Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

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

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Good lord, these people are nuts.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Trump should be leading, not lying.

He really is that stupid.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

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Bernie Sanders 2016

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Good for Sen. Sanders

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Of course, he had some serious backup…

Apart from another long evening watching the convention, what’s on the agenda?

Added bonus, tonight:

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That went well

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Last month:

The hope that it will pay off provides motivation for the candidate, for the senior staff, for the field organizers and for the volunteers. Election results are a clue by four towards reality. Re-adjusting to the actual reality instead of the hoped for reality takes time and at least for me, one or two stupid statements.

Today is a recovery day for Senator Sanders and his campaign. Tomorrow is a reassessment day with a meeting between Senator Sanders and President Obama who can gently deliver any needed clue by fours and provide credible guarantees towards policy/platform enforcement mechanisms. I would be totally happy for Senator Sanders and his campaign to finish out the string in Washington DC next weekend and then start a wind-down with a concession by the middle of the following week. It takes time to mourn a loss and organize a wake, so fellow Clinton supporters, give the Sanders supporters that time please.

 

And now:


 

It took a couple weeks longer than I thought it really needed to, but the Clinton campaign has been busy hiring a lot of good Sanders staffers since three days after California so the reconciliation and unity building blocks had started to be assembled early on.

So let’s just chill.

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And So It Begins…

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No time wasted.  Not a moment.

Twas_a_Famous_Victory_-_Edward_Richard_Taylor_-_Google_Cultural_Institute

Via TPM, this account of Hillary’s conversation with Bernie Sanders after her victory speech last night:

Clinton said on CNN that she “totally” understands how Sanders’ supporters feel and she congratulated the Vermont senator on his “really extraordinary campaign” in her call to him. She said she looked forward to working with Sanders to defeat presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

Sanders’ response to this overture, according to Clinton?

“Senator Sanders has said he will work every day, every week to see that happen, so we’re going to be working to make sure that we have a unified party going into our convention and coming out,” Clinton said.

And Clinton added a message for Sanders’s voters, telling them, “She would “reach out” to his supporters, adding that she and Sanders had similar goals for health care and minimum wages.”

This is the phase of the campaign that gives the lie to the old joke, “Time is the universe’s way of making sure everything doesn’t happen at once.”

 Image: Edward Richard Taylor, Twas a Famous Victory, 1883

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On mourning a loss

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Following up on Tom’s post this morning, I want to say a couple of words about the Sanders’ campaign.

Losing sucks.

I’ve been lucky in that the last two contested Presidential primaries, my preferred candidate won.  In 2008, I was basically happy with either Clinton or Obama but finally went Obama about a month before my state voted.  If the results were reversed, I think that by the time Obama wrapped up his concession speech and I had finished my second beer of the evening, I would be on board with voting for Senator Clinton and e-mailing a good friend who was one of her regional organizers about where they needed a volunteer data geek to help cut turf.

I don’t begrudge Senator Sanders running for as long as he did.  The Presidential primary process for candidates who aren’t selling books or getting in on the grift  is effectively a single iteration game with effectively winner take almost all pay-outs.  Promises made by the winner to everyone else have weak enforcement mechanisms.  From this perspective as long as a candidate has resources and a plausible path to victory, I understand why they stay in.  I understood why Senator Clinton stayed in for so long in 2008.  Odd events (such as the  John Edwards fiasco or a heart attack) happen, so playing a bad hand that is not yet a guaranteed loser of a hand is logical.

Furthermore, as campaigns go on, especially campaigns that aren’t going too well, there is often an incestuous feedback loop.  Romney in 2012 believed that the polls were skewed and he was a favorite going in to Election Day.  None of his advisors were able or willing to break through the bullshit that campaigns tell themselves every day that there really is a plausible path forward to victory.  Campaigning for most people sucks (Bill Clinton exempted) as it is exhausting, repetitive, stressful work.  The hope that it will pay off provides motivation for the candidate, for the senior staff, for the field organizers and for the volunteers.  Election results are a clue by four towards reality.  Re-adjusting to the actual reality instead of the hoped for reality takes time and at least for me, one or two stupid statements.

