Can’t believe I’m about to go all “kids these days” but people said this about Gore & it didn’t turn out so well… pic.twitter.com/0vf2ce6oaA
— Matt O'Brien (@ObsoleteDogma) March 28, 2016
Bernie Sanders won three caucuses over the weekend — just as was predicted — and added 53 delegates to his tally, per Bloomberg Politics. Yay Senator Sanders!
(Of course, because Democrats tend to award delegates proportionally, Hillary Clinton added 40 delegates even though she lost all three races.)
The hardcore #BernieBros are not the type to win graciously, alas. Via Dengre’s twitter feed, Shane Ryan, Paste Magazine:
… Recent online chatter would have you believe that the “Bernie or Bust” movement is populated by those who don’t care about the consequences that might befall poor people, women, and minorities in the event of a massive progressive desertion that hands the presidency to Donald Trump or Ted Cruz…
But there’s a very deep irony in the fact that the supporters of the status quo candidate, Hillary Clinton, have the audacity to accuse progressives of ignoring the under-privileged. The reason we support Bernie Sanders is because we care about those people, and we are those people—otherwise, we’d be neoliberal Democrats or Republicans. Clinton’s white, middle-to-upper-middle class foot soldiers have, by the very nature of their support, essentially written off the bottom half of American society. They’ve outed themselves as members of a privileged class who cherish conservative economic policy for the way it protects and bolsters their kind, but who happen to endorse liberal social views—most likely because they were born in a blue part of the country. Denying that privilege, and weaponizing it against Sanders supporters who actually give a shit about the sprawling, growing underclass of America, is a dirty trick that would make Karl Rove proud…
Rebuttal, from Melissa Hillman at Quartz, “Privilege is what allows Sanders supporters to say they’ll “never” vote for Clinton”:
… We should be closely examining all candidates for office, and balanced, honest criticism of a candidate’s record and policies is crucial. Respectful debate about the candidates is necessary and healthy. But supporting Sanders should not be the same as hating Clinton. Too many people are not debating the candidates and their various records or platforms logically, instead viciously reviling Clinton–often in misogynistic terms–for things they routinely excuse in male politicians. And I have to say, the level of unfocused, irrational vitriol feels an awful lot like what conservatives have been doing to Obama for years.
There’s not a thing wrong with choosing Sanders over Clinton, or disliking Clinton’s current policy proposals. However, the out-and-out hatred we’re seeing from some Sanders supporters (and about which I am hardly the first person to write) bears some serious scrutiny. While the Sanders campaign has made real efforts to deal with the worst of it–the “Bernie Bros” acting as a misogynistic mob, attacking Clinton and her supporters Gamergate-style; the “Bern the Witch” controversy–there’s still far too much active hatred, and far too much of it is misogynistic or coded misogyny. Far too much of it stems from willing belief in conservative propaganda about Clinton that has been debunked over and over.
I think we all expected it, but I did not expect it from our side…
How privileged do you need to be to imagine that it’s a good idea to risk the actual lives of vulnerable Americans because you “hate” Clinton so much that you vow to stay home if Sanders doesn’t get the nomination? How protected from the consequences of a Trump presidency do you need to be to think your hatred of Clinton constitutes, as I saw someone say earlier this week, an “inviolable principle,” meaning that it’s more important than the lives of vulnerable Americans? That all applies equally to any Clinton supporters saying the same about Sanders…
True confession: Almost forty years ago, my first presidential vote went to John Anderson, “Independent”. Those of us angry enough to protest Jimmy Carter’s pandering to the misogynist vote didn’t have the numbers to make any appreciable difference in that year’s GOP landslide, but eight years of Reagan well and truly cured me of voting my principles over pragmatism. Not to mention breaking the American treasury, and what had survived of normal civic policies from Nixon’s aborted tenure. We’ve never rebuilt our resiliency after those twin plagues; neither our country nor the world — not to mention a great many individual citizens — are liable to survive either a Trump or a Cruz presidency. Learn from my mistakes, young voters: Call me an idiot, and make your choices smarter.
And frankly, despite having a very good weekend, Bernie Sanders is not looking like a winner come November:
The problem for Sanders is that ~94% of the remaining delegates will be awarded in primaries. https://t.co/7RpH8XFPyZ
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 27, 2016
Primary wins: Clinton 16, Sanders 4
Caucus wins: Sanders 9, Clinton 2
Primaries left: 17
Caucuses left: 2— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) March 27, 2016
Sanders fares best where third party candidates–like Anderson, Perot, Nader–fared well pic.twitter.com/ngBA0WaZdH
— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) March 28, 2016
Triumph
I hate to “well actually…” you on this, but per the link you posted (the Bloomberg delegate count) for whatever reason (probably the Washington Dem Party’s fault) the majority of the delegates for Washington have yet to be pledged, and the rest will likely go to Bernie at about the same 25-9ish margin for pledged delegates have played out so far. So, he’s going to net a lot more than the gains you posted.
In the long run this isn’t going to matter, Clinton’s lead and the proportional allocation system of the Dem primary make her the almost sure nominee. But those are incomplete numbers.
starscream
We all say hyperbole like this all the time, but the Shane Ryan piece is actually the worst thing I’ve ever read. e.g.:
“Clinton’s white, middle-to-upper-middle class foot soldiers have, by the very nature of their support, essentially written off the bottom half of American society.”
I am so fucking sick of these blowhards.
Major Major Major Major
You should post that thing of mine, AL :P
Ruckus
@starscream:
I am so fucking sick of these blowhards.
Especially when they can’t even see the forest for the single finger they are holding up in front of their own faces.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
This reminds me of ACA. You had True Progressives™ on the net screaming “Kill the Bill”. Of course, they were all privileged, upper income, and had insurance.
It’s easy to risk the fates of others when you have no skin the game (just like the Neo-Cons and Chicken Hawks).
ruemara
I hate to say it, but is Paste Magazine devoted to what Mr. Ryan obviously eats by the bucket? Sweet Hickory Smoked Jesus on a BBQ Grill, that’s some dumbassery bullshit. He can go fuck himself.
Dr. Acula
dengre has an interesting take on how many people actually voted in the Alaska caucus.
Frankensteinbeck
I have been homeless. I have had comfortable clerical jobs. I have lived desperately hand to mouth on a fast food job, for years. I have had the privilege of making an actual living off writing.
Shane Ryan can fuck himself. Sanders isn’t the savior of the poor. Wall Street was the last of my problems when I couldn’t afford a bank card. There’s nothing Sanders would have done for me that Clinton wouldn’t.
I’ll let non-whites handle whether Sanders speaks for them.
Frankensteinbeck
Ahem. I’m sorry. I know Ryan is not representative of Sanders or his supporters, and is a picked nut. He just really frosted my onions with that one.
Unabogie
Personally, I’m sick of being called a neoliberal. I’m not. I’m a regular old liberal just like I’ve been my whole life. I just think Hillary is the better choice this time, for a variety of deeply thought out reasons. Calling me names won’t change my mind.
Kropadope
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Fixed using equally valid unprovable conjecture.
@OP
First off, whom is Matt O’Brien quoting?
I disagree. I think a man with Hillary’s record wouldn’t even be under consideration. Let’s think of an overly-aggressive white male Democrat who’s record includes more instances of enabling bad Republican policy and blunting ambitious Democratic policy due to adamant insistence things be done their way. Joe Lieberman, HRC as a male would be Joe Lieberman.
I have not once seen or heard a Bernie supporter mention Vince Foster, Whitewater, Monica, Benghazi, or claiming she broke the law in the email scandal. Some Hillary supporters have to admit that they won’t accept anything short of pretending that Hillary shits rainbows.
BillinGlendaleCA
That certainly accounts for Hillary’s performance in the southern primaries.
[/snark]
Anya
The “Bernie or Bust” thing is much ado about nothing. It’s only a thing because we’re in the thick of the heat of a passionate primary campaign. My aunt said she would never vote for Obama in 08 when we were in the middle of another heated campaign, & lots of white women were losing their shit. You know how long it took her to not only support him but to donate to him? Less than a month when it became very clear to her that HRC didn’t have a path to victory. It was important for my aunt that the country didn’t go through another version of the horrible Bush years so she got over her hurt feelings.
If some young or slightly older Sanders supporters can’t see there’s far too much at stake in this next election to let the White House fall back then we have failed them. I don’t think yelling at them will accomplish anything. Instead, the Hillary campaign should reach out to them.
I am sorry if I am coming off too preachy. I know that some Bernie supporters are beyond obnoxious but I thought Hillary supporters were obnoxious in 08 but almost all of them voted for Obama.
Major Major Major Major
@Kropadope: 1. There were plenty of prominent liberals saying that Obamacare didn’t go far enough so we should scrap the Senate bill. I’m not going to pull up examples because it’s late, but I distinctly recall reading their opinions.
2. While I disagree with your assessment, Lieberman was a VP candidate. Just sayin’.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Kropadope: It’s a fact Markos Moulitsas and half the loons at GOS and Salon, as well as Keith Olbermann wanted to kill the bill and they weren’t PUMAs.
@Kropadope: you must not read GOS. Numerous Sanders supporters have posted recommended posts on eGhazi and Clinton being arrested. That’s why Kos brought out the ban hammer saying he won’t tolerate the distribution of wingnut memes on a site he owns.
starscream
@Frankensteinbeck: it feels like we say “he’s not representative of all Bernie supporters” quite often at this point.
normal liberal
@Kropadope:
Do please explain how Hillary has been “overly-aggressive.” How, pray, should one establish the proper level of aggression for a former Senator and Secretary of State?
And by the way, references to policy positions of the last Clinton administration are right out. Hillary is not Bill, and this is not 1996.
Kropadope
@Major Major Major Major:
And do we have any evidence that these people are disproportionately Bernie supporters? I always see efforts to link these groups of people with Sanders supporters, but it’s just conjecture borne of hippie-punching.
A losing one who, for many reasons, was emblematic of Gore’s bad campaign decisions, just saying.
Kropadope
@normal liberal:
Even though they were sold as a “two-for-one” presidency and she took point on some of these initiatives and publicly advocated for many others. Are her supporters still allowed to give her credit for whatever good happened during her husband’s presidency?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Kropadope:
Nobody said that.
What I said it’s easy to say “kill the bill” or “Bernie or Bust” when you are privileged and don’t have skin in the game.
eta: Markos Moulitsas is a clinton supporter, but he was a rich privileged ass pushing the “kill the bill” meme.
