also have shifted his stump speech to going after the GOP. Threatening to burn the party down, even if he is only using a metaphor will not make him popular with the very people he would need to win in November and govern as a president. On Jan 20, 2017 he would be the only revolutionary in Washington. Everyone else on the Democratic side would have gained office through the ‘corrupt’ democratic party structure.
schrodinger's cat
@Andy: Well, if you cut people off on a busy road, at least drive at the speed of traffic. Obviously that is too establishmentarian or something.
NonyNony
@schrodinger’s cat: If I got upset at everyone whose idiot supporters couldn’t drive, I wouldn’t vote at all.
Stupid drivers with Obama bumper stickers are the bane of my existence around here. Of course, half of them probably have that really dumb “NObama” sticker that right-wingers think is so very clever but looks like a pro-Obama sticker unless you’re tailgating the car that has it on the back bumper (or stopped in traffic). But regardless, idiots can’t drive, and some idiots support politicians that I generally agree with. Sad but true.
dr. bloor
@schrodinger’s cat: That might have been my wife.
NonyNony
@D58826:
He should have. If he were making the case about how horrible Trump and the GOP are and how he’s better instead of how horrible the Democrats are he might actually even be doing better in the primaries.
schrodinger's cat
@NonyNony: I was just mildly irritated, and then I saw the multiple Bernie stickers on the bumper and I loled!
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Weeping for the party is fine but the whole problem with Bernie is that he’s not really a member of the party and would happily burn it down to die on figurative barricades defending his version of “progressive” ideological purity. At least, that’s the way its beginning to seem. He’s an independent and will be running as an independent in 2018 when he’s up for Senate re-election. He has no loyalty to the Democratic party. That’s a big problem because he’s howling that they’re corrupt and cheating him out of a win.
Anyone who knows the vote totals (Hillary has attracted more than 3 million votes than Bernie) knows that’s a load of BS. He’s losing on votes – he has no argument for being screwed by the Party. Besides which, since he feels he’s such a special snowflake of a candidate that he’s too cool for the party, why shouldn’t they screw him? It’s their party, not his. He doesn’t get to dictate to a party he refuses to be a full member of. You want to be an independent? There are consequences, including the fact that neither of our two major political parties owes you anything, much less screwing over the more popular candidate, who has been a member in good standing for decades, to install you as its titular leader. He’s nuts and if he doesn’t shut up soon I think the party should just tell him to go back home to Maplesyrupsville and cut him out entirely.
berliner2
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: This was a thing in the 1980s: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_(Fritz_Zorn)
rikyrah
Discouraging polls force John McCain to scramble in Arizona
05/18/16 11:20 AM
By Steve Benen
Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) re-election campaign unveiled an attack ad this week, targeting state Sen. Kelli Ward (R), the incumbent’s primary challenger, for her interest in chemtrail conspiracy theories. The web ad mocks “Chemtrail Kelli” and her “bad judgment,” which is “dangerous for Arizona.”
Now, as it turns out, McCain is throwing some stones from a glass house. TPM reported yesterday that the Republican senator “forwarded to the Environmental Protection Agency a letter from a constituent concerned about chemtrails, and asked the EPA to respond,” as if the odd theories have merit.
But even putting this aside, let’s not overlook the broader question: John McCain is worried enough about his primary rival to release an attack ad? According to a poll released yesterday by Public Policy Polling, the incumbent senator has reason to be concerned.
Ramping Up
NEW SHOCK POLL TRUMP UP BY THREE
First lead of the race! Looks like Trump may be an acceptable candidate after all!
Cue liberal denial of the poll results.
Hillary is sinking and sinking fast. Just a few weeks ago she was up by ten! CROOKED HILLARY NEGATIVES NOW TOP TRUMP’S NEGATIVES!
Feel the Surge!
#TooClose2Call
#TRUMPZILLA
Ultraviolet Thunder
@schrodinger’s cat:
Could have been the hardtop convertible Eos. My SIL is a Berner and drives the only one of those I’ve ever seen.
Only thing they sell in the US that’s smaller than a Jetta.
TylerF
@D58826 Bingo. There are 5 basic Sanders voters:
1) young idealists
2) dems who wanted to encourage Clinton to be even more liberal
3) people who just don’t like Clinton
4) people who have a hard time with the idea of lady parts running the world
5) ex-Paulites with nothing better to do.
The Sanders acts as if 100% of his ‘supporters’ (isn’t voters a better word?) fall into category 1. The reality is much different. Take away categories 2-5 and it really isn’t much of a revolution.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Ramping Up:
Please go fall on a blazing cactus.
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
I said this awhile ago. He needs to do this in order to get back the luster to his brand.
Ramping Up
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Mad? Scared? NERVOUS ABOUT TRUMP?
I’ve finally come around to Trump after seeing his short list of SCOTUS nominees. We will finally have a worthy successor to Antonin Scalia and with Republican control of the Senate make sure SCOTUS is rock-ribbed right-wing well into the current century.
Ramping Up
@rikyrah:
Maybe at first, but now he’s “in it to win it”.
#TRUMPZILLA
El Caganer
@rikyrah: He’s just itching for the opportunity to open Trump Towers Pennsylvania Avenue in DC.
Redshift
NYT, via Steve Benen:
Sigh. I’ve often said that if I had one nonpartisan wish this campaign season, it would be for supporters not to believe their own campaign’s bullshit. I never imagined it went all the way to the top.
Chyron HR
@Ramping Up:
So you’ll be back to screaming #NeverTrump #Sassementum #TakeItToTheHouse again tomorrow morning, then.
NonyNony
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Don’t worry about Right To Rise – he’s doing what he has done for the last year: try to figure out which candidate was going to win it in the end and then pretend to be a huge supporter of that candidate to irritate people here.
With both he and srv on the same page it may start to get tedious though. We don’t really need two pro-Trump trolls around here shouting about how great it is that Fox News could produce a poll showing Donald Trump up in the general election. It gets boring, and since srv isn’t going to go away I was hoping that Right To Rise would switch instead to supporting Constitution Party candidate Darrell Castle to keep things interesting around here. Oh well, boring troll is boring. (Some folks think R2R is DougJ – I find that doubtful. If R2R is DougJ then Doug is slipping – the character of R2R is more pathetic than funny.)
D58826
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
I saw a brief reference to something in an article but it don’t go into any detail. I’m not an expert in DNC rules but the comment caught my attention. A basic premise of Bernie and his Bros is that the democratic establishment is hopelessly corrupt and that the DNC in general , and DWS in particular, have tried to impede Bernie at every step. The comment that I read was ‘that as an independent Bernie had to get the approval of the DNC to appear on the primary ballots as a D’. Now I don’t think the DNC thought his campaign was going to take off like it did but if they were inherently trying to grease the skids for Hillary then they would not have added one more name to the list of challengers and an outsider at that.
