Last night, in his town hall on MSNBC, Sanders made a statement that made my blood boil:
Sanders said that “If we end up losing,” it would be “incumbent upon [Clinton] to tell millions of people who right now do not believe in establishment politics and establishment economics” that she supported Sanders’ Medicare-for-all plan.
“I think Secretary Clinton is going to have to explain to millions of young people and a lot of other people that climate change is a real crisis and incrementalism is just not going to solve it,” he added.
Whether Sanders throws his support behind Clinton if she wins the Democratic nomination — and how enthusiastically he endorses her — will play a major role in determining whether his supporters end up backing her too. That will give Sanders some leverage, even if he loses the Democratic nomination, in shaping the party’s platform.
What. An. Asshole. Of course Clinton will have to continue to do everything she can to reach out to all voters. But this response, disregarding the fact that he used it to throw more attacks at Clinton, is why I am so sick of the god damned Sanders purists and his campaign. The correct answer is “I don’t think we are going to lose, but should that happen, I would hope my supporters would vote for the Democratic nominee.” You don’t even have to say her name.
And this is but one example why:
Ted Cruz’s tour de transphobia, launched last week to capitalize on Donald Trump’s criticism of North Carolina’s anti-transgender law, has embraced a new extreme position. Speaking to reporters this weekend in Indiana, he actually admitted that he doesn’t believe transgender people should be allowed to use any restroom except the ones in the privacy of their own home.
“Every one of us has the right to live our lives as we wish,” he said. “If any one of us wants to dress up as a woman or man and wants to live as woman or man and believes that we might be something other than what we were born, God has made each of us with free will and the ability to choose to do that if man to wants to dress as a woman, and live as a woman, and have a bathroom at home.”
A reporter sought clarification on the remark: “So then they shouldn’t use the bathroom out in public?”
Cruz then confirmed just that. “You don’t have a right to intrude upon the rights of others because whether or not a man believes he’s a woman, there are a lot of women who would like to be able to use a public restroom in peace without having a man there — and when there are children involved, you don’t have a right to impose your lifestyle on others.”
You don’t get to call yourself a moral crusader or revclutionary when if you don’t get your way, you let the bigots take over to heighten the contradictions, because real people’s lives are at stake.
You fucking asshole. Not to mention, revolutions don’t start at the top. Coups do.
rikyrah
someone mentioned this in the Morning Open Thread.
Found one of the articles.
Chaos’ In Kansas: ACLU Says Two-Thirds Voter Registrations On Hold
By ROXANA HEGEMAN
Published APRIL 26, 2016, 8:02 AM EDT
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Voting rolls in Kansas are in “chaos” because of the state’s proof-of-citizenship requirements, the American Civil Liberties Union has argued in a court document, noting that about two-thirds of new voter registration applications submitted during a three-week period in February are on hold.
Kansas is fending off multiple legal challenges from voting rights activists, and just months before the state’s August primary, the status of the “dual registration” system remains unclear. Federal judges in separate voter-registration lawsuits unfolding in Kansas and Washington, D.C., could rule at any time. There’s also greater urgency because registrations typically surge during an election year.
Kansas is one of four states, along with Georgia, Alabama and Arizona, to require documentary proof of citizenship — such as a birth certificate, passport or naturalization papers — to register to vote. Under Kansas’ challenged system, voters who registered using a federal form, which hadn’t required proof of U.S. citizenship, could only vote in federal races and not in state or local races. Kansas says it will keep the dual voting system in place for upcoming elections if the courts allow its residents to register to vote either with a federal form or at motor vehicle offices without providing proof of citizenship.
divF
FTFY. When fixed, a great drop-the-mic moment.
danielx
Shades of Ralph Fucking Nader.
chopper
you’re such a villager, john.
*note, ‘villager’ is the new ‘cudlip’.
guachi
I Can No Longer Rationally Discuss the Sanders Campaign is a great tag for 2016. Right behind the only tag this website really needs – Assholes (BJ’s most popular tag! True!)
ARoomWithAMoose
“You don’t get to call yourself a moral crusader or revolutionary when if you don’t get your way, you let the bigots take over to heighten the contradictions, because real people’s lives are at stake.”
In my late 40’s age group.. every “just burn it all down there’s nothing worth saving” asshole I know right now has kids… Seriously??? You ‘tards live through 2001-2009 as 30 somethings…
pseudonymous in nc
@rikyrah: Kobach actively rigs elections. But he’s elected, so that’s okay for Kansas.
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
So how do you overhaul the way we create and use energy- non-incrementally- while- non-incrementally- growing the GNP 5% so we can pay for college tuition and single-payer health care?
dr. bloor
I think Bernie’s hedging is at least partly because he knows he’s riding the tiger. He’s not immune to the charges of ideological impurity and corruption that many of his supporters are directing elsewhere at the moment, and he damn well knows it.
cleek
you need to be nicer to the Saddeners, Cole. they’ll vote Trump to punish you, otherwise.
rikyrah
Nobody likes Rafael.
NOBODY
LOL
……………………..
John Cornyn: Ted Cruz Only Came To The Senate ‘To Run For President’
By CAITLIN MACNEAL
Published APRIL 26, 2016, 11:58 AM EDT
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who has long had a contentious relationship with his Texas colleague Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), again declined to endorse Cruz’s presidential bid on Monday, and instead dissed his colleague for coming to the Capitol simply to launch a presidential bid.
“Clearly, he didn’t come here to remain in the Senate. He came here to run for president. And I think that perhaps explains the difference in tactics,” Cornyn told Texas radio station KERA News while discussing how he differs from Cruz.
Cornyn has so far declined to endorse a presidential candidate in the Republican primary, and he made it clear on Monday that he will not be endorsing Cruz or any of his opponents.
Chyron HR
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again):
We don’t cotton to your “establishment economics” around here, mister.
Mnemosyne
I’m sure it exists on the internet somewhere, but someone on my Facebook had photos of a pretty blonde woman and a bearded man each standing in a women’s restroom asking which of them clearly belonged there.
The twist, of course, was that they were both transgender, so the woman who “obviously” belonged has a peni$ and the bearded man who “obviously” didn’t belong has a vagina.
And, no, Ted Cruz doesn’t get to insist that he gets to look inside my panties to determine when and how I’m allowed to pee. Fuck you, Ted, you fucking pervert.
Villago Delenda Est
@danielx: Ralph Nader has the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis on his hands.
Fuck him.
pseudonymous in nc
Either Bernie’s evolved into the Larry David character from Curb (or the Larry David Bernie from SNL, which is a composite of the two) or he always had the capacity for colossal dick moves deep in his character.
redshirt
@chopper: “Neoliberal Villager”, to be precise.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again): Technical term is, I believe, the “Great Leap Forward*”.
*may not work as advertised
the Conster, la Citoyenne
I think it’s safe to assume the worst about Sanders in every situation. No one who has ever known him or worked with him – I repeat, no one – has had a good thing to say about him. In 30 years. That’s a pretty big tell, and it’s not like he’ll grow out of it eventually. I hope the guy gets crushed today.
TG Chicago
I voted for Sanders and I don’t regret it, but I really wish he’d realize he’s lost the thread here. He is still capable of doing a ton of good for the advancement of liberal policy, but he’s done all he can at the presidential level in 2016. He pushed Hillary to the left, at least rhetorically, and that’s good. Now he needs to give up the POTUS race and work on downballot races. (really, he should have started this some time ago)
It’s really hard to make a case that this stuff is the best use of Bernie’s soapbox.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@pseudonymous in nc: Having read things that those involved in Democratic politics in Vermont have had to say about Sanders (which includes elected officials, civil servants, and journalists), I’m going with door #2.
JBF
Why does everyone always cut off that statement before the end. He also said
http://info.msnbc.com/_news/2016/04/25/35464706-full-transcript-msnbc-town-hall-with-bernie-sanders-moderated-by-chris-hayes?lite
BR
Sanders’s climate change policy / plan is a joke. That’s not to say that Clinton’s is better, but Sanders and his supporters think that he’s proposing something meaningful, but he’s not.
I’ll leave it to Tyndall Centre (co-)director Kevin Anderson to explain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF1zNpzf8RM
Frankensteinbeck
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I know enough about Chinese history to recoil in horror at that statement.
JPL
I find it odd that Sanders won’t releases more of his tax returns, unless Hillary releases her transcripts. At this point, he is just giving Drumpf a reason not to release his.
Ella in New Mexico
Yeah, it’s time fo that shit to stop. There’s a better way to phrase what needs to happen to bring us together other than that.
Seriously, he needs to start doing what I’m doing with my own family and friends:
“It’s highly unlikely at this point Sanders will be the nominee, but it’s just fine to follow your instincts and vote for him in the Primaries as a message to the Party. No matter what the outcome, Sanders voters numbers are going to give her more “permission” to do things I think that she secretly wants to do anyway, but may have been advised she didn’t have the base of support to do in the past.”
I then go on to talk about her history. Not the media/Limbaugh/Faux News versions of who she is, but her real background and accomplishments, particularly how she is far more Progressive than her husband ever was, or the nation would have tolerated up to now. And the fact that she IS a professional politician, and no matter what, good ones ALWAYS find ways to accommodate disparate groups needs: it’s called compromise and it’s not a terrible thing.
And I ask them which legislation the Republican Congress has voted on and sent to the President would they like to see signed by a Republican next year. Across the board budget cuts to all non-defense areas of the Federal Budget? The Repeal of Obama care? Outlawing abortion and contraceptive coverage? Cutting Social Security benefits and and money for higher education? Outlawing unions? Legalized discrimination against LGBT folks and the making only hetero marriage the legal law of the land again? MORE money for discriminatory policing and incarceration of people of color?
Or perhaps you want to see a Supreme Court packed with more Clarence Thomas’s and Antonin Scalias?
Then make sure that if Sanders doesn’t win you get your ass to the polls and vote for the person who is in the best interest of your country–and that’ll be Hilary Clinton.
I also say that if Bernie really wants to be a change agent, there’s lots of things he can do that might actually be BETTER than being President, in terms of carrying on long term reforms. Voters Rights and Election reforms, Campaign finance and the need to regulate big corporations and banks. Ongoing improvement to healthcare in America.
So there, we Bernie bros aren’t all cray-cray.
raven
@JBF: Why do you think?
eclare
Another unforced error that confirmed I made the right choice in voting for HRC: his total diss of Southerners, of which I am one. Both Hillary and Bill spoke in Memphis, even though I’m sure they knew they would win the district. Bernie didn’t even try.
Trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Daaang. When you’re too repellent for your fellow Texas senator…well…the mind boggles. “We do repellent ’round these heah parts, but there’s repellent and then there’s reeeepellent and Senatah Cruz, we find you reeeepellent.”
Ella in New Mexico
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I know you’ve been hired by Trump or Cruz to try to make the Sanders folks think you’re a Hilary supporter and alienate them so much from her that they’ll stay home in the fall, but again:
Take the trolling act elsewhere. It’s wasting all our time.
Trollhattan
@Frankensteinbeck:
Somebody please let me know when I must build the backyard smelter and begin melting down the cookware.
fordpowers
Jesus christ.
I’ll vote for her if I have to because the other side is a literal shit show that will likely start ww3 about 3 weeks in.
But don’t expect me to be excited about it.
and when we’re talking about benghazi, emails and vince foster for the next 4 years – you’ll get my point.
rikyrah
@pseudonymous in nc:
I know. And, if it only applied to Kansas, that would be bad enough – but they’re trying to spread that shyt to other states.
LAO
I am a 46 year old woman and, I have never a stranger’s genitalia in a public restroom. Am I doing it wrong?
AliceBlue
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I think it was Charlie Rangel who said that he doesn’t know anyone who’s had a conversation with Bernie but he knows a lot of people who have been lectured to by him.
FlipYrWhig
@TG Chicago:
He’s not really what you call a “joiner,” Bernie Sanders. He _could_ do this, but that’s not really his thing. His thing is that if you put true, unalloyed, unabashed liberalism before the people, they come out of the woodwork to demand more of it, and the rest just falls into place. They haven’t been doing it up till now because they haven’t been excited by anything they’ve heard, see, so you just tell ’em, and they get excited, and it’s ridiculous that no one has tried this before because it should always work everywhere immediately, unless the corporate media gets in the way. It’s a revolution that just happens spontaneously by talking.
Ella in New Mexico
@JBF: It’s important that he says this. But really, he needs to be less equivocal about it and focus on positive messages about his campaign, not sound so bitter and morose.
