If that were true, I think I'd have a pony. Since I had a pony until I was 9, obviously Reagan fucked it all up.
I only had a little pony. But it was mine.
The pony was named "Tarzan". He wouldn't let you ride him unless you brought an Oreo cookie*. He must have had a union.
* Regular Oreos were for the pony, double-stuffed for the people.
I weep with joy to think that when Trump is President, Moby will get his pony back.
Tarzan is dead. They put him out to pasture, at least for while. I don't know if somebody eventually did an "Animal Farm" on him or not.
Actually, most US Presidents seem to have been pretty intelligent, even those who used that intelligence as a force for evil. Since 1900, I'd say Reagan and GWB would be the only ones I wouldn't back to hold their own with the median American commenter here. Maybe Coolidge as well.
This obviously doesn't equate to wise, prudent and judicious, because some of those highly intelligent men were obviously not those things. But it's a good start.
Also, never forget that 50% of the population is below average intelligence, by definition.
To respond seriously to the OP, I don't think that is a very controversial to say that the American experiment in limited democracy has a been a success in so far as the U.S. has had for the most part, a stable government, and become prosperous and powerful.
How long to ponies live? How much does it cost to keep them at pasture?
The "we" in the OP - I guess that refers to all the people of the U.S. through time? So, the people were wise enough to choose leaders that were wiser than they were?
Also, never forget that 50% of the population is below average intelligence, by definition.
If you mean, as many do when they say "average", the arithmetic mean, this is false.
6: My tears have turned to sadness.
But...surely Trump will find a way! For he has promised to make us GREAT again.
I think they can make it to 40 and this pony was nearly there when I was nine. Keeping a single pony at pasture was effectively free for many of my dad's friends (a marginal pony, in the economic sense).
There is a special providence for drunkards, fools, and the United States of America.
What if we fit in more than one category?
Since 1900, I'd say Reagan and GWB would be the only ones I wouldn't back to hold their own with the median American commenter here.
Who's the median commenter?
18: "Median American commenter" -- that brings it way down, because it includes me.
When I pondered whether I should stop lurking and start participating here, I originally aspired for my comments to at least meet the level of the median commenter. As you can see, I have long since given up on that goal.
20: you're included in the global pool, too.
11: If, as is I think typically assumed, intelligence is normally distributed, then the mean and the median are the same and the statement is true.
To the OP: Anybody who has played Civilization or has read Guns, Germs and Steel knows that the keys to success for a society are advantageous geographical position and access to resources.
To borrow Ann Richards' phrase: The US was born on third base and thinks it hit a triple.
21: The prospect of commenting here was intimidating in ye olde days in part because the threads moved so fast.
I thought a great deal of Guns, Germs, and Steel was about how the geography of the Americas was shitty for developing a powerful culture and that's why Europeans ran the board against the Native Americans.
The prospect of commenting here was intimidating in ye olde days in part because the threads moved so fast.
And now we're all old and arthritic.
29: Have you considered typing with your hands?
Even if I type with my hands, if I don't keep my ankle moving as I sit, I can't walk without pain when I stand up.
I should probably get a physical therapist.
They cost more but they don't poop in the driveway.
Looking forward to the new middle aged white person opiate addict MH posts. Like copping scores at the local bar and selling the family playstation to buy smack
27: Yes. The geography and resources weren't advantageous for the original inhabitants. The OP refers to "our politicians" and their success "for two centuries now."
But Mexicans are much more likely to be descended from the original inhabitants.
I imagine some prominent Republicans are feeling peevish, along the lines of, they knew all along anyone could do as well as Trump in the short term by switching out dog whistles with human whistles, but there are good (and self-interested) reasons they restrained themselves.
|| Josh Marshall seems to be going full Tigre. I've caught myself doing it as well with the odd Berner. To the OP, we'll survive Trump as well . . . |>
Who's the median commenter?
Everybody gets a turn because you guys are the best. The BEST.
(I have missed you guys so much.)
40: I don't understand why Clinton's supporters are hitting such a crescendo of hysteria when it's now clear she's going to win. It's like people are so addicted to the acrimony of primary season that they have to conjure up fanciful scenarios of Sanders going rogue or "berniebros" storming the convention with pitchforks and beer bongs just to keep themselves worked up.
The misogynistic abuse heaped on women who publicly support Clinton has almost certainly converted this CA primary voter from Sanders-to-keep-leftward-pressure-on into a Clinton vote.
40: I've pretty much agreed with Tigre all along, but six weeks ago or so I thought maybe he was being too harsh. I no longer think that.
How fanciful, really?
See, 'clear she's going to win' is also something of a problem. The trouble in Nevada was caused, in part, by Sanders winning the second round -- what kind of idiot designs a system with a winnable second round, anyway -- which was directly caused by Clinton supporters being complacent because not only was it clear she would win, but she had already done so, and decisively.
I've avoided online discussions about the primary pretty much everywhere except here because my experience from 2008 is that primary season just bring all of the vocational assholes out of the woodwork while causing normally sane people to behave badly.
Has there been some uptick in bad behavior from Sanders supporters in the last 2 weeks?
I will say that I'm not primed to see this stuff, but I've had a couple of funny interactions with a Bernie-Bro in my office, who seemed to be trying to pick a fight with me as a demographically presumptive Clinton supporter. This was derailed a bit by my pointing out that I'd actually voted for Bernie, but the vibe was heading toward hostility.
We have inflicted fewer atrocities on the world than the prior dominant world super powers.
Has there been some uptick in bad behavior from Sanders supporters in the last 2 weeks?
Has it? Or has there been more attention bad to the bad behavior that always exists in every campaign?
We are in this era of "LOOK!!! A random supporter of [Black Lives Matter/Pro-Choice/Democrat/Republican/Trump Supporter/etc] said something bad!! That means that the entire moment believes that same thing."
The right wing is worse, but the left does it too. Horrible headline for click bait/fundraising. Actual quote not nearly so bad or made by someone insignificant.
44: I voted for Sanders and have always considered judging a candidate by the behavior of their supporters to be pretty stupid, but it's getting really difficult to avoid it at this point. I have a bunch of otherwise intelligent friends who over the course of the year have turned into ranting lunatics with a complete lack of ability to discern obvious nonsense.
I'm not sure uptick in bad behavior is the right way to describe it, although the messages left for the Nevada state chair were certainly beyond the pale. What I see is an uptick in declarations never to support Clinton, and an increasing certainty that Sanders' impending loss is the result of fraud, not his apparent inability, early on, to close the deal with African-American voters. One Berner was lecturing me the other day on why, despite what the totally-in-the-tank media are saying, Sanders has decisively won the popular vote. But dishonest reporting and corrupt elections officials have suppressed this.
If Sanders had a path to victory 3 weeks ago, it was convincing superdelegates to support him. That's a small electorate, and while many of them signed on with Clinton early, those commitments aren't binding, and the right pitch could make a difference. Instead of figuring out a pitch that would appeal to the particular individuals, the Sanders campaign has embraced, publicly anyway, a strategy of insults and implied threats.
50: I believe that to be a much more controversial conclusion than 8.
the Sanders campaign has embraced, publicly anyway, a strategy of insults and implied threats.
It's working for the guy on the other side.
My favorite hobbyhorse is reminding people that "Tarzan" means "white skin" in the tongue of the super-apes who take in the orphaned young Lord Greystoke.
Moby's childhood pony: super racist.
56: So Trump really will bring him back!!!
55 Yeah, but even setting aside the difference in general party characteristics (the humor of your comment), there's the fundamental problem that so many people just don't seem to get: it's all very well to try to appeal to persons A through F by insulting person G, but when A through F are no longer relevant, and you have to appeal to person G, then it's an indication of really bad strategic thinking.
I agree that judging candidates by random supporters is a bad idea, but at a certain point, you can judge a movement, at least in part, by its ability to focus on the strategic and tactical issues before it. You can't win a Revolution is you can't run a meeting.
58 last: You could tell Lenin had what it took by how he handled the bathroom controversy.
I remain committed to not judging Sanders by the behavior of random nutbars supporting him, without some kind of smoking gun in terms of him or people he hired whipping up the bad behavior. But there does seem to be actually bad behavior going on.
The Nevada state chair is a superdelegate, I'm pretty sure. She knows the other superdelegates from Nevada. Which of them will be motivated to switch to Sanders after the voicemails left on her phone etc? What is Sanders doing to undo the damage overenthusiastic supporters are doing?
60: Sanders response to Nevada seems to have been really wrong. (Though I admit I don't really know what happened in Nevada.)
I was and remain a Sanders supporter, based in part on the assumption that he'll be a good soldier when the time comes. That's still my prediction, but recent events have been discouraging.
I guess this is what it looks like when the second-place candidate in a primary actually has a lot of support and also has actual policy differences between him and the first-place candidate. When was the last time that happened? 1980? It's not a comfortable time to be following politics, that's for sure.
60 Marshall's point is that Sanders and his campaign manager are pumping them up with unrealistic hope of winning and unwarranted accusations that the nomination is being stolen by corruption.
Mine is that it's being lost by incompetence. You lose more in superdelegates by having the Nevada thing get out of control than you could possibly have won had the Nevada convention been run the way you wanted (or not the way you wanted but with a well documented and properly made appeal under the existing procedures).
49 & 61 pretty much cover it for me. 49 bc strongly suspect "Clinton demographic" is code for 40+ woman and 61 sums up confluence of strategic stupidity and unwillingness and or inability to recognize and publicly condemn outright misogyny.
Sander's statement on the Nevada thing is here: https://berniesanders.com/press-release/statement-nevada/
So if HRC's people aren't cheating it is beyond the pale. If they are it is still questionable unless he really won the popular vote nation wide.
It looks bad for Bernie is what I'm saying, but we still need to tamper proof our election systems.
62a The Nevada delegate selection procedure is completely ridiculous, an absolute recipe for this kind of bullshit. It really does look to me like there's some valid grounds for challenge at least a few delegates. But to set that up, you'd have to have had someone effectively leading the Sanders contingent at the convention.
I agree that judging candidates by random supporters is a bad idea, but at a certain point, you can judge a movement, at least in part, by its ability to focus on the strategic and tactical issues before it. You can't win a Revolution is you can't run a meeting.
Agreed.
Managing outside agitators pretending to be supporters to cause you trouble and managing the emotions of your own people is an important aspect.
68 At a couple more delegates in Nevada, maybe. At the nomination, no. At creating a movement that transforms the Democratic party for a generation, yes. But that movement has to include African-Americans, women over 40, the kinds of people who fill county and state party positions, elected officials, as well as enthusiastic young folks.
It's a just a big popularity contest.
I'm beginning to think we need to condense the primary into about 2-3 months of voting. This drawn out stuff is just making everyone crazy. Everyone votes in March-May or April-May, and things have time to settle down before the convention.
72: What depresses me is not that Sanders won't be president, but that the unapologetically leftist movement surrounding him is likely to vanish once the primary is over. Because that's mostly what the left wing of the Democratic part seems to do. Make a quixotic run at the presidency every 4 or 8 years and go into hibernation in between.
Maybe it will be different this time, but I'll believe it when I see it.
unwarranted accusations that the nomination is being stolen
Yeah, this. Sanders lost Nevada because close to 1/4 of his delegates didn't show up to the convention, while 98% of Clinton's did. That's emphatically *not* getting cheated. But even if they had shown up, you're talking about a difference of what? Four national convention delegates?
I keep reading conversations that are roughly analogous to "We only lost that game because the end zones are 10 yards deep instead of 25. PERFIDY! CORRUPTION! BURN THE WITCH!"
Is there an explainer somewhere on what actually happened in Nevada? I don't know -- I have the vague belief that the Sanders campaign is complaining about chicanery by Clinton, but I don't have a timeline or any sense of the details.
Sanders lost Nevada because close to 1/4 of his delegates didn't show up to the convention
I've said it before, but it bears repeating. Young people are the worst.
77: I heard that the Bavarian Illuminati had a hand in what went down, but that's unconfirmed at this point.
75: Sanders was always a super long shot to win the nomination, and has done better than anybody had any reason to believe at the outset. The best case scenario, he could have returned to the Senate within a new Dem majority and with vastly more influence to drive the conversation back toward sanity and be a useful check on Clinton's worst instincts (which are indeed quite bad). But instead, he seems intent on burning bridges. I would really hate to see him end his career as the Democratic Ted Cruz.
Except for about 75% of old people.
I guess this is what it looks like when the second-place candidate in a primary actually has a lot of support and also has actual policy differences between him and the first-place candidate.
From what I can remember of 2008 it's about what it looks like when the second-place candidate in a primary actually has a lot of support and also has almost no actual policy differences between her and the first-place candidate - right down to accusations of conspiracy and corruption at caucuses/delegate choices, wild eyed conspiracy theories/nasty attacks on the candidate*; threats, X-or-Bust yelling, and so on.
Nevada seems to have been a special place this election due to how many times this has happened there already (Sanders supporters: "The Clinton surrogates are rigging it by adjusting the rules ahead of time! Wait we got more what happened?"; Clinton Supporters: "The Sanders supporters cheated because a bunch of us were disqualified! It's theft!" Sanders Supporters: "No you just need to get it together!"; Sanders supporters: "The Clinton supporters cheated because not enough of us showed up! It's theft! Clinton supporters: "No you just need to get it together!"; etc. etc.)
*Though as mean as this one has been I think the attacks on Clinton this time around have been pretty tame/reasonable when compared to the stuff Clinton supporters threw at Obama in 2008. The second bit of the sentence is important.
I'm getting pretty annoyed with Sanders, I'm starting to wish I hadn't voted for him.
77: https://www.ralstonreports.com/blog/sour-grapes-revolution-rocked-paris-hotel
74 A shorter schedule would make an insurgency really difficult, I think. And gives a real advantage to a candidate who can raise a whole bunch of money quickly (which may or may not be an insurgent, as we see from the other side).
77
I found this article, which AFAIK gives a fairly neutral rundown. (It starts playing video footage, so open it on mute if you're at work).
The Republicans compressed their primary schedule to get an early winner and it worked, technically.
I can't tell what Sanders' game-plan is at this point. He can't win, so is he just trying to increase his leverage for policy concessions? He's seems to be stumbling into alienating people rather than consolidating his position. But maybe that's not his plan. I suppose it could just be pique, but I don't know enough about Sanders to guess whether that could be it.
A shorter schedule would make an insurgency really difficult, I think.
What about Jeremy Corbyn?
Sanders lost Nevada because close to 1/4 of his delegates didn't show up to the convention
In this case of NEVADA IS CORRUPT THEY'RE STEALING IT I'LL TELL MOMMY! I think it's actually that a chunk of Sanders delegates were disqualified for whatever reason, and (given the previous caucus where Clinton delegates didn't show up and Sanders ones did) that was enough to turn a narrow Sanders majority of delegates into a narrow Clinton majority.
A shorter schedule would make an insurgency really difficult, I think.
Is this a bad thing? How often have insurgent candidates a) won the candidacy b) won the election c) been any good?
Also, I eagerly await the right-wing article that says that Black Lives Matter tactics have come back to bite the Democrats. Probably already written.
We could keep a few smaller early bellweather states for candidates to raise their national profile, but after super Tuesday we need to start consolidating the voting. There's no reason why we have to do it in dribs and drabs through June. Like, keep three early states, and then start having two super Tuesdays a month for 2 months. Also, eliminate all caucuses, and eliminate this weird delegate selection/reassignment process at successive state conventions.
enough to turn a narrow Sanders majority of delegates into a narrow Clinton majority
This is the claim, but it isn't correct.
