Bernie Sanders is closer 2 my position on immigration than a wing of GOP. Avowed socialist is opposed 2 open borders. http://t.co/jl6aMfSuzf
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) July 29, 2015
… And they’re not Democrats, either.
The best part of Bernie's 2020 campaign is when Trump or Russia (but I repeat myself) bribes him with another lake house or something and Bernie kamikazes the Democratic Party.
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) February 19, 2019
Remember that Wikileaks falsely claimed the hacked DNC documents & emails showed that the DNC worked against Bernie. So in pushing this—as he did in 2016–Trump is pushing Russian propaganda. https://t.co/uxhTsmghZY
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) February 19, 2019
Trump is salivating to run against Sanders, and roll out the elite oppo Bernie has never faced and won’t survive.
— Rob Tannenbaum (@tannenbaumr) February 19, 2019
While we tend to think of Bernie’s voters as being lefties, a lot were young white men, probably voting in a pres nomination for 1st time, with weak ties to the Dem Party (and its leadership, e.g. BHO & HRC), and not necessarily all that ideological. https://t.co/BWEos7AHkL
— Richard Skinner (@richardmskinner) February 19, 2019
.@RadioFreeTom "Bernie Sanders is the answer to a question no one is asking." https://t.co/H7peGuZ0Nm
— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) February 19, 2019
.
This is actually the most… dispassionate explanation I’ve been able to find for Sanders right now:
1/ Bernie's '16 loss was baked in from the start because he never planned to win. He built a "make some speeches and get enough delegates to affect the platform" campaign, not a strategic math-based "get enough delegates to win" campaign. And he succeeded brilliantly at that.
— NCSteve (@TCFKA_NCSteve) February 19, 2019
2/ But he was so successful at that that he, as Abraham Lincoln put it in 1860, got the taste in his mouth but only well after the delegate race was out of reach (i.e. the moment when you can only win by getting a large share of your opponent's most committed voters).
— NCSteve (@TCFKA_NCSteve) February 19, 2019
4/ And thus, while giving lip service to unity, he allowed Weaver to stack his delegate seats with people committed to disrupting the convention and sat there and smirked at their assholery and giving a speech just this side of grudging (the contrast to Hillary in '08 was stark).
— NCSteve (@TCFKA_NCSteve) February 19, 2019
5/ But your character flaw entails not accepting responsibility, or at least blaming those who failed you, in addition to being disqualifying, it's self-correcting. He has shown himself incapable of learning the lessons needed to win.
— NCSteve (@TCFKA_NCSteve) February 19, 2019
Or as others have phrased it: Sanders is Bizarro Trump.
Sebastian
Fuck him.
Dog Dawg Damn
He’s also a perv.
Brachiator
Even though Bernie is not my guy, this stuff is a bunch of noise. We will see if Sanders still has a strong core base, and if he can build it up.
Also, in my ideal universe, Sanders quickly releases his tax returns. If he doesn’t, the real Democrats should pound him into dust on this issue alone.
Sanders needs to declare that he will strongly back whoever wins the Democratic Party nomination. There must be a unified stand against Trump.
TriassicSands
Sanders isn’t a serious candidate — he’s a sloganeer. In 2016, he showed that he was shallow and had no in depth understanding of he issues. Neither did he have anything deeper than mere slogans about policy issues. He has no business being seriously considered as the nominee for the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, his supporters don’t appear to understand just how vapid Sanders is.
eemom
even: I can’t it.
jl
@Brachiator: I agree with all your points. Who gives a shit what Steve King says about anybody? What does it even mean? He will say anything about anybody to save his miserable hide for another day. The slogan about being for against ‘open borders’ is supposed to mean something?
Skimmed the tweets, since none seemed to contain any though or information, or worth any thought.
eemom
@Brachiator:
Pass what you’re smoking over here plz.
Patricia Kayden
@Brachiator: Yeah, I don’t think Sanders will survive the early primaries. He’s just not all that popular with the Democratic base which has so many other good, solid choices.
Brachiator
@TriassicSands: Trump has his core of suckers, uh, true believers. And Sanders has his own crew. We will see what happens. I hope that Sanders campaign fizzles out early, but who knows.
Brachiator
@eemom:
I’m in California. We got primo legal weed.
People keep saying that Trump is an existential threat to democracy. Any non asswipe candidate needs to act with the understanding that this ain’t business as usual. I don’t expect much from Sanders, but I can note what I would like to see.
rikyrah
Lay waste to him ?
rikyrah
???
