2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumAnd the 2016 Ralph Nader Award Goes to Bernie Sanders - Time.com
Sanders distracted Hillary Clinton from creating a unified vision for the futureIn fairness, Sanders ran a surprisingly effective campaign tapping the same anti-establishment fury Donald Trump stirred. Although Sanders and Trump are very different, their campaigns were not. Each treated Hillary Clinton as a compromised, Wall Street–worshipping, Establishment sellout. Both demonized Washington insiders and free trade, rather than tackling the real structural problem: the United States deindustrialized because Americans refuse to pay what it costs to hire American workers and instead buy cheaper imported products. As a result, just as Ralph Nader siphoned tens of thousands of votes on Election Day 2000 in Florida from Al Gore, causing the deadlock and George W. Bush’s victory, Bernie Sanders’ similar vampire effect enfeebled Hillary Clinton.
This dynamic followed a classic historical pattern. Sanders drew Clinton from the center toward the Democrats’ extreme flank. That shift paralleled Jimmy Carter’s leftward lurch when Ted Kennedy ran in 1980, and George H.W. Bush’s rightwing swerve when Pat Buchanan rebelled in 1992. Each time, the frontrunners felt forced to placate loyalists they should have been able to take for granted, while embracing extreme positions that haunted them during the general election campaign.
This year replayed that Insurgent’s Vampire Effect. Clinton expected to inherit the nomination without serious opponents. Joe Biden and John Kerry, each of whom sees a potential president whenever he looks in the mirror, didn’t run, deferring to the Clintons’ power in the party and to Hillary Clinton’s claim that it was “our time” as women to win the presidency—an appeal that, surprisingly, bored younger women.
As an independent, Sanders lacked such loyalty. His hip campaign addressed the displaced and disempowered, claiming Hillary Clinton was the problem not the solution. In response, Hillary Clinton channeled Walter Mondale in 1984, desperately appealing to different special interests. Characteristically, after winning Super Tuesday, she declared: “We have to defend all our rights—workers’ rights, and women’s rights, civil rights and voting rights, LGBT rights and rights for people with disabilities.” This pluralistic appeal failed to offer a unifying national mission. It illustrated Donald Trump’s complaint that Democrats were so busy kowtowing to minorities they neglected the white majority and the nation’s need for consensus.
Having catered to the millennial and minority sensibility in the spring, Hillary Clinton missed the mainstream, failing to recalibrate for the fall. This misread was most apparent in her neglect of her greatest political ally, Bill Clinton, and his legacy. In the 1990s, President Clinton shrewdly led from the center, forging a “Third Way” progressivism more balanced than the big-government, special interest group-oriented liberalism which Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush handily defeated in the 1980s. Clintonite centrism embraced free trade as bringing prosperity not exporting jobs. Clinton fought crime, framing it as threat to all Americans, especially blacks. Clinton reformed welfare to restore governmental credibility and recipients’ dignity. Clinton talked candidly about restructuring the economy while rebuilding traditional culture, because too many Americans felt they were “living in the funhouse.”
Pressed by the Sanders Sensation, intimidated by Black Lives Matter, even Bill Clinton backpedaled, apologizing for fighting crime and his centrist legacy. With no one explaining how bad crime was in the 1990s, how dysfunctional the welfare system was, how two-thirds of blacks supported both initiatives, Clinton’s legislation seemed draconian. Hillary Clinton became a doughnut candidate, sprinkling sweets to particular groups but lacking any core. That distortion made her the perfect foil for Donald Trump’s demagoguery.
Sanders liberals considered Clintonian centrism not liberal enough, not minority-sensitive enough, not pure enough. The result is a president-elect hostile to liberalism, unafraid of demonizing minorities and epitomizing a killer instinct that makes Clintonian triangulation look naïve. All this makes Bernie Sanders the Ralph Nader of 2016
http://time.com/4569766/bernie-sanders-ralph-nader-2016/
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HassleCat
(6,409 posts)"Hey, Hillary! Look over there! It's a UFO!"
Jake Stern
(3,145 posts)paying the old "Look over there" trick.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)Sanders attacked Hillary Clinton and trump directly and accurately quoted Sanders attacks. In the real world these are called facts and just like math these facts can not be ignored.Here is a good example Sanders really hurting 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
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.
karynnj
(59,923 posts)Note in your excerpt that there is a HUGE sleight of hand. Bernie spoke of the system working only for the very rich ... something HRC picked up in her own speeches. In the article, this morphs into Trump speaking of undocumented immigrants!! It is true that Bernie spoke against the trade deals, but that is consistent with his position since trade deals started! Remember that HRC herself blasted TPP.
Trump won the republican primaries with the angry messages that this person is linking tO Bernie. Trump did not pick up Bernie's message - Trump continued with the message he had from the beginning. Note that Bernie referenced both FDR and various democratic socialist countries - there was very little in common with Trump. It also ignores that Sanders DID communicate to some of people who were unreachable by Clinton.
Compare this with the GIFT HRC gave to McCain - stating that both of them were qualified to take the 3 am call - and Obama was not. Or consider that it was Al Gore who first raised the Willie Horton attack on Dukakis. You could argue that Bob Kerrey attacked Bill Clinton's actions on the draft. Howard Dean attacked Kerry as a flip flopper (a theme Bush used as well - even though Kerry is more consistent than most).
That is what happens in primary elections. In fact, of the ones listed by Sanders, Clinton, Core, Kerrey, and Dean -- you could say that the attacks were easily found opposition research (Horton, draft) or generic (all governors attack legislators as flip flopping; all legislators note that Governors have no foreign policy) except one that subjectively questioned the ability of an opponent to be a CIC.
The fact is that Bernie Sanders never had a reputation for running ugly races.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)Ignoring the facts will not make these facts go away. Trump repeatedly and accurately quoted Sanders and used sanders bogus charges to great effect
As for comparison of 2008 to 2916, do you want to look at the facts? Here is an accurate timeline that shows that Hillary Clinton actually worked to help President Obama while sanders delayed and hurt the party http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-aftermath-20160609-snap-htmlstory.html
karynnj
(59,923 posts)That timeline is written in a confusing and biased way. The fact is that BOTH Sanders and Clinton continued until the primaries ended. The primaries themselves happened at different dates. Hillary stayed in for a few days after all primaries were over. Read the linked June 9th article -- Sanders did not suspend his campaign because he wanted his delegates to have leverage on the platform. This is not all that different than Clinton a few days after Obama clinched the nomination.
As to campaigning, the July 25th convention - where Sanders gave a great supporting speech, is essentially the same as July 27th when Clinton joined Obama.
You still ignore the 3 am attack -- which was pretty nasty.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)Each candidate had approval rights over their delegates. The Clinton delegates were carefully vetted. The Sanders delegates were either not vetted or were selected on whether they hated the Democratic party. At the Texas Democratic Party Convention, a Sanders delegate was duly elected by his caucus but was removed and replaced by a BOB. The replaced Sanders delegate would not say that he hated Clinton and so had to be removed. Again, this was an action taken by the Sanders campaign directly.
The Clinton campaign had a "whipping infrastructure" and we saw everything that Sanders sent to his delegates and had reports of every meeting that Sanders had with his delegates. Sanders sent one text message to his supporters that was very weak and never told his supporters to stop attacking Clinton delegates. I was at the delegation breakfast where the younger sanders delegates marched in with linked arms to demand that we condemn Clinton and vote for Sanders. The next morning Sanders came to our delegation (this has been scheduled for a while) and did not apologize. Sanders spent the entire time talking about himself and only mentioned Hillary Clinton as he was leaving the room.
The claim that Sanders did everything to convince his followers to support Hillary Clinton is not consistent with what I saw at the convention.
karynnj
(59,923 posts)Anyone who voted in the primary could go to a local caucus and stand to be a delegate to the state convention. In Burlington, there were enough slots for all of us to go to Montpelier.
Then anyone who wanted to be a delgate, ran to be a delegate. In Montpilier, each person running had a few minutes to speak, then everyone voted. That is how the majority of pledged delegates were chosen. The rest were local officeholders who ran their own contest. Added to that were the superdelgates.
All the pledged delgate votes were for Bernie. Bernie himself had no input in picking the pledged delegates. The people running Sent all of us who went emails explaining who they were and why they wanted to go. Neither Bernie or his VT staff recommended a slate or commented in any way.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)Under party rules, each candidate was supposed to vet their delegates. The fact that Sanders refused to this does not surprise me given the delegates who came to the convention.
The Clinton campaign carefully vetted their delegates. Sanders was supposed to vet his delegates but the only vetting I saw was at the Texas State Democratic Convention where a Sanders delegate was duly elected by his Senate District caucus but removed by the Sanders campaign because the delegate would not state that he hated Hillary Clinton and was replaced by a BOB.
Again, Sanders did not come close to doing everything in his power to help the Clinton campaign or the party in the general election. Sanders was weak with his delegates because he did not want to hurt their feelings or do anything that might affect future book sales
WhiteTara
(30,150 posts)You aren't fit to be president.
That kind of distraction.
Yes, DWS made some big mistakes in this election, and he was one of them.
Bill USA
(6,436 posts)people. Especially those who are not that well versed in economics, politics and reality. Many BS supporters had just started thinking about public policy issues for maybe 1 or 2 years. They were frankly, novitiates and easily moved by simplistic arguments.
