My counter point to the above, is that if Sanders trips to USSR, Cuba etc 30 years ago disqualify him from office then you deserve the leaders you get. Personally I think understanding your idealogical opponents is a positive not a negative. Just like the whole “obama was raised as a muslim” thing. Actually if he was that would be great experience to face the challenges the western world is facing right now.
:eek: That’s . . . that’s . . .
That’s GD material, is what it is.
What is delusional is to think that this will actually sway any possible swing votes who would have voted Democrat if only it weren’t for Bernie’s having set foot on Communist soil.
::Facepalm:: Do I have to spell this out?
They will call him a Communist, a Russian sympathizer and an extremist. They will dredge up old quotes. They will have a field day and Sanders would be slaughtered in the general. Sanders never had to deal with an avalanche of sleaze in the past, because Vermonters knew that whatever his political philosophy he was a terrific mayor and perfectly reasonable and sane on the issues. It’s not like the guy advocates crackpot economics or flat earth climate science like all Republican Presidential candidates do. But those outside of New England don’t have that background.
Luckily Sanders won’t win the nomination and none of this will happen. And we’ll be able to taunt the Republicans over the summer about how they apparently had no problems with Bernie Sanders. But for that to work, Sanders has to win a couple of states.
Even if you have a legitimate criticism of a candidate, smear artists still engage in half and 1/8 truths. Because that forces the target to explain themselves. At which point they have lost, as it makes them look weak.
I mean, you can if you want to, but it’s not necessary. Let’s take a look at some of your claims:
Of course they will. Haters gonna hate, news at eleven.
This is what I’m unconvinced by. Haters gonna hate on Clinton, too, and I’m still not seeing that this attack on Sanders (Thirty years ago he honeymooned with Commies, he’s a commie devil secret agent of zombie Stalin! or whatever they say) is going to stick harder than the attacks on Clinton (She recently laughed in glee as Ayrabs slaughtered Americans in Benghazi, while she ate aborted fetuses with her Planned Parenthood lesbian friends! or whatever they say) will. The fact that this is new and shiny isn’t going to matter much in October.
Right. This is a feature of Sanders, not a bug. The fact that Clinton has a lot more experience dealing with sleaze is partly because she has more exposure to the national Republican sleaze machine, true–but I also genuinely think it’s because she plays faster and looser with the truth and shows more contempt for following strict ethical guidelines. She and Bill Clinton are similar politicians in this regard.
I think you’re probably right here, much as I wish you weren’t. As I’ve said elsewhere, though, acting like Bernie Sanders has a real chance is, I think, the best approach to politics, in much the same way that acting like free will is a thing is the best approach to ethics.
I only have a minute to reply right now, so I will address specific points later; but I just want to say that there is another form of disqualification on display here. The people who shrug and act as though the mainstream American electorate will not be bothered by this because the facts are on Bernie’s side, or this is ancient history, or it’s just not anything to raise much of an eyebrow at much less be horrified by, or–my favorite-- that it literally doesn’t matter how radical Bernie is, because the Republicans would try to paint any Democrat that way anyhow…those commenters have disqualified themselves from having any credibility about judging political viability. They may be very perspicacious about policy or ideological rationality, but they are way out of their bailiwick when it comes to politics. That’s OK: we need wonks in this world just as much as hacks, but we can’t get anyone into office to utilize the wonks’ expertise without hacks.
Cite?
His post, failing anything better, is his cite. It’s far easier to declare your opponents as not credible than it is to address their arguments, et voila!
They’ll vote against him and say he’s a Communist fascist maniac come to sell your daughters to Mexicans, raise your taxes, and kill your jobs. Just like any other progressive Democrat, and even some moderate Democrats.
The question is, who increases turnout on the Democratic/progressive side and gets Democrats downticket in office? That is not clear to me.
What is clear to me is that the Democratic Party of today is led by Hillary Clinton types, and the GOP beat them continually and humiliatingly. Maybe a Sanders would actually do better, but it’s not clear to me what is worse than general abject hatred from both sides and automatic failure. Hillary is seen as a Job-Killing Evil Lesbian Baby-Killer by one side and a Corrupt Wall Street Wamonger by the other. Does Hillary even have a plan to retake Congress? She says she does not, and I believe her.
Sure. But he’s not a tyrant nor a dictator. He’s not even a partisan. He has a long history of working with Republicans and conservatives.
Part of the reason the definition of “socialist” is so contentious is that European “Socialist” parties long ago stopped being radical anarcho-syndicalists and became pragmatic social democrats working within the system. Bernie is much the same.
Going to the Soviet Union in 1988 paints one a radical Commie sympathizer? How about meeting with the head of the whole place and almost give up our nuclear weapons. Who was that guy again? Some Commie named Reagan?
Sister city projects helped the Russian people learn about Americans in a time when there was still control over their media. That helped us win the Cold War.
Hey, reactionaries have to react. Might as well say we shouldn’t have supported Obama because some Republican morons claimed he was Kenyan.
Again, I promise to come back and respond to everything later, but just quickly: it’s similar to the saying “only Nixon can go to China”. Reagan could do what he did because of his rep. And Bernie didn’t just go to the Soviet Union, he went at a time when he was calling for nationalization of major industries and transportation, and three years after he had praised the glorious Sandinista revolution. Context is important, kids.
And the present context, today, in the present election, in 2016, the year we are having this conversation, is this:
Young people are feeling screwed by the failures of capitalism. Socialism sounds pretty good now.
The Democrats don’t tend to win while alienating reformists and the anti-war vote. They can only hope that the GOP are enough more offensive that they get the nose-holder vote. Clinton is a conservative hawk by Democratic Party standards; Sanders is not; he very probably gets more turnout than she does.
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.
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.
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 a few years ago?)
I certainly could be wrong; but I think some Clinton fans are suffering from an overcertainty that’s clouding their judgment, both in the effects of the scandal and in the wisdom of trying to publicize it while acting like they’re not.
Actually I think Sanders votes surprisingly party line despite not actually being a Dem. His govtrack score on bipartisanship wasn’t particularly good iirc.
Oh, no, I think Hillary has to use it, and use it loudly, in case the OP is right.
But she hasn’t, which may put her in trouble for pinko sympathies in the general. She can be tarred as complicit in Communist entryism into the Democratic Party if she accepts that a Communist like Bernie Sanders is an acceptable rival in* her* party.
Or maybe it doesn’t matter that much.
In 1988, Atlanta, GA became a sister city to Tblisi, USSR. I don’t think this makes Andrew Young a Communist, however. There are over 50 American cities that are sister cities to Russian/Soviet cities. Are they all Communists, too?
They’ve been saying this about Obama for eight years straight. They’re going to say it about Hillary, too. As far as the Republicans are concerned, we’re all Commies, regardless of any actual relevant facts. They’d call Bernie a socialist no matter what his vacation pictures show. The fact that this time, they’re almost kind of right, isn’t relevant to their making the charge or to their followers having the vapours over it.
I’ll grant that there is a non-negligible block of people who care about Bernie’s honeymoon - but I don’t believe that any of those twits were ever going to vote for the Democrat, anyway.
I can only assume that there is not only nothing in Bernie’s heart of which he dare not speak, but that there is nothing in his heart of hearts of which he has not already spoken, and at length. Repeatedly.