Who are you arguing with? Fantasy progressives in Rush Limbaugh’s brain? If you want to dispute something I said, then do so, but I have no idea what you’re refuting or disputing.
You make welfare sound like Clinton’s invention. In fact, Clinton reformed welfare, significantly reducing the rolls.
WSJ poll has Clinton up 25 on Sanders today. An outlier, surely, but of course this whole thread was based on an outlier poll.
Your point is that right-wing pundits must think their listeners are too stupid to connect any dots, so have to be bludgeoned by connecting all dots? 
Customers of right-wing media are pretty stupid, but they are capable of remembering that Hillary is a woman. This leaves the pundits free to say " … Hey, I never connected the witch cackle with the fact she’s a woman." While this may be relevant in a court of law, [del]it doesn’t fool anyone[/del] fools very few except, evidently, you.
Yes, I know. He reformed welfare because by 1996, it was getting out of control. Gore should have mentioned that, he may have beaten Bush.
No - my point is that YogSoSoth made a specific claim, in quotes in post #131. His lack of citation notwithstanding, what do you think the lack of critical analysis of this says about customers of left-wing media, or of Yog’s post says about them?
There are actually two points - first, there is no evidence of anyone saying what Yog claims people are saying. Second, the rush to label things as sexist or racist is pervasive and weakens the arena of all of these claims, both legitimate and not.
I think that’s more because there happens to be another very famous person in the same general sphere of human endeavor who shares her last name. If you say “Clinton spoke about the importance of…”, it’s unclear which one you mean. Granted, this is less of an issue now, when it’s almost certainly going to be the current presidential candidate, not the former president, but earlier in her political career, it wouldn’t be so obvious, and so it was necessary to distinguish the two.
There’s another current candidate who has a similar issue, but who can’t just use his first name, because it’s literally the most common first name in the country. So he uses his initials. And his brother had the same issue even worse, sharing both a first and last name with another prominent politician. So he used his middle initial.
Huh. TIL Jeb is actually John.
WAS based, but not IS based – all the other polls show Sanders leading in New Hampshire, very close in Iowa and closing, and I believe closing nationally as well. The WSJ poll sounds like something jury-rigged for propaganda purposes. Who owns the WSJ again? Oh, yeah … Rupert Murdoch, owner of such tainted media as Fox News. I’d be leery of them.
Wishful thinking, I’m afraid.
Of national polls, two showed a mere single-digit lead for Clinton around the time this thread was started. Every poll both before and after shows a double-digit lead for Clinton–often more than 15 points. Sanders is not closing, unless you cherry-pick out the polls you don’t like.
Similarly, Sanders is not “closing” in Iowa. Recent polls show Clinton’s lead growing. 538 (also a Fox News conspiracy member, I’m sure) gives her an 80% chance of taking that state.
And it is not true that “all the other polls show Sanders leading in New Hampshire.” PPP’s poll from a week ago has Clinton winning. Sanders is indeed leading in New Hampshire in the aggregate, and has except for the last six months for a blip in November. Given that he is the Senator from Vermont, that’s not a huge shock. The danger for him would be losing NH.
Interesting piece I saw - perhaps in The New Yorker - suggesting the direct relationship isn’t between HRC and The Bern, but between Trump/Cruz and The Bern: the more likely it is the right chooses a nutter, the better Sanders plays.
Bernie Sanders is a good man. He truly is. However, America is not Europe. We cannot afford some of these things. If he’s the Democratic nominee, Democrats will lose in a landslide. The Democrats would only pickup Illinois and Wisconsin in the Senate. D+2. Who would be Sanders’ vice president? Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison? No executive experience there. Plus, he’s a Muslim. Filmmaker Michael Moore? It would energize the right wing. Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin? She’s female. Check. She’s lesbian. Probably another plus for the left. Not for moderate voters. Bernie Sanders has a lot of work cut out for him.
To add on the national poll front, let’s look at the last two months of poll averages using HuffPo Pollster (18NOV15-17JAN16). Even with less smoothing selected it’s pretty damned flat except for a couple little blips. One of those blips was last week where the average of polls narrowed to 14 points. Those averages have already bounced back up with the Ipsos/Reuters poll (+19 for Clinton) and the NBC/WSJ poll. Hovering over days it looks like December 4th is about the closest in the last two month with Clinton at +10.4%. Even at the closest during the recent dip in the lead Sanders only clawed back to down 14 points. Overall things are pretty flat across the last two months nationally.
It’s an NBC/WSJ sponsored poll. Any theory about rigging the poll has to at least include why NBC (owned by publicly traded Comcast) would play along with the jury rigging. The theory should also explain why Sanders does better than Clinton in the head to head comparisons against Trump. Making Sanders appear more electable against the leading Republican is some piss poor jury rigging if they want to kill his campaign.
Not voting for someone simply because they adhere to a certain religion or are a certain sexual orientation is not being “moderate” I would use far less glowing terms to describe that.
Frankly, it terrifies me that you and I can occupy the same party.
Ditto. People like you put zero emphasis on actually trying to win (as opoosed to standing on principle), which in practice accomplishes bupkis for the people who actually need the help of government programs. Which is why low income minorities support candidates like Hillary and affluent white latte liberals go mad for Bernie. If he is the nominee and pulls another McGovern, they won’t really be materially hurt, and they can actually have a grand old time snarking on Twitter for the next four years about President Cruz.
What you define as “winning” I see as a compromise of core values. It doesn’t matter if you win if you had to sacrifice everything to do so in the process. I don’t oppose your positions because I dislike winning, I oppose them because they’re compromised to the point of being meaningless. You see “triangulation”, I see craven hipocracy.
And I would be more careful about dismissing Bernie supporters as “affluent white latte liberals”. Come election day, you’re going to need us as much as much as we need you.
And please, my eyes nearly rolled right out of my head at “President Cruz”. The guy has no chance and even you know that. Scaremongering doesn’t work.
This really reminds me of the left-wing version of the Tea Party, to be honest.
Is this like Pauline Kael’s “no one I knew voted for him”? 
I know folks who thought that W. had “no chance” in 2004, even with Kerry as the Democratic candidate. They were completely flabbergasted. Never is wise to underestimate the other party.
Ted Cruz does have a chance, if only because Sanders and Clinton are the possible nominees.
Of course, don’t misconstrue my words as an unwillingness to compromise at all. What I’m saying is, there are certain articles that I hold to be very important, and when even those are compromised for the sake of “winning”, I stop feeling as though I’ve “won”.
I’m on the “far left” in American politics, whatever, that’s fine, someone has to be. But if not Bernie, what am I supposed to do? Throw away my vote for a Green? That a DLC Democrat and I occupy the same party is a flaw of the system we currently have. Therefore my support for Hillary extends as far as it takes for her to keep the Rs out of the White House, and not an inch more. Sorry.
As for Cruz, W. was the guy “you wanted to have a beer with.” He was perceived as being personable.
Cruz is not that. His own fellow Tea Party compatriots dislike him, how is he going to win over an independent (to say nothing of his ideological extremism)?
Why can’t we? Are we not as great as Europe? Why not? And if Europe can afford things that we can’t, maybe we should take a look at that, too: How can we become more like Europe, and more able to afford nice things?