# Bernie's Soviet "honeymoon" and trips to Nicaragua and Cuba are disqualifying. **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [February 5, 2016, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209 "2016-02-05T06:15:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/61 "2016-02-06T03:20:19Z")
Okay, I have a chance now to get into some of this. A single response would be outrageously long, so apologies if I end up serially posting if no one else jumps in in the interim. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Cite for any slightest evidence from any point in his lengthy political career that there is **anything** Bernie Sanders dare not speak? How about starting with the Guardian article linked in my OP? > [@](#): > > Today it is rare to find Sanders talk about the plight of people overseas. That, friends say, is perhaps the most significant change he has witnessed in the senator’s political career, as he has become less interested in international affairs. > > Sanders has gradually taken a less keen interest in foreign policy; his politics have become more parochial, focused on the needs of everyday Americans. Gutman described the senator’s evolution as becoming more aligned with the bread-and-butter interests of voters. “The way to succeed in politics is not to be excessively concerned about the people far away,” he said. I seriously doubt he has changed his views about poor countries; he’s just learned that’s a political loser, even among many people on the left (I have been chagrined to hear from many of my left-wing friends that we “should spend our money on the poor people in our own country”, even though they are far better off than the poor in the developing world). [Another example](http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/25/politics/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-2016-election/) of how he has shifted his rhetoric, but I very much doubt his core beliefs shifted along with it (emphasis mine): > [@](#): > > The Republican super PAC America Rising has assigned a tracker to follow Sanders on the campaign trail, and has submitted open-records requests for many of his documents.[…] > > A story by Yahoo’s Hunter Walker was an example of what could come up: **Sanders’ one-time support for nationalizing industries like oil and electric utilities, the seizure of those industries without compensation and his desire to take the Rockefeller family’s wealth and use it to help the poor.** > > When CNN asked strategists working with Republican presidential campaigns how they might deploy those details against Sanders in a general election, none would discuss it on the record – another indication that the party is intent on letting Sanders remain unscathed while his opponent is Clinton. The more I read about Sanders, the more I like, the more I see commonalities in our views…and the more opposed I become to his being the nominee. For instance, I have never encountered anyone saying [this](http://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/19/nyregion/notes-on-people-some-disunity-along-the-united-way.html) before, and I feel exactly the same way: > [@](#): > > For the kickoff of the 40th annual Chittenden County United Way fund-raising drive in Burlington, Vt., the sponsors considered themselves fortunate to have as guests Mayor Bernard Sanders of Burlington and Gov. Richard Snelling of Vermont. > > But the charity workers heard the sort of things they wanted to hear from only one of their guests. > > ‘‘I don’t believe in charities,’’ said Mayor Sanders, bringing a shocked silence to a packed hotel banquet room. The Mayor, who is a Socialist, went on to question the ‘‘fundamental concepts on which charities are based’’ and contended that government, rather than charity organizations, should take over responsibility for social programs. He is spot on about this, but this is anathema to the core values of the vast majority of voters. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/62 "2016-02-06T03:31:09Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > It doesn’t take much. Everything is decided on the margins. The socialist thing is already a downside for Sanders. Getting that tied into USSR-sympathies will only make that stronger. > > It doesn’t matter one bit that we liberals don’t think it means anything. Because we’re going to vote Democrat in the general no matter who is the candidate. The people who matter are those who legitimately might vote Republican and those who might decide not to vote at all. Right, except that it does matter in the sense that starry-eyed liberals might foolishly nominate him. So to me, it does matter that liberals shrug it off, because that is “Danger Will Robinson!”. I mean, I just had to SMH at this, also from the CNN article linked upthread: > [@](#): > > Now 61 and retired, Jan Marcotte feels thrown back to her days as a high school political volunteer when she hears Bernie Sanders speak. > > “I feel like if I close my eyes, I’d be back working for George McGovern,” she said after a Sanders rally last week. For this woman, that is a feature, not a bug! :smack: This kind of thing accentuates a suspicion I have sometimes that a lot of people are backing him just because it’s “cool” or “fun” or “inspirational” to be involved in the campaign. Which makes me despair. This isn’t Burning Man or Bonnaroo! The lives of millions of people, especially among the underclass, will be made more difficult, or even ended, if a Republican is allowed to skate in. The effects on the Supreme Court in particular will last decades. > [@BigT](#): > > And, among those people, there are definitely people for whom this will resonate. I don’t know if it makes Sanders unelectable, but it definitely makes it worse than before. > > And I say that even though I don’t particularly like the way the OP goes about his political posts. Care to elaborate? I respect your opinion, and am willing to self-examine, as you are talking very sensibly. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/63 "2016-02-06T03:35:31Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > This kind of thing accentuates a suspicion I have sometimes that a lot of people are backing him just because it’s “cool” or “fun” or “inspirational” to be involved in the campaign. Your suspicions don’t amount to a substantive policy or strategic point. Perhaps you’d like to post your suspicions in MPSIMS instead? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/64 "2016-02-06T04:03:18Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Me, I expect this’ll be all over the conservosphere, and a bit over mainstream media, for the next week or two. After that, nobody’s really going to give a shit, except for Clinton supporters desperate for some way to attack Sanders while appearing to piously just care about the general election, and superduperrightwingers who think Clinton killed Vince Foster. This isn’t a scandal with a there there; it’s more like Reverend Wright (remember Reverend Wright, the scandal that Clinton fans were sure was going to bring down [some other presidential candidate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Wright_controversy#Other_Presidential_candidates) a few years ago?) Wright almost did bring Obama down. Obama made a great “save” with his race speech, and by severing ties with Wright; and the GOP could never place him in the pews when Wright made his most inflammatory statements. But try this thought experiment: what if it had been Obama \*himself \*who had said them? Maybe it was way back in the '80s when he was a community organizer, and he tried to argue that he was young then and had grown past that way of thinking. Do you think he would have survived it? No fucking way. Completely fatal. There’s a recurring theme here that I already mentioned upthread: “No matter who we run, they are going to accuse them of all kinds of ridiculous nonsense.” Your Vince Foster reference is an example of just this kind of thing. But what I think you (collectively) are missing is that while Republicans try this shit on everyone, there is great variation in how well it works. Bill Clinton left office with a sky-high approval rating despite Foster and the entire kitchen sink being thrown at him. In fact, I think his approval was so high in part \*because \*they threw so much dubious-sounding nonsense at him. But with Bernie, they will be able to be much more judicious and only use well-sourced information in their attacks. People will never get the chance to think “oh boy, there go the Republicans again, making stuff up and distorting” because it will all be there in black and white. I mean, let’s go reductio ad absurdem on this construction. If it literally doesn’t matter how radical Bernie is, because the GOP will try to tar and feather any Democratic candidate, why not just go with a ticket of bell hooks and Noam Chomsky? Answer: because yes, it does matter how truthful their attacks are. The dishonest ones get some traction, but the truthful ones get more. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > For Clinton, they’ll talk about emails, Bengazi, emails, Watergate, her husband’s affairs, emails, Vince Foster, Travelgate, fantasy snipers, Foggy Bottom, emails, Sidney Blumenthal, and electronic message servers. Clinton is likely to give snide dismissals of claims, falling back on what was strictly legal rather than discussing whether her behavior was ethical. > > For the OP to make sense, you’d need to argue that Sanders’s trips and letters from the eighties are somehow **more** scandalfodder than Clinton’s behavior from the last decade, let alone her behavior from the last quarter century. > > Is that really an argument anyone thinks they can make? \*Hell \*yes. See upthread for how the flurry of nonsense aimed at the Clintons is not only “baked in”, but tends to discredit the Republicans more than the Clintons. I will acknowledge this: the “fantasy snipers” thing was bad. Really bad. Brian \*Williams \*bad. I could easily imagine a universe in which that, all by itself, could have and maybe should have ended her political career, at least in terms of aspiring to the presidency. But ironically, I think what saves her on that is that the Republicans had already developed a “boy who cried wolf” problem by that point when it comes to the Clintons. They won’t, I think, make that mistake with Bernie–because they won’t need to. The other thing is that Hillary having some negatives doesn’t make Bernie any more electable. If you honestly believe her negatives are a greater electability problem than his (and apparently you do), the answer should never have been to back Bernie. It should have probably been to go with O’Malley, or try to push a movement for the Dems to draft someone else. So that’s the thing: you are really off base when you seem to be arguing that I am operating based on “I back Hillary to the max, so I will try to destroy anyone who gets in her way, and use disingenuous appeals to ‘electability’”. No, my concerns are very much Bernie-centric, I promise you. Hillary’s