Here’s the tweet:
Jim Clyburn is a voice of powerful moral clarity that is heard loud and clear across this country — in our capital and beyond. He reminds us why we’re in public service in the first place — and I’m proud to have his support. pic.twitter.com/6Lh970vjYu
— Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330) (@JoeBiden) February 26, 2020
Endorsements don’t seem to mean as much as they used to, but Clyburn’s is still a pretty big deal. I don’t think there’s much of a chance for an upset in South Carolina — Biden is expected to win, and he almost certainly will.
As loathsome and regrettable as it is, the media narrative following South Carolina’s vote may make a difference. If Biden wins narrowly, they may choose to spin it as a negative. If it’s a blow-out, the Beltway gang may make Biden’s political resurrection the big story leading up to Super Tuesday.
Meanwhile, millions of people are already voting across multiple states. After the rubble is cleared away from this primary season, maybe we need to rethink the timing of the debates in light of early voting? I don’t know, and I’m glad it’s not my job to figure it out.
Open thread.
Jerry
Biden also got the endorsement of Democratic stalwart, David Price, he of NC’s 4th district.
Jeffro
Glad to see this – not huge but not nothing, either.
FlyingToaster
I’m currently of the opinion that the Democrats should only grant delegates to states with closed primaries; and that they decide which order and not individual states. New Hampshire can insist on being first, but gets zero delegates, because fuck them for being assholes.
It won’t happen, anymore than re-writing the Constitution for the 21st century.
We live in the stupidest timeline. Where’s my quantum gate outta here?
MDB
LOLz…..and no one cares. It’s almost as if the majority of people who frequent this site still think it’s 2008….and playing the same loser-ass, mealy mouthed, centrist, corporatist game of “We are basically going to ignore you…but vote for us anyway…cause REASONS” they did in 2016 makes total sense.
Betty Cracker
Remember this sniveling liar from the previous Republican administration?
Instead of shutting his goddamned mouth forever in penance for helping to lie this country into a ruinous, pointless war that killed hundreds of thousands of people and squandered around a trillion dollars, he’s questioning public health professionals for failing to clear statements with the moron in the White House.
WaterGirl
@MDB: I have no idea what you are trying to say in that comment.
laura
Debates should be limited and overseen by the League of Women Voters as FSM intended. Caucuses should be done away with entirely as they limit participation. Primaries should be done over a much shorter period of time. Villagers – ugh. Campaigns should be limited to election years themselves. Citizen’s United overturned. That’s for starters.
jeffreyw
@FlyingToaster: I’m sure the gate is moving fast but I’ve no clue as to its whereabouts.
RobertDSC-iPhone 8
As long as Sanders loses, its all good.
Betty Cracker
@MDB: Yeah, you’ve got us pegged, genius — this is a Biden Bro blog, 100%! ?
Jinchi
I assume you mean the nomination. Because if it’s Trump v Sanders… I’m all in for Bernie.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: No, we’re all neo-liberal shills no matter which candidate we support. Get with the program.
Subsole
@MDB: tl;dr
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: I’d like to make a motion to second every word of this…spot-on, Betty. Ari is a shameless, soulless liar and shouldn’t be allowed to show his face in public.
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: also, I love how Ari assumes there is a process, ANY process, in this administration, for ANYTHING.
FlyingToaster
@Betty Cracker: I already added dickslap here to my pie filter. Jeebus!
MDB
@WaterGirl: …you don’t ? Then allow me to be more concise….”NO ONE CARES THAT CLYBURN LENT HIS ENDORSEMENT TO THAT PRION ADDLED LIAR, AND CORPORATE LACKEY BIDEN”…..no one except for the loser-ass Democratic right-wing who are still beating off to “The good old days of Tip O’Neal”.
Subsole
Oh do get lost you sanctimonious little thug.
Hildebrand
@MDB: Bingo! You hit all the spots on my card in one go. Sweet
Betty, do I get a prize?
MDB
@RobertDSC-iPhone 8:
……tell me where Uncle Bernie touched you…
Professor Bigfoot
@MDB: funny how “corporatist” “centrist” Democrat is always BLACK DEMOCRATS.
And also funny how much Sanderistas hold Barack Obama and the coalition he put together in such contempt.
Ha ha.
Professor Bigfoot
@MDB: “THOSE NEGROES VOTES DON’T MATTER, DAMMIT! Why should we care what they think?”
There, that’s a really concise retelling of your bullshit.
Professor Bigfoot
@MDB: I’ll tell you, you fuck– he touched me when he tried to primary Barack Obama.
So he and you can kiss my WHOLE fat, hairy black ass.
gvg
Don’t feed the trolls. Pie filter.
schrodingers_cat
Is MDB the new avatar of Brinks trucks full of cash. The style seems familiar although the name does not.
MisterForkbeard
MDB seems like they’re the most excited about this of anyone. Weird that that superleft dude is freaked out when people exercise their choices.
Also, pied because if there is a better example of a bad 14-old-troll I can’t think of one. :)
kindness
I think having media people (the Chuck Todds of the world) be the moderators is a really bad idea. The League of Women Voters is so much more civilized. And really, less debates. They are kinda dumb when you have one 4 days after the last one.
MisterForkbeard
@Jeffro: Yep. The CDC probably called, found out that all 3 remaining White House staffers are in India, stayed on the line waiting for two hours and then said “fuck it, we need to save some lives”
SiubhanDuinne
Deleted.
lamh36
I know folks have been linking to the same article (that has since been updated and corrected)…but JIC
From the SCDP last night:
Immanentize
I read what he said in the last thread about Pete B. Now this.
And people say that vile, ignorant, ill-informed, small minded, Sanders bully-bros just don’t exist.
“Corporatist.” snerk.
LongHairedWeirdo
Keep in mind that the “media narrative” will include whatever is most advantageous to the GOP, as spread by people on “background” or via tweets. The media has become quite incestuous, and this is probably one of the reasons “OMG YOU SAID THE PRESIDENT HAS A SON NAMED BARRON!!!!” hissy fit worked. In any *non-incestuous* media pit, the total nonsense of the complaint would have held sway.
ziggy
Personally I think the debates don’t add much to the primary process. Certainly not as many as the Dems have had. A lot of punching back and forth and rehearsed lines, soundbites. The townhalls were much more informative, when the candidates have more time to flesh out their positions and plans, as well as show more of their personality when not under fire. Debates seem to make this whole process much uglier and pettier, and I suspect turn off a lot of people. Let’s raise the level of discourse somehow.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Didn’t Bernie denounce people like MDB the other day, suggesting that they in fact may be Russian trolls?
Maybe Bernie was lying.
Immanentize
@Professor Bigfoot: That is a really concise telling of Sanders’ comments post-SC circa 2016.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
……tell me where Uncle Bernie touched you…
In Moscow
also in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan
and just for clarity: No, I don’t think Bernie and Jane are Russian agents, I think they are the most blissfully unwitting of useful idiots, because they are both really fucking stupid and really fucking arrogant.
Immanentize
@kindness: I think the number of debates was a Sanders campaign ask of the DNC?
Betty Cracker
@ziggy: I agree. The town halls are better. Fewer debates, more town halls would be good, with the debates moderated by civic organizations, not overpaid media jagoffs.
japa21
@Immanentize: Which all the other candidates avoided mentioning last night.
So many opportunities missed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@kindness:
a-freakin-men to that! another knock on of trying to appease Bernie and his Bros. They convinced themselves that fewer debates was key to the evil Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (cue dramatic chipmunk music) plan to thwart The Unthwartable One
@Betty Cracker:
this too, also as well
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Thirded.
Ksmiami
@Professor Bigfoot: Seconded you win the interwebs today sir. I’d like to add that Bernie is not only racially insensitive but
also a misogynist pos
LongHairedWeirdo
@Betty Cracker: I believe the total cost of the Iraq war, counting things like “people who used to have job opportunities, before the amputation and other trauma”, has been estimated in the trillions, plural.
But, keep in mind, a lot of the people who died were *foreigners*, and many from Muslim countries – you sure can’t expect a country with the GOP in power to consider that a *problem*. Oh, I’m sure that Susan Collins will have be deeply concerned if there’s any really *bad* news for the GOP, but I think when Collins says “deeply concerned” she is actually referring to constipation.
And she’s right, if that’s what she means. It’s just her *cranium* that’s impacted.
Anyway: sure, the economic and humanitarian costs were outlandish, but, again, these are *REPUBLICANS*. They don’t have to worry about that; they just have to win the news cycle. Look at Puerto Rico – it barely gets reported on, so why would the GOP care? Right and wrong doesn’t matter to the GOP; winning does.
You can’t expect Fleischer to shut his mouth in penance when, by Republican standards, he’s done nothing wrong.
Immanentize
@japa21: agreed
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You realise that clip is from the 2016 campaign, yes? (Interviewer Ed Schultz has been dead since 2018.
Baud
@japa21:
Despite the long primary season, the candidates seem to be in a persistent state of unreadiness.
I dislike Bernie, but he had a strategy and stuck to it. I’ll give him that.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: DNFTT.
:-)
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
His strategy was smarter than both Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harrris. Who followed him to the deep end on the M4A trap.
Immanentize
@Baud: I think Biden was probably the one best positioned to take the “What Bernie said about S.C. in 2016” message home this time. But he didn’t.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: @Omnes Omnibus:
At least you guys were better able to decipher the point than I was!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MisterForkbeard:
I someone in the administration or maybe in city or state health departments is doing some planning for what to do when coronavirus appears. I live in a condo building for over-55 year olds, and management here is making plans to do things like cancel communal activities and have only pick-up/delivery service from the restaurants if the virus is in the building. And we don’t have the CDC at our disposal.
WaterGirl
@MDB: Thank you for the clarification.
Jeffro
Clemson poll is out and it’s looking really good for Biden.
Biden: 35%
Steyer: 17%
Sanders 13%
Buttigieg: 8%
Warren: 8%
Klobuchar: 4%
Gabbard: 2%
Hint hint Steyer and Klobuchar
I guess Bloomberg is not on the ballot? Hmm…kind of explains where his support comes from and would presumably go back to if he drops out.
WaterGirl
Wise words from the Thin Black Duke a few weeks ago:
UncleEbeneezer
@Professor Bigfoot: The rise of Trump was clearly a response to the first Black president. Me thinks, the rise of Bernie was too, for reasons that might make a lot of white progressives a bit uncomfortable to admit. I had a white, Bernie-bro FB friend the other day cry out about people like him have been perpetually ignored/silenced by the Democratic Party and I could only roll my eyes. This is such a common sentiment among my fellow, white progressives and it’s just so grossly tone-deaf considering the context of the groups that actually HAVE historically suffered silencing and erasure (hint: people who aren not white men). But to white men, the slight diminishing of our overrepresentation is of course, seen as the worst oppression…ugh…
pat
Can that be true? How dumb can these assholes get?
If I can’t have Liz, evicerating turmp on the debate stage, I want JOE. Go Joe.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat: You beat me to it. I was about to post this when I saw your comment.
BRINKS TRUCKS OF CORPORATE CASH!!!
Disclaimer: not sure I have the words exactly right.
Baud
@Immanentize:
Agree. He is not a good campaigner at all.
piratedan
@Baud: perhaps the campaign realized it was time to give them new assignments to different nearly important blogs to change it up.
FlyingToaster
@WaterGirl: It’s Word Salad hitting all the Russia Today talking points. These comments are hard to parse unless you live or work in the land of invective. I wouldn’t sweat it.
Baud
@Jeffro: God how I wish Steyer and Bloomberg had stayed out of it.
Bostondreams
Off topic: Rod Rosenstein’s sister works at the CDC. Guess what the response by Trumpers has been?
dww44
@laura: I vote to put you in charge of our Presidential nomination process. Agree with all of this. This current system benefits no one except those who make money off the endless campaign season.
I don’t even subscribe to the notion that this seasons our nominee for the grueling electoral contest to follow and makes her/him better able to field a more effective campaign apparatus. It too often kills the candidacies of otherwise worthy folks.
randy khan
@MDB:
I am pretty confident that black voters in South Carolina, who constitute a very big chunk of the Dem electorate there, do care at least some about Clyburn’s endorsement. It wouldn’t matter much in New Hampshire or Iowa, but he’s a big deal there.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I wish Bernie and Biden had too.
@UncleEbeneezer: There’s undoubtedly a component of Sanders’ support that maps to your description: I know a couple of them too. But we (Democrats, I mean) ignore his very real appeal to young folks of all races at our peril, IMO.
dww44
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I am gobsmacked. Seriously, she did that?
Jeffro
@Baud:
Yeeeup. Also, Williamson ;)
In other news folks, trumpov is RIPPED that the markets are reacting to COVID-19 and he of course thinks the Dems are fear-mongering for political advantage.
I. Can’t. Even.
The terrified little pile of orange slush who slammed Obama every 5 minutes over the (well-handled) Ebola epidemic in 2014, and whose favorite news network has featured wall-to-wall coverage of conveniently-timed IMMIGRANT-BOO!-CARAVANS-YAAARGH!! every time an election rolls around is now claiming we are the fearmongers and we’re intentionally tanking his blessed stock market.
For realz!!
Mike in NC
The media are counting on thousands of Republicans voting for Sanders in the open SC primary. His coronation is preordained, it appears.
Cheryl Rofer
One of the things I do for a change of pace is to imagine how the history books will be written in 50 years or so. And yes, I assume that we will get through this as a democratic republic.
Jeffro
Speaking of endorsements, I see Ann Coulter unintentionally endorsed Elizabeth Warren on Twitter this morning.
