Every single fucking word, especially this:
Here’s the thing: If you think Hillary Clinton is a horrible person who is the enemy of the Democratic Party, you are the problem. If you think Bernie Sanders is a horrible person who is the enemy of the Democratic Party, you are also the problem. Quit being part of the problem and get to work doing something useful.
geg6
Unlike a lot of people on the far left, I can hold two thoughts in my mind at the same time. I can still have complete and utter contempt for them and disregard anything they have to say about the DNC Chair race because they are not and never will be Democrats. And at the same time, I can work with them temporarily on getting this country back on the right road. I feel the same way about them as I do “reasonable” Republicans. I’m willing to work with them in the short term, but I still despise them and don’t want them anywhere near the controls of my party.
Elizabelle
Not so concerned about the DNC Chair.
I want a fresh presidential election. And this administration to come tumbling down.
Slow slow slow walk the Gorsuch nomination. Things can change.
The Moar You Know
I’m perfectly willing to work with the Wilmer/Dr. Dipshit acolytes so long as their goals don’t cross mine, or my party’s.
When they do, then they’re of no more help to me than any Republican, and will be treated as such.
TaMara (HFG)
This. I don’t feel one way or the other about the former candidates, but going forward, I expect anyone I vote for to oppose anything that is anti-science, anti-equal rights, anti-environment (to name a few). It time for the adults to take over and the whiny children who want only to hurt people and the planet to take a seat with some crayons and a sippy cup.
Mnemosyne
Yeah, remember when Hillary’s delegates disrupted the Democratic National Convention on live TV by shouting and screaming during everyone’s speeches, including Elizabeth Warren’s?
Sorry, but the Berniebros have some apologizing to do for their rotten behavior during the campaign. Until that happens, I am not ready to play nice.
amk
Nice false equivalence. One is a dem and the other was/is a carpetbagger pissing into the tent.
chopper
both sides!
Mike J
I’m a Democrat. Bernie’s not. Fuck him.
Gin & Tonic
Like, say, actually joining the damn party?
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: say what you will about Manchin, at least he’s a member.
Mnemosyne
Heh, I just went to the post and the VERY FIRST COMMENT is from a Bernie dead-ender.
But the problem is that the Hillary side is still holding grudges. Right.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
He have. Independently independent. For science!
amk
Is loomis the progressive bros’ new greenwald?
EBT
Once again, grow a pair and ban posters who insist on fighting Clinton v Sanders j. Every thread.
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: “Connecticut for Lieberman”.
schrodingers_cat
Nice false equivalence, congrats.
BS is not a Democrat, he joined the party to destroy it from within. He quit after he achieved his goal.
ETA: Who the fuck is this Loomis? Why should I care what he has to say.
Chip Daniels
I found a progressive candidate for Congress (running to replace Xavier Becerra, appointed AG to replace Kamala Harris), and am working with the campaign.
Everyone has a local race or issue to get involved with, and become part of the fight.
permafrost
The party does need to expand to allow the Sanders or bust folks in. Of course the demands that everyone in the party bow down to them should be disregarded. If they won’t settle for policy and continue to demand scalps I don’t really see the point in working with them. They need to work to expand the party too, not just play zero sum games to try to seize control.
tobie
Sorry, Erik Loomis has no credibility on this point and neither do you. What was that Nina Turner kept on saying at the end of the primaries, at the convention, and into the general election campaign? If I recall it was: “We want some acknowledgment of our pain.” Well, guess what? We want some acknowledgment of our pain too. Until BS and his most ardent followers own up to the real damage they did to the party and the party’s candidate, there’s little opening for a conversation.
geg6
@EBT:
So even when a frontpager trolls with a post meant to incite that very thing, the commenter should get the banhammer?
Nice.
JPL
Now Russia test cruise missiles.. nytimes
Putin is just daring Trump to do something about this. Not that I would watch, but tapes might be released.
Major Major Major Major
CNN alerts:
– top GOP senators call for probe in Russia/Trump connection, want Flynn to testify
– director of secret service retires
amk
@EBT: then mm should top the list.
eta: geg6 beat me to it.
gwangung
This is the way to do things. From the ground up, from the grassroots
But that’s not all the things. Frankly, we’ll need Blue Dog Dems in red states. And we’ll have to put up weakened initiatives…because the alternative is what we have right now—full bore attempts to go the other direction.
schrodingers_cat
@permafrost: My BS or bust ex- friend is busy twisting herself into pretzel defending the travel ban.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@schrodingers_cat: This. All that needs to be said about the sanctimonious finger wagger “man of the people” with 3 houses, one on Lake Champlain. He can fuck right off.
/Not an argument about a primary; simply a statement of opinion.
schrodingers_cat
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Has he made any statement on Flynn, yet?
Gin & Tonic
@permafrost:
I’m sorry, how are people being prevented from joining the Democratic party?
permafrost
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah I think a lot of folks are following the Greenwald/Sirota/Intercept Pied Pipers right out of the party. It is hard to contemplate a functioning America if a significant portion of the Left is going to be that stupid. But like I said, if there are Sanders folks who are going to be builders I am more than happy to work with them and support them.
Major Major Major Major
@amk: I would not be terribly torn up if this happened.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@tobie: What was that Nina Turner kept on saying at the end of the primaries, at the convention, and into the general election campaign? If I recall it was: “We want some acknowledgment of our pain.”
Along with “We want our voices to be heard!” to which I desperately wanted someone to respond, on TV, we hear you, because you never shut up, we just don’t agree with you.
That said, the endless primary is a great argument in favor of Pete Butigieg (I just don’t want to call him “Mayor Pete” because first namification can get cloying and cult-y pretty quick)
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@schrodingers_cat: LOL – I don’t know. Perhaps Devine can draft one for him…
Iowa Old Lady
@Major Major Major Major: If I were the director of the Secret Service, I’d resign too. That scene in the Mar a Lago dining room made it clear how Trump’s lack of cooperation has made their job impossible.
cosima
This is what I tell my daughter’s friends, on their Wilmer High Horse — you are part of the problem, or you are part of the solution, and I look forward to hearing about all of the wonderful things that you have done to promote your independent/socialist/? party in the future, including, but not limited to, raising funds to support candidates, no matter how likely they are to win, for any/all seats from local to national.
low-tech cyclist
I really can’t remember which of Perez or Ellison is supposed to be the Good Guy from whose perspective. Like Erik Loomis, I just want the DNC to pick one and get on with it.
Not only should the DNC, DSCC, DCCC, and DLCC get on with recruiting for 2018, but in my former (but longtime) home state of Virginia , all 100 seats in the House of Delegates are up for grabs in 2017.
Virginia has voted Dem in 3 consecutive Presidential elections, but its state legislature is still dominated by Republicans.
Just in general, we shouldn’t be letting this happen – ceding control of state legislatures to the GOP in states we’re consistently winning in statewide elections. And in 2017, other than the occasional special election for Congress, we should be focusing on Virginia. We need to either take the House of Delegates, or figure out what’s holding us back.
I’m ready to open my wallet to a concerted effort to do just that, but damned if I can figure out where to send the money. When the DLCC called to raise money, I asked them if there was a way I could dedicate a contribution to the Virginia 2017 races, and they didn’t know.
amk
@Major Major Major Major: me neither.
amk
@Major Major Major Major:
wow. any reason?
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That and titles. “Ahem, it’s DOCTOR Paul. It’s DOCTOR Jill Stein.”
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
One of the commenters at LGM suggested that Perez and Ellison become co-chairs. The exploding heads would be fun to watch.
hovercraft
Re-posting from dead thread.
Awww, it seems Putin is having a sad :-(
Kremlin, Russian lawmakers play down Flynn’s resignation
NATALIYA VASILYEVA,Associated Press 42 minutes ago
MOSCOW (AP) —
…….The Russian establishment has not harbored any illusions about the Trump administration’s pro-Russia stance for some time now, said Alexei Makarkin at the Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies.
“This infatuation with Trump in Russia is over, and Flynn as a person who has contributed to this infatuation stopped being perceived as a figure who can have a real impact on the U.S. foreign policy,” Makarkin said.
The nomination of Tillerson, former chief executive at ExxonMobil, showed the Russians that he, not Flynn, would be doing the negotiating, Makarkin said.
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on Flynn’s resignation, saying it’s an internal matter for Trump’s administration and “none of our business.” Asked if Moscow still hopes for its relations with the U.S. to improve, he said it is “too early to say” since “Trump’s team has not been shaped yet.”
The Kremlin earlier said it was not expecting a breakthrough before the two presidents meet in person. Putin has suggested that could take place in Slovenia, the home nation of Trump’s wife, Melania, but added that it will be up to Trump to determine the time and place.
Russia’s visibly muted reaction to Flynn’s departure comes as Tillerson is set to hold his first meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later this week. Tillerson, who has sealed multiple deals in Russia and was even decorated with the Russian “Order of Friendship” award, is widely described as a tough negotiator who will not make promises to Russia that he cannot keep.
Still, several senior Russian lawmakers expressed their disappointment over Flynn’s resignation on social media.
Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the foreign affairs committee at the Federation Council, said in a Facebook post that firing a national security adviser for his contacts with Russia is “not just paranoia but something even worse.”
Kosachev also expressed frustration with the Trump administration. “Either Trump hasn’t found the necessary independence and he’s been driven into a corner… or Russophobia has permeated the new administration from top to bottom,” he wrote.
Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the information committee at the Federation Council, tweeted shortly after the resignation announcement that “it was not Flynn who was targeted but relations with Russia.”
By early afternoon, some lawmakers began to retract their original indignant comments, in line with the restrained tone taken by the Kremlin.
Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the foreign affairs committee at the State Duma, first described Flynn’s departure as a “negative signal” for Russia-U.S. relations, but two hours later switched to more moderate language, stressing that it “cannot fundamentally influence Russia-U.S. ties.”