not the awesomest candidate ever, she’s just the less implausible one at this point. On Daily Kos the other day, in fact, someone threw back in my face that I had at one time (2003) actually been [very negative](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2003/11/11/1956/-Courtesy-of-Howard-and-Hillary-a-decade-or-more-of-GOP-presidents) on Hillary’s electability: > [@](#): > > The Hillary thing totally baffles me. I can’t imagine any worse nominee (at least one who has a real chance of being nominated). I was still fairly dubious of her in 2008, which is why I supported Obama (donating to him starting in the primary season, and of course voting for him in the primary). But then Hillary added some foreign policy gravitas as SoS, and there was stuff like “Texts from Hillary”. So she certainly has grown in my estimation. And I kind of feel like we checked off the black guy box and now should check the “not a dude” box (Latinos, we’ll get to you soon, promise!). But I won’t deny there are many more electable Democrats in this country; Bernie is, however, nowhere close to being one of them. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/65 "2016-02-06T04:26:17Z")
Well, it is a concern. But this is not 1972. The Cold War has been over and the USSR defunct for over half the time since then. There are a lot of young people in this country for whom the USSR has never been\* their\* enemy, but Wall Street, the insurance companies, and yes, the Clinton Democrats have been. Sanders, whatever his faults, sounds like he’s on their side. Telling them that they should vote for Hillary as the lesser evil if she gets the nomination is one thing. Telling them that they need to nominate her over Sanders is _crazy._ ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/66 "2016-02-06T04:34:54Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I mean, let’s go reductio ad absurdem on this construction. If it literally doesn’t matter how radical Bernie is, because the GOP will try to tar and feather any Democratic candidate, why not just go with a ticket of bell hooks and Noam Chomsky? Wow, that would trump (pun intended) Trump. That would trump Schwarzenegger! Two terms, and I’m not just being facetious. Americans respond to celebrity, hence the Governator, the Trump candidacy, the Bush dynasty, and yes, the success so far of the Clinton campaign. If, in 1992, Ralph Nader had run for the Democratic nomination for anything, including President, I think he could have had it. You can’t really say that the radical left can’t win in a general when you’ve never tried putting the radical left up in the general. What Trump and Sanders are demonstrating this year is there is a market for a broader range of candidates, way way outside any Overton Window put up by the media and the Very Serious Persons. Not that anyone who paid attention to the way FDR and Reagan remade their parties would doubt it. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/67 "2016-02-06T04:53:57Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > Because of the way people form opinions about people. We are Bayesians. I’ve known you for years now as a poster on this message board. If someone comes along and reveals your secret text messages showing you to have used some racial slurs, it is not going to cause me to radically revise my view of you because I’m incorporating that piece of evidence into a much larger body of evidence. By contrast, if a February 2016 join date posts some crypto-racist rant, I’m going to conclude pretty quickly that the dude’s not worth listening to. > > Bernie effectively has a February 2016 join date for most of the country. Hillary is a '99er. Yes, this is well stated. I especially like the nod to Bayesianism (if that’s a word). > [@foolsguinea](#): > > Wow, that would trump (pun intended) Trump. That would trump Schwarzenegger! > > Two terms, and I’m not just being facetious. Americans respond to celebrity, hence the Governator, the Trump candidacy, the Bush dynasty, and yes, the success so far of the Clinton campaign. If, in 1992, Ralph Nader had run for the Democratic nomination for anything, including President, I think he could have had it. > > You can’t really say that the radical left can’t win in a general when you’ve never tried putting the radical left up in the general. > > What Trump and Sanders are demonstrating this year is there is a market for a broader range of candidates, way way outside any Overton Window put up by the media and the Very Serious Persons. Not that anyone who paid attention to the way FDR and Reagan remade their parties would doubt it. What you’re hinting at, it seems to me, is something else I’ve had “suspicions” about (sorry, LHOD: not moving it to MPSIMS). Namely, that some Bernie supporters are willing to sacrifice the election in exchange for a big, potentially Overton Window-moving, debate in which hard left ideas get to be put up on the \*\*big \*\*debate stage. Would it surprise you to know that I think this is actually the \*best \*argument for nominating Bernie? I don’t agree with it, mind you (maybe I’d be more tempted if there weren’t four Supreme Court Justices born before WWII, including one born when the German Reichstag was still a viable democratic institution), but I credit it with not being delusional and having some upside. I just wish anyone shooting this angle would be honest about their aims. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/68 "2016-02-06T04:54:39Z")
