# President Obama warns of progressive "purity" and "circular firing squads" **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [April 17, 2019, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662 "2019-04-17T06:04:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/41 "2019-04-18T00:55:08Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > **SlackerInc** , do you have any evidence that those “plenty of Bernie Sanders followers” are progressives, liberals, Democrats, or followers of Bernie Sanders? We should hold politicians responsible for what they say and do, not what is said or done by those who purport to follow them. I know little of American politics. Bernie Sanders is a name I’ve heard, but I don’t know what he stands for. I really can’t tell you if any, some or most of Bernie Sanders followers are progressives, liberals or Democrats. However I can confirm that most Bernie Sanders followers are in fact followers of Bernie Sanders. Why are you doubting this point? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/42 "2019-04-18T00:58:11Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Well, it’s not up to me personally. But this attitude is, once again, an example of the massive imbalance in expectations of rationality and integrity applied to the two sides of the political spectrum. > > Republicans melt down into a toxic rat-king of cynical greed and cognitive dissonance, deliberately destabilizing the functioning of government as a self-serving power play under the banner of an ignorant malevolent buffoon, and you just shrug. Democrats engage in genuine principle- and policy-based intraparty disagreements that risk impairing liberal voter unity to even the slightest extent, and you scold vigorously about how irresponsible it would be for us not to “hold it together”. > > It is about time that non-Trumpist non-liberals stopped assuming that it’s the unquestioned responsibility of the nation’s concerned, rational, reality-based, public-service-minded Democratic “Mom” to protect the family from being destroyed by the delusional rampages of sociopathic looter Republican “Dad”. Go straighten out the folks on your own side before you come bleating to us about how badly you need us to save you from the party that you allowed to lapse into such pathological dysfunction. See, it’s posts like this that are the reason for threads like this, and the thought that ‘we are all fucked’. My ‘side’?? My ‘side’ is the weakest fucking part of YOUR FUCKING PARTY AND IS ALMOST NON-EXISTANT IN THE OTHER ONE. Jesus jumped on a cracker. You get all testy because some of us don’t want you folks to rip yourselves apart for a crucial election, as you fucking have done in the past? If not for the fucking Bernie bros and all the butt hurt progressives and left wing loonies, WE WOULDN’T HAVE FUCKING TRUMP TO WORRY ABOUT RIGHT FUCKING NOW! Good grief. I did my part…I held my nose and voted for Hillary. So, yeah…we need you to man up and be ‘mom’ for the rest of us who can’t control your continual infighting. If a request to keep it civil amounts to this, then ‘we are all fucked’ is probably going to be the term we use when Trump gets his second fucking term. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/43 "2019-04-18T01:12:19Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Peter Morris** : > > However I can confirm that most Bernie Sanders followers are in fact followers of Bernie Sanders. Why are you doubting this point? Because a large number of people purporting to be followers of Sanders, especially the loudest and most obnoxious ones, are actually in the employ of Vladimir Putin, and Sanders can therefore have no responsibility at all for what they say. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/44 "2019-04-18T01:27:20Z")
> [@XT](#): > > My ‘side’ is the weakest fucking part of YOUR FUCKING PARTY AND IS ALMOST NON-EXISTANT IN THE OTHER ONE. Then it sounds like you have quite a bit more work to do on the “other one” to get it fit for participation in a rational society. > [@XT](#): > > If not for the fucking Bernie bros and all the butt hurt progressives and left wing loonies, WE WOULDN’T HAVE FUCKING TRUMP TO WORRY ABOUT RIGHT FUCKING NOW! Pfft. You can make up any counterfactual scenarios you like, but the chief reason we have Trump to worry about is that Republicans made him their nominee and conservatives voted for him. What you’ve got there is a blame-game equivalent of the old quip about the guy looking for his lost keys under the streetlight, not because that’s where he lost them, but because that’s where the light is. You’re ripping into Democrats/liberals not because Democrats/liberals are actually the ones responsible for the Trump presidency, but because the other side is beyond the reach of rational argument. > [@XT](#): > > I did my part…I held my nose and voted for Hillary. :dubious: Oh, I see, **you** get to indulge in a little adversarial “infighting” by making snarky remarks about the candidate you chose to vote for, but Democrats themselves mustn’t. > [@XT](#): > > So, yeah…we need you to man up and be ‘mom’ Wow, you do oscillate pretty adroitly between sneering and begging. If you think the Democratic Party’s actions are so desperately crucial, then join the Democratic Party and start doing some of the work (and voting in the primaries), instead of just ostentatiously bestowing the occasional “nose-holding” vote on a Democratic candidate in a general election. If you’re so against anti-Democratic “infighting” and hostile negativity among people more or less united by opposition to Trumpism, then stop engaging in them so much yourself. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/45 "2019-04-18T01:36:04Z")
