The people in society who have the most reason to be angry are not. Those with least reason to be angry are terrified by that.
— AlGiordano (@AlGiordano) March 19, 2016
Eric Sasson, at TNR — “The media is obsessed with the Sanders voter and the Trump voter. Yet it is the Hillary voter who may have the last laugh”:
We have heard much talk this cycle about the mood of our national electorate. People are angry. They are sick and tired of establishment politicians, and are gravitating toward outsiders, revolutionaries, people who are going to “turn this country around.” They are flocking to the polls in huge numbers to make their anger heard…
The voter we almost never hear about, however, is the Clinton voter. Which is surprising, since Hillary Clinton has won more votes in the primaries than any other candidate so far. She has amassed over 2.5 million more votes than Sanders; over 1.1 million more votes than Trump. Clearly Clinton voters exist, yet there has been very little analysis as to who they are or why they are showing up to vote for her. Sure, there has been talk of Clinton’s dominance among African-American voters, and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic voters. Her voters seem to skew older and more affluent. But these are demographics. (And even demographics have a hard time explaining her commanding win in Ohio, or her wins in Massachusetts and Missouri.) There is almost no discussion of what is motivating these voters. If anything, the media seems to think they are holding their noses as they vote for Hillary. As a recent New York Times article suggested, Clinton is winning “votes, not hearts.”…
Considering that narrative, one would expect Clinton to be faring far worse in the primaries. Instead, she currently holds a popular vote and delegate lead over Sanders that far surpasses Obama’s lead over her at this point in the race in 2008.
This is no accident. An examination of Clinton voters and their motivations might reveal that the narrative that most media outlets have been feeding us this election cycle is dubious at best. Because if the biggest vote-getter of either party is Hillary—by a large margin—then that suggests the electorate is not necessarily as angry as pundits claim. It further suggests that perhaps some people are tired of hearing about how angry they are, and are quietly asserting their opinions at the ballot box. If Democrats are so angry, Clinton would not be in the position she is today. Is it really so farfetched to claim that quite a few Democrats aren’t voting for Sanders precisely because he seems angry? Which isn’t to suggest that people aren’t angry—certainly many Republican primary voters seem to be. Rather, it is to suggest that voters who aren’t angry are still showing up at the polls, despite being ignored in news stories…
It’s certainly curious to presume, as many do, that Clinton’s supporters are somehow less enthusiastic than Sanders’s are. How is enthusiasm measured, if not by actual vote count? And they are doing so despite the media narrative surrounding their candidate, despite hearing very little about themselves in the media, despite her “damn” emails, despite Benghazi, despite her low Gallup favorables, and despite how everyone else is “Feeling the Bern.” If anything, Clinton might need to thank the press for consistently underestimating her. Perhaps this is why her supporters are coming out for her in such strength: to assert their existence in the face of a narrative that both overlooks them and disparages their candidate…
Jamelle Bouie wrote about this at Slate, too:
… Hillary Clinton, having learned lessons from her last campaign, is running a race for delegates. And like Obama before her, she’s run up the score in favorable states and held tight in contested ones. Up until Tuesday’s primaries, this gave her an advantage. And now, with lopsided victories in Florida and North Carolina, she enjoys a structural lead that dwarfs the one Obama held at this point in 2008…
Clinton still has a long slog to the nomination—it takes time to accumulate the delegates she needs—but it’s a clear one, without major obstacles. In a sense, she and her team have reverse-engineered Obama’s 2008 effort, bringing “establishment” resources—huge fundraising and tremendous party support—to bear on an insurgent-style campaign that focused on voter contacts and organizing instead of paid media and massive events. Clinton has made mistakes, and she will continue to make them, but her present campaign is durable enough to survive them.
CarolDuhart2
What I find fascinating is that despite all of the media hate-is also the media impotence. Despite all of the “scandals”, people are tuning them out. They are getting aquainted with the real, caring, hard-working Hillary not the media image, and they like what they see.
Capt. Seaweed
I’m not angry about anything, really. The economy is in good shape, my SS checks are arriving on time, I’m on vacation, and the Republican party is tearing itself apart. What’s to be angry about?
Steeplejack
This (likely) Clinton voter’s strategy is very simple. It’s motivated by the desire for a president who will (1) veto stupid Republican shit and (2) be on hand to nominate Supreme Court justices if seats become vacant. Anything else is a bonus. Winter is coming, etc., as the Republican Party continues to devolve.
Okay, the morning shift is arriving. I’m tapping out.
different-church-lady
I had a realization while stuck in traffic last week.
You know how it is. You’re sitting there at the intersection. It’s gridlock. You’re not going anywhere. The six cars in front of you aren’t going anywhere. The four cars stopped in the middle of the intersection aren’t going anywhere because the thirty cars that extend out of your line of vision to the right aren’t going anywhere.
And then it happens: the guy right behind you starts blaring his horn.
Like it’s going to help. Like, somehow, the raw power of his noise-generating device is going to magically open up physical space. Like, somehow, none of us want go to forward with our lives and he’s the only one who realizes we’re stuck and we just have to START FUCKING MOVING YOU MORONS! and our problems here are solved.
That guy? He’s the Sanders loudmouth.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@different-church-lady: the bully pulpit as the ineffective car horn.
I like that imagery. it’s apt.
If Obummer had only honked the horn louder we would have a socialist paradise and capitalism would be on the trash heap of history.
OzarkHillbilly
You know who else has made mistakes? Every single other person to have ever run for President in the history of the United States of America including every single current candidate**. So why is it every pundit in the world feels the need to point out Hillary’s? (asked with about 17 tons of sarcasm)
I am really just sick and tired of it.
**so far all of trumps mistakes have been to his advantage, but that is only because he is running in a racist degenerate party
TriassicSands
@CarolDuhart2:
…and they like what they see.
Then, how do you explain her dismal favorability numbers? There may be a lot of ambivalence about her. I’m no fan, but I’ll vote for her without hesitation if she is the nominee. However, if asked, I wouldn’t have a lot of favorable things to say about her. There are lots of people I would prefer to have as president; only one of them is running, and it’s hard to imagine him winning in November (the “socialist” label would run non-stop in Republican ads, and I can’t imagine an electorate raised to believe that socialists are communists, and commies are pure evil, voting for an avowed socialist — even though Bernie isn’t really a socialist).
different-church-lady
@TriassicSands: The difference between the general public and the voting public.
Amir Khalid
I keep seeing this Bernista argument: Hillary polls poorly head-to-head against Republican candidates, whereas Bernie does rather better and is thus more electable. Yet in this primary season, Hillary has won 2.5 million more votes than Bernie, and 1.1 million more votes than the Donald. Has any pundit found a reason for this discrepancy?
Chyron HR
@Amir Khalid:
“Hillary cheated.”
MattF
@Amir Khalid: Benghazi!
BillinGlendaleCA
@MattF: The Hilbeast is getting illegal votes from Benghazi!
OzarkHillbilly
@TriassicSands:
How about 2 and a half decades worth of Republican attacks on all things Clinton? Incessant insinuations of corruption and untrustworthy-ness will color every ones point of view whether they like it or not.
BENGHAZIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly:
It really bothers me when I hear that crap from Democrats.
Baud
Hillary=Gore as far as the media will treat her.
CarolDuhart2
I wonder if they’ve ever done a breakdown on that “favorability’ thing. I bet a lot of it comes from states/demos that no Democrat would ever get in the first place. Also “favorability” is a compared to what measure. I mean, who else is in the running who’s in politics, and who has an equally high profile?
BillinGlendaleCA
OT: I went up the Brand Library and took some pics, I’ve added them to my Glendale in Infrared album. I think these turned out much better than my trip to the gardens on Friday. The last two are 3d pics, get out those red/blue glasses.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
It occurred to me the other day that people forget how long Jimmy Carter was vilified because of GOP scorn, so much so that the Simpsons could make “History’s Greatest Monster” a meme. The Republicans did the same thing to the Clintons.
Keith G
@Capt. Seaweed:
If you are retired or nearing the end of your work life, not a damn thing. If you already have your college degree especially having gotten it before loan rates became loan-sharky, not a damn thing.
A lot of us were very lucky to be able to take advantage of the world that the parents of the baby boom created before the baby boom came to power and begin dismantling that world.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: So she’s fat?
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: She will be called much worse.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Keith G: The tax revolt didn’t start with boomers.
Keith G
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: “.. the bully pulpit as the ineffective car horn.
I like that imagery. it’s apt.”
Not exactly.
When used correctly, both can be effective and sometimes quite necessary. A lot depends on the conditions at hand and the skill of the operator.
CarolDuhart2
@Keith G: And Jimmy Carter is considered more highly than the guys who demonized him.
Amir Khalid
@CarolDuhart2:
As I understand it, although of course I could be wrong, the pollistas ask the polled, “Do you like/dislike/meh So-and-so?” Like – dislike = favourability. The thing with Hillary is, she’s historically been more popular as an officeholder than as a candidate. And she’s in candidate mode until Election Day.
ETA: Do the pollsters do state-by-state breakdowns of favourability? I think they do, but either they don’t publish those numbers or the media doesn’t report them.
magurakurin
@Keith G:
Utter and total bullshit. The generational stuff is unhelpful to the nth degree. Every generation has its good and its bad.
“Before I knowed it, I was saying out loud, ‘The hell with it! There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do. It’s all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain’t nice, but that’s as far as any man got a right to say.” John Steinbeck
raven
@Keith G: I don’t know, it took me years to rebound from my 3 years of “service”. Nine to get my undergrad, another 7 for my masters and my last one when I as 50. I’m in ok shape for retirement if I work until I’m 68 and that’s after buying my Army time for my “pension”.
OzarkHillbilly
@Keith G: I can not tell a lie: IT’S ALL MY FAULT. I AM EVIL INCARNATE AND SELFISH WITH OXYGEN BEYOND ALL REASON.
superpredators4hillary
Hillary clears it all up for you.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid:
Here in America we call them “primaries”.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: Oh hi, fellow spawn of Satan.
Keith G
@BillinGlendaleCA: Correct, but the DLC mindset tacked on to Norquist-ism allowed bad ideas to gain more purchase and grow even stronger.
Keith G
@magurakurin:
Nah.
Baud
@Keith G: You think Bush should have been reelected in 92?
OzarkHillbilly
@superpredators4hillary: Ah yes, the old “name your politician lies game.” I love that one. No matter which name you insert, you are always correct! Everybody wins!!!
Gindy51
@Amir Khalid: It’s hard to find that if you are being paid not to….
superpredators4hillary
@OzarkHillbilly: Jackpot.
Keith G
@Baud: Dude, why such silliness? Just because I find fault in some decisions made by one group of people doesn’t mean I preferred the others be in power.
Just because I feel Obama’s Red Line comment was extraordinarily stupid doesn’t mean I want a military policy authored by McCain. Etc.
Gindy51
@BillinGlendaleCA: You’re right, we can blame the “greatest generation” for that fiasco.
JPL
24/7 media and talk radio vilified the Clintons for decades. I’m surprised that Hillary’s negatives aren’t higher.
I blame Obama.
Baud
@Keith G:
Your comment suggested that there was some option to DLC type politics in the early 90s that would have been successful.
CarolDuhart2
And the Obama coaltion, the one that elects Presidents, likes her just fine. We aren’t scared of stong women, of Bill Clinton. We could care less about the made-up scandals that aren’t scandals that the Washington press and Fox News have been pushing.
The Clinton years were good to us. African-Americans had record home ownership, employment, and joined the middle class. Not everybody did well, but if we had been able to elect Gore, those people would have also enjoyed the benefits as well.
This Af-American spent the 80’s looking for stable employment that was hard to find, a college education she couldn’t quite complete. It took the Clinton boom and sane governance to get the job she now has.
While we know Hillary is her own woman, I doubt if she’s going to undo the policies that have been successful so far with both Bill and Obama.
dianne
The feral Republicans v. the establishment Republicans v. the sane and sensible Democratic candidate ready on day one to run our country . Which one of these is not like the others? It’s a no-brainer.
OzarkHillbilly
@Keith G:
You know what’s even sillier? Lumping people together as tho they are all equally to blame. Kind of like blaming the carpenter for the faulty wiring. “Well, they both worked on that house.”
BillinGlendaleCA
@Gindy51: Yup, they and the Silents.
JPL
@dianne: Trump’s approach is different than the other candidates, but the policies are the same. They would all make it harder for minorities to vote, they would all add trillions to the deficit by their tax policies, they would all loosen regulations on health insurance companies and forget about controlling pollution. Cruz’s choices for the supreme court would reshape the nation’s laws for decades.
Amir Khalid
Here’s a perspective from India: the writer finds reason to distrust Hillary because of Huma Abedin (her Pakistani-American aide) and because he reckons Democrats like dictators better (!):
Baud
@Amir Khalid: LOL. The 27% rule is universal across nations and cultures.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid:
So he thinks mass deportations of brown people who don’t speak American will be good for Indians and Indian Americans? Interesting.
Keith G
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m sorry if that seemed inaccurate.
At some point in casual conversation there is a slight need to generalize about groups of people who are doing certain things. It goes without saying that: Not all cops are, not all Republicans are, not all Texans are, not all Trump supporters are, and yet most of the commentary I see here (being casual conversation) doesn’t create breakdowns of percentages of people being talked about. So, excuse me if I was taking a bit of a quite universally understood and practiced shortcut.
Let me go on to say that as a liberal baby boomer I feel really sad that I was able to get a very inexpensive top-rated college education and now the kids who work for me are not able to do so because once in power people in my age cohort stripped public spending to such institutions
Zinsky
The problem is that the people who are angry and have a right to be, are angry at the WRONG PEOPLE! Instead of being angry with the poor and with immigrants, they should be angry with Donald Trump, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers and all of the other billionaire class members who are stealing all the wealth through cronyism, rigged laws and structural discrimination that protects their white privilege and unsustainable consumption and misuse of the world’s resources.
Baud
@Zinsky:
A complete answer to your first sentence.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: There’s a huge right wing nationalist movement in India right now, that’s how Modi got elected. Just like here, it’s all projection all the time with India’s RWNJ.
amk
@Keith G:
@Keith G:
Since you seem to be so ‘knowledgeable’ about all things political and geopolitical, more than the politicians that actually do it every day, how about running for some public office?
gogol's wife
@different-church-lady:
LOL.
satby
@Keith G: I would disagree, that started earlier and the Silent Generation was (and continues to be) key in demanding tax cuts and IGMFY government starving. Boomers have always split on that.
SiubhanDuinne
@Amir Khalid:
According to her Wikipedia article, Huma Abedin’s mother is Pakistani while her father is Indian. I wonder why the article would describe her solely as “Pakistani-American” and call her “no friend of India.”