On April 2, Nevada held county conventions which choose the delegates to the state convention. Bernie's team spotted a loophole in the rules allowing people to just show up as "unelected alternate". And hordes of Sanders supporters did just that, and the total number of delegates for this week's state convention were slanted in favor of Sanders: 2,124 to 1,722. This was blogged here and elsewhere, and some people went so far as to argue this meant that Sanders had "won Nevada". It really meant that the Sanders team had outmaneuvered the Clinton team; politics ain't beanbag. Ted Cruz was doing the same sort of thing to Donald Trump in multiple states before he dropped out.
Then the state convention was held and 1701 Clinton delegates showed up and 1670 Sanders supporters showed up. Of these, 6 Clinton supporters were rejected and 8 Sanders supporters were rejected, either for not being registered as Democrats or not providing proof of living in Nevada. There were also 50 or so Sanders supporters who were rejected who didn't show, but they were not going to count anyway.
I guess the "Temporary New Rules" thing at the Nevada convention does kind of seem sketchy, though trying to overturn the results of the second caucus which was already unrepresentative is, I guess, a plausible motivation?
I think the real conclusion here is that the UN should step in and run Nevada's elections for them because they're clearly not up to the task.
The worst part is going to be the aftermath, when the Internet is full of people bitching "I tried really hard for one election, and it didn't work, so I'm giving up on politics forever!" I guess it can't be as bad as the 2004 general election, but it will be bad.
(whistles quietly and walks backward slowly)
As of May 16 Bernie's popularity within the party continues to increase, according to the Gallup poll. On the other hand, the backlash against him within the party appears to have started May 17.
Oh, good lord. I had missed that most of the Sanders delegates didn't show. At that point, what on earth are they complaining about?
The nutshell is more Sanders delegates did show up, but 64 were disqualified from sitting, thus turning a Sanders majority into a Clinton majority. The Sanders campaign claims they followed the rules, and the Nevada chair changed the rules right before the convention started in order to disqualify enough Sanders delegates. Clinton/the Nevada DC claims Sanders delegates didn't follow the party registration rules, and so were disqualified.
Fighting like this over two delegates seems so stupid and counterproductive. These two delegates aren't going to push him over the edge, so he should probably note that he heard there are irregularities, but everyone needs to move on (IIRC he did that after the Nevada caucuses). His supporters need to calm their bad and get themselves in check.* If it turns out there were problems/cheating, then Nevada Democratic leadership needs to realize that cheating to regain a piddly two delegates for Clinton when she's clearly winning is really fucking stupid and counterproductive.
*I left Leftist politics when I realized people would rather snipe with other leftists than actually take on the enemy, and this seems to be happening with a small but vocal # of Sanders supporters. They need to wake the hell up and recognize Clinton and the DNC are not in the whole scheme of things the enemy.
64 were disqualified from sitting
50 of the 64 didn't show.
101
Lots of them didn't show, but according to the Sanders campaign more Sanders people showed up than Clinton people, and 64, not 8, were disqualified (if all of Sanders's people had shown up, this probably wouldn't be a problem). At this point different media seems to be reporting different things, so who knows what really happened.
104
They're claiming they did show and were barred from sitting/entering.
105: One of the two linked articles claims that 50 of the disqualified 64 were no-shows as well. I mean, I suppose there could be argument about what no-show means, but is there someone claiming that all 64 disqualified delegates were actually at the convention?
That is, does no-show mean "I was waiting for an hour and half to check in, but no one would let me, they just told me to keep waiting. Then I went to the bathroom and when I got back the check-in desk was closed, never to reopen." I made that up, but is chicanery along those lines what's alleged?
A bunch of them supposedly showed up but weren't allowed in/whatever that means, and a bunch more (probably the significant majority) didn't show up because they had been disqualified. It's that second bit that's the relevant one, not the first bit.
Saying that people who had been delegates but were changed to not being delegates and didn't show up is the same as actual delegates not showing up is... not a great argument though. The second caucus was the one where the results depended on actual delegates not showing up, as opposed to delegates being disqualified/new rules being instituted/whatever.
Oh, disqualification happened before the convention, not at the convention. Argh. I want a real thumbsucker on this (oh, not that it matters in the slightest). The linked articles are some help, but they're not a timeline of all the procedural steps with what each side alleges at each point.
Also, I haven't seen anybody who can identify what rule was changed. The disqualified Sanders delegates weren't disqualified because of a changed rule; they were disqualified for not being registered Democrats or for not providing proof of residency, which is *literally* the very first rule of the convention.
what each side alleges
This is difficult, because the Outrage Caucus keeps changing their allegations.
That's actually pretty effective as a tactic. Look at the Republican side.
Was there any chance that these 2 delegates would make a difference in the final result? If not, it seems like an odd thing to stage a massive freak out over.
In other words, I agree with 102.
they were disqualified for not being registered Democrats or for not providing proof of residency
This really doesn't matter significantly, because the outcome doesn't matter, Clinton's got the nomination.
But this does seem suspicious to me -- that is, if the Sanders delegates are admitting being non-registered or having failed to submit some residency form, that's one thing, and everyone should shut up. If they're contesting that, then losing forms is really easy. "Your insurgent delegates were disqualified for failing to successfully complete a bureaucratic process that the party completely controls," smells funny.
Not importantly, again, but enough to make me feel forgiving about people being upset about it, to the limited extent that they are upset in a not-horribly-badly-behaved way.
63, 64: the election now is over, the time of strife is past.
I will kiss your elephant, and you can kiss my ass.
I think it's probably wiser to focus on the general election, and the true enemy that the party will be facing, namely Donald Trump the fucking New York Times
On a range of issues, Mr. Trump seems to be taking a page from the Sanders playbook, expressing a willingness to increase the minimum wage, suggesting that the wealthy may pay higher taxes than under his original proposal, attacking Mrs. Clinton from the left on national security and Wall Street, and making clear that his opposition to free trade will be a centerpiece of his general election campaign. As Mr. Trump lays the groundwork for his likely showdown with Mrs. Clinton, he is staking out a series of populist positions that could help him woo working-class Democrats in November.Welcome to like half the news stories on the election for the next six months!
I think I'm going to have to go buy a large wooden board to knock my head against when I'm not seated in front of a desk.
Regardless of the specifics, my takeaway is that this is a screwed-up way to choose a nominee (or delegates, or whatever,) and that a straightforward count of primary votes is in all respects preferable to a system that depends on mastery of the rules of Simon Says/Mother May I.
115: I agree that "losing forms" or similar is bad, but honestly I think that insisting delegates be registered members of the party is sort of essential for the existence of the party.
Not that I think "losing forms" intentionally is what happened.
Right. If it's true, absolutely. If it's false, though... even if not outcome determinative, it'd be a real pissoff. And it's a little peculiar, because this is a stage after caucus participation, at which point registration was presumably checked.
These delegates didn't participate in the caucuses? They don't check registration at the caucuses? Or they appeared to be registered at the time of the caucuses and now it turns out that they weren't really? The last one seems problematic. But again, I don't know facts at all.
I think Clinton should now step up with some genuine conciliation. It doesn't make sense for her to alienate people over 3 delegates either.
You know, it might not make a difference to Clinton or Sanders which two Nevadans at the margins go to Philadelphia, but it makes a whole lot of difference to the four people involved. Just as the 16 (or whatever) people turned away from the state convention for issues related care a lot more than the campaigns. But if you're trying to have a movement, you have to be getting people to subsume their individual motivations to the cause.
If not, it seems like an odd thing to stage a massive freak out over.
This is why people like JMM are starting to point fingers at the top of the org, not random Bros: the "we wuz robbed by a corrupt party!" narrative has been ubiquitous for a long time, and it's been a mask for "we're not winning enough votes." And it's become increasingly clear--as shown pretty definitively by his public statement--that Bernie is OK with this mask, which isn't productive for anyone except consultants and narcissistic candidates who don't want to concede defeat.
121 AIHMB, I'm organizing our county convention. We're not going to be checking registrations of participants or of the people elected as delegates. They have to sign a pledge, and that's it.
I don't know what they did in Nevada, but those folks seem capable of fucking up a 3 car funeral. The county convention process, especially in Clark, seems to have been a total cluster, and checking registrations of thousands of people who didn't sign up or get elected beforehand, on the spot, would have been a huge burden. I wouldn't presume anything at all about what was done at some different level.
Obviously an individual elected delegate, whose registration was in order and made no change to it, would have standing to contest their exclusion. If those people are doing so, good for them, and if they are in the right, I hope that gets resolved in some way. What's bullshit, though, is other people litigating in the court of public opinion the cause of people who were disqualified, are not contesting it, and didn't show up.
121: Here's a (since deleted) reddit post from one of the delisted delegates. I leave it up to you whether it's an example of treachery or dumbassery.
after caucus participation, at which point registration was presumably checked.
If the summary in 95 is to be trusted (about process), there was a rush of Bernie-favoring "unelected alternates" at the county conventions, not the caucuses; it wouldn't be shocking to me if the counties failed to check properly. I mean, we're talking about a 2.5% error rate. Plus, we know that some HRC delegates also were disqualified, despite prior steps, so clearly these people can slip through.
But this does seem suspicious to me -- that is, if the Sanders delegates are admitting being non-registered or having failed to submit some residency form, that's one thing, and everyone should shut up. If they're contesting that, then losing forms is really easy. "Your insurgent delegates were disqualified for failing to successfully complete a bureaucratic process that the party completely controls," smells funny.
It sounds like there may also apparently some "cannot confirm name/birthdate/whatever" stuff, though that could easily just be them describing the rule under which they were excluded.
I think part of the anger happened because a whole bunch of them weren't allowed to present evidence on their behalf or go before the committee to argue for their inclusion. One of the members of the committee had a minority report claiming that this was contrary to the general precedent/generally bad, and read at least part of it at the convention. But Roberta Lange closed the convention immediately afterwards without a vote, the Democratic party officials all left, and everything went to shit.
I kinda figured I would be the last Sanders supporter around here.
The threat to cost Clinton the election in November is really the only chip the insurgents have, or ever had, and keeping it ugly will make the convention negotiations serious.
Just give us what the Clinton camp got in 2008. One Cabinet secretary, the WH Chief of Staff, and the entire economic team. If you think this is ridiculous, you wanted a coronation all along, do not respect the Sanders movement, and can watch Trump take the oath. Clinton has not earned dictatorial or unitary power in the Democratic Party. She has no right to autonomy. She has to fucking deal, give up something valuable.
Politics is fucking high-stakes, life or death. Nobody has to play nice.
124- I concerned about how Sanders is handling this, but hasn't the US needed election reforms for decades? If a pissing match now leads to real improvements in transparency and security in US voting we'll all be better off.
A lot of the 'we was robbed' narrative comes from the purging of voter rolls. There's no question that registrars have to strike people who are dead, or have moved away, from the rolls. Accepting the idea that some Clintonite is intentionally striking minority voters in San Diego County is, I think, a fair marker for people who've lost their minds.
I have no idea what actually happened in Brooklyn, and maybe we'll find out that some significant percentage of the strikes were improper. Even then, you still have to be able to make a coherent argument for whether the errors were intended to favor one side or the other. Maybe there's a way to have done that in Brooklyn.
Watyathing, Sanders people gonna say okay ya won 55-45, you get everything, we get nothing, but we will still bust our backs for the next six months and 8 years? For your program, not ours?
It is simply contemptible to ask that.
126: That does sound like dumbassery, but dumbassery to the point of implausibilty. I'd wonder about (a) if that were more than one out of the sixty-four, with a story that convincingly dumb, and (b) if it's real at all, on the usual internet/dog grounds.
I think Clinton should now step up with some genuine conciliation.
She's venturing this way on the policy side - supporting Medicare buy-in for the 50+ (although this appears to have been verbal only, not yet on her internet platform).
I do agree that it's not unreasonable to expect primary voters to actually be registered members of the party, but you can't deny that, like voter ID laws, this requirement disproportionately suppresses the votes of the young, the poor, and the disenfranchised.
Maybe there's a way to have done that in Brooklyn.
I don't have any facts about how the purge was actually done in Brooklyn, but if you could control it in any finegrained way geographically, it'd be easy to fix. Sanders and Clinton supporters would predictably be concentrated differently in different neighborhoods.
The larger background is that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic establishment have been treating Sanders and his supporters with contempt for months, and the message is out that he gets nothing at the convention.
If Sanders was at 20% I would agree with play nice. At 40-50% they should burn the hall fucking down if they are not treated as at least equal partners.
84
We did not want those delegates anyway.
123: If she does it to the extent that Obama did* in 2008 I'd be absolutely flabbergasted. But she probably should do it to some extent. I don't know if May is the right time to be doing anything more than backing off of attacks though. If she isn't doing something more by mid June or something then that would be problematic (but not necessarily something that would hurt her in the long run**).
*Like, appointing most of Sanders' team to her administration or something. Of course I was absolutely furious about this at the time, and he didn't really get anything from this in terms of votes because it was too late by then. But I am curious if she's going to do anything.
**One the one hand, probably it would do some down ballot damage. On the other hand if she does nothing at all any electoral damage could be blamed on her political enemies which would probably be helpful in pushing a more centrist agenda or pushing back on the increasingly pushy progressive part of the Democratic party coalition.
I am reminded of the way Occupy Wall Street ended, with centrists mocking and shitting on them for not having perfect decorum. People who aren't treated fairly by a corrupt system are going to pissed about it, especially as the goal they have pursuing becomes further and further out of reach. The fallout is not always pretty, but it is human, and it shouldn't be taken as an excuse to discredit the movement as a whole.
141: When did that happen? I didn't see it here.
I sorta agree with 130 although I don't believe that HRC controlled BHO's economic team via that negotiation. He was always going to hire those people anyway.
but those folks seem capable of fucking up a 3 car funeral
Well, it's tricky to run a funeral when the person you're burying keeps insisting he's alive.
140* I agree that she should do a lot. Who is there, though, on the Sanders team that can credibly be given an Admin post and actually wants an Admin post?** This is a real issue with insurgencies: Obama wasn't just taking Clintonish folks as conciliation or to sell out, but also because they were ready, willing, able, and qualified. Staffing the government is actually not that easy.
** This is a genuine, not rhetorical, question. I'm not seeing household names associated with the Sanders campaign -- but am not looking closely enough to draw any inferences at all from my perceptions.
When did that happen? I didn't see it here.
I recall it being the narrative on coverage from the Daily Show, which was high on First Term Obama Era lets-restore-sanity-to-both-sides-of-the-discussionism at the time.
That's not actually an official channel of the Democratic Party.
Who is there, though, on the Sanders team that can credibly be given an Admin post and actually wants an Admin post?
L Randall Wray to Treasury, Stephanie Kelton (minority economist on Senate Budget committee) to CEA, Jamie Galbraith, Pavlina Tcherneva to Labor, many others, I can fill the Clinton economic team with world class economists
I think appointing Bernie himself as Secretary of Labor would be pretty cool.
Right, but we cruelly mock all kind of people. I'm not going to stop just because somebody things a drum circle is helpful.
150: "Secretary of Labour." The extra "U" is because he's working for you.
Where are you going to find tomorrows revolutionaries, if not in today's drum circles?
I don't we why we can't wait for them to age out of the drum circles before we go looking.
this requirement disproportionately suppresses the votes of the young, the poor, and the disenfranchised.
I never understand this argument. We've been fighting to save our neighborhood park for 8 months; some asshole from the suburbs shows up to one of our meetings, I don't give a shit what he says. Why should the Dem Party care who non-Democrats think should run as Democrat?
Furthermore, given that the Democratic Party, as a general policy, works* to register specifically the young, poor, and disenfranchised (see corporate sellout democratic socialist normal party member McAuliffe), this strikes me as a bizarre complaint.
Even if you accept John Emerson's perpetual claim that party elites actively don't want votes from liberals, that still doesn't get you to those elites rejecting votes from minorities which, as we've seen this very year, tend to vote pretty reliably for mainstream party candidates.
Registered party members vote in presidential primaries at less than 50% rates; it's hard for me to look at that and think, "if only more people who haven't bothered to join the party were eligible."