Chris
@redshirt:
Not to mention “Whig.” What the fuck? What was that all about?
sherparick
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again): The same magic unicorns that the Republicans use to cut taxes for rich people, launch wars, and balance the budget and that the Underpants gnomes to make a profit on the collected underpants; that is how Sanders will do it. (Actually, Global Warming Keynesian Program replace coal and 50% of oil and natural gas within 10 years and/or sequester CO2 out of the Ocean and atmosphere in massive quantities to ppm below 300 by 2050 would be a brilliant program. But even Sanders has not proposed that.)
Bernie is at the denial and anger stage about the end of his campaign. But that is the only break I can cut him.
gene108
@rikyrah:
If only as many people cared as much about voting rights, as they do about sports; this shit would not stand.
Sigh…
And the Powers that Be work so hard to keep people discouraged and feeling like their vote does not matter.
Donald
And as someone pointed out above, Sanders also went on in his interview to say this–
” I work with Republicans in the U.S. Senate and I see what they do in the House. I think the Republican Party today has moved so far to the right that they are way, way, way out of touch with where the American people are.
These are people who almost without exception do not even recognize the reality of climate change, let alone want to anything about it.
They want to cut Social Security and give tax breaks to billionaires. They want to end the Affordable Care Act, but they have nothing to replace it with.
I will do everything in my power to make sure that no Republican gets into the White House in this election cycle.”
What I hate about elections is that so many people just act like poop-flinging monkeys. So Sanders didn’t say exactly what you wanted him to say and he is trying very hard to use what power he has to swing the Democratic platform as far left as possible. This makes him evil. This is precisely why so many people tune politics out. I read you guys and while I will vote for Clinton in November, you people really make me want to do the opposite. Not going to do it, but all you self-styled pragmatists are so quick to jump on others and give yourself endless excuses for throwing temper tantrums. God help us if the Clinton campaign ever sounds at all like the jerks in this thread. Come to think of it, sometimes they do. Someone needs to put a muzzle on Bill, for instance.
That, plus someone brings up Nader and Iraq. Remind me what Hillary’s record was on Iraq again?
I’m voting for Clinton. Not reading this blog again for a few months so I won’t feel like I am allied with you assholes.
redshirt
@Chris: In Bob’s defense (ACK!), I think that was a shortening of a user name.
FlipYrWhig
@Chris: I think that was just me.
Robert Sneddon
@fordpowers: If you enjoy talking about benghazi, emails and vince foster that much you’re willing to do so for the next 4 years then go for it. There’s a lot of your fellow Americans who do the same, they’re called Republicans.
dr. bloor
@LAO: No, but you have no future as a Republican senator.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@AliceBlue:
There’s an entire oeuvre of similar comments by people who have worked with him and reported on him. No one can stand the guy. It’s a fact. He’s the most temperamentally unsuitable candidate to be president, apart from Trump and Perot, in my lifetime. Part of his job would be to head the Democratic Party, too – yeah, no, and it has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton.
FlipYrWhig
@Ella in New Mexico: I think “bitter and morose” is what you call “in his wheelhouse.”
Chris
@redshirt:
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh, okay. That was my mistake. I thought an ancient political party was actually being invoked as a good description of the Balloon Juice commentariat.
LAO
@dr. bloor: That’s a relief.
Mike J
Can we talk about something less controversial, like how Cupertino, California should be droned out of existence, just so we can make sure that nobody ever releases another version of iTunes? My Dad asked me to come over and help him rip audio books and load them on his tablet. I had spared myself exposure to iTunes version 12 (9 something was the last one I’ve used). Jesus fuck what a steaming pile of shit. The “people” responsible for it should get the full last scene of Braveheart treatment.
The Senate wants to spend a billion dollars to fight Zika, and I’m in favor of that, but they need to get their priorities straight and push it back until after we’ve rid the world of iTunes.
Brachiator
At moments like this, we must turn to Prince for guidance:
Gett off, twenty three positions in a one night stand
Gett off, I’ll only call you after if you say I can
Gett off, let a woman be a woman and a man be a man
Gett off, if you want to baby here I am (here I am)
and
Oh girl, when you were mine
I used to let you wear all my clothes
You were so fine (so fine)
Maybe that’s the reason that it hurt me so
bemused
@LAO:
LOL. You, me and almost everyone else.
We’ve all been in a restroom with someone transgender. If we keep pointing that out, maybe we can freak out the bigots enough to stay away from public restrooms altogether.
MomSense
@LAO:
ha! I was thinking the same thing. We must frequent only the boring restrooms.
Emerald
@pseudonymous in nc:
According to Al Giordano it’s the latter, although perhaps not so deep. And that’s the reason he has so few endorsements from people who’ve worked with him for years–including Liz Warren.
p.a.
goddamnit positive news just goes against my Dem-since-Carter-down-looks-like-up nature!
rikyrah
So much ‘ water is wet’ news in this, but it must be said. Must be pointed out.
I have said and mean it:
They long for the delusional world of Mad Men, where they pretend that they were big fish in a pond, when the truth is that they were fish in a pond where 90% of everyone else was shoved into sardine cans.
…………….
When Was America Greatest?
Margot Sanger-Katz
APRIL 26, 2016
Donald Trump’s campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again.” His supporters, it turns out, disagree on when that was.
…………………………..
No, political scientists.
Has nothing to do with who is in the White House.
The 90% of the rest of the folks were in sardine cans 50 years ago – they are out now, and, they’re not going back.
eclare
@bemused: That is a great idea! I don’t want to be around “them” asking to see proof that I’m in the correct facility.
BR
@sherparick:
As Kevin Anderson (link in an earlier comment) points out, basically no plan proposed by any politician has come close to what’s needed.
The one approach I do support is to take James Hansen’s favored plan — the Clean Energy Dividend (also known as 100% Fee and Dividend) — and ramp up the fee very rapidly. It should be structured so that within 7 or 8 years gas prices (indirectly affected by the fees) are basically unaffordable. Because of the 100% dividend, the scheme is progressive rather than regressive (something I think Sanders misses in his proposal for a carbon tax, which ends up being regressive).
pseudonymous in nc
@FlipYrWhig:
It doesn’t need to be his thing. He just needs to tell his supporters to support more and better Democrats in every race, federal, state and local. Bernie’s supporters seem to be joiners with the right kind of attitude: I think they’ll be okay with joining.
chopper
@Emerald:
yeah, bernie has basically revealed himself to be an asshole in the last few months. pity.
FlipYrWhig
@pseudonymous in nc: But does he believe in that himself? I’m not sure he does.
Trollhattan
@Mike J:
Ain’t that the truth? At least in a Windows environment (impossible to imagine why that combo might not be super happy, but still). POS locks up from direct eye contact.
Apple did more or less win the mp3 player wars and now they’re slowly abandoning mp3 players (not making enough moolah on them, one supposes). When my Classic heads to the great electronic junkyard, what gizmo will hold all my music? Not even Apple’s largest, at 64GB, can manage half of it and heaven forfend they deign to put a fucking microSD slot on one of their overpriced products. We can’t have that, you will pay US for that memory, sir/madam, unless we decide you don’t need it at all..
aimai
@cleek: The Saddener’s is perfect. But I really came here to say to John:
Fuckin’ A.
gene108
@Ella in New Mexico:
If the most vocal Sanders supporters had your attitude, there would not be this much irritation from non-Sanders supporters.
I really hope Sanders works on down ticket races…but I am not holding my breath…
Aunt Kathy
Yep. I was all set to vote for Bernie. I didn’t think he’d win, but I wanted to be one more voice for Hillary to hear, that a lot of what he says is important. But over the past couple of months he pissed me off. He insulted Obama (can’t remember the details now), which is not something you do in front of me. And that Daily News interview was a disaster. So, in Maryland today, Hillary got my vote. I’m not in love with her, but she’ll do fine.
aimai
@fordpowers: It was always going to be something. The lesson of the Clinton years is that the Republicans have the money, the time, and the inclination to attack and demean whatever Democrat is in the White House 24/7 and double dip on the Sunday Shows. Where there is nothing, and almost all of it was nothing, they will make something up. If it were Bernie you can’t believe the shit they’d fling. They want permanent control over the country and the presidency and they will not let anything get in their way. Bernie, or O’Malley, or Biden (!) would not be immune to exactly the same attacks, or worse.
MattF
@LAO: You need to develop a wide stance.
Roger Moore
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again):
You create a massive government project to replace all our fossil fuel power plants with renewables. You get massive government borrowing and spending to goose the economy and rapid change in our carbon footprint. Win/win.
MattF
@aimai: There’s a reluctance among the normals to think that it’s all lies… But… it is.
ETA: Corrected a monkey-brain overnegation limit.
Steve in the ATL
@Mike J: Well, fellow ex-Memphian and fellow iTunes hater, is there an alternative you can recommend? I tried Music Bee, which is great on my one computer, but couldn’t figure out how to sync it with my other computers, phones, and tablets. With iTunes I synced in a few seconds. Not ready to try MSFT Groove Music.
gene108
@fordpowers:
I voted for Obama, in the 2008, because I dreaded “Clinton fatigue”. But it has been a generation between Bill’s tenure and now.
People have realized Republicans are just as bad, with regards to marital fidelity, as Bill was.
In short, the people who worry about Benghazi and her e-mails are already Republicans and will fling their monkey poo at any would-be Democrat.
bemused
@eclare:
Or be in same restroom with the Orlando woman lawyer who plans to bring her gun into Target restrooms to “protect” herself from transgenders.
Nancy LeTourneau at Washington Monthly wrote about conservative bathroom obsession, pointing out conservatives created white and “colored” bathrooms and during Equal Rights Amendment era conservatives freaked out about unisex bathrooms, “Common Toilet Law”.
negative 1
Since we’ve long ago abandoned policy discussions in these forums and apparently on the front page, here’s something for everyone to mull:
Maybe this was an asshole’s question to begin with. No candidate will say ‘I’ve lost’ in front of their official announcement that they are suspending campaigning. And before I get called names again, no Hillary doesn’t care about Bernie or his supporters nor he about hers. Political campaigns are winner take all; they don’t give a sh!t about their opponents platforms beyond beating them. It’s why you don’t hear that idea in general elections anymore — when was the last time you heard the press even pretend to care about a rethug candidate reaching out to democratic voters after they won?
gf120581
And now Jane Sanders apparently said on Blitzer that they won’t release any more tax returns until Hillary releases her speech transcripts.
One is not like the other, Jane.
scav
@bemused: It’s never been clear to me why the dangerous dangerous transgenders only prey on those opposite to their birth sex, only in public restrooms, and especially only if they have a legal right to be in those restrooms. (“I will dangerously and publicly prey on the young but I will not trespass!”). But then, apparently predatory straight men only prey on females, in public restrooms, while dressed as women and with the same legal cover of being in the bathrooms legally. Those bathroom laws are the only things keeping straight men in check — they’re totally unable to control their fundamental urges otherwise. Or something.
LAO
@MattF: LOL. I will work on it.
Steve in the ATL
@LAO: When is your hearing at the 11th circuit?
Brachiator
@gf120581:
Really? REALLY?
Who does Sanders think he is, Mitt Romney?
Mike J
One more off topic here. Supreme court case. A cop was seen walking out the campaign HQ of a guy running against the mayor. He’s there to pick up a yard sign for his sick mom, but the cops who spotted him assumed he was working for the other candidate. Cop gets demoted. Happily, the Supremes rule 6-2 you can’t retaliate against public employees because you think they’re against you. The dissent however, will make your head swim:
Get that? Because he wasn’t really working on the other campaign, his right to work on a campaign wasn’t violated. If he actually had been working on it, then he could sue.
bemused
@scav:
Don’t analyze their thought processes too much. I always get a headache when I try to do that. There isn’t any logic to be found. I really don’t know how they get themselves dressed and out of the house every day.
Chyron HR
@gf120581:
I assume she means “If Hillary releases her speech transcripts I will take a night class in TurboTax and hopefully figure out how to print our tax returns someday.”
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: There’s a famous set of siblings – brother and sister, don’t remember their names, who have each had gender reassignment surgery. I saw an interview with them once. The biological brother is now the sister and vice versa. Whether its a testament to their surgeons, to their lifestyle choices of diet and exercise, to their inherent genetic makeups, or as is most likely all of the above, you would never tell that they’d been through reassignment. He looks like a bodybuilder and she looks like a model. So unless these new laws are going to include statutory authorization for genital checks prior to entering the restroom, other than mob enforcement, which, unfortunately, I’m sure will happen somewhere, these laws are going to be exceedingly hard to actually enforce.
fordpowers
@aimai + @robert Sneddon – thats my point.
We’ll be rehashing all that bullshit for the next 4 years and nothing will progress.