Anya
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Markos Moulitsas was not part of the kill the bill crowd. He even went against Howard Dean when Dean suggested democracts should vote against the bill. I clearly remember that. I think it was the Firedoglake crowd and Adam Green’s group.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Anya: What do I get if I prove you wrong?
PS thanks for reminding me that Dean wanted to Kill the Bill too. I forgot about that. And I loved Dean.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Anya: You are correct, however there were many members of the GOS community(including recommended diaries) that were part of “Kill the Bill” crowd.
Jewish Steel
You are singing my song, sister.
normal liberal
@Kropadope:
Funny how you skipped the first paragraph.
As to the second, that two-for one sales pitch flamed out pretty fast. And as first lady, Hillary’s one formal policy role was healthcare reform. She also used her position to advocate for women’s rights. Otherwise she did standard FLOTUS support for her spouse, on the rare occasions when she wasn’t being dragged pillar to post to grand jury on all the bogus crap the republicans ginned up to try and destroy them both.
She’s not asking for credit for Bill’s work. She is claiming her own record as an advocate and in government.
So, how much aggression is she allowed?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Jewish Steel: I was never too pure, I voted for Carter in 1980.
ETA: I should note that I grew up in CA, so I knew all about St. Ronnie.
Kropadope
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Nope, saves me a lot of pain in life. This place, in the last few months, has taken on a lot of the things I came here to avoid on political message boards. You’re among the vanguard of the Balloon Juce regiment of Hillary’s army of swinging dicks
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
So, you’re trying to link these groups of people together without actually saying they’re the same people. They just remind you of each other, oooooohhhhkaaaaayyyy. Sounds like a distinction without much meaningful difference. Either stop being so disingenuous or trade in your broad brush for a paint roller, it will be more efficient.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
I mean, the people saying “Bernie or Bust” are obviously Sanders supporters.
I think that’s common sense.
Anyone saying don’t vote in general, if it’s not Bernie (ie Bernie or Bust), the consequence of which is the repeal of ACA is as bad as the radical-chic Progressive Betters™ who wanted to Kill the Bill in the first place.
Sorry I had a fight in the middle of your black panther party
Kropadope
@normal liberal: Hillary’s excessive aggression, both in foreign policy and in dishonest campaigning, has been well documented for years and if you’ve managed to miss that, there’s nothing I can say to help you.
Xenos
Somewhere at the bottom of a drawer I still have the John Anderson t-shirt I bought at a benefit concert in Hartford headlined by James Taylor. I have not worn that thing since Reagan’s election and have been too ashamed to throw it out.
Maybe I can donate it to a Museum of Stupidity somewhere.
Jewish Steel
@BillinGlendaleCA: When I see the outlines of my self-righteous 20something self in the books I read and the music I wrote in the 90’s, mercy, it do make one cringe. But so much leftist stuff is pitched for a starry eyed, callow twit like I once was. I plead idealism.
Aqualad08
@Kropadope:
I’m a HRC supporter. She doesn’t shit rainbows. And yes, I’ve unfortunately noticed an uptick in the regurgitation of “noted scholars” like HA Goodman, Walker Bragman, Brogan Morris and now Shane Ryan peppered into SOME (not all, SOME) of their “Apple Jacks: We Eat What We Like” talking points.
And speaking of thinking your candidate “shits rainbows,” I’m curious as to how his supporters reacted to his “we’ll convince Superdelegates to switch” trial balloon after trashing their very existence a few weeks ago. They say they hate hypocrisy in a candidate… are they willing to call their own out for suggesting (insanely, I might add… if he gets the majority of the pledged delegates then FINE, but that ain’t happening because MATH) something like this? Usurping the will of the voters because REASONS? I understand needing to keep up enthusiasm in a campaign, but jeez… that was the first time I actually questioned his “purity” factor…
Kropadope
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
John Revolta
@Kropadope: You left out “shrill”.
Villago Delenda Est
Shayne Ryan is a idiot. Stupid like this is what gave us 9/11 and the War in Iraq.
Kropadope
@Aqualad08:
Was he trashing their existence or was he trashing the prospect that they might nominate a candidate over voters’ preference.
I didn’t do the math myself, but someone was saying that Bernie had to win 58% of the remaining vote to win the most pledged delegates. Not likely, but not wildly outlandish.
Craigo
@John Revolta: To brogressives, women are by their very nature shrill (and brittle and emotional and sometimes they bleed from where?!) and the fact really doesn’t need pointed out.
Kropadope
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
I’m not watching an hour long video at 3 in the morning to try to decipher what you might have meant by that. the video’s in my tabs and I will watch it because it sounded interesting, but what the flying fuck are you talking about?
@John Revolta: I’d also like to know where the heck you are getting that.
craigie
I also voted for Anderson. In my defense, it was the first election I ever voted in.
But I still have the T-shirt. Maybe that will fund my retirement…
Kropadope
@Craigo:
to Democrats who have adopted blind, unquestioning support of HRC a tribal marker, criticism of one particular woman equates to antipathy to all women and the entire concept of women in charge.
normal liberal
@Kropadope:
You are (consciously or not) missing the point of my objection, to your explicit “if Hillary was a man she’d be nobody” horseshit, wherein you used the phrase “overly-aggressive.” If you were intending a policy critique in that comparison, it was inartful at best.
So, as the president says, let me be clear: your policy preferences are your own to determine. Your misogyny will always undermine your position.
BillinGlendaleCA
@craigie: While I voted for President Carter in both the primary and general elections, I did see Teddy speak on campus and still have my Kennedy’80 button.
normal liberal
@John Revolta:
Thank you for putting this more succinctly than I could at this hour.
Kropadope
@normal liberal: How am I, in any way, being misogynist?
Kropadope
@normal liberal:
I’m apparently sexist because I don’t think it’s a good thing to arbitrarily bomb Muslim nations.
Peale
@normal liberal: if Hillary were a man, she would have been the spouse of the first gay president. Anywhere. In 1992, when it wasn’t even legal to be married. That would have been awesome.
If she were a man, though, she’d be Joe Biden, not Joe Lieberman.
Amir Khalid
@Kropadope:
Here’s Sam Wang’s assessment of Bernie’s chances. Wang is more pessimistic than you.
Cathie from Canada
There are 1700 delegates up for grabs in the next 22 primaries and caucuses. Hillary needs about 700 of them. Bernie needs 1300. Even if he convinces some of the super delegates to switch to support him, it’s not going to be enough.
So I think we can say Hillary’ s got this.
Kropadope
@Peale:
That was whom I was thinking about before I laid out traits, at which point I couldn’t help but think of Joe Lieberman, whom I thought and still wish I had forgotten forever.
NR
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Stop lying. Kos supported the bill in the end (in a complete reversal from his earlier stance of “Strip out the mandate or kill this bill”), as did virtually every other “progressive” online activist, despite the fact that it was warmed-over Republican legislation from the 1990s.
Aqualad08
@Kropadope: Either way, he’s claiming they are a part of his path forward, a path that has 17 primaries and only 4 caucuses in tiny “states” left. By saying they’ll get behind him, he’s implying they will do so despite Hillary winning the pledged delegate contest. Is he winning New York and Puerto Rico by 16 point margins? Probably not. Has he contributed to the Democratic Party’s down ticket races in any meaningful way? No, he hasn’t. Other than his semi-reliable vote in Congress, what does the Party owe him? I’m not asking these questions to be cruel, I’m asking them because his logic is unsupported by reality.
If he wants the superdelegates to switch to him after losing key battleground state primaries like Virginia, Florida and Ohio by healthy margins, he needs a better message then “momentum towards the end.”
It’s simply not a realistic plan. Him winning the remaining contests at a 58% clip, something he has yet to do in a PRIMARY out outside Vermont and New Hampshire, is the very definition of “wildly outlandish.” Caucus season is virtually over… Hillary could lose everything left by 15% and still have more pledged delegates. And she is NOT losing everything left by 15%. Saying superdelegates will bail him out isn’t reality; it’s an attempt to keep the cash rolling in. I don’t blame him, but let’s call it what it is: politician bullshit.
Bess
@Kropadope:
The party candidate will need 2,383 delegates for the nomination.
There are 2,049 remaining to be won.
Sanders has won 1,004 to date.
He would need to win 1,389 of the 2,049 remaining. That’s 70% of the remaining.
The door appears to be closing….
balconesfault
@Kropadope:
Sure, because Hillary threatened to uphold a GOP filibuster in order to force an ACA that was much more deferential to big insurance companies (she didn’t) … and Joe Lieberman was prominent in declaring support for the Iran Nuclear Deal (he wasn’t). Just a couple very important data points to illustrate that … well … you’re wrong.
Kropadope
@Amir Khalid: Sam Wang:
Actually, I said 58, so when broken down to raw numbers, he is actually more optimistic than I am. Bernie also went 80+, 70+, 70+ last night, just sayin.
Wang:Now let’s look at national opinion surveys.
Half the states have voted, so national surveys include a lot of voters who will not be voting again in the primary (I should hope). If Bernie outperforms Hillary going forward, that suggests one of two things. either movement in his direction, which you said last night you believe unlikely. While I disagree, that doesn’t discount the second option, that the remaining states are better territory for Bernie. These possibilities are also not mutually exclusive.
Kropadope
@Bess: So, you think the superdelegates will hold fast to their current positions, even if Bernie pulls off the far-remotely possible and surpasses her in pledged delegates?
superpredators4hillary
Nothing screams “electability” more than vote scolding.
magurakurin
@Triumph: According to the Green Papers they have all been allocated.
Wash
C 27 S 74
Hawaii
C 8 S 17
Alaska
C 3 S 13
Plus 66 for Sanders for the night. A good night, but WI looks to be a delegate split and New York and the Acela Corridor will be very unkind to him.
balconesfault
@Aqualad08:
I keep trying to explain this to younger Bernie supporters who are appalled at the concept of Superdelegates. An awful lot of those Superdelegates are politicians who owe in part their Governors or House or Senate seat to Hillary showing up to the fundraising dinners and events that they have needed to actually put those seats in Democratic hands.
This isn’t cronyism – this is rewarding someone for helping make sure that the Democratic Party actually had (for a short time window) enough votes to get some of Obama’s agenda passed, and during the 2000’s to block some of Bush’s worst proposals (had the Dems not have had enough Senate seats to threaten a filibuster in 2005, we’d probably have part of Social Security privatized right now).