*not hard enough
140.footnotes are right that there isn't much Clinton can give the Sanders camp except symbolically, which people are going to be mistrustful of.
What I try to remind all of them of is this: Hillary Clinton doesn't have to write single-payer legislation, or tuition-free public college legislation; she needs to sign it and she needs to not kneecap it while it's getting written. The right thing to do is to cut the losses here, vote for Clinton, and continue to apply electoral pressure. A vote for Hillary Clinton in the primaries was a vote against single payer and tuition free public college. A vote *against* Hillary in the general is a vote against single payer and tuition free public college.
When did that happen? I didn't see it here.
I'm not sure how many people here could really be referred to as "centrists" in the US specific sense. (In some sort of global basically sane understanding of the range of political views, probably most. This is one of the many ways in which America is exceptional though.)
148 forgets Dean Baker, but bob is right that there are at least dozens of qualified but mostly marginalized economists.
We'll probably get delong in a Clinton admin though.
marginalized economists
Economists use the word "marginal" differently anyway.
150 His current job, with a movement at his back (I too have had hopes for what apo describes in 80), is way better than being in some cabinet position.
158.2: Not if she remembers what he wrote about her.
Sorry, 136.1 really should have preëmpted 155; I just hate the argument so much.
But the point remains that, of the changes you could make to increase participation by marginalized (potential) voters, allowing primary voting by non-party members doesn't even move the dial. Compare that with day-of registration, election day holidays, weekend voting, early voting... all of those would do vastly more to induce greater participation than allowing registered independents to vote in closed primaries.
A vote for Hillary Clinton in the primaries was a vote against single payer and tuition free public college. A vote *against* Hillary in the general is a vote against single payer and tuition free public college the very idea of human civilization and the idea of anything more than a subsistence lifestyle for anyone two to three generations down the line.
Once again, I'm starting to feel like I should go to the local meetings or something. I'm assuming it will pass again.
His current job, with a movement at his back (I too have had hopes for what apo describes in 80), is way better than being in some cabinet position.
This is what I think whenever people start talking about a Warren VP slot (or, god, a Sanders one). It would be a great choice if Clinton wanted to undercut the exact goals that Warren has been fighting for, but not much else. I guess it would boost the ticket among progressives, but I doubt it would be a good thing overall.
The right thing to do is to cut the losses here, vote for Clinton, and continue to apply electoral pressure.
We learned with Obama that the Presidency is powerful, and you can trust nothing and can get nothing after the convention. Lambert vs Lieberman should b=never be forgotten. I have learned it over decades.
1980 was in part a ripping apart the party over the Equal Rights Amendment, feminist, gay, and environmental issues. The Kennedy camp lost, how did the ERA workout?
The Party moved right after 1980. Reagan was bad, but the DLC wasn't that great either.
You have to do it when the opportunity is there. You have go for it all, put it all on the line. Kennedy didn't fight hard enough, and left an opening for Anderson.
165:
Yeah, I keep having to beat down the idea (among friends) that it would be an even remotely good thing to take Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders out of the Senate to put them in what is a PR role at best.
I think she should keep Biden as Vice President. He seems really good at it.
168: Well, some of them may be assassins, in which case it's a sensible desire.
136 In a state that has registration by party, it really doesn't seem like asking registrants to check a box on the form they are already filling out is much of a burden. What are you talking about here? I mean, sure, registration is an unnecessarily burdensome process in many places, but once someone is already doing that, picking the Dem party doesn't seem all that difficult.
What am I missing?
I think it's still much more likely than not that post-California primary Bernie concedes with grace and gives a party-unifying speech. The level of enthusiasm -- and the instructions to his donors -- matters a lot, though. In '08 Hillary fought tough (albeit in a much closer race) until close to the end. But when she conceded she did so well before the convention and not only with enthusiastic support for Obama (led crowd in chanting "Yes we can!") but with instructions for her donors to do the same (even this didn't stop the internet loons, remember the best thing ever aka the whitey tape? That was after Hillary had conceded. But despite lingering loons it was clear direction from the top that the bullshit should end and also decisive that the money should go to and the power belonged with Obama). Bernie would need to do something like this (and probably will do so) in order to maintain non-monster status. If and when he does this his being a bit of a dick in May will likely all be almost immediately forgotten.
A sort-of-insidery source I have claims that Clinton keeps reaching out to Bernie with concessions but that he is rebuffing and maintaining die-hard status. The source isn't a Clinton fanatic by any means but it's also at least 3rd hand, so discount accordingly.
My own view, as you all know, is that when your campaign is based fundamentally on lying to people, as I think Bernie's has been, it becomes harder to reign in folks who believe the lies when it is time to tell the truth. And his lack of connection to/support of the party and other party members, plus the OTT "corruption" and "political revolution" language gives me pause. Still, I'd put it at more than 90% that he concedes gracefully by June 15 and all of this is forgotten by August.
Shit, does nobody remember 2009-2011? Pelosi's very liberal house passed dozens of great bills, that died in the Senate with Obama and Rahm and Geithner shrugging their shoulders and sucking up to Lieberman and the Blue Dogs.
Clinton will laugh at Warren and Sanders in the Senate, even with majorities.
Lemieux will be talking about the 59th and 60th Democrat, and say we can only pass what the rightmost Democrat will allow.
There will be a crisis or great initiative, like the ACA, and the left will need to just go along in order not to waste Clinton's capital.
His current job, with a movement at his back (I too have had hopes for what apo describes in 80), is way better than being in some cabinet position.
His current job will be taken over by another leftest Vermont Democrat, and so little actually ever gets done in the Senate anyway because of the stupid filibuster.
On the other hand an activist and high profile Department of Labor is something we haven't seen in a long time.
remember the best thing ever aka the whitey tape?
Now that we're wrapping up eight years of Obama as President, I think its time for the whitey tape to finally be released. I'm damned curious to see it.
I expect:
a) student loan relief in exchange for entitlement reform, passed with Republican votes
b) Universal Basic Income in return for transfer payment elimination, the ACA was a giant step in that direction. Republicans will remember Hayek and Friedman and get on board.
The "Left-centre" internet will have some dissension, but mostly support their President
President Ryan will slash the UBI in half in 2021.
Republicans will remember Hayek and Friedman and get on board.
Even for you this is pretty fucking removed from reality.
177: Yes, it's not quite up to the level of my 5, but it's close.
If and when he does this his being a bit of a dick in May will likely all be almost immediately forgotten.
I agree with this. Where the dickishness from the top becomes a problem, though, is in the building a movement for the future part. Individual people who are going to be looking for leadership positions in state and county Democratic party operations are going to end up being held accountable for their public conduct. If the positions they are running for are contested.
and sucking up to Lieberman and the Blue Dogs.
bob, you understand that Lieberman was in no way beholden to Obama or the Democratic Party, right? There weren't 50 votes for ending the filibuster, which means anything Pelosi passed needed 60 votes, one of which was Lieberman.
Shit, does nobody remember 2009-2011?
Do you remember it, bob? Franken wasn't seated until July 7, 2009. That made 60 votes. Kennedy died August 29, making 59 votes. Kirk replaced him on September 24, and was replaced by Brown on February 4.
That was it. That was the entire period during which the Senate, including non-Democrat Lieberman, could pass legislation without Republican votes, 185 days including weekends and recesses. But sure, bob. If Obama had just insulted Lieberman, the way tough-guy internet commenters would, he could've passed any law he chose.
My own sense is that running a long, losing (especially) campaign makes people crazy and the people inside the campaign and heavily invested in the campaign are going to be crazy by now and will be somewhat recovered in a couple months. I do feel it reflects poorly on Sanders that he hasn't handled the pressure better, since you know he's trying to win the highest-pressure job in the world.
164: Funny, I'm getting that feeling, too. I really should reply to one of those 14th Ward Democrats mailings that come out around election time. Or maybe I should at least be going to the meetings about JRoth's park so I can better understand how developers influence the process.
179: Where the dickishness from the top becomes a problem, though, is in the building a movement for the future part.
75: What depresses me is not that Sanders won't be president, but that the unapologetically leftist movement surrounding him is likely to vanish once the primary is over. Because that's mostly what the left wing of the Democratic part seems to do.
These comments sort of puzzle me: isn't it the case that MoveOn, for example, has not at all disappeared?
I once met the head of that group in a bar (the one around the corner from my usual one). He knew who I was from comments on local blogs, so I'm waiting a few more years before I join that.
I was going to scoff at the idea that 2008 Clinton supporters were worse than this year's Sanders supporters, but then Tigre brought up the Whitey tape. I somehow blotted out that it was originally a PUMA rumor.
So in conclusion, I hate everyone. The US is a country of loudmouth dumbshits, and Trump is what we deserve. Maybe the corvids will get democracy to work.
186.2: Read the OP again and find a shred of hope.
The PUMAs had the big (for me) advantage of not being on my own social media and thus being an abstract band of hillarious loons, not something immediately in my consciousness zone.
I'm actually looking forward to August or whenever when I can un-hide all the people I've hidden and learn what they've been up to without being subjected to relentless dumbassery.
184: I'm still surprised by how easy it is to meet important people at bars here.
I keep on misreading PUMA as PUA. It makes more sense that way, honestly.
Huh, looking it up, the lead PUMA guy is now a Bernie-or-Buster and heavily Trump-curious. Not surprising at all, I guess.
However, http://dailypuma.blogspot.com/ is keeping it old-school both in terms of website look and feel and Clinton over Sanders support.
And Larry C. Johnson, the original "Mr. Whitey Tape" and PUMA leader, is also now a Bernie-or-buster with heavy levels of Trump curiosity.
And this has been your "where are the PUMAs now" update.
I just can't believe that dailypuma.blogspot.com survived for 8 whole years. Who was looking for a daily update about world events from a PUMA perspective in 2013?
Also re: Tigre's Canadian Girlfriend/Insider Source:
I think it makes sense that the Sanders campaign internally is resistant to deal-making. I do expect, though, that he'll come around when enough has been conceded. I think that on his end he's working on gradually winding down the reconciliation so that it doesn't look forced (see Chris Christie for Trump). And at the same time I think he's probably biding his time and making sure that he can get substantial commitments from the Clinton camp.
I'm not going to vote for Hillary either way, though. My vote goes to Jill Stein.
(I should add I'm only voting for Jill Stein because my home state isn't even remotely up for grabs so I may as well contribute to the mission of increasing the third-party vote.)
190: Whoa. That guy is actually arguing for Trump? Aside from the obligatory "Christ, what an asshole," he's not remotely paying attention to Trump's shifting positions, nor to the proposed changes to the Republican party electoral system currently on the table.
192: I was trying to remember that dude's name so that I could see what he was doing now. So either thank you or curses.
195 - So, my normal move would be to just immediately call you a completely obviously ignorant worthless dumbass and a morally irresponsible fuckwit whose views are self-evidently not worth listening to at all, but let's try a different approach., Have you considered the proposition that increasing the visibility of the Green party (particularly in national presidential elections) doesn't actually help any remotely liberal cause at all? Because (unlike a primary insurgent) it can literally do nothing except be a spoiler party that helps Republicans? So that increasing the visibility of the Green party is actually a deeply counter-productive move, even though you won't move Texas by failing to do so?
Or, get ready to be called a worthless fucking dumbass by me for years. At least if I can remember that you voted Green. I think I made a commitment to calling some other Green voter here a worthless morally reprehensible jackass in some other election, but now I can't remember who that was. Also Jesus Christ is everyone involved in that party including Jill Stein herself a fucking idiot.
Good point. If I want to use my third-party vote wisely I should vote Libertarian instead since they'll play spoiler for the GOP.
If you're going to do something stupid that would be marginally less stupid! Better not to vote at all.
In colloquial American English, a Puma is a younger cougar, i.e. a woman in her 30s who sleeps with much younger men. When ever I hear about PUMAs, I can't help but think of Pumas. Pumas for Hillary could be a group or a TV show.
I guess I'll just vote for Clinton then.
I'm voting for Trump, but only because Death is not on the ballot in my state.
In colloquial American English, a Puma is a younger cougar, i.e. a woman in her 30s who sleeps with much younger men.
I think you've been reading too much Vice.
I want to thank you for changing my mind on this, Tigre. It was the part where you called me a "morally reprehensible fuckwit" that made me realize that you were right all along about centrist coalition-building and that the only reason I couldn't see it was because I was not only stupid, but actually acting in bad faith, too!
In colloquial American English, Pumas are popular athletic shoes. They should make a TV show about Usain Bolt chasing Hillary along the campaign trail!
206: See, Tigre, the diplomatic approach does work!
Someone needs to start a PAC called Morally Reprehensible Fuckwits For Stein.
210: How about Nihilists for Trump Because Death Isn't on the Ballot?
210
MRFFS (prounced "murfs")
208
I would watch pretty much anything if it meant seeing Usain Bolt running.
210: MRFS seeks MILFs for a good, hard caucusing. Serious replies only.
211
NFTBDIOTB doesn't have the same ring as MRFFS.
If there was a woman in her 30s running on a campaign of sleeping with much younger men, I would vote for her instead. But since there isn't, it's Trump for me.
213
Also, Pumas frequently age into MILFs...
215
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Also, I think it's maybe a little early to definitively say that Texas isn't in play in the Presidential election. Obama got a little more than 41% of the vote there in 2012. If you squint hard and imagine a large Latino anti-Trump surge plus a lot of disaffected establishment and/or actually-religious religious Republican voters staying home or peeling off to Hillary, you could get there. I mean, I don't think it's at all likely and if it does happen 2016 will be the blowout to end all blowouts so it's not like Texas would swing the election. But Trump is enough of a wildcard so that there's a real, if small, possibility of a place like Texas being in play.
While I might be able to pull off the "woman" part, "in my 30s" is probably beyond my abilities.
218: I played with that online demographic vote swing thingy, and it was really hard to get Texas to swing.
218:
There will be polls on that. If Texas is in play, I'm very unlikely to vote third party. And I do agree that Jill Stein and the people actively involved in the Green Party are rather stupid and uninspiring. I do think, though, that given that my vote is likely to be meaningless, I may as well use it for meaningless signaling that there are votes to be gained to the left of the Democratic Party center.
Even Trump getting only 51% of the Texas vote would be a political earthquake.
I guess I understand the knee-jerk reaction to "I'm going to vote for Jill Stein", given how patently retarded my Facebook feed looks right now.
I had to explain to a highly politically active attorney in my area that even with the concerns about the Clintons as being hawkish and lapdogs to industrial interests, their Supreme Court appointments have been just fine.
I shit you not, he responded with, "Clarence Thomas and Citizens United beg to differ", at which point I had to explain to this actual fucking credentialed attorney that Bill Clinton didn't appoint Clarence Thomas actually, and that only Republican-appointed justices actually voted in the majority on Citizens United and all of Clinton's alleged "corporate justices" dissented angrily.
220 -- since I have nothing else to do, I went and checked that thing. If you change nothing else from 2012 but changing the Latino participation rate from about 48% to 77% (the same level as for college educated whites) and put their votes at 88% Dem instead of 71% dem you flip TX. Since I've now flipped Texas, I can go back to my true calling of naming Trivers as a worthless dumbass who is signaling nothing but helping build an institution that supports Republicans.
I liked the I Am A Human Being ad. Sanders was introduced here last week by a Native man currently running for the legislature here in town. (It's a contested primary, so he didn't mention that in his intro, nor had he mentioned his impending Sanders into at the candidate forum the night before.) It'll be interesting to see how Sanders does here and in South Dakota.
I shit you not, he responded with, "Clarence Thomas and Citizens United beg to differ", at which point I had to explain to this actual fucking credentialed attorney that Bill Clinton didn't appoint Clarence Thomas actually, and that only Republican-appointed justices actually voted in the majority on Citizens United and all of Clinton's alleged "corporate justices" dissented angrily.
