US Election: Saint Bernard the obstinant

[Shryke]

4 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Eh, I disagree that Bernie would do all that well in a debate against Trump.  Sanders isn't really that great at these things and I figure it would devolve into both of them trying to out yell the other.  Though, honestly, I never actually thought either of them were completely serious.  Trump's the dude who likes to delay things with petty demands, or who backs out and says they were mean to him, or who spends five months pretending like he gave money to charity.  I figured everyone knew this, including Bernie, so it seemed like a pretty obvious joke, to me.  Even more so now that Trump has clinched the nom.

It does highlight how frustrated I am that Hillary has not agreed to another debate.  I think she does well on the debate stage.  I'm not sure there are any negatives to her giving one more debate to Bernie before she goes on to clinch her own nom.  I know there is at least one poster here who, despite being an ardent Hillary supporter, becomes enraged at anyone who so much as suggests she can do better, which baffles me because I'd have thought anyone on the progressive side of things would actually want HIllary to have the best chance at getting elected.  There are too many unforced errors, too many problems that have common sense solutions that she won't take.  I'm just at a loss for why she wouldn't want to debate before the final rounds of primaries.  

Why would she bother debating Sanders? It's over. She won. That's why she's already basically ignoring him.

There's nothing to gain for her except giving Sanders more publicity and more chances to attack her on national television and give herself more chances to make an actual unforced error.

[Bold Barry Whitebeard]

5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I was just going to post how this would have been a brilliant bit of political judo worthy of Obama. Nothing but upside for him, nothing but downside for his opponents. Wonder why he chickened out?

He hasn't chickened out, yet.  He made the remark as a joke.  But his campaign manager said that they would consider it since it has generated so much interest.

[Kalbear]

@Dr. Pepper - there's very little upside to a debate though, at least for clinton. She has done a good job of saying she's won; why debate? It undermines her message. I agree that she would likely be good, but I think she recognizes it as another way to just attack her directly - and that isn't going to unite the party.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

8 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

It does highlight how frustrated I am that Hillary has not agreed to another debate.  I think she does well on the debate stage.  I'm not sure there are any negatives to her giving one more debate to Bernie before she goes on to clinch her own nom.  I know there is at least one poster here who, despite being an ardent Hillary supporter, becomes enraged at anyone who so much as suggests she can do better, which baffles me because I'd have thought anyone on the progressive side of things would actually want HIllary to have the best chance at getting elected.  There are too many unforced errors, too many problems that have common sense solutions that she won't take.  I'm just at a loss for why she wouldn't want to debate before the final rounds of primaries.  

There is literally no reason in the world why Clinton should debate Bernie before the California primary. Clinton is killing Sanders in the California polls right now. There is absolutely nothing in the world for her to gain right now vs. the substantial risk of having an off night or, more likely, giving Sanders one last chance to try to boost his flailing campaign by dialing his rhetoric up to 11 and savaging both her and attacking the legitimacy of the nomination process, neither of which are good for her or the Democrats. 

[TrackerNeil]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

there's very little upside to a debate though, at least for clinton. She has done a good job of saying she's won; why debate? It undermines her message. I agree that she would likely be good, but I think she recognizes it as another way to just attack her directly - and that isn't going to unite the party.

Yup. Clinton has all but won, and one more debate won't change that. If there are still some Americans out there who haven't made up their minds, I doubt that one more night behind the mic would change many opinions.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

@Dr. Pepper - there's very little upside to a debate though, at least for clinton. She has done a good job of saying she's won; why debate? It undermines her message. I agree that she would likely be good, but I think she recognizes it as another way to just attack her directly - and that isn't going to unite the party.

I'd go a step farther and say there is no upside at all.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

34 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

To me, Secretary of State tenure is a big deal. Even though she was too interventionist in her tenure, I think direct foreign policy experience is valuable since foreign policy is an area where the President gets a lot of leeway.

 

Can you acknowledge that the alienation and demonizing is going both ways? That Bernie attacking the legitimacy of the Democratic Party and referring to Clinton as the lesser of two evils is counterproductive to the aim of defeating Trump?

What have Clinton and the DNC done lately to villainize Bernie? As far as I can tell, they're ignoring him  (besides letting him name 1/3 of the platform committee, those bastards!). Meanwhile you have Bernie supporters going Gamergate on a popular liberal Democratic Senator from California, and Bernie's utter douchebag of a campaign manager mansplaining away her complaints by telling her she couldn't possibly have felt threatened. My favorite development of recent days, though, has to be the proliferation of Vince Foster attacks from the theoretical progressives in my social media feeds, who are performing the incredible mental gymnastics of appropriating a vile and discredited anti-Clinton smear from 20 years ago, just as it was repopularized by Trump. Fuck those people.

