Welp:
Warren hits back: “I was disappointed to hear that Bernie is sending his volunteers out to trash me. Bernie knows me and has known me for a long time…I hope bernie reconsiders and turns his campaign in a different direction.” Also notes the “factionalism” caused by 2016 https://t.co/ER0Vm6sgJS pic.twitter.com/N8prZdeZk9
— Alex Thompson (@AlxThomp) January 12, 2020
Prediction: Bernie will not reconsider.
Question for those of y’all who’ve done a lot of canvassing: is this sort of “overcoming objections to the sale” script common? I’ve never seen one like that, but I mostly volunteer to register voters or do data entry because I hate canvassing and suck at it. That said, I did canvass for Obama and Clinton, and no one gave me a script.
PS: Kudos to that reporter for retyping the script to protect the source.
Cacti
Liz is the frog who let the scorpion on her back.
germy
To conservatives, we’re all Bernie.
Hunter Gathers
Wilmer’s Cult will hand the Presidency to Trump.
Again.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the future’s so bright, I want to go back to bed and pull the blankets up over my head and dream of emigrating
Dorothy A. Winsor
I was really doubtful about this report earlier today. It sounded to me like trouble being stirred up. But what do I know?
About the script, do voters really stand there and let a canvasser argue about their preferred candidate? Smile, say thank you, and close the door.
debbie
Fuck scripts! Also, liars: “(optional) In fact, she’s my second choice!” Makes me glad I don’t answer my phone. They’re no better than the robots telling me my FB has been hacked.
Those seem like very long answers. Who would really stick around to listen?
Chyron HR
Bernie 2020: He Doesn’t Appeal to Educated People
PsiFighter37
Warren was stupid for having a nonaggression pact with Wilmer. At some point, one of them will have to cannibalize the other’s supporters to have a shot at the nomination. Hope she decides that this is worth bringing a gun to the gunfight.
Chyron HR
What’s the pre-programmed response to “The world would be better off if Bernie’s first heart attack had killed him”?
Ella in New Mexico
THIS kind of shit by him is what turned me against him mid-2016.
When he went from someone who was healthily pushing the party (and her, to be honest) in a more Progressive direction to outright trashing OUR nominee Hillary Clinton and offering pre-prepared talking points to Trump to use against her was when Bernie was dead to me.
I’ll never vote for him in a primary, and I’d love one of his supporters to come to my door and try to sell this shit-spiel to me. I’ll be polite and factual and kind, but they’ll walk away so fucking sorry they did
No. It’s wrong for him to do it and it’s wrong for her. NOW is not the time for anyone to go scorched earth on our candidates and I think we all respect her for overridingly focusing on HER platform, not making the mistakes of the past and soiling the swimming pool for anyone else that may win.
PsiFighter37
@Ella in New Mexico: That’s way too kind of you. I would tell them to fuck off in as loud and abrasive a manner as possible.
Betty Cracker
@Chyron HR: Seek help?
MattF
Candidates’ staffs take their cues about acceptable behavior from the candidates. Warren gets this.
Cacti
Or tell them fuck off and get off my porch.
sab
@Ella in New Mexico: The problem with that is they know where you live.
Luthe
When I’ve canvassed (before a general, not a primary), the goal was to get likely and candidate-curious voters to the polls. We were told not to even bother with anyone voting for the other guy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Jason Johnson at the Root turned his weekly “power rankings” over to a group of 60+ Black voters, anonymously explaining who they liked and why. It’s worth a read, if a very limited sample. But in the comments are a few people telling the Olds they need to get with it because we don’t have time for “incrementalism”, one of the new buzzwords of the purity left. On top of the fantasy that Bernie can win a general election– which I think is only possible if the economy goes into the dumper again, and even then I don’t think it’s a sure thing– is the fantasy that Congress doesn’t exist. Jon Fugelsang once said in ’16 that President Bernie would rule by Executive Order, then nobly go down to defeat in 2020 having established… something. And, that assertion to the contrary, he is not (usually) stupid
ETA: Forgot the link to Johnson’s piece.
laura
I’ve worked just about every election cycle as a Union Agent – canvasser, phone banker, rallyer of workers around legislation and for candidates from schools district elections to universal health care (shout out to Sheila Kuehl’s SB 840 in 2005!) all the way up to city state and federal epections. Every single was used talking points and messaging – and it was easy to use just as a conversation starter and speak more personally when you had a good understanding of the subject or candidate’s policies.
Never, and I mean never, was disparaging voters or other candidates within the party. Regarding Republicans- it is so easy to speak to the sheer awfulness of their policies that you have no need to resort to ad hominem attacks.
This bullshit ought to be called out and let the man and not his surrogates answer her. Wont be standing around waiting for that holding my breath however.
Duane
@germy: As dangerous as Bill Clinton? The highly popular, two-term President? There has to be better monsters. Whoever Peter Morici is, he’s an idiot.
mvr
@Ella in New Mexico
This basically sums up my 2016 reactions – I sent him money early on because I thought it was good to push the party to the left and because I thought a competitive primary was good for the party.
West of the Rockies
Bernie and his cultists are full of themselves. They think they’re the brightest and best, and they look upon everyone else as barely tolerable.
mvr
@Luthe:
My experience too. Canvassing was to GOTV. But then I’ve not canvassed for caucuses.
Cacti
Bernie is the only candidate in the race who’s been a useful idiot for Moscow longer than Trump.
Immanentize
@laura: First, I’m impressed. Thank you for your service!
Second, I suspect Warren is setting up some particularly thorny Tuesday night questions for Bernie. Who on stage will be the first to point out that he is not a Democrat? My money’s on Biden.
Ella in New Mexico
@PsiFighter37:
@sab:
Well, I live a relatively small community. They’re likely my friends kids, friends of my own kids or kids/family of my patients. I actually care about them not hating me :-D
raven
@Immanentize: Sent you a couple of FM messages.
germy
@Duane:
Immanentize
@raven: ok. I’ll look….
ETA. I’m out at the park right now. It’s 70 friggin degrees! When I get home….
joel hanes
@laura:
never, was disparaging voters or other candidates within the party
Senator Sanders is not a Democrat, and in reality, neither are many of his supporters. Thus, slagging the Democratic candidates is technically not a violation of this rule.
Chyron HR
“Buttigieg isn’t winning over African Americans.”
Presumably the script goes on to allege that Pete thinks letting blacks vote is “rigging” the primary against him, and that he falsely claims to have been a civil rights leader in the 60s.
Raven Onthill
Scripts have been automated; there are canvassing apps these days. I know the Warren campaign and the Washington State Democratic Party use the same app; I wonder if all the candidates are using it.
joel hanes
@West of the Rockies:
Many of us are full of ourselves. I am.
The fatal problem for the Bernies is that in reality, they are something like 10% of the electorate, but they *believe* that they’ll get 60% of the vote in the general. This delusion leads to many missteps.
mrmoshpotato
@West of the Rockies: But but Saint Bernie is going to give everyone free college, free healthcare, a unicorn and cute puppies that never grow up or crap on the carpet!
raven
@Immanentize: Oh, no hurry! It’s 70 here too so I have the windows open while I watch the playoffs.
satby
@Duane: yeah, the Clinton years of relative peace and prosperity, recast as a hellhole.
during the Bush II years I used to tell the traders at the CBOT that I’d blow the Big Dog myself if it meant we could get the calm and decent economy of those years back.
fuck that idiot.
WaterGirl
Wow. When I canvassed for Obama in Iowa before the caucus on Jan 3, 2008, we were told NEVER to disparage other candidates and only talk about Obama.
We were also told that when we were canvassing for Barack Obama we were his representatives and were to conduct ourselves in a way that Obama himself would behave.
If Bernie had a problem with how he was being represented, the Bernie bros would know about it. It’s clear Bernie has no problem with any of this. I seriously considered voting for him in the primary in 2016 but I disliked him by the end of the campaign and now have come to loathe him.
