Sorry to break the news but I registered in 1972 as a Democrat and have voted a straight Democratic ticket since.
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But your views sound very Republican. You like the status quo and you donāt want anything that shakes it up. Until Trump I would have said you are in the wrong party.
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Nope. Dems donāt do litmus tests or pledges or any of that happy horseshit. We can happily disagree on how to deal with a wide variety of issues, and still be Dems. In fact, Iād say thatās what makes Dems better than Cons. Dems see nuance, Cons only black and white.
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What do you mean you donāt do litmus tests. That is what the Hillary supporters here have been imposing when ever they say they can shut up and get in line or those damn kids just want free stuff.
Of course all Democrats hear Bernieās message. And almost all of us support his ideals. Many of us were torn at the beginning of the primary because we really wanted to believe such things could be accomplished. So we listened.
Bernie paints with a broad brush, but canāt fill in the details. He canāt pay for any of it without a laughably impossible 40% tax increase. When trapped in a corner, he bursts out with a cry for revolution, which also aināt gonna happen. Too many people have jobs, families, mortgages, obligations that preclude overthrowing the established order. He kept repeating the same memes at every debate, past the point of eyeroll. His sketchy past would sink him under a tsunami of negative ads if he were ever nominated. So a lot of us figured Bernie is a great addition to the party, but not presidential material.
Then Bernie started to turn bitter and accusative. He was losing because everythingās rigged. The Democratic Party (from which he gets resources, but continues to castigate as corrupt) should fall in line with Bernieās demands and its superdelegates should just give him the nomination. Heās unhappy and dividing the party when unity is needed. Basically, heās biting the hand that feeds him.
Sanders and his supporters could accomplish a lot of their goals by becoming part of the larger organization and helping it succeed, not by whining, making specious accusations and tearing it down. Itās really up to Bernie. So far, heās going the tantrum route and it wonāt end well for him.
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Hmmmmm ā¦ maybe, just maybe, heās angling for the VP position ā¦ on Trumpās ticket.
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I hate number-free bloviation.
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So if Bernie canāt really run as a third-party candidate, might he nevertheless mount a serious write-in campaign rather than endorse Hillary? That could genuinely drain off some needed votes.
Thatās not the same as saying you aināt a real Democrat because of it. Thatās just saying youāre fulla shit. There are a lot of liberals that are fulla shit. Doesnāt mean they arenāt liberals. Means theyāre just embarrassing to be around. Like the anti-GMO people or the anti-vaxxers.
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I read Sandersā trash. His work indicts him. End of story.
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I am not for Bernie. I think he is a deeply flawed candidate. I just think it is sad that Hillary, or at least her supporters, have asked Democrats to check their ideals at the door to vote for her.
I guess, if Hillary thinks that just being Hillary is sufficient reason to vote for her, we are all going to suffer in the coming months. She has to reach out and give us a message of hope. Americans need a real reason to vote for her beyond her sex and obvious technical competence.
Hillary needs to tell us how she intends to move America forward. Her position papers are nice and deeply nuanced but they arenāt inspiring. Frankly if she had a worthy opponent she would be torn to shreds in the general. I mean if history has proved one thing it is Republicans would rather vote for a real Republican than a Democrat pretending to be a Republican. Fortunately she has Trump, but he is showing signs of gathering traditional Republicans around him. She needs a better narrative than she has announced so far if she hopes to move forward.
In two months, no one will remember Toddās interview with Bernie today. In six months no one will remember Bernie Sandersā wins and losses. They wonāt remember his stump speech either, except that is sounded like an old man shouting across a river about something.
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Not sure I know what āfluffing a horseā means and even less sure I want to know, either. 
Just want to throw in that I think itās an excellent idea on TPMās part to gray out flagged comments but leave them visible, curiosity once having killed a cat and all.
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One of the things that have deeply disturbed me in this cycle is the word āestablishmentā is given an undeserved negative connotation and I fear the bad image may stick. The reality is any movement that seeks to make a long-term commitment to its cause and to sustain their work for many years must inevitably be āestablishedā and its institutional memories must be accumulated. And much of this process is far from sexy and glorious ā it takes a lot of boring, tedious efforts, and it cannot be done on a whim and with a short-term attention span. As organizations expand some people need to take this job as their full-time gig as professionals and to get āestablishedā as such.
