During the January 14th, 2016 Republican debate in North Charleston, South Carolina, the following exchange occurred:
[MARIA] BARTIROMO, [FOX BUSINESS NETWORK ANCHOR]: Governor Kasich…
(APPLAUSE)
… Governor Kasich, Hillary Clinton is getting some serious competition from Senator Bernie Sanders. He’s now at 41 percent in the latest CBS/New York Times poll. Vice President Biden sang his praises, saying Bernie is speaking to a yearning that is deep and real, and he has credibility on it.
So what does it say about our country that a candidate who is a self-avowed socialist and who doesn’t think a 90 percent tax rate is too high could be the Democratic nominee?
[GOV. JOHN] KASICH, [R-OHIO]: Well, if that’s the case, we’re going to win every state, if Bernie Sanders is the nominee. That’s not even an issue. But look…
(APPLAUSE)
… and I know Bernie, and I can promise you he’s not going to be president of the United States.
Now, I already discussed yesterday that this idea that Fox News is pushing that Bernie Sanders ever advocated a 90 percent tax rate is complete bullshit. But it’s true that Sanders is a “self-avowed Socialist.”
Of course, back in November, Sanders gave a speech describing what he means when he uses the term “socialist,” and it doesn’t mean that he wants to turn America into a Maoist re-education compound or a Leninist summer camp in the Catskills.
But that’s really neither here nor there. The question we want an answer to is whether or not America would actually elect a socialist as their president.
Back in July, Gallup ask people whether “If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person to be president who happened to be ______, would you vote for that person?
Here were their results:
Now, obviously, socialism got its butt kicked in this survey question, coming in as the only fill-in-the-blank to register below fifty percent.
However, “socialism” was the only transparently ideological category. Even an atheist could be a Republican, but not a socialist. I mean, you would think? Right?
Okay, so maybe we can find some Republicans who like the sound of Bernie’s platform, but there’s a reason that an ideology did worse in this poll than any religion. Among the options, the socialism question was the strongest indicator to conservatives that this hypothetical nominee might not be down with their agenda. What you want to compare “Socialist” to is not “Mormon” or “lesbian.” You want to compare it to liberal or conservative. How many Democrats would (say that they would) vote for a conservative nominee and how many Republicans would (say that they would) vote for a liberal nominee?
Beyond that, people know they’re not supposed to say that they wouldn’t vote for someone because they’re black or Latino or gay or Catholic. But they’re pretty sure it’s okay to say that you won’t vote for someone because they’re too far left or too far right in their politics.
So, yes, more people say that they’d vote for a homosexual, black Mormon woman than say they would vote for a Socialist. These results don’t mean much, though.
A somewhat better measure was taken recently in Iowa, where a Selzer & Company poll found some interesting results in their data. Among likely Democratic caucus-goers, 43 percent described themselves as socialists and 38% described themselves as capitalists (compared to 4% socialist and 62% capitalist among likely Republican caucus-goers). A separate New York Times/CBS News poll from November showed that “56 percent of Democratic primary voters nationally said they had a positive view of socialism.”
Okay, so Democrats are loving themselves some socialism. But that doesn’t tell us whether a socialist can win the general election.
If we go back a little further to a December 2011 Pew Research Poll, we find that “Socialism is a negative for most Americans, but certainly not all. Six-in-ten (60%) say they have a negative reaction to the word; 31% have a positive reaction. Those numbers are little changed from when the question was last asked in April 2010.”
Sixty percent negative reaction is very bad. So, who were the other forty percent who didn’t have a negative reaction?
In only two categories did Pew Research find a majority of people with a positive response to the word “socialism”: blacks (55%-36%) and self-described “liberal Democrats” (59%-33%). There was also a plurality of 18-29 year olds who responded favorably (49%-43%).
Every other group or subgroup saw socialism as a negative.
So, what we’re seeing here is that Sanders might be able to win the Democratic nomination while bearing the socialist label, but that it’s not exactly a big plus for him. And we have little evidence to show that he’d find easy rowing in the general election.
I’m not sure that Gov. John Kasich is justified in being so confident that Sanders would lose all 50 states, but I also don’t think David Atkins is justified in his confidence that Sanders would do just fine and have no negative impact on down-ballot races.
I think Atkins wrote a well-reasoned piece, and I’m not going to rebut it in full here. What I will say is that Sanders hasn’t been put through the meat grinder yet. He may look more electable than Hillary in a couple of recent polls and his policies may poll well in the abstract, but that’s just preliminary data that should be encouraging to Sanders’ supporters but shouldn’t give anyone the idea that these questions have been settled.
Socialism is still a dirty word, even if it isn’t anywhere near as dirty as it used to be, and even if the post-Cold War kids aren’t conditioned against it. If Sanders is the nominee, the Republicans and their big business allies will spend north of a billion dollars trying to make “socialism” less popular than Windows Vista.
Maybe this anti-socialism campaign will have no more effect than Jeb Bush’s spending seems to have, but there is a difference. Jeb is one candidate in a crowded field, not the nominee facing off against a single Democratic opponent.
And, then, since political reporters never lose their jobs, most of them are old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and good James Bond movies. They think that they know what this country will and won’t tolerate, and it won’t tolerate socialism via Vermont.
So, with Sanders, you get a divided Democratic Party that has to take on big money in a Citizen’s United world with a candidate who refuses to accept big donations and is relentlessly hostile to the financial sector. Big corporate media won’t be happy, and their reporters will think it’s the second coming of the Angolan War.
All these factors have to be weighed.
And, you know, I can make up a very long list of Hillary Clinton’s vulnerabilities, too. But they are different vulnerabilities, and of the sort that people are familiar with working around. The party establishment is very united behind her. The business community likes her at least as well as they liked Obama back in 2008, and probably better. And a lot of folks who can’t stomach Trump will come over to her because they lived through her husband’s presidency and know it wasn’t so bad. Giving them Trump vs. Sanders is a tougher call.
I’m not here to endorse anyone, but I think that it’s still hard to make an honest case that Sanders is in any way proven to be more electable than Clinton, especially because he’d have to resuscitate the entire Democratic establishment if Clinton falls on her face a second time and cannot win the nomination.
At this point, Sanders is a huge risk. And that’s what honesty compels me to advise you.
That way, you can know if it’s a risk you think is worth taking.
I love the idea of Sanders. But that’s like saying I like the idea of Socialism or pink unicorns or the Easter Bunny. A time may come when a guy like Sanders can get elected. It’s very unlikely we’ve reached that time. And I have trouble imagining he’d be effective once in office if he were, by some miracle, to win. Far more likely, he’d be forced to face realities that would lead to resentment on the life while the right pummeled him relentlessly.
As much as I like Sanders as a person, he’s not one tenth the politician that is Obama. Any democratic president we might get is going to be a caretaker, not a ground breaker.
I don’t want a politician. I want an honest person who cares for ALL the people, not just those who cross her palm with silver (or pork bellies).
Bernie’s a politician, and an extremely skillful one–how do you think he sold “socialism” to Vermont? He’s capable of pandering, too, and sometimes unnecessarily, as with gun control; Leahy w
ins election after election up there and is a strong gun control advocate. When you think of the perfect non-politician who only does what’s right, think of the French Revolution and Robespierre, who brought on the Terror with his inability to deal with imperfection.
I find it really weird that the Hillary Clinton camp is using the ‘Sanders can win the nomination but not the general election’ argument. Because her numbers in favorability, trustworthiness, and direct polling matchups outside the Democratic base are… pretty worrisome.
Of course, HRC partisans counter that the numbers right now are meaningless, things will reverse to demographics, and that the Obama Coalition doesn’t need much in the way of crossover voters to win. Which is IMO true, buuuuut… it raises the question why this wouldn’t apply to Sanders?
The counterargument to that counterargument is that Sanders would juice Republican turnout enough to make the Obama Coalition + pockets of isolated voters inadequate. Which is, again, an argument that is really weird coming from the HRC camp. Aside from the fact that it again requires them to ignore or dismiss polls showing that she would in fact juice Republican turnout, it also requires them to ignore or dismiss the dozen or so polls showing that Bernie Sanders performs as well or significantly better than her against the other Republicans. Some even concoct conspiracy theories that the number of independents and Republicans supporting Sanders in polls is not just premature but outright fabricated and they’re doing a little Operation Chaos fun.
IOW, HRC partisans are pretty much counting on the fact that association with a bad political label counts for more than being associated with dishonesty and unlikeability and that every other poll showing otherwise is premature or misleading except for identity association polls. Considering that the MSM and even GOP has been openly calling Trump a fascist and that hasn’t had a measurably negative affect on his polling, it makes you wonder if they’re just engaging in “the constant, repetitive reiteration of strong priors”, i.e. derp.
And even if you did believe in all of that, why are you voting for Hillary Clinton instead of Martin O’Malley? What, exactly, are the odds that all of the polling showing Sanders doing well is false and all of the polling showing Clinton doing mediocrely is false?
The problem with the polls showing Sanders doing better than Clinton in the matchups against Republicans, have a few major problems that make them worth less than the electrons to show this page.
In no particular order:
Sen. Sanders is not well known outside the political sphere. As this post points out, people hate the word Socialist, and Sen. Sanders is a self described socialist. The Republicans have yet to start slinging mud against him. The Raciest have yet to scream ‘Jew!’ or the correlative dog whistles at him. He’s yet to define most of his proposals beyond buzz words.
And there are more I’m sure, but those are the ones that stand out to me at this point.
What ever you may think of her, Hillary Clinton’s numbers are pretty much baked into the cake at this point. All that’s left is the decorations and icing.
Bernie Sanders numbers however are still very much still in the ingredient stage of making a cake. There is no telling what is going to happen to his numbers when we get outside of the Dem party sphere.
Trying to use Sen. Sanders numbers now as a predictive evaluation of the future is simply not reasonable.
Look, the most frequently used word with Sanders is socialist. It’s not like it’s some hidden association with his. If you were to ask a minimally aware vote the best one word to describe Sanders, you’re probably going to get ‘socialist’.
Since a disproportionate portion of Sanders’ support comes from Independents, first-time voters, and even Republicans — indeed, Sanders does poorest with the hardiest Dem voters — you’re basically having to claim that these voters will be all: Wait a minute! It’s been a few months, I just remembered that I hate socialists! Grrr!
To make this theory work, you either have to assert a wide-ranging conspiracy of Operation Chaos 2.0 well before any GOP elites or pundits even hinted at it or you’re claiming that voters are so stupid that they don’t associate the dominant label of someone they claimed to like with someone they hate until well after the poll.
That’s a nice thought, but is it reflected by any polling? Seems to me that Hillary Clinton’s numbers have been going down quite a bit in the past couple of months.
What’s your evidence that it’s going to stop? And if it is going to stop, what’s your evidence that it’s because people are fully familiar with Clinton and any other negative black swans are baked into the cake?
What in the world are you talking about? Hillary Clintons numbers have been going up since the Benghazi hearings.
That Bernie Sanders numbers have been going up to plateauing at the same time doesn’t mean her favorables have not also been going up.
As to this:
I’m not sure there exists the evidence to back this asserting up. If I had to hazard a guess the most likely response from a minimally aware voter about what word best describes Sanders it would be: “Who?”
Concerning this:
I’m not sure you can make the jump from “Independents, first-time voters, and even Republicans” supporting Sen. Sanders in a Primary of Democratic Party Presidential Candidates to those groups supporting whoever on the Dem Ticket over whoever on the Repub Ticket.
It’s a clear logical fallacy to assert Primary Support == General Election Support. I give no more General Election credence to Republicans supporting a Dem Primary Candidate than I give Dem’s Trolling Repubs by voting for Trump in Republican Primaries.
Do I think that all Repubs who support Bernie are trolling the process? Not at all. But am I going to, nor should I want to, base my decisions on GE electability on who Republicans want in the Dem Primary.
That more Republicans support Sanders than Clinton should be detrimental to Bernie not helpful; unless you think that those Republicans that aren’t trolling are so stupid and unselfaware that they believe they aren’t going to benefit from a Sanders Candidacy. If Republicans are for it, most sane people should look thrice at the subject before concurring. I’ve rarely seen anything a Republican likes that doesn’t have way more drawbacks than initially anticipated.
As to Independents and First Time Voters (FTVs), neither of these are historically reliable voting blocks in Primaries, let alone the GE. You may want to bet the farm on them, but I am personally less willing to do so.
That most of Sen. Sanders power in the Primary comes from these groups does not inspire belief in sufficient probability that Sen. Sanders can win a GE given the know variables and the best guess at their values in combination with the possibility, and indeed probability, of unknown variables.
That is my personal opinion of the political calculus at play. I’m not sure if Hillary Clinton can win either. I don’t under any circumstances think this election will be a walk. I do think that however much I dislike everyone running in any party, Hillary Clinton stands the best chance at winning. I don’t think she will be the ‘End of the Republic and Perhaps the World’ that you do.
Meanwhile back at my OP, I don’t think any of the numbers Sen. Sanders has are firm or reliable as far as the General Election goes right now. And I admit, that’s a very subjective determination, but to the best of my ability I’ve tried to balance that out by using the best information I have available.
The Wurlitzer has not gotten to Sen. Sanders yet, and when it does it is very unlikely that Sen. Sanders numbers will go up, and highly probable that his numbers will go down given the a priori knowledge that anything to the left of Attila the Hun is treated very differently by the media and the voters of the country compared to anything to the right of Mr. The Hun.
