I was going to write a post on the latest from HRC but Campos pretty much covers it.
I can understand Clinton’s bitterness, and her assessment of the worst of the Bernie Bros is of course correct, but saying you’re withholding judgment on whether you’ll support Sanders in the general against Trump is really bad, whether it’s a tactical gesture or not (I will assume it is but even so JFC).
It trivializes the threat that Trump’s potential re-election represents, and it’s a reminder that yeah in fact Clinton has been unnecessarily chummy with all sorts of scumbags throughout her career, very much including Trump himself. (The Clintons’ willingness to attend Donald Trump’s third wedding in 2005 was the kind of gesture that lent this demi-gangster fraud a sheen of social respectability he never deserved, as Trump himself was eminently aware at the time, which is precisely why he invited them).
In addition to what Campos said, from a position of political power, this is not a smart move. If Bernie wins the primary, crow will have to be eaten, and eating crow is not a power move. If Bernie wins the primary and loses the general, you’re gonna get some blame. And what is to be gained from this statement? As Campos goes on to point out, the likelihood that Clinton’s advice will move voters who weren’t already inclined not to vote for Sanders is pretty much nil. And, unlike Twitter, there are a lot of Democrats who have Bernie as a first choice, and Warren and even Biden as another choice. The Iowa caucus is all about your second choice if your first choice doesn’t get enough votes. So why piss off Bernie voters now?
Betty Cracker
I don’t blame her a bit. She’s human. She’s also sure Bernie isn’t going to be the nominee.
Princess
Hillary is jumping on the grenade and I welcome it.
And no one has the right to question her loyalty to the Dem party and it’s candidate. I saw her stumping for Obama in private events with her supporters in 08. And that race was much closer than 16.
Betty Cracker
You know who’s feasting on crow? The Sanders campaign:
That’s true Nina, because Senator Bernard Sanders relies on surrogates like YOU to do it for him.
ETA: Look, I am not a fan of Joe Biden. At all. I do think his coziness with credit card companies and grifty family members will be exploited by Trump, and it’s worth discussing that now — without lying about it. But Democrats are wising up to Sanders’ act, and good for them. Might as well get the drama over with before the goddamned convention.
satby
Everyone who hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid hates Bernie.
And he’s not getting the nomination as a result, no matter how much his followers scream rigged.
geg6
Fuck Bernie and fuck him again just for laughs.
She has every right to say whatever she wants about that piece of shit. I say it and I won’t be walking it back ever. First, I have no trouble justifying voting for one piece of shit that only smells bad over one that stinks so badly that the earth itself may never rid itself of the stink. And second, I highly doubt he’ll win the nomination and I will be working my ass of to support any and all of his rivals for the nomination, save Gabbard.
FelonyGovt
I can’t blame her. She’s allowed to be frustrated.
satby
@Betty Cracker: and the smear by proxy doesn’t fool anyone either. He’s manifestly unfit to be elected as what he is, much less president. Hopefully this is the last year we need to endure the old fraud.
Baud
Actually no. Because if Sanders wins the nomination and Hillary comes out and endorses him, it’ll be big news that will help Sanders, much more so than if she said nothing now.
Baud
She is retired from politics.
moonbat
Bernie’s not winning the nomination. But sure, stir the pot one more time so we can all take loyalty oaths YET AGAIN. It’s not like anything else important is happening in the news today.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Haha. I guess his done fundraising off of his lies.
BernieBro
Bernie is gonna buy the interview and run ads with it in Wisconsin. See, you fools have this all wrong. Hilary is playing 3dimensional chess, and helping the Sanders campaign here. Big time.
The Moar You Know
Because they absolutely do not matter. They’re not Democrats!
Frankly I’d rather lose without them (we won’t) than win and have to accommodate them and their batshit crazy demands.
Hillary did the right thing here. Again.
Percysowner
Hillary is perfectly aware that she has no power moves again ever, partly thanks to Bernie and his inability to throw full support behind her after she won the nomination. Al Gore and John Kerry were allowed to continue to contribute to the political conversation and could look forward to being considered honored statesmen. Hillary was told to go home and knit. She has been told to sit down and shut up. She will probably never be considered for a government position again. Why shouldn’t she tell the truth as she sees it? It’s not like one candidate has angled for her endorsement, even though she won the last election by votes if not the electoral college. Warren, Biden, Mayor Pete, and Klobuchar CAN’T say these things, because it will alienate Bernie supporters. Hillary can say the truth and not worry about repercussions, because she has been written off by the party and the voters.
Spanky
@BernieBro: Right, DougJ.
Aurona
Thanks, for putting this up here. I really needed to hear more about how He Who Shall Not Be Named is really an okay guy who is going to support women and POC and not stuff his pointy finger in their face as dismissal. I love to hear white men in the morning braying their concern for us. HRC already gave her “vote for the one you think will win” commentary so another dismissal of her makes white male commentary banal, trite and irrelevant. Get your white brethren to vote as a democrat – not as a republican or independent first. Otherwise, I’ll bypass your commentary from here on out, as this past week has shown that may be the only road. Finally, vote like black women where 97% vote for the democrat.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I hate bernies guts and liver, but this is not helpful, not now
god help me, I agree with mix!
kindness
I’ll vote for Bernie if he’s the nominee. I say that easily because I don’t believe Bernie will be the nominee. Bernie’s notions that to get his program through we all have to march and man the barricades every day is a fantasy world. Most of us have jobs and families that require all of our time. I know I vote for someone to do that work for me. Selfish, eh? But I figure I’m the norm with that frame of mind.
BernieBros still suck.