Ramping Up
@Chyron HR:
Nope, I’m all in with a Trump Super PAC now that’s “ramping up” to go on the air within a few weeks. We need SCOTUS And it looks like Bill Kristol, Romeny and Erik Erickson just can’t get their act together.
How do you feel about Clarence Thomas being on the “left” wing of the court after Trumpzila is through appointing picks hand-selected by The Heritage Foundation?
Looks like Trump’s lack of interest in policy may be an upside after all! The Heritage Foundation and ALEC will be running our domestic policy until 2025!
sigaba
@TylerF: Older Berners are from that generation that ALWAYS hated the Democratic Party and only grudgingly supported them when the alternative was worse — McGovern over Nixon, Kennedy over Reagan. Phil Ochs’s great “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” sorta summarizes what people like Susan Sarandon think about Hillary and, to a large extent, PBO. What’s shaking them lose now is the clear fact that the Republican Party coalition is falling apart and they no longer have The Fear, and a lot of them WOULD rather live with Trump than vote for Clinton.
Also HRC will always have detractors because of her record on the Iraq war. Her vote just makes her radioactive to the Cindy Sheehan set.
Chris
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Hey, that’s my birthday.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Implying that the process is rigged, when the real problem is that they didn’t understand the rules, is so irresponsible I’m blown away. This is going to have long-term effects on young voters that hurt the Democratic party big time.
The beneficiaries of this won’t be Bernie voters, or Sanders himself, or independents, or those who want a new Progressive party. It will be Republicans.
Take a good look at that list of jurists Trump released yesterday, and tell me if that’s what you want for the future of your nation. Because that’s what they’re building for you.
magurakurin
@D58826: Especially since when asked about Nicaragua he will get indignant and make comments defending what he said and remind us all that Nicaragua was showing us the way forward back then and we should have followed them then. Likewise for the weird sex stories and everything else. Remember Bernie has never been wrong and has never made a mistake. Leading a Revolution means never having to say I’m sorry.
L Boom
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: I’m at the point where I’m ready to work for any non-Republican running against Bernie in 2018. I’m so pissed about all this right now I’m done with him.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and Reason# 218 I’m starting to be genuinely disgusted by Bernie: Elizabeth Warren. Watching her over the past few weeks actively work to fundraise for and support ten Democratic Senate candidates, seven of them running for open seats or against incumbents. While doing great work when the Senate’s in session and taking occasional breaks to smack the crap out of Trump.
WTF has Bernie been doing for anyone but Bernie? If he put a tiny fraction of the effort into the Presidential campaign into working for the Progressive party in VT, he could turn it into a two party state of Democrats and Progressives. The culture wars here are pretty much over, and the liberals won. If he could campaign for Progressives on a message of economic populism and leaving their guns alone, he could easily pull in the more rural counties of the state in the Northeast Kingdom and undercut Republican support completely, leaving them as irrelevant as the Democrats are in places like Kansas.
But what’s Bernie done for Progressives? Precisely dick.
On a side note: Fuck Jane, too. Burlington College students are so screwed right now. College staff will be gone within a week, and they still haven’t figured out what they’re going to do with transcripts after the doors close. In the meantime, they’re still charging $50 a pop for transcripts for the few who are on the ball enough to immediately work in their escape plans. They can transfer to a number of other local schools which are supposed to honor BC’s tuition given the circumstances. The best of the bunch and the only other school right in town (Champlain College) has said they won’t honor BC tuition, so students who want to stay in are looking at $39k/yr instead of the $21k/yr they were paying at BC. So Goddard is the best bet, and it’s an hour south outside of Montpelier. And many students don’t have cards. What a clusterfuck.
NonyNony
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Eh – poor Right To Rise is just doing what he’s been doing for the past year – trying to grok who the likely Republican candidate might be so that he can pretend to be a supporter and get under people’s skin here. He was as bad at it as any pundit but he’s been itching to switch over to Trump for a month now to try to needle people and I’m honestly surprised it took him this long.
Honestly though we don’t need both srv and R2R around here. We really don’t need two Trump trolls telling us that the fact that Fox News was able to produce a poll showing Donald Trump up as his nomination has been confirmed is somehow meaningful (hilariously neither Fox News nor Rassmussen can cook their voter models enough to get Trump to over 45% – no matter how hard they tweak the data to get that narrative started, they still can’t pull Trump up over Romney).
I was hoping that Right To Rise would switch it up and start backing Constitution Party Candidate Darell Castle (who is likely hoping that confusion over his name will lead to people voting for him because they think he’s Nathan Fillion), but sadly no. Instead we’re going to get srv slow fishing the pool by throwing out the little unsourced bon mots that srv likes to throw out and Right To Rise doing his overly emotional five year old impression for the next few months. Pathetic really, but what are you going to do? You go into an election with the trolls you have, not the trolls you wish you had.
'Niques (frequent visitor; occasional commenter)
It seems to me that Bernie and supporters are spinning out of control over the “unfairness” of the primary process . . . what exactly do they think will happen in the general? That it will be clear sailing?? And, in the highly unlikely event that he becomes President Sanders, does he really think the Republican led congress will go along with each and every one of his ideas? Really?? I keep reminding people in my circle that the obstruction Obama faces is not only because he is black . . . Bernie seems to think that it is, and that as a white male he will be deemed a part of the club. Silly old fool.
Ramping Up
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
And Trump is now LEADING in the polls.
SCOTUS: right wing for a generation! Trumpzilla cannot be stopped, cannot be tamed, he is politically invincible.
Chris
@rikyrah:
This is undoubtedly a dick thing to say at a moment like this, but you can hardly apologize “on behalf of the Republican Party” when most of the Republican Party is on the same page as Trump.
NonyNony
(I tried posting a reply to this, but it got eaten. Trying again)
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I like how he and srv are both posting about this Fox News poll. The amazing thing about it is that even by cooking their voter models and playing with the numbers, they STILL can’t get Trump over 45% even after he’s consolidated the Republican vote and won the nomination. Hilarious. (Their Clinton numbers are ridiculously outside the national average but they didn’t go as far as Rassmussen – who continues to have the reputation they deserve by asserting that their polling shows Clinton with 37% of the national vote. That poll shouldn’t have been published – the person who cooked the numbers on it should be kicked in the ass and told to come back with something more believable next time).
ruemara
@Humdog: I stopped listening to the propaganda outlet of Thom Hartmann years ago. I gave up on both of being honest when someone finally asked Sanders about his Gitmo vote and Sanders poopooed it being that good of a bill to close it and Hartmann just lapped that up and hurried on. Meanwhile, what did they continuously bemoan as evidence of Obama not being a real progressive? Closing Gitmo. I gave it more of a shot after that, but I couldn’t deny the reality that the standards for truth were very compromised.
Miss Bianca
Somehow, that Weaver quote reminds me of an argument my sister was having with my mother once years ago, where my sister accused Mom of not being supportive of her career as an artist. My mother snapped back, “I’ve always been supportive. I’ve never interfered.”
