Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

[Handyman]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

So it will be Bernie's fault that Hillary can't campaign well enough to win over members of her own party? Got it.

Bingo.

 

[Handyman]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

I think most of us did learn it. We are about to find out, though. I hope to hell we did, because Trump is an extinction event for democracy.

The Progressive Wing may have learned, but the rest havent hence why they are already circling the wagons in case Hillary loses. It wont be her fault, or the fault of the Democratic Party Elite, it will Bernie and the Far Left's fault.

The Democratic Party is like the annoying fans of every team you hate. It is never their own fault they lost, it is always something else like "the ref screwed us" or "that team is cheap and dirty". They blame everyone but the people truly responsible, the team.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

The few minutes of Faux I could stand last night almost made me want to defend Hillary, and if this is indicative of how Drumpf is going to be (she is a horrible woman because Clinton cheated on her and NBC covered up the truth on things) then I think a lot of people who dislike her are going to be swayed. There is no doubt Drumpf is going to bully the crap out of her, it is the only game he has. That might be great for tying up the 50% of white men he plans to get it will guarantee he loses every other major demographic. Watching him stammer his way through ripping on her for her husband's inability to not screw ugly chicks is going to push the middle closer to her side. Christ it was working on me and I literally cant stand the woman...

Exactly.

The presidency is the class president vote, and the candidates are Biff Tannen vs Tracy Flick. In the Breakfast Club hierarchy, the Bully is more hated than the Know-it-all. Tracy wins.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

The Democratic Party is like the annoying fans of every team you hate. It is never their own fault they lost, it is always something else like "the ref screwed us" or "that team is cheap and dirty". They blame everyone but the people truly responsible, the team.

That's any institution, protecting itself. Just look at the GOP completely ignoring it's own "autopsy."

Institutions only change when the people who run them literally die. No person ever actually changes his mind or learns something new. In 30 years, the DNC will be liberal and still fellating themselves to the golden days of the Russ Feingold presidency, and the insurgency will be a "third way" moderate named Charlotte Mezvinsky-Bush.

 

[rufus]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

The Progressive Wing may have learned, but the rest havent hence why they are already circling the wagons in case Hillary loses. It wont be her fault, or the fault of the Democratic Party Elite, it will Bernie and the Far Left's fault.

Right. it's their version of the Repub's, "if only we'd run a real true Conservative, we'd have won". Which is why I sorta wish that they'd given Cruz the nomination, and once he got shwacked in the general, they could finally put that myth to bed, say goodbye to the fundicons and the family values phonies, and actually start moving into the 21st century.

 

[SJHovey]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Fracking is terrible and should be banned. Energy independence is not worth the damage it does. It is no better than burning coal except instead of ruining the air it ruins the water table and causes massive amounts of earthquakes.

Better log off the computer then, since the vast majority of Minnesota's electrical supply comes from either coal or natural gas coming out of North Dakota and Canada.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Well, we're 20 games behind. But yes, that's actually a very good analogy. We're a much younger team -- our future looms great, but the present belongs to the Hillaries.

Hillary's going to win the league and it's 1966 so there are no divisions or wildcard -- she's going to the World Series. And I always root for the NL in the World Series (unless it's the Braves. F-ck those guys. They're Dixiecrats.) The Clintons are the Cardinals. They're so full of themselves you want to punch them in the face, and they pretend they're pure as the driven snow when in reality they're just like every other team and they only exist to sell d-ck pills and beer. But at the end of the day, they win.

Bernie's Mets have had a tough couple decades but we're back, right on the cusp. Wait til next year.

Yep . It's exactly why I used the analogy. I'm no Hilbot, but she's the best chance our country has right now. The Millenials haven't grown up in an era of "Communism = Socialism = Scary" so they are much more likely to dabble in it. Which is cool. If a social program has a chance to do (objective) net good for the country, I'm interested in hearing it.

