Now just one minute. So when Bernie calls himself a socialist, it’s A-okay, but when Claire calls him that, it’s an insult? Yippee, great logic there.
On a sober note, the pre-primary, primary election and general election are all different. Being a self-described “socialist” may be ignored in the pre-primary fun, but the voters who actually turn out in the primary are a sober lot mainly. And they know full well exactly how the term “socialist” will work in a general election. It would cause severe candidate flame-out and an election of a Republican. Claire is merely describing what most of us reality-based political junkies actually know. I haven’t seen much change in that reality in my entire 66 years.
But, feel free to be snarky about Claire, the messenger.
What the heck does this mean: “…popularize the social-democratic liberalism that Clinton has spent her entire career trying to expunge from the Democratic Party…”
If the author wants to prove points, it’s probably a good idea to include some examples of statements like this.
Dude, wow. Sen. McCaskill has a weight problem. So what? Attack her shitty politics, but let’s tone down the weight stuff. You’ve really undermined your argument here by making it about her body.
That said, I think Sanders is ill-equipped as a person to be president. My opinion, sure, but I don’t see very much about his personality that helps me to believe he would get much, if anything, done on domestic policy and I’m not clear he has any diplomatic or foreign policy experience to speak of. Further, he is a less than inspirational speaker so I can’t picture him “rallying the masses” like Obama or even W. Actually, this is a major weakness of Hillary too. Anyway, in my opinion a Sanders presidency would be a nightmare for this country and a W like blow against the Democratic Party. But we don’t have to worry about that. Even if he somehow knocks off Hillary, which he won’t, the GOP will murder him in the general. It will be mandate city for the GOP for the next three-four cycles and we can say bye-bye to all the work Obama did on our behalf.
Sanders admitting he is a socialist is fine, but won’t help him win the nomination because most democrats don’t see themselves that way. I admit to myself silently that I am a closet socialist, but in the light of day say that I am a liberal. Even though I agree with Sanders on most of what he says, I support Hillary 100 percent. Sanders could never get half of what he is promising thru congress, and would spend most of his time fighting republicans. This is not to say that Hillary wouldn’t have a hard time too, which she will. It is just that moderate democrats see Hillary more in the middle and feel more at ease with her. I predict that 8 or 10 years down the road there will be room for a socialist to win the presidency because the younger generation coming up will demand it.
And of course the fact that the youngest of that contingent would have been born in 1980 and spent the first decade of their life, and longer as you move up the age range, having their heads stuffed full of Cold War era paranoia and propaganda has nothing to do with that polling…
No, it could not be right. Obama got something like 80% of the African American vote, Bernie to date has almost none. Clinton leads among moderate and conservative Democrats, white and nonwhite. Don’t make the mistake of thinking the Democratic Party is made up of a lot of liberal leaning people who will happily be pulled to the left. It’s not.
Hillary gets the moderate vote among white and nonwhite voters and the Democratic Party does not (yet) skew to the far left where Bernie seems to be. He can promise tax cuts for the working class and tax cuts on the 1%, so can HRC for that matter. but it won’t happen, not with the current House being led by the tea party.
The Democratic primary electorate is not all from NH, Madison, Wis., or Burlington Vt, it is also composed of less educated, older, Southern and nonwhite, more religious, voters who are far from uniformly liberal. HRC almost certainly has that segment wrapped up.
My home town of Milwaukee elected several Socialist mayors in the last century. That is, they belonged to the Socialist Party of America. The last was Frank Zeidler, who served from 1948-1960. So Americans weren’t always so knee-jerk terrified of socialists.
It was the Luntzification of the language that deliberately and with malice aforethought turned “socialist” into a dirty word. Most baggers who snarl that Obama is a socialist know neither the definition nor any actual people who are socialist. They are parroting what they hear on RWNJ media.
Of course Bernie will never be elected president, but I thoroughly enjoy him re-popularizing the term. Go Bernie!
That money that the old man and I get each month from the gubmint, the money that was put aside by our employers? We call them our Socialist paychecks.
And the opponents of FDR, the best known and most productive Socialist, told us he was a traitor to his class. The RWNs have definitely co-opted an ordinary word and put it on a par with pedophilia.
The problem is that words mean whatever the person screaming the loudest says they mean.
“Liberal” can mean anything, but you know it’s bad. Same for “socialism”. But most voters can’t actually define it. It’s just bad. That’s why every Democrat running for president has been “The most liberal
[blahblah] ever to run for President”.
Similarly, all “Conservative” means is…well, it’s definitely something good. That’s why the GOTPers fight hard to out-conservative each other.
Ask a Romney if he’s conservative, and his answer will be “Gosh darn tootin I am!”. Ask a Clinton if they’re liberal and their answer will be along the lines of “Of course not!”
I’m not a fan of disparaging people’s weight either, but how come there’s not nearly this level of freak out when entire threads make fun of Christie for his weight? Yeah I’ve seen some occasional backlash on those threads, but never anything like this.