But, there were other factors too, like the 25 year McCarthyist campaign against both Clintons and M$M's willing participation in selling the meme, Hillary the consort of the Devil. This appealed to many who were burdened by ignorance and a little too much confidence in their grasp of the situation.
pangaia
(24,324 posts)bettyellen
(47,209 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)If Hillary had run a Bill-type campaign on the fall. Nobody who wants the poor bashed and the police given unquestioning support has any views at all that aren't extreme right wing.
bettyellen
(47,209 posts)I'm sort of fed up with this half the story crap that's popular around here. No one was giving police unquestioning support except for fucking Trump.
Wounded Bear
(60,620 posts)it was always a war on drugs and black people.
Well, and to fill all of the privatized prisons, too.
Response to Wounded Bear (Reply #11)
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Gothmog
(154,120 posts)bettyellen
(47,209 posts)For fucks sake I'm not fooled by anyone who doesn't know this crap. It's like their taking dictation from the Intercept and RT.
Eliot Rosewater
(32,530 posts)Hillary wasnt acceptable.
Many of these were young, ideological folks who dont truly understand how a two party system works and how voting 3rd party gets the other guy elected.
Some of these folks may not have voted at all without Bernie, but many would have and would have voted for Hillary given no alternative.
But when Bernie lost and Jill Stein and that other idiot were out there saying "Look at me, I am not corrupt like Hillary" (nor did she run a foundation that helps millions of people everyday, but some of the left dont seem to care about that) many who would have voted Hillary didnt, because Bernie did such a great job of showing where Hillary was more corporate friendly than they would like.
trueblue2007
(18,056 posts)He was really no where to be seen. why didn't he HELP BRING DEMOCRATS TOGETHER IN UNITY.
I will not forgive what Bernie did to hurt Hillary
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)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
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.”
It appears that you are correct in that Sanders did get what he wanted and did not have to disclose how he is paying for three homes
ThirdEye
(204 posts)This whole line that he was in it for coverage and money, and not due to ideology is laughable.
dionysus
(26,467 posts)
Arazi
(6,893 posts)The antisemitic tropes hurled against Sanders on DU are more than pathetic
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)brush
(57,382 posts)Why is that always ignored, as is the Comey, Putin effect?
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)It's just coming from a different angle. At its core, this is the "working class whites/too much identity politics/she didn't talk about economics" narrative that doesn't hold up to scrutiny and never has. The very same narrative many Sanders supporters have been pushing.
So, the reaction to the OP is quite interesting.
As I wrote below, the narrative is bull shit whether it's coming from leftists, centrists or Trump supporters...all of whom, along with members of the media, have been promoting that dog whistle narrative for the last 2 months.
R B Garr
(17,377 posts)would help influence more, but he didn't come through for us in the general like he did for himself in the primary. His strategy wasn't really a unifying one.
JudyM
(29,517 posts)He had far more speaking engagements trying to get votes for her, than she herself did!
Alice11111
(5,730 posts)I voted Hillary, but I think we need to give Bernie credit for his efforts then and now
thesquanderer
(12,333 posts)Maybe you didn't see because he spent a lot of October on the ground in various states, perhaps not yours.
boston bean
(36,460 posts)Response to boston bean (Reply #39)
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bravenak
(34,648 posts)I wont be sad to see this forum leave though.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)bravenak
(34,648 posts)I am damn near ready to beg Hillary to run again if the Bernie stuff doesnt end soon.
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)It's just coming from a different/centrist angle. At its core, this is the "working class whites/too much identity politics/she didn't talk about economics" narrative that doesn't hold up to scrutiny and never has. The very same narrative many Sanders supporters have been pushing.
So, yes, the OP is bull shit. But the reaction to the OP is quite interesting.
As I wrote below, the narrative is bull shit whether it's coming from leftists, centrists or Trump supporters...all of whom, along with members of the media, have been promoting that dog whistle narrative for the last 2 months.
JHan
(10,173 posts)bravenak
(34,648 posts)Gothmog
(154,120 posts)
CentralMass
(15,504 posts)Take a look a Jill Stein impact.
http://www.politicspa.com/did-jill-stein-cost-hillary-clinton-the-election/80274/
"
if Stein didn’t run as the Green Party nominee, Trump may very well have lost the Electoral College.
Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (16) and Wisconsin (10) were the three Rust Belt states that Trump was able to steal from Clinton, blasting a hole in her “Blue Wall”.
Today we learned that in each state the difference between Trump and Clinton was less than the total Jill Stein received.
In Michigan, Trump won by 10,704 votes. Stein got 51,423. In Wisconsin, Trump edged out Clinton by 22,177 votes while Stein received 31,006.
Today, the city of Philadelphia released their final results::
factfinder_77
(841 posts)They started it doing this right after election day with any name that was brought up as a possible 2020 candidate.....save for Bernie, of course. It's his turn in 2020, don't you know? /s.
CentralMass
(15,504 posts)Duppers
(28,244 posts)Response to factfinder_77 (Original post)
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Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)and another book called "Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents".
If Hillary had won in the EC, he would be writing columns demanding she leave the progressive wing of the party out in the cold and work with the GOP to make deeper cuts in the pitiful remnants of our social service network.
Duppers
(28,244 posts)
Locrian
(4,523 posts)It's a (absurd) slam on Bernie so it MUST be true.
treestar
(82,383 posts)talking about who the argument is from to discredit it is a logical fallacy.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And that his agenda has always been to push all "center-left" parties as far to the right as possible.
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)It's just coming from a different/centrist angle. At its core, this is the "working class whites/too much identity politics/she didn't talk about economics" narrative that doesn't hold up to scrutiny and never has. The very same narrative many Sanders supporters have been pushing.
So, yes, the OP is bull shit. But the reaction to the OP is quite interesting.
As I wrote below, the narrative is bull shit whether it's coming from leftists, centrists or Trump supporters...all of whom, along with members of the media, have been promoting that dog whistle narrative for the last 2 months.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Last edited Thu Jan 19, 2017, 02:42 AM - Edit history (1)
We need to address race AND class, hate AND greed.
That doesn't mean proposing one-size-fit-all solutions to everything, but it does mean accepting that sometimes there can be common ground between hard-hit peoples.
When it's phrased like that, do you disagree with it?
(BTW, even with his communications flaws, Bernie was never arguing for making common cause with segregationists).
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)Sanders made a ton of proposals that had no chance of being adopted in the real world and justified these proposal with the silly promise of a voter revolution. In theory I like some of Sanders proposals but I live in the real world and knew that there would be no revolution and so most of Sanders' platform was pure fantasy. The Sanders revolution has been a bust http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/bernie-sanders-democratic-party-new-york-primary-213829
And yet, the “revolution” that Sanders called for didn’t show up. Clinton’s 16-point New York win is simply the exclamation point. First, electorally, Sanders hasn’t been able to win any states on Clinton’s natural turf, while she picked off states like blue-collar Ohio and quintessentially liberal Massachusetts. Eleven of his 16 state wins were in low-turnout caucus states, while she has dominated well-populated primary states. He struggled to win the votes of older voters and whiffed with Southern African-Americans.
But on a more important level, Sanders has also failed to substantially change the Democratic Party at its core: its acceptance of big-dollar fundraising and incremental policy advancement. That was a tough task for Sanders, especially considering he had steered clear of the party for most of his political career until his presidential quest (prompting Hillary to remark at one point, “I’m not even sure he is a Democrat”). For all his success at the polls, Sanders’ ideologically pure campaign foundered on the predictable shoals of policy specifics and political feasibility, obstacles that a progressive populist movement will need to overcome to truly succeed.....
Another Sanders misstep was making his campaign look like a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party apparatus—a great strategy for winning left-leaning independents but not so much for the larger pool of registered Democrats.
I like living in the real world and dealing with proposals that can be adopted in the real world. Sanders turned me off because there was no way that he could deliver on his promises.
MelissaB
(16,547 posts)
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)Guess not after 2016. So he is just another Centrist hack...thanks for the info.
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)The white working class/too much focus on identity politics (dog whistle) narrative is a load of bull whether it's coming from leftists, centrists or right wingers. Seriously, it's been debunked more times than I can count. Sanders supporters promote it, the article in the OP promotes it, Trump supporters promote it, members of the media promote it. But it simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
world wide wally
(21,827 posts)I want to know what his ties to Russia are.
But I don't hold it against Bernie. I don't even hold it against Trump.
I do blame both of their voters though.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)hard-lines on crime are almost always a means of turning our attention to focusing on policing " the bad guys" and incarceration rather than looking at policies that actually address the causes of crime. That sort of language is pandering to the masses rather than lifting them and their ideals up, and it is pandering to the policing and punishment lobbies. No surprise that our prisons and the industries that feed on incarceration only got more and more bloated through the nineties and beyond. It is not a proud thing to be number one in total and per-capita prisoners in the world.
The purist label consistently misses the mark. I am fine with people who have differing opinions on policy. If the one disagreement we have is that money doesn't actually influence politics when it's the Democrats that get cozy with it, that's just too damn fundamental. Nothing gets fixed if you ignore the elephant in the room. It only gets worse...because whether we pretend its there or not, that elephant likes to fucking eat.