Bernie and Warren are changing the base and what's acceptable. Not because we've "known" their ideas are "wrong" but because they've been demonized going back to Mussolini and McCarthy and they haven't been given a fair shake.

I like Bernie, but it's really time to bow out gracefully and allow the race to shift to stopping Trump.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Yep . It's exactly why I used the analogy. I'm no Hilbot, but she's the best chance our country has right now. The Millenials haven't grown up in an era of "Communism = Socialism = Scary" so they are much more likely to dabble in it. Which is cool. If a social program has a chance to do (objective) net good for the country, I'm interested in hearing it.

Bernie and Warren are changing the base and what's acceptable. Not because we've "known" their ideas are "wrong" but because they've been demonized going back to Mussolini and McCarthy and they haven't been given a fair shake.

I like Bernie, but it's really time to bow out gracefully and allow the race to shift to stopping Trump.

I agree with everything you've written here. Rover could also learn a thing or two from your post about how to co-exist respectfully. As could Dame of the Cross, the Baroness of Little Rock.

This is a conclusive argument that 99% of Bernie supporters will understand and hopefully attend to.

Hillary Clinton may not be a revolutionary, but she’ll defend Roe v. Wade, preserve Obamacare, push for reasonable gun laws, protect LGBTQ rights, support parental leave, and heed climate science. Trump will do none of the above.

...

The longer Sanders stays in the race, the more Hillary’s negatives grow, and the more cash and attention she peels away from her general election efforts. A recent YouGov poll reports that 61 percent of Sanders supporters have an unfavorable opinion of Clinton, a number that has grown as the primaries continue to drag on. Moreover, Sanders’ critiques of Clinton have become more pointed and go beyond policy disputes; they also focus on process (allegations that the nomination process is rigged) and character (painting Clinton as corrupt and dishonest). Come November, it will be tough for the Democrats to energize voters who see their nominee as fundamentally untrustworthy and their party as unjust. Trump insulted practically every voting bloc in his party, and the GOP is still holding its nose to line up behind him. Yet the left threatens to fracture. How do we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Like this.

To the Bernie voters who are disgusted with the process and disillusioned with the Democratic nominee, I hear you. But if you plan to stay home, defect to a third party candidate, or vote Trump in November, think back to the fall of 2000. It only took 100,000 ideological purists in one state to give our country away to a know-nothing nightmare of a president.

 

[mookie1995]

Elizabeth Warren is a national treasure.

So then.....

Pocahontas flipped houses

What in the hell is the world coming to???

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

So then.....

Pocahontas flipped houses

What in the hell is the world coming to???

World Government under the Beast, if you believe the Millenarianists.

 

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

I suspect Warren has been tabbed as one of Hillary's attack dogs. She's going to need at least one, so why not?

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

I suspect Warren has been tabbed as one of Hillary's attack dogs. She's going to need at least one, so why not?

It makes sense to have surrogates who attack from positions the candidate can't occupy without contradicting herself. So Hillary can stay friendly with the banksters but the Democratic attack on Trump which references the banksters can still be made... by Warren.

But I think Warren is playing her own game, here. I think she and Hillary have an understanding that Hillary can criticize Bernie's wilder leftist rhetoric in order to beat him but can't put neoliberal tenets into the platform without Warren turning on her. And that's exactly the way the game is played by professionals.

In all honesty the more I see the way Hillary is running this campaign the more I trust her. To a large extent that is due to Bernie maneuvering her. Until now he has wrung as much progress out of her as he is likely to get. He should stay in the race through CA, but he should start to pivot towards We've Got A Bigger Problem Now.

 

[Rover]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Leaving your silly snark aside, let's take flipping the result off the table. Do you admit the DNC has amplified Hillary's lead, or are you going to say with a straight face that you think the party has been utterly candidate-blind?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

These sweeping accusations against Bernie's followers have to rely on reductio ad absurdum, because otherwise the simple fact is the DNC is screwing him but he probably wouldn't have won anyway.