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
If people who are voting Hillary are like me, they’re voting that way because they are invested in maintaining some aspect of the status quo. As I was explaining a couple of weeks ago to a Trump adoring friend, Hillary isn’t going to fuck up my world with big policy lurches or non-consensus conflicts. My personal economy is on the upswing, my kids appear to be capable of doing well, and my clientele appears to be economically better off.
Bernie will blow up that economic and security order through reckless, unconsidered pandering to Mumia activists and anonymous dudebros. His voters are more of a nihilist mindset and don’t seem to have as much to lose (or are young enough to absorb the shock of a one-term Bernie failure). And yes, fail he would – he’s a fucking moron.
Trump will blow up the economic, diplomatic and security order by being bugfuck insane and attaching every aggressive carbuncle with the worst personality traits we attach to Wall Street as advisors and cabinet members.
For me, personally, it’s a no-brainer.
Jack the Second
@CarolDuhart2: When they break down favorability by party it turns out Democrats love Clinton and Republicans think she’s the spawn of Satan. No surprise there.
Independents are fairly ‘meh’, but Democrats can win on turnout, and it’s not like independents like anyone else in the race.
The enthusiasm gap was also a myth the last time I saw poll numbers; just as many Democrats were “very enthusiastic” about Clinton as Sanders. It’s just not the narrative.
Kay
@Zinsky:
Okay, but how will they find that out if there can be no activism that doesn’t immediately bring about “results”?
Where would they hear this? Are they supposed to go from listening to Donald Trump to voting for Hillary Clinton? The only acceptable political participation is voting or persuading others to vote? Once the leader is elected, that’s it, all results are then the best possible (or even imaginable) outcome?
I guess I’m just looking for the “effectiveness” or “efficiency” measure. Was Black Lives Matter worthwhile? What about Fight for Fifteen? Have they justified their voices with “results” yet, and if not, should they not have bothered?
Keith G
@amk: You do realize you are at Balloon Juice, right?
@satby: Yes of course it started earlier, but it grew into an art form during the years of Gingrich and Norquist and the Laffer Curve – a thoroughly purposeful dishonesty.
rikyrah
Good Morning ?, Everyone ?
MazeDancer
The media prefers negativity. Representing the abundant positive in the world, other than puppies, babies, and kittens, does not make “good television”.
The disconnect between Twitter and MSM becomes more apparent daily. The 87% approval Mr. Obama enjoys among Democrats is expressed continually. Just like here, “I don’t want him to go” is a frequent refrain. On TV, all we hear are Republicans calling him a “disaster”. No pushback. Happy Democrats are not “good television”
Hillary voters on Twitter are strongly enthusiastic. See her flaws and humanity. But are still grateful for her big brain, command of so many issues, and combination of caring for others and steel strength. A surprising number of people, including me, and especially women, have gone from ugh, tired of Clintons, to, wait, she’s like me. She’s endured all the sexist crap. Fought her way to this moment. Never gave up. She’s still in love with her country and wants to serve. Make things better.
Sure, I’m in a Twitter bubble. But as the votes show, it’s a big one.
(And Happy Equinox to all!)
CarolDuhart2
@Zinsky: Most Trump supporters don’t know about these people. Even if they knew the names, explaining why they should be angry is more political education than anyone wants to expend. And even if they are angry, the billionaires are untouchable behind walls of steel and glass.
But they can be angry at Maria who works under the table cleaning someone’s house. She’s strange, foreign, and “taking their job” even if it’s a job they would die rather than take, at a rate they would (and can) refuse. Or Daniel Washington who unlike his factory working dad, drives a Lexus because he can now sell insurance in an integrated market. Of Jun Lee, whose mastery of code makes him able to work at a job outside the restaurant business.
Tr ump voters want all the goodies, and the clock to turn back to a time where they can tell the aforementioned to go away and order them around like servants. But the world isn’t cooperating with that desire. China is generating billionaires. Immigrants (many of them not even Abrahamic, let alone Christian) are coming here and generating new tech and jobs that are for “pointy-headed intellectials” which they have been taught to despise becoming. Even the local minorities are getting restless and better jobs. Trump promises to turn the world backwards, like Superman did in the first movie, to a time when these things didn’t exist.
Baud
@CarolDuhart2:
Simile of the week!
Kay
Clearly a colossal waste of time and just so much complaining. Can’t they find a nice Senate candidate and donate to him or her? They’ll get an increase in the federal minimum sometime in the next 30 years- not clear why they insist on honking their horn.
debbie
@JPL:
Don’t forget they’d all end the regulations and oversight (what there is of it) keeping us from a second, identical financial crisis.
OzarkHillbilly
@Keith G:
Sorry, but I call that “laziness” and do my damndest to avoid it for the simple reason that it is at the very least, inaccurate. (except when it comes to Texas. As a the son of a born and bred Texan who was born there myself, I feel it is my honor bound duty to poke fun at them every chance I get, if for no other reason than they have no sense of humor concerning Texas)
Well, I’m not too sure about those Trump supporters, even if they aren’t they are turning a blind eye.
I agree completely with a small caveat: It was done by people in quite a few age cohorts, and I suspect the majority of it was done at a time when baby boomers were a minority of those in power.
Keith G
@Kay: Clearly those individuals need to become more responsible and get into training programs for new jobs in our soon-to-be greener economy.
amk
@Keith G: right, bitching and judging.
Keith G
@OzarkHillbilly: So now that my fellow Baby Boomers have been a majority of those in power…..?
Keith G
@amk: Working hard to uphold a fine tradition.
debbie
@Keith G:
Wrong target. It wasn’t the boomers. It was the MBAs in the 1980s (who were and are of all ages) who decided anything, even education, could be turned into a profit center, and it was the lowlifes (also of all ages) who pushed their way into financial markets.
Kay
@Keith G:
I agree with you. Keith but I think you’re a little ahead. I think you’d have to start with “is it harder for young people now than it was for middle aged people, and why is that?” There’s a lot of political energy invested in either denying it’s harder or scolding them on why it’s their fault. I don’t think “political leaders” (generally) have been persuaded on the basic premise that you (and I) believe – that it is in fact harder than it was for (recent) generations- obviously it isn’t harder as compared against all generations ever. They’d have to get there first, IMO.
geg6
Damn. That first link was so great that I had to have a cigarette. I applaud and sign onto every single word of it and am sharing it far and wide. Made my day.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: I know, and it’s just one more reason why I, as an American, see no reason to trust India any more than Pakistan. They both do what they feel is in their own best interests. Why we would expect anything else is beyond me. And I still can’t see how any one any where (white, black, brown, yellow, purple polka-dot) could see Trump as being good for their country.
Kay
@Keith G:
Nah. A higher floor will benefit the whole cohort- the 70% who are working and don’t have a college degree. That’s what the piece is partly about- how that one demand rippled. It rippled almost immediately. Obama’s original offer on the minimum wage was “10.10” (SOTU address). Clinton is up to 12. Sanders is the high end, at 15. There wasn’t a “high end” until they created it at that meeting. 12 became the realist position because there was a 15.
DivF
@OzarkHillbilly: This. The tax revolt was engineered in California in the late 70s by homeowners who were near retirement, not by boomers in their 20s and early 30s.
gene108
@Baud:
Clinton was pretty far to the Left of where Democrats were, in 1993, with his major policy goals, such as gays in the military, universal healthcare, and gun control.
The only thing he was to the Right of Democrats on was pushing for NAFTA to be passed.
Clinton also opened up government funding for AIDS beyond what Republicans had dared, signed FMLA into law, which Bush, Sr. had vetoed and liberal things he does nor get credit for.
Edit: Bill was too liberal for the times, in 1993, which is why he failed so badly early on.
OzarkHillbilly
@MazeDancer:
It’s snowing here.
Patricia Kayden
“The voter we almost never hear about, however, is the Clinton voter. Which is surprising, since Hillary Clinton has won more votes in the primaries than any other candidate so far.”
This quote says it all about how the media is covering this election cycle. It’s all about Trump this, Trump that. The media is creating the illusion that everyone in this country is fascinated and mesmerized by Trump — instead of pointing out that it’s a segment of the White population (racists, uneducated, xenophobes, etc.) who are pushing Trump to the head of the Clown Car.
It appears that even if Trump were to get 60% of the White vote (which he most likely will), he would still lose the general election if minority voters come out in full force as they did in the last two elections.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/08/26/demographics_and_the_2016_election_scenarios.html
OzarkHillbilly
@Keith G:
You do realize that neither Gingrich or Laffer are baby boomers? (born 1943 and 1940 respectively) Norquist, owner of one of histories most punchable faces, is tho: 1956.
Keith G
@Kay: I am hoping you realize that that was sarcasm. In my spectacularly imprecise opinion, I think we have allowed our economic system to become horrifically imbalanced.
There came a time during the latter stages of the Industrial Revolution, when a handful of forces (some related and some not) conspired to give workers more bargaining power than they had ever had and likely might ever have again.
Not only are those forces gone, but actually there are powers pushing in the exact opposite direction. As a society, we need to rethink the relationship between work and the establishment of a survivable income. We also may need to rethink some rather Golden Rule type feelings about how wages are set and who gets to set them. Those minimum wage workers are working a minimum wage so someone several positions above them can live a comfortable life. The problem is, that the definition of a couple life has also changed.
So yes in the end I begin to sound a bit like a Marxist in the sense that there definitely has to be a change in the way the prerogatives of capital are thought of.
Edited for voice recognition issues.
Keith G
@OzarkHillbilly:Ttwo years, really?
Ruviana
I just finished Jane Mayer’s Dark Money and it might be as scary as anything I’ve read in years. This is what we’re up against. Right wing money is deeply interpenetrated and embedded in the broad political system and burrowing deeper in. I’m not sure how we combat it. I must say that watching the Tr ump candidacy, and the fear it’s creating among the moneyed interests, is very enjoyable. They aren’t sure they can control and co-opt Tr ump though they’ll certainly try if he wins. I’m not sure what the answer is to all this at all.
OzarkHillbilly
@Keith G: This boomer is doing what he can. So sorry that just doesn’t appear to be enough. I’ll try harder in my next life.
Kay
I personally believe that some of the righteous anger of Trump voters is drummed up by Republican political professionals and pundits because they don’t want to admit Trump has fairly broad appeal in the GOP.
The latest polling suggests Trump isn’t drawing a larger percentage of white “working class” than Romney did, which goes against this narrative they’ve all settled on that Trump is the candidate of the angry worker. It’s early but Trump only polls at 49% with ALL white people and Romney got 60%. If all the Cruz and Kasich voters swing to Trump (which they will) they still doesn’t justify this narrative that Trump has discovered a new group of GOP voters. Romney had a giant margin over Obama with white working class, although there was a gender split and also an AGE split. If you’re female and younger white working class you were more likely to vote for Obama. This was discussed in the 2012 campaign, the female white working class, the “nail techs and waitresses” who were voting for Obama. I’m not sure why they’re all lumped together now.
It’s just more denial. These people can’t be rank and file Republicans because Republicans would NEVER support a Trump! Why David Brooks doesn’t! What more do you need? :)
gene108
@Amir Khalid:
Maybe the interests of Indians and Indian-Americans diverges. Maybe a Republican Presidency will be more willing to take up bilateral deals, such as Bush & Co’s nuclear deal with India.
But for Indian-Americans someone fanning the flames of white racism against “the other”, which all Republicans do to some extant, is a direct threat.
The deciding issue maybe which Party’s potential President will do more to limit the hoops Indian nationals have to jump through, which Obama has imposed, to get a visa to the USA, as well as clearing the insufferable backlog Indians face in getting Green Cards.
geg6
@Kay:
I keep seeing you and others saying how difficult young college grads have it. I’m sorry this is purely anecdotal, but this is the cohort I work with every day and have for over twenty years. And, in my personal experience, it simply isn’t true. Yeah, my campus’ average career student loan debt is at around $34k. But…. and it’s a big but…if they complete their degrees, they get very good jobs. Placement (which is hard to quantify because it’s hard to get grads to reply to surveys) is around 85% and we provide lifetime career services, so they can get help with job placement at any point. They are getting jobs in their fields. My campus has six degrees they can complete there (students who are in other majors move seamlessly to other, larger campuses to complete their degrees; we have an unusual structure compared to other multi-campus universities–no such thing as “transferring” within the university), including IST, business, psychology, administration of justice, communications and project and supply chain management. You would think these kids with the comm and psych degrees are struggling, but you’d be very wrong. They are working in their fields, getting married, buying cars and houses and starting families. Maybe our students live in some bubble that protects them. IDK, but this struggling, unemployed college grad with strangling loan debt just isn’t the case for them. It’s the dropouts who have problems, but not our grads.
Patricia Kayden
Eric Sasson, TNR:”We never hear that about Clinton, even though she has survived more scandals and accusations than the rest of the presidential field combined. It may very well be that Hillary voters are the most stubborn of all. Because they’ve heard it all for decades—and they are still showing up.”
Yep. There is no “scandal” that will negatively impact Clinton’s supporters at this point in time. We’ve heard them all — including ridiculous allegations that she personally shot Vince Foster, that she’s lesbian, that she’s somehow responsible for the Benghazi terrorist attacks, that she’s somehow responsible for her cheating husband, etc.
She would have to enter my house and kill my dogs in front of my eyes to lose my vote. Great post to start a new week, by the way. Our side needs to be optimistic and stop being bedazzled by Trump and his media enthusiasts. I hope the DNC is vigorously registering more Democrats so we have the maximum turnout in November.
Kay
@Ruviana:
It is scary. They’re working against library levies now. That’s how specific and granular it is. They went from school board elections to opposing the funding of specific libraries in one cycle. They just won one. No library for you!
OzarkHillbilly
Republican governance in a nutshell.
Keith G
@OzarkHillbilly: Many of us have tried very hard to do so. It’s unfortunate that there are so many other the who are selfish bastards.
I often have a chance to speak to some of them at family reunions.
OzarkHillbilly
@OzarkHillbilly: It gets even better:
magurakurin
@Keith G: Generations are largely artificial constructs. There isn’t real agreement on when they begin and end. But, regardless, what was this wonderful world that the parents of the boomers created? I was born in 62 so I’m technically a boomer. Was Ronald Reagan one of the architects of this paradise? He was born in 1911. The 80’s when he was in power seemed to suck pretty fucking bad to me. I worked full time, but was too poor to have money left at the end of the week and too rich to get food stamps. I lived off Ronald Reagan Ratbait and government rice for a couple of years. Was that wonderful time including the years up until 1967 when inter racial marriages were still illegal in a boat load of states? Just when were the good old days, exactly, and who were they good for?
Generational squabbling serves no purpose other than…squabbling. But if it wiggles your waggle…go for it, I guess.
BrianM
@Kay: Your history of level-headedness, clarity, and participation gives your words great weight.
C.V. Danes
@Keith G: Exactly. Much of her demographic are those who managed to climb the ladder before it got pulled up. Much of Bernie’s demographic are those who are looking up and wondering where the ladder went.