I know you think post #66 is nuts, because the USA is a super-duper right wing country. But politics has a funny way of changing. I remember how press outlets took W Bush’s Presidency as an excuse to say that a) nepotism was hunky-dory, b) women should be disenfranchised, c) _Griswold_ could be overturned, d) real conservatives have to be in favor of pre-emptive war, and e) constitutional restraint on the courts and the Geneva Accords should all be reinterpreted out of existence. It was at this point that I saw that the conservative movement was nothing like I thought they were, and I became a Democrat. Did those ideas die in 2006? Well, not the last two. Also, the GOP run this country now. Even HRC just assumes that a majority of elections this year will go to them. So a party that goes off the deep end apparently does not die electorally. Apparently they drag the country with them. Reagan had stupid ideas about economics and fiscal policy, and was unelectable: Two terms. Poppy Bush was popular and credible: One term. Clinton was not Presidential enough, maybe not likeable enough; he was fat, smarmy, long-winded hillbilly with a stupid accent, not liberal enough, and a general douchebag: Two terms, remembered as not only “likeable” but a “political genius.” W Bush was a ridiculous nitwit in over his head and running for Crown Prince: Two terms, and basically was King of America at the end of his first. John Kerry was electable, not like that Howard Dean guy! And he was a badass war hero, who’d killed men in hand-to-hand combat, so that meant he was tough as nails: Lost, didn’t even sue over evidence of election fraud in Ohio. Howard Dean was a stupid maniac: Actually ran the party pretty well, won back Congress. Barack Hussein Osama was a joke, right? Two terms. Moderates loved McCain: Nope. Moderates loved Romney: Too bad. At this point, I see a pattern. What smart people (and the OP is very smart) think is electable is\* nothing.\* The “unelectable” have an appeal that the electable lack. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/69 "2016-02-06T04:54:45Z")
> [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > Call me cynical, but do delegations on junkets to sister cities _actually_ get much work done or are they just taxpayer-funded vacations? It’s not like he was over there negotiating on nuclear arms or trade policy. Surprisingly, yes. The small city I lived in in China was sister cities with a small town in South Carolina. They set up a really unique, really cool student exchange program which had a huge impact on both cities. And the impact of the cultural exchange in this case was quite impressive on both sides. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/70 "2016-02-06T04:58:36Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Wright almost did bring Obama down. No, he didn’t. > [@](#): > > But with Bernie, they will be able to be much more judicious and only use well-sourced information in their attacks. If they do, the charge is going to be completely foolish. > [@](#): > > I mean, let’s go reductio ad absurdem on this construction. If it literally doesn’t matter how radical Bernie is It literally does matter. Nobody said it didn’t, and your conclusion is your own. > [@](#): > > \*Hell \*yes. See upthread for how the flurry of nonsense aimed at the Clintons is not only “baked in”, but tends to discredit the Republicans more than the Clintons. In your eyes, sure. In the eyes of lots of voters? I’m not convinced. Look, I’m not saying that this attack will be entirely toothless. Nor am I saying that other attacks on Sanders will be ineffective. I have serious reservations about whether he could carry a general election. But I think you’re _vastly_ overestimating how significant a honeymoon destination is going to be. It’s the sort of scandal we get on a nearly weekly basis these days, and people forget them. Voters who are going to be dissuaded by a SOviet honeymoon are already not going to vote for a socialist; the number of folks who’ll say, “I was gonna vote for a socialist, but he honeymooned in the Soviet Union? No way!” is infinitesimal. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/71 "2016-02-06T05:09:42Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > What you’re hinting at, it seems to me, is something else I’ve had “suspicions” about (sorry, LHOD: not moving it to MSIMS). Namely, that some Bernie supporters are willing to sacrifice the election in exchange for a big, potentially Overton Window-moving, debate in which hard left ideas get to be put up on the \*\*big \*\*debate stage. Would it surprise you to know that I think this is actually the \*best \*argument for nominating Bernie? I don’t agree with it, mind you (maybe I’d be more tempted if there weren’t four Supreme Court Justices born before WWII, including one born when the German Reichstag was still a viable democratic institution), but I credit it with not being delusional and having some upside. I just wish anyone shooting this angle would be honest about their aims. What I was trying to say and apparently forgot to put in explicit language, is this: If they managed to convince themselves to get down in the dirt and run, bell hooks and Noam Chomsky would win election as President and Vice President of the United States of America in a general election, respectively, against someone like Marco Rubio or Donald Trump; for the same reason that Trump will (very likely, still) win this year, for the same reason that Arnold Schwarzenegger became Governor of the State of California. The hurdles are in actually doing the work of