Fyodor Lukyanov, chairman of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policies, a group of Russian foreign policy experts, told the RIA Novosti news agency that it’s not yet clear what impact Flynn’s resignation may have.
“There’s nothing to influence yet, there are no relations as such. Our countries have relations shaped by the former administration, which were awful, and Trump was going to change that,” he said.
Yet Trump’s first telephone call with Putin last month demonstrated that Trump did not have anything to offer to Russia immediately, Makarkin said.
“It has led to a realization that if Flynn wanted to promote better ties with Russia, he would not have the real chance to,” he said.
Iowa Old Lady
@Thoroughly Pizzled: Another student in a class I was once in asked a prof if we should call him Doctor X, and the guy said scathingly said only doctors of medicine and doctors of education demand to be called Doctor.
amk
@Mnemosyne: I would like to see co-chairs for blue states, red states and swing states. Bring on the local talent and expertise.
Percysowner
I don’t think Sanders is an enemy of the Democratic Party, although I think he did a huge amount of damage in a year where we couldn’t afford that amount of damage. He’s not a Democrat, he’s an independent who shares most of the ideology of the Democratic party. I hope the Bernie or Busters can find a way to vote for Democrats if only to get rid of the horror that the Republican Party is inflicting on this country. I want the Democratic Party to move left and be more progressive, but first we have to win elections, and that means going with Blue Dogs in Red States.
People are being HURT by this administration. Not the purists who have money and are white, but people who have less or no chance to fight for themselves. We have to take care of them instead of just worrying about purity.
Plus Russian Cruise Missile, Deployed Secretly, Violates Treaty, Officials Say so we get to see how cowed Trump is by Putin. I’m betting he says nothing critical of the test.
cokane
Erik, tho
Hungry Joe
There are several Bernie dead-enders in my family. They’ve gotten to where only about a third of their FB posts are blaming Hillary for Trump (“If only she and the DNC hadn’t sabotaged Bernie, HE’D be Prez!”), while the other two-thirds are actually anti-Trump action calls. I mark this down as progress, and keep my mouth shut. To them, anyway.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@tobie:
What they did to DWS was shameful.
And don’t give me that “she propped up a couple of Florida GOP people”. Dems weren’t going to win those districts, but those were GOPers she could occasionally work with on Florida issues, and weren’t universally despicable.
The Moar You Know
@Major Major Major Major: This is going to go all to shit in a hurry, isn’t it?
cokane
the narcissism of small differences, too
Mike J
@Iowa Old Lady:
Not the job of the Secret Service to protect secrets or national security. It’s their job to protect the president. He was physically safe, even if he was endangering the country.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
THIS.
Families fight, that’s what we do. But you know what else we do, we tell people outside of our family who try to but in to STFU. This is family business, so unless we ask for your input, stay out of it. We invited you in, offered to adopt you and you opted for a trial run, decided you didn’t want to stay and you left. I’ll take Mancin and the rest of the conservadems over Wilmer, they at least have the balls to call themselves democrats even though they know that in their home states it’s a big liability.
Yarrow
BS is not a Democrat and until he is he can sit outside until and unless he decides he is a Democrat and joins the party.
The biggest lesson from this mess is that the Dems were stupid to let a non-Democrat run for president using their party resources and structure. Going forward there should be some rule that you have to have been a member of the party for X amount of time to run for president under its auspices. Doing some work for the party over time is part of paying your dues. Otherwise anyone can just declare themselves a Democrat and run for president taking advantage of the hard work others have done, without ever having done that work themselves.
But outside of that necessary change, the whole thing is boring and dumb and I’d rather work with people to keep up the pressure on our representatives and make connections to elect Democrats going forward.
dmsilev
@Iowa Old Lady: Funny. In my corner of academia, you call someone “Doctor” if you don’t know what their proper title should be. That, and you call someone Doctor on the day that they receive their PhD. That’s usually about it.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
@amk:
Trump is the adversary. Trump, the Republican Party, and the plutocrats rubbing their hands in anticipation of all the juicy victories about to be handed to them.
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
If Putin thought he could install a puppet in the White House and ordinary Americans would just roll over and be okay with that, he really doesn’t understand jack shit about this country.
lethargytartare
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
working with Republicans is an unforgiveable sin.
…for a woman. It’s okay for Bernie, though.
hovercraft
@schrodingers_cat:
That is so insane, while I get that the Wilmer bitterenders will never concede they made a grave error, why do so many feel the need to defend the indefensible? They behaved like immature morons, with their false equivalencies, but now that this catastrophe is playing out in front of all of us, why still try to justify it?
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
If every time I want to fight Trump some jackass Berniebro decides to get in my way and start whining about how his candidate deserved to get his way, why am I supposed to stop and soothe that asshole’s hurt fee-fees again?
Jeffro
“Spicy” Spicer giving a presser at 1pm…this is what I get for not bringing popcorn to work, dammit!
schrodingers_cat
@hovercraft: They are smug and stupid and do not like it when someone has a temerity to point that out.
That’s my ex-friend anyway. She thinks because she does yoga and likes Indian food she is immune to charges of being a pampered privileged racist shithead.
VFX Lurker
I don’t see the point of preening purity progressives. They spread Republican talking points, encourage vanity voting and love stomping all over women and people of color.
Democrats don’t need that poison in their party. Let them wander in the wilderness.
Cacti
If Bernie wants a say in the party, he can join the damn party on a permanent basis.
gwangung
@Brachiator: I’m not that concerned about past problems; that’s an academic exercise.
I’m more concerned about backstabbing right now–and there’s a fair amount of it now (No, you don’t get to lecture POCs about “stealing” the phrase “speaking truth to power”, organizational veteran or not). Work together….WIN SOME ELECTIONS FIRST (and that means at the lower levels).
West of the Rockies (been a while)
I apologize for going off topic, but now that everyone is focused on the bright and shiny “resignation” of Flynn, the concern about Trumpy conducting national security discussions in public has diminished. I hope it won’t go down the memory hole.
Peale
Is this how the process normally goes? Is there some kind of deadline where the DNC has a chairman? Or are they just planning on having town halls for the next 8-10 years of this endless campaign to find a chairman. Since I don’t really get a vote in the matter, its like watching a local school board race in Hawaii and pretending that I have to care about the outcome.
MJS
@Mnemosyne: Many, many “ordinary Americans” are okay with it. They are many of the same people who voted for Trump knowing that there was at least the possibility he was, in fact, a Russian puppet. If you ask these people, “Would you rather a) have America become subservient to Russia, or b) have another Democratic president in your lifetime” it would take them all of a millisecond to choose “a”.
J
Amen!
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: When they stop regurgitating Republican talking points, I will listen to them.
MJS
@West of the Rockies (been a while): I’m mildly encouraged that it won’t, because the very same concern re: Trump’s connection to Russia were just being raised last week.
maurinsky
I’m working with a growing group of mostly women in CT (hit the 4,000 member threshold last night) to channel the energy of all us angry people into action that will result in winning elections. We’ve been phone banking and canvasing for local D candidates in the upcoming special election, including a campaign for a Dem who is pretty damn conservative, but is getting traction for a seat that has traditionally been R.
My thought is that most of these folks who complain about the Democratic party have either not been members at all or have been non-participatory aside from voting members. The Democrats have an existing structure – wouldn’t it be so much easier to join the party, get fucking involved, and move it in the direction people want to go? So much easier than starting a whole fucking new party from the ground up. Third parties have been great at finding Presidential candidates, but what good is that when there are no roots? It’s like building a roof without walls or a foundation below it.
cmorenc
@Major Major Major Major:
Don’t get me wrong that it’s a good thing that Sen Lindsey Graham says he’s “in” on the need for that investigation – NEVERTHELESS we’d be foolish to forget that Senator Graham’s current function in the GOP is to be their leading “concern troll” – except it’s the likes of us (progressives and democrats) whom he’s trolling to create false expectations that he might actually, you know, do something about the crap in the Trump Administration he’s concern trolling about.
gwangung
@VFX Lurker:
Yes, that’s what I’m talking about. (Let’s be clear; there are at least three segments to Sanders supporters, and I do not want to use a wide brush). Folks who repeat rather stupid talking Republican talking points (“Clinton Foundation was a corrupt tool for Hilary and I don’t care you have 30 years of analyzing 990s in the non-profit sector; I trust my sources!”) are just not needed.
hovercraft
Sad, so sad.
02.14.2017 – 12:34 PM EDT
Worth Remembering
With all the storm and drama over Flynn, remember: the legislative momentum on the Hill has ground to almost a standstill, despite the fact that a new president historically gets his most consequential legislation passed during his first year, even first months in office.
– Josh Marshall
I’m going to take a shot in the dark here, but maybe having some people with governing experience and an independent office that can tell you the fiscal and practical implications of your policy proposals before you go blabbing about them, is a good thing.
Jeffro
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
We’re progressives, we can ‘walk and chew gum’!
(I liked Betty’s 7-activity example from a few days ago better than that simple 2-activity one, myself =)
Trump having such discussions in public gets him a slight slap on the wrist at most.
Trump knowing that one of his most trusted advisers was potentially in league with Russia and doing nothing about it gets him…big, big trouble!
I mentioned a week or two ago, I keep picturing Trumpov sitting at a gray-painted table, in one of those classic TV police interrogation rooms, face in his hands. It just won’t go away. Makes me happy about every 30 minutes or so!
Applejinx
@Brachiator:
This. Maybe we don’t all agree on the exact identities of the plutocrats, but Jesus fucking christ, game time is over here.
I lose my shit when people want to go and run pogroms on ‘Wilmer’ and those who back him. That’s been an issue-oriented thing from day one and it resonated and it’s never changed in basic purpose. Does that make it a big ugly dealbreaker? If so that says really ugly things about those who find the message so unpalatable.
