Confession.

I've been trying to make sense of this

But...

I cant get on the Bernie train.
He has good ideas. He marched with black people. He's Jewish and thats novel.
90% of my friends are rooting hard for his platform.

I'm not 100% Clinton but in my mind she is a known-known.
She is deeply fucking problematic this is true.




This whole Sanders circus is bring up feelings of bitterness for me because I think I am souring on people and fake mass optimism.

I keep thinking back to the high-low shift that happened with Obama. Hopes were sky sky SKY high and then when he didn't pan out to be a rainbow shitting magical negro everyone turned into a bunch of crying babies.

I cant help but think the same thing is going to happen to Bernie. I believe people have a very juvenile view of the world and believe politics/policy/infrastructure is a nimble vehicle when it's really the opposite.

A lot of people want a president to "get in there and raise some hell brother" which is why Trump has been picking up, he is selling us on the 'political outsider' angle. One who will bend the rules to make things great again.

I'm not ready to handle the screams of mass disappointment when its revealed that at the end of the day Bernie like all others is just a politician. He might have some great ideas but he still has to exist in a system of checks and balances.

I often wonder how differently the world would be if people were this passionate about local elections.


For the record, if Bernie goes all the way then I am voting like all hell for him to make sure he gets the job.

>I cant help but think the same thing is going to happen to
>Bernie. I believe people have a very juvenile view of the
>world and believe politics/policy/infrastructure is a nimble
>vehicle when it's really the opposite.
>
>A lot of people want a president to "get in there and raise
>some hell brother" which is why Trump has been picking up, he
>is selling us on the 'political outsider' angle. One who will
>bend the rules to make things great again.

YUP!

i dig most/all of what Bernie's talking about and i just don't see it coming to fruition. it would be disappointing for me to see him fail. which is why i'm not buying what he's selling.

i want him to work on the issues he's raised - i just don't think he can/should do that work as POTUS. i think he's better off either staying in the Senate or working in the private sector or for a non-profit org focused on the sort of hell-raising he's all about. but as POTUS it just won't work.

>I'm not ready to handle the screams of mass disappointment
>when its revealed that at the end of the day Bernie like all
>others is just a politician. He might have some great ideas
>but he still has to exist in a system of checks and balances.

and his plan for confronting the checks/balances requires his supporters to become/remain more politically involved than we've ever seen from the gen pop in the USA. i don't see his ppl getting/remaining so fired up that they're all up in their legislators' local offices raising hell and demanding support for Bernie's policies. i don't see them making trips to DC to raise hell. i don't see them even turning out for mid-term elections to toss out the obstructionists. i don't have enough faith in the American ppl to believe in this dream of a 'political revolution'.

i say this b/c of the example i've seen over the past 8 yrs w/Obama. ppl were all kinds of fired up to vote for him in primaries and the general in 2008. and then, as always, the fire died out. the involvement wasn't sustained. ppl went back to life as normal. i suspect the same will happen w/the Bernie supporters.

>I often wonder how differently the world would be if people
>were this passionate about local elections.

Bernie's plans don't work w/o ppl being/remaining passionate in local/mid-term elections. i just don't see it. i wish it could be so though.

>For the record, if Bernie goes all the way then I am voting
>like all hell for him to make sure he gets the job.

absolutely. same here. i will vote for him in a general if he's the Dem's nominee.

>>I often wonder how differently the world would be if people
>>were this passionate about local elections.
>
>Bernie's plans don't work w/o ppl being/remaining passionate
>in local/mid-term elections. i just don't see it. i wish it
>could be so though.

If voters really want to create progressive change in this country, they have to get passionate across this nation about their House races, their Senate races, their governors, their mayors, their state court judges, etc. You can't just promote a figurehead and assume he'll solve everything. That's not the way democracy works.

Not even to suggest that this is a problem exclusive to Bernie supporters-- it's a problem down the line in this country. Progressives need to give far far far more shits about local/state/House and Senate elections. Loving your Presidential candidate isn't even approaching enough.

and all kinds of other foul shit, i'm seeing this firsthand in NC.

and i wrote about it and warned about it, because they did the same shit during the last republican wave election.

they took over all kinds of local ass dogcatcher type elections -- offices that were previously non partisan, like school boards, planning boards, county boards, etc., where a couple yard signs and 300 votes gets you put on -- they bumrushed that shit.

they took the local elections. took the state houses and senates. and, once in, gerrymandered the FUCK outta all of that and introduced all kinds of draconian shit. no new taxes!!! but gave tax breaks to the wealthy and then introduced regressive assed FEES across the board. so people on low or fixed incomes end up getting nickel and dimed to death, on some $50 trash pickup FEE and shit like that. shifting the cost burden on people who can't afford it.

in NC, thanks also to a long history of corruption in state politics at the dem level (thanks y'all for not being above reproach), they got the governorship with slimy ass mccrory. who served as mayor of charlotte while simultaneously taking checks from duke energy as a lobbyist.

and then, after he got in office and duke had one of the worst environmental catastrophes in history, dumping however many thousand tons of coal ash into our rivers and virginia's rivers, dragged his feet for over a year and tried not to investigate it, and finally let them get away with taps on the wrist.

in the meantime, a state with NO in person voter fraud railroads through changes that damn near completely undid the Voting Rights Act, arbitrarily (not really, it was targeted) restricting the ability for folks to register and vote who were students, black, brown, etc.

and THEN they redistricted (gerrymandered) the hell outta the election map, which got shot down by an appeals court and sent to the supremes...

but all these smart-dumb ass too woke to vote ass ni&&as (of all colors, nationalities and economic status) who sat out the mid terms blaming obama for this type of shit.


>If voters really want to create progressive change in this
>country, they have to get passionate across this nation about
>their House races, their Senate races, their governors, their
>mayors, their state court judges, etc. You can't just promote
>a figurehead and assume he'll solve everything. That's not the
>way democracy works.
>
>Not even to suggest that this is a problem exclusive to Bernie
>supporters-- it's a problem down the line in this country.
>Progressives need to give far far far more shits about
>local/state/House and Senate elections. Loving your
>Presidential candidate isn't even approaching enough.

right. sausage making 101 is not really taught in our schools. and it damn sure doesn't make it through on the news in our soundbitocracy.




peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

the barriers to participation are too high, and even people with access to the process have to spend so much time raising money/keeping people who give them money happy that they're not governing.

if we just financed elections publicly and made the windows shorter, we'd be in much better shape.

more radically, i'm starting to feel like 2 year house terms are too short, especially because those people are almost guaranteed reelection. the logic of our 2 party/winner-take-all system is also fundamentally flawed, but i don't see a route to proportional representation or any kind of third party that isn't part of a temporary realignment.

and we need to do something about the constant election cycle in the media. we can't regulate it without breaking the first amendment, other than finding a way to undo citizen's united - but people are going to have to be more discerning consumers.

"when he didn't pan out to be a rainbow shitting magical negro everyone turned into a bunch of crying babies."

Not a solid grasp of nuance on display here. Not even a basic grasp really.

He ran as progressive and governed as a centrist. Simple as that.

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

.

then you really weren't paying attention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWynt87PaJ0

In 2008, he and Hillary were essentially identical on the issues. On the few issues where they differed, he was slightly to her right.

He was a mainstream, coalition Democrat, just like her. The kind of person who wins elections.

It's good to be consistent with a message to let ppl know you won't flip flop, but by this late in the game it's just getting too predictable and repetitive. Say something different, Bernie.

I guess she is the change we can't believe in

im trying to be realistic here

Would make for good bumper stickers

"Bernie's making too much sense. He's talking too much change."

Black folks out here being killed with impunity, and BLACK people
are talking about wanting something familiar.
How is anyone to respect that?

no single individual is coming in and changing the game (it will take many people working over decades to make structural changes to the system). So in the mean time I want the politician who is best at playing the game as it is currently designed.

People don't like Hillary because she is slick but that's the reason why I am attracted to her.





**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

and 'talkin bout it' as far as the big money shit goes. and i'll vote for him in the primary if shit is still up for grabs when our turn comes.

and yes, i'll be holding tf outta my nose if/when i vote for hilldawg in the general. she is infinitely better than anyone on the other side. as they say on Kos, more and better is the goal.

i can't stay home, tho. again, in nc, disaffected dems + off-year elections, plus other ish got us a trainwreck trifecta of repub house, senate and presidency and that is fucking up the state in every way imaginable, AND threatening national politics (via systemic disfranchisement of PoC's and other traditionally dem constituencies).

i would have rather elizabeth warren run as an alternative to hillary. she's brilliant and dope. but again, i appreciate the hell outta bernie for running, running pretty well (against the party's annointed candidate) and pushing her to the left.

