“Sanders was still placing one of the most important posts of campaign into the hands of someone who loathes the Democratic Party. And whatever you may or may not think of Sirota, this was an enormous strategic misstep. “ https://t.co/be17t0Fq6M
— Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) September 5, 2019
I know it’s rude to even suspect that the Sanders campaign is less about ‘winning the Presidency’ than it is about ‘continuing a successful grift on America’s most aggrieved trustifarians’… but would a candidate actually interested in persuading new people to vote for him hire some of America’s most notoriously aggrieved media personalities?
David Faris wrote an op/ed for The Week:
This week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) passed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for second place in the Real Clear Politics polling average of the Democratic primary. She has also taken over second place in Iowa and Nevada and become the betting market favorite. While this isn’t the first time that Warren has inched ahead of Sanders, he and his supporters have to be wondering what happened — and if they can fix it…
It’s impossible to pinpoint the origin of these troubles, but some of his personnel decisions might help explain them. In March, his campaign announced that it had hired as his speechwriter the firebrand progressive journalist David Sirota, who days before the 2012 election wrote that it didn’t matter whether Mitt Romney or Barack Obama appointed the next Supreme Court justice. Sirota’s public record of Obama-hating actually stretches back more than a decade and bringing him on board indicated that Sanders privately shares his distaste for the former president, who remains wildly popular with Democratic voters.
While most people are blissfully unaware of these kinds of campaign machinations and couldn’t care less who writes anyone’s oratories, Sanders was still placing one of the most important posts of campaign into the hands of someone who loathes the Democratic Party. And whatever you may or may not think of Sirota, this was an enormous strategic misstep. Whereas Warren has run an above-the-fray campaign in which she rarely criticizes the other candidates directly and doesn’t waste time warring with the press or feuding with the Center For American Progress, Sirota has repeatedly plunged his candidate into internecine battles with other camps and continued Sanders’ self-destructive fixation on media unfairness…
The trouble with a plan to run against the Democratic Party is that there aren’t that many people who vote in the primaries who nevertheless despise the party as an institution. Even in many states where Sanders beat Clinton in 2016, like Indiana, he lost self-identified Democrats, according to exit polls. His performance, there and elsewhere, was driven by success with independents, and it’s no coincidence that in states where only registered Democrats were allowed to vote, he did poorly. The critical “Acela Corridor” states — New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, and Maryland — still hold these “closed” primaries. There are more Democrats than independents in the primaries. It would then stand to reason that someone who wants to win the nomination shouldn’t engage in behavior and rhetoric that alienates those voters. If anything, he should be bending over backwards to appeal to them…
… And the Sandernista campaign people promptly attack… the person tweeting a link! Who is, not for nothing, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, one of the most left-wing national publications, a site presumably friendly to 99% of Sanders’ announced proposals!
It is a piece in a different publication, you dolt.
— Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) September 5, 2019
As if I wrote the piece ??
— Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) September 5, 2019
A certain very wise BJ commentor has pointed out that people judge an organization by the quality of the people it hires… and that low-quality hires *never* get better, only worse. Maybe Sanders just doesn’t understand how many people have been alienated by David Sirota and his fellow paid campaign hires — or then again, maybe he hires these folks because their modus operandi is what Sanders is looking for in his campaign?
David Sirota is the absolute worst thing Bernie Sanders could have done for his presidential aspirations. https://t.co/9Ww6SzAQ6k
— Dennis DiClaudio (@dennisdiclaudio) September 1, 2019
it's just like…how much of the Dem base cares more about picking fights with WaPo & MSNBC, rather than the Trump admin? It's gotta be like .0001%. It looks nuts outside the bubble.
— Centrism Fan Acct ?? (@Wilson__Valdez) September 3, 2019
I really can't tell how much of it is a strategy and how much of it is just Bernie hiring the people he wants to do exactly what he, himself wants (attack the 'biased' media'…bc everyone is against him). I really think it's more the latter.