I think that in an emotional argument about Sen. Sanders by the FUD the right is going to throw, that Sen. Sanders is not going to come out well. As much as I don’t agree with several around here, I have no illusions that the American Electorate is anything short of a big irrational jumble of positions. But as things like the survey Booman is posting about reveal, they have an irrational dislike of the word Socialism. They have a not quite as irrational dislike of the Soviet Union. They have a horrifically irrational dislike of the word liberal. Sen. Sanders own words on Socialism, the Soviet Union, and liberal(ism) are going to be thrown out like mad. And I’m not anywhere near confident in blatant and naked theocracy avocation, racism, bigotry, sexism, regionalism, and hatred of the other loosing to an apparently non religiously practicing Jewish Northeastern Socialist Liberal who has said nice things about the Soviet Union.
As an aside, I apologize for taking so long to reply. I’m a person who has ADD, who also had a power outage that lost my original attempt at a reply, who then got distracted and discouraged, who then started feeling poorly because of an adverse reaction to my meds for low blood pressure. Needless to say I completely forgot about wanting to reply to your post.
So I will apologize once again for the delay and hope I did not waste any of your time.
I wouldn’t put much stock in a June 2015 polling result for an abstract “socialist”. In June 2-15, how how much experience did the United States electorate have with a self-styled “democratic socialist” running for president on the Democratic ticket?
Compare this with “a woman” (Hillary Clinton, already on the best-known names in American politics, as THE woman candidate; Barack Obama, THE Black president, re-elected, and president for almost seven years. The comparison would be a lot more valid if it was made to the comparable moment in the first presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton & Obama, respectively. There was indeed much skepticism about the electability of a woman or an AA.
http://morningconsult.com/2015/06/clinton-leads-in-early-states-but-sanders-popular-in-new-hampshire
/
Specifically, in June 2015 how familiar was the national electorate with Sanders? (Also, at that time Biden was still in the race.)
A Bloomberg poll June 19-22, 2015 put Clinton ahead of Sanders in Iowa by 50-24.
http://http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-25/bernie-sanders-gains-on-hillary-clinton
-in-bloomberg-early-state-polling
Morning Consult on June 15, 2015, had her leading Sanders in Iowa 54-12, in NH 44 – 32, in SC 56-10.
http://morningconsult.com/2015/06/clinton-leads-in-early-states-but-sanders-popular-in-new-hampshire
/
Compare those figures with recent polls which show Clinton & Sanders very close in Iowa (Quinnipiac 1/15/16 has Sanders ahead there by 5). Monmouth 1/12 has Sanders ahead in NH by 14 points.
Real Clear Politics average, 1/4-1/13 has Clinton ahead by only 12.7% .
http://http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_democratic_presidential_nomina
tion-3824.html
I couldn’t find a very recent poll from SC.
My point here is neither to cherry pick nor to equate Iowa and NH with the nation as a whole, but rather to be up to date with trends specific to the actual candidates. The bottom line is that as Sanders gets better known he gets more popular. Clinton is already extremely well known and she does not seem to be getting more popular.
We haven’t had a strong “socialist” presidential candidate in about 100 years, so as with a lot of things in this election, we’re in uncharted territory here. And just as Obama was the first black president but did not run on that label, I see Sanders in the same way: He makes sure everybody knows he is a DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST, yet he’s running on issues, not on labels or ideology.
I don’t identify myself ideologically as “a socialist”, but I do agree with most of Bernie’s positions on the huge problems currently facing the nation and the world. If you seriously want to address those problems, support Sanders. I think a majority of Americans will feel the same way, as has already been shown by the popularity of Elizabeth Warren. I’m not going to NOT vote for Sanders because I’m afraid the other guy is not going to vote for him, when I see such a strong trend to the contrary.
But of course, I do agree that NH and Iowa will be crucial tests.
The difference is that Democrats are fairly friendly to “socialists” of the Bernie persuasion while Americans in general are not. No cites, but I just saw a poll that showed more Democrats identify as “socialist” than as “capitalist”. So it’s not a big stretch at all for Democrats to come to support a socialist.
The problem in the general is that the overwhelming majority of the socialist and socialist-friendly voters are Democrats. So while they can manage a majority in the Democratic primary, they can’t manage even a close race in the general. For that you need other voters who have spent their whole lives listening to constant propaganda that socialism is Anti-American, wealth-destroying, gulag-installing evil. Yeah, it’s a distortion to the point of being ridiculous, but literally the majority of Americans believe it and we won’t turn it around in a six month campaign.
Long-term there would be substantial Overton Window benefits from running a socialist but they won’t matter for 20 years or more if we get a 6-3 conservative majority on the Court supporting thinly veiled poll taxes.
Who are these ‘Americans in general’ of whom you speak? Do they vote? Do they read? How do you know that when they hear the word socialist they don’t think it means sociable, or socialite, or simply, social-minded? It’s not a big word, but my guess is as good as yours, and I’d bet that as much as politicos are convinced the word is anathema in American politics, Americans in general have a fairly positive sense of the word. In general, they have little idea of its meaning in economics, good or bad.
Neal, look at the study Boo cites. It was a random sample. And don’t be silly. Americans know what “socialist” means.
I can’t help noticing that you “answered” my arguments without addressing any of them. Perfect score there.
I did answer it. You said Americans might support a socialist because Sanders has gained on Clinton in Democratic party primary polls. I pointed out that Democrats are a VERY biased sample of Americans on the issue of socialism and far more friendly to it. Those polls you’re citing are in no way reflective of how Jane Public will respond when the Republicans start throwing up attack adds on Bernie for being a socialist, saying nice things about the Soviet Union, and no doubt a lot of things he wrote in college that can be taken out of context.
The only Republican candidate that is leading Sanders in national polls (and only very slightly) is Rubio. Sanders is slaughtering Trump and Cruz.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/2016_presidential_race.html
Contrary to your implication that I’m paying attention only to the Democratic primaries, I think you (like the media in general) are paying way too much attention to the Republican primaries. Trump and Cruz are very popular with Republicans, but very unpopular with the electorate in general.
It was a poll about a word (socialist) about which most folks have little or no understanding. That’s my point. In the United States, there’s not much experience over the past four generations (or ever) with socialists, or socialism. There’s a lot of propaganda about what the word socialist means, and some folks think they know what socialism is, believing the propaganda. So, Americans in general appear to be divided in terms of whether they’d vote for a candidate that uses the term to describe his politics. I think that item in that poll breaks fifty-fifty because many, maybe most, of the responses are random, with some respondents randomly liking “A socialist’ and others disliking it for reasons that have no representation in their lived experience. As others have said here, there’s not much to go on prior to Sanders actual candidacy over the past several months (after that poll was taken, by the way). Absent direct experience, until just the past few months, Americans in general don’t know what “A socialist” is. It’s a meaningless poll.
Just think ‘Social Security’! All the geezers will learn to love socialism. And then repeat ‘SS’ until they fall over with joy. What’s in a word, you might say? Try then ‘Medicare’. Then you can branch out to subsidies (tax breaks?) for farmers, oil companies, banks, wall street, capital gains tax. The possibilities are endless. Bernie Sanders tries to bang some of this into peoples heads. Let’s give him due credit. There’s not so much you can give Hillary Clinton credit for.
They know what they think a socialist is and you’re not going to change many minds in six months. Large groups of the American public believes all sorts of nonsense (tax cuts create jobs, the climate isn’t warming, the earth is only 6000 years old) in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It’s way easier to continue believing assorted negative stereotypes about socialists than any of those.
So will South Carolina.
The one where Booman endorses HILLARY CLINTON to be President of the United States. Except he’s still too cowardly to type the words out yet.
Don’t worry too much, Martin. You only have nine more months to go. And then four more years after that. It’ll go by in no time.
Sorry, but this is just dumb. Martin may not always be right (Kasich? Really?) but cowardly in taking a position? Ha!
I prefer Sanders to Clinton for reasons which might speak for themselves: principled standpoints vs. unprincipled ones (except her standard mantra of being a woman). I’ve been trying to imagine how the Democratic Party would deal with a Sanders candidacy. They could hardly disown it but then they could not honestly welcome it. Or would a new section of the Democratic Party emerge and overshadow the established neoliberal clique? Important party leaders might be thinking about it, no one would dare talk about it openly. A very peculiar political situation which would challenge the Democratic machine to the limit. By comparison Trump is cut and dry: if/when he wins the nomination, the party will fall in line behind him, you can be sure and he will defeat Clinton.
I agree with you Booman. If we nominate Sanders, we risk making the exact same mistake the Republicans would make if they nominate Trump or Cruz. That is, not recognizing that the very rhetoric that “our side” likes the best will be seen as inherently disqualifying in the eyes of many. It is the error of the echo chamber–believing that your side is so obviously right that all we have to do is state your beliefs with conviction and honesty and we will surely win.
Don’t kid yourself: the republicans will HAMMER Sanders with the socialist label, and much of the political press will play along. I also think he is very vulnerable on the foreign policy front. He will be labelled a peacenik–which he is. Again, the rhetoric that one side most prefers will be an anathema to most of the country.
In a democracy, “believing that your side is so obviously right that all we have to do is state your beliefs with conviction and honesty” is not an error of any kind.
Misunderstanding the environment you’re working in is an error in any endeavor.
Although I agree with your sentiment–of course we should believe that we are right!–there is a difference between believing that we will convince the country eventually, and believing that we will convince the country in the next election.
consistent effort to “convince the country” NOW (e.g., in this case, that a knee-jerk negative reaction against the mere word “socialist” is simply idiotic — see considerable expansion of this point downthread) in order to win the current election (with no assurance of success in this regard, and plenty of evidence suggesting it could well go the opposite way under this approach) . . . seems the best path to ensuring we NEVER “convince the country eventually”. Rather it becomes just the latest in a long line of self-defeating surrender to dishonest, counter-historical, propagandistic demagoguery.
Of course it is. Democracy thrives on rhetoric; even the Romans understood this. As in a courtroom, one must be persuasive; must participate in a dialectic process. Clinton, Obama, Kennedy (and Nixon, Reagan, Eisenhower) succeeded through political talent: they could be persuasive.
Remember the “flag-burning amendment” nonsense in 1988? Dukakis announced, “If my opponent believes that something so blatantly unconstitutional should become law, he’s unqualified to be president.” (Or words to that effect.) He clearly believed that “all he had to do” was say that — that is was so damn true, the whole imbroglio would instantly end. And, it was true, but that rebuttal was hopelessly ineffective.
In a perfectly reasonable, cerebral society (like, say, an idealized version of the international scientific community, wherein you can just “disprove” a contrary thesis and that’s the end of that), you’d be right; but we don’t live there.
Well said, and happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!
Your comment touches on what’s missing from a lot of this analysis: the Republicans are going to nominate someone too. Supposing they nominate Trump and we nominate Sanders, who’s making the bigger mistake?
If they nominate Trump Sanders will likely win, but with what kind of hideous-ass congress sworn to defeat him as they failed to defeat Obama?
I also think Trump would likely lose, but I’m not positive about that.
Trump has one talent: self promotion. He is very good at appealing to specific audiences. Once he gets into the general (as I’m now quite sure he will), he will change his message to appeal to the general public. His current supporters will understand that he “has” to do that. They’re so firmly on board that most of ’em won’t mind.
And our media, always pushing the horse race, will treat him as a reasonable candidate. Meanwhile, they indeed will go right along with turning Sanders into Trotsky. Gotta make the contest more even, doncha know.
Would it work? I dunno. I don’t want to take the chance.
Anyway, after years of enjoying Bernie, I’m beginning to cool toward him. I don’t like the way his campaign is trashing Hillary as a corporate tool of the oligarchs. It’s basically the same smear the Naderites ran against Gore in 2000, and it had a real role in putting Bush in the White House.
So I’m pretty firmly in the Hillary camp this time, after years of dissing her. She really impressed me with her performance in the Benghaaaazi hearing. That’s what turned me, anyway.
So despite my sig line, I don’t think Bernie’s is the revolution we need right now.
But the real question here is this, rae…who would turn out to have made the bigger mistake if the RatPubs nominated Trump and the DemRats nominated Sanders? Trump is looking fairly strong to be the presumptive RatPub nominee now, and to tell you the truth, HRC looks pretty damned shaky now…massive political machine and all. If a couple of cracks in that machine show up during the primaries, the whole construct might very well collapse.
And then we would have a very interesting election.
Quite possibly a mélange à trois. DemRat, RatPub and some form of hastily cobbled-together CentRat.
Sanders, Trump and someone like Bloomberg.
HMMMmmmm…
Yes.
Indeed it would be.
AG
Bloomberg gets lost in a general three-way same as O’Malley does now in the Dem primary and everyone not Trump or Cruz on the Repub side. And hard to see why Bloomberg (or any other centrist-for-the-sake-of-being-centrist wouldn’t pull more votes from Trump (the few he’d get).
Maybe. Maybe not. It’s a possibility, though.
He’d certainly have Wall Street behind him.
AG
They consider all Democrats socialists anyway. So who cares, really?
Now there is a real argument to be made around this point.
I suppose then the question would become exactly how many ‘Twuu’ Republicans there are. If all Democratic Party Candidates are already the dreaded ‘Socialists’ then maybe there really isn’t anything to see here.
I’m just not terribly confident in that answer being favorable to my preferred outcome of continuous progressive accomplishments.
he was so far out of his depth on foreign policy last night it was very concerning
Of course it’s a risk worth taking. The first one truly worth taking (for all the reasons you mention in this very post) since LBJ.
I’d rebut each of your points individually, but they rebut themselves (clever how you did that).
I certainly see the risk. I would be very surprised if the American electorate will choose a socialist Jew who once declared himself a conscientious objector as Commander in Chief. It is very easy for me to imagine the Swift Boating. I also see the risk of running this election without enough money.
What I don’t see is the gain. Since his policies are not widely supported among Democratic legislators, let alone his opposition, I think I risk everything to gain nothing.
That is a very stupid bet.
Political revolution, man, political revolution.
We’ll all be surprised.
In other words, nothing. It adds up to a big risk for zero gain. I think that is a tough sell.
