I’m going to vote for Hillary in the primary. I think she’s smarter than Bernie and that her plans seem better thought out. I guess I’m an incrementalist not a revolutionary.
But there’s really no question that Sandersism is the future:
Among all voters under age 30, Sanders beat Clinton by a huge 84-15 percent margin, another result similar to Iowa.
I think analysts underplayed how much Obama dominated the youth vote the last two general elections. It was completely unprecedented for a candidate in a general presidential election to win the youth vote by 20+ points while losing some other age groups. There’s no way that didn’t herald a new direction for the country politically, in the long term.
And there’s no way that Sanders’ domination of the youth vote in the primaries doesn’t herald a new direction for the Democratic party.
Joel
One can only hope.
dedc79
Warren may prove to be the big winner in all this.
trollhattan
My question is if Hillary prevails and gets the nomination, what happens to the yuut vote? Do they sit out, vote third party…? They won’t switch Republican but if she can’t capture a big chunk of the cohort, she’s in real jeopardy, as are we all.
i.e., Bernie better the hell go on the stump for her.
WarMunchkin
I guess I still have a hard time with this being considered new. Also – hasn’t there always been a liberal wing of the party receiving this % of youth votes?
Doug!
@trollhattan:
I think Bernie will stump for her if she gets the nomination. I don’t think he’s a sore loser type.
Jay C
Let’s just hope that that “new direction for Democrats” isn’t over a cliff…
singfoom
So regardless of who’s in the general you need to make sure the youngs vote. I keep reading about the Bernie Bro youngs saying they won’t vote for Hillary. I hope that’s just noise like the PUMAs in 2008.
The whole “lesser of two evils” dynamic seriously depresses the young vote. It always will. Gotta defeat that attitude.
Doug!
@WarMunchkin:
No, I believe this is pretty unprecedented. Younger people aren’t more liberal like the old saw says.
Tom65
And this is at least partially why I can’t vote for Clinton. She got beat by the youth vote in ’08, saw it up close in ’12, and STILL doesn’t understand it.
schrodinger's cat
What is the demographic breakdown of the Trump voters?
Archon
If you’re under 30 and especially under 25 it’s hard to look at our political and economic system as anything other then being totally discredited. Imagine your formative economical years being the financial crisis (and it’s aftermath) and your political formative years being gridlock and obstruction.
singfoom
@trollhattan: I’m sure that Bernie will go stump for her if she wins the nomination. They agree on too much for him not too.
Hell, anyone have any idea who is on the VP list for HRC?
I know that Bernie as the VP might have some downsides in the general but if she does win the nomination, having him as her VP could keep the youth vote momentum possibly…
beltane
Hillary did well with the over 65s and people making over $200,000 a year. She lost among people who supported her in ’08.
One of the advantages of the Republicans starting out with a huge Klown Kar is that the Klown with his or her finger on the zeitgeist wins. I realize that NH sucks and is full of white people who make less than $200,000 a year, but it is a swing state and the turnout numbers make me really nervous. The collapse of the center-left parties in Europe comes to mind here.
dedc79
How long before Cacti calls TNC a berniebro?
Tim C.
@schrodinger’s cat: White A-holes.
PsiFighter37
The GOP is going to nominate an absolute clown for their nominee, and I get the sense that the Dems are going to blow it. Hillary clearly does not seem to be inspiring anyone, and nominating a man who is not even a member of the party is a death wish for making the Democratic Party relevant again on anything other than the federal level.
What a mess. I will be voting for Hillary, but I think there’s a good shot she blows it.
Someone should also tell Bill to stuff it and give only fluff speeches going forward.
catclub
As long as he stays healthy.
He is 74, right? Could be fine. Biden is not much younger and I was willing to go with him, so that should not be decisive.
dr. bloor
@dedc79: Is this the new “This is good news for McCain?” Not following.
Just Some Fuckhead
@PsiFighter37:
Give him a couple of interns to play with until November.
catclub
@singfoom:
Just to be clear, it is REFUSING to vote for the lesser of two evils that is the problem.
schrodinger's cat
So she lost one primary and she lost it big, why is everyone behaving like she has lost the nomination? There is still a long way to go.
ETA: If Wall Street and banking are evil, does Bernie want to do away with them?
What will replace the stock market to allocates scarce resources, five years plans?
Elie
I support Hillary but hope she can find the thread to her own vision again. Having been first lady and married to a complex philanderer has given her scars that makes her orbit in space wobble precariously at times. She is a pragmatist but she has been vulnerable to people with emotional judgments of her that they have mapped over from her husband. They fault her for everything he did and that is just horribly unfair but I also think is just a sneaky way to be sexist and get away with it.
What bothers me most about Bernie is that he seems to believe that he is running for King of the US… that he just has to want x or y policy and it will happen — implying by that I guess that all of the suffering and hell that Obama went through to get what he could get done, was hell because he must not have tried hard enough. I REALLY dislike his scolding style which will not work in close negotiations of any kind. His minions like it that he doesn’t show a pragmatic ability to horse trade, but indeed, unless he thinks he is in charge of a revolution, he had better learn that pretty quick. As President, many times your old friends are not as friendly anymore and sometimes they also ratfuck you.
I am really concerned about this country and where we are right now….
Eric
@singfoom: I really wouldn’t be surprised to see O’Malley higher up on the list than Sanders, despite his poor showing. Both Clinton and Sanders supporters have praised him as a very good second choice, he’s decent on the stump and unlike Bernie, he could still be a legacy candidate in 8 years.
AnonPhenom
@dedc79:
tnc interview here … http://www.democracynow.org/2016/2/10/ta_nehisi_coates_is_voting_for
singfoom
@dr. bloor: I don’t want to speak for dedc79, but I take it to mean this:
Warren is in a good spot to run as a Sanderish candidate in 2020/2024 depending on the outcome of this race.
Doug!
@schrodinger’s cat:
Oh, I think she’ll win the nomination. I just think that Sanders-style politics — more confrontational, more unabashedly left — is the future for the party.
dedc79
@singfoom: Yes, exactly.
ETA: Sanders is nearing the end of his political career. Warren, in contrast, is just hitting her sweet spot.
Archon
@catclub:
I’m sure he’s been working his tail off and is tired but Bernie looked every bit his 74 years on stage last night.
Doug!
@Elie:
I agree with this critique. But…it is also refreshing to hear a Democrat talk this way for once. Republicans always talk that way. OTOH, that’s part of why I would never vote for a Republican.
jeer9
I think she’s smarter than Bernie
I really wish pundits would elaborate some reasons for this view rather than just making a blanket statement. And taking speaking fees from GS in 2013 when she knew a run was in the works, not to mention her Iraq war vote and perpetual tone deafness, would seem to indicate otherwise.
that her plans seem better thought out.
Since neither of them is likely to get anything through Congress, this idea seems less consequential. Where they differ significantly would be in their choice of appointments, enforcement of the law (as regards Wall Street), and foreign policy.
Please explain why the centrist is better than the progressive.
schrodinger's cat
@Doug!: That’s good, however if you veer left too quickly you could land in a ditch.
Elie
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Have you listened to or observed Clinton lately? The man is a cardiac cripple. He is fragile and will need to watch himself. Your comment was nasty and unnecessary. He doesn’t have a long time to be around.
Eric
@Archon: The basketball with his grandkids wore him out ;)
singfoom
@catclub: I don’t disagree, but they’re two intertwined problems.
Given the history I have seen, I will vote for the lesser of two evils repeatedly while agitating for non-evils in general.
Yes, I agree, voting is a privilege and everyone should vote. That said, I understand where those who don’t vote are coming from. If you think that your vote is meaningless and it’s going to be shit anyways it’a logical conclusion. (Yes, I know SCOTUS and all the reasons FOR voting…)
I just wish we could get a national holidary for Federal elections. That in and of itself would increase turnout across the board…but wouldn’t address the lesser of two evils problem…
peach flavored shampoo
Unless the Dems lose in 2016, the GOP fully rigs the voting/electoral system, and Dems are locked out of power for 30+ years. At that point, the young are then old, and actual young are completely disenfranchised.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Elie: If Hillary wins, don’t be surprised if Bill’s First Gentleman “cause” is something with coeds.
beltane
@trollhattan: Bernie would definitely stump for her but she has to offer more than the usual platitudes if turnout is going to be at the levels needed to beat the Republican nominee no matter who that person is. A message that sounds reasonable to older, financially secure people may not resonate outside with others. My mother, for instance, relies exclusively on Social Security for her survival. She is convinced that Clinton’s vaunted deal making skills will involve throwing her to the wolves of Wall St.
I don’t think Bernie is a good general election candidate. He entered the race just to get the themes of income inequality, etc. into the discussion. Unfortunately, Hillary herself tends to be somewhat overrated as a candidate. The young people regard her much the same way as I regarded Walter Mondale back when I was in high school during the ’84 election-a relic of my grandparents’ generation.
Chyron HR
@dedc79:
I dunno, how long until TNC unironically claims that Hillary is planting secret agents in the Sanders campaign to discredit Bernie?
Amir Khalid
Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer justifiably admired around these parts, has tweeted that he will vote for — but not endorse — Bernie. I’m not sure how announcing one’s vote avoids being an endorsement, but there you go.
I am a bit sceptical about a permanent leftward shift in this generation of the Democratic belia. As a general rule, don’t young Americans shift gradually to the right as they get older? And Bernie, as a newcomer to the national spotlight, is enjoying the New Outsider Hotness that helped propel Obama to victory in 2008. Especially cf. Hillary, who has been on the business end of the right-wing propaganda machine for a quarter-century, has been in the spotlight for all this time. Some have tired of seeing her there, especially those who have never not seen her there.
I agree with you, Doug!, about Hillary vs Bernie. Her heart’s in the right place, like Bernie’s, as far as I can tell; but I prefer her because I reckon she’d be the more able chief executive. Of course, I have absolutely no plans to vote for either of them.
AliceBlue
I get the sense that all this youthful enthusiasm for Bernie is a mile wide and an inch deep. Say he wins the general. How long do they give him to accomplish everything he’s talking about? Six months? A year? At what point do they go the “he sold us out” routine? Expectations for him are going to be stratospherically high. Are they going to show up in November 2018? If they don’t all this “feel the Bern” is jackshit.
Tractarian
@trollhattan:
This is the key question, because as you note, Dems need to win the youth vote by a large margin in November to have any chance of holding on to the WH.
It’s also a big problem because, as I see it, a significant percentage of Bernie supporters are primarily motivated by anti-Hillary animus rather than any real devotion to their candidate. In 2008, Obama got those votes. Bernie is the only one who had the balls to run against her this year, and so he’s the only option for Dems who want no part of Hillary. Unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of them, and it’s hard to see them turning out for her in the general, even if the GOP candidate is someone like Cruz.
Marc
On Dougs larger point, I agree that the real tell is that young people want a much more liberal Democratic party than their older compatriots. And this has a way of sticking. I’ve never seen any election results where there was such a stark age difference in a primary election, and I’ve been following politics since Reagan 1980.
Yglesias, of all people, actually made that point well: if you took a candidate with Sanders positions but not his baggage, that candidate would be a strong favorite to capture the Democratic nomination in the next non-incumbent race.
FYI all of the Sanders supporters that I know, as opposed to random internet folks, simply prefer him; my Sanders-loving adult children don’t have any problem with Clinton. There are clearly a lot of folks who aren’t enthusiastic about Clinton, but that’s hardly unique to her – it applies to any winning candidate (e.g. I felt that way about Kerry, but worked and voted for him anyhow.)