>no single individual is coming in and changing the game (it
>will take many people working over decades to make structural
>changes to the system). So in the mean time I want the
>politician who is best at playing the game as it is currently
>designed.
>
>People don't like Hillary because she is slick but that's the
>reason why I am attracted to her.



peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

I just am generally over senators as President really. I would want someone proven at operating and effective change in massive organizations or institutions.

I like Governors, Maybe Colin Powell or a progressive general or big city mayor even. Maybe even a business person, but it would have to be a business person with a public service record (bloomberg with a better record on the working class).

At this point I am more concern about effectiveness than progressiveness of goals.



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

when talking about Clinton.
You rarely see anyone support her. They kind of just default to her or settle for her.

my mother is one of those ppl - she's a Black woman in her 60s.

a good homie is another - he's a Black man in his mid 30s.

and i see ppl at her rallies and shit, of course.

any issues Dems are having with Bernie or Hillary PALE in comparison.

y'all really gotta fucking understand that Republicans CANNOT take the White House and this Hill vs. Bern shit is what will seal it for them..then we're all fucked.

seriously this shit needs to stop y'all.

PERSPECTIVE.

D

it's a primary. that's what a primary is for. we argue about who would be a better president, pick our favorites, vote for our candidate, etc. It's been a pretty clean campaign on the dem side, all things considered. Bernie has been pushing Hillary on policy, which I'm all in favor of.

What needs to not happen is the 'i'm not voting for so and so if my candidate loses'. People need to be grown up.

just trying to keep perspective around who is really "deeply fucking problematic"...it ain't that deep on the Dem side..

meanwhile, white people out here pushing and shoving and shouting on a Black teenager, in public, on camera in 2016. that shit ain't happening at Hillary Clinton rallies.

d

disrupted a HRC event & was later hauled out of the event by police/security...all b/c they confronted her w/ her own words/policies she supported. Also, that video of HRC being utterly dismissive to the comments of a young Black person was disgusting.

Chill....She was booed and hissed and escorted out at that HRC event....Civilian people in the audience were not laying hands on that girl....Totally different....

What makes that Trump rally crazy is THAT WASN'T SECURITY. That was a random Trump fan literally pushing a young girl. In fact she got pushed several times.

I was wrong, y'all right. They were NOT physically assaulted by HRC supporters just called names & condescended to like you said. HRC was dismissive af to that other young Black person tho, that's on tape.

And I don't want to make it seem like I am trying to change the subject b/c let me be clear, I WAS WRONG AF ABOUT ASHLEY BEING ASSAULTED BY HRC SUPPORTERS @ the Charleston event, DAMALI RIGHT, YOU RIGHT.

The policies HRC advocated for & policy positions she has actually taken have harmed queer Black folks like Ashley & assaulted Black communities across the U.S. And the fact that there were HRC supporters attempting to silence them IS a form a violence imo.


Speaking of assaults @ Trump events, a white photog for a major news outlet was choke slammed (on video by security) for supposedly stepping outside of some designated zone for pictures.

>Speaking of assaults @ Trump events, a white photog for a
>major news outlet was choke slammed (on video by security) for
>supposedly stepping outside of some designated zone for
>pictures.


Shit is scary.....

>disrupted a HRC event & was later hauled out of the event by
>police/security...all b/c they confronted her w/ her own
>words/policies she supported. Also, that video of HRC being
>utterly dismissive to the comments of a young Black person was
>disgusting.


Trump....

>just trying to keep perspective around who is really "deeply
>fucking problematic"...it ain't that deep on the Dem side..
>
>meanwhile, white people out here pushing and shoving and
>shouting on a Black teenager, in public, on camera in 2016.
>that shit ain't happening at Hillary Clinton rallies.


Meet the man doing MUCH of the pushing....His name is Matthew Heimbach (he's the guy in the red hat if u look up the video online). He's a staunch racist who has made racist comments about blacks and about anyone else...Here's just one of his Tweets:

‏@MatthewHeimbach
#JebBush dropping out after spending over $120 million is proof that normal White Americans are tired of Jewish approved politics as usual.

Trump supporter^^^^^

as a choice over sanders for president, as very thoroughly described here.

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/2/22/1489185/-The-Definitive-Encyclopedic-Case-For-Why-Hillary-Clinton-is-the-Wrong-Choice

ie wall street sell out, welfare reform, for-profit mass incarceration, mass death via iraq/libya/US imperalism, history of constant lying, bankruptcy bill, no child left behind, etc etc etc.

is the better option?

it's also shitty to harp on something she said 20 years ago*. my general stance is it's good thing to allow people to grow and change, if they actually do. Has she? i think so. i think she's learned from that misstep and she seems to be making genuine efforts to continue learning. hell, that's more than most white people do

mind you, she is a bit too centrist and hawkish for my tastes, but i'm more thinking of the big picture here..who's more likely to beat Trump? Hillary. i'm by no means a "Hillary supporter"..nor am a i "Bernie Supporter". in this election i'm all about "keep them racists fucking Republicans out of the white house"

we'll deal with her shortcomings later.


d

*i mean some folks still mad at Tiger Woods for his "cablanasian" comment when he was 18

are willing to vote for the other in the general if that other wins the nomination. b/c as you said - the real differences between the 2 are minimal compared to the differences between them and Trump (or Cruz or Rubio).

we can't have ppl who voted for a Dem in their state's primary sitting at home in November b/c they mad their candidate didn't win the nomination.

other side when Trump is the candidate

>>>we can't have ppl who voted for a Dem in their state's primary sitting at home in November b/c they mad their candidate didn't win the nomination.

Bernie's critique of Hillary is actually in-line with Trump's. That's unusual.

Specifically....Bernie has been attacking her for campaign financing and the Iraq war. Usually that's a safe primary critique because it doesn't help the other side in the general. But in this case, Trump will ALSO attack Hillary on Iraq and campaign financing. So even though I think those attacks are legitimate....we'd be actually helping Trump's cause in continuing that line of attack.

we don't seem to be handling these primaries well.

so what if *some* of bernie's critiques of hillary are similar to *some* of trump's critiques?

neither candidate is just a foil for hillary. they have their own distinct ideas about the country, and trumps ideas are why he would be a disaster.

we can't be afraid to go there...we need to recognize her vulnerabilities AND articulate why hillary is still, obviously, a much better choice than trump or cruz or rubio. ignoring them is a recipe for an increasingly irrelevant party moving forward.

Usually.....whatever Bernie's attack on Hillary is would be the opposite of what she would face in the general. That's how primaries usually work and for good reason. They shouldn't be designed to damage the nominee in the general. Because of the enigma of Trump...that's not the case here. Sanders (who I've supported) should adjust in light of that fact lest he does Trump's work for him.

Not to mention....the whole idea of pushing Hillary to the left is outta gas anyways. That only works when you are a threat....which Sanders WAS. He did push Hillary left....but now that she's got the insurmountable lead....she doesn't need to budge anymore.

It's a matter of being pragmatic. Any further attacks won't push Hillary left anymore so there's no benefit. There is, however, a cost in that they will be assisting Trump's line of attack (a weird scenario that is true nonetheless).

i don't get this angle at all. if we don't want to deal with hillary clinton's negatives in a general, we shouldn't have fucking settled for nominating hillary clinton.

they exist. it's our job to point out why she's STILL better, and why many of the Republican critiques are bullshit and unlike Bernie's critiques.

can i see your US citizenship papers, player?

wtf is this 'we' shit?

I'm voting for the candidate who most closely mirrors my view of the way the government should be run. I'm realistic, and if he's elected, i realize that we won't be some kind of democratic socialist utopia in 9 months. I do think he'll be more honest with the american people and push things in a direction that I'm in favor of.


All that being said, if it don't work out for Bern, I'll go ahead and vote for Hill. No need to give up until we actually count the scorecards, though.

Really look at how little the person running has to know about much of anything. Just look at Trump's success for that matter. Look at how black people in congress support those who in large part are against their own interests as black people. To expect anything good to come from such a massive pool of ignorance and superficial gesturing is pointless.

going extreme in either direction is least likely to happen

...Bernie has been in the race. Hilldawg needed someone to move her even more progressive on the issues. I got no beef with Bernie. I hope he stays in for 3 more weeks or so....Just keep it clean and stay on message....