OzarkHillbilly
@Keith G:
Yes there are. I am fortunate that I don’t have any in my family with one exception and they are young enough that I have hope I can educate them softly and subtly. The only problem is I am neither subtle or soft.
gene108
@OzarkHillbilly:
That’s like not being able to tell the difference between Canada and China, because they both have about the same landmass.
Pakistan is a state sponsor of terrorism, lurches between dictatorships and democracy, and is a breeding ground for terrorists.
India is a democracy, for whatever faults it has, still holds to a free press, rights to demonstrate, etc, which America claims to value.
JMG
@Kay: If you’re a middle-aged or older white man, the “news” media, run exclusively by such people, thinks you are more important than anyone else — especially if you’re really loud.
Ben Cisco
@CarolDuhart2: Outstanding!
Keith G
@magurakurin: that is certainly true, a lot of it comes down to when you acquire your political sensibilities and your overall view of how Society is supposed to function.
One of my sisters was conceived while our father was home on leave during World War II. She is the oldest. She may not technically be a baby boomer but she is certainly of the baby boom generation. I came along some 13 years later. 9 years after I was born my sister’s first son was born. Nonetheless, my social and political sensibilities are much more similar to my sister’s then they are to my nephew’s.
OzarkHillbilly
@Keith G:
Well, I suppose when one is painting with a broad brush, little things like facts** don’t really matter, do they?
**lets get real, the very definition of baby boomers is arbitrary to begin with
gene108
@C.V. Danes:
The ladder did not get pulled up. It got knocked over, and seemingly broken beyond all repair, during the Bush, Jr. “wonder” years.
Hillary supporters want the ladder back-up and people climbing again.
They are just more gun shy on quick fixes, which sound good, but may not be sound or doable.
Also half the people tasked with ladder-repair, i.e. the Republicans, want the ladder ground into sawdust, so no one can even think about climbing up.
Kay
@geg6:
I went to community college and undergrad free. It was free. I was by no means a stellar student- I didn’t get good grades until I got to community college. My first house cost 42k. Partly because of that, we were able to pay for two children to finish undergrad out of pocket- they have no college debt- and we’re small town lawyers- we have a middle class income after expenses from the business. The only thing middle class people have is (relatively) small amounts of money leveraged over time. That’s how they stay middle class. They take that 34K they don’t owe and invest it in an asset and then they can give their children something, which sets their children up to be middle class. Each person isn’t achieving “middle class” as a one-off. It ripples. If we’re asking them to start behind and catch up, that’s fine, but I didn’t start behind. I started ahead.
My daughter will need a graduate degree to make what my husband made with a bachelors degree 30 years ago. She’ll pay for that with loans. I just think it’s the reality that they need more education. 2 years of college should be free because it’s the equivalent of high school. Just making it k-14 instead of k-12 would do a lot to solve the problem.
rikyrah
The only thing that is trust about Hillary is that she is not a Republican. And for this election, that is more than enough.
Keith G
@OzarkHillbilly: Exactly.
But yes indeed, let’s all do it we can to stop the use of easily recognizable cultural reference points from the Balloon Juice commentary.
No, I think the above is a bit of an overreaction, but not the first of the morning.
Chris
The big disconnect here is that as part of that whole “flocking to outsiders” thing, the media insists on painting the Trump and Sanders phenomena as exactly equivalent – the two populist outsiders capturing the votes of a population that’s generally dissatisfied with what the hippies used to call “the establishment” and wants to throw all the bums out. The elephant in the room is that this has held true in the Republican Party, where voters have flocked to Trump and “the establishment” is buried no matter what it tries, but false in the Democratic Party, where Sanders has done better than expected, but never enough to threaten Hillary Clinton’s lead.
That suggests two things: one, that Democratic voters are not nearly as upset with “the establishment” (or at least their part of it) as Republican voters are. Two, that even to the extent that they are upset with “the establishment,” they might view Hillary Clinton as a viable candidate to express their anger and fight for them in Washington. I know both those things are true of me, and I very much doubt if I’m the only one.
Of course, if you admit this, then you’re admitting that the Trump phenomenon might, just maybe, be a judgment on the Republican Party specifically, and not on Obama, Hillary, “the liberal elite,” or the generic “everybody in Washington.” And it suggests that the Democrats might at this point be much more in touch with ordinary voters than the Republicans are. Which is a great big problem if you’re trying to explain Trump with a fuzzy combination of “the voters are angry at everybody” and “Obama brought this upon us!”
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@SiubhanDuinne:
One drop rule?
magurakurin
@Keith G: but that’s the point, generations aren’t easily recognizable cultural reference points. They are over generalizations that have been either turned into myths or distortions and aren’t all that useful to describe millions and millions of people that happen to have been born between two arbitrary points in time. But, if it works for, like I said, have at it.
OzarkHillbilly
@gene108: No it’s not. It’s simple recognition that neither country shares the same goals as we do. I can find plenty of fault with India starting with it’s caste system.
geg6
@Kay:
While I don’t completely disagree with you, I’m about the same age as you (probably older), but my education wasn’t free at any point after high school. I went to a public university in the late 70s/early 80s and graduated with over $12k in debt. It took me many years to pay that off. I don’t see how I had it any better than the students today. Yeah, it didn’t make me happy to have all that debt and I wasn’t able to afford buying a house or (granted, I never wanted to do this) get married and have kids for at least a decade after I graduated. There really is no great difference between my experience and that of grads today. It’s the dropouts and those who don’t go to college who suffered then and who still suffer.
Kay
@JMG:
I think the trade debate is healthy. We are looking at a trade deal that impacts 40% of the economy and there was virtually no discussion of it. There was such complete elite consensus on trade they didn’t feel they even had to explain it to people who will be directly impacted by it, which is 100% of us.
It’s a dumb debate now but the debates always start dumb. Debating trade deals is LONG overdue. This assumption that they demand people make “it’s the best we could do and it’s complicated, very high level, so you’ll need to read The Economist just to participate” is just bullshit. If they want to rebut Donald Trump they have to sell the trade deal. What’s in it? How does it benefit most people? Trump seized the issue because free traders were so confident in the absolute rightness of their deals they never bothered to explain them to anyone.
pluky
@TriassicSands: Note where her unfavorable ratings are relative to those of others. Last time I checked, no one and nothing, in politics today has very good favorable/unfavorable ratings.
amk
@Kay:
Didn’t HRC win OH rather handily? Does it mean she explained these trade deals to the voters and they seemed ok with her explanations?
OzarkHillbilly
@Keith G:
:-)
Baud
@Kay:
All the D candidates have college plans. Sanders is more expansive than Clinton’s, but it’s not as if she’s ignoring that issue.
J R in WV
I was 30 when I went back to college, and 34 when I got my BS in Computer Science, which then launched a 25-year career that arced from junior to senior programmer, to analyst, to designer, to project manager, to manager of Application Development services for the entire agency. Now I’m retired, and liking that best of all. But it took a lot of work and serious interest in what the work was to enable to get there.
I had many co-workers who worked hard, but couldn’t muster much interest in the purpose of that work.
I’m totally not interested in Trump, and have contributed to Hillary Clinton’s campaign already. I’ll be kicking in to Tammy Duckworth’s campaign too, as she deserves a helping hand and will do a good job in the senate.
I’m ANGRY with the Republicans who have taken over the WV state legislature, and seem to have no idea what their job is. They seem to think their job is passing irrelevant AND stupid legislation which makes it harder to do the business of state government. My pretty good pension depends in part upon how well the state of West Virginia is managed, which is the primary job of the governor, aided by the tools the legislature provides him.
This past session the Rs gave the governor a new law about “raw milk”, made CCW permits unnecessary (but that’s OK, you can still get one that you don’t need if you want to carry in reciprocal states, who won’t recognize the WV CCW permits because they aren’t required any more), squeezed the budgets of Environmental Protection, Health and Human Services, really the whole government.
They didn’t help the moribund energy sector of the state, they didn’t help land owners deal with greedy O&G drillers, they didn’t fund the state health care program, they didn’t pay any attention to the governor 0 who has been in state government for probably 40 years. You might suspect he knows a little about how to run a state, and you would be correct. Even though he’s a Democratic Machine kind of guy who has built in little dabs of money here and there for himself and his buddies, he still knows how to make the machinery work.
But the Rs work for ALEC, not for West Virginia. Just like the Rs in the Federal government, they don’t give a rat’s ass about the people working in and out of the government. They only care about their own pockets, and the wishes of their bosses, the rich rentiers of New York and the oil patch, and the west coast.
Kay
@geg6:
I would agree with you there. I think Democrats could do a much better job reaching people who will not go to college, but want another option to earn a living wage, including certificate programs at community colleges and vocational ed. Aspiration is great but you have to reach people where they are.
Ohio has a program now where high school kids can get college credit and transfer that when they graduate high schools. The meeting on it here was SRO- parents were really excited about it, because it cuts costs for average kids- NOT just the stellar performers. If your kid is hard working (not brilliant but hard working) they can get two years of college free and to a parent who didn’t go to college an associates degree is “college”. I think we should stop approaching this from the perspective of people who pack a trunk and head off to a freshman dorm. That isn’t how most lower income people “go to college” anyway.
PaulWartenberg2016
The Hillary voter can be one of several groups:
1) Women who understand full well what it’s like to be (mis)treated in a man’s man’s man’s world.
2) Minorities who know that the Democrats take their issues seriously, and view Hillary as the likeliest candidate to win the nomination and perform better than Bernie would against the Republicans.
3) Obama supporters who know we need a Democrat to win in 2016 to solidify and build on all the gains that Obama earned over two hard terms against Republican obstruction. Hillary is the likeliest candidate to make sure the Republicans can never trash/revoke any of it (healthcare reforms, improved diplomatic relationships, alternate energy programs, gay rights, etc).
4) Democratic and moderate voters who sympathize with a socialist agenda but know full well the average American mindset can never accept a Euro model of socialism. Sorry, Bernie. We’re just being pragmatic about what we can do to make America work.
5) Republicans fleeing a Trump candidacy and reckoning “better the devil who won’t destroy the world.” This may be viewed as damning among the hardcore Far Left, but the fewer Republicans voting for Trump = bigger blowout election that shapes an undeniable mandate to lead the nation to a more Left-Center government.
Patricia Kayden
@Chris: “That suggests two things: one, that Democratic voters are not nearly as upset with “the establishment” (or at least their part of it) as Republican voters are.”
If being upset with the establishment equals being upset with President Obama, then it can be safely said that most Democratic voters aren’t upset with the establishment.
http://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2016-03-18/obamas-rising-approval-ratings-will-help-hillary-clinton
the Conster, la Citoyenne
My Bernfeeler FB friends are still posting articles about Hillary’s “coronation”, and of course when I push back and question the meaning of the word in the context of having won the most delegates and way more popular votes, **crickets**. The comment sections of all of these progressive websites from Bernie supporters are as dumb as right wing sites, and just as unhinged from reality. Maybe they’re in the denial/bargaining stage of grief, but the groupthink hero worship aspect to Bernfeeling has been a real eye opener. I hoped Hillary wouldn’t run, but I’ve been really clear eyed about her faults and strengths, and only want a reality-based candidate who will keep what progress PBO has worked so hard for in place, and know how things work and which levers do what. Sanders is not that person.
Plus, President Obama has stated over and over that he doesn’t want to leave messes behind. He’s going to hand over the keys to a sweet sweet ride, and Hillary will be in much better position to take the wheel and keep the car straight on the road. Sanders has no institutional support and would be the dog that caught the car, and is temperamentally unsuited for most aspects of the job. Scolding is not a policy and the finger wagging is tiresome.
Elizabelle
Good morning all. Happy Spring.
Google has a cute doodle today.
Anne Laurie: Thank you for posting the TNR article. Looks worth a read. Tired of the gloom and doom.
JMG
@Kay: The effects of globalization, even if they could be reversed, will now be supplanted by the effects of extreme automation –robotization. IMO, “trade” issues are now largely symbolic for both sides of the debate, not just the Trump-Sanders side. A commitment to “free trade” has been a low-cost way for Democratic candidates to assure the corporate-financial elite they won’t rock the boat TOO much on issues such as their tax rates which really matter to said elite.
But as we have seen, that is not enough for the elite, which has forgotten the old Wall Street adage about what happens to hogs. Had the elite a long-term sense of its best interests, it would support Clinton (or even Sanders) 100 percent this year, as we can take it as a given a Republican President would be profoundly unpopular in short order and that if Clinton loses, the 2020 Democratic candidate will make Bernie look like Mitt Romney.
Amir Khalid
@SiubhanDuinne:
Maybe in that Indian writer’s eyes, a Muslim Indian might as well be a Pakistani.
Kay
@Baud:
I think she spends too much time on a traditional college “experience” that is not the reality for lower middle and working class people. Kids who do really well will get free college (now) and it will be traditional- they’ll enter at 18 and graduate at 22 and then they’ll be off to grad school. What working class people – the non-brilliant middle and lower tier of students, so most of them, do is different- they put together a bachelors degree any way they can.
IMO Democrats are squeamish about this because it implies they have “lower expectations” for lower income people, but if your parents didn’t go to college at all an associates degree or technical certificate IS “college”.
The debate feels weirdly old fashioned to me, like a movie of “college kids”. That only applies to a relatively small group of people.
Just say “free community college” if that’s what she’s offering. They won’t be insulted. They know they’re not going to Harvard.
Chris
@Patricia Kayden:
Well, trying to stuff every politician into a generic similar target of anti-establishment sentiment is one of the problems with their analysis (“oh, the voters are just angry with Washington [whoever the hell ‘Washington’ is]!”) I am angry with a big chunk of “the establishment,” but not so much the President – more everybody who’s done everything they could to obstruct anything he tried to do to help people like me, the same way they obstructed Bill Clinton the white trash hillbilly who “came in and trashed the place and it wasn’t his place,” and the same way they’ll obstruct Hillary Clinton if she’s the next president. The teabagger Congress, the financiers who still own a ludicrous amount of the political system, and all the unelected parasites of “Official Washington” who provide the interface between the two (of which MSM pundits are a part), yes, them I’m pissed off at, and I’d consider that “anti-establishment sentiment.”
Baud
@Kay:
To be honest, I don’t know anything about Sanders’ college plans other than “free at public universities” and “paid for by Wall Street transaction tax.”
I can’t understand Dems’ squeamishness given how often they are wrongly tagged with the elitist label.
geg6
@Kay:
We’ve had what we call dual enrollment for high school kids for years. It’s a great way for kids to get those college credits at low to no cost (the intermediate units in each county have grants for low income students; higher incomes pay half price) and it really helps them be prepared for college and to able to graduate on time instead of in 4.5 or 5 years ( which is the national average now).