That's . . . really something.
Come to think of it - are there any reasonable Latinx VP picks for Clinton? Is Julian Castro viable?
44: I felt the opposite. From professional women in their 60s that I was insufficiently feminist for preferring Sanders to Clinton.
I certainly understand the freedom that living in a state that's not going to be in play lets you feel. Still, I think it really is worth comparing (1) enhancing third party voting with (2) moving the Democratic party. I'm not saying there's no coherent argument for getting a third party going, but I've never heard one that isn't half based on fantasy thinking about how people respond to threats and half based on the kind of ignorance your interlocutor regarding Clinton & Thomas showed.
Comparatively, using the Democratic party as a vehicle requires showing up, exercising some discipline, and working with people you don't agree with on everything -- each of which is also a sine qua non for getting a third party to be anything but a spoiler, in anything but a small otherwise one party polity.
Actually, to flip TX you don't even have to go as far as I did. You just have to get the same participation rates from Latinos in 2016 as you did from blacks in 2012, and have them vote 90% Democratic, less than the Dem percentage in the black vote in 2012. I mean that's probably impossible but if there's one man who could make it happen it's Donald Trump.
Agree, which is why my plan is to look at the polls a week before the election and vote Clinton if it's even a 4 percentage points difference and rando-third-party otherwise.
227: Aside from Castro, I've seen Xavier Becerra mentioned.
232: First I've heard of him!
I'm the proud offspring of hardworking #immigrants. Donald #Trump is the offspring of the @HouseGOP
https://twitter.com/RepBecerra/status/730453718982889473
Rolling Stone: Pro-Bernie Trolls on Why They Harassed Nevada's Democratic Chair. They contacted a couple of people who had sent threatening text messages to Roberta Lange.
My thoughts (1) They are, genuinely, weird and random people. It's a good example of why "nutpicking" shouldn't be used to draw broad conclusions -- they are clearly not representative. (2) It makes me think about Charlie Stross's comment that social media and cell phones provide a poor version of telepathy which human beings aren't well adapted to deal with. It's a dangerous thing to be able to send messages to a random person without any social context.
I voted for Jill Stein in 2012, and then Obama did end up moving to the left. So: Mission Accomplished!
225: That ad and the Immokalee ad are both wonderful. I love that he is unabashedly embracing those communities.
My computer was giving me trouble, and only just now read 126. The line took so long because it takes a long time to sort out people's stories.
We're headed for our own little Bernie disenfranchisement crisis here. So we had this big Bernie rally, over 10% of the population came, many waited for hours and all. And a couple of progressive organizations were going around registering voters. Great idea, right? No. The rally was on a Wednesday, but Monday that week was the last day you could register by filling out a card and giving it to someone. Instead, from Wednesday until election day, you have to go, in person, to the fairgrounds to register. The cards people filled out are going to sit in a box until after the primary, then they'll get processed.
People who filled out cards at the Sanders rally can vote in the general. Not in the primary. I suspect a nontrivial number will go to their polling place on primary election day (they're not going to get a ballot in the mail) and be surprised that they're not on the list. But I filled out the card!
I'm voting for Ralph Nader, because I want to vote my hopes, not my fears.
237
Yeah, that's a clusterfuck waiting to happen. Did the organizations make it very clear that the people who registered then weren't eligible to vote in the primary?
I dunno. I just went back and compared this, from Hillary at her most bitter dead-end moment in 2008 and this thing from Sanders.
I still think it's overwhelmingly likely that he bows out gracefully but that rhetoric and that level of complaining about the process being fixed and refusing to criticize his supporters and it all being about corruption is ... different, and not cool.
Yes, I'm sure the people who scheduled a rally for a candidate who depends on new voters for two days after the deadline for registration are on top of that.
For what its worth, the Denver group (headed by Marc Rubin) from 2008 appears to have been a group of non Hillary Clinton supporters pretending to be Hillary Clinton supporters.
Will Bower, Marc Rubin, Darragh Murphy, Larry C Johnson, and Lambert Strether were Hillary Clinton's biggest supporters in 2008. Not sure about Murphy and Bower but the other three have slithered away to either Trump or Sanders and their hate for Hillary Clinton is on over drive.
232: Can anyone point me to Becerra's DW-Nominate (or similar) scoring? I'm not finding anything that's specific to him.
Although I suppose House members tend to follow leadership, so membership in Caucuses is probably more informative for most Representatives (relative to Senators, anyway).
"Hi, we're registering people to vote, but if you want to vote for Bernie, don't fill out the card I just handed you."
I don't know what they actually said, but what matters anyway is what people understood. So if they said anything other than "go to the fairgrounds, now, as soon as the rally is over. Go!" they've done a real disservice.
243: This is like that time that [redacted author] showed up. Or Priscilla Paisley Puma.
Is there at least a ferris wheel at the fairgrounds? Or some funnel cake?
http://www.ontheissues.org/CA/Xavier_Becerra.htm
Becerra either is or is pretty close to being House Dem leadership - caucus chair, specifically.
248: Thanks much. There's nothing on his position on ekranoplans, but he seems otherwise solid.
249: I wonder which way that cuts? VP suggests a direct path to presidential nominee, and the House seems unlikely to flip in the immediate future. OTOH, Speaker >>>>>>>>>VP.
Have you considered the proposition that increasing the visibility of the Green party (particularly in national presidential elections) doesn't actually help any remotely liberal cause at all? Because (unlike a primary insurgent) it can literally do nothing except be a spoiler party that helps Republicans?
It's worth noting that this is, in fact, only true if you replace "particularly in national presidential elections" with "only in national elections". (Which is the slogan of the Democratic party, I know, but still...)
At state and local levels third parties do actually compete for real, and you see Green party candidates winning seats from time to time (I've probably posted this before because I love it but I love it and here it is again). Making them more prominent (if you're in a very safe area to do it) would actually help them do that more effectively, and help push things left at that level.
251: I'd be more convinced of this* if the national party weren't such a shitshow. IMO what would do the most good, third party-wise, would be a Progressive Urbanist Party (or whatever) that would A. explicitly run as the liberal choice in single-party municipalities, B. explicitly refuse to run Presidential candidates, because that's stupid in our system, C. serve as a conduit for liberal idealism in all the minor elections that they sit out and let right wing lunatics win, D. promote a narrative of good, liberal, local governance that the national Dems don't seem to embrace, and E. get some members into Congress as effectively another liberal caucus, overlapping with the CPC.
I'm not 100% sure even that would be beneficial (and I don't know if the system would handle it well; I'm aware of NYC's Workers Families Party (?), but don't know the specifics, except that they sold out to Cuomo, which isn't promising), but it makes sense to me in a few ways.
*and I have, in fact, supported local Green candidates
251, 252, I'd still rather have those people building the Dem bench for statewide, congressional and ultimately presidential races. It's great that in certain -- most? -- municipalities, the Republican party isn't a player. Whether states can end up like that, well, that would be great.
I'm sure Lambert Strether was one of those Daily Kos people who were furiously pro-Clinton. Like Armando who continues to be so.
I'm not 100% sure even that would be beneficial (and I don't know if the system would handle it well; I'm aware of NYC's Workers Families Party (?), but don't know the specifics, except that they sold out to Cuomo, which isn't promising), but it makes sense to me in a few ways.
The sellout to Cuomo seems to have been a pivotal moment that doomed it to irrelevance forever. Much like the Lib Dems joining the Conservative Party across the pond.
253: I would expect that'd only apply to most municipalities if weighted per capita. Most municipalities are probably suburbs (where there's incentive towards smaller jurisdictions) or small towns. Given that, my intuition is that most members of the class of municipal elected officials are Republicans (although the important ones are Democrats), although I lack proof of that. There's probably a "deep bench" joke in here.
And the nonpartisan tradition at the municipal level makes it easy to obscure affiliations.
253 and 256: in Boston they're all Democrats, but a lot if democrats are sell- outs to luxury real estate developers. Finding a way to promote good urbanist policies and having a reliable progressive caucus would be great.
They're all dems here, too. And they certainly look the part of a big city political machine.
227: The name I've seen floated is Tom Perez
65: I guess this is what it looks like when the second-place candidate in a primary actually has a lot of support and also has actual policy differences between him and the first-place candidate.
This seems right to me. I think the lesson of this primary is that the left is now a much larger and more vocal part of the Democratic coalition than party leaders had thought based on the experience of the past twenty years, but it's still a minority of the overall coalition. I don't think it has as much to do with Sanders personally as some people have claimed, except insofar as he noticed the increased strength of the left (or at least the potential for it) before most Democratic politicians did and saw that this was his chance to get his message out and start building a movement.
These delegates didn't participate in the caucuses? They don't check registration at the caucuses? Or they appeared to be registered at the time of the caucuses and now it turns out that they weren't really? The last one seems problematic. But again, I don't know facts at all.
The caucus atmosphere is a fucking madhouse (at least it was here, and I doubt Nevada was much different), and I can easily see how confusion over registration etc. could come about. I don't know if Nevada allowed registration on-site but Alaska did, and it was a huge mess in part because way more people showed up than they had planned for and lots of them were registering on site, either switching party affiliation or registering for the first time. Those forms (paper forms, filled out by hand in a chaotic atmosphere) wouldn't have been turned in to the state and processed until after the caucus itself and I can easily see some slipping through the cracks or being rejected for one reason or another. We had our state convention this past weekend too and while I guess there was some dissension over similar issues nothing nearly as bad as the Nevada stuff.
I don't know whether this was linked upthread, but it's a pretty good description: https://medium.com/@mamajeanab/the-nevada-state-democratic-convention-c55076db43a#.ph1tesww9
On the other hand an activist and high profile Department of Labor is something we haven't seen in a long time.
High-profile, maybe, but the Obama Labor Department has actually been quite active on a number of fronts. They've been doing a huge crackdown on employers abusing "independent contractor" status, and just today they issued a new rule doubling the threshold above which salaried employees don't have to be paid overtime.
Anyway, if HRC does want to appoint a high-profile Sanders supporter as Secretary of Labor the obvious choice is Robert Reich.
I actually kind of like Sanders in the Senate. He's just barely got this movement going and I think a world in which the younger Democratic politicians see him as someone to whom they can go for advice and coalition building will lead us to good places.
Sanders is a sheepdog, so of course he'll end up making nice with HRC, much to the delight of the pure-hearted suburban liberals. He is, ultimately, a fake radical. I doubt he'd ever enthusiastically encourage his supporters to engage in civil disobedience or direct action; just look at how uncomfortable the man was barely tolerating BLM members protesting his "movement". He's an FDR Democrat who affiliates as an independent and calls himself a socialist, but does he think leftists are so ignorant of history that they don't know that St. Roosevelt himself was opposed by socialists and communists as a lukewarm sop to business?
USA electoral politics is a sick joke, especially for the poor, anyone who cares about the environment, and for all of the victims of what will be Clinton's new wars, her intensification of Obama's and Bush's old wars, and the trade deals she undoubtedly has drafted already. Truly, there's NMM to the idea that HRC won't be the next president. And any of the bed-wetters who fear that Trump has a real shot are just as ignorant as the naïve Sandernistas. Green party supporters are even more laughable, and that's saying something.
Hey, bob, how is that you fancy yourself a Tiqqun-reading radical while also holding out hope for reformist nonsense like a UBI or the idea that the Democratic party can be meaningfully changed from within? The pamphlet wasn't titled 'The Coming Election'. What, you actually want the Democrats to become more like Scandinavian socdems or Euro Labour, so they can spend their next few decades neutering themsleves and becoming completely ineffective in opposing imperialism? We all knew your predictive capacities were blinkered, it seems your desires and dreams are just as narrow. If you weren't so insignificant you'd be an embarrassment.
When the working and marginalized classes are willing to take up arms against the managers and professionals--and not before--then we'll have real politics in this country again. As a precariously-employed-when-I'm-not-unemployed trailer park-dwelling, no-health-insurance-having resident of the midwestern wasteland who, along with the rest of my family, probably would lose the most were it to come to pass, I hope we have another great depression.
Enjoy the next four to eight years of comfort, unfoggedtariat. It's all that you'll get, though less than you deserve.
Now there's a novel rhetorical move: attacking bob from the left.
265: Plus, just in the last couple months, the fiduciary rule and the persuader rule. Which may not be high-profile, but they're big. DOL's been extremely active lately, and it's been making the right people apoplectic.
I get the impression that a lot of the executive branch agencies have been trying to get as much stuff through as they can, and have been pretty successful recently as well (Trump may be distracting the right wing crazies from being more usefully targeted). I'm still impressed with the CFPB's casually submitting for comment a new rule forbidding arbitration clauses (in financial agencies, because that's what they have authority over, not for every single thing). That didn't make nearly as much news as I would have expected.
Maybe they had to wait for Scalia to die for that one?
He is, ultimately, a fake radical.
bob's support for Sanders has puzzled me, also. Bernie is only a far-out radical in the context of the United States. Measured by that yardstick, Hillary is pretty far left, too.
bob is trolling. bob is always trolling.
I say this with respect for Bob as a master of the trolling arts, and perhaps with some arrogance, but I'm pretty sure that Bob would not be a Sanders supporter if there weren't anti-Sanders people here, so I am prepared to take credit for pushing Bob into the Sanders camp.
I miss the alternate reading of history thread.
274 is correct.
276 This is the alternate reading of history we deserve.
I think ogged's alternate reading is pretty plausible, with the caveat that the efforts our politicians channeled our fears and desires into were pretty damn ugly even though they did make us a prosperous superpower.
The framers of the Constitution were going for a system of government that didn't need exceptional leaders to keep it going, and that could withstand the occasional exceptionable leader. By that judgement, they did pretty well,* except for that whole Civil War thing, but let's not quibble over who killed who for how many years.
*From the perspective of continuity and stability, that is.
280 gets it right, though we've needed at least two (Civil War/reconstruction + New Deal/WWII), maybe 3 (first 2 +civil rights movement) moments at which we needed autocratic leaders to say ehhhhhh this Constitution sucks for what we need to do now and what the world needs us to do so let's basically change it completely while pretending we're not doing so. The capacity to do that (ie pretend that nothing has changed when everything has) is in some ways the greatest thing the English did for us.
And don't get me wrong, there are lots of aspects of our Constitution that blow ass and not in a good way and continue to fuck things up right and left.
Back on the politics thread, something I've been wondering: if any Republicans in the Senate are genuinely concerned with a Trump presidency, opposed to one even, should't they now be pushing to allow the Supreme Court nomination move forward? Is anyone even asking about this?
but I'm pretty sure that Bob would not be a Sanders supporter if there weren't anti-Sanders people here
What ya think, I'd be a Clinton supporter instead? Trump? I know you don't believe me, but the 'D" for 45+ years is the truth. Because I really fucking hate Republicans.
Troll I may be, but that just means anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, anti-fucking-social wherever I find myself.
Sanders is the only small chance of doing damage to the system, and catastrophe is preliminary to revolution. I have always hoped he and/or his followers would break away. I have also expected to be disappointed, which is nothing new.
Why I don't go CP. or some local autonomous unit, is too long for here, and not your centrist's business anyway.
And also, have the Democrats run any ads at all calling for the nomination to go forward? When I was following US politics pretty closely in 2008, I remember seeing ads on tv supporting the Bush FISA legislation. That's pretty fucking deep in the weeds (to most people), you'd think the Democrats could run some strong stuff about the Supreme Court.
Sanders supporter? I am a Clinton Trump opponent.
Sanders is the weapon at hand. And not so bad, compared to the two fucking rich fuck millionaires on the other same fucking side.
Your side. All your side.
283: Trump just assured them they will get whatever judges they want.
I keep forgetting that most conservatives' concern with Trump is only that he won't be "conservative" enough, not that he's a fascist whackjob who'd appoing a horse to the court if he could.