And it’s STILL not as bad as what the Republicans are doing. On either ‘side’.
I keep thinking of happy Paul Ryan. Fucking crazed Randian ideologue, clearly thinks Trump and Pence are going to be torn down and he’ll be the heir apparent. On the other side? Nancy Pelosi was questioned by a leftist, about I think Basic Income or something to that effect. Her response? “Sorry, we’re capitalists, that’s just how it is.”
Well, no shit! And yes that system is failing and yes it’s an absolute crisis but you know what’s a bigger crisis? Russia blackmailing the Republicans to extract maximum damage from the USA. Because Russia is capitalist now too… utterly. And they are exploiting the problems with the system more effectively than our people are, and the end game is ruin and destruction. And MAYBE that’s more important than being mad at neoliberal capitalists FOR being neoliberal capitalists. It’s the difference between a soft landing (one hopes) and a crater.
I’ll side with Pelosi in a heartbeat, and I absolutely do not approve of her assumptions there, and I think it’s a big dangerous problem. But it’s not the BIGGEST problem, and this is triage.
Yarrow
@maurinsky:
Yes. Yes it would. And this is exactly how the far right wing Evangelicals and others took over the Republican party starting in the 70’s/80’s. They showed up at precinct meetings. Voted themselves in as precinct chairs, ran for every office they could, and moved up the party hierarchy. There is no reason progressive Democrats can’t do the same thing. It takes time and hard work, but it can be done. Change the party to make it the party you want it to be. The blueprint for how to do it is already there.
Cacti
@schrodingers_cat:
Both the male Republican candidate and the male Independent Democratic Socialist candidate agreed…
The election was unfairly rigged…in favor of the woman candidate?
The most mind boggling part of this election was that a plurality of the public/EC majority was convinced it was a revolutionary act to make another old white man POTUS.
amk
@Brachiator:
Tell that bs who has no problems working with the manchurian shithead.
Jeffro
“Spicy” live presser starting in 3 minutes people!!! Let us savor =)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
We only came up with Wilmer a few weeks ago, you’ve been a unhinged, babbling (through your fingers) halfwit for, IIRC, at least a year.
Have you ever, in you ever-loving life, had shit to lose?
hovercraft
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
I think that the WH had hoped the the steady stream of diarrhea emanating from their would allow a lot of shit to get by without notice, but sadly for them, they are the only shitstream in town, so it is all being examined. Remember that when Flynn shit came out weeks ago, I’m sure they thought they’d weathered that storm, turns out that the first time was just a warning, the eruption came this weekend.
schrodingers_cat
@Applejinx:
You are in need of new talking points, please to wait for new instructions.
Kthnxbai.
? Martin
Situation in Oroville is stable. Lake now 13′ below flood level, on track to be ~25′ below by the time the next rains come. That still has the lake above the erosion point on the emergency spillway, and 25′ may not be enough buffer depending on how hard it rains and how warm this storm is. There’s reason to be optimistic on that, though. This storm doesn’t look as intense as the last one, and it looks a bit colder, so the rate of flow into the lake may not overwhelm the main spillway flow. That is, the main spillway may be able to keep the lake from rising as rapidly. So far, the main spillway is holding up, mostly because it’s almost completely destroyed and the surrounding area eroded down to bedrock. There’s just nothing left to break.
There’s a large organized crew staging crushed rock and helicoptering it into place where the erosion problems are worst. They have multiple helicopters bringing loads in and well over a hundred staged bulk bags that each hold about a ton of material. They are running 24/7. There are crews with pressurized concrete pumps securing the rock in place as best they can. The response to this situation is rather impressive.
The evacuations are going to stay in place for now. I think if they can get the lake level below the erosion point (870′ at a minimum, 850′ ideally) with some confidence that the inflow rate won’t completely overload the main spillway – either because there’s so much coming in from the watershed, or because the spillway rate needs to be reduced due to damage, they’ll lift the evacuation order. I’ve talked to some of our water and structural engineers that have studied that dam and they’re cautiously optimistic. What I haven’t heard is the watershed modeling for this upcoming storm. There is software for doing that, and I imagine the guys at the lake have that dialed in relatively well. They’ll be looking at the weather forecast, and having the model tell them roughly how much inflow they would expect from that. Our guesswork is that this next storm won’t stress the dam nearly as badly as the last one, but that’s guesswork. The big unknown variable is how much snowpack was melted in the last storm. If it was a lot, that’s why the dam was overwhelmed, and that means there will be a lot less to melt in this next storm. If it wasn’t so much, and this storm ends up being warmer than it appears, we could be right back where we were. But the folks at the dam should have a decent sense of that.
gwangung
@Yarrow:
Yes, this.
I have absolutely no problem with folks who do this. It gives me an equal chance to fight if I disagree, and a chance to push behind them if I agree.
It just seems like some folks want to also take a shortcut by head hunting and running rough shod over local officials when a) they haven’t done work on the local level, and b) haven’t won any elections.
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Shut up, neo-liberal capitalist.
/channeling AJ
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: and if this post had included an apology from mistermix for being a worse-than-useless infighting shit-stirrer ever since the election, I would give a shit about his call for unnamed people to stop antagonizing allies and all come together.
hovercraft
@Jeffro:
In case anyone has wants to watch:
Via NBC
C-SPAN
ETA: I’ve limited myself to watching Joy Reid on the weekends, but Melissa’s Spicey is tempting me to watch his briefings, the way one slows down for a wreck.
Applejinx
@Yarrow:
There is no outside. Not for him and his, not for the Teahadists. Our system doesn’t have that. There is only Republican and Democrat, unless the parties implode in corruption and treason (for that, I want it to be the Republicans imploding, NOT the Democrats).
Major Major Major Major
@Yarrow:
There’s your reason.
ETA: Most progressive democrats aren’t like that, but the ones in question are.
ETAA: @Applejinx: If there’s no outside then why is he still sitting there?
Immanentize
I must admit, I don’t think about either Hillary or Bernie anymore. I cant see either of them even in my rear view mirror at this point.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Applejinx:
Well, there is, because he remains an Independent. It would be a trivial matter on his part to join the Democrats. The fact that he hasn’t speaks very poorly of him. What exactly is he accomplishing by staying out?
Jeffro
@hovercraft: I can’t watch Spicer without some giggling, in the expectation that he will pick up the podium and ram the reporters with it!!
rikyrah
@Major Major Major Major:
Uh huh
Uh huh
Marcopolo
All for moving forward. As the primary process took place I went from neutral to Clinton supporter & did some work for her campaign in the general (though I put most of my energy behind Kander here in MO. I haven’t necessarily had kind things to say in regards to diehard Wilmer supporters; however, I am wholeheartedly impressed & encouraged by his former supporters in my state.
Google Mobilize Missouri & check out their site. These folks are organizing inside the Democratic Party, are recruiting & running candidates (quite a few in St. Louis’ upcoming municipal elections), and generally seem to be bringing new energy & enthusiasm to local & statewide politics.
More power to them & I am sure I’ll be working with them heading into 2018!
amk
@Applejinx:
Yeah, building a new party is soooo hard, so let’s go and tell an established party how they are doing it all wrong and demand that only our ideas be accepted. White entitlement much?
feckless
@Percysowner: Hillary was raising money in California a week before the election. She got a lot of money. wasted half a billion dollars, lost Michigan and the election. How was that Bernie’s fault? The DNC wing of the democratic party was too cowardly to fight for the programs that were to mitigate the impact of NAFTA, and betrayed or ignored the Unions at every turn, was that Sanders’ fault?
To the many rabid Hillary supporters here, is it possible that Mr. Sanders excited the base and that without him HRC would never have gotten as close as she did?
Bernie didn’t fail to turn out the dem base, Hillary did, please try to accept that fact. Hillary had no response to the GOP doing something evil like the Comey letter, but WHAT DID SHE EXPECT?
The Hillary/Obama junta of corporate democrats has let the GOP take over the states legislatures, and ignored such basic ideas as retaining Ted Kennedy’s seat. This democratic machine has lost 6 of the last 10 presidential elections, if you don’t think that needs to be examined YOU are the problem, not the unrepentant supporters of HRC or Sanders.
PS I hate what the ‘Bernie bros” did at the convention, but…. they predicted HRC would lose to Trump, and they were Right . Maybe we should start following people who were right before the choice, rather than those who apologize for starting wars etc after the fact.
I also hate that the dem staffers that attacked Mr. Sander’s religion/ethnicity as a way to win the primary in useless W. Virginia were not Fired or even disciplined by the democratic leadership.
I like this site, but the comments (and some of the front pagers) stray in into ad hominems too often, especially towards Senator Sanders.
PS I’m a proud member of the thundering 36th district democrats, I was a Bernie delegate AND I did phone banking for HILLARY.
Mnemosyne
@VFX Lurker:
I would have responded sooner, but I think I gave myself a small concussion banging my head on my desk.
Yes, young white dudebro, you totally invented the phrase “speaking truth to power.” You fucking whiny jackass. ?
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
The election is over. I don’t much care about who believes that they should have won. I don’t care about Bernibros, Stein voters or Libertarian voters or anyone else wanting to revisit the past.
Trump is the worst president in the history of the country. Pence, Trump’s probable replacement should he implode or get impeached, is another Republican disaster.
It’s funny. People claim that Trump is a dangerous authoritarian fascist, but still want to fight internal political battles with people who should be allies. Meanwhile, immigrants are still being rounded up for deportation, a new and improved executive order for banning Muslims is being drafted, idiots are dabbling in foreign policy, and who knows what other mischief is being planned.