 

Yeah, I didn't mean to say it wasn't going both ways. I suppose I am taking the road that the onus of unification is on the winner, not the loser, and Bernie is the loser in this race. So when the DNC lashes at him, it seems particularly divisive to his supporters. And I'd argue the fighting villainizing hasn't stopped, but I get the sense I'm just opening up overall soreness on this topic here, and that's not my intent. 

[DanteGabriel]

Remember kids, when Bernie lies about still being able to win, it's just because he's so devoted to a glorious cause. But when Clinton backs out of a debate that has no upside for her and only strengthens her opponents, it is because she is awful and evil.

[DanteGabriel]

2 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Yeah, I didn't mean to say it wasn't going both ways. I suppose I am taking the road that the onus of unification is on the winner, not the loser, and Bernie is the loser in this race. So when the DNC lashes at him, it seems particularly divisive to his supporters. And I'd argue the fighting villainizing hasn't stopped, but I get the sense I'm just opening up overall soreness on this topic here, and that's not my intent. 

What has the DNC done to lash against Sanders?

[TrackerNeil]

Just now, DanteGabriel said:

Remember kids, when Bernie lies about still being able to win, it's just because he's so devoted to a glorious cause. But when Clinton backs out of a debate that has no upside for her and only strengthens her opponents, it is because she is awful and evil.

YES! This is what drives me crazy; judgments are characterized by the general (and emotion-based) perception of the candidate. Hillary Clinton's reputation has suffered through twenty-plus years of mostly baseless attacks, assisted by where-there's-smoke-there's-fire reporting, so it's no wonder people have a negative attitude about her. Sanders has been spared that, and it's also unsurprising that people feel less negative about him.

[Dr. Pepper]

If she's winning so well (and I agree she is, like I've always agreed), then there really should be no downside unless she fucks it up completely and talks about the time she killed a million little unicorns or something.  There are plenty of upsides, not least of which is to make inroads into the part of the Bernie crowd who is littering facebook, twitter and tumblr feeds and comment sections of articles with shit like "Hillary won't listen to us! Hillary and the establishment refuse to address our concerns!" and so on.  

I tend to think long term, so I'm thinking about what exists not just in California, but also after.  You can whine about how she has to work twice as hard or that she receives judgement where others don't, but that's the reality of things.  

[Maithanet]

6 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

There are plenty of upsides, not least of which is to make inroads into the part of the Bernie crowd who is littering facebook, twitter and tumblr feeds and comment sections of articles with shit like "Hillary won't listen to us! Hillary and the establishment refuse to address our concerns!" and so on. 

But a debate is a fundamentally non-unifying event.  The format is meant to be an exchange of ideas between equals, and to highlight differences between the two of you.  It would only provide ammo to Bernie supporters that they do not need to embrace Clinton, because Sanders is right there, debating. 

[Kalbear]

The Bernie crowd that wants a debate isn't going to change their mind now. They just want Sanders to win. She can gain their trust by doing more concessions to their platform anyway.

[DanteGabriel]

4 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

I tend to think long term, so I'm thinking about what exists not just in California, but also after.  You can whine about how she has to work twice as hard or that she receives judgement where others don't, but that's the reality of things.  

It's strange to me that, after making a strong and well justified feminist critique of Clinton's behavior towards women who accused her husband of sexual assault, you would turn around and characterize a fairly well-established criticism of gender imbalance as "whining." I don't think you would have appreciated it if I'd responded to your previous post about believing sexual assault victims by calling it whining. 

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

12 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

If she's winning so well (and I agree she is, like I've always agreed), then there really should be no downside unless she fucks it up completely and talks about the time she killed a million little unicorns or something.  There are plenty of upsides, not least of which is to make inroads into the part of the Bernie crowd who is littering facebook, twitter and tumblr feeds and comment sections of articles with shit like "Hillary won't listen to us! Hillary and the establishment refuse to address our concerns!" and so on.  

I tend to think long term, so I'm thinking about what exists not just in California, but also after.  You can whine about how she has to work twice as hard or that she receives judgement where others don't, but that's the reality of things.  

This is pure fantasy. Look at Sanders' rhetoric, and the rhetoric of his followers, starting from the first debate until the last debate. We've come a long way from "Any of us Democrats are way better any Republican" and "We've heard enough about your damn emails." Sanders' rhetoric, which feeds his followers' rhetoric, is going to be amped up to 11. The idea that somehow offering Sanders a final debate before she clinches his nomination will lead to his followers suddenly not thinking she's a corporate shill has zero bearing in reality. She's debated him multiple times, and the end result has NEVER been that Sanders'  most vocal supporters are nicer to her on tumblr and Facebook. Never.

And the reality is, Clinton doesn't need to stumble much, if at all, to give the media the "close race" narrative. Sanders just needs to outperform expectations, and then there's a 24 hour news cycle about Sanders' momentum going into the California primary. It's a lose - lose - lose proposition for Hillary, and she'd be stupid to do it. 