My favorite part of this election cycle is going to be when, after Trump wins, all the Clinton voters blame Sanders for her loss. Second favorite: post-election highlight reel of talk-show appearances by Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Conservatives are totally down with fascist whackjobs as long as they can be relied on to advance conservative policy objectives. Trump's problem is that they don't trust him to do that, with good reason.
291- One of the delights of this election is the proof we now have that conservatism never really had much of an popular base.
You can clearly see from the rage at Trump coming from places like the National Review and Weekly Standard, as well as the ambivalence of people like the Koch brothers, that the whole system they've spent the past 50 years painstakingly building to promote their extremely unpopular ideological agenda by hitching it to more popular but odious rhetoric that they don't actually agree with is collapsing before their eyes. Scalia's death just makes it even more apparent the extent to which they're fumbling on the one yard line. Given demographic trends, this was a crucially important election for them and now it's totally fucked.
Don't jinx us man. An economic crash, followed by an October terrorist attack combined with HRC campaigning as badly as we all know she can, could lead to regrettable results.
My friends are all excited about the new expansion for cards against humanity, with the Trump cards and the post-holocaust bug out bag.
I hope 293 is right but I think it's just more wishful thinking in a season when people left and right have been eager to drink their fill of wishful thinking. Sure, people voted for Trump because he's the ultimate dick but that doesn't mean that basically conservative ideas aren't very popular with at least 40% of the country. Maybe slightly less so on social conservatism where I think there is some real movement, but I just think it's wrong that American conservatism or the Republican party is anywhere near collapse or that Trump proves this. They have demographic problems but that's very different and has been true for a while. They're also more polarized, but Trump is a symptom of that, not a disproof of it.
conservatism never really had much of an popular base
Did we start talking about some other country when I wasn't looking?
I believe there is a distinction being made between cultural conservatism (yay America, boo blacks and foreigners and fags) and ideological conservatism (yay supply-side economics and tort reform).
That is, there had been a whole host of issues that were considered conservative third-rail litmus tests that Trump has proven can be shrugged off as long as you identify an enemy and call them names. The Republican base isn't conservative, it's just anti-liberals (as distinct from anti-liberalism, even).
That is, there had been a whole host of issues that were considered conservative third-rail litmus tests that Trump has proven can be shrugged off as long as you identify an enemy and call them names
That and Trump actually invokes some popular protectionism. Clinton kind of does some hand waving in the direction of working class people but you don't have to be very old to remember what administration gave us NAFTA and preferred trade status with China.
Conservative groups: if we do enough racist and resentful dogwhistling we can push through lower taxes, business oriented regulation, and never adjusting anything that can be construed a benefit to reflect inflation and the cost of living. Also no abortion for anyone and no birth control for sluts.
Trump: What if we go for explicit racist politics of resentment and everything else is optional? Also, are sluts really that bad?
I'm going to print out 293 and tuck it away in my wallet to take out and gaze upon wistfully at our darkest, direst political moments just like G.I.s do with pics of their sweethearts in all those WWII movies.
DailyPUMA found it strange that those who used to be for Hillary Clinton, and 8 years later have changed, also feel the need to hate her now.
It seems like these former Clinton supporters would have the perfect storm in 2016, the former candidate they backed in 2008, Clinton, is once again running in 2016, as is their new political choice..
Seems like more of a win win. Yet instead the opposite seems true, their new political love must win at all costs and Hillary Clinton is now evil.
It just makes one wonder if these more visible bloggers are being kick backed in any way.
Right, I get the argument. i think 298 and 300 basically are pure wishful thinking (except for trade, which I think is wishful thinking). There's a large section of the US in favor of anything that can be vaguely construed as pro business, including no environmental restrictions, no wage issues, lack of general business regulation, low taxes in general and on tje wealthy in particular, government is the enemy etc etc. that's a huge part of the conservative coalition and is popular with a broad segment of the public and would not be any different whatsoever in a Trump presidency. The only arguable difference is on trade, and Trump and his supporters oppose free trade for beong insufficiently pro-business (and even there there is no chance that an actual Trump presidecy would do much different on eg tarriffs). Republicans and Republican primary voters aren't giving any of that up, they just think that Trump is more likely to actually implement it.
As I suppose is obvious, I agree with 297. "Conservatism" as it has actually existed over the past fifty years means "hatred of black people and gays and Mexicans (and women if they don't accept being the sex class, subservient to men)." It definitely does not mean "opposition to progressive taxation and capital gains taxes and any environmental regulation," despite the best efforts of the conservative movement to conflate the two categories.
300 is meant more as a gloss on Trump's public campaign statements, not a prediction of what would happen with him as President. He said various things that would have sent other Republicans groveling to Limbaugh afterwards.
It definitely does not mean "opposition to progressive taxation and capital gains taxes
Did Congress just slip those Reagan and Bush tax cuts past some furious vetoes? Were they Democratic initiatives? Maybe the real purpose was to shrink gov't in order to hurt blacks, for the pure racist joy, and the Kochs and Waltons don't care about money at all?
This is where you people just get weird, detached, incomprehensible to me. Sick, frankly.
Did we start talking about some other country when I wasn't looking?
Show me a country where conservatism never really had much of an popular base, and I'll show you a country entirely inhabited by super-inteligent robots.
306 gets it right.
306, 307: Did you fall into a coma six months ago? This election has demonstrated that the white ressentiment wing is the largest wing of the conservative party. Trump has taken any number of non-conservative positions, and none of that hurt him because he's the first candidate in a generation who opening attacked non-minorities.
It's my inability to form a grammatically correct sentence that gives away that I'm a super-intelligent robot.
You don't get to redefine the entirety of a historical category (conservatism) based on one contemporaneous data point. You need to do a lot more work, like maybe Corey Robin's focus on hierarchy, which is cool, but then racism becomes a subset of conservatism and not really determinative. Carnegie and Louis XIV wanted to be above everybody. Robin's failure for me is not looking at Michel's "Iron Law of Oligarchy" and seeing that hierarchy justified by meritocracy shows its ugly face in technocratic liberalism.
Billionaires vs Millionaires in Hawaiian Resort War
308 - but he hasn't actually "taken" any non-economically conservative position, except on trade. He's a wild card who will run his mouth, and to that extent he's shown that at least some Republican voters don't demand rhetorical perfection on economic issues as long as they trust you as a "businessman" who isn't "politically correct." But there are essentially zero Republicans who don't want most of the old economic agenda and who don't think Trump will produce that agrnda is essentially zero -- it's still the party of low taxes and extremely light regulation of business in all areas, though Trump is taking the pro-business position far enough to affirmatively believe in corporate cronyism.
Trump's rise is not a sign of the impending doom if the Republican party, nor does it mean that most Republican voters (or even Trump himself) don't support economic conservatism. Even on trade, the one area where this is arguable, Trump amd his supporters' position is basically "America is losing to China because crippling regulation is killing our businesses; Donald Trump understands that and will also negotiate killer deals with the Chinese." The idea that we're at some end point of the popularity of economic conservatism in the Republican party and a near-majority of voters is wishful thinking and a liberal pipe dream.
As just one example, the way in which he actually plans to ho after China are by making (how - unclear) China stop subsidizing businesses, and by lowering the US Corporate tax rate so that we'll keep businesses here. Or, he rants against US corporate tax inversions -- but his plan to end those is to massively cut taxes on US corporations so that inversions will no longer be necessary. Meanwhile we'll end Obamacare, make Mexico pay for a wall, end "waste, fraud and abuse" in government agencies, end the national debt, etc etc etc.
I personally think the redefinition of conservatism = racism opens the door for Obama in 2012 to make 99% of Bush tax cuts permanent and still remain a liberal and progressive. Or pass TPP with almost entirely Republican votes.
I mean just to use Teo's example Trump specifically supports massively reducing taxes in the wealthy (top rate of 25%) and wants a 15% across the board cap on corporate tax plus an allowance for business owners to be taxed at no more than that rate for income they earn from their businesses. So, basically, a massive tax cut for the rich and a massive massive tax cut for business owners. And that's not a minor part of the campaign. Trump's own brand of conservatism is still about massive tax breaks that overwhelmingly benefit the rich.
China had to pay for their own wall.
Even being protectionist isn't that weird for a conservative. It's a bit weird for a Republican but there's lots of conservative protectionists both globally and historically in America. And you can have the protectionism with the low taxes no regulations stuff pretty easily.
NAFTA is not the problem. If NAFTA was so terrible, it's been 15 years since it was signed to make some type of change. To keep blaming the Clintons for that is ludcrious.
I would suggest the NAFTA argument is a clever attempt to disguise the real economic threat to the U.S. Economy, which is lifelong credit card debt that cannot be paid off by literally tens of millions of credit card customers.
The way credit card debt works is once a person reaches their "ability to pay the minimum only payment threshold", they are basically only getting 50% value on all of their credit card purchases, with the other half going to simply pay the credit card monthly minimum interest charge.
There is around 800 billion dollars in credit card debt. About 20% of that amount is paid annually in interest rate charges that never end. So every year 160 billion dollars in potential seeding money that could go to spruce up local economies instead simply goes back to the fed. Now add in student loans which are actually even larger than credit card debt and that could put the US middle class in a 300 billion to 500 billion dollar a year interest rate vortex of money they earned, that they cannot recirculate into their local economies.
All the focus on specific policy positions and specific ideologies seems, not wrong, but somehow orthogonal to what's going on here. Trump's appeal is so personalistic and emotional, connecting in to trade and race of course, but in a way that to me is consistent with, rather than driven by, conservative policy goals.
The way credit card debt works is once a person reaches their "ability to pay the minimum only payment threshold", they are basically only getting 50% value on all of their credit card purchases, with the other half going to simply pay the credit card monthly minimum interest charge.
AAARGH
There is around 800 billion dollars in credit card debt. About 20% of that amount is paid annually in interest rate charges that never end. So every year 160 billion dollars in potential seeding money that could go to spruce up local economies instead simply goes back to the fed.
AAAUUUUGHHH
Wait, explain to me again how credo card debt works.
The interest you pay on your CC bill doesn't go back to the Federal Reserve, for a start.
The Federal Reserve is something of an unhealthy obsession with certain portions of the U.S. electorate. According to the people selling gold, and despite a century of evidence otherwise, a fractional reserve currency is more dangerous than the crushing deflation that would be produced by a return to the gold standard.
323: I knew that was wrong.
Is the first part of 319 just an exaggeration?
319 could be correct in a very specific set of circumstances but isn't necessarily, and is phrased in a misleading way.
I think Walt in 308, Minivet in 318.1 and face accent in 300 and 305 come closest to describing what is going on with Trump and conservatism.
Trump has discovered that people who label themselves "conservatives" aren't necessarily all that interested in textbook conservatism, just as the Republican "evangelicals" turn out to be (as a group) often not very interested in "conservative" ideas about religion.
Conservative ideology serves a function for its Republican adherents, and Trump has provided an alternative approach that reaches the same goals but is simpler and more direct.
This is shown in part by Trump's deviance on economic issues such as the minimum wage and Social Security. Trump is likewise able to deviate on the Iraq War, and on fidelity to any number of religious principles, including fidelity itself.
For the plurality of Republicans, conservatism offers ideological cover for expressing contempt for losers. But "ideological cover" is merely another way to say "political correctness," and who needs that? Trump supporters are gratified to skip the middleman and just come out in favor of hatred. The ideological superstructure provided by the National Review is beside the point.
Similarly, religious conservatives aren't all that interested in the complex theology of Jerry Falwell -- not even Falwell Jr. cares. Do evangelicals believe in Hell because the Lake of Fire exists in objective reality? No. They have other reasons.
One reason is that Hell provides a rationale for abusing people who are Not Like Them. Turns out you can abuse those people without taking the whole religion thing very seriously.
Sure, Trump is going to find conservatism useful, but what he finds really useful is the epistemic approach that underlies US conservatism. As long as you adhere to certain underlying principles, facts and ideological categories don't matter.
Modern US conservatism had already accomplished a lot in separating beliefs from factuality. Trump goes one step further, and removes the necessity of having any kind of coherent philosophy.
Despite coming from Robert Kagan, I found this a helpful bit of interpretation:
[W]hat Trump offers his followers are not economic remedies -- his proposals change daily. What he offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger.
I wouldn't call Trump a fascist at the moment like Kagan does, but he could become one in office; I think that's less likely than flailing around like Ford or LePage, but even that would include incidentally letting movement conservative appointees wreak havoc on executive and judicial branches alike.
327: The Iraq War and anti-Bush comments are a good example. I would have said that saying "Bush did not keep us safe" was unsayable by a Republican, until Trump said them.
I don't think Trump gives a shit about most issues, and neither do the voters, so his advisors are free to fill the empty spaces in his head with conservative ideas, but I don't think these materially help or hurt him at the ballot box.
I certainly agree that attitude, not policy, is the cornerstone of Trump's appeal. What's wrong is thinking (a) Trump is not an economic conservative (b) Trump's rise signals that many Republican voters are not in fact economic conservatives (by which I mean the basic Reaganite low tax, low regulation combo) and do not in fact believe in economic conservatism; (c) the Republican party will split inti t conservative wing and a racist but economically liberal wing; (d) the Republican party will cease to be a major party and/or one committed to economic conservatism; (e) Republican voters don't "really" care about economic conservatism. Of course they do; they see Trump among other things as the candidate of the embattled business guy.
330 is spot on about the stupidity of these "economic conservatism is collapsing". The guy may have said that we should maybe tax people more and that bankers are "getting away with murder", but his tax plan on his website still nets the rich a hefty tax cut. Also, basically everyone, conservatives included, thinks Wall Street is getting away with murder at this point.
I think it shows AEI-style economic conservatism is not nearly as salient for a lot of base Republican voters as is often assumed, which is why they mostly don't care about his flip-flopping. But it is perfectly consistent/reconcilable with Trump's Era of Bad Feelings mode of politics; his supporters are not aching to raise minimum wage or Social Security, even if those were both made for whites only.
331 - Right. You know who really hates "Wall Street"? The local exploitative medium sized business owner or mid-level manager who wants the banks to give him a break, his taxes to go down, the government to stay the hell out of his business, the "global warming" hoax to end, and the blacks and the Mexicans and the feminists to get out or shut up but in any event to respect his authority. Those guys have been the Republican party backbone for as long as I can remember.
I don't see a split coming either (though anything is possible, of course), but you're overestimating the base's allegiance to what Minivet calls AEI-style economic conservatism. Sure they would like to pay less in taxes; I would too and so would everybody here. That's not conservatism, that's just self-interest. I question how much they actually object to anybody else's taxes getting raised, though, except in the most abstract sense.
Similarly, amorphous, free-floating dislike of the government really isn't based in any sort of cohesive philosophy. They are *perfectly fine* with government that benefits them personally. "Government is the problem" is usually about as thought out as "Duke sucks".
Duke only required a 3% employee contribution for its pension plan and gave all staff four weeks paid vacation from the start.
Also, in general Duke provided people who are me with very nice office space.
I don't really disagree, in that most people in general and conservatives in particular are incoherent idiots, but conservatives want and are absolutely willing to vote for politicians who will promise across the board tax cuts in exchange for defunding public and government services, except for policing and the military and prisons. That's actually a principle people in general and Republican voters are aware of and willing to vote for, for whatever reason. Trump hasn't remotely changed that or indicated that this isn't something that Republican voters actually believe in or care about.
Even with restored funding of public services, I'm not likely to ever have a 250 square foot office with a window and a 12 foot ceiling in a converted tobacco warehouse again.
No Republicans really only care about hatred. Everything else is negotiable.
I had a three-sided desk made out of something that really looked like wood even on close inspection.
339: Does that mean I can get a big office again?
Was your office in Brightleaf Square? My wife (who has worked for Duke more than a decade now) had a super-swank office there for a long time, with a window looking out at the Bridge That Eats Trucks.
onservatives want and are absolutely willing to vote for politicians who will promise across the board tax cuts in exchange for defunding public and government services, except for policing and the military and prisons.
