Is “this proves Bernie would have won” the new “this is great news for John McCain”? Discuss.
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Jim, Foolish Literalist
just stirring shit now, aren’t you, Hooplehead?
SiubhanDuinne
Could be. I’m already hearing from some Bernie-friendly people I know that Ossoff is following Hillary’s playbook and that’s why he’ll lose tomorrow.
Speaking of tomorrow’s GA-6 special election runoff, be sure and check out today’s XKCD (link).
Keith P.
There will never be a new “This is good news…for John McCain.” For that to happen would be bad news…for John McCain, which is a paradox. The political universe would either collapse into a singularity or cease to have ever existed.
Doug!
@Keith P.:
Someone also suggested that the fact that Bernie would have won is itself good news for John McCain.
zhena gogolia
I never thought Ossoff had a chance in hell. It has nothing to do with Wilmer or Hillary.
Thoroughly Pizzled
Macron’s big victory last night proves that the Dems need to cut out the middlemen and nominate the centrist investment bankers themselves.
#BloombergWouldaWon
Amanda in the South Bay
I thought Bernie was popular in your neck of the upstate New York woods (I.e lots of white people).
SenyorDave
@zhena gogolia: I never thought Ossoff had a chance in hell. It has nothing to do with Wilmer or Hillary.
I’ll be very surprised if he does win, but I think he does have a chance in hell. early voting is way up, and I think in this case it will help Ossoff. Unfortunately white people in the south are in large part ignorant racists and will vote Republican up to and including the time where they personally will be f’ed.
Amanda in the South Bay
Fun fact: more people live in GA-06 than Vermont.
D58826
@SiubhanDuinne: Well darn few of those who followed the Bernie play book have won either. The latest being in lat weeks Gubernatorial primary. The Bernie choice lost bigly.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne: isn’t Ossoff talking quite a bit about health care? I keep reading the AHCA is hugely unpopular, even among the manicured lawns and McMansions of the GA-6 (basing that on what I’ve read about the district, never been there).
and then there’s this beautiful specimen of humanity
kindness
I liked Bernie. I didn’t vote for him though. His numbers didn’t add up and by the time the California primary came around Bernie was using discredited Republican talking points against Hillary. So I didn’t vote for him even though I liked some of what he wanted.
BernieBros on the other hand I have had a very hard time with. Especially since we now know many of those anti-Hillary memes were lies spread by Russian trolls (& Republicans & gleeful BernieBros). At the time I couldn’t understand why someone who claimed to be a liberal would spread obvious bullshit against someone on their own side. I still don’t get that part.
Another Scott
@SiubhanDuinne: You need to go to the normal page to see the hover-text.
:-)
Cheers,
Scott.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
While we’ll never know for certain, I doubt he had a chance, even against Trump (something dudebros like to sneer about in regards to Hillary Clinton). He probably would have lost, because the RW smear machine would have sprung up from the silence it had for him during the primaries.
As much I hate it, him being an atheist and jewish would have for sure been means to attack him in ads. Especially the atheist part. In polls, people trust muslims more than they trust atheists. It would have mattered.
He had real problems winning African Americans in the primaries. He probably would have needed to win them to have even had a shot at getting the nom. Which is why some so-called progressives prefer less democratic cacuses to primaries.
Oatler.
What if Mott had covered “Suffragette City” instead? Inquiring minds etc.
geg6
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That kind of message tells me that they are scared shitless of Ossof.
As for Bernie, no he wouldn’t have won (personally, I’m not sure I’d have voted at all had he been my only choice. I might have, but I despise him almost as much as I do Dolt 45). And yes, Doug. It is the new good news for John McCain. And just as stupid and counter factual.
Doug!
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Depends on how you define my neck of the woods. I live in a city that’s roughly half black, half white and went very heavily for Hillary.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Listening to 1-A on NPR, a show about the state of the “Resistance”. The host, interviewing Keith Ellison, just implied that Clinton was against raising the minimum wage, because there is only Fifteen.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@D58826: I know. Whenever I confront N(R) with this point (and getting involved with the party and running your own candidates to prove your way is better) they are mysteriously silent. I wonder why ?
Butch
Actually saw one of those exact pieces this morning on Kos. Can’t say it bothered to read it.
rikyrah
STONKETTE–go read the entire thread
Is healthcare a right? Yes or no. Everything else is just details.
If we all agree that healthcare is not a basic right of human existence, then we must acknowledge that healthcare is a privilege.
And not everybody is privileged.
That’s the whole definition of privilege. Some people have it, some don’t.
If the answer is no, it’s not a right, then healthcare is a privilege and we are not obligated to guarantee every person will be able to get healthcare. The privileged get it. Those of lesser fortune don’t. Simple as that. Oh sure, we might provide some charity, some help for the non-privileged, but we are by no means under any moral obligation to do so. If we’ve got extra money, if we’re feeling generous, sure. What the hell. But otherwise, no.
If you can afford it, you get it.
If you can’t, you don’t.
And you should at least be honest enough to admit that’s what you’re up to. I want to hear every politician, every candidate for office, go on the record, yes or no. And if it’s no, if you believe healthcare is a privilege of those who can afford it, then have the guts to look into the camera and say so. And if you’re voted out of office as a result, or stripped of your privilege by the mob, well, that’s just too goddamned bad.
If healthcare isn’t a right, then it’s just another line item in the budget, next to bridges and warships and farm subsidies.
http://www.stonekettle.com/2017/06/the-right-question.html
rikyrah
Worse than Watergate – Trump and Nixon
Liberal Librarian
June 17, 2017
On the 45th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, it might be instructive to compare that constitutional crisis to the one through which we’re living today.
The old saw is that Watergate wasn’t about the crime, but about the coverup, which became a greater crime, as it dragged Richard Nixon into obstructing justice.
With Russiagate, we have a case where the crime and the coverup are feeding each other. The allegations behind collusion with Russia are far more serious than the botched break-in to the Democratic Party headquarters. Nixon was many things, but he wasn’t a Soviet stooge. In Donald Trump, we have a man who claimed the presidency basically with the aid of a hostile foreign power—the exact thing which having an Electoral College was supposed to prevent.
Such a serious allegation engenders an even more desperate cover-up. Add to that Trump’s own inability to maintain any equanimity, and we have a situation where Russiagate has already dwarfed Watergate, as the attempted coverup relates to matters of national security and sovereignty.
And, let’s remember: Nixon was a popular president until Watergate broke. Trump entered the Oval Office as a minority president, and underwater in polling. He also entered the Oval Office already under a cloud of investigation. As always, him averring that Hillary Clinton couldn’t win as she’d be under a cloud from day 1 was mere projection.
This doesn’t even include the investigations being carried out by the New York Attorney General on Trump’s businesses, or the attorneys general of Maryland and DC suing Trump for violating the Emoluments Clause, or House Democrats doing the same.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
which state?
apparently one of the big themes at WilmerFest a couple weeks ago, after booing Hillary Clinton and declaring Nina Turner our great hope for 2020, was that Democrats need to spend more money. Also they need to be much more selective about who they take money from.
rp
The next six months are a critical time for our democracy because we’ll almost certainly learn that Bernie would have won and that his theoretical victory is good news for John McCain.
rikyrah
The Manufacturing Jobs Program Trump Wants to Kill
The little-known Manufacturing Extension Partnership program has helped grow small-businesses like Michele’s Granola.
by Anne Kim
June 19, 2017
Walk into Michele’s Granola factory in Timonium, Maryland, and you smell the homey aromas of toasting oats, brown sugar and vanilla. The facility produces 2,500 pounds of granola a day in eight different flavors—from classic vanilla almond to more exotic varieties like pumpkin spice, lemon pistachio and ginger hemp. This granola is not the heavy, sticky mass-produced stuff you bought at the supermarket and find months later, congealed in a tub in the back of your pantry. It’s airy, light and practically crackles in your teeth.