I get the anti-establishmentism on the right – the GOP leadership has been deliberately screwing over the economic interests of their rank and file voters for decades now. On the left, it makes far less sense – the Dems have since 1980 been playing a defensive game against a well organized and well funded machine with the sole goal of rolling back New Deal and Great Society programs, and doing so with a voting base that’s extremely fickle with respect to which elections it actually turns out for.
And before people start lecturing about “why vote for establishment Dems who don’t actually work for the people” … I offer Russ Feingold. One of the first members of either party to call for complete withdrawal from Iraq, a regular stalwart on Progressive issues … and in 2010 he got defeated because liberals just didn’t show up to the polls that year. If the Bernistas want to change the world, how about they start by voting in every damn election, primary, referendum, all the way down to dogcatcher … and not just showing up in leap years to declare that the Dems who managed to scrape through those low-turnout year mid-terms aren’t liberal enough.
Kropadope
@balconesfault: @balconesfault:
She’s running for the Democratic nomination, it’s a necessity for her. Yet, she still rattles her sabre regarding Iran. Plus I don’t recall seeing this initiative pursued during her tenure at state. But you’re right, I congratulate her on having enough sense to be a yellow warning light rather than a flashing red light in the manner of her Republican opponents and Joe Lieberman, her former comrade in war drum beating.
Amir Khalid
@Kropadope:
Them’s caucus states, not primary-election states. Also, Alaska and Hawai’i have tiny populations and Bernie’s wins there don’t add a lot of delegates to his column.
magurakurin
@Kropadope: He puts big red maple leafs on his posts…easy to identify. Just skip on by them. That’s what people do here. It seems to work out fine for most. I get a chuckle out of his posts, they piss you off. So, don’t read them. Easy Peasey.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Kropadope: What, was Obama planning to go to war with Iran before John Kerry stepped in and reversed the ship of state in just three years?
Kropadope
@balconesfault:
A few fun facts. Bernie and his campaign frequently make sure to point out that the president can’t do everything alone and that it is important to vote for good Representatives down the whole ticket and show up for every single election. Also, not every presidential election year is a leap year. Years divisible by 100, but not by 400, are not leap years.
Calouste
So I did a quick search on Sane Ryan, and he went to U of North Carolina and Duke, and describes himself as a “gentleman farmer”. Yet he counts himself among the “underprivileged”. I guess by his standards privileged only means Yale and Harvard and a trust fund..
magurakurin
@Kropadope: If Sanders gets 2026, I’ll be screaming louder than you for the supers to switch their vote to Sanders.
2026.
You get that, then we can talk. Until then, it’s all bullshit.
magurakurin
@balconesfault:
this. double plus good.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Kropadope: I want him to be more specific, though, to endorse actual candidates. I want to know that he has a plan.
balconesfault
@Kropadope:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-iran-talks-to-start/
Amir Khalid
@Kropadope:
Funny that if Bernie’s still a Senator in 2018, he’s not running for reelection as a Democrat. Funny that he’s attended Democratic fundraising dinners for years, but in this cycle he can’t be arsed to raise money for or campaign with Democratic Congressional candidates.
An irrelevant quibble.
Kropadope
@Thoroughly Pizzled: Not exactly, but the stepped up sanctions regime was not entirely peaceful. I had heard suggestions for policy along the lines of the Iran deal going back to the Bush administration (not emanating from the administration itself, obviously). This is not a policy I heard Hillary Clinton advocate for prior to its emergence after her tenure. It’s the main reason I plan on voting for her, even though she seems to look at rapprochement with Iran as a very distant possibility. That makes me nervous given her history of reaching toward military-centric solutions too quickly.
Calouste
Maybe Sanders should think about why these people are attracted to his candidacy in the first place?
balconesfault
@Kropadope:
Again … http://abcnews.go.com/International/iran-nuclear-talks-begin/story?id=8720605
Bess
@Kropadope:
I’m totally guessing. If a major problem appeared which would make it significantly harder for Hillary to win against Trump or Cruz then I can see superdelegates moving to Bernie in order to try to save the White House.
If Bernie won more than 70% of the remaining delegates then, well, …, I just do not see that happening. Bernie has won mostly caucuses and lost most of the balloting primaries. Most of the remaining delegates will be picked by ballots. I can’t imagine anything that Bernie could do at this point to swing sentiment that strongly in his favor.
Changing the momentum of the election that drastically would take a meteor strike sort of event. It’s not going to happen because Bernie works up a new and improved speech or finds a new issue talk about.
magurakurin
@Calouste:
Don’t stand next to me.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Hey, now. Not tiny so much as exqusiite.
Hawaii’s population larger than:
New Hampshire
Maine
Rhode Island
Montana
Delaware
South Dakota
North Dakota
Alaska
D.C.
Vermont
Wyoming
Greater than twice as many here now as when I moved here. You’re not rabbits, people! :)
Kathleen
@balconesfault: Thank you.
Kropadope
@Amir Khalid:
I just thought it was interesting and not something everyone knows. I may have, today, helped out someone on March 1. 2100.
Cacti
@Bess:
This.
Nothing short of a black swan event is going to change the trajectory of Democratic nomination at this point. Had he been able to turn his upset in Michigan into a couple more upset wins, maybe. Getting swept in FL/OH/IL/MO/NC was a back breaker.
magurakurin
@Kropadope: If some of the people reading this are in grade school. Most of the people here are in or soon to be in Depends though.
Tastytone
@Frankensteinbeck:
NotMax
@Kropeadope
Also, aside from being irrelevant, incorrect. 2000 was a presidential election year and not a leap year.
Amir Khalid
@Kropadope:
Certainly irrelevant to 2016, which is not a century year.
magurakurin
@Cacti:
and it might be repeated in PA, DE, CT, MD and RI all following a significant loss in NY. The senator is heading back into the thresher in a just a few weeks. If he loses WI, the lights will more or less go out. I don’t see how Tad walks back his claim that Senator Sanders must win WI to have a chance. I’m sure he will walk that statement back, but it won’t be very believable to many but the truly devoted.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
:Ahem:: 2000 was divisible by 400 and therefore a leap year.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Ahem ahem. Years which are evenly divisible into 4000 are NOT leap years.
Easy enough to find a 2000 calendar online.
In fact, come the year 4000, Feb. will gain a day and there will thenceforth be a Feb. 30 every 4 years.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
I sit corrected. The rule is that only century years evenly divisible into 4000 are leap years, so I had it backwards.
Dang you, elderly memory!
However, both 1900 and 1800 (presidential election years) were not leap years. 2100 shall not be a leap year either.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
Huh? Per Wikipedia:
Jewish Steel
@NotMax: What? Where on earth are you getting this information?
ETA: Ah, I see now.
NotMax
Now really feeling old.
Listening to a “British Old Time Radio Comedy” stream on Roku.
One of the stars of the show just concluded? Benedict Cumberbatch.
Craigo
@NotMax: By 4, except by 100, except by 400.
Edit: And I see you figured this out, but it’s a good shorthand.
NotMax
@Jewish Steel
Misremembered.
See correction at #86.
The trivia about February 4000 has stuck with me, however, since learned of it way, way back in childhood. That is a little known calendrical hiccup.
gene108
@Kropadope:
Hillary meme I’ve seen from my Facebook feed from Bernie supporters
Kropadope
@balconesfault: Neither article you cite indicates that the P5+1 negotiations have anything along the lines of the Iran agreement on the table. While the reporter from the CBS article muses about the possibility, that is just conjecture and not demonstrated by the official statements in the article. In fact, most of the CBS article is about hawks’ push for sanctions and regime change. The ABC article states more clearly what the CBS obscures, that the big breakthrough of this particular meeting was that they met without sanctions on the table.
Neither of your articles nor state department documents from the talks indicate Hillary Clinton’s direct involvement either. The state department’s report also doesn’t entertain the idea of Iran enriching its own uranium, but rather having Russia send Iran minimally enriched Uranium for the sake of medic research. In fact, the CBS article you linked to indicates that the peaceful resolution the reporter hopes for would be a break from Hillary Clinton’s successful push for sanctions. In fact, the P5+1’s resolutions from 2008, even before Obama until 2010, a year after your articles, continued to push new sanctions on Iran. The tidiest history I could find was on Wikipedia, I’ll link in a follow-up comment. The effort toward the Iran deal originated in 2013, both your sources and both my sources, the second of which I will post below per link limit.
Kropadope
@Kropadope: History of P5+1.
BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: How about this, every Presidential election in my lifetime has and will be a leap year.
Amir Khalid
@Kropadope:
So you’re saying that this huge, high-level State Department matter could have happened behind the Secretary’s back? To say the least, that would be surprising in the extreme.
Kropadope
@gene108: You say that’s posted by Bernie supporters. There is nothing in the link provided indicating support for Bernie. I’ve seen that before; posted by Trump supporters, libertarians, and long-time Republicans. You may find this tough to believe, but the things that lefty folk dislike about Hillary are different from those.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Obviously, HRC was too busy sitting on her arse flying around the world; just for the hell of it.
MikeBoyScout
Having just participated in precinct caucuses here in Washington on Saturday, not very enthusiastic about participating in the follow-on events as a Clinton delegate.
Some Sanders supporters I’ve interacted with and whom I’ve observed campaigning spew outrageous venom about Clinton.
It’s my job to work through all that, and I suppose I will, but it is beyond my comprehension how anyone who likes and supports Sanders can think a Republican victory in November is allowable because Hillary is_____ .
Kropadope
@Amir Khalid: Did I say no knowledge? She wasn’t there, someone else took point, the decisions made were commensurately conservative. Nothing resembling the Iran deal emerged from those meeting until after her tenure and the P5+1, in fact, imposed additional sanctions in 2010, though I don’t know who the delegation was for this meeting of P5+1. This wasn’t the main vehicle for sanctions during her tenure, however, her biggest success was with the UN Security council.
Funny how she’s so much more successful in advocating acts of war than any other field of public policy.
Kropadope
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Not doing a particular thing != not doing anything at all.
Aqualad08
@Kropadope:
OK… and which “good Representatives” has Bernie recruited to join his “revolution?” Has he made ANY effort to get good candidates of a like mind to run for House seats currently occupied by Republicans? Or raised cash for the DNC or DCCC at one of those “obscene” (his word) fundraisers he attacks her over?
He can “remind people to vote” all he likes… unless he’s willing to help close district candidates pay the bills why should they pledge fidelity short of him outright winning the 2,026 majority of pledged delegates?
Kropadope
@Aqualad08:
The DSCC, yes.