Princess
I think what (almost) everyone wants most from this primary is to elect the person who has the best chance of beating Trump. I also think that no one knows who that is, even though many people claim to know (weirdly, it’s always their preferred candidate, and no one else stands a chance, according to them). Myself, I think the person who wins the primary is probably the person best able to beat Trump, so I’m going to vote for the primary candidate who I think will be the best president and let the chips fall where they may.
All of that aside, I think the other thing (almost) everyone seems to agree about, is that they don’t like candidates who go negative. It feels like everyone who has gone negative has had an immediate drop in the polls. I think it is connected to everyone mostly wanting someone who beats Trump. So we’ll see how this works out for Sanders.
EL
In the midterms I canvassed both Democrats and Independents, and we had a script explaining our candidate’s positions. I’ve canvassed two presidential elections, several congressional elections, and I’ve never seen a script disparaging the opposition.
It only confirms my 2016 opinion of Bernie.
mrmoshpotato
@satby:
Very subtle endorsement of Clinton’s economy. ?
Baud
Good on Warren for punching back.
Baud
Warren is so awful, no one who hates Democrats will vote for her. #Bernie2020.
Immanentize
@germy: Sort of off-topic, but your comment reminded me of an insight I had when I was behaving badly at a neighbor’s party on Christmas. H-1B visas are given overwhelmingly to men. Nearly 3/4 (74.3%) of H-1B Visa applications are for men.
That seems to me like a big problem.
Immanentize
@Baud: (Except for rich, smart people.)
Nothing says class war like that message!
sab
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thank you. That was interesting.
satby
@mrmoshpotato: I don’t think they thought it was subtle at all ?
Ella in New Mexico
@Betty Cracker: Would you consider finding a way to use this audio-vid as a way to cleanse all of us from a particularly shit-stirring when you open a new one?
The first 20 seconds would do. I have no idea how to sample it but it’s what we all need to hear from time to time.
youtube.com/watch?v=aDaCNA3pink
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s not new. I remember it from before Obama.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Immanentize: reminds me of that moment in ’16 when The Beast was reading off the list of demographic groups he won and he included “the poorly educated”, “We love the poorly educated!”
He has such contempt for his own base (see also “2 Corinthians, that’s the one you like, right?”), it’s so amazing and frustrating that they can’t see it. I always enjoy it when he forgets he’s a populist and starts bragging about his Ivy league education and his huge houses. But it never takes with them.
Princess
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thanks for this. This is the best thing I have read yet on the primary. A must-read.
Ella in New Mexico
@joel hanes:
And this is more true today than it was in 2016.
eclare
@satby: 1000%. Love this comment.
LongHairedWeirdo
@mvr: caucuses are very different, and that might be why there’s a message regarding opposition candidates. If no candidate wins a majority on the first round, the next round requires people to push for defections from other candidates, while winning the caucus-goers for the eliminated candidates.
Seeding doubt in people’s minds about a candidate is fair game; I’m more concerned about the way it’s worded – elitist, out of touch, etc., echoing precisely the lines of attack we know will be be the initial lines of attack for the right wing. Why add the damage of such “friendly fire” to voters on our side?
WaterGirl
@Baud: hahahahaha
West of the Rockies
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Trump supporters aren’t the brightest pups in the box, just the most hateful.
Jinchi
Warren and Sanders were smart for holding their fire, especially early in the campaign, when the debate moderators were trying to set up skirmishes between candidates. They wanted to establish their legitimacy as candidates and their ideology as within the mainstream. It was a strategy that maximized the odds of a liberal candidate succeeding, and if either had fallen flat, the other would have their support. But it was a temporary alliance that was bound to collapse if they both ended up in the top tier right before the voting started.
PsiFighter37
@Cacti: You forgot Tulsi…how dare you?!
zhena gogolia
@Hunter Gathers:
I’m afraid so.
scav
I’m hoping to stare them in the eye and agree wholeheartedly, adding that clearly there were so few positive reasons to vote for Bernie that the campaign was reduced to trash-talking actual candidates to fill space.
PsiFighter37
@scav: Bernie and his supporters are basically the real-life equivalent of the Underpants Gmones:
Step 1: Political Revolution
Step 2: ????
Step 3: SOCIALISM!
eclare
Anyone watching KC v Texas?
Villago Delenda Est
Wilmer is simply an asshole. Who is beholden to the NRA. Who can’t get legislation moved through the House or the Senate, but sure is good at getting post offices named, woohoo!
Villago Delenda Est
@West of the Rockies: THIS. A thousand times, THIS.
Ben in RVA
Sanders is all of a sudden going nuclear on both Warren and Biden–he’s using Republican framing to do it.
“Warren is an out-of-touch elitist.”
“Biden is a warmongering Washington insider who sold us out!”
His internals must be ringing real alarm bells inside his campaign.
And FWIW, Biden screwed up that vote, but the characterization of said vote by the Sanders camp and his online supporters is being done in very bad faith. Do not take the bait.
Buckeye
I missed this recent Ode to Bernie from Nathan Robinson:
currentaffairs.org/2020/01/everyone-is-getting-on-the-bernie-train/
Immanentize
@eclare: I’m sure Raven is! I gotta support the Texans, because family.
PsiFighter37
@Buckeye: I think the kombucha he is drinking might’ve been brewed with some really good weed.
PF37 +2
Redshift
@LongHairedWeirdo: Yeah, this reads to me like it’s for the Iowa caucuses, where the need to attract other candidates supporters after the first round is an important part of the process. That makes slightly less obnoxious, but it still seems really stupid. Who would think that disparaging another candidate is a good way to win over their supporters? (Wilmer staffers, apparently.)
Litany
Two things, in no particular order:
FIrst, this is a non-story. I’ve volunteered for Bernie, and this “volunteer script” was never shown to me. Apparently it was posted to a volunteer for Sanders slack and was quickly taken down by the moderators, who quickly reaffirmed that it wasn’t actual material from the campaign. I’m not sure why we’re making such a mountain out of this molehill considering Sanders and his surrogates never even produced this image and in fact took it down as soon as possible, but I guess we’re through the looking glass now and everyone has terminal Primary Brain.
Secondly, does everyone have amnesia about 2008? At that time I got people knocking on my door volunteering for the Hillary campaign who wanted to talk to me about the “whitey” tape. Even if this was real it’d be relatively tame shit in terms of the ratf*cking that Democrats and their volunteers have historically pulled on one another.
eclare
@Immanentize: Stunning game. Texting with a KC die hard.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@PsiFighter37: Tulsi is kinda forgettable.
Mnemosyne
@LongHairedWeirdo:
That’s what bothered me in 2016, too — the exact same lines of attack were used against Hillary by both Sanders and Trump, which meant that people who don’t play a lot of attention to politics gave those attacks a lot of credence: If Trump and Sanders are both saying that she’s the corrupt Wall Street candidate who will sell us all out, it MUST be true, because those guys don’t agree about anything else!
Talking about Hillary’s “corruption” became indistinguishable from Trump’s “Crooked Hillary” claims, and both sides hated the Clinton Foundation despite the fact that it is in fact unusually honest and transparent for a foundation that size.
And, yeah, I’m riding the 2016 pony again because it really feels like we learned NOTHING from 2016 and will gleefully hand Trump all of the attacks he needs to beat our candidate. Again.
Duane
@satby: Maybe he meant Hillary Clinton, not Bill. Her administration was a disaster, as was predicted.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
twitter Nixon (a playwright I think based in London) thinks Bernie can win the nomination and the general. I didn’t read the column cause it’s behind a paywall, but this is one of the first responses to his tweets about it
These are people who think Nancy Pelosi the enemy, that Nancy Pelosi is right wing.
Who helps these people put their shoes on in the morning? reminds them to breathe?
Chyron HR
@Litany:
Translation: Oops, we got caught.
Villago Delenda Est
@PsiFighter37: I concur. I hope he’s posting from a bud legal state, otherwise he’s toast.
JPL
@Immanentize: same
Redshift
@Buckeye: Yeah it’s so weird how when Bernie is ahead in a round of polling, it’s essential for everyone to drop out and for all their supporters to switch to him, but when he’s behind in a round of polling, it isn’t time for his supporters to switch. Almost as if they’re arguing in bad faith about polling and just switching justifications, not conclusions…
Betty Cracker
@Ella in New Mexico: Can’t listen/watch now because I’m playing DJ with my phone for others, but bookmarked for later!