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Kay:
A good friend of mine is a community college English and writing professor in Brooklyn whose classes are full of students who really shouldn’t be in college. She’s created a one-woman show about her experiences teaching these kids, who are barely literate, yet have bought into the whole “everyone needs a college degree” to get ahead. The problem these students have brought to her class started in high school, where they didn’t get the education they needed to succeed and the kinds of organizational and study skills it takes to complete coursework, and that’s the problem that “free college” doesn’t address. In European countries that offer free university, there is a very rigorous admission process, and you get one shot at it. If you fail, you choose another path in life.
Baud
My college plan consists of creating a Baud U. in every state and accepting all comers except the best and the brightest.
And at Baud U.’s, all dorms will be pet friendly.
magurakurin
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Personally I would prefer that the two of them were talking about “totally awesome high school for all.”
Kay
@Baud:
I think Democrats are reluctant to say “most of you probably aren’t going to a top college so in reality we should probably talk about our free community college and vocational programs” because they think that sounds elitist.
They’re uncomfortable with admitting that a middle class requires A HUGE MIDDLE. Conservatives do the same thing for different reasons, because they like the notion of a “meritocracy” that rewards the best (obviously- they made it didn’t they?) and they are in love with the idea of bootstrapping. They love hero stories- the homeless kid that went to Harvard. The kid who got a voucher and shook off the “mediocrity” of his public school, like a rough diamond they discovered. What they don’t love is the mass “public” who actually are just trying to make it, who want something less inspiring, like “security”.
Peale
Bernie is just too old, no matter what his policy views are.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@magurakurin:
Investing in public school teachers K-12 has huge payoffs. In Massachusetts every teacher has to have a Masters degree, and that doesn’t come cheap – perhaps offering free graduate school degrees in education would be a better allocation of resources as a force multiplier.
Jack the Second
@Kay: That Big Business wants to turn back labor rights to the point of “If they were technically slaves, we might be construed as having a legal or moral obligation to take care of them” makes me angry that they’re evil people with no concern for their fellow human beings, and they’re in charge of things.
That Big Business forgets that the alternative to peaceful negotiations across the table leading to stability and dignity for workers is workers occasionally burning down a motherfucking factory and smashing the gears of industry until capital sits down with labor, that makes me angry that they’re stupid, short-sighted idiots with no grasp of history, and they’re in charge of things.
Strong labor unions means that workers don’t violently revolt and capital doesn’t hire private security to gun down protesting women and children. Who the fuck wants to go back?
Kay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
This is a really popular idea but there’s been some studies disproving it. The suspicion is they’re over-relying on “qualifying” testing when kids enter college. They did a large scale experiment where they didn’t test incoming community college members to “place” them in remedial courses but instead relied upon high school grades and many more ended up in regular classes and many more graduated, because they weren’t talking 5 remedial courses which if course sets them back and also costs more. The focus is just now shifting from “high schools aren’t preparing them” to “community colleges can’t expect them to come in the door with college-level skills, because that’s why they’re there- to get college level skills”.
Matt McIrvin
Maybe the Hillary voters are angry about different things.
I saw this analogy somewhere a while back: don’t remember where, but it’s not original to me. You’re a female mid-level corporate manager, with considerable seniority in the organization and a longer list of accomplishments than many men who are higher up in the corporate hierarchy. You suspect you may be bumping against the glass ceiling, but apart from that you seem ripe for promotion.
When the time comes around, you’re passed over in favor of a younger male African-American wunderkind who has been shooting up the ranks. You think, OK, this actually makes sense and isn’t necessarily motivated by sexism: the guy is genuinely brilliant, and his promotion says as much or more about the company’s commitment to diversity as mine would. Nobody saw this guy coming. I’ll get it next time.
The next time, you’re passed over in favor of an older white guy, kind of an oddball, with a less-distinguished record than yours.
Obviously it’s not a perfect analogy. But I can’t help thinking that some people are seeing the potential for a Sanders nomination that way.
SiubhanDuinne
@Amir Khalid:
I suppose that’s it.
The more I learn about Abedin, the more impressed I am with her. I hope Hillary does name her as CoS or senior advisor. The mere fact that she is fluent in Arabic is a huge asset.
Kay
@Jack the Second:
It’s really interesting if you read the other side, the “big business” side. The fact is they were rattled by Occupy. They were scared. There were all these stories about “they’re getting restless! they might come for us!”
It makes me laugh because God, they’re such chickens. 20,000 fast food workers peaceably protesting is TERRIFYING, apparently. The absolute fury with which they meet every peep out of a labor union- labor unions are VASTLY out-gunned, yet they’re an existential threat to CEO’s.
JMG
@SiubhanDuinne: The same Americans who get freaked about people in this country who speak English as a second language distrust other Americans who can speak any foreign language at all, let alone Arabic. Funny how that works.
Kay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I’m on a school committee and I can tell you this- our public school “improving performance” is like bailing a leaky boat. Their students are poorer. 16% more low income students over 20 years. We just “tipped” from less than 50% ow income to more than 50%. Just staying even is an improvement. Of course that isn’t the goal, but that IS the reality. I think that has to be included, not to “protect teachers” but to deal with reality.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Kay:
The problem my friend has with her students is that a small handful will ever get college level skills. The rest are spending all their time doing the kind of remedial reading and writing that the average 5th grader from a suburban school system could do. They come from chaotic family situations and/or are immigrants, and their expectations are completely unrealistic – when my friend asks them what they see themselves doing with their degree, they think they’re going to be lawyers and doctors and rich businessmen like they see on TV.
Chris
@Kay:
Well, do note – they love hero stories, but they tend to be very uncomfortable with the people who’ve actually lived them. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Yeah. Sigh :-(
I guess racists are everywhere. I knew that, of course, but it’s always disappointing to run up against so many examples.
Kay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
So for us, here, in our public school district, 2 things are happening at the same time- we have more lower income students and those students need more education to make what their parents made. That’s why it can’t just be “education” or if it IS just education there has to be a recognition that this is a much heavier lift. They sure won’t accomplish the much heavier lift with less funding than they had in 2009, and that’s what they have to work with.
Aimai
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: i have a cousin who is a principal in an alternate (not charter) highschool in new york. The lives of her kids range from disturbing to frightening to merely chaotic. They cant stay home to attend community college because many of them are essentially homeless as older kids or kids from former relationships get pushed out. And they have trouble functioning in traditional four year/residential schools because they dont have the social, emotional, and financial support that middle class kids do.
liberal
LOL. Just like Bud Light is the most popular beer—it’s the power of brand.
SiubhanDuinne
@JMG:
Really. If English was good enough for Jeebus, it should be good enough for these “people,” knowwhatimean?
Davis X. Machina
@PaulWartenberg2016:
7. Workers laboring under a burden of false consciousness so dire that they cannot correctly determine where their class interests truly lie without the direction and example of a vanguard party.
rikyrah
@CarolDuhart2:
You are right. They long for the delusional world of Mad Men.
Kay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
This is just my opinion but I think that came about from ignoring or devaluing the work that people do. If 70% of US working people DON’T have a college degree that is ignoring and devaluing a hell of a lot of work. We could start by talking about that work like it has value. I heard a lot of bullshit about “welders” from Republicans in the debates. How no one wanted to be a “welder”. Maybe it’s because we only glorify people who are doctors and lawyers and economists and tech moguls?
I also think it’s to a certain extent putting the values of “professionals” on working people. To a lot of people, a community college is enough. It’s a heavy enough lift. They don’t actually need or want what Carly Forinia needs and wants. There will be exceptions! But the exception isn’t the rule.
Amir Khalid
@liberal:
Do you seriously believe that Hillary, who has by far the most comprehensive resume on offer in this cycle, and who is at least the equal of anyone else in the 2016 field in debating and political skills, is to the other candidates what horse piss is to worthwhile beer?
Gator90
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Things are going reasonably well for me; I trust Hillary not to fuck it up.
Aimai
@Matt McIrvin: im an hrc voter–was an edwards then an obama supporter. I do think you are right about one thing–im pissed that all of HRC’s firsts, including her vote totals last time and this time, are being diminished and slandered as irrelevant or passe by sanders supporters and the press. Reminds me of the way ghe progressive fight for clean air and water is forgotten bybrepublicans as they argue that regulations are unnecessary because we have no smog. But i dont see sanders himself as a problematic candidate. As far as im concerned despite all the totalizing hysteria and splitting and weeping from # notallsandersvoters this is all the narcissim of small differences. Some democrats want to hang onto small gains made under Obama and some think they can make huge strides by attacking him and primising radical chsnge. Both want to head in roughly the same direction. Im satisfied with the direction so im essentially satisfied with either as a president.
Kay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
My son has a friend who I love because he’s 13 but he’s really an innocent. He is just ordinary “poor”- his mother is his sole support and she works at a convenience store. You know what he wants? A garage door opener, like I have. He doesn’t have a garage, but that’s besides the point. That to him will mean he has “made it” :)
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Aimai:
Yes, the kinds of situations my friend describes her students coming from is mind-blowing. We were on vacation together and she brought her students’ papers to review/correct and shared some of them. Mind.Blown.
Iowa Old Lady
We expect public schools to remedy a large number of the problems kids face–poverty, parental neglect, learning disabilities, hunger, etc. I understand why we might hope that: All kids go there. But to do it schools need social workers, health care workers, small classes, summer food programs, day care, and all kinds of other stuff. Instead states cut their resources and punish them when they inevitably fail to work miracles.
My DIL is a first grade teacher. Her school also just reached some level where a smaller percentage of kids are below the poverty line. So you think great, but it also meant reduction in funding for a program they ran in late summer where kids who were on the bottom skill levels were given a three week head start of the school year so they could refresh what they’d forgotten over the summer.
I wish we funded schools like we do the military.
Aimai
@liberal: this is exactly it. Didnt jeb bush’s run just show everyone how important name recogition and lots of money is in politics?
JMG
@Kay: I agree in large part. Don’t forget the insidious effect of “credentialism” imposed from above on many white-collar middle-class jobs. I would cite my own former trade, newspaper reporter. It was once open to anyone reasonably literate with a knack for the job, and at the big city tabloid where I worked, the older reporters had a variety of educational backgrounds. I remember reading an obit for a man who began as a copy boy and high school dropout before WWII, went into the service, came back into the business and eventually became editor in chief of one of the Philadelphia dailies (forget which).
Those days are long over. First, there are maybe one-sixth as many jobs as in the ’70s. Second, if you don’t have a journalism degree from an “elite” school or an Ivy League degree with a series of internships at prestige media outlets, there’s no path up from the smaller papers and TV stations that offer not much more than fast food industry wages when hours of work are factored in.
I guarantee that over 90 percent of the staff of the Times, Post, Wall Street Journal today came from at worst the top level of middle class existence, the prosperous professional suburbs and their urban enclave equivalents.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: Firstpost is mostly awful, as I have discovered in the past six months or so. They are like a cross between Buzzfeed and Daily Caller. They skew rightward on politics and are in love with their own sense of humor and smarts.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Kay:
Ok, that’s just really heartbreaking.
Davis X. Machina
@Kay: I’ve been pitching for mandatory skills/trade/vocational schooling for all students. In this country you are what you do. So you should be able to do, perhaps even do for a living, many things.
Let there be no B Ark.
Oh, and to work is to pray.
moonbat
@Chris: Every bit of this.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Speaking as one who has done a little professional welding as a carpenter I find that as offensive as I find it humorous. It’s the same bullshit as when some people say “Americans won’t roof houses anymore” or “hang drywall” or even “pick vegetables”. Americans will happily do any and all of the jobs but not at the slave wages these people seem to think are the most that should ever be paid for such work.
Doug R
@Amir Khalid: Is that why we didn’t notify the Pakistanis about the Bin Laden raid? Because we love and trust them so much?
oldgold
I am no longer concerned about who the Clinton primary voter is. The democratic party’s primary contest is essentially over.
We need to focus on who will be a Clinton November voter.
If her opponent is Trump, and I think it will be, she will inherit the Obama coalition. The diminished African-American
vote will be more than made up for by the increased turnout
of Latin-American voters. The Obama coalition will be supplemented by Clinton receiving a significant majority of female suburban votes.
Kay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I makes sense to focus on “excellence” for AA children (to a certain extent) because there’s lots of evidence of bias- they aren’t admitted to gifted programs in the same numbers they should be and they are punished more harshly than white kids in public schools. But I do think there is a vast middle in the country, white and black, and that can’t be ignored or devalued, because that’s the bedrock- that’s where first generation high achievers come from. Particularly for AA’s because they start behind- they didn’t get the asset accrual possibilities white people got. 3/4 of TNC’s essay on reparations is ABOUT ASSETS. It’s hard-headed. It’s ABOUT property- who got it and who didn’t.
Not everyone is top 10%, including me. That should be admitted and then valued for what it is, which is enough sometimes, and even more than enough- brave and valiant sometimes, depending on where they started.
Aimai
@Matt McIrvin: also the hillary voter isnt only an older white woman–african american women, latino men and women–she has lots of voters for whim this analysis doesnt quite apply.
Bartholomew
Heya ‘status quo’ progressives! Yes, Anne Laurie, the media is obsessed with Sanders and his voters. Eagle eyes. What else is on the agenda today?
The problem with your leftist malformation rotting on this cracking branch is that its members have self-cauterized the section of brain required to understand that collusion between the two parties is a factual event that is actually happening. This cauterization was caused by unjust scapegoating and sealed by years of monkey-cage group think. No known cure; like propaganda it degrades the holder.
The historic cycle, which has played out repetitively since the advent of money, is that after massive financial fraud the corrupt politicians foment war … this is to burn the evidence in the fire as the fraudsters escape, as was done with the Confederate treasury as the perps vacated with the loot. Etc, etc.
The scam is ending: so, benighted donkeys, the role for Hillary is … to foment war. She’s already made her bones with her actual constituents. She is important and very needed, so the self-retarded leftists that took over the ‘progressives’ will support those wars, blindly, as has been demonstrated here for the world to see.
The question I have, how much are they paying you, Cole? You were too smart for this.
CarolDuhart2
Oldgold, I’m not worried about the “diminished” voter participation of AA’s. We know Trump is encouraging racists of all sorts to be violent. And the greatest campaigner in my lifetime will be working with her to get out all of the vote.
Thor Heyerdahl
@Bartholomew: Who knew that a Jill Stein bumper sticker could crystallize such rage? At least Steve knows how to use a litter box.
CarolDuhart2
Look, a dude bro amongst us with the tired “both sides do it” pseudo-intellectual argument. With the “Hillary is a Warmonger” crap (implied).
Mike R
@Thor Heyerdahl: Coupled with too much alcohol the night before and no coffee in the morning.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Morning everyone. Late to the party again…
Relatedly, on the BBC TV show UK Reporters yesterday there was a segment talking about this stuff. One guy was going on all authoritatively about the “outsider” vs “establishment” candidates and how Hillary had so many “scandals” that were hurting her. He also was so exasperated that (roughly) – “The Democrats had the perfect candidate to run this time – Joe Biden – but they got behind this flawed candidate with so many negatives and scandals…”
Being a TV pundit anywhere in the world seems to be the easiest job in the world – just say what 3-5 other “serious” people are saying and you’ve got it made.
