And now, former far-left darling (former because he doesn’t really buy all that much what Sanders is selling), Paul Krugman tees off on Sanders for these statements:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/opinion/sanders-over-the-edge.html
Only in a right-winger’s wet-dream was Krugman ever associated with the “far left”, but that article is an excellent read. Still, Sanders’ values are worth espousing even if his policy proposals are wrong.
Sanders’ campaign started out as a mission to inspire the young and leftish so they’d eventually vote for Hillary. Like Trump’s campaign, which was just a personal publicity stunt, Sanders’ achieved much more success than expected. Let’s hope that by year’s-end we look on Sanders’ campaign as a positive development rather than a Democratic fracture that led to GOP victory.
The second part first. I never met my grandfathers but the one who did not abandon his family running away from gambling debts was the generation before Sanders, with the Yiddish accent, Workmen’s Circle socialist … I understand the tradition. And like jsgoddess it gives more pause than affection. The type is in regards to science the same as on the Right: the “correct” conclusion comes first; if the conclusion is “correct” the science is good, if not, the science is bad.
As to the alleged Clintonian embrace of woo … that article takes a few huge leaps. They take personal advice from someone who advised them to eat a bit of fish and lean meats and who sells the latests trendy diet fads. Hillary Clinton, even according to the article, clearly disagrees with some of what he says. That person personally also embraces a fairly meaningless “wellness” marketing entity called “functional medicine.” Therefore Hillary Clinton embraces all or even ANY aspects of what gets marketed as “functional medicine”? Because she knows this person and enjoys taking some personal fairly benign if trendy nutritional guidance from him, she is likely to appoint him to her health care policy team?
No, it does not follow.
You really believe that?
I think you are the only one. Certainly his current actions are extremely inconsistent with that.
I continue to think he was recruited by the DNC to be her sparring partner, and to bracket her from the left, for the primaries only, after they finally gave up on convincing Elizabeth Warren to do it.
If Sanders had the personal ambitions, or even the commitment to acting on his stated beliefs, now ascribed to him, why would it take until he was 74 to show them?
The DNC is capable of planning? Of long-term thinking? Of subterfuge?
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Because voting for the underdog will ensure that we get the best President available.
Some individuals, and it only really takes one, yes. This isn’t a big plan or all that long-range or even subterfugeous (real word or not, I’m using it). It’s just playing the game, and not on a deep level, either. Get a bunch of activists with disparate agendas into a room and they will not emerge with a coherent and effective strategy, you’re right, but that isn’t necessarily what happened.
So what’s *your *explanation for where Sanders has been all these years, and why he waited until Warren was out to do anything? Remember that his candidacy came first, and the Bernie Bro movement followed it.
You can’t credibly run for president from the House, and to run the year Obama did was his first year in the Senate, also pretty shaky.
Good point. Look at how their neglect of state and local races has fucked the Democratic Party up big time. The Republicans worked hard at getting judges and state government officials into positions of power while the DNC slept. Now the White House is the slender reed upon which all hopes of Democrats retaining power at the federal level depend, as the state government Republicans have gerrymandered the living hell out of all the electoral maps.
I think it was because he was aware of all the polling data which suggests that the majority of Americans, much less the Democrats, support policies that are well to the left of those supported by the DNC centrists. Obviously, there was room for someone on the left to campaign against Hillary.
The issues about oil and gas and placenta eating and defending Nicaragua’s left leaning government are all Washington bobble head talking points, pure gotcha stuff that does not matter. Progressives will stay on focus on the big issues, which are getting money out of politics, preserving the American middle class by fighting wealth inequality, and breaking up the big banks and regulating them so they don’t screw up again, as they surely will under Hillary. Have fun with it, guys, it won’t change the big issues.
It goes both to his credibility and his ability to get things done, both of which are important characteristics of a good President.
Looking at my Facebook feed and comments under stories run by the New York Times, it sure doesn’t look like Progressives are focusing on the “big issues”. Instead they are perfectly happy to play “pure gotcha stuff that does not matter” with respect to Hillary Clinton.
Why the double standard?
So one person from the DNC persuaded a non-Democrat Independent to give up his life so that he could spend 24 hours a day at the age of 74 traveling the country to challenge Hillary Clinton … but it’s not a big plan or even subterfugeous? And the DNC went along with this while simultaneously sabotaging all the debates by putting them at times nobody would watch? Did this person tell anybody else at the DNC what he or she was doing? What did Debbie Wasserman Schultz know and when did she know it?
That’s pretty much the standard boilerplate response to complaints about “gotcha” journalism and commentary. Pretty much anything can be described in those terms.
I’m sure if you go trolling Facebook, twitter and youtube commentary you’ll find supporters of everyone and everything saying stupid things.
Except that it wasn’t ‘gotcha’ journalism. That is Bernie’s record, and those are things he has said and done, and so far as I can see, stands by. Like it or not, that ‘boilerplate’ is true.
Near as I can tell, for Bernheads the definition of gotcha journalism seems to include anything that might reflect poorly upon their idol. It definitely does not seem to include anything that reflects poorly or awkwardly on Hillary Clinton.
This is pretty rich coming from a Bernie supporter, given that Hillary has raised over 30 million dollars this cycle for downballot candidates and the DNC, while Bernie only raises money for himself.
Nope.
If you actually want to know who or what Bambi and Godzilla are in the metaphor of this thread, you’ll have to read the opening post.