Frankensteinbeck
I think the Democratic Party is moving left, as the Republicans move right. Not nearly as insanely. That is a good thing. That Sanders even has a chance speaks of that process. I think Hillary would make a better president and unless New Hampshire seriously moves the polls I don’t see how Sanders has any shot at winning the nomination, but in general I think this is a good sign for the future of American politics.
FlipYrWhig
Among all voters under age 30 _who voted in the Democratic primary_.
Who are Republicans under 30 voting for? And how many of them are there? This is what’s making me nervous: taking the youth vote among Democrats as a proxy for the youth vote in total. And related errors and misperceptions, like the thing I’ve seen several times today about how Hillary Clinton won voters with incomes over $200,000. _AMONG DEMOCRATS_, you knob, I want to say. That doesn’t say anything about who _Republicans_ with incomes over $200,000 are voting for. It ain’t Hillary Clinton.
Tractarian
@Amir Khalid:
You prefer Hillary but won’t vote for her?
PsiFighter37
I am shocked to see Bernie winning the youth vote by the margins he is. I’m barely out of the 18-29 cohort (just turned 30), but seriously? 84-15 for pie-in-the-sky proposals with no concrete way of getting it done?
Either the youth of this country have gotten a lot more stupid, or the disillusionment really, really runs deep.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Tractarian:
How quickly we forget about Martin O’Balley and what’s his name.
Calouste
@singfoom:
Warren will be as old in 2024 as Sanders is now, so she would definitely be a Sanderish candidate in that regard.
Nate Dawg
Someone posted a graph last night showing how each generation voted in general elections. The millennials are the only generation that have voted D every time. There is no general “shift rightward” that can be discerned from the polls.
If the millennials are to the Democrats what the silent generation is to Republicans, then it does indeed herald a Democratic ascendancy in the future.
I think weeding the field down to JUST HILLZ was a huge mistake and short-sighted. But that’s my problem with the Clintons in general. They have zero long-game. Couldn’t anticipate that the Goldman Sachs speeches would look bad….ditto e-mail server.
I miss squeaky clean* Barack Obama.
(*Not actually squeaky clean but has enough foresight to avoid problematic situations down the road. And yes, the administration has been the least scandal-riddled one in my lifetime.)
schrodinger's cat
@Just Some Fuckhead: You sound jealous.
Elie
@Doug!:
For me it is infuriating because that attitude gives a backhand to the Herculanean effort that Obama put out to keep this country half way functioning. Some old white guy thinks all he has to do is to say it and it will happen — esp if he waves his arms around I guess. I aint buying that — I want to have a sense that he has the essential pragmatism to survive AND KEEP THE POLICIES WE VALUE IN PLACE!!!! I could give a fuck about HIM. HIs job is to protect US. As a black woman, I want to see a candidate who can take the heat and run the horrible machine of government using more than rainbowns and unicorns and has a trick or two of his own in his back pocket. I see an untried idealist who has never had to do much of anything hard. As the socialist, he expected others to come to him. He could always hold his values without horsetrading. Now it will be how to get as much as you can in an environment, both foreign and domestic, that is filled with major opposition and downright back stabbing. I listen to him and I just don’t believe he gets any of that… We are back in the 60’s with a series of idealistic Democrats who get crushed in the general. We cannot afford that …
Just Some Fuckhead
@FlipYrWhig: I _love_ your new formatting. It gives your comments so much more strength.
Frankensteinbeck
@Tractarian:
He’s not American.
(Apologies if you were snarking.)
Renie
@dedc79: warren is 66 now after this presidential election she will be 70; that’s not anyone’s sweet spot
singfoom
@PsiFighter37: You know, it’s cool to disagree with policy platforms, etc. But just because someone supports Sanders, youth or no, doesn’t make them stupid.
Nor does calling them so help the general cause of having a rational functioning government not dominated by the crazies…
Cheers.
Amir Khalid
@Tractarian:
Correctamundo.
Mr. Twister
Here’s a question. If Bernie is saying we need a revolution, isn’t he implying Obama sucks ?
NCSteve
@WarMunchkin: More or less, but they were a smaller percentage of the electorate because they turned out for presidential elections the way they still turn out for midterms. Before Obama, “counting on the youth vote” was like counting on the unicorn vote.
Tractarian
@Marc:
Paging the senior Senator from Massachusetts.
On the other hand, if you took a candidate with Hillary’s positions but without her baggage, that candidate would also probably be a strong favorite. See Obama, Barack (2008).
It’s amazing to me that the anti-Hillary animus runs so deep in certain parts of the Democratic party that they would rather nominate a grumpy 74-year atheist democratic socialist who isn’t familiar with foreign policy and isn’t even a Democrat.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mr. Twister:
No. Saying Obama needed to be primaried in 2012 and getting on stage with Cornel West as an endorsement is implying Obama sucks.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
Richard Nixon was elected on the strength of the youth vote.
Elie
@Tractarian:
He is not an American citizen — he can’t vote. :-)
jl
17 days to SC, and I will be surprised if Sanders can catch up. Hopefully that will be a short enough time that HRC will not succumb to her inner Rubo (or Bill’s ‘help’, and I am beginning to wonder whether he tends to malfunction politically when he is not the principal) and panic and try to ‘fix’ BS problems the media is yapping about.
I disagree with Doug!. Both HRC and Sanders are moving in the same general direction. As an economist, I think there is just as much sound economic foundation for their stated poliices. Both I think both flawed in their financial regulation policies, put them together and we are talking serious business. I think better job market and widely spread rising incomes for working and middle class will do more to solve the Democratic midterm blues than the rhetoric.
If Sanders is serious that he wants a political revolution, this election cycle is his chance to go down in history as starting one. if the youths get the yips following an HRC nomination, Sanders will yell at them to get their asses to the polls because successful revolutionists are not quitters at the first set back (he will yell that the billionaires do not quit, dammit, and neither can his troops), and will start scheming how to maximize his influence in Senate majority for first HRC term.
I don’t claim to know whether Sanders will do that. If he is as smart as he thinks he is, he will do it. We have to hope that he will. He could punk out, like Christie, I guess. Who knows?
schrodinger's cat
@Mr. Twister: Its his revolution talk that leaves me cold, its the flip side of making America great again. Sanders opinions about immigrants, especially those who come here to work is not that different from Trump’s.
NonyNony
@Amir Khalid:
This is a myth. In general most folks politics gel when they’re in their 20s and it takes a significant life event to jar them out of it. Which is why the Democrats coasted on FDR’s coattails until the 1970s and elderly voters had a reputation for being a mostly Democratic constituency well into the early 1990s. And why voters who voted for Reagan or Nixon or Ford in their first election are generally still Republican voters today. There are exceptions – and this blog is probably full of them given that Cole himself is one of them – but it’s the standard trend.
FlipYrWhig
@Marc:
Is there such an animal, though? Is there another laser-focused “Wall Street hosed all of us and I’m mad about it too! And I don’t take their dirty money!” candidate? Could there be? Because the Bernie Sanders boom isn’t “positions” or even attitude, I don’t think, but this aura of lifelong incorruptibility and righteousness that I’m not sure can come from a lot of other places. Turn Bernie Sanders, septuagenerian cranky Jew, into Christopher Sanders, young-ish Democrat and down-the-line liberal from Colorado or something, and he wouldn’t have gotten to be a Senator or Governor yet. And to be an ambitious liberal in the 21st century means hobnobbing with the same sorts of people Bernie Sanders finds anathema. Consider Cory Booķer. For that matter, consider Barack Obama.
Mr. Twister
@Frankensteinbeck: Well that too.
amk
Jus’ 2 out 50 states have voted. Jus’ sayin’.
FlipYrWhig
@Just Some Fuckhead: I’ll have you know I’ve been doing _that_ for a LONG time.
Tractarian
@Frankensteinbeck: Was not snarking; did not know he was not eligible to vote.
Of course, when you say “Of course, I have absolutely no plans to vote for either of them” that kind of implies that you could, legally, vote for one of them but chose not to, so you can see where the confusion arises.
Just Some Fuckhead
@FlipYrWhig: I’ve been following your career here for a long time and I don’t recall seeing it before yesterday. Maybe one of your other commenting sites?
Brandon
@PsiFighter37: I share this concern about Hillary “blowing it”. I actually believe that in the end she will win the Democratic nomination with some room to spare. Having already locked up some 400 “superdelegates” doesn’t hurt and the kids can only really get you so far. But I really do fear for her in the general. Clearly her team were hoping for the Clinton-Bush rematch, which I do think she would’ve won easily. But against any of the other top 4 Republican candidates, I think it is 50-50 with a decent chance that she will lose against some of them, including Trump (and I say this sincerely).
A lot of commentary I have read today surrounds the question of who’s to blame or what the fallout would be to Democratic constituencies and Obama’s legacy if Bernie gets the nomination and then loses. But what if it is Hillary that loses the general? What are the ramifications then, with Republicans controlling the House, Senate, Supreme Court and 34 states? And why is there not more of a discussion of how terribly listless the party has become under DWS “leadership” (can’t forget Obama at the titular head either)?
The times I recall the Democrats fielding truly party establishment candidates, they always seem to fail miserably both in national races (Mondale/Dukakis) and state-wide. Here in Maryland we have strong examples, including the disastrous gubernatorial campaigns of Kennedy Townsend and Anthony Brown. While there are good reasons to believe that Bernie is no McGovern and that Clinton is no Mondale, I am still not convinced that Democrats won’t blow it this year, particularly as there are a lot of datapoints that are troubling, i.e. turnout and voter interest among Democrats is lower than for Republicans primary voters (Thanks Debbie!).
BruceFromOhio
Both OffspringFromOhio are enthusiastic for Sanders. They like his messages, and the groundswell of support from their peers. I think it’s awesome, even though we differ in our preference for candidates. TeenFromOhio turns 18 shortly, and plans to vote in the Ohio Democratic primary, as well as the general. The older sib already registered Dem and happily voted in the 2012 general for Obama.
We talked about Clinton winning the primary and selecting Sanders as VP, and vice versa, and they were both fine with that. What is brutally, comically obvious is the difference between the Dem candidates, and the Klown Kar Kavalade Parade of Fail, they are both “WTF?” about Republicans, and that has been pretty standard in their peer demographic in our little neck of the woods. My next opportunity is to get them thinking locally to support Sherrod Brown to remain in the Senate, I think they will both be pretty enthused when they find out what he’s all about. On the way to that is trying to knock off Portman and send his sorry ass packing – I’m concerned a Clinton candidacy will make that more difficult with this demographic, whereas Sanders for President may bode well for down-ticket Dems in the Buckeye come November.
I despair at the gender and age distinctions being made by the media and the shouty folk, it serves only to hurt Dems and help the KKKPoF.
@peach flavored shampoo: Then it becomes a contest to see how much pain, hunger and broken civilization the herd can tolerate before standing back up again. You’ll know it’s really over when the fascists mobilize the National Guard, and the death squads start shooting people at the polls.
AliceBlue
@Elie:
This.
glory b
@dedc79: Y’know, everyone rhapsodizes over her, and I like her on the economy, but she desparately needs some foreign policy chops. Someone asked her about the middle east a while back and she looked like a deer in the headlights.
Then voiced approval for sending troops into another ground war there.
she needs to step up that game, and we need to act like the rest of the world matters.
Mnemosyne
@dedc79:
He’s saying what pretty much everyone else who supports Hillary is saying, including me: if Bernie gets the nomination, I will vote for him. The people who claim they would never, ever vote for the other candidate if their preferred one doesn’t get the nomination are few and far between, but seem to be more numerous on the Bernie side.
(And judging strictly by this website, “more numerous” means I’ve seen one (1) person say No Hillary Vote in the general and zero (0) people say No Bernie Vote.)
