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The Democratic Primary: Will Never End
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His response is perfectly reasonable. Called Trump dumb and his ideas dumb and than went on to talk about his own issues and positions. Like, goddamn I can't help but feeling you are LOOKING for something to be displeased about.
Vox has a piece explaining the situation. In short, it's a mess based on election law.
I'm someone who gives $500-1000 to Democratic candidates/parties/causes per election cycle since 06. I'm just not sure at what point I start to become part of the problem.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
A general criticism is that he only cares about his issues and while he is supportive of things like racial justice or abortion rights, he is not going to be particularly focused on them when he is in the White House, in favor of his economic priorities. And those things are super important. So when he reinforces that belief the way he does here, it's problematic. But whatever, I was already for Clinton.
I would say that Sanders belief that restricting abortion access is a position supported by fringe crazies is a much weaker response than Hillary's, which is that restricting abortion access is a serious issue that is actively and effectively being pursued by a vast portion of the Republican party.
Yes, "not swinging hard enough and pivoting" is a criticism; that's why Clinton's $12 minimum wage proposal falls flat compared to Sanders $15.
E: And to head it off at the pass: While he is a Senator, Bernie's belief on how serious an issue social issues are is irrelevant; he votes the right way. If he becomes president, the fact he believes restricting abortion access is a position supported by fringe crazies means he would probably feel safer putting it on the backburner.
You're going to want to stick with familiar imagery in your attempts at Washington extortion. No room for subtlety.
Either way, I'm going in hard on barrel futures.
Reasonable isn't going to cut it in elections. Bernie needs to clear, he needs to make sure the voters he's appealing to with this subject have his support 100% and he mustn't leave an opening for Hillary to exploit. He utterly failed here with that. This is not a "big sin" but he does not need this right now. And Hillary's really, really good at using opportunities like this to undermine him with boring blocs they share.
No, the issue is that he pretty much dismissed the right wing war on abortion rights. Maddow basically put the ball on a tee, and he whiffed.
Which is why Planned Parenthood and NARAL endorsed Clinton over him.
I don't buy it.
Trump doesn't deserve the air time. Call him dumb and move on. End of story. The only opening it leaves is with people already unhappy with Bernie and are eager to jump on even something good as being "not good enough" based on some nebulous, undefined standard.
You made the same mistake Bernie did in assuming the question has anything to do with Trump.
pleasepaypreacher.net
"Call him dumb and move on" illustrates the point exactly. There is a serious and effective war on women's rights going on, supported by the GOP. It might honestly be the most effective they have been at legislating in a long time.
Dismissing that as a dumb position supported by crazies and moving on to other issues is not really that great.
This is exactly what he does to get his fanbase on board, so he needs to change tac for other demographics. It's not rocket science. He's not competing with Trump here, there's a large portion of demographics Hillary's fighting over with him.
Trump gets the air time for various reasons, which is a separate conversation. Calling Trump dumb minimizes the issues he's supposed to fight for, and he needs to be seen fighting for those issues properly or his coalition will crumble. It's an opening any idiot politician would be a fool not to use against him, when they're targeting the same voters. What he needs to do has been defined already in this thread, it's not an opaque subject. It's Politics 101.
And then Maddow asked Clinton for her thoughts on income inequality and wealth distribution and Clinton said look, Trump is constantly saying crazy things, why aren't we asking him for his policies on abortion and gay rights instead of focusing on this issue that's only being pushed by a crazy 1%.
One would get the impression that she's not really concerned about income inequality.
That's a really interesting question, especially from Sanders POV, and I wish we'd gotten something meaningful out of it. It's absolutely a weird position to be in as an anti-corporatist when the big corporations start fighting hard for certain aspects of your interests, and I honestly don't know how to work that reality into my politics just yet. This was a place where I would have appreciated some real ideological wonkery, given his reputation. Hate that Maddow let it go at that.
Edit: To clarify, I think it's a great question because it's an issue where ideology meets reality, and the reality is that while the left has a strong streak of anti-big business, we're also seeing some of the most shameful anti-LGBT bills get shut down because of those big businesses. As somebody who is considered an ideologue, what do you do when this happens?
