I don’t pin Garland’s failure (which is only a potential right now) on Obama. I pin it on Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans who have a blind racially based hatred of Obama.
Which is why Sanders core campaign message railing against “the establishment” is fundamentally stupid.
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Bernie, like Trump, is just taking advantage of the general perception in America that the current political establishment is on the some corporate payroll or other. That they have lost sight of to whom they should be answering. The Democratic establishment has responded by blaming the people who feel betrayed. They never look at themselves. They never hold themselves accountable.
They especially want to purge these people. It appears kids like these make them apoplectic.
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Well, how else do you compare someone with a whore for the corporatocracy without calling them a whore? You do understand that we are not talking about a sex worker, right?
I mean, I could be a sniveling little asskisser like vampireboydlc, but he already has that sniveling asskissing down so well. And I wouldn’t want to make him unemployed.
Just unsubscribe from their damn emails.
She is running to see if she can screw up a large country as well as she helped screw up any number of small countries like her foreign policy positions have.
Doesn’t make me apoplectic, we take pride (literally) for keeping Portland weird. But being a marketing professional, I don’t think that making that image the face of your campaign will be a winner either socially or politically.
Bernie’s team is scummy, and an apology for one bad action doesn’t relieve him of all their misconduct throughout the campaign. It may have started sooner, but the first thing I remember was them intentionally hiding their knowledge of the security flaw in the DNC’s software upgrade system that made it possible for them to steal Hillary’s donor info from the database. They knew about the flaw, failed to report it; even though it could have allowed ANYONE to hijack or even destroy everyone’s data. They waited for an update, exploited the flaw, accessed and downloaded Hillary’s data and donor reports. THEN they lied about stealing her data and followed it up by claiming only one team member was involved even though the audit trail showed 4 of them signed into and accessing her data. So Bernie let one of them resign and pretend he was solely responsible despite contrary evidence.
Since then they have spread the ugliest of the Bernie Bros garbage and lies, encouraged him to change from a campaign of ideas and policy to a Trump-like sleaze and smear program. They have convinced (or a least not “un-convinced” him not to contribute to down-ticket Dems, to attack the super-delegate system, to make personal attacks against Hillary based on headlines that did not represent what she actually said, originated the “she started it” talking points as an effort to divert attention from the disastrous NYDN interview, and essentially changed him from a nice-enough old man whose goal was to move the party to the left into a PR believing, self-aggrandizing, kool-aid drinking, wedge candidate who is trying to poison the well about Hillary (not qualified?) instead of working to ensure a Democrat in the White House. The Emperor has no clothes, but instead of working for what is most important - a BLUE White House and Congress, they are pushing him to throw the election to the GOP. The whole “Iraq Vote,” which was NOT a vote to go to war, the “purity” meme, the small donors = Big Oil garbage. Bernie has become a mockery of himself, when he could have been great in a Cabinet level position, focused on his 2 issues and left things like National Security, Foreign Relations, Non-Proliferation, International Diplomacy and the other 1000 Presidential responsibilities he has no qualifications for or interest in to Hillary - who IS competent to handle them.
With Hillary as President and a Blue Congress (unlike Bernie, she DOES have coattails and HAS helped other Dems), he could have actually been effective in making some changes while she could run the country and protect women’s rights, etc.which he doesn’t really place a priority on, as he has personally admitted. the fact is we need folks to VOTE BLUE, NO MATTER WHO, but Bernie and the bots think 4 years of GOPers will pave the way for him. 4 years of the GOP will destroy the nation, and maybe the planet,
So No, the “apology” is not enough.
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I think you know that wasn’t my point, and not something I was proposing.
Great question! I think if you really consider the matter you will see that “shill” is a much more apt description of the phenomenon you are referring to (which has very little in common with the relationship between a sex worker and client). Shill - Wikipedia
People use the word “whore” not because it is apt, but because it is demeaning. And it is demeaning in part because it emasculating when used to refer to a man, and because it calls to mind all that’s dirty immoral whenever it is used.
And mostly it’s marginalizing to women, so find another term.
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Others have already commented on the flaw in your logic about the candidates’ relative successes in mobilizing people – Hillary’s two million more votes than Sanders – so I won’t belabor that.
But tell me that families were not inspired by her successful push to enact the Children’s Health Insurance Program, after her stinging defeat in trying to pass universal healthcare reform in the 1990s.
Or women who were stirred by her ringing speech that “women’s rights are human rights.”
Or by human rights advocates who were inspired when she was the highest ranking US official in decades to visit Myanmar/Burma and helped put political pressure on the military dictatorship ruling that country, which recently held its first free elections in decades.
Or by supporters of nuclear nonproliferation who were inspired when she led the diplomatic effort to elicit international support for economic sanctions against Iran which led to a historic agreement to limit that country’s nuclear program to peaceful uses.
Or by advocates of women’s reproductive freedom, commonsense banking reform that builds on the strength of Dodd-Frank, debt-free college for working class and poor students, and innovative ways to break the Congressional bottleneck to funding vitally needed infrastructure projects anticipated to create millions of jobs and boost the nation’s economy.
Not to mention the millions of women and girls everywhere who are inspired by the first women in history to run for US president on a major party ticket, and to whom she is not only an inspiration but a role model to be emulated.
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Not only women, but men, yes, men actually admire her, too.
Who knew?
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What is demeaning to women is to assume that only women are whores. Which is what you are really saying.
And to state the obvious – we use whore to describe politicians as people willing to do anything for money - not to belittle sex workers - but to state an adequate description of the activity, which is pay for play.
No, the Democrats have responded by refusing to play that same cynical game.