“The granola has a very unique texture,” said company founder Michele Tsucalas. “We use just five to seven simple ingredients—nothing you wouldn’t find in your home kitchen.”
Tsucalas began baking her own granola more than a decade ago, experimenting at home as a weekend distraction from her day job as a nonprofit fundraiser. Once her recipe was perfected, she started selling her granola at farmers’ markets in northern Virginia and then at a food co-op in Maryland. Sales started catching fire, and today you can find Michele’s Granola in a dozen states, including at Whole Foods stores throughout the mid-Atlantic United States, and in Wegmans stores in the northeast. Since her first farmers’ market in 2006, Tsucalas’s business has grown from a one-woman concern operating out of leased space in a commercial kitchen to a sleek boutique business with 35 full-time workers.
But the secret to her success is more than a great product. Also instrumental was a little-known but decades-old government program—the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program—aimed at helping small and medium-sized manufacturers like Michele’s Granola grow. It’s also on the chopping block in President Donald Trump’s proposed budget, one of dozens of programs the administration wants to kill.
While Trump has lately touted his efforts at job creation, including with a recent visit to Wisconsin to promote U.S. manufacturing, his plan to zero out the MEP program would eliminate one of the federal government’s best programs for achieving exactly that goal. It’s yet another example of how Trump’s actual economic policies fail to match—and even contradict—the president’s promises and rhetoric.
AliceBlue
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Unfortunately, he’s probably right. The shooting, plus the nasty note and “suspicious substance” received by Handel (which I suspect is the work of the local GOP) will push her over the line.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@kindness: Same here (I live in Florida).
I’d also add that the major difference between the two is that “excellent news” is merely embarrassingly (usually contrarian) idiotic prognostication that looks even dumber in retrospect. “Bernie woulda won” has a bit more to it (though of course that goes with it being a hypothetical), but its deployment now tends to be unsubstantiated, ultimately unprovable gloating, and thus is more actively obnoxious.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@rikyrah: In my high school AP Gov class, our teacher, a 30-something Republican himself, asked us if we thought healthcare was a right. I and a few others raised our hands. Most did not. There was a small group of ultra-conseratives in my class that were really terrible people. One of them after we voted gave me such a shit-eating grin afterwards.
Called out the same dude making an AIDS joke about it killing gay people. Heard it from half-way across the room. It was glorious. I’ll never forget the shocked look on his face
Just One More Canuck
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: she seems nice
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Tom Perriello was latched onto as a Sanders stalking-horse by blathering nimrods like Shaun King. Then when Perriello lost, it was bad news because of something something Establishment discouraging the something something progressives. The fact that the something something progressives can’t even win low-turnout primaries in their own left-of-center cohort does not deter them from believing what they believe about how wonderfully their strategy will always work everywhere always. It’s getting ludicrous.
Somehow NEVER entering into this nonsense about The Establishment is that one group that seems to be included in The Establishment in a lot of states is post-civil-rights-era African American politicians. Ralph Northam used their endorsements very shrewdly.
JPL
@SenyorDave: Rain tomorrow is more likely to suppress turnout for him, then it is for her.
I hope I’m wrong, for obvious reasons.
kindness
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Yes indeed. There are places on the web I won’t post anything regarding Bernie/Hillary. Crooks & Liars & Raw Story both still give me hell when I say anything positive about Hillary. So I read those places but don’t post there.
FlipYrWhig
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): See, I think they’re similar because they’re both illustrative of pundit’s fallacy foolishness. The people who thought counterintuitive things were good for John McCain were people who had an emotional investment in John McCain and/or in colorful non-religious Republicans. The people who think [news item] proves that Bernie Sanders would have won are people who have a (very sad) emotional investment in Bernie Sanders and/or in cantankerous bearded politicians in general.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@JPL: Fucking RAIN?! African-Americans were beaten and killed during the Civil Rights Era fighting for equal rights. If rain is all it takes to depress turnout to fight against fascism, then we deserve to lose.
Major Major Major Major
I don’t see it. Only one of them is funny, for starters.
Bruce K
I’m sorry, but saying “Bernie would’ve won” is like me asserting that the Yankees would have swept the 2004 World Series. It’s an alternate universe, and there’s no way to know what the fallout is from stepping on that butterfly.
And I haven’t been masochistic enough to check, but is Curt Schilling still in media oblivion? (he asked hopefully?)
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Scott:
Oh, I saw the hover text. Didn’t know that it failed to come through with the embed link. Thanks.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
A GOP pol would just give some bullshit evasive answer. They’re craven and without a moral compass; that’s why they always fall in line
Barbara
@rikyrah: I love Michele’s Granola.
Regarding the original point, I think “Bernie would have won” is much more corrosive than “it’s great news for McCain.” The latter is obviously ironic, mocking the media’s determination to only find good news when it comes to McCain. But there are Bernie supporters who are demanding that the rest of us to change our strategy and views to accommodate their sincere and genuine belief that Bernie would have won, and we can’t prove the counterfactual because counterfactuals by definition cannot be proved. I don’t think he would have won. Among other reasons, his wife’s financial issues and his own past of writing pornographic stories and receiving welfare benefits would have doomed him in the same states that Clinton lost, even if the mix of voters would have been different.
SiubhanDuinne
@Bruce K:
Yeah, that’s crazy talk. The Expos would have won in five.
GOVCHRIS1988
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Which isn’t the most contradictory statement like EVER.
Can I be real, the biggest problem with the Bernie campaign was I believe he attracted a lot of ex-Ron Paul fanbots. I remember those guys from 2008, and the Bernie Bots and the Paulbots share the same characteristics, unrelenting fealty to their chosen leader in spite of all his foibles, a cult like approach to smacking down any criticism no matter how light, as a sign you’re fully against them and want to take them out, likelihood of wanting to change the rules in order for them to gain the upper hand, in spite of the majority of people voting against them. We have to all wonder where most of the Paul voters went. They just didn’t disappear, they just garnered another vessel for their madness, put unrealistic plans out there with no foresight to how to really get them done and attack anyone that wasn’t a full believer of the cult. Bernie is just the new Ron
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: and when they do, the person asking the question can say “ok, that’s a no, you don’t think healthcare is a right, thank you, congressman.”
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major: And which major news outlet will do that?
randy khan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
@FlipYrWhig:
The Periello/Sanders thing was somewhat bewildering to me (and then again, it wasn’t). Northam has a really solid record on a lot of progressive issues, better in fact than Periello on some of them (reproductive rights and gun control, in particular), and there wasn’t really much difference in what they promised to do if elected. So on the substance, there wasn’t much reason for the Berniebots to latch onto Periello.
