It was nice of Mr. Carter to vote for someone somewhat younger than himself.
Jimmy Carter is a great man, with great intelligence, who has always had the right priorities. Now go ahead…
Jimmy Carter is a great man, with great intelligence, who has always had the right priorities. Now go ahead…
Go ahead what? No one here beats on anyone that voted for him in the primaries. The issues are with those that took their toys and went home during the general because of some insane purity test Sanders can’t even meet.
During the lengthy talk, Sanders mentioned the Unites States’ low voter turnout rates and how that tends to swing elections for conservatives.
Since I don’t have a copy of the transcript of the discussion, did they also bring up voter suppression? Did they bring up a possible solution for voter suppression and low voter turnout? Did they address the ways in which changing demographics are reshaping the country?
Or was it just two elderly White men sitting around bitching about how the young people need to get off their lawns and go back to the good old days when they had some power?
Nothing wrong with voting for Bernie Sanders in the primary. Everything wrong, after Clinton won by a landslide, to maintain that the Democratic Party should overturn the vote because Bernie. (Whose success, such as it was, was based on the democratic farce and monument to class inequality known as the caucus.)
Jimmy Carter did none of that.
shrug…and??
To be clear, I’m old enough to have lived through Carter’s presidency. I’m not dragging Carter. However, I believe that he remembers this country and it’s political parties from a different time.
The fact is, things have changed and you can’t stay stuck in a particular time period. It’s nice that Carter thinks that global peace and human rights are important topics. However, this country has extremely pressing issues to deal with here and now. It’s not an issue of isolationism; it’s an issue of this country turning into South Africa. IMO, this doesn’t help our current situation.
Legacies are such gossamer things. poof.
Jimmy WHO?
He’s still a great man, with great priorities. He voted for Bernie in the primaries. Big effing deal–a lot of people did. I don’t think many people here has a problem with that. But please, stir the pot over how some people voted a year ago.
So? Big deal. (WHY IS THIS A STORY?)
A lot of people voted for Sanders in the primary (but no where near as many as voted for Hillary.)
What counts is who you voted for (and if you voted AT ALL) in the actual Presidential Election.
I would like to believe that Carter voted for Hillary and not for Johnson or Stein.
After all, if anyone knows that “Elections have consequences” it’s Jimmy Carter.
The mere fact that this is even a story seems like the low-level Russian psy-ops is at it again doing everything it can to fracture the Democratic Party (pretty successfully I might add.)
How much longer are we going to re-litigate the Democratic Primary of 2016?
Get over it. Bernie lost (and lost BIG.)
Hillary lost the Electoral College by less than 80,000 votes spread across 3 states (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan) while crushing the Orange ShitGibbon by over 3 million votes in the election.
It’s over. Move on to the 2018 mid-terms or WE ARE TOAST.
Every single House seat is up for re-election and 33 Senate Seats (23 Democratic Senators, 2 Independent Senators, and 8 Republican Senators.)
We CANNOT AFFORD to keep up this back-biting and internecine warfare if we are to keep the Senate from getting WORSE and take back ANY part of OUR GOVERNMENT.
If we keep this up, the House stays as it is, and the Senate moves to a 60+ seat filibuster-proof REPUBLICAN MAJORITY with Hair Furor in charge. If that happens, we deserve whatever happens to us (Official Christian Nation status, LBGQT (or whatever the fuck it is now) declared non-persons, Fundamentalist Christian re-education camps, Repeal of MULTIPLE Constitutional Amendments, Worldwide Depression, and Nuclear War anyone?)
It’s nothing as sinister as Russian psy-ops. It just some media outlets trying to generate a few page clicks.
That is what we thought in 2016 too.
We were WRONG.
That’s a mischaracterization of both Sanders and Carter.
calling her “unpopular” in his endorsement.
Carter is justifiably highly regarded for his activities as an ex-President, but it’s more than a little ironic for him to comment on any active politician’s popularity. He barely beat the Nixon-pardoning doofus Gerald Ford in 1976, immediately pissed off large portions of the Democratic caucus by submitting a budget that canceled a large number of federal water resource projects, and his final Gallup approval rating just after his obliteration by Reagan in 1980 was 34%.
His vote for the left insurgent Sanders is also ironic, given Carter’s past experience with another insurgency from his left:
Carter wrote that the most intense and mounting opposition to his policies came from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which he attributed to Ted Kennedy’s ambition to replace him as president.
However, all of this is understandable given the antipathy that existed between him and both Clintons since 1980 (via wikipedia):
Carter and Bill Clinton did not have a good relationship, as Clinton had blamed one of President Carter’s policies for losing the governorship of Arkansas in 1980. Although Clinton was the first Democratic president to be elected after Carter, the Carters were snubbed at the first Clinton inauguration. Carter has publicly criticized the morality of President Clinton’s administration including the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the Marc Rich pardon. Carter was also disenchanted with Clinton’s post-presidency activities, including the latter’s $350,000 speeches and “glitz of his star and billionaire studded annual Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meetings in New York”. While Clinton was seen as a “rock star” who made “his trips to Africa on board the lavish private jets of his billionaire buddies” and had an “sleek, expensive library…for being mostly about self-aggrandizement”, Carter remained humble as he flew commercial airlines and founded the Carter Center to incubate good ideas.
Due to his status as former President, Carter was a superdelegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Carter announced his endorsement of Senator Barack Obama over Senator Hillary Clinton. Carter cautioned against Hillary Clinton being picked for the vice president slot on the ticket, saying “I think it would be the worst mistake that could be made. That would just accumulate the negative aspects of both candidates”, citing opinion polls showing 50% of US voters with a negative view of Hillary Clinton.
Given this history of bad blood between Carter and the Clintons, it’s not surprising that he voted for Sanders in the primary and gave only a tepid endorsement of Clinton in the general.
I have a much higher regard for Carter than I do Sanders, but IMHO they both share one notable attribute: a tendency to engage in sanctimonious, holier-than-thou finger-pointing in their public comments.
I agree it’s counterproductive to dwell on the nomination fight. I just don’t see how the Russians are involved.
Hey, I have an idea – let’s spend time and energy fighting about something that doesn’t matter.
I mean, hey, it’s not like there’s anything more important to worry about these days.
No one here beats on anyone that voted for him in the primaries.
You must be new to the comment section here at TPM
You mean that same caucus system that Obama bested Clinton in during 2008 and that she still took for granted when running against Sanders?
Bernie Derangement Syndrome. It’s a real thing.
Here’s the transcript.