That is why I will never disavow a third party candidate who campaigns on principles I agree with, even if that candidate might negatively impact the Democratic candidate's chances.(doesn't mean I'll vote for that candidate;'I've never done so up to this point) If those voices weren't there, I'm not comfortable with what our democratic party might look like today. I'm not a whole lot more confident that we would have won more elections anyway, because being moderate is not a winning formula when it comes to getting the big-money to support you all the way into office, though it will absolutely garner you support when it comes to running against far more liberal candidates in the primaries.
Why would Clinton need to recenter in the fall...because of changes to economic policy? What is this article saying here? No Joe-publics voted for Trump because she was offering free college or talking about how prisons shouldn't be privatized. If the writer's point is that she was pushed left as in, to champion minority causes, well I would love to see where DU members stand on that. If that was a strategic error only born out of her need to compete with Sanders on the left while continuing to avoid taking the fight to the big money, well why didn't she just do that? If on the other hand, it was the right thing to do, then why, if this article is to be believed, she only did it as a response to Sanders, and if so...where's the credit on that one? heh.
The thing that should never be overlooked when reading articles like this is the presumptions that are in the language. What is "extreme flank" about wanting money to be taken out of the political process? Of course, to Time Magazine that is extreme, because Time is a pillar of the establishment. Thus, claims of extreme are stated simply as "fact," without any irony or self- reflection.
boston bean
(36,460 posts)Gothmog
(154,120 posts)JCanete
(5,272 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)But I think we'd all agree that the party must NEVER go that far to the right in any future election...the1992 and 1996 results led to governance that failed on the bare minimum expectation level for a Democratic president:
A Democrat in the White House should feel obligated never to target the Democratic base for attack and to ensure, if there can't be actual gains, that there will be no lost ground for anyone in that base.
There was massive loss for working people across the country due to that Democratic president's successful fight to implement NAFTA, and there was massive loss for the poor due to his embrace of the classist and essentially racist Republican narratives about welfare, drug policy, and crimes.
And there was a period of long-term electoral decline for the Democratic Party throughout that eight years-a decline caused largely by the insistence of the party's strategists in that era NOT to fight for the interests of working and kept-from-working poor, despite the fact that there was no way we could ever expect high turnout among those groups if we weren't going to champion them and stand in solidarity with them.
boston bean
(36,460 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)But we are in this situation largely due to the "blur-the-differences" mindset Bill established in this party.
We lost the electoral college in 2000 largely due to that mindset(we'd have won if Gore had stayed with his "for the people, not the powerful" line, because Nader's vote would have collapsed).
At some point, you can't expect people to keep turning up to the polls if all you do is run a "keep them OUT!" campaign.
Hillary had a great platform, a platform which was improved by the Sanders language that was added. The campaign ads hardly mentioned it. Instead, the focus was almost exclusively on a "stop Trump!" message. This choice convinced a lot of voters that we had no positive proposals to offer. We did have those, but the ads didn't mention them and the stump speech didn't mention them enough.
All of that is the result of Bill's argument that the Right has won the argument on most issues and that Democrats must always campaign by promising nothing but Reaganism-with-a-human-skin-mask, that we can never run FOR, only AGAINST-and not even against that much.
boston bean
(36,460 posts)JCanete
(5,272 posts)Gothmog
(154,120 posts)We lost the 2000 election due to Nader and his stupidity re are some facts on this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/ralph-nader-was-indispens_b_4235065.html
Nader-voters who spurned Democrat Al Gore to vote for Nader ended up swinging both Florida and New Hampshire to Bush in 2000. Charlie Cook, the editor of the Cook Political Report and political analyst for National Journal, called "Florida and New Hampshire" simply "the two states that Mr. Nader handed to the Bush-Cheney ticket," when Cook was writing about "The Next Nader Effect," in The New York Times on 9 March 2004. Cook said, "Mr. Nader, running as the Green Party nominee, cost Al Gore two states, Florida and New Hampshire, either of which would have given the vice president [Gore] a victory in 2000. In Florida, which George W. Bush carried by 537 votes, Mr. Nader received nearly 100,000 votes [nearly 200 times the size of Bush's Florida 'win']. In New Hampshire, which Mr. Bush won by 7,211 votes, Mr. Nader pulled in more than 22,000 [three times the size of Bush's 'win' in that state]." If either of those two states had gone instead to Gore, then Bush would have lost the 2000 election; we would never have had a U.S. President George W. Bush, and so Nader managed to turn not just one but two key toss-up states for candidate Bush, and to become the indispensable person making G.W. Bush the President of the United States -- even more indispensable, and more important to Bush's "electoral success," than were such huge Bush financial contributors as Enron Corporation's chief Ken Lay.
All polling studies that were done, for both the 2000 and the 2004 U.S. Presidential elections, indicated that Nader drained at least 2 to 5 times as many voters from the Democratic candidate as he did from the Republican Bush. (This isn't even considering throw-away Nader voters who would have stayed home and not voted if Nader had not been in the race; they didn't count in these calculations at all.) Nader's 97,488 Florida votes contained vastly more than enough to have overcome the official Jeb Bush / Katherine Harris / count, of a 537-vote Florida "victory" for G.W. Bush. In their 24 April 2006 detailed statistical analysis of the 2000 Florida vote, "Did Ralph Nader Spoil a Gore Presidency?" (available on the internet), Michael C. Herron of Dartmouth and Jeffrey B. Lewis of UCLA stated flatly, "We find that ... Nader was a spoiler for Gore." David Paul Kuhn, CBSNews.com Chief Political Writer, headlined on 27 July 2004, "Nader to Crash Dems Party?" and he wrote: "In 2000, Voter News Service exit polling showed that 47 percent of Nader's Florida supporters would have voted for Gore, and 21 percent for Mr. Bush, easily covering the margin of Gore's loss." Nationwide, Harvard's Barry C. Burden, in his 2001 paper at the American Political Science Association, "Did Ralph Nader Elect George W. Bush?" (also on the internet) presented "Table 3: Self-Reported Effects of Removing Minor Party Candidates," showing that in the VNS exit polls, 47.7% of Nader's voters said they would have voted instead for Gore, 21.9% said they would have voted instead for Bush, and 30.5% said they wouldn't have voted in the Presidential race, if Nader were had not been on the ballot. (This same table also showed that the far tinier nationwide vote for Patrick Buchanan would have split almost evenly between Bush and Gore if Buchanan hadn't been in the race: Buchanan was not a decisive factor in the outcome.) The Florida sub-sample of Nader voters was actually too small to draw such precise figures, but Herron and Lewis concluded that approximately 60% of Florida's Nader voters would have been Gore voters if the 2000 race hadn't included Nader. Clearly, Ralph Nader drew far more votes from Gore than he did from Bush, and on this account alone was an enormous Republican asset in 2000.
Nader's stupidity gave bush the win in 2000. Ignoring Nader's stupidity is wrong
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)It's just coming from a different angle. At its core, this is the "working class whites/too much identity politics/she didn't talk about economics" narrative that doesn't hold up to scrutiny and never has.
So, the reaction to the OP is quite interesting.
As I wrote above, the narrative is bull shit whether it's coming from leftists, centrists or Trump supporters...all of whom, along with members of the media, have been promoting that dog whistle narrative for the last 2 months.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)As I've said in many threads, there is a big difference between saying that we need a message that reaches the white working class, and the media's smirking version of that, which tries to suggest that we should abandon civil-rights causes in favor of some ephemeral disembodied bullshit about "jobs,"a divisive narrative to be sure. That entirely ignores the corrosive influence of money in Washington and the galvanizing call for class-warfare to be waged back against that big-money. But of course the media would twist whatever it can to its own purposes, and do its part to take that target off of its corporate masters.
In spite of that, the media's version has never been what Sanders has been saying, and for that matter, most of his supporters. You may think his use of terminology has sucked, but he didn't mince words about what he meant when he spoke about identity politics or politically correct. He was using pre-charged language, already weaponized by the right, and morphing their meanings into something else as he talks to people that already think those things are bad. That's a verbal Judo, and we can talk about whether or not you think it is effective, since there have been obvious reactions from some Democrats.
There is nothing Sanders has said that can be construed as us needing to subsume civil-rights issues or ignore the rights of any marginalized people for the purpose of courting the white working class. I think the opposite actually, and his policies and history tend to reflect that fact.
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)I think the following quote from a Salon article is instructive:
That's backward and may result in part from Bernie living in the whitest state in the US. Those deeply entrenched beliefs and attitudes prevent economic solidarity. Those beliefs and attitudes are largely what enable the economic conditions we decry. Strategically diminishing racism is key to sustainable progress. As the Salon article points out, polls suggest a majority of Americans agree with Bernie's position on various economic issues, but it's that 'psychological wage' (feeling superior to and more deserving than 'The Other') - as FJT put it in another thread - that stands in the way. Otherwise we wouldn't see tens of millions of people repeatedly voting against their 'class' interests.
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what social justice and economic justice are, and how they relate to one another. As I wrote here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512669872
And, as I posted in FJT's thread, anti-racism is key to the success of the labor union movement (see post #201 from that thread).
Political correctness is just another way of saying human decency, and it's Republicans who play identity politics. Playing along with the right wing narrative is not in the long-term or short-term interests of the Democratic Party.
