My man Obama is going to drop his SCOTUS pick tomorrow after Trump cleans up tonight to let GOP stew about shit for a while. No fucks given
— John Cole (@Johngcole) March 16, 2016
Reuters agrees with Cole’s prediction:
President Barack Obama is likely to announce either Judge Sri Srinivasan or Judge Merrick Garland as his pick for U.S. Supreme Court nominee and the announcement could come as early as Wednesday, a source familiar with the selection process said.
The team of advisers helping to vet candidates, line up their public supporters and answer the president’s questions had finished its work, the source said on Tuesday…
Srinivasan, 49, and Garland, 63, serve together on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That appeals court has served as a springboard to the Supreme Court for several justices including Scalia in recent decades.
Srinivasan, who was born in India and grew up in Kansas, would be the first Asian-American and first Hindu on the high court. Obama appointed him to the appeals court in 2013. The Senate confirmed him in a 97-0 vote…
Garland, who has earned praise from lawmakers of both parties, is the chief judge of the Washington appeals court, where he has served since being appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1997, winning confirmation in a 76-23 vote. Prior to that, he served in the Justice Department under Clinton…
Presidents tend to pick nominees younger than Garland, so they can serve for decades and extend a president’s legacy. But Obama may reason that the choice of an older nominee might also entice Senate Republicans into considering Obama’s selection…
In other news, you’ve probably heard that Hillary Clinton won all five primaries last night — Missouri by so narrow a margin that even most online headlines have yet to be updated. Glenn Thrush, in Politico (hardly a pro-Clinton outlet):
Hillary Clinton has been her own worst enemy at times (think homebrew servers and Goldman Sachs speeches) but her big win in Ohio Tuesday night likely catapulted her into history as the first female nominee of a major party.
Bernie Sanders’ presidential dreams aren’t quite dead. Yet his remarkable insurgency is a teetering Jenga pile of youth support, momentum and access to online millions — and Clinton just plucked out the buttressing block. She won Ohio resoundingly (her massive wins in Florida and North Carolina were a much, much bigger deal in terms of delegates) and she proved that she could capture a diverse and populous industrial Midwestern battleground a week after her shocking loss in Michigan.
This is a big haul. The delegate math for Sanders has been pretty dim since Super Tuesday, but now his core rationale (that he owned the hearts and votes of liberal and working-class northerners) suffered a serious, probably fatal, blow. He started off the night about 215 pledged delegates in the hole and will end the evening more than 300 behind Clinton, a margin bordering on the insurmountable…
Sanders has vowed to push on to the convention, hoping to persuade superdelegates to switch to his side.
On the Republican side, Rubio has suspended his campaign (much to the glee of certain Floridians), but Kasich succeeded in becoming a boulder in Trump’s path by winning Ohio. If you want a breakfast buffet of schadenfreude, Margaret Hartmann at NYMag has a comprehensive roundup of “What the March 15 Primaries Mean for the GOP Race”.
***********
Apart from much more prognostication and postmortems (and perhaps a few adrenaline hangovers), what’s on the agenda for the day?
raven
We’re discovering those little, unanticipated things that come with a new addition. We have big windows that look out into the garden and backyard. The windows go to within a foot of the floor making them a perfect height for Bohdi to look out. We have cats, groundhogs and coyotes roaming around there at night an the knucklehead has discovered he can look out and woof at them at all hours!!!
This big dude was in a tree in the yard at sunset, the eyes are red because I used a flash.
Baud
Garland is well-repected, but if Obama chooses him, I think it means that he thinks it unlikely that the Senate will take a vote on the nominee.
FWIW, I too will be pushing to the convention.
PsiFighter37
@Baud: I can’t see Obama selecting Garland – doesn’t really fit his MO.
Baud
@PsiFighter37: Agree. Hence my rationale for why he would.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Nice pic, here’s mine, IR or course.
Baud
@raven:
Demon owl is awesome.
rikyrah
Good Morning ?, Everyone ?
Baud
@rikyrah: Hey, early bird.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: If you ever get a chance, I’m curious how the ocean would look in infrared.
Linda Featheringill
In spite of our two-party system, this presidential election is a three-way race:
1. Stay the course [or SSDD if you’re against it]
2. Change to the Right [fascism if you’re against it]
3. Change to the Left [admittedly Democratic Socialist, dirty rotten Commies if you’re against it]
So far in this primary season, the majority of voters have chosen change.
Now, what we do with those facts is a question. I am personally for change to the Left but I only have one vote and haven’t had the chance to cast that vote yet.
Edited.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: The day the earth stood still!
OzarkHillbilly
My son is probably a little disappointed today, he was for Bernie. My wife and I both voted for Hillary and our county went to her by 90 votes. (754 -664) Trump won this little corner of the Ozarks with 1,666 votes (hmmmmm… very interesting) to Cruz’s 1,329 (Kasich and Rubio each got 100+)
All day yesterday things were very quiet, made me think they had either caught our local escapee or he had stolen a vehicle and vamoosed. Nope, he is still on the loose, they just gave up looking for him. Seems they have decided instead to use the local citizenry as bait and wait for him to break in/steal/shoot some one or something. You know how it is, manhunts cost money.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Not the ocean, but I’m think of taking some pics of the river. There’s a Japanese tea house and koi pond at one of the local parks. Also a revisit, maybe this weekend, to Franklin Canyon is in order.
My future plans for the next week and a half may depend on the nursing student’s plans since she’s on her last spring break.
different-church-lady
Current temperament at the GOS: about a 50-50 split between dead-ender defiance and “Fuck you, go ahead and ban me, Kos!”, with a sprinkling of Hillary end-zone dance thrown in.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Bernie supporters are passionate. Most of them will need some time. A few dead-enders will never make the transition.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
So that’s where David Koch is.
Mustang Bobby
@raven: Nice picture. I could use that guy hanging around my yard to scare off the peacocks. I thought about getting one of those scarecrow owls at Home Depot that are mounted on a pole to fend off the peafowl, but I’m afraid it would also scare off the ibises and herons that I like having around.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I can’t remember. Are you retired? Where do you find time to lead the life I want to lead?
p.a.
@raven: Nice! Barred?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
Ah, sort of.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: All good. I’m not trying to pry. Sounds like you are enjoying life. That’s all that matters.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
There was a geebeebee thread on the GOS that was a delight of cluelessness.
Napoleon
The prosecutor who refused to prosecute the police in the Tamir Rice case here in Cuyahoga County lost his primary. The same thing happen with Cook County’s (Chicago) prosecutor.
Chyron HR
@Linda Featheringill:
“Is that just something you tell yourself as a
RepublicanDemocratic Socialist to make yourself feel better, or do you think it’s real?”Baud
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
?
@Napoleon: Excellent news.
Linda Featheringill
@different-church-lady:
I went over to dkos and found that your summation of the situation is quite correct. Dunno if I want to get involved in that donnybrook today since I’m still licking my wounds from last night.
Applejinx
@Baud: It really depends on Hillary at this point, and some other factors. Bernie’s consistently about half the Dem voting bloc, and that’s power politics in action too. There are still things that don’t equal ‘nominee’ that would have Berniacs on board. I suggested making him the DNC chair: though that’s a sorta cynical move it’d still work.
The extent to which Hillary pivots and acts like Bernie never existed, is the extent to which she’ll blow it and lose. I called that it wasn’t a foregone Bernie Tuesday, and it sure wasn’t.
If I’m calling anything here it’s that I don’t know what the hell she’s gonna do, and that worries the hell out of me. I’d like to see active moves to incorporate the Bernie wing and co-opt his policy even harder: that’s always what he was running for, from the start. It all depends on lack of unforced errors.
We can get by with Hils and influenced-by-Bernie policy, but the Democrats might have to lose if Tuesday meant a rapid return to ‘business as usual’. The media would help: they never covered Bernie much anyway and only the size of his campaign ever changed that.