Immanentize
@eclare: I’m shocked, actually. I thought the Chiefs would rule the air. But they seem to have forgot where their home field was.
Litany
@Chyron HR: Just as likely someone who wanted to do a hit job on the campaign posted this in the slack and then leaked it, but sure that works too!
Can you find a significant number of volunteers who will talk about using this script, a significant number of call recipients who will talk about hearing it, etc? Of course not, the entire outrage has been ginned up around one image of a word document that we’re supposed to believe all the evil Sanders volunteers have been using to attack Warren. It’s just lazy.
Villago Delenda Est
Totally OT, but notable: Neil Peart gets a nod on his passing on the Wikipedia main page, but they never mentioned that dipshit Don Imus there.
Ben in RVA
@Redshift: Kind of like how Republicans argue for tax cuts.
Recession and deficit? We need tax cuts to stimulate the economy!
Prosperity and surplus? Politicians have been taking too much of your money! We need a tax cut!
JPL
@Chyron HR: His/her comment was confusing because I thought Hillary wanted to see the birth certificate.
eclare
@Immanentize: Special teams has serious issues. Still, tons of time left. Titans fan myself.
Mnemosyne
@Litany:
Sure, Jan. ?
JPL
@Litany: Bernie hired the protester at a Biden event so give me a break.
Immanentize
@Chyron HR: Yeah and, Litany shows up with this pretty canned defense all set to go? As a defence it is pretty weedy. I thought the past tense “volunteered” was a nice touch as this just happened, but Lit! Didn’t see it? Non sequiter.
Shit stirrer.
Kent
Honestly this is totally normal stuff when it comes to caucuses.
My first political caucus experience was when I was an undergrad in Portland in 1984 and I volunteered to do field organizing for the Gary Hart campaign across the river in Washington when they still had caucuses in WA. We had the same exact sorts of scripts back then to use against Mondale. It was cutthroat.
I’m not sure why people are so hyper-sensitive. Politics has always been bare-knuckled since basically forever. Of course Warren is correct to call this out. But it’s just noise. All this stuff will basically help the response abilities of whichever candidate rises to the top.
I’m a Warren fan and despise Bernie. But geez, they probably aren’t wrong about her appeal.
Litany
@Mnemosyne: This is just a fact? I’m not suggesting the campaign told them to do it but it’s revisionist history to pretend like Hillary surrogates weren’t sharing photos of Obama in a turban, suggesting he was a Muslim, using racist rhetoric to justify their PUMA stance, etc. Like we discussed before around 25% of 08 Hillary voters ended up voting for McCain, so I’m not sure why you’re trying to pretend that racism wasn’t a major campaigning tactic for the anti-Obama coalition.
JPL
@eclare: Which team would you prefer to play?
sab
I really love catcake.
Buckeye
@Litany:
twitter.com/AlxThomp/status/1216467334476582918
eclare
@JPL: KC. Spotty D against the run.
Litany
@JPL: Biden told the guy to vote for and put his energies into electing another candidate, why are you mad that “the protester” Carlos Rojas (who has a name btw) took him up on that offer?
Redshift
Yeah. Oh, look, the “anything bad about Bernie didn’t really happen (with no source) and Democrats are evil” troll has showed up! Yay.
Litany
@Buckeye: Ok, so where was it actually rolled out? Because I’ve done phonebanking for several early states and this has never been part of our script.
MisterForkbeard
Much as I think Litany usually argues in bad faith, I am actually completely willing to believe that this was an unofficial thing that got posted somewhere but was never actually pushed or directed by the campaign. It’s overall very mild and tries to sound helpful, however wrong it may be.
I’m also sure that Bernie’s campaign has not established the ‘tone’ of being friendly towards other campaigns. I don’t think he CAN, to be honest – a huge part of his appeal is people who believe ‘the establishment’ is fundamentally evil and deviating from just about any “left” plan means you’re a secret Republican. So his campaign is fundamentally unable to encourage unity and respect among the campaigns, because large chunks of his support are opposed to it.
Immanentize
@Mnemosyne: Funny, that never happened to me. Just different canvassers, probably.
Meanwhile, fucking Larry Johnson put out the Whitey tape shit in mid-may of 2008. Johnson had been triggered by the black guy running and had been pulling shit since 2007. Obama wrapped up the nomination by June 1. So Lit! must have lived in very particular states for the story to even be possible, let alone plausible. Fin
Villago Delenda Est
@Buckeye: As I asserted previously, Bernie is an asshole.
trollhattan
@Buckeye:
Sweet romping Ronny Reagan on a Roomba, that’s adorable. “If you don’t vote for the One True Socialist of our lifetimes you have failed the human race. Shame. Shame. Shame. [head-shave optional]”
Immanentize
@eclare: Text your Chiefs fan friend that the party is over. It seems that the Texan’s plan was to put up points on the board ASAP to shut down Arrowhead fans. Worked.
Fair Economist
Warren gets a lot of support outside of normal Democratic channels because of her longstanding campaign for fair banking. She was one of the very few people who identified the housing bubble well before it blew up. My wingnut stepfather even likes her.
sab
@Litany: Most the Hillary people I knew in 2008 were absolutely torn between Obama and Hillary, as in went into the voting booth not knowing which they would vote for. PUMAs were a tiny group of rich donors.
eclare
@Immanentize: Crazy game.
Redshift
@Kent: Huh. I’ve done a lot of canvassing over the years and I’ve never been asked to talk about the opposing candidate. (Campaign literature, sure, but not canvassers.) Not saying it doesn’t happen but that or other “cutthroat” tactics shouldn’t be brushed off as normal everyday things in my experience.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan: I have long asserted, since the spring of 2016, that the problem with Bernie is not the policies he broadly supports, it’s the fact that he does not have the slightest clue how to implement them, and his personality prevents him from acquiring the clues necessary to do so.
hitchhiker
@Redshift:
Yes. Every instance of Bernie getting half a good number = WE’RE GOING TO WIN FOR SURE (and if we don’t it’s because they cheated).
If you want to see this happening in real time, have a look at r/politics on reddit. Last night someone posted a link to 538 polling with a headline about ALL THE STATES WHERE BERNIE’S AHEAD … and I went to look at it, and it clearly showed Biden tied in all but two of those states, and with a 40% chance of getting the nomination compared to Bernie’s 20%.
The thread, of course, was filled with people who didn’t go to the link but were making proclamations about how it was time for Warren to accept the inevitable and for Biden to be crushed.
I worry about Bernie supporters a lot. I hate it that AOC is marshalling her powers, because the turnout for young voters, imo, is what will determine whether or not we get the senate. Pretty sure we can win the presidency even if only half of millennials vote, as was the case last time. But we need the youngs to show up in numbers, or be stuck with a McConnell legacy that lasts another six years.
Immanentize
@MisterForkbeard:
Then we would have seen such a Statement from Sanders. The reason Warren is up with her statement is because of the fact in my first sentence.
Litany
@MisterForkbeard: I’m willing to concede this. And I’m actually ok with it: I’m a socialist. I think workers are entitled to most if not all of the profits that come out of the things they create, and that the US should stop waging imperial wars of aggression against other countries. These are minority opinions in the Democratic party, which is still a party where you can get away with positions like “we like the GOOD kind of payday loan lender” and “assassinating a leader in another country is basically fine, but the problem is that Trump didn’t ask the right people about it ahead of time.” These are major differences which need to be reconciled in the party’s base, and the way to do that is electoral politics.
Redshift
@sab:
And Republican ratf*ckers.
Immanentize
@hitchhiker: AOC is a Democrat. She has a primary preference which is understandably based on his support and help getting her elected. Loyalty. But the way she disposed of Pelosi haters — I have no doubt she will be working hard to unelect Trump this fall.
emmyelle
Good for her. I’m leaning Biden (not the least bit joyfully), but she just went way up in my estimation.
Litany
@sab:
“Based on data from the 2008 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project, a YouGov survey that also interviewed respondents multiple times during the campaign, 24 percent of people who supported Clinton in the primary as of March 2008 then reported voting for McCain in the general election.
