Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Republicans in disarray!

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

The lights are all blinking red.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Credit Where Due: Sen. Sanders Is Doing His Best Work

Credit Where Due: Sen. Sanders Is Doing His Best Work

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Yet another reason to be happy Joe Biden is President: There is not another 2020 Democratic candidate who could’ve gotten as much good out of Bernie Sanders. Even in 2020, it was noted that Biden was one of the few — if not the only — legislator that actually treated Sanders as a friend, and that gods-given level of tolerance has paid off for all of us:

… Not that I was expecting a softer, sweeter Sanders just because of the holiday. Or even because he is 81 years old and has been a politician for much longer than I’ve been alive. This date would have no frills. We drank ice water. We ordered right away (him: pork noodle soup; me: dumplings). He wasn’t in the mood for chitchat. “Are we talking about my book?” he replied, when I asked if the flying objects that had been shot down over the United States in the past few days were aliens. (The eventual answer was deadpan: “Don’t you think if people from another universe were gonna come to the United States, they could do a little bit better?”) When a young woman rushed into the back room where we were sitting to ask for a photo, he kindly but bluntly told her to take it quickly. “You’re Bernie Sanders. Are you serious?!” she kept repeating. He was.

His book, It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, out next week, is a riff on themes from his presidential runs in 2016 and 2020: America is an oligopoly, politicians are complicit, and the media is biased. Not a lot is new, but this time Sanders has defined an even sicker system he calls Über-capitalism. The oligarchs are greedier and acting with near-total impunity. As he put it to me, “Every goddamn thing is money, money. And lies and lies. And corruption and corruption and corruption.” He talked in numbers and facts, a relentless drumbeat of injustices from which it was hard to steer him away: Did I know BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street control $20 trillion worth of assets? Was I aware that the weekly wage for many American workers, adjusted for inflation, is actually lower than it was 50 years ago?

“No one says to me, ‘Bernie, what do you think about three people owning more wealth than the bottom half of American society?’” he complained. “Isn’t that because we already know what you think?” I asked. “It’s not just me!” he shot back. “They don’t ask anybody!” When our dinner arrived, it was served by the owner of Young Chow and her teenage daughter, who was breathing heavily, having jumped in her car, driven all the way from McLean, and run into the restaurant to serve Sanders his soup.

Sanders may remain a dyspeptic outsider in disposition, but he is more powerfully entrenched than he has ever been, having recently been appointed chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which gives him a perch to go after some of his favorite targets: Big Pharma executives and insurance companies, union-busting bosses like Howard Schultz of Starbucks, predatory for-profit colleges, railroad companies refusing to provide adequate sick leave. I told Sanders I read a Politico story that was basically a bunch of lobbyists saying they are afraid to work with him. “Good,” he said. “They should be.”

Despite how angry he is, Sanders seems to be finally enjoying himself. Maybe it’s because he can vent his spleen without being called insane or ridiculous or a communist by members of his own party. After the president’s State of the Union, in which he called for a billionaire tax, The Wall Street Journal declared, “Joe Biden Is Bernie Sanders.” The senator has undeniably shaped the agenda of the very centrists who wrested the Democratic nomination from him on Super Tuesday 2020 more than they probably care to admit. He is proud of making big government great again and helping Biden aspire to an FDR-size presidency, no matter how far he has fallen short. “If, five years ago, somebody said, ‘We’re gonna spend $1.9 trillion on the needs of the working class of this country,’ people would’ve said, ‘You’re crazy,’” Sanders said of the American Rescue Act, which he helped draft as chair of the Senate Budget Committee in 2021. “Well, no one said it this time. Biden was there. It was very popular.”…

So did Biden get pushed to the left by progressives, or did he subsume them? If there’s still so much capitalism to be angry about, so much left to do, why has no challenger, Sanders included, stepped up to take on Biden in 2024? And for all the disappointments of his presidency from the left’s perspective, what is the need for revolutionary fervor if Democrats in Congress have proved themselves capable of passing not only the Rescue Act, but an infrastructure bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, and other major legislation? “There is a general consensus out there that Biden is by no means the kind of progressive that we would like to see,” Sanders agreed. “But on the other hand, he’s better than people anticipated.” He got prickly when I pushed him on the relative docility of Biden’s left flank. “You’re getting off the subject of the book,” he chastised. “You’re asking me about my political future, why I’m not running against Biden. Well, I am not the only person in the world.”…

Reader Interactions

241Comments

  3. 3.

    Baud

    He got prickly when I pushed him on the relative docility of Biden’s left flank.

    There’s something deeply conservative about the idea that working in solidarity with others is an act of weakness. I don’t understand why it’s so popular among some people who aren’t conservative.

  6. 6.

    geg6

    @Baud:

    If nothing else, the majority of the American oligarchy aspires to be the Russian oligarchy.  So, I think he’s probably right.  Not sure why that would be controversial.  It’s pretty obvious fact.

  7. 7.

    eclare

    I hate that he is the guest on Colbert tonight, I will def turn it off after the monologue to avoid Shouty McFingerWagger.

  8. 8.

    Baud

    @geg6:

    I don’t have his exact words in front of me, but his statement was basically USA = Russia.

    ETA: It was one of those Bernieisms where he speaks in a sort of code that can be interpreted in different ways.

  9. 9.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    is there an actual achievement named in that very long quoted text?

    or is it yet another “Isn’t he admirably grumpy?” puff piece

  11. 11.

    Kent

    @Baud:In a nutshell, drew an equivalence between Russian oligarchy to American oligarchy.

    So like the Kochs and Peter Thiel are similar to Russian Oligarchs?

  14. 14.

    Citizen Alan

    @Baud: While I thought his remarks were badly phrased, I have lon thought that US oligarchs have a far greater loyalty to oligarchs in authoritarian nations than they do to their less-wealthy fellow citizens here.

  17. 17.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    The senator has undeniably shaped the agenda of the very centrists who wrested the Democratic nomination from him on Super Tuesday 2020

    that phrasing tells me everything I need to know about the person who wrote this. I’m only surprised it isn’t that halfwit Sarah Jones. Does NY Mag actually employ two of those?

  20. 20.

    columbusqueen

    Yeah, even if Joe’s gotten him to do some good things, Bernie’s still an unrepentant asshole who drips open sexism, covert racism, & general contempt for mankind. Fuck him!

  27. 27.

    cmorenc

    Fair question re: Sanders critique of wealth concentration: how much wealth is too much for a single person, couple, or family to own?

    Especially compared to average housing prices in many urban areas across the country, especially the west coast.

    Or, for retire comfortably on.

    – $500k?

    -$1,000,000?

    -$5,000,000?

    $10,000,000?

    What is the maximum value or share of a business a person should be able to own?  What difference does it make if the person is the founder of the business?

    $1,000 000?

    $5,000,000?

    $10,000,000?

    $50,000,000?

    ….and so on up to $1 billion?

    And if at some point along the scale, there needs to be divestment of the business ownership, what is the most optimal way to do so, that keeps the entity successfully going

    Questions like this are a prerequisite to satisfactorily answer for the remedy to be constructively applied rather than sowing unintended economic chaos and destruction, even assuming it absolutely needs doing to avoid continuing dysfunctional concentration of wealth.

     

  28. 28.