No real answer is disappointing.
In your example I would applaud her for dismissing something crazy that would waste airtime so I could talk about the important issues. Because it's fairly clear the media loves to talk about Trump saying insane shit rather than report on substantial issues.
Which is also what I think Bernie did, reading the excerpts you guys keep posting. However, if he wanted to appeal more to people on the fence and Clinton supporters, it would be good if he went a little more heavily into it.
Clinton and Sanders largely have very similar social and racial positions, but Bernie emphasizes them much less and makes them very secondary. Their biggest points of departure is Sanders has been conservative on guns and Immigration in the Senate (and remains that way on guns).
Its a bizarre double standard of this primary that Sander's emphasis on economic issues can only be a strength and his relative absence on social/racial issues is somehow unfair.
Another part of the Maddow interview, Sanders asserted that only 5-10% of the country is really committed to socially conservative positions, that its the fringe. He thinks that because, as everything in his record and statements indicate, he doesn't believe people should be voting on non-economic issues. Which is why he emphasizes them much less.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I need my fainting couch and smelling salts, I'm at a loss.
So you don't think abortion restrictions that would turn a miscarriage into a crime and punish mothers for not sufficiently proving it wasn't forced is a substantial issue?
pleasepaypreacher.net
Personally, I'd go with "Happy they got shut down, but disappointed it was because big business was worried about optics and not because what was passed is horrible and got them chucked out of office."
If he said that, he's f'ing insane. Or maybe he doesn't get out of VT enough.
I want to address the bolded since I perceived it to be directed at me, due to the position of the post in the conversation context. Perhaps you did not mean to address me personally, Pants, and that's fine, too. You raise a point worth engaging with in any case.
I am far from a political non-participant. I vote in every election, big and small, publicized and not. I volunteer my time with both advocacy organizations for causes that matter to me and actual political campaigns. I volunteered for Obama as a college student; I volunteered for Elizabeth Warren's Senate campaign in 2012; I harangued my friends daily to vote in the dreadfully turned-out Boston City Council election this year, and, most recently, I phonebanked and knocked on doors for Bernie Sanders.
I make what meager financial contributions I can: $10 here, $20 there. I don't have the time or money to support as many campaigns as I would like, but I do what I can to make my voice heard. I spend my precious time and money, when I can spare it, to support candidates who I believe in. So long as the Democratic candidate for president is a superior option to the Republican candidate for present, a trend I see continuing into the indefinite future, the Democratic candidate will have my vote. But not all of them are going to get my money or my time -- I frankly have better things to spend them on.
If Al Gore couldn't inspire a winning coalition of voters, there is no one to blame for that but Al Gore. It is the job of candidate to make the case for supporting them. Relative to Sanders, Clinton didn't make a persuasive case to me. Obviously she did for you. It would be a mistake to interpret this difference of opinion as a difference in political engagement.
It was a great question. When he's in front of his own rich donors he says things like “The truth is there are many people in this country who have money but also believe in social justice.” But that fundamentally undercuts his argument about Clinton and her donors so...
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I didn't think this was a reasonable idea worth consideration or discussion. Hell, I already agreed that he should have discussed the issue more since it clearly is something many people wanted to hear.
The tone of this thread is surprisingly hostile.
I don't mean to point you out specifically. But if you say the Democratic party isn't the party for your political goals then the two options you have are to not participate meaningfully or to support the GOP.
Yes its the job of the candidates to inspire the voters, but its the job of the voters to do their job well also. We get the government we deserve and a big part of our sins as a country that led to President George W Bush in 2000 was 5% of the left decided to support Nader because Gore wasn't pure enough
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Wooo my schadenfreude was worth it
you go donkey
you go beat monkbro (who is Trump in this scenario I guess)
I'd be generally fine with that answer, but wouldn't expect to hear him say it. His popularity in the more leftist circles I have any window into is rooted very heavily in the notion of him as being anti-corporate, anti-establishment, anti-Wall Street. Given his sympathies for Latin American revolutionary movements, I sincerely doubt he's a big fan of Coca-Cola, for example, but they also just had a hand in stopping my current state's embarrassing legislation. The aforementioned more radically left friends of mine also don't really seem to be flipping their lids about what an awkward position this is if you don't have a more nuanced frame of reference for interpreting social change.