— Centrism Fan Acct ?? (@Wilson__Valdez) September 3, 2019
Is it possible that Bernie Sanders is paying David Sirota not enough money to make him act responsibly, but also paying him way too much for what he contributes?
— (((patriot))) (@iBreezy6) September 4, 2019
Mary G
Some of the comments on Clara Jeffrey’s tweet sound exactly like the Qanon people for Trump. I say let Sirota and the Bernie Bros. do this more, since it’s working for EW.
BruceFromOhio
When all you have is axes to grind, the world is either whetstone or forest.
Mary G
I usually take Business Insider pieces with a rock of salt, and the sourcing seems a bit thin, but some of these quotes from Republicans are bonkers, so I hope they’re all true.
Gretchen
They unsealed more documents in the Manafort or Stone cases this week and Tad Devine is all over them. Why was he part of the Bernie campaign? What’s the Russia connection there?
BlueDWarrior
The more Bernie exposes himself to the public, the more I feel he can stay right there as the Independent Senator from Vermont.
Ruckus
@Mary G:
I think I’ve been giving him too much credit. I’ve been saying 6yr old. Of course we could both be wrong and it’s a case of the terrible twos. Maybe it’s just that we’ve never seen a 2yr old who weighs well over 200 lbs.
Ruckus
@BlueDWarrior:
The more I see the more I’d like the state of VT to just elect someone else, anyone else. But then maybe their whole concept is to get him out of the state for the longest time possible. They could take up a collection and pay him to move, of course that would just upset an entire other state.
sukabi
@Ruckus: sounds like he’s in a Nixon frame of mind as the summer stretched on and the Watergate burst open.
???
NotMax
@Ruckus
Dolt 45: Not the sharpiest knife in the drawer.
;)
FelonyGovt
So many of Bernie’s supporters have such vicious hatred for the Democratic Party and Democrats in general. The comments on that Faris article are unhinged. Hardly seems like a good way to win Democratic primaries.
Ruckus
@sukabi:
I think it’s actually a lot worse.
Nixon was just about pure evil but he wasn’t stupid. And at least not as clinically mentally ill. He did have a rather enlarged view of his qualifications as a human. Not as Costco/pallet sized enlarged view as the current squatter. Or if so, at least something to show for it. Let’s recount.
Nixon, evil, overly positive of his own self worth, with little reason. Not as dumb as a box of rocks.
drumpy, no redeeming value whatsoever and at least an actual box of rocks can be used for something.
This round to Nixon. By a slim margin.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Mary G: To be Scrupulously Fair, none of these quotes are anything we haven’t been hearing in numerous publications for years already, so I completely believe they’re genuine quotes from anonymous Republicans, and I also completely believe they’re true. I also don’t believe any of these anonymous Republicans will ever stop being chickenshits and actually speak about the president*’s mental deterioration on the record, where they could actually do some good. This is one of many reasons I keep paraphrasing Cato the Elder at the end of every comment I make.
I will say that all these quotes comparing him to toddlers are monstrously defamatory. To toddlers. Toddlers will be capable of learning someday, or at least most will. The occupant of the White House is completely ineducable, and will remain so for the rest of his life.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Open thread…all righty….the night sky over Glendale last night, at the upper left we see M31* and at the lower right we see M33(the Triangulum Galaxy).
*Balloon Juice commenter and neighboring galaxy Andromeda.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
He’s the tool in the box that you broke the week after you got it but you thought that at sometime in the future it might heal itself so it’s still there because your dad bought it for you when you were 4, and it never really did anything because it was for a 4yr old, and now it’s just dull, useless and broken, taking up space better used by, well nothing.
Ruckus
@(((CassandraLeo))):
All of this is true. But he was a toddler once upon a time, he just hasn’t moved past that stage. And toddlers are learning, they just have a bit of a ways to go. drumpy has spent far more than the time it should take to have learned something. But he hasn’t. Look he had a job on TV saying two words, and that was a major big deal to him, his first two words. Probably said with racism in mind but still, TWO WORDS. That was a big step. I wonder if he had to be told the words because reading them would have been, impossible.