I don’t doubt that anyone dem would face a onslaught of some sort of ridiculousness from – because thats how they roll – but at least it would be a different conversation. Maybe its too much to hope that it would be a fight over something half way legit like healthcare or education or foreign policy.
But thats why I’m resigned to it – but not excited about it.
hovercraft
@gf120581:
Well after today I don’t think he will garner as much press coverage as he’s gotten so far. I suspect they’ll cover him for the large crowds, and ask him what his end game is. Which I’m sure will piss him off even more causing many “Get Off my Lawn” outbursts.
And yes I agree apples and oranges.
Adam L Silverman
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Mao for Liberals now available at Amazon.
LAO
@Steve in the ATL: No clue. We were pulled off the calendar because one of my co-counsel quit private practice and filed a motion to withdraw. I have never been in this position before. i am thinking of filing a motion to sever his client (which I don’t believe the Court will grant). So my 74 year old client sits in jail waiting and waiting.
I’m pissed.
Mnemosyne
@LAO:
I have heard tell that some gay men and men who want gay sex rendezvous in specific public bathrooms that become known via word of mouth. George Michael got shoved out of the closet when he got caught in one here in sunny CA.
I would say I’m not sure why these assholes are conflating bathroom pickups with people who just want to pee, but I think we all know exactly why they’re doing it.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: never “what” a stranger’s genitalia in a public restroom? Once you fill in the blank, we’ll know which websites to recommend for video instructions.
redshirt
@Roger Moore:
It seems like such a no brainer. We could rebuild the country’s infrastructure, rebuild the manufacturing sector, employ millions, strengthen our national defense and save the world. And make lots of money. Everyone wins, and yet, as long as there is a Republican with the ability to veto or filibuster, we won’t have it.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
This. Anyone who thinks the Republicans weren’t planning to use anti-Semitic attacks on Bernie if he was the Democratic nominee is fooling themselves.
Shell
Wow, just heard on a story on NPR that uptill 2002 California prisons still segregated their prisoners by race. Took the Supreme Court to stop it.
scav
@bemused: On the upside, it makes my feeble attempts at understanding quantum mechanics seem relatively easy.
And OT as possible encouragement to the BLM and similar campaigns, the Hillsborough decision and history is illuminating, horrifying and hopeful. (one here, another here). Those Yorkshire cops are joys to behold. Testing squished kids for alcohol to provide cover for their actions. And Mitsubishi has gotten even more interesting.
FlipYrWhig
@negative 1:
Isn’t that what the “pivot” means in horserace coverage? It’s just that the kind of Democratic voters the punditocracy is concerned with reaching out to are always the already-conservative ones.
dr. bloor
@fordpowers:
The Republicans won’t fight over that because their policies on same are horse shit. The whole point of WHITEWATER!!1! et al is to distract the masses from their craven sociopathy. They’d find something for Bernie, and if they couldn’t, they’d just make shit up. It’s just how they roll.
Roger Moore
@bemused:
I suspect that if we actually switched to unisex restrooms, within a few years the big complaints would be about lines, cleanliness, and the position of the seat (i.e. the same things people complain about now) rather than how crazy it was to share a restroom.
aimai
@bemused: Very nice point. Its always bathrooms. I once wanted to write an essay–wish I had–about just how panicked people got (women, mostly) about workmen using their bathrooms during home renovations. Of course these were home bathrooms, not public toilets, but there was really something fascinating about the ways in which Bathrooms were constructed as safe spaces that could be invaded by the dirt/grime/bodily fluids of people outside the family circle.
raven
@Donald: so what
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: “seen” I’ve never seen a stranger’s genitalia in a public restroom. Everyone else picked up on the missing word. Get with the program
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
I saw the story in People magazine. (It’s not my fault — I bought moisturizer from an online store and they sent me a subscription with no opt-out.) IIRC, they were able to start hormone therapy shortly after puberty, so it was easier for them to develop mostly normally.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
negative 1
@scav: Because ‘won’t someone think of the children’ is the refrain when you want to stomp on someone’s civil rights despite the fact they’re not doing anything. It was gay people in the 80’s and 90’s (they can’t teach children! they can’t be scout masters!) and African Americans in the 60’s (they’re predators! they can’t contain their urges!) and probably countless more before that.
Roger Moore
@Mike J:
I suspect we’re going to start seeing a lot of 6-2 decisions with Thomas and Alito alone on the crazy side.
gene108
@Roger Moore:
Power plants are all well and good, but most of the USA’s CO2 emissions are from auto exhaust.
We need effective mass transit, as much to more than switching power plants or set-up infrastructure to allow the easy switch to electric cars.
aimai
@FlipYrWhig: Didnt’ we hear it ad nauseum that Obama didn’t reach out enough to Republicans? That he didn’t make them feel great about themselves? That he had the temerity to run the country as though he were the winner of the election?
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: We can’t be of assistance if you won’t be precise.
Roger Moore
@scav:
I think the worry is that sexual predators will hang out in the restroom for the opposite gender waiting to get alone with somebody they’ll prey on. They theoretically could do that now, but they’d be confronted on it. If we let transgender people use the bathroom of their identified sex, the predators will claim to be transgender as a reason for hanging out in the “wrong” bathroom and we won’t be able to get them out before they attack somebody. It’s the only thing that makes a lick of sense to me.
Adam L Silverman
Just one actual comment on John’s original point: coups often start in the middle. Quite often its mid level officers who push to overthrow the government and force out their own superior officers. This was the case in Mali, Egypt in the 50s, Syria, Iraq, and a number of other places.
Emma
So I just meandered over to TPM to check on early returns if any and found a story that was new to me. It seems Jane Sanders has stated that they will not release their Sanders tax returns until Hillary releases the speech transcripts. Pardon the vulgarity but WTF?
gene108
@negative 1:
The differences between Hillary and Bernie come down to how to get to the goal. They are both pushing for very similar platforms.
Mnemosyne
@fordpowers:
Meh. At this point, I think Hillary will have some room to say, “That was 25 years ago. Do you have anything relevant to say about today?”
And it’s not like the Republican nominee was going to be discussing important issues anyway, which is why they’re rolling out the Bathroom Wars early.
glasnost
@johncole you should take a break. This is incredibly mild criticism. The primary is over for you, but not the guy on the stage at the biggest moment of his life. Reference the Donald reply and try not to be a giant ass about nothing.
hovercraft
On Fox today Andrea Tantaros likened Hillary to Tom Brady’s suspension. Because he destroyed his phone, that is the same as her “server in Chappaquiddick” her slip not mine. Also too she wiped her server. Oh and she did catch herself and correct the slip.
I guess his on was upheld so something something Hillary. Oh and Hill and Bill are like Tom and Bill.
Hold on folks this general election campaign is going to get bumpy real quick.
Raven Onthill
If Clinton becomes, as has long seemed likely, the winner of the Democratic Presidential nomination, it becomes her job to win over the Democratic left, a much larger group than anyone was aware at the start of the primaries. Bashing Sanders is not going to get these people to turn out, let alone work for the Clinton campaign, yet there are too many of them to ignore if Clinton is to win. If the Democrats are to win, Clinton’s campaign needs to deal. I hope she is willing to do so.
burnspbesq
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again):
Easy peasy. Just build growth rates into your macroeconomic models that hve never before been seen in the real world.
OzarkHillbilly
@aimai: Speaking as one of those dirty grimey workmen, I think I was even more uncomfortable asking to use it. The bathroom is a very private place. I was an intruder.
scav
@Roger Moore: Exactly. Fear of trespassing will keep them in line. The posses of nosy busybodies now licensed to make people drop their drawers or pull out their long form birth certificate in restrooms will keep us safe! But lazy-boys in front of the wrestlers showers, so long as they are same sex, are unproblematic.
negative 1
@FlipYrWhig: I’d argue not exactly. The pivot is the idea that you have to “play up different priorities” in a general where the voters tend to be less ideologically homogenous; basically now that you have to appeal to everyone what do people who aren’t in your party not know about your platform. The question asked of Bernie and HRC is what exactly will you do for the people that didn’t vote for you. The real answer is nothing, which everyone already knows. Hold your breath waiting for them to ask it of Trump in the general (what will you do to earn the support of Democrats)?
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Even that doesn’t make a lick of sense. As someone who uses women’s restrooms, a woman hanging out in there without an obvious reason (like breastfeeding, helping a child/elderly parent, etc) would become really conspicuous, really fast. It’s an imaginary problem, because I seriously doubt that the only thing currently preventing the majority of straight men from trying to covertly watch strangers pee is the fear of getting caught.
And if a majority of y’all really are that pervy, I’m not sure I want to know. ?
burnspbesq
@JBF:
Because the part you quoted is belied by his actions.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Raven Onthill:
If the thought of President Trump or President Cruz doesn’t motivate “the left”, then they’re beyond reason and hopelessly deluded and/or over-entitled.
Richard Grant
@danielx: For a while now, I’ve been calling Sanders The BernieNader. Hasta la vista, Bernie.
gene108
@Mnemosyne:
I think they’d start slagging his values by pushing the fact he had a kid out of wedlock, in the 1960’s.
There are plenty of folks, who just do not want that sort of thing in their President.
I am not commenting on whether Bernie’s a good dad or not, just the fact that it exists will cause a need for damage control from Bernie’s side, when Republicans bring it up, when talking about Bernie’s values.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: I’m beyond help at this point.
Iowa Old Lady
@LAO: Surely the only people whose genitals might be seen in a public restroom are men at the urinal. The more you think about the freakout, the stranger it gets. What unlikely thing do they think will happen that can’t happen now? If a man goes into a women’s room dressed as a woman, then…What?
aimai
@Ella in New Mexico: Very, very, well said.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@danielx:
You can’t spell Sanders without Nader.
aimai
@OzarkHillbilly: Its complicated, for sure. No one likes to open their clothes and feel vulnerable in someone else’s space. And there’s a lot of fraught social stuff going on between owners and workmen, or renters and workmen for that matter. I think someone could write a fascinating ph.d. dissertation on it, actually.
FlipYrWhig
@Raven Onthill: Why is there so much more whining this time? Jesus Christ. I don’t remember there being a lot of huffing and puffing about how the Kerry campaign needed to spend time stroking and soothing Dean supporters. I don’t even remember there being a lot of huffing and puffing about how the Obama campaign needed to stroke and soothe Hillary supporters. Maybe it was just assumed that they wouldn’t be such a bunch of babies.
Robert Sneddon
@Raven Onthill: SoS Clinton has already won over the Democratic left, as the popular vote in the primaries and the resulting pledged delegate count demonstrates. Independent progressives wouldn’t vote for her in the general election if you held a pistol to their heads so she does not need to divert any efforts from her drive to win the Presidency in accommodating their whiny demands.
aimai
@Iowa Old Lady: He can struggle with his pantyhose and heels like the rest of us. Hm, that sentence definitely needs reworking.
FlipYrWhig
@negative 1: I think I agree — even when there’s concern about crossover appeal and whatnot, there’s not comparable concern about Republican victors reaching out to fallen Republican contenders. And I’m not even sure that we’ve been all that consumed with it on the Democratic side either.
burnspbesq
@Mike J:
There are plenty of alternatives to iTunes. Spare us.
LAO
@Iowa Old Lady: Which is why, it is evident that the “great trans bathroom scare of 2016” is a ruse. A scheme to keep punching the LBGT community in the head, which has been an reliably effective GOT ploy for the Republicans in the past. I’m hopeful, that its effectiveness will fade, as adverse economic impacts increase.
Iowa Old Lady
@aimai: In one of the best pieces of news I’ve gotten in a long time, a much younger woman told me no one wore pantyhose anymore and I should just wear these footies in my shoes. Yay!
Trentrunner
@aimai: Well, you noted the difference yourself: public vs. private. Workers doing construction at a private home site are, by virtue of their work, filthy.
And one thing I’m not paying for when I’m having work done at my house is to turn my private bathroom into a public one.
And mitigating the spread of disease is a perfectly good reason not to have a dozen grimy strangers use my clinically clean bathroom. They also cannot eat my food or fuck my spouse. Is this even a question?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Shell: They still, in reality, do so. To do otherwise would result in wholesale slaughter in our lovely state prison system.
les
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
that’s fuckin’ funny, right there.
Adam L Silverman
@aimai: The process and participant observation methodology sections in the prospectus would certainly be something to read!
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: That is a completely other matter.
Mike J
OzarkHillbilly
@aimai:
Whoooooo boy. It would be a doozzy. I could never explain my discomfort, it was just always something I felt at a very base level- “I do not belong here.” – that I never felt in other rooms. Fortunately, if the job was gonna take more than a day or 2, most bosses got a Johnny on the Spot.