Bakari Sellers (@Bakari_Sellers) Tweeted:
I don’t have a problem with Bernie getting in the race, “when is he getting out” is probably a better question.
https://twitter.com/Bakari_Sellers/status/1098062457803661312?s=17
rikyrah
About Bernie Bros being a “bot” creation:
Propane Jane™ (@docrocktex26) Tweeted:
Respectfully, no it fucking wasn’t. I’ve blocked enough of them over the last 4 years to know they exist IRL apart from just the bot variety and are STILL stuck on stupid and committed to imposing their fantastical idealism on women and POC who don’t want them or him.
https://t.co/JRA5Qi1d5s https://twitter.com/docrocktex26/status/1098049544124805121?s=17
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Of course Drumpf loves Sanders. Just last week he voted for Drumpf’s wall and to fully fund the ICE Gestapo. (link)
rikyrah
I think that this should be a front page story:
Vox (@voxdotcom) Tweeted:
CNN’s new political editor, Sarah Isgur, once referred to her future employer as the “Clinton News Network,” and has used false claims and conspiracies to demean Democrats.
She’ll coordinate the network’s 2020 coverage on TV and online.
https://t.co/e5aqudAv1P https://twitter.com/voxdotcom/status/1097961547714957312?s=17
Ruckus
As an old fart I wish BS, a worthless, useless has been would take himself out for a long sit on his back porch where the only thing that he will bother is his ass from siting all day.
He’s got nothing of any substance in his history or in his “policy.” He’s not a good speaker, he’s exclusionary of women, people of color, and seemingly of the poor. His one point is that the wealthy need to do exactly what? And how wealthy is he, IOW where’s those tax returns?
His 15 minutes have been up for a very long time.
And he’d be 79 yrs old when he loses.
Go sit down you old fart and leave the real work to people who can and want to do it, not people like you who think they deserve it for having done nothing for most of your life. We already have someone like you in office and you wouldn’t be any better than he is at this very moment.
rikyrah
Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) Tweeted:
If you’re a CNN reporter covering this WH, how are you going to feel reporting to Jeff Sessions old flack? What if she asks about your sources?
https://twitter.com/CharlesPPierce/status/1098133246246903808?s=17
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Only 2 candidates oppose sanctions on Russian torturers, murderers, and money launders (ie Magnisky Act) — Drumpf and Sanders. (link)
Only 2 candidates had campaign managers who worked for Putin’s puppet Viktor Yanukovych (link)
rikyrah
Thread
Daniel Sugarman (@Daniel_Sugarman) Tweeted:
I can’t sleep.
It has been a difficult few years to cover what’s been going on in the Labour Party.
But tonight – seeing the actions of certain people who are supposedly the future of the Labour Party – I have been left deeply shaken. I can’t remember feeling this distraught.
https://twitter.com/Daniel_Sugarman/status/1098030894705717248?s=17
OzarkHillbilly
Still borked?
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Back
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly:But weird
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: Very.
TS (the original)
Electing 70-80 year olds who don’t give a sh!t about what they do to the country/world & won’t be around to see the disaster is just beyond my understanding.
Anne Laurie
@OzarkHillbilly: You think you got problems? I wanted to get to bed early, dammit!
Site redesign cannot come soon enough, far as I’m concerned…
OzarkHillbilly
@Anne Laurie: :-)
Raven
@Anne Laurie: It took me all day yesterday to rally from my weekend fishing trip to Florida. Two eight hour drives and two eight hour fishing trips in four days kicked my ass!
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: In days long past, I and caving friends would leave STL at 6 pm on a Friday eve, make the 12 hr (?) drive to TAG (TN, AL, GA), drop 2 or 3 150′-300′ pits, find a place to camp and fix Dindin in various states of inebriation, fall asleep, get up 6-7 am, pack up, find some breakfast, drop at least one more pit, make the drive back to STL, and be at work ready to go at 6 AM.
Came back from one trip arriving just in time to see what was left of my truck being towed away after a DWI totaled it.
I ain’t that young anymore.
Raven
Crimson flames tied through my ears, rollin’ high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads using ideas as my maps
“We’ll meet on edges, soon, ” said I, proud ‘neath heated brow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now…
debbie
@Raven:
Yeah, but … trout!
Shakti
@jl:
Open borders (wikipedia page) is supposed to be a defined term but in practice it’s a dog whistle for “too many of those people are coming over here.”
I’ve asked people who use “open borders” what they mean by it and they never can give a cogent answer.
Luthe
I’m so old I remember when trolls harassed (female) people with demands of “show us your tits!” I’ve decided my response to all things Wilmer is “SHOW US YOUR TAXES!”
terben
So, Bernie Sanders and the Democratic nomination. Is he inside, pissing out? Or is he outside, pissing in?
trnc
@eemom:
Ha! You should create a bumper sticker.
Another Scott
@Brachiator:
It’s beautiful there, I’m sure. Is Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land there, too? ;-p
Wilmer had plenty of time to release his taxes. More time isn’t going to make him change his mind.
