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US Politics: What goes up, must come down!


Fragile Bird

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11 hours ago, Kalbear said:

The myth of the bernie bros is just that - it is just a few lone kooks, like (check notes) a regional field director

 

Most of the stuff in there is terrible and unacceptable for a staffer to be saying and this guy deserves to be fired*.  But let's not pretend it's online harassment, it's a locked account and he's not @'ing anybody in those tweets.  

But hey any of these candidates are totally responsible for anything any of their millions of supporters do and say:

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/activist-ashlee-marie-preston-slammed-for-racist-misogynistic-tweets-2019-10?amp&__twitter_impression=true

 

*Only because he got caught and snitched on and it's damaging a movement bigger than him.  

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7 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Most of the stuff in there is terrible and unacceptable for a staffer to be saying and this guy deserves to be fired.  But let's not pretend it's online harassment, it's a locked account and he's not @'ing anybody in those tweets.  

But hey any of these candidates are totally responsible for anything any of their millions of supporters do and say:

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/activist-ashlee-marie-preston-slammed-for-racist-misogynistic-tweets-2019-10?amp&__twitter_impression=true

 

 

It is literally his regional field director. Sanders is absolutely responsible for that! 

And maybe he didnt directly attack anyone (I doubt it, but okay) - but he did encourage others to do that. How is this an excuse? 

Quote

Spread the word guys im not joking it could really fuck up his entire campaign if enough people do this ....u just didn’t hear it from your old pal Ben,” Mora tweeted, encouraging followers to mark all strong Bloomberg supporters as “deceased,” which, he claimed, prevent the campaign from being able to contact them in the future.

 

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I also like how the response is "but what about this one" where very specifically the campaign decried it, the person responsible for vetting it took responsibility, AND the person who said that stuff apologized. 

Like, even if that was equivalent (it isnt), and even if it wasnt deflecting blame (it is), it is STILL miles better than this guy who hasn't been fired, hasn't apologized, and got promoted to this position!

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7 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It is literally his regional field director. Sanders is absolutely responsible for that! 

And maybe he didnt directly attack anyone (I doubt it, but okay) - but he did encourage others to do that. How is this an excuse? 

 

It's not an excuse. 

 

4 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I also like how the response is "but what about this one" where very specifically the campaign decried it, the person responsible for vetting it took responsibility, AND the person who said that stuff apologized. 

Like, even if that was equivalent (it isnt), and even if it wasnt deflecting blame (it is), it is STILL miles better than this guy who hasn't been fired, hasn't apologized, and got promoted to this position!

Pretty sure the Sanders dude got fired but I'll check.  Point is that you can likely find a surrogate or staffer on any of the campaigns doing stupid shit like this.

Eta: he was fired

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What's also interesting to me is that the warren staffer had a LOT more press at it compared to this guy. But that seems like typical par for the course - women have to be near perfect and any flaw is magnified, and men can do things like, well, what Bloomberg does and it's just fine. 

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3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Gonna make a prediction you can call me on later - South Carolina is going to go hard for Biden and fuck up all the narratives. 

I think Biden winning in SC throws the election to Sanders. If Biden loses in his firewall, then there's a chance that the moderate vote coalesces behind a single candidate on Super Tuesday, but a Biden win means the moderate vote remains split.

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3 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I think Biden winning in SC throws the election to Sanders. If Biden loses in his firewall, then there's a chance that the moderate vote coalesces behind a single candidate on Super Tuesday, but a Biden win means the moderate vote remains split.

Possibly. I'm sure Bloomberg is wishing now that he had gotten on the ballot in SC when he had the chance. On the other hand, if Sanders wins again that just might make him seem inevitable to some folks and he'll rack on the score on Super Tuesday.

On the third hand, maybe the next week of all out Bloomberg attack ads do a real number on Sanders. It's the first time a lot of voters will have been exposed to these details. Or maybe it doesn't (which would be a good sign for November).

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5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

What's also interesting to me is that the warren staffer had a LOT more press at it compared to this guy. But that seems like typical par for the course - women have to be near perfect and any flaw is magnified, and men can do things like, well, what Bloomberg does and it's just fine. 

Yeah a woman is going to face much harsher reactions for doing the same thing.  The Warren surrogate also had a much larger and public following versus this guy's private account getting leaked.  This guy just got caught with this today so maybe there will be a bigger blow up over the next couple days.

How would you prevent this from happening though in campaigns as large as these?  At the end of the day all this shit is just a distraction from anything that actually matters, it's pretty much just people being shitty in private and getting caught.  Well, the stuff about fucking with another campaigns likely voter data is really bad.