Matt McIrvin
@Marc:
This is my experience as well. But I keep hearing people with precisely the opposite anecdote, including some who claim to know Sanders > Trump > Clinton voters.
NCSteve
@singfoom: If the conclusion you draw is “disillusionment runs deep,” it’s not really all that insulting. And that’s what I see. People who have a middle aged person’s disillusionment without the life experience and muted endocrine system you need to deal with it when it inevitably comes. My heart aches for them even as I fear the consequences.
FlipYrWhig
@Just Some Fuckhead: I think I was doing it on Pandagon in the days before Ezra Klein was the new guy ruining it.
Hillary Rettig
@Tom65: bingo. It speaks volumes that she hasn’t stood up and publicly disavowed the Steinem / Albright / Schultz statements.
Amir Khalid
@Tractarian:
Being I’m Malaysian and not eligible to vote in American elections, it would be very silly of me to plan to vote for either Hillary or Bernie. So I have no such plans. See? Perfectly logical.
singfoom
@Tractarian: I don’t think it’s anti-Clinton animus as much as it’s anti-neoliberal-economics animus / pushback against the rightwards movement of the Democratic party from the 90s.
After Obama I think people want someone who they think is going to continue to change things and make them better. HRC, with her long history and as someone who participated in that rightwards shift in the 90s is an exemplar of exactly the kind of pol that people are tired of.
I hold no personal animus against her but I’ve always considered her part of the corporate wing of the party and as Doug! stated in the OP, it would seem that the party is moving away from that wing.
That said, I could be wrong about every single point I just made because history and politics are fluid and I’m just some guy.
Cheers
gwangung
@Mr. Twister: Pretty much. And he has some mild anti-Obama statements.
Here’s Angry Black Lady and how she sees Sanders vis a vis the black community:
https://storify.com/gwangung/black-support-of-clinton
jl
I think HRC campaigning against Sanders is totally different than HRC campaigning against a GOPer or (I hope it doesn;t happen) and GOPer and Bloomberg. Totally different set of problems for HRC. I think she will do better in general than primary, at least in terms of the BS media and pundit kibbitzing about all her purported fatal weaknesses.
beltane
@Brandon: It is all but impossible for Hillary to lose the nomination. She will undoubtedly win lock-solid Democratic constituencies in November. Is that good enough? Probably not.
The Democratic party excels at shooting itself in the head. Ensuring that this year’s nominee would be the loser of the last contested primary is just plain old dumb.
Just Some Fuckhead
@FlipYrWhig: I’ll always hate that fucker for reasons even I can’t understand.
shomi
Well at least DJ is being more realistic than C0le by voting for Hillary. For all the right reasons too.
Saying Sanders is the future is totally off the rails though. Twenty years from now maybe. The problem with all those 20 somethings that he bases his whole argument on is that many DO NOT VOTE. ESPECIALLY MIDTERMS. That is not going to change.
The country simply isn’t anywhere close to being that far left and won’t be for a very long time. That’s just a fact. Maybe if you sell off all the red states to Mexico you might have a shot at it today.
However, the Cole’s of the world and most of the people hanging around Dkos don’t seem capable of understanding such things.
'Niques
@jeer9:
I haven’t read all the way through, so forgive me if I am repeating something that’s been said, but the difference will be when the competition spouts off about sochialism – which so very many people are afraid of – giving us a Presnit Trump or Cruz or Satan.
glory b
@Tom65: Okay, those of us who will lose our civil rights, govrnment assistance and education spending while wewatch the next three or four supreme court positions go to Alito clones will salute your purity.
Like someone said a few days ago here, this isn’t like a fantasy footbal game, some of us have our lives on the line.
But go ahead, you do you.
FlipYrWhig
@Brandon:
I’m not sure “establishment” is that helpful for those. Mondale’s anti-establishment challenger was Gary Hart, “Atari Democrat” who set in motion the shift to the DLC sort of model favored by Even The New Republic, Al Gore ’88, and so forth. And Dukakis wasn’t “party establishment” at all, but a sort of fallback position when Gore (tech/reform) and Gephardt (labor) nuked each other and white people weren’t ready for Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition. It would be like John Kasich ending up the Republican candidate this time if Kasich hadn’t previously been an impeachment managing Congressman.
Frankensteinbeck
@Tractarian:
No intention of insulting you. Amir’s status as Malaysian is commonly known, and ‘I can’t tell if you mean it’ snarking is one of BJ’s finest – or at least most prominent – traditions, but at the same time anybody can miss any detail.
catclub
@dedc79:
speaking of something Warren would approve of: Better fiscal policy Spending! With long term debt! At low interest! To make (large) useful things!
dedc79
@Mnemosyne:
I think it’s a bit different. I think he’s saying he’d vote for Sanders over Hillary. I agree with the rest of what you wrote though.
SarahT
@Elie: What you said !
C.V. Danes
@catclub: Perhaps, unless your choice not to vote is really a vote of no confidence.
gwangung
@singfoom:
Hm. Makes me wonder…how much of this rightwards movement was a pragmatic, situational move to capture votes in Congress and how much reflect a deep philosophical bent. I think Obama governs far more moderately that the way he does, in fact, feel.
Archon
@Mr. Twister:
Sanders is having a tough time walking the line in a party where Obama’s popular, I do think Sanders could make an argument that the President tried to do it the traditional way by assuming Republicans and the donor class would work with him in good faith as patriotic Americans only to have them spit in his eye. He could argue that further, when Democrats were looking for the exits at the first sign of adversity it was only through Obama’s integrity, dignity, and force of will that he was able to get anything done at all, even if it was only incremental.
At least that’s an argument that would appeal to an Obamabot like me.
C.V. Danes
@schrodinger’s cat:
You’re assuming that’s what the stock market does now, as opposed to just being a rigged casino for millionaires.
Johnny Coelacanth
@Just Some Fuckhead: Living up to your name again, eh?
glory b
@singfoom: Before, I said Clinton/Castro, but now IDK.
I still think a lock on the Hispanic vote is something to aim for, and I think Bernie would be better in the Senate than VP, because it is historically a dead end job.
Or maybe Sec of Labor?
Tractarian
@Amir Khalid: And perfectly misleading! You’d be a great politician.
Immanentize
@singfoom: My VP choice for Hillary would be HUD Secretary Julian Castro
http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/about/principal_staff/secretary_castro
FlipYrWhig
@singfoom:
So the “corporate” thing seems to come down to the bankruptcy bill, raising money from Wall Street (when running to represent New York in the Senate), those speeches (which I’m still guessing were a bunch of pablum about leaderly leadership), and having been on corporate boards when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas (when she was one of not-many high powered women lawyers, and I suspect a sort of “affirmative action” appointee, who then pushed the corporations on gender equity). Then, by association, with Bill and “Rubinomics.” I think that’s pretty thin gruel for declaring her “corporate.” No one in 1992 would have called her “corporate.”
glory b
@dedc79: Clearly, you didn’t see the interviews or read his rebuttals about this.
He never said he wouldn’t vote for Bernie and he wasn’t telling anyone not to, but if Bernie’s answer to everything was “Revolution!”, he got very “establishment” about reparations.
C.V. Danes
@jeer9:
Why, because the centrist is more pragmatic, or something like that. I guess.
sparrow
@schrodinger’s cat: I know you are being glib, but I think it might be good for you to actually read some of what Bernie is proposing in terms of actual incremental change. It’s on his website. He isn’t remotely close to claiming he will “do away with wall street”. You’re certainly free to think that wall street needs no (or different) regulatory action than he is proposing, but don’t pull out straw man arguments.
Immanentize
@glory b: I agree, why are you changing your mind? For Bernie, it would have to be someone with foreign/military cred. Tammy Duckworth? Jeanne Shaheen?
catclub
@FlipYrWhig:
The polling shows that Trump is least popular with the wealthy and the well educated among the the GOP. So if it were Trump versus Hillary, Hillary would get a lot of those $200K+ votes.
trollhattan
If Malaysia sits out both the primaries and general, the blame rests squarely in the lap of Hillary’s pantsuit. Hrrmph!
CONGRATULATIONS!
@PsiFighter37: Been watching my wife’s students over the last few years.
Sadly (and it really is sad) the problem is #1, not #2. They aren’t disillusioned. Their, shall we say, “willful ignorance” (don’t want to learn, can’t make me learn, don’t need to learn is the attitude) is truly shocking.
trollhattan
@Immanentize:
My thought as well. (She will be skewered for “pandering” but whatevs. I liked him at the last DNC.)
catclub
@C.V. Danes:
eleventy dimensional year plans!
schrodinger's cat
@sparrow: I am not being glib, there are economists of the socialist type who believe that equity markets are flawed and introduce volatility in the economy.
I have read both his immigration and economic plans, they are long on empty promises and short on detail.
Example: College tuition is going to be paid by transaction taxes on equity trades. A > B unless we increase those transaction taxes substantially. How is he going to do that? His answer : revolution.
So what is it revolution or incremental change? You can’t have both simultaneously.
dedc79
@glory b: On the contrary, i read/saw the interviews and his posts over at the Atlantic. I’m not saying he changed his mind, just that he has now, for the first time, acknowledged that he’s supporting Sanders over Clinton.
C.V. Danes
@peach flavored shampoo:
And that, my friend, is when the real revolution will hit the fan.
C.V. Danes
@catclub: Shoot, more like eleventy dimensional ways to pick your pocket!
jl
@Archon: Sanders has made that argument explicitly. It is a standard grumpy aria in his stump speech.
Obama thought he could bargain with the GOP in good faith, and they had no intention of doing so, because they thought cynically manipulating the racism in the country that would give them the benefit of the doubt against the first black president would protect them. (Edit: and, in my view, if you think race had nothing to with it, you would be very sorely mistaken.)
Skip your way through a few of the Sanders stumpers on youtube and you will hear it.
catclub
@jl:
Nowadays, I would expect her to call the guy who lives at the big house on Pennsylvania Ave for political consulting.
He is not well practiced at panicking.
Josie
@schrodinger’s cat: It struck me forcibly last night while listening to his speech. He sounds like Trump, just from the other end of the spectrum – shouting about all the wonderful things he is going to bring about with no clue as to how he would accomplish everything. He isn’t even contributing anything to support down ticket races.
schrodinger's cat
@C.V. Danes: I do think that the stock markets need to be regulated. I just don’t see how electing Bernie Sanders is going to make that happen.
FlipYrWhig
@gwangung:
It was a pragmatic, situational move to capture votes in America, because liberalism was associated with permissiveness and rampant crime. It was hatched to hold onto statewide offices in the Sun Belt as the racists started to decamp toward the Republican Party. To wit, Arkansas (Clinton), Tennessee (Gore), North Carolina (Hunt), Georgia (Zell Miller, at one point not insane!).
Marc
@FlipYrWhig: Someone like Liz Warren could tap into the same sentiment without having ever been, for example, a registered Socialist or an old guy with Brooklyn Jewish accent. To some extent Sherrod Brown, or the late Paul Wellstone, would be templates.
Elie
@gwangung:
Right on… this is a good part of it…
gene108
@jeer9:
Democrats have bought into Hillary’s platform. I do not get this feeling with Democrats being on board with Sanders’ goals.
So even if Democrats retake Congress, they are not going to do what Sanders wants done just because he’s President.
Edit: I think that’s the biggest difference, when people say Sanders will not get things done with Congress.
Archon
@jl:
Wow, Ok I’ll look it up. He needs to put the political revolution talk on hold with black folks and focus on exactly that argument.