    SpaceUnit

    Any wariness I have of Sanders was never really about ideology.

    I used to listen to Air America radio on occasion back during the Bush administration.  Bernie was a guest on the Thom Hartman show for an hour every Friday.  They were two peas in a pod in the sense that they both had their list of talking points about what was wrong in the US but neither of them had any solutions that weren’t simply pie in the sky.

    I mean, nationalizing elections is a swell idea but how we get there?

  29. 29.

    Baud

    It’s too bad it’s the middle of the night in Western Europe. I’m curious whether they call their own countries socialist.  That seems to be what American socialists think socialism is.

  30. 30.

    Kent

    @cmorenc: You don’t need to set upper limits on wealth.  Just go back to the tax rates of the Republican Eisenhower Administration.  People can still be billionaires.  They will just pay their fair share.

  32. 32.

    Kent

    Bernie couldn’t get his Senate colleagues Manchin and Sinema to vote with him when he was sitting there on the same side of the aisle.

    Remind us again how he was going to get his wish list of liberal proposals passed when we was president?

    Right….

  33. 33.

    Baud

    @Kent:

    Rich people never paid tax on unrealized stock appreciation.  Increasing the rates by itself won’t prevent billionaires.

  35. 35.

    Steeplejack

    Here’s Bernie Sanders’s actual quote from The Guardian:

    One of the points that I wanted to make is, yeah, of course the oligarchs run Russia. But guess what? Oligarchs run the United States as well. And it’s not just the United States, it’s not just Russia. Europe, the U.K., all over the world, we’re seeing a small number of incredibly wealthy people running things in their favour. A global oligarchy. This is an issue that needs to be talked about.

  38. 38.

    schrodingers_cat

    Bernie is charging $100 tickets to see him wag his finger at you. Is he on house #4 now? He is a capitalist grifter for all his lip service to socialism. He  dropped millionaires from his finger wagging tirades when he became one.

  39. 39.

    Princess

    This interviewer did something quite miraculous — she made me more annoyed with her than with Sanders himself. Kudos.

    Anyway, this: “The senator has undeniably shaped the agenda of the very centrists who wrested the Democratic nomination from him on Super Tuesday 2020 more than they probably care to admit. ” I don’t buy. The “centrists” aren’t that stupid. I think we have a lot of people in government, especially those who’ve been there for years whose hearts are more liberal than they thought the country would follow. If Sanders did anything, he enabled them to listen to that side of themselves. But honestly, I think the reason Sanders likes Biden in the first place (apart from old white men sticking together) is he always knew Biden was not that far from him.

  45. 45.

    Baud

    @skerry:

    That would be something entirely different than what we’ve had before.  And some people say it’s not workable, but that’s above my pay grade.

  49. 49.

    Dan B

    @Baud: Yes a metal factory a dozen miles SE of Cleveland exploded.  The smoke is headed towards Akron, Kent, and Youngstown.

  50. 50.

    SpaceUnit

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I really don’t recall his positions on Immigrants and guns, but I’ll take your word for it.  I just remember that he was all talk and no strategy.  I never paid him much attention after that.

  52. 52.

    schrodingers_cat

    @SpaceUnit: His voting record on immigration is extremely conservative and he used to be a frequent guest on Lou Dobbs.  He would vote against even minor relief to immigrants like measures capturing unused Green Cards from a years quota etc.

    He mitigated his positions somewhat when he decided to run for President.

    His voting record on guns is  fairly conservative as well. Apparently, now he has “evolved” on this issue as well.

  53. 53.

    Anyway

    Steeplejack

    Here’s Bernie Sanders’s actual quote from The Guardian:

    One of the points that I wanted to make is, yeah, of course the oligarchs run Russia. But guess what? Oligarchs run the United States as well. And it’s not just the United States, it’s not just Russia. Europe, the U.K., all over the world, we’re seeing a small number of incredibly wealthy people running things in their favour. A global oligarchy. This is an issue that needs to be talked about.

    I’m no fan of Sanders and have never been Sanders-curious, but agree with the quote above. Too much concentration of wealth in the world.

  54. 54.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Baud: As for a wealth tax, maybe if we weren’t so fucking fine with wealthy people cheating on their taxes and hiding their assets in complicated vessels that take years to reveal and oh so barely prosecute, we could develop a system to catalog and assess some of this lucre like homes and cars are assessed for us non billionaires.

  60. 60.

    linnen

    I don’t think this was a puff piece given the lack any fluffing. It did give the feeling of a exhibit curator telling viewers, “Look at the odd grumpy old man with his odd notions and his odd followers.”
    The part;

    Maybe it’s because he can vent his spleen without being called insane or ridiculous or a communist by members of his own party.

    and the bit about the Democratic Party nomination shows the writer’s lack of effort. The senator is an Independent. The only other Independent that was around to call Sen. Sanders names is Senator King (I-ME) (Ignoring Sinema as a being Independent is likely to be a place holder.) The Democratic Party nomination was and remains a stunt to leverage the party’s resources while remaining an outsider to the Democratic party.

  61. 61.

    Jay

    @SpaceUnit:

    Sam Panopoulos, a Greek-born Canadian, created the first Hawaiian pizza at the Satellite Restaurant in Chatham, Ontario, Canada in 1962. Inspired in part by his experience preparing Chinese dishes which commonly mix sweet and savory flavours, Panopoulos experimented with adding pineapple, ham, bacon, and other toppings. These additions were not initially very popular.[7][8][9][10][11]

    A 1960 episode of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends contained a reference to “Pineapple Pizza.”[12]

    The addition of pineapple to the traditional mix of tomato sauce and cheese, along with either ham or bacon, later became popular locally and eventually became a staple offering of pizzerias on a global scale.[13] The name of this creation is, in fact, actually not directly inspired by the U.S. state of Hawaii at all; Panopoulos chose the name Hawaiian after the brand of canned pineapple they were using at the time.[2]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_pizza

    Why all the hate on Canadian’s?

    Next you will be bitching about Ketchup Chips and Poutine.

  62. 62.

    schrodingers_cat

    @SpaceUnit: From a CNN piece from 2019

    Sanders, one of the most progressive voices in Washington, has long been criticized for his votes on two key pieces of gun legislation. In the early 1990s, Sanders, representing Vermont in the House, sided with the gun lobby and voted against the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Known as the Brady bill, it became law in 1994 and included tougher background check provisions and a waiting period for gun purchases. More than a decade later, in 2005, Sanders voted to protect gun manufacturers from being sued by victims of gun violence with the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

  63. 63.

    Matt McIrvin

    @cmorenc: I sometimes wonder what we could do if we capped maximum wealth at something REALLY low by rich-people standards. Like, less than what I have. $200k, say, or $100k. Less than the value of most single-family homes.

    We’d have to make it so you didn’t have to hoard wealth to retire or get an education or have a home, because nobody could do it. We’d have to find a better way, nationalize all that. We’d have to bulldoze most of the houses in America and move people into apartment blocks. Better for the environment. We could build huge amounts of dense affordable housing.

    It’s kind of a radical Communist dream, and would never happen. Maybe the economy would break because nobody would have the promise of the big score dangling in front of them, I don’t know. But still.

  64. 64.

    SpaceUnit

    @Jay:

    I’ve never actually eaten pineapple pizza.  If I were offered a slice I would try it.

