No fair! This is more Berkeley than Ann Arbor.
You are kind to call it “idealism.”
Grown-ups realize that a vote is ‘an action that has consequences’ rather than ‘an emblem of the very soul itself–an award, proffered with pride to only the most shining golden Candidate, a decent Candidate, a wise and wondrous Candidate, who will receive that proffered gift [the vote] with due gratitude to the voter, who will thereby be filled with the Glory of Righteousness.’
Responsible people inform themselves of the choices and choose the least-worst option. That’s a voter’s duty. There’s no Emblem of the Soul involved.
Irresponsible people wax on about ‘forcing the party to offer a decent candidate’ who will be worthy of the great gift of their vote.
To those spouting this narcissistic swill: grow up. And not incidentally, stop doing Vlad Putin’s work for him.
So what you’re saying is that voters really don’t have a choice. We should only vote for one of the two major parties whether we want the either of the candidates to win or not because to not do so is to ensure that the one you don’t want to win does. It’s no wonder the vast majority of people have decided that it’s pointless to vote when you put it that way.
As for me, if the DNC wants my vote back, they’re going to have to put up a candidate that I can believe in which is not a centrist. I’m done following the party to the right. I did not leave the party, they left me. I’ll vote for progressive candidates down-ballot, but I have little to no faith in the progressive values of national candidates. I feel that at a certain level, they become beholden to Wall St and corporate interests. Hillary especially so. You can disagree if you like, but she didn’t do much to dissuade my perception.
BTW, you aren’t going to win me back by telling me I’m responsible for Trump winning. For one thing, it’s not true as I voted in Oregon. For another thing, insulting me isn’t a winning strategy. Somebody ought to have mentioned that to Hillary.
But Democratic candidates and the Democratic party aren’t insulting you. Some random dude on the internet is. Why should that make a difference in who you vote for in the future, i.e. winning you back?
Just we we’re operating from cites, here’s Politico’s take on it right when it was happening:
Nobody really voted for Tim Kaine, so I don’t see what would be “undemocratic” about sidelining him if the party thought he couldn’t win. Isn’t winning important? And I explicitly said I didn’t think Brasile had the authority to do this on her own, so I guess we’re in agreement on that matter.
Firstly, there were two issues I brought up, not just one, and the first one was how she was treated by the HRC campaign (see the first part in the quote, below)
Secondly, I was referring to the account she gave on This Week with GS in the second part of the quote, below. Hillary bailed out the DNC, financially, but she got rewarded pretty handsomely for doing so. At the time, of course, Brazile was not the DNC chair so saying Hillary did a better job than Brazile is pretty meaningless:
Which account were you referring to?
Every vote, even for losing or hopeless candidates, matters as a signal. There is nothing wrong with people voting for who they wish.
That’s partly true. I guess I don’t know what some random dude on the internet is trying to accomplish by it, but it’s not real effective for swaying my opinion. And it doesn’t make me feel guilty at all that Trump won. I voted my conscience and I feel fine with my vote. **ElvisL1ves **may not agree, but that’s just too damn bad.
But it’s not just some random dude. It’s Madeline Albright and Gloria Steinem telling me I’m supposed to be voting for a woman because I’m a woman who owes my support to female candidates; it is Hillary Clinton blaming Jill Stein voters for her loss. Nope, it was her. I didn’t vote for her because I didn’t believe in her. She probably could have done more good as a senator.
As for what difference it makes, it doesn’t really, but it’s huge turn-off.
Yes, this is it in a nutshell. Thank you.
If you had stayed in a proper, God fearing state like Texas instead of migrating to Minnesota in order to cavort with those godless ScandiNodricans, you wouldn’t know a fjord from a firearm, and you’d be all the better for it!
Really? Who voted for Kaine? How would that be “democracy”?
Which was more important, winning Congressional elections or paying back debt?
Yet another Bernie-Clinton redux thread, and I guess I’m guilty of taking the bait on this one.
FTR, I never have had a problem with Bernie Sanders the man, the senator, or even his presidential campaign. I didn’t think he was the best nominee for Dems but I’m over that. I have known of Bernie and listened to him on progressive radio and other outlets since at least 2009 and appreciate how he raises awareness to working class issues. I don’t even have a problem with the majority of voters. The only thing I reject is this notion that he was entitled to the Democratic nomination and that Hillary “rigged” the nominations process unfairly. HRC was not my ideal candidate (was more of a Obama-Biden guy) but felt she had the best chance between herself and Bernie’s insurgent campaign. But clearly, she wasn’t good enough and that’s no longer even debatable.
I’d rather look forward at this point than look in the rear-view mirror. Clinton is done, and it’s probably for the best. Meanwhile Sanders seems to be injecting real energy into the party, and I can appreciate that. I personally don’t think that the fight for $15 is a winner, but on the other hand, I do think Medicare for all has the potential to get some real political traction and would like to see the Dems work with Bernie on this. I just hope that the Sanders contingent doesn’t try to impose its virtues on more centrist Democrats because while I would concede that the activist progressives have done well tonight (and even before now), the real test comes next year and coalitions are almost always more successful than ideologically pure factions. The Bernie wing of progressives and mainstream Dems need to put differences aside and work out the issues they’re going to push for first and then work out some of the more controversial or divisive items later.