I just want some of his more fervent supporters to turn it down and chill with the bomb throwing...

obama was way less radical and clear on truly progressive policies than sanders. debt and higher ed is a tangible carrot significant enough to drive mass movement. i think it is a moment that has the capability to be seized. inequality won't disappear with him losing but i think it will be an uglier fight for all if mostly has to happen in the streets than behind the momentum a sanders victory would present. occupy and BLM and the civil rights movement all have something to offer us in our respective roles. if we sit back and only vote then yeah, paralysis is guaranteed.

How about Trump voters?

.....the real threat is the uninformed Hilary auto voters that don't bother to do the research and dig a little on their own...that uninspired laziness is going to keep this country fucked in so many ways if she's elected.

We HOPE they don't win him the election....

Because it was all over the place. I believed it at the time. It felt good, but it was fucking wrong, and I regretted it.

If you can't get excited to vote for Hillary Clinton, for fucks sake please get excited to vote against Donald Trump.

I'm not playing that game of chicken the establishment of the DNC is trying to run on us again... It's that "oh....you don't want a Republican to win now, do you? OK, Please vote for our corporate sell out candidate out of pure fear... Oh great, you did! Now we know that we can keep doing this every four years and you'll never leave" Now is the time to call their bluff... I won't support her ever

I won't support someone who voted for the Iraq War, the Patriot Act. Who's in bed with Wall Street, Big Pharm, the Prison Lobby, Monsanto, Big Energy.. Who's anti Cannabis legalization and thinks we "need more research" while keeping it schedule I so research will never get done.. Someone who has flip-flopped so many policies based on pure political gain.. Who's got a HORRIBLE record on foreign policy..

i'm not even bringing up the list of investigations regarding shady shit she's been involved with over the years..

NOPE.. not getting my vote.. sorry

It's fucking childish, it's so simplistic I don't even know where to start, and it will make the world a worse place. You are choosing to be completely, totally impotent.

but at the very least we can say for sure that it elected George W. Bush, and it thereby CAUSED the Iraq war, along with a long list of other horrors.

Supreme Court, homie...

>
>but at the very least we can say for sure that it elected
>George W. Bush, and it thereby CAUSED the Iraq war, along with
>a long list of other horrors.



^^^^^^^^

>but at the very least we can say for sure that it elected
>George W. Bush, and it thereby CAUSED the Iraq war, along with
>a long list of other horrors.


Hillary caused the war... her and her cronies on both sides CHOOSE to start that war...

meanwhile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdFw1btbkLM

Being one vote out of 77 to authorize is VERY different from being the one who envisioned, planned, argued for, and carried out that war. The war would have happened WITHOUT the authorization, and the authorization would have happened WITHOUT her vote. So no, she did not cause the war.

And note that while Bernie Sanders may have voted correctly on that day, he DID NOT stop the war. He had empty rhetoric, and nothing else, which is the same as what he has today. If Al Gore had been President instead of George W Bush, that particular war would have never even been an idea.

>Being one vote out of 77 to authorize is VERY different from
>being the one who envisioned, planned, argued for, and carried
>out that war. The war would have happened WITHOUT the
>authorization, and the authorization would have happened
>WITHOUT her vote. So no, she did not cause the war.

She should have known better... if if she didn't, thats not the kind of person i want running this country.


>And note that while Bernie Sanders may have voted correctly on
>that day, he DID NOT stop the war. He had empty rhetoric, and
>nothing else, which is the same as what he has today. If Al
>Gore had been President instead of George W Bush, that
>particular war would have never even been an idea.

It's fun to make up scenarios in your head.. If Gore was president, the Giants would have won the Super Bowl that year too....fact is Bernie voted AGAINST the war.. Go watch that video again if you think its "empty rhetoric"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdFw1btbkLM

^^^ you should be ashamed of yourself calling this "empty rhetoric"

and LOL @ the phrase "empty rhetoric" ...she just repeats that bullshit phrase over and over when addressing anything that she see's as an attack ..and you Hill Dawg bots just eat it up... sad

Tell me more.

I should be ashamed of myself for not being, what, emotionally stirred? By a speech that didn't have an effect on anything?

Yes. Empty rhetoric.

once the towers fell we were going to war regardless of who was in office.

>once the towers fell we were going to war regardless of who
>was in office.

In Afghanistan. Not Iraq. Those were two different wars, remember, and Iraq had nothing to do with those towers. Iraq was entirely a Bush administration idea. As was the open-ended, undefined "war on terror."

It may have been a neocon idea, but both parties were complicit.

23 senators voted against it. Hillary and 28 other Democrats voted for it.

That's what's wrong with the party right there. It's all we've been saying in these posts.

than any of the GOP candidates who are likely to oppose her in the general election.

so i don't give a shit about her voting in favor of those wars even though i opposed those wars.

it is not a trivial matter.

if people don't see a difference between the parties, it's because they're not different *enough* and not different in relevant ways.

and we're not asking for them to be exactly like us, we just would like them to take more responsibility for consistently being on the wrong side of history. give us faith that they will do better the next time they need to make those decisions.

that has way more to do with why the dems lost and are losing than a boogeyman like ralph fucking nader.

By you know, not running on his record because Dubya told him couldn't, not running on the environment, etc.

>but at the very least we can say for sure that it elected
>George W. Bush, and it thereby CAUSED the Iraq war, along with
>a long list of other horrors.

C'mon man, talk about "simplistic."

And what makes it so frustrating is we have a very recent example of the consequences of this thinking.

If a sufficient number of people who thought like you got off their ass and actually voted against Bush by voting for Gore (literally just a few thousand people in FL to be specific), there would be no Iraq War.


>I'm not playing that game of chicken the establishment of the
>DNC is trying to run on us again... It's that "oh....you don't
>want a Republican to win now, do you? OK, Please vote for
>our corporate sell out candidate out of pure fear... Oh great,
>you did! Now we know that we can keep doing this every four
>years and you'll never leave" Now is the time to call their
>bluff... I won't support her ever
>
>I won't support someone who voted for the Iraq War, the
>Patriot Act. Who's in bed with Wall Street, Big Pharm, the
>Prison Lobby, Monsanto, Big Energy.. Who's anti Cannabis
>legalization and thinks we "need more research" while keeping
>it schedule I so research will never get done.. Someone who
>has flip-flopped so many policies based on pure political
>gain.. Who's got a HORRIBLE record on foreign policy..
>
>i'm not even bringing up the list of investigations regarding
>shady shit she's been involved with over the years..
>
>NOPE.. not getting my vote.. sorry
>
>
>


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

is we went from Gore/Bush to Clinton/Extreme-Republican-Nominee. The whole country generally is sliding right in terms of candidate options.

I've spent most of my life in Texas. I live in a community that is about 85% POC. Because of gerrymandering and a lack of faith in Democrats, every one of our representatives at the state and national level is a Republican. Most of our local officials are also Republican.

We went from Anne Richards to George Bush to Rick Perry to Greg Abbott as the leader of our state. We've gone from Lloyd Bensten to Ted Cruz. It's a huge change, and it's been a persistent shift right. As unhappy as I was about it as a teenager, I'd be THRILLED to have W and Bob Bullock running the show in Austin right now.

The Republican nominee is going to be way to the right of Dubya. Hillary is to the right of where Gore would be by now. This didn't happen because of leakage to Nader or Greens or Socialists. It happened because of what the major parties decided they wanted to be, and how leaders in these parties listened to/ignored their electorates.

The center/right Democrat platform, legitimately, is a non-seller. It's built to cater to voters who largely don't exist any more, or those who vote Republican.

The Latinos who actually vote in Texas are voting for these Republicans too. John Cornyn went from 36% in 2008 to getting more Latino votes than the Democrat in 2014. The DNC doesn't have a game plan. We are on the cusp of losing a generation, and we're not doing anything about it because the DNC plays demographics instead of leading.

We shouldn't be judged because we don't like voting for that. Especially when many, perhaps most of us, are going to suck it up and vote for Hillary anyway. We're not the problem with the party.

that the candidates are moving to the right because the ELECTORATE is moving to the right. That's not to say that the PEOPLE are moving to the right, but the people who show up to vote are moving to the right. The electorate can move to the right even if the people move left, if the right side gets more passionate while the left side gets more passive and self-destructive. No this isn't a Nader thing, but Nader was a symptom. When a party is (according to popular conception) in power, its supporters get complacent and allow more infighting. This happened to Democrats near the end of the Clinton years, to Republicans near the end of the Bush years, and it's happening to Democrats again at the end of the Obama years. And when a party is (according to popular conception) OUT of power, then they will put more of their infighting aside and unite for what they consider to be the common good. We saw this with the Gingrich revolution in the Clinton years, the Obama insurgency at the end of the Bush years, and the Tea Party in the Obama years.

