Your lips, God’s ear, hope they’ve been introduced.
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Thank you for your response, but I’m not sure it even comes close to explaining what has been happening during this primary cycle in both parties. The folks at 538 touched on it a bit the other day (and were just as dismissive of sexism and racism as a motivating factor as you are), but they did mention something that strikes a chord. One of them offered the idea that this election cycle has sort of propelled the White Male into its own special interest group or voting bloc, instead of the DEFAULT voting bloc. That seems to be true.
It is also clear, though, looking at the exit polls for both Bernie and Trump, this particular voting bloc is simply pissed the fuck off. Disenfranchised, in poli-speak. Pundits like to use terms like “anti-establishment,” but, again, that doesn’t quite pass the sniff test. Why does one particular group feel more disenfranchised by the “establishment” in such greater numbers than any other group? Losing the black vote by 70% in most instances is pretty significant. Especially when minorities, for the most part, have traditionally felt disenfranchised by the establishment.
On the left, we like to pretend that we’re not as racist or as sexist as those on the right, but when you see polls about attitudes toward people of color and the gender gap, white liberals are only slightly more “enlightened.” (I could go looking for those polls, but won’t for a couple of reasons. 1. I’m too lazy, or to paraphrase Todd Snider, I am “a tree-huggin, pot-smokin, porn-watchin, lazy-ass hippie.” 2. You’re obviously a politics junky too, and I’m sure you’re already aware of them)
(Oh, and for the record: yes, I do see my own hypocrisy. In fact, most of the time, at least on the internet, I wallow in it. (I mean, shit, did you see my responses to ronbyers about having just read The Iron Heel and Animal Farm? I mean, fuck, I criticize Bernie’s supporters for being condescending as fuck…and then come up the stretch THREE OR FIVE TIMES MORE CONDESCENDING! hahaha. God, what a fuckin asshole. (Me, that is, not ronbyers.)) Like you said, though, “Fuck, it’s the internet.” (I’m paraphrasing))
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What a crock. The Democratic establishment site and pushed through workable min. wage increases in local and state governments and have been working that process at the Federal level as well. And will continue to do so.
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That’s a great point and I agree. I frequently complain when people go too far with the sexism and racism thing, seeing it where it’s not, because I think it dilutes the arguments and makes our position weaker. It’s kind of a similar thing with Sanders, i.e., going too far undermines even the reasonable part of the argument. For Sanders’ campaign, “it’s a trap.” It’s that old tug-of-war between ideology and reality and making one into the other. It takes time. LOTS of time. Ideologues have a rocky relationship with patience. He and his supporters fell into the ideological trap in that he took laudable long-term goals…ones that I feel safe assuming pretty much all (or the vast majority of) liberals agree with and share…but he essentially promised them in the short-term, making them easy to dismiss as unicorn farts and double rainbows, i.e., unrealistic in light of the practical realities facing any attempt to enact and implement them. Ultimately, that does a disservice to the effort to implement the increments that are achievable in the short-term, because they too get dismissed as just so much happy horseshit.
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Maybe Republicans go to the polls when they get mad because they are organized and lead to the polls. Outside an ever shrinking collection of safe districts, the Democratic party hardly shows its face. Party building is something establishment Democrats don’t understand or like. It requires putting boots on the ground and engaging in real relationship building.
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Read the Salon article, it might open your closed mind.
Yeah, reading Salon these days does wonders for closed minds. I’m surprised they’re not hosted on www.BernieSanders.com
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And that, dear boy, is why she’s going to be the next president.
She deals in real-world solutions to real-world problems—not pie-in-the-sky promises the way Bernie does.
Over-promising leads to no support for things that can be accomplished.
Stressing achievable goals leads to progress and betterment.
Your “thinking” is deeply superficial and is completely ungrounded in reality.
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Older liberal here. Totes agree.
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See, here’s the thing.
Have you ever read one of those “how to succeed in life” books, written by someone who is so wildly successful that it seems like they don’t live in the same universe?
Pretty much invariably, their advice goes something like this:
In order to succeed, aim for where you want to go, not for what you’re willing to settle for.
Yes, your progress is going to be incremental, and it will require time and work. But if you aim for what you’re willing to settle for, that’s all you’re ever going to get.
If your ultimate goal is to maintain the status quo, then Clinton is your girl. If you want something better, for yourself, for your kids, for all the marginalized people around you…
Then get off your ass and work to get Sanders into office, because hiring someone whose goal is to maintain the status quo will ensure that the best that happens is that nothing changes.
Think of it as calculating windage into your shot, because you know there’s a powerful wind working against you.
