Sounds exhausting. I save my disgust for those who actually deserve it. I don’t really care if someone calls me petulant (even in flowery language) because I’m not that fragile. I would expect someone to call me out if I said I wasn’t going to vote because I’d rather pout.
Wherever the point is, we’re not anywhere near there yet. We could have elected fucking Marianne Williamson and, while I know she’s be a disastrous president, I would at least be able to take comfort in the fact that there’s a whole long list of shit Trump would do that she wouldn’t. That goes for any of the candidates, including Sanders, which is why I’d actively vote for any of them in the general election because any of them are significantly better than Trump is. Would horrible monstrous baby-eating neo-con Hillary Clinton have put Kavenaugh on the bench for life? Would she be looting the government to build a wall on the border? Would be be blowing up a national monument right now? Would she be destroying our global alliances? Would she be trying to destroy any gains we’ve made in health care access? No? Then she was the candidate worth voting for in the general election. The primaries are the time to run your purity tests; the general is the time to put on your big boy pants and act like an adult.
It wavers on the other 364 days of the year. I’m working my ass off to push politics to the left on the other 364 days. On election day, I vote for Chirac so I don’t get President Le Pen.
You should also expect to get called out if you’re alienating potential voters from the party. I don’t care what you think about them in your skull, but I’d just as soon you not hurt chances of defeating Trump by pushing potential voters away out of some holier-than-thou sense of outrage at them. “Call-out” my ass.
I’m not. People yelling “Bernie or Bust” aren’t looking to be persuaded or convinced. They’re looking to have stupid neckbeard debates about how “This isn’t a vote for Trump!” and have their ego stroked, and engaging with them by coddling and giving them sweet whispers only serves to feed the idea that they deserve super special treatment.
So what percentage of people who would vote for Bernie in the primary are “Bernie or Bust”?
And to those who support Bernie and will be disappointed with Biden or Buttigieg but vote for them anyway - do they deserve to be called “Bernie Bots” or “Bernie Bros” and talked to like this?
Do you think that, in general, strengths or weakens the political cohesiveness and strength of the democratic party when that happens?
It seems to me that people are using some charicatured version of what they think a “Bernie Bro” is, which, if it exists, applies to a minority of Bernie supporters, and teeing off on every Bernie supporter with vitriol, gatekeeping, and a desperate attempt to make sure that their enthusiasm is stamped out and they’re alienated from the democratic party and politics in general.
“Only 53 percent of Sanders voters say they will certainly support whoever is the Democratic nominee. This is no idle threat. In 2016, in Pennsylvania, 117,000 Sanders primary voters went for Trump in the general, and Trump won the state by 44,292 ballots. In Michigan, 48,000 Sanders voters went for Trump, and Trump won the state by 10,704. In Wisconsin, 51,300 Sanders voters went for Trump, and Trump won the state by 22,748. In short, Sanders voters helped elect Trump.”
I absolutely believe it based on the conversations I’ve had with the “Bernie or Bust” people from 2016. They’re still bragging about how they didn’t vote for Clinton.
I believe you believe in those folks. I just have trouble believing you’re sincere when you claim that throwing nasty broad-brush insults around serves a useful purpose.
This is the Pit and I’m responding to an OP about how we need to coddle Sanders supporters despite their rhetoric. I disagree with the premise of the OP and I don’t believe that these people are sincere in their “But if you were nicer to me, then maybe I’d vote for…” bullshit. Amusingly, the OP opened with the nasty broad-brush insults but you don’t see me threatening to take my ball and run home crying over it. If I wanted to engage in useful purposes, this thread wouldn’t be where I started. But this thread was never about a detente or sincere attempt to bring lines together.
Oh for fucks sake, I didn’t demand special treatment. I said that you shouldn’t do your fucking best to insult Bernie supporters and beat them enthusiasm out of them and try to get them to go away.
If “don’t be an asshole to this group” means to you “oh they want to be coddled”, you’re an asshole.
I bet you’re one of those assholes who tries to be as rude to Bernie supporters as possible, beat the enthusiasm out of them, and then whine that young people don’t vote. It’s like you’re trying to lose. You’re trying to fucking gatekeep people voting for your party. Is it a wonder that democrats are so fucking bad at winning elections?
When I speak of “merit” I mean that I feel justified in calling them out for being committed to a person rather than the idea. It’s a personality cult, not an ideological position that does not depend on a named individual. If Bernie drops dead today (and I’m not wishing death on the guy - I wish him many long healthy years) is the revolution he started over for some of his supporters? It certainly feels like that may be the case.