I was very happy when I started working commercial.
burnspbesq
@Raven Onthill:
Why? Why isn’t it the job of the “Democratic left” to grow up, learn to think long-term and strategically, and understand that there are things in the world known as zero-sum games? Why isn’t it the job of the Democratic left to learn from and follow the example of the French left, who set aside their hatred of Chirac, held their noses, and voted for him en masse in 2002 because it was obvious that the alternative, Le Pen, was too horrible to contemplate? What has the Democratic left done to earn coddling?
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Mnemosyne: They don’t need to do that, all they need to do is send everyone a link to the Vox tax calculator. I know it’s been somewhat debunked, but it doesn’t matter. Bernie actually does want to raise everyone’s taxes by a significant amount, everyone can argue the amount, but raising everyone’s taxes is the true third rail of American politics.
Gin & Tonic
@Trentrunner: Would you rather have them pee in your yard? Think about it. They are there for somewhere around 8 hours. They had a couple of cups of coffee on the way to your place. They’ve been putting up drywall, or sanding the floor, or whatever, for four hours. They have to take a leak. What do you suggest they do?
Gin & Tonic
@Mike J: Cui bono?
OzarkHillbilly
@Trentrunner: If I ever have to do any work at your house I’ll be sure to use your couch for a urinal.
Patricia Kayden
@cleek: Hopefully there aren’t enough of them to destroy the country. Are Sanders’ supporters so blind that they cannot figure out that they’ll be punishing themselves if they don’t vote for Secretary Clinton if she is the Democratic nominee? I do not understand their logic at all.
@gene108: How the hell would Republicans target Senator Sanders for “moral” issues if their candidate is thrice married, womanizing sexist Trump? We’re talking about a man who has commented on his own daughters’ body parts. That would take some big balls.
rikyrah
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
THIS.
One of the GOP’s SuperPAC’s jobs would be to buy add time for the following ad:
On tv.
On radio.
On billboards, coast to coast.
That VOX tax calculator will be imprinted into memory by the time election day comes.
burnspbesq
@Gin & Tonic:
Where i live, they bring porta-pots to the jobsite. The cost is baked into the bid, and no one complains about it.
Matt McIrvin
@negative 1: @gene108:
The EPA says it’s more evenly divided:
https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/usinventoryreport.html
For all greenhouse-gas emissions, it’s about 33% electric power generation, 28% transportation (all forms, not just cars), 21% other industrial emissions, 12% commercial and residential emissions and 9% agriculture.
That’s all greenhouse gases, not just CO2, but CO2 is 81% of the total and I’m guessing transportation probably has a larger fraction of CO2 in the mix than some of the others.
Also, switching to cleaner electric power sources improves the overall benefit from switching to electric cars and electric mass transit.
scav
All of which somehow brought to mind the UK conservative candidate that, in his role as service technician, urinated into the homeowner’s coffee cup. So, better or worse than being allowed into the pristine bathroom?
les
@scav: Those bathroom laws are the only things keeping straight men in check — they’re totally unable to control their fundamental urges otherwise. Or something.
Iowa Old Lady
@Trentrunner: I always tell workmen to use our bathroom and they never do.
Gin & Tonic
@burnspbesq: I have never seen that on residential work around where I live.
OzarkHillbilly
@burnspbesq: Only on jobs that last more than a day or 2.
Applejinx
@burnspbesq: You mean this? http://econbrowser.com
SciNY
@Robert Sneddon: Exactly right. That’s what is needed not only to win a general election, but also govern in our politically riven country. Revolutions sound great, but berning a village to save it is not an option.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@rikyrah:
Raising taxes to make big government even bigger – in order to give free stuff to people – a lot of whom don’t want or need free college, for example. It will be demagogued so fast, so hard and so effectively it will end up with Sanders losing 48 states, maybe 49. Nancy Pelosi has already said she wants nothing to do with trying to back that tax plan. It’s a non-starter, because it’s half baked pie in the sky bullshit, estimating an economic growth rate of 5% – something JEB couldn’t even pretend to believe in.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Raven Onthill:
I am betting most of these folks are not Democrats at all. Maybe they can be persuaded to become Democrats, but it will be a hard sell. Why, because Bernie has poisoned the well with his attacks against the Party, Hillary, Obama, etc. Since it is Bernie who characterized the Democratic party this way it is up to Bernie to fix this. Because none of you knuckleheads believes anything Hillary says.
les
@Iowa Old Lady:
Geeze, the end of civilization as we know it. I thought you Iowegians were with it.
Or else some conservative somewhere gets a stiffy.
One of those.
japa21
@Ella in New Mexico: Extremely well said. And no, not all Sanders supporters are crazy, though there are a few. And some of us Clinton supporters can also get a bit on the crazy side. As usual, it frequently happens that merely calling yourself a Sanders or a Clinton supporter brings out the nastiness in people. It is, as you say, time to stop.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Most of the Bernie supporters I know are Dems. They don’t need convincing of what to do come Nov. They also aren’t the ones screeching on the internet.
les
@les: FYWP. Please to invert quote block.
Patricia Kayden
@Iowa Old Lady: Then we all go into the stalls, lock the doors, do our business, wash our hands and leave. Nothing else goes on in women’s bathrooms — at least the ones I frequent.
Scotian
@scav:
Ah, actually that was a Canadian Conservative Party of Canada candidate who did that. It was caught on video several years earlier by a show called MarketPlace by the CBC, which deals with consumer issues. Someone managed to make the connection during the election campaign and brought it to the attention of the wider public, which it then became one more reason for Canadians to be “pissed off” with the
Harper CPC, which we ejected from power last year and brought Justin Trudeau’s Liberals to majority power.
Patricia Kayden
@scav: He is Canadian (from Scarborough which is close to Toronto). I remember hearing about that. How bizarre.
Partisan Cheese
Crickets on the Hillary supporters hack and takedown of Bernie Sander’s Facebook groups. Not surprising. But yeah Sanders, he is the worst amirite? His supporters are the only bad ones, not you guys.
Chyron HR
@Partisan Cheese:
Your total failure to provide any link to this breaking story nobody’s heard of speaks volumes. I presume it’s sourced from the usual anti-circumcision site?
Patricia Kayden
@Partisan Cheese: What proof do you have that it was Secretary Clinton’s supporters who took down Senator Sanders’ Facebook pages?
Gin & Tonic
@Chyron HR: Has Sullivan started writing for them? Inquiring minds…
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Partisan Cheese:
Is this a story from USUncut or HaHa Goodman at Salon?
les
@Raven Onthill:
First: It ain’t no “much larger group,” and never has been.
Second: What “bashing?” She disagrees with some of his policy ideas–grow the fuck up.
Third: What the fucking fuck does this even mean? Bernistas keep whining Clinton has to reach out to convert them–what the fuck do you think she’s doing? She’s running a political campaign. She makes speeches, invites and answers questions, publishes her policy platform. If what she says is unacceptable to you, don’t vote for her. What do you special snowflakes need? A televised fireside chat that only comes in on Bernista TV machines, where she apologizes for being a corrupt lying tool of Wall Street and promises to do better? Add a platform plank saying everybody who voted for Bernie in a primary and votes for her in the general gets a free college education? Takes each little purity pony by the hand individually and assures you that you’re the most specialest liberal ever and she will gently consult you before any major decision? Confess publicly she was wrong and knows the revolution will sweep conservatives away forever?
Christ, the whining is boring.
Gelfling545
@gf120581: This sounds at least slightly shady and very, very petty.
Chyron HR
@Gin & Tonic:
Sullivan submitted one of his political pieces because they were soliciting “dickhead” articles, but it turned out to be a misunderstanding.
Roger Moore
@gene108:
Actually not. According to EPA, greenhouse gas emissions were 30% from power generation, 26% from transportation, 21% from industry, 12% from commercial and residential, and 9% from agriculture. So power generation remains the #1 source. Also, the emissions are concentrated in relatively few big emitters, which means you’re replacing sources wholesale rather than retail.
ETA: also, some of the use in other areas could be replaced with electricity if we had lots of cheap renewable power, e.g. electric cars and buses, electric heat pumps instead of fossil fuel burning heaters, etc.
gindy51
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: So he is an older, grayer Ted Cruz?
Cacti
That’s why Sanders 2016 is a personality cult as much as a campaign.
He doesn’t just want you to vote for him because of his ideas. He demands your vote because he’s better, purer, and holier than all of his adversaries, and if you vote for them, you’re evil too.
Go jump up your own a**, Bernie.
eclare
@Roger Moore: Exactly. Easier to modify/replace 1200 power plants than however many million cars there are.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Partisan Cheese:
twitter tells me it was a Facebook glitch and everything is back to normal, but please continue with your whining victimization – somewhere else.
scav
@Patricia Kayden: Sorry. Probably read about him first in a UK paper, which is why he got attached to the totally inappropriate anglophone country. Plus, it just somehow seems more a UK thing to do, not that I should under-appreciate your weirdos. Again, Sorry.
burnspbesq
@Applejinx:
No, this. Which has the benefit of being credible.
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/04/a-methodological-moral-struggle-over-the-sanders-economic-policy-proposals.html
gwangung
@Cacti:
Yeah, functionally, all the money is going to him (with little funds going to down ticket candidates) and all the mechanisms for change are predicated on him being the candidate, NOT buiding permanent structures for the future.
Ad hoc groups get beat by permanent groups (if not immediately, then in the long term). Making a structural change like this means they will not be instantaneous, but take substantial amounts of time.
Hungry Joe
Two things I’m unable to fathom:
1) The extreme umbrage taken at the relative few Bernie supporters who act like jerks re Hillary. There are millions of people behind even distantly trailing candidates, and some of them are going to behave that way. Every time. I’m still a Bernie supporter (though I’m wavering), but if Hillary gets the nom, which appears likely, I’m all in: $$, phone banking, precinct walking. Most Bernie supporters I know feel the same way, and most of the rest will come around to voting for her, at least. Why get so bent because of the inevitable noisy few?
2) Public restrooms/sex. I mean, what the hell???!? Public restrooms are, to me, among the least erotic spaces on the planet. I understand that, in desperation, disparaged minorities in the sexual milieu must resort to such places to meet up, but … what am I trying to say here? … I think it’s, “Eww. Just eww.”
les
@Cacti:
Won’t argue, but sometimes “cargo cult” seems to get closer.
Cacti
And like any good guru trusted with other people’s money, he chartered a 767 flight to Rome for himself and 10 family members, with the gourmet in flight menu, because…the revolution.
Patricia Kayden
@Raven Onthill: Do you expect Clinton to beg and plead with people who hate her guts? As far as I am concerned, any so called Progressive or Liberal who doesn’t understand what’s at stake in these elections can go beep themselves. You don’t have to be in love with Secretary Clinton to figure out that she will make a better President than Cruz or Trump. You just have to have a brain.
Gelfling545
@Roger Moore: We need the cool little public restrooms they have using in some places in Paris. After you leave & close the door a robotic sanitizer go us to work to scrub it clean for the next user. You can’t actually see the sanitizer at work so I can’t describe it. Could be house elves for all I know but it makes the emergency public restroom stop much less icky.
Applejinx
@Chyron HR: Nah, it’s all over my Facebook and I gotta actually lay low because I can’t even try to talk down my friends over this one.
It’s real: Facebook has been putting the Bernie pages back. It’s definitely rogue Clintonistas, nobody from the campaign would try that because it’s incredibly stupid. (w.r.t child porn, it’s also incredibly illegal to traffic in that stuff even as a political ratfuck) But it’s also totally consistent with what I’ve seen.
I hadn’t started posting about it because I just expect that behavior from some NOT all Clinton posters. It speaks more to how vulnerable things like Facebook really are to ratfucking. Again, this is Clinton followers, not the campaign (because they’re just not that kind of stupid)
les
@Hungry Joe:
It’s the intertubes, Joe. Sanctimony, whining, threats to withhold their productivity–they get jumped on. Blog fights are like sports, something to get excited about that ultimately doesn’t matter irl. And it seems to me most of us know this is a small number, not representative and not a threat to November. Unless Bernie goes full Nader, of course.
chopper
@gf120581:
what does she mean, ‘any more’? they haven’t released one.
Patricia Kayden
@scav: No apology necessary. I just remember the story and thought it was bizarre that anyone would do such an inexplicable thing. I’m sure Canada has its share of weird politicians (RIP Rob Ford).
Cacti
@Gelfling545:
But doesn’t that mean the robot took away a human toilet scrubbing job?
dollared
Jesus John, what a WATB. This is a negotiation. It’s what adults do. Deal with it. Who knows, maybe you actually agree that we should have Medicare for All.
Hillary Clinton’s supporters say she supports progressive goals. Maybe she could, you know, even pay lip service to those goals.
