But … but … both sides!
HD: Wrong. Quit digging.
Gee, all this time, if I’d only known that debates could be won by just telling the other side “Wrong” without any cites, evidence, facts, or explanation.
You haven’t supported your claim. Whose fault is that?
I gather that specifics aren’t your strong suit, but you’re going to have to try to be a tad more specific if you want an answer. Which claim do you feel is unsupported?
The one you claimed you had responded to. :rolleyes: The facts don’t support your characterization.
Again, quit digging.
I don’t know if you’re being purposefully vague or genuinely don’t understand, either way, it seems like a waste of time with you.
And you’re wrong on this, as well. A study found that “62% of the coverage of Clinton and 56% of the coverage of Trump was negative in tone”.
My favorite example was when that liberal bastion CNN cut away from a live Hillary event to cover an empty Trump podium.
Trump had *many *more scandals than Hillary did, but Hillary’s scandals (her health and her emails) were repeated over and over.
I remember that it was pretty obvious to me that Hillary was in trouble when Bernie put up a real primary challenge. I thought he was just running a Jessie Jackson style ‘I’m going to make my point’ campaign, and I don’t think anyone, including his campaign staff, really expected him to actually be a presidential candidate. When Clinton started having to actually fight to win the primaries in spite of them being stacked in her favor, it should have been a real wakeup call to her campaign that she was in trouble. But none of them wanted to face reality, and it’s easier after the fact to blame Sanders for daring to run than Clinton for ignoring that what should have been a sideshow became a real fight.
I think that’s it. I suspect he was actually recruited by Clinton or the DNC to bracket Clinton from the left, blunting the inevitable Republican attacks on her radical leftism etc., but was their second choice for the role after Warren refused (nevertheless, she persisted). But at some point the adulation went to his head, and he let his campaign become about him instead of policy goals.
But how is Sanders’ change in approach *her *fault (except in the sense that, to some, everything was)? How could she effectively counteract a personality campaign except by sticking to the issues and her record, which is what she did?
That sounds nuts to me. The DNC was incompetent, and probably hurt Hillary more than they helped, but they weren’t so stupid that they’d recruit a serious challenger. They would have been much happier with an easy and conflict-free primary.
Much easier to believe Sanders is exactly what he appeared to be.
They didn’t recruit a serious challenger, as already explained. That happened later.
It’s a convoluted hypothesis with no evidence. It’s much easier to believe that he ran for exactly the reasons and issues he said he did.
How would that explain all his decades of not doing so?
To borrow a maxim, “Don’t mock the alligator until you have finished crossing the stream.”
Many of those on Hillary’s side - much of the mainstream media, her supporters, ivory-tower intellectuals, coastal elites, felt that demographics guaranteed victory and that white working-class flyover America was finished and buried. That they could safely taunt, belittle and mock, and the alligator wouldn’t have enough votes to overcome.
Now, it’s true that white working-class flyover America probably WILL be buried and finished by a blue wave of demographics around the year 2030 or so, yes. But not yet by 2016. And so these Hillary supporters mocked the white working-class alligator too soon, thinking they were already across the stream when they were in fact still only mid-stream - and the alligator bit them.
Right wing radio convinced many Americans that this is so. That doesn’t mean that any beyond a very small portion of liberals were mocking or belittling rural and blue collar white people.
Nate Silver studied this question in a very detailed way, and he found that the single best predictor – better than demographics, economics, religion, etc. – of a region’s support for Trump, was how often they searched google for racist jokes and terms. It was about a lot of things, but the thing it was most about was white racial and ethnic grievance.
That’s kind of a non sequitur. He thought it was the right time, I suppose, and thought he had a chance to win. And he was almost right. Without evidence that the DNC recruited him, it’s ridiculous to posit that as any more than, charitably, an evidence free hypothesis.
The right time to stand up for something had never happened before in 70 years? Let’s be careful about what we call “Nuts”, please.
Of course all evidence would be circumstantial, since no one involved could ever say so publicly. But you may well remember all the well-publicized pressure on Warren to run finally ending just before Sanders’ name started to be mentioned by The Mentioners. You may also be aware of how often a “bracket” candidate with no actual hope but with a far-right or far-left position tends to show up in the primaries in both parties.
It’s a conspiracy theory. You can believe it if you want, but there’s no more evidence for it than other conspiracy theories.
I am always amused by the charge that somehow Hillary supporters ‘hand-wave away’ DNC favoritism toward Clinton. Has it occurred to anyone that most Dems saw this, understood that it was true, and had no issue with the DNC favoring the only Democrat in the race? Ultimately, that’s my beef with Bernie. He wasn’t a Democrat and had no interest in being one. He likes being an independent, but tried to hijack the party since it was easier than building one from scratch. Which is a fine strategy- certainly it worked for Trump- but is it really hard to see why most Dems (and no matter what they say, Hillary won a fair majority of Democratic primaries, both in terms of delegates and raw numbers) were fine with the DNC using any legal means to sink him?
The stupid media fixation on a horse race plus their ignorance of the Democratic nomination process really hurt.
All Democratic primaries and caucuses allocate their pledged delegates proportionally.
Sanders was all but mathematically eliminated after Super Tuesday on March 1.
Clinton won 486 delegates that day while Sanders won 321. There’s just no way Sanders could recover from that butt whipping and after Super Tuesday, Sanders shouldn’t have been considered a threat to the nomination.