:-/
When Hillary wins 400 EVs, there are probably still going to be people saying what a flawed, scandal-ridden, unlikable, screechy, cold, untrsutworthy, and crabby old woman she is and how surprising it is that the GOP lost so badly…
Cheers,
Scott.
oldgold
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Yes, Biden would be the perfect candidate for everyone who is a fan of Uncle Billy in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’
Davis X. Machina
@CarolDuhart2:
If by ‘dudebro’ you mean ‘correctly-oriented cadre who is here to do a vital job of agitprop’, that is.
different-church-lady
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
No, actually, he wouldn’t. Because he ain’t gonna get any of that shit done. And the “dudebros” will never let him off the hook for that.
Heck, if I thought he had a realistic shot getting half of what he talks about done, with real numbers behind it, I’d be firmly in his camp, no matter what orientation the applecart wound up in.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Keith G: Reagan and Weinberger and the other “Free Market Uber Alles” types in Ronnie’s administration weren’t Boomers.
Even these days, the some of the “Silent Generation” types are still doing a lot of damage.
Don’t fall into the trap of blaming a generation for the actions of a particularly destructive political mindset.
Ted Cruz was born in 1970. Is he representative of Gen X? Should we blame Gen X for him? :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
They’re doing a whole lot more than just honking their horn.
ThresherK
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Wow. I have never watched that show, but I guess that really alters my opinion of Britons on politics, and not for the better.
Do you know which “BBC Reporter” said this, and who is their American pundit equivalent?
I mean, when I think of the mediascape for politics over there, I see: A genuine press corps that has papers all over the spectrum, their PM takes actual questions from Parliament, and the England version of Louie Gohmert or Ginnie Foxx (or so many other R’s, insert name here) isn’t fluffed as some serious, accomplished legislator by whatever the English Jonathan Karl is.
ETA: Remember the first rule of being a Republican candidate: All the media cares demands of you is to win. Only for mere Democrats can we be over six months away and the press projects how a Dem needs to transform or overcome or prove some bullshit after inauguration.
Linda
@OzarkHillbilly: I heard a friend of a friend say that she heard “she had blood on her hands,” had NO idea of the context, but was still upset by this.
evodevo
Actually very simple explanation: I love that Bernie is running and pulling Rtump and Clinton to the left – at least SOME of my economic concerns are getting aired! – but I want a candidate who will WIN THE GENERAL. Therefore, Hillary. NEVER want a repeat of 2000….
Villago Delenda Est
@debbie: The obsession with short term profit is the doom of capitalism. Hell, even Adam Smith knew this.
different-church-lady
@Keith G: Back in the latter stages of the industrial revolution, you actually had to make something to make money. Now all you have to do to make money is manipulate money.
If it weren’t for workers’ need to continue to exist on a biological level, the masters of “the economy” would factor them out entirely.
different-church-lady
@JMG: Gotta know your audience.
Kropadope
@evodevo:
Funny that, with her being called the new Gore upthread. It seems every time a party nominates the “safe, electable” candidate, that candidate loses. Romney, Kerry, Gore, Dole, Dukakis, Mondale, . . .
henqiguai
@OzarkHillbilly(#80):
And we here in eastern New England are awaiting the onset of what may be a kickass Nor’easter starting this early evening.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@geg6: Thanks for the good news. It’s heartening to hear things like that.
It’s usually the case that gross perceptions lag reality, often by years. Here’s hoping that’s the case with recent college grad’s job prospects these days as well.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gex
@Chris: Excellent post.
Aimai
@oldgold: if biden were the establishment nominee the bernie people would give him a pass for his AUMF vote.
Kropadope
As far as who Hillary’s voters are, may I suggest victims of Stockholm Syndrome?
Amir Khalid
@Kropadope:
You will vote for Hillary over Donald, and like it.
different-church-lady
@Bartholomew: Poe’s Law.
Matt McIrvin
@oldgold:
I don’t think it’s even clear that the AA vote will be diminished. Having Trump as an opponent will be a powerful motivator for anyone who is not white.
The young white liberal vote will be down from 2008. But Obama already lost a lot of the white youth vote in 2012.
different-church-lady
@Kropadope: George H. W. Bush: REVOLUTIONARY!!!
different-church-lady
@henqiguai: Are we? I gotta start paying more attention…
Matt McIrvin
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Yes, actually. He reminds me of a lot of douchey guys I went to college with.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Haven’t seen “Bartholomew” since he was screaming about how The Blacks just don’t know what’s good for them, or they’d be voting for Bernie(!). Keith G’s smarmy passive-aggressiveness is as regular the sunrise. But I like it when it tips into pure stupid as it did here.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kropadope: I remember when you used to try to be the Reasonablie Berniebot.
different-church-lady
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Well of course: at that point they’ll have her whole presidency to ruin.
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Who’s got the Stockholm Syndrome now, eh?
Matt McIrvin
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I’ve never understood how Joe Biden suddenly became this universally beloved figure. Was it the Onion making jokes about him? Most of Hillary Clinton’s negatives apply as well or more accurately to Biden.
Aimai
Its vitally important that we as a party try to hang on to the gains made under obama and try to move the country forward with a democratic agenda into a third term. My main objection to bernie is that he seems intent on taking down the party and starting again from scratch. Or at least implying to his voters that this is feasible. Its not. Obama trued to break this mindset with OFA. Previous to that there was very little institutional memory or long term thinking about voters, voter registration, down ticket races. It was very much amateur hour with candidates struggling to get voters out in a very disorganized and media buy heavy model. We cant, as a country, afford that approach to the election or to governance. Bernie and his fans are excited to be making a run for the presidency and thats great. But they are not the first, not the only, not the most moral, and not gojng to be syccessful long term unless they lay claim to the successes of the obama team/administration and build on it. I defy bernie to have dine better, if he had been catapulted into obamas seat in 2008. And i just dont think its smart politics to run as an attack candidate against the party you are asking to lead. If its so shitty and the people who have risked their fucking lives to run it (as bill, hillary, obama and michelle all have) are so corrupt the start your own fucking party.
Thor Heyerdahl
@Matt McIrvin:
People just wanted to see him actually wash the white Trans-Am in the Whitehouse driveway?
D58826
Nightmare scenario, esp. if Bernie s fans stay home.:
1. Clinton wins popular vote but does not break 270 in the electorial college
2. GOP split between Trump and 3rd party candidate selected by the power brokers/lobbyists(Mittens?)
3. 3rd party candidate selected in GOP controlled house.
At that point even a banana republic;ic would look betterf
RaflW
@OzarkHillbilly: As the bullshit media coverage of Clinton continues (see NYT referenced @top, for example), I become more and more motivated to see Hillary win. The same morons who have been gobsmacked by Trump’s success of course are covering the Dems. And they are as clueless about what motivates us as they are about Trumpistas.
I am quite confident that the highly self regarding media circle-jerk will continue, and optimistic that Clinton “despite her unfavorables” will win. But that won’t wake up the media any more than 2012 woke up the GOP, even with their fancy ‘autopsy’ report.
different-church-lady
@D58826: As of this moment, GOS all aflutter about a poll that has Clinton ahead of Trump in… Utah.
So (as of this moment) your #1 doesn’t seem to be high in probability.
Amir Khalid
@Matt McIrvin:
I think the Onion’s creation of Onion Joe did help make Joe Biden popular. But he ran for president twice, and faded out early both times. He’s been an effective VP for Obama, he’s earned his reputation for empathy and his popularity a dozen times over, but he’s proven that he’s not a great candidate for president.
The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016
@Davis X. Machina: Isn’t the point of agitprop to be convincing, though?
@Kropadope: Well, when Clinton goes up against an incumbent President or a ‘compassionate conservative’, please let us know.
superpredators4hillary
@Aimai:
Sis Boom Bah
RaflW
@Baud:
And Al Gore.
The media was and is complicit in all this. They love all the GOP red meat being tossed around … it sells papers/clicks/nielsen points. Democrats are competent, and that is highly boring. So, yeah, lets f*k up the country for ratings!
The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016
@different-church-lady: And we see one (of several) very obvious reasons why the Republicans are panicking about candidate Trump.
Jamelle Bouie used some electoral college toy to show what the electoral map would look like with Trump only getting 49% of the white vote. It came out somewhere between Reagan and LBJ.
D58826
@different-church-lady: It is the ‘nightmare scenario’ not necessarily the most probable. Bill won with less than 50% of the popular vote but still hit the 270 EC mark. However in an election year it which Trump as the GOP candidate is not an Onion headline, anything is possible.
The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016
@Kropadope: @superpredators4hillary:
Might I suggest that Sanders would potentially be doing better if his supporters weren’t smug condescending pricks? Just a thought.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
I don’t accept that there’s some acceptable route to political engagement and there’s only one way to get there.
I have no earthly idea what the individuals who make up Bernie Sanders base will do. I do know 15 dollars was widely derided as unimaginable before a labor union put 20 million dollars into it.
I read this screed from the Chamber of Commerce where labor unions only backed it because they “wanted more members”. No shit. There’s this test applied to Lefty causes that isn’t applied to mainstream or Right wing causes- is it “efficient”? I don’t know. I know the chamber of commerce blew a bundle on Romney and no one calls them unserious.
The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016
@D58826: The window to get a third-party candidate’s name on the ballot is rapidly closing and the ever-reliable Bill Kristol is still fishing for volunteers.
Either the GOP says ‘fuck it, we’re doing it live’ and hands the nom to Il Douche or they anoint someone out of the blue in Cleveland. Ronald Reagan ain’t walking through that door. And either way, Clinton wins.
henqiguai
@Keith G(#84):
You use the terms, especially when being insulting, you better get it right.
Baud
@Kropadope:
I said the media would treat Hillary like Gore. Not that it would as effective.
The media would treat Sanders like McGovern or Mondale. That doesn’t mean that Sanders would only win one state.
The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016
@Kay:
If the downticket Dems are smart, they’ll see what Bernie’s done in the rural Midwest as a path to victory where the party is institutionally handicapped. Sanders wasn’t just pulling Clinton and the party to the left, he was showing them ‘hey, have you considered bringing this message to the red states?’
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@ThresherK: I didn’t recognize the guy and don’t recall if I saw his name. I can’t seem to watch the segment again today. He was a youngish-guy, maybe 35-40.
Watching that show is a little eye-opening. There are sensible reporters everywhere, and there are those who just relay “conventional wisdom” with great authority. There are BBC reporters like that, too – I think Katy Kay (one of their BBC America anchors) is very much in that “America is a center-right nation, St. John McCain is right about foreign policy, the Democrats are too leftist, etc.” mode. Once I made up my mind about her, it colors all of her reporting and post-story commentary, so I generally try to avoid shows with her now…
Seeing foreign reporters mouth those talking points can help one snap out of complacency about US reporting, I think.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Okay, but if there’s a top 50% there’s a bottom 50%. What is the role of a community college? Is it to serve the bottom 10% of the top 50%?
My eldest was a really good student in an average high school. He got offered a free ride at U of Cincinnati and he and I went down there because I was trying to talk him into going- it’s free! The President told us the “scholars” were “guaranteed” to pass first year classes and that made the President happy. Okay, but is that school for the top 10%? Why would I pay 10k for a year of college entry level courses if my kid came in knowing that from high school?
Maybe we should be clearer on what we want and what we’re doing to get it. My middle son is an apprentice. As part of that program he takes math courses. His math course is exactly what I would expect kids who came from the bottom 50% of an ordinary public high school to do, and it’s ALL he needs to know to do his skilled trade. That’s where he ranked in high school, so it isn’t a big shocker.
henqiguai
@C.V. Danes (#97):
So, whitewashing out all those Blacks, Hispanics, Chinese, women in general…, eh? ‘Cause, y’know, I kind’a remember that skinny little ladder not even being brought back out until a lot of Boomers started raising hell. Including your not having to worry about your delicate rear-end being drafted and sent off to some sh!t hole overseas (or down south somewhere unpleasant) for a couple of years.
superpredators4hillary
@The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016: The thoughtfulness is appreciated, but Hillarinas have demonstrated your suggestion is bogus.
RaflW
@debbie:
But, our economy operates inside a political container.
As a (barely) Gen Xer with a boomer older brother, I do think there are generational trends worth talking about. Do they apply to every person in the generation? Of course not.
What I think some of the boomer-criticism is aimed at is that the boomer-inflated voter block (with a big assist from older IGMFU voters) accepted and often rewarded the politicians who enabled the MBAs to cause such havoc. It has been the synergy of loose banking regulation, wealth-concentrating tax law, and corporate skid-greasing that has gone on while the boomers are in their leadership years that leaves an impression.
Also, too, I think Al Franken was on to something with his old SNL gig. He distilled much of what I find challenging about a segment of boomers, many of whom seem to have boosted themselves into corporate and political leadership circles now (even Al, as it happens, though he seems to be a politician who cares about people other than “me, Al Franken”).
different-church-lady
@Kay: Would you agree that just sitting in your car screaming JUST FUCKING MOVE ASSHOLE! is no way to approach getting to an actual solution for traffic gridlock?
My comment was not aimed at Sanders, nor most Sanders supporters, nor at advocates in general — not even advocates that wind up being less than effective due to their own miscalculations. It was aimed at a certain kind of loudmouth who misuses issues advocacy as a car horn. All they want to do is blow off steam, and they don’t care if they irritate everyone else while they’re doing it.
Taking the example of OWS, they had certain successes and certain failures. They made a lot of noise, but they also took a lot of action. The noise had a real message behind it. They weren’t just screaming at people.
There’s lots of different routes. But some are still better than others. Irritating people who are stuck in the same situation you are isn’t one of the good ones.
MoxieM
@geg6 : Here’s a grounded data point (a single one, but a real one). Daughter, 24, graduated 2014, with $100,000 in college debt. Yeah, 100k. And she had very good financial aid. She went to an excellent private college. No graduate school, not interested. She’s employed, but had to go overseas to get employment (thankfully, she’s polylingual). She makes just under $30k/year, and has no hope of ever owning a house, or even, a car. She lives decently in Europe (damned socialists!) but could in no way get by here.She could get more training in Europe–not “free” by the way, like everyone claims, that’s nonsense. It’s vastly cheaper, but that’s another post. Her father (otherwise AWOL) and I pick up the loan tab–she just can’t afford it, and eat at the same time. I’m in my late 50’s, hold a doctorate in social sciences, long career in basic research, switched to public history (i.e., managing small historical museums)…now unemployed… bad timing on my part. I am looking toward a dismal retirement and hoping I can find something to scrape by on. Go ahead, call me stupid, but–I’m a mom, it’s what you do.
