Basically the argument that Clinton supporters have been making for a while - Bernie's platform is too optimistic about what can actually be accomplished, and as president he'd probably overreach and then not actually get anything done.
Basically the argument that Clinton supporters have been making for a while - Bernie's platform is too optimistic about what can actually be accomplished, and as president he'd probably overreach and then not actually get anything done.
Also a reaction to the Bernie Or Bust crowd, which touches on the issues with that idea that I've already spoken about here.
My feelings on Bernie has basically been that he probably is going too far or too optimistic but that the compromises he'd end up settling with would probably still be a positive.
As one practical example, many cities and states have already passed legislation raising the minimum wage to $15. Hillary has said $12 is more realistic. Not insignificant portions of the nation are already ahead of her on just this issue. I could go on but you guys get it.
To me, part of political stances is knowing you need to compromise with the other side. With that in mind, a "radical" stance is the equivalent to super low balling on the house or car you want to buy. It's where you start, not something far closer to your opponents position.
Merrick Garland as a Supreme Court nominee is so pissy to me. The closest thing to a progressive position he has is that one time he chastised the NRA. Obama is a terrible compromiser/negotiator in my book. I see Hillary AT BEST as more of the same. Bernie will at least bring a different tactical set that might just move actual policy to the left.
From Bernie's time in the Senate, his primary negotiating tactic appears to be "present some lost-cause legislation, then dig in heels on it till I lose."
The GOP won't let anything from either of them through Congress. I'm more concerned with how they'll run DoJ and foreign policy than any legislative action, and with regards to those Sanders scares me less than Clinton. Though, to be clear, I think a drinking bird with a veto stamp for a beak would make a better President than either of them.
So essentially she's saying, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Which is perfectly reasonable, since we're never going to get perfect. People just want her to be more feisty and aggressively pursue the good while also smiling more and not shouting so much or being threatening to the concept of male control in any way.
From Bernie's time in the Senate, his primary negotiating tactic appears to be "present some lost-cause legislation, then dig in heels on it till I lose."
One man in the legislature is veeeeeeeery different from the POTUS. He was essentially alone in the sense that he was the ONLY legislator there who wasn't on the take. He had no allies inherently with him. I can't fault him for proposing ideas that aren't going to move past his bought colleagues.
Further, he's said that even if he gets the Oval, he needs a legislature that will at least listen to him, let alone make deals with him. To my mind he also brings along a greater chance of flipping the congress back to the Dems even in spite of all the gerrymandering. I have no interest in a status quo that I don't see as all that acceptable.
The GOP won't let anything from either of them through Congress. I'm more concerned with how they'll run DoJ and foreign policy than any legislative action, and with regards to those Sanders scares me less than Clinton. Though, to be clear, I think a drinking bird with a veto stamp for a beak would make a better President than either of them.
If that's your issue, have at is, Hoss. I see the whole Citizens United/economic inequality as the first thing that needs addressing in politics right now. I'm willing to accept weak foreign policy for a few years for the strength of the homeland.
So essentially she's saying, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Which is perfectly reasonable, since we're never going to get perfect. People just want her to be more feisty and aggressively pursue the good while also smiling more and not shouting so much or being threatening to the concept of male control in any way.
You get two guesses as to what was bought to mind when Bernie supporters were objecting to her "refusing to debate Bernie in new york" and demanding he "tone it back" (Which was completely fictional, btw). First guess doesn't count.
Not to mention that every time Bernie's campaign posts simple objective facts about Clinton's record on social media, it's immediately labeled an "attack" by essentially every corporate owned media outlet excepting FOX News, of all places. Facts are not attacks, they are facts.
Then there's this, which I found interesting. I do remember Obama's campaign saying that the Clinton campaign was the source of photos of him in Kenyan garb, too. I don't remember the "Obama boys" thing, but as the author says, it didn't stick well back then (but Obama wasn't blacked out in the mainstream media either, like Bernie has been until some very thin coverage very recently.)
This isn't about the perfect being the enemy of the good. This is about what Mat Taibbi articulated very very well: that it's the choice between an honest politician with a consistent and immaculate record, and a politician who is so profoundly part of the problem that she can't even see it anymore.
Bernie doesn't have to successfully implement universal single payer healthcare or cut the US military in half or raise the minimum wage to $20. He just has to sit in the White House and keep these issues in the public zeitgeist for 8 years while vetoing as much GOP horseshit as he possibly can.
Clinton will make any deal that will enrich her bank account and gain her more political power. That's the difference between her and Bernie, and every hollow accusation that this belief is the result of GOP astroturfing ignores her public voting record.