    Just doesn’t sound right though.

  65. 65.

    Dan B

    @geg6: I got out of Ohio asap. Sab knows the town I grew up in. It was GOP, Klan light, and NAZI adjacent. Weather sucked – bitter cold turning to airless heat and humidity with a couple weeks in between. Plus horrible pollution, especially water.

  66. 66.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jay: My right elbow has been fucked up since I hurt it walking a Canadian girl back to her hotel on Mykonos in 1992.  That’s why.

  67. 67.

    mvr

    I’m skipping to the end before reading upthread, just to say: There is absolutely no point in left and right Democrats fighting if the politics (as opposed to personal ambition or posturing or whatever) matters to us.  From where we are all at together in America in 2023 to where we each want to be in 2050 it is the same direction from here.  And we are going to need all of us to get us any of those places even if somewhere in the future our goals diverge.

  69. 69.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Kent: Yes that was exactly my doubt about Sanders’ viability in 2020. I have no problems with his general prescriptions for more and better social democracy in the US. The question is, as always, how you get from here to there. I never saw or heard a satisfactory plan from either him or his supporters.

    Unlike a lot of people here, I don’t see why he shouldn’t have run for nomination in either 2016 or 2020. He represented issues and people that hitherto hadn’t seemed to get much notice in mainstream US politics. I understood that Primaries were the preferred way of getting people to support you in a quest to represent the party in a general election.

    This issue for me, as always, is what is the plan for doing the things that need doing.

    Mass based demonstrations in States with recalcitrant Senators never seemed to me to be any sort of plan, no matter what Sanders said.

    I think he has a certain charm. His gruffness doesn’t come across to me as sexist, but of course I can’t speak as to how other people feel about his approach to racism.

    In any case, he is old now, he is working in a broad front with the the Democratic Party in the Senate, and I prefer him and his approach to the sneaky, underhand, corporate simping approach of Sinema and Manchin, and the other, less well known Senators that hid behind their rhetorical skirts.

    In Australia his approach and prescriptions are run of the mill in the broad centre left.

  70. 70.

    HumboldtBlue

    OK, I nailed, I fucking nailed it.

    I just pulled from the oven a cottage pie to drool over. I used ground beef, chorizo (soft kind) two small onions, couple cups of frozen veg, can of diced tomatoes, some paste, woostersheer and a lot of seasoning and got that going.

    I mashed about six goldens added some butter, chili powder, queso fresco and ricotta and got that all mixed up and mashed and covered the sauce with them. Added some more queso fresco on top and cooked for 30 minutes, and it’s fucking delicious.

  71. 71.

    Miss Bianca

    @Jay: For the record? I FUCKING LOVE HAWAIIAN PIZZA.

    Fight me, all ye who are so inclined. Or not. It is, purely, a matter of taste, after all

    @HumboldtBlue: Son of a bitch, homemade cottage (or shepherd’s) pie is the best.

  72. 72.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @mvr: I agree.  Taking shots a Sanders right now isn’t going to get us anywhere.  As long as he keeps voting the right way, I’ll spot him some cranky leftist rhetoric.

  73. 73.

    Jay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    why were you walking her back to her hotel and not yours,…..

     

    @SpaceUnit:

    it’s fine. It’s no wood fired, double O, thin crust Margereta with proscutto, but for a go to, it’s good,

    unless you are one of those who like smoked chicken and peppers on a ranch sauce Chicago style pizza.

  74. 74.

    SpaceUnit

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Interesting, but I’m not a Bernie Bro.  I’m happy to take your word that he’s been terrible on guns and immigration.

    My point was that I realized fairly quickly that he wasn’t a serious political thinker or strategist and tuned him out entirely.

  75. 75.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Aussie Sheila: Most people’s major problem with him is that he stayed in the fight long after he lost in 2016 and then only grudgingly supported Clinton.  That almost certainly cost Clinton some votes.  And every fucking voted mattered.  In 2020, people were still pissed at him and uncertain as to whether he would do it again.

  78. 78.

    SpaceUnit

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Goddamn you.  My refrigerator conked out a month ago.

    Best Buy was supposed to deliver a new one last week but it got damaged in transport.  I’m hopefully going to get one delivered on Wednesday but there’s a snowstorm in the forecast and it may not happen.

    I’ve been living off canned soup.  Fuck your cottage pie.

  80. 80.

    Nelle

    @Omnes Omnibus: I had neighbors (4) who were Bernie all the way and would never, ever vote for that …Hillary.  Kansas, so probably didn’t make a difference.  I remember saying, but what about the Supreme Court.  They sneered at me, saying that I was trying to manipulate them with what wouldn’t be a big deal.  Right.

  81. 81.

    Burnspbesq

    The fact that the owners of a dc Chinese restaurant can afford to live in McLean refutes a good chunk of Bernie’s schtick.

  82. 82.

    karen marie

    @Miss Bianca:  I made coconut cookies (not macaroons, coconut cookies).  Now that they’re cool, they’re getting dipped in chocolate.

     

    The directions are insane – “divide the dough into 14 to 16 balls.”  I used my normal cookie scoop (approx 1 tablespoon) and got 30 normal size cookies.  The recipe author must like jumbo cookies.

  83. 83.

    Miss Bianca

    @Aussie Sheila: Yeah, well, thanks as always for your for your…uh… hot takes on American politics. As someone who actually has to live in this country AND be an actual goddamn socialist AND deal with Bernie-stans in real fucking time, all while trying to convince them that it’s Republicans, not Democrats, who are the real enemy, I reserve the right to consider the man both racist and sexist AND a general pest who’s barely worth the powder to blow him up with.

    I mean, I get it. It’s lovely to hear someone spout all the socialist platitudes I lived by in my 20s and *finally* get some sort of notice. Man, how I I wish I had just had the moxie or the good fortune or the right gonads to be the guy who can simultaneously rail against capitalism and oligarchy AND be a US Senator AND have three fucking houses AND charge $100 a head for my upcoming rally/book tours for my stans to listen to me…rail against capitalism. Who amongst us wouldn’t want to live THAT fucking dream, right?

  86. 86.

    ChristianPinko

    @SpaceUnit: People like Bernie always bring to mind T Bogg’s words:

    Every year in Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land all of the sprites and elves and woodland creatures gather together to pick the Rainbow Sunshine Queen. Everyone is there: the Lollipop Guild, the Star-Twinkle Toddlers, the Sparkly Unicorns, the Cookie-Baking Apple-Cheeked Grandmothers, the Fluffy Bunny Bund, the Rumbly-Tumbly Pupperoos, the Snowflake Princesses, the Baby Duckies All-In-A-Row, the Laughing Babies, and the Dykes on Bikes. They have a big picnic with cupcakes and gumdrops and pudding pops, stopping only to cast their votes by throwing Magic Wishing Rocks into the Well of Laughter, Comity, and Good Intentions. Afterward they spend the rest of the night dancing and singing and waving glow sticks until dawn when they tumble sleepy-eyed into beds made of the purest and whitest goose down where they dream of angels and clouds of spun sugar.

    You don’t live there.

    Grow the fuck up.

  87. 87.

    Jay

    @Burnspbesq:

    not really. Over the years I owned two houses in Burnaby, a house in Maple Ridge, and a condo on the Downtown East side.