Warren comms team, you better have Coulter’s tweet on t-shirts by 3pm today! ;)
schrodingers_cat
On my timeline, another hit piece on Hunter Biden in the Garbage Times by Ken Vogel.
Baud
@Cheryl Rofer:
Stephan King is jealous.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Is there an opposite of the Pulitzer? Like a Putz prize? Vogal should get that.
At least this means that the NYT thinks Biden is a front runner again.
japa21
@Baud: Not great, but I also blame his staff. Why aren’t they advising him to do things like that?
Baud
@Betty Cracker: I have no idea what we do about young people if Bernie loses the nomination or the general election. It’s a conundrum.
low-tech cyclist
How would that work with states that have no party registration? (Like Virginia, where I lived for ~30 years.) There’s no way to close a primary if there’s no record anywhere of your party affiliation. No delegates from any of those states, then?
evodevo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The tweet is two yrs old…but still….
Chyron HR
@Baud:
If Bernie loses the general election then obviously we need to nominate him again in 2024.
low-tech cyclist
@Jeffro: Lord yes, that was wonderful!
“Sen. Warren has convinced me that Bernie isn’t that worrisome. He’ll never get anything done. SHE’S the freak who will show up with 17 idiotic plans every day and keep everyone up until it gets done.” – Ann Coulter
(Linking to The Week so I don’t have to link to Coulter’s Twitter feed)
Geminid
In past elections I have been skeptical of whether many people actually crossed over to mess with the other party in open primary states. Seemed like something people talk about more than actually do. I think this year crossover voting may be substantial, though, because 1)in many states like Virginia, where I live, there is no Republican primary. 2) hyper negative partisanship is sky high. 3) the potency of social media as an organizing tool.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I don’t know either. Take their concerns seriously comes to mind, which we’ve come a long way towards doing but at way too great a cost. I won’t bore you with my “we’ve watered down our brand” rant again, but IMO, it’s a serious problem, and ironically, Sanders continues to benefit from it politically while possibly obstructing a resolution to it. It’s a conundrum from HELL! ;)
Steeplejack (phone)
@pat:
The interview is apparently from April 2016. (I didn’t listen to all of it.)
Kent
I don’t think everyone here is old enough to remember the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But the stuff with Sanders commenting positively about Cuba and Nicaragua is really a form of leftist purity-posturing that has mostly gone out of style (or more likely has just changed subjects).
There are, for example 39 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Many of them have made phenomenal progress on a wide variety of economic and social measures. Costa Rica has a high literacy rate, low poverty rate, high degree of environmental protection, and a very free and democratic government without an Army. Uruguay has one of the highest literacy rates in the world at rates very high on democratic measures and low on corruption. Chile has made tremendous economic advances in the past several decades to the point that it is attracting economic migrants from Argentina when decades ago it was the reverse. Columbia is making great strides today after decades of war. There are interesting examples of human progress all over Latin America.
So why do lefties like Sanders insist on talking about old shit like Cuba and the Sandinistas? Because it was the 1970s and 1980s version of lefty purity tests. During the Reagan Administration US policy opposed Nicaragua and Cuba so the reflective reaction of the left at that time was to jump in on the other side. And yes, I’m not naive about US policy in Central America, it was horrible during that time period. I worked in the Peace Corps in Guatemala in the late 1980s and saw the death squads and effects of US propping up military dictators. I also ran into lefty “Sandalistas” vacationing in Guatemala in route to Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinistas who would lecture us shrilly about how we were working in the wrong country.
It was a weird time and Ortega in Nicaragua would do deliberately antagonistic shit like invite Castro to Nicaragua to give a speech, or travel himself to Cuba at the exact moment that Congressional votes were happening on Reagan’s Central American policy. They were gleefully poking the bear (or American Eagle) so to speak. Much of Sanders history of comments about Cuba and Nicaragua (and traveling around to other Communist countries) should be seen as lefty posturing in that context. Much the same as M4A or Green New Deal has become a leftist purity test today, regardless of how politically practical (or counter productive) it is to discuss in the context of a national election.
So when this old shit gets dragged up and Sanders doesn’t put it to rest I just have to sigh and shake my head and say, do we really have to live through all that again? It was nothing more than purity posturing back then and today it’s just tired old lefty stuff of no particular relevance to 2020 except that it is knowingly divisive and stupid to talk about in the context of a national election.
Mayor Pete was right. We don’t need an election between Trump’s 1950s white Evangelical longing for a Norman Rockwell America that never existed and Sanders 1960s Che poster lefty revolutionary America that also never really existed.
jl
I’m a Warren supporter, so hard for me to make electability argument for anyone. Sad to say but, infuriating and absurd, there is evidence that being a woman costs a point or two due to absurd sexism of the US politics at the national level. But I think her platform and energy would compensate.
I have to hope the same is true for Biden or Sanders. Every candidate is human, they all make blunders. Maybe time to quit spinning doomsday scenarios and think about what you can do to make election go our way.
Steeplejack (phone)
@evodevo:
Jon Cooper’s tweet is from this morning.
hitchhiker
Sanders and trump do share one thing: the ability to get otherwise ordinary people to feel like they’re part of something BIG. I’ve been playing with the idea that we’re witnessing one unintended consequence of the collapse of religion in the USA.
Putting the devotion of evangelicals (themselves a shrinking denomination) aside, there’s nothing in public life to replace what was once a sort of hidden organizing principle for white culture. Take away the other point of assumed, not-much-questioned authority (white dude network news anchors), add the failure of factory-based work, and you have a big fat pile of people who just flat don’t know what the hell to do with themselves or who they even are.
When Bernie quacks about “Our Revolution” he’s offering an answer to those existential questions. You’re one of us! And we’ve got work to do! The rallies are semi-religious rites for these people. On the trump side, it’s all organized around resentment. You’re not one of them! And we’re going to beat the shit out of them!
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
Looks to me like @MDB is seeking a role in the display of cute cat cake icons, rather than desiring actual conversation. IT worked for me, outa here so fast!!!
No more patience, the Pie Filter is easy to use and if I toggle someone’s remarks and they make good sense easy to unPie someone yet again. BAck and forth, it’s FUN!!!
Baud
@hitchhiker: I’ve made that analogy before, although not as thoughtfully.
schrodingers_cat
@hitchhiker: BS runs on resentment too. Always railing about the establishment and oligarchs etc. The guy has been in Congress since early 90s. He is the fucking establishment.
Ohio Mom
Cheryl Rofer @69: I have the same dark fantasy, that Bernie wins, accomplishes next to nothing, and is followed by a hard pendulum swing back to an awful Republican.
After that, my storyline gets murky — I have no idea how we get back to normal.
Kent
I’m not sure there is really a way to square Democratic attempts to reduce GOP voter suppression with attempts to close primaries.
BY FAR the GOP’s favorite method of voter suppression is to restrict voter registration. They do this by (1) making it hard to register, (2) stripping people off the voter rolls, and (3) having long waiting periods between when you register and when you become eligible to vote.
The Democratic response to these efforts is to support expansive voter registration including measures like same-day registration. Which more or less makes closed party primaries impractical. They way you close a primary is to lock down your party membership through voter registration well in advance of the primary. If anyone can walk into the polling place on election day and register for either party then effectively the primary is open.
I would much rather see expansive voter registration and efforts to expand the electorate as that will help Dems more than trying to restrict the electorate by locking down the primaries. I don’t know what the ideal solution is but I would always want to err on expanding the electorate rather than restricting it. The GOP instinct is always going to be in the other direction. Don’t play into their hands.
randy khan
@jl:
I have come to conclude that most electability arguments come down to “other candidates have weaknesses, but my candidate has this special strength.” And, as you point out, all of the candidates have weaknesses and strengths.
Sanders helps with young voters, but he pushes away people on the moderate end of the political spectrum.
Biden is great with moderates, but he’s a lousy campaigner.
Klobuchar and Buttigieg are from the Midwest and might help in swing states, but they’re also campaigning to the right and might not excite progressives.
Warren is a strong progressive, but she’s a woman and people are scared about that after Hillary lost.
Etc.
schrodingers_cat
I am seeing many SOS calls on my time line from Delhi. Mobs have surrounded the building they are chanting Jai Sri Ram. Please help.
jl
Here is a golden oldie. Obama said similar things about literacy program in Cuba, his platform included policy of normalizing relationship with Cuba when he ran against McCain. Anyone remember Obama’s Cuba policy? Some people here are spinning themselves into a frenzy.
McCain Hits Obama on Cuba Policy (11 years ago)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W7eb7tCeHI
schrodingers_cat
@Ohio Mom: Win or lose if he wins the nomination it is bad news. His purity police are tweeting guillotines. In power they will conduct Stalinist purges. Most likely they will get Orange Glow reelected.
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: I don’t ignore it, and if it helps Dems (plural, more than just Bernie) win, great.
But I wonder 1.) how sustainable/reliable it is and 2.) how much of it is based on the same sort of BothSides™ bullshit that I believed when I was young and didn’t really understand the complexities/reality of US politics.
Kent
No matter who gets elected next, no matter how centrist or lefty the next Dem is, there will still be a hard pendulum swing back to the GOP in a few more years. There is just way too much money and vested interests at stake. Look at what happened to the moderate Obama.
The only question is, what we will do with the power we have and the time we have available. The GOP understands this which is why they are so much more hard charging when they take power.
No matter who gets elected, the levers of power are most likely going to be executive rather than legislative. So it’s really going to be a question of which candidate is going to do the best job of effectively marshaling the executive branch. I doubt very much that is Sanders. Much more likely to be Warren.
Ohio Mom
hitchhiker @88: That’s an interesting theory. I think there is an argument that Obama also tapped into the human need to belong to something bigger: Yes, WE can.
Seems to me that sense of yearning naturally runs strong in young people, which would explain why so many of them are taken with Sanders.
Barbara
@randy khan: Yes, all candidates have weaknesses. My special reservation about Sanders is that I have a lot of doubts whether he/his team have the skill to refine his message and pivot to become inclusive for a wider range of voters. He and his team seem to have such a take it or leave it attitude. It shows even when they come here to disagree with us — it’s kind of a “suck it libtard” attitude except from the left.
Tom Q
It’s really been shocking the way the entire media complex has pushed Bernie is Crushing It! for the past few days, based on his having won (or half-won) two caucuses, and barely squeaking by in a primary he dominated 4 years ago. Everyone knows these three states are wildly unrepresentative of the D electorate in the main states, yet it’s been insisted the game was essentially over based on these white-people results. (I acknowledge, Sanders got a boost in national polling at the same time, but these same polls had Biden running away with it a few weeks ago, and have basically been bi-polar, with candidates — Harris, Warren, Buttigieg, Bloomberg — achieving sudden leaps and equally sudden drops.)
Obviously, if Biden doesn’t win SC, or just squeaks by, he will be deemed too weak to contend. But if he wins by double-digits — and the ’08/’16 SC contests turned into way bigger blowouts than polls suggested — I think he’ll be very close to where he was before the press started shoveling dirt on him: the clear not-Bernie mainstreamer, and the best hope for uniting the party (beyond the dead-enders, who were always Bernie or nobody, and probably didn’t vote for Obama, either, so screw ’em).
J R in WV
@MDB:
So here’s some real data for the troll, which shows that in South Carolina, where this next primary is being held, lots of people actually do like Congressman Clyburn…
District 6 election results for Mr Clyburn over the past 14 election cycles for congress from Wikipedia:
Elected in 1992.
Re-elected in 1994.
Re-elected in 1996.
Re-elected in 1998.
Re-elected in 2000.
Re-elected in 2002.
Re-elected in 2004.
Re-elected in 2006.
Re-elected in 2008.
Re-elected in 2010.
Re-elected in 2012.
Re-elected in 2014.
Now back into the land o’ pie trollface.
Betty Cracker
@hitchhiker: Mayor Pete mused along similar lines early in the primary — he talked about belonging and said people who’ve become unmoored from communities of all types are more susceptible to destructive rage, which rings true enough.
I’m not so sure the Trump-Sanders analogy works if both are supposed to be predicated on whiteness because Sanders, to his credit, has built a diverse base of support. Their overriding characteristic is youth, and young folks have got a helluva lot more to be righteously angry about than Trump’s moronic mob.
jl
@randy khan:
Thanks.
To the frenzied partisans here: There are a lot of other things going to worry about. You going to mope about the Democratic presidential nominee while Trump voter suppression knocks off your Democratic representative, or keeps your House district or state from flipping blue? Work or contribute for that.
What if coronavirus outbreak hits the US during census? Or election. Maybe volunteer for one of those, or contribute to Democratic GOTV efforts.
People need to get a grip and think about what they can do.
piratedan
I’m guessing the Optics of Jane Sanders going on Russia Today, to talk about how having Republicans being allowed to vote in Democratic primaries is not going to be a good look considering the news that dropped last week. Considering how you’re theoretically supposed to distance yourself from said Russian ties after the primary issue of Russian interference has permeated the country to the point where the President was impeached as a result of said interference.
Also too, I appreciate the passion still on display by the Harris crew, Mayor Pete’s contingent and those with Warren and Biden, why is it that we can have informative back and forth with those supporters and those proponents of the Sanders crew continually pop in with one or two hot takes that essentially boil down to, Bernie is inevitable, so just shut up and get on board.
pie filter is getting a lot more use these days
Another Scott
@Bostondreams: Our good friend Kent assured us last night that only Donnie’s political appointees should fear losing their jobs because reasons.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Barbara
@jl: We only do that everyday, but thanks for your concern.
jl
None of us can do anything about the fact that Sanders is running a tape loop of his 2016 campaign and it has been more popular than seems possible (at least to me, I didn’t expect it to work). None of us can do anything about Biden starting his campaign with a weak strategy, at least I think it was little more than a nostalgia campaign and riding on Obama. None of us can do anything about the fact that Warren might have sunk her campaign by getting bogged down in the weeds of her “I have a plan for that” approach when she should have blew off the BS GOP talking point bait about ‘howugonnapayforit’.
