My latest rant came through unedited in response to a good friend who loves Bernie. Here it is, exactly as it spewed through my fingers and onto the keyboard. I share it because I think it relevant to the larger discussion taking place this primary cycle. So without further adieu:
===================
The trouble with liberals like you (and me — 🙂 ) is we tend to not realize that everyone doesn’t think like us. Same on the other side. Listen to Tea Partiers. They’re outraged, OUTRAGED, because they can’t REPEAL OBAMACARE NOW!!!
I want to say: “Guess what — the country doesn’t agree with you.” As liberals, best statistics show we’re approximately 27% of the population. Makes for great Occupy protests. If we focus our demands and can accept compromise, might even make for some decent legislation. But when we insist on complete ideological purity, so much so that we can’t even work among ourselves to make a particular request, all that energy creates a bunch of heat and noise and not much else.
I see Bernie supporters as well intentioned and hopelessly naive. If there was openness to going for maximum effect and then falling back to effective compromise, consolidating the biggest gains we can leverage, I’d be all in. But what I typically see is enormous hope and enthusiasm that dissolves into cynicism and despair the moment everything doesn’t go our way. Such an approach leads nowhere. It’s less than worthless because it undermines our cause, leaving us divided against ourselves, weak an ineffectual.
I’m not in love with Hillary Clinton but I know she can be an effective president. In fact, I think she might be almost ideally suited to this particular time and place (assuming the crazy doesn’t break and shangri la rain forth). Did you see her brilliant performance against the Benghazi committee? She made those idiots look like the brazen whores that they are.
Bernie can’t explain how he’ll accomplish any of his lofty ideals. He has no explanation whatsoever. It’s just unicorns and rainbows. I’m all for unicorns and rainbows. I’d totally love that, plus maybe a talking money; I’ve always wanted a talking monkey. But you know, I live on planet Earth, where real politics has a certain look and feel and trajectory. I think Obama’s a great president because he made really important things happen. None of it’s perfect, but all of it moves us in the right direction. He did this in the context of a very challenging time. He did it with black skin and a sizable constituency that hates him for being president while black. And then he has to deal with the part of his own party that hates him for not waiving a magic wand and spreading fairy dust upon all the land, with rainbows and unicorns.
Trust me, the same people who love Bernie now are the ones who will turn on him when he makes his first compromise (and lampoon him as having been insincere when he finds the magic wand doesn’t work).
Excellent diary Parallax. Then there is this;
https:/www.balloon-juice.com/2016/02/17/why-not-a-pony
its also that the very people who in the past have complained about the disingenuousness of politicians now are on the Sanders bandwagon, and complain that it is Clinton who is unsupportable because she says many of the Sanders goals can’t be accomplished at this time.
Well, they can’t, and they won’t.
.
Thanks nalbar, both for your kind comment and for the link to the balloon juice article.
My pleasure.
To be honest I have been getting frustrated at the Tribune. To me, the atmosphere has become rather stifling. People who claim to be progressive are awfully quick with a ‘STFU’ when (many times mildly) the flaws of Sanders are pointed out. It’s a rhetorical trick….be nasty and you silence criticism, leaving your own position as the only one being discussed.
Like you say in your post, I’m not a great fan of Clinton. But I make it a point to be as objective as I can, and I certainly don’t use Republican memes against her.
Thanks for your rant. It made me feel less alone.
.
.
You’re not alone. It’s been disheartening to see certain people I respect going off the rails lately.
I can only speak for myself, not other Bernie supporters, but my fear is that Hillary cannot govern effectively i.e. her admin would be going with the flow in a right centrist direction, and she risks not winning at all. Imo governing, if she wins, would have Bill as co-president and continue their direction in terms of use of military and no curbs on the gap between rich and poor. Bernie’s ideas wouldn’t be implemented in a four year term, no one thinks they would, but it’s a direction, a start, or, imo, a continuation of the first steps [on a course, imo, Obama and Kerry have set us on]. as i’ve said on other threads, I talk with a lot of people, the only support for Hillary I’ve encountered at all is the electability argument I read on progressive blogs. if she becomes the nominee, ppl will vote for her against a republican, but doesn’t look like the Clintons are going for coattails and bringing in new voters right now, but we’ll see what happens if she becomes the nominee.
All of which is completely respectable argument with which I have no problem. It’s your “You’re not really Canadian! You’re a secret Hillbot (or even GOP?) troll!” ad hominems against a certain poster that bother me in your case (there are other posters going off the rails in various directions IMO; it’s not just you). If I were a Canadian I for damn sure would be paying very close attention to American politics, given how overwhelming my neighbor to the south looms; when the elephant falls, the eland is crushed beneath it. (And if the USA goes to hell under, say, President Cruz and the disastrous consequences slop over the border, where would Canadians flee to?) The guy is saying similar things to what centerfielddj, for example, is saying; would you accuse him also of being a Hillbot?
I do respect you, Errol, and it pains me to make these criticisms, because you’re normally a sensible, thoughtful participant here. This one thing really seems unlike you. I’m glad you’re passionate about Bernie, I’m glad he’s fired up the Democrats’ side of this process for a lot of people, but that very passion can lead at times people astray, can — I won’t say cloud their perceptions, but rather tinge them. Sometimes unfairly.
As for me, I’m trying to stay dispassionate about my pick. Massachusetts won’t be voting in its primary for quite a while, and I intend to weigh the pluses and minuses of both candidates as judiciously, as drained of emotional appeal as possible, and that includes not only the candidates themselves, but also the arguments and behavior of their supporters. Neither side can claim the irreproachable high ground, as far as I can see, but I also see some worrisome trends toward groupthink in the progressive blogosphere.