JPL
This is the entire statement
Betty Cracker
@satby: That’s what finally tears it for me — Sanders making mouth noises about Democratic unity while sending attack dogs out to say all the shit he won’t say himself this time around but was all-too-eager to say last time. This isn’t a one-off situation; it’s a campaign strategy, and it’s dishonest and destructive.
msb
While Bernie is playing chess, he can finish eating the crow of apologizing to Biden for smearing him. Not so mention letting his campaign staff defend the smear for a couple of days before throwing them under the bus. What a guy.
After what HRC has endured, I’m not criticizing her before she shoots somebody on 5th Ave. (Remember all the screaming about her remarks about the Russian asset being groomed? I do.)
Hoodie
Doubt it matters all that much. Sanders will be a pain in the ass anyway after he doesn’t win the nomination, which he won’t. I assume her goal was to undermine him in the early primaries by peeling away Sanders-curious voters, such that he gets buried on Super Tuesday. I have my doubts that will work, given the die hard nature of his core supporters and the fragmentation of the Dem field.
JPL
Mistermix You should put the entire statement up because she hasn’t endorsed this primary season. I have no doubt that she will work to elect the next democrat, whether it is Wilmer or not.
HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes
@JPL: That is not the statement Campos is reacting to, read the linked post.
In fact, you carefully edited out the key sentence:
If he gets the nomination, will you endorse and campaign for him?
I’m not going to go there yet.
Baud
@JPL:
Outrageous!
It’s always interesting to see who gets triggered by Hillary.
emjayay
@Betty Cracker: Except some polls put him at #1 in New Hampshire at this point. I have no idea why.
I think the NYT is right: want a prog, Warren. Want someone more in the Biden neighborhood, Klobuchar. I think Amy could beat Trump. She has a capacity for sarcasm and probably could and would easily put down Trump in a debate and doesn’t have the baggage that Liz does and has more presidential gravitas, although on policy I’m all for Liz. I just wish Biden would go away for some reason – any reason – and open up the “pragmatic liberal” slot for Amy.
The Dangerman
@satby:
This. On both sides. The BS Kool-Aid kids need to join the DJT Kool-Aid kids and go off and play with themselves.
Baud
@HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes:
From the post.
MisterForkbeard
I agree that this is kind of a dumb move, if completely understandable. I DO think it’s fine to point out that the line he’s selling is seriously overrated, but saying you might withhold support is something that I would have kept quiet.
emjayay
@kindness: It’s a continual frustration that this site doesn’t have up/down votes. So-
^^^^^
Jerald Wilson
@Betty Cracker: I so want Bernie to go away. Just go away Bernie. Just go away.
delk
And if she stays quiet and out of politics some bro will either fabricate or cherry pick an out of context quote to smear her worse.
geg6
Oh, and another point. Campos knows a lot about law and the law school scam and I applaud his work there. But he knows next to nothing about politics and is too lefty moonbat to be trusted on his political instincts. Most of LGM’s frontpagers are that way. I read it for the things they write in their areas of expertise or on culture and pay almost no attention to their posts on politics. The commenters are much more savvy about politics than the frontpagers and I read more of those than the posts on which they are published.
OzarkHillbilly
Hillary won the 2016 DEM race with a total of 15,805,136 votes to 12,029, 699 votes cast for Bernie.
Hillary won the popular vote by 65,853,514 vs 62,984,828 for trump, but lost the Electoral College by a mere 70,000 votes in PA, OH, and WI.
Only here would the idea of not going out of one’s way to unnecessarily piss off as many as maybe 12 million voters be controversial.
gene108
In a more civilized era, the winner of the nomination would graciously come and seek the endorsements of the Party elders, because Party elders have paid their dues to advance the Party’s goals, and not expect everyone to bend their knee to him.
Another Scott
Meh.
Yup.
Will St. Bernard help with down-ballot races, compared to any other major Democrat? It’s hard for me to see how.
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Barbara
Everybody is allowed to have feefees except Clinton, and by extension her supporters. Don’t worry about me, I will pull the lever for Sanders should he be the nominee, but please, MM, it’s past time for you to stop mansplaining electoral consequences to Clinton and her supporters.
Cacti
MM has a sad for Bernie.
This is my surprised face.
Amir Khalid
I agree with the consensus, mistermix: Hillary’s out of the game now, and she’s free to say what she thinks. She has every right to say it, too. If she has to support Wilmer because he’s the nominee, like everyone else will have to, she will do it more vigorously than he supported her in 2016. No one will have to eat crow because of that.
Major Major Major Major
Lol, come on, the Clintons don’t care about political power any more.
I don’t believe for a second she wouldn’t campaign for him if he were the nominee. Kayfabe and nothing more. No reason to overthink it, this will be out of the non-rose-Twitter news cycle in two days.
Betty Cracker
@emjayay: The NH poll isn’t a shocker IMO since he’s been repping neighbor Vermont for ages. I am also in the Warren camp, but I think the media will make a huge deal out of it if Sanders outperforms Warren in NH since MA is also a neighboring state. We shall see.
I’ll vote for whoever the nominee is, Sanders and Gabbard included. I am dismayed about the way we jump down the throat of every Sanders supporter who shows up at this blog — the polite ones, I mean. Not that activities here amount to a fart in a whirlwind, but philosophically, it’s in bad form, IMO. But the campaign is fair game.
I get why people might believe this was an inopportune time for HRC to criticize Sanders. But fuck it. He’s shown his cards in this primary, and it’s the same losing hand he played last time, just once removed since he’s farmed out his smears.
We can’t afford a repeat. If pushing back on his attacks and pointing out the hypocrisy of allowing his staff and rabid supporters to swarm people shuts the old coot down, that’s a good thing, IMO. If not, I don’t see how it’ll make a difference anyway.
gene108
The other reality is 4 million more Democrats voted for Hillary, than for Bernie.