It’s not about you, man.
Who is it about? I thought it was about whether or not it was worth taking the risk of nominating Bernie. The risk I see is that I can imagine Bernie losing a very winnable election. That risk should be balanced against what extra good things the voter can expect from a Sanders Presidency, should it not?
I understand why some people are uncomfortable with Hillary Clinton, but I haven’t heard anybody give me a good reason to be in favor of Bernie Sanders. If you cannot articulate how I will be better off with Bernie Sanders than I will with Hillary Clinton, why should I accept any risk?
I don’t actually think Sanders has a chance in hell…but then, I didn’t think Trump had a chance in hell, and look where we are.
Of course, there’s no Republican equivalent to Hillary, so the equation’s different. They don’t have anyone of that caliber anyway, but they’ve also got that crazed need to get someone who’s “not part of the system” that seems, thankfully, confined to Republicans. (Democrats believe in expertise and hierarchies of achievement, so we don’t have that particular sickness.)
Nevertheless, I think we’re so off the map this cycle that I have no idea what’s going to happen. I have trouble accepting that Trump is actually going to win Iowa, but I guess I’m going to have to get over it. (The same thing happened in Berlin in 1933, and yes, I’m making the goddamned comparison because it’s 100% apt.)
“Of course, there’s no Republican equivalent to Hillary”
Dick Cheney, except he is more honest about his intentions and policies.
There’s no republican equivalent of Hillary who’s in the race. (Apologies for being unclear.)
The politics, demography and economy of 2016 America are very different than those of the 1933 Weimar Republic. We can get carried away with the Godwin violations.
Starting with Occupy, this is the debate over “capitalism as the national religion” that we desperately need. Bernie may lose, but the debate is underway, and will continue. Go Bernie!
Yes, this.
When people say Occupy failed, ask them if they’ve ever heard the phrase “1%”, and what they think it means.
It used to be that FreeMarketTM was above and beyond criticism. Not anymore.
We all love you and this space, but please, cut the bullshit. If this post wasn’t an endorsement of Clinton, then what was it? “I just want Sanders’ supporters to honestly assess the terrain”? No. This is the equivalent to Glenn Beck saying he’s “just asking questions”.
Echoes of all the “helpful” messages to DEM primary voters in 2008 to think about how a black DEM nominee would fare in the general election (either stated or implied that such a person would lose). While primaries were of less importance in 1960, I’d be surprised if DEM convention delegates weren’t also “helpfully” reminded that JFK is a Catholic — with the stated or implied reference to what happened in the 1928 general election.
After both JFK and Obama were elected, all the DEM naysayers “forgot” that they’d ever suggested that either couldn’t be elected, and “prove” that their obstructionism never existed by becoming the most ardent supporters of the man that broke some mind-rot artificial barrier.
Reagan broke a similar barrier — can’t be elected POTUS if one has been divorced — but it wasn’t even an issue in 1980. Or 1996, 2004, or 2008. And now the Republicans aren’t exhibiting any problem with a multiple divorcee and known philander.
The electorate in 2008 was disgusted with the GOP and that favored any DEM. In that year, a decent, qualified white male nominee with positive charisma may have gotten 55% of the national vote, but a white woman or a black wasn’t likely to do that much worse; so, either was potentially electable as long as he/she ran a good enough general election campaign. In the early going of the primary, Obama demonstrated better campaign skills which should have made it obvious to DEM primary voters that he would be the better nominee. The accent in that primary was on personality and not policy differences. That seems to be close to where the GOP is in 2016, but they don’t have the advantage of national disgust with the DEM Party.
Democratic primary voters might want to consider a factor that may be driving Clinton’s high unfavorable ratings. 49% are familiar with her and have a negative opinion. Bush is at 46% unfavorable, although are fewer have an opinion of him. A factor for both is “fatigue” for the Clintons and the Bushes. It isn’t likely that her unfavorables are going to drop much, but against Trump she’ll likely prevail because whittling down his unfavorables by 10% points to simply match her’s is a huge task.
If we look back to Q in September, Trump’s fav/unfav haven’t budged. Bush’s favorables appear to have dropped but his unfavorables were already high. Clinton appears to have improved her favorables and reduced her unfavorables (a good guess is that her performance in debates and at the Benghazi hearing were behind this shift for her), but she remains in a net unfavorable position. Curiously, in those three months the other candidates didn’t make any strides in increasing the proportion of the electorate that have an opinion of them, but with the exception of the still little known Kasich, those in positive territory in Sept remained there in Dec and those with net unfavorable remained net unfavorable.
If Americans had been told repeatedly and very often for over a hundred years that chocolate was poison and ice cream was healthful, they would shun the former and indulge in the latter and the favorite flavor would be “brownie.” IOW, the would have been unknowingly consuming chocolate all along and liked it. Socialism (from the first post office) has been embedded in the American experience and expectation all along. The people just don’t know it and therefore, haven’t been full participants in deciding where socialism, public/private partnerships, and the private sector works best.
Probably not as many states would go for Pol Pot if he had an R behind his name.
More on this point from Nate Silver who collated the fav/unfav ratings from all the polls instead of merely sampling two and checking for trends.
Who do you think I’ll vote for?
Clinton, without a doubt.
LOL.
I see this as “the electability argument.” Fifty states or forty doesn’t matter. Anecdotally, and I think that’s important actually, folks I know are questioning how to pay for Sanders’ proposals. And, additionally, seem to me to be upset that he’s suggesting more people get for free what they had to pay for, went into hock for (education). And they envision it’ll be at their expense (the 90% tax claim isn’t going away any time soon).
The label of “socialist” will remain that. Not “democratic socialist”. That a fine point that won’t make a difference in ads, in right-wing talk and emails. His pacifism will be seen as weakness in protecting the homeland. He doesn’t have enough of the bellicose talk to win over many Republicans.
Bernie’s “vision” is great, for sure. I can be an idealist too. But the fair assessment (I believe) is that the general election chooses a centrist — either left of center or right of center — but a centrist. The Republicans are seeming to rally around far right candidates. The Democrats can win with a center-left candidate. A far left candidate will be easy pickings. It may not be exciting, but it’s important to consider when choosing your primary vote.
In the entire field of candidates, there is no one who has seen what it means to be president more so than Clinton. She’s seen it from inside the White House and as Sect. of State. I believe she knows of what she speaks. I aspire to the same positions as Sanders in lots of ways. For me, though, experience and understanding of the job matter a great deal.
She’s seen everything from the inside: governor’s mansion in Little Rock, White House, Congress, State. Yes, she is the consummate insider. But has she done inside? What is her fame and fortune based on? I don’t get it. She’s basically a celebrity who has profited from her marriage and her networking and charming the financial kings of the country. What is she about? Tell me.
I think what she is about is this: pragmatism, incremental progressivism, hard-work, measured-ness, intelligence, a broad understanding of the complexity of the world. In fact, this last one could be a drawback. Folks like simple answers. Think about how the word “comprehensive” is anathema to the Republicans. She was a good, hard-working Senator from NY who got along well in the Senate. Folks who I know who have met her are extremely impressed with her sincerity. I think her personal instincts are much more progressive than her public statements (which is why the Republicans think she’s a disaster).
Why is being on the inside a bad thing, anyhow? That kind of inside experience is informative. Some folks seem to think that “inside” means corrupted. Not necessarily so.
yes, empty and self serving and it’s sad because as DerFarm points out, she’s smart, or was smart before her native abilities got buried in the Billary quest for whatever. on a personal note I so don’t want to hear her yelling at me for the next 4 or 8 years. she seems to mistake yelling for passion, or, more likely can’t do passion so settles for yelling. of course I’ll vote for her if she’s the nominee, but until then …
“…I so don’t want to hear her yelling at me for the next 4 or 8 years.”
Oh my god, yes. Agree. It’s bad form or something to say that you can’t stand the sound of someone’s voice, but Juno help us, couldn’t we have gotten a first viable female presidential candidate with a better sounding voice?
(Sound of a person’s voice, of course, isn’t just a genetic trait. It’s shaped by the sounds one grew up with. So, a tight, forced, unnatural sounding voice, like Hillary’s, is clearly a result of that kind of background. But, a lot of folks work their asses off to improve the timbre of their voices. There are methods for freeing the natural voice [one that’s called exactly that, as a matter of fact]; techniques that require discipline and practice and it’s amazing to me that after a lifetime of aspiring to win the presidency, Hillary has failed to improve the sound of her voice. Disagree with me if you like, I’ll challenge your ability to hear; hers is a terrible, awful-sounding voice. And get your finger off the troll-trigger, beahmont; this is a relevant criticism of any politician.)
Yes, emotions come across in the voice. I think she has what they call “flat affect” and they’ve coached her to create the illusion of emotion plus toughness with the yelling. her voice is like that of a bad grade school teacher, the kind that Carson or Cruz would have become.
I think she’s trying to be Amanda Curtis, but completely pales beside the real thing. a real high school [math] teacher with a wonderful voice (also sings with her husband)
hope the embed works
pretty much across the board with everything she says there. Very much including that nothing short of a revolution has much realistic hope of saving us from ourselves.
Which, alas, also means I’m very skeptical about her potential for being elected to statewide office or Congress from here, though I’d certainly support her.
In fact, if she ran again, I’d be surprised NOT to see clips from this very appearance show up in attack ads against her. Which, sadly, would probably be quite “effective”, from the perspective of the opponents (rightly called “assholes” by Curtis in that speech — you go girl!) who would run those ads.
she was in congress before running for the senate, as you know but other commenters on the thread do not; now according to the guy who was in charge of the Butte area (( emailed him recently to see what she’s doing now) she’s in politics in the educational association or teachers on the state level – will look it up).
How is Denise doing?
(House, from district containing Butte, a traditionally Labor-Dem stronghold), not “congress”. She’s never been elected to statewide office OR US Congress (which for MT is also statewide, even for the House, since we have only 1 Rep for the entire state).
Haven’t heard much recently about Juneau’s impact. Still early. Expect she’ll win primary handily since I haven’t heard about any serious competition. Much as I disdain Zinke, looks to me like uphill battle to unseat him, though I’d love to see it happen.
yes, state rep from Butte, sorry. Thanks for update on Juneau.
seat again (per very end of that same wiki).
ah, yes, very good.
It’s not bad form, it’s just bad priorities.
If you want someone who’s great to listen to, that’s Reagan. It’s a superficial criterion — one we’re being encouraged by the news media to adopt (“relatability,” “who would you want to have a beer with” etc.).
I don’t want to “have a beer” with the President. I want the right policy initiatives, Supreme Court Justices, and legislation, and I want someone who knows their way around geopolitics and world leaders and knows how to handle a crisis (unlike, say, George W. Bush during Katrina or 9/11).
Beyond that, I couldn’t care less what the President’s voice sounds like.
If I was going to pick an actor with a great voice for president, I’d probably go with James Earl Jones.
I find Reagan difficult to listen to.
Okay but you know what I mean, don’t you?
Jesus Christ. I hate this kind of lazy rhetorical solipsism.
no I think we were talking about personality coming across in the tone of voice, that HRC’s guardedness is to a degree that there’s no there there, certainly no spontaneity. although could be personality issues from way back. The authoritarian unctuousness, a kind of wall, in Reagan’s voice did not appeal to me, and I don’t want a president who is that closed as a person.
No, my point was that anything “coming across in the voice” is best disregarded when you actually assess politicians.
If you want to assess their effectiveness as politicians, then yes, you have to regard their talents and skills as communicators. But if you’re deciding whom you want in office, you have to disregard all of that, which is why I’m saying that I don’t care about Hillary’s voice or anybody’s voice.
It’s like judging products by the quality of their ads. Obviously the ads are an important part of the equation, and if you have a vested interest in a particular product dominating a market, you want that product to have superior ads. But that’s not the same thing as saying, “I don’t want to buy X because the ads bother me.” Who cares?
From here, I springboarded over to how we’re encouraged to focus on the superficial aspects of politics — who we’d “want to get a bee with”; whose voice we like, etc. I’m saying, all that stuff is obviously part of the process and can’t be removed, but people who legitimately pay attention to government and policy and legislation — people like us on this discussion board — shouldn’t be preferring candidates based on “I just don’t like his/her voice.”
Well you completely misunderstand what I’m trying to write – sorry for unclarity. I’m saying that important aspects of the personality come across in the voice, most salient re: politicians, qualities of sincerity and genuineness which goes to credibility on campaign promises and whether they’ll try to carry out an agenda for the people. the voice is not “advertising”. Read a little about Robert Bresson,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary_of_a_Country_Priest
for example, who didn’t hire actors for his films because they’d spent their lives learning how to take on a persona and he wanted genuiness in his characters. that’s what I’m writing. in some instances, Hillary for example, you get what Bresson didn’t like about actors, the voice has been trained to present a persona, but it still tells you that whatever’s inside the person isn’t coming across.
No, I didn’t misunderstand your point at all — I just strongly disagree with it.
I think the idea that you “can hear” insincerity etc. in politicians’ voices and/or manner isn’t just nonsense, it’s a dangerous illusion. (And I think my example of Reagan is a perfect counterfactual.)
As a strange, non-political, off-topic example, remember the husband in Rosemary’s Baby? Ira Levin, being no fool, made that character an actor, because he understood that, given his rôle in the Satanic conspiracy, there was simply no way he could get away with deceiving his wife over nine months unless he was trained to do so.
I just don’t believe people have “authenticity” filters that are any good. (I think that they think they do — and that this false belief is encouraged, as I’m saying — but I think it’s got nothing to do with reality.)
it’s not the same as “having a beer” – as we were discussing, much of the personality comes across in the voice. very difficult to disguise what’s really there in the speaking voice
She’s about winning.
Will that be enough?
We shall see…
AG
If we always have to elect a Wall Street shill to “win”, what have we won and what is it worth?