Worth reading: http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/the-dark-rigidity-of-fundamentalist-rural-america-a-view-from-the-inside/#.WGn7bz5oJ-5.facebook
Once again, the narrative promoted in the OP is, whether people realize it or not, the same narrative many DU posters have been promoting for the last 2 months. Trump supporters have promoted it, as well, which ought to tell you something. It comes from different angles with different spins, but it's bull shit regardless. The reaction to the OP would be hysterical if it wasn't so sad. Suddenly people are either defending or attacking a narrative on which they previously took the opposite stance.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)Last edited Thu Jan 19, 2017, 03:14 AM - Edit history (6)
and I've pointed out in those, why the economics conversation is the right strategy for dismantling racism. Nobody has taken my points to task.That doesn't mean they're strong...maybe people are like "don't poke crazy..." but until somebody shows me where I'm wrong I'm going to continue to promote these points. My argument does seem to have gotten at least some level agreement from FJT.
Here's one of the linked conversation I had with ForJusticeThunders, if you'd like to weigh in:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2677424
For the most part I think we agree with each other, except that I don't see a non-economic entry-point for dealing with racism. You have to admit that the impetus that made people in unions work together was in-fact economic. Of course proximity helps as well, and working with people and being integrated does go some way to helping people to see each other as people, but where that isn't happening, and even where it is, we still see these things persist...and that's not in small part because it is engineered to persist. Talk radio and media promotes racism, both subtly and entirely obviously depending on the outlet.There is a very good reason for that that extends beyond simple dispositions of the news folks.
As to why people might settle for that psychological superiority, I posted this in FJT's thread as well, but it kind of got buried. The intent was to address the suggestion that people will choose hardship if they also get to choose shitting on somebody else. I think that's not how it works.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2677483
Eh..editing again to add one more thing. I know it's on the late side.
I actually disagree with your clean definition of political correctness. Political correctness is rarely about not offending people who are marginalized. It is about not offending the majority opinion(or similarly, not offending any group that is politically valuable while also not offending that bigger group). If the majority opinion is that certain language that targets minorities of one sort or another is unacceptable, then avoiding it is being politically correct. If the majority opinion is that it's okay to shit on muslims or call suicide bombers cowards just because it feels good, avoiding that or even challenging it is NOT being politically correct. Maybe it is principled or decent or honest or thoughtful...but it isn't politically correct. Isn't that why "political" is in politically correct? Rather than say, coming "correct?"
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)"Nobody has taken my points to task..."
Read Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers... it accurately illustrates the major flaws in your premise. Or demand someone answer your questions if you simply want to screech...
Your choice, of course.
"political correctness is rarely about not offending people who are marginalized..."
You'll of course, provide objective evidence to support that allegation, or will you merely call it an opinion to avoid allowing it any real credibility?
JCanete
(5,272 posts)message board, where everybody posts their personal analysis based upon their backgrounds and understanding.
I do actually appreciate your recommendation as such, and I will look it up, but on this message board, where people are posting their thoughts, it would have been nice if you had put in your own, even if that had been a snippet of a relevant passage from Paul Kennedy's writings.
Sure. do you remember Bill Maher getting drummed off of NBC due to public outcry that he dared to say it was ludicrous that suicide bombers were being blanketly labeled cowards, and made the additional mistake of suggesting that the way we fight wars would be more fitting of that title--that is if such a thing had any business being argued in the first place.
Do you remember the Dixie chicks losing their record contracts due to public outcry because of their statements against the war and W? Do you remember Obama having to field the ginned up outrage about people retreating into their religions and their guns? That all is political correctness. The term is just used far more often to mean not saying something impolitic about people of color or homosexuals exclusively. Of course people who take umbrage at insults to their religion or nationalism wouldn't see themselves as forcing political correctness on others. The operative word is "politically." That implies expedience, not righteousness. Why don't you refute me rather than hiding behind the need for me to prove my point against one you haven't yourself proven?
By the way, totally dickish and uncalled for to say that I was screeching here. Where is even the evidence for that.
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)No progressive economic message is going to overcome those "parochial beliefs and attitudes." Those beliefs and attitudes transcend class interests, and not the other way around. Reverend Barber in North Carolina is probably on the right track.
The Democratic Party's best hope is reaching out to those who never vote, as well as genuine swing voters, but the latter are few and far between (and not easily identified). The vast majority of those who vote Republican are unreachable. Again, I refer you to the article from my last post about rural fundamentalists, who make up a huge percentage of the Republican electorate.
Charles Pierce, following quotes from various Trump supporters, wrote the following: "There literally is no innovative political strategy, and there is no creative policy prescription, that would have convinced that woman to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton. She is so deeply sunk in the mire of misinformation that she never will be pulled out again. Who is it, precisely, that doesn't care about her, and how was that manifested in her daily life? How, precisely, would Donald Trump care about her? The piece is replete with these kind of moments. What should the Democrats do to meet halfway the guy who believes the nation is being "pussified"? What's precisely the political outreach strategy that will bring back a guy who says this?"
We need to keep that in mind.
That said, I absolutely agree that the Democratic Party needs to do much more to transform the narrative regarding the mainstream media.
Gotta run.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)see this, let alone get back to it, but I wanted to address some of your points.
First, in my first exposure to the Reverend Barber, he is saying what i've been saying. He is saying show that corollary between those people who are both against living wages and against voting rights for black people. He is certainly not saying in this particular interview, that we should not talk about class, any more than Sanders is saying that we should not talk about civil-rights. They are both tying it all together. Sanders has recently said at I think two different occasions, that racist rhetoric that scapegoats immigrants and people on welfare, etc. has been and is being used as a tool to divide us. He talks about the very nature of that "gift" bestowed on poor white people through very pointed propaganda...that at least they are better than people of color.
It's just so frustrating that those of us trying to be thoughtful about this on both sides of the left are having an argument when we actually seem to agree fundamentally, on the fact that social issues and class issues are inextricably linked.
As to what we should do to meet some sexist guy half-way, well who's trying to do that? Trying to reach a person on a level that might connect is not at all the same thing. It is not about being soft-spoken on civil-rights, it is about tying those rights to what this person actually wants. But of course we aren't going to immediately reach the most vehemently racist or sexist among this crowd.. It's about reaching those we can reach and peeling them off. Those we peel off are themselves contact points for these deeper layers of the onion. The problem with saying that these people are all unreachable is that that IS a self-fulfilling prophecy, and is in contravention to historic evidence that people do have their minds changed...not just within their lifetimes, but within a couple of years.
As to trying to undo what the media has done to Clinton and Democrats over the past 20 years, and to undo it in a single election cycle at that...and to do so by trusting the very media that turned her into a monster...well that's a ludicrous proposition. The point is, we let it get that bad. We pretended all the way up through the last 20 years, and even beyond this last election cycle , that the media that created and just seated Trump, is legit. We are still reaping the whirlwind for that.
If the Democrats want to have a shot in hell of actually controlling government, we need to tie the media to the money...just like we need to tie scapegoating of minorities to the money. If we don't give people a narrative about how much better their lives could be...if we don't show them that their circumstances aren't a given, then sure...they will continue to take twisted comfort in being something as superficial as white skinned. If on the other hand, we give people an unambiguous message of what they deserve and CAN HAVE if only they fight alongside their brothers and sisters etc. of all races and backgrounds against the very forces trying to pit us against each other--well then we are subverting that loss avoidance that is making them cling so tightly to the bullshit. Sure, some are further gone than others.
Lets not be hasty in deciding who those are, an for the love of God, lets not assume that nobody can be reached.
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)First, I wanted to add one more point to my earlier post. I don't think anyone is consciously thinking or saying, "I know progressive economic theory is in my best interest, but I care more about hurting persons of color." But that *is* essentially the end result. Their beliefs and attitudes are what enable them to convince themselves that right wing economics is what's called for. Those beliefs and attitudes explain why people think Obamacare and the ACA are 2 different things. Those beliefs and attitudes explain why Trump supporters think it's totally reasonable to punish Mexico when a Japanese or German automaker wants to build a plant in Mexico, or why it's totally reasonable to think Mexico will pay for the US to build a wall. "Mexico," "Mexican" and "immigrant" are essentially code words to racists.
The argument over what transcends what (class over beliefs and attitudes, or vice versa) is, I think, the crucial piece in all this. Sanders has, perhaps, learned that "all lives matter" is not a proper response to black lives matter, but I think he remains too dismissive of the role racism plays in the US economic structure.
I posted the following last month:
Which of the following would get people to stop supporting Trump:
A) he continues to align with Wall Street and establishment types (no draining of the swamp)
B) he leads an effort to privatize Social Security, Medicare, public education, etc.
C) he doesn't destroy ISIS as he promised he would
D) he doesn't bring back millions of jobs that have been outsourced (and attempts to reduce the minimum wage to boot)
E) he doesn't withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal
F) he doesn't withdraw from the Paris Agreement
G) he does a 180 on civil rights and pisses off hate groups like the KKK (no mass deportations, no Muslim registry, full support of LGBTQ rights, full support of Black Lives Matter, etc.)
The answer is 'G' and nothing else comes remotely close. In fact, I don't think A-F would have any noticeable impact. A-F will get overlooked or blamed on Democrats. 'G' is the deal breaker.
Anyway...
Bill Clinton was able to win but he did great damage to the Democratic Party. The "It's the economy, stupid" and "The era of big gov't is over" ethic was not in the long-term interests of the US or the Democratic Party. Ironically, it would seem some anti-Clinton leftists are promoting a similar deeply flawed narrative from a different angle. Again, the response to the OP is disheartening. People are doing a complete flip-flop without even realizing it.
