I don’t consider the 2016 Slate article to be serious smack. Hell, by Barney Frank standards the 1992 stuff was a love-tap.
Sanders simply didn’t give cause to inspire Democratic attacks during most of his career. If he caused real problems for them, Frank would have let us know about it more than once.
Did you read the article linked in the OP? Frank has nothing to say about “millenials.”
Were the “young people” even eligible to vote back then? Yes, the Sanders demographic skews young (& white)–but some of his fans here seem a bit older.
Poor turnout–by sane voters of all ages–is a big problem in Texas. It’s assumed the Republicans will win all state-wide offices, so why even bother? Too many Texans don’t seem to remember Ann Richards–our last Democratic governor. Not so long ago.
My US Rep, State Senator & State Rep are all Democratic. Mayor of Houston is officially nonpartisan–but the guy who lost the runoff (against a decent but unexciting Democrat) had a Republican past. So why is my representative on the infamous State Board of Education a Creationist, a Far-Right Republican party stalwart & owner of a home-schooling company? She’s chair of the SBOE & will probably get re-elected because of people not voting–or not paying attention to the non-glamorous races down the ballot. Yes, I also get pissed at people not voting–just because none of the candidates make their nipples tingle.
I’m not a purity test voter, so let it be known that Measure for Measure is strawmanning my position! And it’s not an ad hominem to point out that Frank is speaking as a Clinton surrogate. I don’t fault him at all for trying to get press to peddle his book, or even his new banking career, but come on, that WSJ piece title begged a little ridicule.
No, Mr Frank is being ridiculous. Hillary’s ‘electability’ argument is that she will get votes from Democrats and swing voters and maybe even Republicans: that centrist Clinton/Obama appeal. And the problem with that is that those voters will vote for a Clinton or Obama and not for a progressive, or even Democrat, Congressperson.
I think it’s terrible that neither Bernie nor Hillary are making this election about Congress. I think it’s terrible that much of the press are making the primary process about tearing one or the other down. I think it’s terrible that I got sucked into that.
But the truth is, ‘Clinton Democrat’ voters are just as bad at getting Democrats into Congress. They set the trend of giving Congress away to the GOP!
The Democrats have to make this election about Congress, or lose both Congress and the White House. Did that get your attention?
But if the Democrats lose the White House, I’ll actually be excited. Because that means, after, oh, six years or so, so in 2022, they may actually put someone in charge of campaigns who wants to win a Congressional majority and not just the Presidency. 
The people already have a perfectly good and sufficient reason to vote; and it is to keep the Republicans as far away as possible from the levers of power. People who don’t grasp that those levers include midterm congressional and senate seats, statehouses, and governors’ mansions are incomprehensibly irresponsible dolts.
That’s just not gonna cut it. As Bridget says, ya gotta make their nipples tingle. Or at least bring the bread and circuses. This whole “keep the levers of power out of the bad guys’ hands” motif just isn’t a sexy brand. Responsible governance? Hello, snoozefest! Zzzzz…
For the record, I’m a Hillary backer – I’m not arguing in favor of a Bernie Sanders nomination. What I’m saying is that this is how Bernie’s voting base will look at it, and it might be how some people who are less committed to Bernie or Hillary might see it as well. If Hillary needs superdelegates to get her over the top, then there’s going to be the perception among some that the fix was in all along and it just reinforces their perceptions that the DNC is ‘rigging’ the election and all of the rhetoric that he and his supporters spout. For months people have been predicting convention chaos in the republican party, but what I’m saying is that the Democratic convention could result in a nasty breakup of Clinton and Sanders voters, with permanent consequences, or at least consequences on the outcome of the 2016 election.
Trump won’t be the nominee. He could still run as an independent, but the GOP will be represented by Ted Cruz. If Trump runs as an independent, then she probably wins with relative ease, assuming she’s not indicted by then. But there are a lot of ‘ifs’ swirling around right now. If it’s Ted Cruz against Hillary and nobody else, then it’s still going to be tough for the GOP to recover from the damage done by Trump and other republicans, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility to see Cruz actually beating Hillary, especially if Bernie voters revolt.
I vote for the party now, not the person. Voting for the person is the folly of people who actually believe that a nation is run by individual supermen and superwomen – it isn’t. It’s run by groups of people who have a hierarchy and structure within these groups, and ultimately have individual leaders. But voting in elections is about voting for interests and ideas, not people. That’s not to say that individual characteristics should be ignored. Indeed I look at the team that an individual candidate assembles and how competent they are at running a campaign - you can actually get a sense about someone just looking at these factors. But ultimately, superman doesn’t run a country, a state, or even a voting district. It’s about the party and the ideas they represent. The republican party represents oppression and inequality. Staying home and not voting is essentially allowing the party of oppression and inequality to advance its cause. That is a conscious decision on the part of the voter to allow this. Voting is not a right or a choice; it is a duty. When the ideal candidate doesn’t exist, voters are not excused from their duty to prevent the antithesis candidate from gaining power.