The parties don't just "decide what they want to be." The electorate SHOWS the parties how to get votes, and thereby, how to survive. If nobody will show up for single-payer healthcare, then no party in its right mind would jump directly to single-payer healthcare.

That said, I firmly reject the idea that Hillary is to the right of Al Gore. On the issues Hillary is identical to Barack Obama, Al Gore, and in terms of goals even Bernie Sanders. The broad outlines of Bernie's policy proposals are the same as the broad outlines of Hillary's proposals. The only differences are in the details, and that's only because the Sanders campaign hasn't taken the time to spell out any of those details.

>that the candidates are moving to the right because the
>ELECTORATE is moving to the right. That's not to say that the
>PEOPLE are moving to the right, but the people who show up to
>vote are moving to the right. The electorate can move to the
>right even if the people move left, if the right side gets
>more passionate while the left side gets more passive and
>self-destructive. No this isn't a Nader thing, but Nader was a
>symptom. When a party is (according to popular conception) in
>power, its supporters get complacent and allow more
>infighting. This happened to Democrats near the end of the
>Clinton years, to Republicans near the end of the Bush years,
>and it's happening to Democrats again at the end of the Obama
>years. And when a party is (according to popular conception)
>OUT of power, then they will put more of their infighting
>aside and unite for what they consider to be the common good.
>We saw this with the Gingrich revolution in the Clinton years,
>the Obama insurgency at the end of the Bush years, and the Tea
>Party in the Obama years.
>
>The parties don't just "decide what they want to be." The
>electorate SHOWS the parties how to get votes, and thereby,
>how to survive. If nobody will show up for single-payer
>healthcare, then no party in its right mind would jump
>directly to single-payer healthcare.

You're only talking about elections that have happened in a framework where the right has control of the electorate. That's my whole point. By following voters, parties have shifted right. It's going to take a re-articulation and re-definition of politics to reverse that trend.

Hillary and Trump take your point to extremes. Their strategy is 100% tell the voters what they want to hear. It's not a good thing.

Even in the cyclical examples you've mentioned, we've been working under the assumption that Republicans get what they want legislatively until they REALLY fuck up, and then the Dems get maybe 2 years to try to do something, but in most cases they don't because they're afraid of losing the next election.

The current alignment is not permanent, but the DNC acts like it is. That's a failure in leadership and articulating a platform. it's what happens when you take politics one election at a time.

>That said, I firmly reject the idea that Hillary is to the
>right of Al Gore. On the issues Hillary is identical to Barack
>Obama, Al Gore, and in terms of goals even Bernie Sanders. The
>broad outlines of Bernie's policy proposals are the same as
>the broad outlines of Hillary's proposals. The only
>differences are in the details, and that's only because the
>Sanders campaign hasn't taken the time to spell out any of
>those details.
>

Al Gore went out of his way to endorse an anti-war candidate in 2004. He would not be nearly as pro-corporate as Hillary is. He would have been more aggressive about issues like the Keystone XL pipeline than Hillary (and Obama) have been. That's not to say that they aren't mostly the same, but yes, definitely, she is to the right of Al Gore.

>You're only talking about elections that have happened in a
>framework where the right has control of the electorate.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. You're saying the right had control of the electorate in 2008?

>That's my whole point. By following voters, parties have
>shifted right. It's going to take a re-articulation and
>re-definition of politics to reverse that trend.

Meaning, moving away from democracy? I'm not trying to insinuate anything here about what you're saying; I honestly don't understand what you're getting at. Aren't the voters SUPPOSED to be in charge?

>Hillary and Trump take your point to extremes. Their strategy
>is 100% tell the voters what they want to hear. It's not a
>good thing.
>
>Even in the cyclical examples you've mentioned, we've been
>working under the assumption that Republicans get what they
>want legislatively until they REALLY fuck up, and then the
>Dems get maybe 2 years to try to do something, but in most
>cases they don't because they're afraid of losing the next
>election.

No, the only reason GW Bush got more time than most was because 9/11 complicated the normal state of politics.

Besides, W didn't always get what he wanted. Remember when he tried to privatize Social Security? Bush held both houses of Congress at the time and it still turned into a disaster for him.

I think a lot of the time we forget how often the OTHER side is powerless. We only carry the scars from our own losses.

>The current alignment is not permanent, but the DNC acts like
>it is. That's a failure in leadership and articulating a
>platform. it's what happens when you take politics one
>election at a time.
>
>>That said, I firmly reject the idea that Hillary is to the
>>right of Al Gore. On the issues Hillary is identical to
>Barack
>>Obama, Al Gore, and in terms of goals even Bernie Sanders.
>The
>>broad outlines of Bernie's policy proposals are the same as
>>the broad outlines of Hillary's proposals. The only
>>differences are in the details, and that's only because the
>>Sanders campaign hasn't taken the time to spell out any of
>>those details.
>>
>
>Al Gore went out of his way to endorse an anti-war candidate
>in 2004.

An anti-war candidate who, by the way, is currently endorsing Hillary Clinton.

>He would not be nearly as pro-corporate as Hillary
>is.

How, exactly, is she "pro-corporate"? Saying she's taken campaign contributions from the same sources as Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Al Gore, would not be a good answer.

>He would have been more aggressive about issues like the
>Keystone XL pipeline than Hillary (and Obama) have been.

Maybe but the Keystone pipeline has always been a silly issue.

>That's not to say that they aren't mostly the same, but yes,
>definitely, she is to the right of Al Gore.

I still don't see it. At any rate, whatever difference there may be is negligible compared to the difference with Donald Trump or George W Bush.

we don't have large disagreements, and we'll all likely vote the same in the fall, but i think the disdain early hillary voters show for other perspectives in the party is dangerous.

i hope y'all are putting in the same amount of work trying to convince non-democrats to vote democrat in november and 2018 as you are trying to get bernie supporters to move on.

I bet Obama would have run and governed more progressively if he thought he could het away with it.

Democracy is a grind for incremental gains to try to pull a country in the best direction, especially for those on the left. But the left is so busy playing moral high horse with itself (and dealing with the blue collar Bernie Bro faction which exists in many countries on the left) that it doesn't unite effectively and loses the opportunity to govern and more importantly mobilise to motivate non voters and persuade those in the middle and moderate right.

isn't that the left is fighting over moral high ground

because the right is certainly doing that, and it's a mess.

it's that the right is consistently on message about the principals that establish that high ground. it is very effective.

Trump isn't on message about basic conservative principles. He's out there talking about how Planned Parenthood does a lot of good. Trump is reminding the Republicans of the enormous power of triangulation. George W Bush did the same (compassionate conservative and all that). They win by being willing and able to play the game.

2) you're ignoring the donald trump winning by beating other republicans at being on message. make america great again, immigration/trutherism, faux-christianity, harping on roberts.

trump has run for president many times. he's only getting traction now because he's bullshitting his way through the republican messaging. which shows you how powerful it is.

(he's only gone loud on pp and iraq recently because he's trying to pivot center for the general. he's exploiting messaging...he's a parasite)

3) you're ignoring that cruz is currently trump's biggest competition after months of posts from you and others proclaiming the viability of moderates like jeb, kasich, and rubio.

On point (1), yeah, I'll admit that. Local politics is a different game, because the electorate is more homogeneous on a local level. That's why people like Dennis Kucinich, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders, people who could never build a national coalition, can still win local and statewide elections.

>2) you're ignoring the donald trump winning by beating other
>republicans at being on message. make america great again,
>immigration/trutherism, faux-christianity, harping on roberts.

They are all perfectly on-message, but they have different messages. Trump's message doesn't involve any conservative principles, just a right-wing attitude.

>trump has run for president many times. he's only getting
>traction now because he's bullshitting his way through the
>republican messaging. which shows you how powerful it is.
>
>(he's only gone loud on pp and iraq recently because he's
>trying to pivot center for the general. he's exploiting
>messaging...he's a parasite)

Well, he was talking about Iraq from the very beginning. He's also been away from the Tea-Party brand on eminent domain for a long time.