I can’t tell you what you are supposed to do. But you’re lucky you are not (yet) a target of the Trump assault on American society. Pick your battles while you still can. The larger war is coming.
? Martin
@Applejinx:
I will remind that some take a different perspective. Despite the obvious problems induced by our free-market nirvana, global poverty is absolutely plummeting right now, and the two things that is attributed to is increased access to capital and increased access to communications, particularly smartphones and wireless which can overcome the shitty physical infrastructure in many places. That kind of open market allowed parts of Africa to leapfrog past countries like India with very centralized market planning, much to the benefit of the citizens.
The biggest problem that I see in the US isn’t even being acknowledged by the far left and that is that labor and GDP are largely disconnected now in a way that they never were able to be in the past. The use of labor as the basis for taxation (payroll taxes, income taxes, etc.) which made sense for 2 centuries but makes less and less sense now is a big part of the cause of inequality, but left is opposed to unwinding parts of that out of fear that labor-connected social programs will unwind as well. So long as corporations are able to generate laborless revenue and profits, through the use of automation, inequality will grow worse. Corporate taxes won’t solve this problem because the problem isn’t that the corporations are overly profitable, the problem is that their costs are less and less dominated by labor. What the US needs to do is to find a way to tax value-add, regardless of whether that was due to labor or automation. That would suggest shifting away from the standard corporate and income taxes toward a VAT or something comparable. That’s not a popular idea with the left, though.
amk
@feckless: same old bs. I am sure you did jacksquat in GE for dems.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx:
Hear hear! Without Bernie Sanders’s dedicated leadership, how could the political world ever know that a liberal candidate can win in the state of Vermont?
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I had a very odd interaction the other day at a party with a lefty Dem, big Bernie supporter in the primary, there is nothing wrong with either of those of course. Me and a friend (also a lefty Dem, big Bernie guy) were talking about the importance of coalition cohesion right now. This guy asked me, who would you have voted for if Bernie had gotten the nomination? I looked at him funny and said “Bernie, obviously.” Then he said, “well what if it was Bernie vs. Biden?” And I said, Biden. And he said, “SEE?!” as if he had proven his point.
He’d been drinking and I wonder if he thought he’d said Kasich or something. He’s a friend of a friend, he’s not an idiot.
@feckless:
You do know that the base of the Democratic party is POC, right? Did you mean ‘young people’?
hovercraft
Why is it people feel the need to constantly tell us how to run our party? I’m serious, if the democrats are such a bunch of sellout losers, why waste your time with them? There is a very recent blueprint on how to impose your will on a party. The Tea Party was orchestrated by a group of libertarians along with a slice of the base of the republican party, they organized and ran candidates, many of whom won. They put the fear of god into the leadership of the party, and staged a successful coup. If the Wilmer people want to be taken seriously, they must demonstrate to the democratic party that they speak for the majority of democrats. Where have they won against a “corporatist, sellout democrat:”, where did the win an election against a republican that a regular democrat would have lost? Nowhere that I know of. In fact when given a choice between a utopian view of the nation and the nuts and bolts approach taken by Hillary, the majority voted for the latter, our core constituencies overwhelmingly so. We are not buying what you are selling, sulking because we don’t want to buy what you’re selling will not change our minds, neither will yelling at us. Now kindly leave us alone, or talk about something else.
Applejinx
@Thoroughly Pizzled: Don’t care. I would never vote for him in a primary for President again. Just because I’m a Vermonter (and lefty commie socialist who agrees with most of his pet hobbyhorses) doesn’t mean I see him as politically relevant on the national stage. Neither are we: we’re solidly a blue state and pretty insignificant.
I think he should be a Dem exactly because there IS no ‘outside’, claiming to be an Independent is just wankery. Very well, then, he’s my socialist wanker and you’re not taking him from us, but he should be a Dem because the system only allows for two institutionalized parties (in the ‘Suicidal Tendencies’ sense). Obama did not succeed in shaking up the Democratic Party apparatus, he just got elected twice. Bernie didn’t even get elected once. We MUST work with the shitty party hacks we’ve got, or the shitty Republican party hacks will run with nutbags like Paul Ryan and the country will be gruesomely harmed.
Maybe in that light you screaming meemies can acknowledge that I, Applejinx, am more sensible than my Senator Bernie Sanders. He’s still a reliable Dem vote, which is more than I can say ;)
FlipYrWhig
@feckless:
Considering that the base of the Democratic Party is women over 40 and people of color of all ages, I think Bernie Sanders meant fuck-all to the base, which was why he lost, and then he proceeded to pout and whine about millionayuhs and billionayuhs and Wawl Shreet and promulgate various stab-in-the-back conspiracy theories that his imbecilic cult legions still repeat. So, uh, no, not so much.
FlipYrWhig
@hovercraft: Doing things sucks. Telling other people from a safe distance they’re doing most things wrong is AMAZING!
MisterForkbeard
I happen to think that Bernie made a lot of dumb mistakes in the primary, and didn’t do as much in the general as he should have. He’s not an enemy of the party, and we can really use some of the enthusiasm he whipped up.
But jesus, the assholes who were protesting during the convention need to (wo)man up and apologize for their behavior, especially since we’re now getting a firsthand view of what corruption actually looks like. Likewise, the Bros that were (in September!) trying to get Hillary to resign and give the nomination to Sanders for some reason. And some of his supporters or most fervent anti-Hillary people really were/are enemies of the party, being libertarians or just willing dupes of russian propaganda.
But most of them? No. And Sanders? No. He, like Hillary, could have done better but he’s not the enemy.
Applejinx
@hovercraft: Maybe stamping out centrist corporatist capitalist Democrats is not the right thing to do. I think the Republicans are fucked as a party for just that reason. It’s bad, and wrong, and there needs to be a dialogue even when it hurts.
If that has to be done with one side sticking its fingers in its ears and crying ‘Wilmer, it’s all your fault!’ then so be it. Democrats debate things vociferously and that’s how it ought to be. There SHOULD be a right wing in national politics, and I think it should be the Clinton Democrats. Screw the Republicans, they abandoned all hope of an ethos when they went all Tea Party.
I think the ‘centrist’ Democrat thing is an ethos, and thought out, and it’s an evolving position. It’s also wrong, but because it is an evolving position held by intelligent (and naive) people, it deserves to have its representation. Not so for the dominionist, racist hordes. Fuck ’em. If I have to pick between a right wing Dem and a frothing nutbar in a KKK hood, I would rather pick the Dem.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Doesn’t matter what mistermix calls for. It doesn’t change the nature of the problem.
I also don’t know whether the infighting and other crap can be curbed. And I suppose that apologies would be nice in some cases, but people are sometimes stubborn, and stupid.
I’m re-reading some Scottish history, the time of Robert the Bruce. Edward I was known as the Hammer of the Scots, kicking the ever loving shit out of Scotland. The Scottish lords responded by saying, “well, let’s fight and betray one another. That will work.” Obviously, I am oversimplifying, but not by much.
gwangung
@Applejinx: I have no problem with what you said here.
Sorry, folks. (Although if you push, I COULD find something else you’ve said to have a petty squabble over…)
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx:
So the “left wing in national politics” should be the 5-10% of the public that sees themselves as to the left of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama? And then the “right wing” should basically be, what, the other 90-95%?
Applejinx
@? Martin:
YES. This. However, if you look at global capital you’ll see that the corporations are indeed overly profitable; but they don’t have anything to invest in! And so we get asset bubbles. But your underlying concept is right on.
I don’t think ‘Wilmer’ (to be polite to this crowd) ever got anywhere near a solution to this problem. However, his constant obsession with inequality and billionaires does tend to highlight that very problem more than anyone else in politics was willing to do with the possible exception of Elizabeth Warren. I’d like to see real answers to this.
msdc
@Major Major Major Major: But most importantly, what does young Zach think about all this?
Miss Bianca
@schrodingers_cat:
Seriously? To you? HOW?
Major Major Major Major
@Applejinx: I have absolutely no problem with a big ideological tent. As I said above, I’m fine with everybody from Manchin to Bernie in the caucus, but I’m not going to take advice on running the party from somebody who won’t join it even though it wouldn’t harm him to do so. I’d be more sympathetic to taking advice from Angus King, who may have to maintain a veneer of independence ‘cuz Maine, but still reluctant.
@Brachiator:
This is a comment on a post by mistermix. About mistermix’s prior behavior. Of course it matters what mistermix says. Christ on a cracker.
ETA: Of course I want unity and comity in the face of the enemy, but it ain’t gonna be on a mistermix post after the shit he’s been posting. If this was anything other than a comment on a mid-tier blog you’d have more of a point.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: No Allies To The Right!
Mike in DC
To those criticizing Clinton: she’s dead (politically) now, so what’s the point? Her flaws as a candidate are and were known, as were Bernie’s . Primary voters made an informed choice between the two of them, and she won.
Her stated policy prerogatives were suggestive of a largely progressive agenda and not a return to the Neoliberalism of the 90s. There’s little indication of a neoliberal revival in the party, so that’s the equivalent of tilting at windmills now. There are just different degrees of liberalism/progressivism.
schrodingers_cat
@Miss Bianca: Not illegal, doesn’t affect “good immigrants”, is temporary. I told her to go fuck herself.
bemused
It’s so predictable that all smarmy creatures Republican are lock step chanting “move forward” which is just another way of saying “get over it”. It reminds me of cat litter box behavior when kitties frantically cover up their poop with a big pile of litter and run away from the stinky deed as quickly as possible.
maurinsky
Could someone explain what “Wilmer” means in the context you all are using?
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
truth
Major Major Major Major
@maurinsky: Originally (still?) intended as a substitute for Bernie’s name here, since there’s a theory that a couple of the trolls have google alerts set up for it. It’s creeping into common usage.
low-tech cyclist
@maurinsky:
Given that the Dem organization in my county meets at lunchtime on weekdays because they’re a bunch of old guys who apparently aren’t interested in new blood, the answer in my case is, unfortunately, NO.