campaigning and in getting past the party machine. But in the general? They’d be candidates of a quality much above average. I don’t say this because I am personally a fan of bell hooks (whom I have never read and who I think is probably a pretentious, ludicrous, nitwit just from the insistence on putting her name in lower-case when everyone else uses the standard form as if that were humble :dubious:) or Noam Chomsky (who is at this point known as an advocate of a silly false path in linguistic theory and as a whining leftist who doesn’t vote). I say this because they would be more interesting and exciting than the typical candidates, about whom it is to yawn; and that counts for more than you think. They would be mocked in many quarters, but would have more than enough intellectual cachet to win the votes of voters who fancy themselves thoughtful, and enough novelty and celebrity to win voters who aren’t so thoughtful. But that other thing, sure, that’s an inference I can see drawing from other posts I have made on this board in the last few days. But it is not the intent of that post specifically. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/72 "2016-02-06T05:32:15Z")
SlackerInc it doesn’t matter how much you post about it on message boards. Both parties have utterly failed the current under 30s generation. Student debt is at ridiculous levels, and getting a good degree has no guarantee of getting you a job that will ever let you pay back that mountain of debt. Those young people don’t care if Bernie went to the USSR because he’s offering them the same kind of hope that Obama used in his campaign. Clinton offers nothing except more of the same, she has no solutions to their problems. We’ll have to see if Bernie supporters can increase turn out enough or not to make a difference. But if I was a US citizen I’d be voting and campaigning for Bernie. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/73 "2016-02-06T05:38:30Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > If they managed to convince themselves to get down in the dirt and run, bell hooks and Noam Chomsky would win election as President and Vice President of the United States of America in a general election, respectively, against someone like Marco Rubio or Donald Trump; for the same reason that Trump will (very likely, still) win this year, for the same reason that Arnold Schwarzenegger became Governor of the State of California. The hurdles are in actually doing the work of campaigning and in getting past the party machine. But in the general? They’d be candidates of a quality much above average. Well, okay then. I admit, I didn’t see that coming. You’re certainly entitled to hold this opinion. Anyone else want to cosign it? Anyone? > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Look, I’m not saying that this attack will be entirely toothless. Nor am I saying that other attacks on Sanders will be ineffective. I have serious reservations about whether he could carry a general election. > > But I think you’re _vastly_ overestimating how significant a honeymoon destination is going to be. It’s the sort of scandal we get on a nearly weekly basis these days, and people forget them. Voters who are going to be dissuaded by a SOviet honeymoon are already not going to vote for a socialist; the number of folks who’ll say, “I was gonna vote for a socialist, but he honeymooned in the Soviet Union? No way!” is infinitesimal. I hope you’re not being purposely dishonest or disingenuous in your framing. The attack, the commercial they are preparing, is not “Bernie went on honeymoon to the USSR in the 1980s”. It is multipronged but still pithy enough to fit easily into a sixty second ad (I just timed it to see). Keep in mind that I don’t \*endorse \*this attack, I just \*fear \*it. Imagine a sort of wry, slightly bemused announcer, reading this copy over a smorgasbord of revolutionary communist imagery: > [@](#): > > When Sanders first ran for office, he ran on a platform of having government seize major industries and rich people’s homes and bank accounts without compensation, to be redistributed to the poor. Once he was in office, he visited communist Nicaragua and sent a letter on his official mayoral letterhead congratulating them for their “heroic revolution”. He also [praised](http://www.buzzfeed.com/meganapper/sanders-in-1985-sandinista-leader-impressive-castro-totally#.cpREZxl2w) the communist dictator Fidel Castro and traveled to Cuba in an effort to meet him. Little surprise, then, that when Bernie got married at the age of 49, he and his wife honeymooned in the Soviet Union, still ruled at that time by the Communist Party. > > Sanders even shocked a room full United Way charity workers by telling them he was against what they were dedicating their lives to, because the government should be in charge of all aid to the poor. > > Now Sanders is calling for millions of Americans to take to the streets and foment a “political revolution”. But don’t worry, he says: while he still calls himself a “socialist”, Sanders says his views have evolved from those he held back when he was a naive young 45 year old. 