It kills me to come to a gathering place for democrats

[boston bean]

Last edited Sat Dec 24, 2016, 11:01 PM - Edit history (1)

and see Hillary constantly criticized.

She isn't our enemy.

She ran the most progressive candidacy in DECADES.

She is NOT TRUMP.

She is not an oligarch

She is not a supporter of the oligarchy.

She has been besmirched by rw regulars and nuts and lefties too.

I am so god damn sick of it.

She would have probably made the best president of our lifetimes. And this is a political loss beyond anything we could have imagined.

But by all means, keep on guessing on how Bernie would have been better and beat asswipe Trump, with nothing to back it up but criticism of Hillary.

i am so god damn sick of it.

She won by approx 3M votes.

Russia interfered.

The FUCKING FBI interfered in our election.

DAMN, it wasn't because she alienated white people!

ETA I want to thank all the DU members who have rec'd this! THANK YOU!

[Hekate]

1. Amen, Boston Bean. Something is not right when that kind of thing continues.

[boston bean]

6. Some days are ok, and then others it is just as raw as Nov. 9.

[SharonAnn]

29. She would've been awesome as president. No one's perfect, but she would've been awesome.

I still feel the loss as if it just happened last night. And I'm angry at all the Democrats who begrudgingly said they would "hold their nose and vote for Hillary'. That gave lots of people who might've voted for her a reason to think she was seriously flawed and the might've voted third party or not voted as a result.

America's loss of this woman as president is enormous and may well damage America forever.

We've got to stop bringing down our candidates.

[calimary]

124. Seriously. At the risk of stirring something up, Bernie would NOT have won.

If he'd been our candidate, he would have been CRUCIFIED by the GOP. Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek reported that he SAW the bad guys' opposition research on Bernie, that they kept very close and quiet about. Eichenwald says the file the GOP had on Bernie was almost two feet thick. They would have unleashed the hounds and eaten him for a mid-morning snack.

"I have seen the opposition book assembled by Republicans for Sanders, and it was brutal. The Republicans would have torn him apart."

(snip)

"The Republicans had at least four other damning Sanders videos (I don’t know what they showed), and the opposition research folder was almost 2-feet thick. (The section calling him a communist with connections to Castro alone would have cost him Florida.) In other words, the belief that Sanders would have walked into the White House based on polls taken before anyone really attacked him is a delusion built on a scaffolding of political ignorance."

http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-election-521044

I HATE seeing Hillary STILL getting beaten up and blamed by what seems like everybody everywhere, including the incoming "President," Vladimir Putin and his little orange puppet friend. Just HATE it! Dammit - I want all the naysayers to stop beating up on her! Just makes me want to SCREAM!!! She did an EXCELLENT job on the campaign. She worked like a dog! She reached out to everybody. She had details and well-thought-out plans for everything. She understood the issues. She knew her stuff. She knew the turf. She knew the players - domestically AND globally. She is still a national treasure. She does NOT deserve all this shit (SHUT THE FUCK UP, Andrea Mitchell!).

It almost makes me cry - to think of what could have been. The loss of that talent, those brains, that steady hand, that class and dignity, that poise and composure and grace under fire, and the constant drumbeat of lies about her that people swallowed whole, without even bothering to chew - it's fucking INFURIATING. All that talent and capability and experience that we'll NEVER get. That America will NEVER get, to keep us stable and steady in rough and unstable times. It's lost to us. I doubt she'll run again. Hell, who would want to go through that punishment and torture - again??? I hope she has a happy and productive life in the private sector, and I hope she bills near-millions in speaking fees and book deals.

And I hope she's around to see all those who turned their backs on her have a forcible "come to Jesus" moment someday soon, and realize the gem they had in the palm of their hands, that they kicked to the curb. Because they were mad or wanted to lash out or some other lame, stupid-ass irrational idiot reason. I hope the "Don't Blame Me. I Voted for Hillary" bumper stickers start popping up everywhere from coast-to-coast. I hope she's around long enough to see herself vindicated. As far as I can see, there are at least 62 million people in this country and every last useless member of the fucking useless news media who owe her - and the rest of us (nationwide AND planet-wide) - a BIGTIME apology.

I won't hold my breath, though. That moment will come. Hell, in many respects, it's already here. And yet, I fully expect many of them will remain in denial.

[Hekate]

137. Absolutely fantastic rant, calimary.

[sheshe2]

163. sadly they will never forgive her for being a woman.

that is a fact.

love you calimary.

[Gothmog]

356. Being female hurt her

I am so sad that there is still a glass ceiling in this country

[sheshe2]

362. I hear you Gothmog.

[Gothmog]

404. I am also sad at this

[DFW]

165. When we were in the USA this past year, my German wife caught this immediately

While watching the primaries, she said, "how come your (i.e. America's) Republicans and your right wing media are silent on Bernie Sanders, who, being to Hillary's left, should be their political mortal enemy? It comes across as if they want to run against him, so they are spending all their energy trying to destroy Hillary instead, and he is helping weaken her for them, so that they have a chance even if he isn't the nominee."

If someone from Germany who doesn't follow American politics anywhere as closely as we do can spot that after casual observation, than it shouldn't have been overly difficult to figure out for people who do.

[brush]

188. Spot on. The repugs held their fire on Sanders but went all in after Clinton? Not rocket science

[LisaM]

197. I know. That was so obvious.

It really sticks in my craw that people didn't pick up on that (though I don't agree he was that far to Hillary's left - he just labelled himself that way).

[betsuni]

198. It's obvious to the objective common sense observer.

I think pretty much everyone outside of the U.S. sees it. I live in Japan and prime minister Abe and the CEO of Softbank immediately rushed to New York to kiss Trump's buttocks. Embarrassing. Idiots.

[stevenleser]

340. Yes, that all was pretty obvious. There were a few candid statements from the GOP, but clearly

the internal message within the GOP was, don't say anything about this guy, at the very least he will help us by hurting Hillary, and if we are lucky and he is the nominee, we win this one easily.

Kasich himself said that he thought if Bernie was the nominee that the GOP would win 50 states. I think that estimate is high, but 40-43 states would definitely have been a strong possibility.

[aikoaiko]

275. Some people trust Eichenwald's opinion about Bernie winning -- others do not.

Eichenwald has acted as Clinton defender throughout the primary and campaign. It is not surprising that he still is after the election.

[stevenleser]

339. You hardly have to rely on Eichenwald's description of GOP oppo research. Other factors are

Last edited Mon Dec 26, 2016, 11:09 AM - Edit history (1)

similarly fatal to Sanders' chances. For instance, in Pennsylvania as well as Virginia, Florida and the rest of the south, Hillary crushed Sanders as if he wasn't even there during the primaries. Of these states, Hillary lost all to Trump but Virginia which was very close but she won.

Hillary crushed Sanders in those states because to be even remotely competitive in those states in the primary or General Election, a Democrat has to have considerable enthusiasm in the African American and Latino demographics. Sanders couldn't compete with Hillary because he didn't have that enthusiasm on his side. It's pretty easy to interpolate that into Sanders losing all of those states against Trump if he had faced him in the General election.

If that is true, and no one has remotely come up with a counterargument to that, Sanders starts off the race giving up over 270 electoral votes to Trump even if we give Sanders Michigan and Wisconsin. But as I have said to other folks, the problems for Sanders would only start there. If you have no way of competing in a state, your opponent can reallocate resources they would have used on that state, time, money, etc., to other states. So Sanders being non-competitive in Georgia, the Carolinas, Florida, Virginia, and Pennsylvania would have meant Trump could reallocate a ton of resources to the rust belt and places like Nevada and other close states meaning Sanders would probably lose additional states that Hillary won beyond Virginia and may have lost one or more of Wisconsin and Michigan as well.

That's all before you get into Eichenwald's description of GOP opposition research and before you factor in that 50% of the country consistently says they will not vote for a self described Socialist.

[aikoaiko]

370. First, let me say that I am not sure Bernie would have won, but here is my counterargument.

I see you doing what a lot of pundits are doing -- applying a conventional model of GE voting to an unconventional year.

Those conventional models predicted that Hillary would have won handily and Bernie should have been broke and out before O'Malley. With the exception of poll numbers surveying GE pairing during the primaries, no one saw Hillary losing.

I think you're dismissal of Bernie being competitive in the southern states is conventional. 1) You mention that Bernie didn't do well in the southern primaries, but that is due in part to white people being committed to the Republican primaries. We learned in the primaries, especially the open primaries, that white people were turning out for Bernie in surprising numbers. 2) Black folks were warming up to Bernie. During the course of the primaries he went almost unmeasurable amounts of black support to about 30%. Some Black Lives Matter leaders and even Ta-Nehisi Coates declared their support for Bernie toward the end. I'm confident that if President Obama (and to a lesser extent John Lewis) came out with a full-throated endorsement the black votes would have been there, mostly. When Bernie was getting dangerously close to Hillary in national polling about midway through, it took an Obama 'endorsement" in an interview to stop the momentum. I can't find it right now, but I'll look for the interview. You may rememeber it.

Regard the Latino vote, Hillary didn't have it nailed down as much as pundits through. Almost 30% went for Trump. It shows that a sizable group were looking for someone else.

So yes, Bernie might have done better than Hillary in some southern states and may have won one or two.

If that's true and the likelihood of Bernie winning some or all of the rust belt states that flipped for Trump, one can see a Bernie victory.

I know, I know. You can say that all if this is imaginary thinking, but then again so was Trump winning the primary and GE until it happened. White people voted in squirrely ways this round.

[stevenleser]

376. It wasn't an unconventional year. Nothing about it was unconventional.

The year mildly favored change but not much. People like to point to the polls being wrong. The polls were rarely wrong during the primaries except where the polling agencies and pundits themselves said they didn't have a lot of historical data to help them figure out turnout and models.

During the general, we know from past elections that polls can have trouble when a dramatic last minute event changes the dynamic of the race, like this time with Comey's double interference in the last 14 days, once two weeks out and once three days out. The difference between the final polls and the G.E. is that some percentage, probably around 1-2% of folks who were going to vote Hillary changed their votes and some 2-3% or so stayed home, as a result of Comey.

There was nothing special about this election beyond that, no magical sauce that would have given Sanders the election. Your theories are more wishful thinking than based on facts.

[aikoaiko]

379. My take on the election was that change was key factor

Last edited Mon Dec 26, 2016, 10:42 PM - Edit history (1)

On the Republican side, the primary voters rejected mainstream Republicans who had long histories of hate and prejudice toward Obama and progressive causes.

On the Democratic side, the primary voters gave Bernie 45% of the pledged delegates, a lefty who has been outside the Democratic establishment for decades, against a long-time Democrat who was arguably the most qualified candidate ever.

I think there is plenty of evidence that change was a strong sentiment in the electorate.

I know many people are saying Comey or the wikileak of campaign emails changes people, but I just don't see it.

I just don't see the impact in polls at the end of the race in the national polls
[IMG][/IMG]

Or in Michigan (Clinton up by 6 pts)
[IMG][/IMG]

Or in Wisconsin (Clinton up by 6.1 pts)
[IMG][/IMG]

Or in Penn (Clinton up by 4.1 pts)
[IMG][/IMG]

The trendlines cross in Ohio beginning in Sept and Trump was steadily ahead 2 weeks before the Comey letter.
[IMG][/IMG]

Do you have access to polling numbers showing something different?

[stevenleser]

380. Exactly like I said, polling in general elections has trouble with last minute events like Comey.

Partly because they are trying to hit a moving target and partly because the information about a candidate may not change preference as much as it may change folks decision on whether to vote on election day.

It was barely a change election. If people really wanted change, O'Malley would have gotten much more traction as the only candidate who hadn't served in Washington on the Democratic side and Trump would have had an easier time winning the primary and election versus a very establishment Hillary.

[aikoaiko]

381. I can see we are not going to convince each other, but the polls don't show sifts inthe last 10 days

I'm surprised you think O'Malley was a change candidate because he struck me as Clinton-lite. He is a a traditional Democrat with traditional Democratic solutions from a traditional Democratic city and traditional Democratic state with a strong DC employee population.

[stevenleser]

382. And that is because as I keep telling you, the polls have trouble showing that when there is a major

event in the last few weeks of an election.

Think about it this way. You get to the end of a campaign. Most folks have not only decided for whom to vote, they are heavily invested in their candidate. They really don't like the "other party's" candidate. Then something comes out about your candidate that makes you wonder if you should vote for them. You still hate the other candidate. You aren't going to vote for them but you don't feel as enthusiastic about voting for your candidate either. 95%-98% of the folks who think like this, by the way, are still going to vote and vote for the original candidate they chose, but 2-5% will stay home. When polling agencies call to make their last surveys, they may miss a lot of these stay home folks when calling their small slice of the electorate. If they do reach one or two of them, they still have a preference for the original candidate, the only difference is the likelihood of them voting, but that may not come out in the survey. The polls may show nothing or may show the slightest of dips but it will not be as pronounced as what is really going on.

[aikoaiko]

383. Ok I see what you're saying now.

You're saying polling won't detect depressed voters in the last few days or weeks. I'll think about it. I thought you were saying there wasn't enough time to detect any changes in flipped votes. It would be nice to see some data on that, but if it is invisible to polling then I don't know how one would quantify that effect.

It's hard for me to imagine that the Comey letter or Campaign-DNC emails would have much of effect beyond the larger, well-established issues. Bernie supporters already accepted that the DNC was working with the HRC campaign to some degree and the Comey letter was far less inflammatory that previous Comey pronouncements, but it is possible that it played out as you said.

[Gothmog]

510. No one in the real world relied on silly match up polls

Here is a good thread talking about these polls http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511038010

The reliance on these polls by Sanders supporters amuses me. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/harrys-guide-to-2016-election-polls/

Ignore hypothetical matchups in primary season – they also measure nothing. General election polls before and during the primary season have a very wide margin of error. That’s especially the case for candidates who aren’t even in the race and therefore haven’t been treated to the onslaught of skeptical media coverage usually associated with being the candidate.

Sanders supporters have to rely on these worthless polls because it is clear that Sanders is not viable in a general election where the Kochs will be spending $887 million and the RNC candidate may spend an additional billion dollars.

No one in the real world believed that Sanders would be the nominee and so no one wasted time vetting Sanders. Sander got a free ride and was never vetted http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-election-521044

They ignored the fact that Sanders had not yet faced a real campaign against him. Clinton was in the delicate position of dealing with a large portion of voters who treated Sanders more like the Messiah than just another candidate. She was playing the long game—attacking Sanders strongly enough to win, but gently enough to avoid alienating his supporters. Given her overwhelming support from communities of color—for example, about 70 percent of African-American voters cast their ballot for her—Clinton had a firewall that would be difficult for Sanders to breach....

So what would have happened when Sanders hit a real opponent, someone who did not care about alienating the young college voters in his base? I have seen the opposition book assembled by Republicans for Sanders, and it was brutal. The Republicans would have torn him apart. And while Sanders supporters might delude themselves into believing that they could have defended him against all of this, there is a name for politicians who play defense all the time: losers....

The Republicans had at least four other damning Sanders videos (I don’t know what they showed), and the opposition research folder was almost 2-feet thick. (The section calling him a communist with connections to Castro alone would have cost him Florida.) In other words, the belief that Sanders would have walked into the White House based on polls taken before anyone really attacked him is a delusion built on a scaffolding of political ignorance.

Trump would have destroyed Sanders in the general election

[aikoaiko]

515. Except they accurately described what happened to HRC in the GE this time.

An inconvenient fact for you and 538 for sure.

Maybe it was just the broken clock effect or maybe this election was unconventional enough that conventional modeling just wasn't telling us what we needed to know.

I'm not one to say Bernie would have won or not for sure, like you. All I know is that HRC lost and we will have a President Trump for 4 years.

Even as our candidate alienated potential swing voters by calling them deplorable, she recognized that a significant number were unhappy with our economy.

"But the other basket -- and I know this because I see friends from all over America here -- I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas -- as well as, you know, New York and California -- but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."

These are the Trump voters Hillary couldn't convince to vote for her, but with whom Bernie had more credibility.

[Gothmog]

516. No-in the real world these match up polls were worthless because Sanders was not vetted

No one in the press believed that Sanders had any chance of being the nominee and in fact Sanders was effectively eliminated when Jewish, African American and Latino voters rejected Sanders on Super Tuesday. Clinton's lead in pledged delegate was so substantial after Super Tuesday that in the real world, similar candidates would have dropped out but these candidates were actual members of the Democratic Party and were not running solely for media coverage.

Dana Milbank has some good comments on general election match up polls https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/democrats-would-be-insane-to-nominate-bernie-sanders/2016/01/26/0590e624-c472-11e5-a4aa-f25866ba0dc6_story.html?hpid=hp_opinions-for-wide-side_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Sanders and his supporters boast of polls showing him, on average, matching up slightly better against Trump than Clinton does. But those matchups are misleading: Opponents have been attacking and defining Clinton for a quarter- century, but nobody has really gone to work yet on demonizing Sanders.

Watching Sanders at Monday night’s Democratic presidential forum in Des Moines, I imagined how Trump — or another Republican nominee — would disembowel the relatively unknown Vermonter.

The first questioner from the audience asked Sanders to explain why he embraces the “socialist” label and requested that Sanders define it “so that it doesn’t concern the rest of us citizens.”

Sanders, explaining that much of what he proposes is happening in Scandinavia and Germany (a concept that itself alarms Americans who don’t want to be like socialized Europe), answered vaguely: “Creating a government that works for all of us, not just a handful of people on the top — that’s my definition of democratic socialism.”

But that’s not how Republicans will define socialism — and they’ll have the dictionary on their side. They’ll portray Sanders as one who wants the government to own and control major industries and the means of production and distribution of goods. They’ll say he wants to take away private property. That wouldn’t be fair, but it would be easy. Socialists don’t win national elections in the United States .

Sanders on Monday night also admitted he would seek massive tax increases — “one of the biggest tax hikes in history,” as moderator Chris Cuomo put it — to expand Medicare to all. Sanders, this time making a comparison with Britain and France, allowed that “hypothetically, you’re going to pay $5,000 more in taxes,” and declared, “W e will raise taxes, yes we will.” He said this would be offset by lower health-insurance premiums and protested that “it’s demagogic to say, oh, you’re paying more in taxes.”

Well, yes — and Trump is a demagogue.

Sanders also made clear he would be happy to identify Democrats as the party of big government and of wealth redistribution. When Cuomo said Sanders seemed to be saying he would grow government “bigger than ever,” Sanders didn’t quarrel, saying, “P eople want to criticize me, okay,” and “F ine, if that’s the criticism, I accept it.”

Sanders accepts it, but are Democrats ready to accept ownership of socialism, massive tax increases and a dramatic expansion of government? If so, they will lose.

Match up polls are worthless because these polls do not measure what would happen to Sanders in a general election where Sanders is very vulnerable to negative ads. Sanders was never vetted and the above polls are worthless

[aikoaiko]

517. Maybe not. Trump had the biggest opposition research file ever -- even video -- it was not enough

Again, conventional metrics failed us this time and you're still looking at the GE through that lens.

People like you trot out the socialist label, but that was already out there when national matchup polls were taken. Eichenwald's, the esteemed journalist of the Bernie could never win crowd, fine reporting of the oppositional research file amounted to "trust me it was bad" and then mentioned things we already new.

But again, maybe you're right and Bernie would have lost, but all we know for sure is the HRC lost and nothing predicted it accept the primary era matchup polls.

Conventional wisdom is only meaningful during conventional times.

There is much point in having this discussion anymore. I'm open to the idea of alternative endings to this GE and you're not. You are party loyalist for sure.

[Gothmog]

523. I like living in the real world

In the real world, Sanders was rejected in the primary by Jewish, African American and Latino voters. Rejecting the votes of these groups would have doomed Sanders in a run against Trump. The fact that Hillary Clinton had more than four times the lead in pledged delegates over Sanders compared to the lead that President Obama had over Hillary Clinton in 2008 is a fact that shows how bad a candidate Sanders was.

Sanders lost the nomination because he was a weak candidate who made promises that he could never delivered on. Sanders so-called revolution was a flop. Sanders' plans for adopting his proposals depend on these new voters. Here is how Sanders thinks that he will be able to force the GOP to be reasonable http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/21/1483791/-Imagine-Bernie-Sanders-wins-the-White-House-Then-what

Bernie Sanders has made some very big promises when it comes to his legislative priorities: He says he’ll make college free, pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, and institute a generous single-payer national health insurance program. And when he’s asked how he’ll turn these promises into reality, he says that he and his supporters will help bring about a “political revolution.”