>3) you're ignoring that cruz is currently trump's biggest
>competition after months of posts from you and others
>proclaiming the viability of moderates like jeb, kasich, and
>rubio.

Cruz isn't really competition. He's a base candidate. That means, he's competition in a primary election, but he'd be doomed in a general election. Cruz is just as unelectable as Sanders is, and for precisely the same reason: that a majority of the electorate considers him an extremist. In the super Tuesday thread, Mynoriti and I were laughing about the fact that Trump's only serious competition was turning out to be the only guy in the race even less electable than him.

When people like me have brought up Kasich and Rubio (I don't think anyone was ever afraid of Jeb), it's been about the fact that IF they won the nomination, they'd be VERY formidable general election candidates. They are the Hillaries of that side. Cruz is the Bernie of that side. The old cliche is that "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line." Thankfully, that pattern has reversed this time. It's been gratifying, and entertaining, to see the Republicans allow their emotions to torpedo their general-election chances, while the Democrats appear to have avoided that fate.

I'm talking about what is happening, and the arguments between the left about who is better between Clinton and Sanders and threatening not to vote is very much an argument about moral high ground. It's certainly not about pragmatism.

in Illinois - a state Gore won.

but yeah...i fell for that talk, clearly. i won't ever make that mistake again. i learned my lesson.

This time around, I'm voting for Bernie in the primaries. And I'll probably write him in the GE too. Because I live in California.

If it looks like Hilary needs my vote to carry California in the General Election, I'll vote for her. But if Hilary needs my vote in the General Election to carry California, she's already fucked, and isn't going to win this thing anyway.

Good thing she's winning this thing anyway.

>This time around, I'm voting for Bernie in the primaries. And
>I'll probably write him in the GE too. Because I live in
>California.
>
>If it looks like Hilary needs my vote to carry California in
>the General Election, I'll vote for her. But if Hilary needs
>my vote in the General Election to carry California, she's
>already fucked, and isn't going to win this thing anyway.

candidates ever

Bernie is probably the best candidate of the modern era if you believe in social justice, income equality and people over corporations.

It's his viability that most people have a problem with.

that means it's IMPOSSIBLE to have a promising candidate. Because no matter WHO it is.....it won't matter because of congress.

A little too self-defeating imo. One thing at a time. A socialist president is a step towards a more civil society. But that ship has sailed anyways so......

http://www.cheatsheet.com/business/these-20-special-interest-groups-are-flooding-congress-with-cash.html/?a=viewall

so i'm glad there are groups out there lobbying Congress on my behalf. b/c i ain't got time or interest.

http://i.imgur.com/iWKad22.jpg

Trump.

What you just said about Bernie was more than I knew about him prior. All I knew about him before was that he look old and feeble.

One Bernie critique is that he's trying to turn the States into a European-like country. Which is kinda true.

Don't be fooled by the 'Bernie is trying to dismantle what Obama tried to do'. Bernie is trying to go FURTHER than Obama. Health care for all. Corporate taxes. Social programs. Better welfare programs. Basically...the same shit that all other rich countries have.

As an outsider...it's really frusterating to hear leftist Americans doubt that those things are possible. You guys are literally surrounded by other countries that offer these things. When my daughter was born I was shit poor and 20 years old. They gave me a card that could be used anywhere in the country for ANY health issues that may occur....FOR FREE. We had 12 months of mat leave (nation-wide) that our companies are forced to pay. I can't emphasize enough how big a difference these kind of things make in the quality of your life. And even the LEFTISTS in America think they're 'unrealistic'.

In Canada, if we notice Australia has implemented a social program that seems to be working....we say 'hey, we should try that too'. But there's some sort of nationalistic pride that is drilled into Americans from birth that you can't take ideas from other countries. Even amongst the left. How convenient for the 1%.

is more that he doesn't actually have a plan for any of this. I'm flabbergasted by the way people are saying he's good on these issues, because he doesn't actually have any proposals for them. Whenever anyone asks him how he'd get these things done, all he can muster is "we'll get millions of the American people to finally make their voices heard." This was far-fetched from the very beginning, and it's gotten a hell of a lot more so as he's failed gain support even among the party that's naturally supportive of the proposals.

Look at health care. It's not just crony capitalism that's stopped us from implementing a European-style system. Health care is (last I heard) one-seventh of our economy. That is to say, something on the order of a seventh of all Americans would have their livelihoods completely upset if we tried jumping directly into a single-payer system. The European countries generally took the chance to do it shortly after the war, at a time when their economies were already in disarray.

Now Canada (you obviously know this history better than I do but I'll give it a shot) is not, fundamentally, a European-style system. And this is related to the fact that they implemented their system at a time when they couldn't risk as much upset to their economy. The medical providers are not employees of the government, as they are in, for example, the British NHS. The Canadian health services are generally private, it's essentially an insurance system that is government-run and taxpayer-funded. Moreover, this system wasn't invented in one fell swoop of socialistic frenzy. It grew slowly over decades from separate province-level systems.

We are implementing the same kind of system in America. It's been held up, as we've all seen. But this is the "public option" that we were forced to remove from Obamacare to get it to pass. Obamacare has substantially re-regulated the health insurance system, improving coverage, slowing rate inflation, and banning discrimination over pre-existing conditions. But obviously it's still not as good as a single-payer system. But we still want a public option, we're still fighting for it, it's still in the party platform, and it's still something that Hillary publicly supports. The Republicans fought the public option tooth-and-nail because (as they openly admitted in many cases at the time) it would work so much better than for-profit health insurance that it would push the private players out of the market and we'd end up with a de-facto single-payer plan. I agree wholeheartedly, and so would any mainstream Democrat not trying to nuance a voter too afraid of "socialism" to realize that if the government can do it better than the private sector, then the government should be doing it.

"Medicare for all" is not a plan, it's a slogan.

Working to add the public option back into Obamacare, and then relying on empirical data (including the historical success in Canada) that this would naturally move the nation toward a system functionally equivalent to Canada's system. That is a plan.

so him having those proposals ready during the mobilization phase really shouldn't be that surprising

whoever we elect might automatically have the lowest favorability ratings of any president-elect ever.

we probably haven't seen anything like this since the mid-1800s. is that where the fuck we are? that's depressing.

Trump and the sheer number of candidates in the beginning just skews the perception, but 2012 featured: Herman Cain, Michelle Bachman, Santorum's first run, Rick Perry's first run, and Newt Gingrich. Just Cain and Bachman alone are every bit as ridiculous as candidates like Carson.

and for all the goofy antics, people like Bachman, and Cain didn't last more than a couple of weeks on top once everyone had a closer look, they moved on.

The Trump era is a very new phenomenon. The bar is definitely lower.

Give me the devil I know because reaching too far and failing is not OK

that.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/23/opinions/superdelegates-democratic-party-kohn/


Democratic Party superdelegates are undemocratic
By Sally Kohn, CNN Political Commentator
Updated 3:02 PM ET, Tue February 23, 2016


Sally Kohn is an activist, columnist and television commentator. Follow her on Twitter: @sallykohn. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN)You might think, from their title, that superdelegates are better than regular delegates.

Actually, they're worse.

The process for presidential elections in the United States is governed by the Constitution. Primary elections, however, are not. They are controlled by the political parties themselves. In fact, until the 1820s, members of Congress chose the presidential nominee for each party. That elitist system started to buckle with the advent of national conventions, though delegates were still selected through state and local convention processes controlled by the parties.

It wasn't until the mid-1900s that parties embraced primary elections as part of the process for deciding on presidential candidates. But to ensure that the voters themselves didn't have all the power, in 1982 the Democratic Party adopted what are called superdelegates, who today control 15% of the final nomination process.

Sally Kohn
Sally Kohn
The Republican Party has superdelegates, too, but they have a lot less power. GOP superdelegates are only about 7% of the nominating vote, and according to Republican convention rules, superdelegates must vote in accordance with their state primary outcomes.

It's in the Democratic Party that the outsized power and lack of accountability of superdelegates is supremely, well, undemocratic.

Specifically, after the Democratic caucuses in Nevada, CNN estimated that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were almost tied for pledged delegates, with 52 and 51 of them, respectively. And yet Clinton was leading by a much wider margin in the total delegate count because a whopping 445 superdelegates -- out of a total of 712 -- pledged to support her. By comparison, just 18 superdelegates pledged to support Sanders.