An analysis of a different 2008 survey by the political scientists Michael Henderson, Sunshine Hillygus and Trevor Thompson produced a similar estimate: 25 percent.”
—WaPo
Buckeye
@Litany:
Perhaps you should ask Alex Thompson.
@trollhattan:
I’ve been told that Robinson used to be rational, but he’s gone full-on Bernie Cultist now. It’s disturbing.
Bill Arnold
@PsiFighter37:
Fixed that.
(Mostly serious. A very few exceptions like AOC.)
kindness
I know what happened. The Russians gave Republicans a bunch of money and Republicans hired trolls to play an obnoxious BernieBro (yea oxymoron, I know) outreach people.
Clever. Too clever for the Republicans we face. They just take the Russians money.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I say again: I will vote for Warren in the Illinois primary, but I will support whoever the Democrats nominate. They’re all better than Trump. So in the meantime, I try to resist knocking Warren rivals because I don’t want to harm a candidate who might wind up running against Trump.
Litany
@Immanentize:
On the ropeline after a rally in Iowa City, IA, Sen.
Sanders responded to Sen. Elizabeth Warren saying his supporters were sent to “trash” her. “We have hundreds of employees, Elizabeth Warren has hundreds of employees and people sometimes say things that they shouldn’t.”
Sanders continued: “I have never said a negative word about Elizabeth Warren who is a friend of mine. We have differences on issues, that’s what campaigning is about. But no one is gonna be attacking Elizabeth,” Sanders said.
That seems like a statement to me? I’m sure Bernie’s campaign will throw someone under the bus for this ala Bill Shaheen stepping down after raising Obama’s drug use.
Redshift
@Villago Delenda Est: This is my biggest concern as well. I care about policy, but arguably the most important qualification for a president, even more so after Trump has taken a wrecking ball to our government, is the ability to bring people together to build support for actions, and to appoint and administer good people. Bernie’s entire career suggests he’s the opposite of that.
Mnemosyne
@Litany:
Hey, is that the same article that proved that disgruntled Sanders-to-Trump voters flipped Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to Trump even though there were far fewer of them than Clinton-to-McCain voters?
That may not be quite as much of a bragging point as you think. Just sayin’.
zhena gogolia
@kindness:
The Russians (Russian military intelligence) created their own troll farms and told them not to attack Bernie (“We like him”). It’s in the Mueller Report, vol. 1.
The Dangerman
I’m late to this thread but one word for BS (how apropos): Ratfucker.
Maybe that should be two words: Rat Fucker. Or four: The fucker of rats.
Fuck him.
zhena gogolia
@Immanentize:
I wish I were so sure.
Litany
@Mnemosyne: Again, expecting your primary opponent’s supporters to vote for you as a 100% lockstep block is a fantasy as delusional as the misplaced confidence that Democratic insiders had on Hillary’s electoral strength in the first place. If you require a wildly unprecedented thing to happen in order to actually get winning margins then you clearly haven’t actually run a winning campaign.
Kent
@Redshift: Shrug. It was my first experience with canvassing in a caucus. WA was really off the radar. The candidates weren’t there or anything so the paid staff were just on their own running things. As I remember, Hart won and was looking good until Donna Rice happened.
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I am wrong often. But Sanders has a floor. Sanders has a ceiling. The two are withing about 5-7 points of each other. He cannot win this primary. “Not Bernie” will be kicking in as others drop out. What Hillary voter would pick Bernie over Biden (or another candidate?). Yes, crawl over glass, etc. But
Not Gon Hap En
Mnemosyne
@Litany:
Just pointing out that a group of stubborn Berniebro fantasists decided to spitefully throw the election to Trump when their god-king erroneously told them than he had been cheated out of his due.
We all get that you’re threatening us with the same outcome in 2020 because you’re a bunch of thin-skinned babies who will throw a tantrum if you don’t get your way, but I don’t think as many people are falling for your blackmail as you hoped.
Kent
@Immanentize: He is a lot like Trump in that respect. Except his ceiling and floors are much lower.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Immanentize:
Yeah, I’ve thought that floor/ceiling thing about Sanders too. He’s like Trump in that respect.
ETA: Or what Kent said
WaterGirl
@Redshift: I have always heard that Iowa in particular does not like candidates who go negative.
Maybe that’s no longer true, or maybe it was the conventional wisdom but was never true.
Either way, I am surprised by candidates going negative in Iowa.
Immanentize
@Litany: Why do these homosexuals keep sucking my dick?
Immanentize
@Mnemosyne: nice catch!
cope
@West of the Rockies: As for “hateful”, maybe you haven’t caught the gist of some comments being made in here.
As best I can tell without actually being on Twitter, this seems to only be a story on that particular platform. I think I will save my outrage and elevated blood pressure moments for more substantial issues.
MisterForkbeard
@Litany:
Both of these are essentially bullshit and really prove that you’re not here to discuss things honestly.
Discussion points like that are why a lot of people here dislike hardcore Bernie supporters. I don’t think you could do a better job of turning people off if you tried.
Baud
I’m at the point where I want no one to have a majority of pledged delegates and the supers to give it to Biden on the second ballot.
Immanentize
@Litany: Why do these homosexuals keep sucking my dick?
Litany
@Immanentize:
Ones who don’t want to lose again? The choices really aren’t looking too great, and we learned what happens to stale centrists who openly dismiss the problems that Americans are facing in 2016. Our choices are Biden (who seems to be in cognitive decline and even beyond that has a horrible record for a candidate in 2020), Buttigieg (black support so close to 0% that it’s very plausible that it’s actually 0 and an incredibly unappealing platform), and Warren (who I actually like pretty well but who is trying to run Sanders’s campaign while still tacking to the center and clearly hasn’t succeeded at that). I’m going to vote for whoever wins the nomination, but honestly it’s pretty much down to Biden and Sanders at this point unless things change incredibly quickly in the next few days. Historically whoever wins Iowa and New Hampshire emerges as a massive favorite with clear momentum, the window is getting small for either of the other two relevant candidates to make their move.
eddie blake
@Litany: “If you require a wildly unprecedented thing to happen in order to actually get winning margins then you clearly haven’t actually run a winning campaign.”
you mean like a massive multi-million dollar gru/gop ratfucking?
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: Maybe Hillary’s people did that? I have no idea. But if you pulled that sort of thing while canvassing for Obama, you would have been booted out on your ear.
MisterForkbeard
@Litany: He didn’t speak about his campaign at all, is the obvious missing thing in that statement. The problem is “Bernie’s campaign had a script to badmouth Warren”, which she called him out on. His response is “I haven’t attacked her and hey people say bad stuff all the time so don’t blame me!”
This is not a complete response. Saying “the script in question was not approved by my campaign and I strongly disapprove of it” would have been fantastic and everything he needed to say.
Litany
@Immanentize: How dare those Sanders surrogates argue against another candidate while also praising her as a close second!
eddie blake
@Litany:
“stale centrists who openly dismiss the problems that Americans are facing in 2016.”
wow. you’re just a dick.
why don’t you run off and make your OWN goddamn party?
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: You kept going into moderation because you had somehow dropped the final “t” from your email address, which made it not valid.
Litany
@MisterForkbeard: Like I said, I think his statement indicates he disapproves of this strategy and I would suspect that someone quietly gets cut loose in the coming days if this did come from inside the house. I personally don’t disagree with the point: Warren’s campaign sorta seems like the project of a certain type of PMC white liberal at this point, but I understand why it’s dumb for the campaign to say that (in the same way that I assume many of you don’t want your favorite candidates to make the critiques of Sanders that you do on this blog).
WaterGirl
@sab: I ?CatCake.
Mnemosyne
@MisterForkbeard:
Apparently when Obama’s administration regulated payday lenders, they didn’t, like, MEAN it mean it. Or something.
But, hey, Trump immediately rolled those regulations back again in another win for the brocialists who voted for him. Yay!
theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/07/payday-loans-rule-consumer-financial-protection-roll-back
Litany
@eddie blake: This is Biden talking to donors:
“I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money,” he said. “The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change.”