That’s a phrase Sanders uses often, but what does he mean by it? Sanders has said that if he wins the presidency, his victory will be accompanied by a “huge increase in voter turnout”—one that he thinks might end Republican control of Congress. But Sanders acknowledges that the House and Senate could, in spite of his best efforts, remain in GOP hands come next January.

Given that likelihood, Sanders offers an alternate means for achieving his political revolution. He says he knows that a Democratic president can’t simply “sit down and negotiate” with Republican leaders and forge a series of compromises. Anyone who's observed the GOP’s behavior over the course of Barack Obama’s presidency would not dispute that, and in any event, no compromise with Republicans would ever lead to single-payer anyway.

So what then? How would a President Sanders get Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to pass any of his big-ticket items? This is the model he proposes:

What we do is you put an issue before Congress, let’s just use free tuition at public colleges and universities, and that vote is going to take place on November 8 ... whatever it may be. We tell millions and millions of people, young people and their parents, there is going to be a vote ... half the people don’t know what’s going on ... but we tell them when the vote is, maybe we welcome a million young people to Washington, D.C. to say hello to their members of Congress. Maybe we have the telephones and the e-mails flying all over the place so that everybody in America will know how their representative is voting. [...]

And then Republicans are going to have to make a decision. Then they’re going to have to make a decision. You know, when thousands of young people in their district are saying, “You vote against this, you’re out of your job, because we know what’s going on.” So this gets back to what a political revolution is about, is bringing people in touch with the Congress, not having that huge wall. That’s how you bring about change.

The rest of the DK article debunks that concept that Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell could be influenced by these new voters but we never get to this issue and Sanders himself admits that he will not bet elected without this revolution. So far we are not seeing any evidence of this revolution. Again, Sanders's whole campaign is based on this revolution and so it is appropriate to ask where these new voters are?

Again, where are these millions and millions of new voters?

[aikoaiko]

525. The real world where Trump beat HRC the most qualified candidate ever

And you're so sure that Bernie would have lost.

I should explain that when I talk about Bernie winning the GE am presuming that he had won the primary with votes. And he did not and I wish my fellow Democratic primary voters and caucusers had agreed with me. I am not talking about undoing the votes of those who supported HRC regardless of their POC or gender status.

You ask where the revolution is and where those voters are? I think they are waiting for a party to nominate a leader who is credible to them.

Your framing of the pledge count is funny. You still have such a hard time with how Bernie won 45% of the pledged delegates against the most qualified candidate ever.

I applaud your loyalty. It will come in handy some day.

And with that I'm out of here because I have parties to attend. Happy New Year.

[Gothmog]

526. Trump had a great deal hope including from Sanders

Bernie won most of his delegates in undemocratic primaries. We eliminated the primary part of the Texas two step this cycle and I will be pushing for the elimination of caucuses in other states. Sanders was rejected by Jewish, African American and Latino voters and relied on undemocratic caucuses for a significant portion of his so-called wins.
http://pleasecutthecrap.com/a-message-for-hardcore-bernie-stans/

Hillary Cinton won the nomination because of democracy. She received more than 57% of Democratic votes cast. Bernie Sanders virtually only won caucuses, which are the least democratic aspect of the primary process. And most of those he won only because she decided to save her money for the General election. He won very few primaries, except for his “home states” and Michigan and his clock was cleaned in virtually every other state that mattered. Demographically, he only won white liberals. The fact that YOU think he made it close, or only lost because of “Super Delegates” is a hallmark of your delusion. Bernie Stans largely didn’t seem to notice that she reached out to you repeatedly and you bit her hand off, making you more like Republicans than you should be comfortable with.

Sanders could not win the popular vote and was in the process only due to caucuses

[StevieM]

538. Great post. This point needs to be made: 2016 was not unconventional or

a "change election," like 1980 or 2008.

It was a year of McCarthyism. The fake email scandal was the most successful fake scandal in history. And it was built on the back of the Republican betrayal of our country following Benghazi when they chose to exploit it and make up lies.

[Lucinda]

304. +1

[Gothmog]

355. Trump had a two foot thick book of oppo on Sanders

[Cha]

372. Thank you for this, calimary!

"The Republicans had at least four other damning Sanders videos (I don’t know what they showed), and the opposition research folder was almost 2-feet thick. (The section calling him a communist with connections to Castro alone would have cost him Florida.) In other words, the belief that Sanders would have walked into the White House based on polls taken before anyone really attacked him is a delusion built on a scaffolding of political ignorance."

http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-election-521044

[Gothmog]

500. Great post

Sanders would have been destroyed by the GOP

[Pathwalker]

502. Thank you for this post, Calimary.

Very eloquent, and total truth. Thank you.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

2. I feel very cheated. Like This is a personal loss

Not a political loss.

[Arkansas Granny]

3. It feels like a betrayal.

[boston bean]

5. It is an extremely personal affront to me as a human being.

And to see people here dragging her through the coals after what actually happened, is just a redux of the offense, over and over and over.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

13. Yup.

[StevieM]

84. I am still sick over this whole thing. It was such an evil victory for the GOP.

And I can't believe the way that Arkansas forgot the Clintons and how dedicated they were to that state. Was there any positive talk about the Clintons down there? Does anybody remember their achievements?

[Arkansas Granny]

129. Arkansas has gone from blue to deep red in just a few years time.

The religious right holds sway here now. People have become so polarized that they can't remember or won't admit the positive effect that the Clintons had on our state. Hillary was very instrumental in improvements to education. I know that my children saw great benefits from that.

[we can do it]

11. I feel like everything I believe in has been stolen.

[boston bean]

15. I feel like women are reviled. To vote that fucker in....

I've never felt so fucking raw about it as I do now.

To pick that sick fuck over her.... People must really hate women. It's a sad testament.

[yeoman6987]

16. Don't worry 2020 or 2024 the repugs are gearing up kellyanne Conway to be the

First president. They are already saying she broke the glass ceiling with regards to running the first successful winning campaign. Good grief! Life is sick sometimes.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

252. Now there's a scary thought!! Don't think there'll be anything left for Satan's Bride to destroy after the Fuhrer-Elect is done ransackin the country.

[duffyduff]

20. No sane, intelligent person could have picked Trump.

All he had was channelling his supporters' inner bigot.

[boston bean]

24. ayep!

being a woman in that environment is chilling...

I am questioning everything I have taken for granted.

[dionysus]

27. And black people. And dems in general. For some reason the rethugs have a special

hate saved up for anything clinton...

[Ghost OF Trotsky]

284. Well, y'all were getting a bit uppity

I mean if we're going to Make America Great Again, how can we actually treat any non whites, non heterosexuals or women or non Christians as equal Citizens? MAGA is such barely disguised code for the rule of property owning white Christian heterosexual males that satire isn't even possible.

[we can do it]

35. It's disheartening.

[liquid diamond]

309. Come on.

Hillary being a woman and Berniebro hate had nothing to do with her loss. It was her emails that did her in.

[Kuhl]

325. Gender is on the list of reasons why she lost..

... But I suspect it isn't close to the top of that list.

[Gothmog]

524. I strongly disagree with your analysis and conclusions

Gender played a large role including with many Sanders supporters

[Cowpunk]

287. Therein lies the problem.

Many Hillary supporters are taking this whole thing very personally. Many Bernie supporters felt same the way after his loss. Many still do. I'm not trying to belittle your feelings. You have the right to feel that way, but when people start talking about banning dissent, it worries me. To me, this looks like yet another iteration of the conflict between party loyalists and dissenters on this site. The site's owners have made it clear throughout the years that both views are welcome. The rancor will quiet down eventually as it always does.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

301. He lost because he got fewer votes

She lost after getting more

Hence my feeling cheated

[Cowpunk]

387. Oh, I see.

Your pain is legitimate, theirs isn't.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

391. lol. No my feeling cheated is different from

My pain at losing

I supported HRC in 08 and did not feel cheated when obama won.

Helps that I am a rational human being

[Gothmog]

358. Sanders got less than 43% of the vote in the primaries

Sanders did not come close to getting enough votes.
http://pleasecutthecrap.com/a-message-for-hardcore-bernie-stans/

Hillary Cinton won the nomination because of democracy. She received more than 57% of Democratic votes cast. Bernie Sanders virtually only won caucuses, which are the least democratic aspect of the primary process. And most of those he won only because she decided to save her money for the General election. He won very few primaries, except for his “home states” and Michigan and his clock was cleaned in virtually every other state that mattered. Demographically, he only won white liberals. The fact that YOU think he made it close, or only lost because of “Super Delegates” is a hallmark of your delusion. Bernie Stans largely didn’t seem to notice that she reached out to you repeatedly and you bit her hand off, making you more like Republicans than you should be comfortable with.

Sanders would not do well without caucuses

[Gothmog]

357. I have the same feelings

[RKP5637]

4. K&R! n/t

[we can do it]

7. Thank you.

[uponit7771]

8. YES !!! THERE'S NO GUESSING WITH COMEY !!! The polls numbers went down after Comey and its

... measurable.

[Nonhlanhla]

9. What breaks my heart

is that I agree with you that she would probably have made one of the best presidents of our lifetime.

This loss is personal to me as well, as a woman and a feminist who so very much wanted to see her succeed. And I feel cheated, not only because I think the Electoral College is nonsense, but also because I know she would have probably won the EC if not for the interference of the FBI (and the Russians). Add to that the fact that the ...person... who will be occupying the presidency next year is a racist, misogynist, immature, psychopathic narcissist who neither deserves the office, nor is fit to be in it.

[boston bean]

12. you've hit the nail on the head.

[obliviously]

134. Nails are outdated

Stainless steel screws are used now, please try and catch up.

[brush]

191. Is that silly insult even necessary? Try contributing something useful.

[we can do it]

56. Mine's broken, too.

[Exilednight]

10. i disagree with some of your premise.

i believe Obama ran the most progressive GE campaign in decades.

I believe Bernie ran a more progressive campaign than Hillary. She lamented that many if Bernie's ideas were too much too soon and that working around the margins of existing law in small increments was the way to go.

In an election of change that didn't work out for us.

[elleng]

17. I agree.

[lapucelle]

32. Obama ran a progressive campaign, but, by and large, did not advance a progressive agenda.

Sanders ran an unnecessarily negative campaign. It didn't win him the nomination, and damaged Hillary immeasurably in the eyes of young voters who didn't know her record. The media loved watching Hillary get punched from all sides and did their part to stoke the flames. I firmly believe that history will not be kind to any of the players in this year's game, except for Mrs. Clinton.

[Exilednight]

34. We will have to agree to disagree on all acounts.

I found Obama's foreign policy to be more progressive than Hillary's in '08. I was quite dusappointed when he named Hillary SoS.
Hillary did more damage to Obama than Bernie did to Hillary. Hillary sunk to some pretty low lows in 08.

[lapucelle]

44. We will have to disagree.

I worked for Hillary during the primaries in 2008 and then for Obama in the general. During the primaries there were sharp elbows on all sides, but nothing like the virulent negativity that led a large of bloc of voters to abandon both the candidate and the platform this time around. It was a scorched earth approach, and there was no going back. Sanders painted Hillary as the enemy in no uncertain terms. It provided the Republicans the ammunition to hit hard from the left as well as from the right.

As for Obama's more progressive approach to foreign policy, it may have been true in theory, but, to be frank, my feeling for the last eight years is that Obama has been largely indecisive and has proven to be as easily rolled by our enemies abroad as he was by the Republicans at home.

[Exilednight]

59. Bernie had scorched earth policy? One word for you from '08: PUMAs.

Obama overcame PUMAs.

[boston bean]

61. Hillary gave her full throated support prior to the convention.

She didn't linger giving her supporters hope she would contest the convention.

Claiming everything was rigged against her.

Please now, please let's deal in reality.

[Exilednight]

66. I am dealing in reality. Many of her supporters blame Obama for her not winning in 2016.

Talk about holding a grudge.

[boston bean]

75. that's a new one.

[Tanuki]

81. I haven't heard that from anyone. nt

[Exilednight]

116. you should read more.

[Tanuki]

127. Perhaps you would oblige by posting something one could read to support your assertion.

Unless you are just here to insult.

[Exilednight]

203. Post #115

[brush]

192. Seriously? You're still holding a grudge from the 2008 campaign.

[Exilednight]

202. What are you talking about?

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

254. Read the same thing just recently, forget where.

[Charles Bukowski]

272. You should lie less.

[Exilednight]

280. What did I lie about?

[Crunchy Frog]

307. I certainly have seen that sentiment expressed here.

[sheshe2]

95. Link?

[Exilednight]

115. Here you go.

https://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2016/11/09/rage-won/

This is what I think sealed her fate:

The real coup happened 8 years ago when the finance industry decided to save itself and threw all of its weight behind a very weak Democratic candidate. The recession was too long, the stimulus too little, the ACA too expensive and stingy for many people. Obama compromised too much, accommodated the Republicans too often. It was by design.

Often, when the Obamas and Clintons were campaigning together, I thought it might be a mistake. Yeah, he’s got a certain cool. Michelle is eloquent. But they tied themselves at the hip.

Go ahead and read the comments section and see how many agree with her.

[sheshe2]

118. Thanks but no....

It is just a trash Democrats and Obama in particular link. I don't read things like that.

[Exilednight]

199. you asked for proof, and there it is. That is a 100% pure pro Hillary site.

[synergie]

439. Seems like it's the same "reality" as Donald, "many people" are saying

things I want to believe despite having nothing but my false beliefs to back up my statements.

Be less like Donnie, will you? At least in your incarnation on a Democratic site?

[Exilednight]

443. I've provided links upthread.

Btw: the poster of that site is a member of DU.

[synergie]

488. It's a long thread and you have many posts, few of which contain facts.

Please post your links here.

Please make sure it's not some blog with comments and an actual credible source. Thanks!

[murielm99]

135. I was accused of being a PUMA

here on DU, all while I was out working hard for Obama. Before the primary results I did support Hillary. That was my right.

My work was recognized in the real world. The Obama campaign thanked me. This PUMA shit was never real.

Yes, Bernie had a scorched earth policy. He is still out spewing horseshit and pimping his book. He is not a Democrat. He is running for his Senate campaign as an independent, so he does not deserve any special handling with kid gloves by me or anyone else who has spent a lifetime trying to elect Democrats.

[Exilednight]

200. The PUMA thing is real. Many are still out there.

[lapucelle]

224. Clinton led her coalition to the table.

She made the stakes clear, we understood them, and we did the right thing for the greater good. It wasn't Obama who accomplished that; it was Hillary. I was there. I remember.

[Exilednight]

230. PUMAs are still out there. To pretend otherwise is ignorance at best and intellectual dishonesty at

worst.

[lapucelle]

233. I never said there weren't still PUMAS out there, but we seem to agree it's marginal

especially since you are the one who said they had been "overcome".

Sanders was unable or unwilling to marshal his coalition and inspire his followers sufficiently to insure that the most progressive platform in decades evolved into actual policy. It was a test of leadership, and Sanders failed.

And with that, allow me to put you on ignore. It's Christmas, and I'd rather not get into a pissing war with a stranger. On holidays, that's what I have family for.

[Exilednight]

243. They weren't marginal. Obama found other avenues to win.

[boston bean]

389. May I suggest you review third party voting in 2008 compared to 2016.

[Gothmog]

360. Trump used Sanders quotes and arguments to great effect in the general

Sanders had no chance of being the nominee after Super Tuesday but continued his campaign which hurt Clinton. Here is a good example Sanders really hurt Clinton I am still mad at the number of times that trump used Sanders' claims against Clinton. Sanders' baseless charges that the system was fixed and rigged were used by trump to great effect and hurt Clinton http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rigged-system-donald-trump_us_5855cb44e4b08debb7898607?section=us_politics

And if Sanders’ rhetoric during the primaries started that stew simmering with his talk about the system only working for the rich, Trump brought it to a full boil with his remarks blaming undocumented immigrants and trade agreements that he claimed were forged as the result of open corruption.

I think he was able to thread a certain toxic needle. But he did win, and we’re all going to pay the price.
John Weaver, aide to Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s presidential campaign

The underlying irony for those who sought to end what they perceived as corruption is that they may well have elected a president whose record through the years and whose actions since the election signal it could be the most openly corrupt administration in generations.....

And if Sanders’ rhetoric during the primaries started that stew simmering with his talk about the system only working for the rich, Trump brought it to a full boil with his remarks blaming undocumented immigrants and trade agreements that he claimed were forged as the result of open corruption.

Sanders' bogus rigged process claim hurt a great deal

[Exilednight]

378. So your argument is

that it's Bernie's fault that she was unable to rebuff the attacks made on her during the primary? If it is, then she has no business in politics. The art of politics is controlling your environment.

A smart politician knows how to turn these attacks around. An incompetent one does not.

[boston bean]

390. No that is not the argument.

[Exilednight]

395. Then what is the argument.

IF your claim is that she was beat up by Bernie in the primary, that's on Hillary. She should have been able to control her environment and rebuff the attacks.

[Gothmog]

397. Sanders was treated with kid gloves by the Clinton campaign which tied her hands

Sanders was not vetted and was in fact treated with kid gloves by the Clinton campaign VOX had a good article on the potential lines of attack that Sanders would be exposed to if Sanders was the nominee. http://www.vox.com/2016/2/3/10903404/gop-campaign-against-sanders One of the more interesting observations in the VOX analysis is the fact that Sanders have been treated with kids gloves compared to what Sanders would face if he was the Democratic nominee. I strongly agree with the VOX's position that the so-called negative attacks against Sander have been mild. Form the article:

I have no interest in litigating any of these attacks here. Like any Democrat elected president in 2016, Sanders wouldn't be able to get much done, but he would block attempts to roll back Obama's accomplishments and have a chance to fill a few Supreme Court vacancies.

When Sanders supporters discuss these attacks, though, they do so in tones of barely contained outrage, as though it is simply disgusting what they have to put up with. Questioning the practical achievability of single-payer health care. Impugning the broad electoral appeal of socialism. Is nothing sacred?

But c'mon. This stuff is patty-cakes compared with the brutalization he would face at the hands of the right in a general election.

His supporters would need to recalibrate their umbrage-o-meters in a serious way.

Sanders was treated with kid gloves by the Clinton campaign because of the amusing over-reactions of the Sanders supporters in the primary process. It appears that you are upset that Hillary Clinton did not use all of the oppo research that was available. Sanders was a weak candidate and would have been destroyed if the oppo research was used.

[Exilednight]

400. That explains nothing of relevance.

[Gothmog]

412. Actually, it does explain a great deal

Sanders was not vetted during the primary process. The Clinton campaign treated Sanders with kid gloves and no one in the press believed that Sanders was going to be the nominee and so there was no need for vetting.

[Exilednight]

421. Proof?

[Gothmog]

423. In the real world Sanders was a very very weak candidate

Look at the absent of any vetting of Sanders. Sanders was a very weak general election candidate who had zero chance of being the nominee. The Clinton campaign was never worried about Sanders and so treated him with kid gloves. The press ignored Sanders because they knew that he had no chance of being the nominee. The GOP ran ads to help Sanders in the primary because he was such a weak candidate. http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1266681

In the real world, Sanders was allowed to coast and was not vetted. If Clinton had gone after Sanders it would have been easy to destroy him. Again, there is a ton of good oppo on Sanders. The Trump campaign oppo book was two feet thick with great videos of Sanders talking about communism and related topics that would have been used to destroy him with mainstream voters.

[Exilednight]

428. Where's your proof that Hillary treated Sanders with kid gloves against her will?

Stop trying to change the subject. You said that Hillary treated Bernie with kid gloves because she had no other option. If you want me to believe it, then provide me inarguable facts that showed Hillary had no other choice

[Gothmog]

430. This was commonly known

See http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2668532

[Exilednight]

432. That's an oped piece, not news. Any real proof?

[Gothmog]

436. I was a delegate to the National Convention

At both the Texas State Democratic Convention and the National convention, Clinton delegates were told to be nice to Sanders delegates no matter how poorly informed the Sanders del elates were because Sanders supporters would go nuts if there was any unfavorable discussion of Sanders. There were some sanders supporters screaming obscenities at the national convention and their credentials were not pulled because we had to treat these supporters with kid gloves.

One example that stands out to me was the booing of Congressman John Lewis at the National Convention by the Sanders delegates. Congressman Lewis is hated by many Sanders supporters because of some comments about Sanders not being a meaningful participant in the civil rights protests. On the JPR board, the booing of Congressman John Lewis was applauded by the posters on that board. Do you really want to defend the booing of Congressman John Lewis by Sanders supporters? Do you think that this conduct was appropriate?