Non-interference is support. Non-threat is anything short of actual physical violence. I’m left with the same response I had to Mom: “oookaay, then…”
rikyrah
Republicans Hit a New Low
By fighting Zika funding, they’re showing their true values.
BY DAVID DAYEN
May 18, 2016
Politicians on the left like to say that budgets are “moral documents.” As Vice President Joe Biden has said, “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value.” Conservatives, on the other hand, consider more spending than they deem prudent to be a moral crime. At his presidential campaign website, Senator Ted Cruz features a chart showing the burden of debt on a child born today at each stage of their life. “No responsible parent would leave their children with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt,” Cruz writes. “We should not allow the government to do this to our children and grandchildren either.”
…………………….
After months of delays, the Senate finally voted this week on federal funding to combat the mosquito-borne Zika virus, which causes microcephaly, a condition where babies are born with abnormally small heads. Zika is responsible for “other severe fetal brain defects,” according to the Centers for Disease Control, which is studying the links between the virus and afflictions in adults like Guillain-Barré syndrome, which causes temporary paralysis.
President Barack Obama first asked for $1.9 billion in Zika funding in early February, when the virus had already spread to 26 countries in Latin America. Congress sat for months on the request, which would go toward mosquito control, research into vaccines, and public education programs to fight contraction of the virus.
………………………………
The Senate put three proposals on the floor Tuesday, as amendments to a transportation and housing appropriations bill. The proposal that passed only offers $1.1 billion in new funding, part of a compromise hammered out by Republican Roy Blunt and Democrat Patty Murray. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also gave Democrats a vote on the full $1.9 billion request, knowing that it would fail to reach the 60-vote cloture threshold amid Republican opposition (which it did, 50-47).
So Senate Republicans were only willing to cough up a little more than half of what public health agencies say is necessary to fight Zika. The third proposal would have also offered $1.1 billion, but pay for it with money from the Affordable Care Act’s Prevention and Public Health Fund, making some people sicker to make other people well. That failed cloture as well, but received 52 votes, more than the president’s full funding request.
That inadequate Senate plan is an improvement on House Republicans’ plan. On Monday, they announced a $622 million package, less than one-third of Obama’s request. Appropriations Committee Chair Hal Rogers claimed that the White House didn’t adequately explain what the Zika funding would be used for, leading them to make their own determination. The House bill would not be “emergency” funding, meaning that it would have to be incorporated into the overall funding process for the next fiscal year. So not only would Zika funding have to be offset by eliminating spending elsewhere in the budget, but it wouldn’t be available until October of this year.
TylerF
@sigaba that’s kinda my point. There was a built in 30% or so of primary voters that were always going to vote for the not Clinton candidate.
Soylent Green
How Trump could win:
1) The nation has more bigoted morons than we realize.
2) Men who won’t vote for a woman outnumber women who won’t vote for Trump.
3) Conservatives vowing never to vote for Trump will vote for Trump and lie about it.
4) In swing states, ramped-up voter suppression works.
5) The media get their horse race by legitimizing Trump.
6) Bernie goes Nader on us, or fucks up the convention, or
7) Bernie gets on board, but his base still writes his name in.
Chyron HR
@Ramping Up:
I’m sure he’ll do just as well as your 2012 man-crush Mitt Romney did.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Nice try, creep.
Ramping Up
@NonyNony:
How exactly is Fox News or Rasmussen “cooked”?
Just more liberal denial. Crooked Hillary is a horrible candidate with historically high negatives, and Trumpzilla is leading a real movement. Crooked Hillary’s tired “war on women” playbook is stale and didn’t work in the primaries, and it won’t work now.
This one is Trump’s to lose.
Cat48
@Redshift:
Bernie has turned into a drama queen. I like my president’s cool & calm, like my no drama Obama. Isn’t Hillary the one who should be a drama queen, since she’s a girl?
Ramping Up
@Chyron HR:
Trump is something the likes of which this country has never seen. Look at what he did in the primaries–everyone said he would lose, but he won. Everyone said his politically incorrect statements would sink his candidacy, but his poll numbers only rose.
People are tired of PC, and tired of Crooked Hillary.
Mark B
@NonyNony: Rasmussen is not a professional polling organization, they are a Republican propaganda arm. They consistently overstate Republican percentages by 5% or more. In any case, this should be Trump’s high point, people don’t know what an idiot he is yet, and the Democrats are still fractured.
sherparick
@FlipYrWhig: Yep, and they have become pretty repugnant themselves. By the way, I can’t imagine a faster way to turn-off the Black and Hispanic communities of California then to signal indifference to Donald Trump being elected President if it “reforms” the Democratic Party. If you look at the states he has won, with the exceptions of Michigan and Indiana where the trade issue really helped him, Bernie and his bros have only been able to carry the states where 85% of the voters are white. This is a real problem where the Democrats are already a minority majority party. Ditto running a campaign where the only significant woman advisor is the candidate’s wife. Bernie and the “progressive” commune that is the burning white sun of his support show the limit of certain kind of Marxist ideology that considers “class” the only “real” category and “race,” “ethnicity,” “gender,” “religion,” and “nationalism” all “false consciousness” states that do no present serious issues. When Bernie and his campaign start “whitesplaining” and “mansplaining” and runs a campaign in California against the “corrupt Democratic Party” he going to get a bad reaction to that line from popular Democratic leaders like Jerry Brown, Karmala Harris, and Barbara Boxer to regular Democratic voters even of the “progressive” variety.
Mark B
@Soylent Green: Sadly, somewhat plausible.
sherparick
@Ramping Up: It is a pretty “White” movement is it not? Or is that a feature, not a bug for you.
negative 1
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: If Bernie was going to ‘burn down the party’ he’d run a third party campaign. Until he does or says he will or even says ‘I won’t rule it out’ your point is not only unproven but demonstratively false.
different-church-lady
Am I a fuckin’ genius or what?
negative 1
@‘Niques (frequent visitor; occasional commenter): Yes, the nerve of attempting to make the process more fair. Instead all we can do is recognize how unfair the process is and attempt to cheat better.
My lord this campaign has brought out the worst in us all.
sherparick
@rikyrah: So a Trump victory will just heighten the contradictions!!! This is how we Democratic Socialists, as the result of Hitler gaining power in 1933, got the German Democratic Republic (DDR/GDR) establish in 1945, with a bit of help from Joseph Stalin, the Red Army, and U.S. 8th Air Force.
I hope the last part gave away the snark.
scav
@Miss Bianca: I’m suddenly stuck hearing in the ham Movieland Southern Sherriff accent, One of the fat ones with sunglasses appearing behind the outsiders stranded car, thumping his trunchen in his left hand. “Now look he-yah boy. Ah’m a offiser of the Lahw. You don’t have the raht to be afeard.” <thump thump>
different-church-lady
@Ramping Up:
Well, it’s true I’ve never actually seen a dumpster fire…
Major Major Major Major
I’m just going to either assume this is the open thread since downstairs got stompified.
