So, Bernie Sanders gave a speech last night. We’ve been talking about it. I’m sure some of y’all are sick of the entire discussion, which is fine — lots of other interesting threads below, or, if your scroll is sticky, there’s sure to be another up top soon.
But I’m one of those annoying assholes who believe the only way to work through a conflict is to get everything on the table. (The four scariest words in my family are “we need to talk…”)
It’s not that I enjoy picking at scabs (well, maybe a little). It’s that only in this way can we come together and move forward. Or decide that each other are irredeemable morons upon whom we should not bother to waste another pixel and look for other allies instead. Either outcome is progress!
So, I’ve got the talking stick: I’ll start. My reaction to Sanders’ speech was closer to John’s than Anne Laurie’s, but it has elements of both. Valued commenter Barbara said something that resonated with me in the thread below:
I don’t think anyone would disagree that Sanders has been a reliable progressive ally of Democrats in Congress on most issues. But he has also been an intentional outsider — which is his choice and one that never bothered me much. But it’s just a bridge too far to be an intentional outsider and then, when it no longer seems advantageous, to assume insider status with the right to direct the party’s apparatus even as he still refuses to endorse the party’s candidate. What this speech shows is that he is still too openly conflicted to claim that authority. In the case of a voluntary organization like a political party, credibility is the result of some amount of reciprocal loyalty, which, even now, he is refusing to show. My disdain at this point is not personal to Bernie Sanders or his wife, or his supporters, it’s his apparent unwillingness to truly be part of the organization he wants to direct.
Yep. I have additional concerns as well, such as the suspicion that Sanders doesn’t take the possibility of the Trumpocalypse as seriously as he ought (he says the right words on this, but his actions don’t match, IMO). And as someone whose preferences are generally to the left of the party mainstream, I’m pissed off that Sanders now appears to be squandering what could have been greater influence for the Warren wing. Could be I’m reading it wrong. But that’s how it looks to me right now.
But the thing that makes me angriest about both Sanders and his followers is their seeming belief that they alone can save the party from its corporatist tendencies and bend the arc toward justice. Excuse me, I happen to have President Obama right here — you know, the guy who orchestrated the largest top-down transfer of wealth in American history via the ACA and the man who presided over the greatest expansion of civil rights since the 1960s?
Oh, and look here — I also happen to have the first woman ever nominated by a major party in the U.S., who also happens to be one of the most accomplished, knowledgeable and influential women on the goddamned planet.
Chopped liver much, Berniacs? So pardon the fuck outta me if I’m not quite ready to hand the keys to our party platform over to the double-digit loser of the primary contest who has been a Democrat for all of one year. There. I feel better already.
Now for the mollifying part: Kudos to Sanders for telling people to get involved at the local level. And to the extent that he was able to get young folks excited about politics — and more importantly, to the extent that this actually translates into them getting involved in the party — huzzah for that.
While I think it’s not only essential, realistic and good manners to pay respect to and promise to protect PBO’s accomplishments, it’s also important to acknowledge that everything is not okay. Wages have been stagnant for decades. Working people are getting screwed. Minorities are getting killed, literally. Too much wealth continues to accumulate in too few hands. Millions more have access to the shitty healthcare coverage we middle class folks have had all along, but it’s still shitty. We need to address this.
You can’t blame millennials for looking at 2016 as square one. It is, to them. I’m actually super-hopeful about millennials – not because of the ones I’ve met online or anything to do with the Sanders campaign but due to the younger folks I know in real life, including my 30-something brother and teenage daughter. In my experience, they don’t embody the shallow, self-centered, participation-trophy traits their elders complain about.
But, being young, one thing many of them do lack is perspective, and here’s how that’s playing out in this election, IMO: The youngest of them seem to think it’s normal to have a Democratic president of Barack Obama’s stature and achievements in the White House. Whereas to folks like me, who are old enough to have voted for BILL Clinton twice, it’s near miraculous.
We’ve been here before. I remember rolling my eyes at my parents’ generation’s fixation on the politics surrounding the Vietnam War when that seemed like ancient history to me. Absurdly, one of the reasons I first supported PBO in 2008 was a desire to move past that dynamic. But I quickly learned that, as Faulkner said, the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.
Speaking of the past, guys, this fellow on the other ticket, he makes Richard Nixon seem like a responsible, transparent, non-paranoid and un-self-interested actor. So can we move on now?
And with that, I relinquish the talking stick to you…
Paul in KY
Donald Trump makes Dubya seem like Cicero. Excellent comments, Betty.
burnspbesq
Just took a quick look at the CA SOS website. The number of unprocessed ballots is down to 1.3 million. Clinton”s margin has narrowed slightly; it’s now 55-44.
Aardvark Cheeselog
I wish we were better at this part. I don’t see how we improve things much unless we get there.
In 2008 I got an email from OFA asking me to be a precinct committeeperson, (an elected post, you vote for them in primaries in FL, if they’re contested). OFA asked me to file the papers and stand by for instructions. I filed the papers and got the post. The instructions never came.
Letting the original incarnation of OFA wither on the vine was a huge missed opportunity. I understand BHO had a lot on his mind that year, and the people who ran the campaign were ready for a break, but fvck there were a lot of excited, motivated people who just got left hanging.
NotMax
The kiddies: “Richard Nixon? I forget, was he before or after Lincoln?”
/curmudgeon
Four scariest words in my family: “Let’s all get together.” Close second: “Let’s keep in touch.”
burnspbesq
The Busters have been mercifully quiet on my FB feed since about Tuesday.
Emma
As I said several times in comment threads over the past few months, I was willing to crawl over broken glass to vote for the Democratic candidate, whoever it was, because, even without Trump, the Republican lineup scared me into next week. I disliked Sanders at a personal level — he reminds me of a great-uncle who always absolutely had to have the last word and be right, details be damned — but that wouldn’t have been enough to stop me. I learned a long time ago that in politics it’s best not to have BFFs.
What has bothered me is the ahistoricity of this movement. As far as Bernie supporters were concerned, nothing of note had happened in the Democratic Party before Bernie. We were just another species of contemptible Republican. Coupled with Bernie’s seeming inability to understand anything more complicated than income inequality — complicated enough, I grant you, but not the mot important thing in American politics, IMO — and I was relieved that it was Hillary who pulled ahead.
Unfortunately, the man reminds me more and more of my great-uncle.
Uncle Ebeneezer
…And already has one foot out of the door, having filed paperwork to leave the party he claims to want to reform, as soon as he can’t use it to aid his Campaign anymore.
Otherwise, yes, to all of it. Damn well said. Thank you.
Montanareddog
I think Betty gives too much credit to the Sanders campaign for generating enthusiasm amongst the young. It’s easy to stoke up the crowds by raling against the system. It seems pretty much SOP in elections. Getting people stoked about achievable policy goals and the hard work of winning elections, that would have been an admirable achievement.
Chris
The contrast between Warren’s behavior last week and Sanders’ was stark, and not in Sanders’ favor.
I’d like to hope that Warren, who’s also quite popular among young and working-class voters, can salvage their votes even if Sanders decides to be a douchenozzle all the way.
Elie
Bernie owns his future, whatever it is. Despite any good points he might have in his policy recommendations, I cannot overlook his failure to congratulate and endorse Hillary. As commenter Barbara put it more elegantly in a downstring post, he wants to direct the Democrats as the loser without supporting their nominee or providing any positives about the organization as a whole. This is not acceptable and I have no use for him. I think the danger is people who supported him trying to carry out a contrarian view of the Democrats and essentially “waging war” in local races to recruit more independents and non Democrats. I just don’t want that and now look at all his recommendations as suspect and intended to disrupt rather than improve. I don’t want Bernie in the party and not interested in his “ideas” — such as they are.
C.S.
@Paul in KY:
An ideologically-blinded patrician whose current reputation is based on his own self-serving writings and the slavish and unearned devotion of later historians?
. . . Okay, yeah — I sorta see the connection now.
LAO
When I read the speech last night, I kept hearing the voice of that (brilliant) 8th grader — “we need a cinnamon bun revolution.” I’m sure you all caught the video.
Paul in KY
@C.S.: Should I have said Seneca, oh mighty Roman historian?
Just Some Fuckhead, Clinton Supporter
Check the horse. It might be dead.
LAO
@Just Some Fuckhead, Clinton Supporter: LOL! new favorite comment!
Applejinx
I think Bernie’s smart enough to see what’s being planned, and he’s not entirely thrilled by it (which is actually a point in his favor).
He’s going to be Lefty Reagan. A powerful and venerated, hagiographied symbol of leftyness and Democrats… who doesn’t actually get to do jack shit.
I’m cool with that so long as we get to keep him up here in Vermont, mostly because I’m on board with Obama/Clinton incrementalism and don’t believe we’re in a position to REVOLUTION and then somehow miraculously invent a new system out of nowhere which works and gets buy-in from American citizens: that sounds like a good way to have a complete collapse of society, no thank you.
People are gonna have to get used to him being Lefty Reagan, and he’s gonna have to get used to that being a largely ceremonial position.
Frankensteinbeck
If it turns out Sanders did this, he will deserve great praise for an excellent legacy, whatever his other faults may be.
I worry he has done the opposite, by telling them that all their problems would have been easily solved if the Democratic Party hadn’t intentionally cheated them out of it.
inventor
@burnspbesq: You must be unaware that once the provisional ballots are counted in CA and they get everything all un-corrupted Bernie will win in a landslide.
A freakin’ lanslide.
dmsilev
@Just Some Fuckhead, Clinton Supporter: Nonono, we’ve been beating on the dead pony that Sanders promised his supporters.
Do try to keep up.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
My local paper should be called the Wingnut Daily News. Which means I get to enjoy the fantastical stylings of Krauthammer, Cal Thomas and many more. Clarence Page is their leftist.
Thomas had one recently where he talked about millennials wanting to be given a check rather than earning it. Which I have found to be gratuitous slander. From my experience, millennials want to earn a check they can live on. And probably more offensive to Thomas’ ilk, they want to do it on their own terms as much as possible.
? Martin
@burnspbesq:
Nearly 2 weeks after the election. If only California weren’t some technological backwater, maybe we could efficiently run an election.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Good stuff and right on target, Betty.
Ready to crush ol’ Baby Hands into a fine mist l’orange.
C.S.
@Paul in KY: Depends on what you were going for. Great statesman? . . . Great orator? . . . Subtle thinker? . . . Basic interpersonal skills?
Like I said above, I actually think Cicero works pretty well for Dubya.
nutella
Others have pointed out how tacky it is for Bernie to lecture us about state and local elections when he failed to do anything at all for state and local candidates during his campaign.
Don’t forget, though, that he also sent his minions out to protest against supporting state and local candidates at George Clooney’s and HRC’s fundraiser. That appalling action was Bernie working actively and publicly against supporting state and local candidates so he’s got one hell of a goddamn nerve lecturing anybody about it now.
(edited for clarity)
the Conster, la Citoyenne
The real revolution would involve smashing the white supremacist patriarchy as represented by the Presidency, and we’ve got a pretty good start, now being 8 years into it, with 4 more years most likely, and here comes Bernie fucking Sanders trying to revise history by willfully denying Obama’s revolution, by starting whatever it is he started- I refuse to call it a revolution, because it’s more counter-revolutionary. He’s deliberately set out to drive wedges through the Democratic coalition. It’s more like a tantrum of white male entitlement than any revolution, and re-casting himself – an old white resentful man – as some savior of the country who can’t be arsed to implement his progressive vision by engaging with the local pols in white Vermont? I mean, Cornel West has always been the tell, hasn’t it? He’s so full of shit, and so is his grifting wife who is still on MSNBC talking about campaigning on.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@LAO: “Why should students have to pay for their own cinnamon rolls?” In case anyone missed it.
Amaranthine RBG
The people who are sore at Sanders for not congratulating Clinton now are the same ones who were sore at him for not dropping out of the race months ago.
Runt
People talk about Bernie using his leverage to push the party to the left. But where exactly does his current leverage come from? The unspoken threat that he could tell his followers not to vote for Hillary in November. But that’s the leverage of a hostage taker. If Bernie really is willing to shoot the hostage, that would be outrageous. But if he isn’t, his leverage is basically an illusion right now.
dr. bloor
@Applejinx:
Are you too young or too old to remember the Reagan administrations?
Picking from the current crew, Warren is the Lefty Reagan, because she’s powerful and venerated, and when she hangs up her cleats will have done a great deal of shit.
Smiling Mortician
@Applejinx:
Yeah, no. And Reagan did plenty of shit. Tons of shit. All of the shit, actually. Of course, he actually won his party’s nomination and then the White House, twice. So . . . no.
Chris
@Applejinx:
Hell, no. You need to have done a lot more than he has for that level of hagiography. Like, at minimum being elected president.
Michael Bersin
Tomorrow we’ll be attending the Missouri Democratic Party state convention in Sedalia. County level delegates will vote for the Democratic Party Electors and Missouri’s members of the DNC. Hillary and Bernie county delegates will vote their respective allocated national at large delegates. Yesterday at our county Democratic committee/club meeting our county chair informed me that he had been contacting all of our county delegates (elected in April) to see if anyone needed a ride, etc. At least three of the six Bernie delegates (twenty somethings, if I recall correctly) informed him that they wouldn’t be attending the state convention. In April in our county there weren’t enough people to fill the Bernie alternate slots. I haven’t seen the “new faces” Bernie people at any of our county Democratic committee/club meetings since that April delegate selection meeting. It’ll be interesting to see if this drop off in interest (or whatever) is the same in other counties across the state.
Chyron HR
@Amaranthine RBG:
Gee, ya think?
dmsilev
@Smiling Mortician: I could see an argument for calling Sanders the Goldwater of the left. Never won the Presidency, but possibly presaged an ideological shift in the Party that would pay fruit some years later.
Or possibly he’ll just be an afterthought. Time will tell.
Poopyman
@Just Some Fuckhead, Clinton Supporter: Oh, no no no. As long as that old mule keeps campaigning against the presumptive nominee long after he’s been mathematically eliminated from winning the nomination, we get to beat the hell out of him.
EBT
Petsonally a great way to twist the knife a little more is to mention my fancy new genitals were 100% covered because California.
Frankensteinbeck
@Amaranthine RBG:
Sanders hasn’t stopped doing what pissed them off, so yeah, everyone he pissed off is still pissed off. He also keeps pissing off more and more people who used to like him. You’re right, the behavior of his detractors is consistent and logical.
cckids
@Montanareddog:
This. Also, Bernie has, essentially, lucked into a time in history that makes it easier to “catch on”, via Twitter & FB, etc. If he’d run in 1992, he’d have been lost in the white noise.
He lost me entirely with that sh*tty tweet about celebrating advancements Dems made in health care that didn’t mention Obama. Small, small man.
Paul in KY
@C.S.: Statesman, mostly.
Chris
@Amaranthine RBG:
I’m not. I had no dog in the fight for much of the primary, finally hopped on board the Clinton train just in time for my state’s primary at the end of April, and was fine with Sanders continuing to run until the very last primary, even after he no longer had a chance.
That last primary was this week. The Democratic primary is over. Bernie Sanders lost. And now he needs to get with the program, quickly.
Paul in KY
@Amaranthine RBG: No shit…
tsquared2001
“Excuse me, I happen to have President Obama right here — you know, the guy who orchestrated the largest top-down transfer of wealth in American history via the ACA and the man who presided over the greatest expansion of civil rights since the 1960s?”
This.
Apart from calling a party I have been proud to be a member of since I was in the uterus a bunch a whores, sellouts and crooked fucks, the poo pooing of POTUS’ accomplishments is the thing that sticks in my craw. Who the fuck are you, Senator Sanders to act like Mr. Obama’s tremendous deeds were luck or happenstance or just NOT accomplished in the correct Sanders Approved ™ method? Fuck that noise.
There is a certain skill set involved in being President of the United States. The Democratic party took a long (oh so fucking long) look at Senator Sanders and determined that, nope, his application was lacking those skills. That is NO reason to act like a spoiled little kid towards the job candidate whose resume blew away the hiring committee.
I now yield the talking stick but DAMN, if holding it didn’t feel good.
MattF
I recall, back in the day (1968, to be specific) some one asked me who I was going to vote for. My answer was that none of the candidates were concerned about my interests. Which was true. And yet… Richard Nixon vs. Hubert Humphrey? Sigh.
Fair Economist
@burnspbesq:
Her percentage margin has dropped but her absolute margin has gone up. In very recent counting (the last day) Sanders has started to gain a bit, which I’m guessing indicates that after same-day and mail-ins both went against him, the provisionals are breaking for him. Still no way he wins or even comes close.