He claims he did that in 2016, didn’t you hear? And he was shocked, shocked that people who he had been telling for a year or more that the Democratic Party was Corrupt™ and worse didn’t think he meant it.
Apparently Faiz Shakir is his campaign manager (whatever that means, these days of 15 different titles at the top of presidential campaigns) – lately of the ACLU and before that adviser to Reid and before that Pelosi. I know nothing much about him, and he’s still working for a shouty, pointy, old man who doesn’t work well with others.
Wilmer’s not going to change his spots. But, we’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
trnc
This is a real question – does the DNC have any standards or requirements for candidates to run as democrats? I don’t get how they would allow him to run without officially joining the party and pledging unqualified support for the eventual nominee. If the answer is that he might split the vote, he did that in 2016 anyway. Also, I’m not keen on relinquishing our party to political terrorists.
I’m assuming that he is likely to meet ballot requirements in most states to run as an independent, and I understand that 2020 really, really, really is important, so I realize it’s an extremely difficult situation.
trnc
@Shakti: I suspect that some people who say they want open borders don’t actually mean zero checks at ports of entry, but I suppose there are some crackpots in any crowd.
FlipYrWhig
Sanders’s behavior at the convention was when I was officially done with him. He’s a graceless, self-important ass.
kindness
I really am not enjoying seeing the BernieBros out and about and spreading fresh hate of their Democratic brothers who aren’t BernieBros. I wish I could more easily distinguish between the Russian trolls and the genuine American idiots.
I don’t hate Bernie. His notions are OK. What I don’t respect about his ideas is they all require a great magic astrix & hand waving to make the numbers work. In that respect Bernie is just like Paul Ryan. No…..Bernie can not be handled with kid gloves this time.
Ruckus
@terben:
He’s old, so both.
Kathleen
@terben: Inside pissing in.
Ruckus
@kindness:
They don’t work even then because they don’t have any actual substance. He lives in magic fairy dust world, where if everyone just listened and believed in him, we would all be farting fairy dust. Well anyway we would if we were the same gender/race/monetary/political fairies as him.
Ruckus
@Kathleen:
I was thinking pissing all over but I like your answer better.
Ruckus
Note that Rick Wilson, republican, often quoted here as being against drumpf, seems to be angling for BS.
He is not in any way on our side, he just wants regular republicans not drumpf.
Wapiti
@Ruckus: I read that as cautionary: Bernie will betray the Democrats in a heartbeat. So Wilson is saying that we can’t/shouldn’t trust Sanders.
Chris
Best hope for this primary is that Tulsi Gabbard steals enough of Bernie’s kook supporters, and Elizabeth Warren steals enough of Bernie’s reasonable supporters, that the guy doesn’t get anywhere in this campaign and ends up just an also-ran whose campaign ends not with a bang but a whimper.
Xavier Onassis
@Brachiator: “Sanders needs to declare that he will strongly back whoever wins the Democratic Party nomination.” Fine, if you apply the same standard to every candidate.
Chris
Yeah, Bernie was treated with kid gloves all through 2016 by the Hillary campaign and other Democrats because they didn’t want to alienate him or his base too much lest he go away angry and take his voters with him. The mainstream media and the Republicans, meanwhile, also mostly didn’t go after him because as long as he was tearing into the Democrats, he was doing their job for them. And he doesn’t even realize it. Dude has no idea just how hard he’d get slammed as soon as he stepped out of the sheltered cocoon of the Democratic primary.
Chris
And also this:
And an even deeper practical flaw in a politician.
We saw all through 2016 how Bernie Sanders reacts to setbacks: he stomps his foot and whines that things are not fair. And that’s pretty much it. That didn’t cut it when he was in a Democratic primary when everybody was treating him with kid gloves. It sure as hell isn’t going to cut it in a general election in which the GOP and MSM will both open up on him with both barrels. And in the vanishingly unlikely eventuality that he makes it all the way to the White House, it’s not going to cut it there, either.
Chris
@kindness:
I didn’t hate him in 2016, but I did think pretty much from the start that he was a one trick pony who didn’t know anything about anything outside of his pet issues, and didn’t want to know either, which is why I never thought of voting for him.
Then there was that interview when he was asked how he wanted to break up the big banks, and it turned out he didn’t actually know shit about his pet issue, either.
Southern Goth
Meh.