Anybody like The Avett Brothers? Been listening to a lot of them lately.
Ramping Up
@sherparick:
It’s colorblind, all are welcome who want to Make America Great Again!
@different-church-lady:
That “dumpster fire” is LEADING IN THE POLLS. How do you like them apples?
Major Major Major Major
What really bothers me about the whole “greased the skids” thing is, like, there’s no evidence of this so people point to the debate schedule, but any debate schedule would favor Hillary, because she’s really good at debates!
@different-church-lady: You’re not missing much. The smell will stick on you though.
senator tankerbell
@cmorenc: Is that for real in NJ? I registered as an independent at age 18. In high school, Rush Limbaugh was to my LEFT, and I was in the process of becoming what I am now, roughly a Paul Krugman Democrat. Admittedly, I’ve been too lazy all these years to change my party registration, as the NJ primary is held so late in the season it never matters. I thought I missed the deadline this time around (thought it was about 55 days). Are you saying I can show up on the 7th, register as a Dem, and cast my ballot for Sec. Clinton?
scav
@negative 1: Standing around, screaching about unfairness is emphatically not attempting to make the system more fair: it’s merely lung exercise. Showing up consistently and establishing a role and a say and getting on committees in charge of participation rules, that sort of dull shit is an attempt rather than a stage pirouette and a smug bow.
different-church-lady
@Ramping Up: So was President Perot.
hovercraft
@sherparick:
Yes I know we “blacks” love the orange buffoon, according to him. But back here on planet earth we cannot fathom a so called Democratic-socialist and his flock who say the democrats are as corrupt as the republicans. Last night Chucky asked Weaver how the system was rigged when they knew what the rules were going in. His response was to dodge that question and return to his talking points about closed primaries and superdelegates.
Superdelegates are merely party leaders expressing their preference, in other words endorsing a candidate. Last time I checked free speech applies to everyone. If voters simply vote for who their representatives tell them to , that is on them. Chaka Fatah had a lot of endorsements from his fellow CBC members but he still lost, his opponent ran a better campaign (the indictment also too). As Chuck pointed out , in 2008 Obama ran against the system and won so it can be done. Weavers response was to hem and haw and say Obama was special.
Running against the system is always hard, but you know that going in. You don’t get to run and then start crying because they won’t go out of their way to help you bring them down.
Chyron HR
@Ramping Up:
Sounds like we don’t need to worry about Trump, then! Thanks for sharing your insight with us.
WarMunchkin
@Soylent Green: At this point, the phrase “contingency plan” should be something that Democrats regularly talk about. Trump isn’t a “serious chance” anymore, it’s going to be a competitive race that we could very well lose.
So what’s the plan to protect people from being interned and deported, guarantee the value of U.S. treasury securities, ensure nuclear nonproliferation, keep global stability in the absence of NATO, protect women who need abortions or contraceptive services, should Trump become President?
negative 1
@L Boom: Beware of assuming that a party will change people’s placement on the ideological spectrum. If you had two parties, Democrats and Greens/Socialists/WhoeverThey’reCalled the Democrats would become the conservative party. None of that gets the rural sections of the Northeast Kingdom to become more liberal.
How do I know this you ask? Because here in Rhode Island we have so many registered Dems that there are two wings to the party, and the primaries are basically the general election. But it is possible for a republican to run as a Democrat and still be conservative, as seen here (check the Gina Raimondo parts):
rollingstone.com/politics/news/looting-the-pension-funds-20130926
negative 1
@scav: It’s worked so far, after all.
Cacti
The “revolution” will let you little ladies know how you’re allowed to feel and when.
Bernie 2016: like Trump, minus the explicit racial bigotry.
scav
@negative 1: Yeah, things have utterly changed.
Miss Bianca
@Immanentize: Jerry Rubin would have given us the weekends off from thought school? Hey, at least the labor movement gave us *something*.
ETA: I see craigo got there first. You gotta be quick on the draw around this joint!
Falconer
@Unsympathetic:
Either work with the system or GTFO.
Keep up the good work, and you’ll convince me to stay home…
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Ramping Up:
Horse apples. It’s your mess. Get a shovel.
hovercraft
When you’ve lost most of the great orange satan diarists you’re in trouble. Nevada and the campaign response apparently was the last straw. Temper tantrums and denial are normally not liberal traits.
I think as a minority and a woman I’m more inclined to expect and accept gradual incremental progress because this is my lived reality, change takes time. And for every bit of progress there is a backlash from those being deprived of the privilege to keep others down. Unfortunately the privileged Bernie supporters and the candidate himself are not used to being in a position that is not the privileged one. If you are used to starting on third thinking you hit a triple, and one day you find yourself at home plate need a hit to get on base you think you’ve been screwed over.
You chose this uphill battle and you lost. Just deal with it.
NonyNony
@Mark B:
Naw, barring a complete shitshow of a convention, his high point should come right after the Republican convention. He’ll get that post-convention bounce of 1-2 percent. It’ll be interesting to see if the post-convention bounce can get him over that 45% mark in the majority of polls (not just the clownshow Fox News and Rassumussen polls).
hovercraft
@Cacti:
No explicit racism, instead we get explicit paternalism, “we just don’t understand” what’s best for us.
D58826
@negative 1: 1, Bernie knew the rules when he threw his hat in the ring.
2. Warren is working inside the party to make changes for the future. Bernie’s folks are just shouting at the moon and talking about leaving the party will not fix the problem.
Cacti
@hovercraft:
And zero self-awareness.
Act like deranged howler monkeys because they don’t know the rules of the NV convention, or when they failed to register before deadlines in closed contests around the country…
But routinely call people who don’t choose their guy “low information voters”.
D58826
@hovercraft:
But Obama was still a mainstream democrat. If he had lost the nomination, no one was talking about him taking his marbles and going home. The same thing with Hillary. While her backing of Obama might have been somewhat unprecedented in its enthusiasm, she to was a long time member of the party. It was in her long term interests to fully back the candidate. One of the most shameful aspects of Teddy Kennedy’s career is the temper tantrum at the 1980 convention. Carter was already facing a lot of head wind and he didn’t need Teddy walking off in a snit.
Bernie is a democrat for his own convenience. Uncle Joe is offering him a bridge back off of the ledge that Bernie finds himself on.
aimai
@Matt McIrvin: I also think that people who experience themselves as weak and frightened get off on attacking, covertly, via phone or internet when they also experience themselves of having joined a group/cult/campaign. The very things that make Bernie people feel good about themselves as Bernie supporters (joining with others, joining in a world historic campaign, fighting the power, finally being heard, etc…etc…etc…) are conducive to exploisve rage at the people who appear to be attacking or thwarting their new messiah. They feel justified–and that includes women as well as men, old as well as young–in lashing out at the apostate (if its a former bernie supporter) or the attacker (if its a hillary supporter). They don’t do this to trump voters because they believe that some trump supporters could become converts, while all hillary supporters are seen as enemies within the faith and irredeimable.
hovercraft
@Cacti:
Yes we are low information, as they hurl republican nonsense at us about events in the 90’s they know nothing about. The Clinton corruption they speak of was indeed mostly a “vast right wing conspiracy”. The Bill Clinton was far from perfect but he was a hell of a lot better than the alternatives. And hind sight is 20/20. Plus Hillary is not Bill, as I’m sure Trump will find out soon enough most rational people do not condone victim blaming. She did not cheat he did.