I didn't even bring up that her former president husband is on video breaking election law during the MA primaries.. oops I just did. That's simply the most well documented instance of deliberate disenfranchisement that can be directly tied to her. With AZ she has some plausible deniability.
The Clintons are cynical, neo-liberal deal brokers, and nothing like the Democratic party that used to represent the middle and labor classes.
Bernie Or Bust is a thing because people crave integrity in their governance and with the exception of Bernie no candidate has got any. Caving to partisan scare tactics is only validating their MO for yet another election cycle. We've had many decades of that and socioeconomic progress has been thrown into reverse since at least the mid 90s. People aren't willing to accept that anymore.
The problem is over reach doesn't get you a half measure, it gets you nothing and probably sets you back 4-12 years. Like when the Clintons initially when for HIllarycare in the 90's and no one brought up healthcare reform for the most part till Obama in 2008.
Funnily enough, you just came up in conversation the other day. I was wondering when you'd be back with the same old song and dance. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder, until it ends and nothing's changed. Full marks for managing to restrain yourself this long, though.
Bernie Or Bust is a thing because people crave integrity in their governance and with the exception of Bernie no candidate has got any.
Which doesn't change that it's a position based on privilege, and almost exclusively held by white people who will be far more able to weather a republican presidency, who care more for their hurt feelings that their guy didn't win than they care for not fucking over people who can't hide by lying in a snowbank.
Don't even pretend you care otherwise, Mr "I'll take trump over Hillary any day."
The Clintons are cynical, neo-liberal deal brokers, and nothing like the Democratic party that used to represent the middle and labor classes.
Clinton, singular. We're only electing one of them. As much as your sort love to blame her for things her husband did.
I didn't even bring up that her former president husband is on video breaking election law during the MA primaries.. oops I just did. That's simply the most well documented instance of deliberate disenfranchisement that can be directly tied to her.
"Plausible deniability", he said, about issues that disproportionately harmed her own vote count, and which can be directly tied back to local republicans, actions similar to which she's previously harshly criticized, going as far as calling it "A blast from the Jim crow past." So, yes, very plausible.
Which doesn't change that it's a position based on privilege, and almost exclusively held by white people who will be far more able to weather a republican presidency, who care more for their hurt feelings that their guy didn't win than they care for not fucking over people who can't hide by lying in a snowbank.
So essentially she's saying, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Which is perfectly reasonable, since we're never going to get perfect. People just want her to be more feisty and aggressively pursue the good while also smiling more and not shouting so much or being threatening to the concept of male control in any way.
The issue to me was that she implied Sanders was "perfect", and was endorsing him in a strange way. She is saying she is not what this country needs, but rather what this country can get. It's not a flattering thing to say about yourself.
If that's your issue, have at is, Hoss. I see the whole Citizens United/economic inequality as the first thing that needs addressing in politics right now. I'm willing to accept weak foreign policy for a few years for the strength of the homeland.
It's not a matter of issue, it's a matter of practice. Unless the Democrats take back Congress (which I'm not counting on) the next President will be lame duck as far as legislation goes, regardless of who's in office.
Churba you can keep on calling consistency the same old song and dance and maybe that plays to your audience but it's not much of an argument. I could accuse you of the same thing. The same condescending, loosely backed arguments that rely on force of personality over any strength in your citations (when you give them.)
Checking in from time to time is my idea of sticking to my ideals and canvasing for my candidate, don't start thinking I've got a crush on you or anything.
Crem - he's definitely still an underdog, but both demographics in upcoming states (and I'm not talking about "whiteness") and spreading awareness are working in his favor right now, in a big way.
Greg, it's sad that you think standing up for integrity in governance is trolling. Sorry to hear. Also apparently I'm a Bernie Bro (which doesn't actually exist outside of a construct of the Hillary campaign, you should see the hate mail I get from HRC supporters on my Bernie page) because I believe in it. That's an unfortunate stance, too.
There are acid, horrible supporters of every candidate. I've seen it from "Bernie People", but not on my page almost ever. When I do, I ask them to use good arguments and not juvenile nonsense. I've seen far more of it on Hillary pages and in the trolling comments of Hillary supporters on more popular venues. You could accuse me of cognitive filtering and I could accuse you of the same. It's out there in any shape or form you want to find it in.