Any politician who threatens to change the status quo in meaningful ways will face a relentlessly hostile financial sector, corporate media–and even, to some extent, established ‘alternative’ media/pundits such as blogs.
The issue of ‘socialism’ itself it rather silly. People who insist upon willfully misunderstanding Sanders wouldn’t support him if he called himself the Third Way. And Americans, I’d imagine, in even larger number would insist that that won’t vote for a fascist, but that’s precisely who is leading the Republican field.
I agree that Sanders is a huge risk. Change always is.
aren’t we facing the same question as we face on the eve of the 08 Iowa caucuses? and caucus and NH results well give us some information about what’s possible
Not really. Too many variables in Iowa, including weather, and not enough diversity among the population. New Hampshire is a state when independents can vote in either primary. The “excitement” is on the Republican side. It might be determinative for the Repubs, but not so much for the Dems.
Based on political orientation and ideology, Iowa is more diverse than most states. Skin color, gender, sexual orientation is a superficial measure of political diversity.
It’s not the same in that Obama was in no way an insurgent candidate, with his first-class staff, backed politically from the beginning by Durbin and Daschle and Kennedy, and financially by Pritzker and her friends, and that relentless chase after the postpartisan center vote. Personally, I really didn’t like Obama until the summer of 2008, I thought he was too conservative, but ended up backing him when he was the only electable candidate who wasn’t Clinton, i.e. hadn’t voted for the Iraq AUMF. (By now, she’s apologized enough on that for me, and I have developed an enormous attachment to Obama, which is a big part of why I try to be less doctrinaire nowadays–if I’d had my way our candidate would have been Bill Richardson or John Edwards and President McCain would have blown up the entire Middle East and we’d be living with 25% unemployment in the Second Great Depression).
See what you’re saying. I was supporting Edwards, because I thought Obama was not electable -. was out of the country on work during IA and NH came back to a whole new ball game.
But I mean similar to 08 in that the electability question is paramount and we won’t know for a while how that will go. all I can say is Hillary too has electablility issues because of her negatives. are voters going to turn out just because DWS things they should? I don’t think so.
Yes to all. It’s scary both ways.
If DWS thinks that voters should hustle down to the poles, they might instead decide to stay home just to spite her. She’s become maybe the biggest Democratic negatives in this election. HRC might conceivably tell her ‘Keep her pie shut, I don’t need you anymore’.
I don’t think HRC will inspire turnout except to oppose her; I am hearing no support anecdotally, none!.
I bet you if Americans were polled on who Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is, a very small percentage would know. Even if you polled only Democrats, most would not know her. I would call that a negative for her (she’s not a compelling speaker), but it also argues against your claim here.
Voters don’t give much of a shit about process. That’s the only thing that makes her notable at all for most people, her associations with Hillary and the Party process.
Depends on your premises. The argument holds water if you assume that the base of the Democratic party, and the people who comment on progressive blogs, are two co-extensive groups.
See? Aren’t you glad you ditched electability?
What a candidate will do if elected is more important than his/her chances of election.
That’s silly. If somebody has no chance of being elected what they’ll do if elected is completely, totally, utterly, 100% irrelevant – because they’re not going to be elected and it’s not going to happen. What somebody will do if elected ONLY matters to the extent that they’ve got a chance to be elected.
Why not vote for Trump? When he’s elected you can say you voted for the winner.
If I knew for sure that Sanders could not be elected, I wouldn’t support him. I can certainly see why people might think he couldn’t be elected. The problem is that so far, the evidence indicates that he’s doing better than Clinton. If and when things start going the other way, maybe I’ll start listening to you.
Don’t believe me? RCP poll 1/9-1/13 (an aggregated poll) has Trump v. Clinton, Clinton by +2.5. But Cruz v. Clinton (12/16-1/7), Cruz by +1.8, and Rubio v. Clinton (12/16-1/7), Rubio by +3.0.
On the other hand, Trump v. Sanders (11/16-1/13) is Sanders by +5.3. Cruz v. Sanders (10/29-12/20), Sanders by +3.3, and Rubio v. Sanders is Rubio by +1.0, in a comparatively old poll (10/29-12/20).
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/2016_presidential_race.html
Against all three of the strongest GOP candidates, as of now, Sanders is stronger than Clinton.
The received opinion in 2008 was that a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama could not possibly be elected. But he was — twice.
” we’d be living with 25% unemployment in the Second Great Depression”
We are!
If you mean true unemployment U6 it’s now at 9.8%, down from 17.1% in 2010.
I don’t believe ANY of those figures. I believe what I hear from my family and my friend’s families when they go looking for jobs. But I’ll concede the McDonald’s two blocks away has had a “Now Hiring” sign for months. People want jobs, not McJobs.
Except Beahmont, it appears.
Upvoted in Frogpond solidarity.
Same. What in the hell is with these commenters who think they can come in here and make up their own rules about troll rating. Ridiculous. How hard is this? If someone posts something you disagree with, don’t vote at all.
So let me see if I get this straight. The owner of the site, you know the guy who sets the rules, links in his site FAQ to this article for the site’s definition of trolling. Said article quotes trolling as being:
I come along and see a comment that calls all statics by the government on unemployment ‘unbelievable’ because of personal antidotal ‘evidence’ and that all jobs available are just ‘McJobs’. Now, to my understanding of the word inflammatory and the phrase “with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional respone”, science and math denialism while attempting to spread FUD meet the definitions of both the word and the phrase in question.
Now if something has to the best of my understanding of the English Language the posted definition of trolling per the site’s owner and administrator, I’m well within my rights to mark the comment as trolling.
Now if you can tell me how science and math denial to spread FUD are not inflammatory and/or not intended to invoke an emotional response, then I’ll change my rating.
People around here tend to be very… irrational at times. There are tons of things I don’t like or agree with posted. There are tons of things I do. But I don’t upvote things just because I agree with them, and I don’t downvote things just because I disagree with them. And this is provable. You can look at what I rate and don’t rate, and you’ll find lots of things that I don’t agree with not getting ratings. You can even find things I don’t agree with completely but that show a good faith effort to examine the situation and reach a logical and rational conclusion getting 3’s or 4’s.
Hell, all you have to do is look at Voices post saying that we already are living in the Second Great Depression and have 25% unemployment and then his subsequent post being an ass to prove that. Neither of those things meet the definition of trolling as defined by Booman, so they don’t get troll ratings.
You can keep pretending I troll rate things because I disagree with the statement, but that doesn’t make it true. And neither does your ‘No True Scotsman’ fallacy about my state of being part of the community make it true either.
Flagging this post, Beahmont, as a 2-Warning!
Your reasons for troll-rating so much here aren’t very good and they have the consistent effect of distracting and demoting posts unfairly for those of us that sort based on ratings. A couple of friendly suggestions:
If you think a statement made by a poster is meant mostly or just to be provocative, challenge that statement with a response of your own and try to find out if what you perceive as provocation is correct.
If you think a statement is false, or in denial of a priori evidence, then provide the contrary evidence in a response to the post with the facts you dispute. Even / especially information you know is bad information; even if it’s so bad it’s stultifying to have to respond to it. Be a mensch. Prove your point; correct the record; please don’t just troll-rate someone.
Your comments by the way are interesting and well-drafted. I like reading them and would like to read more or them. So far they’re pretty sparse so it’s hard to get a good read on you. Mostly what I know is that you’re a trigger-happy troll-rater. It’s not much to go on.
Okay… So a complete refusal to engage on what the definition of trolling is as per our host, plus a refusal to engage on the matter if the post is intended to invoke an emotional response and/or is inflammatory.
As to:
Posting science and math denialism with and via FUD is a purposeful attempt to distract and derail a logical and/or rational debate. I do not understand how calling a troll post a troll post is unfair unless you can explain how specifically it’s not a troll post. I’ve taken the criteria for trolling as given by the site’s administrator and applied it to a post and found reasonable objective cause to conclude that the post in question matches the definition provided.
On a personal note, sorting posts based on rating is a very peculiar way to receive unbiased information. This method of viewing information seems almost guaranteed to lead to confirmation bias and bubble logic within any given community. Of course the prior statement is likely almost meaningless for the reasons I am about to bring up.
So… there are several reasons this doesn’t generally work. As a general expectation and rule, people who post FUD and throw out empirical evidence are not actually interested in having a rational debate. If someone isn’t having a rational debate, there really is almost no point in the world in having a debate, especially on the internet.
Even if I did decide to waste time debating a troll, science tells us that in engaging and debating someone who is refusing to debate rationally is not just a waste of my time, but detrimental to my cause. It’s generally referred to as the Backfire Effect. And what it says is that confronting someone’s believes can and often reinforces the beliefs being confronted, even and especially if they are wrong.
Thus science lends credence to one of the ‘Internets’ oldest rules: “Don’t feed the Troll(s)!”
If enough people took your way of troll-rating commenters, without the substantial back-up-voting seen here, a lot of posts would be deleted, and those posters would eventually be banned. This isn’t the same thing as up/down voting. This isn’t Shakesville where they heavily moderate comments and ban people — as is their right as a designated “safe space” and blog operator. But that’s not how things roll around here. I’d rather have this place than the cesspool that is The Great Orange Satan, thanks.
Most believe Sanders has very little chance of winning anything, socialist you know, and an old man at that. The way Team Hillary plays it there is no alternative. It is either her or Trump. And they may just be right.
But then you look at the issues talked about in the campaign. A short list of domestic issues includes the high cost of healthcare, the need for more jobs and a living wage, growing poverty and inequality, the high cost of a college education, the sleeping giant of climate change, the systemic racism within our justice and police systems, the need to get money out of politics, the gambling from banks who seemingly serve no one, the crumbling infrastructure, the dysfunctional supreme court and congress. You can name your own.
And in foreign policy never ending wars, and a MIC that spends trillions for things like an F 35 that may or may not work and gobbles up taxes. And if any nation meets our disapproval we impose sanctions. The empire is crumbling and we cannot see it.
Sometimes I think it all started with Viet Nam, and liberalism died in Grant Park. Taxes are a dirty word today, even if you can net save by increasing taxes and reducing other costs. We have lost our way.
So TINA rules. So there is Bernie the socialist’s way, the clown car way (mostly carpet bomb somebody) and Hillary’s third way. Only one of these has a chance of healing the empire. So this old man will hang on to it for as long as possible.
“Sometimes I think it all started with Viet Nam, and liberalism died in Grant Park. Taxes are a dirty word today, even if you can net save by increasing taxes and reducing other costs. We have lost our way. “
You have the truth, Brother.
Personally, this decision has never been that difficult for me. I’ll vote for Bernie (assuming he hangs in there til CA), and then when Hillary beats him I’ll vote for her in the general.
It’s not that both of them don’t have drawbacks that annoy me. They do. That’s politics in America. Frankly I don’t care who this party nominates because I’m voting against Republicans either way.
OK, that’s the simplest possible way of looking at it, but yeah.
It totally is, and I didn’t mean to sound dismissive toward the complexities. I realize they’re there, and appreciate reading the more nuanced give and take about them (especially on this blog). But I gotta say that my mental health is immeasurably better by keeping out of the primary wars this time around.
Surely not 50 states. Would Oregon or Vermont vote for Trump or Cruz over Sanders? Minnesota? Massachusetts? California?
I don’t know, as of now Sanders is slaughtering Trump in national polls.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/264023-in-blockbuster-poll-sanders-destr
oys-trump-by-13
There are definitions and definitions. Many conflate Socialism with Communism. You may be seeing that 47% would vote for a Communist if they liked him/her and his platform.
When I was a schoolboy, what we were taught was that Socialism was the belief that the State should own the means of production and Communism meant that EVERYTHING was held in common by the state. You don’t own your house, your clothes, your yard, NOTHING!
Now, I don’t really want an America without McDonald’s, GM, Ford, Boeing, Microsoft (OK, maybe!), Google, et cetera. Such a nineteenth century vision is too gray and bland. Capitalism does give us variety and choice, IF it is well regulated and not allowed to follow its natural tendency to monopoly. THAT’s what I’ve heard Bernie say in innumerable “Brunch with Bernie” weekend broadcasts from Thom Hartmann. I just wish he had never used the “S” word. Too be fair, European socialism was regarded as different from classical Socialism back in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
The word “socialist” has been robbed of a coherent meaning over the last seven years that it has been used as a bludgeon against President Obama. If “Obamacare” is socialism, perhaps it’s not such a bad thing. Of course, it’s not: Not socialism, and not such a bad thing, but that’s beside the point. The point is that the word has lost the ability to stigmatize.
Bernie’s sentimental attraction to the Soviet Union, on the other hand, would be harder to explain in the General.
Would you care to explain what you mean about the Soviet Union remark? Surely you are not referring to his honeymoon that has been explained as an official Burlington event that happened to occur at the same time? Should he have not performed his mayoral function? Or postponed his marriage because it might look bad forty years later?
The Clintons are master at mud slinging, like all pigs.
You understand that you lose the high ground about mud slinging when you characterize others as pigs, right?
Sanders himself called it “a very strange honeymoon”. He left the day after he got married. He came back praising the quality of housing and healthcare. You may accept this as not politically problematic. I think the TV spots write themselves.
You think the Clintons are masters of mudslinging. They have nothing on the right-wing Wurlitzer. Almost every single Bush administration official, including both Sec States, used private email AND threw all the messages out – even when under investigation as in the politicized US Attorney scandal. Media response? Not quite bupkis, but very close. Hillary uses a private server but conserves the messages and hands them over when done – vastly more responsible than ANY Bush appointee – and what do we get? 24/7 coverage of the “email scandal” and multiple Congressional investigations. Even a large proportion of the folks HERE end up piping the Wurlitzer’s tune.
Seven years? More like a hundred.
