That post is entirely useless, Jackie. It doesn’t in any way deal with the issues being brought up. What his issues are is not in question. What is is whether or not he pushed the conspiracy narrative and made it harder for people for Clinton when she was the only one who could defeat Trump.
people who have issues to discuss don’t do it by starting a pit thread.
Really? Since when?
I see you’re a liar. No wonder you like Bernie so much.
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Did you ever consider that those aren’t the only two choices?
You don’t even have to choose. You can be both.
The fools tend to be the natural prey of the assholes.
Better late than never. Welcome to the anti-Bernie fold!
I just hope Mueller is investigating what Bernie got up to during his “honeymoon” in the USSR, when Putin was a KGB colonel.
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Dammit! Now you have me wanting to watch “Team America” again, just for that stupid “asshole” speech.
What makes you think I haven’t?
When Sanders started his campaign way back in 2015, I was pretty open-minded towards him. I knew he self-described as a socialist, which I do not, but I was no Clinton-superfan, having supported Obama in 2008. So I was open. It didn’t take too long for me to categorize him as a bit of a lightweight, as a slogan-oriented candidate. Clinton seemed the opposite - an issue-depth-oriented candidate. They weren’t too far apart on issues, and when they had differences, it always seemed to be Clinton taking a more thoughtful, nuanced position. There also seemed to be a guy whose main issue was getting the US on the metric system, and Carcetti from The Wire was hanging around, too.
So I became a Clinton supporter. I knew Sanders supporters, and they seemed fine. I’d have been fine if he’d won, though I was certainly worried about how the socialist tag would play in the general. But I had no qualms about voting for him in November if it came to that.
Then he started losing. All of the sudden, the system was rigged. Southern states shouldn’t count, since they were red. Closed primaries and advanced registration systems were a corrupt party throwing the nomination to Clinton. Superdelegates, who have never mattered at all, were the height of the establishment stomping on the people. Caucuses, which have minuscule turnout and are legitimately a problematic way for a state party to register its preference, warranted hardly a mention, since they tended to benefit Sanders. When it became clear he wouldn’t win, Sanders and his campaign fanned the flames of bullshit process grievances. When the nomination really was over, Sanders endorsed Clinton, but his endorsement always felt half-hearted to me, was frequently expressed as, “Trump would be much, much worse,” and, judging solely by Sanders fans in my Facebook feed, completely ineffectual.
Now, I don’t know how many more of his supporters would have voted for Clinton in the general had he chosen to be a graceful loser, or offered a better endorsement, but given the closeness of the race, it doesn’t strain credibility to believe it would have changed the outcome.
Since the end of the campaign, I’ve remained fairly frustrated with Sanders. I’ve seen some ‘kumbaya-singing’ in this thread from Sanders supporters, that we all need to come together to win in 2018, and that’s true. But it only counts if you keep singing when your guy loses the primary. The Virginia gubernatorial primary doesn’t give me a whole lot of hope there.
^^^ This is exactly how I perceived it also. ^^^
Somehow, we have to dramatically change the country without frightening the Trogs. Like porcupines making love, a question to approach with a mixture of eagerness and trepidation. As I’ve said, I had the impression that Sander’s run was primarily a negotiation, an entirely honorable political action. He meant, first and foremost, to demonstrate the numerical strength of the progressive movement. To say “You should listen to us, because we are many.” Theatrical, sure, but politics is theater without intermissions.
What I think happened was that the response overwhelmed his reasoned expectations. So maybe he changed his mind, maybe he began to think he really could do it. Or he didn’t, but his most avid supporters did. Making them more receptive to news and opinions that suggested that Hillary was bent on torpedoing and sabotaging Bernie.
Some of that, we lately learn, was direct Russian agitprop. I don’t know how many FB pages I saw depicting her as the Whore of Babylon Lite, from outfits that either did not exist or didn’t until the previous day. Might not even have been suspicious enough to check, if there were not so many and so clumsy!
No one, to my knowledge, has any reliable numbers to say x Bernie Boys refused to vote for Hillary. Some must have sobered up, seized the bull by the tail and faced the situation. Others did not. Out of sheer itching curiosity, I would give all the wowee in Maui to know, but we never will.
Good analysis.
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Well said. I’m probably a but closer politically to Sander than to Clinton, but the more I see of Sanders, the more he turns me off. Now, if by some miracle he gets the Dem nomination, I’ll have no problem voting for him. But since he never really was close to beating Hillary, I’m not too worried.
And that happens in every election. It’s the responsibility of the candidate to win those voters over. Hill couldn’t close the deal, and blaming Bernie is a way to ensure a repeat next go around.
If your product doesn’t sell, it might make you feel good to blame the consumers, but it ain’t gonna sell any more product for you.
You can’t close a deal with people who think deal-closing is a sign of corruption and beneath them. No, their failure is their own.
Sorry, I should have been clear that I wasn’t aiming those remarks at you, as I don’t think you are doing this. I was just using that part of your post as a jumping off point, but it could easily have been read otherwise.
I’d suggest that this is only true when both parties in a negotiation are operating in good faith - where both are willing to make allowances and accept less than 100% victory.
Unfortunately, there was a very small subset of people who supported Senator Sanders who - in my opinion - were not operating in good faith. These people had one demand - Senator Sanders, Democratic candidate for President - and nothing short of that would suffice. No platform or party consideration mattered. No compromise was possible. It may feel good to imply that Secretary Clinton failed to win over these voters, but it is only possible to fail at something if that thing is possible. I “failed” to teleport to work today, and my experience is that I had a better chance of doing that than of convincing a certain segment of the progressive movement to vote Clinton last November.
Look, my best friend in the whole world was and is a huge Sanders supporter. Donated to and volunteered for Sanders’ primary campaign, expressed reservations about Clinton’s plans and policies. He is a whole-hog, far left, super-progressive. And when it became clear that Sanders was not going to win the primary, my friend started working to persuade the Clinton campaign to move leftward. Which it did. Not all the way! Of course not all the way, because the Clinton campaign also represents people who are not on the far left (like me!). But my friend recognized that in a negotiation, one gives up some to avoid losing all. So he supported Clinton in the general, avoided doing things that would harm her chances, and voted for her. I doubt John Stamos’ Left Ear would quibble with my friend Mike. But for those who refused to negotiate in good faith, yeah, they’re assholes and they deserve the blowback.
I don’t think this is fully right. Of course Clinton is the principal agent in her campaign, but electing a president is really an all-party (*) effort. And we don’t need to pick just one person to blame. To your specific analogy, we should both modify the product to make it more appealing, and engage in some customer-education, to help them realize the product is better than you realize, and if you don’t pick our product, you will get a burning pile of feces on your doorstep.
(*) Sanders is technically an independent, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect him to comport to the norms of the party whose nomination he sought.