LAO
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Thanks for posting. Every time I try to post a link, I’m sent into moderation. ?
Paul in KY
@EBT: Great news!! Cali seems to be a great place to live (when you’re stuck in KY).
wjs
Last night I added a link to the website “Brand New Congress.” This is an organization of Sanders volunteers who are going to–and I’m quoting what they put on the site–recruit about 400 people to run for office against Democrats and Republicans in the next two years.
These people are not interested in making nice with the Democratic Party. They want to undermine it and destroy it; they don’t care if Republicans win because that means they were right all along and you were wrong.
If there’s any linkage in funding between the Sanders campaign, the Sanders PACs, or the Sanders Senate re-election campaign and BNC then you know this whole idea of playing nice was just to get people to talk about something else while they put the infrastructure in place to run against Democratic House incumbents and weaken them. This is a long term strategy to attack the Democratic party from the left.
eemom
sooooooooooooooooo
tired
of fucking
bernie.
oldgold
Whether BS realizes it or not, his political capital over the last month has dramatically dwindled and continues to do so.
BS needs to make a deal as soon as possible and get aboard the train heading for November’s election. Otherwise, he is either going to be relegated to a damn footnote in history or, worse, a vain glorious villain, who aided and abetted a Trump victory.
artem1s
from the beginning Sanders campaign looked strangely like a Ron Paul effort to infect another established party with contrarian libertarians. I didn’t really see that much difference between flat taxers and flat wagers; kill the Fed and kill Wall Street. Here in Ohio the Bern was mostly represented by disaffected Kucinich loyalists and semi-anarchist occupy-Cleveland leftists. They didn’t have particularly favorable views of the Democratic Party who ousted their hero because he was such a contrarian dickhead who never could be bothered to bring any money into his district. So when the rest of the country started to feel the Bern, I was mostly, ‘meh, I’ve seen this movie before’.
And I am old enough to remember the economic growth during the Clinton era that was largely wasted or stalled with W. We have managed to recover during Obama, but the state Democratic Party is in shreds after losing every state level office when Kasich took over. They were far too polite when running against that monster and I fear we are doomed endure 8 years of DeWine once Kasich is termed out. Mostly because the state party has done such a poor job of utilizing OFA up-and-comers. I hope I am wrong but I’m fairly certain the Sanders people here in Ohio are likely to spend the rest of their voting lives taking their bitterness out on the Dems and are likely to align more with austerity politicians who promise them weed and their parents vouchers for private education.
Hillary has long standing connections in this state and she was just a better economic choice for Ohio. I just didn’t see any advantage in voting for someone who’s record was way too shallow on details and follow up. Once the trolling and repeating of the CDS started up with the Bros, I was sure.
Sanders will spend the rest of his sorry political life trying to claim credit for anything that goes well in Clinton’s campaign and administration. And he will be right there, finger wagging on MSNBC every time anything goes awry. As Dan Savage says, DTMFA. He’s toxic and does not care about actually legislating. He just wants the continual attention of the pep rallies and being a contrarian. I honestly hope he gets primaried at this point.
tsquared2001
@NotMax: My family: run as fast as possible when you hear the words “I need a favor”. Never turns out well.
Paul in KY
@MattF: VP Humphrey would have been a much, much, much, much better president than Nixon.
Kay
It’s so bad not to concede. I don’t know how that’s defensible. A little respect and decency would have gone a long way.
It’s just horrible behavior. No more complicated than that.
ShadeTail
And being, respectively, a black man and a woman born and raised in the US, they actually understand the problems and challenges faced by minorities and women. It’s been galling to watch a bunch of white men, Sanders included, white-and-man-splain how all these problems and challenges are purely economic at their foundation, so vote for our guy. It proves the unfortunate fact that such prejudice isn’t restricted to the right.
cckids
@<a href="#comment-58
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@wjs:
Are these the same people who can’t figure out how to register to vote, or understand the rules? I’ll worry about them as much as I worry about giant puppets.
MattF
@Paul in KY: Which is what I see now. I guess I didn’t make that clear.
Poopyman
@wjs:
Any evidence that it’s actually from the left? I’d like to see someone follow the money.
Chris
@Poopyman:
That was my first thought, too.
Poopyman
@eemom: Could you please rephrase that, please?
Please?
Yellowdog
@Applejinx: He will not be venerated by the majority of Democrats. He has disrespected our nominee and attacked the party. He can go back to being a do-nothing back-bencher–until he gets defeated by a real Democrat in 2018.
wjs
@Poopyman: Funny thing is, they don’t identify themselves on that site–at least, not what I can find. But you get the sense that this is the same sort of site that the Sanders team runs and they link to his main campaign site. It could be a scam to get people to donate cash.
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: They’re probably pretty hapless, but stripping away a few thousand votes from an incumbent Democrat trying to hold onto a House seat could cost us a few House members. I don’t seem them winning any races but I see them throwing a few.
C.S.
@Paul in KY: Bismarck, maybe?
Cacti
I couldn’t think of a more fitting end to Bernie’s “revolution”:
Old man in a basement reads list of ransom demands.
Patricia Kayden
Off topic but here’s a story about Trump’s wrongheaded war on the press.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/06/15/heres-what-president-trumps-war-on-the-media-might-look-like/?postshare=611466075653561&tid=ss_tw
Poopyman
@Cacti: He’s not in the big tent pissing out. He’s not even outside the tent pissing in, really. At this point he’s in the sideshow tent biting the heads off chickens.
Sad!
FlipYrWhig
@Amaranthine RBG:
Is that supposed to be an example of hypocrisy? Kinda seems to me like, going back, yes, months, Bernie Sanders has been ill-tempered, inconsiderate, self-aggrandizing, and incapable of taking a hint.
@Applejinx:
Yeah, no, not even close. I can see an argument for his being Lefty Goldwater: guy who runs an ideological campaign that doesn’t quite break through but sets new things in motion, and gives new people new experiences they’ll go on to use to change their party in the future. But he could also end up being Lefty McCain, guy who becomes a Sunday talk show darling because it’s possible he’ll say something critical of the leadership of his own (sort of) party.
starscream
Kinda OT: Clinton’s increased lead is due almost entirely to Trump losing voters, not her gaining them. Any theories why she’s staying flat instead of going up? She’s polling behind her numbers from a few months ago.
(I am a huge Clinton supporter who has disliked Bernie for months, not trying to concern troll.)
tsquared2001
@Kay: It is NOT defensible. How hard is it to say “I fully support Mrs. Clinton”?
Kay
I felt like I knew only the most hardcore wingnuts were so vindictive and punishing they would support a lifetime ban.
They are meaner than the vast majority of people. I think this evidence is conclusive :)
CONGRATULATIONS!
Ha. No. Trump is a boor and an idiot. Trump is the kind of guy who would kill us all by dropping the nuclear football in the toilet. I will bet my car his last words will be “whoops”.
Nixon was the real deal, a high-functioning, very smart psychopath with a nice dose of paranoia thrown on top. A very dangerous man with a plan.
Cacti
@tsquared2001:
The male ego is such a curious thing.
To get the endorsement of the male loser, the female nominee has to act like he was the winner?
Yeah, no.
Kay
@tsquared2001:
I agree. She’s not his mom. She doesn’t have to pretend he won at Monopoly. I would have fully supported her holding out for a concession. Now everyone will do this, run and pretend they didn’t lose. There has to be SOME concession to reality or it turns into a joke.
Mike in DC
He has to concede and endorse before the convention, which gives him until the day before. Otherwise, no speaking slot in prime time. Why would they risk him making a nonendorsement with implicit and explicit criticism in prime time?
FlipYrWhig
@cckids:
I think he thinks it’s all one problem: The Establishment. The Establishment made it so he couldn’t overcome the favorite. The Establishment is what keeps the people from getting what they really want (i.e., Bernie Sanders and the things Bernie Sanders likes). So reforming the primary process will disarm the oligarchs and then the “political revolution” to come will take care of the rest. It’s silly and simplistic, but that’s the way Bernie Sanders’s brain works.
randy khan
@Amaranthine RBG:
Granted, the sample is somewhat self-selected, but that’s not what I see among my Democratic/Progressive/Lefty friends. Even after it was painfully obvious (New York) that Sanders was not going to win, they generally said they were fine with him staying in the race, whether they supported Sanders, Clinton or just a Democratic victory. They only got annoyed with him when he started doing things like wooing superdelegates he’d previously said were illegitimate and not conceding.
Speaking as a white guy, now he just sounds like an entitled white guy who doesn’t want to admit he lost. Freaking Ted Cruz handled it better than he is.
(An aside on DWS – (a) good riddance; and (b) this is how it always was going to play out. Even to the extent Clinton had any power to oust her – which is doubtful – there is no chance she would have agreed to it while there was any chance Sanders could get the nomination. Doing so would have been an admission of weakness and, impliedly, that Sanders was right all along.)
randy khan
@Mike in DC:
He has to concede and endorse enough before the convention for his slot to be scheduled and for his speech to be vetted. (Even the Big Dog will have his speech vetted; probably only Obama could get away without it.)
Mike J
GG no re
Brachiator
The clock is running out on Sanders’ moment in the sun. I don’t know that he can deliver the youth vote to Clinton, although I think his presence on the campaign trail might be useful. But he is still more interested in building his version of a progressive movement than in helping the Democrats win this specific presidential campaign, and I don’t see that the two goals can be easily reconciled.
It would be good if he acknowledged Clinton’s victory or the significance of her becoming the Democratic Party nominee, but his formal concession is not necessary. The convention will move on with or without him. The election will take place with or without his blessing.
Sanders has played his part, but inevitably, his voice and influence must become less and less important. Ultimately, I don’t care what he says or does, or when he says or does it.
Or, as Ambassador Kosh said on “Babylon 5,” The avalanche has already started; It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
PsiFighter37
Bernie’s ‘leverage’ is gone. All of his most vociferous supporters on my FB feed are basically quiet, with only one big dead-ended now resorting to Breitbart articles about Hillary’s emails.
If he keeps this up, the Clinton campaign will gladly hand him an afternoon speaking slot at the DNC and tell him to piss off once he is done. Naturally, Bernie won’t get the message.
Jane must be really sad there won’t be anymore front-row Hamilton seats or private planes with catered food to enjoy on other people’s dime.
FlipYrWhig
@starscream:
My guess is that some of the Berniacs are having a moment of pique. They have harder feelings _now_ than they did a few months ago; they don’t want to say that Hillary Clinton has won them over because they, like their candidate, want to drive a hard bargain. But they’ll come around before too much longer.
Jack the Second
@MattF: The thing that makes me want to beat people around the head and shoulders is when voters don’t want to break the circle of group X doesn’t vote -> politicians don’t give a shit about group X -> group X doesn’t vote.
It’s like a couple’s fight where neither wants to speak first. If you get out the vote, politicians will crawl over broken glass to find out what they can do for you.
Paul in KY
@C.S.: That would be a great choice. Was trying to stay with Roman ones. Would Seneca have been a great statesman choice or should I have gone with someone else?
Cacti
@Brachiator:
I’m not even sure at this point that he’d be valuable as a surrogate. He’s a loose canon and not entirely trustworthy.
Poopyman
@randy khan: Scene playing out in my head right now:
After a rousing introduction at the convention, Bernie comes out onstage carrying a chair …
Paul in KY
@randy khan: That is sad when you can make the case that Darth Creepy handled his loss with more class. Says something…
shortribs
My issue IS with Bernie personally. He’s taken what could have been a decent young progressive movement and turned a lot of them into cynics. Maybe they were there already, many young people are, but he’s instilled in them a sense of distrust for anyone that isn’t Bernie Sanders or BS-approved coupled with an arrogance that I think will just lead them to failure if/when they do get involved in their communities. I have two kids in college and I see it in them and their friends, the cynicism is very real and very much more intense than it was a year ago, maybe it will subside when he’s out of the picture and they’ve moved on, but he’s done as much harm as good in my view.
Paul in KY
@PsiFighter37: I think we need a Downfall parody on Bernie acting petulant. Put out the word!
negative 1
@FlipYrWhig: At the height of the bad feelings era there are only something like 20% of his supporters who said they wouldn’t vote for Clinton, and most pollsters believe (as do I) that some of that are people who actually have a willing ear to complain to, putting the number far far lower than that.
Most don’t need to come around, they’re not going to vote Trump. The media pushed that narrative because all along there was very little drama in this election, and there continues to be very little. Clinton was the heavy favorite and continues to be. They just have so many more months to try and fill before that.
Major Major Major Major
???
Good post, though. I didn’t see the speech so I can’t really comment but this is probably how I would feel about it.
NotMax
@PsiFighter37
“Jane, stop this crazy thing!”
Kathleen
@Cacti: I would have expected Bernie Bundy to tweet demand that DNC provide snacks for his speech.
Miss Bianca
Betty, I have come to the unavoidable conclusion that Sanders JUST DOESN’T GIVE A SHIT about any version of “progress” that doesn’t look, walk, and talk just like his.
And as for telling people to get involved – yeah, that’s nice and all. And I would love to see the Democratic Party become a force in red/rural areas again. Maybe a Clinton blow-out will have that effect (I mean, seriously, Kansas and Utah possibly going for HRC?), but Sanders will have WILLFULLY EXCLUDED himself from that effort.
It’s taken *years* for the Republicans to own these state and local legislatures, and they’ve had more years to fuck things up. Could Bernie Sanders be making himself useful pointing out all the ways that people have been duped into voting for this shit? Sure – he’s surely subscribes to the theory of false consciousness. but only if he commits himself to the new reality of the Democratic party – multicultural, multigenerational (it ain’t just about the youngs, Bernie!), multi-gendered. Which is a hard sell where I’m at, frankly, but we have to find a way to be pragmatic about winning while refusing to pander to prejudices. It’s a hell of a needle to thread, and I don’t think Sanders is capable of doing it.
Trollhattan
@tsquared2001:
Especially if you’re the only one with a pickup truck. Or money.
tsquared2001
@Cacti: You know, I didn’t think it was a male thing earlier in the primary season, mostly because I expected a “progressive” to be more enlightened. But now Sanders supporting Marcy Kaptur shows that despite income inequality being his sine qua non, he doesn’t fucking get it. Privilege can be an overused insult but I am happy to throw that slur towards Senator Sanders.
gwangung
@Yellowdog:
More basically, he’s attacked the sitting President of that party who is very, very popular with that party.
I don’t care how right you are on the issues, but that’s a loser strategy.
Granted that he probably started out as a message campaign that lucked into viability, but you have to take steps that enhance viability, not hamper it.
Cacti
Not even the fee for the gaming license, Bernie. Which Hillary would appreciate if you put up personally.
Brachiator
@Cacti:
I think he would have value speaking clearly about areas where he agrees with Clinton. And I think he would be funny and effective as another voice speaking out against Trump.
It’s up to Sanders to make the most of this opportunity to help the Democrats or to fade back into the woodwork.
gogol's wife
@PsiFighter37:
They got front-row Hamilton seats!? Now THAT is an outrage!
negative 1
As far as the complaint above that Millenials think Barack Obama is normal — the research done by the national affiliate of our union (who does lots of political/organizing research) shows that Millenials in general are FAR more motivated by “positive” messaging (you can make a difference) than by fear (if you vote X the hordes will engulf you). So that data would point to the fact that it’s not just a presidential idea.
I point this out because there’s no real reason for the Clinton campaign to swerve from the message of “can you imagine how bad he would be” but it would be awesome if the Senate/House race Dems could use some positive messaging/ run on some platform ideas rather than just getting lazy and praying that GOP non-Trump supporters stay home. That’s a potential way to help in the upcoming midterms (yes I think this is wrapped up enough to worry that far out) and reach out to young voters.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Miss Bianca:
He’s done nothing about developing the Independent Party in VERMONT… where he’s held in high regard, and which is most like a small Scandinavian country on which he could have experimented being all leadery and effective and shit. The arrogance of him calling for Obama to be primaried and him not having the balls to do it himself while finding the courage when a woman announces, is not coincidence. He’s a narcissist with a giant ego, like another political player on the national stage.
Rick Taylor
“But he has also been an intentional outsider — which is his choice and one that never bothered me much. But it’s just a bridge too far to be an intentional outsider and then, when it no longer seems advantageous, to assume insider status with the right to direct the party’s apparatus even as he still refuses to endorse the party’s candidate.”