And the notion that Hillary Clinton didn't talk enough about economics or that she lost due to economic anxiety (on the part of a segment of white working class voters) is verifiably false. Also, the "establishment" did very well in the 2016 election. So, the anti-establishment narrative is also quite flawed.
You're more optimistic than I am about peeling people away from the dark side. With limited time and energy, I'd rather focus on engaging the disengaged and combating voter suppression, while being thankful that the country is becoming more diverse all the time. 40% don't ever vote, so let's figure out a way to reduce that number.
Regarding the media, we agree. The Republican Party has repeatedly hammered the "liberal media" drum for decades, and that's paid dividends. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party hasn't fought back hardly at all. I also think the following article makes good points: http://www.salon.com/2017/01/08/what-went-wrong-with-the-democratic-party-three-big-failures-that-led-to-the-current-debacle/
The Democratic Party also needs to do much more to defend and improve upon public education, including the promotion of classes in media literacy. Tens of millions of people in the US, including most Trump supporters, subscribe to patently false beliefs. Beliefs that are so absurd that they leave one speechless. Tens of millions of people. This is a serious problem that Democrats, when they go on the political talk shows, need to address. They need to draw attention to this matter and the role the media should play in combating the spread of absurdity. Instead of letting media members get away with their false equivalency game, their everything is a matter of opinion and all opinions are equally valid game.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)Yes, Trump would lose a swath of avowed racists. But if Trump's economic message were giving corporate elites boners, you can be damned sure that they would have helped a huge chunk of the populace come around. "See! and the racist liberals tried to paint Trump and Republicans as racists..." Of course that's not going to happen, because class-warfare prosecuted downward relies too heavily on racism as a dividing mechanism for them to ever let Trump get away with attempting to erode it in a meaningful way, like as it impacts voting rights...but if the media, in all of its forms was so inclined, ...oh it could do a lot towards changing people's minds. People soak that shit up without even knowing they're doing it. It isn't in a vacuum that these people excuse all of those other insults to their intelligence...its because the messaging is working 24/7 to tell them that's not really what it was ever about anyway, "as they well know"...telling them to not worry, they're in good hands.
Again, if you want to tackle voter suppression or poor education, you have to tackle the media, because that is the machinery that has allowed that stuff to happen, either in silence, or with its blessing in the form of outright propaganda.
As I posted in one of the previous links, I do not agree that economic anxiety was disproven as an influencer of our election. As you said, what people believe their reasoning is, is different than their actual reasoning. It is economic anxiety that makes it so effective to make villains out of Mexicans and people on welfare(or read--thanks to the media--black people). Sure, when it comes time to vote, it might be they say it's cuz they don't like Mexicans...but they don't like Mexicans for a very visceral reason. Those Mexicans are actually their enemies...they are doing them harm. You can't separate out the racism from the root of that Racism, and whether that racism comes out of a justification for the scraps of dignity they are clinging to, or comes as a direct consequence of feeling threat and being told who to blame, that is all very much about security, economic and otherwise. It is all very much about being afraid and being handed the culprit for that fear.
As to Clinton, I don't think anything about what Sanders is promoting compares. "It's the economy Stupid," was about jobs...not about inequality...not about unfair taxes or raping of the environment...just jobs and industries. Not that that's all bad as something to attend to, but to ignore everything else, from corporate consolidation to erosions of unions and social programs and regulations, to feeding into the incarceration state, was damn unfortunate, and came with exactly the high cost you say it did.
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)Yes, the response is visceral. There's no critical thought. Jobs, trade, "economic anxiety", all of that is used after the fact to justify their visceral/racist response to "those people." They don't want to think of themselves as racist and know that it isn't socially acceptable, so they find means to justify why they feel the way they do.
The justification follows the racism, not the other way around. As I said, the disagreement over what transcends what is really the crucial piece in this discussion.
As I said, the "working class whites"/economic messaging/dismissal of "identity politics" and political correctness narrative is being promoted by leftists, centrists and Trump supporters. It's the same narrative coming from different angles/spins; I'm not saying Sanders is promoting the same policies as Bill Clinton did.
Which reminds me, regarding political correctness, what I was saying earlier is that term is used by many to be dismissive of what is really just basic decency. It's not political correctness that says you shouldn't be a racist, misogynistic asshole. It's human decency that says that. When Megyn Kelly read those quotes of Trump's regarding women, he and his supporters dismissed objections as "political correctness run amok."
JCanete
(5,272 posts)were born racists. I say racism is a cultural phenomenon, and if you accept that, then how can racism be the root? It has to be instead, rooted in some other fundamentally human/mammalian qualities or behaviors.
I tend to lean towards a Maslovian philosophy on this. I'm not sure it can be called a science...the very fact that the hierarchy of needs framework seems to fit everything I see in humanity might suggest to Carl Popper that the model is a bad one for the very fact that it may have been designed to be unfalsifiable. Regardless, it seems to makes sense to me.
So the question is, what is it about basic human needs that has made us construct racist narratives? Isn't that all about fear, and survival, and maybe as we get more complicated as a species and we start to have internal and external narratives of good and evil, greed as well?
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)The idea that class interests will transcend racism if only the Democratic Party will change the way it addresses economics is what I dispute.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)Basic human needs:
air water food warmth, rest.
safety/security
love and belonging
esteem
What you are positing is that racism is so powerful because it operates at the level of esteem only. Self aggrandizement at the suffering of others. I would say that's far less pervasive than when something threatens(or is imagined to threaten) on lower, far more limbic-ally dominant tiers: needs for safety and security love and belonging.
I won't burden you with a lot of this here, but if those triggers are impacting people, then we have to figure out how to show them that they are afraid of the wrong things...hell, I'm still all in favor of giving them something else to be afraid of. Something real.
the love and belonging thing is a major hurdle though right? Because these racist communities are their tribes. It's dangerous and unappealing to think of the people around them as wrong or bad. Developing empathy might help them to expand a sense of their tribe to include people of color, and therein almost certainly follows cognitive dissonance. How that is dealt with will probably rely greatly on the balance between what this person has internalized as his or her personal values, and what is safe.
As to esteem itself...well this tier is why the narratives get baked in to justify all behaviors and attitudes...where we make ourselves the good guy and those who we are fearful of, or who we wish to exploit, the bad guys, or even not human at all.
But the reasons we do this span from esteem all the way down the pyramid.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Bernie and his supporters never said we should stop fighting racism or even spend any less time fighting it. The actual argument, which was not always communicated effectively, was that we need to talk about class as well as race...that BOTH matter that addressing both could massively expand the progressive coalition, that there were issues people of color and low-income or no-income whites could find common ground on, and it's not possible to defeat either racism or corporate greed without defeating both. The implication that the Sanders position was ever that racism should be put on the backburner was and is a strawman, was and is fundamentally unfair, and since we are now in a situation in which it is unlikely that Bernie will ever seek the presidency again, there's really no good reason to keep using that strawman against his supporters, many of who actually pushed the campaign to take a more explicit stand on race and essentially all of who are with you on this point.
I truly believe that, whoever any of us supported in the primaries, we are all in agree that we need to keep fighting racism and fighting it just as much as we do now.
What I've never heard anyone explain is how it would be possible to defeat racism in isolation, without addressing class or economic power. We tried that in the Sixties and the white backlash won. BLM tried that and seems to have reached the point of diminishing returns.
How do YOU propose we center anti-racism effectively now, what would be the strategy you would lay out for that?
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)Read through the posts again in this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2677264
Read FJT's posts. Read mine.
The whole "we have to address both equally/at the same time" is a simplistic misunderstanding of the point.
Bigotry, particularly racism, transcends class interests. No progressive economic message is going to convert the bigots. And Clinton didn't lose because she didn't speak enough about economics--economics dominated her campaign.
Bernie's positions on economic matters have the support of a majority of Americans, yet the candidates he supported most strongly underperformed Clinton in their respective states. That won't change unless we strategically focus on breaking down those "parochial attitudes and beliefs."
Reverend Barber is probably on the right track: https://thinkprogress.org/rev-barber-moral-change-1ad2776df7c#.swxy502a8
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)was and is on board with all of that, and so are those who supported that candidate, even if they didn't communicate this as well as they might have.
But we are through with 2016 and need to stop making assumptions about what people on the Left feel about addressing race based on which candidate they supported in the 2016 primaries.
From what I can see, we all agree about confronting racism AND about forming multi-racial alliances.
What would you have to see or hear to trust that that is the case?
chwaliszewski
(1,528 posts)Hillary Clinton. I wish people would just let this go. Next it will be anything that Trump does wrong will be Bernie's fault because Trump shouldn't have been president because Hillary should have been president because blah, blah, blah...
Bernie did not win the Democratic primary. It sucks.
Hillary did not win the general election. It sucks.
Trump won the electoral college. It sucks.
Basically, everything sucks. After what I've seen this week from the Democrats, I'd say Cory Booker needs to take a hike and Al Franken needs to team up with Elizabeth Warren and run in 2020. Those two have been doing the Dems proud with their grilling of Trump's nominees.