Mary
@different-church-lady: Is the end zone dancing “Yay, I’m happy my team won,” style, or “in your face, your team sucks” style. I’ve perused quickly and seen plenty of the former and very little of the latter, but I only read front page posts and comments.
satby
I’m relieved that the primary season is almost over. I want all Democratic attacks to be focused on the real enemy, Trump and whatever hairball the Repubs try to pawn off on the public as their nominee instead of him. Bernie has really missed me off with his attacks on Clinton the last few weeks. He never manages to explain that they voted the same more than 90% of the time on legislation.
Linda Featheringill
@Chyron HR:
Of course I think it’s real, or I wouldn’t have said it.
You, naturally, are free to think that I’m delusional if you wish.
You do call me a traitor to the Democratic Party because I disagree with you. Stalinist much?
Edited.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
You’re up early! Good morning backatcha!
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
However do you expect to run the FBI, CIA, NSA and DHS with an attitude like that?
John Cole
SHE READS ME!
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s why I don’t need to pry.
different-church-lady
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Isn’t that every Geebeebee thread?
Oh wait, you said “delight” on this one.
JPL
Good Morning. Luckovich nails Trump today. link
There are plenty of republicans who feel that once in office, they can control Trump and that’s why I’m concerned about his candidacy. The attacks against Clinton will be yooge!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Applejinx: interesting that you seem to have no faith (or no interest) in Bernie Sanders’ ability to influence the electorate outside of the presidential race. I think you are sadly representative of the biggest flaw in the Sanders ‘movement’.
gene108
I stopped reading GOS, when it became clear the ACA would not include a public option.
Those guys really lost their shit and could not be reasoned.
I swear they were more interested in destroying private insurance, as they were in universal healthcare.
Though it was a good outlet to have in years after 9/11/01 and before Katrina, when it seemed the media was drooling over Bush, Jr and the neocons, while calling the rest of us traitors for not falling in line; knowing you were not alone was good.
p.a.
If Kasich can keep this up there could be a contested convention! I’m excited not just because of the negative implications for the Rethugs, but because it’s now historically unusual. There have been controversies; MFDP and Goldwater/Rockefeller in ’64 (I was only 5), Chicago Police Riot in ’68, but I really don’t remember a contested convention.
different-church-lady
@Mary: In the specific case of the GOS, it’s of the “Hey, can we start banning these loser idiots RIGHT THIS SECOND?” style.
Baud
@gene108: I lasted a little longer, but the 2010 midterms did it for me.
SiubhanDuinne
@John Cole:
Why is everybody up so early??
You, rikyrah, me….
JPL
Supreme Court nominee will be announced in a few hours.
Applejinx
@Linda Featheringill: Easy now, he isn’t necessarily representative of Hillary herself. Maybe some of her cabinet ;P
different-church-lady
@gene108:
As of today they will be more interested in destroying the democratic party as they were in getting Sanders elected.
That’s why Kos laid down the decree of March 15th: to prevent the dead-enders from going scorched earth.
Baud
@p.a.: I know. I said last night that I’d have to take off work to watch it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@gene108: I think you and I left GOS about the same time(Baud too, I believe).
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Baud:
geebeebee is like the ultimate Bernie homer.
gene108
@John Cole:
Yay!
Good news!
Who is “she” BTW?
PsiFighter37
Obama’s SCOTUS nominee drops at 11 AM.
Baud
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: There’s a level above Berniebro?
different-church-lady
@Baud: Baghdad Geebeebee
BillinGlendaleCA
Eh, what’s a geebeebee?
BillinGlendaleCA
@gene108: I’m guessing AL, since she quoted Cole.
Debbie
@Baud:
A little disappointing that you would call them dead-enders.
p.a.
@Baud:
IfWhen it gets ugly, and with a convention comprised of fascists, semi-fascists, demi-fascists, hemi-fascists it WILL, I wonder how they will try to limit media access? Rabid dog fights are not good pr.gene108
@BillinGlendaleCA:
It was a nice little world for awhile.
A good feeling, when you wrote a diary that got a bunch of likes, as if you were somehow going to reach out a wilder world and make a difference.
Then I talked to people IRL and realized how few people read blogs, let alone lefty blogs…and the dream was shattered…
p.a.
@BillinGlendaleCA: The illigitimate Gibb brother?
Baud
@Debbie:
I’m talking about people who can’t transition to general election mode and support the nominee. Most will.
How is it different from mocking PUMAs?
BillinGlendaleCA
@p.a.: Randy?
gene108
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Oh…I was thinking it might’ve been a new lady friend for John…
p.a.
@BillinGlendaleCA: I’m not comfortable answering personal questions on a blog.
Applejinx
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: On the contrary, I know he’s influenced the electorate. This is a Hillary crowd and I’m not playing that up because I want to see how things lay.
The thing is, on the one hand Bernie does not influence ALL the electorate, more like about half the Dem electorate. I’d like to think that was a power bloc, but it remains to be seen. The other thing is, since Fox News created the model for top-down voter management, the electorate does not matter so it’s very much up to Hillary Clinton which way this goes.
If she wants to tap into a populist surge and be the next FDR, that is absolutely available to her. It’s clear what she needs to do though she might try to have it both ways, typically. That’s still better than nothing.
If she wants to purge all the Berniacs for disloyalty, that is also a thing she can choose. If she does that, she might blow the election but she’d have the wholehearted support of the DNC machinery in doing so, plus a whole bunch of noisy blogposters. We’ll know by the tone of things, particularly the tone of things in the media.
I think this is Hillary’s first real test. It’s not the winning, it’s ‘what are you going to do with the car you’ve caught, oh barking politician?’.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
an important point. I think blogs are great for blowing off steam, finding information, book recs and pet pics. I suspect they have been important for organizing and fund-raising, but are a small part of the whole picture. I think this Jamelle Bouie tweet is a good perspective adjuster when things get heated, or over-confident, or over-despairing
Debbie
@Baud:
It probably isn’t, any different but that doesn’t make it okay. It just seems un-Democratic to demean fellow party supporters who don’t share one’s views.
But no matter. I’m happy that Kasich has the mic now. His allusions to his presidential agenda as “Shock and Awe” will certainly not win him non-GOP moderates. And I’m also happy that a few Blue Dog Dems lost their seats in my local elections.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This is where I really valued blogs, as an alternative to the mainstream media. Unfortunately, I think blog information has become more unreliable over the years just as the media has.
Amir Khalid
@Applejinx:
I may have missed something here, but when has Hillary talked about purging anybody?
ETA: And why would she ever do that, anyway?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
What the hell are you gibbering about?
Once again, your grasp of history is remarkable.
gearing up for a persecution fantasy? Have fun. Bring a camera. I hear the view up on that cross is pretty good and maybe you can share your pictures with us. See if you can’t use some reclaimed, repurposed wood.
Linda Featheringill
@Applejinx:
I didn’t say that Hillary or that most of followers were Stalinist.
BillinGlendaleCA
@p.a.: So you don’t think the illegitimate Gibb brother is named Randy?
Baud
@Debbie:
I’ve never been ok with liberals who sit out elections, particularly presidential elections. It’s their right, of course. But I don’t have to consider myself in allegiance with them. I would be — and am — equally scornful of people like Jim Webb who won’t vote for the nominee.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Luckovich is wonderful today. Thanks.
Applejinx
One thing, I’d love to see Hils say something like, “I have to commend my loyal opponent on his platform, with so many great traditional liberal ideas. In fact, I think we all like these ideas so much, that we’ll keep them!”
“But I’m sorry, Bernie… I just don’t think you have the ovaries to make that stuff real…”
Brazenly insisting she was always the only way you’d ever get that stuff done, is what I’d like to see. Power posturing and end-zone dance is fine if it’s for the right purpose. Seize the baton and lead if you gotta be President that bad. She needs to jump in front of the progressive parade and own it, especially if she’s going against Trump (who makes a lot of conventional wisdom regarding the greatness of power and riches, look really bad).
Almost like they’d planned it o_O
PurpleGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Maybe it’s not that people are up early but they never went to sleep. My sleep cycle is topsy-turvy and I sleep more during the day than overnight. (Miss a lot of threads this way… le sigh.)