Applejinx
@Major Major Major Major: No problem: my interest in who’s running the DNC is really not very great. ANYBODY who can get our shit together is OK in my book, as long as they aren’t galloping to the defense of fucking payday lenders and supporting Republicans (obligatory DWS-smash).
I think Trump delivered a bigger wake up call than ‘Wilmer’, frankly. Nothing ‘Wilmer’ said should have been able to rock the boat that much. Fuckin’ obscure Socialist rabble-rouser from Vermont, who would even listen? Turns out quite a lot of people, but even if he had never taken a ‘sick and tired about hearing about your emails, and we’re both way better than the R’, he still shouldn’t have been able to prevent her election. And he went out and campaigned for her after losing, in good faith.
Trump. Comey. Russia. This was the Red October, and the real threat. Not the guy from Vermont with sparrows and hippies.
I do think ‘Wilmer’ should simply join the Dems, but he’s always been our obscure Socialist Senator, and before that, Representative. Tactically, practically, I think he should join, but ideologically I have to ask ‘why the hell would he want to join the Democrats NOW?’ After they let Trump con millions into thinking that he, not the Democrats, represented economic justice of all things? Talk about a vote of no confidence. That’s genuinely horrible performance, to lose that issue to THAT GUY. It’s horrifying.
Amaranthine RBG
Dumbassery like this ensures that 2020 will not be a sure thing for Democrats.
Yes, let’s keep splitting the coalition until all that remains is the One True Democrat.
Dumbass
trollhattan
@Miss Bianca:
Something, something, something, burqas?
MisterForkbeard
@Amaranthine RBG: Let’s just say that they absolutely should apologize for some of their behavior, but I’m still happy to let them join the party and contribute even without that.
Mnemosyne
@Marcopolo:
I’m totally happy with the Bernie supporters who are carrying their excitement and energy forward into getting involved with their local parties and getting local candidates elected.
I am less happy with the ones who keep wanting to make every. fucking. thing. a re-fight of the primary.
Mike in DC
In lieu of an apology, I’d settle for them shit canning phrases like “Neoliberal corporatist sellout*”.
*-I believe I may have even used this phrase once during the campaign. I regret the error.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
@Mnemosyne:
You don’t have even the slightest shred of self-awareness, do you?
Frankensteinbeck
@feckless:
No, it is not possible. ‘The base’ are minorities. Sanders told them to shut up and let white people go first. As for his supporters, he led them to believe Hillary was a crook who stole the election from him, and without the folks who stuck to that belief in the general, we’d have easily won the electoral college despite racists turning out in droves for the white power candidate.
When the results came in, Bernie hurt Democrats much more than helped.
MisterForkbeard
@Mike in DC: This. They need to stop with the republican propaganda, right now. Especially since there was never any goddamned evidence of any of it.
I’m not going to need an apology but if they’d like to contribute and help out in the Resistance, they need to stop attacking our allies.
Applejinx
@Amaranthine RBG: In fairness, as one of those ‘bros’ kinda-sorta, and someone who’s talked with a LOT of other bros…
You do realize that we expect exactly this attitude, and it’s fueled most of the confrontation and anger?
Dumbassery like that is normal and expected and nothing remotely new. This is exactly the attitude we have seen all along, so don’t panic on the grounds of ‘oh noes, dumbassery, if they aren’t nice to the hippies they’ll drop out!’
They were never nice. They’re still not. Screw it. We have a republic to save, if that’s even possible, and waiting until old cranky Democrats stop hating progressives is just plain off the table. We are going to have to vote with them even while they curse us and vow to punish everyone we like.
If that seems like a tall order, stop cursing us and vowing to punish everyone we like. We probably won’t fucking believe you. Doesn’t matter, though.
2020: ‘anything is better than this, FFS’ :)
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: Nobody thought Trump represented economic justice. They thought he represented the wrathful and long-overdue smiting of the world’s brown people. But they know that that’s kinda hideous, so they pretended it had something to do with factory jobs that started disappearing 45 years ago, and “the left” bought it, because “the left” has been praying for a century for The People to decide to smash capitalism and thought their Great Pumpkin had finally come.
gwangung
@Amaranthine RBG: Let’s make it clear then…I have no truck with so-called Democrats who want to junk “identity politics.” And I have no truck with so-called Democrats who point to long time veterans as a problem, particularly if they are new to the party—unless they winning elections.
Win at the grassroots and you’ve got your mandate for change.
gwangung
@NR: Fuck off, Mr. Self Awareness.
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig:
Bullshit. He promised exactly that to the Rust Belt, otherwise he would have lost, and rightly so. He lied lied lied. Where were you, not to know that?
Major Major Major Major
@Applejinx: The main issue I have is that, at least on the leftiest part of the left coast out here, the WTO protest/Occupy types now feel like they are owed the Democratic party. I think part of this comes from Bernie’s not conceding the primary after it became very clear that he couldn’t win. It seems to have energized some sort of strange entitlement that was less mainstream before. And that more than anything else is hurting coalition cohesion right now. I heard a thing I like on the radio the other day, somebody said, People need to learn that if there’s nobody in your coalition you disagree with, then what you have is not a coalition. The Democrats have always been a coalition party, it’s time we all (ALL) acted like one.
schrodingers_cat
Signal has been activated, g0bl00 still missing.
NR
@schrodingers_cat:
Right, it’s Bernie Sanders’s fault that the Democratic party went from a majority in the House, a supermajority in the Senate, and control of a majority of state legislatures in 2009, to minorities in the House and Senate and control of less than a third of state legislatures today. All of that is Bernie Sanders’s fault. Does the man’s power to cause electoral disaster have no limit?!?!?!
maurinsky
@low-tech cyclist:
My group has run into vast differences in how the DTCs are operated. In one city, the DTC has welcomed them with open arms; in another, it’s a man’s man’s man’s man’s world – they want to meet for coffee before they will consider welcoming you into the fold. So we decided: if we can work with them, and they can work with us, great; if not, we’ll work without them.
Right now, candidates and campaign managers are loving us, though! Last Thursday was a snowday, we made over 6,000 phone calls for one of the special election candidates.
NR
@gwangung: I’m not the one who complained about other people holding grudges seven minutes after I posted about how I’m still holding a grudge myself.
maurinsky
FWIW, I don’t care who voted for who at this point. Either help fix it or get out of the way.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: Bullshit to you. Almost no one who voted for him did it on the basis of economic promises. Almost everyone who did either hated Hillary Clinton or wanted someone to start cracking black and brown heads. The Rust Belt is where Arabs and Somalis and Mexicans moved in. That’s what they hate. That’s what they want to stop.
@NR: Oh my motherfucking God it’s you taking out your one puny non-fact and wiggling it around again.
NR
@tobie:
And until you guys own up to the fact that your candidate was already damaged long before Bernie Sanders entered the race, and not even his vigorously campaigning for her could save her, there’s little opening for conversation.
rikyrah
Following Flynn’s Resignation, Questions Remain
by Nancy LeTourneau
February 14, 2017 9:56 AM
Just prior to Michael Flynn’s resignation last night, the Washington Post published this report.
Beyond the salacious idea that the National Security Advisor risked being blackmailed by Russia, what this tells us is that the White House has known Flynn was lying for at least 2-3 weeks. But then there is this tidbit from the report.
All of the sudden yesterday, in the swirl of this becoming public knowledge, the focus of the story became that Flynn had lied to Vice President Pence and the two connected for him to apologize. That makes no sense. If the White House has known that he lied for over 2 weeks, why did they wait until yesterday to tell Pence he’d been set up?
Applejinx
@Major Major Major Major: Agreed. I think this entitlement comes from the size of the faction: the strident messaging against oligarchy IS mainstream by now. It doesn’t mean the Occupy types are capable of running things.
I heard a guest on Chapo Trap House (great fun, you guys would hate it!) talking about that very issue. He visited Occupy, and found that the leftists were so furious with the very concept of power that they didn’t even allow it among themselves. So they were a leaderless rabble, with no dreams and no plans: reactionary, in a word.
They can be legitimately reactionary against real problems and yet still lack any coherent idea of what to do about ’em.
I think we are going to have to rely on mainstream Democrats to plan and dream, but that’s why it’s so important to get certain realities through their thick skulls. It’s great that globalization is lifting the lowest poorest demographics up, but it’s pretty well documented that the very poorest and the very richest are making great strides, and the ones being screwed are US.
Would it be just to reverse that, have America complacent and happy once more in union jobs, and all the Third World starves? No, absolutely not. But you can’t carry on as things are going, either.
les
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
It’s the only thing he’s ever done that gets him in the news.
NR
@schrodingers_cat:
Republican talking points like “We can’t do single-payer because it’ll cost too much?”
Oh wait, it was Hillary Clinton who said that, not some Berniebro.
Miss Bianca
@schrodingers_cat: “good immigrants”? Is that like the “good Negroes” and “good Jews” and “good Catholics” – unlike the “other kind” – y’know, the ones that the stereotypes actually apply to! – that I used to hear about as a young thing?
Major Major Major Major
@Applejinx: That’s absolutely what happened with Occupy, that and they decided to listen to hippies who think that if consensus is good enough for managing their 5-roommate apartment then it should be good enough for a movement.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@permafrost:
What the fuck does this mean? I think every primary should be a closed primary, and that the caucuses should be shit canned.
@Frankensteinbeck:
He’s still telling white people they should go first, and he should be first of the first.
bupalos
I think it’s both fair game and constructive to criticize aspects of both those politicians, bigly. I’m not really interested in which one is worse, but I’m quite interested in what each of them did wrong that helped us get to where we are. I think it’s kind of a growing problem that you can’t open your mouth in either direction without people assuming you must be “from the other camp” and shouting you down.