    The most I paid for any of them was $360k.

    Buying in now for any of those locations is $1m to $1.5m.

  90. 90.

    patrick II

    @schrodingers_cat: ​
      MAGA republicans consider Western European countries socialist – – all of that healthcare, unions, and inexpensive education. Itis one reason they are loathe to defend them and why Trump could threaten to blow up NATO with nary a peep from Republicans.

  97. 97.

    RaflW

    @cmorenc: I don’t think the asset base is the issue. The lack of meaningful tax on so much income that the already-wealthy enjoy is the problem.

    We might not need a 90% bracket, but I’d be just fine with something in the 45-50% range for incomes. And none of this ‘carried interest’ exemption bullshit, thank you very much.

  98. 98.

    Dan B

    @HumboldtBlue: Years ago I was at 6,000 feet on the Cascade Crest trail when there was a meteor that crossed nearly 1/4 of the sky. The ttrail was glittery, with some width.  I remember it vividly.  No sound, no sudden brightness.  Such a variety of phenomenon.

  100. 100.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Aussie Sheila: Thank you for your observations as to how Australians might view a Bernie Sanders. Many in my family including me, were influenced by him in a not negative way to think about how wealth and power are distributed in this country and the world. I can learn from that without discounting the problematic about him.

  102. 102.

    columbusqueen

    @Dan B: I suppose I should have left, but too late now. My inertia was rooted in growing up in my mother’s hometown. The first members of the family arrived in 1813. We just always stayed put, & it’s a habit that’s hard to break.

  104. 104.

    RaflW

    @Dan B: Our townhouse is, but we’re in Colorado right now. Went snowboarding this morning at Breckenridge, where the storm is winding up before roaring northeast.

    Winds were gusting to 75mph at the ridgelines. But only snowed 2″. I left at noon. That’s too much wind, even if the air temp was about 28 (which, to be clear is mild for February. Wind chill is real, tho).

  105. 105.

    Kelly

    @Dan B: When I was a child I saw a meteor that silently crossed about half the sky, 10 times brighter than any stars. At the end it burst into a dozen pieces very briefly 10 times brighter than before.

  107. 107.

    HumboldtBlue

    @RaflW: ​ 

    Our forecast is for temps in the low 20s with a chance of snow ON THE COAST! It can get down below 30 a day or two in February, but this is gonna be five days or so, and it NEVER snows on the coast.

  108. 108.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Miss Bianca: Weak sauce. You sound like a Republican who rails against anyone who isn’t actually destitute arguing for a better distribution of resources. This is a favourite trope of the defensive right. Not saying you are that, but it is a form of argument that is incoherent imo.

  110. 110.

    Another Scott

    @Omnes Omnibus: My biggest problem with St. Bernard’s 2016 was his nearly constant screaming about CORRUPTION, implicitly saying it was HRC and the Democrats who were CORRUPT.  When he knew it wasn’t true.

    He poisoned the well.  And was later shocked, shocked when his half-hearted comments of support for her were rejected by his rabid followers.

    And the country and the world suffered terribly as a result.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  111. 111.

    Jay

    @Steeplejack:

    Yup. In 1964, you could buy a 100 acre horse farm for $64k. That would cost you $12m to $23m today.

    The “outlaws” bought their South Van(halen) house for $5,600 in 1956. Paid off the mortgage in 1968. He worked in the lumber mill as a sorter. She worked part time off and on in sweatshops as a sewer. They sold it last year for $2.8 million as a tear down.

  113. 113.

    Miss Bianca

    @Aussie Sheila: “Weak sauce”. Oh, right. I forgot, you know soooo much more about our politics than I would, you know, because I’m only some stupid ass old-school Wobblie abortion advocate who’s worked for progressive policies in my country since I was a kid. So I know NOTHING about shit compared to you, lady.

    Christ, how I wish you would just fuck the fuck off back to wherever and stop wasting your enlightenment on us boors on this top 10,000 blog.  Listening to you bore on and fucking on about how benighted we are in the US and how much more enlightened YOU are reminds me of being in a hostel in Greece listening to a South African, a Brit, and a German lecture me at length about American imperialism.

    It’s not like I didn’t actually agree with them, it’s just that there’s only so much “Oh Kettle, you are so VERY VERY black, signed, Pot” that I can actually stomach without puking.

    Seriously, take your holier than thou crap and shove it.

  114. 114.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Another Scott:

    : My biggest problem with St. Bernard’s 2016 was his nearly constant screaming about CORRUPTION, implicitly saying it was HRC and the Democrats who were CORRUPT.

    Yup. And then in ’17/18 while actual Democrats were trying to undo the damage he did, he embarked on his “the Democratic Pawh-ty is a fayl-yuh!” campaign. Then he had the gall to run as a Democrat, again.

  115. 115.

    LiminalOwl

    @Baud: As will many Reform Jews.

    A favorite story (with apologies): My college boyfriend, raised in a Conservative Jewish home, brought me to his hometown to meet his parents, and we all went out to a Chinese restaurant.  Boyfriend’s grandmother ordered from the vegetarian section of the menu, but I was surprised to see that his parents ordered a pork dish. Later, I asked Boyfriend to explain. Oh, he said, his parents regarded the Chinese as “tricky” people who might serve other* meat and label it as pork. But what about Grandmother? I asked. Oh, he said, she figured that the Chinese were tricky so any meat was probably pork no matter how it was labeled.

    *years later I realized that there was probably another slur implied; at the time, that part went over my head. But the whole incident left me… bemused.

  118. 118.

    piratedan

    @Another Scott: as his actions fed his ambitions and his own echo chamber of supporters, they were even more gleefully amplified by a media that was happy to continue to cut up HRC.  Should Bernie have known better, in hindsight, damn straight, but his ambition was also used by others for their own means, so while he owns some of the blame for the fallout, he shares it with those that used his ambition as a tool.

  119. 119.

    Tim Ellis

    As always in these threads, there’s a lot of Bernie hate to which people can certainly feel entitled, as your feelings are yours to do with as you please.

    I will note again that I, and many others of my generation, would simply not be Democrats at all if not for Bernie; and that the claims he is making are factually accurate, which may be part of why these threads devolve into discussions of feelings instead, since he actually is quite right on the merits.

    Ultimately we need each other and there is much to be gained from working together. Biden deserves great credit for seeing the astute political move of welcoming Bernie progressives into the party openly, and delivering on some of our core priorities. There is plenty of outrage fired at Bernie and crew for 2016, and fair enough; but there is plenty of blame to go around for how that all shook out, and it’s to all of our gain that Biden learned those lessons well and avoided repeating the mistakes of 2016 in the centrist camp.

    I remain deeply grateful to Senator Sanders for showing a path to a politics that spoke to a vision of real change that I had simply not seen in others before and for showing me that I could make a difference as part of the political system. For many, many people of my generation, that was something we simply did not find before. Maybe that’s our fault, maybe it isn’t, maybe it’s complicated, but whatever the reason, Bernie energized us and brought us into the Democratic party; and Biden worked to welcome us, rather than reject us, from the party. The result? Massive millennial and Gen z turnout, wildly popular progressive policies, and a historic midterm result. Can’t complain! And it simply did not happen without Bernie.

  122. 122.