One thing that mitigate’s my frustrations in this regard is that we have a two party system in which if you want to change things without shooting yourself and your closest political allies in the foot, you have to choose one of the two major parties and work on changing them. I’m much happier that Bernie ran in the primaries rather than running a third party candidate that might have taken a significant number of votes from Hillary in the general.
rikyrah
Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Trolls Trump: ‘I Bailed You Out Twice’
The prince has offered to bail Trump out a third time, too.
01/29/2016 03:59 am ET
A Saudi prince may have just beaten Donald Trump at a game of Twitter trolling.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said on Twitter that he’s bailed the billionaire out twice — and suggested the GOP presidential frontrunner might need his help a third time.
The exchange was initiated by Trump, who had retweeted a badly Photoshopped image showing the prince with Fox News host Megyn Kelly, calling him a co-owner of the network:
……………
The prince’s tweet included news stories showing that he bought Trump’s yacht in 1991, which had been turned over to creditors when he was $900 million in debt, according to Buzzfeed.
He also included a link to a story showing that he was part of the group that bought New York City’s Plaza Hotel from Trump in 1995. As part of the deal, bin Talal paid off Trump’s debt on the hotel in what the New York Times said was “a defeat for the real estate developer.”
negative 1
@gwangung: I will guarantee most of this will be forgotten in 2 years *dusts off PUMA article*. Campaigns are winner take all and no one cares the moment they are over.
negative 1
@Yellowdog: Who did you have in mind to run against him in Vermont?
Everyone needs to breathe deeply. Before we reach across state lines to take out our own maybe we could use some of that energy to take out Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, Louis Gohmert…
The list goes on.
Major Major Major Major
@negative 1: If I had to guess, I’d say that Dems are a little burned out on talking about moving the policy needle forward since a) the last six years have been a rearguard action and b) we got absolutely clobbered the last time we tried to do anything and opinion still hasn’t recovered. “Oh, this new Democratic idea will be just like Obamacare for _______” is still surprisingly effective messaging, I’d wager.
Plus, the GOP just nominated an extinction-level event for president, so fear is kind of in the air right now and hopey changey stuff might feel incongruous.
tsquared2001
@Kay: “Now everyone will do this, run and pretend they didn’t lose.”
This is a fear of mine. When you bring in the youngsters, the absolutely WORST thing you can do is get them thinking that winning and losing are simply a matter of perspective since that mindset will inevitably lead to apathy.
Cacti
@negative 1:
Howard Dean
C.S.
@Paul in KY: Was either Seneca really much of a statesmen? And once you get past the Republic, isn’t it pretty much all just toadies or generals all the way down?
gwangung
@negative 1: My comment was more an autopsy thing than anything else; if we’re thinking more toward the future, I think the effect may be to discredit the very real (and very correct imao) issues he had been championing before getting caught up in the process.
As for future, more positive oriented things, how about two tidibits: A) Politicians tend to listen to you more if they win with your vote, and B) Politicians tend to govern more liberally if they win by bigger margins (because they don’t need to listen as much to the losing side). Those two bits directly show direct impact by individual voters.
Elie
@Poopyman:
LOL! This…. (thanks for the laugh)
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti: And Al Giordano, of course.
Heh. Dean would be great, but I don’t think he’ll do it.
Emma
@rikyrah: Oh my. Oh my. *snicker*
tsquared2001
@FlipYrWhig: ” It’s silly and simplistic, but that’s the way Bernie Sanders’s brain works.”
A fan of the BIG picture, he is not.
jl
I see in the news that DWS is out as DNC chair and replaced with another HRC ally. What is notable to me is that the actual demand that I saw over the internet put down in writing from Sanders campaign (as opposed to vague sensationalist pundit babble) was that DWS had to go after the convention was over.
The supposed 1 hour exploratory chit chat between H and S was a two hour confab that included all their top aides. H and S left smiling and both released nearly identical statements.
I think the evidence is that big deals where struck and plans were hatched. I think impossible to tell how much of what we see in the aftermath of that meeting is political Kabuki theatre or Sanders causing trouble. I’m not going to waste my time with pointless kremlinology on exactly how H and S are coordinating their statements and actions. It’s just a stupid waste of time. I’ll worry about whether whatever they do seems to be working for November up and down the ticket.
Cacti
@tsquared2001:
The longer the campaign went on, the more apparent it became to me that there was a strong undercurrent of “Father knows best” running through the Bernie campaign.
Hillary, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Barbara Boxer, Elizabeth Warren, Cecile Richards, Dolores Huerta, Roberta Lange, etc.
What male “establishment” figure received a similar level of vitriol from the Brocialists?
Miss Bianca
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): OMG. I finally watched that and it is HILARIOUS. I love how he is cracking himself up. I also love how he not just got the voices, he got the hand gestures spot-on. That kid is going places as a performer.
ETA: Pancho is now staring intently at the screen, trying to follow the cursor. Smart kitty! I have to take a photo of him reading BJ!
Why yes, I am besotted with the office kitties, why dio `34wwwwsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssjk ask? hhhhhhhhhhgbhhhhhhhhhh
(thanks for the edits, Pancho!)
Prometheus Shrugged
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: You’ve described the vote in California in one succinct paragraph. Sanders did well in the most racist enclaves and in the places where the kids bought Cornell West’s snake oil.
James E Powell
@Cacti:
I don’t think it’s a male thing at all – It’s a Bernie thing.
For people like him the admission “I lost” will never replace “I was screwed out of what I should have received”
gwangung
@Cacti: Some in the campaign, but much stronger in a small sliver of supporters (and that small sliver magnified their effect using gamergate tactics).
Poopyman
@jl:
I’m pretty sure that’s the rationale for us all hanging out on this blog. It may not be the best plan, but at least it’s a plan.
low-tech cyclist
I just want to say that I found Barbara’s comment that Betty quoted to be one of the more insightful things I’ve read in this political season.
Also:
Dubya made Nixon look that good. Now Trump is doing it for Dubya. The GOP’s descent is picking up speed. (If only it was because they were being pulled into a black hole.)
Major Major Major Major
@James E Powell: That is a personality type, to be sure, but the vast majority of people who have it (at least that I’ve met) are men. Or alcoholics. Who are also mostly men.
@Poopyman: Yeah, but with one non-notable exception, we aren’t running for President.
gvg
Ehh, I disagree Betty. I think Bernie is no longer interesting or newsworthy since Orlando. Party should try and muzzle him while soothing him without giving anything important. I don’t really care what he says anymore and I don’t hink he is needed nor that he helped get anyone excited who wasn’t already. I think Warren was always the real leader of that faction and as soon as people have totally forgotten him, they will turn to her as they would have if he never ran.
Of course my negative feelings were there at the start because I am one of those maybe 1/3 who just didn’t like an independent changing his party affiliation for a real shot at the Presidency. Then he goes and insults my party and the way I look at it, me. I am not corrupt and he can take a hike. he fails basic politics. Frankly he should have joined the Democratic party by 2006. It should have been clear to him then the difference.
redshirt
@Applejinx:
This is one of the funniest posts I’ve ever read on BJ, and it’s even funnier because it’s 100% sincere.
Are you out of your mind? Do you understand the references you’re using? My gads, it’s too much.
eemom
@Kay:
To remove any further doubt, I saw a headline the other day that they’ve filed a lawsuit against McAuliffe. Didn’t bother to find out more….can’t imagine how they’d have standing. But I guess that besides being hateful and spiteful, they have nothing better to do.
Ruckus
@Amaranthine RBG:
They were right then and they are right today.
Then it really was too early to be right (but they were) but right, now it’s just right. You want to play on the national stage you are supposed to act like an adult. He could have chosen to run as what he is, an independent. He didn’t and he lost. The adult thing to do is to congratulate your opponent and ask what you can do to help. But he was never a democrat. And he’s proved it time and time again.
burnspbesq
@inventor:
Congrats on your new genitals. As a California taxpayer, I’m happy to have contributed to the cause.
Chyron HR
@redshirt:
The proper term is “neuroatypical”.
FlipYrWhig
@Cacti:
Ooh, interesting observation. I don’t remember Sherrod Brown or Al Franken getting dumped on for backing Hillary (although maybe it happened in ways local to their states). Patrick Murphy in FL, to a degree. And of course Obama. But, on the other hand, the same group of people who pilloried Debbie Wasserman-Schultz were previously all upset about Rahm Emanuel and Tim Geithner. Some people just enjoy scapegoating and dogpiling.
Miss Bianca
@Poopyman:
OK, that one wins the Intenets for the day.
negative 1
@jl: I said before and will say again — everyone looking to make a martyr out of DWS should stop. Now. She’s a horrible legislator and both HRC and Sanders wanted her gone, as did Elizabeth Warren, and as did a number of other good people.
Our union joined the Payday Loan fight, along with every other progressive group and human being with a conscience. Warren pushed hard for the regulation to curb them/eliminate them. Who fought back on the scammers behalf?
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/warren-wasserman-schultz-clash-over-payday-lenders
rikyrah
GOP congressman: ‘Muslim community’ wants to kill all gays
06/17/16 11:02 AM
By Steve Benen
The day of the mass-shooting in Orlando, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) saw a partisan opportunity. In a striking statement, the far-right Texan effectively challenged his foes on the other side of the aisle: “If you’re a Democratic politician and you really want to stand for LGBT, show real courage and stand up against the vicious ideology that has targeted our fellow Americans for murder.”
Soon after, this became a surprisingly common talking point among Republicans, including Donald Trump. As we talked about the other day, the pitch is ugly but straightforward: a Muslim killed 49 people in a gay nightclub; Republicans are anti-Muslim; therefore LGBT voters should support Republicans.
The trouble is, the house of cards collapses pretty quickly for anyone who pauses to think about the argument. Indeed, to take the pitch seriously, one has to find arguments like this one from Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) persuasive.
Poopyman
@Major Major Major Major: Wellll, one of us was.
Roger Moore
@starscream:
My guess is that people are unhappy with Trump but are too far to the right to accept Hillary, so they’re saying no preference in 2-way polls or going with Johnson in 3-way polls. Johnson certainly seems to be polling unusually high for a third-party candidate, and that’s presumably a big chunk of the explanation.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
Then stop fucking him.
redshirt
@Major Major Major Major: I haven’t kept tabs on Dean, but I wonder why not. He’s got a network in Vermont already in place. He’s got national visibility and he’d get national support, and being a Senator seems like a pretty sweet gig. Why wouldn’t he run if the party made it clear they’d support him?
tsquared2001
@Trollhattan: Exactly. I have had to tell the Kids my moving days ARE over. Phone a friend, already
Chris
@rikyrah:
Wait. Was he attacking Fox News by calling them stooges of the Muslims? And if so, is he fucking nuts? He can’t get anywhere without Fox News.
Tom65
I don’t think this is true, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that Sanders is really the only one on the national stage making the case. Warren, as much I love her, doesn’t have the platform available to Sanders right now, and he’s making the most of it. Maybe when this all dies down she’ll make that move and take on Sanders’ progressive mantle, but until then Sanders has the mic.
Ruckus
@tsquared2001:
Well it’s obviously difficult so far.
hovercraft
I’m more AL than Betty. For whatever reason her loyalty and her stick to it ness I warmed up to Hillary this year. Back in ’08 I didn’t hate her I just loved him, I went from an Obot to a happy supporter of hers in ’16. From the very beginning Bernie just rubbed me the wrong way. The grumpy old man schtick and the expansive social programs which could be great with some major tweaking would never happen. I saw no point in backing a candidate whose entire agenda is a pipe dream, if I wanted that I would vote republican. To push me further away from him every time he was challenged about the feasibility of his proposals he refused to explain. As I said a few days ago no candidate is perfect, so I happily supported her. If by some miracle he had won , which I never thought he would, I would have supported him. Just as in ’08 Hillary became more destructive as she fell further behind the same thing has happened here. The biggest difference is that as a democrat she had no interest in burning down an institution she spent her entire adult life working for. Bernie has no such qualms. The resentment this time is much deeper because the betrayal is much worse. The only reason he is where he is today is because the DNC allowed him to run as a democrat. We let you in gave you the run of the house and all you did was trash the house, shit all over the place, and now he wants to be given ownership of the house. We gave you membership and you are popular with a segment of the membership. You don’t get to rewrite the membership rules. Spend some time with us learn our ways, find why we do things the way we do. If you have suggestions on how we can do things better more efficiently lets sit down and talk. As an opponent of corporate America you should know you are acting like one of those efficiency experts who come in a implement a whole bunch of changes and ends up f**king everything up because while it all looked great on paper in real life it sucked. Holding the democratic party and it’s nominee hostage is not the way to get your way, it just makes me and many others wanna say f**k off.
Poopyman
@Chris: More proof that he really is throwing the election?
Chris
@rikyrah:
Thank you for advising us to do what we’ve been doing for years now. We will continue to do it. And you will continue to be upset that we did.
tsquared2001
@Cacti: A Godfather reference ALWAYS enlivens a Balloon Juice thread.
redshirt
@Chris: One of the great ironies of Fox News is they have a large ownership percentage by that Saudi prince. Which you think would make a lot of “Conservatives” suspicious, but we all know how they think.
Major Major Major Major
@Chris: He was probably attacking Megyn Kelly. She has blood coming out of her whatever and that means she has no place on that venerated network.
@redshirt: I get the impression he kind of likes Sanders. But I’m really not following this closely at all.
raven
@starscream: That is seriously dumb.
Chris
@Miss Bianca:
Yes, it does. Thank you so much for reposting it, I somehow missed it further upthread.
Shell
They makes as much sense as saying The Republican party used to be the party of Abraham Lincoln.So if you’re at all progressive you should vote for us.
Paul in KY
@C.S.: I guess so. Really had forgotten that Seneca was in the Empire period. Guess Cicero was in it too. How about Marius? Or to go back a bit, Cincinattus?
Emma
@jl: Aargh. She’s still DNC chair. Brandon Davis comes in as new Chief of Staff for the election. Standard DNC procedure.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I think the main thing that’s happening is that typical people are responding based on their opinions of the morality of taking people’s vote away permanently for a felony, while the politicians are responding tactically.
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: Please give them a scritch for me!
Chris
@redshirt:
It’s kind of like World War Two all over again. Everybody go and pick on the Japanese-Americans (and, to a lesser extent, German-Americans and Italian-Americans), regardless of their actual politics. But don’t anybody make a peep about the Wall Street boys who’ve made a fortune trading with the Nazis. You know, the actual Nazis.
The rich are different from you and me, as some guy once said.
James E Powell
@Cacti:
I thought they were friends
catclub
@negative 1:
But will they vote for Remain, in Britain?
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: that has got to the worst attempt at voter outreach i’ve ever seen.
Major Major Major Major
@Chris:
Why’d we let that guy’s son and grandson be presidents, anyway?
Paul in KY
@burnspbesq: He looks a bit tired and disheveled too!
hovercraft
I can’t watch this here Its a superpac ad from the Tiny Hands Pac.
Is it any good.
Poopyman
Well, I guess by now the meter’s expired on the OP and — oooh look! Pooty-Poot is upping the ante in Syria!
Paul in KY
@Chris: He does seem to have unconventional approaches to his election strategery.
Vlad
@shortribs: If you’re asking millennials to vote for Clinton, then their cynicism seems entirely warranted and appropriate. Her positions are tailored more toward older voters than younger ones (e.g. military interventions, drug policy, trade agreements, wage growth, etc.). Young people should still vote for her, because she’s (hugely) better for their interests than Trump, but it’s hard to be idealistic at the same time you’re voting for someone with whom you have significant and substantial disagreements on a number of policy issues – particularly when there’s a lingering (and earned) suspicion that she’ll pull a Sista Soujah and triangulate toward some counterproductive DLC third-way horseshit at the first opportunity.
negative 1
@catclub: Don’t know, we only do research here in the USA. My understanding of the UK situation was that the youth vote over there supported remaining though.
Miss Bianca
@Paul in KY:Pancho and Lefty accept all homage. : )
tsquared2001
@Cacti: Yup. NOTHING pisses me off worse than that “now shush, woman” attitude.
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig:
Hah! Yeah, that’s a given. Enjoy. I hope he continues to give his stump speech in those situations so the talk shows hear endless statistics about oligarchy and wealth until it’s coming out their ears. It’s them, not so much Democrats, at fault for where we’ve ended up.
negative 1
@Vlad: I think that’s rather unfair. Millenials voted for Sanders because of their preference for his positions on student debt and income inequality. They’ll vote for Clinton because her positions on those are widely better than Trumps.