Percysowner
@Chris:
I don’t think Bernie is going to get the kid glove treatment from the Democrats this time. Hillary was in a tough spot. With it being only a 2 person race and with Bernie’s supporters being so rabid, she couldn’t afford to go hard after him. It would have brought out MORE cries of how the DNC was actively working to suppress any opposition to Hillary and everyone was being UNFAIR to poor Bernie. This time there are many candidates that are espousing Bernie’s values, so that is no longer trumps his opponents. Plus the party and the other candidates saw how Bernie undercut Hillary and… well if he didn’t contribute to her loss, he certainly did nothing to help her win. I think other candidates will come strong, hard and early at Bernie. At least I hope so.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I really don’t see how Sanders doesn’t look old, white and out of touch next to a candidate like say Harris. The fact that Trump, with whom it’s always 1980, is being such a Berni Boi shows how past his day Sanders is.
Ithink
@Chris:
A-fucking-men to ALL of this! If he wins the nomination I’ll merrily pull the lever to get rid of the anal herpes virus that is the Trumps but I won’t be a donor in any way to his success.
J R in WV
Bernard Sanders is a despicable prick trying to derail a political party he has nothing to do with 99% of the time. He’s a misogynistic, racist, purity troll who is beholden to Russia and has been since he was a deluded teen a century ago. Putin owns him exactly the way he owns Trump, for the same reasons.
I know more about economics than Sanders does, and I would make a better Democratic candidate than he does, because for one reason I’ve been a Democratic party member, contributor, and volunteer for decades, and he has not. I will not vote for him, because he is NOT A DEMOCRAT at all.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@rikyrah: Yup. I loathe this myth that BB’s are all just Russian Bots. NO THEY AREN’T!!! I unfriended about a dozen of them who I knew personally, in 2016. When I go to local political events there’s a couple dozen (non-friends) that I steer clear of because I have had negative interactions with them before through Indivisible or because I checked out their social media and saw lots of Bro-ish behavior. Sadly, 13/14 of my CA Dem State delegates are Bernie-Bros thanks to our recent election. They are very real, and just as fucking annoying in real life as they are online.
J R in WV
@Xavier Onassis, Russian Troll:
Not needed with regard to other candidates, who are all members of the Democratic Party, unlike Sanders, who is not a Democratic member at all. You reveal your prejudice in a single sentence, treasonous fool !!
Even fellow Russian Troll Tulsi Gabbard is formally a member of the Democratic Party, even though she is otherwise a fool. Plus not going to be a contender, nor is Sanders.
Gin & Tonic
Driving back from Vermont earlier I had CNN (I think) radio on in the car, and David Cicilline, my almost-Congressman was on one of the political gabfests. So they asked him about the Sanders candidacy, among other things, and to Dave’s credit, he said at one point that Sanders has had beneficial effects on Democratic positions but “he is not a member of the Democratic Party, and the party has many good candidates to choose from.”
Captain C
@terben: Inside pissing in.
eddie blake
@Ruckus: he’s not wrong. commie doc brown is a suicide bomber.
Mike in Pasadena
@Dog Dawg Damn: Serious question: what is that about?
Freemark
I don’t think Bernie is going to get too far. I still like him better than Hillary and if those were my two choices I’d still pick him, but the Democratic women running have so far seemed to learn the lessons of both his and Hillary’s candidacy. I think he will be left in their dust. Especially if one starts to stand out from the pack.
Ben Cisco
Bernie can have an entire stadium of seats.
Xavier Onassis
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: True but not honest. Sanders, Schumer, Klobuchar, and Brown voted for the negotiated funding bill. Booker, Harris, and Gillibrand voted against. Passed 83-16-1.
Xavier Onassis
@J R in WV: You’re right, but nobody starts a campaign by saying anything but “When I’m President I’ll do x,y, and z.”
Dennis
@eemom: Two independent studies showed that Bernie supporters voted for Hillary in the 2016 general election at a higher rate than Hillary supporters voted for Obama in the 2008 election.
Primaries are about figuring out who a majority of Democrats support. If he doesn’t win that race, he’ll concede and support the Democratic nominee just as he did in 2016. Why is that a cause for this hate that Anne Laurie displays?
Sab
@Dennis: Can you give cites for either study? All the Hillary voters I know were really torn in the primary between her and Obama, as in couldn’t decide who they liked better.
ETA: ’08 PUMAs were mostly a MSM invention. On the other hand, I talked to disgruntlrd Bernie bros every single night that I did telephone canvassing for the general election in ’08 and ’16.
Dennis
@Sab:
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/545812242/1-in-10-sanders-primary-voters-ended-up-supporting-trump-survey-finds
Key graph: “For example, Schaffner tells NPR that around 12 percent of Republican primary voters (including 34 percent of Ohio Gov. John Kasich voters and 11 percent of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio voters) ended up voting for Clinton. And according to one 2008 study, around 25 percent of Clinton primary voters in that election ended up voting for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the general. (In addition, the data showed 13 percent of McCain primary voters ended up voting for Obama, and 9 percent of Obama voters ended up voting for McCain — perhaps signaling something that swayed voters between primaries and the general election, or some amount of error in the data, or both.)