Chetan Murthy
@Ruckus:
You are a generous, generous, man, Sir. Charitable, kind, willing to forgive people their faults, gentle with stray animals and children. No snarling jackal, thee. *grin*
Sister Golden Bear
@NotMax: Nor one of the knifiest Sharpies in the drawer.
CaseyL
Bernie’s supporters are unfortunate proof that mindless hatred and political nihilism are not limited to the GOP, and not a demographic that’s dying off.
But then, I look back at the hatred directed at Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and the utter havoc of that year’s Democratic National Convention. I used to think it was a natural consequence of Humphrey being LBJ’s Veep and therefore limited in what he could say about/against the Vietnam War; and the heartbreak of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. But now I wonder if it was a precursor of the Purity Progressive bullshit that has bedeviled us ever since.
John Revolta
@Ruckus: Nixon could play the piano.
Cacti
The reason why Bernie is stalled:
He’s a dick.
The biggest reason he’s losing ground to Warren is that she isn’t a dyspeptic grouch all the time.
Chetan Murthy
@John Revolta: @Ruckus: IIRC, Nixon loved his doggie Checkers.
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
People’s faults I can sometimes forgive. This asshole has only gotten worse as he’s gotten older. He’s all fucking faults. Not smarter, not better, not pleasant, not thinner, he’s aged like $2/gallon wine. Started out shitty and now he’s shittier, sour, smells like wino piss, and those are his good qualities.
And yes, gentle with stray animals and children. With adults with piss poor political views, massive snarling jackal.
BruceFromOhio
@FelonyGovt:
But that’s the point – when you get cut out of what you want, you can self-victimize and say “See? I *told* you it was rigged!”
Ruckus
@John Revolta:
@Chetan Murthy:
See Nixon did have some good qualities. I knew they were there and that someone would find both of them………
hervevillechaizelounge
FWIW, I used to feel guilty every time I clicked on a Guardian article because there’s a big blurb asking for donations, and I don’t read the site frequently enough to merit a subscription.
Then I read one of Sirota’s pieces bashing the Dems—it completely changed my outlook. Now I suck up their content for free and feel quite joyous—any media company that published Sirota deserves to go bankrupt. I fucking chortle with glee as I click around willy-nilly.
Fuck David Sirota, and fuck Bernie for hiring him.
John Revolta
@Chetan Murthy: I think the Checkers thing was a ruse to get sympathy.
Maybe not. OTOH, he was a huge baseball fan so there’s that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Nixon was a dick, Trump’s a prick.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@John Revolta: The “Checkers Speech” was to convince Ike to keep him on the ticket, it worked.
rikyrah
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Gorgeous ??
piratedan
just makes me wonder at times, since these guys seem to hate the Democratic party and how it runs things and its positions on various items ranging from economic opportunity to foreign policy, why the fuck don’t they put in the work and build their own fucking party? I mean the Greens are there to be co-opted, or even just call themselves the Progressive or Liberal Party and show us what they’re about. In the marketplace of ideas and ideology, they can sell whatever they have to offer, prove just how lame and cumbersome the Dems are and be a true choice for people to flock to….
but we know why they don’t, they’re political Libertarians, sure, now that all of the hard work of actually building a party has been done, they’re offended that we don’t see them for the saviors that they perceive themselves to be, so they would rather piss and moan than get out there and actually get their hands dirty, because all of that meeting of the people and finding out about the realities of policy and how it affects you and me is something they’d rather not sully themselves with.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Happy 78th birthday, Bernie!
You don’t look a day over 90
wasabi gasp
This thread is a bastion of self awareness. Kudos!
smike
@BruceFromOhio:
The system may be a bit tilted to Democrats, I’ll admit. Scandalous, I tell you! Rigged!
The asshole is not a Democrat, likewise his base. If they want to play in our sandbox, come on in. Play on our terms or get the fuck out.