But Periello doesn’t like Dominion Energy, which sounds sort of progressive, and Northam never wanted to say he was progressive, I think figuring that his positions speak for themselves, and as was the case in the Presidential primaries, issues like reproductive freedom and gun control just don’t seem to be that important to Sanders supporters, so that made him their choice. (I should be clear, though, that unlike Sanders, who did not do a great job reaching out to PoC, Periello did work to get their votes, although in the end it didn’t help him that much.)
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: well, we’re already presupposing the counterfactual universe where they would ask them the first question…
D58826
@randy khan:
Purity Pony politics per chance????
msdc
@Thoroughly Pizzled: That’s amused me as well, especially in contrast to the treatment the UK elections got.
Socialist loses election by less than expected: HE COULDA WON!
Centrist technocrat wins legislative supermajority: [crickets]
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: The problem is that you have a not-insubstantial portion of the electorate who thinks that healthcare is indeed a privilege and absolutely NOT a right, and they not only vote for the kind of asshole that’s occupying those seats anyway, they LIKE representatives that espouse that point of view and work even harder to elect them (see unlawfully elected President Trump as the prime example of this new politics of spite).
randy khan
@Another Scott:
The hover text is excellent, not to mention pretty much true of every Congressional district in the country.
Facebones
@randy khan: It’s all about personality. Very interesting election analysis that Jon Chait links to today. He points out that Clinton and Sanders supporters really didn’t differ much on issues (duh), rather the only key difference was personality and outsider-ness.
“Where they mainly differ is on international trade and the question of whether politics is a rigged game. The ideological content of Sanders’s platform is not what drew voters. It was, instead, his counter-positioning to Clinton as a clean, uncorrupted outsider.”
So yeah. It really was just they didn’t like her and refused to listen to her.
martian
I really don’t get the logic of how Corbyn losing not as badly as expected proves Bernie would have won. How does that follow? What I learned from the UK election was that Greens in other countries are not useless fucking purity ponies, since it looked to me like the Greens standing down in an attempt to defeat the Conservatives significantly helped. So, hey, maybe Hillary would have won if Dr. Jill Fucking Useful Idiot For The Ruskies Stein hadn’t been doing her level best to smear Hillary over here?
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@msdc: Doesn’t fit the preferred narrative
@Facebones: The Berniebots were wrong about the Dem primaries being rigged. The GOP however wants to rig the game forever in their favor. They’re perfectly aware that undermining education and destroying healthcare for millions has the potential to create more GOP voters and simultaneously kill of those they consider enemies.
Major Major Major Major
@martian: because everything must prove that what democrats do is wrong.
FlipYrWhig
@Barbara: The mistake people make is assuming that Bernie Sanders would have won a campaign on the strength of economic populism in the midwest, where Hillary Clinton faltered. IMHO a Sanders vs. Trump campaign wouldn’t have been about economic populism, it would have been all about what to do against terrorism, and Bernie Sanders has no freakin’ clue what to do about terrorism or how to project “resolve” during an international incident. Every time foreign policy came up in the debates he switched the subject to say he didn’t vote for the Iraq War resolution and he doesn’t care for Henry Kissinger. When your opponent is running on kicking ass and finishing the job and so forth, a wild-haired peacenik is going to have… difficulties. That’s what sank John Kerry and that’s what sank Michael Dukakis.
So if there’s going to be a sports analogy, it’s probably something like “If the Red Sox had taken out Pedro Martinez in Game 7 in 2003 they’d definitely have gone on to win the Series.”
FlipYrWhig
@randy khan: They latched onto Perriello because their Svengali Bernie Sanders told them to. And Northam is ESTABLISHMENT by virtue of having important people like him, while Perriello is WICKED ANTIESTABLISHMENT because he lost reelection or something. Forget it, randy, it’s Bernietown.
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: Once again, the establishment is proving that it can only win in the places that have people living in them.
SatanicPanic
Who cares
satby
@The Moar You Know:
to be completely honest,they think it’s a right for them, but not for others, because currently they have some way of getting healthcare: they have insurance or the means to pay their medical bills. Should their circumstances change, their views on healthcare as a basic right will too. Which Jim Wright notes at the end of his excellent piece.
SFAW
But the Mets won yesterday, avoiding getting swept by the Nats.
Even now, I’m wondering how the long-term reliability of the Chevy Volt is.
Rochester? Is that where you live?
New England has had a fairly gray and dreary month-or-so, weather-wise
I liked the CGI (or whatever) in Dr. Strange
Early voting allegedly helped Ossoff, don’t know if I heard correctly
What’s the over/under on if/when Shitgibbon gets impeached
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t respond to Doug trolling
Until now, of course
Look, Doug, you’re smart enough that ridiculous OP/trolling like this is pointless
Do you think you can post a non-trolling OP?
And, in conclusion:
. . . . as Bird, Stewart, and Lightfoot might say: “ON WISCONSIN”
Chemical engineers will get the joke, I hope. But even if they don’t: Why is this even a thread?
ETA: On a more serious note: re: the question posed at the top: Who the fuck cares?
randy khan
@D58826:
LOL. As I said, their similarities were merely on the substance.
More seriously, if we’re going to play purity politics, I want core Democratic positions like reproductive rights and some kind of gun control to be part of that. I’m tired of people who say they are “true progressives” and throw that kind of basic stuff out the window.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major: Yeah, I know. I’m feeling like making gallows jokes today
Thoroughly Pizzled
@FlipYrWhig: Any theory of the election needs to explain why Florida went red, because it doesn’t fit into the “Rust Belt’s Revenge” narrative at all.
FlipYrWhig
@Facebones: My back-of-the-envelope calculation is that half of Bernie Sanders’s vote came from people who wanted someone specifically to the left of Hillary Clinton, and half of Bernie Sanders’s vote came from people who wanted someone different from Hillary Clinton (been around too long, scandal fatigue, ‘just something I don’t like about her,’ etc.). But it’s in his interests, and in the interests of the alt-media, to pretend like all of the Sanders vote came from people clamoring for MOAR LEFT PLZ
Bobby Thomson
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: I don’t wonder.
Barbara
@randy khan: First, Perriello is legitimately a good guy I would have had no problem working for. It appears that Sanders and Warren made him something of a cause celebre in order to have a candidate with anti-establishment credentials. Some people believe that Perriello pushed Northam to be more progressive, although I think that this was really more a matter of style than substance. Northam has always been progressive on reproductive rights, and became progressive on gun control measures quite some time ago. There are subtle differences between Perriello and Northam on higher education. Perriello’s program is more straightforward, but more expensive and less achievable. Ultimately, I think it just seemed strange to a lot of people that Perriello was parachuting back into Virginia politics by running for the highest seat. This is that kind of state.
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: Also, The Establishment plays dirty, like by getting more people to vote for it.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Thoroughly Pizzled: Lots of old white retired people live there? People who are more likely to vote than practically any other cohort? Seems easy to explain
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Facebones: Obviously it’s unfair to apply this to all Wilmer voters, but this is a good example of my Purity of Essence Law.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: Oh, I don’t think it’s a difficult thing to explain, but it gets left out of all the cliched Trump voter narratives. What factory jobs have been shipped out of Florida?