Bernie’s purity and extreme policy oversimplifications are toxic (and faintly reminiscent of Trump.) Dropping a “free-state-college” bomb on the existing university system would be incredibly destabilizing, but Bernie can’t care about that what with revolutions being revolutions and eggs and omlettes, etc. The Clintons’ personal wealth derived from political connections is toxic and faintly reminiscent of BushCo, and the historical DLC waffling and poor retail politics isn’t great either. Now that that election is behind us (or maybe in us? inhabiting our bodies like in Alien?) it’s really not too much to ask for a candidate not compromised in either of these ways, and shouldn’t be verboten to mention that these guys were notup to snuff, considering they managed to merge their wondertwin powers to form shape of rain and form of tissue paper glove and left us holding this steaming turd barehanded.
Gravenstone
@NR: And right on cue, here’s Troll thing #1. Google alert did the job, eh? Throw back a coffee or two and wade into the rising tide of Balloon Juice to hector us all for insufficient purity?
? Martin
@Applejinx:
I don’t see a problem with the former, but I do with the latter. Capital that is idle is being wasted and should be taxed at a high rate. That we have trillions in negative yield bonds is scandalous.
But the reason I don’t have a problem with the profitability is that a high value-add is generally a good thing. A company has identified a value level that consumers are happy with and if they can produce it at low cost and generate a high value-add (and therefore a high profit), great. That reduction in cost of production can be adopted by other businesses to produce goods at lower cost, and if consumers are willing to pay that price, that’s fine. Now, in that case a VAT based tax approach will take more of those profits – and probably more than they do now because of how corporations can manipulate their income.
The exception here is on closed markets – either goods/services that consumers cannot opt out of, or good/services that have geographical or other market constraints. In these situations, you have inelastic demand and consumers lose their ability to set reasonable market prices. Health care is an ideal example of this – the EMT is standing above you with the defibrillator asking how much you are willing to pay to have your heart restarted. That is far from a free market and you need to have some regulatory structure in place. In this situation it also would make sense to have a different taxation structure because the government is to some extent dictating the potential value-add.
Usually these can be routed around by restructuring the market. For example, the cable monopolies are entirely avoidable by decoupling the infrastructure from the service. Cable companies could still build out the infrastructure but they wouldn’t have a monopoly on the service over the wire. They could lease that bandwidth to other service providers, so they can still pay off their investment, and consumers would get a choice. This would force cable companies to focus on price and service and would still provide incentives to build out the infrastructure. Google might happily take their cash, build out the infrastructure and provide no service, simply leasing out the bandwidth to anyone and everyone and generating income off of it. That’s fine – the infrastructure gets built because someone has excess capital and a way to generate income off of it. If the cable companies don’t have capital, that’s fine too, they can focus on selling their service. The geographic constraints are lifted and the market opens up and value-add can be properly measured again.
randy khan
@low-tech cyclist:
The Virginia Democratic Party would be your best bet for donations to help in the legislative races.
One issue in Virginia is yet another Republican gerrymander that will make it tough to take the House of Delegates. (Of course if the Administration keeps trashing the R brand, you never know.) The gerrymander means that it is absolutely critical to maintain control of the governorship, both because right now Terry McAuliffe is the only thing stopping the Republicans and because a Democratic governor can veto a bad redistricting plan in 2021.
gvg
Mistermix, look in the mirror and grow up. YOU stirred up an issue AGAIN that the rest of us have mostly been too busy to remember to fight about. YOU phrased it in a fight provoking way. Sure we need to work together, but the way you started this post almost guaranteed people who weren’t fighting would start up again. You have some bitterness issues you need to get over quietly.
I don’t agree with your assesment of Wilmer so I voted differently than you. Enough other people made their choices and Hillary won the primary. The DNC didn’t have that big an impact.
NR
@Frankensteinbeck:
No, he didn’t. Stop lying.
Ampersand
I have to say…judging by the haughty, condescending tone of the Hillary fans here–where they know everything and the rest of us know nothing–you’d think that she was the force behind some sort of wave election. As opposed to falling flat on her face against the most incompetent Presidential candidate in history.
I voted for Hillary. I did some volunteering for her campaign, though probably not enough. She was more electable than Bernie, without a doubt. But she was still a god-awful candidate. Once everyone is finally ready to admit that, I’ll know that things can start moving forward.
Before the election, I posted a comment saying that my group of friends, who were normally solid Dem voters, didn’t like Hillary at all. This worried me, to say the least. I was basically told that, since they’re all white (I live in a fairly rural area), I should just shut up. We don’t matter, the party didn’t need us, etc. The attitude I see here on Balloon Juice is part of what’s holding the party back. Forget appealing to Trump voters–why not just try appealing to left-leaning white people, or at least not actively insulting us? To me, that seems to be an easier mountain to climb.
Trump is horrible, and getting worse all the time. I’m glad that people are fighting back. But, as we’ve seen in many different elections, it’s not enough to be against something. You have to be for something, as well. Getting people to agree that Trump is horrible probably won’t be enough to build a winning coalition–we’ll have to decide what sort of agenda we want to push, as well. And that will require appealing to potential voters, and not insulting them.
Hillary isn’t the enemy, and neither is Bernie. But they aren’t the answers, either. We need to come up with new answers. I look forward to leaving the past behind.
Betty Cracker
The primaries are water under the bridge as far as I’m concerned. Even the most preening, annoying, deluded, entitled, hysterical shitlords are welcome in MY Democratic Party as long as they supported our nominee over the deranged demagogue in 2016 and will do all they can to turn Trump and his minions out going forward.
On the other hand, assholes like that Jabbersplat Horkenham Barfnel creature who used to drop by here to do victory laps after the election can DIAF. He (or the subset of “the left” that troll pretends to represent) was never a Democrat, never will be, and is consequently useless in the fight against the plutocrats, forced-birthers, sexists, racists, xenophobes, et al. So fuck him and his ilk.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
Oh, look, the Berniebro I was thinking of showed right up to continue the same asshole behavior.
This is my not-surprised face.
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: But is the consensus-based 5-person apartment a _neoliberal_ apartment? Surely not! And that’s what’s most important, not the ants or the cardboard where that windowpane is supposed to be.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
You don’t have the slightest shred of reading comprehension, do you, collaborator?
Here’s a hint: there’s no point in forgiving people who don’t understand what they did wrong, because they’ll just do the same damn thing over and over again. At some point, you have to hold the puppy’s nose to the carpet, or it will never stop peeing inside the house.
geg6
@feckless:
Bernie supporters are NOT THE FUCKING BASE.
I’m the base. I’ve worked to elect Dem candidates at all levels by phone banking and canvassing, raising and donating funds, gone to meetings, done voter registration and a myriad other things for 40 years now. My registration has never changed. I never saw any of the Wilmerbots until the primary fight. And then I never saw them again because they were too pure to work for Hillary. Don’t fucking tell me that they are the base because they aren’t. They are lazy, entitled assholes who I will work with on policy matters but who I don’t want having one word of say in how my party chooses to constitute itself and how it chooses to move forward. Just shut the fuck up about how Wilmer excited the base. No one with whom I’ve been doing this work inside the party was excited by him. No one.
FlipYrWhig
@Ampersand:
Do you believe there’s a large number of hitherto untapped “left-leaning white people”? I think there is a very small number of very, very loud and whiny ones.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: Nah, this one is an old troll named “Steve”. I can’t remember if it’s Steve who keeps his liberty iron by the back door for shootin’ rabbits for dinner in the backyard, or Steve who runs a really good job-creating business that is being crushed by Obamacare, and that he finances with his Discover card.
Yarrow
@Applejinx:
He’s chosen to be an elected official for how many years while being outside those two parties. Clearly it can be done. He can run for president on his own party’s dime. What? They don’t have a national presence? Well, get to work!
stinger
@Jeffro: For me, it’s “Spicey needs a nap” that engenders helpless giggling.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Hmm, white dudes feeling entitled, where have I seen that in action before … ?
I will maintain something I’ve been saying for a while: Bernie and others were right that there was a whole segment of white voters who weren’t being reached by traditional candidates. Unfortunately for the rest of us, it turned out that those were the outright white supremacists, and the various battles this year managed to embolden and empower them.
We probably should have left the White Working Class sleeping rather than wake them up only to find out what they really wanted to vote for.
stinger
@? Martin: I really appreciate your detailed reports and analyses of this event, even though I live nowhere near California.
NR
@Mnemosyne: Dude, you literally complained about “Berniebros” holding grudges seven minutes after you proudly announced you were still holding a grudge against them. That is an absolutely astonishing lack of self-awareness that rivals even the most willfilly blind, hard-headed right-winger.
You attack other people for behavior you happily engage in yourself. The hypocrisy is stunning.
FlipYrWhig
@geg6: I would have more respect for leftish postmortems of the election if they made that obvious concession. It’s a tenable theory to say that a different candidate would have energized different people, and in sufficient numbers to change the outcome. I don’t know if I agree, but it has the shape of an actual theory. But that’s SO RARELY where this goes. It is _much_ more common to say that the base is young angry liberals and they were robbed and I BET YOU’RE SORRY NOW HUH. And because they knew how to appeal to working-class people, which was by the foolproof route of talking in detail about trade and industrial policy. SMH. What’s it been, 3 months of this particular form of back and forth, 18 of the general variety?
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s THAT guy?? Huh.
randy khan
@permafrost:
Any Bernie or Buster who wants to be in the party can be in the party, so long as it’s understood that you can’t demand that the party do everything you want before you join. (And, frankly, I find myself considering whether I want Ellison – who on the merits would be perfectly fine – as DNC chair because some of the BoBs are saying that picking Perez would show the party isn’t taking them seriously enough. I know better than that, but the entitledness really ticks me off.)