    Tim Ellis

    @schrodingers_cat: “hates immigrants” is a fairly strong charge to level at the man who assembled the most diverse primary electorate of 2020 and overwhelmingly carried the Latino and Muslim voting blocs. Is there something you know better than them about?

  123. 123.

    James E Powell

    @Citizen Alan:

    I have lon thought that US oligarchs have a far greater loyalty to oligarchs in authoritarian nations than they do to their less-wealthy fellow citizens here.

    I believe that was Lenin’s argument. I think it’s true, to some extent. Oil Barons for sure, maybe all extraction industry billionaires.

  124. 124.

    Tim Ellis

    @Amir Khalid: i am with you 100%, pineapple on pizza is a delight (particularly when paired with jalapeno); but I’ve also moved to Canada, so I’m not sure I actually help against charges of unamericanism lol

  126. 126.

    HumboldtBlue

    And may I add that pineapple on pizza is what low class, seedy ne’er-do-wells eat, they just can’t seem to help themselves.

    Poor souls.

  127. 127.

    Captain C

    @SpaceUnit: On my second date with my current, she asked me what my favorite pizza was. I truthfully told her pineapple and jalapeño. She thought I was trolling her.  Still gives me grief about it years later :^)

  130. 130.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Tim Ellis:

    I have to disagree with your assertion that “… the claims he is making are factually accurate.” Senator Sanders identifies a problem but over-simplifies it and offers no realistic solutions.

    First, are the “oligarchs” really in control in Russia (never mind in the United States)? I disagree. Vladimir Putin made a deal with the oligarchs, they could keep their money as long as they did not threaten him. If they cross him, there are consequences, the least of which is having their money taken away.

    To be sure, we have billionaires here and they exercise power. What exactly is “power”? My simple definition is the ability to get other people to do what you want. Money confers power in our society but it is not absolute.

    To my mind, the underlying problem is that there is an international financial system dedicated to protecting kleptocrats, oligarchs and the extremely rich, allowing them to shield their assets from scrutiny and taxation. Nations, even the United States, have difficulty combating this elaborate system. Oliver Bullough, in Moneyland, describes this system in detail. The book also gives insight into Ukraine before the Maidan revolution, with brief appearances by Paul Manafort, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

    I also have no solutions to offer, but I strongly recommend that book.

  131. 131.

    TurnItOffAndOnAgain

    @Anyway:

    It’s not that he’s necessarily wrong, it’s that it reeks of what-aboutism, at least to me. It’s not just folks on the right who are hesitant (at best) to say anything mean about Uncle Vlad and his toy country.

  133. 133.

    SpaceUnit

    @Amir Khalid:

    @Captain C:

    Because my often feeble attempts at humor have on occasion offended other commenters on this blog I would like to once again reassert that I have not experienced pineapple pizza nor do I bear it’s many enthusiasts any contempt.  Sometimes I’m just talking out my ass.

  135. 135.

    TEL

    If Bernie (and his biggest fans) wanted to know why so many Democratic presidential candidates got together in 2020 to endorse Biden, what stood out for me – Bernie’s first tweet after winning his first primary contest was about how he was “taking on the Democratic party. And the Republican party.” Taking on the Republican party was almost an afterthought.

    Bernie is Bernie, and he is not actually a Democrat nor has he done much of anything to support the Democratic party. Yet here he was running to be the de facto leader of the Democratic party and treating them as the enemy to be conquered. That single tweet summed up the many many problems of having Bernie in a leadership position for Democrats. He is someone who serves his own agenda only. Where it happens to overlap with the Democratic party, he’ll happily support it. If it doesn’t he’ll ignore it or declare it “the establishment” and go to war against it. What seriously turned me against Bernie was he did exactly that to Planned Parenthood in 2016. Women’s right to bodily autonomy meant nothing to him. It wasn’t until some backlash publicly occurred that he sort of walked back threatening war against PP. I’ve never forgiven him for that and want him nowhere near a position of power for organizing the Democratic party.

  137. 137.

    Xavier

    @RaflW: Also, get some teeth in anti-trust, reform patents esp. pharma, get around pharma patents with public development of drugs, figure out how to get rid of incestuous corporate boards that award each other obscene compensation, don’t let international corporations mysteriously accrue all their profits in low tax venues…on and on.

    Surprisingly, the easiest way to do that is stop taxing corporations and tax any transfer from a corporation to an individual as ordinary income, at progressive rates. With draconian penalties, including revocation of corporate charter, for violations.

  139. 139.

    eclare

    @TEL:   Well said!

    I had forgotten about the PP issue.  For me it was his dismissal of the primary votes of Democrats in red states.  I happen to be one of them.

  140. 140.

    SFAW

    @Miss Bianca: ​
     

    For the record? I FUCKING LOVE HAWAIIAN PIZZA.

    Fight me, all ye who are so inclined. Or not. It is, purely, a matter of taste, after all

    What’s next, you’re turning Rethuglican?
    Are you also one of those [insert appropriate term of derision] who put ketchup on hot dogs? Who insist on their steak being extra-well-done?
    And to think, I used to like you.
    May FSM have mercy on your soul.

  141. 141.

    SFAW

    @HumboldtBlue: ​
     

    And may I add that pineapple on pizza is what low class, seedy ne’er-do-wells eat, they just can’t seem to help themselves.

    Poor souls.

    Preach it, brother.

  142. 142.

    featheredsprite

    Listen you guys. It was your hatred for us on the Left that lost that election.

    You cannot win by yourself. You tried that and failed.

    Biden won because he welcomed all into the Big Tent.

  144. 144.

    RaflW

    @Miss Bianca: Max gust at Breck in the past 24hrs was 95 mph! It was at 4am, and several miles from me, so I slept right thru it. Still, whooh!! I was calling our classic 1982 speculative developer condo “creaky mcblowapart” this afternoon.

  145. 145.

    SFAW

    @Amir Khalid: ​
     

    Hey! I like pineapple on pizza.

    This may be the first comment of yours, ever, where my response is anything close to “WTAF?”
    I still loves ya, Amir, but ….

  147. 147.

    Jay

    Technically, if it isn’t a thin crust, OO flour dough, wood fired with “something” (no more than 3, one herb, fresh pulled mozza, a meat of some kind ) on a tomato sauce base, it ain’t a pizza. Mushrooms and cooked onions are somewhat allowed, but they push the margins. Baked good’s of some kind, but not a pizza.

  148. 148.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jay: Look, sport, I’ll take pizza criticism from an Italian but not from a Canadian.  Stick to poutine, you do that well.​

  149. 149.

    Brachiator

    Sorry I came late to the Bernie thread. I recently saw him interviewed on Face the Nation. Three major themes, which contained his greatest hits. He is responsible for pushing Biden to the left. We must do it (whatever it is) like they do it in Europe and other advanced nations. So, no policy detail. And he will never hold the MAGA right responsible for their racism, sexism and bigotry.

  151. 151.

    Jay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    yeah, no. Was married into Italian stock, 1st gen Calabria Mafia, and Putine, we have ruined, by making it trendy and upscale. while Pho has remained honest, Ramen has been ruined.

  152. 152.

    SFAW

    @Jay: ​
     

    a big chunk of 2016 was “punching left”,……. while Nazi’s were on the rise. Still happens here.