Not by name. And sure what he says applies to* every other group* that sat out 2010 and 2014 and then acts angry that Democrats are not producing the policies they want and are now are Bernie voters.
Um, which are those other groups?
And what I am saying is that your speculation is judging the bulk of those who prefer Sanders by the loudness of a very few and is giving them way too little credit.
It should be obvious from my posts that I do not take a win in November for granted. I am worried that in the improbable but far from impossible close election Cruz or Trump (or whoever could be named later) could win and that an election could hinge on a small percent who could be not turned from a “Bernie or Bust” Clinton bashing mode to voting for her or at least against the other side. Yes, your scenario would have some small but nonzero impact, but not massive and not based on the belief that it was somehow unfair for the nomination to go to the candidate who got the most votes and the most pledged delegates.
I voted in 2010, but the dems proved themselves to be incompetent, easy to trick, inept and probably complicit. You can’t expect your base to be motivated to vote for that. And empty rhetoric gets old after an election cycle or two.
So Nancy Pelosi is some kind of sellout? Give me a break. Is your SN intended ironically?
I love how we in the mainstream of the Democratic Party are always told (by people like LHOD) to turn the other cheek and be welcoming and inviting toward the left wingers who constantly heap scorn and abuse on us, and slander public servants we admire. What are they expected to do, to meet us halfway? It is exhausting, like the college roommate who keeps you on edge by constantly threatening suicide.
Speaking as a middle-aged guy, I can assure you that a bunch of other candidates in the past have already showed that “young voters are persuadable and have energy.” John Anderson was very, very popular on college campuses. Gary Hart built a lot of enthusiasm among young people for his campaign. Jerry Brown in his own peculiar way. Sanders has done better than any of them, probably, but fundamentally he hasn’t demonstrated anything truly new.
And unfortunately, the results are going to be nothing new either. Anderson lost and didn’t provide any kind of place for his young supporters to further his ideas. Hart didn’t leave any kind of legacy other than Monkey Business. Once that presidential campaign was over and “their guy” had lost, there was nowhere for those disappointed young people to go. It’s going to happen again. It would be awfully nice, as I have said in other threads, if Sanders was building some kind of organization, some kind of broad coalition, that focused not only on electing a president but also on down-ballot races. Some kind of organization that would keep on going after the presidential election was over, that could channel this energy and this excitement. I’d love it if he did that. But he isn’t interested. Which means that the energy of his supporters will go exactly where the energy of John Anderson’s supporters went–nowhere.
One other point. I agree that Barney Frank shouldn’t be insulting younger voters (I do not believe that he did this, exactly, but I agree he shouldn’t). I agree that finding ways to involve younger folks in the process is a good thing. But this invitation is going to be rejected if it comes from any strong Clinton supporter, especially an older, political insider like Frank.
Sanders, after all, has set up Clinton as the enemy (which for his purposes makes sense), choosing to attack her for having “friends on Wall Street,” taking money from the oil and gas industries, not *really *opposing Citizens United. Many of his supporters have taken this rhetoric way further, painting her as a Republican, a fascist, a criminal, a traitor, a rigger of elections, a hypocrite, you name it, and her supporters as the same…just look at the comments section of pretty much any online political article.
“Come on and work with us,” from any political leader who currently supports Clinton, is going to be met by many of Sanders’s young supporters with a loud “Yeah, right!” (Or, “Fuck off!”) They’ll see it as selling out. They’ll see it as an attempt to co-opt them. So they won’t listen to Frank. They won’t listen to Debbie Wasserman Schultz. They won’t listen to James Clyburn, or Amy Klobuchar, or Julian Castro. They *will *listen to Sanders…but it’s incumbent on him to let them know that his goals go far beyond his own campaign, and to show them how they can continue to use their excitement to make their voices heard–even if that means voting for “the enemy” Clinton, working for candidates who may not be self-described democratic socialists, or trying to get involved in other ways. The ball really is in his court.
Oh, I knew I had an anecdote…Here it is.
I was in college in Massachusetts when John Anderson was running in the 1980 primary season. Most of my friends were all in for him–he told it like it was, he was anti-establishment, he was honest, and they liked a lot of his policies too.
You might have thought the campus liberals would have supported the Massachusetts guy, Senator Ted Kennedy, a man with a long history of hard work on behalf of progressive causes, who was challenging Jimmy Carter for the nomination on the Democratic side of the aisle; but you’d be wrong.
That lack of love for Teddy really bothered one of our best-known professors, a political scientist who was a personal friend of the Kennedy family and had advised…maybe all three of the brothers? one, at least, on policy issues. His panties were in such a wad over the Anderson phenomenon that he wrote a letter to the editor of the school paper telling students not to support John and encouraging them to support Ted.
