Nothing is certain, except death and taxes and a US election campaign.
May 19, 2016 1:40 PM Subscribe

Though we've come a long way since Bernie, Donald and Hillary formally launched their campaigns, there's still a while to go before polling stations open. Recently, Barack enjoyed a Nordic State Dinner , delivered a commencement speech of our time, and pushed through rules including extending overtime pay to more than four million Americans. On the campaign trail, Hillary takes Kentucky while Bernie takes Oregon. Meanwhile, Donald clarifies that there's no VP for Marco with him, but Marco wants people to leave him alone anyway, people make wild speculations about Bernie's possible VP pick, Ted pretends Donald does not exist, Reince pleads "come together", and in coal country Hillary mentions a Bill role as a potential running mate is a bit coy.

News of voting complications, laws, suppression and other shenanigans from California, Florida, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Delegate count trackers are available at 538, Associated Press, Bloomberg and The Economist. The odds on the overall winner, and the VP picks for the Democratic and Republican tickets, while Nate reckons 75% Hillary, 25% Donald. Donald may compose a tweet about this, though while Johnny Depp may win an Emmy playing Trump, who has his celebrity endorsers, another actor vows to stop the forces of Donald.

As well as the high profile trio, Jill Stein (twitter, website, ballotpedia) and Gary Johnson (twitter, website, ballotpedia) are also running, amongst others who are or might and details of their finances. Alternative candidates are available.

Election threadopedia: most recent eight
May 9th - What variety of cheese would Donald be? The 2016 US election continues.
May 4th - Trump will be the Republican standard-bearer.
April 26th - Crossing the Delaware: five primaries in the US election.
April 19th - Twirling towards freedom: the US election - New York primaries.
April 11th - It's still only April: the US election drags ever onwards.
April 3rd - After this it's the midterms: April's US election primaries.
March 15th - Election 2016: Rubio and Kasich's last stand.
March 5th - Six candidates, eight days, eleven states: Election 2016 continues.

Post title attribution.

posted by Wordshore (2979 comments total) 43 users marked this as a favorite

From all of us on mobile devices or just plain slow computers: Thanks!
posted by zombieflanders at 1:41 PM on May 19, 2016 [28 favorites]

I'm tired of this save how do I start a new game with different characters
posted by poffin boffin at 1:42 PM on May 19, 2016 [162 favorites]

I'm tired of this save how do I start a new game with different characters

It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a Trump.
posted by dw at 1:43 PM on May 19, 2016 [85 favorites]

Wordshore is gunning for the most commented upon user of all time title.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:49 PM on May 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

I'm tired of this save how do I start a new game with different characters

Ask the establishment Republicans, they seem to be trying.
posted by zabuni at 1:49 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's like EVE Online, I'm not a player in the game, but I enjoy reading about all the enormous battles.
posted by Kabanos at 1:49 PM on May 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

and in coal country Hillary mentions a Bill role as a potential running mate is a bit coy.

Great post as always Wordshore. Having a wee bit of problem parsing the above - can an ex President run for VP?
posted by infini at 1:52 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

These threads drive me crazy and I don't know why I can't just look away, but I do know this:
Wordshore, you are a treasure. Thanks for putting so much work into these posts!
posted by TwoStride at 1:53 PM on May 19, 2016 [12 favorites]

No, Bill Clinton is constitutionally ineligible to be VP. So is Obama.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:54 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Just finished reading this FiveThirtyEight piece on Sanders voter sentiments. The graph showing a dramatic Clinton favorability crash in the last month is frightening. Hopefully this is just a stages-of-grief thing, but the Sanders campaign needs to stop illegitimizing the process ASAP or the rift will never heal.
posted by Rhaomi at 1:54 PM on May 19, 2016 [24 favorites]

Gotta parse it as:

(in coal country) (Hillary mentions a Bill role) [whilst] (a potential running mate, someone else, is a bit coy).
posted by 0xFCAF at 1:55 PM on May 19, 2016

I said this at the tail end of the last thread, but I would LOVE LOVE LOVE it if Clinton gave an epic speech on misogyny like Obama's 2008 speech on race. This election season is all about "telling it like it is" and "PC run amok" -- so let's use it to our advantage - you want me to tell it like it is? ok, let's talk about the patriarchy, let's talk about misogyny, let's talk about intersectionality.
posted by melissasaurus at 1:56 PM on May 19, 2016 [37 favorites]

Matt Taibbi: R.I.P., GOP: How Trump Is Killing the Republican Party. Donald Trump crushed 16 GOP opponents in one of the most appalling, vicious campaigns in history. His next victim? The entire Republican Party
posted by homunculus at 1:57 PM on May 19, 2016 [16 favorites]

I think it's high time for Sanders to act 'presidential' and rein in his rabids.
posted by Dashy at 1:59 PM on May 19, 2016 [29 favorites]

As I said in the tail end of the last thread when probably no-one was left reading it; I think the immediate aftermath of California will be a defining moment for the Sanders campaign. Clinton will obtain a straight majority of the pledged delegates on that day. Will Sanders give a speech recognizing she will be the nominee and pledging to stop Trump or will he give a speech where he defiantly pledges to fight on to the convention floor?

In the first case I think his campaign will be viewed as a valiant (and somewhat successful) attempt to shift the Democratic party leftward. In the second case he will be viewed as Nader 2.0 except worse.
posted by Justinian at 2:01 PM on May 19, 2016 [21 favorites]

I still worry about the general. I wasn't politically aware enough in 1980 to pay attention, but I'm getting strong 2000 vibes. We all thought Junior was a total blowhard with no chance of victory, and he got it close enough that the Republicans on the Supreme Court could steal it for him, and then he was genuinely elected in 2004.

I underestimated the willingness of racist Americans to vote for an idiot once. I fear 538 and the others predicting a fairly easy Clinton victory may be making the same mistake.

Rhaomi, I'm betting stages of grief. I've unsubbed from /r/sandersforpresident, but I was (am?) a Sanders supporter and so are a lot of my friends both IRL and online. Most have moved on and are already ready to support Clinton against Trump.

I think the rump of hardcore Bernie Bros may be larger than the (possibly mythic) rump of PUMA's, but ultimately I think they'll be about as significant in the general as the PUMA's were. Which is to say, not at all.
posted by sotonohito at 2:02 PM on May 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

Nader 2.0

The dark side of y2k nostalgia
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:03 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

No, Bill Clinton is constitutionally ineligible to be VP. So is Obama.

This is actually an unsettled Constitutional question. Bill Clinton as VP would raise additional issues in the electoral college because he and Hillary Clinton reside in the same state.
posted by melissasaurus at 2:04 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

No, Bill Clinton is constitutionally ineligible to be VP. So is Obama.

Prrrobably. The 22nd Amendment says the VP cannot be "constitutionally ineligible to the office of President". But the 22nd Amendment says "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice". There are some who believe that, technically speaking, Clinton and Obama and Bush are not constitutionally ineligible to the office, merely constitutionally ineligible to be elected.
posted by Etrigan at 2:05 PM on May 19, 2016 [21 favorites]

As well as the high profile trio, Jill Stein (twitter, website, ballotpedia) and Gary Johnson (twitter, website, ballotpedia) are also running

I mentioned before that on the California Primary ballot, there were 5 other candidates for the Democratic party. Well, neither Jill Stein for the Greens nor Gary Johnson for the Libertarians are running unopposed: Green, Libertarian. Also interesting: some of the folks Trump defeated are still on the Republican ballot here, including Ben Carson.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:06 PM on May 19, 2016

I really doubt Clinton will provoke a Constitutional crisis by choosing either Obama or her husband as her VP. Among other things it'd cost her votes, and she's far too adept a politician to do that. My money is still on Clinton picking a white, straight, older, Southern guy. Very safe, very establishment, to reassure the misogynist and racist wing of the Party that it's ok.

Justinian, I think he could fulfill his pledge to stay in until all votes are cast and keep in up to the convention and still be ok. At least in theory. In practice it'd take a lot more nuance and recognition of reality than he seems to have lately.
posted by sotonohito at 2:07 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

No, Bill Clinton is constitutionally ineligible to be VP. So is Obama.

Is Al Gore eligible?
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:08 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Chrysostom: Wordshore is gunning for the most commented upon user of all time title.

I don't see anything on the infodumster to calculate that natively, but he might be getting close through an aggregate count of Which posts in MetaFilter have the most comments? He'd do better if he wasn't so good about getting new election posts up so frequently.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:10 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Your Ultimate Guide To The 11 White People Donald Trump Will Consider For The Supreme Court

Here's the Thing About Donald Trump's Supreme Court Shortlist: It should make the "Bernie or Bust' crowd think again.
posted by homunculus at 2:10 PM on May 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

I'm tired of this save how do I start a new game with different characters

but all that time spent grinding will feel wasted!
posted by numaner at 2:11 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm tired of this save how do I start a new game with different characters

Have you tried turning it off and on again?
posted by stolyarova at 2:12 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Politico asks: Is Sanders 2016 becoming Nader 2000?

The Week's Ryan Cooper responds: how about try to win the election instead of preemptively figuring out who to blame for losing
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 2:13 PM on May 19, 2016 [25 favorites]

Justinian, I think he could fulfill his pledge to stay in until all votes are cast and keep in up to the convention and still be ok. At least in theory. In practice it'd take a lot more nuance and recognition of reality than he seems to have lately.

Yeah I was trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to draw a distinction between still holding rallies and letting people vote and continuing the combative anti-Democratic-party tone of the last week or two. I don't think he should or will suspend his campaign completely, just that he needs to recognize the reality of the situation after California.
posted by Justinian at 2:13 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Trump’s Newest Enemy: Environmentalists. Donald Trump has officially taken aim at the environment. Environmentalists are starting to aim back.
posted by homunculus at 2:14 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

A genuine question to Bernie Sanders supporters who are mad at Clinton and the DNC for various reasons. What is it exactly that you would like Clinton to do in the coming week, weeks, months? It seems like the anger directed at Clinton is basically either "I don't like you and wish you were somebody else," or: "I wish you would drop out of the race." Well, she's not dropping out and she's not going to magically become someone else. What can she do to garner your vote, absent those two things? I think knowing exactly what you'd like Clinton to do will help me understand some of the frustration out there, because right now I don't understand it.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 2:16 PM on May 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

Donating a comma to the cause, I parsed it as

in coal country Hillary mentions a Bill role, as a potential running mate is a bit coy.
posted by Dashy at 2:16 PM on May 19, 2016

AHaWO: I'm interested in that as well. The key things that Sanders and Clinton have differences on are single-payer health care, minimum wage level, and wall street reform. I don't see how Clinton could make concessions on single-payer or the $15 minimum wage since she's already pretty far left on those, just not quite as far left as Sanders. So to me the most likely place she could move a little would be something to do with Wall Street and the banks. Perhaps combined with reforms to the superdelegate and caucus systems.

What that would look like I have no idea.
posted by Justinian at 2:20 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

In a FB conversation, I said that the rabies of revolution! currently infecting Sanders supporters, and indeed the idea of contesting a convention, owes its roots, at least in part, to Drumpf.

But Sonohito is right in pointing out that Sanders lacks the nuance, and the realism, to rein his people in.
posted by Dashy at 2:22 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Donating a comma to the cause, I parsed it as

in coal country Hillary mentions a Bill role, as a potential running mate is a bit coy.

Yep, you're right; there should have been a comma there. My native dialect is Asum, we're are a bit odd with the use of commas and clauses at times, and old habits die hard; sorry about that.
posted by Wordshore at 2:23 PM on May 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

A genuine question to Bernie Sanders supporters who are mad at Clinton and the DNC for various reasons.

I am absolutely going to vote for Hilary Clinton in November.

But I wish she hadn't voted for the Iraq War. In fact, I wish her foreign policy was very, very different. I wish she hadn't been so quick throughout her public career to throw LGBT people under the bus when things got tough. I wish she had been better to the women her husband was involved with and probably sexually harassed. I wish she would take stronger stands against Wall Street and the banks. I wish she wouldn't speak more with less wiggle room language on racial and social justice issues, including raising the minimum wage.

I am absolutely going to vote for Hilary Clinton in November.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:23 PM on May 19, 2016 [70 favorites]

I underestimated the willingness of racist Americans to vote for an idiot once. I fear 538 and the others predicting a fairly easy Clinton victory may be making the same mistake.

All we can say, at the moment, is that the polls don't look great for Trump. That doesn't mean an easy victory, but it does mean that the data we have suggest a victory.

I think that you are correct about the insidious force of racism in American politics, and that any Clinton victory is going to be much closer than anyone on Metafilter (I think universally, although maybe we have someone who supports Trump hiding somewhat. If so, please show yourself. Please...) would be comfortable with.

So, not time to relax and not time to panic. It is unsettling that the latest polls suggest Republicans forming up behind Trump while Democrats remain rather scattered and unsupportive of Clinton. I don't think Rasmussen's approach right now is necessarily very useful in telling us where we'll be in six months time, but I think it's revealing something specific about the state of the contest right now.
posted by howfar at 2:26 PM on May 19, 2016

MCMike, definitely not asking you to like her. At this point, however, opposing the Orange Death is a civic duty.
posted by stolyarova at 2:27 PM on May 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

All we can say, at the moment, is that the polls don't look great for Trump.

They didn't. The last week he has surged and is polling ahead of Clinton nationally and in some swing states in at least some polls.

We'll know more once the Democratic primary process is wrapped up. It's hard to poll candidates when one is the nominee and the other is still in a bitter primary.
posted by Justinian at 2:27 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

In other news, Trump has finally released his financials (NYT analysis). I believe he's trying to quiet the calls for his tax returns, but there's a lot less detail here than there (and a lot more room for his flexible relationship with the truth). Either way, he's not nearly worth the $10 billion he claims.
posted by stolyarova at 2:32 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm really interested who is chosen as VPs candidates. Let's be honest both Hilary and Trump are not spring chickens. We saw what happened to Reagan before his first term even ended.

I think the odds are good that a VP might have to step in before the term is up. Or at least be the candidate next term.
posted by KaizenSoze at 2:33 PM on May 19, 2016

What can she do to garner your vote, absent those two things? I think knowing exactly what you'd like Clinton to do will help me understand some of the frustration out there, because right now I don't understand it.

I'm in a deep blue state, so she doesn't really "need" to earn my vote, but nevertheless... I liked the direction her campaign was taking a few weeks ago, focusing on Trump, being unapologetically feminist ("deal me in" and issuing "woman cards" was brilliant). I want more of that. Bernie or Bust is a small segment of people, many of whom were probably always going to vote third party in a Clinton vs. Republican election. Just stop ramping up all of this "Clinton is being attacked, Trump will be president! It's all your fault!" nonsense. Stop telling me how an alleged Sanders supporter on Facebook or Reddit said something misogynistic. Yeah, some Sanders supporters say and do misogynistic things, so do some Clinton supporters. If you've been a woman online expressing your political opinion this year, you've probably been harassed irrespective of the person you support. We live in a patriarchy. Stop fighting Sanders (who you already beat) and continue fighting the patriarchy.

I don't think "Fwd: Fwd: OMG IT's aLL RigGed!" But our institutions in this country are corrupt. Our institutions are broken. Our institutions are sexist and racist. Watch any of the long segments on Last Week Tonight and tell me that shit isn't fucked up and bullshit -- including shit that Democrats do (or fail to do because they're too milquetoast to stand up for women and PoC and LGBT folks).

I want her to say something that makes men in the Democratic party establishment think that she went too far, or took womens rights too far. I want her to call out by name the Democrats in NC that voted for the transphobic bill and say that she'd support primary opponents in those districts. I want her to read aloud RBG's dissent in Gonzoles v. Carhart describing the horrors of a world without access to safe, legal abortion at any stage of pregnancy. I want her to be brave and be bold. For me. For my mother. For my daughter.

We may have to accept marginal gains in policy, but we don't have to accept marginal gains in discourse. Tell it like it is Hillary Clinton, please. We're all counting on you.
posted by melissasaurus at 2:38 PM on May 19, 2016 [85 favorites]

The last week he has surged and is polling ahead of Clinton nationally and in some swing states in at least some polls.

Hmm. Which polls and why is important there. If you read the rest of my comment, you'll note the specific reference to Rasmussen and the current significance of their polling method. But it's not just a matter of the electoral cycle, but also the polling cycle. Fox and Rasmussen have tended to produce more positive results for Trump this year, and they're currently working at a faster pace than other pollsters. Let's see what happens when the polling clarifies.

I suspect we're going to see a small Clinton advantage remaining, but I think what's important right now is what Rasmussen is revealing. There is limited enthusiasm for Clinton. Something has to be done about that. The election isn't tomorrow, and polls are only of limited value as predictors, but Clinton's weakness within her own party is an observable fact that they are revealing.
posted by howfar at 2:38 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

> I think the odds are good that a VP might have to step in before the term is up. Or at least be the candidate next term.

I bet that at some point Trump promises that he will never die.
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:39 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Nate Silver: How I Acted Like A Pundit And Screwed Up On Donald Trump: Trump’s nomination shows the need for a more rigorous approach.

Matt Taibbi: Trump Isn't the Campaign Media's First Mistake: We've been getting this story wrong for ages, and Trump is the consequence
posted by homunculus at 2:39 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

In other news, Trump has finally released his financials (NYT analysis).

That's just the latest FEC filing all candidates are required to make. It doesn't count.
posted by zachlipton at 2:40 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm really interested who is chosen as VPs candidates. Let's be honest both Hilary and Trump are not spring chickens.

Can we maybe not with this? Yes, the VP is important for a number of reasons, one of them being the fact that they could need to serve as President. But the whole "they're old so they need a backup" thing is grating.
posted by zachlipton at 2:42 PM on May 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Stop fighting Sanders (who you already beat)

I actually quite agree with this; however it does raise the question as to whether Sanders has a responsibility to stop fighting Clinton, and whether he thinks he has been beaten.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 2:43 PM on May 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

Obama tanked in the polls in 2008 after McCain nominated Palin (!!!), trailing by 10 points.

I think if we all pull together -- and by all I mean Clinton and most (I exclude the Bernie or Bust people) Sanders supporters, this season is going to be a bigger win than 08. But the downticket and looking hard at opportunities in red states with demographics that are going purple is the name of the game if we want to see real, meaningful and lasting policy change.

I just wanted to add that I love what Clinton said today about Trump, in case anyone didn't see it:

Hillary Clinton labeled her Republican rival Donald Trump "divisive and dangerous" and "unmoored" on Thursday, saying his recent behavior shows he's not qualified to be president.
The Democratic presidential front-runner unleashed her sharpest attacks yet on Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, in an exclusive interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo in Park Ridge, Illinois.
She pointed to Trump's attacks on British politicians, his willingness to speak with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, his call for the United States to back away from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and his assertion that more countries should have nuclear weapons, and said it "adds up to a very troubling picture."
"I know how hard this job is, and I know that we need steadiness as well as strength and smarts in it, and I have concluded he is not qualified to be president of the United States," Clinton said.
posted by bearwife at 2:43 PM on May 19, 2016 [30 favorites]

poffin boffin: "I'm tired of this save how do I start a new game with different characters"

This isn't a game. It's malware. Format your hard drive and reinstall.
posted by Splunge at 2:47 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

This isn't a game. It's malware. Format your hard drive and reinstall.

Re-installation of Election 2016 has been aborted. Would you like to install Election 2020? (Yes/No/Unplug/Pour Gasoline on Hard Drive and BURN BURN BURN!!)
posted by pyramid termite at 2:52 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

however it does raise the question as to whether Sanders has a responsibility to stop fighting Clinton

I keep seeing this come up. And very often it seems like a weird take on "make him admit he was wrong from the start."

Given that he has almost zero chance of getting the nomination, the calls for him to "just give up" seem more petty and questionable than anything Sanders may or may not actually be doing.
posted by Dark Messiah at 2:52 PM on May 19, 2016 [23 favorites]

They didn't. The last week he has surged and is polling ahead of Clinton nationally and in some swing states in at least some polls.

We'll know more once the Democratic primary process is wrapped up. It's hard to poll candidates when one is the nominee and the other is still in a bitter primary.

There's like six months of campaign left. The match-up polls between Trump and Clinton are going to move around a lot.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:53 PM on May 19, 2016

Those nervous about TRUMP EDGING AHEAD IN POLLS! need to look at electoral maps and take a Xanax. To defeat Hillary in November, Trump would need to flip not one but several swing states that all went for Obama in 2012 -- not a narrow victory but a sea change of dramatic proportions across Purple America. That's unlikely even with a Republican candidate that actual Republicans LIKE.

The 2016 end result is very likely to be what it's always been likely to be: a Democratic President, a closely divided Senate and a Republican House with a dingbat backbencher caucus driving its agenda.

But Sonohito is right in pointing out that Sanders lacks the nuance, and the realism, to rein his people in.

Lots of "his people" are reined in. I pulled the lever for Bernie, and I will pull it for Hillary in the fall because, well, DUH. But do not mistake waves of populist rage and disillusionment as an uniquely conservative phenomenon.

Large chunks of the electorate are lining up behind Bernie AND/OR behind Trump not because they've studied their politics and decided they're most representative of their beliefs, but because they're PISSED and gravitating to the loudest voice that's actively calling out blame. Bernie blames the corporations and the 1%. Trump blames, well, make a list but here's a hint for its contents: most of it isn't Caucasian. Bernouts need to realize that President Hillary is a lot more likely to remember that they exist and need help than President Trump would be -- and Candidate Hillary needs to find ways to voice that.
posted by delfin at 2:54 PM on May 19, 2016 [27 favorites]

Also I think "Great Hate and Sickness!" would make a good Trump pledge for the Trumplerjugend
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:55 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

A genuine question to Bernie Sanders supporters who are mad at Clinton and the DNC for various reasons. What is it exactly that you would like Clinton to do in the coming week, weeks, months?

If she would break off her family's marriage alliance with House Goldman Sachs, that would make me feel she might be serious about reining in Wall Street or reducing income inequality.

That being said, she already has my vote in that I prefer the slow road to hell over the fast one.
posted by Balna Watya at 2:56 PM on May 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

Given that he has almost zero chance of getting the nomination, the calls for him to "just give up" seem more petty and questionable than anything Sanders may or may not actually be doing.

Hmmm, I think we may be talking past each other. I'm a Clinton supporter but am cool with Sanders taking it to the convention. He has a great message to get out there! But I'm not cool with him continuing to fan the fires of unrest, and with him lying to his supporters about his chances. TPM said it better than I could.

And it's just another one of those weird sexist things I see -- Hillary has to play nice and can't say anything bad about Bernie, but it's okay for him to imply that it's all a conspiracy, the entire system is rigged against him and his supporters, and Clinton is part of the corrupt, rigged system. Of course his supporters are starting to abandon her in droves!

I just really wish they'd both set their sights on Trump.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 2:57 PM on May 19, 2016 [49 favorites]

he doesn't have to give up. he can fight his battle Howard Dean style
posted by angrycat at 2:59 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

I just really wish they'd both set their sights on Trump.

It's like that part where Daredevil and the Punisher are kicking the shit out of each other, and I'm just like, "Guys, Wilson Fisk is still out there."
posted by stolyarova at 3:02 PM on May 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

As posted by showbiz_liz in an earlier thread, if you take 5% away from Ds in every state in 2012 and give it to the Rs, Ds still win 272 ECs to 266 (electoral map).
posted by chris24 at 3:04 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

I had a cordial conversation with a couple of Bernie-or-Busters a couple weeks ago (involved as I am in local democratic politics). Now, the vast majority of local Bernie supporters I know are going to vote for Hillary in the general, whether happily ("I like them both, I just agree more with Bernie") or grudgingly ("Can't stand her but if she's the D nominee, that's who I'm voting for.").

So these were polite young men, college students at a local private college, white, cis, het, and rabid for Bernie, and never voting for Hillary. And it was a weird conversation. Their two major things were a) free college and b) the political system is corrupt and that people like them (i.e., not superrich) don't have adequate access to it. Both were business majors; one of them was majoring in finance and hoping to work on Wall Street. I asked about breaking up the big banks and he waved it away -- "I know he talks a lot about that but I'm not worried, he can't get that done, and anyway, there will still be big money in finance." They didn't care about infrastructure, minimum wage, trade, civil liberties, etc.; they were interested in political corruption, which they felt Bernie was the only candidate addressing, and the cost of college. I asked about K-12 education and one told me it wasn't as critical as free college because, "We already spend more per student in poor schools than rich schools, it's just not being used well." They weren't interested in health care access, or in women's issues. (I didn't super-grill them or challenge them a ton, because it was a cordial conversation and I was curious.)

As far as I could tell, they were straight-up "Main Street" Republicans, who thought people should work hard at the opportunities they already have and anyone can then succeed, who see the political system as corrupt and have one specific personal problem -- college debt -- that Bernie has addressed. They don't see general inequality as an issue, they're not very interested in his big banks rhetoric. They're not engaged in any left or liberal issues in general, other than college debt. They are SUPER turned off by the anti-intellectualism and xenophobia and racism of the institutional GOP right now and definitely won't vote for Trump, but in any other cycle they're clearly Romney voters. Maybe W voters. They won't vote for Hillary because they're not liberals. They're (very young, fairly naive) center-right types who happen to like Bernie and two of his issues a lot.

So while I'm sure there are many varieties of Bernie-or-Busters out there, I'm not sure how many of them are rejecting Hillary for being insufficiently liberal, and in their case there isn't ANYTHING Hillary could do to make herself acceptable to them; they want Bernie specifically for idiosyncratic reasons, and otherwise they'd prefer an old-fashioned, pre-Gingrich Republican. Anyway, I'm sure there are Bernie supporters too far left to vote for Hillary, but I don't know how big a group it is; because clearly there are also Bernie supporters who won't vote for Hillary because they're not liberals at all. So, yeah, I kind of feel like we need some after-the-election evidence, rather than feverish pre-convention speculation, about which Bernie supporters refused to support Hillary -- because I'm betting a significant number of them (maybe not a majority, but a significant number) are voters who wouldn't be in a liberal coalition in any year but this one, for this candidate, and they aren't transferable.

(Anyway, just to reemphasize, the vast, vast majority of local Bernie supporters I've chatted with are long-time liberals -- some new to political activism, but reliable liberals. These guys stood out because they were a) just about the only Bernie-or-Busters and b) SO WEIRD in their mix of political beliefs. I do know a couple other Bernie-or-Busters but they're like local gadfly semi-communists I've known for years, they flit in and out of voting for mainstream candidates based on highly idiosyncratic personal criteria, and sometimes just don't vote at all because that's how they're sticking it to the man that year.)

My impression of the local party politics, which is fairly quiet right now because it's a slow period, is that there's no big rift between the Hillary folks and the Bernie folks, and there's a continuation of a long-time push/pull between older, traditional Democratic factions (mostly union, here) who hold most of the local party power, and younger lefties who are more motivated by inequality, the environment, etc., who are trying to pull the local party further left. That's a well-established local dynamic, so it's not a new upsetting thing and there's an ongoing dialogue about those compromises; I don't think local Bernie people feel particularly unheard, nor that local Hillary people feel particularly affronted or attacked -- this is a continuation of an issue we've been dealing with for a decade and we're well-used to the conversation about "move left!" "okay, but practicality!" "okay, but idealism!" I mean there's a certain amount of elbowing and jostling, but I don't think anybody feels particularly offended or disenfranchised by any of it; "grumpy" or maybe "frustrated by a specific issue" is as far as I'd go.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:05 PM on May 19, 2016 [97 favorites]

I'm tired of this save how do I start a new game with different characters

It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a Trump.

IT'S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS.
posted by Fizz at 3:06 PM on May 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Guys, Wilson Fisk is still out there.

Trump/Fisk 2016
posted by Hoopo at 3:13 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

My mom is a Bernie or Bust, she'll be voting for Stein in the general. She's in MA, so it's not going to hurt Clinton. I don't think there's anything that Clinton could say or do to get her to support her. (When I said I had voted for Clinton in the primary, her reaction was "we're going to have a war, she's so hawkish.") Of course, my mom is too the left of everyone I know. I'm pretty sure that she's still hoping the revolution will come and sweep the proletariat into power.

Family tradition has it that she chewed out John Kerry for a hawkish vote in the senate in the late 80s when she ran into him at a event they were both at. She denies it to this day, I was too young to know, but it fits who she is.

So that's my view of the left side of Bernie or Bust.
posted by Hactar at 3:13 PM on May 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

On re-reading Eyebrow's McGee's comment, with the exception of voting in ever election, no matter how small, the semi-communist label is not too far off the mark for my mom.
posted by Hactar at 3:16 PM on May 19, 2016

I was a Sanders supporter, and will definitely be voting for Hillary in November (insofar as much as my DC vote matters for anything).

Given that he has almost zero chance of getting the nomination, the calls for him to "just give up" seem more petty and questionable than anything Sanders may or may not actually be doing.

I also agree with this. A lot of the Clinton supporters in my social circle have been weirdly petty (and aggressive) about this, and the attitude really isn't helping Clinton's general appeal. We get it. You won.

Sanders is possibly being a sore loser, but Clinton absolutely needs to be seen as a gracious winner. We got a taste of that last month, but the Clinton campaign seems to have shifted back into a weird cycle of unnecessary negative campaigning.

I also don't understand it -- this seems like a legitimately bad strategy. Clinton almost definitely benefits from being mathematically guaranteed to win, whilst Sanders shifts the Overton window to the left, allowing Clinton to push her stances to the left while still appearing to be a moderate.

It also bothers me that Sanders is adopting some pretty questionable "sore loser" tactics instead of using his platform to push his agenda (and support downticket candidates that share his views). Many of his criticisms have been disingenuous, which is also bothersome, given that he's not exactly wrong about how badly the primaries are fucked up, or that the DNC seems to do an exceptionally poor job of selecting candidates that represent the electorate.
posted by schmod at 3:18 PM on May 19, 2016 [25 favorites]

Trump/Fisk 2016

Fisk would hate Trump for being a lowbrow vulgarian. Fisk started poor, became wealthy, and refined his tastes. He's also intensely private. Trump started rich, became richer, and never had or got any taste at all. He's also always adored the spotlight. While there are parallels, in many ways, apart from both being cartoon villains, Trump and Fisk are antitheses.
posted by stolyarova at 3:20 PM on May 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

he doesn't have to give up. he can fight his battle Howard Dean style

Completely abandon his principles and become a lobbyist for Big Pharma?
posted by Justinian at 3:20 PM on May 19, 2016 [27 favorites]

I no longer support Bernie Sanders. He seems more concerned today with poisoning the well to win at all costs, not bringing about the changes this country needs; the changes he spent most of the election talking about. I contributed to his campaign. I told my friends and family how excited I was about him and his ideas. I don't see how anything he's saying or doing now moves our agenda forward.

We fought hard and we lost fair and square. I can deal with that. That's how democracy works. What I can't deal with is how the candidate I put my trust in has changed into someone I don't recognize and would never have supported if he had acted this way from the beginning. I'm very disappointed.

So let's get to work making sure Hillary Clinton gets elected as president of the United States. We only have six months and the consequences of failure are dire.
posted by double block and bleed at 3:23 PM on May 19, 2016 [60 favorites]

erm no i meant Dean's non-evil things. But I'm not a Dean expert, maybe he's Satan, who knows
posted by angrycat at 3:24 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

given that he's not exactly wrong about how badly the primaries are fucked up,

He's happy to criticize closed primaries as anti-democratic, but won't do the same for caucuses, which are even more so.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:25 PM on May 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

This isn't a game. It's malware. Format your hard drive and reinstall.

Re-installation of Election 2016 has been aborted. Would you like to install Election 2020? (Yes/No/Unplug/Pour Gasoline on Hard Drive and BURN BURN BURN!!)

DBAN 2016!
posted by Special Agent Dale Cooper at 3:25 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

I have a solid feeling that Clinton will struggle to beat Trump in November.

Ironically for all the talk about Trump destroying the Republican party, it's more accurate to say that he has realigned the the party's messaging with its voters.

The Clinton position (as always) reflects a careful compromise: carrots for moderate Republicans to peal them away from their party and a big stick for Democrats because they have no reasonable alternative.

That leaves her some distance from her base and requires anger at Trump and fear over wedge issues to energize her voters, which might work or it might not.
posted by ethansr at 3:26 PM on May 19, 2016 [17 favorites]

I don't think I buy that --- Clinton is solidly liberal and I think she's probably closer to the average Democratic voter than Sanders is (which is one reason why more people are voting for her...).

She is not aligned with the far left of the party, but I think she is well aligned with the majority of Democrats. She has more issues with independents which is what her campaign will have to focus on.
posted by thefoxgod at 3:29 PM on May 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

"Vote for Hillary because Trump is worse!" is not exactly a clarion call. OTOH, I don't live in a swing state, so my antipathy is equally matched by all candidates' apathy. (s/directly/equally/)
posted by spacewrench at 3:32 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Trump/Fisk 2016
Fisk would hate Trump

Okay, then, which comic book supervillain would be a good running mate for Drumphy?
Lex Luthor would have the same problems as Fisk.
Doctor Doom, Loki, Galactus, Magneto... all not U.S. born so ineligible.
Joker? Too similar to The Donald's style, and he doesn't like anybody upstaging him.
Also in the Batverse, Catwoman or Harley Quinn... both good for picking up superficial 'women votes', and 'total babes'... but are they canonically over 35?
Any others?
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:34 PM on May 19, 2016

It's not "Vote for Hillary because Trump is worse!" It's "Vote for Hillary because she most closely aligns with the majority of your positions!" And, yes, Trump is a disaster.
posted by Justinian at 3:34 PM on May 19, 2016 [22 favorites]

I hope there will be a groundswell of female support for Clinton, especially against such a misogynistic opponent as Trump - much the way as President Obama had a great groundswell of minority support in 2008.
posted by stolyarova at 3:34 PM on May 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Trump is a disaster.

Exactly as the man himself would put it. ;)

Kind of /s, but I'm working hard to clear my own language of Trumpese. The incidence of "tremendous", "terrible," "a mess" et al. has increased and while the man may take the White House, he'll never take my brain.
posted by stolyarova at 3:36 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's not "Vote for Hillary because Trump is worse!" It's "Vote for Hillary because she most closely aligns with the majority of your positions!"
___

MCMike, definitely not asking you to like her. At this point, however, opposing the Orange Death is a civic duty.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:37 PM on May 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

...and true to form, he's making every effort to be the biggest disaster.
posted by schmod at 3:38 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

I actually quite agree with this; however it does raise the question as to whether Sanders has a responsibility to stop fighting Clinton, and whether he thinks he has been beaten.

Here's what Hillary Clinton had to say on May 23, 2008:

“We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California,” Hillary Clinton said yesterday, referencing the fact that past nomination contests have stretched into June to explain why she hasn’t heeded calls to exit the Democratic race. She was in an editorial board meeting with a South Dakota newspaper, and she didn’t even seem to notice she’d just uttered the unutterable.

The nation’s political science students, our future strategists and campaign managers, would do well to pay attention to this moment. There are taboos in presidential politics, and this is one of the biggest. To raise the specter of a rival’s assassination, even unintentionally, is to make a truly terrible thing real. It sounds like one might be waiting for a terrible thing to happen, even if one isn’t. It sounds almost like wishful thinking.

The concern trolling wrt Sanders campaign right now is so completely insincere.
posted by ennui.bz at 3:39 PM on May 19, 2016 [44 favorites]

Add me to the chorus of "too early to be really worried about the polls"; after all, Hillary is currently "getting it from both sides".
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:40 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

What do you think of the prospect of a national unity ticket? I.e., what if Secretary Clinton selected a moderate Republican running mate, as a way of inviting #NeverTrump voters to her cause?

I don't think it will happen, because she should be able to win handily with a traditional Democratic electorate, and I don't think I even want it to happen, but it sure would be interesting.
posted by chrchr at 3:41 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

I really wish that people in safe blue states would keep in mind that there are lots of people reading your words who don't live in safe blue states, and the things you say can have an impact.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:41 PM on May 19, 2016 [22 favorites]

Okay, then, which comic book supervillain would be a good running mate for Drumphy?

Trump/The semantic virus from PontyPool?
posted by Balna Watya at 3:43 PM on May 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

oneswellfoop, how about General Zod or the Penguin?
posted by stolyarova at 3:43 PM on May 19, 2016

And, as if by magic, a new poll emerges showing a 6% Clinton lead but more support for the (eventual) nominee among Republicans than Democrats. Which backs up my general reading of the other recent polls, I think.
posted by howfar at 3:44 PM on May 19, 2016

Trump/The semantic virus from PontyPool?

So basically Trump/Trump 2016, he is a semantic virus already.
posted by stolyarova at 3:44 PM on May 19, 2016

I really wish that people in safe blue states would keep in mind that there are lots of people reading your words who don't live in safe blue states, and the things you say can have an impact.

I don't think people should self-censor themselves just because someone else's voting calculus may be different. Everything I write here (about the election or about anything) is from my perspective. I shouldn't have to lie just because someone else is working from a different perspective.
posted by downtohisturtles at 3:45 PM on May 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

Hadn't seen that quote about Kennedy before. But couldn't the mention of Kennedy just have been intended to mean "Kennedy was still in the race in June. Why not me?" And wasn't she significantly closer than Sanders?
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:46 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

this firing squad ain't gonna circle itself!
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:48 PM on May 19, 2016 [18 favorites]

Given the movement of NeverTrumpers to Trump since he locked up the nomination, polls comparing Clinton and Trump right now are silly. Wait a month or two until Clinton is in a comparable position and see what happens.

I mean, it was obvious Trump was going to win for weeks, but until Cruz and Kasich dropped out a lot of Republicans seemed to claim they would never vote for him. That is, as expected, changing. I suspect we will see exactly the same thing on the Dem side.
posted by thefoxgod at 3:50 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Sanders is eroding his base of support right now in a quixotic attempt to reverse his fortunes and or force policy concessions from Clinton both of which seem exceedingly unlikely moving forward.

At first I thought it was largely Tad Devine pushing a hail mary strategy because he wanted to continue to do big media buys because he gets paid a percentage but the reality is that he's a hired gun and will want to get on the gravy train again in 2020 with a different candidate.

No increasingly this rhetoric is coming from Weaver and both Sanders who clearly don't have a solid end game planned out and seem to in effect shouting at clouds.

Pretty sad because I think he's squandered a good amount of good will at the same time he's squandered campaign contributions.
posted by vuron at 3:50 PM on May 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

...the things you say can have an impact.

...so the fact that our votes are worthless, means that our words are too? That we should keep our opinions to ourselves? That we should not advocate for positions we believe in (provided that we do so with civility)?
posted by spacewrench at 3:50 PM on May 19, 2016 [18 favorites]

Clinton, iirc, waited a week after all the votes were counted to drop. She was just as persistent in the face of inevitable defeat as Sanders is being. Sanders should drop because he is hurting her chances right now for little reason, but he isn't doing anything unique here.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:52 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

I've been hearing people shit on Clinton since 1992 but you never know, the next comment might be the one that knocks the scales from my eyes
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:54 PM on May 19, 2016 [61 favorites]

Hadn't seen that quote about Kennedy before. But couldn't the mention of Kennedy just have been intended to mean "Kennedy was still in the race in June. Why not me?" And wasn't she significantly closer than Sanders?

Here we have her on June 4, refusing to concede after Obama clinched the delegate count:

NBC News and news services
updated 6/4/2008 12:41:49 AM ET

NEW YORK — Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton Tuesday refused to bow out of the Democratic race Tuesday, hoping to maintain leverage as Barack Obama clinched the delegates needed to secure the party's nomination.

Clinton told supporters in a rally at Baruch College that she would consult party leaders in coming days on how to move forward, but that, "I will be making no decisions tonight."

"A lot of people are asking, 'What does Hillary want?'" Clinton said. "I want what I have always fought for: I want the nearly 18 million people who voted for me to be respected and heard."

Clinton told the crowd she would consult in the coming days with advisers about the fate of her moribund candidacy. But her remarks came hours after she told congressional colleagues she would be open to joining Obama as his running mate.

Many of her top supporters spoke openly of Clinton's potential vice presidential prospects. Lanny Davis, a former White House special counsel under President Clinton, said he told the former first lady Tuesday that he was initiating a petition to press Obama to select her for the second spot on the ticket. He said Clinton did not encourage or discourage the step.

She conceded on the 7th. I have no idea what she meant whe she suggested Obama could be assasinated during the primary, but... really, imagine if Sanders said something like that now. The complaints about Sanders not conceding are completely and totally insincere.
posted by ennui.bz at 3:54 PM on May 19, 2016 [26 favorites]

What do you think of the prospect of a national unity ticket? I.e., what if Secretary Clinton selected a moderate Republican running mate, as a way of inviting #NeverTrump voters to her cause?

About the same way I think of getting a free pet Unicorn, i.e. not often, briefly, and with little seriousness?
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:54 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

I know only two Bernie-or-Bust persons (one male, one female), and both of them are young and not very knowledgeable. I am a long-time socialist, so I have been supporting Bernie with slight enthusiasm (If you are a long-time socialist, you know Bernie has not been very supportive of other socialists, either). I will vote for Hillary when the time comes, but right now I am supporting Bernie's platform.
posted by acrasis at 3:54 PM on May 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

I asked about K-12 education and one told me it wasn't as critical as free college because, "We already spend more per student in poor schools than rich schools, it's just not being used well."

If this is common thinking among young Bernie supporters, then they are not just mistaken, they are voicing a very dangerous conservative meme.

One thing that turned me off to Bernie early on was the overemphasis on "free college" with almost nothing to be said about K-12. Yes, college is expensive, but we can't even produce a consistent education out of our woefully underfunded schools.
posted by dw at 3:54 PM on May 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

If what you say has an impact, then clearly it is not worthless.

That your candidate does not win does not mean your votes are worthless. I (and I suspect all the other pro HRC MeFis) respect the principles of most Sanders voters, and anticipate they will influence the direction of the platform and future policy choices.

I am weary of the instant reformulation of any statement into a complaint about a demeaning attack which didn't actually occur.
posted by bearwife at 3:55 PM on May 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

The complaints about Sanders not conceding are completely and totally insincere.

Would it be possible -- just theoretically -- to find both Clinton's behavior in 2008 and Sanders' behavior now to be less than ideal? Asking for a friend.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 3:55 PM on May 19, 2016 [54 favorites]

Okay, getting bored now since nothing much will truly be relevant prior to Bernie's reaction to getting mathematically eliminated after California (and even then not all that relevant). I do still support Wordshore's campaign for "most commented" title, but I also feel for the Moderators who are still going to be working here through November.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:57 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's ok, oneswellfoop, Trump will do something insane in the next day or two and give us something to talk about.
posted by mmoncur at 3:58 PM on May 19, 2016

Christ, the Sanders Nevada freakout and statement are so dumb.

Like, imagine an alternate universe where Sanders could become the nominee — maybe some Clinton email discusses procuring Serbian baby blood for her to bathe in, keeping her skin taut. In that case, in order to win the general, Sanders is still going to have to persuade Clinton voters to come around to him. Having a massive freakout is counter productive, alienates people whose votes he'd need if he had a legit chance, and just feeds Stabbed In The Back fantasy explanations for why his message isn't actually as compelling for a majority of Dem voters.

If Sanders isn't going to act like he's got a chance and this is a legit campaign, it just seems like a cynical bilking of people new to primary processes. It's going to end up burning out people and turning them away from doing the (dull, unglamorous) work necessary to win at local levels and keep pushing an actual grassroots progressive platform.
posted by klangklangston at 3:59 PM on May 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

Would it be possible -- just theoretically -- to find both Clinton's behavior in 2008 and Sanders' behavior now to be less than ideal? Asking for a friend.

Tell your friend that the judgements of Sanders' campaign right now are based on the expectation that the "left" in the Democratic party is just going to roll over and play dead, like they've been doing since Mondale lost. Sanders may end up doing so, but I hope not. I hope he continues to challenge the sale of the party to Wall Street into the election in November.
posted by ennui.bz at 4:00 PM on May 19, 2016 [20 favorites]

I voted for Clinton in 2008 and was repeatedly massively disappointed in how her campaign was run. One thing that makes me even more enthusiastic about her in 2016 is that by all evidence she learned from that and isn't repeating those mistakes and is running a much better campaign this time around.

And yeah on preview re: klangklangston's point, a perfectly logical and reasonable response to being repeatedly told that the electoral system is rigged and corrupt and bought and paid for is to say well why fucking bother participating. That is awful, destructive messaging.
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:02 PM on May 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

If Sanders isn't going to act like he's got a chance and this is a legit campaign, it just seems like a cynical bilking of people new to primary processes. It's going to end up burning out people and turning them away from doing the (dull, unglamorous) work necessary to win at local levels and keep pushing an actual grassroots progressive platform.

what happened in Nevada is a pretty clear signal that Sanders supporters aren't welcome in the local party operations.
posted by ennui.bz at 4:02 PM on May 19, 2016 [21 favorites]

i was for Obama in '08 from the beginning and thought that HRC really didn't look good with the RFK comment and my opinion of her dipped. Then she conceded and fought for Obama.

So I don't think Sanders looks good and maybe he'll pull it together and it'll be all kumbya here in Philly. But that is not the tenor of his recent comments. HRC was never in the *I'm gonna burn it down* camp that I can recall
posted by angrycat at 4:03 PM on May 19, 2016 [11 favorites]

Thanks for the new thread, Wordshore. Continuing the conversation from the previous thread:

> If that ends up being the kind of concession Sanders demands, I think Clinton 100% can and should promise to take that issue up at the convention... Push to standardize a process for setting debate schedules and assigning rules committee seats and so on, going forward. She has nothing much to lose by making that kind of concession...

But would this really satisfy disaffected Sanders voters? Sanders fans in this thread -- would this make you feel the system is less rigged, going forward? Or would it be seen as too little too late?

I think it would help a lot. Sanders supporters have been under constant attack from Hillary supporters telling us progressive Democrats have no place in the Democratic Party. Fuck-you gestures from the DNC on top of that haven't helped. Any gestures from Clinton indicating she herself doesn't hate us, and accepts Sanders supporters as part of the party would go a long ways.
posted by nangar at 4:03 PM on May 19, 2016 [18 favorites]

Hillary was dramatically closer to securing the nomination in 2008 than Sanders is now. The reality is that Sanders ran a mediocre campaign and actually exceeded expectations but has absolutely no idea of what to do with his new profile other than spam the same tired stump speech over and over.

At this point I actually think he's diminishing the support for his policies because people will seek to disassociate from the train wreck his campaign has become.
posted by vuron at 4:03 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Anything that gets more Larry David on tv is good for America.
posted by peeedro at 4:05 PM on May 19, 2016

Maybe they just mean that people should keep in mind that a person's voting options are very dependent on their state?

So you have someone saying, "It's a civic duty to keep Trump out of office." but others disagree. But it really depends on your state. If you're in a state that is going to go to whatever democrat no matter what and always will, then yeah, you can probably vote for whoever you want but if you're in a swing state, I think your options are A. Trump or B. Whatever vote is most likely to keep Trump out of the oval office AKA Clinton.

I mean, I would have caucused to vote for Sanders but I checked and it was all-or-nothing and it was definitely going to go to Clinton so I just stayed home (since there aren't lesser offices to vote for, seriously, WEIRD people run for some of the down-ballot stuff). In the general, I was always going to vote for whatever democrat won the nomination, it's doubly true now that Trump is the presumptive nominee. Until I have a real option to vote for a 3rd party without throwing my vote away, I'm always going to use my vote in whatever way is most likely to keep the republican out of every office I can.
posted by VTX at 4:06 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

oneswellfoop, good call on Zod. Penguin is also not an American, so can't be him either. How about the Riddler? He might actually give Donny some canny campaign strategy.
posted by stolyarova at 4:06 PM on May 19, 2016

Okay, then, which comic book supervillain would be a good running mate for Drumphy?

What about Amanda Waller? She's used to working for Luthor, and managing lunatics into the bargain, plus she'd make Drumpf look better re: women and PoC.
posted by tautological at 4:07 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

She pointed to Trump's... willingness to speak with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un

Yeah, so, anything that demilitarizes the Korean Peninsula is a good thing, and this has to be part of the solution. Hillary is wrong on this one. Our current policy of regularly conducting live-fire exercises off the coast of North Korea isn't helping. They're asking for a peace treaty to end the war which we are still technically in with them, which is an entirely reasonable thing to ask for.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 4:07 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Hillary supporters telling us progressive Democrats have no place in the Democratic Party.
Again, Mr. Sanders himself had no place in the Democratic Party until recently, which explains A LOT about the DNC's treatment of him AND his response. In other words, for me, no surprises at all.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:07 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Ennui, maybe the nomination of less liberal candidates than you would like is that not one very liberal candidate has come close to winning since FDR? I'm all for moving the Overton window left, but I also like winning elections, nominating SC justices, passing healthcare, etc., especially when the alternative is the recent incarnation of the Republican Party. The country isn't always as left as we'd like it.
posted by chris24 at 4:07 PM on May 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

I've heard his stump speech many times now and I'm not sure I'll ever tire of it. To hear someone speaking so bluntly and openly about issues not discussed in America is refreshing, which is why I suspect he continues to draw tens of thousands to his rallies.
posted by kyp at 4:08 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

OH I'VE GOT IT. Scarecrow. He can scare people into believing Trump's fear politics schtick.
posted by stolyarova at 4:08 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

On May 20, 2008, Obama won Oregon and clinched a majority of pledged delegates. At that point, the only reason Hillary stayed in the race was because there were still enough superdelegates + regular delegates left that she could have won, and she'd won a majority of votes (mindful, of course, that Obama wasn't even on the Michigan ballot due to the penalties against them for trying to go too early). She, in theory, had a minuscule shot. But she would only be able to do it by flipping superdelegates. She should have dropped out on May 20; the fact she stayed in two more weeks really looked like an awful fiasco.

As of today, Hillary is still 255 short of a majority of pledged delegates. I believe, once she clinches that (yes, it's why I keep saying June 7 over and over and over again), there is zero reason for Bernie to stay in the race. Until them, I have no problem with him staying in the race.

But. Like I said in the last thread, we're late in the basketball game and Bernie is down considerably to Hillary. Play hard, but stop fouling, because you're pissing everyone off. And certainly don't flagrant foul.
posted by dw at 4:09 PM on May 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

DW, totally stealing that analogy for a basketball fan Bernie or Bust friend of mine.
posted by chris24 at 4:11 PM on May 19, 2016

Here are my current thoughts on the Sanders vs. Clinton issue:

If people bring it up to me, maybe they will stop if I scream and scream and just keep screaming.

No?

I should probably scream some more.
posted by kyrademon at 4:13 PM on May 19, 2016 [19 favorites]

Okay, then, which comic book supervillain would be a good running mate for Drumphy?

muttley
posted by pyramid termite at 4:17 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

I don't get what the Democratic establishment is doing right now. Hillary has it won. They should be courting Bernie's voters; instead they seem to be doing everything possible to alienate them. Considering how the Dems lost the House and Senate, along with so many State Houses and governorships, it seems to me we should be questioning them not Bernie - who went from nothing to practically winning the nomination. Not to mention one of the Dems' chosen candidate's biggest claims to fame is losing in 2008. This is starting to give me a very bad feeling about the general election. Obama can not save them this time.
posted by Golden Eternity at 4:18 PM on May 19, 2016 [23 favorites]

I'm not sure what it actually is that The Establishment is supposed to be doing right now to court these voters. They're not exactly telling Sanders voters to go fuck themselves.
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:20 PM on May 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

I should probably scream some more.

i was on vacation for two weeks with limited internet access and i have only just caught up on the previous megathread and i also want to scream
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:22 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Scarecrow. He can scare people into believing Trump's fear politics schtick.

Oooh, good point. Maybe Sebastian Shaw or Emma Frost to manipulate the Kochs to his side?
posted by tautological at 4:24 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

One thing that turned me off to Bernie early on was the overemphasis on "free college" with almost nothing to be said about K-12.

Yeah, that's sort of weird. Mostly that's saying people who went to K-12 in good schools would get free college, many who could afford it anyway.

But I'm one of those people who thinks "the college education" is way over marketed. I think we'd be fine if we gave everyone a really good K-12 education.
posted by bongo_x at 4:26 PM on May 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

what happened in Nevada is a pretty clear signal that Sanders supporters aren't welcome in the local party operations.

ennui.bz, what do you mean by "what happened in Nevada"? I'm interested in what your take is on it, so I can understand what it's signaling to you. A reference to "what happened" can be interpreted in so many ways.
posted by defenestration at 4:28 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Never before has the phrase 'Fear and Loathing' been more appropriate. Thanks Hunter. We miss you. You would have had so much fun with this election. If it didn't cause your head to explode with incredible violence.
posted by Splunge at 4:29 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

I should probably scream some more.

I am interested in your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
posted by mordax at 4:30 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Including the super delegates, who are not flipping to Sanders at all, Clinton is within 90 of clinching the votes needed for the nomination. She has 1768 delegates, plus 525 super delegates at a minimum, and it is 2383 to win on the first ballot. She's going to pick up more from the caucuses in the Virgin Islands and PR, and she is certainly going to win New Jersey (and likely California and New Mexico too) on June 7.

So, yes, if people who have supported Sanders and want to see his policies enacted are planning ahead, now would be a good time to begin to think about the party platform and how to defeat Trump and take red legislatures and governorships and perhaps Congress back in November.

I am real unhappy with the recent happenings in the Sanders campaign, but I think it is completely counterproductive to attack his supporters, who are understandably upset and disappointed. And as for the Bernie or Bust people, I've given up on them anyway.
posted by bearwife at 4:31 PM on May 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

This interview with Howard Dean sheds some light on Bernie's mindset.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:32 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Lalex, she has spoken many times about what can only be a very painful issue for her. What, and why, do you need to hear again, just because someone dragged it out again?
posted by Dashy at 4:32 PM on May 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

> I'm not sure what it actually is that The Establishment is supposed to be doing right now to court these voters. They're not exactly telling Sanders voters to go fuck themselves.

They certainly seem to be. And this worries me.

("They" being DWS and Clinton surrogates, mostly.)
posted by nangar at 4:35 PM on May 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

These threads are long enough without complete derails into supervillain chatter, thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 4:35 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm starting to feel like Elizabeth Warren would be a good pick for VP despite all the much discussed downsides. I think Bernie supporters would generally be happy with that pick?
posted by Justinian at 4:36 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

"One thing that turned me off to Bernie early on was the overemphasis on "free college" with almost nothing to be said about K-12."

I gotta tell you, what really stuck in my craw with these two dudes was they had a burning ember of rage that the political system was built to exclude them -- white, cis, het men with upper-middle class parents attending a $40,000 a year private college -- but couldn't work up more than a shrug for women, minorities, LGBT people, the poor, or anybody else. It's a clearly broken institution when it listens to Goldman Sachs bankers but not aspiring future Goldman Sachs bankers like them; it's totally shruggo when it's anybody else, because institutional racism isn't a thing anymore, and women already have equal rights, and poor people just don't work hard enough, and LOOK THE REAL PROBLEM IS THAT WE PRIVILEGED YOUNG WHITE MEN ARE BEING IGNORED. It was like, try to be even the tiniest bit woke, dudes. Try to exercise the smallest morsel of empathy. They just had some kind of special armor that protected them against even the tiniest bit of self-awareness. (And yeah, I know, that armor is called privilege, but plenty of their equally privileged classmates were way more with-it. These guys were just kind-of ... unique.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:36 PM on May 19, 2016 [74 favorites]

They're not exactly telling Sanders voters to go fuck themselves.

They certainly seem to be. And this worries me.

I'm still unclear on what it is that reads as "go fuck yourselves". Not giving him the election?
posted by bongo_x at 4:37 PM on May 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

I've never really understood either, bongo_x. I see a lot of rage about DWS... who, yes, is clearly and understandably pulling for Clinton... but I haven't actually ever gotten a lot of specifics on what she has done to screw over Sanders so badly.
posted by Justinian at 4:40 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Justinian: "I haven't actually ever gotten a lot of specifics on what she has done to screw over Sanders so badly."

As near as I can tell -- and I've admittedly not kept up nearly as much with this as others have -- one of the more substantive objections were regarding the debate schedules. Namely that there were not enough debates and they weren't scheduled at particularly good times... which is basically what every underdog candidate who could use more exposure would complain about. I seriously haven't been able to grok the level of vitriol from some Sanders supporters (say, r/SandersForPresident redditors) regarding these seemingly (to me) run-of-the-mill party and campaign stuff like this.
posted by mhum at 4:54 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Her line about superdelegates being a necessary firewall against the grass roots doesn't exactly endear her to the self-identifying grass roots supporting Bernie.
posted by delfin at 4:55 PM on May 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

I'm actually a bit unclear on this: do the candidates agree on the debate dates?
posted by defenestration at 4:56 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

What evidence do you have that HRC -destroyed- Lewinsky, or others, herself?
posted by Dashy at 5:00 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

And yet superdelegates are now Bernie's only feasible route to victory. They're a firewall in that they could have saved the GOP from Trump, and they protect the Democrats from another 1980 style floor fight. But they're still sway-able.

Hillary was telling the truth. Those are the rules. I think Bernie could have swayed the superdelegates if he'd figured out how to break through among people of color and older whites. But he just never did.
posted by dw at 5:01 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Sorry for my dumb question. This Wikipedia article is a pretty good resource for anyone else wondering: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_debates_and_forums,_2016
posted by defenestration at 5:01 PM on May 19, 2016

I would like her to address her role in discrediting, tarring, and destroying these women. If she has done so I've not seen it.

This is conspiracy theory nonsense. Hillary and Huma and Debbie, the wicked trio.
posted by feste at 5:02 PM on May 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

They certainly seem to be. And this worries me.

("They" being DWS and Clinton surrogates, mostly.)

I think there would be a lot less animosity towards Sanders staying in the race if his tactics weren't focused on denouncing Clinton and the DNC as wholly corrupt and the entire election process as rigged.

If his speeches were policy-focused, if he was attempted to address actual issues, then his claim that he's staying in order to influence policy would seem more legit.
posted by Anonymous at 5:05 PM on May 19, 2016

> I am real unhappy with the recent happenings in the Sanders campaign, but I think it is completely counterproductive to attack his supporters, who are understandably upset and disappointed.

I wish more of your fellow Hillary supporters agreed.

Personally, I'm not even upset and disappointed. We've gotten over 40% the national convention delegates. We've built an informal network of grassroots organizations that can support progressive candidates in the future. A lot of people who weren't previously involved in the political process have gotten involved and learned a lot about how campaigns work. This is pretty much the best outcome I had hoped for when the campaign started. I just want the attacks to stop.
posted by nangar at 5:07 PM on May 19, 2016 [20 favorites]

Trump called Bill Clinton a rapist in his interview with Sean Hannity last night. It's maybe the third or fourth time he's called him a rapist in the past couple of weeks. He is absolutely going to keep calling Bill Clinton a rapist, and Hillary an enabler of his sexual aggression, all the way until November. There are entire books written about this stuff that have been floating around in right-wing circles since the 90s. Today Hillary tried to brush it off and said that she would not discuss it. But I don't know. It seems like Trump and conservative media are going to try to equate Bill Clinton with Bill Cosby, and sink Hillary through association. It's a legitimate concern to have.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:09 PM on May 19, 2016 [17 favorites]

And some people (not here) just don't seem to understand superdelegates. I saw another FB post today by somebody saying Hillary was going to win because of her superdelegates and was angry about it.

(I suppose its technically true, but neither Bernie nor Hillary can win without superdelegates at this point, and if they were eliminated she would obviously win anyways, although I know people here basically understand this).
posted by thefoxgod at 5:09 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

I just want the attacks to stop.

I think Clinton supporters feel the same way. It kind of sucks when the opponent is spending most of his time calling your candidate corrupt and the election rigged, and then if you push back the opponent's supporters get upset because they feel you're alienating them.
posted by Anonymous at 5:11 PM on May 19, 2016

(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates A genuine question to Bernie Sanders supporters who are mad at Clinton and the DNC for various reasons. What is it exactly that you would like Clinton to do in the coming week, weeks, months?

Not a Bernie Or Buster, I've already pledged to volunteer for Clinton after the convention.

But you asked so here it is.

Why I didn't (and don't) like Clinton Identity politics. But not the way the term is typically used. I see her as a member of and supporter of the billionaire looter class, the Beige Dictatorship (a term I do not direct at any voters or anyone who isn't an actual politician or political appointee), whatever you want to call it. She's part of the nice faction of the Beige Dictatorship, she's not like the gleefully malicious Romney types. But nice faction or gleeful evil faction, that's still who and what she is, she was born to it, she has lived it her whole life.

My initial support of Sanders was almost entirely based on the fact that he wasn't part of the billionaire looter class, that he seemed to be a break from the Beige Dictatorship. Not really based on any specific policy proposal, but almost entirely around the fact that, for the first time in my entire life, a candidate for President had appeared who wasn't part of that class.

Several things reinforced my belief that she was basically not on my side simply due to who and what she is.

The $15/hour minimum wage thing. She could have just said she agreed in principle, the President doesn't set minimum wage and the difference between a $12/hour minimum and a $15/hour minimum seems, well, petty and largely irrelevant. To me it was yet another example of the sort of reflexive triangulation and compromise for its own sake that I've seen from Democrats my whole life, more of the same Beige Dictator crap we've seen from Obama, and before him Bill Clinton. Cut the shit and just take my side please!

Then there was the time she declared that universal single payer was impossible because America couldn't afford it. She could have said that she had philosophic reasons for supporting multi-payer systems but was utterly committed to universal health care no matter how it was achieved. Instead she regurgitated a bullshit billionaire looter lie, because that's who she is and what she genuinely believes.

I wanted someone who wasn't part of that billionaire looter class, someone who didn't reflexively triangulate and compromise away everything, someone who wasn't Beige and who was able to actually fight the good fight and try for the whole loaf instead of unthinkingly going for less.

What she can do now: Again, she doesn't have to try and buy or win my support, it's there simply on the grounds that she's not-Trump. I'll vote for a literal sack of shit rather than Donald Trump.

But I'd feel better and really like it if she'd start pledging and working to make structural changes in the DNC and how the state parties work. I think it is undeniable at this point that the DNC is a deeply corrupt and broken system, especially the Byzantine way primaries work (especially especially the horrible caucus system).

Unlike most policy proposals for national politics, Clinton actually does (or will have once she's president) the power to really create change in the way the DNC works, and through that significant influence over the way the state parties work. Get rid of superdelegates, that sort of thing.

Ideally she'd be pushing to abridge the godawful primary season and end this monstrous multi-year slog before we even get to the real election season.

I don't ask for anything regarding taxes or foreign policy or whatever because a) I wouldn't believe what she says (remember when Obama promised to fillibuster the telecom immunity bill? Yeah, so do I, never trust a Beige person), and b) she can't do it anyway because the President isn't a dictator. But changes to the DNC she can do, and I'd really love it if she would.
posted by sotonohito at 5:11 PM on May 19, 2016 [50 favorites]

Is your concern that HRC did what the right wing would like to claim, or that the right wing will smear her with sexist smut by association? There's a crucial difference I hope you see.
posted by Dashy at 5:11 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

And if your concern is the latter, why is that a reason against her? It should be why you defend her.
posted by Dashy at 5:15 PM on May 19, 2016

Quit trying to make "beige" happen. I'll buy everyone a beer if we can eliminate "beige" and "optics".
posted by bongo_x at 5:15 PM on May 19, 2016 [35 favorites]

Lalex, that is rumormonging, verbally repeated. It is not evidence, nor does it bring validity to it.
posted by Dashy at 5:16 PM on May 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

Y'all know Vermin Supreme is still running, dontcha?
posted by waitingtoderail at 5:17 PM on May 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

For some evidence for my earlier claim about Clinton and Democrats, 538 looked at exit polls. In literally every state except Vermont, Clinton won the vote among self-identified Democrats (as opposed to registered --- in closed primaries, it wouldn't be uncommon to have a self-identified independent register as Democrat to vote in the primary). She has the support of the party. What she needs is the support of independents.
posted by thefoxgod at 5:19 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Second round is on me if we can kill 'momentum'
posted by Dashy at 5:19 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

The problem with the "all those women are lying" defense is that it's a) icky and b) gross. So yeah, I do think she needs a better response than what we've heard so far. And again, I'm a Clinton supporter.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:19 PM on May 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Whoops, missed New Hampshire as another exception.
posted by thefoxgod at 5:20 PM on May 19, 2016

That Vox article is pure clickbait. Here's the TLDR

So far, this issue has mostly been raised by conservative media and Republican politicians like Prudhomme-O'Brien.

and this:

There are three main accusers, of whom it seems by far the most credible — based on the publicly available evidence — is Broaddrick. Jones's claim was aired for years and faced several major problems (including the fact that she claimed the president's penis had a "distinguishing mark" that doctors and Monica Lewinsky said it did not have), and Willey repeatedly lied to federal investigators and changed her story dramatically between grand jury testimony and a deposition in the Jones case (among other issues).

But Broaddrick's allegation, while hardly proven, has not been definitively refuted.

It's Alex Jones-level storytelling
posted by feste at 5:21 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

I don't even understand the beige thing. I associate beige with walls and/or carpet. There's a lot of beige in rental apartments because it's neutral and works with whatever furniture you have. What did beige ever do to you?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:23 PM on May 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

Lalex, Bill Clinton lost my support at the time based on his sexual victimization of vulnerable and/or subordinate women -- I never voted for the man and his incredible egotism still makes me grit my teeth -- but there is no evidence Hillary abetted him. The article doesn't actually provide any.

Also, HRC has been a bold and consistent advocate for women.

Also, Trump is very likely a rapist per Ivanka's book and certainly a long time womanizer and sexist who has energetically demeaned women throughout this campaign.

Speaking as a feminist with a long background of fighting for sexual assault and domestic violence victims, I think you are pointing at the wrong target.
posted by bearwife at 5:25 PM on May 19, 2016 [24 favorites]

Where are the attacks from Clinton exactly? Clinton has said pretty much nothing other than emphasizing that she is going to be the nominee. Her surrogates have mostly expressed a desire to not have state party chairs and their families harassed, not have chairs thrown, and not have one of the more liberal Democratic senators screamed at when she's trying to speak. And yes, they've called for Sanders to acknowledge the reality of the delegate math right now.

In turn, Sanders has turned his attacks from "the system" in general being rigged to the party and this nominating processing being rigged. And when you ask for examples of what's rigged, I hear about things like some debates on Friday and Saturday night or complaints that superdelegates endorsed Clinton early, as though it's a bad thing for a candidate to have secured the support of the vast majority of those leading her party. And what I don't hear about are the actually undemocratic parts of the Democratic primary process, like caucuses and superdelgates, because those happen to have been the main things that Sanders has had going for him. And the more anybody talks about the primary being "rigged," the more they undermine the fact that millions more people voted for the other candidate.

So where does this leave us? I just wish Sanders could stop lashing out at the party and its members and try to preserve the enormous support and goodwill he's generated, goodwill that's disappearing by the minute right now, so that it could be used in an organized way to back progressive causes for years to come. Sanders has actually gotten young progressives to turn out and care. That doesn't have to end. The "Bernie Sanders Seal of Approval," along with that email list and other initiatives, could be used for years to drive turnout for everyone from progressive state legislators to Congressional candidates Sanders supports. None of that can happen if Sanders insists on a fight to the death.
posted by zachlipton at 5:26 PM on May 19, 2016 [25 favorites]

Seriously, this beige thing is atrocious. I can't shake the feeling that most people trying to make it a thing have figured out that "sheeple" isn't going to go over well among adults, but just can't let it go.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 5:26 PM on May 19, 2016 [22 favorites]

It's Alex Jones-level storytelling

Or maybe it's a victim that looks untrustworthy for various reasons but is in fact telling the truth. It's wrong to be too dismissive of these allegations. The best legal minds and political operators available were, and are, there to protect Bill from them.
posted by Drinky Die at 5:27 PM on May 19, 2016 [12 favorites]

Also, HRC has been a bold and consistent advocate for women.

I think this is a really good response to every single question she gets about Bill. Just immediately pivot and discuss how she's devoted her life to helping women. But she can't keep saying "no comment" and "the voters don't care" when people bring this up. She just can't.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:29 PM on May 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

I have come to loathe Bernie Sanders. I don't feel the Bern, I want him to pound sand.
posted by humanfont at 5:31 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Bernie Sanders’ Second Life Headquarters Besieged by Trump-Supporting Swastikas
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:31 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Reasonable people can be concerned about how Hillary's role in the 1990s allegations against Bill.

reasonable people can be sick and tired of the whole goddamned mess - haven't we heard about this enough?
posted by pyramid termite at 5:32 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

The Democrats started out with a truly pathetic debate schedule, and getting the Clinton campaign to agree to more was like pulling teeth, yeah. It was widely thought the debate schedule was purposely limited to insulate Clinton as front-runner.

It obviously was. But to me that's like elementary level politics not "BURN THE CORRUPT SYSTEM TO THE GROUND" stuff. A corrupt system keeping Bernie down would be maneuvering to keep his name off the ballot or the like. Not sticking the first couple of debates in wonky timeslots before moving to a more regular schedule once the primary became more contested.
posted by Justinian at 5:33 PM on May 19, 2016 [11 favorites]

There was originally an agreement for six debates. As the race heated up, they added three more. I honestly think that having an average of 1.3 debates a month (plus many town halls/forums) from October-April is pretty darn reasonable and that the only justification for even more is to cheer on your preferred candidate or hope someone screws up horribly rather than learn something new about their positions.

If you want to blame DWS for something about the debates, then blame her for maneuvering to ensure Lessig was kept out. I had all sorts of problems with that short-lived campaign, but it would have been a good thing for democracy had he been able to make his unconventional pitch on the debate stage at least once.
posted by zachlipton at 5:33 PM on May 19, 2016

I'd like to see her address them.

I was alive during the 90s. There was a whole rightwing industry devoted to Clinton scandals. The Drudge Report (which is mentioned as a source in that Vox article) *began* life as an anti-Clinton website. You will never satisfy conspiracy theorists. No facts, no addressing of issues will be enough.
posted by feste at 5:36 PM on May 19, 2016 [39 favorites]

sotonohito: "I think it is undeniable at this point that the DNC is a deeply corrupt and broken system, especially the Byzantine way primaries work (especially especially the horrible caucus system). "

Byzantine? Definitely. Broken? Eh, maybe. Corrupt? [citation needed]

At this point, I'm going to have to admit that I have less and less idea what certain Bernie supporters are specifically complaining about when they're complaining about "corruption". Around half the time, I could substitute "satanism/satanic" for "corruption/corrupt" and lose no meaning in the various posts I see on my Facebook from my most hardcore Bernie-supporting friends. And, specifically regarding corruption in DNC primary stuff, I have so little frame of reference for what the basis for these accusations are. Like, surely they're not claiming that Hillary's campaign is dropping satchels of unmarked, non-sequential twenties on the back porch of state Democratic party chairpersons, right?
posted by mhum at 5:36 PM on May 19, 2016 [11 favorites]

It obviously was. But to me that's like elementary level politics not "BURN THE CORRUPT SYSTEM TO THE GROUND" stuff.

Death by a thousand papercuts.
posted by kyp at 5:40 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Drudge Report (which is mentioned as a source in that Vox article) *began* life as an anti-Clinton website.

Yes, it began mainly by correctly reporting that Bill Clinton had an affair with a young woman who worked for him as an intern. Which Bill of course denied, one of many bald faced lies to the American people or under oath before God. There's a reason it's easy to have conspiracy theories about Bill, one was true.
posted by Drinky Die at 5:42 PM on May 19, 2016 [17 favorites]

I bet that at some point Trump promises that he will never die.

Well, um, let me just say I'm really sorry about this, but I can't resist:

And they are dancing, the board floor slamming under the jackboots and the fiddlers grinning hideously over their canted pieces. Towering over them all is the donald and he is naked dancing, his small hands lively and quick and now in doubletime and bowing to the hispanics, huge and pale and orangehaired, like an enormous infant. He never sleeps, he says. He says he’ll never die. He bows to the fiddlers and sashays backwards and throws back his head and laughs deep in his throat and he is a great favorite, the donald. He wafts his hat and the over comb of his skull passes yellowy under the lamps and he swings about and takes possession of one of the fiddles and he pirouettes and makes a pass, two passes, dancing and fiddling all at once. His hands are small and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the donald. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.

posted by Joakim Ziegler at 5:46 PM on May 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

Does this mean we finally have to decide once and for all what the meaning of "is" is?!
posted by anarch at 5:46 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Does this mean we finally have to decide once and for all what the meaning of "is" is?!

And destroy metafilter? And the universe?
posted by futz at 5:51 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Hillary addressing the issues and telling us the facts would actually be enough for me. But I would like to hear something and I don't think I'm alone in this.

What does this mean, though? If Hillary said, "I didn't do the things that smearmongers have accused me of doing, and several of Bill's accusers were not credible anyway," would that satisfy you?
posted by vathek at 5:52 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Beige Dictatorship (prev)
posted by MikeKD at 5:52 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

The Trump anti-semitic brigade is out in force again.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:53 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Ugh, this is why I never wanted her to run, why I was so happy to have Obama as an alternative to support in 2008, because the Clinton sex scandals would never go away, never stop being something she needed to address, even from her own party, even after her advocacy of women's rights. And I hate that it's Democrats who say, "I like her, but she needs to address it." What should she say? Should she confess? "Yes, I threatened those bitches!" Or should she say "I'm sorry I didn't believe the stories, and I was wrong, here Bernie, you be the nominee!" Or should she divorce him, once and for all.

How should she address the issue?

My poor, stupid party.
posted by feste at 5:54 PM on May 19, 2016 [30 favorites]

She's tough and smart. I think she'll figure it out.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:55 PM on May 19, 2016 [11 favorites]

pyramid termite: "reasonable people can be sick and tired of the whole goddamned mess - haven't we heard about this enough?"

I've recently come to a certain realization. Let's say you have a voter for whom 2016 is not their first nor second, but let's say third presidential election cycle that they're eligible to vote in (i.e.: 2008's Obama vs. McCain would have been their first). That voter is under the age of thirty. Which means that they would have been at most 6 years old when Bill Clinton was elected and 13 years old when he was impeached. Unless this hypothetical voter was unusually precocious and interested in politics as a child, they would really not have had that much direct exposure to all of the 1990's "vast right-wing conspiracy" stuff -- Whitewater, who murdered Vince Foster, Arkansas state troopers running drugs out of Little Rock airport, etc. Never mind those even younger voters for whom these things were circulating before they were even born...

Sometimes I wonder if there is actually a noticeable chunk of the Democratic electorate who has not acquired immunity to these memetic viruses. At the same time, maybe this isn't all bad. There were definitely people in the 1990s on the Dem side who dismissed the sexual harassment accusations against Bill Clinton because they automatically lumped them into all the other crazy stuff coming out of the Arkansas Project.
posted by mhum at 5:55 PM on May 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

A meta meta comment:

To me, the back and forth in this thread over allegations of malfeasance within the Democratic Party is another sign that the 2 candidate system, both within and without the party, is something that needs serious reform. Both are the natural result of first past the post voting and a lack of a preferential voting system.

There is close to zero viability for independents and other parties, so we end up with an environment where sometimes we cannot cede ground for fear of damaging the prospects of a candidate in the general election.
posted by kyp at 5:56 PM on May 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

I am Lewinsky's age, and it was utterly, painfully clear that she was so naively getting thrown under a bus driven by a woman named Tripp.
posted by Dashy at 5:59 PM on May 19, 2016 [21 favorites]

Just a quick re-review of a few of the manifest problems with the primary process, which long predate Sanders and which will continue long after he is forgotten (assuming they aren't fixed any time soon):

- Caucuses *
- First states are overwhelmingly white and somewhat conservative *
- Sequencing more generally, which is almost inevitably biased +
- Sheer length of the process (which is separate from the sequence) *
- Super-delegates +
- Party control of the process that is free to favor certain candidates +
- No voice for Independents who are behaviorally Democrats +
- Insane patchwork of state systems that are opaque to most voters +/*
- Media focus on wins, momentum, optics, etc, that makes everyone stupider +/*

Note that about half of these flaws helped Sanders (*), and about half helped Clinton (+). So in addition to reflecting most established norms of democratic representation, it's also fairly non-partisan to say that the system badly needs reform.
posted by chortly at 6:02 PM on May 19, 2016 [21 favorites]

And to think that America turned down the opportunity to make this guy president.
posted by schmod at 6:03 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Ugh, okay, so I just kind of did a mental exercise and tried to be like a late-comer J.Q. Public type of voter, who turns on the news and sees:
-Trump is actually starting to look like an adult. Winning the nomination and meeting with Ryan and Mitch McConnell in DC, heading down to NJ to help Chris Christie. Probably looking presidential, at least more presidential than the other side...
-Which is still smarting from the Nevada Caucus meltdown over freaking five delegates. Both sides pointing fingers at each other and busy fighting about inside baseball stuff, which most regular folks either wonder why the Democrats didn't settle way before this election or just proves to them that, "Gee, those Democrats are sure a contentious people". Then we have Clinton, who now is being seen as a weak general candidate, because she can't wrap up the nomination and unite the party. And then there's Bernie Sanders who hates the Party he's running in and threatening to unleash hell.

This is actually looking like a very, very good month for Donald Trump. And we don't have many months left on the calendar, so I really hope somebody other than Trump knows what they're doing at this point.
posted by FJT at 6:04 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Bernie Sander had one child out of wedlock and is on his third marriage. He met his current wife while she was working for him at city hall.
posted by humanfont at 6:06 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

I am Lewinsky's age, and it was utterly, painfully clear that she was so naively getting thrown under a bus driven by a woman named Tripp.

where is Bill Clinton's role in this?

wat?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:06 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Are ordinary voters mostly even aware of the craziness in Nevada? My guess is that they're mostly not.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:06 PM on May 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

J. Q. Public isn't paying attention to the 24-hour-election-coverage-cycle yet and won't be until at least September.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:06 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Actually, I take that back partially -- I think a lot of typically nonpolitical people are side-eying (at the least) Donald Trump.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:08 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

I don't follow, humanfont. Is your comment in response to something, or just a random fact dump?
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 6:08 PM on May 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

FJT: "This is actually looking like a very, very good month for Donald Trump. And we don't have many months left on the calendar, so I really hope somebody other than Trump knows what they're doing at this point."

Don't forget: we haven't had even one Trump-Clinton debate yet. There are four presidential debates currently scheduled, with the first one in September.
posted by mhum at 6:11 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

What should HRC do if she still genuinely doesn't believe Bill's accusers? Seriously? What if she actually thinks that this is all inflated, because unlike the rest of us, she was much closer to the situation?

I have no doubt she knows/believes that he committed adultery and could've behaved badly. That horse is so beaten to death you couldn't even make glue out of it (not that people don't keep trying). But to the extent his actions were criminal? Violent? I'm not talking about what I believe -- what if HRC straight up doesn't believe it?
posted by scaryblackdeath at 6:11 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

To be fair, one of those is a VP debate.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 6:12 PM on May 19, 2016

I know I'm descending into fury, but maybe that's just how we women react.
posted by feste at 6:13 PM on May 19, 2016

And for the record: I'm not at all trying to defend Bill Clinton and his behavior with women. I just see it as entirely possible that HRC may still not buy anyone's story but his. What I sincerely don't believe is that she stayed with him after the Lewinsky scandal simply for political expediency. I think she still loves him, so I fully expect she might still have an actual problem believing the ugliest stuff.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 6:18 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

If his speeches were policy-focused, if he was attempted to address actual issues, then his claim that he's staying in order to influence policy would seem more legit.

The thing is, he is still giving those speeches, and with every local event, he's been making a real effort to connect his policies to the specific hardships that affect those people. It's just that he's also saying all the other stuff. It's my opinion that the higher ups in his campaign really don't know what they're doing. There's been a perception from the very beginning that he couldn't possibly win. Nearly a year ago, people were already talking about how him running would only weaken support for the clear and obvious winner. I think he can and should be pushing against that and making it clear that his proposals are serious, and that he was and is worth voting for as a serious candidate. I think he should be making a case for why you shouldn't assume it's all over because of Super Tuesday.

But I think he doesn't know how to do that because he's never had to. It's infinitely frustrating because he's been saying some really amazing things lately, but it's all getting dominated by the horse race aspect of this. He should know better, and he certainly knows that incendiary comments get more eyeballs than statements about the experience of being a blue collar worker, or the decline of historically Black colleges. It's a shame, and as much as I want to be mad at the media for making headlines out of one thing over the other, I also think he should have known better and that he brought this on himself. It's frustrating, and a disappointment, and I hate having to be on the defensive about supporting him, all because he's trying to play hardball instead of doing what made people like me want to support him in the first place.
posted by teponaztli at 6:19 PM on May 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

I can't not associate "beige" with a dumb conversation I had with someone 10-15 years ago. Every time I read it or hear it I start to hear Rob Thomas choking out a note.
posted by downtohisturtles at 6:19 PM on May 19, 2016

I mean the really crazy/sad thing is that Trump's ex-wife accused *him* of rape after a botched scalp surgery thingie I don't even really know. But she wrote it all out very explicitly. So the hubris of a guy who likely raped his ex-wife going after the wife of a guy with sexual skeletons in the closets... I mean it's really bizarre. But Trump don't give a shit.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:26 PM on May 19, 2016 [22 favorites]

I've recently come to a certain realization. Let's say you have a voter for whom 2016 is not their first nor second, but let's say third presidential election cycle that they're eligible to vote in (i.e.: 2008's Obama vs. McCain would have been their first). That voter is under the age of thirty. Which means that they would have been at most 6 years old when Bill Clinton was elected and 13 years old when he was impeached. Unless this hypothetical voter was unusually precocious and interested in politics as a child, they would really not have had that much direct exposure to all of the 1990's "vast right-wing conspiracy" stuff -- Whitewater, who murdered Vince Foster, Arkansas state troopers running drugs out of Little Rock airport, etc. Never mind those even younger voters for whom these things were circulating before they were even born...

I do think this is an important piece of it. I am this age, though I am the precocious voter you describe who remembers watching the impeachment proceedings while in elementary school. There was, in fact, a vast right-wing conspiracy against the Clintons that was devoted to undermining the legitimacy of Bill's presidency. The fact that they eventually managed to come up with something that stuck after throwing everything else at the wall does not undermine that.

And that's not to say that Bill doesn't have a problem or that victims of sexual assault shouldn't be taken seriously. But people have been screaming "Clinton = Bad" for so long that we've all forgotten who started it or why we all still think it.
posted by zachlipton at 6:28 PM on May 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

The Trump anti-semitic brigade is out in force again.

This is utterly fucking terrifying.
posted by zachlipton at 6:28 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

I guess we've reached that part of the season where the Democrats en masse start freaking out about how they're going to blow it this time.
posted by dw at 6:30 PM on May 19, 2016 [19 favorites]

It's really amazingly annoying that the most substantive response to the well considered comment that sotonohito made was to criticize the "beige" metaphor, after people both explicitly and implicitly expressed complete shock that Bernie-or-bust is a thing.
posted by TypographicalError at 6:31 PM on May 19, 2016 [25 favorites]

A box... There has been plenty of talk in this thread and elsewhere about Bill and Hillary's marriage problems, why does the Sanders get a pass for his behavior?
posted by humanfont at 6:33 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Metafilter obviously has an enlightened culture of believing rape reports until proven false but the reality is most of the world doesn't operate in that mode and that certainly wasn't the norm in the 90s.

Is there truth to the allegations against Bill? Quite possibly yes but there is absolutely no way that proof could ever be attained or else Starr would of found it. And for a lot of people there is still a default assumption of innocent until proven guilty even though that burden is undeniably biased against rape victims.

In contrast we have volumes of complete false conspiracy theories reflecting the right wing obsession with Bill and Hillary so I can totally understand why many people are unwilling to believe the allegations against Bill and Hillary.

The reality is that Trump is trying to bring up these allegations now to upset polling that pretty much guarantees a crushing loss in November.
posted by vuron at 6:33 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

What does MF usually say about people who deny rape allegations?

There are two options one has in responding to rape allegation. One is to support the idea that the accusation is true. The other is to say that there's a conspiracy against the assailant. Usually, the weight of probability is heavily in favor of the former, but in Bill's highly unusual case it's so clear that there are conspiracies against him that the situation is much harder to judge, especially given Broaddrick's claim that Hillary was essentially a co-conspirator in the rape, which I find hard to believe given her long record as a feminist.
posted by vathek at 6:35 PM on May 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

I find the double-standards about politicians' behavior totally galling, humanfont, and I have no doubt that Bernie would have been disqualified from the get-go if he were a woman, but it's still kind of gross to go after someone for purely personal behavior that's their own business. I just wish women could have the same privileges that Bernie takes for granted.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:39 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

If you think you can guess who does not participate in or enable abuse based on past history of apparently being a good person in public, I have some bad news for you.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:40 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

A box... There has been plenty of talk in this thread and elsewhere about Bill and Hillary's marriage problems, why does the Sanders get a pass for his behavior?

Mostly because he's not going to get the nomination.
posted by box at 6:40 PM on May 19, 2016

humanfont, are you actually saying that divorce and having a child out of wedlock should trouble us about our candidates? They seem to me to be very different from concerns over the appearance of enabling sexual abuse, but perhaps you think Bernie should address the nation about having a child out of wedlock? If you want to tell us how you feel, just tell us how you feel.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 6:41 PM on May 19, 2016 [28 favorites]

posted by box at 6:40 PM on May 19

posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 6:41 PM on May 19

I can't wait to see what comes next.
posted by downtohisturtles at 6:44 PM on May 19, 2016 [24 favorites]

So we're what? Blaming Hillary Clinton for the stuff Bill Clinton did now? Can we not? Please?

Let's just leave that sort of crap to Donald Trump and his supporters.

I don't think Hillary Clinton really needs to, or should, say anything at all about her husband's affairs. It has nothing at all to do with her candidacy.
posted by sotonohito at 6:45 PM on May 19, 2016 [27 favorites]

I would like to talk about the fact that I'm a little scared that Trump supporters are literally going to kill me, but apparently that's not as interesting as the Democrats' personal lives.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:51 PM on May 19, 2016 [53 favorites]

How about this: it's entirely possible HRC regrets how she reacted to her husband's affairs and/or abuse but since she chose to stay with him and due to the political and social reality, she can't say so. Consider this: a large portion of Americans are still prone to blaming the woman (for abuse, for getting raped, whatever.) There is no way HRC can talk specifically about cases very close to her because we don't allow politicians to admit they were wrong and this isn't a political hill worth climbing because most Americans won't give a damn about the nuances (they blame the women too!) We especially don't let women be wrong. She's damned by many if she doesn't "stand by her man" but damned by a much smaller number if she were to drop him. There's no room for her to say she's married to a human being who made mistakes but their partnership is worth keeping. Certainly there's no room for her to talk about it publicly without someone being upset. The reality is she can do a lot more for abuse victims by making sure that drummed up sex scandals get as little attention as possible. And yes I say drummed up because the reality is the vast majority of Americans only have heard about it or care about Bill Clinton's because it's a convenient way to demonize him (and her). It's only coming up now because Trump said something awful. Do we really believe he cares an iota for rape victims from the 90s?
posted by R343L at 6:54 PM on May 19, 2016 [35 favorites]

Or what R343L said much more eloquently.
posted by feste at 6:58 PM on May 19, 2016

I was always going to support the Democratic nominee, whoever that was. (I said in an early thread I would vote for a Satan/sentient Ebola virus ticket if I were reasonably confident they'd support the Democratic party platform and keep the GOP out of the White House.) But I was hoping the nominee would be Sanders, and even when it was clear that wasn't going to happen, I still had a lot of respect for him. And I dismissed the Bernie Bro problems and some of the nasty campaigning as just a minority of jerks any campaign picks up along the way. Until yesterday. TPM isn't as good as it used to be, but I still have confidence in Josh Marshall's information, and if he's convinced the nasty tenor that the Sanders campaign has taken recently is directly attributable to Bernie, then I'm out. Not that it matters, because Clinton has it all but sewn up, but I hate it that he's closing the campaign in a way that turns off reasonable supporters and potentially damages the party. I'm really disappointed, because there is a lot to like about Sanders' positions, and he started the campaign in a really hopeful, honorable way. But that's not how he's ending it, and endings count.

To be clear, I don't think he needs to drop out. Campaign in every state. Get your message out. But do it in a way that makes it clear who the real danger is--and it's not Clinton and the DNC.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 6:59 PM on May 19, 2016 [35 favorites]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I have become weary of writing out the same responses to the same arguments that are made by the same people every few hundred comments or so.

That goes both ways, too. At this point I've stopped bothering to answer when people ask "why do you support Sanders?" because it's guaranteed that it'll turn into the exact same conversation I've been having with people for the past year. "But have you considered..." Yes, yes I have, thank you.
posted by teponaztli at 7:00 PM on May 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

Bill's a creep and we'll never know exactly how creepy. But I'm pretty sure Hillary, as the cheated-upon, as one of the victims of his creepery. And she has lived in the shadow of this for just as long as Monica Lewinsky. And her reputation and personal life have been put out there for judgement and slurs and smears too. And it sucks for her too.
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:01 PM on May 19, 2016 [12 favorites]

Of all the shitty things that happened in regards to Lewinsky, including her boss's bad behavior, the backstabbing by a supposed friend and confidante, the ridiculous inquisition she handled from the special prosecutor, the media bullying, etc it seems that Hillary Clinton's response of blaming the other woman is while an unfair and mean response is also a totally human one especially considering her own history of being relentlessly attacked.

I think most of us would like to imagine we would be better more compassionate humans in similar circumstances but I personally don't know that I wouldn't have made the same mistakes. The reality is that I try to be compassionate to both Monica and Hillary knowing that both suffered based upon the failures of other people.
posted by vuron at 7:04 PM on May 19, 2016 [29 favorites]

That goes both ways, too. At this point I've stopped bothering to answer when people ask "why do you support Sanders?" because it's guaranteed that it'll turn into the exact same conversation I've been having with people for the past year. "But have you considered..." Yes, yes I have, thank you.

For what it's worth, I don't think anyone in these threads (or at least the past few threads) has questioned why someone supports Sanders. I believe any questions have been directed towards the "Bernie or Bust" crowd, but I feel that's a different scenario.

To be clear, I don't think he needs to drop out. Campaign in every state. Get your message out. But do it in a way that makes it clear who the real danger is--and it's not Clinton and the DNC.

This is my feeling about Sanders, and I think this is why he is seeing such a backlash after Nevada. Prior to that one could still make the argument he was not the originator of the nastiness, but his failure to condemn his supporters' behavior at the caucus and his ramping up of attacks on the DNC/Clinton tears away any pretense.
posted by Anonymous at 7:04 PM on May 19, 2016

Bernie Sanders 2016: Noise Band: "Hello my name is Bernie Sanders ... for my entire political career I've worked to create an economy that's worked for everybody and not just billionaires. I am also in a fucked up noise band called Frog Piss."
posted by mcmile at 7:05 PM on May 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

It's really amazingly annoying that the most substantive response to the well considered comment that sotonohito made was to criticize the "beige" metaphor, after people both explicitly and implicitly expressed complete shock that Bernie-or-bust is a thing.

To an extent, I agree, but I think some of the reaction comes from people who were following the previous election thread, which had a lot of beige talk too toward the end. It's frankly an annoying phrase (makes me think of the Neutrals from Futurama to be honest) and it's not one that starts sounding any better the more you hear it.

That said, I also think the "beige dictatorship" theory ignores the very real consequences that these elections actually have on actual people, some of them are here in this thread. To argue that Clinton is just a bland corporate suit pushing unwanted mediocre policies while maintaining the status quo (and I apologize if that sounds like I'm setting up a strawman, but that's basically how I understand the beige dictatorship essay) is to be in the privileged position of ignoring the people who have their basic human rights at stake in this election.

To give just a few examples, we're talking about millions of immigrants currently shielded from deportation by executive actions that could be repealed in an instant, 1.6 billion Muslims around the world that Trump would ban on the basis of their religion, who know how many Hispanic and Muslim Americans who feel threatened to be at home in their own country right now, LGBT people whose rights have been under attack, women who would like there to be some remotely accessible way to get an abortion, or Jews who are now discovering that criticizing the Republican nominee results in neo-Nazis coming out the woodwork to attack you. To argue that we're stuck in a meaningless beige dictatorship means that getting health insurance for millions of Americans meant nothing or that it wasn't important to have an administration that (yes, finally) fought with us for marriage equality, and now trans equality, rather than standing in the way. To embrace the beige dictatorship means that raising the minimum wage (however much you raise it) and seeking to make college more affordable (however you do that) are equally preferable policies to another massive tax cut for the rich with the intent of hacking the federal government to pieces.

The #1 thing we're fighting for right now is to not undo essentially all the progress we've made. That's supremely frustrating, yes, but it's where we are. Of course I want more, and it's obvious that this kind of fight to maintain the status quo serves entrenched powerful interests, who by definition, benefit from the status quo, more than anyone else, but that's where we are right now. To an awful lot of people, the issues I talked about above, among others, are starkly black and white issues and are not in any way beige. And to dismiss Clinton as simply beige (even while recognizing the greater evil and without being a Bernie or Buster) is to ignore their voices.
posted by zachlipton at 7:05 PM on May 19, 2016 [49 favorites]

askmefi would have told Hillary emphatically to DTMFA with each successive reveal.
posted by futz at 7:07 PM on May 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

I saw a Bernie-or-Buster once! 1951, back in Sequoia National Park. Had a foot on him, thirty-seven inches, heel to toe. Made a sound I would not want to hear twice in my life.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:15 PM on May 19, 2016 [17 favorites]

Hillary didn't sexually assault anyone. I'm not seeing ANY evidence she abetted Bill. She is married to him, but she is her own person. The efforts she has made to support women are huge and awesome. She is on track to break the highest glass ceiling in the USA this year

Meanwhile she will shortly face a hateful sexist racist bully who can't wait to be best friends with dome of the world's worst dictators and trash our alliances and roll back every progressive step via the Supreme Court appointments the next President will surely have.

We need to unite. We need to look hard at TRUMP and the party now embracing him. A hell of a lot is at stake.
posted by bearwife at 7:17 PM on May 19, 2016 [36 favorites]

From the RS link h-dogg posted at the start,

Donald Trump, unhinged pig

That is all.
I'm petebest and I approve this message.
posted by petebest at 7:19 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

I've haven't been paying attention to the "Hillary is terrible because her husband cheated on her" stuff because, well who gives a shit. But, are people mad at her because of how she felt and about and treated Lewinsky?

I'm a dude, but if my wife cheated on me, the absolutely last person's feelings I'd be worried about would be the other man who fucked my wife.
posted by sideshow at 7:21 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

I'm a dude, but if my wife cheated on me, the absolutely last person's feelings I'd be worried about would be the other man who fucked my wife.

I mean, with all due respect, there are all sorts of gender implications and power issues that don't look the same when you switch roles.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:24 PM on May 19, 2016 [18 favorites]

Yeah the biege dictatorship bullshit is a false narrative heavily promoted by really privileged people mainly because they fell like they should have increased access to power because why not they are really smart and work hard. So it becomes easy to imagine a vast conspiracy of bankers and billionaires.

Of course at the same time it's okay to dismiss the votes of minorities because they are ignorant idiots.

Yes corporate and monied interests have excessive influence and both parties are heavily staffed by technocrats but the data increasingly shows that these monied interests are increasingly negating each other because money doesn't always translate to people power.

Furthermore it seems like 90 of the hardcore support for both Sanders and Trump seem to be buying into a repackaging of the current great man and disruptor narrative that is so popular among Silicon Valley douchebros. I actually wouldn't be shocked if at some point in time we find that a lot of the social media power driving both candidates has been provided by some very smart and motivated programmers.

But like so many SV disruption specialists it seems both Sanders and Trump are remarkable in having the vaguest idea of how to implement their policies when they disrupt Washington.
posted by vuron at 7:24 PM on May 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Rashomon taught me that the Truth of a narrative largely depends on your position within the events forming the plot points of that.narrative. I have no doubt that Hillary has a different perspective than Monica or that of a third party media consumer.

DrinkyDie- Citizens United does need to be reversed but this election has shown that if you have 5 or more Republican billionaires each backing a different candidate chances are none of them will actually be the nominee.

CU has a massive impact on down ballot elections but the data seems to be showing that Super PAC money has a poor return on investment for the presidential election at least. And at least for most of these billionaires they don't get rich betting on long shots with poor odds.
posted by vuron at 7:38 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Clinton is for overturning Citizen's United. She said it would be her metric in appointing Supreme Court nominees.
posted by feste at 7:38 PM on May 19, 2016 [12 favorites]

"what happened in Nevada is a pretty clear signal that Sanders supporters aren't welcome in the local party operations."

So, the thing is, all local party representatives are elected from registered Democrats in their given counties. In California, we're voting on committee members as part of the primary. It's those representatives and captains that eventually end up setting the caucus and election rules through the state party (very simplified). If you don't think that the rules set up by the state party are fair, you can run in your local precinct elections, convince a handful of people to vote for you, then lobby your fellow party members to change the rules. If you get the votes, you win.

Most of the Sanders supporters in Nevada had just as much opportunity as anyone else to set the rules for delegates, but they didn't. If they want to fix that so that more progressive candidates have a better shot in the future, they can participate in the process. That the current Nevada state party may not want them there is kind of immaterial — they have to convince a majority of voters or accept that a majority of their fellow party members prefer another vision.

I can get not being familiar with this stuff, as it's a bureaucratic morass in a lot of ways, but that highlights the general perception of Sanders voters as political novices who confuse the righteousness of their views with prevailing in a process. Don't throw chairs — organize!
posted by klangklangston at 7:38 PM on May 19, 2016 [19 favorites]

They didn't throw chairs did they?
posted by futz at 7:43 PM on May 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

I think we should stop trying to overturn Citizen's United. The money cancels out and doesn't translate to people power and rich interests working together to maintain power is imaginary and made up by people I think are douchebags.

I don't think it's just as simple as "the money cancels out." It may well cancel out when it comes to this candidate vs that candidate (see also: Jeb!), but it really doesn't when it comes to spreading FUD to maintain the status quo (which inherently benefits the people with money and power) vs advocating for change.

But there are also inherent free speech problems with preventing wealthy and corporate interests from spreading whatever messages they think will help their agendas. The only real solutions I've got are a better press that's capable of exposing and refuting lies and a more educated citizenry that's capable of critical thinking. I'm not holding my breath.

To me, the real problem is that Citizen's United undermines any sort of future campaign finance reform effort, because what's the point of contribution limits if every campaign turns into a just-barely-legally-coordinated multi-billion-dollar effort?
posted by zachlipton at 7:44 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

I am implying that this will never happen. HRC is not going to confess. Don't you get that there is literally nothing she can say about it if she wants to be elected? Anything she says only fodder for her enemies.

Hopefully the best brains (and hearts) in her campaign are furiously working on this as we speak, because it will be an issue. Tactic #1 in the Karl Rove playbook is attacking the person's biggest strength, which is Hillary's support among women. There might be something she could say along the lines of

"Finding out that my husband violated the trust of our marriage is the most painful thing I've gone through in my life, and many women understand what that's like. We do our best to stay classy and compassionate, even toward the other women but it's REALLY FUCKING HARD. (tears) I'm sorry. I... You ... You can't imagine how much I wish none of this happened, there's a million things I could have done differently inside and outside of my relationship with Bill before and after these affairs. But we can't always choose how life turns out, and we just do the best we can. We're human and we do our best. My heart goes out to every woman who has had to deal with this, including my opponent's wives, and that is all I have to say on the subject."
posted by msalt at 7:47 PM on May 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Citizens United does need to be reversed but this election has shown that if you have 5 or more Republican billionaires each backing a different candidate chances are none of them will actually be the nominee

This election also showed a people funded candidate losing hard to a candidate who fully embraced the post-Citizens United reality in their fundraising approach. That candidate is also going to be President, in part on the back of that fundraising. The advantage the super pac money gave Clinton was not neutralized.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:48 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Obama gave his "A More Perfect Union" speech on March 18 (much earlier than I remember). The Democratic nominee was going to win anyway, but that speech probably won him the election. He took a sleazy political attack and turned it into an opportunity to talk about race in America. It checked the two major boxes for his candidacy: he acknowledged the role that race was going to play in the election and it showed how he would handle political controversy (answer: pretty brilliantly). He addressed the role of racism in the campaign early and neutralized it before it could turn into a conflagration later in the season.

I think Clinton has a similar opportunity with the accusations about her husband and how she deal with his accusers. Use it as a jumping off point to talk about sexism in this country. Talk about the awful gender imbalances in play. The things Wright said are inexcusable, and some of her husband's actions were, too. But her candidacy is about improving our country so that the system itself makes their actions less likely in the future. There's no un-saying what Wright said and no un-doing what Bill did, but the right president in the White House can move the country forward on the systematic problems that made such things possible in the first place.

I don't know whether Clinton has it in her to give a speech like Obama's - few do. But it seems like an opportunity to put that particular line of attack behind her.
posted by one_bean at 7:48 PM on May 19, 2016 [24 favorites]

They didn't throw chairs did they?

Reported as yes, but now unconfirmed.
posted by klangklangston at 7:48 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

zachlipton I can see where you're coming from here, and I don't actually disagree and I'm sorry if I sounded dismissive or indifferent to the people who are hurt by current policy or will be hurt by Republicans in office. The choice this time, between Trump and Clinton is quite stark. More of the same vs. Chaotic Evil, and I think the correct choice there is self evident.

I've said before and in other threads that simply for the Supreme Court voting anything but Democratic this time around is damaging to a lot of people.

And for what it's worth, I do see the Democratic party as being vastly superior to the Republicans in a number of essential and critical areas, I'm not out here claiming that they're all the same.

But, I also think that there are deep, dangerous, structural problems with the US economy and society and that however much better it is to have Clinton (and what I'd argue is largely a continuation of the policies and positions of the Obama presidency) than Trump, that still leaves the massive, dangerous, structural problems in the USA essentially unaddressed because I don't think Clinton, or Obama, or really any mainline national level Democratic politician is capable of even acknowledging those deep structural problems. Their livelihood, their political careers, and all the people they care about are contingent on them pretending that the deep structural problems are simply not there and that what the USA needs, at absolute most, is some minor tinkering.

I do genuinely think that Clinton represents, basically, more of the same where "the same" is triangulating, centrist, and basically well intentioned but operating from a worldview and set of priorities found among the elites and largely unaware of, if not aggressively indifferent to, the problems faced by most people.

This concerns me both because I'd like to see the deep structural problems addressed [1], and because I fear that when they are left unaddressed it vastly increased the odds of a populist right uprising which I believe will inevitably result in a Fascist or quasi-Fascist state.

Donald Trump didn't just appear out of nowhere. He exists as a political force only because a sizable number of American voters are harmed by the deep structural problems and see him as the only person who is addressing them.

And, depressingly, he is. He's addressing the deep structural problems with bigotry and lies, but the fact that he's acknowledging them (and promising simple, cheap, solutions that perfectly match the prejudices of his voters) is the basis of his success. I don't think it'll be enough this time, but the simmering resentment that he's tapped into won't vanish when (please) Clinton wins the 2016 elections.

Thus the Beige Dictatorship talk. Because from my POV she is, due to her birth, her upbringing, her current connections, friends, family, and status, fundamentally unable to even admit the problems exist. The billionaire class **CAN'T** admit that there are deep structural problems, because if they do then their wealth is in danger, and she's part of that billionaire class.

So yes, she'll help and is a good person for the stuff that doesn't threaten the core interests of the billionaire class (their money). On those issues she'll be great. GLBT issues, yup. Pro-Choice issues? She's our candidate. Even to an extent (but only to an extent) healthcare and minimum wage. She's from the smart billionaire faction and knows perfectly well that a sick or starving worker is not a productive worker, and is also likely a basically compassionate person who actually gives a shit about her fellow human beings. All unlike Donald Trump who is almost certainly a genuine sociopath or narcissistic and will burn the country just to see what happens, or Mitt Romney who (regardless of personal feelings) is beholden to theocrats who hate women and want to make them suffer, and who frankly doesn't care of the peasants starve or not because he's too short sighted to realize the danger that sort of thinking represents.

I don't at all try to pretend that the Republicans and Democrats are identical or that one isn't vastly preferable to the other.

But I do think that neither is willing or capable of acknowledging a huge set of problems we face, and that's where the Beige Dictatorship talk comes from.

When it comes to the basic existence and operation of corporate America, the basic way banks exist and do business, the basic question of whether or not the billionaire class should be able to parasite out all the money, Clinton, Romney, Junior, Obama, etc really are on essentially the same side. They all agree that the status quo on corporations, banks, and billionaires is basically ok and that, at most, what is needful is a bit of tinkering around the edges. And none will ever, under any circumstances, take even the slightest action that could seriously endanger the status quo for those organizations and people.

Which is where the Trump supporters actually do have the truth on their side. Trump will disrupt the status quo for bankers, business, and billionaires. He'll do so in harmful and dangerous ways, he'll do so to enrich his friends and ruin his enemies, and he'll have not the slightest concern for the people who elected him; but he will change the status quo.

And to the bigots who are hurting that looks like a good deal, and will continue to look like a good deal as long as the billionaire parasite class is taking all the money and leaving them with nothing. Trump is just the first, and we're incredibly lucky that he's such an incompetent buffoon. Can you imagine how bad it will be when a competent politician starts tapping into that rising tide of right wing populism?

Either we start addressing the problems of banks, billionaires, and business, or we will see repeats of Trumplike politicians, all with increasing success, in all the future elections, until finally they win.

It isn't enough to stop Trump now. That's necessary, but not sufficient. We, and by we I mean the Democratic party and the Democratic voters, must end the conditions that allow right wing populist politicians to rise. And that's going to mean taking a lot of money way from billionaires, breaking up a shit ton of banks and business, all of which are unthinkable to the Democratic establishment right now.

I'll acknowledge that the term Beige Dictatorship is apparently a bad term to use. I thought it was a very convenient shorthand, but obviously not. So I'm retiring it. But I think what I meant by it, and the concerns I have about the establishment politicians (of all parties, but I focus on the Democrats because I view the Republicans as a total lost cause), are valid.

[1] Note that I don't expect any candidate to actually be able to solve the deep structural problems on their own, I'm well aware that the powers of the Presidency basically are the veto and the bully pulpit. But simply having someone even honestly talking about the real problems would be a start, and if they were willing to start aggressively working to get people who wanted to acknowledge and solve the problems elected to Congress then so much the better.
posted by sotonohito at 7:51 PM on May 19, 2016 [46 favorites]

Please. Enlighten me.

Well, I guess I'd start by pointing out that his most popular proposals are deporting 11 million people and temporarily banning Muslims from entering the United States.
posted by FJT at 7:52 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Re lalex's comment above: IIRC, those three specific women didn't make claims of sexual violence. Flowers talked about an affair, Hamzy claimed that she and Bill tried (and failed) to find a place to have sex, and I can't remember any violence associated with Lewinsky's experience with the president. So those quotes from HRC are about women who had or tried to have consensual sex with her husband (keeping in mind that Lewinsky was young and naive and her boss should have kept his damn hands off her).

I don't know what to think about Broaddrick. I'll have to dig into that story.
posted by maudlin at 7:54 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

A Box: Bernie Sanders' relationship with Jane Sanders is also problematic. They began dating around the time he became Mayor. It's not entirely clearly whether he started dating one of his subordinates or (as I've read), he found her a job in city government because they were already dating (which is worse).

But neither one is really OK. And it was a continuing pattern -- it wasn't illegal AFAIK for him to hire Jane and her daughter to work on his reelection campaigns in 2000, 2002 and 2004 and pay them $100,000 combined, but it's certainly skeevy and almost never done for that reason.
posted by msalt at 7:59 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Please refresh and don't respond to deleted comments. Thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 7:59 PM on May 19, 2016

Trump will disrupt the status quo for bankers, business, and billionaires. He'll do so in harmful and dangerous ways, he'll do so to enrich his friends and ruin his enemies, and he'll have not the slightest concern for the people who elected him; but he will change the status quo.

What makes you think this? In what ways will Trump disrupt the status quo, save to hand power to people who are slightly dumber and more unbalanced than they were in the past? Do you think people who are currently rich will be any less rich after Trump, or people who are currently poor will be any less poor? The only thing Trump offers is the opportunity for people who got their pockets lined at the periphery to get their pockets lined directly. And economic collapse. I don't consider any of those to be a change in the status quo, because under Trump there is no risk that the rich White people in power will be any less rich or any less powerful.
posted by Anonymous at 8:01 PM on May 19, 2016

Drink Die- The Clinton Super PACs were basically absent during the nomination process (mainly to reserve cash for the General Election) mainly because except for about a two week period following NH and before SC he could've seriously damaged her.

But the reality is that Sanders has been dramatically raising more than Clinton in terms of hard money contributions and has typically been spending dramatically more than her in virtually every state he has actively campaigned in.

Of course that was in order to fight a better organized opponent with massive name recognition and an organization more than 8 years in development so I can understand why he had to pay premium prices for his media buys and campaign staff but the simple fact of the matter is that almost all of the Clinton dark money (and I admit there is a significant amount) is still in treasure vaults waiting for the General election.

Trump is of course rapidly pivoting from being a "self-funded" candidate to someone desperately looking for Super PAC money for the GE but it's unclear who besides Adelson is going all in on Trump. And let's be clear Adelson is really mainly a single issue donor.

Most of the biggest Republican dark money donors seem to be focusing more on playing defense in the house and Senate with the understanding Trump is an awful candidate but that 4 more years of congressional gridlock basically reaffirms the status quo.

That's the thing that drives me insane about the idea that the beige dictators are pushing a status quo result because honestly if you want status quo all you need to do is make sure that there is no consensus because doing nothing inherently supports the status quo.

Centrist democrats are often accused of being pro-status quo when the reality is that they typically push incremental change rather than sweeping changes but incrementalism can still be extremely powerful in the lives of millions of Americans- evidence being the last 7+ years of Obama.
posted by vuron at 8:01 PM on May 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

That's the thing that drives me insane about the idea that the beige dictators are pushing a status quo result because honestly if you want status quo all you need to do is make sure that there is no consensus because doing nothing inherently supports the status quo.

But what better way to insure there is no consensus than to nominate the two most disliked candidates in history? It's funny because I think we agree on most facts but are coming to very different conclusions about where to direct our fear because of those facts.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:05 PM on May 19, 2016

schroedinger I don't think Trump will disrupt the status quo in any way that is remotely beneficial to his voters or much of anyone else. But he's promising to embroil the US in a trade war against basically the entire planet, encourage nuclear proliferation in Europe and South East Asia, unilaterally end US treaty obligations to various long time allies, and so on.

I certainly don't think he'll help anyone but white men, and only a tiny sliver of white men who properly suck up to him.

But I do imagine that he'd go after various businesses, banks, and billionaires who slighted him. Or are more successful than him. Or who he just plain doesn't like for his own irrational reasons.

I don't think this will be even slightly beneficial, I think it'll be an unmitigated disaster.

But changing the status quo for the worse is still changing it. I don't want it to happen, and I'm not an advocate of all changes to the status quo. I vastly prefer the current status quo to whatever Trump would do. But if he got his way he'd produce a vastly changed America.
posted by sotonohito at 8:07 PM on May 19, 2016

Ruin is change, right?
posted by sotonohito at 8:08 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Reince Priebus minus the vowels is 'RNC PR BS'.
posted by adept256 at 8:10 PM on May 19, 2016 [39 favorites]

Which anagrams to CPR BS RN. Which is basically Priebus's job. Bringing back from the dead a bullshit Republican nomination.
posted by downtohisturtles at 8:14 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's only coming up now because Trump said something awful. Do we really believe he cares an iota for rape victims from the 90s?

In the next few months, Trump will say a lot of things. Some fraction will be really appealing to those on the left, because they will be left policies or will capture far left sentiments. It’s important to focus on the fact that he is the embodiment of a random number generator, not that the random number generator has produced a policy you care about.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:18 PM on May 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

As far as I can tell the majority of Democrats seem to like Clinton a lot. She is leading the vote total by a significant margin especially in states with a closed Democratic primary.

Yes she's deeply unpopular among Republican core voters but honestly these are the same voters that basically left Cruz and Trump as the last idiots standing so honestly fuck them.

So the question mark is whether Clinton's perceived weakness among Independents will cost her the election or if their widespread support of Sanders was more based on a preference for Sanders rather than an antipathy towards Clinton and her policies.

Obviously most Sanders supporters will point to Clinton's perceived weakness among independents as a reason why Sanders should be the nominee with the assumption that 95% of registered Democrats will vote for the Democratic candidate either way. Sanders doing better among independents is "proof" that he'll do even better than Obama 2012 in most states.

However unfortunately while the assumption that most Democrats would vote for Sanders in November regardless it isn't a guarantee that every Sanders primary voter would vote for Sanders in November. Indeed in a decent number of states that he's won there has been a major cross-over effect in the primary which is quite likely to be reversed in the GE.

Furthermore the central conceit is that the super delegates should go with the better general election candidate based rather than respecting the will of the primary and caucus goers to this point. The logical faults and let's be perfectly honest the complete disregard of Sanders previous rhetoric concerning the super delegates just makes this new Sanders campaign position seem delusional and/or desperate and unprincipled.

Considering that Sanders has basically wrapped himself in the mantle of being a principled candidate willing to tilt at windmills to protect the little guy the seeming lack of principle regarding the super delegates undermines his very message in a way that Clinton's appeal to super delegates in 2008 really didn't because the reality is that she never wrapped herself up in so much "principled man" rhetoric in 2008.
posted by vuron at 8:19 PM on May 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

While nothing will ever beat Press Secretary Larry Speakes, but I have learned that there's more value in Reince Priebus' name than I'd ever have thought. Yay metafilter!
posted by sotonohito at 8:19 PM on May 19, 2016

Obligatory.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 8:22 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Ruin is change, right?

Chaos is a ladder!
posted by Justinian at 8:24 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Lots of people duped by the chair throwing story when numerous delegates at the convention said it was false. Snopes. I believe that most of the reporting on that event is wrong and I'd like to know how it spread so far without actual evidence. There is tons of video. Did ANYONE watch it? But too late. The damage is done.
posted by futz at 8:26 PM on May 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

My money is still on Clinton picking a white, straight, older, Southern guy. -- sotonohito

Absolutely. After all, the last time she did that, she ended up in the White House.
posted by rokusan at 8:26 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

sotonohito: I don't think you're wrong about structural problems. Part of the problem is that the problems are, well, structural, so it's inherently difficult to define them and proscribe solutions.

But I guess what it comes down to for me is a doubt that Sanders could have brought about structural change in the way you propose. Sanders has long talked about his "revolution" and the need for his backers to stay with him after he's elected to fight for these policies. But the corpus of Sanders' proposals amount to something more revolutionary than the New Deal, which is something we only got amid the incredibly devastating ruin of the Depression (a situation that was far worse than any we're in now) and some serious battles (court packing anyone?). And he wants to do this in a climate that is far more hostile to change, and with years of built-in hostility to anything resembling "socialism," without the support of the legislature, the unions, or the party rank-and-file. Structural change of the sort you describe is hard enough, because it involves dismantling the interests of powerful people, people who, by definition, have power to stop you. It's a heck of a lot harder when you haven't built up a structure to support it.

So from that perspective, with the idea that I generally liked Sanders and what he was proposing, but didn't think he could sell it, my choice really boils down to effectiveness. For, I'm not convinced that Sanders could actually do anything about a "billionaire class" sitting in that chair. To you, class seems to matter more. But from my perspective, it boils down to "we're lucky to get 10% of what we want, so I want the person I think will be most effective at getting anything," and that's Clinton right now. Which class or team someone plays for is less important to me right now than what we can actually get done.

In short, and as you recognize, with both Sanders and Trump, I'm highly skeptical of anyone who promises to come in as President and make such significant changes against the interests of powerful people who prefer the status quo.
posted by zachlipton at 8:29 PM on May 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

I believe that most of the reporting on that event is wrong and I'd like to know how it spread so far without actual evidence.

Did you see how it spread around here? Folks repeated it because they wanted it to be true.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 8:29 PM on May 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

I wanted to talk about it but dreaded the pile on and still do.
posted by futz at 8:31 PM on May 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

I truly believe that the coverage of what happened in Nevada has been a hit job. In the previous post the articles that were cited as evidence were written by HRC supporters in a GYOB fashion. Very sparse on verifiable facts with tons of video evidence to the contrary. I could talk about this for days but I don't think that it would be productive here. I truly hope that there is a postmortem on how this primary was covered by the media. I am not in conspiracy mode but I believe that there are problems ahead for Hillary, the DNC, and media outlets. Per usual there will be a documentary that comes out in a few years when all the chuckleheads feel safe enough to come out of the woodwork to yuk it up about how they subverted democracy or whatever. Yeah, I know politics is dirty and all that Jazz but this time it really feels like there is some THERE THERE. There will be revelations about Bernie's campaign too for sure. I am a believer in where there is smoke there is fire and Hillary's whole political career has been surrounded by smoke. It can't ALL be a vast right wing conspiracy. She is also responsible for all her own flip flops...oops, I mean evolutions.
posted by futz at 8:32 PM on May 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Five things people should stop saying about Bernie Sanders
posted by lalochezia at 8:36 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

I am certainly willing to accept the idea that no chairs were thrown (though at least one guy clearly picked up a chair as if to throw it before other supporters physically intervened), but there was clearly a ton of anger, yelling, disrupting Boxer's speech, harassment and death threats against the state party chair, her job, and her grandson, etc... The chair really doesn't matter.

The end result of the Nevada convention is a slate of delegates that is more-or-less proportional to the actual caucus vote in Nevada (as a caucus, that's a vote that disenfranchises large numbers of voters, but that's a different problem that should also be addressed). If a couple of delegates really matter, have them; the final result will be the same.
posted by zachlipton at 8:38 PM on May 19, 2016 [19 favorites]

Like wise if a couple delegates didn't matter so much why did the HRC folks fight so hard to get them?
posted by futz at 8:41 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

It is all so weird.
posted by futz at 8:41 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Why would the Cllnton folks choose now of all times to "trump" up a anti-bernie narrative? The reality is that he's already a spent force and Clinton has already moved on to GE mode and has been in effect ignoring the increasingly erratic punches that the Sanders campaign has been trying to throw in recent weeks. There is absolutely nothing that is going to change the nomination math now and the likelihood of superdelegates actually spurning her in any great numbers seems ludicrous.

So what possible gain does she have in promoting an anti-Bernie narrative right now? He's not going to be the nominee and his ability to jam through major no-go platform planks during the convention seem extremely limited.

Muzzling hims might be a motive but it seems like casting him as the kooky college professor that has lost control over his classroom of young student activists limits his potential as a future Clinton campaign surrogate. So either there has been an acceptance that Sanders will simply not endorse Clinton and it's time to make him seem like an idiot or this seems counterproductive.
posted by vuron at 8:42 PM on May 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Exactly. Also, how did 50 people become delegates if they weren't eligible? It's really weird. They already won and now they are pissing off voters they probably need. I don't see what the Democratic Party thinks it is gaining by pushing away Bernie voters.
posted by Golden Eternity at 8:43 PM on May 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

But the silence from her camp and many other quarters regarding the many, multiple accusations of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and rape really saddens and upsets me and I'm not really sure what to do with those feelings.

I agree 100% that Hillary should address this, ideally as part of a larger speech riffing on the long fight against structural sexism and misogyny, sexual harassment in the workplace, the vilification of women for behavior it takes two to engage in, the disbelief when women talk about discrimination, harassment, and rape. Not because it is fair to demand that of her (as opposed to Bill), but because IT IS NOT GOING AWAY no matter how many times the Clintons try to get it to. It's only May and Trump is already accusing Bill Clinton of rape, straight up.

Part of selling your candidacy is telling a coherent story about who you are to the voters. There are lots of things wide swaths of voters buy about Hillary - that she is smart, canny, ambitious, hardworking, meticulous, deeply invested in the equality of women; they know her history of feminism and the potential that she would be the first woman president. But they also know her husband, at the bare minimum, had an affair with a thirty years younger, very subordinate intern while he was one of the most powerful men in the universe and in his mid-fifties and then very publicly lied about it and dragged her name and life through a mud so thick Monica's still stuck in it; and they think they know that Hillary had something to do with the smearing of the numerous other women who came forward again and again ("bimbo eruptions") to say her husband engaged in inappropriate behavior up to and including rape. For many people, this part of her story does not square.

Is it fair to demand that she explain her choices around her husband's ridiculously poor behavior, when she is interviewing for a job? No. But that doesn't mean she can just ignore the question and everyone will go "oh okay." She needs a damn good answer to it. She needs to somehow use this question to segue into her version of Obama's speech on race. But her choices so far, including failure to address this question and making Bill a significant part of her campaign and her promises for Bill's role once she's in office indicate to me that she is not willing to go there. I wonder whether this is an "elephant in the room" kind of topic on the campaign - something staffers are afraid to talk about candidly with her.
posted by sallybrown at 8:44 PM on May 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

Like wise if a couple delegates didn't matter so much why did the HRC folks fight so hard to get them?

But this goes the other way: if a couple of delegates didn’t matter so much, why did Sanders’ supporters get so riled up about their rule violations. It’s really weird.

These are fraught situations all around.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:45 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's only May and Trump is already accusing Bill Clinton of rape, straight up.

Trump and a bunch of you all here, too!
posted by feste at 8:46 PM on May 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

GTM, I was responding to zachlipton.
posted by futz at 8:47 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

And the chair...multiple chairs even(!) thing was a hit job based on no evidence. I stand by my words until proven otherwise
posted by futz at 8:49 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

But this goes the other way: if a couple of delegates didn’t matter so much, why did Sanders’ supporters get so riled up about their rule violations. It’s really weird.

These are fraught situations all around.

But that is irrelevant as Sanders has lost the nomination. It is now Hillary and the Democratic establishments' job to win the election, they are responsible for the choices they are making, and they shouldn't be getting into it like this with Sanders, imo.
posted by Golden Eternity at 8:49 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump and a bunch of you all here, too!

Not sure how you define a bunch, and why you're ignoring the difference between mentioning Bill has been accused of rape (fact) and saying the allegation was true (has anyone at all said this? I certainly have not).
posted by sallybrown at 8:50 PM on May 19, 2016

evidence being the last 7+ years of Obama.

During which time wealth inequality and unrest have continued to grow, the banks have consolidated even further, speculation has continued to run rampant, good jobs have continued to disappear, interventionism has continued to describe our foreign policy involvement, Guantanamo has remained open, state governments around the country have been run into the ground by powerful right wing wackos, health care has remained inaccessibly costly for millions and millions of people, ...

I love Obama. He is a great man. His was not a perfect presidency, whatever the circumstances. When those of us who say it say that we do not want more of the same, maybe don't tell us what we're saying isn't as important as we think it is. (Let's leave it at "it can't be done," because at least we can simply disagree on that.)
posted by an animate objects at 8:52 PM on May 19, 2016 [21 favorites]

It's only May and Trump is already accusing Bill Clinton of rape, straight up.

Trump and a bunch of you all here, too!

I agree with Hillary Clinton about how people should respond. I just don't have the same view of the evidence she apparently does. I haven't seen enough to say I disbelieve their claims.

At a campaign event in New Hampshire, a woman asked Hillary Clinton, “You say that all rape victims should be believed, but you say that about Juanita Broderick, Kathleen Wiley, and/or Paula Jones? Should we believe them, as well?"

Clinton responded, “Well, I would say that everybody should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence.”
posted by Drinky Die at 8:55 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

I feel like there are decades old things (and newer things) I would like Sanders to address but since he's losing I wonder whether mentioning them seems petty, on the other hand, to the extent he is choosing to both still be in the race and to treat it like an open contest, maybe it's hypocritical or patronizing NOT to say them? But maybe it's more politic to 'court' Sanders supported by not saying them? But I don't want to implicitly affirm the idea that Clinton is somehow uniquely morally compromised (while Sanders is not), because I think it is sexist and harmful both to women and the election and Trump's narrative about her. It feels like a tightrope. How do I be enthusiastic and legitimately partisan (because if an election is not a time to be partisan I don't know what is) for Clinton without alienating fellow progressives (who might not see me as a fellow just because I support Clinton), many of whom, at least around me, are actually pretty high visibility/social/cultural/economic status, in many ways higher than I am?

Maybe that's why support for Clinton seems muted and the narrative that she doesn't inspire enthusiasm in supporters has legs. Maybe I should wear a Clinton t-shirt. But would it just invite harassment? I don't know!!

(And I don't think of myself as sheeple or a beige and I am not completely uncritical of Clinton's political history or even current choices, nor completely uncritical of democratic processes, political establishments, etc. But I'm not sure how to counter the idea that enthusiastically supporting her means I'm a sheeple without dignifying the idea that I'm kind of a moron incapable of nuance. I don't know!!)
posted by Salamandrous at 9:15 PM on May 19, 2016 [19 favorites]

I'm not convinced that in the modern world with capital being hypermobile that the idea that any political figure can somehow undo decades of converting the US from being a manufacturing centric economy to a service, information and consumer driven economy. I'm not even convinced that reversing that shift would necessarily be a great thing for the world in general. Yes there has been a lot of American workers hurt in the shift of manufacturing jobs overseas but many of those jobs have resulted in the modernization of the political and economic systems in those countries with large increases in per capita wealth and a host of other benefits. It could also be seen as instrumental to the widespread adoption of democratic ideas in many nations.

Yes lots of Americans are hurting and there is an incredible amount of wealth inequality in this country but it's not entirely clear that the policies proposed by Sanders would really do that much in stopping much less reversing those structural changes in the economy.

I definitely support increasing progressive taxation but it's also abundantly clear that the hyper-rich (the 0.1% and the 0.01%) can pretty much do business in any location and there is nothing inherently tying them to the US any more. They can basically choose to in effect invest in whatever locations provide the best return on investment so make it too onerous for them and they will increase the level of tax dodging using tax havens or they will park even more money in overseas investments. Furthermore his proposed anti-speculation tax has been widely criticized as doing only a limited amount to decrease speculation with an increased likelihood of actually increasing volatility, reducing liquidity, and actually limiting access to capital for investors looking to grow or expand businesses.

I'm not saying that policies shouldn't be enacted to reduce the consolidation of capital in the US but these are exceedingly complex policy issues in which agreement even among nobel laureate economic policy experts seems to be limited.

Personally I find the attempts to boil the solution for what ails the US from both economic and socio-political policies down to "we need a revolution in this country" to be frankly a bit depressing because I don't really think good sound bites are a good replacement for good public policy but there has been a tendency to provide easy answers to the electorate that ultimately are a mixture of unachievable (Sanders) or simply wrongheaded and evil (Trump). I'm not saying I love all of Clinton's policy approaches but they seem to be consistently grounded in reality even if the eventual impacts seem to be reinforcing the consolidation of wealth.
posted by vuron at 9:29 PM on May 19, 2016 [18 favorites]

And the chair...multiple chairs even(!) thing was a hit job based on no evidence. I stand by my words until proven otherwise

The chair thing is a red herring though. I don't care if chairs were thrown. I think it unlikely that they were. There was plenty of bad behavior completely apart from any probably non-existent chair throwing.
posted by Justinian at 9:31 PM on May 19, 2016 [18 favorites]

It now looks like there's a strong chance that no chairs were thrown, true. The reporting I heard (on NPR) was careful to say "chairs were said to have been thrown, though this has not been verified."

It was a highly chaotic situation, where the most respected local reporter on the scene (Ralston) reported that chairs had been thrown, based on the firsthand report of another local journalist, and there was clear video of a Sanders supporter brandishing a chair, and other videos of Sanders supporters rushing the stage and yelling "F*ck that C*nt" while the Twitter feed on screen is full of comments saying "RIOT!" and "We'll bail you out of jail," while others doxxed the chairwoman (@MEagle420's tweet is still up, I'm not going to link to it) and people openly tweeted and phoned in death threats.

I definitely think the news outlets who reported chair throwing as fact should at least report the uncertainty -- Snopes, by the way, does not call it false, just "Unproven". (This one guy put his chair down. That's not proof that no one threw a chair.) But calling it "a hit job based on no evidence" is just not accurate.
posted by msalt at 9:52 PM on May 19, 2016 [23 favorites]

Nader 2.0

fuck that shit. as atrios says, it's *her* job to convince me to vote for her. she should do her job.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:54 PM on May 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

Like wise if a couple delegates didn't matter so much why did the HRC folks fight so hard to get them?

They weren't "fighting" to get delegates. The party representatives were simply counting the votes and awarding delegates according to the count as required by the rules. Are you suggesting that the party representatives should have committed election fraud and illegally awarded a few extra delegates to Sanders in a effort to make peace with his supporters?
posted by JackFlash at 9:58 PM on May 19, 2016 [26 favorites]

it's *her* job to convince me to vote for her. she should do her job.

Perhaps, but I don't think it is *his* job to tell you not to vote for her either.
posted by FJT at 10:02 PM on May 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

Nader 2.0

fuck that shit. as atrios says, it's her job to convince me to vote for her. she should do her job.

I guess the yuge one isn’t motivating…

Après moi, le postiche.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:04 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Après moi, le postiche.

*that* is funny.
posted by j_curiouser at 10:08 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

msalt, if this was the "most respected local reporter" in attendance in NV, the fourth estate is in boat load of trouble.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 10:13 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Did Sanders complain about the rules before he entered the primary? Did he complain about any unfair rules in states that he won, or does he just complain when the rules go against him?
posted by kirkaracha at 10:19 PM on May 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

Obama tanked in the polls in 2008 after McCain nominated Palin (!!!), trailing by 10 points.

Not really. Based on RealClearPolitics' averages of polls, McCain got a brief spike to about a 3-4 point lead the week of the Republican convention before dropping as people realized what an idiot Palin is.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:23 PM on May 19, 2016

Everyone used the chairs story as evidence of violence.. It is not irrelevant at all. The narrative is out in the world now despite Sander's supporters shouting from the rooftops that it wasn't true. The media failed to do their due diligence. Nina Turner has been trying over and over again to correct the record of what happened and no one will listen to her. Reporters have reported the exact opposite of what she has been saying and tweeting and attributing false quotes to her. Why? Where is the fact checking? Why does this keep happening?
posted by futz at 10:23 PM on May 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Guess she must be one of those Bernie Bros we keep hearing about.
posted by iamck at 10:25 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Futz, welcome to the last 20 years of being a Clinton supporter.
posted by happyroach at 10:25 PM on May 19, 2016 [17 favorites]

So a fake chair throwing story is the new reason Bernie's going to lose? His loss is not the result of a vast conspiracy - he's losing, and is going to lose, because he sought the Democratic party nomination, with all the caucus / closed primary / media madness bullshit that entails (all of which he was aware of before he jumped in), and he did not get enough votes. Not enough people with the power to choose the nominee wanted him to be the nominee. It's not some big, nefarious con.
posted by sallybrown at 10:29 PM on May 19, 2016 [26 favorites]

Everyone used the chairs story as evidence of violence.

I feel like the "thousands of death threats, threats of violence, and misogynistic insults" received by Roberta Lange are the important "evidence" here.

An obsession with focusing on whether a chair was or was not thrown, and whether there was or was not a vast Democratic Party Establishment conspiracy to spread lies about airborne chairs, really seems like an attempt to obfuscate the very real truth that a small group of utterly unhinged Sanders supporters did in fact engage in hateful, vitriolic threats of actual physical harm to this woman.
posted by dersins at 10:37 PM on May 19, 2016 [58 favorites]

Also, how did 50 people become delegates if they weren't eligible

By all accounts, at least some of them were eligible when they became delegates byt no longer eligible at the time of the convention. Because they were no longer Democrats.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:40 PM on May 19, 2016

And those are mild compared to some I've seen cited elsewhere. Like the ones that say shit like "we know where your kids/grandkids to school," and so forth. There are some--including that one-- quoted here.
posted by dersins at 10:48 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

So I just realized that a fascinating side-effect of Trump's anti-semitic brigade is that a bunch of white dudes are getting a taste of the kind of social media abuse that women have been subject to for a long time. I wonder if and how that's going to change discussions of things like GamerGate.

By "white dudes" are you referring to Jews? Because if so, most of us are depressingly familiar with being the targets of antisemitic hatred both on the internet and off it. Directly or indirectly.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think death threats and Holocaust references are "fascinating." People like Tila Tequila literally wished for Ben Shapiro and his newborn child to be put in gas chambers on Twitter.
posted by zarq at 10:49 PM on May 19, 2016 [17 favorites]

The world is full of assholes. I've done insurance, finance, and banking IT for 30 years.

Fundamentally, I can't reconcile how we can routinely count 22,500,000,000 pennies to the tenth of a cent, but can't get our act together and count the 225,000,000 registered votes that might come in.

The sturm-und-drang of the assholes is is the direct result of frustration with a system that lacks, repeatability, openness, and transparency.

For me, the lack of audit trails give away the game. I'll sum up as, "I'm really enjoying the show they're putting on. Clinton as the Face, Trump as the Heel. I wonder, are there any WWE people involved? Where's Stephanie McMahon these days?"

And I am *certain* the tabulating servers will announce Hillary Clinton as the winner.
posted by mikelieman at 10:55 PM on May 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

please don't post horrible stuff here just to prove that it exists, thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 11:00 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also, how did 50 people become delegates if they weren't eligible

It is my understanding that 56 delegates were not even there. As in, not physically present at the convention, and thus could not be certified. Also, there were delegates who were Democrats when they were chosen, but withdrew themselves from the party membership before the convention. Obviously, if you are not a Democrat you can't exactly expect to be a participant in party processes.

And I am *certain* the tabulating servers will announce Hillary Clinton as the winner.

Just to double-check, are you arguing Clinton stole the primaries from Sanders? If so, would you mind providing proof? Otherwise, this just reads like nasty insinuation meant to cast further aspersion on her credibility without having any backing to do so.
posted by Anonymous at 11:01 PM on May 19, 2016

Just to double-check, are you arguing Clinton stole the primaries from Sanders?

I'm not *arguing* anything. Maybe it's because I live in Albany, NY and always enjoyed William Kennedy's writing that I think any candidate that can't out-ratfuck the other guy, doesn't deserve the job.

I *support* Sanders because he most aligns with my values. But I'm not naive. I learned from Nixon/McGovern all I needed to know. Dude never had a chance in hell. I still voted for him, and encourage others. Pascal's Wager? I might be wrong and it doesn't hurt to vote anyway?

Do you think the servers have *ever* been secure? FWIW, it's a lot easier all around than throwing ballots of boxes from republican precints in the Hudson River or fucking up chad-punching machines.
posted by mikelieman at 11:06 PM on May 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Or shaving gears on the old lever machines.... My favourite.
posted by mikelieman at 11:07 PM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'll cut this short right now. I'm not interested in anything but a certified audit of the computing infrastructure that tabulates the votes. Everything else is just pointless arguing back and forth. I'm done. ( But if you can lay your hands on a certified end-to-end audit, I need to see it! )
posted by mikelieman at 11:10 PM on May 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

I mean, I think a voter verified paper trail is a minimum step toward ensuring our elections are fair, and we should fight for that in places where it doesn't happen, but I think it's awfully disingenuous to throw around the idea that the primary was literally a fraud (as in millions of people voted for Sanders but those votes were thrown out or counted for Clinton) without a shred of evidence.

It also ignores the actual and very real disenfranchisement of voters through policies that range from caucuses to voter ID laws, which we're seemingly powerless to stop.
posted by zachlipton at 11:12 PM on May 19, 2016 [21 favorites]

If you have specific accusations to lay against a specific candidate, then please do so. Oblique posts darkly alluding to a lack of security are not very helpful and do not really contribute to any dialogue about anything. See, right now, it appears you are saying that Clinton conspired to steal the primary election, without offering any proof that she did so other than your assertion that there is not enough security in the vote tabulating process. Is this what you're trying to say?

Otherwise, if you are raising general questions about election audits, then I encourage you to make a separate post documenting your concerns about the process. Because if you do not intend to imply national voting conspiracies exist then you are not doing a very good job of it.
posted by Anonymous at 11:34 PM on May 19, 2016

what if, like, Clinton actually gets more votes because more people vote for her

did I just blow your mind
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:35 PM on May 19, 2016 [56 favorites]

Wait, so if the elections are rigged the polls that fairly accurately predict election outcomes must be rigged too. The polls are conducted by supposedly independent organizations, but they must be in on it! Some of them are administered by major universities! And the exit polling too. This is amazing. Just how many people are in on this?
posted by chrchr at 11:37 PM on May 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

Several comments deleted. Mikelieman, cut it out completely, immediately, and take a break from the thread.
posted by taz (staff) at 11:47 PM on May 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Actual stuff that disenfranchises voters that we can and should fight:

Voter ID laws
Felon disenfranchisement
Hours long lines at polling places
Unreasonably early deadlines to register or declare a party
Cutting back or eliminating early voting options
Caucuses

posted by zachlipton at 11:57 PM on May 19, 2016 [31 favorites]

Also, how did 50 people become delegates if they weren't eligible?

Well, here's one example -- a Sanders delegate who posted on Reddit that they changed their registration out of the Democratic Party betweeen the second and third conventions as a protest.

More generally, delegates had a deadline to register in advance of the 3rd convention. 64 Sanders delegates, and 8 Clinton delegates, didn't do that and so they were disqualified. 8 of the Sanders delegates did show up at the 3rd convention anyway, and the committee -- composed of 5 Sanders supporters and 5 Clinton supporters -- admitted six of them after their proved they lived in their districts.
posted by msalt at 12:07 AM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

Or shaving gears on the old lever machines....

I actually saw a couple of machines with shaved gears in Philly in the 80s. Twas a lesson in machine politics (pun intended.)

Seismic shift in CIncyBluesland. My 82 year old mother, who cast her first presidential ballot for Eisenhower's second time around, told me today that she has changed her Republican registration to Democrat. Apparently she did this a few months ago. I knew she was unhappy with the Repubs but I didn't think she'd go that far. Her birthday is Saturday so I told her to "pick a restaurant that serves booze because I'm buying you a double-shot." She's a traditional Episcopalian so she's down for that!
posted by CincyBlues at 12:23 AM on May 20, 2016 [25 favorites]

msalt, if this was the "most respected local reporter" in attendance in NV, the fourth estate is in boat load of trouble.

What makes you say that? Because he stood by his account when harassed on Twitter?

Ironically, Sanders supporters liked this same reporter earlier when he called BS on the Clinton camp's description of the second round. if you want actual facts, as in eyewitness descriptions, here is Ralston's half hour TV show describing the events. To update my earlier comment, it appears that 50 of the 64 challenged Sanders delegates did not show up, while 14 did. Of those, 8 were rejected and 6 were accepted.

Here is another eyewitness account by someone there who saw chairs thrown.

By the way, Politifact ruled that allegations that the Clinton campaign "hijacked" the process or ignored "regular procedure" as Jeff Weaver stated, false. Not unproven, but false. A Politifact staffer is on this same show discussing it in some detail.
posted by msalt at 12:38 AM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

How do I be enthusiastic and legitimately partisan (because if an election is not a time to be partisan I don't know what is) for Clinton without alienating fellow progressives (who might not see me as a fellow just because I support Clinton), many of whom, at least around me, are actually pretty high visibility/social/cultural/economic status, in many ways higher than I am?

There have been a lot of nasty pieces written about the deficiencies of one group of supporters or the other, and I think they're the absolute worst that this election season has had to offer. I tend to notice more of the ones that are directed at me personally, which I assume is pretty natural, but I'm aware of the general climate all around. I don't like being called naive or anything else I've been associated with lately, and it's really put me off of talking about this with anyone. But I also really, really don't like hearing about people sending death threats and being nasty. Not because they're on my "side," but because it's horrible behavior and it's inexcusable.

The reality is that the vast majority of us are totally OK with whichever candidate you support. You don't hear from us so much, because what are we going to say? "Well, I don't, but have a nice day anyway?" If someone wants to disagree on a specific point, I'll talk about that, but if I see someone wearing a Clinton shirt I assume it's because her campaign appeals to them for reasons that are significant to them. Just like how I support Sanders for reasons that are significant to me. You can - gasp - disagree with me on this without being an idiot. I think my social circles are pretty evenly split between Sanders and Clinton supporters, and this has somehow not caused us to throw punches or stop returning calls.

Look, there are millions of things in my life that could be worse than voting for Clinton. Do I enthusiastically support her? No. Does that mean people who do are somehow missing some crucial information? No! I have my reservations about her, just like I do with Obama and other eminently qualified politicians. I have reservations about Sanders, for that matter. I've just made a mental calculus that adds up to supporting him, and I like to think a person can do that.