JHB
(37,410 posts)...as the outside event that clearly pushed the vote against the Democrats but is ignored when there's an axe to grind against the liberal wing of the party.
chwaliszewski
(1,528 posts)did Hillary do anything wrong to cause this electoral outcome or was it all a combination of Bernie, Russia, Comey, etc. ?
JHB
(37,410 posts)Last edited Thu Jan 19, 2017, 02:29 PM - Edit history (2)
...there's an argument to be made for ANY of them to be "the" reason we lost the EC and a howler monkey will be sworn in on Friday. Some were immediate to the election, some are longer-term strategic blind spots and bad calls.
They all deserve examination, but harping on any one of them to the exclusion of the others will just perpetuate the dysfunction.
And hey, let's not absolve the "responsible Republicans" who voted for Johnson just because they "could not vote for that woman." Both the Libertarian and Green parties got about 3x as many votes as they did in 2012 (L's a little more, G's just under). Assuming the swell was from the "rRs" for the Ls and the "Or Busts" (who'd already parted with Bernie) for the Gs, there were over 3 times as many Republicans who let Trump into office just out of spite and swallowing all the horseshit about Hillary promulgated by conservatives than there were strident lefties who effectively did much the same.
But hey, why would the author of the Time column look there when he'd have to pass up an opportunity to grind an axe, one whose fumes Time's audience can be pretty comfortable sniffing.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)
Cha
(305,134 posts)
jg10003
(1,026 posts)Had no right to run against her. The fact that he ran a clean, issue oriented campaign doesn't change the fact that he was wrong to oppose the DNC's anointed one. Of course he did actively campaign for Clinton in the general election (unlike Nader, who got over 90,000 votes in Florida). But it was irresponsible of Sanders to give primary voters a choice other than the one offered by the powers that be.
WhiteTara
(30,150 posts)and voted for her in overwhelming numbers.
ThirdEye
(204 posts)She got to be the GE candidate and still lost... to Trump.
If you need everyone to be in perfect alignment, say the right words, and never question their party's candidate (before or after the primary) in order to win against *Trump*, then I think there's a bigger issue.
(and of course it's not that simple with things like gerrymandering, Russia and Comey)
treestar
(82,383 posts)and in fact he did not have the right to run as other than independent, we gave him the "right" to run against Democrats.
emulatorloo
(45,551 posts)Apparently Weaver convinced Bernie to go full blown negative for the New York primary. Not issues. Smears and character attacks. "Deal with the Devil" Even after Weaver lost NY, he kept the negative campaigning up.
Bernie supporter here, I have a huge amount of bitterness about how badly Weaver fucked this up.
I don't agree w OP's premise, but I'm not going to pretend Weaver didn't go scorched earth.
SticksnStones
(2,108 posts)That wasn't his objective. His campaign was about raising awareness for his message, not about making certain the republicans are kept away from the White House.
He was about changing minds and policies. Not about strategically, how to beat a republican.
She knew policies don't mean jack if you don't win the job. His campaign helped undermine hers.
JudyM
(29,517 posts)deal. So they deserved to be aired. That's called democracy.
Response to factfinder_77 (Original post)
Post removed
delisen
(6,440 posts)There had always been a strong isolationist movement in the Democratic Party right up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor when everybody was forced had to wake up the reality that the US was part of the world.
We've been bombed again. Hillary Clinton knew who the enemy was and is, and sounded the alarm Sanders decided the enemy was the Democratic Party.
Ralph Nader, John Edwards, Bernie Sanders............narrow vision.
Cooley Hurd
(26,877 posts)delisen
(6,440 posts)The Democratic Party had an isolationist wing and they weren't just conservative Democrats. these are the people I was thinking of. They opposed FDR's attempts to aid the British.
The America First movement, I agree, was Republican.
Nice- welcome to DU
WhiteTara
(30,150 posts)Welcome to DU
JTFrog
(14,274 posts)
Lil Missy
(17,865 posts)Tortmaster
(382 posts)(1) Jill Stein was the Ralph Nader of 2016.
(2) The author puts a finger on one of the issues, but what about Comey, Russia, Wikileaks, Republican witch hunts? Let's not pretend that Sanders was more significant than those other causes. Moreover, Secretary Clinton beat Senator Sanders by 3.7 million votes, whereas she beat Trump by 2.9 million in a much larger election. It was never a contest after South Carolina.
(3) This is spit-take wrong: "Sanders liberals considered Clintonian centrism not liberal enough, not minority-sensitive enough, not pure enough." Not minority-sensitive enough? If the author means statements taken out of context from two decades ago, okay. But nobody believes that, especially since Clinton got massive POC support. She was getting nearly 80% of that vote over the age of 45 (i.e. people who vote). Finally, Democrats who only want to talk about economics are only "pure" on one subject: Economics. How does that make somebody pure?
Time to do an about-face and point your bayonets at Republicans, who could care less if you die.
JHB
(37,410 posts)How many "responsible Republicans" voted for Johnson just to not vote for either Trump or Clinton? Both the Libertarians and Greens got about 3 times as many votes as they did in 2012, but the Libertarian vote was three times the size of the Green vote.
Never let them off the hook. They elected him just as much as the people who voted for Kremlin Don.
JTFrog
(14,274 posts)
PotatoChip
(3,186 posts)What a ridiculous article.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)Actually, sanders was on the ballot and preformed poorly. https://extranewsfeed.com/bernie-sanders-was-on-the-2016-ballot-and-he-underperformed-hillary-clinton-3b561e8cb779#.jbtsa3epl
And the white workers whose supposed “hate for corporate interests” led them to vote for Trump? They don’t seem upset that Trump has installed three Goldman Sachs executives in his administration. They don’t seem to be angry that Trump’s cabinet is the wealthiest in US history. And we haven’t heard any discontent from the white working class over Trump choosing an Exxon Mobil CEO for Secretary of State.
The devil is in the details, and at first glance, it is easy to see why so many people can believe that Bernie actually would have won. He got a great deal of positive media coverage as the underdog early on, especially with Republicans deliberately eschewing attacks on him in favor of attacks on Clinton. His supporters also trended younger and whiter, demographics that tend to be more visible in the media around election time. A highly energized and vocal minority of Sanders supporters dominated social media, helping him win online polls by huge margins.
But at some point, you have to put away the narrative and actually evaluate performance. This happens in sports all the time, especially with hyped up amateur college prospects before they go pro. Big time college players are often surrounded by an aura, a narrative of sorts, which pushes many casual observers to believe their college skills will translate to success on the next level. But professional teams have to evaluate the performance of these amateur players to determine if they can have success as professionals, regardless what the narrative surrounding them in college was. A college player with a lot of hype isn’t necessarily going to succeed professionally. In fact, some of the most hyped up prospects have the most underwhelming performances at the next level. In the same vein, we can evaluate Sanders’ performance in 2016 and determine whether his platform is ready for the next level. Sanders endorsed a plethora of candidates and initiatives across the country, in coastal states and Rust Belt states. He campaigned for these candidates and initiatives because they represented his platform and his vision for the future of the Democratic Party. In essence, Bernie Sanders was on the 2016 ballot. Let’s take a look at how he performed.
After looking at a number of races where sanders supported candidates under perform Hillary Clinton, that author makes a strong closing
Why did Sanders underperform Clinton significantly throughout 2016 — first in the primaries, and then with his candidates and initiatives in the general? If Sanders’ platform and candidates had lost, but performed better than Clinton, than that would be an indicator that perhaps he was on to something. If they had actually won, then he could really claim to have momentum. But instead, we saw the opposite result: Sanders’ platform lost, and lost by much bigger margins than Clinton did. It even lost in states Clinton won big. What does that tell us about the future of the Democratic Party? Well, perhaps we need to acknowledge that the Bernie Sanders platform just isn’t as popular as it’s made out to be.
dionysus
(26,467 posts)Gothmog
(154,120 posts)Sanders was a very very weak candidate who was rejected by Jewish, African American and Latino votes. Sanders brought no new voters to the party
kenfrequed
(7,865 posts)Yeah... except the polling had Bernie beating Trump by double digits while Hill was often within the margin of error. Which is about where Hill ended up sort of winning by, within the margin of error.
So if we had wanted to fire people up and win by more than that and make it so there was no possibility for an electoral college steal then I suppose we would have had to go some other direction...
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)No one in the media believed that Sanders had a chance of being the nominee and so Sanders was never vetted. Match up polls only make sense if the candidate is actually vetted and Sanders was never vetted. Here is a good thread talking about these polls http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511038010
The reliance on these polls by Sanders supporters amuse me. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/harrys-guide-to-2016-election-polls/
Sanders would have been destroyed in the general election.
No one should rely on hypo match up type polls in selecting a nominee at this stage of the race.
kenfrequed
(7,865 posts)Those polls on possible match ups had predictive value.
Just saying "no one in the real world" does not discount them.
Bernie might have had a better shot at it... he might have won where Hillary lost.
What does amaze me is that I have been politically active since the 80's and the excuse that I have always been given is "electability" whenever the left of the party wants to push their candidate. In the last thirty years that is what most of us on the left have had to hear and there even were arguments made about this using similar polls.
But this year, since we were living in moderate-magic land, predictive polls were tossed out and the electability argument was no longer allowed. So in order to compete with the politician with the highest net negatives we decided we had to run the candidate with the second highest net negatives.