Unsympathetic
@sherparick:
Thanks for the explanation! The minutiae is important but unable to be found in news.
Potato, carbohydrate.. It’s a silly character defect of some to project Enemy onto someone just so they can have the feeling that they’re Fighting The Power.. even if it’s just something with no priors.
rikyrah
@hovercraft:
I call it the delusional world of Mad Men.
Pretending that you use to be big fish in a big river.
When, in fact, you were a fish in a pond where 90% of all the other fish were crammed into sardine cans.
Well, the sardine cans are open, and you now have to compete with the other 90%.
Nobody’s going back into the cans, so phucking deal with it.
hovercraft
@D58826:
I agree about Obama being a party member who couldn’t afford to burn any bridges if he had lost.
Chuck was making the point that Obama was running against the establishment, and as a severe underdog his team came up with a plan to beat the establishment using their own rules against them. Sanders is whining that the rules are stacked against them. They are and always will be stacked in the establishments favor. The difference is that the Obama knew that going in and had a strategy to overcome this whereas Bernie did not. He knew the rules going in but now he wants them changed.
Cacti
@hovercraft:
Nothing reveals character quite so much as a moment of anger.
When the mask of civility slipped, Sanders’ supporters immediate reaction was a torrent of misogynistic verbal abuse at Democratic women leaders.
Odd (not really) that so many women are part of “the establishment” at which mostly male “revolution” is directing/has directed its righteous fury:
Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, Cecile Richards, Elizabeth Warren, Roberta Lange, Dolores Huerta, etc.
scav
@D58826: There was that whole thing about “community organizer” too, that was a meticulously organized campaign and organization to get things done and the candidate elected, not a series of spontaneous yellings about unfairness and context-dependent definitions of the only rules that they would accept as “democratic” and “transparent”.
sherparick
@different-church-lady: But other countries have. Napoleon III (for whom Marx created his famous bon mot, “History does repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”), Mussolini, Juan Peron, etc. for examples. Actually, there are a couple examples, but none with Trump’s mastery of celebrity media, Huey Long, Ross Perot, and George Wallace all presented themselves as champion for the common (white) man.
rikyrah
@hovercraft:
I’ve written before that Bernie didn’t impress me, because the financial stuff he’s talking about, well…….
As a Black person, there is a language that he could use to make sure that he understood that Black people have LONG known about the injustices put upon people by those in banks.
He could have references many of Jesse Jackson’s speeches from the past 30 years, about the negative impact of the banks on the Black community, if he didn’t want to use Coates’ good Atlantic articles from the past few years.
ICYMI, I’m saying that there’s nothing NEW in what Bernie’s talking about.
Income inequality?
Wealth gap?
Who the phuck doesn’t know about this if not the Black community.
But, when Jesse and others were bringing up these topics, over the course of past decades, there was a general shrug from so-called White progressives.
Yet, now, that it has caught up to the general White community, it’s such a problem.
Uh huh
Uh huh.
Lips pursed.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
But if we could just go back I could “feel” like the big guy on campus. I could say what I think without being called racist, intolerant, or a misogynist.
These people are all about feelings not rational reality.
They should have won, it’s not fair.
Gelfling 545
@Betty Cracker:
“which doesn’t recommend their executive ”
That is the fundamental issue here. The test of an executive is not how s/he functions when all is just jolly and the crowds are cheering but how s/he handles things when all goes to sh*t. So far, Sanders seems like a fair weather captain.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
Amen
grrljock
@Major Major Major Major: Yes, I have a couple of the Avett Brothers albums (love “The Carpenter”). I really like their banjo sound. Got introduced to them via Brandi Carlile–do you listen to her too? She has some pipes!
CONGRATULATIONS!
@negative 1: Poor assertion. It’s a lot easier to destroy a city from the inside than the outside. Consult any Roman history.
And like most of those Roman examples, we let him in with cheers and shouts of welcome.
If he’s going to burn down the party he’s in the right place at the right time. After he gets destroyed in California, that will be the true test of the man’s intentions. I am not hopeful by what I’ve seen so far.
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major: latest stuff I’ve heard from them is cool.
btw, I think it was commenter Icefire I have to thank for turning me on to Minnesota Public Radio’s “The Current.” It’s now my go-to workplace radio station. That’s where I’m hearing the Avett Brothers, and a whole lot of cool new stuff.
negative 1
@scav: But this is my point — Democrats have been on committees, held the executive branch, etc. and nothing has changed. So telling everyone to be patient and trust the process will at this point come with a certain dose of skepticism.
negative 1
@CONGRATULATIONS!: You can’t really be serious.
Candidate A: 60% Candidate B: 40%
Candidate A : 30% Candidate B: 40% Candidate C: 30%
But you’re right it’s far more effective to run a primary campaign that brings up tactical differences until everyone recognizes that some of the votes are from bros!
sherparick
@hovercraft: Obama never ran as an “anti-establishment” candidate except that his race and background itself would be astounding overthrow of 200 years of White Supremacy. His explicit attack on Hilary was her vote and support for the Iraq War. As a Senator, he was involved deeply in Robert Rubin “Hamilton Project” at the Brookings Institution, which is about as Establishment and New Democrat as it gets. hamiltonproject.org/
Bernie and his Bros are simply delusional on California, which has a very different voting population then Oregon and Washington. ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=526. Through out this whole campaign he has not been able to appeal to minority communities and he and his tone deaf campaign will think the big crowds they draw on college campuses will mean they don’t have to change. He also has Barbara Boxer fired up to go up and down the State campaigning against him, and I expect she is more popular than he is in California.
I am not surprise that Trump is close or leading Hilary in some polls right now. She is getting slammed by Trump, Bernie, and the MSM, all echoing right-wing talking points, (for instance Karl Rove is repeating Hugh Hewitt’s talking point that HiIary will be indicted any day for the e-mail server issue.) Bernie voters are saying “undecided” or “other” when polled on Trump v. Clinton, while Republicans are mostly falling into line with the new tribal leader. Hopefully, as the shear catastrophic awfulness of a Trump Presidency (war crimes, mass internment camps for Hispanics and deportations, nuclear weapons exploding in Middle East, return to 1929 economics and 1900 environmental laws (e.g. none) just to name the “highlights”) will cause 15% of the electorate to vote for the far lesser of two evils in November.
gwangung
@negative 1: Big structural changes have not been forthcoming. But I think small, incremental changes have been made. And adding up incremental changes will, at some point, tip over into a cascade (I’m thinking about gay marriage here).