😉 It just occurred to me that I forgot to try to fit in his atheism (or maybe agnosticism). :smack: But now, even after remembering, I still am kinda feeling like it wasn’t really needed. (!!!) Wow, does that ever say something in and of itself. When you can write sixty seconds worth of GOP attack ad copy, and “nah, I don’t really believe in God” ends up on the cutting room floor, you have a \*\*lot \*\*of fires to put out. ETA: > [@coremelt](#): > > SlackerInc it doesn’t matter how much you post about it on message boards. Both parties have utterly failed the current under 30s generation. It does matter, because while you’re likely right that college-educated Millennials are mostly beyond hope of redemption, Bernie needs more than just that cohort to get the nomination. So I’m going to do my level best to try to prevent him from making major inroads beyond them. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/74 "2016-02-06T06:02:02Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > It does matter, because while you’re likely right that college-educated Millennials are mostly beyond hope of redemption, Bernie needs more than just that cohort to get the nomination. What you mean is they’ve been utterly failed by a corrupt political system that consigns them to a mountain of debt if they ever want to be more than a retail or fast food worker. I’m 43 and I got mostly free University in Australia, but like I said I’d support Bernie if I could. You can piss into the wind all you want, but I doubt you’ll change even one persons opinion here on the straight dope, never mind have any influence on the primaries. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/75 "2016-02-06T06:26:50Z")
This is only a starting point. I aim to try to get this script (after polishing it some more) viral, maybe shop it to Hillary’s super-PAC. And I don’t need to convert anyone who has been backing Bernie all along. I just need to try to keep people who have been supporting Hillary from flipping to to Bernie. I may fail, it may turn out to be “pissing in the wind” as you say, but then at least I can say I tried. Speaking of polishing the script, it does occur to me that there would be a way to work in the atheism angle. I had a few seconds to spare, so I think I could probably squeeze in an intro, right at the beginning, saying “Bernie Sanders [doesn’t seem to believe in God.](http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/10/23/did-you-catch-how-bernie-sanders-responded-when-jimmy-kimmel-asked-do-you-believe-in-god/) But he definitely believes in socialism.” ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/76 "2016-02-06T06:30:08Z")
I haven’t read the whole thread, but since my opinion is so valued here I thought I"d give it. Sanders’ honeymoon is not disqualifying at all, it isn’t even really a big deal. However, that and his rather kind words for left wing Latin American dictators will be used against him and deservedly so. But that’s not even disqualifying, IMO. I find nothing about Sanders disqualifying. I think Clinton has far more issues that approach that level of awfulness, starting with taking so much money from Wall Street for her personal enrichment. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/77 "2016-02-06T06:42:03Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > It just occurred to me that I forgot to try to fit in his atheism (or maybe agnosticism). :smack: But now, even after remembering, I still am kinda feeling like it wasn’t really needed. (!!!) Wow, does that ever say something in and of itself. When you can write sixty seconds worth of GOP attack ad copy, and “nah, I don’t really believe in God” ends up on the cutting room floor, you have a \*\*lot \*\*of fires to put out. Conan O’Brien doesn’t believe in God, either, as I recall. There are a lot of low-key atheists in this country. Big deal. > [@](#): > > It does matter, because while you’re likely right that college-educated Millennials are mostly beyond hope of redemption, Bernie needs more than just that cohort to get the nomination. So I’m going to do my level best to try to prevent him from making major inroads beyond them. “Redemption”? Oh my word, was that a fnordian slip? Are–are you worried that Sanders will lead our youth away from Jesus? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/78 "2016-02-06T06:44:24Z")
Yeah, but Sanders will have to give “the speech” at some point. I’m not sure he can pull it off. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/79 "2016-02-06T06:45:09Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Conan O’Brien doesn’t believe in God, either, as I recall. There are a lot of low-key atheists in this country. Big deal. > “Redemption”? Oh my word, was that a fnordian slip? > > Are–are you worried that Sanders will lead our youth away from Jesus? 😃 Nope, I’m an atheist. Big fan of Bill Maher and Sam Harris. But I would never vote for them in a Democratic primary. Nor would I vote for a carbon copy of myself. I’m pragmatic that way. BTW, are you implying Conan O’Brien could win the presidency? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/80 "2016-02-06T06:45:53Z")
Bernie being the nominee would be better for the country. If Hillary is the nominee, it’s going to be a very ugly, very divisive election. Both sides are adept at slinging mud. If Hillary wins, Republicans will believe that she’s illegitimate. If she loses, the left will blame the loss on the vast right wing conspiracy. Either way, it will not be healthy. If Bernie is the nominee, there will still be the usual mud. But there’s a much better chance that the election might actually present a stark choice between a European-style socialist plan and a more pro-market point of view. It will be a referendum on Capitalism, and whatever the public chooses can honestly be said to represent some form of mandate for change. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209.md?page=5)