I found this a pretty interesting argument, which I'm sure many here will dismiss as "He won't do those things anyway.":
I can certainly relate to this as we have a two income middle class household in Connecticut and my Crohns Disease has now gone untreated for 3 years because I simply can't afford to pay for my prescriptions anymore and still cover my kids' needs as well. It's either/or for us at this point. Hillary's not going to fix that. She's not even going to talk about fixing that. In fact she's already come out and said that it can't happen.
Lucky for me it's just a slow, somewhat painful progression and not something really aggressive like cancer that I can't afford the meds for (Not yet anyway. Untreated Crohns tends to inevitably become colorectal cancer, which has a terrible mortality rate). Others have it a lot worse (and have been ejected from all sorts of places trying to be heard about it, and recently.)
Too bad the Hillary campaign hasn't got any photos of Sanders looking super Jewy they can circulate, I guess. That sort of thing seems to be all right.
It'd be nice if you would bring up some different talking points besides your usual ones. It might create an actual conversation instead of the same slog we've been through every other time you've posted in this thread.
The problem is over reach doesn't get you a half measure, it gets you nothing and probably sets you back 4-12 years. Like when the Clintons initially when for HIllarycare in the 90's and no one brought up healthcare reform for the most part till Obama in 2008.
Bernie was on board with it. He still is, while Clinton is now saying it's impossible. I'm not so sure it is. An awful lot of the Congress is up for re-election this year. If Bernie were to get the nomination, I think there's a very good chance of seeing voting participation surge in order to unseat as many incumbents as possible.
Sanders has been a quiet, minority presence in Congress. However, I think he's been very successful in a very short time in turning that around and becoming quite a motivator and leader of a very large chunk of the US population. I think that it probably had to get this bad before that was possible. He's been able to make small, but frequent and significant adjustments to the trajectory of hundreds of bills from his quiet little seat in the back of the room. From the presidential podium, I think he could do a great deal even with a recalcitrant Congress.
Gerrymandering, of course, is still a real problem. However, it's based (at least in part) on prior years' participation statistics.
Banta, I make the arguments that I think show the strength of the candidate. I don't agree that I literally repeat the same things. I do agree that Churba accuses me of this every time I post in this thread. Basically I think what he means by it (and you? I don't know?) is that my arguments are always pro-Bernie. Well yeah, they are. His strong points remain his strong points. Coming up with a whole new angle every week is something for the 24 hour news cycle, not a mature understanding of politics.
In that vein, though, Bernie also recently came out in favor of "seriously reforming" the PATRIOT Act and ending "the Orwellian surveillance of every American." That seems to be gaining a lot of traction since yesterday in social media. I doubt we'd see that stance from Clinton at this point in her career.
The fact is that the reasons that Bernie is the best candidate going forward remain the same. There's not a whole lot to expand upon except to find better visualizations, refine arguments, and debunk propaganda.
I find the medium.com article I linked pretty compelling. It's very short, but I think it's tight and hits the salient points that explain why voting status quo is much more of a "privileged" position than #BernieOrBust could ever be.
So essentially she's saying, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Which is perfectly reasonable, since we're never going to get perfect. People just want her to be more feisty and aggressively pursue the good while also smiling more and not shouting so much or being threatening to the concept of male control in any way.
The issue to me was that she implied Sanders was "perfect", and was endorsing him in a strange way. She is saying she is not what this country needs, but rather what this country can get. It's not a flattering thing to say about yourself.
What does being flattering have to do with anything? This is a real job, not fairy unicorn magic land. Talking yourself up doesn't change the reality of the job duties.
If she's saying she can get something done incrementally, while Bernie goes for the moon or nothing, she is being honest and realistic. The fact that it doesn't make her sparkle like a disco ball is irrelevant.
If she tries to paint herself with a flattering brush, everybody screams about how dishonest she is. If she doesn't, people scream about how her campaign isn't doing a very good job making her look good. WTF I can't even anymore.
I don't think it's accurate at all to say that Bernie is going for the moon or nothing. His entire career is a case study in the opposite: compromising and making minute changes in trajectory to everything he touches. Combined with that, though, I'd like to see some advocacy. That's what Sanders offers over Clinton at a minimum.
Clinton's record shows she's dishonest. People don't have to say it for her. I wish we could have seen Warren run instead. I think she would have crystallized the entire party.
So, it looks betting odds have Sanders at something like a 10% chance to win the nomination; pretty low, but not negligible.
The odds indicate Kasich as having roughly the same chance of winning his party's nomination, which is interesting since it's impossible for him to get a majority (although he can still win a contested convention).
In fact, it appears it's highly likely there will be a contested convention for the Republicans, which should be quite entertaining indeed.