PJ
@jl: Obama had been elected President, he wasn’t praising Cuban literacy efforts when he was running. (And yes, Cuban literacy has gone way up in 60 years, as it has in every Latin American country, with or without a dictatorship, but it’s not something a Democratic candidate should be campaigning on in Florida.)
There are ways to talk about normalizing relations with Cuba without praising Fidel. Millions of Americans have relations in Cuba, they keep the country alive by sending billions of dollars in remittances every year (not sure how restrictions placed by Trump in 2019 have effected this), and they want their relatives to live better lives. But they sure as hell don’t want to vote for someone praising a Communist dictatorship.
jl
@Barbara: Wasn’t addressed to those who are already doing stuff. It was addressed to those here who have talked about they will be so angry or depressed that they might not do anything but go vote on election day.
I was speaking to the far gone frenzied among the commenters.
Sorry if there was a misunderstanding.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
So despicable.
jl
@PJ: Obama started talking about it during the 2008 campaign
Obama, in Miami, Calls for Engaging With Cuba
By Jeff Zeleny
May 24, 2008
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/us/politics/24campaign.html
Edit: Sure, Obama probably did it better, but Obama is a far better politician that any of the current candidates.
Ohio Mom
Schrödinger’s cat: I feel helpless and heartsick about the pogrom in Delhi. It wasn’t so long ago — in my grandparents’ childhoods — that my people were the target of pogroms. That somehow makes it all realer to me.
If it wasn’t for you, the events on India wouldn’t be on my radar at all, and it means something to me that you are making sure we know and don’t forget.
joel hanes
I’m beginning to wish that I were a low-information voter.
JPL
@Baud: lol We need your wit so don’t go pulling a raven on us.
burnspbesq
@WaterGirl:
Neither does he/she.
Tom Q
@jl: Obama brought it up as part of a campaign to end the long-running Cuban embargo.
Sanders is using it as justification for why it’s cool he’s running as a socialist.
If you don’t see the electoral difference, you may be out of your depth commenting on politics.
Cheryl Rofer
@piratedan:
I would like to congratulate everyone who has not allowed the trolls to derail the discussion.
GOOD JOB!
bemused
So Minnesota has a presidential primary election next Tues, March 3, the first time in decades. I didn’t request a mail-in ballot so will vote on Tues at my polling place. Now to give a lot of thought on which Dem candidate to vote for, excruciating.
PJ
@jl: please show me where in that article Obama was praising Castro.
Again, sane Cuban-Americans are not against normalizing relations with Cuba, it’s the props to the dictator that show them (and others) that Bernie doesn’t really care.
jl
@Tom Q: You may need to review the news on how this issue came up in this campaign.
Another Scott
Good for Joe. I hope he does well in SC. As a way of breaking the St. Bernard Is Inevitable meme, if nothing else.
In other news, WHO Covid-19 Update 36 (6 page .pdf).
United States (Data as of 2/25):
53 confirmed cases (18 new)
Likely place of exposure: China 14 (0 new)
Exposure outside of US: 36 (18 new)
Exposure inside of US: 2 (0 new)
I keep hearing in the news about “14” cases in the US. The press isn’t keeping up…
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Tom Q
@joel hanes: I had lunch the other day with someone I knew a bit in high school (many years ago). He’s a smart guy (the school has a strong rating). And he shocked me by saying he’s never voted in a presidential election. When others in the group mentioned political developments, you could tell he really didn’t have feelings about them one way or another.
My thought was, wow: I’ve finally met a low-information voter. And in part I envied him — I’m sure he’s never had trouble sleeping, the way I have on Election nights in 1994, 2000 and 2016.
Steeplejack (phone)
@piratedan:
Once again I note that the Jane Sanders RT interview is from 2016.
Ben Cisco
@WaterGirl: Something about pastries.
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: The assclown is topped with a raspberry now.
The Dangerman
@Betty Cracker:
See: NOAA, Hurricane, and Alabama.
“Don’t make the President pick up his sharpie to correct the CDC!”
Asshole.
Barbara
@jl: No problem. Sorry if I misunderstood. My great aunts were adults when women received full suffrage and they told me that they had not missed any election, however insignificant, in more than 50 years. There is no way I will ever not vote. I will step away from social media well before I would ever get to that point.
Kent
No, I said that the current purge being reported on at that time by the Washington Post and being implemented by some 23 year old white house flunky was just political appointees because those were the ones attracting Trump’s wrath for being insufficiently loyal and obsequious. And they are the ones who can be fired without cause or paperwork.
Trump is leaving wreckage everywhere in the Federal government in thousands of administrative ways and doing all manner of evil shit to drive good people out of government, but mostly not by direct firing. They do it other ways, like moving the HQ of the BLM from DC to rural Colorado hoping that a lot of top people will just resign rather than move and they can put their own people in to replace them.
I’m working at a school today that blocks twitter so I can’t see the specific twitter post you are referring to here.
geg6
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The PA primary is closed and always has been.
Ruckus
Annnd my first occupant of the bakery on mobile.
This one feels good.
Suzanne
I am listening to Clyburn’s interview on FiveThirtyEight from yesterday, in which he speaks about the endorsement (though he didn’t explicitly say who he was going to endorse). Clyburn is infuriating me. He keeps saying things like, “Americans don’t want to send their kids to college, Americans want their kids to become plumbers”, and “Americans don’t want free childcare”.
I respect his service, but this is the kind of status quo nonsense that makes me incredibly ambivalent about the Democratic Party. These are things that I want, and a longtime leader of the national party IS NOT LISTENING TO ME.
UGHHHHHH.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Another Scott:
Yeah, about that:
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Putzliter?
Ruckus
@kindness:
You can shorten it to the League of Women Voters is civilized. What happened at the debate wasn’t even close.
PJ
@Ohio Mom: Everyone, but young people particularly, want to feel that their lives matter and that what they do makes a positive difference in the world. For 40 years, young people in this country have been told to live with greatly diminished expectations compared to their parents, rack up massive debt, be afraid of getting medical treatment due to the cost, live with the fear that they or their children will be shot in school or at work, and be happy they aren’t homeless, while the wealthy get wealthier and the world gets hotter, and there’s nothing to be done about it, so stop your whining. Of course they are angry. I’m Gen X and I’ve been angry about it for 40 years. Young people in particular need hope, and Democratic politicians have to provide that, or what’s the point? Bernie is the least of the candidates in my view, but I understand why young people respond to him, because he talks about goals rather than the harsh reality of American politics. I just wish someone, like Warren, would win, someone who shares those goals but has a path to achieving them and can persuade others to join her.
Elizabelle
My New Yorker magazine arrived this morning. March 2 edition.
Cover illustration is Michael Bloomberg in top hat and tails, setting his money on fire.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodingers_cat:
Good god.
Suzanne
@PJ:
Well, Clyburn is making me completely hopeless in this interview. I get that he is a longtime operative and incredibly pragmatic. But he doesn’t seem to support anything that I think we actually need to do to make anyone’s life better in this country (college, childcare, student loan forgiveness, universal healthcare, etc etc etc). I get that these things are difficult. But this defeatist attitude is killing me.
low-tech cyclist
Since by the time the Dems regain control, we’ll have missed the window on global warming, I figure it’s pretty much now or never.
Which is why I really want Warren. She knows what needs to be done to get stuff through Congress.
Oddly enough, my (distant) second choice is Bloomberg, because he clearly cares about climate change, and isn’t likely to take it kindly if a Dem Senate majority places a higher value on an arcane Senate rule than on saving the planet.
Elizabelle
@randy khan:
Yes. Hillary lost, with over 3 million more votes than Trump.
Thanks, Bernie Bros and manic progressives, for making low information voters conclude (1) a woman cannot be elected in the US and (2) Hillary ran a bad campaign.
Weirdly, I am not hearing the “a woman cannot win” at the doors in Virginia. Voters are telling me “it’s time for a woman.”
JMG
I voted early in Mass. today. I chose Warren. If she doesn’t win in Lexington, she isn’t gonna win anywhere in the USA. We are totally her sweet spot demographic. Huge college and college plus population, and the prevailing minority (25 percent of the population) is Asian American, where she’s also strong. But we’re just one town.
PS: I think it takes some nerve to say that Clyburn isn’t offering hope because you didn’t like his radio interview. Obviously the voters of his district, who need hope more than probably 90 percent of this board, disagree.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato:
Okay, that made me laugh!
Kent
@Steeplejack (phone): This is not anything new or surprising. The White House has been making these sorts of noises since day 1. What they are really trying to do is intimidate Federal employees into shutting up and keeping their heads down. Create a culture of fear in other words.
How many civil service employees have actually been fired for political reasons during Trump? The article doesn’t say. In fact it doesn’t provide a single example of any employee actually fired for political reasons. Because that is extremely hard to do. Instead they use the term “prohibited personnel practices” which is a pretty expansive term that likely includes all manner of things short of firing, like getting reassigned away from areas of responsibility into scut work, that sort of thing. When Tillerson was running State there were stories about top people being reassigned to the basement to process Freedom of Information Act requests. I expect that is what we are talking about here.
If Democrats take power we will see the same thing in reverse as Trump political appointee loyalists attempt to “burrow” into their agencies by converting their status from political appointee to civil service. A lot of that shit happened at the end of the Bush Administration. And then when the Obama people took power they had to move some of those Bush folks who were obstructing things aside. If you are the new Dem head of the EPA and you find your upper staff is a bunch of coal and oil industry folks (recently burrowed into the civil service) who are going to obstruct or slow-walk your agenda, do you just shrug and say “oh well”. No, you are going to reassign them to some useless project and bring your own people in.
These are the games that every administration does. Trump is just ramping it up to a whole new level. But I suspect it is mostly white house lackeys trying to instill fear into the civil service which is what they do.
Brachiator
We’ve had, what, 28,000 debates? I don’t think there is much point in trying to synchronize debates and primaries. Focus should instead be on making voting easier and secure. I like early voting, even though you might have situations where a candidate actually drops out before their names can be removed from a ballot.
janesays
Or… maybe we need to rethink whether there is any good reason to have a new debate every freaking week? Seriously, what’s the point of this? It’s ridiculous. We’re not getting real insight into the candidates, it’s just the political version of professional wrestling at this point.
A
@WaterGirl: it’s all good, he doesn’t either.
Jay
@piratedan
Jim, Foolish Literalist
maybe it’s the effect of age, but I see almost the mirror image of that. Promising everything, hand-waving away political reality, sneering at “incrementalism”, treating the presidency as a tsar-like power center, discounting the legislature(s) and broad-coalitions, all but ignoring the judiciary… I see all those things as long-term poisons in the Democratic Party and our politics in general.
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: Shit. That wasn’t my intention at all!
artem1s
@hitchhiker:
maybe more important, unions. the union parades, meetings and halls were where a lot of the WWC angst was expressed. They were almost like sporting events. I’m talking Wobblies, not Jimmy Hoffa/mob boss stuff.
Betty Cracker
@PJ: 10,000 amens to all of that.
@Suzanne: Yep. Basically, all good faith policy debates and desire to govern rather than loot and oppress in the US now reside within the Democratic Party. That is not sustainable long term. I had hoped the Republican Party’s absolute lunacy would result in its destruction first so something saner might arise from the ashes to restore balance. But it’s entirely possible that clown show might continue on while the Democratic Party rips itself apart, and then we’ll REALLY be fucked…
satby
@WaterGirl: He/she (betting he) popped up ugly in the morning thread too, to troll about Buttigieg. Just a troll, no coherence required.
Subsole
@PJ: Millennial here.
All of this.
Suzanne
@JMG:
He is offering his perspective, which is that many progressive goals are unrealistic and therefore should be abandoned. Those goals are full-throatedly supported by Warren, which is why she has my support…. and the guy that Clyburn is endorsing does not.
Mandalay
@Suzanne:
I just listened to it as well. What infuriated me was that near the end of interview Clyburn all but said that Trump will win if Sanders gets the nomination. Clyburn is welcome to endorse Biden, and may loathe Sanders as much as a bunch of folks on this thread, but saying that is just downright harmful to the Democratic Party.
Folks here spewing hate for Sanders makes not a whit of difference to the Election results, but Clyburn is House Majority Whip. I hope someone has a word in his ear and tells him to STFU.
artem1s
@Tom Q:
the media is running with the ‘peaked too early’ meme. they have to have a news story to run with every week that pushes a different face onto the front page. It’s stupid and childish. They have been trying to present politics like it’s a sporting event simply to get more ad buys for decades now. Time to outlaw all TV advertising.period. The station has to give the time away in equal portions or nothing. It’s criminally irresponsible to sell Bloomberg ad time during a debate. Make the candidates go out and do town halls. Doing away with Citizen’s United won’t cut it anymore. Media is too dependent on the revenue for this to be healthy for the democratic process.
Nicole
I think Bernie’s appeal to young voters is because he talks like big structural change will be simple, and doesn’t get mired down in boring details. I remember being in my 20s and feeling the same way about big change- if people would JUST DO THINGS, things would be better. And there’s no way to grasp that that’s not how big structural change works other than getting older and seeing how these big changes come about- slowly, and with lots of fits and starts. It made me crackers in 2016, seeing the Clintons getting attacked for DADT, because I’m a Gen-Xer and I remember Bill Clinton campaigning on gay men and women serving openly in the military and running smack dab up against the very bigoted powers-that-be, and DADT being the best he could get. But if I tried talking to anyone not old enough to remember it- to listen to them, Clinton slapped it onto a military to restrict gay men and women’s freedom, rather than taking it as the best compromise he could get over a situation that was MUCH WORSE before DADT.