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: Often people of a dusky hue, and we all know why they vote for them.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@FlipYrWhig: It seems to me that a lot of BernieBros (dead enders) are extraordinarily anti-democratic when doing so would be beneficial for them or their messiah
FlipYrWhig
@Barbara: IIRC Perriello was one of the first politicians championed by the liberal blogosphere in those Paul Hackett / Darcy Burner / CRASHING THE GATE days. So he was already available to the remnants of that crowd and the readers who grew up on it as an object of fascination.
Matt McIrvin
@randy khan: The self-styled “true progressives” tend to regard either economic inequality/capitalism or foreign policy as the only important thing. I actually suspect that there’s the potential for a further split between the economic leftists and the foreign-policy leftists–a lot of people assume that the liberal politicians who bang the economic-inequality drum the hardest also agree with them on dismantling the US global empire, and they don’t necessarily.
sharl
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t dispute your basic premise, but regarding the phrase I bolded – and bearing in mind the fact that Virginia runs open primaries, which may attenuate the importance of turnout numbers – there was this report (the last sentence leaves me confused fwiw; I’ll walk away then re-read it after a while, maybe that will help).
Words like low or high in this case always require elaboration, i.e., low/high compared to what? So maybe my pedantry is ill-advised, if I’m not seeing what you mean by “low turnout”.
In any case, I would think Northam winning a high(er) turnout primary would be extra good news for him for November. And it’s good to see that Perriello immediately signed on with Northam’s general election campaign.
Matt McIrvin
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah… I’ve definitely heard people insist that they’d have voted for Bernie because he wasn’t as much of a left-wing extremist as that crazy Hillary. (However, they were probably not Democratic primary voters–they were libertarians or low-information quasi-centrist types.)
Patricia Kayden
Miracles happen so I’m rooting for Ossoff to win. The polls are tight so it could go either way. Got to stay optimistic.
Another Scott
@randy khan: My take (as a Perriello voter) was that it was a weird race. Northam was pretty much invisible over the last 4 years (as you’d expect for an LTG in VA) – the only time I heard from him was via his periodic fundraising letters (which started as soon as he took office). The party lined up behind him very early (he got just about everyone’s endorsement in December before anyone (serious) filed to run against him for the GOV nomination).
He has a weird background. He voted for W twice and there are persistent rumors that he almost flipped parties in the mid-2000s.
How someone can be “strongly pro choice” and vote for W twice is a bit, er, weird.
Perriello’s only elected office, AFAIK, is one term in the US House. Lots of progressive-types liked him a lot, but he didn’t seem to me to have much of a state-wide following. Obama campaigned for him for re-election, and that was a big plus in my book (for both of them). But there’s the NRA stuff and the Stupak stuff. It would have been amazing for him to win the state-wide nomination in these circumstances.
Northam would normally be thought of as a better fit for the whole of the state, but so was Warner and he barely won re-election in 2014. Many of Northam’s policy statements struck me as “yeah, I’m just as progressive as Tom, but nothing is going to happen in the legislature so we shouldn’t waste our time even trying”. It’s not the way to inspire people to flip seats. Tom had much, much more detailed proposals about taxes, education, the environment, voting rights, women’s rights, etc., etc., than Ralph. Ralph played it very safe…
I decided late to donate and vote for Tom. Bernie’s and Liz’s endorsements had no impact on my thinking.
I think Tom didn’t expect to win, but wanted to get his name out there and show that he was a fighter across the state to lay a foundation for future office. I think he did a great job at that.
I like Ralph’s chances in the fall, but he better get some fire in his belly and fight. This isn’t going to be easy, and we need every vote we can get in the HoD. I’m going to be very upset with him if he just acts like he can coast to victory and not work his heart out to elect Democrats across the state.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I agree, foreign policy would’ve been lethal for him. The fact that the right demagogues on terrorism, and a lot of people are just plain silly about it, doesn’t change the potency of the issue, and Wilmer’s hand-waving away of issues he considers distractions from the class struggle wouldn’t have helped him. ISIL decapitation porn was a big factor in 2014, IMHO. The unemployment/commune/unsavory ‘associations’ would’ve just been gravy. And I/P is probably the issue I agree with him most on, but I couldn’t get elected either
@FlipYrWhig: FWIW, Periello is said to be one of Obama’s favorite young pols.
D58826
Reposting from what looks like a dead thread
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: Yeah, I think one of the questions that isn’t asked enough is about race and “the Democratic Establishment.” Seems to me that one of the effects of antiestablishment gestures is a diminution of the kinds of politicians who have slowly worked their way into the upper echelons of the Democratic Party — _and the voters who like and trust them_. This is partly why I kvetch so much about who “the establishment” is even supposed to be. Antiestablishment people want us to think of the accursed establishment as affluent white men catering to the interests of corporations and Wall Street, and a few token ladies and POC who are “neoliberals.” What if they’re (also?) middle-aged black people with decades of political experience? Still think they’re the problem? Still think you’d rather be on the side of eternal graduate students and aging hippies? :P
randy khan
@Barbara:
To be clear, while I preferred Northam, I think Periello would have been fine and I would have crawled over broken glass to vote for him against Gillespie. (I also thought it was a bit peculiar to jump in again after all these years and run for Governor, but at least he had been in Congress, so he wasn’t a newbie. Of course, the Republicans just nominated someone who’s never held any elective office so far as I know, but IOKIYAR.)
Matt McIrvin
@Patricia Kayden: My assumption is usually that in a special or midterm election, Republicans get an automatic turnout advantage of several points over the polls. One of the things we don’t know is to what extent that advantage in recent politics is a function of the President being Democratic for the past eight years. 9/11 was such a distorting influence during the Bush years.
martian
@Major Major Major Major: So, just your standard reasoning backwards from the desired conclusion, purity pony edition. Gotcha.
You know, right before the election I heard an interview with Nader where the interviewer attempted to get him to admit that Gore would have been better than Bush. I was incandescent with rage by the end of it, the bald-faced intellectual dishonesty of the man – Nader still couldn’t admit it, that there was far more than “one thin dime’s worth of difference” between Gore and Bush. After that and after this election, I’m questioning everything I thought I knew about the Left and my own allegiances.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@sharl: That does seem like a lot of people. I would be more afraid that allowing non-democrats into the primary is an invitation for sabotage (voting for an unelectable moron for ex.).
amk
what a stupid post. what’s your point, doug?
Another Scott
@sharl: Only something like 10% of Democrats voted in the primary. In that sense, it was a low turnout election (even though turnout was up by comparison with some other recent primaries).
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:
Hell, Sanders couldn’t win the California primary, an open primary with room for pro-Sanders candidates and all manner of lefties. And he didn’t win the Democratic nomination because he was ultimately the weaker candidate. I suppose I would have voted for him because I detested Trump, but it would have not been with any enthusiasm.
Sanders and his supporters think that he would have rallied the party and gone on to victory. But the bottom line for me is that he was and is a progressive kook who talks a weak game, but is ultimately full of shit. Hell, I didn’t like or support Hillary Clinton in 2008, but she was still more substantial then than Sanders was in 2016.
I don’t know that the Republicans would have been able to blast Sanders out of the election. I don’t know that Sanders could have made a case for himself with as many voters as Clinton.
Even now, I might find watching Sanders more interesting if he had the guts to try to create a new political party rather than simplistically sniping at the Democrats.
