Did he ever intend to? Seemed to me that he was intent on demonstrating the significance of progressives in the Party, without any effort to pretend to dominance. Even at their most heated, they were mutually respectful and HRC accepted Bernie’s premise as valid and took steps to recognize that. Open minded and wrong is a full step better than just wrong.
The ugly struggle wasn’t them, it was their supporters’ inability to accept the basic premises of coalition politics. If we were that important, we wouldn’t need a coalition, we would just rule.
(And the huge downside to such importance is that, if it were true, then all the ambitious reptiles seeking opportunity would flock to our banner and try to lead us. For a generation or so, now, they have been flocking to the tighty-righty cause. Let us be careful about what we wish for…)
Hillary Clinton wasn’t owed shit in the primaries. In fact she wasn’t even owed anything in the general. It’s not about what Hillary Clinton was owed; the rest of the country was owed being spared by the nightmare that’s beginning to unfold. This didn’t have to happen. If Clinton had been pitted against John Kasich or even Marco Rubio, then someone could be forgiven for not voting for her, whether it’s voting for the Republican, voting for an independent, or just not voting at all.
I don’t think many people saw Trump as the nightmare that you and I do during the campaign. Many still don’t. The media, when they bothered covering him honestly instead of pretending he was a legitimate person, much less candidate, just depicted him as a crass buffoon.
I said from early on that he scared the hell out of me, and all he had to do was say something outrageous about Gypsies and we could all fill our Hitler Bingo scorecards, given his tirades against homosexuals, immigrants, Muslims, handicapped persons, women, political opponents, transgendered individuals, and people of other faiths. Basically ALL the groups Hitler targeted.
But I was very much in the minority in that view. The media represented him as just another relatively harmless Republican idiot, or in a “both sides do it” 50/50 “you decide!” manner that is so stupidly popular among talking heads desperate to appear neutral, as though reality isn’t a thing, it’s just something people decide on.
They also massively underestimated him and overestimated Hillary; a large swath of people likely didn’t show up to the polls because they were sure they didn’t need to. Despite Hillary having only about a 3% lead according to polls going in, it was common wisdom that she was guaranteed to win, with talking heads routinely giving idiotic figures like 90% likely to be the next President despite the polling reflecting the reality that a small gust of wind would blow her campaign right over. And it turned out, surprise! the polls were right - she won by about 3% in the popular vote, but lost the electoral college.
There won’t be as many statues, though. They take up too much space, what with the mount of choice for those Bro heroes depicted, being a plug-in hybrid.
It is the voter’s fault because the voters are the ones who pick the people that are in congress. It pretty much does always come down to them.
Now in 2008, when people showed up at the polls, the got obama elected, and managed to get a decent number of congress critters in as well. This allowed them to pass some stuff that was good for the country. You can argue about whether obama care, and you can argue about the bailout, but you can’t argue that they were not done and passed. The idea that the dems didn’t do anything is pretty counter to the facts on the ground.
In 2010, however, the progressives did not turn out at the elections, and the conservatives did, changing the makeup of congress, and removing the democratic majorities. After that, yeah, there was little that the dems did, but it wasn’t because they didn’t want to, it’s because they didn’t have enough support from the voters.
But no, they are not owed your vote, not in any way. But, if you don’t vote, then you can’t really complain about the results either.
Nor do I think I am; the danger of Trump is coming to be widely recognized; even among his GOP colleagues.
However, his disapproval ratings =/ extreme concern for his authoritarian tendencies and potential to take a wrecking ball to American democracy. He had a 60% disapproval rating on election day, and he still got elected. I think quite a few of that 68% still just dislike him because they think he’s a moron, or incompetent, or just really hate *some of his policies. I’m not convinced it’s penetrated with most people that he’s a narcissistic maniac concerned with one and only thing: himself, and is perfectly willing to watch the world burn so long as he personally benefits. I don’t know if that fact will ever penetrate, because most people are willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt, even if they don’t deserve it.
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity,” is, I believe, still the prevailing, and unnecessarily generous, outlook on Trump at this point. He’s, he’s incompetent and stupid, but those are his redeeming qualities in terms of limiting the damage he does.
Sure I can. I don’t get a vote on whether we go to war either, but I sure as hell have a right to complain when we do. The fact that we’re given a vote doesn’t *excuse the overall shitty behavior of our elected representatives. In fact, it makes it worse, because they’re supposed to be representing what their constituents want, but tacitly refuse to do so, as evidenced in poll after poll showing that policy no longer has any correlation to how voters view an issue, but has a direct correlation to how *donors feel about an issue.
This is good. The best thing for the Dems is to distance themselves as much as possible from Hillary and her stench. A strong public castigation and scouring of her and her lackeys and their influence would be the best possible way to pull independents and even some Trump-horrified Repubs to their side.
Oh, I see. You were not a true hater of Trump unless you hated him in much the same way you did. Are you Scottish by any chance? I noticed you also moved the goalpost from “many people” to “most people”, too. I don’t know that “most people” think Trump is dangerous, but the idea that “many people” didn’t (your original claim) doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. Unless we invoke the New True Scotsman rule, that is.
If you are trying to convince is that Trump = Hitler, been there done that on his MB a dozen times. Yeah. you’re in the minority there, mainly because it’s wrong.
The latest blurb released from her new book is that she tried have HRC (and her running mate) replaced with Biden/Booker after the fainting spell outside the 9/11 memorial. I hope there is more to the story than that, because my first reaction is: Who the hell do you think you are that you can take the candidate people voted for off the ticket? How would that even be possible? Not to mention that Biden didn’t want to run.
So it turns out this was all just more anti-Clinton bullshit and there was no DNC agreement as to the primary. I wonder how many Sanders supporters will even learn that this narrative was a lie.
Motivated reasoning has characterized many members of that group since its inception. A good number of them will put enough effort into doublethink, using Brazile’s elisions and falsehoods as part of their ‘evidence,’ so as to be able to go on believing that Hillary is the worst person on the face of the earth. It’s important to them.
Brazile did herself no favors today with her appearance on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”:
Looking over her bio at wikipedia, I see no indication that Brazile was up on a roof or marooned in the Superdome, during Katrina. So I wonder how her claim of victimhood will be received by those who actually did suffer during that storm.
Maybe if that had actually happened instead of the attempted hijacking of the party by a non-Democrat and his ravening hordes of fanatical Lost-Causers. Who, it should be noted, were very quick to jump on these Brazile bridge-burning “revelations” before it was revealed that she was fudging things a bit to gin up her book sales.
Here’s the text of the agreement. It’s an odd document. It claims that it is only oriented towards the general election, not the primary process, but the Hillary For America organization has significant control over hiring of DNC staff members starting on Sept 11*, 2015 several months before the first primary. Other special access by the HFA also begins well before the general election.
*an oddly chosen date that conspiracy buffs must love!