MCA1
So much panicking, my goodness. The obvious way to win this nomination contest for Clinton was to play the slow and steady wins the race strategy, not say or do anything outrageous, and focus on ground game and shoring up the endorsement caucus, all of which she’s doing. Sanders had to win NH as a basic prerequisite to even thinking about making things interesting. But we all knew going in that he was likely to win lily-white NH. So what’s changed? More youth voters in NH supported him than expected? OK, so he’s done more to rile up the under 25 set than expected. Is that going to carry him to victories in South Carolina and elsewhere? There’s still no evidence that Sanders will do anything to disrupt the general Obama coalition (AA, Latino, women) support for legacy candidate/Obama Sec’y of State Clinton.
As for the general, first, it amazes me that a lot of folks express horror at the Republican crowd but are naive enough to think that same Republican crowd wouldn’t destroy Sanders in 5 seconds by simply saying “Soshulist” (which = “Soviet-style Marxist” for 60% of Americans) in every sentence. I’m on board with anyone supporting Sanders because they like his positions or vision or independence or judgment more, but it’s delusional to think he stands a better chance than Clinton in the general.
To the concerns above about Clinton losing the general: calm down. There is one person in the R field who has any reasonable chance against her, and he finished 7th in Iowa, 2nd last night with half as much support as Trump, and has no field operation. In a mano-a-mano landscape between Clinton and Rubio, Trump, Cruz, or Bush she has obvious advantages to ruthlessly exploit. Yeah, she could “blow it” by not obsessively focusing on the incredibly obvious huge weaknesses of her opponent, but the fundamentals of the general race still overwhelmingly point to a D victory, unless y’all think somehow Trump’s well positioned to take Florida, Ohio and Michigan or something. He can’t flit around twitter bullying a different opponent every week, he’ll be confronted with Clinton having been a guest at his last wedding, and he’ll inspire a reflexive queasiness in every independent or D-leaning female in America when he inevitably calls Hillary the c-word or expresses disgust at her bodily functions or whatever it is. I’ve been wrong about when people will sober up and realize the Trump milk has curdled numerous times already, but I think the landscape of a general election is just different.
Denali
It bothers me more than Bernie holds dual citizenship than that Hilary has given speeches to Goldman Sachs.
glory b
@singfoom: Like I said, keep in mind that for some of us, your decision could be a life or death one.
For us, it isn’t fantasy football.
FlipYrWhig
@Josie: Well, to be fair, a victory speech isn’t the right moment to announce a detailed plan. For Trump, there’s no plan whatsoever: it’s just the repetition of the words “deal” and “great.” For Sanders, there’s a plan. Problem is, the way to get the plan into reality is a lot of stuff that I don’t think can happen, like public pressure that intimidates and shames Republicans.
PaulW
If I were in the DNC and/or any of the state party organizations, I would be heavily recruiting among the 20-somethings right now to line up candidates for Congressional and State Lege elections. It is looking as though an entire generation – hi, Millenials – is Left-leaning in a way the Republicans and the Far Right are not going to overwhelm. They may not win many elections in 2016 but you need to cultivate them for the midterms in 2018 and definitely by 2020.
Germy
Bernie Sanders interviewed by the ladies on The View
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6aBA8bmycU
jl
@singfoom:
” don’t think it’s anti-Clinton animus as much as it’s anti-neoliberal-economics animus / pushback against the rightwards movement of the Democratic party from the 90s. ”
Neo-liberalism did not deliver on its promises either under Democrats or GOP. And I think economic and Democratic political problems under Obama created mostly because he deferred to neolinberal and Washington Consensus economic policies (particularly macroeconomic and financial regulation) too much.
I think that is a fact that is hard to deny. I can understand why people are confused and disillusioned, and sadly I can understand why a lot of people fall for GOPer and Trump BS in the rubble.
A guiding, over-arching paradigm for our politics and economics and society has failed at a very basic level. Interesting times tend follow that kind of event.
moderateindy
@jeer9: 100 percent yes. People that are picking based upon the idea that either of them has a better chance than the other at getting their legislative agenda passed have not been paying attention. Whatever their policy plans from a legisltion standpoint might be is a moot point. Neither are going to get anything passed with the current makeup of the Congress.
Sanders will bring to the table a myriad of proposals that are far more progressive than what we’ll get from Clinton, and while none will get passed, at least they will become part of the national conversation.
Of the two Sanders actually inspires, and thus has the best chance of getting a bigger turnout, which will help down the ballot. He also has the bigger chance of totally crashing, and burning. Hillary is a known entity with some seriously high negative numbers, but numbers that aren’t going to change much. She is the status quo candidate, which makes her a safer choice.
From an executive branch standpoint I completely prefer Sanders. I see a Sanders DOJ as being a much more aggressive entity when it comes to slowing the corruption that is our corporate and financial system. I see Clinton’ DOJ being like Obama’s which is fairly friendly, for a Democrat, to our corporate overlords.
I do have a problem with Clinton’s lucrative compensation from Goldman Suks, and others for her speeches. It is incredibly tone deaf if nothing else. Particularly since they really didn’t need the money. My guess is that the Clintons have spent the last 25 years surrounded by the financial elites, and thus probably identify, as well as sympathize with the Wall Street, Wal-Mart, Hedge fund folks. I know she doesn’t want to release the contents of those speeches because they will show her sucking up to the same people she says she wants to reform. I won’t hold that against her cause nobody that is getting a quarter mil for a speech is going to castigate the audience. My problem with her is that I’m not sure she doesn’t actually believe the stuff she said.
I definitely prefer Bernie when it comes to who I want to be President, but I’m not sure if I prefer him to be the Dem nominee. Sure nada is going to get done from a legislation standpoint, but the elephant in the room is the Supreme Court. If Hillary is the more electable of the two candidates then that trumps what Bernie brings to the table, Because as a nation we can endure another decade of no important legislation getting passed, but we can’t endure another 1 or 2 seats on the court being filled by movement conservatives.
Bob In Portland
If Sanders wins the nomination I presume that DWS will be gone, and that’s positive for the Democratic Party.
If DWS oversees another congressional fail, is there any movement within the party structure to get rid of the plutocrats and plutocrat allies? I doubt it. Then the youth vote will have to look elsewhere. So the revolution is postponed, or maybe the new dark age begins.
dedc79
@Denali: Huh?
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Unless you’re worried about voter fraud, perhaps I can send you an absentee ballot? You’d have to use a different name, of course. And swear or affirm that you live in a town in central MA, and that you’ve lived here for ages. But outside of that, should be no problem.
So, what’ll it be? And don’t get all high-and-mighty about being “ethical” and “having integrity,” OK? Yer a furriner, and every good American knows what youse guys are really like.
Oh, and make sure you get it in the mail quickly, because we know that the mail is carried to the USofA by slow boats from China (so to speak)
Anyway, let me know.
Mnemosyne
@dedc79:
It’s hard to tell from that article, since it says “election” and not “primary,” and I don’t feel like tracking down the whole interview. But I’m sticking with my overall point: Democrats who will absolutely refuse to vote for either candidate in the general election are few and far between.
Cacti
@moderateindy:
Yay!
Noble failure is the best kind.
NR
@MCA1:
No one with Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable ratings has ever been elected president in the history of the United States.
(And spare me the inevitable “Well no woman and no Jew has ever been elected either!” crap. It’s not the same thing and you all know it.)
MCA1
@Marc: Franken? Would old stuff from the radio or former comedian life = baggage? Hasn’t stopped him in Minnesota. It’s not like Rush Limbaugh fans would ever get on board with him, anyway.
I don’t think he has those ambitions, but sort of fits the profile you’re talking about.
Wrb
Dunno, many I who I know who are contemplating Sanders say they would never vote for Hillary and will switch to Trump. I think she could beat another insider but fear that Trump would trounce her. I’ll vote for her, but at least according to my limited sample many others won’t.
The switchers are of two types:
a) Those badly hurt by the recession and who have a viscerial dislike of anything connected. They see Wall Street influence as the cause of their suffering. The smarter once see Clintonian deregulation and NAFTA as direct causes.
B) Obama supporters who have been unable to forgive Clinton behavior in 2008. For them this defined her character.
I think she could take another insider, but think Trump v. Clinton would prove to be a nightmare for Democrats. He will run against Wall Street and will do so aggressively and shamelessly.
WJS
The way Clinton wins this is by realizing that young people just don’t vote. I know this because President McGovern told me.
Just Some Fuckhead
@singfoom: Agree. The polemicists want to cast Sanders as some kind of rejection of Obama but he’s the natural continuation of Obama. Obama set this change theme in motion. It isn’t just going to go away.
Cacti
@NR:
No first term Presidential candidate over age 70 has ever been elected POTUS in the history of the United States.
FlipYrWhig
@moderateindy:
But what if the way they become “part of the national conversation” is like this? “That sure went over like a lead balloon, I hope they don’t try that again.” Because that’s kind of what happened with “HillaryCare.” And then 20 years later we got to try health care reform again, less ambitiously not more, more market-oriented not less, and so forth, and barely got it through, and a bunch of the Congresscritters who voted for it grudgingly were tossed out on their asses. I don’t see why people expect that making liberal ideas “part of the national conversation” means that one day you get them. Has there been a national-level political proposal that succeeded in moving the Overton Window leftwards? All the leftish Overton Window examples I can think of are social movements deliberately outside the corridors of power in DC.
If Bernie Sanders’s goal is to move the Overton Window, he’d be much better off being something other than a president shepherding legislation.
WJS
@Denali: Bernie Sanders is not a citizen of Israel. He has denied it publicly.
Eric
@Tractarian: I think even if ‘they’ largely abandon Hillary, it won’t cost her the general per se. An influx of motivated youth is going to have a larger effect on a primary than in November. It could be decisive if it’s close, but I doubt it’s a certain death certificate.
Mnemosyne
@moderateindy:
The kind of weird thing about Hillary’s high negatives is that they’re pretty fixed — she’s been in the public eye for so long that most people have made up their minds about her for good or ill. That also means that, unless she screws up in some major way, her negatives aren’t going to budge (ie you won’t have large numbers of people change their opinion of her from positive to negative). I don’t think there’s any other candidate on either side that you can say that about.
NR
@Cacti: Like I said, not the same thing and you damn well know it.
MCA1
@NR: Thanks for presuming the response for me (I never would have stated it as it’s as facile as discounting Obama based on race would have been in ’08). A better response would be that it doesn’t matter, because if it’s Hillary vs. Donald or Rafael, whoever wins will set the new record. Somebody’s gotta win the general election. Currently Trump’s unfavorable numbers blow Clinton’s out of the water. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-is-really-unpopular-with-general-election-voters/
NR
@Mnemosyne: It baffles me that some people think that Hillary’s negatives being “fixed” is somehow a good thing. They’re “fixed” at a level that makes it basically impossible for her to win the White House.
Cacti
@NR:
Well, if an anonymous internet person say it’s not the same, that’s the final word.
Or not.
Archon
@NR:
Donald Trump’s unfavorable numbers blow Hillary Clinton’s out the water and he’s walking into a General election with 45 percent of the vote minimum.
We are in a new political age my friend.
NR
@MCA1: Yes and that’s why Trump is the only candidate she has a chance against. Even so, I’m still not sure she beats him. Never bet against a Republican in a race to the bottom.
schrodinger's cat
@jl: I agree with your critique of neo-liberalism but I don’t think one person, even the President can change that. I also find that Sanders plans are not grounded in reality. If he really wants to get his agenda through the Congress he should focus on ballot access and making Congressional elections more competitive by taking it out of the hands of partisan redistricting committees.
FlipYrWhig
@Cacti: Remember when we were getting close to the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and everyone said that the right strategy was to put it into the defense appropriations bill to make it hard to vote against, and then the Republicans filibustered? Everyone was ecstatic that they had tried the right strategy and narrowly lost, right, because it was noble and made a statement? I mean, that must have been what happened. There couldn’t have been much complaining about how the administration didn’t try properly.