And I remember the Clinton administration refusing the GOP proposal on health care in the early 1990s. And at the time, when I was in my 20s, I understood and agreed with them. Because BIG CHANGE NOW NO COMPROMISE. But, had they compromised, we’d be almost 30 years further along towards universal coverage had they been willing to not act like, well, how Bernie talks today.
The patience to keep working towards things, even when it feels like they’re getting better only very slowly, if at all, are things that generally only come with age. And, for all that they have more time than the olds, young people tend to be more impatient. And that’s okay; it’s where they’re supposed to be, but man, it’s aggravating when an elderly candidate comes on the scene who doesn’t appear to have emotionally matured past his 20s.
But I think that’s the appeal; his brain still perceives the world, at age 78, like theirs does now.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Like climate change, the “harsh reality of American politics” exists whether you talk about it or not.
Brachiator
@Elizabelle:
RE: Warren is a strong progressive, but she’s a woman and people are scared about that after Hillary lost.
Yep. This is a bunch of nonsense. And many polls have suggested that every Democratic Party candidate can defeat Trump. Every one. That obviously means the women as well.
The hand wringing over who is “electable” is a punditry and blogosphere con game. Best not to play.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: Agreed. Clyburn is someone with whom I don’t especially share a lot ideologically. I’m happy to have a debate/”national conversation” with people who share his outlook. It can be reasonable and productive and compromise can be found. But it kills me that we’re effectively the same party, because anything further left of tinkering around the edges with the current system, which is leaving my generation a smoking crater, is instantly off the table when Party leadership is dominated by people with this mindset.
Chyron HR
@Jay:
So what? The Revolution continues to deny Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election to this day.
LightCastle
@hitchhiker:
I think you are right to some degree, but you shouldn’t underestimate who much resentment is also part of Bernie’s pitch. He doesn’t do a lot of “we are going to build great things in this revolution” in his revival meetings. He focuses mainly on “them” and how “they” are holding all this good stuff back.
A good revival/rally needs both, and the mix is variable, but my impression has always been that a lot of people are driven more by the part where they “win” by “beating the other guy” than any other part.
It’s where the “bend the knee” stuff comes from and where the Bernie –> Trump voters come from. The point is that you’re winning and they are crying. Having ostensibly progressive goals means it is easier to look at yourself in a mirror, but the real fuel is that you beat them.
There is a section of the base that is for Bernie because they want the good things in general; there is a part that wants the good things and is really mad that people keep throwing up barriers; and there is a final group that is really mad that people keep throwing up barriers and do not care about the good things as long as those people who told them “no” get what’s coming to them.
A lot of people voting for Bernie are in the first two groups. The “Bernie Bros” are almost exclusively the third group.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
Saw another “BERNIE” sweatshirt in my class today. I’m so depressed. WHAT DO THEY SEE IN HIM?
Chyron HR
@Mandalay:
Seems like you should wait until November 3 to get the vapors about predictions like that.
Subsole
@hitchhiker: Would add that a lot of my generation seems susceptible to Sanders b/c we tried to prop those failing institutions up with rampant consumerism, which has started failing as well.
Kind of how the czars used the church, and the church used the czars, until both got swept away in the backlash.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Status. There’s a club, and we’re not in it.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: What’s wrong? I loved picturing it with a raspberry on his head.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia:
They see someone who recognizes that they are held back by economic forces out of their control and recognizes that it will take more than, say, a $2K tax credit to fix it.
The question that I think is really the more interesting one is why they think that Bernie can make the future happen when EDubs would not. EDubs is equally progressive but far more capable.
Ivan X
@hitchhiker: I think this is a very insightful comment and an idea which other candidates would do well to think about. Obama also offered a “lite” version of this (and I think let down a lot of people who were looking for direction by not formally mobilizing and motivating them the same way once elected). Hillary Clinton didn’t offer it, and of the current candidates, only Warren comes close but she’s up against Bernie.
Ivan X
@randy khan: yes.
germy
chopper
@jl:
well then maybe the guys who aren’t very good at saying that sort of shit should cut it the fuck out.
Kent
For those of you dinging on Clyburn, what EXACTLY do you want him to say in his support for Biden?
There has been endless hand-wringing here about the Dem failure to tear down Sanders so here you have someone tearing down Sanders and suddenly it’s all vapors? We can’t attack Sander’s policy proposals because that will alienate the young? We can’t attack his electability because we don’t want to go there and he might be the nominee?
What is the attack on Sanders if not his policies or electability?
Would you rather Clyburn just talk positive about Biden and not even mention the elephant in the room named Sanders?
I don’t get it. Now I haven’t watched the 538 interview so I’m not exactly sure what you are all responding too. But still. What is the correct line of attack on Sanders then?
LightCastle
@Ivan X:
There were a number of people I knew in Cambridge who told me Obama was “changing everything” and all my concerns about structural limitations and also that what Obama actually said was fairly technocratic and modest were just my inability to understand how powerful and monumental this all was.
It baffled me. They, of course, were massively disappointed in him in the end. Some learned the lesson to “not fall in love with politicians”. I have mostly lost touch with that crew but if I recall they were pretty solidly pro-Bernie in 2016 despite being 8 years older. (Oddly, the ones who were in start up tech culture but had moved on seemed not to be, having decided that the person actually showing up to do the work is more important. )
It has *real* appeal. The problem is that once you have broken that spell, it is very hard to see how others can fall for it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Suzanne: Bernie was in that lane before Sen. Warren, if she want’s that lane, she needs to displace him. She’s getting seen as the “I’m for that too” candidate. IMHO unfairly, but that’s the way it seems to be shaking out.
germy
Something I’ve wondered about:
Kent
@jl: Engaging with Cuba is not the same thing as praising Castro.
Mandalay
@Elizabelle:
Oh FFS. You can be a Clinton supporter and still believe (2); you don’t need Sanders & Co to realize that.
And it’s really not 2016 any more.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne:
I can’t believe my students are not intelligent and well-informed enough to look beyond promises to try to find documentation of how those promises are conceivably to be kept in the world we live in. But I guess they aren’t.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ivan X:
I see this a lot and don’t get it. What were they waiting for Obama to tell them to do? Vote? Hold hands and feel feelings that would make Joe Lieberman less of an asshole and Mark “Young Earth” Pryor less stupid? I saw Obama urging people to vote a whole lot. I remember big rallies in Ohio and Wisconsin in 2010. What I remember is a whole lot of people whining like that idiot Jon Stewart gave one of his “Medals of Reasonableness” to at the Rally About Nothing, because she said she was “exhausted by defending” Obama when he hadn’t magically fixed everything in two years.
If by some miracle Bernie cobbles together 270 electoral votes, Mitch McConnell will see to it that his presidency makes Carter’s look like the LBJ dictatorship of so many bro-gressive fantasies. And that’s without factoring in a recession that (and I am not an economist) I think is likely to hit before 2022
zhena gogolia
Someone on here (can’t remember who) said we’d be in a very different place right now, economically, with respect to the climate, and with respect to the prospects of young people, if Humphrey, Gore, and Kerry hadn’t been considered insufficiently pure and progressive by a lot of people.
ETA: Sorry I left out H. Clinton.
Mandalay
@Chyron HR:
There are many like you here, but you are the poster child. Absolutely nothing positive to say about any Democrat, but always ready with a sneer. All you do is drop your pants and shit on Sanders.
Here’s a challenge for you: tell us who your candidate is, and why they will defeat Trump. Tell us what you like about them, and their policies. Can you do that?
Kent
Three WA-state mail-in primary ballots arrive at my house on Friday.
One I’m mailing to my daughter in college who will promptly mail it back for Bernie.
The second one my wife already filled out and sent back for Klobuchar
The third one is mine and and I haven’t filled it out yet but will most likely do so for Warren.
Sigh….microcosm of the US I guess.
Jay
@Chyron HR:
Wilmer’s taking 15% to 30+% of the delegates.
In theory, that also means somewhere between 15% and 30+% of the Democratic Party votes.
Red baiting Wilmer, “rancid hating” on Wilmer and his supporters, is going to cause some to stay home in the General, rather than being “Team Broken Glass”.
There are lots of ways to use policy to show that Wilmer is a bad cantidate. There are lots of ways to use Wilmers current statements to show that Wilmer is a poor cantidate with out descending into Red Baiting. There are lots of ways to counter Wilmers toxic crew with out going scorched earth.
The Trumpistas are already attacking Bloomberg for being a “socialist billionaire”, leave the Red Baiting up to them.
Or, do you not need “all the votes” in 2020, just the pure enough ones?
Going on RT in 2016 when the Russian Ratfucking was still a secret kept from the American Public and even many of the Politicians, is not the same thing as going on RT now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@zhena gogolia: but I’m sure Michael Moore has gotten a lot smarter in those twenty years since he told us there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Bush and Gore. Why else would MSNBC have him on two or three times a week?
Nicole
They will, but right now maybe they’re just still too young? (I don’t know the median age of your students) I think of that funny quote that Mark Twain didn’t say, but gets attributed to him all the time- about when he was 14 his dad didn’t know anything, but when he turned 21 he was amazed at how much the old man had learned in 7 years. There’s no teacher like time.
(Mark Twain’s dad died when he was 11, so yeah, no, he didn’t say it.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
is there a line to do this?
hitchhiker
What’s weird is that my own millennial offspring don’t want anything to do with Bernie, but more than a few of my boomer friends are all in. There’s no room for healthy skepticism with them, which is depressing beyond the beyond. In their real lives, these folks aren’t exactly functional. One is almost 70 and lives alone in a house she’s trying to get sorted after a lifetime of hoarding. One is late 60s and has to rely on her Gen X daughter for help in housing. Another is late 50s and frankly unable to think her way out of a wet paper bag.
They all seem to think that supporting Bernie = getting cool cred with their own kids. They’re eager to join a movement! I hardly know what to say to them, because if I listen for 15 minutes it’s obvious the level of sophistication they’re bringing to the ballot is thin/gooey like an old graham cracker. Where do you even start?
Chyron HR
@Mandalay:
Oh, no, I’m mean to the self-proclaimed chosen one. :*(
My candidate is Warren, because she’s a leftist–an actual leftist, not a white nationalist promising to keep the darkies out and give health insurance to the downtrodden white man.
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Ohio Mom: I am heartsick. My parents are not talking to me. Husband kitteh has withdrawn from both his family WhatsApp groups.
I feel so utterly alone. Photographs from NorthEast Delhi look like a war zone.
I feel ashamed and helpless. Bearing witness is the least I can do. For the Sangh is desperately trying to rewrite history and white wash their sins.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@zhena gogolia: You left out Jimmy Carter too.
PJ
@LightCastle: Some people in this world are driven by an impersonal hatred. It’s not a justified anger at oppressive regimes or institutions. Instead, ironically, at its roots, this comes from something personal that has happened to them, but they deny that it has personal roots because that would be an acknowledgement of some personal weakness or vulnerability. They can’t accept that their feelings of inferiority or weakness are part of the human condition. The result is a toxic combination of narcissism and resentment – despite their obvious personal virtues, these people have been screwed over, and someone has to pay. And often their targets are among the more vulnerable in society, because they feel better – more powerful – when they demonstrate that they are stronger than these weak elements.
These people are attracted to far right and far left politics because part of the messages of the far right and left (and often a big part) is that it would be so easy for you to have all of these good things you deserve if it wasn’t for THOSE PEOPLE to whom your hatred and scorn should be directed and who will be justly punished when we gain power. Thus the Bernie Bros and MAGAts, who seem so alike except in the policies they espouse.
Jay
@Kent:
Clyburn didn’t “attack” Wilmer.
He dissed the aspirational economic goals of Wilmer’s proposals and his supporters, ( a good economic life, a good education, affordable housing, etc) as pie in the sky unobtanium.
And he didn’t do it by pointing out that Wilmer could never get it done, because he’s Wilmer, and that there were other Cantidates who probably could get it done,
He did it by inferring that economic justice is neither needed, nor wanted, or possible.
Eric NNY
@Baud: You mean we have our very own Russian troll?
How exciting for our top 10,000 blog!
zhena gogolia
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Yes, remember how the MSM laughed at him for telling us to turn down the heat and wear sweaters?
Ben Cisco
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Impressive, your snark level is.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: You’re doing well, but remember that there is only so much you can do on your own. Don’t beat yourself up over the good you are doing. The monsters want us all to quit.
Pace yourself. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Hang in there. We need you fighting for the long term, too!
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
@Kent: First of all, I don’t share the Bernie hatred here. I find him decidedly meh. I am progressive, but I also think that a good progressive would have participated in the Democratic Party to drag it leftward rather than sitting out. This is why I’m so impressed by Warren. She’s worked her ass off to actualize progressive goals even if she didn’t lead the CFPB. I don’t think the DNC needs to “STOP BERNIE!!!”. I think that the DNC needs to recognize that progressives are an important part of the coalition and provide a better alternative than Bernie. Clyburn basically said that progressives are fantasists and need to get over it. I can think of no better way to alienate people whose votes will also be important to a (FSM-willing) Democratic majority.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne:
I do not hate Sanders. I do hate Putin, who supports him. Putin does not wish our country well, so his support is frightening to me.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@zhena gogolia: …and putting soar panels on the White House.
Jay
@schrodingers_cat:
what Scott said.