In other words, while Clinton and Sanders were almost perfectly split in the tally of voter-determined delegates, superdelegates threw their weight behind Clinton by an almost 25-to-1 ratio.

Any liberal who has ever been at a protest march for social justice has heard the popular chant: "This is what democracy looks like!" Well, superdelegates are definitely not what democracy looks like. Anything but.

Is primary 'rigged' against Bernie Sanders?

Is primary 'rigged' against Bernie Sanders? 01:37
So here's where it gets really interesting: In the 2008 Democratic primary, by at least some measures, more people actually voted for Clinton than for Barack Obama. But because of the way pledged delegates are counted and because Obama's team led an effort early on to lock down superdelegates, the math ultimately favored Obama, and Clinton dropped out. Clinton, in turn, learned not to dismantle the superdelegate system but to better play it, hiring the architect of Obama's superdelegate strategy to marshal hers this time around. And so fans of Sanders -- as well as, presumably, fans of democratic participation in general -- have launched efforts to call on superdelegates to reflect the will of the voters they represent and promise to support whichever candidate their state voters back. One such petition by MoveOn.org, has over 179,000 signatures. Another similar petition has almost 200,000 signatures.

Not so fast, says the Democratic Party. The uproar about superdelegates started after the New Hampshire primary. Sanders won 60% of the vote and, therefore, 15 of the state's pledged delegates. Clinton won just nine delegates. But nonetheless, Sanders and Clinton remained tied vis-a-vis New Hampshire delegates because six of the state's eight superdelegates backed Clinton.

CNN's Jake Tapper asked Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz why the Democratic Party would embrace such a plainly undemocratic process. Here's what she said:

"Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don't have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists."

In other words, the Democratic Party's superdelegates exist to preserve the power and influence of the Democratic Party's elite. Well that makes perfect sense -- if you're, say, the inherently elitist, pro-big business, rich Republican Party. But not if you're supposed to be the party that protects the interests of regular Americans.

And sure, there's an argument to be made that both parties should have a fail-safe way to prevent the sort of cataclysmic disaster of the kind Donald Trump is creating by becoming the GOP nominee. But democracy is democracy, folks. We're supposed to stand by the process even if we don't like the outcome.

According to a new poll, nearly one in three Trump supporters in South Carolina supports banning gay people from entering the United States. That's horrifying. But the Republican Party has to reckon with those voters -- and the way in which Republican policies and rhetoric over the last several decades have given succor and solace to those views. Sweeping them under the rug via a superdelegate trouncing would be convenient but wrong.

Most of us know the quotes about democracy being messy or imperfect or the worst form of government except for all the others. Here's another quote: "Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy." That one comes from Mussolini, who was a fascist, and, perhaps if he were alive today, would be a superdelegate.

lol.....

It's like they're not even trying to sell his message anymore. It's 5% Bernie's vision, and 95% how Hillary Clinton is the most awful human being to ever walk the earth.

Last few months it's evolved into a "either you're with us or with the terrorists" mindset.

I don't blame him for any of it though. He's been a class act.

And I really doubt that many of Bernie's supporters are actually like that.

I don't judge anyone's fanbase by what's represented on the Internet. I think how supporters act in "real" life settings are a better indication. Which is why I have no problem labeling the majority of Trump supporters as morons.

but they stay on reddit and will read shit off to me randomly... "Dude, did you see what Hillary said in 1974??"

I get it, fuck lol.

But I've also got the obnoxious Hilary-Stans and the "Bernie isn't a true socialist" types. I ignore them all.

i have a boy who describes himself as a marxist but i haven't asked him about Bernie. As for Hillary, i don't know anyone riding hard for her like that. My mom and her friends want her, but they're ok with Bernie as well. Mostly it's just people who recognize she's whatever, but will definitely vote for her.

I do have some Trump/Cruz people. and plenty of Bernie lol.

>But I've also got the obnoxious Hilary-Stans and the "Bernie
>isn't a true socialist" types. I ignore them all.

The notion that you wouldn't consider voting for a candidate because of a segment of his supporters is peculiar. Every politician has annoying, caustic supporters - but the supporters aren't running to be President, Bernie Sanders is.

It seems to me that there needs to be criticism and analysis on the actual candidate - Bernie Sanders - in order to logically make a case as to why he doesn't warrant your support. Conversely, I see a lot of whining about the so-called unfair attacks that progressives are launching at Clinton. Yes, there are some who are being unfair with regards to Clinton, but the lion-share of the Progressive criticism of her (from the likes of Robert Reich and Michelle Alexander) are based on substantive grounds and verifiable records - whereas I hear a lot of people here and elsewhere criticizing Sanders because of some of his obnoxious supporters. Not the strongest logic.



-->

Or that I would be basing my vote on supporters?

I'm sure it's good for my body - but I'm so tired of all these IG fitness enthusiasts showing off and unattainable photos in fitness magazines promoting physiques that most people will never attain....

A lot of my friends eat healthy, whole diets - some even eat plant-based diets citing ethical concerns about treatment of animals and global warming/environmental concerns associated with industrial animal farming.

I'm not 100% for fast-food, but I'm probably going to just eat it because i'm so tired of the optimists who think that they can overpower the processed foods industry.

-->

I'm not going to base my vote on losing some internet argument with a disagreeable, surly stranger. There is no clever or pithy statement from anyone that will change my vote.

-->

I try real hard.

You don't get to complain about the establishment ever again. You can't be mad at the status quo because that's what you opted for. You don't get to complain about the options on the left being too much in th middle or even to the right.

I mean, you still will, but you'll be responsible ya dirty old bitch (c)

... if someone prefers Hillary's plan to Bernie's plan, votes consistently in local, state, and federal elections for Democratic candidates, and urges all of his or her friends and family to vote Democrat in all elections as well?

That person is doing a hundred times more for the possibility of actual progress than all of the people I see saying that they'll stay home if Bernie doesn't get the nom, holding their vote hostage.

Bernie won't fix things by himself. Hillary won't fix things by herself. Progress is won at local, state, federal levels, with congressmen, mayors, governors, Senators, local and state judges, etc.

I really don't like this mind set of "IF YOU DON'T DO THIS YOU MUST HATE THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY" that I've seen on *both* sides of the fence (though admittedly more on Bernie's). It's the type of reductive narrative that causes people to develop savior complexes over presidential candidates in the first place.

>Bernie won't fix things by himself. Hillary won't fix things
>by herself. Progress is won at local, state, federal levels,
>with congressmen, mayors, governors, Senators, local and state
>judges, etc.
>

It's a grind, it's slow and incremental. Sanders isn't the person who makes or breaks the movement. It's the lack of mobilisation across the board.

Not only do I not believe HRC's recently acquired taste for more left-leaning policies, I don't believe her to be a progressive. Her husband's presidency doesn't sit right (left) with me and neither do her efforts as a senator to score points and make her case for a better job.

Basically, if Hillary and Bernie propose a similar policy, or even the same policy, I have no inclination to believe her. I love BHO irrationally, but he has unfortunately left truisms, like "political realities" or "evolving positions", that I think would allow a dishonest successor to be slippery with their promises.

You can fault Bernie Sanders for naivety, but that concedes he's earnest. You could say he wouldn't get enough done, but that means we **know** what he would try to do. HRC supporters love to say she would get stuff done even with extreme opposition. They're predicting her selling them out.

Democrats were so thrilled about winning the White House back in 1992 they didn't much care where Clinton was on the death penalty or that he broke the safety nets for the poor in a way republicans could only envy. Now I'm supposed to vote for Hillary because what's best for America is a president with a (D) next to their name? Fool me once ya can't get fooled again (c)

If the difference is between Hillary and Trump, the differences are roughly 197298572948562459874 times more stark than the ones between Hillary and Bernie.

And you also ignored the central point that I made: it doesn't come down to one person. It comes down to Houses and Senates being in Democratic majority. It comes down to state governments winning Democratic votes. And on top of that, yes, a Democratic president to work with Democratic bodies at the state and federal levels.

Thanks for not reading.

*unreliable, inconsistent, possibly dishonest

Cool. I vehemently disagree. Like, 1908230957249857% disagree.

That's what I'm reading in your replies. If I'm reading incorrectly, feel free to succinctly correct me, because that's what your argument is reading as from the outside to this particular writer.

And your reply still doesn't remotely address my main point about the president not being the be-all end-all, that it comes down to House and Senate and State elections if you want to see real change.