Of course, some by-products in that process can be counter-productive. āEstablishedā organizations can become rigid and structurally inflexible, a social, psychological distance tends to widen between those professionals and rank-and-filers, and such issues must be addressed and solved. But this āestablishment = inherently bad therefore must be destroyedā meme is counter-productive and in fact, unacceptable. It takes āestablishedā organizations to make positive changes in the long term, and making organization āestablishedā itself takes a lot of sustained work.
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Bernieās foolishness regarding the SDs is more than hypocritical. It is the exact opposite of what he āsaidā that he was all about and why he was running and what he is against.
That he has done a full 180, flip flopped on his key issue and now is trying to somehow discredit his opponent due to his absolute lack of ethics and morals is the epitome of phony and dishonest.
I guess he wants the Bern to extend to his own ass because he now isnāt just going to lose, heās staining his entire legacy and self worth.
His spin is pretty much comical and yet he wants to be taken seriously. He is insulting his own followers and everyone else that he is attempting to sell this horseshit to.
Smell the Bern, is more apropos.
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Naw. He wrote that shit a long time ago. And reading these original articles this morning, I think, at worst, they are just fuckin embarrassing. Buncha trite hippy bullshit. Bernie was clearly smokin the old ganj. To fuckin EXCESS.
Iām actually embarrassed for him.
Hunter Thompson used to say that heād never advocate drugs and alcohol for anyone else, but that theyād worked for him. (No, they didnāt, but thatās another argument.) Donāt think ol Bern can say the same thing.
File this in the you are not alone category. I too voted for Bernie-- in New York. By that point in time it was primarily a vote to insure that Hillary stayed on the left side of the Party and that a progressive agenda was pushed.
Since then Iāve seen some of his supporters (not most, but more than Iām comfortable with) go Trump-ian (LA (yelling at Hillary supporters attending event, NV, hundreds ot harassing phone calls and a few death threats thrown in), Iāve seen him push a totally false talking point, that the nomination is still winnable (itās not, its over), and thenāthereās been thisāfirst wanting the Superdelegates to honor the will of the people through pledged delegates (when he won NH big=āPlan A), then asking for a proportional vote (when he won some caucuses by lopsided marginsāPlan B), to finally asking the Superdelegates to take control of things, overthrow the voting, and hand the nomination to him (PlanC).
This has nothing to do with anything being rigged against him; itās just Bernie trying to claw his way to maximum relevance. Itās not even about winning, btw; he knows that his own behavior has done more to turn off Superdelegates than the fact that heās losing badly in pledged delegates. So he goes to rallies telling people heās gonna win, and he knows it to be untrue.
Everyone should understand that, whatever Bernie or Weaver may say, historically, Superdelegates have never overturned the will of the people; theyāve never nominated someone who didnāt lead in pledged delegates since they were first intituted in 1976 after the disastrous McGovern loss.
As someone whom I despise infinitely more than Bernie (whom I still appreciate, at least on an ideological level, for relentlessly pushing a progressive agenda thatās definitely forced Hillary to address some important issues), Donald Trump would sayāSAD
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Maybe he is just full of shit, but if somebody walks like a Republican and talks like a Republican maybe he is really a Republican who votes Democratic out of tribal identity.
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I guess that is an option for him. However, I believe that if he attempted it, heād likely only receive those who are only die-hard āBernieā fans and not long-time Democrats, nor a very large chunk of those Democrats who did vote for him the primaries but see a White House win as vital not only for the Democratic Party but for the nation (and the world, really). In other words, the vast majority of those who voted in the Democratic primaries for any of the Dem candidates would stick to voting Democratic. That tiny sliver of true āindependentsā (non-leaners for Dem or Repub) will likely not be voting third-party because the majority of them would want to win ā¦ and they would view a write-in candidate as losing. At least this is show I see it, and Iāve been keeping tabs on elections for thirty years now. Of course, I could be wrong (as could any of us).
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I believe otherwise, Ron Byers. This isnāt a new soap being rolled out to the market. Itās about leadership and experience and reliability. āSellingā us on a āNew Dreamā is BS. So is fear mongering, such as 'they want to take away our freedom!".
Getting us through the day in an orderly fashion and with a reasonable degree of certainty is all we can expect from society, and anyone who can pull that off deserves our vote. Telling people that we are āentitledā to free stuff and that we ādeserveā things because we are Americans has its limits, and Bernie has exceeded those limits.
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