I’d link to this but my last link sent my whole comment into the moderation netherworld, so you’ll have to google it yourself. This whole feeling of revenge exists only in internet comments; elections are binary choices.
jl
@hovercraft: As I said above, I think the signs are that HRC and Sanders struck a deal and hatched a plan to get as large a coalition of HRC and Sanders supporters as possible to vote the right way in November. I don’t think HRC gives the tiniest crap about Sanders isn’t really a Democrat, or whether he is this or that degree of gracious or subservient towards her or the DNC, or whatever, She worries about winning big in November, getting as big as possible Democratic margin in the Senate, and getting the margin as close as possible in the House.
I don’t see how the two of them could have a two hour meeting with all their top aides, and then release almost identical statements (or was that just some funny coincidence?) without some big deals being struck.
Sorry you, and other commenters, are lost in your private hells of resentment and pet hate, instead of spending your time more usefully. I think time would be better spend trying to keep track of how many Sandersbots will work and vote for HRC, and how many low info and confused independents break for HRC, and how well the Democrats look to do up and down the ticket.
I made some predictions about how Sanders would wrap up his campaign and so far they seem to be panning out. I admit, I think Sanders is more likely that I’d like to admit to renege, but we won’t know that until the convention. I expect to see some highly orchestrated debates, and votes and drama at the convention. That might be part of the plan. But if Sanders is a jackass, he could go in and turn that into chaotic mess that results in bad feelings afterwards.
In the meantime, I think obsessing over every syllable Sanders utters looking for various signs and symptoms of how he is wrecking everything is pointless. We don’t know what the two agreed to at the meeting.
? Martin
@negative 1:
Entirely anecdotal, but all of the reasons why my kids and their friends offered up for backing Sanders was related to his projection of a better future. It wasn’t that Clinton wasn’t offering that, but it was usually qualified by reality. The exception being her statements on civil rights which she tends be much more aspirational about.
They also felt that her social messaging seemed a bit forced. ‘Chillin in Cedar Rapids’ is a not exactly a favorable meme to her. That had nothing to do with their preference for Sanders, but they all think that Obama is cool as shit and pretty much all wish he could be president for life.
Vlad
@Cacti: There are also some prominent women in Sanders’s camp, who are well-regarded by his supporters. See, for example, Tulsi Gabbard, who was the DNC vice-chair. I think trying to paint it as an anti-woman thing is a real reach – you’re seeing what you want to see.
negative 1
@Emma: Calling Brandon Davis and improvement over Wasserman-Schultz is like saying antibiotics are an improvement over leeches.
redshirt
@Chris: I also legitimately wonder what Prince Alwalleed’s motivation is for such a large investment in Fox News. There’s plenty of ways to make money and news organizations aren’t high on the list, so he must be investing for specific reasons. One assumes he’s well aware of what Fox News does and the message it sends. In fact, he must support it. So, why would a Saudi Prince support a propaganda outlet that demonizes Muslims as a foundational principle?
FlipYrWhig
@Tom65:
But that’s just it — he’s not. He’s hung up on how the next primary will work. That matters to candidates 4 years from now. He should be making the most of his bullhorn to get attention paid to everyday people’s everyday problems. To his credit, his video statement did address that stuff — but by withholding the endorsement of Hillary he ensures that what people are going to talk about is when he’s going to endorse Hillary, as opposed to what he wants America to have, and how his supporters will help us get it.
Chris
@Shell:
I mean, they sell it as “Muslims treat you worse than we do and we hate Muslims so vote for us,” but I’ve always really loved it as an example of how fucked up their thought process is:
1) Don’t vote based on who treats you better here, in this country, you know, the country that the people you’re voting for will actually control. Instead, vote for who treats gays better on the other side of the planet in countries whose laws our elections have absolutely no bearing on.
2) Just trust that Republicans are, in fact, looking out for the interests of gays who are threatened by Muslim rule… even though the couple of times a Republican administration ended up in charge of a Muslim country (Iraq, Afghanistan), they did absolutely fuck-all for gay rights. Gay rights (and women’s rights and religious minority rights), if anything, got worse after the 2003 invasion in Iraq, not better. (Probably not in Afghanistan, but then the Taliban were a basket case even by Saudi standards).
3) And just ignore the fact that in every case in which gays are suffering from similar levels of oppression to those they face in many Muslim countries and there isn’t a Muslim to pin it on… Republicans are completely silent and don’t even bother to pretend that gay rights are an issue the way they do in Muslim countries. Worse than that, they’ll actively encourage it: the Uganda “kill the gays bill” (later downgraded to a “lock up the gays and throw away the keys bill,” under intense international pressure of which Republicans were not a part) had American missionaries’ fingerprints all over it.
Seriously: just how subhumanly fucking stupid do they think gay people are?
(I suppose ever since the Pulse attack they can now argue that this is about here, and not in Muslim-majority countries on the other end of the Earth, but that’ll only go so far. There are no Sharia Law advocates and barely any Muslims running for office anywhere here. And when, out of all the attacks regularly directed at gays in this country, the only ones you even pretend to care about are those done by one particular ethnic/sectarian group, it’s kind of hard for the targeted community to miss that).
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Vlad:
She and Sanders voted together 93% of the time. Sanders finally came around to doing something down ticket, and is supporting anti-choice Marcy Kaptur. Clinton has very progressive programs for free/affordable quality child care and pre-K programs, which gives way more bang for the buck than free college, based on a program that is already working and will help everyone, not just white college kids. Sanders supports drone warfare. Sanders has done fuck all when it comes to pushing progressive causes, he just talks shit and doesn’t do shit.
nominus
@jl: The Bernouts already had their hands full of stones ready to throw. Hand-picked HRC replacement! She’s taking over the party!
I was promptly accused of being a paid shill when I asked if anyone actually knew anything about Davis or the union he used to represent.
Trollhattan
@Vlad:
A silly proclamation that requires evidence of some kind to acquire even a faint pulse of legitimacy.
Vlad
@negative 1: Yeah, they’ll vote for Clinton, and they should. I certainly plan to do so. But deciding to vote for someone you don’t like or trust all that much because the alternative is much worse is, intrinsically, a cynical and pragmatic choice, rather than an idealistic one. So you kind of need to choose whether you want idealistic young voters or engaged ones – Sanders supporters aren’t going to turn on a dime and stop caring about the issues that led them toward Sanders (and away from Clinton) in the first place just because it would be convenient for the Party.
Paul in KY
@? Martin: I wish he could be President for life too, Martin. Although, in reality, that would be a way to send him to an early grave. Very tough job, that.
boatboy_srq
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I hate to say it, but while Sanders has a good idea of what needs fixing in the US, who he is (entitled straight white male, Socialist by persuasion and Democrat for convenience) and how he says it (which boils down to “it’s the economics, stupid”) combine to make his points painful to hear after all this time. VT is welcome to him.
hamletta
This is a crock of shit. The DLC doesn’t even exist anymore, because it doesn’t need to. The third-way business was about coming back from the wilderness of being the party of abortion, amnesty, and anarchy.
Nobody did that stuff because it was fun; they did it because they had to.
FlipYrWhig
@Vlad:
That’s fucking ridiculous. I don’t understand how it can _continue_ to be the case that Team Bernie is this sure that Hillary Clinton is actively running FOR THE SPECIFIC PURPOSE OF DOING MORE OF THE THINGS THEY DON’T LIKE. She’s not barnstorming from town to town asking people to vote for military interventions and to keep weed criminalized, for fuck’s sake. She’s talking about WILDLY PROGRESSIVE THINGS. She’s running as an intersectional feminist who cares about women, children, people of color, LGBT people, and so forth. It’s mind-blowing to me that Bernie Sanders people attribute to his nothingburger of a campaign all these wonderful merits and credit Hillary Clinton’s comprehensively liberal-minded and conscientious campaign with a thin gruel extruded from the white papers of Bill Clinton circa ’96.
FlipYrWhig
@Vlad:
Like, for instance, the issue of hating Hillary Clinton based on the Iraq War vote and some shit they heard happened in the 1990s.
les
Why? It’s hypocritical beyond belief–Sanders has never done anything to get anyone involved at any level beyond the Sanders family. He actively refused to campaign for or raise money for anyone but himself. He actively campaigned against the Dem party, which is the only real vehicle for local action that might, eventually, help state and national action. The routine most of his followers–and ain’t that a fine description–is to show up sans experience, credentials or information, demand everyone do what they want, and pout or riot when it doesn’t work.
There’s not a thing in his issues that hasn’t been a Democratic issue or goal since forever.
Every cohort of youngs gets excited in their first go round–Bernie didn’t invent it and he didn’t cause it. Clean for Gene–to old for anyone to remember?
He’s a fucking fraud, with neither the intent nor the ability to actually do anything positive for a party. He doesn’t even have a plan for his “issues” that he’s “fostered” during 3 decades as a federal legislator. Yeah, the quintessential “outsider.” He’s closer to the Dem’s Sarah Palin than Reagan.
D58826
@nutella: And at least one down ballot endorsement was a challenge to a sitting democrat. Admittedly that was Debbie but do we want to start picking off sitting democrats with left wing ‘teaparty’ challenges? That has just pushed the GOP to the crazy wingnut edge.
Trollhattan
O/T Run away! Then run away some more.
I cannot condone this kind of weather violence.
Paul in KY
@Vlad: Welcome to the club, Vlad. Generally that’s the choice you are presented with in most elections.
Chyron HR
@Vlad:
“We can’t be misogynist–we like Tulsa Giblets, whoever that is! And
Elizabeth WarrenVivian James!”Vlad
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Affordable child care and free pre-K are good things for society, but they aren’t really hot-button issues for young voters. Economic and social considerations are leading to later marriages and later (and lower) birth rates among young people, and voters are always going to be more excited about carrots that they can eat now than about carrots that they might or might not get to eat in five or ten or fifteen years.
If you don’t like Sanders, that’s fine. You’re allowed to make your own choices. But his agenda is markedly different than Clinton’s in a number of areas, and a lot of those areas are what led young voters to preferentially select him. Voting for someone who gives those young voters less than they hoped to get, purely because the alternative gives them nothing, is a very reasonable and rational calculation – but it’s also a cynical one. So young Sanders supporters who are going to vote for Clinton in the general are going to be coming from a cynical place when they do so.
Chris
@redshirt:
Well, if you know that Fox News is the primary outlet for Islamophobic sentiment in America, it makes sense to me that you’d want to buy a controlling interest so that you can keep an eye on it and possibly influence it. So that, say, if they get into a war hysteria mood, you can help direct that rage at places like Syria or Iran rather than your own.
FlipYrWhig
@Vlad:
Tulsi Gabbard, the antigay Islamophobe and fan of Narendra Modi? If Tulsi Gabbard were a Clinton supporter, Bernie Sanders supporters would despise her.
negative 1
@? Martin: I think that’s probably a fair portrait of what the data bears out. Comment vitriol aside, if you were HRC why wouldn’t you basically keep your mouth shut and run a conservative campaign? She was never really under any threat of losing, so just pointing out the downside of not voting for her is a lot safer than pointing out policy ideas others always have the potential of not liking. She was always the heavy favorite to win, so she ran the campaign accordingly. Obviously the policy stuff is out there but most voters only hear the ads.
Davis X. Machina
@D58826: The Party has to decide whether it wants to be a vanguard party or a mass party.
Miss Bianca
@Vlad: If millenials are really as stupid as you’ve painted them, God help us all. Or are you making the mistaking of thinking them subject to all of *your* prejudices?
FlipYrWhig
@Vlad:
Oh noes! This has never happened before! Suck it up, darlin’. Usually American politics is based on what to do about the price of old people’s medicine.
petesh
@Poopyman: Beautiful update of LBJ, which I shall be borrowing. I add my latest definition:
Vlad
@Paul in KY: Of course. I just don’t see why people are acting all surprised that people who didn’t support Clinton in the primary aren’t coming toward supporting her in the general election from a place of dewy-eyed idealism. It’s like the Clinton supporters’ precious fee-fees are hurt that Sanders supporters didn’t magically morph into true believers on Clinton’s agenda.
Personally, I don’t give a flying fuck about whether or not young voters like or trust Clinton, as long as they vote for her. Of course, I’m a cynic like that.
Hoodie
@dr. bloor: Yeah, I don’t get how anyone thinks that Bernie will have shit for a legacy. If anyone, Bernie is like Goldwater. Also, why use GOP idols? Warren is the heir to Teddy Kennedy, who did more for the American people than Reagan ever did, which is ironic considering that his candidacy against Carter arguably gave us Reagan.
James E Powell
@hamletta:
No, not really. It was more about “We’re not going to give stuff to the [insert racist epithet]”
Aleta
Last night I was disturbed about a couple of parts in Sanders’ speech, and for the first time angry toward Sanders. Granted there was a lot of good in his speech. But he lost me when he said:
The people I’ve known the longest are lifelong Democratic voters who work as carpenters, nurses and health aides, teachers and aidse, farmers, musicians, and as seasonal and minimum wage workers. Some of them supported Sanders and some Clinton, but they have always been in the Democratic party. He could have easily said “even more working people and young people.”
Major Major Major Major
@Chris:
You’re talking about the people who thought women were so subhumanly stupid they’d support republicans because Sarah Palin.
FlipYrWhig
@Miss Bianca: I’m actually not sure what Sanders’s supposed issue-based appeal to young people was, other than “College Costs A Lot” and “Shit Sucks, Which Makes Me Mad.”
Ruckus
@redshirt:
He is very, very, very, wealthy. Very, Very. His interests may not align with those who are not. And they may be motivated by money, not by any other interests. If he thinks American big business/oil interests are better served by his relatively small investments in the US going to the conservative side, and that benefits him, that’s where his money goes. As for diddling drumpf goes, that may just be one far richer guy fucking with someone who is pretending to be rich. Because he can.
Roger Moore
@Chris:
It beats “Vote for us because mumble, mumble, mumble”, which is the practical alternative.
Vlad
@FlipYrWhig: And if they did, Clinton people would use it as more evidence of Sanders supporters’ horrible sexism, no doubt.
Inventing straw-men is fun!
les
@Vlad:
Citation needed. Your plea sounds a lot like, gee, the youngs are ignorant and simple, don’t expect them to learn or understand or work, they might run away! There’s already a party for folks like that. That’s how you wind up with a Trump.
Chris
@Trollhattan:
I do love a dry heat. I’ve lived the last sixteen years in one or another swamp (Washington DC, Miami, and northern Florida), and the couple of months I spent in Phoenix a few summers ago were nirvana compared to that. Among other things, turns out I can grow a beard and not have it itch like crazy; just gotta do it in a place where I won’t start sweating the second I step outdoors.
Best of luck to the southwesterners dealing with this weather.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@Emma: It is posts like yours that make me wish we could recc (or +1) comments. Come to think of it, much of what I read here makes me wish that.
Where else do people use perfectly excellent words like ahistoricity?
Cacti
@Vlad:
Then name a single male Democratic leader who got the same level of invective from the Bernfeelers.
The “He’s not sexist, his Mom’s a woman” school of defense is not especially compelling.
D58826
What I have found so frustrating is that many of the policy differences are relatively minor. Take healthcare. I doubt that there are many democrats opposed to universal healthcare. The difference is how to get there. Bernie is in favor of single payer. As the primary evolved you might have gotten the idea that the existing healthcare system had not been reformed in decades and that Hillary was indifferent to universal healthcare. Never mentioned in any serious way was Obamacare or that Hillary tried to get national healthcare in 1993 and it sank like a brick.
As the primary season continued Bernie seemed to pivot from policy differences to the system was rigged to deny the will of the people as expressed thru Bernie’s revolution. Of course DWS and the DNC wanted a smooth and quiet primary season leading up to Hillary’s nomination. If the shoe had been on the other foot Bernie would have wanted the same thing for himself.
I think it would be a lot easier to get the Bernie supporters behind Hillary if it were just the policy issues. After all it should be easy to say ‘that while I prefer single payer I can support Hillary’s incremental approach to improving Obamacare’. It’s a lot harder to walk back ‘Hillary and the DNC stole a primary victory that was rightfully mine’.
Major Major Major Major
@Vlad:
Millennials have never even heard of Sista Souljah or the DLC and probably think Third Way was the missing member of TLC.
Aleta
And Sanders’ closing
could so easily have changed “began with” to something like “went forward with” etc so as not to ignore voter registration, Black Lives Matter, the Innocence Project and voting rights of ex-prisoners, the Occupy movements, etc.
Overall, the fact that he wouldn’t bother to include other people just blew my mind.
FlipYrWhig
@Vlad: The fact that Bernie Sanders supporters love other Bernie Sanders supporters, regardless of their demonstrated ideology, beliefs, or record; and have contempt for everyone else, regardless of their demonstrated ideology, beliefs, or record; that’s not a strawman, that’s the actual ethos of the “movement.”