The National Convention was a challenging event due to the Sanders supporters' over reactions.

[Exilednight]

446. Okay, that's her delegates. I'm asking about her.

No one handles her, she's the decision maker.

[Gothmog]

447. Clinton did not attack Sanders for two reasons

First, there was no need to in that Sanders had no chance of being the nominee. Jewish, African American and Latino voters all rejected Sanders. Sanders got 43% of the vote in the primary and had no chance of being the nominee in the real world. After Super Tuesday, Hillary Clinton had a sufficient delegate lead that it was clear to everyone that Sanders had no chance of being the nominee. Hillary Clinton ended up with more than four times the pledged delegate lead compared to the delegate lead that President Obama enjoyed in 2008.

Second, it was clear that Sanders supporters over-reacted to everything. here is an example http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-bernie-sanders-supporters-20160415-story.html

Shawn Bagley thought he knew what he was getting into when he was elected to become one of California’s so-called superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention, and energetic debate with other activists was part of it.

What Bagley had not anticipated was being jolted out of bed by a 2 a.m. phone call from an angry Bernie Sanders supporter. The caller accused Bagley, a retired produce broker from Salinas, of stealing democracy from the citizenry.

“Why is Bernie Sanders letting these people loose on us?” said Bagley, a Hillary Clinton backer who says he was branded corrupt, immoral and thickheaded over the course of some 200 social media posts and phone calls from Sanders fans. “He lost my vote at 2 a.m.”

Sanders supporters are known to be a spirited bunch. But as their frustration mounts over their candidate’s failure to significantly cut into Clinton’s lead, no small number of them are lashing out in ways that are not particularly helpful to his campaign.

Sanders delegates over-reacted to anyone who did not treat Sanders as a saint. There was no need for Clinton to go out of her way to attack Sanders given the extreme over-reaction of Sanders

BTW, you have refused to answer my questions Do you approve of the way that Sanders delegates treated Congressman John Lewis at the national convention?

[Exilednight]

454. Stop trying to muddy the waters. Did someone keep her against

her own free will from attacking Sanders?

It's a simple yes or no question, and if they did then provide the evidence.

I'm a 110% positive that she made a choice not to attack him since she had nothing of substance to attack him with.

[Gothmog]

451. Here is another good example

The Human Rights Campaign and Planned Parenthood both endorsed Hillary Clinton. Sanders supporters responded by trying to defund and attack PP and HRC for such actions http://www.democraticunderground.com/110735248 Given these over-reactions, the Clinton campaign decided to treat Sanders with kid gloves.

Do you approve of the Sanders supporters attempts to attack and defund Planned Parenthood?

[synergie]

434. She didn't attack him, not on his gang rape essays, his child sex one etc.

She could have, if the vile invective you folks were using against her was based in reality. That she did not lay a glove on him, is the inarguable fact that she did indeed use kid gloves on him.

[Exilednight]

435. That doesn't answer my question.

[Gothmog]

437. Do you approve of the booing of Congressman John Lewis by Sanders delegates at national convention?

[synergie]

438. But, it does. You just don't like the answer.

[Exilednight]

445. There was proof she was gagged against her will? where is it?

[Gothmog]

448. Read the posts again-no one said that Hillary Clinton was forced to be nice to Sanders

Again, Sanders was a very weak general election candidate who had no chance of being the nominee. There was no need for Clinton to attack Sanders in that Sanders had been rejected by Jewish, African American and Latino voters. Sanders only appealed to a mainly white base and that is not sufficient to win the nomination.

Second, Sanders supporters were over-reacting already even when Sanders was not attacked. See the examples posted above.

Finally, Sanders did not return the favor and did attack Clinton. Trump had fun using Sanders attacks in the general election Sanders had no chance of being the nominee after Super Tuesday but continued his campaign which hurt Clinton. Here is a good example Sanders really hurt Clinton I am still mad at the number of times that trump used Sanders' claims against Clinton. Sanders' baseless charges that the system was fixed and rigged were used by trump to great effect and hurt Clinton http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rigged-system-donald-trump_us_5855cb44e4b08debb7898607?section=us_politics

And if Sanders’ rhetoric during the primaries started that stew simmering with his talk about the system only working for the rich, Trump brought it to a full boil with his remarks blaming undocumented immigrants and trade agreements that he claimed were forged as the result of open corruption.

I think he was able to thread a certain toxic needle. But he did win, and we’re all going to pay the price.
John Weaver, aide to Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s presidential campaign

The underlying irony for those who sought to end what they perceived as corruption is that they may well have elected a president whose record through the years and whose actions since the election signal it could be the most openly corrupt administration in generations.....

And if Sanders’ rhetoric during the primaries started that stew simmering with his talk about the system only working for the rich, Trump brought it to a full boil with his remarks blaming undocumented immigrants and trade agreements that he claimed were forged as the result of open corruption.

Sanders' bogus rigged process claim hurt a great deal

[synergie]

482. It's weird how far you've dragged those goal posts to deny the basic truth here.

Bernie was not touched, he was not attacked and he had many referenced skeletons in his closet.

[synergie]

487. Since this is a claim you and only you have made, perhaps you should ask yourself

this question, as the onus of proof is on the person making the claim, and this is 100% something you came up with on your own.

[George II]

442. Did you read the platform written in July?

[Gothmog]

396. Sanders had no chance of being the nominee and ran a campaign designed to hurt Clinton

Sanders had no chance of being the nominee after super tuesday. Clinton had a delegate lead after super tuesday that Sanders would not over come. Sanders misled his voters when he claimed that he could win and stayed in long after a candidate who was really a member of the Democratic Party and who cared about the Democratic Party would have dropped out. Hillary Clinton had more than four times the pledged delegate lead compared to the delegate lead that President Obama had over Clinton in 2008. Clinton conceded promptly after conventions and worked to elect President Obama.

[Exilednight]

398. That's a nice rant, but it doesn't explain why

Hillary could not put the issue to bed.

[Gothmog]

413. To put the issue to bed would mean not treating Sanders with kid gloves

Sanders supporters had unrealistic expectations concerning Sanders and so would have over-reacted.

[Exilednight]

420. That's on Hillary.

No one said to treat Sanders that way.

[Gothmog]

424. You are wrong-Sanders supporters would have gone nuts is Sanders was treated like a real candidate

There was a ton of oppo research and if used against Sanders as if he was a real candidate, his supporters would have been very upset.

[Exilednight]

427. I keep hearing about this research, but no one can produce it.

If it existed, then Hillary should have used it.

No one tapes Hillary's mouth shut. She had a chance to end all the controversy about her speeches and she chose not to.

Unless you can provide proof that she was gagged from going after Sanders, your argument holds no merit.

[Gothmog]

429. The research was available for use but Hillary Clinton had to treat Sanders with kid gloves

The Sanders supporters over react and were not realistic. Any criticism of Sanders was met with amusing over reaction

[Exilednight]

431. Prove it exists and link up to it, and please provide proof that Hillary was gagged.

[synergie]

440. It's been proven numerous times, it's why so many of you were alerting and hiding people during

the primaries. I'm sorry that you seem to need "proof" to engage in critical thinking here, and that you failed to do your research or read any of the few articles that were out there about Bernie, since no one bothered to vet him and so many here lost their heads in outrage when his avowed essays were referenced.

That she did not attack him on his published works is proof that she did not attack him. If you need proof of the essays that he has admitted to writing, I can google that for you, if you like, despite the reaction of a certain faction when I dared to post it months ago. Apparently I was silenced long before you could learn for yourself, and you never bothered to investigate the candidate you had given your devotion to.

Had Bernie been the candidate, the GOP would not have been running pro-Bernie ads (as they did in Iowa), they would have excoriated him, with his own words and it would have been ugly.

[Gothmog]

441. There was a great deal of material to use on Sanders

[Exilednight]

444. Critical thinking is based off of known variables, none of which

have been introduced.

No one put a gun to Hillary's head and told her to shut up.

If this playbook exists, then it would have been used to go after his Senate seat.

The dumbest argument out there is that it's not used because he's a popular senator from Vermont and they don't care about his seat. Republicans care about every Senate seat, and will fight tooth and nail to get them.

[Gothmog]

449. Do you tire of being wrong?

Sanders was treated with kid gloves by the media and Clinton because Sanders was a very weak candidate who had been rejected by the base of the party-i.e, Jewish, African American and Latino voters.

You are ducking the question as to whether you approved of the way that Sanders delegates over-reacted and treated Congressman John Lewis. I wonder why you do not want to address this issue

[Exilednight]

468. Actually, I just get tired of people who make accusations with only hear-say evidence.

Your posts to make points are like "I heard from my mom's stylist best friends sister that Bernie eats puppies for lunch".

You provide no real evidence, just what others have to say about it.

[Gothmog]

469. It is so very amusing to see a layperson try to use terms that they do not understand

I note that you have not responded to the fact that (i) Congressman John Lewis was booed at the national convention by Sanders delegates for really bogus reasons, (ii) Sanders delegated attacked and tried to defund Planned Parenthood due to its endorsement of Hillary Clinton and (iii) Sanders delegates attacked and harassed super delegates

You might want to look up the term hearsay before you use it. Thank you for the laughs.

[Exilednight]

472. I note that you have yet to prove that Hillary was gagged against her will from attacking Sanders.

The art of politics is controlling your environment.

Hillary threw everything she had at Obama in 2008, but none of it stuck because he knew how to turn it around. This has always been Hillary's achilles heel. She doesn't know how to put away criticisms without making herself look bad while doing it. She attacked Obama in '08 and he comes back with "it's the silly season of politics". McCain tries to make him look unstatesmen type when he postpones his campaign, Obama comes back with "I can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time."

If Sanders was so damaging to her campaign, then why couldn't she put any issue he raised to bed?

[Gothmog]

473. Re-read the material on this thread

Your attempt at analysis is wrong yet again. Facts are good things. Ignoring the facts presented will not make them go away.

Are you going to respond to the examples of Sanders supporters over-reacting??? There are a ton more examples. I am enjoying your refusal to deal with these facts.

[Exilednight]

475. There are no facts that you presented. NO ONE TOLD HILLARY TO STAY SILENT!

She's her own person. All you have is what someone else said, just like the "playbook" that exists against Sanders. If it was there, they would have used it. Everyone knows that she was trying to "appear" presidential by ignoring Sanders and focusing on Trump. In the long run, it didn't work.

If Sanders was such a pain in her ass, then she should have took him out early. But she didn't because she couldn't.

If you have actual evidence from someone who said "Hillary, stay silent or I'll sink your career", or something to that effect, then post it.


If not, then you haven't much of anything useful to add to this discussion.

[synergie]

483. So she exercised her judgment and chose not to attack an easy target

and you're literally screaming about what exactly?

Why would any of us have evidence of something you've made up and that which you and only you have asserted. It's your point, you created it, back it up or admit that you lack a point.

[JustAnotherGen]

491. Who cares - time for 2017 elections!

https://www.murphy4nj.com/2016/12/murphy-gop-plan-to-repeal-federal-health-law/
Murphy 4 NJ!

[Gothmog]

492. Again misusing legal terms and ignoring facts are not helping your case

I am amused that you do not want to talk about the examples of Sanders supporters over-reacting anytime that Sanders was not treated as a saint. These examples are called facts in the real world and ignoring these facts will not make them go away. Again, Hillary Clinton never needed to "take Sanders out" because sanders had zero chance of being the nominee. Sanders had been rejected by Jewish, African American and Latino voters and did not have the support of the base.

Second, it is clear that any attack on Sanders would provoke some extreme reactions. Again look at the facts cited above that you want to ignore. Planned Parenthood was attacked by Sanders supporters over an endorsement. Super delegates were stalked and harassed by Sanders supporter for not ignoring the will of the base of the party. Congressman John Lewis was booed at the national convention due to perceived slight to sanders. Sanders supporters would have gone totally nuts if Clinton had used any of the available oppo on Sanders

Again, ignoring facts will not make these facts go away.

[synergie]

484. I get tired of people who launch strawman arguments, move the goal posts

and then demand repeatedly that someone produce evidence of something they themselves have made up whole cloth. It's even more tiresome when they try to use phrases they cannot spell and cannot use correctly in context.

Your posts are like: I demand you provide proof that Bernie eats puppies for lunch, because that is what I'm going to pretend you said, cause reading is hard!

[synergie]

467. Ignoring known variables doesn't help when one is attempting to pretend

one this thinking critically.

The facts have indeed been introduced, and I offered to google them for you, since it appears that you either lack the skills or the ability to do so yourself, and my posting of them was so very upsetting to you and your friends.

Oh, so now someone had to physically threaten Hillary to prove that she treated her opponent with the same kid gloves the GOP did, in their drive to have him be the opponent?

The playbook very much exists, and it will be used to go after his Senate seat, he was allowed by the Dems to go unchallenged because he ostensibly went along with the Dems. His antics through this season and the results he contributed to have made that something that will not be happening again.

That is indeed a pretty dumb argument you put forth, like your others, it lacks any understanding or knowledge of politics, or critical thinking.

[Exilednight]

470. Yeah, that's why I cash paychecks from the DNC from 2006 to 2009.

You know - the years we took back the Senate, House and Executive. I'm a real no nothing at politics.

[synergie]

485. Yeah, sure I believe that. I mean you just said, it's not like you provided proof

or anything. Um, yeah, a guy who can't differentiate between "know" and "no" sure knows a great deal, especially when he just says stuff on the internet after haranguing others about proof, while providing none.

Your posts do not show much knowledge of things, not critical thought, not rhetoric, not spelling, nor truth telling. Your posts speak volumes, they don't speak of someone who knows anything about politics.

[Gothmog]

474. You are using facts against someone who wants ignore these facts

[synergie]

486. But he "nos" so much about politics, he cashed checks and was solely responsible for

Obama's win, and lots of others, he's super "no"ledgable, he said so, and that's proof and not 'hear-say" at all!

Facts are hard for these people, they really do challenge their worldview. It's like with the CONs of an era not so long ago (a year or so?), denial of facts, embracing nonsense and lots of pretense to credentials and qualifications that their posts make plain they do not have.

[Gothmog]

489. I am also amused by that post

[JCanete]

346. It did not provide the republicans the tools to hit hard on corporate influence. Most Republicans

and Democrats have a tacit understanding that you don't go after each other with "follow the money." Too many glass houses. Trump on the other hand, is an insane egomaniac that couldn't be reined in by anybody. The hypocrisy flowed through him without a hint of self irony. That's the shit he got away with because of a corporate media and a democratic party that didn't really hammer him on his own corruption; and worse, have never uniformly called out the media for the propaganda machine that it is. Playing nice with the money got us what it always does. Second place.

And you don't think we need a message that addresses big money's ties to our politics?

[JCanete]

167. I don't think it was unecessarily negative. It took going all the way to the convention for Clinton

and the DNC to start taking Sanders seriously at all. And his message is a non-starter if we pretend like the other party takes money but we don't. That would be a fucking laughable level of hypocrisy, that would doom the message. We need to get out of that business, and drawing attention to it is the only way to do that.

It could have been less painful had the establishment reacted appropriately, quicker, rather than to smugly attempt to shut that voice down.I'm sure Sanders would have bowed out if they had given him something to show the people that his message had won over.

[SammyWinstonJack]

174. +1000000!

[LaydeeBug]

177. The exact inverse argument could be made...

the writing was on the wall back in APRIL, and Bernie Bros still thought there would be a contested convention and everyone would rally around Bernie. One could make the EXACT same argument that he hurt her in the general by not bowing out when it was mathematically impossible for him to win.

She beat him by every metric.

Russia hacked the rest. And they would have hacked Bernie too, so this resurgence of BB's is a bit telling, since each and EVERY Bernie supporter I know voted for Trump.

[JCanete]

215. That's not a different inverse argument. Its the same argument. I'm saying had the DNC not

been so smug and actually realized earlier that they should make some changes and invite the Sanders portion of the party to the table, I think Sanders would have taken that as a win. Remember, the only thing he ever got in the race to do was to move Clinton to the left. He didn't think he was going to get near as far as he did.

As to the hacking. If Russia messed with our machines I'm with you. If they just stole compromising information and produced fake news, it just wasn't that damning. What was damning is our own corporate media. What was damning is that we got beat by the money we keep thinking we need to compete. We are getting played for suckers. But yes, that money and those establishment ties did help Clinton to beat Sanders in every metric. Was that in itself an accomplishment worthy of note? That was to be expected.

And allow me to introduce myself as one of many Bernie supporters I know, who voted for Clinton. I don't think I know any Sanders supporters who went for Trump actually. That said, I don't have a problem with Sanders message registering with dumbasses. It means that without pandering to them or dropping any of his social or economic agenda, he still pulled in people who would ordinarily never be in favor of voting in a person that was going to push for legislation that helped the poor and minorities.

[LaydeeBug]

289. The Sanders portion of the party WAS invited to the table...

the problem was, they couldn't take *yes* for an answer. The problem was, even though the writing was on the wall for him back in APRIL, his supporters continued to brow beat and insist they were going to sway the convention. It was bitter.

I am glad you voted for Clinton, but I am not making it up that not one single Bernie supporter that I know voted for Clinton or a third party candidate. They voted for Trump.

Signs in their windows and all.

[JCanete]

345. You'll have to show me what being invited to the table looks like. Saying "drop out and trust us" is

total BS and you have to know that. Or give me examples that I missed during the primary. I'd love to be educated on this.

[Amaril]

419. Oh, absolutely

When the message to Sanders' supporters that came from the Clinton Camp was "We don't need or want you." how could we not feel oh-so-welcome at the table.

That shit was said........and said again........and again........and again. After I received my first & only hide in my 10 years here for popping back at someone who said effectively that, I started putting everyone who said it on ignore. After the election was over, my ignore list was 100+ strong.

I voted for Clinton. I also don't know any Sanders supporters -- online or in the real world -- who voted for Trump. The ones I know either voted for Clinton or didn't vote at all (which was stupid). I also know several Republicans (I live in a predominantly red area) who refused to vote for Trump or Clinton, but said they would have voted for Sanders in the GE.

Politics is ugly. Candidates are in it to WIN, and they are going to cite the reasons why their opponent is a less viable choice. That's how it works. One of the things that really irked me about Clinton's campaign was the expectation that she should be given a pass -- that no one should bring up her negatives -- real or perceived -- and that Sanders shouldn't have challenged her in the first place. That ISN'T how it works.

After the Wasserman-Schultz BS came to light, I fully supported Sanders taking it to the convention. WE -- meaning Democrats -- are supposed to better than that, and WE should be able to expect better than that from our leadership.

[LaydeeBug]

425. 80% of your platform was adopted...AND Sanders supporters were

really,truly holding out for a brokered convention, or a contested convention...etc...when Bernie could not have won. It isn't nearly as bad as Comey and Russia, but it wasn't for nothing.

You all didn't recognize your seat at the table, because you wanted to RUN the table.

[JCanete]

456. again, show me what that looked like. I don't remember the overture, and I certainly

don't remember anything concrete.

[LaydeeBug]

457. You don't remember because you were too busy lamenting...and berating...To wit:

“We got 80% of what we wanted in this platform,” top Sanders foreign policy adviser Warren Gunnels told CNN.

http://ktla.com/2016/07/10/democrats-adopt-many-bernie-sanders-demands-in-partys-new-platform/

Honestly, you were too busy making the perfect the enemy of the good to see that this had happened, and that Hillary DID INDEED reach out to Bernie, and his supporters. I love me some Bernie, but THAT part of it is certainly on his hard cores who made this much harder than it needed to be.

[JCanete]

458. 07/10/16. you are talking about what we got after Sanders stayed in the race. Guess what!

I totally agree with you. What are we arguing about again?

[LaydeeBug]

459. your inability to remember that.

nt

[JCanete]

460. what? No we aren't. The conversation was about whether or not the DNC should have

adopted some of Sanders' message far before the convention, and why they smugly thought they didn't have to. The conversation, or at least my part in it, was that if people are frustrated that there was anger at the convention and bad blood, that maybe they should be looking to Clinton and the DNC for holding out like they did.

My whole point was that Sanders had to stay in the race to get those concessions, so I'm going to have to call BS on you saying that I totally forgot about those concessions.