I think one basic error is to think that socialism and capitalism are mutually exclusive. Sweden is typically held up as the paradigm of a socialist country, and yet Stockholm does have a stock exchange. And if you look at what Swedish socialism actually consists of, a lot of it is stuff that we have too, like marginal tax rates and unemployment compensation. A lot of the differences are just in the extent of the programs.
Personally I think Sanders should ditch the socialist label, because it isn’t really necessary and it’s more of a liability than not. He can still be exactly who he is without calling himself a socialist, because there’s nothing that he wants that hasn’t been done, or at least called for, in the United States before. He really is firmly within an American tradition, and he can never emphasize that too much.
If anything it’s the market fundamentalists whose ideas are foreign, what with all their Austrians and that awful Russian woman.
“Personally I think Sanders should ditch the socialist label, because it isn’t really necessary and it’s more of a liability than not.”
First of all, he does not use the label Socialist. He has said for many years he is a Democratic Socialist and he owns it. This is the core of his authenticity. You know where he stands without all that marketing bullshit, a key ingredient necessary for trust that gives people something to vote for.
Hillary’s attacks are going to backfire because they put her on the wrong side of issues that are very popular with Democrats.
Frankly I think a competent repub candidate would beat him like a drum
But who is this competent repub?
Competent at what?
Competent at drum beating.
And…just who would that be?
Hmmmmm…
Or just one of his servants?
Hmmmmm…
AG
You finally posted a comment I liked.
I do keep trying.
AG
None of them, I hope, but I wouldn’t stake the countries future on that
Luckily, not a one of those anywhere to be seen . . . even on the distant horizon.
European social democrats still recognize the validity of Marx’s analysis of capitalism (except Labour in UK–thanks, for that too, slimeball Tony Blair–but Corbyn wants to bring Marx back), but long ago abandoned the concept of revolution (that’s the real divorce between socialists and communists, not what they taught us in school), in favor of developing workers’ power in elections and stable institutions. They detached themselves from nationalizing industry in the decades after World War II (and in that sense have not been “socialists” at all for a long time, just as Sanders is not), sometimes inconsistently (relatively right France has much more nationalization than relatively left Denmark). The worldwide purpose of the socialist movement nowadays is less to destroy capitalism than to defend workers and poor from its worst effects.
In that sense there’s not that much difference between Sanders and Clinton, who would agree with the formulation. She has called for an end to ISP monopolies and drug monopolies, and Yglesias argues persuasively that she’s to Sanders’s left on banking regulation (she thinks bringing back Glass-Steagal is a Band-aid that won’t repair underlying problems). Bernie is really not a leftist but a populist. He’s fierce and fearless and consistent where she’s timid and wonky and wavering, that’s what we love about him, but it’s possible that she’s more effective.
The electability question is pretty important, though, and I think Atkins is wrong in dismissing it so easily. Especially in insisting that there’s nothing to worry about downballot. Without a Congress Sanders will be able to accomplish far less than Obama has accomplished since 2010, precisely because of his unvarying righteousness, and we’d better not elect him if we can’t elect people to cooperate with him. Another fear is of the Democratic centrists who will run for Congress detaching themselves from Bernie, which will be bad for us whether they win or lose. (As the same people have been during the Obama administration.) They would possibly be less of a problem with a president Clinton because they’d want to have her support.
I think most Democrats running for Congress will run away from Bernie. I don’t think they will have a choice. Maybe – maybe – Bernie can raise enough money for his presidential bid without any corporate support, but Congress? How do Democrats down ticket compete with Republican money? If Bernie tops the ticket can any Democrat raise enough money to win?
Will it not matter if Democrats run as if Citizen’s United had never been decided while the Republicans run in a post Citizen United reality?
The “socialist” label may be the least of Sanders’ political liabilities. He seems to think that when others don’t share his priorities, the solution is to keep repeating himself, and perhaps to raise his voice.
His patronizing conceit last night that the reason that minorities are not attracted to his candidacy is that they are not paying attention illustrates the self-limiting nature of his candidacy:
There’s no guarantee that, if nominated, he would have a competent opponent, but if he were to receive one, yes, I readily believe that he could lose the election in a landslide – simply by not listening.
We must vote for the electable one even if he/she is against our interests, so we are told over and over.
True, we get no value from voting for someone who loses. But we get no value from electing our enemy, either.
As for the lesser evil, should you vote for Stalin over Hitler? Well, if you are Jewish, you should, but for me there is no difference. If you had the choice would you vote for Al Capone or Bugs Moran for President? Why bother?
Should you vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? Why bother? Both are blowhards and screwups who just want to pick your pocket and offer nothing but symbolism in return. Trump is marginally more dangerous in foreign policy. Marginally.
I often hear that Sanders cannot do anything because absolutely nothing will change in the House and Senate, i.e. he has no coat tails. Maybe and maybe not on the coattails. But he has claimed that he can break up the big banks under existing law. That’s a major change. I can’t see Sanders blundering into war with Iran. I can definitely see Clinton doing that. I can see Sanders ordering FCC crackdowns and a whole host of regulatory agency improvements even if all his appointees have to be “acting” directors. Obama didn’t understand the machinery of government because he was an outsider. Sanders and I labored in those fields for decades. We KNOW what can be done if the President is behind his agencies. I don’t see Clinton doing any of that. I see Clinton furthering the turnover of the federal government to private contractors.
Sometimes the lesser evil is just evil.
Hillary wants to raise the minimum wage, improve voting rights, rein in racist and crooked cops, raise taxes on the very wealthy, tax destabilizing financial transactions, end gender equality, increase unionization, reduce deaths from opiate ODs, legalize medical marijuana, and a host of other great things which aren’t being done now and generally haven’t been done in our lifetimes if ever.
It’s just nonsense to call Hillary the “lesser evil”. A Hillary administration with any power to get legislation through would be a HUGE improvement over our current situation. You can say Sanders would be even better, and maybe he would, but President Hillary Clinton would be a huge boost to the country.
Don’t forget the Supreme Court. Is Clinton so awful that we’re willing to let a Republican pick the next two or three justices?
Of course not. But that’s a “lesser evil” argument and my point is that Hillary as president is a big, positive good.
And walks on water too!
She doesn’t mean it, though.
You can tell.
Plus she’s going to bomb Iran.
Sheesh, everyone knows this….
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
While not a Clinton supporter in the 1992 primaries, I accepted him as okay in the general election. The only campaign promise that he delivered on was a broad based income tax increase. Oh, guess we should include NAFTA which Democrats didn’t really support or want as a delivered promise. Probably could have ended up with less toxic legislation if we’d re-elected GWHB.
How many of Hillary 2016 campaign promises did she promise in 2007-08? Racism/discrimination and income/wealth inequality weren’t any less pressing then than they are today. How many would we see today if Sanders weren’t in the race?
btw — she doesn’t want to legalize marijuana. She’s is conservative on social issues and always has been. She doesn’t see or acknowledge the economic connection to social issues if it would disadvantage her benefactors or is contrary to her conservative Christianity.
so “she doesn’t want to legalize marijuana” doesn’t contradict this, though you seem to imply it does. The two are different things.
“But it’s true that Sanders is a self-avowed Socialist.”
Sorry, but that is also bullshit. As you rightly note, “…it doesn’t mean that he wants to turn America into a Maoist re-education compound or a Leninist summer camp in the Catskills.” But then you continued to say is the next paragraph, “…whether or not America would actually elect a socialist as their president.” It’s as if you completely ignored what you just said going right back to the establishment narrative but then if you didn’t it would be awkward to continue the story.
The Communists (Marxist) proudly declare themselves as self-avowed Socialists going out of their way to protest the idea that Bernie Sanders is anywhere near being a socialist. The Marxists are the ones who would want to turn America into a Maoist re-education compound or a Leninist summer camp in the Catskills. The Marxist corrupted the word socialist by claiming it as their own attaching the baggage of a corrupt failed political ideology.
Al From, Bill Clinton and the DLC (Clinton Machine) also corrupted the front half of Bernie’s label, Democrat, by selling out to the corporatist new democrat third way no labels bullshit. This way of thinking has all but destroyed our middle class and in the process gave the Republicans far too much structural political power.
Maybe it’s not such a bad idea to recycle the labels of both of these failed ideologies into something new, Democratic Socialist, meaning keep our powerful capitalist system but make it work of all of our people improving everyone’s lives instead of just enriching the top one percent.
“What I will say is that Sanders hasn’t been put through the meat grinder yet.”
Do I hear a slight tinge of regret for the silent treatment on the issues Bernie has raised until it looks like he might win both of the early primaries?
“Big corporate media won’t be happy, and their reporters will think it’s the second coming of the Angolan War.”
I wonder if you would have had the same reaction when FDR said, “…I welcome their anger!”
“…you can know if it’s a risk you think is worth taking.”
The real risk is nominating the establishment candidate Hillary Clinton with a large angry populist movement on both sides of the aisle. David Atkins is right, “If either candidate has the potential for cross-partisan appeal, it’s Sanders.”
This post is a bit of punching to your left, which maybe politicians might want to do in certain circumstances, but my coalition has room for anarchists, socialists, communists, and Marxists. Why are you ready to shove them under the bus?
Henry Wallace told us that both the 1917 Russian Bolshevik Revolution and the American Revolution were revolutions for the common man. Maybe it started out that way but it didn’t end that way. What happened (think blowback) was the British and Americans in 1918 decided to counter the Bolshevik Revolution by supporting the anti-Soviet forces, or Whites, headed mainly by former tsarist generals and admirals, with money, British and American ground troops. This intervention was used effectively by the Bolsheviks to demonstrate that their enemies were backed by Western Capital leading to the establishment of the Soviet Union. Vladimir Lenin, inspired by German philosopher Karl Marx and his famous book Das Kapital, attempted to shape the future of the Soviet Union, warning against the unchecked power of party members, including Joseph Stalin. What emerged was nothing like what Lenin had envisioned. You might say the Marxist never really had a chance or you might say the Marxist became Stalin. Either way this extreme left experiment was a colossal failure.
Now these Marxist, whoever they really are, remain anti-capitalist claiming the term socialist as their own. This has nothing to do with being a Democratic Socialist and in my opinion, deserves no place in our political considerations. The revolution Bernie is talking about is about saving capitalism from its own forces of greed and accumulated power making capitalism work for all the people by inspiring a much broader participation in our own experiment with democracy. Now we get to see if our American Revolution was for the common man or not.
I’m ignoring your assessment of Bernie here just to note that your assessment of Lenin is ludicrous.
Sorry, I must stop trusting the internet.
http://www.history.com/topics/vladimir-lenin
You reminded me in the movie JKF when Jim Garrison told David Ferrie he was going to have to hold him for further questioning because his story was unbelievable and David replied, “Really, what part?” You can’t just walk away, or maybe you can.
In comparison to what, exactly? The people of that region were substantially worse off prior to the October Revolution.
Don’t be too triumphant yet, for we haven’t exactly seen the full fruit borne of capitalism, have we? Whether on the environment, oligarchy, and lack of political freedom…what we have yet to see could be, and I suspect will be, far worse, killing vastly more people than Stalin could have dreamed. Also, what if it can’t be “saved from itself”? What if, as I and many fellow socialists here and elsewhere believe, that it’s inherently structural in the system itself?
Regardless, you’re treating those groups of people the same way neoliberals are treating Democratic Socialists. I see no difference in your purges and theirs. I’m not a Democratic Socialist. I’m also not a Tankie. Obviously, one draws lines in who they associate with in a political party. But do you even have room, for, say, Kshama Sawant? If not, why not?
Kshama Sawant has stated that she does not advocate for any system like the “bureaucratic dictatorship” of the former Soviet Union, but for democratic socialism meaning “the society being run democratically in the interest of all working people on the planet, all children – everybody who has needs, and all that being done in an environmentally sustainable manner.” I have no problem with her unless she means the state should own all means of production making all the decisions, why do you think I would?
“In comparison to what, exactly? The people of that region were substantially worse off prior to the October Revolution.”
I would say in the comparison to the people in the political opposition who became dead when the Red Terror got to them. And Stalin was such a lovely leader the people of Ukraine greeted the Nazis as liberators when they first arrived, that was until the Nazi death squads also started killing them.
Well, you draw lines, why can’t I? You may be right that our capitalist system can’t be saved from itself. It’s like a snake that eats its own tail and it’s hungry, always hungry. The system is now so rigged that the life blood (wealth) is being drained (going to the top) from the economy to the point the whole thing might just die. Henry Ford, a lovely extreme right winger, recognized that if he didn’t raise the starvation wages he was paying no one would be able to buy his cars. Now apply that to Wal-Mart.
I do draw the line with the people who want to scrap capitalism because capitalism has proved itself to be the most powerful and successful economic system the world has ever seen. However, when capitalism degenerates into monopolies it is not longer capitalism but something else, the main reason the financial institutions must be broken up, not destroyed. Go see “The Big Short.”
I also draw a line with people who think the only way to solve our problems is with a single or bureaucratic dictator, what the Marxist-Lenin regime became. That system simply did not work and is in the dust bin of history where it belongs.
Capitalism is not really compatible with democracy because it does not want to be regulated or taxed in any way. Putting a harness on this beast is not going to be easy but I say it can and must be done. The only reason I say we can do this is because we still have the vote but it only works if we all stand together.
However, when capitalism degenerates into monopolies it is not longer capitalism but something else, the main reason the financial institutions must be broken up, not destroyed.
That’s where we differ. This is capitalism. The accumulation of capital. Just because you want to call it something else as it makes you uncomfortable doesn’t change the facts here. I see a lot of “but it’s not capitalism anymore, it’s ‘corportatism'” (or some other “ism”). No. This is capitalism. In the flesh.
I’m glad you recognize that capitalism is not compatible with democracy. It is not. It’s why I’m still confused by your defense of it.