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You mean the old “no difference between the two parties” crap, when everything we’ve seen points to glaring differences?
It’s beyond old. But then, Nader is a bitter old kook.
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The primary definition of whore is a woman who gets paid for sex. In general men who get paid for sex (a far less frequent transaction, given the patriarchal nature of most societies, the fact that men control the dollars, and the commodification of sex) are NOT called whores. Give me a break with your “it’s demeaning to assume only women are whores” line. That is sophistry. And sophomoric.
whore
[hawr, hohr or, often, hoo r]
Spell Syllables
Word Origin
See more synonyms on Thesaurus.com
noun
1.
a woman who engages in promiscuous sexual intercourse, usually for money; prostitute; harlot; strumpet.
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I don’t agree that it’s a good political strategy to name-call or attack anyone’s political opponents, particularly someone who’s running in your own party, and whose support you might soon need.
But beyond that, I am getting more than a little impatient with the Johnny come lately revolutionaries who are too inept to realize that.
I was reminded of an online comment I made here right after the 2014 midterm elections, when some were championing Elizabeth Warren-or-bust and promising they would never vote for Hillary. I think it still applies:
"In 2000, many idealistic liberals rejected Al Gore in favor of Ralph Nader, even though he did not have a national structure needed to get him a majority of the Electoral vote, or a single ally in Congress to help him effectuate his agenda.
Even though they probably agreed with Al Gore on 60 to 80 percent of the issues, and even though Gore would have had half the Congress on his side to help him get things done.
In 2010 we lost the House and many state legislatures because too many people were not “enthusiastic” and did not bother to vote for imperfect or uninspiring Democratic candidates, which put President Obama on the defensive trying to defend his positions and funding priorities against a rabid Republican majority that got elected with the help of unlimited, unregulated, and undisclosed campaign funds promoting phony grass-roots organizations, a reactionary mob mentality, and paranoid conspiracy fantasies.
Last month, despite the public being in a position to be well aware of the destructive agenda and track record of the Reactionary Right, they again declined to vote, which enabled the Republicans to take the Senate, strengthen their hold on the House, and gain additional seats in state legislatures.
Immediately, their first actions are to call for – Surprise! – cutting corporate taxes and opposing the president’s executive action on immigration. They are expected to challenge his actions on pollution controls, and can be expected to continue attacking the ACA, call for a government shutdown, refuse to raise the debt ceiling, oppose ongoing nuclear talks with Iran and provocatively call for additional punishing sanctions against that country, a defunding of vital government operations, and maybe even an impeachment.
These political operatives are funded by unlimited, unregulated, secret campaign donations, and enabled by a compliant, captured media and an uninformed, apathetic public.
Their agenda can be stopped only if Americans get out and vote in every single election.
This is what we are up against, a political cabal whose agenda is more wars, more misery for working-class and struggling families, more bailouts and carve-outs for the powerful special interests, and a diminution of rights for women, minorities and disenfranchised citizens.
And a public misinformed by divisive right wing media, deceptive and misleading Youtube videos, and talk show hosts and religious extremists using anger, fear and resentment to promote reactionary politicians and policies.
This is the “vast right wing conspiracy” that Hillary Clinton warned us about in the 1990’s – when her husband was facing constant, vicious attacks for eight years straight – except now it’s on steroids.
And it’s only too happy to attack Hillary from the Left and smear her as a war-monger, a whore for Wall Street and crony capitalists, a phony, entitled, calculating, rich out-of-touch politician, in an effort to get disillusioned and disappointed Democrats and liberals to stay away from the polls on Election Day 2016.
And meanwhile, out of the other side of their mouths, they will turn to their right wing base and revive all the slanders from the politics of personal destruction from the Bill Clinton era, and additionally smear Hillary as nothing less than a third Obama term promising little more than a continuation of out-of-control spending and reparations for unproductive black moochers, job-killing regulations, and apology tours for the benefit of terrorists and America’s enemies.
And in contrast with a disillusioned and disaffected Left, these people can be counted on to enthusiastically vote for the Republican candidate, because they’ve been spoon-fed so much hate, bitterness and resentment that they glorify politicians who prioritize the failure of America’s first black president and who call for taking hostages and shutting down the government, and domestic terrorists who point semi-automatic weapons at government agents seeking to collect long-overdue fines from a scofflaw rancher in arrears of more than one million in grazing fees on federal lands, and white police officers who gun down unarmed black men and boys with impunity, a Christian Identity preacher who publicly and provocatively burns a Koran which leads to the death of our soldiers in overseas missions, and radio talk show hosts who slut-shame women who defend the provision of medical contraceptives in insurance plans, and citizens who demonize a black boy gunned down for jaywalking and left on the street by police, and mock the choke hold used on a black man who was killed by police for selling cigarettes on the street.
And there you are, with all those ribbons in your hair – all your deeply held liberal ideals and unchallenged, untested assumptions – and already you are all too willing to throw Hillary Clinton – probably the only Democrat with the national name recognition and network of supporters and contributors necessary to mount a winning challenge against a Republican presidential candidate – under the bus as if she already were damaged goods, the Great Betrayer, and all in favor of …
Who? Who is the candidate you feel we should get behind? Who is going to challenge the Republicans in 2016? Tell me and I will sincerely consider that person. Will you examine the pro’s and con’s and get behind an imperfect presidential candidate and a slate of Congressional and state candidates – and accept the less “exciting” of the two candidates-- as part of an effective, coherent campaign to loosen the death grip of the Reactionary Right?"
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???
I am a man and I have tremendous respect for her, but modesty prevents me from presuming to speak on behalf of my gender.