You really think it’s unfair to call the guy who tells millennials he has no empathy for their situation, promises to work with Mitch McConnell once elected, and fantasizes about running with a Republican VP a stale centrist?
Baud
With respect to the Buttigieg talking point, how does the canvasser choose between which and who?
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
I mean, it’s possible that they did, but Litany has already established themselves as someone who feeds on lies and half-truths, so I’m pretty sure that an internet claim that they read somewhere has now been transferred in their mind as something that happened to them personally.
eddie blake
@Litany: good lord, you’re just functionally unable to argue in good faith.
you said 2016. was biden running in 2016? musta missed that.
get the fuck out of here with that weak sauce.
piratedan
broken glass… broken glass…. internal ratfucking… broken glass… will keep my eye on the prize no matter who comes out of the primaries… Trying to remember that while Mr. Sanders has shown himself to be “prickly” when it comes to his political aspirations and the people that he employees and those who support him are still (check chart) leagues better than those whom he would replace. I fully expect the media will faithfully and breathlessly report any democratic infighting as those are stories that essentially write themselves rather than the devolution into political fascism that is ongoing over next door that would call on certain journalists to perhaps offend someone who is preternaturally disposed to have them taken out back and either shot, raped or beaten up, so we can’t have that.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: Could be.
I will beat on the same drum – and say that engaging with people who are not open and who are not sincerely attempting to have a meaningful exchange is a waste of time, waste of breath, waste of pixels, and waste of a good thread.
Ben in RVA
@Litany:
It does look like it will come down to Biden and Sanders.
In that case, the choice is clear–vote for the Democrat.
Baud
BTW, the first line of that memo is an utter lie.
The Thin Black Duke
Remember folks, you don’t have to go to every argument you’re invited to, especially when the other guy has already made up his mind.
Baud
@The Thin Black Duke:
Yep.
Immanentize
@WaterGirl: I figured that out. Not that I don’t need a little moderation now and then!
Litany
@Mnemosyne: Again, less brocialists voted for Trump in 16 than NPR totebag-toting liberals voted for John “I will always hate the g**k” McCain in 08. And I was referring to that time where the party chair lashed out at the CFPB and argued that the lenders were the REAL victims.
Even the Obama regulations weren’t the radical populist agenda you’re suggesting. They were implemented in 2016 on the way out, anyone involved in that process had to know that the proposed rules would never be enacted. It sure looked good (which I’d argue was the point), but if there was any urgency about these loans the administration would have tackled them a looooong time ago.
trollhattan
@Baud:
If I get canvassed, going with “I’m a Dapper Dan man!” and will watch for some clipboard page flipping.
Did get canvassed yesterday by Girl Scouts taking cookie orders. “Yes please, two flavors!”
So adorbs.
trollhattan
@The Thin Black Duke:
Imaginary up-vote button pressed.
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
I did get him to provide the article proving that unrepentant Berniebros threw the election to Trump, so it hasn’t been all pointless. I can tell that I’m going to find a million and one uses for that in the upcoming weeks.
But I will admit that I’m starting to get bored and should probably take a nap to try and sleep off some more of this flu.
Buckeye
@Kent:
Oh, some of this is definitely ‘Dems.In.Dissaray!’ type reporting as well.
@Litany:
Kinda sorta. They’re pretty good at winnowing the field though.
The Iowa caucuses have a poor record of picking presidents, but they play the important role of winnowing the field. In only one instance in the history of the modern Iowa caucuses has someone finished lower than third and gone on to win a party’s nomination (John McCain finished fourth by a whisker in 2008). That’s the source of the phrase that presidential candidates have “three tickets out of Iowa.”
Since 1972, the top voter-getter in the Democratic caucuses has gone on to win the nomination in seven of 10 contested races, but just Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008 won the presidency. Among Republicans since 1980, the winner of the Iowa caucuses has gained the nomination in three of eight contested races, but the presidency just once: George W. Bush in 2000.
data.desmoinesregister.com/iowa-caucus/history/#2016/gop
Iowa and New Hampshire get a lot of attention, but their records in picking presidents, let alone nominees, is spotty (as you can see from the chart above). But that doesn’t mean the states don’t matter. They have been effective at weeding the field of candidates, and they’re about momentum for those later states.
npr.org/2016/01/31/465016222/how-predictive-are-iowa-and-new-hampshire
Betty Cracker
@sab: There were ridiculous rich donor PUMAs like Lady Lynn de Flapdoodle whoziwatsis, but that wasn’t all there was to it. Luckily, it wasn’t a close election.
Buckeye
@The Thin Black Duke:
so you’re saying I should have pie for dessert?
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: Surely the kind of moderation we can supply here is not the kind of moderation that you occasionally need! :-)
Villago Delenda Est
@Buckeye: The kicker here is that the Iowa caucuses voting for President is purely a straw poll; it has no impact on how the Iowa delegation at either convention will pan out.
It’s a damn joke on the country, created by the greater Des Moines hospitality chamber.
Ben in RVA
@Litany: Let’s say that your figures are accurate.
It’s still very clear that the framing Sanders used against Clinton in the primary (i.e. that she was “corrupt”) played into Trump’s hands, and cemented the vague sense of “both sides same!” in the minds of low-info and marginal Democratic voters. The problem wasn’t Sanders supporters voting for Trump so much as it was depressed turnout.
Mnemosyne
@Litany:
(A) Fewer, not less.
(B) Sanders-to-Trump voters gave the White House to Trump. Clinton-to-McCain voters had no affect on the outcome. That’s why the mere number doesn’t count — the larger number didn’t have any effect, while the smaller number fucked the entire country over.
But I’m not surprised you’re having trouble accepting reality since you’ve been divorced from reality in every interaction I’ve had with you so far. ?♀️
NeenerNeener
It took me awhile to catch on to the catcake comments, because mine is set for quotes.
eddie blake
@Ben in RVA: pretty sure turnout was depressed due to voter id (first time used in WI during a presidential election) and other gop vote suppression techniques.
CaseyL
Deleted as I realized that icon at the top is the pie filter.
joel hanes
@Immanentize:
But Sanders has a floor. Sanders has a ceiling. The two are withing about 5-7 points of each other. He cannot win this primary.
Agreed.
Fearless prediction :
As in 2016, and regardless of what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire and Maine, on the day after Super Tuesday it will once again be mathematically impossible for Sen. Sanders to get the nomination.
What he and his supporters choose to do at that point …
Ben in RVA
@eddie blake:
Not saying that didn’t have an effect, too, but there was depressed turnout even in states that did not adopt voter suppression laws (i.e. Pennsylvania). The “both sides same” rhetoric depressed turnout as well, and Sanders supporters enabled it.
Litany
@Ben in RVA: The Democrats have accommodated and even championed forever war in the Middle East and Cold War style regime change in Latin America. They completely failed to punish the architects of the financial crash, directly facilitating a populist revolt that took the form of the embarrassing 2010 elections and the corresponding gerrymandering of the electoral map. Seeing how poorly the ostensibly left-wing party of this country has looked out for the little man only makes me more excited to vote for someone who has opted out of the last few decades of their Third Way bullshit, and given the party’s approval rate even among voters who self-identify as left wing I’m definitely not the only one who feels that way.
I do appreciate your honesty that you would chose the guy who inexplicably goes on tangents about young black kids playing with his leg hair by the side of the pool over the dude who talks about class warfare and doesn’t have a (D) next to his name.
Bill Arnold
@MisterForkbeard:
Seconded. And Duverer’s Law[1] and etc. Real socialism in America isn’t happening any time soon via electoral politics, and attempts to do so often/usually (with local exceptions in very progressive voting districts) boost authoritarianism. IMO. Hence the underpants gnomes jokes. (Effort would be better spent helping the Republican party to fracture itself into multiple parties.)
[1] I learned a bit skimming that wikipedia article. (Very much not a political scientist by training.)
CarolPW
@CaseyL: At the bottom of the post, the pie. I just used it myself.