I don't think there is a question that rank and file conservatives broadly support that stuff. What's been learned is that they don't deeply support it.
They get fed a steady media diet of why capital gains taxes are horrible, and sure, they eat it, but its the tribal racism that comes as dessert which they really like. Trump's popularity is based on feeding them dessert for dinner.
Yes, Brightleaf Square. I've put links to videos from that same guy here before. I knew him. My window was too far down to have that good of a view but it was that same building. I left more than a dozen years ago.
337: Right, and that's not even limited to Republican voters - in supermajority California, lots of habitual Democratic voters, as well as independents, will reflexively vote against tax increases, and "government is obviously totally bloated, I'm sure they can increase services without more taxes by really cutting the fat" is a common refrain.
When I moved out, I rented a truck. The Ryder guy was like "Don't go down Gregson."
If Republicans were conservative purists, they had approximately 16 better choices in this presidential election than Trump. (Maybe only 10 or so choices if we're talking purely in terms of economics.)
Who in this election was more of a conservative apostate than Trump?
Sure, yeah, Trump is, at heart, just another con man. And the best guess is that when it comes time to govern, he'll be as rightwing as any of those other goofballs. But rightwing ideology is not what he's selling.
Trump is selling epistemic freedom on a scale that conservatives only dreamed of in the past. You want to think women should be jailed for getting abortions? That's okay! You want to think that women are innocent victims of abortionists, and that they shouldn't be punished? That's okay, too! You want to think both of those things on the same day? Great!
Conservatives prepared the ground for Trump. It was they who discovered that evolution was bad science, that global warming was a liberal plot, that lowering taxes raises revenue, and that there were WMD in Iraq. So he owes the conservatives a debt that he will no doubt repay. But conservatism is only a tool to promote Trump's real ideology -- an ideology that is perfectly consistent with a higher minimum wage or government support for Planned Parenthood.
I'll support a tax increase as long as the money is used to build more bridges like the one in 344.
I think there's a problem with talking about whether or not conservatives mostly go in for AEI conservative economics and that kind of thing, because the descriptions that we have to use for those policies are slogans they've spent decades memorizing and will loudly yell, vote for, and say they support at the slightest provocation. But that's not necessarily the same thing as saying that what those phrases describe is what they support - or at least not in its specifics. (I suspect that they believe that those policies are ones that will result in what they want, and are shocked and confused when it turns out they don't come anywhere near doing that for about as long as it takes for someone to remind them of the hated enemy.)
The problem is that Trump cheerfully offered them what they really wanted, and understood those phrases to mostly mean, in very direct terms. And also tossed in some additional slogans of his own which didn't bother them particularly since they knew that when he said "Iraq was bad" he meant "I hate the liberals and anyone like them" just like they knew that when Glenn Beck said "Iraq was good!" he meant that too. And when he said we should raise the minimum wage they knew he meant for them, and when he said we should lower/eliminate the minimum wage they knew he meant for those other people, and so on.
It's worth remembering that if you rent a truck, the one thing you are very specifically not insured against is driving under something too low for you to drive under.
I am infuriated that nobody has set a compilation of truck-roof-bridge collisions to the Blue Danube.
Wrong. What it needs is Yakety Sax.
My wife went on a business trip to Durham and I sent her that video and told her to get pictures and see if she could see a truck being destroyed. She did not seem as excited about this idea as I was.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
There's certainly a faction of conservatives afraid that Trump won't use any political capital to lower SS payments or shrink Medicare. Trump says he's going to replace the ACA, but such conservatives know full well that he's not going to do anything major, because nothing major actually works without a bunch of magic asterisks. That said, I expect him to move heaven and earth to get something called Trumpcare, even if it's a fairly modest change. (Trumpcare might end up a lot like Montana care, which has higher fees for medicaid expansion folks).
The faction of conservatives that want a credible threat of war with Iran aren't likely to get what they want from Trump. I'd expect Trump to be a lot less deferential to Israel than conservatives currently opposing Obama would like, on the principle that Trump doesn't defer to anyone.
The Israeli government right now does seem unsuited for the sort of oh-you're-so-great dishonest sycophancy required to get really great stuff from Trump. Any world leaders/diplomats willing to do that pretty aggressively could probably make out like bandits though.
I expect a President Trump would let the existing foreign policy establishment run foreign policy (as he seems to know almost nothing about it and care even less), resulting in more or less the same shitty FP we've had for half a century or more.
And also tossed in some additional slogans of his own which didn't bother them particularly since they knew that when he said "Iraq was bad" he meant "I hate the liberals and anyone like them"
I'm on board with 352, but I think this bit could be a little more precise. I'd propose that Trump is essentially saying to people: "Because I can say whatever the fuck I want to say, you can, too. And you don't ever need to let anyone make you feel badly about that."
That stance is fundamentally hostile to liberalism. And it cuts to the heart of why Trump can do things like -- for example -- calling McCain a loser for getting captured.
But with arbitrary interference on behalf of his personal friends and/or to take vengeance against perceived slights.
The Israeli government right now does seem unsuited for the sort of oh-you're-so-great dishonest sycophancy required to get really great stuff from Trump.
They might be able to con him into it, though. He has a weak spot for tough-guy leaders - look how keen he is on Putin.
361.2: Also McCain, despite the fact that he's the secret-not-secret boyfriend of like half the DC press, isn't widely beloved among the conservative base. The idea that Republicans in general would freak out about that was always projection, at best. He's a loser and a RINO and so on as far as most of those voters are concerned.
He's a loser and a RINO and so on as far as most of those voters are concerned.
And let us remember that this is NOT because McCain departs from conservative orthodoxy in some meaningful way. McCain is all about "limited government" and low taxes and perpetual war and whatnot.
McCain said in public that Obama isn't an Arab -- that's the kind of shit that got him in trouble with the base. McCain was weak. He told the truth sometimes, and thus was a servant to reality rather than the master of it.
366 last That and immigration, the objection to which stems from the same source.
I remember that bridge from when I worked briefly as a cross country truck driver in the late 70's. I didn't hit it but I did have to back up in heavy traffic and take the side road.
Back then there wasn't a sign with flashing lights, just a little bitty sign on the right side of the bridge.
I assume the area was less gentrified then. All the warehouses were offices and restaurants when I was there. I watched 9/11 in the bar.
370: Then good on you for spotting it.
I just remember slamming on my brakes not far from the bridge and saying words I didn't even know I knew.
saying words I didn't even know I knew.
So very funny.
It was Dutch. In a crisis, all humans can speak Dutch.
I don't remember what the area was like then but was probably warehouses. It was an interesting time. I got to see the worst parts of all of the major cities. I especially remember Hunts Point in the Bronx. It was all burned out /bombed out and scared the shit out of this mid-west farm boy.
Back on the generalized primary thread, this sort of thing is why I'm develop a contempt for Sanders and a disgust for everyone who fills my FB feed with wankerific defenses and self-righteousness:
Consider a few points: Sanders has in the last three days essentially declared war on the institutional Democratic party, giving it an ultimatum to open up its doors to people who want 'real change'. Fair enough. But his entire stated strategy is to do well enough in the final run of primaries that super-delegates, the embodiment of the institutional party, decide to drop Clinton and switch their allegiance to Sanders.It's incoherent, infantile bullshit, but we're supposed to be so respectful of him as the embodiment of all that is True and Noble, opposed to that worthless
I can't remember; is there a tradition in America of telling people who haven't been screwed that they're being screwed? Is that tradition owned by admirable people? I guess this is different because a bird.
Right. You know who really hates "Wall Street"? The local exploitative medium sized business owner or mid-level manager who wants the banks to give him a break, his taxes to go down, the government to stay the hell out of his business
Yep. Consolidation of banks means fewer options when it comes to loans, etc. Because I hate myself, I listen to conservative talk radio now and then and I think many liberals would be surprised at the level of anger at the banks. This is probably due in no small part to the perception of bankers as coastal-urban-Jew elites, but I think liberals do often fail to realize just how fragmented American business interests actually are.
380 Yeah, but it's really hard to peel someone off on an issue basis against their tribe in the grander scheme.
379: I believe the name for that tradition is "contested primary".
Seriously though "we didn't lose! we wuz robbed!*" and "bring on the superdelegate saviors!" were exactly the things the Clinton campaign was saying when Obama started to clear the 'can't be caught' point. There's nothing unprecedented here, and if it's enough to hate Sanders then it's enough to hate Clinton as well.
*And so on through the next four chapters of it. It's probably a good example of this kind of thing, though I can't be certain because I only read about it rather than wasting that much time watching the whole thing.
382 I didn't think much of Clinton's conduct then, so telling me that he's no worse than she was doesn't tell me anything good about Sanders. If people are saying that he's uniquely evil, that's stupid. If they're saying that he's playing a dangerous game, to no meaningful advantage, the fact that Clinton also played a dangerous game and it worked out doesn't mean anything.
Marshall makes a valid point comparing Clinton's investment in the party's future in 2008 and Sanders' investment in the party's future in 2016. It's not irrelevant in weighing their behavior. It's especially not irrelevant in considering the likelihood of an appeal to superdelegates working out. Clinton in 2008 could believe that she had relationships and more to offer superdelegates who switched (or switched back) to her. What's Bernie got? Nice party you got here, be a shame if someone was to burn it down? OK, it certainly can be more than that, and whether it is depends on what Sen. Sanders himself is telling these particular individuals.
The arguments from the Sanders campaign don't seem appreciably different - if anything they're probably slightly stronger ones* because they're grounded in less open racism. They're basically the same "I'm the stronger candidate for the election and (something something) will of the people!" That's certainly what Sanders and his campaign have been kind of but not too explicitly pushing, anyway.
The "BERN IT DOWN**" stuff as far as I can tell is coming from nuttier supporters and, frankly, they've got nothing on 2008 as far as that goes. At this point in 2008 the "Clinton or Bust!" people were actually a surprisingly large percentage of her voters (even though I still believe that a lot of the PUMA people were sketchy operatives). The Times article Marshall links to tries to link it to Sanders, but they really have to stretch their description of what people said to the point where it's pretty obvious that they weren't getting that for real.
*Meaning: "oh that's very slightly less bullshit, maybe."
**Seriously though I've seen multiple articles now worrying over whether Sanders is willing to burn the party down/whatever. And no one is using "Bern it down"? Shame on them all.
If Sanders is still attacking Clinton after California, I may -- MAY! -- start to pay attention again. But until then, all of the people, including a bunch of my very good friends, who are whining about his conduct are a bunch of thumb-sucking, pearl-clutching concern trolls (or they want access to or jobs within the Clinton administration). This is what democratic politics looks like, weenies.
Marshall makes a valid point comparing Clinton's investment in the party's future in 2008 and Sanders' investment in the party's future in 2016.
Either you take Sanders at his word -- that he's trying to change the Democratic Party the Clintons built -- or you don't. If you do, then he has every reason to stay in the race until his glass slipper turns into a pumpkin. If you don't, then you're Josh. As for me, it sure seems like Sanders is looking to maximize his leverage, and that's it.
Seriously though "we didn't lose! we wuz robbed!*" and "bring on the superdelegate saviors!" were exactly the things the Clinton campaign was saying when Obama started to clear the 'can't be caught' point.
Are you really not understanding the inherent contradiction between "superdelegates are evil" and "superdelegates will save us"? What you're linking isn't remotely the same, largely because Clinton started the primary with more superdelegates. She wasn't asking party insiders to flip their support because they were corrupt elites arrayed against her.
I should also add here that, in 2008, I also wanted her to shut up and go away, because it was a done deal. The fact that losers always act annoyingly doesn't make them right, nor does it make them winners. It makes them annoying losers. Have some fucking self respect.
Ok, the Clinton campaign's conduct in 2008 was indefensible. It worked out, though, because her advocacy of Obama after the end was unrestrained, and because she wasn't blaming her defeat on dishonesty of the party people (including elected officials) all over the country. When push came to shove -- at the end of the primary race -- she shrank from pursuing an appeal to superdelegates strategy.
It also worked out because Republicans had had 2 disastrous terms, McCain is a nut, Sarah Palin is historically awful, and when the economy crashed two months before the election, the Republican candidates had no ideas at all (including enthusiatic support of the Republican Administration's policy).
And just to be super-clear, I wouldn't care at all if he (or she in 2008) were just keeping his head down, making his case, rallying the troops until the end. But instead there are all of these self-contradictory, bad faith arguments and slanders that don't elevate whatever issues he claimed to care about, that don't prime his followers to do a goddamn productive thing beyond this election, that don't add to union membership or raise the minimum wage or relieve debt. They don't do shit except to convince a bunch of morons that, if not for EVIL and CORRUPT Demoncrats in Nevada, Bernie would be winning.
What a fucking hero.
Like I said, Carp, feel free to give me a shout if Sanders is still on the attack after California. Until then, relax and enjoy the magisterial spectacle of small-d democratic politics playing out as the godlike Founders* intended.
* Or officials in the DNC.
In the run-up to the county and state conventions, I'm on calls with Sanders campaign folks, and while many of them are people I like -- and I'm genuinely looking forward to meeting Margo/ K/dder at the state convention -- the level of paranoia I'm running into is really mind-boggling.
(On the other hand, the interest in going to Philadelphia, from folks I know in both camps, is really charming.)
386: As far as I can tell that's everything the Sanders campaign has said as well. He was talking about appealing to superdelegates relatively early in the race as well, and largely in the same way his campaign is right now.
Oh, and this?
Are you really not understanding the inherent contradiction between "superdelegates are evil" and "superdelegates will save us"? What you're linking isn't remotely the same, largely because Clinton started the primary with more superdelegates. She wasn't asking party insiders to flip their support because they were corrupt elites arrayed against her.
Do you actually have a bunch of links where Sanders or his campaign said this kind of thing? Put up or shut up.
On the other hand, the interest in going to Philadelphia, from folks I know in both camps, is really charming.
It's a really nice place. And you can take a train from the airport right downtown.
You know, watching this all unfold, I think I might skip voting this year. There aren't going to be any significantly contested local races on my ballot, MN is safe for the Democrat party, and I don't even want to vote for Keith since he threw BLM under the bus last winter.
And frankly? I'm not sure that Clinton, if she wins the general, which looks pretty unlikely at this point, would nominate any prochoice people to the Supreme Court. She's a creature of the Eastern banking establishment as much as any candidate in my lifetime. If a bill to found the EPA came across her desk, do you actually think a former Wal-Mart board member would sign it?
I don't think I've seen "Eastern" as a modifier for "banking establishment" since the last time I was in a place haunted by Williams Jennings Bryan.
Yesterday's PUMAs are today's political grownups! Truly there are second acts in American lives! Seriously, peopoe, turning this Nevada subplot into a synecdoche for the Sanders campaign is some straight-up bullshit. Related: Debbie Wasserman Schultz occupies a position on the spectrum of evil somewhere between the Koch brothers and the New York Yankees.
The gimp gets it right in 385-6.
It's like we're watching Watergate unfold and everyone is still talking about the Checkers speech.
And no one is using "Bern it down"? Shame on them all.
I put out a DMCA notice.
I'm not sure that Clinton, if she wins the general, which looks pretty unlikely at this point, would nominate any prochoice people to the Supreme Court.
I think people are unnervingly complacent about the general election, but come on now. It's still easily in the more-likely-than-not range.
Also I find it hard to believe that, of all the suspicious compromises I think she'd be happier to make than she should be, nominating a pro-life justice has got to be one of the least likely ones imaginable.
I hope I'm overreacting. Really.
I'm hearing the same kind of thing from Sanders-supporting folks around here, though, about Clinton not appointing pro-choice judges. I mean come on, just how deep in the rabbit hole do you have to entertain, even for a minute, that particular thing?