Today is a recovery day for Senator Sanders and his campaign.  Tomorrow is a reassessment day with a meeting between Senator Sanders and President Obama who can gently deliver any needed clue by fours and provide credible guarantees towards policy/platform enforcement mechanisms.  I would be totally happy for Senator Sanders and his campaign to finish out the string in Washington DC next weekend and then start a wind-down with a concession by the middle of the following week.  It takes time to mourn a loss and organize a wake, so fellow Clinton supporters, give the Sanders supporters that time please.

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Open Thread: Sen. Sanders Needs to Look Behind Him

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Joy-Ann Reid, at the Daily Beast — “Meet Al Giordano, the Man Who Wants to Take Bernie Down”:

If Al Giordano challenges Bernie Sanders for his U.S. Senate seat in 2018, he will tick nearly all of the boxes Sanders checked during his surprisingly robust presidential run…

So why would he do it? Because in Giordano’s view, and that of his social media supporters, Bernie is losing ugly and hurting Democrats’ chances of prevailing against Donald Trump in November.

“I mean, what haven’t they touched?” Giordano asks, peering at me via a 6-by-4 inch Skype window from his home in Mexico City. “What part of the Obama coalition have they not alienated? It’s like they want to erase the coalition.”

Giordano is referring not to Sanders himself, but to his most fervent online followers, who have blasted away at everyone from John Lewis to Delores Huerta to Elizabeth Warren, and most recently Barney Frank, for failing to support Bernie’s “political revolution,” or worse, for backing Hillary Clinton, who is loathed by a swath of the Sanders faithful. Giordano says he blames Sanders for the vituperative tendencies of his shock troops, and for failing to talk them down.

Giordano, a bearded, graying, former reporter with the Boston Phoenix alternative weekly, cut his teeth as an anti-nuclear protester in the early 1980s while living in Rowe, a small Massachusetts town bordering Vernon, Vermont. When he wasn’t filing for the Phoenix, he spent his time protesting the twin nuclear power plants on either side of the state border: Yankee Rowe and Vermont Yankee. And he became close friends with the late leftie activist and anarchist Abbie Hoffman. He has spent the last 19 years in Mexico, where he runs an online newsletter, Narco News, and a school that trains journalists to cover social movements. His claim to fame is winning a First Amendment case against the Banco Nacional de México, which sued him, a Mexican reporter and Narco News for libel over a series of stories claiming a bank official was in league with Central American drug cartels.

The 56-year-old Giordano presents as a combative Hillary Clinton supporter, but he didn’t vote absentee for her (or for anyone) in the April 19 primary in his home state of New York. He vocally backed and voted for Barack Obama in 2008, but has only voted for president one other time in 20 years: for Bill Clinton in 1996.

“For me this is not about Hillary Clinton, who has her strengths and she has her flaws,” he says. “This is about a coalition that has saved the United States and can keep saving it, and this is what needs to be protected. And so maybe it’s time for the Obama coalition to go to Vermont.”…

There’s still time for Sen. Sanders to do the right thing, and go back to his ‘safe’ seat in Vermont! But remember, VT’s a poor state and one with a suprisingly small population — contesting a Senate seat there would be nowhere near as ‘impossible’ as trying for NY, or even MI or OH. And I can attest, from my experience as a Masshole, that even a popular Senator (hello, John Kerry) who runs for president and fails suddenly becomes a big fat LUZER among his low-info constituents.

Don’t remember which of you commentors turned me on to Al’s twitter feed, but I owe you a big thanks! Al’s Wikipedia page is back (after some aggrieved BernieBros managed to get it pulled for being ‘insufficiently significant’ yestheyarethatpetty), so you can follow the links there for further information.

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Tuesday Evening Open Thread: I’m With Her, Too

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Nacy Pelosi plays the Good Cop. And the Bad Cop? Well, last week, there was this Politico report:

… “I’ve never been too good at math, but I can figure that one out. I think he better do a little mathing,” Reid said…

Reid went on to say that while Sanders has the right to continue his presidential campaign, he doesn’t recommend extending it.

“No, I don’t think he should. I don’t know what that’s going to prove. Sometimes you just have to give up. I’ve lost before. The numbers aren’t there.”

Sen. Sanders has had all the fun made the best impact he can in this election cycle. Anything less than a gracious concession, at the very least, is not going to make his future career path pleasant…

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: I’m With Her, TooPost + Comments (103)