Ben in RVA
@joel hanes:
He can’t when the primary, and his internals are showing it, which is precisely why his camp is pivoting to tearing down any candidate who can. There’s a real toddler attitude of “if I can’t have it, NO ONE CAN!” among the Sanders camp.
Remember that he is not a Democrat, and that a very large chunk of his supporters (if not the majority) actively loathe the Democratic Party.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: I didn’t have the flu, and I’m still under the weather, but I am getting going in the right direction.
Hope you are, too!
Redshift
@WaterGirl:
No. There is just no good reason to engage with this bad-faith claim. Hillary Clinton in 2008 was running a normal primary campaign, not a scorched-earth one (unlike some other candidates in other years), and it is ludicrous to believe that they would engage in ludicrous race-baiting that would blow up the Democratic coalition.
It’s not impossible that some asshole canvasser went off script, and would have been out on but their ear in that campaign, too, but that’s it.
joel hanes
@Litany:
To a some extent, I actually agree with you about the behavior of the national Democratic Party over the last thirty years. (I strongly disagree with you about *why* the Democrats have behaved so)
What I think you miss is that people like you and me constitute at most 20% of the electorate, and probably less. We will never have the power to get all of what we want. To get even half a loaf, we must join forces with the people who goals are nearest our own, and we must accept compromise when that necessary broad coalition wins.
WaterGirl
@CaseyL: Yep. The pie filter is the good looking cherry tart, with the word “Filter” underneath.
It’s just below the post itself and just above the circle with the # of comments.
If you click the #comments in the byline at the top, it takes you almost exactly there, you just have to shift a tiny bit in order to see to the pie filter.
raven
@Litany: The dude sticks his fucking finger in my face I’ll break it off and shove up his ass.
Ben in RVA
@Litany: Do you really believe that the Tea Party was “populist”? And that the 2010 election losses were due to anything other than the elevated unemployment rate and slow recovery that is typical of recessions which follow financial crises?
Whooo boy, where do I start…
joel hanes
@Redshift:
People who were willing to call Taylor Marsh and Larry Johnson “Hillary surrogates” attributed some of the statements of those two PUMA assholes to the Clinton campaign, and to Sec. Clinton herself.
Litany
@Ben in RVA: Oh please come of this. Sanders honestly never took the gloves off vs. Hillary in 2016; when he was perfectly teed up to attack Hillary on one of her biggest scandals he went with “the American people are sick and tired about hearing about your damn emails.” He ran a campaign based on the issues and never really tore into Hillary, probably because he never really thought he could win until near the end. Insofar as he did have a critique of her it was by drawing comparisons, which is basically unavoidable if you want to make a case for an entirely new political orthodoxy against a champion of the old paradigm.
Honestly I blame Clinton for Trump even winning the primary. Obviously Russia played a big role in the general, but Clinton’s campaign deliberately elevated Trump in the primary because they thought he could damage Rubio and Bush. Here’s an internal memo that got leaked after the fact:
“The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right. In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more ‘Pied Piper’ candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party…
Pied Piper candidates include, but aren’t limited to:
• Ted Cruz
• Donald Trump
• Ben Carson
We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously.”
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thanks for the pointer. A good read.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ben in RVA
@Litany: Hillary Clinton rigged the 2016 Republican Primary, too? That’s a new one, I gotta say! Is there nothing Hillary Clinton can’t do?
Villago Delenda Est
@CaseyL: ISWYDT
Litany
@Redshift: Remember when Clinton insisted Obama denounce Farrakhan, said he didn’t denounce Reverend Wright soon enough after his historic race speech, then said she wouldn’t drop out until the convention even when victory was mathematically impossible because Obama might be assassinated like past civil rights leaders? And that’s without getting into all the surrogates saying racist shit and then throwing themselves under the bus. I’m gonna call bullshit on ’08 being a reasonable campaign.
Immanentize
@WaterGirl: perhaps….
Villago Delenda Est
@Ben in RVA: She apparently can’t rig the Electoral College. You need Scott Walker, Rick Snyder, some braindead Stein supporters, and an army of Russian bots for that.
JPL
@CarolPW: Although normally I just ignore the trolls, even I didn’t. He now has changed the subject which is unfortunate. I’ll learn from my experience.
Kent
@Litany: There was a lot of fucking glee in the Democratic party when Trump won the primary. We do forget that. Everyone thought that Kasich or even Jeb were stronger general election candidates.
schrodingers_cat
Not going to vote for the Russian asset in the D primary.
Betty Cracker
@Litany: If Bernie is the nominee, I will vote for him. But the fact that he hired Bernie or Buster types and folks who dox Twitter randos who criticize him is a huge problem. The denial isn’t credible, not after the candidate himself invited toxic people to run his campaign.
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sadly, a lot of Bernie voters see what Trump is doing and his disregard for rules and the Congress so they think it’s the right thing if you are doing it for all the right reasons. I’ve heard that from my Bernie curious acquaintances. And the more Trump’s lawlessness is shown, the more they are convinced it will work for Bernie.
Litany
@Ben in RVA: She didn’t rig it, but it’s a matter of public record that her campaign told relatively influential contacts in the media to talk up Trump deliberately so that Hillary could run against him or at least use his example to undermine mainstream Republicans. Regardless of how influential this tactic actually was in the final tally, is it or is it not ethical to tell press surrogates to elevate a white nationalist? Really simple question here, somehow doubt I’ll get a simple answer.
Mnemosyne
@Litany:
I have some bad news for you, buckaroo: there was no “email scandal.” It was all fake. In fact, ALL of Hillary’s 2016 “scandals” were fake.
You fell for right-wing propaganda that the Russians carefully packaged in “leftist” paper and you’re still spouting Russian talking points about Democrats to this day. You should probably at least ask them to toss a few rubles your way since you’re doing so much of their work for them.
eddie blake
@Litany: there was no underlying crime behind the completely absurd email ‘scandal’ so there was literally NOTHING sanders could hit her with, unless he was like you, a completely disingenuous hack…
oh, wait.
eclare
Please stop feeding trolls!
The Thin Black Duke
@eclare: I second that emotion.
Ben in RVA
@Litany:
Regardless of how influential this tactic actually was in the final tally, is it or is it not ethical to tell press surrogates to elevate a white nationalist?
Of course not! Good thing Sanders never said anything that could possible elevate Tr–
Ooops!
JPL
@eclare: troll 1 bj 0
the game on tv is kinda crazy. I assume O’Brien’s job is on the line after that horrible let’s go for it on the 30..
Reboot
@Litany: Here’s a question–why don’t you put as much rhetorical energy into waging war against Republicans as you do against Democrats?
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Litany:
…even Trump winning the Republican Primary.
This is beyond parody.
Doug J – having fun yet?
Kent
@Litany: It was a normal political campaign. Do you remember Obama saying “Hillary will say anything, do anything to be president?” Or derisively saying that she was “likeable enough?”
If that wasn’t a normal campaign, I want to know which year was a “nomal” year when it was all kumbaya and no one ever dissed the opposition.
Litany
@Mnemosyne: I’m not talking about if the email scandal was legitimate or not; obviously it was a non-story too. For what it’s worth my dad works for the federal government and dryly observed that if he violated gov. policy by handling confidential material on a private server he’d be fired on the spot, but I basically take it as given that different rules apply for powerful people and accept that this was all blown out of proportion (especially when coming from a campaign that would go on to preside over one of the most corrupt administrations in history). My point is that even at the debate everyone knew that (rightfully or not) the email question was a major weakness for Clinton, if only in the eyes of voters. Bernie deferred that attack and went back to the actual issues animating his campaign, which is why I don’t take this “he ran a dirty campaign that called Hillary corrupt and depressed turnout!” line that seriously.
Citizen Alan
@Litany: What percentage of those Hillary-McCain voters were always Republicans but were crossing over into Dem Primaries to ratfuck us? Because I vividly remember Rush Limbaugh encouraging Republicans to do so in order to keep the Dem primary going and to foment bad feelings between the Obama and Clinton factions. Operation Chaos, I think he called it. Hell, Cindy Hyde-Smith, the current Republican Junior Senator from Mississippi, caught flack from GOP primary opponents for having voted for Hillary in 2008. That’s the same Cindy Hyde-Smith who made a lynching joke in the middle of a campaign against Mike Espy.