Like Pants suggested, I'm beginning to think this was more awkward for Bernie as an image issue than an actual ideological struggle. Either way, doubling down on, "No, the real problems are just Wall Street and the Kochs and the big banks," is deeply unsatisfying. He's obviously an intelligent man, so I can't see this as anything but either a dodge or a refusal to deal with the more complicated reality he'll face when he's not a lone voice in the Senate.
The CW is he's big among Millennials, but if that polling is right, no one is actually big among Millennials. So where is his $40 million/month coming from? My somewhat snarky guess is old boomers, who did the leftist thing back in their college days. "Socialist" holds no stigma for them, and they've actually got money to give to political campaigns.
In any case, it's somewhat disappointing. I'm not voting Bernie, but I'd love it if he were persuading young liberals to engage with politics. But it seems like he's not even doing that. Mostly, he's just firing up college students.
pleasepaypreacher.net
This.
And it helps a great deal if you think about voting as an exercise in harm minimization rather than as a medium for expressing your personal political aspirations.
It's clearly a dodge imo. He needs to keep riding the anti-establishment, anti-Big-everything tiger to stay in this thing at all.
It's one of the problems with focusing your campaign's message down to a knife's edge. When all you have is a hammer, as it were.
It seems like that his biggest funding has been coming from his "fuck the system man!" message. He picked a fight with the DNC and his funding went bananas and he's basically been playing that card ever since. He can't pivot to any other kind of messaging without losing his main source of campaign funding. Can't admit he would endorse Clinton should she win because it'll fuck his ability to fundraise. Can't talk about supporting the Democratic ticket because his funding success depends on saying "fuck the democratic party".
Socialism, free college, universal healthcare, all good but it's yelling "fuck the system" that actually pays the bills.
Disagree. Voting is about getting the policy you want implemented. It's just that you it also involves admitting that you aren't the only one who's opinion matters and you need to accept compromises. And the further along you move, the more you need to accept. (ie - Primaries are where you can be much more ideologically stringent because that's what they are for. As the general approaches you need to be willing to accept candidates that may be not be as close to exactly what you want.)
Or work to change the party.
By, say, supporting candidates you like in the primary.
Followed by supporting the party in the General, regardless of which candidate won.
Sure, as soon as you've spent every cent of influence you earn through contest. I don't think Bernie's cupboard is quite bare. He has resources that the party can use. If Clinton, once nominated, wants him to put those resources to use supporting her, he has a right to make some conditions. And, anyway, as long as his campaign is still bringing in donations and organizing people, his pot of resources that the party can use will only grow.
Sanders said that Trump is uniquely stupid in that view. Maddow pointed out that Cruz is actually more extreme, nudging him towards the "real" issue instead of just Trump, and he waved it away as being a "fringe" thing that only a couple of crazies support.
Imagine if Clinton waved off income inequality as a "fringe" thing that only a couple of crazies support.
It would be completely out of touch with what's currently happening.
If it helps, replace the 401k thing with something equally ludicrous that is an actual consequence of income inequality that proponents of it don't want to admit, because that's more in line with what actually happened.
edit: I can feel myself growing more hyperbolic so please scale things down as needed.
I think that any ethical approach to voting has to account for the likely outcome of the election, too. Voting isn't about you, it's about the future welfare of the country. If you know your vote (or non-vote) risks changing the winner of the election from someone you don't prefer to someone who will wreck the country, then you have an ethical obligation to vote for the person you don't prefer.
Not a hoaks or a prank, just a prop that got mistaken for real.
It belonged to a woman who goes around the US visiting abortion clinics and teaching the staff there to recognice and deal with bombs and other things like that.
That, is how serious an issue abortion and reproductive rights are.
Not merely legislation, or activism, but out and out terrorism.
And trying to imply that this is somehow a minor fringe issue, is fucking horrible stance to take.