Some of us are paying attention and will bear witness too.
the Conster
@Suzanne:
Neither Sanders or Warren ever get around to targeting McConnell – the guy they see every day. Why does Warren keep talking about the filibuster? Presidents have nothing to do with Senate rules. It makes me crazy. She’s too smart to be so willfully blind to the fact that BIG STRUCTURAL CHANGE won’t happen even if the Senate flips. I don’t want smoke blown up my ass.
Suzanne
@Kent: To me, the best “attack” on Sanders is that he has big ideas but no skills to achieve them. (In architecture, I deride those as “Skyhooks”.)
But that’s not what Clyburn thinks. He thinks the goals themselves are bad, and I don’t agree.
Betty Cracker
@Kent: I didn’t hear the interview, but if it’s true that Clyburn said Trump would beat Sanders, he shouldn’t have said that. By all means, say Biden has a better chance of winning big, talk up Biden’s policies, blah blah blah. But Sanders is the current front runner in our primary and his chance of being the nominee is currently not only NOT zero, it’s better than any other candidate’s at the moment. So yeah, the majority whip of the Democratic House should not be saying Trump would beat Sanders. It’s one thing for us mostly anonymous cloud-shouters around here to do it. It’s quite another for a party leader, whose words will end up in a GOP PAC-funded ad.
206inKY
@jl: Jesus Christ, Obama did not honeymoon to the USSR. He couldn’t be more different than Sanders, who is typical of the white male Marxists of his generation: high on ideological confidence, contemptuous of pragmatism. They were the inverse of Reagan’s suburban warriors, just more shouty and less sadistic.
FlyingToaster
@low-tech cyclist:
@Kent:
It’s my opinion.
I am not a supporter of same-day registration. I think it’s saner to give citizens multiple points at which you can register (RMV, social services, schools, community groups), and only require ID/proof of residency at registration time. And you can stay “unenrolled” and not vote in primaries. I was an independent (MO, IN) or unenrolled (MA) until I was 30 and figured out which party I actually agreed with enough to vote in their primary.
I’d be fine with a “must sign up with a party 30 days before primary if you want to vote in it”. I realize you see this as restrictive. I disagree. I think we have a good grounding now in the nature of ratfucking — I grew up in Missouri, after all — and this removes the ability of the other party, R or D, from ratfucking your primary.
For states without party reg, then the state party can take responsibility for the primary, and use mail-in ballots for members of the party. And thereby quit making the government do the work of the political parties, already.
Jay
@zhena gogolia:
Putin’s going for the divide and conquor game, and will support any campaign that is useful in that regard, irregardless of what those campaigns want.
He both backed and attacked BLM.
Attacking Wilmer for Putin’s “support”, ( and attacks), plays into Putin’s Game.
germy
Well said. I agree.
PJ
@the Conster: What does the President have to do with the Senate? They only have to persuade the Senate to pass the laws and approve the judges that they want. Any President who doesn’t try to persuade a Democratic majority to get rid of the filibuster is going to see their legislation fail.
Also, too, no Presidential candidate is running against Mitch McConnell. Targeting McConnell at this stage makes zero sense, except to emphasize that they think they are going to be powerless as President, which is no way to get people enthused about voting for you.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne:
The DNC has literally tied itself in knots trying to appease “progressives”, from the 2016 convention to the clusterfuck that is the 2020 debates. And they don’t “provide” candidates.
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I am so sick of being told what the “Democrats” should do.
zhena gogolia
@Jay:
It’s more serious than that, unfortunately.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@PJ:
“Captain Kelly/Speaker Gideon/Mr Harrison, do you support the nominee of your party who has pledged as president to eliminate private health insurance?”
germy
@zhena gogolia: Democratic voters or Democratic politicians?
Kent
I don’t have all the answers. But I would point out that same-day registration is the needed remedy for the sort of disenfranchisement practiced by the GOP where they strip millions of people off voting rolls by bad-faith methods like the deliberately flawed name match in FL 2000 when only people with black or Hispanic sounding names seemed to get stripped from the rolls. Or in GA 2016 when hundreds of thousands of mostly black voters got stripped off the rolls.
Yes, maybe primaries should be run under a different set of registration rules than general elections. I would, be afraid though, of having party-administered primaries. Elections are damned expensive and complicated. Plus, there are often many other candidates on primary ballots than just the presidential ones. And often they are for non-partisan positions too.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Speaking of endorsements the Beltway Press was trying to get Pelosi to veto Sanders as a nominee.
So let’s considered this; the conservatives are are asking the Representative of the city San Francisco and life time liberal to oppose Sander’s, for being to liberal.
It is amusing after the “moderates” spent months wring their hands over Warren and her plans for reform they are now facing an actual socialist who just wants to burn it all down. I am starting like the cut of Sander’s gibberish just for that. Much like the Democratic women need to dial up the Bitch, it’s sounds like it’s high time for the Democrats in general to dial up the Liberal.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: I’m really sick of Democrats who oppose every bit of social policy that’s even slightly left of center.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Steve in the ATL is missed.
I also agree. I don’t see how you can do better than Warren in the progressive space.
MisterForkbeard
@Mandalay:
I think you’re right. I really don’t want any of our elected officials (or senior party members) talking about how one of our nominees will definitely lose. Same reason I’d really prefer if Bernie knocked off his hate on the Democratic Establishment – it’s not fucking helpful.
the Conster
@PJ:
Warren keeps talking about rolling back the filibuster to get her plans passed, but presidents have nothing to do with Senate rules. I have no idea what her BIG STRUCTURAL CHANGE is to deal with a GOP Senate.
the Conster
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Dear god. NO ONE KNOWS MORE ABOUT THE COUNTRY THAN PELOSI. Sanders sat through 35 years in Congress, DOING NOTHING. Not one of those Justice Dem Berniecrats won a red seat.
Jay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Wilmerites are not Progressives.
Warrenites are.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud:
Oh my god. I can’t believe I did that. I blame you for not pointing it out until the edit time had passed.
tam1MI
@Betty Cracker: Too bad that train left the station in 2016. Bernie Sanders set the precedent of party members viciously attacking the front runner and even the duly chosen candidate of the Democratic party. He can fucking deal with it, it’s his fault it exists.
germy
I was hoping a newer generation of Democratic politicians would end that tradition, but then I saw Mayor Pete say in an interview free state college would be unfair, because wealthy people would send their kids.
As if wealthy people don’t use public libraries and elementary schools?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Suzanne: Another way to look at it, Sandars is in prime position to be the magic unicorn that everyone claims to dream of because of Both sides Do it. A large part of how Trump got in was because Trump isn’t a good Republican, now everyone is feed up with Trump because Trump isn’t a good at anything type. Sanders got that Third Way cred that the other Democrats don’t got.
Also keep in mind, a lot of Trump’s base really wanted socialism, just not from a woman because of cooties, or something… Sander’s will be safely old, white, cantankerous and male for them.
Betty Cracker
@the Conster: Her plan is to win the fucking senate and abolish the filibuster, which she’s only said about 50 million times. She’s probably not going to be the nominee, so maybe look for a new hobby.
germy
@the Conster: I thought Ms. Klobuchar in one of the debates said she passed bills with him? Maybe I misheard.
cckids
@low-tech cyclist:
I really want someone to ask him WHY, if climate change is such a priority for him, he spent so, so much getting Republican senators elected, thus ensuring McConnell would continue as leader. In what possible universe would that help climate change? (or gun control, his other main issue).
It makes me entirely suspect his actual motivation.
The Moar You Know
@Nicole: People forget. The most likely consequence of coming out in the US military before DADT was getting murdered by your squadmates. The BEST outcome was a dishonorable discharge, probably accompanied by a few beatings.
PJ
@the Conster: No Democratic President is going to get their legislation through a Republican Senate. Warren keeps getting asked about the filibuster because, unlike Sanders, she has plans on how to get her legislation passed – it is highly unlikely that Democrats will wind up with 60+ seats in the Senate, but it’s not out of the question that they get 50+. That’s why this is an issue.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Betty Cracker
@tam1MI: And the result will be the same, if that childish mindset prevails.
Chyron HR
What’s wild to me is I’ve already seen Bernie’s freaks out in the wild spouting off about how “DA STABBISHMENT” needs to get out there and start selling Democratic Socialism to the American people if they want Bernie to win. But sure, how dare that uppity negro suggest that electing Bernie might be a heavy lift?
MisterForkbeard
@germy:
Interestingly, in my town a lot of them don’t. I think this holds true in areas like South Bend, too – the local services kind of suck because they’re underfunded, so CAPITALISM! happens and overpriced schools come in. Public libraries don’t get as much use now as they did 30 years ago, either.
Still not really a good argument from Pete.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: Has she met the Democrats in the Senate? //
germy
@Betty Cracker:
I’m still hoping.
Suzanne
@germy:
Mayo Pete sucks. He’s like an 80-year-old man in a 38-year-old body.
However…. I will note that wealthy people probably do not use public libraries and elementary schools at the rate you imply. Those are definitely class-segregated spaces.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I AM LITERALLY BEING PERSECUTED! THIS IS THE WORDST WHICH HUNT SINCE THE DEEPS STATE WENT AFTER ENDORA IN SALEM!
piratedan
@Steeplejack (phone): STILL, regardless of the date, going on to a network that has been traditionally associated as an enemy of the US and is a known propaganda tool for them, and then saying what she said… strikes me as unfortunate.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
The situation in India is terrible. But there is this:
There are people who are willing to stand up, to resist, to fight back.
Some small, growing hope, perhaps.
the Conster
@PJ:
I don’t understand what a president has to do with the filibuster rules, except complain about them? None of them can do anything about the filibuster.
MisterForkbeard
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I think this (and his army of bullying overly-online supporters) are actually good points in Bernie’s favor. He’s riding the “everybody sucks” train, which is dishonest but works well for people who’ve been left behind.
His angry troll army are very similar to Trump’s, as well – both of them are confrontational, use distorted facts (if at all) and are ubiquitous fucking everywhere. It makes you think their opinions are much more popular than they really are.
Patricia Kayden
Truth
MisterForkbeard
@the Conster: A lot of what presidents promise comes down to the fact that they’ll effectively be the leader of their party and will have a lot of influence in Congress.
Warren would loudly and repeatedly tell the Senate they need to get rid of the filibuster and might help lobby waverers. That as much as she can do there.
Suzanne
@Chyron HR: He didn’t say that electing Bernie would be a heavy lift. He essentially said that progressive goals are silly, and that people should vote for Biden and get over it.
If that’s the viewpoint of the party leadership, I find that disappointing. It certainly doesn’t make me more likely to vote for Biden that I now have Clyburn’s assurance that he will absolutely do nothing to materially improve my life or that of my children.
tam1MI
@Betty Cracker: It’s now an established precedent. Bernie’s campaign is just going to have to deal with it. We can’t turn back the clock.
Baud
@MisterForkbeard:
I agree with the policy. I don’t think it’s an efficient use of valuable national TV debate time. (Goes for Pete too.) .YMMV.
Kent
White Privilege defined: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/26/charleston-church-shooter-dylann-roof-staging-hunger-strike-prison
If you read through the article, Dlyan Roof is on a hunger strike because of alleged mistreatment at the hands of prison authorities. What is this alleged mistreatment? At the end of the article we find:
Okay….
Meanwhile: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/opinion/mississippi-prison-deaths.html
germy
@Kent: Is it Roof’s fantasy to study law and use it to get himself released? I wonder why he wants to file legal papers… does he want to “prove” they arrested the wrong boy?
Kent
@Baud: Honestly, presidential elections are one part referendum on the presidential candidate and one part referendum on the party platform and objectives. Atrios reminds us of this frequently.
“You should vote Democratic BECAUSE……..”
Candidates should be able to answer that without using Trump in the sentence. People also want to know that politicians are fighting for their objectives, not giving up on them before they even start. I do give Bernie credit for understanding this.
tam1MI
Bernie has already blighted the chances of Dems in Florida. But yeah, the uppity black guy stating the plain, unvarnished truth is the REAL problem. Pull my other leg.
Citizen Alan
Pretty sure it was me. You also left off Carter, who might possibly have been able to beat Reagan in 80 if he hadn’t still been fighting off Ted Kennedy all the way to the convention.
Brachiator
@Kent:
Interesting split in candidate preference. Good luck to us all.
ETA: most likely voting for Warren in California primary.
Kent
@tam1MI: IN 2016 the Bernie folks told us that South Carolina and the other black southern primaries that Hillary dominated “didn’t really count” because those were southern states or something . Or maybe it was the 3/5ths of a vote thing. I get confused. There are so many different ways to count black votes.
I wonder what it will be this time if he loses.
Citizen Alan
@Mandalay:
cough-notaDemocrat-cough
Baud
@Kent:
I don’t know what that has to do with my comment, but I agree. I don’t see a major difference in the candidates on that point though.
Suzanne
Well, John Legend endorsed Warren.
I love him. And not just because he’s dreamy.
topclimber
@the Conster: Let’s put it to a vote at the Convention.
Kent
My kid is in college in Arkansas. Her crowd of young lefties at the fairly conservative University of Arkansas are all in for Bernie. I don’t have the energy to argue with her. At least she isn’t a Trumper like a bunch of the other young white evangelicals that she goes to church with.
My wife is a physician and is hugely skeptical of M4A because she works for Kaiser Permanente which is a wholly-integrated doctor-run HMO system, and no one can adequately explain how a system like Kaiser would operate under M4A. Kaiser has put in a tremendous amount of work to fully integrate healthcare and they don’t want to see it all tossed out and be forced to just compete in the old fee for service model with all the other providers under a single payer system. Even Warren’s detailed plans don’t explain how operations like Kaiser would work under M4A. She is also very busy and doesn’t follow politics like we do and the last time she engaged in the primary was when Klobuchar was kicking ass in the Iowa debate and New Hampshire. That is when she decided that Amy was her gal.