Chyron HR
@Linda Featheringill:
I don’t believe I did. But, hey, you carry on bragging about the MASSIVE lead Sanders has (if you somehow magically add Trump’s delegates to his). See how far that gets you at the convention.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
May i present geebeebee.
Bobby Thomson
No Garland!
OzarkHillbilly
@Applejinx:
And now they have Trump as their reward
With today’s gerrymandered House and GOP Senate?
.
Where does that even come from?
And Bernie as head of the DNC? What makes you think he would even want to be a part of the Party Machinery? A party he has disdained from joining for almost his entire political life?
Baud
@Amir Khalid: oh, it’s an actual person.
Baud
@Applejinx: Hillary’s not going to adopt Bernie’s platform wholesale, if that’s what you’re waiting for.
Germy
Saw this headline on SALON:
OzarkHillbilly
@Debbie:
They aren’t fellow party supporters if they refuse to support the party’s nominee. They are 2 year olds who need to be sent to their rooms.
SiubhanDuinne
@Applejinx:
That is unlikely in the extreme. Laughably so. Hillary isn’t the purity pony here.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t mean this as a knock on Bernie, but my feeling is that he’ll return to being an Independent after the election.
Debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
And I don’t think treating them poorly is the answer. But that’s all politics is, really: a scrum for 2-year-olds.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Man, I hope not. He’s built a lot of credibility for his cause, which is a good cause. I think it would hurt that cause if he then goes back to his old self.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Debbie:
No, that’s the Republican Party.
Iowa Old Lady
@raven: That is a beautiful owl. It’s like he posed for you.
JPL
@Bobby Thomson: Why do you feel that way? I’m not familiar with his rulings.
Baud
@Debbie: I suppose you are right that no one should be treated poorly, but that horse left the barn a long time ago.
Applejinx
@SiubhanDuinne: We shall see. There’s a great deal of support for it from Party faithful. There’s a lot of disloyalty talk here, and from what I’m told the GOS is loaded with potential Dem voters who are actively disloyal specifically to Hillary.
I prefer to be actively disloyal to Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and some of the people (say, Haim Saban) who would like to have Hillary’s ear. Pro tip: if you get to be President, you don’t automatically have to obey the people who think they’re buying your loyalty. If Hillary does win, she’ll be unusually free to do as she likes, because she’s got the establishment cred but she’ll be also representing the moonbats and hippies, who’ve put up a startling show of strength and trend young these days.
Bobby Thomson
@JPL: too old and too conservative. Plus yet another white guy.
sherparick
@Napoleon: “The arc of the [moral] universe is long, but it bends toward justice” (at least on this occasion.) I am so old that I remember the November 1972 Cook County State’s attorney election when moderate Republican Bernard Carey defeated Regular Democrat Ed Hanrahan who had organized the infamous raid/death squad raid that killed Fred Hampton because angry Black voters said enough was enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton Carey was to be a burr in the Daley machine saddle for the next 8 years. Hopefully, Kim Foxx will be the same to Rahm Emamuel and Governor Hedgefund. http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/illinois-primary-results-emanuel-sanders-clinton-foxx-alvarez/Content?oid=21454641
Applejinx
I’m reading these words on Facebook:
Smile :)
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: So do I. He is not a Democrat in any real sense of the word. And no, this is not a knock on Bernie, just an acknowledgement of reality.
@Debbie:
If telling them the truth hurts, maybe they should wear it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Applejinx: I tend to doubt that DWS will continue to be the DNC chair after the election. She’s been chair for 5 years and you’d have to go back to Bob Strauss in the 70’s to find a chair that’s been in that position that long.
In the past I’ve said that I don’t think that the party chair should be an current elected official; it’s a full time job and should be treated that way.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Agree.
JPL
@Bobby Thomson: Although I like Srinivasan, he is moderate to conservative also. He might bring an interesting perspective, to ruling concerning separation of church and state.
amk
@Applejinx:
bs influences the indies the most. Most of the dem party is with hrc as the exit polls in primaries show. Not surprising.
Amir Khalid
From the link in the post, Tad Devine’s argument for a path to the nomination sounds unrealistic. His guy trails Hillary by 8.6 million votes to 6.1, and that gap is growing rather than shrinking. Team Bernie isn’t successfully making the case for the superdelegates to dump Hillary and join Bernie: that The People are on their side rather than Hillary’s.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Would fit in quite well with some of the other Berniebros we have here.
OzarkHillbilly
So what happens when a good guy with a gun confronts another good guy with a gun?
The original victim was killed.
He was the grandson of Robbie Montgomery, the owner of Sweetie Pie’s who has done a lot of work to keep ex-cons from returning to their previously self destructive lives.
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly: I think Bernie is within the Democratic party spectrum. A populist New Dealer if you will. Hope he stays affiliated with us for rest of his days.
Bobby Thomson
@Debbie: when the shoe fits
Applejinx
@OzarkHillbilly: Time to change the word.
@Paul in KY: I hope he does too. He very accurately describes my aspirations politically, and I think the show of strength he’s demonstrated is a great argument to say: whatever Bernie’s power bloc is, Dem or Independent or Socialist, it ought to be a Democratic Party tent-pole.
Capture that vote and you have a path to the future. It’s disproportionately youngs. Why let some other party have those voters? Take ’em, represent ’em, incorporate the platform. Clearly it’s a demographic. The question has been whether it’s a DOMINANT demographic, and the answer is ‘eh, not quite, at least not this time’.
Applejinx
@Bobby Thomson: Calling a predominantly youth movement a dead end seems just a leetle bit backwards. How are the demographics, were Hillary’s victories driven again by people who are going to die sooner and not be there to vote anymore?
Y’know, before we get heavily into that DEAD-ENDER thing…
Tripod
Way she goes boys. Sometimes she goes, sometimes she doesn’t….. fucking way she goes.
LULZ @ applejunx lecturing the Clintons on realpolitik.
Baud
@Applejinx:
No one here is calling the entire movement a dead end. That term as used here is limited to the small minority of people in that movement who will now walk away.
@Applejinx: This comment I agree with wholeheartedly.
C.V. Danes
@Baud:
Hillary will somehow need to inherit that passion, and I think it will be difficult when her instincts are telling her that it’s ok to pal around with Kissinger and that the Reagans advanced the discussion on AIDS.
If she can’t make the transition, then that passion will turn to anger, and rightly so.
Bobby Thomson
@Applejinx: curious as to how you think Clinton is going to crush dissenters.
Paul in KY
@Applejinx: Gotta agree with you here. Getting young, motivated voters is a great thing.
Baud
@C.V. Danes: Whatever. Whoever was going to win the nomination was going to have to unify the party. It’s been that way since the beginning.
Joel
@Linda Featheringill: Democratic socialism isn’t an argument against Sanders, it’s an argument for him. The argument against him is pretty simple: risk. That includes risk assumed in the general election, and after (if he were elected). As things stand, Sanders has essentially no chance of winning the nomination so it’s all moot.
FlipYrWhig
@Amir Khalid:
Numbers never really were their strong suit, n’est-ce pas?
Applejinx
@Tripod: Nobody cares, or even remembers, where an idea comes from. The only thing that matters is if it works.
Co-opting the Bernie platform and coming up with some pretext to get the Bernistas on board would work. Purging ’em will lose the election to most likely Trump, which is a horrible idea.