And as for the rest of the Balloon Juice frightened children, grow up. 99% of Sanders supporters will vote for Clinton when the time comes. All this outrage, distortion and contempt only serves to make sure that the remaining 1% hates the Clinton supporters with the heat of a thousand suns, and makes sure that the 50% of the Sanders supporters who are truly mistrustful of Clinton’s conservative positions don’t lift a finger to help her.
les
@Gelfling545:
But are the sanitizers segregated by their manufactured gender? Huh? Maybe you can’t see them, but maybe they can see you!
dollared
@Cacti: God, you are just a gigantic pile of distorted horseshit, aren’t you? You don’t think that whole trip helped all Democrats? Do you recall how many Catholics there are in the US?
You are no different from a wingnut banging on Al Gore for having an SUV. Figure out which side you’re on – republican or democrat.
The Thin Black Duke
@dollared: Whine, bitch, moan. Yawn.
Cacti
@dollared:
Do I think Bernie fan stalking the Pope helped all Democrats?
No. Not even a little.
And why did he need to cart his grandkids along to throw his panties at the Pope?
Patricia Kayden
@dollared: “All this outrage, distortion and contempt only serves to make sure that the remaining 1% hates the Clinton supporters with the heat of a thousand suns”
Why would I as a Secretary Clinton supporter care if Senator Sanders’ supporters hate me? Wow. Talk about childishness. This kind of talk is worthy of a Trump supporters.
dollared
@Patricia Kayden: I expect Secretary Clinton to recognize that the leftmost third of the Democratic Party is fucking essential to her getting elected, and figure out how to pander to them as well as she panders to bankers for her paydays.
It’s called fucking politics. Maybe we’d all have more confidence in her if she learned some, and if her supporters figured it out as well.
Gelfling545
@Cacti: well, from what I saw in my previous visits (quite some time ago) there were few jobs to be lost in public toilet cleaning! I’m talking about the really public on the street facilities here.
dollared
@Cacti: Wow. It’s called a political campaign. Nice to see your anti-Catholic bigotry show up. Nice to know you don’t really care about winning the election.
Give in to your hatred, Luuuuuukkkke
Emma
@dollared: I can tell you how much it helped. Not one damn bit. American Catholics got one or two glimpses of Sanders in a small room talking to other scholars, and a papal comment about how it had been a quick encounter and completely personal. If they cared to find out at all.
(added later) American conservative Catholics loathe the Pope. Liberal Catholics tend to vote Democrat anyway.
Ryan
““You don’t have a right to intrude upon the rights of others”
HA! What a lark. On almost every other issue, a God botherer like Cruz that his will should prevail over the views of any who shares a view he doesn’t like, even if it means using Federal Tyranny to make it so.
Cacti
@dollared:
But your guru said it wasn’t a political trip.
Was he lying?
dollared
@Patricia Kayden: Um, because if you want Secretary Clinton elected, you have to work side by side with some Sanders supporters in the run up to the general election. It’s called coalition building. All the Clintonistas told me it was important.
I guess except for the spoiled, bratty children among you. Who would rather nurse their outrage than focus on electing the first woman President.
dollared
@Cacti: I don’t have a guru. I have a set of policies I support, and a strong set of beliefs about how the country can adopt them.
You have hatred issues. And you are hurting your candidate.
Patricia Kayden
@Hungry Joe: “Public restrooms/sex. I mean, what the hell???!?”
Given what happened with Senator Larry Craig, I have a feeling that Republicans are projecting their view of sex in restrooms on the public because I’m with you about public restrooms being the last places on earth I would associate with sex.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: Maybe it was rogue Bernie operatives running a false flag operation so they could cry foul! I think that was your interpretation of the _real story_ of when Bernie’s actual operatives actually started peeking at Hillary Clinton donor files and got caught and it was the LEAST FAIR THING EVAR HILLARYS TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE
Robert Sneddon
@Applejinx: Actually it seems to have been a “hit” inspired by 4chan. They like the “let’s you and him fight” idea and supporters of Senator Sanders are nice and paranoid at the moment, ripe for the fucking-with. They’ll go ballistic without actually checking what really happened, saying things like “It’s definitely rogue Clintonistas” without proof.
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
Given the amount of rodent copulation that’s been going on by Ron Paul fans claiming to now be Bernie fans, those guys would be my prime suspects, honestly.
ETA: Or, to put it another way, the jackasses who decided to doxx the Democratic superdelegates seem like the kind of crowd who would do this.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Hungry Joe: 2) They see a predator of women and children everywhere because their emotional development around sexuality is so warped. Women are at more risk from straight men in public open and social spaces than they are in public restrooms because the predators don’t stand out they way they would in a loo. Also too the predators are far more likely to know their prey than be strangers, but.
The same is true for children – public restrooms are far safer for them than lots of places that “seem” safe, churches, sports stuff, scouts, etc. But the RWNJs think everybody’s view of sexuality is as warped as theirs and they get all freaked.
Plus, it’s not about the bathrooms, it’s a bout the ickiness of the others.
dollared
@Emma: Actually, moderate Catholics are the largest religiously identifiable swing group. I personally know hundreds who pay attention to the Pope’s politics.
Let loose of your bigotry. This was a good thing.
FlipYrWhig
@dollared:
Yeah, maybe she should put some skin in the game and run for president as a liberal for several months, again, and happening currently, or something!
Cacti
@dollared:
I also noticed you avoided revolutionary generalissimo Bernie saying it wasn’t a political trip.
What was it then? Just a chance to burn a quick half-million on a day trip to Rome and some lobster sliders for the grandkiddos?
Patricia Kayden
@dollared: You are going to be so bitter when Secretary Clinton is elected. I would be fine with a President Sanders but I can see that quite a few of his supporters have decided that Secretary Clinton is the enemy.
Oh well.
dollared
@Roger Moore: This. Well put.
FlipYrWhig
@dollared:
Policies like “things should be good” and beliefs like “the country should do them.” Sophisticated stuff like that!
Emma
@dollared: I am a Mass-going Catholic. I talked to people about it. That’s how I know. I don’t need to read polls to know that in my small working class church there were more concerns about the next week’s fundraising bbq than about Sanders.
Cacti
@Patricia Kayden:
For the dead end left fringe, Democrats will always be the real enemy.
Because they believe in working within the system rather than torching the place and starting from scratch.
Patricia Kayden
@dollared: Actually, all I plan to do is vote, which is what I did today in Maryland. I don’t have to work with Sanders supporters or anyone else for that matter. I expect that adults can make up their own minds to decide whether a President Clinton would be better than a President Cruz or Trump (or whoever the Koch brothers choose at the Republican convention). It will be a very simple decision come November.
dollared
@Patricia Kayden: Have you read this post and this thread? You stupid shit, have you seen me say that I would be bitter that a president Clinton is elected? You realize your hatred is so great that you can’t even grasp facts at this point? I’m hoping she’ll be a great president. I’m supporting Bernie Sanders because her route to greatness will be to the left, if she chooses to take it.
The whiny, stupid carping and bitterness on this blog is all from the Clinton supporters. They are terrified that she’ll blow it. I think she’ll do fine.
Mnemosyne
@Robert Sneddon:
This, too. I think it’s outsiders trying to fuck with Democrats, not actual supporters of either Bernie or Hillary.
FlipYrWhig
@dollared:
Have you met this person who posts here under the name “dollared”?
Big Picture Pathologist
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Actually, Bob Ney former Congressman and now reporter for Talk Radio News, says he knew Sanders personally and says he is actually pretty good at working with the other side of the aisle to get things done. Shows how much you know.
aimai
@Hungry Joe: You are mistaking direct conversations people are having with actual, specific, internet supporters of Bernie with some abstract hate on for Bernie supporters. Thats not what is going on. I have nothing against Bernie supporters or voters–in fact like a lot of Hillary people I could have gone for Bernie very, very, easily. And I don’t object to people wanting to vote for their candidate right through until after California, either. I think that people should have the chance to vote for their candidate. I’m just arguing with, and “taking umbrage with” specific Bernie supporters and Bernie himself for taking a hatchet to normal politics in pursuit of a romance of “not politics.” I’m disgusted with specific people who, whether here or at dkos, can’t stop themselves from personally attacking Hillary Clinton and her voters. Its not generalized to all Bernie supporters, although since we are talking about a large number of people there may be a large number of people falling into the fractional, dead ender, category.
WarMunchkin
@dollared: I think that’s nonsense. The leftmost third of Democrats are likely voting Democrat because of policy. If you’re not going to vote for Clinton in the general, you’re doing so because you want to punish the Democrats or believe that Hillary Clinton is not fit for elected office (you, Bob, goBlue). And if you believe either of those things, then that’s that, really, no convincing anyone who thinks that. On to voters who might actually vote for her.
A couple weeks ago one of the more aggressive Clinton people here mentioned that if Sanders played his cards right, he could get some things into the party platform. I don’t think that’s going to happen because the fact of the matter is that Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination. That’s it. Sanders lost, and he gets nothing.
There’s no bargaining, no changing the platform, no speaking time, no lip service, no attempt to mend bridges that never existed in the first place.
So yes, Hillary Clinton goes to the general election, and it is her responsibility to win it. I agree with Sanders there. She’ll do her best by presenting her policy proposals and pointing out how crazy Trump is. Her policy proposals will be the same as they were at the start of this race. They are not as lefty as I would like, but I think they are mostly solid. I’m perfectly okay the Sanders people voting for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein or Donald Trump if they’re trying to punish the Democrats.
Because at the end of the day, if that’s how you want to use your vote, that’s part of democracy, too. Democracy is supposed to be about the expression of the people. I want to use my vote to support the person best equipped to support the public policy that I think will help the country, so I’m going to ask my friends to vote for Hillary.
aimai
@dollared: Ah! “you stupid shit!” That’s what I’m talkin’ about.
patroclus
Well, Bernie didn’t make my blood boil and I agree with him that it’s the nominee’s responsibility to win over the voters of the runner-up. But the weird thing is that Bernie supporters, when confronted by facts, just continue to repeat their talking points regardless. Last night, dollared made the allegation that federal spending has declined under Obama when, in fact, as the NYT and Politifact published, federal spending has actually increased. And they also claim that Dodd-Frank, the first strict regulatory statute in 70+ years, constitutes “self-regulation” when it, in fact, strictly regulates the finance sector in multitudinous ways. Why do they keep repeating inaccurate stuff? Do they think merely by repeating them, it makes it accurate? It’s bizarre!
Cacti
@Big Picture Pathologist:
You mean like those times he crossed over to vote against immigration reform, and for gun manufacturer immunity?
No, you must mean like when he worked with Republicans and got them to support progressive legislation like…umm….
Yeah, I got nothing.
FlipYrWhig
@Cacti:
Pfft, The Left doesn’t actually believe in torching the place and starting from scratch, they believe that someone else should have torched the place and started from scratch already, but they couldn’t because of corporations and The Establishment, and now it’s too late for anything other than sulking and big talk about missed opportunities. Outvoting people, showing up to meetings, that’s all hard and boring and not really fair when you think about it.
FlipYrWhig
@Big Picture Pathologist:
That’s the “Amendment King” Bernie we’ve heard about. Thing is, that’s what Bernie does when people approach him because they need _his_ support. We don’t really know what it looks like when Bernie has to approach other people because he needs _their_ support. Except that he worked on that VA reform bill–which, in retelling the story, he says would have been much better and more sweeping if Republicans hadn’t been obstacles to it. YA THINK BERN? Most of us know this process as “politics.”
dollared
@patroclus: Federal spending has expanded at the lowest rate in the postwar era under Obama. I told you that, and I provided documentary evidence.
Dodd Frank relies heavily on post facto self reporting. Fact. And to the extent the Feds have verified, the banks still don’t meet the Dodd Frank requirements. I told you that and provided documentary evidence..
Find some other fairy tales to tell to people. Leave me out of your fantasies.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Big Picture Pathologist: Bob Ney from Ohio? Freedom Fries creator and Abramoff co-consiprator? That Bob Ney? LOL.
dollared
@aimai: What are you talking about? Tell me more. Did you see the stupid assertion she made about me that provoked my response?
Please, explain my party foul to me.
tones
@Ella in New Mexico: thanks for this, so tired of these fakes.
dollared
@WarMunchkin: As will I. But I disagree about the negotiation. If she wants a united party and she wants that 10% of the electorate, she’ll find a way to give them something to be happy about. That’s good politics.
patroclus
@dollared: No, you said that Obama implemented spending cuts and that federal spending had declined. Then, when shown that you were wrong, you doubled down and “stood by your statement.” Then, in the 500+ thread below, you repeated the very same inaccurate comment. It’s bizarre that you would do so and kind of humorous. The documentary evidence you provided directly contradicted your inaccurate statement. If you are now going to change your tune and agree with me, that’s great! Thanks for actually changing your view after being confronted by fact!