There’s a lot of bitterness among us Hillary voters, which Bernie needs to smooth over.
It’s not my fucking job to bend the knee to Bernie. He and his supporters need to show some humility, and make amends. They may not agree Hillary supporters / regular Democrats have a reason to be pissed off, but any body, who’s made into their 30’s knows there are times you have to take the blame for something, say sorry, in order to keep lines of communication open with a co-worker, customer, vendor, etc., in order to solve a bigger problem. Bernie’s been 30+ years old, longer than most Gen X’ers have been alive.
Elizabelle
Screw Campos. I don’t think I would vote for Bernie either. Hillary is brave to say that.
Just another way to dump on the Clintons, and I am sick of that.
WRT Bernie: we need someone considerably more skilled in the aftermath of Trump. And a Democrat, for gawd’s sake. I hope the DNC changes the rules to disallow vanity runs by non-Democrats. This political season has been enormously more difficult than it should be, because ego over actual patriotism and country.
gene108
@Another Scott:
Lt. Gov John Fetterman (D-PA), ran for the Democratic nomination for Senate, in 2016. He was an ardent Bernie Sanders supporters. He campaigned for Bernie.
Bernie did nothing for him.
Based on this data point, Bernie is all about Bernie. We’d be lucky, if he doesn’t openly campaign for DSA / Justice Democrat primary challengers, against Democratic incumbents, if he were the nominee or even as the President.
O. Felix Culpa
MM jumps on HRC. Again. Quelle surprise.
Kent
Oh FFS,
When IS the right time to criticize Bernie? Or is he beyond criticism?
I say now is EXACTLY the right time to be discussing Bernie’s character as a candidate. EXACTLY the right time. While everyone’s attention is getting focused but before the primary season starts. Would you rather have Clinton sit on her thoughts until June?
Or are we in some sort of Potemkin world where the Bernie monkeys get to fling their feces with glee but everyone else needs to button their lips because “Bernie might win”
Sheesh.
dr. bloor
@The Moar You Know:
Bernie’s problem isn’t HRC, it’s that even if he wins the nomination, precious few will feel compelled to accommodate him and his demands. His leadership style essentially involves shitting where he eats, and then expecting his fellow diners to bask in the aroma.
HRC’s comments helpfully remind us that even if we can get him into the WH, he will enter with zero political capital and zero political leverage. On the “Ineffectual Leader” scale, he’s going to make Jimmy Carter look like FDR.
chopper
i don’t blame her at all for this, sanders sandbagged her in 2016. i’m surprised she hasn’t gotten ‘fuck sanders’ tattooed on her forehead.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
The polite ones sort of get it, that there is a lot of bitterness Sanders needs to smooth over, from the 2016 election, and they are trying to reach out and do this.
I’m not sure, if Sanders and his leadership team understand it.
chopper
@dr. bloor:
also, he has only ever campaigned for himself, so no chance at all of flipping the senate.
Ruviana
It came up in Campos’s comments too-this was just more mansplaining. Hillary made fairly anodyne comments about Bernie and Campos (and now MM) are pearl clutching like crazy. It’s still early. Maybe wait and see how the primaries go?
Percysowner
@Elizabelle:
I’d give someone one chance, in case they really have seen the light and want to be a Democrat. I would NOT give the go ahead to someone who became a Democrat until they lost, changed back to whatever they were before, then became a Democrat again WHILE AT THE SAME TIME being listed as and Independent on the ballot for their next race that isn’t for President. Either you’re in or you’re out, none of this waffling.
chopper
@BernieBro:
so what you’re saying is, this is big news for john mccain?
Cacti
Playing nice with Wilmer in 2016 got us 4-years of Trump.
Fire away, Hillary!
John Cole
We must follow different people because apparently half my twitter feed is insufferable Bernie stans.
Elizabelle
Rethinking my above comment. And:
I will not vote for Bernard Fucking Sanders. Full stop.
He would be a complete fucking disaster and the MSM, which is already wired for Republicans, would point that out at every turn.
And then we get a Republican president who is more dangerous than Trump, because he (or maybe she) watched and learned and is more smooth and does not say the quiet parts out loud. But even more delivery to the oligarchs and plutocrats. And there goes the last of our actual democracy.
No, no, no.
Villago Delenda Est
So why piss off Bernie voters now?
Because the hard-core ones are total assholes who will sell out the actual Dem nominee in a motherfucking heartbeat.
Gin & Tonic
If by some freak chance Bernie gets the nomination, the results in November will be Mondale at best and McGovern at worst.
Gin & Tonic
@Elizabelle: Come sit by me.
Elizabelle
@Percysowner: No. It’s a big country. We can come up with candidates who have been Democrats, proudly and effectively, for a long time.
No half toe in the water. No, no, no.
Elizabelle
@Gin & Tonic: Always am!
JPL
@Cacti: Yup.. MSM is the same way though.
I do wish he had put up the entire comment because it’s misleading without it.
Roger Moore
@satby:
I’m not sure I would say it doesn’t fool anyone, but ultimately it shouldn’t matter. As Elizabeth Warren likes to say, personnel is policy. It doesn’t matter if Bernie is coordinating with his proxies* to smear his opponents while keeping his own hands clean or if he’s surrounded himself with awful people and he can’t control them. Either way, he’s going to surround himself with the same people, or at least the same kind of people, after he’s elected, so the same kind of thing will keep happening. I care about that outcome, not about the hidden details of how it comes about.
*Though this is only true of the people he has actually chosen to represent him. Every politician attracts at least a few awful people, and that shouldn’t be held against them so long as they do their best to discourage and disavow those unchosen followers’ behavior.