Ruckus
@piratedan:
Pissing all over someone else and not actually having to accept responsibility is a fine way of life, which is why BS does it. This is the guy who complains about his filet mignon for dinner every night, because he wants prime rib, deserves prime rib, demands prime rib, but never ever gets his hands dirty by going to the market and buying the prime rib. And of course if he actually did one day go to the market, he’d piss off the meat guy by telling him that his filet mignon is horrible, that he could raise cows that have perfect filet mignon that tastes exactly like prime rib.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@rikyrah: Thanks, it even has some detail in the Triangulum galaxy. Remember that was taken here in my yard in a heavily light polluted environment without a tracker.
ETA: I’m testing the shot out with the sky tracker right now.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: spectacular, as usual.
NotMax
@BillinGlendaleCA
(finishes counting) There are four stars missing. FAKE SKY!
:)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: I did some star reduction.
@opiejeanne: Thanks, with basic equipment(dlsr or mirrorless camera and a tripod) anyone could shoot this shot anywhere. The processing takes a bit of work though.
ETA: I may try some Orion shots later, once it rises.
sukabi
@Ruckus: by some accounts Nixon was paranoid, wandering around the WH nearly naked talking to the portraits prior to his exit.
I figure drumpf has been there for a while…the difference is this is drumpfs “comfort zone” that he’s been occupying since just after the inauguration.
Amir Khalid
@Ruckus:
If I may, a correction:
Amir Khalid
It’s Lady’s turn at the luthier’s — to fix an output jack issue. While waiting for my Grab ride I chatted with the luthier, and he happened to mention how global warming affects acoustc guitars. Certain kinds of glue, e.g. the wood glue used in acoustics, are prone to perish in hot and humid conditions. The luthiery has been getting a lot of guitars that need regluing here and there: my own Missy had bracing that had come unglued.
Another thing: You know that kid at the convenience store who never stops to think before he bags your hot snack together with your cold drink? Well, I saw him again today, bless his heart.
NotMax
@Amikr Khalid
Perhaps he could be persuaded to write a definitive guide to his craft.
The Lex Luthier.
;)
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
Joke is only for laugh, but pun is for a higher purpose: cringe. You are master of cringe, and I salute you.
Kathleen
@CaseyL: I’ve had the same thought.
satby
@Amir Khalid: he is indeed!
@NotMax: [email protected]?BillinGlendaleCA: beautiful as always.
A good “fuck Wilmer” thread always gets me wide awake, helpful on a Saturday morning. That, and coffee, much coffee.
satby
@CaseyL: @Kathleen: and neither of you would be wrong.
Baud
I’m glad Bernie is stalled, but I’m ready for him to drop. It’s good that reporters are starting to cover his hatred of Democrats.
satby
@Cacti:
And that’s cost him some former fans in my family. His act was a novelty when he first ran, though it was stale by March 2016 for a lot of us. But he hasn’t changed a note in the intervening years while the world is literally burning and the current occupant pours gasoline all over everything. Warren doesn’t piss and moan, she works and plans and persists. People respond to that.
Chyron HR
@piratedan:
More to the point, since a central tenet of Bernism is that Republicans voters all yearn for Democratic socialism, why don’t they take over the Republican party?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@satby: Thanks, trying to snap a pic of the crab nebula now.
M31
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Nice!
Ramalama
@Amir Khalid: glue. Now you have me wondering about the fate of books in a climate crisis.
Cameron
I like most of the stuff Bernie advocates but he isn’t the person to carry it out. If he and his followers are this clueless about winning the nomination I can’t see how he could win the election. Alienating the members of the party in whose name you’re running doesn’t sound like a very good plan.
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
I missed your question about a music theory book until the thread was long dead. My suggestion isn’t a book but it’s a wonderful online school set up by Duke Robillard who is one of the truly great guitarists. His online school is called sonic-junction and it’s really high quality. Check it out and see if you like it.
Chris Johnson
@Gretchen:
That IS the Russia connection, and it’s why I bailed on Bernie. I always liked Bernie’s message, but if he was and is that fucking gullible and full of himself that he hired the guy who torpedoed Dukakis, Gore and Kerry and who appears to have done those things on purpose, then I have less than no faith in Bernie as a person or elected official.