Just to be clear, btw, Kshama Sawant has called for the nationalization of many industries.
Anyway, your right to want to not accept radicals and leftists into your camp. If Bernie Sanders is about as left as you’re willing to go, count me out.
This is a complex issue so bear with me for a bit. There is a certain magic to the capitalist market place that gives it its well demonstrated success. If you want to participate you can offer a product or service. If that product or service is the best quality combined with the best price you win. You get money and the opportunity to grow your business. If it goes the other way you lose and go out of business. Each participating person gets to choose (the key point) the product or service to deliver, how to deliver it and what price to charge. This works as sort of a brutal quality control system that is lost with nationalization.
The decisions of the producer and the decisions of the consumer combine to make possible the highest quality product at the lowest price. This generates positive market forces that can produce tremendous amounts of wealth to create a high standard of living. This is how I see capitalism when it works at its best.
The difference between the cost to the producer and the price charged is the entire point of the producer participating in the first place. The natural inclination for the producer would be have the lowest possible cost of production cost while charging highest possible price, what the market will bear. The best way to cheat or distort the market is to corner the market then raise the price, creating a monopoly. Now you don’t have to worry about quality or price, just rake in the money, all for yourself. What a clever idea, but what if people just walk away from you and your new and improved crappy high priced product? No worry because you planned for this by choosing a product for your monopoly everyone must have to live their life such as medical insurance, internet service or fuel distribution. These are examples of things I call utilities and must be highly regulated. Some things like prisons, public education and our common use infrastructure should never be allowed in private capitalist hands and if they are they must be removed by federal law.
Let’s examine the cost of the production side of our ideal capitalist market a bit more. You can use your profits to gain political influence to keep out or kill the unions or simply chase cheap labor around the world finding it in business friendly places like authoritarian former communist China with some of the most appalling labor conditions with pollution on an unheard of scale, things out of control capitalist really like to take advantage of. Wal-Mart, where Hillary once sat on the board of directors, did both of these things. Wal-Mart pays wages so low that many of their employees require public assistance just to survive. Wal-Mart will never change their business practices without changes in the law that would force Wal-Mart to allow union representation plus a national minimum living wage law.
In general, nationalization should always be a limited last resort. Allowing the Post Office to do fundamental banking services would create a nationalized bank that would put rip-off check cashing and payday lenders out of business. Sometimes a little government competition is the answer such as the towns that installed a municipal internet service charging a fraction of the cost as the current crappy high priced vendor or the town who set up their own gas station to beat the local distributors who were gouging the residents. Yes, we can fix this if we stand together.
So Kshama Sawant wants to give back all but $40k of her salary while married to a Microsoft engineer, how noble. She has advocated for the nationalization of large Washington State corporations such as Boeing, Microsoft, and Amazon.com. This is where she loses me because none of these corporations are utilities necessary to a live one’s life or are they even a monopoly.
What Kshama Sawant fails to understand is that her calls for large Seattle companies such as Starbucks and Amazon to be unionized might be appropriate for a labor leader but not an elected official. We do not make laws for individual citizens or specific companies because that would violate equal protection under the law.
A lot of what Kshama Sawant says is straight up Democratic Socialist which I think accounts for her remarkable electoral success. Other Democrats should take note if they want to beat her in the future. I think she could have gone a lot further without the toxic Marxist baggage but that toothpaste is already out of the tube.
If my auntie had wheels, she’d be a bus.
She must be a Greyhound if you think Hillary has any appeal to Republicans.
The Marxist corrupted the word socialist by claiming it as their own attaching the baggage of a corrupt failed political ideology.
No, they corrupted Marxism/communism. Marx didn’t advocate for a totalitarian, feudalistic industrialization.
Are you saying the Marxist corrupted Marxism/communism?
While in Munich in 1895, Lenin and others co-founded a newspaper, Iskra, to unify Russian and European Marxists. Karl Marx had already died in 1883. Did Lenin at that time represent the Marxist?
After the 1917 revolution, the Bolshevik’s quickly consolidated power; privatizing all aspects of the Soviet economy, cracking down on dissents through the Cheka, or secret police and instituting the Red Terror, aimed at destroying monarchist and anti-Bolshevik sympathizers during the Russian Civil War.
Before the 1917 revolution, parting from his fellow Marxists, in particular the group calling itself the Mensheviks, led by Julius Martov, Lenin paved the way for a one-man dictatorship over the people he claimed he had wanted to empower. Are you confused yet dealing with all these power struggles and shifting labels?
If not, while not trying to do their opposition research for them, look at this video:
http://www.examiner.com/article/the-enemies-within-trevor-loudon-exposes-bernie-sanders-as-a-hardcor
e-marxist
Clinton has her problems too. One is her favorability rating which is not very good.
One thing that interests me about this plot is that her favorability was very high when she left her position as Secretary of State in 2013. Only since she started her campaign has it dropped. People seemed to be very happy with the job she did as SS until after she quit. Evidently the right wing noise machine and the left wing echo chamber have had some success in pushing down her favorable rating. Based on what? What changed in her record between 2013 and now? Nothing substantive as far as I can see.
When, in all likelihood, Clinton becomes the dem candidate she will have a hard time digging out from under this irrational negative crap, piled up with the help of some on the left. I worry about that.
“What changed in her record between 2013 and now? Nothing substantive as far as I can see.”
What changed? In 2013 she had just retired as Obama’s secretary of state. In 2016 she’s running for president of the United States (for the second time; the first time she lost to that same Barack Obama).
I thought she did a good job as Secretary of State, but that doesn’t mean I want her as president.
Well, it’s not as if you could swap “Bernie Sanders” in for “a socialist” in that poll and get the same result. Once you replace the generic socialist with an actual person, you also have to consider that person’s other qualities.
And you have to consider the opponents, because of course it’s not a yes or no question, it’s either/or.
At this point I would estimate that Sanders actually has a lot of room for his own favorability ratings to improve. I don’t think most people really know much about him, so their perception at this point is colored by the “socialist” label. But if he became the nominee he’d start to get a lot more attention, and he’d start to come into focus as something other than just a random socialist.
To take one example, he’s going to talk a lot about climate change, and of course whoever the Republicans nominate is going to keep denying that climate change is even happening. How is that going to go down in a general election?
Individuals do matter, and Bernie will poll better than an abstract socialist. But prejudices and biases matter too. The last time the American public split even on whether they’d be willing to vote for an African-American president was the 60’s, so Bernie getting elected now would be comparable to Obama getting elected then. Would you really have been willing to stake it all on electing Obama in 1968, when the alternative is a Republican trifecta and probably decades of Supreme Court dominance?
I don’t think many people are disputing that Sen. Sanders numbers could actually rise as things progress. I think a lot of people are suggesting that such a thing is not probable.
I also think that a lot of people around here are also under some impression that his numbers won’t go down, if not out right stating that they can’t go down. And from the view over here, either of those positions seems very dubious at best and straight up out of a unicorn’s crack pipe dream at worst.
Sen. Sanders has not even begun to wade through the Wurlitzer of the election so far. My personal doubts about his election prospects have little to do with him and much to do with not underestimating that the Wurlitzer treats those on the left much differently than it treats those on the right. I’m not convinced at all that that Sen. Sanders can survive the full force of the Wurlitzer.
Hear this concern from time to time. Can Bernie take it?
What might the mighty Wurlitzer blast Bernie’s way that he couldn’t take? Any examples?
If the Hillary campaign figgers that out, trust me, like the birther issue in 2008, they will try to use it.
BET ON IT
Between Clinton and Wasserman Schultz I’m about ready to declare a democracy of the people dead in the US. It’s over. Get back in line and do your job.
You write:
What took you so long? It began its death spiral in Dealy Plaza. Or maybe even before, when JFK won because he looked better on TV.
It is now a democracy controlled by the media. A “mediocracy,” so to speak. And who controls the media? Corporate powers worth trillions.
If there is any chance of change, that change may be being driven…not on purpose, but driven nonetheless…by the successful candidacy of Donald Trump. The media have been absolutely unsuccessful in even managing to slow him down, let alone stop him.
Celebritocracy is now the order of the day.
So the worm turns, once again.
Watch.
AG
Please Arthur, if any candidate running in 2016 is a media creation TRUMP is.
How much FREE press has he gotten every day from Fox CNN MSNBC?
How many time each, day does some cable-cabal news program, run 5-10 minutes of his loud mouth, bloviating away, something they do for no one else running.
Damn man, for somebody who plays the know-it-all on this blog; how can you miss this one?
The media systems have another, parallel agenda at the same time…competition with other media. If they do not make a profit for several quarters then they go down. Their executives go down first.
The decision makers.
If they do not cover Trump some other media will do so. Bet on it. Trump knows this. He’s been playing them. That’s his real talent. Playing the media.
These execs…and believe me, I know this field very well because I was married for 12 years to someone who was a high-level tech functionary in a large media network…these execs have debts. Big cars. Expensive houses. Coddled upper-middle class children to be channelled into the Ivy Leagues if at all possible. Wives who will divorce them and take them for all they are worth if they do not maintain a certain level of upper middle classness. Tuition up the yin-yang!!! Etc.
So they cover Trump, or any other “newsworthy” item.
It’s all a hustle.
Bet on that as well.
AG
Funny, you didn’t admit T-Rump is the media creation of the election cycle.
For what reason the corporate owned media is working so hard to under cut the traditional GOtPer selected candidates is unknown to me, but they have made sure Bush, Christy, Walker Kasich, And event Rubio are second tier to T-Rump and that Canadian guy.
Trump has made that happen. Forced it to happen. He is a media-hustling genius. That’s about the end of his genius as far as I am concerned, but in a heretofore media-controlled system, it is beginning to look like that might just be enough to win.
So it goes.
Down like a motherfucker!!!
Later…
AG
Nice bold declaration without one shred of evidence to back it up.
Evidence!!!???
The evidence of about 4 months of almost unanimous mass media opposition to his candidacy on every level, from his first declaration of intent to run right through the transparently anti-Trump posturing of Fox News during the first debate to the current (totallypanicked) “ANYBODY BUT TRUMP!!!” bullshit across the mass media spectrum…more than enough “evidence” for me!!!
Where the fuck you been!!!???
AG
Trump would need at least 40% of the Hispanic vote to win in November even if he increases white voter turnout for him, a highly debatable claim.
Arthur, would Trump get 40% of the Hispanic vote in a general election?
Additional questions: What do non-whites in your multicultural neighborhood think of Trump’s campaign? More importantly, what do non-whites think of Trump’s campaign in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and the other swing states?
Empty numbers.
AG
LOL…yeah, thought so.
Then why’d you put them up?
AG
I was laughing at you for your unwillingness or inability to share any personal awareness of how non-white voters are responding to the Trump campaign.
W. Bush won over 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2004.
McCain won 31% of the Hispanic vote in 2008.
Romney won 27% of the Hispanic vote in 2012.
Romney also got smashed by African-American and Asian-American voters.
A GOP candidate cannot run an explicitly white supremacist campaign and win the general election in the 21st Century. Isn’t it a little disturbing to you that a GOP candidate may be able to win the POTUS nomination with a explicitly white supremacist campaign?
You write:
Disturbing?
Yes.
But a quite possible reality?
Also yes.
You have more faith in this country’s electorate than do I. There has been a sea-change…a reactionary, white-supremacist sea-change, driven as much by the survival and growth of extremist Islam since 9/11 despite massive military opposition as by anything else…throughout much of Western Europe and the U.S. Trump has shown himself quite capable of riding that wave…not only riding it but making it even bigger…for over 6 months now. Meanwhile HRC…his only practical opponent…is sinking like a stone.
Trump’s chances improve with every day.
Deal wid it.
AG
You didn’t respond to the questions at hand. Let’s try again.
Would Trump outperform Romney in the general election with non-white voters?
Is it not more likely that Trump would not only underperform Romney with these voters, but that voter turnout from non-whites would be goosed by the chance to vote against the white supremacist?
Have you talked to any non-white voters in swing states about the Trump campaign?
You ask:
No, I do not believe that he would.
No, it is definitely not “more likely,” and here is why. It’s a complicated equation, but here goes:
1-It is a given that people who habitually vote are likely to vote again, and non-white voters are no different in that respect from white voters.
2-It is also a given that people who do not habitually vote are very difficult to get out to the polls. They’re working; they have home duties; they don’t really have much interest one way or another; they are so skeptical of the whole system that they will not even consider voting for the candidates from which they are permitted to choose, they’re just too goddamned lazy and/or stupid…a whole litany of “reasons” (some good, some not so good) why they do not vote.
3-It has been my observation…and remember, I am a (well accepted and thus fairly well integrated) “minority” in my own field of endeavor as a latin and jazz musician and in my multiracial Bronx neighborhood, plus as an apparently working-class/middle class white man I can blend in seamlessly with the more “majority” (read “segregated”) white scene, so I get to hear and witness a fairly broad swath of opinions…it has been my observation over the last 7 years of the Obama presidency that fewer and fewer non-white people have much good to say about him or what he has been able to do. They are increasingly disaffected with Obama and thus with the Democratic Party itself. Both have thoroughly earned that disaffection. Hillary doesn’t go over so big, either. Bet on it.
Meanwhile over the last year or so I have seen and heard a remarkable turnaround towards Trump from working class white people. people who in my estimation sit out contests like Obama vs. McCain and Obama vs. Romney because:
A-They don’t trust the general run of politicians.
B-They don’t rust the general run of wealthy people.
C-They don’t trust the media. Including Fox, especially after the totally unsuccessful Megan Kelly run at Trump in the first RatPub debate.
and
D-They thoroughly despise the Republican and Democratic Parties as they have stood for quite a while and the federal government in which they share power. They think that the whole thing is a sham, a “You scratch my back; I’ll scratch yours; we’ll all get rich and fuck the rubes!!!” con game.