Chris
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m still not convinced that Sarah Palin was supposed to increase turnout by appealing to women. It seems at least as convincing that she was supposed to increase turnout by turning men on.
negative 1
@FlipYrWhig: Because, again, vitriol aside, people largely impute priorities based on what they hear from candidates through the lens of the news and ad buys.
Bernie and HRC share the same position on almost everything. Sorry to burst the argument, but it’s true — look up their positions on their websites. What everyone ends up screaming about is the perception that their candidate will work tirelessly to have their goal pass while others they’ll let go if there’s too much opposition. I am honestly asking because ad buys vary market-to-market, but how many of Hillary’s were economic inequality or student loan themed? In my state there were none. If you were worried about those two issues, which millenials were, the candidate that had ads themed *only* around those issues would *seem* to have those as a higher priority. HRC’s ads in my area were either more nebulous or when they were policy specific were about childcare.
Vlad
@Miss Bianca: What’s stupid about being less excited about supporting politicians whose interests are less aligned with your own? That seems eminently rational to me.
negative 1
@FlipYrWhig: Which you’re going to cite a source for any day now.
D58826
@les: Well one big difference involved college tuition. He promised a lot of free stuff, so no wonder the youngins were interested.
les
@Vlad:
God this is ignorant, and pretty much exactly backwards. My fee-fees arent’ hurt, I’m pissed that some imaginary revolutionary cohort of butt hurt purists wants to insist that they get to impose their loser’s agenda on the winner or they can’t vote for her because they can’t cast a ballot without love in their hearts.
nominus
@Vlad:
Votes are binary, they don’t count any more or less if they’re done out of cynicism or protest. We abolished the Cynical College a few forevers ago.
RE: Free College vs Free Childcare: I get that one may be more immediately attractive to younguns than the other, but if we are to assume that Bernie’s young supporters are somewhat smart, they would have to realize that even the 17/18 year olds voting this year won’t see free college by the time they graduate. I would bet that even more of his supporters are already past the point of benefiting from free tuition; they’re in favor of it because it’s a sensible investment. If that’s the case, surely they can (perhaps eventually) see the same logic in “older” issues and see that they’re also worthwhile investments. Otherwise, I have to abandon my original hypothesis about the intelligence of his supporters.
Xboxershorts
@tsquared2001:
Sanders never did the things you’re accusing him of, like pooh pooing the accomplishments of Obama. I do recall him saying things like, we need to go further, but he never pooh poo’d them.
You’d be right, however, to pin such brash talk and ignorance on his most ardent supporters, too many of whom don’t even appear to be democrats and are themselves too fucking short in the tooth to remember the huge propaganda investment of Richard Mellon Scaife that has dogged the Clintons for damn near 3 decades now spewing falsehood after falsehood.
I hate those fuckers the same way our esteemed blog host hates them. All they see is the corruption being manufactured from whole cloth by an even larger more dangerous propaganda network and they’re too ingorantly goddam assured of their own purity
Fuck them. Blame THEM
And I phone banked for Bernie here in PA
Cacti
@Aleta:
Nice erasure of President Obama too.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@eemom:
I had no idea you’d even met him, much less become so close. Of course you’re tired.
FlipYrWhig
@D58826: It’s easy to be in favor of things. It’s about the easiest thing you can do. Somehow Bernie Sanders has gotten credit, to the tune of millions of people, for liking… good… things. How to get those things, how to prioritize them, how to figure out how to balance some with others, none of that seems to matter, because Bernie Favors Things! How inspiring! It drives me up the fucking wall, and it has to have been irking Hillary Clinton for a year.
Vlad
@FlipYrWhig: Where on earth is that a “fact”? Some Bernie supporters are nice, and some are dicks – just like with Clinton people. I’m sure it’s more comfortable for you to experience the world as a series of stereotypes and snap judgments, rather than looking at it with sober analysis, but you might want to give the latter a spin some time.
D58826
@Aleta: According to the GOP all of the bad in the world started on Jan. 20th 2009 at 12:01pm.
./ According to Bernie progress starts with his presidential campaign.
FlipYrWhig
@negative 1: They supported a primary challenge _from the right_ against Debbie Wasserman Schultz. That says it all. Gabbard is like Kyrsten Sinema: photogenic and not particularly liberal. By the standards the Brave True Left purports to apply, Tulsi Gabbard ought to be considered part of the problem. But she’s not. Why? Because she supported Bernie Sanders. Because that’s what the “movement” is, a personality cult masquerading as a progressive insurgency.
Major Major Major Major
@Xboxershorts:
les
@D58826:
I guess; but 1) access to education has always been a Dem priority, and 2) it’s another place he promised something that could only be delivered by the states. I guess having ignorant followers helps in that case.
D58826
@FlipYrWhig: (sigh) you just don’t understand. Those are the kinds of things that only the corrupt running dog flunkies of the bankers worry about. The head of the revolution will sweep all of that away in the poking of his fingers in the air.
yes snark.
Bobby Thomson
@Aleta: Dr. King and Susan B. Anthony would like a word with you – and him.
Elie
@rikyrah:
Trump doesn’t yet get that he is taking on a multi-dimensional war with folks who have no problem slitting his throat while eating fried chicken and working a crossword puzzle. These folks are gonna destroy him and enjoy it. He had better get a clue.. they are not scared of him and not the least unwilling to mix it up so he had better watch out…
negative 1
@FlipYrWhig: I personally wouldn’t vote for Debbie Wasserman-Schultz for anything. What policy of hers do you like? Her attempt to silence the CFPB on payday loans or her kneecapping other democrats in Florida to get preferential treatments in her own primaries?
There are plenty of reasons to support any challenge to DWS. Hillary did, too. I like her more for it.
Vlad
@Major Major Major Major: If you want to bring young people into your camp, I’m sure looking down your nose at them will be an effective approach. Best of luck with that.
Regardless of whether young voters should or shouldn’t like and/or trust Clinton, they mostly don’t right now. Does she deserve affection and trust? Maybe. But to borrow a line from Unforgiven, “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.” You have to work with the facts on the ground, and the polling on the situation is what it is. Suck it up and start building some bridges, or don’t, and take your chances in November.
Cacti
@FlipYrWhig:
It just slays me that the “revolutionaries” are shoveling money at a “progressive” challenger who opposes the Iran nuclear deal.
FlipYrWhig
@Vlad: You cited Gabbard. By any ideological metric, Tulsi Gabbard is not a liberal lion. If the Bernie Sanders phenomenon were a genuine liberal uprising, Tulsi Gabbard would be considered on the wrong side of the line. Which goes to show that the Bernie Sanders phenomenon is NOT a genuine liberal uprising. It’s a bunch of people, mostly well-meaning, who are very confused.
Linnaeus
@D58826:
At risk of repeating what others probably said before me, this was the biggest misstep of Sanders’s campaign, and a good illustration of why he simply wasn’t ready for a national campaign, among other things.
negative 1
@les: Free college education can be given at a Federal level. You just have to grant the money specifically for that purpose to the states. HRC wants to do it, look it up on her website.
Major Major Major Major
@Chris:
I think it was both. IIRC they said the former out loud, and the latter was blindingly obvious.
@Vlad:
Xboxershorts
@Major Major Major Major:
Yes, there are. And to them I say…
Welcome to a representative republic, who’s designers built into the very machinery of such that guarantees compromise. If you cannot compromise in such a system, you risk losing all.
Major Major Major Major
@Xboxershorts: That was a Bernie Sanders quote.
tsquared2001
@Vlad: Aren’t millennials grown ups?
Even if the rest of your assertions were true (a big fucking if), backing a particular candidate is not a romance. I got over that ethos at age 9 when I watched McGovern lose nearly every state.
Miss Bianca
@FlipYrWhig: To say nothing of the clang of scales dropping from their eyes when it was pointed out to some of these Millenials who were all “free college! Fuck yeah!” that, even *if* their preferred candidate won, and even *if* he managed to get some version of his college tuition agenda passed – two massively big “ifs” – it wasn’t going to be in time to do *them* any good. Maybe some of them really *are* as stupid as Vlad makes them out to be.
negative 1
@nominus: Or they don’t have kids and don’t think they want any.
Calling someone else’s priorities stupid is, well, stupid. They’re just different from yours. Its why we vote.
redshirt
@Chris: I suppose that’s possible. He’s on the Newscorp board, so one assumes he has a voice in editorial direction. So you’re suggesting he’s on the board in order to keep American Islamophobia pointed at Shi’ites?
It’s possible.
Major Major Major Major
@Vlad: I’m a millennial. Trust me, 95% of us have no idea what those things are.
@tsquared2001:
Why yes, we are. Thank you for being one of the few people who seems to have noticed.
Bobby Thomson
@negative 1: unlike her opponent, she supports the Iran deal.
FlipYrWhig
@negative 1: Grassroots conservatives primaried Eric Cantor. Woohoo! The guy they got instead is a symbolic, amateurish clown who accomplishes nothing for Republicans. Victory!
Is the point to purge enemies or to mold things in a progressive direction? Because if it’s the latter, getting rid of Debbie Wasserman Schultz accomplishes none of it. If it’s the former, and it is, I will submit once more that the Bernie Sanders movement doesn’t have an ideological basis whatsoever. Which means it doesn’t play a part in pulling to the left or whatnot, which was, I thought, the whole goddamn point.
Xboxershorts
@Major Major Major Major:
There most certainly was more to that quote
And…
Every word of it is true. I was deeply disappointed in how Occupy was treated, in how Wall St was not prosecuted, in the weakness of the Stimulus, in his inability to get a jobs bill out there. But I’m old enough to understand why compromise is a necessity.
I am still grateful as hell we had Obama over either of our prior choices.
PS…Criticism of the incumbent or establishment and support for the incumbent/establishment are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@negative 1:
Like the ACA’s Medicaid provision is? We know how well received those programs are by red state legislatures.
Juju
@eemom: Perhaps Jane is as well?
ruemara
@Vlad: Tulsi Gabbard? Who excoriated the president for not saying radical islamic terror? She’s not very progressive. Marcy Kaptur. Anti-choice. A coalition of women who march in lock step with Sanders on trashing the party and focusing only on issues he deems important. Nah. do better. He isn’t “anti-woman”. He just doesn’t give a shit about “identity politics”. He’s said so.
Major Major Major Major
@Xboxershorts: You said Sanders never pooh-poohed his accomplishments. He’s been alright, I guess, but we’re all very disappointed in him doesn’t count?
FlipYrWhig
@tsquared2001: Nobody voted for Johnson, Humphrey, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, or Kerry thinking it was a romance, either. On the left it’s been a romance about two and a half times since the invention of television. Most of us get over that, in the same way that most of us take jobs that pay the bills rather than starving while waiting for something that speaks to our souls.
tsquared2001
@Xboxershorts: So, the idea that Senator Sanders wanted to primary the sitting POTUS was something I imagined? Or the fact that whenever he talks about health care, he NEVER mentions Mr. Obama passing the ACA? Or when he talks about Wall Street reform, Dodd-Frank is something he pisses on? That the CFPB is never mentioned in his stump speech? Or when he calls for free college, he never mentions POTUS taking the banks out of the student loan process?
Damn, that must have been a long strange trip I took.
Xboxershorts
@Major Major Major Major: I’ll say this again since you may have missed it
Criticism of the incumbent or establishment and support for the incumbent/establishment are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Vlad
@FlipYrWhig: Nowhere did I say that Gabbard was a “liberal lion,” so I’ll thank you to stop trying to jam your own words into my mouth. I did say that it would be very odd for a group of foaming-at-the-mouth misogynists, the characterization you applied to Sanders supporters, to use one of the most prominent women in Congress as a top surrogate.
A lot of Sanders supporters would probably prefer that Gabbard had different positions on some issues. I sure would. But this is politics, and if you wait for a politician who’s perfect on every issue, you’ll never vote. People trying to convince Sanders supporters to move over to Clinton ought to have a lot of sympathy for that argument, I would think, since they’re going to end up needing it themselves.
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig:
I thought you said they got rid of Cantor.
Miss Bianca
@Vlad: What’s “stupid” is the apparent failure to realize that Bernie Sanders had NO.PLAN for implementing his wonderful-sounding policies – at least, no plan that could possibly *work* – and had NO.CLUE, apparently, that “having a plan” – a workable plan – for policy implementation was kind of, y’know, a thing when you’re running for President.
As my old housemate used to say, “even a bad plan is better than no plan”.
negative 1
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Not thinking it’s likely is a different argument then it can’t be done. Like I said, HRC supports it too. I also think it’s unlikely, but I’d argue pushing it from the federal side is a heck of a lot better than turning it over to increasingly red state governments.
More to the point, Bernie’s not wrong about Dems losing badly at the state level so we should be trying to accomplish as much as we can at the federal level.
Lurkypants
@Vlad:
And there’s your bubble, right there.
A hell of a lot of young voters have young children, and their economic concerns include safe, affordable child care so they can work. You seem to be under the impression that the only “young voters” are those who are white and college-educated.
Vlad
@Major Major Major Major: I’m over the line, but not by much (37), and I can only say that my experience has been very different from yours.
Cacti
@Major Major Major Major:
Then there was that foreword Bernie penned to the Bill Press manifesto of white left butt hurt “Buyer’s Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down”.
tsquared2001
@Major Major Major Major: Thank you Major. Let us NOT rewrite the history that just happened a scant 24 months ago.
FlipYrWhig
@Vlad:
Uh, no, I did not apply such a characterization. This guy I know recently said something about jamming, words, and mouths. You and he should have a talk.
les
@Vlad:
What the fuck does this mean? You insist 1) they have to like her, they can’t vote cynical; and 2) they’ll never like her, she’s (list of inaccurate and untrue stuff that floats around since forever). Well, OK, the only real answer is fuck off.
Major Major Major Major
@Xboxershorts: tsquared seems to have missed it too. Long thread, I guess.
Bobby Thomson
@Xboxershorts: when you got skin in the game you stay in the game but you don’t get a win unless you play in the game.
Miss Bianca
@negative 1: Yeah, but what does *that* matter? It’s a PLAN. But it’s Hillary Clinton’s plan, so of course the youngs aren’t going to get turned on by it! //
Chris
@redshirt:
Not even necessarily “at Shi’ites” so much as “at other people.” Although in the modern bipolar Middle Eastern order, I suppose that is what it means.
But NewsCorp is just one piece of a much bigger picture. Saudi and American elites have spent decades developing strong relationships with each other – and trying to influence the other country so that it’s favorable to them and hostile to their strategic rivals. NewsCorp is just one of the many many many powerful factions in American politics/economics that the Saudis want access to.
The relationship’s gotten a lot more tenuous in this century, but seventy years of this stuff has left deeply entrenched ties.
nominus
@negative 1: So your argument is that they can’t relate to any policy that doesn’t directly affect them?
I’m arguing that they should have the intelligence to see the merits of another policy they may be able to use later versus supporting a policy they’re too late to benefit from. Not sure how you think I’m calling them stupid, especially if you’re citing an opposite example.
les
@negative 1:
Ah, block grants. Been to a red state lately? I can tell you how KS will do it: take the grant, remove an equivalent amount of state money and use it to fill the gaping budget holes that repub rule has created. If that’s a Hillary plan, it’s a disappointment.
Vlad
@tsquared2001: I’m confused by your post, since you seem to think that I have the opposite position that I do. I don’t give a pope shit about the romance of politics – that sounds like the sort of thing David Broder would blather about after a few too many snifters of brandy. I was responding to a Clinton supporter who was complaining about the young Bernie supporters this cycle becoming cynical about the political process and political decision-making. As a cynic myself, I largely approve of their decision, and even applaud it. It’s reasonable and rational, and it’s also likely to lead to the best outcome for the country in November. Y’all better hope those Sanders backers are cynical enough to sell out their ideals and pull the lever for Clinton in November, because if not, we’re all fucked.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Cacti:
Would this be a good time to also mention his choice of surrogates? Whose sole purpose, it seems was to shit all over Obama and his accomplishments.
Major Major Major Major
@Vlad: I’m (obviously or I wouldn’t be here) very politically active and live in a pretty liberal part of the country and, at 31, can safely say that only complete junkies like myself know what those are. Maybe people have heard of the Sista Souljah thing, but only because of the breathless 2008(?) reporting “is this Obama’s Sista Souljah moment?!” (what was that even about?). That was certainly the first time I heard about it. And I doubt the Millennials who’ve heard of it could define it. “Oh, it’s when Bill Clinton something something black people?”