But even with large changes, there is pushback and efforts to roll them back, and it takes constant effort to maintain. Thinking the battle has been won has taken us to the point where, for example, abortion and reproductive rights are in actual danger in large parts of the country.
Pushing for big, bold radical change may be satisfying….but I’m not so certain that it is effective or possible, and it’s certainly not permanent—that also needs vigilance and constant, incremental progress.
Uncle Cosmo
@Cramping Up fka Ripe2Rot:
The same way Raz always twists his results to support Thugs like you, fuckhead: Mess with the turnout model to disproportionately weight the demographics that are voting your way. The only way Raz maintains a figleaf of credibility is by gradually unscrewing the turnout model back toward something approaching sanity (i.e., “refining” it) as the election approaches, so his final results aren’t too far from reality. But early in the season those are pure RNC PR BS polls, crafted to support whatever narrative you Thugs want to push & fed to the media to broadcast it.
(This post has been brought to you by the letters FOAD, you asshole.)
scav
@negative 1: Skepticism, sure, but you also need the numbers to make things work. There will be battles you lose, sometimes for a freaking long time because your opinions are currently in the minority (however right). It’s part of the package. And standing around screaming about unfairness does nada, zilch, except maybe some personal catharsis.
And the nothing has changed? Cool the drama jets, there are people here who will testify as to the lack of nothing accomplished. Not that everything has been accomplished by any means, but there’s a openly gay US military leader, women in elite forces, they’re working on transgendered military, little question of health care, SSM, but hey, all that’s nothing because whatever kewpie doll of your choice hasn’t arrived yet.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@D58826: “If little Bobby down the street jumped in front of a train, would you do that too?”
Yeah, the GOP will use anything in a person’s background, real or imagined, in an attempt to win. That doesn’t mean that rational people should do the same thing. A lefty guy once saying some nice things about the Sandanistas isn’t terribly relevant right now, no matter how much it may say about his thinking then.
Bernie’s not going to be the nominee. His statements throughout the campaign have indicated that he will support the nominee if he loses. Assuming he does that (which I still think is a better than 50% bet, even with the recent noise), he will be needed as a vote in the Senate. Attempting to do damage to him at this point is counter-productive.
We need to keep an eye on the big picture.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who remembers “hard working people, white people”, “super predators”, also too…)
negative 1
@scav: Or conversely nothing has been accomplished on income distribution, college funding/college debt, card check, and arguably very little on environmental causes.
It comes down to priorities, and if the same priorities that I detailed above are yours, and they certainly are the priorities of large swaths of the democratic voting coalition, then yes nothing got accomplished. It’s nothing new, and it’s not drama. Belittling others for not having your priorities will eventually leave them open to being persuaded by others. That’s what Trump just did to the GOP, after all.
sherparick
@negative 1: What do you mean “nothing has changed?” ACA imperfect step that it is has reduced uninsured Americans from 20% to 10%; the overtime rules means that millions of workers are going to get pay raises; and we may still be involved more than I like in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we no longer have a steady stream of Americans coming home in body bags or to get fitted for artificial limbs that we had in 2008. Also, if Trump is elected, you will see lots of “change,” but soon find out that not all change is good. (For instance, things really changed in Germany in 1933, but it was not a good change, as people were to find out over the next 12 years.) When people say stuff like that, I am just gobsmacked.
Also, about the American Government in particular, change, particularly progressive change is hard and infrequent. You not only have to control the Presidency, but both houses of Congress with big progressive majorities, which is really hard to get given the popularity Neo-Confederate point of view in 20 of the 50 states. Hence in any give year, you have about 40 senators and 150 House members who would like to repeal all social and economic legislation passed since 1858. Further, you need a Supreme Court that will sustain progressive laws as Constitutional, which we are likely not to have for a generation if President Trump is elected this year. It also helps if 25 of the fifty states are not run by employees of the Koch Organization like Scott Walker and his Republican majorities in once progressive Wisconsin.
burnspbesq
@Ramping Up:
I’m not denying the poll results. I’m denying that they are relevant.
Check your calendar. Learn how the Electoral College works.
Then gargle with Drano.
Aleta
Just like no one has the right to feel threatened by people wearing camo walking for their health by carrying long guns.
hovercraft
@sherparick:
When I say he ran against the establishment, I only mean in terms of the Clintons being doyennes of the establishment, which at the end of the day wants the safest candidate as possible. She was the insider and he was the outsider without the kind of deep rooted connections she had.
But you are absolutely right, he expressed no desire to blow to the party itself.
As to the polls right now as democrats come home she will become stronger. Plus she will have the entire party out there campaigning for her BO will be a big asset for her.
Trump will be Trump so should help too.
hovercraft
@burnspbesq:
heh heh heh
dogwood
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I don’t know what Bernie will do, but it would seem very naive to trust him at this point. Assuming that people who share your political ideology share your values of decency, honesty and respect can often lead to disappointment. It’s been a long campaign, and I’ve yet to see Bernie have a moment of greatness. Is Bernie capable of being humble, gracious or self-critical? I don’t know. So far he seems like a small man on a big stage. We’ll see what he does when this is over, but I’d be cautious about trusting him.
D58826
Cnn is reporting that Bernie plans on campaigning hard against Hillary and doesn’t care if he hurts her fee-fees. Once she goes over the delegate limit he will expect to be invited to the table and the Clinton folks should just forgot what he said last week. It’s politics after all. They are also reporting that for Bernie it isn’t personnel with Hillary but he has a visceral hatred of the DNC and DWS.
Why should Hillary be made to consider the Bernie Bro fee fees but the Bernie folks are under no such obligation.
chopper
@D58826:
“i don’t hate clinton. i hate the democratic party. p.s., i can pretty please lead democratic party?”
scav
@negative 1: Priorities are fine, but discounting real changes and neglecting opportunities for changes that aren’t your personal number one seems utterly selfish. Where did I imply that income inequality wasn’t a problem or was unimportant? At the moment, it’s just a fucking harder problem, so it’s on the still to do list, however high it ranks on my personal agenda. And I’ve no illusions that accomplishing my personal number one priority will cure all other problems, so feel free to tell everyone else to get to the back of the line.
burnspbesq
@D58826:
Because.
gwangung
Then take it over. You can do that kinda easily….by winning.
Destroying it without a replacement just ensures dominance by Republicans, who WILL have a working national structure.
burnspbesq
Some of the supposed “explanations” for the guy with the chair that Berniacs were passing around on FB the other day were amusing. I will grant them that.
different-church-lady
@D58826:
The thing is she probably doesn’t care if he hurts her fee-fees either.
different-church-lady
@burnspbesq: “HOLDING A CHAIR OVER MY HEAD IS JUST A NON-THREATENING NORMAL THING THAT NORMAL PEOPLE DO EVERY DAY OF THEIR NORMAL LIVES!”
D58826
@negative 1: Right absolutely nothing has changed over the years because the democrats are such totally corrupt tools of the big bankers.