FlipYrWhig
@Bobby Thomson: THE HILLARY IN MY MIND IS SO RUTHLESS
sherparick
@Linda Featheringill: Something to remember that Mussolini and Hitler were the “Change” candidates of teh 1920s and 30s in Italy and Germany, respectively. I am very much of Paul Campos’s mind about Hilary in that she has encapsulates herself in an elite bubble and often says things that really clang on liberals and academics who obsessively follow the residue of the netroots blogs and remember the history of the last 50 years (something she apparently does not not). http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/03/if-you-see-her-say-hello For example, Henry Kissinger is an unindicted war criminal for myself and most liberal political obsessives who scour the internet, read books, and remember the actual history of the United States since the end of WWII. We forget that for most of our fellow citizens, if they remember anything about the seventies, think of Kissinger as the guy who opened U.S. China relations, negotiated the end of the Vietnam War, and negotiated a “detente” with the Soviet Union, all of which earned him the unmitigated hatred of Ronald Reagan and other right-wingers at the time. So Hilary saying nice things about Henry Kissinger does not clang in their years like it clangs in ours. Ditto Nancy Reagan and Aids. I must admit I worry terribly about her judgement and her apparent lack of caution as a “liberal interventionist’ (I wish I could reprogram with J.Q. Adams admonition about “not going abroad in search of monsters to destroy”), but the she will veto all the crap coming out a Tea Party Congress.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: Maybe Bernie Sanders can spend another week haranguing the world about how everyone but him is woefully corrupt, like the way he spent the 50 years before 2015.
C.V. Danes
@Baud: Agreed.
Bobby Thomson
@Debbie: people who don’t support the party’s candidates aren’t party supporters.
OzarkHillbilly
@Paul in KY: My own views on how things ought to be are real close to Bernie’s, but we live in a different country, one that will not accept such a thing whole hog, but will accept bits and pieces heading in that direction. The Democratic Party is a reflection of that reality, however imperfectly it may do so. They would, and indeed have, accepted Bernie as a kindred spirit. But Bernie has wanted nothing to with it until now, because, as near as I can tell, he sees the Democratic Party as being part and parcel of a corrupt process that feeds on money at the expense of people. He is not entirely wrong.
Should he lose, I fully expect him to go back to being an Independent from Vermont. I really don’t have a problem with that and applaud his efforts at broadening our political discourse. “Socialism” is no longer a dirty word.
John D.
@Applejinx:
Not ever, really.
2008, the high-water mark for turnout of the youth, also was a high-water mark for a lot of demographic cohorts. That chart right there is why no serious political movement *relies* on the youth vote. They do not vote in anywhere near the numbers of older voters, they are fickle as hell, and they often have issue that the older voters do not (rapidly changing residence, etc.) What they do have is passion, and energy, and are extremely useful for that, which is why every serious political movement *courts* the youth vote.
Nobody — and I mean nobody — in the Clinton campaign has even hinted at a purge of the Sanders’ supporters. Your suggestion that she might plan to do so is somewhere between insulting and insane. Grow the fuck up. The youth feeling the Bern are as welcome as anybody in the Democratic party. It’s a big tent. That’s why Bernie has been caucusing with the Democrats from 25 years.
FlipYrWhig
@sherparick: Paul Campos was all worked up that Hillary made a flawed comment about RECONSTRUCTION. He is seriously concerned that she doesn’t have her finger on the pulse of how historians in the past 20 years have substantively rethought the experiment in governance after the Civil War. For him this is a serious and telling problem. He’s a goofball.
FlipYrWhig
@Bobby Thomson: BUT THATS THE DEMOCRATIC BASE
OzarkHillbilly
@Applejinx: What word?
On this we agree.
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig:
@FlipYrWhig:
This? Not helping your side super effectively.
I read that same Matt Taibbi article, and everybody in Washington being exposed WAS super corrupt. Problem? How exactly do you think the Republicans got as bad as they are, if that wasn’t the culture?
There’s gotta be a lot of housecleaning. I think many people can see things have just got stupid out there, and it’s unsustainably bad.
FlipYrWhig
@John D.: There’s no one to “purge” anyway, seeing that Sanders has virtually no institutional endorsements (which makes him proud). No one supporting Sanders has a gig they need to fear losing. But this “Wrath of Hillary” thing comes up from time to time with Applejinx and the other Sanders brethren as an explanation for why any decent person would support Clinton: because she threatened them or something they cared about, of course.
Bobby Thomson
@Baud: bargaining.
Aimai
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: just read it. Holy crap but bernies supporters are the worst part of bernie.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: By watching Bernie Sanders this cycle I learned not to like him. Not just because I supported the other candidate, but because he’s a scold and a prig and very, very proud of himself. Good night, Bernie.
Chyron HR
@John D.:
Oh, no, sorry, guys, that’s me. I’m totally spearheading a Stalinist purge of the Berninators.
“You and your cronies want to go back home to your dachas, not the salt mines? Then we’d better talk.”
amk
Moving on from pie fights, who is gonna be the kenyan’s scotus nominee?
FlipYrWhig
@Aimai: Bernie himself ain’t so fantastic either.
Baud
@Bobby Thomson: Bargaining is fine, as long as people accept the result and follow through with support. But no amount of bargain is going to get Hillary to swap her platform for Bernie’s in total.
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: I said before, I’m very glad Elizabeth Warren never endorsed Bernie. There’s also the platform to consider: does Hillary pivot to co-opt Bernie’s issues and grab those voters? We’ve been about the issues from the beginning, you can’t seriously think an old white Jewish guy with silly hair and a tendency to yell at clouds was the point of the exercise. It’s been about the issues, and Bernie’s never stopped hammering the same points.
Those issues represent about half the Dem electorate. It’s those Hillary Clinton can embrace, or purge.
The term effectively indicates the idea of ‘a politician gaining power and making someone or something vanish from the narrative’. Actual Siberia not included (though the way our MSM likes to cover socialism, it might as well be unless Hillary actively courts that wing of the party).
OzarkHillbilly
@Applejinx:
Reading is fundamental: Nobody here has said Bernie’s supporters are dead enders, NOBODY. What we have said, time and again, is that those Bernie supporters who refuse to support the eventual Dem nominee, should it be Hillary, are acting like
a bunch of spoiled 2 year olds who didn’t get all the cake and cookies they wanted so now they are going home!!!!!
THAT, is all we are saying
FlipYrWhig
@amk: Probably Srinavasan, so we can look forward to a burst of hutthurt over corporate this and corporate that from “the left” that’s still licking its wounds over Bernie.
Aimai
@FlipYrWhig: yup. I stay out of campos’s threads ever since he told me that my grandfather would be ashamed of me–because campos incirrectly thought i came down on the wrong side of campos’s anti-anti-obesity jihad.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: It was barely about issues at all. You pretended it was about issues but it was entirely symbolism and personality all along. “He’s mad like I am! Something something banks billionaires, which I also hate!”
WereBear
@OzarkHillbilly: Is he a low risk offender? When an embezzling dentist broke out, law enforcement let the deep woods bugs drive him out. But when two murderers broke out of Dannemora, it was a constant manhunt for weeks.
C.V. Danes
My 2 cents:
Now that Hillary feels that she has sewn up the nomination, she will immediately ‘triangulate’ back into her comfort zone, which is back to the right. Anyone on the left who has the temerity to point this out will be labled a traitor, because of the Trump Boogeyman. The progressive wing will dutifully vote for Clinton, but will otherwise feel disenfranchised. Voter turnout will lower than under Obama, but Hillary will still win. The Senate will stay Republican. Business will continue as it has for the last four/eight years.
Exciting times!
Paul in KY
@sherparick: I think that in general she is ‘too nice’ to various elite GOPers. My perspective, of course, is that of someone who despises just about all Republicans.
Applejinx
@Baud: Why?
I’m not aware of a thing Hillary represents that Bernie doesn’t also represent, or TRY to represent. He’s not done nearly as well with black voters, and I think they get their wish.
You’re implying Hillary is principled and invariant… but you could also say ‘rigid and not-learning’. To stick stubbornly to neoliberal bullshit in the face of an electoral wave is not the smart Hillary Clinton I’ve seen. I think she’ll go with whatever gets the votes, as Bill did before her.
Back in the day, people believed in trickle-down and neoliberalism. Now, that stuff’s pretty laughably discredited, even hated.
Time to reinvent. (I for one would welcome our new reinvented overlord)
Would I trust her to stick with that new mask? If it was obviously the New Hillary, yes I bloody well would… because she’s ALWAYS done that. My objection is not to her being a politician, it’s that the wind was blowing the wrong way back then, and accurately representing that was no service to the country.
But second time’s the charm, eh?