But we’re talking about an entire generation of people here, and a very big one at that. Our friends are a pretty crappy barometer for who knows what.
negative 1
@les: No, not block grants. Grants for a purpose — think federal highway grants for federal highways. There are more than one kind of grant. It’s not a disappointment. Read up on them.
Linnaeus
@negative 1:
Sure, but there’s a ton of stuff that gets done specifically at the state level, so the Democratic Party at the state level needs work in places across the country. That’s also where you develop Democrats who can go on to elective office at the federal level.
Miss Bianca
@nominus: Plus, anyione who thinks millenials aren’t interested in free childcare /early childhood education doesn’t know any really young parents. Not *all* Millenials are college students – most of the ones I know aren’t college-bound. Many of them are getting pregnant and having children while still in high school. Believe me, quality and affordable child care and pre-K is not going to be an irrelevant issue to millienials.
Vlad
@Major Major Major Major: All of that is true, but none of it changes what I said. Most of the young people I know are too worried right now about how to pay for basic needs like school and housing to give much thought to how they’re going to afford kids down the road. They probably ought to worry about that, too, but at some point there’s only so much worry to go ’round.
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: Quiet, you. Everybody knows that Millennials consist solely of blue-haired Oberlin students who are too worn out protesting the lack on trans inclusion in the applied musicology department to go to class, complaining about student debt.
negative 1
@nominus: “Otherwise, I have to abandon my original hypothesis about the intelligence of his supporters.”
You can’t find a poll where Bernie’s millenial supporters don’t support free childcare, because there isn’t one. However, what I think you are arguing is that they prioritize free education over free childcare. Your argument of ‘think about the future’ would also include those kids who would receive free childcare also being on the receiving end of free college tuition.
Which would be more valuable to you? Probably depends on where you went to school and your parents’ financial situation. However criticism over which to prioritize seems silly when it really depends on the person, from either a moral or a personal situation perspective.
Major Major Major Major
@Vlad: I was responding to your comment that ‘they’ were too cynically worried about Hillary pulling a triangulating DLC-style third way Sista Souljah to be enthusiastic, though.
les
@negative 1:
No shit, Sherlock. And unless the grant is the entire University budget, a state can reduce the state portion. Newsflash: KS is doing that with highway moneys. Your cache of knowledge may not be unique.
Linnaeus
@Major Major Major Major:
The Wikipedia entry gives a good summary.
(Very) short version: Sister Souljah commented on the violence of the 1992 Los Angeles riots:
About a month later, Clinton spoke in front of the Rainbow Coalition and repudiated the comment, comparing it to something David Duke would say. In this way, Clinton distanced himself from both Souljah and Jesse Jackson, who had invited Souljah to speak to the Rainbow Coalition as well.
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major: I saw “blue-haired”, thought of a bunch of little old ladies, realized that those conditions would probably apply to Oberlin students *regardless* of age, and LOL’d.
Cacti
@Vlad:
University education is not a basic need.
Major Major Major Major
@Linnaeus: No no I know that. I was trying to remember what the fuss was over for “Obama’s Sista Souljah moment” lo those many campaigns ago.
negative 1
@les: Then why did you immediately say block grants?
States give less than you think to their colleges anymore. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2015/01/05/students-cover-more-of-their-public-university-tuition-now-than-state-governments/
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: Every Applied Musicologist in that department should check zir privilege.
Linnaeus
@Major Major Major Major:
Oh, sorry for the misreading on my part. Working from home – this is what happens when I try to do too many things at once.
ETA: IIRC, Obama’s “Sister Souljah moment” had something to do with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose church Obama attended, and his statement “God damn America” and if Obama would distance himself from that.
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: Rev. Wright.
Vlad
@Major Major Major Major: Fair enough – anecdotes are pretty unreliable. Regardless of exactly why young voters don’t trust Clinton, though, the fact remains that in general, they don’t. We’re lucky that she’s going to be going up against Trump, who’s trusted even less than she is…
Jay C
@low-tech cyclist:
Wait until the Convention. It will probably turn from an event to an event horizon……
Vlad
@Cacti: In today’s economy, with today’s wages for people without a college degree? Yeah, it kind of is, unless you want to live in your mom’s basement until you’re 45.
negative 1
@les: Which explains why you immediately said ‘block grant’. Tuition from students makes up more of state college budgets than states do anymore, it has since 2015, and it looks unlikely to stop as a trend. Hence, if we want to reduce the cost of colleges, it looks like it’s up to the federal government.
If you’re against that, though, you could always vote Republican. They need the help.
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti:
The problem, and this really is one, is that it’s become a basic need in America. It’s a symbol of having some sort of mythical meritocratic potential that nobody will hire you for white collar work without. And we’ve shit on blue-collar work so much that a living wage now pretty much means white-collar work.
A traditional university education, like with reading Plato and stuff, is not a basic need. But having a piece of paper that says you went to college is required for a living wage in America, and a living wage is a basic need. They’ve become conflated. So the question is, do we overhaul the whole system, including the cultural expectations around it, to look more like, I don’t know, Germany or Japan? Or do we just make college affordable?
Vlad
@Vlad: @les: You might want to back up and re-read what I wrote, because your comment makes no sense.
Gravenstone
@Vlad: Reggie dear, is that you? Your slip is starting to show …
tsquared2001
@FlipYrWhig: You know it. Falling in love with a politician is a sucker bet.
Major Major Major Major
@Vlad:
Unfair and stupid as it is, that’s true. Sigh.
But I don’t think that’s true. I think she’s a much stronger candidate than people like to imagine. Hers is just a silent majority (for real this time!), or at least was in the primary.
I imagine, and could very well be wrong, that people will warm to her as the campaign goes on.
Mnemosyne
@gogol’s wife:
Totally OT (but I’m sick of Bernie anyway), have you seen Joel Grey’s “Hamilton” story? He basically showed up at the box office and gave his name and they were all, Yes, sir, Mr. Grey, sir! But he didn’t actually have a reservation!
He seemed to feel slightly guilty about it, but not that much. I guess you can get away with that when you’re one of the kings of Broadway. I wouldn’t be surprised if Nathan Lane does the same thing.
Vlad
@Miss Bianca: You think young voters don’t know that? No Democratic president is going to get anything of consequence passed in the House until it flips blue, which means that no Democratic president is going to get anything of consequence passed any time in the near future. Clinton can have all the plans she wants, and Congress is still going to do its best to jam her whole agenda right down the wood chipper, just like with Obama eight years ago. That being the case, there’s no real downside to voting in the primary for the candidate who at least espouses the same principles that you hold, as a way of shifting the Overton window.
Whoops, there’s that millennial cynicism again.
Vlad
@Gravenstone: Who or what the fuck is a “Reggie”?
Cacti
@Vlad:
Affordable college tuition is a worthwhile policy goal, but not necessary to sustain life. Hence it will never be regarded with the same urgency as items like food, shelter, and medical care. Moreover, in the real world, when it hasn’t been accompanied by improved access to quality primary and secondary education for the poor and working classes, free tuition has resulted in an upward transfer of wealth to those in the top economic quartile.
C.S.
@Paul in KY: I actually still think Cicero is your best comparison. He’s got a reputation (unearned, in my opinion, but YMMV) of being a statesman and as the Last Sane Man Standing Up To The Growing Tide Of Tyranny. And its a plus that people have heard of him and have a vague recollection that they’re supposed to admire him. I’d be cool with Marius though.
Glad we had this little talk . . .
jl
@Vlad: Cacti is tendentiously assuming that ‘college’ just has to mean a PhD in Classics from Princeton.
Cacti is peddling BS. It’s community college technical certificates and professional BA’s and BS;s too.
But, hell, them damn trust fund babies who want a free ride getting the nursing or computer science degree they need these days to be competitive in the job market, from lux joints like Sacramento State, sjhould just check their damn privilege,right?
I heard in news a few weeks ago that an organization that sponsors coding bootcamp programs did a study showing that to advance beyond entry level, the bootcamps aren’t enough. You need 2 or 4 year degree from accredited institution. I don’t know why this organization would have incentive to put out a bogus study with that conclusion.
les
@negative 1:
Dude/dudette, sorry for the horrible use of term. I’ve worked with fed and state grant programs for 30 years, block and otherwise. Unless you propose simply giving money directly to students–and there isn’t a prayer in hell of coming up with that kind of federal money–the state can fuck with grant money. Or refuse it; heard of Medicaid expansion? You condescend pretty well, but you don’t argue worth a fuck.
FlipYrWhig
@Vlad:
But now we’re back to your obnoxious original contention, which is that Hillary Clinton doesn’t “espouse the same principles.” That’s bullshit on every level. _Even through the filter of cynicism and mistrust_, it has to be clear that Hillary Clinton has spent the entire primary season _espousing_ progressive principles. I defy anyone to show me Hillary Clinton speaking against progressive principles. To hear the Berniacs tell it, she’s constantly promising warfare and misery. (You can say she must not really _mean it_, because mumble mumble Iraq vote and Bill. But that has nothing to do with “espouse” and “principles.”)
redshirt
@tsquared2001: My love for Bams hasn’t let me down. Not once.
msdc
Coming to this very late, but I just wanted to say that the post (and the comment at its core) are spot on.
FlipYrWhig
@C.S.: Lucius Junius Brutus? Cato?
les
@Vlad:
Really? You didn’t say Bernie’s youngs won’t shouldn’t have to vote cynical? You didn’t say they just don’t like her? You didn’t say the Dems/Hilary have to build bridges to fix it? I know you didn’t offer anything resembling the fix. Sorry; I guess I misunderstood ya.
Major Major Major Major
@jl:
What makes you think it’s not true?
nominus
@negative 1: again, not sure exactly what you’re arguing here, so let’s backtrack to the original rather than take the quote out of context.
Someone points out that young Berners support free college over free childcare because they’re young and it affects them more.
I say that shortchanges the Berners viewpoint, because if you argue that they’re just voting for free stuff then you’re arguing that they’re dumb. They can’t use the free stuff they’re voting for either, so it’s not a smart thing to do.
They may be voting for it because they see it as a wise investment. If that’s the case, then childcare can be sold as just as worthwhile of an investment.
Otherwise the Republican canard about the younguns just wanting free stuff applies, which we do not accept until given evidence thereof. Thus: the argument that Berners want college over childcare because they’re young isn’t a good argument; it basically paints them as dumb and/or self-absorbed, an argument I reject.
Whether they actually prefer one over the other? Do they want either, neither or both? I care not. I say both, but then again neither one benefits me since we’re too old for college and my wife doesn’t want two jobs.
Vlad
@Cacti: @Cacti: When you can’t afford food, shelter, and medical care as a worker earning minimum wage, and even a lot of entry-level jobs require a college diploma, then yeah, a college education is kind of necessary.
Chyron HR
@jl:
Meanwhile on planet Earth, Sanders spent a month of the primary railing against Clinton for calling him “quote unqualified unquote”, an alleged quote that he literally invented out of whole cloth for the sole purpose of complaining about it.
But yeah, that darn Cacti and their BS, amirite?
Major Major Major Major
@Chyron HR: What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?
Emma
@negative 1: Late to the party. You must know him very well. What am I missing?
gvg
@Vlad: a certain class of young people. college isn’t happening for all. I think childcare might actually be more of interest to them. Now from working at a big University but having a grade school kid, I have to say regular kindegarten through high school seems in more trouble than college. I also haven’t thought tuition and debt costs were as urgent as the news imply. Not all schools and states cost a fortune.
Vlad
@les:No, I didn’t, which is why I said you should back up and re-read my post. I was responding to a guy who had a sad about all this late-stage cynicism among young Sanders supporters, and I said that a) becoming cynical is entirely right and appropriate as a response to their preferred candidate being beaten by someone with very different positions in some important areas and b) being cynical is also likely to lead them to hold their noses and vote for Hillary in the general, which is good for everybody, given the alternative.
The more cynical you can encourage those voters to be – the better a job you can do on selling them on a quarter of a loaf instead of none – the more likely you are to bring them around to your candidate of your choice and get a President Hillary in November. Or you can talk about how stupid and entitled they are, and how frustrating it is that they won’t just give up and do what you want because you want it, and take your chances in the general.
negative 1
@les: I’m not condescending. I’m arguing that the federal government can make the grant spending very targeted when they want to, although they don’t always want to. This is an instance where, I agree, they may not want to, although I’m arguing that they should, and responding to the idea that it is impossible.
The irony is that people are arguing that medicare expansion is a reason *not* to do this. I think it’s a great idea. What’s wrong with saying ‘the federal government will cover 50% of the cost of University of State if the state government does too’? If, say, I don’t know, South Carolina thinks this means that Mooslims win I’ll move to the northeast where it would easily pass. If the people of South Carolina have an issue with it, they could always try voting for a politician who would agree to those terms. I see less of a downside to that idea than I did with the medicare expansion.
Xboxershorts
@Major Major Major Major:
It’s also false that Sanders invented it out of whole cloth.
The NY Times did, extrapolating that from a Clinton Speech. Hillary never said it, but the Times implied that she did. Bernie most certainly did not invent it. And I believe the NY Times was forced to write a correction.
negative 1
@Emma: Soooo glad you asked. He’s awesome — does political work for SEIU, which is ground floor organizing among the most vulnerable constituencies and some of the hardest to help (they face tremendous obstacles). They’re also very liberal and obviously very big into economic injustice. If you’re into the concept of signalling, this also means that the dems are seriously trying to work with organized labor (which makes me happy but you don’t me).
gwangung
@Xboxershorts:
That’s bullshit.
What clod said he would be better for race relations than Obama? Who was exploring attempts to primarying him 2012? No matter what your position, those were slaps at Obama (and very stupid ones, too).
Vlad
@FlipYrWhig: Clinton is more progressive in some areas, and less progressive in others. She is, on the whole, less progressive than Sanders. If you prefer her positions to his, or you value the specific areas in which she’s progressive more highly than the greater number of areas in which he is, that’s your right. But it is what it is.
If people think that Clinton is a hawk, then that’s mostly the result of her record and her stated positions. If she doesn’t want people to think that she’s a hawk, then she should be less hawkish.
les
@Vlad:
OK, I read you as “a guy,” I guess. Sorry; you seem to sound a lot like “a guy.” Or you sound like “a guy” is, ya know, right. I’m still waiting for somebody to back up the “very different positions,” unless you think accusing Clinton and the Dems of various forms of corruption and dishonesty is a “position.”
Miss Bianca
@Vlad: The thing that I’m finding so amusing/infuriating is that Clinton’s political agenda and Sanders’s are pretty much basically the same – with the exception that Clinton’s is actually the *more* progressive when it comes to women’s rights *and* education. So exactly what was supposed to be so preferable about Bernie Sanders that anti-Clinton propaganda – to which he contributed, by the way, which is another reason I despise the creature – couldn’t account for?
aimai
@jl: There is no excuse, and there will never be any excuse, for Sanders not whole heartedly endorsing Hilary last night and offering to go out on the campaign trail as a campaign surrogate. There is only going to be one campaign against Trump and he is either in it as her surrogate–subordinate to her message–or he is not. If he’s not going to accept that she won and she calls the shots w/r/t to campaign promises and strategies then he can fuck off and, for all of me, die in a fire. The Kabuki that you just watched, with the special meeting and the identical press releases, are literally the least Sanders could do, and the most Hillary needed to do, to keep Sanders from staggering out of the Clinton meeting shouting “the bitch has poisoned me and my supporters must riot at the convention!” But I wish we could dispense with the mythic fantasy that Sanders supporters are peddling that what has happened so far represents corrupt politicians Hillary and Obama paying a rightful tribute to the true tribune of the people, one Bernie Sanders. This is not what is happening and everyone can see it. Both Hillary and Obama have been forced to waste hours of their valuable time stroking his enormous, overblown, swollen, festering ego. And the only reason they have had to do so is that he is obviously and pathetically extorting the attention with threats of running third party or further posioning the well with his stupid believers.
aimai
@C.S.: That’s Cato, actually, Cicero had a very mixed reputation as a gossip and as a new man coming from nowhere.
Emma
@negative 1: Then he’s exactly what Hillary needed in that position. You go, Hillz!!
Xboxershorts
@gwangung: I’m pretty Trump also said he’d be better at race relations than Obama.