[LaydeeBug]

461. No. It wasn't. See post 345.

nt

[JCanete]

462. take the context of the whole conversation. I'm sorry that you got misled by me saying "during the

Last edited Wed Dec 28, 2016, 07:07 PM - Edit history (1)

primary." You have shown me that 15 whole days before the convention--which yes, technically was during the primary--Sanders and the DNC had finally come to an agreement. That agreement was almost certainly structured with how Sanders threw his weight behind Clinton and moved to have all of his delegates tallied to her during the convention.

I was kind of talking about that whole stretch between April up until that point when the DNC was only making an effort to make Sanders the candidate of Bernie Bro's, driven by delusional self interest, when they could have just been more progressive already.

Here's the actual quote of mine from the post before 345.

"I'm saying that had the DNC not been so smug and actually realized earlier that they should make some changes and invite the Sanders portion of the party to the table, I think Sanders would have taken that as a win."

[Gothmog]

361. I was at the National Convention and your analysis is wrong

I was a delegate to the national convention and many of the sanders delegates believed that Sanders could take the nomination away from Hillary Clinton at the convention. I was in the delegation where a good number of the younger sanders supporters walked in locked in arm to arm to demand that the Clinton delegates condemn Clinton and vote for Sanders. These delegates were somehow told by the Sanders people to go ahead and try this stunt. Again, I heard repeatedly that Sanders did not want to be too hard on his supporters and that we were told to be nice to the Sanders delegates and hope that they came around.

Sanders never truly attempted to reason with or deal with his supporters at the convention because he did not want to lose their support for future races. I know this in part because the Clinton team and whips were monitoring all of the Sanders meetings and reporting back to the Clinton "whipping infrastructure" (a term that I learned in Philadelphia and love). Some of the Sanders supporters were totally out of control during the last two nights of the convention and the sanders campaign would not revoke the credentials of some really foul mouth Sanders delegates on the last night. We were fortunate in that the Sanders supporters used an unlocked/non-password protected list server to plan their stunts and the Clinton whips would warn us in advance when a demonstration was coming.

I saw the consequences of Sanders campaign first hand at the convention. A great deal of effort was used to keep a group of Sanders delegates from disrupting the convention. Sanders evidently thought that a text message was sufficient.

After the convention, I found a number of Sanders supporters who were block walking for local candidates going out of their way to encourage Stein votes. One sanders supporter actually bragged about this practice at a young democrats meeting attended by one of my daughters.

[JCanete]

369. You are fond of leading with "You are wrong," and then not addressing anything I said.

Why didn't the DNC and Clinton make concessions to Sanders earlier? From the convention on, Sanders threw his full support behind Clinton. That could have happened earlier, and perhaps by the time of the convention, all those things that you are griping about might have been far less irritating to you. As if dissent at a convention means jack and shit in the big picture anyway.

The effort made then and now to paint all Sanders supporters with the color of the loudest most obnoxious of us was always transparent, by the way, and it is exactly the kind of shit that started right about the time the DNC thought it could embarrass Sanders into dropping out, rather than to recognize the appeal of his message.

Why didn't they just adopt the things they adopted anyway, sooner? That would have gone a long frikken way to uniting the party, and they probably could have gotten Sanders to fall in behind Clinton in April.

[Gothmog]

394. Again your attempt at analysis is simply wrong

I am amused that your feelings are hurt but your analysis is simply wrong and sad. You were not there. One of my friends was a co-chair of the rules committee and that committee worked until 2AM Sunday morning to resolve issues with the Sanders people. When I left to go to the convention, Clinton delegates were warned to expect up to five floor/roll call votes due to Sanders' demands. Those roll calls were averted and even then the bernie supporters were not happy.

Again I was at the delegate breakfast where a number of young sanders supporters came in after winning all of the concessions and demanded that we condemn Hillary Clinton and overturn the will of the voters in our state by voting for Sanders. It was not a fun time. I was pleased to see the older sanders supporters apologized for the actions of these young sanders supporters. The labor people who were supporting Sanders were really upset.

As for painting Sanders supporters as BOB, I was there and there were a large number of Sanders supporters who fit this description. My daughter and I were yelled at by Sanders supporters at the convention (it was not a fun experience).

Sanders never had a chance of being the nominee. Sanders lacked support from Jewish, African American and Latino voters. Hillary Clinton had more than four times the lead in pledged delegates overs Sanders compared to the lead that President Obama had over Hillary Clinton in 2008. Sanders won less than 43% of the vote in the primaries and his only real victories were in non-democratic caucus states. The fact that so many concessions were made to a non-viable candidate was sad and wrong in my opinion.

Again you were not at the convention. I was. Your attempt at analysis is wrong but amusing

[JCanete]

401. I'm sorry but you couldn't be more wrong, and it is amusing to me, and pathetic, and sad,

all at once..

seriously...feelings hurt? I am frustrated, because one thing you seem utterly incapable of is posting anything that means a damn thing, which does give me the impression that you probably do work with the DNC, so kudos.

I wasn't talking about whether there was a contingent of frustrated Sanders supporters at the convention. I was talking about far before that. I was talking about how the first isolated incidents of " Bernie bros" became the single image that kept getting pounded by the media and the Brock faux media, far before the convention. I was also talking about how those concessions that you think were so "sad" that were the only concrete things that Clinton campaigned on...the only things that got me excited for voting for her...could have been arrived at far earlier than the convention avoiding a lot of the stuff you were so offended by, and yet you keep talking about the convention itself as it occurred, as if that refutes any fucking thing at all...

I am all for being proved wrong. I'm even thick skinned enough to be called wrong. But if you're going to do it.....maybe address the things I actually said rather than going on your own tangent.

[Gothmog]

405. The fact that you think that you are correct is amusing but is not based on facts

Math is an important concept and you do not realize that Sanders had no chance whatsoever of being the nominee. The Clinton lead following Super Tuesday was too large for Sanders to over come. At the end, Clinton had four time the lead in pledged delegates over Sanders compared to the lead that President Obama had over Hillary Clinton in 2008. The fact is that Sanders lied or mislead his followers following Super Tuesday. In past contests, the candidates were all real members of the Democratic Party and so they conceded when it was clear that could not win. Sanders was not a true member of the Democratic Party and kept his campaign going based on misrepresentations to his supporters. In past campaigns, the candidates who were members of the Democratic Party and who cared about the Democratic Party conceded and worked from day one to elect the nominee. That did not happen in 2016,

The fact that Sanders did not concede at the same time as Clinton. I was at both the 2008 and 2016 Texas Democratic State conventions. The differences were amazing. Hillary Clinton had conceded three or four days before the convention and so the credentials fights and other disputes went away. In 2016, we had a very disruptive and non-unifying convention with Bernie bros being very nasty. That carried on to the general election. I know of several bernie supporters who bragged in meetings of the young democrats (where one of my daughters was present) that they got voters to vote for Stein while blockwalking for other local candidates. I doubt that this was an isolated incident.

Sanders platform was based on unrealistic promises that he could never delivered on and as a result Sanders supporters had unrealistic expectations through out the process. I saw this at the DNC.

The fact that you do not want to address these facts amuses me. Math is important in the real world.

I am sorry that you feelings are hurt. I continue to be amused that you think that you are right.

[JCanete]

406. Again, addressing nothing that I said. Not a single thing. Do you talk around things for a living?

I could engage you on any topic you brought up instead...

but then you'd probably respond with something entirely unrelated, led by "Your analysis is wrong and amusing."

I'm just going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're fucking with me, not actually missing the point as widely as you appear to be.

[JustAnotherGen]

408. Not to throw gas on the fire - not my intent

But I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to convey here?

[JCanete]

411. in my last post? Or throughout the thread? The last post has to do with the way my conversations go

with Gothmog. I say something, Goth tells me in no uncertain terms how wrong I am, and then proceeds to prove it to me with entirely disparate information. I wasn't saying much else there except that it was apparently pointless to try to have a conversation.

If you're talking about any other part of our discourse, you'll have to be more specific about where you're getting lost.

[Gothmog]

414. I am not the only one amused on this thread

Again, if you use facts or make a valid argument, I will be happy to address. I cannot address your hurt feelings.

[JCanete]

418. So you weren't happy to address anything I've said so far? Is that why you talked about entirely

different shit? I guess just saying "wrong," works as an argument in itself if you are either Trump or Gothmog.

[Gothmog]

422. Use some facts or present something other than feelings

I disagree with your feelings. If you have facts, use them

[George II]

416. As a desciple of Sheldon Cooper, I caan't resist this:

[JCanete]

417. hehe, semantically, I think you can be more or less wrong though. Wrong on part of something

is different from being wrong on a lot of something. Sure, if you are wrong at any given point, then you are grammatically speaking, wrong. But given the complicated range that a conversation covers, I think that more wrong says something different than wrong.

That said, I was saying it all in snark given the nature of me and Gothmog's conversations, and how one of us tends to kick the posts off.

[Gothmog]

450. Again, I use facts on these threads and you want to talk about your feelings

Facts are what matter and your personal feelings and opinions are not relevant in the real world

[JCanete]

452. ugh..that was worth another post? The FACT is, that you use "facts" that are irrelevant to the

argument I am making while you tell me that I'm wrong. It's fine to say that I've got those things wrong, or even that I'm paying attention to the wrong things, but to answer a claim about last week's weather by saying something like "Wrong, it was sunny out yesterday and I was there, and you were in a cave..." is way the fuck off the mark.

To then come back and say "I don't address what you actually say because you don't use facts, just feelings..." invalidates further, your baseless and undefended argument that I'm wrong. You could totally say "I don't think you know what you're talking about." I think that's fair, but it doesn't make the counter-claim that you do. To say "wrong" and then not to prove it, or to even try, is pretty damn lame.

[Gothmog]

453. Again it appears that you only want to discuss your feelings and not the facts

In the real world your personal feelings and opinions are meaningless and could not introduced in court. Again, the facts remain that Sanders had no chance of being the nominee after Super Tuesday based on the math but continued his campaign based on falsehoods told to his supporters. Do you have any math or facts to back up your claims? It is also a fact that Hillary Clinton had more than four times the pledged delegate lead over Sanders compared to the lead that President Obama had over Hillary Clinton in 2008. Clinton did the right thing and Sanders did not.

Again, in the real world in past contests, the candidates who were as far behind in delegates as Sanders was following Super Tuesday all dropped out. First, these candidates were actual members of the Democratic Party and second these candidates wanted to win in November. Sanders ignored these facts and his campaign was designed to hurt Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party in the general.

I am happy to discuss facts. I really do not care about your feelings.

[JCanete]

455. but what the fuck are you talking about? How is that responding to anything I've said up to this

point? I've made absolutely no claims about Sanders actual chances. I didn't talk about them at all. I didn't suggest that he thought he could win. I suggested that he might have dropped out earlier had the DNC and Clinton done what they ultimately did anyway, and actually adopt some of Sanders positions.

I don't give a fuck about what other candidates have done in the past. I really don't. It has no relevance to me. No candidate in the past has run purely on donations from citizens either. No candidate in the past was trying to actually change business as usual as an outsider, and yes Sanders was an outsider. By your own claim, "he was not a democrat." While some of us are perfectly glad to have had him in our party, there are plenty of you, particularly insiders, that didn't want him in the party and you made that pretty clear from the get-go. Don't give me any bullshit about welcoming him in with open arms. So is having all those pledged delegates supposed to mean something to me? You think with all that support that Clinton and the machine wanted to adopt anything Sanders was proposing? If he just dropped out without a fight they would have done so? No you don't, and in fact, you think it's sad that you ever had to compromise.

You fucking like business as usual. So I don't care what you saw. I don't necessarily even trust you given your tactics of argumentation, but I certainly don't trust your judgement. What you see is filtered through your own reality and that reality has a significant bias.

[Gothmog]

463. Has Sanders changed his FEC filing to run as a Democrat for Senate in 2018?

Is Sanders even pretending to be a member of the Democratic Party? Sanders is now registered with the FEC as an independent for the 2018 Senate race. That is good evidence that Sanders never intended to be a part of the party. If Sanders really wanted to be welcomed to the party, then he might want to stay in the party for a while

The premise of the OP is about being part of a gathering of Democrats. You admit in your posts that Sanders did not run to be the nominee and that you do not care if the math showed that Sanders had no chance of being the nominee. That proves my point that Sanders' goal was not to become the nominee or to help the party (something addressed in the OP) but was to disrupt and hurt the party. Sanders succeeded in helping Trump win and that is very sad to me. You may approve of this result but again that is contrary to the premises stated in the OP.

Sanders admitted that he ran in the Democratic primary for money and publicity. http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/bernie-sanders-independent-media-coverage-220747

Bernie Sanders on Monday told NBC’s Chuck Todd that he ran as a Democrat to get more media coverage.

During a town hall-style event in Columbus, Ohio, the independent Vermont senator said, “In terms of media coverage, you have to run within the Democratic Party.” He then took a dig at MNSBC, telling Todd, the network “would not have me on his program” if he ran as an independent.

Money also played a role in his decision to run as a Democrat, Sanders added.

“To run as an independent, you need — you could be a billionaire," he said. "If you're a billionaire, you can do that. I'm not a billionaire. So the structure of American politics today is such that I thought the right ethic was to run within the Democratic Party.”

According to Sanders' own words, he was not really seeking the nomination but media coverage. Sanders succeeded in his goal and in the process hurt the Democratic Party in 2016.

The fact that you do not care that in the past other candidates running for the Democratic nomination were actual members of the party and cared about the Party is telling to me. Sanders campaign was not based on a good faith attempt to be the nominee but on a desire for media coverage. I am sad that Sanders told his followers about his chances of being the nominee and that these followers believed these misrepresentations. Those misrepresentations eventually helped trump win in 2016.

I am sorry if I hurt your feelings but your posts lack any facts to discuss. I am sad that many so-called Democrats are happy that the party lost in 2016. It is going to be a long four years under Trump and this could have been avoided.

I agree strongly with the OP.

[JCanete]

464. I would like to take a moment to praise you for actually responding to things I said in my post.

That had to have been hard.

Your sense of "helping" the party is not mine. Besides, the party's goals, supposedly, should be to help the American people. In my mind, helping the party become more progressive, which you actually have to admit Sander's influence did, given that you have actually vocally lamented it here, is GOOD.

The party's insistence on rejecting that message and holding out as long as possible... was BAD, and hurt the party.

Nothing you just said proves what you think it proves. I fully accept that that is your interpretation, but now you have mine.

I very much care about the democratic party, which means I care about its direction and what it fights for. In my opinion, our leadership didn't care enough about that. They did come around though, and Clinton did adopt Sanders policies as we've discussed, and I did get excited to vote for her, which I did. So when you say people are happy we lost, that ain't me.

[Gothmog]

465. Again your aversion to facts amuses me

If you care so much about the Democratic Party and its goals then you should be more upset at the fact that Sanders helped Trump win.

Again I suggest that you re-read the OP.

[JCanete]

466. My entrance into the conversation wasn't with the OP, so I'm not sure why that matters.

I disagree that Sanders helped Trump win. We can go round and round about that, but what you don't have is facts that prove it to be so any more than I have facts that disprove it. We both have evidence and our own interpretations of that evidence, and for that matter, our interpretations of the other person's evidence.

So, I thank you for the conversation where it has been one, and I'm sure we'll have more of them in the future.

[Gothmog]

471. Ignoring the facts will not change these facts

Closing your eyes to the facts presented is amusing to me. Your posts amuse me.

[JCanete]

480. there should be a drinking game associated with every time you say facts, amuse and wrong.

Tell you what, it seems important to you, so feel free to repost these snippets of wisdom one last time so that you can have the last word. I promise I'll let them stand.

[Gothmog]

490. Again, your feelings are meaningless

We could also do a game where you get a point if you ever use a fact in your post. So far your posts are fact free and I do not care about your feelings. In the real world your personal opinion and feelings are meaningless.

[Warren DeMontague]

476. What's a "desciple"

I cant stand that middlebrow network shit. Peddled to marginaly sentient people who think watching it means they're clever, while turning actual smart and aspergers-y folks into a hyuk hyuk laff riot. Derp.

But hey.. my mom likes it.

[lapucelle]

334. Sanders is the establishment as much as any other long term politician.

When the situation becomes so hopeless that one of your major surrogates has to apologize and leave the trail because he publicly characterized Democrats as "corporate whores" in a desperate bid to stoke voters, it's time to reevaluate exactly whose interests you are truly serving.

The biggest irony is that a Clinton win or a Democratic senate (or both) would have given Sanders a very powerful voice in the Senate and the progressive agenda he claims to have really been fighting for. All he has now is a title that was invented for him and the mistrust of his colleagues.

I wouldn't be surprised to see an actual Democrat run for Senate in Vermont in 2018. My money is on Howard Dean or this guy.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/06/meet-al-giordano-the-man-who-wants-to-take-bernie-down.html

[JCanete]

344. You have a fundamental misunderstanding about what establishment even means.

You don't get to really be part of the club if you don't "understand" how backscratching is supposed to work in politics. People certainly don't hand you a megaphone, and they don't actually want to work with you. He still had a vote, and that had to be courted, but that's typically the extent of your power when you're a lone voice in a wilderness. Your influence is made marginal.

Your assessment about what a Clinton win would have brought Sanders is not at all mine. I saw a concerted effort throughout the campaign to marginalize him, and to make him a peddler of unicorns and fairy dust(you know some of the stuff that eventually became a part of the Democratic platform), and then, a loser who couldn't let go. I have no reason to believe, without things being on paper, that any lip-service they might have paid him behind the scenes to get him to drop out would have come to fruition.

The DNC platform didn't get hammered out til right before the convention, and there is just about no reason to believe, given the signals sent up by the Democratic Establishment, that there was any intention to make concessions to Sanders until he pushed all the way to it. They could have done that earlier. They could have given him a win that proved that they weren't just disdainfully locking us out of the conversation, far earlier. They didn't think they had to.

The bottom line is first, I reject the silliness that Sanders contributed to Trump's win--that is almost totally the US media's to own-- but second, even if you insist on a corollary, then you should be looking at Clinton and the DNC for thinking they could turn their back and go about business as usual.

I guess wouldn't be surprised if the Democrats ran somebody against Sanders. Are you saying they want to give him payback for daring to challenge the chosen one? I would be equally unsurprised though, if he isn't challenged. His favorables are way too high, and it makes the DNC look petty and vindictive.

[lapucelle]

347. "The Establishment generally denotes a dominant group or elite that holds power

or authority in a nation or organization". Sounds like the senate to me. Even pretend iconoclasts can qualify if their actions belie their words.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/bernie-sanders-regular-luxurious-dscc-fundraising-retreats

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/09/bernie-sanders-loves-this-1-trillion-war-machine.html

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/4/16/1516075/-Sanders-are-still-profiting-from-Sierra-Blanca-nuclear-waste-dump-per-their-2014-tax-return

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/sep/22/fact-checking-viral-graphic-critical-bernie-sander/

[JCanete]

348. Well I just explained to you how he's not part of that inner circle of power. He is in the Senate.

he's not in the group.

And who the fuck cares anyway. If somebody is in the establishment railing against the way the establishment is doing business--because it is doing it shittily--I want that guy in there. Trying to shut somebody up or undercut his message by smirkingly saying ...hrrr hrrr hrrr, but you're part of the establishment...snark...is totally and intentionally missing the point.

[lapucelle]

349. Because I don't need you to explain things to me, I didn't read beyond your title.

And I've that if I put you on ignore, I won't have to read those either.

[JCanete]

350. Boggles the mind why you're on a discussion board at all. Why not just write shit in a journal and

then read it back to yourself and nod.

[Gothmog]

493. Coming from you that is so very very funny

Again, you may want to consider using facts

[JCanete]

495. hey, its Gothmog! You forgot to say that it's amusing to you...

Your contributions are not insightful, and it is clear at this point that they aren't rendered in good faith for the sake of actual discussion. You would rather characterize me and my posts than to actually address the content. It has nothing to do with your claimed reliance on facts. If facts were the issue, you'd just use them already to undercut my arguments rather than going off on marginally related tangents.

But what exactly is your goal here? Why was it important for you to reengage me in a pissing contest? Do you want to have the last vapid word in all of my posts, because I'll do a quick run-through and give you a list.

[Gothmog]

496. Again, there are no facts or real analysis in your post

I really do not care about your feelings or unsupported opinions. I found it amusing when you attacked another poster for expressing their opinion or feelings. Again, I come here for facts and not opinions that are unsupported by facts or analysis. Your attack on another poster for expressing their opinion amuses me

Thank you for the amusement.

[JCanete]

497. no, I commented on the other poster for posting on a discussion board and then, because that poster

didn't want to actually discuss, placing me on ignore. Your own attempts to use facts are ...wait for it...amusing to me.