Major Major Major Major
@John Cole: Twitter is a weird combination of many people expressing an opinion, many people dunking on that opinion, and many people pretending that the opinion isn’t popular on Twitter.
Belafon
@MisterForkbeard: I went and read the block. She didn’t say she wouldn’t support him, but it’s pretty obvious that how she feels about him is that he has a culture around him that she doesn’t like. And what she describes is pretty accurate and it’s what the guy in the White House has as well.
So, mistermix, it seems to me that what you want is for a particular person to be able to benefit from Hillary Clinton, Inc, but Hillary Clinton the politician should just keep quiet.
Elizabelle
@O. Felix Culpa: I know. I really do look at the post’s author and steer clear of MisterMix more often than not. He is slippery and there are better front pagers.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: You think that would be worse than watching Trump replace RBG with an anti-choice zealot? Hard nope on that.
japa21
Although I have some sympathy for the basic sentiment expressed by MM, I have no sympathy for Sanders. He should be out there thanking HRC every day that she was so gentle with him during the primary in 2016. She could have absolutely destroyed his political future but didn’t. I know she didn’t because she wanted to be able to hold on to his supporters for the general, but in retrospect, I wish she had. If she had been even 1/3 as negative toward him as he was toward her, it would have been over early and given her more time to coalesce her overall support.
As far as working to help elect down ballot Dems, Sanders doesn’t believe he needs a Dem support system in Congress or elsewhere. He’ll just unleash the rabid dogs, AKA Bernie Bros, and they’ll hound Congress into doing what he wants.
And yes, sometimes when a Bernie supporter shows up, he or she gets treated pretty roughly here, which is really not appropriate. There was one last night that was polite, conceded some of Sanders’ faults, etc. Some interacted with that commenter well, some just went on the attack.
Cacti
Time to stop humoring the dyspeptic old toad and give him the vetting that’s been due for 4-years now.
Americans view the label “socialism” negatively by a -13 margin. If Bernie somehow fluked his way to the Dem nomination, with an actual Fidel Castro-loving Marxist as the ticket topper, the whole party would get clubbed like a baby seal at the ballot box.
DB11
@Elizabelle: Hillary didn’t say she wouldn’t vote for Sanders, only that she’s not yet willing to commit to endorsing and campaigning for him, were he to become the nominee. (which seems highly unlikely to my mind)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Gin & Tonic: I think your prediction is overly optimistic.
germy
@geg6:
Here’s what Campos said:
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore:
This sounds familiar.
Belafon
Also, any article writing about Clinton that includes a picture of them with Trump should be circumspect.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: I think Trump could beat Bernie, so we’d be screwed either way, right? Do you see women lining up to vote for Bernie and his bros, who don’t even like Democrats? Or African Americans?
Gun safety is a huge issue for women and others who value students’ and other peoples’ lives. We saw the men cosplaying in Virginia yesterday, and shame on them.
We can do better. Why sit around thinking “yes, I could eat that shit sandwich” at this point in time? We have not seen the first vote in a primary or caucus cast yet.
daveNYC
@Betty Cracker:Stephen Breyer isn’t exactly a spring chicken either. Fingers crossed for the next 50 weeks for both of them.
moonbat
@Cacti: …”clubbed like a baby seal at the ballot box.” Read this just as I finished my second coffee and now I am ready to face the day. ;)
Major Major Major Major
Cacti
@Major Major Major Major:
When he wanders outside of his niche as a statistician, Nate Silver has nothing remotely valuable or insightful to say. Just the usual pearl clutching, villager garbage.
JPL
@Elizabelle: I’ll vote for him and I’m sure that Hillary will also, but much is being made of something she didn’t say.
She said it’s to early since we’re in the midst of a primary. It was a mistake of MM not to include that in the post. I’ll skip his posts now also.
piratedan
I think we can be reasonable and come back to this discussion point, if and when the former Mayor of Burlington wins a couple of primaries that aren’t in his own fucking back yard. Until then, no one has even begun tabulating any votes yet and as far as I recall, we have Freedom of Speech and if HRC has these feelings then she has the right to speak them and based on the actions of four years ago, she sure as fuck seems to have a certain element of justification for doing so. In the years since that election have the Sanders aficionados done any consensus building? voter registration? develop specific plans of engagements to win over voters, offer specific ideas to the American people on how he could lead the country forward?
apparently the answer to those questions are jack and shit.
Maybe he thought HRC would just ride off into the fucking sunset and not say anything, were his team even aware of the campaign that she ran against the Deplorables? Did they think she would just sit by quietly while he pulled the same tricks out of the bag? She may have needed him them because she understood the actual threat of Trump, she sure as hell doesn’t need him now.
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti: oh, sorry, I didn’t realize the primary hadn’t recently devolved into a ridiculous mud-wrestling contest.
Baud
@Belafon: Agreed. It’s weak sauce.
@JPL:
Some things never change.
Elizabelle
@daveNYC: I know. I worry about that. Stay strong and alive, Supreme Court.
Chyron HR
@OzarkHillbilly:
And only in the minds of Bernie’s worshipers would going out of their way to piss off at least 15 million voters be desirable.
Cacti
@Major Major Major Major: Halp! Halp! Save us! Nate Silver has had his innocence abused! Oh the humanity!
Nope. Nothing has devolved. The heart attack patient from Vermont decided it was time to start throwing elbows, and now he’s getting some back.
To which I say: About damn time!