NR
@Cacti: Nice nonargument, but it’s pretty much what I’ve come to expect from you.
Mnemosyne
@Wrb:
Sorry, but it has already been decided here that the people of whom you speak don’t actually exist, and you will be asked to provide names and addresses to show you’re telling the truth.
/kidding not kidding
gene108
@shomi:
When I was in my 20’s I was pretty disengaged with politics. That changed as I got older and felt I had something to lose, if a disastrous candidate is elected to office, which happened with Bush, Jr.
They may start voting more regularly in 10+ years.
Steve in the ATL
@NR:
No, any Democrat, including Hillary, is likely to win because of the electoral college. And her negatives aren’t as high as Trump’s. And he hasn’t been attacked yet, whereas she has been the target of rightwing smears for 25 years.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Only if the other guy’s negatives stay low, which they won’t. Which Republican do you picture ending up with lower negatives than Hillary? Trump is already there. Rubio’s a loser. Kasich is going nowhere. Cruz is spouting his S&M fantasies about Hillary in his speeches.
Which Republican is going to be able to keep the mask up through November?
Bob In Portland
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/01/30/clinton-system-donor-machine-2016-election/
trollhattan
@srv:
Right. Because nothing attracts an OWS-type crowd better than an aged, squirrel-pated, short-fingered vulgarian, trust fund, real estate developer. Nothing.
Hit ctrl+alt+del to complete the software updates.
Bob In Portland
Has anyone here commented on the New York Review of Books article, “The Clinton System”? It’s out there and mostly I’ve heard nothing about it.
Archon
@NR:
She would beat Ted Cruz too, against everyone else it’s a toss-up. I think it would be a very close election but I’m genuinely afraid Bernie Sanders could lose to Trump or Cruz
NR
@Steve in the ATL: The blue wall in the electoral college is a myth. Nate Silver debunked it last year.
I’ve stipulated that Hillary might beat Trump. But she also might lose to him, and he’s the only potential Republican candidate she has a chance against.
moderateindy
@Mnemosyne: I totally agree, and I thought i conveyed that in my post. There is one extra negative on Hillary regarding turnout. The Hilz hate from the right is nuclear. I actually think that it could spur turnout on the right. I know quite a few Republicans, (mostly the top 5% percent variety) and almost all think Trump is an idiot.
I don’t know if they would stay home if he was their nominee, but I am certain that they would drag themselves over hot coals to the polls to vote against Hillary.
Of course, as a rule, they can gin up enough hate and outrage that they may feel the same way regardless of what Dem might be running
patrick II
@Mnemosyne:
Nixon was going to end the Vietnam War with his “secret plan”.
trollhattan
@NR:
Say what?
Bobby Thomson
@Archon: yes. It would also be very effective for Sanders to call out Rove campaigning on his behalf. “Stop lying about my opponent. This election should be about ideas and the future of out country, not personalities.” But that’s a very different campaign than Devine has in mind.
Cacti
@NR:
What argument? You offered an opinion, I disagreed with it.
Opinion statements are not objective facts. I’m sorry the difference confuses you.
pamelabrown53
@PsiFighter37:
The disparity between the youth vote, et a,l worries me too. While I want to welcome and encourage them to participate in the political process, they seem way too invested in Green Lanternism which is a recipe for even more cynicism and less participation.
David M
@Josie:
Sanders seems like a reaction against how Obama and the Democrats sold out. The problem I see there is promising more than Obama, but delivering less isn’t something I see ending well.
NR
@Mnemosyne: You’re taking it on faith that the Republican candidate’s negatives will go up. That is not guaranteed. Meanwhile Hillary’s negatives are already crazy high.
japa21
Personally, I agree with Sanders philosophically on a lot of issues (except Medicare for all).
I also would like to see more “progressive” talk from Clinton, although there is little doubt she is more progressive now than in 2008 and far more progressive than Bill ever was.
But I won’t for someone for President just because their ideas and mine match more closely than someone else’s does.
Obviously, if one candidate has positions I abhor (for example any Republican running for a position higher than dog-catcher)I won’t consider that person at all.
But if agree with one person 90% and another 80% (pretty much the way it is with Sanders and Clinton) I am going to look at who I think has the skills necessary to be a competent and effective President. And one of the things that is essential for me is the ability to recognize mistakes and do something about it. Another is the ability to engender loyalty from those who that person will have working for them. And perhaps most important of all, specially in the office of President, I believe is the view of foreign policy.
I have seen nothing from Sanders that shows me he would be a competent President. To the best of my knowledge, he has never acknowledged his failings during this campaign. And he hasn’t show me anything from a foreign policy perspective that makes me think he would be effective on the world stage.
So, this Obamabot, who resented many of the things Hillary did in 2008, is going to vote for her without hesitation and without regrets.
Mnemosyne
@Archon:
Actually, I think Sanders would do fine against Trump. Sanders may be the “insurgent,” but he’s still a politician, so I think he could show Trump up as the idiot he is.
NR
@Cacti: It’s not an opinion that no one with Hillary’s unfavorable ratings has ever been elected president, it’s a fact.
Heliopause
One of the big takeaways for me was the polling. Final polling average in Iowa was approximately Clinton +4, it ended up a tie. Final polling averages in New Hampshire were Sanders +13 or 14, result was Sanders +22. In other words the pollsters are thus far undersampling Sanders or oversampling Clinton or something else is going on that they’re not measuring. I’m not ready to predict huge surprises in Nevada or South Carolina but this polling trend is something to keep an eye on going forward.
Cacti
@trollhattan:
If NR says so, it’s true.
End of discussion.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
.
Oh yes, volumes. Vast stretches of volumes
Ever find that evidence that Clinton supported single payer health care? Which support she sold out for speaking fees, like you said?
Speaks volumes that you won’t answer that question.
Cacti
@NR:
It’s also a fact that no one over age 70 has ever been elected to a first term as President.
You said it’s not the same. That’s an opinion.
David M
@NR:
It doesn’t seem like Hillary Clinton’s negatives are crazy high…
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-is-really-unpopular-with-general-election-voters/
PsiFighter37
@singfoom: I would like a concrete proposal for funding free college, single payer, etc. And something that is realistic, not just ‘soak the rich’.
Seriously, Bernie’s healthcare paper is 8 pages long. I could write more bullshit that would look more detailed and would be longer than that. The guy clearly has less than zero interest in foreign policy (shouting ‘Iraq’ over and over does not count as policy).
When Obama ran, he put out thoughtful, detailed proposals about his plans, and he knew he would have a Democratic majority in the House and Senate to help. Bernie will be lucky to have a Democratic Senate majority (if that), and the House will laugh as they throw away anything he sends to Congress.
‘Revolution’ is not a good enough explanation for how things will get done.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
I notice you didn’t name any names. Which Republican do you honestly think will survive national exposure without their negatives skyrocketing? Being the most popular asshole among Republican primary voters rarely gets you very far nationwide.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Why I can’t join the “It’s great that Bernie is chaining the conversation!” chorus. He’s setting up a bait-and-switch.
NR
@Cacti: Um, no. There is an objective difference between a candidate’s age and their popularity. One has a direct effect on elections, the other does not.
Wrb
@Mnemosyne: @Mnemosyne:
ah sorry missed it I only seem to come around here when something is breaking about which sparky arguments can be had. Thus I’ve been absent for a few years.
Cacti
@NR:
Also an opinion statement.
NR
@David M: Only compared to Trump (and I guess Jeb! too, but he hasn’t been relevant in months).
NR
@Cacti: Okay Sparky. You just go on thinking that.
Anoniminous
@trollhattan:
Malaysian turnout has totally sucked for generations. It’s almost like they don’t care who is president.
Mnemosyne
@David M:
Given how divided the country is, 50 percent unfavorable doesn’t seem that out of line. I really doubt that number would go much lower barring any major scandals.
moderateindy
@FlipYrWhig: Of course it doesn’t mean you’ll get the changes, but not talking about it at all, which Hillary won’t means you’re pretty much guaranteed not to get it.
Sports analogy alert!!!! It’s like if you were a basketball player with time running out, and if you took the shot, and missed people might hate you, so instead you pass the ball to another player and time runs out. At some point ya gotta take a shot. Being afraid that you might miss and there will be backlash simply guarantees defeat.
NR
@Mnemosyne: People said the same thing about George W. Bush in 2000. Look how that turned out.
But regardless, you are putting the possibility of the Republican candidate’s numbers getting worse up against the certainty of Hillary’s already terrible numbers. That is, at best, an extremely risky proposition.
Cacti
@NR:
Please post your proof then re: candidate’s ages.
Paul in KY
@Doug!: I like making him the veep on the ticket. Get your youth vote & Berniebros & he’s good with a comeback & can do some attack-dogging. Plus, insulates Hillary from RWNJs wanting her taken care of as he would be President.
David M
@Mnemosyne:
The one thing that stood out to me was the fact she had the highest favorable ratings of all candidates, and the only GOP candidates with a better net rating were Carson (R-Grift) and Rubio (R-Robot).
Bobby Thomson
You can’t win a general election and make gains in congress if congressional candidates are running away from or even against you. Even if Sanders managed to pull out an electoral college win after Republicans and the press turned on him, he would be a disaster for marginal elections. And in turn, those candidates’ inevitable ritual denouncement of him wouldn’t do them or him any favors. See generally the 2010 elections.
Bobby Thomson
@Paul in KY: but that’s a very old and very white ticket.
Anoniminous
@Heliopause:
People under 35 are by far & away Mobile Only and the polling companies have a major problem with getting a valid sample.
burnspbesq
@beltane:
Gotta disagree. I think Clinton’s EV floor is 213, vs. about 150-160 for Sanders.
How do i get to 213? CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, MN, NV, NJ, NM, NY, OR, RI, VT, WA.
Which ones do i worry about Sanders not holding? CO, CT, IL, NV, NJ, OR, WA.
It’s a lot easier to get from 213 to 270 than to get from 150 to 270.
Kropadope
@PsiFighter37:
Well, do you expect him to turn in a complete bill to run on? Congress writes the laws. Anything a Presidential candidate puts out that requires changes in law is aspirational and details beyond the broad outlines are simply BS. This is a big reason why I think the Green Lantern candidate who leads people to expect too much is actually Hillary Clinton.
Bernie has many more proposals than the pie-in-the-sky ones that Clinton supporters love to hammer him with also. I’m tired of having to post a portion of them here every day, but check out his website, you may be surprised.
.
I wouldn’t say less than zero. If you listen past that canned speech he gives about his Iraq War vote as a response to every foreign policy question, which is seriously starting to grate on me, he seems to have a reasonable idea about goals and challenges that face us outside the U.S.
Cacti
@Bobby Thomson:
I think the old part would make people especially uncomfortable.
69 year old ticket topper with 74 year old Veep, or vice versa.
WaterGirl
@Germy: I think the only time I have ever seen Barack Obama not look totally comfortable was when he was interviewed on The View in (what must have been) 2008. I can still remember him crossing and uncrossing his legs, maybe pulling at his trousers. I remember his socks, for some reason. Sweet memory.
How did Bernie do?
TallPete
@David M: Regarding swing states in 2016, Quinnipiac University’s July and August Swing State Polls highlight that voters in Colorado, Iowa, Virginia, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania don’t find Hillary Clinton to be trustworthy
Cacti
@Kropadope:
When you present a plan that projects more annual savings on prescription drugs than is actually spent annually on prescription drugs, you can fairly say that the plan is fundamentally unserious.
PsiFighter37
@Kropadope: I would expect someone who has been in Congress for 25+ years to, yes.