And I'm getting the distinct feeling that you wouldn't pass the Turing Test, given the constraints of your responses.

[Gothmog]

498. Another silly but funny post

I live in the real world where facts and analysis are important. I use facts in my posts and do not rely on posts about my feelings or opinions not based on facts or analysis. Your posts rely on your unsubstantiated feelings about a subject and lack facts or analysis to back up your claims.

Lets look at what is considered to be a fact that supports an argument. Sanders had no chance of being the nominee and Sanders ran in the Democratic Primary solely for media coverage with no hope of winning. Sanders admitted that he was running for media coverage and money http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/bernie-sanders-independent-media-coverage-220747

Bernie Sanders on Monday told NBC’s Chuck Todd that he ran as a Democrat to get more media coverage.

During a town hall-style event in Columbus, Ohio, the independent Vermont senator said, “In terms of media coverage, you have to run within the Democratic Party.” He then took a dig at MNSBC, telling Todd, the network “would not have me on his program” if he ran as an independent.

Money also played a role in his decision to run as a Democrat, Sanders added.

“To run as an independent, you need — you could be a billionaire," he said. "If you're a billionaire, you can do that. I'm not a billionaire. So the structure of American politics today is such that I thought the right ethic was to run within the Democratic Party.”

If Sanders had been an actual member of the Democratic Party and cared about the Party, Sanders would have conceded after Super Tuesday. Sanders attacks on Clinton were responsible in part for Trump winning and for that I will not support Sanders or his supporter Keith Ellison

[Kuhl]

326. That doesn't really jive with reality...

An unnecessarily negative campaign would have made full use of the email scandal instead of pshawing it on a national stage.

The primary process treated her with kid gloves frankly which led to the disaster in November.

[lapucelle]

333. "The primary process treated her with kid gloves"

Excuse me a moment while I roll my eyes.

The disaster in November was the direct result of the BoBs, the FBI, the Tea Party, the alt-right, and an equivocating media treating Clinton with the same kid gloves.

The only people desperately spinning now are the BoBs and the narcissistic no shows who realize that they have been played and that they will have to live with the contempt of 65,000,000+ voters.

Now excuse me permanently while I put you on ignore.

Oh, and welcome to DU.

[Kuhl]

336. I'm just saying that she had every internal advantage possible...

... With all of her people in the key positions to support her.

She won the primary battle to lose the election war.

[Gothmog]

499. Clinton lost because Sanders entered the race with no expectation of being nominee

Sanders had no chance of being the nominee in that Jewish, African American and Latino voters rejected him. After Super Tuesday, Clinton had a delegate lead that Sanders would not be able to overcome. Sanders stayed in the race not to win but to hurt the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton. Sanders succeeded. http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=post&forum=1251&pid=2667852

[Kuhl]

503. She just as easily could have realized that Bernie still had power...

... And negotiated his exit and support much sooner.

[Gothmog]

504. Sander was the one who dragged out the negotiations

Sanders pushed very hard up to until the last minute before the convention. I was a delegate to the National Convention and the Clinton whipping infrastructure was warning delegates to expect up to five floor votes. Leticia van de Putte (the 2014 Democratic candidate for Lt. Governor) was co-chair of the Rules committee and she told me that they met until 2:30 AM on Sunday morning before the convention to deal with the super delegate issue.

Sanders was not interested in helping the Democratic party. Sanders ran for media coverage and Sanders hurt the Democratic party

[Kuhl]

505. He was interested in getting more of his views into the main party...

If that had happened and we had more of his people and less of Clintons with a negotiated agreement?

Maybe we'd have president Clinton now...

In any case, Bernie was under no obligation to quit and bow out. Hillary had a few swords hanging over her head and it was possible something campaign ending could have come out like an indictment or other large scandal.

Bernie owes it to his people to fight as long and hard as he can.

[Gothmog]

506. Sanders hurt the party and help elect Trump

I guess helping trump be elected is okay if you get your way

[Kuhl]

507. This is the old line...

... That no one should have dared to challenge Clinton at any point and if the entire party and the voters had just done as they were told everything would have been fine.

[Gothmog]

512. How do you explain Sanders own admissions that he only ran for media coverage

Sanders himself stated that he only ran for media coverage http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=post&forum=1251&pid=2670187 I would love to see a sanders supporter explain Sanders own statements

[Kuhl]

513. I'll amend...

He was in it to win (not very likely) or to have a significant influence on the party in the future.

Better?

[Gothmog]

514. Sanders was eliminated mathematically after Super Tuesday

After Sanders being soundly rejected by Jewish, African American and Latino voters, Sanders had no chance in the real world of being the nominee. Hillary Clinton's lead at this point was not going to be over come and Sanders stayed in the race anyway to get media attention.

Remember that at the end, Hillary Clinton had more than four times the lead in pledged delegates over Sanders compared to the lead in pledged delegates that President Obama had over Hillary Clinton in 2008. The way Hillary Clinton handled the situation was so much more classy and appropriate compared to Sanders antics.

In the real world math is important. Do you agree?

[Kuhl]

518. He still held a significant portion of the voting block in his hand...

If Hillary wanted it, she should have negotiated for it instead of pulling the usual 'wait out the storm'.

She didn't and this is what we get.

[Gothmog]

520. So you are proud of Sanders efforts to get Trump elected

[Kuhl]

521. I'm saying that it is unrealistic...

... To expect everyone to forego the primary process.

[Gothmog]

522. In the past people running were actual members of the Democratic Party and cared about the Party

Here Sanders was not really a part of the party and only ran in the party for media coverage. In the past, when a member of the Democratic Party who actually cared about the party found themselves behind by the number of pledged delegates that Sanders was after Super Tuesday, they conceded. Again these candidates were actual members of the Democratic Party and cared about the party. Sanders had no chance for the nomination and lied to his supporters when he claimed that had a chance. The result was that Sanders helped elect Trump.

It appears that you approve of this result. I do not

[JCanete]

536. yes! this is exactly what I've been saying! nt

[Gothmog]

534. Sanders tops list for most appearances on 2016 Sunday shows

Sanders used his media coverage to become by far the most frequent guest on the Sunday morning show circuit http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/sanders-top-list-for-most-appearances-on-2016-sunday-shows-846175811977 Sanders ran for media coverage and got it. To get such coverage, Sanders attacked the Democratic party and helped trump get elected

[Gothmog]

541. Clinton 2008 vs. Sanders 2016: A comparison of what happened when the campaign ends

Look this time line and you can see proof that Sanders was trying to hurt the party and give trump a victory http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-aftermath-20160609-snap-htmlstory.html The differences in how Clinton responded to losing and Sanders trying to hurt the party are amazing

[Gothmog]

494. No, The Systems Not Totally Rigged. But That Idea Sure Helped Donald Trump.

Sanders had no chance of being the nominee after Super Tuesday but continued his campaign which hurt Clinton. Here is a good example Sanders really hurt Clinton I am still mad at the number of times that trump used Sanders' claims against Clinton. Sanders' baseless charges that the system was fixed and rigged were used by trump to great effect and hurt Clinton http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rigged-system-donald-trump_us_5855cb44e4b08debb7898607?section=us_politics

And if Sanders’ rhetoric during the primaries started that stew simmering with his talk about the system only working for the rich, Trump brought it to a full boil with his remarks blaming undocumented immigrants and trade agreements that he claimed were forged as the result of open corruption.

I think he was able to thread a certain toxic needle. But he did win, and we’re all going to pay the price.
John Weaver, aide to Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s presidential campaign

The underlying irony for those who sought to end what they perceived as corruption is that they may well have elected a president whose record through the years and whose actions since the election signal it could be the most openly corrupt administration in generations.....

And if Sanders’ rhetoric during the primaries started that stew simmering with his talk about the system only working for the rich, Trump brought it to a full boil with his remarks blaming undocumented immigrants and trade agreements that he claimed were forged as the result of open corruption.

Sanders' bogus rigged process claim hurt a great deal

[George II]

331. He advanced a progressive agenda, but it was blocked at every turn by a republican congress.

[WilliamH1474]

41. Yep

I think that Obama was a once in a lifetime President. And I apologize if this offends the OP as that is not my intention. I just thing that the entire reason we have a postmortem is to dissect what went wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I voted Hillary and my state went for her but there were some serious problems that should be addressed. I think that to pretend like there were no problems is a disservice to the Democratic party and will only set us up for failure.

I have said this before and I will repeat it.

The FBI would have NEVER been an issue for her, had she used a State Department email account. Had she turned over the entire 60,000 emails to the FBI from day one on the condition that her private emails not be released, she would have never appeared to be hiding something. Had she taken the thing serious from day one, and not be flippant about the entire thing and she would not have been viewed as reckless or whatever else people said.

That was partially why when she was ill, and fell on Sept. 11 it became a huge deal. It again looked like she was lying about her health. She had the opportunity to get in front of that, and chose not to.

She chose to spend more time talking about Trump's negatives than her own message and vision for America. In my state all the ad's that ran were extremely negative.

There were a lot of mistakes and miscalculations made, but hindsight is also 20 20 and it's easy to Monday morning quarterback.

The Wikileaks emails played a part sure, but there was a reason Dumbf won. The lead in the popular vote is often cited, but the fact is that Hillary won CA by 4 Million votes. Dumbf won the rest of the country by 2 million votes. THAT is a major problem and glossing over it does not help us dissect the reason that we lost.

I just pray that we can figure out exactly what went wrong before 2020 because 2018 does not look pretty either and Mid terms never seem to registrar on the average person's radar.

I hope you all have a happy holidays!

[stevenleser]

76. The FBI would have been an issue if she had used a state dept email account

Because state.gov email is also not rated for anything classified.

The exact same security issues would have existed using the state.gov email as a private email server. Not secure for classified mail is not secure for classified mail.

You have to use the Siprnet email system to send information up to secret and JWICS for top secret.

Someone accidentally sending classified or secret or top secret level information to your state.gov email is exactly the same security issue as if it was sent to a private email server or Gmail for that matter.

I had a debate on this very issue on Sirius radio vs a former CIA agent and he was forced to acknowledge that I was right.

Unfortunately you and many other people bought into the nonsense Republicans and other folks with an anti-Hillary agenda fed you. This was all silly manufactured outrage. Errors like this with sending emails to non rated email systems happen all the time. It's only an issue this time because some folks wanted to manufacure an issue against Hillary.

[boston bean]

101. thank you for this. the BS people have fallen for and how the media covered this

is a travesty!

[Hekate]

140. Thank you Steven Leser

[WilliamH1474]

157. I guess we just see things differently

But that is OK, as a fellow Democrat I am always open to discussion and disagreement. I really appreciate your detailed response.

I think part of the problem is that there was classified content emailed in the first place. But has human's we all make mistakes and an email that was classified slipping through the cracks can be easily explained. However I think there were over 60 emails with classified information on them. Somewhere in there, you have to think logically and admit to yourself that someone was cutting corners

It's hard for me, because I really had no preference in either Bernie or Hillary because I liked a lot of both platforms, and hated everything the Repugs brought to the table.

I do take issue with you saying that I bought into some kind of Repug nonsense just because I don't think that everything went off without a hitch and there were no mistakes made. I was taught since a young age that part of making a mistake is learning from it, so that you do not repeat it. There will be no learning from these mistakes, and no correcting problems if we all just hold hands and pretend that she ran a perfect campaign, and that the only reason that we lost was because of Comey and some Russian bs.

I fear that there has been a lot of making excuses and not enough open and through analysis of why we have lost a total of 900 state legislature seats, 12 governors, 69 House seats, 13 Senate seat. Somewhere along the road, we have lost our grasp of the common man(or women) and been beaten by a racist group that used to be so hated, and reviled.

Again, this is just one man's opinion and I may be way off base. This is simply my take on this election.

Happy Holidays!

[pnwmom]

171. There WASN'T classified material "emailed in the first place." All the targeted emails

except two were retroactively classified. And those 2 were supposed to have been declassified -- each contained a stray "C" marking that was supposed to have been removed.

[stevenleser]

246. Well, I see it right according to the facts which are not in dispute. It's not opinion.

As some one else responded to you, the added insult here is that the items were not classified at the time of being sent but had their security classification changed later and should not have had their classifications changed.

The more you peel the onion, the worse this nonsense is. It's not opinion. It's a pathetic, poor excuse for a scandal that you and plenty of others bought into because you refused to do the most basic investigation. And as a result, someone who is a really terrible choice for President, who has made a lifetime of cheating people out of paying them for hard work and who has various other glaring issues, is going to take the oath of office in four weeks.

[pnwmom]

170. +1000. n/t

[karynnj]

270. Except, the classification issue might never have even erupted

If the State Department had all the emails, they would have given the Congress and media the emails that matched the requests. None of the emails that were classified dealt with that - most were about the drone program etc.

The real problem was that she was seen to be secretive and to being willing to not tell the entire truth if something is unpleasant. As the FBI concluded, there was no case to indict on the classified information. In terms of providing stuff to Congress and the media, it is not criminal law -- I believe the only recourse is to demand the department provide it.

The problem was not classification, it was the perception that she hid stuff and that resonated with her 1990s reputation. The problem was POLITICAL, not legal. It eroded her favorables and whether she was perceived as honest. (Yes, I know that score is stunning when Trump lies as easily as he speaks.)

[stevenleser]

283. Nope, they would have altered their manufactured argument, but the outrage would have been the same

Don't forget with whom we are dealing. Reality is no impediment to these folks.

[Kuhl]

327. Every time it came up, people ask why it existed in the first place..

[karynnj]

341. Not sure if you mean the why the server existed OR why there was a classification issue

If the server, there is a real likelihood that no one would ever have known if the SD got all the emails in a timely manner. The rules on office records, despite precedents where practice did not follow the rules, was that the emails should have been archived. In fact, had she done this she would have been CLOSER to the guidelines Obama set in 2014 (AFTER HRC) than any predecessor. So, had she doen that - either we never would have known anything about her server OR we would have known that it was not explicitly outlawed and that she took care to preserve, archive and have available in a timely fashion to the State Department her work email. (Key take away - it counters rather than reinforces the idea that she hides things and it means there would never have been the slowly changing story that fed the false idea that she was not honest.

If you ask why there was a classification issue -- it came when the State Department had to redact emails in full or in part before they put them all online. The FIRST person to ask that they all be put online was Clinton in an effort to defuse a negative story. This meant that many emails that never would have been made public were. It also meant that the State Department had to look at every line of every email and consider whether, added to what was at that point known and in conjunction with all the other emails, it should be classified to allow it to be redacted.

What you can see is that over 4 years in the department, where HRC would have originated and received classified material on a daily basis -- it clearly was sent over the classified networks. In fact, some "incriminating" emails where top aides wrote of trouble sending stuff over classified means - actually confirm that the practice was to use the classified systems for classified material.

One issue that totally got confused was that she substituted a NON CLASSIFIED private account for the NON CLASSIFIED state.gove account that she should have used. In EITHER case, classified information should not have been there. However, for any non classified account for someone working in national security, it is likely that some things that were not classified information might - because of things that happened in the up to 6 intervening years - might be sensitive enough that they would need to be classified before being put on a public website for all to see. (Consider that a minor player years ago in some country might now be a leader, who could be embarrased (or worse) by reports mentioning his opinions back in - say - 2009. )

My conjecture, and I am aware it is a CONJECTURE, is that if everything was archived and all the FOIA and Congressional inquiries were done starting back when HRC was Secretary -- there would have been no claims the Obama administration was stonewalling or hiding anything. Further, there would have probably been no issue of her email - or if there was one at all, it would have been minor and easily responded to.

[StevieM]

540. Excellent post. It is amazing how successfully Republicans spread misinformation.

Then again, we live in a country where Al Gore lost because he said that he went to Texas with the Director of FEMA and it turns out he really went with the Deputy Director of FEMA.

[JHan]

117. The Political Media lost its mind this year:

Whole year Clinton was dragged to the level of Trump. There was no distinction made between the candidates - emails were equated with all of Trump's horrors. Uncurated emails were scoured for scandal. Journalistic integrity in reporting leaks went through the window. As for Clinton's email scandal, on the face of it - to me- it was nonsense, and as the investigation wore on, it was confirmed that there was no there there. Comey, being Comey, interjected himself into his conclusions as FBI Director - no surprise as he's something of a zealot. It all added to more speculation and terrible journalism till ridiculous comparisons were made with Watergate.

And the pneumonia episode showed our terrible tendency to dehumanize politicians and there was the whiff of sexism.

Politicians get sick all the time. I don't need them to tell me when or how unless it's really really serious. Clinton did what many women do, (I do this) , which is to soldier on in the face of illness. It reached the level of absurd when there were calls for her to release her medical records - which none of us are entitled to, it was bad enough when Democrats asked for McCain to divulge his in 08.

The one good thing about 2016 is the reminder that grassroots activism is important, the Democratic Party has a great opportunity to truly distinguish itself as enlightened and forward thinking compared to the regressive world view and policies of Trump and the GOP.

[WilliamH1474]

161. I thank you for taking the time to write a great responce!

I think that Hillary had a lot going against her for sure, but I do think that somethings could have been handled a lot better.

I think one of the major problems in our country is the role of the media and how bad journalism has gotten. They no longer seem to care what the actual truth is, or what actually happened. Most media including stuff written by the left has become opinion pieces written as fact. There are very few in depth story's and very little digging and now it has become one place reporting on something, and the rest parroting the same thing with a slightly different spin on it just to stay relevant. I personally think that they should just report the news as the news, and let the viewer make up their mind about what was reported.

One personal thing I noticed was Hillary's reluctance to allow the media into the campaign, or to allow them to participate. Now this can be explained by the constant hounding from her day's as First Lady and the role the media played in Bill's impeachment but at some point she had to realize the affects of that.

By her doing stuff like roping off the media and not wanting to do any press conferences left her having to constantly defend against speculation, instead of being able to convey her message. I want you to imagine a different scenario for a second.

When she was feeling ill, instead of not telling the press and having a huge uproar about her health and so on what if she had instead dominated to conversation a different way. What if she had said "I am sick with pneumonia and not feeling great, but out of respect for the heroic citizens who died on this terrible day, I am going to be making an appearance anyways, because as a strong woman I can't take a day off and must soldier on!" The entire narrative would have changed and anyone questioning her dedication would be shown for what they are.

Dumbf dominated the airwaves because he was usually the only one who was speaking to the press (however disgusting the reason). If she had done the same, and used the media to broadcast her message a lot more people would have heard it. She could have spent the same time that she spent rebuking the deplorable to enhance her vision. She should have said "While my opponent said *insert deplorable thing here* I rebuke that and want to tell you that my plan is better because *xyz*

There were a lot of missed opportunity's one of which was spending so much time fund raising in private instead of doing rally's and talking to people directly. She came off as wanting to please the donor class and not give the people what they wanted which was an alternative to Dumbf.

Again this is just my opinion as uneducated as it may be. Happy Holidays everyone!

[JHan]

269. Happy Holidays, hope you're enjoying it to the max :)

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

43. Well said... Bernie's positive contributions to the Democratic platform cannot be overstated.

[baldguy]

184. Bernie's contributions to the Democratic platform are overstated every day.

The fact that in the end he chose NOT to join the party proves it.

[Gore1FL]

212. Perhaps if the Democrats acted like Democrats once in a while, he wouldn't have felt the need.

There was a time when we stood up for our values rather than cower and apologize because of them.

There was a time when Democrats didn't fundamentally buy into Reagonomics.

[baldguy]

216. The idea that there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans is a RW lie.

The most extreme idiots from deepest Trumpian Dumbfuckistan don't believe it. Why do you?

[Gore1FL]

251. When did I say that? Perhaps before lobbing insults you should reread my post for understanding.

And if you are confused about the "Reaganomics" observation and wish to dispute it, please include a list of Post-Mondale Democratic Presidents or Party Nominees who ran on change our tax rates to pre-Reagan levels in your reply.

[baldguy]

257. When you say "...if the Democrats acted like Democrats...", who are they acting like then?

Those are your words, and they have clear implications.You've bought into the RW lies & obviously don't support the Democratic Party.

Now you're trying to deny & deflect from those implications, which shows your contempt for people who oppose the fascism of the Republican Party.

Just accept the fact that you've exposed yourself & slink away.

[Gore1FL]

263. Cowering bullied school children is who they act like.

You seriously should try to act like a civil member of this board and work on not putting words in peoples's mouths.

I remember the 1970s when Democrats were Democrats. If you don't that may explain your confusion.