But either way, do you. We can totally and absolutely disagree on this point. I'm open to the idea that people somehow equate the gap between those two scenarios. I'm baffled as to how that happens, but I'm open to the idea that those thoughts do somehow exist in the heads of individuals.

he is not putting on the hope/change fairy costume that Obama wore

he wants to be the spark to get all the trash out of DC


I heard some huge number of existing seats are up for grabs this year as well. along with the SC nom's. to get his aggressive policies done he is asking for a capital hill overhaul

It'd be great.

that has to get removed,

but probably a full third of the country wants to turn the dial back in the complete opposite direction

...but I have to post this. The right-wing Honduran coup government she provided political cover and backchannel support to, after they overthrew the moderate leftist Manuel Zelaya, continues its reign of terror. And that reign of terror includes targeting women, indigenous people, and environmentalists. Keep Berta Cáceres in mind if you're voting for Clinton in the primaries.

http://www.thenation.com/article/the-clinton-backed-honduran-regime-is-picking-off-indigenous-leaders/

Clinton-Backed Honduran Regime Is Picking Off Indigenous Leaders

By Greg Grandin 3/3/16 12:53 PM

Hillary Clinton will be good for women. Ask Berta Cáceres. But you can’t. She’s dead. Gunned down yesterday, March 2, at midnight, in her hometown of La Esperanza, Intibuca, in Honduras.

Cáceres was a vocal and brave indigenous leader, an opponent of the 2009 Honduran coup that Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, made possible. In The Nation, Dana Frank and I covered that coup as it unfolded. Later, as Clinton’s emails were released, others, such as Robert Naiman, Mark Weisbrot, and Alex Main, revealed the central role she played in undercutting Manuel Zelaya, the deposed president, and undercutting the opposition movement demanding his restoration. In so doing, Clinton allied with the worst sectors of Honduran society.

Despite the fact that he was a rural patriarch, Zelaya as president was remarkably supportive of “intersectionality” (that is, a left politics not reducible to class or political economy): He tried to make the morning-after pill legal. (After Zelaya’s ouster, Honduras’s coup congress—the one legitimated by Hillary Clinton—passed an “absolute ban on emergency contraception,” criminalizing “the sale, distribution, and use of the ‘morning-after pill’—imposing punishment for offenders equal to that of obtaining or performing an abortion, which in Honduras is completely restricted.”) He supported gay and transgender rights. (Read this. Among the first to be murdered was Vicky Hernandez Castillo, a transgendered activist in San Pedro Sula. Hernandez left her home on the night of the coup, apparently unaware that the new government had decreed a curfew. She was found dead the next morning, shot in the eye and strangled; Sentidog, an LGBT monitoring group, writes that 168 LGBT people were killed in Honduras between the coup and 2014.)

Zelaya apologized for a policy of “social cleansing”—that is, the murder and disappearance of street children and gang members—executed by his predecessors. And he backed rural peasant and indigenous movements, such as the one Cáceres led, in the fight against land dispossession, mining, and biofuels. Zelaya, as president, was by no means perfect. But he was slowly trying to use the power of the state on behalf of the best people in Honduras, including Berta Cáceres.

Since Zelaya’s ouster, there’s been an all-out assault on these decent people—torture, murder, militarization of the countryside, repressive laws, such as the absolute ban on the morning-after pill, the rise of paramilitary security forces, and the wholesale deliverance of the country’s land and resources to transnational pillagers. That’s not to mention libertarian fantasies, promoted by billionaires such as PayPal’s Peter Thiel and Milton Friedman’s grandson (can’t make this shit up), of turning the country into some kind of Year-Zero stateless utopia.

Such is the nature of the “unity government” Clinton helped institutionalize. In her book, Hard Choices, Clinton holds up her Honduran settlement as a proud example of her trademark clear-eyed, “pragmatic” foreign policy approach.

Berta Cáceres gave her life to fight that government. She was the general coordinator of the COPINH (Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras), a group that has had many of its leadership murdered in the last few years. Last year, Cáceres was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work opposing a major dam project.

Since the 2009 coup, Honduras has witnessed an explosive growth in environmentally destructive megaprojects that would displace indigenous communities. Almost 30 percent of the country’s land was earmarked for mining concessions, creating a demand for cheap energy to power future mining operations. To meet this need, the government approved hundreds of dam projects around the country, privatizing rivers, land, and uprooting communities. Among them was the Agua Zarca Dam, a joint project of Honduran company Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA) and Chinese state-owned Sinohydro, the world’s largest dam developer. Agua Zarca, slated for construction on the sacred Gualcarque River, was pushed through without consulting the indigenous Lenca people—a violation of international treaties governing indigenous peoples’ rights. The dam would cut off the supply of water, food and medicine for hundreds of Lenca people and violate their right to sustainably manage and live off their land.

Berta Cáceres, a Lenca woman, grew up during the violence that swept through Central America in the 1980s. Her mother, a midwife and social activist, took in and cared for refugees from El Salvador, teaching her young children the value of standing up for disenfranchised people. Cáceres grew up to become a student activist and in 1993, she co-founded the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) to address the growing threats posed to Lenca communities by illegal logging, fight for their territorial rights and improve their livelihoods. In 2006, community members from Rio Blanco came to COPINH asking for help. They had witnessed an influx of machinery and construction equipment coming into their town. They had no idea what the construction was for or who was behind the project. What they knew was that an aggression against the river—a place of spiritual importance to the Lenca people—was an act against the community, its free will, and its autonomy.

The names of Cáceres’s murderers are yet unknown. But we know who killed her.

According to one email circulating about her death: “Berta Cáceres and COPINH have been accompanying various land struggles throughout western Honduras. In the last few weeks, violence and repression towards Berta, COPINH, and the communities they support had escalated. In Rio Blanco on February 20th, Berta, COPINH, and the community of Rio Blanco faced threats and repression as they carried out a peaceful action to protect the River Gualcarque against the construction of a hydroelectric dam by the internationally financed Honduran company DESA. As a result of COPINH’s work supporting the Rio Blanco struggle, Berta had received countless threats against her life and was granted precautionary measures by the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights. On February 25th, another Lenca community supported by COPINH in Guise, Intibuca, was violently evicted and destroyed.”

(Here’s Telesur’s report on the killing.)

I’m tempted to end this post with a call on Bernie bros and sisters to hold Hillary Clinton responsible and to ask, when possible in town halls and meet and greets, if she ever met Cáceres, or if she is still proud of the hell she helped routinize in Honduras. But, really, Cáceres’s assassination shouldn’t be reduced to the idiocy of American electoral politics.

All people of goodwill should ask Hillary Clinton those questions.

which she embraces and represents, that many of us are complicit in through our positions of privilege, indifference, apathy etc. RIP.