More like, “If you don’t let us have a democracy, and just pretend that your oligarchy is ‘democracy’ because it’s called ‘the Democratic Party,’ then we don’t have a democracy.”
I am sick and tired of the Democratic Party pretending that “democracy” is “give Bubba and his pals what they want.” It seems like Clintonistas don’t even know what democracy is. They don’t look at the actual constituencies they need to win votes.
They expect the ostensible Democratic base of voters to choose someone who hangs around the clubhouse over someone who has an agenda to serve the actual common man. That base is (wild-ass guess) something north of 98% voters who’ve never been at all active in internal party politics; why would they care? Clinton’s clubhouse Democrats attack a progressive as “not a real Democrat” because he was an independent; but they need independents to win.
The *progressive *base, whom you presumably need to win, didn’t want Hillary. Hillary didn’t appeal across the aisle, except as a boogieman to smear the entire party with in direct mail. Even swing voters were skeptical of her.
Hillary was chums with Dubya Bush, a Republican so notorious even conservative Republicans don’t want to claim him. She is chums with actual real-life supervillain Henry Kissinger; they spend Christmases together. She and Bubba were pretty friendly with Donald Trump not so long ago. We didn’t see in her anyone social-democratic; we saw a nouveau-riche yuppie playing at aristocrat and disregarding the little people.
How was that going to work? Better it would have been to run even a lifelong independent who at least talked like a progressive. Oh, wait, that’s what we told you to do!
Meh. I can play this game too.
A vote for HRC in the primary, given her negative net approval rating, was practically a vote for DJT in the general. Did you vote for Hillary in the primary? Congratulations, you voted for the clown.
But we’ve had these arguments before. The point of this thread, it seems to me, is that HRC’s people decided that it was more important to pay back the party’s old debts than to fund Congressional races–a catastrophic error.
I see the policy a little differently than you do, but I am pretty close to agreement with most of this post.
I do wish that the Clintons had figured something out years ago: Dubya getting in the White House didn’t make it easier for Hillary to run for President; it made it almost impossible. The populace don’t want to see two patrician families trading the Presidency.
I don’t think that’s what Brazile is saying. She’s saying that the Hillary campaign thought it was more important to fund the Hillary campaign than to fund Congressional races. And Brazile was frustrated in having to fight them over that. Pls see the quotes from I posted in #246. It might be arguable whether she is right or not, but I don’t think anyone is complaining about paying off debts rather then funding Congressional races. Or did I miss that??
You’re free to disagree but I think the deeper issue is that, beyond dynastic politics, people have soured on the neo-liberal political order, which is what the Clintons stood for. I still think she could have won the election with a little more massaged or nuanced messaging and had she not fallaciously assumed that the blue wall states were hers, but that’s all in the past. Voter frustration is what drove Jeb Bush and Clinton out of the picture.
My only concern is, what now? I’m not objecting to a Bernie revolution outright, but as I’ve said before on other threads: revolutions have to have more than passion. If you’re going to have a revolution, you gotta make sure you can keep the lights on and keep the food stalls going. Otherwise it’s just a dressed up riot. Revolutions require people with ideas on how to govern and how to plan for reality once the takeover occurs.
I was…being charitable to claim that it was about paying off debts. That seemed to be Brazile’s claim, unless I misread. If it was primarily going to the Clinton campaign, then it’s even worse.
A) A President without a Congress of the same party, in the present environment, is probably a joke, someone for the opposition to kick and spit at.
B) Hillary’s negatives meant it would be better to advertise other Democrats to vote for, turning out voters for them, instead of constantly putting her front and center.
The decisions Brazile says HRC’s team made were a perfect way to wreck the Democratic Party for this cycle if not for years to come.
It’s a bit complicated, so after reading this, I wouldn’t say you’re completely wrong. Let me see if I can lay out the storyline.
In the summer of 2015 (maybe going back further, I don’t know) the DNC was something like $15M in debt. Going by memory on the number, so I can’t swear by it, but it was chunk of change and the exact amount isn’t too important. Hillary, who has a talent for raising big bucks from deep pocketed donors offered to pay off the debt in exchange for certain “favors” concerning influence of the DNC.
Now, it’s possible that she could have said “fuck the debt, let’s raise some money so we can get some cash out to the states”. I honestly don’t know. Sounds unlikely and unrealistic, but who knows? And once the joint fund raising venture began, very little of the money raised stayed with the states. It all flowed back the DNC where HRC’s people had a considerable say about how it would be spent.
Brazile talks about a similar deal being offered to Bernie, but he wasn’t in the same league as HRC at the time in terms of donor connections. And it wasn’t clear what the original deal was that was thrown out there and how it compares to the final version they singed with HRC. I think it’s unlikely that there wasn’t a certain amount of negotiating about the details by the HRC camp that resulted in that final agreement.
Not bad, but I rise to quibble. Would she need to be explicit? The money already talks, why interrupt it? Who could deny that she deserved a role in the leadership, if not necessarily the Leader? Making it explicit might lose more support than it gains, people get surly when they feel they’ve been pressured.
Also, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. 'Course, shit works best, but that strains the analogy.