The quote from the guy you used as a cite might have had something to do with it.
He’s got about 2.5 million less votes than Hillary Clinton. Success is a relative term.
I did already. You ignored the link I presented twice, for example.
He lost while distancing himself from his own plan because it was too far left for him to run on!
Republicans have backed the usual horses - tort reform, selling insurance across state lines, HSAs - things which are even more pro-business (and also not likely to make insurance cheaper or entice people to buy it, but hey, it’s pro-business!)
Still irrelevant to my point no matter how many times you repeat it.
Flat spending means less - as a percentage of the budget, as a percentage of GDP, and compared with inflation.
And “Air quality across the United States has improved dramatically since 1970 when Congress passed the Clean Air Act in response to growing pollution problems and fouled air from coast to coast” but what have we done since then, or is the better air quality just a result of that act that was passed when such an pervasive act could be passed? Superfund was a big deal - and it was passed in 1980. In fact, most all of the prominent environmental legislation was enacted decades ago.
In fact, they’re the only climate change denier party in the whole world:
I have trouble believing that a group that denies science entirely would be able to pass the “business killing” kinds of acts that they were able to pass in the past.
The Tea Party had an impact. Yes, mostly a terrible impact. But there’s no denying that far-right branch of the Republican Party made a huge impact for a few years short of a decade now.
There is no Progressive equivalent in terms of influence at all. That’s the point.
Mmm-hmm. So explain to me how the “voting base” manages to constantly be betrayed by the “elites” but doesn’t do anything about it. Either this is bullshit, and the party leadership actually is liberal enough for the party’s voters (and I still don’t see any response to my comparison of Pelosi with earlier Speakers, BTW), or the progressive wing of the party is pathetically incompetent or just lazy and unfocused. (My money’s on “both”.)
My county Democratic organization is having a meeting soon at which delegates to the state convention will be elected. They have regular meetings every month at a local bar, where anyone is welcome. Those who attend regularly are sure to be the ones who win the votes at the big meeting later this month. And that ultimately is how the “elites” get in place: through this grass roots process. If this progressive majority you speak of can’t be bothered to participate in party politics on this level, why should anyone take them seriously?
And again, we hear the same kind of complaints from many in the GOP about party elites going against the grassroots, despite the fact that the same basic idea applies there: if they show up to these kinds of meetings, and they represent the majority of those who do, they will be in charge. (To some extent, they have had some success in this regard, but they still bellyache about party leaders, the way Ted Cruz does.)
Right, exactly. One of my BernieBro progressive friends actually expresses admiration for the Tea Party because they are so uncompromising. Until recently I’d have said that the left wing equivalent in the Democratic Party was much smaller and thus not as likely to cause this kind of trouble. But it does appear to be moving in that direction. Ultimately a centrist party might actually form and gain some traction.
They are doing something about it which is why we are seeing such success on the part of the Bernie Sanders campaign as well as with challengers to DLC-type Democrats such as DWS. Also do you think Pelosi is any more liberal then say John McCormack or Tip O’Neill?
For someone who appropriates the SJW-Shakesshit language of “Bernie Bros”, you are astoundingly ignorant of even the basics of privilege theory which even a left-Bismarckian social nationalist like me can accept. Have you ever considered that people with lower levels of education and/or income might not have the same amount of political literacy or not have the leisure time to leave their jobs to devote their time and energies to party politicking or not have the means of transportation to attend political conventions? Have you ever considered that the plutocratic klassenkrieg against the rest of America have eviscerated our communities, producing atomized and alienated individuals as documented by sociologists such as Putnam?
Yes, as I’ve said we need more Leninist/Stalinist style enforcement of ideological orthodoxy in the Democratic Party, partly in order to expel reactionaries like you. The only “centrist” party that might gain traction is a populist/radical centrist party that would be more akin to American Peronism then anything else. The “centrism” the plutocrats and their paid hacks dream, popularly described as “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” (“Yeah, we want to gut Medicare and raise the retirement age to 75 but we tinted our FB page rainbow so we are so tolerant unlike those dirty, inbred, fundie Republicans herp derp”), is a fantasy as unreachable as mine of achieving carnal union with Elle Fanning are. Were some shill like Bloomberg to run for President they’d doubtless do worse then even the Libertarian and Green candidates and the party membership rolls would only be useful to provide names to fill forced corrective labour camps once the National-Proletarian Revolution occurs.
Sometimes there are threads (or parts of threads) that are SO worth reading.
Honestly, if “Inbred Mm domesticus” and “John_Stamos’_Left_Ear” were arguing this at a dinner table somewhere… I don’t care if the food being served was fried liver and onions.
Now that Bernie won Wyoming, Bernie Bros are screaming about how unfair it is that they tied in delegates.
Once more with feeling: NO DELEGATES HAVE VOTED!
Superdelegates are free to change their mind before they actually vote. They have never gone against the will of the people and they won’t this year.
If Bernie somehow managed to get past really, really long odds and win enough pledged delegates and doesn’t get the nomination due to superdelegates, I will eat my hat.
It isn’t superdelegates that brings Hillary to even, its winning some districts by small margins to get delegates for that District when Sanders won the popular vote overall.
Sanders is making one of the mistakes Clinton made eight years ago. Winning the state isn’t important - its HOW you do it.
My son has played baseball sine the ball sat on the T and is now playing JV in high school. Each year new rules would be introduced. When they started stealing bases, there was a huge cry of “that’s not fair!” When they started stealing home a few years later - “its not fair!” Curve balls came with “its not fair.” You’ve got to work the rules of the game you are in.
My daughter is watching The West Wing for the first time and we are getting to the disclosure of Bartlett’s MS. He keeps saying “I wasn’t supposed to win - I was in there to keep Hoynes honest” - I think Sanders started out in that place - but unlike fictional Bartlett, doesn’t have the fictional Josh, Leo, Toby, Sam and CJ - and more importantly, doesn’t have a scriptwriter writing him an idealistic ending.
Does your hat eating pledge apply if Bernie ekes out a lead in pledged delegates but still trails in the popular vote? Because I think the superdelegates would give it to Hillary in that case, and I see no problem with that.
By the way, SlackerInc, your reservations are confirmed, but they have you listed as “vegetarian”. If this is not accurate, please advise your Welcoming Counselor upon your arrival.
I doubt that much of the electorate is really aware of that distinction, and even so, it’s remarkable for anyone who refers to himself as any kind of socialist.
Had he said someone who was perceived to be a socialist, I wouldn’t have quibbled. But he said “self-avowed” which is plainly untrue.
Also, young people like Socialism much more than older people and of course young people are supporting Bernie in droves.
If you’re a millennial, your experience with capitalism is not as rosy as boomers who reaped the advantages - instead they are dealing with the disadvantages:
I am not against capitalism but I am against the unfettered version of it that we have now.
A millennial needs a college education to have a chance in the workforce but is likely to come out of that owing unprecedented debt before they even start getting a paycheck which doesn’t go as far as it used to.
As for the upward mobility that capitalism once afforded people in this country, that’s long gone. Meanwhile, the ultra-wealthy in this country have more of it than they ever did and it ain’t trickling down.
If you’re a millennial and you base capitalism on what you have seen it do and how it is affecting you, you’re bound to have a negative view of it. So socialism isn’t a dirty word to them, and that shouldn’t be a huge shock.
People have spent the past eight years calling a centrist President a “socialist.” If nothing else, at least a Bernie candidacy has shown that is yet another thing the right wing got wrong.