I also think his first instinct is isolationism. Good in some cases but bad in most – we need to be engaged with the rest of the world (not necessarily in a militaristic fashion, just overall).
Iowa Old Lady
Before HRC became a candidate, her approval numbers were in the stratosphere. Months of attack have brought them back to earth. Sanders hasn’t face that barrage yet, probably because Rs are hoping he’ll be the candidate. Or possibly they’re too busy attacking one another. The point is, we don’t know if Sanders’s numbers will hold.
Chyron HR
@NR:
If Hillary’s so unelectable, Sanders should have this thing sewn up by March Madness, so what’s the problem?
cleek
@Elie: 100x this
FlipYrWhig
@moderateindy: I think it’s more like you’re a basketball coach and you think it’s dumb that no one’s played a full court press the whole game before, and all the other coaches say you can’t do it because it’ll tire out your starters, and you have a thin bench, and you decide that all the other coaches are in cahoots to stop you from trying your great strategy so you do it anyway, and it starts out really well and you get some turnovers, and then your starters can’t keep up the pace, and you lose, and you blame Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
jeer9
Thanks, moderateindy.
Voters who consider themselves progressive should be supporting Sanders. If you are not, you want the cachet of that label and inclusion in a community that you’re not really comfortable with (DFHs, OWSers, under thirty naifs, etc.)
Paul in KY
@BruceFromOhio: Sounds like you have some cool KidsFromOhio!
Archon
@srv:
35 percent in a Republican primary is a juggernaut we haven’t seen in decades?
Who knew?
SarahT
@japa21: Right on.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
Haven’t read comments yet, so this may be old news by now (and unsurprising), but Carly has suspended her campaign.
Chrisp Crispy — BOOM!
Carly Fearina — BOOM!
Death Panel Truck
Did no one get the Mott the Hoople reference in the title to this post?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
that level of preciousness has to be a spoof.
singfoom
@glory b: I have repeatedly said that I will be voting for whichever person wins the Democratic nomination. I know very well what awaits if the USA elects another crazy austerian Republican.
Cheers.
jl
@schrodinger’s cat:
” he should focus on ballot access and making Congressional elections more competitive by taking it out of the hands of partisan redistricting committees. ”
I’ve sent some money to Sanders campaign, not sure whether I will contribute again (his health care plan rollout really pissed me off) but I have no dog in this Dem primary fight. I want the person mostly likely to win the general to win the primary. I do not care who. I have zero concern about anyone’s political career other than as tools to get things done. I wish them well in the personal lives, of course, even miserable jerks like Cruz.
I don’t agree with your point about feasible political revolution and Sanders campaign though. Sanders is advocating inspiring policy goals that are popular with a lot of people and that can be achieved at a national level. Reasonable people can disagree whether, at this time, they are feasible to achieve, and whether Sanders’ approach is the best way forward.
But you are talking about tackling state election systems head on, a process issue, apart from inspiring policy goals? And one that is not under federal control. I think both HRC and Sanders about equal in their devotion to doing whatever feds can do to improve voter rights, within existing federal power. Both HRC and Sanders are good enough for me on that. I don’t see benefit of presidential candidate putting reform of state election systems among their priorities.
I’m not sure it matters. As the campaign goes on, I see HRC evolving in a good way, and Sanders kind of stuck when he needs to evolve quickly after initial successes. So, i think HRC will win nomination with enough popularly elected delegates and no brokered convention nonsense.
So, only important questions are whether Sanders really means what he says about his political revolution being just as important as his nomination, and whether the HRC email/classification issue remains total BS. If those two go right, I think HRC has a very good chance against any of the GOP presidential Gong Show contestants.
NR
@Chyron HR: The problem is that Democrats are out of touch with the rest of the country when it comes to her favorability.
lawguy
@Cacti: Actually, Sanders has the chance of significantly changing the make up of congress with the motivation of his followers. Clinton really has little chance of that.
As far as working with a republican congress how did that work out for the last two democratic presidents, both of whom self identified as moderates? So when some one suggests that Clinton can work better with a republican congress, give me a break. Most of the same people who were in the room that decided that they would do everything to destroy Obama’s presidency, with in a few weeks of his taking office are still there. Or have been replaced by even more radical individuals.
So this “she can work better with the other side” is simply a refusal to rationally look at the history we have been living through in the last several decades. Unless of course, she is even more conservative than I think.
schrodinger's cat
@jeer9: One True Progressive has not yet won the nomination let alone the presidency and you are out there instituting purity tests. How very Stalinist of you!
FlipYrWhig
@jeer9: Oh jesus christ. The only way to be a Real Progressive is to reduce the entirety of politics to the banal truism that banks are bad? “Community.” Fuck you.
WaterGirl
Did anyone else watch President Obama speak to the IL legislature this afternoon? No soaring rhetoric, but inspirational as always. I hope he does a lot more of this over the next (almost) year.
I intend to spend the next 11 months being very grateful that he is our president.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m genuinely curious: Why are you against Medicare for all? The substance or the politics?
What if you suspended a campaign and nobody noticed?
@Death Panel Truck: we hillbots are none of us young doods
dedc79
@Mnemosyne:
Coates:
ellennelle
@Elie:
excuse me, but with all due respect, you seem to know nothing about this man of whom you speak so emotionally here.
bernie’s actual record over his many years in both the house and senate speaks for itself. i recommend you take the time to review that before you take on such ill-informed opinions and then share them with such confidence.
the fact is, he’s gotten more actual work done in this gawdforsaken cesspool of obstructionist congress than any other lawmaker, and his colleagues hold him in very high regard.
if you honestly think hillary can get more done with those republicans who’ve made it their business to destroy her over the past couple decades, then maybe you should review obama’s last 8 years. those cretins are misogynist racists, and it they’ll be delighted to perpetuate their insane toddler tantrum for 4-8 more years, no big deal to them if their scapegoat is black or female, no big deal if the country rots, they got theirs.
bernie on the other hand has been a member of congress since before hillary became first lady, and he’s built a large and strong network of collegial relationships, from sherrod brown to – seriously – jeff sessions and roger wicker. and he’s done this through careful compromising, but also a keen sense for detail.
i also recommend that you – AND DOUG!! – review the actual policies he has put forth rather than accepting so blindly what the blind press parrots are saying. fact is, his platform is far more specific – and has certainly been far more consistent – than hillary’s.
please folks, i don’t really care who you vote for, that’s your business. but at least do yourself – and the rest of the country – the service of making a well-informed choice.
moderateindy
On the foreign policy thing Hillary is uber qualified in comparison, but I worry about her actual ideology. She has always been very hawkish. Was that a matter of political strategy, or her real stance? I don’t hammer her for her Iraq vote. Voting no wouldn’t have stopped the bill fom passing, but it could have really hurt her politically with the moderates in NY, as well as her Presidential aspirations going forward. I don’t think a woman can afford to look weak on military matters. But what if she is actually a hawk? That could be very bad, and so it’s worth considering, because that is one area that she could get Republican support, and get things passed.
Renie
@Denali: he doesn’t have dual citizenship; get your facts straight
raven
Snake in the grass Carly out!
Paul in KY
@SFAW: You’re ahead of me SFAW. Was thinking along the same lines…
ellennelle
@lawguy:
yeah. what you said.
Cacti
@lawguy:
Actually, the above is the height of wishful thinking.
The GOP has gerrymandered itself a safe House majority through at least 2020. In 2012, Dem candidates won over 1 million votes more than GOP candidates in the House election, but the chamber remained in Republican control.
Aside from the above, Sanders has also shown no interest thus far in fundraising for or cultivating likeminded legislative candidates. You can’t sweep in a wave of candidates that don’t exist.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: Carly’s traveling hate show, was getting tiresome. Good riddance.
singfoom
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: Ah, it’s so refreshing to hear that iCarly has given up. I’m sure she’ll say she saw the video where she won the NH primary though and double down on it when confronted.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Paul in KY
@Bobby Thomson: Reagan/Bush was very old/white.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@ellennelle: if we feel it strongly enough, it will become true.
MCA1
@NR: Uh huh. First, your initial post on this subject clearly implies, though it doesn’t explicitly state it, that Clinton had no chance because no one’s ever been elected with her unfavorable numbers. If that’s not what you meant to imply, fine, you worded it poorly because that’s the obvious implication. Regardless, my point was simply that it’s fundamentally irrelevant – if the two teams in the World Series had worse regular season records than any previous World Series winner, then the fact that no team with as bad a record as Team X had has ever won the World Series doesn’t matter.
Second, if you think Cruz’s negative numbers wouldn’t approach or surpass Clinton’s after a general election campaign and/or that she wouldn’t have a chance against him, then I’d submit you’re nuts, or have not actually listened to him for more than 3 seconds. You’re also being disingenuous by stating that Clinton’s numbers are ossified and can’t possibly improve when given the platform of a 6 month one-on-one race with a RWNJ or a fascist to both humanize her and make her policies seem reasonable.
Most importantly, the raw number on favorable/unfavorable isn’t what matters – it’s the spread between the candidates. What you should be focusing on is not the lowest favorability rating of any Election Night winner, but rather the election winner with the biggest (negative) or smallest (positive) gap relative to the loser. If the person with higher unfavorables has never won, fine, then we can argue about whether anyone other than Trump could surpass Clinton’s unfavorable numbers by November.
ellennelle
@Elie:
i agree. the man’s teeth are not his own.
(and that might well work metaphorically)
jl
I think Sanders has already made one contribution, and this showing that you can build a grass roots funding organization that will raise enough money to compete with candidates who have major institutional backing. And you don’t have to be a charismatic, young and good looking person with very exceptional political gifts (like Obama) to do so. You can be grumpy old coot. Just need to present with conviction a set of policy goals with broad appeal.
That might be lasting contribution, unless the GOP wins and sends us down the path of Hungary, with minority rule by a soft authoritarian government that suppresses popular participation in elections, and puts up as many institutional roadblocks to any change that irritates the ruling party as possible.
ellennelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
my, how condescending. and cynical.
nothing ever happens without first believing it will.
the thing is, bernie stresses constantly that this is WORK that WE ALL have to do.
i, um, do believe that is the very definition of democracy.
last i checked.
David M
@lawguy:
The Democrats have turnout trouble in off-year Congressional elections, and the Sanders coalition is probably going to make that worse. It’s possible that Clinton could help swing the older voters back towards the Dems.
FlipYrWhig
@lawguy:
How’s turnout among Democrats been in the states that have actually voted? Really really high because of the Wonders of Bernie-Mania and its obvious world-changing potential?
NH Democratic turnout, 2008: 287,557
NH Democratic turnout, 2016: 249,310
jl
Only HRC issue that I see as more BS-y than HRC emails is HRC transcripts of talks to banksters. Maybe she should release them as a feint, so the HRC attack cottage industry can waste time and resources reading through pages and pages of boilerplate.
Glad that Sanders, so far, has more or less blown of the issue as BS.
Archon
@jl: Actually Bernie is fairly unique because everyone knows he’s been talking about these issues for 40 years, that insulates him from the critique that he’s some fly by night candidate.
For example even if Elizabeth Warren would have ran she would have had to explain in detail how and why she was a Reagan Republican in her mid forties and a progressive Democrat now. Bernie doesn’t have that problem.
Summer
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I teach. I totally disagree.
moderateindy
@FlipYrWhig: Of course if you were losing before trying the full court press the idea that you won’t try it because you might lose seems pretty stupid. Cause you know you’re already losing.
Make no mistake our current strategy is not working, and were not just treading water, we are losing ground.
Hillary offers more of the same. How does that change anything? Perhaps it’s time for a full court press. It might fail, but at least you gave something else besides an already failing strategy a try
raven
@ellennelle: So you DO have a caps key huh?