Kay
If Bernie wants to be the nominee he has to take responsibility for uniting the party, like all the other candidates. It’s a job requirement. That he isn’t even going to try is just so entitled I can’t even believe it. How he manages to evade responsibility for this over and over just amazes me. HE has to do it. No one HAS to help him, either. Stop making excuses for his inability to attract Democrats. No other candidate gets this special treatment. This isn’t complicated- Biden is on top because more Democrats support Biden. It’s not Clinton’s fault, it’s not the DNC’s fault- it’s Bernie’s fault. He has to win and the only way to win is to unite Democrats around his candidacy. If he can’t do that then he won’t be the nominee.
I support Warren. If I wanted to I could blame Bernie for Warren coming up short, since his lunatic supporters attacked her, but I’m not. It’s HER JOB.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: Of course we can do better, and I trust we will. You laid down the marker; I was just responding to it. But while we’re dealing in hypotheticals, recall that lots of people who stayed home in 2016 because HRC didn’t float their boat assumed she’d win. Almost nobody thought Trump could win either, yet here we are.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Exactly right.
Josie
“And, unlike Twitter, there are a lot of Democrats who have Bernie as a first choice, and Warren and even Biden as another choice. The Iowa caucus is all about your second choice if your first choice doesn’t get enough votes. So why piss off Bernie voters now?”
I fail to see how Clinton’s statement reflects badly on Warren or Biden. She is not stating a preference for either of them, so why would it keep voters from choosing one of them as a second choice? As I stated on an earlier post, your (and possibly Campos’) attitude toward Hillary is showing. Personally, I think she has earned the right to say whatever she damn well pleases.
Kay
Is Bernie going to lose another primary and blame everyone but himself?
Why does he think he should be the candidate without winning the primary? It’s insane. What’s the excuse this time? Do Democrats not know him well enough? He’s been running for 5 years. If there was going to be this mass movement toward Bernie wouldn’t it have happened already?
Jim
Obviously because they prefer an orange Fuhrer get another four years than the guy that’s done more to push this country in the direction of socioeconomic justice than any other currently on stage, get his first four. Don’t tell me you’re surprised about that. The “Wilma” followers differ from the Trump cult members only in who the dear leader is in terms of the dynamics of it all. There BSDS has left them in a pitiful state that endangers the future of this country and its denizens, and the petty little ego-preservation program they’ll engage in will not allow anything but the same dereliction in duty they rightly or wrongly charged others with before.
Baud
@Josie:
The Establishment speaks with one voice.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Well said, Kay.
Omnes Omnibus
You can just go blow a herd of goats, the both of you. I’m surprised that HRC hasn’t advocated burning the whole place down and machine gunning her critics. I probably would have if I had been in her place. She can say whatever the hell she wants.
chopper
@Major Major Major Major:
and of course silver and his ilk are here to point out how above this sort of poppycock they are. i’m sure it was with great sadness that he wrote that out.
O. Felix Culpa
Yes. His supporters started gearing up with “the establishment [sic] is rigging the election for Biden” months ago. It’s preemptive preparation for sore losing.
Edited.
Barbara
I take myself back to my idealistic younger self in 2008. The Clinton/Obama fight got pretty nasty at times. Certainly, my sister and I made a pact to stop talking politics with my mother because we just couldn’t talk up Obama without her losing her mind and getting very upset with us. Yet, she did vote for Obama. If Sanders is like a Waterford goblet who shatters at the least little pressure, then we totally need someone else to be the nominee. Stop propping him up. I can see flaws in all of my preferred candidates and I am not afraid to recognize them or respond to them when they are brought up by others. I do not feel compelled to tell someone to shut up lest we put ourselves in a worse position for the GE.
low-tech cyclist
Can’t forget a certain war criminal:
“Henry Kissinger is a friend of mine.” – Hillary, on NPR Morning Edition, June 10, 2014
sdhays
I love how this is Hillary’s problem rather than Bernie’s failure to cultivate Hillary’s support.
Newsflash – Bernie is not going to be the nominee. He’s lazy, and he’s “not a people person”, and he has no upside. One of the really annoying things about Dump that isn’t simply disgusting is that his win has made lots of people who otherwise might have had half a clue about their own chances believe that “anything is possible”. Buttigege also falls in this bucket.
Bernie is the second choice of very few people who are currently supporting another candidate because he doesn’t give a shit about those people, and it shows. As other candidates drop out, other candidates will benefit, not Bernie. And that’s why I rarely have anything to say about him.
Eolirin
@HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes: Where she’s not willing to go is in engaging the hypothetical in the first place, not that she’s not willing to endorse him if he’s the nominee.
Hence her talking about the vigorous primary in the next sentence.
Miss Bianca
He will not fucking win the nomination. And he deserves all the fucking shit she can throw at him and then some. It’s about damn time.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker:
Me, yesterday:
schrodingers_cat
@John Cole: They even infect Indian political Twitter. I have them muted. BS was the man because apparently he is going to let incarcerated felons vote unlike other evil Ds.
different-church-lady
@Major Major Major Major:
schrodingers_cat
@Miss Bianca: Amen sister!
joel hanes
At this point, nothing that can be said about the junior Senator from Vermont, or his followers, can possibly redound to the benefit of the nation.
I had previously vowed not to re-litigate the 2016 primary.
I broke that vow on a couple occasions.
Now I’m making a resolution not to mention Bernie Sanders nor Hillary Clinton until after the election. I may have to give up reading blogs …
Jinchi
@The Moar You Know: Hillary Clinton got about 11 million votes from Sanders voters in 2016. Find us another 11 million to replace them before you decide to tell them all to get lost.
sdhays
@schrodingers_cat: My problem with letting incarcerated felons vote is that I don’t want to give our penal system the power of running elections for the people under their control. It’s unworkable.
To me, it’s madness. Once they’re out, definitely let them vote, but keep the Department of Corrections out of our elections!