He endorsed Chuy Garcia. He also endorsed Jesse Jackson in 1988. I would wager on their having been more, but it’s tough to find in the midst of Google only wanting to spit up who has endorsed Bernie in 2016.
You can seriously say that with his army of small donors together being able to allow him to be competitive with those mainly reliant on the big money? Those same people are a major part of his audience for the “every election and every office are important” message. Whether the supporters act on this is dependent on a wide range of things, and if Bernie’s supporters aren’t giving to Congressional candidates, the almost uniform preference for HRC there is almost certainly a factor.
opiejeanne
@MikeBoyScout: We caucused in Washington too. Almost everyone was nice or at least polite when they disagreed with each other, except for one woman who was exceedingly bitter about her job going overseas and who made some comments about Hillary that were untrue, and stated them pretty viciously. If she’d spat when she said Hillary it wouldn’t have surprised me.
It was too much for the Bernie supporters sitting with me, and the Bernie delegates indicated to me* that her comments were wrong and uncalled for.
*I’m one of the Hillary delegates from my precinct.
Fred B.
For the better part of 40 years I have, for the most part, have been voting for the pile of crap that stunk the less. And that is how the status quo continues. Hillary is a corporate lackey who hasn’t seen a war she hasn’t loved. She will throw us some crumbs but that’s about it.Corporate influence, income inequality, Jobs going overseas have occurred under both parties because most of both parties have been bought and paid for. Now both piles smell so bad I can’t do it. This not democracy. I certainly won’t vote Repub but I can’t vote Hillary. Nothing will improve until money in politics is brought under control.
Thge two part system now consists of the corporate party and the insane corporate party. If you can’t see that then you get what you deserve.
Fred
@Calouste: I’m going to make a wild stab at explaining Bernibros. Youthful exhuberence. Also the political discourse of the past couple delades has not provided a good example for sane interaction. And youthful exhuberence.
MikeBoyScout
@Fred B.:
Hyperbole and all that, but you do know this statement is absolute BS right?
“Hillary is a corporate lackey who hasn’t seen a war she hasn’t loved.”
See, I’m old enough to remember a thing called the Vietnam war when Hillary worked for Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and McGovern in 1972.
MikeBoyScout
@opiejeanne: Hope to meet you in Tacoma in June
Zinsky
Cathy from Canada put it nicely – Hillary has got this. I love Bernie and his message, but the contest is over and it is time for Democrats to stop fighting amongst themselves and work to get the Senate back too! Regardless of which Democrat were to win the White House, if the Senate remains in GOP hands, it will be a caretaker presidency and nothing meaningful will get accomplished. Keep your eyes on the prize, people!
Nicole
My dad also voted for Anderson, AL. I remember. I think it’s the only time he didn’t vote for the Democrat in a national election. I’m a little worried about his vote this fall, though.
satby
@MikeBoyScout: thank you. Because I had to put the tablet down or toss it after I read that. The bullshit is deep in that one.
satby
And I was another Anderson voter back then. I think it cured a lot of us of our delusions about 3rd party runs. And letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Aimai
@Kropadope: by the time the ACA was passed PUMAs were a thing of the past. Tons of ” kill the bill” types were self proclaimed disaffected Ona voters or third party voters.
Aimai
@Kropadope: thst is such crap.
different-church-lady
@Fred:
You misspelled “obstinacy”.
different-church-lady
@Kropadope:
She’s crushing it in raw vote totals, so I’m not seeing your point here.
NorthLeft12
@starscream: Yes, that quote which basically states as fact that all the middle class supporters of Clinton because they support Clinton don’t give a damn about lower income citizens and the issues that impact them.
Do these guys actually read and/or listen to what they are actually saying?
different-church-lady
What’s sad about this is that tomorrow we’ll have someone on one of these threads who will say, “I’m not seeing anyone saying ‘Bernie or Bust!'”.
different-church-lady
@Fred B.:
Ah. So it’s all your fault.
Kay
I will of course support the Dem nominee but while there have been some over the top attacks on Clinton from Sanders supporters, there’s also been what I consider some denial from Clinton supporters. It’s hard to get a simple admission that it is more difficult to pay for college now than it was even ten years ago, or that some of these trade deals sucked, or that the deductibles and premium costs in the ACA are too high.
These things are true. It IS harder to afford college, people WERE promised trade deals would “create jobs” and the lost jobs were never mentioned, the ACA DOES cost too much out of pocket. Every one of these things that are plainly true are met with this kind of ferocious denial and insistence that people are whining about nothing. It’s not nothing.
It’s particularly nonsensical to me that Clinton supporters would adopt this “all policy demands are privilege” approach because “I get things done” is her argument. I feel like they’re so busy dismissing complaints they never get around to saying what she would do about all these real problems.
For example- I didn’t even know she had a “free college” program, but she does! It’s two free years of community college. That might be a good thing to talk about rather than focusing on how “BernieBros” want “free stuff”.
John D.
@Bess: I keep a running count of delegate allocation at a web page.
Sweeping the trio over the weekend shifted Bernie to needing just 56.53% of the remaining pledged delegates to hit 2026.
The problem for Sanders is — as it has always been — that he is not winning the delegate-rich states by large margins (prior to WA), while Clinton is. WA is by far his best single-state delegate pickup of the entire contest, but the upcoming NY primary will likely erase the 66 net delegates. Or, if you don’t like predictions, WA and GA were a wash — he won 103 to her 100 delegates. The problem for him is that those 2 states alone are 5% of the total pledged delegates. He’s got a 228 pledged delegate deficit right now. “A wash” won’t eat into that.
NY has 247 delegates, as is polling at Clinton +30 or more. PA has 189 delegates and is polling at Clinton +25 or more. Those two states alone are 25% of the remaining delegate pool. If Clinton wins them by even 10 points, she adds 42 delegates to her lead while cutting the remaining pool by a quarter. Obviously the race could tighten significantly between now and mid-April, but NY polling has been universally kind to Clinton, from all sources on all dates. I expect +30 to be far closer to the mark than +10.
At this point, Sanders has precisely one path forward for the nomination — California. He has to take it, and take it huge. It’s the only remaining delegate-rich state that he’s polling reasonably well in. The issue with that is that it is by far the most expensive state to campaign in. It’s huge, the TV and radio markets are outlandish in their charges, and the infrastructure costs are staggering. So, nobody wants to pin their hopes on CA.
All that said, I do not want to underplay Sanders’ performance on Saturday. He did outstandingly well in all 3 caucuses. His supporters are motivated and energized, and he and they should be commended for their performance. Tad Devine can eat a whole bag of salted dicks, though. Hypocrisy rankles.
sherparick
First, as this is the primary, vote and argue for the candidate you think best. That is what a primary and the intra-party nomination fight is always about. And yes, if your candidate does not have the most votes and delegates at the end, I do expect you to vote for the pile of crap that stinks less, because those on the Republican side stink so much more.
Much like Movement Conservatives and Theocrats, the Bernie Bros appear to confuse a “right” to express idiotic and vicious opinions with the “privilege” of expressing such opinions without counter-criticism. We also have the right to point out logical flaws, errors, and biases. Yes, the Bernie Bros have a right to “stay home” and express recycled Rush Limbaugh criticism of Hillary, but the rest of us have a right to point out that they are obtuse moral idiots. Because by holding to their “high principals” of not choosing the “lesser of two evils,” they are in fact choosing to inflect or expressing a preference for the Greater Evil. Using the same logic, these folks would not have voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860 because he did not advocate the immediate abolition of slavery and in fact promised to enforce the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, preferring to see the pro-slavery Stephen Douglas or soon to be traitor John Breckinridge elected President. The problem of not choosing the “lesser of two evils,” means you have stated a preference for the having the “Greater Evil” in power. That has never worked out well in American or other countries history.
Kay
Also, I’m in the Democratic Party (unlike a lot of young people who don’t consider themselves “Democrats” but vote for Democrats) and I don’t think they pay enough attention to the 70% of working people who don’t have college degrees AND I think they do a terrible job on state races. These are real problems! They can’t rely on labor unions to carry the entire load of of economic policy and advocacy for 70% of working people and they can’t cede any more states. Eventually this will impact national Presidential races. I think it already is, and I’ll give you just ONE example- state law on voting. It’s pretty vital Democrats start competing at the state level because in some of these states suppression alone is estimated to shave 2% off vote totals.
Clinton has actually said quite a bit about this- how state law is indivisible from and entwined with federal law on issue after issue. SHE recognizes it’s a problem.
John D.
@Kay:
“Too high” is a comparative phrase. “Too high” compared to what?
Because they aren’t too high compared to the pre-ACA market. They aren’t too high compared to the projections for 2016 from all sources, both with and without the ACA included in the projections. The only ones who can I can think of with an honest claim of “too high” are the young healthy folk who now have to carry insurance, for whom any amount is too high, since they were paying zero. (I specifically am not including the folk who complain that their old policy was much cheaper. They didn’t have a policy. They had rescission-bait.)
Do I think medical care in the USA costs far too much? Of course I do. But the ACA did not arise in a vacuum. In the context of the USA medical system, the ACA is astoundingly better than what was in place before.
satby
@Kay: You know, people who worry that their kids will be gunned down on the way home from the 7-11 really aren’t as worried about college. People who only have health insurance because of the ACA aren’t enthused about tossing that for some mythical single payer plan (one of whom would be me). People who don’t have jobs now (like me) really worry about more immediate things that trade deals of the past. Clinton supporters (and I am one) do not consider “all policy demands are privilege”; we just prioritize them differently.
FlipYrWhig
Not everyone who supports Bernie Sanders is smug and hideous, but there’s an obvious correlation.
Kay
@John D.:
I have had loyal Democrats in my office, people who supported the health care law, and they cannot afford the deductible. We’ve gone from telling people the ACA is a “start” and that it can be built upon to telling them they are making this up. They’re not making it up. They have to change plans all the time and the out of pocket costs fluctuate. The ACA was sold as a “guarantee”- it was offered as economic security. If they don’t know what it will cost year to year it fails on that promise.
Maybe it would be easier to go at if from the other direction. What complaints are they permitted? They have to have NO health insurance available? I just feel like we’re cutting off any avenue of redress for what are real problems by insisting these problems don’t exist.
FlipYrWhig
@John D.:
In other words, assholes.
Applejinx
Since this is yet another thread specifically about SandersVsClinton, yay…
This can be absolutely, horribly true and STILL not change the fact that these people not only have the power (through being affluent enough to exert control over the Democrats: it ain’t all Haim Saban out there) but are prepared to wield it, and don’t care who they hurt.