Churba you can keep on calling consistency the same old song and dance and maybe that plays to your audience but it's not much of an argument. I could accuse you of the same thing. The same condescending, loosely backed arguments that rely on force of personality over any strength in your citations (when you give them.)
That which is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. Bring some sometime, then maybe you'll be worth the effort.
I mean, apart from how you already proved yourself not worth the effort, with the whole being a racist knob thing. And the acting like you're the only motherfucker with some hardships. And trying to lecture a member of the media how the media works, then pitching a fit when you're told no. And the utter lack of self awareness when you talk about never seeing any toxic bernie supporters, I assume because you manage to shave of a morning without a mirror. And the almost obsessive Hillary attacks, many of which are kinda borderline sexist, many of which display very little connection with reality, or knowledge of politics.
Checking in from time to time is my idea of sticking to my ideals and canvasing for my candidate, don't start thinking I've got a crush on you or anything.
And thank god for that, having seen how you act with your current crush on Sanders, it's a bit more "Fatal Attraction" and "The Crush" than I prefer in my partners.
Comments
To me, part of political stances is knowing you need to compromise with the other side. With that in mind, a "radical" stance is the equivalent to super low balling on the house or car you want to buy. It's where you start, not something far closer to your opponents position.
Merrick Garland as a Supreme Court nominee is so pissy to me. The closest thing to a progressive position he has is that one time he chastised the NRA. Obama is a terrible compromiser/negotiator in my book. I see Hillary AT BEST as more of the same. Bernie will at least bring a different tactical set that might just move actual policy to the left.
Further, he's said that even if he gets the Oval, he needs a legislature that will at least listen to him, let alone make deals with him. To my mind he also brings along a greater chance of flipping the congress back to the Dems even in spite of all the gerrymandering. I have no interest in a status quo that I don't see as all that acceptable. If that's your issue, have at is, Hoss. I see the whole Citizens United/economic inequality as the first thing that needs addressing in politics right now. I'm willing to accept weak foreign policy for a few years for the strength of the homeland.
Not to mention that every time Bernie's campaign posts simple objective facts about Clinton's record on social media, it's immediately labeled an "attack" by essentially every corporate owned media outlet excepting FOX News, of all places. Facts are not attacks, they are facts.
Then there's this, which I found interesting. I do remember Obama's campaign saying that the Clinton campaign was the source of photos of him in Kenyan garb, too. I don't remember the "Obama boys" thing, but as the author says, it didn't stick well back then (but Obama wasn't blacked out in the mainstream media either, like Bernie has been until some very thin coverage very recently.)
http://www.salon.com/2016/03/28/clinton_campaign_to_bernie_drop_your_negative_tone_and_maybe_hillary_will_debate_you_in_ny/
This isn't about the perfect being the enemy of the good. This is about what Mat Taibbi articulated very very well: that it's the choice between an honest politician with a consistent and immaculate record, and a politician who is so profoundly part of the problem that she can't even see it anymore.
Bernie doesn't have to successfully implement universal single payer healthcare or cut the US military in half or raise the minimum wage to $20. He just has to sit in the White House and keep these issues in the public zeitgeist for 8 years while vetoing as much GOP horseshit as he possibly can.
Clinton will make any deal that will enrich her bank account and gain her more political power. That's the difference between her and Bernie, and every hollow accusation that this belief is the result of GOP astroturfing ignores her public voting record.
I didn't even bring up that her former president husband is on video breaking election law during the MA primaries.. oops I just did. That's simply the most well documented instance of deliberate disenfranchisement that can be directly tied to her. With AZ she has some plausible deniability.
The Clintons are cynical, neo-liberal deal brokers, and nothing like the Democratic party that used to represent the middle and labor classes.
Bernie Or Bust is a thing because people crave integrity in their governance and with the exception of Bernie no candidate has got any. Caving to partisan scare tactics is only validating their MO for yet another election cycle. We've had many decades of that and socioeconomic progress has been thrown into reverse since at least the mid 90s. People aren't willing to accept that anymore.
Don't even pretend you care otherwise, Mr "I'll take trump over Hillary any day." Clinton, singular. We're only electing one of them. As much as your sort love to blame her for things her husband did. Snopes on the topic. Spoiler - No. "Plausible deniability", he said, about issues that disproportionately harmed her own vote count, and which can be directly tied back to local republicans, actions similar to which she's previously harshly criticized, going as far as calling it "A blast from the Jim crow past." So, yes, very plausible.
FYI.