Kent
@Litany: Not sure why we are still talking about this. But in point of fact, Hillary didn’t have any classified materials on her server. What she had was some innocuous staff emails discussing a fucking NYT article about drone strikes that were later classified years after the fact by some eager-beaver pinhead bureaucrat.
Litany
@Ben in RVA: Lord knows that calling a large portion of Trump voters nonredeemable bigots was a winning strategy, do you really think saying this in a tweet is the same as running a media campaign behind closed doors where you tell people to report on a white nationalist every time he lurches onto TV and calls Mexicans rapists? I believe that Clinton was adopting this strategy to boost her own chances; I see why she did it, but it was irresponsible. I also think that Sanders was basically trying to do the same thing here by defusing the right wing line that any centrist who even considered Trump was an unrepentant racist in the eyes of the Clinton campaign. Regardless of our differences, I think we can all agree that Sanders did a pretty fucking good job as a surrogate once the primary was over. He wound up doing around three times the appearances for Hillary that she did for Obama in 08.
@Kent: I do think some of the racist stuff she pulled was pretty far out of bounds, but leaving that aside the historical precedent you point out is my point. Even if the line of reasoning in the article above came straight from Sanders himself it doesn’t even compare to how dirty Democratic primaries have historically been.
Kattails
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: They endorsed him last time too. I guess I’m going to have to cancel my membership and tell them why. Although they did poll & I assume that’s what they got, which is just depressing.
Citizen Alan
@Betty Cracker:
The single most hilarious moment in 2008 for me was when Lynn Forrester, the Baroness de Rothschild called Obama an elitist.
Litany
@Citizen Alan: Presumably some of them, but I don’t know that it’s enough to entirely discount the racist Dems who couldn’t countenance voting for a black man. Most voters don’t vote in their final candidate’s primary in the first place, let alone the primary of their preferred candidate’s opponent. I was being a bit facetious when I estimated the role that Hillary played in handing Trump the (R) nomination, but I think your theory here is about as credible as mine.
Mnemosyne
@Litany:
Good thing she didn’t do that, then. You should probably look up the real details of what happened for yourself rather than relying on your right-wing dad’s interpretation.
But, hey, Bernie attacking Hillary over her speeches to corporations to Goldman Sachs and calling them “corrupt” sure turned out well when Trump picked up the exact same meme (including the Goldman Sachs name) and ran with it despite there being no actual evidence of corruption.
And how did Bernie know about those speeches? From her publicly available tax returns that she released on the internet. Remind me, when did Bernie finally release his tax forms? Sometime in 2017 long after they could be scrutinized, wasn’t it?
Yep, it sure was pure and righteous for Bernie to attack Hillary on publicly available information that he refused to release about himself.
Citizen Alan
@Litany: People like you are why I literally pray for Wilmer to have a fatal heart attack.
Litany
@Kent: That’s not true. The majority of the emails were classified retroactively, but the FBI found 110 emails that were classified at the time.
And again, regardless of the level of classification it would still be a fireable offense to use private email accounts for public government work at any level of information security (but especially as Secretary of State). Do I think it was a big deal? No, but again I’m not sure why anyone is treating me like I came in dropping Breitbart links and Qanon shit about this. My point is that the ahistorical narrative that Sanders and Trump adopted more or less identical tactics to undermine Clinton by calling her corrupt isn’t really true.
Mnemosyne
@Litany:
You mean other than Sanders losing us Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania and therefore the entire election? Yeah, losing the election for us was one hell of a great job on Bernie’s part.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
Litany
@Citizen Alan: Damn, I guess this is the reasonable and polite tone that us damn Berniecrats can’t adopt when championing our preferred candidate. I will definitely take after your example!
Mnemosyne
@Litany:
Ahem.
businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-goldman-democratic-debate-2016-1/
Litany
@Mnemosyne: You remain fixated on this point that a small fraction of Sanders primary voters who weren’t even traditional democrats wound up voting like the independents they were. This always happens with any election, and if you don’t account for it and overcome it you haven’t actually run a winning campaign.
If you wanted to win Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania I don’t know what to tell you; there was a candidate who did really well in those states, but nobody really seemed to think that was a particularly valuable quality at the time.
satby
@WaterGirl: and this thread is full of delicious pie and cake!
Citizen Alan
@Litany:
Basically, at this point, I can only see three possible outcomes.
Option 1: Wilmer loses the primary. He blames it all on the corrupt Democratic Party. His cultists do everything they can to sandbag the Dem nominee. Shitgibbon narrowly wins.
Option 2: Wilmer wins the primary. He goes on to lose to Shitgibbon in an epic landslide on par with Reagan-Mondale that also costs us the House and Senate. US falls to fascism.
Option 3: Wilmer dies of natural causes. Lacking anyone to blame (not that you won’t try anyway), his cult disintegrates and plays little to no role in the 2020 general election.
J R in WV
@Litany:
Yes, but I’m a capitaist. And I think workers are entitled to most if not all of the profits that come out of the things they create, and that the US should stop waging imperial wars of aggression against other countries.
I note that your nym “Litany” has about 391 hits on this site according to Google search. But I also note that the vast majority of those hits are the use the the English word “litany” meaning a long list of items — and not the use as a Nym. I don’t have time to inspect all of the hits, but it seems to me that you are either a very recent commentor, or one who has commented very rarely so far.
Maybe a Bernie troll, not willing to actually vote for a real Democratic candidate? Because Bernie is NOT a Democratic candidate at all… never was, never will be!!!
Litany
@Mnemosyne: That’s literally just a true statement on his part? I wrote that insofar as Bernie criticized Hillary it was because he was championing an alternative framework for the Democratic party that would by necessity frown upon certain quid pro quo tendencies that were taken for granted in the past.
I think it’s true that Trump seized on this and it probably did some damage, but that’s not the same thing as “Trump and Bernie have identical positions on Clinton’s corruption” and I think Trump seized on this line opportunistically rather than actually believing it. Everyone knew that Clinton as a candidate comes with baggage (some real, some manufactured) it was the job of her campaign to overcome that. They failed.
And for what it’s worth Clinton certainly took potshots at Sanders that would have hurt him in a hypothetical general; one of her big lines at one point was that he wasn’t there for her when she was a first lady fighting for universal healthcare. In fact Sanders was standing right behind her during one of her biggest speeches on the subject, and Hillary later sent a letter thanking Sander for his unflinching support of single payer. I won’t dispute that things got ugly at the end, but that wasn’t a one-sided thing and it’s something that stronger candidates have also experienced and overcome.
Mnemosyne
@Litany:
Gosh, if only the candidate who had done well in those states had managed to persuade the people who voted for him to vote for Hillary as the next best thing. But it seems pretty clear that Sanders couldn’t even win over HIS OWN voters after the damage he had done to Hillary’s campaign with his own two hands.
Publicly telling his former voters that it was okay for them to vote for Trump because he knew they weren’t racist like Hillary said they were was really just icing on the cake.
Litany
@J R in WV: Cool if you believe those things; get on board, because all the relevant candidates still in the race voted for the Iraq War (which to me is a prima facie disqualification) and are actively contemptuous of any attempt to meaningfully fight wealth inequality. I’d be tentatively interested in Warren if she were polling better or seemed viable, but she’s had all of 2019 to articulate an alternative vision of a left-wing American platform and it seems like it’s an electoral dead end.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Litany: Look, I can’t, and won’t, deny that there are bad people everywhere.
Thing is, are there explicit “Hillary Supporters from 2008” who can be identified as people who used racial and religious bigotry to try to win the nomination? If so, those people deserve our anger. If not, assume some of them have seen the results and learned to be better people, while others should be told “we don’t do that” when they make themselves known.
The Republicans have their “11th Commandment: thou shalt speak no evil of a fellow Republican” and that has us where all the nations of the world know we’re an untrustworthy partner, and will celebrate corruption, *if* one political party wins the elections.