FlipYrWhig
@Aimai: I like LGM but every once in a while one of their crew goes on a Somerby-style jihad where the same issue keeps coming up and the conversation narrows and narrows until it’s a bunch of back and forth between a front pager and some other writer somewhere else. Campos is particularly guilty of that but Loomis does it a fair amount too. At least Lemieux is more of a generalist and less of a single-minded point-scorer, and Shakezula has been a great addition to topic diversity.
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly: Agree with you that he hasn’t been a big supporter at all of Democratic Party, before joining it. Now we have him ‘in the tent’, I’d rather have him in here, etc, etc.
Chyron HR
@Applejinx:
Hence the famed hashtag, “#FeelTheIssues”.
Aimai
@John D.: right. The clintons rather famously are transactional, grown up, party politicians. They have NEVER been associated with purges. Its the bernie wing that is all about purging and purifying. Christ I’m so sick of these assholes. They are both sore winners and. Sore losers.
Applejinx
@C.V. Danes: If she does, she will lose.
Full stop. Republican turnout for Trump has been damn high, and he gets to run against literally Hillary Clinton.
Up to her, really. The signs are more than clear. I’m not sure Hillary needs to lose twice to get a clue. I really think she’s smarter than that, though she picks lousy advisors.
FlipYrWhig
@C.V. Danes: My 2 cents: the Bernie people will continue to conjure up Demon Hillary in their minds and maintain foolish ideas about her and her core principles, and to take credit for anything progressive she does even though 25 years ago she was considered the progressive polestar of the Clinton Administration and all the liberals snarked that they wished Hillary had been president instead of Bill.
Paul in KY
@amk: I’m thinking the Indian dude.
different-church-lady
@Applejinx:
The odds of this are zero. Utterly zero. What on earth would make you think for a second she’d want to do that?
FlipYrWhig
@Aimai:
Oh yeah, what about the White House Travel Office? (What a weird “scandal” THAT was.)
OzarkHillbilly
@Aimai: Every time I read about the “ruthless Clinton machine” I get a real satisfied smile and say, “Yeeeaahhh….”
Baud
@Applejinx: Because the winner of a primary does not adopt wholesale the platform of the loser. And it would look disingenuous if she did. I’m NOT saying they can’t bargain over pieces of her platform and move them a bit more in Bernie’s direction for the sake of party unity. But she’s not, for example, going to start pushing single payer. What I can see, perhaps, is that she modifies her college financing plan to be more generous to appeal to Bernie’s supporters.
Bobby Thomson
@Applejinx: people who vote for Sanders in the primaries aren’t dead Enders. People who refuse to back the party after its decision is made are. See the difference?
FlipYrWhig
@different-church-lady: Are you saying that Bernie Sanders supporters have a persecution complex or something? Perish the thought!
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig:
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig: I wasn’t saying it: I was thinking it, and considering expanding on it. You just saved me the trouble.
Aimai
@C.V. Danes: she wants to win votes. To get into power. If bernies voters are a solid bloc of actual voters she will pursue them. If they are fucking dilletante poeurs she will look for anti trump votes where they are. In ither words she will court the countyry that exists not the unreal, undemocratic, fantasy leftist paradise in your head.
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: So you agree she doesn’t have core principles? That’s an advantage. She CAN BE the ideal Dem politician for the times, just as Bill accurately represented his own times.
But in that light, nothing unfair about taking credit for directing her in a progressive direction. To observe that someone is responsive to the real ‘id’ of the electorate is no sin. Trump’s responsive to that, too. Hillary has the opportunity of representing the more appealing side of America. We could use some of that.
amk
@Paul in KY: Me too. But then, no surprises there. :)
nutella
@sherparick:
Anita Alvarez is out. She got just over 25% of the votes so Foxx won big. She does have to run against a Republican prosecutor in the general so it’s not done deal but she’s the likely winner.
Thor Heyerdahl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
“Come down off the cross
We can use the wood”
Tom Waits
different-church-lady
@different-church-lady: Now that I’ve caught up on the comments, I can see everyone saved me the trouble.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: What the hell are you talking about? Hillary Clinton has been progressive for 50 years. As progressive as Bernie Sanders, perhaps not, but, then again, Bernie Sanders has had the luxury of not having to look out for home-state interests (Vermont has none) or clashing demographic groups (ditto). The Sanders people are so intent on this nonsensical “corporate” thing that they repeat to one another with essentially no basis that they ignore everything she says and does. Open your eyes, ears, and mind.
Baud
@Bobby Thomson:
Unless they all stay home. Which I don’t expect at all. But maybe some people do think that.
Applejinx
@Aimai: How much more evidence do you want?!
Jesus Fucking Christ. Putting her in danger of losing the actual nomination, raising tens of millions of dollars over and over, filling stadiums with enthusiastic voters and it’s still dilettante poseurs to you and an unreal, undemocratic, fantasy leftist paradise?
That’s spelled “America”. You know, if you’re willing to keep it.
nutella
@FlipYrWhig:
Not to mention the purge of Vince Foster.
The Ancient Randonneur
Bloomberg Business is reporting that the President will announce his SCOTUS nominee at 11 EDT
Just One More Canuck
@Aimai: I read it too – I could feel my brain cells dying
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear:
Not real enlightening as those charges could be for any # of things that are on a spectrum from “just above a misdemeanor” to “he’s a stone cold killer who just hasn’t killed anyone yet”. For the first 36 hrs it was all, “should be considered armed and dangerous” and an absolute circus out here. I am not too terribly concerned but it is hard to look at calling off the search as anything more than baiting a hook. I always help my wife out to her car in the pre-dawn darkness but I have made an adjustment to the routine. I now take her stuff out before she is ready to walk out herself, looking very carefully in all directions as I go, I check both vehicles inside and all around, and yes, I have a gun with me when I do these things. I don’t like it, but at this point I think it is prudent.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Damn. I hope it’s over soon.
different-church-lady
@OzarkHillbilly: Shorter: fuckin’ set theory, how does it work?
Anya
At this point I feel sorry for Judge Garland. This is the third time he was part of the list of “top picks” for the supreme court. I doubt he’ll be the choice. I don’t know how I feel about Srinivasan. He’s so unknown. Let’s hope he doesn’t become Obama’s David Souter.
peach flavored shampoo
So how long after HRC becomes preznit will a Republican Senate decline to hold hearings for a SCOTUS nominee? Cant they, technically, hold out indefinitely?
different-church-lady
@Baud: Some will stay home. Some will write in Bernie. Some will write in Jill Stein. Some will go Trump. Some will write-in Baud.
The vast vast majority will vote for Clinton.
The wounded, online bleatings of the folks in the subsets described in the first paragraph will continue. For years.
Weaselone
@C.V. Danes:
OFFS. Hillary’s voting record as Senator places her squarely in the middle of the more liberal half of Democratic senators, just to the left of the oval offices current occupant.
Bobby Thomson
@Aimai: I forgot about that.
Aimai
@Applejinx: i can only go by the testimony of vocal bernie supporters at kos. They are telling me, quite loudly, that they are not a democratic voting bloc, will not support the nominee, will not work for down ticket races, and see no reason to oppose trump. Are they the minority of bernie supporters? Is this not bernies message as long as he is trying to drive voter turnout by attacking obama, the dem party, and hillary personally?
different-church-lady
@Weaselone: I’m not sure why you’re bothering — we’ve been told time and time and time again that democrats are just republicans now.
rk
@Applejinx:
Seriously! Are you for real? Amazing anyone could write such crap with a straight face. I seem to remember a bitterly fought primary between Hillary and some guy and after the bitter fight Hillary supporters went on to vote for the guy, she campaigned for him and served as his secretary of state.
The stuff that I read here sometimes makes me think that it’s not just republicans who deny reality and revel in victimhood.
different-church-lady
@Aimai: The GOS is not an accurate representation of the real world. Not even real-world Sanders voters.
Elizabelle
Thinking being obstructionists to any Obama Supreme Court hearings will not work well for the GOP establishment, no?