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
I understand what you meant about his past behavior, and you can dismiss him, but it still does not impact what must be done.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: Betty outed him not long after he adopted the ARBG persona.
Is NR still denying that he voted for Trump out of spite?
stinger
@Mike in DC: “she’s dead (politically) now” Sez who?
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Again: if someone punches me in the face and then tries to act like he never did it and even if he did, I should just get over it and stop complaining that he punched me in the face, that person is an asshole. And you’re an asshole for saying, Yeah, why are you still complaining that you got punched in the face when that’s not what I want to talk about now?
But, then, you’re a collaborator by nature, so I didn’t really expect anything else from you.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: Sure, just don’t pooh-pooh my comment for being irrelevant – which, you’re right, it would be, if this were you and I discussing this over coffee, or if this were a party meeting, but it’s a mistermix post.
randy khan
@Ampersand:
I don’t imagine that I know everything, but I’m also not interested in people who tell me I know nothing (and I’m not even Jon Snow) and that the only true path forward is to do only what they want. It is, frankly, no less condescending to describe a candidate who won the popular vote by 3 million as “falling flat on her face” and as “a god-awful candidate” than it is to tell people who have any criticism of her to shut up.
NR
@Mnemosyne: Okay, so when you hold grudges, it’s justified and good and right, but when other people hold grudges, it’s because they’re just assholes.
Can you let me know what other things there are where the rules are different for you as opposed to everyone else? It would be helpful to keep track of those things.
schrodingers_cat
@NR: R talking points spread by BS: Crooked Hillary, Rigged Election, Corporate Democrats, Neo-liberal sellouts
Miss Bianca
@Ampersand: Thank you for haughtily and condescendingly lecturing haughty, condescending Hillary fans. You make such an interesting point about what a terrible candidate she was! Former FLOTUS, Senator, SOS…yes, she was certainly “god-awful”, wasn’t she? Too bad she wasn’t a shouty old white guy who played at being a populist and whose advisors were all in the pocket of the Russians and promised a bunch of shit he couldn’t possibly deliver, since that’s what the electorate apparently wanted, She might have really cleaned up!
You want to give us “something new”, sunshine? Throw your own damn hat in the ring, since you seem to know what it takes to win. Take that “left-leaning white people” gag and RUN with it, big boy! Show us how it’s done! Believe me, once you’ve won, we’ll all give your lectures about How Shit Ought To Be Done to appeal to your particular tribe the attention you seem so sure that they deserve.
Mnemosyne
@randy khan:
Kind-of sort-of but not really off-topic, has Karl Rove been taking victory laps as the architect of this result, or has he been keeping his head down so nobody remembers that this was his plan?
I was thinking of trying to search and find out, but I couldn’t stop vomiting until the urge passed.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
The injured party is not responsible for making nice.
This is a basic concept that most people learned in kindergarten, but that collaborators like yourself seem to have missed learning.
Mike in DC
@stinger:
As a presidential candidate. She can still do lots of stuff, but her path to the presidency is prohibitively steep now. I’m not just talking about the general election, either.
hovercraft
@Applejinx:
That is your opinion and you are free to argue your point of view. I’m not saying that you should change your views, I’m saying stop trying to impose your view of the party on us, you have been here for how long? You know that most of us here are not of the opinion that we lost because we rejected Wilmer and Hillary was a weak candidate, believe that like all candidates she had faults and made mistakes, but given the two alternatives, Wilmer and the Shitgibbon she was the best choice. This was not a reluctant vote for most of us, it was not the lesser of two evils we liked and respected her. Many of the people who spout talking points about her flaws and record don’t know what the hell they are talking about, we are a bunch of pretty well informed political junkies who have no problem correcting each other when we post something that’s incorrect. I can’t say the same about the Wilmer and Shitgibbon supporters who link to wack jobs citing rumors and conspiracies about her. Obama moved the party leftwards, but what we all have to remember is that as much as the country has become more socially progressive over the last several years, they are not as proogressive as we are yet. Prop 8 passed in fucking California in 2008 for gods sake. You can go on about corporatist democrats, but as I’ve pointed out several times before, EW voted to eliminate the medical device tax, MA is home to several manufacturers, Barnie Frank got lots of money from Wall Street, Tom Harkin was against “nutritional supplement” manufacturers being required to tell the truth about their products, the unions are not pure either, no special interest is, they all have their own priorities.
Saying that Clinton democrats should be the “right wing party” tells me that you are full of shit and not worth wasting anymore time on. Good luck finding a pure progressive party to represent you. I never said that Wilmer was the “reason” she lost, he was a factor but so were many other things.
msdc
@Ampersand:
and
Yeah, that doesn’t sound at all haughty or condescending.
Serious question: what do you think the Sanders supporters here (the genuine ones, that is, not the trolls) need to admit about Sanders and his campaign? What admissions on their/your part are necessary for moving forward? Because right now I’m seeing a whole lot of people who spent the entire campaign running down the nominee suddenly turn around and start laying down ground rules for a comity and etiquette they never showed when it counted. And I’d like to know what they plan to do differently next time before I decide to hear them out, much less let them set the terms for the discussion.
stinger
@Mike in DC: Why? Is Wilmer planning to run in the Dem primary again?
NR
@Mnemosyne: Right, I got it. You’re allowed to hold grudges, but no one else is. You are the one special snowflake who gets to operate under a different set of rules from the rest of the world.
I’ll ask again: can you tell me what other things are covered under this special set of rules that apply only to you? I want to make sure I don’t break any of them.
Ohio Mom
@maurinsky: late to the party and I don’t think I’m going finish reading this thread: been there, done that, in regard to this topic.
If no one else has answered your question, it’s a nickname for the other Democratic candidate, the one from Vermont. Using his actual name sometimes attracts trolls via google alerts.
Although by now you’d think even the trolls were sick of this subject.
Sign me,
A big Erik Loomis fan
Applejinx
@hovercraft:
I’m a Gen Xer, 48, and never in my life have I once voted for a Republican. Never ever. Not even when it was cool.
Do I have to be, like, a lot older to be a lifelong Democratic voter? I’m getting older as fast as I can but you fuckers are still beating me ;D
Mike in DC
@stinger:
Dunno, but the field looks to be wide open and very competitive, and there will be some strong contenders likely in 2020–Warren, Booker, Biden, maybe Deval Patrick, Kamala Harris, probably a governor or three. On top of that, the media isn’t going to be any nicer to Hillary the third time around. She’ll be older and have to work harder to fight the perception that she’s the past and not the future of the party. There will be some sentiment that “she had her shot”, as well. Not saying that’s fair, just that it’s the likely environment.
philadelphialawyer
low-tech cyclist: Jeez, the shut out “new bloods” want to help so much, but they can’t make time to show up for a lunchtime meeting on a weekday? Doesn’t sound so hard to me, if you really give a shit. When should the meetings be? At midnight on Saturday night, so the “new bloods” can work attendance into their pub crawl? How about at seven am on Sunday morning? And, of course, that is the only the meeting. Perhaps the “new bloods” could do some work at the block or precinct level first, for which there is no need to attend the big, oh so important, “meeting” at all.
FlipYrWhig
@philadelphialawyer: I was totally just about to organize the most important and lasting political shift in the history of America, but then it turned out I had a thing.
philadelphialawyer
@low-tech cyclist: Try Googling “Democratic Party Virginia.” The first hit is the State party organization. There is a contribute button right on top. Again, jeez, it ain’t rocket science. You wanna give money to Virginia Democrats, go right to them and do so, instead of longwinded bitching about national Democratic organizations not catering to your whims.
philadelphialawyer
@FlipYrWhig: Guffaw! The entitlement snowflake whining is really breathtaking in its transparency.
AnonPhenom
@Mnemosyne:
wow, talk about ‘privileged’.
your candidate deserved to win despite the fact that she couldn’t carry a majority of her own demographic ( white women) against a sexual predator.
yeah.
she & her supporters are the injured party.
let it go
move on
stop yelling at the clouds
hovercraft
@Applejinx:
I’m 49, yes a year older, but likewise I never voted for a GOPer, what’s your point? As far as I can tell no one is beating you up because of your age, it’s your insistence on telling us how to be good and or better democrats. The civil rights era was led by wonderful organizations, but when the younger generation wanted to express themselves about the police violence against people of color, they complained about the lack of reaction from the likes of the NAACP, and then they got to work organizing themselves into the BLM movement. They took charge and created their own organization.
When I said here, I meant here at BJ, not earth or in the party. As you low uniformity of opinion is not required here, but thread jacking is annoying, state your point of view and then move on, restating the same laments over and over is not productive or persuasive, it just pisses people off which I’m sure in turn pisses you off, and next thing you know we’re back in the primaries.
Daulnay
@FlipYrWhig:
OK, I’ll bite. Why did Hillary lose?
1) Hillary haters? The party knew they were there, and would vote against Hillary no matter what. She had a lock on the nomination (before Sanders showed up anyway.) If Hillary haters were going to force a loss, the party wouldn’t have chosen her. They’re not the reason she lost, they were factored in.
2) Racists? The racists have been in the Republican camp since Nixon, and Democrats know that. Again, they were factored in or should have been. The Obama years showed us that racism is alive and well in America, so it’s really doubtful that the Democratic leadership didn’t factor it in. Racism is a little more interesting; is there statistical evidence that racists turned out in greater numbers, tilting the vote? Did Trump actually energize the racist vote enough to win? If there’s solid evidence it’d be nice to see, all I’ve seen is a lot of smoke and handwaving.