All of this was a late-night, long-winded way of saying that the vast majority of people won't be alienated by your supporting Clinton. The whole "political spectrum" thing is absolute bullshit, and I'm not going to think you're less than me because your views don't line up with mine. If you're willing to do the same for me, we're cool, and I'll keep on being enthusiastic about Sanders - even if I know he's not perfect himself.
posted by teponaztli at 12:55 AM on May 20, 2016 [10 favorites]

All that said, I don't know how anyone else can react, and it's depressing to think that you'd get shit for supporting Clinton, just like it depresses me to get shit for supporting Sanders. I guess I'm just trying to say that you hear from the loudmouths more than anyone else. But they don't speak for most of us.
posted by teponaztli at 12:58 AM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

MF, I confess I was fully ready to find all HRC hate here. But I underestimated that many others here would have had the same growing doubts about Bernie I've had. And reasoned discussion regardless of views. Very impressive indeed.
posted by persona au gratin at 2:24 AM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

Btw, I don't think it's fair to blame increasing inequality on Obama. He's really tried, and managed to hike taxes on the rich twice. And he's trying to deal with stuff set out in the Panama Papers. But Congress.
posted by persona au gratin at 2:29 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

By the way, Politifact ruled that allegations that the Clinton campaign "hijacked" the process or ignored "regular procedure" as Jeff Weaver stated, false. Not unproven, but false. A Politifact staffer is on this same show discussing it in some detail.

I dug into the Nevada thing in the other thread for quite some time to try and make sure I understood what happened. And as a factual matter it looks to me like the procedures were properly followed to the best of the ability of the people running the convention and a group of people didn't like the fact that they lost and we've all seen the result. That's as far as I can tell what happened and it's what every single objective news source I've looked at has also concluded.

But the discouraging thing is that I don't think it is possible to convince the diehards that that is what happened. And I don't know what to do about it. Maybe there's nothing to be done. But when people say Clinton needs to win their votes and then point to things like what happened in Nevada as evidence that she is failing to do so I get depressed. Because it seems divorced from reality. And I thought we were supposed to live in the reality-based community? Did that change in the last few years?
posted by Justinian at 2:43 AM on May 20, 2016 [12 favorites]

I talked to a Bernie-Or-Buster I know today long enough for him to share that he was also a Gamergater. He is very confident that everything we're hearing out of Nevada is lies, lies.

Another one I talked to said the texts that Roberta Lange received which said she "deserved to be hung in the public square" weren't a threat but "an opinion." I shit you not.

Most Sanders supporters I know are working their way towards acceptance. Others are twisting as hard as they can to acknowledging the flaws in their guy's approach, or that he's lost.
posted by EatTheWeek at 2:52 AM on May 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

A disability activist talks about switching from Sanders to Clinton. I've excerpted a bunch, but the whole thing is worth the read:

“Berned” by Bernie Sanders

Last fall, a fellow disability activist and close friend of mine introduced me to Bernie Sanders. From the moment I first heard his platform, I was hooked. After living abroad several years in a country with socialized medicine and heavily subsidized education, I was thrilled an American politician was proposing these policies here. Due to my own disabilities, the cost of healthcare has become exorbitant and becoming chronically ill forced me to leave my career in public service litigation to collect meager social security benefits. So, Bernie’s message resonated strongly with my own personal experience of being in the 99%.
[...]
I began contacting the campaign as early as the fall to advise them on their disability outreach failures, as well as to communicate grave concerns the community was having with some on his policies. I tried every possible method of communication from emailing the campaign through the website and contacting them through social media, to direct emails and text messages to top political directors, including Jeff Weaver, BEGGING them to respond. I also discovered that I was not the only disability activist experiencing this very frustration with the campaign.
[...]
Finally, his political director, Billy Gendell, a non-disabled white male, responded by scheduling a phone call with me. I was finally hopeful once again, but what came next was personally devastating. . . . The only policy answer that wasn’t “off the record” was Bernie’s official statement on the opioid issue, sent to me via email. It said that chronic pain sufferers should seek yoga or guided meditation to ease our suffering.
[...]
So, begrudgingly, I told a Hillary supporter with a disability that I was now considering supporting Hillary. He immediately introduced me via email to a blind Clinton staffer. Within literally minutes, she emailed me at 9 p.m. saying she would like to speak to me about the campaign. I was so encouraged by how quickly they responded, after the months I was ignored by Bernie.

She didn’t treat me like a nuisance like the Bernie campaign did but rather an asset. She wanted to know my legal and advocacy opinion on disability policy. She explained in detail how Hillary planned to initiate change for us with sophisticated, legal political strategy. And, then she asked me to come on board and help the campaign best meet the needs of the disability community through, inter alia, writing for the campaign after they were able to officially vet my credentials. I soon realized that the Clinton campaign didn’t just care about the disability community; they hired us and treated us like the intelligent people we are.

posted by Anonymous at 3:29 AM on May 20, 2016

Also, I don't know if this tweet means Ivanka Trump currently supports Clinton or just has supported her in the past--but God, I hope it's the former.
posted by Anonymous at 3:33 AM on May 20, 2016

What's precisely interesting about Bernie is that he made a questionable tactical choice openly criticizing the elections and party apparatus.

It can be what distinguishes a leftist and a neoliberal.

The effect is the same as when in other situations leftists use critiques on structure, microaggressions, privilege, etc. Once such internal discourse is exposed, out-groups always immediately construe such language as proof that leftists are in reality cynical, ineffectual, hostile, overcritical, and a heap of other negative qualities. This reaction is due to a gap in ideology i.e. a difference of personal values and social contexts.

Bernie seems a leftist insofar as he genuinely believes in open discourse, speech-as-commons, 1968, calling-out, e.g. questioning legitimacy of authority. He performs this in his acts of criticism.

So when he actually does this, he is cast as "bad" for a) undermining his mainstream appeal, and b) presenting a major hazard of vote-splitting. He is hurting himself and messing things up for other people, in other words.

Obama thinks of himself as more politically sophisticated, for example by avoiding talk of "revolution", instead emphasizing a positivist rhetoric of cooperation and working towards gradual change. But that's the fundamental difference: Bernie can't help not be a closet leftist, because it's so tempting to speak truth to power. Every left activist has this as a personal threshold, because deep down we believe ideas matter. Evidently Bernie crossed his and he spoke his mind.

Let's say the mainstream are right: suppose there are exigencies that require politicians and citizens to not conduct critique. If you must, do it privately, with an audience you know. But then, when would voicing these issues in the public sphere ever be appropriate?
posted by polymodus at 4:31 AM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

There are ways to critique the party and party apparatus that are not summed up as "Everyone is corrupt and they are all trying to disenfranchise you and this election has been stolen from me."
posted by Anonymous at 4:38 AM on May 20, 2016

Chuck Todd just mentioned on MSNBC that in their most recent poll, so many respondents were answering "neither" to the question of Donald vs Hillary that they had to meet to talk about whether to change the poll ("neither" was not an option given in this poll).
posted by sallybrown at 4:38 AM on May 20, 2016

GOP elite line up behind Donald Trump

That didn't take long.
posted by octothorpe at 4:46 AM on May 20, 2016

re: the neither thing

oh no this is going to be the south park election of false equivalencies isn't it

maddening
posted by defenestration at 4:48 AM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

They had some Republican politician on MSNBC as well (a former governor?) who clung to his choice to vote for Donald despite Mika pushing him to name a single policy he agreed with Donald on. All he could say was that Donald was from the business community and Hillary was from "the party of redistribution." So she gets tagged from the right for the thing those from the left claim she isn't. Cool.

Yesterday, Mika told Bob Gates that her father (Zbigniew Brzezinski) wanted him to run as a third party. (Hey, mine too!)

I'm still planning to sit out the primary (one for my feelings) but then vote Hillary in the general (one for pragmatism and the survival of my country).
posted by sallybrown at 5:04 AM on May 20, 2016

I've seen two people on Facebook complain that "both of the choices for President are terrible" and they were both Republicans (and Mormons). At first I thought this was a terrible false equivalency but I think I can understand this -- they have a choice between a giant orange racist man-baby and someone who has seriously contrary positions to theirs (pro choice, anti gun, etc.)

I'm hoping most of the "neither" votes come from Republicans and right-leaning independents.

I'm hoping.
posted by mmoncur at 5:09 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Eight Years Ago
posted by indubitable at 5:25 AM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

The future is ringing in my ears.

"She's going to steal the election from us the way she stole it from Bernie. But we're stronger and won't let that happen!" –Trump

*the crowd explodes in cheers of righteous anger*
posted by defenestration at 5:27 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

The future is ringing in my ears.

Future? How about earlier this morning.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:31 AM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

For someone not on the U.S. in a country with a lot of corrupt political parties, the naivety of some people here are downright astounding. I mean, c'mon, what the f--k? I am reminded of a Current Affairs article about political vulgarity and how it is sometimes needed when the system/policy/war are utterly inimical to human prosperity and lives.

The point is, if your party's system is corrupt, then calling it corrupt is par the course. Political power players are corrupt and incestious - and the Establishment is real, at least in here. My nation's respected politicians openly rig our voting process, engage in outright bribes and are generally being a scum of the highest degree.

I have little doubt that in the U.S. -- from what I have read -- is also like that, even though to a lesser degree. The game is rigged, and what do you do when that happens? You shout to be heard, you complain and take actions to the street. In my country, some people riot and attack government building or stage a non-peaceful demonstration, time to time. For me? That is justified. Twenty years ago, when the government and the largest political party was killing people left and right and mostly be dictatorial oligarchists, what should we do? Be polite? No. No way. Fuck that.

I sympathize with Bernie voters because the accusation that he's mad that he lost and now he is trying to divide the party up seems hollow when the statement that he has made was like this : "The people of this country want a government which represents all of us, not just the 1 percent, super PACs and wealthy campaign contributors." What the hell is wrong with that? That quote is from the full speech. All the talk about the potential disunity of the democratic party in this thread reminded me of hardcore nationalists in this country that uses that kind of language to tamp up political discourses, kill leftists and jail 'non-nationalists' without due process. It's sickening.

Although I do understand what is at stake here (Trump) and how much of a disaster if he would be elected, both for the U.S. and for the world, but telling Bernie to shut up and resign is, frankly, stupid beyond belief for reasons outlined above.
posted by tirta-yana at 6:10 AM on May 20, 2016 [17 favorites]

I have little doubt that in the U.S. -- from what I have read -- is also like that, even though to a lesser degree. The game is rigged, and what do you do when that happens? You shout to be heard, you complain and take actions to the street. In my country, some people riot and attack government building or stage a non-peaceful demonstration, time to time. For me? That is justified. Twenty years ago, when the government and the largest political party was killing people left and right and mostly be dictatorial oligarchists, what should we do? Be polite? No. No way. Fuck that.

The US has 235 million registered voters. There is one president. It's a massive undertaking to distill the will of an electorate that size into a suitable representative. It's not like Bernie is being fucked by technicalities, Clinton is three million votes ahead out of 23 million votes cast so far in the primaries. This is basically "I'm not getting my way so I'm going to have a tantrum and throw salt over every piece of dirt I can find".
posted by Talez at 6:19 AM on May 20, 2016 [13 favorites]

How specifically is the game rigged?
posted by defenestration at 6:23 AM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

The other thing is that people are individuals and have other pressing issues and concerns than just political corruption and corporate money in government. Social conservatives for instance will vote for anti-choice and anti-equality candidates over anti-corruption candidates any day of the week.
posted by Talez at 6:23 AM on May 20, 2016

The point is, if your party's system is corrupt, then calling it corrupt is par the course.

I don't want to speak for all Hillary supporters but, again, can someone provide proof of a rigged election beyond the "people who weren't registered Democrats weren't allowed to be delegates in Nevada" complaint? Hand-wavy statements like "the system is corrupt" does actually get my head nodding in agreement, to a degree, but then... well, what else is there? Specifically? The debate schedule? I mean, if you think about it, Bernie has been winning a lot of states lately. He's basically been winning the states that, demographically, he's supposed to win. But wouldn't a rigged campaign have tried to blunt his momentum somehow by stopping him in Indiana, or Michigan, or any of the other close races? I see impressively few shenanigans in the Dem race.

I think that the really simple reason why Bernie lost is not surprising, and it's not a conspiracy. He got destroyed on Super Tuesday because minority voters and old people voted for Hillary.

But at this point both sides have made their arguments and I guess we'll just keep going back and forth until after the California primary.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:26 AM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

the accusation that he's mad that he lost and now he is trying to divide the party up seems hollow when the statement that he has made was like this : "The people of this country want a government which represents all of us, not just the 1 percent, super PACs and wealthy campaign contributors." What the hell is wrong with that?

Any argument about how "the people" want you to be President when a substantial majority of them have been consistently voting for the other candidate is either divorced from reality or disingenuous.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:27 AM on May 20, 2016 [32 favorites]

Clinton is three million votes ahead in a system that includes caucuses with much lower participation than primaries as well as media outlets lying about Sanders' chances for 11 months, doing everything they can to foster the narrative that Clinton is inevitable.

If we ran a system where the candidates were picked by popular vote all on the same day we'd probably have the exact same result as we do now. The only reason Sanders has been able to pick up points is the long and disjointed primary season the US has. If we all voted back in February we'd have shown up, delivered Clinton a landslide and gone home.

The only way you can have a Bernie victory this season is literally rigging it as hard as possible for an anti-establishment candidate.
posted by Talez at 6:28 AM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

I think you're discounting the massive effect that CNN, NBC, etc. have had on perceptions about Sanders' and Clinton's chances.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 6:30 AM on May 20, 2016

I think you're discounting the massive effect that CNN, NBC, etc. have had on perceptions about Sanders' and Clinton's chances.

Yes, let's not discount this -- it's reason number one why Trump was soundly defeated by Jeb!
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:32 AM on May 20, 2016 [27 favorites]

zachlipton But I guess what it comes down to for me is a doubt that Sanders could have brought about structural change in the way you propose.

I'm 100% certain that he couldn't have brought about any structural change. As you note, this is a hard problem, with massive inertia and huge wealth on the side of the bad guys.

But he could have, would have, at least brought attention to the problem and perhaps begun the process that would eventually lead to getting it solved. And sure, he can try to do that as a Senator or even as a private citizen, but the President has a much louder voice.

I'm not even sure he'd have really tried very hard, but I think that he would have at least acknowledged the problem, and I know that Clinton and every other establishment candidate won't. Frankly, I'll take whatever I can get here, because to my mind the problem of wealth is so huge, and the consequences of ignoring it are so dire, that even just a tiny hint that someone might bring attention to it is all the hope I have at the moment.

I absolutely did not expect a revolution or for Sanders to be a savior. Maybe others did, but I didn't.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, unless there's a miracle the Republicans will have the House through 2020, and they're still likely to hold on to the Senate (though less so with the Supreme Court tantrum and the Trump candidacy). Given that, all the President can really do is hold the line, maintain the status quo, via the veto, and use the bully pulpit to try and advocate.

I expect both Clinton and Sanders will do a good enough job holding the line, though I'm less confident that Clinton will preserve Social Security I can easily see her "pragmatically" trading it away for temporary concessions from the R's just for the sake of getting anything done. I expected the benefit of Sanders mainly to be that he'd be out there, using the voice of the presidency, to sound the alarm about the problem of wealth.

vuron I'm not convinced that in the modern world with capital being hypermobile that the idea that any political figure can somehow undo decades of converting the US from being a manufacturing centric economy to a service, information and consumer driven economy. I'm not even convinced that reversing that shift would necessarily be a great thing for the world in general.

Nor am I, and if I gave the impression that I thought a critical part of things was bringing manufacturing back to the USA [1] then I must have badly misstatted things because I do not at all think that switching America to a manufacturing economy is a good or necessary thing.

What worries me is not what sort of jobs there are, or really even if there are jobs [2] for everyone, but rather the growing wealth gap and income inequality in general.

In the 1950's the average CEO made around twelve times what the lowest paid worker in their company made. This made those CEO's rich people, they had mansions and live in maids and yachts and so on. But there was money for everyone else too.

Today the average CEO makes over three hundred times what their lowest paid worker makes, and many make over one thousand times what their lowest paid worker makes. This makes them not merely rich but obscenely rich. And their wealth has come in part by taking away wealth from poorer people. In the USA wages increased to match productivity increases with the the percentage of the pie for every class not significantly changing, but everyone steadily getting a bit better off thanks to the pie growing.

In the 1970's that stopped and productivity skyrocketed while wages stagnated or shrank.

**THAT** is the problem I see. Not manufacturing jobs going away, but jobs that pay a living wage and jobs that provide a middle class life going away. The job that once provided a middle class life for a family of four now provides barely enough for a single person to scrape by on.

That is the deep structural problem I'm worried about. Because while a lot of people have philosophic objections to addressing this problem via redistribution or whatever, it still hurts them and so they look for someone to blame.

The situation today is where right wing populism comes from. People are legitimately hurting, people who had once hoped for their children to do better than they did now face the serious possibility of their children doing worse, often much worse. Middle class success is increasingly out of reach for people, and when the few who have it attain it they discover that it is precarious and a single illness or injury can push them back into abject poverty.

The uncertainty, the fear, leads to a rise in authoritarianism. Worse, it leads to scapegoating any minority or despised group. The average right wing person may not be willing to place the blame where it belongs (on the looter billionaire class), but they're perfectly willing to place the blame for their economic suffering on Jews, immigrants, women, academics, intellectuals, gay people, trans people, brown people, environmentalists, basically anyone who isn't a cis, white, straight, man.

Where do you think Trump got the support that has catapulted a completely incompetent buffoon like him into the Republican presidential nomination? It didn't just come out of nowhere. It didn't just happen because Republicans are dumb. It happened because the seething resentment fueled by massive income inequality and economic pain has been bubbling steadily for decades now and is finally reaching a point where those people will vote for any idiot who promises them quick, easy, cheap, answers that match their prejudices. Trump is just the first and those who follow him will be better and smarter and thus more effective.

Until **SOMETHING** happens and the actual core issue is addressed the authoritarian, right wing populism, that we see with Trump will not go away, it will just keep growing until it is unstoppable.

We see it in Greece, we see it in France, in Spain, in Hungary. All places where vicious, racist, bigoted, authoritarian, right wing populism is rising. Because they are having the same sort of economic problems we have, and for the same reason: the rich are hoarding all the money.

I'm not saying that policies shouldn't be enacted to reduce the consolidation of capital in the US but these are exceedingly complex policy issues in which agreement even among nobel laureate economic policy experts seems to be limited.

I'm in 100% agreement with you here. It is a non-trivial problem, doubly so today since as you mentioned wealth is a lot more mobile today than it ever has been in the past.

But while I didn't expect Sanders to succeed (or really even have the power to do much beyond talking about the problem), I don't expect Clinton to even talk about the problem, much less even try to fix it.

Because Clinton is part of the problem. She's a member of the billionaire looter class, she identifies with them, she thinks like them, and therefore she is however nice and otherwise a good presidential pick, fundamentally incapable of even thinking that the problem is a problem.

Clinton's presidency, like Obama's presidency, will be one of gains in other areas, holding the line on civil rights, and leaving the core problem of wealth swept under the rug and never discussed. And that's deeply troubling to me.

We can't even begin to try to fix the problem until we admit that it exists. And I think that's going to take Presidential level admitting.

[1] Though, really, it never left much. The USA manufactures more today than it did in the 1950's, but thanks to automation it employs fewer people while making those goods.

[2] I think that we are approaching the point where there is going to be a large permanently unemployed class because increasing automation will reduce the number of jobs. I am convinced that a Universal Basic Income is the only real hope for making it through.
posted by sotonohito at 6:32 AM on May 20, 2016 [19 favorites]

Clinton is three million votes ahead in a system that includes caucuses with much lower participation than primaries

Without the caucases Bernie would be doing worse, not better.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 6:33 AM on May 20, 2016 [23 favorites]

(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates, do you actually think that Trump got the same treatment from the media as Sanders? If so, I don't think we have a shared set of facts.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 6:35 AM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

Clinton "trading away" social security is not even remotely possible as a thing that could happen

And if the media really wanted to downplay Sanders' chance of winning they could have been all "well he's pretty much out of this, barring a miracle" since early March, which would have been basically true, but they've been more than happy to treat this as a live contest, even after NY
posted by prize bull octorok at 6:38 AM on May 20, 2016 [10 favorites]

(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates, do you actually think that Trump got the same treatment from the media as Sanders? If so, I don't think we have a shared set of facts.

I don't know about treatment but in terms of discounting chances? Yes, Trump got it waaay worse. The media continued to claim that Trump would not win the nomination, months and months after he began leading national polls. They simply continued to deny every poll that said Trump would win. Everyone was waiting for someone to come along and knock him off. Bernie, on the other hand, never led in national polling aggregates. He got close at times, but Clinton has maintained a consistent 5-15% lead over him since the campaign started. So there was really no need for the media to change the narrative that Clinton would ultimately win.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:39 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates, do you actually think that Trump got the same treatment from the media as Sanders? If so, I don't think we have a shared set of facts.

Uhhhh... Trump got told (as politely as you can on basic cable) to fuck off and die by the biggest conservative mouthpiece in America.
posted by Talez at 6:39 AM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

What happened in Nevada:

The Nevada State Democratic Party held its caucus on February 20, and Hillary Clinton won more pledged delegates. However, Nevada has a tiered system, where there are county-level conventions prior to the state convention. Delegates must show up, and when they don’t, it produces an outcome, like what happened in Clark County, which flipped from having more Clinton delegates to more Sanders delegates at the county convention. This increased interest among Sanders supporters, who saw the state convention as a final opportunity to pick up more delegates for Sanders to send to the national convention.

According to several individuals, who were present, the Nevada State Democratic Party, led by chairwoman Roberta Lange, engaged in the following during the 15-hour convention:

Lange and an executive board secretly voted on rules two weeks before the convention to give Lange “exclusive control” over the convention and strictly limit motions, as well as challenges to rulings by the chair

Voted on “temporary rules” for the convention and cheated by calling the vote for the “yeas” when the “nays” clearly had larger numbers. The vote happened early at 9:30 am before all the delegates had arrived. [Video here.]

The State Democratic Party was provided with petitions from twenty percent of the delegates in attendance to challenge the adopted rules. Signatures were collected ahead of the convention because there were activists well-aware of what the Party would try to do with the new “temporary rules.” In fact, one of these people, Angie Morelli, was a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Party, which was partly dismissed a day before the convention. The leadership pretended to accept the petitions and then ignored the fact that proper procedure had been followed, blocking any challenges, which effectively disenfranchised a subsection of people attempting to have their voices heard.

Lange granted herself the authority to have the final decision on all the delegates excluded from the convention. There were 56 Sanders delegates and four Clinton delegates, which were deemed to have improper or inadequate registration information. The number of Clinton delegates outnumbered Sanders delegates by only 33 delegates.

When one of the members of the state party committees attempted to read a “Minority Report,” reflecting what had happened with the decision to exclude 56 Sanders delegates, Lange tried to take the microphone out of the hand of the person, who was about to read the report.

Multiple attempts were made to bring motions in order to remove Lange as chair of the state party convention because it appeared to be Lange who was responsible for eruptions of disorder. Congressional candidate Dan Rolle hopped on a megaphone to make a motion and had the megaphone confiscated. Then, Rolle tried again later when he had access to the microphone to make a motion for a “no confidence” vote. The leadership cut off his microphone.

Nina Turner, one of the most prominent and well-respected Sanders surrogates, was there to represent his campaign at the convention. Yet, abruptly, the leadership switched the order and had Senator Barbara Boxer go on stage to speak for the Clinton campaign. Her speech riled up supporters, and as she was booed, she kept riling them up by berating them.

Lange moved to adjourn the convention when there was a motion made for a recount on the floor late in the convention.

State Democratic Party leadership refused to acknowledge delegates from the Sanders side, who were following the rules to make motions, and effectively sowed chaos in the process. As they fled the convention after abruptly adjourning, Las Vegas metro police lined the stage. Sanders delegates contemplated a civil disobedience action in response, but eventually, most left the room as it was cleared. This image of police in the room helped the Party spread propaganda in the hours after that it was the Sanders people who were “violent,” and brought the convention to the point of chaos where it was not safe for people anymore.

Unfortunately, all of this conduct has been drowned out by a narrative that somehow Sanders supporters were sore losers. They misunderstood the process. They mistakenly believed they would win the convention when they should have accepted back in February, when Clinton won the caucus, that they would not flip the state. Charles Pierce of Esquire wrote, “This whole mess was over four freaking delegates, and the Sanders people should know better than to conclude what has been a brilliant and important campaign by turning it into an extended temper tantrum.”

posted by ennui.bz at 6:44 AM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

Went from changing my registration in NY from I to D so I could vote for Bernie (back in the fall) to proudly and eagerly voting for Clinton in the NY primary, to thinking that Bernie's movement is rooted in misogyny (above all) and insulated leftist naiveté and white privilege in recent weeks. I never really believed he could win. Now I hope he loses badly in the final few primaries, which I suspect after the last few days is now assured.

Picking up a chair is violence. Sending threats by text message is violence. Calling women (allies or not) bitches and cunts is violence. You can parse words and split hairs all you want. Those are not legitimate forms of protest in my understanding of American political ideals. And millions of Americans just saw all they needed to see to put this thing to bed. I predict Bernie loses California and New Jersey both by double digits, and deservedly so.

I'm with her, now. And if you think not voting is a choice, you're either selfish or ignorant of history or both. The president has to be president of all Americans, with very diverse views and interests. No campaign based on blaming one class of people for all of our problems (whether that is "immigrants" or "the rich") can produce political change I am interested in supporting as an American.

Vote your conscience, but remember to check your privilege first.
posted by spitbull at 6:44 AM on May 20, 2016 [54 favorites]

I missed the part in logic class where one time one thing happened therefore the opposite has never happened and will never happen.
posted by entropicamericana at 6:45 AM on May 20, 2016

Honestly, if you look at the mass media all you're going to see is confirmation of what you thought, because "The Media" isn't a consistent unitary actor, it's a mess of people and organizations with no real need to be consistent. So The Media says a lot of contradictory things at any given time and any given person or organization is likely to say different things at different times.

You've been annoyed that they've been discounting Sanders' chances. But from my perspective he has never had any realistic chance of winning and I've been annoyed that The Media keeps following their dull and obvious incentives to create interest and viewership by highlighting conflict and the closeness of the race. I will admit that my perspective is different-not-better in part because I'm occasionally on the being-interviewed side of the equation (and was a few times around the NY primary, though I never checked if they saw air or print), so I get frustrated with this tendency because I see it iterated across issues.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:45 AM on May 20, 2016 [10 favorites]

No campaign based on blaming one class of people for all of our problems (whether that is "immigrants" or "the rich") can produce political change I am interested in supporting as an American.

Bingo bingo bingo bingo
posted by sallybrown at 6:47 AM on May 20, 2016 [17 favorites]

Clinton "trading away" social security is not even remotely possible as a thing that could happen

Not in its entirety, of course, but some of us twitch when Democrats view it as something where concessions might be made. How many times did the phrase "grand bargain" rear its ugly head during Obama's terms? The main reason why chained CPI failed wasn't the progressive outrage or Obama's lack of desire for it, but rather the Republicans' refusal to budge an inch on giving anything tax-related in return.

Neither President Sanders nor President Clinton would be able to get substantial positive fiscal or political change past the Senate, much less the House. But Sanders seems less likely to use Obamaesque fiscal negotiation, i.e. "my first offer is in the center-right, your first offer is way off in John Birch Society land, let's meet somewhere in between."
posted by delfin at 6:48 AM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

I think there's a vast difference between saying "Trump can't win" but giving him hundreds of hours of media, and saying "Sanders can't win" and giving him a small fraction of the coverage. I can accept that you see it differently, but it seems to me that there is a much different effect between the two types of exposure.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 6:48 AM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

There is some truth in the assertion that it requires a massive amount of money to actually run for the President or as a member of congress. That definitely tends to skew the representation significantly towards older, rich, white males. Increasingly the money that is required to run for office either requires significant personal capital to the point where self-funding candidates are increasingly found at various levels because it's one of the best ways of achieving the critical mass to even be consider as a serious candidate beyond a local election. This also has an effect of advantaging the incumbent because the cost of campaigns and the challenge of achieving name recognition heavily favor the person who already has successfully run for office.

Yes this can be extremely corrosive to democracy because it distorts representation from an accurate reflection of the electorate to a microcosm of the elite with the consequences that policies that favor the elite tend to be favored by representatives.

This is also reflected in the news coverage by journalists where the research has shown over and over that there tends to be significant bias towards the economic and socio-political status quo by journalists simply because it's of an economic advantage to the publishers and advertisers to reach the highest audience (although admittedly some news outlets adopt much more biased outlooks as a way of differentiating themselves in the market) plus there is a tendency to rely on the wonk bubble of established political experts and commentators. The incestous nature of US TV and Newspaper journalism in regards to maintaining access regardless of the administration seems to be fairly obvious to even the most naive consumer of journalism.

So yeah a more independent fourth estate and less dark money in the process might help improve democracy but it's really not certain how we can achieve those goals and the current "just tear the whole thing down" sentiment being captured by Sanders and Trump plus the typical tendency of journalists to engage in really facile explanations fueled by all sorts of false equivalencies really seem like a symptom of an underlying problem but amazingly neither seem to be long on solutions.

I think the canary in the coalmine is useful but I do want a political leader to be less focused on assigning blame and more focused on creating actionable steps to fixing said problem.
posted by vuron at 6:49 AM on May 20, 2016

prize bull octorok Clinton "trading away" social security is not even remotely possible as a thing that could happen

Obama tried to trade away Social Security and failed only because the Republicans were so far gone into lunacy by then that they wouldn't take the deal, why should I think Clinton wouldn't do the same?

spitbull No campaign based on blaming one class of people for all of our problems (whether that is "immigrants" or "the rich") can produce political change I am interested in supporting as an American.

Then it's a good thing I wasn't blaming all our problems on the rich.

But I do think blaming the economic problems (not all problems, just the economic ones) on the people hoarding all the money isn't exactly unreasonable.

If you disagree, could you identify what other group you think might be to blame rather than just saying I'm a bad person?
posted by sotonohito at 7:00 AM on May 20, 2016 [15 favorites]

Without the caucases Bernie would be doing worse, not better.

Which is why he hasn't pushed for their abolishment in his argument for primary reform. Also, he's happy to benefit from the system being rigged when it's in his favor.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:01 AM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

What about this: every state is a closed primary, but you can change your party registration up to and even the day of the primary. Then anyone can vote for the candidate of their choice, but if you're voting for the Democratic candidate, you've got to be a Democrat. As for caucuses, I think they should all be eliminated, with the possible exception of Iowa. Let one early state be a caucus, sure, but after that, primary voting seems the more democratic and fair way to approach it.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:04 AM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

What about this: every state is a closed primary, but you can change your party registration up to and even the day of the primary.

How is that functionally different from being an open primary?
posted by Etrigan at 7:07 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

How is that functionally different from being an open primary?

It's basically the same, but it would increase the number of registered Democrats, which I'm guessing would be good for state parties -- more data, more voters on the rolls, etc. It would also tamp down some of the "I'm a Democrat but am voting for Kasich as a vote against Trump" or "I'm a Republican but voting for Sanders to mess with Clinton" type voting we've seen. I mean, sure, you still could do that, but you'd have to change your party registration.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:10 AM on May 20, 2016

It isn't - it's a semi-open primary (anyone can vote in a primary, but must elect which primary to vote in.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:10 AM on May 20, 2016

Caucuses are inherently anti-democratic but the Iowa caucus do serve the purpose of allowing one state to basically do the job of determining how good a candidate can be at retail politics (holding hands and shaking babies, doing endless trips to small town diners to talk to salt of the earth types, etc) and because it has a lower bar on entry it possibly allows for more insurgent candidates to gain traction.

However personally I think anyone running for president these days probably has shown at least a vague mastery of retail politics so the endless Iowa and NH campaign stops are basically of only marginal value and let's be honest neither state is remotely representative of the bulk of the US.

So personally I'd be glad to see the caucuses go altogether.

A national primary day (held on a Saturday to not screw over working class voters of course) has some potential but basically it would always advantage the candidate with massive infrastructure and name recognition so it has drawbacks.

My personal preference would be a rotating calendar of primaries where if you are first one election cycle you are last in another but due to the infrequent nature of elections that can result in some strange distortions of voter sentiment as generations age.

But it's very interesting that Sanders has tended to focus on the undemocratic nature of various parts of the nomination process up to and until it suddenly appears that those parts benefit his campaign.

When Iowa and Nevada were the only caucus states that had voted he talked about how caucuses sucked (NH was his big win at that time) but when he reeled of a massive win streak in caucuses that criticism disappeared. By a similar token he was hyper critical of the nature of super delegates early on but now his campaign has pivoted to full force pitching to them that they should ignore the results of nomination process and focus exclusively on general election matchup polling.

This willingness to be principled up until the point in which being principled erodes his arguments for being in the race has really soured me on him as a politician. I expect most politicians to be opportunistic but he's done such a good job of representing himself as the last honest man in Washington that when the James Stewart/ Jefferson Smith routine goes away it's really jarring.
posted by vuron at 7:20 AM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

No campaign based on blaming one class of people for all of our problems (whether that is "immigrants" or "the rich")

There may be a good point in this, approached with some subtlety, but drawing that specific parallel as if those are remotely equivalent things manages to be both incredibly dumb and offensive at the same time.
posted by phearlez at 7:22 AM on May 20, 2016 [22 favorites]

well those underprivileged rich folk, someone's gotta stick up for em
posted by entropicamericana at 7:30 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

“Berned” by Bernie Sanders

So back up to this article... what this says, yet again, is that the Bernie campaign people were not ready for a truly national campaign. But we've known that, from the various Black Lives Matter protests last fall to how they've handled this last week in Nevada. By contrast, Hillary got all her ducks in a row from the beginning.

Perhaps we're seeing the consequences of a campaign (and a candidate) that's in way over their heads and lacks any way to save face -- and perhaps doesn't have to (or want to) since they can just burn it all down.

I do hope the Hillary campaign is working to give the Bernie campaign a way to save face, because if not....
posted by dw at 7:37 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

I despise the two front runners so very very much that I've simply stopped reading US politics. Yes, I know that's exactly what they are looking for - scorching the earth so there's no sign of intelligent life - but for my own sanity, I have to retreat.

Based on watching these primaries for some four decades now, I still think that Sanders has a chance - the front runner has never won a D primary in my whole existence (incumbents aside of course) and Hillary does seem to have a talent for massive fuckups. But it's still a long-shot. Pending such a stroke of good luck, I'm checked out of the US political scene until 2017 (and basically checked out of Facebook - I can't bring myself to open it and see all this Trump and Clinton).
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 7:41 AM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

By contrast, Hillary got all her ducks in a row from the beginning.

To be fair, she has had years and years of planning. I don't think (pure speculation) she would have run again unless she thought she had a very very good chance of winning. Once the election is past and the post-mortems come out, it will be fascinating to see what the dynamics were in Bernie's campaign as it shifted from "old man shouts at cloud" to viable runaway campaign. It does sound like this kind of underestimation of him happened on a much smaller scale in some of his early VT races. The dynamic here is just so different.
posted by sallybrown at 7:42 AM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

By the way, on caucuses? Oregon and Washington are politically very similar -- dense, highly liberal urban areas surrounded by lots of less dense, highly libertarian/conservative areas. Both have vote-by-mail.

Bernie finished with 74% of the delegates in Washington. In Oregon, he'll come in as high as 58%.

Now, you could argue that Oregon had a closed primary while Washington's are open so that might affect things, but Oregon's registration laws and affiliation change laws are pretty straightforward and open, and there was a lot of runway for independents to switch.

Regardless, an open primary in Washington would not have yielded a 74% yield for Bernie. Washington remains one of his highest net delegate pickups because of those caucuses. He would have done worse in Tuesday's primary, even if he won.
posted by dw at 7:45 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Or look at Nebraska. Bernie won the caucus handily; later, in the open voting, Clinton won. Why Nebraska had two elections is beyond me but it does show a pretty stark difference between caucus voters and regular voters.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:49 AM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

I despise the two front runners so very very much that I've simply stopped reading US politics. Yes, I know that's exactly what they are looking for - scorching the earth so there's no sign of intelligent life - but for my own sanity, I have to retreat.

I refuse to check out because it's not fair for the burden of engagement, paying attention, tracking what's said, following and discussing news, etc to fall on the people already most worried about the outcome, who don't have the privilege to check out because they are worried they'll be deported, or blocked from entering the country, or the like under a Trump presidency. There are people out there terrified for their lives and their families. So as much as I don't love the two front runners either, I suck it up and deal. The more people who tune out, the easier it is for Trump to normalize his poisonous stances.
posted by sallybrown at 7:52 AM on May 20, 2016 [17 favorites]

Or look at Nebraska. Bernie won the caucus handily; later, in the open voting, Clinton won. Why Nebraska had two elections is beyond me but it does show a pretty stark difference between caucus voters and regular voters.

The Nebraska caucus was on March 6, when Sanders was closer in the delegate count. Timing matters.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:52 AM on May 20, 2016

With Trump at the top of the ticket, the consequences of this election are bigger than any I have experienced in my lifetime. (I was less than two years old when Johnson ran against Goldwater--maybe that comes close.) So the fighting between Sanders and Clinton and between Sanders supports and Clinton supporters really, really scares me.

In 2008, I supported Clinton over Obama, but I voted for Obama in Pennsylvania, because by April was time to unite around the person who was going to win. Clinton should have conceded before she did. Her hanging on too long worried me, because I thought that her actions would hurt the Democrats' chances that year. But had McCain won, I think I think would at least have *had* a country when he left office. So I didn't have the fear that I have now for the future of the USA and indeed the entire world. (Trump with his finger on the button--frightening.)

Unfortunately for Clinton, her holding on so long against Obama and the encouragement she got for doing so from her most ardent supports now undercut arguments from her and her supporters that Sanders drop out.

Clinton eventually vigorously supported Obama. Is there perhaps a difference between her age then (60) and Sanders age now (74) in that she saw that she could have another chance at running and Sanders almost certainly will not? Clinton had a lot to lose by not being the team player in 2008. Maybe Sanders feels that at his age he has nothing to lose by "burning it all down."
posted by haiku warrior at 8:10 AM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

"In early 2005, Donald Trump explained to radio host Howard Stern that he had considered hosting a version of his show The Apprentice pitting black contestants vs. white ones."
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 8:13 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

What happened in Nevada:

The problem with this narrative is that it is alternately wholly skewed against or completely at odds to what independent observers documented about the process. Basically everyone who is not a Bernie supporter has presented a narrative very different from this one. Not to mention some of the facts in aforementioned narrative leave out large chunks of information--for example, when discussing the dismissed Sanders delegates it neglects to mention that 56 of those delegates were not even physically present, and that the credential committee approving delegate credentials was 50% Sanders supporters. When it talks about the approval of "temporary rules", it does not mention that the approval of "temporary rules" is not even the approval of rules--it's simply an acknowledgement that a set of "temporary rules" has been presented. The equivalent of saying "I received your letter" after someone sends you a letter.

--------

Also, are we seriously arguing the media has been biased in favor of Clinton? The same media that perpetuated Watergate, Vince Foster murder, 24/7/365 sperm-on-dress, BenghaziBenghaziBenghazi, EmailsOfDoom? The same email that relentlessly questions whether she is likeable enough, or too ambitious, or trustworthy, or God knows what else? The same media that has portrayed the Sanders/Clinton race as a horse race for the entire primary until the last week or so, despite the fact she pulled ahead in delegates and never lost the lead?
posted by Anonymous at 8:13 AM on May 20, 2016

With Trump at the top of the ticket, the consequences of this election are bigger than any I have experienced in my lifetime.

I mean, Trump scares the shit out of me, but your statement disregards that many presidents in the past 40 years (especially Reagan and W. Bush, IMHO) have had disastrous, deadly consequences for huge swaths of population.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:14 AM on May 20, 2016

Obama tried to trade away Social Security and failed only because the Republicans were so far gone into lunacy by then that they wouldn't take the deal, why should I think Clinton wouldn't do the same?

From her campaign site:
As president, she would:
- Fight any attempts to gamble seniors’ retirement security on the stock market through privatization.
- Oppose reducing annual cost-of-living adjustments.
- Oppose Republican efforts to raise the retirement age—an unfair idea that will particularly hurt the seniors who have worked the hardest throughout their lives.
- Oppose closing the long-term shortfall on the backs of the middle class, whether through benefit cuts or tax increases.

She seems pretty clear on that.
posted by octothorpe at 8:15 AM on May 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

I mean, Trump scares the shit out of me, but your statement disregards that many presidents in the past 40 years (especially Reagan and W. Bush, IMHO) have had disastrous, deadly consequences for huge swaths of population.

Not if you believe the consequences will be even worse under Trump.
posted by sallybrown at 8:18 AM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

With Trump at the top of the ticket, the consequences of this election are bigger than any I have experienced in my lifetime.

I mean, Trump scares the shit out of me, but your statement disregards that many presidents in the past 40 years (especially Reagan and W. Bush, IMHO) have had disastrous, deadly consequences for huge swaths of population.

haiku warrior didn't say "the consequences of this election are big and none others have been".
posted by Etrigan at 8:19 AM on May 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

I think I think would at least have *had* a country when he left office.

So long as he didn't have a heart attack and folksy dontchaknow ascended to the presidency.
posted by Talez at 8:20 AM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

Not if you believe the consequences will be even worse under Trump.

Right, I guess I just want people to remember that a lot of people are dead because of mistakes we have made in elections past.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:20 AM on May 20, 2016

I mean, Trump scares the shit out of me, but your statement disregards that many presidents in the past 40 years (especially Reagan and W. Bush, IMHO) have had disastrous, deadly consequences for huge swaths of population.

I don't think anyone is discounting the suffering these presidents have perpetuated. Just stating the country still exists. Obviously, "maintaining the existence of the thing you're in charge of" is like, the minimum possible bar for any leader and is in no way an indicator of leadership quality.

"In early 2005, Donald Trump explained to radio host Howard Stern that he had considered hosting a version of his show The Apprentice pitting black contestants vs. white ones."

“On The Apprentice there was a concept, okay, thrown out by some person, nine blacks against nine whites,” said Trump. “And it would be nine blacks against nine whites, all highly educated, very smart, strong, beautiful. Do you like it? Do you like it, Robin?” . . . Stern went on to ask Trump a series of questions. “Very dark blacks, or light-skinned blacks?” Stern asked. “Assortment,” Trump responded, “against whites.” When a laughing Quivers asked how many blondes, Trump added he wanted all nine whites to be blonde.

The Apprentice: RACE WAR!

How can one person be this terrible? Seriously, how?! Trump: the literal embodiment of the White Male Id.
posted by Anonymous at 8:22 AM on May 20, 2016

317, I agree that Reagan and Bush had disastrous consequences, but I didn't have the fear during the election that I have now. Perhaps it is because I have now seen how badly things can turn out that I am more fearful now. And Trump seems much worse than either of them did at this point in the campaign.
posted by haiku warrior at 8:22 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump added he wanted all nine whites to be blonde.

Apparently it was cut off early and he started talking about "Blue eyed fine aryan specimens".
posted by Talez at 8:23 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Apprentice: RACE WAR!

Survivor actually did this season. It's called Cook Islands. And the winner, Yul, went on to work for President Obama.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:24 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

God it's like the 1936 Olympics.
posted by sallybrown at 8:25 AM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

Bill Clinton is constitutionally ineligible to be VP. So is Obama.

Is Al Gore eligible?

Sure, he was only elected president once.
posted by Gelatin at 8:29 AM on May 20, 2016 [44 favorites]

Also, are we seriously arguing the media has been biased in favor of Clinton?

It's complicated.

But for most Sanders supporters, there's the troubling question of corporate interest. When major media has financial interests in one candidate over the other, it does tend to raise eyebrows.
posted by iamck at 8:29 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Maybe Sanders feels that at his age he has nothing to lose by "burning it all down."

Maybe he doesn't but the millions of PoC, LGBT and women who would be collateral damage for a generation to a Trump presidency sure do. Which is why his actions since March 15th when he lost OH and FL by huge margins, and effectively the nomination, have infuriated me.
posted by chris24 at 8:29 AM on May 20, 2016 [18 favorites]

octothorpe And Obama promised, on live national television, that he would not merely vote against telecom immunity, but that he would personally filibuster any bill containing telecom immunity.

Then he voted for telecom immunity.

Similarly, in 2011 Obama said this in his State of the Union address:

“To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations. We must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.”

And in 2014 he was offering up cuts to Social Security as a bargaining position despite not only his pledge not to, but despite the fact that the Republicans didn't even **ASK** him to. He just volunteered, all on his own, to gut Social Security.

So I don't put a lot of faith in Clinton's solemn promise to leave Social Security alone. I've seen that before in Obama and I've seen that believing that sort of thing makes me feel like a sucker.

There will be a long stalemate, maybe even a government shutdown looming, and I'm quite confident that out of desperation to get something done she'll offer up Social Security.

I don't even particularly think she's lying when she says she won't cut Social Security, I don't think Obama was lying in 2011. I don't think either is deliberately plotting to slash Social Security for grins.

But I think that her campaign promises that she's the Democrat who can, despite the Republicans holding the House and likely the Senate, get things done are completely unmoored from reality. Absolutely anything she wants that is to the left of Glenn Beck will simply not happen. Congress is going to send her nothing but a constant stream of attempts to repeal the ACA, budgets that completely eliminate funding for both the ACA and Planned Parenthood, etc.

And in desperation to get something, anything, done there's Social Security glistening like the ultimate bargaining chip. And she'll use it because the alternative is watching the Republicans hold the entire nation hostage by gridlock and I don't think she, or Obama, or possibly even Sanders, can stand that. They're politicians because they're active and want to accomplish things, not simply warm a chair and hold the status quo.
posted by sotonohito at 8:44 AM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

"In early 2005, Donald Trump explained to radio host Howard Stern that he had considered hosting a version of his show The Apprentice pitting black contestants vs. white ones."

Trump takes credit for everything, but I wonder if that was really his idea or something the production team kicked around for a while and then rejected. Because another Mark Burnett show, Survivor, did try dividing tribes by racial ethnicity in their 13th season: Survivor: Cook Islands. That aired in 2006, so it probably would have happened in 2005. They segregated the tribes into four ethnic groups: African Americans, Caucasian-Americans, Asian-Americans and Latino-Americans. The tribes merged quickly, less than a third of the way into the season, eliminating the divide. But the show was thoroughly criticized for it.

On preview, I see roomthreeseventeen beat me to it. :)
posted by zarq at 8:45 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

zarq, I was told on Facebook it was Burnett's idea.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:48 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

By "white dudes" are you referring to Jews? Because if so, most of us are depressingly familiar with being the targets of antisemitic hatred both on the internet and off it. Directly or indirectly.

Huh. That's interesting. I haven't been, and neither have any of the Jewish people I know. And the victim here expressed total shock at being subjected to sentiments that he thought had died out generations ago.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:49 AM on May 20, 2016

I asked myself a question before the 2012 election; where's the line? What would a Democrat have to do to just absolutely disqualify themselves from my vote?

I was reading a lot about the drone war, and the economic collapse of '08, and the incompetency and short-sightedness of how both were handled were boggling to me.

And then it just got worse from there--banks kept consolidating, and look, we're back to banks being acknowledged to be too big to fail, just within the last month. And we are still insisting that any "military aged" male killed in a drone strike must've been a viable target. And we still do double-tap strikes that kill rescuers. It's unforgivable to me. That's so obviously a war crime I can't even look fellow leftists/liberals in the eye when they try to make excuses for it. My bile rises and the disgust I feel for the lack of empathy just makes me feel misanthropic. When my own Mom, a dedicated Hillary volunteer, can't offer anything but "I don't think it'll be that bad/it's not that bad" when I know it's that bad, I read it in the damn paper, I just swallow it and don't talk about it because I hate to think less of her for her unwillingness or inability to just admit that it sucks and it's a terrible thing we're forced to accept because nobody with any power in this country seems to have a problem with it. So I just don't talk about it so I can still have some kind of respect for her as my mother, as a source of guidance.

So that was my line. It was in '12 when I voted for Stein, and it'll probably be again in '16, when I vote for Stein.

It has to matter, something has to matter enough that you can say "Nope, even if the other obvious choice is worse, I won't sign my name to this."

You have to know what that is. If it's not dead Pakistani kids who never learned to read, shit, I got nothing for you. But at least be honest with yourself with what the line is.

So, to the question earlier about "What would Hillary have to do to win you to her side?"; I don't think she could. I think she's more hawkish than Obama, who was already too hawkish. I could easily see her deporting more people than he did (and he's already beaten GWB on that account) and I can easily see her getting us into another war in the Middle East. I just can't have any part of that, especially when the efforts to right the problems here at home seem like tokens that must include handouts to the source of the problems they're trying to address; see the massive infusion of capital into the main source of health care costs, the insurance companies, that the ACA created.

It sucks, because I realize I'm just withdrawing, but on the other hand, it's forced me into a position of mindfulness of the immediacies of my own life, to treasure the little things that I have right here and right now, because I have no faith that there are any real positive outcomes from this election. It just means more death overseas at our hands, more half-measures at home, and further splitting of our nation, and nobody is better off, and nobody is happier, except for a few people at the top who can buy their way out of any of the problems the rest of us have to wrestle with.
posted by turntraitor at 8:51 AM on May 20, 2016 [18 favorites]

So I don't put a lot of faith in Clinton's solemn promise to leave Social Security alone. I've seen that before in Obama and I've seen that believing that sort of thing makes me feel like a sucker.

So your argument is just that you think she's lying? Why do you think that Sanders is telling the truth then? Or anyone?
posted by octothorpe at 8:53 AM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

zarq, I was told on Facebook it was Burnett's idea.

Ah! That makes sense, then.

I always assumed it was a poorly thought out response to complaints from the public about the lack of diversity on the show.
posted by zarq at 8:54 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

> What would a Democrat have to do to just absolutely disqualify themselves from my vote?

That's fair enough - each of us must have their own line, and we each have to live with the consequences. Even if it wasn't their fault at all - I'm not blaming them - I bet a lot of Naderites in Florida now wish they'd voted for Gore.

> I realize I'm just withdrawing

Yeah, that's the problem, isn't it. When President Trump is inaugurated, this sort of thing will be banned outright. Participation will be mandatory, and yuuge.
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:57 AM on May 20, 2016

octothorpe, sotonohito said this in the same comment:

I don't even particularly think she's lying when she says she won't cut Social Security, I don't think Obama was lying in 2011. I don't think either is deliberately plotting to slash Social Security for grins.
posted by futz at 8:59 AM on May 20, 2016

Huh. That's interesting. I haven't been, and neither have any of the Jewish people I know.

Consider yourself lucky.

By contrast, most of my friends and family members who are Jewish have experienced antisemitism in one form or another.

For WTF-ness, there's nothing quite like having someone ask, earnestly and innocently, if they can see your horns.

And the victim here expressed total shock at being subjected to sentiments that he thought had died out generations ago.

Yeah. Clearly, he was wrong.
posted by zarq at 8:59 AM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

So I don't put a lot of faith in Clinton's solemn promise to leave Social Security alone. I've seen that before in Obama and I've seen that believing that sort of thing makes me feel like a sucker.

What makes you think Sanders will be any different, though?
posted by Anonymous at 8:59 AM on May 20, 2016

I don't see where Obama was ever gutting Social Security. There was some talk of switching to a 'Chained' CPI rather than the CPI currently in use and the cutting of Social Security SSI benefits for those receiving unemployment. Both were just talk. Did I miss something?
posted by readery at 9:00 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

sonohito explicitly states that they don't believe Clinton is lying per se:

"I don't even particularly think she's lying when she says she won't cut Social Security, I don't think Obama was lying in 2011. I don't think either is deliberately plotting to slash Social Security for grins.

But I think that her campaign promises that she's the Democrat who can, despite the Republicans holding the House and likely the Senate, get things done are completely unmoored from reality. "

It is that the desire to "do things" will lead to the triangulating keep-cutting-the-pie-in-half-until-it's-crumbs strategies we've already seen from Pres. Obama.

Remember sequestration? Sure, some good things happened during this administration, particularly in the first two years when there was a Democratic(ish) majority. But the last 6 years have seen less and less funding for all the important things that the federal government does.

The way you break that cycle is with big ideas that you can sell as a narrative to the people. That is what I believe Sec. Clinton does not get.
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:00 AM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

The way you break that cycle is with

voting in midterm elections???

big ideas that you can sell as a narrative to the people.

ah
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:02 AM on May 20, 2016 [16 favorites]

Chained CPI, as far as I understand it, is basically recalculating downward the formulas for cost-of-living increases. So everybody gets to claim that they saved social security and didn't cut benefits, but inflation does it for them over time.

It's the opposite of what Democrats are always pushing for with the minimum wage, tying them strongly to COL.
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:03 AM on May 20, 2016

It has to matter, something has to matter enough that you can say "Nope, even if the other obvious choice is worse, I won't sign my name to this."

This. A million times.
posted by iamck at 9:03 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

voting in midterm elections???

I took that as a given; I've voted in every primary and general election since I moved back to the States. But I'm not the person the Democrats need to reach out to; they need to reach out to the folks that don't vote. And saying "hey, you should vote you bad non-voters you!" is not a great strategy for that.
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:06 AM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

TT, if you live in a swing state you will be throwing your vote away. It's unfortunate that you are so put off. But look no further than the Supreme Court to see the consequences. Imagine another Alito and another Roberts instead of a Kagan and a Sotomayor. If Obama cannot get his choice through the Senate, the next president will appoint at least one, and possibly three justices.
posted by haiku warrior at 9:09 AM on May 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

I could easily see her deporting more people than he did

I don't think that will be true. Trump's entire platform and now the Republican Party's entire stance is anti-immigration. After this election, I don't think there's any turning back to the status quo. And even if we pass some form of comprehensive reform, there's going to be another at least another four to eight years of trying to stop Republicans from trying to veto it and just people in public harassing people who look Hispanic (or whatever future minority that's unpopular) because of a suspicion they may not be legally here. It's proven with health care, abortion, and same-sex marriage that if the other side is defeated through federal action, they will just regroup, retrench, and fight on.
posted by FJT at 9:10 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

TT, if you live in a swing state you will be throwing your vote away.

You can argue all day about what people should do in swing states, but I don't think it's fair to ever tell someone they are throwing their carefully thought out vote away.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:10 AM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

and nobody is better off

the Muslims who are not banned from the U.S.
the people who are not rounded up and deported, splitting their families apart
the would-be victims of less regulated guns
women who maintain the right to choose because there's not a Republican in office when Kennedy or RBG leaves the Court
people who maintain all sorts of legal protections like the right to bring class action suit and their fourth amendment rights, for the same reason
the people of color and mentally ill who are not shot by an even further emboldened police
the refugees who are not turned away
the children who aren't stripped of food and care provided by the state
the people with disabilities whose funding can be taken away
the consumers whose market protections against corporate malfeasance can be ignored at the direction of the Executive
the citizens who rely on the threat and force of the Civil Rights Division to protect their constantly-under-attack rights

You may think things are so bad already that they can't get worse. If so, you are very, very wrong.
posted by sallybrown at 9:12 AM on May 20, 2016 [53 favorites]

It has to matter, something has to matter enough that you can say "Nope, even if the other obvious choice is worse, I won't sign my name to this."

The issues matter. But your name doesn't matter. Your conscience doesn't matter. People matter. Children matter. Lives matter. Black lives matter. And by not doing everything to protect those things, in order to protect the value of your name, you are, I am very much afraid, doing something wrong. Is your name worth the life of even a single child? Because by letting the greater evil prevail, to preserve your name, I believe you are saying it's worth much more.
posted by howfar at 9:15 AM on May 20, 2016 [30 favorites]

Hopeful/cynical evocation of reversion to the mean?
posted by maudlin at 9:19 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

I would love to know a good way to get people voting in 'boring' elections and I admit that I do not have good answers or ideas for how to accomplish that. I do think that telling people over and over that the system is rigged, corrupt, etc is megacounterproductive to achieving that outcome tho

Obviously despair is not a great motivator either although I do think that things are pretty rigged on a number of levels (including within the Democratic party). Originally, though, the Sanders message was a pretty bog-standard leftist critique/narrative with the call-to-action of "vote for Bernie and get these issues on the agenda". (It later became "holy shit we might actually pull this off" and then the dog ran squarely into the car and is currently limping away somewhat dazedly.)

But there was a coherent message, a narrative which was of course simplified but also which is reasonably accurate and which was compelling and which placed a vote for Sen. Sanders as action item #1 toward accomplishing that vision. If Sec. Clinton has a compelling narrative to her campaign I do not know what it is. "Vote for me, I'm not a dumpster fire" is not great although it will probably win her the election (I hope).

Hard-working, competent lovable nerd is sort of where I hope she goes? Ultimately I do agree with many commenters in these threads that part of Sec. Clinton's issue is that she is "a woman caught in the act of asking for power". I'm not sure how she threads that needle.
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:22 AM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

It has to matter, something has to matter enough that you can say "Nope, even if the other obvious choice is worse, I won't sign my name to this."

That line for me is with domestic issues, rather than foreign policy. I'm against fearmongering and warmongering. I'm definitely against Presidents and Congress waging unnecessary and useless wars. But I'm far more invested in whether or not women have a right to control their own bodies and have access to abortion and health care without outside interference. I'm far more invested in the next President not running the economy into the ground by defaulting on our debt, that they will not stereotype and vilify entire groups of people and spur mobs to violence, and that they will be honest and realistic about what they will and will not be able to accomplish. I'm much more interested in focusing on a slew of domestic issues, including gun control, funding for all levels of education and increasing access to less expensive health care for everyone, then I am about some other issues.

You have to know what that is. If it's not dead Pakistani kids who never learned to read, shit, I got nothing for you.

That's fine, but it's important to note that reasonable people can in fact care about 'dead Pakistani kids' while simultaneously focusing on other priorities. There's nothing wrong with placing "Supports Drone Warfare" on a spectrum of what we do and don't find acceptable -- and voting for a candidate because even though they might support policies we disagree with, we think they'll be a net positive for the country overall. Or at least compared to their competition.
posted by zarq at 9:23 AM on May 20, 2016 [10 favorites]

There is a very strange dual tendency to say "Trump would not be as bad as he is promising" and, at the same time, "Clinton would not be as good as she is promising." (I feel it too.) I don't know why, but I see it everywhere.

Democrats have a long and prominent track record of seeking compromises even when they shouldn't.

Trump is enough of a goddamned cartoon character that it's hard to take anything he says seriously, even when the consequences if we don't are dire.
posted by delfin at 9:24 AM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

The issues matter. But your name doesn't matter.

I agree, it doesn't matter to anyone else. But I have to accept that if I vote for Clinton, some kids in Waziristan will be missing limbs, relatives, and the ability to have any kind of meaningful existence, just because of a trick of geography, and a wrongheaded belief that somehow drones are "fixing" a problem. I still have to live with myself if I do that, and no amount of people clicking + on a MeFi post because I logicked my way out of not somehow being responsible for the actions of the person I voted for won't get me to sleep any faster at night.

So how do I calculate?

I agree black lives matter. I agree all those things matter. But do they matter more than those kids? Do I have to make that choice? I don't think I do. I think it's morally acceptable to just say if the vote means I get dead kids and more wealth inequality and more of what we're already getting, then I'm not casting that vote. I'm still casting a vote, and it's a vote that is just as meaningful to me, and my conscience. I'm not going to look down on Clinton voters; I just can't support what that vote means anymore.
posted by turntraitor at 9:25 AM on May 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

how your vote makes you personally feel versus the big picture outcome of your vote seems to be what is at play here
posted by defenestration at 9:28 AM on May 20, 2016 [12 favorites]

If Sec. Clinton has a compelling narrative to her campaign I do not know what it is. "Vote for me, I'm not a dumpster fire" is not great although it will probably win her the election (I hope).

The narrative has struck me more as "vote for me, I'm smart and experienced and I know what I'm doing and I have hella detailed policy ideas" which, admittedly, does not quite grab you by the glands as forcefully as MAGA, but it's a pitch I can certainly feel totally OK about getting behind.
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:29 AM on May 20, 2016 [15 favorites]

The other side of that equation:

If you vote for Clinton, people in foreign countries are going to get droned, bombed, maimed and killed. If you vote for Trump, people in foreign countries are going to get droned, bombed, maimed and killed.

We're Americans. It's what we do. It's in our blood and DNA.
posted by delfin at 9:31 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

You have to know what that is. If it's not dead Pakistani kids who never learned to read, shit, I got nothing for you. But at least be honest with yourself with what the line is.

It's a big country in a big world and the line that runs through it isn't always straight or cleanly delineated. For me, I look at the past and always see a lot of examples where individuals or people see bad stuff being done to them or in general by other groups that hold the power or even by groups they work with or in. But, they still try and sometimes something good happens. But that's just me.
posted by FJT at 9:33 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

We're Americans. It's what we do. It's in our blood and DNA.

There's not a genetic mutation that happens when you get US citizenship that makes you bomb brown people.

We have choices.
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:34 AM on May 20, 2016 [20 favorites]

If you vote for Clinton, people in foreign countries are going to get droned, bombed, maimed and killed. If you vote for Trump, people in foreign countries are going to get droned, bombed, maimed and killed.

At least Clinton will do it with a modicum of restraint and will feel some sort of empathy for the carnage that's so politically correctly called "collateral damage". Trump on the other hand hasn't ruled out turning parts of the middle east to glass.
posted by Talez at 9:34 AM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

I see my vote as a strategic tool, not a declaration of my principles.

I will not let perfect be the enemy of good when so much is at stake.
posted by defenestration at 9:36 AM on May 20, 2016 [43 favorites]

I've been thinking about this comment from prize bull octorok a few threads back:

I think there's some philosophical fault lines between people who think any/all candidates need to earn their votes and people who have essentially pre-pledged their votes to the best option on the table, or even just the least worst option. A sort of aspirational/utilitarian divide. idk. But it jumps out at me when people talk about their votes as a thing to be earned, cause I really don't see my vote as a favor or boon I'm granting to the candidate who shows themselves to be worthy of it, it's a tool I use to try and secure my own interests. Not saying my view is the objectively correct one, just noting the difference

This is a really significant difference and it's the root of a lot of the arguments I see here. It's hard for me (as a utilitarian tool type voter) to understand where someone like turntraitor is coming from. I think it's less about seeing a vote as a favor or a boon, and more of a, I dunno, moral identification with the candidate?
posted by theodolite at 9:37 AM on May 20, 2016 [22 favorites]

It's magical thinking to imagine that any vote you cast in a U.S. Presidential election will stop all kids from being murdered, whether Tamir Rice or a child in Pakistan hit by a bomb. One hopes that casting the right vote helps make sure that fewer kids die. By voting you are necessarily making a choice, just as you are by not voting. It's a luxury, a privilege to imagine you don't have to compromise your principles, and don't have to do the emotional labor of feeling bad about yourself because you caved on something you cared about to help stop a greater evil from coming to pass.

You think the rest of us don't know or care about drones, and dead children, and humiliating abdication of our constitutional principles? Or is it that our spines aren't stiff enough?
posted by sallybrown at 9:38 AM on May 20, 2016 [29 favorites]

votes are like favorites, different people use them in different ways and that is ok
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:38 AM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

votes are like favorites, different people use them in different ways and that is ok

Yes but favorites don't exactly decide the leader of the free world. Best you can do with those is suck up to cortex.
posted by Talez at 9:40 AM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

Wow, here is a thing about US politics that I did not know: The president is exempt from rules that executive-branch employees can't participate "personally and substantially" in things that affect their own financial or business affairs. In other words, presidents don't HAVE to put their assets in blind trusts; they don't even have to stop running their businesses:

In 2012, Mitt Romney placed his complex private-equity investments into a blind trust, to assure the public that their president would not be influenced by private financial incentives. Trump, by contrast, plans to cede control of his diverse holdings to his immediate family members, and the Donald has never been one to delegate — this is a billionaire who does his own publicity.

If President Trump decides he can’t trust the kids to watch the shop, there’s little anyone could do to stop him from effectively running his company and country at the same time. American law bars regular Executive-branch employees from participating “personally and substantially” in any government matter that could affect their own financial interests. But, incredibly, the president is exempted from that rule. According to CNBC, Trump would be within his legal rights to remain his company’s chief executive, even while serving as America’s commander-in-chief. At that point, the only thing that could restrain Trump from putting his financial interests ahead of the public good would be his own sense of shame.

Apparently back in 2006 he was pulling for a housing market crash so he could make bank on others' misery.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:40 AM on May 20, 2016 [21 favorites]

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83
Anthony Kennedy is 79
Stephen Breyer is 77
Clarence Thomas is 67
Samuel Alito is 66
John Roberts is 61
Sonia Sotomayor is also 61
Elena Kagan is 56

Ceterum censeo Trumpo esse delendam.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:48 AM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

By contrast, most of my friends and family members who are Jewish have experienced antisemitism in one form or another.

The writers don't say they've never experienced antisemitism before. They say they've never experienced antisemitism like this before. (Julia Ioffe said she had when her family lived in Russia, but not in the US.) I have never received a call from a coffin-maker because someone contacted them and said I would be needing their services. Maybe you have, but if so, I don't think that's typical.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:49 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

the people who are not rounded up and deported, splitting their families apart
the refugees who are not turned away
the children who aren't stripped of food and care provided by the state

*offer not valid in all areas; Central American child refugees will be deported to send a message.
posted by indubitable at 9:57 AM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

I think voting is a moral act, but I strongly disagree that a person is culpable for every action of a candidate they voted for. The implication of that logic is that you should never vote (or always vote for hopeless third party protest candidates), because every single president of the United States is going to be in charge of a country that bombs civilians and deports people and imprisons thousands and does all kinds of other terrible things. And even if you don't vote, your taxes pay for it.
posted by theodolite at 9:58 AM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

I'm sort of sympathetic to the voting as a moral act or endorsement viewpoint. I don't let it decide my vote, even here in Texas I'll be voting Clinton, not Stein, but I'll also be feeling a bit icky about the drone wars I know will continue and expand under Clinton. I do feel that what America does reflects on me, I felt deeply ashamed by Junior's presidency when speaking to foreign friends.

And I feel shame and hate and rage churning in my gut when I contemplate the evils that will be done by my nation in the coming years.

But I also fee a deep obligation to do the least harmful thing, and clearly that's working as hard as I can to get Clinton elected because Trump is so awful that each day I'm newly startled and horrified that the Republican party has not splintered and fallen apart by his nomination; and I am terrified by what it means that things have gotten so bad that upwards of 40% of Americans think Trump would be a good pick for President.

So even though I'm sympathetic to the idea that voting for Clinton means morally siding with her, or taking responsibility for the children she will murder with drones, I ultimately have to chose pragmatism.
posted by sotonohito at 10:08 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think it's morally acceptable to just say if the vote means I get dead kids and more wealth inequality and more of what we're already getting, then I'm not casting that vote.

What are you views on the "Trolley Problem"?

There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the correct choice?

In essence, I think your argument comes down to defending option 1. I think that view, without more, is ethically problematic. It (I think unjustifiably) privileges the personal experience of the choosing agent over that of the people on the tracks.
posted by howfar at 10:08 AM on May 20, 2016 [21 favorites]

By the way, on caucuses? Oregon and Washington are politically very similar -- dense, highly liberal urban areas surrounded by lots of less dense, highly libertarian/conservative areas. Both have vote-by-mail.

Bernie finished with 74% of the delegates in Washington. In Oregon, he'll come in as high as 58%.

Some additional numbers that seem kind of relevant here: over 625,000 voters--about 2/3 of Oregon's 950,000+ registered Democrats--voted in the Oregon primary this week (well after the race was realistically--if not mathematically--over) to decide the distribution of 59 delegates. That's a bit over 10,000 voters per delegate.

In Washington, a much larger state which has about twice the number of registered voters, the Democratic caucuses took place in late March, when the race was substantially more competitive. Only about 230,000 participated to decide the distribution of 101 delegates. That's a bit under 2300 voters per delegate.

Thanks to the caucus process, a Washington Democrat's vote was worth almost 5 times as much as an Oregon Democrat's vote.

Seems legit.
posted by dersins at 10:11 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

What are you views on the "Trolley Problem"?
There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move.

god that was the worst episode of Mr Rogers
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:16 AM on May 20, 2016 [51 favorites]

Oh no now I'm reading it in his voice
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:19 AM on May 20, 2016 [13 favorites]

"Well, at least I didn't kill that one person when my inaction ensured that those other five people died."
posted by tonycpsu at 10:22 AM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

That fact that the trolley problem is even something we have to debate is what's wrong with this entire election. Outlaw trolleys.
posted by cell divide at 10:23 AM on May 20, 2016 [10 favorites]

Washington Post dug up some 1978/79 tax returns Trump filed in the course of a casino license application. Guess how much he paid in taxes in those years! Here's a hint: the ancient Greeks debated whether this number even existed
posted by theodolite at 10:27 AM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

I don't think you can even apply the reduction in complexity of the trolly problem here. The biggest issue in the trolly problem is that, while you're engaging in this calculus of reducing the total death toll by 4, you are never the less causing the death of that one very specific person. Absent your action, that person would continue to live. It is more accurate to say that when you pull that lever you are saving 5 people and murdering one.

A presidential contest between Clinton and Trump almost certainly doesn't mean a new and unique death if we're talking about foreign wars. There's every indication that Trump would be equally bad in all the same ways and additionally worse in others. If he was some sort of staunch protectionist you might have a real A vs B situation - he might engage in reckless policies that would cause other different problems but reduce troops on the ground and drones in the air over other spots. But there's no sign of that or any reason to think that the congress is going to be any different on these foreign issues.
posted by phearlez at 10:28 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

fixed guideway transit is inherently corrupt

free hovercraft for all
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:29 AM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

Seriously though, thank you howfar for framing it in terms of the Trolley Problem. I think that may be the single best explanation for why I think tactical voting is morally imperative.

I don't think anyone in the various Trolley Problems would feel great about their decisions, they're designed to be morally tough and no matter what you chose someone is going to die. If I were put into a Trolley Problem in the real world I'd doubtless feel awful about my choice. But that doesn't make it wrong, just icky.
posted by sotonohito at 10:35 AM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

1) Chained CPI is fucked up and bullshit. Both SS benefits and minimum wage need to be tied directly to a Senator's total compensation.

2) Turd Sandwich 2016!
posted by j_curiouser at 10:35 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83
Anthony Kennedy is 79
Stephen Breyer is 77
Clarence Thomas is 67
Samuel Alito is 66
John Roberts is 61
Sonia Sotomayor is also 61
Elena Kagan is 56

Their ages are a bit irrelevant. Any member of the Court can leave at any time, if they need to. Or someone who is not yet 80 can die out of the blue and leave us with 8 members on the Court for god knows how long.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:36 AM on May 20, 2016

Added to this election season's list of problems I never expected to have: I hit the paywall limit at the WaPo.
posted by stolyarova at 10:37 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Any member of the Court can leave at any time, if they need to.

Yeah, but if they know they'll be replaced with someone they seriously disagree with, they never, ever will
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:39 AM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

I hit the paywall limit at the WaPo.

private browsing is your friend
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:39 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Both SS benefits and minimum wage need to be tied directly to a Senator's total compensation.

eh, most Senators are already fabulously wealthy, with a few exceptions like Joe Biden (when he was a Senator) and Bernie Sanders.
posted by indubitable at 10:40 AM on May 20, 2016

How you decide to vote and what variables to use and all that makes the process something like a Zen koan to me. You have only so much information to work with. You have multiple possible answers to the situation and none of them are the "right" one. There is no definitive correct response.
posted by downtohisturtles at 10:40 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Their ages are a bit irrelevant.

Yes, all men (and women) are mortal (and fickle). But older people are more likely to die or get too ill to work in any given year. Ask any actuary.

Added to this election season's list of problems I never expected to have: I hit the paywall limit at the WaPo.

Right click and open a private window/incognito session. Or squeeze a fresh lemon into your eyes. (Can we call this the Lemon Pledge versus the Trolley Problem?)
posted by maudlin at 10:40 AM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

Yeah, but if they know they'll be replaced with someone they seriously disagree with, they never, ever will

I don't agree with this at all. I think most of the justices would put their spouse or seriously ill child before the Court.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:41 AM on May 20, 2016

room, true, but ages do matter because several Justices are approaching their statistically likely age of death. And RBG is seriously ill, the fact that she's lived this long is astounding and expecting her to last another four years is wishful thinking. I still maintain she should have retired two years ago to give Obama a chance to replace her, she's a great justice and I'd miss having her on the Court but risking her replacement coming from a Republican is, I think, irresponsible of her.
posted by sotonohito at 10:41 AM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

I expect if Hillary's elected and the Senate settles out as expected EBG and possibly Souter will announce their retirements in April 2017.
posted by dw at 10:45 AM on May 20, 2016

RBG has been very clear on her calculus: she does not believe that Obama could get a justice as liberal as she is appointed, and so she feels the best thing to do is to remain on the Court as long as she is physically and mentally able to do the work. It's a fair judgement and she is, well, good at judging things.

I imagine her calculus might change if it appears that ~~a Republican~~ the small-fingered dumpster fire looks to be winning. Obama could do a double-recess-appointment, I'm sure the Republicans would howl but at that point I think Obama might not GAF at all.
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:46 AM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

I expect if Hillary's elected and the Senate settles out as expected RBG and possibly Souter will announce their retirements in April 2017.

I mean, maybe? If she's elected with the reddest Congress in history, we're down to 5 justices then?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:47 AM on May 20, 2016

You know what would be really weird, is if there was a Supreme Court vacancy for like three months already and everyone just kind of stopped talking about it
posted by theodolite at 10:48 AM on May 20, 2016 [59 favorites]

Ask any actuary.

You're right about older people having an increased risk of death and this is an incredibly pedantic correction, but there are two major actuarial organizations in the United States: the Society of Actuaries (which does life and health) and the Casualty Actuarial Society (which does property and casualty). The SOA is bigger than the CAS, but technically it wouldn't be any actuary. Just the life & health ones.
posted by stolyarova at 10:51 AM on May 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

That is exactly the sort of answer I presume an actuary would give. Thank you.
posted by zachlipton at 10:55 AM on May 20, 2016 [23 favorites]

Do you mean Breyer? Souter retired in 2009.

I meant Breyer. Can't tell the SCOTUS without a scorecard, it seems.
posted by dw at 10:57 AM on May 20, 2016

Is it weird that I literally teared up thinking about RBG dying?
posted by hollygoheavy at 10:59 AM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

zachlipton, technically it's my husband who's the actuary, not me. ;)
posted by stolyarova at 11:00 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

I have never received a call from a coffin-maker because someone contacted them and said I would be needing their services. Maybe you have,

No. Look, no offense but I really don't have any interest in playing "antisemitism Olympics" with you.

You said something that really bothered me last night -- it read to me as 'maybe now those Jewish white dudes will have greater understanding/empathy for women who have had to deal with Gamergate harassment.' That felt very WTF. As if we're somehow incapable of being properly horrified by Gamergate until it happens to us personally, or worse, that the antisemitic harassment might possibly have a positive outcome, by "changing the discussion."

If you meant otherwise, then fine. Whatever. But that's how it came across to me, and I said something because I found it unpleasant to see those sentiments being expressed here. I don't want to play 'whose been through the worst antisemitism' with you. Or 'does awful antisemitism even exist anymore?' It's not an abstract discussion. It's not fun.
posted by zarq at 11:01 AM on May 20, 2016 [14 favorites]

That is exactly the sort of answer I presume an actuary would give.

Well, actuary...
posted by dersins at 11:01 AM on May 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

The assimilated middle- and upper-class Jews of fin-de-siecle Vienna and Budapest believed antisemitism was a gauche and fading anachronism, maybe a problem in the shtetls and to the East but not a significant part of their lives in the cultured and relatively diverse cities.
posted by theodolite at 11:08 AM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

OK, people can calm down now.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:20 AM on May 20, 2016 [15 favorites]

massive sigh of relief
posted by stolyarova at 11:20 AM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

You said something that really bothered me last night -- it read to me as 'maybe now those Jewish white dudes will have greater understanding/empathy for women who have had to deal with Gamergate harassment.' That felt very WTF. As if we're somehow incapable of being properly horrified by Gamergate until it happens to us personally, or worse, that the antisemitic harassment might possibly have a positive outcome, by "changing the discussion."

Zarq, I hear you, and I don't disagree with the WTFness of that reading. A subtext that I took away, and now that I re-read the comment I honestly don't know where I got it, because it really isn't even in there is more like: "maybe now the harassment people always dismiss because they don't see it will be more obvious to everyone." And then ArbitraryAndCapricious tied the antisemitism to the broader harassment of women online and GamerGate.

I think there's a fair question whether this kind of antisemitism can or should be linked with GamerGate harassment. On the one hand, both appear to come out of the same online trolling urge and may well involve some of the same cast of characters. Bullies seek to push their victims' buttons, and antisemitism is an excellent way to do that. On the other hand, the pro-Trump antisemitism online is inevitably linked through its symbolism, or just blatantly stated, with centuries of events that have resulted in the mass murder of millions of people. Without taking anything away from the serious harm that GamerGate harassment has done, equating the two feels problematic to me.

This kind of antisemitism feels very real and terrifying to me in a way that the usual wink-wink, nudge-nudge money/power/control the media stuff never has.
posted by zachlipton at 11:23 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sanders probably isn't Trump or even Clinton rich but he's still rich by any real standard. 2014 is the only year he has released tax information. For this year he reported joint income of about $200,000 most of it from his Senate salary. However until recently his wife worked full time at jobs which have reported salaries of over $150,000/year. On top of that his wife received a $200,000 severance package when she was terminated from her last position. So their joint income maybe have been closer to $400,000/year. For 2014 he paid an effective tax rate of 13.5%, which is actually lower than Mitt Romney paid. Also keep in mind that many of the ordinary expenses of life don't come out of his pocket (many of his meals, travel, etc).

In terms of assets has stock / mutual fund investments valued at between $200,000-800,000 based on Senate filings. We also know that he owns real estate in Vermont and DC which includes two homes and some rental property. Real estate holdings are not subject to normal Senate disclosure rules, but reportedly he owns a townhouse on Capital Hill which is now probably valued at over $1 million and a house in Burlington valued at $320,000. He also owns at least one condo which he rents out. It has also been reported that he has some rural property in Vermont that may entail several hundred acres at this point (reports online seem to indicate 85-600 acres). On top of this he has a Congressional pension which is a pretty hefty asset vs the normal retirement packages.
posted by humanfont at 11:26 AM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

Someone asked about Clinton winning over Bernie or Busters upthread, and I wanted to answer since the past year has been a constant conversation between my wife and I about trying to come around and vote for Hillary.

My wife is very progressive and die hard Bernie, I'm more center/right, but gave up on the Republican party years ago. Bernie was the best option left on the table for me. Besides policy issues, I deeply care about the character and ideals of candidates (especially presidents/governors where the job is not just creating/voting on laws). I want my leaders to follow the Cincinnatus ideal. Leadership should be taken for service, not power (it should now be obvious why I gave up on the republican party years ago).

Taking big money speakers fees, so much political power being kept in one family, having a family foundation (that's takes millions from foreign governments), "Hillary for America", "I'm with her". Those are all things that make me want to puke. Her recent pivot towards being anti trump actually sits much better with me ("Love trumps hate"). I will also be looking to see who she picks for VP and other members of her team. I've sort of given up on her caring more about service than power, but I'm hoping her VP might not.

My wife will be looking at how she treats the most vulnerable of society. Will she pivot towards the center or be pulled more left by Bernie. We won't be voting for trump or sitting out, but would consider third party. Our state doesn't matter much anyway.
posted by derivation at 11:26 AM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

ArbitraryAndCapricious tied the antisemitism to the broader harassment of women online and GamerGate.

It's the last gasp of power for the angry white males who feel like they have to be higher than someone, anyone on the ladder of society, and they'll step on any faces they can to do it.
posted by stolyarova at 11:27 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

derivation, if you haven't already seen in, you might be interested in this article about Hillary's "love and kindness" philosophy. I share a lot of your concerns still, but it was a view of Hillary I hadn't seen.
posted by sallybrown at 11:33 AM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

"I'm with her" makes you want to puke? That's about as anodyne a campaign slogan as I've ever heard.
posted by angrycat at 11:33 AM on May 20, 2016 [13 favorites]

also, my personal reaction to people arguing that HRC needs to earn their vote is like what. No, you have an obligation to vote for the person who is going to hurt the country/world/universe the least. I'll even go all out and say that one has a patriotic obligation to do the same. I love my country, even though it does shitty things sometimes.

people who are like third party/Jill Stein/whatever I mean I can't Killgrave you into voting responsibly, but I'm not going to act like somebody's choice of vote is tantamount to choice of sexual partner. It's not.
posted by angrycat at 11:39 AM on May 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

Ugh. No. No one has an obligation to do anything. No one has any right to tell you that you have to vote or, worse, how to vote.
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:43 AM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

Her?
posted by tonycpsu at 11:44 AM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Pretty sure we’ve got the right to tell you. It doesn’t mean you have to listen, though.
posted by nicepersonality at 11:45 AM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

well that's a nice little philosophy but doesn't really, you know, help anything
posted by angrycat at 11:45 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't want to argue with you, angrycat. But I can't support any sort of forcing people to do something because you or I think it's right. You can try to persuade people if you want. But what they do in the end is ultimately their decision.
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:49 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

But I can't support any sort of forcing people to do something because you or I think it's right.

I am super baffled by this almost-paranoid defensiveness. In what possible universe is stating a belief that people have an "obligation to vote for the person who is going to hurt the country/world/universe the least" even remotely equivalent to "forcing" anyone to do anything?
posted by dersins at 11:54 AM on May 20, 2016 [23 favorites]

I think it was extremely obvious that angrycat was not suggesting any sort of force. A moral obligation to vote a certain way might or might not exist, but either way, there's no force.
posted by skewed at 11:56 AM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

NRA Endorses Donald Trump, Trump Tells NRA Clinton 'Wants to Abolish the Second Amendment'
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:57 AM on May 20, 2016

If only.
posted by zarq at 11:58 AM on May 20, 2016 [17 favorites]

Nobody here is actually forcing anybody to vote. I hearby wave my magic wand and condemn anybody who is literally dragging someone by the ear into a voting booth against their will. But yes, the actual point of an election campaign is to persuade other people to both vote and vote in a certain way. Why else do we have debates and town halls and interviews and everything else?
posted by zachlipton at 11:58 AM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

Sorry. Maybe I'm jumpy. But there's a whole lot of creepy authoritarianism/'people thinking they are correct and others are wrong/awful/horrible/traitors' on display in this election and it disgusts me to no end. Anything that touches on that gets me going.
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:59 AM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

I think talking things over is fine. Being persuasive is fine. Shaming people, disparaging them or telling them they're personally responsible for the country going to apocalyptic hell in a handbasket because they voted for a particular candidate is not.

Except for Trump voters. Y'all are fair game. ;)
posted by zarq at 12:01 PM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

NRA Endorses Donald Trump, Trump Tells NRA Clinton 'Wants to Abolish the Second Amendment'

Fuck. This ensures my dad's vote. He has spent the last 15 years absorbing Fox News and NRA magazines with gross caricatures of Hillary on the cover.

We can't even talk about politics at all anymore because he's gone full frothing racist grandpa.
posted by Fleebnork at 12:02 PM on May 20, 2016

"I'm with her" makes you want to puke? That's about as anodyne a campaign slogan as I've ever heard.

I wouldn't say puke, but I do find it very off-putting. I'd be more excited to hear that she's with me than an invitation to say that I'm with her. Maybe they feel it is necessary to get out the word that lots of normal people are supporting her, since more than two decades of Hillary-bashing have kind of normalized the idea that she's unlikeable. I'm a former Bernie voter/donor turned reluctant but semi-enthusiastic Hillary supporter/donor, for what it's worth.
posted by skewed at 12:08 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

As to skewed's point, "I'm with her" sounds candidate-centric. Pretty far removed from "Yes We Can"
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:12 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Ike Likes Me
posted by defenestration at 12:13 PM on May 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

bern feels me
posted by defenestration at 12:14 PM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

I like Ike rhymes, tho.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:16 PM on May 20, 2016

Tippecanoe and me also
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:16 PM on May 20, 2016 [22 favorites]

I wouldn't say puke, but I do find it very off-putting.

Two of the (many) official slogans used by the Obama campaign in 2012 were "I'm in" and "I've got his back." The Obama slogans, like Clinton's "I'm with her," were a way for supporters to express their support. Did it similarly bother you when the Obama campaign did it, or does Clinton's slogan feel somehow different to you?

Because here's the thing: if "I'm with her" does feel different to you, it is probably worth interrogating that feeling and trying to determine why you are reacting differently in this case, and what exactly it is that you are finding "off-putting."
posted by dersins at 12:17 PM on May 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

And, yeah, "Feel the Bern" serves the same function, except that it is phrased as an imperative to support rather than as an expression of support. (Also, with a soupçon of excruciating punnage, which, frankly, not my favorite, but YMMV.)
posted by dersins at 12:23 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Reading over the lists of presidential campaign slogans you get with a simple Google, not many are memorable. "I'm with Her" works in the sense that it's simple and memorable. (Wikipedia says Jill Stein's is "It's in My Hands" which is frankly kind of bizarre.)

"Yes We Can" was awesome - maybe I romanticize that because of how wonderful that moment in time felt.

"I Like Ike" is just a genuinely excellent slogan, it's a pleasure to say. And "Happy Days are Here Again" is also a classic.
posted by sallybrown at 12:24 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Can't spell America without ME

Make aMErica great again

Morning in aMErica
posted by Existential Dread at 12:25 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

Existential Dread, don't give them any ideas.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:26 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'd like to see more in the vein of "We Polked you in '44, We shall Pierce you in '52"
posted by everybody had matching towels at 12:26 PM on May 20, 2016 [14 favorites]

amERICa though

where are the erics/ericas who will lead us to freedom
posted by poffin boffin at 12:26 PM on May 20, 2016 [19 favorites]

"Let Well Enough Alone" for the super chill voters and "Vote As You Shot" for the super aggro ones.
posted by sallybrown at 12:27 PM on May 20, 2016

iamERICa.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:28 PM on May 20, 2016

I'd be more excited to hear that she's with me than an invitation to say that I'm with her.

Good! Then you may be glad to see that Hillary's said in this interview, and I believe in other speeches although I couldn't immediately pull them up, "I often say, even if you're not supporting me, I'm supporting you."

Can't fit it on a bumper sticker, but it's a thing she says and keeps saying. In fact, I just found another one: "I talk to some of the young people and I say, you know, you may not be supporting me but I’m supporting you. I will work for you, I will fight for you, I just wish that there were an opportunity to actually talk and listen to each other."
posted by Stacey at 12:30 PM on May 20, 2016 [13 favorites]

where are the erics/ericas who will lead us to freedom

They only work part time in the morning due to budget constraints. Hence: A.M. Erica.
posted by malocchio at 12:30 PM on May 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

I'm just looking forward to joining Bridge Players for Clinton after the convention. We'll play with this deck of cards, and every bid will be No-Trump.
posted by dersins at 12:30 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

From way upthread: What do you think of the prospect of a national unity ticket? I.e., what if Secretary Clinton selected a moderate Republican running mate, as a way of inviting #NeverTrump voters to her cause?

I think the idea that Democrats are supposed to show bipartisanship by adopting Republican positions got stale around the middle of George W. Bush's first term, no matter how much it thrills the likes of Ron Fournier. Obama got no credit for bipartisanship from inviting Republicans to join his cabinet (and Democrats really do have to quit offering Secretary of Defense to Republicans, as it validates the perception that the Rs are "tough on defense," which also is long past its sell-by date).

I strongly doubt vice presidential picks are much of a motivator. Now, Clinton could, and should, tailor her message to appeal to moderate Republicans -- she's a known quality with lots of experience who stands for thoughtful, cautious leadership, etc.

Any so-called "moderate Republicans" who are prepared to pull the lever for Trump just go to prove they aren't really moderate.
posted by Gelatin at 12:32 PM on May 20, 2016 [16 favorites]

where are the erics/ericas who will lead us to freedom

Eric Trump
posted by Going To Maine at 12:34 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

how dare you
posted by sallybrown at 12:35 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

he's not even the best son! let alone the best child (Ivanka).
posted by sallybrown at 12:36 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

ralph pls no
posted by stolyarova at 12:36 PM on May 20, 2016

I'm With Her works better on a t-shirt .
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:36 PM on May 20, 2016

Living here in Texas, where the Lege recently passed a law forcing college campuses to accept openly carried guns everywhere on campus, I'd be totally behind an effort to repeal the 2nd Amendment.

I don't want to outlaw civilian ownership of firearms, but elevating that from "fun but dangerous hobby" to "critical human right" is absurd and results in dangerous and obnoxious behavior.

Fun fact, the Lege also set things up so that a sign asking people not to pack heat **MUST** follow an absurd number of nit picky details or it doesn't count. You wanted to ask people not to carry guns into your store but the font was the wrong size? Ha ha on you, it doesn't count. You wanted to ask people not to take guns into your store but the background was the wrong color? Sucker! Now all the Rambo wannabes can stomp around with their guns out and you can't do anything about it!

Basically the Lege has declared that guns everywhere is the goal of Texas and that anyone who would rather not have heavily armed assholes stomping around waving their guns at people must jump through an ever increasing number of hoops.

University of Houston had a class for professors on how to deal with armed students in class, among other things urging professors to avoid any topics that could cause conservatives discomfort so as to avoid provoking the armed students into a shooting rampage. Yes, really.

If Clinton really did want to abolish the 2nd Amendment I'd be overjoyed.
posted by sotonohito at 12:36 PM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

The Rude Pundit: Our Stupid Clinton/Sanders Battle Is Gonna Lose Us the War with Trump
posted by homunculus at 12:38 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

i was thinking more like c-list actor eric roberts or hot fictional character eric northman
posted by poffin boffin at 12:38 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Eric Cartman.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:39 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

he's not even the best son! let alone the best child (Ivanka).

well he's better than the dreaded Laramie Trump at least

that kid is garbage
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:40 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

Roberts/Henriksen 2016
posted by Existential Dread at 12:41 PM on May 20, 2016

Why Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders should watch 'All the Way': "This is not about principle, it's about votes," Johnson barks out in one of the great lines of the film.

Schenkkan's dialogue captures the essential outlook of LBJ, even though he takes liberties with the chronology at points. We lionize Johnson for his ability to use power to get what he wanted but in fact his biggest skill was understanding the limits of the presidency and knowing when to cut deals, as difficult as they could be.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:41 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Here are our pipeline Eric options:

Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning (first openly gay President?)
Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles (first Jewish President?)
Congressman Eric Swalwell

...I haven't found any Ericas so far...
posted by sallybrown at 12:41 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

If you vote for Clinton, people in foreign countries are going to get droned, bombed, maimed and killed. If you vote for Trump, people in foreign countries are going to get droned, bombed, maimed and killed.

Trump wants unlimited bombing with no regard for civilian casualties. He wants to target wives, children and the extended families of the "terrorists". He has also suggested we should return to torturing terrorists, doing way worse things than waterboarding. I don't think it is correct to equate the positions of Trump and Hillary in this area. Furthermore is a vote for the green or libertarian party candidate likely to achieve anything with respect to advancing your goal of ending the drone war?

Votes for Nader in 2000 didn't lead to anything tangible in terms of reducing the power of corporations, limiting money in politics or reducing the footprint of the US military. All Nader accomplished was to anger sympathetic Democrats.
posted by humanfont at 12:42 PM on May 20, 2016 [24 favorites]

Why Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders should watch 'All the Way':

I'd rather they watch Jingle All the Way

For what, I ask you, is a better unifier than laughter
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:44 PM on May 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

Because here's the thing: if "I'm with her" does feel different to you, it is probably worth interrogating that feeling and trying to determine why you are reacting differently in this case, and what exactly it is that you are finding "off-putting."

Thanks. Does it have to be misogyny rather than just not liking slogans that try to build up imaginary comradery? I never cared for "feel the bern" and I don't remember/never heard Obama's "I've got his back" slogan, but find it similarly unpleasant. Nothing beats "Yes we can" I guess.

Then you may be glad to see that Hillary's said in this interview, and I believe in other speeches although I couldn't immediately pull them up, "I often say, even if you're not supporting me, I'm supporting you."

I was and I am. I think she's very good in interviews, better than in speeches. I think she's running a pretty good campaign, all things considered. And not in an "Oh, this was strategically skillful" kind of way, but that she is convincing me that she is the best person for the job. I am a former Bernie supporter not in that I have accepted he will lose, but that at this point if I could cast an tie-breaking vote I would vote for Hillary.
posted by skewed at 12:45 PM on May 20, 2016 [12 favorites]

For what, I ask you, is a better unifier than laughter

Sheer terror.
posted by zarq at 12:48 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

"Yes we can" is also "si se puede" - a well-known phrase among grassroots and labor organizers (esp the UFW). It's a not-so-subtle statement that Obama sees and appreciates and understands the importance of protest and collective grassroots action, as well as a direct nod to the efforts of Latinx organizers.

"I'm with her" feels like you're trying to pretend you're BFFs so you can sneak into the VIP lounge "Oh, I lost my ticket, but I'm with her." I know campaigns have many slogans, so I hope they find something more evocative of collective action for the general election.
posted by melissasaurus at 12:58 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

"I'm with her"

Reminds me:

- 50% of Pamela Des Barres's I'm With the Band (really fun but maybe not what Hillary is going for, unless we know even less about her than we thought);

- 40% of a really long work meeting where you're having a debate about whether to use font A or font B and someone is like "I'm with Janet, font B SUCKS"; and

- 10% of "Yes my friends I have chosen the female one"
posted by sallybrown at 1:05 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

I see nothing wrong with "I have chosen the female one" as a vote against systemic misogyny, especially when the alternative is The Chauvinist Pig incarnate.
posted by stolyarova at 1:08 PM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

i need to know what fonts A and B are before i can agree or disagree with this comment
posted by poffin boffin at 1:09 PM on May 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

Does it have to be misogyny rather than just not liking slogans that try to build up imaginary comradery?

Of course it doesn't have to be misogyny. That's actually not even where my thinking was going with that.

I was thinking more that it's worth asking oneself whether one is reacting to the slogan itself, or to the fact that it is the slogan of Hillary Clinton.

After all, the dominant narrative about Clinton for the last quarter-century (starting from the far right, but now coming almost-equally from both the far right and the left), has been shaped by accusations that she is a dishonest, dislikeable, untrustworthy schemer whose mainstream liberal exterior conceals [choose A if the accusations are coming from the right, B if they are coming from the left: A. a radical feminist left wing agenda / B. a secret right wing republican agenda]. It's not farfetched to think that could contribute to a strong negative reaction to what is a pretty innocuous slogan that expresses the same thing as pretty much every political slogan in the history of ever.
posted by dersins at 1:09 PM on May 20, 2016 [14 favorites]

"I have chosen the female one"

this totally sounds like something a human not-misogynist would say
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:12 PM on May 20, 2016 [15 favorites]

There is no possible campaign slogan that is going to articulate my rather nuanced views on abortion, healthcare, free trade, gun control, climate change, income inequality and the wage gap, other than "Fuck You, Trump."
posted by malocchio at 1:13 PM on May 20, 2016 [19 favorites]

i need to know what fonts A and B are before i can agree or disagree with this comment

Comic sans and papyrus
posted by sandswipe at 1:13 PM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

this totally sounds like something a human not-misogynist would say

Ted Cruz goes undercover at a Hillary rally
posted by indubitable at 1:14 PM on May 20, 2016 [12 favorites]

There's not a genetic mutation that happens when you get US citizenship that makes you bomb brown people.

I hate the "in the DNA" metaphor cliche too, but Americans, no matter what their personal politics, are complicit in the policies of the national as a whole that exploit the rest of the world economically and militarily to sustain a significantly wealthier-than-average way of life.
posted by aught at 1:14 PM on May 20, 2016

I think "I'm With Her" is pretty strong, especially compared to Trump's "I'm With Stupid".
posted by chrchr at 1:15 PM on May 20, 2016 [15 favorites]

One big difference is that Trump's wearing the "I'm with stupid" shirt, and he's pointing the arrow at the rest of the country.
posted by dersins at 1:17 PM on May 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

aught, agreed.
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:17 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Many people are voting against Trump, so I think that's why some people feel hesitant with the "I'm with her" slogan and wish it were more issue focused.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:18 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

"I'm With Her" makes me think of a TV commercial where two old folks are sitting in rocking chairs on a porch watching the world go by. One candidate runs past and does something obnoxious or ridiculous. Then the second candidate calmly strides by looking responsible and well put together. Both people then turn to one another and at the same time say "I'm With Her" and then the screen goes black and you get your standard "Paid for by...".

It's a dumb marketing slogan. But most marketing slogans are pretty dumb. This one is no dumber than any of the others.
posted by downtohisturtles at 1:18 PM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

One big difference is that Trump's wearing the "I'm with stupid" shirt, and he's pointing the arrow at the rest of the country.

The blatant pandering at the NRA today is hilarious: “the only way to save our second Amendment is to vote for a person that you all know named Donald Trump”
posted by Golden Eternity at 1:25 PM on May 20, 2016

My issue with Bernie is not that he's voicing critique of the party. It's that he's blaming the issues with the party for his loss, giving his supporters the impression that he lost because he wuz robbed, rather than because he lacked the necessary votes. Using legitimate critiques of the party to prop up a losing campaign in such a false way ends up hurting efforts to fix the very real issues with the party. *

There are ways to critique the party and party apparatus that are not summed up as "Everyone is corrupt and they are all trying to disenfranchise you and this election has been stolen from me." *

One issue is, that is mostly your interpretation. If you put yourself in Sanders' shoes—just go back and listen to his original bid at the start of the race—his critique in those words was a given: he would just as well have asserted this corruption at the very beginning, because that is and was his perspective coming in.

The alternative interpretation is that he's saying a very standard thing as an appeal to structural microaggression, with "he lacked the necessary votes" being precisely the hegemonic critical point. Rather, he's saying to his audience, "the cards are stacked, this is yet another case, and we are tired of it!". Some left academics actually say this stuff; Chomsky's said it, I've had another Berkeley econ professor say this. It is really believed.

This can be important, because understanding this is key to his base and what his explicit supporters are on about. To them, he's not blaming but quite the opposite: he speaks the unpleasant truth and performs willingness to challenge hegemonic legitimacy and language ("Using legitimate critiques in such a false way", "There are ways to critique that are not"…, etc. is part of that narrative).

For many liberals, Bernie Sanders' rhetoric is extremely disagreeable. Irresponsible, even! But I'm not interested in deciding who is being fair, for if we take a step back, we see that this conflict of outlooks is a manifestation of the trolley problem or philosophical divide that's been mentioned above. It is a values conflict, between unity and dissent. The lesson is that neither have been seeing eye-to-eye. I do think that bridging this gap requires a unifying view, which can only come from knowing what's going on for others.
posted by polymodus at 1:25 PM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

I think "I'm With Her" is pretty strong, especially compared to Trump's "I'm With Stupid".

I need to call the woman who was reading the Claudia Rankine book at Trump's rally and ask how I can get someone to sit in the stands just to one side of Trump, who can then rip off an innocuous looking Trump tie and blazer to reveal an I'm With Stupid shirt that has an arrow pointing to The Donald.
posted by sallybrown at 1:31 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

Note to Self: Vice President Joe Biden
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:39 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

When I first heard "I'm with her," I thought of someone who is backing and empowering women struggling against the patriarchy--like a girl being derided for her appearance at a spelling bee, your friend who is getting slut-shamed, a co-worker who can't get a promotion because her boss is a sexist ass, or a random woman at a bar who you see getting verbally abused for turning down a guy's advances. For me, the "her" didn't just mean Clinton, it's a way of declaring you're there to back up all the women who are facing attacks or obstacles due to their gender.

The second level comes later. It is the "her" that refers to Clinton herself. She can use the pronoun in lieu of her name, because out of the two major parties there's only one "her"--it couldn't refer to anybody but Clinton. Which is part of the point: simply by becoming the nominee Clinton is already breaking a major barrier and serving as one symbol of all women who fight to achieve self-determination and equality.

I can see why either of those interpretations might be off-putting. Personally, I like "Love trumps hate" better, since it really underlines the difference between her and Trump's philosophies.

I would also like to hear something along the lines of "Even if you're not with me, I'm with you" worked into a snappy phrase. But it has those bleak undertones that basically acknowledge a whole swath of the population dislikes her, so I can understand why they might swing away from it.
posted by Anonymous at 1:44 PM on May 20, 2016

Bernie's argument that the deck is impossibly stacked against an insurgent candidate going up against an establishment-backed Clinton might be better if the insurgent candidacy of a black man with a Muslim name hadn't beaten the same establishment-backed Clinton in the last contested primary. He had obstacles but he didn't run a good enough campaign, turn out enough voters, or build a big enough coalition.
posted by chris24 at 1:48 PM on May 20, 2016 [20 favorites]

I don't think I could call Obama an insurgent candidate. He was a high profile new senator who gave the big speech at the 2004 convention. He was already part of the establishment. Just a different part. Not to say he was favored or that someone with his identity seemed likely to win back in 2008. But he was not an outsider.
posted by downtohisturtles at 1:51 PM on May 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

Ok, but Sanders is running to essentially be the leader of the Democratic party. It's not remotely unreasonable to ask of someone running for that position, who says that the party and its process is rigged and corrupt, what legitimate critiques he has and how specifically he would reform the party's process to make it better. There's no reason he can't give a speech or put out a position paper laying out specific proposals to change the Democratic nomination process for the future. If he claims that he can do something about the fact that the entire country's system is rigged and corrupt, surely he can take a minute to specifically address what he'd do about his own party.

And what's happening instead is dismissal and condemnation of his criticism instead of "reasonably asking what the hell he means by what he said". That is hegemony in action, isn' it?

What that means is when a marginalized class is formulating a criticism, they are not obliged to offer a solution. A defining characteristic of leftism is being able to tolerate that kind of moment.

And still, Sanders does have an answer, ideologically—as essentially a New Dealer in favor of economic/labor reform, it's probably along the lines of improving those relations that will eventually lead to better standards for healthier politics at large. It's an indirect solution, because there are no concrete actions that can break a vicious cycle.

Now again, I'm not saying he's right, or that his approach is better. I'm identifying how his rhetoric works on his platform and reading the situation in this way, and how his supporters might perceive things.
posted by polymodus at 1:51 PM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

Not the outsider Bernie was, no. But not the establishment pick and he had the racial issues to overcome as well.
posted by chris24 at 1:52 PM on May 20, 2016

Oops. How The Wrong Verb Meant The Texas GOP Called Most Texans Gay.

We also take this opportunity to point out that the official Texas GOP platform intended to call homosexuality a "chosen behavior" and unacceptable.
posted by zachlipton at 1:53 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

you can't take it back now, texas, sorry, here is your welcome package of show tunes and lube
posted by poffin boffin at 1:56 PM on May 20, 2016 [24 favorites]

Re: Nevada convention, list of alleged violations:

Voted on “temporary rules” for the convention and cheated by calling the vote for the “yeas” when the “nays” clearly had larger numbers.

This allegation doesn't make sense. The fact that Sanders supporters (younger, more male) yelled louder does not mean they get more votes. it's not a decibel meter vote, and a cell phone video taken in the middle of the Sanders section is not an objective measure of relative volume anyway. The chair was visibly scanning the crowd to see how many people were responding.

When the individual count was taken later, Clinton won, so obviously she had more delegates there. Common sense says that her delegates voted yay, which is a majority right there. Furthermore, Sanders delegates helped generate those temporary rules, and at least those directly involved presumably approved them.

So why are you so convinced that a majority voted nay?
posted by msalt at 1:57 PM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

Trump said at the rally, proposing to slap a 35 percent tariff on imported products from American companies that have outsourced their jobs and tax China's exports. And if all of that starts a trade war, "who the hell cares?"

I just, how is this a person who is real? Like, I understand that people are going for the strongman "I don't give a shit what the eggheads think" routine, but there is a certain point where the things you are arguing are so fucking stupid that getting enthused by it is like getting enthused by a dude screaming "two plus two is five!"
posted by Anonymous at 1:57 PM on May 20, 2016

NRA Endorses Donald Trump, Trump Tells NRA Clinton 'Wants to Abolish the Second Amendment'

So for what it's worth (anecdotal amusement at least) I spent time last week with relatives who are about as second-amendment strong as one can get (rural plains staters, all hunters, two actual gun dealers), and they all loathe Trump with a white hot passion and are praying (in one case maybe literally) for a GOP convention coup of some kind to replace him.
posted by aught at 1:57 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Bernie's argument that the deck is impossibly stacked against an insurgent candidate going up against an establishment-backed Clinton might be better if the insurgent candidacy of a black man with a Muslim name hadn't beaten the same establishment-backed Clinton in the last contested primary. He had obstacles but he didn't run a good enough campaign, turn out enough voters, or build a big enough coalition.

—I think I've already addressed this in my comparison with Obama upthread.
posted by polymodus at 1:58 PM on May 20, 2016

Oops. How The Wrong Verb Meant The Texas GOP Called Most Texans Gay.

That's not even the craziest shit in there. There's also repealing the 17th amendment, getting back on the gold standard, sovereign citizen "county sheriff is the highest law of the land" bs, dismantling almost every federal agency, endorsement of racial profiling, and repealing the Endangered Species Act.

In the year of 2016 this is the Texas state GOP platform. It's two thousand and fucking sixteen. My brain just can't. I can't wrap my head around it.
posted by Talez at 2:01 PM on May 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

...there is a certain point where the things you are arguing are so fucking stupid that getting enthused by it is like getting enthused by a dude screaming "two plus two is five!"

That's how you can tell they bellyfeel Ingsoc!
posted by vibrotronica at 2:02 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

What that means is when a marginalized class is formulating a criticism, they are not obliged to offer a solution. A defining characteristic of leftism is being able to tolerate that kind of moment.

And still, Sanders does have an answer, ideologically—as essentially a New Dealer in favor of economic/labor reform, it's probably along the lines of improving those relations that will eventually lead to better standards for healthier politics at large. It's an indirect solution, because there are no concrete actions that can break a vicious cycle.

We're talking Bernie Sanders here, the guy running for President with millions of supporters. Asking Sanders to offer a solution for the problems he's vaguely calling out in his own party is not remotely the same thing as asking a marginalized group to solve all the problems impacting them. The President's job is to propose policies and solutions, not simply be the caller-outer-in-chief. Which I guess leads to the question: is the Sanders campaign a serious policy-driven candidacy, or a big national protest? He certainly acts like it's the former, but you're essentially telling me it's the latter.

He is, at this moment, calling out the party's nomination process. There are specific tangible ways in which that can be improved without broad "economic/labor reform" impacting everyone in the entire society.

When you're losing and you keep popping up to rant about the process as "rigged" or "corrupt," you just come across as a sore loser. If you actually point to specific things and use the considerable following you've developed to advocate to change those things, you're showing leadership.
posted by zachlipton at 2:02 PM on May 20, 2016 [15 favorites]

Common sense says that her delegates voted yay, which is a majority right there.

Have to disagree, which is why it is so problematic that the vote wasn't counted. Even at the Clark County convention Hillary supporters united with Bernie supporters to oppose unfair rule changes.

The picture below is of 2 Clinton supporters locking arms with 2 Sanders supporters on the credentials committee at the previous convention in solidarity:

Current status of the Clark County, Nevada credentials committee. pic.twitter.com/TOeWl5iaaD— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 2, 2016

posted by kyp at 2:02 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Speaking of Trumps sons, I give you Uday & Qusay, which strikes me as a fair analogy.
posted by madamjujujive at 2:06 PM on May 20, 2016

And what's happening instead is dismissal and condemnation of his criticism instead of "reasonably asking what the hell he means by what he said". That is hegemony in action, isn' it?

No, it's the fact that while one may be entitled to their own opinion, they are not entitled to their own facts. Sanders is asserting that the system is rigged against him, yes - but the evidence doesn't back the argument up. Hell, his argument itself is inconsistent - he rails against closed primaries for disenfranchising voters, but defends caucuses, which are much more disenfranchising.

At a certain point, the obligation to prove a claim rests on the claimant.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:08 PM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

You said something that really bothered me last night -- it read to me as 'maybe now those Jewish white dudes will have greater understanding/empathy for women who have had to deal with Gamergate harassment.' That felt very WTF. As if we're somehow incapable of being properly horrified by Gamergate until it happens to us personally, or worse, that the antisemitic harassment might possibly have a positive outcome, by "changing the discussion."

I haven't actually seen any evidence that the mainstream media, let alone the conservative media, have taken seriously the ongoing problem of social media harassment meant to terrorize and silence feminist writers. Neither has law enforcement. I think that conversation may change now that people in the mainstream and conservative media establishments are being subject to the same tactics. I guess that I'm sorry that feels wtf to you, but I actually don't think that I, as a Jewish woman, need your permission as a Jewish man to state my opinions. I'm think I've made it pretty clear that I'm horrified and pretty scared about the antisemitism coming from Trump's supporters, and if you choose to stay interpret what I said as thinking that there's anything positive about it, then I can only assure you that that's entirely your issue.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:09 PM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

but defends caucuses

When did Sanders defend caucuses?
posted by kyp at 2:11 PM on May 20, 2016

Except they weren't unfair rule changes -- it was basic procedural stuff that they decided to throw a misinformed shitfit over. I try not to hold the Bernie Bro lecturing I have gotten in the wild against the Sanders campaign, though it requires effort, but when his actual delegates try to overturn the popular vote with maneuvers in convention *and then throw tantrums* when yelling louder doesn't get them what they want, I am not impressed.

Especially when people decide that the difference between "thrown chairs" and "went after someone with a chair, had it wrested away before they could use it" is important and therefore they are libeled innocents.
posted by tavella at 2:11 PM on May 20, 2016 [18 favorites]

So why are you so convinced that a majority voted nay?

I think because technically in the original rules it was supposed to be decided by a voice vote, so technically it didn't matter if there were more delegates as long as one side was louder. Why follow democracy in good faith when you could win on technicalities?

—I think I've already addressed this in my comparison with Obama upthread.

Your explanation is that leftists speak "truth to power", and neoliberals don't, and Obama proved himself to be a neoliberal while Bernie outed himself as a leftist. There are two problems with this explanation. First, it requires the adoption of extremely non-standard definitions of "leftist" and "neoliberal", definitions that seem to have been concocted specifically to link oratory style with political beliefs in order to make the argument work. Second, it assumes that the leftist/neoliberal split are literally the most important factor in deciding whether a candidate is acceptable to the general populace, as if, say, racism and anti-Islamic attitudes don't exist.

It also ignores all the other massive differences between Obama and Sanders and the way they planned their strategy and ran their campaigns. Like, the fact that Obama's tactics were brilliant and innovative, and Bernie has been making it up as he goes along.
posted by Anonymous at 2:12 PM on May 20, 2016

When did Sanders defend caucuses?

May 6th interview with Maddow:

MADDOW: It seems to me like the other sort of small D, democratic problem in the – in the way the Republican – the way the Democrats and Republicans pick their nominees are the caucuses.

And, I know caucuses have a strong history and they have their adherents. But they're pretty anti-democratic. They're complicated. They're for insiders. They are – they take a lot of time. They exclude, in effect, a lot of people.

That's – and you've done very, very well at caucuses. What's your view on them?

SANDERS: The answer is yes and no. Everything you've said is true, but there's another side to that. I happen to believe that we have to really reinvigorate American democracy, not only getting a much larger voter turnouts than we have in the past.

The last general election, as you remember, midterm election, 63 percent of the people didn't vote. This is unacceptable.

So we need to figure out ways to bring people into the process. We also have to figure out a way to engage people in a very deep sense in American democracy. And what caucuses do do – you're right, it does take time to come to a caucus and to argue with your neighbor about which candidate is the better candidate.

But you know what? I kind of like that. You know, I understand there are negatives to it. But I do like the idea of the American people becoming more engaged in the political process. Yes, you're spending a – a few hours on a Saturday afternoon. But this is – you are helping to determine
the future of America.

It has its ups and its downs, right. But I don't think we should dismiss the caucuses.

He says 37% turnout is unacceptable, and then advocates a system that results in a ~1% turnout and he knows has a ~1% turnout. Plus the "few hours on a Saturday afternoon" bit, which, from my understanding, is usually more than a few hours and not necessarily on a weekend.
posted by Anonymous at 2:28 PM on May 20, 2016

Gradualism, Single-Payer, and the Debate We’re Not Having

The second place where this came up was with single-payer, which I discussed in a previous post. As I said in that post, there are some major problems with the current debate which make it very difficult to have the conversation that Scott Lemieux wants us to be having about how to build on the Affordable Care Act to get to a European-style health system.

Because when we look at an example like Colorado, signs are not very encouraging that the ACA is going to be used in that way, as opposed to being used as rhetorical cover for being opposed to further reform. It’s one thing to argue that gradualism is better than going for single-payer in one bite, but it’s another thing to openly campaign for the defeat of a single-payer initiative, to echo Republican attacks that single-payer will raise taxes and kill jobs, and to see Democratic consultants working for the vote no campaign.

posted by tonycpsu at 2:32 PM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

schroedinger, thanks for the link.
posted by kyp at 2:34 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

I fully support efforts to point out ways in which American electoral processes are undemocratic. But combining those efforts with an attempt to seize the nomination no matter what doesn't fly; you end up saying that everything that makes a Sanders nomination less likely is anti-democratic and then you've lost the high ground. The establishment is just trying to keep power for themselves? Then how is this crap from the Sanders camp any better?

(We voted for the guy in Virginia, too, for all the good that did.)
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:36 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

We call Donald Trump an idiot yet we're the ones tearing a party apart over two fucking delegates and procedural bullshit. The math really hasn't worked for Sanders in any conceivable way since March 15th (after the results is when I pulled my recurring donation for him) yet we're halfway through May and we're into just scorched earth style political brawling now?

This why I'm getting that funny "we're about to get fucked this election, aren't we?" feeling right now.

I'd say I'm done with it but I was done with it two fucking months ago. Grow up the lot of you.
posted by Talez at 2:40 PM on May 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

I think because technically in the original rules it was supposed to be decided by a voice vote, so technically it didn't matter if there were more delegates as long as one side was louder. Why follow democracy in good faith when you could win on technicalities?

But that's a mistaken understanding. Voice vote doesn't mean that the louder side wins, it means the side with the most people voice voting wins. Which is decided by number of people not loudness!

Clinton's supporters outnumbered the Sanders supporters which is why they won the voice votes. But I've never once seen a diehard acknowledge that. It's always an assertion that the chair overruled the louder Sanders supporters (with evidence being audio taken from the middle of the Sanders supporters... which kind of guarantees they sound louder). Which is completely irrelevant.

Loudness does not win a voice vote.
posted by Justinian at 2:41 PM on May 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

I'm actually pretty irked that caucus reform has become so wrapped up with the Bernie vs. Hillary debate, because it's really a separate issue that deserves attention no matter what side of that divide you're on. I'm worried we're going to get hung up on this particular primary season and come up with solutions that don't really address the overarching problems.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:42 PM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

If it makes you feel any better, it's highly unlikely we were going to get any sort of reform of the process to begin with, so I don't think we've lost much.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:48 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

we're down to 5 justices then?

The Republicans' court-unpacking plan.
posted by JackFlash at 2:50 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

We call Donald Trump an idiot yet we're the ones tearing a party apart over two fucking delegates and procedural bullshit.

Who is “we” here out of curiosity? I sort of assume that “we” is the elections thread on MetaFilter, which is a very small window on the world, and one that includes almost no Republicans whatsoever.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:51 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

"This why I'm getting that funny "we're about to get fucked this election, aren't we?" feeling right now."

Vox thinks you can relax: "The most recent CBS/New York Times poll shows that 6 percent of Democratic primary voters (many of whom, as we've learned in this campaign, are not registered Democrats) say they won't support Clinton, plus another 2 percent who say they're not sure."

Compared to 2008: "Back in late May 2008, a CBS/New York Times poll found that 12 percent of Democratic primary voters said they would vote for John McCain, plus 3 percent who said they wouldn't vote and 4 percent who weren't sure."

It's a very small liberal circular firing squad. I mean it's barely like an arc of 20*. It's going to be okay. I think the echo chambers we politically-active liberals live in sometimes are making this seem like a worse thing than it actually is. I'm frustrated by the infighting too, but this is probably a temporary set of arguments and disunity that isn't as far-reaching as it feels like. Most Democratic voters aren't really even paying attention to it.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:51 PM on May 20, 2016 [21 favorites]

that reminds me, I've been missing corb's dispatches from the secret Dumblecruz's Army meetings
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:52 PM on May 20, 2016 [23 favorites]

Well, inasmuch as #NeverTrump was a thing, it's not anymore, so...
posted by tonycpsu at 2:54 PM on May 20, 2016

Who is “we” here out of curiosity? I sort of assume that “we” is the elections thread on MetaFilter, which is a very small window on the world, and one that includes almost no Republicans whatsoever.

Us, /r/SandersForPresident, the supporters that filed the lawsuit against the Nevada DNC.
posted by Talez at 2:54 PM on May 20, 2016

Yeah, that's true, tonycpsu. There's a committee looking at ways to fix the Iowa Democratic caucuses, and the current feeling is that any changes they make will be pretty small, and our best hope for reform is that the national party will lay down the law. And I don't think that will fly this year, because Sanders supporters would see it as some sort of attempt to stifle dissent.

I think we might get proxy voting for people with disabilities, which would at least be something.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:54 PM on May 20, 2016

Like I'm subbed to /r/SandersForPresident and it's like a fucking viper pit of toxicity towards Clinton, the DNC, anyone they think is against Bernie.
posted by Talez at 2:55 PM on May 20, 2016

Kyp: a photo of four credentials committee members locking arms on April 2 proves that lots of Clinton delegates defected to the Sanders side on May 14th? Not hardly, and the fact that they voted for Clinton's slate is much stronger evidence to the contrary. Here's what Politifact says:

Supporters of Sanders believed that the convention rules, which have been largely the same since 2008, gave an unfair amount of power to Lange, the convention chair. The rules specifically lay out that all convention votes must be done by voice vote, and that only the convention chair can declare the winner or call for a more specific method of voting among the thousands of delegates.

The rules, which can be read here, also state that any amendment attempts must be approved by two-thirds of the convention delegates — which would be difficult given the nearly even number of Clinton and Sanders backers present.... there were no last minute rule changes sprung on convention-goers — the rules had been publicly available weeks in advance, largely unchanged for three presidential cycles, and given to both campaigns.

The first major fight happened in the morning, with the convention being gaveled in nearly 40 minutes after the scheduled 9 a.m. start time. In a voice vote, Lange approved adoption of a preliminary credentials report ... Although several videos from the event appear to have louder "nays" than "yeas," both preliminary and final delegate counts showed that Clinton supporters outnumbered Sanders supporters in the room. And trying to determine the outcome of a voice vote from a video of around 3,000 delegates is somewhat arbitrary to begin with. The only person with authority to call for a different voting mechanism is the convention chair: Lange.
posted by msalt at 3:04 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Us, /r/SandersForPresident, the supporters that filed the lawsuit against the Nevada DNC.

These are wonderfully unrepresentative groups. Fears assuaged.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:07 PM on May 20, 2016

Does anyone think that this sounds like trying to unite the Dems?

Apparently simple math proved challenging for the Sanders campaign on Saturday night – but it really shouldn’t take three days to figure out this one
posted by futz at 3:08 PM on May 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

I'm sorry, schroedinger—do you not think that the further from center a candidate is, a) the less popular appeal they will have, b) the less sociotechnogical capital they will have to run an innovative campaign, and c) the more likely they are going to be distortedly framed such as a priori deciding they are "ranting" (real comment above) or "making it up"?

Your explanation is that leftists speak "truth to power", and neoliberals don't, and Obama proved himself to be a neoliberal while Bernie outed himself as a leftist. There are two problems with this explanation.

No. It is simply that leftists tend to engage in critique and are more comfortable doing it. Critique involves rhetoric, but it is fundamentally an intellectual process. Politicians perform critique and criticism generally, and the kind of critique they levy—the intellectual content of their statements or absence of statements—is part of their political behavior. Further, they gain or shed supporters based on citizens' identification with various language.

Yes, critique can seem so out of habit that it takes on the appearance of liability to the out-group. "He's ranting!" Versus, "The cards are stacked!" The key is to remember that his supporters see his same words very differently, and understanding where that comes from would be incredibly useful for the purposes of solidarity or unity. Second, there is a distinct lack of recognition that critique tends to trigger unexamined negative reactions (why I said other politicians such as Obama are more savvy about this), which we understand are not really warranted because "negative logic" is not necessarily threatening. Third, critique is hard to resist. We're all tempted to do it, on one level or another.

Nevertheless, as a New Dealer, Sanders is not even that left! He's not a socialist, or communist, or Marxist, or Jill Stein. To me, it's an intuitive rule of thumb that the closer you appear to the centre, the greater a politician's appeal will be. That seems accurate in this political climate.

As for race, the typical argument by implicit racist leftists is that economic class > race issues. Race is a distraction, versus Race matters to actual people. We've all heard versions of that disagreement. My personal position, as a queer and person of color, is that the conflict runs deeper than that level. Any Marxian who has read Capital must intuit that class and race are deeply interlinked, and the problem of our times is to find the right synthesis, to refuse to let either's privileged mode blind us by an mutually-exclusive, either-or proposition. I don't have a satisfactory answer, but being a minority makes this relevant to me, and I have heard no one articulate any good answer, let alone take the time to conceptualize this problem in the first place.
posted by polymodus at 3:08 PM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

Does anyone think that this sounds like trying to unite the Dems?

Holy shit. Can someone please for the love of god take away their shovel?
posted by Talez at 3:10 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think this calls for that Lebowski gif of "You're not wrong you're just an asshole." 'Cause they're not wrong, they're just...
posted by Justinian at 3:11 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

When people being toxic on the internet leads to doxxing the chair of a state party, which leads to literally thousands of harassing and threatening phonecalls and text messages, then, yeah, it does fucking matter.

That is Gamergate shit right there, and it has no fucking place whatsoever in any of this. The spoiled, hateful children who engage in it need to take a long, hard look at themselves and grow the fuck up.

(Which of course they won't, because if they were capable of introspection they wouldn't be pulling that bush league shit in the first place.)
posted by dersins at 3:12 PM on May 20, 2016 [26 favorites]

Does anyone think that this sounds like trying to unite the Dems?

Apparently simple math proved challenging for the Sanders campaign on Saturday night – but it really shouldn’t take three days to figure out this one

Gee, it's surprising that the people who have been receiving death threats might not be in the mood to kiss and make up, nor feel that it's their place to make the first steps towards reconciliation.

Funny, that.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:18 PM on May 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

I think this calls for that Lebowski gif of "You're not wrong you're just an asshole." 'Cause they're not wrong, they're just...

Dealing with death threats, vandalism, and attempts to disrupt not only their lives but the lives of people around them?

I'm sorry, but I think that they have a damn good reason to not be terribly interested in comity at the moment.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:22 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83
Anthony Kennedy is 79
Stephen Breyer is 77

Likelihood they'll all live to see another 8 years doesn't strike me as high. Kennedy was the swing vote for gay marriage (and before that for striking down anti LGBTQ sodomy laws.) The Notorious RBG and Breyer are half the consistently sensible justices on the Court. If you care about abortion, the ACA, civil rights, wage equality, the ability to access the courts, or a host of other issues, this alone is reason to vote. For HRC

Also, for those who don't like "I'm With Her," how about the two campaign slogans that encapsulate HRC's personal philosophy, "Do the Most Good," or "Love Trumps Hate?" Or my personal favorite, #HillYes.

Also, although everything about Nevada, most of all Sanders' failure to condemn the death threats and his speech rallying followers against the DNC, bugs the heck out of me, I wish to leave it in the forgotten past. If Sanders has told Durbin, as the link above indicates, that he will be in the fight against Trump, then I'm fine with moving on. The important thing is to welcome the Sanders supporters at the convention, listen to them thoughtfully about the platform, and unite against Trump and the down ballot Rs.
posted by bearwife at 3:25 PM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

Also, although everything about Nevada, most of all Sanders' failure to condemn the death threats and his speech rallying followers against the DNC, bugs the heck out of me, I wish to leave it in the forgotten past.

Leaving it in the forgotten past it a great way to guarantee this happens again.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:29 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

OK, not to get all tweaky here, but "Love Trumps Hate" seems terrible from an advertising perspective (what little I know about it) and needs to be nipped in the bud. It has Trumps name right in the middle of it, and doesn't name the alternative at all. 80% of people would see that and take it as a pro Trump message.
posted by bongo_x at 3:31 PM on May 20, 2016 [12 favorites]

the voice vote should have been counted more accurately.

But the voice vote they were demanding was for the most ridiculous reason. The motion was to accept the preliminary count of credentials, a mere formality. You need to accept the preliminary count to establish a quorum before you can do any other business. The quorum requires that only 40% of registered delegates be present.

So they were demanding a head count to establish a preliminary head count to establish a quorum number which common sense would tell anyone that at least 40% of delegates who registered that morning were present in the room.

This was pure "burn it all down" obstructionism. If they insisted on head counts for every single minor formality motion the convention would take days. Even so, a caucus that should have taken a few hours took more than 16 hours due to ignorant, meaningless obstruction.
posted by JackFlash at 3:32 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

To add to bongo_x's point, it uses "Trump" in the sense of "victory" which I think we need to avoid doing as much as possible to limit the subconscious connotations. Using "Trump" in the sense of "trumpery" and "fakery," however, is an excellent idea.
posted by stolyarova at 3:33 PM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

I'm not sure what it actually is that The Establishment is supposed to be doing right now to court these voters. They're not exactly telling Sanders voters to go fuck themselves.

A genuine question to Bernie Sanders supporters who are mad at Clinton and the DNC for various reasons. What is it exactly that you would like Clinton to do in the coming week, weeks, months?

I'm certainly not a typical Bernie supporter but these are my thoughts:

- Battle Sanders on the issues.

Don't feed the personal conflicts between Bernie and Hillary supporters, try to bring them together. This means stop criticizing Bernie for continuing his campaign and "misleading his followers." Just explain why she's a stronger candidate, but also focus more on things she agrees with Bernie on. Ignore the more personal attacks from Bernie's side. This pattern developing of Bernie supporters and Hillary supporters attacking each other is really useless and destructive; try to cut it of.

- Provide clarity on dividing issues:

I think a big issue dividing democrats is a sort of false conflict between the more old-school Marxist Left and the BLM movement on whether economic policy or structural racism is a more important focus of the next President. The Marxist Left may believe building a cohesive labor movement will ultimately address racism and that Democrats should be reaching out more to the "white working class" even if they may be somewhat racist. BLM intellectuals may accuse past labor movements of contributing to racism and see appealing the the white working class as a betrayal that supports the white supremacist status quo.

Hillary could do some good by making a more in-depth policy speech on these issues, explaining they are independent problems, and how she plans to address both of them.

- Explain how she plans to address wealth inequality and possible structural changes we are seeing in the economy.

As a Bernie supporter she seems weak on this - that it will take more than assigning Bill to "revive" the economy. Maybe she wants to attract the neoliberal Republicans alienated by Trump, so she's trying to please too many people. I would suggest she re-assign people like Krugman from attacking Bernie to developing more in-depth liberal solutions of their own to labor and wealth-inequality issues and ways to sell them. I'm skeptical of Trump and Bernie's protectionism, but it does seem that we should be doing a lot more to compensate for working class jobs being lost to globalization and technology and create more higher-income jobs.

What should Sanders do?

Bernie's ardent supporters are probably trying to decide if it makes more sense to work from within the Democratic party or independently. Bernie should use the Democratic convention to emphasize how close they came to winning the Dem nomination, even with everything stacked against outsiders, and declare his commitment to the Party moving forward. The Party should use the opportunity to welcome them.
posted by Golden Eternity at 3:34 PM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

OK, not to get all tweaky here, but "Love Trumps Hate" seems terrible from an advertising perspective (what little I know about it) and needs to be nipped in the bud.

It's an apostrophe away from an endorsement!
posted by indubitable at 3:38 PM on May 20, 2016 [31 favorites]

the voice vote should have been counted more accurately.

The Seattle teachers' union had voice votes all through our general meetings on the strike last autumn, and to ratify the contract that preceded it. Voice voting is probably the most divisive, undemocratic, and frankly un-reassuring methods of collective decision-making I've ever experienced. Even when I was pretty damn sure my "side" won a vote, I walked away feeling deeply uncomfortable with the process, and therefore the whole decision.

Unless you're witnessing an absolute, unquestionable landslide, judging a voice vote is arbitrary as hell. More importantly, when things are contentious, it's a great way to make sure one side or the other walks away feeling robbed, because those people around them sure were loud, weren't they? How could the other side have been louder? If it was even close, why not do a headcount?

Further, it is incredibly difficult to go against a shouting crowd. Calling "no" when everyone else is shouting "yay" requires a lot of fortitude. At that point, when faced with a riled-up crowd, you're naturally going to be left weighing the importance of your vote against the importance of not being harassed, not alienating people you know, the list goes on. I saw people speak up against going on strike, giving very good, personal reasons for it, and honestly I admired their courage even when I disagreed with them. We should not subject people to that sort of mob pressure. That's not the way to make rational or fair decisions.

I'm not terribly sympathetic toward Sanders's supporters out of Nevada, because on the balance I don't think they were robbed at all. At the same time, I can absolutely see where the system is set up to welcome controversy like this.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 3:43 PM on May 20, 2016 [14 favorites]

JackFlash, I was responding to a specific point about voice votes having to follow nominee lines exactly.

I've seen conflicting accounts of the Nevada convention from both sides, that differ on timelines and importance of certain events. On MeFi I'm seeing that both sides are unable or unwilling to concede certain points or have fundamental differences in the interpretation of the event, so I don't really want to get involved in a long endless unproductive discussion (I probably shouldn't have replied to begin with).
posted by kyp at 3:43 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Did you know that although Trump called in his remarks to the NRA today for "an end to gun-free zones in the United States" , it turns out many of his own properties don't allow guns?

Other (completely untruthful) gems from his statements today:

Hillary wants to disarm vulnerable Americans in high-crime neighborhoods,” Mr. Trump said. “This is the most basic human right of all, but Hillary wants to strip it away . . ."

"Crooked Hillary Clinton is the most anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment candidate ever to run for office. She wants to abolish the Second Amendment.”

Mr. Trump also unveiled a new moniker for Mrs. Clinton — “heartless Hillary” — and said that her policies on guns and criminal justice would make women, in particular, less safe. He said her agenda was “to release the violent criminals from jail.”

“She wants them all released,” he said. “She wants people released that you wouldn’t want to walk on the street with, you wouldn’t want to look at.”

FYI, I'm one of those rare pro-gun MeFis, though I think HRC's gun control proposals are all sensible and I'm fine with them.
posted by bearwife at 3:54 PM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

Like I'm subbed to /r/SandersForPresident and it's like a fucking viper pit of toxicity towards Clinton, the DNC, anyone they think is against Bernie

"i dove into a septic tank and i can't believe i found all this poop!"
posted by poffin boffin at 3:55 PM on May 20, 2016 [23 favorites]

“heartless Hillary”

I can’t see it sticking. Rolls off the tongue better than “crooked” , but just seems cartoonish given Trump’s obvious grossness.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:57 PM on May 20, 2016

JackFlash: This was pure "burn it all down" obstructionism. If they insisted on head counts for every single minor formality motion the convention would take days. Even so, a caucus that should have taken a few hours took more than 16 hours due to ignorant, meaningless obstruction.

There's really only two possibilities: it was either ignorance, or it was a deliberate attempt to drag things out because they figured their group could outlast the numerically superior group. And that gets pretty ugly when they are a) attempting to overturn an initial public vote and b) counting on the other side to have more obligations (job shifts they have to turn up for, kids they have to be home for) or to be older/handicapped/otherwise not able to go 16 hours+ plus.

So when someone is attempting to play Robert's Rules of Orders games to disenfranchise people doubly, I am unmoved by the idea it is unfair to use those same legislative rules to prevent them.
posted by tavella at 3:58 PM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

Yes! It amounts to "how dare they use parliamentary rules to stop us from using parliamentary rules to disenfranchise people!"
posted by Justinian at 4:00 PM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

Plus, as sallybrown pointed out with the article she posted above, Hillary Clinton is far from heartless.
posted by stolyarova at 4:00 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

who is this Robert guy anyway

let's get him
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:00 PM on May 20, 2016 [10 favorites]

Really I just wanted to link to that article again because even though it's Buzzfeed and it's from several months ago it's very well-done.
posted by stolyarova at 4:01 PM on May 20, 2016

FYI, I'm one of those rare pro-gun MeFis, though I think HRC's gun control proposals are all sensible and I'm fine with them.

I'm a gun owner who is fine with them too. The NRA has positioned themself on the logical extreme when it comes to guns. They occasionally claim they want to enforce existing gun laws or something but its super clear they really just want completely unrestricted access (at least for white people).

While that will play well for Trump in red states, I don't think it will be to his advantage to stick to an absolutist view of gun control in swing states. Most of the country supports at least some restrictions.

Of course, Trump doesn't value consistency, so he may well say something different at debates or rallies in those states than he does to the NRA.
posted by thefoxgod at 4:06 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

More from Dishonest Donald today: no, he didn't raise 6 million for vets. Maybe half that amount.
posted by bearwife at 4:11 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

who is this Robert guy anyway let's get him

No way man. Robert rules!
posted by zachlipton at 4:15 PM on May 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

it was either ignorance, or it was a deliberate attempt to drag things out because they figured their group could outlast the numerically superior group.

So, "Let us dispel this fiction that they didn't know what they were doing. They knew exactly what they were doing."
posted by JackFlash at 4:16 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump announced his energy advisor. Not only is he a climate change denier (unsurprising), he denies there is warming occurring and denies any link between CO2 and global warming. (As opposed to the "warming is occurring but humans aren't causing it / can't stop it" line I've heard from more Republicans recently).

(Again, not really surprising from a candidate who once claimed climate change was a Chinese hoax)
posted by thefoxgod at 4:18 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm sorry, schroedinger—do you not think that the further from center a candidate is, a) the less popular appeal they will have, b) the less sociotechnogical capital they will have to run an innovative campaign, and c) the more likely they are going to be distortedly framed such as a priori deciding they are "ranting" (real comment above) or "making it up"?

I assume this is a response to my argument that the Obama campaign was well-organized?

(A) Popular appeal has very little to do with whether one's campaign is organized. Having a coherent message and strategy, and staying on that, and ensuring your operatives aren't contradicting one another is not dependent on how many people like you.

(B) The importance of access to sociotechnological capital is dependent on whether you're going off of established strategies or developing new ones. Obama was developing new ones. The people he recruited to run his campaign were relatively young and new to the field; they were not the grizzled veterans who won't commit until they've checked to make sure nobody else in their Rolodex has picked them up. Which is to say--yes, it is possible to recruit outside talent, but you do have to look for it and you have to plan for it. Bernie doesn't even have the excuse of having difficulty finding talent, though--he used the same dude who ran his 2006 campaign and then worked as his aide. Despite the fact this guy was clearly out of his depth from the start.

(C) Finally, in the modern political arena framing of whether one is "ranting" is as much about how one presents one's message and handles the media as it is about the message itself. Donald Trump is a great example of somebody who is saying insane, incoherent shit, and yet has netted himself the GOP nomination because he delivers his incoherent shit well and has done a great job of manipulating the media.

Bernie's fundamental issue is that he started out a protest candidate and did not seem to put his campaign together with the care and planning he should've if he actually wanted to win (e.g. did not start planning in 2014). Obama had a clear idea of what he wanted, was thoughtful in his staff recruitment, and was mostly well-organized through the whole process.

No. It is simply that leftists tend to engage in critique and are more comfortable doing it.

Like, I understand that the sum total of your argument is "let's listen to Sanders supporters", but it's hard to get at that meat when it is couched in blanket, unsupported statements like this.
posted by Anonymous at 4:20 PM on May 20, 2016

Democrats consider new rules to avoid convention chaos

In a speech dedicated almost entirely to projecting confidence that the party will ultimately unify, Wasserman Schultz drew on her experience as a die-hard Hillary Clinton supporter in 2008.

“To say that I was not very well-liked by then-Sen. Obama’s supporters would be an understatement. Despised might be more accurate,” Wasserman Schultz said. “I share that story with you because I want to remind everyone that we have been down this road before.”

She mocked the “media’s love affair with notions of party discord” and said she was “confident that we will channel the passion and energy from our primary into unity behind a common purpose.”

...Buckley called on the Sanders campaign, along with the Clinton’s campaign and the DNC, to agree to eight new guidelines to ensure peace at upcoming state conventions.

The guidelines called for cost sharing for extra security, more meetings to hammer out issues ahead of time and for senior officials with both campaigns to be on the floor of the convention to help reign in supporters if need be.

He also called on all parties to agree that conventions should proceed “without interruption or interference of any manner,” including “auditory or visual distractions.”...
posted by futz at 4:26 PM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

It's looking more and more like Philadelphia 2016 going to be Chicago 1968 all over again. It makes me sick.
posted by haiku warrior at 4:45 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

I, like a few others, gloated over the certainty of GOP convention turmoil. This is the universe's payback for our arrogance: the Republicans fall quietly into line behind Trump while the Democrats gear up to tear themselves apart.

Lord, I accept my penance, but I ask you not punish the whole country for my wrongdoings.
posted by Anonymous at 4:58 PM on May 20, 2016

Bernie should announce he is going to transform his campaign into a bid to flip the Senate to Democratic control so he can become chairman of the budget committee. That's the second most powerful job in DC. For the changes he wants to make, it might beore powerful. For example Obamacare was written by Max Bachus when he ran the committee.
posted by humanfont at 5:00 PM on May 20, 2016 [18 favorites]

From futz's link:

Lange told MSNBC that she is still receiving threats from Sanders supporters and fears for her safety. She said she has yet to hear from the Sanders campaign.

WTF? No "hey I'm sorry people are making death threats in my name" call? The problem with running a principled good-guy campaign is that people actually expect you to continue be the good guy.
posted by zachlipton at 5:03 PM on May 20, 2016 [16 favorites]

Or at least, "Hey guys" (and I do mean guys), "stop threatening Chairperson Lange, K? You're not helping."
posted by msalt at 5:06 PM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

FYI, I'm one of those rare pro-gun MeFis, though I think HRC's gun control proposals are all sensible and I'm fine with them.

Huh, I just realized that I feel the same way about guns and HRC: I have my issues with them but overall I am a lot less anti-them than most liberals, and I usually keep my mouth shut about them because I realize other people passionately disagree with my and I just don't always wanna get into it, especially when it comes down to a matter of personal values and priorities rather than incomplete information on either side.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:06 PM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's looking more and more like Philadelphia 2016 going to be Chicago 1968 all over again. It makes me sick.

This really needs a cite. I mean, it’s been less than a week since Nevada. Less than a week. - There’s plenty of times for things to change around. Arguments that Sanders is entitled to be the nominee go out the window if Clinton hits the pledged delegate totals, which has a decent shot of happening.

What we do have is a media that wouldn’t mind having a big old beef and convention fight. (It would be great anyway, but also adds a bunch of drama and fear to an election where one candidate is widely despised.) We also have a bunch of GG-style trolls who are happy to threaten someone. That’s serious, yes, but it’s also pretty standard-grade misogyny in the US. It’s not the sign of a new movement, it’s a sign of ordinary grossness against women.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:11 PM on May 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

First, it's not an unsupported argument. Leftists on metafilter itself utilize structural critique. Sociologists and invisible knapsack are examples of left critique. Even postmodernism is left critique, of a sort. So when Sanders uses the same concepts at a different target, my response as a Leftist is to extend the same standard of comprehension. Doing so is separate from how much I would advocate for his views or policies—Noam Chomsky had already presciently evaluated Sanders' prospects, months before any of these recent events.

Like, I understand that the sum total of your argument is "let's listen to Sanders supporters"

That's not my argument. That certainly is one side effect of perspective taking, but it is up each of us to do as we're comfortable. If one of them threatened you with a chair, I am not suggesting that you be try to nice to them. That would be reductive of what I've said at length.

Bernie's fundamental issue is that he started out a protest candidate and did not seem to put his campaign together with the care and planning he should've if he actually wanted to win (e.g. did not start planning in 2014). Obama had a clear idea of what he wanted, was thoughtful in his staff recruitment, and was mostly well-organized through the whole process.

This is essentially a competence narrative, which is the capitalistic, neoliberal framing of social relations. Specifically why:

a) People select for ideological compatibility. Messages are symbolic, and citizens' perception of where a politician falls along the Overton window gets their vote. Centrists tend to win because of identification by the population. Organization and rational discourse have roles and effects, but they are not primal or ultimate causes; at risk of superficial contradiction, there can be no primal explanation, really. Dan Kahan specifically challenges the information deficit theory of rationality, for example. The competence explanation satisfies neoliberal need for closure; I see this again and again in instances of hegemonic language.

b) When Obama was innovative because he built upon grassroots talent, that is exactly the leverage of sociotechnological capital. Not the other case that was suggested: not using establishment resources of veteran campaign agents provides authenticity and indeed required intellectual capital—on the part of Obama and his staff—political savvy, to recognize that. Startup culture is not born from a vacuum. From Marx as well as critical theorists, we understand that capital in either sense is not static, and that it should not be simplistically mystified or demarcated.

c) Trump is a perfect example too. He secured his current position because he tapped into deep frustrations of some demographic sectors in a particular way. Whether his words "are" bullshit depends on who the listener is. We have some tools to understand the dynamic between Trump and his supporters, but that's what it is in part: a sociological and psychological dynamic where certain economically impoverished groups find appeal in a figure who advocates solutions the rest of us validly believe are problematic. Meanwhile, when we accuse others of ranting, we too become complicit in buying into the dynamic. We should recognize that more. Such rhetoric colors our own comprehension and understanding. It increases the gap, it generates more othering, and prevents empathy. It is really about ourselves and thinking to consider what they see in us.
posted by polymodus at 5:19 PM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

It is nice to see some media doing some investigating. CBS is now saying that Dishonest Donald's positions on guns at the NRA today are a flip flop from earlier statements.
posted by bearwife at 5:31 PM on May 20, 2016

Lord, I accept my penance, but I ask you not punish the whole country for my wrongdoings.