Sigh. I probably stepped over the line there. It’s very frustrating and more than a bit scary that I have to rely on the Dems to hold shit together to ensure Trump doesn’t get another term. Anyway, I’m not opposed to the party hashing stuff out for itself and debating, even heatedly, the direction they should go. It’s there party. I just don’t want to see another repeat of the last election. It’s not ‘counterfactual’ that a lot of voters that voted for Obama didn’t vote for Hillary…many didn’t vote at all. And many, mainly deluded blue collar types, voted for freaking Trump. And I think a lot of it has to do with this same in-fighting that happened last time. Many on this board basically said that it was Bernie or no one, or that they couldn’t stomach Hillary. Many of my own progressive or left leaning friends either didn’t vote or voted green. If you think this is ‘counterfactual’ then I don’t know where you were during the lead up to the last election. Sure, the Republicans are to blame for nominating Trump, but nomination doesn’t equal getting the presidency…he had to win the election, and, he did. Even if you think it was mainly anyone else but the left wing/progressives, you have to acknowledge it had a non-zero effect or there is no point even talking because we are so far off there is no point. If I’m engaging in ‘negativity’ it’s because I see this spinning out the same way right now. This is the Dems real moment to move things back to some sanity. And, right now, they do seem to be holding it together. Maybe I’m just being overly pessimistic after the last ice cold shock of an election. Sorry for lashing out…I get a bit hot about this, but it’s mainly fear. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/46 "2019-04-18T02:04:09Z")
> [@XT](#): > > It’s there party. I just don’t want to see another repeat of the last election. Can’t blame you for that, but ISTM that you are engaging here in the same type of counterproductive “purity” obsession that you complain of in progressives. You’re saying that the Democrats are the only hope for “holding shit together” to avoid (further) catastrophic consequences of Republican dysfunction, but at the same time you’re resolutely keeping aloof and declaring that the Democrats are “not your party”. Why is it any more excusable for you to do that than for some left-wing Democratic-Socialist type to do that? If you think that what we need is more Democratic unity, okay then, how about you join the party and help provide some? You’re allowed to leave as soon as you think the crisis is over, you know; we don’t require folks to be branded on the forehead with a permanent scarlet “D” or anything. But if your own ideologically pure political affiliation is by your own admission not providing any realistic path to electoral success, then maybe it’s time to stop kibitzing from the sidelines and actually carry a little water for the only affiliation that currently does provide one. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/47 "2019-04-18T02:04:22Z")
> [@XT](#): > > … It’s very frustrating and more than a bit scary that I have to rely on the Dems to hold shit together to ensure Trump doesn’t get another term. > … It’s a terrible burden that you observe from another perspective. Sounds rough. Condolences, thoughts and prayers, what have you. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/48 "2019-04-18T02:13:06Z")
Without getting too much into my personal history, I will say that I’ve the mentality up close and personal. Folks that would rather go down in flames than settle for half a loaf. Spoiler alert: They usually go down in flames. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/49 "2019-04-18T02:57:41Z")
Trivia Question: What do Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin have in common? Answer: Had the votes for Jill Stein all gone to Hillary, these three states would have gone for _ **Hillary, who would have then become the 45th President of the U.S.A.** _ (OTOH, Trump would have won New Mexico, Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, Minnesota and Nevada (and PA, MI, WI back again) if he had the Gary Johnson votes.) > [@CarnalK](#): > > With you I’m never sure but you did read the title of your article, right? Or just the name of the URL! Thanks to **CarnalK** ’s post, I clicked to the article. Shameful. > [@XT](#): > > … If I’m engaging in ‘negativity’ it’s because I see this spinning out the same way right now. This is the Dems real moment to move things back to some sanity. And, right now, they do seem to be holding it together. Maybe I’m just being overly pessimistic after the last ice cold shock of an election. Sorry for lashing out…I get a bit hot about this, but it’s mainly fear. I’m also afraid of Trump re-election. You’re one of the good ones, **XT**. It’s a shame that the dinbats who voted for Stein and Brnie Brats who didn’t bother to vote at all are humored while you, a Hillary voter, are criticized. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/50 "2019-04-18T04:35:37Z")