More evidence that Washington is broken and the establishment politicians are irrelevant (red meat for Trump) and Hillary and Bernie will be pointing and laughing at them, constantly.
Srinivasan was confirmed, 97-0. Don’t know much about either potential nominee, but I like going with a younger justice.
It’s what the GOP does. We are saddled with John Roberts for a long time, it appears.
Also, wouldn’t the GOP Justice Committee Senators welcome the chance to bloviate? Not holding any hearings may not sit as well with their constituents as the recently re-elected Turtle McConnell thinks.
C.V. Danes
@FlipYrWhig: @Aimai: Thanks for making my point for me.
I have no demon illusions about Clinton. She’s the establishment candidate. The establishment is why I have never considered myself a Democrat. When I come out to vote in November, it will be to vote against Trump, not to vote for Hillary, as I suspect it will be for most of the Bernie supporters.
People didn’t rally around Bernie because they thought he was cool. They rallied around him because they felt legitimately disenfranchised the the Democratic establishment. You can either embrace that and listen to their concerns to bring their votes into the fold, or you can keep Clinton-splaining to them why they’re wrong and continue suffering the low voter turnout that has handed the Republicans both sides of Congress and most state governments.
different-church-lady
@rk: The ratio of hard-thinking to nonsensical results is almost Brooksian in its scope, no?
JMG
Ninety-five to 99 percent of Sanders supporters are just plain old liberals who will vote Democratic in November. The rest hang on the Internet participating in free group therapy for the hysterics they are.
Aimai
@Bobby Thomson: I didnt! How about the time joe from lowell attacked me for being a nym jacking troll because i didnt agree with one of his arguments? Im always doomed to disappoint some people when the real aimai doesnt parrot the imaginary aimai’s perfect imaginary agreement with the speaker.
FEMA Camp Counselor
@FlipYrWhig:
Eh, at least Loomis does excellent work on labor issues. I highly recommend Out of Sight.
Campos on the other hand is goddamned obnoxious. I’ll always be somewhat grateful to him for the work he did on Law Schools, since it convinced me not to flush hundreds of thousands of dollars down the toilet, but it’s become blatantly clear that the guy is a Nader-esque moral scold constantly looking to charge at an ever increasing list of peeves to fluff his sense of self-righteousness. After his Law School scam stuff became mainstream in the Law world, he needed a new windmill to tilt at and the results have not been pretty. Guy thought that Elena Kagan was unqualified because she taught using the Socratic method, Michelle Obama’s healthy eating program was/is proto-eugenics, and that an African American protester wasn’t a real leftist because he came from a well off family.
I think he just has this thing about “elites” and is always going to thumb their eyes, no matter who those elites are.
Applejinx
@Aimai: Hillary would have to swing real sharply to the right to get THAT outcome. I don’t honestly believe that will happen. C.V. Danes is the one who thinks she’s gonna tack right.
I’m pretty sure she can tell that’s electoral suicide, and she didn’t come this far to blow it in the final stages. I see it as a very real possibility, even probability, that she’ll do the opposite: reinvent herself as The Greatest Liberal President with an emphasis on gender/racial issues (that is MOST welcome to see) and weasel a bit on economics but appease the Left in order to be sure of their votes.
She’ll need to spot that Trump will, very predictably, try to get to her Left on the subject of Wall Street and corporate capture of government. It’s his strongest argument against her, and she can smack it down by embracing Bernie like the politician she is. It’s easy to praise a guy’s ideas and values, when he lost ;) part of her argument is that SHE can implement all that, far better.
It is also possible (not likely, but I insist it’s possible) for her to take crappy advice, decide that the whole Bernie wing is a lost cause and will stay home or vote for Trump, and proceed to go after the disenchanted Republicans and try to win THAT way. If she does, she’ll lose. The sight of that will turn off most Democrats.
Elizabelle
Haven’t mentioned it for a while, but Antonin Scalia is still dead.
Tra la la la la.
Did they ever disclose his burial site? LOL.
amk
Jim Morin
Aimai
@JMG: basically this. C.v. Danes makes this point handily upthread. The “i hate democrats” party is either identical to the total democratic party set of voters or a vanishingly slim bunch of fucking prima donnas who need their hands held and their mouths stuffed with sugar plums before they will vote to save the country frim obvious ruin. Or both!
OzarkHillbilly
@FEMA Camp Counselor:
Hmmmm… So do I. ;-)
FEMA Camp Counselors
@JMG:
Even the arch-Bernie guy on my Facebook feed is saying he’ll work to get Clinton in in the fall, even though he’s not happy about it.
Obama
This is just the latest round of the PUMAs or that “Primary Obama 2012” thing. It’s a bunch of very loud and obnoxious people who think that they’re way more important then they actually are.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle:
I wish they would. All this cat litter is piling up and getting a bit stnky too.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: You should infiltrate the Republican Convention for us and report back on the cannibalism that will take place. Hidden camera and the whole lot. Should be fun and you can use it as research on how to run your next campaign more effectively.
P.S. Someone from BJ should infiltrate the Republican Convention!! The laughs would be epic. (They most likely won’t let me in since I’m Black.)
different-church-lady
@Aimai: Jesus.. and Joe’s one of the sane ones.
C.V. Danes
@Applejinx:
I, of course, would be very pleasantly surprised if that would occur, but I consider that more of a long shot than Bernie getting the nomination. Hillary is a creature of the establishment. She has been in it her whole professional life. She will govern that way when she becomes president.
satby
The relentless need to make Hillary Clinton into an amoral boogie (wo)man is really getting old. And the fact that her record is constantly ignored while shouty scolding guy’s is lauded to the skies, even though they’re basically identical makes me wonder if there’s a misogynistic aspect to it.
J R in WV
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Somehow, given the reply to Raven, I was expecting a photo of some kind of bird, probably an owl. So wrong.
rikyrah
Well, I am happy on the local front for the results from last night.
Anita Alvarez had to go. I had never been fond of her, but I was done with the result of the Rekia Boyd murder. From the result of that, I just felt nothing but disgust when I saw her. So, seeing her go down made me very happy. And, those who put up that fraud More shot themselves in the foot – More didn’t take votes from Foxx – she took them from Alvarez.
And, as for Ken Dunkin…don’t let the door hit you on your way out. I absolutely despise Michael Madigan..but, even when you have the Devil in your midst, somehow, there always happens to be an even worse Devil in the form of our Governor- Bruce Rauner. We have been without a State Budget since July. The thought…the mere thought.,..that ANY Democrat would side with Rauner – FOR ANY REASON – I didn’t give two shyts about what Madigan decided to do to Dunkin. So, good riddance to him, and I hope the 30 pieces he got from Rauner was worth it, considering the thousands of the ‘least of these’ in my state that have been hurt because of Dunkin’s paid -for ‘ independence’. Negro, please.
And, Tammy Duckworth won. Wasn’t feeling her, but Andrea Zopp didn’t even reach out to the Black community like she should have..so, oh well. I’ll support Duckworth to get rid of Kirk.
japa21
I have usually seen Applejinx as one of the saner Bernie supporters on this site, definitely several steps above someone like goblue72. Today however, I have to somewhat change my mind. This is a bunch of pure drivel, talking about purges, no core principles, etc.
I wonder if any Bernie supporters listened to and actually heard Hillary’s speech last night; the one where she blasted banks, talked about doing some for debt ridden students and grads and speaking about attaining free education. Oh, she didn’t mention single payer, the ultimate pony, so she isn’t embracing Bernie’s ideas.
Why would she want to embrace all of Bernie’s ideas? Not all of them are good ideas.
The fact is she is also a populist candidate, just with a more secure footing in reality.
And I am tired of all this talk about the youngs and how they should not be disregarded (hint, they aren’t being disregarded) because they will become a major portion of the Dem base as the olds die off. Gee, haven’t we heard that about the GOP?
Facts are that a good portion of the youngs, as they get older, will lose some of their idealism, some will turn far more conservative, a few may remain as passionately liberal as they are today.
Bobby Thomson
@Anya: I know him. Another Breyer.