I'm not sure that Clinton, if she wins the general, which looks pretty unlikely at this point, would nominate any prochoice people to the Supreme Court.
Wait, what? That's nuts.
She's a creature of the Eastern banking establishment as much as any candidate in my lifetime. . . . a former Wal-Mart board member would sign it?
What's odd about that juxtaposition is that the original criticism of the Cintons was that they were too Arkansas -- Whitewater, criticisms of state money being funneled to Hilary Clinton's law firm, etc . . . and her membership on the Walmart board would be part of that web of parochial Arkansas politics. So it just feels odd to see that now being offered as support for her being a creature of the Eastern banking establishment.
All that said, Von Wafer is correct.
I dunno, the original criticism was, what, twenty five years ago and at the time when they were moving from Arkansas to where the Eastern banking establishments had a big presence?
Nominating a pro-life justice is just a bizarre rumor, though. Is it based on the "safe, legal, rare?" stuff? Or just some kind of general malevolence on her part?
I mean, I can imagine her nominating some sorta questionable liberal-John-Roberts sorts. But the part of her State department legacy that's genuinely something to be proud of, as opposed to more questionable, is pushing more for women's rights at a global level and it's really hard for me to believe that that's not one of the things that she genuinely cares about.
I didn't mind Hillary sticking with it in 2008 and don't mind Bernie now, though I'll grant that both could conduct themselves with a little more class.
But as Von says, there's an expiration date on this.
By the way, politicalfootball, I wanted to note that Nate Silver ended up agreeing with your criticisms of him.
I'd actually like a fair-minded Sanders supporter to look at the two things linked in 240 and see if they come across as equivalent.
I'm actually very sympathetic to the notion that Sanders' indefensible behavior now is similar to Hillary's indefensible behavior in May 2008, but I dunno. The Sanders move seems to be to spread the notion that the party in general and Hillary in particular are affirmatively corrupt and captured by big money and that his supporters alone reflect true democracy. That's pretty different than Hillary's last-ditch arguments in 2008 (in a closer race) which got much less close (AFAICT) to "burn everything down if I'm not elected because fuck this party" which is something Hillary wasn't even willing to hint at in 2008. Of course some of her supporters were but the Sanders stuff seems to be at least in part the candidate, not the internet nutballs. (Plus, the overall level of bullshitting supporters seems to me much higher with Sanders throughout the campaign, but I realize that's more controversial).
Anyhow, what Clinton did in late 08 was indefensible and what Sanders is doing now is either as indefensible or substantially more indefensible, so it shouldn't be defended.
I don't think I'm a fair-minded Sanders supporter. His candidacy wore thin for me about a month and a half ago. Still, this, from back in the day, is probably worth considering (read the comments).
406:Thanks, Nick. I hadn't seen that.
I will say this, though: Sanders has more message discipline than any candidate this side of George W. Bush. And his message has been relentlessly consistent: monied interests own American politics; the Clintons are agents of monied interests; the Democratic Party is a tool of the Clintons. His tone of voice has varied now and again, but not often and not much.
Nominating a pro-life justice is hard for even me to understand, because although I do believe Clinton is capable of any kind of deal, I can't see what ideological tendency she would trade with Republicans for that. It is not as if she would have a hard time getting a tough on crime or pro-business candidate through.
Maybe a full on death penalty opponent who is pro-life? Would liberals make that deal, a final end to the death penalty in America in exchange for more difficult abortion access? There may be Catholic judges out there to make that a possibility.
I could also see Hatch making the opposite deal, presuming Repubs retain a veto point, accepting a pro-choice justice who is a nightmare in most other respects. If I squint really hard.
Trump is a closet liberal put up to running as a conservative troll by the Clintons, who are themselves closet conservatives who want to roll back abortion rights. Got it!
It's a measure of the collective psychosis that we're entertaining discussions of whether Hillary Clinton would nominate a pro-life Supreme Court justice. And "Eastern banking establishment" is too coy by half. Just say "Jews", Nat. This is a safe space.
Pwned by the the true antisemite. Twas ever thus.
Okay, maybe a radical economic leftist judge who is openly pro-life could get through, although I doubt it, and don't know that there are any William Douglass left out there to get nominated.
There is negative infinity chance that Clinton would nominate a pro-life judge. Let's move on, for the love of god. Apparently there were more reasons than learning to code to completely drop out of society for the past several months.
410: Uhh, but it's the truth.
There's something funny about asking Sanders to not say Clinton is corrupt, captured by banksters and autocratic in the Party. Cause these are objective facts.
Or not funny.
PS:I expect to stop saying it myself from July to December, because all the innocent lurkers could get demoralized. Or sumpin.
I'd forgotten about the RFK thing in 08, totally indefensible, though maybe just a call to keep campaigning through June because who knows what will happen. But definitely indefensible.
412 seems to be literally the position of the where-are-they-now-PUMAs turned Bernie or Busters linked upthread.
It does seem to me that if you're gonna run a Democratic primary on the theme of not only is my opponent wrong, but also the corrupt tool of monied interests" you probably have a special obligation to walk your rhetoric and your supporters back once it's clear you've lost. And maybe Bernie will do that after California! But he can't just say "I lost, thanks for all your hard work guys" he has to affirmatively turn towards walking back the corruption stuff and getting his supporters out to vote for her. I hope he does so!
Since this is the politics thread, have we discussed this enraged order from the Texas judge in the DACA/DAPA immigration case yet?
I am torn between astonishment that he is issuing an order that seems unenforceable on its face (requiring hundreds of DOJ attorneys to receive ethics training*) and worry that this level of vitriol and continuing mistrust bodes very ill for life after the Supreme Court decision, regardless of which way they rule.
I can't even bring myself to think about what could happen if the administration has to give him the personal contact information of thousands of young immigrants, as he is demanding. Whoops-a-daisy 'accidental' release of the info? Leak to rogue ICE agents? The whole thing seems horrible.
*I was reminded on Twitter that many attorneys already have to receive ethics training to keep up their CLEs for state bar membership, but I don't know if that would cover all of them.
I think you all need to give a lot of the Sanders supporters a break. My understanding is that a lot of them are young. I was young once and seem to recall I had an idealistic and simplistic view of how easy it would be to change the world for the better and it was incomprehensible that anyone could be against this. Now I am old and cynical. I voted for Bernie hoping to move the party to the left but realized it probably would not make any difference.
It's also possible that what you're hearing is a small subset of insane Sanders supporters. This poll certainly seems to indicate that.
When do you think Clinton had an implicit guarantee from Obama that she would be his Secretary of State? I don't know, but I bet it was right around the time she threw her support behind him (which, people seem to forget, wasn't an entirely smooth transition). My point is this: it's incumbent on the winner rather than the loser to make the first move. What is Clinton going to offer Sanders for his support? We won't know, I suspect, until after she's inaugurated.
418 -- does he? Clinton's got to offer Sanders something to make it worth his time, and she's got to offer his supporters something that it makes it worth it to them, and that's got to be better than "back me or the kitten gets it" which is pretty much lazy blackmail.
See this Davies classic although obviously you have to allow for the fact that Trump really is the absolute worst. But still.
422 - I actually think I do know the answer to that. Not until after Obama was elected, and then she took the job after some negotiations and guarantee. In any case, not until well after she was out and had enthusiastically told her supporters and donors to switch to Obama, which was in June '08.
I actually think I do know the answer to that.
How? How in the name of all that's good and pure could you possibly know this?
I'm not sure why Sanders' attacks on Clinton, to the extent that there are many which is pretty low all things considered*, are substantially worse than Clinton's attacks on Obama in 2008 - she went after him in the full coded-racism/unqualified-lightweight ways that the Republicans immediately did afterwards. But even if he is being meaner it's worth noting that there is one genuine difference between '08 and '16 which is that Sanders and Clinton genuinely disagree about a lot of stuff, including big direction-of-the-party things.
Clinton in 2008 arguing that she wanted as many delegates as she could bring to the convention in order to have (legitimate**) power when it comes to voting on issues, party platforms, etc. would have looked ridiculous, since the difference between her and Obama as far as that stuff went was very small. But Sanders does have a legitimate argument to make there, even if it is clear that we're talking about the relevant size of the minority he shows up with. And that's something that he's been explicitly saying is what he wants to do so it doesn't really require much in the way of charity to attribute that goal to him.
*Yes I know there's this crazy guy on facebook who says really horrible and obviously insane things about her therefore Sanders does. Whatever.
*Because, due to the democratic electoral process, I mean. Clinton or Sanders showing up with the delegates they had when it became clear they were showing up with a minority as opposed to the delegates they would have if they continued through California would effectively under represent the voters he speaks for.
That's true, its on Clinton now. If she offers to appoint Bernie as Labor Commissar, all this shit goes away.
If Clinton promises to merge the Department of Homeland Security with the Department of Energy into the Department of Socialist Prosperity and Public Safety and appoint Sanders the Socialist Prosperity and Public Safety Czar then all is forgiven.
Plus the electoral benefits of millions of old white men having strokes and/or heart attacks can't be understated.
426 - Well, it's what the public reporting at the time said. And I know a former Senate staffer of hers who said so. And a guy who was and is super close to Kerry who said that Kerry had basically been promised the job in the first term until Biden nixed him after the election. So that seems like good enough for me though of course maybe there was some secret deal.
But also why would Clinton hold out for some deal
to be Secretary of State with a guy she (then, probably) distrusted). She was a sitting US Senator. And she endorsed fully and completely by June 7. So a secret dangling of the Secretary of State prize seems very unlikely.
And I think the basic deal with US presidential primary politics is that if you lose you then endorse without a lot of quid-pro-quo negotiating, because that saves your standing in the party. There may be deals cut early on.
And I think the basic deal with US presidential primary politics is that if you lose you then endorse without a lot of quid-pro-quo negotiating, because that saves your standing in the party.
Bernie doesn't give a shit about his standing in the party, so its going to take something more in the trade.
Yeah but there's an implicit deal behind all that that says "narrow primary losers get things they want". Maybe Bernie feels he isn't in on that implicit deal and wants to make it explicit. Fair enough, especially if he feels he's been knifed by the Dems so far- which, really, he has.
Right but 431 is exactly the problem. And if he goes full- or even half-rogue then he really will be the epic asshole that I've feared he might be.
Well, it's what the public reporting at the time said. And I know a former Senate staffer of hers who said so. And a guy who was and is super close to Kerry who said that Kerry had basically been promised the job in the first term until Biden nixed him after the election.
No kidding, you got the information from PGD's guy who said that Obama was just itching to trade away Social Security, didn't you? That guy had the skinny, it's true. Like I said, I have no idea if they cut a deal, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me to learn they did.
And I think the basic deal with US presidential primary politics is that if you lose you then endorse without a lot of quid-pro-quo negotiating, because that saves your standing in the party.
Wait, what? This isn't how hotly contested primaries have ever worked, is it? And you're saying that you honestly believe that Clinton left the race without negotiating with Obama -- again, I have no idea for what exactly, though I do at least know that he agreed to retire her campaign debt. Don't take this the wrong way, my brother, but you're the deranged guy in my social media feed.
To be clear, I don't think he'll do so, but the person he is (non-party, grandiose bullshitter) and the rhetoric on which he's run make me nervous.
434 - I don't think that's right. There's a kind of bargaining that goes on but the basic "will you enthusiastically endorse and get your donors to do the same" isn't in play, at least from anyone who wants back in the tent and not eternal enmity. They don't end campaigns like warring enemies in Game of Thrones. But it's harder with an outsider like Bernie.
But it's really up to Clinton as leader to make a reasonable offer to Bernie. Until that happens, Bernie's entitled to campaign hard for himself. And if she makes a reasonable offer and he blows shit up, he's a dick, but she has to make the offer first, surely.
Checking, Clinton also says in her memoir that she wasn't asked to be Secretary of State until after the 2008 election and was very surprised by the offer at the time. Maybe she's stone-cold lying. But she's a lawyer and I believe that stone-cold lying (as opposed to shading the truth heavily) is not something that would come naturally to her, not to mention that unless she and Obama spoke and told no one (which - why?) someone would have leaked the story of an earlier deal by now, but not a peep.
I don't think 437 is right, and also another 3rd hand girlfriend in Canada tells me that "offers" have been made by Clinton to Sanders, for whatever that's worth. It's really not like a Parliamentary system forming a government, for example.
How's 437 not right? Sanders has a following, Clinton wants that following for herself, she needs to buy it off him. Sanders' voters don't belong to Clinton, she needs to earn them.
I think the principal reason Bernie hasn't formally accepted anything is that there's no real reason to yet. He's got a lot of voters in his camp and can afford to hold out. After that, it's not quite clear what she can offer that he can hold her to. And lastly, there's the fact that a good number of his supporters are insane and he's probably trying to figure out of to talk them off the ledge.
Do you actually have a bunch of links where Sanders or his campaign said this kind of thing? Put up or shut up.
Are you fucking kidding me? I don't have to leave TFA to find Sanders lovers--I'm inclined to say including you--bemoaning the corrupt and inherently illegitimate superdelegate system. Until it became obvious that Sanders would never win the majority of delegates, it was consistently said that superdelegates were a dishonest prop for a failing Clinton, and I commented here and elsewhere that it was hilarious when Sanders turned on a dime to announce that his whole campaign depended on them but his supporters didn't know it yet. You're out of your fucking mind if you think Sanders was pro-superdelegate all along.
Meanwhile, Von Wafer's position seems to be, "Clinton was a racist monster for campaigning to the bitter end in 2008, which is why it's so admirable that Sanders is attempting to damage the Democratic Party in the same way in 2016."
Clinton's dead-ender campaign was stupid and insulting in 2008, and Sander's dead-ender campaign is stupid and insulting right now. But feel free to hold that the former was contemptible while the latter is the pinnacle of democracy now. Sure, why not, you're the noble ones.
440: She shouldn't have to buy off members of her own party at all. If their guy loses they should fall in line. If you want to pressure her leftward when she's in office, that's what your members in Congress are for.
And lastly, there's the fact that a good number of his supporters are insane and he's probably trying to figure out of to talk them off the ledge.
This would make sense but doesn't seem to be what he's actually doing.
Meanwhile, Von Wafer's position seems to be, "Clinton was a racist monster for campaigning to the bitter end in 2008, which is why it's so admirable that Sanders is attempting to damage the Democratic Party in the same way in 2016."
You really think this is my position? Either way, that's pretty stupid: both the position itself and your claim that it's mine.
445: Have you seen Lethal Weapon? Are you not yet too old for this shit?
the original criticism of the Cintons was that they were too Arkansas
That wasn't *my* original criticism of them. That kind of anti-flyover country bias doesn't exactly play well around here.
It's still easily in the more-likely-than-not range.
So why are there so many polls that show Trump with a non-trivial edge over her?
And "Eastern banking establishment" is too coy by half. Just say "Jews", Nat. This is a safe space.
Dude, you're living in the past. I deal with those folx all day long, and Jews might be slightly over-represented, but you're more likely to be talking to an Italian or a WASP or an Armenian or somebody.
Or just some kind of general malevolence on her part? What malevolence? I don't think Hillary Clinton is evil, it's just that her supposed ideological commitments are an inch wide and an inch deep. It's all a mess of entangling alliances and horse-trading in smoke-filled rooms with her. Just like her pal Kissinger, I think she's able to convince herself that whatever corruption she wades through in the morning is all washed off nice and clean by dinnertime. I think she could appoint someone weak on reproductive freedom to the court and loudly proclaim that this was the mature, sensible thing to do, and anyone who didn't like it should go back to Kenya. Because she's a feminist. And half the people here would defend her because we all have to be mature, sensible people who live in the real world and we understand that you can't get everything you want, and making compromises on your supposed core values is the mark utmost maturity and sensibility.