As for whether it's evil, no, it's just politics. It makes perfect political sense to these people that they are screwing him: (1) Hillary is closer to the politics of the aging DLC generation of professional Democratic apparatchiks, (2) they lack the courage of liberal convictions because they were so buttf-cked throughout the 80s, and so they are convinced Hillary is their best bet to win, (3) they know who butters their donor bread, and a legitimate left would take away a lot of those people's goodies and enrage them, and (4) they are looking forward to 2017 and beyond and they have been making quid pro quo agreements with Clintonistas for the last 3 (or 23) years.

The DNC may be favoring Hillary, but its done zero for her in terms of Pledged Delegates. Obviously institutional support matters with Super Delegates, but they won't decide the race. Either way, pick your story and stick with it. Either Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is a fuking idiot (my view) or she's an evil genius who mysteriously has cost Bernie millions of votes. How exactly has she done this?

To answer Handy's point, while its incumbent on Hillary to turn out the Dem coalition whether they be her supporters, Sanders people, O'Malley people or whoever else, its a problem when Sanders keeps peddling conspiracy theories as to why he's lost. That's on him. He lost because for whatever reason an extra 3M people chose Hillary. That's not a close race (I think its like 57%-43%). That's a blowout. If anything DWS has helped Bernie to give him a convenient foil to run against, but one who's thoroughly incompetent so she can't actually do anything to hurt him.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

He lost because for whatever reason an extra 3M people chose Hillary.

John Oliver made a great point on Sunday. He said,

Sanders supporters might argue that doesn’t include all caucus votes, but when The Washington Post estimated the rest, they found that [Hillary] would still lead by 2.9 million votes, and even if you multiply all those estimated caucus votes by 7 to account for lower turnouts, even if you give Bernie a bonus of 10,000 extra votes in every state that’s voted so far, and even if you tack on an extra 100,000 votes just for ****s and giggles, she’s still comfortably ahead

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

It makes sense to have surrogates who attack from positions the candidate can't occupy without contradicting herself. So Hillary can stay friendly with the banksters but the Democratic attack on Trump which references the banksters can still be made... by Warren.

But I think Warren is playing her own game, here. I think she and Hillary have an understanding that Hillary can criticize Bernie's wilder leftist rhetoric in order to beat him but can't put neoliberal tenets into the platform without Warren turning on her. And that's exactly the way the game is played by professionals.

In all honesty the more I see the way Hillary is running this campaign the more I trust her. To a large extent that is due to Bernie maneuvering her. Until now he has wrung as much progress out of her as he is likely to get. He should stay in the race through CA, but he should start to pivot towards We've Got A Bigger Problem Now.

Completely agree. Especially with the last paragraph. I don't subscribe to a lot of what Bernie supports (single payer, free college, etc.) but it's important to get these ideas out there and debate them in an honest way. If only within one party, the adults-in-the-room party.

The last paragraph is an important point because Bernie needs to find a good place to merge in traffic. You have a maniac in the far-right lane, the middle lane is continuing on, and the left lane is ending in the next mile. If you don't merge at a good point, you make it messy for everyone in the left lane and the middle lane. And if you make it messy enough for the middle lane, you're going to see some of them jump to the far right lane just to keep moving.

A graceful exit is possible after California. It may be the last one before the lane ends. He would be wise to merge his support behind Hillary and use the momentum he's built over the last nine months to advance his ideas in the Senate.

 

[Rover]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

I too am seeing signs Bernie might be looking to work within the party. He's right about DWS getting sh !tcanned. I also think having him write a bit of the platform is a good idea. Finally I'm sure he doesn't want to be another Nader. What I'd love to see Sanders do is put his fundraising and appeal to younger voters to find about a dozen Congressional Goopers to target and defeat provided he's in agreement with the Dem challenger. Any district that contains a lot of college students for example. If he can put a dozen seats on the map that weren't on there before, and pull off half of them, his clout just skyrocketed in the next Congress as he now has a army of Bernie bots to push his agenda. This is a far better use of the man's energy than railing against superdelegates while appealing for them to switch their votes at the same time.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

This is exactly why the Democrats need to bring their more radical members back into supporting the candidate:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ryan-to-endorse-trump

The Right has already started to firm up their candidate by having the base support the candidate, even if they acknowledge he's not perfect.