If it makes you feel any better, I've been vocally dreading an ugly GOP convention and hoping it doesn't happen. Neither convention deserves that -- especially when you consider the people like convention center staffers, local businesses and other uninvolved parties who'd suffer for it.

The universe is only punishing your schaudenfreude if it's also totally ignoring my good behavior. :)
posted by scaryblackdeath at 5:35 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

haiku warrior: "It's looking more and more like Philadelphia 2016 going to be Chicago 1968 all over again. It makes me sick."

In case you missed it upthread, here is Josh Marshall's review of some of the emails he received as the editor of talkingpointsmemo.com eight years ago during the Obama vs. Clinton primary fight. tl;dr: things were as messy (if not messier) at this point in 2008. Of course, the underlying dynamics were clearly different back then but maybe keep hope that it's possible for things to be super messy without being catastrophically fatal.
posted by mhum at 5:52 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm taking the weekend off the internet. I'm tired, it's been a hard week of fighting everywhere, and I need to do something else for a while.

Please be excellent to each other this weekend and assume positive intent. I mean, you never know when we might run into each other at a President Donald Trump's Make Reeducation Great Again! internment camp.
posted by dw at 5:53 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

i have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace, that two are called a law firm, and that three or more become a national convention
posted by poffin boffin at 5:58 PM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

This is essentially a competence narrative, which is the capitalistic, neoliberal framing of social relations.

And this is where I very much disagree. Because behind all the symbolism in an election campaign, it's actually a job interview. It is fundamentally about convincing voters that a particular person will do the best job in the position through a combination of proposing specific policies and appeals that a candidate's skills, experience, and charisma will allow them to achieve some of those policies and best deal with unforeseen events. Call me a crazy capitalistic, neoliberal sellout, but I believe that competence is one of the basic criteria for the job of President of the United States, and the election should indeed include a "competence narrative."

(Even Trump, ridiculous as it may sound, has a competence narrative to a certain extent. Much of his argument is an appeal to his (less than amazing) business success, with a side helping of "I'm more competent because I haven't been in government like those idiots." I'm also certainly not saying Sanders is incompetent either here, and he is not.)

Because if you're not arguing competence, you're not running for office anymore; you're running a national protest movement. And that's totally fine too. We need people to protest and effective protests need good leadership.

Nor is this a new issue. For one example, we can look at Occupy. People kept asking "what are your demands?" and the response ranged from "well these things would be nice" to "we're a disparate group that wants different things and our main point is to occupy this space and make a point and wait, you're kicking us out of the park now?" And neither of those are inherently wrong positions to take, but Occupy also was never running for the highest elected office.

And I think it leads us down a bad road when we confuse protest with campaigning, because it takes policy, solutions, and competence off the table and leads to a reliance on emotion-raising wedge issues to gain support. And we need all of those things desperately, and a lot fewer wedges.

So I do thank you, because clearly you see the world, elections, and the campaigns very differently than I do, but I'm personally a big fan of the "competence narrative."
posted by zachlipton at 6:02 PM on May 20, 2016 [16 favorites]

we're a desperate group that wants different things

I think this was a typo but I love it.
posted by Justinian at 6:05 PM on May 20, 2016 [16 favorites]

I think this was a typo but I love it.

It was, and I squeaked in just before the edit window expired to fix it, but I thank you for saving it for posterity, because I too love it.
posted by zachlipton at 6:07 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm taking the weekend off the internet.

i hear you - i have other things to do besides listen to intrapartisan bickering and learning the latest obscene absurdity committed by the droolald

it's seriously getting on my nerves
posted by pyramid termite at 6:16 PM on May 20, 2016

Heartless Hillary is a much catchier nickname than Crooked Hillary, and plays more into Hillary's right-wing reputation as someone willing to do anything for power (the nutjob stuff about the Clinton marriage being a sham, Benghazi!!!!, etc). I think that one will stick.
posted by sallybrown at 6:18 PM on May 20, 2016

we're a desperate group that wants different things

Lol, feeling this. Came back to this thread because I had to disengage from some very upset Berners in my personal circle who want their guy to "win" no matter how, no matter who or what it hurts. The way I see it, this Final Boss Form of the right wing cruelty bloc is too frightening and dangerous to take any chances with. They see equivalencies between Trump and Clinton which I can't grok, and we keep talking past each other. I don't get their position, I do get their frustration, and I do need to step away from the interaction periodically. I'm in a safe blue state so these particular moral purity performances can't do all that much damage but man, I need to manage my own frustration with this whole situation better. November's a long way off. (ps, thank you so much for existing, mature and reasonable election discussion thread. You're crushing it with these posts, Wordshore)
posted by EatTheWeek at 6:18 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

A bit of a derail, but I would like to note here how glad I am that Black Lives Matter has been able to resist the usual neoliberal chants of "Too vague! Unserious!" enough to get their agenda recognized by both Democratic candidates. I don't know enough to really dig into why, but I imagine a large part is that "Stop killing us!" is a bit less abstract than Occupy's "Wealth inequality is a serious problem!".
posted by indubitable at 6:21 PM on May 20, 2016 [15 favorites]

Well, yes, having clear, actionable demands and specific, achievable goals (no matter how difficult they may be to achieve) make it easier to get buy-in from people outside a movement. Are there people who do not understand this?
posted by dersins at 6:29 PM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

Thirding that TPM Link as required reading. Sibling rivalries get heated in contests, but ultimately it's about family.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:31 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

In addition to dersins's point, I would add:

- solid and horribly disturbing visual proof of what the problem is

- severe overreaction on the part of local authority, also caught on camera and easily disseminated

- brilliant strategy in regards to protests, slogans, fast and soundbite-ready of information (DeRay Mckesson and Johnetta Elzie, among many others)

- significant time and effort devoted to compiling factual background information (aided by journalists) and developing concrete, specific proposed solutions targeted to specific towns and regions (what Campaign Zero is doing)

- People with significant amounts of power (DOJ, for example) already familiar with and would like to help movement succeed.
posted by sallybrown at 6:35 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Libertarian Party VP candidate (and former governor of MA) Bill Weld quoted in the NYT about Trump's comments on illegal immigrants and Mexico:

“I can hear the glass crunching on Kristallnacht in the ghettos of Warsaw and Vienna when I hear that, honest,” Mr. Weld said Thursday.

posted by Justinian at 6:36 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

Gotta say, the Libertarian ticket is pretty reputable this time around. They actually picked people with high-level executive experience. Good for them.

Also, if they're taking Koch money, they'll probably garner a lot more votes from Donald than from Hillary, which is excellent news.
posted by stolyarova at 6:39 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

If something truly horrible happened and polls came close enough in a number of swing states to make President Trump seem likely rather than possible, I wonder if the third party candidates would team up to urge people to vote for Hillary for the good of the country?
posted by sallybrown at 6:40 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's like this election season is being pieced together from scraps of rejected Voltron scripts.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 6:43 PM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

GOP Senator Bob Bennett's Dying Wish Was To Apologize To Muslims On Behalf Of His Party For Trump
posted by homunculus at 6:44 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm kinda hoping the LP can poll 15% and get on the debate stage. I'd love to see that Kristallnacht comment during a debate being watched by 40 million people.
posted by Justinian at 6:44 PM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

Gary Johnson probably would, and I'd have said the same about Jill Stein except for her recent terrible AMA where she said Trump was better than Hillary. Gary is so anti-authoritarian that Trump is pretty much his worst nightmare (Trump's platform is essentially anti-libertarian in every possible way).
posted by stolyarova at 6:45 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Stein really said that? Holy shit.
posted by futz at 6:46 PM on May 20, 2016

She did.

First off I agree with the comment below that it's hard to say which is the greater evil. Trump recently came out for higher taxes on the rich and raising the minimum wage. Hillary can't figure out what minimum wage she supports, and she actually as Secretary of State pushed wages lower in Haiti, from 60 cents and hour down to 40 cents an hour! It's not clear which one is the bigger warhawk, and Donald seems more receptive to stopping corporate trade agreements than Hillary who's been a cheerleader for predatory trade agreements starting with NAFTA. Now Hillary is going after Republican donors and Republican voters. We are seeing the two corporate parties converge into one.

The politics of fear says you have to vote against the candidate you fear rather than for the candidate who shares your values. That fear campaign needs to be called out as self-serving propaganda for the political establish. In fact, this politics of fear delivered everything we were afraid of. All the reasons you are told to vote for a lesser evil, because you didn't want the Wall Street bailouts, or the expanding war, or growing student debt, or shipping our jobs overseas, or the attack on immigrant rights, all those things we've gotten by the droves because we allowed ourselves to be silenced. In fact, the lesser evil paves the way to the great evil... because the base won't come out to vote for a lesser evil Democrat who is throwing everyday people under the bus so the Republicans will win anyhow even after you've voted in the lesser evil.

Democracy does not need more fear and silence. Democracy needs a moral compass. We have to be that moral compass. It's time to forget the lesser evil and fight for the greater good!

IMO, her hatred for Clinton has blinded her to Trump's greater danger.
posted by stolyarova at 6:49 PM on May 20, 2016 [12 favorites]

Even with a pretty simple message of Black Lives Matter there was an attempt to shame BLM activists into admitting that All Lives Matter and while that probably disarmed the movement in the eyes of red state conservatives the BLM movement has steadfastly refused to surrender their rhetoric and message.

In contrast I feel like Occupy and the Bernie Movement have attempted to capitalize on widespread economic frustration and in many ways have had decent rhetoric and messaging but both were often handicapped by the failure to bridge disparate groups with an inclusive and intersectional strategy. The result has been that Bernie really failed to ignite any real significant support with African American and Latino voters who are increasingly becoming the kingmakers in terms of Democratic politics.

Clinton lost in 2008 because Obama had a better ground game and he had better strength in the AA community and it's clear that she's spent 8 years fixing those issues. She had a vastly superior field operation to Sanders and she's spent 8 years actively courting the AA community. Combined with her open appreciation for Obama's successes and her active participation in the Obama administration and it was really no question that despite some past missteps she was going to dominate among those minority populations.

Nevada allowed her to slow Bernie's progress and she's been ascendant (with some brief narrowing of the margins) ever since SC. I've actually been surprised that he's been as competitive as he has been but that's mainly fueled by massive fundraising and massive ad buys because his ground game has been pretty much garbage.
posted by vuron at 6:49 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

To be precise she said it was hard to say which was more evil and then went into a spiel about various bullshit ways that Trump is supposedly better than Clinton. For example saying that Trump says he'll raise taxes on the rich. Which is, you know, the exact opposite of the truth. Stein is pretty much an idiot.
posted by Justinian at 6:50 PM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

Stein really said that?

And Ralph Nader came pretty close the other day too. There is something about the Green Party that perhaps I don't understand.
posted by bongo_x at 6:52 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

I knew of other reasons that I considered wacky but that AMA comment... yikes
posted by futz at 6:52 PM on May 20, 2016

I think the leaders of the Green party are wacky heighten the contradiction types. So they see Clinton as a bigger threat because she won't destroy the country leading to a glorious Green future.
posted by Justinian at 6:54 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Greens (and the left in general) probably see the Democrats as more disappointing or more of a problem because there is at least some connection there. They don't agree on everything, but there is some overlap between the two groups and it's always harder when someone who you agree with on most things has some BIG IMPORTANT ISSUE where they differ. It's no different from people in these threads that have commented on how they have rifts with friends/family where they once had none because some issue that's never come up before came up and it showed a division. If you're in agreement on the rest, those little differences become bigger. And they hurt more. And so many Greens/etc. react much more strongly to the differences with the Democrats than they do with the Republicans.
posted by downtohisturtles at 7:05 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Coupla comments deleted; probably things will go better if we just skip the calling-people-morons part of the program.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:05 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

The Green Party has always been pretty high on the false equivalency burn the whole thing down sort of bullshit arguments.

Which is basically why so many people pretty much view them as the party of the "privilege denying dude" because while there might be some vague truth to their assertions the reality is that no things can be dramatically worse for many Americans under a Republican administration.
posted by vuron at 7:06 PM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

Hmm, I don't know much about the Greens, but I think Stein senses this is a great opportunity to get some Bernie or Bust supporters. It's smart to go on Reddit and doing an AMA, seeing as how it's unofficially the Sanders Campaign virtual HQ (sorry, Second Life).
posted by FJT at 7:07 PM on May 20, 2016

The comments that I have seen about her from bernie folks are not positive due to her opinions on homeopathy.
posted by futz at 7:12 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

The best was on Mother's Day when Jill Stein said Hillary Clinton didn't reflect the values of being a mom. Exactly the kind of essentialist retrograde judgmental sexism I want in a progressive party!
posted by sallybrown at 7:12 PM on May 20, 2016 [27 favorites]

her opinions on homeopathy

oh noooo
posted by sallybrown at 7:13 PM on May 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

Meh, the Green Party is facing an uphill battle to even get on the ballot in a bunch of states and Bernie has basically sucked all of the air (and probably most of the available cash) out of the left margins of the US political spectrum.

Yes there are some Bernie or Bust types that will sign on to Stein but most will go the way of the PUMA and back down from the brink.

Of course the most vocal will be the douchebros will somehow occupy the inexplicable overlap area in a Venn diagram of Bernie Supporters and Gamergate truthers. And let's be honest a lot of those guys are already on /pol/ and r/thedonald.

I'm just concerned that the rhetoric of the "stolen election" will get some passionate supporters to drop out of the process altogether.
posted by vuron at 7:15 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

homeopathy

Ah, that explains why she hasn't figured out that getting 0.36% of the vote doesn't actually do anything.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:19 PM on May 20, 2016 [50 favorites]

I have not looked into her platform or beliefs but I see the homeopathy thing connected to her everywhere so please don't rely on me as to whether it is actually true. i can't be bothered to actually look into it.
posted by futz at 7:30 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

It seems like she's not just pandering to the homeopathy crowd but has chimed in with some FUD concerning vaccines in an attempt to appeal to the anti-vaxxer crowd.

I understand she's a politician now but would it be possible for Harvard Medical School to retract her diploma for being a pandering coward?
posted by vuron at 7:34 PM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

I believe the homeopathy thing comes from the fact that the Green Party platform contains:

We support the teaching, funding and practice of holistic health approaches and as appropriate, the use of complementary and alternative therapies such as herbal medicines, homeopathy, naturopathy, traditional Chinese medicine and other healing approaches.

Since Jill Stein went to Harvard Medical school so I really hope she doesn't actually believe in homepathy. But her platform does specifically support funding it so....
posted by Justinian at 7:34 PM on May 20, 2016

I don't get enough people hawking essential oil pyramid schemes on my Facebook, I would like to hear more about the healing powers of lavender from the Oval Office.
posted by sallybrown at 7:37 PM on May 20, 2016 [21 favorites]

From what I've heard, pro-science GP members tend to view that plank of the party as a pretty craven attempt to bring in enough members from the alt medicine scene to hit their funding/debate/whatever thresholds, after which the woo contingent will be tossed away. Which, after this year's GOP debacle, doesn't really sound like a great plan.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 7:44 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Some people on Reddit are claiming that Stein has said she personally disagrees with the homeopathy part of the party's platform. For what that's worth.

I also think caring about the Green Party position on homeopathy is about as useful as asking my local school board candidates for their positions on nuclear disarmament.
posted by zachlipton at 7:45 PM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

as useful as asking my local school board candidates for their positions on nuclear disarmament.

No. That would be slightly useful. It would be like asking local school board candidates if they approve of students wearing condoms during the entire school day for their protection.
posted by Talez at 7:48 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

What's the official Green Party position on tiger-repelling rocks?
posted by dersins at 7:52 PM on May 20, 2016 [10 favorites]

Well chafing might be a problem but I can pretty much guarantee nobody is going to be having sex if they are forced to wear a condom for 8+ hours 5 days a week.
posted by vuron at 7:54 PM on May 20, 2016

Well no Green Party candidate has ever been mauled by a tiger, have they? I think you have your answer.
posted by Justinian at 7:54 PM on May 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

Actually Green party candidate/activist David Villalobos was mauled in 2013 when he jumped into the tiger enclosure at the Bronx zoo. He would later explain his actions as a spiritual thing.
posted by humanfont at 8:05 PM on May 20, 2016 [37 favorites]

...

Ok then. Well shit.
posted by Justinian at 8:10 PM on May 20, 2016 [30 favorites]

RE: Love trumps hate.

This is near the top of /r/the_dingus. It's definitely not a good clinton slogan, especially when it's so difficult to get half of the country to notice/admit/care if they're doing hurtful or even hateful things.
posted by sandswipe at 8:17 PM on May 20, 2016

Do we know that he actually had his tiger repelling rock at that moment though? Maybe he failed to bring it that day to the zoo and thus was deprived of it's tiger repelling aura?

Personally I hope that Stein doesn't actually buy into the woo but honestly there are a ton of woo believers on both the far left and far right. I've had some people explain to me that the reality is that the political spectrum isn't really just mapped in two dimensions, the political spectrum is actually just a two dimensional depiction of a three dimensional object (like a cylinder or sphere) and the far right and far left actually meet on the other side of the object.
posted by vuron at 8:20 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

It is simply that leftists tend to engage in critique and are more comfortable doing it.

So where does "We know where you live. We know where your children go to school." fall as far as critique?

I mean I know you're trying to frame this in nice, abstract, academic terms, but people who are getting continual death threats in the style of gamergate may not see the value.

My impression is that while Sanders and his core group may see his critiques as an intellectual exercise in speaking truth to power, his online campaigners, informed by the tactics of anonymous and 4Chan see them as a way to vent their anger on the vulnerable, cloaked in ideological terminology.
posted by happyroach at 8:29 PM on May 20, 2016 [10 favorites]

I was excited about Sanders early on and really wanted him to get the nomination but at this point I would have a hard time making myself vote for Bernie even if it was between him and Trump. Too much nastiness around him lately and he has too little to say about it.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 8:55 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

See, that's what some his supporters say too except about Clinton. I'm not happy about what's been going on either but I'd still vote for Sanders without a single qualm.
posted by Justinian at 9:00 PM on May 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

I also think caring about the Green Party position on homeopathy is about as useful as asking my local school board candidates for their positions on nuclear disarmament.

I agree, it's just funny that they have one at all. What is their position on body hair; shave or all natural? Toilet paper rolls; over or under?

I'm off to check the party platform on the "Top Sheet With Duvet Cover" question before I make up my mind. I'm not saying I'm a single issue voter, but you have to have a moral compass.
posted by bongo_x at 9:12 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

WAR IS PEACE.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
TRUMP HATES LOVE.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:22 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Couple comments deleted. Please don't use edit to add content -- just make a second comment. It's confusing when people are reading two different versions of your comment.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:53 PM on May 20, 2016

I should clarify that I WOULD vote for Sanders over Trump, I would vote for a rabid skunk over Trump. But I wouldn't be happy about it and I would leave the booth a bit disgusted right now.

Which feels weird considering a few weeks ago I was very disappointed that he was not doing better in the primaries.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 10:15 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's strange, or perhaps telling, as a statement of the self-reflexive nature of the internet, that conversations about Bernie Sanders draws from this critique of a few people. Like, let's create this strawman, these meme of "the bro," and just run it until exhaustion. Ten million supporters by popular vote, and we're talking about 4chan like this is somehow relevant to the talking points of the Sanders campaign.
posted by iamck at 12:45 AM on May 21, 2016 [12 favorites]

The main reason the Nevada incident and the harassment is still a discussion point is because Bernie's response to it was awful. Instead his response added fuel to the fire.
posted by chris24 at 4:11 AM on May 21, 2016 [20 favorites]

Erick Erickson is still calling for Romney to run as a third party candidate: "No one wants to vote for a candidate because they are against the other candidate. People want to vote for a candidate because they like that candidate. Romney could provide that."

Up is down, hot is cold, Romney is likable.
posted by peeedro at 4:26 AM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

Erick Erickson is still calling for Romney to run as a third party candidate: "No one wants to vote for a candidate because they are against the other candidate. People want to vote for a candidate because they like that candidate. Romney could provide that."

That would hand Clinton the election on a silver platter.
posted by Talez at 5:28 AM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

I look around at who are my friends posting on Facebook about Never Shillary feel the Bern and I make connections and find patterns. And these are my friends, people I care about and like and whose judgment, for a lot of things, I like very much. They are not gamergaters! But they are, at least so far, minimum 3rd generation American-born on at least one side, doing worse than their parents (not worse than their peers, but their parents did very well) with a meaningful private social and economic safety net to fall back on.

They're my friends and I'm not criticizing their basic humanity or intelligence. But when their posts get too incessant I do unfollow them because it's hard not to feel that to the extent they believe what they are saying about Clinton and the Democratic party, it can take a lot of mental and emotional energy to keep reminding myself that probably deep down they respect my basic humanity, judgment, and intelligence too, and it feels more sensible to fall back a bit and wait out the season.
posted by Salamandrous at 5:34 AM on May 21, 2016 [7 favorites]

Sanders supporters planning four rallies during the Democratic convention.
posted by octothorpe at 6:20 AM on May 21, 2016

Sanders campaign down to less than $6 million in cash, with a bern rate of $40 million a month.
posted by chris24 at 6:41 AM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Then it's a good thing I wasn't blaming all our problems on the rich.
posted by sotonohito

Yes and it's also a good thing that I wasn't blaming you for blaming all our problems on "the rich," but blaming your candidate for having a message that doesn't resonate with the experience of a substantial number of voters.

But I do think blaming the economic problems (not all problems, just the economic ones) on the people hoarding all the money isn't exactly unreasonable.

We have many economic problems, but on the other hand we are at relatively low unemployment, with low inflation, with begrudgingly rising wages, with a single digit uninsured rate for the first time in history, and with the stock markets (on which many middle class retirements and educations depend) in relatively robust shape even after raising interest rates a notch. "Hoarding money" is a problem, but it doesn't explain the global economic transformations that have had such a storied effect on American workers (in ways that have also provided benefits that are rarely the subject of political rhetorical accounting). I agree that income inequality and low tax rates on investment wealth and incentives to keep wealth offshore are major, serious economic problems that hold up the obvious massive needed investment in infrastructure, science, and education for renewable energy and fighting climate change and maintaining worker productivity (but so is massive investment in the military, and I'm with a good portion of the right in seeing fraud, abuse, and corruption as significant economic drains across our economy, including the massive informal economy tied to the continued insanity of drug laws and the carceral state). So broadly, I agree with your analysis of the problem.

The difference is that I don't see Bernie Sanders as the solution. I think incremental building on Pres. Obama's not so modest successes is more likely to deliver economic justice and long term change, especially if the left acts as a real constituency of the democratic party and not as a fringe movement too concerned with the perfect to pursue the good (exactly what my initial hope was for the Sanders campaign, like many of my left but pragmatic friends).

I don't think Bernie can do anything about income inequality as president, even if he could win (which he can't, and if you can't see the ads that would destroy Bernie, you're not imagining hard enough). And even if he could win, I don't consider him a credible president along other equally important dimensions of competence for the job, something I have come to realize as his campaign has continued without developing beyond his economic justice arguments. (Ah, you will say, Clinton has proved only that she is incompetent at military policy or diplomacy, to which I will say, I would prefer experienced incompetence to an untested idealist's hand on the apparatus of military power, thank you, especially since I've never seen anyone succeed in those domains without also making major mistakes, to wit, one Barack Obama -- does anyone think Bernie would be a better president than Obama on foreign policy or military strategy? If so, on what basis? And Obama has made grave errors in the course of gaining his experience, and still been an order of magnitude better than any republican we could have had in the office). I also think those arguments suffer from being placed in a context of theoretical abstraction ("Denmark does it why can't we?") that is all to familiar to me from spending my life in academia around the exact sort of leftist yet privileged folks I see defending Bernie most assertively. It's a bubble, no less than the right wing ideological bubble.

It comes down to pragmatism vs. idealism. But if you're gonna back the idealist, then it's incumbent to admit that for all his authenticity and theoretical force of his analysis and utopian quality of his economic vision, he's never done anything to prove he is capable of actually leading a diverse nation in a dangerous world at a critical time. We can agree to disagree if this is the best option when the alternative is Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. But realistically it never was an alternative and it won't be now.
posted by spitbull at 7:09 AM on May 21, 2016 [21 favorites]

Well, the talking point of the Sanders campaign seems to be "the DNC is corrupt and should be burned down," so when his young, presumably more tech savvy supporters take that and use the bullying tools tech gives them to harass DNC members, it seems to be fair game as a discussion point.

Not only is that a hyperbolic exaggeration of the Sanders campaign talking points but it doesn't change the fact that you're singling out an extreme violent minority as representative for millions of people. Which most of the time we don't endorse around here. I suppose it's "fair game" if this is just a rhetorical competition of mud-slinging, which is what politics is, after all. And I can see the Clinton campaign delighting in Nevada as an attempt to link Sanders to violence. But any attempt to try and hold Sanders responsible for death threats is ludicrous, and I would expect a little more nuance around these parts.
posted by iamck at 7:16 AM on May 21, 2016 [10 favorites]

you're singling out an extreme violent minority as representative for millions of people

An extreme minority, absolutely, but one that Sanders has yet to strongly disavow for some god-knows-what reason?? It would make great political (not to mention MORAL) sense to come out and strongly condemn this bullshit Gamergateism in direct, clear, simple terms (not the weak tea he's offered so far), so why isn't he? I truly don't think he as a person or the really good people surrounding him (Jane Sanders, for one) support this gross behavior, so I'm at a loss here. Either he has too much on his plate right now, he has advisors who are wrongheadedly not making this a priority, he's afraid to piss off this gross small flank of his supporters (perhaps he thinks they are larger in number than you or I do?), or...what else am I missing?
posted by sallybrown at 7:25 AM on May 21, 2016 [24 favorites]

Sanders campaign down to less than $6 million in cash, with a bern rate of $40 million a month.

Even as he racked up primary victories last month and sharpened his attacks against the former secretary of state, online donors started holding back. Sanders raised considerably less in April than his record-setting $46 million in March or $43.5 million in February.

Everyone realized the math wouldn't work except the campaign. I mean, shit, I donated both those months then saw the writing on the wall after the March 15th clobbering.
posted by Talez at 7:29 AM on May 21, 2016

I have no idea why Sanders has not directly, explicitly, and unequivocally called out the people making threats and misogynistic comments and made it clear that those people do not represent the values of his campaign and that he has no use for their "help." At this point, it seems inexcusable that he hasn't.
posted by prize bull octorok at 7:30 AM on May 21, 2016 [21 favorites]

And I can see the Clinton campaign delighting in Nevada as an attempt to link Sanders to violence.

You have to think pretty low of someone to think they take delight in someone getting swamped with disgusting voicemails calling her a bitch and cunt and threatening violence against her and her family. I'm pretty sure the reaction to that from any halfway decent person is disgust, not delight. Not everything is just another opportunity for point scoring.
posted by sallybrown at 7:30 AM on May 21, 2016 [29 favorites]

Look, this is what's so frustrating. Sanders had no problem earlier in the year calling on Trump to strongly disavow the violent minority of the people attending his rallies. He knows that's the right thing to do - and the presidential thing to do.

So when he had the opportunity to do the same thing with what happened in Nevada, he went all "but..." about it. That was not a good look, and I was really disappointed to see it. He needed to do the same thing he was calling on Trump to do and make it clear that violence (including the vile misogynism and doxxing against so many women in leadership positions in the Democratic party) has absolutely no place in his campaign.

I don't see any "delight". I haven't seen Clinton crowing about how, see, Sanders is awful. What I have seen are people rightly concerned about how the violent rhetoric deployed by the minority is being winked at instead of strongly and quickly shut down hard, as it should be. I've seen frustration that women are, once again, being treated as collateral (or as the enemy) because their personal safety and dignity is second to anything else.

People have made the comparison to Gamergate, and that's right on. Misogyny toward women in public positions is a huge, visible problem in American society right now. Nevada isn't an isolated event. It's part of a much larger picture, and Sanders had the opportunity to put himself on the right side of the issue by not only strongly condemning it (with no weaselly half-apologies and justifications) but reaching out publicly to people like Lange. He's getting the pushback he rightly deserves. I'm not blaming him for the violent actions of a few - I'm blaming him for his own weak response right now.
posted by Salieri at 7:35 AM on May 21, 2016 [55 favorites]

And btw, a lot of us here calling Bernie out for this are very much not Clinton supporters. I donated to Bernie's campaign (as well as Hillary's), I really liked the energy he brought to the race at first, I'm not voting Hillary in the primary as a protest against her foreign policy and my frustration with the Clinton Foundation stuff...my objection to Bernie's behavior here is coming from a place of love, not point scoring.
posted by sallybrown at 7:38 AM on May 21, 2016 [11 favorites]

I think incremental building on Pres. Obama's not so modest successes is more likely to deliver economic justice and long term change, especially if the left acts as a real constituency of the democratic party and not as a fringe movement too concerned with the perfect to pursue the good (exactly what my initial hope was for the Sanders campaign, like many of my left but pragmatic friends).

I basically agree with you but I don't see how incrementalism is a possibility with the current Congress (specifically the House). In the past 6 years I can think of only one instance of actual legislative progressive advances (a permanent Medicare doc payment fix) and that in itself is pretty wonk-y. I could be wrong, talk me down please, but is there anything that has happened through Congress in a positive and meaningful direction since the GOP took over the gerrymandered-to-hell lower chamber?

I welcome and cheer on DGAF OBAMA because he is (after 7 reluctant years) embracing energy-in-the-executive as a non-optimal-but-best-of-bad-options strategy for getting things done (eg. executive action on deportations, overtime, trans issues).

For the next four years, though, what is the strategy? I've come down more on the "articulate a strong narrative" side in these threads but on the other side there is of course the need to deliver things, not merely for politics' sake (i.e. to demonstrate that the Dems are the party of getting things done vs. the GOP party of NO) but also because, obviously, there are things that need to be done that haven't gotten done in these last 6 obstructionist years.

My opinion is that Sec. Clinton has been just as bad or disingenuous as Sen. Sanders on making pie-in-the-sky claims about what can be done. I know, that's probably just what has to happen to get the nod. But I hope that she will be more clear going forward about her plans for what can, realistically, be done to move the ball forward through the machinery actually available to her as head of the federal administration.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:38 AM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Erick Erickson is still calling for Romney to run as a third party candidate: "No one wants to vote for a candidate because they are against the other candidate. People want to vote for a candidate because they like that candidate. Romney could provide that."

That would hand Clinton the election on a silver platter.

It's sacrificing the White House to preserve control of Congress.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:44 AM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

It still means that the person on top of the Republican ticket is Donald Trump, though.

The only way they can actually step away from him at this point is to actually try everything possible to step away from him by rules-lawyering at the convention. Right now they're basically all stepping forward to kiss the ring.

I really really hope people are paying attention so that these assholes can be thoroughly mocked and spat upon by the electorate when they try to do the wide-eyed "I do not know the man!" thing in October. This better not go in the memory hole.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:51 AM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's sacrificing the White House to preserve control of Congress.

I'm not sure I get the logic here - I mean, I know that some particularly effective winning presidential candidates have "coattails", but how would having, in effect, a second Republican candidate going to help downstream races? I imagine most Republicans will still vote for congressional and statehouse candidates of their own party even if they don't like the presidential contender, won't they?
posted by AdamCSnider at 7:51 AM on May 21, 2016

I imagine most Republicans will still vote for congressional and statehouse candidates of their own party even if they don't like the presidential contender, won't they?

If #nevertrump stays home it won't help downballot candidates.
posted by Talez at 7:55 AM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

I can see it helping keep Congress for the Rs IF it's true that whole upper middle class / white collar professional (Wall Street, law firm, consultants, etc) / country club / Rockefeller Republican / Reagan Democrat coalition (a) can be depended on to vote for downticket R's; (b) will not turn out to vote for Donald (incl. voting for Donald purely to vote against Hillary); and (c) will not turn out to vote for Hillary (to save their country from Donald); but (d) would turn out to vote for Romney. And I'm not sure that's a realistic expectation.
posted by sallybrown at 8:02 AM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

I am struck by how insanely restricted our electoral system is by the most mundane limitations. Third party runs would be somewhat more practical is there weren't state ballot restrictions- like say if you had a standard national candidacy section. The threat of "people staying home" would not exist if voting was mandatory. These aren't even systemic changes like getting rid of first-past-the-post. These are fixed are many other democracies have already implemented.
posted by Apocryphon at 9:46 AM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have no idea why Sanders has not directly, explicitly, and unequivocally called out the people making threats and misogynistic comment

The Nevada incident and the gamergatesque aftermath is presidential-class test of leadership which, so far, Senator Sanders is failing badly.
posted by EatTheWeek at 9:47 AM on May 21, 2016 [8 favorites]

It's sacrificing the White House to preserve control of Congress.

This is an interesting thought. I'm just speculating here, but that certainly could make sense:

For the Republicans to ensure they don't lose the Senate (and possibly, though it is VERY unlikely, the house) they'll need a real concerted, organized effort to get the vote out.

For Republican GOTV, it's not the country club set that matters--there's not that many of them, and they don't really organize in that way. Evangelical Christians, often organizing through church groups, have been the beating heart of the GOP ground game for awhile now, and they need someone at the top of the ticket they can work for.

Trump's support does include quite a lot of self-described evangelicals, but, crucially, these folks--despite considering themselves evangelicals--often are not actually church-goers. Those are folks who, on average, are less educated and less affluent than other evangelicals, which means they have less time and less opportunity (as well as, sometimes, less inclination) to organize, volunteer and get the vote out.

But Trump has shown little interest (or aptitude) for establishing that sort of ground game, or for attracting the folks that traditionally have been the biggest part of getting out the vote for Republicans. He hasn't really needed to during the primary because his opposition was largely either incompetent, as poorly-organized as he was, or despised by huge swaths of the GOP establishment.

Romney is far from an ideal candidate for this for a number of reasons (people are kind of meh about him; also he is Mormon), but he does have at least four important things going for him:

1. The entire GOP base already knows who he is--and so do the big donors.
2. He is not Donald Trump. It is not implausible that someone who is a sincerely devout evangelical Christian might look at Trump and see perhaps the least [C/c]hristian (in both the big-C literal sense and the little-c moral sense) GOP presidential candidate in a long time. Romney (even if he is LDS), is at least not performing a cartoonish caricature of actual evil.
3. Donald Trump did not already kick his ass in a bunch of primaries and caucuses.
4. He is available.

Though there could be another potential (R) candidate who meets these very limited criteria, I can't actually think of one off-hand, which really doesn't speak well

As I said at the beginning of this comment, I'm obviously totally speculating, but if Erickson was thinking "to hell will the Presidency we need to hold Congress," the reasoning might be something like this.
posted by dersins at 9:50 AM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

Sanders supporters planning four rallies during the Democratic convention.

When this kind of thing is happening--at that scale--independent of a campaign, it is clear the campaign has lost control of its own messaging.

Which is fine if you're running a protest movement and trying to raise awareness on key issues, but can be a fucking disaster if you're actually trying to win.
posted by dersins at 9:53 AM on May 21, 2016 [10 favorites]

it is clear the campaign has lost control of its own messaging

The thing that irks me the most about Berners is their careless use of the term "revolution." When I hear comfortable or mostly comfortable middle class white people throwing that word around, what I hear is "I don't read very much history at all." I genuinely never want to see a revolution in my lifetime. Revolutions are mob violence and endless reprisals. They're uncontrollable by their very nature. It's not like the Jacobins said "hey, let's fuck up France for two generations minimum." It's not like the Bolsheviks said "hey, let's set the table for a genocidal strongman tyrant to reign for years."

I get that they hang that little figleaf of "political" revolution on it, but that's not the direction a lot of his supporters have taken it in. I get the allure of it - reforming government is a tedious, frustrating process which never seems to complete. It's so much more attractive and exciting to say "let's smash everything and start over with us in charge!" There's a simple appeal to that, makes a great elevator pitch to people who were already pretty sure they were right about everything to begin with. I'm not surprised at all that now they're turning to conspiracy theories for comfort. "The party screwed us!" is a much more attractive narrative than "we made our case to the voters and they were not convinced."

I live in an overwhelmingly white, kneejerk liberal college town which I should have moved out of at least three years ago, so this nomination contest has been exhausting. I tried to watch the first couple debates with Berners and it was intolerable. They would talk over every single other candidate, then hang on every sanctimony-stoking word their guy had to say. They didn't need to hear a single one of Clinton or anyone else's points before they knew they disagreed. This is all anecdotal of course, but a lot of the Berners in my town have an almost religious adoration for this finger-wagging, self-righteous idealogue that has turned me off completely. I'm in broad agreement with a lot of Sanders' positions, but the way they're pitched is so "you're with us or YOU'RE A CAPITALIST SHILL WHY AREN'T YOU WITH US" that I plain can't get down. This is the case they mean to make to Purple America? It won't play. Thank god he's been defeated in this nomination process. I hope he recognizes that he's lost, and soon.

(ps - I make a special effort to never call him "Bernie" because we're not on a first name basis because ffs the President isn't supposed to be your buddy)
posted by EatTheWeek at 10:22 AM on May 21, 2016 [33 favorites]

I basically agree with you but I don't see how incrementalism is a possibility with the current Congress (specifically the House). In the past 6 years I can think of only one instance of actual legislative progressive advances (a permanent Medicare doc payment fix) and that in itself is pretty wonk-y. I could be wrong, talk me down please, but is there anything that has happened through Congress in a positive and meaningful direction since the GOP took over the gerrymandered-to-hell lower chamber?

We don't elect a president to run Congress. We elect a president to appoint judges, make executive rules, veto legislation, and set the narrative - in that order. The most recent example of incremental change came this week when the Department of Labor changed overtime rules for salaried positions, which will affect millions of Americans (MeFi thread in case you missed it). Federal policy in this country isn't just conducted by the legislature. At this point, given Congress' notorious gridlock, I would argue that the courts and the executive are far more effective at resolving our most pressing problems.

Take climate change. While we sit and watch Congress not even consider cap and trade, the executive branch has been working across Departments to get to work. We will never build another coal power plant in this country - thanks to EPA rule making. Funding for renewable R&D has skyrocketed thanks to the DoE. Solar projects have been fast tracked on public lands thanks to Interior. Taken together, it's creating a climate where renewable energy is an industry that will grow, giving them more money and therefore political influence, and future efforts to implement some kind of climate change legislation more likely.

The era of big, important legislation is effectively dead for the time being in this country. Courts and executive actions are where everything happens. Presidents have enormous ability to guide the ship in totally unsexy ways that don't get a lot of attention but that, cumulatively, result in a very different course for the country. LBJ was a master of legislative action. Clinton, and her team, have an incredible depth of experience on the executive side, which is far more important given the current political climate.
posted by one_bean at 10:37 AM on May 21, 2016 [27 favorites]

Trump's support does include quite a lot of self-described evangelicals, but, crucially, these folks--despite considering themselves evangelicals--often are not actually church-goers.

I hate how this point keeps getting buried. On the one hand, it makes me feel like I’m no-true-scotsmanning self-described evangelicals. (“No! Just because you say you’re one doesn’t mean you qualify!”) On the other, if the notion of the religious right is to have meaning, it would seem to need to cover those who actively practice their religion, not just those who want to wrap themselves in its mantle. But then, I certainly wouldn’t police Catholics in the same way…
posted by Going To Maine at 10:41 AM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Back to the I'm With Her thing, I really like it as an organizing slogan. It's short, it's punchy, and it's unambiguous. Where it falls down--where Yes We Can was a success--is that it's something Clinton can't really use herself all the time. She can in some ways; "Your mother, your sister, your daughter, your friend--I'm with her." That works.

What works even better is for Clinton to respond to I'm With Her with "I'm With You."
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:45 AM on May 21, 2016 [6 favorites]

I'm willing to give Sanders the benefit of the doubt. If you believe the insider accounts, Sanders simply couldn't believe the terrible things that were reported and discounted them.

Presumably Barbara Boxer, who actually witnessed some of the events, straightened him out. Dick Durbin also talked to him. By all accounts Sanders has always had very friendly relations with his colleagues in the Senate. He doesn't have a reputation for bitterness or anger in his political relations. We will see in the remaining few weeks of the campaign whether he tones down his more incendiary statements.

Sanders was a flawed messenger for his cause, but at least he advanced a conversation that otherwise would never have seen the light of day.

I'm guessing that by the end of the primary season and July rolls around, Sanders will have made peace with the fact that he isn't going to be nominated and will unite with Clinton in the battle against their common enemy, Donald Trump and the Republicans.
posted by JackFlash at 10:52 AM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

Trump's support does include quite a lot of self-described evangelicals, but, crucially, these folks--despite considering themselves evangelicals--often are not actually church-goers. Those are folks who, on average, are less educated and less affluent than other evangelicals, which means they have less time and less opportunity (as well as, sometimes, less inclination) to organize, volunteer and get the vote out.

This. I think the evangelical bloc is potentially in play. Not fully, not all this cycle. But the crackup between them and the libertarian elite has been happening for at least ten years now.

Religiously observant, regularly churchgoing conservative white Protestants have long voted Republican, but they do not like brash, boastful, foul-mouthed politicians particularly when those politicians do not have a history of engagement with and respect for them. (There's maybe a bit of a parallel here with Sen. Sanders's recent difficulty with connecting to African-Americans.) The community places a high value on politeness and propriety and, well, conservatism! suspicion of big loud promises and grand gestures! - it's very much a Guess culture to Trump's big-city Ask personality.

Whereas I think a lot of evangelical-identified people who don't go to church more than once or twice a year at best are culturally quite different, although for the last few generations both groups have voted Republican and basically have been considered to be in the same bucket by the punditry. I'm really trying not to be cartoonish or stereotyping here, but it's sort of a Ned Flanders / Homer Simpson distinction? Like, I can see Homer voting for Trump but I think Ned would be giving side-eye.

Now I'm thinking about subdivisions of evangelical. I wouldn't be surprised if more hierarchical, establishment-minded evangelicals (conservative Presbyterians, Lutherans and so on) really start to think about a separate vehicle for political action. I don't know what that would look like. Or, hang on, there might be a class issue here between middle-class and working-class evangelicals.
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:53 AM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

on non-preview:

But then, I certainly wouldn’t police Catholics in the same way…

True -- in the sense that there's not a great way to make an objective determination about someone's religion beyond self-identification.

But sociologically I think there's a huge gap between Catholics who attend Mass weekly vs. C&E folks or people who purely identify as Catholic as a quasi-ethnic heritage, in terms of how they vote. That's not to say that Catholics who attend Mass weekly are all, or even mostly, Republican but I bet they are more conservative on abortion and gay marriage and are probably more likely to vote R.
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:59 AM on May 21, 2016

Sanders campaign down to less than $6 million in cash, with a bern rate of $40 million a month.

It's pretty ironic that Bernie, while attacking the role of money in politics, has run the most expensive primary campaign in history. (And has so little to show for it.)
posted by msalt at 11:00 AM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

Erick Erickson is still calling for Romney to run as a third party candidate ...That would hand Clinton the election on a silver platter.

Not necessarily. If a third party candidate can win a big state or two and hold Hillary below 270 electoral votes, the decision is thrown to the Republican House of Representatives.

I see this as the real strategy. Kind of a Hail Mary but one with a real chance of keeping the Republican establishment in charge.
posted by msalt at 11:04 AM on May 21, 2016

That's not to say that Catholics who attend Mass weekly are all, or even mostly, Republican but I bet they are more conservative on abortion and gay marriage and are probably more likely to vote R.

I was under the impression that Catholics as a bloc lean left, compared to other self-identified Christians in the U.S. But that may be from including those of us who are culturally Catholic but don't practice / are agnostic in the sample.
posted by sallybrown at 11:15 AM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Catholics, as well as those who are religious or otherwise socially conservative but economically lean left, don't exactly have a party in American politics.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:17 AM on May 21, 2016

It may also have to do with the most common ethnic communities tied to Catholicism in the US being part of the working class / labor base of the Democrats?
posted by sallybrown at 11:19 AM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

More than a dozen of the party’s most reliable individual contributors and wealthy families indicated that they would not give to or raise money for Mr. Trump.
posted by chrchr at 11:19 AM on May 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

I still don't understand how that strategy is supposed to work. Democrats got an absolute majority or near-majority in states making up more than 1/2 the electoral college in both 2008 and 2012. Where is this magical 10-15% of the electorate that voted for Obama in '08 and '12 but so loathes Clinton that they will vote for a weird offshoot Republican-ish third party in enough numbers to bring Clinton's share of the vote in even one purple state down to the 30 or 35% needed to give the third party candidate some electoral votes?

It's the level of logic of a bad sitcom where the younger sibling complains that the older sibling's half of the sandwich is bigger and then the older sibling cuts the younger's part in half and says "hey look now you get two pieces and I only have one YOU WIN".

If they actually care more about #neverTrump then they need to ruleslawyer him out of a first-ballot win not come up with ridiculous rubegoldberg schemes.
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:20 AM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

I was under the impression that Catholics as a bloc lean left, compared to other self-identified Christians in the U.S. But that may be from including those of us who are culturally Catholic but don't practice / are agnostic in the sample.

I think a podcast I was listening to the other day (slate politics? the gist?) was mentioning that Catholics basically vote like, uh, humans. As far as I understand it, Catholics as a bloc have tended to vote Democratic since the days of the Know-Nothings - which doesn't necessarily say anything one way or the other about their position on a post-1968 ideological scale.

Catholics, as well as those who are religious or otherwise socially conservative but economically lean left, don't exactly have a party in American politics.

haha that link is exactly the kind of thing I was just scrounging around the internet for. I expect the call for a new socially conservative / economically somewhat left party to get louder over the next few months.
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:30 AM on May 21, 2016

The thing that irks me the most about Berners is their careless use of the term "revolution." When I hear comfortable or mostly comfortable middle class white people throwing that word around, what I hear is "I don't read very much history at all." I genuinely never want to see a revolution in my lifetime. Revolutions are mob violence and endless reprisals.

Wikipedia has a category nonviolent revolutions that includes many of the color revolutions of recent decades and following through to non-English Wikipedia versions on a few of the articles seems to confirm that using "revolution" this way is standard even in other languages, so I think this is conventional usage rather than a fig leaf.

I'd agree that many people speak of revolution without appearing to appreciate the gravity of even just the societal upheaval that can result from disruption of an established order and established institutions, but I don't think it's much more ignorant or self-centered than for example comfortable middle class Americans supporting status quo U.S. militarism and enthusiasm for Henry Kissinger.
posted by XMLicious at 11:35 AM on May 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

If a third party candidate can win a big state or two and hold Hillary below 270 electoral votes, the decision is thrown to the Republican House of Representatives.

I keep seeing this being kicked around as a possibility, but it requires a very, very specific sort of candidate, one with geographically targeted appeal and either no influence on the rest of the race or an ideologically balanced influence elsewhere which draws down both frontrunners equally.

Romney is too Republican with no geographical base of support. He splits Republicans everywhere and doesn't steal any single state. The closest person I can see to fulfilling this role is John Kasich, with a nice definite Ohio bloc and very limited support elsewhere. But I think even he is too Republican --- Democrats aren't going to cross the aisle for him, while Republicans who had resigned themselves to Trump would shift to support him (establishment Republicans who had resigned themselves to Trump would shift to support a ham sandwich if it was a member of the GOP). He could get Ohio but he gives Clinton Florida, Arizona, hell, maybe even Texas.
posted by jackbishop at 11:36 AM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

I expect the call for a new socially conservative / economically somewhat left party to get louder over the next few months.

It's been a long time coming.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:41 AM on May 21, 2016

I keep seeing this being kicked around as a possibility, but it requires a very, very specific sort of candidate, one with geographically targeted appeal and either no influence on the rest of the race or an ideologically balanced influence elsewhere which draws down both frontrunners equally.

Bloomberg might take up some votes from Democrats, but then he wouldn't get as many Republican votes as Kasich would. Not to mention he's already rejected running and policies and political stances aside, as a person he seems to be generally unpopular with party elites, despite having the same configuration of social liberal/economic conservative technocratic corporatism.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:43 AM on May 21, 2016

Wikipedia has a category nonviolent revolutions

I don't trust any categorisation of significant nonviolent revolutions which is missing "The, Prince and".
posted by howfar at 11:47 AM on May 21, 2016 [6 favorites]

I think the evangelical bloc is potentially in play. Not fully, not all this cycle. But the crackup between them and the libertarian elite has been happening for at least ten years now.

Yeah! I've been feeling this too. It's too bad that so much of the left treats or has treated rejection of religion as such a badge of honor (and I've definitely been guilty of this) because I think there's a powerful argument for economic reform to be made along Christian lines in the United States. Something I really regret is spending so much of the time since I lost my faith thinking of Christianity as this monolithic thing. I mean, yikes, imagine asking Martin Luther and Joseph Smith "you guys have basically the same thing going on, right?" Smart people can be really dumb sometimes. What that's cost me, among other things, is to only recently come to appreciate the Church's historic role as a social bloc that acts as a check on the State and the Market.

What I've lost faith in more recently is certainty. In the idea that the three pound lump of fat in my skull can ever contain the cosmos. What does a meat robot know about what's real? And honestly, if someone believes enough in a story or character that it changes their behavior here on planet Earth, then it's real enough for me. The multiverse is a big place. So it's not like the light of Christ has come flooding back into my life, but openness to millennia of diverse thought from that tradition sure has. I turned my back on the church with a teenager's certainty because I only focused on the creepy stuff that all my favorite bands and comedians went off on. I missed the larger point, that humans can make evil out of anything if they want to.

What that made me miss is the experience of Christians who were just as disgusted with people who used their faith as a vehicle for cruelty, but stayed Christian anyway and tried to remind that institution of the, you know, importance of staying Christ-like. That's a bravery I've only recently come to appreciate. Think about reading your Bible often enough to know how much time Jesus spends working for the poor, saying love everyone, and then seeing how much louder a signal the prosperity gospel hokum and the medieval misogyny gets. And I thought watching Man of Steel was frustrating.

What's stopping a reform minded Christian politician from taking the same tack the bigots do? Where are the left wing Bible thumpers? If American crowds love it when you quote the Bible, the case that Jesus said "help the poor" is much, much, much stronger than the case that Jesus said "hate on gay people until we can't anymore, then hate on trans people." You don't need to do any double backbends into the Nazarene's Leviticus references to point to places where Jesus said to help the poor. Imagine the last thirty, forty years of American history without the right wing monopolizing religious thought on a national level. Imagine the left wing embracing those sincere Christians who don't know where to turn now that the party they thought to be on their side has embraced a man like Trump.
posted by EatTheWeek at 11:50 AM on May 21, 2016 [17 favorites]

I'd agree that many people speak of revolution without appearing to appreciate the gravity of even just the societal upheaval that can result from disruption of an established order and established institutions, but I don't think it's much more ignorant or self-centered than for example comfortable middle class Americans supporting status quo U.S. militarism and enthusiasm for Henry Kissinger.

For sure. And just to be clear, I'm definitely of the mind that the United States needs to change its ways if it means to be a good citizen of the world or even a country at all, long term. It's just that I prefer the incremental sort of change that keeps institutions and social bonds intact. Lose those, and the revolution becomes about dealing with the resulting confusion, even if it stays non violent.
posted by EatTheWeek at 12:00 PM on May 21, 2016

It would to have be states that Clinton would otherwise win, though, or else it doesn't stop her getting an electoral college majority.

I think the unicorn GOP savior spoiler is a highly popular centrist Republican governor or Senator from a light-blue state.

Christie would actually fit the bill rather well if he had made better life choices over the last couple years and months.

Rick Snyder of Michigan would also be a pretty viable option if there weren't that little problem of poisoning all the children in his state's ~~third-largest city~~ seventh-largest city*.

Scott Walker, Bruce Rauner,

...

...

nope, can't think of anyone.

holy fuck, Flint's population is less than 100,000 now
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:00 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

The thing that irks me the most about Berners is their careless use of the term "revolution."

Yeah, I think I've mentioned how every time I hear the word "revolution" I flinch a little bit on the inside. For me, revolution reminds me of what happened to my grandparents in China and also the Cultural Revolution that occurred a couple of decades later. In this election season it's acted as a small reminder that as an immigrant I don't see things the way the majority of Americans do. I also wonder if other immigrant communities that have had similar situations with their home country (like Cuban or Vietnamese communities) also have similar feelings on the word.
posted by FJT at 12:02 PM on May 21, 2016 [10 favorites]

I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
posted by Apocryphon at 12:04 PM on May 21, 2016 [6 favorites]

It's too bad that so much of the left treats or has treated rejection of religion as such a badge of honor (and I've definitely been guilty of this) because I think there's a powerful argument for economic reform to be made along Christian lines in the United States.

God, YES. I was raised Lutheran, and although I have been firmly atheist since I was old enough to ask myself whether I was or not, it drives me absolutely bananas to hear other leftists talk about 'religion' as if it meant, basically, 'the asshole evangelical Baptists I grew up with.'

My parents' church took in Vietnamese refugees. They raised money to build a group home for severely mentally disabled people. They welcomed a gay couple into their congregation in the 80s. And they never made any demands on me - not even after I said I didn't want to get confirmed.

I don't believe in god. But I believe in the good that religion can do, and I can't understand why so many people can only see the bad, and write off the majority of the country because of it. Religion is an incredibly powerful force that can be harnessed for good as well as bad.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:06 PM on May 21, 2016 [18 favorites]

The Christian Left is around. We just don't feel the need to go around reading Bible verses from the well of the Senate, we'd rather quietly think about what loving God and our neighbor means in the context of our individual and communal life, and then implementing that.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:07 PM on May 21, 2016 [12 favorites]

I was getting ready to come in here to ask MetaFilter to talk me down about the supposed low primary turnout rates (compared to 2008) and whether this did not bode well for GE turnout rates. I'm not sure whether this has been linked yet in any of the election threads, but I found it interesting and it also calmed me down a smidge (but I'm still kind of worried because I live in a very hyped up county in a major swing state).
posted by mostly vowels at 12:11 PM on May 21, 2016

So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

That's me!
posted by Going To Maine at 12:13 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

As a Taiwanese-American, I see history as a whole bloody mess of conflicts, with rotten bastards playing the part of both oppressor and the oppressed, revolutionary and counterrevolutionary. "Revolution" is just branding- and in American presidential politics, not even really original one at that. We just had the completely opposite libertarian Ron Paul rEVOLution eight years ago. And revolution does sort of imply that you'd have to scrap everything completely, that there's nothing redeemable about the current system at all.

How about Reconstruction?
posted by Apocryphon at 12:17 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm trying to find Evangelical perspectives on the Current Garbage Fire. I think people are still trying to figure out where they stand for the most part....

An interview in Relevant (the major evangelical youth magazine) with Joshua DuBois, former head of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships under GWB:

"I think more and more churches, for example, are serving refugees on the front lines here in the United States and across the globe. More and more churches are working directly with the victims of human trafficking.

"When you work on this stuff—when you’re hand in hand with a trafficking victim, or when you’re in Greece or Macedonia or wherever the case may be, working with refugees—you have to take into account the role that government plays in helping those same people.

...

"So I do see that shifting, I see it changing, particularly with this next generation of believers and I think a lot more folks are engaging in public policy as a result.

A trustee at an ultra-conservative college spoke out against Trump endorsement & ended up having to resign:

"On March 1st a Washington Post article appeared in which I expressed my disagreement with Jerry Falwell Jr’s formal endorsement of Donald Trump. Jerry and a number of fellow Liberty University trustees expressed to me and to the other trustees their disapproval of my speaking publicly about the subject.

posted by tivalasvegas at 12:30 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Weird sort of one-liner exchange removed. If y'all want to have a discussion about metaphor and political speech or whatever, okay, but may try to not shape it like a schoolyard sarcasm-off.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:32 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

The Clinton Global Initiative is doing good work around the world. If you are attacking it for its donor list, then you might as well attack NPR, PBS, the Sierra Club, ever major musem, university, and library in America.

Can you find an example of poor judgment by one of those organizations comparable to this crap? Because I can't think of one.
posted by sallybrown at 12:33 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

It's disingenuous to suggest that Sanders has been unclear that his revolution is to happen at the voting booth.
posted by Drinky Die at 12:34 PM on May 21, 2016 [8 favorites]

I highly doubt Sanders would say yes if asked whether the political revolution he's calling for is a metaphorical one...but who knows. I do know a number of the Sanders supporters I know would be dismayed if so.

I think he's pretty much explained exactly what he means: millions more people need to vote so we can elect people that will stand up against Wall Street and other special interests, restore the New Deal, truly address income inequality, and global warming, etc.
posted by Golden Eternity at 12:40 PM on May 21, 2016 [11 favorites]

Restoration would also be a cool label. The New Deal Restoration. Vote True Deal, not Trump Deal.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:41 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Evangelical Republicans are not deeply theologically versed Christians who somehow happen to vote GOP. They are rock-ribbed anti-government homophobic misogynist conservatives who go to churches that not-accidentally read the Bible as being anti-government, homophobic, and misogynist.

I respectfully disagree. Many evangelicals do fit, or have fit, the stereotype you suggest. Many do not or have changed their minds. Many of the latter have already jumped ship to the Democrats, but continue to hold evangelical beliefs.

Evangelicals don't have to be the enemy on everything. They can be allies to progressives on a number of issues.

Jimmy Carter is an evangelical. Harry Reid is Mormon (and pro-life) so maybe not technically evangelical, but similarly he is a conservative Protestant.

Time spent engaging them on a theological level is 99.9999% wasted.

I think the number is closer to 50%. For every person who is simply not going to accept any argument made outside their epistemically-closed circle of interpretation, there is another person who will.

Polling indicates that evangelicals are changing their mind on homosexuality at roughly the same rate that the broader society is (albeit from a lower initial approval rate).
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:44 PM on May 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

Previous metaphorical revolutions.... So imagine these, but for good instead of evil.
posted by entropicamericana at 12:44 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hey, words have different meanings to people. And, growing up here and observing the glorification of the American Revolution, hearing people frequently quoting Thomas Jefferson's horticultural advice as Truth, general rah-rah patriotism, milleniarianism, accelerationism, and let's not forget the constant hoarding of guns, beans, and gold in bombproof shelters can make a person wonder what that word means when it's being said, too.
posted by FJT at 12:45 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

You know, I'm glad that so many people can speak of political revolution in a purely figurative manner. It's probably easier if half your family hadn't been wiped out when you were a child.

Bernie Sanders is a Jew who was born in 1941. I think he has an idea about the dangers of political violence.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:45 PM on May 21, 2016 [15 favorites]

Hey, words have different meanings to people. And, growing up here and observing the glorification of the American Revolution, hearing people frequently quoting Thomas Jefferson's horticultural advice, general rah-rah patriotism, milleniarianism, accelerationism, and let's not forget the constant hoarding of guns, beans, and gold in bombproof shelters can make a person wonder what that word means when it's being said, too.

I guess if one wants to seize on the least charitable possible interpretation, that's their prerogative.
posted by entropicamericana at 12:47 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

Restoration would also be a cool label. The New Deal Restoration. Vote True Deal, not Trump Deal.

Um I grok your meaning but this is too revanchist-sounding for me to be comfortable hearing for the next six months.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:51 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't think Sanders wants to be Robespierre, no. But Robespierre didn't want to be Robespierre, either. I get that the man himself says this should happen at the ballot box, but he's also telling his followers that the ballot box is rigged when it doesn't go their way. And his followers have already told a political opponent that she deserved to hang in a public square, among (many, many, many) other things. I don't think mob violence in the streets is imminent (HOPE NOT, anyhow), but the cavalier use of the term reflects a certain stridency, immaturity, and naive attitude about social change that I don't find impressive or persuasive.
posted by EatTheWeek at 12:54 PM on May 21, 2016 [22 favorites]

What Sanders means is not necessarily the same as some of his supporters now believe, since he has seemingly lost control of some of the message and narrative of his own campaign.
posted by chris24 at 12:55 PM on May 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

Re: 3rd Party candidate throwing election to the House of Representatives

The closest person I can see to fulfilling this role is John Kasich, with a nice definite Ohio bloc and very limited support elsewhere. ... He could get Ohio but he gives Clinton Florida, Arizona, hell, maybe even Texas.

Kasich is my big worry, or even multiple candidates running as favorite sons -- Scott Walker in Wisconsin, as tivalasvegas noted, Kasich in Ohio. Relative moderates in swing states like Arkansas and Arizona that Dems might possibly win. Maybe even Bernie in Vermont?

There's no reason they have to even put their name on the ballot in any other state, and it would be safest not to.
posted by msalt at 1:00 PM on May 21, 2016

Um I grok your meaning but this is too revanchist-sounding for me to be comfortable hearing for the next six months.

Alright, but I still like the concept of "Reconstruct the Democratic Party", partly for political-historical irony reasons.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:01 PM on May 21, 2016

I guess if one wants to seize on the least charitable possible interpretation

Well, I'm not seizing on it. It's how I actually feel about it. I mentally put it aside when I listen to him speak. Clearly, he's not hurting for support because of his use of the word. And I'm aware I'm a minority, in a lot of ways. But, it's not a big deal.
posted by FJT at 1:02 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

"Edge of a Revolution" by Nickelback
posted by Apocryphon at 1:06 PM on May 21, 2016

There's no reason they have to even put their name on the ballot in any other state, and it would be safest not to.

This is a terrifying potential outcome, and could be the bedrock of Republican ownership of the White House for a long time. Do the primary clown car thing, ignore it, run enough spoilers for President in enough states to bollix the EV, send the decision to the frothing dingbats in the gerrymandered House.

I'm not saying it's likely, mind you--the electoral maps are pretty clear. But not impossible, right? Someone tell me I'm wrong pls.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:07 PM on May 21, 2016

This objection to "revolution" is hardly a new thing. I have absolutely no fear that Sanders is really plotting any other kind of revolution or that he doesn't mean exactly what he said.

But as The Beatles put it:

You say you want a revolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world,

The word "revolution" clearly means different things to different people. For a non-trivial number of Americans today, and their families, it brings up some particularly unpleasant history that they are personally acquainted with. That's problematic for what's supposed to be a big tent movement. And when you use "revolution" as a shorthand for what boils down to "let's adopt helpful social welfare policies similar to those used in a number of European countries because they make things better for a lot of people, also less with the banks please," it makes these positions seem far more extreme than they really ought to be, and it discounts the hard word involved in getting anything done.

I think a lot of Americans, in high school US History classes, glossed over much of the Revolutionary War. What sticks is the Boston Tea Party, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, with a brief diversion into the Articles of Confederation if you were paying attention. Not so much about in the several years in between. And much as the American Revolutionary War truly sucked for the people involved and the many who died, it worked out a lot better than most of the revolutions around the world.

TL;DR: "You want a revolution? I want a revelation"
posted by zachlipton at 1:07 PM on May 21, 2016 [6 favorites]

Guys, c'mon.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:08 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

Could there be some kind of Power Rangers style attempt to have like 20 different favorite sons (and/or daughters) of the party running for the states in which it's possible to get on the ballot still?

All states except Nebraska and Maine are winner takes all. Whoever gets the most votes gets all of the electoral votes. A majority is not required. A plurality wins the state.

Any Republican favorite son is going to split the vote with Trump, making Clinton more likely to win a plurality and all of the electoral votes. Any conservative third party candidate, in one state or all states, helps Clinton.
posted by JackFlash at 1:22 PM on May 21, 2016

Ladies and gents, I would like be the first to announce that the Cruz slate of troublemakers against Trump took 40/41 delegates for WA, prompting an apoplectic fit by the Trump Chair, who was denied a seat. Unity this, motherfuckers.
posted by corb at 1:28 PM on May 21, 2016 [50 favorites]

From the NYT article posted by chrchr:
But Mr. Trump still has no sanctioned “super PAC” able to raise unlimited sums to support his campaign. A gathering next month at Mr. Pickens’s Texas ranch that was to be sponsored by one of the pro-Trump groups, Great America PAC, has been called off because Mr. Pickens was not sure he was hosting Mr. Trump’s preferred super PAC.

I can honestly see a scenario where the GOP generally lines up behind Trump for this election, defends him from the inevitable questions about campaign financial illegalities, watches him get demolished in the general...and then happily turns on him to support investigations and prosecutions as soon as the election is over.

Even if we don't see any actionable scandals, I expect the entire party will be vicious toward Trump once he loses. They'll want to show their independent judgment and integrity as soon as it's safe again.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 1:28 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

If Rubio can win Florida and Kasich can win Ohio, while Trump holds down the red states, it might be enough to block Clinton in the E.C.
posted by chrchr at 1:29 PM on May 21, 2016

...I'm definitely of the mind that the United States needs to change its ways if it means to be a good citizen of the world or even a country at all, long term. It's just that I prefer the incremental sort of change that keeps institutions and social bonds intact. Lose those, and the revolution becomes about dealing with the resulting confusion, even if it stays non violent.

Can't incrementalism just as easily be promoted by comfortable people who don't have to suffer its consequences, as might revolution? Criticize specific things specific people have done in the current political season by all means but when we are opposed by people talking about government-maintained ethnic registries, special police patrols of neighborhoods based upon ethnicity, and mass population resettlement, and by people who are actually implementing things like criminalized miscarriage and other stuff calling the Republic of Gilead to mind, right now does not seem like a great time in history (if indeed there is any good time) to generally censure responses to societal issues that might be too "revolutionary", too disruptive of institutions and social bonds.

I don't know if you watched network news coverage of the Ferguson protests a couple of years ago but the "Oh, gasp, such violence!" reaction of most of the commentators on every fucking channel, exclusively directed at protesters, was utterly disgusting. You don't need to worry about there not being enough resistance to too-sudden rocking of the boat, it's endemic.
posted by XMLicious at 1:34 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

The responses from wealthy Republican donors on why they wouldn't support Trump had me rolling.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:37 PM on May 21, 2016 [6 favorites]

If Rubio can win Florida

Rubio lost FL to Trump by 19 points. Unless you think a bunch of Ds would vote for him rather than HRC, he's not winning FL.
posted by chris24 at 1:38 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Romney would be the best option. He could take Utah at least. There was an article about him trying this strategy a few months ago.

But it's pretty clear the GOP is rallying behind Trump now.
posted by Golden Eternity at 2:06 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

The leadership is. I got yelled at by a bully of a state senator who was telling Cruz supporters we hate the party for not backing "unity". But they can't keep this creaking ship together.
posted by corb at 2:10 PM on May 21, 2016 [12 favorites]

Sanders is supporting Tim Canova now against DWS. Downticket this.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:11 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm not saying it's likely, mind you--the electoral maps are pretty clear. But not impossible, right?

The best you can say about it is that it doesn't violate any known physical laws. So it's possible in the same way that it's physically possible that Sanders could be Trump's running mate.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:12 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Unity this, motherfuckers.

Corb, coming through with the report! I want more!
posted by Salieri at 2:14 PM on May 21, 2016 [11 favorites]

Sanders is supporting Tim Canova now against DWS. Downticket this.

I do not see this ending well for Sanders, frankly. But maybe this is his way of saying he's done with being a serious candidate for office and is content with the gadfly role.
posted by dersins at 2:22 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sanders is supporting Tim Canova now against DWS.

Yeah, I'm a little concerned Sanders isn't aware he's being a dumbass, reassuring words from Dick Durbin notwithstanding
posted by angrycat at 2:23 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

There's no reason they have to even put their name on the ballot in any other state, and it would be safest not to.

I suppose so, but then (a) the ridiculous attempt to game the system is pretty apparent, and (b) why would the candidate agree to it? It's one thing to tell Kasich, "hey, we think you're better than Trump, go out and crush him," and another to say, "hey, run in just one state to help us with our plan to fuck up the system."
posted by jackbishop at 2:32 PM on May 21, 2016

I would like be the first to announce that the Cruz slate of troublemakers against Trump took 40/41 delegates .

So here is what I just do not get. Certain people are opposed to Trump because of his hatred and threats of violence against Hispanics. But some of these same people are happy to support Cruz, a Christian Hispanic, because he instead directs his hatred and threats of violence against American Muslims.

It just seems depressingly self-serving and astounding in lack of empathy.
posted by JackFlash at 2:41 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

There's no reason they have to even put their name on the ballot in any other state, and it would be safest not to.

This is some very strange conspiracy talk: a number of republicans will wage secret, organized, third-party candidacies in swing statesin order to screw over everyone and throw it to the house of representatives, who will then coalesce on a single, unity candidate somehow picked from the lot of them.

Is it possible that this weird thing that has never, ever happened before will happen just this once in a presidential campaign? Sure, vaguely. Is it something to plan on happening and get worked up over? No, because it is crazy.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:41 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

So here is what I just do not get. Certain people are opposed to Trump because of his hatred and threats of violence against Hispanics. But some of these same people are happy to support Cruz, a Christian Hispanic, because he instead directs his hatred and threats of violence against American Muslims.

It just seems depressingly self-serving and astounding in lack of empathy.

This is what identity politics looks like when it's not coming from a broader sense of universalist principles. Remember, we've been here before. Many immigrant groups went through a period of being the hated Other ("no dogs or Irish allowed"), before managing to force their way into acceptance, often after tremendous effort, just to turn around and do their best to slam the door shut in the face of whoever - Jewish Americans, African-Americans, Hispanic immigrants - was next in line. It is not unusual, and yet so many people seem to be surprised by it, time and again.

A lot of people aren't really aiming for equality, per se - they don't want the line between Us and Them to go away, they just want to get themselves and their families comfortably on the right side of the line.
posted by AdamCSnider at 2:49 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

So VERY interestingly - one of the resolutions proposed was one condemning despicable actions and behavior of Donald Trump. The official Party put it in the "do not pass" recommend, which means it's not included in the information packet, and just gets talked about. The Party has put it last before 104 others and I think is trying to run out the clock on it. There's a LOT of talk about "unity" and they also played some BS Trumpaganda.
posted by corb at 2:52 PM on May 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

Oh also - one of the delegates chosen is a Muslim who got cheers from the floor. It might be the locale, but there's a lot of pushback in WA at least against ethnic bigotry.
posted by corb at 2:55 PM on May 21, 2016 [20 favorites]

GET 'EM, corb!
posted by scaryblackdeath at 2:57 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

This is some very strange conspiracy talk: a number of republicans will wage secret, organized, third-party candidacies in swing statesin order to screw over everyone and throw it to the house of representatives, who will then coalesce on a single, unity candidate somehow picked from the lot of them.

I don't quite see where you're coming from -- secret? screw over everyone? The House of Representatives scenario, and third party candidacies, are being openly discussed by national Republicans who -- with good reason -- see Trump as a disaster and think they are working to save the country from disaster, not screw people over. The fact that they retain massive personal power is also a side benefit.

The targets would need to be very carefully chosen -- swing states with a popular and reasonable looking popular son (or daughter). I haven't done the math but I 'm guessing that Ohio alone could hold Hillary below 270 depending how other states go.

The other advantage of targeting one or two states is that the entire national Republican establishment could focus their money and campaign staff talent there, overwhelming Hillary and Donald's resources.
posted by msalt at 3:03 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

corb, this is an excellent demonstration of what I think will be Trump's greatest weakness in November: he's demonstrated something close to outright contempt for the ground game, and with a little effort can be out-organized.
posted by dersins at 3:04 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

when we are opposed by people talking about government-maintained ethnic registries, special police patrols of neighborhoods based upon ethnicity, and mass population resettlement, and by people who are actually implementing things like criminalized miscarriage and other stuff calling the Republic of Gilead to mind, right now does not seem like a great time in history (if indeed there is any good time) to generally censure responses to societal issues that might be too "revolutionary", too disruptive of institutions and social bonds.

OK, so, your argument falls flat given that the people arguing "revolution" are also proponents of voting strategies that are most likely to benefit the very candidate arguing for aforementioned horrors.

Corb, I am all excited for these developments!
posted by Anonymous at 3:07 PM on May 21, 2016

I'd like to think that voters in the states in these hypothetical scenarios would push back hard against being so explicitly gamified.
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:07 PM on May 21, 2016

It's also worth noting that at the point people saw which way the wind was blowing and that the Cruz campaign was running the only anti-Trump show in town, a lot of people started withdrawing and endorsing the Cruz slate even if they were wearing Kasich stickers or what have you. The Trumpsters are losing their shit. But I talked to a reasonable Trumpster, and he said not only did they have no slate, they didn't even contact each other to make sure they were coming. They figured they had it in the bag so why show?
posted by corb at 3:09 PM on May 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

I do not see this ending well for Sanders, frankly.

They were already making noises about running someone against him in the Senate. Good luck with that.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:11 PM on May 21, 2016

They were already making noises about running someone against him in the Senate. Good luck with that.

Considering that the DNC routinely clears the deck for him (and has done so since 1990, pushing aside their own candidate who was just as if not more leftward that year)? You might be surprised at what happens when they say "no, we're not giving you tacit support this year."
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:15 PM on May 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

Sanders is supporting Tim Canova now against DWS.

Guess he was trying not to rock the boat on that one; pretty disappointing since I've been plugged into Canova's mailing list and he's consistently identified his campaign with Sanders' movement.
posted by indubitable at 3:15 PM on May 21, 2016

To be clear: it is disappointing that Sanders did not endorse Canova earlier.
posted by indubitable at 3:17 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

They were already making noises about running someone against him in the Senate. Good luck with that.

Sanders has been caucusing with the Dems, and they've been actively supporting him over people from their own party and endorsing him for committee positions in return. He owes them quite a bit. If they decide to withdraw that support then I would not be surprised if he decides to retire from the Senate in 2018--whether on his own or due to the strength of the candidate run against him.
posted by Anonymous at 3:28 PM on May 21, 2016

The Uranium One claims??! Long time Canadian donors to CGI sold assets to a Russian company. The deal went through ordinary approval processes and there is no evidence in Clinton's emails or the article you linked that she or CGI was even aware of the deal. A deal that the donors didn't disclose to CGI when they made the donation, even though they were supposed to.

The only reason we know about it is a right wing hack at the Hoover Foundation had a book deal that claimed to expose the corruption at CGI and this was his most shocking revelation. A revelation backed by nothing. The right wing has spend hundreds of millions investigating Hillary for 24 years. They had an independent prosecutor looking at her for 10 years. The GOP Congress has multiple Benghazi and email investigations. No one has been more investigated and had the prosecutors come up with nothing.
posted by humanfont at 3:29 PM on May 21, 2016 [14 favorites]

To be clear: His position as "Independent" has effectively been a fig leaf. Until now he's been pretty loyal to the DNC, so they haven't really cared he isn't officially a Democrat.
posted by Anonymous at 3:29 PM on May 21, 2016

This article is a good demonstration of prior DNC support for Sanders. In 2006, the state DNC supported him over an actual member of the party:

Carleton said the Democrats' early intervention in the race is crucial in part because Vermont has among the most liberal ballot-access laws in the nation. Candidates for statewide office need just 500 signatures of registered voters to appear on a primary ballot. Because the state has no system of formal party registration, Democrats and the GOP alike must sometimes contend with "opportunistic party-jumping" from politicians, Carleton said.

And in 2012, the DNC didn't run anyone against him.
posted by Anonymous at 3:36 PM on May 21, 2016

In 2006, the state DNC supported him over the actual DNC candidate:

Ah, I wondered if his being a Dem now and having to be primaryed was a vulnerability, but it appears not (unless he's pissed off the state folks in the past ten years.)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:42 PM on May 21, 2016

What's left for the D primary? Puerto Rico, California, New Jersey, and D.C.? Clinton could very possibly sweep all four convincingly which would lend itself to a stupid "CLINTON HAS THE BIG MO AND CLOSES IT OUT STRONG" narrative in the media when, as with the entire cycle, it's all about demographics. Still; better to finish strong on a dumb narrative than the reverse.

At least this painfully extended part of the election season will be over in two weeks.
posted by Justinian at 3:43 PM on May 21, 2016

Thanks corb. Interesting to me how the Cruz people keep on going. But these delegates will still be bound by the May 24 primary results so, at least on the surface, it's not going to gain Cruz much. Here's the Seattle Times story on the WA Republican Convention for anyone interested.

Story included this on the Muslim delegate (assuming this is the one you were talking about, corb):

Hossein Khorram is a Republican delegate from Clyde Hill. He’s an Iranian American and Muslim, and was a supporter of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. He’ll now support Trump as the presumptive GOP nominee, notwithstanding Trump’s proposal for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S. “I don’t really blame him,” he said. “He’s not a racist. He’s not.”

Khorram said Republicans “need to help” Trump to ensure he understands the principles of the party. “He needs a little bit of guidance,” he said.
posted by honestcoyote at 3:44 PM on May 21, 2016

One interesting thing I'm hearing is that being a "faithless delegate" and voting against the primary results is not criminal but rather a $1000 fine that does not invalidate the vote. Another thing I'm hearing is that delegates may be able to abstain, either technically or physically, if bound to a delegate they do not actually support. Not sure how accurate this is yet though.

That Seattle Times article is missing a LOT of context. They filed the story before any floor voting had taken place - just the gladhanding before the camps firmed up. The report from the credentialing committee hadn't even been accepted yet.
posted by corb at 3:51 PM on May 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

Speaking of Kasich doing a third-party run in Ohio: he can't due to the state's sore loser law.

I'm thinking the ultimate #nevertrump ploy is going to involve backing the Libertarians. With William Weld (former MA gov.) joining the ticket, it will be two former GOP governors. Neither of them are particularly popular in GOP circles, but having some previous mainstream success should make it easier to get endorsements / money from GOP-ers who would never normally support a third-party.
posted by honestcoyote at 3:53 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

And in 2012, the DNC didn't run anyone against him.

Because they let him run in the 2012 Democratic senatorial primary, which he won and then declined to run as a Democrat, forestalling any other Democratic candidate.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:07 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

In other election news, our old friend James O'Keefe is trying to insert himself into electoral politics, and screwing up in a big way.
posted by TedW at 4:14 PM on May 21, 2016

Today The Comic Strip of the Day broke format to look at the editorial cartoons of 8 years ago on another candidate who didn't give up when it was obvious.

And a thought about the "Hillary stayed on to get the consolation prize of the Secretary of State job": Joe Biden quit his campaign much earlier, and HE got the V.P. job...
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:21 PM on May 21, 2016

being a "faithless delegate" and voting against the primary results is not criminal but rather a $1000 fine that does not invalidate the vote.

VERY INTERESTING
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:23 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

What's left for the D primary? Puerto Rico, California, New Jersey, and D.C.?

The remaining Democratic primaries and caucases are:

June 4, Virgin Islands
June 5, Puerto Rico
June 7, California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
June 14, Washington, DC

Open caucus: North Dakota
Closed caucus: Virgin Islands
Open primaries: Puerto Rico, Montana
Semi-closed primaries: California, New Jersey, South Dakota
Closed primaries: New Mexico, Washington, DC
posted by kirkaracha at 4:31 PM on May 21, 2016

Amy Davidson: Megyn Kelly’s Guide to Surrendering to Donald Trump

Adam Gopnik: The Dangerous Acceptance of Donald Trump
posted by homunculus at 4:32 PM on May 21, 2016 [8 favorites]

538.com has a timeline and a proportional map with states sized by available delegates.

The timeline also charts the pace of winning delegates each candidate needs to maintain to win the nomination. Note that since around March 26 Clinton has been gaining about 107-108% of the delegates she needs and has consistently overperformed since the beginning of the race. Sanders has been gaining about 92-93% of the delegates he needs and has consistently underperformed.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:32 PM on May 21, 2016

Dumbass to primary DWS who voted to fast-track TPP? And who originally limited Democrats to six debates while Republican debates commanded the airwaves for months? And she co-sponsored a bill to strip powers from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? I don't get what's dumbass about supporting a challenger to DWS.

Nope. Dumbass for Sanders to express his support for the challenger only after the Nevada fiasco. As is said in the article, Sanders didn't do anything to support the challenger until then.
posted by angrycat at 4:36 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Dumbass for Sanders to express his support for the challenger only after the Nevada fiasco. As is said in the article, Sanders didn't do anything to support the challenger until then.

FFS, he had enough to deal with DWS' Clinton Campaign BS.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:40 PM on May 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

The Sanders sub has been throwing some money at Canova for awhile now.
posted by futz at 4:45 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

One other thing I'm learning is why parties have such jacked up platforms. Everyone wants to go home, and it's easier to let bullshit slide when to debate it means you can't go hom, especially if you're using your energy on whipping votes to, say, stop Trump. I know I'm not fighting stuff I disagree with that I planned to, because I'm exhausted. I suspect this is a shared feeling.
posted by corb at 4:55 PM on May 21, 2016 [6 favorites]

As mentioned above, Sanders was probably trying not to rock the boat with Canova over DWS. This recent "endorsement" is somewhat soft itself: when Sanders is asked point-blank if he supports Wasserman Schultz, he merely says "Of course I support her opponent" without even mentioning his name.
posted by scrowdid at 4:55 PM on May 21, 2016

If the Seattle Times told me it was raining here in Seattle and I looked outside and saw rain, I'd still wonder what their angle was. Or if they just got lucky.I would never, ever trust the Times' political reporting.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 5:00 PM on May 21, 2016 [7 favorites]

Because they let him run in the 2012 Democratic senatorial primary, which he won and then declined to run as a Democrat, forestalling any other Democratic candidate.

Yeah. The point being--the bulk of Sanders's Congressional career (back to the House, as well) has been built on the goodwill of the Democrats (and he's been all too happy to bank on). I'm going to guess his 2018 prospects will be based on how he's able to turn things around by November.
posted by Anonymous at 5:03 PM on May 21, 2016

I'm going to guess his 2018 prospects will be based on how he's able to turn things around by November

OK. Thought that would be the DNC Wheelhouse.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:17 PM on May 21, 2016

I'm talking about his own rhetoric and the rhetoric of his supporters. Do you think the DNC is going to support a candidate who paints them and their nominee as corrupt and craven?
posted by Anonymous at 5:23 PM on May 21, 2016

What a great way to prove they aren't corrupt and craven, by showing the people of Vermont that their public office holder serves at the pleasure of the DNC, a "private organization" which may use said public office as an instrument to punish insubordinate primary voters in the rest of the country.
posted by XMLicious at 6:42 PM on May 21, 2016 [15 favorites]

If the people of Vermont choose to vote for Sanders, they can still do so. The guy runs as an Independent. The DNC supplying their own candidate does not prevent him from running.

I am surprised anybody is crying for the fainting salts at the suggestion a political party may put up their own candidate when the Independent candidate spends his presidential campaign decrying them. Sanders has been making political deals with the DNC for three decades. It does no good to act like he's a truth-telling maverick all of a sudden because the guy decided to burn his political alliances for his own devices.
posted by Anonymous at 7:02 PM on May 21, 2016

Exactly how is it corrupt to present your own candidate when the alternative made it clear he questions your very legitimacy as a party? Like, if an ally says "I'm not your ally" any more, then yeah, you're going to go find new allies.
posted by Anonymous at 7:05 PM on May 21, 2016

Does everyone here want the Tea Party Movement?
Because this is how you get the Tea Party movement.
posted by FJT at 7:07 PM on May 21, 2016 [8 favorites]

Well, a Left-Wing Tea Party influencing (but not totally taking over) the Democratic Party is not, in and of itself a bad thing. But remember the circumstances creating the Right-Wing Tea Party... it all started after (and though they deny it, in response to) a Black Man being elected President. Sadly (and frighteningly), the one thing that would most likely trigger a Left-Wing Tea Party would be an Orange Man (Trump) being elected President.

It would need a different name, though. The Venti Latte Party?
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:15 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

The kombucha party
posted by museum of fire ants at 7:16 PM on May 21, 2016 [6 favorites]

For those who enjoy schadenfreude, the State Trump Chairman got blocked out of even alternate or elector status. So sad!
posted by corb at 7:18 PM on May 21, 2016 [24 favorites]

which makes me think of the Worst Possible Political Alliance Ever: The Green Tea Party.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:18 PM on May 21, 2016 [13 favorites]

I was going to say, I have already heard some of the more extreme left factions referred to as the Green Tea Party.

For those who enjoy schadenfreude, the State Trump Chairman got blocked out of even alternate or elector status. So sad!

HA! Rules-lawyering for good!
posted by Anonymous at 7:20 PM on May 21, 2016

Well, the "Tea Party" is taken from a pre-US revolutionary protest. If you want to evoke that era, but still have it drink themed, then you can probably call it the "Whiskey Rebellion" (which is a post-Revolutionary War event, but it's still around that time at least).

But the rebels did lose, so that might not be a good name.
posted by FJT at 7:24 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

The shut-out of Trump delegates and alternates also has at least some minor real world consequences. These are usually rewards for campaigning, as are coveted guest passes. By shutting Trump campaign staff out of all of those slots, we limit the amount of carrots they can dangle over the heads of loyalists. It won't affect true believers, but it might affect their GOTV effort.
posted by corb at 7:25 PM on May 21, 2016 [7 favorites]

By the way, in other election news, during the Oregon primary this week, voters in Harney County rejected almost every candidate who had supported the Malheur occupation. Harney had the highest turnout of any county in the state.
posted by dersins at 7:28 PM on May 21, 2016 [27 favorites]

Bruenighazi: How a feisty Bernie blogger's firing explains Democratic politics in 2016 (by Matthew Yglesius on Vox.com)
posted by Golden Eternity at 7:43 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Wow, that Bruenig guy sounds like a gigantic asshole.
posted by dersins at 8:06 PM on May 21, 2016 [7 favorites]

"The problem with this narrative is that it is alternately wholly skewed against or completely at odds to what independent observers documented about the process. Basically everyone who is not a Bernie supporter has presented a narrative very different from this one. Not to mention some of the facts in aforementioned narrative leave out large chunks of information--for example, when discussing the dismissed Sanders delegates it neglects to mention that 56 of those delegates were not even physically present, and that the credential committee approving delegate credentials was 50% Sanders supporters. When it talks about the approval of "temporary rules", it does not mention that the approval of "temporary rules" is not even the approval of rules--it's simply an acknowledgement that a set of "temporary rules" has been presented. The equivalent of saying "I received your letter" after someone sends you a letter. "

God, and that it's full of complaints about parliamentary procedure without HAVING ANY FUCKING IDEA HOW PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE WORKS.

For example, one of the charges is that the chair allowed a motion to adjourn while there was a motion to recount still on the table. The convention rules (.doc, and which don't include anything untoward, and rather grant the chair customary powers for a parliamentary debate, despite the SEKRIT MEETING complaints) states that their parliamentary procedure will be governed by Robert's Rules. A motion to adjourn takes precedence over all other motions that can be offered except one — a motion to set a time of adjournment.

Many of the other complaints are along the same lines — the Common Dreams chuckleheads seem to have only seen voice votes on MTV Spring Break, and pretend that petition signatures are an acceptable method for overturning parliamentary decisions by the chair. It's like, I understand losing because you were outmaneuvered in parliamentary procedure is frustrating because it has no real relationship with how right your point of view is. On the other hand, if you're going into a situation that is governed by parliamentary procedure and don't bother to learn how it works, that's your fault. That's no more "stealing the election" than it is to take all the properties of the player you bankrupt in Monopoly — the rules may be unfair, but they're the fucking rules that you're playing by, and not knowing the rules that you're playing by is fucking incompetent when it comes to a campaign for president.

It's not like there aren't Model UNers all over this great country who are happily Sanders supporters — hopefully, some of his activists can get one to show up to the next caucuses.
posted by klangklangston at 8:34 PM on May 21, 2016 [20 favorites]

Well, the "Tea Party" is taken from a pre-US revolutionary protest. If you want to evoke that era, but still have it drink themed, then you can probably call it the "Whiskey Rebellion" (which is a post-Revolutionary War event, but it's still around that time at least).

Yeah, I've suggested it, along with Committees of Correspondence. Or for a more militant sound, the Continental Army.
posted by Apocryphon at 8:40 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

I go on to Twitter, and I see Rania Khalek (pro-Bruenig) of the Electronic Intifada feuding with Imani Grady (pro-Jeong) of Rewire. This is one of those circular firing squad I've heard so much about, isn't it? What perfect timing for Hollywood to be putting forth movies about superhero internecine warfare.
posted by Apocryphon at 8:49 PM on May 21, 2016

Klangklangston is right again. Honestly the Trump and Sanders supporters both act like parliamentary procedure was initiated just for these conventions rather than having existed unchanged for quite some time.
posted by corb at 8:53 PM on May 21, 2016 [9 favorites]

I know it's weird to think about, but I want to move the country toward Democratic Socialism and I don't want to destroy the Democratic Party. I'll give some people a moment to gather their blown mind.

Wow, that Bruenig guy sounds like a gigantic asshole.

I love his bit about it's all really about the young vs the olds. Did the young people invent Democratic Socialism too? How the fuck did Sanders get on board so quick?
posted by bongo_x at 8:56 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

(Indeed, one side consequence of Bruenig's departure from Demos has been the revival of a harassment campaign against his wife, Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig, by followers of Roosh V related to a spat between the two of them a year ago.)

Men!
posted by Going To Maine at 8:57 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Bruenighazi: How a feisty Bernie blogger's firing explains Democratic politics in 2016

But to many, it reflects something larger, the latest in a series of efforts by the forces of centrist liberalism to stifle more left-wing voices in order to serve the interests of capitalism.

If all you have is a hammer and sickle, everything looks like a series of efforts by the forces of centrist liberalism to stifle more left-wing voices in order to serve the interests of capitalism.

As an aside, I am very supportive of -ghazi replacing -gate as the suffix of scandal.
posted by figurant at 9:01 PM on May 21, 2016 [13 favorites]

I don’t wanna see the American people voting for the lesser of two evils.

Well, it's a good thing for Sanders that there are so many people out there who enthusiastically support Clinton because they think she's the best candidate!

And honestly, that's pretty insulting to the millions who've voted so far in the primary. If you're saying that Clinton is so disliked that she's seen merely as the "lesser of two evils" compared to Trump, what does that say about the majority of voters who honestly preferred her as a Democratic candidate? That they're stupid? Duped? That they willingly abandoned their principles and voted for "evil"?

I keep hearing that Sanders will support Clinton against Trump. I don't think this is how it works.
posted by Salieri at 9:04 PM on May 21, 2016 [20 favorites]

As an aside, I am very supportive of -ghazi replacing -gate as the suffix of scandal.

I feel like there's a place for both, though. -gate when the scandal is both real and significant, and -ghazi when it's full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
posted by dersins at 9:07 PM on May 21, 2016 [13 favorites]

And honestly, that's pretty insulting to the millions who've voted so far in the primary. If you're saying that Clinton is so disliked that she's seen merely as the "lesser of two evils" compared to Trump, what does that say about the majority of voters who honestly preferred her as a Democratic candidate?

More to the point, if people only vote for Clinton because she is the "lesser of two evils," wouldn't the fact that more have voted for her than for Sanders make him the greater evil?
posted by dersins at 9:11 PM on May 21, 2016 [6 favorites]

"I don’t wanna see the American people voting for the lesser of two evils."

I'm starting to feel pretty stupid for expecting better of this guy.
posted by EatTheWeek at 9:24 PM on May 21, 2016 [15 favorites]

"I don’t wanna see the American people voting for the lesser of two evils."

After 40 years of voting regularly, primaries and general elections, I've had so many of the candidates I've supported in past primaries NOT make it to the general, "lesser of two evils" has become the way I frequently vote - in fact, the "evil" part of the cliché doesn't even register for me anymore. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if that's how Bernie thinks about it. Not that it's not a mistake. It's just a cliché that needs replacing... I was thinking "the greater of two lessers"...

But then, neither Hillary nor Bernie was my "first choice"; in fact Hillary wasn't my first choice among the 'insiders' and Bernie not my first choice among 'outsiders'... but my top choices in both categories weren't even running this time around.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:47 PM on May 21, 2016

The Republican party has been trying to prove Hillary Clinton is a werewolf for my entire adult life. They have failed. Utterly. The Sanders campaign has similarly failed.

She's not a "lesser evil." She's imperfect. She's flawed. "Evil" is another category entirely. This election is melodramatic enough as it is without words like "evil" getting casually thrown around.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:49 PM on May 21, 2016 [29 favorites]

And honestly, that's pretty insulting to the millions who've voted so far in the primary.

It's unfortunate if it feels insulting. I can't speak for everyone who uses the term "lesser of two evils," but I'd challenge this claim of misogyny. Nader voters used the same term in 2000, remember?

The snark in me wants to say insults hurt a lot less than bombs, i.e. one of the my issues with Clinton above all was her support for the Iraq war, when she fell in line with the establishment, while millions of us were in the streets ignored. And now we're still reeling from the effects of Iraq - primarily through this perceived conflict between the West and Islam that is now unified and global and has destabilized and destroyed the lives of a part of the world in which I spend half my life. (so yea, it's personal).

I don't think she has a black heart or anything. Overall I would say not to focus too much on the "evil" as it relates to the person Hillary Clinton, because were really talking policies here, not individuals.
posted by iamck at 9:50 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

Yeah. We have an evil candidate in the race. And assuming I can come up with the fees for this stupid secret-service-protected hotel, I'll be fighting him in Cleveland. Don't rule #nevertrump out yet.
posted by corb at 9:52 PM on May 21, 2016 [16 favorites]

Eh, I think getting carried away about "the lesser of two evils", when the scare quotes are apparent in tone of voice and body language, is just as counterproductive as using the phrase in the first place. Escalating conflict is very rarely the way to make it go away. No-one can win this fight.
posted by howfar at 9:57 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Nader voters used the same term in 2000, remember?

It's funny you say that, because if Nader voters had voted for the "lesser of two evils", we would not have ended up with the Iraq War--which Sanders may not have voted for, but he certainly voted to fund.
posted by Anonymous at 9:59 PM on May 21, 2016

We've been through that discussion before. Al Gore's failure to garner more votes, as well as Jeb Bush's voter suppression in FL, heck even the Supreme Court itself, were just as responsible as Nader was, if not more.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:02 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

Political Rifts Over Bill Clinton’s Welfare Law Resurface as Aid Shrinks: Some states are limiting cash benefits for families, rekindling concerns — some on the Democratic campaign trail — about a law signed 20 years ago.
posted by homunculus at 10:09 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

Thomas Frank: Why Hillary Clinton's 90s nostalgia is so dangerous: Times were good in the last years of Bill Clinton’s presidency. But to put the arch-deregulator in charge of an economy wrecked by financial bubbles is sheer folly
posted by homunculus at 10:10 PM on May 21, 2016 [13 favorites]

We've been through that discussion before. Al Gore's failure to garner more votes, as well as Jeb Bush's voter suppression in FL, heck even the Supreme Court itself, were just as responsible as Nader was, if not more.

Maybe we have, but you stating your beliefs about that doesn't mean the rest of us agree.
posted by Anonymous at 10:17 PM on May 21, 2016

And in 2012, the DNC didn't run anyone against him.

Because they let him run in the 2012 Democratic senatorial primary, which he won and then declined to run as a Democrat, forestalling any other Democratic candidate.

Well, their rules let people nominate him. VT dems unaffiliated with Sanders did the minimal legwork to get him on the primary ballot and voters picked him, despite his statement up front that he'd decline it if nominated.

I'm sure someone could work up a good frothing conspiracy around this, but it seems far more likely to me that this just reflects that the true believers in the VT democratic party who vote in the primaries want a candidate like Sanders. That doesn't seem all that far-fetched considering how many people nationwide clearly want the party to look more like his beliefs.

I mean, I'm sure Sanders wasn't crying over a lack of competition. But a sufficiently dedicated candidate could have run for that slot as an independent themselves. Maybe now the VT party will be motivated to change their rules so this can't happen again, but clearly the people there know what they're getting and like it. The suggestion that the party as an organization is throwing him some sort of bone, rather than the VT dem voters, is silly.
posted by phearlez at 10:23 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

She's not a "lesser evil." She's imperfect. She's flawed. "Evil" is another category entirely. This election is melodramatic enough as it is without words like "evil" getting casually thrown around.

Voting for the Iraq war was evil.

Maybe we have, but you stating your beliefs about that doesn't mean the rest of us agree.

It's not a question of beliefs. Democrats voted for Bush more than for Nader in Florida. Gore's campaign failed to do it's job.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:25 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's not a question of beliefs. Democrats voted for Bush more than for Nader in Florida. Gore's campaign failed to do it's job.

Joint Causality Does Not Allow Any Individual Willful Cause to Escape Responsibility

Obviously, election outcomes are the product of the complex interaction of many variables. Prominent Florida officials and Supreme Court justices and Ralph Nader all needed each other to achieve their common goal of putting George W. Bush in the White House. Under some other plausible scenarios, they would not have succeeded, and in others the help Nader’s campaign provided to Bush would have been superfluous. In terms of whether Nader deserves responsibility for the predictable potential consequences of his actions, this is all neither here nor there. Things could have worked out so that Nader failed to throw the election to Bush. Could have, but didn’t. And even if he had failed, it would have remained worth pointing out that as a tactic for pushing the Democrats to the left spoiler campaigns are all downside with no upside.

A variant form of apologism is to concede that Nader bears his share of responsibility, but to whine about how he’s been singled out. Why attack poor Ralph? Antonin Scalia and the Bush brothers are the real enemy! Well, first of all, most Nader critics are plenty critical of the Republican bad actors involved (certainly I have been.) The media has generally not gotten enough criticism (although I’ve been beating that drum forever.) But, especially going forward, there’s a rather obvious reason to spend time criticizing Nader for supporting Republicans instead of criticizing Jeb Bush for supporting George W. Bush. It is obviously futile to try to persuade Republicans not to advance Republican interests. It is, however, worth trying to persuade people who don’t support Republican interests not to support Republican interests.

posted by tonycpsu at 10:44 PM on May 21, 2016 [9 favorites]

Voting for the Iraq war was evil.

If voting for the war is evil, I assume that voting to pay for the war to continue must also be evil.

Seems we're back to deciding which is the lesser of two evils after all.
posted by dersins at 11:03 PM on May 21, 2016 [15 favorites]

I'll vote for HRC in the general, because I don't have faith that my generally blue state won't swing Trump. I didn't vote for Kerry. I wouldn't happily vote for Uncle Joe, either. Because the Iraq War is my single issue. I am 100% on your side, though. I assume that any blue candidate wants to protect women's healthcare rights. That's a non-issue for me. But I have never felt so alienated from my party. I am not a BernieBro. I'm not a Bernie or buster. I've been stumping for the Dems since elementary school (literally, because this was part of my G&T program). I am a feminist. I care deeply about politics and always have, for as long as I can remember. I am not on Reddit. I think there is a loud minority of Sanders supporters that are out of hand. And I am so over being lumped in with them. I am not a bad person because I care about policy, and find HRC not to my liking. That doesn't make me sexist. But this infighting, this narrative going on, makes me want to disaffiliate after the general. I'm a true blue believer, and the party needs people like me, the people who feel silenced. Throw us an olive branch. Stop treating us like we're the enemy, because of the actions of the zealots. I do not want a President Trump, no way, no how. I don't want to see it burn. I do want to feel like I matter, that I'm in it with you, and I'm not finding things very welcoming.
posted by Ruki at 11:04 PM on May 21, 2016 [24 favorites]

A couple of comments deleted. Please drop the personal stuff, please drop the "what you do with your vote" or "how you personally feel" arguing. This is a place to discuss news about the election, not to argue individually about people's own choices. And Generally, everyone, if we can't muster the will to have a thread about the election that isn't swamped with a) Bernie/Hillary supporters suck, b) hyperbolic "Bernie/Hillary is EVIL" ranting, or c) another fun round of "let's relitigate Nader for the umpteenbillionth round, because this time I'm totally going to change the other guy's mind" maybe there really is nothing left to discuss, and we don't need to have more election threads, because this is beyond tedious.
posted by taz (staff) at 11:21 PM on May 21, 2016 [21 favorites]

I assume that any blue candidate wants to protect women's healthcare rights.

I don't, because that's not a safe assumption where I live. In particular, there's a candidate in our Democratic Senate primary who has a long history of anti-choice activism, including voting for a bill that would impose a waiting period (and that's particularly bad in a state where many people have to travel long distances for medical care) and expressing support for defunding Planned Parenthood. He's recently decided that he's pro-choice, although he's still extremely cagey about it. What he says is that he supports Roe v Wade. What he doesn't say is that he still supports every restriction that the courts find to be allowed by Roe. For instance, he wants a ban on late-term abortion, with exceptions only for the health of the mother.

This guy came out for Bernie early and hard, and he is currently Bernie or Bust. He is fundraising heavily among national Bernie supporters. He doesn't mention his opposition to abortion or other socially conservative positions, and he berates people who bring those things up. It's divisive; it's pro-Hillary; it's a distraction from the real issues. And I guess I just fundamentally disagree that my bodily safety is a divisive secondary issue.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:20 AM on May 22, 2016 [18 favorites]

Russ Feingold(D) looks like he has a decent shot at displacing Ron Johnson(R) in Wisconsin. I was very sad to lose Feingold in the Senate so this race has me excited.

Illinois might also be a gain as it seems to be leaning consistently toward Tammy Duckworth(D). She was a solid voice in the house and would be a good addition to the Senate. Mark Kirk(R) hasn't been the worst, he can be reasoned with, but I don't see much conviction (he did miss some time due to illness and he was a junior senator so it isn't totally his fault) but even when he is there, he is mainly decoration.

Chris Van Hollen(D) has been a standout in the house so him to replace Barbara Mikulski(D) is a decent move and the Maryland seat seems fairly assured. It would have been nice to have a woman in the seat but hopefully gains elsewhere will balance things a bit more.

The New Hampshire race is also one to watch. Kelly Ayotte(R) is a mixed bag. At times I have liked her and at others been flabbergasted by her views. I'm not sure how popular the current Governor Maggie Hassan(D) is and don't know much about her (or state demographics) but I don't see a lot of fight or conviction. So while polling is close and this would be a nice seat to switch ... I worry.

Chuck Schumer(D) of New York ... I wanted him to retire ... unfortunately he is running against a wingnut in a pretty safe race. So 6 more years of his smug trying to score political points as if they are real.

Arizona ... Ann Kirkpatrick(D) ran a 2010 McCain ad (youtube 1min) against John McCain(R). His own party challenger Kelli Ward(R) is using the same ad (vimeo 30sec) but with a different twist.

All 2016 political ads (an internet archive project)
posted by phoque at 5:25 AM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

Chuck Schumer(D) of New York ... I wanted him to retire ... unfortunately he is running against a wingnut in a pretty safe race. So 6 more years of his smug trying to score political points as if they are real.

Schumer's in line to replace Harry Reid as the Senate Democratic leader when the latter retires in January, so he's definitely not going anywhere voluntarily.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:44 AM on May 22, 2016

New ABC/WaPo polling data
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:45 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Demographic split on that ABC poll seems odd, especially when you dig down into the detailed information and there was at least 22% support for Mittens.

Methinks they are a doing a poor job of screening the "independent" voters.
posted by vuron at 7:00 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

Methinks they are a doing a poor job of screening the "independent" voters.

Does it count as a poor job if they're doing it on purpose?

Despite 538's whiffing it on the Trumpmentum thing, I think they will be more necessary than ever in the general election, because pretty much every Trump v Clinton poll that's come out recently has had some kind of massive skew in the demographic sampling, all of which favor Republicans.

I realize that this is exactly what many Republicans claimed was happening last time, and I don't want to take this too far into "ignoring objective reality" territory... but I just plain do not trust any poll these days until someone with far more knowledge of stats and demographics than me takes a hard look at the sample and checks it for representativeness. Because a close race is good for business, and I have zero faith in the willingness of the news media to report on the facts as they actually exist anymore.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:13 AM on May 22, 2016 [5 favorites]

3 of the last 4 national polls have Trump winning. Let's not unskew the polls and talk about how they are irrelevant. Let's not spin theories to explain why Clinton is really still winning. Let's look at the data and figure out why Trump is winning. Right now, it looks like he's pulled even or taken the lead because he's polling better than expected among young voters and white voters. Let's start with the first one: why are young voters splitting their vote between Trump and Clinton? Many of these are enthusiastic Sanders supporters who have heard nothing but horrible things about Clinton for the past 8 months. Hopefully Sanders can change his rhetoric and fully endorse Clinton at the convention (like Clinton did for Obama). Clinton is going to need those young people to vote for her. Now what about the second one: why is Clinton doing worse among white voters than Obama? Is the "realignment" of parties that folks have been talking about really going to come to this -- a white party and a non-white party? If white voters cast their votes +70% for Trump, then I don't see how you don't draw that distinction. It's the acceleration of the segregation of parties as markers of identity instead of ideas.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:25 AM on May 22, 2016 [6 favorites]

And in contrast to the ABC/WaPo poll above which has some freaking out, the new NBC/WSJ poll has Clinton up 46-43.
posted by chris24 at 7:28 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

Wow, that Gopnik piece.

To say “Well, he would not really have the power to accomplish that” is to misunderstand the nature of thin-skinned authoritarians in power. They do not arrive in office and discover, as constitutionalists do, that their capabilities are more limited than they imagined. They arrive, and then make their power as large as they can.
posted by zarq at 7:29 AM on May 22, 2016 [9 favorites]

National polls are mostly irrelevant anyway, since we don't vote that way. but both ABC and NBC having both candidates in a tie is not great.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:29 AM on May 22, 2016

Here is a site you can bookmark to see what the state of the race is in terms of polling. Yes, Clinton is up +3 in the new NBC/WSJ poll. That's a drop from her +11 lead in the same poll last month. Every poll that has been released in the last 2 weeks has shown the same thing -- Trump gaining on Clinton by roughly 6-9 points. The data seems to be pointing to two factors: Republicans coalescing around Trump, and more Sanders supporters claiming they won't vote for Clinton. Those two factors combined are driving the current trend.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:33 AM on May 22, 2016 [4 favorites]

And assuming I can come up with the fees for this stupid secret-service-protected hotel, I'll be fighting him in Cleveland. Don't rule #nevertrump out yet.

I can't get enough of these kinds of first-hand accounts of the nitty-gritty of the political process. Not that I want you to go in debt for it, corb, but I hope you're able to go and let us know what it's like.

I was curious about how it went at your state convention. How big was the #nevertrump movement in terms of organization? Did you get a sense that it had sort of coalesced behind some specific leaders and was acting with a single purpose, or was it more individuals? Are there other like-minded delegates in the other states who are also on board, and has there been any collaboration between the states?
posted by Salieri at 7:48 AM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

Unless you think Trump can turn a blue state, all Clinton needs is FL, where 87% of Latinos have an unfavorable view of Trump.
posted by chris24 at 7:49 AM on May 22, 2016

Unless you think Trump can turn a blue state, all Clinton needs is FL

New CBS Battleground Poll shows Clinton with 1-point lead in Florida. The poll you link to was 2 weeks ago, when the race was different.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:52 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

I wasn't saying anything about the election polling in the link, just his unfavorables with Latinos.
posted by chris24 at 7:55 AM on May 22, 2016

Anything can and will happen in Florida, including voter suppression.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:02 AM on May 22, 2016

Absolutely. Registration and GOTV will be even more crucial than ever this year with all the GOP attempts at disenfranchising and the gutting of the VRA. In the ABC poll above Clinton actually leads +6 with adults but trails -2 with registered voters. 20% of the sample was unregistered and those favored her by +40.
posted by chris24 at 8:08 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

Honestly corb, I'm kind of relieved that you'll be in a secret-service protected hotel.. if #NeverTrump has any measure of success, I really fear the violence that may erupt.
posted by zug at 8:42 AM on May 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

The Sanders campaign sent a very strongly worded email about defeating Wasserman-Schultz just now. Interesting.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:45 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

Is 'Stronger Together' the New @HillaryClinton Slogan?

(This would be a great slogan, IMHO)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:50 AM on May 22, 2016 [9 favorites]

I hope so. I think it's great too.
posted by chris24 at 8:51 AM on May 22, 2016

Anything can and will happen in Florida, including voter suppression.

Oh, totally. Send the FHP out to roust certain neighborhoods for suspected outstanding warrants, "sloppily" purge the voter rolls like a week before the election, who the hell knows what else, between AG Pam Bondi and Rick Scott, I wouldn't put anything past them.

Plus it's, you know, Florida. I wouldn't count out the organic support Trump has in the state.
posted by indubitable at 9:07 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

I had a weird Star Wars dream last night where Han Solo was bringing a friend onto the Millenium Falcon and the audience is like "No! Don't trust him!" because we all knew the guy was secretly an awful Sith murder-lord. When the camera panned back to him, it was Bernie Sanders. I don't know what the hell this election is doing to my brain but I really need this shit to be over, guys.

Also his costuming was objectively terrible. My subconscious clearly has no business dressing bad guys.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:37 AM on May 22, 2016 [13 favorites]

I'm not going to worry too much about polls at this point in the game. We may have been obsessed about this election for over a year now but most Americans have barely been paying attention. I'm putting my main hope in the fact that Clinton seems to have a tight, well-organized and well-funded campaign organization and Trump doesn't seem to actually know what a political campaign is.
posted by octothorpe at 9:39 AM on May 22, 2016 [6 favorites]

I had a dream last night that Trump as President was my Uber driver and he was drunk and hitting things and people and wouldn't take me where I wanted to go. So yeah, can't wait for this to be over.
posted by chris24 at 9:44 AM on May 22, 2016 [5 favorites]

Sam Wang says "Don't Panic!".
posted by octothorpe at 9:45 AM on May 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

I found out yesterday that a family member (Connecticut, Jewish) is voting for Trump. So I sometimes feel that I don't have any idea what's going to happen.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:46 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

Okay, okay, fine. I promise not to panic. Can I still be frustrated and disappointed that at least 45% of voters are going to support a man-baby over one of the most qualified candidates to ever run for President?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:48 AM on May 22, 2016 [16 favorites]

Why Democrats Could Tolerate a Lot More Division in 2008

Yes, Hillary Clinton refused to drop out of the race until the very end and kept the party divided long after it was clear she couldn't win the nomination. (I hated her for it.) But everything worked out just fine in 2008, right? Why shouldn't we assume that history will repeat itself?

Because 2008 was a very different year. Democrats were trying to replace a Republican president who had job disapproval ratings in the mid-60s to low 70s throughout the summer and fall of 2008. Democrats -- both Obama and Clinton-- were pledging to change the direction of the country in a year when more than 80% of Americans consistently told pollsters the country was on the wrong track.

So Democrats could afford a little disunity. They had the wind at their backs.

They don't have the wind at their backs now. [...]

posted by tonycpsu at 9:50 AM on May 22, 2016 [7 favorites]

Trump really is the babiest of the man-babies, isn't he?

I'm not too worried either. Let's see how things shake out post-convention. Clinton runs a very tight ship, and I think a lot of people are really going to pull together once the drama and hurt feelings of the primary are out of the way.

(I recently rewatched Clinton's speech from the floor in support of Obama at the 2008 convention, and it still brings tears to my eyes. That was so amazing.)
posted by Salieri at 9:53 AM on May 22, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm heartened by the fact that none of my family seems to be Trump supporters despite being reliable Republicans. And they're mostly white working-class voters who should be natural allies for him. But they're also deeply religious and Trump's life/words/behavior doesn't seem compatible with their values. The pastor at my mom's church, an Oklahoma Southern Baptist church that is by no measure progressive, was even speaking out against Trump and his campaign. If the religious right is not going to fall in behind the nominee Trump has no chance whatsoever.
posted by downtohisturtles at 9:59 AM on May 22, 2016 [4 favorites]

Politico: Just What Were Donald Trump's Ties to the Mob?
posted by chrchr at 10:09 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

The evangelicals I know who usually would lean Republican are not crazy about Trump, and I don't think there's anything he can do to change that. He's not one of them and he has a serious character issue. I don't think they'll all fall in line behind him, not by a longshot.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:13 AM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

roomthreeseventeen: "Is 'Stronger Together' the New @HillaryClinton Slogan?

(This would be a great slogan, IMHO)"

That link doesn't seem to work but it is a good slogan.
posted by octothorpe at 10:18 AM on May 22, 2016

octothorpe, sorry, they seem to have deleted it.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:20 AM on May 22, 2016

Anecdotally, we all might know of some Republicans who say they won't vote for Trump (including my mom and dad!). But the polling of the last week suggests that ~90% of GOP voters are already supporting him over Clinton.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 10:21 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

I suspect a lot of Republicans with liberal children are just lying to them about who they will vote for rather than start an argument.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 11:23 AM on May 22, 2016 [12 favorites]

I know a few Republicans who don't like Trump but if he's the nominee, they'll vote for him because he's the Republican running.
posted by octothorpe at 11:32 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Sanders campaign sent a very strongly worded email about defeating Wasserman-Schultz just now. Interesting.

It sounds like Sanders is about to endorse a whole slate of progressive candidates soon as well:

A few weeks ago, we raised a tremendous amount of money for three progressive candidates for Congress. Your support changed their races overnight. In the days ahead, we’re going to add a dozen or more additional candidates to that list.

posted by kyp at 11:43 AM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

“Senator Sanders has every right to finish off his campaign however he chooses,” Clinton told Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” Sunday.
posted by zarq at 12:12 PM on May 22, 2016

Sanders actively fundraising--rather than just voicing support--for the primary opponent of the head of the DNC looks to me like a sign that his campaign is entering full-on "screw you guys, I'm taking my toys and going home" mode.

It's clear he's decided he's ok with burning all his bridges with the Democratic Party, which I interpret as meaning that he's decided either not to run for reelection to the Senate in 2018, or to do it without any support from the party. Which, fine, his prerogative.

What I do worry about, though, is that he may be trying to signal his willingness to be a spoiler candidate in the presidential race. I don't think (I hope!) he'd actually do that--it would destroy both his career and, by guaranteeing a Trump presidency, his legacy--but I wonder if maybe he's looking to play a game of high-stakes chicken with the party in order to force concessions.

Either way, it will be interesting to learn who those "dozen or more" candidates are. Is he going to be focusing only on races in which a Dem incumbent is facing a primary challenge from the left, or will he also target races with a vulnerable Republican incumbent? This is the difference between Tea Party-style disruption tactics and a sincere attempt to move Congress leftward. We'll have to wait and see, I suppose.
posted by dersins at 12:28 PM on May 22, 2016 [5 favorites]

A little late to support primary opponents for this election, isn't it?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 12:47 PM on May 22, 2016

Thanks for sharing that, kyp! Just kicked in a few bucks to help Bernie help progressive Dems win their primaries.
posted by notyou at 12:48 PM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

The FLA primary is August 30.
posted by notyou at 12:49 PM on May 22, 2016

What I do worry about, though, is that he may be trying to signal his willingness to be a spoiler candidate in the presidential race.

Sanders already ruled that out a long time ago and I don't think he'd change his mind now (and, I might add as a Sanders supporter, I wouldn't support him there if he did). I would love to see a real up for grabs election though. 7-8 candidates all competing on the same field in the same debate for votes. It's kinda ridiculous that two parties have had the only voices for this long. They might actually have to appeal to people if they couldn't count on "ain't he bad!" as their main argument! Wouldn't that be lovely?
posted by downtohisturtles at 12:49 PM on May 22, 2016 [8 favorites]

Huh, is Florida just weird, or do lots of states have one primary for President and then another primary for everyone else? I know that here in Pennsylvania we did it all in one shot.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 12:51 PM on May 22, 2016

I would love to see a real up for grabs election though. 7-8 candidates all competing on the same field in the same debate for votes.

Sounds fun, but that's a recipe for the House of Representatives picking the next president, which, yeah, no thanks.
posted by dersins at 12:53 PM on May 22, 2016 [5 favorites]

...or do lots of states have one primary for President and then another primary for everyone else?

Yep.
posted by notyou at 1:02 PM on May 22, 2016 [4 favorites]

Under the current HoR no. That's a recipe for disaster. But I'm talking in grand ideas of what could and should be. Not the ugly reality we see before us.
posted by downtohisturtles at 1:03 PM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

Huh, is Florida just weird, or do lots of states have one primary for President and then another primary for everyone else? I know that here in Pennsylvania we did it all in one shot.

Hawaii holds the non-presidential primary in August as well.
posted by melissasaurus at 1:03 PM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

But I'm talking in grand ideas of what could and should be. Not the ugly reality we see before us.

And there we have the fundamental divide in the Democratic Party this cycle.
posted by dersins at 1:06 PM on May 22, 2016 [6 favorites]

Yep. It's all about Bernie/Hillary. Sigh...
posted by downtohisturtles at 1:09 PM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

Endorsing and assisting progressive candidates is a somewhat more productive use of the end of his campaign. I'll be interested to see how the incumbents that this Bernie Boost means to challenge line up with the dude's enemies list.
posted by EatTheWeek at 1:18 PM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

He hasn't done a lot of this, but last month his campaign made some noise with three endorsement/fundraising help outs:

In fundraising appeals being sent Wednesday, Mr. Sanders asks for contributions to be divided among his campaign and those of Zephyr Teachout of New York, Pramila Jayapal of Washington state and Lucy Flores of Nevada. All three women have endorsed his presidential campaign.

Teachout ran hard against Cuomo in the NY gov primary, but I dunno if Cuomo's on the dude's enemies list or not.
posted by notyou at 1:32 PM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

Joe Rogan Experience #801 - Gary Johnson

Around the 1:31:00 mark he says he would end action against Edward Snowden and give him a pass.
posted by bukvich at 2:51 PM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

If we had a proportional system, we could end up with 5 or 6 parties representative of particular constituencies:

From Left - > Right

True Leftists:

Symbol: ?
Domestic Policy: ?
International Policy: Internecine.
Party Leader: ?

Social Democrats:

Symbol: Songbird
Domestic Policy: Egalitarian.
Foreign Policy: Reluctant
Party Leader: Bernie

Liberals:

Symbol: Jackass
Domestic Policy: Technocratic.
Foreign Policy: Interventionist.
Party Leader: Hillary

P90X:

Symbol: Badass Eagle
Domestic Policy: Objectivist.
Foreign Policy: Muscular.
Party Leader: Paul Ryan

Sons of Reagan:

Symbol: Elephant
Domestic Policy: Reactionary.
Foreign Policy: Drive the ~~communists~~ islamists off the edge of the earth
Party Leader: Donald Trump

Don't Call Us Nazis (but don't not call us Nazis either):

Symbol: Cross (not on fire... radiating justice in a flame-like fashion)
Domestic Policy: Brown People need to leave
Foreign Policy: Brown People need to die
Party Leader: Donald Trump

posted by ethansr at 4:14 PM on May 22, 2016 [13 favorites]

The last two parties are identical except one has a xenophobic isolationist stance while the other has a xenophobic interventionist stance. You also forgot that there's probably one or two parties worth of religious people.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:38 PM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sanders already ruled that out a long time ago and I don't think he'd change his mind now (and, I might add as a Sanders supporter, I wouldn't support him there if he did). I would love to see a real up for grabs election though. 7-8 candidates all competing on the same field in the same debate for votes. It's kinda ridiculous that two parties have had the only voices for this long. They might actually have to appeal to people if they couldn't count on "ain't he bad!" as their main argument! Wouldn't that be lovely?

Literally impossible without amending the Constitution, sorry.
posted by kafziel at 4:46 PM on May 22, 2016

It is not constitutionally prohibited to have more than two candidates for President.
posted by Drinky Die at 4:56 PM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, it isn't "literally impossible" but it is "figuratively impossible". Maybe this is the new meaning of literally which means the opposite of literally.

Because while not prohibited or literally impossible it is structurally so unlikely as to be impossible to a first approximation.
posted by Justinian at 5:00 PM on May 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

There are already many candidates for president. The current system favors centrists with broad appeal. We could amend the system to give demagogues who can eke out a slim plurality a better shot, I guess.
posted by prize bull octorok at 5:00 PM on May 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

It is not constitutionally prohibited to have more than two candidates for President.

No. There often are more than two. But because of the way that the electoral college works instead of something like a straight IRV election for the president/VP ticket there will usually be no more than two viable contenders and one will often act as a spoiler.

If it was an IRV you could have a ticket like this:

[1] Bernie Sanders
[5] Donald Trump
[2] Hilary Clinton
[3] Willard Romney
[4] Ted Cruz
posted by Talez at 5:00 PM on May 22, 2016

And that's the part that would require a constitutional change.
posted by Talez at 5:00 PM on May 22, 2016

It is not constitutionally prohibited to have more than two candidates for President.

The 12th amendment quite plainly prohibits having more than 2 comparatively viable candidates for President. There can never be an election with 7-8 candidates that is actually up for grabs.
posted by kafziel at 5:02 PM on May 22, 2016

"The 12th amendment quite plainly prohibits having more than 2 comparatively viable candidates for President."

I'm confused. The 12th amendment changes how VPs are selected, and reduces the top voter-getters the House may pick among from 5 to 3, in the rare case the election is thrown to the House. And since it went into effect in 1804 there HAVE been three-way and more-way elections with viable candidates -- most notably the 4-way clusterfuck of 1860 that resulted in Lincoln's election. But also in 1856 when the Whigs collapsed; in 1912 when TR ran as a Bull Moose; and others.

I actually went and read the text of the amendment to see what I'm missing -- but it isn't plain to me, can you explain?
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:55 PM on May 22, 2016 [4 favorites]

I think what he is pointing out really goes back to Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution and is the same in the 12th Amendment. That is, if no candidate gets an absolute majority of electoral votes, then the President is selected by the House of Representatives.

If you have more than two viable parties, then the likelihood of none getting a majority and the election going to the House is much more probable. So while it isn't actually prohibited by the Constitution, it is in nobody's interest to promote lots of parties. As Justinian points out it is more figurative than literal.
posted by JackFlash at 6:23 PM on May 22, 2016 [7 favorites]

In other words, if some third party candidate were lucky enough to peel off California or Texas, you very likely are heading to a hung election.
posted by JackFlash at 6:29 PM on May 22, 2016

If you have more than two viable parties, then the likelihood of none getting a majority and the election going to the House is much more probable. So while it isn't actually prohibited by the Constitution, it is in nobody's interest to promote lots of parties. As Justinian points out it is more figurative than literal.

And then, if you have three or more people in the House and there isn't one clear winner or one clear loser, you can't get a majority there either. The election hangs until someone voluntarily drops out, which nobody has an incentive to do.
posted by kafziel at 7:02 PM on May 22, 2016

I'm liking the current Californian system more and more... wide-open primary where everybody votes off one ballot. All the major party candidates, minor party candidates and joke candidates in one place, then the top two (regardless of their total vote) go into the Fall Election, UNLESS one candidate gets 50%+1, then it's all over. So June isn't really a "Primary", it's the Main Election, with November being the "Run-Off". Probably the best thing based on a successful initiative campaign in my 40 years of voting. Of course, we still need to convince people to come out to vote in June, and to read the Voter Handbooks with the candidates' statements then try to avoid injuries caused by eye-rolling while reading the joke candidates' statements.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:21 PM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

And then, if you have three or more people in the House and there isn't one clear winner or one clear loser, you can't get a majority there either. The election hangs until someone voluntarily drops out, which nobody has an incentive to do

Kind of. The Vice President is elected by the Senate and becomes the acting President until the House comes through with a majority vote. So at least there wouldn't be a situation where no President can be seated. Theoretically the Senate could deadlock 50-50 and fail to elect a vice-President in which case the Speaker of the House would become President until one of the previous two deadlocks is resolved.
posted by Justinian at 7:43 PM on May 22, 2016

Trump overtakes Clinton in poll average for first time
posted by Golden Eternity at 8:20 PM on May 22, 2016

From Sam Wang today: "...right around now, national polls are the least informative they are going to be in 2016."
posted by dersins at 8:25 PM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

OMG, everyone panic!
posted by octothorpe at 8:28 PM on May 22, 2016

ok
posted by Cookiebastard at 8:45 PM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

panicking.
posted by futz at 9:12 PM on May 22, 2016

I wouldn't say I'm panicking, but knowing what the GOP will throw at Clinton, and knowing the media is 100% in the tank for Trump, I'm not nearly as relaxed about it as I was a month or so ago.

Like, just imagine for just a second that we found out that Hillary had ties to the mob -- there would be no end to it on the news channels. But Trump skates, because he's good for business, and besides, everyone is so fatigued from hearing about all the cartoonishly despicable thing's he's said and done over the years that it barely registers. I'm certainly not immune to it -- I saw the mob story linked above and didn't even bother clicking, because of course Donald Trump is connected to the mob. And yet -- Donald Trump, the GOP's presumptive, is connected to the mob! This seems like something people might want to set aside the 300th replay of the "John Miller" tapes to talk about!

So then a few minutes later in my news feed travels, I see this post about the cratering energy industry jobs here in PA, and though the post has nothing to do with politics, all I could think about was the ads that Trump will be running in this purple state telling everyone that Hillary took their jobs away, but no-nonsense tell-it-like-it-is successful businessman Donald Trump will bring them back.

So, uh, yeah, I do think some concern about tightening of polls is warranted, no matter how many caveats there are about national polls this far out.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:14 PM on May 22, 2016 [10 favorites]

the media is 100% in the tank for Trump
An audacious claim, but one that is beginning to develop some real truth... I'd say 55% 'in the tank' and rising faster than his voter polls as press entities decide there's nothing they can do about him besides ride the bandwagon.

no-nonsense tell-it-like-it-is successful businessman
Too few people realize that this combination of words makes a multi-level oxymoron.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:22 PM on May 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

I’d say 55% ‘in the tank’

Who? Which media? Fox, and -at least at one point, Joe Scarborough? Citations needed. (There’s a solid difference between “in the tank” and “breathlessly reporting whatever possible in order to sustain the drama.)

In not-in-the-tank news, you have William Saletan at Slate with “Ten things every politician who endorses Donald Trump should be forced to defend.”
posted by Going To Maine at 9:29 PM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

There’s a solid difference between “in the tank” and “breathlessly reporting whatever possible in order to sustain the drama.

My point above was that there really isn't much of a difference, because the endless coverage of all of the dumb things he says and does has numbing effect that has the potential to overwhelm any negative coverage he gets. His incessant creation of viral outrage is like a denial-of-service attack on the sensibilities of voters.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:44 PM on May 22, 2016 [7 favorites]

Ed Kilgore says it's about to suck to be Trump:
"At key moments in the campaign like the debates, Trump will no longer be addressing an audience that inherently hates "political correctness" and thus has a high tolerance for borderline racist and sexist rhetoric and insult-comedy. And Clinton and her allies will be able deploy their massive oppo-research files on Trump in a consistent, relentless manner very much unlike the occasional, clumsy, and halfhearted Trump-bashing undertaken by his primary opponents and the mainstream media. After all, it's not like Democrats need to treat him with kid gloves because they'll need to appeal to his core supporters down the road."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:48 PM on May 22, 2016 [20 favorites]

Why would trump's mob ties be a problem? We've had all kinds of movies and TV series showing mobsters as dedicated family men Just Like Us. Mobsters are cool now, so Trump will only be cooler by association.
posted by happyroach at 10:01 PM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

"Trump Fatigue" and the end of the American experiment

There's been some chatter that America is now experiencing a form of "Trump fatigue." That's Trump's non-stop barrage of half-truths, outright lies, and over-the-top outrageousness has finally overloaded and broken the political machine. That the public and especially the news media -- after the infinityith comment-that's-supposed-to-end-Trump's-campaign-but-didn't -- has thrown up its hands and surrendered. And with the conventional outrage machine broken, voters are just falling into our usual bunkers. as if this were your normal old U.S. election and Mitt McCain McReagan were running against Lyndon F. Gore.

posted by tonycpsu at 10:09 PM on May 22, 2016 [4 favorites]

Also, in the New York Mag "It's about to Suck to be Trump "article, pay attention to what "Trumpette" is saying in the comments. These are exactly the talking points the Trump campaign will be using in the general election. Most likely because Trumpette is a paid member of the Trump campaign.
posted by happyroach at 10:17 PM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

@PostPolls: What if Mitt Romney runs? 22% would support him as an independent against Clinton (37%) and Trump (35%)
posted by Golden Eternity at 10:44 PM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

Most likely because Trumpette is a paid member of the Trump campaign.

I assume this is similar to "Smurfette", i.e. she's the only female in the entire staff.
posted by mmoncur at 11:32 PM on May 22, 2016 [5 favorites]

Don't know if it's been linked here before, but The Wackiest Donald Trump Conspiracy Theory Yet: Did the media sit on damaging revelations until they'd helped him secure the GOP nomination?
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:46 AM on May 23, 2016

It's so hard to keep from thinking about Trump, but sometimes, you just gotta...

There have been WAY too many Trump-topical NON-editorial comics lately... I get it, there's so much obvious material, but ple-e-ease! This one, however, captured my thinking near-perfectly.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:20 AM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Jeeves and a Man called The Donald
A sporting Jeeves story, with apologies to P.G. Wodehouse
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:49 AM on May 23, 2016

Just a reply to an election comment in a non-election thread :

I think conventional wisdom goes that Trump is only beating Clinton, while benefiting from a bump in support of Republicans giving in and accepting him. And Clinton should receive the same bump when she finally defeats Sanders.

All that could be pundit bunk : It's plausible the Republicans' conversion to Trump is progressing but slower than anyone realizes. And Clinton might fail spectacularly to as she pivots rightward for the general.

Aside from all that, there is one wildcard reason president Trump could really trounce Clinton :

Trump is not tied down by facts, much like Bush v2 and other Republicans. Trump is also not tied down by Republican policy. Trump could pivot for the general in ways no Democrat can fathom. Will he? Does he even know how? Or will he spout random shit? Can he even hire advisers who know how? Or does he hire idiots? Who knows!

It's not even about Trump anymore. It's about the people running his campaign. And the Republicans who migrate to his campaign. If Trump has advisers who understand the voters well, and do not believe the Kochs' think tanks or any other ideology, then Trump becomes extremely dangerous.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:06 AM on May 23, 2016

All signs now pointing to a very difficult campaign ahead. Because while polls today don't show us the outcome in 6 months, they do prove to us that a Trump victory is entirely feasible as things stand. A lot to be worried about. You may also panic if you wish.
posted by howfar at 5:39 AM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Don't Panic.
posted by Drinky Die at 5:45 AM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Well I can predict one thing for sure, come election night I will be weeping. Whether they will be tears of joy and relief or tears of anger and fear remains to be seen.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:48 AM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Don't know if it's been linked here before, but The Wackiest Donald Trump Conspiracy Theory Yet: Did the media sit on damaging revelations until they'd helped him secure the GOP nomination?

Ummmh, I don't know:

Among other things, we learned from the tapes that Republicans have nominated an egomaniac with an Andy Kaufmanesque repertoire and his very own Tony Clifton-style alter egos.

Andy Kaufmanesque? Tony Clifton-style?
If anything, I think this would have only helped him to clinch the nomination even faster.

But seriously, how is calling up journalists under false names any worse than, say, advocating torture, advocating the murder of non-combatants, contemplating the use of the IRS for his personal vendettas, proposing to strip millions of US citizens of their constitutional rights, or the other umpteen cartoonishly evil policy proposals, immediate reversals thereof etc. etc.

Not that bragging to journalists under a false name is in any way OK for a presidential candidate, but in what universe is it even in the same category of evil as any of these?

Oh, right, I forgot: It doesn't matter what a candidate stands for or what his intentions are or what the course he wants the country to take.
The only thing that matters is what he did or did not do in the past, regardless of whether that has anything to with the ability to serve as president. Whether he inhaled. Whether she showed sufficient sympathy with the woman that was molested by her husband. Whether he bullied someone in high school. Whether he slipped on a banana peel. Or whether he sowed self-serving stories in the press.
posted by sour cream at 5:51 AM on May 23, 2016

I'm panicking. This feels like 2000 all over again.
posted by humanfont at 6:22 AM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm panicking. This feels like 2000 all over again.

In 2000, whites were 81% of the vote. This year they'll be 70%.
posted by chris24 at 6:34 AM on May 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

I'm panicking. This feels like 2000 all over again.

Who is Joe Lieberman in this version?
posted by Drinky Die at 6:35 AM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

In 2000, whites were 81% of the vote. This year they'll be 70%.

I honestly would be surprised if that were the case. There have been a ton of voter suppression laws passed since then, and parts of the Voting Rights Act that existed in 2000 do not exist anymore. I'm not saying anyone should panic, but if we aren't vigilant, Donald Trump is going to walk away with this election.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:37 AM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

In 2000, whites were 81% of the vote. This year they'll be 70%.

I honestly would be surprised if that were the case.

In 2012, whites were 72%. Yes, the VRA changes happened in 2013, but even if disenfranchisement eliminates some of the demographic change, it's going to be much different than 2000. But I agree, vigilance, registration and GOTV is key.
posted by chris24 at 6:41 AM on May 23, 2016

On journalistic responsibility in the face of Outrage Fatigue.
posted by bardophile at 7:07 AM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Don't know if it's been linked here before, but The Wackiest Donald Trump Conspiracy Theory Yet: Did the media sit on damaging revelations until they'd helped him secure the GOP nomination?

Is it really a conspiracy, though? Or is it just part-and-parcel of "the media" doing its entirely predictable build-you-up-tear-you-down kabuki?

My gut feeling (or forlorn hope, I can't tell which) is that we're cresting on the "build-up" phase, and then post-RNC "the media" wave is going to crash down, and hard. All of the Mafia ties, the chronically bankrupt business practices, spousal abuse, hucksterism, crony capitalism, you name it, it's all going to be churned up in the "tear-down" phase.

I think there's going to be a stage where all that dirty laundry gets put in sharp relief, and it's going to harden the hard-core, but switch off alot of the fence-sitters at the same time. I just don't think we've made it there yet. Fingers crossed, breath held...
posted by the painkiller at 7:08 AM on May 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

But seriously, how is calling up journalists under false names any worse than, say, advocating torture, advocating the murder of non-combatants, contemplating the use of the IRS for his personal vendettas, proposing to strip millions of US citizens of their constitutional rights, or the other...

Apparently our moral yardstick is not actually calibrated to any moral standard, but instead is based on how previous presidents and presidential candidates have conventionally behaved and what they have gotten away with. Which is all kinds of shit. But apparently going outside the box in wacky ways is what generates sticky levels of indignation. It's hard to get a discussion going on substance rather than style.
posted by puddledork at 7:11 AM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Who is Joe Lieberman in this version?

I'm actually trying to think of who would be an equally disqualifying running mate for Hillary. However, I do not want to speak my ideas out loud lest they be heard and implemented.
posted by delfin at 7:18 AM on May 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

I don't believe in panicking. I believe in working to prevent catastrophic outcomes. So if you're feeling panicky, try to figure out what you can do to help. I'm going to recommend joining your local chapter of the League of Women Voters. (You don't have to be a woman.) They're actively fighting vote suppression, and it will help you stay informed about local and state-level elections.

Anyone have any other panic-fighting suggestions?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:18 AM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Gary Johnson gave me an herbal remedy.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:20 AM on May 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

Counterintuitive, but help Republicans fight Trump. We are the best positioned to fight and to pull off his votes in the event he is in fact nominated.
posted by corb at 7:22 AM on May 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare For All!

In The New York Times, political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels argue that voters rarely vote based on issues, and that this is true even for Bernie Sanders backers. Citing a survey released early this year, they say that Sanders supporters are actually less likely to back a number of his issue positions than supporters of Hillary Clinton are:
In a survey conducted for the American National Election Studies in late January, supporters of Mr. Sanders were ... less likely than Mrs. Clinton’s supporters to favor ... a higher minimum wage, increasing government spending on health care and an expansion of government services financed by higher taxes.
And young voters in general, while they claim to be more progressive than oldsters, may actually be less so:
[...] For example, young Democrats were less likely than older Democrats to support increased government funding of health care, substantially less likely to favor a higher minimum wage and less likely to support expanding government services. Their distinctive liberalism is mostly a matter of adopting campaign labels, not policy preferences.

[...] I wonder if they think the "millionaires and billionaires" are the bad manipulators of the system while people with billion-dollar start-ups are the beneficent system manipulators. And maybe, to them, Bernieism is like Uber, but for politics -- it's new, it undercuts something old and seemingly sclerotic, so it must be cool.

I respond to the Sanders message -- but I know that what he wants to do would require European levels of taxation. I can see that as a worthwhile trade-off, but I think think a GOP general election campaign against Sanders would point out the tax cost of what he wants to do, and a lot of people who like him now would recoil in horror. If this survey is right, they don't understand what he's proposing.

posted by tonycpsu at 7:24 AM on May 23, 2016 [15 favorites]

corb At this point I'd even help the so-called "Pro-Life" scumbuckets if they'd actually vote Clinton and help prevent a Trump presidency.

The problem is that I doubt very many Republicans have the principles you do. We've watched most of the high profile #NeverTrump types switch to endorsing him and saying that Clinton would be worse for America already. Given the intensely tribal nature of politics in America I find this disappointing, but not really surprising. Team Republican is going to get behind their candidate, same as Team Democrat is going to get behind theirs.

On the one hand that's useful since it means the Bernie or Bust crowd is almost certain to be all talk and very little action indeed, same as the PUMA's were back in 2008.

On the other hand it also means that a lot of Republicans, including plenty of rank and file Republican voters, are very likely to just shrug and vote Trump because, well, he's got that R after his name.

I think you vastly overestimate the number of genuine #NeverTrump people there actually are. I'll support any of them I meet, but so far you're the only one I've actually encountered in the wild.

All the Republicans I know IRL are going to vote Trump, some are very enthusiastic about it, others are not fond of Trump but think Clinton is evil incarnate, or are not fond of Trump but think voting Republican is just something they have to do or they'll turn into "liberals" and they know that being a "liberal" is the worst thing a person can be.
posted by sotonohito at 7:53 AM on May 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

Oh no, they would do Clinton/Lieberman 2016, wouldn't they? "..and I'm announcing as my running mate: The Man Who Saved Obamacare!!"
posted by ethansr at 8:20 AM on May 23, 2016

Frankly, at this point any poll showing Trump ahead would frighten me. Like, if you asked five random people and three said they were voting for Trump, it would frighten me. Or anyone at all saying they intend to vote for Trump. Anywhere. Ever.
posted by kyrademon at 8:20 AM on May 23, 2016 [18 favorites]

The memo is titled “After Winning on June 7th Bernie Sanders Should Suspend his Campaign and Launch an Independent Organization to Defeat Donald Trump.” In the document, DeTemple advises that Sanders form a large independent expenditure committee that would register young voters with an eye toward down-ballot races: “Call it Revolution 2016 or another name that best speaks to base and message and its focused task over the next five months might be to mobilize voters under 30.”
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:50 AM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

"After Winning on June 7th". They are expecting a victory in California and maybe New Jersey? That's confidence.
posted by FJT at 9:12 AM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

"After Winning on June 7th". They are expecting a victory in California and maybe New Jersey? That's confidence.

Well, Sanders is saying that Clinton calling herself the nominee is presumptive:

Sen. Bernie Sanders said Hillary Clinton is getting a bit ahead of herself. The senator from Vermont said on ABC News’ This Week that his Democratic opponent is “jumping the gun” by claiming she will definitely be the Democratic presidential contender. “We're going to have to do very, very, very well in the remaining nine contests,” Sanders recognized before adding, “I think we have a shot.”

On CNN, Sanders appeared to get a bit frustrated with host Jake Tapper when he asked whether he wasn’t misleading his supporters when he downplayed that Clinton had won “roughly 54 percent” of pledged delegates. “No,” Sanders fired back, “I assume that most of the people who come to my rallies can do arithmetic.”
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:19 AM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

“We're going to have to do very, very, very well in the remaining nine contests,” Sanders recognized before adding, “I think we have a shot.”

I know, right? After his victory in Oregon, Sanders only has to win California by about 47 points to catch Clinton!

“I assume that most of the people who come to my rallies can do arithmetic.”

It's not the supporters who appear to be struggling with the arithmetic.
posted by dersins at 9:22 AM on May 23, 2016 [17 favorites]

All the Republicans I know IRL are going to vote Trump, some are very enthusiastic about it, others are not fond of Trump but think Clinton is evil incarnate, or are not fond of Trump but think voting Republican is just something they have to do or they'll turn into "liberals" and they know that being a "liberal" is the worst thing a person can be.

The republicans I know in real life are just as concerned about stacking the supreme court with social conservatives as the democrats are about making sure they don't.

And yeah, they really hate Hillary.
posted by SteveInMaine at 9:23 AM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

My Republican relatives despise Hillary but say they're going to suck it up and vote for her, but I don't think they're typical.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:27 AM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Anne Gearan: Sanders to have major input in writing of Democratic Party platform

The two Democratic candidates have agreed with Democratic Party officials to a new apportionment of the 15-member committee that writes the platform, according to Democratic officials familiar with the compromise worked out this month.