[baldguy]

265. You're not above a little bullying yourself, though, huh?

It's too late. You've exposed yourself. You can go away now.

[Gore1FL]

266. A few things

1> Demonstrate where I was a Bully.
2> Telling members of the progressive coalition to go away is part of the problem we had with the 2016 general election.
3> I've been here since 2001 and and a long-time DUer. So your assessment is laughable.
4> You are the one violating there board rules with pretty much every response.

I recommend you take deep breaths and perhaps find someone else's posts to not comprehend rather than tempt me to start alerting on your personal attacks.

Have a nice day.

[TonyPDX]

250. Perhaps the Democratic party should join HIM.

[Gore1FL]

267. Exactly. nt

[truebluegreen]

290. He "chose" to continue representing his constituents

as an independent, which is how he ran and was elected.

Quel horror!

[baldguy]

328. He couldn't do that as a real Democrat?

It's obvious your problem is with the Democratic Party, then.

[truebluegreen]

329. Can you read? He ran for Senator as an Independent,

he was elected by his constituents as an Independent, and he feels it is appropriate to continue representing them as the Independent they elected.

In what way does repeating what Bernie has said about his party status demonstrate "my" problem? That is idiotic.

[baldguy]

330. You seem to think there's something wrong with the Democratic Party

which has received the majority of votes in 6 of the last 7 Presidential contests (and there are questions about the 7th) and has the majority of people agree with them on the issues. The Party was good enough for Sanders to pop up at the front of the parade trying to take credit for it. But since the Party rejected him, like a petulant child he doesn't want anything to do with it.

And you seem to be supporting his disingenuous position. Therefore: your problem.

[truebluegreen]

338. I "seem"? Sanders "doesn't want"?

Who do you think you are, to speak for me, or Sanders, or anybody besides yourself?

I will say this though: you "seem" to think that winning the presidential election is the only one that matters and that "seems" to be a problem. Your problem.

Oh, and speaking of disingenous, I'm sure you would have preferred that Bernie run as a third-party candidate because that, of course, would have insured Hillary's victory, not only in the popular vote but also the Electoral College. Right? Right? Or would you have preferred that he just not run at all, because...why? Do tell.

[jack_krass]

73. +1

[Lil Missy]

149. She was right. Probably why he lost.

Not to mention he's not a Democrat.

[Exilednight]

220. If she was right, then she would have won the GE in a landslide.

[Lil Missy]

322. Being right and losing are not mutually exclusive.

She was right AND she lost. Nor would her being wrong mean Bernie would win.

[pnwmom]

169. It's nuts to say that electing the first woman President EVER didn't represent a sea change.

Hillary wouldn't have had a chance if she had run BOTH as the first woman President AND on Bernie's platform.

And only a man could present himself in that angry, know-it-all way that Bernie did. Any woman acting like Bernie would have been laughed off the Presidential stage.

[Exilednight]

221. Sea change was achieved in 2008. Polls have shown that younger peopole do not believe

her run to be historically significant. GenXers and younger know they will see a woman president in their lifetime. No one ever believed they would see a PoC elected.

[pnwmom]

222. Polls can't prove that electing Hillary wouldn't have represented a sea change.

All they show is that young people are taking too much for granted. Back in the 70's I would have been shocked if I'd known that, decades later, no woman had yet been elected -- and that a creep like DT would be elected over a woman as experienced, smart, and capable as Hillary.

And I would have as wrong as the young people today who are taking for granted they will see a woman elected in the near future -- or even in their lifetimes.

As far as Obama goes, he didn't get elected by promising a sea change in POLICY. That's why people here are constantly (and wrongly) accusing him of being too conservative.

[Exilednight]

232. Look back at his platform. It was to the left of Hillary's in '08.

Did his governing match his platform? Like anything else it's a mixed bag.

As far as a woman becoming president; it will happen within the next 20 years. My belief is that it will probably be Warren. She's popular among the Clinton and Sanders wing of the party.

[pnwmom]

236. It wasn't to the left of Hillary's in 2016. You can't say a woman will be elected

in the next 20 years. Not after what just happened this year. Twenty years from now we could be living under one party Republican rule -- especially with all the people like you who are taking progress for granted.

[Exilednight]

244. Yes his platform was. Especially in foreign policy.

I was a bit disappointed when he selected Clinton as SoS. Ironically, I think his years with Kerry as SoS are more aligned with his '08 platform.

A woman will be president within 20 years, probably less. That's providing that people like you do not view Hillary's loss as a setback, which based on your statement that you already do.

[pnwmom]

260. Of course Hillary's loss is a setback! A huge setback!

It sent the message to women everywhere that no matter how qualified or capable, a woman could lose to the worst man in the world.

[Exilednight]

268. That's not true.

Hillary was a qualified candidate, but she's not a capable campaigner.

[pnwmom]

276. Nonsense. She would have won if James Comey hadn't dropped his letter bombs.

The poll aggregators all show that her support dropped precipitously after the first bomb and never recovered, and that the "undecideds" broke for Trump. Hillary had no way to expect or plan for unprecedented and unethical interference from the FBI.

[Exilednight]

281. Could have, should have, would have.

What was Hillary's three to five word economic message?

[pnwmom]

288. Jobs, jobs, jobs. They analyzed her speeches and she talked about jobs

far more than anything else -- the media just didn't cover it.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/16/13972394/most-common-words-hillary-clinton-speech

[Exilednight]

299. That's not a message, it's a word.

A message is 3 to 5 word sentence that would sell a jobs program.

[SunSeeker]

14. K & R

[apcalc]

18. 100% agree

Spot on!

[iluvtennis]

33. + 100 nt

[bucolic_frolic]

19. Trump gets elected, we all suffer

our message was too complex

[BlueMTexpat]

21. That is one reason why

I am still adding people to my Ignore List.

I will continue to do so. Whatever they call themselves, I do not call them Democrats. F*ck them!

Hillary would indeed have made an outstanding President. Now we have a POS who for me will be NMP (Never My President) now and for always.

[liquid diamond]

313. If the purists

can't have it all, they will burn down the whole house. In their eyes: fuck minoroties, fuck gays, and fuck immigrants. Bernie wasn't their nominee, so they sat out the election. Reap it you sick fucks.

[BlueMTexpat]

392. If they were the only ones

to suffer, I wouldn't give one whit about them.

Unfortunately, their selfishness will hurt those who supported Hillary and can least afford to be hurt.

[LakeArenal]

22. I really blame us, the voters

I don't quite get how one day everything is coming up roses, then one fake news story about her being "ill" and bam, she drops 7 points. Then Trump does his usual deplorable stuff and bam, she's up 10 points, then Comey drops another fake issue and bam, she's down 12 points. WTF, people, how can you be so fickle. Why can't people see they are being manipulated. It's crazy. Also crazy, is everything the worst of the worst thought about Clinton was actually a characteristic of Trump. Jayzus! Jayzus Jayzus!

Happy Holiday folks. This is the first I have commented much since the election. It's still a raw nerve for me also...

[StevieM]

70. It really is insane that HRC falling ill was treated like a scandal. The media and the GOP

are truly disgraceful.

[Emilybemily]

23. Fuckin' A

I am goddamned sick of that too. That and the Bernie whiners.

[dionysus]

25. DU has always been like that, sadly. Whether or not you support hillary,bernie, dean,

Kerry, kucinch, even john Edwards, it wasn't hard to find examples of them being slagged. No matter who it is,seems dems are equal opportunity haters!

[MFM008]

26. Yup

X1000

[betsuni]

28. I'm fucking sick of it too.

I guess they think repeating garbage-lies over and over is going to work. Not here it doesn't. Idiots.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

30. What you said.

And thanks for saying it!

Wish there was something we could do about it.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

31. Bernie had the enthusiasm and it was squashed.

[Nonhlanhla]

36. Bernie got outvoted

Simple as that. His coalition was not broad enough.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

48. Uh huh. Sure.

[boston bean]

51. umm what are you doubting?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

53. Anyone who acts like we can't have what we want.

[boston bean]

122. what?

[George II]

38. How was it (truthfully) "squashed"?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

47. The most obvious was DWS denying him access to his own database.

[boston bean]

52. After his campaign illegally breached Hillary's database? oh, ok?

and for what a day or two?

[boston bean]

68. hahahaha.. oh gawd.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

69. Go back into the archives and see for yourself.

[boston bean]

71. no need. LOL

[Spitfire of ATJ]

72. Of course not. It would burst your bubble.

[boston bean]

74. It wouldn't be my bubble bursting. hahaha

[Spitfire of ATJ]

86. Remember THIS?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1280&pid=188058

[boston bean]

94. lmao!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

100. Obviously not.

[boston bean]

103. You want me to remember the time when bernie's campaign didn't illegally download his opponents

information?

I'm sorry, I will never believe anything but.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

105. That's because you are in a bubble.

[boston bean]

107. oh.. LOL

[Spitfire of ATJ]

109. It's why you lost.

[boston bean]

111. what's the reason?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

126. Believing reality is what you believe.

[murielm99]

136. Who lost?

What interesting wording. Bernie lost the primary, so you cannot be referring to him. YOU lost? Hillary lost the general, and you say YOU lost? What Democrat would use that wording? Who are you?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

143. Here we go with the "loyalty" crap again....

Face it. Hillary didn't mobilize our side.

[murielm99]

150. WHOSE SIDE?

Seriously, whose fucking side? She won by nearly 2.9 million votes, and she did not mobilize you? Oh, you poor dear. Hillary did not hold your little hand.

I still don't know whose fucking side you are yakking about.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

153. The arrogant side that STILL acts like Bernie supporters are the enemy.

[murielm99]

154. Then stop acting like an enemy.

Stop spewing lies about the data breach that Bernie's campaign exploited. Stop acting like a cult member and start acting like a Democrat. The election is over. We have work to do in order to survive the next four years, and to get on with our lives. Bleating about Bernie is childish and he is yesterday's news.

[think]

155. "Bernie Sanders Withdraws Lawsuit Against DNC After Being Proven Correct About Data Breach"

The independent investigation found that Sanders didn’t steal any data, had no access to the Clinton campaign’s strategy or data, and did nothing wrong.
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/04/29/bernie-sanders-withdraws-lawsuit-dnc-proven-correct-data-breach.html

[sweetloukillbot]

195. Except the story says the opposite

DNC Communications Director Luis Miranda said in a statement that the analysis confirmed the DNC’s initial findings, “The forensic analysis conducted by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike confirmed that the DNC’s initial findings, which were the basis of the temporary shutdown in December, were accurate. The audit confirmed that one campaign gained unauthorized access to the data of another, and the audit further confirmed that the results of those searches were saved within the system and that data was exported. Following the conclusion of the audit that confirmed the DNC’s original findings, the Sanders campaign withdrew its lawsuit.”

[think]

209. I quoted the article. You quoted the DNC's Luis Miranda. Miranda does not claim anything was stolen

or used improperly.

The final results were never made public. If there was any truth to the LIES that data was stolen and used improperly that report would be PUBLIC.

The final results of the investigation on Friday were not made public.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/278228-sanders-drops-lawsuit-against-dnc

[Spitfire of ATJ]

159. LOL!!! You STILL are going around claiming Bernie hacked Hillary!

[Coolest Ranger]

182. As long as you keep

attacking Hillary and her supporters you are the enemy. Sorry but that's the truth

[TonyPDX]

501. Thank you.

[NBachers]

172. You've got it backwards. The correct thing to say is: "Our side didn't mobilize for Hillary."

whoever your side happens to be.

[BainsBane]

384. There are two sides

Last edited Tue Dec 27, 2016, 01:53 PM - Edit history (1)

Hillary or Trump. Anyone who did not vote for Hillary put that racist thief Trump in power. That they pretend to be leftists is irrelevant. They stood with the White Supremacists against progressive policies they claimed to support. If they had actually supported those policies or given a shit about anything but their own egos, the decision to support Hillary would have been easy. You just admitted to not supporting Clinton, which means you made a false declaration in signing the TOS. It also means you decided that my life and those of every other non-white male in America is not important enough to get over your anger about the primary. That also required ignoring Bernie's calls to vote for Clinton.

I won't hazard a guess as to why the self absorbed chose fascism, racism, misogyny, and cleptocracy over progressive policies. All that matters is they did, and that decision reveals who they are. Fascism is as fascism does.

I have some sympathy for the undereducated Trump voters who were conned. I have nothing but contempt for those who chose to turn the country over to fascism and exact revenge on the poorest, most vulnerable Americans because their particular guy lost the primary by 3.8 million votes. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people who choose hatred over progressive policies would enable fascism. Trump, who himself is driven by vindictiveness, is the perfect reflection of their souls.

[fleabiscuit]

386. Awesome post. nt

[JustAnotherGen]

409. Plus 1 million

[think]

145. Thank you for posting this. I had missed it. /nt

[Spitfire of ATJ]

158. I can't believe there are STILL people that claim Bernie hacked Hillary....

That was debunked long ago.

It's like finding people who still believe Saddam was behind 9/11.

[sweetloukillbot]

196. You mean like the people who investigated the issue?

From your link:
DNC Communications Director Luis Miranda said in a statement that the analysis confirmed the DNC’s initial findings, “The forensic analysis conducted by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike confirmed that the DNC’s initial findings, which were the basis of the temporary shutdown in December, were accurate. The audit confirmed that one campaign gained unauthorized access to the data of another, and the audit further confirmed that the results of those searches were saved within the system and that data was exported. Following the conclusion of the audit that confirmed the DNC’s original findings, the Sanders campaign withdrew its lawsuit.”

[think]

213. That's the DNC's response. And he makes no claim anything was stolen or used improperly

And the DNC did not make the final report PUBLIC. If there was any truth to the bogus claims any data was stolen or misused this report would be PUBLIC.

The final results of the investigation on Friday were not made public.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/278228-sanders-drops-lawsuit-against-dnc

[BainsBane]

385. It was not

Logs of the searches were published.

Hacking isn't the most accurate term. There was a security breach of the DNC database, not caused by either campaign. During that breach, the Sanders campaign executed multiple searches of Clinton voter files. The logs of those searches have been made public.

So you're correct that his campaign didn't hack Clinton's files, but they did take advantage of a security breach to improperly access them. Sanders himself even admitted to improper behavior by a staffer in that incident.

That someone told you what you want to hear does not constitute debunking.
If I had a dime for every time someone claimed information they found inconvenient had been "debunked," I'd be rich enough to be in Trump's cabinet.

[George II]

332. A highly subjective "article" full of inaccuracies and glossed over details.

[George II]

373. Here you go, sir:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/dec/22/bernie-s/Sanders-take-Clinton-voter-data/

"On Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015, NGP VAN, the vendor that operates the system, released a software modification that had a bug. According to a lawsuit filed by the Sanders campaign, "several staff members of the campaign accessed and viewed confidential Information" that belonged to the Clinton campaign."

The logs of the Sanders' access were released:

"These logs show Sanders people spent a bit under two hours in the data. During that time, they called up information from about a dozen states."

There were FOUR people accessing the database, with each spending roughly 2 hours, totaling close to EIGHT hours of access, not one.

These are documented facts. The ONLY reason the DNC shut down the Sanders' campaign access (for about two days) was because they accessed data they weren't authorized to access and the DNC wanted to make sure they could no longer do so.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

57. Yes, that definitely stuck in my craw.

[boston bean]

60. his campaign workers breach into her database really stuck in my craw.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

77. Yeah, that was a stupid move, I'll give you that one...

but, mild in comparison to what Bernie's campaign had to deal with. But, hey, that's water under the bridge... we now need to unite like never before.

Bernie is already shining the light of truth against that racist pig tRump that shows us the way out of this disgusting mess. And, if another progressive leader steps forward, than it's another win-win for democracy.

As long as we don't repeat the same mistakes as this last go round, we'll defeat Furher tRump handily in 4 years.

[boston bean]

78. Bernie didn't have the class to concede to the first woman democratic nominee in our nations history

I don't think i will ever forgive him for that.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

90. Bernie conceded when it was clear there was no realistic path to victory... it may not have been soon enough for your liking, but then Hillary didn't quickly concede to Obama either.

[boston bean]

91. point me to the concession speech. you have a link to that?

[Gothmog]

364. Your analysis is wrong

Clinton's delegate lead after Super Tuesday was so great that Sanders had no chance of being the nominee. Sanders had little support from Jewish, African American and Latino voters who are key groups in the Democratic base. After Super Tuesday, Sanders had no chance of being the nominee and as far as I am concerned Sander misled his supporters when he claimed that he could win.

At the end, Hillary Clinton had more than four times the lead in pledged delegates over sanders compared to the lead that President Obama had over Hillary Clinton in 2008. Clinton immediately conceded and worked from after the Calif. primary to the general election. Sanders held out hope to his supporters that he could still win until just before the convention.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

371. OMFG!! Why don't we just hang Bernie!! And let's mock and denigrate him AND his supporters EVERY chance we get, so we guaran-damn-tee ourselves the Dems NEVER win anotha election!

Yeahhh, that's a GREAT idea!!! Wooohooo!!

[Gothmog]

399. If Sanders was the nominee he would have been destroyed in the general election

Trump had an oppo book on Sanders that was two feet thick. http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-election-521044

They ignored the fact that Sanders had not yet faced a real campaign against him. Clinton was in the delicate position of dealing with a large portion of voters who treated Sanders more like the Messiah than just another candidate. She was playing the long game—attacking Sanders strongly enough to win, but gently enough to avoid alienating his supporters. Given her overwhelming support from communities of color—for example, about 70 percent of African-American voters cast their ballot for her—Clinton had a firewall that would be difficult for Sanders to breach....

So what would have happened when Sanders hit a real opponent, someone who did not care about alienating the young college voters in his base? I have seen the opposition book assembled by Republicans for Sanders, and it was brutal. The Republicans would have torn him apart. And while Sanders supporters might delude themselves into believing that they could have defended him against all of this, there is a name for politicians who play defense all the time: losers....

The Republicans had at least four other damning Sanders videos (I don’t know what they showed), and the opposition research folder was almost 2-feet thick. (The section calling him a communist with connections to Castro alone would have cost him Florida.) In other words, the belief that Sanders would have walked into the White House based on polls taken before anyone really attacked him is a delusion built on a scaffolding of political ignorance.

Trump would have destroyed Sanders in the general election

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

402. No way, no how... just the opposite! Bernie would've carved that Nazi racist pig up like a Hawaiian luau!!

[Gothmog]

403. Sanders was a very weak general election candidate who would have been destroyed in the general

Sanders was never attacked by the Clinton campaign in the primary but there was a ton of good material that could have been used. Sanders was allowed to coast through the primary process with no vetting because no one believed that he was going to be the nominee. Sanders would have been destroyed in the general election.

[George II]

189. What stuck in my craw was the Sanders campaign hacking into the DNC database.....

.....and then acting like it was THEIR fault!

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

225. Yes, I already responded to that legitimate complaint above and, agreed, that was bad form...

But, maybe Bernie was on to other shenanigans the DNC was perpetrating on his campaign and wanted it exposed... just a theory, but, no excuse for hacking of anyone, by anyone.

I think we can ALL agree on that!

[George II]

99. You do know why that happened, right?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

104. I'm sure you have the version with the vapors.

[George II]

190. I have the version that the Sanders campaign confessed to doing. You?

[Coolest Ranger]

180. Enough of this

Bernie is not a democrat. He's an independent. 2, he never took black folks into consideration had he did that and listened to us and worked with us he would have made out a lot better so stop it with this nonsense.

3. You want to impress us, start winning races locally. Run in everything you can get your hands on. Then move up. Then start catering to voters like me. You can do that then I might start to take a look at you guys seriously.

[Uponthegears]

201. Voters like you?

I'm wondering just who you place in that category.

I am black. I grew up in a neighborhood that NO white politician visited during the last election, nor ever visited before. I am in my mid-60s now, a graduate of NYU Law, and for over 30 years have represented primarily young black males and the surviving families of young black males sacrificed on the altar of making white folks "feel safe." I have been involved in liberation both here and other places in the world since I moved to the Bay area at age 18 and in politics since voting for McGovern in 1972.

What makes you think you get to talk for me?

Do people like me not qualify as "black folks?" I mean, I can accept that if that's YOUR definition. I am an economic socialist, I admit. I believe that fight for equality starts, not ends, with $60 trillion of reparations. I believe we have a right to use force to defend ourselves when threatened. I believe that the Michael Browns of this country deserve our loyalty every bit as much as their parents. Do I need to go on? In short, I may not be, and I may not fight for, the type of "black folks" you want white people to think about when you throw out that term. That's fine. I live in white-dominated world, too. I understand why you might not want to stand with someone it sees as "radical".