    So?
    I don’t particularly like all the hippie-punching that happens here (or in the real world), but if that’s the reason Dems/Lefties decided to withhold their votes — if they actually DID withhold them — then they should, as Shakespeare (I think) said, grow the fuck up.

  153. 153.

    Jay

    @SFAW:

    no disagreement here.

    I am a dipper, but every place I have lived and voted, I get to at best, vote “against” the Con, sometime Liberal, (Federal, provincial Libs here are Cons), some times dipper, sometimes green. With FPTP, my vote, my entire life has been “against”, not “for”.

  155. 155.

    The Moar You Know

     

    And may I add that pineapple on pizza is what low class, seedy ne’er-do-wells eat, they just can’t seem to help themselves.

    Poor souls.

    @HumboldtBlue: if eating pineapple on pizza makes me low class white trash, then I guess I’m gonna have to buy a 2005 F150 and head over to WallyWorld, because pineapple on pizza is where it’s at.

  158. 158.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @The Moar You Know: ​
      Nah, a 2005 F-150 is actually a usable truck. Not too big yet and, by now, old enough that it has a few dings and dents so no one would really mind taking it into the woods.

  159. 159.

    gwangung

    @eclare: The Planned Parenthood threat was an own goal; it was a mark of a poor loser who couldn’t accept that an organization would  naturally endorse a long time political ally and friend.

    The actual distaste and near hatred of simple human relationship (spending decades as friends and allies is NOT corruption) by so many in the far left was and is a real turnoff for regular people

    (Oh….I don’t care for Canadian bacon and pineapple pizza….but sprinkle a bit of pineapple with pepperoni or jalapeño? Sweet and spicy works for me)

  160. 160.

    SFAW

    @Jay: ​
     
    “Dipper”? I imagine someone will explain that term, since I am apparently not aware of all Internet traditions.
    You seem to have this tendency to do “Hey, I’m just sayin’ ” comments, first on pizza, now on elections. As you kids say: whatevs.

  163. 163.

    SFAW

    @Jay:

    Technically, if it isn’t a thin crust, OO flour dough, wood fired with “something” (no more than 3, one herb, fresh pulled mozza, a meat of some kind ) on a tomato sauce base, it ain’t a pizza.

    Now you’re just being dim. And elitist, or maybe faux elitist.

  164. 164.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus: ​
     

    But, methinks you are being overly earnest about the topic.

    “Earnest” is probably not the word I’d choose, but you are far more diplomatic/tactful than I.

  166. 166.

    Jay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    sorry, but you seem to think we are having the same conversation, but we arn’t. I have posted no links,  other than the Hawaiian pizza one,  nor have responded to any comments you have made with links.

    I really don’t know what you are talking about, and I don’t mean that in a dismissive way.

  167. 167.

    Jay

    @SFAW:

    nope, just married into a really Italian family for a decade,

     

    who were elitist, well, regionalist,….

    as a Canadian, I was more acceptable as a suitor, than somebody from “spit”, Milan or Venice.

  169. 169.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jay:   Have you considered clicking on the reply links back through the conversation?  Although, at this point, I am not sure why I am bothering.

  170. 170.

    SFAW

    @Jay: ​
     
    You really need to be able to follow links back to their “source” (so to speak), because Omnes is not the one who can’t seem to follow a time line (so to speak).
    [Omnes: please don’t despair that I’m the one defending you.]

  176. 176.

    Jay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I do, takes me back to SFAW

    Do I really need to go back to the first comment, reread the entire thread, and every comment,

    or you know, having made it clear I don’t have a clue what you are taking about or your point is, you can be less cryptic, and just, like a normal human, speak?

  179. 179.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jay: ​
      The reply links of this particular exchange go back only to your comment at 147. As I said, I think that you are being overly earnest. Some comments on this blog are simply absurdist or completely tangential. It really does help to recognize that.

  182. 182.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus: ​
     
    Expecting Jay to be able to follow links back is like expecting logical thought from a Rethuglican: ain’t gonna happen. But, yeah, that “stream” did go back to his comment at 147. Of course, Jay may think your response to 147 was somehow a response to me, but there’s no accounting for illiteracy (or some such).

  183. 183.

    Ksmiami

    @Omnes Omnibus: me too, same in Zagreb, Sophia etc… what a better approach is a basic universal income for all esp as we transition to a work less society and machines start taking over even middle class. Middle management roles…

  188. 188.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus: ​

    Guilty as charged, Yer Honor.

    ETA: I just hope they don’t sign Rodgers. [No disrespect to him vis-a-vis QB-ing, he’s one of the greats, but the Jets don’t need to pull another Brett Farve “WTF?” signing.]

  189. 189.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

     His book, It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, out next week, is a riff on themes from his presidential runs in 2016 and 2020

    Geez.

    He’s taking money from those people that he’ll use to buy another beach house.

  190. 190.

    Steeplejack

    Jay:

    Here are the comments in order: 147, 148, 151, 154. You lost the thread, so to speak, at 156. Omnes’s link at 154 was back to your comment at 151.

    (The links he referred to are reply links, not external links.)

  192. 192.

    Origuy

    I’m good with pineapple on pizza, but I prefer pepperoni to ham or Canadian bacon.

    I will note that you will not find pineapple on pizza in Italy, but nor will you find what Americans call pepperoni, which is an American invention. The closest will be a spicy salami, which is perfectly acceptable. If you ask for pepperoni, you will likely get peperoni, which are peppers.

    I did see some toppings that might be strange to Americans, like zucchini flowers or speck (Tyrolian ham.)

  193. 193.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    data-mce-fragment=”1″>@Steeplejack: ​
     

    A global oligarchy.

    Hmm. Internationalists who control the world. I wonder where I’ve heard that before?

  194. 194.

    Freemark

    @Tim Ellis: ​
     
    My experience recruiting college voters is that without Bernie Hillary would have lost by a wider margin. I can name ten people who voted for Hillary in 2016 because Bernie got them engaged. They just wouldn’t have voted at all if not for him and his campaign.

    I do find the Bernie haters on here are so similar to the Bernie Bros that I find it pretty funny. It’s kind of like the left/right wheel. They’re so extreme that they are practically identical to what they claim to hate.

  195. 195.

    Tim Ellis

    @Mr. Bemused Senior: I will agree that he simplifies the problems down, which I think is valuable for messaging but will concede comes with costs. I don’t think that means they are inaccurate claims, but I agree that they’re not the full picture.

    I also agree that the US problems are not equivalent to Russia’s problems with oligarchs, though as I believe has been demonstrated earlier in the thread, that’s also not actually what he said in this particular instance.

    Regardless, at the end of the day I agree with your conclusion re: the underlying problem of a financial system that protects the oligarchs. As far as solutions, well, I would take it a step further, as I think that is a natural outgrowth of capitalism and so the solution is to put in place the changes needed to move us beyond capitalism… but, as always, I could be wrong lol.

  196. 196.

    Tim Ellis

    @TEL: I think this is basically right, and is what I tell Berniecrats who still feel bitter about the way things shook out; at the end of the day, Bernie’s biggest challenge in seeking the Democratic nomination was not being a Democrat. For those of us who came in as a result of Bernie, this is frustrating – here we are ready to play ball for the first time and it felt like the walls kept getting thrown up in our faces. But flip it around; if we had a Bernie-style party and a centrist tried to come in and run it, how would we react? Probably pretty pissy! And I don’t think Bernie really tried seriously to outreach to existing Democrats and build those bridges in the intervening four years leading up to 2020. So they worked together to stop him. That’s not rigging; that’s politics.