Sanders will name five members and Clinton six, based on the number of popular votes each has received to date, one official said. Democratic Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz will name four. The campaign choices were selected in consultation with the campaigns and the DNC from larger slates of 12 and 10 suggested by the campaigns.

posted by zombieflanders at 9:32 AM on May 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

So, realistically, that's 10 seats for Clinton and 5 for Sanders since DWS is from the same wing of the Democratic party as Clinton is. I'd hoped for better.
posted by sotonohito at 9:38 AM on May 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

The republicans I know in real life are just as concerned about stacking the supreme court with social conservatives as the democrats are about making sure they don't.

Ask them if we should have overturned Plessy v. Ferguson. Ask them if we should have overturned Pace v. Alabama. Hell, ask them if we should have overturned Bowers v. Hardwick.

Liberal judges make America a better place. Rehnquist told us the 14th amendment was to free the slaves and that's it. Warren liberated women's sexuality with it.
posted by Talez at 9:40 AM on May 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

So, realistically, that's 10 seats for Clinton and 5 for Sanders since DWS is from the same wing of the Democratic party as Clinton is. I'd hoped for better.

Given ~42-43% of the popular vote, that does seem a warped representation of the will of human, non-corporate-people Democratic voters.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:39 AM on May 23, 2016

If it were between Trump and Hillary Clinton, would you vote for Clinton?
If I were in a swing state, a state that matters, and the choice were between Clinton and Trump, I would vote against Trump. And by arithmetic, that means hold your nose and vote for Clinton.

Noam Chomsky
posted by y2karl at 10:56 AM on May 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

It looks like the chair of the platform drafting committee will be Rep. Elijah Cummings (MD). FWIW, he endorsed Clinton but wants her to "embrace" Sanders, who he's worked with on several major issues before.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:07 AM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

Ask them if we should have overturned Plessy v. Ferguson. Ask them if we should have overturned Pace v. Alabama. Hell, ask them if we should have overturned Bowers v. Hardwick.

"Uh yeah, doi, what part of "Original Intent of the Founding Fathers don't you get?"

Rehnquist told us the 14th amendment was to free the slaves and that's it. Warren liberated women's sexuality with it.

Which many conservatives will say was the entire problem with the 14th amendment. Can't have a fantasy Doris Day 1950s of women are liberated and shit.
posted by happyroach at 11:08 AM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

I think this election season is trying to turn me off and on again.
posted by Flexagon at 11:28 AM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trump is not tied down by facts, much like Bush v2 and other Republicans. Trump is also not tied down by Republican policy. Trump could pivot for the general in ways no Democrat can fathom.

Eh, I don't think that's true. I mean, it's true in the sense that Trump could say anything. But there's limits to the positions he can take and still get Rs to vote for him. The republican party has had an issue nationally for quite a while that they have various groups with very different interests, sometimes at odds with each other, that they can't lose and still get enough votes. If Trump were to pivot in ways that would cut into actual D voters he'd be taking stances that would alienate some of those groups.

Currently he holds ground where, if he makes nicey-nice with other Rs who voters trust on their strong issues, people will hold their nose and vote for him. It's one thing for folks who are issue voters on abortion to ignore old support of Planned Parenthood. It's another for them to support him even if he were to, say, take a no limits on first trimester abortions stance.

tl;dr: I don't think there's much for him to pivot on and pick up voters without losing a similar or larger number of voters elsewhere.
posted by phearlez at 11:53 AM on May 23, 2016

Personal harassment is awful because it's targeting individuals in a very vile, visceral manner. Policy positions are awful because they're targeting populations, in an impersonal, detached manner.

The way I see it, that's what's going on in the intra-Democratic/American liberal/left crack-up of this election. The ones pushing (some) awful policies are in positions of power, while those who seek to change this business as usual are (some of) the ones lashing out while engaging in vile personal attacks. Those on the latter forget that personal attacks are reprehensible and sell out the soul of what you're fighting for, debasing your positions in favor of incoherent rage. It's also a useful distraction that can be exploited by your opponent.

People fight, I get that. But do it cleanly. Fix your PR, people.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:59 AM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

California's open primary law does not apply to presidential candidates

Sorry if I didn't make clear that it applies to everything EXCEPT the Presidential campaigns, but I AM also concerned with the 'downticket' races.

"Uh yeah, doi, what part of "Original Intent of the Founding Fathers don't you get?"

I noted in the last election thread the candidate in the open primary for California Senator: "Herbert G. Peters | Andrew Jackson Democrat. Our first 70 years; our county grew and flourished..." All things considered, he seems primed to get an alarming number of votes...

Any delusions that we may be "an enlightened nation" in "an enlightened age" are set aside by some of the other news-related items on MeFi's front page.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:59 AM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

No problem, our system is a bit confusing so I just want to clarify that one point.
posted by malocchio at 12:01 PM on May 23, 2016

Looks like Sanders is gonna have another chance to get it right and denounce the gamergate shit that his followers are still throwing at Roberta Lange.
posted by EatTheWeek at 12:06 PM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

Look at how close a "far right" candidate came to winning the Presidency of Austria.

And I wonder if a Neo-Nazi takeover of a nice white European country like Austria were to result in a flood of refugees who aren't 'brown' (just Jewish or Agnostic or Socialist or Liberal), if the Trumpists and other Good Americans would have some serious trouble with them coming here. I suspect "yes". (It's not like we haven't done it before.)
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:07 PM on May 23, 2016

Looks like Sanders is gonna have another chance to get it right and denounce the gamergate shit that his followers are still throwing at Roberta Lange.

No, see, this stuff isn't important because media reports were wrong about chair throwing. Remember, it's not about harassment, it's about ethics in political journalism.
posted by dersins at 12:11 PM on May 23, 2016 [15 favorites]

FWIW, he endorsed Clinton but wants her to "embrace" Sanders, who he's worked with on several major issues before.

Yeah, this is why I think it's kind of narrow to focus only on whether someone on a committee is chosen by Clinton, Sanders, or someone else. I've tried to Google the committee and find out the names, so I can actually find out more about them. But either they haven't been selected yet or the news hasn't gotten out, so I don't know anything about where they stand on certain issues.
posted by FJT at 12:12 PM on May 23, 2016

Hawaii Republicans Unite Behind Donald Trump, But Not Unanimously

A large banner reading “Defeat Hillary, Vote Trump!” expressed the sentiments of many of the several hundred people who attended Hawaii’s Republican state convention Saturday at the Filipino Community Center’s Casamina Flores Ballroom in Waipahu.

But not every local Republican backs the New York businessman-turned-politician, and that led to turmoil when state Rep. Beth Fukumoto Chang took the stage. [...]

Fukumoto Chang said she is worried about what she considers racist and sexist remarks made by Trump, even though she said she doesn’t think all his supporters held such views. She said it was probable that some supporters of Hillary Clinton were racist and sexist.

As for her brand of Republicanism, Fukumoto Chang said it was important for her party to “use a different tone and sound like we are from Hawaii” in order to succeed here. [...]

“Hawaii is not Texas, and we are never going to be,” she said.

posted by melissasaurus at 12:16 PM on May 23, 2016

Given ~42-43% of the popular vote, that does seem a warped representation of the will of human, non-corporate-people Democratic voters.

On a 15 member committee, that would mean Sanders is entitled to 6 seats. So I'm a little unclear how only getting 5 seats is a "warped representation."

So much of the arguing and fighting has been about tiny numbers of committee members or delegates. I wonder if the Democratic convention is just going to be one giant faculty meeting. Oh God, my PTSD is coming back.
posted by dw at 12:25 PM on May 23, 2016 [12 favorites]

Any delusions that we may be "an enlightened nation" in "an enlightened age" are set aside by some of the other news-related items on MeFi's front page.

Fifty years ago, America had not yet reached the decision that prohibited home sellers/renters from discriminating against races, creeds or national origins, nor the one that legalized interracial marriage nationwide.

Forty years ago, America was toying with the idea that discrimination based on sex should also be illegal, but we said "naaaah" to that as a Constitutional Amendment and are still fighting over it on many fronts.

Thirty years ago, Americans were wondering how movie star Rock Hudson had managed to die of the mysterious Gay Plague that Reagan administration officials had laughed about. Meanwhile, we were busy raising taxes rates on the lowest income bracket while lowering it on the highest.

Twenty years ago, the President was busy having a sexual affair with an intern while caving to the Republican Congress on "welfare reform" that had nasty effects on the nation's poor and disadvantaged.

Fifteen years ago, it was not yet legal in all fifty states for two men or two women to engage in consensual sexual relations in their own homes.

Right now, one of the presumptive candidates for President is Donald Fucking Trump.

So let's not start suckin' each other's Enlightened Nation dicks just yet.
posted by delfin at 12:32 PM on May 23, 2016 [16 favorites]

There were 3 different black men in the 1980s murdered by white mobs for venturing into the wrong neighborhood.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:36 PM on May 23, 2016

dw: On a 15 member committee, that would mean Sanders is entitled to 6 seats. So I'm a little unclear how only getting 5 seats is a "warped representation."

33% is not 43%. With six people he still wouldn't have a majority, but he'd be better represented on the committee. If his percentage rises just a couple of points, he'd be entitled to 7 representatives on the committee.

Fewer people means a greater probability that if some of the rest of the committee doesn't like their proposals, they'll be able to block them from happening. The Sanders folks will now have to convince more people to support their ideas for inclusion in the platform.

If nothing else, you'd think that the Clinton camp and the DNC would be doing everything in their power to keep Sanders' voters engaged and happy. This one costs them very little. Clinton cannot afford to lose that demographic, and neither can an extensive roster of Democratic candidates running for local and regional positions.
posted by zarq at 12:37 PM on May 23, 2016 [7 favorites]

So all DWS has to do is seat one Bernie supporter and this isn't an issue. And it may not be. Hell, she might seat two. But it doesn't matter because she's evil or something.

Another day closer to Emperor Trump, I guess.
posted by dw at 12:40 PM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

So much of the arguing and fighting has been about tiny numbers of committee members or delegates.

That they're just doing it so they each get a specific number of picks sort of puzzles me too. I think it would be better for at least the appearance of unity to have some of the picks on the committee be classified as neither "Sanders picks" or "Establishment picks" but names that they both agree are good to sit on the committee.
posted by FJT at 12:42 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

For those interested in tax policy, Fordham Law Review recently held a symposium titled "We Are What We Tax" with a bunch of great papers on various tax policy topics including addressing wealth inequality, how we think about charity/philanthropy through the tax code, political contributions and oligarchy, etc. The article by Victor Fleischer on "Job Creationism" [pdf] seems interesting.
posted by melissasaurus at 12:44 PM on May 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

it's true in the sense that Trump could say anything. But there's limits to the positions he can take and still get Rs to vote for him.

Which is why I hope Clinton and the Democrats hammer him on his flip-flops from more Democratic positions, such as support of Planned Parenthood, and drive home the message that Trump can't be trusted to uphold Republican priorities either.
posted by Gelatin at 12:46 PM on May 23, 2016

I do sort of think that if and when Trump wins, it'll be because of DWS and petty, stupid crap that turns people off.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:47 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't think DWS has anywhere near the name recognition that is going to affect anything in the national election.
posted by zutalors! at 12:50 PM on May 23, 2016 [13 favorites]

Or it'll be because more people voted for Trump. But by all means let's find a woman to blame.
posted by dersins at 12:51 PM on May 23, 2016 [28 favorites]

33% is not 43%.

And if they got 43%, then the complaint would be that the platform wasn't 43% from Sanders' campaign website verbatim. As another high-profile Democrat once said, "The election is over."
posted by Etrigan at 12:51 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Whenever I see DWS, I think we're talking about a sci-fi writer or an airport.
posted by malocchio at 12:53 PM on May 23, 2016

Or it'll be because more people voted for Trump. But by all means let's find a woman to blame.

This is pretty unfair, and flagged. I'm a woman. I would blame whoever was in charge of running this circus right now.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:54 PM on May 23, 2016 [9 favorites]

Bernie supporters know who DWS is. And that may affect their vote. DWS and Hillary are one and the same in many people's minds.
posted by futz at 12:55 PM on May 23, 2016

Charles Pierce: This Is the Smartest Thing Bernie Sanders Has Done in Weeks: That's why I think the smartest thing Sanders has done in the past two months is to come out and clearly support Tim Canova, the progressive candidate who is running against Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the mysteriously still-employed chairman of the Democratic National Committee, in a Democratic congressional primary in Florida. And, as ABC News has found, Sanders has jumped into this race with both feet.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:57 PM on May 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

I don't think anything about DWS is going to turn the election, whether Bernie supporters have focused on her or not. I just think the focus is going to shift sharply once we get to the general.
posted by zutalors! at 12:58 PM on May 23, 2016

I don't care who's fault it's going to be, either you both make up or I'm turning this primary around right now!
posted by FJT at 12:58 PM on May 23, 2016

I'm kinda hangry at the moment so please y'all just interpret this as an appropriately phrased reminder to try and be cool in here so I can focus on acquiring some lunch.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:59 PM on May 23, 2016 [17 favorites]

Canova has raised $250 thousand since the Sanders endorsement. I'd say that that is a sign that DWS is on people's radar.
posted by futz at 1:01 PM on May 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

dw: So much of the arguing and fighting has been about tiny numbers of committee members or delegates.

Shifting "tiny numbers" of committee members and delegates can go a long way towards making people feel like they're being listened to.

Put another way, politics is incremental and it's important to take the long view.

It's not just about this election. It's about 2018 and 2020 and beyond. Sanders' supporters are younger than Clinton's. If they feel they and he are being treated unfairly by the DNC then they won't forget that. The DNC will become the enemy. They will remember being mistreated by Clinton supporters and they will become the enemy. It's not enough to say "well, they'll fall in line because the alternative is Trump." What happens when, inevitably, the devil incarnate's not the alternative?

Party unity shouldn't only be one way.

Etrigan: And if they got 43%, then the complaint would be that the platform wasn't 43% from Sanders' campaign website verbatim.

I don't think speculation like this is particularly helpful or constructive. You're saying they'll move the goalposts, without evidence.

As another high-profile Democrat once said, "The election is over."

Then people who believe that, when no one candidate yet has a majority of delegates and the convention hasn't happened yet, are not only wrong, but stupidly short-sighted.
posted by zarq at 1:09 PM on May 23, 2016 [13 favorites]

The Anna Gearan article I posted upthread has been updated with the choices for the platform officials. The tl;dr:

DNC/DWS:
Rep. Elijah Cummings (MD)
Rep. Howard Berman (CA)
Rep. Barbara Lee (CA)
Bonnie Schaefer

Sanders:
James Zogby
Cornel West
Rep. Keith Ellison (MN)
Bill McKibben
Deborah Parker

Clinton:
Wendy Sherman
Neera Tanden
Rep. Luis Guttierez (IL)
Carol Browner
State Rep. Alicia Reece (OH)
Paul Booth
posted by zombieflanders at 1:13 PM on May 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

It's not enough to say "well, they'll fall in line because the alternative is Trump."

It didn't work for Kerry, and that was after Bush II had a term in office and we all knew what the deal was if he got a second term. The stakes are pretty high so I hope the party bosses don't think that is going to be a winning strategy here.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 1:13 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I saw an analysis that said that most people don't even know about the things that Trump has been saying on the election trail, even though he has very high name recognition. So the idea that DWS is going to throw him the general just doesn't make sense to me, because it's clear that most voters just really don't pay attention to all that much.

I mean, I'm not a fan of DWS either but I'm just responding to the idea that she's going to lose the election for the Democrats because everyone will be so mad at her.
posted by zutalors! at 1:14 PM on May 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

I would blame whoever was in charge of running this circus right now.

Is DWS in charge? I don't think the DNC Chair has the authority to say, force everyone to sit in a room until a deal is struck. The feeling I get is the DNC Chair coordinates and mediates, but can't really arbitrate.
posted by FJT at 1:14 PM on May 23, 2016

Zarq, you write pretty confidently about what would make Sanders' fans happy/happier to vote for Clinton. But... what is your evidence?

From what I can tell, there is a significant majority of Sanders supporters who *are* happy to vote for Clinton if she wins the primary. Then there is a small minority who are 'Bernie or Bust/Never Shillary" whom I don't see getting placated by one extra committee member. So I wonder how many people you are really talking about and how you can be confident that the goalposts won't just keep getting moved. In a way, they *should* be moved if the goal is really pushing Clinton left, but at a certain point, it just becomes disingenuous (and sounds kind of tone argument to me) to say that Clinton just needs to be really nice to Sanders' supporters about this one thing, because if only she does this one thing (that may or may not be fully in her power) she will win the people who would otherwise... directly or indirectly support a Trump victory.
posted by Salamandrous at 1:17 PM on May 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

Trump acknowledges climate change — at his golf course.

This is the shit the media should be hammering him on.
posted by Talez at 1:23 PM on May 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

Zarq, you write pretty confidently about what would make Sanders' fans happy/happier to vote for Clinton. But... what is your evidence?

Logic. When the candidate is pushing for fair representation at the convention and there's a MoveOn petition (currently with 8000+ signatures) asking for the same, it's only logical to think that this is an issue which probably matters to a decent number of his supporters.

From what I can tell, there is a significant majority of Sanders supporters who *are* happy to vote for Clinton if she wins the primary. Then there is a small minority who are 'Bernie or Bust/Never Shillary" whom I don't see getting placated by one extra committee member. So I wonder how many people you are really talking about and how you can be confident that the goalposts won't just keep getting moved.

I don't see why citing imaginary moving goalposts shouldn't be treated as what it is: bullshit speculation masquerading as an excuse not to do something.

In a way, they *should* be moved if the goal is really pushing Clinton left, but at a certain point, it just becomes disingenuous (and sounds kind of tone argument to me) to say that Clinton just needs to be really nice to Sanders' supporters about this one thing, because if only she does this one thing (that may or may not be fully in her power) she will win the people who would otherwise... directly or indirectly support a Trump victory.

I've already explained why I think this is about treating a large segment of voters with respect, and why I think that will be important down the road. That's not a "tone argument."
posted by zarq at 1:26 PM on May 23, 2016 [12 favorites]

Rep. Elijah Cummings (MD)
Rep. Howard Berman (CA)
Rep. Barbara Lee (CA)
Bonnie Schaefer

All things considered, the problem isn't the "lack" of Bernie supporters (tho Barbara Lee is roughly similar to him in beliefs). It's Howard Berman, the man who didn't want to open up the NIH research databases because "the N doesn't stand for Napster."
posted by dw at 1:29 PM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

it's only logical to think that this is an issue which probably matters to a decent number of his supporters.

Yeah, but is it a winnable issue? Is there a point where the people who are signing MoveOn petitions say "ok, Clinton has acquiesced to our demands and we'll support her now" or is it just another cudgel? I got doubts
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:29 PM on May 23, 2016 [8 favorites]

I mean, as a father I wouldn't accept "I can't do X for someone because then they'll demand more" from my own children as a justification not to do something at all. I'd expect better reasoning from them, and they're only eight.
posted by zarq at 1:31 PM on May 23, 2016 [12 favorites]

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe is reportedly under investigation by the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for $120,000 worth of campaign donations from Chinese businessman Wang Wenliang.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:43 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mean, as a father I wouldn't accept "I can't do X for someone because then they'll demand more" from my own children as a justification not to do something at all. I'd expect better reasoning from them, and they're only eight.

Then how about "we should not reward abysmal behavior"? Which is what giving the delegate would be, after the campaign's refusal to unequivocally condemn the harassment of party officials.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:44 PM on May 23, 2016 [7 favorites]

When the candidate is pushing for fair representation at the convention and there's a MoveOn petition (currently with 8000+ signatures)

I get that there are people to whom this is important, and that's absolutely their prerogative, but let's not pretend that 8000 signatures is much more than a rounding error in this context.

I mean, the "let's build a Death Star" petition got several times that number, ffs.
posted by dersins at 1:47 PM on May 23, 2016 [10 favorites]

It'd rock if Debbie Wasserman Schultz looses to Tim Canova. I'm thrilled Sanders stayed in long enough to make a difference in that race. :)

It's clear most Sanders supporters will vote for Clinton. It's equally clear the Clintons, DWS, Obama, etc. have held down the progressive side of the party, hereby limiting the viability of Democratic candidates in down ballot races, and handing congress to Koch brothers.

I will not be voting for Clinton myself because she will continue championing Obama's awful trade deals. I want her to beat Trump, but I care more that the Democrats become dependent upon their progressive wing. And I'd rather Clinton never gets fast track authority for trade deals in particular.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:47 PM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

Logic. When the candidate is pushing for fair representation at the convention and there's a MoveOn petition (currently with 8000+ signatures) asking for the same

Isn't there a logic that there's significant overlap to both Clinton's and Sanders' support base? I still think it's terrible idea to treat this as if each side's picks are mutually exclusive with zero overlap with one another, instead of trying to find common ground picks that all sides can support. But maybe that's naive and I'm underestimating the acrimony each side feels towards the other at this point.
posted by FJT at 1:54 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think, FTJ, it's more an acknowledgement that there really are deep, philosophic, differences between the sides.

As dw pointed out, DWS put forward a guy who was opposed to opening up taxpayer funded research to the public. That indicates a serious philosophic disconnect.

And DWS herself is the person who tried to scuttle any attempt to reign in the payday lenders. Serious philosophic disconnect.
posted by sotonohito at 1:57 PM on May 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

Yeah, if your working definition of respect is doing whatever 8k people sign a petition for on MoveOn, I'm not sure it's a really sensible strategy.

jeffburdges is a good illustration of the diversity of Sanders supporters. There is clearly no one thing or even one set of things that Clinton could do to win over everybody, and there is a subset for whom there is nothing she could say or do at this point.

'You need us so you better be nice to us' is not a good luck on allies. If preserving the rights of minorities, women, and immigrants, is not a good enough reason to get a Sanders supporter to the polls for Clinton, then it seems to me that these are indeed people that we had better figure out how to proceed without, because these are not reliable allies that should ever be counted on. They may be fair weather friends. I want to push left too, but not as a pander to Sanders supporters (even if it actually were half as effective as you seem to think it would be). And it feels incredibly threatening to be told that Clinton needs to hand over power to people who consider things like my bodily autonomy an acceptable casualty for moving the party 'left'. What kind of progress is that?
posted by Salamandrous at 2:00 PM on May 23, 2016 [26 favorites]

There is clearly no one thing or even one set of things that Clinton could do to win over everybody, and there is a subset for whom there is nothing she could say or do at this point.

While this may be true, it seems like advocating for proportional representation makes sense from a party unity point of view, whereas "fuck it, they're a lost cause" really seems like a shortsighted strategy.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 2:15 PM on May 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

Does the compromise struck—something both candidates agreed to—for the platform commitee strike you as "fuck it, they're a lost cause"?
posted by defenestration at 2:20 PM on May 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

The Roberta Lange situation is a real sticking point with me, because I'm afraid it's about to become one of those Things everyone is tired of hearing about - like, oh yeah, whatever, that wasn't good, but can't we just move on already? And in the meantime, you have an actual person who can't tweet about fucking baseball without being attacked. How long are we supposed to just accept that this is the status quo? Let's just add her to the list of women who can't have an online presence anymore, because, *shrug*, what can you do? That's the way it is these days!

Again, I'm not at all saying that the misogynistic minority speaks for the Sanders campaign - and I'm sure not all of them are actual Sanders supporters (although I find the argument that they're all pro-Trump agitators laughable, because this shit exists everywhere, even on the left). But I refuse to just accept what has been happening to Lange as collateral damage of a feisty primary, and I'm going to continue to be disappointed (and increasingly pissed off) with every day that passes without Sanders speaking out firmly against it. Frankly, he's way overdue as it is.
posted by Salieri at 2:29 PM on May 23, 2016 [31 favorites]

Sanders names Cornel West, Keith Ellison to DNC platform committee

Sanders wins greater say in Democratic platform; names pro-Palestinian activist (James Zogby)

It sounds like Sanders is being pretty disruptive with these nominations and by going after DWS. Hopefully, the Dems are able to absorb it okay. I can't imagine Cornel West will be a very constructive member of the committee. I wish Obama were given a few committee seats.
posted by Golden Eternity at 2:30 PM on May 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

I would say that the fact that Sanders is putting Cornel West, a man who described Obama (after earlier supporting him) as a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface," on the platform committee and the DNC hasn't yet responded to that by saying "forget it, we're not having a platform committee anymore" is a sign of openness in and of itself.
posted by zachlipton at 2:33 PM on May 23, 2016 [12 favorites]

I've already explained why I think this is about treating a large segment of voters with respect, and why I think that will be important down the road. That's not a "tone argument."

Right, but it's hard to do that when many of those voters won't grapple with objective reality and thus might view what constitutes as "respect" differently. We're talking about a lot of people who won't even accept that Nevada wasn't a DNC directed stolen election.

I would say that the fact that Sanders is putting Cornel West, a man who described Obama (after earlier supporting him) as a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface," on the platform committee and the DNC hasn't yet responded to that by saying "forget it, we're not having a platform committee anymore" is a sign of openness in and of itself.

It looks to me like they're bending over backwards to be accommodating here. Another disconnect that seems hard to resolve.
posted by Justinian at 2:36 PM on May 23, 2016 [10 favorites]

It looks to me like they're bending over backwards to be accommodating here. Another disconnect that seems hard to resolve.

I think it's the right way for them to go. I'm not sure Sanders is making the best use of this opening.
posted by Golden Eternity at 2:42 PM on May 23, 2016

Is anyone disputing that the most recent appointments to the platform committee are a good thing for the Sanders camp? It's almost like people are inventing disgruntled Sanders supporters when there's not necessarily any evidence of them.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 2:44 PM on May 23, 2016 [9 favorites]

We must reign in the trade deal insanity though, Salamandrous. These deals harm social, scientific, and economic progress all over the world, not just the U.S.

In any case, if one votes in a solidly red state, then one's vote cannot help Clinton actually win, only possibly make that win into a landslide. I suspect a Clinton landslide might be in the cards anyways, but it'd be very bad if she turned that landslide clout towards pushing Obama's atrocious trade deals.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:47 PM on May 23, 2016

It's almost like people are inventing disgruntled Sanders supporters when there's not necessarily any evidence of them

zarq and sotonohito have posted in the last couple hours right in this thread?
posted by Justinian at 2:52 PM on May 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

Is anyone disputing that the most recent appointments to the platform committee are a good thing for the Sanders camp? It's almost like people are inventing disgruntled Sanders supporters when there's not necessarily any evidence of them.

The first response to the platform committee numbers sort of set the tone in that direction early:

So, realistically, that's 10 seats for Clinton and 5 for Sanders since DWS is from the same wing of the Democratic party as Clinton is. I'd hoped for better.

More recent responses seem to be a bit more circumspect in their assessments, but this isn't some straw man people invented for the purposes of bashing Sanders supporters.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:52 PM on May 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe is reportedly under investigation by the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for $120,000 worth of campaign donations from Chinese businessman Wang Wenliang.

If you picked Terry Mcauliffe for the the VP pool, please take one giant step backwards. Thank you.
posted by zachlipton at 2:55 PM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

this isn't some straw man people invented for the purposes of bashing Sanders supporters.

It's also not particularly a BURN DOWN THE DNC SILENCED ALL MY LIFE type comment. I really, really think that the vast majority of Sen. Sanders' supporters will unite behind Sec. Clinton just as her own people came in eight years ago.

And the handful of #neverClinton people who will stay that way? Almost certainly would not have voted for any Democrat if Sanders hadn't been in the race in the first place.
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:58 PM on May 23, 2016 [8 favorites]

Rep. Howard Berman (CA)
...the living embodiment of the fact that California Democrat does NOT automatically mean Liberal. I don't know the exact location of his district (it's near Hollywood), but his designation should be "(D-Corporate Hollywood)".

"Rockefeller Republican in blackface"
Well, the Rockefeller Republicans of all races are no longer welcome in the Republican Party. In fact, they may be more influential in the Democratic Party right now than they were in the Republican Party at any time since Ford gave Nelson R. the Temporary VP gig (with an assurance to critics he wouldn't be his running mate in '76).

it'd be very bad if she... pushed Obama's atrocious trade deals.
She has already publicly committed to putting First Husband Bill in charge of "fixing the economy the same way he fixed it in the '90s", and I assume it includes all kinds of atrocious trade deals. Of course, most of Bill's credit for 'fixing the economy' would've evaporated if the Dot Com Bubble had burst BEFORE he left office, but you have to admit the worst trade deals are better than the Trump approach of Trade Wars, Labor Shortages, Defaulting on International Debt, Shooting Wars (to take back 'our oil' so we can burn more of it) and Whatever Makes More Money for Donald Personally (and harms his personal enemies).
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:59 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think, FTJ, it's more an acknowledgement that there really are deep, philosophic, differences between the sides.

Yeah, that makes sense. But still, it's kind of disappointing that out of the possible hundreds of thousands (if not more) that work in Left/Progressive/Liberal/Democratic circles, that Sanders, DWS, and Clinton can't choose 15 butts to put into seats that everyone is all right with.

Or, if that's too much of a reach, we can have Sanders pick five of his own, Clinton pick five of his own, and have the last five as consensus picks. That sidesteps the question of how much is fair representation.
posted by FJT at 2:59 PM on May 23, 2016

And the handful of #neverClinton people who will stay that way? Almost certainly would not have voted for any Democrat if Sanders hadn't been in the race in the first place.

This. Anyone who can honestly look at Trump and think, "Yeah, I can live with that," is not someone whose vote was ever going to be swayed by logic, integrity, or even basic survival instinct. No amount of arguing is gonna change that. I doubt even Sanders can get through someone who would come to that conclusion.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 3:01 PM on May 23, 2016 [10 favorites]

I think Sanders' appointments are great and will add much-needed voices to the committee - especially excited about Deborah Parker.
posted by melissasaurus at 3:02 PM on May 23, 2016 [7 favorites]

Justinian, I wasn't referring to the specific proportion of seat on committee (that seems to be pretty well addressed), I was referring to your claim that the DNC is "bending over backwards to be accommodating here. Another disconnect that seems hard to resolve," in regards to specific picks for the committee. Statements like this:

I would say that the fact that Sanders is putting Cornel West, a man who described Obama (after earlier supporting him) as a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface," on the platform committee and the DNC hasn't yet responded to that by saying "forget it, we're not having a platform committee anymore" is a sign of openness in and of itself.

set up a really weird atmosphere, with Sanders supporters supposed to be grateful that the DNC isn't just taking their ball and going home.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 3:04 PM on May 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

I can't imagine Cornel West will be a very constructive member of the committee

Christ, it's starting to sound like the Democratic convention is going to be as much of a tire fire as the Republican one, the only major difference being the caliber of their nominee.
posted by corb at 3:06 PM on May 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

Well, the DNC is going to set up an anti-Obama plank on the third of Never, which makes me wonder what the point of West on the committee is.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:09 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Eh.

I recently went on vacation with a group of people including my mom, who had not been on an international flight ever (or at least not in my lifetime). So the attendants came around with the little blue customs declarations forms. Mom, bless her conscientious heart, was worriedly trying to remember all the stuff she'd bought and what its value all was, and I'm like "Mom. It's okay. Just estimate the best you can. No one will ever look at this form and it will sit in a cabinet forever do not stress about this."

That level of relevance is where the campaigns (particularly the Sanders side) are now at. When you're arguing about how many seats you get to pick for a committee that will produce a document that no one will ever read -- yeah.

The Democratic Party isn't going to split. Sanders people are sad and disappointed and Clinton people are annoyed and eye-roll-y and everyone is channeling their frustration into silly arguments about butts in seats on committees. It happens every time there's a contested primary race due to the stupid structure of primaries. And it will be over soon.
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:14 PM on May 23, 2016 [26 favorites]

oh the customs people never even took the forms from us, in the end. Next time I talk to Mom on the phone maybe I will try to convince her she needs to mail it in.
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:18 PM on May 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

Clinton Declines To Participate In Fox News Dem Debate

"We have declined Fox News' invitation to participate in a debate in California. As we have said previously, we plan to compete hard in the remaining primary states, particularly California, while turning our attention to the threat a Donald Trump presidency poses," Clinton's spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri said in a statement to Bloomberg.

posted by zachlipton at 3:49 PM on May 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

I doubt there are any #NeverClinton people in the sense that Republicans were saying #NeverTrump, scaryblackdeath.

If you're a older school Republican, then Clinton offers a solid right-wing economic choice with a proven record of political ability, sanity, foreign policy experience, etc. As many Republicans have now told us.

It's awful hard to imagine Trump offering anything to lefties though. There are self-identified Democrats who'll vote for Trump of course, but they'd vote for Kim Kardashian if she were running too, so they do not really count.

I'd wager any Sanders supporters making nebulous complaints about "respect" will wind up voting for Clinton too. And maybe watching Cornel West will actually help them feel better about it.

It's entirely different to simply withhold voting for Clinton due to her apparent stance on specific issues like trade though. An issue cannot move politicians unless there are actual voters who vote based on that issue.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:51 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

I would say that the fact that Sanders is putting Cornel West, a man who described Obama (after earlier supporting him) as a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface," on the platform committee

Oh, he's used way worse language than that. He straight-up called Obama "the first ni**erized president", except, you know, without the censoring.

He's not exactly a unity choice.
posted by Anonymous at 4:11 PM on May 23, 2016

Meh. One could play that game with a number of the people on that committee that skew towards support for Clinton. For example, Wendy Sherman's seeming excuses for Japan's wartime enslavement and abuse of Chinese and Korean women brought her rebuke. A bit strange to see her as a Clinton representative given that, but here we are.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 4:19 PM on May 23, 2016

Ann Coulter is a talking head on MSNBC. Ann Coulter! What the hell!
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:20 PM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

And it will be over soon.

Pleeeeeeeeeease.

We'll see on June 8th.
posted by Justinian at 4:23 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Meh. One could play that game with a number of the people on that committee that skew towards support for Clinton.

Calling the first Black POTUS one of the--if not the--worst racial slurs in US history is not a "game", and it sure as hell is not a "meh" issue.
posted by Anonymous at 4:24 PM on May 23, 2016

Why not object to West being appointed to the committee, then, instead of this endless tu quoque nonsense?
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 4:27 PM on May 23, 2016

I imagine that tone-deaf comments about sex slavery are no game to women who suffered those atrocities, either.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 4:27 PM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

Not to mention that West has tweeted in support of Trump over Clinton .
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:28 PM on May 23, 2016 [16 favorites]

Why not object to West being appointed to the committee, then, instead of this endless tu quoque nonsense?

Um, we are. But we're also pointing out that Sanders appointing West is a rather...non-conciliatory action on his part.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:30 PM on May 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

whoa i knew West was critical of Obama but had no idea he had gone that far.

Clinton's likeability levels are really bad. I'm glad the electoral math is on her side, but Trump is some dark Slytherin lord. I have no idea how to explain his appeal except dark magic.

So given that, what the fuck. Sanders, make it stop.
posted by angrycat at 4:34 PM on May 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

Did you read the rest of that string of tweets, NoxAeternum? I just did, and I have no idea how they can be construed as supporting Trump over Clinton.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 4:37 PM on May 23, 2016

Not to mention that West has tweeted in support of Trump over Clinton

I mean, I think there are charitable readings of that particular tweet that don't amount to an endorsement of Trump so much as a commentary about money in politics. That said, I don't know how any logically-minded person can credibly see Trump as "authentic" (perhaps back in August was a simpler time?) given his clear willingness to reverse himself on literally any position, often within the same day, if he thinks people will like him more because of it.
posted by zachlipton at 4:41 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm fine with whoever each candidate wants to appoint to the committee -- they know best who they want to represent their interests. If Sanders feels that West will do that job, so be it. At the end of the day he's one vote among many, and the document they're voting on is not in any way binding. We have many more important issues to concern ourselves with, even within the narrow subgenre of intra-party bickering.
posted by tonycpsu at 4:45 PM on May 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

DWS picks 2/4 women. Clinton picks 4/6 women. Sanders picks 1/5. That's kind of stark, that difference.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:48 PM on May 23, 2016 [17 favorites]

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe is reportedly under investigation by the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for $120,000 worth of campaign donations from Chinese businessman Wang Wenliang.

CNN Bravely Wedged the Clintons into Someone Else's Scandal. Twice.
posted by homunculus at 4:49 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

DWS picks 2/4 women. Clinton picks 4/6 women. Sanders picks 1/5. That's kind of stark, that difference.

Considering that Sanders had the worst gender ratio among his top paid staff - worse than even the GOP candidates - it's not surprising.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:52 PM on May 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

Honestly I bet the odds of Terry McAuliffe getting the VP slot have increased.

Hillary is due for another spectacular own-goal.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:00 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

I have no idea how to explain his appeal except dark magic.

"Lots of anglos hold reprehensibly racist attitudes."
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:05 PM on May 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

Honestly I bet the odds of Terry McAuliffe getting the VP slot have increased.

Hillary is due for another spectacular own-goal.

So now we're just outright making shit up to be mad at Clinton for?
posted by dersins at 5:05 PM on May 23, 2016 [22 favorites]

I'm not mad at Clinton. I'm just used to Democrats shooting themselves in the foot. Gallows humor.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:08 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Fair enough. I'm kinda like a gun-shy retriever at this point.
posted by dersins at 5:12 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Did you guys see John Oliver last night? Or as I call him "British Milhouse"?

His long-form piece was about the primary process and he made a lot of the same points people around these parts regularly make. He also made some funny-because-they're-true comments about the Clinton/Sanders dynamic.

He could hear the Sanders supporters typing already!
posted by Justinian at 5:14 PM on May 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

I wonder who CNN's anonymous source is on this McAuliffe investigation. DOJ and FBI are officially no comment. What is the source's motivation?
posted by humanfont at 5:30 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Pierce had a pointed comment on that:

This, of course, could be anybody. "U.S. officials briefed on the probe" could be a Republican committee staffer talking to his second cousin in the Bureau's office in Duluth.
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:32 PM on May 23, 2016

Justinian: "Did you guys see John Oliver last night? Or as I call him "British Milhouse"?

His long-form piece was about the primary process and he made a lot of the same points people around these parts regularly make. He also made some funny-because-they're-true comments about the Clinton/Sanders dynamic.

He could hear the Sanders supporters typing already!"

And the YouTube comments prove him so right.
posted by octothorpe at 5:38 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think Sanders' appointments are great and will add much-needed voices to the committee - especially excited about Deborah Parker.

She has a GoFundMe to help pay for convention costs, if you're interested.
posted by kyp at 5:45 PM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

calling "Brother Trump" an "authentic human being" shows a massive failure in judgment.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:15 PM on May 23, 2016 [9 favorites]

So, who had May 23 for when Trump would bring up Vince Foster?
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:17 PM on May 23, 2016

"Trump Overload" takes the "I could shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters" meme further...
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:17 PM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

I imagine that tone-deaf comments about sex slavery are no game to women who suffered those atrocities, either.

So then why would you refer to bringing that issue up as a "game"? I am not sure what your point is here. If a committee appointment has directly referred to the sitting POTUS (again, the FIRST BLACK POTUS) as a ni**er that is something that is kind of super fucked up and you're pivoting back and forth from that doesn't change the fact it is super fucked up.

Cornel West is an egotistical hack who uses his prior contributions to the Black American intelligentsia as an excuse to throw out really foul accusations against anyone who he feels has impugned his self-appointed position as Leader Of Black Thought. There was a great article about him last year by Michael Eric Dyson.

Frankly, his appointment reflects the ongoing tone-deaf attitude the Sanders campaign has held towards the Black community in general.
posted by Anonymous at 6:56 PM on May 23, 2016

Well, on the plus side they did put Keith Ellison on the committee, too. But only one woman? At least it's Deborah Parker.
posted by dw at 7:02 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

In related news to deliberately aggressive committee choices, this bodes really well:

Bernie Sanders predicted Monday that the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia could be "messy" as he pushed the party to adopt his progressive agenda, but added, "Democracy is not always nice and quiet and gentle."

posted by Anonymous at 7:02 PM on May 23, 2016

Several comments deleted. Hello, cool it please.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:24 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Rep. Barbara Lee and Rep. Elijah Cummings are AWESOME choices, so wooo on that (I agree about the "sheesh" on the Cornel West pick...).

If you picked Terry Mcauliffe for the the VP pool, please take one giant step backwards. Thank you.

Too late, I think all those people have already been bored to death by him. Clinton will not pick him, and wouldn't have even before this.

as for the other side, Team Omarosa for VP stands strong and welcomes all joiners - we ARE here to make friends
posted by sallybrown at 8:03 PM on May 23, 2016

I haven't seen this linked yet - a good longform piece in GQ on Bill Clinton on the campaign trail. It discusses the current rumors about his health / loss of charisma, the "Air Fuck One" Burkle stuff, his potential role in the White House, etc.
posted by sallybrown at 8:07 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

I really, really think that the vast majority of Sen. Sanders' supporters will unite behind Sec. Clinton just as her own people came in eight years ago.

I was a Clinton supporter who said "Fuck Obama and his sexist, asshole supporters" in 2008. Was a member of TPM and watched his supporters get more and more vicious as the primaries went on. Decided I would vote for McCain, who seemed moderate enough to be palatable. That lasted three months, until he chose Palin as his running mate. I couldn't bring myself to vote for that ticket anymore, so I held my nose and voted for a guy who I thought had run a pretty PR campaign filled with smoke and mirrors, lied to Americans and made a slew of promises he would never keep. And in that I was right. Guantanamo's still open, and he's broken a shitload of other campaign promises. I was also wrong. He kept a shitload of promises I never thought were possible, including the ACA, in the face of an overwhelmingly obstructionist Congress.

Don't assume that Sanders voters will "fall in line." Don't assume that voting for Clinton because the alternative is Trump means they will line up and vote for other Democratic candidates because they'll magically see the light. Do not take their votes or support for granted. And don't assume that you can afford to lose their support by ignoring issues that matter to them. Because those young, left progressives are the future of liberalism in this country. And they may very well decide that as the baby boomers die out over the next 10-20 years and lose their chokehold over the party, that it's time to clean house.
posted by zarq at 8:35 PM on May 23, 2016 [12 favorites]

I am not sure what your point is here.

I guess my point is that I'm tired of the hypocrisy. It's hypocritical to pick on Sanders for selecting West, if you're deliberately not going to hold Clinton to the same moral standards when her pick is tone-deaf about something as vile as sex slavery. This Clinton-must-win-at-all-costs, ignore-all-the-dirty-questionable-choices-she's-made attitude reeks of playing games when there are real consequences to looking the other way. It stinks of it. And if you want Sanders voters to come to your side your candidate needs to work a lot harder at being better.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 8:40 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

. Because those young, left progressives are the future of liberalism in this country.

I'm not convinced that being a Bernie voter equals being the future of liberalism. The Sanders campaign just hasn't been coherent enough for that, and hasn't allowed enough diverse voices.

Also, splitting the platform committee nominations actually seems like a pretty fair concession.

I'm not sure what "not ignoring Sanders voters" is supposed to look like anymore, unless it's just giving him the nomination.
posted by zutalors! at 8:48 PM on May 23, 2016 [14 favorites]

It's hypocritical to pick on Sanders for selecting West, if you're deliberately not going to hold Clinton to the same moral standards when her pick is tone-deaf about something as vile as sex slavery.

Let's look at what Sherman actually said:

"Nationalist feelings can still be exploited, and it's not hard for a political leader anywhere to earn cheap applause by vilifying a former enemy . . . To what extent does the past limit future possibilities for cooperation? The conventional answer to that question, sadly, is a lot.”

Is it a shitty thing to say in the context of South Korean relations with Japan? Yes. Is it giving Japan the pass for sex slavery? Not really. Is it quite the same as calling someone the n-word? I think you would have an extremely hard time arguing that, and probably plenty of people who would be extremely upset you equated the two.

I don't see hypocrisy, I see somebody trying to wiggle around an extremely antagonistic pick by Sanders by dredging up anything they can find about other committee members. West isn't just a shithead, he's specifically a shithead with a grudge against Obama and Clinton. As I said, this reflects poorly on the Sanders campaign and their willingness (or lack thereof) to engage in some kind of compromise or cooperation, and it further reflects on their ongoing tone-deaf behavior to the Black community.

And if you want Sanders voters to come to your side your candidate needs to work a lot harder at being better.

Maybe some of us are starting to see his campaign as unwilling to compromise, period. Frankly, the stuff I've seen from his campaign and his most ardent supporters indicates there really isn't anything Clinton could do to make them happy, short of giving him total control over her cabinet choices or stepping down and anointing him the nominee.

Clinton is not "winning at all costs". She is winning, period. She has more votes. She has more delegates. She has thoroughly trounced Sanders. In no other campaign has the losing candidate demanded as much congeniality and obsequiousness as Sanders has, and the DNC has thus far been remarkably patient about his temper tantrum.

Frankly, in a contest where the winning side has been dominated by POC and female voters, and the losing has been dominated by White men, his behavior has reeked of the ugliest entitlement.
posted by Anonymous at 8:58 PM on May 23, 2016

It's hypocritical to pick on Sanders for selecting West, if you're deliberately not going to hold Clinton to the same moral standards when her pick is tone-deaf about something as vile as sex slavery.

So, just so I understand, are you talking about the "earn cheap applause by vilifying an enemy" thing she said about Korea/Japan/China relations, or has Sherman been out there talking up the virtues of human trafficking?

Because this, while absolutely phrased very poorly, is a lot less dramatic than you are presenting it to be.
posted by dersins at 9:00 PM on May 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

Honestly, the concerns about West seem overblown, and I think that this is one of the situations that he could really shine in. I mean, it could also be a shitshow, but when he's actually engaged as a gadfly, he can be fantastic — he's incredibly smart, and has a great rhetorical cadence. I also think that the platforms have limited policy value overall, which means that he's freed from some of the dicier issues of how to compromise on something that gets enacted versus something that gets said. He could end up showing his ass, but I have more hope for him than I do Berman.
posted by klangklangston at 9:02 PM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

People are looking for any reason to feel right and be mad at the other candidate at this point. The details don't matter. Not which side it's coming from. Not what it's about (and there are legitimate reasons to be pissed at everyone all around in this clusterfuck). But there's outrage to be had, so let's yell at people!
posted by downtohisturtles at 9:06 PM on May 23, 2016 [7 favorites]

"Maybe some of us are starting to see his campaign as unwilling to compromise, period. "

I think that's a somewhat valid concern overall, informed by the increase in partisanship and the example of the Tea Party treating compromise as apostasy. But the Dems have always had a lot more internal diversity of opinion, and the Hard Left faction is neither as much of the party nor as able to command fealty as the Hard Right. I tend to think that a lot of the people who would really be opposed to any compromise within the Democratic platform are ones that are already self selected out.

So, yeah, some people are going to like the notion of being uncompromising, but Sanders' whole career has been based on compromising to get incremental reforms through, so…
posted by klangklangston at 9:11 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't think Sherman's comments are as damning as people here are making them out to be, though I'm curious to hear other perspectives. To me, they sound like someone who has spent years in the trenches of foreign policy expressing frustration that arguments over behavior during WWII, which represent both legitimate grievances and opportunities to score political points at home, continue to stand as a major impediment to regional cooperation in Asia. This is in line with our country's standard foreign policy where we prefer that our allies not spend so much of everyone's time fighting over things that, without minimizing the impact of events some of which constituted war crimes, happened 70 years ago. Because the time on those arguments was time not spent on issues of concern to the State Department, such as dealing with proliferation in North Korea or addressing China's actions in the South China Sea or convincing the Chinese government to allow Apple to sell the iPhone in China.

I can see how a State Department official who has years of frustration over this issue might express that frustration in a less than ideal way. Perhaps her remarks were tone-deaf, but they don't amount to defending sex slavery.
posted by zachlipton at 9:31 PM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

Look, I don't approve of the way his campaign has turned, either. What I, personally, as a Democrat, would like to see is for the HRC campaign and her supporters to not entirely write me off as naïve, uninformed, and sexist because I have concerns with some of her policies. That's really all I want right now. I'm sorry I voted for a guy that turned out to be a shitshow, ok? I'm not sorry for believing in his campaign at the start. It's really off-putting to be literally told that I am a bad person for voting for Sanders. You are telling me I don't matter, what I care about doesn't matter, and my vote doesn't matter. Don't. That's the compromise that I would personally like.
posted by Ruki at 9:38 PM on May 23, 2016 [17 favorites]

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I have absolutely nothing against Sanders supporters and easily could have voted for him myself if I lived in an earlier voting state. There are plenty of excellent reasons to have policy disagreements with elements of both candidates' platforms. I think they matter and what they represent matters a great deal, especially for the future of the party, and that we need to have a broader conversation, once everyone can calm down, about what this all means for the left going forward.

I also think that the small but vocal crowd of Sanders supporters who want to "Bern it all down," who have been making threats about a woman's grandchild, and who are predictably accusing John Oliver of being a shill for Time Warner for pointing out that Clinton has more votes, are deeply problematic. I also recognize that the vast majority of Sanders voters are not those people, and it, unfortunately, is sometimes hard to separate the reasonable masses from the vocal minority.
posted by zachlipton at 9:49 PM on May 23, 2016 [15 favorites]

It's really off-putting to be literally told that I am a bad person for voting for Sanders. You are telling me I don't matter, what I care about doesn't matter, and my vote doesn't matter. Don't. That's the compromise that I would personally like.

I don't think anybody in this thread is saying this. Personally, my objections are to Sanders himself and to the Bernie or Busters.
posted by Anonymous at 9:55 PM on May 23, 2016

By numbers the Bernie or Bust people may be small, but they dominate the social media, so at this point, they're the main voice of the Sanders campaign. And they're not interested in compromise.
posted by happyroach at 9:58 PM on May 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

the small but vocal crowd of Sanders supporters who want to "Bern it all down," who have been making threats about a woman's grandchild, and who are predictably accusing John Oliver of being a shill for Time Warner for pointing out that Clinton has more votes, are deeply problematic. I also recognize that the vast majority of Sanders voters are not those people, and it, unfortunately, is sometimes hard to separate the reasonable masses from the vocal minority.

Could we perhaps reserve the term "Bernie Bro" to be used exclusively for those gamergate-y jackholes?

That way, Ruki and the 9.9 million (and counting) other Sanders supporters who are not shitheads could be confident that when we talk about about "Bernie Bros" we are not talking about them.

Or has that term already been poisoned by the aggressively-broad application some have made of it?
posted by dersins at 10:00 PM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm not sure what "not ignoring Sanders voters" is supposed to look like anymore, unless it's just giving him the nomination.

I am waiting for the final platform. If it turns out to adopt significant parts of the better of Bernie's policies, they'll get my vote. I suggest charging sales tax on the sales of stocks and bonds funding public colleges, and a public option to the individual mandate, i.e. Universal Medicare. That would make me overjoyed.
posted by mikelieman at 10:02 PM on May 23, 2016

overjoyed... since it's clear evidence of the overton window shifting left.
posted by mikelieman at 10:03 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I find it hard to believe that the anger against this small contingency hasn't affected the way some of you view all Sanders's supporters. I mean, that is a lot of the focus here. And if it is such a small amount then why are "you" wasting so much time on them? I feel the anger here and all it has done is alienate me. I can't be alone in this.
posted by futz at 10:09 PM on May 23, 2016 [13 favorites]

So here's one to think about:
Bernie only has two routes left to winning the nomination: Win at least 67% of the remaining delegates and push the super-delegates to go with the candidate with the most delegates (which they probably will), OR finish strong and push a super-duper-majority of the super-delegates (between 600 and 650, roughly) to give him the delegate victory.

Of the two routes, which one is more feasible?

Last polling in California (and there hasn't been any in nearly a month) had him down by nearly 10, and he's even more worse off in New Jersey. I'd put his odds of pulling off that route at 1%, at best.

On the other side, super-delegates are free to vote for whom they want, but he'd need to convince over 600 of them to go against the pledged delegate majority. The right promises, sure, he could peel some off, but I'd say that's about 1%, at best.

It's a bit of a tossup, to me. I mean, we're looking at something between a snowball in hell and a flying pig.

Now. Let's say you're the Bernie camp. You know these are your only two routes to victory. Would you only pick one, or would you try both of them knowing the tactics of one may hurt the other? You might actually try both. It's absolutely insane given the inherent contradictions, but given your odds why not both?

I think that's what's happening. They're trying to make peace with the Democrats while on the other side they're beating them up for their red meat supporters. They're striking deals on the platform, then pushing forward Cornel West. They're literally doing everything to make the Democrats happy AND pissed while making their hardcore supporters happy AND pissed.

No idea if it's working. No idea if it's even true. But it seems to make sense for the gambits they're taking.
posted by dw at 10:14 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've personally just been avoiding the term "Bernie Bro" entirely because I think it inflames things and conflates a number of somewhat-related issues in an unhelpful way.
posted by zachlipton at 10:17 PM on May 23, 2016 [7 favorites]

Or has that term already been poisoned by the aggressively-broad application some have made of it?

Thoroughly poisoned.
posted by futz at 10:21 PM on May 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

I don't use "Bernie Bro" anymore other than for very specific people on Facebook (i.e. certain men who mansplain women friends regardless of their Bernie/Hillary support). I do refer to "Busters" a bit of late, though. And those are also very particular -- a handful of Bernie supporters who are so hardcore they see everything as a DNC conspiracy and talk of voting for Bernie third party or for Trump.

A vast majority of my Bernie supporting friends will vote for Hillary when the time comes. Some still are actively supporting Bernie, though they acknowledge the odds are long. That's most of what I've seen from Bernie people. But the Busters are very vocal by comparison. Most of the non-Busters mention politics on Facebook or Twitter at about the rate as the Hillary people -- roughly every 1-2 weeks in between 10 posts about their kids/ their cat/ the latest meme.
posted by dw at 10:26 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's not even just the Bernie Bros, though. Yes, they should be called out as shitheads. I really don't want them on my side, because they are fundamentally not. But the way I have personally been treated is alienating. The rightfully deleted comments after my first post in this thread, for example. The anger is spilling out, to the point where I feel unwelcome not only here but in the party I've been registered in since I turned 18.
posted by Ruki at 10:29 PM on May 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

If you're using any negative term to refer to some people, but then saying "it's OK, you're one of the good'uns" to others, you probably shouldn't be using that term in the first place. Your starting point is negatively biased and based on anger/upset feelings/etc. and it bleeds out into everything that comes afterwards.
posted by downtohisturtles at 10:32 PM on May 23, 2016 [7 favorites]

I hear that you feel alienated. I hear that many Bernie supporters in this thread feel alienated. I guess I am just not sure what is alienating you. People have been criticizing those who are Bernie or Bust, and they have criticized Sanders himself. But I have not seen criticism of "all Sanders supporters, period."
posted by Anonymous at 10:35 PM on May 23, 2016

If you're using any negative term to refer to some people, but then saying "it's OK, you're one of the good'uns" to others, you probably shouldn't be using that term in the first place.

Yes but no. You're applying a principle that makes perfect sense when talking about things like race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, etc., but doesn't really work when we're talking about something, such as one's preferred politician, that is a matter of choice rather than nature.

Plus, repeating something like zachlipton's "the small but vocal crowd of Sanders supporters who want to 'Bern it all down,' who have been making threats about a woman's grandchild, and who are predictably accusing John Oliver of being a shill for Time Warner for pointing out that Clinton has more votes" every sentence or two would get tiresome as fuck for both speaker and listener.

There needs to be a simpler way to make it clear who is being referred to.
posted by dersins at 10:45 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

There needs to be a simpler way to make it clear who is being referred to.

If it's stereotypical "Bernie-bros", I would suggest, as a Bernie supporter, the correct term is "Assholes".
posted by mikelieman at 10:47 PM on May 23, 2016 [11 favorites]

Yes! Let's just call assholes "assholes" all around! It's the "making you sure you know that its assholes on your side not mine" bullshit that's so ugly.
posted by downtohisturtles at 10:49 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

If it's stereotypical "Bernie-bros", I would suggest, as a Bernie supporter, the correct term is "Assholes".

Fair enough. But we're talking about people who are assholes specifically and explicitly within the context of their support for Sanders. I mean, anyone who calls up a woman to make vague threats about her grandchildren is almost certainly an asshole in other areas of his life, but whether he's shitty to his girlfriend or whatever isn't the topic at hand.
posted by dersins at 10:51 PM on May 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

But...but...but...

Try talking to US right here in this thread. And try listening. That would be a start.
posted by futz at 10:57 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Um, I am. I have been. I will continue to be.

I am not sure what you are getting at.
posted by dersins at 11:04 PM on May 23, 2016

But are you talking to Bernie's supporters in this thread now? We agree. The assholes who threaten people are assholes. The assholes who act violently are assholes. We all agree about that. But noting that assholes exist and do asshole things and are probably acting like assholes in my name doesn't change the fact there there are lots of people that agree with all of what you're saying but don't want to be called an asshole. And you may not think you're doing it. But we don't all have to answer for the assholes. At least I hope not... I know a few shady people but that's mostly nonpolitical...
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:12 PM on May 23, 2016

Nobody is making anyone in this thread answer for those assholes.

People have been criticizing Sanders, and criticizing assholes, and criticizing assholes Sanders has appointed to a platform committee. That's it.
posted by Anonymous at 11:13 PM on May 23, 2016

It's really confusing to read these complaints and then read through the actual thread and what was said, because I feel like we're reading two completely different sets of comments.
posted by Anonymous at 11:15 PM on May 23, 2016

Hillary Clinton’s Camp Set Up ‘Veterans Against Trump’ Protest

At Monday’s protest, Marine veteran and Clinton supporter Alexander McCoy served as a spokesman for the demonstrators—and went to great lengths to hide the Clinton campaign’s involvement with organizing the demonstration.

“We’re not affiliated with any campaign, we’re not affiliated with any organization,” McCoy told reporters, saying the protesters used “grassroots organizing techniques, we came together over social media.”

McCoy later told The Daily Beast he reached out to the Clinton campaign to obtain press contacts but denied that Clinton staffers had been involved in organizing the event.

Then, reached by phone after the event, McCoy acknowledged that the Clinton campaign organized the conference call bringing together possible attendees to the protest.

The Clinton campaign initially played down its role in the event, but Murray later said in a statement to The Daily Beast: “[W]e were more than happy to lend some logistical support to the activists who organized today’s protest and we’ll be happy to do the same for any other veterans who want to speak out against Trump’s shameful disrespect.”

...Nevertheless, one veterans organizer said, the result was an astroturfed political stunt rather than an expression of grassroots outrage.

“Trump has time after time fucked us over,” said the frustrated organizer. “But what are we doing here? Why was the protest organized this way? Why were veterans groups shut out? It’s disappointing.”
posted by futz at 11:19 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Did that Daily Beast political reporter just discover politics like, some time this afternoon? Every campaign in the history of ever has done and continues to do that stuff.
posted by dersins at 11:25 PM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's the normalization of astroturf. Not that it's unique.
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:27 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Kind of grasping at straws there, huh? Sanders has Revolution Media, Clinton has Correct the Record, Trump has . . . himself, if the John Miller/Barron/Baron calls are any indication. That stuff has been going on since the 1800s. Seriously. The 1800s!
posted by Anonymous at 11:44 PM on May 23, 2016

But we're talking about people who are assholes specifically and explicitly within the context of their support for Sanders.

No problem!

Asshole Bernie Sanders Supporters.
posted by mikelieman at 11:47 PM on May 23, 2016

This is disgusting. Nobody should be proud to be affiliated with either of these men let alone employ them as top players in their campaign.
posted by futz at 11:47 PM on May 23, 2016

I understand that lie lie deny deny it to be expected but getting caught out is problematic. Toying with veterans is usually a mistake. Her campaign got caught and it's not a good look. Will anyone care? Probably not.
posted by futz at 11:53 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I am waiting for the final platform. If it turns out to adopt significant parts of the better of Bernie's policies, they'll get my vote.

Depending on what you mean by "significant parts" I don't think that will happen. Because they agree on most things. So if you then adopt significant parts of Bernie's policies on top of that... you might as well have nominated Sanders in the first place. Clinton won which means the platform should reflect her position on most of what they disagree on. I mean, if Sanders had won I don't think people would be saying that he should adopt significant parts of Clinton's platform...

That isn't to say they shouldn't give him some influence on things, but he lost so he's going to get the smaller part of the stuff they disagree on, by definition.
posted by Justinian at 12:01 AM on May 24, 2016 [16 favorites]

Nobody should be proud to be affiliated with either of these men let alone employ them as top players in their campaign.

You should read ahead to the part where the article says neither is employed by the campaigns.
posted by one_bean at 12:08 AM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

Both men operate outside the official campaigns, though Mr. Brock directly coordinates with the Clinton campaign through Correct the Record. Mr. Stone said he had “no formal or informal role” within the Trump campaign, but he is close to Mr. Trump and has had a major influence on strategy.

Sounds like they are affiliated, but not officially. The difference is arguably splitting hairs, for what they do and what connections they have.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:22 AM on May 24, 2016

Wtf now you are attacking David Brock? The founder of Media Matters and a leading figure in CREW? Have you read his Confessions of A Right Wing Hitman?
posted by humanfont at 2:26 AM on May 24, 2016

Brock and his Correct The Record organization recently spent $1 million on paid internet commenters to troll Sanders supporters online.
posted by scrowdid at 3:42 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Brock has been pretty sleazy lately.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:48 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Correct the Record had not engaged in trolling. It is a handful of people monitoring social media, doing analysis and buying ads / promoting hashtags on Twitter and Facebook.
The freakout over Correct the Record is an example of the absurd double standard for the Sanders campaign. Sanders has spent more than $16 million with Revolution Media which has much larger staff actively participating in online forums and media.
posted by humanfont at 4:15 AM on May 24, 2016 [16 favorites]

"Troll" is a pretty bad-faith way of putting whatever they're doing. Not to mention, as stated, Sanders has been paying Revolution Messaging (I incorrectly referred to it as "Revolution Media" before) to do the same as CTR for months now:

Since July, Revolution Messaging has been tasked with overseeing social media, online fundraising, web design and digital advertising for Sanders, sending a steady stream of text messages, emails and issue-based ads urging supporters to donate or volunteer. The team also nurtures and helps grow the communities on Sanders’s already popular Facebook and Reddit pages.

As of late April, he's spent $16 million on them.
posted by Anonymous at 4:20 AM on May 24, 2016

In 2008 Obama had a similar campaign to CTR's called "Stop the Smears". It was run by Shauna Daly--who now is a leader in Bernie's RM team.
posted by Anonymous at 4:28 AM on May 24, 2016

Ex-Media Matters employee on Correct The Record: “Usually places like MMFA and CTR are defending her against the media and established figures. This seems to be going after essentially random individuals online,” she said. “I don’t know that they’ve done anything like this before.”

Bernie Sanders Campaign: We Don't Pay For Comments, Thank You 'A Sanders campaign official told The Daily Beast that the money paid to Revolution Messaging was spent on “online ads, email fundraising, web development, graphic design, photography and videography.”'
posted by scrowdid at 4:35 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

A Sanders campaign official told The Daily Beast that the money paid to Revolution Messaging was spent on “online ads, email fundraising, web development, graphic design, photography and videography.”'

OK, so when figuring out what CTR does, we go to someone not associated with the Clinton campaign or those organizations . . . and when figuring out what Revolution Messaging does, we just trust what Sanders representatives say? Is that how this works? Even when the Revolution Messaging website itself refers to managing online Facebook and Reddit communities?

Also, as of the end of March he's paid $23.5 million, per FEC filings.
posted by Anonymous at 4:57 AM on May 24, 2016

Buzzfeed reporting on a survey of transgender issues that was sent to the candidates.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:57 AM on May 24, 2016

So far still haven't heard if the Sanders campaign ever made that meeting with AIDS activists that they ditched.
posted by Anonymous at 5:01 AM on May 24, 2016

Here we go again:

In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Trump called the circumstances of Vincent Foster’s death “very fishy.”

“He had intimate knowledge of what was going on,” Trump said of Foster’s relationship with the Clintons. “He knew everything that was going on and then all of a sudden he committed suicide.” . . .

“I don’t bring [Foster] up because I don’t know enough to really discuss it,” Trump added. “I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder. I don’t do that because I don’t think it’s fair.”

schroedinger, this is very true -- and I haven't heard of Trump meeting with anyone.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:02 AM on May 24, 2016

Last polling in California (and there hasn't been any in nearly a month) had him down by nearly 10

New poll has HRC up 18.
posted by chris24 at 5:22 AM on May 24, 2016

Well, good: Communications Chair for Young Republicans’ National Organization Quits Over Trump

Specifically because she "[wants] no part of a racist, fascist, hateful presidency".
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:23 AM on May 24, 2016 [21 favorites]

OK, so when figuring out what CTR does, we go to someone not associated with the Clinton campaign or those organizations . . . and when figuring out what Revolution Messaging does, we listen to what Sanders representatives say? Is that how this works?

The first CTR-related link was in response to comments here that seemed to indicate CTR was doing absolutely nothing out-of-the-ordinary. Well, there's a link to a former Media Matters staffer who thinks otherwise. Believe her or don't. It's an interesting article even beyond that quote.

The second CTR-related link, quoting from Bernie's campaign, is in response to comments here that seemed to allege Bernie's campaign is engaging in the same sort of astroturfing. I thought it worth presenting the other side of it here. Regarding 'nurturing and helping grow' existing online communities, I don't think that need be called astroturfing, but see it how you will.

"Stop The Smears" seemingly aka "Fight The Smears" was largely a repository of info with resources on how to counteract misinformation, which Obama supporters could refer to when engaging online. Doesn't necessarily indicate astroturfing, though a related supporter-organized site (smearbusters.org) grew up around the Fight The Smears resources, prompting comments that it "proceed judiciously to avoid claims of astroturfing."
posted by scrowdid at 5:23 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

and I haven't heard of Trump meeting with anyone.

His dad met with the KKK! Does that count?
posted by Anonymous at 5:23 AM on May 24, 2016

I wonder how Vince Foster's family and friends feel about the right wing repeatedly using their loved one's death as a political punching bag? This man was a human being, for fuck's sake. I'm sorry, but as icky as you may feel about Hillary (and I know that feeling well), Trump is not in any way a plausible alternative.

On the one hand, I feel like someone should be holding the feet of the GOP leadership to the fire. Make Ryan, McConnell, et al say they either believe it or not, on camera. On the other hand, we definitely shouldn't encourage the crazy, and I'm kind of afraid that it'll end up becoming A Thing.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:22 AM on May 24, 2016

Case in point: Wow, Haley Barbour has "no idea" whether Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster. LOL. Good job, Republicans.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:35 AM on May 24, 2016

schroedinger: OK, so when figuring out what CTR does, we go to someone not associated with the Clinton campaign or those organizations . . . and when figuring out what Revolution Messaging does, we just trust what Sanders representatives say? Is that how this works? Even when the Revolution Messaging website itself refers to managing online Facebook and Reddit communities?

My company website says we do media training for clients. We don't do that for every client. It all depends on what they need and request.

A company may offer a service. That does not mean that a client is using them for it.
posted by zarq at 6:37 AM on May 24, 2016

Ah, I see. This is what you were referring to: The team also nurtures and helps grow the communities on Sanders’s already popular Facebook and Reddit pages.

"Nurture" and "grow" could mean any number of things including online advertising within and outside of Facebook, as well as "boosting" posts on FB to specific regions and demographics. It does not necessarily mean that they are doing "the same as CTR." My firm uses similar language to talk about what clients care about most: building numbers of engaged followers.
posted by zarq at 6:42 AM on May 24, 2016

Another interesting thing about CTR is that it appears to be loopholing campaign finance law regarding coordination between a SuperPAC and a campaign (via scrowdid's first CTR link above):

Due to FEC loopholes, the Sunlight Foundation’s Libby Watson found this year that Correct the Record can openly coordinate with Clinton’s campaign, despite rules that typically disallow political campaigns from working directly with PACs.

“SuperPACs aren’t supposed to coordinate with candidates. The whole reasoning behind (Supreme Court decision) Citizens United rests on (PACs) being independent, but Correct the Record claims it can coordinate,” Watson told The Daily Beast. “It’s not totally clear what their reasoning is, but it seems to be that material posted on the Internet for free—like, blogs—doesn’t count as an ‘independent expenditure.’”

Which, well, whatever.
posted by notyou at 6:55 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Where was Donald Trump on the day Vince Foster died? Until he accounts for his whereabouts the media needs to treat him as the prime suspect.
posted by humanfont at 7:02 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

NYT op-ed by David Brooks today: Why Is Clinton Disliked?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:07 AM on May 24, 2016

Where was Donald Trump on the day Vince Foster died? Until he accounts for his whereabouts the media needs to treat him as the prime suspect.

You forget, Trump could have stood in the middle of 5th Ave and shot Foster and he wouldn't lose any voters.
posted by aught at 7:07 AM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

Oh come on, that's being disingenuous at this point. It's obvious that a lot of the anti-Clinton social media posts are using a single source for their talking points- we're seeing the same phrases over and over again.

The Sanders and Clinton Campaigns probably have several people admining their social media channels, including internal staff. I have a client with 6 admins on their FB page. 5 are people employed by the company. One of our staffers is also an admin, so she can post media news and make grammatical corrections when needed on other people's posts. Other than that, she does nothing.

Repetitive phrasing proves nothing, really. It also falls into the trap of seeing all-powerful boogeymen where none may exist. It's reminiscent of the complaint redditors used to make that anyone who was pro-Israel or defended them was a paid shill. Because they couldn't believe that anyone could possibly be pro-Israel. Do we have proof that these posts are coming specifically from RM staffers or are part of their strategy? No. Is it possible? Sure. But it seems to me that accusations should really have some evidence behind them if they want to be taken seriously.
posted by zarq at 7:10 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Has anyone ever positively identified a CTR poster in the wild yet? They do state that they identify themselves as such.
posted by prize bull octorok at 7:17 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

"Neither Bernie Sanders nor Hillary Clinton are all that interested in exposing the growing rift over Israel policy within the Democratic Party at the party’s national convention in July. But a compromise deal aimed at taking the Democratic primary down a notch in Philadelphia could make the Israel split big news."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:18 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Great White Hope: Trump Unites Generations Of White Nationalists

Taylor said he sees himself as "an old school stickler" who would prefer Trump carry out those proposals through legislation, but not everyone in the movement shares that reservation.

"Next time there are illegal alien demonstrations, round them up and ship them out," Brimelow of VDARE.com proposed.

Johnson believes Trump should simply override the judicial and legislative branches to make whatever immigration reforms he chooses.

"You could have a Trump do what Andrew Jackson did when he defied the U.S. Supreme Court and had the Trail of Tears," Johnson said, pointing out that the president "controls the armies."

"It might be violating the procedures we've used for 100-some years but its not unconstitutional," he continued. "I think we need to have some strong executive decisions because America has disintegrated so much that something dramatic needs to be done."

posted by tonycpsu at 7:20 AM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

How this Bernie supporter is getting ready for Hillary (Daily Kos diary)
posted by Anonymous at 7:25 AM on May 24, 2016

NYT op-ed by David Brooks today: Why Is Clinton Disliked?

But what exactly do so many have against her?

I would begin my explanation with this question: Can you tell me what Hillary Clinton does for fun? We know what Obama does for fun — golf, basketball, etc. We know, unfortunately, what Trump does for fun.

SO MUCH EYEROLL
posted by zombieflanders at 7:26 AM on May 24, 2016 [23 favorites]

So we're at the point in the campaign where we're arguing about whose super PACs and surrogate media orgs are worse than the other.

This is like that point on Super Bowl Week where ESPN is down to arguing over whether the backup kickers are going to be the difference between the two teams. Followed by a comparison of the two team's best fried stadium food in which they buttonhole Eric Ripert to pick the better corndog.

Two weeks to go!
posted by dw at 7:26 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Good link, roomthreeseventeen.

However, this...

At least in her public persona, Clinton gives off an exclusively professional vibe: industrious, calculated, goal-oriented, distrustful. It’s hard from the outside to have a sense of her as a person; she is a role.

This formal, career-oriented persona puts her in direct contrast with the mores of the social media age, which is intimate, personalist, revealing, trusting and vulnerable. It puts her in conflict with most people’s lived experience. Most Americans feel more vivid and alive outside the work experience than within. So of course to many she seems Machiavellian, crafty, power-oriented, untrustworthy.

...how can Brooks completely fail to discuss the special burden that women face in how necessary it is for us to appear "likable"? There is no possible way to remove Clinton's gender from the issue. And even leaving that aside, I can't possibly imagine why someone who has been subject to such relentless, public attacks from the right wing for decades now would perhaps be a little circumspect about being "revealing" and "vulnerable" just to get a job.

Seriously, "vulnerable"? What an ugly word to use when the online world has become so hostile to women. The social media landscape is not a gender-neutral place. And yeah, let's ignore completely the double-standard faced by women who are punished for both appearing too "professional" (because how can we ask you to do a job if we don't know what your hobbies are?) and too "personal" (well, no wonder you're getting so much hate mail, why did you put yourself out there like that?).

I worry that I'm becoming that annoying one-note poster always banging on about sexism, but it boggles my mind that there is still so much unexamined garbage out there. Maybe it will get better after the primary is over?
posted by Salieri at 7:26 AM on May 24, 2016 [43 favorites]

...how can Brooks completely fail to discuss the special burden that women face in how necessary it is for us to appear "likable"?

Yes, yes. I think that was the revelation he should have come to at the end of the article, and just doesn't. Does he not realize it?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:28 AM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

What David Brooks and Haley Barbour don't know about most everything could fill ~~a shelf of books~~ all the libraries of America.
posted by phearlez at 7:31 AM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

I don't know if she likes basket ball and it makes me FURIOUS

She's 5'2". The 76ers could use her. If this whole running for President thing doesn't work out.... :)
posted by zarq at 7:39 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Looks like Deadspin needs to do another round of "I Don't Think David Brooks Is Okay, You Guys"
posted by tonycpsu at 7:40 AM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

David Brooks has been having an identity crisis all over the pages of the NYT for at least half a year now. The man has enough trouble maintaining the level of cognitive dissonance it takes him to keep himself together, much less offer any kind of social insight.

But, I mean, how great would this article have been if he had ended it with a paragraph about Secretary Clinton being forced into this role where she is thought of just as a role because of her gender?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:41 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Charlie Pierce: Multiple Old White Men Would Like to Know What Hillary Clinton Does for 'Fun'

Let's approach this from the other direction. What does HRC not do for fun? As is the case with most Americans, reading David Brooks columns likely tops that list.

But, you ask, what's the best way to ruin the rest of your life?

Reading Jonah Goldberg in The National Review on the subject of David Brooks' curiosity about what Hillary Rodham Clinton does for "fun."
Hillary Clinton is unpopular because she's inauthentic and a very bad and brazen liar. Brooks is right that Clinton has dedicated her life to what he calls "public service." And that's fair enough. But she's also dedicated her life to the pursuit of power—and it shows. She's a partisan, vindictive and somewhat paranoid public figure who is about as good at faking sincerity as she is at faking laughter.
This is fairly rich coming from someone who wouldn't even have much of a career if his mother hadn't been in the middle of a 20-year campaign of ratfcking dedicated to producing exactly this image of HRC, and which too many elite political journalists like to pretend either had no effect, or didn't happen at all.

posted by zombieflanders at 7:41 AM on May 24, 2016 [22 favorites]

I would sort of like to know what she does for fun.

*hides*
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:46 AM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Let's approach this from the other direction. What does HRC not do for fun?

Oh god, my mind has gone to a strange place where we see Hillary skydiving and chowing down on balut and playing three-dimensional chess with Obama on an actual Star Trek board and, I don't know, participating in a lumberjack competition.

And it's all accompanied by a voiceover by Movie Trailer Guy: "What does Hillary Clinton do for fun? Well...what does she *not* do for fun?"
posted by Salieri at 7:48 AM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

NYT op-ed by David Brooks today: Why Is Clinton Disliked?

More sexist bullshit. His entire premise boils down to she's not showing her softer side. Is this now a requirement for the Office?

No one gave a shit about any of this when Obama ran for President, or Bush. Or Kerry. Or Gore. Or Bill Clinton.

Okay, they may have cared about what that last one did for fun....
posted by zarq at 7:49 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh god, my mind has gone to a strange place where we see Hillary skydiving and chowing down on balut

What, she's a contestant on Survivor?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:51 AM on May 24, 2016

I would sort of like to know what she does for fun.

Me too! She can be little bit goofy behind the scenes, which means it might be interesting. Cones of Dunshire, or she's a secret WWE fan, or quietly trying to recreate Ulfberht swords from iron ore she digs out of the garden or something!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 7:51 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

No one gave a shit about any of this when Obama ran for President

I'm not sure this is true. There were lots of stories about him blowing off steam by playing basketball and being a fan of Chicago sports.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:53 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

No one gave a shit about any of this when Obama ran for President, or Bush. Or Kerry. Or Gore. Or Bill Clinton.

To be fair we did learn about Mittens and his love of chocolate milk and PB&J.
posted by Talez at 7:53 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I had forgotten Jonah Goldberg's mom was the person that suggested that Linda Tripp continue her friendship with Monica Lewinski and tape the phone calls for 'a book deal'.
posted by readery at 7:54 AM on May 24, 2016

What, she's a contestant on Survivor?

And what Donald Trump fails to discover, until the finale, is that she was not only a contestant but the immunity idol all along! Bwa ha ha ha!
posted by Salieri at 7:54 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

No one gave a shit about any of this when Obama ran for President, or Bush. Or Kerry. Or Gore. Or Bill Clinton.

You're right, I certainly don't remember anyone mentioning basketball, baseball, sailing, windsurfing, or saxophones during any of those campaigns. That said, I still don't know what Gore does for fun... Powerpoint? (This might explain the 2000 election.)
posted by entropicamericana at 7:55 AM on May 24, 2016

That said, I still don't know what Gore does for fun...

Guest starring in Futurama and Dungeons and Dragons.
posted by Talez at 7:56 AM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

And what Donald Trump fails to discover, until the finale, is that she was not only a contestant but the immunity idol all along! Bwa ha ha ha!

You can only use the idol until F5 though. Then you have to keep winning immunity and try and drag the real losers with you to Final Tribal Council.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:56 AM on May 24, 2016

But, I mean, how great would this article have been if he had ended it with a paragraph about Secretary Clinton being forced into this role where she is thought of just as a role because of her gender?

That's my point though, that requires a level of insight and degree of self-reflection that David Brooks just isn't capable of possessing.

If you read through her leaked emails you can get some insight into some of the things she enjoys: her grandkids, watching Downton Abbey/The Good Wife/Parks & Recreation, fashion, and china patterns (no, really). They're quite humanizing.
posted by Anonymous at 7:56 AM on May 24, 2016

schroedinger, oh, yes, I wish she would talk about those things publicly.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:58 AM on May 24, 2016

Her emails are also full of really warm letters of thanks from other (mostly female) politicians, heads of non profits, etc. She's apparently quite likable among her staff, among former Senate colleagues, etc. People who know her outside the media firestorm.
posted by zutalors! at 7:58 AM on May 24, 2016 [10 favorites]

I'm not sure this is true. There were lots of stories about him blowing off steam by playing basketball and being a fan of Chicago sports.

You're right, I certainly don't remember anyone mentioning basketball, baseball, sailing, windsurfing, or saxophones during any of those campaigns.

Maybe zarq meant engaged voters rather than right-wing hacks? And besides, they were just as stupid and shitty metrics for "presidential" back then, too. If anyone on the left is seriously looking at a ferfucksake David Brooks article as a source for ammo to use against Clinton, I have to wonder how far down the rabbit hole we are.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:04 AM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

To be fair we did learn about Mittens and his love of chocolate milk and PB&J.

His campaign had to make him sound human, in response to all the people who were worried that Mormonism was a cult.

You're right, I certainly don't remember anyone mentioning basketball, baseball, sailing, windsurfing, or saxophones during any of those campaigns.

True.

I just find it all very frustrating, because it feeds the hoary old Republican myth that her personality (and by extension her career) is somehow fake or a lie. She was Secretary of State. She's published two memoirs and several other books, including an adorable one of letters kids wrote to the Presidential pets. As mentioned, her leaked emails reveal a wide variety of interests. She talks about some of them on the campaign trail. His big complaint is she isn't human enough? Give me a break.
posted by zarq at 8:05 AM on May 24, 2016 [13 favorites]

Someone needs to sit her down and ask her about the truly important issues of our time.

"Senator Clinton, on the 15th anniversary of the airing of 'The Gift', could you discuss the legacy that Buffy the Vampire Slayer has had on your personal and political life?"

Oh god 15 years I am so very old
posted by Salieri at 8:06 AM on May 24, 2016 [11 favorites]

"Senator Clinton, on the 15th anniversary of the airing of 'The Gift', could you discuss the legacy that Buffy the Vampire Slayer has had on your personal and political life?"

Doing the math.... Chelsea Clinton would have been around 17 when Buffy premiered and around 21 when The Gift aired. It would not surprise me in the least if her mom had more than a passing familiarity with the show.
posted by zarq at 8:12 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

I could imagine Clinton telling anyone who will listen that Trump is both Ben and Glory, but everyone immediately forgetting it 5 seconds later.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 8:13 AM on May 24, 2016 [15 favorites]

Sanders Says Voters See Clinton As “Lesser Of Two Evils” — Here’s Why That Idea Matters So Much (via The Frisky)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:20 AM on May 24, 2016

I could imagine Clinton telling anyone who will listen that Trump is both Ben and Glory, but everyone immediately forgetting it 5 seconds later.

HRC, incredulously, at the first debate: "Is everyone here very stoned?"

Yes, I am here for this
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:22 AM on May 24, 2016 [13 favorites]

No one gave a shit about any of this when Obama ran for President.

Recall that back in 2008 the very same David Brooks declared that Obama wasn't the sort of person who would fit in at an Applebee's salad bar.

This coming from the pampered limousine scribe who obviously had never stepped foot in an Applebees which the chain confirmed never had a salad bar.
posted by JackFlash at 8:31 AM on May 24, 2016 [15 favorites]

I hope Jeet Heer is correct: “close attention to his recent moves reveals that Sanders is carefully trying to thread the needle of acknowledging that Clinton is the nominee while also securing a greater voice for his progressive politics in the Democratic Party.”
posted by nicepersonality at 8:33 AM on May 24, 2016 [11 favorites]

His campaign had to make him sound human

Every time I hear this from now until the heat death of the universe my brain will solemnly intone "Ted Cruz is only one being and not several."
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:36 AM on May 24, 2016 [10 favorites]

I would sort of like to know what she does for fun.

I have a feeling that every night she posts on the internet and writes stories under the name of Dr. Chuck. Tingle. It's a theory, anyway.
posted by happyroach at 8:44 AM on May 24, 2016 [10 favorites]

This thread became 1000% more enjoyable once it led me to envision US politics as a Buffyverse AU.
posted by Superplin at 8:45 AM on May 24, 2016 [11 favorites]

No one gave a shit about any of this when Obama ran for President

I'm not sure this is true. There were lots of stories about him blowing off steam by playing basketball and being a fan of Chicago sports.

Right, and people loved him for that.

On the other hand, when we hear stories about Clinton's sports fandom they're greeted with cries of "Liar! Hypocrite!" When we hear stories about Clinton's love for hot sauce (well documented since the 1990's), they're greeted with "Panderer! Beyonce-ripper-offer!"

This is the sort of unhinged response that practically everything she does and has done, says and has said, is met with.

The funny part of it all is that when she has finally overcome these ludicrously-epic double standards and is actually being President of the United States, many of these same people will remember that, actually, she's kind of badass, and will make complimentary memes about her (remember Clinton-texting-in-sunglasses?).

Then in 2020 we go through all this same shit again when President Clinton runs for reelection.
posted by dersins at 8:50 AM on May 24, 2016 [43 favorites]

Showbiz_liz, you know me well enough to know that it would take almost nothing to get me to spin off a Buffy/Hillary side-Tumblr. Don't tempt me.
posted by Stacey at 8:53 AM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

many of these same people will remember that, actually, she's kind of badass

oh god I hope so.
posted by readery at 8:53 AM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

What, she's a contestant on Survivor?

Kinda.
posted by zarq at 8:54 AM on May 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

it would take almost nothing to get me to spin off a Buffy/Hillary side-Tumblr. Don't tempt me.

I would not object to such an endeavor, for what it's worth.

And I had just been thinking about how much I miss the BtVS fandom and whether it's too late to finish my WIPs....
posted by Salieri at 8:55 AM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

If Hillary were enough of a Buffy fan, Donald would be turned to dust five minutes into their first debate.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:56 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Can you tell me what Hillary Clinton does for fun?

Well, Hillary Clinton really liked the Game Boy.
posted by FJT at 8:58 AM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

And I had just been thinking about how much I miss the BtVS fandom and whether it's too late to finish my WIPs....

It's never too late.
posted by Superplin at 8:59 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

538: Trump’s Scorning Of Data May Not Hurt Him, But It’ll Hurt The GOP
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:04 AM on May 24, 2016

The funny part of it all is that when she has finally overcome these ludicrously-epic double standards and is actually being President of the United States, many of these same people will remember that, actually, she's kind of badass, and will make complimentary memes about her

I'm dreaming that in ten or fifteen years there will be a biopic about the life of President Hillary Clinton and it will star Jennifer Lawrence and suddenly everyone will find Hillary lovable.
posted by puddledork at 9:10 AM on May 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

"I'm taking a holiday from dealing. Happily vacationing in the land of not-coping." - me @ this entire election
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:14 AM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm already giving the choice to cast Bradley Cooper as Bill the side-eye
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:14 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ryan Reynolds, surely-- Cooper would make a much better Al Gore. Antagonists would include Nick Offerman as Gingrich, with Sam Rockwell as an absolute shoo-in for the Ken Starr role.
posted by dersins at 9:20 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I’m dreaming that in ten or fifteen years there will be a biopic about the life of President Hillary Clinton and it will star Jennifer Lawrence and suddenly everyone will find Hillary lovable.

Make it Amy Adams and I’ll agree.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:22 AM on May 24, 2016

What, she's a contestant on Survivor?

Kinda.

Honestly that would be a much simpler way to do these interminable primaries.

listen to us

Okay. What does listening to you look like? In what ways are you not being listened to?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:25 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I’m dreaming that in ten or fifteen years there will be a biopic about the life of President Hillary Clinton and it will star Jennifer Lawrence and suddenly everyone will find Hillary lovable.

Kate McKinnon
Claire Danes
Rachel McAdams
posted by zutalors! at 9:28 AM on May 24, 2016

Rachel McAdams

OMG! Remember her in the first season of Slings and Arrows?
posted by kingless at 9:38 AM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

You forget, Trump could have stood in the middle of 5th Ave and shot Foster and he wouldn't lose any voters.

His voters are actually kind of scary in how fervently they support him. So, I was one of the people elected to be a part of the delegation to Cleveland. It is stupidly, punishingly expensive to attend - like if I don't come up with another several hundred dollars in the next two weeks, I won't be able to go at all, leaving aside the hotel and airfare costs. So, like nearly everyone who wasn't born independently wealthy, I've got a gofundme up - as you know, people do, and people have done, and it has never been a problem. I've posted it in a couple places, not too aggressively, because I do feel a little bad asking for help. Whatever. I'm pretty open that I'm not for Trump.

I'm getting a lot of hate messages from Trump voters - like, really nasty shit, that is totally unprecedented in a previously very internally civil party. A lot of people talking about how I'm begging for thievery, how if I'm not going to "support the nominee" I should go to hell, join the Democrats (which I think they take as pretty much the same), I'm destroying America, I'm a bad mother, whatever.

And you know, I'm pretty used to people saying nasty shit to me for supporting candidates. But this is weird, really weird, and I'm willing to bet that when the dust is cleared on this election, the Republican Party is going to be missing at least 10-15% of it, who are like, "This bullshit isn't worth it."
posted by corb at 9:41 AM on May 24, 2016 [43 favorites]

I'm getting a lot of hate messages from Trump voters - like, really nasty shit, that is totally unprecedented in a previously very internally civil party

That's terrible. I'm so sorry to hear that.
posted by zutalors! at 9:42 AM on May 24, 2016 [11 favorites]

I’m dreaming that in ten or fifteen years there will be a biopic about the life of President Hillary Clinton and it will star Jennifer Lawrence and suddenly everyone will find Hillary lovable.

Kate McKinnon
Claire Danes
Rachel McAdams

No wait. Reese Witherspoon obviously.
posted by zutalors! at 9:43 AM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

OK, who stole this from us? The 2016 Election Is Exactly Like the Show ‘Survivor’ – And I Can Prove It To You
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:46 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm so sorry this is happening to you, corb. That is really awful.
posted by Salieri at 9:58 AM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

Given that the last time Hillary shared a quirky personal detail (she takes hot sauce everywhere she goes!) she got accused of pandering, I can see why she's not super-eager to reveal more humanizing factors of her life.
posted by jackbishop at 10:00 AM on May 24, 2016 [11 favorites]

Given that the last time Hillary shared a quirky personal detail (she takes hot sauce everywhere she goes!) she got accused of pandering

...to Big Tobasco.
posted by zarq at 10:09 AM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Corb, please be careful. :(
posted by zarq at 10:10 AM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

I'm getting a lot of hate messages from Trump voters - like, really nasty shit, that is totally unprecedented in a previously very internally civil party.

I'm sorry to hear that, corb. Unfortunately, I'm hearing that from a number of people about Trump supporters, people like you who are active in the Republican Party and who are not onboard this campaign. It's really not a matter of ideology anymore, IMO. This is a violent force.

Please take care of yourself in the meantime, be kind to yourself. I'm sure you know, but sometimes it can be easy to forget, when it feels like so much depends on you.
posted by krinklyfig at 10:10 AM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

A couple comments deleted; I know folks have good intentions but let's not open the floor to a referendum on any individual member personally.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:12 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

how can Brooks completely fail to discuss the special burden that women face in how necessary it is for us to appear "likable"?

Oooh, I know! Pick me!

Because Brooks is a dishonest hack!

Brooks' job is to make modern movement conservatism sound palatable to the totebagger set. He hasn't yet come around to endorsing Trump -- I predicted some time ago that he would eventually "reluctantly" conclude that a Trump presidency wouldn't be as bad as Clinton's -- but her we see him laying the groundwork with pointless rehashing of the narrative of Clinton's "unlikability."
posted by Gelatin at 10:14 AM on May 24, 2016 [16 favorites]

A friend just posted this to Facebook: One thing I forgot to mention about The King and I-- proof that theater is a living, breathing thing : you should have heard the uncomfortable laughter when the King said "Someday I want to build a wall around Siam"..,.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:15 AM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

Yeah be careful corb - remember that lots of the nastiest and most infamous organizations in the 20th century got their start as bouncers or enforcers at political party meetings.
posted by XMLicious at 10:16 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

corb, I'm sorry to hear of the abuse flung your way. I hope you're able to make a positive difference at the convention.
posted by Gelatin at 10:22 AM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's really not a matter of ideology anymore, IMO. This is a violent force.

Yeah, I hate to sound hyperbolic, but this really feels like the fight against fascism I naively thought would not take place in my lifetime.

In comfort for others - there really are a lot of us out there. One reason you're not seeing it is because Republican leaders are actively calling fake cries of 'Unity'. For example, today I received an email from the State Chair of the Republican Party, talking about how one of the things we accomplished was unity. This is about a convention where the fighting was so bad, it extended to mobile wifi spots, with you having to type "NeverHillary" as the password for the official WiFi, and so other people set up "Trump Has No Morals" and "Trump divided the Party"

In terms of the calls for safety - I really appreciate the concern! Truly and deeply. It's something we're thinking about - we're talking about setting up buddy teams when moving around the convention, though that probably won't protect against a true riot if we're successful.

And though I hate thinking about it - in truth it's probably going to take years even if we do win to disband this kind of violenct participation. These people aren't just going to go away. All we can do is stop them from gaining power and try to slowly ease them off.
posted by corb at 10:22 AM on May 24, 2016 [19 favorites]

They can't vote, but it's not stopping these Latino youth from registering others

Espeno says he’ll keep knocking on strangers’ doors if that’s what it takes to keep away a future president with anti-immigrant policies. As for what he would propose if he were president? “If I were to be president, I would pass immigration reform. That’s what I would do. I would unite families again, offer them jobs, make them productive citizens of the United States, make them family. We need more reunification rather than division.”

CASA de Maryland hopes to register 20,000 voters by this fall. Nationwide, there are millions of Latino citizens not registered to vote, and volunteers like Hernandez and Espeno know they’ll only reach a few of these people. But they’ll keep up their efforts, knowing that every person they get to show up at the polls, might represent a vote in their favor.

I wish more stories like this were featured as the "future of the electorate."
posted by zutalors! at 10:25 AM on May 24, 2016 [16 favorites]

I know it shouldn't even matter, and it's usually brought up in a bullshit context, but I feel like this is worth saying: even beyond her politics, or what she's accomplished, I like Clinton. I find her likable.

Sure, she's sorta stiff and kinda awkward at times. But in a climate where people are nuts over 'authenticity', do you think she'd choose to be that way if that wasn't her true self? Does 'authenticity' not matter if you don't like someone's vibe? Some may be turned off by that type of personality, but the alternative would be to force a pandering charisma that comes off as insincere—let's call it Fallon-ing. And while some people are into that, I'm not. I guess people find different stuff likable or unlikable. Who'da thunk it?
posted by defenestration at 10:43 AM on May 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

How this Bernie supporter is getting ready for Hillary

I appreciate things like this, and I've been making a point of reading and understanding why people enthusiastically support Clinton. It goes a million miles further than articles about why young, naive people mean well but don't understand pragmatism. What's frustrating for me, though, is that everyone STILL seems to have an answer for testimonials like that. There's always something you can say to discount why someone supports Clinton, or why they support Sanders, and it's like you can't say it without someone coming in to say "yeah, but here's why you're wrong to think that."

I've posted comments saying "I think Sanders has really good policies on this issue" and the response was "yeah, but you could only think that if you hold Clinton to a double standard" or "well it's too little too late," or something. And it's like - I'm not making a comparison, I'm not saying "here's why Sanders is soooo much better than Clinton because he's perfect," I'm saying I think his policies are really good, and some people aren't willing to accept that for what it is.

This entire election we've been talking about politics as if our other people's views on things must be direct attacks on our own. Like you can't say "Clinton does this better than Sanders" without that being an affront on who you are as a voter. Or - and I'm sensitive to this, obviously - that I can't say what drives my support for Sanders without being told the ways I'm in the wrong for thinking that way.

I've been as guilty as anyone of this kind of reaction to stuff, but it's got to stop, and the article in that link is all about listening - but it's frustrating because I feel like people are only really willing to hear comments about Sanders if they're about how a person doesn't really support him anymore, or comments about Clinton that explicitly state why she is a flawed politician.

I hope it's not too hard to imagine why people like me might be put off by comments that end with "but I'm sure Sanders supporters will find some way to excuse this," just like how it's not too hard for me to imagine why it would be off-putting to have my candidate referred to as a shill. Gah, I just wish people would try to have a little perspective from the other candidate's supporters why they talk about this stuff. Like I said - your enthusiasm goes much, much further than telling me why I'm obviously not getting the big picture.
posted by teponaztli at 10:44 AM on May 24, 2016 [14 favorites]

Reading the "what does HRC do for fun?" things reminds me of Obama ordering something with arugula instead of iceberg lettuce or something and how that made him a horrible elitist. Like, it was a plant-based teapot tempest for weeks.

Well, that criticism was definitely silly. However...
Remember that time John Kerry tried to order a Philly cheesesteak with Swiss?
I still say that incident was more embarrassing than his losing to George W. Bush.
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:48 AM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

And no, that's not an long-winded way of saying people shouldn't criticize Sanders, or Clinton, or anyone else.
posted by teponaztli at 10:49 AM on May 24, 2016

This is the ‘definitive’ comedy takedown of Donald Trump, courtesy of The Onion’s co-founder
posted by bukvich at 10:52 AM on May 24, 2016

NYT op-ed by David Brooks today: Why Is Clinton Disliked?

More sexist bullshit. His entire premise boils down to she's not showing her softer side. Is this now a requirement for the Office?

No, it's a requirement that we hypocritically want what we're not getting. Let's not forget the endless opeds we've gotten about how bad it is when Obama doesn't show anger/frustration.

Mind, anyone who is not a moron knows that the second he did it would be all boogabooga angry black dude. Just like the second Clinton made an effort at showing this personal stuff (aside from the above mentioned accusations of insincerity) it would be a sign of her vag making her too soft and emotional and distractible to be president.

I now feel dirty for spending this much time on Brooks, whose columns should all just pose the question Why the fuck do I have this job?
posted by phearlez at 10:54 AM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

Yesterday was the deadline for voter registration in California: "Hundreds of thousands of Californians have signed up to vote, but what that means is anybody's guess"

Highlights:
* Hundreds of thousands of registrations occurred between mid-March and mid-May.
* 220,000+ Democrats (an almost 3% boost)
* Nearly 70,000 Republicans (a 1.45% increase)
* Non-partisan voters (fastest-growing in California for years) fell by 20,000 (-.5%)
* Both independents and Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary; only Republicans can take part in that party's primary.
* By Friday, Los Angeles County had 196,000 new registrants. Another 141,000 people had either changed their address or political party. Over the weekend, another 40,000 people registered, in both categories combined. More than 61% of new registrants were under under 20. The second largest group of registrants in Los Angeles County was aged 30 to 39. "Though that suggests a Sanders vote, all manner of political entities are sponsoring voter registration drives this season, and the voters being drawn in could be more diverse than age alone suggests. Latino organizations have sought to register voters in order to cast ballots against Trump. Candidates have their own voter drives."
* 108,000 voters were dropped from the rolls in Orange County. They had not cast ballots in the last four state elections and had not replied to inquiries about their status
posted by zarq at 10:54 AM on May 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

Sacramento County sets a new voter registration record
posted by zarq at 10:57 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sure, she's sorta stiff and kinda awkward at times. But in a climate where people are nuts over 'authenticity', do you think she'd choose to be that way if that wasn't her true self? Does 'authenticity' not matter if you don't like someone's vibe? Some may be turned off by that type of personality, but the alternative would be to force a pandering charisma that comes off as insincere—let's call it Fallon-ing. And while some people are into that, I'm not. I guess people find different stuff likable or unlikable. Who'da thunk it?

In Susan Cain's book Quiet she talks about how the introvert trait extends to campaigning, which I found fascinating. Like Gore struggled as a campaigner but excelled when he had A Project like climate change.

I think HRC is an introvert, and America has had a thing for extrovert Presidents since Teddy Roosevelt.
posted by zutalors! at 10:58 AM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

Oh, and hilariously... the ultra-right wing American Independent Party lost 32,000 registered voters (-6.7%) in the last month, because voters who wanted to register as "No Party Preference" Independents probably didn't understand that meant not joining a political party.
posted by zarq at 11:02 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

A few comments deleted; if you want to ask corb about her fundraiser, that needs to happen privately.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:06 AM on May 24, 2016

I think HRC is an introvert, and America has had a thing for extrovert Presidents since Teddy Roosevelt.

You might be onto something there. In fact, it would be fascinating to see an analysis of every US president with regard to how their personalities aligned along the Introvert/Extrovert axis.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:07 AM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

Brooks and all the other op-ed writers you love to hate are just (relatively) high-brow clickbait. Up here in Canada we have (among others) Margaret Wente, who probably has more people hate-reading/tweeting her columns than regular readers these days.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:11 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

it would be fascinating to see an analysis of every US president with regard to how their personalities aligned along the Introvert/Extrovert axis.

the crucial INFP demographic
posted by beerperson at 11:16 AM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

TCC, I long for the day we can just call her Margaret Went Somewhere Else, Thank God.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:21 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Rick Hasen: Breaking: In Major Decision, Federal Court Blocks Cutback in Ohio Registration/Early Voting “Golden Week”

In a 120-page opinion, a federal district court has held that the Ohio legislature’s elimination of “Golden Week,” a week in which Ohio voters could both register to vote and cast an early ballot at the same location, violates both the 14th amendment of the Constitution and section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This is a big victory for Marc Elias and the Democrats which brought this suit (over much handwringing by some in the voting rights community). Democrats have relied heavily on Golden Week in the past and fought the Ohio Legislature (dominated by Republicans) to keep it. The theories accepted by the trial court are sure to be controversial, and it is not clear how they will fare in the 6th Circuit. However, the Sixth Circuit has among the most pro-voting rights views of both constitutional and voting rights theories (see the discussions around pages 21 and 31 here). The case could well go en banc to the Sixth Circuit, especially because of a potentially likely 4-4 split at the Supreme Court, leaving the Sixth Circuit as likely the last word on the meaning of the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act in the area covered by the Sixth Circuit for this election.

When you combine this case, the North Carolina voting case (currently on fast track appeal to the 4th Circuit) and the Texas voter id appeal (heard today by an en banc court in the 5th Circuit), along with two additional challenges to Wisconsin’s voter id law (which was upheld by the 7th Circuit, after a 5-5 split over whether to take that case en banc), there is sorely a need for clarification of the scope of Section 2 when it comes to the “new vote denial” cases. Yet the Scalia-less and Garland-less Court may not be in a position to take these cases now, in that they may split 4-4 on their resolution. It just shows a cost of the vacancy right now.

posted by zombieflanders at 11:21 AM on May 24, 2016 [14 favorites]

Here is the list of people Sanders has also asked his supporters to contribute to:

"Justin Bamberg is a state representative from South Carolina who was an early endorser of Hillary Clinton’s campaign but switched his endorsement before the primary because of Bernie’s work for "racial, social, and economic justice." Justin won his last election by ONLY 113 votes and needs our support in what’s sure to be another close race this November.

David Bowen is the son of Jamaican immigrants who is running for his second term in the Wisconsin State Legislature. He fought for and won a living wage for Milwaukee city employees and is a progressive champion Wisconsin needs.

Clara Hart is a refugee from Mozambique whose family fled from violence when she was just 8 years old. Now she's running for the South Dakota House, where she hopes to continue her work for immigrant families.

Terry Alexander is a representative in the South Carolina legislature who supports raising the minimum wage, expanding health care, and protecting the right to vote. He is a courageous legislator who I'm proud to support.

Carol Ammons became the first African-American woman to win election in her district of the Illinois State Legislature, scoring an upset election victory against a well-funded establishment opponent. She's fighting for progressive issues and candidates and deserves our support.

Chris Pearson is running for the Vermont State Senate after spending four terms in the Vermont House of Representatives. He is a champion on the issues of livable wages, strong labor union advocacy, climate change, and voting rights. This year he was able to pass a bill into law for automatic voter registration. Chris is a good friend of working people and of mine.

Jane Kim is the first Korean American to win election in San Francisco, and she's running to become a California state senator. The daughter of immigrants, Jane is a civil rights attorney who's fought for affordable housing and fair wages in her city.

Joe Salazar is a representative to Colorado's state house who is a tireless advocate for stopping fracking, protecting civil rights, and advancing criminal justice reform. He won his last election by just 221 votes, and your support will go a long way to helping him win this year."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:35 AM on May 24, 2016 [15 favorites]

Yet the Scalia-less and Garland-less Court may not be in a position to take these cases now, in that they may split 4-4 on their resolution. It just shows a cost of the vacancy right now.

Is there any evidence of how the current justices' votes would shake out on this?
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:36 AM on May 24, 2016

The 6th Circuit covers Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, for reference.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:38 AM on May 24, 2016

Is there any evidence of how the current justices' votes would shake out on this?

I assume it would be along the same lines as Shelby v Holder.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:40 AM on May 24, 2016

Case in point: Wow, Haley Barbour has "no idea" whether Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster. LOL. Good job, Republicans.

Donald Trump Might be the New Puke Funnel

So is Donald Trump is becoming the new "puke funnel" -- a one-man conduit directing (or redirecting) sleazy stories from the fringe to the legitimate press?

[...]

Trump might now be in the process of replacing several of those steps with, well, himself.

But he can do that only if the press allows him to. Are journalists going to let Trump funnel puke into their stories? Are they going to treat any swill he stirs up as legitimate news? It's their choice.

posted by tonycpsu at 11:41 AM on May 24, 2016 [8 favorites]

'Becoming'?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:43 AM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

I think honestly the key to defeating Trump is going to require concerted action of groups who technically aren't working with each other. The Republicans to pick off Trump/Trump support - the Libertarians to offer a refuge and a home for those who can't live with Clinton, thus dividing the vote - the conservative Democrats to make a case about Hillary Clinton being someone reasonable Republicans can live with - the other Democrats to volunteer to drive voters, correct misinformation, etc. And you know, maybe it's possible one of the pillars won't be necessary, but, why risk it?

And maybe even the Democrats to offer the Bernie supporters a home. I know it's hard because of a lot of reasons, but if the people pulling down Trump and the people pulling down Clinton neutralize each other, we're still in a wash.
posted by corb at 11:48 AM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

Matthew Yglesias: Republican Jewish Coalition won't say where all the anti-Semitic invective is coming from

The Republican Jewish Coalition has the mission of attracting votes and fundraising dollars for Republicans from American Jews, a challenge when your party's nominee has a robust following among the online "alt-right," which is full of kooky anti-Semites. (Check out the #kikeservative hashtag for some examples.)

To that end, the RJC put out a statement today saying that it is against "the troubling increase of anti-Semitic invective" on the campaign trail but not identifying where the invective is coming from.
[...]
So let's be clear about this: The anti-Semitic invective directing toward journalists covering the campaign is coming from Donald Trump's supporters. There's plenty of invective to go around from supporters of all the candidates, but the specifically anti-Semitic invective is coming from Team Trump.
[...]
The strange thing about this strategy is that while there are a lot of things you can fool the media about, you really can't lie to journalists about the contents of their own inboxes. We see what's going on out there.

posted by zombieflanders at 11:53 AM on May 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

Anybody who has attempted to read one of Trump's own books knows he has always been a "puke funnel". The article showed Trump tweeting about an anti-Hillary book. Is there someplace I can get a list of the books published about what a reprehensible monster Donnie is that I can pass along? Is the list too long to cut/paste here? Or has the profitability of his publishing deals discouraged major publishers from buying anti-Trump tomes?

if the people pulling down Trump and the people pulling down Clinton neutralize each other, we're still in a wash.
While people have been pulling down Clinton for 25 years, Trump has been managing a self-promotion campaign for more than 30 years... (I've mentioned that we never realized putting his name on buildings was a large-scale equivalent of putting up signs with candidates' names on your lawn) This is where he gets his level of support from people who aren't openly evil people. (Well, that and the evil-but-not-openly-so people who now can 'be themselves')
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:59 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I'm disappointed that Lindsay Graham seems to be joining Trump's train.
posted by zutalors! at 12:09 PM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

I wouldn't blame the RJC for being coy about it. They're probably trying to walk the same line a lot of people are - desperately trying to organize against Trump and his people, but where if they are too vocal against Trump, they face attacks from his brownshirts.

Yeah, no.

RJC Statement on Donald Trump

"The Republican Jewish Coalition congratulates Donald Trump on being the presumptive Presidential nominee of the Republican Party. Throughout the course of this long campaign among Republicans there has been unity in the belief that Hillary Clinton is the worst possible choice for a commander in chief. Secretary Clinton has proven time and again through her record and her policies that her candidacy will compromise our national security, weaken our economy and further strain our relationship with our greatest ally, Israel. Along with the Presidential race, the RJC will be working hard to hold on to our majorities in the Senate and the House. It is critical that these majorities be preserved. To do this we must remember our core principles: peace through strength, unwavering support for Israel, and robust American leadership at home and abroad."
posted by phearlez at 12:23 PM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU ARE YOU INSANE.
posted by corb at 12:24 PM on May 24, 2016 [25 favorites]

Er, I meant that for the RJC. Seriously, what the hell. I understand walking a fine line, but not actually endorsing HitlerLite should be a low bar for it to clear.
posted by corb at 12:25 PM on May 24, 2016 [9 favorites]

I think you need to stock up on St John's Wort for the coming months, corb.
posted by phearlez at 12:29 PM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

> Are journalists going to let Trump funnel puke into their stories? Are they going to treat any swill he stirs up as legitimate news? It's their choice.

Journalists are going to go along with anything that results in clicks. So, yes.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:29 PM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

Speaking of dishonest hacks, Megan McArdle tries to claim that Trump's rise isn't the Republicans' fault. One of her points seems to be that since she can't change anyone's mind about anything, the noise machine of talk radio and the rest of the conservative media can't either.

Sure.
posted by Gelatin at 12:33 PM on May 24, 2016

"We abhor any abuse of journalists, commentators and writers whether it be from Sanders, Clinton or Trump supporters," lol yes all those virulently antisemitic hardcore Bernie Sanders supporters you're always hearing so much about
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:34 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

.@JohnKasich sends letter to Ohio GOP requesting his delegates stay bound to him through the convention -@aabramson
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:36 PM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

> I think honestly the key to defeating Trump is going to require concerted action of groups who technically aren't working with each other.

All this extraordinary, desperate effort to defeat a candidate who, policy-wise, is one half-step above the sorts of nutcases who run for municipal office and get a couple dozen votes. In a less stupid world it would be akin to devoting the resources of the Center For Disease Control to curing an eight year-old's sniffles.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:37 PM on May 24, 2016 [10 favorites]

a challenge when your party's nominee has a robust following among the online "alt-right," which is full of kooky anti-Semites. (Check out the #kikeservative hashtag for some examples.)

I went and looked at this hashtag and, man alive. Also led me down a rabbit hole to the hashtags #cuckservative and #prestitute, which are both also worth a look if you feel like torturing yourself today
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:40 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Here is the list of people Sanders has also asked his supporters to contribute to:

Wow, I'm kinda psyched at how diverse the slate is.
posted by kyp at 12:41 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

corb Yeah, I hate to sound hyperbolic, but this really feels like the fight against fascism I naively thought would not take place in my lifetime.

[...]

And though I hate thinking about it - in truth it's probably going to take years even if we do win to disband this kind of violenct participation. These people aren't just going to go away. All we can do is stop them from gaining power and try to slowly ease them off.

I think you are 100% correct in your fear that we are seeing naked Fascism rising here.

I think the real problem though, is that the Republican party has actively been creating the necessary preconditions for Fascism ever since the late 1970's, and the Democratic party has regrettably been alternating between active participation in that and passively letting them get away with it.

The rise of Fascism has always been tied to economic conditions. Even in later Taisho and early Showa Japan's quasi-Fascist rise there was a view of economy as largely based on defeating or suborning the Other. In Italy and Germany the pattern was much clearer:

Economic pain lead to a rise in authoritarian thinking. A government unable or unwilling to address the root causes of that economic pain lead to the people becoming dissatisfied with democratic government and more sympathetic to the idea of a single leader who could just get things done. And then the rise of a charismatic leader who had simple, easy, solutions for the problems that perfectly matched the prejudices of their followers.

But before all that can happen there has to be that bedrock of economic pain.

I've mentioned it before in this thread, and I think it bears repeating: in the 1950's the average CEO made only around twelve times what their lowest paid employee made. Today the average CEO makes over 300 times what the lowest paid employee makes, and often they make thousands of times what the lowest paid employee makes.

Uncomfortable as it makes some of the more reasonable people on the right, the simple fact is that income inequality is a significant and growing problem.

If the rich are rich and everyone else is middle class, then it isn't a big deal. But if the rich are rich because they're squeezing the middle class and pushing people into poverty then that is a big deal.

Take a look at these interactive graphs on the subject of income inequality. One thing especially worth noticing is about halfway down the page where it shows real income growth by quintile. Until the mid 1980's pretty much everyone was slowly getting a bit richer as time passed. Then suddenly the extremely rich started getting **MUCH** richer, and everyone else saw their income stagnating or even shrinking.

Since 1973 fully 20% of the American population has seen their income shrink, and they were the poorest to begin with.

In the early 1980's someone preaching Trump style quasi-Fascism would never have gotten an success. Fascism is one of the failure states of Democracy that can only kick in when a large number of people are economically suffering.

Today, even though we've "recovered" from the Great Recession we haven't really. Jobs are still scarce, and jobs that pay a middle class wage are vanishing at a truly disturbing rate.

In that environment, people are willing to listen to the message the Republicans have been pushing for decades and take it frighteningly seriously. The Republicans say that the bad people (black people, Mexicans, liberals, Jews, professors, intellectuals, environmentalists, Muslims, gay people, women, basically anyone who isn't a straight white Christian man) are responsible for the bad things in the world and if you vote Republican than the Republicans will punish, or kill, the bad people and then everything will be all right again.

It was called the Southern Strategy originally because it was formulated specifically to exploit the racial resentment of straight, cis, white, Christian men in the Deep South. But it has never been exclusively Southern in its application.

So while I think corb is, regrettably, correct in thinking that Trump represents the first of many increasingly openly Fascist candidates, I think she's incorrect in thinking that the Republican party is especially interested in purging itself of Fascism. Proto-Fascism has been, after all, the main way the Party has been getting enough votes to be a nationally relevant party since 1964. Even if the Republicans were willing to address the problem (and so far they aren't, none of the major #neverTrump voices has really cared to explore why their Party was susceptible to Trump), I doubt very strongly that they would be willing to end the propaganda that has so successfully been winning them votes.

And I do hold the Democrats to be almost as culpable. Triangulating around harsh austerity measures, refusing to take the necessary tax and regulatory steps to reign in the massive theft of wealth by the billionaire looter class, quietly going along with Republican plans to loot and oppress black people, the list goes on. While the Democrats position themselves as the Part that is horrified by Republicans stirring up racism for votes, the Democrats don't do anything that actually addresses any of the problems that make stirring up racism for votes to be an effective strategy.
posted by sotonohito at 12:42 PM on May 24, 2016 [19 favorites]

As for what is the matter with the RJC and other Republican groups endorsing Trump despite the clear threat he represents to their constituents, I'd guess it comes down to two big things:

1) They put their economic agenda and prejudices above other concerns. Trump may be a Fascist who will likely lead to a rise in violence against them, but they think that preventing talk about income inequality, preventing any hint of taxes for the rich increasing, and so on is more important than the risk of increasing Fascism.

2) Because of 1, they imagine that he is all talk and no action, that his Fascist ranting is just a show for the yokels and he doesn't really mean it, that they can tame him, that they can use his popularity to push through some of their own projects that they haven't been able to get done.
posted by sotonohito at 12:51 PM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

A plea for help, I've been trolling the fever swamps of the various Republican blogs and so far haven't found much if any musing from the voices of #neverTrump on why they think their (supposedly sane and reasonable) party went for him. Has anyone else found something I've missed, or is that really the near completely taboo subject it appears to be?
posted by sotonohito at 12:53 PM on May 24, 2016

I don't really think that #neverTrump is a thing, though. A lot of people are willing to make concessions.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:56 PM on May 24, 2016

Patrick Iber and Mike Konczal: Karl Polanyi for President

This piece was included in a non-election-related FPP earlier today, but because it places a lot of themes of this election in a historical context, I thought it was worth linking to here. Worth reading in its entirety, but for the tl;dr-inclined:

One candidate, Bernie Sanders, has argued explicitly that health care and education-two things that the New Deal mostly left alone-should be rights and therefore accessible to all. While public policy pundits fight over the specifics, they miss that Sanders, by discussing these things as rights instead of just policies, has changed the nature of the debate. This key distinction helps explain why tens of thousands have turned out to Sanders rallies across the country-not to mention the millions who have supported him online and at the polls-demonstrating enthusiasm for a politics that he explicitly identifies as "democratic socialism." But what kind of socialism?

[...]

So more people are talking about Polanyi than I thought. But can he really help us understand the 2016 presidential election?

Certainly! First, Polanyi wouldn't have been surprised by the rise of Trump. He knew that the double movement-the protective steps that people take when exposed to too much unfettered capitalism-does not always benefit the left. Trump supporters clamoring to make America great again reflect one version of this; they hearken to a time when life was more secure and stable, at least for certain types of working- and middle-class whites.

In fact, one of the reasons that Polanyi rushed The Great Transformation to press was to warn post-Second World War policymakers that poor economic institutions could lead-through the double movement-to disastrous consequences for democracy. For Polanyi, it would make sense that the Sanders and Trump insurgencies happened simultaneously, and that there are some people who would rank those two as their favored candidates, in spite of them seeming to come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Both campaigns are based in part in complaints about the corrosive effects of exposure to global markets. Both are against so-called "free trade" and skeptical of open borders, though only Trump's campaign is shot through with xenophobia and only Sanders wants to reform the Wall Street practices responsible for the Great Recession. Still, in spite of all their differences, both Sanders and Trump look like expressions of "double movement" politics.

Is Bernie Sanders the only "Polanyian" Democrat?

Not at all. Democrats have taken up Polanyian arguments in response to many of the market-fundamentalist notions that the Tea Party has helped to circulate in recent years. The most notable example might be President Obama and Elizabeth Warren's "you didn't build that" faux-controversy from 2011 and 2012. [...]

But Polanyi also helps explains some of the tensions within the Democratic Party. One of the divides within the Democratic primary between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton has been between a social-democratic and a "progressive" but market-friendly vision of addressing social problems. Take, for example, health care. Sanders proposes a single-payer system in which the government pays and health care directly, and he frames it explicitly in the language of rights: "healthcare is a human right and should be guaranteed to all Americans regardless of wealth or income."

Clinton, meanwhile, describes affordable health care as a right. Clinton also wants higher education to remain a market commodity, because she says that if the government paid, it would needlessly be giving a free ride to the children of the wealthy and the upper-middle class. Clinton's reasoning appeals to ideas of market efficiency, while Sanders, in stating that "Education should be a right, not a privilege," appeals to ideas of community beyond markets.

Sanders here offers a straightforward defense of decommodification-the idea that some things do not belong in the marketplace-that is at odds with the kind of politics that the leadership of the Democratic Party has offered more or less since Carter and the narrow policy "wonk" focus that tends to dominate coverage.

posted by tonycpsu at 12:58 PM on May 24, 2016 [16 favorites]

Just received a very entertaining political mailer (spoiler: from the California Republican Party, transcribed below formatted as on the mailer)

Just like Bernie Sanders,
Bill Ostrander wants to
overturn Citizens United
eliminating freedom of speech
for corporations.
On June 7th, tell
Democrat Bill Ostrander
he's TOO LIBERAL
for Congress!

Okay, what idiot with the Cal GOP thinks "freedom of speech for corporations" is an issue you can rally support around? I suspect if you polled some of the more conservative small business owners around here, (if they're not incorporated themselves) they either wouldn't give a rat's ass about corporations having speech rights or be against it. Besides, "freedom of speech for corporations" is NOT what Citizens United (as I know it) is all about. Some Spin Doctor apparently spun around until he got dizzy and fell down.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:23 PM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

Here is the list of people Sanders has also asked his supporters to contribute to:

I appreciate that Sanders is starting to turn his attention to fundraising "down ballot" races. But these are all really down ballot - none of the candidates are running for federal office. I loved the fifty state strategy, I see how important it is to develop a deep bench of talented people who can eventually run for federal office. Isn't it a little weird, though, that in Sanders' quest for a political revolution that will require a Congress situated to pass his legislative agenda he's still not devoting much energy to supporting candidates for Congress? I'm legitimately curious what the strategy here is. I can't recall an instance of a high profile presidential candidate spending their energy on local races like this.
posted by one_bean at 1:41 PM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

corb: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU ARE YOU INSANE.

The RJC is a neocon pro-Israel group who believes that the Obama administration has been a disaster for Israel-American relations. They're constantly harping in their twitter feed and press statements about it. Stuff like this. They see Israel's security as primary and all other concerns as secondary, and also believe that the danger of antisemitism is far more pronounced on the left than the right. These are all standard right wing talking posts aimed at Jewish voters. So any Republican candidate who refuses to continue Obama administration policies with regard to Israel is going to get their support. They'll justify voting for a thin-skinned egomaniacal orange fascist because in their mind he's "good for Israel" and by extension "good for the Jews." Not exactly the most forward-thinking bunch.

Here's the good news, at least from my perspective: the difference between the RJC and the average Jewish American is we of the latter group generally don't place Israel at the top of our priority list when it comes to voting for a candidate. Israel as a Jewish homeland is important to many American Jews. But a majority of us vote for Democrats, likely because that party is more in line with our (collective) beliefs about social issues.
posted by zarq at 1:46 PM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

Okay, what idiot with the Cal GOP thinks "freedom of speech for corporations" is an issue you can rally support around?

It's like some fucked up Claire McCaskill deal where she got the wingnut through the primary that would be far easier to beat later. Except the Republicans don't realize that jungle primaries means not that he'll probably be up against Bill Ostrander and easier to beat in the general but he'll probably be kicked out earlier in the jungle primary.
posted by Talez at 1:47 PM on May 24, 2016

Change comes from the bottom up, is what I think the strategy is.
posted by Ruki at 1:48 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

As for what is the matter with the RJC

With the RJC, I think it's very simple, and has nothing to do with economic interests.

I'd say their main concern is the conflict between Iran and Netanyahu's Israel. Clinton backed the Iran nuclear deal, and Obama's has been at odds with Netanyahu to the point where Israel was lobbying against Obama directly.

So from their perspective a "few bad apples" doesn't make up for their massive opposition to Democrats. Plus Trump says he's going to contain Muslims. Of course they're going to back him.

Bottom line, it's important to not just place all support for Trump on economic terms. He's good at manipulating fears as well.

Edit: or what Zarq said.
posted by happyroach at 1:50 PM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'd say their main concern is the conflict between Iran and Netanyahu's Israel. Clinton backed the Iran nuclear deal, and Obama's has been at odds with Netanyahu to the point where Israel was lobbying against Obama directly.

I had forgotten about Iran and Clinton's support of the deal. Good point!
posted by zarq at 1:54 PM on May 24, 2016

the difference between the RJC and the average Jewish American is we of the latter group generally don't place Israel at the top of our priority list when it comes to voting for a candidate.

I think there are also a considerable number of people who believe that Obama's policies are actually better for Israel's security than Likud's or the GOP's.
posted by Golden Eternity at 2:04 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Jane Kim is the first Korean American to win election in San Francisco, and she's running to become a California state senator. The daughter of immigrants, Jane is a civil rights attorney who's fought for affordable housing and fair wages in her city.

This is a bit of an interesting one on Sanders' list. I like Jane Kim a lot, but the background here is important. She's running for CA State Senate to represent the 11th district, that's basically San Francisco + a little bit of San Mateo. The district went 83% for Obama in 2012. Her only real opponent is Scott Weiner. Both are Democrats. Weiner is, yes, considered less progressive, but only by the standards of San Francisco politics, where being a lead proponent of a soda tax, putting measures on the ballot to better fund public transportation, mandating solar panels on new construction, mandating parental leave for private employers in the City, and literally slamming the door on Fox News cameras is not enough to make you a progressive.

And while the debate here in San Francisco is framed as moderate vs. progressive, these would both be two very progressive candidates practically anywhere else in the country. As tends to happen when the candidates mostly agree, the debate has become increasingly ugly. They have disagreements on certain policies to be sure, but both are quite left on a national scale. And I say all this as someone who generally supports Jane Kim and who has been turned off by a bunch of Weiner's efforts.

In terms of best using his time and resources, I'm not sure why Sanders would target this race; it's essentially guaranteed to elect a progressive Democrat no matter who wins. Why not focus on a race where Sanders' involvement could make more of a difference?
posted by zachlipton at 2:07 PM on May 24, 2016 [9 favorites]

I think there are also a considerable number of people who believe that Obama's policies are actually better for Israel's security than Likud's or the GOP's.

I agree completely. I'm one of them.
posted by zarq at 2:10 PM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

And I do hold the Democrats to be almost as culpable.

I wonder if our black, hispanic, gay, trans friends, or any of our other comrades who are less privileged than we white, cis, straight guys feel that the Democrats are roughly as bad as the Republicans.
posted by Justinian at 2:13 PM on May 24, 2016 [10 favorites]

Jake Tapper on Trump's Vince Foster bullshit.
posted by chris24 at 2:14 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's kind of fitting, now that Netanyahu and Likud are coming to resemble Trump and his GOP more and more.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:18 PM on May 24, 2016

That being said, Clinton left almost no sunlight between her and Bibi at her awful, terrifying AIPAC speech.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:21 PM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Justinian, I think you're mis-reading the comment. It's not that the dems are "as bad" as the GOP, just that they could have taken steps to directly address economic inequality directly many times since 1980 and probably a bunch of other stuff that would have prevented the rise of Trump but they didn't.

They had opportunities to be part of the solution but chose to be part of the problem instead.
posted by VTX at 2:21 PM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

I think there are also a considerable number of people who believe that Obama's policies are actually better for Israel's security than Likud's or the GOP's.

The hardline right in Israel is a threat to Israeli security. The government of Israel =/= Israel, and it sure as heck =/= Jews.
posted by Meatbomb at 2:22 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

No one was making those comparisons...
posted by zombieflanders at 2:24 PM on May 24, 2016

NYT: Reeling From 2016 Chaos, G.O.P. Mulls Overhaul of Primaries

... Mr. Trump won the primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina, where voters are not required to be party members. That has spurred some from the party’s conservative wing, including many supporters of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, to question whether independents are exercising too much influence in Republican contests.

Of course, any changes made now cannot address the unforeseeable. Republicans thought that reforms enacted after the 2012 campaign, such as limiting the number of debates and compressing the nominating calendar, would help make the process less unpredictable this time. It did not turn out that way.

“It’s always the problem,” said Ms. Kamarck, “that you’re fighting the last battle.”
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:26 PM on May 24, 2016

Wait, they limited the number of debates this year? To what, the number of grains of sand on the beach?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:35 PM on May 24, 2016 [8 favorites]

Republicans Are Breaking Obamacare So They Can Declare It Broken
posted by zachlipton at 2:38 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

I wonder if our black, hispanic, gay, trans friends, or any of our other comrades who are less privileged than we white, cis, straight guys feel that the Democrats are roughly as bad as the Republicans.

There were eleven Democrats that voted in favor of HB2 in NC. There were 17 Democratic Senators that voted for the 2003 ban on late-term D&E abortion. 5 Democratic Senators voted against the DREAM Act.

Any gains that have been made are because these "comrades who are less privileged" have been shouting and protesting and lobbying and running for office and eventually enough people in power have listened. Yes, where these gains have been made, they've been made through the Democratic Party. But that doesn't mean everyone with a D next to their name gets cover for the shitty actions they take. And if the Democratic party continues to support a person who voted in favor of HB2, instead of finding someone else to run among the large pool of people who didn't show support for the bill, then they don't get to claim they're on the side of social justice. I don't expect people to always get it right, but when they get it so very very wrong there needs to be some institutional response from the party. If you're an elected Democrat and you're not Wendy Davis-ing every bullshit GOP [everything]-phobic bill that comes up -- even if you know you can't win -- then you're not doing enough.
posted by melissasaurus at 2:40 PM on May 24, 2016 [25 favorites]

Israel as a Jewish homeland is important to many American Jews

As a Jewish-American, my homeland is, and always will be my native New York until The Messiah Comes...
posted by mikelieman at 2:40 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Folks, really really let's not have any kind of Israel debate in here, just in case anybody was thinking "what this thread needs is a vigorous discussion about Israel"
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:46 PM on May 24, 2016 [35 favorites]

Republicans Are Breaking Obamacare So They Can Declare It Broken

No shit. Not to mention refusing to fix any of the minor kinks and such that are going to be the case with any piece of major, complex legislation.

I'm still mad about the fact that (statistically speaking) hundreds or thousands of people have died because Republican state legislators have refused to expand Medicaid even as the federal government offered an unprecedentedly high level of matching dollars as incentive. It's literally a policy that poor people can fuck off and die.
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:48 PM on May 24, 2016 [18 favorites]

[Folks, really really let's not have any kind of Israel debate in here, just in case anybody was thinking "what this thread needs is a vigorous discussion about Israel"]

Thank you, LM.
posted by zarq at 3:15 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Both Sanders and his surrogates are still insisting that they're Going All The Way! to the convention. I really, really hope this is typical rhetoric where you don't even hint you might concede until you actually do. Because we can't afford infighting in the five weeks between California and the convention. It'll giftwrap things for Trump.
posted by Justinian at 3:21 PM on May 24, 2016

(The latest poll from yesterday shows Clinton leading Sanders in CA 57-39. Which would be a blowout in the most important and largest Democratic state in the country.)
posted by Justinian at 3:26 PM on May 24, 2016

It's not that the dems are "as bad" as the GOP, just that they could have taken steps

This is actually the casualty of the godforsaken two-party system.

When you have one party who is perceived - accurately or otherwise - to support BadX 100%, and you go for the party who supports BadX 75% - or fuck, even 17% - you don't want to hear about how your party could stand to support BadX less, because you're like "That one! That party over there! They are doing it more!"

But the thing is, while it does really matter, in the end, that they are doing it more, it also matters that your party is doing it, because while you refuse to call out your own party for the 17% or whatever because the other party is doing it worse, the next time you look, your party is at 20%. And then the next time, they're at 24%. And every time you think about taking a hard look at your own party, someone calls out - "Stop them! They're at 100% of BadX!"

I will be honest. I saw the Republicans pandering to what I must now accurately term, "the mob", to gain votes - the 'panem et circenses' crowd that we all talk about being worried about. And I didn't stand up to it or counter it, because from my perspective, the Democrats were catering to the mob far worse and it was a real problem and they were the only ones fighting against it even somewhat, so we couldn't afford to get our house in order because by God the Democrats were going to ruin everything.

And now my party has Trump, who is hoping to ride the mob all the way to FascistTown, and the only hope we have of stopping him is basically trying to sneak the One Ring into Mordor.

And it's really, really fucking easy to think, "Ha-ha! Republicans! We told you so!" and to dismiss any suggestion that the Democrats also have problems within their own party as just "False equivalence". And this election, maybe you can't afford to look at that 17%. But on November 9, that 17% needs to be looked at. I don't even know what it is. But I look at the Democratic party tearing themselves apart, and it's pretty clear that some problems exist. Maybe it's the circular firing squad, maybe something else that is obvious to people on the inside and they're ignoring too. But parties don't tear themselves apart like this when everything is healthy and just fine.
posted by corb at 3:30 PM on May 24, 2016 [23 favorites]

Oh, I agree completely that the Democratic party has problems. As you say, though, I think the time to worry about those problems is November 9th.
posted by Justinian at 3:35 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

I wonder if our black, hispanic, gay, trans friends, or any of our other comrades who are less privileged than we white, cis, straight guys feel that the Democrats are roughly as bad as the Republicans.

Thank god we have the democrats to protect us from all the crazy things Trump is proposing, like mass deportations and indiscriminate murder of muslims.
posted by no regrets, coyote at 3:42 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

[Folks, really really let's not have any kind of Israel debate in here, just in case anybody was thinking "what this thread needs is a vigorous discussion about Israel"]

I'm likewise concerned that Hillary may diverge from Obama on foreign policy. It is clear from the Ben Rhodes uproar that the anti-Iran Deal 'echo chamber' is undeterred. I think she will face heavy pressure to void the Iran deal if possible and intervene in Syria. She's apparently ideologically more interventionist than Obama. I hope she doesn't give in too much to this pressure, but it is seemingly just not possible for a President to completely abandon the "Washington playbook," as we have discovered with Obama.
posted by Golden Eternity at 3:58 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Many of the negotiations that led to the Iran deal happened under Clinton's State Department. Clinton named Wendy Sherman (discussed above for her remarks on comfort women), who was the lead negotiator of the Iran deal, as one of her picks for the platform committee. I have no doubt that America will get involved in some disappointing intervention somewhere in the world, but she seems rather on board with the Iran deal.
posted by zachlipton at 4:08 PM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Thank god we have the democrats to protect us from all the crazy things Trump is proposing, like mass deportations and indiscriminate murder of muslims.

What's the thing called again when you pretend two things are the same but actually they're totally not?

I am not defending the policies in your links; obviously it would be better if no innocent people were killed, and if no undocumented families were detained or deported. However, the things you are linking to are in no way whatsoever similar to what Trump is proposing.

Trump has called for the deportation of hundreds of thousands--perhaps millions--of undocumented immigrants, but your first link calls the planned ICE raids similar in scope to raids in January that "resulted in the detention of 121 people."

Trump has called for the indiscriminate carpet-bombing of ISIS and their families, which would result in killing tens of thousands of people at minimum, but your second link is about the deaths of a total of 165 civilians (out of 200 total killed) over a 13-month period.

Oh, I just remembered-- it's called "false equivalence"
posted by dersins at 4:20 PM on May 24, 2016 [24 favorites]

I don't know anything about the Ben Rhodes thing -- two minutes of googling leads me to believe it's some dustup about Iran treaty negotiation timelines?

But yeah, I can't imagine Clinton reversing the deal she worked so hard to build.
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:22 PM on May 24, 2016

The odds of Clinton repudiating the Iran deal are zero. Zero.
posted by Justinian at 4:34 PM on May 24, 2016

second link is about the deaths of a total of 165 civilians (out of 200 total killed) over a 13-month period.

I'm not a defender of drone strikes but you need to be more careful in your language or you risk discrediting your position. The link claims that 35 were intended targets. Nowhere does it say that the others were "civilians." If you blow up a SUV containing a target person and three bodyguards, no civilians were killed, yet 75% were not the primary target. There no doubt have been some civilian casualties, but the numbers you cite are not supported by the documents.

The linked article itself uses suspect statistics. They cite two completely different sources for their statistics. The number of targets is allegedly from a leaked government Powerpoint slide. The number of casualties is compiled from journalist reports. You really can't link these two without knowing if then even refer to the same operations, time periods, or countries.

I think that drone strikes are a bad policy, but this kind of journalism is garbage and doesn't help the cause.
posted by JackFlash at 4:47 PM on May 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

Tonight they start counting the Washington ballots! But be ready for a loooooong wait for results given probably half the votes expected are just hitting mail boxes today. Usually takes us 2-3 days to get a result.

However, Trump will win handily and the Democratic primary is irrelevant. So no reason to care.
posted by dw at 5:03 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Re Sanders downballot races:
"Carol Ammons became the first African-American woman to win election in her district of the Illinois State Legislature, scoring an upset election victory against a well-funded establishment opponent. She's fighting for progressive issues and candidates and deserves our support."

Carol Ammons is running unopposed (she was unopposed in the primary and is unopposed in the general) and his support for her -- instead of Democrats and progressives in hard-fought races in what is going to be one of the ugliest Illinois legislative battles in years because we still have no state budget and electing just three more Democrats is the difference between getting a Democratic state budget and throwing millions of Illinoisians who rely on state support (disabled, elderly, hungry children, special ed) under the bus, who are already losing services -- is getting him some SUPER BAD PRESS from solidly Progressive outlets in Illinois who are PISSED. He's raising money for someone with no opponent that he's going to "split" with her (which most people are taking to mean he will take it all -- or that they'll split it and her campaign will donate it back to Bernie), and drawing off donations that are badly needed in tighter races by embattled progressive Democrats.

I'm seeing just FURY from local (Bernie-supporting) progressives who are enraged he's using Ammons for meaningless PR and fundraising for himself while drawing off necessary support for Illinois progressives who need the publicity and donations. It's a pretty big misstep from his team, and it shows a total lack of knowledge about or commitment to local progressive candidates.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:04 PM on May 24, 2016 [46 favorites]

(The latest poll from yesterday shows Clinton leading Sanders in CA 57-39. Which would be a blowout in the most important and largest Democratic state in the country.)

But, like I keep saying, one poll. On the plus side, it's consistent with the same poll run a month ago by the same agency. On the minus side, it's consistent with the same poll run a month ago by the same agency.

The poll of polls does suggest Bernie's going to lose, though.
posted by dw at 5:09 PM on May 24, 2016

ride the mob all the way to FascistTown

Now I'm gonna have Lipps Inc in my head for days. Evil, pure and simple from the eighth dimension.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:12 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

But, like I keep saying, one poll.

Sure, but SurveyUSA is the most accurate pollster by 538's pollster ratings. And by far the best large pollster. I don't think Clinton will win by 20 points but it's certainly a good sign for her campaign to have SurveyUSA showing her up by that much.

I'm seeing a lot of Trump fatigue in the media today. He keeps spewing bullshit and they keep calling him out on it and nothing happens. They don't really know what to do.
posted by Justinian at 5:19 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Justinian I wonder if our black, hispanic, gay, trans friends, or any of our other comrades who are less privileged than we white, cis, straight guys feel that the Democrats are roughly as bad as the Republicans.

Look, I realize we're on different sides of a lot of things, but it'd be nice if you weren't grossly misrepresenting what I say, especially on something so absolutely fucking essential as preventing the future rise of Fascism in America.

I'm down with it if you disagree with what I actually say. But when you strawman me it really irks me.

No, Justinian, I did not say that the Democrats were roughly as bad as the Republicans. If you actually bothered to read what I wrote you'd see that. I think you might be well advised to consider your reasoning for so badly misrepresenting, or possibly misunderstanding, what I actually said.

The Democrats, however good they are in a multitude of other areas, have almost completely failed when it comes to dealing with, or even acknowledging, the economic pain that is a necessary precondition for the rise of Fascism in general and the rise of Trump right now in specific.

The Republicans, who have been actively and vigorously pursuing policies that could hardly have been better designed to produce preconditions for Fascism are more to blame, but while they were doing that the Democrats basically ignored it.

There may be valid reasons why the Democrats thought that ignoring, and several occasions actively supporting and abetting, the Republican efforts to lay the foundations for Fascism was a good policy. But the Democrats have, at absolute best, been passively letting the Republicans establish the necessary economic preconditions for Fascism and have been far too meek and polite about calling out the way the Republicans have been dogwhistling racism, misogyny, homophobia, and religious bigotry as a means of drumming up votes, which also helps build up the social conditions necessary for Fascism.

This is a completely separate issue from other things, including good things, the Democrats have been doing.

Note, again, that this is not a statement that the Democrats are roughly as bad as the Republicans. It **IS** a statement that the Democrats have a large amount of responsibility for the rise of Trump and American Fascism; not as large as the Republican responsibility, not as deliberate as what the Republican leadership was doing.

But that responsibility exists and we need to identify it in order to reverse that trend. I'm not even interested in laying blame, just fixing the problem.
posted by sotonohito at 5:20 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Funky Town is a lot more fun than FascistTown.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:20 PM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

I'm gonna have Lipps Inc in my head for days
Try the 1986 Pseudo Echo version on that earworm... not great, but several dimensions less evil.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:22 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Okay, folks. Call my somewhat heavy prediction here. Just got off a call with Cruz staff and their media wranglers - they are trying to push back VERY HARD on the #NeverTrumpers within the Cruz delegation. It's actually kind of bizarre - they're telling people not to have contact with the media if they think they might go off on Donald Trump, but that's completely unenforceable.

Given the pushback and some of the language, though - including suggestions of "Tell the media you will take your cue from Ted Cruz" - I have a nasty, ugly suspicion that we're going to see Cruz endorsing or at least seeming to tolerate Trump in the near future.
posted by corb at 5:56 PM on May 24, 2016 [18 favorites]

Corb, that's one of the more disturbing pieces of news in this thread. Which is saying a LOT.
posted by Superplin at 6:09 PM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Cruz doesn't have any other option, though. The party is embracing Trump. That's it.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:10 PM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

Given the pushback and some of the language, though - including suggestions of "Tell the media you will take your cue from Ted Cruz" - I have a nasty, ugly suspicion that we're going to see Cruz endorsing or at least seeming to tolerate Trump in the near future.

Of course he is. Ideologically they're like 98% the same candidate, all the primary bluster was just posturing. Just like every other Republican of note, he'll march in lockstep behind Trump.
posted by kafziel at 6:14 PM on May 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

That virtually the entire Republican establishment is apparently willing to support the possibility of an actual literal fascist dictatorship over a president who might be able to enact some policies they disagree with, demonstrates a level of cravenness and moral bankruptcy that I would not have expected even of Dick Cheney on his face-shootiest day.

Looks like I picked the wrong election cycle to quit sniffing glue.
posted by dersins at 6:18 PM on May 24, 2016 [28 favorites]

Cruz started the campaign praising Trump, though. He only really switched it up when it seemed like #nevertrump might have enough legs to get him the nomination. I’m not shocked he’s changing his tune again; I assume he’s trying to position himself as the consensus candidate (of highly-motivated GOP voters, anyway) in 2020.
posted by nicepersonality at 6:20 PM on May 24, 2016

Ideologically [Cruz and Trump are] like 98% the same candidate, all the primary bluster was just posturing. Just like every other Republican of note, he'll march in lockstep behind Trump.

I wish that were the case. Trump isn't ideologically anything besides Trumpican.
posted by Etrigan at 6:22 PM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

I wish that were the case. Trump isn't ideologically anything besides Trumpican.

If Trump loses, conservatives will be able to make a solid case that the Rs once again failed to nominate a candidate who was conservative enough.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:25 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sorry to disappoint -- @realDonaldTrump is terrific. #DealWithIt
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:26 PM on May 24, 2016

I agree! To quote the great Terry Pratchett, "Elves are fantastic -- they inspire fantasy. Elves are awesome -- they inspire awe. Elves are terrific -- they inspire terror."
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:37 PM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

If Trump loses, conservatives will be able to make a solid case that the Rs once again failed to nominate a candidate who was conservative enough.