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I don’t where you are, but the Democrats are and have put boots on the ground. Certainly in Texas, which is about as red as it gets. When Kerry was running he never showed up here except once. That is no longer the way it is here - the Democrats have become extremely active here. It’s completely misleading to say the Democrats aren’t doing what you want them to do because they are.
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More of your bullshit.
As I have said before about Bernie’s most fervent followers, you are one enema away from being able to fit in a thimble.
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Well, right, but in the context of what I was answering, it doesn’t matter WHY he couldn’t exploit it, just that he didn’t. You’re right though…there are probably better examples.
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And she will get to sit in the oval office and accomplish just as much as Obama has since 2010.
The Presidency isn’t not the end all of our political system. The Democratic party ought to be reshaping itself to win back the house and take a large lead in the Senate in 2018 or 2020, Instead we seem to believe that we have won the world if we just win the Presidency. If we don’t promise much we don’t have to change the political landscape.
You have just provided a textbook example of a large part of what is driving Sanders supporters away from the Clinton campaign.
Many Democrats are getting very tired of Bernie using the Establishment Corporate Democratic Whores Party as a vehicle to cry out against the Establishment Corporate Democratic Whores. This goes well with Bernie’s history of making enemies of natural allies.
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I have no idea where you live, but if that is the state of the Democratic Party in your neighborhood, I encourage you to become a precinct captain or president of your local chapter and start putting your sweat and tears where your keyboard fingers are.
Myself, I live in California, where the Democratic Party, with all it’s warts and shortcomings, is alive and well. We have a Democratic governor, both houses are controlled by Dems, we have a budget surplus, just passed $15/hr, family leave, and all the good things that you on the far left purport to want. Investment in infrastructure. Investment in education.
That didn’t come easy, we had two full decades of Republicans who destroyed the state. Finally, we passed a redistricting initiative where apportionment is done by independent commission. So the state is representative of the population.
None of this happens by somebody else’s magic wand, Mr. Byers. NOR did it happen with an iota of assistance by any warmed-over Naderites.
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Explain how that is bullshit. It is an every day experience out in Missouri and states like Missouri. The Democratic party hardly exists anymore outside the urban cores of Kansas City and St. Louis. I won’t say Kansas City and St. Louis because most of the close in suburbs are drifting Republican. That is because the Republican party works to find candidates and promote its agenda. The Democrats, not so much.
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Wow, I step away for a few hours and there are already hundreds of posts about a throwaway comment about the milquetoast, quisling Democrats.
You’d think from some Sanders supporters that Democrats, and not Republicans, were the real enemy.
I post this comment a couple of days ago, and I think it still applies:
"LOL, I still remember a comment attributed to Boehner after one of those negotiating sessions with Obama, “I didn’t sign up to go mano a mano with this guy.”
LOL, after all the hand-wringing year after year about Obama getting his lunch money swiped and his pants pulled down by the big bad Republicans, and “Why doesn’t he start negotiating from the liberal position instead of giving everything away at the start,” here we have a president who has defended and preserved every policy victory he has fought for against an opposition that has controlled the House for five years and the Senate for a year.
And only gave up the equivalent of small change that fell between the couch cushions.
Meanwhile, the brand new House Speaker can’t get a budget past his own majority, the Republicans are careening headlong into a brokered convention between a blustering vulgarian and an unlikeable theocrat, their Senate majority is in danger, and a divided Supreme Court stands as testimony of the death of movement conservatism’s judicial activism.
Don’t be fooled by Obama’s smiling magnanimous and self-deprecating humor. He cut his teeth on the south side of Chicago, and learned power politics on the mean streets.
By refusing to play the game the Republicans wanted, and by refusing to fall into their trap, he has pushed the entire party to such extremes that they are on the verge of being unelectable.
And ever so blithely, sweetly, and serenely – that 1000-watt smile and those pinchable cheeks! – he is overseeing the destruction of his political enemies.
And despite his comment at the State of the Union, he has one more election to attend to.
In the words of Michael Corleone, “Today I settled all family business so don’t tell me that you’re innocent.”
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Read what I wrote again, because you sure as shit didn’t understand it the first time.
I don’t have time to hunt down her words but I think this quote pretty much sums up Hillary’s pitch to her supporters. She thinks achievable and promises little.
Wait, are you saying that like it’s a good thing or a bad thing?
I think you mean it as a bad thing, but it sure sounds like a good thing to me.
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Congratulations!!
You have been nominated for the Ridiculous Straw Man of the Day Award!
While competition is stiff, you’re sure to be a finalist.
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