Now, I could be wrong, and there may be some House of Cards chicanery going on in the GOP base, but it's better to let them commit party suicide by playing with fire rather than continuing to tempt fate on the left.

Donald isn't smart enough to outmaneuver the establishment. He has a small number of tools he uses. For whatever reason he's gained a lot of traction with those tools in the last year. When that playbook becomes tired and overused, it's going to blow up in their faces. It could take 25 years to fully recover. That said, the establishment has far more resources and actually understands how to play the game. He doesn't. He just doesn't.

If the GOP finds a way to weaponize Trump, it's going to be a long eight years.

 

[jerphisch]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Can't get the link at work, but Sam Bee pretty much destroyed the Bernie NV whiners this week. Full ep is on YouTube and that is the first segment.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

I too am seeing signs Bernie might be looking to work within the party. He's right about DWS getting sh !tcanned. I also think having him write a bit of the platform is a good idea. Finally I'm sure he doesn't want to be another Nader. What I'd love to see Sanders do is put his fundraising and appeal to younger voters to find about a dozen Congressional Goopers to target and defeat provided he's in agreement with the Dem challenger. Any district that contains a lot of college students for example. If he can put a dozen seats on the map that weren't on there before, and pull off half of them, his clout just skyrocketed in the next Congress as he now has a army of Bernie bots to push his agenda. This is a far better use of the man's energy than railing against superdelegates while appealing for them to switch their votes at the same time.

Agree completely.

Though the thing is he won't get anything except some symbolism in the platform. He has 1/3 of the committee, which means he gets to lose every substantive vote on content 2-to-1. That's completely fair: the rule has always been the winner gets to f-ck the Prom Queen.

Then again, the platform is itself symbolic. Like all successful politicians, the Clintons are very generous with empty gestures, so they may allow Bernie to transcribe The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon into the DNC Preamble. He'll take it and like it, because second prize is a set of steak knives.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

I too am seeing signs Bernie might be looking to work within the party. He's right about DWS getting sh !tcanned. I also think having him write a bit of the platform is a good idea. Finally I'm sure he doesn't want to be another Nader. What I'd love to see Sanders do is put his fundraising and appeal to younger voters to find about a dozen Congressional Goopers to target and defeat provided he's in agreement with the Dem challenger. Any district that contains a lot of college students for example. If he can put a dozen seats on the map that weren't on there before, and pull off half of them, his clout just skyrocketed in the next Congress as he now has a army of Bernie bots to push his agenda. This is a far better use of the man's energy than railing against superdelegates while appealing for them to switch their votes at the same time.

I'm not sure I see a dozen seats that could be put in play. If you look at the 2014 margins in the house, the first seat that comes up that went R that is within his sphere of influence is NH1 and that was a 3.3% MOV. The next are ME2 at 5%, NY1 at 8.7%, and maybe NJ3 at 9.6%, NJ5% 12.1%, and NY11 at 12.3%. Everything else is at 15% or more in the Northeast. Asking him to go into the Southwest or even Midwest is asking a lot.

He would also be better served also trying to protect the D seats. There are a lot. MN8, NY18, NY4, CT5, CT4, MN1, MN7, NY3, MA9, NH2. All of these seats were under 10%. MN8 and NY18 were under 2%. Nearly all of them were 7%.

I have no idea of the demographics of these districts. I'm not entirely sure he would play well in places like the Iron Range of Minnesota's 8th. (Edit: apparently I don't even know my own state that well - http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/minnesota .)

I'd say you're right that he should pick a dozen seats to protect or put back in play. I hope the Democrats have their **** in order and have a plan like this already.