Conservatism never fails; it is only failed.
posted by Etrigan at 6:39 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Hey, that's MY line!
posted by Chrysostom at 6:41 PM on May 24, 2016

Hey, that's MY line!

Nah.
posted by one_bean at 6:48 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

If Trump loses, conservatives will be able to make a solid case that the Rs once again failed to nominate a candidate who was conservative enough.

Great! Let them keep thinking that. It keeps them from realizing they lose because they run shitty candidates and have shitty policies.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:58 PM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

I think that the some old patricians of the GOP think Trump is just making it up for the marks, but secretly he is one of them. This terrifies me the most. They underestimate the danger.
posted by humanfont at 6:59 PM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

He's raising money for someone with no opponent that he's going to "split" with her (which most people are taking to mean he will take it all -- or that they'll split it and her campaign will donate it back to Bernie), and drawing off donations that are badly needed in tighter races by embattled progressive Democrats.

If people are furious about the mere possibility of Sanders theoretically doing this they should be absolutely enraged and explode into small mushroom clouds over the Hillary Victory Fund which Clinton formed last year doing the same thing by "splitting" funds with 33 state Democratic parties. This is the fund that the money from the $358,000-per-seat George Clooney events have gone to.

The Clinton campaign's participation in the fund is only responsible for 5400/358000 ≅ 1.5% of that maximum donation but you can see on Open Secrets (and in these WaPo and Politico articles) that nearly all of the money the fund has put out has gone to her campaign, the DNC Services Corp, or "expenses" that just so happen to go to contractors for the Clinton campaign.

When the fund was formed last year several of the other Democratic candidates protested (Maybe all of them? I didn't track down the response of every campaign.) In the WaPo article from February:

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Lawrence Noble, a former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) who is now with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “Joint victory funds are not intended to be separate operating committees that just support a single candidate. But they appear to be turning the traditional notion of a joint committee into a Hillary fundraising committee.”

I think this fund and the relatively tiny amounts of money it has shared with the state parties, which could theoretically be passed on to down-ticket races though there's no requirement for that, are the basis for the meme we constantly hear that supposedly Clinton supports down-ballot races but Sanders doesn't.

But if Bernie doing this and not sharing the proceeds in one particular race (if that were to be what he actually did) would deplete a local donor pool as EMcG says, Clinton tapping the donation limits of two thirds of the state organizations to draw $60 million and counting nationwide will have done much worse and has actually accomplished the opposite of supporting down-ballot races across the country.

Whether or not there's some rationale to make this okay for Clinton to do but still unconscionable on Bernie's part, it's McCutcheon v. FEC which by invalidating aggregate contribution limits massively increased the amount of money that can be pumped into a joint fund like this, so I guess that's one part of campaign finance we won't see reformed under a Clinton administration.
posted by XMLicious at 7:07 PM on May 24, 2016 [13 favorites]

Given the pushback and some of the language, though - including suggestions of "Tell the media you will take your cue from Ted Cruz" - I have a nasty, ugly suspicion that we're going to see Cruz endorsing or at least seeming to tolerate Trump in the near future.

Has anyone checked his basement for pods?
posted by zarq at 7:17 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think that the some old patricians of the GOP think Trump is just making it up for the marks, but secretly he is one of them. This terrifies me the most. They underestimate the danger.

Bear in mind that the people who seem resistant to Trump are folks like Mitt Romney and that list of key GOP donors who are sitting this one out. I certainly believe there are Republicans who think Trump is just putting on a show, but there's a decent case that the big money donors are the ones giving this year a pass.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:18 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I feel like this is a weird year though, because the media is going to cover Trump whether or not he has any paid anything.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:21 PM on May 24, 2016

The donors are pulling out - we were told one reason for the 900$ fee just to register this year is that sponsors were not funding Trump's convention.
posted by corb at 7:24 PM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

XMLicious, this is Bernie supporters feeling betrayed, not general Democrats bitching. Haven't seen much reaction from the Hilary people except some eyerolling that fundraising for a candidate with no opponent isn't your best PR move. It isn't pesonal for them. For Bernie supporters it's personal. It also only came out today so they're probably blowing off some immediate rage, who knows how they'll feel after a few days.

The Illinois budget crisis is super-bad, though, and most people have at least one affected family member who has already lost services. I'm hearing a lot of "He could have helped actual economically vulnerable Illinoisans but went for empty PR that does literally nothing to advance Progressive causes in Illinois." People's kids are going without medical care and schools are cutting 20% of their staffs, so I think it feels extra pesonal to progressives who support Bernie's economic ideas and have stumped and canvassed for him, like they are being personally sacrificed to just another campaign machine.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:26 PM on May 24, 2016 [14 favorites]

$900 registration fee!?

Do you get to see a breakdown of where that money goes? I have to wonder how much of that is the cost of putting on a show vs. how much of that is naked fundraising for the GOP. Or going straight into somebody's pockets.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 7:27 PM on May 24, 2016

Are the donors pulling out of the downballot or just the presidential race? I understand focusing their money on something else, but if they pull out funding for downballot then what are the Republicans in congress going to be left with? Their whole job is basically to translate whatever the donor wants into simplistic rhetoric to appeal to people who don't necessarily share their concerns but also don't like the idea of government.
posted by downtohisturtles at 7:36 PM on May 24, 2016

the big money donors are the ones giving this year a pass.
Wish that it were so... most of the political $$$ not going to Trump will instead go to downticket Republicans to ensure that whoever is elected President won't be able to get out of bed without the approval of the most conservative Congress since the Civil War. If Trump wins, he will never get to go "full Fascist", but will instead take full credit for rubber-stamping the most regressive laws the oxymoronically-named Freedom Caucus can come up with. If Hillary wins, the obstructionism will be mind-boggling... do you REALLY think they'll let her nominate any Supreme Court justices... ever?
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:37 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

do you REALLY think they'll let her nominate any Supreme Court justices... ever?

Yes. If Clinton wins she'll nominate and get through a nominee.
posted by Justinian at 7:38 PM on May 24, 2016 [8 favorites]

Dems discuss dropping Wasserman Schultz
posted by Golden Eternity at 7:46 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Wow. Truly damned if you do, damned if you don't.
posted by kyp at 7:47 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

“It’s very important for her to adopt a role of pouring oil on troubled waters. She did the opposite last week when she poured gasoline on the events that occurred in Nevada,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)

Senator Merkely, I think your metaphors are leaking.
posted by Justinian at 7:55 PM on May 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

Do you get to see a breakdown of where that money goes? I have to wonder how much of that is the cost of putting on a show vs. how much of that is naked fundraising for the GOP. Or going straight into somebody's pockets.

While my initial suspicion was extremely cynical - that the fee exists to keep out reasonable people who aren't heavily vested in the party establishment, especially when I first went to run the numbers - it looks like all of the delegates and alternates will, combined, be contributing about $3 million. Apparently, these conventions expect to cost somewhere around $60 million, which is fucking insane, especially when you consider that doesn't even include hotel rooms. The only thing thus far that I know they're covering is the space, food, 'events', and the convention staff, however many of those exist.
posted by corb at 7:59 PM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Not only that, but for as much as I want to see her gone, DWS was right when she said Sanders' response to NV was unacceptable. The fact that he did not respond with an unequivocal statement against the harassment and threats being levelled was troubling.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:00 PM on May 24, 2016 [12 favorites]

$900 registration fee!?

A friend has been elected a Sanders delegate. He's looking at a $3000-5000 total cost to go to Philly, including airfare, hotel, and everything else.

I can't imagine tossing another $900 on top of that. At those sort of prices you better get a keynote from Shingy and a "gift cave."
posted by dw at 8:01 PM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Dropping DWS would seem to be a suitable concession to offer Sanders and his supporters. It doesn't really accomplish a whole lot, other than losing her a job for somewhat vague reasons (it's her support of the payday loan industry that bothers me more), but it's a direct response to Sanders' complaints about her and the process and looks like a meaningful response. In terms of a designated person to take the fall, she's tempting. Only question is who you put up instead?
posted by zachlipton at 8:05 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

I hate to say it, particularly on the Democratic side, but I do love seeing the conventions actually mean something. I'm so goddamn sick of the 3 day polished party commercial. It's scripted and staged and designed to appeal to certain people at certain designated points in certain pre-planned ways and it's everything wrong about political marketing. Because it all looks like the work of marketers. A lot of us turn the TV off when someone's trying to sell us something. Politicians included. Quit manipulating people.
posted by downtohisturtles at 8:06 PM on May 24, 2016 [8 favorites]

While my initial suspicion was extremely cynical - that the fee exists to keep out reasonable people who aren't heavily vested in the party establishment,

America, land of the free/well subsidized/borrower from friends and family/go-funded democracy/

Pay to play is for the rich and comfy. Going into debt to even get in the door is exclusionary and apparently an expense or burden that we are expected to bear just to have our voice heard.

Nothing new here but fucking gross when laid bare. USA, USA, USA.
posted by futz at 8:15 PM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

The counting is underway in Washington, and Hillary currently leads ~55-45. For that, she will get exactly zero delegates in this pointless election.

Meanwhile, Trump might just net ALL the delegates for Washington.
posted by dw at 8:16 PM on May 24, 2016

The counting is underway in Washington, and Hillary currently leads ~55-45. For that, she will get exactly zero delegates in this pointless election.

However if she wins, WA won't be the only state to come up with a ballot result that is significantly out of step with the caucus results. We need to get rid of these stupid caucuses. They aren't representative at all.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:19 PM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

More ballots so far have been cast for Bernie in Washington (299K) than caucus attendees TOTAL (230K). And he's currently 7% behind Hillary.

There's been a push in Washington to make the Democrats accept the primary. Hoping they get the message for 2020.
posted by dw at 8:23 PM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

Dropping DWS would seem to be a suitable concession to offer Sanders and his supporters.

So after a year of sturm und drang and $200 million down the drain, it basically comes down to Sanders collecting the scalp of his imagined personal tormentor.

That's some revolution there.
posted by JackFlash at 8:31 PM on May 24, 2016 [21 favorites]

I was a panelist at a convention on the day of the WA caucus, so I sent in an absentee affidavit. Later that day, I got into a conversation with a starry-eyed believer in the caucus system. The caucuses encourage involvement with the party, you see. It's totally democratic, he says.

"Sure," I told him, "if you're comfortable with excluding everyone who can't get there, which is basically what happens since the absentee stuff is tough to find. And if you're okay with excluding people with social anxiety, or anyone facing voter intimidation at home or from their neighbors, and if you're okay with making the whole system tougher for everyone who doesn't benefit from all the same social privilege check-boxes you and I get."

Dude said, with a completely straight face, "There's no social privilege."

And I couldn't really take it any further than that, because I was literally moving into moderating a panel for an already-present audience. But oh god it was so hard to reboot my brain.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:32 PM on May 24, 2016 [16 favorites]

Today I learned Taylor Swift is a neo-Nazi icon among alt-right Trumpists.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:35 PM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Oh, and this nugget:
Current total GOP votes cast (44 delegates to be allocated): 465K
Current total Dem votes cast (ZERO delegates to be allocated): 658K

That's right. Almost 200K more people (so far) have mailed in a ballot for a completely meaningless primary than for the one actually allocating delegates.

Washington. We're just a little crazy.
posted by dw at 8:36 PM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

Ray Walston, Luck Dragon, that's a relic from 4chan (home of the Trumpenjugend alt-right), IIRC. "Tay-tay is my waifu" started there.
posted by stolyarova at 8:38 PM on May 24, 2016

T-Swift thinks those guys are assholes. Don't drag her into this.
posted by downtohisturtles at 8:38 PM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

And yes, downtohisturtles is right. She doesn't encourage or sanction 4chan's actions. They're a cesspit.
posted by stolyarova at 8:41 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't

I mean

what
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:42 PM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

I wish that were the case. Trump isn't ideologically anything besides Trumpican.

Yeah, my oldest sister and her family are nearly all born again evangelicals (one nephew who is in the Army may not be so much these days, but his three siblings are). They're also stridently conservative, to the point where we had to collectively tell them to cut it out with proselytizing and political bomb throwing within the family. Anyway, they have been openly discussing their misgivings with Trump and the GOP, and at this point they are settling on Gary Johnson as their candidate of choice.

I think it comes down to integrity, and the fact that they don't believe in racism as an organizing principle (I mean there is some latent racism in their beliefs, like immigration, but they don't openly espouse racism, per se, not the way Trump does). They rightly do not trust Trump's nod to the evangelical base, nor do they see him standing on conservative, spiritual or ethical principles. He's not conservative at all (nor is he really liberal), though he's playing that game right now. They see him as entirely self-serving and therefore untrustworthy, which actually does matter to them, much more than any kind of purported platform differences. However, I must add that their candidate of choice was Cruz, whom I find repulsive, but as they say... at least it's an ethos. Cruz is also self-serving, but he has a constituency, and he's ready and eager to die on many hills for his causes, or take down his opposition, but at least they know he's their guy. Trump? Not at all. They aren't as active as corb is, and they're not using any hashtags on social media, but for the first time in decades the GOP has lost their vote. I suspect they are far from unique in terms of their beliefs and voting choices this election season.
posted by krinklyfig at 8:47 PM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

Apparently, these conventions expect to cost somewhere around $60 million, which is fucking insane, especially when you consider that doesn't even include hotel rooms. The only thing thus far that I know they're covering is the space, food, 'events', and the convention staff, however many of those exist.

Unless that cost includes security (which it might, and I have no idea what security at that level costs, though I assume at this point Secret Service has a big stake in how it works), they are lying to you about that number. $60 million is just cartoonishly off--if they paid for $500 hotel rooms for 5000 people for 3 nights, that's only 7.5mil. And food provided to conventions is usually predicated on a minimum spend--which is usually met by everyone staying at the hotel having breakfast--plus whatever people actually charge. Like, that number is just bonkers, and if it's the number they told you, noope.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:10 PM on May 24, 2016

If the crowning accomplishment of the Sanders campaign is going to be getting a woman fired from her job, I'm going to puke.
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:11 PM on May 24, 2016 [28 favorites]

BTW, my sister's family is a prime example of evangelical conservatives who go to church, who actually "walk the walk." Some polls have made the distinction that Trump's evangelical support is strongest among those who do not attend church. Those evangelicals who do attend church are mostly opposed to him.
posted by krinklyfig at 9:16 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yep, that's what us Sanders supporters want. Women being fired! Honestly... The silly arguments are worse than anything.
posted by downtohisturtles at 9:18 PM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

I shouldn't have to put a /s tag to that but dear God.
posted by downtohisturtles at 9:19 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Washington primary results tonight are surprising.

One nice counter to the narrative that Clinton's supporters lack enthusiasm for her is that twice now -- in Nebraska and Washington State -- hundreds of thousands of people have bothered to vote for her in primaries that literally do not count because delegates have already been awarded through the caucuses.

(Also can you imagine the howls of outrage from low-information Sanders supporters if she had won two caucuses but then he had won the popular vote in those states' subsequent primaries?)

[And to clarify I mean "those Sanders supporters who are low-information" not "all Sanders supporters are low-information," -- I'm not referring to anybody in this thread]
posted by pocketfullofrye at 9:20 PM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

Looking at past costs for 2012 Tampa, it looks like the Cleveland projected budget is 7.5 mil more than Tampa actually spent - though those costs still look crazy to my uneducated eye. 9 mil for construction? 5 mil for transportation? What?

Is the DNC projecting that weirdly high too?
posted by corb at 9:23 PM on May 24, 2016

Is the DNC projecting that weirdly high too?

From Philly.com:

The 2016 Democratic National Convention is expected to cost about $85 million, covering everything from production and program planning to hotel costs and construction.
…
A good portion of [the projected economic] impact could come from the convention committee itself, which plans to spend about $50 million on items such as stage equipment, lights, and catering, and hopes to purchase locally and regionally.

posted by Going To Maine at 9:36 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Big events tend to cost a lot more than it would seem necessary, unless you've planned events. There is never enough money... or it always seems that way. I haven't dug into the numbers, but the budget doesn't sound out of line. From a distance, it *is* crazy to spend that much on a party nomination convention, and IMO this should all be publicly funded (and a much shorter process overall), but if you're gonna have a major party convention for a country of our size and GDP, it's gonna cost a hell of a lot to do it right. It's still obscene, yes, I totally agree.
posted by krinklyfig at 9:38 PM on May 24, 2016

What precisely did DWS do which was so terrible?

"Wasserman Schultz is among a dozen Florida representatives who have cosponsored bipartisan legislation that would delay the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s payday lending rules by two years and void a “deferred presentment transaction” in states with laws similar to Florida’s."

Basically she seems to be trying to delay legislation that protects people from payday lenders. I tend to think a lot of stuff that gets trumped up against Democrat establishment types boils down to people's simplistic misunderstandings of complex issues, but this seems difficult to defend.
posted by pocketfullofrye at 9:42 PM on May 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

Isn't DWS pro-payday loans and a lot of other pretty crappy financial services stuff?
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:42 PM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

How much of the $85 mil is for the national ad vs. the local vendors? Is it purely about TV and promotion or is it a local thing for paying people doing a job? I fully support paying for the people who run things and work the thing day to day. I don't support an ad agency getting paid half of that because they're actually running things to benefit a client.
posted by downtohisturtles at 9:43 PM on May 24, 2016

Beaten, but, yeah. I'm not a huge fan of DWS because she seems far more reflexively anti-far-left-stuff than Clinton herself does.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:44 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

There are various reasons to be cheesed at DWS that have been raised in the thread at a few different spots. However, perhaps a better question is: why is the Sanders campaign cheesed at DWS? The answer to that would seem to come down to perceived unfair treatment during the election. If that hadn’t occurred, it seems unlikely he would go after this particular piece of the power structure.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:45 PM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

Oh, I thought people wanted her to step down because of her actions during the primary not because of her general stances on issues. I do know about her questionable payday loan crap.
posted by Justinian at 9:45 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

What precisely did DWS do which was so terrible? Yes, I know about the debate thing. I agree that the first couple of debates should have been in better timeslots. But surely that's not what has made her the scapegoat here? Something beyond "she's in the tank for Hillary!" would be appreciated. Like actually concrete actions she took which deserve a firing.

Well, as you say, the debates were structured in such a way as to insulate the voting public from Sanders as a candidate as much as possible. And barred people from the debates for questioning the schedule. And created new rules to punish candidates who participated in "unsanctioned" debates. She also denied the Sanders campaign access to voter data to which the Clinton campaign was allowed full access. But that's just overt bias in this primary - she's also been a terrible congresswoman and a terrible chair generally. Here's an article on the subject.
posted by kafziel at 9:50 PM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

DWS' position is a convenient scapegoat. The GOP doesn't much like Prebus, nor did they like Michael Steele, and a lot of times they're just punching bags for their party, while they serve as surrogates defending the party to the media. Chair of the DNC/RNC is a thankless job with a high profile. Nearly anyone who is in that position will be vilified repeatedly from within the party for very minor transgressions, while being given zero credit for any accomplishments, and at the same time act as PR. DWS has made some mistakes, but she is the easiest target, and it kinda goes with the territory. I feel like it's gotten a bit too much lately, however. I'm not at all convinced that she's intentionally hurting Bernie's campaign, although she does act in loyalty to the party (e.g., the "establishment"), which is her job.
posted by krinklyfig at 9:52 PM on May 24, 2016 [8 favorites]

Trump protesters smash door, break through barriers
posted by futz at 9:54 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Isn't DWS pro-payday loans and a lot of other pretty crappy financial services stuff?

Yeah, and I strongly object to it. The Democrats do not need payday lenders as a constituency, ffs.
posted by krinklyfig at 9:56 PM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

If the crowning accomplishment of the Sanders campaign is going to be getting a woman fired from her job, I'm going to puke.

Feeling this. It's not like DWS would be the first politician to fall on their sword to settle down the mob, but I don't think the It's About Ethics in Nevada Delegate Selection fellas are gonna be satisfied with just one witch-berning.
posted by EatTheWeek at 10:10 PM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

DWS also welcomed lobbyist money back into the DNC after it was excluded post-2008.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:13 PM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

I don't support an ad agency getting paid half of that because they're actually running things to benefit a client.

As a thought experiment, I consider what the tone and expenses of campaigns would be like without media-buys. Then I drink more bourbon.
posted by mikelieman at 10:14 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

She also denied the Sanders campaign access to voter data to which the Clinton campaign was allowed full access.

You're not talking about the time DWS temporarily suspended Sanders' access to the voter database for less than 48 hours after four of his campaign staffers illegally accessed and downloaded Clinton's voter information, are you? Because if you are, that's a pretty weird way to describe that incident.

There's plenty of awful things she has done as a Congresswoman and for the DNC, no need to shoot yourself in the foot.
posted by one_bean at 10:16 PM on May 24, 2016 [20 favorites]

The Democrats do not need payday lenders as a constituency, ffs.

If I remember my assigned risk financing days right, those payday lenders operate off a credit line from, say, HSBC.

And everyone wants their support. Well, almost everyone.
posted by mikelieman at 10:17 PM on May 24, 2016

Good lord, that Trump rally futz linked to was about an hour away from me. I didn't know about it, otherwise I'd have been tempted to protest, although not sure if it's counterproductive at this stage.

I signed up on Trump's email list last fall, as well as for text alerts and actual calls from the campaign, just to see what they were doing- I made it easy for the campaign to get in touch, just to see how effective their campaign was. I included my real zip code, and expressed an interest in volunteering (I won't actually do it). I did the same for Obama in 2008 and 2012 (as a supporter, not experiment).

So far, the Trump campaign has no ground game here whatsoever, not as far as I can tell. They communicate with email and text very rarely, at the most a few times a week (usually one a month, maybe), and not to organize, but they are fundraising. They have not once attempted to contact me personally, though I live in a state which just had a Trump rally tonight. By contrast, in 2008 I was getting at the very least 1-3 emails per day from the Obama campaign by this time (often more), local and national, as well as a text before every primary and fundraising push, maybe 5-10 texts a week. So, maybe Trump's constituency is a bit older and not as technically plugged in, but from here their campaign efforts look incredibly weak, not even doing the basics of grassroots outreach. It's stunning.
posted by krinklyfig at 10:22 PM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

four of his campaign staffers illegally accessed and downloaded Clinton's voter information, are you?

The vendor's report, I think, doesn't really support that...

From NGPVAN's Report

On Wednesday morning, there was a release of VAN code. Unfortunately, it contained a bug. For a brief window, the voter data that is always searchable across campaigns in VoteBuilder included client scores it should not have, on a specific part of the VAN system. So for voters that a user already had access to, that user was able to search by and view (but not export or save or act on) some attributes that came from another campaign.

posted by mikelieman at 10:23 PM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

FWIW, I don't hold DWS accountable for the NGPVAN thing. Software developers going, "We fucked up, shut it down until we know WTF we did!" isn't going to come as a huge revelation to many of us...
posted by mikelieman at 10:24 PM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

oh god can we please not do the fucking VAN thing again
posted by dersins at 10:33 PM on May 24, 2016 [9 favorites]

Chair of the DNC/RNC is a thankless job with a high profile. Nearly anyone who is in that position will be vilified repeatedly from within the party for very minor transgressions, while being given zero credit for any accomplishments, and at the same time act as PR.
I don't recall any reports of DWS getting flak from Clinton's campaign, only Sanders'. Which means either (a) she did a very good job for the party and got scapegoated by one candidate or (b) she did a very good job for one candidate only.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:57 PM on May 24, 2016

Somehow the Clinton campaign got exclusive access to internal NGP-VAN documents concerning the incident which they helpfully interpreted for the media with terms like "downloaded" and "intrusion attempt", then DWS as the supposedly-impartial head of the DNC went on national television to among other things make analogies about burglary—after unprecedentedly cutting off the Sanders campaign without notice from their own data in violation of the agreement governing that data being stored in the DNC's contractor's system.

Unprecedentedly, because the same sort of access incident probably happened when DWS was co-chairing the 2008 Clinton campaign and on other occasions, but there were no repercussions whatsoever.

But really, why should any of that ever be mentioned again, it's not like there's some big meeting convened where all the Democrats might discuss their principles and the integrity of party operations and maybe try to make it look like the political establishment of the country actually cares enough to at least address the appearance of impropriety and predetermined outcomes.
posted by XMLicious at 11:12 PM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

oneswellfoop, that may be, but I have seen Bernie supporters getting unto the weeds about the primary process a number of times. It appeared like there were a large number of people on Bernie's side who were unfamiliar with the process, like younger voters and independents, who perceived it to be conspiring against their efforts, when in reality they had never been through it and often reacted to procedural issues in a disproportionate way. But it's not surprising, as some of it is strategic. All the activism has been concentrated on Bernie's side, and an underdog in an election contest has every incentive to question the process, while the leader has no incentive to do so. I don't think it goes too much deeper than that.

I do think it's worthwhile to question the process, because it always needs improvement. I think the kind of dynamic that's playing out is a necessary part of activism in elections, and it's charged with emotion, but it's how it gets changed.
posted by krinklyfig at 11:15 PM on May 24, 2016

Right Wing Watch: Trump 'Christian Policy' Adviser Is A 'Prophet' Who Stopped A Tsunami, Says AIDS Is Result Of 'Unnatural Sex'

Mario Bramnick, an official with the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, told Time magazine last week that Donald Trump has taken on Frank Amedia of Touch Heaven Ministries in Ohio as his new “liaison for Christian policy” and that Amedia has been arranging meetings for the Republican presidential candidate with conservative religious leaders.

Amedia, who was once implicated in a bribery scandal in which he attempted to help a car-dealer friend avoid prosecution, is now a self-proclaimed “apostle” who says that he once single-handedly stopped a tsunami from hitting an island in Hawaii.
...
We reported last week on Amedia’s mission work in Haiti after the country was hit by a devastating earthquake, when he linked the country’s troubles to “the curse of Voodoo” and said that he might give up providing aid to Haitians who did not renounce Voodoo.

posted by zachlipton at 11:19 PM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh Lord, there is a Snopes article about the data breach.

After the conclusion of the investigation by Crowdstrike, the Sanders campaign withdrew the lawsuit and claimed they were vindicated. Then the DNC released a statement about the investigation, which said:

The audit confirmed that one campaign gained unauthorized access to the data of another, and the audit further confirmed that the results of those searches were saved within the system and that data was exported. Following the conclusion of the audit that confirmed the DNC's original findings, the Sanders campaign withdrew its lawsuit.

So basically, after the investigation was over both sides said completely different things about its results. I think it casts shade on the Sanders campaign's claims that they dropped the lawsuit despite saying the investigation proved them correct. But we can't confirm one way or the other outside of the DNC's statement because they're not releasing the original study.
posted by Anonymous at 11:22 PM on May 24, 2016

Also, all of these details have been discussed before with the same posters making the same allegations, so I suggest we all drop it because clearly nobody is changing their minds.
posted by Anonymous at 11:23 PM on May 24, 2016

Read this regarding the database breach. Pay attention to the contractual information.

Read the whole lawsuit but the crux of the Sanders campaign's complaint is on page 6, items 27 and 28.

The DNC violated the contract by terminating the Sanders' campaign access to the database.. The DNC didn't follow the procedures outlined in their contact. Read pages 5 and 6 to get the gist. The story told here on metafilter is more complicated than has been described. There are screwups on both sides but ultimately the DNC failed to follow protocol as outlined in the contract.
posted by futz at 11:33 PM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Once again, the original conversation about the NGP VAN incident is here, in case people want to read a long discussion of that. Discussion about the lawsuit being dropped is included in here. At over 1,500 comments in this thread, we don't need to reproduce it all here.
posted by taz (staff) at 11:58 PM on May 24, 2016 [14 favorites]

DWS also welcomed lobbyist money back into the DNC after it was excluded post-2008.

There are plenty of reasons for Schultz to get fired on her own numerous demerits. She should get fired because just about everything she does these days is an absolute shitshow for the Democratic Party, not least of which is how what nearly half of the left wants has nothing to with defending the rights of payday lender scumbags ripping off the public. Firing her because it would be pandering to Sanders voters is just... pandering. It's patronizing.

I care about the business interests she represents, what policies she really stands for, and the undue influence her interests have over the candidate the DNC is fronting, which has little alignment with the interests of nearly half of those on the left (who vote).

Firing her would do next to nothing to move the establishment to some rational, actionable position on minimum wage, would do next to nothing to move the establishment to some rational, actionable position on universal healthcare, and would do next to nothing to move the establishment to some rational, actionable position that puts a halt to fomenting wars overseas that have devastating economic and social costs on our society. She deserves to get booted, not because of Sanders, but because her own actions are at right angles to how a truly left-wing party should be operating in 2016.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 1:29 AM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Old but still amazing NRA ad about how Obama isn't like gator-wrestlin' 'Merica

I would submit that the man in it is not a gator wrestler though. Just a feeling I have. Maybe it's unfair.
posted by angrycat at 3:50 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a pretty wretched person, and has been one of my least-favorite people in DC for literally my adult life. The dislike of her stretches far, far beyond 2016 and Bernie Sanders. A month ago, I'd have cheered at news of her stepping down, or getting a very unceremonious boot.

But now? In the wake of Nevada's kind-of-frightening Dem outrage, the #GamerGate-level harassment campaigns against Dem women, and the bleeding of what're currently seen as alt-right shithurling tactics into the alt-left as well? Fuck no. Capitulating to one of the scarier movements in contemporary America, which isn't as powerful now as the scary Trump movement they're supporting but also hasn't been building steam for nearly as long, would be a terrible decision. Schultz is all kinds of turd, but don't give the people demanding her head any power. Period.

I voted pretty fuckin' proudly for Bernie, and if I got to vote a second time I'd probably vote Bernie a second time, so it'd be nice if my fellow Bernie supporters would stop acting personally aggrieved every time it's been rightly pointed out that:

— there's a fucked-up faction of Bernie supporters dominating all the media narratives this month

— it's the same "Bernie bro" faction that've been written about in yes-totally-problematic-but-not-100%-wrong articles before this point

— the media spin around Bernie is still pretty unbalanced, but that doesn't make this actually-existing faction any less fucked-up or awful

— right now that faction is influencing the Sanders campaign way more than they should be.
posted by rorgy at 4:23 AM on May 25, 2016 [43 favorites]

Donna Edwards calls out the Democratic party:

The struggle for a more perfect union is the struggle for a union that welcomes all voices to the table and provides them ample opportunity to be heard. It's a clarion call that we should champion in classrooms, boardrooms, and the halls of the United States Congress. As important as it was to elect a black president in 2008 and as it will be to elect a woman president in 2016, that is simply not good enough and should not be the easy out. We are neither post-racial nor post-gender. Indeed while it is true that things are better than they were, it is not a high bar. In Maryland, 2017 will likely be the first time in 43 years that we will not have a woman in our congressional delegation. We must be honest about the depth of the problem in order to unloose the structural barriers that contribute to it — the money, the process, the lineage. It may require some to simply step aside.

posted by peeedro at 4:37 AM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

Angrycat, the article says that is Charlie Daniels so I assume he is the country/Western singer.
And by "old" they mean two months old.

The only true Americans are blue-collar penis-havers.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:39 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

In Maryland, 2017 will likely be the first time in 43 years that we will not have a woman in our congressional delegation.

So effing depressing.

The people in here defending that DWS witch-burning - you realize what's brought her down isn't any of her stances about payday loans or the other reasons she is so supposedly disliked (which hmmmm don't recall hearing so much bellyaching about those until Bernie started complaining about unfair treatment), but because she is "divisive" aka the GamerGate faction of the Bernie Bros venemously hates her and is pulling the old "I won't eat any food on my plate if the peas are touching it!!!!" tantrum? That sits okay with supposed progressives? How many women are in the rooms where the Dems are plotting DWS's firing? This is a bunch of sexist GARBAGE, as rorgy more eloquently explains.
posted by sallybrown at 5:07 AM on May 25, 2016 [17 favorites]

Well, well, well. 4channers are posing as Sanders and Clinton supporters. It’s worth keeping in mind that not only are the loud Intarweb fights not representative of the Democratic electorate in general, they’re probably not even representative of passionate Clinton and Sanders supporters involved in loud Intarweb fights.
posted by nicepersonality at 5:15 AM on May 25, 2016 [11 favorites]

A few years back, my former sixth-grade crush messaged me on Facebook and we had a whole conversation about 4chan and Anonymous, because she'd been on some TV show that included Guy Fawkes-clad disruptors interrupting a court room. "It's so funny," I thought to myself, "how somebody I didn't talk to when I was 11 because I was on 4chan is talking to me now, at 21, about 4chan." And it felt really neat that my former childhood escapism was bleeding into the "real world" I had one saw fit to try and escape.

"I can't wait to see where this goes next," I said, like an idiot.
posted by rorgy at 5:21 AM on May 25, 2016 [16 favorites]

In Maryland, 2017 will likely be the first time in 43 years that we will not have a woman in our congressional delegation.

Meanwhile in Washington we may end up with a 50/50 delegation thanks to, of all things, Bernie's endorsement of Pramila Jayapal.

The problem isn't that we're not making progress. It's that it's unevenly distributed.
posted by dw at 6:57 AM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump won Washington State's primary Tuesday, leaving him eight delegates shy of outright clinching the nomination.
--
RNC official: We won’t go full Trump on party platform. The official is Ben Key, the RNC platform committee’s executive director.
--
"This Is What the Future of American Politics Looks Like. This year, we’re seeing the end of a partisan realignment, and the beginning of a policy one — and U.S. politics is about to change big-time."
--
NYT: As Donald Trump Pushes Conspiracy Theories, Right-Wing Media Gets Its Wish Ever since talk radio, cable news and the Internet emerged in the 1990s as potent political forces on the right, Republicans have used those media to attack their opponents through a now-familiar two-step.

Political operatives would secretly place damaging information with friendly outlets like The Drudge Report and Fox News and with radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh — and then they would work to get the same information absorbed into the mainstream media.

Candidates themselves would avoid being seen slinging mud, if possible, so as to avoid coming across as undignified or desperate.

Yet by personally broaching topics like Bill Clinton’s marital indiscretions and the conspiracy theories surrounding the suicide of Vincent W. Foster Jr., a Clinton White House aide, Donald J. Trump is again defying the norms of presidential politics and fashioning his own outrageous style — one that has little use for a middleman, let alone usual ideas about dignity.

“They’ve reverse-engineered the way it has always worked because they now have a candidate willing to say it himself,” said Danny Diaz, who was a top aide in Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, speaking with a measure of wonder about the spectacle of the party’s presumptive nominee discussing Mr. Clinton’s sexual escapades.

With Mr. Trump as the Republican standard-bearer, the line separating the conservative mischief makers and the party’s more buttoned-up cadre of elected officials and aides has been obliterated. Fusing what had been two separate but symbiotic forces, Mr. Trump has begun a real-life political science experiment: What happens when a major party’s nominee is more provocateur than politician?

That the Republican Party has embraced someone willing to traffic in the most inflammatory of accusations comes as wish fulfillment for an element of the right that is convinced that the party lost the past two elections because its candidates were unwilling to attack President Obama forcefully enough.

posted by zarq at 6:58 AM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

“There have been a lot of meetings over the past 48 hours about what color plate do we deliver Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s head on,” a Democratic senator who backs Hillary Clinton said. “I don’t see how she can continue to the election. How can she open the convention?”
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:05 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Protesters and police clashed Tuesday night outside a Donald Trump rally in Albuquerque, with demonstrators throwing rocks and bottles at officers on horseback and burning shirts.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:07 AM on May 25, 2016

I have to echo the sentiment that it stinks that DWS is seemingly being fired now. I know next to nothing about about her but it sounds like there are longstanding reasons she hasn't been the best in the role. But it's only now after lots of sexist threats & scary crap happened in Nevada, a crappy "my supporters would never do that" response, and lots of "the party has it in for one side" ravings (just happens to be the side with a vocal minority making the sexist threats).

Not too long ago Nintendo fired a woman. She'd been the target of some GG assholes for a long time. Nintendo ostensibly fired her for violating company policy (possibly around having second jobs). But it sounded like the official reason for the firing had been the case for a long time so that it came after being targeted for harassment looks like a company giving in to sexist retrogrades.

Some years ago I was getting Twitter attacked for some of my writing. The Twitter stuff was gross, violent and misogynist. I was also getting emails from someone local who by their tone and language seemed to be related. The emails claimed they knew people where I worked. No explicit threat. Just implied that they'd make trouble. It was affecting me to be threatened so I told my manager. Because I didn't want the first he heard of it to be the threatener. Maybe it would help. (Nothing came of it. My harasser(s) went away eventually. But it was scary for a while.)

So all this to say is I'm kind of sensitive. DWS may have been doing a bad job for a long time. But it stinks that it's only now when a (admittedly small) contingent that made threats against other woman democrats is loud that it's possible she's going. Because she's too "divisive".
posted by R343L at 7:12 AM on May 25, 2016 [27 favorites]

On a brighter note, thanks everyone whose been noting who the candidates nominate for committees, who they have as their top advisors, who they promote etc. I think it's really cool how many excellent women are leading or learning the ropes for it. That's a great outcome of this election all by itself. Maybe by the time my daughter is in high school, more of congress will be women!
posted by R343L at 7:14 AM on May 25, 2016

The State Department audit on Clinton's emails is out, so expect that to be the talking point of the day, I guess.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:14 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've been hearing for years that DWS was a regressive and authoritarian party leader who was widely disliked within her own party for a wide variety of policies. This isn't anything like that Nintendo case. I'm pretty sure DWS only lasted as long as she did because usually, no one but wonky nerds pays any attention at all to who the head of the DNC is or what they do. Shining a light on that very powerful unelected role is a good thing.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:21 AM on May 25, 2016 [12 favorites]

That Trump protest link. It could all come to naught but those factions are terrifying. People easily get swept up in movements and violent anti-Trump action will be used to "justify" more violence. It can happen here. :(

This is what I find most concerning about the conventions, actually. Trump's people are horrid, but a lot of the anti-Trump peole don't seem to know where to stop either.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:23 AM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'll admit I'm torn here. DWS is an awful Representative, a terrible leader for the DNC, and generally stands for everything I despise about my party of choice. She long ago, long before Sanders, was demonstrated to be a firm member of the surrender first faction of the Democratic party, recall that she used her position in the DNC to sabotage Democrats running against her Republican buddies from Florida.

On the other hand, yes, the idea that she might be fired not due to her actual awfulness but to appease the Bros is icky in the extreme.

On balance, I'm inclined to count getting rid of DWS as a win, even if it is tainted by the Bros.

Ideally she'd be replaced by Barbara Lee. Lee is a fighter, and we need a fighter to run the DNC, and Lee is a strong progressive voice in Congress. But I could also get behind Yvette Clarke or Jan Schakowsky.
posted by sotonohito at 7:25 AM on May 25, 2016 [12 favorites]

For those who were talking about wanting to get to know HRC's personality a little better, I think she really needs to bring Ellen with her everywhere she goes. This is awesome.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:29 AM on May 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

Pellet guns? Attempting to set the convention center on fire? Throwing burning t-shirts? I am so disappointed this is coming from the anti-Trump faction. This is not going to convince anyone. It plays directly into Trump's tiny, goblin-like hands.
posted by Anonymous at 7:34 AM on May 25, 2016

Trump loves nothing more than playing the victim. Violent protests play right into his tiny orange hands.
posted by stolyarova at 7:36 AM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

For those who were talking about wanting to get to know HRC's personality a little better, I think she really needs to bring Ellen with her everywhere she goes. This is awesome.

I like that sly little self-referential line about Michelle Obama being a great VP pick - "talk about somebody well-prepared!"
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:38 AM on May 25, 2016 [7 favorites]

Yeah. Violence is not the right answer. Thank God I already know Trump is evil, because every time something like this happens, it makes people think that Trump is fighting AGAINST the barbarians at the gates of Rome, rather than WITH them.
posted by corb at 7:41 AM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

For those who were talking about wanting to get to know HRC's personality a little better, I think she really needs to bring Ellen with her everywhere she goes. This is awesome.

I am so surprised she even had to think about Steve Harvey versus Beyoncé. Seriously, it's Beyoncé, Beyoncé every time!
posted by Anonymous at 7:43 AM on May 25, 2016

And attacking the police is pretty fucking stupid. Even leaving aside every other reason not to attack the police, the optics are terrible.

It is entirely true that the police are not our friends. No one can dispute that.

But attacking the police who were not attacking us, the police who were just doing their job and trying to keep things calm at Trump's rally, is such a bad idea I'm staggered that anyone thought it was a good idea.
posted by sotonohito at 7:49 AM on May 25, 2016 [11 favorites]

showbiz_liz: I don't really disagree but I didn't bring up the Nintendo case because they were identical. I was calling out the appearance problem where organizations seemingly don't have a problem with a woman until loud sexists shout a lot. It appears bad that no one in the party thought worth replacing her (before a presidential election year!) until it appeared a very loud faction got angry (some of whom are also making threats against other women). It looks bad even if it was time to replace her for other reasons.
posted by R343L at 7:50 AM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

There are plenty of reasons for Schultz to get fired on her own numerous demerits. She should get fired because just about everything she does these days is an absolute shitshow for the Democratic Party, not least of which is how what nearly half of the left wants has nothing to with defending the rights of payday lender scumbags ripping off the public. Firing her because it would be pandering to Sanders voters is just... pandering. It's patronizing.

Seriously? Look, do you want her in the position, or do you want her fired?

Applying some sort of BUT ONLY FOR THE RIGHT REASONS ideological purity test to the latter is just silly, pointless posturing.
posted by dersins at 7:51 AM on May 25, 2016

Applying some sort of BUT ONLY FOR THE RIGHT REASONS ideological purity test to the latter is just silly, pointless posturing.

No, it isn't. As they're pointing out, if DWS is ousted not because of her failings, but as a means to appease a faction that have been engaging in gendered harassment of party officials, that sets up a horrible precedent.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:02 AM on May 25, 2016 [27 favorites]

dersins not to try to speak for R343L, but I can sympathize with her position. There's long term consequences to consider here as well as the immediate short term gain. Giving the Bros a scalp that they want mostly for misogynist reasons is going to have the long term consequence of emboldening them and making them, and others, believe that similar misogyny will be rewarded in the future.

I think, on balance, I'm willing to pay that price. And maybe that's because as a man I will never have to pay it personally and directly. I hope that's not why, but I can see how some people might think it is.

I can also see why some people, especially those who have been on the receiving end of this, might consider keeping DWS around, despite all her faults, to be better than letting the forces of harassment and misogyny win and by winning gain power and credibility.

There's also the very uncomfortable truth that DWS was an awful head for the DNC for years and no one in power (including Bernie Sanders) said anything about it until she stared putting her thumb on the scales for Clinton at Sanders' expense.

A few total leftist wonks like me were opposed to her being chair of the DNC, but no one who mattered cared at all.
posted by sotonohito at 8:08 AM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

Is Donald Trump’s Hair a $60,000 Weave? A Gawker Investigation
posted by bukvich at 8:12 AM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Though we don't have a time machine, and even the Greens haven't promised time travel in their platform, maybe a point we can mostly agree on is that DWS should have been fired or removed from her leadership of the DNC years ago?
posted by puddledork at 8:13 AM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

And yet she wasn't...until now. Of course that matters - you can't shrug off sexism just because you like the ends of it.
posted by sallybrown at 8:15 AM on May 25, 2016 [21 favorites]

The right people get fired for the wrong reasons all the damn time. Life isn't exactly fair.

It doesn't excuse the sexist ripostes and the dogpiling coming from that rabid part of the Bernie camp, and it doesn't mean we should overlook the terrible, terrible optics of Bernie people pushing a woman out of power in a year when this primary has been micro- and macroaggressions against a woman that doesn't fit the stereotypes. And we shouldn't let any of them off the hook for that.

But, the right people get fired for the wrong reasons all the damn time. If DWS gets fired for this, so be it. There's a litany of problems with her in that role. But I think it's going to be hard to separate her larger problems from those terrible optics and that perception that the rabid part of the Bernie camp wants blood.
posted by dw at 8:15 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's like on The Wire where you root for some awful scummy person to die or get fired for years but they only finally do when their entire corrupt organization is being replaced by a howling inferno of violence and rage.

Watching DWS get attacked is not unlike watching Trump crush Rubio in the primaries. Yes, I was gleeful, but this is really not what I wanted to see America become. (Bernie Assholes are way less scary than Trump, and I like DWS less than I like Rubio on some levels, but I hold the left to much higher standards than I hold the right, and "don't capitulate to the rape-threatening assholes" really isn't a high bar ever.)
posted by rorgy at 8:16 AM on May 25, 2016 [12 favorites]

And what that also tells us is that the DNC cares more about immature sexist doxxers than it does about the people who might have been harmed by DWS's bad policy over the years.
posted by sallybrown at 8:16 AM on May 25, 2016 [22 favorites]

I really wish that Democrats could be concentrating on winning against Trump and not so much on organizing a circular firing squad six months be fore the election. Whatever problems you might have with DWS, getting rid of her at this late stage isn't going to help the Democrats in November. If you fire her, then someone has to take her place, and there are going to be ugly fights about that and then if and when someone gets chosen, that person is not going to have much time to get up to speed.
posted by octothorpe at 8:25 AM on May 25, 2016 [14 favorites]

Maybe Tulsi Gabbard's shouldn't have resigned from her vice chair post. She could be the second female head of the DNC in a row.
posted by Apocryphon at 8:31 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Ye gods, but that NYT article is damning, though not in the way they probably think it is.

Ever since talk radio, cable news and the Internet emerged in the 1990s as potent political forces on the right, Republicans have used those media to attack their opponents through a now-familiar two-step.

Political operatives would secretly place damaging information with friendly outlets like The Drudge Report and Fox News and with radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh — and then they would work to get the same information absorbed into the mainstream media.

...as if the mainstream media itself isn't an active player in this process, despite it being a "now-familiar two-step."
posted by Gelatin at 8:48 AM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

I think, on balance, I'm willing to pay that price. And maybe that's because as a man I will never have to pay it personally and directly. I hope that's not why, but I can see how some people might think it is.

I think this comment was nicely self-reflective, sotonohito, but...yeah. I don't have a whole lot of love for DWS in particular - I'd never heard of her until a few months ago, and it doesn't seem like she's the best person for the job - but it stings to hear someone who identifies as a man look at the way many Democratic women have been treated this year and say that you're "willing to pay that price". Thanks, I guess? Maybe you'd like to volunteer monitoring Boxer's Facebook page or collating Lange's texts for her.

We can't afford to normalize misogynistic tactics in the way that the Trump campaign is normalizing naked racism. Giving in now just makes it that much harder to keep fighting.
posted by Salieri at 8:54 AM on May 25, 2016 [19 favorites]

octothorpe That I'm a bit less concerned about. I don't think it is going to matter much if the Democrats start focusing 100% on churning out anti-Trump ads no, or if they wait until July 30 to start.

If, after the convention, we've still got circular firing squads then I'd start worrying, but as important as defeating Trump is, getting the Democratic party into shape is also important.
posted by sotonohito at 8:56 AM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

The State Department audit on Clinton's emails is out, so expect that to be the talking point of the day, I guess.

Clinton Violated Email Rules:

The report represents the latest pushback — in this case by a nonpartisan government entity — against her campaign’s claim that she did not break any rules and that her use of a private server was completely allowed.

The report also details how some technology staff said they were instructed to not talk of Clinton’s email set-up after they raised concerns about the unusual arrangement. It also includes conflicting information about whether the private email server had been approved by the State Department’s legal staff.

“In one meeting, one staff member raised concerns that information sent and received on Secretary Clinton’s account could contain Federal records that needed to be preserved in order to satisfy Federal recordkeeping requirements,” the document states. “According to the staff member, the Director stated that the Secretary’s personal system had been reviewed and approved by Department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further. As previously noted, OIG found no evidence that staff in the Office of the Legal Adviser reviewed or approved Secretary Clinton’s personal system.”

The watchdog report goes on to say that a staff member from the office that handles information technology for the Office of the Secretary recounted the hush nature of the email arrangement.

“According to the other S/ES-IRM staff member who raised concerns about the server, the Director stated that the mission of S/ES-IRM is to support the Secretary and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again,” the report states.

Note that this report does not get into the classified information issue that's the focus of the FBI's investigation. But still...

FUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu *jumps off cliff*
posted by sallybrown at 9:03 AM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

And this is the problem with drawing this whole thing out so long with so many denials - it allows it to break right in the middle of the worst possible time to do so.

Sometimes I feel like people are taking "Trump can't possibly win" as a fucking dare.
posted by corb at 9:04 AM on May 25, 2016 [9 favorites]

Josh Marshall wrote an article yesterday, The Trumpian Song of Sexual Violence, where he discusses why in the hell Trump has been bringing up things like Bill Clinton's sexual history when even Republican consultants have admitted that their research shows that it only makes people think more favorably of Hillary.

But since there is that offsetting effect why is he doing this? I think this is all just an over-literal way of looking at things which misses the point of the dominance politics which is at the root of everything Trump does. Trump is doing this for the simple reason of brutalizing Clinton and showing that he can do so. Whether it makes any sense as a literal argument is really beside the point. It is at the root of the "bitch slap" mentality that power is demonstrated by inflicting harm on others and showing they can't fight back. Trump did something similar to his primary opponents, only with a woman it has a distinct edge because dominance politics is inherently gendered.

He also posted some comments by women talking about their fear in listening to Trump speak and how it reminds them of past abusive relationships.
posted by Salieri at 9:07 AM on May 25, 2016 [18 favorites]

I think, on balance, I'm willing to pay that price. And maybe that's because as a man I will never have to pay it personally and directly. I hope that's not why, but I can see how some people might think it is.

I'm not really sure you get to claim the ends justify the means when you're not the one being hurt by the means.
posted by Anonymous at 9:08 AM on May 25, 2016

As a man, I find it remarkably easy to think in detached, calculating terms about the historic inevitability of crushing amounts of emotional and mental damage flung women's way, when it "makes sense" en route to achieving some other arbitrary, calculated goal. And then somebody texts me five minutes late and my week is utterly ruined.

Isn't the whole Bernie/Hillary divide rooted around idealism/realism anyway? What does it say that we in the idealist camp are willing to shrug off a hate campaign targeting women so long as it gets something else done? Can't we aim higher than "the terrorists are in OUR camp now"?
posted by rorgy at 9:26 AM on May 25, 2016 [11 favorites]

He also posted some comments by women talking about their fear in listening to Trump speak and how it reminds them of past abusive relationships.

Thanks for this. Those comments and the Marshall essay yesterday helped me understand why I've felt some of the things Trump has been saying are vaguely disturbing.
posted by zarq at 9:28 AM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

A counterpoint to that Politico piece:

In other words, this is pretty much all the stuff we already knew. The Department of State apparently has epically bad email systems. Nonetheless, Hillary Clinton should have consulted with State's IT staff about her personal email account. She didn't. She should have turned over her work emails sooner. She didn't. Ditto for her staff.

And that's about it. Hillary screwed up. The IG report doesn't present any evidence that her system was ever hacked. Nor does it suggest that Hillary was deliberately trying to prevent work-related emails from being retained. Nor was she the only one conducting official business on a personal account. Colin Powell did it too, as well as dozens of other State employees.

Nonetheless, Hillary exercised poor judgment here. That's been clear for a long time. Beyond that, though, there's not much more to say.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:30 AM on May 25, 2016 [9 favorites]

Nonetheless, Hillary exercised poor judgment here. That's been clear for a long time. Beyond that, though, there's not much more to say.

Yeah, I still find this a complete non story.
posted by zutalors! at 9:36 AM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

No, it isn't. As they're pointing out, if DWS is ousted not because of her failings, but as a means to appease a faction that have been engaging in gendered harassment of party officials, that sets up a horrible precedent.

Sorry, yeah, I was very unclear and totally failed to communicate what I intended, which is something more like:

This seems like an attempt to manufacture a sort of Catch-22 type of situation--one in which pissed off and complainy folks will find a reason to be pissed off and complainy at the DNC no matter the outcome.

"We are angry because we hate Wasserman Schultz. She is conspiring against us and we want her fired!"

"Ok, we're firing her."

"You are just firing her because we are angry and that is wrong. You should fire her for other reasons. We are angry about that now!"

That's (obviously, I hope) a sort-of-hyperbolic simplification of what's going in, but it does seem like there is a dynamic being established in which a group of people are now finding reasons to perform anger about the consequences (Wasserman Schultz perhaps being fired) of their own actions (complaining loudly and at great length that Wasserman Schultz should be fired).
posted by dersins at 9:38 AM on May 25, 2016

Look, do you want her in the position, or do you want her fired?

Applying some sort of BUT ONLY FOR THE RIGHT REASONS ideological purity test to the latter is just silly, pointless posturing.

Thinking about this more...here's the thing. One of the reasons why sexism is so insidious is because people, including women, are farrrr from perfect. There will almost always be something about a woman that superficially justifies discriminating against her (at least to people who don't think too deeply). And often the targets of sexism are so targeted because there are lots of superficial reasons to justify discrimination. Is DWS Barbara Lee, or Barbara Mikulski, or Elizabeth Warren? Fuck no! But that's part of the reason she's an easier target. (Think back to why the Montgomery Bus Boycott started not with Claudette Colvin, but with Rosa Parks.)

There's a famous sex discrimination case called Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, in which a woman named Ann Hopkins claimed she was denied a PW partnership because she was a woman. Now, a family friend of mine worked at PW during the time in question, knew Ann Hopkins, and despite generally being very polite, would tell anyone that she thought Ann Hopkins was a big old asshole and all around terrible boss. There were facts to this effect in the record of the case. But - there were also comment cards that the PW partners filled out about the candidates for partnership, and in Ann Hopkins's case, the comment cards said things like she needed to go to charm school and that she should wear more makeup and jewelry and walk more femininely. Despite her jerkiness, she performed her work better than her male coworkers. What my man Justice Brennan said in his plurality opinion was that when proving discrimination under a theory of disparate treatment, it didn't matter that there were lawful reasons for denying a partnership to Hopkins, so long as there was also evidence that the denial of the partnership happened because of gender discrimination (and that stereotypes based on sex, like that a woman partner needs makeup and jewelry, are a form of discrimination).

So yeah, are there non-sexist reasons to get rid of DWS as head of the DNC? There appear to be a lot of them. But what is actually happening here? What are the reasons that a person who apparently has sucked for so long is only now getting kicked out? It matters.

The means matter just as much as, and sometimes more than, the ends.
posted by sallybrown at 9:46 AM on May 25, 2016 [34 favorites]

Is Donald Trump’s Hair a $60,000 Weave? A Gawker Investigation

This was way more intriguing than I thought it would be.
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:47 AM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

That's (obviously, I hope) a sort-of-hyperbolic simplification of what's going in,

I think you are conflating two completely different groups of people (people calling for the head of DWS on a plate =/= people in here pointing out that this is sexist bullshit).
posted by sallybrown at 9:48 AM on May 25, 2016

This was way more intriguing than I thought it would be.

it seems far more likely to be a grotesque fungus eating into his brain tbh
posted by poffin boffin at 9:52 AM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

brain morgellons
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:52 AM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

Nonetheless, Hillary exercised poor judgment here. That's been clear for a long time. Beyond that, though, there's not much more to say.

Yeah, I still find this a complete non story.

As a tech professional I think it's a story, but not one that deserves to go on for more than a few days with regards to Clinton. This was a boneheaded move and Clinton deserves to lose 3 house points for it or some other such minor esteem demerit.

The real interesting story there is just how shit our government tech infrastructure and guidance often is, and the way that the powerful get to end-run around shitty setups and structures because everyone knows they're 70% sloth & delay versus 30% reasonable security and process. Since people know how much of it is BS they end up throwing out the important restrictions and ignoring real problems and they feel okay about it. And the folks up at the top know they can skate on it so we have folks insulating them by saying to concerned folks shut up and let it go, this is how it is.

A reasonable and trusted system would work well enough people wouldn't do this sort of thing and folks at all levels would be held to that standard or there'd be a response that's appropriately strident. Instead it pressure-cookers and mostly gets left alone till there's a blowup. Either because something goes to shit and makes a mess or because there's political hay to be made.
posted by phearlez at 9:55 AM on May 25, 2016 [16 favorites]

Is it weird that I think if Donald suddenly lost his hair or it was exposed as a fraud, that would hurt his campaign more than anything else could? Maybe he is the modern-day Samson, and all those beefcake Samson pictures in my childhood Bible story book were a lie.
posted by sallybrown at 9:56 AM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

it seems far more likely to be a grotesque fungus eating into his brain tbh

I feel like I am in elementary school again.

What's this?
I don't know.
A brainsucker. What's it doing?
I don't know.
Starving!

Which is kind of a good cap on a long stretch of this election making me feel like I am watching a grade school operation.
posted by phearlez at 9:57 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I know the preference is to only have one election thread, but GOD I wish I could just go to the bottom of the thread and read about a current issue - like, what people have to say about the email report that just got issued today - in a linear fashion without it being interrupted by Democratic National Committee inside baseball for the umpteenth time.
posted by yhbc at 9:57 AM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Is it weird that I think if Donald suddenly lost his hair or it was exposed as a fraud, that would hurt his campaign more than anything else could?

I've theorized this before.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:03 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think you are conflating two completely different groups of people (people calling for the head of DWS on a plate =/= people in here pointing out that this is sexist bullshit).

That is totally likely. There have been so many people calling for her head in this thread (and pretty much all the other election threads as well), that I have almost certainly lost track of who is who. Where's my scorecard? (And also I'll shut up now.)
posted by dersins at 10:07 AM on May 25, 2016

(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates: "Sorry to disappoint -- @realDonaldTrump is terrific. #DealWithIt"

Ted Cruz would eat one of Trump's shoes if he was near Trump's spotlight when he did it.
posted by boo_radley at 10:09 AM on May 25, 2016

Is Donald Trump’s Hair a $60,000 Weave? A Gawker Investigation

I'm guilty of referring to him as an orange apocalypse. But this feels like it's going too far and makes me uncomfortable. Is it possible his hair isn't real? Yes -- moreso because he lies constantly and is insecure. Do we really need an in depth investigation regarding whether a part of the man's body meets certain standards of attractiveness?
posted by zarq at 10:10 AM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

A reasonable and trusted system would work well enough people wouldn't do this sort of thing and folks at all levels would be held to that standard or there'd be a response that's appropriately strident.

Maybe you can answer this: how much of international cyber espionage is IT knowledge and coding skill, and how much of it is taking advantage of relatively obviously holes left open for anybody to look through?
posted by Anonymous at 10:13 AM on May 25, 2016

Jeff Weaver, who previously said that "no one had the right to feel threatened" at the NV convention in response to Barbara Boxer's comments that she was concerned for her safety. Now he's basically accusing her of lying about feeling unsafe.

The entitled sexist bullshit of telling a woman she doesn't have "the right to feel threatened" by an angry mob was disgraceful and a number of people called it out at the time, and to double down on it last night is even worse.
posted by zachlipton at 10:14 AM on May 25, 2016 [28 favorites]

"Jeff Weaver gets to go back to the comic book store. Bernie has to go back and sit with Boxer, at least for a while."
posted by zombieflanders at 10:19 AM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Isn't there someone in the Sanders campaign who can tell Jeff Weaver to cut the crap? I can't see Bernie approving of remarks like that (let alone Jane Sanders!).
posted by sallybrown at 10:22 AM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

i am a definite bernie supporter but good god jeff weaver is a dumbass. i wish wish wish he weren't a part of the campaign
posted by burgerrr at 10:23 AM on May 25, 2016 [17 favorites]

Well, Boxer is probably on the Berniegaters hit list after CWS, so it's only natural her statements are going to be dismissed.

I wonder though, who the next outspoken, political Democratic women are that'll be targeted? I mean, aside from Clinton of course.
posted by happyroach at 10:25 AM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

Isn't there someone in the Sanders campaign who can tell Jeff Weaver to cut the crap?

Isn't the answer to that question rather obvious.
posted by JackFlash at 10:26 AM on May 25, 2016 [19 favorites]

I'm not sure anymore that Jeff Weaver is so far off Bernie's message. Bernie never said anything about the harassment in Nevada.
posted by zutalors! at 10:27 AM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

Well, Barbara Lee is one of the people DWS picked as a platform official for the convention. Come for Rep. Lee and you'll have to go through me, though. The one Bernie Bro* I know personally still hasn't shut up about John Lewis being a fraud, so there is really no limit to who could be next.

*by this I mean, jumps into social media comment threads with viturperative, unending fighty comments; posts memes calling Hillary "$hillary"; throws around the B and C words about Hillary and DWS, etc. I am well aware he is part of a tiny minority.
posted by sallybrown at 10:30 AM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Jeff Weaver continues to do a good job of invoking all the stereotypes that surround men who own comic book stores.
posted by Anonymous at 10:31 AM on May 25, 2016

He's claiming she wasn't afraid because she was "contemptuously blowing kisses at the Sanders supporters" when she walked off stage. Because people totally don't use defiance and sarcasm as coping mechanisms for feeling threatened.
posted by Anonymous at 10:35 AM on May 25, 2016

As far as the Clinton server thing goes, I'm a tech, I'm interested in security, and I think the whole thing is also basically bullshit.

Even more than the point phearlez raised about the process being mostly musty garbage that everyone can tell is mostly musty garbage, there's also the much bigger problem.

The US government has a really terrible habit of classifying virtually everything for no reason at all. Basically the default for the US government is to assume that everything needs to be classified, and that only select things are not classified and they need to be working on the opposite assumptions.

This means that a whole lot of completely boring, mundane, and utterly safe to release to the world stuff that people like, say, the Secretary of State, needs access to is classified and everyone just sort of sighs, shrugs, and moves along because what are you going to do?

And that, especially when coupled with the problem of the systems and procedures being largely composed of obvious BS, is going to inevitably create an environment where simply for the sake of getting shit done people break the rules on classified materials.

Because the whole thing is a towering pile of bullshit and trying to actually follow the rules would grind all work to a complete halt.

Until the US government undergoes a massive declassification effort and completely rebuilds its culture so that all government documents are assumed to be open and it takes effort, and justification, to get any document classified then we're going to see a similar disregard for the rules from everyone in the government.
posted by sotonohito at 10:37 AM on May 25, 2016 [10 favorites]

Weaver has been awful from day one, with his prolific missives containing misinformation and half-truths. I contributed to the Sanders campaign despite Weaver, and I'm starting to regret it... I honestly don't know if he's been the one who has singlehandedly guided the campaign to where it is now, or how much of that was driven by Sanders himself, but I don't care anymore - His behavior is counter to the campaign that Sanders claimed to want to run, and it just keeps getting worse. I'd rather see him replaced than DWS (who I've disliked and wanted to see replaced for some time prior to this campaign, but not like this) - He is a substantial problem right now, and I hope that there comes a point where I never have to hear his voice or read his words again. I have no idea why Sanders would keep him on, but doing so - or at the very least, not having him change his messaging - shows really poor judgement, and has rather dulled my enthusiasm for Sanders.
posted by MysticMCJ at 10:37 AM on May 25, 2016 [14 favorites]

I just had a long Facebook fight with my cousin (male, early 30s, white, works with his hands) over Trump again. This time, he asserted that racism isn't real, that it's a settled issue, and that the only people still talking about it are the racists.

I can't figure out how to de-Trump him, and every further conversation breaks my heart a little bit more. His belief seems to be founded in the notion that Trump really is a successful businessman because he has a lot of money, and that this translates to a good set of qualifications for the Presidency.

Ugh. This entire political season is so toxic.
posted by stolyarova at 10:42 AM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

I don't think there a magic bullet that's going to take Trump down on a broad scale or a perfect argument that's going to flip individual supporters. I do think there's more than enough people out there who really, really don't want him to be president and that if they get out there and vote, he won't be, and I hope getting those people registered and turned out is what the DNC and everybody else working towards defeating Trump focuses on.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:47 AM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

Maybe you can answer this: how much of international cyber espionage is IT knowledge and coding skill, and how much of it is taking advantage of relatively obviously holes left open for anybody to look through?

Probably the biggest source of data compromises is commonly used software (say, mail handling software like sendmail, web servers like apache, or just operating system versions of Windows/Linux/etc) on inadequately maintained systems. I don't know what the platform was for HRC's server, but there's two main things that bites someone in the ass when they try to set up and deploy their own solutions for things.

1: Improper initial hardening. How conversant was the person who set up that machine? Did they take reasonable steps in turning off unnecessary services? You never know when software PDQ is going to turn out to have a flaw in it, so if you simply don't run the things you don't need you don't have to worry about them turning out to be flawed. Did they set it up on a connection that properly limited what ports were open? Was it running some best practices product to help it cope with attacks, like something that watches for a high number of connections or failures and closes off access temporarily? Did they configure things with password try limits?

2: Failure to keep things up-to-date/monitor notifications about discovered flaws. Software gets patches to cope with problems, and either you take a policy of always updating or you watch for CVE notices for things you're running. Both approaches have merits and supporters and detractors, but the one thing you don't want to do is nothing. And that's the most common result when you have systems without dedicated oversight. And even if you try to devote someone - who may or may not be good at this sort of thing - to it, it's just very easy to let that slide if it's not something you commonly do. So a devoted group that maintains a lot of stuff is more likely to stay on top of something than if you're assigning a low level grunt who otherwise usually handles setting up new monitors for people.

So to finally get to your actual question, how much of what happens is actual knowledge versus exploiting this sort of thing? I don't know, and I'm not sure anyone could. A breach that's exploited but not leaked you'd never know about. All you can know is whether you have systems that are vulnerable to known attacks. You can know that there's a lot of canned attacks for known issues out there, and over the last decade we've seen a lot of stuff get released that makes it as easy as using a DVD ripper on your windows machine.

There's little HRC could have done to cope with what is known as "zero day" attacks, things based on new and undisclosed vulnerabilities. There's some ways you cope with that, via monitoring and compartmentalization, but that's almost completely beyond the reach of someone doing this sort of service as a one-off, and it's why you want to have these services run by dedicated people with specialization. They can have intrusion detection and prevention platforms that one department isn't going to afford/run/monitor.

Realistically mail should be lower concern. It's inherently insecure and the best thing you can do with it is don't ever send anything over mail you wouldn't want to get out. That's also the sort of thing you help prevent by not doing it yourself, as a dedicated department can use tools to monitor messages for identifiable problem data (many orgs will monitor for things that look like social security numbers and credit card numbers, for example), but IMNSHO that's not as big a deal; better to keep people from picking up the gun and aiming it at their foot than taking a hail mary on stopping the bullet on the way to their toes.

But you can scan for things that are improperly patched as well, and it's something a competent department would do. But not if they didn't know the machine existed.

So I don't know how much espionage depends on easy tools versus competent crackers, but I know a huge amount of breaching happens because of neglected maintenance. And it's also important to remember that just because something is breached by non-espionage folks doesn't mean it won't get sold to espionage folks. I can't recall if the NSA has confirmed that they buy zero-day exploits or not but it's pretty well accepted as fact that they do. People peddle stuff they crack, so even if competent folks aren't working in espionage they may be selling things.

As sotonohito says, from a sensitivity standpoint it's hard to take seriously this classified/not classified thing. Over in the post about the Intercept's recent dump of NSA newsletter items I pointed out that the NSA classified a newsletter item about who has the authority to declassify something and what's the difference between a redaction and declassification. Addressing the revelation of something like that based on it being classified (stupidly) rather than its content is an action of aggressive hostility to good sense and the right of citizens to know what happens in their government.
posted by phearlez at 10:50 AM on May 25, 2016 [7 favorites]

Salieri We can't afford to normalize misogynistic tactics in the way that the Trump campaign is normalizing naked racism. Giving in now just makes it that much harder to keep fighting.

Well, for what it's worth I do agree with that, and by "pay the price" wasn't trying to say that I thought the misogynist attacks on DWS were a price I'd accept, but rather that the hypothetical emboldening of the Bros if DWS is fired is.

Which is a pretty thin line I'll agree.

The whole thing stinks and I hate that the Bros have made it so that none of the available options are good.

Either we declare that due to Bro action DWS can't be fired and we're stuck with an ineffective, friendly to Republicans, horrible on a lot of key issues, chair for the DNC

OR

We tell the Bros that *this time* we'll do what they were pushing for because we had other reasons too, and then try to shut them down before they take that win and use it as a jumping off point for more of the same.

I really want DWS out of the chair. From my POV she's awful at it, under her horrible mismanagement the Democrats have been losing seats steadily and really for that reason alone she should be ousted, she won't fight (except the left, she'll attack the left remorselessly), and she makes he whole party look bad with her awful positions on predatory lending.

I also don't want to reward the Bros even tangentially.

Neither choice is good, but on balance I do think that the hypothetical risk of emboldening the Bros is worth the gain of getting rid of DWS.

I can also completely and totally see the viewpoint of someone who takes the opposite position and believes that the bad of keeping DWS around is a price worth paying to deny the Bros a scalp.

I do not consider the misogyny and harassment the Bros have been engaging in to be an acceptable price for getting rid of DWS.

I'd also feel a whole lot better about the whole thing if Sanders would acknowledge the threats and misogyny, condemn them with no equivocating and excuse making, and fire Weaver for being a giant gaping asshole. Unfortunately I don't think that's going to happen, and I'm more convinced than ever that Sanders is, despite his good points on absolutely critical issues, such a failure as a candidate and leader that I wish I could take back my primary vote for him.

Maybe after California he'll be shaken out of his delusion that he can win and realize all the bad shit he's been allowing due to that delusion and begin making amends. But ugh, his tolerance for the Bros and the fact that Weaver is still working for him is horrible.
posted by sotonohito at 10:51 AM on May 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

I can't figure out how to de-Trump him

Could you get him to learn more about truly successful businessmen who also did good for their communities, like Warren Buffett, James Sinegal (founder of Costco), George Jenkins* (founder of Publix)? Even Richard Branson or Mitt Romney (the documentary Mitt is streaming on Netflix)? If he's into reading he might like Snowball, which is Buffett's biography. Giving him an alternate example of what a successful businessman (who is also not a garbage heap of a person) really looks like might help de-Trump him.

*Jenkins was once asked, "If you hadn't given away so much, how much do you think you would be worth today?" Without hesitation, he replied, "Probably nothing."
posted by sallybrown at 10:52 AM on May 25, 2016 [9 favorites]

Has anybody else noticed the fatalistic attitude of many Trump supporters (and even some non-Trump supporters) that Trump's victory is a foregone conclusion? A couple of examples:

It's articles like this, in their total rhetorical impotence, that not only can't hurt the Donald, but also strengthen him.

and

I'm asking of you and every rational human being to acknowledge reality, rather than ideology (which is strangely what everyone else asks of Sanders supporters).

The thing is, I want to be wrong on this. I could easily stomach a President Clinton vs a President Trump. I don't want Trump to be president, the very thought turns my stomach. However, if democratic voters refuse to learn from the GOP process, Clinton will hand the presidency to Trump.

It's the most frustrating rhetorical technique I've seen in years.
posted by stolyarova at 10:53 AM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

Bookings at Trump Hotels Plummet

Donald Trump has garnered a lot of attention as a Republican presidential candidate. But how has this attention impacted his business interests? Are sales up or down?...
The results? Bookings at Trump Hotels are down big time: they have decreased 59% compared to the same period last year

posted by readery at 10:55 AM on May 25, 2016 [19 favorites]

I don't think there a magic bullet that's going to take Trump down

I'm still with the idea of a stiff breeze that will knock his hair off
posted by Apocryphon at 11:03 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Can anyone access this (in the Torygraph... I know)? Donald Trump signed off deal designed to deprive US of tens of millions in tax

Any insight on whether how this is likely to affect voters? Or is Trump already perceived so badly that it will make no difference?

Replying to my own post, which is a breach of etiquette I know. However, a quick summary - it appears that Trump sold partnership equity (which would be taxable at a 40% capital gain rate) but then subsequently recharacterized it into a "loan" (which is not taxable). As a result, $20m in tax was evaded. The re-characterization of the loan is not likely to withstand scrutiny from the IRS given that the economic substance of the transaction didn't change.

Thinking aloud, however, would Trump be able to evade scrutiny or investigation by the IRS now that he is the presumptive nominee for the Republicans? Presumably, any time the IRS tried to investigate, the Republicans would just cry foul. What could the IRS do to get around this in order to enforce the law (if, indeed the government were inclined to do so)?
posted by apcmwh at 11:03 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

schroedinger Maybe you can answer this: how much of international cyber espionage is IT knowledge and coding skill, and how much of it is taking advantage of relatively obviously holes left open for anybody to look through?

I can't speak for the government, but I can say that in the business world the answer is none of the above.

The single biggest security flaw in any system is people. People are terrible at security.

A few days ago I was working on a computer for a VP at the place I work, she was out of the office and I needed into her Windows login to set a few things up for her. I email her explaining the situation, explained that by company security policy I shouldn't know her password so I wasn't asking for it but I could either change it to a temp password and then after I was done set it so she could change it back, or I could come in at a convenient time for her when she was in the office and had logged in. I let her know I wouldn't be taking hardly any of her time and that at most what I needed would take two minutes.

She replied "that sounds great, my password is 123abc".

People are the biggest security hole that exists and exploiting that, called social engineering by hackers, is the core of industrial and corporate espionage.

There's an IT security group in the UK that does a test every year, they'll send out email claiming to be from corporate IT and asking for people's passwords. Over half the time the person just sends the password without any hesitation.

In my own personal experience it can be even worse. Several years ago at a law firm I worked for there had been a phishing attempt [1] and the CEO asked me to send out a warning email to the firm so everyone would know to be on alert. I did so, explaining that I (I was the only IT person there, everyone knew me personally and by sight) would **NEVER** ask for their password, that anyone asking for their password was a criminal trying to break our security, and that password security was essential because we had a lot of HIPAA stuff in addition to the just generally legally confidential stuff.

Out of the ~90 people who got the mail, I got about ten people who replied telling me their password.

You want to break into a computer somewhere? Don't bother with zero day exploits and security holes in software. Just stop by in business casual and say "Hi, I'm X from IT and I need your password."

[1] Phishing is when an outside hacker attempts to get people inside to disclose sensitive info.
posted by sotonohito at 11:06 AM on May 25, 2016 [25 favorites]

Giving him an alternate example of what a successful businessman (who is also not a garbage heap of a person) really looks like might help de-Trump him.

After the revelations about how one of his businesses routinely preys on the poor, I don't think you can say Buffet isn't a garbage person anymore.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:10 AM on May 25, 2016

tl;dr, sotonohito. My password is $69xw33dB@llz2016, just do whatever you need with it and let me know when I can log back in
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:10 AM on May 25, 2016 [17 favorites]

I really want DWS out of the chair.

I am not sure of the exact procedure for getting rid of her as chair--but surely she can be ousted as chair after the election, when all of this has died down?
posted by Anonymous at 11:11 AM on May 25, 2016

tl;dr, sotonohito. My password is $69xw33dB@llz2016, just do whatever you need with it and let me know when I can log back in

Hold on, let me just check in my notebook where I write all my usernames and passwords down and I'll get back to you.
posted by sallybrown at 11:12 AM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

I don't think there a magic bullet that's going to take Trump down

This eagle came close.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:15 AM on May 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

You had one job, eagle!
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:35 AM on May 25, 2016 [13 favorites]

Trump campaign CC's Politico reporter instead of consultant on plan to attack Clinton over Whitewater.

Or did they do it on purpose? Who can tell with these clowns?
posted by zachlipton at 11:36 AM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

Bookings at Trump Hotels are down big time: they have decreased 59% compared to the same period last year

I was at an event at the Doral in Miami this year and absolutely the organization hosting it wished they hadn't moved there. Good-sized conferences are booked long in advance and often for extended durations; I think this one committed to 3 years there. They'd signed long before Trump announced his candidacy, and at the time he'd filmed a brief 30-60 second welcome video. The usual hey XYZ org, welcome blah blah you're gonna love it look forward to seeing you. After a few months of his candidacy they silently removed it from their org website and studiously didn't follow up on earlier discussions to have him appear at one of the events. (Which probably wouldn't have happened but they didn't even want a drop-in)

And this is a mostly right-leaning organization, though largely because of tariffs and price supports so he's a lose-lose from their perspective.

But it surprises me not at all to hear people are fleeing. Even a somewhat partisan organization doesn't want to be associated with him, so not only do you have people who are turned off by him but groups as well. I wonder how bad it would be if there weren't contracts and lead times.
posted by phearlez at 11:44 AM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

Whitewater? Vince Foster? Newt Gingrich? Seems like a good time to start drinking like I did in the '90s, too.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:47 AM on May 25, 2016 [13 favorites]

Whitewater is just so complicated and boring, as far as a "scandal" goes. Not effective.
posted by sallybrown at 11:50 AM on May 25, 2016

Presumably, any time the IRS tried to investigate, the Republicans would just cry foul. What could the IRS do to get around this in order to enforce the law (if, indeed the government were inclined to do so)?

Well, House Republicans already want to impeach the IRS commissioner, so I'd say it would be an uphill battle. Not to mention that partnership audits are especially complex and that questions of debt vs. equity classification are extremely fact-dependent so any resolution would take more than one and probably more than two Trump terms (assuming that the IRS still existed and functioned in a Trump presidency, which is not actually a safe assumption to make). If the transaction happened exclusively in 2007, there may be a statute of limitations issue as well, depending on the specific facts and what was or was not disclosed on the return, whether the return at issue is already under audit, and whether any of the parties agreed to extend the statute of limitations for any of the returns (as in common during an audit, for various reasons).

I have no idea how they'd procedurally handle the fact that the person under audit (or suing/being sued by the agency in court) is also the opposing counsel's boss.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:50 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Whitewater is just so complicated and boring, as far as a "scandal" goes. Not effective.

I think the phrase you're looking for is "low-energy."
posted by zombieflanders at 11:52 AM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

OK so I had to block that cousin. He admires Putin's treatment of the press. I'm done (and gutted and heartbroken).
posted by stolyarova at 12:05 PM on May 25, 2016

It's the most frustrating rhetorical technique I've seen in years.

I don't know if it's rhetoric so much as a complete lack of faith in the political and media institutions that are supposed to hold people like Trump to account.

I've been pessimistically expecting Trump to do quite well, which I think might be because I first formed my political awareness in the early 2000's, when those same institutions repeatedly rolled over for George W Bush.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:07 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Jeff Weaver continues to do a good job of invoking all the stereotypes that surround men who own comic book stores.

Worst. Campaign manager. Ever.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:08 PM on May 25, 2016 [23 favorites]

I mean, I suspect it's no coincidence that he doesn't seem to have any non-Sanders political experience.
posted by dersins at 12:11 PM on May 25, 2016

Whitewater is just so complicated and boring, as far as a "scandal" goes. Not effective.

I'm not so sure about that. To voters under, say, 30 or so, it has all the taint of scandal without needing to actually go into any of the facts. The fact that Whitewater is complicated is actually a plus, because you can just say "whitewater" and let it be code for "the Clintons are corrupt and scandal-prone" without having to explain it. As we talked about the other day, there's a decent sized subset of voters who weren't around (or weren't following politics) for the vast right-wing conspiracy era and who will consider each of these "scandals" as a black mark against Clinton instead of the product of a years-long witch hunt that jumped from baseless accusation to accusation before it eventually landed.

This seems as good a place as any to remind anyone that an actual Congressman stood up and sang a song entitled Twinkle, Twinkle Kenneth Starr on the House floor.
posted by zachlipton at 12:14 PM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

Nader voiced the discontent I was feeling. I was young and idealistic and wanted political revolution. It felt good to back a rabble-rouser, not the stiff, robotic Al Gore. I was annoyed with the Democrats for picking a predictable, incremental candidate who played not to the left, but to the mushy middle. I went to a Nader rally in NYC: Bill Murray, Michael Moore, and Susan Sarandon spoke. Eddie Vedder sang. I felt inspired, part of a movement to bring about real change, ready to cast my protest vote.

Alarmingly, some Sanders supporters seem to welcome the chaos of a Trump presidency.

But here’s the thing: In the eight years that followed, I was reminded again and again that George Bush and Al Gore were not carbon copies of each other...

Now, 16 years later, I look back on my young, Nader-voting self and see plenty of parallels with the college students who are feeling the Bern. Hillary Clinton is a wonkish, often uninspiring candidate, just as Al Gore was. Like Gore, she promises to extend an incumbent’s centrist legacy rather than move the country further left. Her ties to the moneyed powers-that-be sometimes seem stronger than her connection to the other 99 percent. And Bernie, as Nader did, promises to dial back the influence of big-money corporate donors and bring about real change. He even has Bill Murray, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, and Eddie Vedder on his side.

But if Bernie splinters the left and erodes Clinton’s support among voters, the consequences for our country could be even more dire than another Bush administration...

A Letter to a Bernie-or-Bust Voter
posted by y2karl at 12:20 PM on May 25, 2016 [14 favorites]

when the fuck is the dem primary gonna be over so Obama & Biden can just go ham on Trump
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:20 PM on May 25, 2016 [11 favorites]

Jenna Johnson at The Washington Post: “Trump accuses New Mexico’s Republican governor of not doing her job”
posted by Going To Maine at 12:21 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Bonus link: The songs of NewsRadio's Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman) (yt link of some of them), many of them about various 90s Clinton sandals.
posted by zachlipton at 12:23 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

This seems as good a place as any to remind anyone that an actual Congressman stood up and sang a song entitled Twinkle, Twinkle Kenneth Starr on the House floor.

Ha! I remember that guy. Mike Pappas was a freshman Congressman, up for re-election, running against an unknown Princeton physics professor named Rush Holt. Until this incident, no one thought Holt had a chance in hell. Instead, he won and served eight terms before retiring from politics in 2015.

According to Wikipedia, Pappas ran for the seat again a couple of years later but was defeated during the Republican primary.
posted by zarq at 12:27 PM on May 25, 2016

The actual interview with Jeff Weaver is even worse than the headlines about accusing Boxer of lying. The question put to Weaver is whether he wanted to prevent a repeat at the national convention of what happened in Nevada.

His answer is that, yes, he wanted to prevent a repeat of women like Barbara Boxer provoking attacks against themselves. Yes, women provoking attacks against themselves.

I guess I'm done believing that the Bernie Bros are just a small faction. It goes right to the top and Bernie Sanders is condoning it.
posted by JackFlash at 12:31 PM on May 25, 2016 [25 favorites]

Jenna Johnson at The Washington Post: “Trump accuses New Mexico’s Republican governor of not doing her job”

From the article: Ahead of the rally, several of Trump’s warm-up acts attacked Clinton. David Chavez, a local attorney and former state lawmaker made a series of jokes about Clinton, comparing voting for Clinton because she's a woman to drinking bleach because it looks like water.

"I've heard people say: I don't know who to choose: Trump or Hillary. Even Bill Clinton chose other women. So you should, too," Chavez said to laughter and applause.
Gonna be a long summer.
posted by zarq at 12:31 PM on May 25, 2016 [7 favorites]

“Trump accuses New Mexico’s Republican governor of not doing her job”
---
Lately, Martinez has dodged questions about Trump and has yet to say whether she will support him.

This fucking clown openly mocks her, claims he could do a better job than her and insinuates that she should be voted out of office, and still - still - she either does not want to or cannot condemn him in public. Right now, Trump has the Republican Party in a headlock and is yellling "STOP HITTING YOURSELF! STOP HITTING YOURSELF!" Next it'll be the whole country and by extension the world.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:37 PM on May 25, 2016 [15 favorites]

This seems as good a place as any to remind anyone that an actual Congressman stood up and sang a song entitled Twinkle, Twinkle Kenneth Starr on the House floor.

Speaking of Kenneth Starr, it looks like he's going to lose his job as chancellor of Baylor University for a sexual assault incident that the university had knowledge of but failed to investigate. So we now have a trifecta of members of the Great Clinton Boner Hunt of the late 90's facing a downfall for their own issues: Gingrich for his ethics violations and being a serial philanderer, Hastert for sexual abusing boys, and Starr, ironically, for not investigating allegations of sexual misconduct.
posted by peeedro at 12:46 PM on May 25, 2016 [32 favorites]

Just popped in to mention Ken Starr's latest exploits. Horrifying and shameful, Baylor.
posted by Existential Dread at 12:48 PM on May 25, 2016

Surely this smug and condescending thinkpiece will get people onboard the Hillary train.

The piece in question is obviously not aimed at me, but I definitely did not get "smug" or "condescending" from it.

I totally understand however, that, if someone were to feel the essay was aimed at them, they might well find it smug and condescending.

Can someone who does find it smug and condescending point to specific moments that create that effect? I have no doubt that those moments are there even if I can't see them, and I would like to be able to see them for what they are, if for no other reason than that might help me avoid projecting smugness or condescension where I don't intend to.
posted by dersins at 12:54 PM on May 25, 2016

And Then the Lord Said, 'Let There Be Light, You're Gonna Love It'. There's nothing funnier than the Evangelical preachers backing Trump.
posted by homunculus at 12:57 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

So I want to check my confirmation bias here for a minute.

My impression right now is that the loud, harassing, tweet/meme/media criticism of Democrats from the asshole division of the alt-left has so far centered on:

Hillary Clinton
Barack Obama
DSW
Barbara Boxer
John Lewis
that old lady Delegate in Alaska who voted for Clinton

is this accurate? Or have there been white male targets vilified and harangued in the same way that I’m just not aware of or not remembering?

To be clear, I’m not asserting that any of these people don’t deserve to be criticized. And I’m not claiming there isn’t also very sensible, valid criticism of them from the non-asshole division of the alt-left.

I’m just trying to determine whether it’s true that the people who get Twitter brigaded and meme-degraded in the name of progressivism are consistently not white men.
posted by pocketfullofrye at 12:59 PM on May 25, 2016 [15 favorites]

And DWS herself is the person who tried to scuttle any attempt to reign in the payday lenders. Serious philosophic disconnect.

Will Debbie Wasserman Schultz Even Make It to the Convention? Uh, yeah, about that...
posted by homunculus at 1:02 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Speaking of Kenneth Starr, it looks like he's going to lose his job as chancellor of Baylor University for a sexual assault incident that the university had knowledge of but failed to investigate.

Oh, it gets worse. It's pretty clear that they're firing Starr (but not really, he's just getting shipped to the law school) in order to not fire their football coach, who seems to have found success on the gridiron by picking up players that other teams have turned down, because of violence issues.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:04 PM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

> Protesters and police clashed Tuesday night outside a Donald Trump rally in Albuquerque, with demonstrators throwing rocks and bottles at officers on horseback and burning shirts.

Rioting Only Makes Trump Stronger. What happened last night was not just pointless. It was utterly stupid.
posted by homunculus at 1:05 PM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

Here’s a fun little thought exercise. Let us pretend for a minute that perhaps Ivari was never really “in the process of changing the address” in New York. That would mean that, for at least the five additional years the business continued to function in New York state (if not longer), Ivari International sat squarely in the direct vicinity of Donald Trump’s office.

Considering the lack of advertising and refusal to share its actual location, new clients would have surely been rare, if not nonexistent. This would mean, then, that Ivari would need some steady source of income from some sort of mega-client. Some mega-client that, perhaps, has built an identity around his objectively terrible hair choices but refuses to concede that his hair is anything but his own. In which case, this bombastic, mega-client would of course demand the utmost privacy.

Wouldn’t it be convenient, then, if Ivari’s New York office was right next door to its number one—and perhaps only—client’s own office? And wouldn’t having other clients become unnecessary if this one hyper-wealthy regular required constant attention?

Might this secret mega-client singlehandedly sustaining Ivari International’s New York office with constant treatments be none other than presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump himself?

Is Donald Trump’s Hair a $60,000 Weave? A Gawker Investigation
posted by y2karl at 1:35 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I know it's a big thread but is it really that hard to do a minimal search before posting a link? This makes it even longer.
posted by phearlez at 1:43 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Looks like police about to shut down demonstrations outside @realDonaldTrump event in Anaheim.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:46 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Elizabeth Warren Slams ‘Small, Insecure Money Grubber’ Trump For Profiting Off Housing Crisis
posted by homunculus at 1:47 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

I know it's a big thread but is it really that hard to do a minimal search before posting a link?

On mobile, yes, it's difficult for me.
posted by agregoli at 1:52 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

is this accurate? Or have there been white male targets vilified and harangued in the same way that I’m just not aware of or not remembering?

The white males who get the worst of it that I've seen tend to come mostly from the pundit/politico class. Matt Yglesias, David Brock, Jonathan Chait, Tom Watson (and Peter Daou, although he is Lebanese). Nate Silver hasn't exactly been savaged, but he's endured some personal criticism as well. Rahm Emanuel is also a pretty frequent target of anger whenever he's in the news. If you count Andrew Sullivan on the basis of voting for Democrats nowadays, he is repeatedly harangued as a racist and warmonger.

The criticism of men takes different form and I'm not about to directly compare them or claim that it's in any way equal or cancels anything out. But, since you asked, it does exist.
posted by Copronymus at 2:03 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

schroedinger: "Pellet guns? Attempting to set the convention center on fire? Throwing burning t-shirts? I am so disappointed this is coming from the anti-Trump faction."

As a resident of Albuquerque, this stuff is beginning to piss me off.

It would be nice if people would recognize the very natural tendency hat media has to be a bit inflammatory. I'm not saying that the media is involved in some conspiracy, or that they're scheming to deceive the public; I'm saying that it's perfectly normal for a news outlet to make events out to be much more catastrophic than they actually are in order to win eyeballs and secure advertising dollars. That doesn't make the media evil or worthless, but it does mean we need to take its claims with a grain of salt.

In this case, there was only one arrest - as the police preferred to put it, "at least one," although that still doesn't seem like much to me. The police themselves have said that almost every protestor had gone home by the time there were any fights or disruptions. The whole thing about "tearing down the barricades" people have been talking about - well, it's a flimsy, poorly-constructed fence, with no marking or anything; it's easy enough to push it open a little, so people did. I think the lone shirt-burning guy was an idiot, but he was just an idiot, so of course he didn't get arrested. The most egregious thing here seems to have been a number of people who started throwing rocks at cops. I wasn't there, but it sounds distinctly as though this had less to do with Trump and more to do with the attitude some of us in this city have toward our often problematic police department; the fact that there were so few arrests as a result of this seems to bear out my feeling that it was a minor affair.

Regardless of all this, I keep seeing references to a "riot" in the media and even in comments here. Again, I would suggest that people take media reports, which are bound to be inflammatory, with a grain of salt.
posted by koeselitz at 2:10 PM on May 25, 2016 [10 favorites]

Regardless of all this, I keep seeing references to a "riot" in the media and even in comments here. Again, I would suggest that people take media reports, which are bound to be inflammatory, with a grain of salt.

The article I posted had pictures and video.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:12 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

There's an easy solution to the misogynist implications of canning DWS:

have both her and Jeff Weaver fired simultaneously as part of an announced detente deal between Bernie and Hillary. Explicity reference her "loss of credibility as a an objective and effective party leader," as well as his disturbing and insensitive sexist comments and failure to focus on important political issues (as opposed to primary process conspiracies.)

Everybody wins.
posted by msalt at 2:12 PM on May 25, 2016 [17 favorites]

Jeff Weaver's job is about to come to an end regardless.
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:14 PM on May 25, 2016 [7 favorites]

Trump tells the Anaheim crowd that Mitt Romney walks like a penguin.
posted by zachlipton at 2:14 PM on May 25, 2016

For those who were talking about wanting to get to know HRC's personality a little better, I think she really needs to bring Ellen with her everywhere she goes. This is awesome.

The most fascinating dynamic of this election will be how the quieter voices of (many) women respond to the blatant bullying by (mostly) men. The secret Hillary groups on Facebook are a fascinating development. I think that opinion leaders such as Ellen and Oprah will decide this election, and that very few men understand how much power they (and, in a previous generation, Dear Abby) have.
posted by msalt at 2:17 PM on May 25, 2016 [15 favorites]

roomthreeseventeen: "The article I posted had pictures and video."

Yeah, I've seen those. Nothing like a riot in those videos and pictures.
posted by koeselitz at 2:19 PM on May 25, 2016

Yeah, I've seen those. Nothing like a riot in those videos and pictures.

I guess you can argue semantics about whether starting fires and throwing things at police is considered a riot.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:23 PM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

Sanders skips Grijalva
posted by bongo_x at 2:32 PM on May 25, 2016

>10 people "starting fires and throwing things at police" is not a riot, unless the Trump-loving Media wants it to be.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:32 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

The more I think about it, here's the ideal scenario for the Sanders campaign: Jeff Weaver needs to be fired from the campaign, immediately -- and Sanders needs to state explicit disapproval with his messaging, as well as the more abhorrent actions from the minority of his supporters who are actively harassing others. There needs to be a zero-tolerance policy from his campaign on this, with very direct messaging that CANNOT be missed, and that messaging needs to extend to encouraging his supporters to actively shut down that sort of behavior. It needs to not just be said during the occasional interview, it needs to be directly communicated to the supporters via the same mechanisms that Weaver has used to spread his bullshit. If he can steer the messaging in a drastically different direction, sooner rather than later, then we actually have a chance of him both being able to guide the messaging in a more progressive direction, while simultaneously healing SOME of the rifts within the party - and it bolsters the idea of Sanders being able to lead positively.

I'm not sure how this goes in any positive direction at this point if Weaver is still controlling the campaign and the messaging... Otherwise, he is just another divisive actor who has taken advantage of the desire of those who are more to the left within (and outside of) the democratic party, and redirected it into more conflict - corrupting any of the original messaging or intentions of the campaign.

Lack of action or condemnation from Sanders is the same as approval - It reflects poorly upon him to let this continue, and it's making many of us question his intentions. And it has an additional bonus effect - Yet again, a subset of people who have felt neglected by the democratic party, have seem hope turn into betrayal. While it may not be all of the Sanders camp who feels this way, I don't believe it to be an insignificant amount either - and that can only lead to more disengagement. So much for a "political revolution" - Let's be revolutionary by holding a shitty campaign manager accountable, and expressly condemning any misogyny or other hateful actions by the supporters, even if it's an extremely small amount of them. It doesn't go far enough to say that they are not representative of the campaign.

While Weaver's job may be coming to an end regardless, if there isn't an explicit turn away from him and the bile that he has spewn from his orifices and keyboard, then the damage will remain. There is an opportunity to make this better right now, but I don't see how there's any unity or cooperation there with him at the helm. Weaver was a poor choice - While that may not have been apparent to Sanders at the beginning, it should be blindingly obvious by now... and one of the worst things a leader can do is to keep someone like Weaver in power (or at least not correcting the messaging) -- unless they are trying to show that this is truly the direction that they want to go, and that they implicitly support this behavior. If you don't counter that behavior, the small amount of people who are bad actors will grow into larger groups, like a cancer.

I've liked Sanders for a long time, but I cannot condone or support what is going on now. I want to believe that he wants to run this positively, and that Weaver isn't an extension of his beliefs - but his actions need to show that.
posted by MysticMCJ at 2:38 PM on May 25, 2016 [15 favorites]

i would 1000000% support canning both jeff weaver and DWS simultaneously. a girl can dream...
posted by burgerrr at 2:47 PM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm kind of bummed by the semi-dismissive hand-waving upthread about the recent OIG report on Clinton's emails. Dwelling on the information security aspects of this misses the fact that the Federal Records Act is a really important part of government transparency, but there are so few things in place to ensure that those covered by the act are actually complying with the preservation of federal records.

I work in the records sector (but not for the federal government). I've started to read the OIG report, and it seems very fair and even-handed to me (plus it examines the practices of SoS going back to Albright). It really, really worries me that we only care about shitty recordkeeping practices when a person of the political party we don't like does it, and turn around and say "Well everyone does it, so..." when someone we like does do it. Shitty records practices are truly the most bipartisan thing of all in politics.
posted by mostly vowels at 2:50 PM on May 25, 2016 [22 favorites]

I hear that the record keeping is a concern, but to the extent that it's gotten people on both sides into a frenzy of "Put her in prison" over it...I just don't see it.
posted by zutalors! at 2:55 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

No one here is saying "put her in prison." But I agree that it's troubling. I am especially perturbed by a culture in which people were essentially told to shut up (and lied to about legal approvals) when they pointed out what was going on was wrong.
posted by sallybrown at 3:03 PM on May 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

There is a lot of space between "What can we all do as concerned people to demand better record keeping" and "Put her in prison." From what I can see, the people who are all "put her in prison!!" are #tcot types who didn't care about egregious records violations from the Bush administration. That's why I mentioned how the shrugging over records issues is truly the most bipartisan of all issues.
posted by mostly vowels at 3:03 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Honestly, part of the problem is how partisan this has gotten. I really wish she could be like "Yeah, I did do this thing, and it was wrong, and I won't do it again, I truly do understand why it was wrong and classification is very important." But she can't give an inch, because the other side is "prison, yay!"
posted by corb at 3:06 PM on May 25, 2016 [15 favorites]

And the thing is that she's actually said that more or less last September, though it took her quite a while of refusing to apologize to get there:

As I look back at it now, even though it was allowed, I should have used two accounts. That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility.

posted by zachlipton at 3:09 PM on May 25, 2016 [10 favorites]

>10 people "starting fires and throwing things at police" is not a riot, unless the Trump-loving Media wants it to be.

There were more than ten, and arguing over semantics when it involves throwing rocks at police and starting fires is a not a good look for the anti-Trump side.
posted by Anonymous at 3:10 PM on May 25, 2016

Part of what disturbs me is less Clinton's apology, and more the fact that people within the Department tried to raise the issue, were told that it was approved, and no record of this has been found. Again, this is why I don't think this is an issue worth talking about to club Clinton with (if it helps people take me seriously, I plan to vote for her if she's the nominee), but because we so desperately need to give the Federal Records Act some teeth.
posted by mostly vowels at 3:11 PM on May 25, 2016

The fact that Whitewater is complicated is actually a plus, because you can just say "whitewater" and let it be code for "the Clintons are corrupt and scandal-prone" without having to explain it.

I'm just amazed that Donald Trump wants to open a national conversation about failed real estate deals.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 3:12 PM on May 25, 2016 [21 favorites]

Two staff in S/ES-IRM reported to OIG that, in late 2010, they each discussed their concerns about Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email account in separate meetings with the then-Director of S/ES-IRM. In one meeting, one staff member raised concerns that information sent and received on Secretary Clinton’s account could contain Federal records that needed to be preserved in order to satisfy Federal recordkeeping requirements. According to the staff member, the Director stated that the Secretary’s personal system had been reviewed and approved by Department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further. As previously noted, OIG found no evidence that staff in the Office of the Legal Adviser reviewed or approved Secretary Clinton’s personal system. According to the other S/ES-IRM staff member who raised concerns about the server, the Director stated that the mission of S/ES-IRM is to support the Secretary and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again. link to the OIG report

In other words, perhaps in the most generous interpretation Clinton was operating under the impression operating a private server was allowed, however it is clear that this was not actually the case. And in that case, someone was seriously violating federal records law by claiming there was an exemption when one had not been granted.
posted by mostly vowels at 3:16 PM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

I really wish she could be like "Yeah, I did do this thing, and it was wrong, and I won't do it again

Clinton last September: "As I look back at it now, even though it was allowed, I should have used two accounts. That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility."

Sorry I see this was already quoted above.
posted by JackFlash at 3:17 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

perhaps in the most generous interpretation Clinton was operating under the impression operating a private server was allowed, however it is clear that this was not actually the case.

That is not correct. There is no statement that the private server was not allowed. There is no indication that getting a legal opinion was required. There is only a dispute as to whether a legal opinion was sought.
posted by JackFlash at 3:25 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm just amazed that Donald Trump wants to open a national conversation about failed real estate deals.

He's yet to face concentrated media criticism about anything. The man has faced numerous lawsuits and has a laundry list of ethics violations of his own, but has done a good job of not being hounded for anything in particular because he has the media jumping from one terrible thing he said to the next. Shit, his ex-wife documented his sexual assault of her in a book and he still goes after Clinton for that. I am wholly unsurprised he feels emboldened to start up the Whitewater bullshit.
posted by Anonymous at 3:26 PM on May 25, 2016

There is no statement that the private server was not allowed. There is no indication that getting a legal opinion was required.

Thinking about this again, I also just kind of note for curiousity's sake the difference between people who approach classified information from the position of having come up from the ranks of spook-dom, and who handle classified information every day, and most of their job involves thinking about classification, such that they can identify stuff pretty easily, and people who approach classified information because they've been given an appointed or elected office, without that kind of deep enrichment of having worked in the field for a long time.

So coming from a military intelligence background, and having been attached for a while at the NSA, I kind of instinctively recoil at the idea that a private server would ever have been allowed. Like, who could think that? That's crazy! But I also spent years and years and years talking and thinking about classified information all the time, and seeing it be a real problem when people tried to keep classified information anywhere not secure.

But as a politician, you really aren't in that world - you're thinking more of practical stuff. "Is this going to be useful to a spy? Is it likely? What if I run for future political office, am I going to want to have copies of all my emails to make sure there are no bombshells?" And so it makes complete sense in your head, and you might not even think of why it would be a problem. Especially if the classification seems idiotic.
posted by corb at 3:32 PM on May 25, 2016 [7 favorites]

Well, the other shoe still has to drop with the FBI's investigation, does it not?
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 3:40 PM on May 25, 2016

Especially if the classification seems idiotic.

My understanding is that a lot of this stuff actually gets labeled classified after the fact meaning they were not labeled classified when they were sent or received.
posted by pocketfullofrye at 3:40 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

I kind of instinctively recoil at the idea that a private server would ever have been allowed.

As has been pointed out many times, Clinton was not using her email for classified information. Using email for classified information is forbidden. It makes no difference if it is a private server or a government server. The .GOV accounts are not secured for classified information any more than a private server.

As has been pointed out many times, for classified information they used face to face meetings or paper documents. Neither has anything to do with an email server.
posted by JackFlash at 3:42 PM on May 25, 2016 [16 favorites]

That the Republican Party has embraced someone willing to traffic in the most inflammatory of accusations comes as wish fulfillment for an element of the right that is convinced that the party lost the past two elections because its candidates were unwilling to attack President Obama forcefully enough.

And one can only pray that they're wrong.
Because there is mounting evidence that mudslinging can be extremely effective when done right. And if there's one thing that Trump is expert at, it's smearing the competition. It' what got him the nomination and at the pace he's going, it will get him the presidency.

And the horrible thing is that there is really no good way for Clinton to fight back, because when given the choice between a woman who wrestles a pig and the pig, most Americans will vote for the pig. It's just more authentic and therefore more American.
posted by sour cream at 3:42 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

Y'all keep getting hung up on classification, but that's missing the point. Records are records that have to be managed within the federal records infrastructure regardless of their classification status. The problem comes down to using systems that are outside the scope of official federal records systems. If you read the OIG report, most of the discussion is about circumvention of federal recordkeeping guidelines, not mis-classification or abuse of classification.
posted by mostly vowels at 3:54 PM on May 25, 2016 [18 favorites]

you know the funny thing is that we've had Trumps on more local levels

my current obsession is with Sylvester Pennoyer, the two-term guv of Oregon and one term mayor of Portland. Pennoyer was just a crazy man; all law students know Pennoyer v. Neff; well, Pennoyer was obsessed with the lower court judge who ruled against him to the extent Pennoyer vowed in one of his inaugurals that the judge should be impeached. As mayor, Pennoyer went through I think 4 chiefs of police and one year fired the entire police force. The Oregonian at the time was like WTF dude no about a hundred times, but Pennoyer basically kept holding higher offices until he died, pretty much.

my main point here is that Pennoyer had two things going for him 1) He had some serious credentials as a businessman (timber) with a Harvard degree and 2) He whipped up fears about the Chinese. Seriously, the feds were all 'dude don't get all violent with the Chinese' and Pennoyer was all 'shut up I'll do what I want.' He was blaming the Chinese for every economic ill suffered by Oregonians at the time.

I know there are other examples of demagogues in the U.S., but Pennoyer is my current obsession. I guess my dark fear is that the culture has changed to an extent where a nonsense man could do more than take over a state.
posted by angrycat at 4:11 PM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

And the horrible thing is that there is really no good way for Clinton to fight back, because when given the choice between a woman who wrestles a pig and the pig, most Americans will vote for the pig. It's just more authentic and therefore more American.

I think this is referring to a very White, mostly male subset of the US though. Humans will be humans, but xenophobia can only work so well for so long in a democracy when the people you're alienating continue to outgrow the people you're labeling the in-group.

I find it disturbing that Trump has gotten this far, and I blame the media for not calling him on his shit, the Republican party leadership for its craven inability to mobilize an organized response, and White people for being unable to handle diversity. But I don't feel as hopeless about the outcome of this election as I'd feel if it was, say, the mid-90s. You can't get by on just White people anymore--you definitely can't get by on just White men--and Trump has yet to prove he has widespread appeal beyond that demographic.
posted by Anonymous at 4:20 PM on May 25, 2016

you definitely can't get by on just White men

George Wallace arguably proved this point already.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:32 PM on May 25, 2016

You can't get by on just White people anymore--you definitely can't get by on just White men--and Trump has yet to prove he has widespread appeal beyond that demographic.

He's actually winning married white women. Unmarried white women on the other hand he gets slaughtered. Women become more Republican when they become married.
posted by Talez at 4:42 PM on May 25, 2016

I’d be interested to know if those numbers are controlling for age…
posted by Going To Maine at 4:44 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Women become more Republican when they become married.
"...to love, honor and obey at the ballot box..."
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:55 PM on May 25, 2016

He's actually winning married white women. Unmarried white women on the other hand he gets slaughtered. Women become more Republican when they become married.

This was the same with Romney. Trump is appealing to and disgusting the same demographics that Romney did, only to a greater extreme. White men and married White women do not a president make, not any more. My greatest concern is whether voter ID and registration laws will disenfranchise a sufficient number of poor people and POC to tip the scales to Trump's favor.
posted by Anonymous at 4:56 PM on May 25, 2016

The problem comes down to using systems that are outside the scope of official federal records systems.

No law or rule, even today, prohibits using personal email systems for official business. The law only requires that those records eventually be transferred to a federal records system.

From the OIG report stating the rules in 2009: "Agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency recordkeeping."

So the rules explicitly allowed using personal email systems for official business as long records were retained. Clinton complied with these rules by printing out 55,000 pages of her official emails and submitting them to the federal archives.

Later the OIG comments on the tardiness of the release, but at the time there were no rules specifying a deadline for archival. In 2014, a year after Clinton left office, they issued new rules requiring that copies of official email on personal email accounts be forwarded to federal archives within 20 days.

Two things to note. The rules even today still allow employees to use personal email accounts for official business if they make copies within 20 days. This 20-day time limit did not apply during the Clinton tenure.
posted by JackFlash at 4:57 PM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

And in that case, someone was seriously violating federal records law by claiming there was an exemption when one had not been granted.

It is not at all clear that a law of any kind was violated. The report says that State Department guidelines that were put in place to ensure the law was followed were violated. Though it may seem like splitting hairs to say so, violating guidelines is very much not the same as breaking laws.

This, from Forbes of all places, is a rather different view of email-ghazi:

"State Department Report On Email Vindicates Clinton Rather Than Nails Her"

This bit about Colin Powell was especially interesting, I thought:

Third, where the report does add to our knowledge, is about Colin Powell, who served from 2001-2005. Powell did all his email business on a private account. All of his emails on official business were apparently in a private account. It is not clear why a great deal of what is said against Clinton’s emails, could not be said against Powell’s. Moreover, Powell’s similar practices can hardly be blamed on his being a novice about security. He not only had been Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he had been National Security Adviser. He had jurisdiction over all the intelligence agencies. Since Powell, with unimpeachable security credentials, felt fine using private email for official business, why are we climbing all over Clinton? It is, to be blunt, a double standard.

posted by dersins at 5:16 PM on May 25, 2016 [13 favorites]

Trump is appealing to and disgusting the same demographics that Romney did, only to a greater extreme. White men and married White women do not a president make, not any more

That's a common argument: Trump appeals only to whites, Hispanics and people of color won't vote for Trump, so Clinton is going to win easily.

But I wonder if that is true, though. Sure, his unfavorability ratings among Hispanics and POC and other minorities, such as women (sarcasm alert!), are sky-high. But first of all, we have seen in the primaries that unfavorability ratings don't mean anything. Trump was the most unfavorable candidate of all, yet he won the nomination handily.

Second, I wonder if it is legitimate to assume that e.g. all Hispanics should be voting against Trump, just because he said some nasty stuff about Mexicans. One common argument explaining Turmp's success is that a lot of people feel like they always get the short end of the stick and thus will vote for the candidate that at least offers to shake up things instead of the same-old same-old. This is an essentially economic argument and thus it may also be in the (perceived) economic interest of Hispanics and other minorities to vote Trump.

Third, I think that a lot can be explained by people's desire not to be on the bottom rung of society. Thus, a lot of e.g. Hispanics may actually vote for Trump, because at least he'll keep out those goddamn Mexicans illegals. Similar thinking may be true for lots of demographics.
In short, Hillary may still get the majority of the minority vote, but the effect may not be as large as many people hope it will be. In fact, I think that there's a lot of wishful thinking going on there.
posted by sour cream at 5:19 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think a lot of people are in fact voting Trump out of a 'chaos is a ladder' impulse. One person I heard say, "I can't put all the political and media elites in a room, lock the door, and light a match, so I'm doing the next best thing and voting Trump." At a certain point, people who are desperately unhappy are eager for any radical change because they think it might either be better for them, or it will tear down the people at the top.
posted by corb at 5:26 PM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

Between the OPM hacks, Edward Snowdan and Chelsea Manning's leaks it seems to me that the official systems are not actually secure at all. Clinton's private email was probably more secure in that it wasn't instantly available to some random bored army private in Iraq or federal contractor in Hawaii.
posted by humanfont at 5:44 PM on May 25, 2016

Turmp

I know it is a typo, but try saying that out loud.
I am laughing myself silly.
posted by daq at 5:45 PM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

Clinton's private email was probably more secure in that it wasn't instantly available to some random bored army private in Iraq

Clinton's official emails weren't available to Manning, either. Manning didn't "hack" anything, she just copied things that were available to her as part of her duties.
posted by Etrigan at 5:48 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

turmp is the evolved pokemon form of derp
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:48 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Turmp
posted by peeedro at 5:52 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

In short, Hillary may still get the majority of the minority vote, but the effect may not be as large as many people hope it will be. In fact, I think that there's a lot of wishful thinking going on there.

Except that if you tally the total popular vote so far, Clinton has 1.5 million more votes than Trump

Now, we do not elect presidents directly, so there are absolutely complications of delegates and whanot. But just looking at who people are actually voting for, Clinton is clearly the frontrunner.
posted by pocketfullofrye at 5:58 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I agree with you that Clinton is the frontrunner but comparing her vote total to Trump's in the primary is apples and oranges. Trump had what, five? ten? challengers at the start of the voting, whereas Clinton had only the one, during a series of votes that took place over months and in a dynamic setting on both sides.

There's too much noise to really pull anything meaningful here regarding the general election.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:07 PM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

But first of all, we have seen in the primaries that unfavorability ratings don't mean anything. Trump was the most unfavorable candidate of all, yet he won the nomination handily.

Trump has won 43% of voters who voted in the Republican primaries. A subset of a subset. The winner-take-all rules of the Republican primary have given him the impression of a popular dominance that he does not possess. He now has to win 50%+ of all voters in the USA. He is absolutely an unusual candidate, and this is absolutely an unusual election, but there is a huge difference between winning a primary and winning the general.

Look, here are the current delegate counts:

Trump: 1144
Cruz: 551
Rubio: 173
Kasich: 158

Here's what the totals would be if they used proportional delegate distribution:

Trump: 887
Cruz: 571
Rubio: 267
Kasich: 301

Basically, unless Trump won nearly 80% of the remaining contests we'd be almost guaranteed a contested convention.

Of course there will be some people who just want to see chaos, and of course there will be POC who vote for Trump, but honestly, I need to see him consistently leading in post-convention polls before I start freaking out. In order to win Trump needs POC and White women, and we all know how he's doing with the former and the latter is a hard sell.

I think people staying home, being disenfranchised, or voting third-party are more likely to lead to a Trump presidency than a majority of people actually voting Trump.
posted by Anonymous at 6:14 PM on May 25, 2016

Except that if you tally the total popular vote so far, Clinton has 1.5 million more votes than Trump

If you go by vote count in the primaries, then you should be really worried: This shows that about 22 mio. Democrats voted vs. >26 mio. Republicans, and maybe the spread is even greater, because I see only 5 Rep. candidates.
Assuming that Sanders voters will vote Clinten and Cruz etc. voters will vote Trump, with cross-overs roughly canceling each outer out, it looks like at least the popular vote will go to Trump. Throw in the usual voter suppression as well as dissatisfaction as the greater motivator than fighting to keep the status quo, and it looks like a clear Trump victory.

Althrough, like tivalasvegas correctly points out, it's not really meaningful to extrapolate from the primaries to the GE.
posted by sour cream at 6:16 PM on May 25, 2016

My greatest concern is whether voter ID and registration laws will disenfranchise a sufficient number of poor people and POC to tip the scales to Trump's favor.
And limited to "battleground states"; voter suppression laws won't matter in states where Any Republican is going to win (although it may matter to individual congressional districts and whoever's President will have to deal with Congress), but if enough Democrats get turned away from the polls to flip certain states, Trump could lose the Popular Vote by 5 million or more and still win it all.

One of the more wonky articles linked here had a lot of info about the composition of the electorate, but one stat stuck out like a sore thumb. 7 percent of those self-categorized in the 2000 census as "Hispanic" changed to "White" for the 2010 census. That's a lot. I've known some American-born or long-ago-naturalized Hispanics who are deeply resentful of "Illegals" (and most of them used that term) and oppose strongly anything that would help "them who are totally not like me", so Trump's anti-immigrant stance might win him votes among them.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:17 PM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

If you go by vote count in the primaries, then you should be really worried: This shows that about 22 mio. Democrats voted vs. >26 mio. Republicans, and maybe the spread is even greater, because I see only 5 Rep. candidates.
Assuming that Sanders voters will vote Clinten and Cruz etc. voters will vote Trump, with cross-overs roughly canceling each outer out, it looks like at least the popular vote will go to Trump. Throw in the usual voter suppression as well as dissatisfaction as the greater motivator than fighting to keep the status quo, and it looks like a clear Trump victory

You can't tell general electorate numbers from primary numbers. I don't know that Cruz voters will vote Cruz instead of staying home etc. Voter suppression is a thing and we should be fighting it no matter what side we're on, but it would have to be truly unprecedented, with very poor opposition from courts, Clinton campaign etc, in order to work at that level. i don't see "clear Trump victory" in any data that we've seen so far, at all.
posted by zutalors! at 6:26 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I read Turmp as Turnip and I thought no! That is going too far.

I would both eat and vote for a turnip long before Trump.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:29 PM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

i don't see "clear Trump victory" in any data that we've seen so far, at all.

Let's just hope you're right.
Half a year ago, not many people were expecting a Trump nomination either.
posted by sour cream at 6:31 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I agree with you that Clinton is the frontrunner but comparing her vote total to Trump's in the primary is apples and oranges. Trump had what, five? ten? challengers at the start of the voting, whereas Clinton had only the one, during a series of votes that took place over months and in a dynamic setting on both sides.

There's too much noise to really pull anything meaningful here regarding the general election.

But it is relevant in the discussion of the prevailing narrative taking hold as to Trump's inevitability. Or any discussion of how unlikeable Clinton is and what she needs to different to win.
posted by billyfleetwood at 6:35 PM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

Half a year ago, not many people were expecting a Trump nomination either.

Gonna put this tweet out there again.

So many pundits have spent so much time trying to answer the question "Who are Trump voters" without saying "racist White people." But that is what they are. Racist White people. Shit, if George Wallace couldn't win off the backs of racist White people in 1964, it sure isn't going to happen now.

Trump is going to require some amazing pivots, a dramatic change in character, and his opponents going completely brain-dead and ignoring everything he said during the primaries. Like, I won't rule out the possibility of the latter, but with regards to the first two Trump has demonstrated an ability to dodge questions but not change the essential impression of being a racist dickwad.
posted by Anonymous at 6:41 PM on May 25, 2016

I honestly don't think you can label every Trump voter as a racist White.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:44 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

The vast majority, though. I mean, I saw this joke the other day: "We're not saying everyone in the Republican party is a racist, but if you're a racist have we got the party for you!"

Sub Trump for Republican and, well.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:46 PM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

Clinton’s inexcusable, willful disregard for the rules

...There were also numerous notifications that some emails (but not all) are considered federal records under the law and that she should print and file those in her office and, before leaving office, surrender all emails dealing with department business. She did so only about two years later, in December 2014.

...Starting in 2009, there was a new, electronic system, known as SMART, to properly archive department emails without having to print and file them, but Ms. Clinton opted not to use it, out of concern that there was “overly broad access to sensitive materials.” According to the report, after a staff member “raised concerns” with another official about Ms. Clinton’s personal email server, the staff was instructed “never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again.”

...The department’s email technology was archaic. Other staffers also used personal email, as did Secretary Colin Powell (2001-2005), without preserving the records. But there is no excuse for the way Ms. Clinton breezed through all the warnings and notifications. While not illegal behavior, it was disturbingly unmindful of the rules. In the middle of the presidential campaign, we urge the FBI to finish its own investigation soon, so all information about this troubling episode will be before the voters.
posted by futz at 6:51 PM on May 25, 2016

Turmp's success is that a lot of people feel like they always get the short end of the stick and thus will vote for the candidate that at least offers to shake up things instead of the same-old same-old.

I think this holds true more for whites than for minorities. Though minorities have taken a just as bad if not worse hit due to the recession, they also generally been more approving and receptive of President Obama, his efforts to fight the recession, and policies like ACA. And I think this goes beyond African-Americans, extending to both Hispanics and Asian Americans too.

Third, I think that a lot can be explained by people's desire not to be on the bottom rung of society. Thus, a lot of e.g. Hispanics may actually vote for Trump, because at least he'll keep out those goddamn Mexicans illegals.

I think while it's true that nobody wants to be on the bottom rung of society, I also think most people don't like knowing they climbed up by throwing someone else under the bus. If that sounds too optimistic, I also think immigrants are more likely to know someone negatively affected by Trump's policies. Not necessarily an undocumented person, but more like relatives or friends in the old country. And to add to that, some immigrants also absorb news media back home, where reporting on Trump has been mostly negative. I know my own parents usually watch Taiwanese news much more than any Western news outlet.
posted by FJT at 7:02 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trump is going to require some amazing pivots, a dramatic change in character, and his opponents going completely brain-dead and ignoring everything he said during the primaries. Like, I won't rule out the possibility of the latter, but with regards to the first two Trump has demonstrated an ability to dodge questions but not change the essential impression of being a racist dickwad

Yes, I think it's not unlikely that this (drastic pivots) will happen.

The one defining characteristic of Trump is that he is entirely devoid of ideology.
I don't think that he personally is very racist at all, at least not in the sense that he has a core belief that people of one race are intrinsically inferior to people of other races. If Trump has a core belief, I think it is that he himself is superior to any other person on the planet and boy is he having a run to prove just that.

Of course, they say that if you say racist stuff, then you're a racist, but I think that the racist stuff that he spouted was just a means to an end, which he successfully reached. Once he sees it as advantage to stop saying racist things, he won't hesitate a second to do just that and suddenly espouse the exact opposite position. Moreover, he has the uncanny ability to revoke his prior position, while still leaving enough ambiguity in there to keep his followers thinking that he didn't revoke anything at all. Just look at his reversals: The man is a titan of ambiguity.

Furthermore, since he has no ideological core, he is totally free to pivot on just about anything he wants, as long as it will get him closer to the presidency. He has already proven that he is willing to slaughter any Republican holy cow, then desecrate it and then have it for breakfast. In fact, I'm almost suprised he hasn't done more of that. Maybe he's in a consolidation phase now and just waiting for a moment with maximum impact, such as the DNC. But just wait for him to take up many positions that are arguably to the left of Clinton, ideally without appearing as such to the Republican base.
posted by sour cream at 7:16 PM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

this is one of those times that you can tell actual minorities from white people wondering what certain minority groups might think or want to do.
posted by zutalors! at 7:16 PM on May 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

I honestly don't think you can label every Trump voter as a racist White.

No, not every one, but did you read the study I linked? They're pretty damn racist. There's another analysis by the same group.

I was listening to a 538 podcast where they were trying to define Trump voters and for every general categorization they tried to make--social class, location, age, income, prior support for other candidates--they could find enough counterexamples for it to not work. It was hiarrible because they'd go around and around trying to figure out who Trump voters were, without just saying the elephant in the room: racist White people.

Turmp's success is that a lot of people feel like they always get the short end of the stick and thus will vote for the candidate that at least offers to shake up things instead of the same-old same-old.

This resentment/entitlement is more of a White thing than a POC thing. For example, Black Americans are well aware they got the short end of the stick. But they're not voting Trump because they know while things still aren't fair now, they used to be a lot worse and are slowly getting better.

The desire to burn it down because you feel like you're getting the short end of the stick means you were raised expecting (A) that the stick should have been given to you in the first place, and (B) that you'll come out on top in the end.
posted by Anonymous at 7:35 PM on May 25, 2016

I mean, at the very least to be a Trump supporter you have to be OK with racism and racist language/appeals. You could argue that might not make someone a racist per se, but I think its kind of a fine line. I would agree that many people's primary reason for supporting Trump may not be racism. But they are at least willing to overlook/excuse overt racism to do so.
posted by thefoxgod at 7:38 PM on May 25, 2016 [10 favorites]

While not illegal behavior, it was disturbingly unmindful of the rules.

This statement is disturbingly unmindful of the facts. Exactly which rules was she unmindful of? The rules allowed and still allow use of personal email accounts. The rules require federal archiving of emails pertaining to official business. Clinton has done so. The only complaint is that it took so long, but considering that 55,000 pages of emails were involved, that is not too surprising. Similar delays on document releases have been the case for every Secretary of State and every President in history.
posted by JackFlash at 7:41 PM on May 25, 2016 [7 favorites]

The desire to burn it down because you feel like you're getting the short end of the stick means you were raised expecting (A) that the stick should have been given to you in the first place, and (B) that you'll come out on top in the end.

This is an astonishingly deep and insightful statement.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:42 PM on May 25, 2016 [12 favorites]

None of the previous SoS used their own private server. That is the crux of much of this.
posted by futz at 7:45 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Racist White people.
Also ignorant people and gullible people (sorry, 'low-information' people), who think he's one of the Richest Men in the World (and therefore one of the smartest) just because of his high visibility. And he's been ~~lying about his net worth~~ claiming Forbes underestimates his net worth since 1982... Check out the video of his history with Forbes (where one of the first pics shows him with Hulk Hogan). I can't imagine many WWE fans of any race or gender voting for Hillary.

But for people who think "this is all too complicated for me, let somebody else handle the important stuff", Donald is the kind of 'somebody else', they'll gladly leave it to, after his 30+ year personal image campaign, mostly unchallenged by the media because they thought he wasn't worth the bother (and aided by NBC making him the Icon of Business on Reality TV).
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:47 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Private server and private email account are so similar as to be functionally indistinguishable, and lay bare the partisan (R/D and Clinton/Sanders) nature of so much of the foodly boop about this.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:48 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

None of the previous SoS used their own private server. That is the crux of much of this.

Nonsense. You are just making stuff up. Why is it any different if one uses gmail or aol or any other server? There is no law or rule concerning the use of non-government servers for personal email. None at all.
posted by JackFlash at 8:01 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

2015 Hillary Clinton admits private email server was 'a mistake'
‘I’m sorry about that. I take full responsibility’ says embattled Democratic frontrunner, a day after telling the Associated Press she would not apologize

As recently as Monday, Clinton had refused to apologize for exclusively using a personal email address while secretary of state, telling the Associated Press that she wouldn’t apologize because “what I did was allowed. It was allowed by the State Department. The State Department has confirmed that”.

which we now know was a lie. It was never approved.

2016 Hillary Clinton's email server violated state department rules, audit finds
Efforts by the former secretary of state to move on from her email controversy hit a major setback as investigation finds disregard for department guidelines

Despite guidelines to the contrary, Clinton used mobile devices to conduct official business on her personal email account and private server. She never sought approval from senior information officers, who would have refused the request because of security risks, the audit said.

posted by futz at 8:20 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trump and the Powers of the American Presidency (Part I) by Benjamin Wittes
posted by Golden Eternity at 8:20 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

Based on the available facts and public sentiment anything other than a pass on indicting Clinton would be politically disastrous for the FBI. If your the director of the FBI you make sure you give Clinton a clean bill of health after a careful investigation. Collect a small chit for it to cash in later if she wins in November. Think about the partisan reaction to their Presidential nominee getting indicted this close to the fall based on what doesn't appear to be a strong case. And of course they risk the ultimate nightmare she wins the Presidency anyway and beats the rap. Now your career, department and the Bureau are on her shit list.
posted by humanfont at 8:24 PM on May 25, 2016

None of the previous SoS used their own private server.

You are technically correct. They used the Republican Party's private server.
posted by dirigibleman at 8:25 PM on May 25, 2016 [14 favorites]

Hillary Clinton's email server violated state department rules, audit finds.

This is incorrect. Nowhere does the OIG audit say this.

It was never approved.

The audit does not say this. They only indicate that they did not find a written document indicating so. They have testimony from a State Department official that it was approved.
posted by JackFlash at 8:33 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

They have testimony from a State Department official that it was approved.

cite?
posted by futz at 8:34 PM on May 25, 2016

From the OIG report: "the Director [of Office of Information Resources Management] stated that the Secretary’s
personal system had been reviewed and approved by Department legal staff."
posted by JackFlash at 8:42 PM on May 25, 2016 [7 favorites]

For you folks who weren't around during Watergate, this email thing gives you a small taste of what it was like except it went on for eight straight years. Lurid headlines not based on fact. Innuendo. Statements of criminality contradicted by facts in actual testimony and documents. Anonymous leaks. And on and on. Don't be taken for fools. Don't be Drudge Report enablers.
posted by JackFlash at 9:01 PM on May 25, 2016 [9 favorites]

Usually a cite includes a link. I am really not trying to be an ass. I would like to read it. Is a link to high a hurdle?
posted by futz at 9:09 PM on May 25, 2016

For you folks who weren't around during Watergate

I think you mean Whitewater…
posted by Going To Maine at 9:13 PM on May 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

And the Drudge comment is insulting as hell. Ffs.
posted by futz at 9:14 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

JackFlash's excerpt highlighted:

Two staff in S/ES-IRM reported to OIG that, in late 2010, they each discussed their concerns about Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email account in separate meetings with the then-Director of S/ES-IRM. In one meeting, one staff member raised concerns that information sent and received on Secretary Clinton’s account could contain Federal records that needed to be preserved in order to satisfy Federal recordkeeping requirements. According to the staff member, the Director stated that the Secretary’s personal system had been reviewed and approved by Department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further. As previously noted, OIG found no evidence that staff in the Office of the Legal Adviser reviewed or approved Secretary Clinton’s personal system. According to the other S/ES-IRM staff member who raised concerns about the server, the Director stated that the mission of S/ES-IRM is to support the Secretary and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again. (Inspector General Report, page 40 - pdf, text)

posted by XMLicious at 9:18 PM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

Usually a cite includes a link. I am really not trying to be an ass. I would like to read it. Is a link to high a hurdle?

Futz, the report is linked in this comment. It is also readily available on Google, as I think it is linked by most news articles discussing it.
posted by Anonymous at 9:22 PM on May 25, 2016

futz, even if your facts pan out (which isn't really looking to be happening), you motivation is starting to seem a bit suspect.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 9:23 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

That was at Hillary's staff meeting. Hillary's Director told her staff that was approved by Legal after her staff raised concernst and the IOG found no evidence of that claim. Read the whole context again.
posted by futz at 9:24 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mean, at the very least to be a Trump supporter you have to be OK with racism and racist language/appeals.

Why is that?
I mean, you can totally not be OK with racism and still vote for Trump. I bet that many people will.
For example, you could hold the entirely rational position that you are not OK with racism, but another issue is more important to you, such as that not another Clinton gets into the White House.
Or you could justify it by telling yourself he doesn't really mean it that way, this is just an act put on for the election etc.

Justifying their choices - it's what people do all the time.
posted by sour cream at 9:31 PM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

I can't imagine many WWE fans of any race or gender voting for Hillary.

Wait, what? To expand, WTF?
posted by bongo_x at 9:33 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

futz's motivation seems suspect? JackFlash just quoted a sentence fragment from the report, with a fake period added and no ellipsis, crafted to make it appear as though it said the exact opposite of what it actually says. Look above at the subsequent sentence: As previously noted, OIG found no evidence that staff in the Office of the Legal Adviser reviewed or approved Secretary Clinton’s personal system.

This is a fairly artificial scandal and would be a stupid reason for Clinton to lose the presidential race but every time Clinton says something like "Whaaa? Wipe the server with a cloth?!?" or someone lies about it or is deceptive about it, it only reinforces the image of her as being dishonest and untrustworthy. (The image that Republicans want to promote, that is.)
posted by XMLicious at 9:34 PM on May 25, 2016 [11 favorites]

@BernieSanders: "Game on. I look forward to debating Donald Trump in California before the June 7 primary."
posted by Golden Eternity at 9:36 PM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

@BernieSanders: "Game on. I look forward to debating Donald Trump in California before the June 7 primary."

Cmon what?
posted by zutalors! at 9:40 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Why is that?
I mean, you can totally not be OK with racism and still vote for Trump. I bet that many people will.

I don't buy it. Racism, like sexism, and homophobia, and a whole host of other -isms is the sort of thing that gets ingrained in you from the culture around you from Day 1. The vast majority of people say they aren't racist and don't support racism and then turn around and their everyday behaviors reflect that they are hella racist. See brief discussion here.

When you say "racism, eh, NBD man" you aren't making a rational choice--you're making a choice that's influenced by your own racism. Part of the reason Trump's supporters are mostly White is because White people are more likely to make the choice to let the racism slide. This is because they themselves are racist.
posted by Anonymous at 9:43 PM on May 25, 2016

Cmon what?

Okay, maybe this explains it:

@DannyEFreeman: "This after @realDonaldTrump said on @JimmyKimmelLive he'd debate @BernieSanders."

Good move by Bernie. Trump will never do it. At least not before the primary.
posted by Golden Eternity at 9:44 PM on May 25, 2016

@BernieSanders: "Game on. I look forward to debating Donald Trump in California before the June 7 primary."

ONE NIGHT ONLY! TWO OLD MEN WITH DISTINCTIVE HAIR YELLING AT EACH OTHER!

I’d watch.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:47 PM on May 25, 2016 [13 favorites]

This is because they themselves are racist.

Let us extend the benefit that we would extend someone else on the site: making a racist choice does not mean that you are racist. However, that does not eliminate the racist tones from the act.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:49 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

Let us extend the benefit that we would extend someone else on the site: making a racist choice does not mean that you are racist

We're all racist to some degree or another. To what degree depends on our level of self-awareness and the social circle in which we were brought up. But we're all racist, so I have no qualms about saying that a person making a racist choice is a racist.

If you support a demonstrably racist candidate because you tell yourself you're prioritizing a certain issue over their racism, you're essentially endorsing the institutionalized racism said candidate seeks to perpetuate. Which is racist.
posted by Anonymous at 9:57 PM on May 25, 2016

I would like it if there would be a parallel debate between Clinton and Cruz, because why the hell not, it would be nearly as entertaining. Kasich can debate Gary Johnson and it would be the most substantiative out of all debates.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:00 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

If Clinton and Cruz debated we might see an actual discussion of policy. The Sanders-Trump debate will be a glorious shitshow.
posted by Anonymous at 10:04 PM on May 25, 2016

I’d watch.

Who wouldn't? I wonder what the strategy for each of the two candidates would be. Would Trump try to curry favor with Bernie voters by attacking Hillary and the Democratic primary process? Or would that force Bernie into a position of defending them to differentiate himself from Trump and exhibit his liberal credentials? But if Sanders does that, how does he distinguish himself from Clinton, which he needs to do for the upcoming primary vote(s)? Or does Trump take the opposite tack, and mercilessly attack Bernie/Obama/Hillary en bloc, and perhaps Bernie specifically as a crazed socialist that wants to dilute Americans' precious bodily fluids? The plot thickens...
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 10:05 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

I mean, you can totally not be OK with racism and still vote for Trump. I bet that many people will.

From what I've gleaned, Trump supporters who say they aren't racist follow the internal logic that illegal immigrants aren't a race and Muslims are not a race either, hence Trump is not racist. But, that's only if you accept their specious definition of what racism is in the first place.

Because, it is racist. Just because undocumented people aren't a specific race, doesn't mean such policies won't primarily affect minorities. And of course racism encompasses things like xenophobia and nativism, which is Trump all the way.

And then there's Trump's overarching theme of American decline, caused by enemies both foreign and domestic. I don't think Trump is as obvious to give a specific racial identity to what an "American" is, just like how he doesn't really point to a specific era (like the Reagan era or the 50s) as the time when America was "great". But, the people that he targets and blames for the decline are usually people of color (or pro-POC causes like BLM or just general PC culture) or foreigners (China, Japan, Mexico, South Korea. And to add to this, it's always non-white countries. I've actually never heard Trump blaming German cars or Canadian oil for America losing).

Yes, we all make justifications, especially based on something as big as political candidates to support, but directly pointing to specific groups, blaming them on something as big as America's decline, and then "suggesting" they should either be taken away or not allowed in is a big red flag.
posted by FJT at 10:06 PM on May 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

it said the exact opposite of what it actually says.

It says exactly what it says. They have testimony that the director of IT for the State Department says they had legal clearance. They have no evidence contradicting this testimony, which is exactly what I said in the original citation. Now you can claim that the State Department director of IT is a liar, or that the director of IT is in a conspiracy with Hillary Clinton, but then you would sound exactly like Alex Jones and you could start shooting watermelons in your backyard. You have zero evidence supporting your conspiracy. The OIG makes no claims saying that the IT director lied. They only state that they have found no written document but then no written document is required.

And so it goes.
posted by JackFlash at 10:07 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

When you say "racism, eh, NBD man" you aren't making a rational choice--you're making a choice that's influenced by your own racism. Part of the reason Trump's supporters are mostly White is because White people are more likely to make the choice to let the racism slide. This is because they themselves are racist.

So your support of Clinton also means you support her vote in favor of invading Iraq, or bombing Libya, or hatefying welfare, or whatever other hateful things Clinton has been in favor of over the years in pursuit of political edge?

We all pick and choose. Even Trump voters. Even you.
posted by notyou at 10:09 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

For example, you could hold the entirely rational position that you are not OK with racism, but another issue is more important

Nope. If you're supporting racism, you are a racist. You may not mean to be, you may claim it as another issue is more important, but at the end of the day you are supporting outright racism.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:12 PM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

If Trump were behaving strategically in a Trump/Sanders debate, he'd go easy on Sanders and shit on Clinton. In his ideal world he's facing Sanders in the general, not Clinton, and in second-best world Sanders voters come and vote for him. He's obviously been making a play for them, talking about how Sanders has been treated unfairly.

However, Trump views every interaction as a dick-measuring contest, so he may not be able to resist the impulse to whip it out and start crowing about Sanders's failures in the polls and various weaknesses as a candidate.

As for Sanders himself, given how easily Clinton was able to get him worked up during their last debates I can only see this ending badly for him.
posted by Anonymous at 10:13 PM on May 25, 2016

So your support of Clinton also means you support her vote in favor of invading Iraq, or bombing Libya, or hatefying welfare, or whatever other hateful things Clinton has been in favor of over the years in pursuit of political edge?

No, wow, no. Being dovish or hawkish is not even remotely the same thing as demonizing huge groups of other people based on their identity, things that are inborn characteristics about their skin colour or sexual orientation or gender identity or nation of origin or even, given the ties of culture and faith, their religion.

Supporting Trump (or Cruz or any other Republican) is supporting an intended regime that says "these people (who happen to look, believe, and live like us) are better than those people (who we think don't)." Republicans--conservatives in general--are intent on making the world look like themselves. Everyone slightly to the left of them is going "Okay, but like, all people are created equal yes, but they're not all treated equal so let's do something about that."

Clinton fucked the fuck up on the Iraq war. She's not talking about deporting millions of people because of their religion. These are fundamentally different things.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:21 PM on May 25, 2016 [9 favorites]

Whether Trump supporters are inherently racist prior to supporting Trump is the most boring question ever for me. What matters is that their Overton window on racism is being shifted every minute he's the candidate.
posted by corb at 10:21 PM on May 25, 2016 [26 favorites]

Well, ok, and the only difference between Trump and any other Republican Presidential candidate is that he says out loud what the rest say sotto voce. That window has been shifting for a very long time. And in some cases, the window itself has never shifted, only the light shining through it--which is how we get dog whistles from everyone else, going right back to the Southern Strategy (which I assume I don't have to quote here).
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:25 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Where do you get this stuff, schroedinger? On the one hand, you want to undermine the BS misogyny baked into the system that's costing Clinton votes (and Clinton supporters their autonomy), on the other, you're assuming Trump will best Sanders because Trump is more of a "man", in the conventional sense. But Clinton would castrate Trump instead? Yeah, you may wanna think this stuff through.
posted by notyou at 10:26 PM on May 25, 2016

Well, ok, and the only difference between Trump and any other Republican Presidential candidate is that he says out loud what the rest say sotto voce.

Except for the whole anti-trade thing. Trump says a lot of stuff.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:31 PM on May 25, 2016

Clinton fucked the fuck up on the Iraq war. She's not talking about deporting millions of people because of their religion. These are fundamentally different things.

Do we disagree?

One is racist deportation for political gain.The other is racist warmongering for political gain. Tomatoe, Tomatoh.
posted by notyou at 10:34 PM on May 25, 2016

So your support of Clinton also means you support her vote in favor of invading Iraq, or bombing Libya, or hatefying welfare, or whatever other hateful things Clinton has been in favor of over the years in pursuit of political edge?

Obviously everyone makes compromises when they choose a candidate. How many Sanders supporters are in favor of his lackadaisical approach to gun regulation?

That said, to me there's a difference between disagreements over policy versus whether or not you're OK with a candidate who is expressly interested in perpetuating White supremacy. Like fffm says, when you get to the point of "How OK am I with a guy who called all Mexicans rapists" you aren't talking about digging up statistics or a debate over theory or sifting through comparative historical situations, you're straight up deciding that your racial/ethnic identity is sufficiently different from that of the persecuted group to not be hurt by the blowback against them. This is an inherently privileged decision, steeped in racism and being raised with the benefits of Whiteness.

On the one hand, you want to undermine the BS misogyny baked into the system that's costing Clinton votes (and Clinton supporters their autonomy), on the other, you're assuming Trump will best Sanders because Trump is more of a "man", in the conventional sense. But Clinton would castrate Trump instead? Yeah, you may wanna think this stuff through.

Whew, I am not sure where all this is coming from--like, I haven't mentioned Clinton v. Trump in debates for a while so I guess you're drawing on opinions I expressed in prior threads? That said, what exactly is your objection? Are you arguing the following can't exist simultaneously:

Sexism negatively effects how Clinton and her supporters are perceived
Trump has done a good job in debates of riling up and bullying his opponents
Sanders has shown himself to get easily riled in debates
Trump himself gets riled when challenged by women, so there's a decent chance Clinton would be able to turn the tables on him

I don't see the contradiction between those?
posted by Anonymous at 10:39 PM on May 25, 2016

But honestly, that comment turns on schroedinger's estimation that Trump will crush Sanders because of conventional understandings of "manliness". Whatever my uncharitableness.
posted by notyou at 10:40 PM on May 25, 2016

schroedinger's estimation that Trump will crush Sanders because of conventional understandings of "manliness"

Wow, I have no idea where you got this. Please see my above response.
posted by Anonymous at 10:43 PM on May 25, 2016

But honestly, that comment turns on schroedinger's estimation that Trump will crush Sanders because of conventional understandings of "manliness". Whatever my uncharitableness.

No, it really doesn't. It turns on Trump's desire to crush Sanders because of Trump's understanding of manliness, and on Sanders' tendency to allow his debate opponent to get under his skin.

Neither of those is anywhere in the vicinity of what you are saying. So, yeah, uncharitable is putting it charitably.
posted by dersins at 10:43 PM on May 25, 2016 [7 favorites]

Uh, or what schroedinger said.
posted by dersins at 10:44 PM on May 25, 2016

It says exactly what it says. They have testimony that the director of IT for the State Department says they had legal clearance.

Please read it again. Hillary's Director told Hillary's staff that it had been okay'd by Legal when it hadn't. Read any media outlet and that is what they are saying. And it is what the OIG says for reals.

And please stop accusing anyone who disagrees with you of being an Alex Jones or Drudge Report nut. I have never read those sites. It is insulting. Beyond insulting.
posted by futz at 10:46 PM on May 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

Outcomes I see from a Sanders/Trump debate:

* Trump makes a better showing in this debate than he has made in the GOP debates. Trump's support increases. Everyone else freaks the hell out.

* A wash. Everyone decides their candidate did better than the other guy. Trump consolidates and expands his gains among Republicans. Sanders supporters dig in for their guy. More panic about Clinton.

* Sanders does well, leading to more resentment for Clinton among his supporters and further media hand-wringing, further weakening her standing in polls. Trump walks away probably fine, 'cause his supporters never really waver, anyway, while the rest of the Republicans decide they hate Clinton even more.