That’s politics. That’s why Elizabeth Warren would be a fool not to reserve judgement and perhaps endorse alongside DWS who’s trying to ruin all she cares about. Sheer, pure politics.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a dirty trick. It doesn’t matter if it’s ALL dirty tricks. If they deliver the nomination to Clinton (as was always intended) then we practically can only vote for her or the Republican, and they can trickle down whatever salvation they deem appropriate. If we’re lucky, only the Middle East will suffer (though we’ll pay for it, both directly and in perpetual destabilization as we kick all the anthills and hornets’ nests we can find). And rewards and punishments are doled out based on loyalty, not merit, not even the survival of the Republic.
In the end, the most basic level by which this works is politics. Bernie can try and change this, but he’ll either become it or succumb to it. I think the degree to which he’s able to deny the Presidency to Clinton… is the degree to which he becomes it, and becomes not really any better than another Clinton.
We really did need better than Clinton.
Kay
@satby:
Okay, then unless they’re being gunned down on the street they shouldn’t mention any of these things or make any demands. Why have political Parties at all? Obviously political leaders are doing the best they can. Why talk about college affordability at all? It’s not a matter of survival, after all.
Also? It got no coverage because people think it doesn’t matter but these aren’t “trade deals of the past”. There have been two large trade deals under Obama and the 3rd is well on they way to a rubber stamp. Specific promises were made with each of these trade deals- 600k net jobs, 2 million net jobs, even AFTER they should have known they can’t make jobs promises on these deals they continue to make them.
Fred B.
@MikeBoyScout: I am old enough to remember that too. But that was then. Tell the people of Libya and Honduras and the Middle East that.
Dennis
Voting for Anderson also “well and truly” cured me of voting for a 3rd party candidate again. But what does that have to do with who you vote for in the primaries? I guess voting for Obama in the 2008 primaries doomed us to 8 more years of Republican rule? (And some Hillary people were saying just that, at the time.)
Kay
@satby:
I;m actually glad you said it because it’s an extreme example of what I’m talking about. Person comes to the door and I say “vote for Democrats”. They say “I haven’t had a raise in 6 years, I can’t use this health insurance because I can’t pay the out of pocket costs and State U now costs 13k a year when it cost 8k for my older child”
What do Democrats say “you’re alive and you have a job and and an insurance policy and the possibility of college, so really all these issues boil down to privilege”? Clinton doesn’t see to believe this. She has an elaborate website with policy proposals. She seems to believe some of these issues are valid.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: Voting for Bernie Sanders is not the exclusive way to care about the “underclass,” and indeed the people I know in real life who are most passionate about Bernie Sanders are the farthest from “underclass” possible. They’re dilettantes. They’re the Subaru/Whole Foods set. They’re the same exact comfortable white people who’ve been moaning about how politics isn’t liberal enough for them for 30 consecutive years while doing nothing to make it more liberal in any way except bringing their own canvas bags to the grocery store. I take it other Bernie Sanders people are closer to the world they supposedly champion. That is not at all my experience. And it is not where the writers who take to the pages of Paste and Salon and whatnot come from either.
Applejinx
@balconesfault:
This. It really is all about politics. It’s not unreasonable to be upset when Democrats learn from Republicans that it’s fun to screw over the rank and file for massive personal profit (lobbying, and buying into the stock market in order to become investor class: they’re ALL fucking investor class, these people), and it’s not unreasonable to observe the machine’s become a sort of hybrid.
But you can’t replace the machine unless you replace the machine. Hashtags will not do that. Rallies alone will not do that. They only document how unhappy everybody is, and the machine doesn’t give a rat’s ass about that.
If you come at the king, you best not miss. If you try to replace the machine you have to actually do that, as in mobilize all the voters and genuinely outperform the machine even while it’s set against you with everything it’s got.
That’s a pretty high bar to clear, and the consequences for failing to do that aren’t awesome.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: If they don’t like what the Democratic Party is doing for them, they should feel free to make demands of the Republican Party. Why don’t they?
C.V. Danes
Any progressive who elects to stay home on election day, no matter who the Democratic candidate is, needs to have his or her ass kicked repeatedly wherever they have the temerity to show their heads after the election.
Don’t like Hillary (or Bernie)? Tough shit. Go vote anyway. Go vote for all the downballot people and iniatives where your vote matters the most.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: What Democrats are screwing over the rank and file for massive personal profit? What is this story you have running in your mind at all times? Jesus Fucking Christ.
FlipYrWhig
@C.V. Danes: BUT I WANNA BE INSPIRED AND IM NOT WAAAHAHHAAA
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
Sorry, this doesn’t make any sense to me. Why don’t they? Because they have been persuaded that the Republican Party has nothing for them. That’s an ADVANTAGE for Democrats. They have ’em right where they want ’em! They’re halfway home! The response to that is going to be “go to a Cruz rally and see how you like that!” I mean come on. What is this? Is this a political Party or a club?
I continue to maintain that blaming voters is not a smart approach. It may feel good but it won’t get us where we want to go. Why are we constantly analyzing voters and attributing motives to them? It’s just crazy to spend so much time listing the (admittedly real!) deficiencies of voters. What is the point? ESPECIALLY coming from people who insist they are pragmatists and all about winning.
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig: Venn diagrams.
Kay
@Applejinx:
I reject this too- this all or nothing, “if you come at the king you best not miss”. You can come at the king a lot in the US. You can come at the king over and over for 20 years. You’ll miss 99% of the time but the king may move your way. Hillary Clinton will not actually murder Bernie Sanders.That isn’t how it works. It’s much more transactional and pragmatic than that.
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig:
All of them, Katie. Except Bernie, of course…
different-church-lady
@Kay:
She murdered Vince Foster. What makes you think she won’t kill again?
C.V. Danes
@FlipYrWhig: Just sayin’ :-)
Your local school board and judge are just as important.
John D.
@Kay: Kay, I’m really not sure what you are responding to, since I asked what you were comparing to with “too high” and you veered off into claims I never made.
Yes, out of pocket costs are high. They were growing more year-to-year pre-ACA. The ACA is reducingthe rate of medical inflation. There are things we can do to improve upon this, but NONE of them fucking well start with “The ACA is screwing me”. Unfettered capitalism is screwing you. The ACA is trying to fix that.
The economic security sold via the ACA is “one illness or injury won’t destroy you financially”. Go kick Max Baucus and Ben Nelson if the economic security on the premium/OOP costs is a bit lacking.
Beth in VA
@magurakurin: Wisconsin seems like Sanders’ territry to me, but I don’t know. Just based on the infortunately mostly ineffectual but passionate activism against Scott Walker centered in Madison. He took away UW tenure for that one.-
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: I’m not an organizer, just a curmudgeon. I’m not in the business of persuading anyone; when I am, I act differently. But it seems to me that if the fish aren’t running you can sink your line somewhere else.
different-church-lady
@Dennis:
But if the Hillbots had actually carried through with the (standard-issue) petulant threats to go scorched earth and stay home, they would have doomed us to just that.
They didn’t. And it’s very likely that Bernie voters won’t either, the natterings of on-line brogressives notwithstanding.
Kay
@John D.:
The main reason I supported the health care law was the expansion of Medicaid. That’s a solid unimpeachable benefit and it cements the idea that health care is a right, so actually advances a very liberal goal in a major way.
I felt the same way about SCHIP. I thought that was huge. It will pay dividends for decades and we’re just now getting to the “pay off” part. The more people you line up in front of a lower income program to protect it the more resilient it is. There’s almost a calculus. You need more lower income people because they don’t have as much clout- so you need only XX wealthy people to support cuts in estate taxes but you need XXX,XXX to support Medicaid. This is very pragmatic to me. I feel I’m a realist- the opposite of unicorn. I am willing to accept and deal with the fact that the 70% have less clout than the 30% instead of denying it.
Original Lee
@Kay: I agree with you. What can I say to my cousin in Michigan, whose Bronze plan costs her more per month than the payroll deduction for health insurance from my paycheck? She’s the one who is working part time in retail, is nearly 15 years younger and in much better health than I am – what can I possibly tell her that will convince her Clinton gets it? She will probably vote for Clinton in the fall, because she knows up close and personal how bad the GOP is right now, but she won’t be happy about it.
John D.
@Kay: Yeah, I agree with all of that. Roberts well and truly screwed a bunch of people with his ACA ruling involving Medicaid.
I also consider myself primarily a realist, both politically and aspirationally. Ideally, I’d like to see Medicaid and Medicare expand over a long-ish period until they met in the middle. The “we have to do it all today” crowd make me itch. it’s like they never heard of secondary effects. And yet, I get the impulse, because slow, incremental change only works if you have a long-term commitment to it, and given our biannual turnover of government, a long — decades-long, in fact — stretch of commitment is hard to come by.
We have an ideal opportunity in this election to secure that, though. The GOP is fracturing badly, and in what appear to be irreparable ways, right before our eyes. The Democratic party, unified, dwarfs the size of any of the GOP splinter factions. Which is why the #BernieOrBust assholes irritate me so badly. This is not the time to factionalize ourselves. Fight hard in the primary. Pull for your candidate. But once the nomination — the one that Bernie chose to seek — is settled, support the candidate that was chosen, even if it is not your first choice. Politics is the art of the possible, and precisely none of the things Bernie supporters want to see happen are possible under GOP governance.
Applejinx
@Kay: My point being you can’t make a bid for control of the machine, fail, and then go ‘waaah, I’m gonna stay home’. We know the two parties running America are only wildly different in certain ways! If you look at it in a class sense (increasingly relevant in America) or an economic sense, they’re not nearly so different. Hell, the ACA directly subsidizes a massive, well-lobbyed industry that other countries don’t support nearly as much, and that’s one of the biggest ‘progressive victories’: poor youth now have to pay this industry rather than fall back on the emergency room or complete lack of health care.
We know this when it’s that obvious, and it looks like you have to go fight all the machines and never surrender.
But if you cannot defeat the Dem machine as it stands, and there’s a better than even chance that Bernie and his rallies and sparrow can’t defeat the Dem machine, then you can’t simply turn saboteur and try to smash the machine and prevent it from functioning.
Because if you do that, the Republican machine carries on empowered, and you’ve done worse than nothing.
It’s really, really, REALLY not about ‘defeating the Dem machine’, no matter what it looks like. You have to REPLACE the machine or it’s worthless. I saw a lot of good hardworking people working for Bernie, smart and pragmatic. If there’s not enough of them to literally replace the DNC types it’s worthless.
