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The reason I call it pseudo intellectual is because it's painted as an attempt at communicating information. It's constructed as an infographic, when in fact it's naive, childish propaganda, peddling opinions at best, insinuating misinformation more often.
I'll get to that in a second, but I also want to point out that this is getting to be a pattern both among the campaign and its supporters. There's the Sanders TV ads where they draw graphs, don't explain what (if any) data is being shown, then wipe it all away and replace it with a cartoon of somebody handing somebody else a bag of cash, at which point the old sage says "the system is rigged", as if that constitutes a plan for anything (if he really thinks the system is rigged, why is he even trying to work within it?). Or there's the way they always trot out head-to-head general election polls, directly implying that Sanders's leads in those polls indicate he'd be a stronger candidate, when any Poli-sci 101 student could explain why those polls at best mean nothing, at worst imply very bad news for Sanders once you make reasonable assumptions about what happens in the course of a general election. Or there's the entire economic plan, spelled out with little to no empirical support. Instead the campaign repeatedly points to the single economic analysis that roundly (and not very plausibly) supports Sanders's views. Then when the people who really know what they're talking about point out that this beloved analysis contains even more fairy-dust than many Republican economic proposals, even tracking the problem down to a very specific mathematical error (accurately modeling a stimulative effect from government spending, but then neglecting to end the stimulus when that spending comes to an end), the campaign doesn't take the time to carry out their own, more serious economic analysis, they just go quiet on the subject. And the supporters: at best they deflect, at worst they accuse the entire field of macroeconomics of either being the domain of "Hillbots", or of not being a science at all.
So, to the "flip timeline." First of all, this whole idea of accusing a candidate of "flip flopping" should be offensive to anyone who saw John Kerry raked over the coals for it. There's nothing wrong with seeing nuance in issues, there's nothing wrong with changing your positions as you learn from your mistakes. And no, there's nothing wrong with adapting to the mood of the country to maximize the likelihood of getting elected to actually do some good.
I'm also annoyed at how they draw the lines in red and blue, to insinuate that she's been taking Republican positions. Every one of the positions mentioned here has been well within the mainstream of the Democratic party.
Now, line by line:
Gay marriage: The line drawn here would apply just as well to Barack Obama as to Hillary Clinton. And we all like Barack Obama right? Right? As a matter of fact, those of us who remember the 2008 campaign will remember her generally being to the left of Obama on the issue. She supported civil unions at the federal level, as Barack Obama and all sane Democrats did at the time, but she called for real marriage on a state-by-state basis, and for legalizing gay marriage in New York.
Iraq: She took the same position as a lot of Democrats, despite voicing strong reservations. Yes, one can infer that she was thinking about running for President and was trying to avoid sexist pigeonholing of her as weak on Defense. And yes, in 2008, she stated the obvious and said the war was a mistake. That flip was not a bad thing by any means. And while people will harp on her judgement on this point, let's not forget that Barack Obama (who we all like, right?) trusted her judgement on these matters enough to name her Secretary of State.
Universal Health Coverage: I just love it how Obamacare is drawn in red here. Also, it's lovely how they say she "backtracked" by supporting the public option. She never opposed the public option.
Criminal Justice: Wait, it's bad that she supported strict sentences for hate crimes?
TPP: First of all, I love how they go to the trouble of explaining that the TPP would "displace certain jobs to/from US." I guess they're assuming their readers are too simple to know what TPP even stands for, let alone what it does, so they imply an interpretation far afield from mainstream economic analysis. It's a shame that she's been forced to claim opposition to TPP. The TPP is one of the great achievements of Obama's second term (and we all like Obama right?). It would be nice if Sanders and his supporters would take the time to understand WHY the TPP is so uniformly regarded as good for the American economy, rather than falling back on naive tropes from the Nader campaign.
Keystone pipeline: The one thing we know for sure about the Keystone pipeline is that it never deserved the attention it got. The Republicans claim it would create a lot of jobs. That's bullshit, of course -- it would produce a tiny number of jobs, which would largely disappear as soon as the pipeline is done. The Democratic base thinks it would severely harm the environment. That's bullshit too! Nobody on this board has argued harder on environmental issues, particularly global warming, than me. But the standard lefty interpretation of the Keystone pipeline is hopelessly naive. Yes, leaks would cause environmental damage, but more leaks, and more overall damage, would be caused by transporting the oil by truck or train, which is what would happen without Keystone. As for whether making it easier for Canada to extract oil would cause the world to use more oil: is anybody really naive enough to believe that?
Cuban Embargo: All along that line, she's either equal, or to the left, of mainstream Democratic party positions. Was any electable politician calling for an end to the Cuban embargo before 2008?
NCLB: So Ted Kennedy's position gets drawn in red?
DNC ban on lobbyist fundraising: It was a nice, high-minded idea that the party tried out for a while, hoping that a holier-than-thou stance would outweigh the enormous disadvantage it would put them in against the Republicans. It failed. Just like Bernie Sanders's opposition to superpacs would be a catastrophe in a general election.
"Free stuff": Okay, now they're joking.
"Wall Street stance": This somehow neglects to mention that everyone who knows how the modern banking system works agrees that her proposals on banking reform are stronger than Bernie's. Glass-Steagal, however satisfying it might be to employ, would have made essentially no difference in how the financial crisis unfolded. Banking does not work the same way it did in the 1930s.
People will nitpick, or completely dismiss, individual arguments here, but the real problem with the infographic is the complete lack of any semblance of nuance, historical understanding, or willingness to understand how policy actually works. It's not a God-given fact that liberals will always have the intellectual high-ground. We have to fight to uphold that reputation, often in the face of extreme stupidity (which we see from OKP liberals all the time, inside and outside of politics). Obama was never a revolutionary. He was pragmatic, and he was a technocrat. His legacy is the willingness to learn from experience and understand how the world really works. The way the Sanders campaign is being run is a complete withdrawal from that legacy, and it's sickening to see.
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