FEMA Camp Counselors
@different-church-lady:
I think he falls into the category of “the primary is making me stupid.” He’s feeling the Bern and getting into spats with Clinton supporters.
Elizabelle
Richard Mayhew has a new thread up. Those rats ain’t gonna romance themselves.
Aimai
The way i look at my vote is This: i inherited a single vote in giant evil megacorp USA limited. Other people employed by usa ltd dont get a vote or are blocked frim voting. Every four years i can caucus with other shsreholders aming a set of candidates for ceo and trustee. Some of my friends are shut out and never even get up to the meeting to vote. Some of my friends (immigrants, undicumented, children, people in other corporations) dont get to vote at all. If i get the chance–thanks to race, birth, age, wealth or luck, to get up to the room to cast my ballot im going to cast it for the best person in the room on behalf of all the other people who cant make it, wont make it, or are prevented frim majing it. And im not gojng to fucking sulk and whine zbout how i didnt get my elevator pick or about how everyone else is obviously wrong for not suporting a perfect candidate who dixnt make it into the room.
To swutch back to reality hrc has lost elections before and she instantly went back to work–every time–for the oublic. Raising money for democrats Znd supporting the nominee. What is bernie going to do? Historically he has never worked for the bigger cause outside of his own electoral success. There is no democratic so ialist party in the US. Bernie is a vanity candidate. I wish he would prove me wring but his thunb sucking vical supporters-/obviously not those, like mist bernie supporters i know in real life) are inclining me to assume he will tske his ball and go home. If he diesnt? His supporters are going to turn on him in a rage like they turned on watren and franken.
Aimai
Sorry for the typos. On amtrak and iphone. Need infrastructure rebuilt stat!
John D.
@Applejinx:
Cite?
Here’s my problem with your thesis: This is a primary. There have been just over 15 million votes cast for the Dem nomination so far. Barack Obama got just under 70 million votes in 2008 nationwide in the general election.
If Hillary or Bernie gets *just* Democratic votes in November, they lose in a landslide.
This is as it should be, as neither Democrats nor Republicans make up a majority of our citizens.
A Presidential candidate must reach out towards the center, if not the other side, to have any hope of success. Ignoring that very salient fact of national electoral politics is naive and stupid. This does not mean that the Dem candidate has to become Republican-lite or anything of that nature, but it does mean that they need to speak to voters who are not the base, and especially voters who are not the extremist segment of the base. Should Hillary get the nomination, I fully expect her to implement portions of Sanders’ platform into her own (expansion of some of her existing plans is how I expect it to play out) and for her to spend a lot of time reassuring more moderate voters that the caricature of her that has been presented in the primary season is not actually her.
Y’know, like every fucking politician ever after a bruising primary fight.
(The following assumes Clinton is the nominee, as seems very likely at this point, Campos’ ego-masturbation notwithstanding).
She has a responsibility to be receptive to Sanders and his supporters, and to recognize their ideas have merit and deserve a hearing, incorporating portions that don’t violate her platform. He and his supporters have a responsibility to support her and work to get her elected. That’s what being members of the same party means. We had competing visions for the party. The voters made their choice. Now the actual work begins of beating the Republican in November.
FlipYrWhig
@FEMA Camp Counselors: Joe is in particularly bad form lately, doing that hectoring thing. But that’s what all the Bernie people online CONSTANTLY DO.
@C.V. Danes: Oh boo fucking hoo. The Democratic Party is a coalition and liberals aren’t even a majority within it, and the kind of Obama-sold-me-out liberals who are the core of the Sanders campaign online aren’t even a majority of liberals, thus aren’t even CLOSE to a majority of Democrats. Don’t like it? Make more supporters and take it over. Or, you know, pout about how ESTABLISHMENT ATE MY BABY
japa21
@Aimai: Excellent post, typos and all.
Too many, unfortunately, don’t see it your way.
Applejinx
@japa21:
In fact, I didn’t. I was at an NA meeting, and then up writing non-politics-related stuff, and I didn’t see anybody’s speech. It sounds like I’m not wrong: she’s as smart as I thought, she’s tacking left.
If you really think she’d be saying that stuff had Bernie never run AND done as well as he has, I can’t help you. I don’t think her being ‘amoral’ (I generally don’t put it like that) is bad. I see her as Bill was: a politician so dedicated that she can work out what the electorate wants. That IS ‘populist’.
The electorate used to want some mighty dumb things, especially in the 80s and 90s. The electorate more or less wanted Dubya Bush, twice. They’ve changed their minds.
I think Hillary can keep up with what the electorate wants. Unlike Bernie, I don’t think she’s in the least inclined to tell them what they should want, or care about, which is why I’m glad Bernie’s been doing that. So has Trump, oddly (though some of the things he thinks you should want, yikes!)
Bobby Thomson
@different-church-lady: the GOS is also infested with Republican ratfuckers posing as purity trolls. Just sayin’.
Bobby Thomson
@C.V. Danes: you have a pretty low estimation of your candidate. There were quite a few people who affirmatively supported him and weren’t just motivated by CDS.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx:
SHE WAS LEFT ALREADY. Fucking hell. Bernie Sanders isn’t the arbiter of everything “left,” even though his obnoxious ass and his even more obnoxious campaign team’s collective obnoxious ass has been fapping itself raw to that contention for months.
japa21
@Applejinx: So you admit Bernie is a moralizing scold who thinks he knows better than anybody else.
Calouste
@different-church-lady: Projection. Applejinx would like Bernie to purge all the Clintonistas if he won the nomination. Bernie is the only pure one, as he says himself.
japa21
@FlipYrWhig: This what I don’t understand about some of Bernie’s supporters. She really isn’t saying much more than she has been saying for years. But they have been fixated on this image of her they built up in their minds that is not consistent with reality.
No, she isn’t Bernie, which is a good thing, because she would then definitely lose in the general just like Bernie would. And not all Bernie’s ideas are good (see Export-Import Bank or Medicare for All) or reasonable considering the current climate.
Applejinx
@Calouste: Can we at least purge Debbie Wasserman Schultz? We could probably get by with just a COUPLE purges and you know who they are as well as I do.
Can we purge Haim Saban? I don’t like him chumming around with Sheldon Adelson, wanting to buy the New York Times. I prefer the Iran that’s NOT glass.
o/` I’ve got a little list, they never will be missed o/`
Marcia
@Linda Featheringill: If I hadn’t already heard the election results (except in my home state!), I’d have thought Sanders had received every vote west of the Alps. A meme reading “A five-state sweep for HRC. The handwriting is on the wall. I know what I have to do” was answered with “I just gave Bernie another $27.”
Not that I’m against being loyal to your candidate to the end but if she wins, how are they going to explain the events occurring on the next January 20th?
different-church-lady
@Applejinx:
The “electorate” is not a fuckin’ hive mind. The electorate is a vast collection of people who want different and conflicting things.
We didn’t have dumb things in the 80s and 90s because the entire country decided we wanted dumb things. We had dumb things because NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE wanted non-dumb things.
You know how to get more people to want non-dumb things? You work to convince them. You don’t scold them, and you don’t call them idiots, and you don’t wait around for “the electorate” to change, and you do it one person at a time.
Marcia
@JPL: And some of the yuuuge attacks will come from the Right.
Bruce K
Just got my absentee ballot for the New York primary, and I finally had to bite the bullet between Hillary and Bernie – but it also gave the option of voting for individual delegates to the convention. Six Bernie supporters, six Hillary supporters, pick six of the twelve.
I think that both of them have strengths and weaknesses, and both of their platforms need to be heard, both incorporated into the final Democratic national party platform for 2016.
But if the GOP standard-bearer is going to be Donald Trump, the Democratic nominee can’t afford to bring a knife to a gunfight, and I suspect that Hillary will be ready with a knife, a gun, a baseball bat, a chainsaw, a particle cannon, and a couple of nukes up her sleeve for good measure…
FlipYrWhig
@japa21: She’s “corporate,” man! Look, the Iraq War vote is a serious issue. I think she’s a Samantha Power-style liberal interventionist for global human rights. Some people don’t like that. It’s a legitimate gripe. None of the other stuff is meaningful at all. Running for Senate in New York is expensive, and people who work on Wall Street–some of whom, even at the highest levels, are Democrats and liberals, to wit, Jon Corzine–are a resource for campaign cash. If you’re trying to run a global do-gooder charity, rich people are your friends. Did she have to represent New York? Admittedly no. Did the Clinton family have to do the Clinton Global Initiative? Obviously no. But just blurting out that lucre is filthy is an easy stance to take.