What would really be useful is the Dem machine retuning itself in a more class-oriented way, observing what’s happening. You’d think Bernie’s small-donor fundraising would be a clue here. Almost without exception these are people who can’t afford to do such a thing, yet are. That’s desperation talking in a very loud voice. It’s insane that’s even happening.
As long as Hillary’s picture of America is hardworking aspirational people putting in the work to join the investor class and win the American Dream, the Dem machine is in serious danger, because that is some impossibly unrealistic bullshit. It’s insultingly out of touch with modern economic theory. Read some Piketty.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
If you don’t give people a political outlet to effect change they abandon politics. That doesn’t seem like a difficult concept to me. That’s rational.
The collapse of conservative economic policies in Louisiana, in Pennsylvania, in Kansas, is an opportunity for Democrats. Even if you start with the most transactional “politics is a marketplace” view it’s an opportunity. I would like to see them DO something with it instead of analyzing voter motives. No more analyzing! No more “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” ! Just go in there and start fucking talking about how they’re different. They have NOTHING to lose at this point- they’re down to 22 states and they don’t have a Congressional majority. What’s the worse that could happen? They find out their deepest fears about the horribleness of voters are true? Where does that leave us? We need a better electorate? I don’t know what to do with that.
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: Trump is winning on totally bullshit economic promises to bring all the jobs back and make everybody have money again.
Be careful what you wish for, Whig (and pay closer attention please).
Kay
@Applejinx:
You’ll hear that talked about, I can almost guarantee it. Ohio Democrats are talking about it. It’s exciting. It’s a way out of the campaign finance mess-not by itself but small donor fundraising will be a piece of the puzzle that allows some room for a solution. It’s an alternative and we need an alternative. People in Congress don’t like making phone calls to well-off donors 4 hours a week. They want an alternative. They know it’s broken.
Did you know George W Bush was the 1st US presidential candidate to go 100% private funding? I just read that the other day. I didn’t know he was the father of this mess- he’s the one who took it to a new level. That man has done more damage than one person should be able to do. The wreckage toll keeps mounting.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx:
What would really be useful is some awareness that some people actually like Clinton better, rather than being patsies of THE MACHINE. Honesty, this is the single biggest reason why I not only actively and affirmatively want Clinton to win, I actively want Bernie Sanders to lose, and as badly as possible, as many places as possible, and as soon as possible. The utter condescension.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Why would small-donor fundraising be any more exciting now than it was in 2008 when Barack Obama did it?
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: Hey, I like some things about her, but talk about a machine politician! That’s one of her biggest strengths. She and Bill did just what we want Bernie to do. The Clintons came in as outsiders, hicks, and they absolutely took over. Their influence is immense. It’s sheer politics and it’s breathtaking.
Now if they had half a fucking clue about how the citizens of their country lived, and half a decent idea what to do about it, I’d be twice the Hilbot you are.
I don’t think Hillary is automatically opposed to class consciousness. Hell, she and Bill both come from humble origins. The problem is, I think she believes we’re all supposed to do it like her, and that’s not mathematically possible. You can’t expend aspirational slogans on a crab bucket. Crabs need a beach to hang out on, not the largest fullest possible bucket to claw their way out of.
Whether you personally like Hillary is irrelevant, and if that’s your basis for governance you’re a damned fool, and I’m saying that as a very adamant Bernie supporter who may have no option but to vote for the Clinton machine in the general (and plan for another uprising in future if they don’t get a clue).
Kropadope
@FlipYrWhig:
May I offer you a mirror? It’s convex, allowing for you to simultaneously watch your co-partisans as well. Seriously, you Hillary backers have the market cornered on condescension; prattling on Bernie supporters are naïve, looking for free stuff, don’t understand so and so. My average interaction with online Hillary supporters leaves me wanting Trump to win literally so I can enjoy you smug assholes being miserable.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
Because Sanders is (as usual) pushing the envelope. He’s going further than Obama. He’s saying small donor fundraising can finance a campaign. It could particularly finance a campaign in a state race or a House district, which is why it’s exciting. I know you and I disagree about the value of arguing what’s conceivable rather than what’s possible, but I think Sanders arguing what’s conceivable is more than “unicorns”- I think it’s vital in a political debate. It is literally the Left side. Why shouldn’t there be a Left side? There’s a Right side. It’s unbalanced, and worse than that it’s not a real debate. There is Left, Center and Right. All of those are part of a “debate”. There’s no reason to cut it off at Center Left and make that “Left”.
Like on so many other issues, IMO, Democrats have to sharpen their arguments. They have to explain why Clinton thinks the campaign finance system is broken while she’s insisting that the source of donations has no effect on policy. If donations have no effect on policy then why are we worried about the Koch brothers? It’s a stretch to think campaign donations ONLY compromise Republicans.
Eolirin
@Kay: This is completely right, but I think this back and forth highlights the difference between being a member of the party and actively working to achieve a progressive agenda and commenting on a blog.
The BJ comment threads aren’t a place where any of us are going to bring about political change. That has to happen on the ground. Almost all of the bickering and arguments on here are completely inconsequential to any sort of electoral outcome.
EtA: To be clear: I know *you* get that. I’m not sure everyone else is getting it though, and I wanted to draw attention to it.
Applejinx
@Kropadope: Steady, Krope. That’s an awfully costly price for schadenfreude.
gvg
@Kropadope: Actually a lot of people learn from their mistakes such as the quoted author who explains how he voted for Anderson and learned it was a mistake. So then a new crop arises that seems to repeat the same mistake and who act exactly like the last group of purists. SOME people never learn and are the same voters over and over doing the same error, but many are brand new enthusiests. It is perfectly legitimate to point out resemblances in behavior and try to convince some of them not to. they don’t have to be the exact same people to be the same in that sense. And Trump and Cruz and in fact the whole load of clowns, in spires many to fear, so they are trying to be proactive. I do think it’s a bit more persuasive because the author admits to having done it himself. YMMV
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t think campaign donations are a straight quid pro quo. I think they skew priorities and they impact politician’s views on what is important. If you spend most of your time calling people who care a lot about issues that impact the top 10 or 20 or 30% of earners, that changes how you view the country. You start to believe that IS the electorate, and then you’re wondering why you’re not reaching the bottom 70% at all with these arguments. That’s why we have these “shocking!” news stories where 70% of people don’t have 5,000 dollars they can put their hands on for an emergency or have no retirement savings. That can’t be a surprise! They should know that! Cutting Social Security looks a lot less appealing when you realize it’s the sole source of retirement income for a shit load of people. “People” aren’t living longer. The 30% of people with a college degree are living longer. This is a profound omission, a HUGE error.
Kropadope
@Applejinx: I don’t care if it results in me out on the street under a cardboard box.
Scott P.
Hillary would be the second or third-most liberal major Presidential candidate in US history.
Karl R Kaiser
The country has been steadily collapsing for the past 25 years, mostly under the leadership of corporatist Democrats, and Clinton would be the most conservative Democrat on all but social issues in a century.
We desperately needs progressive reforms, but if they rise to power Clinton’s DNC cronies will block progressives at all levels of government, including any primary challenge in 2020.
The country cannot survive on this path, so it is no longer “pragmatic” NOR responsible to vote for corporatist Democrats, who are the first line of obstruction to turning the country around. It would be smarter to vote for Trump, kick corporatist Democrats to the curb in 2016, and promote progressives everywhere in 2018 and 2020.
Fred B.
@Scott P.: as she said herself, she is a Goldwater girl. If she is a Liberal then the word has lost all meaning. She is liberal compared to the tea party but so what!
Applejinx
@Kropadope: We disagree… and we’ve got until November to somehow change your mind (or, put Bernie over the top AND set him up with a working political machine).
Because the Clintonistas could well feel likewise if Bernie takes the primary… and they are the ones controlling the machine he’d have to use to be elected. And I don’t trust them right now to do the right thing, any more than we can trust you (right now) to do the right thing.
Kay
Can I say too that I’m middle aged and I’m sick of stuff like this (from Josh Marshall). My son canvassed for Sanders. He’s 21. He has no idea what this ultra-savvy “giant puppets” thing means. Your particular political reality is not “reality” for everyone. There are new voters every year.
It reminds me of the GOP attacks on Jimmy Carter in the 2008 campaign. Young people had no idea what they were talking about and we all laughed. Now we’re rolling out the giant puppets theme from 1994.
Bob In Portland
@starscream: Thomas Frank’s book, LISTEN, LIBERAL, makes the same accusation. Before getting too bent out of shape you might read it.
Bobby Thomson
@Kropadope: better idea, how’s about you shove your passive aggressive bullshit faux naïveté up your ass and then go fuck yourself.
Bob In Portland
@Ruckus: Doesn’t advance your argument.
Freemark
@FlipYrWhig: The vast majority of smug and hideous on this site are Hillary supporters so I think you don’t understand correlation.
Bob In Portland
@Fred B.: After she was a Goldwater Girl, Clinton wrote a speech for Melvin Laird supporting the bombing of North Vietnam (in 1968, before Laird left the House to be Nixon’s Secretary of War). And in 1968 she went to both the Republican and Democratic conventions. Now that’s curious. I didn’t think that conventions were all that much fun. Must have gone to the wrong party room.
Bob In Portland
@FlipYrWhig: Does not advance your argument.
Bob In Portland
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Since single-payer was taken off the table by Obama right away, some people presumed that Obama was defining the terms of his right-of-center economics rather than what could actually be accomplished.
Bob In Portland
@Frankensteinbeck: Hawaii is the most non-white state in the union. Alaska has the largest native population. Your point?
chopper
@FlipYrWhig:
the common clay of online progressivism.
Kropadope
@Applejinx:
I’ve said many times I plan on voting for Hillary, but I know exactly where to find comfort if she loses.
FlipYrWhig
@Kropadope: My average online interaction skews heavily, heavily otherwise, and it’s part of why I’m such an ass with you guys here. Because this is one of the last bastions where people who genuinely prefer Hillary Clinton can speak about it and get, like, a split reaction, rather than getting immediately dogpiled about bloodthirsty warmonger this and neoliberal corporatist that.
@Applejinx: The socioeconomic profile of every vocal Bernie Sanders supporter I know in real life is not remotely humble, either in background or in present reality. I’m not saying that other types aren’t possible, I’m just saying that my experience is not that these are grassroots radicals at all, but rather the sorts of people who have a favorite place to get olives.