Josie
@joel hanes:
You might be safe just skipping MM’s posts. I may take that pledge myself.
Gin & Tonic
@low-tech cyclist: Well, that does it. I won’t be voting for Hillary this year.
Cacti
When Bernie announced his “Votes for Pedos” position, I knew that he was trying again to harm Dem chances of winning as much as possible.
schrodingers_cat
@Josie: Shorter M^2, BS is never wrong, he can only be wronged.
different-church-lady
@geg6:
Loomis sees things differently.
I pretty much only hate-read them now. Their shtick has become extremely limited.
Fair Economist
I understand her frustration, but we all need to stick with the message that anybody running for the Democratic nomination would be vastly better than Trump. We will need that when the troll armies are trying to sow dissension in the fall (on whomever we nominate; it won’t matter). For all Sanders’ faults, she can’t really mean it
The rest of the hits are OK.
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: This!
@Miss Bianca: and This!
@Josie: and This!
Eolirin
@Fair Economist: She didn’t say she wouldn’t support him. She refused to engage the question given that the primaries are still on going.
Kent
Oh FFS. Clinton criticizing Sanders is not Democrats telling 11 million 2016 Sanders primary voters to “get lost”
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker:
The northern border of Massachusetts is the Mason-Dixon line of New England.
Kent
I only read them anymore for the NFL threads where a lot of really smart football fans hang out.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ah, that’s the O2 style I love so well. : )
Fair Economist
@Elizabelle:
“Nach Hitler, Uns” never works. If Trump is re-elected he will give the Republicans permanent control of the Supreme Court, as well as destroy any vestiges of fairness in our voting and regulatory systems. We will have no democracy left.
A Sanders presidency does indeed put us at risk of your scenario but it’s not yet guaranteed. We will have *some* chance.
If Sanders is nominated, we will have to support him as best we can.
Miss Bianca
@different-church-lady:
Hot damn tamale, that’s it in a nutshell. Or a taco shell.
Fair Economist
@Eolirin: It’s very important to engage that question now. Any Democratic candidate would be vastly superior to Trump, and that needs to be in people’s heads before the real splittism push starts.
Plus, nobody believes she’s really holding back from supporting particular candidates in the general. Do you really think she’d say that about Biden, Klobuchar, or Warren?
anarchoRex
I have no problem with her statement, she didn’t say “no, never,” she just said “not yet.”
Chyron HR
@Fair Economist:
Just because it didn’t work when Bernie did it in 2016 doesn’t mean it won’t work in 2020!
Eolirin
@Fair Economist: The question was whether she’d endorse and campaign for him. Clinton does not need to commit to campaigning for Sanders at all, even if she’s willing to endorse him. He might not even want that kind of assistance from her.
She is under no obligation to engage with that hypothetical, nor is it vital that it be addressed now. And Clinton, of all people, has no obligation to take on the responsibility of pushing the Trump is worse than any dem line here. There are plenty of other people to who can be doing that with regard to Sanders.
Miss Bianca
@Jinchi: How many of those 11 million would still vote for Sanders in the primaries or caucuses is an interesting question. Many, many commenters here – and not a few front pagers – who were at least Bernie-curious, if not actual Bernie voters, have since become disillusioned and turned to other candidates. Methinks there may be more than a few among that 11 million who would say so of themselves.
lysuth
Wow–I left this site 4 years ago because it was worse than RedState. I said something positive about Bernie and got vilified and doxed and cursed. And you haven’t changed–sad. That you can express such hate for the only person who cares about M4A, climate change, justice reform, voting rights, women’s rights, equal pay for equal work, unions, working people, is anti-war and anti-oligarchy. Amazing!! And you support Hillary, the ultimate corporate democrat who loves Henry Kissinger, war, fracking, big business—sick.
Major Major Major Major
Not letting the incarcerated vote *is* putting the department of corrections, as well as the rest of the prison-industrial complex, in charge of elections.
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti:
With reading comprehension skills like that, no wonder you’re an asshole. Going through life that confused would piss me off too.
WaterGirl
I had to go through most of the 116 comments before I could even see glean what Hillary had said that was so upsetting.
Maybe I woke up stupid this morning, but am I right in thinking that this whole thread is about Hillary saying this?
Oh my god. If she had said yes, people would be bitching and saying that she threw Elizabeth Warren and other candidates under the bus.
We’re spun up about Clinton saying something that it seems Clinton didn’t even say.
As I said yesterday, in a completely different context: If you’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t, then you have the luxury of doing what you think is right.
If I were Hillary, I’m not sure whether I would never say another public word or whether I would tell everyone to go fuck themselves. Once again, too many people are putting the responsibility for an election outcome all on Hillary’s shoulders and she’s not even fucking running.
WaterGirl
@lysuth: I think you might have used a different spelling of your nym, because your comment went into moderation.
Elizabelle
@Fair Economist: I’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it.
It is the Supreme Court. And isn’t that just what brought a lot of Republicans and “independents” (in name only) home to Trump. In 2016 and remains to be seen this year.
I look forward to a vigorous primary and the best candidate. Who will make us proud.
different-church-lady
@WaterGirl:
“But it’s my only line!!”
Mary in Ohio
What frustrates me is if McCain had been asked before the primary if he would support and campaign for Trump in the general he would have rightly laughed at the question. And no one would have thought twice about it. But because it’s Clinton we keep getting the hysterics of Bernie Bros and others calling her out. She was right to say what she said. And if, strong if, Sanders happens to win the primary and Clinton still doesn’t come out in support of him who cares?
WaterGirl
@lysuth:
i have two bones to pick with your comment:
That’s all I am going to say, so there’s no need for you to respond.