Derivatives regulation did not exist at all until Dodd-Frank. Your understanding of the Volcker rule, the CFPB, the FSOC, Basel III, the new rules on thrifts and the abolition of the OTS, the push-out regulations, the OFR etc… as “self-regulation” is inaccurate. Even more so than your previously stated views on federal spending supposedly declining under Obama. You should read up on the subject and stop repeating inaccurate stuff. It makes you look foolish. Dodd-Frank is NOT self-regulation; hence you are wrong. If you are indicative of Bernie’s views, then I can see why he’s losing.
Monala
@BR: For people who can’t afford an electric car (but need the transportation, and have few or no other options), what happens when gas becomes unaffordable?
Cacti
@dollared:
Okay.
Once upon a time, Bernie Sanders was elected President of the United States.
patroclus
@Cacti: The idea that federal spending declined under Obama – as reiterated by dollared countless times, is an utter fairy tale. It’s amusing that inaccurate statements get repeated ad nauseum by dollared. S/he apparently has a set a beliefs and then makes up non-facts to justify those beliefs. And then labels factual disagreements as “fairy tales.”
aimai
@dollared: Her mistake was responding to you as though you were a reasonable person. You little shit.
dollared
@patroclus: Countless. Provide two links. No, provide 5. You do have all your fingers, don’t you?
Cacti
@dollared:
FWIW, I’m sorry I insulted Bernie’s Catholic faith. ;-)
Riggsveda
John, what you wanted from Sanders you already got, during the town hall meet with Chris Hayes. In fact, it was quoted elsewhere on this blog, and it was the last thing he said when Hayes continued to press him about whether he would support Clinton as the nominee: “I will do everything in my power to make sure that no Republican gets into the White House in this election,” Sanders said. Like you said, he doesn’t even have to say her name. Ease off the name-calling, for Christ’s sake…you got what you wanted.
dollared
@aimai: She said I would be bitter if when President Clinton is elected. That is not true, as I have explained 50 times on this blog. That is the kind of stupid, inflammatory, hostile rhetoric you scared children have been indulging in for the last 3 months while the moderately competent politician Bernie Sanders scared this shit out of all of you because Future President Clinton is such a marginal politician.
She was being a stupid shit. I said so. Deal with it.
DCF
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
You are a piece of work, sister…if your statement was any more off-base, it would merit ‘Three Pinocchios’ and a Scalia salute. Your absolutist hatred of Sanders – not to mention your ahistorical characterization of the man – is without fact(s) or merit.
patroclus
@aimai: Indeed – look at his/her latest response. When confronted by facts, s/he just responds with insults. I’m beginning to agree with you regarding Bernie’s internet supporters – I actually though dollared was bright and was here for issue discussion. It seems that I was wrong.
the reason, of course, for the fact that the rate of increase (in federal spending) declined is because of the Republicans, who (like a week ago) fail to pass budget resolutions, appropriations bills and then just shut down the government when they don’t get their way. Then, they pass months-long CR’s with funding at existing levels. In Bush’s era, they ran idiotic wars off the books, with constant supplemental appropriations that expanded federal spending. But dollared lays all that off on Obama (and presumably Clinton) merely because he has a wikipedia definition of “neo-liberal” that he wants to apply as an epithet to politicians s/he doesn’t like. This, I am finding, is typical of Bernie’s supporters. It’s weird and demonstrably illiberal.
WarMunchkin
@dollared: I volunteered and went to the Hillary party in Times Square not one week after deciding to vote for her over Sanders. Here are the things that she said that I think Sanders people will like:
– She aggressively called out trickle-down economics. (Notably, that other corporate sellout, Bill Clinton also did the same in 2012: We cannot afford to double down on trickle down)
– She talked about solving climate change as being essential for a secure future.
– She talked about the Democratic Party as Roosevelt’s legacy
– She talked about including Muslim-Americans as Americans
And for the really hardcore left people, she supports a democratically socialist family leave policy. That to me is huge. Because family leave is 3 months of universal basic income. Eventually we’ll get to 4 months, then 5, then a year, then a lifetime.
tones
@Raven Onthill: which is exactly what Bernie said – it is up to her to win over my voters, because at this point she has offered them nothing -which is precisely why they are not inclined to vote for her.
A Ghost To Most
@dollared:
One finger forward,three fingers back.
Chill the fuck out.
Cacti
@tones:
He also said he couldn’t just snap his fingers and have his supporters do what he said.
Yeah. Right.
patroclus
@WarMunchkin: In response to Sanders, she also now opposes the TPP and she said she would sign a $15 minimum wage bill if enacted by Congress. She has also said she intends to end the reliance on private prisons (in the federal system) and support union rights. She intends to implement the recent landmark Paris agreements on carbon emissions and energy conservation – and presumably support a California-like bill in Congress. But apparently, because there is a wikipedia definition of neo-liberal, none of this is good enough.
tones
@burnspbesq: oh of course, we don’t think his actions support that statement , so may just as well edit the quote for him.
DB’s
dollared
@patroclus: I made truthful statements and you distorted them. I provided you with documentation and you ignored it. Now you want to label me “illiberal.”
After you provide the links to the “countless” times I said what I didn’t in actuality say, then perhaps you could provide your definition of illiberal. I did provide you with a commonplace definition of neoliberal and provided evidence for that as well.
BTW your account of budget history is mostly accurate but there is plenty to discuss in how President Obama handled those situations, and which battles he chose to fight. But that would have to be discussion with someone I would trust to not distort my past statements
Davis X. Machina
@WarMunchkin:
She doesn’t mean it, though. You can tell.
Plus she’s going to start World War III.
Everyone knows this.
Marc McKenzie
You don’t get to call yourself a moral crusader or revclutionary when if you don’t get your way, you let the bigots take over to heighten the contradictions, because real people’s lives are at stake.
Sure wish someone could’ve told this to Nader back in 2000…..
….But maybe we can tell Susan Sarandon and the hard-core Sanders supporters?
Kay
@WarMunchkin:
Even for Donald Trump’s family? I thought universal benefits were “free stuff” for “privileged people”.
Miss Bianca
@Ella in New Mexico: Goddess help you, you’re doing yeo(wo)man’s service. This Clintonista thanks you. : )
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@DCF:
Citation needed.
Kay
@WarMunchkin:
I don’t think she can do it. If it replaces 3/4’s of income, some people will get bigger payments than others and that means it “mostly benefits” privileged people according to the “free stuff” analysis Democrats have all of a sudden adopted.
Nope. Should be limited to those who make 15k a year.
Monala
@Mnemosyne: Women hang out in restrooms all the time, and you can’t necessarily tell their reason. They might be waiting for someone else who is using the toilet, or waiting for a certain stall to become available (i.e., the handicapped stall), or they’re just there to check their makeup, but can’t get close enough to the mirror yet because it’s blocked by people washing their hands. Seeing a woman just hanging out in the restroom isn’t something that triggers any red flags for me.
Seeing a man in the restroom might, and has. It’s happened to me twice. The first time, I was out on a double date in high school, and almost bumped into a man as I entered the women’s room. We both screamed, and then he apologized, as he realized he’d made a mistake. When I returned to my table and told my friends, the man (who unbeknownst to me, was sitting at the next table, on a date of his own), leaned over and said, “Hey! You don’t have to tell everybody!” All of us laughed.
The second time was a few years ago, when I attended my niece’s birthday party at a kid’s party place. A older man was standing up against the wall in the women’s room, holding a doll. I reported him to the staff, who questioned him. It turns out, he was there with his granddaughter, and she was scared to go into the restroom alone.
The latter story is why I like the sign I heard about, posted on a unisex restroom at Target maybe? It said something like, “Why a unisex bathroom? To serve our customers who are fathers with daughters, mothers with sons, anyone who needs the assistance of someone else to use the restroom, or anyone who needs additional privacy or can’t comfortably use the men’s or women’s room.”
patroclus
@dollared: You made inaccurate statements and were directly contradicted by the links you provided, which I fully read. Obama did not cut spending – and he recently got $80 billion in domestic discretionary and another $80 billion in defense spending in last fall’s Omnibus. If he had had his way (i.e., his proposed budgets), federal spending would have increased more than it did. Increased appropriations, since Keynes wrote the General Theory in 1935, have always been regarded as liberal solutions to economic problems. This is the opposite of the austerity regimes imposed by Jeffrey Sachs in Latin America countries and the former SSR’s. Obama is not a “neo-liberal”, and to the extent that the policy mix of his presidency resembles that, it was because of the Republicans. Both Sanders and Clinton are like Obama – liberals who propose liberal economic policy. Sanders would probably have even higher spending (schools; single-payer) so I can see why you like him. I do too.
Dodd-Frank, like the New Deal era banking statutes, imposes strict financial regulation on a wide variety of areas, and completely reverses the self-regulatory era which prevailed since Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the CFTC Modernization Act. In finance, there has been a paradigmatic shift back to the way it was in the 1930’s through the 1980’s. It could have gone further, but it stands as a liberal reform, implemented by Obama. A neo-liberal solution would have emphasized less regulation. The bankers no very well that regulation has increased markedly – they fought the CFPB and the Volcker rule like they were the Devil (and they are still fighting Basel). They lost – we have now returned to the New Deal style of financial regulation which worked so well until the Reagan era.
I have a feeling that you and I don’t really disagree on much. I advocate leftish/liberal solutions to financial problems; not neo-liberal ones. The fact that we support different candidates obscures that.
FlipYrWhig
@tones:
This is a load of manure worthy of a titanosaur. You might even think that Bernie Sanders’s supporters have built up a straw-Hillary in their minds, rather than actually listening to the actual public appearances of an actual two-time presidential candidate.
Cacti
@Marc McKenzie:
Sanders celebrity supporters have been an unexpected boon…
To the Clinton campaign.
spacecakes
@Trollhattan: My ipod classic died recently and I replaced it with a Sony Walkman A17. 64gb internal +128 gb microsd= a lot of storage and it sounds great.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
About that Facebook issue.
WarMunchkin
@Kay: Can’t tell if you’re snarking. I support universality in social programs, and I am prepared to burn down any Dem who wants to means test social security, because that’s bullshit. I’m pretty sure that the income gap aspect is addressed via a cap on max income dispensed via family leave. 15k payout over 3 months isn’t ideal, but it’s a good start. I’d want a 20k cap.
Miss Bianca
@Trentrunner: So, you rent a port-a-potty for work(wo)men at your house, then?
DCF
IMV, if the Democratic party is to retain – and reformulate – its core historical identity, the feet of the establishment frontrunner (HRC) will need to be held to the fire repeatedly on issues such as climate change, criminal justice, foreign intervention(s), living wage(s), and a plethora of other policies.
The Sanders campaign has amassed considerable leverage within the Democratic party – and the greater American electorate (read: independents) over the course of the past year. Were he to simply capitulate to the establishment candidate, she would have no political reason(s) to consider – and implement, at least in part – his progressive positions. HRC, I regret to say, is not a leader in the true sense of the word. She is a follower – of polls and persistent pressure from the progressive wing (read: Elizabeth Warren) of the party. What should he say at this point of the primary? So long, and thanks for all the fish?
Don’t blame an authentic, consistent and courageous candidate for not wrapping both arms around a deeply-flawed candidate (read: personal negatives second only to the Trumpenstein, > than 50%) who represents a timidity and conventionality rationalized by euphemistic descriptors like ‘pragmatic’ and ‘expedient’. Sanders will support HRC in the general election – but don’t expect him to don a cheerleader uniform and wholeheartedly endorse neo-liberal/corporatist approaches that he has sought to overturn for the entirety of his political career.
MSNBC Democratic Town Hall | Hillary Is Done Courting Progressives
MSNBC Democratic Town Hall | Hillary Is Done Courting Progressives
MSNBC Democratic Town Hall | The Worst Line Was…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7wCK41gqMU
MSNBC Democratic Town Hall | The Best Line Was…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWwY3rwdGXs
tones
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: “Attacks”
Now the unvarnished truth becomes an “Attack”
He attacked OBAMA!1!
Well, he said maybe a primary would lead to him listening to the people more, and if so , then it would be worth it.
OMG.
He “attacks ” Hillary :
She makes more in an hour than I make in a year, but she is going to smash those companies that gave her 20 million [ok 28+] ? probably not…
Such a vicious attack.
the worst thing is you people got nothin’ , yet try shamelessly anyway – he has been a gentleman at every step, but he is not one to sugar coat everything he says, so you all hate him.