FlipYrWhig
@ellennelle:
I have not seen that “his colleagues hold him in very high regard.”
Isn’t there a contradiction between the idea that Bernie knows that the Republican misogynist racists won’t work with him and the other notion that he gets along swimmingly with Jeff Sessions, such a racist that he couldn’t even be appointed a federal judge?
Obama was, we were told, pals with Tom Coburn and Dick Lugar. Fat lot of good came of that.
No one is going to work with Bernie Sanders.
No Republicans are going to work with Bernie Sanders. That’s obvious. No Republicans are going to work with Hillary Clinton, either.
How about Democrats, of the sort that Bernie Sanders has spent his whole career deriding and decrying for various ideological sins? Claire McCaskill, e.g., would work grudgingly with Bernie Sanders. Should she do that? Of course not. Sam Nunn shouldn’t have shivved Bill Clinton either, and yet he did.
The thing that activists like about Bernie Sanders is that he takes no shit and calls things as he sees them. He thinks Democrats suck and are corrupt. Activists do too! And the Democrats he thinks suck feel… howdya think… about that?
FlipYrWhig
@jl: Except that it was part of his Goldman Sachs-themed non-attack attack ad.
Denali
My apologies. I was wrong about Bernie Sanders having a duel citizenship.
raven
@moderateindy: Zone or man to man?
ellennelle
@Elie:
wow. elie. hon, please settle down, you’ll have a coronary.
i beg, i beseech you to simply review the actual record that exists out there.
bernie has been actually GETTING THINGS DONE IN CONGRESS SINCE BEFORE HILLARY WAS FIRST LADY!
and he absolutely has NO PLANS TO UNDO WHAT OBAMA HAS DONE!!
he plans to build on it, shift obamacare to medicare for all.
obama himself presented the bill after he signed it by saying it was not perfect, but it was a start, and we can build on it.
social security started in just that exact same way.
you seem to have swallowed some serious kool-aid on those memes.
there is a helluva lot more out there to learn that would set your mind at ease. i just worry about your expending so much energy being angry over things that are simply NOT TRUE, when you could be using that energy – and passion – to actually discover some actual truths.
i mean, you might start with TNC and michelle alexander’s points, for instance. 2 minds i have to say i admire more than most anyone walking these days.
just, you know, some thoughts.
peace, sister.
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: Bernie has voted against immigration reform and to audit the Fed, no wonder he has Republican friends.
Sanders has a long troubling history against skilled immigration reform. He doesn’t want people like me in this country. So even if he is the second coming of Karl Marx and Lenin he is not my candidate. Kthxbai.
jeer9
Real progressives are supporting Hillary because they believe in the sort of incrementalism conveyed by Obama’s failure to prosecute the banksters, his HAMP program that protected the fraud, and his refusal to fight for cramdown to protect underwater homeowners.
This is not a spoof.
lawguy
@Cacti: Yes but you don’t deal with my main point is that republicans are not going to work with Clinton and you know it.
moderateindy
@raven: box and one
Steve in the ATL
@Archon: Sorry newbie but this isn’t a problem. Times change, people grow. We are supposed to be impressed by the fact that someone hasn’t done this in his entire career? Because he’s always been right about everything?
I’m guessing you don’t have any gray hair yet, but you will eventually learn that life is much more complicated than you guys seem to understand.
FlipYrWhig
@moderateindy:
Nobody gives you credit for the great job you did in theory while failing in practice. Not in politics.
jl
@FlipYrWhig:
” Except that it was part of his Goldman Sachs-themed non-attack attack ad.”
Bad on Bernie, then.
I’m a Bernie mega-donor. I’ll write the old coot and tell him to knock it off. Which won’t make any difference. I suppose.
Steve in the ATL
@lawguy: Republicans have both stated and demonstrated that they aren’t going to work with any Democrat, so you’ll need a different argument to distinguish Bernie from Hillary.
Kropadope
I would argue that there’s a difference between saying that your colleagues are personally corrupt and saying that they are participants in a system that is fundamentally corrupt. I think Bernie means the latter, which would also indicate that he himself is subject to that criticism he makes.
lawguy
@FlipYrWhig: So we should not vote for Sanders because the people who have controlled the democratic party for decades and have driven it into the ground won’t be happy with him? Just asking for a friend.
FlipYrWhig
@ellennelle:
Except that’s not a shift, not a plan, nor building. Please proceed, governor.
daveNYC
@Denali: He doesn’t.
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/article/2015/jun/11/backstory-behind-diane-rehms-question-bernie-sande/
dedc79
@Denali: You were wrong about him having a DUAL citizenship ( a bunch of misinformation pushed by the anti-semitic fringes on facebook and then mystifyingly repeated by Diane Rehm on NPR in an interview of Sanders). I don’t know what DUEL citizenship would even be.
FlipYrWhig
@lawguy: No, you’re right, it’s a good idea to vote for someone who has by conscious choice pissed on the whole party as impure for 20 years, because no one he’d have to work with could possibly be annoyed at that.
Renie
@TallPete: I’m so sick of the word ‘trustworthy’ . people believing Hillary is not trustworthy is due to 25+ years of the media saying it. ask anyone of them to give 1 or 2 examples and i doubt they can. i also find it annoying hillary is being held responsible for what bill did. i don’t know any woman who would wants to be blamed for crap her husband ever did.
get off my lawn
PJ
@jl: None of these “issues” would be problems for her if she would just say “you want to read this crap, fine, go ahead” and dump the emails (less any “classified info”) and the speeches out in the open. It’s her refusal to recognize that the more she stonewalls on these issues, the more it looks like she is hiding something nefarious, which seriously calls her judgment into question.
I’m pretty sure her millions of dollars in speeches to major banks did not attack or criticize them in any way. I’m more concerned that, as a major politician, she doesn’t realize that it looks like she is taking their money in exchange for favorable influence down the line.
lawguy
@FlipYrWhig: Where do you get the pissed on the whole party thing? Again and again people have pointed out that he does get things done. But if you need a reason to support Clinton and that reason is that the people who are now and with her as president look to remain in the minority party for the entirety of her term in office will like her then go for it.
ellennelle
@FlipYrWhig:
eh?
first, i never said bernie said he could not work with congress. he has for a quarter century; i think he’s got a clue. obama had been there about 3 years when he kicked off his prez campaign.
as for the likes of claire mccaskill, were the progressive movement to take off (i believe the words ‘tsunami’ and ‘powerhouse’ were used to describe the sanders campaign on national TV last night), she and blue dogs like her will likely be needing to watch for dems competing for her senate seat. she and those like her give me hives. and i’ll include DWS in that category; she is being primaried in FL as we speak by a very strong progressive contender.
and if you doubt that hypothesis, i offer hillary’s own speech in NH last night as evidence; she sounded like she was reading bernie’s own speech! there is just no question that the party simply MUST take one giant step to the left, and quick. hell, the entire country has to do this, or the damn .001% will hoover up everything, and the planet will spit us all out like a rotten garbage burger.
as for the kind comments from colleagues: here:
Senator Jeff Sessions — Republican, Alabama
“I’ve always respected Bernie and we’ve gotten along personally well.”
Senator Jack Reed — Democrat, Rhode Island
“ a gentleman, thoughtful, a leader… If you want to have a pleasant discussion on not only policy issues but just issues of the day, he’s a pleasant guy.”
Senator Richard Burr — Republican, North Carolina
“ one who’s willing to sit down and compromise and negotiate to get to a final product.”
Senator Roger Wicker — Republican, Mississippi
“I learned early on not to be automatically dismissive of a Bernie Sanders initiative or amendment… He’s tenacious and dogged and he has determination, and he’s not to be underestimated.”
Senator Sherrod Brown — Democrat, Ohio
“ would call them ‘tripartite amendments’ because we’d have him and he’d get a Republican, he’d get a Democrat and he’d pass things.
He’s good at building coalitions.”
Senator John Mccain — Republican, Arizona
“(While working on the Veterans Affairs legislation) “I found him to be honorable and good as his word.”
Senator Chuck Schumer — Democrat, New York
“He knew when to hold and knew when to fold and, I think, maximized what we could get for veterans.”
Senator Jack Reed — Democratic, Rhode Island (again)
“Frankly, without him, I don’t think we would have gotten done…
It was a great testament to his skill as a legislator.”
FlipYrWhig
@PJ: I’m pretty sure her millions of dollars in speeches to dozens and dozens of groups — some but not all are linked to banks; it’s not hard to find the list — were derived from a famous person saying a bunch of vacuous nothing, because that’s what the speaker circuit is.
FlipYrWhig
@ellennelle: No one ever said nice things about Hillary Clinton as a Senator! It’s very newsworthy!
The day the “progressive movement” takes off in Missouri, come see me.
Applejinx
@jl: How in character is it for Sanders to punk out?
What you said sounds very plausible. Hopefully it won’t be necessary but ‘the billionaires don’t give up dammit’ sounds very like him. And absolutely we’re all talking about how we will have to take the Sanders campaign, and stay networked and communicate, build a replacement system.
Because the DNC wasn’t there for us in the midterms. We don’t have a functioning left equivalent of the Right Wing Noise And Talking Points Machine yet. We’ll need not so much talking points as ‘this is happening, here’s where it’s happening, this is the facts and the background’. Basic information and some history on situations, for our voters, so we can mobilize.
This is the e-generation, that’s very do-able. The RWNM is radio-era, we’ll need to have an app for that, and it’s totally totally do-able.
Loneoak
@Elie:
I know this is waaaay down thread at this point, but you’re mistaken about Sanders. I’m not going to argue about whether ‘incrementalism’ or ‘revolution’ is a better strategy for you or anyone else to prefer—I trust you know yourself well enough to know what will keep you safe. But this:
… is unfair to Sanders. He earned a ton of respect as Mayor of Burlington, especially for getting logistics stuff done very well (like snow removal). He has been called the “Amendment King” for getting more amendments to legislation than anyone else in Congress. He’s widely credited for making meaningful improvements to the ACA even thought he opposed its fundamental premise of maintaining private insurance. It’s simply not true that he is untried or that he doesn’t understand pragmatic incrementalism. He’s lost more elections than HRC has run. Few people have more experience in government than Sanders. I give Clinton her fair due, you really ought to give Bernie his. Vote for whomever you want, but don’t buy into framing invented by the media that has just never paid attention to crazy uncle Bernie.
To my mind, the big stylistic difference here is that he consistently speaks a big game on lefty values *and* gets things done despite it. HRC/Clintonism is predicated on talking a small game on our values *in order to* get things done. I’m tired of the Clintonism strategy, frankly.
lawguy
@lawguy: “Now for her and will likely remain with her” sigh, (semi)powerful thoughts reduced to gibberish
glory b
@Immanentize: Actually, I still like him for VP, but I feel like the folks feeling the Bern would insist he get pushed aside for Sanders.
hispanics are already spitiing mad about Trump. Voting for a ticket with Castro would be a big FU to him.
moderateindy
There was one stat from New Hampshire that alarmed me last night.
People talk about Bernies dudebros, I honestly don’t think many exist. What Sanders has totally tapped into is the OWS movement, and I highly doubt that those younger people will switch to Trump. They will simply see Hillary as being part of the problem, and just stay home.
Getting back to NH, and why Bernie crushed Hillary. It was because of all the blue collar folks , particularly along the coast that voted for Clinton in 2008, switched to Sanders. Why? because of his poipulist economic message that hit home with them. Here’s the thing, those people could very easily go for Trump.