We can’t go that far, but we can ask that our side refrain from obvious GOP-or-hostile-nation rodent fornication, always, and everywhere. (Even better if people start realizing just *how* dishonest the GOP is prepared to be, so they stop listening to any of their statements as having any basis other than “it polls well and might make our opponents say something that sounds bad, if taken out of context.” )
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
DO NOT FEED THE ENERGY CREATURE!!!!
Ahem.
*wanders off to check the phase of the moon
Mnemosyne
@Litany:
He called the Democratic Party “corrupt.”
He and his followers insisted that he got “cheated” by the DNC when he failed to win enough VOTES from Democratic voters.
He sat and pouted in the audience at the DNC while his supporters booed and jeered the people making speeches, including the mothers of children murdered by police and Elizabeth Warren.
He made a few desultory speeches allegedly for Hillary that were pretty much indistinguishable from his own stump speech with her name tacked on at the end.
He reassured his voters who wouldn’t vote for Hillary that it was okay and that he knew they weren’t really racist.
But it wasn’t his fault that the party was divided and his primary voters stayed home or voted for Jill Stein. Nope, it was all one big co-inkydink.
Litany
@LongHairedWeirdo: Sure, but does that go both ways? Ever since 2016 all I’ve heard is that Sanders gave Trump the election by daring to run a campaign, that he’s a Russian stooge, that anyone who wants single payer or attacks someone on the grounds of their Iraq vote is a bot or disguised Republican, that it’d be a good thing for the world if Sanders personally dropped dead of a heart attack (a sentiment which you can see expressed up-thread). There are lots of Dems I like, but part of why I’ve adopted my current rhetoric is because moderate Dems are obviously unwilling to actually put into practice the civility they demand from anyone to their left.
Litany
@Mnemosyne: This is so obviously misleading (intentionally or not I don’t know) that I’m just going to save both of us some grief and not even bother a response.
Mnemosyne
@Litany:
Yeah, kinda sucks to be on one end of that never-ending drumbeat, huh?
Maybe you guys shouldn’t have picked the fight in the first place and pissed so many people off. Did you think that we had short memories and would have forgiven and forgotten everything that happened by the time 2020 rolled around?
Kattails
@Redshift: I distinctly remember that a black woman legislator, cannot remember her name, was getting death threats for backing Hillary against Obama at the time. In the article, she talked about how loyal she felt toward Hillary. I also know that a young woman who worked on the Hillary campaign up here later went into the southern states and reported that they were getting sufficient harassment from young black men that they had to call the police about it; and I doubt very much that this was something they wanted to do. Nor can I imagine it was approved by Obama or anyone high in the campaign, or anyone for that matter.
So, in campaigns sh*t happens. But the Bernie campaign record of stealing data, misogyny, using Russian talking points, his delegates booing at the convention, lack of tax return transparency… none of these things allow me any sense that he is who he claims to be.
Debating on what kind of pie there might be for dessert.
Bill Arnold
Re Clinton’s emails, it was enlightening (in a bad way) to watch the US press not pick this up in 2016.
I learned of this in the NYTimes in mid 2016. The headline buried the completely opposite key information. Paragraphs 11-12:
Hillary Clinton’s Email Was Probably Hacked, Experts Say (2016/07/07)
L’s dad probably wants DJT executed for his criminally poor infosec practices, right?
Kattails
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Waning gibbous in Leo, you’re welcome.
Mnemosyne
@Litany:
Misleading? Even before the 2016 election happened, we knew that the “rigged” claims were bogus and deliberately inflated by the Russians. The one “insider” claim by Donna Brazile after that point was almost immediately walked back when she realized that she might be put under oath in the ongoing lawsuit and admitted that the case wasn’t nearly as airtight as she claimed.
newrepublic.com/article/135472/no-dnc-didnt-rig-primary-favor-hillary
germy
@Mnemosyne:
I never thought you’d sink so low as to accuse Elizabeth Warren of murdering children.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
Damn you, lack of Oxford comma!
/shakes fist at sky
5x5
@Mnemosyne: “…children murdered by police and Elizabeth Warren”
This primary is out of control. /
(Damn. Too late.)
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Kattails: And inconjunct with Neptune in Pisces. Ugh.
Richard Guhl
@Luthe: I canvassed the general in 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016, as well as the 2016 primary on behalf of Hillary. We never trashed the other candidates, and only made statements that were in favor of our candidates. If we called a voter for another candidate, we thanked them for their time.
Waffle House GOAT
@Litany: thanks for motivating me to donate to my favorite Dems (ie—NOT Bernie Sanders) this evening!
eddie blake
@Litany: you. are. SO. full. of. shit.
oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-director-comey-emails-were-not-properly-marked-as-classi…
Immanentize
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: I’m actually leaning toward a butt hurt Mister Mix sock puppet. I’m sure I’m wrong.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
I’m shocked! Shocked!
Bernie promised he wouldn’t run a negative campaign and instead run on issues.
HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCOOOOOOOOOOOOOONODE!
EL
@Redshift: yes, reminds me of the “Bernie Math” video from 2016.
EL
@Litany:
No, we can’t agree on that. Did you forget Bernie people causing a ruckus at the Democratic convention? I can’t forget that.
A quote from Time magazine describing the event that pretty well describes my take at the time:
I strongly suspect that he could have calmed things down if he’d tried. I also recall that he stayed in the race, trashing Clinton, long after it was impossible for him to win the nomination. The refusal to acknowledge he couldn’t win fed those who protested on the convention floor.
So good try, but your memory is faulty or you are blinded and willing to lie.
Mnemosyne
@Litany:
At the request of management, I am pieing you. Goodbye.
FlipYrWhig
I’m not sure there’s anything that disgusts me more in contemporary politics than the eternal graduate students who love Bernie Sanders pretending that they, and Their Savior, have arisen from “the working class,” but that someone else’s voters are too affluent and too educated.
jayjaybear
Oh, look! My very first pie filter resident!
Sleeper
@Litany: I appreciate your Quixotic efforts here but it’s probably a waste of your time. This place is nothing but toxic, Cult of the Savvy, MSNBC centrists now. When commenters are so full of bile and venom for a candidate that they are literally joking about and cheering for the man’s death, the time for conversation is over. I’m reasonably sure that more than a few of them will be rationalizing their voting for Trump should Sanders actually win the nomination, because the center always hates those to their left more than those to their right.
cope
@Sleeper: Thanks for saying that, Sleeper. I wouldn’t say everything in here is toxic but the concentration is high enough to make it uncomfortable and unwelcoming at times.
I know I am speaking into an empty chamber now that this thread is well past its due date. That said, sometimes it feels as if we were all in that classic “Twilight Zone” episode in which the evil space aliens sit back and watch formerly friendly neighbors turn on on each other out of fear of, well, aliens.
Oh, and congrats to Betty for generating .5 Tbogg comments with a post about “factionalism”.
Sondra Fabe
Bernie Sanders and Jim Comey – reasons 1 and 2 why Hillary lost in 2016. The Russians and the Electoral College – reason 3 and 4.
Melissa
Did anyone read the update to the story? That it wasn’t an official script, was posted to a Slack group by someone who had had access for a limited amount of time, and was taken down almost immediately by an actual campaign worker?
Was actually a bit of a hit piece. No one ever used that script: it wasn’t a real one.
EnamoredZeal
@Melissa: these people don’t care about facts. It’s as obvious as the biased news these people say they hate yet parrot.
GoBlue72
OK Boomer.
As has already been noted, this wasn’t an official script, but was posted by a volunteer or someone not official affiliated with the campaign and was taken down as soon as an actual campaign worker discovered it. At best, a knucklehead volunteer driving waaaay outside his/her lane. At worst, it was intentional rat-f$%king.
But Warren took the bait with the perfectly predictable results.
You’d think the AARP crew of BJ would be a little more circumspect given how easily y’all lost yer bowel movements every time Hillary was ratf&cked with.
But its Sanders, so TO THE BARRICADES!!!!
GoBlue72
@Melissa: These people don’t care. They think Sanders is the anti-Christ and if he’s the nominee, a number of them will declare they arent voting for him – probably the same ones who accuse Sanders supporters of doing the same thing in 2016.