Real Democrats don’t have to be afraid of the truth, sorry.
She is not a real democrat, she is a republican – and always has been.
DCF
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
You made the claim(s). Back them up…only you can’t do so, can you?….
Robert Sneddon
@Kay:
British paid maternity leave (which can also be split to cover some paternity leave, including same-sex “paternity”) is 90% of current earnings for nine months, no means test applicable. Employment rights, holiday entitlements etc. are all covered of course since we’re human beings and not animals.
Kay
@WarMunchkin:
Clinton makes that argument against free college. It’s a terrible argument for Democrats but it was so important to rebut Bernie Sanders that we’re now arguing against universal benefits. Too much benefit for middle and upper people. Please notify Medicare and immediately means test.
I wish the primary was over too. If this goes on much longer who knows what we’ll throw out the window because it has Bernie cooties? Could be anything.
Cacti
@tones:
I’m sorry the rest of us haven’t accepted Bernie as our personal savior.
It’s a character flaw we’re all working on.
patroclus
@tones: I don’t hate Bernie – I like him a lot. He is a very effective Senator from Vermont. He’s made a LOT of good proposals which, if enacted, would transform the country in a beneficial way. I didn’t vote for him and I don’t believe Hillary is a Republican or a neo-liberal though. I disagree with you there. She has moved leftwards in this primary season so he has had a good impact.
FlipYrWhig
@DCF: This is quite a story. When has Bernie Sanders shown courage? Representing Vermont, he’s insulated from everything. Who has he ever offended? Who has he ever overcome? Who has he ever persuaded to do anything?
Cacti
@Kay:
Food, water, medical care, and subsidized college tuition.
They really are the 4 things no one can live without.
Fr33d0m
Not sure if someone has any actual research to back it up, but I doubt enough Sanders supporters will sit around and watch the Trumpification of America. I know some think it will bring the Revolution, but it will also cement a Conservative SCOTUS for another generation or two. Not to mention what will happen to equality and the environment during that time.
I remember somewhere around 2012 (or earlier) someone saying that letting the Republican’s win was sure to end that party because they would be so crazy nobody would vote for them for a generation. Well they got the crazy part right, but did they foresee the gerrymandering? and do you really think there is no chance for a Republican win in November?
les
@tones:
Let me re-offer the answer I gave your buddy Raven: What the fucking fuck does this even mean? Bernistas keep whining Clinton has to reach out to convert them, has to offer them something–what the fuck do you think she’s doing? She’s running a political campaign–she’s, ya know, reaching out to voters. She makes speeches, invites and answers questions, publishes her policy platform. If what she says is unacceptable to you, don’t vote for her. What do you special snowflakes need? A televised fireside chat that only comes in on Bernista TV machines, where she apologizes for being a corrupt lying tool of Wall Street and promises to do better? Add a platform plank saying everybody who voted for Bernie in a primary and votes for her in the general gets a free college education? Takes each little purity pony by the hand individually and assures you that you’re the most specialest liberal ever and she will gently consult you before any major decision? Confess publicly she was wrong and knows the revolution will sweep conservatives away forever?
Christ, the whining is boring.
Kay
@Cacti:
And paid family leave! Universal. Probably mostly benefit Donald Trump, don’t you think? If it benefits a single upper middle class family Democrats should filibuster. That cannot stand.
DCF
MSNBC Democratic Town Hall | Hillary Is Done Courting Progressives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LhMrMXBPKU
MSNBC Democratic Town Hall | Hillary Is A Follower, Not A Leader
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGmvKJ3XL7A
Raven Onthill
the Conster@119: “If the thought of President Trump or President Cruz doesn’t motivate “the left”
Threats get old, when repeated often enough. Last time it was Romney, the time before it was McCain, before that Bush. Threatening people with the genuine horrors that a Crump Presidency will visit on them will get some them to vote, yes, but not enthusiastically so, and others will simply stay home. Maybe that will be enough. But do you want to risk it? Wouldn’t it be better to get more enthusiastic supporters?
C’mon, Dems. Give us something to vote for.
burnspbesq@141: it’s the job of the Party’s nominee to rally the troops.
Patricia Kayden@185: “Do you expect Clinton to beg and plead with people who hate her guts? As far as I am concerned, any so called Progressive or Liberal who doesn’t understand what’s at stake in these elections can go beep themselves.”
I expect her to negotiate and compromise with Sanders, as Congressional leaders have been doing for decades.
And, yes, maybe the threat of Crump will be enough. But it is as I said, people are tired of threats and don’t like giving in to them. It would be much, much better for the Democratic leadership to deal.
Cacti
@Kay:
I feel ya sister. There isn’t a thimble’s worth of difference between medical care and college tuition.
Just ask any 20 year old.
DCF
@FlipYrWhig:
Try listening – and considering…if you’re not ‘open’ to the facts, all the reasoning in the world is for naught….
FWIW…has any other candidate voiced balanced support for the Palestinians?
The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016
@Raven Onthill:
White privilege is a helluva drug, of course. They’re all right, Jack!
Kay
@Cacti:
It won’t pass anyway. I’ve read repeatedly here how Americans will never support social policies that benefit the wrong people, even tangentially. That’s a no-go.
les
@tones:
Dude, borrowing numbers from dollared will lead you bad places. Which won’t apparently bother you, but still…
Only in the fever dreams of irresponsible flakes is it the job of POTUS to smash major sectors of the American economy. Even St. Berny whiffed on how that happens. Stupid, innumerate, inaccurate attacks on politicians and calls for violent revolution don’t, it turns out, win many votes.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@tones: No, she’s a Democrat, and you’re a moron.
Kay
@Cacti:
Medical care? You mean a salary replacement for privileged parents. I’m outraged. I bet it was those college students again. The ones who don’t learn civics anymore and get trophies for “just showing up”.
When will they stop demanding free stuff?
les
@Raven Onthill:
Yes. If the only acceptable alternative is a rainbow farting unicorn that can’t win a primary.
WarMunchkin
@Kay: It is a terrible argument, and Sanders is right on universality. We’ll get there one day. That said, I think the real issue is that there isn’t a reliable path to a middle class life. I think software engineering was pushed as the next thing (everyone will learn to code! soon!), but I’d rather people not have to spend years of specialized education to get to middle class levels of stability and security.
feckless
“I will do everything in my power to make sure that no Republican gets into the White House in this election,”
Misleading headline? clickbait?
This insistence that Bernie is some kind of liberal traitor for not clapping louder for Hillary and her corporate mindset reminds me of the good ol’ days in the oughts when we were losing in Iraq because ‘the liberals’ said nasty things about C-plus Augustus, aka W.
I consider myself liberal and realistic (don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good), but I am sick of voting out of FEAR of the other candidate, and then having the person I voted for implement republican legislation that a republican president could not pass (NAFTA, Romneycare). We have asked for nothing from our democratic representatives, and that is the kind of governance we have received, nothing.
What is Hillary’s reason to be president besides “I’m a woman” and “I’m not Trump/Cruz”. I know the republican story – cut taxes, bomb countries, and hate browns/gays/women. To win this thing we need to turn out voters (see any Bernie rally vs. the $2500 a plate Hillary events). To win back the congress we need new democratic voters.
You and Kos just keep attacking Bernie and crew, cursing us out and calling us names. That will really rally the base.
Oh and the “realistic” policy statements & “issue evolution”by Hillary? Tell it to Senator Warren about the Bankruptcy bill. And once I’d like someone to address the concept of a teaparty congress doing ANYTHING to benefit their lifelong enemy, Clinton.
I gave $ to the Bernie campaign, and I expect him to fight to the end to force our vision of a better country. Your insistence that arguing Bernie’s vision is hurtful to our election chances is insulting AND wrong.
Will you still be blindly cheering for Hillary after she starts her inevitable war?
tones
@les: wow you never cease to amaze – I thought you were a dick but this proves I was way to kind in that assessment.You are a complete asshole , and totally rude about it as well.
No f-ing one even implied it was a bigger group – you just can’t read.
The phrase was ” a bigger group than previously realized”.
Geez.
Cacti
@Kay:
Mexico has fully subsidized college tuition, Canada doesn’t. And that’s why the former is the most peaceful, prosperous, and stable nation in the western hemisphere, and the latter is a bombed out hell of narco cartels.
Or something.
les
@feckless:
Whatever you may consider, you are neither if you believe the last bit of your statement. Excellent choice of name, though, gotta give ya that.
les
@tones: Dude: “much larger group” was a, ya know, direct quote. Thanks for the compliment, though. When I’m able to impress the innumerate, the dishonest and the intentionally ignorant, my job is done.
aimai
@Kay: Look, I love you and I usually honor your political insights but this is just silly. Nothing that gets said during the primary is 100 percent either candidate’s eventual platform. Its true that Hillary pushed back on Bernie’s argument with a counter argument. If you recall Obama and Hillary tangled over “the mandate” during their primary and Obama argued against Hillary and then later came over and decided, in the battle to actually get the ACA passed, that there did have to be a mandate. Because actually getting the legislation through requires a lot of jiggling and juggling and changing of your position.
So: no, just because Hillary argued against Bernie’s vague proposals to raise taxes so high that no one would ever vote for him to pay for upper class people’s college tuition doesn’t mean that she is in favor of means testing Social Security, or of doing away with the attempt to get family leave, or anything else. It just means she wanted to distinguish herself from Bernie. “We” are not “arguing” anything–neither for nor against universal stuff. Its just a primary, not a sign of the end times.
Ella in New Mexico
@aimai:
@gene108:
@japa21:
@Miss Bianca:
Thank you, much appreciated.
Now if people out there calling themselves Hilary supporters, particularly those who seem quite strangely bound and determined to tell Sander’s average, ordinary, real-world supporters they’re unwelcome and unnecessary to the Democratic Party’s future, or who can’t seem to resist feeding and fanning their flames of disillusion, discouragement and pessimism about government so as to result in a huge chunk of them staying home in November— my job is gonna be so much easier.
If “winning” is what we are trying to accomplish, I can’t help but think that some of the worst offenders here at this blog and elsewhere don’t actually work for Clinton or the Democrats at all…particularly when they slip and mouth Republican talking points about either candidate. People who talk like this:
have to be working for the dark side, as far as I’m concerned. And they’re getting too damn excited about their prospects at keeping the Sander’s voters from voting in the fall, so they’re getting sloppy. When did Hilary Clinton ever minimize the concerns of middle class people that their kids can get an education without debt the size of a mortgage? When did she ever criticize them for wanting “free stuff”?–that’s a REPUBLICAN slur.
Why do we all think we got Charles Koch blasting his new-found love for Hilary Clinton in public, folks? it’s gonna feed right into some of the Sander’s supporters worries that she is two faced and is part of the same corrupt system as the Republicans. He knows it, the evil bastard. He wants them to just go away so we lose a majority in the fall–who needs a third party spoiler candidate when you can mind fuck half the Democratic voters with fake shit?
I really think it’s time to start differentiating between the REAL issues and fans, and the fake ones out there, folks.
The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016
I found this perusing old local news this morning: Presidential primary results for Cuyahoga County
The map tells a fascinating story. Sanders won the college campuses and gentrified neighborhoods like Lakewood, Ohio City, and Tremont. Clinton took the inner city as well as plenty of working class districts out here in the suburbs. Which kinda goes with the line someone elsewhere dropped of Sanders supporters being a Whole Foods checkout line. Clinton’s, meanwhile, were at Aldi’s, Marc’s, and Dave’s. Ultimately, Sanders talked a good game, but his outreach away from his base really needed a lot of work. Hopefully, this will be a learning lesson for the next liberal populist in line.
(And look at how Kasich slaughtered Trump in the Republican suburbs. Oh, November will be fun.)
les
@Ella in New Mexico:
Serious question: how much is this happening in the average, ordinary, real world? ‘Cause I’m not seeing it. I see (and contribute when I’m feeling grouchy) blog fights and pissing matches, but how many Sanders supporters are actually under attack irl? I’m in the initially glad he was running ’cause good issues, see Hillary as the better actual president, kinda tired of the “whole system is bad” schtick camp; but I’ve never seen one of these in the world attacks by me or any other Democrat. And my sense is that the chunk that will stay home isn’t large and likely always did stay home.
Kay
@aimai:
I’m supporting Clinton. I’m just surprised Democrats now have no problem with money in politics and reject universal benefits unless they’re means-tested under this insane “privilege” analysis.
That isn’t the Party platform, aimai. You know the President is traveling the country saying college is the new high school, right?