3)Sexists? Obviously sexism was going to be a drag on the Hillary vote, though the worst ones were thought to already be solid Republicans. Again, it should have been factored in. Hillary made Trump’s sexism a strong issue against him, and the types who favored a macho strongman were already Republicans. Is there any evidence that a significant part of the electorate unexpectedly swung from Democratic to Republican because of sexism?
4) The Democratic party’s abandonment of much of the electoral landscape to the Republicans? (mirrored by a similar abandonment of other parts by Republicans). The electoral math was pretty bad for Democrats, and this is why the Republicans won the election even while losing the popular vote, so it’s more of a factor than the previous 3. However, the Rust Belt swing states were decisive, not the states Democrats totally abandoned. This contributed, but wasn’t the key – Clinton had what looked like a good path to victory.
5) The press. Swallowing a whale and straining at a gnat. Imo the press has to shoulder much of the blame for Trump and the Republican ascendency as a whole. They largely abandoned their role as suppliers of news and facts in favor of being entertainment, over the last couple decades. The whole ‘balance’ he-said/she-said approach to news abandons the press’ responsibility to supply correct information. However, Democratic strategists couldn’t expect a neutral or sympathetic press this election cycle, so can we really say the press were responsible for the loss? Reponsible for a bad situation, yes. And largely responsible for Trump’s nomination, as well, since they as a whole failed at their job in spite of some good reporting that didn’t get wide distribution. (Side note, the anti-Trump elements at the Wall Street Journal are being purged. Murdoch’s ownership corrupts again.)
6) The working-class whites? First, they’re not monolithic — some of them were part of the Obama coalition in 2008 and 2012. Outside the South, whites split 50/50 for/against Obama in 2012, iirc. The split was greater along class lines, with working class people voting more for Obama, about what you’d expect. Working-class whites in the South didn’t swing, they were already solid Republicans. Working-class whites on the coasts either didn’t swing or didn’t make a difference, those states are solidly Democratic.
The only place where it mattered was in the Rust Belt, where Clinton was expected to win enough states to win the election and where she didn’t. Michael Moore spotted the swing before the election, and warned of it. It shows up in exit polls. This is where the election was lost — Clinton needed to keep these working class people in the Democratic camp, and she didn’t. (There are anecdotes that non-white working class people voted Trump, but I haven’t seen any statistical/polling evidence showing that was significant.) Trump promised a reversal of the globalist system, a return to nationalism and protectionism. It gave hope to desperate people in the Rust Belt, and they bit. Complete snake oil, but desperation makes people grasp at straws. Obama gave them hope. Trump gave them hope. Clinton gave them more of the same old, and they bolted the coalition.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@ Martin: Thanks for the update!
I think Oroville, like the Wolf Creek Dam and the Kingston Fossil Plant spill here in Tennessee, and the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed during rush hour traffic, along with the pumps and levies that failed in New Orleans post-Katrina, are all excellent examples of our infrastructure issues, with delayed maintenance leading to far more expensive (and in some cases deadly) complications that the original repairs would have been. I’d love to see a post on the history of the Oroville maintenance issues from the early part of this century on; I think it would be very instructive for those of us looking at out environments and wondering if we’ll be next to see the timeline for Oroville.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Mnemosyne: I don’t expect an apology (I’m too realistic for that) but this whole conversation seems, yet again to be centered around SOME* Bernie supporters feeling like their actions during the Primary/General, including: how much they got on board to try to elect HRC, how they treated Black/Southern voters, how much time they spent sharing Corrupt Hillary/Emailz!! memes etc., should somehow be off limits to discussion now that they are ready to work with Democrats. It’s the same old game of “we’ll take our ball and go home” and inflated sense of entitlement (We are the Revolution so DNC chair is OWED to us!) that it’s always been.
*If this doesn’t refer to you, it doesn’t refer to you, so stop defending the worst BBros, screaming NotAll!!, and continuing the poor Bernie Stan Persecution Fantasy.
Daulnay
And 6) Bernie Sanders. Definitely the reason Hillary lost. He made people notice Clinton’s flaws. He brought up her coziness with Wall Street, made a big deal about the millions she made in speaker’s fees. His supporters made DWS’ support for payday lenders an issue for Clinton. He made her support for free trade an issue.
Of course, none of those things would have made a difference if they were false. Clinton took millions in speaking fees from Wall Street, for speeches whose content she kept secret. That should rightly be a campaign issue, political corruption and corporate influence are major problems. However, it’s not an issue that Republicans can normally make stick — it only helped because Trump was an anti-establishment, anti-Wall Street candidate. Bernie’s criticisms would have been meaningless if Hillary had been running against Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio.
Lit3Bolt
People fighting about this feel that they are on the forefront of redefining the American Left for the next 150 years. Instead, they are gambling on their political existence in the next two years.
Motherfuckers, if you don’t put down that circular firing squad, no one on Earth is going to remember what “neoliberal” or “the far Left” even MEANS.
Shut the fuck up, both of you. At this point, I’m willing to ally with the mobster from the Rockateer. He may not make an honest buck, but he’s 100% American. Sometimes that’s good enough.
Emma
@Uncle Ebeneezer: You know what’s pissing me off? If I hear one more time about “the base,” I am going to pitch an epic fit. We are the base of the Democratic party: Women, people of color, LGTB folk, cisgender males who worked their arses off for Hillary. We didn’t push anyone away. Democrats who turned to Trump weren’t pushed away by the base — Trump gave them the chance to let their racism and misogyny fly and they couldn’t wait to take it.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@maurinsky: That’s awesome. Thanks for getting in there and helping with some of the heavy lifting! And thank your fellow callers, too!
VFX Lurker
@Lit3Bolt: I say we can fight Trump *and* shun fake, unreliable “allies” at the same time.
Bobby Thomson
@Mnemosyne: this.
Ampersand
@Miss Bianca:
“Former FLOTUS, Senator, SOS…yes, she was certainly “god-awful”, wasn’t she?”
One job she got because of who she was married to, one job she got almost automatically (that’s like giving a Republican credit for becoming a Senator in Kansas–wow, what an uphill battle!), and one job that a former rival appointed her to as a peace offering. As I said, she lost to the most incompetent Presidential candidate in history. And, for all her titles, all her “competence,” she still wasn’t smart enough to do new polling in the Rust Belt. Yikes. She won big in the popular vote, but, sadly, it’s the electoral college that counts. You either get the job done or you don’t.
I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers or know everything. And I also don’t expect any political party to do everything that I want. Believe me, I’m more than willing to compromise. We’ll all have to put aside certain things and work together. That’s why I’m so confused by the combative nature of certain posters here. You mock the Beltway-style centrists, and rightfully so, but you’re basically centrists yourself, and you bash anyone who doesn’t fit into your super-narrow beliefs.
Thornton Hall
Anyone who causes a stale debate between Marxism and Neoliberalism is part of the problem.
As long as there are Marxists, there will be Neoliberals. It’s the same Newtonian bullshit reasoning. Just different ends.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Emma: Agreed. Fortunately most of the places I hang out, it’s understood, acknowledged and celebrated that the base you refer to is the real base of the party. I’ve learned to stay away from places where White, Vermont totebaggers are considered the base. I just don’t have the patience. To paraphrase/co-opt the excellent feminist slogan: If your Dem/Progressive group/party isn’t intersectional, it’s bullshit. The real revolution will be led by Black and Brown, women, LGBTQIA, Latinxs, Muslims, immigrants etc. I’m with them. My people (White/cis/het men) have had more than our chance to run things and it’s gotten us here.
Raven Onthill
@geg6: “I feel the same way about them as I do “reasonable” Republicans. I’m willing to work with them in the short term, but I still despise them and don’t want them anywhere near the controls of my party.”
And therefore the party will continue as it has during the last 20 (or 35) years, when it lost half the country.
Miss Bianca
@Ampersand: Your political acumen bowls me over so much, I’m amazed that Clinton didn’t hire you to be an advisor.
One factor you conveniently left out of your “analysis” is the systematic GOP-supprted voter suppression efforts in those same Rust Belt states that threw the electoral college. The GOP certainly “got the job done” when it came to suppressing the vote – do you find that admirable?
You’re also conveniently overlooking a sort of overweening sexism that is unfortunately rampant in American society – not surprising, considering that it’s exemplified in the flippant way you dismiss HRC’s accomplishments as either flukes, or “peace offerings” – things she didn’t have to do any work for, things that she certainly didn’t accomplish anything by doing and doing well. Wow. What a smug little piece of work you are, Mr. “I’m willing to compromise”. Pro-tip: maybe learn a little humilty, and think a bit about checking your own privilege, before you start in with “why won’t people here agree with me when I try to tell them how wrong they are.”
LAC
If you have to keep flogging the berniebro false equivalency shit and expect a lollipop, you are the problem. Do something useful…stop doing this. Literally sick of reading the same tired excuse making shit by the same purity pony posters, with healthy doses of sexism thrown in. You made your point, and as a result Trump is president. And no, you are not entitled to having your heads rubbed for reassurance. We have work to do.
NR
@Miss Bianca:
Let’s have a look at some of the comments people here made before you decided to speak up, shall we?
So I’m wondering: where were your calls for humility and understanding when all those people were exhibiting the very same behavior you’re now accusing Ampersand of? Why is it that you only show up with your tut-tutting when people stand up to the mountains of bullshit that get thrown at the left around here?
When you start calling out people on your side for their bad behavior, I’ll give your comments some weight. Until then, your calls for humility and civility are a blatantly transparent attempt to get people who disagree with you to shut up so you can blame the left for everything wrong under the sun in peace.
NR
@LAC:
Fixed that for you.
LAC
@NR: ????????????Fixed that for you. You are the worst reason for these sort of posts because you always show up. ??
NR
@LAC: Love you too, Chuckles.
LAC
@NR: fuck you, chump…
NR
@LAC: Nah, not interested. Fuck yourself, Skippy.