Checking in from time to time is my idea of sticking to my ideals and canvasing for my candidate, don't start thinking I've got a crush on you or anything.
Crem - he's definitely still an underdog, but both demographics in upcoming states (and I'm not talking about "whiteness") and spreading awareness are working in his favor right now, in a big way.
Greg, it's sad that you think standing up for integrity in governance is trolling. Sorry to hear. Also apparently I'm a Bernie Bro (which doesn't actually exist outside of a construct of the Hillary campaign, you should see the hate mail I get from HRC supporters on my Bernie page) because I believe in it. That's an unfortunate stance, too.
There are acid, horrible supporters of every candidate. I've seen it from "Bernie People", but not on my page almost ever. When I do, I ask them to use good arguments and not juvenile nonsense. I've seen far more of it on Hillary pages and in the trolling comments of Hillary supporters on more popular venues. You could accuse me of cognitive filtering and I could accuse you of the same. It's out there in any shape or form you want to find it in.
I found this a pretty interesting argument, which I'm sure many here will dismiss as "He won't do those things anyway.":
https://medium.com/@tonybrasunas/please-recognize-your-privilege-if-you-can-afford-eight-years-of-hillary-clinton-and-the-status-quo-fc1b9dc62bcd#.uebpuvnsm
I can certainly relate to this as we have a two income middle class household in Connecticut and my Crohns Disease has now gone untreated for 3 years because I simply can't afford to pay for my prescriptions anymore and still cover my kids' needs as well. It's either/or for us at this point. Hillary's not going to fix that. She's not even going to talk about fixing that. In fact she's already come out and said that it can't happen.
Lucky for me it's just a slow, somewhat painful progression and not something really aggressive like cancer that I can't afford the meds for (Not yet anyway. Untreated Crohns tends to inevitably become colorectal cancer, which has a terrible mortality rate). Others have it a lot worse (and have been ejected from all sorts of places trying to be heard about it, and recently.)
Too bad the Hillary campaign hasn't got any photos of Sanders looking super Jewy they can circulate, I guess. That sort of thing seems to be all right.
Sanders has been a quiet, minority presence in Congress. However, I think he's been very successful in a very short time in turning that around and becoming quite a motivator and leader of a very large chunk of the US population. I think that it probably had to get this bad before that was possible. He's been able to make small, but frequent and significant adjustments to the trajectory of hundreds of bills from his quiet little seat in the back of the room. From the presidential podium, I think he could do a great deal even with a recalcitrant Congress.
Gerrymandering, of course, is still a real problem. However, it's based (at least in part) on prior years' participation statistics.
In that vein, though, Bernie also recently came out in favor of "seriously reforming" the PATRIOT Act and ending "the Orwellian surveillance of every American." That seems to be gaining a lot of traction since yesterday in social media. I doubt we'd see that stance from Clinton at this point in her career.
The fact is that the reasons that Bernie is the best candidate going forward remain the same. There's not a whole lot to expand upon except to find better visualizations, refine arguments, and debunk propaganda.
I find the medium.com article I linked pretty compelling. It's very short, but I think it's tight and hits the salient points that explain why voting status quo is much more of a "privileged" position than #BernieOrBust could ever be.
If she's saying she can get something done incrementally, while Bernie goes for the moon or nothing, she is being honest and realistic. The fact that it doesn't make her sparkle like a disco ball is irrelevant.
If she tries to paint herself with a flattering brush, everybody screams about how dishonest she is. If she doesn't, people scream about how her campaign isn't doing a very good job making her look good. WTF I can't even anymore.
Clinton's record shows she's dishonest. People don't have to say it for her. I wish we could have seen Warren run instead. I think she would have crystallized the entire party.
The odds indicate Kasich as having roughly the same chance of winning his party's nomination, which is interesting since it's impossible for him to get a majority (although he can still win a contested convention).
In fact, it appears it's highly likely there will be a contested convention for the Republicans, which should be quite entertaining indeed.
I mean, apart from how you already proved yourself not worth the effort, with the whole being a racist knob thing. And the acting like you're the only motherfucker with some hardships. And trying to lecture a member of the media how the media works, then pitching a fit when you're told no. And the utter lack of self awareness when you talk about never seeing any toxic bernie supporters, I assume because you manage to shave of a morning without a mirror. And the almost obsessive Hillary attacks, many of which are kinda borderline sexist, many of which display very little connection with reality, or knowledge of politics. And thank god for that, having seen how you act with your current crush on Sanders, it's a bit more "Fatal Attraction" and "The Crush" than I prefer in my partners. Of course you do.