Kropadope
@FlipYrWhig:
Well, hanging out around here, I could see why some might feel that way. Also you’re a self-righteous prick and clearly haven’t listened to a word Bernie said. Get fucking bent. The purge won’t be by Hillary herself, it will be by her eternally smug, dickish supporters.
Oh, we’re so grown up and mature because we voted for a pragmatist with an equally thin record of accomplishment as the radical she’s running against and an insistence on crafting policies in full detail who will publically shame you for questioning details of her plan, like Congress isn’t a thing.
different-church-lady
@Marcia:
In the worst possible terms, most likely.
Marcia
@Amir Khalid:
“when has Hillary talked about purging anybody?”
Sometime between murdering Vince Foster and putting pornographic ornaments on the White House Christmas tree.
different-church-lady
@Bruce K:
Well, she is a warmonger, after all…
C.V. Danes
@John D.:
I would say that Hillary needs to reach out towards everyone who is left of center. If we want to flip the Senate, we need those who are right of center to stay home.
Aimai
@Kropadope: how are they going to purge the sandenistas? Lots of families split their votes. My father and mother pribably voted bernie. My husband may have too. Are we standing at the ballot box preventing them from voting?
Aimai
@C.V. Danes: are you advocating a policy of voter suppression or just some kind of repressive emotional disenfranchisement of voters you dont see as left enough? Since bernie lost the black vote decisively in red states ive seen a ton of his supporters argue that black voters are “low information voters” and also “conservative” voters. Are you making the same argument–that hillary should piss off her southern minority support in favor of the “independent” white ethnic male voter?
C.V. Danes
@FlipYrWhig:
Intesting. The Internets tell me that Sanders took 49% of Illinois, 49% of Missouri, 41% of North Carolina, 43% of Ohio, and even 33% of Florida.
Seems like a pretty big chunk of the base to me.
Marcia
@different-church-lady: And to think I believed in 1970 that I was thoroughly sick of the word “establishment”. Who knew!
FlipYrWhig
@Kropadope: Bernie Sanders is a dick. I know what he believes, and what he believes is stupid.
Marcia
@FlipYrWhig: ” I think she’s a Samantha Power-style liberal interventionist for global human rights.”
For more info on the Samantha power style, pay a visit here:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/59789/14-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-bewitched
Miss Bianca
Happy Dance for me in CO, despite having to go to the dentist to get a tooth fixed. COngratulations to Sec. Clinton!
Heads up – I will be heading to the state Democratic delegate meeting next month! April 15th-17th is the weekend. Budweiser auditorium in Loveland. Any Front Range BJers feel like getting together the eve before or after to shoot the breeze? Would be chuffed to meet any/all y’all.
FlipYrWhig
@C.V. Danes: IMHO he has a steady third of Democrats, which state by state, race by race, can get closer to half. Good for him. Democratic politics will be better for being reminded that there’s an audience that wants to hear progressive things, expanding the targeted electorate beyond the affluent suburbanites who want low taxes but have gay friends who tend to be the core of Democratic messaging, and that’s the legacy of the Sanders campaign I respect. The candidate himself is a flaming asshole.
Miss Bianca
@FlipYrWhig:
LGM has gone completely off the hook with the HRC hatred lately, and the consequent Sanders fluffing. So has Crooked Timber. I can barely read them anymore. Something about a bunch of elitist leftist male academics unloading all that hate on our country’s leading female politician has left me with a sour feeling in my stomach.
different-church-lady
@Aimai:
By posting dickish comments on an obscure website, apparently.
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig:
Isn’t that exactly what they tried to do?
Mnemosyne
@different-church-lady:
What, being the 10,000th most popular liberal website doesn’t make us thought leaders controlling every move of the Democratic Party? I haz a sad.
C.V. Danes
@Aimai: Not at all. The fact is that Republicans are not going to vote for Hillary, so they will either vote Trump or stay home. Right-leaning independents might be persuaded to vote for Hillary, but they’ll still vote Republican for the down ballot races. I’d just as soon they just stay home too :-)
FlipYrWhig
@Miss Bianca: One of the things I dislike most about the American left is the way that the university left likes to pass itself off to be the vanguard of the working class.
C.V. Danes
@FlipYrWhig: More or less agreed, except for the Sanders is a dick, but we can agree to disagree on that for the good of the whole :-)
FlipYrWhig
@different-church-lady: Not enough, apparently. Which frustrates them to no end. Because they’re the REAL Democrats, you see.
FlipYrWhig
@C.V. Danes: Well, good, there’s that. But I honestly, and this is not for effect, have been put off lately by not just Bernie’s passionate online supporters (that’ll happen) but by the man himself. The purity/corruption thing just drives me around the bend.
chopper
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
it’s hard enough to get that last nail in, but then how the hell do you work a camera?
different-church-lady
@chopper: Selfie stick. Duh.
RaflW
Merrick Garland announced. Let the third ring of the circus commence! (Timing, after Hillary sews up the nom is quite smart….)
Miss Bianca
@FlipYrWhig:
Ding, ding, DING!
@Mnemosyne:
IKR? btw, with all the Bujold love floating round, I’m starting to think we ought to have a BJ group read. I got “Cordelia’s Honor” cued up… ; )
Amir Khalid
Interesting, this: There’s another Republican candidates debate scheduled for Monday. But Trump says he won’t be there, he’d rather make a speech at AIPAC. Kasich says if Trump’s not going, he’s not going either, so there. I doubt Cruz will see any point in showing up alone.
I don’t expect the Republican powers-that-be to tolerate this kind of disrespect from the entire remaining presidential field. But I wonder what they can do to make the candidates show up.
Linnaeus
@Miss Bianca:
Not really. Campos clearly doesn’t like Clinton, but the other front-pagers do.
Miss Bianca
@Linnaeus:
Maybe it’s just that I always seem to catch Campos’s posts first…and then I turn off. Shame, because I really like their coverage of other issues. Maybe things will simmer down a bit now.
Linnaeus
@Miss Bianca:
I should say that the other front-pagers do have their reservations about Clinton, but they’ve been pretty critical of Sanders, too.
Elie
Ok — I’m not getting it. Why if we have a primary process where every candidate gets a chance to design and implement their campaign according to agreed upon rules — why if a candidate wins in the state by state, but isn’t your favorite, why does it mean you effectively support the person who leads the opposition party by staying home? Why is that ok? Sure, hold your nose (as I would have done to vote for Bernie), but please vote for the Democrat! How is it better to vote for Trump? I can understand the disappointment — even some anger and depression — but to not vote for the Democrat… well don’t get that at all…
Elie
@Miss Bianca:
And the University left work in one of the biggest plantation environment in existence! Funny that they are so strident while sustaining their careers in one of the most undemocratic environments in existence…
mclaren
@Chyron HR:
Nyet, comrade! Once Bernie’s socialist paradise becomes real, we will all enjoy rock candy mountains and lemonade streams. Forward to the barricades! Socialism or death!
mclaren
@Miss Bianca:
That’s because you’re a running-dog counterrevolutionary deviationist, comrade. Wait until Bernie’s social revolution transforms America. You too will become a guest at a thought reform camp.
mclaren
@Amir Khalid:
Whips. Crazed weasels. Pit bulls with AIDS.
mclaren
@Elie:
Because we’re Democrats, and we bungee-jump with ropes made of toilet paper.
mclaren
@gene108:
Peggy Noonan, naturally.
mclaren
@FlipYrWhig:
Spoken like a true blue American, and a genuine child of Tammany Hall.
Source: The Great McGinty, Preston Sturges, 1940.