Vlad
@les: Clinton is, in general, much more of a hawk and an interventionist in foreign policy. She’s much more in favor of multilateral trade agreements like the TPP (and, in the olden days, NAFTA), even though she strategically pivoted against that particular agreement later in the primary. She’s indicated that she’ll be much more conciliatory in her relations with Israel. She’s not in favor of the legalization of recreational marijuana, and while she does support more reasonable sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine, she doesn’t want to make them retroactive. She is in favor of the death penalty. She is less-engaged on tuition costs and the minimum wage. Etc.
You may or may not think those are important issues, but they do represent substantive differences between the platforms of the two.
Major Major Major Major
@Xboxershorts: Catilyn Jenner said Trump would be good for women’s issues.
Lynn Dee
I agree with most of Bernie’s policies. As far as I’m concerned, the further left Clinton goes, the better. But my antipathy to Bernie personally has definitely grown. He says it’s not about him? He gives every indication it’s all about him.
gwangung
@Xboxershorts: Shrug. You still made a bullshit statement, particularly when it’s clear that the strategy of the Sanders campaign was to to run against the accomplishments of the Obama presidency.
Betty Cracker
@Major Major Major Major: I agree. When Obama proposed tuition-free community college a while back, he argued that in today’s economy, an associate’s degree is like a high school degree was 25 years ago. HRC also supports tuition-free community college in her “debt-free” college plan. Sounds sensible to me.
gwangung
@Lynn Dee: Heh. My antipathy towards him is towards his skills as an elected official. Not very good at managing folks, not good at getting beyond sound bites, not good at adjusting his work to encompass different objectives. That’s like 75% of my checklist for a political leader.
Vlad
@Miss Bianca: I think that their positions differ in many more areas than you suggest – see my reply in #333 (which is not exhaustive by any means).
I also have relatively little sympathy for the “Bernie’s playing dirty pool” card, given all the racist dog-whistling Clinton engaged in when she was running against Obama eight years ago.
FlipYrWhig
@Miss Bianca: The extent of Bernie Sanders’s supposed issue-based appeal to young people appears to me to be “Something something free college later” and “The other candidate voted for the Iraq War.” The image-based appeal to young people is “Like you, I’m mad about how things are, and you can tell from my disregard for conventions regarding hair, posture, and voice that I’m not one of those Typical Politicians.”
@Vlad: Ah, but you’re changing the original contention, which was that Bernie Sanders “espoused” “principles” that made young people gravitate to him, while Hillary Clinton didn’t. What were those “principles,” per se? Because you cannot tell me that Hillary Clinton hasn’t been talking about inclusion, equality, and fighting for the little guy since Day One. I daresay that it was never about “principles” at all. It was about the performance of righteous anger. So, you know, good for him; Hillary Clinton doesn’t really have that in her arsenal. I can accept that explanation. But don’t sit there and tell me that Hillary Clinton has based her campaign on something other than robust liberal principles.
Xboxershorts
@gwangung: No you don’t…and no he didn’t. You’re too angry to see clearly. He was critical of Obama’s NON accomplishments. Things Obama couldn’t or wouldn’t get done.
There’s a big difference between the two…
Tell me, who was it implied his election opponent was an amoral hermaphrodite?
Welcome to American politics man. Get over yourself.
dogwood
@Chyron HR:
Tulsi G is from an extreme right-wing Hawaiian family. She is a democrat of convenience only, and she isn’t a liberal or a progressive. Further proof that the Sanders campaign was in part a ridiculous cult of personality.
Miss Bianca
@Vlad: Your first point I’ll concede as fair. Your second point I’ll call BS.
FlipYrWhig
@Vlad: We still have no idea what Bernie Sanders thinks about foreign policy, other than that the Iraq War was a bad idea. He supported Afghanistan, he supports drone strikes. He doesn’t have any ideas about Russia or Syria or China. All we know is that Hillary Clinton leans towards using American power to help protect civilians and smite terrorists, and that Sanders something something. We assume that he’s a dove because he’s an old SDS type, but he’s uncomfortable talking about that whole area. So instead people project things onto him. And he’s happy to have it that way.
Betty Cracker
@Vlad: FTR, myself and many of the other folks who are irritated with Bernie now were pissed off as hell at Clinton over that eight years ago. The difference is that when she lost, she did what you’re supposed to do; she conceded graciously, endorsed Obama wholeheartedly and worked her ass off to get him elected. I don’t think we’re being inconsistent, FWIW.
Vlad
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s a curious statement to make about someone who was volunteering for the Goldwater campaign at the same time that Sanders was getting arrested at civil rights demonstrations. To her credit, she moved away from her earlier views, and has gradually drifted leftward along with the rest of the country.
Clinton has, at times, been a supporter of good and important progressive causes, and she deserves recognition for that, but her record is hardly un-mixed in these areas, and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.
Major Major Major Major
@Xboxershorts:
I don’t know?
Cat48
Bernie needs to concede and endorse Hillary bc that’s the very least he could do and it’s a normal act expected by the Loser. Norms are important bc when norms of behavior break down, we’ve lost a bit of civilization we may never get back. He started this behavior during the campaign, not conceding he lost a state and that Hillary had won. Hillary tried to continue it but if he had lost, he wouldn’t take her phone calls so she eventually stopped calling. This interaction has always been done by politicians. Obama always called, win or lose. Also, reporters say Bernie is looking for a “large concession” he can “make” Hillary give to him bc he Lost.
I seethe when I think of it.
I’ll never be fond of him bc he wanted to primary my favorite president and spent a lot of time bashing Obama on TV & radio.
J R in WV
@Amaranthine RBG:
I really like that blockquote*2 frame look!
Major Major Major Major
@Vlad:
They have a six year age difference. I’ll bet Bernie did something dumb when he was 16 too.
And, you know, speak for yourself, but my political beliefs have changed from the ones I held before I was old enough to vote.
Vlad
@Miss Bianca: We’ll have to agree to disagree, then. I live in PA, so I saw a lot of her Appalachian outreach first-hand at the time when she was doing it, and it made me sick to my stomach.
Omnes Omnibus
@Vlad:
Once a comment like this pops up, it’s a damn good sign to walk away from interaction with the commenter on this particular topic.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good god.
J R in WV
@EBT:
Here’s hoping your fancy new fancy parts bring you much joy for the entire future!! Best of luck with everything!
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Agreed.
Hey did you guys know that Obama’s middle name is Hussein?
dogwood
@Vlad:
Give it up. Bernie ran a populist campaign geared toward attracting angry white, predominantly male voters who don’t want to talk about race, guns or gender issues, but can’t bring themselves to vote republican. And you are right, Bernie didn’t do any dog whistling, he just came right out and said it was sad that blacks voted for Barack Obama because of his race. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him end up as a regular on Fox News when this is over.
Vlad
@Major Major Major Major: Sure, probably. We were all idiots when we were sixteen. But there’s a whole lot of non-progressive stuff on her ledger if you include things that were done during Bill’s time in his various offices (which I think is fair to include, given that she’s citing her influence and engagement during those periods as relevant experience in her pitch). I mean, we were just talking about Sister Souljah a couple dozen posts ago, and then there’s the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, and her opposition to gay marriage (including DOMA), and her ongoing support for the death penalty…
aimai
@Vlad: To pretend that her pre-college flirtation with Goldwater is anything at all is just disgusting. Disgusting. Bernie was, of course, older than her and so more politically active along with his cohort. With her cohort she moved SHARPLY leftward and has remained extremely progressive, more so than the rest of the country or other White Women with whom she should be compared. To compliment Bernie the way you do with “he was doing X” while “she was doing Y” is like complimenting him for walking before she could crawl. Of course he did–he is years older than her. She has done what she needed to do, politically, in her time. And, of course, her successes as a progressive Icon have far exceeded his from the beginning and right through until today. Its more accurate to say tha the wasted the first 40 years of his life doing fuck all and then got into politics, while she emerged straight from college as a leader in her generation of progressive women.
Major Major Major Major
@Vlad:
Then why did you bring up the Goldwater thing?
YOU were.
Xboxershorts
@Major Major Major Major:
Thomas Jefferson, the target of that acrimony was John Adams.
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah. That’s become my “don’t make eye contact!” signal on the topic of Clinton too. Check please!
FlipYrWhig
@Vlad:
For fuck’s sake, Vlad. I’m not sure this comparison is going to do your hero a lot of good when it comes to the late ’60s and most of the 1970s, when Bernie Sanders was a freelance weirdo writing about rape fantasies and magical orgasm machines that prevent your sexual repression from giving you cancer, and Hillary Clinton was investigating segregation, fighting for children’s rights, advising the Watergate prosecution, and setting up rape crisis hotlines in Arkansas.
Vlad
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Well, I mean, she did. She was the president of her school’s Young Republicans when she was in college, too. People change, and in her case for the better, but saying that she was a progressive from “Day One” is like saying that Robert Byrd was.
Byrd helped do a lot of good once he came around to the right side, and so has Hillary, but fair is fair.
aimai
@Major Major Major Major: This is one of those stupid lines that people circulate–it is supposed to have been said by John Adams about Jefferson, but its just a dumb misreading of a lengthy metaphoric use of the concept, not a real thing. No: Adams did not accuse Jefferson of actually being a hermaphrodite. Yes, he did use the word in alluding to Jefferson’s chameleon like qualities or his ability to appeal to both sides of a debate.
Miss Bianca
@Vlad: Fine, fair enough. But to argue “well, you have no moral suasion to call Bernie Sanders out on his shit because look what Clinton did eight years ago! Or, FFS, back in *1964*” is insulting and fatuous. HRC has given evidence of being able to change her positions, grow, and become a better candidate – hell, a better person – as a result. Whereas Bernie Sanders seems to be stuck in his SDS days. Which is fine if you happen to think that represents the absolute apex of human and political development. I’m not of that opinion, myself.
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: You forgot ‘unemployed’.
Well, I suppose you did say ‘freelance’.
ETA: Aaaand now our buddy Vlad brought up Robert Byrd and the KKK as a just wonderful under-the-radar false equivalence.
You know who else loved under-the-radar false equivalence?
Vlad
@Major Major Major Major:
Because the guy to whom I was responding said that she’s been all about “inclusion, equality, and fighting for the little guy” since “Day One.” Well, on “Day One,” she was about 180 degrees from all that stuff.
You can make a decent case for Clinton on the merits, but if you’re going to do that, you need to stick to stuff that’s actually true.
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major:
Probably something when he was 16. Also _his entire 30s_. See this MoJo article.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Thomas Jefferson?
FlipYrWhig
@Vlad: See under off, comma, fuck, comma, just go ahead and. Bernie Sanders was a crazy fuckup who sounded for all the world like a creeper trying to wheedle free love from hippie chicks. While she was at the same age Hillary Clinton was accomplishing actual things for actual people. Bernie Sanders’s entire life can’t hold a candle to what Hillary Clinton did _before Bill Clinton was governor_. Ridiculous.
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: I don’t think that’s how commas work.
dogwood
@Vlad:
That Goldwater girl crap reveals just how intellectually dishonest you are. Elizabeth Warren was a real grown up Reagan loving republican when the Clintons were working hard to get democrats back in power. When I was 10, I voted for Goldwater in my classroom election. To this day, it is the defining moment of my political life.
Vlad
@Miss Bianca: Again, I said she deserves credit for changing her stance. I was raised in a Republican household, so I know how it works as far as questioning your assumptions and growing out of that worldview. But trying to Dutch-uncle her into a lifetime of progressive beliefs isn’t fair or reasonable, particularly when there’s an actual and reasonable case to be made for her.
jl
@Major Major Major Major: you misread me. I do think the study is true.
Vlad
@FlipYrWhig: Fair enough. In lieu of an actual response, I’ll assume that you don’t have any rebuttal to the other points that I raised about her history on gay marriage and drug policy and the death penalty, then?
jl
@aimai: I guess you were at their meeting and know exactly what was said and can read the minds of both HRC and Sanders, and can see into the future about what a big chunk of Sanders supporters would do if he just unconditionally threw his support to Hillar. Good to know.
I hope that you use your powers for good and not for evil.
FlipYrWhig
@Vlad: The fucking death penalty? Christ almighty. The death penalty hasn’t been a vital political issue since the Dukakis campaign nearly 30 years ago. Bully for Bernie Sanders, he opposes stuff. The doing of stuff, not so much. The opposing, with thoughts, he’s a fucking expert at it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: I read that and I hear Zero Mostel’s voice in my head: “Yes, Prince Myshkin! What can we do for you?”
Miss Bianca
@Vlad: Well, then, I give up. I’m no longer sure what your fucking point is supposed to be. If it’s that Bernie Sanders has been a pillar of priggishly unwavering lefty rectitude his entire life, I’m not sure that’s a compelling argument – and not one that would stand up to the kind of scrutiny the Clintons have been dealing with for 30 + years.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Prometheus Shrugged:
Bernie ran as much of a dog whistle campaign using his surrogates as any Republican would (until Trump). Did Bernie ever distance himself or take responsibility for anything said or done? No? Oh. So fuck him and his demands.
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: “Shh, he’s on a roll.”
Vlad
@aimai: Why is that out of bounds?
Personally, I think she’s an opportunist, like most politicians. She wasn’t particularly progressive in the ’90s, and she’s become somewhat more so since then because that’s where the votes are. Which, as long as she sticks to her stated agenda, is OK. (Not great, since I’d prefer a more liberal platform, but OK.) I don’t really care about whether or not a politician is a true believer, as long as they push for the policies that I want. Harry Truman may have been a racist, but his positive steps on civil rights (like integrating the civil service) did the same amount of good that they would have if he’d been color-blind. In the end, results are what matter.
Major Major Major Major
@jl: Ahhh, I see.
Yeah, I would agree with the study, based on personal experience. The bootcamps teach you a language, but the schools teach you to think like a computer.
Vlad
@FlipYrWhig:
a) Eight years ago, you could have said the same thing about gun control.
b) You said that Hillary has been “talking about inclusion, equality, and fighting for the little guy since Day One.” Well, convicted death-row defendants are about as little as little guys get, and as an attorney she should fully know and appreciate that. If you look at the list of countries that still make use of capital punishment, it’s mostly countries like China and Pakistan and Iran and Somalia – not the people you should want to emulate. The death penalty is also disproportionately applied to minorities in the US, particularly African-Americans, so her position on the issue is kind of suspect from the standpoint of racial justice (and even more so, given her positions on the retroactive application of drug sentencing guidelines). And it’s even relevant as to the length and depth of her progressive values, given her husband’s eagerness to personally preside over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, who was so profoundly mentally impaired that he asked his guards to save the dessert his last meal “for later”, in order to establish his law-and-order bona-fides.
dogwood
@Vlad:
Hillary was a First Lady in the ’90’s. It wasn’t a secret at the time that she was more liberal than her husband, any more than it was a secret that Betty Ford and Barbara Bush were pro-choice.
FlipYrWhig
@Vlad: Don’t lecture me about the 1990s, you condescending little shit.
Vlad
@Miss Bianca: My point was that the descriptor that he applied to Clinton is one that could much more accurately be applied to Sanders. Clinton isn’t a candidate with a multi-decade record of ironclad progressivism. She’s got a checkered record, with good points and bad ones, and has generally drifted leftward with public sentiment on progressive issues. That’s a pragmatic approach, and one that has garnered some demonstrable positive outcomes, and you can make a good case for her as someone who is likely to pursue moderately progressive policies as long as it is advantageous for her to do so – which it seems likely to be for at least the immediate future. She has an authenticity problem with the voters right now (deserved or not), and trying to dress her up as a career-long true believer when she isn’t and hasn’t been only makes her look fake.
Vlad
@FlipYrWhig: Why not, you condescending big shit?
Keith G
Non-breathing equine beating session #24
Vlad
@dogwood: That may or may not be true – “everybody knows” isn’t particularly good evidence. But even if so, part of her argument in this campaign has been her experience in Washington (including her time as First Lady) and the knowledge of the political process that it gave her, and if she wasn’t able to exert any influence over policy at the time, then how much electoral credit does she really deserve for that part of her career?
Vlad
@dogwood: Why is that intellectually dishonest? Elizabeth Warren has come a long way in her views, just like Hillary has. I think the world of Warren. But if somebody tried to portray her as a lifelong progressive, I’d object to that, too, because fair is fair. She has enough real line items on her resume that she doesn’t need to resort to fake ones.
Miss Bianca
@Vlad: I shouldn’t even bother with a response, but what the hell, I appear to be a glutton for punishment: I’ll take HRC’s record of accomplishment over BS’s, any day. Because, you know…it *is* one. For all Sanders’s “lifelong progressive” posturing, he’s gotten surprisingly little actually accomplished. Has he had “the right stands” on certain issues? Perhaps. Has it done jackshit actually useful? Not so much. It’s easy to have an unsullied record of purity if you’re more interested in striking postures than in the actual getting in the weeds politicking that leads to accomplishments.