Bob In Portland
@Kropadope: And yet people are still going bankrupt by medical costs, people still can’t afford their medicines. How many people have policies with thousand-dollar deductibles? If ACA was as far as politically expedient, then you still wrote off a percentage of people (by the lottery of illness). ACA has been a lifesaver for some, but not for others.
The Sanders position still holds: It’s not enough.
chopper
@Kropadope:
my favorite part of these threads is, after 150 posts of people slagging each other, X fans start bitching about how “it’s the other guys who are assholes”.
FlipYrWhig
@Fred B.: So, 52 years ago, a 17-year-old liked the libertarian-ish Republican candidate. I’m sure that’s very important to her political identity now.
Bob In Portland
@Xenos: John Anderson had something to do with the creation of Young Americans For Freedom, and one of those YAFers tried to split my skull with a monkey wrench at a demonstration in 1968.
FlipYrWhig
@chopper: I’m an asshole about my candidate here but in my meatspace life I’ll have you know I’m delightful.
Tripod
Clearly… this is all George Clooney’s fault.
Kropadope
@FlipYrWhig:
Well, you will never enjoy the lovely experience of having to deal with yourself.
FlipYrWhig
@Bob In Portland: John Anderson and YAF? Doesn’t sound right and a quick Google isn’t turning up anything incriminating, but that’s before my era (born 1971).
FlipYrWhig
@Kropadope: Indeed I’ve been irritated by that experience for 44 years and counting.
Bob In Portland
@Bess: I saw numbers today at HuffPost that said that that was down to 54% this morning. Still trailing, but not impossible. I’ll be interested to see how the debate in NY goes.
polyorchnid octopunch
@John D.: Love the Brian Mulroney quote there. You Canadian?
Kropadope
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah, well, if your problem is really that you’re mad at Bernie supporters in other venues and choose to take it out on an entirely different set of Bernie supporters here rather than the particular ones bothering you, that’s a real profile in courage and a worthy example for others of anger allocation.
Bob In Portland
@Applejinx:
Actually, you can, and every election cycle 40-60 percent of the voters do.
Tegdirb
@Kropadope: Even when Sanders is for it like he was with Iraq in the 90’s and Afghanistan? Or do you just conveniently ignore that?
John D.
@Bob In Portland: There is literally no way that 54% is correct. He would not have gotten to 54% if he had gotten every single delegate from AK, HI, and WA. Currently it is 56.53% needed (with a few delegates yet to be finalized from Saturday).
polyorchnid octopunch
@FlipYrWhig: That sounds like a crude lampoon to me. If you’re going to complain about crude lampoons, you shouldn’t engage in them yourself.
John D.
@polyorchnid octopunch: Um. I have no idea who that is, nor was I quoting anyone. What words did I use?
Bob In Portland
@FlipYrWhig: You know, it may or may not be, but in 1980 it kept me away from Anderson. All I could think of was that monkey wrench waving over that guy’s head.
FlipYrWhig
@Kropadope: Never intended to inspire anyone. ETA: Also, ain’t like y’all don’t provoke reactions here. Applejinx is particularly a burr in my proverbial saddle.
Kropadope
@Tegdirb: At least Sanders has shown some degree of discernment with respect to which interventions to embrace, as opposed to Hillary’s answer, “all of them, Katie.”
False argument that lack of support for unwise military interventions should equate to lack of support for all military interventions remains false.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Fred B.: Quite a lot actually. There is no question that she’s far and away better for you as President than either Trump or Cruz if you’re a woman, brown, or pick a different ref for god. It’s a massive difference.
polyorchnid octopunch
@John D.: “Politics is the art of the possible.” Ah, if you’re not Canadian there’s probably too much backstory there. Canadian politics in the 80s, during the Reagan/Thatcher era.
Bob In Portland
@John D.: I didn’t do the calculations and the article was pro-Sanders, so make of it what you will.
John D.
@polyorchnid octopunch: Ah. That’s actually a MUCH older quote — Otto von Bismarck.
FlipYrWhig
@polyorchnid octopunch: Seems like the origin of the expression may be Bismarck.
Kropadope
@FlipYrWhig:
Compared to virtually every thread for the past few months having a questionably sourced attack on Bernie’s supporters? Your proposed equivalency doesn’t look so equivalent to me.
John D.
@Bob In Portland: I did make of it what I would, that’s why I gave you the correct answer. Good data trumps any ideology. Good data allows us to make more accurate decisions and predictions.
The math is that he has 1038 pledged with 1747 yet to be awarded, according to The Green Papers. That’s 56.53% to reach 2025.5, and 56.55% to reach 2026.
dogwood
@Fred B.:
She has said herself she WAS a Goldwater girl. And Elizabeth Warren was a grown-ass Reagan woman. So stop with the talking points and make a substantive case.
FlipYrWhig
@Kropadope: I’m not particularly concerned with Who Started It, but as long as it’s started, I have no objection to continuing it, and giving at least as good as getting, and may the best candidate win.
Amaranthine RBG
It’s interesting to me that in internecine attacks, Sanders supporters go after Clinton where Climton supporters go after Sanders supporters.
gex
@balconesfault: The way I have been putting this to Bernie supporters is this:
Bernie has enough money and enough support to get on the ballot in every state, where he can be democratically voted for or not.
Complaints about how undemocratic superdelegates are sound ridiculous coming from the supporters of a candidate who specifically chose to run as a Democrat because he acknowledges that running as a Democrat provides advantages he would not have running as an independent.
Those benefits don’t come from nowhere. Those benefits are derived from the people who have spent more time and more effort in supporting the Democratic party over the years than either Bernie or his more strident supporters ever would.
If they want to avoid superdelegates? Run independently or build their own party. If they want all the goodies that being a Democrat can give them? Then quit with the constant bitching about every single other aspect of the Democratic party.
I’m open to ideas about how to change the nomination process for the Dems. But not from outsiders who insist it’s their way or they’re out.
chopper
@FlipYrWhig:
I find it funny that guys who have the likes of mclaren and BiP on their side are honestly complaining that “we’re the nice ones, it’s those other guys what are smug pricks”.
gwangung
@Kropadope: River in Egypt.
Idiots like you, who deny evidence, are of no use to the cause you support. So screw yourself, because you’re contributing to the problem. I prefer dealing with folks who recognize problems and try to ameliorate.
Kropadope
@chopper:
Freemark
My interaction with REAL Bernie supporters is in exact opposition to what many here are claiming for online supporters. While I am in high middle age, born in 68, I went back to college here in PA and got my degree in Physics. While doing so I have interacted with dozens of real Millennials. What I have found is that while they have varying backgrounds almost as a whole I can tell you they were generally not lazy, over-entitled, or misogynistic. Many are POC and the large majority of them had little interest in politics until Bernie Sanders helped get them interested in it.
Talking with these REAL people helped me to understand their point of view. While I am a Bernie supporter and have liked him for years I have never been Bernie or bust. I have been and will continue to be a strong supporter of the Democratic Party as long as it is the best choice. But to this younger generation there isn’t a great deal of difference ECONOMICALLY and environmentally between the Republicans and the Democrats. And on that they are somewhat correct.
When there is a lot of noise it takes a strong signal to cut through it. And in our current political climate there is a lot of noise. So let’s take a look at Hillary and mainstream democratic policies for example:
Millennials are:
against fracking
-Republicans are for it
-Hillary is for it
against wars
-Republicans for
-Hillary is for
for Great reductions in the cost of college
-Republican against
-Hillary not as against
reducing military spending, spending on infrastructure like trains
-Republicans against
-Hillary against or meh
Wall Street and corporations as dangerous
-Republicans hell no
-Hillary no
Millennials have good reason to not see great differences among the parties. Sanders has made the differences clear and has gotten his signal above the noise. If Hillary and other Democrats want the support of Millennials they need to sell their differences, they need to get their signal above the noise. Trying to get people previously un-engaged to engage in politics you need to push them. Being somewhat better on some issues isn’t going to do it. “Vote Hillary, she isn’t as bad as the other guy” is a piss poor slogan.
chopper
@Kropadope:
see, I’m not making the argument you are. sure, those guys you list are smug pricks from time to time. so are you and your ilk. it’s BJ after all, not a goddamn knitting circle. so don’t act all fuckin high and mighty about how the other guys are the assholes. grow a fucking skin FFS.
Kropadope
@chopper: I take my grievances right to the people who are aggrieving me while the people I listed and their like-minded cohort constantly whine about rando, unverifiable Bernie supporters on the internet and wield the caricature they paint as a straw man to beat rather than engage what Sanders supporters here are saying at any given time. Tell me again who needs a thicker skin.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@John D.:
Compared to their income. I know quite a few people who make too much to get a subsidy but really don’t have $300 free in their monthly budget, much less the $600 it takes to get a decent policy here. I was astounded when I learned that they don’t qualify for a subsidy, but that’s the issue.
different-church-lady
@Freemark:
That’s because Real Life Bernie supporters tend to behave very differently than on-line Bernie supporters.
One problem is that oversimplification can also be noise. And the helpful little cheat sheet you offered is vastly oversimple.
chopper
@Kropadope:
Jesus, this sounds exactly like every wanna be internet tough guy arguer I’ve ever met. you just need to throw some Latin terms like “ad hominem” in there and someone will call Bingo.
look it’s obvious nobody’s gonna get you to stop rationalizing your horseshit victim mentality belief here. I was expecting the whole “the Hillary people attack us first we’re just defending ourselves” gambit to be honest. just know we’re laughing at it.
sunny raines
The obvious BS in this argument [cough] is that the under-privileged, aka, minorities, elderly, and poor aren’t supporting Bernie, they’re supporting Clinton. mostly overwhelmingly. So what the snot-nosed BernieBros are pedantically saying is: ‘we know better what’s good for you then you do’. Pretty effed-up those BernieBros (just like the obamabots).
freemark
@different-church-lady: The over-simplification was the entire point. Nuances get lost in their noise. Sometimes nuances can be pulled out but not until you get people to look more closely at them. Things that have been under our noses for a long time are often only noticed when something draws our attention to them at least once. Bernie can be like that for Hillary. But it is up to her, not him or his supporters, to make that happen.
dogwood
@Kropadope:
You said something the other night about Hillary supporters being the new “silent majority” that I thought was interesting. In the public sphere we all know that right wingers are unbearable. I used to think that I was subject to these public and social anti-Obama tirades because I live in a red state. But my childhood friend who lives in Hawaii says that listening to people talk in public there would lead many to believe that the Aloha state is tea party country. Among my social group there are some strong Bernie supporters who morphed into Hillary haters once the voting began. I don’t engage with them because what they say about her is often irrational and ugly. They interpret my silence to mean that I can’t defend Clinton when my silence is about not wanting to escalate their nastiness. These are my dear friends and their friendship means more to me than winning some argument. Right now they say they will never vote for her, but since I never heard them say a bad word about Clinton when she was SoS, I think they’ll calm down.