If there’s anyone who is not tired of re-litigating 2016, please raise your hand.
O. Felix Culpa
Yes, and what’s upsetting is that a FRONT PAGER posted that deceptive shit. I don’t care who MM supports, but I do care about dishonest posts, especially dishonest posting about HRC. That’s the job of the MSM and trolls and it makes me wild that it’s done by a FRONT PAGER here.
Miss Bianca
@lysuth: If you seriously think that Bernie Sanders is, indeed, “the only person who cares about M4A, climate change, justice reform, voting rights, women’s rights, equal pay for equal work, unions, working people, is anti-war and anti-oligarchy,” then I can understand your righteous horror and indignation with us unwashed jackals.
However, since to believe that there is One and Only One who cares about all of the above, and that that One is Bernie Sanders, you’d have to be *such* an idiot that it’s actually kind of poignant, all I can feel right now is sorry for you.
lysuth
Yes, I did use a different nym. The last time I posted here I used my real name–stupid move–and the clan here googled me, tried to expose my identity so they could vilify me (and you talk about Bernie Bros) so I changed it.
WaterGirl
@Mary in Ohio: It’s like asking a candidate who is still running for fucking PRESIDENT whether they would be someone else’s VP.
There’s a time for that question, and while they are still in the race is most definitely not that time.
Citizen Alan
@lysuth:
Everything that you and Wilmer claim to support has been put out of our reach for generations in large part because of his actions and those of his cultists.
sdhays
@Major Major Major Major: Our prisons are so rife with corruption and brutality, I don’t see how we can trust them to administer elections for the people under their control.
WaterGirl
@lysuth: The first comment with a new nym has to be approved, which I did, but as you can see future comments go through with manual intervention.
If you were last here 4 years ago, you might be interested in reading the new comment policy. You can find it in the footer of the site.
Josie
@O. Felix Culpa:
Excellent point.
different-church-lady
@lysuth:
And the person who asked you to un-make this decision was who?
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Mary in Ohio: Exactly, she has been told to retire, shut up, go home and knit repeatedly. So why is she obligated to campaign for anyone? She has been told she is to polarizing and divisive, and that she should not express her opinions in public. If I were her I would go on an extended European tour this year just to be left alone by the press and the pundits.
Jinchi
To be clear, I was referring to this comment.
HRC can say whatever she likes about Bernie.
Chyron HR
@lysuth:
Yes, salvation can ONLY come through accepting Bernie as your lord and savior!
Searcher
@lysuth: Oh, look, the Bernie Bro who hasn’t felt the need to participate in electoral politics for the last 4 years suddenly has opinions again for some reason.
I am shocked. This is my shocked face.
JPL
@WaterGirl: Look at my comment at 19
Searcher
@Fair Economist: If Tulsi fucking Gabbard is the nominee we’ll have to rally around her.
Doesn’t mean I’m going to spend the next three months talking about how happy I’d be to do it or how much better she’d be than Trump.
Kathleen
@Baud: I’m enjoying every minute of this gluteus grievance session
mrmoshpotato
@gene108:
Yes, but Wilmer is 1. Not a Democrat, 2. A ratfucking sack of shit who only cares about himself and his “revolution.”
“How’re you going to fund all these ideas (not plans) if you win?”
“The people will demand it!” (wags finger)
“Huh?!”
Kathleen
@MisterForkbeard: Why is it a dumb move?
geg6
@germy:
Where in my comment did I say that Campos was a Berniebro? What I said is that he’s a pie-in-the-sky lefty who doesn’t have good political instincts. I stand by this and ask you to engage in what I actually said rather than what you think I said.
Searcher
If she had been even 1/3 as negative toward him as he was toward her, it would have been over early and given her more time to coalesce her overall support.
I’m going to disagree with you on this point. If Clinton had been angry or mean or quietly confrontational she would have been pilloried for it, for eight different contradictory reasons. This was a “heads he wins, tails she loses” situation.
CaseyL
If Bernie gets the nomination, we will not only NOT take the Senate, we are likely to lose the House.
Bernie has anti-coattails, not least because most of his voters could not care less about downballot races and are likely to either ignore them or vote for some 3rd Party candidate. (I love AOC, but she won in a deep blue district; she did not flip a seat. I don’t think any of the Bernie-affiliated candidates who won in 2018 flipped seats.)
Bernie will be better in the WH than a GOP, but only as a(nother) holding action. The GOP Senate will not approve any of his judicial or cabinet nominations, including SCOTUS. We’ll be in for 4 years of rule-by-Executive Order, and Acting Heads of This’N’That.
Speaking of Cabinet positions…. who the hell would be in Bernie’s Cabinet? He hasn’t exactly spent the last 30 years amassing a network of big-brain, big-accomplishment resources. He hasn’t worked on any years-long projects with anyone, has not established strong ties to anyone with experience in putting together big programs, and is a royal PITA to work with/for.