Especially with lower level staffers (not positive but it sounds like a 'regional director' is someone who trains small groups of canvassers, so there would have been hundreds of them in Iowa).

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2 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

 

How would you prevent this from happening though in campaigns as large as these?  At the end of the day all this shit is just a distraction from anything that actually matters, it's pretty much just people being shitty in private and getting caught.  Well, the stuff about fucking with another campaigns likely voter data is really bad.

Especially with lower level staffers (not positive but it sounds like a 'regional director' is someone who trains small groups of canvassers, so there would have been hundreds of them in Iowa).

I think you prevent it - or at least mitigate it - by not hiring people like Sirota who do it as well, by not encouraging your followers to gaslight people and take ownership of it, and make it a habit to go out of your way and criticize and disown this behavior whenever you can. Mistakes are gonna happen in hiring and behavior, but nothing will get fixed if responsibility continues to be all "whatabout that other person" or "it doesnt really happen" or "it is russian trolls".

This has been following sanders for 5 years now and he has made precisely one public statement about it so far. 

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2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Just before I went out today to do a Pokémon ex-raid, I was watching CNBC and there was a panel talking about what would happen to the markets if Sanders wins the nomination (not too too much, Covid-19 is going to have more impact) and the impact if he’s elected (potentially a huge impact). One of the panel members, a CNBC regular, made the comment that if you only read Twitter you’d think Democrats across the country want revolution, but if you actually talk to people what they really want is more or less what they have right now, a strong economy and low interest rates, just a lot fewer tweets. I suspect that’s a pretty good comment.

That seems like such a load. The economy is good for the rich and no one else. Since most Americans (more than 70 percent) live paycheck to paycheck, I absolutely cannot believe that most Americans think things are great.

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2 hours ago, Lollygag said:

.....and this is exactly what I was expecting to start coming up again. Howard Schultz II: when the right has gone so far right and the left so far left causing the middle to revolt. Note Bloomberg is keeping his massive, nation-wide infrastructure in place regardless of his own nomination status though I'm not convinced that Bloomberg would run himself.

https://theweek.com/articles/897624/real-third-way-2020

 

That article is pretty disgusting--some rich white dude saying it's okay to not vote for a candidate who is seeking ways to help poor people literally stop suffering because that's SO EXTREEEEMMMEEEE, he actually is no different than the racist, sundowning, misogynist and rapist who inhabits the White House. Revolution indeed. My guess is if people like him followed through, it'd be enough to hurt the left--in theory. Though I believe these rich white men who claim to be liberal and posit positions like this have voted Repub all their lives.

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56 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

It's not an excuse. 

 

Pretty sure the Sanders dude got fired but I'll check.  Point is that you can likely find a surrogate or staffer on any of the campaigns doing stupid shit like this.

Eta: he was fired

But has Bernie apologized every day since the firing?

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40 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I think you prevent it - or at least mitigate it - by not hiring people like Sirota who do it as well, by not encouraging your followers to gaslight people and take ownership of it, and make it a habit to go out of your way and criticize and disown this behavior whenever you can. Mistakes are gonna happen in hiring and behavior, but nothing will get fixed if responsibility continues to be all "whatabout that other person" or "it doesnt really happen" or "it is russian trolls".

This has been following sanders for 5 years now and he has made precisely one public statement about it so far. 

Has Sirota been harassing people?

 

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13 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

But has Bernie apologized every day since the firing?

That wouldn't be good enough I'm afraid. It's not enough to disown those supporters on a debate stage which is literally the most visible platform he has or to fire the guy. He needs to flog himself in penance and take a walk of shame through King's Landing. 

Listen, it's right to critcize bad behavior. However, at some point once people are fired and he's spoken out multiple times it kinda goes from actual critcism to just political gamesmanship (like how  a certain Pete Buttigieg only started talking about it once he started facing the prospects of not doing well in an election)

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On Bernie's VP, I think we can discount anyone over 70. No Warren, Biden, or Bloomberg, quite apart from the fact that a Bloomberg selection would scream sell-out, and Warren buggers up the Senate.

At that point, various questions then arise about how Bernie is going to play this. I do think Klobuchar would be his best bet, in that she's a Mid-Westerner, a woman, and an election winner with a history of getting support from rural Republicans. Plus, she's completely non-threatening for moderates, isn't despised by progressives, and wouldn't lose a Senate seat. Downside is that reaching out to a more conservative VP doesn't have a great track record in recent times (2000, 1988).

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