I’m for Warren for the same reasons as most of the other Warren supporters. I think she would be the most effective leader of the bunch and is probably the only candidate at this point who stands a chance of bridging the gaps in the party from left to center.
The Moar You Know
@germy: This is where Mayor Pete’s lack of life experience becomes a real problem. See, if you build, let’s say…schools, with the stated expectation that the wealthy will use them for free, you’ll get schools built for the wealthy, even though they’ll never actually use them. Wealthy people love free shit.
If you build schools (or any other public works) and say they’re for everyone but the wealthy, you are going to get homeless-shelter level facilities at the best. Because the wealthy will refuse to fund them.
Betty Cracker
@germy: Me too. I don’t get to vote until 3/17, but if Warren is still in it then, she has my vote.
topclimber
@PJ: I guess by similar logic no President should push to end gerrymandering except by suing in the courts. State legislators are in charge–how could the Bully Pulpit possibly affect them?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne:
You really think, based on this one interview with one member of Congress who has endorsed Biden, that a President Biden would veto progressive legislation send to his desk by Nancy Pelosi and a Majority Leader Schumer?
the Conster
@topclimber:
Put Senate filibuster rules up to a vote at the convention? In what world does that make any sense?
Suzanne
I must admit that I find it more than a bit ludicrous that Clyburn is giving his endorsement to a two-time Presidential campaign loser, but thinks it’s the people who want free college at public universities who are the ones who need to step back into reality.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: What order do we go in? Pick numbers out of a hat?
Kent
Buttigieg is extremely smart and I’m sure he knows better. What he does have is a tendency to pander to centrist independent voters as he is trying to carve out that lane. So he says stupid shit that is mostly just pandering. But his lack of experience with many of these battles over the long years doesn’t give him the insight to know how damaging that sort of meme can be.
Means testing is one of the worst impulses of the centrist wing of the Democratic party. I have one child in college and one entering college in about 18 months. The incredibly intrusive FASFA hoops you have to jump through to get any sort of consideration for financial aid these days are ridiculous in the extreme. And whole books are written on how to game the system and there is a whole industry of accountants out there helping people do the same.
Makes me want to fucking scream.
topclimber
@the Conster: In a world where you want to get all the Dem senators on board because the party thinks it a good idea.
the Conster
@Suzanne:
Community college is free in several states already. Free college before investment in quality childcare and K-12 is white privilege on steroids.
The Moar You Know
@Citizen Alan: I grant you I was only 12 at the time, but Carter wasn’t going to win that election no matter what, and that was obvious even to a 12 year old.
You know what else was obvious, even to me the kid back then? That Reagan was a morally bankrupt monster who enjoyed cruelty to those beneath him for its own sake. And his wife liked it even more.
Like a really upscale, classy version of Trump
Seen this movie before and know how it ends.
Ivan X
@Elizabelle: Barry Blitt is a genius. He also did the Obama fist bump cover. He always hits it out of the park.
the Conster
@topclimber:
The Senate’s rules have nothing to do with the DNC or the presidential candidate. I have no idea wtf you’re talking about.
Chyron HR
@Suzanne:
I must admit that I find it more than a bit ludicrous that Suzanne is sneering at a two-time Presidential campaign loser, but thinks a one-time loser is the most electable person running.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne: you’re investing an awful lot of something, I’m not quite sure what, in James Clyburn.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t think that President Biden would actively lead a progressive agenda. I think he would sign whatever crossed his desk, but the President, as the leader of the party, drives the agenda. I would like a more progressive agenda to be supported than the one that Clyburn obviously believes in. I believe that parties need to forward positive visions for the future in order to build a theory of the case for their candidates, and in order to have goals for governance. I don’t see much of a positive vision for the future from moderates and centrists. I don’t think what they’re pushing will meet the challenges in front of us.
I should note that Clyburn’s endorsement doesn’t make me less likely to vote for Biden than I already was. Honestly, Biden is an utterly mediocre choice, in my view. He would be a totally adequate president. But if the point of an endorsement is to throw support to someone, Clyburn did not convince me of that.
Elizabelle
@Ivan X: Didn’t notice the artist. But you’re right — the concept reminded me of that very fist bump cover: is the joke on Bloomberg, or on Bloomberg’s detractors?
Barry Blitt for the win.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Did you listen to the interview I am referring to? The one Clyburn gave yesterday? On this very topic?
Suzanne
@Chyron HR: I don’t support Sanders. Nor do I think he’s the most electable person running. But, you know, rock on with the binary thinking. That’s the kind of really compelling, insightful analysis we’ve come to depend on.
topclimber
@the Conster: Ok I will try again.
How do you influence our Senators to drop an institution rooted in Jim Crow and designed to magnify the anti-majoritarian bias of the Senate?
I think a platform plank is a way to do it.
I think the same for a healthcare plank that calls for universal health care within 10 years and leaves it to office holders to back their own approach to getting there. Congress critters might run away from M4A but they would have a united front on the goal and considerable less disarray then the GOP hopes for.
By the way, it looks like hostility works for you, and that’s OK. Might I also suggest thinking outside the box now and then?
Kent
@the Conster: Talking about the problem of the filibuster as part of the Democratic platform is called moving the Overton window. If it is something you want to see happen, you have to start talking about it. The GOP is much better about this sort of thing than we are. They rattle on endlessly for decades about seemingly pointless shit until suddenly it isn’t so pointless anymore
No one actually thinks that Senate rules are actually determined by party platforms. They are simply moving the conversation along to put more pressure on establishment Dem Senators who might be reluctant to change.
Suzanne
@the Conster: Um, don’t worry, Clyburn also thinks that free childcare is pie-in-the-sky non-seriousness.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Brachiator
@Kent:
My niece and nephew are college age or a little older. I never argue with them about their preferred candidate (unless they ever went nuts and became Republican). But I may ask, usually through my sister, why they like their candidate. My niece liked Bernie in 2016, and is now re-evaluating.
Ultimately, the country’s future will be in their hands, and they may have to fight for whatever is right and just if conservatives keep throwing up obstacles.
The concern makes sense. I have Kaiser here in California. Like it and would like to see it continue to flourish under a universal health care system.
I might like Biden more if he weren’t so damn old. Early on liked Harris, and thought that Yang made some interesting contributions. I actually think that anyone (except Sanders and Bloomberg) could do a good job, but am leaning toward Warren for many of the reasons you note.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne: I didn’t listen to it and I’m not going to
he’s one congressman and I’m not a single issue voter
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
He appeals to young folks because what he talks about will affect them the longest. They have lived and watched their parents live like there is not just no tomorrow but no today either and BS is mad/shouty about it. And they don’t realize how hard it is to get where he wants to go, and how little he understands how to get there. And I’d bet they think that if he’d been elected instead of trump or HRC, we’d be there now.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He’s the House Majority Whip, ergo a leader in a party of which I am a member. I would like to see my views better represented and advanced among the party leadership. The fact that he (among others) is so dismissive of progressive goals basically ensures that they’ll never be realized. But, you know, that’s so cool, I guess.
joel hanes
@Suzanne:
why they think that Bernie can make the future happen when EDubs would not
Bernie tells them that when he’s elected, it will be simple, and we won’t need any more actual politics in our politics. That’s a really attractive message to people who are not up for the slow boring of hard boards, and find compromise repellent, and are disappointed by stepwise improvements.
I was 18 years old once, and remember how that felt.
the Conster
@Suzanne:
We can’t have nice things because the white majority keeps voting GOP because they don’t want *those people* to have nice things. Maybe Clyburn has seen enough evidence of that to last several lifetimes.
joel hanes
@zhena gogolia:
Intelligence and information are often overruled by desires and emotions.
Ruckus
@Kent:
Dealing with 300+ million people, there is no great nor any perfect way to get much of anything done. You get what works for the most, while striving not to hurt the rest.
Suzanne
@joel hanes: To be fair, it really sucks to be told to sit down and follow the direction of The Adults in the Room, when those adults have messed things up so badly. Being told that tinkering around the edges is going to meet the challenges of the future… that is utterly insufficient and quite frankly damaging to the credibility of those adults.
joel hanes
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m so sorry.
Both my parents and one of my sisters were Republicans right through Nixon, Ford, GHWB, and W. It took Abu Ghraib and Schiavo and Katrina and Palin to shake that.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Because Bernie is an old white man, Elizabeth reminds them of their mom or least favorite teacher, and misogyny is an actual thing.
Suzanne
@the Conster: Agreed. But the only way to have a fighting chance of achieving progressive goals—the ones that would move us forward to a future in which Americans’ lives would be less marked by the race and class into which they were born—is to coalesce around the goal. Winning elections doesn’t mean a whole lot without an agenda.
”Americans don’t want to send their kids to college, they want their kids to become plumbers.” Yeah. That’s helpful. I certainly believe that the person who said that is a good representative of my concerns.
Another Scott
@cckids: Yeah, ex-Mayor Mike doesn’t seem to think more than one step ahead.
There’s a pretty big hole in Step 2.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
joel hanes
@Suzanne:
Well, you know ..
We all want to change the world
Another Scott
@the Conster: A successful presidential candidate has coat-tails drawing in like-minded politicians. Those like-minded politicians get things done if there are enough of them.
“Senator Smith, you were elected with President Warren to pass this, that, and the other thing. Why are you refusing to let majority rule and pass the legislation??”
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia: Would you prefer it was yelled at you by a bunch of children who want free government unicorns?
(ducks)
satby
Hallelujah, somebody understood the context of that comment and explained it better than I could.
artem1s
@Kent:
registration rules should be Federal and who is and isn’t registered shouldn’t be determined by a potentially partisan state AG. If you want to switch parties, that also can be managed at the national level. Take the fucking state politics out of registration – make the laws universal and there is no upside to voter suppression for either party. A national, automatic at age 18, voter registration system should be part of any renewal of the Voting Rights Act. Moving or missing one voting cycle should not affect whether you are registered or not, just where you vote and who and what you get to vote for. Registration should be forever and lifelong. One and done.
Kent
I’ll have to watch the Clyburn interview this evening. I can’t do it while I’m teaching class. But I would note that the life experience of someone like Clyburn is probably 70 years worth of progressive programs and government benefits post-WW2 that have mostly or entirely been captured by the white population and deliberately denied to the black population, especially in the south. Housing programs, farm programs, education, public health. They have all been weaponized by whites to enforce white supremacy in 1000 overt and covert ways.
Just getting to a place where blacks and whites are treated equally and equitably (with no new programs at all) in terms of criminal justice, employment, education, health care, housing, and so forth would be an enormous and life-changing achievement for communities of color across this country.
The only time I have actually seen him in action were the hearings last year when….was it Cohen?? was testifying to the House and I was damned impressed with him then. Especially his badass closing remarks.
Jay
@Another Scott:
Mayor Mike’s Real Agenda is not public, and it’s not Guns or Climate Change.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, it’s a rhetorical question. I know the answer. Sigh.
I do think, in general, however…. the exceedingly geriatric leadership of the Democratic Party would be well-served by listening to young people about what they want rather than telling them that what they want is not going to happen.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Is it possible that Clyburn, an African American from South Carolina, has different priorities than you do that have more to do with things like the school to prison pipeline or Black people being shot dead by the police?
different-church-lady
Hi. I hear there’s a shit show down here! [begins to read thread backwards…]
mrmoshpotato
@different-church-lady: Bwhahahha
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@different-church-lady: really? I would barely qualify this as a set-to not really a tussle, not even a fracas
Suzanne
@Kent: I agree. I began this discussion by noting that I have respect for Clyburn’s long government service. I have no doubt that he is coming from a place of pragmatism, which is reasonable. But it sucks. And honestly, I don’t have much hope for the future if this is the best that I can expect from the leadership of my own side.
Kent
The answer to the SCOTUS decision on Shelby County that repealed DOJ oversight of southern elections is to nationalize all the fucking elections. It’s not likely to happen in our lifetime, and there would actually be constitutional issues involved. But there could, least, be massively increased Federal involvement and standards that are implemented vis-a-vis Federal funding incentives.
Come up with uniform national standards for voter registration, voting technology, precinct operations, vote counting, recordkeeping, recounts, etc. etc. And then pour in $20 billion dollars or whatever the necessary amount is in the form of Federal subsidies to states and localities to make it all happen and most every jurisdiction will go along just to get the money.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: It certainly is possible. But that’s not what he said in the interview. He dismissed progressive goals as being unrealistic, and said nothing about Biden being better on issues on racial justice/equality.
debbie
I saw something flashing by on Twitter about Trump suing the FYNYT for libel in regard to Putin helping Trump in 2016. Now, I’m seeing nothing. Was this bogus?
mrmoshpotato
@debbie: Maybe someone beat Dump with the Constitution.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@debbie:
The Moar You Know
@Jay: Suspect you’re correct about that. Part of this is he really wants Trump gone, hates the fucker. Well and good.
But why does he want him gone bad enough to dump a couple of billion on the project?
All I know of Bloomberg is that he’s very inconsiderate. He was invited to speak at my sister’s graduation. That day was cold (low 40s) and quite foggy. Under those circumstances, you say “hey, this weather sucks, I’m gonna make this short”, speak for ten minutes and tell everyone to leave.
He spoke for two hours. Nothing but vague anodynes the entire time. Mayor Mike REALLY loves the sound of his own voice, I guess. I think we all had legit hypothermia by the time we left.
The only insights I left with that day was that Bloomberg was a tendentious, EXTREMELY SHORT bore with zero consideration for other people.