Kropadope
@chopper: Engaging the arguments presented to me and criticizing the constant erection of straw men is both tough guy posturing and being a victim. Riiiiiiight.
@sunny raines: So, disagreeing with a determination other voters are making is “knowing better what’s good for them.” Again, constant straw man
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: That wouldn’t surprise me in the least :)
chopper
@Kropadope:
no, declaring an entire side of the argument as ‘the assholes’ while conveniently ignoring the assholes on your side, while rationalizing it with some bullshit internet-guy talk is both tough guy posturing and being a victim.
and complaining about ‘straw men’ after making the argument that “the other guys are the assholes” is just another thick, creamy layer of stupid on top of the whole shit sundae.
JaneE
I plan to vote for Sanders in the primary, because his economic positions are closer to mine than Hillary’s are. I think he would be more vigorous in prosecuting white collar/Wall Street crimes than she would. That doesn’t mean that I won’t vote for her in November if she is the Democratic nominee. Any of the GOP candidates would be so bad for everything I think is important that there isn’t a chance I could stay home, even as I encourage my Republican acquaintances to sit it out if their preferred candidate doesn’t win.
FlipYrWhig
@Freemark: I don’t want to get into a whole thing about this, OK, but I think your list is highly skewed, not just regarding Hillary’s positions on any of those things but particularly regarding their position in a list of supposed prominent millennial concerns. (F’rex, no mention of police brutality, guns, or immigration.)
FlipYrWhig
@chopper: Eh, I think on this thread I did that first (“assholes”).
chopper
@FlipYrWhig:
yeah, and half the time mclaren, goblue or bob or whoever else pulls it off first in another one.
it’s just moronic ‘we’re the good guys’ tribal bullshit.
Monala
@John D.: I think the people struggling with the ACA costs the most are people who were uninsured pre-ACA, but were lucky enough not to have any major illnesses. Now they have to carry insurance, and for many, the costs are hurting them.
People who had good insurance before are better off in some ways – costs are rising more slowly. People who were uninsured and had major health issues are better off, because now they’re getting care they didn’t have before. It’s that third group – the previously uninsured without major health issues – who are feeling the most pain. We really do have to figure out ways to make “affordable” really be that.
Aqualad08
@Kropadope:
So, a guy who lost the Chicago mayor primary last year and a guy who lost the presidential primary 28 years ago. That’s it? Don’t make that wager; you’ll lose. Although I must say “blaming Google” seems like a terrific untapped excuse just waiting to be exploited….
Kay
This is Paul Krugman today. To this I say “about goddamned time”.
Why in the HELL did it take Democrats so long to admit this?
Why did they spend 20 years insisting it was all forces beyond their control when that NEVER was true? Was it wise to blame working people for the fact that their wages are stagnant or going down? Does that even make POLITICAL sense? If “nothing can be done” and it’s all a matter of market forces then why do we need an interventionist government at all? It’s like Democrats decided to make themselves irrelevant to a huge swathe of lower income people and then complained that they weren’t appreciated.
They just want an admission that our trade deals have harmed them and then some real way forward. Instead we lectured them for 20 years on how nothing could be done, and their complaints were invalid.
FlipYrWhig
@Monala: This is my sense too: there were a lot of people who felt like they had health insurance and who were coming up “winners” by never having to use it. I don’t know what to say to them.
Bill Arnold
I voted for Anderson too, as my first vote in a presidential election. Still cringe in embarrassment about it. Never again, unless it is 100 percent clear that a protest vote for a 3d party candidate will not affect the outcome. (New York State does have a bunch of parties that usually endorse a major party candidate, so voting for them can be OK.)
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: This is well said, but I also feel like it should continue to be said that many of the bad things we associate with a bad economy in America we’re told to attribute to globalization rather than, say, “capitalism.” But, as an old literature professor of mine said in response to the old saw about how sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, “you can never be sure when.”
J R in WV
@Fred B.:
Oh, Fred, for Crissakes, she WAS a Goldwater Girl, in 1964, which was , hmmm, lessee, 52 years ago? My Dad was a Goldwater guy in 1964, and he’s been dead for 12 years now. I was 13 back then, and even I understood that “Daisy” A-Bomb commercial.
Let it go, dude, Hillary Rodham Clinton IS NOT a Goldwater girl now, today. People grow up, mature, learn things in college, and grad school, and law school. Not to mention the White House, and thinking about the whole world.
Hillary is far more a liberal progressive than she is a Goldwater Girl today. If you can’t see that, then you haven’t learned anything yourself in the past 40 years.
Freemark
@FlipYrWhig: I was just giving examples but guns, in general, aren’t a pressing concern of Millennials. As for police brutality/criminal justice and immigration they are well acquainted with Bernie Sanders record and its CONSISTENCY. Hillary’s and the Democratic Party’s rhetoric was much closer to the Republican side of things until fairly recently.
I personally believe that Hillary and the Democrats have been much better than the Republicans, but Hillary really has done little to distance herself from the ‘tough on crime’, tough on drugs’ crowd until recently. Her nuance and shifting rhetoric does not make her stand out from Republican policies. She needs to make her positions and contrasts clearer and stronger. I was active in the Democratic Party on campus and I can tell you even the smart college kids weren’t impressed with her policies or more importantly her conviction to stand behind them. They are smart, they know Bernie Sanders won’t be able to get much of anything done, Especially at first, but they know he will fight with them and for them. They also don’t buy into any of the right-wing hogwash about Hillary Clinton. But they get no feeling at all from her attitude, lack of consistency, or her close ties to corporations and Wall Street, that she will be on their side and FIGHT for them. When it comers right down to it the detailed policy positions are much less important to them than whether or not she is on THEIR side. And right now she doesn’t seem to be. The young’uns I know feel the Republicans are against them, that Hillary is less against them, and Bernie is for them. I hope she can change that.
FlipYrWhig
@Freemark: It sounds like you’re saying “the millennials who support Bernie Sanders prioritize the things Bernie Sanders cares about, which is why they support Bernie Sanders.” But that’s circular.
And not for nothing but Bernie Sanders’s record on immigration is the opposite of consistent, if by that you mean consistently progressive.
Chyron HR
@Freemark:
Some people might criticize Bernie for not walking back any of his “African-American kids get summarily executed by the police because they’re hanging out on street corners instead of having productive jobs” rhetoric, but True Progressives like us know he’s to be PRAISED for his CONSISTENCY.
Kropadope
@chopper:
No, just the particular assholes I deal with on a routine basis.
John D.
@Kropadope: My main function here is to provide data in response to egregiously false claims. I have posted fewer than 70 comments in 2016. If I wanted to be an ass, I’d ask you to show me on the doll where the bad math hurt you.
I’m not sure why you are singling me out in your list. But I’ll make sure to earn it from here on out.
@Monala: Well, yes. And that’s the group I singled out as having a legitimate gripe involving “too high”. It’s a valid complaint, and yet a wrong-headed one, since now they are shielded from all the things they assumed would not affect them — things they were often wrong about, and often in ways that were life-destroying. Youth always believes they are immortal, up until they discover they aren’t.
chopper
@Kropadope:
well i have to deal with insufferable berniebros on a routine basis online. apparently there are assholes online all over the place. hoocoodanode?
in all seriousness, if talking to a handful of “hill people” online makes you want trump to win, maybe you should go outside and talk to some real people for a change.
Kropadope
@John D.:
You made a real strong impression real quickly.
@chopper: All the meatspace people I run into eager to talk about their candidate love Trump. I’m all set.
John D.
@Kropadope: Cool. You must have been spouting bullshit if I got under your skin that quickly. Glad to hear I was memorable enough.
Sorry to hear that I’m crushing your “only Clinton supporters are assholes online” theory, though. I voted for Sanders in my primary.
My Truth Hurts
Oh wow is it strawman o’clock already? Where does the time go?
My Truth Hurts
By the way, Nader didn’t lose the election for Gore, Gore, his warhawk VP choice Liberman, his music warning labeling wife, the SCOTUS, Clinton and his blowjob, NAFTA and election officials in Florida lost the election for Gore. Most independents voted for Bush. Without Nader in the race Gore still would have lost. So tired of hearing this myth. It simply isn’t true as much as DLC fanboys and girls and the Washington Post want it to be.
Here are some articles with facts for those not allergic to them
http://disinfo.com/2010/11/debunked-the-myth-that-ralph-nader-cost-al-gore-the-2000-election/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/6/1260721/-The-Nader-Myth
http://www.cagreens.org/alameda/city/0803myth/myth.html
http://prorev.com/green2000.htm
Elie
What strikes me in observing the communication on this site and others, is that to have any political system actually work, you not only need a process to determine the winner of any contest but also enough trust and faith in the system of all participants, for the losing candidate’s supporters to support the result. Sure, anyone who works hard for a candidate and believes in their positions and policy, will be disappointed if they lose. But if you actually think that the loss of your candidate is intolerable, you are in a different place and that place — where the award of winners and losers becomes the next battle — well, that is like some of the countries in Africa where the losers to an election never concede and continue their opposition by other means.
I think we need to settle down and think a little bit. I am a strong Hillary supporter, but I would expect to hitch up my pants and accept the results if Bernie wins the nomination. Happy about it? No. But I trust the process just enough to allow him to be the winner. I am not sure what I would do if Trump or Cruz won — and that is something to think about. Needless to say I would be pretty unaccepting of that result but not sure what I would do about it.
We are not making our system better with some of the bullshit people are leveling at each other in defense or attack of each others favorite candidates. While I am sure this will not stop such conversation, I am concerned that we can shut it down when the time comes and get ready for the real battle ahead. Right?
satby
@Kay: I really don’t know where you get this whole “people are told those aren’t problems” thing from. I never said that, and never saw anyone else saying that either. I just think people have different priorities and that’s legitimate.
gluon1
Can anyone educate us youngin’s as to what AL meant by “Jimmy Carter’s pandering to the misogynist vote”?
Karla
@gluon1: I would also like to know.