I think Bernie wanted to win: it’s like being a crack addict, but for politics. But you have to not hire Russian moles who will torpedo your campaign. Bernie failed that test and it took him a long time to get rid of Devine. And I think Bernie clings to many attitudes that Devine knowingly encouraged in him: between inside work and Russian twitter mobs, Bernie got used as a really effective spoiler, and continues to be one to the extent that he continues to buy into the Russian-fed narratives. They’ll tell you what you want to hear that serves their purposes: it’s not hard, especially with Cambridge Analytica-style data.
Amir Khalid
@Ramalama:
I think hardcover books where they stitch the pages together with thread would be safe. The other kind of hardcover would be threatened, and all paperbacks too.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Not to mention Stradivariuses. (Stradivarii?)
SFAW
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I did those in college. Just once, however. I was hungover for days.
SFAW
@NotMax:
Nicely done.
“Puns are the lowest form of humor”
– said by every person who wishes they were smart enough to think of them.
Citizen Alan
@CaseyL:
I have taken to saying that the only difference between Bernie supporters and Trump supporters lies in what goodies each group expects their respective senile cult-leaders to deliver to their specific demographic groups upon becoming Dictator.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
Strads would be delicate things from their age alone, but I think my Strat would be safe.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
“A little Gorilla Glue and some duct tape and that Stradivarius will be good as new. You’ll never notice the difference.”
:)
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@(((CassandraLeo))): Yeah they’re just more exaggerated versions of what we’ve been hearing throughout his regime. For the first couple years there he had people around him to keep him somewhat in line – Mattie and Kelley for example. Yeah Kelley is a right prick but he was competent and could handle Trump to some extent. Mulvany is completely incapable and everyone else is “acting” and out their depth, or the position is vacant for months on end. No one capable of keeping him from going off the rails even occasionally is left.
Peter
Worth noting that one reason why Clara Jeffries’s retweet if the article is so full of people attacking HER for it, is that another one of Bernie’s brilliant hires set her up to get hatemobbed.
Uncle Cosmo
@?BillinGlendaleCA: :”It’s a real PITA to get a decent shot of that nebula,” Tom said crabbily. (Alas, Tom Swifties are a mostly-lost art…)
Jinchi
I don’t think this argument holds up in the age of Trump.
Kattails
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Just stunning, as usual. I saved it for dessert, after a nice breakfast of Bernie bashing. He can’t self-delete fast enough for me.
Now off to the dump and the bread-and-butter job.
Dev Null
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I read this as “Onion shots” and did a doubletake.
I spend way too much time online…
Uncle Cosmo
@Amir Khalid: Any book that uses (so-called) “perfect” binding, where the individual pages are glued to the spine, would be vulnerable to AGW effects. Books “bound in signatures” – with 8-16 sheets (32-64 printed pages) stitched together at the fold & then stitched to the next signature – would be pretty resistant, except that the signatures then have to be attached to an inner spine which is then attached to the cover, & if the attachment employs glue, there could be a problem.
Small-format mass-market paperbacks are nearly all “perfect” bound. Hardbacks are nearly all bound in signatures. “Trade” (larger format) paperbacks can go either way.
In my student days I was a big fan of Dover paperbacks. In the 1950s Dover Publications applied “photo-offset lithography” – essentially taking a photo of each page in a book & transferring it to a plate for printing – to produce inexpensive editions of books “in the public domain” – i.e., whose copyrights had expired. The result had the same page size as the original (along with all the misprints & printer’s errors) & were all bound in signatures (& then glued to the paper cover). I still have a fair number of these on my shelves – everything from Chandrasekhar’s Introduction to the Theory of Stellar Structure (1939), cost $3.25 in 1970, to A Shropshire Lad and My Antonia. Paper was good quality & opaque – unlike cheap paperbacks whose pages turn brown in a decade or so, the Chandrasekhar has hardly discolored in nearly 50 years.