Related, heard something on NPR on my commute this morning. A self described Republican who is a never-Trumper said he wrote in Bernie’s name during the 2016 election. This election, he says that he doesn’t know who he will vote for even if Bernie is the nominee because Bernie has gone too far to the left.
So while I understand the difference between anecdote and data, this comes up time and again - people who claim to be Bernie supporters but not Democrats, saying there is only one option for them, but they can’t even be counted on to vote the way they claim they would. Contributing to ensuring another four years of Trump be damned.
Nah. Truth be told, I’d rather not engage with many of them because they’re just exhausting. Not in a “I’m excited and have a lot of energy” way but in a “OMG if you don’t agree with me, you’re just a corporate dick sucking third way right wing democrat” sort of way. I can’t say that I never talk to any about politics because, when the topic comes up, they always pipe in, but it’s not an experience I go looking for.
Perhaps this needs its own thread in GD, but let’s try to help you here.
(1) Many European or Canadian health systems retain a place for health insurance: it is not antithetical to a single-payer system. Indeed competition from the “public option” will force private insurance companies to improve their policies.
(2) Biden’s plan does provide free care to many needy Americans, and guarantees every American access to health insurance at a maximum of 8.5% of their income. 8.5% is more than zero but, if the coverage is good, will make a huge dent in America’s big healthcare problem.
Now, this Biden plan is not the Sanders plan. I, like you and Sanders (and perhaps, ultimately, moderates like Biden), would like to see private health insurance almost disappear and have basic health free. And, if the government’s public option becomes good enough, private health insurance may gradually become a thing of the past. The 8.5% ceiling might be lowered in future. But regardless of how fast these gradual improvements occur, Biden’s path has a key advantage over Bernie’s:
(3) Biden’s plan has a good chance of becoming law and accomplishing much of the good that Bernie’s plan would gain. Even that is a long-shot: it will require that we get 50 Senators and that all fifty vote to eliminate the filibuster. It may require packing the supreme court, since Kavanagh and the other evil-doers on the court might stab any Democratic plan in the eye out of spite.
(4) Sanders’ plan, OTOH, has no chance of becoming law. Sanders, as Senator or perhaps Secy of Health might do good by continuing to move the Overton window. As President he’ll end up appearing powerless, pathetic, and quite possibly fail to secure a 2nd term.
You go to a restaurant that has filet mignon and T-bone on the menu. You prefer filet but the server informs you they’re out: maybe they’ll have some if you come back in a decade or two. Do you accept the T-bone — second choice — or throw a tantrum asking for the filet mignon that’s unavailable? Which course is saner?
SenorBeef, over the last four years, I haven’t concerned myself too much with any talk of Bernie Bros or whatever. I have formed an opinion on Bernie, himself, and it is not favorable. That’s based on the work he’s done in Washington, me reading the news, etc. – certainly not on anything like viewing his supporters and attributing value judgments to the candidate as a proxy.
You, in this thread, have quite literally done more damage to my opinion of Bernie supporters than anything I have seen or heard in the last four years. And you’ve done it single-handedly.
I would say that you’ve lost the plot, but I’ve been saying that all along. You are continuing to not find the plot.
I’m not interested in debating healthcare with you. I don’t care what you think about Joe Biden’s healthcare plan. I have already said that it is the morally correct thing to do, on election day, to vote against Trump. I have already said “I already said that.”
What I have been attempting to do is articulate that someone who is motivated to vote specifically because of Sanders’ socialist governance model doesn’t agree with you about your goddamned steak analogy. It doesn’t matter how many different ways you say “this thing is almost as good” to somebody who doesn’t agree that it’s almost as good. This is something every fucking person in this thread understands when it comes to the candidate THEY prefer. That’s why they prefer that candidate. It’s something that every fucking person in this thread understands when it comes to why they don’t support the candidates they don’t support.
Yet somehow, it becomes mysterious that some Sanders supporters, some of whom have already voted for Trump, don’t just spontaneously decide “oh, yeah, Joe Biden, basically the same as Sanders so he’ll be my top choice if Bernie goes down.” He’s not the same. It is rational to notice that they are not the same. It is not a difference of degree, it is a difference of kind. If you think that it is repugnant that somebody would observe that difference and not shrug their shoulders about it on election day, that’s fine. I honor and celebrate your opinion as far as that goes. But please, as a personal favor to me, could you stop being so condescending about a point you’ve already proven yourself wrong about?