FlipYrWhig
@sharl: Sure, but let me give another example: when the Virginia D senate primary was Harris Miller vs. Jim Webb, DailyKos readers (and I [ETA] counted myself among them) got all excited about Webb… and Webb won. If the whole selling point for your political positioning is that your side is all about enthusiasm and youthful energy, the easiest kind of election for you to win should be a primary election, where not that many people show up, and especially a primary like this one, where not that many people really cared very much about the differences between the candidates. If you have two candidates broadly tolerable to the party’s electorate and one is the kind of progressive who fires people up, he really should win, and if he doesn’t, it should call into question a lot of cherished assumptions. It hasn’t. It has made people outside the state mope about betrayal and malign neglect of “progressives” supposedly made to feel unwelcome. At this point it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Another Scott
@martian: Nader would have voted for Bush in 2000.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Uncle Cosmo
@SiubhanDuinne: Reminds me of the legendary tale of the physics prof who was ticketed for running a red light & came to court with the explanation that as he drove toward the light it appeared green to him because of the Doppler shift.
The legendary judge, remembering enough of his college physics, offered to drop the red-light citation – if the driver agreed to pay the fine (at $X per each 10 mph over the speed limit) for the speed he’d just admitted going.
Prof paid the original ticket. And court costs.
randy khan
@Another Scott:
I think I’ve said this before, but reproductive rights activists love love love Northam. The executive director of Virginia NARAL has nothing but great things to say about him, and he got a big cheer at the annual fundraiser (attended, I should note, not just by Northam but by Governor McAuliffe and Attorney General Mark Herring).
Sort of like Cole, I’ll give him a pass on voting for Bush because his record in office has been very strong. The party-switching thing always has been an odd story – near as I can tell, the Republicans wooed him but he never reciprocated their affections in any way. He may just have been playing it smart by not saying anything until he made a decision or he may never have been interested in the first place; it’s hard to tell.
Northam isn’t a guy who shouts much (so to speak) – when I went to a fundraiser for him he was calm but firm, and I think that’s the way he is. I’d probably like it better if he told some more stories about his work as a pediatrician with poor children, as he has some passion there. On the other hand, the “Trump is a narcissistic maniac” ad was pretty good, so maybe he’s warming up to the task.
sunny raines
Bernie would of won, except he didn’t. Couldn’t even win over Dems and no the DNC blah, blah, blah didn’t make the difference. So drop it already and move on to something important, like limiting the damage of trump and the republicans.
randy khan
@Another Scott:
My precinct was lower than the Democratic Presidential primary last year, but not by a huge amount. On the other hand, it’s a very engaged neighborhood in every way.
Major Major Major Major
@martian:
You and me both.
Bobby Thomson
@amk: you mad, bro?
sharl
@FlipYrWhig: Thanks, that is helpful context.
@Another Scott: Thanks, that makes sense. For comparative purposes, I wonder how VA stacks up with states that have the highest primary participation, and what the associated numbers are. Not a straightforward comparison I know, since VA gubernatorial voting is in “off-years” (from Presidential elections), but I assume someone has attempted the comparison at this point. (I’ll try to search on this later when I get time…)
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Facebones: Don’t forget this part:
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Brachiator:
That seems right for me. I admit I never followed the primaries very closely. I voted for Clinton in both the primary and the general because I felt she had the best chance to win and practical policies that I thought would work towards improving the nation and people’s lives.
I don’t necessarily care how “liberal”, “progressive” or “left” something is as long as it does the above. They are just labels that happen to describe generally good (by which I mean ethical and effective) policies
D58826
@Brachiator: @? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:
I remember that during the fall campaign there was an article that said Hillary’s folks had an op research document on Bernie the size of several Manhattan phone books. And they were more or less on the same side. Don’t even what to think about the legitimate stuff (he did after all visit/praise the Castors) that the GOP had let alone what Breitbart, Alex Jones,Faux news and Russia today would have invented.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@FlipYrWhig:
IOW, Wilmer would have had to out-Trump Trump. Since in some counties in the rust belt Trump got almost 90% of the white male vote, which Dem constituency would he have had to throw under the bus to appeal to the Deplorables? Muslims? women? Exit polling showed they hated BLM with a passion, and Wilmer’s free college pandering wasn’t going to work on them either, especially since Jane had just tanked Burlington College and stolen those kids college degrees, but I’m sure Trump wouldn’t have said Crooked Jane or Commie Bernie cuz he’s just that kind of guy.
SatanicPanic
“Bernie would have won” is the new “He didn’t even try”. Duh.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: I voted for her because I thought she would make a better president.
This election finally disabused me completely of the notion that “more liberal”, “more lefty”, “more pure” etc. were too much of a value add for a policy’s or a politician’s effectiveness. Like how Sanders’s college plan was basically a handout to the upper-middle-class folks who didn’t need it, even though it was leftier-sounding than Hitlery’s college plan. ‘More liberal’ can be a good proxy for cursory judgment of course, but it’s not an inherent virtue.
@D58826: I figured the “environmental racism” part of that wouldn’t have looked very good with the “Hitlery didn’t even mention Standing Rock!” types.
SatanicPanic
@Major Major Major Major: There has always been fools on the left. It could be worse- look at the cranks the right has to put up with. They’re like 95% of that side.
Brachiator
@D58826:
I am not a big believer in the all powerful RW smear machine. It didn’t work for McCain. It didn’t work for Romney. And Clinton came with her own baggage (no matter how false this stuff was) that worked against her more than anything the Republicans threw at her.
However, once you cut through the bullshit, Sanders was not a great campaigner. He did not win over enough Democrats. I don’t think he would have done all that well in the general election because of his own faults. Certainly, he is recycling the same tired old arguments in his attacks on Trump. Sanders is a one trick pony. Yes, it appeals to some people. A good number of people. But not enough to get over the electoral hump.
rikyrah
@FlipYrWhig:
Because Northam listened to McAuliffe about HOW he won…
Hint, it was the Black vote.
Uncle Cosmo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Anyone who says the ballfield shooting made up their mind to vote GOP is a fucking liar – it only provides a rather withered figleaf for doing what they would’ve done in any event.
rikyrah
@Barbara:
He was an ACTUAL socialist…and, folks think that the GOP Propaganda machine wouldn’t have dismantled him?
Lips pursed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Uncle Cosmo: Republicans are looking for reasons to vote Republican. They’ll always find a reason. I hope to be proved wrong in 36 hours.
Barbara
@randy khan: I think that will be held against Gillespie, just as it was held against McAuliffe, who as a Dem had never held elective office. I think McAuliffe helped Northam hold off Perriello because McAuliffe was actually a lot more progressive than many people were willing to give him credit for. He withdrew McDonnell’s loathsome regulations against abortion clinics. This is one reason I was so irked by the Warren/Sanders brigade — they basically didn’t give McAuliffe credit because he was associated with Clinton and a former fund raiser. McAuliffe’s determination to stand up for the voting rights of felons released from prison was thrilling, and is something he deserves enormous credit for. I can’t remember another time when I have seen such a creative use of executive power to further justice on such a large and tangible scale. I have to believe that helped Northam with African Americans in particular.
sharl
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:
I wondered about that too, though I doubt it happened in this case. One clue would be just where in Virginia those Dem primary votes came from: if, as I suspect, they came mostly from North Virginia (basically DC suburbia), where more Dem-friendly VA voters are concentrated, then I doubt that any such rat-fucking was involved. Lots of new “Dem” primary voters from elsewhere in VA would be cause for such concerns IMO.