Tom Q
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Throughout the 1992 later primaries, where Bill Clinton was racking up easy victories, the press kept emphasizing polls saying voters wold prefer some other (imaginary) candidate. I remember telling a friend in June of that year that the headline in November would be “Clinton wins sweeping victory but polls show voters would prefer someone else”. So, this didn’t start with Hillary; it’s part and parcel of how the press has been treating the Clintons since they came to national prominence.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
I think we will have a real debate about campaign finance because the Democrat’s position doesn’t make any sense. If campaign funding has NO BEARING on political leverage or access or results then why do Democrats oppose Citizens United? They just finished telling us donations don’t sway them. Citizens shouldn’t be a problem, then.
Are Democratic politicians just better people? Republicans are swayed by the Koch brothers donations but Democrats aren’t swayed when they take money from the Walton heirs? Roughly half of the donations from rip off, for-profit colleges, for example, go to Democrats. If they are going to say they are in support of “campaign finance reform” they better explain why they are in favor of that. Because all those other people are influenced by donations but not them?
It won’t be this cycle and it may not be the next either, but someone has to raise the issue before it can become an issue.
Betty Cracker
@MoxieM: I know other parents who are in a similar boat. The fact is, state and federal aid to students and universities has been slashed for decades, so of course it’s harder for students now. When I was a student at a state college in the late 1980s, it was possible to piece together sufficient funding for a place to live, food to eat, books and tuition through a combination of Pell grants, scholarships and working — without going into debt. I did it myself. My 17-year-old will not be able to replicate that when she goes to college next year. There just isn’t enough aid available. So we’ll help her. It’s either that or she goes into crushing debt.
different-church-lady
@different-church-lady: @Kay: Also neglected to mention that I don’t agree with the Canadian Anchor Baby’s application of my analogy to the “bully pulpit”. It’s a misuse of the term. The guy blaring his horn isn’t using a bully pulpit. He’s not even using a soapbox. He’s just blaring a horn. At the most he’s merely demanding that someone else use one.
Kay
@MoxieM:
One of our legal assistants has a son who is a very good student. Ohio State is out of reach for him, because he’s not “top” enough to get a free ride. Okay, who is this public university for? Was it intended to be for kids who are in the top 20% of income and top 5% ACT score?
Joel
@CarolDuhart2: I pointed this out some time ago when people were fretting over one or other of the morning or sunday shows. While these shows resonate within the narrow beltway circles, they are watched consistently by a few hundred thousand people nationally. In other words: 0.2% of the country.
Aimai
@Kay: citizens united isnt a problem because it helps the wealthy buy poiticians but because it enables politicians to buy voters.
Baud
@Kay: He is exactly they type of student who would be welcome at University of Baud – Ohio.
D58826
@Tom Q: And the ever popular ‘scandal plagued Clintons’. If they were guilty of even half of what they have been accused of there isn’t enough time left in the universe for them to serve their sentences.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: That has happened here too. If I were graduating from high school now with the grades I had when I actually graduated in the 80s, there’s no way I’d get into my alma mater, the University of Florida. My kiddo, who is a much better student than I was, wasn’t a lock to get in.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Isn’t it too soon to pull the lever on the Bob Kerry ejector seat?
Kay
@Baud:
She didn’t go to college but that’s where he wants to go. He can’t. You’re just like “oh stop lying to them. stop telling them to wear this merchandise with flagship “state school” on it from 5th grade and work hard if it’s just a bunch of bullshit”.
He would have been better off being told “the best thing for you is 2 free years of community college and the public college down the road”. That makes everyone uncomfortable because we want to pretend it’s 1974 and we all started “equal” and some of us rose on merit alone, because we’re so brilliant and hard working. If it’s harder for them at least tell them that.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Aimai: I’d phrase it a little differently:
Citizens United is a big problem not because of the amount of money involved, but because there is little or no disclosure of where the money is coming from and no accountability. Corporate leadership can decide to dump millions of money into entities that are obviously designed to destroy a particular candidate with little or no input from the shareholders or other stakeholders. Independently wealthy people can hid behind some corporate structure and spend vast sums that individual people cannot (as they’re limited to $2700 per campaign).
Also, while some poo-poo the idea that Citizens United has been a big deal since the Koch Brothers and Adelson’s favorite candidates haven’t won, I’m not so sanguine.
We shouldn’t forget that Citizen’s United is the shortened version of the group’s name – “Citizen’s United Not Timid”. It’s Roger Stone’s 527 that was explicitly designed to destroy Hillary. I don’t think he’s gone away, and I don’t think that his group (and groups like them) will be sitting on their laurels after the SCOTUS victory. They’re going to try to go after her in the fall. I don’t think we really know the impact of the Citizens United decision yet. The final SCOTUS decision wasn’t handed down until January 2010. This will be the first election when Hillary sees the full impact of the decision…
Cheers,
Scott.
henqiguai
@Matt McIrvin(#138):
I’d just like to point out that most credible studies, over the years, have shown white women benefiting more from affirmative action, to which you’re alluding, than others.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
It’s part of my platform.
@Kay: Yeah, even if 100% of higher education is free, people aren’t going to get into the school of their choice. There has to alternatives for everyone.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I’m up against a woman lawyer a lot here.We see each other weekly. I love her because she’s a truth-teller. She went to MSU. She doesn’t have children but she dotes on her nieces and nephews and he nephew was rejected from MSU. She was like “WTF? MSU is now for the upper crust? Since when? He works twice as hard as I did”.
The “proficiency” score on Ohio’s state public schools test is now “college ready” which is the equivalent of the average ACT score of entering college students. 30% passed, which shouldn’t surprise anyone, since 25% of people here have a college degree. What happens to the 70%? Can it even be “the bottom 70%?” Does that phrase even make sense?
different-church-lady
@Baud:
Dude, over half the delegates haven’t been awarded yet and your strongest states are ahead of you!Oh, wait, now I see: you’re planning on concurrent presidencies.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@BillinGlendaleCA: Just checked out your page. Very cool. (Altadena, resident here.) Always love seeing pics of LA. And those Yosemite pics are fantastic (love the bear one.) Bookmarking.
Brachiator
Goddam this is simple minded twaddle, typical of the crap that blathers about media “narratives.” Who says that voter sentiment is binary, and must oscillate between anger and what? complacency?
And the emphasis on media narratives usually is about the elitism which infects punditry, and which loves to suggest that voters are little more than easily manipulated sheep, who just need to be fed the most compelling narrative.
I like the weaselly rhetorical trick here which moves from a discussion of voter sentiment to a diss of Sanders because he might “seem” angry. Of course, it doesn’t matter here, what Sanders’ political views might be.
Kay
@Baud:
I think it only becomes a crisis when it starts impacting the people who think they are “safe”, and we’re almost there. It doesn’t seem that complicated to me. If you used to be able to make 35k a year w/out a college degree and now you need one, that’s harder. It’s not that they’re whiners. It’s that the world changed.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
I’ll just give you an example. There was lots of handwringing about the Trump protests. Okay, but “violence at Trump rallies” and “Donald Trump inciting people to hit other people” is front page.
They revealed something about Donald Trump that would not have been revealed in those carefully controlled debates and “press avails”. He can’t even handle his own rallies and he wants to be President. He can’t even lead his followers.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: Last week we were told that voter turnout in the primary means nothing. Does it mean something this week?
chopper
@CarolDuhart2:
mclaren and BiP finally hooked up, had a baby and dropped it on its head on accident.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
He IS leading them. They’re going exactly where he’s pointing. He doesn’t even act ashamed by their behavior.
Bob In Portland
@BillinGlendaleCA: If you are comfortable with a politician financed by the 1%, who seems to have no compunctions about getting us into wars, then enjoy it. If she wins then a year from now she’ll be telling you “with a heavy heart” how the bad Republicans, who Debbie Wasserman Schultz helped to elect, won’t let her keep any of her campaign promises. That same sinking feeling that people got when Obama was talking about putting Social Security on the table will fill the hearts of well-to-do liberals. And they will not understand why they are in this position again.
Meanwhile, further down the foodchain…
D58826
@Baud: The GOP slime machine is quiet now because it suits their purpose that the democratic primary is between ‘squeaky clean’ Bernie and ‘corrupt’ Hillary. If Bernie is the candidate they will crank up the slime machine to 11 and he won’t be ‘squeaky clean’ for long.
Ruckus
@Keith G:
Fuck you.
I am tired of this crap that all the boomers are destroying the world. Lots and lots of us helped make that world and like that world and think it should get even better. Not every republican is a boomer. Several of the ones that were running for president were not boomers and they are the ones that want to tear down that world.
Boomers are a large generation and lots of us are just/soon retiring and understand the world moves on with or without us. Most of us have kids, many of whom have kids and we realize that the world they live in isn’t the one we grew up in. And why. It’s fucking history, many of us fought that worsening but there’s a lot of us and not all of us did. And that there’s a lot of us has nothing to do with us. It’s our parents, the great fucking generation that created us and the world that you think we all hate.
Not all those republicans voting for dumphf are boomers, many of them are your generation. How do you account for that?
Fuck You and your boomers caused all of this shit.
Chris
@different-church-lady:
Heck, he said he’d pay the legal fees of anyone who assaulted the Unpersons who had the gall to show up at his rally.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
I don’t think he is. He lied about Chicago police telling him to shut down that rally because he didn’t want to be associated with what might happen there. This whole “Donald Trump as genius puppet-master” reminds me of how liberals gave Karl Rove way too much credit. In 2006 when Rove said the GOP “had the math” liberals were convinced that meant he had a plan. He had no plan. He’s just a liar.
The Goats' Nanny
David Gerrold posted on this last week. Don’t come into my (his) house and throw out Right Wing Smear campaign crap. Nothing like being the target of one long billion dollar attack ad. HRC should be proud that she’s been such a job creator.
If you have substantive points, make them. Policies, votes, positions, even (gasp) how the candidate on the opposing side may have seen the ground shift under their feet as they modified their views and position on ________ . But if you do the Right Wing drill? Delete.
Chris
@D58826:
The most ridiculous thing about the “scandal plagued Clintons” thing is that in damn near a decade of searching for anything, anything that they could hang around Bill Clinton’s neck, the very worst thing the Republicans were able to come up with was his lying about his sex life.
That, right there, was their best shot. That really does tell you everything you need to know about these “scandals.”
Chris
@Kay:
Probably nitpicky of me, but
Really? My impression was that he lied about Chicago police warnings about the rally to give an air of authenticity to his claim that he was being persecuted and silenced by the violent left-wing protesters.
Germy
@Kay:
At one time, I was addicted to reading the biographies of famous successful people of the early to mid-20th century. What struck me was how many of them barely finished high school, or graduated high school and then either skipped college, or took a semester or two and then dropped out. And they found jobs, and worked their ways up in those jobs.
Nowadays you need a college degree to change a fucking lightbulb.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
Those total vote counts in the primaries should be much higher. But of the people who did show up to vote, more have voted for Hillary than for any other candidate. At the very least, that weighs against the proposition that she will not be electable in November.
Kay
@Bob In Portland:
I love the lie about raising the age for Social Security, because Social Security has a reduced benefit for people who take younger. The people who take younger will be people with physical jobs who can’t work past 62 or 65, so, the people who need Social Security most. They will get burned. The people I see who take the reduced SS benefit early are people like home health aides- they can no longer physically perform the work and they’re TOO OLD to get a different job. I tell them it’s reduced benefit and they should wait, but they can’t.
Raising the age is in effect a Social Security cut for the people who need it most. Either the people proposing this are absolute morons who have no idea who takes SS early now, or they are deliberately lying to people.
yellowdog
@Chris: He said he’d have his lawyers look into it. And then. . . zilch. He riles them up and then they pay the price. And they think he is on their side. SMH
Ruckus
@Keith G:
You are a fucking ageist. It’s the same as being a racist or a bigot or misogynist, it’s just age is your problem.
You have issues that you think you can lay blame on one group for and that’s what you’ve done.
You are no better than trump or his supporters, just a different group to attack.
The world will always have problems. Humans can make that worse and humans can make that better. Has always been that way and will always be that way. There are what, over 6 billion of us on this rock, not all of them are going to see things your way.
Matt
I would say that a lot of her support is from Baby Boomers and older, who are not ready to turn the reins of control over to the Millennial Generation [we’ll get there soon :) ]. I think she’s the last Baby Boomer president to run, and that generation is hoping she’ll fuck up less than her predecessors and make up for their shitty choices in the past, her husband included. A lot of us are voting for Bernie because he represents more the radical 1920s/30s labor movement Democratic movement vs. the current social liberalism/economic conservatism of the Clintonian/JFK democrats. Obama and H. Clinton I think are the end of the Clinton/JFK, less taxes/government more social equality branch of Democrats. I’m interested to see what comes next, because almost nobody I know (including myself) is voting for Hillary, well with the strange exception of white professional gay men.
Kay
@Germy:
We hire legal assistants out of high school. I get lots of qualified applicants. We only have two and one has been with us for 15 years so it’s not like we hire a lot, but we just did so in the last 6 months.
We have to train them but if they know basic word processing (and they do, now, out of high school) they have done us fine. I actually ran a retail greenhouse when I was 19 with no college or training. The owner was a drunk. He’d show up about once a week and clean out the cash drawer. It was a full time job. I rented a house with a roommate and supported myself fairly comfortably on what he paid me.
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
Very interesting stuff. The perspective seems filtered through the fog of India/Pakistan enmity and is almost amusing in its bias and incorrect perspective. Also interesting that the writer thinks that Clinton is unduly influenced by her aide, and that her aide must be pro-Pakistan. This would be like suggesting that Bobby Jindal was secretly working for India.
Bob In Portland
Here’s something from DownWithTyranny:
The most I ever made in my life was about forty-thousand a year. I worked a blue-collar job. Am I in the same demographic as most BJers?
That most BJers look at Clinton and cannot understand or will not admit the the arguments from the left is intriguing. Once I suggested that people here watch “The Conformist”. I don’t think anyone took up the suggestion.
@Kay: I laugh when people want their letter carriers to work until 70.
Yeah, you’re safe. For now.
Brachiator
@Matt:
Gosh. If only it were the 1920s.
Bob In Portland
@different-church-lady: How much different is putting the blame on Sanders supporters any different from Trump supporters blaming Mexicans for traffic delays? Just curious.
The Goats' Nanny
@Patricia Kayden: QOTD: She would have to enter my house and kill my dogs in front of my eyes to lose my vote.
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator:
There’s also a bit of India/China enmity in there fogging the writer’s perspective. schrodinger’s cat is familiar with the site, and she’s none too impressed by it.
Brachiator
@Aimai:
I agree with you, but the problem is that the core of Sanders supporters, including many who post here, see Bill Clinton, Obama and Hillary Clinton as either failures or sellouts. They back Sanders precisely because he is going for the long Hail Mary pass that will bring full on fantasy socialism to America.