His plan is a federal/state fund. Like Sanders. I’m wondering why no one is jeering at him for believing GOP governors will support this. Realism is fine but you guys are going further Right than the actual Party platform in some wacky effort to discredit Bernie Sanders by renouncing liberalism
He isn’t going to win. He was never going to win. It’s not necessary to do this.
WarMunchkin
@Ella in New Mexico: Holy shit, someone on this blog actually said that. **facepalm** brb buying my T-bone steak
Monala
@Kay: Over the last few days, Martin has made some good points about the problems with free public college for everyone: you will have wealthy kids who might otherwise attend private colleges, switch to the public colleges for the free education, and because they have numerous academic and other advantages, they can drive out a lot of the lower income kids from public universities.
You have made a lot of arguments that “free college” doesn’t just mean four year degree institutions, but since Sanders and his supporters are contrasting this to Obama and Clinton, who support things like free community college and debt-free college education, then it sounds like Sanders’ plan is “free four years.” And that would create the access issues Martin describes.
les
@Kay:
This is the painful shit. Blog commenters do not equal “Democrats.” And if the claim is the commenters here have demonstrated “no problem with money in politics” it’s pure dishonesty. Lying for effect is not a rhetorical device; it’s lying. Democrats, and most commenters here, have historically and currently been the ones rejecting means testing for universal benefits. Characterizing an argument about college as a general horror by Dems is just more dishonesty. One of many reasons you’re scarcely worth reading.
Kay
@aimai:
I will enthusiastically support Hillary Clinton on public education. I think she understands it better than anyone out there, as a public trust.
We’re making real gains on free college and free prek and it isn’t means-tested. Poor kids do better when middle class people have skin in the same game. That’s bed rock “Democrat”. It works. It’s not “privileged”. It’s practical.
Nick Reynolds
So Cole and the Koch bros are voting for the same candidate in the fall. Dope!
Gin & Tonic
Interesting local story. RI primary, as you probably know, is today. I observed what I consider to be high turnout at my polling place. But the town of New Shoreham, aka Block Island, reportedly ran out of Democratic ballots and had to have an emergency delivery by ferry (Block Island sits about seven miles off shore.)
Kay
@les:
. You’re talking about pay to play and the analysis is broader than that. It’s always been broader than that. Go read Citizens and tell me why you want to “overturn” it. We already have laws that bar bribes. No one is accusing anyone of committing a crime. It isn’t about Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders didn’t invent campaign finance reform.
Monala
@Kay: Medical care is a different issue from college education. Medical needs are an equalizer – although wealthier people are less likely to have health issues than poorer people (due to better nutrition, living environments, etc), health issues like cancer or injuries can happen to anyone. IOW, there’s an element of chance that can make a wealthy person end up in great need medically, and all except the richest of the rich can pay for that themselves.
But wealthy kids are almost universally going to have a leg up over lower-income kids when it comes to college admission, and free [four-year] college has the potential to increase those disparities, as I wrote about in my comment above (citing Martin’s points over the last few days about college access).
Kay
@Nick Reynolds:
Koch didn’t endorse her, which was why I was baffled when she refused his “endorsement”.
I have no idea what that was about.
Gin & Tonic
@Gin & Tonic: Anyway, I’ll go out on a limb and predict that New Shoreham will go for Bernie. It’s an odd place – during the off season very few people live there, but they seem to be superannuated hippies, and the sort of people who are basically at a subsistence level doing odd jobs. In the summer, it’s lots of tourists and lots of people who spend three months of the year at their multi-million dollar houses.
Kay
@Monala:
Clinton’s paid family leave plan replaces 3/4 of income (up to a level). Better off people will benefit more.
My public school district offers free prek. 50% of our kids are lower income. 50% are not. I paid for prek when mine were little. I backed universal prek because when it comes up for a levy the upper 50% will support it. If it’s universal they will be IN it instead of outside it seeing it as charity. It’s win/win.
It’s not about looking at a ledger and adding and subtracting.
WarMunchkin
@Kay: I’m actually really curious now… why do we want to overturn Citizens United again?
Betty Cracker
@Kay:
There’s some of that going on. But I think it’s more blog-smackdown silliness than any meaningful indication of what people are thinking IRL.
Kay
@Monala:
The FMLA benefits higher income more. They can afford to take 12 weeks w/out pay. I used it once. My husband paid the bills.
Worth it? Or just another subsidy for the privileged?
Ella in New Mexico
@les: Well, that’s probably because A. You’re not openly a Sander’s supporter and B. You’re a normal person. I’m not talking about you ;-)
And yes, they’re here and elsewhere and my God I swear only someone being PAID to post so much insider-detailed political aggression and snark would be as omnipresent as they are. On every thread, every hour, every day with the “Rainbows and Ponies and All Bernie-Supporters are White Male Bigots”- Hate. I can’t decide if they remind me of a more of a character on VEEP or one of Frank Underwoods dirty deed doers.
The rest of us have real jobs and are just interested commentators.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Okay, thanks. I’ll drop out of the Bernie Wars.
Monala
@Kay: The issue I’m addressing is not financial, but access. That was the point Martin made: unless we also have some plan to increase the number of seats at public universities (and IIRC, he gave some numbers of the cost to increase buildings and classroom capacities, and instructors), then wealthier kids who might otherwise go to private colleges might drive lower income kids out of the public colleges, were it free (not entirely so, obviously, but they could easily reduce the numbers of lower income kids who can get into a public university).
The access issue won’t apply to family leave (the jobs that people are taking leave from already exist), and while it can affect universal preK, it won’t to the same degree.
Patricia Kayden
@feckless: I don’t have any reason to believe that Secretary Clinton will start any wars. Which wars did her husband start?
Patricia Kayden
@Nick Reynolds: Was that supposed to be funny?
Kay
@WarMunchkin:
Because we want to regulate campaign finance because of the corrupting influence of unlimited money in politics. Not exchanging bags of cash for votes, which is illegal. It skews the playing field toward those who can pay for more access.
This isn’t even “liberal”. John McCain was the GOP crusader on it before he sold every one of his former principles. He joined Russ Feingold and made it a top tier issue.
Ella in New Mexico
@Kay:
@Kay:
Actually, I wish you wouldn’t because it’s a voice of conscience and reason, and it’s important that we not miss the forest for the trees here. I really think you’re making some damn good points and yes, some folks here just can’t get over winning a stupid back and forth on a blog to the point that they’re eating their own leg off to spite someone they disagree with. Screw them. ;-)
Kay
@Monala:
Monala, all I would say is Ohio is offering free college credits in high school. I went to the meeting. It was working class and poor kids- the most ambitious. My kid will go and live at a college for 4 years. I don’t need it.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Ella in New Mexico: I don’t think the poster supported that quote, they were describing the Republican attack line if Bernie were to win the nomination and go forward to the general.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
Nomination.
Ella in New Mexico
@Monala:
I don’t think this will happen. In my experience here in NM where we have a lottery scholarship that covers all NM high school graduate’s tuition if they just maintain a certain course load and GPA. MORE lower income and less advantaged kids go to our schools, including middle income kids who can’t afford out-of-state or private institutions. The wealthy parents still send their kids to private schools and big name, out-of-state public universities. They look down on our state institutions to a certain degree as “not as good”, which is silly.
The same thing happened in our town when we expanded K-5 Summer Recreation programs to all income levels vs. making them for “poor kids” only. With a family of 6 and an income of 50-60K a year, we didn’t qualify before that, and we really couldn’t afford full-time activities for them–they would have spent a lot of time at home in the summer. Our “rich parents” didn’t swarm the programs knocking the rest of us out. They just turned up their noses at the thought of their children associating with people who barely spoke English or were on Food Stamps and kept on putting their kids in expensive daycare or sending them to camps or hiring nannies.
My kids got to have a great time with some really sweet and adorable kids from their community, many of whom they remained friends with in middle and high school, and they got the benefit of being exposed to some of our community’s best teachers, artists, writers and coaches.
Sometimes, we overestimate the very wealthy’s willingness to mingle with the dirty masses. ;-)
Betty Cracker
@Kay: My daughter is graduating from high school next month. She’s already got a year’s worth of college credits via taking community college classes in high school — didn’t cost us a penny. Her friend is getting her associate’s degree along with her high school diploma.
dollared
@Ella in New Mexico: Well said.
DCF
@Kay:
He’s already won…and you’re right…it isn’t necessary to do this….
WarMunchkin
@Kay:
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet responded to my identical question in the thread below. I find it noteworthy that there seem to be actual, clear policy difference between these perspectives.
dollared
@Monala: @Ella in New Mexico: If you haven’t followed Martin, you will eventually learn that he is a vigorous free trader and has many market based arguments against democratic socialism. He is on our side on many issues, but he is pretty much the definition of the modern neoliberal – arguing for market-based solutions that are very efficient but result in grotesque inequality, but hey, what can you do because The Market Decides.
His college argument is exactly that, and it overlooks that we had this system in the past – for example, California’s public universities were basically free, but they worked just fine, USC and Stanford don’t appear to have withered away, and we got Silicon Valley from all that free public education.
dollared
@Ella in New Mexico: Yup, my kids are getting a great, free public education at a terrific magnet school, with a great peer group and a minimum of country club kids. There’s no shortage of parents looking for that extra extra elite experience…..so they leave us alone.
Monala
@Ella in New Mexico: that is very good to hear. Thanks for sharing.
dollared
@patroclus: You know, you are right, we are not far apart. And of course I will support her.
But I do not overestimate her liberal credentials. She has not said she opposes TPP. She has said that she opposes it “in its current form.” It’s very transparent what she’s doing. And she did not support $15, she opposed $15 and talked about $12, until the world blew by her.
She has learned to minimize her attack surface, which means that she definitely supports very little and puts forth not much in the way of visionary leadership. I don’t blame her, given her experience. However, given her vast array of wealthy friends, given her historical positions, given her bellicosity recently on Israel, her friendship with Kissinger, her dreadful support of the Honduran coup, and given her gratuitous use of Republican arguments on the college cost issue, I also don’t expect her to act as a progressive. She represents the mid-left of the Washington Consensus. It’s just who she is.
dollared
@Kay: Thanks. It’s amazing how deeply tribal it has become.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
That is quite possibly the saddest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Sadder than Bambi’s mother.
Bob In Portland
Here you go, Cole.
Applejinx
@WarMunchkin: I like all of this. More of it please.
No problem at all with both Hillary and Bill teeing off on trickle-down economics: I’ve been saying for what, a year? that this is what they do. Hillary is absolutely correct that the electorate won’t stand for that anymore. Let her be the white knight (I love the idea that family leave is a wedge for basic income: I believe that will end up necessary for maintaining a consumer economy)
Good to hear from you :)
Xboxershorts
I think you’re mis-interpreting John.
Bernie did not say he wouldn’t fall in line. In fact, at the end of that interview, not quoted in your post, he clearly states he will do everything he can to make sure the GOP does not win the WH.
What was quoted here really is a reflection of his constituency, many of them younger, Independent and not aligned with either party. And they don’t remember the 25 years of media harassment HRC has been subject to. They’re blissfully unaware that the GOP runs the worlds largest and most efficient propaganda machine. His constituency only sees the big grift in DC, they don’t trust HRC (rightly or wrongly they don’t) and they won’t readily jump to supporting HRC even if Bernie stumps for her. Bernie only said that if Hillary wants those votes she has to reach out to those voters.
Bernie will be stumping for the Dems, he said that. But he just can’t guarantee his supporters will embrace Hillary, that Hillary has to earn their support.
Nothing in what he said should engender the kind of anger you expressed in your post, John.
moderateindy
You know why Sanders said what he said? Because he knows how the Clinton’s work. As soon as she becomes the nominee, she will make a hard pivot back to the center. Calling her out about where she stands on such issues will make that effort more difficult. The most important thing that the Sanders campaign has done, has been dragging Hillary to the left. Pointing out that if she doesn’t stay there she could lose support of Sander’s supporters is his way of moving the party to the left. It’s the only leverage he has to keep her to the left.
I think it would be a huge mistake for her to go back to the centrist strategy she started this campaign with, and risk turning off the more liberal and progressive elements of the party, and end up with them staying home. She doesn’t need to court moderates, and actual independents that are going to vote, because they aren’t going to vote Trump. Trumps only path to being President is his trade policy, and populist economic message. To me the only voting bloc that is up for grabs, is the middle/ lower middle class white guys that have been crushed by the current economic paradigm, and are looking for someome to address their needs. Trump’s rhetoric does that. If Hillary darts back to the right she may have problems with that group seeing her as little more than the status quo that got us where we are. Couple that with younger Sander’s voters being turned off, and not realizing how inportant the Supreme court situation is, and deciding to stay home, and there might be a path to President Donald.