Again in my student days, the Baltimore County library would buy Dover reprints of significant books & have them rebound in library binding. I also have a couple of those, rescued from the “withdrawn” pile. Frankly I would expect those to be stable & usable in the 22nd century – if there’s anyone around who can still read.
/yeah, I know, TMI
germy
germy
Ixnay
@MomSense: Further note to Amir Khalid- Another guitar master in New England (Maine) is Bob Thompson. Huge understanding of the fretboard in all styles. I think his materials are available online, but you’d have to contact him. Good luck. http://www.hearstudios.com/about/staff/bob-thompson
Amir Khalid
@Uncle Cosmo:
No, not too much information at all. I found your comment very helpful.
wenchacha
@?BillinGlendaleCA: LIke a Pollock, Bill.
chopper
the whole “the DNC rigged it!” grift isn’t going to go as far this time, so they’re adding the media in to the stew.
ThresherK
“Whereas Warren has run an above-the-fray campaign in which she rarely criticizes the other candidates directly…”
And Sanders and his followers think he’s been hit by opposition candidates so far? Har de har.
“(Warren) doesn’t waste time warring with the press…”
Yet she has displayed skill at the precision strike against stupid press things like GOP talking points emanating from CNN at the town hall. More of this, please. It’s what Dems need to do in the way they should do it.
J R in WV
@germy:
Mr Sirota seems to be pouting a wee bit. Defensive also too!
Having worked for all those Democrats, why are you not working for a Democratic candidate this election cycle?
TomatoQueen
@Uncle Cosmo: Not TMI at all. Dover editions are the lifeblood of the Great Books of the Western World series, particularly starting with the volumes of Euclid, and carrying on with many others, as seen at the St John’s College Bookstore (a little bit of Heaven on the Annapolis campus) and in class as well. The two best things about them were the prices (ridiculously low), and the squib on the back cover that says “This is a permanent book.”
Ruckus
That picture of BS in the old rusted out Fiat is perfect on so many levels.
Someone put a lot of thought into that particular model as the setting. He looks perfectly comfortable in a rusted out peoples car which was just this side of acceptable when still in good shape, but should have been put in the scrap heap long ago when it was still a recyclable object, rather than kept around, being in the way, decaying to rust, and no longer anything remotely useful.
MomSense
Ooooaaaaakkk la home where the wingnuts are up to something bad.
man driving stolen vehicle caught with rattlesnake, uranium, and whisky
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
No one actually wants him to “help”?
He seems to be an attack dog rather than positive in any way. With BS, maybe he’s found his mentor.
Msb
@ Bill
Bernie’s Brianha has quite a sideline in doxxing and hatemobbing people on Twitter. Not a good look.
@ Ramalama and Amir Khalid
Most modern paperbacks will crumble unless they’re printed on acid-free paper. Two old lines of paperbacks, Zephyr and Tauchnitz, have sewn bindings and good paper, but you’ll only find classics under these brands, and used at that. I have some beautifully readable copies that are over 100 years old, however.
@ BillinGendaleCA
Thank you!
taumaturgo
@CaseyL: IMO, is more of the centrist DINO cowardize and unwillines to upset big donors and their legalize bribery that is pushing the new generation of voters to look beyond the loser status quo.
Steeplejack
@MomSense:
Probably on his way to Florida.
Warren Lorente
@CaseyL: The Democratic “purity” candidate in 1968 was Gene McCarthy, Senator from Minnesota. He came out against the Vietnam war early. I don’t recall whether there were enough McCarthy supporters who sat out the General Eleacton after Humphrey was nominated to throw the election to Nixon, but they may have been a factor. (Humphrey’s being Johnson’s Vice President was the biggest factor.) So, yes, purity was a part of that election. I see similarities between the McCarthy supporters I knew and the Sanders supporters of today.
Gex
The Trump Voters Whose ‘Need for Chaos’ Obliterates Everything Else
Daoud bin Daoud
@Sister Golden Bear: Bloody well played!