[Dr. Pepper]

12 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

It's strange to me that, after making a strong and well justified feminist critique of Clinton's behavior towards women who accused her husband of sexual assault, you would turn around and characterize a fairly well-established criticism of gender imbalance as "whining." I don't think you would have appreciated it if I'd responded to your previous post about believing sexual assault victims by calling it whining. 

I think there's a big difference between calling assault victims whiners and responding to a man (or group of men) that a female candidate in a sexist world won't have to to find ways to navigate that, but sure, I probably should have used a different word.  

[Centrist Simon Steele]

43 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

What Clinton's done wrong is, apparently, win the nomination.

"Going Gamergate" is exactly what this all feels like. A successful woman is questioned in every possible way, and her credentials are assumed to mean very little. At least Trump comes right out and says, "Clinton is winning because she is a woman." I don't respect much about Trump, but I respect that he has the guts to just say what's motivating him.

 

 

 I just don't agree with this, and here is where I feel the dismissiveness of Bernie supporters and their issues with Clinton really rests. Gamergate, sexism--I do not know if these are fair charges/comparison. Consider this editorial: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/clintons-inexcusable-willful-disregard-for-the-rules/2016/05/25/0089e942-22ae-11e6-9e7f-57890b612299_story.html

Clinton is not a saint--at least glancing through her history, it is difficult to say she doesn't have a checkered history in politics. Bernie's pointing to her ties to Wall Street, her seemingly flagrant disregard for the rules--these are attributes Bernie supporters seem unable to accept in the winning nomination. I know this because I went through this myself before evaluating the fallacies in my own thinking, and while some may be rooted in sexism, the majority of the fight against Clinton is not the woman card. I do not think Bernie supporters would fight again Elizabeth Warren, for example, because of the values she represents. I believe this is very much a value based issue for voters on the left. Gamergate is not a fair comparison because it is a comparison that dismisses the core problem Bernie supporters have in supporting Hillary. Instead of addressing the corruption issues, the ties to Wall Street, she dodges it, and people are labeled as sexists. I suppose this is not going to help win those holdouts.

Is gender/sex at play here too? I suppose so. But when reduced to only that, the problem festers. There are ways to bridge this issue with Bernie supporters. That's the way I see it anyway. 

[DanteGabriel]

Simon, I'm still curious to hear how the DNC has lashed against Sanders. Was it before or after they gave him five seats on the platform committee?

[TrackerNeil]

12 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Clinton is not a saint--at least glancing through her history, it is difficult to say she doesn't have a checkered history in politics. Bernie's pointing to her ties to Wall Street, her seemingly flagrant disregard for the rules--these are attributes Bernie supporters seem unable to accept in the winning nomination. I know this because I went through this myself before evaluating the fallacies in my own thinking, and while some may be rooted in sexism, the majority of the fight against Clinton is not the woman card. I do not think Bernie supporters would fight again Elizabeth Warren, for example, because of the values she represents. I believe this is very much a value based issue for voters on the left. Gamergate is not a fair comparison because it is a comparison that dismisses the core problem Bernie supporters have in supporting Hillary. Instead of addressing the corruption issues, the ties to Wall Street, she dodges it, and people are labeled as sexists. I suppose this is not going to help win those holdouts.

Is gender/sex at play here too? I suppose so. But when reduced to only that, the problem festers. There are ways to bridge this issue with Bernie supporters. That's the way I see it anyway. 

Trust me, I know Clinton is no saint, and if I should ever forget, someone is around to remind me. And let me just say that whenever a woman runs for office I assume sexism is affecting the race, because it usually does.

Also, I don't remember anyone slamming most male politicians for affairs their husband had, or dinging them for being insufficiently sympathetic towards their wives' boy-toys. The fact that Monica Lewinsky has been raised as a campaign issue for Hillary Clinton says much, or at least to me.

About Elizabeth Warren...it seems that when she was running for office, she was "dislikable" too.

[lokisnow]

21 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

 

I've come to accept this is just the way it is for now, but a lot of people are tired and want things to change now. 

No they are not. If they want change 'now' they would have to vote for it in every 'now' in which it is possible to vote for change 'now'. As it is they are selectively and weakly voting for change only in the 'now' of a presidential election every four years. Given the structure of our government is designed to resist rapid change, a vote for change 'now' only every four years and unsupported by a vote for change in all the other 'nows' in between is insufficient to elect a legislature and executive capable of implementing the change 'now' allegedly desired by the electorate.

People say they want things to change, but their actions indicate what they say is not genuine given they only support change every four years and sometimes not even then.

Elect Bernie Sanders. He cannot do a fucking thing because no supporting legislature was elected: 1) With him. 2) Before him. 3) After him.