But…and this is a big “but”…Trump has captured them.
Big time.
This is the information u[on which I base my opinion in this matter. If Trump wins the Republican nomination and lives long enough to run for office, neither HRC or Unca Bernie is going to be able to sufficiently motivate the non-white vote and/or the millennial/”youth” vote to turn out in enough numbers to mitigate the tidal wave of working class/middle class habitual non-voters that will appear on Election Day and vote for Trump.
So it goes.
So far.
Things do change. “Accidents” happen; skeletons are rattled out of long-hidden closets (Always remember Pretty Boy John Edwards, Thomas Eagleton, etc.) along with a whole host of other surprising possibilities.
But this is what I see on the ground today.
Deal wid it.
You disagree?
Have at it.
I certainly could be wrong.
If I am?
Sue me.
Or argue with me.
But don’t just post empty numbers.
The lie like rugs.
Later…
AG
So many words.
What’s missing?
What do non-white voters think of the Trump campaign?
I see no evidence that he knows. The evidence is out there. But he thinks numbers lie, so there’s no convincing him.
There’s also distasteful presumptions AG makes in this last post, where he believes white voters who have not voted in the past will overcome the habit of not voting in 2016 because of Trump, but non-whites will not. It’s disappointing to see him take this line of argumentation.
Disappointing? Only to supporters of the PermaGov-as-established.
Let it fall.
Let the fever come to a climax and then die away.
There’s no other solution as far as I can see.
If Trump becomes our Hitler, then 30+ years from now maybe we will become as balanced as was Western Europe before the Bush II Iraq adventure and subsequent disasters.
Let it burn.
Fuck it.
AG
A better solution would be for voters who don’t believe that the United States should be ruled by a feudalist white supremacist to turn out to vote in big numbers. Your view is peculiar, and your “solution” is preposterous. But thanks for putting it on the record. At least your white privilege would protect you, eh?
You believe that whites who do not have a habit of voting would turn out to vote for Trump, but non-whites would not turn out to vote against him. What should we make of that view of yours?
I resigned my “white privilege” when I dropped out of white society in the late ’60s/early ’70s. I’ll take that position to the grave. Bet on it.
You?
AG
Yet you actively root for non-whites to enter the Thunderdome that would be a Trump Presidency. Sounds like white privledge to me.
For a guy who “dropped out of white society,” you sure do have definitive views (based on experience!) of what disaffected whites will do on Election Day in November.
Also, still haven’t heard from you what your multicultural friends have said about a Trump campaign. What do you think they’ll do in swing states?
Bullshit. I am not “rooting” for Trump presidency, as even a cursory reading of my many recent posts on the subject would prove.
You are either being disingenuous, bone-deep stupid, or…more likely…a frighteningly horrible combination of the two. Are you really Debbie Wasserman Schultz in disguise?
Go away.
Please.
AG
Why do you think whites would be motivated to turn out in greater numbers if Trump is in the general election, and non-whites would not? You wrote that people who do not have a record of voting are harder to GOTV; this is true. Yet you make a separate prediction of how different ethnic groups would respond in November. You’ve identified (with dubious evidence) why you believe whites would turn out in huge numbers, but you do not identify why non-whites would not be motivated to turn out.
You think you have made that case by claiming (with dubious evidence) that non-whites are disenchanted with President Obama and the Democratic Party, but you have now refused to respond to multiple invitations to consider what non-whites think about the Trump campaign.
Most think a Trump presidency would be worse for them than an HRC presidency. That’s a no-brainer.
But how much worse? And in what manner? There are the kickers.
Many also think…on the evidence of 7 years of the empty promises/no action/failed action Obama administration…that an HRC presidency would just be more of the same.
Why vote?
Butch II said it best:
U.S. citizens across the board…not just minority people…are sick of being hustled. Trump and Sanders at least offer the possibility of not being hustled, and if that didn’t work out? Well…at least it would be a new hustle.
I don’t see a large minority turnout for HRC. It would be a “hold your nose and vote against something” turnout, never a real mover and shaker in elections. But the Trump vote? That would be a vote for something, no matter how stupid, venal and closet-racist it might be.
That’s my look at it.
Only if Bernie Sanders wins the nomination will there be the possibility of a vote for something Dem turnout. From all strata of the society.
Trump vs. Sanders? Especially if Sanders manages to get Elizabeth Warren to run with him? That would be the biggest voter turnout in the history of the U.S.
Let us pray.
AG
I disagree with your conclusion here, but this conversation has been very revealing. Thanks for engaging.
Oh, and:
“Bullshit. I am not “rooting” for Trump presidency, as even a cursory reading of my many recent posts on the subject would prove.”
I disagree. How are we to interpret this from you?
“Let the fever come to a climax and then die away.
There’s no other solution as far as I can see.
If Trump becomes our Hitler, then 30+ years from now maybe we will become as balanced as was Western Europe before the Bush II Iraq adventure and subsequent disasters.
Let it burn.
Fuck it.”
Unbelievable.
If that’s what you call “rooting” for something?
You really do have conceptual problems.
AG
I don’t want to let anything burn. You do. You’re calling for it here.
Yes. I am. I think that we need a revolution of some sort here in the U.S. We are terminally bogged down in corporate bullshit. I would prefer it to be peaceful…that is why i am talking about Bernie Sanders. But if that is not to be, then I believe that it will happen no matter whether HRC or Trump is elected. If the illness needs to come to a climax before regressing, so be it.
Trump’s rise and eventual fall would be quicker and nastier. Is that “better?” Am I “rooting” for him? No. I’m just parsing the possibilities.
AG
White privilege personified.
Why do you think that? Do you think it will be any better to be “white”…or in Ta Nehisi Coates’s words “believe that one is white”…if this country tanks? If you do, it is you who are dreaming of your own “white privilege.”
There are no privileges in a foxhole and none in a war zone either. None on a bread line, none for those without a home.
None.
If I personally have any “privilege” in a case like that it will be whatever I have earned from a lifelong pursuit of my art and craft, and it will be the “privilege” of a refugee.
Scant privilege indeed, most often. And not one that I covet.
If this country goes down…economically, more than likely…I’ll probably be riding it out on the streets of my working class Bronx neighborhood. Or holed up in Maine with my brother, who is as far out of this scene as am I. Only well-armed.
What’s on your keychain, Bunky? Got your nice little house in a nice white suburb? That’s how you come off here. Sniping from the comfort of your own “privilege.”
AG
I don’t think a Trump Presidency could or would be a useful way to burn the country down. You do.
You concede upthread that minorities would suffer particular harm, and you propose that it would be acceptable in order to bring on the revolution. Your view would not be the same if you were a member of the ethnicities who would suffer first.
Again, totally happy to get you on the record here. I’m disappointed that your alienation and anger have brought you this low, but I’m not shocked.
I though that I was clear enough above. My bad. I misunderestimated you.
Let me be perfectly clear. If there is a real breakdown in this country, minorities will not suffer any more particular harm than will coddled, knee-jerk leftinesses like yourself. In fact, they will probably be better off than will you because they have generations of learning how to deal with trouble behind them.
You?
Obviously, not so much.
End of discussion.
AG
P.S. Go pull on your
wank…errr, ahhh…bank account.You gonna need it.
Look, what you wrote upthread is plenty clear. Your attempt to walk it back is sad.
Who would be made to suffer most under a Trump Presidency is crystal clear to anyone willing to be honest. We can see that you are not among those who are willing to be honest about this.
Since Trump will not be elected President, we will not have to experience the burning down of the country, despite your fervent desire to see the country burn.
Prescient and a kneejerk leftiness!!!
Congratulations. Doubly blessed!!!
Or…whatever.
We shall see whatever “whatever” really means.
Soon enough.
Won’t we.
Best of luck.
You gonna need it.
We’re all gonna need it.
Bet on it.
AG
For T-Rump this is publicity, and having the lame-stream media attack him just feeds his “outsider” status.
BTW for some reason even the supposed liberal MSNBC runs significant amounts of trump events, something no other candidate gets.
The “anybody but trump” from beltway mouth pieces cements his outsider status also.
I wonder why this seems to elude you.
I wonder too.
Is a puzzlement.
Leftiness knee-jerkism is my only theory.
Eyes wide shut, the centrist left stumbles along under the entitlement-crerated illusion that it is destined to rule the world.
Sad.
AG
From the guy who coined the term Perma-gov, that quote reads like a verbal turd ion the punch bowl.
Come on Arthur THINK,
the answer ain’t that hard.
Hint look what each party controls, what they will most likely control after the election if current trends go forth.
Add to this who is acceptable to those who pull the levers behind the curtain in the prema-gov.
What do they want from this election.
vs
What will they accept?
Proofread your comment and try again.
There are so many “WHAT DID HE SAY!!!???” pieces in that little comment that I am loathe to respond.
Some of the larger “WHAT!!!???” statements:
Who “they,” exactly?
Who dat, exactly? You know? Inform me, please.
Again…who “they?”
Your post reminds me of the old Lone Ranger joke.
Who “they,” clif?
Damned if I know.
You seem to think that you do.
If so…lay it on me.
Please.
Thank you and goodnight.
AG
P.S. And now the news.
I got your “they,” right here!!!
WTFU.
Who “they,” exactly?
It is stated in the question.
they=party
Are you truly this dense?
Who is “The Party?”
Which “Party?”
The party of the first part?
The party of the second part?
The party of the third part? That is, those who own both parties and their allied media?
Get real.
And then…wake the fuck up.
Please.
You think anything will be different…better…if say HRC or Unca Bernie win? That’s the line we were handed when Obama won. Are you better off now? Are any of us? Or is it just the forms that change while the effects remain the same?
DemRat or RatPub…same controllers, different fronts.
Bet on it.
WTFU.
AG
Now you are intentionally being disingenuous;
The statement;
Since there are ONLY two registered political parties controlling the office of President and the two sides of the isle in congress,
you are dishonestly being obtuse for some reason.
What exactly is it that they “control,” clif. How can they “control” when they are themselves controlled by corporate interests and…to a larger degree than anyone seems to recognize…by the intelligence establishment.
If the Federal Reserve Bank…not a subsidiary of the federal government but an independent entity… refuses to be audted and gets away with it, who controls what?
If the CIA refuses to tell its supposed congressional overseers what it is doing or how much money it controls while at he same time eavesdropping on the committees that are supposed to control it (And no doubt eavesdropping on the executive branch as well), I ask again: Who controls what?
If being successfully elected to the federal legislature or the presidency is absolutely, positively dependent on massive corporate money, who really controls the supposed governmental “controllers?”
I am looking at what each party controls, clif…what each party really controls…and it looks to me like the only thing that they even partially successfully control is their own brandling. Everything else is controlled by corporate power and its intelligence partners.
They make laws, you’re going to say???!!!
Give me a break!!!
The so-called “laws” of this country are routinely bent…and often quite blatantly broken…by everyone in a position of real power in the federal government and also by any corporation with enough financial clout to get away with it.
Get real.
AG
The constitutional offices and constitutional powers attributed to said offices.
If I actually need to explain what that means arthur, there is NO hope for you.
Who dat, exactly? You know? Inform me, please.
By name, very few, by actions they perform in public more.
Those who frame the debate,
IE set the boundaries of acceptable debate;
IE why spending trillions on blowing brown people all over the planet IS acceptable, while spending far less to secure health care access inside the USA is NOT acceptable for debate.
The pro-military coropration crowd.
Why helping the poorest among us is socialism and BAD but handing corporations free money
IE allowing rich ranchers out west to pay pennies on the dollar for grazing fees in their pursuit of profit isn’t.
Or handing billions to oil corporation to explore for oil, something they should be doing the capitalistic way, with no government handouts.
Not to mention those who push for very low tax rates for the rich, in terms like capital gains, qualified dividends or capital loss carryover.
The overtaxed pro-wallstreet crowd
The people who push for these while giving lip service to the guns and anti abortion crowd, which is used by the MSM as a nice shiny meme to distract the low info voters.
Again…who “they?”
see above arthur …..
What do they want from this election, and what outcome are they willing to accept if their first choice(Jeb?) is shot down by the knuckle dragging, gun hugging, buy-bull spouting base.
At the moment I think they prefer Hillary over T-Rump;
I watched Bob Gates talking her up, actually talking DOWN T-Rump-Cruz-Bernie on Wolf Blitzer’s neo-con news show on CNN
https:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aPNh7NR_0Y
I couldn’t believe an deep GOtPer insider was defending Hillary, except the Bush family choice has flamed out, and if she was the incumbent in 2020, after T-Rump lost badly, Jeb? might stand a better chance.
They expect to hold the house and maybe hold the senate, thus forcing Hillary back into 90’s style triangulation, setting her up for defeat in 2020
T-Rump over Cruz
Trump seems to be as possibly mattetable, certainly doesn’t hold to views if the winds change, and like above will hold house/senate as a check on T-Rump if needed. His VP probably would need be agreed upon in this scenario
and of course anybody in the clown car over Bernie,
However expect if Bernie shows promise to win like Obama did in 08, watch Jeb/Kasich/Christie (take yer choice) to get better much press
cruz T-Rump very bad press and all the stops puled to throw the convention into no obvious choice going in.
Inverted totalitarianism.
Exactly why won’t you endorse someone?
Are you above it?
It is pretty clear you are for Clinton based on this piece. And electability is a reasonable concern.
It is why I am an undecided NH voters.
But be honest and don’t pretend that this fight doesn’t matter, and that you don’t have an opinion.
But if you were so sure the GOP was on their way to self destructing why would this be so important.
There is a massive contradiction in thinking about 2016.
How many times has it be been written here that the GOP is head for a ’72 type debacle.
BUT Sanders is too scary and we might lose.