419 I just read the order, and it's amazing. (I can send it by email if you want). The conduct of the government attorneys, if what the judge says is true (and he quotes their statements to him from the transcripts), is egregious, and it's not like the usual remedies would work here.
Tbh I am also not sure where 443.1 came from and was taken aback by it. (I have no dog in this fight except the giant ghost dog on this plane that is making the connection, and therefore my data-heavy work activities, slower than continental drift. I guess it would make me happy if someone were illicitly streaming "Ghost Dog.")
Natilo, was today the worst day of your life, or has that trend been altered? Genuine concern.
I also don't understand why VW keeps thinking, thread after thread after thread, that it's some hilarious display of ignorance to suggest that Obama wanted to trade away SS benefits in a grand bargain. This was his official position for years. His spokesman talked about it. His proxies on the Sunday shows talked about it. He said Very Serious things about the debt and belt-tightening and entitlements. But Boehner couldn't/wouldn't make it happen, so it didn't happen.
Somehow, VW's take on this is that Obama obviously never wanted a grand bargain, and that anyone who thinks he did is a hilarious conspiracy theorist. Because 3 years of trying to get a grand bargain was, I dunno, performance art or something.
It's really fucking amazing. Apparently, anyone who seems to want something, but doesn't get it, clearly never wanted it. That's what I teach my kids, too. "IF YOU WANTED IT, YOU'D HAVE GOTTEN IT. LOSER."
The polls that show Trump with a non-trivial edge are (1) sketchy outliers and (2) the bump you see when the primary ends and someone is the clearly selected candidate. There's nothing interesting there yet. If we get past the Democratic party convention and it's still there then it's time to be terrified.
Also I guess the rant in 442 is a "no I don't have anything there", then, right? Because it sounds like what you're saying is that Sanders has been consistent the entire time but that a lot of people have been uneasy about the superdelegate thing*, and a few random crazy people you can find on the internet have been random crazy people on the internet. Which is pretty weak sauce given the "CONTRADICTIONS!" and "EEEVIL!" bullshit you've been throwing around.
The biggest complaint that I can remember people having about superdelegates is that they were being reported in Clinton's totals along with pledged delegates even though, reasonably enough, they weren't actually pledged delegates that she had won. And that that habit - on the part of the press - was influencing the race. And, you know, it was.
*Which has been true of any number of people who didn't support Sanders as well, because if you're going to have a primary it's pretty sketchy to have those other delegates floating around. But it's also been clear that they weren't interested in overturning anything, so it didn't matter.
This is a pretty fucked up time for a lot of reasons. I mean, obviously, I don't have it nearly as bad as most of the people on this planet, blah blah blah, some of my best friends are sell-out politicians, etc. But I do take comfort in the fact that there's no way I'll live long enough to see most of the disastrous effects of the current crisis.
I just don't see why anyone would trust any of these people further than they could be thrown by an average, spherical cow.
446: It's an ugly caricature of a position that you genuinely seem to hold. The proof that Sanders is reasonable to do what he is doing is that Clinton was doing a similar, unreasonable thing 8 years ago.
Every reference I've seen to things like 240 is from Sanders people who seem to think that it vindicates, rather than indicts. Clinton in May, 2008 behaved badly. Sanders, in May, 2016 is behaving similarly to Clinton in May, 2008. The conclusion is, according to you, that this is a glorious exercise in democracy.
I suppose I should go back to TFA and read your praise for Clinton in May of 2008. I'm sure it's there, right?
Wrt the superdelegates, wasn't the biggest criticism of them up until February that the concept was created as a way to ensure that party bosses would get to go on the big convention junket and whatnot? I mean, it's not like the fix was ever out, y'know? It's maybe a tiny bit more democratic to have superdelegates who are dreary grey bureaucrats do the rubber-stamp thing at the convention rather that having a bunch of old men named "Boss" meet up in a SFR and hash it out secretly. I get so sick of the Bernie stuff at the other place -- most of the people who seem to have fallen hardest for that shuck are people who really ought to know better, given how cynical I remember them being about electoral politics in 1994 or whatever.
451: jeez, dude, don't drag me into your parenting fiascos. It's bad enough watching you fumble your way through political discussions. Also, no kidding: stop putting words in my mouth. If you want to ascribe a position to me, you know the drill: point to a comment or italicize something I've said. Otherwise, go holler at someone else, okay?
It's an ugly caricature of a position that you genuinely seem to hold.
Either quote me or point to a specific comment. Otherwise, you're arguing with the voices in your head.
451.3 is a tough but fair pedagogy.
I think VW's point is more about the inherent unknowability of high politics without looking at the complete record, which is sort of true but also sort of not true -- you can definitely come up with probabilities, even though IMO you should always be humble about confidently believing that you understand something just because you've seen it reported -- reporters often make huge sins of omission and missing context that makes their stories very misleading. But it's also not really right to just think that we know nothing.
We not know nothing. We mugwump. Or maybe we anti-masonic party.
My great parenting success if that we're now up like a 90% flush rate. Once the basic habit is set, we can advance to "if it's yellow, let it mellow".
I was reading back through some of TFA from 2008 because it seemed like a good enough way to double check my instincts about that primary. The Florida and Michigan thread had some pretty great moments, but I think Jackmormon won it right here.
It only confirmed my "no no one is going to break the party" and "yes it's normal to contest a primary all the way through" beliefs, and also Sanders and Clinton come off as being a lot nicer to each other than Clinton was to Obama in '08 so that's good for when the inevitable reconciliation happens. Also it only confirmed my sense that Sanders is way more justified here than Clinton was then, because he at least has an articulable goal in showing up at the convention with a chunk of delegates.
Hello from 1995! It must be so exciting there in the future with equal rights for GLBT people, all the benefits of 20 more years of environmental consciousness raising and lots of exciting CD-ROMs on a variety of improving topics.
Jackmormon won it right here.
Wow.
The past, the present, and the future are one to her.
This Machine Points Its Six-Shooter At Fascism And Makes It Dance, Hombre, Dance!
Looking back at the thread linked in 461, I see that I was saying exactly the same things in 2008 about the Clinton campaign that I'm now saying about the Sanders campaign. Points for consistency, I guess.
467 to 454.3, if that needs to be made explicit.
I use and endorse what VW has been saying in this thread and especially 385 and 386.
Also, Jackmormon should have a job with 538.
Nothing Clinton did in 2008 could match the horrible smugness of Obama's "likable enough" line. That she was able to work with him after that proved to me she was presidential timber.
Also, I'm mad at Jackmormon for holding out on us about her time machine. Could you at least let us know who won the 2024 election?
This was worse than the open race baiting? Or the 'imaginary hip black friend' bit?
I mean, we're talking about a campaign that leaked pictures of him in Somali clothing to the Drudge report, and then when denying it said "But let me say this: I have no shame or no problem with people looking at Barack Obama in his native clothing, in the clothing of his country." (And then, in case anyone thought this was a mistake made the same claim again just a few seconds later.)
471: It's possible you are taking me a little more seriously than I intended.
You are pointing out all kinds of objectively reprehensible things, but none of that cut to the quick like Obama's casually tossed-off reply.
The gun Zimmerman used to murder Trayvon Martin ended up selling for over a hundred thousand dollars. (The winning bid wasn't by "Racist McShootyface" but still looked a little suspicious. It was high enough over 100K though that whoever legitimately won it would still have had to be over that.)
I mean, we're talking about a campaign that leaked pictures of him in Somali clothing to the Drudge report,
I remember arguing about this about the time, but they really didn't. The pictures were public (and Obama wasn't keeping them a secret) before the Clinton campaign had anything to do with them. What got leaked was internal Clinton campaign emails sending the pictures around, one campaign worker to another, which is probably indicative of being kind of racist themselves on the issue, but wasn't making anything about Obama, including the pictures, that wasn't public before.
I haven't looked up the facts again, so I may be a little garbled, but I will eat my hat if there is any sense in which the Clinton campaign leaked pictures of Obama that had not been previously published to the Drudge Report.
I still need to buy a sun hat. Between trying to minimize how ridiculous I look and how much money I spend, I don't think I can worry about edibility.
Straw is your only hat for eating. Braise it for a while, and it's not bad at all.
A decent straw Panama hat costs like $80.
When Drudge posted it it was supposedly from a Clinton staffer. It could have been a clever ruse, I suppose, but that was certainly the story at the time. I mean, the photos were public in that they weren't secret but someone had to find them and distribute them, doing that was credited to the Clinton campaign, and now that we have that Penn memo outlining a strategy of, basically, doing that exact kind of thing I think it's fair game.
The photo was taken in 2006. He was already a senator. Wouldn't that have been a widely covered trip?
Also, I'm mad at Jackmormon for holding out on us about her time machine.
Amusingly, JM was replying to JRoth who had written, "What I don't understand is how the country that voted for Gingrich, et al. was also the America that really wanted to vote Ted Kennedy or Bernie Sanders as President."
Also, reading that thread makes me feel very old for some reason.
479: As long as you're clear that the only evidence that the Clinton campaign 'distributed' them, rather than a staffer emailing them around internally, is Drudge's word for it. No one else got them from the Clinton campaign, and the campaign denied it.
Well, and the really (really) ugly follow up I linked to and the fact that we know it was an explicit Clinton campaign strategy, sure. I'm not sure what more evidence there would reasonably be above and beyond those three things, except for maybe Clinton herself holding a press conference to show it to everyone.
"Excuse me while I whip this out. "
Well, and the really (really) ugly
No it wasn't. It was certainly disingenous, but "Golly, pictures like that shouldn't be a problem," is straightforwardly true. They shouldn't be a problem, and it's ridiculous if they were. Ugly would have been anything intimating that it is reasonable for voters to be put off by the photo.
we know it was an explicit Clinton campaign strategy
No we don't. Explicit Clinton campaign strategy would mean that you had a Clinton spokesperson on the record saying that 'it' was their strategy, where 'it' is any version of "We should make people think he's a Muslim foreigner so that they won't vote for him."
"But let me say this: I have no shame or no problem with people looking at Barack Obama in his native clothing, in the clothing of his country."
if we're supporting a woman or an African-American for President, we ought to be able to support their ability to wear the clothing of their nation.
That's not even remotely "it shouldn't be a problem."
Also yes we damn well do know that. I vaguely recall it being discussed here, but couldn't find it quickly in TFA so I gave up.
Added:
"It also exposes a strong weakness for him - his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and values."and
What could hold him back
Lack of Experience
Lack of American roots"
Penn was pretty direct about trying to cast him as not American enough.
We're not going to get anywhere with this. Not 'fundamentally American', presenting him as weirdo from Hawaii who doesn't have 'American values', seems to me to be completely different from the kind of birtherism that would seem really morally culpable to me, but I get that you disagree and we're not getting anywhere with it. (Completely different? Argh. I'm arguing, so I'm overstating. It's not good, and Penn should burn in hell, but it seems to me to be within the realm of normal spin in the way that, e.g., the Clinton campaign actually using those pictures negatively against him would not have been, and I'm resisting your lumping the two categories of behavior together.)
his native clothing
It's clothing of the country his father comes from and remained a citizen and resident of throughout his life. Out of context, I wouldn't find that phrasing objectionable. In context, it's disingenuous as fuck, but I wouldn't call it ugly. I'm not expecting you to agree.
It's Somali clothing not Kenyan, though. I mean, he was in Kenya along the border, but it's not traditionally Kenyan. (And I'm pretty sure his father was Luo, which would mean Western Kenya not Eastern.)
And even if it was traditionally Luo it's still not his native country - that would be the one he's actually from, namely America. In the context of an explicit campaign strategy to portray him as not American enough it's pretty blatant and ugly stuff.
I think that stuff from 2008 is indefensible, thoughbas the quotes show they were also obviously attempts to dog-whistle while maintaining plaisible deniability.
I'm on the fence as to whether the recent Sanders stuff is more indefensible (it's still indefensible! If you are defending it you look like a jackass!). The difference is that the Sanders stuff now is not just nasty but plausibly read as a threat to take his supporters away and/or split the party because "corruption." I don't think he will persist in this line or that he could actually split the party even if he wanted to, and my money would be on this all being forgotten soon, but the rhetoric is different and the danger is different, particularly given the way in which he's conducted the campaign, his ties to the party, and the person many of his supporters take him for.
I usually find myself silently agreeing with LB here and even when I don't I can see where you're coming from but I'm surprised to find myself vehemently disagreeing here. I mean:
in his native clothing, in the clothing of his country."
and
the clothing of their nation.
Are just really blatant appeals to racism and birtherism (avant la lettre? I can't recall the timetable), and seem to go beyond dog-whistling but that's at the very least what they are.
It's as disingenous as it could be. For that statement specifically, I am cutting maximal slack, because I think the Drudge thing is bullshit. I do not think that the Drudge Report getting internal emails from the Clinton campaign was likely to have been an intentional leak by Clinton. At which point you've got a quick campaign response to a shitty situation, where they're being hammered for something they didn't intentionally do.
But, yeah, that wording needs all the slack I can cut it. It's not good at all. If I thought it was thoughtfully crafted for effect, rather than an immediate response, I'd think it was very bad.
The Clinton campaign had also been feeding stuff to Drudge for the entire primary, too, so it's not like it would have been a change of strategy so much as just doubling down on the nastiness and race baiting that had already started to show up.
I'm not sure if he is anymore. He was still at the time, but aside from the occasional "Drudge Poll Shows Trump All Powerful Messiah" stories after the debates I haven't seen his name thrown around in a long time.
495: He certainly had quite a run. Am I just imagining that I remember that Drudge would post his newsletter on alt.showbiz.gossip, and everyone would make fun of him for pretending that he had all this insider knowledge?
497: I don't think so Maybe you've confused drudge and rock.
Drudge's cousin Chinua Achebe died recently.
Breitbart is the dead rightwing noise machine person, as far as I know. I don't know if Drudge is dead, but I don't remember hearing it.
His site is still up. I just learned that Bernie Sanders almost killed Barbara Boxer. Or something.
Also that naked ladies are going to perform Shakespeare in Central Park. Which is probably right on your way home.
And "Eastern banking establishment" is too coy by half. Just say "Jews", Nat. This is a safe space.
I know Congregationalist church attendance has been plummeting, but are the WASPs completely extinct these days?
The RFK thing went thud, then splat, and was exhumed by people looking to cause a controversy.
Why was Hillary Clinton being asked to drop out of the race when she ended up only 59 pledged delegates behind. Barack Obama got 248 caucus delegates, Hillary Clinton only got 124, and we know the caucuses were rigged. Florida was rigged, and not only was Michigan rigged, but Obama and his two minions dropped out of that race on the final day for filing or non filing and then went around telling Iowans Hillary Clinton was trying usurp their role in the nominating process.
As for the FED and the credit card debt. Whether or not you agree the FED ends up with the interest rate payments is only a small portion of the issue. The 160 billion dollars a year in never ending interest rate charges and therefore consumers being charged double for every purchase they make once they reach their ability to pay limit and cannot pay down their debt, along with the student loan debt issue still amounts to 400 - 500 billion dollars a year in money that consumers earned, and did not get to spend. And then there is zombie debt and foreclosures sucking out who knows how much a year from consumers. That's why the economy is in a constant stall.
Just look on your credit card statement (if you have one) Look how much of your minimum payment goes towards interest, and how much goes to principle. Usually its around 50% goes towards the interest rate payment, and only 50% goes towards principle reduction. If a person can only pay the minimum every month, they pay 50% towards interest rate charges.
If a consumer can pay more than the minimum but ends up spending more as well, meaning they can never pay down their debt, their paying anywhere from 25% to 50% in interest rate charges every month.
Salon is completely in the tank for Bernie Sanders, they are financially indebted to a Trump ally.
The gall to accuse Hillary Clinton of caucus fraud by Sander's supporters is, galling. Sanders has gained more delegates from caucus fraud than Hillary Clinton has gained from her super delegate advantage.
