If people are so fucking stupid as to vote for stuff that happened 30 years ago and ignore what is happening now, then we get the government we deserve.
And it’s not like Trump is going to be all sweetness and light if Bernie is not the nominee. It doesn’t matter who the nominee is, the GOP and “independent” attack ads are going to lie their asses off about whoever it is.
Given that, it makes the most sense to vote in the primaries for the candidate who’s policies most match your own. Then Blue no matter who in the general.
Many people here are still het up over the fact the Biden was fooled by the shrub into voting for the iraq war resolution some 20 years ago, thus “proving” Biden is a “warmonger” so, yeah, "people are so fucking stupid ".
The innocent civilians we blew to smithereens 20 years ago are still dead. There’s no limit on how long we can judge the politicians who helped make that happen. And whether they helped because they were too dirt fucking stupid to know better or because they were just horny for war isn’t even all that important.
I skimmed the article, and the skill and experience Yglesias discusses all show up as accomplishments in effective messaging, but not in actual getting shit done.
And he still doesn’t seem to have any sort of believable theory of how he’s going to get shit done in 2021.
This is why I’m still firmly in Warren’s corner, and why there’s no way I’m going to support Bernie for the nomination. There’s all sorts of shit that needs doing, and there’s no reason to believe that President Sanders will be anything less than an unmitigated failure in office. Despite all the problems I have with Biden, I think I’d rather have Biden, who would be more of a mitigated failure IMHO.
My question then becomes-why would Trump’s association with Putin’s Russia NOT also be an attack strategy that could work for the Dems?
As in, why did all that email kerfluffle during the 2016 campaign allegedly help sink Hillary, while Trump’s “I grab 'em by the pussy!” comment didn’t wreck Trump’s chances?
You seem to be implying that any questionable ideas or associations by the Dems (even if it is ancient history) is automatically damaging to their chances, while Trump can do or say almost any idiotic thing (present tense) which indicates that he is unfit for office, and it won’t move his polling needle down one pixel. Maybe you are right, but that’s a pretty astonishing notion, tbh.
But they don’t recall Trump’s various recent meetings with Putin. Gotcha.
If it was that one vote, it would be one thing. But he was defending our going into Iraq for years after the invasion. People have dug up Biden quote after Biden quote from the next few years defending the war.
Also:
I remember that period well. I remember that Bush used the argument that we were only giving him a tool to make his threats more credible, so that Saddam would have to prove to us that he’d gotten rid of his WMDs.
And Saddam cooperated. He let our inspectors in, let them do their jobs, and they found nothing.
But Bush made the decision to go to war anyway.
Do you remember the howls of outrage for the Congresspersons he fooled into voting for the AUMF? Do you remember how they stood up and demanded another vote to withdraw that authorization?
Neither do I. And Joe Biden was certainly one of the people I don’t remember any howls of outrage from.
Of course there are double standards in politics – and they aren’t just from the extreme ends of the spectrum.
To quite a few people in the middle, Trump is opinionated, Hillary is shrill. Or, giving money to farmers are a lifeline for good Americans who hit hard times, giving money to poor people in cities is socialism.
Effective messaging is what’s most important for winning elections. I think your criticism of Bernie is perfectly valid, but it doesn’t make him any less likely to beat Trump, IMO.
Yes its an astonishing notion, but evidence indicates its also true. At this point its pretty clear that everyone has their mind made up about Trump. Either you already realize that he is an incompetent, corrupt, narcissistic sociopath, or else you believe that all the charges against him are false news and are impervious to new evidence. Negative campaigning is going to be of limited value against Trump because its already baked in.
For the Dems on the other hand there is still room to fall. Whether Trump wins or not will depend on how many of those who have a negative opinion of Trump can be convinced that the Democrat candidate is just as bad or even worse.
In honor of the approximate one year anniversary of Bernie announcing his candidacy, here are some reactions at the time from the wise and brilliant pundits of the mass media, excerpted fromhere.
Sanders is running against a very weak field even now after so many people dropped out. As they say, in the land of the blind the one eyed guy is king.
As noted above, there are certainly double standards in politics. Trump said and did all those awful things, and is still saying and doing them, and the vast majority of Republican voters voted for him and still love him. He has a personality cult and it’s working for him bigtime.
Most voters, and I daresay most Democrats, don’t yet know about the more unappealing things in Sanders’s background that I mentioned. And when they learn about them, as they surely will from the GOP attack machine when and if Bernie secures the Democratic nomination, it will not be politically helpful to him, to say the least.
I’ve changed my opinion since I posted in August. Now, I believe he should be the nominee if the primary process shows that he is getting the strongest support. People criticize his position because they say his initiatives are too expensive, but the reality is that they could probably be paid for by taking back that trillion dollar plus tax break that Trump gave to the millionaires and billionaires that support him.
No not medicare. I mean endless wars corruption and rightie nihilism. medicare is a drop in the bucket.
If you’re gooinig to complain that we can’t afford health care you must be livid about the conservatives nihilism, profilgacy and waste? Right? Hello…? Hello…?
He isn’t left enough. American politics that you have is too easily bought with money. It’s not the time for moderate solutions like Sanders. You need a clean slate, there is too much dead wood.
In a Condorcet vote, Bernie leads all the other Democrats, and all by double-digits except for Biden and Warren. So even if the rest of the party coalesces around a single alternative, Bernie still could have an advantage (and possibly a big advantage).