FlipYrWhig
@Vlad:
The only reason you think this is because you have no idea of what she did before Bill Clinton’s presidency. And you are heavily invested in keeping your ignorance intact, because it allows you to repeatedly make bullshit arguments.
FlipYrWhig
@Miss Bianca: Hey now, 36 years ago he was a decent mayor of a town with 40,000 people in it! That’s the size of my hometown, whose mayor is a guy I went to high school with. POLITICAL REVOLUTION
Ruckus
@Keith G:
Are you sure it isn’t at least #124? Seems like it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Jefferson.
Vlad
@Miss Bianca: That both is and isn’t a fair point.
The value of principles vs. accomplishments is one of the main areas of separation between the two campaigns. I think that there is value in both approaches, and that a functioning party needs both people who are always working to extend the frontier and people who are willing to make compromises in return for incremental gains. Too many of the former and you never pass any laws, and too many of the latter and you surrender too much ground when you pass them.
If you’re a voter who puts more value on the latter approach this cycle, it’s entirely reasonable and rational to prefer Clinton to Sanders. I don’t agree, but it’s a viable and intellectually consistent position. But legislative accomplishments are the core of Clinton’s brand and not Sanders’s, and complaining about the latter’s lack of them kind of misses the point – it’s like talking about the gas mileage on a piece of construction equipment. That’s not what it’s for.
I think that the value of Clinton’s political experience as First Lady is, by and large, overstated. Non-zero, but still not as great as her backers would claim. That said, if you prefer the Clinton-type pitch to the Sanders-type one, then even if you go with the assumption that I’m correct about the value of Clinton’s experience, then she’s still ahead of Sanders in that area, and if you’re basing your decision on that, then you weren’t wrong to opt for her in the primary.
redshirt
Can we go Tbogg here? It just depends on if the BernieBros want to continue.
dogwood
@Vlad:
You are either intellectually dishonest or woefully ignorant. And now that I think back to your ignorant assumptions about Tulsi G., it’s probably the latter. She’s an Islamophobe. They love her at the National Review.
Applejinx
@redshirt: God, no. The thread is ‘bitching about Bernie’ fair and square, by design, and the Hilbots are same as ever, and who can stand that? John did a post to the effect of ‘ok, fair enough’ and that’s what really matters.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus: It’s unicorn flogging, so it’s OK.
redshirt
@Applejinx: Vlad seems game. Send up the Bird signal and get the crew on board. Let’s Tbogg this!
J R in WV
@Vlad:
Hi Vlad! Glad to see you posting here on Balloon-Juice!
Where did you find Balloon-Juice first? Have you been visiting for very long? Why did you decide to start posting comments?
I haven’t seen you posting here before…. have I?
Where are you from?
Welcome to the community.
Vlad
@FlipYrWhig: I know exactly what she did in her law school days. She represented Communists and migrants and abused children and indigent defendants. Those are all very good things, and I’m glad that she did them. That doesn’t necessarily mean that she did so out of specific political or ideological convictions, though, any more than it means that the ACLU are white supremacists for defending Klansmen. Lawyers represent clients for all kinds of reasons, and just like politicians, for every one who backs a praiseworthy cause out of principle, there’s another who does the same for purely selfish reasons. (Which, again, I don’t really care about – a convict who’s exonerated ends up just as free regardless of the sincerity and moral fiber of his advocate.)
I note that you declined to engage in any substantive way with my arguments about her record in the ’90s.
Vlad
@J R in WV: Thanks for the welcome, but it’s not needed. I mostly lurk, but I’ve been commenting on-and-off since the middle of the last decade (as a check of the e-mail account associated with my posts can no doubt verify, for the suspicious ones among you). I remember when Cole was a Republican, even.
I was born in Australia to American parents, came over to the US at about six months old, and have spent most of my life in Pittsburgh, where I live now.
I decided to post in this thread because I’m kind of tired of seeing the reflexive contempt and disgust toward Sanders supporters on the site, and I was curious how people would respond if I decided to engage with them on it. (Verdict – some better than others.) On the whole, this doesn’t seem to have been a particularly rewarding discussion, with people jumping to a lot of conclusions about my positions and opinions rather than engaging with what I’m actually saying, so I’ll probably go back to lurking once things peter out in this thread. At least until the next time baseball comes up in discussion, anyway.
redshirt
@Vlad: What team do you root for?
Omnes Omnibus
@Vlad: IOW you do not know what she actually did.
chopper
dang, i leave for a few hours and suddenly we’re most of the way to a tbogg.
Vlad
@dogwood: What “ignorant assumptions” about Tulsi Gabbard? All I said was that it would be weird for one of the most prominent women in Congress to support Sanders if his campaign were powered by misogyny. Her regrettable positions on Islam don’t have much to do with that (and aren’t connected to much of anything else, given that they arise from her connections to Hindu nationalists – that’s not really a bloc with a lot of other representation in the US, be it the Sanders camp or elsewhere).
dogwood
@Vlad:
Her record in the 90’s? What the hell does that mean? She didn’t hold elective office until 2001.
Miss Bianca
@Vlad: May I just ask, *how* is it preferable to go for “principles” over “legislative accomplishments” when you’re talking about somebody’s record as a legislator? If you’re talking about someone’s fitness to be President? Sorry, I just don’t see how you can seriously argue that progressive “principles” are more important than being able to deliver a progressive *legislative agenda*. All the principles in the world don’t mean jack if you’re not able or willing to do that. YMMV – and, apparently, does. But again…I think it’s a fatuous argument. Altho’ I probably wouldn’t have thought so as a college student. But I’d have been just as wrong then, even if I thought I was right.
Vlad
@redshirt: The Pirates.
dogwood
@Vlad:
If endorsing Bernie Sanders is all it takes to make you one of the “most prominent women in Congress”, then you really have set the bar pretty low.
redshirt
I was a Reagan Youth and unfortunately my first vote for President was for George Bush Sr.
I learned though. I’ll never even consider voting for a Republican again. Unless of course they somehow completely change and the world goes upside down. Which seems unlikely.
redshirt
@Vlad: Cool. I have no beef with you and in fact wish the Pirates well. NL ball is like a different world.
Lynn Dee
@Betty Cracker:
I agree. Those were/are my feelings exactly. And he’s still baggin’ on her! It’s not even simply that he refuses to endorse her or concede she won. It’s that he’s still taking potshots at her.
He’s basically still campaigning, even if not for the nomination: “I’ll run my campaign, missy, and you can run yours. If it happens that I help you out, you’re welcome.”
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Miss Bianca:
The first bill President Stein would sign would have all the puritybros running for the next purity ticket of Cornel West/Allan West as proof of their unwillingness to compromise on their bro principles. The Tea Parties of the left and right unity ticket would surely heighten all of the contradictions and usher in the new age of DERP.
Vlad
@dogwood: Both in 2008 and 2016, Hillary has touted her experience as First Lady as one of her qualifications, and she has claimed partial credit for a lot of the accomplishments during Bill’s time as governor and president. It was one of the main points of her argument against Obama, since without it they would have both just been rookie senators (and you see some echoes of the same argument applied to Sanders in this thread, with people talking about his time as a mayor as if it’s a negative).
From the outside, it’s tough to know exactly how to assess her role in her husband’s administration. With the exception of health care, I don’t think that she had a huge amount of influence over policy (positive or negative) during the ’90s, but if she and her supporters are going to tout part of those successes as hers, then she deserves a share of the failures, too. Particularly if she’s unwilling or unable to fully separate herself from them in the present day, as with the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Lynn Dee:
I actually think Jane is Bernie’s campaign whisperer. His inner circle is Jane and Jeff Weaver – two more delusional and self-aggrandizing grifting frauds who are taking advantage of Bernie catching the car would be hard to find.
Cacti
@Lynn Dee:
For a progressive revolutionary, he seems to have a chronic case of white male entitlement.
Lynn Dee
@Cacti:
Yep. And I’m not sure that’s that unusual for the era in which he “cut his revolutionary teeth.”
Elie
@Miss Bianca:
Girl, Umh, Umh, Umh, there is just no reason to keep talking to this person. It aint honest communication. Its like “playing tennis” by batting the ball against a wall. It comes back but it isn’t really a result of a true dynamic with something vibrant. Its just a wall doing what walls do. Any return of the ball is elastic recoil against the wall.
Time to go pressure wash the driveway. More fun than watching the play by play with this one…
Vlad
@Miss Bianca: As I said up above in response to someone else, I don’t think any Democratic candidate will be getting much done in Congress over the next four years. The Republicans will just stonewall, like they did under Obama, and the House isn’t turning over any time soon (barring a miracle). So being able to work with people and pass laws is probably going to be about as helpful as being able to belch the alphabet. The only areas where the President will be able to make any progress will be in things like nominations and executive orders, and for those, ideological purity is actually fairly helpful (relatively speaking).
That’s how I see it, anyway. YMMV.
Vlad
@redshirt: Thanks!
Who is your team of choice?
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
I just gotta say – IBEW, Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the guys in bucket trucks, rebuilding the power grid after tornadoes, hurricanes, whatever. $55,000/year. CWA, the guys who keep the internet taking to itself, also. Plumbers, union carpenters, Operating Engineers, guys using huge tools to build roads and dams and bridges.
There are still union jobs, most of them don’t require college work, people shouldn’t forget about the guys who build and maintain the national infrastructure. And it pays well.
Vlad
@dogwood: Endorsing Sanders doesn’t make you that. Being one of the Vice-Chairs of the DNC, on the other hand…
Cacti
@J R in WV:
Also Longshoremen. High-paying union job with no college requirement.
redshirt
@Vlad: Red Sox. Hallowed be their name.
But not so far tonight.
redshirt
@Vlad: If the Senate swings back a Dem President could get a lot more done, at least towards nominations.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Vlad:
We’re on the verge of being able to create another historic wave election thanks to Trump. If only there was a progressive voting bloc we Democrats could rely on who cared as much about voting out the obstacles to progress as they are to voting for their progressive hero.
Vlad
@Betty Cracker: That’s fair.
I think that most of the things people have been freaking out over for the last couple of weeks are just ticky-tack hand-fighting for leverage. Clinton wants to secure Sanders’s support as cheaply as possible, and Sanders wants to extract as much as possible in exchange for his endorsement, and all of the back-and-forth over the superdelegates and such is just the two haggling over the price by proxy. He needs to present himself as a credible threat to hold out in order to retain leverage until the deal is sealed, even if he has no intention of actually walking (as I believe that he doesn’t), and if he wants to bring his supporters with him and sell them on supporting Clinton, he needs to have a few specific concessions (whatever they might be, and however large or small they might be) to point at as validation for their efforts.
If he actually decides to go full Nader, then I’ll be right there with all the Clintonites, waiting to stick a shiv in his kidney. The odds of that feel really, really low, though. Cross your fingers, and I’ll do the same.
Vlad
@redshirt: I’m broadly sympathetic to the Red Sox. An internet acquaintance of mine used to work for them for a while, many moons ago.
Also, Betts is a whole lot of fun.
Vlad
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I’d love to see a Democratic wave. Of course, when you totally disregard purity in pursuit of a wave, you end up like I did the last time we had one, with a worthless Dem like Jason Fucking Altmire (who wouldn’t even vote for Pelosi for leader) as my rep.
redshirt
@Vlad: I feel the same towards the Pirates. They seem like a fun team to root for. The Steelers, OTOH, can go suck.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Vlad:
You can’t be that clueless, can you? Oh wait, committee chairmen, Senate Majority leader, SCOTUS and control of the legislative agenda don’t matter when you’re an entitled white male drunk on your own specialness.
redshirt
@Vlad: I have to assume Bernie’s speech last night was discussed during Sanders and Clinton’s meeting the other day in Washington. As such, I assume this speech is part of a plan that was agreed upon at that meeting. One final point being, of course, Sanders concession and work on behalf of Clinton.
Vlad
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: What does any of that have to do with the price of tea in China? I voted for Sanders in the primary because I thought he would make better choices on the third and fourth of those items, and the first and second ones don’t have much to do with either one of them (since Trump and the RNC would have been equally screwed wave-wise no matter who won the Democratic primary).
Also, who the fuck is making a special pleading? I’m just a voter, like any other, and I’ve already said (ad nauseam, at this point) that I’m going to cross over to Clinton in the general, because no matter how low my expectations for her are, Trump (or any other Republican) would be substantially worse. So what in blue Christ are you looking for, exactly? You think that if you call me entitled often enough, I’ll get Stockholm syndrome and join your choir?
redshirt
@Vlad: To answer for others, I think people think you’re someone else and thus come pre-loaded with skepticism and hostility.
Cacti
@Vlad:
Impure! Impure!
Off with his head! Enemy of the people’s revolution!
Vlad
@redshirt: Agreed. As far as I’m concerned, the whole NFL can go perch and rotate. The Steelers seem perfectly happy to sign awful people to play for them these days, and all the concussion shit is just disgusting.
bemused senior
@Vlad: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/hillary-clintons-forgotten-death-penalty-shift-117441_Page2.html
Vlad
@redshirt: A specific someone else? Or just anti-Sanders stereotypes in general?
bemused senior
Since I didn’t use the link button this link about the death penalty went to moderation.
redshirt
@Vlad: Both, I think. It’s unfortunate for you since you have nothing to do with them but are facing the consequences. But this crowd is very anti Sanders at this point – I am too! – and that’s some more negativity your way. Sorry.
Vlad
@redshirt: Well, if anybody thinks I’m a sockpuppet, here‘s me dancing on Altmire’s grave in the comments of a thread from 2012. I must be going for the long con, I guess.
Figure I’ll take off and re-lurk. Was nice talking to a few of you guys.
redshirt
@Vlad: Come back for the General! Bashing Trump is going to be a lot of fun!
bemused senior
@Vlad: Listen to this if you want information about the 1990s. Like most male Sanders supporters, her tireless work on behalf of women’s rights doesn’t count for your assessment of her progressive record.
redshirt
Now that I’ve somehow mollified the only Sanders supporter in this thread, odds of a Tbogg have dropped dramatically. Trending at 20%.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@bemused senior:
That was a great read. All of this information will be highlighted over the next few months, and a lot of the Hillary bashing will be revealed for what it is – a right wing hit job on an amazing, strong, serious, gracious woman who has had liberal principles all of her life, and who has been subject to revilment and dismissiveness all of her life by a phalanx of petty, sexist, mean, hateful, jealous, mediocre men of both parties.
Also want to do my part for a TBogg. This will hopefully be the last Hillzilla v. Berniebro bash fest, so let’s do it for posterity.
No One You Know
@Chyron HR: No, the proper term is delusional.
Neuroatypicals do better than that!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@redshirt: Lemme stir some shit up, in the spirit of Tbogg (threads)
Forty. Three. Years. Old.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Wow. If he officially concedes, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s another Heaven’s Gate. WTF.
redshirt
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I get her feelings about zombies.
eemom
I’ll do my part for teh TBogg, because I’m pissed and disgusted. I have a FB friend who’s a total slavering Bernie cult bot. Bernie GOOD. Hillary BAD. Talking Jonestown level cultbot. Posts literally everything she finds on the internet that “supports” either of those narratives, facts be damned.
Well, she’s also a high school classmate, and a doctor…..so she’s not STUPID….so when we got into it a little this evening over something I posted, I tried to make nice, and say that we’re really on the same side, etc. She didn’t respond to any of that. What she DID do, was post some totally unrelated thing about some Long Island psycho that has my name and picture above it….maybe because it was cut and pasted wrong, or something. I’m just assuming it was inadvertent. But I’ve asked her twice to take it down, and she hasn’t.
Moral: Bernouts are some seriously fucked up people.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: You are from Long Island?
eemom
No, she is.
redshirt
@eemom: Yeah some of them take it way personally, for reasons I cannot understand. I mean, the dude is a frumpy old clown man. It’s not like he’s Justin Bieber.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Well, that’s okay then.
LeonS
@Uncle Ebeneezer: Do you have a source for that?
Lynn Dee
aimai at
nomoremisterniceblog:
Emma
@eemom: Good Christ, that’s horrible.
Omnes Omnibus
@LeonS: It isn’t true, but it is out there. FEC filings by PACs made it seem that way.
Martin
Damn typos – didn’t check it. Should have. My bad. Fat bass player fingers :(
Paul in KY
@C.S.: Good conversation on Ancient Romans. Probably Marius would be best, but no one knows of him, so I will return to Cicero.