The Moar You Know
@martian: I’m having more of a “confirming everything I’d long suspected about those who claim to be on the Left” and hoping that a good alternative will emerge.
Captain C
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Virginia. There was talk that Periello’s association with Wilmer may have hurt him in the primary.
D58826
@Brachiator: I take your point and the smear machine is not all powerful. And in 2008 it had the head wind of a collapsing economy to deal with. In 2012 the public had 4 years to get used to Obama and realize that most of what was being said were lies. At that point there were more folks comfortable with Obama than there were ready to believe the latest smear. The standard ‘Bernie would have won’ is coupled with the ‘look how popular he is now and was in June of 2016’. Of course his is popular. He has high name recognition, even among the non political junkies but the smear campaign would have taken those number down quite a bit. Enough to beat Trump? Who knows.
The thing that still is amazing is that one of the few true things that Trump said was he could shoot some one in Times Square and no one would care and he would not lose one vote.
Now all of that being said it would be nice if both sides stopped re-fighting their vision of the last war and got their heads together to figure out a way to start winning the next war in 2018. Let a generation of poli-sci profs. fill bookcases full of learned treatises on the subject. In the real world there is 120 years of progressive progress that has to be protected.
Barbara
@Captain C: Yes, possibly, and the clue might have been that Clinton absolutely crushed Sanders in the presidential primary, because the composition of the primary electorate doesn’t change that much in one year.
rikyrah
@Barbara:
THIS!
How can this be just passed by?
rikyrah
White Progressives and the Black Vote
by Martin Longman
June 19, 2017 12:17 PM
If you take a look at the black population of Virginia by county and overlay that with a map of the election results of the gubernatorial primary between Ralph Northam and Tom Perriello, you’ll be able to see the correlation quite clearly. It’s particularly noticeable in the southern and western parts of the state where the demographics are less complicated and the culture is more classically Virginia than in the D.C. suburbs. Here are the ten county groups with the heaviest black populations by percentage. Overall, Northam won 56 percent to 44 percent for Perriello.
Petersburg city: percentage black= 77.8, Northam 73 Perriello 28
Emporia city: percentage black= 63.6, Northam 66 Perriello 34
Greensville: percentage black= 59.2, Northam 72 Perriello 28
Sussex: percentage black= 57.8, Northam 72 Perriello 28
Franklin city: percentage black= 56.4, Northam 72 Perriello 28
Brunswick: percentage black= 56.1, Northam 57 Perriello 43
Portsmouth city: percentage black= 53.5, Northam 76 Perriello 24
Richmond city: percentage black= 50.1, Northam 55 Perriello 45
Hampton City: percentage black= 49.7, Northam 72 Perriello 28
Danville city: percentage black= 49.3, Perriello 88 Northam 12
You can see that Northam outperformed his statewide average in eight out of the ten, the exceptions being in Richmond where he basically matched his average and in Danville which is a major outlier that I’d love to understand.
Here are the ten county groups with the smallest black populations by percentage.
Craig: percentage black= 0.2, Perriello 71 Northam 29
Dickenson: percentage black= 0.4, Northam 61 Perriello 39
Highland: percentage black= 0.6, Perriello 62 Northam 38
Scott: percentage black= 0.8, Perriello 51 Northam 49
Carroll: percentage black= 0.8, Perriello 58 Northam 42
Russell: percentage black= 1.0, Northam 65 Perriello 35
Washington: percentage black= 1.5, Perriello 58 Northam 42
Giles: percentage black= 1.6, Perriello 72 Northam 28
Floyd: percentage black= 1.9, Perriello 74 Northam 26
Rockingham: percentage black= 2.0, Perriello 59 Northam 41
FlipYrWhig
@D58826: @the Conster, la Citoyenne: Another thing that seems to rarely enter into 2016 postmortem analyses is that the same demographics where Sanders outdid Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries… favored Hillary Clinton over Obama in 2008. Why is there any better reason to think that their true feelings are for Bernie Sanders, or that their feelings for Bernie Sanders stem from his left-progressive-social-democratic-whatever-ness? The whole thing is fantastical.
@Brachiator: The way the smear machine slagged Kerry and Dukakis, though, seems indicative of what would have happened to Sanders: hippie wuss. Hillary Clinton got slagged the exact way Gore got slagged, which was different: shady, corrupt, liar. You’re right that Obama overcame it, and Bill Clinton before him. But that leads me to conclude that the number one thing a successful Democrat has to have is… youth. To cadge a phrase from Dukakis ’88, it’s not about ideology. Would that it were so! It ain’t.
germy
I have no doubt.
different-church-lady
Passively trolling the blog now? For shame.
FlipYrWhig
@rikyrah: McAulliffe’s relative success in office is SUCH a middle finger to the bellyachers on the “left” who always hated that guy because of corporate DLC something something.
Kathleen
@FlipYrWhig: But the WouldaStockers will tell you is that Bernie’s people would win if it weren’t for the nefarious, greedy, grasping, corporate teat suckling Democrats thwarting their every move. Also, too, “The Blahs”.
FlipYrWhig
@germy: I wonder if the “sucking up too much oxygen!” rule often applied to Hillary Clinton by critics might ever apply to the no-signs-of-going-away Bernard Sanders. “Keep sending us money or we’ll never be able to afford a 4th house, um, I mean, develop new progressive strategies for losing!”
Barbara
@rikyrah: Regarding Danville City as an outlier, it is west of Richmond, where Perriello got most of his support. Danville City, along with the list of Perriello strongholds, are small population areas, where the number of voters in the entire primary would have been lucky to scratch three digits. You have to win a whole lot of those places to make up for the city of Richmond or Northern Virginia. Some of the counties on the Northam list are similar (Sussex) but there are also bigger ones (Richmond, Hampton, Petersburg), and they are all on or east of the Fall Line (the line that runs roughly southwest from Harper’s Ferry, WV, through Georgetown, Fredericksburg and Richmond). Those place are all where they are because the rivers they traverse are not navigable beyond where they sit. That’s called the Fall Line.
FlipYrWhig
@Kathleen: LOL @ “WouldaStock.”
germy
@FlipYrWhig: I predict balloon-juice will be a place where much oxygen will be sucked up by various new nyms telling us Kirsten or whoever gets the nom is a neo-corporatist friend of big something or another.
sharl
@rikyrah: This is good information, and any Dem consultant or bigwig “supporter” who doesn’t acknowledge the critical position of African-Americans in the Dem base deserves this list being shoved in their face (followed by their firing if they’re being paid to help Dems).
Total numbers matter, but Dem leaders who remember that Obama got some support in 2008 from white racists – see this, based on accounts like this – need to also remember that the 2008 election happened after Bush and his allies crashed the economy and had us mired in a deadly and pointless war. If you’re an out-of-work or underemployed white racist, it may be that you’re at least smart enough to put away your racist freak flag and vote your pocketbook/house/job-prospects. More upscale white folk feel they have the “luxury” of voting their racism, if they’re not being hurt economically.
I dunno, maybe the threats to health insurance from Republicans will help the Dems with those kind of white folks, in the same way Bush “helped” Obama in 2008. We’ll find out…
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@germy: Was the Wilmer douche banned?