What I don't understand is how you exclude people like Rev. Middlebrooks. Does that name mean anything to you? He was sitting in the Lorraine Motel when Dr. King was murdered. He's worked for our community for over a half a century. If you want to know more, you need only read. His life isn't "tainted" by "radicalism."

He campaigned for Senator Sanders during the primary, just like I did, and he campaigned in the South, just like I did.

Did our voices not "count" when we, directly (for Rev. Middlebrooks) or indirectly (me) were "listened to" by Sanders? Does it not count when our concerns were addressed? (Example, do you remember when Hillary supporters accused Sanders of being racist for talking about young people in poor neighborhoods hanging around on street corners with no education and no jobs? Now those young people may not be representative of our community, or for that matter, even our poor communities, but they are still there and they f'n count).

I have zero issue with those who say Hillary won the black vote during the primaries because she has spent years, decades in fact, talking to politically-involved people of color, going into their communities and their churches and being vocal about their concerns. She deserves a tremendous amount of praise for doing that when very few national politicians have.

HOWEVER, saying that Hillary did things that very few white politician have, which she did, is not the same as the utter tripe spread by people like you about Sanders not caring about or listening to people of color.

That's pure garbage.

[Coolest Ranger]

207. and what

makes all of you think you can talk for me. What is garbage are responses like this I keep getting.

[Uponthegears]

218. Tripe

I talked for myself and for a person I talk to on a regular basis. YOU talked for "black folks" and about "black people's concerns".

Don't project your behavior on me.

After the primary I worked hard for Hillary because I know what she would have meant for us and how that psychopath Trump would hurt us. Even though she has baggage in the segment of our community I work with, I never said one word about it even during the primary and neither did Sanders. In contrast, Hillary's supporters spun every thing Sanders said into some sign of special (because all white people are almost necessarily racist) racial insensitivity. It was crap then. It's crap now.

Hillary deserved the support she got from the black community because she worked for it, NOT because of the slander you keep spreading about Sanders.

[Coolest Ranger]

181. Excuse me

but the DNC database does not belong to him. He should have been building his own database. I know I got called by the Bernie campaign begging for my vote during the priamary

[Gothmog]

363. That was after Sanders campaign accessed confidential Clinton files

[obliviously]

133. Liniment, Bengay, hotwater bottle

We win with vibrant young, Bill Clinton Obama etc(well shame we stopped before etc.)

[Hekate]

142. WTH are you getting at? Bernie's a crotchety grandpa with a stoop, but I wouldn't ask if he ...

....uses liniment.

[obliviously]

144. What do our last two winners have in common

Relative youth, stamina...

[Hekate]

146. Trump looks and acts old, so does Sanders. The youngest of the 3 is Hillary....

....and she also looks the most vigorous, has the quickest most agile mind, and the broadest background in government and world affairs.

[Coolest Ranger]

179. Yea

but Bernie did not win the primary and please let's stop rehashing the primary this is why so many of us are sick of this.

[George II]

37. More than personally saddened, I'm saddened for our country. All the millions of Americans....

....over the last 240 years who sacrificed everything to make this country what it was, sometimes I think it has all been taken away from them and us.

[boston bean]

42. I hear you George.

[bowens43]

39. she lost against the worst candidate ever to run for the office. enough said

if you dare speak the truth about hillary here you violate the rules.... so enough said.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

46. I have a feeling Bernie will get his shot to dethrone the Furher-Elect and fully expect Hillary's supporters to pledge their allegiance when the shoe is on the other foot.

Bernie & Elizabeth 2020!!!

[sheshe2]

102. Not.

[obliviously]

138. Okay got it

Jerky could not beat pemmican so let's run jerky again.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

141. By that logic, you must be saying pemmican should not have run this time... okay, got it!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

151. Bernie is 74, so I doubt he'll run again.

I'd love it if Warren did, though.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

228. No need for ageism... besides 70's is the new 50's.

Bernie has the energy and stamina of a person decades younger. You certainly didn't see him falter on the campaign trail, during a grueling schedule that easily would have tired most politicians his age. He stood his ground and showed ZERO signs of slowing down. The phrase "healthy as an ox" comes to mind.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

229. It's not ageism. I'm old, too, and as such

I'll be the first in line to smack down comments that diss us old people. Bernie seems to be in great shape, but the reality is that in four years he'll be 78. Maybe he'll still be in great shape by then, but the reality is that the wheels do start wobbling when you hit your '70s. The more important thing, though, is the public perception that a 78-year-old candidate is just too old for what is an extremely stressful job. I'll bet you kroner to krugerrands that there are a lot of people (including party PTB) that simply would not vote for a candidate on that basis.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

234. So, using that logic, you could also argue we should elect only young, straight, white males to be our candidate, to avoid ageistic, homophobic, racist, mysogynistic bigots from voting against em...

makes no sense to me. If Bernie is still spry into his 70's, awesome, I say let's run him. If he's truly showing signs of wear - or, if a 50-year-old potential candidate is also not in good health - sure, let's turn to someone else who is better off health-wise.

Make sense?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

237. Whatever. The reality is that it's doubtful that a 78-year-old candidate would get elected.

Call it what you want. Your argument is ridiculous because it's already been proven that a black candidate can win the presidency, and that a female candidate could have, having won the popular vote.

It's also fairly doubtful that a 78-year-old (who would be 82 at the end of their term, if they made it that far) would even want to do it. Again, speaking as an old person, you get to a point where you just want to sit back and enjoy the time you have left. And "let's run him" assumes that "we" can just turn a key in his back like some kind of wind-up toy and send him out there, whether he wants to do it or the party wants him to do it.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

238. Okay TVO, again, using the logic of your argument, let's prove the bigots wrong again and run a 78-year-old candidate and get him elected... I love it!

Bernie & Elizabeth 2020!!!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

242. Not gonna happen, but you can dream on.

I like Bernie, too, but he will not run in 2020. Bet on it. There are others who can pick up where he left off.

[leftofcool]

185. Will he be running 3rd party?

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

227. Why would Bernie do that? That's silly! He's demonstrably shown his allegiance to the Democratic Party, while, at the same time, adeptly attracting independents...

... we get the best of both worlds!!

[StevieM]

539. Well I would never "pledge my allegiance" to a candidate but if he is the nominee I will

vote for him.

I agree that his age is not an obstacle to him running again.

I will probably back Elizabeth Warren in 2020.

BTW how do you get so many words into your reply title line?

[WilliamH1474]

164. Sadly you are right.

Anything less than a glowing review seems to be taken as heresy. I hope people start listening to the opinions of others and be willing to listen to some criticism. Otherwise we will be running a weak ticket in 2020

[JudyM]

256. Schumer (at least) seems to have gotten the memo. Welcome to DU, WilliamH1474!

[lapucelle]

352. Schumer's a smart politician.

Make up a title and bestow it on Sanders in front of the press. Freeze him out on the inside. Run a real Democrat like Dean or Giordano in Vermont in 2018. Let the 78 year old independent retire gracefully or face questions about Lockheed Martin, Sierra Blanca, and/or those missing tax returns.

Schumer is a tough New York politico. He didn't have to run away to Whitelandia or sell his soul to the NRA to win an election. The payback will be rough.

[BeyondGeography]

176. Yup

and yup.

[m-lekktor]

219. exactly. + 1000

and she couldn't even face her supporters election night at the Jacob Javitz Center, she sent Podesta.

[lapucelle]

393. Her supporters? What an odd choice of words.

How peculiar that that you refer to Democrats as if they comprise a group you're not part of.

I was at the Javits Center that night. Nobody expected Hillary to come out and speak.

It's unfathomable to me why any Democrat would gloat over the heartbreak in midtown that night.

[JudyM]

255. While the written DU rule against bashing Sanders is violated continually.

Some folks don't follow rules that are in the best interest of the party.

[Charles Bukowski]

278. Bernie lost... no scratch that... got his ass kicked

That's the only truth here.

[Paladin]

40. Amen, +1000.

I had a belly-full of the Hillary-bashing around this place, some time ago. I know that everybody is stunned and sickened by trump's "victory." But enough is enough.

[humbled_opinion]

45. I feel you but

Bernie did not have the baggage that she did, Bernie did have a movement and enthusiasm that she didn't. No one believed that idiot Trump ever had a chance because we believed that Americans would see through his B.S. and eventually get tired of it at least that is what I thought, and I was content with her after her convention speech and I agree she was very progressive, and she would have made an excellent President. Important thing is to learn from this so next time during our primaries there can be no dismissing those that bring valid arguments about why one candidate would be better to run than another, we must resolve to never forget the lessons from this election.

[boston bean]

49. Bernie lost the primaries by nearly 3.5M votes. Can we please stop with this.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

50. Bernie had so much going for him and, yes, got shot down... fair or not, we had to accept it.

But now it's Bernie's turn to take his rightful place in the spotlight and show the world what he can do in battling that racist pig tRump.

Bernie & Elizabeth 2020!!!

[boston bean]

54. you are going to be a very disappointed person. I'll leave it at that.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

63. Maybe, maybe not... but, couldn't be MORE disappointed than losing to the most despicable presidential candidate to EVER run for office.

Bernie will not go away quietly... nor should he... he's earned the right to get his turn at bat.

[boston bean]

65. Bernie will be irrelevant as soon as his book tour is over. Count on that.

Listen, I don't hate him.

I am pissed at him for not conceding... really EVER.

And I am pissed at him for not helping his supporters support the dem nominee.

He lost by millions of votes. Time to move on into reality and understand what happened during this election, not some sour grapes about having lost a primary.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

83. How can you say that Bernie never conceded and supported Hillary BB?

That is simply untrue and, perhaps, upon further reflection, when the wounds of this recent battle have healed, you'll see things in a different (more objective) light.

[boston bean]

85. can you point to his concession speech?

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

96. I distinctly remember hearing it, as it was bitterly disappointing to say the least...

but, we had no choice but to accept the results of the primary and support the ultimate winner... I don't think Bernie could have campaigned any harder for Hillary.

[boston bean]

97. provide the link and I will consider I am wrong.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

108. Here's the money quote from one of several of Bernie's concession speeches:

"Secretary Clinton has won the Democratic nominating process, and I congratulate her for that. She will be the Democratic nominee for president and I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States."

Bernie could not have been any more explicit in acknowledging Hillary's victory and pledging to campaign hard in trying to help get her elected President.

[boston bean]

110. Prior to the convention, please.

[PatsFan87]

112. Oh lord.

"Listen, I don't hate him." - Mhm. Sure you don't.

And if we are going to talk about relevancy, Bernie will be a senator, the face of the progressive movement, and in charge of outreach for the party while Hillary will be sitting in her living room in Chappaqua. It seems a tad hypocritical to me that you're willing to bash Bernie but others are not allowed to bash Hillary. Perhaps model the behavior you'd like to see on here.

[WilliamH1474]

168. After doing a lot of reading on this thread.

The Op seems to not want to hear anything but an echo chamber of how amazing Hillary was.

I think this is very symptomatic of the entire election on our side. I have stated before in this thread that I had no real preference between the two just a strong hatred of Dumbf. There were a lot I liked in both.


BUT the OP has decided to ignore the proven evidence that the primary was less than fair. I will list 5 instances that come to mind.

1: The debate scheduling. I don't think anyone can argue that the debates were scheduled to be on nights where the viewership was known to be low. It later came out that Brazile leaked 2 debate questions to the Clinton camp so Hillary would be prepared for the question. As many of you know Brazile was later asked to resign over this at CNN. She never actually apologize. (Yes I know stolen emails and so on but the fact is that it happened and never should have)

2: The Co- Location of Hillary offices at DNC offices in Nevada. There was not even an attempt to hide what was going on there.

3: The voter access that has been discussed.

4: DNC finance chair was caught fundraising for Hillary. Henry R. Muñoz III was caught fundraising in San Antonio in direct violation of "The Chairperson shall be responsible for ensuring that the national officers and staff of the Democratic National Committee maintain impartiality and even-handedness during the Democratic Party Presidential nominating process.”

5:Lining up super delegates before the August debate even started the Clinton camp announced that they had lined up 1 fifth of the Super delegates.

I just find the entire thing leaving a bad taste in my mouth, And I think it is a lot harder for Bernie supporters to admit defeat when they were killed by "friendly" fire before the war even started.

Blaming them is not going to get you anywhere, just less democrats wanting to support you next time.

Just my .2 Happy Holidays

[duhneece]

214. Hillary did much over the past 40 years to support the Dem organization structure, without which NO

Hillary did much over the past 40 years to support the Dem organization structure, without which NO Dem would have ever been elected. The building and supporting of an organization (any organization) can be boring, difficult work collaborating and negotiating with others. It is as if a person joined the military, spent one year providing great ideas...then wanted a full pension, while others spend 20 or 40 years in that organization earning a pension.

[StevieM]

80. Had Sanders or O'Malley been the Democratic nominee we would have learned that they are

awful human beings. The GOP would have had made up scandals waiting for them and they would have sold them very effectively. There may have even been a bogus FBI investigation.

We will never know whether they could have managed to live their fake scandals down.

In 2004, had Wes Clark been the nominee, the Swift Boat Veterans would have shown up just the same, just in a different form and with a different set of lies.

[stevenleser]

92. With Sanders they wouldn't have had to do much. 50% of the country consistently

Polls that they will not vote for a socialist.

[TonyPDX]

249. May I borrow your crystal ball, please?

[stevenleser]

253. No crystal ball is needed. Hillary crushed Bernie in Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania

and the rest of the south. Assuming Bernie loses all those states since Hillary lost all of them to Trump except Virginia which she won narrowly is a pretty solid bet. And that being the case Trump would have had over 270 EVs against Sanders as well even if we give Sanders Wisconsin and Michigan.

The problem for Bernie beyond that is, if you increase the states for which you have no way of contesting in the general election, as Bernie would have done, it allows your opponent to reallocate money and time and other effort to the remaining contested states. Bernie has no way of contesting the south, Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania. You have to have massive support and enthusiasm among the African American community and Latinos to contest those states against the GOP and the lack of enthusiasm for Bernie among those demographics is why Hillary crushed him in those states.

No crystal ball is needed. Sanders starts off conceding over 270 EVs to Trump.

[LonePirate]

55. Hillary is only criticized here by the BoBs who hate her more than PEOTUS because she beat their god

[LaydeeBug]

62. yep.

[YoungDemCA]

226. I wasn't a Bernie supporter in the primaries and I have plenty of criticism for Hillary.

So no, try again.

[Crunchy Frog]

310. No.

Very critical of Hillary. Never a Bernie supporter.

[Larkspur]

509. I'm a feminist who voted for Bernie

Bernie Bro name calling is male chauvinism by another name.

[LaydeeBug]

58. they will NOT let the primaries go!

[truebluegreen]

291. They?

[LaydeeBug]

292. yep

[truebluegreen]

293. Pot, meet kettle

Or, why is this whole thread even here?

[LaydeeBug]

296. Not at all...

and this thread is here because the Poster decided to post it. It has responses from people who agree and disagree and why, in some cases.

[truebluegreen]

297. That's my point.

Both sides are doing it.

[KamaAina]

64. It's not a question of Bernie being better.

It's about her blowing what should have been a Reagan-style landslide.

[RBInMaine]

79. No one dislikes Clinton, and there were many factors. But to do an honest and complete analysis ALL

factors have to be put on the table including the mistakes she as the candidate made herself. In fact her team has acknowledged mistakes. So please, thicken up the skin a little bit here. This is politics and it is TOUGH business and SHOULD be.

[ananda]

82. Agree.

The Reeps, in collusion with Russia, stole
this election -- criminally and traitorously.

Clinton ran a fine campaign, nothing less.

[boston bean]

87. + a million ananda!

[NobodyHere]

88. If you don't like Hilary criticism

The I hope you never read the GD: P forum.

[boston bean]

98. I don't mind truthful examination of facts. What we are seeing is a

some sort of illusion of what might have happened if, based in no reality whatsoever!

[Guilded Lilly]

89. I'm with you boston bean...

especially the "I am so god damn sick of it" part.

[stevenleser]

93. Yep, plus one million. nt

[sheshe2]

106. Go Boston!

[Jakes Progress]

113. All those

are just excused that some are throwing out to deflect their own sense of guilt. Helping elect trump is a big wad of shame to deal with for the next four years.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

205. Yup

[TreasonousBastard]

114. I'm not seeing her constantly criticized...

What I am seeing is a few malcontents constantly refighting the primary and picking apart the election to make it look like her fault. Here we go again with a replay of Obama's first run, but he won the general so the losers had nothing to whine about.

We got screwed in a million ways, and many are being hashed out in hindsight, with some Bernistas not able to shut up about their pet theories for the loss.

This sucks in ways we haven't seen yet, but the point is not to refight this election-- it is to get rid of Trump. If he doesn't run himself out of office, we have 3 years to make his life miserable and another year to drive his re-election into the ground.

[boston bean]

119. I am.

[HassleCat]

120. Most are refraining from criticizing Hillary.

She happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was a pretty good candidate, an excellent candidate on paper, and probably our best choice. Maybe Bernie would have done better, but it's not Hillary's fault she won the primaries.

It is not criticizing Hillary when we speculate that Bernie could have beat Trump. It's not bashing Hillary to discuss some of the problems she had. We have never found a perfect candidate, and it doesn't seem unfair to talk about why we lost, even if that includes some discussion about the candidate's shortcomings.

[jimlup]

121. I agree that it is wrong to criticize Hillary for not being progressive enough etc. but...

it would be a disservice not to address the establishment issue. Which, like it or not, is an issue. We need to learn from this not bury our heads in the sand and say la la la la and think everything is OK because it isn't.

Hillary lost because she couldn't hold the Obama coalition. We need to figure out why and in one word I would say it was the "establishment" factor.

[boston bean]

123. Obama's establishment?

[jimlup]

125. Hillary isn't

Obama. Unfortunately, Obama wasn't running.

Don't get me wrong. It isn't a trivial thing but people didn't buy what Hillary (not Obama who would likely have been re-elected had he been eligible to run) was selling. Why not?

[boston bean]

128. Umm. Think about it.

[jimlup]

130. Think well!

Because we MUST answer the question because we have to be ready for 2018 and 2020 and if we try the same establishment entitlement stuff it won't work.

[Coolest Ranger]

175. enough

with the establishment crap. Not everyone in the party is hard left and if you want to earn our respect and support get people elected locally first before you start demanding that we all bow down to you

[jimlup]

194. That is pretty funny

"hard left" you folks really don't get it do you? Earn your "respect"

[Coolest Ranger]

208. Yes

this is why no one listens to you because you dismiss folks like us and I don't have to put up with your mess.

[jimlup]

211. We don't

dismiss you? ... you dismiss us and have for years (actually all of the decades I've been alive at least.)

Now we have an emergency. Your position of privileged entitlement has vanished. We can go with the same old same old and lose or we could try and understand what is happening...

dismiss us at your own continued peril.

[DownriverDem]

131. Totally agree with you BB

25 years of RWNJ hate with total talk radio domination propagandized way too many folks.

[obliviously]

132. pro·gres·sive

prəˈɡresiv/
adjective
1.
happening or developing gradually or in stages; proceeding step by step.
"a progressive decline in popularity"


Time to redefine parameters.

[Cha]

139. Thank you, boston! You know I love her.

It killed me coming to this place during President Obama's years and seeing all the hate.

Well, now it's over..



Happy Christmas~

[Tatiana]

147. She lost. That's why you see criticism.

That is not to say that she wouldn't have been the most progressive President of my lifetime, but she lost an election that should have been won and would have been won despite the obstacles if better decision making had been utilized.

We're not robots; we're human beings with our own thoughts and opinions. An analysis is warranted so that we can take steps to ensure this nightmare isn't repeated in the future.

[OnionPatch]

240. That's it, exactly.

It's not that I don't agree with many points in the OP but the truth is we lost. And IMO, there were more reasons for that than just those listed. Our party will get nowhere by claiming nothing was the fault of our candidate or the campaign. We find ourselves in the political crisis of our lifetimes. Analysis is needed, dogged and brutal analysis.

[Crunchy Frog]

312. Yes. Thank you.

[fleabiscuit]

148. You are far from alone. nt

[RazBerryBeret]

156. I've read a hundred posts like this....

big question is...
Whatcha gonna do about it?

[Liberal_in_LA]

160. Thank you

[McCamy Taylor]

162. Divide and Conquer---the oldest GOP game in town.

Solidarity!