    And I think it’s an extra credit to Biden that he followed that up with real bridge building of his own, despite all that history. And it paid off electorally.

  197. 197.

    Tim Ellis

    @Jay: Curious where you are now. I’m in Ontario, so you know the government we just got saddled with again. I was a hardcore dipper for about ten years, but recently have become more of a free agent for a variety of reasons – foremost of which is that I am just more concerned now with getting stuff done than I am concerned about the label of the people who do it.

  198. 198.

    Tim Ellis

    @Freemark: Yep, absolutely. The only reason I was involved at all in 2016 was because of Bernie, who got me SO involved that by October I was running a Democratic campaign in Michigan (which we won – unseated a three-term incumbent Repub, no less). None of that was likely to have happened without Bernie.

    I get why there is bad blood, but people under 45 are much more progressive than the older generations and – fairly or not – many of us did not see ourselves reflected in the Democratic party prior to Bernie’s run. And now we do. In these urgent times, that’s an incredibly important achievement. We all need to be working together to face down the fascists, and despite the bumps and hiccups, now we largely are. A lot of people deserve credit for that; Bernie is definitely one of them (and also definitely NOT the only one).

  199. 199.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I can name ten people who voted for Hillary in 2016 because Bernie got them engaged. They just wouldn’t have voted at all if not for him and his campaign.

    Huh. Ten whole votes. Which state was that?

    I’m in Ontario, so you know the government we just got saddled with again. I was a hardcore dipper for about ten years, but recently have become more of a free agent

    Huh.

  200. 200.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    he only reason I was involved at all in 2016 was because of Bernie, who got me SO involved that by October I was running a Democratic campaign in Michigan

    I’m in Ontario, so you know the government we just got saddled with again. I was a hardcore dipper for about ten years,

  202. 202.

    sab

    @Freemark: I agree with you on Bernie voters for Hillary. I am a longtime Hillary supporter who volunteered on her campaign in Ohio, and there were a Bernie supporters who came over to her and worked hard on her campaign in the general election. We didn’t pull it over the top, but there were Bernie supporters working hard with us.

  203. 203.

    piratedan

    @featheredsprite: to be fair, you didn’t exactly “embrace” HRC either, and if you had, we would not have been subjected to 4 years of Trump, facist enabling and the near destruction of the US governmental infrastructure.  You have Roe repealed and a war in Europe and a SCOTUS hellbent on repealing everything back to the Civil War regarding societal rights and evangelicals attempting to ostracize everyone that isn’t in a pew every Sunday. You took your ball and went home.

    See, you have agency as well.

  205. 205.

    Baud

    @sab:

    We don’t know what the world would have looked like if Bernie hadn’t run or had conceded gracefully.  I happen to think Hillary would have won, but that’s also playing alternate history games. The fact that he did run and that the majority of his supporters did the right thing in the election does not mean we can’t criticize him for his own actions and those of his less noble fans.

  206. 206.

    Tim Ellis

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, I live abroad, where I am an active and duly elected officer in the leadership of Democrats Abroad, a group that routinely turns out enough of the over over one million Americans living abroad to deliver the margin of victory in several swing states. I returned to the US in 2016 for Bernie and stayed for *two years*, during which time I personally managed campaigns that unseated incumbent Republicans in swing states like Michigan. Feel free to go ahead now and say whatever you are trying to imply; I’d genuinely enjoy hearing it.

  208. 208.

    sab

    @Baud: I agree. He could have bowed out gracefully earlier, and many of his top campaign guys were dreadful. But he had a lot of good worker bees, same as I was a Hillary worker bee, and we all worked our hearts out in the general election.  Other states may have been different, but in Ohio the Bernie bros did not hurt us. They were on board with us.

  209. 209.

    Baud

    @sab:

    Good to hear.  I think the term Bernie bros is used to describe his less helpful supporters though.  It would not be a term used in talking about his fans who worked and voted for Hillary.

  210. 210.

    sab

    @Baud: I think of “Bernie bros” as his toxic campaign staffers only. I hate to see it used against good people who supported him in 2016 primaries and then moved on at the general. At the ground level Bernie supporters are still our allies or coworkers. I hate seeing them tarred with the same brush as the worst of his top people, much as I hate seeing him tarred with that brush.

    ETA A candidate is responsible for for their staff, but Hillary and Bernie both had bad people on board. I think Biden, being kind of old and very experienced (he was a kid when he first came to Congress)  has much less of that, but that in itself is a fluke of history. His competence yet youth back in his youth. Good guy built a great team.

  211. 211.

    Baud

    @sab:

    Not just his staffers but also his toxic fans, especially online. I don’t know how often his non-toxic fans get hit with the Bro label.  I agree they shouldn’t be.

    On the other hand, if his non-toxic fans feel offended when we call out his toxic fans, that’s on them.

    I think most of that is in the past anyway. We thankfully have less occasion to talk about Bernie or Bros these days.

  212. 212.

    sab

    @Tim Ellis: I am curious about voting abroad.

    My nephew, married to a Canadian, says there are two ways. One is to vote as officially “abroad”. An American citizen with no actual residential roots in America. All of those guys only have one elector in Philadelphia representing all Americans abroad.

    The other is to register to vote from a house you own or a family member’s home that can be used as your last US residence. Those are scattered across the country, and are perfectly legal. I have a classmate working overseas transferred a lot who has been voting from her parents’ (now her daughter’s) house for 50 years. Her electors are Ohioans, not Philadelphians. All very legal.

    That is my understanding. Am I correct?

  214. 214.

    Ramalama

    @sab: I only know about the 2nd part…where you last lived in the US is considered your voting address. But even if you never lived in Merica, but have American parents, you can qualify to vote. So Elizabeth Warren is my senator even though I’m living in the mountains north of Montreal.

  215. 215.

    columbusqueen

    @Freemark: Screw that. When dear Bernie starts bitching about the establishment Democratic Party, he’s pissing all over people like me. I’ve been a volunteer, committee member, & candidate for my local party since 1986. Forgive me for taking offense at a latecomer slinging BS because most of us preferred Hillary.

  216. 216.

    Matt McIrvin

    @sab:

    My nephew, married to a Canadian, says there are two ways. One is to vote as officially “abroad”. An American citizen with no actual residential roots in America. All of those guys only have one elector in Philadelphia representing all Americans abroad.

    I am a bit puzzled by this–I’m pretty sure there is no special member of the Electoral College representing Americans abroad; the only non-state entity with electors is Washington, DC.

    There are convention delegates in the Democratic Party representing Americans abroad, though–in 2020 there were 13.

  217. 217.

    Momentary

    @Matt McIrvin:  Same here, I’m a US/UK dual citizen and registered to vote per the last place I lived in the USA many years ago, which happened to be CA though I have no real ties there.  I’ve never heard of this second option, I thought even if you were born to American parents outside the USA you’d have to register per whatever their last USA address was.

  218. 218.