So let us jump in the way back machine and start in 1980 and list all of the democratic failures that a Bernie dominated party would have avoided. From 1980-1992 the GOP controlled the White House. Unless the Bernie party had a veto proof majority in Congress, which the corrupt democrats did not have, his agenda was DOA. And yet those corrupt democrats managed to get a soc. security rescue plan and immigration reform passed and signed by Reagan.
In 1993 the standpate, status que wall street/insurance company loving Clintos moved in to 1600 Pa. ave. As part of their corrupt agenda Hillary developed a health care reform package that would have totally rewritten the rules of health care in the US. Even controlling both Houses of Congress the plan was DOA. From 1994-2000 Clinton was faced with a Congress more intent on impeachment than legislating. Yet the economy boomed and the government ran a surplus. Yes there were downsides – DOMA and the crime bill (which Bernie voted for) but all of that was passed with bipartisan support.
From 2001-2008 the GOP had a veto pen in the white House. From 2001-2006 the GOP controlled Congress. Even when Congress flipped in 2006 the Bernie party would not have a veto proof majority. From 2008 to today the turncoat centrist Obama has occupied the White House. His healthcare reform, which passed the Bernie Congress by the skin of its teeth, is a total failure because it isn’t single payer and has only reduced the uninsured rate to less than 10%. Obama also failed to get the Roberts court to allow him to force red state governors to expand Medicare. Repeal of DOMA/DADT, passage of Dodd-Frank, saving the economy in 2009 are all failures to get anything done by the corrupt sell out democrats.
Yea there is a bit of snark in that but it also highlights the political environment of the past 30-40 years. And at the moment Bernie has not shown us that he has possession of the green lantern to overcome the opposition.
Miss Bianca
@different-church-lady: WITH THEIR NORMAL HUMAN HANDS!!
negative 1
@scav: You’re personalizing it and you shouldn’t. Politicians run on the idea that they will do something about the problem (let’s say card check) and do nothing. Thus, the 3rd or 4th one you hear saying “I’ll pass it” is going to get that skepticism. That goes double for a person (Hillary) who is saying roughly “I’m going to continue the work of the last administration” when the last administration did nothing on the topic, either. No one is saying ‘get to the back of the line’; they’re saying ‘how long to I have to stand at the back of the line’.
Either way they feel ignored so they are specifically less receptive to a message of incremental change, and figure a long shot has no downside (as how much less than nothing can you get) but has at least a small chance of getting you something. If you owed $1 million dollars next week you’d probably play the powerball rather than open an IRA.
Now go ahead and call me more names or use the word ‘purity’ in an insult directed at me.
D58826
@chopper: he he that sums it up
negative 1
@D58826: You went too far back. Clinton signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and NAFTA. Is that reductive? Sure, but he did so because he wanted universal health care. This speaks to my point about priorities, and why they matter, and why the losers of shuffling to accomplish one priority over another will feel left out.
I don’t get why you needed a time machine to make a straw Bernie party, but hey it’s fun. In your alternate timeline who won the world series in 2010?
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major: btw, I’m listening to a *brand-new* Monkees release! This wonderful world!
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@D58826: He wasn’t eligible to be on the NH ballot because he wasn’t a registered member of the Democratic Party by the filing deadline – but they bent the rules to give him a spot on said ballot, and that’s where he got his first big win.
@L Boom: Yeah, that’s one of the problems I have with him. Hillary and other members of the party are helping down ballot candidates. Bernie isn’t. You’d think a Socialist would be about collaboration and pulling together, but not Bernie. He’s the world’s first Ayn Randian Socialist, apparently.
@negative 1: There are plenty of things he can do to hamstring Clinton and the Democratic Party shy of a third party run. Besides which I didn’t say he was going to burn it down, I said it was beginning to seem like he might. He still has time to come to his senses and live by his promise to support the Party’s nominee in the general election. He’s never going to make up the popular vote deficit and if he can’t win the popular vote his arguments to be the nominee don’t hold much sway. I seriously am beginning to think that he just said all that nice stuff about how he’d support the eventual nominee to con the DNC into letting him into their primary. He’s on record saying that stuff. It’s time for him to live up to his word.
dogwood
@scav:
To quote to often mocked Reinhold Niebuhr:
“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.”
When I think of John Lewis and many others like him, I am reminded that they believed someday a black family might be the First Family, but they didn’t necessarily expect to see it themselves. Didn’t stop them though. You move things forward with perseverance, patience, optimism and courage.
scav
@negative 1: I’m just impressed you think politicians can accomplish everything promised in their campaigns without the infrastructure and general context and support in the government and country also being ready and willing for such changes to be accomplished. It’s as though you expect polliticos to have magic wands and say “Make it So!” and poof! Yes, there is a growing trends world-wide to take on the excesses of crony capitalism but it is still growing and certainly wasn’t there (especially in these here United States) for a good part our admittedly fucked up recent economic past. Yeah, it’s frustrating, but until you get better Americans as a voting majority, patience and perseverance is likely a dull inevitability. Of course, you can assemble somewhat fewer and wrastle up a revolution, but it will be an imposition of your beliefs on others and very likely won’t end up as the perfected nirvana you expect.
D58826
@negative 1: I didn’t say Clinton was perfect. Whatever its faults NAFTA didnot created income inequality or the rust belt. Yes repealing G-S was a mistake but it seems to have had a minimal impact on the 2008 meltdown. Most of the big players were not commerical banks and therefore not covered by G-S. And one more thing that Obama failed to do was get Dodd_frank passed with its new rules to get the shaow banking system under control
As to the rest of you comment I invented a Bernie party not as a strawman but as a device to highlight that a Bernie party, all things being equal, would not have had any more luck getting your agenda passed than the real democratic party had.
and lets try this again
I believe one of your priorities is card check. I think it is a good idea and should be passed into law. Since Obama, like every one of his predecessors, has a limited amount of political capital he had to chose his battles. If he had put card check over medical care reform then the folks who benefited from card check would be happy winners and the folks who would still not have medical care would be losers. All you are doing is moving the list of winners and loser around to suit your agenda priorities. There is nothing wrong with have a priority list different than Obama’s but just because he chose a different set of priorities, and got much of it passed, does not mean nothing has changed’
NorthLeft12
@Immanentize: “Thought school”? Is that sorta like regular school except you have to……you know….think?
D58826
OT – CBS just announced Morley Safer has passed away,
NorthLeft12
@gvg: I was thinking particularly about adults issuing threats of violence. In my experience, there is more of the adults threatening than kids doing it.
NorthLeft12
@Matt McIrvin: I get what you are saying but I guess I still don’t understand why that behavior that [I believe] is clearly illegal, is not being acted on by the justice system. Or treated with much seriousness by society in general.
gex
@Chris: this.