> [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](#): > > Something like [this](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/sanders-promised-civility-hired-twitter-attack-dog/585259/)? Could be better and needs to be said louder and more often, but the rest of the article isnt good news. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/51 "2019-04-18T04:45:37Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > If there’s a circular firing squad, people like Nancy Pelosi need to quit firing on the left, need to come together with us to take action. She needs to quit dividing the left by denigrating our policies as unfeasible and denigrating our politicians’ wins by saying a glass of water could’ve won their districts. I’m sure the denigrating you refer to was completely out of the blue, a first strike against progressives who had never had anything but kind words for her and her allies, until her shockingly unprovoked attacks. Right? :dubious: Snark aside, I do genuinely find it fascinating, the psychology of the progressive left of the party (if they are really even in the party at all, something they at least don’t seem to like to admit to being if they can help it). I think they honestly don’t comprehend how they come across. They swim around in cesspools like Truthout and Salon where everyone constantly sneers at mainstream Democrats. It’s the water they bathe in, the air they breathe. But they don’t keep it there. They come onto my Facebook page and think nothing of breezily tossing off calumnies like: “limousine liberalism – a dash of social enlightenment combined with a heaping helping of corporate-friendly policy and a sprinkle of austerity” “Some of us are fed up with pretty rhetoric and calls for bipartisanship that mask the deeply pro-corporate record of a candidate who’s bankrolled by special interests.” “Should I assume you’re literally on the payroll of the DNC? Because that is just about the only way I can explain the level of self-delusion and blind partisanship that afflicts you.” (Note how it’s taken as a given that being on the DNC’s payroll would be a huge stain on someone’s character, like discovering they work for one of the Koch’s astroturf groups or something. If I met someone who worked for the DNC, I’d thank them for their service!) But if I fire back at Bernie, like pointing out his and his wife’s repeated lies in 2016 about his tax returns, suddenly they go into high dudgeon: “Bernie’s the front runner with a very solid chance of winning the nomination. At some point you’ll stop doing the right’s work for them, won’t you?” “A lifetime of progressive leadership out the window. Instead the presidency should go to the next media-hyped person who talks fast and ‘looks presidential,’ regardless of their actual leadership history or what they plan to do in office. Makes sense if what you’re hoping for is incremental fine-tuning of the status quo, disguised as a movement for progressive reform.” “The faux outrage over this is pathetic. You’ve got your tax returns now. Find another quibble to wring your hands over.” “Bernie has made good on a promise and all you can do is keep complaining and finding fault and questioning his motives. It’s ridiculous. It’s asinine. It does not merit a response. It is, in a word, bullshit. And if it gives Trump a second term, you will have absolutely nobody to blame but yourselves.” :rolleyes: This is all just from today, from four different Bernhead Facebook friends. If I really dug more deeply, I could find some real gems. The double standard used to really drive me nuts, and I had trouble understanding how seemingly intelligent people could be so lacking in self-awareness. But over time, what I have concluded–and this is what makes the left so dangerous, as Obama hinted at–is that they don’t really understand this as a difference of opinion between two groups who have an uneasy coalition with each other out of necessity in our political system that doesn’t tolerate third parties well. I think they see themselves as analogous to gay people who are “out and proud”, and we are like repressed closeted folk who are too timid and anxiety-ridden to really let our freak flags fly, so we watch balefully from the sidelines, ashamed at our lack of courage, as the progressives strut their stuff. Therefore, if we dare to boldly assert our confidence in mainstream Democratic leaders and policies, they are flummoxed. “WHAT?!? How could you betray progressivism this way? Do you work for the _DNC_ or something?” It’s like they just learned one of their friends is an admitted, even proud, cannibal. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/52 "2019-04-18T05:34:39Z")
> [@E-DUB](#): > > Without getting too much into my personal history, I will say that I’ve the mentality up close and personal. Folks that would rather go down in flames than settle for half a loaf. Spoiler alert: They usually go down in flames. Yes, and more importantly from my perspective: they also drag those of us who are starving, and would happily take that half a loaf, down with them. :smack: > [@Kimstu](#): > > You’re saying that the Democrats are the only hope for “holding shit together” to avoid (further) catastrophic consequences of Republican dysfunction, but at the same time you’re resolutely keeping aloof and declaring that the Democrats are “not your party”. Why is it any more excusable for you to do that than for some left-wing Democratic-Socialist type to do that? > > If you think that what we need is more Democratic unity, okay then, how about you join the party and help provide some? You’re allowed to leave as soon as you think the crisis is over, you know; we don’t require folks to be branded on the forehead with a permanent scarlet “D” or anything. > > But if your own ideologically pure political affiliation is by your own admission not providing any realistic path to electoral success, then maybe it’s time to stop kibitzing from the sidelines and actually carry a little water for the only affiliation that currently does provide one. Very fair points. > [@Chronos](#): > > Because a large number of people purporting to be followers of Sanders, especially the loudest and most obnoxious ones, are actually in the employ of Vladimir Putin, and Sanders can therefore have no responsibility at all for what they say. Yes, I’m sure that’s true in many cases. But the ones I quoted above are all people I know personally, including someone I play poker with and someone I’ve known since high school. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/53 "2019-04-18T05:58:12Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > It seems less thin-skinned than smart to me. In this field being the second choice of many will be useful, as others drop out. Playing high road, advocating high road and fighting over ideas, rather than low ball attacks, makes you more likely to be chosen by those who have others as their current first choice when that current first choice no longer seems viable. I’ll be more impressed by calls like this from Sanders when he’s trying to stop other candidates from sniping at each other. The example cited was very self-serving. > [@Chimera](#): > > To me the biggest turn-off to Bernie Sanders has been his followers. They seem to think that insulting and attacking every other Democrat and their supporters will gain them support. But you’re not going to insult me into voting for Bernie. > > Before you get your knickers in a twist about Hillary and “deplorables”, she wasn’t trying to win their support and for the most part, those people chose to identify with the label rather than thinking “well that’s not me”. It was a one-off, not the constant stream of invective and personal attacks I’ve seen from the hard-core Bernie Bros. Right, and furthermore that whole “deplorables” thing was misrepresented and/or misunderstood. For everyone on the Trump-supporting side to, as you say, assume she was talking about them was ignorant or unintentionally revealing about themselves. Because here’s what she actually said (emphasis mine): > [@](#): > > I know there are only 60 days left to make our case — and don’t get complacent, don’t see the latest outrageous, offensive, inappropriate comment and think “well, he’s done this time”. We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? > > The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now how 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. > > But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but **that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.** The actual point she was making was quite nearly the exact opposite of the way it was characterized. Which was REALLY frustrating. > [@senoy](#): > > Humans are evolved to be religious. What has happened as we have secularized is that politics has become the religion of the masses with all of the objective moral certitude that that entails. The danger is that politics is not institutionalized religion which typically has the advantage of centuries of institutional inertia and tradition behind it. It swings on a dime and is allowed to tear down things that were ‘gospel’ a few short years ago. Rather than an institutionalized religion, the ‘religion’ that we follow is essentially a series of cults. There is no need for internal consistency or appeal to higher authority. The cult itself is the authority and its only goal is the destruction of the heretic. The ideals themselves are merely tools to be used to advance the cult itself and can be discarded or ignored when convenient. Ideals that were sacred a decade ago can be derided as unvirtuous now. There is no middle, nor any moderation since that denies the fundamentalism of the cult itself. The only aim is to find the next prophet and tear down anyone that stands in his or her way. This is extremely insightful! Kudos. > [@bump](#): > > All I know, and what I suspect Obama was getting at, is that the real target of the Democratic party’s marketing needs to be moderates- specifically the centrist moderates and ones who are maybe right-leaning a bit, and having a lot of party infighting over questions of ideological purity and the like is a good way to make yourselves look disunited and unorganized relative to the GOP goose-stepping along in lock-step. Word. But every fucking time I point this out to people, the response I get is “oh well, the people you’re trying to target will never vote for a Democrat anyway”. I don’t know if this is just ignorant (do they not realize some people really do swing back and forth, which is why we got Clinton, then Bush, then Obama, then Trump?), or defeatist (we can’t win no matter what we do, so screw it: let’s just let 'er rip). 