Ultimately, I see no way this helps the cause of the Democrats. It only drives a bigger wedge between the Clinton and Sanders camps. This does NOT speak to Sanders being willing to close ranks with Democrats after the primaries. It's a real dick move on his part to even publicly entertain this suggestion.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:46 PM on May 25, 2016 [23 favorites]

That said, to me there's a difference between disagreements over policy versus whether or not you're OK with a candidate who is expressly interested in perpetuating White supremacy.

See, YOU don't get to make that estimation. You have no idea of the juggling each of us have made It's coming to our compromises. I don't think you are a murderer of Iraqis because you support Clinton. I don't think you want to further impoverish the poor, even though your candidate's preferred policies have done so. And so I think you are unkind and dishonest to brand all Trump or Sanders or not-Clinton supporters Racist or Misogynist, based on the candidate's stated preferences, here or there.

It's othering. It's wrong. Stop it.
posted by notyou at 10:53 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

Trump has done very, very little to hammer on Bernie. I actually think he won't, because if he's smart, he knows he looks like Bernie to certain Bernie voters if they squint enough. I mean, he's a trade hawk and he's not Hillary.

So, the debate isn't a debate. It's an opportunity to make his case to Bernie voters. And Bernie just handed him the mike.

Jeff Weaver isn't running this campaign. It's John Foster Dulles, and his M.O. is mutually assured destruction.
posted by dw at 10:54 PM on May 25, 2016 [7 favorites]

Hillary's Director at the time was Cheryl Mills and the OIG report says that she was the one who told her staff to stop talking about the email situation and that it had been cleared by Legal. That is in the report. No conspiracy theories needed.
posted by futz at 10:55 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

One is racist deportation for political gain.The other is racist warmongering for political gain.

But that's kind of a false comparison though. Since Donald Trump is promising to both engage in racist deportation AND racist warmongering and his supporters don't seem to mind either as long as America is the victor.
posted by FJT at 10:55 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Well, the AND is kind of problematic, yeah.
posted by notyou at 10:57 PM on May 25, 2016

Hillary's Director told Hillary's staff that it had been okay'd by Legal when it hadn't ... And it is what the OIG says for reals.

You are delusional. The OIG says nothing of the sort -- not even close.

Read any media outlet and that is what they are saying.

You mean the same media outlets who lied to us about the WMDs in Iraq. The same media outlets who lied to us about Whitewater and Vince Foster. Because the worst of those media outlets weren't Fox News or Drudge. They were the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Those who lived through the 90s know it well. Get used to it because it is coming back in force.

And so it goes.
posted by JackFlash at 11:00 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Look, I'll eat crow if I am wrong. Someone above said that I could verify your statement because it was all over the news. That is why I said that. PLEASE stop being so insulting.
posted by futz at 11:05 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Have a good evening.
posted by futz at 11:06 PM on May 25, 2016

And so I think you are unkind and dishonest to brand all Trump or Sanders or not-Clinton supporters Racist or Misogynist, based on the candidate's stated preferences, here or there.

I am drawing my summation from actual studies done on actual Trump voters, wherein it was demonstrated that Trump voters tie White identity to American identity, demonstrate more racial resentment, and have a statistically significant lower opinion of various minority groups than other voters, including other Republican voters. I linked to these studies earlier in this thread.

US society is built on racism. White people are disproportionately racist. Trump voters are disproportionately White. I don't think it is possible to grow up in the USA and not be racist to some degree, especially if you are White. That includes myself.

We aren't going to overthrow White supremacy by pretending we aren't affected by implicit bias and racism only comes in the form of white hoods and burning crosses. Frankly, I am sick of tiptoeing around White fragility. If you're a White person who supports a candidate who calls himself a "friend of the blacks" and all Mexicans rapists and agitates for mass deportation of Muslims, then you need to do some hard thinking as to why you are OK with prioritizing whatever your pet issue is over the dehumanization of groups of people who are racially and ethnically different from you.

Also, when the hell did I brand all not-Clinton supporters misogynist? This is like your claims I think Trump is manly--where are you getting this stuff?
posted by Anonymous at 11:08 PM on May 25, 2016

The OIG says nothing of the sort -- not even close.

Read it again. The instruction to Clinton's staffers not to bring it up because it had been cleared OK was not true. Otherwise it wouldn't even be newsworthy.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:09 PM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

His campaign is running extremely low on funds and a debate is basically free publicity. I doubt he has given it any more strategic thought than that--certainly can't have considered why Trump would be happy to debate someone who is not getting the nomination.

Sanders is still angling for a stronger negotiating position before he capitulates. We know that there are back channel discussions, probably ongoing (the agreement between re: the platform committee was all behind the scenes), and here Sanders raises it a notch. This is all wrapping up after June 7, and Sanders has to make hay while he can. NBD.
posted by notyou at 11:18 PM on May 25, 2016

This is all wrapping up after June 7, and Sanders has to make hay while he can. NBD.

It's only NBD if you don't take the stakes of this election seriously.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:22 PM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

And so it goes.

This is condescending and annoying.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:26 PM on May 25, 2016 [12 favorites]

It's only NBD if you don't take the stakes of this election seriously.

I'm voting in June! I've given money to my preferred candidates! I've been outspoken in person and online. I think my analysis of the current developments is "serious". Why the insult?
posted by notyou at 11:30 PM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

Sanders does well, leading to more resentment for Clinton among his supporters and further media hand-wringing, further weakening her standing in polls.

I think there's a hidden assumption here that every success of Bernie's is at Hillary's expense, which I do not think is true. Given how much Sanders has stressed the wide gulf between both himself and Clinton vs. Trump in previous debates, I think it's also entirely possible a good showing for him would benefit both Democrats. For example, if he can reach any of the disaffected whites considering a Trump vote (who HRC has been less popular with) and weaken Trump in their eyes, they may be more likely to stay home or vote D in the general. That's a good outcome even if Clinton is the eventual nominee.
posted by en forme de poire at 11:49 PM on May 25, 2016 [9 favorites]

JackFlash, on pp 36-37 of the report it explicitly says,

Throughout Secretary Clinton’s tenure, the FAM stated that normal day-to-day operations should be conducted on an authorized AIS, yet OIG found no evidence that the Secretary requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server. According to the current CIO and Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security, Secretary Clinton had an obligation to discuss using her personal email account to conduct official business with their offices, who in turn would have attempted to provide her with approved and secured means that met her business needs. However, according to these officials, DS and IRM did not—and would not—approve her exclusive reliance on a personal email account to conduct Department business, because of the restrictions in the FAM and the security risks in doing so.

and

Although this report does not address the safety or security of hersystem, DS and IRM reported to OIG that Secretary Clinton never demonstrated to them that her private server or mobile device met minimum information security requirements specified by FISMA and the FAM.

and

In addition to interviewing current and former officials in DS and IRM, OIG interviewed other senior Department officials with relevant knowledge who served under Secretary Clinton, including the Under Secretary for Management, who supervises both DS and IRM; current and former Executive Secretaries; and attorneys within the Office of the Legal Adviser. These officials all stated that they were not asked to approve or otherwise review the use of Secretary Clinton’s server and that they had no knowledge of approval or review by other Department staff.

If observing that you have cherry-picked and creatively quoted the single case in the report where someone repeats a claim that was made to them saying the system was approved immediately before forbidding them to ever speak of it again makes me a watermelon-shooting conspiracy theorist, what does it say about you that you're positing a scenario where the private email system was approved but no written record of this occurring was available to the OIG and the officials listed in the report definitively stated that it was not approved and the OIG then put those false statements into the report?

Someone needs to come up with a response on this that doesn't sound like prevarication.
posted by XMLicious at 11:49 PM on May 25, 2016 [10 favorites]

Meanwhile:

The poll, released Wednesday night by the Public Policy Institute of California, showed Mrs. Clinton leading Mr. Sanders among likely voters, 46 percent to 44 percent — within the margin of error. A survey by the organization in March found Mrs. Clinton with a lead of 48 percent to 41 percent over Mr. Sanders.

Maybe Sanders thinks a debate with Trump will help his negotiating position with Clinton. Maybe Clinton should have accepted Sanders' offer to debate.
posted by notyou at 12:03 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's a real dick move on his part to even publicly entertain this suggestion.

When you're running for the most important office in the nation, isn't campaigning for every vote important? Shouldn't candidates be willing to debate anytime, anywhere?
posted by mikelieman at 12:12 AM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

It might just turn into a unity moment of Sanders and Trump spending 2 hours criticizing Clinton and the Democratic Party. Which would be beneficial to both candidates.
posted by FJT at 12:15 AM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

I think my analysis of the current developments is "serious". Why the insult?

Why are you being disgenuous? The Sanders campaign is making strategic decisions that only benefit Trump in the long run, and you dismissed it as "no big deal." "NBD" is not generally used in conjunction with statements that are intended to be serious.

When you're running for the most important office in the nation, isn't campaigning for every vote important? Shouldn't candidates be willing to debate anytime, anywhere?

The campaign is over. Sanders is not going to win. Sanders knows he's not going to win. This posturing and blustering is entirely self-serving and, as I said, benefits Trump in the long run.

Debates are for convincing people of your policy positions. Clinton has already won the election; the voters are already convinced. There is not really any reason for her debate, and there sure as hell is no reason for her to debate on Fox fucking News, who are hardly impartial to her.

Maybe Sanders thinks a debate with Trump will help his negotiating position with Clinton. Maybe Clinton should have accepted Sanders' offer to debate.

"You should debate. After all, this is a real nice election you've got going . . . I'd hate for something to happen to it."
posted by Anonymous at 12:40 AM on May 26, 2016

The campaign is over. Sanders is not going to win

That's your opinion. I don't agree. It's not over until every delegate in Philadelphia casts their vote, and to give up before *EVERY* American gets to cast *THEIR* ballot (for delegates) doesn't seem very... "Democratic", does it?
posted by mikelieman at 12:46 AM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

And I think the Clinton Campaign saying, "Hey, California, YOU DON'T MATTER" isn't necessarily the best move...
posted by mikelieman at 12:47 AM on May 26, 2016

When you're running for the most important office in the nation, isn't campaigning for every vote important? Shouldn't candidates be willing to debate anytime, anywhere?

But the assumption there is that Sanders is a candidate running for President right now. He, realistically, is not. His only path to the nomination involves convincing the superdelegates, who overwhelmingly back Clinton, to hand it to him.

There are basically two remotely reasonable scenarios by which that could conceivably happen: something so dramatic happens so as to essentially cause Clinton to drop out (or at least for most Democratic elected officials and party leaders to agree that she should drop out and force the issue), or Sanders comes out ahead in the delegate count and makes a successful appeal for the superdelgates to honor the will of the voters (an appeal that will likely be complicated by Clinton winning the popular vote, thus muddying the will of the voters). The former seems unlikely, and should something happen in the next two months, Sanders will still be just as available in July whether he suspends his campaign or not. The latter is incredibly unlikely. It requires Sanders to win California by a gigantic margin, larger than he's won any state including Vermont, completely unsupported by any polling to date. It also requires many of the same people who Sanders has railed against and deemed corrupt to switch sides and suddenly support him.

More importantly, the California GOP primary is a closed primary. The deadline to register as a Republican has passed. No-Party-Preference voters (independents) may vote a Democratic ballot if they request one, or get a ballot from a third-party, but they cannot vote Republican. Republicans have to vote a Republican ballot. So at this point, Democrats and NPP voters may choose between Clinton, Sanders, or a third-party candidate, and Republicans may choose between Trump and the last standing Republicans who dropped out too late and are still on the ballot (that's Carson, Cruz, Kasich, and Gilmore at least in SF). There are no voters in California who can choose between Sanders and Trump in the primary, none.

And that's the thing about a Trump-Sanders debate. The normal point of such a debate would be to allow voters to listen to the candidates and make a decision about which one would be best for the job. But as far as the primary is concerned, there are zero California voters who will get a ballot where they may choose between Sanders and Trump. So a Trump-Sanders debate isn't actually about convincing California voters to vote a certain way, except insofar as it involves an absent punching bag both candidates can beat on together.

There are perfectly reasonable reasons for Sanders to stay in the race in order to promote his agenda, actually running for office isn't one of them anymore. And there are perfectly reasonable reasons for Sanders to take advantage of the ridiculous audience that would watch such a debate, but getting votes in California, the state he must somehow utterly crush in order to have any hope of the nomination, isn't one of them either. So if Sanders isn't running for office here, he's running some sort of protest movement. And that's fine too, great even, but his protest movement is pretending to be a presidential campaign, and it's sitting squarely in the middle of an actual real election with enormous consequences to a lot of people's lives. That's a problem.
posted by zachlipton at 12:52 AM on May 26, 2016 [29 favorites]

And I think the Clinton Campaign saying, "Hey, California, YOU DON'T MATTER" isn't necessarily the best move...

I don't think anyone said that, but nice strawman?
posted by Anonymous at 12:55 AM on May 26, 2016

Worse than a strawman, that's an ultra-condescending stance that Californians don't understand the realities of primary races and can't handle the truth. That you're attacking their value as voters unless you lie to them.

What makes that especially bizarre is that California's primary hasn't mattered since 1968, and voters are fully aware of it. They moved the campaign up earlier once, to Super Tuesday, and moved it right back again afterwards.

But that phrasing is a perfect example of the disingenuous, emotionally driven rhetoric of the Sanders campaign. Really, when was the last time they focused on an actual issue? (as opposed to campaign mechanics, and excuses for why they're not really losing the horse race)
posted by msalt at 1:20 AM on May 26, 2016 [23 favorites]

Right, I guess he wants to debate Trump so he can discuss Democratic primary campaign mechanics.
posted by en forme de poire at 1:41 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

hey guys, what's new with the election--
/reads
o shit
posted by angrycat at 3:31 AM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

Clinton Beats Trump With Middle-Income Rust Belt Voters: Bloomberg Poll

Some seemingly conflicting views are also found in the survey results. Clinton leads by 14 percentage points on fighting for the middle class, while Trump leads by 15 points in creating jobs. Clinton has a 32-percentage-point advantage on having the skills to conduct foreign policy, but Trump leads by 11 points on battling terrorist threats.

The middle-income voters surveyed view Clinton as slightly more trustworthy than Trump, 29 percent to 23 percent, with 48 percent saying they're not sure who should be trusted more. Clinton is easily the favorite when it comes to who would be a better role model for children, 39 percent to 14 percent.

posted by XMLicious at 3:55 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Bernie could genuinely still win the pledged delegates. I realize it's a long shot, but as Bernie says, nothing about his campaign has NOT been a long shot. He's already gotten 75-80 percent in many states, and California has some of his biggest supporters - if he wins by a margin over 70, that delegate gap gets much tighter and could disappear. Remember, independents can vote in the CA Democratic primary but *not* in the Republican primary, which could add a lot of support to Bernie. I'd say June 7 could have a chance at being a very interesting set of results.

But that phrasing is a perfect example of the disingenuous, emotionally driven rhetoric of the Sanders campaign.

Thanks for the reminder that it's an open secret strategy to dismiss Sanders supporters as "emotionally driven". In fact, I very non-emotionally don't want Democrats to nominate Clinton because I don't want Trump to be president. Her numbers have been weaker against him all season and getting worse. I don't want another 49.5%-49.5% squeaker in November.
posted by scrowdid at 4:15 AM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

There's a difference between calling the Sanders campaign emotionally driven and calling supporters that. Everything doesn't need to be taken this personally.
posted by zutalors! at 4:39 AM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

mikelieman: "The campaign is over. Sanders is not going to win

That's your opinion. I don't agree. It's not over until every delegate in Philadelphia casts their vote, and to give up before *EVERY* American gets to cast *THEIR* ballot (for delegates) doesn't seem very... "Democratic", does it?"

It's Democratic that the candidate with the most votes wins and Clinton has the most votes. California isn't going to change that.
posted by octothorpe at 4:41 AM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

It's Democratic that the candidate with the most votes wins and Clinton has the most votes. California isn't going to change that.

But who cares? Sanders has always said he's going to compete his heart out in every state.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:52 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's Democratic that the candidate with the most votes wins and Clinton has the most votes.

Funny think I noticed about that. Those 'most votes' tallies don't seem to include the Caucus states. IIRC those weren't trivial numbers, so again, I'm unconvinced the campaign for the democratic nomination is as over as everyone says.

Hey, let's do this, if you're in California, and you're convinced it *is* over, and nothing will change that, why not cast a ballot for Bernie to show you agree with the leftward shift in the Overton Window. And that'll help move the platform left in Philly.
posted by mikelieman at 5:15 AM on May 26, 2016

The Sanders campaign accused a woman of going out of her way to claim she felt threatened. "Disingenuous" is a POLITE way to describe that.

And, again, I voted for Bernie Sanders. I think Hillary Clinton's got glaring problems [that won't stop her from being an excellent president]. It's weird to me how Sanders supporters are getting a kind of Randian victim complex over people telling them they're spouting melodramatic rhetoric when they clearly are (like claiming the caucus voters somehow make up for Bernie's 3 million-vote deficit—lol, wut?—or acting like there's a conspiracy to "keep them down" just because their outsider fairly-radical candidate lost to one of the most famous and, yes, beloved, politicians alive). It's a ludicrous tack to take, one that hovers between embarrassing and irritating and, yes, kind of scary for those of us looking at how misogynist/racist some of those supporters are.

Once again, I'd like to point out, I'm saying this as a Sanders voter. I woke up in the morning, went to a voting booth, voted Sanders, walked to work, a coworker asked "Did you vote?", I said "Yeah!", he said "Who for?", I said "Bernie!", and he went, somewhat verbatim, "Niiiiiiiiiiice." Because we all voted for Bernie, here, in Philadelphia. And we knew even before the polls closed that he was gonna lose, and nobody freaked out when the statistically inevitable came to pass.
posted by rorgy at 5:32 AM on May 26, 2016 [34 favorites]

And for fuck's sake, Bernie getting this humiliatingly played by Trump is why I'm glad he's not running in the general, polls or no polls. The dude's got an embarrassingly bad head for media rhetoric. Trump would crush him. As it is, Trump will use him against Hillary, and Bernie will probably even convince himself that this is what he wants, the egotistical schmuck who I gladly voted for.
posted by rorgy at 5:36 AM on May 26, 2016 [21 favorites]

The dude's got an embarrassingly bad head for media rhetoric. Trump would crush him.

No offense, but there is no evidence of this. Bernie tests much higher against Trump, whereas HRC is a draw right now.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:47 AM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

But who cares? Sanders has always said he's going to compete his heart out in every state.

Right, but for a lot of us who voted or intend to vote or Sanders, there's two ways that could go:

-he continues pushing his messages of economic and social justice (and their intersections), makes it clear he intends to work with Democrats up and down the ballot through November, and gets rid of the nastier elements in his own campaign staff

Or

-he lets Weaver and his ilk run things, doing almost nothing about their blatant misogyny and general assholery, and continues to rail against how corrupt the Democratic Party nomination is while simultaneously insisting that he will win based on what he claims is one of the most corrupt aspects of the process

You can see why a lot of us are worried that the second is more likely than the first. Stuff like agreeing to get in the mud pit with Trump don't instill confidence that he's aware of how he's coming across even to his own supporters.
posted by zombieflanders at 5:55 AM on May 26, 2016 [22 favorites]

Friendly reminder: assume good faith, generously. Flag a thing if it looks over the line. Don't generalize if you can at all avoid it. Cheers!
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (staff) at 6:04 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Funny think I noticed about that. Those 'most votes' tallies don't seem to include the Caucus states.

The Washington Post did that calculation. As of May 19th, she still led by 2.9 million votes. John Oliver breaks it down further.

------------------------

Bernie could genuinely still win the pledged delegates. I realize it's a long shot, but as Bernie says, nothing about his campaign has NOT been a long shot. He's already gotten 75-80 percent in many states, and California has some of his biggest supporters - if he wins by a margin over 70, that delegate gap gets much tighter and could disappear.

Going by 2013 demographics data I pulled from here and percent vote totals from Politico, Bernie hasn't gotten a plurality of the vote in any primary states that were less than 67.5% non-Latin@/Hispanic Whites. He's done only marginally better in caucus states (wins start at 62.5%), save the glaring outlier of Hawaii.* California is 46.6% White non-Hispanic.

Furthermore, Bernie needs to average 67.4% of the vote in all remaining states to win. He's gotten above 67.4% of the vote in 8 states, 7 of which were caucuses, only 4 of which were over 75%. The sole primary is Vermont.

Frankly, this would take a miracle.

*Compare that to Clinton, who has won primaries in states that are anywhere from 44% to 91.6%.
posted by Anonymous at 6:10 AM on May 26, 2016

Bernie tests much higher against Trump, whereas HRC is a draw right now.

First, I don't know how this is a refutation about the quality of Bernie's media rhetoric. Second, as has been mentioned many times, Bernie has basically not been subjected to any negative campaigning. Clinton's been getting it for 30 years, but Bernie has a whole truckload of skeletons that have yet to be unearthed from his closet. His current polling against Trump is operating under artificially inflated conditions--Clinton was a thousand times dirtier against Obama, and you know Trump would be getting a thousand times dirtier than that.
posted by Anonymous at 6:17 AM on May 26, 2016

Here's the video of Trump discussing the potential Bernie debate on Kimmel. It's notable that Kimmel poses the issue of a debate as a question from Bernie himself. The exchange was:

“Hillary Clinton backed out of an agreement to debate me in California before the June 7th primary. Are you prepared to debate the major issues facing our largest state and the country prior to the California primary?” asked Sanders via written letter.

“Yes, I am,” replied Trump. “How much is he going to pay me? Because if I debated him, we would have such high ratings and I think I should take that money and give it to some worthy charity. If he paid a nice sum for a charity I would love to do that.”

Bernie has basically not been subjected to any negative campaigning.

FAIR: The Myth That Sanders Hasn’t Been Criticized Won’t Go Away
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 6:21 AM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

p.s. "Overton window" is getting right up there with "the Beige Dictatorship" in "overused buzzwords phrases that are making me want to throw my laptop across the room."
posted by Anonymous at 6:21 AM on May 26, 2016

FAIR: The Myth That Sanders Hasn’t Been Criticized Won’t Go Away

. . . dude, you realize you linked to a blatantly biased pro-Bernie blog, right? This is basically an opinion piece powered by conspiracy theories and cherry-picking. Get back to me when the MSM has given as half as much time to Bernie's rape essays and USSR honeymoon as they have to Trump's hair. That's the shit he's going to have to face down in the general.
posted by Anonymous at 6:26 AM on May 26, 2016

@BernieSanders: "Game on. I look forward to debating Donald Trump in California before the June 7 primary."

A woman works to earn a major-party presidential nomination for the first time. You won't believe what happens next!
posted by duffell at 6:28 AM on May 26, 2016 [14 favorites]

FAIR is a 'blatantly biased pro-Bernie blog'? WTF are you smoking?
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 6:28 AM on May 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

During this election? Yeah, they have had their own agenda.
posted by Anonymous at 6:35 AM on May 26, 2016

If that's true, then the same can be said of NYT, WP, etc. You dismissed the linked article as conspiracy theories and cherry-picking, but to me that just demonstrates that you didn't read it. Or are links to debate questions about Russia and socialism somehow conspiracy theories?
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 6:41 AM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

I mean if you say X never happened, but I present evidence that X happened, that's not cherry-picking!
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 6:42 AM on May 26, 2016

I was talking to a VERY ARDENT Bernie supporter the other day and I mentioned sort of off-hand "well I dunno I just think that if Bernie did get the nomination, you know the Republicans are going to make hay about his kid out of wedlock and then that time he took a trip to the USSR -- stuff like that, they'll paint him as just a godless commie."

She had never heard about the kid or about the USSR trip before. Point being: people don't *know* Sanders that well, which is both good and bad. Good because you can project all your happy feelings on him, and bad because he can still be defined negatively by a concerted campaign to do just that.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:49 AM on May 26, 2016 [14 favorites]

I think the thrust of the argument is that if and when Republicans start running attack ads against Bernie Sanders he will likely take a large hit in his favorable/unfavorable numbers. The FIAR article really didn't refute this belief. Add in the Donald's fondness for lying and we're going to see some really ugly ads and tweets if Bernie is the nominee.

Bernie isn't unbruised because he's unbruisable. He's unbruised because the biggest hitters haven't even tried to pummel him yet.
posted by puddledork at 6:51 AM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

Do people really care if he had a child before he was married? I honestly don't think so.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:51 AM on May 26, 2016

Do people really care if he had a child before he was married? I honestly don't think so.

Yeah but that's not really the point.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:52 AM on May 26, 2016

"Let's ask Bernie about his socialism" isn't what any of us mean by negative campaigning, though. I think Bernie would do a very good job, in a general election, of explaining why everyday Americans would benefit under his political/economic vision.

Bernie Sanders has been interrogated about his socialism. Hillary Clinton has been accused of deliberately letting American soldiers die in a terrorist attack, her use of a private email server is being declared a jailtime offense, and her husband is being re-accused of being a rapist murderer. And... I could go on, really, but I don't have to.

If the "negative campaigning" against Hillary consisted only of criticism of her Goldman-Sachs speeches and her hawkish military positions, she'd... probably be a lot better-liked than she is. That she isn't is because "negative campaigning" hasn't meant "criticize economic policy" in literally the entire history of goddamn America.

Bernie Sanders doesn't have a spotless history, and he has the horrible tendency to try and articulate his beliefs during debates. Donald Trump'll come up with one nickname for him and Bernie will spend six months trying aimlessly to debunk it. I was worried about Rubio out-debating Bernie, ffs, and we all know what happened to Rubio in the debates.

(Reiterating that none of this is criticism of Bernie's policies or his idealism or anything about him, and that actual Bernie Sanders supporters are bringing these points up.)
posted by rorgy at 6:53 AM on May 26, 2016 [16 favorites]

thefoxgod I mean, at the very least to be a Trump supporter you have to be OK with racism and racist language/appeals. You could argue that might not make someone a racist per se, but I think its kind of a fine line.

See, while this is 100% true, it's also not likely to be a big factor for a lot of Republicans because that's always been the case. Trump just says the quiet parts loud, but the quiet parts have always been there.

Since at least the 1960's to be a Republican is to be a person who is willing to throw in your lot with racists, homophobes, misogynists, and all other sorts of bigots in order to get the votes needed to win. Individual Republicans may find that to be a less than ideal bargain and may sincerely regret allying with such people.

But regardless of whether they were motivated mostly by aversion to talk of income inequality, or a desire for lower taxes, or a belief that government regulation is bad, or a desire for a more hawkish military policy, even the least racist of Republicans has (since the 1960's) been willing to empower racism, to encourage the spread of racism, and to tacitly lend their support to racist causes.

Again, perhaps on an individual level many Republican voters weren't happy about this. But they saw it as a bargain worth taking. Lower taxes for racism. Bigger military budgets for racism. Hostility to regulation for racism.

On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers were tortured and murdered by Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price and two members of the KKK. Neshoba county officials were well aware of the murders and that Chad Price had been the organizer of the murders.

For over a month, state, county, and local officials denied that James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner had even been in the county. They claimed that their disappearance was a hoax, a false flag, organized by nefarious liberals intent on making the racist white people of Mississippi look bad. They claimed that the young men were well known to be hiding out in Alabama.

President Johnson took the then all but unprecedented step of having the FBI investigate rather than simply letting state and local authorities handle the matter. Mississippi state and local authorities were outraged at FBI involvement.

Thanks only to the FBI, the bodies of the three were found, and Deputy Price and his two Klan accomplices were put on trial, where the local judge and jury treated them as heroes. Extremely light sentences were handed out and all three were out of prison before six years had passed.

Why do I bring up the history of Neshoba county?

Because less than 16 years after James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered by a Neshoba county deputy, and the state and local authorities had worked so hard to cover it up, Ronald Wilson Reagan made his first major campaign stop after the Republican Convention in tiny Neshoba county, his feet metaphorically on the gravestones of the murder victims, and in that context delivered a speech containing the following:

I believe in state's rights; I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level. And I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the constitution to that federal establishment. And if I do get the job I'm looking for, I'm going to devote myself to trying to reorder those priorities and to restore to the states and local communities those functions which properly belong there.

Emphasis mine.

The message is perfectly clear. Reagan was telling the racist murderers of Neshoba county he believed that it had been wrong of Johnson to send in the FBI to do a real investigation, and that he fully intended to allow state and local authorities to murder anyone who got a bit uppity and cover it up without any fear that the Federal government would expose the truth.

The Republicans who want to think of themselves as not personally racist have, and I'm sure they have plenty of justifications, always been willing to ally themselves with the worst racists in America. They have always been willing to join up with literal racist murderers.

The only difference is that Trump doesn't express this by dogwhistles and that makes the nature of the bargain more difficult to deny, especially for those who were into self denial about the nature of the Republican party.

So I don't expect the naked racism of Trump to really do him much harm. The Republican party has been about making deals with racists for well over 50 years now. That Trump makes it harder to deny this is uncomfortable for many Republicans who would like to imagine that they aren't racist, but I think in the end they'll make peace with it and go along because they have been going along for 50 years.

The simple fact is, the Republican Party has depended on racist votes for its national relevance for half a century. Trump is nothing new. So expecting things to suddenly shift or change because he says the quiet parts loud is mere wishful thinking.

Perhaps a tiny handful of Republicans will suddenly find that they can no longer lie to themselves about the bargain at the heart of their party, and they will change. But it won't be enough to alter the electoral calculus.
posted by sotonohito at 6:54 AM on May 26, 2016 [29 favorites]

The NYT gives Hillary's current pledged delegate lead at 271. There are 930 pledged delegates left available.

So to catch and pass Hillary, Bernie needs 601 pledged delegates. At that point, he can legitimately say the super-delegates need to follow the will of the people.

So he needs 64.6% of the remaining pledged delegates to win.

The most generous recent polls say Hillary +2 in California, +14 in New Jersey. Together that's 688 of those 930.

Some remaining states look good for him -- Montana and the Dakotas mainly. But even if he sweeps them, that's only giving him 75 total delegates. He would still need 60% of the remaining delegates.

And remember that 45 of those remaining delegates are in DC, a town whose demographics resembled Virginia and Maryland, two states Bernie lost big in.

Is it impossible for Bernie to win? No, of course not. He has not been statistically eliminated. Is it highly unlikely? Yes. In every measure you look at, from demographics to polls to history, a Bernie pledged delegate win would be not just unprecedented, it would suggest either he swung a part of the electorate that has been highly resistant to his message... or he cheated on an unprecedented scale. And the latter seems structurally impossible, while the former only happens when opponents are faced with major scandals. And in that case, we're in deus ex machina territory.

As for disrespect, well, when 3x as many Democrats (so far) vote in a primary than showed up for a caucus, even though their vote was meaningless... well, maybe we should give the voters credit.
posted by dw at 6:59 AM on May 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

(Incidentally, Al Franken's The Truth (With Jokes) provides a fantastic and rigorously-documented overview of the negative campaign W. Bush ran against John Kerry, and tells a pretty good story about how negative political campaigning actually works. "Turn a military veteran's Purple Hearts into a reason not to vote for him" is as interesting a process as it's despicable, and things like that are why I can't help but find a lot of the "but Bernie would do great in the general election!" stuff pretty naive thinking at best. Donald Trump makes Karl Rove look like a kid in a sandbox.)
posted by rorgy at 6:59 AM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

dw: 3x voters cast a ballot in a pointless primary ... And that doesn't include me and my husband who recycled our ballots because it seemed wrong to make the county pay to count it when our party wasn't going to use the result anyway.
posted by R343L at 7:04 AM on May 26, 2016

"Let's ask Bernie about his socialism"

I actually heard a great counter for this, "We the people..."
posted by mikelieman at 7:09 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

cjelli, the claim made here, "as has been mentioned many times, Bernie has basically not been subjected to any negative campaigning" was the spark for the FAIR article discussion.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 7:15 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't think that most Americans even really know who Sanders is. He's gotten so little press as compared to Clinton and Trump that I don't think that he even enters the picture for a lot of people.
posted by octothorpe at 7:15 AM on May 26, 2016

The simple fact is, the Republican Party has depended on racist votes for its national relevance for half a century. Trump is nothing new. So expecting things to suddenly shift or change because he says the quiet parts loud is mere wishful thinking.

The weakness of Trump's approach is not that it will drive voters away, but that White voters are simply no longer a sufficiently high enough percentage of the voting population to make this a sustainable tactic.

I think the thrust of the argument is that if and when Republicans start running attack ads against Bernie Sanders he will likely take a large hit in his favorable/unfavorable numbers.

Yeah, that was my point. Collecting together all the times somebody mentioned Bernie was socialist is not proof that Bernie's been "vetted". Those articles are child's play next to the shitty, terrible things you could turn out about him that would get turned out about him. Here's an uncharitable list that doesn't even get close to how uncharitable a muckraker like Trump would get:

He abandoned his child (he didn't support his son! His children don't call him Dad! So anti-family!)
He wrote that terrible rape fantasy essay in his 30s
He claimed men get prostate cancer caused by repression from "bitch" teachers
He advocates for the sexual freedom of children
The honeymoon in the USSR
The various complimentary things he's said about various violent communist leaders, including Castro
Mismanagement of the VA
Moving nuclear waste to Sierra Blanca (undercutting his arguments that he's anti-racist)
He's an athiest
He's a socialist (last I read only 35% of US voters had a favorable view of that)
Said complimentary things about breadlines
Said he doesn't believe in charities
That whole mess with his wife and Burlington College (which is now closing its doors at the end of this semester)

Like, I'm sure his supporters could do a point-by-point refutation of this in this thread, that's not the issue. The general voting population is not reading this thread. The issue is that all of these things would work just fantastically in a televison or radio ad, set to ominous music with close-ups of Bernie's face interspersed with, like pictures of Castro or some shit. He just hasn't received anywhere near the kind of treatment Clinton and Trump have, and until he does his polling results and fantasy Sanders v. Trump polls are not good predictors of anything.

The classic example is Michael Dukakis, who was pretty much unknown and started out with really high favorables early in 1988, only to fall to, well, where he fell to by the time of the election.
posted by Anonymous at 7:17 AM on May 26, 2016

Trump reaches number of delegates needed to clinch Republican presidential nomination - AP
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:22 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

barf
posted by Anonymous at 7:26 AM on May 26, 2016

Funny think I noticed about that. Those 'most votes' tallies don't seem to include the Caucus states. IIRC those weren't trivial numbers, so again, I'm unconvinced the campaign for the democratic nomination is as over as everyone says.

The caucus state numbers are very, very low compared to the other states and Clinton is still millions of votes ahead when you include them.
posted by Justinian at 7:27 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trump reaches number of delegates needed to clinch Republican presidential nomination

This is indeed a disturbing universe.
posted by DiscountDeity at 7:29 AM on May 26, 2016

Trump-Sanders debate looks like it ain't gonna happen. Read the whole thread: Ezekiel Kweku is a damn sharp writer (and not a huge fan of Clinton).
posted by maudlin at 7:31 AM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

AP reached this conclusion by speaking directly with unbound delegates, who said they would support him.
posted by zarq at 7:32 AM on May 26, 2016

When everything is a "joke," "suggestion" or "opening bid," it's all pretty low stakes
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:34 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Well, that's a relief. I couldn't see a Sanders-Trump debate ending well for the country - it seems unlikely that Sanders would have played St. George to Trump's dragon for all our sakes. It probably would have ended up being an anti-Clinton circlejerk.
posted by stolyarova at 7:36 AM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

AP reached this conclusion by speaking directly with unbound delegates, who said they would support him.

In other words, he's clinched by the GOP's super-delegates, something Hillary could still do if she can round up about 90 more.
posted by dw at 7:37 AM on May 26, 2016

Trump-Sanders debate looks like it ain't gonna happen. Read the whole thread: Ezekiel Kweku is a damn sharp writer (and not a huge fan of Clinton).

Yeah, "Shrillary Tintin" doesn't seem like an unbiased source.
posted by zutalors! at 7:39 AM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

Trump-Sanders debate looks like it ain't gonna happen.

Christ I hope not. What a pointless insult to Clinton that would have been.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:39 AM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

I mean, I hope it does happen, even though I know it won't. Hillary was the one who turned down the debate she had previously said she'd participate in.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:41 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

During Trump's appearance last night, Jimmy Kimmel also pushed him on whether he believes trans people should be allowed to use the correct bathrooms for their gender identity. His answer, unsurprisingly, makes no sense.
posted by zarq at 7:42 AM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

honestly at this point i'm ready for the election to be over because i'm tired of being told what a horrible person i am for having opinions
posted by entropicamericana at 7:42 AM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

I actually don't have that much of an issue with Trump saying he doesn't know about the bathroom thing. But he should get educated on subjects he knows nothing about.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:47 AM on May 26, 2016

In 1980, Sanders served as an elector for the Socialist Workers Party, which was founded on the principles of Leon Trotsky. According to the New York Times, that party called for abolishing the military budget. It also called for “solidarity” with the revolutionary regimes in Iran, Nicaragua, Grenada, and Cuba; this was in the middle of the Iranian hostage crisis.

The attack ads for that would be brutal and Swift Boat-ian. Former Iranian hostages and their families talking about how Bernie betrayed them and is he really the right person for America.

That's been the one I've worried the most about if he pulls off the miracle. His writings on women would hurt him with Hillary women. But the Iran and Nicaragua stuff would knock out a wide swath of Midwestern and Southern independents. He could win with just Democratic men and sub-30 Democratic women, but that path is very, very narrow.
posted by dw at 7:48 AM on May 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

I'd be less skeptical of Trump pleading ignorance on trans issues if he hadn't taken three separate positions on the question since April.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:50 AM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

Former Iranian hostages and their families talking about how Bernie betrayed them

You mean like "October Surprise" Iranian Hostages?
posted by mikelieman at 7:51 AM on May 26, 2016

I'd be less skeptical of Trump pleading ignorance on trans issues if he hadn't taken three separate positions on the question since April.

This is true. In a vacuum, "I don't know" is okay.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:53 AM on May 26, 2016

Pleading ignorance is a ploy. 'Shrug, I dunno! It's complicated I guess? What do you think????'
posted by museum of fire ants at 7:54 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Let the states decide" enrages me on healthcare, LGBT issues etc. Land use rules, gun rights, things like that the states can decide. But like people's actual bodies and their rights regarding same are the same state to state.
posted by zutalors! at 7:56 AM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

Tim Canova has raised more than $700k this month.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:58 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I actually don't have that much of an issue with Trump saying he doesn't know about the bathroom thing. But he should get educated on subjects he knows nothing about.

The problem is, he's not saying he "doesn't know about the bathroom thing." He's not just saying, "I don't know." He repeatedly voiced an opinion that states should decide, not the Federal government. State legislatures have an abysmal record on protecting trans rights. Only 19 states prohibit discrimination against transgender people, and 11 states are currently trying to sue the Obama administration over the trans student guidelines it issued last week.
posted by zarq at 7:58 AM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

The Sanders-Trump debate would have been too entertaining for the world, which is why it would never have happened. Thankfully we can content ourselves with impersonators.
posted by Apocryphon at 7:58 AM on May 26, 2016

Collecting together all the times somebody mentioned Bernie was socialist is not proof that Bernie's been "vetted". Those articles are child's play next to the shitty, terrible things you could turn out about him that would get turned out about him.

I don't think anyone denies that the right-wing/Republican propaganda machine is going to get kicked up to 11 on Bernie if he wins the nomination. Something to consider is whether Bernie is uniquely vulnerable to this kind of attack. In my opinion, the answer is no. Being "known" doesn't inoculate one from the effectiveness of these attacks (e.g. Kerry getting swift-boated). And while Hillary does have many scandals (or quasi-scandals or non-scandals) that her supporters thinks she has put behind her, those are gifts that just keep on giving as far as the right is concerned. Furthermore, there's plenty more to come out / develop (see the DN! segment today on her email situation). I don't have a comprehensive list of these potential attacks on Clinton (but I'm sure the Trump campaign does), but one could be the "28 pages of the 9/11 report" scandal where Trump could put her between the rock of her support of gulf monarchies and the hard place of her supposed patriotism -- when did she know about the content of the 28 pages, why didn't she alert the American public, why is she siding with the Saudis over Americans, why is she protecting 9/11 conspirators, etc. etc. etc. The point is, I don't think the "Bernie hasn't faced the right-wing noise machine to its full extent" is a convincing argument for Hillary's relative electability.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 8:02 AM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

If this is the election where a brazenly openly xenophobe and racist can get wide support from one segment of the electorate, who's to say an unabashed socialist and big government supporter wouldn't from a different segment?

It's almost as if for all of the threads of the inevitable unsustainable nature of the system, about the depressing statistics of inequality and economic disempowerment, of the jokes about late capitalism, people are refusing to see that we're entering into a different stage of history!
posted by Apocryphon at 8:07 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Someone linked to a NY Times story on the latest California primary poll. If you look at the link in the story to the report by the polling organization, it shows that the sampling error for likely Democratic primary voters is plus or minus 6.2 percent. Lord, that is beyond lousy.
posted by raysmj at 8:08 AM on May 26, 2016

Is it impossible for Bernie to win? No, of course not.

It's not impossible for Sanders to win the nomination in much the same way that it's not impossible for me to win the Monaco Grand Prix this Sunday or to become the king-consort or whatever they call it of Sweden.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:12 AM on May 26, 2016 [15 favorites]

The biggest attack ad, just waiting around for its time and careful consideration, involves Donald Trump and his ties to organized crime--which the Internet site often derisively referred to as Tiger Beat on the Potomac put together a big expose about just recently.
posted by raysmj at 8:17 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Funny think I noticed about that. Those 'most votes' tallies don't seem to include the Caucus states. IIRC those weren't trivial numbers, so again, I'm unconvinced the campaign for the democratic nomination is as over as everyone says.

Sorry, but they are trivial numbers in this context.

Really, this OMG THE CAUCUS STATES AREN'T INCLUDED IN THE POPULAR VOTE! thing needs to fucking stop. Some terrible HuffPo lie-ditorial about it has been all over my facebook feed for the last week or so, claiming that because the total population of Washington is 7 million, and Sanders won Washington, he must therefore be secretly winning the popular vote. This is beyond idiotic. Fewer than 250,000 people participated in the Washington Democratic caucuses, and other caucus states have seen similarly-miniscule turnout.

OK, lets's look at some ACTUAL NUMBERS:

Here's the current popular vote count, which shows Clinton leading by 3 million-odd votes.

You'll note that, athough popular vote totals are given for a number of caucus states (CO & MN, notably), several caucus states / territories are either not included in that tally, or, as in Wyoming, show vote totals that appear to reflect something like county delegates, rather than actual votes.

Those states are:
Nevada
American Samoa
Northern Marianas Islands
Guam
Wyoming
Washington
Alaska
Maine
Iowa

Clinton won the caucuses of the first four on the list, so presumably their popular votes would only add to her lead. That leaves us:

Wyoming, with a reported turnout of around 7000 people for the democratic caucuses
Washington, reported turnout approx. 230,000
Alaska: approx. 10,600 total turnout
Maine: approx. 47,000 total
Iowa: approx. 171,000 total

Total turnout for these states, then, was around 475,000.

These are inexact numbers, I realize, and we can't know for certain exactly how many of these folks voted for each candidate, so let's pretend for the sake of this exercise that Sanders received every one of those 475,000 votes (obviously he didn't, but wevs).

That still leaves Clinton with a lead in the popular vote of over 2.5 million. So can we please for fuck's sake stop trying to propagate the ludicrous myth that if only the poor little caucus states were counted, then Sanders would be winning?

He wouldn't. He would still be getting his ass kicked, just by a slightly smaller margin.
posted by dersins at 8:20 AM on May 26, 2016 [11 favorites]

And while Hillary does have many scandals (or quasi-scandals or non-scandals) that her supporters thinks she has put behind her, those are gifts that just keep on giving as far as the right is concerned.

You know, rehashing Watergate and dragging up emails isn't exactly the same as a guy endorsing the Iranian Revolution, complimenting Castro, and writing about rape fantasies. There is something to be said for being experienced at handling scandal and already going through the experienced of being dragged through the mud. There isn't much more they can say about her. The DN segment you link is a variation of the same email rehash. There is not really anything new or specifically exciting.

Anyway, the point is moot because Bernie is about as likely to win as I am to sprout wings from my back. It would be awfully nice if he didn't appear to be hellbent on bringing down the DNC and Clinton with him.
posted by Anonymous at 8:21 AM on May 26, 2016

It's not impossible for Sanders to win the nomination in much the same way that it's not impossible for me to win the Monaco Grand Prix this Sunday or to become the king-consort or whatever they call it of Sweden.

otoh, the Sharks just made it to the Stanley Cup finals and the Cubs are going to the World Series, so I'm going to start practicing my genuflection just for you, your grace
posted by Apocryphon at 8:24 AM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Yeah, "Shrillary Tintin" doesn't seem like an unbiased source.

Kweku is a real, talented journalist and has been FPPed here before. His Twitter handle is @theshrillest, his most recent set of avis have been various versions of Tintin, and he's been ringing the changes on his handle for ages ("shrall cromsy aka squid collar aka squall crumbsy aka shrimp gatsby aka slump couplet aka skull crumpet"), with "Shrillary Tintin" just being the latest one.

Trust me, with all the time I spend on Twitter, I don't waste my time with diehard, yelly partisans. I mentioned the "not a fan of Clinton" bit so I wouldn't look as if I were trying to pile on Sanders supporters here.

Short list of other Twitter sources sensibly supporting/leaning Sanders as a candidate but can critique him/accept that Clinton is the likely nom: @tressiemcphd (Tressie McMillan Cottom), Angus Johnston, Jim Henley, Sean McElwee.

Short list of Twitter sources sensibly supporting/leaning Clinton as a candidate but can critique her/point out Sanders' virtues: Jamelle Bouie, Mark Kleiman, Tom Levenson, Clay Shirky.
posted by maudlin at 8:25 AM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

The point is, I don't think the "Bernie hasn't faced the right-wing noise machine to its full extent" is a convincing argument for Hillary's relative electability.

The fact that she has more votes is a convincing argument to me.
posted by zutalors! at 8:26 AM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

He would still be getting his ass kicked, just by a slightly smaller margin.

This is the point that John Oliver made on his show, wherein he said no doubt he would be referred to as an angry toucan funded by Shillary.
posted by Justinian at 8:28 AM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

the Cubs are going to the World Series

It's not even Memorial Day yet!
posted by chrchr at 8:29 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

The biggest attack ad, just waiting around for its time and careful consideration, involves Donald Trump and his ties to organized crime

The pessimist in me says that won't have much of a negative effect, as much of the Trump fan base loves him because he's a rich celebrity whose TV persona is that of a tough, no-nonsense guy who knows what it takes to get the sausage made—just like Tony Soprano!
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:31 AM on May 26, 2016

So on an update from Republican Camp:

A lot of attention is being paid to whether delegates can "abstain" if their vote would be bound to a candidate otherwise.

There is also a proposal to the rules committee of a conscience exemption" - if you feel casting a vote for an individual would violate your morals, you don't have to. I don't know what the makeup of the Rules Committee is yet, but it's worth noting this is in the air.
posted by corb at 8:31 AM on May 26, 2016 [19 favorites]

What chaos is going to happen if not every state delegate arrives? Could it materially affect the outcome of the nomination?
posted by Talez at 8:35 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Something to consider is whether Bernie is uniquely vulnerable to this kind of attack. In my opinion, the answer is no.

He'll be hit very hard on his promise to raise taxes and more than any other potential issue, that may sink him.

Sanders is proposing the largest peacetime tax increase in this country's history. He's wise to tie those increases to health care and education. In general, Americans will vote for higher taxes if they are accompanied by a direct benefit that gives concrete and relatively fast results. But I'm not convinced the average business owner will vote for a 6.6% tax increase along with a raise to their personal taxes. I'm not convinced that an across-the-board 2.2% tax on anyone making under $200,000 and much higher tax rates for people above that line will fly with the American public, either. Many Americans are barely making ends meet as it is.
posted by zarq at 8:36 AM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Some terrible HuffPo lie-ditorial about it has been all over my facebook feed for the last week or so, claiming that because the total population of Washington is 7 million, and Sanders won Washington, he must therefore be secretly winning the popular vote. This is beyond idiotic.

It's especially beyond idiotic because the results of the actual, meaningless Washington state Democratic primary completely disprove the thesis - had WA gone with the primary, Sanders would have a much narrower margin of victory, if not outright losing the state. And this is the second time that happened, the first being Nebraska.

Horribly unrepresentative election process generates horribly unrepresentative results. Who knew?
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:36 AM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

It's especially beyond idiotic because the results of the actual, meaningless Washington state Democratic primary completely disprove the thesis - had WA gone with the primary, Sanders would have a much narrower margin of victory, if not outright losing the state.

There's just no evidence of this.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:39 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Well except that Sanders did actually lose the WA primary. That is evidence.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 8:41 AM on May 26, 2016 [14 favorites]

I'm not convinced that an across-the-board 2.2% tax on anyone making under $200,000 and much higher tax rates for people above that line will fly with the American public, either. Many Americans are barely making ends meet as it is.

At face value, it seems like a bad deal. However, a 2.2% tax increase taking the place of my insurance premiums means an extra $1,000 per year back in my pocket. Plus employers would recoup the money they spend on insurance as well.

Although the Fox News reaction of MUH TAXES!!! would probably drown out people actually doing the math for themselves.
posted by Fleebnork at 8:41 AM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Well except that Sanders did actually lose the WA primary. That is evidence.

No it isn't. Because at this point, Clinton's candidacy is more of an inevitability than it was when Washington had their caucus, and the primary has zero effect on the race.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:42 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

But, Sanders said every vote must be counted! I guess that only applies in contests he's winning then.
posted by FJT at 8:45 AM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Let's cool it with the sarcasm please
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:47 AM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

That Clinton won the WA primary is evidence. It may not be definitive but that there are counter-arguments doesn't make it not evidence.
posted by Justinian at 8:47 AM on May 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

Although the Fox News reaction of MUH TAXES!!! would probably drown out people actually doing the math for themselves.

Exactly.
posted by zarq at 8:47 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's not impossible for Sanders to win the nomination in much the same way that it's not impossible for me to win the Monaco Grand Prix this Sunday or to become the king-consort or whatever they call it of Sweden.

1. You're not entered in the Monaco Grand Prix. Bernie is on the ballot in all remaining states.
2. You'd have to deal with a vindictive Queen Silvia and a national scandal to pull that off (well, unless you could woo Victoria away from her husband then off Gustav). Again, Bernie is on the ballot in all remaining states.

It's not impossible, but it's highly improbable. His odds of getting his money back in Powerball are better.
posted by dw at 8:55 AM on May 26, 2016

That Clinton won the WA primary is evidence. It may not be definitive but that there are counter-arguments doesn't make it not evidence.
That Sanders polls better than Clinton against Trump is evidence. It may not be definitive but that there are counter-arguments doesn't make it not evidence.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 8:56 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hi fellow Sanders supporters,

It's over and that is okay.

A left-wing insurgent candidate came closer to winning the Democratic nomination than any left-wing insurgent candidate has done since Gene McCarthy. It was a long, difficult path to the nomination and we got further than I dared hope we would six months ago.

Good things have come out of this. Hopefully, more people within the Democratic party leadership will be attuned to our concerns, both around policy issues and messaging, and around how to create a genuinely democratic process for selecting the Democratic nomination.

Please let's not go down the polls-unskewing-if-only-X-had-happened-silenced-all-my-life route. That's not going to help us advocate for the policies and principles we believe this country needs.

That is what we're fighting for, right?
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:59 AM on May 26, 2016 [30 favorites]

On here it's like "EVERYONE KNOWS HILLARY'S THE WAY TO GO" but in the realm of people I actually know I can't find one single person who is progressive/left leaning and who has anything to say about her.

There's a lot of "secret" support. In my experience it's bad to say out loud you support Hillary. Also on this site, there was a lot of hostility toward even considering Hillary back in February.

It's not even that HILLARY'S THE WAY TO GO though at this point, it's that she's legitimately winning and it's frustrating that people don't want to see that.
posted by zutalors! at 9:00 AM on May 26, 2016 [24 favorites]

I have 262 facebook friends and have yet to see any pro-Hillary sentiment in my feed

This is because posting pro-Clinton things brings down the unholy wrath of Sanders supporters posting invented-quote dank memes on your wall, so people have learned not to do that.
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:03 AM on May 26, 2016 [30 favorites]

i totally agree, tivalasvegas, especially about the conspiracy theory election-stealing bs (which isn't at all to say that the caucus and primary process is perfect). but mostly i'm still so mad at jeff weaver, i feel like he really hobbled bernie's campaign in so many ways and i wish more people's frustration and anger was directed at him
posted by burgerrr at 9:03 AM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

A lot of attention is being paid to whether delegates can "abstain" if their vote would be bound to a candidate otherwise

This has been brought up by supporters of other candidates who did not get the GOP nomination before, most recently in 2012 and 2008. The answer in the past, which probably holds true unless the rules have changed, is that in most cases bound delegates really cannot abstain without violating the laws of their home states. If they don't show up to vote then their alternate votes for them and there's an alternate for every delegate.
posted by zarq at 9:04 AM on May 26, 2016

I support Clinton, but I'm not saying anything about it on social media feeds before the nomination is given. I'm not interested in the potential onslaught I will face for sharing my support on FB, etc. I also don't think doing so will change anyone's mind about the primary—or even that it would matter at this point, if it could. (Note: I would also support Sanders if he was nominated.)
posted by defenestration at 9:05 AM on May 26, 2016 [11 favorites]

I feel like you'd have to watch an ungodly amount of MSNBC (which I do) in order to know who Jeff Weaver is.
posted by zutalors! at 9:05 AM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

Here in Phoenix I have 262 facebook friends and have yet to see any pro-Hillary sentiment in my feed

Just curious, anything pro-Trump related?
posted by FJT at 9:07 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I feel like you'd have to watch an ungodly amount of MSNBC (which I do) in order to know who Jeff Weaver is.

He's on a lot of other channels often enough that even if people don't know his name, he's a recognizable face of the Sanders campaign. Especially in the last two months. CNN in particular. But also Bloomberg, CBS, ABC and NBC.
posted by zarq at 9:07 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I feel like you'd have to watch an ungodly amount of MSNBC (which I do) in order to know who Jeff Weaver is.

Or have shopped at his comic book store. I bet he sells a mean pack of Magic cards.
posted by Justinian at 9:07 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

That Clinton won the WA primary is evidence. It may not be definitive but that there are counter-arguments doesn't make it not evidence.

Hang on. There's one good reason you shouldn't compare the two: Double-dipping. I caucused AND voted. There's no rule against that. So the straight comparison is muddled.

A better argument would be to compare Washington's delegate allocation to Oregon's, which had a similar postal ballot primary, albeit closed to Washington's open caucus and primary. They also have similar demographics, though Washington is more ethnically diverse.

Bernie won 74% of the Washington delegates, 74 to 27. He won about 58% of the Oregon delegates, 34 to 25.

If you assume an open Washington primary would have looked more like the Oregon primary, and you tack on perhaps 10% because it's an open primary and it was in March, that's 68%. If the delegates were distributed in a similar fashion as the caucus, that means he gets 67. In other words, he got, at the least, a 7 delegate bonus.

But I would argue, too, that given Washington is more ethnically diverse, and given that Washington primaries typically have turnouts more on the order of Oregon's in presidential years, it would probably be lower. More like 60%.

So, no. You can't compare the two Washington systems. But you can look at similar data and say that Bernie really got a huge bonus in the 13th largest state because only 230,000 people could show up on a Saturday morning.
posted by dw at 9:08 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Just curious, anything pro-Trump related?

nope. The handful of vocal conservatives I know were #neverTrump all the way and have been curiously silent since his guaranteed nomination.
posted by Taft at 9:10 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

nope. The handful of vocal conservatives I know were #neverTrump all the way and have been curiously silent since his guaranteed nomination.

that's my experience too. Weirdly they were very excited about Carson. This is NoVa area upper middle class Republicans, so the supposedly liberal ones.
posted by zutalors! at 9:11 AM on May 26, 2016

Some of us (uh me) chose not to go argue with Bernie supporters (my precinct was overwhelmingly Bernie) in favor of seeing a friend from out of town. Also not spending 4+ hours with a toddler in a busy crowded place (which is what it turned out to be for many in my precinct because chaos.) And I'm white and well off and had almost no interest in going. The caucuses suppress a lot of votes for lots of good and bad reasons.
posted by R343L at 9:12 AM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

I support Clinton, but I'm not saying anything about it on social media feeds before the nomination is given.

Yup. I've mentioned in a previous thread that I'm a member of a couple of different private pro-Hillary discussion groups full of people who do not feel particularly comfortable or safe talking about their pro-Hillary preferences more publicly because of the dynamics of this primary. That's still the case. Just in the past few days I have seen a couple people say "Hey, I think it's probably time to start talking about this more publicly", doing so, and coming running back to say "nope, it's still pretty awful out there, learn from my mistakes!"

So, me, I'm still keeping quietly publicly, talking to my people privately, donating and signing up as an alternate delegate and a local organizer, talking to my partner about whether we can offer some space in our home for Hillary staff/volunteers closer to November, but like hell am I saying a damn thing on my public social media feeds at this point in time.

You may know more Hillary people than you think you do. Or not - if you're really curious you could try asking and promising not to fight with the responders, but frankly, I still probably wouldn't respond to such a request because the poster might not want to fight, but their friends might, and I'd rather use my energy in better ways for my candidate.
posted by Stacey at 9:17 AM on May 26, 2016 [17 favorites]

The best thing about caucusing for Hillary in Seattle, though, is it was dead easy to pick our delegates. There were six of us. We had two delegates. Three people wanted the slots. We were done in under 10 minutes. The Sanders folk apparently stayed for two more hours based on how long it took my neighbor to come home.
posted by dw at 9:18 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Weirdly they were very excited about Carson.

Yes, I got that too. There was a soft spot for him among evangelicals.

Speaking of Christian voters, anyone know the word among Mega-Churches? Are they prepping their congregations to vote Trump or what?
posted by Taft at 9:21 AM on May 26, 2016

Here in Phoenix I have 262 facebook friends and have yet to see any pro-Hillary sentiment in my feed.

I'd say that's more a reflection of the self-limiting nature of social circles than of her support. If you're in your mid-20s you're experiencing the significant age divide between Sanders and Clinton supporters. Even moreso if your social circle is mostly White.

And chalk me up as another Clinton supporter who has consciously toned down her public support on social media. Though my Facebook feed is currently operating at a tense, though pleasant truce: me and a number of liberal friends seem to have come to the unspoken understanding that we all have very strong feelings about our preferred candidate, but as we would like our friendships to endure past election season we mostly don't post about them.

that's my experience too. Weirdly they were very excited about Carson. This is NoVa area upper middle class Republicans, so the supposedly liberal ones.

I am acquainted with more Trump supporters than I am comfortable with on account of my association with the lifting community--there's a lot of conservative middle-class white men in it.
posted by Anonymous at 9:22 AM on May 26, 2016

Because we're very involved in local Democratic politics we KNOW who walked for Sanders and who walked for Clinton. (We didn't walk this primary season due to family obligations, and due to being okay with both candidates, and then we both ended up pulling GOP ballots in Illinois's open primary to try to stop the Trumpocalypse, which turned out to be futile but oh well.)

Sanders supporters (who are lovely and normal people and not crazy weirdos, around here) have been vocal in their facebook feeds about their support for Bernie. Clinton supporters have been virtually silent, because it is too dangerous to post your support for her, especially if you are a woman. It's not the local Sanders supporters who are doing it, either (cordial intraparty relationships have been the norm, despite some frustrations) -- it's people's second cousins, crazy uncles, college friends, and a handful of Bernie-affiliated local folks who were NOT involved in the official local campaign for him and therefore feel no particular obligation to be cordial or non-shitty.

But the fact remains that local Sanders supporters who post on facebook get a lot of "likes" and supportive comments; local Clinton supporters, especially when women, get a TON of harassment, some of it EXTREMELY ugly and some of it violent. I know a couple of women who have quit facebook at least for the duration of the campaign as a result.

They also keep an informal tally of sign vandalism, more Sanders supporters have reported yard sign theft; more Clinton supporters have reported yard sign vandalism (typically with vulgarities, especially vulgarities directed against women, like the c word). Totally informal and not statistically valid, but it's interesting that people who hate Sanders are trying to erase his followers; people who hate Clinton are trying to threaten and intimidate her followers. (Mostly sign vandalism/theft is teenaged hoodlums or really immature adults, though, and so doesn't say a whole ton about how adults are reacting to the campaign. But it's always sort-of interesting to see how different candidates' signs are being treated. Trump got defaced more often, Cruz got uprooted and flung on the ground more often.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:23 AM on May 26, 2016 [35 favorites]

As for the clandestine networks of Hillary voters, EH. I'll keep thinking EH until proven otherwise.
posted by Taft at 9:24 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

ok, I guess people's opinions and experiences here aren't proof enough. I've also gotten memails from people who are afraid to say anything positive about Clinton in these threads.
posted by zutalors! at 9:26 AM on May 26, 2016 [23 favorites]

It's hard to blame Jeff Weaver for just saying out loud the actual truth of the situation Sanders is in.

For example, he took a lot of shit for saying that Sanders intends to win by flipping the superdelegates. But there's no other way for him to win unless he starts getting implausibly enormous margins in the remaining states.

Is it Jeff Weaver's fault for identifying the objective reality of Sanders' sole victory path? Or is it Sanders' fault for continuing to run a campaign that started out decrying the superdelegates before it had to rely on them as its only hope?
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:28 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

No they really aren't enough. I totally do not get the impression from the general atmosphere of people-I-know-on-Facebook that anyone would A) cruelly harass or threaten or even shit on other peoples political posts or B) not post their beliefs because they're afraid of being shit on. Lots of people post about stuff they know would piss off/confuse/alienate certain kinds of people just because its cathartic to put your vulnerable self out there.
posted by Taft at 9:32 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's Jeff Weaver's fault for saying Barbara Boxer was lying when she said she felt threatened in Nevada.
posted by zutalors! at 9:33 AM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

I also intentionally toned down what I posted after a few bad responses and seeing what happened in Facebook comment threads of friends. I had friends' Sanders supporting threads (freakin dank memes) devolve into Hilary hate fests - and that was without even a Clinton supporter commenting to light a back and forth argument. I almost unfriended some folks because I thought it gross they'd share some posts or let comments on their wall descend into crappy sexist BS. But it definitely made me very careful about what and how often I posted in support of Clinton. And I'm not in any secret Facebook Clinton Facebook groups.

But that said I decided not to be so scarce now because if we don't start talking Clinton up, Trump might win and uggggggghhhhhhhh.
posted by R343L at 9:33 AM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Couple comments deleted. Again, the sarcastic one-liners don't help anything. Questions about moderation come to the contact form. And again, it shouldn't be news to anybody here that supporters of both Clinton and Sanders both feel as if they're under some level of attack; scrapping about that fact as if it's somehow not true isn't going to be productive.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:34 AM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

As for the clandestine networks of Hillary voters, EH. I'll keep thinking EH until proven otherwise.

This is an interesting perspective. You brought out your personal experiences as an indicator of Clinton's lack of support. But when others bring out their own personal experiences, you decide it's invalid evidence. I would posit that it is this sort of attitude that would discourage friends of yours who hold a different opinion about Clinton from speaking up.

I think the best conclusion you could draw is that the opinions and experiences of you and your immediate social circle are not necessarily reflective of those of the population as a whole.

Or is it Sanders' fault for continuing to run a campaign that started out decrying the superdelegates before it had to rely on them as its only hope?

Like, "use superdelegates to overturn the popular vote" isn't a great look, but it's especially not a great look in the context of a campaign that spent months talking about how undemocratic and terrible the superdelegates are.

Also, Jeff Weaver invites disgust for so many other reasons besides the superdelegates. He's been the mouthpiece for some of the campaign's worst statements and positions.
posted by Anonymous at 9:35 AM on May 26, 2016

As for the clandestine networks of Hillary voters, EH. I'll keep thinking EH until proven otherwise.

What would constitute proof? Apparently people relaying their own experiences doesn't.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:35 AM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

No they really aren't enough.

that's pretty uncharitable. I personally am not lying or getting any extra gain by pointing out that Hillary supporters might not be posting on social media out of fear of harassment.
posted by zutalors! at 9:36 AM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

Is it Jeff Weaver's fault for identifying the objective reality of Sanders' sole victory path?

No, but it's blatant hypocrisy to blast super-delegates over and over again, encourage your supporters to spam super-delegates with varying levels of threats and pleadings for not daring to follow the will of the caucus voters, then turn around and insist that they are vital to your vote and let's make nice because you know we're the right choice but the system is corrupt and so are you.

Actually, that's not even hypocrisy. That's a campaign that's flailing and struggling to stay on message.
posted by dw at 9:38 AM on May 26, 2016 [12 favorites]

Or have shopped at his comic book store. I bet he sells a mean pack of Magic cards.

I bet he was furious when Chaos Orb was banned from tournament play.
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:39 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

As a Hillary supporter (switched from Bernie) I have also kept my head down. Other women know why.

I'm old enough to know misogyny on the left is rarely confronted by the left. AND, I'm relieved to lurk on MeFi where it is at least discussed. (and especially relieved see the reminders to remain civil)

This article in The Root gives me hope. The future belongs to women and the non-white ... slowly, quietly, patiently, we will carry on. Why Black Voters Are The Most Rational Voters of 2016

Note: The FB link to this article no longer works; I can't help but wonder if that is related to the massive number of ugly racist, misogynist comments.
posted by Surfurrus at 9:43 AM on May 26, 2016 [11 favorites]

I read a really interesting comment the other day about the supposed lack of enthusiasm among even Hillary's supporters, and they mentioned that so many of the people supporting her are the same people who are always invisible to the larger world looking for "trends" - specifically, older women and women of color. People don't see their enthusiasm because 1) it doesn't take the same form as the pro-Sanders crowd, and 2) they generally don't *see* these people at all.

That resonated with me.
posted by Salieri at 9:43 AM on May 26, 2016 [45 favorites]

B) not post their beliefs because they're afraid of being shit on. Lots of people post about stuff they know would piss off/confuse/alienate certain kinds of people just because its cathartic to put your vulnerable self out there.

After literally years of MeFi threads about people, especially women, being harassed at levels ranging from minor trolling to life-ruining consequences, for posting stuff on the internet, this is pretty unfair. Some people post things online because they know it will be cathartic or they just want to start something. Many others do not, and experiencing strong negative reactions the first time tends to not make most people want to do it again.

In the end though, what does it matter? Nobody cares whether there are secret pro-Hillary Facebook groups (though, I think claiming that multiple in this thread are lying about that is disingenuous). Millions more actual voters have voted for Clinton right now. That would certainly imply that the will of the electorate may not match the voices found on your social media feeds. I know it doesn't match up for me.
posted by zachlipton at 9:44 AM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

To bring up a topic from earlier, Baylor is firing Art Briles over the cover up of rape, sexual assaults, and domestic violence by Baylor football players. I'm led to believe that the increased scrutiny driven by Trump digging up Whitewater forced their hand.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:48 AM on May 26, 2016

As for the clandestine networks of Hillary voters, EH. I'll keep thinking EH until proven otherwise.

So the 2.5- to 3-million (depending on how we treat caucus states that don't report popular vote totals) more people who have expressed their preference for Clinton are, what, exactly?

(Seems worth noting as well that, because of Sanders' over-performance in caucus states, Clinton supporters' votes have in aggregate counted LESS than those of Sanders supporters: Clinton has received one delegate for every 7347 votes cast for her; Sanders has received one delegate for every 6969 votes cast for him*

*I'm being generous in these calculations. These numbers involve crediting Sanders for every single one of the ~475,000 caucus-goers in states he won that don't report popular votes, and Clinton with no popular votes from those states at all; Sanders' actual vote/delegate number is probably even lower, and Clinton's is probably higher.)
posted by dersins at 9:49 AM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

On here it's like "EVERYONE KNOWS HILLARY'S THE WAY TO GO" but in the realm of people I actually know I can't find one single person who is progressive/left leaning and who has anything to say about her.
There's a lot of "secret" support.

A "silent majority", would you say?
posted by indubitable at 9:53 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

More of a silenced majority indubitable.
posted by Surfurrus at 9:55 AM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

where do i donate to support the obamas barricading themselves in the white house and refusing to leave
posted by poffin boffin at 9:55 AM on May 26, 2016 [34 favorites]

"Clinton couldn't have won. I don't know anybody who voted for her"

(not actually the quote it claims to be)
posted by zachlipton at 9:56 AM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

After literally years of MeFi threads about people, especially women, being harassed at levels ranging from minor trolling to life-ruining consequences, for posting stuff on the internet, this is pretty unfair. Some people post things online because they know it will be cathartic or they just want to start something. Many others do not, and experiencing strong negative reactions the first time tends to not make most people want to do it again.

The disbelief actually reminds me a lot of the sexism threads where men were like "I just don't believe there's this much street harassment, it never happens to my girlfriend"
posted by zutalors! at 9:57 AM on May 26, 2016 [23 favorites]

I don't facebook much but my girlfriend is in two private Clinton groups, each with a few thousand members. She stopped posting political stuff on her wall after a couple of anodyne status updates turned into 100+ comment shitfests. Do you want like, screenshots or something
posted by theodolite at 10:00 AM on May 26, 2016 [15 favorites]

That's a campaign that's flailing and struggling to stay on message.

It's clear when they were putting their campaign together they never expected to get this far, and I think a lot of the arguments and positions they took earlier in the campaign ("I'm not going negative," "enough about the emails," "superdelegates are unfair") did not take into account that he would experience this relatively level of success and would want to win this badly. Which is to say--I'm not sure they are even sure what the message is anymore.

The Atlantic put out this article about the end of the Sanders campaign, which doesn't offer too much new insight but does have this bit:

Near the end of Dean’s 2004 campaign, he told me, just before the Wisconsin primary, he had started to realize he was going to lose, and he was bitterly angry about it—the unfairness of the process, the way he’d been treated. Late that night, the phone rang in his hotel room in Milwaukee. It was Al Gore, the former vice president, who had endorsed him.

“I ranted and raved for 10 or 15 minutes,” Dean recalled. “And when finally I stop for breath, he says, ‘This is about the country. It’s not about you.’ That stopped me in my tracks.”

Dean quit the race the next day. Accepting defeat, he said, was a process. “Having been there, it’s a gradual landing you have to bring yourself into,” he said. The question, he suggested, is whether there is someone close to Sanders who can say to him what Gore said to Dean.

According to the insider reports, people have tried to have this conversation with him, but they've either been people from outside his campaign, or if they were from within the campaign they didn't have the same pull as those who support an aggressive stance (e.g. Weaver, Jane, etc). You can see some of these intracampaign divisions play out publicly. Immediately after New York Tad Devine was taking a much more conciliatory tone and it seemed he was going into "wrap it up" mode, and then Weaver came out swinging. Since then Devine has been fading further into the background, offering up fewer statements and wording them very carefully when he has.

I am dying to read the post-campaign tell-all long-form article/book that comes out in the wake of this.
posted by Anonymous at 10:01 AM on May 26, 2016

I feel like a lot of lessons learned in past sexism threads were up and gone with the first gusts of the primary season breeze.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:01 AM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

(not actually the quote it claims to be)

Wow. I am embarrassed that I fell for the false version and have repeated it. Thanks, zachlipton.
posted by maudlin at 10:02 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

It didn't really sink in for me that there was a profound problem with this election until, over and over again, I watched white men pile on women I knew who'd come out for Hillary. Yes, it's a bit of pareidolia. But it's a similar pattern to what I saw in the heart of Gamergate. And it's really led me to question whether, as a white(ish) man, if I actually do see things as clearly as I think I do, or whether being a white(ish) guy I'm shielded from the reality on the ground.

Many of my Bernie supporting friends are good people who aren't going to dogpile on a political thread. Some, however, even though they are good liberal feminist types, do anyway because... well, someone is wrong on the Internet. Or someone just doesn't "get it."

I've had some Hillary people do the same. But it's a much smaller number. And mostly men. Which is also worrying, both in the "stop dogpiling" and the "wait, are you speaking up because you're not afraid of being silenced?"

There is something fundamentally wrong here. Saying you have 200+ friends and no one talks about Hillary isn't a statement about Hillary. It's a statement about how powerful those with privilege are with silencing "others," even though no one among Bernie supporters would ever identify it in themselves. It's because, like DFW's fish don't know what the hell water is, us white men don't know what the hell privilege is.
posted by dw at 10:02 AM on May 26, 2016 [21 favorites]

I've mentioned in a previous thread that I'm a member of a couple of different private pro-Hillary discussion groups full of people who do not feel particularly comfortable or safe talking about their pro-Hillary preferences more publicly because of the dynamics of this primary. That's still the case. Just in the past few days I have seen a couple people say "Hey, I think it's probably time to start talking about this more publicly", doing so, and coming running back to say "nope, it's still pretty awful out there, learn from my mistakes!"

This is fucking depressing. And Sanders and his team have only enabled the harassers by downplaying it as a distraction from "real" issues or else falling back on the old "B-b-but both sides do it!" trope.
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:03 AM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

I feel like a lot of lessons learned in past sexism threads were up and gone with the first gusts of the primary season breeze.

I feel like it was SUPER naive of me to think we could talk about sexism wrt Clinton in these threads since there has been so much improvement on the site wrt sexism generally.
posted by zutalors! at 10:05 AM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

As for the clandestine networks of Hillary voters, EH. I'll keep thinking EH until proven otherwise.

At this point, I'm beginning to think gaslighting is a more or less official strategy of the Sanders campaign.

What WOULD constitute proof for you? People saying that they're responding to Sanders supporters the same way they respond to GamerGaters isn't proof for you. Actual numbers of voters isn't good enough. So what would be?
posted by happyroach at 10:05 AM on May 26, 2016 [12 favorites]

The last time I tried to talk about Clinton on Facebook (with a "Trump is just as bad as Clinton" anarcho-socialist type), I got so angry that I had to call my parents in order to distract myself from the conversation before I said something I'd regret, because I was starting to literally see red. So, yeah, I have little interest in inviting more of that into my life.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:05 AM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

I'll also say: I'm not in any specifically Clinton Facebook groups, but I AM in a number of private groups - one's for a feminist book club, one's for fans of a podcast, etc. And the smaller and more intimate those groups are, the more likely I am to see a pro-Clinton (or, more accurately, not-anti-Clinton) post.

I don't think it's anything as dramatic as "Clinton supporters have deliberately been driven underground by a targeted campaign to make that exact thing happen." It's just that the most vocal Sanders supporters seem to hate Clinton a hell of a lot more than the most vocal Clinton supporters seem to hate Sanders, and so the Clinton side just chooses not to engage more often. Especially not now that it's essentially a done deal that Clinton will be the nominee (yes, yes it is), so why bother?
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:09 AM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

"As for the clandestine networks of Hillary voters, EH. I'll keep thinking EH until proven otherwise."

30% more votes kinda proves they're somewhere.
posted by chris24 at 10:14 AM on May 26, 2016 [12 favorites]

surfurrus: I'm old enough to know misogyny on the left is rarely confronted by the left.

Um, this. This times a lot. I don't care how correct our position is on banking reform or progressive taxation or single payer* or white supremacy -- if we are a movement that silences, dismisses and abuses women we are losing any claim to be on the right side of anything.

As a cis male it is my responsibility as a decent human being to listen to women when they say that they are being harassed and silenced and to stand up for them, not to explain things away.

*and people who have followed my posting history know that this is my professional wheelhouse and I'm pretty damn passionate about it
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:14 AM on May 26, 2016 [32 favorites]

What chaos is going to happen if not every state delegate arrives? Could it materially affect the outcome of the nomination?

I'm not sure! It could depend on whether a quorum was present or not, and it's definitely something to consider. Could a state delegation have a man on the inside, stalling them until the first vote is past, for them to come in for the second?

Basically we are in Calvinball land. Or could be. Zarq makes a good point upthread that delegates have alternates - but if you're talking about replacing, say, 35 #nevertrump delegates, with 35 #nevertrump alternates - it's not that different, really, and there's no reason to think that they will do the normal thing any more than the first guys.

I am hearing a lot of private conversations where we are talking about this being fascism, and people are talking about how when Nazis salute, you don't salute, no matter what pressures are brought to bear on you. They may not be doing it publicly - but people on the inside are very disturbed. Assuming we're not all thrown out, I think you'll see some shenanigans this year.
posted by corb at 10:15 AM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

I've been struggling whether or not to voice support for Clinton among co-workers. A couple have already kind of seen leaning towards Sanders, Trump, or both. And the few times Clinton has come up, they instantly refer to her as a liar, overly-ambitious, and loud. I've tried to subtly push back on those remarks without looking like I'm in the tank for Clinton, but it's always left me a bit unsatisfied that I can't be an active supporter. It doesn't help I'm in a Republican county either.
posted by FJT at 10:18 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

So it's quite likely that the specific FB social group mentioned here is full of eminently reasonable people who wouldn't harass Clinton supporters, or, maybe, just a few might try it and would be promptly chastened by the majority. But just as women have learned from their experiences with street harassment, or their peers' experiences, that they must restrict and change their behaviour in public, so might Clinton supporters be over-cautious in any online environment that resembles the poisonous ones they know of.

I think a lot of early threads about harassment included at least one guy who was offended that strange women would walk faster if he was walking behind them, or that they would freeze out any genuine, friendly overture. HE wasn't a harasser, why was he being lumped in with THOSE guys? It wasn't fair. Given the shitfest that is social media these days (and recognizing that free floating trolls/4chan members/Trump supporters are bloating the numbers), it seems likely that many Clinton supporters are just keeping their mouths shut online even when they wouldn't actually be facing any risks in a specific social group. It's not fair for lots of people, obviously.
posted by maudlin at 10:18 AM on May 26, 2016 [18 favorites]

Donald Trump gets the 1,237 delegates he needs for the Republican nomination
posted by infini at 10:22 AM on May 26, 2016

Speaking of Christian voters, anyone know the word among Mega-Churches? Are they prepping their congregations to vote Trump or what?

My parents go to a pretty big evangelical church (several thousand members, multiple services, large facility), and I asked them, who is everyone at your church (presumably mostly Republican) going to vote for? They weren't sure but they said the pastor has said several subtle things suggesting he is NOT a Trump fan.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:22 AM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Orrin Hatch submits op-ed, "My meeting with Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland," explaining how he met with Garland and likes him, but still won't give him a hearing. Only problem is that the Deseret News publishes the thing well before the meeting took place.
posted by zachlipton at 10:24 AM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

Also, similar to stories above, my loudest Hillary-supporting friend on Facebook ended up deactivating for awhile; he was getting too much blowback and he couldn't take it.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:24 AM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

corb: Assuming we're not all thrown out, I think you'll see some shenanigans this year.

Anyone else interested in following along should look to 2012 and what happened to Ron Paul's delegates. (I'm guessing corb and the other members of the Cruz delegation are aware of all of this recent history.)

* RNC Rules to Stifle Ron Paul in 2012 Could Come Back to Bite in 2016
* Chaos on the Convention Floor as RNC Blocks Ron Paul Delegates, Alters Seating Rules
* Boehner Booed at Convention as Chaos Erupts on Convention Floor Over Ron Paul Delegates
* Ron Paul delegates very upset by GOP rules change
* Nevada delegates revolt, vote for Paul anyway Wayne Terhune, a Paul supporter and chairman of the Nevada delegation, said he was frustrated at every turn as he submitted the petitions to the convention secretary by hand and then when the new convention rules were adopted on a voice vote that sounded close.

From the floor, Terhune tried to call for a standing vote count of the delegates. But convention organizers turned off his microphone and wouldn't answer a phone stationed with the Nevada delegation, which was given a spot near the back of the floor far from the stage.

"My microphone was dead, nobody answered the phone. They just wanted to silence us," Terhune said in the middle of the floor fight as Paul supporters shouted in dismay at the new rules. "If I try to storm the place, they'll probably put the Secret Service on us."

After losing the rules battle, Terhune took a piece of paper and recorded the votes of each Nevada delegate - as they wanted, not as assigned.

Former Nevada Gov. Robert List called Terhune an "outlaw" for subverting the binding vote.

"Dr. Terhune failed to act with integrity," said List, an official delegate for Romney and a leader of the Republican National Committee. "It was his responsibility to vote in accordance with the rules. I called him an outlaw. It's contrary to the process."

posted by zarq at 10:33 AM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's almost as if for all of the threads of the inevitable unsustainable nature of the system, about the depressing statistics of inequality and economic disempowerment, of the jokes about late capitalism, people are refusing to see that we're entering into a different stage of history!

On MetaFilter and left wing internet discussion.

they mentioned that so many of the people supporting her are the same people who are always invisible to the larger world looking for "trends" - specifically, older women and women of color.

Yeah, I was really turned off by Sanders supporters who would say "If you don't count X". "If you don't count the South" being especially harsh. I think it's pretty easy to pick out the difference between Georgia and Oregon without even thinking about it too hard.
posted by bongo_x at 10:38 AM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

As a not-intended-to-be-a-counterpoint point, the only Bernie supporting people I know who deactivated their Facebook accounts over reactions to political threads were queer women* my age who were tired of their (mostly straight women) friends bashing them for not supporting Clinton, which sucks but is certainly not the same thing being described here. I have not seen Bernie supporting men (queer or otherwise) receive the same treatment (from men or women)

* I do think there's a lot of queer women of that same demographic who are not thrilled to be supporting Clinton but certainly will in November because they aren't idiots.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:39 AM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Okay, this is crazy. Is this for real? Who is running things over in the Sanders campaign? Is there any legitimate strategy at this point?

'Game on' -- Trump, Sanders to debate?

But the whole proposal appears to have been orchestrated by the Sanders campaign.

Michael Briggs, a Sanders spokesman, said that Kimmel allowed the Sanders campaign to submit a question to Trump to be asked during the taping -- so they asked about a potential debate.

The Sanders campaign jokingly, but half seriously, wants to debate Trump now that Clinton has declined to debate. They think it'll be (as Trump also said) the highest rating ever on whatever network that would run it.

posted by Salieri at 10:44 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Okay, this is crazy.

But here's my platform, debate me maybe?
posted by an animate objects at 10:49 AM on May 26, 2016 [23 favorites]

On MetaFilter and left wing internet discussion.

Yes, but you'd think on MeFi people would be the best equipped to understand why Trump and Sanders have appeal to segments of voters, why Trump was able to defeat the rest of the GOP field, why Sanders is choosing to keep running despite mathematical inequalities, and so on. These are all literally signs of the times and people keep acting like the normal rules apply. If you think things are this wild now, wait until we finally hit the market correction.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:49 AM on May 26, 2016

Is it time to start wondering if Sanders is a plant for the Trump campaign?
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:50 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Possible debate line-ups:
* Sanders vs Trump
* Clinton vs Ted Cruz
* Obama vs John Kerry
* Excel spreadsheet vs Sanders
* Trump vs Clint Eastwood's Chair
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:51 AM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Jill Stein vs Gary Johnson would be fun.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:52 AM on May 26, 2016

Is it time to start wondering if Sanders is a plant for the Trump campaign?

No.

I saw a funny thing on twitter. Pictures of Sanders and Trump, caption something like "Millionaire and billionaire to hold debate over which one gets to live in public housing."
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:53 AM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

Ben Carson vs Truckasaurus
Martin O'Malley vs Mothra
Carly Fiorina vs The Volcano
Marco Rubio vs Kramer
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:53 AM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

Is it time to start wondering if Sanders is a plant for the Trump campaign?

No. Left-wing politicians and/or senior campaign officials are capable of misogyny all on their own without being secret fascists.
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:53 AM on May 26, 2016 [14 favorites]

Hey buddy, the mashup thread is three doors over.
posted by cortex at 10:53 AM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

Is it time to start wondering if Sanders is a plant for the Trump campaign?

B-but isn't Trump a plant for the Clinton campaign? How deep does the rabbit hole go?!
posted by Anonymous at 10:54 AM on May 26, 2016

Martin O'Malley vs. John Kasich drinking in a darkened bar while someone is putting up chairs
posted by theodolite at 10:54 AM on May 26, 2016 [12 favorites]

Hillary Clinton's our Bene Gesserit here. Wheels within wheels within wheels.

The only thing we have to fear is Bill waking and seeing the Golden Path.
posted by rorgy at 10:56 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Wait, if Bernie is a plant for Trump, and Trump is a plant for Hillary, then who is Hillary a plant for

OMG MAYBE THEY ARE THE SAME PERSON

MAYBE IT REALLY IS A 4-CORNER TIMECUBE
posted by dw at 10:56 AM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

We've been getting a lot of double-posted links lately due to the unwieldy length of this thread.
Why have you forsaken us, Wordshore??
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:58 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think "Kang and Kodos" is the obvious answer here.
posted by zutalors! at 10:58 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Looks like it's a Mexican standoff.
posted by rorgy at 10:59 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I saw a funny thing on twitter. Pictures of Sanders and Trump, caption something like "Millionaire and billionaire to hold debate over which one gets to live in public housing."

Funny, but worth noting that a lot of the memes going around about the White House as public housing are doing so because it is currently inhabited by a black family.
posted by corb at 11:00 AM on May 26, 2016 [24 favorites]

Trump's campaign chair:

The vice presidential pick will also be part of the process of proving he’s ready for the White House, Manafort said.

“He needs an experienced person to do the part of the job he doesn’t want to do. He seems himself more as the chairman of the board, than even the CEO, let alone the COO.”

“There is a long list of who that person could be,” Manafort added, “and every one of them has major problems.”

The campaign probably won’t choose a woman or a member of a minority group, he said. “In fact, that would be viewed as pandering, I think.”

posted by octothorpe at 11:03 AM on May 26, 2016

"Dr. Terhune failed to act with integrity," said List, an official delegate for Romney and a leader of the Republican National Committee. "It was his responsibility to vote in accordance with the rules. I called him an outlaw. It's contrary to the process."

I was a Nevada state delegate for Ron Paul in 2012. I was on the floor in Sparks, NV and part of the delegation that voted to send him to the national convention, in part because I know Wayne Terhune personally. He's a little bit of a religious kook (he has a weird hard-on for the King James version of the Bible), but he was, in my experience, a man of integrity.

By the way, in 2012, Romney's delegates passed out fake delegate slates (stuffed with Romney supporters, but with the Ron Paul logo at the top of the page) to try to get Ron Paul's supporters at the state convention to vote for Romney-supporting delegates. I was the one who noticed and called them out. It was nasty.
posted by stolyarova at 11:06 AM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

He needs an experienced person to do the part of the job he doesn’t want to do

So basically Trump looked at the Bush/Cheney years and thought, damn, that's how I want to do it.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:06 AM on May 26, 2016

The campaign probably won’t choose a woman or a member of a minority group, he said. “In fact, that would be viewed as pandering, I think.”

That's right folks you heard it here first, hiring women and minorities is bad for business.
posted by an animate objects at 11:07 AM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

Has anyone checked to see if TRUMP = SANDERS = CLINTON = TRUMP ALL-ONE-GOD-FAITH appears if you rearrange the letters on the back of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps?

I BET YOU HAVEN'T, HAVE YOU?

After Kraft's latest PR stunt, Dr. Bronner's recently changed the text on their labels to long, mumbling Ben Carson quotes to see if anyone would notice. No one did.
posted by duffell at 11:07 AM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

MAYBE IT REALLY IS A 4-CORNER TIMECUBE

The other day I was thinking that maybe we should give the ol' quad-sected empire thing a try. Give Clinton, Sanders, Trump, and Cruz each a part of the U.S. and see how they govern their corner. Kasich can get Ohio to himself, and Bloomberg NYC again, as alternate enclaves to the tetrarchic fiefdoms. Maybe also give New Mexico back to Gary Johnson.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:08 AM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

The campaign probably won’t choose a woman or a member of a minority group, he said. “In fact, that would be viewed as pandering, I think.”

"Also, our candidate has a deep fear of being replaced by a woman or minority."
posted by zarq at 11:09 AM on May 26, 2016 [13 favorites]

and Bloomberg NYC again

No thank you. Clinton's our Senator. We'll take her. You can have Bloomberg.
posted by zarq at 11:11 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

The campaign probably won’t choose a woman or a member of a minority group, he said. “In fact, that would be viewed as pandering, I think.”

And this is exactly why we need to see more women and minorities (and minority women!) in positions of power and influence. Because when it's normalized, it's no longer pandering!
posted by Salieri at 11:12 AM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

Oh right, Bloomberg didn't even run this year, so he shouldn't even be considered as a Prefect. Well, O'Malley can have Baltimore/Maryland again. Jill Stein can rule Florida, since they seem to love voting for the Greens so much, har har. Jeb and Rubio get nothing.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:15 AM on May 26, 2016

“There is a long list of who that person could be,” Manafort added, “and every one of them has major problems.”

-Omarosa: too black/female
-Donald Trump, Jr.: bad optics, out of control vicodin habit
-that guy from Shark Tank who looks like a shaved Monopoly Man: Canadian
-Sheriff Joe Arpaio: perceived as "soft"
-Robert Durst: pending legal issues
posted by theodolite at 11:18 AM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

Fred Durst: KEEP AMERICA ROLLIN' ROLLIN' ROLLIN' ROLLIN'
posted by Apocryphon at 11:20 AM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

The campaign probably won’t choose a woman or a member of a minority group, he said.

Why would the writer opt to use a summation here instead of printing the direct quote verbatim? Let the fucker hang himself with his own words! Seems like shoddy journalism to me.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:22 AM on May 26, 2016

Re: Omarosa as the joke VP suggestion- you know what other nativist GOP insurgent candidate also have a black female running mate with a name that ended with the letter a?
posted by Apocryphon at 11:24 AM on May 26, 2016

“There is a long list of who that person could be,” Manafort added, “and every one of them has major problems.”

Is this a typo or something? "We have a long list of potential VP picks and they all suck!"
posted by sallybrown at 11:30 AM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

The campaign probably won’t choose a woman or a member of a minority group, he said. “In fact, that would be viewed as pandering, I think.”

dark days for the Omarosa-for-VP bloc, but we will persevere
posted by sallybrown at 11:34 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think Trump will pick an older white man with military or foreign relations/policy experience. Like a Bob Corker.
posted by zutalors! at 11:36 AM on May 26, 2016

“There is a long list of who that person could be,” Manafort added, “and every one of them has major problems.”

Is this a typo or something? "We have a long list of potential VP picks and they all suck!"

I think he means that they're still in the early stages of the winnowing process, but that eventually with enough thorough vetting they will narrow it down to the one pure, perfect white male candidate.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:37 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

At this point I honestly think that Trump would see picking a VP with 'traditional' qualifications as a sign of weakness.
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:39 AM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Picking Jim Webb would be an audacious move, he's the perfect geographical counterpart and reinforces that the campaign is for the majority demographic, while slapping on a sop to the idea of bipartisan unity, but Trump is not smart nor savvy enough to pull that off.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:40 AM on May 26, 2016

Maybe Trump will announce he's picked Jesus as his running mate. It's kind of the perfect fit for him.
posted by sallybrown at 11:40 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Remember he has to choose someone horrible enough that no one will assassinate him. I am literally terrified. David Duke, maybe?
posted by corb at 11:40 AM on May 26, 2016

Donald Trump is the "plucky comic relief" who reveals himself to be a sociopathic fascist dictator, surprising everyone who wasn't paying attention. Donald Trump is Kefka.
posted by duffell at 11:40 AM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

Well, he is a clown who would abuse power.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:46 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump / Inanimate Carbon Rod 2016

I think he already said it wouldn't be Christie.
posted by Etrigan at 11:48 AM on May 26, 2016 [13 favorites]

Remember he has to choose someone horrible enough that no one will assassinate him. I am literally terrified. David Duke, maybe?

Sarah Palin.
posted by zarq at 11:49 AM on May 26, 2016

Trump / Inanimate Carbon Rod 2016

I think he already said it wouldn't be Christie.

He said carbon not carbonara.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:49 AM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Trump calls Warren "Pocahontas". Local ND reporter yells "that's very offensive". Trump says "ok". Then calls warren "Pocahontas" again.

God Bless Katy Tur and everyone else on Trump detail.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:50 AM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

you know who Trump should debate? Elizabeth Warren.
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:55 AM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

Remember he has to choose someone horrible enough that no one will assassinate him. I am literally terrified. David Duke, maybe?

Sarah Palin.

SCREAMING FOREVER
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:55 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Emily Atkin: "All 3 major cable news networks currently airing footage of Trump's podium while Clinton gives big Union speech"
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:55 AM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Vice President Harriet Miers
posted by Apocryphon at 12:06 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

We've talked quite a bit about Ivanka as VP (okay perhaps less than seriously), but what about *drumroll* Jared Kushner, Ivanka's husband? Not a blood relation to Trump, but still family; he turned 35 this year; by all accounts (even people who dislike his choices at the paper), he is one of the best-mannered people on earth; he's a young, charismatic, great-looking guy; strong connections to the business world; doesn't appear to be attention-seeking but does appear to be power-seeking; is an "outsider" to politics...?
posted by sallybrown at 12:08 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I can't imagine Trump will choose anyone who would be a rival for attention, as Palin would be. But who knows?
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:09 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Same as Dick Cheney was before he appeared out of nowhere to be the real president during Junior's term in office.

Um, Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense for the first Gulf War, and a Congressman before that. He wasn't some invisible power broker nobody had ever heard of.
posted by zachlipton at 12:10 PM on May 26, 2016 [14 favorites]

Jared Kushner

Trump nominating a Jewish person as his veep would cause the alt-right and white nationalists to implode. I'd be up for that, though Gov. Sandoval would be just as amazing a pick.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:11 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

yes, I remember getting Dick Cheney in a pack of "Heroes of the Gulf War" trading cards when I was like 10

man the 90s were weird
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:11 PM on May 26, 2016 [13 favorites]

Vice President Actual Zombie Nathan Bedford Forrest
posted by poffin boffin at 12:11 PM on May 26, 2016 [16 favorites]

That's yet another attraction, for Trump: "see, I told you I loooooove the [X] people!" He talked a bunch in his AIPAC speech about how his grandkids are Jewish and how Ivanka converted to be with Jared.
posted by sallybrown at 12:12 PM on May 26, 2016

In all seriousness, I'm still betting on Trump "picking" (having picked for him my the RNC), a party functionary we've never heard of except in passing in the occasional news story. Assistant Undersecretary for whatever or something. Same as Dick Cheney was before he appeared out of nowhere to be the real president during Junior's term in office.

Cheney was a friend of the Bush family, though (not to mention a former Representative, Chief of Staff to the President, and Secretary of Defense). He wasn't famous famous, but he wasn't a party functionary we've never heard of nor appeared out of nowhere.

And Trump won't get a VP pick foisted on him by the RNC. What are they going to do if he says "Fuck off, I want Omarosa and you can't stop me"? He might ask them for advice, but only in the sense that he wants it to look like he's taking their advice as long as it goes along with what he wants to do anyway.
posted by Etrigan at 12:12 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have not seen Bernie supporting men (queer or otherwise) receive the same treatment (from men or women)

I have seen exactly this actually -- for a while, a friend of mine had every even mildly pro-Bernie post he made immediately (literally within minutes) mobbed by multiple hostile, insulting, and condescending barbs from a Hillary supporter he barely knew.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:14 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is how I imagine it goes every time Trump meets with the RNC.

One day before: email from Trump flack reminding Reince Prebus to call the candidate "Mr. Trump" at all times.

Meeting time:

Donald: "Look at this table, isn't this table really something? I'm telling you, this is amazing wood. The finest grain. Someone get me a Coke. Now, why did you want to meet?"
Reince: "Mr. Trump, These are our thoughts about X, Y, and Z. It's important to us that you do A, B, and C."
Donald: "Thanks for sharing that. Have a nice trip back to DC. Remember, the Hudson News in Terminal A is the one you want to go to, the other ones are terrible, just terrible."
[Reince and delegation leave]
Donald: "What a fucking disaster that guy is. Now where were we?"
posted by sallybrown at 12:16 PM on May 26, 2016 [15 favorites]

Vince Foster was my brother. Donald Trump should be ashamed.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:20 PM on May 26, 2016 [12 favorites]

Every time I read virtually any well-reasoned, thoughtful argument against Donald Trump's candidacy I picture him and his supporters making fart noises, flipping off the author and high-fiving each other as he goes up another point in the polls. Which is more or less what's happening.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:24 PM on May 26, 2016 [19 favorites]

sallybrown, I'm imagining that scene happening in the boardroom of The Apprentice and it's so vivid, it's like I'm right there.
posted by malocchio at 12:28 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump reaches number of delegates needed to clinch Republican presidential nomination - AP

He's all yours, Republicans.

All yours. And you can have him.
posted by Gelatin at 12:28 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

He needs an experienced person to do the part of the job he doesn’t want to do. He seems himself more as the chairman of the board, than even the CEO, let alone the COO.

The buck stops...eh, over there someplace.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:29 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trading card companies were competing to print Desert Storm cards. You could collect a whole binder of Dicks!

I had a bunch of these! I always wanted the cool ones, like jet fighters and tanks and stuff, not a trading card of Norman Schwarzkopf.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:30 PM on May 26, 2016

A Few Words About This Alleged Trump-Sanders Debate: No, they are not making similar appeals to similar people.
posted by homunculus at 12:31 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Here in Phoenix I have 262 facebook friends and have yet to see any pro-Hillary sentiment in my feed. Obviously if you support Hillary you're going to throw scorn at that claim. But I've heard this from multiple people. I totally get that Hillary really is sweeping in votes, but that leads me to think that her demos are uniformly insulated from my socioeconomic pool of friends and family members, which is weeeeirrrd. On here it's like "EVERYONE KNOWS HILLARY'S THE WAY TO GO" but in the realm of people I actually know I can't find one single person who is progressive/left leaning and who has anything to say about her.

I'm also in Phoenix. If I look at my feed, everyone posting about politics is pro-Bernie. Some more zealously than others, but he's the only candidate anyone seems to support.

In my face-to-face conversations with friends, most of the people I talk to are voting for Hillary, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Most voted for her in the primary. Some have changed their mind since then.

My real-life friends are all on Facebook, most are fairly regular users, and several post frequently about politics. But none of them ever post anything about Clinton, so it would seem she has no support. My friends are typically unafraid to post personal or even controversial thoughts; we've all been online a long time.

Your friends posting about politics on Facebook don't represent everyone you know. Nor do mine.
posted by Superplin at 12:34 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Editorials, Clinton breaks a California promise, penned by the San Francisco Chronicle
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:35 PM on May 26, 2016

I am delighted that @realDonaldTrump has agreed to debate. Let’s do it in the biggest stadium possible.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:36 PM on May 26, 2016

I wonder if Richard Myers is on Trump's VP candidate list.
posted by zarq at 12:38 PM on May 26, 2016

I... don't think that getting a bunch of Trump and Sanders supporters together in a huge stadium is a good idea.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:43 PM on May 26, 2016 [29 favorites]

The idea of a high-ranking, powerful military figure as Trump's VP scares the shit out of me.
posted by sallybrown at 12:44 PM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

I... don't think that getting a bunch of Trump and Sanders supporters together in a huge stadium is a good idea.

Amen. Security alone would cost a fortune.
Maybe Mexico will pay for it.
posted by Superplin at 12:45 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Charles Pierce on the possible Trump-Sanders debate.
posted by maudlin at 12:46 PM on May 26, 2016

After he debates Trump is he going to announce his VP pick?
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 12:47 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Trump announces his pick after the debate. He picks Sanders. Crowd goes wild.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:48 PM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

Trump/Sanders would win in a landslide. But I'm not sure I'd want to be around for it.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:49 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Trump announces his pick after the debate. He picks Sanders. Crowd goes wild.

Not that this is a high bar, but that's a likelier scenario than anything we've seen on House of Cards.
posted by duffell at 12:50 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

The Hill: Sanders camp: Discussions underway for Trump debate
--
USA Today: Trump: I'll debate Sanders for $10 million for women's health issues
--
Salon: What the hell are you doing, Bernie? The Vermont senator inexplicably agrees to debate Donald Trump
--
CNN: Sanders camp: We hope Trump doesn't 'chicken out' on debate
--
Matt Taibbi: "If you'd told me two years ago that a Trump-Sanders debate was a potential TV blockbuster, I'd have thought I was having an acid flashback."

posted by zarq at 12:52 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Is this really happening?
posted by corb at 12:55 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Is this really happening?

If it is, then seriously: fuck Bernie Sanders forever. I say this as someone who donated to him early in the campaign.
posted by duffell at 12:57 PM on May 26, 2016 [23 favorites]

The disturbance I just felt in the Force puts Obi-Wan to shame.
posted by malocchio at 12:57 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

They think it'll be (as Trump also said) the highest rating ever on whatever network that would run it.

This wildly overestimates how much most people give a fuck about debates, or even politics in general. The most-watched debate in history pulled about 24 million viewers. That was the first Republican debate of this cycle, and ratings have been falling fairly steadily since then.

The final episode of MASH, on the other hand, pulled more than 5 times as many viewers (about 125 million) in 1983, when the TV audience was, to put it mildly, considerably smaller.
posted by dersins at 12:58 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, if this pans out we can mark 5/26/16 as the day the Sanders campaign fully jumped the shark.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:59 PM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

Also the day Robert Reich jumped the shark, because he's not being all WTF on the Facebook over it.
posted by zutalors! at 1:01 PM on May 26, 2016

well

Sanders could use this opportunity for his big face turn, going for Trump's hammy orange throat and talking up how Clinton on her worst day is 1000x better than Trump

based on how he's run things these last few weeks though I have zero faith in that happening
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:03 PM on May 26, 2016 [18 favorites]

I would probably lose my center too if I was where Bernie is now, and had just gone through what he'd gone through (see also: the Clintons' gross behavior in the waning days of the 2008 nomination fight), but this is why you surround yourself with iron-spined, levelheaded people who have the access and chutzpah to go Cher on you.
posted by sallybrown at 1:03 PM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

Trump announces his pick after the debate. He picks Sanders. Crowd goes wild.

Sheer nonsense. There is zero way that Sanders would ever agree to be part of a Trump ticket.
posted by en forme de poire at 1:06 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Trump announces his pick after the debate. He picks Sanders. Crowd goes wild.

Sheer nonsense. There is zero way that Sanders would ever agree to be part of a Trump ticket.

Sanders says "No". Crowd goes even wilder.
posted by Etrigan at 1:08 PM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

Sanders makes commitment for Dem platform in HIV/AIDS meeting
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:09 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Walter tango foxtrot, holy hell. The only way this isn't a total win for Trump and Trump alone is if Al Gore runs in with a steel chair halfway through.
posted by EatTheWeek at 1:09 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Why must this election get weirder?
posted by R343L at 1:11 PM on May 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

On the one hand, a Trump/Sanders debate with a stadium full of Trump and non-Trump supporters is terrifying.* On the other hand, Trump's weakness is that he's afraid to look weak. So calling his bluff and goading him into doing a bunch of stuff that will be difficult and time consuming for him could be a good thing. I mean, I'd love it if Warren was like "hey, i'll debate him too" instead of just tweeting at him. And then if every Democratic politician or public figure challenged him to a debate (omg, could you imagine him debating Dan Savage or Lindy West or DeRay Mckesson?? -- in reality I can't imagine him agreeing to debate anyone other than a straight white man). Yes, this would be a lot of "free" press, but he'd also have to take so much time off the campaign trail to do it, and he couldn't say no because then he'd be a chicken. He's a troll - you either have to stop feeding the troll (which the media will never do with Trump) or you have to troll the troll.

*How are they going to handle the Clinton/Trump debates? Will they even allow an audience to be there? Will Trump even agree to debate?
posted by melissasaurus at 1:11 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Sanders makes commitment for Dem platform in HIV/AIDS meeting

The activists he met with see things a bit differently:

Feeling used and abused by the Sanders campaign right now. They just issued a press release making it sound like our meeting was about his endorsement of AHF's drug pricing ballot initiative in CA. Senator Sanders never brought the issue up during our meeting. WE brought it up near the end, only to tell him that we had been flooded with messages from all the leading AIDS organizations in CA with deep concerns about AHF's initiative -- they are worried it could actually negatively impact access to AIDS drugs. Those groups have tried to reach the campaign with these concerns but had hit a brick wall. We asked Sanders to designate someone in his campaign to talk with these groups, and he agreed to this. WE DID NOT ENDORSE AHF'S INITIATIVE. His campaign should not have issued a press release implying this was a major topic of discussion at the meeting, and that there was general agreement on the Senator's position on this. Anything but.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:14 PM on May 26, 2016 [12 favorites]

NoxAeternum, thanks for linking. For some reason Peter's statement didn't come up in my FB feed.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:15 PM on May 26, 2016

I think Trump would leave the campaign trail for a media circus any day. If Trump debates Sanders he'll be able to throw that in Clinton's face for the duration of the GE. Not to mention Trump will be able to turn everything towards Clinton even when that wasn't the topic. Lastly, Sanders' main rallying cry is big money in politics, Trump can give a big ol' "I agree!" and then what?
posted by avalonian at 1:16 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

How are they going to handle the Clinton/Trump debates? Will they even allow an audience to be there? Will Trump even agree to debate?

Poorly, under heavy security, and I doubt it.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:18 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Sanders makes commitment for Dem platform in HIV/AIDS meeting

According to activists, Sanders pledged during the meeting the 2016 Democratic Party platform will include a plank on the need to increase generic competition for pharmaceutical production of HIV/AIDS drugs, such as by reducing U.S. pressure on India to change its patent laws.

A bold move, considering that use of generics to treat HIV/AIDS has been part of PEPFAR since the mid-2000s.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 1:19 PM on May 26, 2016

A bold move, considering that use of generics to treat HIV/AIDS has been part of PEPFAR since the mid-2000s.

Nobody implied it was a bold move. But it's not being done yet.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:21 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is utter nonsense. As I pointed out last night, Trump and Sanders are literally not running in the same primary in California. Because of the way the primary works, and the deadline to change your party has passed (15 days before election day), there are zero CA voters at this point who will get to choose between Sanders and Trump.

There is no way in which Sanders getting on that stage is not just handing Trump a giant handful of support. And as good a cause as raising money for women's health is, the precedent that you have to raise millions of dollars for a cause to have a political debate is absurd, and we should not allow Trump to set conditions for the rest of the election that he won't appear unless there is money on the table.
posted by zachlipton at 1:22 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

If it is, then seriously: fuck Bernie Sanders forever. I say this as someone who donated to him early in the campaign.

Why? I want Bernie to, above all, get out the message of progressive politics to as many people as possible while he still has this platform. I want that above any continued effort toward winning an almost certainly lost Democratic nomination. Trump is spectacle. Trump gets media ratings. I say go for it. I certainly don't think he'd use it as an opportunity to tee off on Hillary. He loathes Trump.
posted by indubitable at 1:22 PM on May 26, 2016 [14 favorites]

He's a troll - you either have to stop feeding the troll (which the media will never do with Trump) or you have to troll the troll.

The problem with Sanders is that his best qualities--his earnestness, his empathy, his authenticity--make him fundamentally incapable of being a troll. They're also what most people are supporting him for. That's what feels the most disappointing about this "debate." It's very clearly playing to Trump's strengths, not Sanders', and I really don't see any way that this turns out to be anything but 1) yet more free advertising for Trump, and 2) a way for Sanders' criticisms to enable Trump to tear down Clinton in his usual disgusting fashion. I would love for Sanders to show up disprove all of this, but right now I just don't see how. He's asking for a rhetorical brawl in a stadium that's bound to be full of the worst kinds of spectators on national TV. Just bein' Bernie doesn't work in that kind of situation, and being untrue to himself would be even worse.

I don't know if he's jumped the shark just yet, but he's certainly putting on the waterskis and telling the guy in the motorboat to rev up the engine.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:24 PM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

I don't think anyone will be listening to Bernie's message. The fact that this has even been suggested is pretty ridiculous, if it happens it will go down as the ridiculous media circus it is. Like Clint Eastwood and the empty chair x25.
posted by zutalors! at 1:25 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

If you think that a Fox News run debate with Trump as one of the participants is going to be a viable platform for extolling progressive values, I have some riverside property in NYC for cheap.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:26 PM on May 26, 2016 [26 favorites]

If it is, then seriously: fuck Bernie Sanders forever. I say this as someone who donated to him early in the campaign.

Why?

Because Donald Trump will spend the entire debate shitting on his real opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, using Bernie Sanders' own talking points, and goading Sanders to do the same.
Because it's political theater that will bolster the dangerous narrative that Hillary Clinton did not earn the nomination that she's about to secure.
Because these two men running off and having their own "debate" at the dawn of a major party's historic nomination of a female presidential candidate is DO I REALLY HAVE TO FINISH THIS SENTENCE, FUCKING CHRIST

posted by duffell at 1:27 PM on May 26, 2016 [89 favorites]

Like Clint Eastwood and the empty chair x25.

But they're both cranky old white guys. Which of them is the chair?
posted by dersins at 1:28 PM on May 26, 2016

Hillary Clinton is the chair.
posted by zutalors! at 1:28 PM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

I don't think the debate is the best idea ever. But I also don't think "ignore Trump until August and then engage typical political campaign" will be effective. He isn't playing by the typical politician playbook. He doesn't care whether the system survives his run. I believe that Clinton will win, because demographics and electoral college math is on her side. But her winning isn't enough, we also need to fight Trump-ism - constantly, relentlessly, and from every corner (even if you're Republican or NeverClinton) because it's not going away.
posted by melissasaurus at 1:29 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

From the Pierce piece: The alternative is to believe that Sanders has gone crazy from the heat and decided that the best thing he can do as a national politician is to collaborate in a silly and dangerous carny sideshow act that can have only one result: the spectacle of two aging white men slamming the first woman ever to have an odds-on chance to be president of the United States.

If the main threat of a Sanders-Trump debate is that they will be talking smack about Clinton, I'm not sure how legit it is. At the first mention of Hillary, Sanders can go, "Senator Clinton is not debating with you tonight, Mister Trump. You are debating with me." He's done that before when the chance to bring up the emails happened at the debate. The Sanders campaign* has made many mistakes before, but aggressively going on the offensive** against Hillary's on a personality level? I don't think that's the trap that Sanders will fall into.

*and note, I make the difference between his campaign***, and his supporters- his fan club.

** it seems like most of the campaign's mistake in recent weeks has been sins of omission. Of failing to censure and condemn the aggressive attacks that the fan club has made.

*** Okay, I guess there's also Jeff Weaver, who seems to be a jerk, who's in the leadership of the campaign.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:30 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Because Donald Trump will spend the entire debate shitting on his real opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton

He's going to do that anyway in the general.

Because it's political theater that will bolster the dangerous narrative that Hillary Clinton did not earn the nomination that she's about to secure.

How? That doesn't even make sense.

Because these two men running off and having their own "debate" at the dawn of a major party's historic nomination of a female presidential candidate is DO I REALLY HAVE TO FINISH THIS SENTENCE, FUCKING CHRIST

Easier than making an actual argument, I guess?
posted by indubitable at 1:32 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

The Sanders campaign* has made many mistakes before, but aggressively going on the offensive** against Hillary's on a personality level? I don't think that's the trap that Sanders will fall into.

I hope you're right, but the Sanders campaign of the last two weeks is not the same as the Sanders campaign of the prior year.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 1:32 PM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

If the main threat of a Sanders-Trump debate is that they will be talking smack about Clinton

No, it's as duffell pointed out, a dickish "the men are talking" move.
posted by zutalors! at 1:32 PM on May 26, 2016 [14 favorites]

I certainly don't think he'd use it as an opportunity to tee off on Hillary.

That's not the problem. The problem is that he doesn't have to. Trump, the moderators, or both will do it for him.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:33 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Trump is never going to do this. An authentic socialist POV from Sanders would take the wind out of Trump's nativist sails.

I don't understand how less exposure is a good thing, or how this is bad for Clinton at all. If you think Sanders is going to go on stage and gang up on Clinton with Trump, you need to take a deep breath and do something else for a while. I'd love to see Sanders go after Trump.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 1:33 PM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

Because it's political theater that will bolster the dangerous narrative that Hillary Clinton did not earn the nomination that she's about to secure.

How? That doesn't even make sense.

Because both Sanders and Trump can say "the debate was between the R candidate, and the D candidate didn't even show up how legitimate is she anyway"
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:33 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

The problem with Sanders is that his best qualities--his earnestness, his empathy, his authenticity--make him fundamentally incapable of being a troll.

At some point can be hard to tell the difference between someone who is, really, truly earnestly just asking questions and a troll.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:34 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mean it would be if Hillary hadn't already declined Trump's invitation to debate, which started this whole thing.
posted by indubitable at 1:34 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Because both Sanders and Trump can say "the debate was between the R candidate, and the D candidate didn't even show up how legitimate is she anyway"

Except Hillary is going to be the party's nominee.
posted by indubitable at 1:36 PM on May 26, 2016

Trump is never going to do this. An authentic socialist POV from Sanders would take the wind out of Trump's nativist sails.

Even if you accept that people given the choice between nativism and socialism will overwhelmingly choose the latter, which is hugely optimistic especially in this climate, what happens to those sails when Sanders loses the nomination, as he refuses to accept is inevitable but which is, in fact, inevitable?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:37 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mean it would be if Hillary hadn't already declined Trump's invitation to debate, which started this whole thing.

Right, because declining to roll around in a pool of shit with the guy that filled it is a real betrayal of progressive values.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:37 PM on May 26, 2016 [16 favorites]

Because both Sanders and Trump can say "the debate was between the R candidate, and the D candidate didn't even show up how legitimate is she anyway"

Clinton and Trump are going to inevitably debate once this interminable primary season is over. If anything, a Sanders-Trump debate will be useful for the Clinton campaign to study and adapt for the actual general election debates against Trump.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:38 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

As I said upthread, if this is what Bernie is really doing, it's mutually assured destruction for the Democrats. There is zero way he can win this. Go hard at Trump, get laid out like everyone in the GOP while Trump tears him apart with his quarter-truths. Play the We Hate Hillary game, well, now the Dems hate you AND you damage her candidacy by giving legitimacy to everything Trump has said by aligning it with your criticisms. Go soft on Trump, you're not presidential and you're just Chris Christie with less adipose and worse hair. Win the debate and you're STILL not the nominee.

This is beyond desperation. This is ignore-your-handlers-and-go-all-maverick-on-your-veep-nominee terrible. Someone on that side of the world needs to talk Bernie down. Of course, as long as Shaun King is his hypeman and Jeff Weaver rambles on in front of cameras, there's no one around loud enough for him to hear.
posted by dw at 1:39 PM on May 26, 2016 [19 favorites]

Right, because declining to roll around in a pool of shit with the guy that filled it is a real betrayal of progressive values.

It is definitely not a "dickish, 'the men are talking' move," though.
posted by indubitable at 1:39 PM on May 26, 2016

so she should learn by watching a less successful candidate debate Trump?
posted by zutalors! at 1:39 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Because these two men running off and having their own "debate" at the dawn of a major party's historic nomination of a female presidential candidate is DO I REALLY HAVE TO FINISH THIS SENTENCE, FUCKING CHRIST

Easier than making an actual argument, I guess?

This is an actual argument. This is when you're sitting around with your two guy friends and talking about an issue, and you say something neither of them likes, so they turn away from you and keep discussing amongst themselves. Because they're guys, and they don't have to acknowledge or listen to you.

It's a fucking DICK MOVE for Bernie to agree to this. It's so foolish that it comes across as purely ego-driven.
posted by sallybrown at 1:39 PM on May 26, 2016 [35 favorites]

Because Donald Trump will spend the entire debate shitting on his real opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton

He's going to do that anyway in the general.

Not with Bernie front and center as Spectator #1. Can you seriously not envision a week or more of headlines "Bernie throws Hillary under Bus" "Bernie stands by while Trump blah blah Hillary" "Trump and Bernie agree: Hillary should release her Sachs Transcripts" "Trump calls out Hillary's corruption. Bernie's response? *shrug*" 2 to 3 hours of cameras on each of them. One with everything to gain (trump) and one with almost nothing to (at least officially) (Sanders)

Because it's political theater that will bolster the dangerous narrative that Hillary Clinton did not earn the nomination that she's about to secure.

How? That doesn't even make sense.

Because Bernie's been saying the whole thing is rigged and "the people" should be heard even when he's down tons of votes?

Because these two men running off and having their own "debate" at the dawn of a major party's historic nomination of a female presidential candidate is DO I REALLY HAVE TO FINISH THIS SENTENCE, FUCKING CHRIST

Easier than making an actual argument, I guess?

That was the argument. A woman is about to officially get the nomination for one of two major parties of the United States for the first time, and the opposing party's nominee is going to debate her runner up. It's hard to believe your responses are in good faith.
posted by avalonian at 1:39 PM on May 26, 2016 [36 favorites]

The only thing I can think is maybe he's trying to expose Trump as a coward?
posted by corb at 1:40 PM on May 26, 2016

But I also don't think "ignore Trump until August and then engage typical political campaign" will be effective.

Good thing that Clinton and party surrogates are tackling him head on now, then?
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:40 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

so she should learn by watching a less successful candidate debate Trump?

Yes. That's how vaccinations work.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:40 PM on May 26, 2016

Except Hillary is going to be the party's nominee.

Yes? The narrative amongst OnlyBernie/NeverHIllary types will absorb this as proof that she isn't really the nominee.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:40 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

It is definitely not a "dickish, 'the men are talking' move," though.

This isn't a "yes or no" answer question. You don't see it this way? Okay. Lots of people do.
posted by sallybrown at 1:40 PM on May 26, 2016 [14 favorites]

I just can't imagine what the actual purpose of this is. What good can it possibly do?
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:42 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Even if you accept that people given the choice between nativism and socialism will overwhelmingly choose the latter, which is hugely optimistic especially in this climate, what happens to those sails when Sanders loses the nomination, as he refuses to accept is inevitable but which is, in fact, inevitable?

I fully expect Sanders not to be the nominee and I fully expect Sanders will accept that. His strongest language has always been about how awful and disastrous Trump would be. I don't see any reason to think he would do anything to empower Trump.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 1:42 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

And, yeah, to me it does read as a total, massive, deliberate insult to Clinton from Sanders.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:42 PM on May 26, 2016 [22 favorites]

Good thing that Clinton and party surrogates are tackling him head on now, then?

It'd sure be more effective if Sanders wasn't running around the field yelling "ME ME PAY ATTENTION TO ME" while they're doing it, though.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:42 PM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

I mean it would be if Hillary hadn't already declined Trump's invitation to debate, which started this whole thing.

No, what started this whole thing was Sanders agreeing to debate on Fox News, rather than tell them what orifice they could shove their offer.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:43 PM on May 26, 2016

And, yeah, it me it does read as a total, massive, deliberate insult to Clinton from Sanders.

Clinton said she wouldn't go.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:44 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I fully expect Sanders not to be the nominee and I fully expect Sanders will accept that. His strongest language has always been about how awful and disastrous Trump would be. I don't see any reason to think he would do anything to empower Trump.

Because if Trump voters en masse see something they like in Sanders' "authentic socialist POV" and then Hillary Clinton beats the socialist in the primary because she has more votes, they're going right back to Trump, even angrier at her.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:44 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yes. That's how vaccinations work.

That is a really weak metaphor. A public event that will affect public opinion above and beyond anything Clinton will "learn" from this != vaccination. You may as well argue that shouting at viruses will keep somebody from getting measles.

(Has she ASKED for this "vaccination"? Nope. Metaphor fail part two.)
posted by maudlin at 1:44 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

The more I think about this the worse idea it sounds like.

I think it's a bad idea for ANYONE to debate Trump just one time. There's a reason why gaslighting, bullying, yelling, misrepresenting, and outright lying work on the majority of people: we're not used to responding to it, especially not a specific new person's spin on all those things. I don't see any way Trump wouldn't come out ahead (in the eyes of his supporters and anyone who would support him) in a single debate one on one with just about anyone. He's a professional flusterer. While you're sitting there WTFing, he's smugly looking left and right, and that's what [enough] people remember.
posted by avalonian at 1:44 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

It is definitely not a "dickish, 'the men are talking' move," though.

It really is. It really, really, really, really is. Intended that way or not, w/e, but that is exactly what this is. Clinton is about to bust through the highest glass ceiling in the USA and the also-ran, who has a periwinkle's chance in a supernova at this point, is grabbing the spotlight to talk to another old white dude.

It absolutely is "shush dear the men are talking" and I'm exceedingly disappointed in the notion that it's not.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:45 PM on May 26, 2016 [31 favorites]

I don't see any reason to think he would do anything to empower Trump.

And yet, here we are.
posted by zarq at 1:45 PM on May 26, 2016 [11 favorites]

Just the fact that Sanders would do this empowers Trump. It makes Clinton look illegitimate, because she is the person who is supposed to debate the opposing nominee.

this has never been done before, and funny that it's in an election year where a woman will be the nominee.

Clinton has had an unprecedented, frankly absurd amount of crap thrown at her, and the argument seems to be "well, she should handle it, she wants to be President" It's ridiculous.
posted by zutalors! at 1:46 PM on May 26, 2016 [31 favorites]

I don't see any reason to think he would do anything to empower Trump.

Again, he doesn't have to do anything. Just providing Trump and FNC the chance to do it to his face will do that for him.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:47 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

It really is. It really, really, really, really is. Intended that way or not, w/e, but that is exactly what this is. Clinton is about to bust through the highest glass ceiling in the USA and the also-ran, who has a periwinkle's chance in a supernova at this point, is grabbing the spotlight to talk to another old white dude.

It absolutely is "shush dear the men are talking" and I'm exceedingly disappointed in the notion that it's not.

Trump originally offered Hillary the debate. She declined. He then offered it to Sanders. He said, "Yeah, sure." That is not, "shush dear the men are talking".
posted by indubitable at 1:48 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

The constant ongoing discussion here to even establish if sexism is happening here more than concludes that debate to anybody who knows a motherfucking thing about sexism.

This thread is gonna be an interesting historical document in some shameful goddamn ways.
posted by rorgy at 1:48 PM on May 26, 2016 [35 favorites]

People keep repeating that Clinton declined the debate as if (a) we don't already know that; and (b) it negates the numerous points people have made about sexism. We read it the first 5 times.
posted by sallybrown at 1:49 PM on May 26, 2016 [24 favorites]

Sanders has said through the whole campaign that he wants all-candidates debates during the primary, that he would show up for one if it happened, that he thinks there should be more debates period, etc etc. This isn't a new position, it's the same thing he's said the whole time. That if you're a politician running for office, you should be speaking in public and taking the public's questions and ready to debate at any time any place.

From the link above (New Yorker July 2015):

Sanders offered another plus: “These inter-party debates,” he wrote, “would put in dramatic focus the shallow and at times ridiculous policies and proposals being advocated by the Republican candidates and by their party’s platform.”

posted by melissasaurus at 1:52 PM on May 26, 2016 [11 favorites]

As I said upthread, if this is what Bernie is really doing, it's mutually assured destruction for the Democrats.

How about the Independents? The Independents that will decide this election if the Evangelicals stay home rather than vote for Trump or Clinton? I think they're the ones who will decide this, and the DNC is cutting their own throat by neglecting them. Yeah, they're not Democrats, but you're going to need them if you want to actually win.
posted by mikelieman at 1:52 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

There's never been a debate as far as I know between opposing party candidates during the primary (at least since television started). For Sanders to debate the presumed general election opponent is to presume he is a general election candidate. It's messed up. Have even actual presumed nominees debated before the party conventions before?

I have to imagine this is a joke and Sanders is going to back out because otherwise I just can't believe he would do it. Or these are rumors that will turn out to be false. Because if it's true then Sanders is amazingly disappointing.
posted by R343L at 1:53 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

I mean, it's only MAD if the DNC ignores all the people who could help them put a candidate in office...
posted by mikelieman at 1:53 PM on May 26, 2016

How about the Independents? The Independents that will decide this election if the Evangelicals stay home rather than vote for Trump or Clinton?

The people who'll decide this election are women and people of color.
posted by rorgy at 1:53 PM on May 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

that he wants all-candidates debates during the primary

This is not an all-candidates debate. It's not even an accurately representative debate, because it's the certain Republican nominee versus the Democratic also-ran.
posted by sallybrown at 1:54 PM on May 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

A public event that will affect public opinion above and beyond anything Clinton will "learn" from this != vaccination. You may as well argue that shouting at viruses will keep somebody from getting measles.

Now that I think about it, vaccines works by having an immune system beating up a weaker, neutralized form of a disease, so it's incoherent at best, problematic at worst, for this metaphor to liken Hillary studying Sanders beat Trump, or vice versa. I respectfully withdraw it.

That said, I'm still not altogether convinced that the Clinton campaign knows how to handle Trump in a debate yet, but I suppose there are better avenues to figure out how.

this has never been done before,

Quite honestly, this is an election of unprecedented events. This ship has sailed for precedence.

This thread is gonna be an interesting historical document in some shameful goddamn ways.

The craziest thing is, this debate is probably not even going to happen. The prospect of a Sanders-Trump debate already happened months ago, and Trump ran away then. The past couple dozen or so posts are probably fuming over nothing.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:54 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

On preview: apparently he's supported the idea in the past. Well goodie for him. But even he has to know how this looks at this stage of the primary. He knows he only has the remotest chance of getting the nomination. He has to know what it looks like.
posted by R343L at 1:54 PM on May 26, 2016

For Sanders to debate the presumed general election opponent is to presume he is a general election candidate. It's messed up.

How is that a presumption? It isn't.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:55 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

this has never been done before,

Quite honestly, this is an election of unprecedented events. This ship has sailed for precedence.

Yes, I keep hearing that as an excuse for sexism against Clinton. How odd that these unprecedented events are occurring as we try to nominate the first female general election nominee.
posted by zutalors! at 1:56 PM on May 26, 2016 [25 favorites]

Trump originally offered Hillary the debate. She declined. He then offered it to Sanders. He said, "Yeah, sure."

Literally none of this happened.

Trump didn't offer to debate Clinton.
Fox News asked Clinton to debate Sanders in California. She declined.
Trump didn't offer a debate to Sanders.
Sanders asked Jimmy Kimmel to blindside Trump with the question on national television.
Trump agreed, tried to back out and has now said, "Only if 10 million dollars goes to charity."
Without waiting for Trump to respond publicly with a "yes," the Sanders campaign has announced that the debate is happening, and is goading Trump so he won't "chicken out."

That is not, "shush dear the men are talking".

Yeah, it pretty much is.
posted by zarq at 1:57 PM on May 26, 2016 [49 favorites]

How odd that these unprecedented events are occurring as we try to nominate the first female general election nominee.

It's not the only unprecedented event, though. Trump being a party outsider non elected official becoming presumptive nominee, Cruz naming a VP before being the convention (not entirely unprecedented, but rare enough), the spouse of a former president running for office, etc.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:57 PM on May 26, 2016

I'm so tired of "unprecedented" things happening this campaign.
posted by MysticMCJ at 1:59 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

We live in unprecedented times.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:00 PM on May 26, 2016

Guys, there is nothing wrong with anyone debating anyone else. Come on.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:01 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

The people who'll decide this election are women and people of color.

Thank God.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:01 PM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

How about the Independents? The Independents that will decide this election if the Evangelicals stay home rather than vote for Trump or Clinton? I think they're the ones who will decide this, and the DNC is cutting their own throat by neglecting them. Yeah, they're not Democrats, but you're going to need them if you want to actually win.

The myth of "independents" being decisive in elections has been debunked, probably hundreds of times by now, by actual voting data that shows almost all of them being partisan voters in the overwhelming majority of cases.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:02 PM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

As has already been articulated, I find a lot wrong with it.
posted by agregoli at 2:02 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

In the meantime, Jonathan Weisman writes in the New York Times on the anti-Semitic Twitter harassment he's received harassment for tweeting an anti-Trump article:

The only response I blocked and forwarded to Twitter was a photo of my disembodied head held aloft, long Orthodox hair locks called payot photoshopped on my sideburns and a skullcap placed as a crown. I let stand the image of a smiling Mr. Trump in Nazi uniform flicking the switch on a gas chamber containing my Photoshopped face.

posted by zachlipton at 2:02 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

For people who are pro-this: what, in your opinion, is the purpose of it?
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:03 PM on May 26, 2016

I mean guys, let's be empathetic here, it must really really suck to get beat BY A GIRL.
posted by sallybrown at 2:03 PM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

2008 was (also) the year that a woman runs for president.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 2:03 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

For people who are pro-this: what, in your opinion, is the purpose of it?

If they are honestly going to debate policy, then they should do it. And frankly, anything that Bernie can do to make it clear that Trump can't debate is good. Let's not give him the summer to prepare.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:05 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Guys, there is nothing wrong with anyone debating anyone else. Come on.

When the debate is being run by Fox News?
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:06 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Trump: I'll debate Sanders for $10 million for women's health issues

Wow. Just. Wow. I don't want to be cynical but this seems like he's in his office, his manager comes in and says "women hate you" and he comes back "but I love women, just raise a few million for them so they know we care".

Never mind the fact that he's still a boorish pig when it comes to women.
posted by Talez at 2:07 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

How about the Independents?

This debate doesn't help them at all. One presumptive nominee vs someone who essentially has a less than 1% chance of being the presumptive nominee? When independents can't even vote in three of the final 9 races?

I'm kinda tired of the "independent" canard. If people want a part in selecting a party's nominee, join the damn party. This is like someone who didn't want to be part of the Christmas party planning committee whining that they didn't get a say just because they weren't willing to sit through that boring Wednesday lunch meeting every week to talk about caterers.

And if you have a problem with all of that, then let's move to a national runoff system free of parties. But that requires a constitutional amendment, which requires getting it through Congress and 38 state legislatures... so you better be ready to do the damn work.
posted by dw at 2:08 PM on May 26, 2016 [12 favorites]

It's been said over and over, but it feels utterly unsurprising that the year a woman runs for president is the year the Platonic Patriarchal Man, untrained and rich and crass and gross and brilliant at shaming and humiliating others in typically masculine ways, beats a bunch of superficially-more-valid men for the top spot.

I put it slightly differently recently. In 2008, we elected the first black president. In 2012, the Republicans put up the most stereotypically white candidate they could find -- a super-rich New England Mormon. In 2016, we are poised to elect the first woman president, and the Republicans have put up a candidate who checks every box of stereotypical "manliness" -- he's a loud, boorish, "tough guy" who talks about the size of his manhood and blames women's behavior on their periods and bathroom breaks. Coincidence?
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 2:09 PM on May 26, 2016 [11 favorites]

I view the donation thing as a way to say "fuck you" to anti-Trump women. It's a form of control - he's going to do this and shove it in our faces the rest of the time, and the amount is so large and the money so needed that we can't refuse. Plus he'll probably give it to the Phyllis Schafley Foundation or some other nonsense.
posted by sallybrown at 2:10 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

If they are honestly going to debate policy

Because those are the defining characteristics of FNC and Trump? You can't be serious. Why anyone would give either of them, let alone the combination of the two, the benefit of the doubt on this based on that logic is mind-boggling.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:10 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Ben Trismegistus: Who'll the 2020 candidate against Hillary Clinton be, then? Chuck Norris?
posted by rorgy at 2:11 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

What is FNC?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:12 PM on May 26, 2016

Fox News Channel.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:13 PM on May 26, 2016

Fox News Channel
posted by zachlipton at 2:14 PM on May 26, 2016

Sanders campaign praises RNC chair for leadership

"I mean, if you look at the Republican side, the party chair there has been working day and night to try and you know, keep everybody together and to try unify the party."

"And I think we need a similar effort on the Democratic side," [Weaver] said.

Between stuff like this and publicly even entertaining the idea of a debate with Trump without being the D nominee, the Sanders campaign is starting to remind me of school on Memorial Day: no class.

Let's not give him the summer to prepare.

Trump doesn't need to do anything to prepare.

Having watched Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates for every election cycle since 2000, I don't think it's possible for networks to declare Republicans losers. Democrats can certainly be declared losers, but the mainstream networks will report anything other than a complete and utter unraveling by the R in terms that make it seem as if it were a draw (eg, "While $Democrat scored some points on subjects such as blah blah blah, $Republican was very poised and appeared presidential and confident.")

So all Trump needs to do is show up and speak in complete sentences and the worst that the networks will say is that neither side gained any ground or lost any ground as a result of the debate.
posted by lord_wolf at 2:14 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Fox News Ch—oh
posted by rorgy at 2:14 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

And frankly, anything that Bernie can do to make it clear that Trump can’t debate is good.

The Republican debates were stupid and terrible, but it does seem like Trump won them. He might not have won them by debating, but he won, and there’s no reason he can’t do it again.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:15 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

How about the Independents? The Independents that will decide this election if the Evangelicals stay home rather than vote for Trump or Clinton?

The people you are talking about barely even exist. Study after study has shown that the substantial majority of voters who describe themselves as "Independent" are consistent Democratic or Republican voters. One hypothesis (which I find pretty credible) is that this is connected to Americans' self-mythologizing, that we like to think of ourselves as "independent" even if we're actually not.
posted by dersins at 2:15 PM on May 26, 2016 [12 favorites]

So all Trump needs to do is show up and speak in complete sentences and the worst that the networks will say is that neither side gained any ground or lost any ground as a result of the debate.

Nah, that's waaaaaay too high a bar for Trump. Failure to visibly soil himself will suffice.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:16 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Scandal had a plot where Olivia's evil father set up her sometimes-evil-ex to get married to a DC power socialite to make him a more attractive VP candidate so he could get elected and get killed. He was a Republican former head of NSA (who was also a part of secret organization of assassins than run a sort of shadow CIA) trying to run on the Democratic ticket, and then he ended up the GOP nominee for Reasons, running on the same ticket as the ex-First Lady/Senator of the sitting president.

Right now, Shonda Rhimes sits in her house of ABC Money thinking "Well, fuck you everybody who complained on the Internet that Season 5 went too off the rails? Look at your damn self, America."
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:16 PM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

Actually, I imagine Trump will just emphasize that Sanders is a loser.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:17 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

My expectations for such a debate upthread still stand. The only remotely noble thing Sanders could do with this would be to kamikaze straight through the debate talking about how Clinton is better than Trump. That doesn't fit the pattern he's shown throughout this campaign, particularly in the last few weeks. I'm much more inclined to agree with the argument that this is a shitty "men are talking" moment -- and it looks especially desperate considering how Sanders got this rolling through Jimmy Kimmel.

But honestly: I think we're in for at least a week of back and forth about whether or not this will happen at all. Trump will keep jerking everyone around on it, because Trump's an asshole.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 2:18 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Who'll the 2020 candidate against Hillary Clinton be, then? Chuck Norris?

I think the republicans might nominate an actual, semi-sentient, autonomous phallus.

Oh, wait, that's this year. Sorry.
posted by dersins at 2:18 PM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

Yeah, I was gonna make the "will they just pick a detached penis" joke too, then remembered who the 2016 nominee was.
posted by rorgy at 2:19 PM on May 26, 2016

Bernie is out of campaign funds and can't let go of the limelight.
He is way past 'platform' now - it's all about his ego
Trump has been running on free media time for his whole campaign.
His financial future depends on displays of bizaare showmanship

This "debate" has nothing to do with the election. Two sad old white guys are being led by their egos (almost said dicks, eh?) into a circus show for FOX.

Someone very wry and rich should sponsor a competing event in the same time slot - make it the best show, event ever imagined.
posted by Surfurrus at 2:19 PM on May 26, 2016

maybe that kid doing the bottle flip

i'd watch that
posted by zutalors! at 2:20 PM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

Sanders campaign praises RNC chair for leadership

One of my kids must have switched my multivitamin for crazy pills. That's the only reasonable explanation.
posted by zarq at 2:20 PM on May 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

"I mean, if you look at the Republican side, the party chair there has been working day and night to try and you know, keep everybody together and to try unify the party."

"And I think we need a similar effort on the Democratic side," [Weaver] said.

Are you EFFING KIDDING me?
posted by corb at 2:21 PM on May 26, 2016 [26 favorites]

Actually, I imagine Trump will just emphasize that Sanders is a loser.

Oh, not a chance. Trump knows Sanders isn't going to be the nominee. He's going to make sympathetic noises and talk about how corrupt Clinton and the DNC are and how votes were "stolen" from Sanders in NY and AZ and whatever. He's not doing this to finish off Sanders, he's doing it to try and peel off some of Sanders' supporters.
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:21 PM on May 26, 2016 [17 favorites]

I'm honestly starting to get the feeling Sanders is going to run third party after he doesn't get the nomination.
posted by defenestration at 2:23 PM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

2008 was (also) the year that a woman runs for president.

Carol Moseley-Braun ran in 2004.

For people who are pro-this: what, in your opinion, is the purpose of it?

To undermine Trump's positions on economics and manufacturing with actual progressivism? I mean, I can see how this could be viewed as being motivated by sexism -- there's been plenty of it so far -- but I don't think Bernie Sanders is thinking about how he and The Donald can stick it to Hillary for being a woman. I think he sees this as an opportunity to push his positions.

Trump just today or yesterday said he wants to make the GOP a "worker's party" by campaigning on those very issues.

So all Trump needs to do is show up and speak in complete sentences and the worst that the networks will say is that neither side gained any ground or lost any ground as a result of the debate.

Well, hell, why attack Trump at all?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:23 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

> One of my kids must have switched my multivitamin for crazy pills. That's the only reasonable explanation.

No kidding there. I'm at a total loss for what to make of this, other than Weaver is clearly going to continue to double down on his present path and strategy... The idea of Weaver preaching unity is rather offensive.
posted by MysticMCJ at 2:24 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Someone very wry and rich should sponsor a competing event in the same time slot - make it the best show, event ever imagined.

Oprah interviews Beyoncé and Jay-Z about their marriage
God resurrects Prince live on TV
Obama holds hourlong press conference to discuss evidence of alien life
posted by sallybrown at 2:24 PM on May 26, 2016 [13 favorites]

I'm honestly starting to get the feeling Sanders is going to run third party after he doesn't get the nomination.

On the bright side, if he does, that could open up the Republican side of things, and we could maybe have the first four way race in forever.

I am trying really hard to find bright sides.
posted by corb at 2:25 PM on May 26, 2016 [12 favorites]

Weaver has come utterly unhinged. It's a shame that nobody in the Sanders camp--the candidate included--seems willing or able to tell him to sit down and shut the fuck up. I think this may come at least partially from inexperience; as far as I can tell, he's never worked on a non-Sanders campaign.
posted by dersins at 2:25 PM on May 26, 2016 [11 favorites]

Also, Christ, I just looked at the date at the top of the thread. Can you believe it's only been ten days?
posted by corb at 2:25 PM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

I mean, can you imagine the complete and utter shitstorm that would have erupted back in 2008 if Clinton had tried to pull something similar with Obama as the presumptive nominee? HahahahaHAAAA omg the world would have exploded.
posted by Salieri at 2:25 PM on May 26, 2016 [22 favorites]

Right now, by staying completely out of it, Clinton does indeed look like the only adult in the room. And it's a lovely look.
posted by Salieri at 2:27 PM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

Hillary wasn't that far from Obama, though. Now, if Ron Paul had offered to debate Obama...
posted by Apocryphon at 2:27 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

If Sanders runs third-party, I'll actively campaign for Hillary from now until the election. Fuck that noise.

Dear Bernie: please don't make me have to uphold this promise.
posted by rorgy at 2:29 PM on May 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

It's a shame that nobody in the Sanders camp--the candidate included--seems willing or able to tell him to sit down and shut the fuck up.

At this point, it's all on Bernie. He is running his campaign this way. It's the worst combination of Trotskyist We-Are-The-Revolution insanity with 60s SDS style radical disorganization.

As said upthread, someone needs to call him and remind him this isn't about him, it's about the country.
posted by dw at 2:29 PM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

I'm in favor of the debate idea (though not the donation/charity aspect - gross), because Trump scares the shit out of me. I get comfort from the electoral college math, and know that it will be an uphill battle for Trump no matter what. But I know a lot of Trump supporters IRL including women, including PoC, including people living in swing states. Democrats don't have a great track record during my life of beating Republicans with popular appeal. Gore won and still lost. Nothing in the media I consume indicates that any anti-Trump tactic that has been tried so far might actually work. This is Trump on Elizabeth Warren earlier. I am scared. I don't know what will work against him. I'm hoping Clinton's campaign is awesome, and I'm sure I will feel somewhat better as that ramps up toward the fall. But Trump is a threat now. People -- everyone from every corner of politics -- needs to be opposing him now. I like that someone is willing to stand up and take him on. I want more people to do that - and not just on Twitter or Sunday morning talks shows.
posted by melissasaurus at 2:31 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

If they are honestly going to debate policy, then they should do it. And frankly, anything that Bernie can do to make it clear that Trump can't debate is good. Let's not give him the summer to prepare.

Yeah, in my headcanon this is an awesome Straight-Talking Socialist Takes Down The Bullshitting Fascist ass-kicking royale.

But realistically it would be a shitshow at best. No good will come of it. No good will come of it. No. Good. Will. Come. Of. It.
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:32 PM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

In the past couple of hours, this conversation has sort of snowballed into a place of panic and animosity. I mean, moreso than usual.