A simple truth is the bloggers who came of age around the time of Dean have seen time pass them by. It is clear that Sanders has won the ideological argument. He may not win, but the rank and file agrees with him.
The reason is simple: neo-liberalism simply failed. As much as I admire Obama, his ideology resulted in his failure to take on the economic challenge sufficiently, and we lost the House and the Senate as a result.
And this really pisses Democrats off.
Remember when everyone made fun of how stupid the MSM is?
There is a lot more honest conversation in it than there is in the blogs about Sanders.
Neo-liberalism has not “failed,” fladem. It has taken power and will likely continue to rule no matter who the people may be that are
selected to run the corporate government.Bet on it.
Your mistake lies in thinking that it was ever meant to do anything other than whitewash the continuation of the United States as a an economic/imperialist power that is supported by massive overt and covert military operations.
So it goes.
Don’t feel bad.
You have lots of company.
AG
AG, A slightly less arrogant tone might be recommendable: ‘ Don’t feel bad.’
I meant that. I was at one time part of that group. I woke up one lovely day while parked in my car reading the Sunday NY Times while I waited for my son to finish his Aikido practice. Here is the image that capped it.
Kerry Hawk about to pounce on innocent little Dean Mouse and eat him up!!!
I had a revelatory experience. An epiphany. I suddenly understood the existence of a Permanent Government and the media that are in its service.
Sure enough, only a few weeks later…
Dean got “AAARRRRGHED!!!” right out of the race, and a number of months after that, Kerry threw the election. “For the good of the country,” he said. Bullshit. For the good of the PermaGov and for his own ongoing, revolving door profit.
Arrogant?
I suppose, in a humbled sort of way. I’m no dummy, but it took me about 35+ years of political observation to plainly see what had been going on right in front of me since the JFK assassination.
Arrogant?
In a humbled sort of way, I suppose. I have been preaching to an (unfortunately mostly deaf) so-called progressive choir ever since. Forgive me if I surrender to the temptation of raising my voice once in a while.
Or not…your choice.
Later…
AG
P.S. Here’s some “arrogance” for you…
It doesn’t really matter very much to me one way or another whether you…or pretty much anyone else…approves of either my statements or how I put them. I’m damned well going to have my say. My way. Deal wid it.
I get it. And I did deal with it in my own way. Good luck with all that.
Thank you.
AG
Forget it, Jake — it’s Chinatown.
(Meaning, Gilroy is going to continue to express himself in his own insufferable way no matter what anyone says. No matter how often he’s called on it, he just doubles down, insisting it’s “necessary.”)
Failed in it’s promise of prosperity for all, “lifts all boats” and like that. Just like Communism failed although it ran over a third of the world and China is still technically Communist, although it seems to be an oligarchy like the USA and Russia.
I can’t. My employer’s tax status does not allow us to advocate for candidates.
That’s an honest answer.
I have friend who runs an environmental group in NH. He has to say the same thing.
Thank you for the explanation.
I will say this, though.
It is highly likely that who I personally support in the ballot booth will not be the same as the person who I think is the more prudent choice.
What this opionion tells me is that I am not likely to be able to vote for Bernie Sanders by the time the North Carolina primary comes around on SuperTuesday. He will either have bee shut out or financed out because of the “S” word.
Interesting that a cold war that ended 26 years ago has that long term effect. And the wars of the past 25 years are seen as plusses.
I’m not optimistic at all about this election. The people voting practically are voting as if the system is corrupt–whether it is or not. That guarantees that that what we get will not be practical at all, just easier to buy.
The enthusiasm for Trump has been diminishing as Republicans roll out their campaign rhetoric against him.
I am fortunate that I don’t have to vote until after some other people have voted and shown who is electable and by how much.
Only two more weeks of waiting to some moderate reality sweeps over the primaries.
If people really were voting pragmatically, the Republican Party would no longer exist. It makes one wonder what people actually mean by the word “pragmatic”.
Me, when I hear that word, I hear a lecture from Joe Lieberman and certain defeat for all the values that I would like to see implemented as policy.
When I see people being hectored for socialism, I see a country about to run off the rails again.
It has only been since 1946 — 70 years ago — that”socialist” was the political kiss of death. It was at one point in the 1930s the third party.
And when anyone mentions the Soviet Union in connection with socialism, I know that I am deep in the heart of some real dishonest politics of the sort that would finance several hundred radio shock jocks to continuously lead a “war against socialism” with as much authority as a “war against Christmas” or a “War against Muslims”. A sure sign that even the candidate who gets elected is not going to deliver what they rand on. Because “anti-communist”.
Here’s the bottom line for me: Bernie feels like the loyal opposition, not like a future president. That just seems to be the way he carries himself now and always. I just imagine him bumping his knees on everything in the oval office.
What does a “future president” look like? A tall, gangly self-educated man from the backwoods of the country? A born wealthy man, married to a born wealthy woman, that couldn’t walk?
The spouse of a former president that had no political career of her own until handed a Senate seat?
I’ll take any self-made, intelligent, experienced liberal politician over any oligarch funded and approved front person any day. I wish it were Sherrod Brown in this race instead of Sanders because he is a decade younger and equally strong in all the public policy issues that matter most to me. But he’s not and Sanders is running a damn fine campaign against one of the most inevitable, best funded, best supported among the party elites candidates ever. She also happens to be visionless and tone-deaf (literally).
What you just said.
You begin by talking about how a person looks which can take all kinds, I think we both agree, and at this point probably any race and gender, depending. But I wasn’t talking about how he looks. I mean how he acts. I think he acts like a loyal member of the opposition. I think one of his finest moments was when he parleyed the public option for increased funding for community health centers, because of how pragmatic and helpful that was.
Just as Bernie’s appeal is how he sticks to his position and doesn’t compromise, I don’t see him particularly interested in, ready for, or appropriate for the type of negotiating and compromising he will have to do as a president. He just seems like somebody who wants to state his position over and over again. AND, since his appeal is his sticking to his guns, he can’t tack to the middle without losing who he is. And that’s why the single payer thing is a big train wreck for him, much more than it is for Hillary. He can’t really explain how it will work in a convincing way, but he can’t back down from it without looking like a broken man.
Finally, I think people way over-estimate Hillary’s tone-deafness and the importance of her missteps so far, and tend to paint her as less progressive than she actually is because it helps draw a stronger contrast with Bernie.
…tend to paint her as less progressive than she actually is because it helps draw a stronger contrast with Bernie.
No — based on her public record from 1992 to 2016, she’s not a progressive. Fact based Democrats got that in 2008 which is why they had no choice but to back the every so slightly more progressive candidate. Do you think she’s been wearing a body with a great big P on the bodice under her pants suits for over twenty years and just waiting for the day when she can ripped off the pants suit?
How can anyone take someone who one day says that she’s very liberal and a few days later severely moderate (different audiences of course) seriously? Who shifts from behind the public opinion winds? “Marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman” to support for same-sex marriage AFTER Biden and Obama went there?
Sanders looked at the crap ACA and found a way to get something modestly helpful for low income people in it. Not enough money to do it right, but he pushed for and got as much as he could out of the WH.
You seem to think that compromising before the debate and negotiations is a better way to go instead of going into debates and negotiations with what one really wants and compromising only after and only so much as is necessary. FDR and Frances Perkins used the former strategy and Obama uses the latter. And Bill Clinton ran with whatever Wall St and GOP elites told him was “pragmatic.”
I think I understand what you are saying, but we disagree on so many particulars that we have to just agree to disagree I think, which is standard.
“…the crap ACA…”.
Yeah, there you go. Keep on trying to browbeat Frog Ponders into submission to your views by using rhetoric like that. It makes your claims about FDR/Perkins and the Clintons pretty damn suspect. That the frame of that comparison utterly ignores their Administrations’ moments in history and the Congresses they worked with is only the beginning of the problems with the comparison.
Yes, FDR was a great President and Clinton was not. But the length to which you take your claims are pretty absurd.
Hey, why didn’t FDR pass single payer? SELLOUT.
I do know how to yank your chain, don’t I? You’re becoming much too predictable.
Yes, crap. Any government policy that enrices private, for profit health insurers on the government dime is crap. It’s not as if the federal and state governments don’t operate many insurance funds. (Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance (note it’s actually called insurance), FDIC (federally insured bank deposits — again not the word “insured”), federal flood insurance, crop insurance, and at the state level, there’s short-term disability insurance, workers’ comp insurance, high risk home insurance, etc.) Therefore, it’s not just legal (Constitutional) to do so, but they also know how to freaking do it.
Glad we’re on the record here.
Meanwhile, Paul Krugman joined the discussion today:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/18/health-reform-is-hard/?_r=0
Feel free to place Krugman outside your group of “fact based Democrats…” if you like.
It’s important to take on this case that transitioning to single payer would be difficult in both political and policy terms. Claiming it would be easy-peasy undermines the credibility of the claimant.
“Fact based Democrats…” was a nice touch, too.
of the matter without ever putting your finger directly on the core of the problem: abject Democratic/liberal/progressive/leftist surrender to rightwingnut propaganda that deliberately misrepresents Reality in order to demonize those (and other) terms. Terms that, honestly and accurately understood, name perfectly honorable, positive (or at the very worst, neutral) political philosophies/movements that have earned their deserved credit for most of the positive developments throughout human history (and certainly throughout this nation’s relatively brief history).
Demonization campaigns that have been as successful as they are dishonest. Which success can, to a very significant degree, be laid directly at the feet of, e.g., actual “liberals” who – confronted by this dishonest demonization campaign – rather than mount a robust, truth-telling defense of liberalism’s validity and myriad demonstrated accomplishments towards improving real people’s lives, instead responded approximately thus: “They’re saying mean things about me! Never mind that it’s all false, deliberately dishonest nonsense, that leaves me feeling icky! So, here, I know, I just won’t admit any longer to being a ‘liberal’ . . . from now on, I’m a ‘progressive’! Yeah, a ‘progressive’, that’s it, that’s the ticket!” (Well guess what, self-styled `progressives’: it’s now your turn. Or hadn’t you noticed?) Niemöller seems apropos somehow:
In another online venue and prior inpixelation, I attempted to make this case re: “socialist”, way back when it became the rightwingnut vogue (useless-corporate-media-enabled, obviously) to disparage and dismiss the newly prominent Obama by sticking (ridiculously!) the “socialist” label on him, then turning and walking away, rubbing their hands together in self-satisfaction over an “argument” thoroughly and definitively won via the mere (inaccurate, or actually meaningless in this context – but never mind that!) deployment of the term. Which was . . . and remains . . . deeply stupid in its profound (though likely in many cases only pretended) ignorance of simple history. That would be the actual history in which this nation has always had a mixed capitalist/socialist governmental/economic system, all the way back to ol’ Ben Franklin proposing (as I recall it) public libraries, fire departments, postal service, etc. Then there are the many other thoroughly socialist institutions including police departments, the military, Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid, state/federal highway departments and road systems, public school systems and colleges/universities . . . and on and on and on, which pervade our society. Which we established, and which we have always chosen to keep* because they work (mostly) to the benefit of the majority, so we like them as they are (mostly). Because, even in strictly practical terms, it just makes better sense for some societal functions to be socialized. Because, contra wingnut dogma (embraced with religious, true-believer fervor that’s immune to correction by the facts that comprise Reality), public institutions/government demonstrably can (and demonstratedly have and do) accomplish some public-serving functions better, including more cost-efficiently, than private “enterprise”.
Which is why the wingnut clamor and movement to abolish all those socialist functions, then let the “invisible hand” of the “free” market step in to provide them, is . . . erm . . . notable for its absence! Which is why the “<gasp> socialist!” diversion – besides being profoundly stupid and profoundly dishonest – is also profoundly hypocritical.
No, deployment of “socialist” as though it ends the discussion in victory for the propagandist is just deeply stupid, and deserves robust refutation every time it’s attempted – but that rarely happens (and kudos to Bernie for at least making an attempt at it in a recent speech; as all liberals/progressives/Democrats/lefties should be doing consistently). Imagine if the token “liberals” on the teevee talking-head-fests consistently challenged this propagandistic idiocy, instead of treating it as anything other than profoundly stupid, which is what they do in their “punditry”, thereby lending the stupid undeserved credibility.
*and yes, of course “privatization” dogma has made significant inroads against a few of these socialist institutions, and is constantly attempting further inroads (see, e.g., immensely wasteful and corrupt privatization of military functions to contractors à la Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater [or whatever they changed their name to after so sullying that one]; the “charter” schools/vouchers grifts, etc.). Notably, though, these inroads have generally been accomplished 1) not through will-of-the-majority democratic process, but by corrupting special-interest influence on representative government; and 2) only for those cherry-picked functions the profiteers identify as having greatest potential for parasitically skimming large quantities of public money off the top into their own pockets without it accomplishing anything for the public good.
due to your list of vulnerabilities and all the ones her lefty detractors are oh so intimately aware of.
The question isn’t whether he’s more electeable than her, but rather whether she’s more electable than him to the point where it overrides his far superior policy proposals/pursuits, like her wanting thousands to continue to die yearly, etc, from a lack of health insurance. And don’t get me started on her warmongering, etc.
I’d say the laothing/despising of her from those on the left in the dem party and with indies/cons far exceeds in numbers, the impediment his being a “democratic” socialist presents in dem ranks.
ANd the act that you’re focusing solely on “socialist” minus the adjective as your “poll” foundation apparently does as well, suggests that you’re already in her camp, and those polls pretty worthless given the diff between a democratic socialist and those who claim the “socialist” label they were polled about.
I get a very strong sense of Sanders being a “no bullshit” or at least a “low bullshit” kind of candidate. I think that whatever label fox sticks on him, non-Republibots will respond to that. It’s what draws people to Trump too. And it’s definitely something HRC lacks: “Email server no big deal, well it was a bad idea but I’m not sorry, I”m sorry for email server.”