SiubhanDuinne
Off I go to pick up my Voter Protection (poll-watching) credentials for tomorrow.
Kathleen
@rikyrah: When I still listened to NPR I heard a “reporter” badgering him to admit that his action was “political” and designed to boost votes for Democratic candidates. Evidently a VA Republican made the charge (surprise) and she was hell bent on making sure she could deliver McAulliffe’s scalp to the aggrieved Thug. She asked him that question 3-4 times and was very hostile. I’ve never heard that level of hostility on NPR when the issue of Thuglican voter suppression is discussed – oh, wait.
chopper
@Bruce K:
to me the ‘bernie woulda won’ bit is meaningless for similar reasons. bernie lost the primary, full stop. ‘had he won it’ means ‘if we spot the guy a coupla million votes’. well shit, while we’re spotting dudes a coupla million votes, clinton would have won the general with a few hundred thousand.
SiubhanDuinne
@Uncle Cosmo:
Great story! I heard it years ago but had forgotten it. Thanks for reminding me, and for the laugh.
germy
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
They always return. New nyms, same old word salads.
Kathleen
@FlipYrWhig: Thank you. I try. (Blushes).
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
Given all the vitriol flung at Donna Brazile last year, it seems to me that most of the Berniebros double down on their “establishment” screeches when it’s a person of color in charge, particularly a woman of color.
I guess the only way we can move forward into the future is to put old white men in charge of everything again.
Recall
Is it wrong of me to think that Sanders would have won because he’s a guy?
gvg
the thing that worries me is that my long time democratic liberal parents in their 70’s still think Bernie could have won and mom actually says Biden would have won. They have for decades been very perceptive in elections and are both normally feminists. I can’t understand it. Dad has made a lot of money on the stock market and understands finance pretty well, but he still preferred Sanders. Mom has the impression that the Democrats spent too much effort on defending trans bathroom rights and that evidently bothers her. Hasn’t made any impression on her when I have tried to correct her . that was one state that got into a city versus state fight with the liberal position taken in support of business profits. Not the whole party or campaign. I supported the rights but it was just not a major national issue for that election season. I have also realized she is getting less open minded maybe due to having been retired more than 15 years and not meeting enough new people any more. they don’t watch Fox. they have always been liberals since the 60’s. the Hillary is corrupt meme seems to be everywhere. It’s discouraging really. false media narratives also impacted Gore and Kerry so I really want a solution.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@germy: To my knowledge, *rrrrr of Omicron Persei 8 hadn’t been banned and/or forced into adopting a new nym, though.
sharl
@sharl: I had speculated on how the threat of an AHCA might help Dems,
But this tweet from Jeff Stein of Vox, who is reporting from GA-6, throws cold water on that:
I hope he’s wrong, but as I recall, this district has a LOT of financially comfortable white people. So sadly, I find Stein’s observation to be plausible on a relatively large scale. Hope I’m wrong about that…
martian
@The Moar You Know: I think I assumed good faith on the Left in way that was childish. And I assumed common goals and the will to work towards them. I voted Green whenever I got the chance, hell, I’m pretty sure I’ve voted for actual Socialists. I always voted Dem at the top of the ticket because I guess I’m just a neoliberal incrementalist sell-out like that, but I really believed in building up the Left as a political force. But fascism came to America and the Left just, I dunno, whiffed it. Like, tilting at windmills vs. fighting giants – same same! Hillary is as bad as Trump, just in a different way! Then the bringing on the revolution bullshit that disregards all the vulnerable and less privileged people who would be inevitably ground underfoot in the glorious revolution. The horrifying, profound callousness of it. The moral blindness of the revolutionary cosplay. That the Left can be as blinded by the white as the Right. There’s a lot of ugly truth to chew over.
I want to hope for a better alternative, but from where will it arise? I’m not seeing it right now. Not that I’m especially politically perceptive, as this election has clearly revealed for me.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@sharl: Those people he talked to are morons who can’t think big picture
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@germy: Unless he dies before then. He is 74
goblue72
What I am sure of is that after Ossoff loses there will be a lot of “oh, I never thought he’d win” by a lot of Democrats who two months ago totally thought he could.
Regardless, it won’t demonstrate much about Shrillary or her PUMA supporters except the quicker they exit stage right the better.
sharl
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: At the Racism Store they throw in short-sighted cluelessness as a free add-on when you sign up for the Prosperous White Racist plan.
goblue72
@rikyrah: You might try quoting the REST of the article, in which the case is laid out for a conclusion completely different from the one you are trying to paint.
I mean, I get it. You got your hobbyhorse and you are gonna beat that hobbyhorse until it turns into glue. But it doesn’t change that it’s a hobbyhorse.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@goblue72: Hiya Dwight! Wanna tell us how a super smart true progressive like you woulda won the race from your cubicle? Maybe the affluent evangelicals of GA-6 would be totally down with your “More Malcom, Less Martin” agenda.
You pathetic little poseur.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@goblue72: Nobody cares Dwight about your whitesplaining
Captain C
@martian: Not possible. Apparently HC was The Worstest Candidate Ever, in addition to being History’s Worst Monster. Where that leaves Wilmer after she soundly spanked him by millions of votes is left as an exercise in reasoning for the reader, and the fact that she beat Drumpf by around 3 million votes, well, something something Warmonger Unlikeable.
Brachiator
@D58826:
Crazy Trump bragging. But I understand the truth of the statement.
It’s being rolled back so thoroughly that we may have to start all over again, if the country survives the Age of Trump.
@FlipYrWhig:
You’re joking, right? Please tell me you’re joking. Dukakis was 55 in 1988, and that’s hardly ancient. On the other hand, Trump, McCain, Romney, Reagan, alte kakers all.
Also, in 2016, Trump usurped and didn’t need the GOP smear machine. Again, as I note, Hillary Clinton came pre-smeared by decades of bullshit thrown onto her and her husband. Trump made the crap personal and pithy, no longer just sound bites, but Twitter-sized morsels. And there wasn’t much new here, apart from the email leaks.
Again, I have no idea what a Sanders campaign would have been like. I think he would have been more direct in dealing with Trump than was Clinton. But I also have to imagine what it might have been like to have the full Democratic Party backing Sanders. Ultimately, this is all empty speculation, and I just don’t think it deserves a lot of deep thought. But just as I don’t think that Sanders would have been an easy winner, I don’t see some all powerful GOP opposition machine mowing him down. Hell, remember that Clinton won the popular vote count. Even though it doesn’t mean much when weighed against the electoral college vote, it’s still a fact that Clinton was not crushed by Trump and the Republicans.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
You keep saying the GOP smear machine is irrelevant, then citing the role it played in clinton’s defeat. What point are you trying to make?
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Brachiator: She was hurt just enough to lose and that’s the point. From now on, the minority party (Democrats) will always lose by just so much to the GOP candidate, thanks to dark money from American oligarchs, voter suppression, and the disastrous effects of destroying the public education and healthcare systems.
They’re banking on never losing an election ever again
Mnemosyne
@sharl:
Ironically, the fact that Obama improved the economy and people’s lives hurt Hillary in this election. The working-class racists were feeling comfortable and secure again, so they decided it was time to put Those People back in their places.