They like Sanders because he is their political Sleeping Beauty, kissed by “the radical 1920s/30s labor movement Democratic movement” and who has spent the last 25 years in the blissful slumber of his political independence, his purity unspoiled by having to be an actual Democrat.
To be fair, Sanders acknowledges the achievements of the Obama Administration, but the outlines of his agenda so far rejects any continuity with his predecessor.
Bob In Portland
@The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016:
I thought that the motto of Balloon Juice was “Smug condescending pricks welcome.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Obama and Bill Clinton both raised taxes, Obama less than he wanted to (I’ll be shocked if you’re one of those “HE ONLY PRETENDED TO WANT TO” types, shocked, I say) and most people would say Obamacare (to say northing of the Stimulus, increased environmental regulations, … all the other things emoprogs don’t know happened because it didn’t make the people they hate mad enough) was “more government”, but you seem to think you’re on to something.
GoBlue72
@different-church-lady: Your bullshit hippie punching is tiring.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
You have never been banned here, have you?
GoBlue72
@Matt: The generational divide in voters between Clinton and Sanders voters as a whole is pretty clear. Not that the tone deaf Me Generation Boomers are willing to look in a mirror.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: Actually, I was.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@GoBlue72: not nearly as much as your delusions of martyrdom
you’re not a hippie, I believe you recently said your a middle-aged middle manager– Dwight Schrute as a keyboard radical– and being mocked on a blog is not being punched.
and the really important point: being obnoxious on a blog is not courageous activism.
chopper
@GoBlue72:
and here’s goblue complaining about ‘hippie punching’.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
Getting put in time-out isn’t quite the same as getting banned.
FlipYrWhig
I have been saying for months that the Sanders boomlet is overwhelmingly the same people who always think that the Democratic president or front runner (when the president isn’t a Democrat) isn’t as liberal as they would like. Add to that a group of younger people who are actually a different phenomenon with different priorities. Let’s focus on explaining what’s driving the latter. We already know what drives the former. Also, let’s permanently retire the word “establishment.”
GoBlue72
@OzarkHillbilly: Baby Boomers have been in power for quite some time. George W Bush is a Boomer. The GOP dominance of Congress and the state’s has occurred when Boomers hit the age demographic coinciding with high voter turnout.
The legacy of Boomers is while they have been relatively liberalish on social issues, they are positively conservative on economic ones.
GoBlue72
@FlipYrWhig: There is an establishment. You can’t wish it away in some Orwellian bit of hand waving.
Bob In Portland
@GoBlue72: It’s class. Look at the quote from DownWithTyranny above. Younger people realize how badly our system has decayed. Older people approaching retirement or retired are looking at how Wall Street swindled them. Those are the people who the New Democratic Party left behind. That’s a lot of people.
And yes, there are people who for some crazy reason don’t think that spending trillions in taxpayer money to corner the world energy market isn’t a particularly good foreign policy strategy. They are Clinton supporters. They have been able to sit on their hands and follow the Syrian okeydoke because, well, that’s how they were raised.
There are the Steinem feminists who see Clinton as the icon on top of the cake, and tend to overlook her political record. Clinton actually thought that the kind words from Kissinger and the kind words to Nancy Reagan wouldn’t offend her base. And it doesn’t, certainly not to the extent that it bothers Bernie supporters. That’s why you have apologists say things like, “What could Hillary have possibly done about the military coup in Honduras? She was only the Secretary of State.”
Bob In Portland
@FlipYrWhig: A real head scratcher, eh?
GoBlue72
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “hippie punching” as a phrase does not refer to actual long haired flower children from the 60s you moron. Nor to generic “young lefties”.
As for me, I can guarantee I spend more time in the real world working on political advocacy and campaigns than 90% of the keyboard cranks here.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: Over a year timeout. I then reregistered with another email address. I always thought that the reason I was allowed back in was because Cole was too lazy to block me again when I showed up.
FlipYrWhig
@GoBlue72: Right, it’s that thing that includes all the Democratic bankers on Wall Street and some but not all of the longstanding office-holders and some voters from some places. And the important thing is that they suck! It’s a dumb concept with no explanatory power and was cooked up by the media to equate Clinton and Bush on the one hand with Sanders and Trump on the other. Then , for all the reasons in the OP, it explains nothing about Sanders/Clinton. So why keep dragging it out?
Bob In Portland
@GoBlue72: Thank you.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@GoBlue72: Yeah, you’re changing the world, Dwight K.
and you’re not at all a sad little creature
anything at all
FlipYrWhig
@Bob In Portland: Yes, Bernie Sanders voters are the kinds of people who care a lot about Kissinger and Honduran coups. This is also why they have a low ceiling, because it’s the same people who have cared about Kissinger and Central American leftism for 30-50 years running. It’s also the same people who listened to Pacifica Radio. These aren’t bad people, they’re diehards, and there aren’t very many of them, and there didn’t get to be more of them because of something something anti-establishment mood.
ruemara
@Kay: Thanks for asking. Black Lives Matter have been gaining results, but that’s because unlike the Occupy Movement, they got into the ring of politics and demanded answers. The Fight for $15 has also had gains, also because they got into the political ring and demanded answers. The “activists” I see without results are usually very busy screaming, making puppets and fighting GMOs while not being very clear on what GMOs are. They are in it for the spectacle, not the icky grubbing of dealing politically.
Bob In Portland
@FlipYrWhig:
Dragging what out? The primary season? Not succumbing to the will of The Hillary? Clinton is owned by the establishment and a lot of the BJ base is the establishment. Maybe not the 1%, but economically protected from what a lot of the Sanders supporters are feeling.
In any case, I don’t vote until May.
Bob In Portland
@FlipYrWhig: And the Hillary people don’t notice these things. You aren’t bothered that a war criminal praised her, and Hillary isn’t. If you have any idea why Kissinger did what he did then you’d understand why Clinton does what she does but somehow that gets edited out. And that is the dividing line. If you lived in San Francisco in the 1980s and watched gay friends dropping like flies and weren’t insulted by Clinton’s paean to Nancy Reagan, then I just guess there are some of us who won’t forgive and forget that particular American genocide.
How long can you wait for the water in Flint to be clean? How long can you wait for our endless wars to be over? How much does a $15 minimum wage affect you?
Chyron HR
@GoBlue72:
Yeah, totally. Congratulations on your victory. The superdelegates are lining up behind Berns as we speak.
Bob In Portland
@Capt. Seaweed: Smugness we can get behind.
Kay
@Bob In Portland:
The whole thing is a lie. “People are living longer”. Well, some people are. A huge other group are “living shorter.” Since they’re dying younger than the top 20% they’re actually a bargain in Social Security terms! They should not get a cut, they should get a bonus.
This entire Social Security debate has been conducted around the 30% of people with college degrees, just like the entire health care reform debate was conducted around people who have health insurance. Nothing could change for them. They had to keep exactly what they have, or it was no deal.
D58826
@Chris: yep.
Applejinx
@superpredators4hillary: Bear in mind that I don’t WANT her to still support NAFTA, to be against gay marriage, etc etc etc.
Yes, tacky to have that pattern where she denies she ever said/did the ‘bad thing’, but I’m incredibly far from surprised at video evidence that Hillary is lying to tack a certain direction.
It’s fair to ask ‘is the new support for gay marriage, or whatever, a cover for her wanting to get in power and go back to the old opinion she first had’ but in at least some cases that’s ridiculous. She is flat denying this stuff because it’s political poison and she knows she can’t even acknowledge it much less get in power and start enacting it. In some ways it’s more reassuring the harder she lies and denies.
YES please turn into a Bernie clone, Hillary, and take the credit for governing that way as hard as you can.
…if to be ‘honest’ would mean supporting those crap ideas out of the past that we would like to see thoroughly discredited.
You run/win with the Hillary tailored to today’s electorate, not to the electorate of 1994.
If people are really that offended by the reality of this, go make Bernie win all the primaries. I’ve done about all I can, and if we’re stuck with Hillary I want this one currently claiming she’s the most progressivey progressive and denying bigotry and NAFTA. I LIKE denying of bigotry and NAFTA.
There’s also the fact that what’s she supposed to do, admit it? Get real.
superpredators4hillary
@Chyron HR: Yowza!!! Might I make a suggestion?
Kay
I do think it’s a great point, “where is the Hillary voter?” though. It’s true that there’s been little or no discussion of the top vote getter and her “base”.
Clinton should promote the hell out of this essay.
Great point, and one that will make political media defensive :)
Bob In Portland
@Chyron HR: Is making up quotes for other people smug and cool? Or is it that you run out of energy having to actually argue points and find it easier to be condescending and smug?
Right now children are being poisoned. Workers can’t afford to live on the minimum wage. Lots of people still cannot afford healthcare. The schools are underfunded and the charter school and testing scams continue unabated. Private prisons flourish. The drug wars continue. We came we saw he died. All those wars continue. If Clinton is merely an extension of Obama’s eight years of treading water, then you probably won’t notice who gets tossed out of the life raft. And gee, why are all these Honduran children dying trying to get into America?
gwangung
@Kay:
In my circles, it’s about half Sanders, half Clinton. And these are long time minority, community organizers, getting down in the nitty gritty of getting health care, child care, etc. to those who are definitely not the stereoytypical privileged types.
Basically, about the furthrest you could get from”hippie punchers.”
D58826
@FlipYrWhig: Over the past few weeks in a number of articles and blog posts I have found out that:
1. Bill Clinton was the worst president we ever had
2. Al Gore was the most flawed candidate we have ever had
3. John Kerry was a was well something bad
4. Obama was promising but pretty much has failed the progressive agenda
5. Hillary is the most flawed candidate we have ever had and will be the worst president we will ever have (since she is a Clinton see number 1).
Seems like it’s a very high bar to get over if you want the approval of some progressives.
nutella
@J R in WV:
That’s something that amazes me. All those salt-of-the-earth state legislators in all those fly-over states following the detailed written orders of a bunch of fat cats from New York, Las Vegas, and LA. How can they not notice they’re following orders from the coastal elites?
Matt
@JMG
Automation of the workforce with roboticized/technologized replacements I think will have an extreme effect on American capitalism. What does the world look like when there aren’t enough ‘old-fashioned’ jobs? I’d like to see some democrats talk about this, because I think it’s the next big jobs bust in the country.
gene108
@Kay:
Short answer, Republicans get a lot more CU money than Dems, and Republicans have used that money to build what seems like an insurmountable institutional advantage in the House and in state legislatures.
Kay
@gwangung:
I;m already sick of the Trump voters. If they can flip Ohio and Michigan and Illinois and all the other states they claim, okay, let’s see it, let’s have a race. I want to see consistent polling showing this is true in state head to heads.
Enough bragging out of them, unless Clinton also gets to say Arizona is in play based on her Latino support.
Trump’s a blowhard loudmouth. I’m tired of everyone assuming everything he says is true. He lies constantly.
Applejinx
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: That’s actually a wonderful symbol. I’m with that kid, my biggest aspiration is a garage door opener (I assume he doesn’t mean ‘no garage, just the opener’).
Why? I have a thousand dollar car with 200,000 miles on it. The more it sits outside in all weather the more it deteriorates. My Mom has a much newer (though not fancy) car, and she has a garage door opener. That car won’t be smashed by falling tree branches, it’ll be rained and snowed on less, it will last longer because it’s protected in a convenient way.
It’s Sam Vimes’ Boots Theory of Economics. If you can afford a garage door opener, that implies many things about protecting your assets from the wear and tear of life. It’s the smart and prudent thing to have, and the infrastructure for having it is way beyond me and beyond that kid, maybe beyond us EVER having it no matter what we do (unless we hit the lottery).
So our cars will be subject to more deterioration than those of people with garages (and garage door openers).
Makes perfect sense to me. That kid’s got a good head on his shoulders and knows what to aspire to.
gene108
@Bob In Portland:
Maybe she should have demanded Zelaya get his wish, and Honduras rewrite their Constitution?
Bob In Portland
1. Nixon or Reagan top the worst President lists. Clinton was the most Republican Democrat we’ve had though, and oversaw the globalization of our economy at the expense of the working class. He also managed to break up Yugoslavia along the lines of Hitler’s political strategy in WWII. (Incoming, Hillary!)
2. Al Gore lost because of voter fraud in Florida.
3. Kerry lost because a lot of Dems didn’t care that much about the wars, but, hey, there’s no draft anymore. (Two Bonesmen. What a coincidence!)
4. Obama followed the same playbook as Clinton, putting Wall Street in charge of the economy while being unable to expand the Democratic base into the House, the Senate, in statehouses (although a lot of that is thanks to DWS, Schumer et al). He kinda put up some fight with the permanent government over the oil wars, but in the end they got what they wanted. I can almost hear those pipelines ringing.
5. Hillary is who she has always been. She was a Republican. She’s changed less than the Democratic Party’s leadership has. She still supports endless war, she lives among the ultra-rich, she will be shackled by Republicans so that she appears to be giving a good try while failing.
Stopping wars may indeed be a very high bar. Who wants endless wars? Somebody who is rooting for Clinton against Sanders. Rearranging the tax system may indeed be a very high bar, especially for a politician who has received hundreds of millions of dollars from the rich.
So yeah, we picky hippies/old leftists aren’t satisfied and predict that we’ll get exactly what we got with Bill and Barack, but maybe with a few more wars. That’s okay as long as Clinton doesn’t start a nuclear war, right?
The great thing is that we can all meet up here in a year and complain about those gull-darned Republicans blocking progress.
Bob In Portland
@gene108: Be sure to invite a Honduran child over for Christmas.
Bob In Portland
@gene108: Or maybe she shouldn’t have given all those weapons to Qatar that ended up in ISIS’s hands.
Has any reporter ever tracked how that Texas plumber’s Toyota to ISIS?
Bob In Portland
@Kay: You know how labor is honored? By being paid for the work. Can you see Clinton hacking at the anti-labor sections of the Taft-Hartley Act?
patroclus
Advocating military intervention in Honduras would be a terrible policy and Sanders certainly isn’t doing it. Hillary certainly took the right position in pursuing a non-intervention policy regarding the 2009 coup and even the articles posted by her critics directly contradict the arguments made by her critics.
patroclus
The Salon article linked by Bob in Portland contains this exact quote – “It’s impossible to accuse Clinton of foreknowledge of the (2009) coup”. Rather, Obama and Clinton pursues a non-intervention policy and ultimately achieved a settlement. Does Bob in Portland really advocate a military intervention in Honduras?
patroclus
If Bob in Portlands’ preferred strategy of military intervention in Honduras had been followed, there’d be a lot of dead Honduran children who couldn’t make it for Navidad. Even the articles cited by Bob in Portland contradict his criticism’s.
Oops – Obama’s landing in Cuba right now – re-establishing good relations there after over a half century of sanctions and conflict. I sure am glad Hillary supported this policy of rapproachment with Latin America rather than following a military intervention strategy as advocated by some.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
I see people fretting about how it looks bad that Hillary is accepting praise from Henry Kissinger. I get that to many in America, Kissinger is a senior minion of the devil, and anyone Kissinger praises must therefore be a junior minion.