Plus I’d add he probably followed the playbook on race, sex, and queers. Just because he’s sympathetic to one of the very many groups of Americans the GOP encourages white men to think of as the problem doesn’t mean he didn’t help lead them down the path to Trump.
grandpa john
@burnspbesq:
Fox polled more R than D, under polled independents. Could not find rest of crosstab breakdowns like sex, age, race. geographic location.
Evidently most people don’t seem to educate themselves on the things that can be manipulated to control the results of a poll
scav
@gex: I’m reminded that early (defined loosely) Christians often would put off professing the faith and confessing until they were on their very death bed. That way they wouldn’t have to follow all those dratted rules throughout their actual lives but still get the resurrection and eternal life.
negative 1
@scav: I don’t think politicians can accomplish 1/10 of what they promise, infrastructure or no. I’m pretty sure they would agree with that. I cite this stat based on how our lobbyist here at work spends his time -90% playing defense against stuff that is bad for us, 10% trying to get whatever our pet bill is. Rather than argue this circle, I’ll ask — let’s say the Dems win. What do you think the two signature accomplishments HRC gets passed are?
@D58826: epi.org/publication/bp155/ Unless your contention is that NAFTA had no effect on offshoring. Care to show your work on that topic?
usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/08/27/repeal-of-glass-steagall-caused-the-financ… Not as scholarly as above, but I’ll argue against your evidence when you show it.
You do realize that if you consider yourself a liberal you’ve now argued that NAFTA and the repeal of Glass Steagall were fine. This election has brought out the worst in us now hasn’t it.
glory b
@Wyrm1:If no one’s seen it yet;
Interesting article from jezebel.com, a writer there called some of the guys who made the phone call threats.
All of them identified themselves as fervent Bernie supporters.
As you might imagine, they minimized their statements (“I was just playing a character…).
Cacti
@glory b:
Rolling Stone did the same thing and reported similar findings.
So much for the suggestion it was a bunch of paid provocateurs.
D58826
@negative 1: I didn’t say NAFTA had zero impact. I said that the rust belt and income inequality pre-dated NAFTA and if NAFTA had never been pasted much of the economic damage done since 1994 would still have happened. Remember the treaty is the North American Free Trade Association. I don’t remember the exact name but there was a term for the auto parts plants built along the US-Mexico border prior to NAFTA being passed. has absolutely nothing to do with all of the jobs that have been lost to China, Japan and Korea.
Its complicated and making NAFTA a scapegoat for a lot of other economic problems doesn’t help in addressing the larger issue.
scav
@negative 1: I’m not wild about many of her positions, but I’ll take competence in government so that we can live to battle on in future as a fall-back, especially in face of the current panel of alternatives. I wasn’t wild about Obama as I thought he’d compromise too often and too easily, so was all in all pleasantly surprised despite a very frustrating first couple of years. Do I expect lightning to strike twice? Nope. But then, I also don’t see much the point of concrete speculation as to accomplishments until I see the hand the country deals in the Congress. As this point in the shouting digital and media match, that seems completely unpredictable.
D58826
@negative 1:
Electrons are to valuable to respond to a statement that stupid so that’s all I’ll say on that.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
Et Tu, Levenson?
Idk, Tom, did you watch the video?
Boxer doesn’t look frightened for one instant! Quite the contrary, she baits the Bernie supporters even more! She stands pretty defiant against their booing.
She just couldn’t help herself, telling the crowd that they’re “BOOING THEMSELVES OUT OF THE ELECTION.”
You do know that they ignored process at the Convention concerning the Voice Vote. There was an overwhelming Nay, and Lange blew right past it.
Where’s the Front Page post about Sanders Campaign office being shot at? His offices being broken into? His Female supporter being roughed up by the Clintonite?
Instead we get some weak conjecture about Weaver “Mansplaining”.
Thought you were above this low ball politics, Tom!
burnspbesq
@negative 1:
Offshoring to Mexico is hardly the core of the offshoring problem. And there were strong incentives to move manufacturing jobs to Mexico in place before NAFTA. Does the word “maquiladora” ring any bells? Ever taken a look at the unique language in Article 5 of the US – Mexico income tax treaty?
gex
@negative 1: and acting like the victories just listed are nothing may be a huge part of why Bernie isn’t winning.
Despite this entire campaign hearing minorities talk about how Bernie’s focus on class over all else worries us, he and supporters like you are not at all shy to say that any effort expended on helping with our issues is a waste of time and effort. Then you demand that we support you.
The Bernie Bro moniker didn’t come from nowhere. It’s a nod that to many, progressive = white male progressive. Racial minorities, women, and queers are a distraction, are separate from progressivism.
So you win. You convinced me progressivism doesn’t address those issues. In which case I’ll stick with the Dems, who are mostly with you in economics, but also count those victories as victories.
FWIW my partner died 4 months before marriage equality. I was destroyed financially. That victory you pooh-poohed is a thing that destroys lives. But I guess since it never threatened you in any way, marriage equality is inconsequential.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
From Truthdig:
D58826
@burnspbesq:
Thank you that was the word the my one remaining brain cell could not remember.
burnspbesq
@Jonathan Holland Becnel:
Tell you what. Go find and read the relevant provisions of the Nevada criminal code. Then come back and explain why brandishing a chair in the manner we have all seen does not make out the entire prima facie case for assault.
scav
@scav: Notice also I said compromise too easily — compromise is often the pointy end of the crowbar.
burnspbesq
@negative 1:
One more thing you need to understand. This is personal for a lot of us.
If those who wanted single-payer or nothing had gotten their way, I would be dead. Period, full stop, no room for doubt.
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
Evidently there are staff on the WaPo who actually believe that fascism is liberal, as opposed to the factual case that facism is the opposite end of the political spectrum from liberalism. Which (if it were true that fascism is a variety of liberalism) would make Trump moreliberal than Hillary.
Since Fascism isn’t in fact liberal, there is nothing that can make Trump more liberal than Hillary. Nothing!
les
@negative 1:
Winners win, losers whine about the rules. Wanna “make the process more fair?” Get in the party, work to change the rules. This campaign has surely brought out the worst in Bernie; most of his never-were-voter, don’t-get-poitics, respect-mah-purity minions always were worse.
J R in WV
@NonyNony:
In Tucson the past couple of winters I’ve been there, lots of big old Dodge Ram trucks with bumper stickers attacking Obama. Some of them pretty vile!
I wonder where those guys thought they would be getting new parts for those old trucks had Obama not saved Chrysler from bankruptcy? New engines would be scarce as hen’s teeth pretty soon after those manufacturing lines shut down!
J R in WV
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Nope. They still sell a variety of Golfs, from eGolf to Golf R (starting at $36k !!) all smaller than a Jetta.
les
@negative 1:
The stupid, it burns.
Monala
@Chyron HR: I know. It cracks me up that RtR/RA/whatever latest handle they use has been wrong about everything – about Jeb, about Rubio, about Cruz, and now wants us to believe that s/he is right about Trump.
terry chay
@schrodinger’s cat: Was probably diesel too. :-D