Kay comments from rural Ohio where there are a lot of actual WWC people (not just rich contractors insisting they’re the real WWC) and she said a lot of them were looking a little nauseous the day after the election when reality started to sink in and they realized they had just shot themselves in the foot so they could stick it to Black Lives Matter.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Hmmm. You quoted what I said, but apparently didn’t read it.
And I never said it was irrelevant. I said that it was not all-powerful. I also said that assuming that the GOP would have crushed Sanders is empty headed speculation. It’s like saying that Sarah Palin would have been a great candidate if she was not a complete idiot.
All speculation about how Sanders would have done is equally empty and says more about the person doing the speculation than about anything substantive.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
No, no, I read it, I just don’t think it makes any sense. You think if trump had started talking about Crooked Hillary without twenty-plus years of Whitewater, cattle futures, Rose Law firm, Vince Foster, Benghazi, Clinton Foundation (and that’s just off the top of my head), it would have worked? All counterfactuals being equally bunk, I guess it’s possible. But you aren’t making nearly as persuasive a case as you seem to think. In fact, you’re not making a case at all. You’re just saying things.
sharl
@Mnemosyne: I tend to believe this as well. I don’t know how you’d verify it via polling or surveys – white folks (reminder: I are one) will lie their asses off in response to questions that bring up their own racism – but I seem to recall that surveys have been carefully designed with questions that don’t broach the topic in a direct and obvious way. Such surveys are no magical bullets – for a long, hard (multi-generational) slog like this, there are no magic bullets – but at least would help chip away at prejudices and misconceptions IMO.
And yeah, I have one or two of those BLM-haters in my own family, and despite knowing them my entire life, they can still shock and appall me.
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:
Clinton lost for a lot of reasons, including some of her own errors.
I don’t think that any of this is written in stone.
D58826
@germy: Hmm saw that movie in 2016. don’t really want to see it again in 2020. What ever or where ever the blame lies, its time to start looking to 2020 candidates who are not 72+years old. Bernie will bew what 78, Hillary 74, Biden 74. Surely there must one or two democrats that will only be 69 in 2020.
D58826
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: BUT BUT BUT you forgot e-mails!!!!!!!!!
D58826
@Brachiator: Well then so is all of the BERNIE would have won speculation. At some point you do have to do a postmortem. But at this point the D’s are beginning to wallow in it. Certainly something that would never happen to astute observers of the political scene here at BJ:-)
Captain C
@ Goku (aka Junior G-Man) : Such as the people who went from “Superdelegates are completely undemocratic and must be abolished!” to “The Superdelegates must vote for Bernie, the real people’s choice, and pay no attention to those vote totals behind the curtain.” in a few seconds flat.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Brachiator:
I agree. But I fear the public is becoming less and less engaged. They can say in polls how much they hate Congress or don’t trust Trump, but the vast majority of them can’t get off their asses to do anything about it. And to varying amounts the ones who are engaged are susceptible to propaganda.
Maybe not, but it sure feels as if the chisel has already started
Barbara
@gvg: I actually think Biden could have won. There was a lot of gender bias in people’s refusal to vote for Clinton. That bias would not have occurred with Biden, and Biden was not quite as closely associated with NAFTA as Clinton was. I grew up in Pittsburgh and fairly or not many people think of NAFTA as a kind of before and after event. Seriously, the loss of most steel jobs preceded NAFTA by a decade or more, but NAFTA kind of signaled — fairly or not — that nothing was every going to be done about those kinds of jobs and the people who did them.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Don’t know. However, Trump mowed down all the GOP pretenders and made the GOP bow down to him. And he was able to sell his brand of bullshit to the voters. Also, he didn’t pull out anything new against Hillary Clinton. But he did make the most of her own dumb ass email server error.
Again, my point here is that some posters seem to think that the GOP Smear Machine is mighty and works well against all Democrats. But if it will make you feel good, I can stipulate that it worked wonders against Clinton, and still say that it would not necessarily have been effective against Sanders. And that was my main point.
We’re all just saying things. That’s why we come here. But I am not simply being contrarian. I think a lot of conventional wisdom, even conventional wisdom about the 2016 election, is a waste of time when used to speculate about other possible outcomes. Originally, I only meant to push back against Berniebro fantasies that Sanders would have been a easy victor against Trump. On the other hand, I don’t think he would have been squashed like a bug. But we’ll never know (assuming that Sanders is not the 2020 candidate).
Brachiator
@D58826:
Yep. And isn’t there some book or long article about the Clinton campaign? I think that some of that can be interesting. For example, I have written here that in retrospect no one, especially Clinton, should have trusted the polling. Or rather, they should have looked at the LA Times poll which showed a clear voter tendency in favor of Trump, and worked harder to overcome this. However, in the real world, I don’t think that too many people really understood the importance of this, so again, in reality, the Clinton team would always have missed this. Nor could they do anything much about the email leaks or the Russian interference.
Ain’t that the truth!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Barbara: I grew up in Chicago, and among my very large extended, ‘working-class’ (I hate that term, but that’s the commonly used demo they tend to fit) family, to whom their “Irishness” is very important, Biden is very popular. Even the hard core Catholics might have voted for him if he hit the Irish thing hard enough. But Biden had his own baggage– Hunter’s business dealings are easily portrayed as, at best, trading on his father’s position, he’s at least as hawkish as HRC, and there’s all kinds of tape of him from Anita Hill to the 94 crime bill to NAFTA– that could/would have been a drag on him. And he has a long history of stepping on his own tongue that looks very different at the top of the ticket than from second place. I’d say of all the candidates who didn’t run, he probably would’ve been the strongest against trump, but arguably more vulnerable to a conventional R than HRC. Of all the candidates who did run, I think she was still pretty clearly the strongest.
Steeplejack (phone)
@SiubhanDuinne:
Pro tip: if you use XKCD’s “permanent link to this comic” instead of the “image URL” link, people can see the mouse-over text by pressing and holding the image. “Luckily for my interpretation, no precincts were won by the Green Party.”
Aleta
GothamGirlBlue Retweeted Imani Gandy
Imani Gandy @AngryBlackLady
Class solidarity with white working class people wouldn’t have saved Philando’s life, or Sandra’s or whomever, so fuck right the fuck off.
GothamGirlBlue @GothamGirlBlue Jun 17
Berner: bombing of “black Wall St” in Tulsa was just an expression of economic anxiety against the exploitation of capitalism
Me: fuck you
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, there is not a lot of mileage in flogging this particular argument to death. Clinton lost by so little with the kinds of voters that would have had less objections to Biden, but which other voters might not have come out is unknowable.
Hal
I posted this a few days ago because I thought a lot of good points were made about the Bernie would have one trope. It is king of long, but worth a gander.
Captain C
@Aleta:
I suppose if you read “economic anxiety” as “fear that they might have to compete on equal terms with people whom they used to exploit and oppress with impunity,” it might be accurate (at least until the point at which we must interpret racist fucks who were probably fine with capitalism as being the Vanguard of the Revolution). It doesn’t make bombing and otherwise murdering American citizens any more OK, though.
Brachiator
@Hal:
Very good. Nice to see all this in one place.
NR
@Mnemosyne: I too like anecdotes that reinforce my already preconceived view of the world.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@NR: Even the liberal “The Intercept” says loser Bernouts are wrong:
Geez… if it’s in The Intercept it must be true.