[JCanete]

166. People on both sides are passionate about their candidates. You have been perfectly willing to fan

the flames from the other side of this divide. I'm not exactly sure why you're surprised, but then that's typical of most of us here, that we only hear the insults and inflammatory comments that are directed at our candidate of choice. Your very OP is proof of that because it acts like those things you are mentioning happened in a vacuum, like there aren't posts that pop up saying why Bernie would have lost the election, or why he's shitty for one reason or another.

Maybe, I don't know....stop being part of the problem, and we can come together to shame those kinds of baiting OP's.

[NBachers]

173. They still don't realize what they've thrown away, Boston Bean, or the terror they've unleashed.

[barbtries]

178. i'm sick of it too.

if she had a fatal flaw, it was the decades of propaganda and hate pushing that found its mark. who's never made a mistake? at the end of the day, Hillary has been a public servant for most of her life in a way that most republicans if not all will never be. so much Hillary hate. even though i supported Bernie until it was mathematically impossible for him to win, i then supported Hillary with gusto and went so far as to beg people to vote for her.
she should have won.

[Gothmog]

183. Great OP

[SidDithers]

186. DU rec...nt

Sid

[Littlered9560]

187. I couldn't agree more.

[democratisphere]

193. Agreed on all points.

Not enough Democrats in key States got out to vote for HRC. HRC would have been a game changing President for the good. Instead, we now have drumpf. We Democrats have no one to blame but ourselves.

[baldguy]

204. Part of the problem - as seen in the responses to this thread

Is that we have too many people here who aren't Democrats, and who want to see the Democratic Party fail. Like Trump supporters, they see Clinton's lack of success in spite of winning the popular vote as a good thing for Democracy. Such delusions are a requirement for them to maintain their world view.

[Coolest Ranger]

210. Agreed Baldguy

They are so obvious to spot. Especially when they start with the insults or start laughing at you. I have no interest in talking to people who don't respect us

[La Lioness Priyanka]

235. So fucking true

[jack_krass]

261. So fucking untrue....

Voicing an opinion that HRC was a flawed canididate does NOT, I repeat NOT NOT NOT mean you "aren't a Democrat", as many in this place would have us believe.

In fact, Bernie Sanders holds positions closer to traditional Democratic ideals than HRC.

[baldguy]

264. Critcizing Clinton doesn't mark one out as not being a real Democrat.

What does mark one out is continuing to repeat the RW lies that she was somehow too flawed, or too unpopular, or too untrustworthy.

And the one thing Sanders could do to SHOW he supports traditional Democratic values is the actually join the fucking party! He has repeatedly refused to do so.

[truebluegreen]

294. QED

[hollowdweller]

217. Looking at this forum I don't see that many threads knocking her.

Going down the list of threads I don't see that many knocking her.

I think she lost in 2008 and in 2016 and it's time to move on.

I'm not sure the thread YOU are posting is promoting moving on.

Just saying, but it would not be beyond the Russians to keep their surrogates working on keeping up the fighting among dems.

So rather than let them play us by complaining about how Clinton was treated maybe we should talk about what we should be for and who should be our new messengers.

[randr]

223. Everything you point out is true

However, as a lifelong Democrat I sincerely believe we made a mistake. It had been evident for quite some time that the establishment politicos in Washington were on their way out. A populist movement was surely going to take the day in this last election.
We, as stalwart Democrats, have the obligation to confront the current political climate, listen to all parties in our vast progressive movement, and actually hold ourselves true to the historic values we are supposed to espouse.
A small minority of mostly uninformed voters stole the election and we need to address how we let that happen.

[HassleCat]

277. The day of the neoliberal is passing.

They have run the party for 30 years or more, and their appeal is waning.

[truebluegreen]

295. Praise Dawg for that.

[stevenleser]

303. Nothing about the Democratic Party is changing as a result of this election

So whatever silly slogans you have invented to malign the party you will still be using 4-8-12-20-40 years from now.

[HassleCat]

308. Change is already in progress

And has been ever since our party abandoned the New Deal in favor of Let's Make a Deal. We are now the minority party at all levels of government. That will change, and it will change by means of grassroots organizing by progressives. It has been dormant for a long time, pushed aside by big money, but every office we lose at every level inspires people to conclude there must be a better way, something we can do to rebuild coalitions and relationships that make our base both side and deep. If we do it right, you'll be happy, not feeling left out.

[stevenleser]

311. Nope, it's not and it doesn't need to change. We got more votes. And what's more

all we have to do is wait for Trump and the GOP to do their thing as we all can agree they will do it.

We'll be back in the White House in no time at all.

We don't need to change anything.

[HassleCat]

314. I see your point

The presidency is all that matters. Four years is no time at all, and any damage that occurs is merely collateral damage. As long as we win the presidency about half the time, we're happy.

[Crunchy Frog]

315. Sadly, it may be signing its own death warrant with that attitude.

Either that, or so marginalized that it might as well be dead.

It's too bad. This country is really going to need a genuine opposition force.

[stevenleser]

317. Nope, we won the popular vote in 6 of the last 7 national elections. We're fine. nt

[Crunchy Frog]

319. Even God himself couldn't sink this ship.

[stevenleser]

320. If you are going to go that far in mis-paraphrasing what I am saying, why bother coming to a

discussion forum at all? Just have conversations with yourself in a mirror. That way you won't need to make up stuff in other people's posts.

[Crunchy Frog]

321. Okay. You're right. Everything's just fine. n/t

[Midwestern Democrat]

323. Look at where we stand down ballot - how bad does it have to get before we should be concerned? NT

[stevenleser]

335. So you are cherry-picking particular races and interpreting those races to get to your desired

result. Gee why don't I find that compelling.

The down ballot issues and our issues in midterm election years are, in my opinion, very similar. For some reason, somewhere between 5-10 million Democratic voters are only interested in voting when there is a Presidential choice at the top of the ticket.

This isn't an issue about the issues for which the Democratic party stands, it's an issue of how to convince those voters that the other races have an impact on their lives.

[Midwestern Democrat]

342. Midterm turnout has always been lower than presidential turnout

Below are the presidential and midterm turnout rates from 1972 through 2014. Midterm turnout has always sucked - our problem is that our coalition isn't broad enough - it's too concentrated in the cities and on the coasts.

1972/1974 56.2%/39.1% -17.1%
1976/1978 54.8%/39% - 15.8%
1980/1982 54.2%/42% -12.2%
1984/1986 55.2%/38.1% -17.1%
1988/1990 52.8%/38.4% - 14.4%
1992/1994 58.1%/41.1% -17%
1996/1998 51.7%/38.1% -13.6%
2000/2002 54.2%/39.5% - 14.7%
2004/2006 60.1%/40.4% -19.7%
2008/2010 61.6%/41% -20.6%
2012/2014 58.6%/35.9% -22.7%

[stevenleser]

343. For both parties, yes, everyone knows that. Except more Democrats stay home on midterms than

Republicans do.

This is not a size of coalition issue, we have won the popular vote in six of the last seven Presidential elections going back nearly 30 years now. Our coalition is plenty big enough. They just need to vote down ticket and in the midterms.

[mcar]

231. Christmas kick!

[Stuart G]

239. K and R...nt

[still_one]

241. Thank you for this Boston

[lostnfound]

245. Why not recommend the Merry Christmas Hillary thread instead?

Too cheery, is it?

[KPN]

247. And it kills me to come to a gathering place for democrats

and see anyone who suggests that the Democratic Party had any contribution whatsoever to Hillary's loss and would benefit from genuine introspection criticized for holding that view.

It strikes me as not very Democratic, and certainly not tolerant, and defensive.

Hillary and the Democratic Party lost. That's the reality.

[LaydeeBug]

248. k and r. (again) nt

[Shemp Howard]

258. I disagree, strongly.

So we are not supposed to be critical of Hillary? She is not our enemy, as you said. But neither is she some sort of perfect person, beyond all human faults.

She lost. She lost when she had every advantage. And so we must figure out why. The FBI, etc. certainly played a part. But it can be fairly argued that she, and her staff, made critical mistakes. Are we not allowed to consider that?

[stevenleser]

262. Every campaign and candidate makes mistakes. The correct way

to frame that question in a post election analysis is, did she make more or worse mistakes than your average Democratic nominee.

The answer to that question is an easy "No".

And no, Hillary did not have every advantage. She was up against a billionaire who had a ton of billionaire friends in a Citizens United reality. The FBI director was against her, the Russian intelligence agencies were engaged against her, a portion of the left lost their minds and decided not to support her, and the press did not adequately analyze her opponents massive faults.

And after all of that, she still had more people vote for her than voted for her opponent. That is a hugely important fact that cannot be brushed aside. It's a major historical event for a President to come to power without winning a majority of the votes of voters.

[Crunchy Frog]

316. So, basically, she ran a B- campaign, at a time when we absolutely couldn't afford it.

But that's AOK, and she should get an "E" for effort. And we've already known for years that the Republicans are ruthless, and will lie, cheat, steal, slander, and play every dirty trick in the book, but somehow we were still surprised and unprepared.

And no, it's no longer a "major historical event". Not when it's happened twice in the last 16 years.

I honestly think this complacency is going to destroy the Democratic Party, abandoning the country to be destroyed by the neo fascists that the Republicans have become.

Honestly, when I read a post like this, it makes me want to blow my brains out.

[stevenleser]

318. Nope. Not even close to what I was saying. nt

[revmclaren]

259. K & R

X 1000.

This is Democratic Underground, not "Bash Democrats Underground".

I signed the TOS thereby promising to support Democrats here as everyone else did to return. Many are crossing the line between constructive and destructive criticism. I hope the 2016 post mortem forum goes the way of this foul year as quickly as possible.

[ancianita]

271. Hillary was underrated all her life. Let's not bear grudges but forge ahead with the women we have.

So it doesn't happen to them.

[Ghost OF Trotsky]

273. It's not Secretary Clinton

It is, at least in my case, to critique the terribly incompetent campaign her people ran and to figure out how to keep it from happening again. Yes, the republicans used every trick in the book, BUT we spent a lot of money in a not very competent way and got out thought and out fought by people we looked down our noses at. 2018 starts now, and while I have love and respect for Secretary Clinton, we've also got to look at why we lost and if that slaughters some sacred cows so be it.

[mtnsnake]

274. Maybe you should consider learning how to handle setbacks just a bit

because you obviously have a major problem with the least little bit of criticism concerning our loss.

The great majority of those you are addressing never called her "Trump" or an "oligarchy" or anything of the sort, as you implied in your post. You make it sound like anyone who offers constructive criticism about our loss hates her guts or something. Yes, there are a few posts outright blaming her, but the majority of criticism is valid and constructive, not hateful. Some people like to learn from our losses so we'll be better prepared for 2018 and 2020.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

279. If you put a car in the ditch on I-15 in broad daylight...

you're going to face some frustration and hostility from your passengers.

Had Bernie inevitably led Trump to a forty-five state landslide he would be similarly assailed.

[Rex]

282. lulz

[La Lioness Priyanka]

528. Are we saving all our empathy for white males these days?

Should someone post another op about empathy with trump voters? Would that elicit less laughter?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

530. Lol.

[Rex]

531. Yeah that is what I thought.

Take your garbage elsewhere.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

532. Aww

[SCantiGOP]

285. Like Al Gore,

I think you can say in retrospect that she ran a poor campaign. That does not detract from their personal integrity or the value of their ideas.

[Larkspur]

286. She proved in 2008 what a terrible campainer she was so

why would she be any better in 2016?

I was not impressed with her in 2008 nor in 2016.

[Hekate]

353. +3,000,000 votes over Trump, despite voter suppression. Sure, a terrible no good very bad campaigner

[Larkspur]

426. HRC is not going to be the 45th President of the United States, so

yeah, she was a terrible campaigner. She LOST the Presidential election.

[Hekate]

433. She won the actual VOTE, Larkspur, by THREE MILLION OVER TRUMP. What part of that ....

....is so hard to understand? The actual VOTERS CHOSE HILLARY. She will NOT be the President, for a whole variety of factors not related to the FACT that most people voted for HER.

The EC: holdover from the days of slavery, giving disproportionate power to low-population rural states

Voter suppression: how many hoops do YOU have to jump through to register to vote and to actually cast your ballot? In red states they make it damn near impossible for retirees, college students, and POC to be able to vote, and those are all likely Dem voters

FBI Director Comey: it is now acknowledged that what he went public with just before the election was pure garbage

The private server: was much more secure than the government one, and previous SecStates also had them. So does Jason Chaffetz, RW pit bull

Vladimir Putin: Jesus Christ on a Trailer Hitch. Since when does any American take their information/marching orders from a totalitarian dictator?

25 years of lies and smears against Hillary by the VRWC were resurrected in time for her campaign, and were maliciously repeated by embittered lefties and millenials too young to know how it started

And despite this shitstorm, HILLARY GOT THREE MILLION MORE VOTES THAN TRUMP. AND DESPITE DOING THAT, HE WILL BE PRESIDENT AND SHE WILL NOT.

Do not, repeat, do NOT tell me she was a bad campaigner. Look at the evidence.

[Larkspur]

508. HRC's problem has always been developing a winning strategy based upon the rules of the contest

She proved incompetent in 2008 when she lost the Democratic Party's nomination to a freshman senator from IL with Hussein as his middle name.

She proved incompetent again in 2016 when she failed to win the electoral college vote against Trump.

She is incompetent at developing a winning strategy to get her across the finish line. Now all of us will pay for her incompetence as we have to deal with Trump in the WH.

[Hekate]

519. Well OK then.Your argument has totally won me over. Personally I think it was probably the pantsuits

And that she lacked that swingy-thingy to go with them, that certain je nes sais quas was missing.

There's just no question in my mind any more that a certain stooped and cranky old gentleman with a wagging finger would have definitely beaten the rich man with friends in the Kremlin and friends in the alt-right and an FBI director who put his thumb on the scale.

[Larkspur]

527. If 2016 Dem Primary was as open as the 2008 one, HRC would not have won the Dem nomination

this year, but the meme inside the Party was that it was "Her Turn" to be the Dem nominee and President and therefore some Dems, who may have given it a shot, held back. Bernie only ran because there was no real challenge to her and her pro-corporate agenda. Primaries are time to have a discussion on where the Party should head.

I'm treating HRC the same way Al Gore was treated by Clintonistas after he won the popular vote and loss the WH.

[aikoaiko]

298. It is difficult to see how we will get past this division.

It appears that too many of us are triggered to provocation and posting retaliatory posts.

Maybe, at some point, defeating Trump will be a superordinate goal that reduces the antagonism and Us v Them dynamics at DU.

[Arazi]

300. This is the 2016 Post Mortem Forum. We dissect the campaign and the candidate

That you think any candidate needs special protection says more about your cult-of-personality worship than those of us focused on winning going forward.

She ran a bad campaign. She was a candidate with unprecedented negative numbers. What's crazy to me is to see Dems circle the wagons and refuse to examine what went wrong.

Including running Hillary

[NanceGreggs]

302. I see no plea for "special protection".

What I DO see is certain posters who have nothing to say about HRC that isn't a scathing criticism of her, and usually the party as a whole.

If you believe that running Hillary was some great mistake, you must also believe that the millions of Dems who chose here as their nominee, and the millions of people who voted for her in the GE, were all somehow willing - nay, eager - to collectively make the same mistake.

Imagine that? People making up their own minds, people choosing their own standard-bearer, people voting for the candidate they chose without deferring to your wisdom and better judgment.

[StevieM]

537. She ran a great campaign and had the whole thing won by a decisive margin with 11 days to go.

The Comey intervention was absolutely devastating.

And it was not a legitimate thing for him to do.

Had it not been for this criminal act by the GOP Hillary would have won by the same margin in the electoral college that Obama won by in 2016.

[NanceGreggs]

305. I've posted this dozens of times ...

... but I'll do so again, because I think it relevant to what we're seeing happening here.

IMHO, where it all went wrong on DU was the change in the TOS after Obama's election, where the "constructive criticism" of Democrats rule was changed to allow for "any and all criticism".

After that rule change, DU became inundated with people posing as "concerned Dems" - who trashed Obama and the Party on every issue on a daily basis, and oh-so-surprisingly never had anything positive to say about either.

Many old-time DUers left as a result - I was one of them. I eventually came back - many, many never did.

What's the difference between "constructive criticism" and "any and all" criticism?

It's the difference between saying, "We lost in the Rust Belt - and I think this is why ...," and saying, "Hillary lost the Rust Belt because she is the worst candidate ever, the DNC sucks, the whole Party sucks, and I think we should talk about how much everyone and everything sucks."

One invites constructive criticism, and constructive discussion. The other invites a bash-fest of Democrats, with the attendant whinging, complaining - and often more than a few RW talking points thrown into the mix.

Is DU still a "gathering place for Democrats"? To some extent, it is - as there are still many Democrats here. But there is no dismissing the fact that a lot of people here aren't Dems, or like-minded people. And I believe this election and its aftermath has given us all a much clearer picture of who's who.

[Hekate]

354. +3 million (votes over Trump) Nance

[YoungDemCA]

359. Good luck with your voter outreach efforts! We certainly don't need more people voting for Dems!

In fact, we need less people voting for us. After all, those "uneducated" white trash are just a bunch of Trump-loving bigoted assholes, right?

No necessary.

[NanceGreggs]

374. What on earth ...

... does voter outreach have to do with who posts on DU, and what the posting rules are?

[Gothmog]

365. Great post

[betsuni]

366. +1

[liquid diamond]

306. A few months in

to the fuhrer's presidency and Bernie supporters will agree, and they will be sorry.

[Kuhl]

324. If she was everything you say...

... She would be president elect right now.

[stevenleser]

337. Nope, more like, if everything happened to other Democratic Prez candidates that happened to her

very few of them would have been elected, to wit:

- FBI Director intervening on behalf of her opponent two weeks before election day with absolutely no evidence to support it

- Russian intelligence intervening on behalf of her opponent

- Nonstop and mostly free Media coverage of her opponent

- Wholly inadequate media vetting of her opponent to include letting him get away with not releasing his tax returns

[Kuhl]

367. Isn't that the point though?

A baked potato should have been able to beat Mr. Tiny hands and yet here we are.

Does she bear none of that responsibility? Is there no accountability to the party for having put forth someone who could lose to an abomination like Trump?

Not even that we lost but that it was even close?

[stevenleser]

368. It IS the point, but not the point you seem determined to try to make.

Hillary was an extraordinarily good candidate. It took all of the above for her opponent to eke out a miniscule 80,000 vote margin among three states that made a difference.

[Madam45for2923]

351. Kicked! Reccomended! and Thank You!

[TonyPDX]

377. A real Democrat like Joe Manchin?

[Orsino]

388. 2016 Post-Mortem isn't for you.

The party's nominee signed on for the blame as well as the credit. She's strong. She can take it even when we can't.

[Cosmocat]

407. Agreed

she is a good person and deserved FAR better than what this stupid ass country did to her.

[JustAnotherGen]

410. Kick and rec boston!

[Fiendish Thingy]

415. And yet, if we don't examine and learn from our mistakes

We our doomed to repeat them.

One mistake would be to continue focusing on the Russians, and ignore the risks of running a candidate who, rightly or wrongly, has such high negatives, and to ignore a party/primary structure that at least has the appearance of corruption. Lack of campaigning in the Rust Belt is another fair criticism to examine for the future.

To focus on external factors and ignore mistakes made by the party, the campaign, and yes, the candidate will doom the Democrats to continued losses. (Hint: moving to the right is not the answer, as data shows the public will respond to properly framed liberal positions)

This is a necessarily painful process, and I understand your frustration, but it is a critical conversation that Democrats need to have. What better place than DU?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

477. How can you do a postmortem if you keep insisting the corpse isn't really dead?

[SylviaD]

478. I, too, am sickened...

...by the anti-Hillary posts and general Clinton bashing that goes on here.

[SidDithers]

479. This place is turning into Bernie Underground again...

Sid

[Gothmog]

511. Agreed

[Lil Missy]

542. At least now they can't hide truthful posts that they don't like.

That was about as undemocratic as it could possibly be back then.

[betsuni]

481. Even saw the "Hillary vacations with war criminal Kissinger and Bill golfs with Trump"

thing twice today.

[theglammistress]

533. Wish I could rec this to infinity

The OP sums up exactly how I feel. Of all places, DU should be a haven for us to come together and plot the way forward. Not for constant Clinton bashing.

Also, Bernie would not have won.

We (and all Dems) better get it together, and fast. We're about to take on the fight of our collective lives.

[LaydeeBug]

535. kick!