Can we at least table the "Sanders is going to go third party and doom us all" hysteria to (if and when) this hypothetical debate is actually confirmed to happen? Because odds are, Trump will run away despite this media buzz. Because while Trump breaks all sorts of precedence, he does it against easy pickings (establishment Republicans). He's not going to risk his ego by debating Sanders. He's not smart enough to lure him into a debate where he softly agrees with him to get at Sanders' base. He's a blustery bully who knows how to read moods and lead mobs (especially the press, into accidentally giving him coverage), but he doesn't actually do a lot of head-to-head confrontation against someone who's willing to stand up to him.

I mean, there was Jeb, but Trump can hardly accuse Sanders' brother of failing to protect America from 9/11, so.

Maybe we can calm down a bit until something actually happens? Because if anything these realtime media updates are tearing MeFi apart and nothing of substance has even happened yet.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:34 PM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

At this point, though, who IS left that can call Bernie and talk him off the cliff? I don't see him listening to Elizabeth Warren.
posted by dw at 2:34 PM on May 26, 2016

Weaver's gotta go. Not after the primaries are over, not even after California.

Now.

Sure, do it on Friday during the news dump or over the long weekend, but it has to be very very soon. He's toxic for the candidate, the campaign, and American progressivism inside and outside of the Democrat tent. Don't defend him, just state flat-out that he's not representing Sanders' values or ideals.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:36 PM on May 26, 2016 [23 favorites]

If Sanders runs third-party, I'll actively campaign for Hillary from now until the election. Fuck that noise.

I have never voted for a Democrat for President before, but if the general campaign is as gross as I think it will be, I'm going to vote for Hillary. My presidential vote is purely symbolic anyway (Illinois) and I'm more and more inclined to make a pro-woman protest vote over a left-wing protest vote. You have to walk before you can run.
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:36 PM on May 26, 2016 [11 favorites]

If Sanders runs third-party

... nobody gets quite enough EV, and the Republican-dominated gerrymandered House decides who the President is. They're going to look at their re-elections coming up in 2/4/6 years and realize it'll have to be Trump or they lose their jobs. Another Republican is no better for women, people of colour, trans people, LGB people, etc.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:38 PM on May 26, 2016

Sanders is not going to run third party.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:38 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Sanders is not going to run third party.

Last month I'd agree with you, now I half expect him to run for President of the Moon.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:40 PM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

Gingrich as VP, then.
posted by cortex at 2:40 PM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

You know one thing I just thought of - I wonder if part of what is going on with Sanders is the fact that Trump /is/ Assclown McHitlerface. I find myself succumbing to the temptation to fight him directly at any possible moment too. Like, he was supposed to address our state convention and I nearly got lured into the idea of "What if instead of fighting him with this weird Rules Committee thing, I went up and told him to his face how he is a ruiner?" Which, like, obviously that is a way worse tactic! But there's something about the possibility of getting a fascist in the room with you that makes you want to fight it.

What if Sanders is just feeling the need to flail against the monster in the room, and egotistically thinks he can? That he can deliver the Captain America smackdown of Leftist Justice or whatever?
posted by corb at 2:41 PM on May 26, 2016 [13 favorites]

Also, Christ, I just looked at the date at the top of the thread. Can you believe it's only been ten days?

Ten very long days.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:42 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oprah interviews Beyoncé and Jay-Z about their marriage
God resurrects Prince live on TV
Obama holds hourlong press conference to discuss evidence of alien life

LOL - close. Wouldn't this be the perfect time for Hillary to send out a multi-city, live streamed, celebrity studded, Free, night-long concert to thank her constituents? It's all about grabbing the spotlight - in fact, it should be called "Grab the Spotlight" straight out!

It would be a welcome relief from the two losers' idiocy.
posted by Surfurrus at 2:43 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Sanders' campaign manager and some of his fanbase has acted stupidly in increasing amounts the past few weeks, but can we at least wait for the freaking conventions to panic?

It kind of really sucks that all of this drama is happening the week that his campaign has finally started promoting downticket votes.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:44 PM on May 26, 2016

Sanders' campaign manager and some of his fanbase has acted stupidly in increasing amounts the past few weeks, but can we at least wait for the freaking conventions to panic?

Sanders has control over his campaign manager (I hope). What possible reason is there to keep him on?
posted by zombieflanders at 2:47 PM on May 26, 2016

I've probably read almost every comment in every single one of these threads. People are repeating the exact same arguments and making the same comments and expressing fear of the same hypotheticals over and over and over 100 comments below the last time which was 100 comments below the previous. Which is what they did in the last thread about the same topics. And the one before that. Even though this thread is at over 2000+ comments already, maybe this can be the last of these things until something actually happens in the race? Ruminating over the same fears and getting into the same old disputes isn't healthy for anyone.
posted by downtohisturtles at 2:49 PM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

Sanders has control over his campaign manager (I hope).

I actually kind of hope he doesn't, actually. If he does have control over him it means the insanity is coming from Sanders, or at least that he tacitly endorses it.
posted by dersins at 2:55 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

> Reagan was telling the racist murderers of Neshoba county he believed that it had been wrong of Johnson to send in the FBI to do a real investigation, and that he fully intended to allow state and local authorities to murder anyone who got a bit uppity and cover it up without any fear that the Federal government would expose the truth.

The Republicans who want to think of themselves as not personally racist have, and I'm sure they have plenty of justifications, always been willing to ally themselves with the worst racists in America. They have always been willing to join up with literal racist murderers.

The only difference is that Trump doesn't express this by dogwhistles and that makes the nature of the bargain more difficult to deny, especially for those who were into self denial about the nature of the Republican party.

Relevant piece: American crossroads: Reagan, Trump and the devil down south. How the Republican party’s dog-whistle appeal to racism, refined by Richard Nixon and perfected by Ronald Reagan, led inexorably to Donald Trump

Previously.
posted by homunculus at 2:55 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Couple comments removed, we're getting farther and farther into "well I haven't stated my opinion in a few hours so here it is again" territory and I really need y'all to try harder to not just literally go around in circles endlessly.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:56 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

But if we don't run on the hamster wheel of politics, what are we supposed to do, leave the glowing screens behind and live our lives?
posted by stolyarova at 2:59 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

How about the Independents? The Independents that will decide this election if the Evangelicals stay home rather than vote for Trump or Clinton? I think they're the ones who will decide this, and the DNC is cutting their own throat by neglecting them. Yeah, they're not Democrats, but you're going to need them if you want to actually win.

Obama lost independents by 5 points and beat Romney by 5 million votes.
posted by chris24 at 3:02 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

I made a post about an idle game, maybe kill the next few months on that?
posted by cortex at 3:03 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

I really need y'all to try harder to not just literally go around in circles endlessly

You mean we're just supposed to sit here?

Thanks for the deletions. :)
posted by zarq at 3:04 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

You mean we're just supposed to sit here?

The higher, the fewer!
posted by Salieri at 3:05 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Rubio Says He'd Speak On Trump's Behalf At Convention If Asked

Rubio, who previously called Trump a "con artist," is willing to speak for Trump. Is there one of these guys with a sense of shame?
posted by zachlipton at 3:07 PM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

Trump has successfully negged the entire Republican party (which is perfectly in line with his misogynistic PUA character).
posted by stolyarova at 3:09 PM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

These are people who love power more than they love themselves let alone anyone else.
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:11 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

What if Sanders is just feeling the need to flail against the monster in the room, and egotistically thinks he can? That he can deliver the Captain America smackdown of Leftist Justice or whatever?

Possible, but it's more likely that this is a Hail Mary pass. The Sanders campaign knows perfectly well that they're losing. Sticking to the status quo and propriety is the path to getting nowhere near where they need to be after June 7, so it's time to take some risks. Getting their candidate in front of the sort of audience that Trump can pull has obvious upsides.

This would be a perfectly respectable tactic, even clever, in a vacuum. Here in the real world it's mind-bogglingly irresponsible.
posted by figurant at 3:14 PM on May 26, 2016 [13 favorites]

If Trump and Sanders debate, the drinking game rules will be:

1. Drink whenever someone says "Yuge"
2. Please don't die of alcohol poisoning
posted by peeedro at 3:18 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Rubio Says He’d Speak On Trump's Behalf At Convention If Asked

Now this I didn’t expect.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:19 PM on May 26, 2016

3. Take a double shot every time you wonder if this is really happening
posted by MysticMCJ at 3:20 PM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

These are people who love power more than they love themselves let alone anyone else.

There was a good story on This American Life a few months ago about a young gay Trump supporter in SC, where they talked about this:

[Kid's (adoptive) Dad]: Because Trump shows power and Alex is about power. Because he was so impotent as a child, he had no control over his life.

There's something powerful about Donald Trump. And that appeals to Alex. When he speaks about his future, I think he pictures himself living like Donald Trump, with a penthouse on the 77th floor of something. And he's told Jan and I that we're going to live with him on his ranch. He's going to have horses and thousands of acres.

Zoe Chace:
When I talked to Alex most recently, after talking to his parents, this was the thing that made the most sense, the power vote.

Alex Chalgren:
And you can ask my mom this, ask my dad this. I have this sort of like gravitating pull towards people who are successful because I too want to be successful. Yeah. I want to be-- not necessarily, I don't focus on wealth. I focus on power. Because as Kevin Spacey said, in House of Cards, a fool goes after money. But someone that really seeks to control goes after power.

Zoe Chace:
The power vote, those who want more power than they feel they have right now. That is a lot of people for a lot of reasons. That is the category Alex falls into now. The power vote-- that's Alex Chalgren.

posted by melissasaurus at 3:21 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

4. Definitely die of alcohol poisoning
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:21 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

> What if Sanders is just feeling the need to flail against the monster in the room, and egotistically thinks he can?

That makes sense, corb. I'd been having trouble understanding his decision before.
posted by nangar at 3:27 PM on May 26, 2016

For people who are pro-this: what, in your opinion, is the purpose of it?

I haven't decided definitively, but here are a couple of reasons I'm tentatively pro:

1. I'm in favor of Sanders getting more time in the spotlight in general. For someone with his platform (i.e., someone literally calling for "democratic socialism") to be given nationally recognition and not written off as a joke candidate, like previous prominent lefty types, is long overdue. Until the convention, I don't see any reason why we should foreclose on the opportunity to have that viewpoint reach more people. If anything this debate helps the Sanders campaign stay in the public eye without having to attack Clinton.

2. I said this upthread already but if Sanders can weaken Trump before the general, particularly among the voters that Sanders has had more success reaching than Clinton (where Trump may be more competitive), then that helps Clinton the near-certain eventual nominee.

3. I think that the supposition that Bernie is somehow going to come out of this buddy-buddy with Trump is totally contradicted by everything Bernie has said in previous debates, interviews, life, etc; however critical he's been of HRC, he has been hundreds of times more scathing whenever Trump comes up. And again, as I've said before, the idea that anything good for Bernie necessarily hurts Hillary is jumping to a conclusion that I think is unwarranted. It could be bad, good, or neutral; it depends on what specifically is said, like literally any other public appearance.
posted by en forme de poire at 3:37 PM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

I don't think it matters if Bernie acts buddy-buddy with Trump. I could totally see this kind of exchange happening:

BERNIE: You're a monster. I oppose everything you stand for. Go to Hell

TRUMP: Ha ha! I love this guy! He's scrappy! I like that. Totally screwed over by Crooked Hillary, though. What a disaster. The Democratic party is such a tremendous disaster, the way they stole the election from Bernie...
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:44 PM on May 26, 2016 [47 favorites]

Obama holds hourlong press conference to discuss evidence of alien life

"I've decided to finally release my long-form birth certificate!"

*holds up badly forged document proclaiming him to be from Rigel VII*
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 3:45 PM on May 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

I made a post about an idle game, maybe kill the next few months on that?

You MAGNIFICENT BASTARD.
posted by corb at 3:45 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

“Five, 10 years from now — different party. You’re going to have a worker’s party," Trump said in the May 17 interview. "A party of people that haven’t had a real wage increase in 18 years, that are angry."

Are we seeing a 1960s style party inversion?
posted by Talez at 3:55 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm officially starting to regret voting for Sanders. I wanted him to do well even though I didn't think he would win, now I wish he'd done worse and was gone already.
posted by bongo_x at 3:56 PM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

Trump's "worker's party" exists: it's called the Traditionalist Workers Party, and it's a white supremacist group. (link goes to SPLC, not the hate group's site)
posted by duffell at 4:00 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm officially starting to regret voting for Sanders. I wanted him to do well even though I didn't think he would win, now I wish he'd done worse and was gone already.

I'm starting to feel that way too. It just reinforces the stereotype that leftist liberals will have a tantrum and burn it all down if they can't get their way. I supported Bernie because I'm social democrat and he's most like a social democrat. But his inability to be a graceful loser is absolutely infuriating. If I can't get a social democrat I don't want a fucking (crypto-)fascist for a president in exchange. It's just pragmatism.
posted by Talez at 4:03 PM on May 26, 2016 [11 favorites]

I wanted him to do well even though I didn't think he would win, now I wish he'd done worse and was gone already.

It's kind of a catch-22... well, that's not quite what I mean. But the drawn-out structure and general opacity/complexity of the primary process is such that any relatively close race (and this is not even particularly close, but it's close enough) will pretty much inevitably end in frustration and dumb lashing out by the side that is slowly losing.

This is why I always hated playing Monopoly. You're obviously losing by about mid-game but it takes so. long. to finally end your miserable hovel of a real estate empire and you just keep hoping that the others all land repeatedly on your one sad light blue monopoly.

Primaries: not a process that particularly leads to, like, a beautiful synthesis of ideals.
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:04 PM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

One day. All states. Instant run-off voting. It's the way it should be from the start.
posted by Talez at 4:07 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

once i came across a cat that had just been struck by a car and thrown to the side of the road. i went to see if i could help it, and the poor thing was basically I'M GOING TO KILL YOU because it was it was terrified and probably in horrific pain

i feel like this debate thing comes from a similar place, except it's somebody's ego in great agony.

i still feel horrible for the cat, and i saw that decades ago. so i should be more sympathetic and not want to fling poo about this whole debate thing. but i don't feel sympathetic, i feel more like DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE GO AWAY DIE
posted by angrycat at 4:14 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

i still feel horrible for the cat, and i saw that decades ago. so i should be more sympathetic and not want to fling poo about this whole debate thing. but i don't feel sympathetic, i feel more like DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE GO AWAY DIE
posted by angrycat

Epony...you know.
posted by duffell at 4:16 PM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

once i came across a cat that had just been struck by a car and thrown to the side of the road. i went to see if i could help it, and the poor thing was basically I'M GOING TO KILL YOU because it was it was terrified and probably in horrific pain

posted by angrycat at 1:14 PM on May 26 [+] [!]

Have you ever wondered whether you were the cat and this is purgatory?
posted by melissasaurus at 4:16 PM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

Are we seeing a 1960s style party inversion?

Bettridge’s law of comments.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:17 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Have you ever wondered whether you were the cat and this is purgatory?

man this is like the metafilter version of last sunday's game of thrones reveal
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:18 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

>>2008 was (also) the year that a woman runs for president.
>Carol Moseley-Braun ran in 2004.

Well if you want to play that game, Shirley Chisholm ran in 1972. Comedienne Gracie Allen ran as the candidate of the "Suprise Party" in 1940. And suffragist Victoria Woodhull ran in 1872 as leader of the Equal Rights Party, when she couldn't even vote.

But we're talking about candidates who had the slightest chance of winning. And Hillary was the first.
posted by msalt at 4:19 PM on May 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

For a different angle on the proposed Sanders-Trump debate, I think people are underestimating how macho Bernie is because of stereotypes about lefties that owe a lot to the character "Meathead" on All in the Family. Bernie is a street-brawling hard-ass socialist of the kind American has forgotten about, but which were well known (and feared) in the days of violent labor battles and the Wobblies. I'll admit I'd be fascinated to watch him swing fleshy swords with Trump, but Donald is a great street fighter because goes by the credo of "no rules in a knife fight."

Bernie's sense of outrage would be his great weakness and The Donald would go immediately for it if things got ugly. But I think he'd rather aggressively agree with Sanders, crtiicizing NAFTA and TPP and Hillary's handling of Libya and the Iraq War and "how unfair the Democrats were to Bernie" which he has already said in speeches.

His angle would be "Democrats are elitists who don't REALLY support the working man, look they support these trade agreements, I'm the one who's really pushing Bernie's agenda." And since both Trump and Sanders claim without details that they will "renegotiate" current trade agreements and magically return jobs to the U.S. -- an absurd promise -- what's Bernie going to say?
posted by msalt at 4:28 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

MetaFilter: not a process that particularly leads to, like, a beautiful synthesis of ideals.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:29 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Because Trump shows power and Alex is about power.
And Trump wants all the power and wants nobody else, least of all you, to have any.

“Five, 10 years from now — different party. You’re going to have a worker’s party," Trump said in the May 17 interview. "A party of people that haven’t had a real wage increase in 18 years, that are angry."
And the ones who aren't total gullible idiots will know Trump is responsible. The poster boy for the .01% making himself money for doing nothing that benefits anyone else.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:30 PM on May 26, 2016

I'd love to see a Bernie/Trump throwdown after the election. As things stand now, no thanks, we've seen enough crazy gamechanging shit already this season and most of it wasn't good.
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:32 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

And the ones who aren't total gullible idiots will know Trump is responsible.

Well.
posted by phearlez at 4:32 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

I suspect Bernie is into the debate idea because
(a) it lets him get his ideas out to an even bigger audience
(b) it gives him an opportunity to show he can do well against Trump (thus making him the better Democratic candidate)
...and of course (b) is assuming it goes well for Bernie, and also tied up with the idea that he can still be the nominee. I'd like to think he could do well against Trump in a debate, but at this point I'd like to see him backing off on the "still a viable candidate" angle, for sure.
I'm definitely down with (a), so I'm not against the debate. I suspect Trump is, though, or he wouldn't have attached a $10 million price tag to it.
posted by uosuaq at 4:34 PM on May 26, 2016

In other news, Sanders is officially endorsing and fundraising for Russ Feingold (D-Wis) today. Excited to see what other races get included in the coming weeks:

Today I am proud to endorse my friend @RussFeingold for U.S. Senate. Join me in supporting progressive Democrats: https://t.co/ttYkv040Pj— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) May 26, 2016

posted by kyp at 4:36 PM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

Have you ever wondered whether you were the cat and this is purgatory?

man this is like the metafilter version of last sunday's game of thrones reveal

Wait is Game of Thrones actually Lost?
posted by Going To Maine at 4:41 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

eHow | 6 easy steps to imagining whether Trump could actually get elected!

Step 1: Picture yourself in a place that's cold and utterly dark. Pitch black. You're as good as blind here.

Step 2: Listen closely. Those are rats. You can't see them in the dark, but they're everywhere.

Step 3: Begin whimpering.

Step 4: WHAT WAS THAT THAT FUCKING TOUCHED ME

Step 5: Open your mouth and scream.

Step 6: Remember that you're alone, a thousand miles from nowhere, and there is no one to hear your scream, no one to offer succor.
posted by Lyme Drop at 5:01 PM on May 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

Bernie is a street-brawling hard-ass socialist of the kind American has forgotten about, but which were well known (and feared) in the days of violent labor battles and the Wobblies.

This is one of the things I love about him. I only know a few left in the labor movement who are like him and they're all older trades union folks, who still don't mind a good brawl.

as a side note, I had a teacher who would ruminate on the differences in adjectives between the classes, and one of them was how people described a fight. Was the brawl down at the bar last night "a great fight!" or was it "a terrible fight!" ?
posted by small_ruminant at 5:27 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Coming from outside the USA, as long as the world gets another chance to hear Bernie Sanders speak and represent what the majority of American youth stand for, I'll be happy that we got a chance to communicate our ideals. Then we'll get off your lawn.
posted by iamck at 5:28 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

eHow | 6 easy steps to imagining whether Trump could actually get elected!

As illustrated by Elaine Benes.
posted by melissasaurus at 5:28 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I want to go back to that part where (according to Paul Manafort) Trump wants a V.P. with experience to do the things that Trump doesn't want to do. Has any Presidential candidate ever announced ahead of time that there would be Presidential duties they don't want to be bothered with? Am I imagining this whole thing? Hallucinating? Clearly this is a cry for help from a 71 year old man who is in over his head and just wants to play golf.

So now I'm wondering. He wouldn't have a boss, right? What is the bare minimum he would be required to do Constitutionally? "From time to time" give a state of the Union, which could be once every four years, I suppose. Nominate Justices for the Supreme Court. Sign legislation. Anything else?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:03 PM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

Rachel Maddow is on the 'debate is a ridiculously terrible' side of the Trump - Sanders kerfluffle tonight.
posted by zutalors! at 6:14 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

The President has very few enumerated duties, they're listed in article II. He shall give congress information on the state of the union, but only need do so "from time to time" so who knows, he could probably just have his staff/VP write out something and sign it once or twice in a term. No formal speech is required. He also shall receive ambassadors, but it's not clear that he has to actually invite any.

The most controversial duty is "he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed" but in practice he can just have the DoJ do all of this and it's not clear to what extent the executive can decide a particular law should not be enforced anyway.

Finally, he shall shall commission all the officers of the United States. Also something he could effectively delegate to his VP and sign off on.

Basically, if he wants to, he can let the staff/VP handle everything and concentrate on whatever the hell it is he wants out of being president.
posted by skewed at 6:20 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

isn't... isn't there... oh. yes.

"The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States...."

NOPE
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:23 PM on May 26, 2016

Clearly this is a cry for help from a 71 year old man who is in over his head and just wants to play golf.

“I’m Tiny (Hands) Donald! Wubalubadubdub!”
posted by Going To Maine at 6:40 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

I have a lot of reasons to be more pro-Sanders than most people, but I'd really rather he not debate Trump. Yes, he said a long time ago that he wanted an all-candidate debate, but this is the kind of stuff that keeps backfiring horribly. I think he sees this as a way to get back to the stadium-filling atmosphere of the early campaign, but it's just ugly now. It been sad enough to see some of the excitement around his campaign evaporate, and I don't think this is going to bring it back.

I don't wish he'd lost earlier, and I'm still going to vote for him in the CA primary, but it is sad that he's limping along like this. Better to burn out than to fade away, right?

No, I'm not going to make the pun, ugh.
posted by teponaztli at 6:42 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

My husband is saying Sanders backed out - has anyone heard anything?
posted by corb at 6:42 PM on May 26, 2016

Don't see anything on Twitter about it.
posted by maudlin at 6:45 PM on May 26, 2016

It's shocking to me that anyone who isn't #neverhillary could defend this hypothetical debate. If Sanders goes along with it the DNC should sanction him with every single means at their disposal. Hell, they should withdraw any concessions to him they've already made if they can. He'll have proved he is nothing but a narcissist who cares more about his own ego than the good of the country, and concessions to a guy like that buy you nothing.

I thought I liked Sanders. I hope this is just some exercise in trolling Trump. Because if Sanders goes through with it it will have permanently tarnished him and his legacy.
posted by Justinian at 6:51 PM on May 26, 2016 [13 favorites]

I'll admit I'd be fascinated to watch him swing fleshy swords with Trump,

Shudder.
posted by bongo_x at 7:02 PM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

My husband is saying Sanders backed out - has anyone heard anything?

He is on Jimmy Kimmel tonight (I didn't watch last night, because I was also protesting Trump being on the show). At this point, I half expect him and Kimmel to admit it was all just a joke.
posted by yhbc at 7:02 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm guessing that a big part of the motivation for this debate is that there's been a running trope about how Sanders would melt down in front of Trump (as part of the larger "he's obviously unelectable" argument against him). I think some people are excited because they want Sanders to prove how much better he is than Trump, some want to see Trump taken down, and some want to prove that he's stronger against Trump than he's been given credit for.

I can't guess how a debate would even play out. I can imagine it playing out well for Sanders, and I can imagine it being a nightmare. If it's a nightmare, it validates all of his detractors and probably sticks with him forever. But like I said, I think it's a big mistake either way.
posted by teponaztli at 7:03 PM on May 26, 2016

These last ten days have already tarnished him and his legacy plenty. For my part, I no longer trust his judgment or leadership, and have developed serious concerns about his character.
posted by EatTheWeek at 7:03 PM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

I'll admit I’d be fascinated to watch him swing fleshy swords with Trump,

Shudder.

The worst slash.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:10 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

At this point, I half expect him and Kimmel to admit it was all just a joke.

At this point I half expect him to burst in front of flames in front of a live studio audience, refuse to acknowledge or put out the fire, and keep talking about the cruelty of welfare cuts while audience members steadily shuffle towards the emergency exit.
posted by teponaztli at 7:10 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

The argument that Sanders could take on Trump and control the conversation, and even hurt Trump and help the Dems is not completely impossible.

But it's very much Sanders saying "I'm sure I can shoot this apple off of Hillary's head". It's a stupid risk to take with very little upside. Everyone watching knows it's very likely Clinton will get hurt, Sanders will look like an ass, and Trump will be on the side shaking his head and laughing.
posted by bongo_x at 7:12 PM on May 26, 2016 [23 favorites]

Bernie struggles to answer foreign policy questions about Central and South America. Quote: "You are asking me questions about Latin America that I am very interested in but right now I’m running for president of the United States."

I understand foreign policy isn't his jam, but after a year of campaigning you think he'd have studied up a bit more to be able ot handle himself during these interviews.
posted by Anonymous at 7:14 PM on May 26, 2016

The worst part of this is that the Jimmy Kimmel show is now somehow relevant to my mental health.
posted by goHermGO at 7:24 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

May 2008, NYT/CBS poll: 60% of Clinton backers say theyd vote Obama

May 2016, NYT/CBS poll: 72% of Sanders backers say theyd vote Clinton— Taniel (@Taniel) May 19, 2016

posted by kyp at 7:30 PM on May 26, 2016 [26 favorites]

From 538: The System Isn’t ‘Rigged’ Against Sanders; Clinton’s winning because more Democrats want her to be the nominee.
posted by Justinian at 7:37 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Weird because Bernie was all about the Sandinistas and Nicauragua in the 1980s. Now he's forgotten everything he knows or is he just afraid where the questions might lead.
posted by humanfont at 7:45 PM on May 26, 2016

For kicks I went back and looked at some old 2008 election threads. In May 2008, we were discussing "The Democratic Primary Season in 7 minutes" and it only had 63 comments. I lurked on MetaFilter for yeeeaaars before I signed up and never really recall election threads , but how come the volume of comments just went off the charts with this election? Is it the Trump effect??

(If this is too MeTa, mods, do what thou will)
posted by mostly vowels at 7:54 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Can I vote for the two boys who just won the Spelling Bee championship?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:59 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I lurked on MetaFilter for yeeeaaars before I signed up and never really recall election threads , but how come the volume of comments just went off the charts with this election? Is it the Trump effect??

There were huge threads in 2008 too; the one where McCain announced his running mate ended up with 5555 comments.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:15 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

That Sarah Palin thread was crazypants.

I really thought we'd hit Peak Electoral Insanity with that one. I was so naïve eight years ago.
posted by Superplin at 8:23 PM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

There were huge threads in 2008 too; the one where McCain announced his running mate ended up with 5555 comments.

Ah! Yes, found it. To be fair, I only searched for Clinton just to see what comparable 2008 primary threads were like. Doesn't seem like they were routinely this big at the primary stage in 2008.
posted by mostly vowels at 8:23 PM on May 26, 2016

Wonder if anyone ever found that Whitey Tape
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:32 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Well, I turned Kimmel off when he said Sanders and Clinton are still in a dead heat. If he later says the whole thing was a joke, guess I'll have to miss it.
posted by yhbc at 8:45 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump promises to make America rich and actually says this:

“I will give you everything. I will give you what you’ve been looking for for 50 years.
“I’m the only one.”

This is why nobody should debate Trump ever. He can just OUTRIGHT LIE about what he's going to do and people believe it, the media gives him a pass on it while his spokesman comes out a week later and says "Well, he meant he'd give you a VIRTUAL everything."

Think Bernie Sanders can beat Trump? How can the guy who pledges to raise taxes beat the guy who literally promises to give everybody money?

I'm sorry but this election is going to be a referendum on stupidity, and stupidity has a very, very good chance of winning.
posted by mmoncur at 9:04 PM on May 26, 2016 [15 favorites]

Has Clinton actually not said she'll raise taxes? I didn't realize that.
posted by XMLicious at 9:08 PM on May 26, 2016

A Snopes page on the Bernie vs. Trump debate has appeared in the last few hours, veracity currently rated "Undetermined."
posted by XMLicious at 9:17 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

The worst slash.

Ooh, a challenge!

Donald Trump and Rob Ford meet at a hockey game, and discover a shared love of used jockstraps. The VIP box can barely contain their passion as two men come together in the most primal of ways.

Two tops vie for dominance in the bedroom after Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Hillary Rodham Clinton make eyes at each other during the Stat of the Union, 2018.

BREAKING (Reuters) Sarah Palin and Stephen Colbert lose control, tear off each others' clothes in live TV shocker.

Behind the desk: The official erotic novel of the steamy, hidden romance between Ann Coulter and That Weird College Radical Hippy Dude Everyone Went To School With.

Primary Cummers: Unbeknownst to the voting public, all candidates gather for a ritualistic orgy on January 17th of every election year.

SCROTUS

...I'll show myself out.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:19 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney and the weekend at Bohemian Grove they'll never tell anyone about...and never forget

I'm not sorry
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:27 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Trump told the crowd. “I will give you everything. I will give you what you’ve been looking for for 50 years.
“I’m the only one.”

Wait, is he suggesting he should be our president or our husband?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 9:37 PM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

If Trump starts playing this at rallies, we'll invade without even taking off our shoes first.
posted by maudlin at 9:40 PM on May 26, 2016

*catches up on 972 comments after being busy with family stuff*

*scours fine print of berniesanders.com "thank you for your donation" email for refund instructions*

*looks for something in the beer fridge with "imperial" in the name*
posted by tonycpsu at 9:43 PM on May 26, 2016 [15 favorites]

Trump promises to make America rich and actually says this:

“I will give you everything. I will give you what you’ve been looking for for 50 years.
“I’m the only one.”

He actually sort of hints on how to do that: By sharing the proceeds from shale energy production:

"It’s a choice between sharing in this great energy wealth or sharing in the poverty promised by Hillary Clinton."

Wait, sharing wealth? Socializing the profits instead of just the risks?
That is actually socialism! Nationalizing the profits from energy production, that's what they do in countries like Venezuela or Iran!
In America, the profits should trickle up to the top and only the risks should be shared with society.
Someone should tell him to go back to Soviet Mexico.

But anyway, I think this is just the first in a long line of promises by Trump that is going to be way to the left of Clinton.
posted by sour cream at 9:47 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Sure, he's going to make statements that are to the left, to the right, in the middle, up, down, etc. He has no consistency and no shame. Regardless of who he runs against, he will run literally in every direction from them (as he did in the primary, where sometimes he ran to the left of the GOP like on PP, and to the right of them on immigration which I had not really thought possible, but was!).
posted by thefoxgod at 10:02 PM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

It's not just left of Clinton, it's way out in left field. It's in another dimension. He has lots of promises that come from both extreme ends of the political spectrum, some that come from the KKK, and some that come from outer space, but none of them are sincere or have any concrete plans behind them. And many of them will change into their opposites.

And he can do it as long as the media gives him a pass and a percentage of America lines up behind him because one or more of those random things sound good.

Wait, is he suggesting he should be our president or our husband?

He had us at "Hello"!

Worst romantic comedy ever.
posted by mmoncur at 10:03 PM on May 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

That way, anyone who wants to vote for him based on personality or "shaking up the system" or whatever has some policy thing they can point to. At least, thats my theory for why its working: people don't care about policy really, but it helps to justify their gut like or dislike for Trump. Regardless of your political positions, you can probably find something he said you liked (as long as you disregard everything else!). Like... I guess I agree with Trump on marijuana! And... well, nothing else really. Yet. But I'm sure he'll say some wacky thing in the future that maybe I can agree on. If I just overlook the racism and craziness and extreme right views on global warming and guns and...
posted by thefoxgod at 10:06 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

I was pretty much resigned to Clinton winning the nomination and I'll do what needs to be done later on, but I still was planning on voting for Bernie in the California primary. I've had my vote by mail ballot here for a week that I just hadn't gotten around to sending in. But with the debate thing I don't even want to anymore. I just want to throw it away and climb into bed and sleep until February. By the time I wake up everything will be OK or D.C. might be on fire. But at least I'll have some certainty finally.
posted by downtohisturtles at 10:07 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

By sharing the proceeds from shale energy production:
"It’s a choice between sharing in this great energy wealth or sharing in the poverty promised by Hillary Clinton."

So his big money making plan is to speed up Global Warming until Trump Tower becomes a beachfront property... mmmkay...
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:09 PM on May 26, 2016

I may have missed this, but is there a survey anywhere that states platform/policy positions of candidates anonymously, and gauges the level of agreement of likely voters? I realize this is essentially impossible with Trump, who has declared a head-spinning array of positions on various issues, but at the very least I'd be curious to see whether there's any indication of the degree to which people are voting based on personality vs actual positions.

My gut instinct says that the latter play a shockingly small role in people's voting decisions, but I'd like to see some actual data if any exist.
posted by Superplin at 10:53 PM on May 26, 2016

For some perspective this happened. I can't see something similar happening for Hillary. This won't be easy.
posted by johnpowell at 11:00 PM on May 26, 2016

Hillary Clinton dance party
Bernie Sanders dance party
posted by Apocryphon at 11:15 PM on May 26, 2016

I will dance in the street if HRC is elected. I've been waiting my entire life to see a woman president. Hell if Carly Fiorina had somehow managed to be a competitive candidate and was elected I'd probably dance for her.
posted by R343L at 11:19 PM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

One part of the excitement over Obama was that it marked the end of the Bush years. Not the only reason, sure, but even Obama wouldnt get the same level of excitement today.
posted by thefoxgod at 11:31 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I understand foreign policy isn't his jam, but after a year of campaigning you think he'd have studied up a bit more to be able ot handle himself during these interviews.

otoh, it is a sign of humility that he did not feign false knowledge about the region, as other politicians might have, and in doing so he affirmed the need for the United States in asserting its moral authority in welcoming Central American refugees whose lives would be threatened
posted by Apocryphon at 11:35 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

One part of the excitement over Obama was that it marked the end of the Bush years. Not the only reason, sure, but even Obama wouldn’t get the same level of excitement today.

Let us remember that Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize for essentially “not being George Bush”.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:36 PM on May 26, 2016 [14 favorites]

Obama wouldnt get the same level of excitement today.

I mean, he didn't have that level of excitement 4 years later in 2012, but he still won handily.

Dance parties are like yard signs for young people: they're a form of enthusiastic social signalling, but they don't vote.
posted by dersins at 11:42 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Is Bernie really so aggrieved at losing the nomination that he is explicitly willing to campaign on Trump's behalf? Because that's all this is. What happened to the old Bernie Sanders?

Kevin Drum: Bernie Sanders Is Switching Teams

Is this the year we find out Ralph Nader was always on George W. Bush's payroll? Because this is how this all feels to me. What hubris, what utter narcissistic folly. Bernie & We go full tilt Thelma And Louise as he drives us all off that cliff. Except we, Bros aside, didn't shake on this suicide pact.. Mr. Get Off My Socialist Lawn gets eaten alive by the Andromedan Hairweave. I I never saw this.coming. I am sick with this.
posted by y2karl at 11:50 PM on May 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

I bet Sanders has been working for Hydra the whole time!
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:38 AM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'd take Hydra over Trump, tbh

those HISS tanks were pretty badass
posted by dersins at 1:10 AM on May 27, 2016

Why Bernie Sanders is Actually Winning.
posted by Justinian at 2:17 AM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

So Trump says he's going to be making an appearance at Rolling Thunder this weekend. "I am doing it in honor of the great bikers who have been totally supportive of my campaign and now I want to be supportive of them."

That's how stupid this man is, it's not a biker event or a political rally, it's an event to bring attention to POW/MIA issues. But I guess it's too much to expect the media to remind us Trump is the guy who would say of POW's, "I like people who weren't captured." I hope Clinton has surrogates lined up that will bash him this whole weekend over that statement.
posted by peeedro at 3:34 AM on May 27, 2016 [12 favorites]

21 YouTube Songs Called "Trump Train," Ranked

And people say Gawker doesn't do vital, crucial research.
posted by rorgy at 3:57 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

In May 2008, we were discussing "The Democratic Primary Season in 7 minutes"
A comment from that thread, by markr: The bit I don't get (Australian here) is hasn't Clinton basically been kicking her own party in the balls hard since February when it was obvious she was going to lose? All she's done is spend a few months making her party's future candidate look as bad as possible and make the whole party look divided and weak. Or is this pretty normal?
It does appear that that is, indeed, pretty normal.
posted by blub at 4:17 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

"I like people who weren't captured."

Sorry, peeedro, that statement went into the Magical Trump Memory Pit and now the timeline is changed so it never happened! So neither Clinton's people nor the media will mention it at all!

Sigh.
posted by mmoncur at 4:22 AM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

Interestingly, Sarah Palin also bragged that capitalists in Alaska were doing it right, and in innovative ways, by forcing energy companies to share their profits with all Alaskans, since the oil belonged to the citizenry, after all. And that this was more capitalist than and vastly superior to Barack Obama's socialism.

Words: they mean nothing these days.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:37 AM on May 27, 2016 [35 favorites]

Words: they mean nothing these days.

parenthetically, I slacked a colleague a snippet from a client's ticket y'day, asking, "Is it me, or is this word-salad?"

Turns out it wasn't me.

"English motherfucker, do you speak it?"
posted by mikelieman at 4:51 AM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

I bet Sanders has been working for Hydra the whole time!

Wouldn't H.Y.D.R.A. be backing someone who would actually win?
posted by mikelieman at 4:58 AM on May 27, 2016

My bad, just checked. Hydra isn't an acronym...
posted by mikelieman at 4:59 AM on May 27, 2016

Does Bernie's campaign accept donations in the form of posters?
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:32 AM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Words: they mean nothing these days.

"So what is so uniquely dangerous about Trump? Perhaps the answer is that both of these qualities are, in a sense, the same thing. His contempt for objective truth is the rejection of democratic accountability, an implicit demand that his supporters place undying faith in him. Because the only measure of truth he accepts is what he claims at any given moment, the power his supporters vest in him is unlimited." --Jonathan Chait, "Trump’s Lies and Trump’s Authoritarianism Are the Same Thing."
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:40 AM on May 27, 2016 [10 favorites]

> But I guess it's too much to expect the media to remind us Trump is the guy who would say of POW's, "I like people who weren't captured."

It wouldn't matter if they did, but you would think that actual POW's would.
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:50 AM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

It wouldn't matter if they did, but you would think that actual POW's would.

Rolling Thunder endorsed Dubya and trash-talked Kerry in 2004. Add in Palin and now Trump, I don't really consider them a non-partisan organization (and certainly not when it comes to actual veterans) anymore.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:21 AM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

This election is like a nightmare where you've thought you're awake and the nightmare is over but then your comforter turns into a mass of spiders and you realize you're still dreaming
posted by angrycat at 6:43 AM on May 27, 2016 [21 favorites]

“A dark side of me wants to see what happens if Trump is in,” said Mr. Vizcarra, who works in information technology. “There is going to be some kind of change, and even if it’s like a Nazi-type change. People are so drama-filled. They want to see stuff like that happen. It’s like reality TV. You don’t want to just see everybody be happy with each other. You want to see someone fighting somebody.”

“Everyone is like: ‘Trump has these terrible social issues. He hates Muslims and he hates the L.G.B.T. community,’ ” [Becerra] said. “But our world is big enough that he’s not actually going to implement any of those changes in a realistic way. But what he will do is potentially audit the federal government, and he will try to break up some of the banks and try to at least influence government that way. However, with Hillary, it will just be a complacent, run-of-the-middle-of-the-road presidency.”

There's pushback from another Sanders supporter quoted in this article, but these sentiments worry me.
posted by defenestration at 6:55 AM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

I am a very big fan of Senator Sanders and his career, but I am becoming increasingly concerned that he is handing the election to Donald Trump on a silver platter.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:59 AM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Donald Trump was supposed to be a gift to late-night TV, but comedians aren’t laughing
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:03 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Honestly, I've always thought that Bernie was kind of dumb and kind of egotistical, but I'm beginning to think he's a genuinely bad person in a way that I hadn't suspected previously. I always thought he would back off if the stakes got too high and he could see that he was putting people and the country in danger. Now I'm not so sure, and it scares the shit out of me.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:05 AM on May 27, 2016 [11 favorites]

Philip Klein: Donald Trump has exposed Marco Rubio

It's one thing to begrudgingly argue that as dangerous as he thinks a Trump presidency would be, that he thinks a Clinton presidency would be even worse. But to actually say that he would be "honored" by the chance to speak on Trump's behalf at the GOP convention, and to downplay his previously stated problems with Trump as mere "policy differences," is to prove the Rubio skeptics right.

That is, far from being an inspirational moral leader, Rubio has shown himself to be more of an opportunistic politician with his finger to the wind. He latched on to the Tea Party energy when he needed it to launch a long-shot Senate bid against an establishment figure in 2010. He embraced the idea of comprehensive immigration reform in 2013 in the wake of a GOP "autopsy" suggesting it was necessary to win in a changing electorate, but then downplayed it as it became a hindrance to his presidential campaign. Now he's desperate to reconcile his past words about Trump — from just over two months ago — with his political need to fall in line behind his party's nominee.

For all of Rubio's rhetoric about responsible leadership, he's now willing to embrace a demagogue just because that demagogue has an 'R' next to his name. Trump, for all his faults, has managed to expose Rubio's true character — and it is not pretty.

Steve Benen: Will party trump principle for Marco Rubio?

In case anyone’s forgotten, during the primaries, Rubio referred to Trump as a “lunatic” and a “con man.” His campaign, quite literally, sold #NeverTrump swag on its website. The Florida senator told audiences that Trump might urinate on himself, mocked Trump’s hair and face, and even made vulgar jokes about Trump’s genitals.

As recently as two weeks ago, Rubio said he stood by his earlier comments that Trump cannot be trusted with the nation’s nuclear codes.

But as of yesterday, the senator is eager to do his part to make Donald Trump the leader of the free world.

We’ve all seen examples of people putting party above principle, but even by contemporary standards, Rubio’s shamelessness is simply breathtaking.

posted by zombieflanders at 7:07 AM on May 27, 2016 [12 favorites]

from defenestration's link:

Sanders supporters have also begun to protest at Mrs. Clinton’s events with signs that read, “Where are Hillary’s emails?

um, all online.
posted by zutalors! at 7:28 AM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

This is via Sanders' FB, just published: I cannot wait to have a debate with Donald Trump about the many issues facing Californians and the rest of our country.

We all agree that Trump would be a disaster for this country, and I look forward to asking him why he favors more tax breaks for the rich, why he opposes raising the minimum wage, why he thinks climate change is a hoax, and why he thinks it is okay to insult millions of Muslims and Mexicans.

If you would like to see me debate Donald Trump on the major issues before California's primary, please add your name to our petition, and share the link with your friends.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:30 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

We all agree that Trump would be a disaster for this country, and I look forward to asking him why he favors more tax breaks for the rich, why he opposes raising the minimum wage, why he thinks climate change is a hoax, and why he thinks it is okay to insult millions of Muslims and Mexicans.

Anybody else a little troubled (but unsurprised) that Bernie left women and trans people off the list?
posted by stolyarova at 7:44 AM on May 27, 2016 [12 favorites]

unsurprised. he barely talks about women.
posted by zutalors! at 7:45 AM on May 27, 2016 [10 favorites]

The question is what it will take for Sanders to be satisfied with some sort of moral victory short of the nomination. This week, he was given five slots on the Democratic platform committee, which will allow him to influence what the party stands for -- presumably an important goal. Sanders is also thought to be interested in reforms to the nominating process that he has derided as ''rigged.''

But while his aides have occasionally alluded to these sorts of goals, Sanders continues to behave like a candidate who still believes he can win. On Monday, he criticized Clinton for turning down one last debate; on Tuesday, he sought to wring an additional delegate out of Kentucky by challenging the vote count in one district. His speeches give about as much critical time to both Clinton and Trump, and his crowds boo both with equal vehemence.

Is Sanders -- the onetime liberal gadfly whose views few of his colleagues heeded ''simply enjoying the spotlight’s validating glow for as long as it lasts? Or is he as delusional as some of his dead-ender fans? It’s impossible to tell.

I asked Howard Dean, Sanders’s fellow Vermonter and onetime insurgent Democratic presidential candidate, whether he approved of the way Sanders is conducting himself these days. ''No,'' said Dean, who has endorsed Clinton. But he said he understood.

Near the end of Dean’s 2004 campaign, he told me, just before the Wisconsin primary, he had started to realize he was going to lose, and he was bitterly angry about it -- the unfairness of the process, the way he’d been treated. Late that night, the phone rang in his hotel room in Milwaukee. It was Al Gore, the former vice president, who had endorsed him.

''I ranted and raved for 10 or 15 minutes,'' Dean recalled. -- And when finally I stop for breath, he says, ‘This is about the country. It’s not about you.’ That stopped me in my tracks.''

Dean quit the race the next day. Accepting defeat, he said, was a process. ''Having been there, it’s a gradual landing you have to bring yourself into,'' he said. The question, he suggested, is whether there is someone close to Sanders who can say to him what Gore said to Dean.

This Is How a Revolution Ends
posted by y2karl at 7:50 AM on May 27, 2016 [11 favorites]

> (Sanders) is handing the election to Donald Trump on a silver platter.

If Clinton is so weak as to not be able to lock up the primary she should not have been the presumptive nominee. This isn't the general with a leftist running 3rd party, this is a primary with what is supposed to be her base. Failure here is on her for being a divisive candidate and the Dem establishment for throwing in with her knowing that.

> (Sanders) was putting people and the country in danger.

"Fall in line or the boogietrump will get you." Hillary might as well sell "Lesser Evil" t-shirts and just go all in with it.
posted by anti social order at 7:52 AM on May 27, 2016 [10 favorites]

The Surge Of Trump-Fueled Anti-Semitism Is Hitting Jewish Reporters Who Cover Him
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:55 AM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Hillary might as well sell "Lesser Evil" t-shirts and just go all in with it.

Of course, no one has attacked Sanders the way Sanders, Trump and thirty odd years of Republican smears have attacked Hillary Clinton. And he has said so many things that would get thrown in his face the minute he became the nominee. He has gotten a free ride so far and he is still in Fantasyland. It's no wonder he is doing so well in the polls now.

But Trump, the Koch brothers and the Republican SuperPACS are all sitting on opposition research that will turn him into yesterday's nothingburger.
posted by y2karl at 8:01 AM on May 27, 2016 [20 favorites]

Words: they mean nothing these days.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master — that's all."

posted by kirkaracha at 8:04 AM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

But I guess it's too much to expect the media to remind us Trump is the guy who would say of POW's, "I like people who weren't captured."

Ah, NPR ran a touching StoryCorps piece this morning about POW Admiral Stockdale as remembered by his son. So the fact that it coincides with Rolling Thunder isn't accidental. (Sometimes I forget that Memorial Day isn't just about BBQ.)
posted by puddledork at 8:13 AM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

That's okay, millions of people voting HitlerLite have also forgotten all the soldiers who died to prevent fascism too.

/bitter
posted by corb at 8:18 AM on May 27, 2016 [14 favorites]

well, i was already taken aback by hillary's lack of good judgment regarding the whole e-mail thing - and now we are confronted with bernie's lack of good judgment in going rogue and taking on the great trumpdragon on his own

looking over everyone who's been running, i can only say that we are so screwed if this is the best we can do for leadership
posted by pyramid termite at 8:22 AM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Failure here is on her for being a divisive candidate and the Dem establishment for throwing in with her knowing that.

She's not the divisive one. She enjoys great support among Democratic leaning supporters. The majority of Sanders supporters who have been polled have also said they will vote for her. She conceded in 2008, campaigned vigorously for Obama and the Party, and even went to serve in the last administration.

Maybe the Dem establishment is still to blame. But it would be for letting a divisive candidate like Sanders run.
posted by FJT at 8:23 AM on May 27, 2016 [22 favorites]

I wish I could draw. I would draw a gloomy camp with barbed wire overhead, and two gaunt people in tattered t-shirts in front of the fence. Both have their arms folded over their chest and are not looking at each other. In the last panel, it pulls back to show posters on the walls showing Trump's face. It's revealed that one is wearing a Clinton shirt, one a Sanders shirt. A line comes from both of their mouths, leading to a word bubble that says, "This is YOUR fault!"
posted by corb at 8:33 AM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

But it would be for letting a divisive candidate like Sanders run.

I mean, let's not do this.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:35 AM on May 27, 2016 [15 favorites]

The reality-based version of that would be people wearing Trump shirts saying it's the other's fault.

While Sanders' latest thing is going to cause major problems, the fault for Trump being the nominee is laid squarely at the feet of those who marked a ballot for him, and nobody else.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:36 AM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I would say "suffice it to say, volleys of 'no YOUR candidate is the dismissive one' aren't going to get this discussion anywhere interesting" except after months of this, saying that sort of thing has clearnly not sufficed, so: for reals, drop it, all around, like it's hot.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:42 AM on May 27, 2016 [11 favorites]

Hillary might as well sell "Lesser Evil" t-shirts and just go all in with it.

Then let's not do this, either.
posted by malocchio at 8:44 AM on May 27, 2016 [14 favorites]

If Clinton is so weak as to not be able to lock up the primary she should not have been the presumptive nominee.

She's effectively had it locked up since mid-March.
posted by prize bull octorok at 8:54 AM on May 27, 2016 [29 favorites]

Rolling Thunder endorsed Dubya and trash-talked Kerry in 2004. Add in Palin and now Trump, I don't really consider them a non-partisan organization (and certainly not when it comes to actual veterans) anymore.

Yeah, The WashPo has an article up about Artie Muller, the head of the group that organizes Rolling Thunder, where he "used the b-word to dismiss" Hillary Clinton and responds to Trump's POW remarks by saying, "It doesn’t bother me... I don’t think he meant it."

Le sigh.
posted by peeedro at 8:57 AM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Appropriate to the discussion from yesterday on quiet Clinton support: Why Some Clinton Supporters Are Not 'Really Ready To Go Public'
posted by zutalors! at 9:12 AM on May 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

responds to Trump's POW remarks by saying, "It doesn’t bother me... I don’t think he meant it."

This is the perfect illustration of that Jonathan Chait piece linked earlier and also why we're all so completely fucked
posted by theodolite at 9:20 AM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

Christ, I don't know how to link it from my FB app, but Mother Jones just put together an overlay of Trump audio talking about what would happen to protesters in "the good old days" with video of people being hauled away from lunch counters. Terrifying.
posted by corb at 9:28 AM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Appropriate to the discussion from yesterday on quiet Clinton support: Why Some Clinton Supporters Are Not 'Really Ready To Go Public'

Shades of John Oliver's piece on the primaries: the comments on that NPR article immediately illustrate the point of why so many Clinton supporters aren't speaking up.

Granted, internet comments in general are usually awful, but still.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:37 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

this whole 'we are powerless against Trump' thing completely plays into the idea that "independent" white male voters are the most important voters and the ones who are going to decide everything and the ones who need to be won over etc etc etc and could we please just knock it off and stop worrying so much about ignorant chuckleheads who pick and choose which of Trump's idiot plans they believe he is or isn't joking about or just want to see the world burn so they can be VIPs in the world of ashes to come and think more about the many many demographics that are saying HELL no to Trump and worry about making sure they are encouraged and supported and directly assisted in speaking up and getting out to vote and not being disenfranchised? THANK YOU SO MUCH
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:37 AM on May 27, 2016 [25 favorites]

yeah, I find it "powerless against Trump" disappointing and pretty offensive to women and minorities. Trump is going to lose terribly unless those groups just don't vote in any meaningful number, which despite voter suppression and gerrymandering is still pretty unlikely.

It's like in the primary, there was all this anxiety about Clinton not winning white men, but almost nothing about Sanders not winning minorities, no thinkpieces on why he wasn't, except by some minority writers.

Also there's a huge drive to register Hispanics going on right now, and they're not going to use newfound voting (and sometimes citizenship rights) to vote Trump.

It's really just a reminder of how much white people and especially white men are supposed to be deciding everything for the rest of us.
posted by zutalors! at 9:43 AM on May 27, 2016 [12 favorites]

Re: quiet Clinton support, that article really nails it for me. I mentioned that I was switching from one to the other after Nevada on a couple of platforms and I *definitely* heard about it from some vocal Sanders supporters. Some of them were very kind about it, but most of them were not.

I also got waaaaay more feedback from other Clinton supporters, almost entirely in private.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 9:45 AM on May 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

Here's the Mother Jones video Corb was referring to.
It is chilling.
posted by Superplin at 9:58 AM on May 27, 2016 [13 favorites]

Trump's a bully, but the worst kind of bully - the bully with actual power, who will say he is not a bully. The bully who is ignorant and denies his own privilege of being an old, white man with money. I realized that when he said "go home to mommy" to the protesters in New Mexico (who were generally peaceful, except a few who caused all the damage and got all the attention). That is not something I want my president saying to anyone, unless it's a lost child who the president has just escorted back home.

yeah, I find it "powerless against Trump" disappointing and pretty offensive to women and minorities. Trump is going to lose terribly unless those groups just don't vote in any meaningful number, which despite voter suppression and gerrymandering is still pretty unlikely.

Yes, which makes his stupid comment that maybe he should run for Governor of New Mexico especially dumb. Sure, the whities in the crowd loved that, but this is a diverse state in terms of race. And his comment about Syrian refugees is pretty far from true, unless this map from Nov. 2015 has changed drastically. Very few Syrian refugees have been settled in this state, but hey, why worry about the truth when you can fill people with fear and hate?

On the topic of loose grasp of reality, here's a guide to the many conspiracy theories Trump has supported.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:59 AM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

This bit from the Los Angeles Times had me shaking my head:

With his highly nationalized approach, however, Sanders doesn’t take full advantage of the opportunity for kinship. In the northern San Diego County city of Vista, he mispronounced the city's name. In Irvine, he suggested that many schoolchildren in that upscale area didn't know anyone attending college.

In perhaps the most gaping omission, he did not refer to the December San Bernardino terrorist attacks in his speech there. Clinton, by contrast, mentioned the loss of life and continued concern in San Bernardino during her appearance in nearby Riverside.

In Ventura, Sanders was preceded to the stage by an organizer who noted that the venue for the event was a Native American site.

Sanders made no mention of that, sticking to the words he uses in every speech about how America owes a debt to its native people that it can never fully repay.

If you're wondering why he's losing, that's a pretty good example of the reason.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:01 AM on May 27, 2016 [9 favorites]

unless it's a lost child who the president has just escorted back home.

I think you've just hit on Justin Trudeau's next feel-good moment.
posted by zachlipton at 10:09 AM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Fusion: This is the one big reason that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders should debate each other
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:17 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

In the northern San Diego County city of Vista, he mispronounced the city's name.

Wait, how do you mispronounce Vista? Wikipedia says it's the same as the word.
posted by Etrigan at 10:17 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

You know what's funny about the "everyone loathes Clinton" thing is, up until about two years ago she had a net favorable rating, and five years ago her national approval rating was like 65%. It's not as if she's a despicable person who has never been liked by America at large.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:17 AM on May 27, 2016 [18 favorites]

Wait, how do you mispronounce Vista? Wikipedia says it's the same as the word.

Veesta vs. Vihsta?
posted by stolyarova at 10:19 AM on May 27, 2016

My grandma & aunt live in Vista (which is fully north San Diego county conservative territory if you're wondering) and they pronounce it just like the Windows version. I assume they're pronouncing it correctly.
posted by downtohisturtles at 10:20 AM on May 27, 2016

I didn't mean to imply that only white male voters count. I don't even think Trump will win this election. It's just that he's already done so much damage to the idea that facts matter, that institutions are important, that it's not OK to be an utter shitlord to other people in public

It was a crappy frustrated comment and I should probably take a break
posted by theodolite at 10:23 AM on May 27, 2016

She's been slightly ahead on paper since then but has yet to lead the narrative.

I feel like I hear a lot of complaints about how Hillary Clinton supposedly has the media in her pocket, and Sanders is not taken seriously in "the narrative," but I also hear people saying that Hillary Clinton doesn't have "the narrative" on her side and therefore she's the weaker candidate.
posted by duffell at 10:27 AM on May 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

Narrative and Momentum are false gods of democracy and we should quit worrying about where they're going to throw their lightning bolts.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:30 AM on May 27, 2016 [9 favorites]

I didn't mean to imply that only white male voters count.

FWIW I don't think that discussion here was aimed at you specifically. At least it wasn't my intention. But overall yeah, I think we could try discussing some other perspectives.
posted by zutalors! at 10:31 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm not saying that either, I'm just hoping that we can give minorities and women some credit. I'm not saying sit back, I'm saying don't buy into the narrative that Trump is winning over a country that voted for Obama twice.
posted by zutalors! at 10:35 AM on May 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

All this "narrative" talk has me thinking... #EveryThreadAHamiltonThread

[Sanders]
I’m erasing myself from the narrative
Let future historians wonder how Bernie
Reacted when voters broke his heart
You have torn it all apart
I am watching it
Bern
Watching it Bern
The party has no right to my heart
The party has no place in my head
I don’t care if everything I shred
I’m Berning the party
Berning the voters that might have elected you
I hope that you Bern
posted by zachlipton at 10:37 AM on May 27, 2016 [14 favorites]

This thread has brought me Buffy AND Hamilton. My happy places are happy. (Fictional politics are less stressful.)
posted by Superplin at 10:51 AM on May 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

Agreed, Trump has remarkable room to pivot to go after different groups, but the evangelicals sound harder to reach than simply finding more wacky voters.

There are actually clever operations that could disrupt the wacky vote, like maybe a series of comedy Jerry Springer style fake cartoon debates that pit Clinton vs Trump. These would be low brow humor, and not overly pro-Clinton, but they could be designed to make her sympathetic amongst at least female Trump wacky voters, yet not really influence her standing amongst sane people.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:10 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

It is chilling.

God, you're not kidding. I had to stop it halfway through.
posted by Salieri at 11:10 AM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm not saying that either, I'm just hoping that we can give minorities and women some credit. I'm not saying sit back, I'm saying don't buy into the narrative that Trump is winning over a country that voted for Obama twice.

Only unmarried women generally vote for Democrats (roughly 2/3). Married women are more likely to be Republicans. (about 55%).
posted by Talez at 11:10 AM on May 27, 2016

My hypothesis is that with the Evangelical GOP people sitting this one out, Trump's getting -- what Howard Stern called -- "The Wacky Vote". I have *zero* doubt that even without the Independents that the DNC might not get, that Hillary Clinton is going to be our next President.

Wacky? Bless his heart... for not calling them racists, misogynists and fear-mongers.

But "with the Evangelical GOP people sitting this one out" is my biggest hope. Bonus points to humanity if we can get more HB2-type bills up for public votes, just so they can go down in flames (just like the local finances following passage of HB2).
posted by filthy light thief at 11:12 AM on May 27, 2016

I hope that you Bern

this is amazing.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:14 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've come up with a really unusual yet satisfying coping mechanism for all of this.... I fired up an emulator with one of the Wrestlemania games where you can create a custom wrestler, and created an expy of Trump (as a heel, of course) - down to the stupid hat and awful hair. I've given him a flashy intro, but absolutely zero skill - I wasted some points on smoke perpetually coming out of his head, but that's about it.

This morning, I've been going through all of the stock wrestlers who are minorities or women, starting a match against him, and then thoroughly crushing him. I'm generally not a violent person, and I'm not even a fan of wrestling, so I don't know how this idea ever entered my head - but seriously, it's incredibly satisfying, much more so than I would have guessed.
posted by MysticMCJ at 11:18 AM on May 27, 2016 [22 favorites]

Only unmarried women generally vote for Democrats (roughly 2/3). Married women are more likely to be Republicans. (about 55%)

I'm skeptical about that number without seeing age/race breakdowns. It's touted a lot but it's doesn't somehow cancel out how women feel about Trump.
posted by zutalors! at 11:22 AM on May 27, 2016

I interpret wacky as meaning completely disconnected from anything policy related, filthy light thief, like the people who say they'll vote for Sanders or Trump. It's just a show for them.

There is actually some hope to dissuade this from voting for Trump, maybe reach them through ads, but maybe reach them through other channels like comedy or whatever.

There are also racists, misogynists, and fear-mongers, but they'll vote Republican if they vote. And they cannot really be either converted or even discouraged from voting.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:24 AM on May 27, 2016

Republican women are not voting for Trump in large numbers, thank god.
posted by corb at 11:29 AM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

Republican women are not voting for Trump in large numbers, thank god.

I do wonder whether this will be the case in the general. I mean, he is the GOP nominee, and they're Republicans. Often this means that they are anti-abortion, so as long as Trump sticks to the script more or less on that issue, can't he retain them?
posted by dis_integration at 11:32 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

The abortion issue is where he's going to get hit from the evangelical right. His recently-professed hard right stance there is laughably bullshit and they are not going to believe him on it, I think.

Unlike Trump's core supporters, who are attracted to his tone and attitude above actual policy, evangelicals do have a clear set of policy goals and hopefully they get that Trump doesn't actually care about any of it.
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:45 AM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Perhaps, but what are they going to do instead? Some will undoubtedly stay home, but it's not like someone militantly anti-abortion is going to go "well I don't believe Trump really cares about the dead babies, so I'll vote for Clinton instead, who I'm certain I don't agree with at all."
posted by zachlipton at 11:52 AM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Yeah, look - I'm sure the evangelical right differ on abortion with pretty much everyone here, but the fact is, they know what they believe, and Donald Trump's parody of them is cartoonishly awful.

There may in fact be people who support punishing women for getting abortions, but the evangelical women that I have been talking to were monstrously offended by that statement. Everyone was chattering about it at convention, at how terrible and awful it would be, and how much it would turn women away from getting help, if they thought that if they did make the abortion choice they would be punished for it.

For evangelical women, stopping the abortions is a really important goal, but a lot of it is about the whole woman - like I pause to say that I know this is disputed, but this is their belief - that women need to be supported and embraced and helped, not punished.

So Donald Trump's stance on abortion is kind of like he came into a herd of sheep, with a sheep hat on, dripping with blood, and was like "No man, I'm one of you."
posted by corb at 11:52 AM on May 27, 2016 [17 favorites]

I think the republicans might nominate an actual, semi-sentient, autonomous phallus.

Oh, wait, that's this year. Sorry.

Indeed.
posted by homunculus at 12:03 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Well, now, this is interesting:

Ashley Parker and Maggie Haberman: Donald Trump’s Campaign Stumbles as It Tries to Go Big (emphasis mine)

A sense of paranoia is growing among his campaign staff members, including some who have told associates they believe that their Trump Tower offices may be bugged.

And there is confusion among his donors, who want to give money to a “super PAC” supporting Mr. Trump, but have received conflicting signals from top aides about which one to support.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump secured the Republican Party’s nomination for president, a remarkable achievement for a political newcomer. But inside his campaign, the limits of the real estate mogul’s managerial style — reliant on his gut and built around his unpredictable personality — are vividly on display, according to interviews with nearly a dozen Republicans inside and outside of the operation.

Two months after assurances that was the candidate would become “more presidential” and transition to a more unifying phase of his campaign, Mr. Trump continues to act as if the primary is still underway. His team has struggled to fill top positions, such as communications director, and Mr. Trump has made clear he still sees himself as his own chief adviser.

This week, Mr. Trump fired Rick Wiley, his national political director, after Mr. Wiley clashed with campaign officials in three states. And while fights among aides are not unusual, the daily leaks of damaging information from within his campaign are prompting worry among Republican officials.

posted by zombieflanders at 12:03 PM on May 27, 2016 [12 favorites]

Republican women are not voting for Trump in large numbers, thank god.

I'll take your word for it, since you probably know more Republicans than I do. But the numerous Republican women in my family voted for Trump and/or will vote for him in the general (there's a reason I live 5000 miles away from them). Luckily, many of these people live in solid red or blue states, but some do live in swing states.

I'm worried about Trump winning and I'm worried about Trump losing. His supporters significantly overlap with the group that likes to open carry outside mosques and/or take over federal buildings and/or shoot unarmed black men. I'm worried about not just voter ID laws but voter intimidation - at the voting booth and in employment, housing, etc. I'm seriously wondering how we get UN election monitors here because I don't think the Trumpsters will go quietly into that good night if (when!) he loses. I don't have faith in our institutions to be able to protect us from the fallout.

I look at 270toWin and whatnot to tell the rational part of my brain that it will be ok, but my adrenal glands are not getting the message and have been on full fight or flight mode for months, and we still have months left of this stupid election. I think Clinton is better equipped to fight Trump than Sanders for a variety of reasons; but the fear over all of the things that can happen in the world and in the campaigns over the next five months is exhausting. The stakes are too high and I'm not high enough. I just want the whole thing to be over with.
posted by melissasaurus at 12:10 PM on May 27, 2016 [10 favorites]

I'm going to disagree with the consensus view here on both Trump and Evangelicals, and the significance of the proposed Trump/Sanders debate.

The debate, I think, even if it does take place will be all but completely meaningless and have no impact on the general election in the slightest. We're still over a month from the conventions, and even if Sanders basically spends the whole debate agreeing with Trump that Clinton is evil incarnate I don't see that changing the outcome of the general. All it will accomplish, if the debate happens and if Sanders spends the debate attacking Clinton, is Sanders squandering pretty much everything he gained in the primaries and leaving the left with jack shit and the left hating him more than the Clintonistas do.

I also, unfortunately, think the Evangelical vote will go Trump easily.

Mostly I think this because mostly I agree with Fred Clark, of slacktivist fame, that the Evangelical self identifying people aren't really united by religion but rather by politics. And Trump will pander to them.

Worse, on the religious note, everyone loves a convert and Evangelicals especially have a culture where people claiming a truly awful past and a conversion experience, are awarded with high social standing.

Don't forget, there was a guy who made a fortune doing Evangelical speeches and revivals who claimed that he had been a Satanist who (no exaggeration) sacrificed babies before he renounced his evil ways and was saved by the grace of Christ. He was, of course, lying about sacrificing babies (and as near as anyone can tell lying about being a Satanist too), but for years he was an Evangelical superstar almost entirely because he claimed to have ritually sacrificed babies to Satan.

As long as Trump has an adviser smart enough to spin his sudden switch to the so-called "Pro-Life" camp as a story of conversion and faith, they'll eat it up.

And even if they don't spin it that way I think the Evangelicals will come out in support of Trump simply because he endorses the politics that are truly what unite them. As long as he talks Jesus from time to time, hates on gay people and abortion, they'll back him all the way.
posted by sotonohito at 12:40 PM on May 27, 2016 [9 favorites]

corb I don't see any evidence to support any of what you say about abortion. I haven't noticed a single so-called "Pro-Life" group offering even the slightest criticism of Indiana after it imprisoned either Bei Bei Shuai or Purvi Patel.

I'm sure they **SAY** they don't want to punish women. But when women are actually being punished, they don't say a word much less take any action.

I also think they know Trump is a recent convert and while they may recoil in horror at the thought of the harm his honesty about punishing women, I also think they'll forgive and forget now that he has walked it back and framed it as him really meaning that women punish themselves if they get an abortion and therefore desperately need to be forced to give birth because that's what all women really want.

He's smart enough to learn to say what they want, and even though it is blatantly obvious that he doesn't give a shit one way or the other, he says he's on their side and I think that'll be enough.
posted by sotonohito at 12:46 PM on May 27, 2016 [7 favorites]

If we see Trump on his knees in prayer then we will know he is serious about capturing the Evangelical vote but I'm guessing he won't go that far. I think he will blow them off as not important enough to put himself out. His Achilles heel is his enormous ego and I can't see him making much of an effort beyond his normal bombastic speeches. As for humbling himself? Forget about it!

It is too early to tell but my sense is that there will be no united Evangelical vote but rather a splintered one with many just sitting this one out.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:51 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

melissasaurus Yeah, the thought of a close election that Trump loses terrifies me as well. I'm old enough to remember the Brooks Brothers riot that Roger Stone was instrumental in organizing, and the thought of what he can do now that he's got actual armed lunatics to direct is truly horrifying. He's already threatening non-Trump delegates that he knows their hotel room numbers and intends to employ violence against them if they don't let Trump win.

I can easily see a genuine riot and lots of murders if the election is close enough they can believe it was stolen.

For that matter I can see a lot of Trump supporters rioting and murdering even if the election isn't close.

They're truly frightening people and they're pretty heavily armed. When that goes up against a police culture that tends to ignore crimes committed by right wing white people....
posted by sotonohito at 12:54 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't hang out with evangelicals or really know any in person but here's what I think they're gonna do
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:54 PM on May 27, 2016 [7 favorites]

I live in Texas. Half the people I know are Evangelicals, including a couple who are very radical pro-Trump types.
posted by sotonohito at 12:56 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Maybe Larry David should debate Trump.

Given their shared backgrounds in broadcast TV, it may be oddly more appropriate.
posted by lampshade at 1:22 PM on May 27, 2016

Maybe Larry David should debate Trump.

Put them at opposite ends of a boardroom table so Larry David can play it in his George Steinbrenner character and I'd pay to watch that.
posted by peeedro at 1:27 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

There will be no Sanders-Trump debate.
posted by melissasaurus at 1:28 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Not only that, but Trump's press release shows that Sanders got played like a piano:

Based on the fact that the Democratic nominating process is totally rigged and Crooked Hillary Clinton and Deborah Wasserman Schultz will not allow Bernie Sanders to win, and now that I am the presumptive Republican nominee, it seems inappropriate that I would debate the second place finisher. Likewise, the networks want to make a killing on these events and are not proving to be too generous to charitable causes, in this case, women’s health issues. Therefore, as much as I want to debate Bernie Sanders - and it would be an easy payday - I will wait to debate the first place finisher in the Democratic Party, probably Crooked Hillary Clinton, or whoever it may be.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:32 PM on May 27, 2016 [7 favorites]

Lucy and the football, indeed.
posted by maudlin at 1:32 PM on May 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

> Ah, NPR ran a touching StoryCorps piece this morning about POW Admiral Stockdale as remembered by his son. So the fact that it coincides with Rolling Thunder isn't accidental. (Sometimes I forget that Memorial Day isn't just about BBQ.)

Stockdale wrote a fascinating essay on Stoicism and being a POW which can be read here if you're interested:

COURAGE UNDER FIRE: Testing Epictetus's Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior (PDF)
posted by homunculus at 1:36 PM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

My god, that's a genuine press release? I thought that was Twitter shenanigans.

I'm so sorry, America.
posted by figurant at 1:39 PM on May 27, 2016 [17 favorites]

Color me shocked that TV networks aren't willing to set a precedent in which they donate millions to air a spectacle of a debate. Trump killed any prospect of a debate when he said he'd only do it if millions went to women's health. They'll gladly go along with using Trump for ratings, but once they have to write checks, they're not touching that.
posted by zachlipton at 1:42 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Therefore, as much as I want to debate Bernie Sanders - and it would be an easy payday - I will wait to debate the first place finisher in the Democratic Party, probably Crooked Hillary Clinton, or whoever it may be.

Making America great again clearly does not begin with employing rules of grammar and usage.
posted by Schismatic at 1:43 PM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Trump was just trolling Bernie when he suggested that they have a debate.
This seems to have worked. Bernie bit and another amusing shit storm struck the Dems for a while.
Trump has an ugly sense of humour.
posted by dougzilla at 1:44 PM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

My brother just sent me this: Reminder to Sanders voters: the United States has an inventory of 7,100 nuclear warheads. This man, with this impulse control, wants control of them.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:46 PM on May 27, 2016 [11 favorites]

“Oh, Wolf! This doesn’t sound like a serious discussion!” Dem front-runner Hillary Clinton scolded CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, when asked about the debate-for-dollars being discussed by GOP nominee Donald Trump and her Dem rival Bernie Sanders – in concert with some TV networks, according to Trump.

“I don’t think it’s serious. It’s not going to happen!” Clinton sniffed over the telephone when Blitzer pressed for her reaction to Trump’s announcement he’d been approached by more than one TV network about broadcasting such a debate.

Well, at least one person didn't get trolled.
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:47 PM on May 27, 2016 [13 favorites]

And WTF with calling DWS "Deborah?" That is, according to Wikipedia, the name she was born with, but she goes by Debbie pretty much everywhere, such as her Congressional homepage, social media accounts, and official bio. Presumably "Wasserman Schultz" doesn't sound Jewish enough (Schultz is actually a fairly common German name enjoyed by many non-Jews too)?
posted by zachlipton at 1:47 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Color me shocked that TV networks aren't willing to set a precedent

You honestly believe this was about what TV networks were and weren't willing to do? You don't think Trump made all these decisions all on his own?
posted by scaryblackdeath at 1:49 PM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

I cling to faith in the people who actually have to push the buttons and turn the keys. For my own sanity I have to believe that like whatsisname in the USSR thirty-odd years ago, at the final moment they won't do it. (Unless things have been updated and the President has remote firing access?)

I can't believe that anyone at the Pentagon, either, would at the end of the day advocate for actual use of nuclear warheads.

Maybe those are beliefs not supported by fact. I'm okay with that, because the only other option is to pull down your pants and slide on the ice.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:50 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sanders has now been outwitted by a man who sold steaks at The Sharper Image.
posted by EatTheWeek at 1:51 PM on May 27, 2016 [20 favorites]

Well, at least one person didn't get trolled.

She has decades of experience spotting bad faith gestures.
posted by Superplin at 1:52 PM on May 27, 2016 [14 favorites]

Unless things have been updated and the President has remote firing access?

Nuclear missile silos still use floppy disks, so I'm guessing no, probably no such updates.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 1:53 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I wouldn't say Sanders has been outwitted. To the #neveryhillary crowd, it looks like Trump backed down. You can already see the damage control in /r/the_donald (I know... I know...).
posted by avalonian at 1:54 PM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Sanders has now been outwitted by a man who sold steaks at The Sharper Image.

At this point, Sanders should drop out.

Not because he has been all but mathematically eliminated.

Because he just demonstrated with this that he does not have the skills to be the President.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:55 PM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Because he just demonstrated with this that he does not have the skills to be the President.

by that metric, Trump should also drop out. Let's not go there.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:58 PM on May 27, 2016

*I say wasn't outwitted in that they both looked ridiculous and was certainly poor judgment for Sanders to even engage in the possibility in the first place. But I don't think this is a point for Trump.
posted by avalonian at 1:59 PM on May 27, 2016

by that metric, Trump should also drop out.

that is correct, he should
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:01 PM on May 27, 2016 [29 favorites]

Apparently Trump is courting the 4chan vote.
posted by corb at 2:10 PM on May 27, 2016

I think it's important also not to be like "It's okay peeps! Sit back, the brown voters will totally save us!" If your demographic is voting Trump, fight back, don't just rely on the Hispanic Voter Firewall.

This needs to be repeated. People vote against their perceived interests all the time. And we have pathetic rates of voter turn out. Unpredictable things happen that can be taken advantage of. Saying that Trump needs to be countered and combated isn't saying white male voters should be elevated above others.

It reminds me of arguments against the fifty state strategy of Dean's DNC. Why do we need to compete in all the states if we can guarantee a win in 50%+1?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:12 PM on May 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

Apparently Trump is courting the 4chan vote.

Have you seen /pol/ lately? The board is basically Trump's Stormfront Lite™ wing.
posted by Talez at 2:12 PM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Tech Company Calls Donald’s Bluff: We’d Pay $10M For A Trump-Sanders Debate!

Do not taunt Happy Fun Trump.
posted by zachlipton at 2:41 PM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

this guy's web site is, um, worth a moment or two of your time
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:45 PM on May 27, 2016

Marco Rubio's twitter feed is interesting right now. He's trying to justify how he can "help the party beat Clinton" without "supporting Trump."
posted by melissasaurus at 3:04 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

The Renegade General Who Believes Hiroshima Could Happen Again
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:05 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

> Not only that, but Trump's press release shows that Sanders got played like a piano:

Trump is a cunning troll. I wonder if he's deliberately trying to get Sanders even more riled up against Clinton and the Democratic party ("Crooked Hillary Clinton and Deborah Wasserman Schultz will not allow Bernie Sanders to win...") so that he'll increase his attacks against them.
posted by homunculus at 3:06 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Honestly, if I were Bernie I'd drop this debate idea post-haste. If you're gonna get played like this you stand zero chance against this troll.
posted by dw at 3:09 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Scolded", "sniffed". Sigh gendered language to describe HRC's response. At least the headline was a more neutral "scoffed".
posted by R343L at 3:09 PM on May 27, 2016 [18 favorites]

Apparently Trump is courting the 4chan vote.

No need, he's already got them.
posted by homunculus at 3:12 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Go home, Rubio, you're drunk.
posted by corb at 3:14 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't care who was trolling whom I'm just glad we can put this Sanders-Trump debate fiasco to bed.
posted by Justinian at 3:20 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Scolded", "sniffed". Sigh gendered language to describe HRC's response. At least the headline was a more neutral "scoffed".

It's like Hillary Clinton as written by Robert Jordan.

*Hillary tugs on her braid*.
posted by Justinian at 3:21 PM on May 27, 2016 [15 favorites]

Bernie will just spin this as Trump being afraid to debate him. Trump's crack about the DNC comes off as transparently disingenuous concern trolling and is likely to have zero net impact, particularly after the D convention. Concluding that this decision means Sanders can't be trusted not to frivolously nuke somebody is some pretty intense, evidence-free catastrophizing.
posted by en forme de poire at 3:27 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't get why there aren't more Corbs. I mean, this could be a time for a true conservative to shine. Then after the HRC landslide, it would be like, "Corb, you are the future of the party." I get that Trump is scary in a number of respects, but it's not like if you speak up against him, you get deported to Syria or something.

I guess Mittens is looking more appealing these days, as an aside.
posted by angrycat at 3:30 PM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Concluding that this decision means Sanders can't be trusted not to frivolously nuke somebody is some pretty intense, evidence-free catastrophizing.

Pretty sure that reminder to Sanders voters was about not wanting Trump to get access to nukes.
posted by chris24 at 3:37 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

You know the day I knew Obama was going to win the 2008 election? September 24. From Wikipedia:

"On September 24, 2008, McCain announced his intention to suspend his campaign the next day and declared that he wanted to delay the first debate "until we have taken action" on the Paulson financial rescue plan.[25] The reason given for the proposed postponement was so that McCain and Obama could return to Washington, D.C. in order to work on a legislative response to the unfolding economic turmoil. Obama rejected that idea, stating that "this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess."[26] A McCain adviser suggested replacing the Vice Presidential debate with the first Presidential debates and postponing the VP debates to an unspecified later date.[27] Chancellor of the University of Mississippi, Robert Khayat, proposed that Obama hold a townhall meeting with the audience if McCain failed to appear.[28] On the morning of September 26, McCain agreed to participate in the debate, claiming that there had been enough progress in the financial bailout plan.[29] Three days later, however, the House of Representatives defeated the bailout proposal"

Josh Marshall of TPM has been tirelessly pointing out that Trump's entire political technique is based on displaying dominance. McCain and Obama were supposed to fight. McCain tried to make excuses to back out. Obama called his bluff.

Sanders challenged Trump. Trump accepted. Then Trump backed out. Trump, the alpha dog who rose t the top of the puppy pile by scrapping with all comers, is afraid to fight the beta dog of the enemy pack. Sanders attacked Trump's strength—his legendary debating prowess—and Trump backed down.
posted by vibrotronica at 3:38 PM on May 27, 2016 [9 favorites]

(which, not to dismiss Corb's bravery here. I just thought there were more brave people in the GOP)
posted by angrycat at 3:38 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Pretty sure that reminder to Sanders voters was about Trump getting access to nukes.

Ok, but I still think this is catastrophizing. This debate tempest-in-a-teapot is at worst a gaffe that will be forgotten about in a month and at best damages Trump.
posted by en forme de poire at 3:59 PM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Josh Marshall of TPM has been tirelessly pointing out that Trump's entire political technique is based on displaying dominance. McCain and Obama were supposed to fight. McCain tried to make excuses to back out. Obama called his bluff.

Sanders challenged Trump. Trump accepted. Then Trump backed out. Trump, the alpha dog who rose t the top of the puppy pile by scrapping with all comers, is afraid to fight the beta dog of the enemy pack. Sanders attacked Trump's strength—his legendary debating prowess—and Trump backed down.

Except that he didn't back down so much as point out that as the Republican flagbearer, he has no obligation to debate someone who is all but eliminated from becoming the Democratic one. McCain couldn't ignore Obama calling his bluff because they had the same position of party flagbearer. That's not the case here, and Trump used that difference as a rhetorical shiv to further injure Sanders.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:59 PM on May 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

yeah what Trump did was like asking somebody to the prom and then a day later saying 'oh I just remembered I can't take you to the prom, you're a NERD.'
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:01 PM on May 27, 2016 [30 favorites]

Ann Coulter is on MSNBC again.

What the hell, world.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:09 PM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

I agree that the whole debate-baiting (debaiting?) debacle was about Trump performing dominance, over Sanders and the DNC. His refusal was framed in the most dismissive possible terms. "You're beneath me." *

*Buffy reference probably not entirely accidental. (On my part. I don't think Trump is a Buffy fan. Not smart enough.)
posted by Superplin at 4:11 PM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

“It eats you, starting with your bottom.”
posted by nicepersonality at 4:14 PM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Ennh. The pictures of the protests are not great optics. Every Mexican flag being waved in a protest clashing with the police gets Trump 10,000 more votes.
posted by Justinian at 4:17 PM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

#ChickenTrump is starting to trend on Twitter.

DISASTER! Why is #ChickenTrump trending?! @Twitter must shut down immediately!! Otherwise: LAWSUIT IS COMING!! pic.twitter.com/Tywo6CPvJ4— DonaId J. Trump (@realDenaldTrump) May 27, 2016

posted by kyp at 4:19 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

It is almost impossible to tell the difference between Trump on Twitter and a Trump parody on Twitter.
posted by dersins at 4:22 PM on May 27, 2016 [13 favorites]

Is that #ChickenTrump in similar usage to #BullTrump and #BatTrumpCrazy?
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:23 PM on May 27, 2016

From what I can see, some people are trying to make #ChickenTrump happen. They have the attention of the parody account @realDenaldTrump but not yet a response from @realDonaldTrump.
posted by maudlin at 4:23 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

What
posted by homunculus at 4:47 PM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

See, I told you guys there would be no debate. Now don't you guys feel silly for panicking last night?
posted by Apocryphon at 5:31 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

#DonaldDucked is the superior bird based hashtag.
posted by Drinky Die at 5:32 PM on May 27, 2016 [14 favorites]

Well, when has Twitter ever rallied behind the best hashtag?
#DonaldDucked should've trended after his confrontation with the eagle, and when he ducked the Fox News debate, and... well, so many times since he started running.

There are so many complaints that all of Trump's awfulness never "catches on", or in the current vernacular, becomes "viral", but it's the kind of people who are Trump Supporters (white dudes in 4chan, 8chan and Reddit) who are the pros at making things "viral". Which is probably why #ChickenDonald is the first anti-Trump meme to take off on Twitter (because a lot of them like #Bernie more than #Donald).
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:03 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

DISASTER! Why is #ChickenTrump trending?!

it's because you're a little pecker, donnie
posted by pyramid termite at 6:04 PM on May 27, 2016

Maddow is reporting that the Sanders camp is trying to remove Dan Molloy & Barney Frank from convention roles. This will be a big fight. In what world is Barney Frank not liberal enough?
posted by madamjujujive at 6:17 PM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

Barney Frank has never been one to sugar coat his opinions.
posted by peeedro at 6:27 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Frank doesn't like Sanders. I guess the feeling is mutual.

Barney Frank Is Not Impressed by Bernie Sanders: “Bernie Sanders has been in Congress for 25 years with little to show for it.”
posted by homunculus at 6:28 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Frank is a big Clinton supporter. They are probably afraid he'll be biased in her favor.
posted by zarq at 6:29 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Now don't you guys feel silly for panicking last night?

I anticipate being in a state of near-panic until the election. Fortunately, I am already accustomed to feeling silly.
posted by homunculus at 6:32 PM on May 27, 2016 [14 favorites]

I wonder if heart attacks increase as it gets closer to the election? There's gotta be a paper about that.
posted by downtohisturtles at 6:35 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Speaking at a rally in Fresno, Calif., Trump accused state officials of denying water to Central Valley farmers so they can send it out to sea "to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish."

At this point, I'm waiting for him to make some sort of message to teens telling them that smoking is totally healthy for you. And then maybe he'll promise to end all those silly DUI laws based on old wives' tales about how you shouldn't drive drunk.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 6:47 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Nobody has ever taken the Colbert line that "Reality has a well-known liberal bias" more seriously... or more successfully.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:52 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

The hand delivered attorney letter demanding Frank & Molloy removal.
posted by madamjujujive at 6:59 PM on May 27, 2016

whelp! Can't have a revolution without a few party purges!
posted by EatTheWeek at 7:03 PM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

whelp! Can't have a revolution without a few party purges!

Wait wait wait wait wait. Bernie's a Democrat? I thought he was a DINO (literally, metaphorically, and figuratively).
posted by Talez at 7:07 PM on May 27, 2016

yes, but a *INO can take control of an existing Party. Perfect example: Il Douche Donald.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:13 PM on May 27, 2016

Yes, but now that dear not-quite leader calls himself one, we can't have any counter revolutionaries in positions of influence.
posted by EatTheWeek at 7:13 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who's the banana republic now?

Sanders in 2011

This week he doesn't know much about Latin America.
posted by humanfont at 7:23 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I agree, writing a letter alleging that two party officials may have a conflict of interest and requesting that they step down from their roles at the convention means that Sanders is basically like Kim Jong-Il.

I mean regardless of whether that letter is BS or not, come on. A "purge?" "Dear Leader?" "Counterrevolutionaries?"
posted by en forme de poire at 7:25 PM on May 27, 2016 [7 favorites]

via Peter Staley: This is just depressing. We emailed our "open letter to Senator Sanders" (http://bit.ly/25qTtTi) from the 19 activists that attended the Sanders meeting, to the various contacts we had corresponded with.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:29 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

The hand delivered attorney letter demanding Frank & Molloy removal.

Wait what?? I assumed this was just a general complaint, but they've actually had lawyers send a four page letter that boils down to "these people don't like me and have said mean things about me, in some cases going back decades, so they should be disqualified." Sweet Jesus indeed.

It goes back to dw's excellent basketball analogy. You don't have to lie down in the middle of the court as the clock runs out, but for crying out loud, stop fouling. The debate flap, this letter, these are big huge flagrant fouls.
posted by zachlipton at 7:29 PM on May 27, 2016 [10 favorites]

I understand that being a member of a party is new to Bernie, and he's not the sharpest tool in the shed, so it may take him a while to figure things out, but there are going to be people involved in the convention who supported the front-runner. That's not a conflict of interest, let alone a legal matter.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:32 PM on May 27, 2016 [9 favorites]

Peter Thiel's support for Donald Trump is a bigger threat to press freedom than his lawsuits

Related thread: If they don't own the press, they will destroy it.
posted by homunculus at 7:33 PM on May 27, 2016

In addition to the letter, there are reports of "or else" threats about disruption or shutting down the convention. Not sure if that is just Twitter talk but it would seem this is more on the order of a demand than request.
posted by madamjujujive at 7:35 PM on May 27, 2016

I'm kinda enjoying #ChickenTrump. It's a true battle of keyboard warriors.
posted by dw at 7:38 PM on May 27, 2016

Don't worry, Molloy and Frank will still be at the convention... their severed heads mounted on pikes will greet people at the entrance as a warning to all who would defy Sanders.
posted by XMLicious at 7:39 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trump Tells California 'There Is No Drought'

Speaking at a rally in Fresno, Calif., Trump accused state officials of denying water to Central Valley farmers so they can send it out to sea "to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish."

"We're going to solve your water problem. You have a water problem that is so insane. It is so ridiculous where they're taking the water and shoving it out to sea," Trump said at a rally that drew thousands.

There aren't enough faces and palms in the universe. Jesus Christ he basically stopped short of promising them Jefferson.
posted by Talez at 7:43 PM on May 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

Between who even knows what's happening in the Sanders camp and the apparent chaos in the heart of Trump-dom, it seems like we're seeing the result of what happens when you have national campaigns with huge followings and without experienced leadership at the helm. I don't know if it's a case of not having anyone to sit there and say, "No, this is not how things are done," or if the candidates simply aren't listening to anyone who can urge some moderation and professionalism.

(With Trump, it's obviously both.)

These are exciting times and I don't like living in them. :(
posted by Salieri at 7:43 PM on May 27, 2016 [12 favorites]

All the Presumptive Nominee’s Men: For a guy who yells about Washington and Wall Street money in politics, Donald Trump sure has a lot on insiders on his team.
posted by homunculus at 7:45 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

That's not a conflict of interest, let alone a legal matter.

Despite being the product of lawyers, the letter deals with the Democrats' internal rules, bylaws, and regulations, not the actual law.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 7:45 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

The hand delivered attorney letter demanding Frank & Molloy removal.

I really, really hope the DNC sends a Cleveland Browns-style response:

Dear Mr. Deutsch:

Attached is a letter that we received May 27, 2016. We feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters.

Very Truly Yours,

Democratic National Committee

posted by dersins at 7:49 PM on May 27, 2016 [14 favorites]

I'd just like to say that I'm a social democrat. I voted for Bernie Sanders because he supports policies I agree with. I have no regrets at all about voting for him in the primary or volunteering for his campaign, and I hope to work for other progressive candidates in the future.
posted by nangar at 7:52 PM on May 27, 2016 [12 favorites]

I don't regret voting for him, either. I'm just hoping this doesn't all end badly
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:53 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

All the Presumptive Nominee’s Men: For a guy who yells about Washington and Wall Street money in politics, Donald Trump sure has a lot on insiders on his team.

Remember Woody Johnson? Trump ripped Bush a new one for having him on side. Basically insinuated that Johnson having Bush on the payroll would stop drug price reform.

Trump announces his victory committee today. Top of the list? Woody fucking Johnson.

The hypocrisy, the bullshit, the blatant lying, the contempt for the electorate is just so fucking naked and people eat it up. This is why we're fucking terrified that he's Reagan 2.0.
posted by Talez at 7:56 PM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

This isn't about policy. This is about his choice of strategy as the campaign winds down. It is the strategy of someone who is operating out of self-interest rather than the greater good.
posted by Anonymous at 7:56 PM on May 27, 2016

Wow, I get sick of it and stop paying attention for a few hours and then Bernie gets psyched! and then goes after Barney Frank with lawyers on top of it ? When did I fall into this.dimension ? What is the speed of light here ?

#EpicMeltdownFail
posted by y2karl at 7:57 PM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

I have no regrets at all about voting for him in the primary or volunteering for his campaign,

I didn't vote for him, but I don't believe anyone who supported him because they agree with his policy positions should regret doing so for an instant.
posted by dersins at 7:58 PM on May 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

I didn't vote for him, but I don't believe anyone who supported him because they agree with his policy positions should regret doing so for an instant.

I'm sure that will be comforting when the working poor are huddled around a raging trash can fire, their minimum wage protection repealed and replaced with "leave it to the states".
posted by Talez at 8:00 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

What is the speed of light here ?

The speed of blight appears to be the larger concern.
posted by nubs at 8:02 PM on May 27, 2016

I'm sure that will be comforting when the working poor are huddled around a raging trash can fire, their minimum wage protection repealed and replaced with "leave it to the states".

The hell does that even mean?
posted by dersins at 8:02 PM on May 27, 2016

The hell does that even mean?

It's a vision of the Trumpocalpyse as the Democratic party gets torn apart with petty scorched earth infighting.
posted by Talez at 8:05 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

How could the possibly be the fault of someone who voted for Sanders because they agree with him from a policy standpoint? Sure, blame Sanders if his endgame antics get us to that point, but to lay that at the feet of people who did nothing more than exercise their right to vote in the fucking primary is beyond ridiculous.
posted by dersins at 8:10 PM on May 27, 2016 [25 favorites]

I sure as hell regret supporting him right now. I wish he just fucked off after the March 15th primary when the math became blindingly obvious his chances of success were on par with pigs growing wings. Instead of conceding gracefully he's basically holding a knife to the donkey's throat.
posted by Talez at 8:17 PM on May 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

Holy shit, you guys. That Trump propaganda video I walked out on at convention actually contains Vox Day.
posted by corb at 8:18 PM on May 27, 2016 [18 favorites]

Don't worry. Even after Hillary is selected, elected, and Sanders is remembered as the socialist Ron Paul for he season, a party purge is inevitable.
posted by Apocryphon at 8:18 PM on May 27, 2016

Assuming he does stage a coup, I hope he demands we address him as Colonel Sanders.
posted by JackFlash at 8:19 PM on May 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

Are you serious, corb?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:20 PM on May 27, 2016

I wish he just fucked off after the March 15th primary when the math became blindingly obvious his chances of success were on par with pigs growing wings. Instead of conceding gracefully he's basically holding a knife to the donkey's throat.

Atkeson found that the effect of divisive primaries on how well the nominee does in the general election drops out. In other words, divisive primaries don’t make the incumbent party vulnerable; the causation runs the other way.

...Henderson, Hillygus and Tompson found in a 2010 paper that a Democratic primary voter who was “frustrated” with the primary was more likely to vote for Republican John McCain in the general election. But they also found that substantive political issues were a bigger factor in voters’ decision-making than primary-inspired angst. Clinton voters who supported the Iraq War, for example, were more likely to vote for McCain in the general. They concluded, as Atkeson did, that the impact of divisive primaries has more to do with different views within the party on political issues than the occurrence of the divisive primary itself.

From 538: "Sanders Shouldn't Drop Out For Clinton's Sake: There's little evidence a prolonged primary hurts a nominee." (May 5)
posted by en forme de poire at 8:22 PM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

That Trump propaganda video I walked out on at convention actually contains Vox Day.
So based on VD's antics with the Rabid Wolves, we need to remind voters that "No Award" is NOT an option in voting for President.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:24 PM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

I'm fine with Sanders staying in until the convention and campaigning hard in California. It's all this other bullshit that is a problem. The convention is a pageant. It kicks off the campaign for the general election and is an advertisement for the candidate. If Bernie wants concessions, he should try to get substantive concessions, not fixate on symbolic shit at an event that is only significant as a potential PR coup or disaster. He's totally inept at politics, which is why he would have been a shitty president and why he's a dangerous live wire right now.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:31 PM on May 27, 2016 [24 favorites]

Instead of conceding gracefully he's basically holding a knife to the donkey's throat.

Thing is, in 11 more days it will be irrelevant. Hillary would clinch the majority of pledged delegates on June 7 even if Bernie won every remaining state and territory in a clean sweep, won California by 20, won NJ by 10, and won DC by 20.

In 11 more days he will lose all his leverage. He can do a hell of a lot of damage between now and then, but look what I just said -- 100% of the votes in the Dakotas, Montana, and NM. A 20 point blowout in California where he's looking at best at "could win." 20 point blowout in DC, where he has ZERO chance of winning unless Hillary says something horribly disparaging about Ben's Chili Bowl. And he STILL loses.

This is a gambit for a greater say in a process he won't have any say over in 11 more days. This is nice-party-sure-wouldn't-want-anything-to-happen-to-it crap, but it's also burning every bridge with the super-delegates he actually needs to win.

Question is whether the party can just simply sit there and let it happen. That's not a Democratic Party M.O.
posted by dw at 8:33 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

If Bernie wants concessions, he should try to get substantive concessions, not fixate on symbolic shit at an event that is only significant as a potential PR coup or disaster.

But coming into the convention with a strong performance in the remaining contests increases his ability to get substantive concessions on behalf of the people who voted for him, hence the continued importance of being in the public eye right up until then.
posted by en forme de poire at 8:35 PM on May 27, 2016

He's made it pretty clear that his leverage is throwing an embarrassing public tantrum at the convention, which will overshadow the work that the convention is actually supposed to do.

Everyone is clear that Vox Day is a straight-up white supremacist, right?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:36 PM on May 27, 2016 [17 favorites]

Didn't you literally just say that if Sanders wants substantive concessions he should try to get them?
posted by en forme de poire at 8:39 PM on May 27, 2016

Holy shit, you guys. That Trump propaganda video I walked out on at convention actually contains Vox Day.

I have to echo y2karl - what dimension have I fallen into? What is even happening right now?
posted by Salieri at 8:39 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Everyone is clear that Vox Day is a straight-up white supremacist, right?

Yep.
posted by dw at 8:41 PM on May 27, 2016 [7 favorites]

I'm saying that the things he's focusing on are not substantive concessions. Nobody gives a fuck about the platform, for instance. It gets written, and then nobody ever looks at it again. It is true that Barney Frank thinks Sanders is a lightweight and holds him in open contempt, and that's got to be a bummer, but it doesn't matter. What happens after the convention matters, and Sanders is completely torpedoing his chances of having an ongoing voice by looking like a dingbat, appearing to be holding the fate of humanity hostage to his ego, and alienating everyone.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:45 PM on May 27, 2016 [10 favorites]

Trump Attacks Federal Judge in Trump U Case

In which Trump rants for 12 minutes about the judge handling the Trump University case, citing such legitimate grievances such as the judge ruling against him and allegedly being Mexican.

“We’re in front of a very hostile judge,” Mr. Trump said. “The judge was appointed by Barack Obama, federal judge. Frankly, he should recuse himself because he’s given us ruling after ruling after ruling, negative, negative, negative.”

Mr. Trump also told the audience, which had previously chanted the Republican standard-bearer’s signature “build that wall” mantra in reference to Mr. Trump’s proposed wall along the Mexican border, that Judge Curiel is “Mexican.”

“What happens is the judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great. I think that’s fine,” Mr. Trump said.

Judge Curiel was born in Indiana.

posted by zachlipton at 8:46 PM on May 27, 2016 [7 favorites]

I don't think anyone should regret their vote. I think many of us were a coin flip away in deciding between the two candidates, particularly in the primary. My pragmatic side won out. People voted on what they knew at that time. The landscape has shifted and recent events have been revealing. I am both mad and sad. There's the old adage about more tears shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones, and it comes to mind after all those years I rooted for Bernie and wanted him to have a larger voice. Now I just want him to stfu. Always painful to learn a hero's wings are made of wax.

I retain the right to be more judgmental of future choices though!
posted by madamjujujive at 8:47 PM on May 27, 2016 [12 favorites]

I am very concerned, and not in a trollish way. Hillary and her camp should have known she had the nomination sewn up for two months now, and have brought in Bernie and his alleged "Bros" a long time past. She is all about overkill, and she will not have overkill against Trump. Bernie vs. Trump debate would have been IDEAL, as even Bernie recognized he's just there to float attacks against The Donald to see what sticks. Instead, we have indignant vitriol from Hillary's camp, as if she believes Bernie is still a threat that must be defeated.

Ummm. I'm with Bernie, am I a threat to be defeated? The "shush, men are talking" angle was so perfect and vicious... I don't know if I can get over it. I mean, I must, as those three SC slots, at least, are up for grabs. But I will be bitter about it. It was a vile bit of slander. Unfortunate and unfair.

Hillary needs to bring in Sanders voters. She legit needs their votes. She's treating them like vanquished peons. I am terrified of November, if she's actually this bad at campaigning.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:48 PM on May 27, 2016 [10 favorites]

The hilarious part of that story is that Trump is the one who brought it up. What candidate for office would be possessed to spend a significant portion of his time in front of a massive crowd voluntarily discussing how one of his enterprises is at this very moment pending federal fraud charges?
posted by zachlipton at 8:51 PM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm saying that the things he's focusing on are not substantive concessions. Nobody gives a fuck about the platform, for instance. It gets written, and then nobody ever looks at it again.

What do you think would be a substantive concession? I think getting Clinton to budge on the target for the federal minimum wage would be significant, for instance, but maybe that's naive of me. (I also don't think that he's going after Barney Frank just because they don't like each other and that's what he's decided to spend political capital on, I think it's an attempt to get a convention that is more receptive to adopting some of his planks.)
posted by en forme de poire at 8:55 PM on May 27, 2016

Yeah honestly those in both Sanders and Clinton camp who got overly mad about a debate that was tentative the whole time were being played by Trump like a damn fiddle.
posted by Apocryphon at 8:56 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

In other parts of the election, I got another negative flyer about Bill Ostrander sent to me by the California Republican Party. It points out that Ostander is the only candidate to endorse Bernie Sanders, and is supporting Sanders' "even more progressive health care plan". Some of the wording, to me, seemed chosen less for being negatives to conservatives, as being positives for liberals. A little research shows that Ostander is nowhere near the leading Democratic candidate - he's polling third among D's. Now, with the California Open Primary, it's possible for both of the candidates to make the cut for November to be with the same party... there's no incumbent running (she was a Democrat) and there are 4 D's and 3 R's on the ballot. There are not-very-many more Democrats than Republicans in the district. I have seen zero pro-Ostander advertising, so why are the Republicans negative campaigning against him first, and with a flyer in the mailbox of a Registered Democrat? (Me. Can't speak for my neighbors of various political bents if they got it.) Could this be some kind of reverse psychology campaigning to get the #3 Democrat to take very-liberal votes away from #1 and #2, and give the top 2 Republicans a better shot at winning both top spots? At best, it seems stupid, at worst, devious, at most, just weird. Welcome to the electoral jungle.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:01 PM on May 27, 2016

Hillary needs to bring in Sanders voters. She legit needs their votes. She's treating them like vanquished peons. I am terrified of November, if she's actually this bad at campaigning.

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. The only good thing about this miserable last week is how the Clinton campaign has stayed out of it entirely. Her campaign speeches in California this week have been focused on Trump, not on treating Sanders as any kind of threat. All of these are self-inflicted errors on the part of the Sanders campaign, which is what is so frustrating. How can you bring in people who refuse to be brought in?

And how can you deal with a campaign which has still failed to address the violence toward fellow Democrats?

In the aftermath, top Wyoming Democratic officials, especially those publicly backing Clinton, reported receiving angry calls, letters and threats.

"I have received some very negative phone calls and some very negative letters," said state Rep. Mary Hales, a Clinton supporter. The threats, she said, were "things like ‘bitch,’ and that they're going to contact your family members, put this information out on a blog, and things like that."

The state party’s executive director, Aimee Van Cleave, said she had received threats and that someone let the air out of her car tires.

In my opinion, as long as behavior like this still hasn't been satisfactorily addressed by Sanders, there is no right to demand any kind of "concessions" on the part of the Party.

And as far as I've seen, the Clinton camp has been more than conciliatory so far. I mean...Cornel West?? My God. What an insult to the current President.
posted by Salieri at 9:02 PM on May 27, 2016 [21 favorites]

What do you think would be a substantive concession? I think getting Clinton to budge on the target for the federal minimum wage would be significant,

Hillary is already supporting a 53% increase in the minimum wage, which no Democrat has been able to get raised since in 9 years, and before that not for another 10 years. That will be tough to get through Congress as it is. Not a great place to insist on concessions.

How about limits on campaign donations? Reinstating the rules on lobbyist donations that DWS removed? Voter access reform? Reform to the rules for Democratic primary debates, or eliminating caucuses (with maybe an exception for Iowa), or allowing change of registration closer to elections?

These would be good because -- assuming the effective date is November 9th or later -- they won't hurt Clinton in defeating Trump, either by hamstringing her current campaign or by giving Trump an issue that might hurt Clinton in the general election.
posted by msalt at 9:03 PM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Feingold's opponent incumbent Sen Ron Johnson (R-Wis) "Stump with Trump?" he quipped when asked if he'd appear on the campaign trail alongside Republican front-runner. "Just because it rhymes: It'd be the Ronald (and) the Donald."
Johnson added: "Certainly as I travel the state extensively, I hear a lot of support because what Donald Trump is saying resonates with an awful lot of people when it comes to the incompetence of Washington, D.C."
CNN report

Schumer's in line to replace Harry Reid as the Senate Democratic leader when the latter retires in January, so he's definitely not going anywhere voluntarily.

Yes. And he has both qualities and faults for the position. His quality and fault is blind party loyalty. It doesn't matter the issue, he will argue unfair Republican tactics but if done by a his side which is never at fault, it is totally fair. He never takes a high road, it is constant blame game. At hearings it is an unproductive waste of time as Republicans get their backs up and Democrats roll their eyes. Schumer has been striving for the position and he loves the schmooze and won't mind the scorn. I am split on how effective he will be. Leahy would have been a good elder statesperson, well respected all around, but I doubt he wanted the work. Also and more importantly I shouldn't have called his opponent Wendy Long a wingnut, while I disagreed with her when she was carrying water for the Bush administration, it is those ideas (or support for) I should have repudiated and not just dismissed her out of hand. (Responding way late, but more because my own comment has been bugging me so I want to call myself out on it.)
posted by phoque at 9:03 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

She's treating them like vanquished peons. I am terrified of November, if she's actually this bad at campaigning.

Serious question: what has she specifically said and done in the past few weeks that you feel is actively alienating Sanders voters?

I have heard a number of Sanders voters complain that they are being denigrated and not listened to, but when pressed do not explain what they mean. I do not want to see Trump elected, so please--what does it look like, in your mind, to be listened to? What further concessions need to be made? How do you feel you're being insulted?
posted by Anonymous at 9:04 PM on May 27, 2016

The platform is not binding, so even if a $15 minimum wage is in the platform, Clinton doesn't have to run on that. If Bernie wants Clinton to budge on the minimum wage, he's going to have to talk to Clinton about it, because she's going to be the nominee, and she's going to run her campaign.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:05 PM on May 27, 2016

Right, A&C. I'm assuming that "real concessions" would not be putting things in the platform, but her personally adopting them and campaigning for them.

As I've said before, I'd love to get Bernie and Hillary to agree on an aggressive voting rights and campaign finance reform package -- including mandatory disclosure of tax returns for 4 years -- and put Bernie in charge of campaigning for the package. He can travel around, on the Clinton campaign's dime, building energy and attacking Trump.
posted by msalt at 9:09 PM on May 27, 2016

And because I'm trying my best to be fair to everyone...this is good! This is a start! From the article I linked above:

The Sanders camp has also been involved in taking precautions to maintain a level of civility at the convention. On Tuesday, a Sanders field organizer met with pro-Sanders delegates in Laramie to discuss proper conduct at the convention, according to Wyoming state Rep. Charles Pelkey, the only elected official in the state who endorsed Sanders. Pelkey said he planned to have another meeting with Sanders delegates on Thursday.

But it's nowhere near enough. The threats and misogyny still need to be addressed on a large scale, preferably by Sanders himself. Make it clear that this doesn't have any place in your campaign!
posted by Salieri at 9:10 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump's San Diego rally draws more than 1,000 chanting protesters (Reuters)
posted by bukvich at 9:13 PM on May 27, 2016

I haven't found that Hillary herself or the campaign has been particularly disrespectful to Bernie supporters or to him, but they do play very hardball politics at the same time (I mean even by Presidential campaign standards) and that can be grating at a time when insider status quo partisan politics are infuriating essentially the entire population of the country.

But I don't really blame them for any of that, especially right now. She and her campaign organization already blew one primary they thought they were heavily favored to win. Common sense and basic human competitiveness means that if you ever get another shot at something like this you don't show any mercy. If Bernie wants to go the distance with Clinton she has no obligation to stop trying to knock him out.
posted by Drinky Die at 9:15 PM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

And if she thinks she has the best shot to stop Trump, she is OBLIGATED to do anything ethical in her power there is to do to beat him.
posted by Drinky Die at 9:17 PM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

I am terrified of November, if she's actually this bad at campaigning.

If she's this bad at campaigning? 2008 should have answered that question pretty clearly.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:26 PM on May 27, 2016

Are you serious, corb?

Unfortunately, yes. Now I wish I'd paid more attention. Also I want to continuously throw up.
posted by corb at 9:34 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oh, sure, doing bad against Barack Obama proves that ? C'mon.
posted by y2karl at 9:35 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mean. he was the golden throated dream then. Bernie with good looks and minus the mean.
posted by y2karl at 9:36 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mean, look at the Bern with the sound off. Mr. Get Off My Lawn incarnate.
posted by y2karl at 9:38 PM on May 27, 2016

Obama had a trillion times the charisma.
posted by y2karl at 9:38 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hillary not descending down to "talk shit about Bernie"–level campaigning makes her look presidential. If anything, I wish she'd been gentler during the period where she seemed unnecessarily aggressive towards him—not that any of that comes close to the recent stuff Bernie's been firing out.
posted by rorgy at 9:40 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Clinton should do what Obama did in '08, which was grovel and scrape for the approval of the supporters of his primary opponent who loathed him the most

That's what happened right
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:42 PM on May 27, 2016 [28 favorites]

If Bernie wants Clinton to budge on the minimum wage, he's going to have to talk to Clinton about it, because she's going to be the nominee, and she's going to run her campaign.

I mean, I of course agree -- but just because the first thing we've heard in the mass media has had to do with the platform, I don't think it means that the Sanders campaign will not also seek to influence the positions Clinton is actually going to run on, or the team she will be assembling.
posted by en forme de poire at 9:58 PM on May 27, 2016

As straws at which to grasp dwindle, the bitterness grows. "It's not about you, it's about the country, " Al Gore told Howard Dean. And Dean let go the.next.day. Who will be Sander's Al Gore ? Who could be ? It seems like the two guys in the race are their own best advisors.

And worst as well.
posted by y2karl at 10:30 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Holy fuck, this video is HORRIBLE. They meant to only excerpt a glowing pro-Trump speech, but somehow proved incapable of clipping video, so as follows:

-starts out with people literally praying for a black man to come so he can help Trump. "I pray that you can bring into his life a strong African-American who can stand with him" Then Ben Carson speaks! Prayer apparently answered WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS EVEN.

FUCK A TOKEN HISPANIC WITH A 'LEGAL IMMIGRANT SHIRT' as Trump says 'I like Hispanics'

Jesus Christ I think if I hadn't walked out I might have set that video equipment on fire.

Now he has a lady saying Trump thinks ladies are great
Now video of Maury giving a little girl a "check from Donald Trump" what the hell is this even

OH JESUS VOX DAY AND STEFAN MOLYNEUX WHAT THE SHIT IS THIS BURN IT DOWN

I can't watch this anymore guys I am sorry
please can we make him go away yet?
posted by corb at 10:41 PM on May 27, 2016 [23 favorites]

I need to see this terrible video, corb. Is it anywhere on the internet yet?
posted by stolyarova at 10:46 PM on May 27, 2016

I need to see this terrible video, corb.

ditto!
posted by lampshade at 10:55 PM on May 27, 2016

Carson has eyewitnesses that Trump is praying. To god.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:58 PM on May 27, 2016

"It's not about you, it's about the country, " Al Gore told Howard Dean. And Dean let go the.next.day.
...clearing the way for John Kerry to.... uh, maybe not a perfect example. But in 2004, Bernie Sanders was a proud not-a-Democrat, Donald Trump was guest starring on WWE Wrestling, Hillary Clinton was on her first term as a Senator, Barack Obama was running for the Senate, Ted Cruz was Solicitor General of Texas, Ralph Nader was a pariah and nobody had heard of "The Tea Party". I don't think we're going to be able to apply any lessons from any previous elections to this one until sometime in December.

If the Horrible Video is any example of Trump "pivoting" for the General Election, it's going to take total incompetence for Hillary to lose this. It's not a "surely this" moment, but it looks like every time he opens his mouth he's going to lose a few more of the Non-Racist, Non-Insane Republicans. The GOP leadership may have given up on #nevertrump, but it's just going to keep growing among the 'little people'. And his recent "there is no drought" speech in California... well, he never had a prayer in Cal, but he has certainly turned off a lot of Republicans in the farm counties and their staying home may flip a few congressional seats to D.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:04 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Bernie Sanders' 'Scorched Earth' Strategy Seems to Be Working - "The socialist senator is driving up Clinton's disapproval rating with his supporters – and winning concessions to the party's left flank in the process."

Sanders already banked a significant concession on Monday, when the party granted him nearly as many appointees to the convention's platform committee as the (likely) nominee herself. Among the Vermont senator's five picks were Cornel West – a harsh critic of Obama and card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America – climate activist Bill McKibben, and Arab-American Institute President James Zogby. Those selections should set up a contentious fight over the party's official policy on the Israel-Palestine conflict. However, many of Clinton's six picks also hail from the party's left wing, creating a progressive majority on the committee that is likely to deliver the Democrats' most liberal platform on domestic policy in a generation.

To be sure, Clinton won't have to run on that platform, just like Mitt Romney didn't have to campaign on the GOP's official opposition to creeping Sharia in 2012. But on Wednesday, Clinton moved in Sanders's direction on domestic spending voluntarily – promising to expand her initial proposal for infrastructure spending. Clinton had previously promised to spend $275 billion on infrastructure over a five-year period, while Sanders has campaigned on a $1 trillion proposal (Donald Trump endorsed a similarly massive infrastructure build-up in his campaign book, though he doesn't talk about it all that often).

It's still possible that Sanders's decision to cultivate his supporters' antipathy for the Democratic Party will hurt his agenda in the long run. As Slate's Jamelle Bouie writes, for Sanders to reshape the Democratic coalition, he needs to keep his backers inside of it – a task that will be impossible "if they view the entire political system as irreversibly flawed." And obviously, if a critical mass of young liberals in swing states embrace "Bernie or Bust" – and Donald Trump makes it into the Oval Office – Sanders will have little chance of living to see a more social-democratic United States.

But in recent days, Sanders has signaled a commitment to building his movement inside the Democratic tent, raising funds for a slate of like-minded state legislators, and for Wisconsin Senate candidate Russ Feingold. And, at least for the moment, Sanders's willingness "to harm Hillary Clinton" appears to be only increasing his influence over her party. Politics ain't beanbag. Neither, presumably, are political revolutions.

Jeffrey Sachs: Bernie Sanders easily wins the policy debate - "Sanders' recipes are supported by overwhelming evidence — notably from countries that already follow the policies he advocates. On health care, growth and income inequality, Sanders wins the policy debate hands down."
posted by kliuless at 11:11 PM on May 27, 2016 [9 favorites]

And his recent "there is no drought" speech in California... well, he never had a prayer in Cal, but he has certainly turned off a lot of Republicans in the farm counties and their staying home may flip a few congressional seats to D.

He gave that speech like eight hours ago, so I'm surprised you could know this already. I'd love to see evidence if you have it, though! From my perspective, all of the "Congress Created Dust Bowl" signs that litter the Central Valley suggest that Trump pretty much nailed a lot of farmers' grievances.
posted by one_bean at 11:17 PM on May 27, 2016

Yeah it's not that simple. The refrain is that the drought is a government-created problem caused by mandatory flow levels through the delta that preserve endangered species at the expense of providing water to farmers and communities. This is a common complaint and Trump far from the first to make it. It's been a Republican talking point for years in fact. There are some major holes in this theory (like there actually was a drought, there was significantly less water than there used to be, though some people are questioning whether the "normal" levels have actually been abnormally high), but he wasn't literally saying "there is no drought," but complaining about the government and environmentalists.
posted by zachlipton at 11:31 PM on May 27, 2016

Basically all of the Valley Congressional folk are co-sponsors on a bill that would do what Trump is advocating - divert water from Threatened & Endangered Species and give it to farmers. Co-signers include Republicans who typically win their district with ~65-75% of the vote but also Jim Costa, a Democrat representing Fresno. Trump was pitch perfect in that speech, and it's sort of classic Trump: say something that on the face of it sounds utterly ridiculous but at its heart gets to a core belief of a particular constituency.
posted by one_bean at 11:37 PM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Bernie Sanders' 'Scorched Earth' Strategy Seems to Be Working

[muffled ballad of sacco & vanzetti screaming in the distance]
posted by figurant at 11:37 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mean, he does literally literally say there is no drought: "They don't understand — nobody understands it," he said, declaring at one point: "There is no drought. They turn the water out into the ocean."

He also blames the environmentalists and the government, but he seems to be saying that there isn't any drought at all; it's just made up by the environmentalists.
posted by Weeping_angel at 11:38 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't want the link tracking back to here, but if anyone wanted to google "WSRP unity speech" they might get a video, which they could cue up to 1:56:30.
posted by corb at 11:38 PM on May 27, 2016 [13 favorites]

Found it, aaaand now I feel nauseous. It's as terrible as promised. Thanks, corb.
posted by stolyarova at 11:50 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh my god. That video. Martin Luther King and Vox Day?
I cannot.
posted by Superplin at 11:52 PM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yeah, that was awful and nauseating and... Wow.
posted by Weeping_angel at 11:53 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

When they showed MLK, like he was part of their intellectual heritage somehow, my guts turned over. Talk about revisionism. I'm going back to the #ChickenTrump feed on Twitter to clean my mind before bed.
posted by stolyarova at 11:54 PM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Also notice that almost all of the "better times" footage is from the 50s and 60s. Mmmhm. Better. Right.

unless you're not white, cis and male
posted by stolyarova at 11:57 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Wow Corb. That is truly frightening.
This isn't a game.
posted by dougzilla at 1:19 AM on May 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

He also posted some comments by women talking about their fear in listening to Trump speak and how it reminds them of past abusive relationships.

He reminds me of my grandfather and uncle put together, both of whom were abusers (also land developers). His narcissism is very obvious to anyone who has been subject to this kind of abuse. I do think some people who are supporters have unprocessed trauma, and they're playing their role in that dysfunctional dynamic. It's just such a glaring issue with him that it's not hard to see how it plays out in the people around him and who are drawn to him.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:51 AM on May 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

A couple of comments deleted, responding to earlier deleted comments.
posted by taz (staff) at 2:11 AM on May 28, 2016

Can someone please take away the Sanders campaign's shovels?

After putting pressure on the Bernie Sanders campaign to agree to meet with them, a coalition of HIV/AIDS activists now say that the independent Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential candidate is “misleading the public” about the content of that meeting, and “exploiting” their group for short-term political gain, even implying an endorsement by the group that they did not make.

Update: The Sanders campaign responded to the activists’ letter by accusing them of being stooges for pharmaceutical companies. No, I’m not kidding. You can read the full response here, but here’s a taste:
This is absolutely absurd and ridiculous. No presidential candidate running for president is more committed to ending the AIDS epidemic than Bernie Sanders. And you would know this if you read Bernie’s plan. Here is a copy:

https://berniesanders.com/issues/hiv-and-aids/

While we are disappointed in your continued mischaracterizations and repeated attacks on the Bernie Sanders campaign, it is not surprising that someone who depends on Gilead Sciences and other big pharmaceutical companies for funding would continue to drop bombs on the only presidential candidate who has the courage to stand up to the greed of the big drug companies.

PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.
posted by Talez at 5:00 AM on May 28, 2016 [24 favorites]

The Sanders campaign seems to be going to war with HIV activists. I cannot tell why. This makes no sense.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:13 AM on May 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

He reminds me of my grandfather and uncle put together, both of whom were abusers (also land developers). His narcissism is very obvious to anyone who has been subject to this kind of abuse.

Oh, yes. But I think that he goes beyond narcissism and well into psychopath territory. Now, most people think Hannibal Lector or Ted Bundy when they hear the word "psychopaths", but psychopaths don't have to be killers. Rather, the common denominator is a total lack of empathy and remorse, which comes in quite handy in a lot situations, such as when running for office. Of course, the usual caveats regarding armchair psychology apply, but here is a brief reading list on the subject. Read it, form your own judgment ... and be terrified of what is yet to come:

Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us (Robert D. Hare): "Psychopaths are social predators who charm, manipulate, and ruthlessly plow their way through life, leaving a broad trail of broken hearts, shattered expectations, and empty wallets. Completely lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they selfishly take what they want and do as they please..." In Without Conscience Robert Hare argues convincingly that "psychopath" and "antisocial personality disorder" (a psychiatric term defined by a cluster of criminal behaviors) are not the same thing. Not all psychopaths are criminals, he says, and not all criminals are psychopaths. He proposes a psychopathy checklist that includes emotional/interpersonal traits such as glibness, grandiosity, lack of guilt, and shallow emotions, as well as social deviance traits such as impulsiveness, lack of responsibility, and antisocial behavior.

Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work (Paul Babiak, Robert D. Hare): Snakes in Suits is a compelling, frightening, and scientifically sound look at exactly how psychopaths work in the corporate environment: what kind of companies attract them, how they negotiate the hiring process, and how they function day by day. You'll learn how they apply their "instinctive" manipulation techniques -- assessing potential targets, controlling influential victims, and abandoning those no longer useful -- to business processes such as hiring, political command and control, and executive succession, all while hiding within the corporate culture. It's a must read for anyone in the business world, because whatever level you're at, you'll learn the subtle warning signs of psychopathic behavior and be able to protect yourself and your company -- before it's too late.

The Sociopath Next Door (Martha Stout): We are accustomed to think of sociopaths as violent criminals, but in The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people—one in twenty-five—has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. One in twenty-five everyday Americans, therefore, is secretly a sociopath. They could be your colleague, your neighbor, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt.

How do we recognize the remorseless? One of their chief characteristics is a kind of glow or charisma that makes sociopaths more charming or interesting than the other people around them. They’re more spontaneous, more intense, more complex, or even sexier than everyone else, making them tricky to identify and leaving us easily seduced. Fundamentally, sociopaths are different because they cannot love. Sociopaths learn early on to show sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others’ suffering. They live to dominate and thrill to win.

*****

... and a quick google search (Donald Trump psychopath) reveals this:

Harvard Psychologist Explains Trump Is ‘Dangerous’ Because He’s Literally a Narcissistic Psychopath

Political Psychopathy–The “Culture of Psychopathy” as Epitomized in the Presidential Campaign Choice quote: “How can I prepare to be the best ‘political psychopath’ I can be? Are there texts to study? Schools to attend? How can I best prepare myself?” I’d answer, “Go watch, and watch again, and again, the 2016 presidential debates. Study especially the Republican debates. You’ll be watching multiple ‘political psychopaths’ in peak psychopathic form. Study these men. They are the masters…the masters of psychopathy. Good luck.”

Donald Trump, The Psychopath

*****

Now, I wonder what would happen if Clinton (or one of her surrogates) called him out on this. Just like "crooked Hillary" use "Donald Trump, the psychopath" at every opportunity. I think that could be a bit difficult to deal with for him, because (whether he knows it or not), it cuts to the very core of his character and might hopefully get a few people thinking - at least those who have first-hand experience at dealing with a psychopath.
posted by sour cream at 6:37 AM on May 28, 2016 [7 favorites]

Holy fucking shit. Calling Peter Staley a stooge for Gilead is like declaring war! WTF, Bernie? Is Michael Weinstein your HIV advisor? I'm just mortified.
posted by Sophie1 at 6:51 AM on May 28, 2016 [9 favorites]

With that, Sanders has just lost any remaining goodwill I had for him. Wow.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:03 AM on May 28, 2016 [12 favorites]

They're all psychopaths. Electoral representative democracy is an engine for selecting psychopaths as rulers.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 7:13 AM on May 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yes, mob rule brings out the best in people.
posted by y2karl at 7:16 AM on May 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

Electoral representative democracy is an engine for selecting psychopaths as rulers.

Exhibit A: Abraham Lincoln
posted by y2karl at 7:41 AM on May 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

That Trump quote about putting the water in the ocean--

The scary thing about this is that it is SO FUCKING INSANE and that is his point, that the feds would be all, 'let's send this precious water into the ocean!' And if people, if one single person, kay, let's avoid hysteria, let's say, if fifty people believe that the federal gov't is so fucked up that it would divert California fresh water to the ocean--

I mean, what ARE those 50 people going to do? If I thought, 'the federal gov't is deliberately turning my homeland into a desert' I would be all, hey, my 49 friends, let's go blow shit up.
posted by angrycat at 7:44 AM on May 28, 2016 [7 favorites]

Holy fucking shit. Calling Peter Staley a stooge for Gilead is like declaring war! WTF, Bernie?

Somebody has to tell Sanders to get rid of these guys. It doesn't really matter if they're from inside the campaign or out, but as I mentioned above, they have to stress that dumping people like Weaver and Gunnels has to happen ASAP. I really don't care if they're worried that Tiger Beat On The Potomac will declare that his campaign is circling the drain, because it's not really as if stuff like this already makes it look any less chaotic or desperate. It also probably wouldn't hurt for Sanders himself to send out a strongly-worded memo to the top campaign staff reminding them he will be the one who has to answer for the words and actions of his advisors regardless of whether he becomes President or continues as a Senator.

Bernie, a lot of us want to believe that this isn't you. Now's the time to step up and show the leadership you would bring to the White House.
posted by zombieflanders at 7:55 AM on May 28, 2016 [24 favorites]

There is no drought. They turn the water out into the ocean.

What this country needs is more carbon dioxide. Elect me and I will repeal the law of gravity.
posted by y2karl at 8:11 AM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

And if people, if one single person, kay, let's avoid hysteria, let's say, if fifty people believe that the federal gov't is so fucked up that it would divert California fresh water to the ocean--

"Divert" is perhaps not the word, not like they've built channels or pipelines to more efficiently get that water into the ocean, but the USG is indeed enforcing the flow of fresh water into the ocean in favor of the little fish, denying it to the farmers. Should this change is a further question, but Trump is right that it happens.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 8:22 AM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

y2karl, yes, Clinton ran a lousy campaign in 2008, and did as much to defeat herself as Obama did to win the primary. I recall clearly, at the time, marveling at how bad of a manager she proved to be. From a September 2008 post-mortem of her campaign in The Atlantic:

The anger and toxic obsessions overwhelmed even the most reserved Beltway wise men. Surprisingly, Clinton herself, when pressed, was her own shrewdest strategist, a role that had never been her strong suit in the White House. But her advisers couldn’t execute strategy; they routinely attacked and undermined each other, and Clinton never forced a resolution. Major decisions would be put off for weeks until suddenly she would erupt, driving her staff to panic and misfire.

Above all, this irony emerges: Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence—on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to “do the job from Day One.” In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency.

Yes, Obama ran a great campaign in 2008, but many seem to have forgotten what a long-shot he really was, and how much he needed Clinton to totally botch her bid, to win that primary.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:32 AM on May 28, 2016

I mean, all the President Camacho jokes in the world can't compete with a reality where a major presidential candidate declares the massive 100 - year drought isn't actually happening.
posted by Existential Dread at 8:44 AM on May 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

USG is indeed enforcing the flow of fresh water into the ocean in favor of the little fish, denying it to the farmers. Should this change is a further question, but Trump is right that it happens.

Trump isn't claiming that a small fraction of water is being diverted for fish. He's claiming that drought conditions are being manufactured by environmentalists and/or the government.
posted by dirigibleman at 8:59 AM on May 28, 2016 [7 favorites]

Loosefilter: as for botching a bid, that describes better a Democratic candidate for president in 2016 other than Hillary Clinton. More people voted for Clinton in Washington's primary than voted in the caucuses and no one on her side is crying rigged system over that.
posted by y2karl at 9:06 AM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

I am also not sure that the practice of "leaving a certain amount of water where it is so that all the freshwater fish in the region do not up and die" can reasonably be called water being diverted.
posted by kyrademon at 9:06 AM on May 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

It doesn't matter if he had the gist of it right (although he phrased it like a 10 year old doing a book report the night it's due), the fact that he claimed there is no drought when anyone with eyes can see it, when actual cities are running out of water because the water table is dropping below their wells is incredible. The sheer level of outright ignorance and lying is going to bite him hard.

You have it exactly backwards. It doesn't matter if he got the gist of it wrong. The party line is "drought is nature's fault, but water shortages are man's fault." If we had more dams, and we stopped diverting water for the Delta smelt (the effect of which, if you don't care about a little fish, is pumping hundreds of billions of gallons of fresh water out to the ocean), then there would be enough water for the farmers. Ignore for a second whether you agree with the argument. That's the fundamental belief of farmers in the Central Valley, that it's a "Congress Created Dust Bowl" because all the big Federal agencies stop the dams from being built because of environmental regulations and they push the water out to sea because of environmental regulations.

When Trump says there's no drought, you hear him claiming it has actually rained quite a bit the past few years, contrary to all tangible evidence. What farmers in the Valley hear is that, sure it hasn't rained as much the past few years, but if those enviros didn't get their way then we'd all be fine and the effect would be there's no drought. And when you try to correct Trump on this point, you end up sounding like a pedantic egghead who doesn't understand the concerns of hardworking farmers. Yes, okay, there's a drought. But there shouldn't be water shortages - that's a man made problem that Donald's going to fix.

If you want to understand why Trump has been so successful, it's critical to understand why what you hear when he says "there's no drought" is just fundamentally different from what his supporters hear.
posted by one_bean at 9:08 AM on May 28, 2016 [24 favorites]

The combination of decades of a declining education system and increasing mistrust in government has created the perfect situation for demagogues to gain mass support by making empty promises. It's nothing new. Reagan did it, after all.

Perhaps Clinton should start upselling the vision thing. How often do voters go for the rational reason-talker, as opposed to the wild visionary?
posted by Apocryphon at 9:27 AM on May 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

If you want to understand why Trump has been so successful, it's critical to understand why what you hear when he says "there's no drought" is just fundamentally different from what his supporters hear.

I think that is an accurate and good description of the pschological filter that allows people to make Trump's statements seem truthier than the truth.

The problem is, it's only possible because Trump is moving into a fact-vacuum created by media tendency to report statements even when they are absolutely contradicted by the facts. It's unconscionable to report, as news, the soundbites that Trump spreads, and *afterward* note how not everyone agrees. When Trump says there is no drought, it needs to be reported fact first, then bullshit claim second. "Despite overwhelming evidence that California has been experiencing one of the worst droughts in over a hundred years, Mr. Trump today claimed that recent rains indicate that there is no drought."

If Trump told the truth 95% of the time, then journalists would call him on his lies. His genius is in recognizing that in today's news climate, if he lies 60-80% of the time, then no one will call him on it. Most of the mainstream news about Trump seem to go "Trump today said [outrageous, unsupported claim]. Wow, how will this effect his polling against Clinton?"

I still think that demographics, a good campaign over the summer, strong support from president Obama and a decent economic situation overall will lead to a Clinton win. My bigger fear though is that Trump is not the apotheosis of right-wing proto-fascist demagoguery, but merely the teacher for the next round of elections.
posted by skewed at 9:30 AM on May 28, 2016 [12 favorites]

My fear is that a market correction is inevitable, and it may happen during this election season. Don't recessions come in 7-8 year cycles? We are overdue for one.
posted by Apocryphon at 9:33 AM on May 28, 2016

There's no precise timing for recessions, they can come close together or far apart. The most recent data for the previous quarter was .8% growth, which is on the low-side, but suggests an actual recession would be at worst 6-12 months away.

A market correction is something distinct, just a drop in stock market values. An actual correction (10% drop in value from the peak) would drive headlines for awhile, but unless it was sustained over months with no sign of recovery, it wouldn't be a story big enough to drive the election, I don't think. A 10% drop over 1-2 months with a 3-5% recovery over a similar period afterward is not that unlikely, but also not that big of a deal. A larger drop would have to be precipitated by some major event, because at this point corporate profitability is still good and that is the fundamental factor that drives the market.
posted by skewed at 9:39 AM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

My fear is that there will be a moderate market crash because Trump is ahead in some polls near the election and actual business leaders know that defaulting on the debt and starting trade wars would be terrible for business, and then the reaction to trump's terrible planning is that regular, non-ceo people take this as evidence that they need to elect trump.
posted by sandswipe at 9:39 AM on May 28, 2016 [6 favorites]

Yeah, to me that scenario sounds both preposterous and disturbingly plausible.
posted by skewed at 9:51 AM on May 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

as for botching a bid, that describes better a Democratic candidate for president in 2016 other than Hillary Clinton

Well, if we're talking Democratic candidates botching a bid for president generally, there are more apt examples from the past several decades. But my point was about Clinton's 2008 campaign and her demonstrated lack of managerial acumen during it; what anyone else does/did in any other year is beside that point.

However, I will say that, in my experience, a professional who demonstrates incompetence in a core skill set in their 50s or 60s is likely demonstrating a permanent trait.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:58 AM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Election 2016: that scenario sounds both preposterous and disturbingly plausible
posted by poffin boffin at 9:59 AM on May 28, 2016 [19 favorites]

one deleted; maybe hold off on linking the fighty hit piece stuff if you have to disclaimer that you haven't even confirmed it?
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:07 AM on May 28, 2016

FWIW, several news and music outlets are reporting that Sanders did in fact come on stage to "Where The Hood At," which as that link notes, contains lyrics that are homophobic and transphobic as well as condoning anti-LGBT violence. Video of the song being played at the rally as he comes on stage is available on Youtube.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:19 AM on May 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

Oh my God. Sanders, stop. Just stop.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:22 AM on May 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

(ps, the lyrics are included in the first link and could be highly triggering for anyone who's queer and/or trans)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:24 AM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh shit, sorry for leaving off a content warning.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:26 AM on May 28, 2016

OK, is is by far the most tone-deaf thing I've ever seen in a campaign. Why the Bernie Sanders campaign would choose DMX's "Where the Hood At" is utterly beyond my comprehension. Those who know me know, I am a hip-hop aficionado since the first time I heard RUN-DMC's "King of Rock" in high school. I know that there is plenty of rap that ranges from inoffensive to very, very progressive. This song is not in that range. It praises violence against gay people and transgendered people. Not subtly, or just in-passing, but as a major overt lyrical thematic element of a verse. There has been plenty of attention paid to candidate entrance music in the past few years. Mainly for copyright issues. It should have taken all of 15 seconds of listening to reject this song. Music is an incredibly powerful cultural force. People with Alzheimer’s can sometimes remember songs from their childhood when they can't remember their spouse's face. Associating yourself with a song makes a cultural and political statement. That's why they HAVE entrance music. This isn't just a song. And I don't care if they only played a few-seconds clip that didn't contain offensive lyrics. A clip evokes a whole song. That's part of the power of music. I was remaining neutral through these Dem primaries, intentionally, and this knocks me pretty solid into Camp Hillary. Fuck this fucking idiotic bullshit. This is on Bernie Sanders, and Jeff Fucking Weaver.
posted by Cookiebastard at 10:50 AM on May 28, 2016 [14 favorites]

Hoo boy. That's a firin'. Or it really, really ought to be.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:01 AM on May 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

Like that's such a terrible decision that in a TV version of this election it would turn out to be some sort of sabotage by one of the other camps.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:03 AM on May 28, 2016 [15 favorites]

Like if you had to pick a DMX song for Bernie entrance music, your one potential possible choice is 'Who We Be'--but you couldn't actually use it, because of, like, all of his other songs.

I want Hillary to win, but I also want to be the person who picks out Bernie's rap song entrance music. Word is bond, I can pick a different song for every remaining campaign event right up to the general election, and every single one of them will be a better choice than 'Where the Hood At.'

Get at me, Bernie campaign. Arf arf!
posted by box at 11:11 AM on May 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

Like that's such a terrible decision that in a TV version of this election it would turn out to be some sort of sabotage by one of the other camps.

I mean, it's pretty clearly the hand of Debbie Wasserman Schultz at work.
posted by dersins at 11:35 AM on May 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

FWIW, the link to Americablog says there's no real confirmation that song was played.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:42 AM on May 28, 2016

There's a YouTube video with confirmation in the same comment, though.
posted by Anonymous at 11:45 AM on May 28, 2016

Weirdly, there are what seem to be multiple videos of the same thing, some with the music, some without.
posted by dersins at 11:48 AM on May 28, 2016

I don't know one way or the other. Seems to be a lot of confusion.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:49 AM on May 28, 2016

The whole situation is really weird. The Fox one is muted. And the ABC video seems edited, as the crowd noise drops during the synth rock thing. What the hell is going on here?
posted by defenestration at 11:56 AM on May 28, 2016

FWIW, in the Americablog link, the recording with the DMX song seems to be the only one with ambient audio. The audio on the FOX and ABC feeds seems like it's coming through a sound board. I wonder if the networks mixed out the song for either licensing or "adult content" reasons. (Purely speculating, obviously.)
posted by dersins at 11:56 AM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

(In the case of the ABC feed, that would mean the weird crappy synth-rock stuff was added in, which would explain why the crowd noise drops out. Also, that track has shitty, generic needle-drop library music written all over it.)
posted by dersins at 12:00 PM on May 28, 2016

Yeah, it sounds to me at least that the DMX version is the real one, and the ABC one has cheesy music added after the fact. And it seems from the BET and Billboard links on the AmericaBlog link that DMX thinks his music was really played.
posted by chris24 at 12:19 PM on May 28, 2016

The Washington Blade thinks that the DMX version of the video was faked.
posted by Spathe Cadet at 12:34 PM on May 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

(Because the Sanders campaign said it was and provided alternate video.)
posted by Spathe Cadet at 12:35 PM on May 28, 2016

He's being hailed for his street cred, even by people who appear to be familiar with the music. I'm curious to see whether criticism of the choice is taken seriously or seen by the campaign and supporters as petty nitpicking.
(I don't think it's the least bit petty--it's more horrifying than hearing "Every Breath You Take" at a wedding--but I acknowledge that my initial enthusiasm for Sanders waned weeks ago, so I'm not especially sympathetic to gaffes of this sort right now.)
posted by Superplin at 12:38 PM on May 28, 2016

Frankly, whether it's real or not I think the attacks on Peter Staley & Co are more indicative of his regard for the LGBT community.
posted by Anonymous at 12:38 PM on May 28, 2016

Ack, preview fail. I'm relieved it seems to be fake.

Schroedinger's point holds, though.
posted by Superplin at 12:41 PM on May 28, 2016

When Trump says there's no drought, you hear him claiming it has actually rained quite a bit the past few years, contrary to all tangible evidence. What farmers in the Valley hear is that, sure it hasn't rained as much the past few years, but if those enviros didn't get their way then we'd all be fine and the effect would be there's no drought. And when you try to correct Trump on this point, you end up sounding like a pedantic egghead who doesn't understand the concerns of hardworking farmers. Yes, okay, there's a drought. But there shouldn't be water shortages - that's a man made problem that Donald's going to fix.

It's more complicated than that. It's the fact that rural communities in California have actually run dry because the farmers have sucked up all the groundwater in addition to demanding a greater share of water from the delta. It's the fact that saltwater from the ocean is intruding into the water table, with dire consequences for CA agriculture. It's the fact that water rights in CA are royally messed up, with senior water rights impacting everyone else heavily. Delta freshwater levels impact farmers downstream, shipping traffic, and the ecosystem.

I'm comfortable with Donald's garbled pandering to low-information rural voters or farmers who stand to benefit from greater water diversion (largely those with senior water rights). To everyone else in CA who has been paying attention (which is a far greater section of populace), he sounds like a fucking idiot. I might sound like an egghead to some, but to most I'm just another member of the reality-based community. And the "Congress-created Dust Bowl," signs (I'll admit I've never seen these) just indicate more confusion about the issue, as Congress (predominantly the House) has been working hard to strip those protections. So let them blame Congress, that's fine.
posted by Existential Dread at 12:41 PM on May 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

The Staley thing aside, I really hope that people who criticized Sanders for the video that doesn't seem to be real and who were so mad that he was fooled about the debate take a moment to re-evaluate. Anyone can be fooled.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:51 PM on May 28, 2016 [6 favorites]

The Washington Blade thinks that the DMX version of the video was faked.

From that link:

According to the Sanders campaign, a video of the rally was spliced with music of DMX singing “Where the Hood At?” as performed at the 2014 Masters Of Ceremony concert at Radio City Music Hall in NYC.

Surprising that the campaign was able so quickly to identify which exact performance of the song is in the video.

Did they already know? Is it possible the campaign itself (or one of their vendors like Revolution Messaging) faked the video to get Sanders some viral street cred (note that the initial reports were all positive), only to realize after being called out how fucked up the lyrics are?

Probably too farfetched. But still, weird that they would be so quick to point to a specific performance of the song from a couple of years ago.
posted by dersins at 12:54 PM on May 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

If the video had been real, there would have been more than one, from different angles.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:57 PM on May 28, 2016

The idea that the Sanders campaign itself faked the video is pretty crazy and not supported by any evidence. I don't know why we need to go there.
posted by zachlipton at 12:59 PM on May 28, 2016 [20 favorites]

Yeah, no, to be clear, I don't think that is actually what happened.
posted by dersins at 1:05 PM on May 28, 2016

However, I will say that, in my experience, a professional who displays incompetence in a core skill set in their 50s and 60s is likely demonstrating a permanent trait.

The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion, our strength, and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama, the next president of the United States.

Today, as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him.

And I ask all of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, June 7, 2008

That, in particular, was not, a display of an incompetence in a core skill set, but rather a gracious concession and an expression of total support for and solidarity with an opponent to whom she lost in a hard fought contest.

Should she lose the one she is in now, well, the record shows she can step up to the plate. She supported Obama to the max and campaigned for him.

Should she not become the Democratic nominee, I suspect she will do the same for Senator Sanders.

Should she win the race that she is in now, will Senator Sanders display the magnimanity she did and do the work for her that she did for Obama ? Will he step up to the plate ?