538 was horribly wrong about a hell of a lot of things this year but go ahead and keep sourcing them.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)Sanders was a very weak candidate who was never vetted. The Clinton campaign treated Sanders with kid gloves because sanders had no chance in the real world of being the nominee. The press did not vet sanders because sanders was such a weak candidate and it would have been a waste of their time 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:
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.
kenfrequed
(7,865 posts)This is another absurdly poorly written article by another Hill surrogate. It is an op-ed piece. Nothing more.
The campaign against Sanders was a campaign against his supporters. They knew that they couldn't hit him on policy. They knew they couldn't hit him on any scandal. They knew going with personal dirt on Sanders would make them look bad.
So the angle was "Bernie Bros". The angle was "unhinged lefties." The angle was mockery, gaslighting, and dismissal. The angle was illusory chair throwing.
The GOP would not have fared better because Senator Sanders has an impeccable record.
You got your candidate and she lost. I even voted for your candidate in the general election and she STILL lost.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)Ignoring the facts presented will not make them go away. Sanders was soundly rejected by Jewish, African American and Latino voters and was effectively eliminated on Super Tuesday. Why did these groups overwhelmingly reject sanders? They looked at his so-called records and laughed. In the real world facts matter and in the real world Sanders was a very weak candidate who was too weak for the press to vet and too weak for Clinton to go negative on.
Why do you think the GOP ran ads for Sanders? Karl Rove is running the standard attack ads against Clinton but other GOP types are trying to help Sanders also. The ad mentioned in the OP is really designed to help Sanders and not hurt him. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/gops-anti-sanders-attack-ad-intended-help-not-hurt-sanders
The ad called Sanders a “liberal” who supports tuition-free college, single-payer health care, and higher taxes on the “super-rich.” The intention was to boost Sanders in the Iowa caucuses, since Republicans see the Vermont senator as an easy target in the general election.
This week, it’s happening again. A group called Future 45 is running ads that, at first blush, seem critical. But the spots actually tout some of Sanders’ ideas that are popular with Democratic primary voters: an increase in the minimum wage, higher taxes on banks and corporations, tuition-free college, and universal health care.
And who’s Future 45? The Intercept reported yesterday:
Future 45 is [a super PAC] run by Brian O. Walsh, a longtime Republican operative who has in the past served as political director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. Most recently, he was president of the American Action Network, a dark money group that was the second-largest outside spender in 2010.
Over the last year, Future 45 has been funded primarily by hedge fund managers. Two billionaire Rubio-backers – Paul Singer, who runs Elliott Management, and Ken Griffin, who runs Citadel – have each contributed $250,000.
The overarching point is effectively the same as it was a month ago: Republicans are running anti-Sanders “attack” ads that are actually intended to help him, not hurt him.
As we discussed in the first go-around, this is part of a larger strategy in which Republican mega-donors try to manipulate Democratic voters because they see Sanders as a sure loser in November.
Karl Rove and the GOP mega donors know that Sanders is the weakest possible general election candidate and are running ads to help Sanders. The fact that some think that these ads are to hurt Sanders is sad but funny.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)Trump would have a very easy time with Sanders. 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
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.
kenfrequed
(7,865 posts)He spent much of the year being wrong, just like most absurd pundits.
He writes op-eds. Citing him gives you nothing. Keep trying. Or don't.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)This is amusing from someone citing bogus match up polls as a reason why sanders should have been the nominee. Such polls were worthless. I know that the facts cited by Milbanks are troubling to sanders supporters but these facts are correct. No one in the press or the real world thought that Sanders had a chance of being the nominee. Sanders was soundly rejected by Jewish, African American and Latino voters and was effectively eliminated after super Tuesday in the real world
If Sanders had been the nominee, Trump would have destroyed him. Trump had a two foot thick book of oppo research on Sanders http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-election-521044
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.
The facts are clear that the silly match up polls cited are worthless because no one vetted Sanders. Sanders was simply too weak of a candidate for the press to care about. If sanders have been the nominee, Trump would have destoryed him
kenfrequed
(7,865 posts)He was a media surrogate for Hill the entire election cycle and his piece is without merit.
He magically thinks that the people that didn't show up for Hillary are going to show up even less for Bernie.
Absolutely absurd.
kenfrequed
(7,865 posts)Read it on your own time. Eichenwald is a bad op ed writer and has little in the way of journalistic integrity.
dionysus
(26,467 posts)dozens of times in dozens of threads, even in places where it is irrelevant.
Repeatedly pasting those opinions, especially in threads where bernie is not the topic, is spam.
Facts don't scare me, the opinions that you spam do not scare me either. They do however, sometimes annoy me to the point where I will comment on said spammery.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)dionysus
(26,467 posts)Gothmog
(154,120 posts)Sanders' platform was unrealistic and could never be implemented in the real world without the millions/billions/trillions of new voters that he promised. Sanders' revolutoin was a flop. If you want facts, please explain this. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/10/sorry-bernie-sanders-there-is-zero-evidence-of-your-political-revolution-yet/
To succeed, Sanders might have to drive Americans who don't normally participate to the polls. Unfortunately for him, groups who usually do not vote did not turn out in unusually large numbers in New Hampshire, according to exit polling data.
https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=
&w=1484
...As for Sanders, he credited his victory to turnout. "Because of a huge voter turnout -- and I say huge -- we won," he said in his speech declaring victory, dropping the "h" in "huge." "We harnessed the energy, and the excitement that the Democratic party will need to succeed in November."
In fact, Sanders won by persuading many habitual Democratic primary voters to support him. With 95 percent of precincts reporting their results as of Wednesday morning, just 241,000 ballots had been cast in the Democratic primary, fewer than the 268,000 projected by New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner last week. Nearly 289,000 voters cast ballots in the state's Democratic primary in 2008.
To be sure, the general election is still seven months away. Ordinary Americans might be paying little attention to the campaign at this point, and if Sanders wins the nomination, he'll have the help of the Democratic Party apparatus in registering new voters. The political revolution hasn't started, though, at least not yet.
Without this revolution, I am not sure how Sanders proposes to advance his unrealistic agenda.
I live in the real world and I simply do not believe that Sanders' agenda is realistic and the lack of any evidence of a Sanders revolution reinforces my opinion
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)Sanders was a very weak candidate who relied on a mythical and magical voter revolution for his unrealistic platform. That revolution failed utterly. Sanders brought in no new voters and as a result Sanders' agenda failed. Sanders" supported proposals and candidates did poorly in 2016. These are facts.
Cha
(305,134 posts)be seen too many times.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)Garrett78
(10,721 posts)Particularly racism. Bigotry transcends class interests. Until we strategically diminish racism, no progressive economic message will win over enough people to establish a permanent majority. But not because progressive economic viewpoints, when considered on their own, are unpopular.
Because of that and because of things in his background, I agree with you that Sanders would have gotten his ass kicked had he been the nominee.
Paladin
(28,734 posts)forjusticethunders
(1,151 posts)Especially on race and social justice issues.
She did a HUGE amount of work to build an intersectional base, and she's going to throw it away by trying to calm down some of the deplorables? And a lot of her minority base voters are economically left as well too (yes believe it or not, minorities really like progressive economics). And Hillary, while she was conflated with Bill to a huge extent, was the genuine leftist of the two and in many ways 2016 was a return to her roots (2008 I feel like was a lot more influenced by Bill).
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)It's just coming from a different angle. At its core, this is the "working class whites/too much identity politics/she didn't talk about economics" narrative that doesn't hold up to scrutiny and never has.
The reaction to the OP would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)NWCorona
(8,541 posts)But he's no Nader and this article is pure division tactics.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)Sanders and the traitor Nader share a love of stating that there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties and have even used the same sad terminology. Sanders first used the same terminology of stating that there are no differences between the Democratic Party and the Republican party when he ran as a spoiler for governor. http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/04/when-bernie-sanders-ran-against-vermont/kNP6xUupbQ3Qbg9UUelvVM/story.html?p1=Article_Trending_Most_Viewed
After Sanders used this termination, Nader joined in first http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jun/30/ralph-nader/nader-almost-said-gore-bush-but-not-quite/
"The only difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door," he told supporters in California a month later.
"It's a Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum vote," Nader said in Philadelphia four days before the election, repeating a favorite refrain of his. "Both parties are selling our government to big business paymasters. ...That's a pretty serious similarity."
Nader also failed to challenge Sam Donaldson on ABC's This Week when Donaldson said, "You don't think it matters. You've said it doesn't matter to you who is the president of the United States, Bush or Gore."
Nader replied, "Because it's the permanent corporate government that's running the show here ... you can see they're morphing more and more on more and more issues into one corporate party."
NWCorona
(8,541 posts)I hate to break it to you but Bernie wasn't running in the GE so comparing 2016 to 2000 is kinda moot.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)Sanders was in effect on the ballot in 2016 and significantly under performed Clinton http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2680990
NWCorona
(8,541 posts)Gothmog
(154,120 posts)I live in the real world. If the Sanders agenda is so powerful, then why did this agenda do so poorly at the voting booth?
NWCorona
(8,541 posts)But the main one IMHO was that the Dem base was more comfortable with Hillary as she was a known entity.