So again, why two billion? I have no idea, but removing Trump is not for his direct benefit; he could simply move to another country and buy citizenship. Anywhere, with his money. Probably take a week at the most.
So yeah, I think he has an ulterior goal, and I don’t know what that is. I won’t be voting for him in any case. I already didn’t like him. I do like that he could and would strip the bark off of Trump, publicly, and would humiliate him in the process (I think Dems need to get a lot meaner towards their opponents) but the stuff coming out about how he treated his female employees makes voting for him an absolute non-starter.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
As Kent said, I think the issue is that Clyburn’s priorities are different. He’s still working to get African Americans to the point where they can realistically get admitted to college, so he doesn’t see free college as a priority at this time. I read a really interesting Medium piece a few months ago about how many Black women view staying home with their kids as an impossible dream, because they’ve ALWAYS had to be working mothers. I can see why those people might be less enthused about middle-class white women’s complaints about the cost of childcare.
The people I follow on Black Twitter seem to feel that white progressives are trying to prevent them from moving forward by focusing on things like free college that are still, to this day, far more accessible to white middle-class people than to Black people.
This is a divide that needs to be talked about before it gets too ugly.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: FWIW, I agree with you. One of these days, I’ll finally write my “The Tent Is Too Damn Big” post, and it’ll be at least a 500-comment shit-show! ;-)
MisterForkbeard
@debbie: TPM has it here: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/read-trump-sues-nyt-for-defamation-alleging-bias-over-russia-op-ed
ETA: It is classic bullshit. The Trump Campaign is suing the NYT over an op-ed written BEFORE Mueller’s report, which said that the Trump campaign and Russia were both working towards Trump’s election in 2016 and likely had a quid pro quo arrangement in which Trump would give them friendlier policy in exchange for help. They’re saying that the Mueller report disproved it and since the writer was a self-described “Democrat with a vengeance” then the whole thing proves systemic bias by the NYT.
They’re just doing this so they can say the “NYT is being sued for being part of the democratic campaign”
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
There is absolutely a racial divide between white progressives and many African Americans older than 40. African Americans know damn well that benefits that are extended to “everyone” have historically been denied to them, and they’re tired of it. They want the same good public schools that white suburbanites enjoy before we start talking about how much white suburban kids are paying for college.
It may have been left unspoken, but that’s what the objection to the “progressive” agenda is. African Americans don’t see why they should support an agenda that won’t help them.
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: brouhaha…. balderdash… ballyhoo…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne:
that’s a punch in the gut
topclimber
@Betty Cracker: How about a “Let’s all STFU until Super Tuesday because we are all too busy working our butts off for our preferred candidates” post, Betty?
WaterGirl
@topclimber: That would be the Playing to Win thread, it’s a few posts down.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: I would feel more confident that this was an issue of priorities and not a true ideological difference if many of those progressive goals that Clyburn derided weren’t going to be most beneficial to people of color. I know I don’t need to tell you the statistics about black maternal mortality due to worse access to healthcare, how student loans fall most heavily not on people like me but on primarily minority borrowers who went to for-profit institutions, how there is a higher percentage of black women in college right now than anyone else. Honestly, Sanders is growing his support among people of color. I don’t think it’s great for Dem leadership to dismiss those concerns as white people stuff.
Chris Johnson
@Suzanne: I completely agree, Suzanne, though I’m a lot older than you I think (over 50). That’s what I see as well, and there are any number of problems that CANNOT be coped with in that ‘we can’t have nice things, deal with it’ way.
Climate change will WRECK us and the globe we’re on. We’ve only begun to see the true intensity of it, and it exacerbates a lot of migration/racism problems. It will get to where people CAN NOT stay where they are, and all hell will break loose compared to where we’re at.
Pandemics will WRECK us. I am only one of many people who absolutely cannot just blithely go use medical services even faced with a pandemic. The cost of ‘responsibly’ checking up on stuff would ruin me. When you consider a population who are all in the same boat with pandemics coming on, we are the worst case scenario. Coronavirus could be the breaking point for maintaining our for-profit, intensely profitable health care system, and the example that shows how catastrophically wrong we are.
These things are not subtle.
Our desperation, likewise, is not subtle.
Sucks that Bernie Sanders is doing so well, but he is also one of two people who are really taking these problems seriously, and who are believable about them.
Betty Cracker
@topclimber: WaterGirl covers those!
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: I agree with you. But it’s worth noting that the same age gap exists in the African-American community as in the white community w/r/t progressivism. The over-40 set in both cohorts is significantly less progressive than the under-40 set. And Clyburn is about 8,000 years old. So that’s likely informing his viewpoint.
What I think is also really interesting is the large number of POC I know who are supporting Warren.
Sigh. Warren is the best choice.
tybee
@Suzanne:
i agree
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Yes, many of the issues that white progressives talk about affect Black people, but what assurance is there that Black people’s issues will be put at the forefront? How will Medicare For All get rid of the medical racism that’s killing Black mothers? How will free college fix majority-minority high schools that don’t give kids the education they need to get into college?
Historically, Black Americans have NOT equally benefited from programs that allegedly benefited everyone. I think people like Clyburn want to see the receipts on how the programs will be designed to make sure that they benefit rather than the usual reassurances that the programs are for “everyone.” American history tells us over and over again that “everyone” really means “white people” and everyone else gets the scraps.
I far prefer Warren to Sanders because she’s actually put some thought into how she would structure her programs to try and make them equitable rather than assuming that what’s good for middle-class white people is good for everyone. I really can’t blame Clyburn for being skeptical that most progressives are putting in the same work.
geg6
@Kent:
The FAFSA is not all that intrusive and there is no way to game it. At some schools, you can game the financial aid office for institutional funds but no one games the FAFSA. Or gets away with it if they try. Most of it comes directly from the IRS. And the rest of it can be verified at any time. If you can’t verify it with acceptable documentation, you don’t get the federal aid. Period. This is my area of expertise and you couldn’t be more wrong here.
Mohagan
@WaterGirl: I love the cat cake but don’t know what it is supposed to indicate, if anything.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: M4A will not cure racism. But it will allow black women to get to the OBGYN and have more healthy babies. And free university and medical school will not fix crappy public K-12s, but it will make it possible for more young POC to become doctors and teachers and to provide stable lives for their families. Paid family leave will not fix racism, but it will keep poor women, who are disproportionately POC, from having to choice between caring for themselves and their kids, or paying rent.
This is the hard part of being in coalition.
WaterGirl
@Mohagan:
If you have never used the pie filter, you might not know that CatCake is one of the images that comes up for people you have pied.
When I post CatCake in a thread, that’s typically my attempt at a happy way to say “don’t engage with the trolls”. If I use CatCake in a reply to someone in a thread, it’s because I think that person is here to stir the shit and not to engage in serious conversation.
edit: Unless someone mentions that they love CatCake and I post her picture in a thread with I ?CatCake. If I do that, it’s just catcake love. :-)
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
From my place at the elderly age of 50, I will say that younger people of all races and ethnicities like to hear that there are quick and easy solutions to our problems that don’t happen because (X) is standing in the way, with (X) almost always a Democrat, for some reason.
Oddly, we never hear what the true (X) is: racism and misogyny. We only hear that this party or that politician is standing in the way. I can’t even tell you how many goddamned times I’ve heard morons claiming that Obama personally killed the public option in PPACA when that never fucking happened. But PPACA is a failure because Obama was a failure and we can’t even fucking discuss how John Fucking Roberts kneecapped PPACA because then we’re not blaming Obama enough for our current situation. Trump is slowly strangling PPACA, but we can’t talk about that either, because then we’re not talking about how the Democrats failed us.
So, yeah, I get a little grumpy when every failure of the past 12 years is laid at the feet of Democrats like Clyburn while the Republicans get off scott-free. I suspect that Clyburn would be a lot less cynical if he hadn’t seen this game of “Blame the Democrats” play out over and over and over again.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: I remember when you were a young whippersnapper!
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne:
Enjoy your third and fourth Trump terms. I’m sure they will be great for the younger generation, as long as they’re rich and white.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
I will pre-warn you about reading the story I’m going to link to because it may be disturbing to you as a (relatively) new mother. Here in Los Angeles, Cedars-Sinai, one of the top hospitals, is being sued because they let a woman bleed out after her c-section and said that her health “was not a priority.”
She was Black. She didn’t have trouble getting prenatal care. She died because the hospital ignored and neglected her after performing major abdominal surgery on her.
Medicare For All would have done NOTHING to save her, because the problem wasn’t getting care. It was getting care from people who didn’t care enough about her to check on her condition after surgery.
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/man-sues-california-hospital-after-wife-dies-during-childbirth-tmw/
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
I know! And now I’m a old woman. ?
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: I am responding to Clyburn’s interview with Galen Druke from FiveThirtyEight yesterday about his Biden endorsement. No one blamed Clyburn for anything. He made a number of statements in the interview strongly implying that progressive goals were fantasy. No one blamed him for any failures.
I do find this incredibly disappointing from senior party leadership.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @MisterForkbeard:
Thanks. I’d assumed it was the reporting last week about Russia helping Trump and “helping” Sanders. Maybe there will be a flurry of lawsuits. Does anyone think there’s a court in this country brave enough to label these as frivolous?
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: Yes, I’m sure nominating Joe Biden, as Clyburn recommends, is the sure path to winning the Presidency. Oh. Wait.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne:
There is no sure path, but an experienced former Vice President with tons of foreign policy experience and deep connections in Congress (who was instrumental in passing the ACA), with a wise vice-presidential pick, stands a far better chance than a person with no accomplishments, an arrogant and unyielding character, a terrible lack of judgment about how popular Fidel Castro is to the general voting public, numerous skeletons in his closet that haven’t yet been revealed to us but certainly will be, and whom down-ticket candidates are already having to distance themselves from.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne:
and just so we’re clear: That’s it? Not just Clyburn and his entire career, but the whole of the leadership of the Democratic Party are worthy of defenestration because of this one interview?
your obsession with the New Neoliberal Voldemort would be easier to understand if you had some quotes
japa21
One of the things that really irks me is when people say younger people are more progressive than older people. I’m 73 and there are several people here who are older than I am. I think all would rightfully claim the label of progressive. I know a whole bunch of people who are young (20-30) who are conservative. IOW, all age groups have all types.
The biggest difference I see between the two groups (and this is a generality and definitely not all inclusive) is that the younger group tends to think what they want should happen now and, in their opinion, there is no reason why it can’t happen now. The older group tends to realize that, although it would really be nice if it could happen now, that isn’t the way the world works.
Ultimately, the end goals of both groups are the same but the time frames are different. In reality, sometimes the older group may try to go too slowly because they have been burned in the past (specially true for people like Clyburn) and the younguns want to move way too fast.
Much as I am surprised by my thinking on this, AOC may actually represent the middle road.
Kent
Let’s do a quick google search shall we?
https://www.google.com/search?q=gaming+the+fafsa
Yes, once you are sitting around the kitchen table filling out the FAFSA it is too late to actually game it. But many wealthy people go to extraordinary measures to manipulate income and funding sources to game the FAFSA. One obvious strategy is strategically timing the use of parent and grandparent 529 plans. For wealthy people who’s income sources are through complicated trusts, investments, and business ownership there are many many ways to strategically organize your finances to maximize financial aid. But yes, for the average middle class professional with an ordinary W2 salary that gets reported to the IRS there is little to be done but just fill out the FAFSA and make the best of it.
Of course my larger point is that none of that would be necessary, at least for public universities, if they were simply affordable to all like they were in say the 1960s. Means-testing actually means MEANS TESTING which is always going to be an intrusive and complicated process, especially at higher income levels, and open to all kinds of manipulation. There is usually no good reason to do it other than the perception that the wealthy are getting something that they don’t deserve. We need to just stop it.
debbie
@Suzanne:
I think they can be called fantasies because there is no way those goals will ever be implemented. Does anyone honestly think the GOP will roll over and die if BS is elected president? If any Dem is elected president? Even if we won majorities in the Senate, held the House, and the assholes on the SC abdicated, the remaining Rethugs would just pull what they did in Oregon: Run and hide so there wouldn’t be enough bodies to vote.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: And here’s some information from the National Partnership for Women and Families:
“Pervasive coverage disparities remain for women of color, despite significant health insurance gains since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (see Table 1).
Nearly 14 percent of Black women are uninsured, compared to eight percent of white women.
Women of color who are of reproductive age (15-44) face the biggest disparities in coverage. Insurance coverage for women who are of reproductive age is especially critical, because women need access to preventive health care, such as birth control, to maintain their health and choose when and whether to become a parent. Pregnant women who lack coverage often delay or forgo prenatal care in the first trimester, and inadequate prenatal care is associated with higher rates of infant and maternal mortality.”
No, M4A will not fix racism in medical practice, which is shameful. But it will save black lives.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
I’m saying that Clyburn is understandably skeptical about the progressive agenda based on his life experience and American history. I don’t entirely agree with him, but I can understand why he’s skeptical. He supported PPACA, so I don’t think he’s unreasonable, but he will need to be persuaded, not bullied.
Suzanne
Well, I suggested, on a thread about Clyburn’s endorsement of Biden, that you listen to the interview Clyburn gave about his endorsement of Biden. Here’s a link so you can listen to it. Although you already refused to listen to it. I already provided some quotes above, including his whole, “Americans don’t want to send their kids to college” statement. But okay.
I’m not “obsessed”. I am disappointed in the lack of vision Clyburn evinces in this interview. I am disappointed that the senior leadership of a party that I proudly belong to, give money to, and spend a lot of time volunteering for doesn’t want to support the same legislative goals that I support.