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/54 "2019-04-18T06:46:27Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Could be better and needs to be said louder and more often, but the rest of the article isnt good news. Meh, I read not good news about pretty much every other Presidential candidate frequently. I just picked the quote from that article because it was the most concise about the email that Bernie sent to his followers, requesting that they be civil. I didn’t note the controversy in the article because that’s not what the quote was about, but in case anyone is interested, here’s the other side: [The Crux of the Accusations Against David Sirota From the Atlantic’s Edward-Isaac Dovere is False](https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/the-crux-of-the-accusations-against-david-sirota-from-the-atlantics-edward-isaac-dovere-is-false/) off-topic spoilered quote from the article > [@](#): > > As it turns out, there are indeed serious breaches of journalistic ethics from this episode, but they are ones committed by the Atlantic and Dovere, not by Sirota. That’s because the core accusation of the Atlantic article – that Sirota “for months” had been “informally” advising the Sanders campaign as a speechwriter while pretending to be an independent reporter attacking Sanders’ opponents – is simply false. It relies on a timeline that simply never happened. > > Since publication of Dovere’s bombshell, the Atlantic has tweaked and edited the story to reflect the multiple errors and denials that make it appear as though the original version contained those edits. ---
**Author:** ![SOJA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@SOJA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SOJA)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/55 "2019-04-18T09:31:30Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Oh, I see plenty of Bernie Sanders followers with their knives out for Beto. They accuse him of being in the pocket of Big Oil, even though he constantly talks about getting off fossil fuels within the next ten years. I’ve long suspected most Bernie supporters like that to be mentally challenged in some form or fashion. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/56 "2019-04-18T10:37:29Z")
The vapid squabbling here, among intelligent people all committed to the overthrow of the Trump regime, has strengthened my fears: _ **Trump will probably win re-election.** _ I am now rooting for a severe financial crisis as the best remaining hope for America. ☹ [SPOILER]Since the election of 1892, when ex-President Cleveland defeated Benjamin Harrison, there has been a total of one (1) time that a party was thrown out of the White House after only 4 years. That one instance was in the 1980 election, when the country was reeling from the Iran hostage crisis and stagflation; and huge interest rate hikes had just plunged the country into recession. Carter was defeated by the very popular Ronald Reagan. _There is no man of Reagan-like charisma warming up in the Democrat’s bullpen._[/SPOILER] ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/57 "2019-04-18T10:46:00Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > **SlackerInc** , do you have any evidence that those “plenty of Bernie Sanders followers” are progressives, liberals, Democrats, or followers of Bernie Sanders? We should hold politicians responsible for what they say and do, not what is said or done by those who purport to follow them. Does that include Trump? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/58 "2019-04-18T22:20:28Z")
Yes, that includes Trump. Trump is not responsible for what his followers do. They are responsible for what they do, and he is responsible for what he does. They are also partly responsible for what he does, because they gave him the power to do it, and he is partly responsible for what he tells them to do. If you see Sanders telling his followers to attack O’Rourke, then I’ll agree that Sanders is responsible for that. ---
**Author:** ![Reindeer\_Flotilla](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reindeer_flotilla/32/3024_2.png) [@Reindeer\_Flotilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reindeer_Flotilla)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/59 "2019-04-18T22:50:56Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > The vapid squabbling here, among intelligent people all committed to the overthrow of the Trump regime, has strengthened my fears: _ **Trump will probably win re-election.** _ > I am now rooting for a severe financial crisis as the best remaining hope for America. ☹ I see a lot of people putting a concerted effort at researching the report and putting together arguments against a few Trump supporters who are trying to deflect away from its contents. If you consider that “vapid squabbling”, that’s your right - but declaring a false equivalency between the two sides by implying both-sides-are-equally-to-blame is part of the mindset that’s lending credibility to Trump that’s not deserved. _ **That’s** _ what will get him reelected. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2019, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662/60 "2019-04-19T00:52:19Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I’m sure the denigrating you refer to was completely out of the blue, a first strike against progressives who had never had anything but kind words for her and her allies, until her shockingly unprovoked attacks. Right? :dubious: Oh my god. Do you really think that “BUT HE STARTED IT FIRST!!!” is an effective rhetorical technique? > [@](#): > > They come onto my Facebook page and think nothing of breezily tossing off calumnies like: > > “limousine liberalism – a dash of social enlightenment combined with a heaping helping of corporate-friendly policy and a sprinkle of austerity” The problem with your using personal anecdotes of your associates insulting your political position is that I can’t respond appropriately in this forum. So I’ll just say that your experience is not necessarily the norm, or even relevant, and leave it there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-obama-warns-of-progressive-purity-and-circular-firing-squads/832662.md?page=4)