Gothmog
(154,120 posts)I live in a deep red state and so I am faced with the real world on a daily basis. A number of Sanders proposals sounded great but they were not realistic in the real world. Sanders based his unrealistic proposals on a mythical voter revolution where millions/billions/trillions of new voters would magically appear and somehow forced the GOP to be reasonable. That revolution exists only in a fantasy world and has not been evident in the real world http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/articles/2016-04-15/bernie-sanders-bad-delegate-math-and-fantasy-revolution
There's a lot wrong with this formulation, as Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times this morning. It suggests a world view redolent of former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's toxic pandering to "real America." In Sanders' case, he's saying that red-state Democrats should be discounted because they're too conservative. But that's simply wrong, Krugman notes: Clinton isn't "riding a wave of support from old-fashioned Confederate-flag-waving Dixiecrats," she ran up the score by scoring lopsided victories among black voters ("let's be blunt, the descendants of slaves," he writes).
And the fact that the Deep South is conservative should be irrelevant, given that Sanders argues the principle obstacle to his super progressive agenda is campaign finance corruption rather than, say, ideology. Either he's leading a national movement, as he claims, or he's not.
Thus more broadly, his attempt to delegitimize a swath of voters lays bare a fundamental inconsistency of the Sanders campaign: One of his basic answers about how he's going to accomplish his aims – whether winning the Democratic nod, winning the general election or enacting his agenda – is the forthcoming revolution. His super-ambitious agenda will prove to be achievable substance rather than unicorns-and-rainbows fantasy, he said Thursday night, "when millions of people stand up, fight back and create a government that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent. That is what the political revolution is about. That is what this campaign is about."
And that's fine: If he can summon the revolution, then more power to him, literally and figuratively. But the Sanders revolution is breaking on the hard realities of math. The revolution will not be televised, the old song goes; but it can be fantasized – and it can be measured, in votes and delegates. And in every calculable respect, it's coming up short. That leaves Sanders to bank on an anti-democratic sleight of hand to secure the nomination. That's not a broad-based revolution; that's a palace coup.
To support the Sanders agenda is rely on Sanders' so-called revolution. Clearly the millions/billions/trillions of new voters that sanders promised never showed which is why his agenda failed.
Many voters may like parts of the Sanders agenda but they are not going to waste their vote on proposals that have no chance of passing in the real world
NWCorona
(8,541 posts)Gothmog
(154,120 posts)The exit polls show that Sanders actually brought in no new voters. Without the millions/billions/trillions of new voters, these proposals are not realistic in the real world.
I like living in the real world.
Haveadream
(1,630 posts)Thanks for this factfinder
R B Garr
(17,377 posts)That never should have been allowed to go on so long. This article puts into perspective things that Bernie never bothers with doing about the Clintons. Bernie never bothers with the reality of the '90's politics. Maybe before he bashed the Clintons anymore, he can fully explain to the public's satisfaction why he never bothered to run during that period some 25 years ago. The answer is obvious why he didn't, but he spends his time bashing the Clintons/Democrats instead. So sick of it! 
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)It's what politicians in his position do. It's nothing new. We have to look past it as there usually be a Berner in the field.
m-lekktor
(3,675 posts)Garrett78
(10,721 posts)It's just coming from a different angle. At the core, it's the same ol' "working class whites/too much identity politics" narrative that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
For that reason, the reaction to the article in the OP is pretty interesting.
Raster
(20,999 posts)treestar
(82,383 posts)People will jump on it sarcastically but it is tough to argue with.
killbotfactory
(13,566 posts)Oh wait...
Raster
(20,999 posts)...oh wait, that didn't happen.
Orsino
(37,428 posts)It will be one of the many stories told in the FEMA camps to frighten children.
guillaumeb
(42,649 posts)Typical of a magazine that rarely engages in actual analysis, preferring this type of People Magazine level analysis.
In spite of the GOP voter supression, Clinton actually won the popular vote. Rather than blame Sanders, a more compelling case (but still incorrect)could be made to blame white women for Clinton's loss.
Grade for analysis:F.
BainsBane
(54,728 posts)Last edited Wed Jan 18, 2017, 02:12 PM - Edit history (1)
my problem is he continued it long after he couldn't win and convinced his supporters the primary was rigged against him, often focusing on state requirements that had been in place for decades, as though their singular purpose was to disadvantage him.
Even so, I was prepared to leave it all in the past until he used the GE defeat to renew the recriminations toward Clinton and other Democrats. It particularly bothers me that his supporters insist we have no right to object to or even comment on attacks on the party.
The idea that he should be able to denounce the party but citizens have no right to object or offer any view other than applause treats an elected representative treated as superior to the rest of us and thus betrays a deeply inegalitarian worldview that is antithetical to democracy and liberalism. I don't want a party that holds one man above the rest and doesn't permit the citizenry to criticize or even ask questions. They talk about the party representing the people, but they refuse to allow citizens to engage in any way other than as fans. That is not civic engagement. That so many Americans across the political spectrum take such an approach is deeply troubling to me.
Raster
(20,999 posts)...Once again, let's blame everything and everyone... EXCEPT FOR THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN, who didn't even know they were so fucking deep in the hole until election night.
But then again, this kind of crap is to be expected as the worst fucking POTUS EVER is inaugurated and begins to dismantle 40 years of progressive, Democratic policies.
Give it all a rest... Hillary Clinton was the presumed 2016 nominee the moment she "graciously" stepped aside at the 2008 DNC Convention. The word went out: Hillary would run in 2016, and no one wanted to challenge the supposedly infallible Clinton machine. No matter that polls showed she would be one of the most disliked and distrusted candidates EVER.
Oh yes, once again, let's blame it all on Senator Sanders.
Z_California
(650 posts)Please Democratic party, please be the party of the people and not this crap. Your future depends on it!
tonedevil
(3,022 posts)pile of crap as legitimate for the sake of argument. What is the solution? should no one have challenged Secretary Clinton in the primary for fear of weakening her in the General Election? Since you want to cry like a baby about Dr. Stein and Governor Johnson running as third party candidates do you want to limit General Election to the two major parties? The juvenile stupidity of this kind of article is a lot of why I think we lose elections. Either we figure out how to win elections the way they are run or we lose again and again.
dionysus
(26,467 posts)is all you need to read to tell the article is crap.
The author goes on to praise "free trade", triangulation, bill's welfare reform and the "crime fighting" that imlosed mandatory sentencing and sent untold numbers of black men to rot in jail.
He even cried about the dems on the left not being "taken for granted". Woo hoo
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)Bernie supporters did what they promised to do.
Hello, Corrupt Trump.
Vinca
(50,959 posts)We'll never know what might have been and it's long overdue we put this on the shelf and tried to find a path out of this nightmare.
Arazi
(6,893 posts)Articles like this only prove the Democratic party isnt interested in actually examining why it's fucking bleeding out. So much easier to just blame Bernie.
Fucking bullshit
JHan
(10,173 posts)The "Democratic Party" has welcomed a place and position of leadership for Sanders.
Response to factfinder_77 (Original post)
Post removed
JustinL
(722 posts)I cannot respect any politician or pundit who considers BLM to be "intimidating."
flvegan
(64,578 posts)In reality, it should be Gary Johnson, shouldn't it? With his 200,000 votes, Hillary wins Florida. With his 170,000 votes, Hillary wins Michigan (and so forth, and so on). Hell, she'd have won Michigan if she got Darrell Lane Castle's 16,000 votes, whoever the hell that is. Who cares, fuck him anyway, amirite? Isn't that the direct comparison with Nader anyway?
Does Putin or Comey get the 2016 Katherine Harris Award?
I mean if we're handing out awards for "people who may have had something to do with voters not voting for X candidate" it should be a complete list.
The infighting is truly something to behold. One could say that the infighting should get some kind of award itself. And awards are fun. Keeps our minds off Tinkleface McTinyfist for a bit at least.
Rex
(65,616 posts)Of course the M$M will divide and conquer, keeps their ratings up and that means a good pay day.
montanacowboy
(6,287 posts)Get the hell off it
tecelote
(5,141 posts)Talk about beating a dead horse.
StevieM
(10,539 posts)Her 2008 and 2016 campaigns were not rigid and empty.
Her slogan in 2008 was "Solutions for America." She campaigned on universal health care coverage, universal pre-K, banking reform and many other issues. Nobody excused her of having an empty campaign, not even the people who were hating on her.
People did make that dishonest and inaccurate claim this time around, but not in 2008.
vaberella
(24,634 posts)
customerserviceguy
(25,185 posts)are cackling their asses off over the Bernie vs. Hillary infighting that is going on. What we need to do is "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow" as the song says.
Right now, we have no clear frontrunner for 2020. Maybe we'll be able to beat Trump with anyone that gets nominated, but the focus should be on making a fair primary election process that produces a candidate that all Democratic voters can get behind, and then we pull in the undecideds.
Your charge that Sanders distracted Hillary could have been leveled against her in 2008, when she fought hard for the nomination against Barack Obama. He rallied his base in enough states, she did not do that in the right places. It's time to move on, and see who will be our champion in a few years from now.
AgadorSparticus
(7,963 posts)The GOP must love articles like this that do their dirty work for them.
thesquanderer
(12,333 posts)re: "His insurgency pushed her too far left to prevent an effective re-centering in the fall," etc.
Are we really buying that the left is irrelevant, and the only way for a Dem to ever win is to become virtually indistinguishable from a moderate Republican? Our only options are centrist vs. loon, for the rest of time?