    Momentary

    It’s very annoying that I’m forever pinned to Barbara Lee’s district, probably the single place in the entire USA that needs my vote the least, just because that was my last USA address however briefly, while I actually have stronger but chronologically earlier ties to a couple of other places where my vote would matter a whole lot more.

  219. 219.

    sab

    @Momentary: First v second option? First abroad. Second wherever home base is/was.

    My nephew thinks this is real.

    Americans abroad are often, even mostly idiots trusting in their citizenship with no actual facts supporting their position.

    Just some idiots with the right passport.

  221. 221.

    Anyway

    @Baud:

    I think most of that is in the past anyway. We thankfully have less occasion to talk about Bernie or Bros these days.

    Bwahaha! I see why they call Baud the funny guy…  =)

  222. 222.

    Momentary

    @sab: Here is the government website to help Americans outside the USA to register to vote.  It does not say anything about this supposed “abroad” option.  It says that if you have never lived in the USA most states allow you to register using your parents’ last USA address.  If your nephew is correct I should think there would be some actual official government information about this option.

  224. 224.

    Momentary

    @Baud:  I have too many sheep to be able to fly back and live in Wyoming for a week, but if there is any valid option that doesn’t require my physical presence I would be down for it!

  227. 227.

    Princess

    It’s possible for two things to be true. Bernie energized a ton of voters, the vast majority of whom voted for Hillary. And the margins were tight enough that his resentment and grudging endorsement caused enough of them to stay home or vote Stein that it helped swing the election to Trump.

    Along with Russia. And it interests me that Caitlyn Johnstone who was urging voters to go third party (she’s Australian) is now a big Putin supporter.

    And frankly Hillary’s campaign was mediocre. Fine, but it left enough holes for these other opportunities to make a difference. And now that I’ve pissed off everybody and probably killed the thread, I’ll stop.

    Oh wait — pineapple on pizza is amazing.

  230. 230.

    Geminid

    @Princess: While defectors to Stein and the Green Party could have been a factor in Clinton’s close loss in 2016, Gary Johnson and the Liberterian Party may have played a greater role. They won 4.5 million votes (~3.3%) overall, and far exceeded Trump’s margin in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

    The 2016 Libertarian vote was over twice theirs in the elections before and after. I think some that year were persuaded that Clinton was a cinch to win- a common misapprehension- and thought they had a free “protest” vote. Even though they were unenthusiastic about Clinton they still might hsve voted for her if they’d believed the outcome was truly in doubt. That same factor may have led some less motivated Democratic voters to stay home.

  231. 231.

    Kay

    @Princess:

    The enduring mystery of Hillary’s campaign is why they didn’t know they were in trouble in PA, WI and MI. How could they not know they were w/in 1 in those states? Not “know that Trump would win” but know how tight it would be? It’s shockingly bad work. Campaigns aren’t informed by broad strokes- “Hillary is the favorite” – they’re informed by specific information about specific states down to the county level. NOTHING they saw in MI, PA or WI tipped them off that they were in trouble?

    It’s never been explained.

  232. 232.

    Kay

    @Princess:

    On election night in 2020 you saw this with Biden’s campaign. Early to midway thru the evening it looked very close in PA but Biden’s team were 100% confident they had it – they never wavered. They knew what they were going to get in PA. Clinton’s team, in contrast, didn’t know not just PA but also MI and WI.

  233. 233.

    evodevo

    @Kent: Yes. This. if wingers are so hellbent on returning to the ’50’s, then let’s reinstate the tax structure of the times lol

  234. 234.

    evodevo

    @Kay: Yes…I don’t think I have ever seen anything on this.  Probably because the Trumpy admin was just such a constant shitshow from Nov. on, that dropped off the radar…

  235. 235.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @eclare:

    @Omnes Omnibus:   PJ O’Rourke referred to it as stack-a-prole housing.  Saw the same in the outskirts of Zagreb, horribly depressing to look at.

    I wonder if the same sort of housing in the banlieux of Paris would look any less “horribly depressing.” I tend to doubt it.

    I myself have spent something like 7 months total, quite comfortably, as a guest in an apartment in a Cold-War-era  panelák in the suburbs of Prague. Newer construction tends toward jolly-colored exterior paint & thus looks a lot cheerier from the outside. (Insufficiently-maintained stucco looks like hammered doo-doo any- and everywhere in the world.)

    FTR, Europeans I’ve known have a refreshing tendency to worry more about how their homes look and feel inside, where they live, versus what a passerby might think. In the 1980s I stumbled across unsuspected relatives in a small town in Sicily and was invited home. Inside the drab gray stucco exterior, the place was damn near a frackin’ palace.

  236. 236.

    Kay

    @evodevo:

    I’d just love to know what happened. Because it was a huge professional campaign! They weren’t just relying on “everyone thinks she will win” because if that were true no one would need campaign professionals- one would just tap into the “general feeling” and be done with it. So what were they using?

  237. 237.

    J R in WV

    @Baud:

    That they run the USA the way the Russian oligarchs run Russia.

    Just look closely at safety and the train wreck in Ohio, self-driving cars driving into fire trucks everywhere, children working to clean slaughterhouses late at night, etc, etc.

    Then tell me again how US oligarchs don’t run things here.

  238. 238.

    Princess

    @Kay: This exactly. I will never forget going in to make calls for Clinton on election day and calling…Iowa. Iowa. Even in 2012, Obama had us calling Wisconsin. There was some campaign malpractice going on there.

  239. 239.

    trucmat

    Sanders, Clinton, Biden, and even Manchin all are in my tent. The first three have my admiration as strong intelligent fellow travelers that see the world through a similar lens. Manchin always looks a bit uncomfortable with us but he prefers the company here to the wackos he knows are trashing the place over in the other tent. Now, in 2023, I have no interest in litigating or holding grudges about 2016. If you do perhaps rethink your goals. That bitterness blinds you and only helps Republicans and their fascist membership.

  240. 240.

    Roger Moore

    @cmorenc:

    And if at some point along the scale, there needs to be divestment of the business ownership, what is the most optimal way to do so, that keeps the entity successfully going

    IMO, this is the wrong form of the question.  The bigger issue is why we assume the founder of a business has an innate right to an outsized share of the value of the business in the first place.  In a genuinely fair system, employees would get a lot more of the value of their work, and much less would accrue to the business and its owner.  That would result in employees being better off and business owners not being so obscenely wealthy.

    Just as an example, right now Tesla has about 100,000 employees, a number that has been growing rapidly.  If they’re receiving an average of $200,000/year in salary and benefits, Tesla has probably paid its employees less in salary and benefits since the company was founded than the current value of Elon Musk’s shares.  That’s crazy, and it’s the real reason the ultra-wealthy are as rich as they are.  We need a system in which employees receive a more reasonable share of the wealth their work is producing.

  241. 241.

    Roger Moore

    @Jay:

    Technically, if it isn’t a thin crust, OO flour dough, wood fired with “something” (no more than 3, one herb, fresh pulled mozza, a meat of some kind ) on a tomato sauce base, it ain’t a pizza.

    Bullshit.  It might not be Neapolitan-style pizza, but actual Italian pizza comes in more styles than that.  In fact, many of the American styles that people criticize as being “not real pizza” are based on the pizza from different regions of Italy, e.g. Detroit-style pizza is based on Sicilian sfincione.

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