But way to go displaying the same sort of elementary all-bad-no-good kind of analysis that we depend on.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
When an upper-class Black woman at a top hospital is the victim of fatal racist medical neglect, color me skeptical that merely improving access to medical care will solve the problem of maternal mortality for Black women.
As I said above, Warren has an actual plan to address maternal mortality above and beyond her M4A plan. She knows that access and mortality are different issues that have to be addressed separately because just getting access to medical care doesn’t mean it will be good or non-racist medical care.
These are the reasons why many African Americans are wary of white progressives — what good does more access to prenatal care do if Black and brown women then die from preventable causes due to racist medical neglect?
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: I think nominating Biden is throwing this election in the garbage and nominating Sanders is only slightly better.
But I think that the Democratic Party should do some actual thought leadership here, and support progressive goals, and go out and convince people why those goals are worth supporting. I don’t think it’s a good stance for leadership of the ostensible center-left party to instantly flush away any leftist social policy. Not to mention to tell the supporters of the guy who is currently in the lead that you don’t care about their agenda. I mean, if I was trying to lose an election, this is how I would do it.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Let me turn that question around on you: do you support Clyburn’s legislative goals? If you look at his 10|20|30 Amendment or his A Better Deal, are his overall legislative goals really that much different than yours?
He is focused on poverty, specifically rural poverty. You are focused on the middle class. Do we really need to say that his goals are bad and yours are good?
Chyron HR
Isn’t it weird how we keep getting people who declare at the start of the thread that they’re supporters of one of the non-Bernie candidates, and yet 200 posts later they’re foaming at the mouth about some alleged slight to the Chosen One?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne:
Yeah, I’m the one who devoted 157 posts to obsessively complaining about one interview from a guy whose career I know pretty much nothing about. I sure brought all the negative today.
Archon
@Suzanne:
I would feel much better about throwing incrementalism aside and going with Bernie Sanders radical changes if the right-wing was buried and it was essentially an argument between left-center incrementalism and leftist policy goals.
But that’s not how it is. The right wing is aminated, angry with a disturbingly large mount of adherents in states that matter for the electoral college. And they got radical “solutions” to todays problems as well.
Asking people to choose between the growing authoritarianism of the right vs the “revolution of the left” is extremely dangerous and it might not go the way we think, especially when considering for all the problems of today this ain’t 1932, shit we don’t even have 1980 problems.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: When an upper-class Black woman at a top hospital is the victim of fatal racist medical neglect, color me skeptical that merely improving access to medical care will solve the problem of maternal mortality for Black women.
Access to health care will not solve this issue in isolation. But it is a vital part of the solution, possibly the largest single component of the solution. Another part of this solution is having more black doctors, which is a goal that free college and medical school woulf advance.
Mnemosyne
Anyway, after poking this hornets’ nest repeatedly, I need to go do some actual work at the job that pays me. See all y’all jackals later.
zhena gogolia
@Archon:
Absolutely. We are not faced with a choice between progressive policies and centrist policies. We are faced with a choice between Nazism/Putinism and . . . something else, whatever we can get, by clawing our way to it.
Yutsano
So…Tbogg?
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
I am skeptical that improving access to healthcare is the primary solution for medical racism. I think it could, at least temporarily, make the problem worse since you would have an overall larger number of people being mistreated or neglected. YMMV. But I have to go do some actual work now.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: I do support most of his legislative goals, including the ones you named. I should also note that healthcare in rural areas is at crisis level (this is tangential to my job, so I am always reading about these issues)…. and one of the biggest factors in this crisis is that there are not enough doctors willing to work in rural areas, because medical school costs so much that they can’t afford to work in rural areas. Which is yet another reason I support free college education.
I am a progressive, in large part because I believe that progressive policy will be the best thing that government can do for the working and lower classes. I am more than happy to raise taxes on myself. In fact, I frequently do vote to raise taxes on myself. I don’t think it’s fair to say that I’m focused on the interests of the middle class primarily. But I am focused on turning the lower and working class into the middle class.
That will not happen if poor people can’t go to college, or get healthcare, or if they’re spending all their money on childcare.
Suzanne
I mean, I think it’s weird how commenters on a blog that is ostensibly about center-left political action are all defending some status quo nonsense that is essentially in opposition to everything we said we wanted for the last ten years or so. But that’s just me.
WaterGirl
I was just reading Cole’s twitter feed on the right, and he said there is “about to be some condescending shit coming from a certain campaign”.
My first thought is that of course some of the Bernie boys are not going to be able to resist trashing Jim Clyburn. How is that going to play with the supposedly 30% of the black vote that supposedly supports Bernie Sanders?
Suzanne
I don’t really disagree with you. But I also don’t think that running a middle-of-the-road candidate like Biden will successfully activate the Obama coalition, or any other winning coalition. I think we have to somehow thread the needle, and I think Warren has the best chance of that. But an essential part of bringing everyone together is not telling Sanders supporters that they’re living in fantasy land.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne:
Well, that’s incredibly dishonest but if it gives you a tingly feeling in your self-righteousness, go for it.
neldob
@schrodingers_cat: I can only write my representatives and the NYT, which I will do. Also NPR. I am so sorry.
jk
The 2020 Democratic Primary campaign will be remembered as the White Male Privilege campaign.
Warren and Klobuchar have consistently performed better than Sanders and Biden in the presidential debates and their stump speeches are better and yet their campaigns are on the verge of collapse whereas Sanders is cruising along and if Biden wins in South Carolina he’s right back in this race.
As much as every commenter to this blog loves to trash the NY Times, their editorial board was correct in concluding that Warren and Klobuchar are clearly the 2 best candidates in this field.
No female presidential candidate with an obnoxious, crotchety get off my lawn personality comparable to Biden and Sanders would be celebrated or tolerated by the pundit class. Biden and Sanders both suck. Vote for Warren or Klobuchar and send Biden and Sanders into the trash receptacle of history where they belong.
VFX Lurker
“It’s very difficult convincing the young of anything. They’re born knowing so much.” — Frank Herbert, God-Emperor of Dune
;^)
Emma from FL
@Suzanne: One person. It took ONE PERSON MAKING ONE COMMENT to drive you to despair. Deep breaths.
Suzanne
Dude, this entire thread needs an OK BOOMER.
“Why are these young people so into Sanders and progressive governance? Why don’t they listen to their elders? Why won’t they support who we tell them to?” Maybe because centrist governance has left them a smoking crater where a future used to be?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@jk: If I were picking a president from the current field, Warren would be my first choice, Klobuchar probably my second, and as much as I viscerally hate him, Bernie would not be my last choice, and I don’t know what I would do with Biden (how far does this fantasy extend? do I get to pick Veeps and compose the Senate?). But they were both already going to have to fight misogyny, and Klobuchar got stuck in the gate, while Warren has made some really bad political choices, mostly involving trying to be Bernie 2.0– I gather she was running ads allying herself with Obama in NV last week, which is good, but it took her a year to figure out that (outside of twitter) people like Obama better than Bernie?
Ksmiami
@different-church-lady: So Betty’s comment got you too?!!
Suzanne
@Emma from FL: To be fair, that “one person” is senior leadership of this party. A party that I have belonged to since literally the day I turned 18, a party whose meetings I attend, that I donate funds to, and that I volunteer for. I canvassed in the last election for Clinton in triple-digit weather for eight weekends in a row. I understand pragmatism.
But if the Dems ever want to win an election again, they need to not treat the left flank as meaningless. Bernie Sanders is winning right now, and if the party leadership was smart, they’d reach out to his voters—the vast majority of whom are not “bros”. Instead, they basically told them to go away. Well, that is a surefire recipe for losing. So, yeah, I’m upset.
Ksmiami
@zhena gogolia: thank you. Sanders is complete poison
Kent
I’m a Warren supporter and Klobuchar is my #2 for reasons unrelated to gender. 78 is too ridiculously old for a candidate when we want to hold the White House for 8 years, and 38 is too young and inexperienced. That only leaves female candidates.
That said, I do honestly think the only path to seeing a female in the Oval Office is through the Vice Presidency. I think the first female VP this country elects is likely to be the first female president. And because of all the misogyny, we aren’t likely to skip that step.
Archon
@Suzanne:
I’m trying to imagine the multiple black swan events that not only get Sanders elected, but elected in wide enough margins where his platform is implemented and I can’t.
All I’m worried about is Trump being removed from office though so if Bernie convinces me he is most likely to win, I’ll happily support him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne:
Jesus fucking christ
The entire nominating process was turned over to the demands and foot-stomping of the Sanders campaign, you take one fucking interview and blow it up into the Party telling Sanders voters “to go away”
You’re… not processing facts well. (That’s much nicer than what I originally typed)
topclimber
@Betty Cracker: Nice dodge. All hands on deck!
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You don’t get it, do you? Sanders is winning right now. I don’t care about his campaign. I’m talking about the people who are turning out to vote for him. At this point, more people have turned out to vote for Sanders than anyone else. He is an attractive candidate to those people specifically because is supports progressive governance. His voters will be an important part of a winning coalition, and as such, it is not helpful for someone who is a leader in the party to tell the progressives that their agenda is not going to happen.
Literally, an endorsement is a sales pitch. Clyburn’s sales pitch is “those progressive ideas are not happening, choose this other candidate I support who will not give you what you want”. That is absolutely how to lose an election….especially because, at least right now, Sanders is winning this nomination.
Speaking of not processing facts well… this entire thread–hell, this entire blog for the last few months–has been very little than older people griping about Sanders and how the darn young folk are silly/confused/deluded for supporting him. I have news for you: we aren’t winning without them. Rather than dismissing them and their policy concerns, it would be better for party leadership to support someone like Warren, who could potentially keep the progressive and the more moderate sides of the coalition together.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne: because I do t want to bother with a drive by: you’re Suzanne the architect once from AZ?
Elizabelle
@Suzanne:
it would be better for party leadership to support someone like Warren, who could potentially keep the progressive and the more moderate sides of the coalition together.
Agreed!
Suzanne, a lot of us remember what our votes for John Anderson in 1980 (guilty!) did in ushering in the Reagan era. And, of course, Carter was weakened by Teddy Kennedy challenging him from his left flank.
Reagan was one thing, Trump is an existential threat. There is no do over if we don’t eject him this November.
I know you have a teen in your home, and you may be thinking protectively of how your child is feeling the Bern. (That’s the case for several parents here on the blog.)
I don’t think anyone wants to dismiss young voters. But they do not turn out in sufficient numbers, and they and nonvoters are hardly a substitute for discouraged actual Democrats, who have worked for this party for years and years.
It’s tragic the midwest “moderates” and two gazillionaires were in there, and remain in for so long. It’s a missed opportunity that Warren has so far not gotten more traction.
This is the worst primary season I remember since the 80s.
It is truly turning me off politics, because you have to swim through such garbage now — the 24/7 cable cycle, all the dreadful pundits, the constant lies on social media, the gotchas.
It does not have to be this ugly.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne: Here’s what I get: Your reaction to one interview was so over the top it was kind of embarrassing to watch, and the way you used it to tar first him, then the Democratic leadership, then anyone here who disagrees with you, was an asshole move. More a series of asshole moves, I suppose. I’m not saying you’re an asshole, just that you’ve been acting in this thread the way an asshole would.
True, he has won a couple of narrow pluralities in smallish states. His earth-shaking victory in NV represented, I believe, about 7% of the votes a candidate would need to win that state.
This really pissed me off. Don’t fucking tell me what I’ve wanted for ten years. I have never supported BernieCare, because I think it’s bad politics. I’m ambivalent about “free college” (which I suspect is what this is really about, because it affects you personally). for the same reason. As matters of policy, that’s another discussion, one we don’t have the luxury of right now. And non of the Dems’ plans represent the “status quo”. So, again, fuck that smarmy, self-serving, and above all dishonest generalization. I’m not saying fuck you, I’m just saying fuck what you posted.
Again, something only an asshole would use to tag such a dishonest and antagonistic post. So fuck that tag.
here we simply disagree on approaching politics, I think it’s better to be honest about what is achievable and what isn’t, especially with the young voters you somewhat cringe-inducingly (aren’t you comfortably north of forty?) presume to speak for (which, maybe, more on later), than to overpromise and dumb down the political process. How do we draw them back after Mitch McConnell spends four years laughing at Bernie’s railings and Christie/Haley or some other monstrosity is elected in 2024?
Maybe, as I said above she’s my first choice as president, and I still may vote for her, but she’s done some dumb things in her campaign so far, and she seems locked into the idea that unpopular ideas will become popular if they’re Big! and Bold! I wish we had a time machine and we could go back to this time last year and she could figure out a health care stance before she declared, and someone could explain to her that the only Democrat to win two terms with majority popular vote since FDR might actually know a thing or two about campaigns and politics.
I hope you’re right that there is a “winning coalition” for Sanders. I wish there were another way to run that scenario that didn’t end in a second trump term. But I’m skeptical. I don’t think you’d seriously argue that nominating Sanders doesn’t take Florida off the map. North Carolina for Bernie? I wouldn’t bet on it. AZ? I’ll defer to your presence there, but I doubt it. So we’re back to the big three, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. We have no wiggle room. We have to run that small, rickety table. And that’s assuming ME-2 (hell, all of Maine) and New Hampshire stay blue.
So, I hope you optimists, even if you are pretty nasty in your optimism, are right.
Left of Center
@jl: This is good stuff and words of wisdom.
Suzy
@ziggy: I totally agree. I much prefer town halls too. Debates are more about theater. Who is going to have “a moment” ? Who is going to punch who?
schrodingers_cat
@neldob: Thanks. Every little bit helps.