>...but I have to post this. The right-wing Honduran coup
>government she provided political cover and backchannel
>support to, after they overthrew the moderate leftist Manuel
>Zelaya, continues its reign of terror. And that reign of
>terror includes targeting women, indigenous people, and
>environmentalists. Keep Berta Cáceres in mind if you're
>voting for Clinton in the primaries.
>
>http://www.thenation.com/article/the-clinton-backed-honduran-regime-is-picking-off-indigenous-leaders/
>
>Clinton-Backed Honduran Regime Is Picking Off Indigenous
>Leaders
>
>By Greg Grandin 3/3/16 12:53 PM
>
>Hillary Clinton will be good for women. Ask Berta Cáceres.
>But you can’t. She’s dead. Gunned down yesterday, March 2,
>at midnight, in her hometown of La Esperanza, Intibuca, in
>Honduras.
>
>Cáceres was a vocal and brave indigenous leader, an opponent
>of the 2009 Honduran coup that Hillary Clinton, as secretary
>of state, made possible. In The Nation, Dana Frank and I
>covered that coup as it unfolded. Later, as Clinton’s emails
>were released, others, such as Robert Naiman, Mark Weisbrot,
>and Alex Main, revealed the central role she played in
>undercutting Manuel Zelaya, the deposed president, and
>undercutting the opposition movement demanding his
>restoration. In so doing, Clinton allied with the worst
>sectors of Honduran society.
>
>Despite the fact that he was a rural patriarch, Zelaya as
>president was remarkably supportive of “intersectionality”
>(that is, a left politics not reducible to class or political
>economy): He tried to make the morning-after pill legal.
>(After Zelaya’s ouster, Honduras’s coup congress—the one
>legitimated by Hillary Clinton—passed an “absolute ban on
>emergency contraception,” criminalizing “the sale,
>distribution, and use of the ‘morning-after
>pill’—imposing punishment for offenders equal to that of
>obtaining or performing an abortion, which in Honduras is
>completely restricted.”) He supported gay and transgender
>rights. (Read this. Among the first to be murdered was Vicky
>Hernandez Castillo, a transgendered activist in San Pedro
>Sula. Hernandez left her home on the night of the coup,
>apparently unaware that the new government had decreed a
>curfew. She was found dead the next morning, shot in the eye
>and strangled; Sentidog, an LGBT monitoring group, writes that
>168 LGBT people were killed in Honduras between the coup and
>2014.)
>
>Zelaya apologized for a policy of “social
>cleansing”—that is, the murder and disappearance of street
>children and gang members—executed by his predecessors. And
>he backed rural peasant and indigenous movements, such as the
>one Cáceres led, in the fight against land dispossession,
>mining, and biofuels. Zelaya, as president, was by no means
>perfect. But he was slowly trying to use the power of the
>state on behalf of the best people in Honduras, including
>Berta Cáceres.
>
>Since Zelaya’s ouster, there’s been an all-out assault on
>these decent people—torture, murder, militarization of the
>countryside, repressive laws, such as the absolute ban on the
>morning-after pill, the rise of paramilitary security forces,
>and the wholesale deliverance of the country’s land and
>resources to transnational pillagers. That’s not to mention
>libertarian fantasies, promoted by billionaires such as
>PayPal’s Peter Thiel and Milton Friedman’s grandson
>(can’t make this shit up), of turning the country into some
>kind of Year-Zero stateless utopia.
>
>Such is the nature of the “unity government” Clinton
>helped institutionalize. In her book, Hard Choices, Clinton
>holds up her Honduran settlement as a proud example of her
>trademark clear-eyed, “pragmatic” foreign policy
>approach.
>
>Berta Cáceres gave her life to fight that government. She was
>the general coordinator of the COPINH (Consejo Cívico de
>Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras), a group
>that has had many of its leadership murdered in the last few
>years. Last year, Cáceres was awarded the Goldman
>Environmental Prize for her work opposing a major dam
>project.
>
>Since the 2009 coup, Honduras has witnessed an explosive
>growth in environmentally destructive megaprojects that would
>displace indigenous communities. Almost 30 percent of the
>country’s land was earmarked for mining concessions,
>creating a demand for cheap energy to power future mining
>operations. To meet this need, the government approved
>hundreds of dam projects around the country, privatizing
>rivers, land, and uprooting communities. Among them was the
>Agua Zarca Dam, a joint project of Honduran company
>Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA) and Chinese state-owned
>Sinohydro, the world’s largest dam developer. Agua Zarca,
>slated for construction on the sacred Gualcarque River, was
>pushed through without consulting the indigenous Lenca
>people—a violation of international treaties governing
>indigenous peoples’ rights. The dam would cut off the supply
>of water, food and medicine for hundreds of Lenca people and
>violate their right to sustainably manage and live off their
>land.
>
>Berta Cáceres, a Lenca woman, grew up during the violence
>that swept through Central America in the 1980s. Her mother, a
>midwife and social activist, took in and cared for refugees
>from El Salvador, teaching her young children the value of
>standing up for disenfranchised people. Cáceres grew up to
>become a student activist and in 1993, she co-founded the
>National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of
>Honduras (COPINH) to address the growing threats posed to
>Lenca communities by illegal logging, fight for their
>territorial rights and improve their livelihoods. In 2006,
>community members from Rio Blanco came to COPINH asking for
>help. They had witnessed an influx of machinery and
>construction equipment coming into their town. They had no
>idea what the construction was for or who was behind the
>project. What they knew was that an aggression against the
>river—a place of spiritual importance to the Lenca
>people—was an act against the community, its free will, and
>its autonomy.
>
>The names of Cáceres’s murderers are yet unknown. But we
>know who killed her.
>
>According to one email circulating about her death: “Berta
>Cáceres and COPINH have been accompanying various land
>struggles throughout western Honduras. In the last few weeks,
>violence and repression towards Berta, COPINH, and the
>communities they support had escalated. In Rio Blanco on
>February 20th, Berta, COPINH, and the community of Rio Blanco
>faced threats and repression as they carried out a peaceful
>action to protect the River Gualcarque against the
>construction of a hydroelectric dam by the internationally
>financed Honduran company DESA. As a result of COPINH’s work
>supporting the Rio Blanco struggle, Berta had received
>countless threats against her life and was granted
>precautionary measures by the Inter-American Commission for
>Human Rights. On February 25th, another Lenca community
>supported by COPINH in Guise, Intibuca, was violently evicted
>and destroyed.”
>
>(Here’s Telesur’s report on the killing.)
>
>I’m tempted to end this post with a call on Bernie bros and
>sisters to hold Hillary Clinton responsible and to ask, when
>possible in town halls and meet and greets, if she ever met
>Cáceres, or if she is still proud of the hell she helped
>routinize in Honduras. But, really, Cáceres’s assassination
>shouldn’t be reduced to the idiocy of American electoral
>politics.
>
>All people of goodwill should ask Hillary Clinton those
>questions.

to the information, aren't taught the critical thinking skills or aren't encouraged to explore beyond the narrow answers to the test, they probably won't be the most worldly global citizens. some of the responsibility lies with the mass ignorance and patriotism about US imperialism the k-12 system deliberately pushes. however once we've seen glimpses of the fuller truth on its impact we make choices, such as building (or not) with like minded towards alternatives, our responsibility to others and in this case the environment here and abroad, and who we're advocating for in political office. this single death symbolizes so much. now multiply it by hundreds of thousands for the middle east.

dumb ass hustlin backwards ass thinking ive ever heard in my
life.... a super dumb art smarty move

you seem to be making shit up to get angry about.

When it's all said and done the majority of Dems will vote Dem.

they're probably just as if not more angry with their own side as the other. Their own side ought to be listening to them more but they're not. How do you get them to listen? Voting for their own parties in the past hasn't done it, so why should that work for the future? Maybe voting for the other side and teaching them a lesson will.

^^ that's not airtight logic but these aren't airtight thinkers.

Go to Salon.com and other LEFT leaning sites...Some of them Bernie Bros. are saying just that....

i dont have time to make shit up.. arent you the one saying turn out is already low on the dem side?? not that it matters.. but yeah alot of bernie supporters are just mad at the "system" and trump is anti "system".. but i dont see how you can go from wanting to ne dam near socialist to possibly as far right as you can go ..as in going from bernie to trump



>you seem to be making shit up to get angry about.
>
>When it's all said and done the majority of Dems will vote
>Dem.

If you are in tune you wouldnt get upset at the truth.

Dem turn out is low bruh

Its state houses. Its Congress. The only reason Bernie is problematic is the trouble his image of not getting shit done with a R controlled legislature will serve for Ds in the years to come. Moderate is dead and Bernie is a lone wolf. Always the nay when everyone is yay. Refreshing and truthful but not what is needed to go against folks like Ryan, Cruz, blah, blah, blah. Plus, people are underestimating how much a certain significant % of the nation FEARS anything remotely related to socialism and will NEVER EVA EVA vote for him.

Why are there suddenly millions of socialists in America?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/29/why-are-there-suddenly-millions-of-socialists-in-america?CMP=fb_us

"But the prime mover of millions of Americans into the socialist column has been the near complete dysfunctionality of contemporary American capitalism. Where once the regulated, unionized and semi-socialized capitalism of the mid-20th century produced a vibrant middle class majority, the deregulated, deunionized and financialized capitalism of the past 35 years has produced record levels of inequality, a shrinking middle class, and scant economic opportunities (along with record economic burdens) for the young."

Because they've spent the last 8 years hearing the Republicans call Obama a socialist....

His revolution talk is really just about getting more people, especially young people more engaged and involved in the political process, because if they're active in more than just voting for a president they can take back state legislatures, the senate, and make inroads in the house.

He has the right idea, though the problem i still feel is his (or anyone's) ability to keep people active and it for the long haul, because his presidency, more than anyone else's would depend on it. And i don't have a whole lot of faith in millennials, or people in general. I think things have to get much worse for more people for it to work. until people wake up (so-to-speak) we'll have to settle for incremental change at best.

>Plus, people are underestimating how much a
>certain significant % of the nation FEARS anything remotely
>related to socialism and will NEVER EVA EVA vote for him.

It's definitely a dirty word still. Could dissipate over time