Beyond the Donald’s nativism, and Xenophobia, he also has an economic populist message. He doesn’t present himself as a friend of the banks, he has no aversion to (talking about) raising taxes on the rich, and he is decidedly not on the bandwagon when it comes to free trade. A huuuuge part of his schtick about bringing home jobs from China, or not letting the Mexicans come here, and steal all those juicy landscaping/ fruit picking / hotel maid jobs will resonate with a crapload of working people, even one’s that might be democrats.
If Sanders is out there with similar alternatives that focus on economic equality those people that voted for him in NH still vote for him in the GE. Not so sure that they won’t jump ship if Clinton is the candidate. Of course that whole argument goes out the window if Trump isn’t in the race.
PJ
I thought it was interesting that I’ve received three emails from Bernie since last night (which is two too many) asking for a $3 donation. I just received one from Hilary asking for donations starting at $250, and going up to $10,000:
You can also help out the campaign by attending an upcoming event:
Meet Hillary Clinton on February 16th
Secretary Clinton will be in New York on February 16th, and this may be the last time to meet her at an event for the primary contribution limit of $2,700. She will be holding a breakfast reception at Le Parker Meridien in midtown Manhattan, starting at 9:30am.
CLICK HERE to reserve your ticket to meet Hillary
Intimate Evening with President Bill Clinton
Wednesday, February 17th, 7:00pm
The Spotted Pig, 314 W. 11th St.
$2,700 per person, $27,000 Event Chair
PURCHASE TICKETS HERE
Bowling with President Bill Clinton
Brooklyn Bowl, 61 Wythe Ave. | 5:00 P.M.
Guest (limited) – $250
Attendee – $500
Friend – $1000
Champion (premium viewing) – $2700
Co-Host (includes reception) – raise $10,000
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a candidate trying to raise as much money as possible, but I do think the emphasis placed on amounts by the candidates is telling.
ellennelle
@FlipYrWhig:
how exactly do you figure?
i live in MA. the plan here was romneycare, what obamacare was modeled on. i used both, as a citizen and as a mental health practitioner.
i am now on medicare.
there is almost zero daylight between the basic structures of these plans, except medicare covers a lot more for a lot less, which translates as obamacare covers a lot less for a lot more cost. the biggest real difference is the who gets covered, and how much the insurance companies have to say about any of it.
fuck a bunch of insurance companies. it is grossly immoral for anyone to profit on the needs of an ailing person.
get rid of them. it can be done incrementally (doug alert) by dropping the age from 66 to 55, then 50, then children, etc. it could happen in a matter of 10-15 years, faster if (a) whiny naysayers with no vision or imagination would not drag their stinky feet, and (b) if all the GODDAM FINANCIAL INTERESTS invested in this diabolical plan called health insurance would get a conscience.
ellennelle
@PJ:
no kidding.
Steve in the ATL
@ellennelle:
I may have spotted a flaw in your plan….
David M
@ellennelle:
That’s pretty much my entire reason not considering Sanders a serious candidate. It’s 2016, I have no interest in re-opening the discussion over health care in a major way that would be much more disruptive than Obamacare.
ellennelle
@Loneoak:
yeah! could not agree more!
you made these points better than i; i thank you!!
geg6
@jeer9:
Because you and you alone get to decide what it means to be liberal.
You are an arrogant ass.
ellennelle
@Steve in the ATL:
that of course is the weak spot in an activist movement; the problem rests with those in power.
bernie threatens to break up the banks (shoulda been done 7 years ago), and prosecute.
whether he will do those things or not, i suspect that’s what has to happen first.
i also believe that he will actually really try to do both these things.
hence blankfein’s nervous condemnation of him as “dangerous.”
Applejinx
@Cacti: No reality show TV star has ever been elected President of the United States.
WaterGirl
@PJ: Back in the day, I gave everything I could to the Obama campaign; I borrowed some money, sold some stuff.
My sister, who gave $5 once, would get messages from the Obama campaign asking her for $5.
The Obama campaign would ask me for a fair amount of money in their messages, alwaysodd numbers like $177 or $233, so it was obvious that the Obama campaign had some formula based on previous giving patterns.
Unless you have been a mega donor in the past, I find it really surprising that Hillary would be asking for so much money in email messages.
moderateindy
@FlipYrWhig: Again you seem oblivious to the completely obvious point that you are already failing in practice.
Obama’s done some really nice things to move us forward, yet overall we are still losing ground, and we did little in the last 8 years to correct serious fundamental structural problems in our financial, and economic systems. Can you honestly tell me that you believe Clinton is going to address those things in any way?
Definition of insanity: doing the same thing over, and over again and expecting different results.
lawguy
@David M: There is no reason, however, to think that if one tries for medicare for all that it will destroy ACA.
ellennelle
@raven:
chuckle. i am lazy, what can i say? easier to avoid caps. if i need emphasis, i’m also too lazy to do the italics thing, so i just hit the caps lock. pretty embarrassing, given how much writing i have to do in a day’s work.
evidently sam bee last night called trump a “sentient caps lock key,” or some such. i should be more careful.
;-)
but, in the spirit of this topic of caps, just wanna say to whomever glances over this at this point….
SANDERS HAS RAKED IN MORE THAN $5 MILL SINCE LAST NIGHT!
half of it in the first 4 hours after the race was called.
you guys can say what you like about the incremental details and the pie in the sky ideals, whatever. but there is really something happening here, something really important, and importantly real.
it would seem wise to at least sit up and take notice.
WaterGirl
@raven: I ditch the caps key whenever I have a kitty in my lap.
ellennelle
@David M:
how old are you? do you have children?
and how comfortable are you?
are you aware of the millions out there who really suffer and need this change?
and what exactly did that fight take out of your personal flesh?
please tell me you’re not really that crass, and this was just a momentary lapse.
David M
@lawguy:
There’s no reason to try for Medicare for All now either, especially when it won’t happen, and trying for it could help the GOP and undermine Obamacare. No upside.
ellennelle
@Applejinx:
could not agree more!
why are such sound voices as yours so hard to find here??
PJ
@WaterGirl: I’ve never signed up for anything from Hillary, and whenever I would get one of those DNC emails asking which candidate I would vote for, I never selected Hillary, so I don’t think they were specifically targeting me with regard to money, I think they were probably emailing anybody they had on their list who lives in New York.
David M
@ellennelle:
We’re discussing whether it’s a good idea to push Medicare for All, and then watch it either be forgotten upon Sanders taking office or become an epic dumpster fire that causes Democrats to lose elections. Why would I be excited about that? (Medicare for All is not going to happen in the near future, so we’re arguing over a promise that’s 100% guaranteed to be broken.)
ellennelle
@FlipYrWhig:
not at all sure what your first comment even means, but as for the second one, it’s a date.
i grew up in the south, and all my family is there. my last elderly relative just died; FDR brought them electricity, and dignity, and they remain devoted dems to this day.
sadly, the next generations have been infected with fox fever, but they can figure out which side of their bread is buttered, and who brings both to the table.
nothing is impossible.
;-)
glory b
@lawguy: He’s never endorsed, campaigned for or fundraised for anyone except himself.
At this time during Obama’s first campaign, he was campaigning for others also.
Bernis still isn’t.
I don’t think that is how this works.
Loneoak
@David M:
While Medicare for All may not happen immediately, demonstrating just how many Americans value the principle of universal health care may actually make the ACA more viable. Despite the rapid downward trajectory, t is still abominable that 10% of the US doesn’t have insurance and that so many people find it unaffordable and that so many states continue to refuse Medicaid expansion. Make a case for universal health care and maybe we can get the public option.
When HRC says she wants to stay the course I hear capitulation on values as a starting point, not pragmatism. When Bernie says we need to make the case, I hear someone who might actually start negotiations from a point of strength and get something incrementally better.
glory b
@moderateindy: I was listening to Steve Clemons this weekend on Insight radio. He reminded me that this was still a time when we (or, I guess, Dems) thought politics should end at the shore, and that many Dems, !) couldn’t/wouldn’t believe that Bush would lie us into a war, and 2) we should show solidarity to the world.
So, sure, there were those with reservations, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Almost made me nostalgic.
lawguy
@glory b: You do understand that both Clinton and Obama are both establishment dems, don’t you? They both had machines behind them. It was one part of the establishment fighting another part of the establishment. in 2008.
If you are right, and you may be, Sanders has been trying to break into the club. That would have to be his goal.
Wrb
It ain’t just the kids. Interesting article. Sanders sweeps the struggling working class towns that were Clinton’s strength last time
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/sanders-coalition-not-what-we-thought-it-was
Bill Arnold
@ellennelle:
Ah, i get it. Yes, he has a “plan”, as in a description of a desired future (that we/progressives all agree would be much better), or a “health plan”.
He does not have a plan, in the usual sense. – (1) this is the current state of things (ACA), (2) this is the desired state (Medicare for all, yay!) (3) here’s the plan for how we get there (all likely paths covered), assuming opponents who fight like dervishes every step of the way, to block (or reverse) any progress from 1 to 2.
E.g., what exactly would he trade for reducing the Medicare age from 65 to 62?
So the medicare for all plan is just aspirational, and inspirational, which is fine if it gets him elected.
Or, maybe he gets to work with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, and the Senate votes to de-fang the filibuster. All things are possible.
Not trying to be negative or cynical here (seriously), just worried.
misterpuff
@Mr. Twister: Uh Yeah.
But Obama gets a pass due to the virulent racist hate against him. That’s quite a headwind to move against.
Actually, in the debate, both Dem candidates have implied Obama has underachieved, especially his response to Flint.
Admiral_Komack
@trollhattan: I suspect he won’t, him being a democratic socialist and all.
And if he doesn’t, then what?
les
@NR:
No one ___ has ever been elected
XKCD for the win.
les
@lawguy:
Isn’t that true only if Sanders refuses to support the ticket if he’s not on it? If the motivation thing starts and stops with Sanders personally, he’s even less likely to start any revolution than I think he is.
shomi
@gene108: Nonsense. People have been hoping for the younger generation to vote for 50 years. NEVER HAPPENED…NEVER WILL.
Also it’s a fact that as a lot of people get older and more politically aware they tend to get more conservative. So you can’t just extrapolate and say all those young 20 something idealistic progressives today who rarely vote are going to ALL be old progressives and the US suddently becomes this progressive utopia. That’s just NOT going to happen.
TallPete
@Renie: go look up the polls for the wording. For that matter look at the NH exit polling which supports this. Don’t shoot the messenger. P.S. I peed on your lawn :)
ellennelle
@Bill Arnold:
oh FFS.
name me one president whose policies have ever been (a) presented with every single specific detail worked out beforehand, and (b) that done, was then turned into law as such.
your premise and question are too absurd to address seriously.
but i will say this, your position still begs the question as to just why we would not still try.
after all, obama wanted to reform healthcare. he did not have a plan in place when he campaigned, and many of his positions were compromised along the way. but, we got something better than we had.
my daddy always told me, honey, shoot for the moon, and whatever you get, at least it’ll be closer to the moon.
how many of you bummer beasts are out there, anyways?
ellennelle
@David M:
are you at all aware of the political climate in which FDR got social security passed?
he also had the supremes working against him.
so i guess all you bummer beasts lurking about are saying we don’t try to do the right thing cuz it’s hard?
David M
@ellennelle:
The political climate for FDR? I seem to remember him having large majorities in Congress.
Sanders will have less support in Congress than Obama.
D58826
@singfoom: Unfortunately I think learning that politics, like life in general, is often the choice of the lesser of two evils is part of growing up.. I wonder how many of us old codgers swore in the 60’s never to sell out for the lesser of two evils. Now we realize that is the only way thing get done.
Raven Onthill
Me, 2008:
Me, 2009:
Me, 2016:
Of course, that is only one possible outcome. Other possibilities I can see are less kind.
Paul in KY
@Applejinx: But a ‘TV star’ has….