I know my comments about the Canadian guy bothered you, you wrote so, and I’m sorry about that because I like that we usually are on the same wavelength. it bothered me that he started out claiming to know nothing about USA politics but really pushing Hillary’s electability and stating that our HC system is better than their [socialist] care. now he claims to follow USA politics closely – though could be he just didn’t know anything about pre-Obamacare healthcare in the USA. it very much rubs me the wrong way [putting it mildly] when citizens of other countries tell me/ us how to vote. yes, give their pov, what might affect them in their country, commentary, etc. Frank, for example, is great – he’s willing to be corrected when one of us points out that his long distance view may be off base. He also offers us plenty of valuable diary info and commentary on the situation in Ireland, the EU, etc. As I wrote above, the electability argument for Hillary is not clear cut at all. for someone supposedly benefiting from the programs Sanders is pushing, to say we shouldn’t aspire to that, we should vote for whom he thinks is electable – I have a problem with that. I’ve worked in Canada, I’ve seen the peace of mind that the non millionaire classes have by having a safety net – something that almost everyone I know here does not have.
Since I’m not familiar with whatever comment first ticked you off about Tom, I can’t pass judgment on whether your initial reaction was spot on or not — nor do I want to get into a Judgment of Political Paris over it. I will say that your current reactions to him seem excessive; I think at this point you have such a visceral distaste for him that it colors your perceptions. Which I’m sorry to see, because we do tend to be simpatico so often.
May I suggest this? — that whenever you read a comment from him, before reacting you ask yourself, “If janicket wrote that (or, say, centerfielddj or IL JimP, just to name two posters I respect who have written posts in much the same vein as Tom’s) would I find it so offensive?” Or would you address any disagreement with what was argued in such a post from a non-Tom with the courtesy and thoughtful counter-argument that I know I at least could expect from you?
In any case, I’m glad to consider you a cyberfriend in the Pond.
thanks, I appreciate the thought, but not to worry. he hasn’t mentioned Canada since his first two comments, he’s commenting like a usaian now without reference to Canada. sometimes I read his comments, mostly I don’t. thanks for thinking of me though
and thanks for being my cyber friend!!!
I don’t see it. I’ve pointed out Sanders’ weaknesses on this blog well before this even started getting under way — particularly that he has a history of being too dismissive of those who aren’t down with his idea of political change. I even cited Shakesville as my evidence (hardly unbiased, particularly with their extreme focus on identity politics) because I thought they did an excellent look at his past and his evolution as a politician. I never was told to “STFU” about it. I still stand by those links — and I think this whole Killer Mike uterus hullabaloo continues to expose those same weaknesses which were previously alluded to.
I’d certainly expect you to get a lot of pushback, but I haven’t seen anyone tell others to “STFU”.
At the same time, this same episode is exposing CLINTON’s weaknesses. She’s going full on identity politics — even at the expense of economic justice (“Will taking on WS end racism?!?!”). And I no one in her camp is even willing to acknowledge that this might a.) backfire, both now in the primary, and in the GE b.) have long term ramifications for coalitions moving forward
She’s essentially asking people to choose between identity politics and class-based politics — something I refuse to do, as I believe both are very important. And tangentially related, she and her supporters are somehow asking me to pretend that Scalia and Thomas had a point in Citizens United.
I have no idea how Clinton will accomplish anything. Not that I think she really wants to.
And there is the rub. The Catch 22.
So I honesty think the Clinton people are talking more about unicorns than Sanders is. Because Clinton can’t do anything either without the House and the Senate – and she has no reasonable chance of winning both.
There is no other alternative: you have to inspire people. Clinton just doesn’t. Good lord take a look at the cross-tabs: she is being rejected by an entire generation in a way I don’t think any probably nominee ever has been.
So she has no real theory of change.
If you are are happy with the status quo – and there are things to defend about it – then that is fine.
But in my experience people don’t wait very long in voting lines to defend the status quo.
She’s a man, he’s a woman, we’re a third party. Clinton has pushed this crap her whole career, her husband has turned it into a fine art, and they have their daughter taking the whole thing one step further with her horrible, paranoid trolling about Sanders letting all the prisoners free: very worrisome, she opined. No one, it seems, asked her if she also found it worrying that a country with five percent of the world’s population has some 25 percent of the world’s prison population, by far the largest percentage in the world, very much because of her father’s policies: law and order, Mrs. Clinton whispered and, don’t forget, the land of the free.
btw Parallax,
thanks for posting this diary, opportunity for a constructive conversation!
Thanks Errol. Just dropped by; it’s nice to see several thoughtful conversations unfolding in the comments. In this little community, there’s still a nice sense that we’re all on the same team. We may have differing perspectives but everyone shares similar goals. That respect and trust comes through and it’s really nice.
Was in Canada tonight. Just got back in fact, from Vancouver, where a friend’s Sufi community has a spiritual center. We’re both Sufis but in different communities. Mine is in Napa, California so I sometimes accompany him to his — just across the border, about an hour from our homes. He and I live five minutes apart.
Was really interesting to hear the many opinions on the U.S. primaries. They follow us closely because our choices have such a huge impact on their lives. They’re fascinated by Trump, in a sort of horrified way. Many of them like Sanders and several expressed fears similar to those expressed here around his electability. I didn’t hear anyone express a sense that Clinton would make a better president or that our health care system is better than theirs. Canadians seem to love their safety net.