The letter went over like the proverbial lead balloon. “Who does he think he is?” was heard throughout the dining hall the night the paper came out. “Where does some Kennedy suck-up get off telling me who to vote for?” I doubt it changed anybody’s mind, except possibly pushing some on-the-fence-sitters to move away from Kennedy. I hadn’t been on the fence, and it added to my certainty that Anderson was a better candidate than Teddy.
That’s how it worked then, and I expect that’s how it works now. That’s what college students do. Obviously, the Dem “establishment” is going to have to try to encourage young Sanders supporters to join the fold, but Barney Frank is not going to have a lot of traction if he tries.
It’s good to see most Dopers have the right instincts. But like a drunk too proud to enter A.A., maybe America can’t recover until it hits bottom.
Yes. And I was walking precincts before I was old enough to vote. My mother’s young friend was a Delegate to the DNC. And the “smoke-filled rooms” weren’t just stuffed with cigar-smoking friends of Daley or Pendergast, but cigarette-smoking housewives, and others proud to be Democrats with an upper-case D.
:eek: 
:smack: I could understand an ambivalence when comparing some electoral choices in the 1970’s or 80’s. But in the present environment, surely voting for the most mediocre Democratic candidate to oppose a Tea Partyite or Evanginerd requires no special “reason.” Instead such a mediocrity makes it all clearer to voice off and vote in the Caucus or Primary.
Are you of the Millenial Age we’re talking about, Messrs Clark and Mensoe? If even you two need a special reason to pull the lever and cancel out a Foxofidiot, maybe there really is little hope for America until we “bottom out.”
Is apathy then going to replace Hillary’s Democratic Senate with a GOP Senate by 2019? :mad:
Then maybe a dose of Donald Trump, with a bottom-hitting wake-up to follow, really would be the best palliative right now. :eek:
What specifically would you have liked to have seen that you did not receive from Democrats?
Obama did not end the war, but he did significantly wind down combat operations in Iraq, which may have inadvertently led to other complications, including increased presence of ISIS (that topic could have its own thread).
Obama did not pass universal healthcare, but he was able to greatly expand it. I know this for a fact because I had a nephew with mental health problems who was able to get continued healthcare coverage on his mother’s insurance plan. Others – myself included – can’t be denied due to preexisting conditions. I would agree that the premiums are not necessarily cheap for a lot of people but for some they’re actually cheap and they haven’t, contrary to popular opinion, led to a collapse in the health insurance markets. I would absolutely agree that a Sanders-styled universal approach would be better, but the reality is that a majority of Americans don’t feel that way right now.
Obama and the Democrats might take money from PACs, but that’s the only way they can compete with republicans in major races. It was Bush’s Supreme Court that sanctioned Citizens United. It should be noted that there would never have been a George W Bush, never have been a Citizens United, had Ralph Nader’s voters supported Al Gore.
As I have said, people who think they’re voting for a single superman as president don’t get it, and don’t understand how the American political system works, regardless of whatever you’ve studied in civics or poli sci. You’re voting not for superman or superwoman, but for the groups of people who largely support your interests. Your vote is not a choice; it’s a responsibility. It is not really a matter of whether your idea of a superman wins the nomination.
He may have meant process. The Democrats did what they did using the old political tricks that Obama ran against. He made deals with the pharma companies, the AMA, the insurance companies, etc., to avoid the major opposition that killed reform in 1993. it worked, but it stunk. Which is fine if you just want it to get done. Not so fine if you wanted a new kind of politics, a more honest, transparent politics.
Young people especially probably didn’t find that every inspiring, which is why they’ve never matched their 2008 turnout.
Um, it was a Slate interview and it read like a Slate interview. It’s hard for me to imagine it in the WSJ.
And calling him a Clinton surrogate is just ad hominem. My point is Barney Frank was one of the hardest left members of Congress. And carping about his board membership with Signature Bank really is rather dubious. They aren’t especially focused on the sorts of derivatives that got us into trouble - heck they aren’t even large enough to merit a wikipedia entry. I see that Directors at Signature Bank earn $26,000 per year. Not exactly enough to to support a lavish lifestyle, unless you stack them up. Denying one of our nation’s leading progressives that would be applying purity criteria. Also Frank’s autobio was published a year ago: the book tour is long over.
That said, I don’t want to be too harsh on camille. In another thread IIRC, she indicated that she would prefer to work on a down ballot campaign after Hillary is nominated. That sounds terrific: personally I think the real action is away from the top line race.
Um, I was referring to the piece Frank penned that I cited, the one with the ridiculous title:
Yes, I Took Bank Money. And It Made Me a Better Regulator.
(But you’re right it wasn’t WSJ; it was from his column in Politico. Apologies for the typo.)
Nonsense. It’s a disclosure of personal interest. Are you claiming he is not supporting Clinton?
Ok, I missed that. While I agree with the substance of the article I must concede it positively begs for mockery. (And the humor gods must be satisfied. :))
Hard for me to disagree when the point is framed as a disclosure.