About the only way I’d feel good about voting for Bernie in the general is if his VP is almost his total opposite: younger, not a prickly asshole, with legislative/organizational accomplishments, and a general air of enthusiastic competence. Then I can root for him to resign in that person’s favor.
tam1MI
@Jim: Just when I get around to thinking, “Yeah, I guess I could vote for Bernie”…
Somebody like you comes along.
geg6
Story of her life, I’m thinking.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Searcher: If one is female and a serious Democratic politician, one needs to be knowledgeable, but not a know-it-all, have detailed plans, but not be “over prepared”, be attractive but not too sexy, be well dress and well groomed but don’t appear to have spent much on either, be well educated, but never mention it, have a carrying speaking voice but never, ever be shrill or hectoring or anything that might seem unpleasant, or remind people of their ex/mom/grandma/teacher.
chopper
@different-church-lady:
my favorite thing about LGM is how loomis holds the entire commentariat in such scorn and contempt because not all of them agree with his constant pronouncements that ‘everyone is doing everything all wrong’.
geg6
@different-church-lady:
They are very good in their areas of expertise. But they are very bad at political punditry. Very bad. And the commenters on that thread are all good until the bros jump in around halfway through, mansplaining and gaslighting every step of the way. But, funny enough, the bros aren’t the ones Loomis is calling stupid.
geg6
@Fair Economist:
Though I will not sit out an election, if Sanders wins the nomination, we’ll get a Trump second term for sure. He’s toxic.
stinger
I thought I’d been paying attention, but apparently not. Can someone explain to me how Hillary has shown that she “loves Henry Kissinger”? I know that she met with him, as she met with all her (living) predecessors as Secretary of State.
As did Elizabeth McCord.
WaterGirl
@JPL: Yeah, your comment was my first clue! But it didn’t include the question the had been asked, so I still didn’t really understand the fuller picture.
randy khan
I’ll just repost what I said at LGM:
jl
Sanders should fire the guy who wrote that vile op ed falsely accusing Biden of corruption. HRC needs to get over her bitterness about 2016.
Go Warren!
germy
@stinger:
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-henry-clintons-relationship-kissinger/story?id=39195203
HRC’s critics think she agrees with every Henry said and did, but the above quote proves otherwise.
Kent
@stinger: as you requested:
https://www.vox.com/world/2016/2/12/10979304/clinton-sanders-kissinger
stinger
@germy:
@germy: Thanks!
Did she not do the same with other former essess of ess?
Just One More Canuck
@Jinchi:
I hate to break this to you, but Hillary isn’t running this year. What is Bernie doing to get votes from the Hillary voters he needs to get the nomination?
stinger
@Kent: Thanks – but the Vox article is mostly about Kissinger’s crimes, and I lived through that era. It just feels like she’s being criticized for turning to the very few other humans who ever held her job for occasional advice. The Former Secretary of State Club is nearly as small as the Former President Club. Madeleine Albright campaigned for Hillary, but it seems that it’s more important to find connections to criticize HRC for.
Mnemosyne
@HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes:
Ohmygosh, she’s not going to go there yet!
Burn the witch! Burn her! How dare she not pledge her fealty to St. Bernie before a single caucus has happened or a single vote has been counted! Burn her!
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Racist/Sexist Wilmer = Jeremy Corbyn
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim:
the guy that’s done more to push this country in the direction of socioeconomic justice than any other currently on stage,
but it’s not a cult or dim-witted children
Mnemosyne
@germy:
I’m pretty sure that if you want to know what to do when it comes to diplomacy, you befriend Henry Kissinger, ask for his advice, and then do the exact opposite of what he says to do.
Marc McKenzie
“So why piss off Bernie voters now?”
Because…they still hate Hillary and they really did piss _us_ off with their antics in 2016 including their asshole crap at the DNC. And they still come at us with this, “If Bernie isn’t the nominee, enjoy four more years of TRUMP!!” while gloating about how they loved voting for Stein in 2016 or, worse yet, claiming that Sanders marched with King so why don’t you Black voters go with him instead of Joe Biden? And let’s not forget their constant slamming of Obama, especially by Bernie fans like Ben Speilberg and Walker Bragman and Matt Stoller.
Hillary did the right thing. And if she pissed them off, so what? They need a good talking to and they need to be told that their shit does stink and that we’re tired of their nonsense. Trump and the GOP are dragging the country over the fucking cliff and yet these fools still keep slamming Democrats. Enough already.
Falconer
@WaterGirl:
The answer to that question is simply:
I will support whom ever the party nominates.
Not difficult, now is it?
Bupalos
@Betty Cracker: If she was so sure Bernie wouldn’t be the nominee, then why bother saying you’d pause on the decision if he was?
It’s a tit-for-tat tactical effort to submarine the guy in the primary. Which is just fine by me. I’m at the point where whatever it takes to get him off the stage is perfectly defensible.
Bupalos
Also though, reading through this thread, multiple things can be true. Hillary Clinton really is a go-along centrist DLC politician that progressive dems had absolutely almost reason to be excited about and who really does in many ways represent the way things are systemically corrupt. She absolutely will listen to Henry Kissinger if 52% of the public thinks she should. And it’s just fine if someone like that successfuly kneecaps Bernie Sanders, who is a fundamentally more damaging character.
Richard Guhl
@Betty Cracker: I think that this is Hillary’s personal dish of revenge served cold to Bernie for, among other things, his sourpuss at the 2016 convention when she captured the nomination. But I also hear it as the primal scream of Boomer women, who got a heady whiff of liberation from second-wave feminism and ran into stone walls at both the personal and institutional levels. They chafed at the rules that confined their GI mothers and Silent sisters, who often bought into the gender roles.
Both Bernie and Joe remind them of their crappy Silent bosses — the arrogant bossy ones and the handsy ones. But for activist Boomer women, most galling of all, was the awful treatment by progressive men and the failure of the ERA.
Bernie is a living example of white male privilege. Can you imagine any woman gaining political power if she had a child out of wedlock and provided little material support, but instead went on a twenty year vision quest?
Or, for that matter, had dalliances with oddball politics like the Socialist Workers Party, as Bernie did in the early 70s?
Yes, this is personal. But it also seems to be about the betrayals Boomer women have experienced across the board.
No One You Know
@Elizabelle:
@Gin & Tonic:
I’m going to the bar. Can I bring either of you anything?
No One You Know
@Richard Guhl: Well put. I think you really got it.