But I looked up what Kissinger said about Hillary. And all he said was that she ran the State Department better than anyone had run it in a long time. He did not euphemistically praise her for advocating foreign policy that promoted US imperialism, or that sowed war and destruction. He said only that she was was a damn good executive. And it’s true, she did rehabilitate a State Department that had been sidelined and demoralised by the George Walker Bush administration. And under her it helped lay the groundwork for the diplomatic successes of Obama’s second term.
Applejinx
@Bob In Portland:
I’m not convinced. I see the Republicans fighting to double down on bullshit I don’t want, and to all appearances Hillary is trying to run away from most of it. Again: seems to me Hillary lies and changes to repudiate former positions. Those positions were once popular and I hated them then, too.
Somebody (Whig?) posted the Matt Taibbi article on Bernie hating Congress and its corruption. I read it, and it looked to me like Congress really sucked. We can’t overlook that. If Hillary is lying to run away from her old positions, that’s about the least corrupt thing to come out of Congress in decades and I’m grudgingly impressed.
I’d still rather run with Bernie and have it a straight-up power struggle, but I do think Hil is a hell of a strong candidate by now, and part of that is not getting caught in gotcha media pranks, whether they’re from journalists or activists. She HAS to lie or get nailed to the wall on ‘flip-flopping’, it’s like ‘have you stopped beating your wife?’
I want to see how hard she adopts the positions we’ve seen her move toward recently. I’ve said over and over that she’s going to want to represent the biggest demographic, the ‘people’ she’s elected to represent. Once that was literally New York. If it’s America, and especially since the alternatives are horrible, I’m totally prepared to give her a chance, and I’m pretty sure that’s all she’s asking for.
Nobody will EVER be scrutinized as harshly over ‘capitulating to Wall Street’ or ‘war-mongering’. That’s a kind of advantage: stuff can fly under the radar, and I think the status quo shouldn’t get to fly under the radar. Because it’ll find a way to persist even if we elect a Bernie/Jesus ticket, but with Hillary/? at least people will be really vigilant… and she knows they’ll be vigilant, because she’s paying perhaps the closest attention of anybody to the political climate.
Trump just lucked in to the political climate, and Bernie isn’t attending to it at all: he just happens to coincide with it and is a gloriously stubborn old coot. It’s Hillary who is watching all this most carefully.
retiredeng
@Amir Khalid: I wonder how common it is but I don’t allow polling or any other kind of unsolicited requests for my time. We’ve had numerous robo calls and they all get blocked summarily.
Davis X. Machina
@D58826: Fundamentally some of those voters don’t have any more faith in the State per se than the most Norquistian bathtub fetishist.
They would prefer a politics-without-politicians, thank you very much, or one without parties, at least, as a place to start. Now if there were just some way to put the unfiltered Voice of the People in Its Wisdom* on the ballot, we’d be getting somewhere.
* Some people think this might not go so well sometimes, but they fail to take into account the fact that the average voter is in fact a natural social democrat, and the reason why we’re in the mess we’re in is because he or she is simply, and temporarily, blind to the fact — and it is a fact.
gene108
@Bob In Portland:
Would an unpopular, with the government at least, Zelaya serving out the remaining six months of his term made that much of a difference to the problems Honduras has now?
I do not know enough about Honduras to know why things have gone badly for the people over the last seven years, but I do not think Zelaya was/is a talisman against these problems.
There have been two Presidential elections, since the coup, and neither of Zelaya’s successors has seemed to make things better.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Uncle Ebeneezer: Thanks, I’m playing with augmenting visual color with infrared today(it clears out haze). Those pics from Yosemite were taken back in the late 70’s.
different-church-lady
And there we have it folks: BiP is such a relentless idiot that he’s even driven Applejinx to defend Hillary.
different-church-lady
@Bob In Portland: a) I very specifically used the term “Sanders Loudmouth” rather than “Sanders supporter” for a reason.
b) What is it you think I’m blaming them for?
Bob in Portland
@gene108: That sounds a lot like waiting a year so that the people can vote for who they want on the Supreme Court. What’s six months gonna do? What’s a year?
Bob in Portland
@different-church-lady: @Applejinx: Quite honestly, I don’t have a hell of a lot of hope for this country. Hillary will be driving down the same freeway that Bill and Barack did.
Bob in Portland
@different-church-lady: I don’t see a difference, because a Sanders supporter becomes a loudmouth when he says something you don’t like.
I presume that since Clinton took her last check from the private prison industry last fall that she’ll work to shut down private prisons.
How am I a relentless idiot? Because you don’t agree with me?
Bob In Portland
From DownWithTyranny:
Kay
@Bob in Portland:
It’s just appalling, the way we treat people. It gets worse every year:
No Sunday time and a half, serfs! We can’t possibly afford it. Can they possibly make it harder for these people to survive? What is the incentive for having a job?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Bob in Portland:
This is quite a revolution that Bernie’s got going on, which is in the process of being rejected by every metric. His prodigious fundraising can’t even buy anything other than a blowout in a couple of exclusively white states. Maybe the real revolutionary act is the white woman embracing the black guy and honoring his hard work?
different-church-lady
@Bob in Portland: Gosh, Bob, you’re right, it’s all hopeless. Nothing at all works correctly in our entire society and everyone we elect (with the exception of ONE candidate) is just going to shit the place up even more.
different-church-lady
@Kay: I’m looking at that and I’m thinking, “Mr. Rennie, why the fuck should I give a shit what’s affordable for YOU?”
Bob In Portland
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Revolution is how you define it. I’m sure that’s why Clinton is keeping the lid on her Wall Street speeches. Too incendiary.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Bob In Portland:
Yeah, keep fucking that chicken.
Bob In Portland
@Applejinx: I hope you’re right. But I hoped that Bill’s support for NAFTA wasn’t a prelude. It was. Obama is a conservative Dem and since he’s been in office things have gotten worse for the bottom 90%.
Meanwhile, I see this.
Michael Brown
@different-church-lady: Hi, I happen to be one of those “Sanders Loudmouths”. I don’t think you quite got that right. Allow me to fix that.
When I call people such as yourself a fucking moron for being…well….a fucking moron, It has fuck all to do with anything even remotely analogous to traffic jams…..and has everything to do with “progressives” whom for some reason…when it comes to this particular subject…become terminally stupid and are thus compelled to back the person that not only would be less popular during the primary, but has repeated told your dumb-asses that she has no intention of changing a fucking thing worth mentioning. So basically people such as yourself…given the the choice between two “liberal” candidates…..chooses the one that is literally Wall Street’s whore….the one whom threw black/brown people under the bus whenever it suited her(and did not divest from the prison industrial complex until she was called out on it last October”, the one that voted to go to war with a nation that did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO US because she wanted to look “tough”…when even a fucking 3 year old could see that the reasons given for invading Iraq was bullshit…etc…etc…etc.
This is why us “Bernie Loudmouths” have absolutely no issues calling people like you the irredeemably stupid fucks that you are. You don’t change a corrupt system via perpetuating it.
Michael Brown
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Yeah…while you keep refusing to answer the question….just like every Clinton supporting clown whenever the subject of the various comes up:
1. Labeling black people as super predators while profiting from investments in the private prison industrial complex…that she by the way did not divest in until she was called out on it last October.
2. Being Wall Street’s whore
3. Voting for a war that ended untold lives…because she thought looking tough was more important than dead children whom would likely all be alive today.
4. Basically telling you all she had no intention of changing a fucking thing worth mentioning w/r to this corrupt system she and her family are profiting from.
5. etc…etc…etc…
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Michael Brown:
You have a narrative that feeds your mind and soul, while reality changes under your nose, and everyone who’s not a douchebro like you rejects the Bern. Enjoy your irrelevancy.
Litany
@Michael Brown: Why then is the Bernie coalition basically a bunch of white college dudes tripping over one another to condescend to people of color and women rather than a diverse swath of the electorate agitating for change? And how can a candidate be “less popular” in a primary they are literally winning, often by 2 to 1 margins? I suppose you meant general election, but you’d be wrong on that count too. The only reason Sanders is doing so well is the millions of dollars worth of Republican super PAC money, and he’s still not running a competitive race (that pesky math, yknow). You’d best believe that Karl Rove isn’t backing a candidate advocating free health care out of the goodness in his secretly Nordic-loving heart. It’s a dirty game of “pick your opponent,” and if Sanders were to win the nomination the right wing media and money that’s propping him up would eat him alive, Soviet honeymoon and all. And those of us who recognize that fact and live with it are apparently “fucking stupid,” even if we’re doing more than our fair share to move the country left through other initiatives beyond the ballot. (Note that this criticism doesn’t apply to those who voted Sanders as a protest vote, as I did. This is for the #Bernieorbust types who have gotten themselves caught up in a bubble as insidious as any conservative talk show radio, in which transformative change is just one election of another elderly white male politician away.)
Sanders is losing badly in the very states where he would need unprecedented momentum to win a Congress that would even consider his agenda, but if you point that out you’re a shill. Sanders’s healthcare plan is unrealistic even based on the standards of other countries with universal coverage and his promise to end mass incarceration is literally impossible, but only a Benedict Arnold progressive of the evil cryptofascist class would engage with such oppressive facts. Hillary is a very liberal senator who voted with Sanders 93% of the time, but why acknowledge actual records when you can just call her derogatory slurs? (And remember kids, spicing up your rhetoric with really misogynistic language is definitely, *definitely* leftist!) And Sanders voted for the 1994 crime bill just like Hillary, but why admit that politics is a dirty game in which you occasionally have to back a candidate whose views don’t perfectly align with yours when you can instead hold your candidates up to ideological purity tests that they don’t even pass?
Sad as it is, your Mumia sweatshirt *won’t* get you into heaven anymore.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Litany:
Where have you been all my life? xoxo
Bernie decided he had nothing to learn from the master coalition builder, and instead decided to trash everyone and everything from his privileged white perch in whitest Vermont, conning himself and a bunch of entitled white kids that think politics started in 2015.
Bob In Portland
@Litany: Nice racist toss there.
Don’t read this book either.
Bob In Portland
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Well, I guess you’ve whittled it down to the essentials.
Litany
@Bob In Portland: I don’t know how it’s any more racist to point out that Bernie is losing the black vote in the deep South at a greater rate than Hillary did in ’08 than it is to point out that the GOP might have a teensy problem appealing to minority voters. Both are facts, and we can quibble about the reasons. So far this election I’ve heard a lot of white liberals condescending about how if “black people only were more educated or informed they would vote for Bernie, the candidate who really would do well by them” (an actual quote from my facebook). I have noticed very few white liberals actually listen to black voters about why they prefer Hillary. Ironically, this is the exact sort of dialogue I’d expect between white GOP voters and minority voters they are trying to woo. I assume, based on this comment, that you might be a liberal in the “Reverse Racism is Also A Thing Too, You Guys” camp, but if you’re not than I eagerly await your explanation.
I also think that it’s weird that you assume that I don’t read Thomas Frank. Not everyone who disagrees with you is just another ignorant voter one thinkpiece, book, or pamphlet away from joining you in your suicide pact with the GOP. Similarly, I suffer no illusions about what the current Democratic Party stands for, and in spite of my deep, deep disagreements with them on a host of issues, I will show up and fucking vote blue in every election in which the Dems nominate someone less than terrible, even if I have to wade through blood and present 16 forms of ID upon arriving the polling place in order to do so. I’ll also do all the other good progressive things, from attending protests to writing op-eds, from donating to organizations that serve the needy when I have the means to attending legislative hearings and meeting with my state and national representatives and speaking my views. I don’t have a problem with voters casting their vote for Sanders in this primary. I did so myself, in an early primary where I was still half-deluding myself that he could win. I don’t begrudge others doing the same, and don’t even begrudge them still believing that he can somehow pull a miracle victory. What I take issue with is the #Bernieorbust crowd, who seem to have learned nothing from the Decider and his Miracle in Florida, where 537 feel-good voters decided that sanctimonious thrill of voting for the enlightened author of Unsafe at any Speed was worth 8 years of Dubya.
Bob In Portland
@Litany: Fascinating stat I saw this a.m. In the states where Clinton won the voting turnout was down. Way down. In states where the voting turnout was high, Sanders won.
Considering that Sanders brings in not only new voters who apparently aren’t inspired by Clinton but also independents who are independents because they don’t like the party establishments, there is good reason to suspect that up to a third of Sanders’ voters won’t vote for Clinton. Why would you expect that Clinton would get the votes of the people who left the Democratic Party because of the Clintons and the New Dems?
Every poll has shown that Sanders does better against all the Republican candidates than Clinton. People actually like him.
So what sanctimonious thrill will you have for watching the Democratic Party fail this November? Perhaps if you triangulated a little more you’d see that the Democrats are missing the opportunity to become the dominant American political party this fall.
And I’m glad you read Thomas Frank. Do you consider yourself part of what he describes as the 10%?
Gore lost, not because of Ralph Nader, but because of voter fraud conducted by Republicans in Florida, and the Supreme Court. And because Gore was another New Dem half-stepper. When voters are offered Republicans or Republican-lites they choose the real thing. Okay, Claire McCaskill beat that wacko in Missouri and she’s a DINO. But since she votes with the Republicans so much she might as well be a Republican.
As long as you recognize the widespread distaste for Clinton on the left, and if you think that her wars, her financial relationships with the 1%, her failures to offer solutions to the vast majority of Americans is fine for you, then you can cast your aspersions down from your tower.
Bob In Portland
@Litany: Also, Clinton won white voters in the South in huge numbers. So by your theorizing white Southerners are what?
The South is lower-information, much more conservative than the rest of the country. That applies across all races. The call for the most conservative region of our country to be responsible for choosing the candidates would seem antithetical to a liberal.
So Sanders is more popular, less hated than Clinton. More people would vote for him than her. These stats are up there to be seen. If Clinton fails, please don’t come back and complain that it’s my fault because I didn’t vote for her. You’ve been warned, not by me but by the American public.
Bob In Portland
@Michael Brown: A little coarse, but certainly right on point.
Bob In Portland
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Tell me, Conster. Clinton and her husband have received well over a hundred million dollars from the 1% since 2001, mostly through speaking fees. Hillary Clinton has received hundreds of millions for political donations, again mostly from the 1%. The Clinton Foundation has an estimated two billion, again mostly from the very rich. The Clinton Global Initiative is operated out of Canada and it’s hard to track the tides of money going in or out.
In my life the 1% (actually, their representatives) have generally told me to shut up, so I am curious as to what these very very rich people like hearing from a presidential candidate. You, kind sir, are certainly allowed to be incurious. You too can be your own kind of low-information voter. You can be happy in an economical situation where most of your fellow citizens aren’t. It’s America. You’ll probably do well under a Trump.