I sorely hope so. But, given the record so far, and, especially given current indications, I am not holding my breath.

If he does, I will be so grateful.

Should his supporters listen to him, and follow his lead, I will be even more grateful.

And extremely and pleasantly surprised.
posted by y2karl at 1:17 PM on May 28, 2016 [12 favorites]

OK, Hahaha, great, so the Sanders campaign didn't use that horrible DMX after all-instead it was some kind of fucked-up troll that I fell for. That's a relief! Phew! Sorry I flew off the handle there, I get a little uptight sometimes about the death of democracy but it's OK, just gonna go take a walk and kick every yard sign over that I can find every day for the next six months now.
posted by Cookiebastard at 1:58 PM on May 28, 2016 [7 favorites]

It's OK I fell for #ManEnough4Hillary. We all get rused sometimes.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 2:39 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Now confirmed as a hoax by a Sanders supporter (who is claiming it was a "social experiment" in the statement he gave Slate.)
posted by dersins at 3:02 PM on May 28, 2016

Idiot troll does trolling. News at 11.
posted by zachlipton at 3:09 PM on May 28, 2016

What a weird and destructive thing to do.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:10 PM on May 28, 2016 [11 favorites]

To those Hilary supporters, I hope you feel at a lose [sic] for words and I say that with all due respect, I respect your stance but Id [sic] like to ask you how it feels to believe you almost had a 1up on Bernie and a reason to shame him only to come up short?

Well, someone is assuming an awful lot of bad faith in his opposition—and, FWIW, the sort that really wasn't evident here. I think across the spectrum here we were kind of agog and horrified, not thinking in terms of scoring cheap points. Yes, we took it at face value, but, y'know, in a civilized society we should be able to do that.
posted by jackbishop at 3:16 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Remember how everyone was horrified and outraged in 2008 when Obama allegedly used 99 Problems as introduction music at a celebration, and it spread via Taylor Marsh and the like all over the internet, and turned out to be complete bullshit?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:18 PM on May 28, 2016

In a world in which multiple politicians have used Springsteen's "Born in the USA" because they thought it was upbeat and patriotic, it's not unreasonable to believe a campaign would make this kind of misstep.
posted by dersins at 3:19 PM on May 28, 2016 [7 favorites]

How about something on the lighter side? Nineteenth century American young people turned to political rallies to date, mate, and fornicate:

"Before Tinder, before shopping malls, drive-ins, or speak-easies, young people searched for a place to meet and flirt. In 19th century America, wild political rallies offered the perfect opportunity. [...] In the 1800s, political parties held massive midnight campaign rallies, promising booze, bonfires, and barbecue. [...] Newspapers frequently reported on the “young couples making love” (by which they meant flirting and cuddling) at party events. Some young people used partisan rallies to meet new partners, while many young women, denied the ballot, expressed their politics through their courtships. Parties looking for votes catered to young people looking for love. Together they built a reciprocal relationship, blending the most public and private aspects of life."

(Possibly NWFVW*, discusses ladies squealing.)

*Not Safe For Victorian Workplaces
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:27 PM on May 28, 2016 [10 favorites]

Or no wood for Volkswagens...
posted by y2karl at 3:31 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Nor weird for vivacious wolverines
posted by y2karl at 3:33 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

By the Numbers: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are Fringe Candidates
posted by bukvich at 3:35 PM on May 28, 2016

Lotta bad-faith use of statistics to score cheap, meaningless rhetorical points in that link.
posted by dersins at 3:41 PM on May 28, 2016 [8 favorites]

I've never seen a better argument than that article for the premise that "non-voters aren't worth sh!t".
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:43 PM on May 28, 2016

For example, here's how the author arrives at the conclusion that only ~8% of people align with Clinton politically:

Hillary Clinton’s claim of ‘centrism’ is belied by her miniscule political support. Calculation: 31% of Registered Voters are Democrats, 54% of Eligible Voters voted in 2012, 50% of Registered Democrats support Hillary Clinton: .31 X .54 X .50 = .0837

I mean, sure the part where numbers are applied to other numbers is, like, correct math, but to present those calculations as meaningful in the way the author claims is either totally disingenuous or evidence of about a 5th-grade level of understanding of political- and social science.
posted by dersins at 3:46 PM on May 28, 2016 [12 favorites]

Hillary Clinton Won’t Say How Much Goldman Sachs CEO Invested With Her Son-in-Law
posted by jeffburdges at 3:51 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Why would she even know that information? Why does it matter? It seems like someone found another way to say Hillary Clinton and Goldman Sacks in the same article. The same week Bernie wants to bar Barney Frank, co-author of Dodd Frank the bill Goldman hates the most, from the convention for being too pro-Hillary. Also as a reminder Bernie voted for the Commodities Futures Modernization Act which was the law that created the 2008 financial crisis.
posted by humanfont at 4:12 PM on May 28, 2016 [13 favorites]

...There are plenty of reasons to like Obama more than Hillary Clinton. I certainly do. But we all need to stay reality-based too. On domestic policy there was very little difference between Obama and Clinton during the 2008 campaign, and to the extent there was, it was generally Obama who was considered a bit more centrist. It was Obama who was the darling of Wall Street. His climate change plan was all but identical to Hillary's but included lots of happy talk about clean coal. Etc. etc.

This whole thing is crazy. Do people even remember the 2008 campaign? Obama was an inspirational speaker, for sure, but on policy matters he was a relentlessly pragmatic, mainstream Democrat. And that's how he's governed ever since he won. If you like Obama on domestic policy, it's really hard to see just what you'd have against Hillary. Their differences lie mostly in foreign policy instincts, and not anywhere else.

How Can You Like Barack Obama But Loathe Hillary Clinton?
posted by y2karl at 4:13 PM on May 28, 2016 [16 favorites]

Hillary Clinton Won’t Say How Much Goldman Sachs CEO Invested With Her Son-in-Law

So what?

No, seriously, so fucking what?

A rich dude invested in a hedge fund, which is what rich dudes do. The rich dude works for Goldman Sachs. One of the founding partners of the hedge fund is married to Hillary Clinton's daughter.

Then, as we can see in the video, some dude from The Intercept tried to get all up in Hillary Clinton's face at a rally while she was greeting supporters. She ignored him, because, seriously, she was greeting supporters at a rally and why should she get into it with someone going for a cheap gotcha? (You'll perhaps notice that there do not seem to be a bunch of other reporters shouting questions at her.)

Greenwald (not the reporter for this piece, I should note) has been responsible for some damn good journalism in the past, but the Intercept's coverage of the Clinton-Sanders race has been a joke.
posted by dersins at 4:13 PM on May 28, 2016 [10 favorites]

Well, speaking of Goldman Sachs connections:

Donald Trump has named an ex-Goldman Sachs partner, Hollywood financier and former Hillary Clinton supporter as his national finance chairman.
Steven Mnuchin brings with him an impressive list of contacts in Hollywood and Wall Street. The founder of film finance company Dune Capital, he backed action movies including the X-Men franchise and James Cameron’s box office record-breaker, Avatar.

"The X-men franchise"? Does that mean the box office of 'X-Men: Apocalypse' is going to help the 'Trump: Apocalypse'? Or can we just call him "Evil Mutant" now?
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:16 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

That, in particular, was not, a display of an incompetence in a core skill set, but rather a gracious concession and an expression of total support for and solidarity with an opponent to whom she lost in a hard fought contest.

Of course, I wasn't describing her ancillary skill set of conceding a primary when she's lost, but rather the incompetent core skill set of managing an effective campaign. If she were competent at that, she would not have to be so good at concession speeches. Thanks for underscoring my point.
posted by LooseFilter at 4:21 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

If she were competent at that, she would not have to be so good at concession speeches.

Speech. Concession speech, singular.

Prior to this cycle, Clinton has run in five total races: three primaries and two general elections.

Of those five races, she has won four, and lost one.

Very soon, she will have won five, and lost one.

Come November, she will (God I hope), have won six races and lost one.

But tell us again about all the concession speeches.
posted by dersins at 4:28 PM on May 28, 2016 [36 favorites]

Hillary Clinton Won’t Say How Much Goldman Sachs CEO Invested With Her Son-in-Law

Dude, didn't you hear? Influence peddling, cronyism, regulatory capture and conflicts of interest aren't things we worry about anymore.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:49 PM on May 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

Apologies: speech, for the single national election she's previously competed in. But that doesn't affect at all my point about Clinton's 2008 campaign. (Her 2016 campaign hasn't been impressive, either, and she's lucky she's only had to compete with Sanders so far.) So please don't throw shade my way for mentioning her concession speech: I did not bring it up, and only referenced it to observe that my initial point had been missed (again).

Look, I hope I'm wrong about Clinton's managerial acumen. I hope she runs an amazing national campaign and just embarrasses Trump and anyone foolish enough to support him. A good, solid national spanking is absolutely in order, for our own sake and for the rest of the world. And then I hope that she's an amazing president, which is something that would benefit us all.

But I cannot ignore the evidence of her public record, which speaks to mismanagement of personnel and poor decision-making regarding strategy (electoral, legislative, or executive) and which I have witnessed first-hand throughout my adult life from the time she bungled health care reform in 1993 to the present day. There is a pattern, it has been consistent for decades, and I think it's foolish to ignore it.
posted by LooseFilter at 4:50 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Well, poor decision making regarding strategy is certainly something of which Senator Sanders has no record...
posted by y2karl at 4:58 PM on May 28, 2016 [10 favorites]

Now confirmed as a hoax by a Sanders supporter

Well, with supporters like that, Sanders' opposition can save a ton on ratfucking, that's for sure!

Fuck that idiot and his idiot "social experiment.
posted by Cookiebastard at 5:15 PM on May 28, 2016 [13 favorites]

Losing 101: Most presidents in the last 50 years lost an important election
posted by FJT at 5:22 PM on May 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Dude, didn't you hear? Influence peddling, cronyism, regulatory capture and conflicts of interest aren't things we worry about anymore.

There are so many fine ways to shovel cash to or towards candidates that I'm not sure why it's only H. Clinton and not the Republican contenders that get a lot of ink.

Let's overturn Citizens United.
posted by puddledork at 5:35 PM on May 28, 2016

I have no love for Senator Clinton but, on the other hand I am not a victim of decades long Republican billionaire funded Clinton Derangement Syndrome. So, I don't see how a choice between a mobbed up for the most part business failure, famous for being famous, versus an outsider Congressman/Senator, not at all known for being a team player, whose experience in civic administration begins and ends as the former mayor of a city in Vermont is the better option for the most powerful political position on Earth. Between two palimpsest projection screens for their followers' pipe dreams is not the contest I want to see.
posted by y2karl at 5:58 PM on May 28, 2016 [6 favorites]

There are so many fine ways to shovel cash to or towards candidates that I'm not sure why it's only H. Clinton and not the Republican contenders that get a lot of ink.
Six Words: The Myth Of The 'Liberal' Press.

Although if you accept the common narrative that "the Republicans are the party of the rich", any occasions of shoveling cash to them is not news. Any occasions of shoveling cash to Democrats is pure "Man Bites Dog" news.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:03 PM on May 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

I mean, one can argue Obama was an outsider and unknown but we lucked out, didn't we ? Between Sanders and Trump is a snake eyes roll of the dice. Oh, the believers believe in miracles but I fear Trump will steamroll Sanders because, as noted above, no one has yet to really lay a glove on him. And when the gloves come off, I would rather have the devil I know going up against the psychopath with the grandiloquently pathetic hairweave.
posted by y2karl at 6:06 PM on May 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

Not occasional at all, even: on Open Secrets' Joint Fundraising Committee page top 10 list, the current posted numbers show the Hillary Victory Fund which accepts up to $358,000 from each individual thanks to tapping the donor limits of 33 state Democratic party organizations via the McCutcheon v. FEC decision which depended upon Citizens United, has raised more money than all of the Republican funds in the top 10 list combined.

Spotlights definitely need to be shone on Republican activities (for example, I live in NH and circa a decade ago Eagle Publishing, Inc. which is now part of Salem Media Group tried to start up a fake grassroots conservative web site, which fortunately only limped along for a few years; but I'm sure there's much more money for operations like that now) but I can't imagine there's going to be too much reform of post-Citizens-United campaign finance under a Clinton administration when she's made it so integral to her own campaign.

If she proposes any particular laws once in office, scrutinize them very closely to make sure they're not just superficial cosmetic changes designed to shunt away the impetus for actual reform.
posted by XMLicious at 6:18 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Now confirmed as a hoax by a Sanders supporter (who is claiming it was a "social experiment" in the statement he gave Slate.)

I believe he said; "I was trying to see if I could pull a cheap, stupid stunt and get the world to view me as a jackass, and as you can see the experiment was a great success. I think I've proved my point."
posted by bongo_x at 6:21 PM on May 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

If she proposes any particular laws once in office, scrutinize them very closely

I suspect there's not much danger of anything Clinton does being underscrutinized.
posted by dersins at 6:22 PM on May 28, 2016 [12 favorites]

With good reason.
posted by XMLicious at 6:25 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Well, with purported reason, anyway.
posted by dersins at 6:27 PM on May 28, 2016 [6 favorites]

whose experience in civic administration begins and ends as the former mayor of a city in Vermont

Oh, come on. In addition to being mayor (where he was re-elected three times before stepping down) he's also been a congressman for 16 years and a senator for 10. Clinton has great qualifications as well, but Sanders is just as qualified as most people who seek the Presidency - Obama was a state senator for 8 years and a national senator for less than 4 before his campaign.
posted by en forme de poire at 6:30 PM on May 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

Now confirmed as a hoax by a Sanders supporter (who is claiming it was a "social experiment" in the statement he gave Slate.)

I believe he said; "I was trying to see if I could pull a cheap, stupid stunt and get the world to view me as a jackass, and as you can see the experiment was a great success. I think I've proved my point."

I know that this is a joke, but in his actual statement to Billboard, he says: "I wanted to show the world that politics are not something to fool around with and to prove it, I faked this video" which I think somehow manages to make him seem like even more of a jackass than your line does.
posted by DiscountDeity at 6:31 PM on May 28, 2016 [15 favorites]

but Sanders is just as qualified as most people who seek the Presidency

I agree, and let's keep in mind the opponent is Donald fucking Trump, TV clown and failed businessman. Qualified candidates for the Dems is not the problem.
posted by bongo_x at 6:34 PM on May 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

Sanders is just as qualified as most people who seek the Presidency - Obama was a state senator for 8 years and a national senator for less than 4 before his campaign.

Obama's kinda sui generis, though. Not sure it's really fair to compare anyone to him.

(For that matter, Trump is also unique in sort of the same way--except of course completely and utterly not the same at all.)
posted by dersins at 6:34 PM on May 28, 2016

Ideally the video thing wouldn't have happened at all of course. But failing that I'm glad as hell it was a dumbass Sanders supporter and not a dumbass Clinton supporter who faked it. Imagine the explosion of fury if it had been a Clinton person!
posted by Justinian at 6:34 PM on May 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

which I think somehow manages to make him seem like even more of a jackass than your line does.

I tried man, it's hard to keep up with people like that.
posted by bongo_x at 6:34 PM on May 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

Imagine the explosion of fury if it had been a Clinton person!

Oh, don't worry, comment sections across the internet are already awash with accusations of SEKRIT CLINTON FALSE FLAG OPERATION1!1!!
posted by dersins at 6:37 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Isn't "social experiment" usually internetspeak for "I got caught doing some ridiculous bullshit which I don't want to be held responsible for"? Didn't the User Friendly guy say he was running a "social experiment' when he got busted stealing MeFi comments for his shitty webcomic?
posted by EatTheWeek at 6:37 PM on May 28, 2016 [10 favorites]

Yeah I think it's pretty clear the "social experiment" thing is bullshit post hoc rationalizing at its internettiest.
posted by dersins at 6:40 PM on May 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

Obama's kinda sui generis, though. Not sure it's really fair to compare anyone to him.

For that matter, Trump is also unique in sort of the same way

Trump has a total of zero experience with elected office, which is totally unlike either Obama or Sanders. And I brought up Obama as an extreme example: most presidential candidates have some combination of experience as national lawmakers, state governor, and/or some other high-ranking position in the national eye. With nearly 20 years in the first category Sanders' level of experience is right what I would expect for someone running for the Presidency; it's his positions and third-party tenure that make his rise exceptional. I really don't think this is a very controversial point to be making.
posted by en forme de poire at 6:46 PM on May 28, 2016

I hope no-one's suggesting that he didn't have an IRB sign off on his experimental protocol.
posted by figurant at 6:46 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Dammit, I thought I just came up with the perfect sock puppet name; Donald Fucking Trump:TV Clown but then I realized having a sock puppet name that links back to your own comment doesn't really work. So I guess that one's up for grabs.
posted by bongo_x at 6:46 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sanders' level of experience is right what I would expect for someone running for the Presidency; it's his positions and third-party tenure that make his rise exceptional. I really don't think this is a very controversial point to be making.

No, you're absolutely correct. I didn't mean to imply I disagreed with you about Sanders' experience, and apologize if that's how I came across.
posted by dersins at 6:55 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

np at all, and likewise, sorry if I misread what you were saying.
posted by en forme de poire at 7:02 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

... it's his positions and third-party tenure that make his rise exceptional.

More detailed evidence casts doubt on the notion that support for Mr. Sanders reflects a shift to the left in the policy preferences of Democrats. In a survey conducted for the American National Election Studies in late January, supporters of Mr. Sanders were more pessimistic than Mrs. Clinton’s supporters about “opportunity in America today for the average person to get ahead” and more likely to say that economic inequality had increased.

However, they were less likely than Mrs. Clinton’s supporters to favor concrete policies that Mr. Sanders has offered as remedies for these ills, including a higher minimum wage, increasing government spending on health care and an expansion of government services financed by higher taxes. It is quite a stretch to view these people as the vanguard of a new, social-democratic-trending Democratic Party.

Mr. Sanders has drawn enthusiastic support from young people, a common pattern for outsider candidates. But here, too, the impression of ideological commitment is mostly illusory. While young Democrats in the January survey were more likely than those over age 35 to call themselves liberals, their ideological self-designations seem to have been much more lightly held, varying significantly when they were reinterviewed.

For many of them, liberal ideology seems to have been a short-term byproduct of enthusiasm for Mr. Sanders rather than a stable political conviction...

Do Sanders Supporters Favor His Policies ?

More likely it is his outsider status.
posted by y2karl at 7:22 PM on May 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

Outsider being a simpler way of expressing third-party tenure in this case.
posted by y2karl at 7:24 PM on May 28, 2016

I don't know what "third-party tenure" means, but yeah, I have a strong feeling that Sanders and Trump are riding an anti-insider wave of sentiment. The problem with this sort of disruption is that it's unfocused and disorganised, as we saw with the Nevada convention. Consequently, even when it succeeds, it doesn't result in a better outcome - it just creates a vacancy for fascists and blowhard populists to enter.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:34 PM on May 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

It doesn't result in a better outcome, no, which ever baffles me.

When you're in a race and somebody comes up behind you, letting steam screeching like a pot out of hell, you don't slow down and say "well let me explain myself...."

You fucking run. You run faster and harder and you keep taking ground, because it's a race.

For everything we've seen this cycle, I still cannot with the idea that any candidate should be within a thousand yards of something even faintly smelling of pragmatic moderation.

Careful will not win this election, but courage has a chance. Otherwise it'll be... well, I mean, we all know what it'll be otherwise.
posted by an animate objects at 8:37 PM on May 28, 2016

To go with your metaphor, you seem to be conflating "careful" and "not sprinting," which I think is a mistake. Careful is knowing when to sprint, and when to conserve your energy.
posted by dersins at 8:43 PM on May 28, 2016

According to politico's Twitter, Gary Johnson got booed at the Libertarian convention for supporting the Civil Rights Act, so who the fuck knows if I'll have a third party candidate for Republicans to run to tomorrow.

What the shit is going on with the whole of the electorate right now?
posted by corb at 8:55 PM on May 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

What the shit is going on with the whole of the electorate right now?

They're angry, and they won't be happy until there's blood, even if it's their own blood.
posted by dw at 9:02 PM on May 28, 2016 [9 favorites]

What the shit is going on with the whole of the electorate right now?

I think people are not aware that living in a fucked up but mostly working country is a privilege many do not have, and can't even imagine that there's a possibility they'd actually lose that.
posted by bongo_x at 9:07 PM on May 28, 2016 [22 favorites]

Do Sanders Supporters Favor His Policies ?

I actually saw this reported a few days ago but couldn't remember where! Thanks for posting it.

It makes me question the utility of making policy concessions to Sanders in an effort to get his supporters' votes. Because many of his die hards, according to this report:

But it is a mistake to assume that voters who support Mr. Sanders because he is not Mrs. Clinton necessarily favor his left-leaning policy views.

In that light it seems a fool's errand to try to appeal to those voters with policies which they don't necessarily support.
posted by Justinian at 9:17 PM on May 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

I am super skeptical about the conclusions in that article, as I'd be of any article that makes a data-driven claim without an accompanying description of the methods.

Anyway, I downloaded the data they based those claims on (ANES pilot 2016). The way they phrase the Clinton/Sanders question is as follows: "Regardless of whether you will vote in the Democratic primary this year, which Democratic candidate do you prefer?" (emphasis mine). Separately, they ask people about their party affiliation (D, R, I-lean D, I-lean R, other). So indeed, overall, Sanders "supporters" seem to want slightly less government spending on health insurance than Clinton "supporters". But this actually includes a lot of people who self-identify as Republicans: 17% of Republicans (not even R-leaning independents) actually answered "Sanders" to that question. This is way higher than any figure I've seen for the proportion of Republicans voting in open D primaries, let alone the closed primaries. Indeed, as a sanity check, these "Sanders"-answering self-identified-Republicans seem to actually prefer Trump based on the feeling thermometers (median for Trump 73 out of 100, median for Sanders 53 out of 100).

When you drop the people who answered "Republican" to the party affiliation question, leaving all independents and "other" respondents regardless of how they lean, Sanders supporters now want more spending on health insurance than Clinton supporters, on average, and are much more likely to select the strongest level of support for spending on health insurance (36% vs. 29%, total n = 642). The same thing holds for their other examples, an increased minimum wage and increased spending on child care. Sanders supporters are also much more likely to respond that the rich-poor gap has gotten "much" larger (69% vs. 56%) even without chucking Rs, and this gets even more dramatic when you do (74.5% vs. 57%).

This suggests, at the very least, that their evidence that Sanders supporters are actually more economically conservative than Clinton supporters is pretty fragile, and at the worst, that their conclusion is actually exactly backwards.
posted by en forme de poire at 9:19 PM on May 28, 2016 [17 favorites]

(code and results)
posted by en forme de poire at 9:45 PM on May 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

From the record, Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels are not exactly unfamiliar with political science or statistics and certainly not neophytes nor amateurs. But what do I know ? Not enough to refute them in a matter of minutes.

But who knows, maybe there's a hidden reservoir of committed social democrats out there among the millenials. After all, American voters are reknowned for their political sophistication. Donald Trump is certainly proof of that.
posted by y2karl at 10:01 PM on May 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

When you drop the people who answered "Republican" to the party affiliation question

So you're saying that when you changed the dataset you reached different conclusions? That's...not super surprising.
posted by dersins at 10:32 PM on May 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

I would certainly welcome any input from MeFi's crack squad of quantitative poli sci folks as to whether I missed something obvious. It's totally possible their results depend on some more sophisticated cleaning of/correction to those data, considering I spent around 45 minutes on it and am not a political scientist. Unfortunately, since their methods aren't described anywhere that I can see, it's hard to tell what exactly they did.

So you're saying that when you changed the dataset you reached different conclusions? That's...not super surprising.

I'm certainly willing to consider that I could be the one in the wrong here, of course. But it should actually be surprising if you analyze a dataset two different (reasonable) ways and get two opposite results. That usually indicates that either one of those methods is making faulty assumptions, or the conclusion is not robust.
posted by en forme de poire at 11:04 PM on May 28, 2016 [6 favorites]

The lawsuit against Jane Sanders is progressing and reaching out to Bernie himself. This is the lawsuit concerning the unsecured loan she made to purchase land from the Burlington Catholic Diocese for Burlington College, the loan that went south and eventually led to the college's closing. The lawyers representing the diocese sent out a letter to Bernie Sanders demanding all documents he has related to the loan.
posted by Anonymous at 11:17 PM on May 28, 2016

Well, Bernie could always take a page from the Trump playbook and insult the opposing lawyers at a campaign rally...
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:35 PM on May 28, 2016

I'm certainly willing to consider that I could be the one in the wrong here, of course. But it should actually be surprising if you analyze a dataset two different (reasonable) ways and get two opposite results. That usually indicates that either one of those methods is making faulty assumptions, or the conclusion is not robust.

I've not questioning your ability to run the numbers, I'm just pointing out that you chose to disregard all data from an entire category of respondents due to it not matching what you remember from other articles you've read on the subject. That does not strike me as a particularly rigorous criterion for exclusion.
posted by dersins at 11:47 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

To be totally clear about why I took that step of dropping self-ID'd Republicans: I am a registered Democrat who is definitely going to vote for the Democratic candidate in the fall. If you asked me which Republican candidate I preferred, I would have probably said Jeb or Kasich over Trump or Cruz, simply because I feel so negatively about the last two. However, that still doesn't make me a Jeb supporter, and in fact I would have campaigned hard to make sure he didn't make it to the Presidency.

It's possible there's some proportion of R's who are actually crossing the aisle and supporting Bernie, but 17% seems much higher than what people have reported in primary exit polls. In Michigan, for example, one of Bernie's best showings, only 4% of Dem primary voters identified themselves as Republicans (source). Furthermore, only 66% of people who indicated that they preferred Sanders to Clinton actually ranked Sanders highest in their feeling thermometers; mostly, the people who prefer Sanders but rated someone else higher actually felt the most positive about Trump (34% of the remaining; then Carson at 16%, then Rubio at 13%).

Incidentally, if you just look at people who did not feel most warmly about a Republican candidate on the feeling thermometers, the effect I described above, that Sanders supporters look more economically liberal than Clinton, gets even larger. The same is true when I look only at the respondents who on average felt more warmly about the Democrats than the Republicans.

Based on this I suspect that the self-ID'd R's in this sample just tend to really loathe Clinton (median feeling thermometer scores were 8/100 among Sanders-preferring Republicans) and like Sanders somewhat better (53/100) but not as much as they like other Republican candidates, like Trump (73/100). And self-identified Republicans, of course, don't usually want increased government spending on social programs.

Of course, again, I'm not a political scientist, and I'm sure this doesn't invalidate their larger point that in politics, tribalism unfortunately tends to win over policies; but it does make me suspicious about the specific claim that based on this study, Bernie supporters don't actually tend to support more liberal economic policies than Hillary supporters.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:07 AM on May 29, 2016 [14 favorites]

the people who prefer Sanders but rated someone else higher

Sorry, I got sloppy writing this out. This means: the people who said they would preferred Sanders over Clinton out of the Democratic candidates (regardless of whether they intended to vote in the D primary), but who also, based on the feeling thermometers, responded that they felt yet more positively about a Republican candidate than they did about either of the Dems.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:44 AM on May 29, 2016

One deleted. Sorry, but I don't think we need to have more and more increasingly acrimonious back and forth about this. I understand that folks could argue this into the ground, but ultimately, it's "I changed some things and came up with a different result," which is fine for a casual "hm" sort of comment, and fine also to point out how that doesn't necessarily invalidate the original research, but not really worth a continued extended angry derail.
posted by taz (staff) at 2:20 AM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

What the shit is going on with the whole of the electorate right now?

People are really pissed off for a lot of interconnected reasons, the entirety of which they probably don't understand themselves, and the bipartisan consensus is that failing to succeed in our economic and political systems is a failure of character, which pisses them off even more.

All they've got left are base bigotries and prejudices.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:21 AM on May 29, 2016 [8 favorites]

Hey everybody, let's check in on the Libertarian Party, surely their campaign won't be a dumpster fi--oh:

Johnson jeered for support of Civil Rights Act, driver’s license laws

The crowd first booed [Gary] Johnson after he was asked a question about climate change and the effects on the environment. Johnson said he wasn’t sure what the cause was, but that the coal industry was bankrupt due to free market ideals. The crowd showed their loud disapproval of Johnson’s stance that doesn’t quite fit with their ideas of Libertarian ideals.

Johnson received more boos when he advocated for forcing people to have some sort of license to drive a car and when he said he would vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1984.

posted by zombieflanders at 4:58 AM on May 29, 2016 [9 favorites]

the Civil Rights Act of 1984

Eh?
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:35 AM on May 29, 2016

the Civil Rights Act of 1984

Eh?

To be fair, there probably ARE libertarians who call it by that name as an oh-so-clever insinuation that government suppression of bigotry is Big Brother-like.
posted by duffell at 5:41 AM on May 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

Apparently Johnson has done a major SNAFU picking William Weld for VP.

But this was hilarious: Libertarian John McAfee's Campaign to Tear Down the Political System
posted by bukvich at 6:11 AM on May 29, 2016

6 Reasons Libertarian Party Delegates Are Wary of William Weld

Kinda interesting. I was a little surprised the LP would be so against Weld in a contentious year when picking a relatively mainstream politician could help them hit their highest score yet. But I shouldn't have been. It's the age-old dilemma of fringe-y American politics: going mainstream vs. holding true to ideological principles.
posted by honestcoyote at 6:37 AM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

6 Reasons Libertarian Party Delegates Are Wary of William Weld

Linked mainly (okay, entirely) so I can point out this quote from Johnson:

"I will not be elected president of the United States if Bill Weld is not my vice presidential pick. It's not going to happen. It's just that simple."

Which, I mean, that's true, in the same way it's true that if Weld isn't on the LP ticket I also won't be elected president.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:39 AM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Meanwhile, over in Wisconsin, a county clerk is openly claiming there is such a thing as "too much access" to voting, and asserting that long lines and wait times at polling places are an indication that the current system is just fine.
posted by jackbishop at 7:22 AM on May 29, 2016 [10 favorites]

Libertarian Party Presidential Debate from yesterday CSPAN video (2hr30min)

Libertarian Party National Convention happening now on CSPAN.
posted by phoque at 7:32 AM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

I love it. We have reached a level of ratfucking that we have no clue what's really going on.
posted by mikelieman at 7:35 AM on May 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

Meanwhile, thousands of bikers are riding into DC for the annual Rolling Thunder biker rally in support of POW/MIA soldiers. Donald Trump, who taunted John McCain by saying "I like people that weren't captured," is expected to speak at the event.
posted by duffell at 7:56 AM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump needs to roll in on a Huge Triumph for maximum impact.
posted by bukvich at 8:02 AM on May 29, 2016

Libertarian Party is voting now. Come on, guys, don't screw this up.
posted by corb at 8:32 AM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Donald Trump, who taunted John McCain by saying "I like people that weren't captured," is expected to speak at the event.

Nancy Regg, a spokeswoman for Rolling Thunder, brushed aside those controversies, saying Trump would “make our military great again.” Regg said the business magnate enjoyed the support of Rolling Thunder’s founder and much of the organization behind the rally.
posted by peeedro at 9:08 AM on May 29, 2016

Hard work, planning and lots of individual sacrifice is what has made the US military strong in the past. Plus whizzy machines and, decades ago, a strong manufacturing base. Provocative bluster and trumped up levels of xenophobia are a fucking dangerous path to "greatness".
posted by puddledork at 9:11 AM on May 29, 2016 [8 favorites]

Hi everyone, I just caught up reading these past two threads! Where are the complimentary cookies and/or certificates?
posted by ersatz at 9:31 AM on May 29, 2016 [17 favorites]

trumped up levels of xenophobia

I see what you &c.
posted by dersins at 9:54 AM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Gary Johnson just won the nomination with 55% of the vote.
posted by corb at 9:58 AM on May 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm gonna be pissed if PA is close enough that I have to vote Clinton. I really, really like Johnson.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:13 AM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Gary Johnson Swindle and the Degradation of Third Party Politics (2012)
posted by knapah at 10:24 AM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sanders: Voters should take a "hard look" at Clinton emails report

"I'm sick and tired of hearing about her damn emails" seems so long ago now.
posted by chris24 at 10:28 AM on May 29, 2016 [19 favorites]

That was back in the days when the Sanders campaign actually cared more about discussing issues and policies than about making vague "I'm not saying, but I'm just saying..." internet comment-style insinuations and innuendoes.
posted by dersins at 10:39 AM on May 29, 2016 [10 favorites]

Thanks for doing that bit analysis, en forme de poire. I can't access the American National Election Studies' data because I'm not a member of an affiliated institution. I hope someone will take will take a more detailed look at their data set. I'd like to a see breakdown of the results from Dems and Dem leaners, and younger versus older voters. And maybe an analysis specifically of Republican Sanders supporters, if the sample size large enough to permit that. They're an interesting bunch of people in their own right, even if they're not typical of Bernie supporters as whole and there aren't that many of them. From the questions they asked, it should also be possible to break out responses from activist and non-activist supporters of the candidates, which would be interesting as well. (As a person without the appropriate institutional affiliation, ANES lets me look at questions asked in the survey, but not the data they got in response to those questions.)

For those of who are mad at en forme de poire for doing this, I'll point out that it's normal in looking at polling data to go to cross-tabs and see how the results break down by different demographic groups, including party affiliation.

It's also worth pointing out that ANES's survey is not typical of most political polls. It's a survey of political attitudes among voting-age people in the US. It's not trying predict how the elections are going to turn out. They tried to get their sample to match the general US population in age, gender, ethnicity and other demographic variables. They did not restrict their sample to registered voters or likely primary voters the way most election polls do, though you can include only people who said there registered to vote or were likely to vote in your analysis ANES's data, since they asked their respondents about this, and you can use their responses to those questions as filters.

You can ask interesting questions from this data: Who says they're more likely to vote (based on self-report)? Who supports which candidate? How many people support this position also support that position? But you cannot ask who's going to win the election; that's not why this survey was conducted.
posted by nangar at 10:43 AM on May 29, 2016 [6 favorites]

The rolling thunder thing is sad. I only hope that this is a catastrophic misread of the membership and they boo the shit out of him.
posted by humanfont at 10:53 AM on May 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

Up to here, I can see where she is coming from, at least, even though her logic clearly does not account for differences in population density:
“If there’s an office open 30 days versus an office that’s only open 10 work days, there are obviously voters that have a lot more access than someone else,” Novack insisted. “There has to come a point where it’s just giving over-access … to particular parts of the state.”

And then she loses me completely:

When she was asked if some voters had too much access, Novack replied that there was “too much access to the voters as far as opportunities.”

The county clerk added that long lines in urban areas were actually a sign that voters had enough access to polls.

“Apparently access is an easy thing or they wouldn’t have long lines,” she opined.
posted by bardophile at 10:55 AM on May 29, 2016

For those of who are mad at en forme de poire for doing this

I want to make it clear that, despite my pushback, I am not "mad" at en forme de poire for doing this. Of course it's worth looking closely at the numbers from different angles.

On balance, though, I'll give substantially more weight to Achen and Bartels' analysis of the same data.

These guys are not some pair of Seth Abramson-style, talking-out-their-ass, pushing-their-agenda guest bloggers on loan from HuffPo; they are two of the most esteemed academics in the world in their field. I'm going to go ahead and trust that, though they don't explicitly lay out their methodology (it's the New York Times, not an academic journal), they actually know what they're doing.

They might possibly have approached the dataset with the time, care and expertise of people who've been doing this stuff at the highest level for decades. And it might possibly be that said expertise leads to a superior analysis than one predicated on a hunch-based model thrown together by someone on the internet with access to R and 45 minutes to kill.
posted by dersins at 10:59 AM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

I recently asked one of my older relatives whether he'd ever seen anything like the present election season. His answer was that it kind of reminded him of the '60s, and that the last time he'd seen this sort of level of political antagonism "a whole bunch of people got shot all over the place." So yay.

I guess I should be glad his chosen comparison wasn't to the 1930s, which he also lived through. But hey, we've still got a few months to go!
posted by AdamCSnider at 11:26 AM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

trump at rolling thunder livestream if you have a really strong stomach
posted by bukvich at 11:32 AM on May 29, 2016

There were some wide shots when he arrived, the crowd is tiny.
posted by peeedro at 11:36 AM on May 29, 2016

...the Sanders campaign was, above all other things, a test of a popular political theory that’s been banging around for a long time, really gaining traction with Thomas Frank’s 2004 bestseller “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” The idea behind this theory is that Republicans are only able to get to white working class and middle-class voters with racist and sexist appeals because the Democrats don’t counter with a strong message of economic justice. If Democrats embraced economic populism, offering things like single payer health care and free college that appealed to the self-interest of these voters, they could convince these voters to abandon their crusade to ban abortion and kick all the Mexicans out.

It’s a really appealing theory, in no small part because the Democrats used to have broad appeal to white voters in the old days, and if they could win back voters that defected to the Republicans decades ago while keeping the majority of non-white voters, they’d have an unstoppable coalition.

Sanders himself is a huge proponent of this theory...

...Sanders offered the country a neat little experiment: Would running a candidate who campaigned as a bold economic populist who offered a platform built on soaking the rich and drastically expanding social spending be enough to woo independents and even Republicans over to the Democrats? It was a perfect experiment...

The answer is a resounding no...

That’s why it’s important not to give up criticizing Sanders. His political theories were wrong. Instead, there’s significant supporting evidence for the competing theory, which was popularized by Barack Obama and embraced by Hillary Clinton, which is that the Democrats do better by focusing on core constituencies, like women and people of color, rather than continuing to chase the elusive white working class male vote...

If anything, it’s all more important now than ever for critics to stay on Sanders. Right now, he’s pushing this idea that the only reason he lost is because the system was rigged against him, rather than admitting that his bold plan to win white working class voters back into the Democratic fold failed. If he’s permitted to do this without pushback, he might convince some gullible Democrats to keep wasting time and energy on trying to win over white voters with economic populism, rather than committing to the winning strategy of building up the Democratic coalition through old-fashioned liberalism. Which, ironically, would end up undermining the long term goal of building a progressive majority.

It’s time to look in the mirror, Bernie: Now, more than ever, Sanders needs to be criticized for his failed political theories
posted by y2karl at 11:38 AM on May 29, 2016 [7 favorites]

The differences between EFDP and Achen/Bartels are probably just differences between two, both entirely reasonable, definitions of "Sanders supporters." The only one that appears in the pilot study is the one EFDP mentioned earlier, which is just "People who say they prefer Sanders to other Democratic candidates." This is not the same as "Sanders voters," which EFDP is trying to get closer to, since some of those people are not primary voters, some would prefer to vote in the Democratic primary but can't because they're unaffiliated or Republican, and some would prefer to vote in a Republican primary. Anyway, this is the only definition you can use with those data, because they don't ask about primary vote choice.

That people would adopt, after the fact, some issue positions of a candidate they chose for some other reason is boringly normal and not something unique to Sanders. Neither, for that matter, are voters who oppose many issue positions highlighted by their preferred candidate, though they may not be aware of the disconnection.

Achen and Bartels are smart and all, and not just talking out their asses, but you should assume that they are in fact pushing their agenda (or agendas). They're worldly enough to know that that's why you write a column in the NYT. How much of that agenda is taking Sanders down a little and how much is just here's something polisci knows about I really really wouldn't want to guess.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:46 AM on May 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

Oh, so they would squander their hard won academic reputations for a transparent "agenda" ? Ri-i-ight...
posted by y2karl at 11:57 AM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

See also Attack the Messenger.
posted by y2karl at 12:02 PM on May 29, 2016

This is a tiny crowd? Maybe compared to the Obama speeches, but there are a lot of people there.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:14 PM on May 29, 2016

"I'm sick and tired of hearing about her damn emails" seems so long ago now.

I gained a lot of respect for him when he said that -- it showed him to be on the same side, a team player even. It gave me hope.

But after seeing him deride, sneer and mansplainingly talk down to her in the later debates and then pull all the crybully stunts of late and become a de facto Trumpeteer, that respect has vanished.
posted by y2karl at 12:16 PM on May 29, 2016 [11 favorites]

This is a tiny crowd?

That's the Pentagon parking lot where the riders meet before the ride. Trump appeared on a stage in front of the reflecting pool by the Lincoln Memorial and there was really nobody there.
posted by peeedro at 12:24 PM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

"A crowd count wasn't immediately available, but the space in front of the Lincoln Memorial was far from filled up."

That space is the stairs and hillside between the reflecting pool and the ring road that goes around the Lincoln Memorial. The crowd in that picture is only about 100 feet deep.
posted by peeedro at 12:42 PM on May 29, 2016

it's also as hot as Satan's ass crack today, so that might have played a factor.
posted by angrycat at 1:21 PM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

So the Sanders campaign seems to be ending in ignominy and acrimony. Certainly both the candidate and his supporters have been engaging in divisive tactics that have become more and more repellant, marginalizing themselves in desperation. But does that mean that Marcotte above is right?

"he might convince some gullible Democrats to keep wasting time and energy on trying to win over white voters with economic populism, rather than committing to the winning strategy of building up the Democratic coalition through old-fashioned liberalism."

There seems to be a movement to do to Sanders what was done to McGovern- another flawed campaign with a flawed candidate at the center, beset with unlucky events and poor signaling all around. Marcotte claims that Sanders' campaign is a "perfect experiment", some sort of universal referendum on the idea of economic populism, which has been soundly rejected.

This is nonsensical. Sanders has always been a marginal figure of the Democratic Party at best, and his campaign this election has gotten farther than anyone could have envisioned. His failure to win the nomination is more of a disappointment to his most fervent (and vocal) supporters than anyone else. His candidacy has brought many important issues to the forefront, and forces Clinton to move to the left on several of them as well. And now Marcotte seems to be calling for Sanders' supporters to not only abandon the campaign, but the ideals behind it as well.

That is inane. Sanders is replaceable. All politicians are. His messages and policies are not. It will be up to the next generation of populists and leftists within the Democratic Party to carry those policies into 2018, 2020, and beyond, but his defeat this year should not mean the defeat of economic populism. If anything, it means that a sound candidate- someone younger, more demographically appealing, who speaks more of social issues in addition to economic ones- could do far better than Sanders will. But why should the economic message be diminished? Marcotte advocates "old-fashioned liberalism." That sounds like maintaining the New Democratic consensus status quo to me.

If anything, this is the time that Sanders supporters should be preparing to reform their movement from one that's based around a single candidate and election to a perpetual one that will fight for many. Learn from McGovern.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:23 PM on May 29, 2016 [22 favorites]

Enough inter-generational and inter-personal sniping, days off for further offenders.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 1:57 PM on May 29, 2016

Deleted several in that snipe-fest as apparently people are going to keep responding regardless. DROP IT. If you have nothing left to say but "Your candidate sucks because ..." then go get some fresh air and enjoy the spring weather.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 2:01 PM on May 29, 2016

For historical context, a different Salon piece: "George McGovern: He deserved better", another account of the sordid and tragic affair that led to the defeat of McGovernism in 1972 and its reputation by the party. Note that the author is Joan Walsh, so it's not as if the "McGovern got a bum deal" narrative lacks cross-factional acknowledgement within the Democratic Party.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:11 PM on May 29, 2016

Any thoughts on what an ideological foil to "MAGA" might look like? "Yes we can" ran out of shelf life pretty quick there. I don't think I'm With Her is reusable, nor the Bern.

Maybe...

"For Great Justice"
"People are People"
"Leave That Ladder Right Where It Is You Selfish Asshole"
"Occupy Netflix"
"All In The Family"
"Monty Python Was Right"
"Your Sense of Humor Is Like a Pungent Cologne That Cannot Fully Disguise How Full Of Shit You Are And Smell"
"I'm Blue"
"Cuddle More Hate Less"
"No Whites [sometimes]"
"Temperance Made More Sense Than Your Opinions but I'll Need a Stiff Drink to Forget What You Just Said"
"It's Literally Just a Roomful of Toilets"
"God Gives Poor Head, Fuck the One Percent Instead"
"Facts not Forks"
"Yeah Humility Is Chill"
"Put Down the Megaphone and Step Away from the Uterus"
"Righty Tighty"
posted by an animate objects at 2:19 PM on May 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

I voted George McGovern the first time I got to vote for President, never regretted it and I do not need to be reminded who he was.

But, then again, I was one who demonstrated against Hubert Humphrey when he campaigned in Seattle and that I bitterly regret. For we missed our chance there, given by how narrowly he lost. What a difference it would have made.

I just hope there is not a Hillary Rodham Clinton: She Deserved Better written by the cockroaches that evolve after the Trumpocalypse.
posted by y2karl at 2:32 PM on May 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

I think it's difficult to combine anger and populism and end up with progress, and in my personal view it's a little harder for the United States since, well, the US in some ways is a very angry country and there's a history of crowds turning into ugly mobs.
posted by FJT at 3:02 PM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Marcotte claims that Sanders' campaign is a "perfect experiment", some sort of universal referendum on the idea of economic populism, which has been soundly rejected.

The referendum wasn't on economic populism, but on the theory of false consciousness and the argument that identity politics was preventing a class-based politics from forming. The argument was that because the Democrats weren't giving a full throated economic based platform, the GOP was able to use bigotry to appeal to voters. The argument was that if Democrats shifted from identity issues and focused on class and economics, those voters would see through the bigotry and align with other leftward groups. This was the point of Sanders' "you shouldn't vote your race" comment at the start of the campaign.

But what actually happened was that it was shown that the bigotry of the GOP wasn't a bug - it was a feature and selling point. The issue isn't that the GOP voters were hoodwinked, it's that they want a societal structure that puts them on top. Furthermore, it also turns out that the intentional de-emphasis on identity issues made minority groups, for whom those issues are incredibly important, concerned that those issues would be placed on the back burner, and made them more hesitant.

So, what's the lesson take here? Well, the big one is that false consciousness is dead - these people aren't being tricked into bigotry, they openly support it. And what that means is that economic populism needs to work in supporting other leftward movements, not demanding they be subsumed under class arguments.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:11 PM on May 29, 2016 [32 favorites]

This is some crazy fucking shit
posted by angrycat at 3:19 PM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

here's how Trump treats veterans who don't shut up and take his money
posted by angrycat at 3:31 PM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

here's how Trump treats veterans who don't shut up and take his money

Remember kids: They're not fascists! They're just very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.

The jackboots and brown shirts? Well that's just for show. There's nothing to worry about there if you love this country and want this country to be great again.
posted by Talez at 3:42 PM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

it's difficult to combine anger and populism and end up with progress, and in my personal view it's a little harder for the United States since, well, the US in some ways is a very angry country and there's a history of crowds turning into ugly mobs.

IMHO the big picture is that two long-standing and objectively unfair / unsustainable periods of privilege and weatlh are coming to an end -- white men against everyone else in U.S. society, and the U.S. economy against the rest of the world.

It's not surprising that white men are linking these two essentially separate developments, and both Bernie and Donald have hit upon "unfair trade deals" as the conspiracy theory that unites them.

But that's not the issue at all. What happened was that China and India rejoined the world economy with half of the world's population. They can make stuff cheaper. That's just reality, and no amount of "renegotiating," tearing up or killing trade deals is going to change that or "bring jobs back."
posted by msalt at 3:54 PM on May 29, 2016 [15 favorites]

Judge bashed by Trump orders release of company records

This could be pretty big.

"Some of the firm’s internal documents previously became public. A 2010 “playbook” published by Politico, for instance, directed sales people to rank students based on their liquid assets to determine who to target for buying courses.

Curiel ordered that the playbooks and other records, numbering about 1,000 pages, be released by Thursday, June 2, allowing time to redact telephone numbers and other personal information about the company. ...

[In a separate suit,] New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman lalleged] that Trump personally earned $5 million from the enterprise, in which sales personnel were assigned to get people to pay $1,495 for a three-day seminar in real estate techniques. "

Sounds like Scientology.
posted by msalt at 4:07 PM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Marcotte claims that Sanders' campaign is a "perfect experiment", some sort of universal referendum on the idea of economic populism, which has been soundly rejected.

Considering all the advantages Clinton had and the disadvantages Sanders had, how close Sanders got to the nomination ought to demonstrate to the Dems the exact opposite.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:19 PM on May 29, 2016 [12 favorites]

But that's not the issue at all. What happened was that China and India rejoined the world economy with half of the world's population. They can make stuff cheaper. That's just reality, and no amount of "renegotiating," tearing up or killing trade deals is going to change that or "bring jobs back."

Wealth Inequality feels just like Global Warming to me. A lot of people are downplaying both. Neither can continue on the present course without ruining basically everything for everyone, and nobody seems to want to do what's necessary to stop it.
posted by an animate objects at 4:26 PM on May 29, 2016 [10 favorites]

Considering all the advantages Clinton had and the disadvantages Sanders had, how close Sanders got to the nomination ought to demonstrate to the Dems the exact opposite.

"Close" is a bit much, though. He led for one week and wasn't within striking distance after mid-March. If California had been earlier this time out we wouldn't even be talking about how close it is.

That said, Sanders' campaign had three fundamental flaws: They didn't get stuck in until well after Hillary had started, they had never run a campaign anywhere close to this scale, and they never figured out how to build a broad coalition. Bernie could be the nominee now if he'd started earlier and his team had done more to organize his coalition instead of expecting it to just appear. (Heck, he'd have done better to disrupt Hillary's, but he never did figure that out, other than a handful of elected officials.)

I don't see Bernie as getting robbed by the party. I see someone who is trying hard to disrupt it, but lacking the insider knowledge to know where it's weakest and what groups to carve off. His attacks on the Dems have been like a 5 year old trying to break a piñata -- he has a rough idea how to break it, but he's still flailing that stick wildly and hoping to find the spot.
posted by dw at 4:33 PM on May 29, 2016 [10 favorites]

how close Sanders got to the nomination

Realistically, though, Sanders was never really close.

Yes, he had a brief lead in pledged delegates after New Hampshire, but Clinton took the lead back in the very next contest (Nevada), and started to pull away after South Carolina; media (and Sanders campaign) narratives notwithstanding, the race has been a blowout since March 1.
posted by dersins at 4:34 PM on May 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

"Close" is a bit much, though.

Semantics aside, can we at least agree its bonkers for the Democratic Party to ignore the enormous voting block that makes up Sanders supporters? The party will have to respond and adapt to the youth, which will only grow. How they will, who knows - but pretending they're irrelevant is not a wise course unless you want to fracture a new party from your voters.
posted by iamck at 4:45 PM on May 29, 2016 [10 favorites]

Neither can continue on the present course without ruining basically everything for everyone, and nobody seems to want to do what's necessary to stop it.

Yeah, they're also related because the US and the West can't just push around other states to do what they think is the best for the world. And I don't really blame other countries for having their own interests or being wary either, since the West's record isn't exactly great.

Which just makes me facepalm every time Trump thinks he can simply get his way by basically acting like an abusive family member by either threatening other countries with violence, trade wars, or abandonment.
posted by FJT at 4:46 PM on May 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

So, lest anyone think this shit isn't bizarre, a dude just stripped at the Libertarian Convention.
posted by corb at 5:09 PM on May 29, 2016 [11 favorites]

I'm starting to think that maybe I accidentally ingested some hallucinogens without realizing it.
posted by Superplin at 5:16 PM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

That parody is a little too on-the-nose, corb. I think maybe the showrunners should have cast somebody as Weeks who was slightly less stereotypically internet-libertarian.
posted by dersins at 5:21 PM on May 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

It isn't a parody it happened live and created a bit of a shit storm.
posted by phoque at 5:23 PM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

yes that was the joke THANKS FOR RUINING IT
posted by dersins at 5:25 PM on May 29, 2016 [13 favorites]

Libertarian Party National Convention, Day 2 Part 2 CSPAN video 4hrs4min, stripping and aftermath occurs at 3hrs24min.
posted by phoque at 5:25 PM on May 29, 2016

(I'm pretty sure Dersin was joking.)
posted by Superplin at 5:25 PM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

JOKE RUINER
posted by dersins at 5:28 PM on May 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

BEARDED INTERNETARIANS ARE NOT A LAUGHING MATTER.
posted by Superplin at 5:32 PM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

EMPRICAL EVIDENCE SUGGESTS YOU ARE MISTAKEN
posted by dersins at 5:33 PM on May 29, 2016 [11 favorites]

Apparently Gary Johnson was played in and out by music from Hamilton, thereby suggesting the the Libertarians have a much better handle on contemporary pop culture than on American history.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:40 PM on May 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

Lol holy shit for serious? I saw a screencap of that on FB just now and thought it was a hacky photoshop gag.
posted by EatTheWeek at 5:41 PM on May 29, 2016

I thought it was a joke because of the fake story about Bernie, but apparently not:

The blockbuster Broadway musical “Hamilton” served as a surprisingly apt soundtrack to the Libertarian Convention this weekend, where party faithful gathered in Orlando to pick a presidential ticket.

Gary Johnson, who won the top slot Sunday, opened and closed his speeches to the delegates with a pair of songs from the musical, ironically celebrating the proponent of a central banking system that Libertarians despise. One had the refrain: “I am not throwing away my shot.” The other: “We are outgunned. Outmanned.”

posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:45 PM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

dersins: "That parody is a little too on-the-nose, corb. I think maybe the showrunners should have cast somebody as Weeks who was slightly less stereotypically internet-libertarian."

Well, at least he wasn't wearing a fedora.
posted by octothorpe at 5:48 PM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Well, at least he wasn't wearing a fedora.

He really missed his opportunity for a 9-1/2 Weeks moment, there.
posted by Superplin at 5:49 PM on May 29, 2016

Hamilton was into libertarianism only in the same sense that Aaron Burr was into not shooting people.
posted by zachlipton at 5:50 PM on May 29, 2016 [9 favorites]

One had the refrain: “I am not throwing away my shot.” The other: “We are outgunned. Outmanned.”

So far, my reaction to most election news is best reflected by another Hamilton lyric. "You must be out of your GODDAMNED mind!"
posted by Superplin at 5:50 PM on May 29, 2016 [6 favorites]

zachlipton: "Hamilton was into libertarianism only in the same sense that Aaron Burr was into not shooting people."

More to the point, why would libertarians be identifying with the guy who created the federal debt?
posted by octothorpe at 5:59 PM on May 29, 2016 [8 favorites]

Speaking of things you can't unsee: Chicken Trump. [via BoingBoing's FB page]
posted by dersins at 6:00 PM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

oneswellfoop: Is there someplace I can get a list of the books published about what a reprehensible monster Donnie is that I can pass along?

This was literally days ago, but I just remembered there was a good primer on Trump writings where they sat down and interviewed the authors who wrote books about Trump. It's called Trumpology: A Master Class. They briefly touch on a lot of different things about Donald Trump, so I can't really throw a quote here that sums it up, but I do recommend giving it a read.
posted by FJT at 6:00 PM on May 29, 2016 [5 favorites]

Ok I found a clip. Watch here at 3:33:25 as Johnson finishes his acceptance speech. We get a booming "HERE COMES THE GENERAL" and the rest of "Right Hand Man."
posted by zachlipton at 6:02 PM on May 29, 2016

Semantics aside, can we at least agree its bonkers for the Democratic Party to ignore the enormous voting block that makes up Sanders supporters?

I honestly don't think they're being ignored. We've got a problem in reconciling this in that the Sanders campaign is pushing really hard on all the negative notes that weren't there in the beginning -- which, tellingly, was how it drew in so much support to begin with. At first, Sanders was running a cleaner campaign than anyone had seen in years and it was attractive. Now he's flinging all the same negativity and double-standards as anyone else, yet his base either doesn't recognize it or doesn't care.

Everything Clinton does to come closer to the Sanders campaign is portrayed as a scam or a sign of her lack of conviction. If she doesn't budge, she's too tied to the establishment and she's not listening. If she does move, she's weak and she's pandering. What else is she supposed to do?
posted by scaryblackdeath at 6:03 PM on May 29, 2016 [20 favorites]

Or just use this handy dandy clip link to witness the Gary Johnson/Hamilton absurdity in all its glory. I'm not finding "My Shot," which the LA Times said happened too.
posted by zachlipton at 6:07 PM on May 29, 2016

It should be noted that in the midterms of 2014, the percentage of eligible 18 to 29 year old voters who went to the polls was 19.9%, the lowest such percentage in years.

Which was the year the Republican party took over the Senate. And look how that worked out

The last time 18 to 29 year olds voted in any significant numbers was in 2008 when they were inspired by the candidacy of Barack Obama.

They also tend to vote for third party candidates. In 2000, 22% of Ross Perot's votes were cast by young voters.

Between low turnout and all the voter suppression laws passed by Republican voters, which make it much more difficult for both minorities and the 18 to 29 year old demographic to vote, it becomes a perfect storm for a very low turnout among millennials.

The oldest voters, on the other hand, vote per capita in much larger percentages than other age groups in both Presidential and mid-term and state elections. And they tend to vote Republican.

Which is why the majority of state legislatures are controlled by Republicans who then control Congressional redistricting, which has made for the Republican stranglehold on the House.

The only way this stranglehold can be broken is through a coalition of all traditional Democratic constituencies -- women, minorities, lgbt and youth voters.

But it would help if everyone voted for the same candidates. Voting for third party candidates, voting for outsider candidates or simply not voting, none of these are coalition building moves.

And let it be noted that the enormous block of Sanders voters is still smaller than the enormous block of Clinton voters.

The only way that the.youth vote can get accommodated by the Democratic party at all is to show up in large numbers to vote for whoever is the Democratic nominee in all general elections. We all have to be on the same team.

Millennials may now be the bulge in the population snake but unless they show and vote their numbers count for little.
posted by y2karl at 6:14 PM on May 29, 2016 [12 favorites]

By the way,.in regards to Amanda Marcotte, I should hope that people rtfa. The series of excerpts in this thread are that - excerpts and not a coherent synopsis. But then we should all hope we.all rtfa all the time.
posted by y2karl at 6:29 PM on May 29, 2016

So, lest anyone think this shit isn't bizarre, a dude just stripped at the Libertarian Convention.

There's something kind of endearingly Parks & Rec about this tbh.
posted by en forme de poire at 7:27 PM on May 29, 2016 [10 favorites]

The only way that the youth vote can get accommodated by the Democratic party at all is to show up in large numbers to vote for whoever is the Democratic nominee in all general elections.

But... we did. We voted Obama into office. And here we are 8 years later with a bunch of the same problems and a whole lot of people blaming us for the very idealism that put a democrat in the white house to begin with.

When will our votes ever be worth more than crumbs?
posted by an animate objects at 9:23 PM on May 29, 2016 [7 favorites]

> The oldest voters, on the other hand, vote per capita in much larger percentages than other age groups in both Presidential and mid-term and state elections. And they tend to vote Republican.

Which is why the majority of state legislatures are controlled by Republicans who then control Congressional redistricting, which has made for the Republican stranglehold on the House.

It's not as simple as that. The Tea Party on the Republican side has gotten really good at getting their people to turn out in off-year elections. They're running GOTV operations in these elections, we're not.

Just smugly making fun of other Democrats for not voting doesn't cut it. We need to make an effort to get our people to turn out.
posted by nangar at 9:38 PM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

The Hawaii democratic convention was this weekend - I didn't attend but I've been following along on Twitter. A Bernie supporter and grassroots environmental activist was elected state party chair in a close race. Some folks tried to eliminate same day registration for the caucus but it didn't pass. They approved a resolution calling for ending the superdelegate system for the 2020 race (I think this means that the state party will not include any superdelegates in their delegate selection plan and they will try to eliminate them at the national level as well, but I'm not sure yet). Both Sanders and Clinton had a little promo video - Bernie's was Hawaii-specific while Clinton's was generic; many were disappointed with that. Honolulu Civil Beat has a decent summary of day 1 and day 2.
posted by melissasaurus at 9:48 PM on May 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

whole lot of people blaming us for the very idealism that put a democrat in the white house to begin with.

I don't think idealism is being blamed, unless you think it's idealism driving the "Bernie or Bust" movement. And idealism doesn't preclude supporting Hillary Clinton or the Democratic Party.

I'm an older millennial and I consider myself an idealist, but I also consider myself a team player.
posted by FJT at 9:50 PM on May 29, 2016 [8 favorites]

So, lest anyone think this shit isn't bizarre, a dude just stripped at the Libertarian Convention.

Oh no. Ohnono. Don't even THINK about it Bernie.
posted by happyroach at 9:50 PM on May 29, 2016 [6 favorites]

When will our votes ever be worth more than crumbs?
When you vote more than once every four years!!! See "Samantha Bee on 2010 Election"...
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:52 PM on May 29, 2016 [19 favorites]

But... we did. We voted Obama into office. And here we are 8 years later with a bunch of the same problems and a whole lot of people blaming us for the very idealism that put a democrat in the white house to begin with.

And then after 2008 a whole lot of folks decided that that was all that had to be done, forget midterm elections, forget congressional seats, and anyway Obama didn't do everything they wanted immediately so fuck it, the system is fucked. It helps that Obama was voted in by a coalition which included but was not restricted to the young radical vote. If there's one thing that this election cycle has pointed to, it's that other elements of that coalition (African-American voters, female voters, older liberal voters, moderate Democrats) don't necessarily agree with how the young Left views the world.

I don't know anyone who blames (self-described) idealists for their "idealism". I know a lot of older Democrats who see entitlement and a weak grasp on reality in the "sprint" mentality they often display.

I've harped on this before, but the Conservative Counter-Revolution (just to take one recent example of a political sea change) took place over roughly two decades. Sixteen years from Goldwater's doomed run to Reagan's successful one, full of crushing disappointments (Goldwater's defeat, Nixon's impeachment, "milquitoast" Ford, Carter's victory). These things don't happen in an election cycle. Obama reached some people. Sanders has reached some more, albeit with a somewhat different message. If those people work long and hard, they can reach more, and those can reach more. But this is the start (if people don't just give up because eight to twelve months of hard campaigning didn't win them all the prizes) or it's the end (if they just give up). The victory, if it comes, may well be a ways away.

When will our votes ever be worth more than crumbs

When there are more of them. When they appear on the field consistently, as opposed to wandering off into voter apathy and disenchantment, while masses of conservative voters (including many in the Democratic Party) show up like clockwork. Sanders voters are a sizable chunk of change, but there are still larger blocs that are uninterested or frankly hostile to what they stand for. Politicians don't get elected by ignoring those realities, and even if elected they find it very difficult to govern.

Conservatives became decisive in the Republican Party and then in the nation at large by pulling together enough folks to become - in reality briefly but in appearance for several decades and counting - an indispensible bloc.
posted by AdamCSnider at 9:54 PM on May 29, 2016 [33 favorites]

We're not sprinting because we're impatient, we're sprinting because we're being chased by a bear.
posted by Drinky Die at 9:59 PM on May 29, 2016 [6 favorites]

"When will our votes ever be worth more than crumbs?"

Not to be flip about it, but when you show up for midterm elections. And not just for midterms, but for everything down to off-year municipal primaries. "I voted for Obama and nothing changed!" is weaksauce. I campaign and vote twice a year, every year -- primary and general, odd years as well as evens. That's 15 times since Obama's first election, not counting special elections. If you haven't shown up those 15 times (or however many your state works out to -- you may not have odd-numbered-year municipal primaries), then no, your vote is not worth as much as a reliable voter who turns out TWICE A YEAR EVERY YEAR and campaigns TWICE A YEAR EVERY YEAR.

It bugs me when newly-active progressives show disdain for the folks who have been going door to door with petitions and campaign literature twice a year, every year, for 30 years, and who have labored to put Democrats on the ballot for municipal water board director. You don't get a sticker for turning up once every four years (well, I guess you do LITERALLY get a sticker and it says "I voted!" but you know what I mean). The party is going to continue to concentrate on the people who trudge through late February mud in odd-year municipal elections to knock on doors for city council, because those are the people who turn elections. So start being one of those people. (I literally went door to door 6 months pregnant in the coldest winter in a decade on icy sidewalks when I was so unwieldy I could barely walk on NORMAL ground, for four hours at a stretch, eight hours a day, in an odd-numbered year, so I know from committed campaigning.)

Show up in 2017 offering to knock on doors for local town council and you'll be AMAZED how seriously your ideas and goals are taken. Again, not being flip. The people who show up in 2017 are the people who will drive the party agenda and capture the party's attention.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:04 PM on May 29, 2016 [70 favorites]

I mean, when I got active in local politics a little over a decade ago, the local Democratic party was still pretty suspicious of environmentalism and pro-coal-is-pro-union because we're a coal-mining state with coal miner unions. Not in my county, but unions stick together (as well they should), and we're a strong union county, and that is the backbone of the local party. There were a handful of us, less than half a dozen, mostly from out-of-town, in our mid-20s, very committed to environmental issues. And the party didn't take us seriously at first because lots of kids in their 20s show up on fire with whatever and then disappear. But a handful of us stuck around, built relationships, continued to advocate in the party for our issues, continued to campaign for local Democrats, and ten years later there's no infrastructure project that goes before the city council without a significant "green" piece because the Democratic city council members won't vote for things that don't have it. And half of them are the same council members as they were when I got here! It's just that we grew a constituency, a reliable one that turns out to vote, for environmental issues. We're now a local party that expects our Congresscritters and Senators to show up ready to talk to us about the environment, not to wait for us to ask. And they know it and they do it. (I mean, dude, our Republican city officials just introduced a $1.5 billion 10-year infrastructure plan that is 100% green, which we are still kind-of boggling about, but they have realized the only way to get a broad enough coalition of voters to agree to a plan that size is to make it green, because they can't get it done without Democrats and Democrats won't get on board without greening it up, and it's a little mind-blowing to realized that you and a few of your friends started that ball rolling and now it's like way down the hill ahead of us and Katamari Damancy-ing everything in its path.)

And it is a totally small handful of people who got that local shift moving. And yes, it took time. But all it really took was time -- our time over several years, just showing up and showing up and showing up, because the people who show up are the people who get listened to, and the people who get listened to are the people who set the agenda.

I know you're just one person, but you can be just one person making progressive ideas heard in every local city council race until your local officials just ASSUME they have to address it before they even begin. You can be just one person bringing up bike infrastructure every single time a road project comes up for a vote, until county staff includes it in their planning because they're going to have to talk about it anyway. Whatever it is. That's how you shift people's opinions and get things done -- you just. keep. showing. up. and. talking. to. them. It will probably take several years. But ALL it takes is several years, it doesn't take magical powers of persuasion. It takes showing up and talking and building relationships and sitting through meetings that are often excruciatingly dull. That's it. That's all. Patience and a tolerance for boredom and a cause you're willing to talk about. That is all you need.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:25 PM on May 29, 2016 [62 favorites]

If there's one thing that this election cycle has pointed to, it's that other elements of that coalition (African-American voters, female voters, older liberal voters, moderate Democrats) don't necessarily agree with how the young Left views the world.

I've heard they said quite a lot in the narrative of this election, but is this true? The young left is young white men? Because the numbers don't support that at all. I understand Clinton as identity candidate as a strong campaign narrative, but voting polls reveal this is more about age than identity.
posted by iamck at 12:20 AM on May 30, 2016 [8 favorites]

But... we did. We voted Obama into office.

And then didn't show up in 2010 or 2014. Which is why Congress looks like it does.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:00 AM on May 30, 2016 [6 favorites]

I never realized it takes Eyebrows to open your eyes.
posted by wallabear at 1:23 AM on May 30, 2016 [10 favorites]

It will probably take several years. But ALL it takes is several years, it doesn't take magical powers of persuasion.
Just Repetition... it's how a 40-year P.R. campaign for a business failure/com man made him an accepted candidate for the highest office in America.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:43 AM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Watching this clip of Dick Van Dyke introducing Bernie Sanders at a California campaign rally (and filling a little time waiting for the candidate by DANCING), I feel a little better about voting for Sanders, but I REALLY wish I could vote for Dick Van Dyke.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:25 AM on May 30, 2016 [9 favorites]

It's not as simple as that. The Tea Party on the Republican side has gotten really good at getting their people to turn out in off-year elections. They're running GOTV operations in these elections, we're not.

I promise you that we do run GOTV operations in off-year elections. You're welcome to join in if you like. We're always desperate for volunteers, especially people who are willing and able to knock doors. A lot of off-year GOTV volunteers are very elderly, and we always have too many phone-callers and not enough door-knockers. We had more regular volunteers who were over 80 than under 30 in 2014: everyone would be straight-up thrilled if more young people wanted to get involved.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:16 AM on May 30, 2016 [8 favorites]

I've harped on this before, but the Conservative Counter-Revolution (just to take one recent example of a political sea change) took place over roughly two decades. Sixteen years from Goldwater's doomed run to Reagan's successful one, full of crushing disappointments (Goldwater's defeat, Nixon's impeachment, "milquitoast" Ford, Carter's victory). These things don't happen in an election cycle.

To which the partial rejoinder is that there was quite a lot of money and institutional power leveraged on behalf of the Conservative movement of the period in question, whether it was early stuff like Robert W. Welch pouring money into Bircherism, W.F. Buckley using his personal fortune to launch National Review, and so forth.

Even the seemingly populist movements like the Moral Majority were not entirely grass-roots, but sprung up partly because a previous organization with money behind it suffered an ideological split and partly because Republican operatives recognized that there was a great untapped base of previously politically uninvolved voters and decided to aggressively target them.

Only *then* was there the kind of coordination and involvement at the local level to start building from the ground up. It's much harder to identify the well-funded, well-organized groups that will mobilize voters around, say, economic reform. Populist engagement turns out to require a parallel building of infrastructure by people of means and influence who are dissatisfied.

More broadly, the way people experience politics has shifted so profoundly that I doubt the Conservative movement could still be built that way today. People see and hear a 24-hour news cycle, and they make connections not locally but electronically; commanding mass attention is what they see as the currency of political movements, and the problems they see are presented to them as huge, systemic ones. Further, one of the problems is itself a lack of time and money.
posted by kewb at 5:19 AM on May 30, 2016 [5 favorites]

Door knocking seems scary, especially for a shy person like me, and I always dread starting, but once you get going its great fun. People are very nice for the most part, even when they disagree with you. Most places will pair you with an experienced walker the first few times while you get the knack. Then you start doing opposite sides of the street so you can go solo but see your partner.

Wear good shoes. Most politicians use it as a weight-control strategy because it's a lot of walking! Best time to walk is during NFL games ... everyone's home watching and you can humanize yourself by asking the score. (Downside: you miss the whole regular season)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:27 AM on May 30, 2016 [7 favorites]

I didn't realize the libertarian stripper was on the stage
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:18 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Eyebrows, while I agree with what you say, I don't think the disillusionment of first time Obama voters should just be brushed off with a lecture on the virtue of hard work.

Back in 2008 a whole lot of younger people got involved in politics for the first time in their lives, and back then they worked hard, and as a result they helped get Obama elected.

And afterward Obama basically told them to fuck off. **HE** wasn't out there talking up the need to work in the midterms, he wasn't out there being at the tip of the spear for their issues, he took their votes and then sneered at them for being "the professional left".

While I agree with what you say, I don't think the blame is wholly on the young idealistic crowd. Working your ass of for someone then being shoved aside and having your issues shat upon by your candidate is going to be disheartening and not many people are going to take that sort of experience as a message that they should work really hard for the system that just told them they aren't worth shit in hopes that maybe, at some unspecified later date that may never arrive, if they serve the people who hate them well enough they can get a bit of influence.

I agree that, horrible deal though it is, that actually is the only path forward that looks workable. But that's going to be a hard sell to most people.

"Hey idealistic young voter! Have we got a **GREAT** deal for you! Volunteer for people who treat you like garbage and think your ideals are communist tripe, work very very hard for no benefit to get those people elected, and once elected those people will sneer at you, visibly hate you, and deride you! After several decades your lords and masters may deign to let you have a (very small) say in things!"

I agree that, given the structure of US politics, that's really the only chance we have. But I think you'd have to agree that it's as far from attractive a proposition as you're likely to ever find.

Especially when there's hucksters like Obama out there pretending to really care about the issues of his young volunteers, riding their idealism into office, and then abandoning them without a second thought. Obama couldn't have done a better job of vaccinating the idealistic young voters of 2008 against ever voting again if he'd deliberately tried to.

It's damn hard getting the will to do the hard and unpleasant work of grassroots campaigning even if you actually like and support the candidates. When you're doing it for people who despise you and your cause, all in hopes that some day in the future it may pay off with a bit of influence, then it's a lot harder.
posted by sotonohito at 6:38 AM on May 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

Well, between 2008 and 2010 Obama did get us Obamacare, the biggest progressive legislative win since the Civil Rights Act. He also helped prevent a great depression. But he hadn't gotten you everything you wanted in two years with a Republican congress most of the time so that's telling you to fuck off?
posted by chris24 at 7:00 AM on May 30, 2016 [25 favorites]

Really I'm still kind of stunned at Obama's bizarre short sightedness. He had a pretty good political organization going, and after he got into the White House he just abandoned it. I'd say that Obama personally is more to blame for the 2010 debacle than any of the kids who voted for him in 2008.

He didn't try to hold the organization together after he was elected, he wasn't out there trying to get his 2008 voters working in the 2010 elections, he just let the whole thing fall apart and then joined in the chorus from the establishment Democrats deriding the "professional left" for failing to win 2010 for him.

The DNC has made a lot of use of the network and strategies Obama employed since. They're forming the basis of all future campaigns. They formed the basis of his 2012 campaign. No, he wasn't campaigning for 2010--because he wasn't running for office. He was there to govern. I think it is kind of crazy that you'd argue a president should be constantly campaigning, I would argue that is a sign of a broken system if you can't depend on voters to stay engaged for more than five minutes.

I don't think we can blame politicians for the short-sightedness of voters. The fact is, people like the idea of big, sweeping changes. Nuance and complexity and hard policy work with incremental advancement sound boring, even though the latter is what makes change happen. This is not limited to politics. This is a cultural issue.

Why do you think Sanders is inspiring so much passion? People want to hear big, bombastic promises. Clinton is campaigning on ideas of smart policy, realistic, incremental change, and long-term engagement. Sanders is campaigning on ideas that are somewhere between extremely ambitious to insanely unrealistic. Have a revolution and everything will be fixed! I'm also going to make the argument that this tends to be something you see more among younger people. I am not so old that I don't remember what it was like to be in my early twenties and think that the rest of the world just hadn't gotten with the program yet. A lot of growing up has been learning to accept the inevitable messiness of humanity and figuring out how to navigate through it. And that's what politics is: figuring out how to make change while dealing with the messiness of humanity.
posted by Anonymous at 7:13 AM on May 30, 2016

Yeah, I remember Obama making a point of saying repeatedly that after the election, he was going to have to deal with being President and that directing the momentum of his campaign to other causes would be up to the people participating in the campaign. At no point do I remember him declaring "fuck off" to his base of support. When did this "abandonment" happen? When did he become a "huckster?" He was busy being the President of the United States.
posted by EatTheWeek at 7:13 AM on May 30, 2016 [21 favorites]

Here's what you should know, but may not be hearing clearly in the political reporting: Mrs. Clinton is clearly ahead, both in general election polls and in Electoral College projections based on state polls.

It's true her lead isn't as big as it was before Mr. Trump clinched the G.O.P. nomination, largely because Republicans have consolidated around their presumptive nominee, while Sanders supporters are still balking at saying that they'll vote for her.

But that probably won't last; many Clinton supporters said similar things about Barack Obama in 2008, but eventually rallied around the nominee. So, unless Bernie Sanders refuses to concede and insinuates that the nomination was stolen by the candidate who won more votes, Mrs. Clinton is a clear favorite to win the White House.

Feel the Math
posted by y2karl at 7:20 AM on May 30, 2016 [6 favorites]

Best time to walk is during NFL games ... everyone's home watching and you can humanize yourself by asking the score.

Oh my god, no! I don't know about your city but if there ever was an iron-clad rule about campaigning here in Pittsburgh, it's never ever try to contact a voter during a Steelers game. Campaigns just shutdown and watch the game because there's no surer way to antagonize a voter than to interrupt them during game-time. You couldn't pay me enough to knock on doors when the game was on, I'm sort of shaking at the thought of it.
posted by octothorpe at 7:22 AM on May 30, 2016 [6 favorites]

So, unless Bernie Sanders refuses to concede and insinuates that the nomination was stolen by the candidate who won more votes, Mrs. Clinton is a clear favorite to win the White House.

Well, at this point, I'm a little worried about that.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:23 AM on May 30, 2016 [5 favorites]

Among the very, very serious comments on that Libertarian stripper video:

This is whats called COINTELPRO. Counter intelligence aimed at surveilling,
infiltrating, discrediting and disrupting domestic political
organizations. I can promise you that this man was paid off to do this.
This is disgusting. This is an attempt to make the Libertarian Party
look like a bunch of wack jobs. I am furious.

posted by duffell at 7:40 AM on May 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

Really I'm still kind of stunned at Obama's bizarre short sightedness. He had a pretty good political organization going, and after he got into the White House he just abandoned it.

A lot of that is Axelrod and other operatives were busy getting paid for victory laps. The big names attach themselves to big name elections and don't bother with the small time stuff unless there's a big payday attached. There was a lot of goodwill squandered. Obama has had a busy job governing, as will Hillary (we hope). What we need is those that come out of the campaign with knowledge and experience use that power rather than go off in to high paid consultancy heaven.
posted by readery at 7:47 AM on May 30, 2016

Why do you think Sanders is inspiring so much passion?

Didn't vote for a war that mass murdered hundreds of thousands of people is a point in his favor for me. But I guess I am just too simplistic to understand the nuance of this crazy politics thing.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:54 AM on May 30, 2016 [7 favorites]

Didn't vote for a war that mass murdered hundreds of thousands of people is a point in his favor for me.

If you're a single-issue voter and that's your issue, then yeah, Sanders or Trump are your only current options. But most Sanders supporters are advocating for him based on other issues as well, and many of those issues fit the "giant, sweeping promise" description.
posted by Anonymous at 7:58 AM on May 30, 2016

"Don't be a party to mass murder," isn't really a "single issue" for me in the sense that phrase is traditionally used.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:03 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Barney Frank's response to Sanders trying to kick him off the rules committee is amazing.
posted by chris24 at 8:12 AM on May 30, 2016

If you're a single-issue voter and that's your issue, then yeah, Sanders or Trump are your only current options.

A reminder that Trump supported the Iraq War.
posted by chris24 at 8:13 AM on May 30, 2016 [6 favorites]

And we're right back to the fall back position for the establishment: any criticism is the result of a childish petulance rooted in a snit that they didn't get everything they asked for right away.

No, that's not the problem.

Obama and his administraton told the Leftists who helped get him into office to bugger off on many occasions, here's one. With, as usual, the claims that any criticism of the establishment is rooted in a temper tantrum because we didn't get all the toys right away.

Obama said when he was elected that we'd need to push him, but when we tried to we were told that we were crybabies and wild eyed nutcases, the "professional left" due nothing but contempt and dismissal.

That's a problem.

It seems that for a great many people in the Democratic party the only acceptable behavior is long hours of volunteering for any and all establishment Democrats, voting for establishment Democrats, and then being nice polite kiddies and shutting the fuck up in between.

Primary challenges to establishment Democrats, we are told, are utterly unacceptable. The Democrats must be a "big tent", which always means big enough to hold conservatives but not quite big enough to hold the left.

Criticism of elected Democratic officials is also unacceptable. This, I've been told many (many) times right here on Metafilter is undermining the party and essentially treason that will result in President Trump overturning Roe v Wade.

This is what results in people using terms like Beige Dictatorship. Because, for the supporters of the establishment Democrats, there's literally nothing the left can do to try and advance their position beyond asking nicely and saying "yessir, thank you sir" when told no. Anything else, anything but wholehearted and uncomplaining support for the establishment Democrats is a mark of childishness at best, and a destructive divisiveness that will make any and all failures entirely our fault at worst.

Already in these political threads there's been a number of people, with a lot of favorites, declaring that if Clinton loses the blame is entirely on the left. Why? Apparently because we got uppity and started trying for a bit more than a few crumbs tossed our way with the scorn and contempt the Democrats always treat us.

Thank God that Sanders only got 45% of the votes, now we can safely declare that economic issues are completely irrelevant, get back to shamelessly pandering to the economic elites, and totally ignoring the people who aren't quite satisfied with that status quo.

Oh, but those same 45% who are totally and completely irrelevant and deserve nothing, not the tiniest crumbs, had better get their asses to the voting booth every election or anything bad that happens is entirely their fault.

Which is it? Are the 45% of Sanders voters irrelevant children who can and should be completely ignored? Or are they so critical that any and all failures are all their fault? It can't be both.
posted by sotonohito at 8:14 AM on May 30, 2016 [13 favorites]

That Frank quote is almost certainly fake. The screen cap is the only source.
posted by maudlin at 8:15 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

That Frank quote is almost certainly fake. The screen cap is the only source.

Well then, I've joined Amy Siskind, Josh Marshall and Oliver Willis in being fooled this morning. Sorry.
posted by chris24 at 8:21 AM on May 30, 2016

So, I am admittedly pretty innumerate but were the entire 45% of Sanders voters under 30 ? If not, what percentage of his votes were cast by them ?
posted by y2karl at 8:22 AM on May 30, 2016

And, for that matter, what percentage of Trump voters were under 30 ? Not to belatedly mention those Mrs. Clinton's total ?
posted by y2karl at 8:24 AM on May 30, 2016

Or, for that matter, those of President Obama's totals in 2008 and 2012 ?
posted by y2karl at 8:29 AM on May 30, 2016

Sanders
Trump
Mrs. Clinton

I don't know if this is deliberate but it kind of skeeves me out.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:30 AM on May 30, 2016 [18 favorites]

Oh, but those same 45% who are totally and completely irrelevant and deserve nothing, not the tiniest crumbs, had better get their asses to the voting booth every election or anything bad that happens is entirely their fault.

But it isn't at all fair to say that Clinton's policies represent "nothing" or "crumbs" - she and Sanders agree on a ton of issues! It isn't as if Sanders voters are being told to vote for someone who represents none of their interests.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:31 AM on May 30, 2016 [20 favorites]

Watching this clip of Dick Van Dyke introducing Bernie Sanders at a California campaign rally (and filling a little time waiting for the candidate by DANCING), I feel a little better about voting for Sanders, but I REALLY wish I could vote for Dick Van Dyke.

Re: dancing.

Dick Van Dyke is 90 years old (!). That's wonderful.
posted by mazola at 8:36 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Are the 45% of Sanders voters irrelevant children who can and should be completely ignored?

The vast majority of that 45% are people who don't think Obama is a sellout huckster who told them to fuck off. Who prefer Bernie for whatever reason but will vote for Clinton this fall without a second thought. Conflating all of Bernie's support with your own beliefs is presumptuous.
posted by chris24 at 8:37 AM on May 30, 2016 [25 favorites]

Obama and his administraton told the Leftists who helped get him into office to bugger off on many occasions, here's one.

You call that "buggering off", I call that "being realistic about the policies one can get passed and getting frustrated when ideological purists start blaming you for not turning the presidency into a dictatorship."

You work with the Congress you have.

Oh, but those same 45% who are totally and completely irrelevant and deserve nothing, not the tiniest crumbs, had better get their asses to the voting booth every election or anything bad that happens is entirely their fault.

This is a ridiculous exaggeration and I am pretty damn sure you know that. Hysteric rhetorical flourishes help nobody.
posted by Anonymous at 8:50 AM on May 30, 2016

> "This is an attempt to make the Libertarian Party look like a bunch of wack jobs ..."

"... and that's MY thing!"
posted by kyrademon at 8:56 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is whats called COINTELPRO. Counter intelligence aimed at surveilling,
infiltrating, discrediting and disrupting domestic political
organizations. I can promise you that this man was paid off to do this.
This is disgusting. This is an attempt to make the Libertarian Party
look like a bunch of wack jobs. I am furious.

this might not actually be wrong this time though
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:07 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mean, it's worth noting to a certain extent that the Obama campaign courted leftist causes far more aggressively prior to getting into office, and dropped them once he got in. I know, at the time I was a part of one. His campaign staff were full of reassurances; once he got elected, we didn't get the time of day.

This is normal for politicians. But a lot of people wanted Obama to be more than just your usual politician, and that's why they voted for him - and that's why they feel betrayed. They expected access, and were disappointed.

But the election against HitlerLite is not the election to cast a protest vote.
posted by corb at 9:08 AM on May 30, 2016 [13 favorites]

Really I'm still kind of stunned at Obama's bizarre short sightedness. He had a pretty good political organization going, and after he got into the White House he just abandoned it. I'd say that Obama personally is more to blame for the 2010 debacle than any of the kids who voted for him in 2008.

This passage begins with a premise that is straight up untrue, and gets more preposterous as it goes on.

The Obama for America 2008 campaign became OFA 2.0, under the aegis of the DNC, before the 2010 cycle even began. They were staffed in every state, and began by mobilizing support for the ACA before moving on the midterms and running GOTV efforts in every state. Sure, Obama didn't, like, run it personally; as noted above, he was kinda busy being President. He was, however, involved to the extent that his job (and campaign laws) allowed him to be.

What made the 2008 and 2012 campaigns so fucking successful was the sheer volume of volunteers, who basically acted as a substantial force multiplier for the organization's dollars and staff. In 2010 (and 2014), a lot of those people just didn't show up.

The ones who did show up were the ones who had also shown in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, etc.

The ones who mostly didn't show up--despite the best vol recruit efforts of OFA staff and volunteers-- were the ones who showed up for the first time in 2008. Without those volunteers, it is literally impossible to run a GOTV operation on the scale of 2008 or 2012. Those folks not showing up to volunteer resulted directly in a much larger group of folks not showing up to vote.

This is not the fault of the President, this is the fault of people who figured they'd done their piece after 2008. Which, sorry, is simply not how it works.

That "piece" is ongoing. It is never done. The moment people start to think "mission accomplished" is the moment we start losing the progress we've made. And it's on those people to keep doing their piece, not on the fucking President to somehow try to force them.
posted by dersins at 9:09 AM on May 30, 2016 [20 favorites]

The self described hard left supporters of Bernie have spent plenty of time attacking Obama over his inability to close Gitmo. Even though Bernie voted for the legislation that blocks its closure. That isn't pushing him, that's just a circular firing squad. If you want to push the democrats left, stop helping elect Republicans. Show up to help staff get out the vote drives in off year elections instead of sniping on web forums about how the party isn't left enough for you. When we have more democrats in congress the country goes leftward, when we don't we have to triangulate and play defense.
posted by humanfont at 9:10 AM on May 30, 2016 [13 favorites]

Not seeing this with a quick search through the thread, so hopefully it's not old news: Bill Kristol announces there will be an independent candidate - an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance.
posted by clawsoon at 9:10 AM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump is so thin-skinned he threatens Kristol just for mentioning the Libertarian ticket? He's so easy to rile these days.
posted by stolyarova at 9:12 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Donald Trump on Twitter: Bill Kristol has been wrong for 2yrs-an embarrassed loser

"2 years" is a little soft, but otherwise: stopped clock, etc, etc
posted by duffell at 9:13 AM on May 30, 2016

One of the tweets shows D. Trump calling his potential unnamed challenger "a lightweight". I laughed.
posted by puddledork at 9:14 AM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Bill Kristol announces there will be an independent candidate

Oh wow wow. I thought it'd never happen. (Obvs, good likelihood it still won't.)

I'm excited to see what kind of three kids in a trenchcoat and fake beard he's whipped up.
posted by saturday_morning at 9:15 AM on May 30, 2016 [11 favorites]

Well I mean Gary Johnson does weigh less than Donald Trump, he's a triathlete.

He's also a two-term Republican governor running with another governor, but according to Trump even Senators and Secretaries of State are "lightweights" so I don't know who wouldn't be. Maybe somebody with real experience like Hulk Hogan.
posted by stolyarova at 9:17 AM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't know if this was deliberate...

Not deliberate but rather unconsciously following Paul Krugman's usage, the quote of whom I had just typed out as copying and pasting on this phone is quite problematic for me as I have just figured that out and, too, it takes just as long, if not longer, when a thread is as long as this. Or so I have found.
posted by y2karl at 9:19 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Bill Kristol announces there will be an independent candidate - an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance.

Kristol seems to hinting it will be Romney. That seems HIGHLY unlikely, but, if it is true, I will gain a SHITLOAD of respect for Mittens.

He would have to know that a third-party candidate can be nothing but a spoiler at this point, which means he would be spending a ton of time, effort and money, knowing that he cannot succeed in anything but preventing President Trump.

He would, in other words, be sacrificing whatever is left of his political career for the good of the country. Which, for real, even though I don't like the guy or his policies, Respect.
posted by dersins at 9:24 AM on May 30, 2016 [41 favorites]

And, for that matter, I am fairly recent to texting and do all this typing by phone with one finger.
posted by y2karl at 9:26 AM on May 30, 2016

Bill Kristol announces there will be an independent candidate - an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance.

Given Mr. Kristol's track record, should we believe anything he says?
posted by nubs at 9:29 AM on May 30, 2016 [5 favorites]

In 2012 I was convinced Romney was the Worst Guy Ever, but his behavior this year has convinced me that he's a man of principle, even if I disagree with him fundamentally on a wide range of issues.

If he launched an independent run simply to Stop Trump, I'd seriously consider him an American hero on par with many of the founders. A Trump presidency is a potentially extinction-level event (if we're talking the probability of WWIII and the concomitant nuclear winter, or even just widespread economic devastation).
posted by stolyarova at 9:30 AM on May 30, 2016 [15 favorites]

Oh man, I don't know if my brain could handle the cognitive dissonance of 'Mitt Romney, savior of America' but hell, I'll take it. If nothing else, simply denying Utah to Trump would make any path to victory for Trump impossible.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:33 AM on May 30, 2016 [15 favorites]

If he launched an independent run simply to Stop Trump, I'd seriously consider him an American hero on par with many of the founders. A Trump presidency is a potentially extinction-level event (if we're talking the probability of WWIII and the concomitant nuclear winter, or even just widespread economic devastation).

My inner cynic assumes a (still purely hypothetical!) independent Mitt run would be bankrolled by the Kochs, with the intention of stanching the bleeding of the Republican Party in downticket races; it would give Republican congressional candidates in swing districts an "out" by allowing them to throw their support behind Mitt as the "reasonable conservative." Still, it's hard to see the political advantage for Romney himself, so I'll allow the "hero" label, cognitive dissonance be damned.
posted by duffell at 9:39 AM on May 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

If Mitt runs, please let his campaign slogan be "Miss me yet?"
posted by peeedro at 9:41 AM on May 30, 2016 [9 favorites]

Given how much of the GOP has decided to fall in behind Trump, I have to wonder how much support a spoiler like Romney (or whoever) could get at this point. Granted, falling in behind Trump really is a total abandonment of anything that smells of principle or patriotism, so there's nothing left to lose by jumping ship--except the badge of party loyalty. And so far, party loyalty seems to be more important to much of the GOP establishment than any of those other nonsense virtues. I want to believe it could do some good (and I agree that if it is Romney, it's a real show of principle and courage on his part), but I just don't know if it's realistic to expect any real impact from it at all.

Honestly, though, if Bill Kristol is right, the real surprise won't be the appearance of a spoiler candidate. The shocker will be that Bill Kristol was actually right about anything. If that happens, I won't know what to believe in anymore.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:51 AM on May 30, 2016 [5 favorites]

In 2012 I was convinced Romney was the Worst Guy Ever, but his behavior this year has convinced me that he's a man of principle, even if I disagree with him fundamentally on a wide range of issues.

Yes, this is what we all need to stop doing. He was never the worst guy ever, just someone I disagreed with and didn't want to be president. When the opposition party candidates all become the worst people in the world (like Obama is to many) then you've lowered the bar so much that judgement becomes pointless.

Then you get Trump. I mean, he's not any worse than those other candidates, right? They were all the worst people in the world.
posted by bongo_x at 9:51 AM on May 30, 2016 [16 favorites]

Still, it's hard to see the political advantage for Romney himself, so I'll allow the "hero" label, cognitive dissonance be damned.

Well, it's not like it's going to leave him ostracized and ruined, living on the run and sleeping in dumpsters. With or without elevators.
posted by y2karl at 9:53 AM on May 30, 2016 [5 favorites]

Yeah, basic competence and sensible judgement is something that is very important. The biggest problem with Bush was never his ideology, it was that he simply was not up for the job and it was obvious and exploitable. Romney never scared me like Bush or Trump, even though he would have been his own sort of disaster.
posted by Drinky Die at 9:54 AM on May 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

He would, in other words, be sacrificing whatever is left of his political career for the good of the country. Which, for real, even though I don't like the guy or his policies, Respect.

One of the things that always boggled me about Romney's 2012 campaign was that Romney's dad actually seemed like a genuinely good-hearted, decent politician. I disagree with a lot of his philosophy but it seemed like he really did want the best for everyone and truly saw being a politician as a chance to serve the public rather than just gain power. He's the sort of guy who was raised in Whitey McWhitestown, then moved to Detroit and made a real effort to try to engage the Black community--though he wasn't always on point, it was far more than most White politicians of the time did. He was a supporter of the Civil Rights movement and agitated for housing integration. When he ran for president he went on a 17-week tour of the poorest urban communities in the country. Like, straight up, unstaged wandering through ghettos, talking to random people on the street, calling local activists (even local Black Panther groups!) to talk with them and even dropping in on their offices when they wouldn't return his calls. He'd get cussed out and he'd just listen and keep on genuinely trying. It was clunky and weird but it showed real heart and concern. Nixon brought him on as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and he pushed hard for integration, affordable housing, urban revitalization, and his aggressiveness on these topics was ultimately part of what did his political career in.

So watching his son tie himself in with the racist bullshit coming from the Republican Party in 2012, it was really bizarre. Romney was one of the few conservatives left who approximated a classic, pre-Reagan Rockefeller Republican, and he linked up arms with the Tea Party lunatics.

Now, I recognize I am going full-tilt armchair philosopher here, but maybe Romney sees Trump as another chance to live up to his father's legacy. George Romney was a vehement opponent of Goldwater. At the 1964 convention he fought bitterly for civil rights and anti-extremism to be included on the party platform and ultimately lost. After Goldwater's nomination, he separated himself entirely from the national ticket and then kept fighting with Goldwater privately and sometimes even publicly. The parallels between Trump and Goldwater are obvious. This is an opportunity for Romney to repudiate on a national level the same racism and bigotry his father resisted over a half-century ago, and perhaps Mitt sees that.
posted by Anonymous at 10:05 AM on May 30, 2016

Wow, a Mitt Romney third party run would be huge. Even worthy of a new FPP, maybe?
posted by skewed at 10:11 AM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

I would totally read a biographer who wrote a book that examined prominent political families and analyzed the effects of different politicians' legacies on the political careers and leadership decisions of their offspring.
posted by Anonymous at 10:12 AM on May 30, 2016

So watching his son tie himself in with the racist bullshit coming from the Republican Party in 2012, it was really bizarre. Romney was one of the few conservatives left who approximated a classic, pre-Reagan Rockefeller Republican, and he linked up arms with the Tea Party lunatics.

I went through a similar bout of confusion watching McCain four years before that, so I get where you're coming from. There have been a lot of politicians who have had to make a choice between their careers and their own consciences in the past sixteen years (I mean, that's a part of politics in any age, but especially now, I think), and it's been eye-opening to see just how many of them chose career.

I'm skeptical that this move, if Romney actually makes it, will "destroy" his career. It might remove him from the national stage, but there's an entire infrastructure, at this point, both within Washington DC and outside it, devoted to making sure that former politicians and officeholders will land on their feet. And if and when the Trump insurgency subsides, he'll have a shot at a comeback as the elder statesman of a Koch-financed libertarian Republicanism that he's far more personally comfortable with.

I mean, this will probably be his last run, one way or the other, for the presidency (he'd be 73 in 2020 and 77 in 2024), so in that sense (and only that sense!) he's in the same position as Sanders - he's not going to do this again most likely so he has nothing really to lose. He's spent his whole life within a particular element of the Republican Party that the Trumpeters are trying to eliminate entirely, if they succeed, he will have no home whatsoever. I'll be as glad as anyone to see him run, but I don't really see it as a noble falling on his sword for the country or the Party. He co-existed as long as he could. They brought the fight to him.
posted by AdamCSnider at 10:18 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Romney: The man who saved America by being a loser.
posted by Talez at 10:23 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

The danger with a third-party run from someone like Romney is that it wouldn't just be an effort to siphon votes from Trump, but it would have to be targeted to certain states to try to ensure that nobody reaches 270 electoral votes, thus throwing the whole thing to the House. If that strategy proved successful, forget who the House chooses, it would be a a significant problem for the legitimacy of the President's office to have the job filled that way.
posted by zachlipton at 10:23 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I went through a similar bout of confusion watching McCain four years before that,

Yeah. I mean McCain was the guy who told one of his supporters that she was wrong about Obama being a Muslim, called him a good man and stood up to racism and xenophobia.

Then he picked Palin and all bets were off. We couldn't have that fucking loony one heart attack away from a 25th Amendment presidency.
posted by Talez at 10:24 AM on May 30, 2016 [9 favorites]

If that strategy proved successful, forget who the House chooses, it would be a a significant problem for the legitimacy of the President's office to have the job filled that way.

I doubt it, honestly. The 2000 election was decided by the Supreme Court, and that didn't cause any problems for "legitimacy" in terms of how the population at large have seen the presidency since or in terms of how Bush and Obama have actually carried out policy from the office. For most people in this country, you have to actually break the laws to lose legitimacy, not just take advantage of a rule that hasn't been used since 1824.
posted by AdamCSnider at 10:28 AM on May 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

I keep seeing this idea floated that a conservative third party candidate would somehow make it harder for a democrat to reach 270. It doesn't make sense at all, what state that Obama 2012 won would Hillary lose if she was facing both Trump and Romney? What state would a Romney third-party candidate actually win?

The real benefit for the Republicans of a Romney or similar "true conservative" candidate would be preserving the integrity of the party for future elections and getting the sizable portion of America that leans right but is uncomfortable supporting Trump to come out on election day to elect republican congressmen and governors. I could imagine a Romney candidacy creating an electoral landslide for Hillary but allowing the Republicans to keep roughly the status quo in Congress.
posted by skewed at 10:36 AM on May 30, 2016 [10 favorites]

Why would anyone assume that Romney or anyone else running third party was doing it to heroically save the country? I think it more likely that they would be doing it to selfishly save the Republican Party so that the Republican Party could continue to do terrible Republican stuff that benefits Republicans in the future.

I think that Clinton can do a fine job of saving the country from Republicanism on her own.
posted by JackFlash at 10:39 AM on May 30, 2016

What state would a Romney third-party candidate actually win?

Utah! And Idaho. But yeah, those aren't exactly electoral college powerhouses.
posted by saturday_morning at 10:43 AM on May 30, 2016

The thing is, Republicans/leaners are half the country. We don't need to be saved from them, we need to learn how to live with them. Right now we can't, we are intolerable to each other for serious reasons.

We've been living with them for generations, and it's even gotten easier to do so on certain issues (gay marriage, for one) in the past few years. And on a daily basis, we all inhabit the same country. Trump represents a portion of the electorate that sees coexistence as unacceptable, and so we need to fight that. But he doesn't represent half the country. He represents an energized core within the minority of voters who participate in primaries. We can't and shouldn't ignore what he represents. But he's not a sign of an inability to coexist within the body politic at large. He's representing those who want to make that inability happen.
posted by AdamCSnider at 11:07 AM on May 30, 2016 [8 favorites]

We need to learn to live with the people who think we are subhuman and try to legislate away our right to exist because a bully told them to in church
posted by beerperson at 11:11 AM on May 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

But he doesn't represent half the country. He represents an energized core within the minority of voters who participate in primaries.

I damn hope so. This country has a really active and terrible id.
posted by Talez at 11:12 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think it more likely that they would be doing it to selfishly save the Republican Party so that the Republican Party could continue to do terrible Republican stuff that benefits Republicans in the future.

Some Republicans believe saving the Republican Party (i.e. returning to less xenophobic conservatism) would help save the country because they feel their specific iteration of the Republican Party's policies work best for the USA. You can disagree with their policy positions (I sure as hell do), but being Republican doesn't automatically mean they have malicious intent.

Also, someone can do something both out of self-interest and for the greater good. George Romney didn't just disagree with Goldwater's racism and believe it was the wrong direction for the Republican Party, he also thought Goldwater's nomination would hurt his own re-election campaign.
posted by Anonymous at 11:12 AM on May 30, 2016

We need to learn to live with the people who think we are subhuman and try to legislate away our right to exist because a bully told them to in church

Well... yeah. We do. We do have to live with them. That doesn't mean we have to capitulate to them, but writing them off completely seems foolish to me. Even if we can win easily without them.

The Dems really have done a pretty poor job of saying "these are the policies we stand for, and here is how they can help you, a Republican voter." And you might say - well, why bother, it'll never work, they're too far gone into brainwashing, or they're just crappy people so I don't WANT them in my party - but the only way we're ever going to wrestle the country back from these people is by converting a chunk of them, because they're not gonna just stop existing and being Americans.

Reaching out to them doesn't mean compromising liberal principles. It means communicating those principles more effectively than we have been. Of course it won't convince everyone, but I can't see any other way forward for this country.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:19 AM on May 30, 2016 [19 favorites]

We need to learn to live with the people who think we are subhuman and try to legislate away our right to exist because a bully told them to in church

We are already living with them. They live next door, you buy your groceries from them, they stop you when you are speeding, they teach your children, they fight in wars and pay their taxes. We know how to live with them, because we've been doing it forever. We also, looking at the way life has changed in this country for (among others) gay Americans, African-Americans, Catholics and Jews and other religious minorities, know how to get them to change their minds.

We live in a country which has massive gender and sexual inequality issues. We don't live in a country where gay people can't marry and women can't vote (both of which were true when my grandfather was born). Indeed we live in a country where most Republicans are fine with women voting and where a growing number have no problem with gay Americans getting married.

We live in a country with massive issues regarding race and ethnic identity. We no longer live in a country where African Americans are legally segregated or where Asian American immigration is legally restricted. Both of those things were true when my grandfather was born.

IT IS HOPELESS LOOK AT ALL THE BAD PEOPLE THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF CHANGE seems to have a certain visceral charm for some folks, but its ahistorical. And defeatist. And, I have come increasingly to believe, for a whole lot of folks who are part of my demographic (white, male, middle-class) it's attraction is primarily based on the fact that it demands nothing but angst from us. After all, if everything is hopeless, we're not obligated to put ourselves out for anything, are we?
posted by AdamCSnider at 11:28 AM on May 30, 2016 [32 favorites]

What state would a Romney third-party candidate actually win?

Besides Utah and Idaho, he'd also have a shot at Arizona and Nevada. And he could really screw up Pennsylvania and Ohio.

I could also see him winning some Midwestern states that went for Cruz and have a strong animus towards Hillary -- Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, perhaps even a Dakota.

But it's important to note that a third party candidate is already behind -- the Texas deadline has passed and the North Carolina deadline is too close. That's 53 electoral votes an independent can't win.

Even throwing it to the House might be dicey. Delegations vote as a group, not individually. If you have Republicans breaking off from the "vote Romney" camp to vote Hillary, you may have Hillary win some states by plurality, foiling the entire point of this "kick it to the House" strategy.

All a third party Republican is good for is to help downticket. The GOP's best chance at winning the Presidency remains Trump.
posted by dw at 11:33 AM on May 30, 2016

Besides Utah and Idaho, he'd also have a shot at Arizona and Nevada. And he could really screw up Pennsylvania and Ohio. I could also see him winning some Midwestern states that went for Cruz and have a strong animus towards Hillary -- Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, perhaps even a Dakota.

I'm not sure how he could screw up Pennsylvania and Ohio when most of his votes would be coming from the R side. And the rest of those states excluding Nevada are ones he'd be stealing from Trump. Looking at it from the D side.
posted by chris24 at 11:42 AM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

There's also the weird, but apparently very popular, idea among the far Left, the far Right, Libertarians, and a host of others that you can somehow take over and lead the country to freedom without compromise, even though the majority of people disagree with you.

One of my professors during my undergraduate years (a decade ago now) who had emigrated from Greece used to tell us that Americans were just a few years away from sacrificing the President to make the rains come. He meant it as a pointed joke: we have become increasingly Messianic in our view of what the Presidency is, what it can actually accomplish alone and (and even more dangerous) what it should be able to accomplish alone, in a perfect world. And this is particularly true among chunks of the voting public (including the Libertarians, the Left, and the Right) which do not perceive themselves as "political", think that "politics" is a dirty word, and believe that the rejection of their self-evidently right positions demonstrates the unfitness of the electorate itself. Which is the foundational case for a political Messiah.

Trump is taking advantage of that consciously. He, not his policies (although they will be the greatest policies, yuuuge policies, because they are his) are the solution to America's problems. He will force the system to work, something that is appealing to people who don't actually understand what constraints the president operates under and who believe that the failures of past administrations are simply the result of the incumbents' lack of moral fiber or toughness.

I feel that Sanders, although he's actually worked hard to push the view that a broader political revolution is a necessity, also benefits from the same phenomena among some of his followers. Obama definitely accumulated something similar during his 2008 run, which contributed to the disenchantment with him and to the apparent blank wall of incomprehension he ran into whenever he started talking about the necessity of voting in midterms, etc.

And as greater and greater emphasis is placed on the President as the font of all good (and evil), this not only encourages disenchantment and rage among voters who don't understand the system when their Messiah inevitably fails, it leaves the rest of that system - from local elections up through Congress itself - in the hands of those who actually do understand the system. That includes millions of committed and educated voters (who often then get derided as "insiders" when they turn out to have inexcusably read the manual on, say, primary procedures). It also includes genuine insiders who are just protecting their careers, as well as powerful interests like the Koch brothers et al, who have the resources to hire knowledgeable operatives and to push hard in important but less visible ways to influence the system.
posted by AdamCSnider at 11:55 AM on May 30, 2016 [24 favorites]

Trump is taking advantage of that consciously. He, not his policies (although they will be the greatest policies, yuuuge policies, because they are his) are the solution to America's problems. He will force the system to work, something that is appealing to people who don't actually understand what constraints the president operates under and who believe that the failures of past administrations are simply the result of the incumbents' lack of moral fiber or toughness.

To be fair, they have been told "Obama is doing this" and "Obama is doing that" with a deadlocked congress. It's not surprising that people have completely forgotten how representative democracy works.
posted by Talez at 12:08 PM on May 30, 2016

I kinda can't wait to see who Kristol's idea of an 'impressive' independent candidate is. He's the one that initially backed Palin and recommended her to McCain after meeting her on some conservative cruise off Alaska. He was quite taken with her (and note HE SPOKE TO HER IN PERSON AND WAS STILL CONVINCED SHE HAD A BRAIN). He also was a big Iraq war backer going on all the talk shows talking up the 'two month war' we were about to embark upon, as if it was a lark.

Yet he still gets invited to opine. If I were the candidate he was backing I'd take long look in the mirror.
posted by readery at 12:30 PM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Kristol doesn't know anything more than you or I do.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:33 PM on May 30, 2016

Oh hey and to piggyback a little on what Eyebrows McGee said in response to "When will our votes ever be worth more than crumbs?"

To get the most bang for your vote-buck, run for office if you can. There are down-ballot and elected quasi-and-non-governmental offices everywhere that need to be filled. Run for Homeowners Association Chair, Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor, or go-for-it and run for Congress. Running for office, if you do your earned media right, gives you opportunities to get a message out to organize voters around.
posted by Cookiebastard at 12:37 PM on May 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm super excited about how hard Hillary has been hitting issues related to childcare in the past couple of weeks, with her proposal for universal access to preschool, for raising pay for childcare workers, and for subsidies to make sure that no family pays more than 10% of their income for childcare. Childcare often (bafflingly) gets dismissed as a woman's issue, and women's issues often get dismissed as secondary and unimportant, but this is a huge issue for so many people I know.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:39 PM on May 30, 2016 [11 favorites]

I just don't see a path forward for the Left here, and that's what bothers me so deeply.

After he was elected Obama quoted the (possibly mythic) exchange between FDR and some New Deal advocates, "I agree with you, now go out and make me do it." This, he declared, was how progressives, leftists, and others not part of the establishment Democrats had to move forward.

But it seems that everything we on the Left tired to make him do it was declared to be either childish, traitorous, or in some other way out of bounds. Far from living up to his end of that bargain and letting us make him do it, Obama seemed to despise it when we tried. Thus all that sniping at the "professional left".

So I ask sincerely, what is the path forward for the Left that is acceptable to the Clintonistas and other supporters of the establishment Democrats?

To me it seems that the Democrats demand everything from the Left, but give nothing back, and view even the existence of the left as an affront. I'd say the Democrats take us for granted, but that would actually be better than what we currently have. The Democrats want our votes, our volunteer hours, and our money, but they don't actually want **US** at all. I feel as if the Democrats treat Leftists as inconvenient, embarrassing, things that inconveniently come attached to some votes, hours, and money; things that must be scolded and ignored and if at all possible hidden away so civilized people won't know we exist.

I feel as if I'm in an abusive relationship here, and I want a way forward.

Again, make no mistake, after the convention I'll not merely vote for Clinton, I'll volunteer for her and spend some of my precious time phone banking, or going door to door, or what have you. But that's because the alternative is Trump, not out of any actual love of Clinton or expectation that it will buy me or my cause any influence or voice.

To me it seems that the Democrats are all take and no give. To me it seems as if we are told that the places where our agendas overlap [1] are all that matter and that if we aren't satisfied with that then we are too needy, too demanding, too childish. Yet we are expected to give our votes, our time, our money, and pretend the areas where we have deep disagreements with the Democrats don't exist.

We're stuck with each other. In a sane political system we wouldn't be and the centrist corporatist branch of the Democrats could be their own party, the Leftists could be their own party, and we might form a coalition but it'd be on more equal footing. But here we're stuck with each other under the umbrella of a single party and the footing isn't equal at all.

So what is the path forward for my agenda that is acceptable to the Democrats?

We've been told that Tea Party style primary challenges are forbidden, that to engage in such would be a vile betrayal of the Democrats and they would, naturally, have to punish us by ignoring our agenda even more than they normally do if we engaged in such wanton acts. And, indeed, when we tried to oust the odious Joe Liberman the Democrats took bitter revenge on us, endorsed Lieberman's run as an independent, treated the actual Democratic candidate as a pariah, and celebrated his loss.

So we're forbidden from advancing our own candidates.

When Obama took office he told us to advocate vigorously for our agenda, to "make him do it". Well, that turned out to be forbidden as well. Rather than, as he claimed, welcoming our efforts to drive him towards our agenda he turned on us and attacked us most viciously and nastily.

So we're forbidden from lobbying and advocating for our policies to elected Democrats.

What is the path forward then?

I understand that the Democratic Party would dearly love us to just give up all this leftist nonsense and become good corporate centrists. That's what they want, and them having their own agenda is fine.

To me though, it appears that they demand their own agenda be all there is, without compromise. They appear to compromise endlessly with the Republicans, clearly they are capable of compromise, but I don't see compromise in Democratic dealings with the Left. There, and seemingly there alone, the Democratic Party shows a rigid spine. If they were as firm and unyielding in their dealings with the Republicans I would feel so much better.

So what is the path forward? I'm asking because from my POV everything the Left has tried so far has been declared to be improper or working for the Republicans.

Withholding our votes is off the table, many people here in this thread have preemptively declared that doing so makes us very bad people indeed.

Agitating for our positions is of the table, Obama made that clear.

Running our own candidates in primary elections is off the table, the DNC's support of Lieberman made that clear.

So what **ARE** we permitted to do?

[1] And to be sure, those places are significant. I do not at all claim there is no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, and I am weary of having to keep saying this simply to ward off scolding and hectoring.
posted by sotonohito at 12:39 PM on May 30, 2016 [11 favorites]

I have decided that Gary Johnson is who I will vote for to be President instead of Hillary Clinton.
posted by Drinky Die at 12:40 PM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Kristol doesn't know anything more than you or I do.

In a general sense, I suspect he knows substantially less than most of us.

In a more narrowly specific sense, he probably does know a little more about which prominent (or semi-prominent) Republicans might be contemplating the possibility of a third-party or independent presidential bid this year.
posted by dersins at 12:40 PM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Besides Utah and Idaho, he'd also have a shot at Arizona and Nevada. And he could really screw up Pennsylvania and Ohio.

How is it Romney would take Nevada in a 3-way race when he was unable to take it in a 2 man race? I mean, what evidence is there to suggest that this is at all likely in a 3-way race?

As for AZ, Romney won AZ in 2012 53.5 to Obama's 44.5. Could he win it again against Clinton AND Trump? Yeah, possible, but seems much more likely that this would throw the state to Clinton.

Same analysis for Pennsylvania and Ohio, except for the fact that the Democrats already have the advantage there. Could they lose Ohio to Trump in a 2-way race? Yeah, possible. But in a 3-way race? How?

So again, I hear some worrying about a conservative third party candidate being a problem for the democrats, but I can't see how there's any evidence that it would cost the democrats anything of consequence from their 2012 presidential electoral totals.
posted by skewed at 12:40 PM on May 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

I have decided that Gary Johnson is who I will vote for to be President instead of Hillary Clinton.

So you favor lowering taxes on the wealthy (a.k.a "reforming the tax code"), cutting social programs (oops, I mean "entitlement reform"), deregulating the financial and energy sectors ("let the market decide"), and completely eliminating the Department of Education ("leave it up to the states")?

Because if that's the case, you were never going to vote for Clinton (or, for that matter, Sanders) anyway.
posted by dersins at 12:52 PM on May 30, 2016 [31 favorites]

I feel as if I’m in an abusive relationship here, and I want a way forward.

Honestly, if the “left” can get a local candidate to adopt a coherent set of policy positions and lift them into Congress by arguing that the current Democrat should go further, that would probably help a great deal. The presidential stage is a bad venue because only one of the two big parties can win. I’m pretty sure if the left pulled off a bunch of successful primarying, it would go fine. I also imagine that primarying someone would tick off the party, but it’s not like mainstream Republicans have been happy when they’ve gotten primaried. Just do everyone a favor and make sure the D getting knocked out is in a reliably safe seat.

Of course, you'll need a left-wing version of the Koch brothers to help out, but my impression was that that was what the Sanders campaign and its mailing list kind of are just that. (Move On was supposed to be that? But I guess it isn’t.)
posted by Going To Maine at 12:54 PM on May 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

So you favor lowering taxes on the wealthy (a.k.a "reforming the tax code"), cutting social programs (oops, I mean "entitlement reform"), deregulating the financial and energy sectors ("let the market decide"), and completely eliminating the Department of Education ("leave it up to the states")?

If we’re allowed to point out that Sanders won’t be able to enact his entire agenda, we should be able to argue that Johnson won’t be able to enact much of his agenda either.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:57 PM on May 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

I already did vote for Sanders. And for Johnson in 2012. And Obama in 08. And Kerry in 04. And Brown in 2000.

Both libertarians and dems have significant important areas where I disagree and where I agree. I go with the candidate I feel is right for me for the time.
posted by Drinky Die at 12:58 PM on May 30, 2016

And also: a vote for Gary Johnson stops Trump too. We don't need a circular firing squad, we need to stop fascism.
posted by corb at 12:58 PM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

If we’re allowed to point out that Sanders won’t be able to enact his entire agenda, we should be able to argue that Johnson won’t be able to enact much of his agenda either.

Well, since Johnson has approximately a zero point negative zero percent chance of winning so much as a single electoral vote, he won't actually have the opportunity to even try to enact anything.

But that's not really the point I was making.
posted by dersins at 1:00 PM on May 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

And also: a vote for Gary Johnson stops Trump too.

Only if it was going for Trump. Not if it was going for Clinton.
posted by chris24 at 1:01 PM on May 30, 2016 [7 favorites]

And also: a vote for Gary Johnson stops Trump too.

A vote for Gary Johnson from somebody who normally votes Republican helps stop Trump.

A vote for Gary Johnson from somebody who normally votes Democrat has precisely the opposite effect.

A vote for Gary Johnson from somebody who normally votes Libertarian or Green or writes in Lizard People or their own mom's name has exactly the same effect as it always does, which is none whatsoever.
posted by dersins at 1:03 PM on May 30, 2016 [5 favorites]

Perhaps instead of attacking the Democratic Party and its incumbents you should focus your attacks on making Republicans lose.
posted by humanfont at 1:08 PM on May 30, 2016

Perhaps instead of attacking the Democratic Party and its incumbents you should focus your attacks on making Republicans lose.

The Tea Party has made hay off of the opposite strategy. I’m not a fan of gridlock, but what works works. (“works” in the sense of pushing ideology and forcing candidates to change stances, not passing laws.)
posted by Going To Maine at 1:12 PM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

"I don't think the disillusionment of first time Obama voters should just be brushed off with a lecture on the virtue of hard work."

Look, I got so excited by Obama in 2008 that I walked my first precinct in 2009. I've spent the last 8 years working with and in my local party, and, yeah, I feel listened to and I feel like I have influence on the direction of the local party. You apparently checked out after the 2008 vote and are now back in 2016 still feeling ignored. I'm not just some old lady (which is how I feel like you're trying to label and dismiss me) "lecturing on the virtue of hard work." I'm a progressive who got involved and who is making change.

And look, politics is fundamentally hard work. It requires people willing to do that hard work. If you don't want to do the hard work, then the changes aren't going to happen. People have to do these things. They don't just happen.

I reiterate my first point. If you're energized by 2016 and want to push a Progressive message and change our politics, show up in 2017. There is no other way to make political change happen except to keep showing up for all the boring in-between parts. You get your voice heard by continuing to speak when everybody else has gone home for another four years.

I get it if you don't like the system -- it's an imperfect and often frustrating one that works nothing like our ideals would have it work -- but it's not a system that's hard to get engaged in or to build influence in or to be heard in. It's not exclusive or exclusionary, it's not work that's only available to some people, it's doesn't require secret knowledge or special training or money to donate. It literally just requires showing up to meetings and talking to people on a consistent basis and pitching in come election time for local elections (whether that's phone banking or walking or doing paperwork or delivering signs or driving voters or what have you -- there's something for everyone regardless of your availability or physical ability). There's even usually cookies at meetings. If you want to make your voice heard and have an impact on the direction of the Democratic party, this is how you do it.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:13 PM on May 30, 2016 [28 favorites]

Perhaps a question for both parties is: how do you cater to your extreme wings, with the understanding that your “centrist” branch will always be at risk of jumping ship to the other party, and your “extremist” branch is at risk of jumping ship to a third party? And how real is that risk, at both local and national levels?
posted by Going To Maine at 1:14 PM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Withholding our votes is off the table, many people here in this thread have preemptively declared that doing so makes us very bad people indeed.

Having longer-term goals doesn't prevent you from accepting short term tactical necessities. If Romney was running as the Republican candidate I'd still be voting for Hillary, but I'd be much less terrified of a Democratic loss.

And frankly? I've spent most of the past twelve months hearing Leftists tell me and others who don't share all their opinions that we're very "bad people indeed". We're sellouts to Big Corporate America, shills for Shillary, we don't love our country, we hate the working man. It happens. If they're threatening you or sending hate mail, that's a whole 'nother thing, and needs to be stepped on hard. But pretty much everyone in politics is claiming that the other folks are wrong, and people take politics very seriously because policy decisions, y'know, affect their lives and those of the people they love. Clinton's policies will affect real people. Sanders' policies will affect real people, if magic strikes and he gets the nomination and then wins the general. Trump's policies will affect real people. If you think that Clinton is corrupt, or Sanders is a naive grandstanding fool, or Trump is an outright fascist thug, then people who support that person, or who aren't taking every step to prevent them taking power, are actively damaging you and yours. That gets them het up. Naturally.

Agitating for our positions is of the table, Obama made that clear.

Why would you give a shit what Obama says? Agitate anyway. Plenty of Leftists have been doing that. You talk about FDR's "make me" slogan, well - make the Democratic Party pay attention. Get enough folks together that they have to listen to you. The Left did enough of that this round to get Hillary to integrate some elements of their agenda into her own. Get more next time. Which means, if you're actually asking for specific suggestions:

1) get started earlier (Sanders and his folks were a bit ramshackle in the beginning) and
2)learn the levers (make sure that your activists are aware of how the party machinery works, to prevent shenanigans or at the very least expose them more clearly).
3) remember that you're not just facing the "Establishment" Sanders' so enjoys blaming - there are everyday Democratic citizens who honestly view the policies of those filthy, filthy corporate centrists you so despise as sensible or even good for the country (on some points I'm one of those). You'll need to bring something more convincing than YOU'RE ALL CORRUPT AND/OR IDIOTS to bring enough of them over to your side. There are also those who have spent their lives in a world where the choices, on a personal level as on a political one, are between Not So Good and Even Worse and see Leftists as people who are selling moonshine. And there are other tight-knit groups - single issue voters for whom one candidate's support of their position overwhelms everything else (militarism overseas, abortion rights, educational or immigration policies) that you're going to have to convince, not that your positions are right, but that they are equally important.

Build your faction. If it gets big enough, people have to take it into account. Note the sudden collapse of so many mainstream Republicans into the Trump camp, mere weeks after they were denying him on television. That's not because they saw the light. It's because they realized that there are Consequences to ignoring that particular faction, and they decided they didn't like those Consequences.

Running our own candidates in primary elections is off the table

Sanders ran. He did damn well. He didn't get enough primary votes to win. Learn from that experience and run someone in 2020 or 2024, or apply those lessons to getting progressive Democrats elected to Congress or at the state level.

There are plenty of ways forward. There are no ways forward where everyone is nice and friendly and polite while you actively try to drag the party in a direction which they view as crazy or stupid or just plain wrong. Those ways have never existed. Not in 1939, not in 1960, not today. There are Leftists who are going to shit on me. There are centrists who are going to shit on you. Welcome to the politics of representative democracy.
posted by AdamCSnider at 1:17 PM on May 30, 2016 [25 favorites]

I already did vote for Sanders. And for Johnson in 2012. And Obama in 08. And Kerry in 04. And Brown in 2000.

I mean this question honestly in the hope of better understanding your position. How can one support both Sanders and Johnson? Sanders promotes broad European-style social welfare programs that get the federal government more involved in health care, college, and child care. He wants a higher minimum wage and wants higher taxes with a more progressive tax code to pay for these programs. Johnson and the Libertarian Party want the federal government substantially less involved in any of those things, wants a highly regressive flat consumption tax, is opposed to a federal minimum wage at all, and wants to abolish the Department of Education.

I suppose the two just seem rather opposite in terms of many of their policies. What makes you support both?
posted by zachlipton at 1:22 PM on May 30, 2016 [7 favorites]

"So we're forbidden from advancing our own candidates"

Does this mean you have been stopped from circulating nominating petitions for a progressive candidate by the Democratic party? You have been prevented from launching your own run for city council? You were blocked by party thugs from going door-to-door for a progressive county board member? Where has this all been happening? Where I live -- which is not all that progressive in itself -- we've had no problem advancing progressive candidates, with the institutional support of the local party (voter lists, candidate training, access to election-law lawyers) even when the "old guard" isn't particularly enthusiastic about our candidate. They've even come to our losing progressive candidates and said, "Hey, we'd like you to run for precinct committeeman, we're impressed by your commitment." And we're a local party where I feel like we have a pretty strong ideological and demographic cleavage between the "old guard" and the new guard (due to economic and racial shifts in the area since the 1960s) and there's a real tension there. But they've accepted and encouraged us as Democrats and given us access to support and resources and invited us into the local party fold.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:25 PM on May 30, 2016 [17 favorites]

And just to be clear, sotonohito (and others) - I'm sorry if my long ranting posts feel like kind of a dogpiling thing, or are a bit sharper than they have to be. This conversation has been hitting a nerve and I should probably bow out of it for a bit. I'm sorry you feel so alienated, that feeling sucks horribly, and I realize that telling you all the stuff you should be doing is a bit like telling someone who is depressed all the things they should be doing to cheer themselves up. I'm glad you're participating in this thread.
posted by AdamCSnider at 1:27 PM on May 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

I am beginning to feel like there's a chance the Libertarian Party will be what a lot of Republicans long-term shift to, altering both parties forever. Not this year, but maybe in ten or fifteen. If the LP is smart enough to sell, "If you let me have my gay pot farm over here, I won't ask about your religious compound over there", I feel like there's an unholy alliance waiting to happen, where religious conservatives go for "freedom" and economic conservatives go for "seriously, I give zero fucks about your culture war."
posted by corb at 1:32 PM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

But it seems that everything we on the Left tired to make him do it was declared to be either childish, traitorous, or in some other way out of bounds. Far from living up to his end of that bargain and letting us make him do it, Obama seemed to despise it when we tried. Thus all that sniping at the "professional left".

So I ask sincerely, what is the path forward for the Left that is acceptable to the Clintonistas and other supporters of the establishment Democrats?

I think key to this is that, in this context, "Make me" doesn't mean "post lefty memes to Facebook" or "sign online petitions." It doesn't even mean "go to rallies" or "get out in the streets and protest." It means "show up in off-years and work your ass off to elect left-wing people who will force me to adopt your agenda."

That is, as others have noted here, the path the right took, with no small amount of success. It is also the path forward for the left.
posted by dersins at 1:36 PM on May 30, 2016 [13 favorites]

I think the sticking point with that, corb, might be the whole concept of "keeping us safe," which involves things like border security/ immigration enforcement, spying on potential terrorists, and militaristic foreign policy. Can Libertarians and old-school conservatives compromise on that stuff?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:38 PM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I keep seeing this idea floated that a conservative third party candidate would somehow make it harder for a democrat to reach 270. It doesn't make sense at all, what state that Obama 2012 won would Hillary lose if she was facing both Trump and Romney?

Agreed. I'm only worried about Romney if he runs only in Nevada and Colorado, but stays off the ballot in Idaho and Utah. That would be a clear sign that his goal is denying Hillary 270 electoral votes.

But the real threat, I think, would not be a Republican but some blue dog Democrat like Jim Webb or even a lefty like Nader, convinced to run by the ego boost. Nader ran for the Harvard Board of Overseers recently on a slate led by right-wing activist Ron Unz, also seen recently funding openly white supremacist writers. Nader acted as a beard for the racially-tinged anti-affirmative slate.

I wouldn't be surprised if Jill Stein received some large donations from black-box SuperPACs this year, either.
posted by msalt at 2:02 PM on May 30, 2016

The way forward for Progressives is quite simple:
1. Draft good people to run for office in local races
2. Win local races
3. Get involved in the local party

Remember, Bernie was a mayor before he ever went to Washington. Obama was a state legislator. Pretty much everyone in Congress was a lower office once upon a time.

One of my friends is a hardcore Bernie supporter -- a FeelTheBern meme sort. He's going to Philly as a delegate, and I am supporting his fundraising. Why would I do that, as a Hillary supporter? Because if the Progressives are ever going to be a voice in Washington, they need solid, smart, future-looking people as delegates, as party leaders, as the wheels and gears of the Democratic party.

There's still plenty of room for Progressives in the Democratic party. But you can't win if you don't play. And hell, you want to break up the parties, you need strong voices and solid wonks to run your revolution. Raising a flag and expecting everyone to rally around doesn't make a revolution. You need good people, good organization, and money.

I have a lot of respect for Bernie, even as I disagree with much of his policy thinking. I would like to see more people like my friend in this party going forward. But it takes work. (I'd be involved, too, but I'm not, because my passions are elsewhere. Thus I support others.)
posted by dw at 2:07 PM on May 30, 2016 [15 favorites]

that is acceptable to the Clintonistas

The irony, of course, being that Clintonista originated as a slur against Clinton and her supporters for being too leftist, a reference to the Sandinistas.
posted by Justinian at 2:29 PM on May 30, 2016 [22 favorites]

There's still plenty of room for Progressives in the Democratic party

Maybe, but I don't see the DNC doing much to earn my vote. And their taking it for granted is a strategic error. I don't like the feeling of being taken for granted.
posted by mikelieman at 2:33 PM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

And for some reason, when I'm told I should vote to ally someone else's fears it feels manipulative, as in the idea of discussing issues is off the table. I don't like that feeling either.
posted by mikelieman at 2:35 PM on May 30, 2016

A vote isn't a favor.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 2:41 PM on May 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

That's an opinion, sure. I obviously don't agree and feel that if someone wants MY vote, they're going to have to explain what's in it for me.
posted by mikelieman at 2:50 PM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

You apparently checked out after the 2008 vote and are now back in 2016 still feeling ignored.

While I agree with most of what you're saying, this seems unnecessarily uncharitable. It also runs counter to sotonohito's description of continued involvement.
posted by bardophile at 3:00 PM on May 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

"Discussing issues is off the table," said somebody in the 3,000-comment-long thread that was only open for two-ish weeks.

We need to learn to live with the people who think we are subhuman and try to legislate away our right to exist because a bully told them to in church

Yeah, so: I have a friend who takes her faith seriously. Hers is a branch of faith that invites, erm, some less-than-good ideas along for the ride. I go over to her churchy commune for dinner every so often, and hear people earnestly talk about how great it is that they get to talk to high school kids about abstinence, or hear people pray to God to end the sin of abortion. I try to speak up as best as feels polite, as a guest into a faith that I flagrantly don't believe but that has welcomed me to dinner anyway. Often I just want to ask these people questions, about how they came to see the world this twisted, awful way.

Last week, I made a Trump joke to my friend, and she laughed, and then she said: "But Hillary is worse!" Which kind of floored me. I sort of assumed better of her? But I'm also pretty sure she's the kind of person who doesn't follow politics all too seriously. You'd better believe I'm thinking of how to sell her on Clinton, or at least how to explain why I think Trump is light years worse.

The doorwoman at my last job, a tremendously kind and cheerful human who I had many lovely conversations with, would occasionally espouse some beliefs that struck me as hurtful and batshit. "Completely at odds with how I perceived her," I would say, but of course this is the contradictory way all people work, myself included. (If you're a sockpuppet for the person I think you are, pretend I went into all manner of personal anecdote here; if not, make some up.)

I also have a grandfather whose Trump-loving I mostly laugh at. We haven't talked so much this election season, and that bothers me on a level that doesn't start me talking to him again.

So yes, I'd like to coexist with these people. I'd like to coexist with both them and the incredibly queer people I met at a party the day after my Catholic friend's dinner, who laughed with me at the sheer discrepancy between my two evenings the same way my Catholic friend did—though perhaps with a bit more context than she had. Many lovely people in my life think terrible things, I'm sure sometimes behind my back where I can't see them. I'd rather not shun them from my communities. Even when the imperative is on them to stop shunning first, I get that simply declaring cold wars on all them and hoping they'll start the years-long and often-painful struggle that results in the rejection of a belief system is, well, asking a whole lot of them. And it offers me a convenient excuse to cut them off and not do my share of the emotional labor if they don't make the first giant leap. (Hell, I have—or had—friends who didn't have the patience to deal with my getting as far as I've come, and that's their prerogative. But I miss them and wish I'd had their support, even knowing that that's a demand I couldn't always reasonably expect them to make.)

I love leftist debates a whole ton, but more comes out of discussions with people not like me than comes out of most discussions here. I'd love if people in general were better at that arduous process. Or, better, if there was a way to organize people to do that, so it wasn't so onerous for individuals who find themselves wanting to start that conversation up. But yeah, it matters a lot, and I think it's silly to act indignant at that thought.
posted by rorgy at 3:00 PM on May 30, 2016 [8 favorites]

they're going to have to explain what's in it for me.

This is, like, everything that's not awesome about the U.S. wrapped up in one efficient little self-centered phrase.

Remember when JFK said that whole thing about "Ask not what your country can do for you..." and so forth?

Well, part of that is NOT being all "What's in it for me," but instead wondering "what can I do to make things better?"

One thing you can do to make things better is vote.
posted by dersins at 3:00 PM on May 30, 2016 [33 favorites]

I obviously don't agree and feel that if someone wants MY vote, they're going to have to explain what's in it for me.

Well I could explain it to you, but if I do, what's in it for me?
posted by happyroach at 3:14 PM on May 30, 2016 [17 favorites]

That's an opinion, sure. I obviously don't agree and feel that if someone wants MY vote, they're going to have to explain what's in it for me.

Why does something always have to be in it for you (and I mean the universal you, not you in particular)? I'm not gay, but I vote for candidates that support LGBT rights. I don't have a uterus, but I vote for candidates that support the right to choose. I make more than minimum wage, but I vote for candidates that support raising it. I don't have kids, but I've voted to send more money to public schools. I support these things because I believe they benefit many of the other people I share a country with, and I benefit when other people get things they want (in fact, I can do more than just vote and support their causes as an ally). What's in it for me is that I can go to my friend's wedding and see his happiness, or not have someone I care about consider a dangerous back-alley medical procedure from an unqualified person, or maybe not have the guy who made my food wonder how he's going to eat tonight.

And on the flip-side, there is nothing wrong with voting to protect the gains we've already made. Yes, it's phenomenally depressing that sometimes it feels like we're swimming upstream just trying to maintain the status quo and prevent people from rolling back recent progress on everything from health care to gay rights, but that's where we are right now. Even if you're dissatisfied with the choices, voting to protect what we've got and try to move forward is not a bad strategy. There are a lot of people, many with far less privilege than me, who stand to lose an awful lot under a Trump Presidency. Voting to help them is literally the very least you can do, whether or not there's anything in it for you.
posted by zachlipton at 3:15 PM on May 30, 2016 [39 favorites]

A couple comments deleted. Just stop it. If you're here to fight or you think everybody's a jerk, just go do something else rather than continuing to drop in short sarcastic jibes.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 3:29 PM on May 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

Eyebrows McGee For what it's worth, I'm 41 and have been involved with politics in various ways for most of my adult life. Back when the Green Party seemed like it might have had a faint chance I helped organize the Amarillo Green Party, and I was a delegate to the state convention.

These days I mostly stick with phonebanking.

Does this mean you have been stopped from circulating nominating petitions for a progressive candidate by the Democratic party? You have been prevented from launching your own run for city council? You were blocked by party thugs from going door-to-door for a progressive county board member? Where has this all been happening?

I meant that following the betrayal of actual Democratic Party nominee Ned Lamont in favor of Joe "I'm really a Republican" Lieberman, it was quite clear that the Democratic Party considered primary challenges to sitting Democrats to be intolerable and they viewed it not as an acceptable way of advancing progressive/Leftist goals but rather as a betrayal that they would match by subverting the actual Democratic nominee if that's what it took to stamp out.

If it is your contention that progressive/Leftist change in the Democratic Party is going to be viewed as betrayal of the Party and that it is reasonable to expect the Party to subvert the nominee if they aren't a corporatist type, well OK, but if that's the case then the Party and its supporters kind of lose any ability to call for restraint or civility from the Left.

The old joke was that the Republicans feared their base and the Democrats despised theirs. If you mean that the joke is reality and Leftists should behave accordingly I'm not sure anyone is going to like the results.

dersins I think key to this is that, in this context, "Make me" doesn't mean "post lefty memes to Facebook" or "sign online petitions." It doesn't even mean "go to rallies" or "get out in the streets and protest." It means "show up in off-years and work your ass off to elect left-wing people who will force me to adopt your agenda."

Yeah, we tried that and the result was Obama supporting Lieberman and actively working to subvert Ned Lamont. Clearly he and the DNC don't think that's a legitimate path forward for Leftists and progressives.

That's why I'm asking: What is the DNC approved path forward for Leftists and progressives?

If the answer is: there isn't one, you'll have to go to war with the Party, well ok. But if that's the case then don't complain too much when Leftists go to war with the Party because the war would be one of the Party's choosing, not ours.
posted by sotonohito at 4:47 PM on May 30, 2016 [5 favorites]

Sanders is speaking in Oakland today. I'm home sick, but my partner called me and we spent 10 minutes on the phone together while she tried to find the end of the line to get into the rally. Thousands of people have turned out.

I've spent so much time reading wonkery on the internet, seeing social media fights, and having every argument and talking point broken down and weighed from a thousand different directions. I've gotten sarcastic jokes at my expense, I've read about death threats from "my people," and it's all made me want to crawl into a hole and totally disengage from politics forever. Election threads depress me.

But then my partner's description of the comically long line to get into the rally was actually kind of inspiring.

There's a lot of people really excited about this, about a politician everyone said was too far to the left to ever be taken seriously. Yeah, obviously a majority of voters are choosing Clinton, but the spectacle of thousands of people waiting on line is a reminder that he's gotten 45% of the vote in spite of what everyone was expecting. Sanders been far from the perfect candidate, but his success gives me hope that we can get more candidates like this, more people who are willing to run to the left despite the conventional wisdom about grand bargains and electability. Knowing that thousands of people are willing to wait in line for this makes me think it might be possible.

I called my [contacts in the campaign] to let them know my partner and I are part of the crowd today (if only in spirit in my case). I can only imagine how stressful it is right now, but I like to think it helps to be reminded that people care.
posted by teponaztli at 5:09 PM on May 30, 2016 [6 favorites]

That’s why I’m asking: What is the DNC approved path forward for Leftists and progressives?

Well, speaking as a member of the DNC…

Clearly you have a large amount of awareness of the Lamont campaign, but given that Lieberman won with 70 percent of the vote (thanks, Rs) it seems sort of unfair to lay his loss entirely in the hands of the Ds. My assumption (& feel free to beef it) is that Connecticut is largely a centrist state so Lamont was likely to have a hard time when he came from the left - especially since the Republicans liked Lieberman. More generally, it seems like just primarying a candidate doesn’t guarantee general election victory. When Dick Lugar got primaried in Indiana for instance,the Ds swiped it with Joe Donnelly. At the same time, it’s a good signaling method for making everyone else jump a bit to the left (at least, if they also have the fear).
posted by Going To Maine at 5:27 PM on May 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

(I mean, heck, this is how Sanders has gotten Clinton to jump to the left on a few points, and you know the Rs and trying to figure out what on Earth to do with their platform to still get those Trump voters.)
posted by Going To Maine at 5:28 PM on May 30, 2016

it’s a good signaling method for making everyone else jump a bit to the left

"...And then a step to the right!"
posted by kirkaracha at 5:59 PM on May 30, 2016 [9 favorites]

Going to Maine My objection wasn't so much to Ned Lamont losing, as it was to the DNC and all the elected Democrats declaring that they didn't care who the winner of the Democratic primary had been they were going to support their insider chum Joe Liberman.

I thought the whole point of a party, the whole reason for the DNC existing, was to elect **DEMOCRATS**, not their personal insider friends even if they lose the primary and aren't actually the Democratic nominee.
posted by sotonohito at 6:06 PM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hasn't the Democratic party been supporting Sanders himself for years, against potential challengers from within the party? I feel like there is more data to be weighed than the one Lieberman race, before making sweeping conclusions about what has happened in the past -- let alone about what is possible for the future.

(And that was after Sanders got into the higher office in part with the support and endorsement of the NRA in exchange for opposing waiting periods for gun purchases, so not exactly coming in aligned with Democratic policies either to the left or to the right).
posted by Salamandrous at 6:10 PM on May 30, 2016 [7 favorites]

Which is why I say that clearly the DNC considers primary challenges or running people for office to be an illigitmate way for Leftists and/or progressives to advance their agenda. They went for the non-Democrat rather than the Leftist nominated Democrat.

So, given that reality, what (if anything) do the DNC and the DNC supporting Democrats consider to be valid, legitimate, means for the progressives/Left to advance their agenda?

Agitating for change is not, per the Democratic Party, a legitimate way for the Left to advance it's issues.

Nominating Leftists is not, per the Democratic Party, a legitimate way for the Left to advance it's cause.

Many people here have been declaring that the Left needs to follow the rules, to do it the right, DNC approved, way. But the more I look at it there isn't a DNC approved way for the Left to exert influence. Anything we do is declared to be illegitimate.

The "Big Tent" is big enough to include Joe Lieberman, Jim Webb, and all manner of arch-conservative DINOs, but apparently not big enough to include me (except for my vote and my money, that the DNC demands and if I withhold either I'm personally responsible for President Trump).

If the DNC won't allow a peaceful way forward then they and their supporters lose any right to complain about the Left being uncivil and not following the rules.
posted by sotonohito at 6:12 PM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Tip Sheet for Presidential Campaigns: How to Interact with Single-Issue Advocates, with AIDS as a Recent Example
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:14 PM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Salamandrous I think to a large extent Sanders is a good example of the problem here. The Democratic Party chose to go with their buddy, their fellow insider, rather than run a Democrat. I'm not a Sanders cultist, I went with him because he seemed to be a break from the status quo, not because he was my vision of a savior. Now that he's proving himself to be both an ass and largely incapable of running a real campaign, I can't say I'm really behind him anymore.
posted by sotonohito at 6:15 PM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Which is why I say that clearly the DNC considers primary challenges or running people for office to be an illigitmate way for Leftists and/or progressives to advance their agenda. They went for the non-Democrat rather than the Leftist nominated Democrat.

But this is just an example of a poorly-targeted race. You don't just target someone in a primary like that because you disagree with them, you target someone in that situation because you disagree with them AND they're vulnerable.

Primarying an incumbent U.S. Senator who is popular enough that he can win as an independent candidate is a fool's errand. Running as an independent, Lieberman won every county in Connecticut in the 2006 general.

I suspect the party looked at his seniority in the Senate and his strength as a candidate and decided the prudent course of action was to back a known ally who would definitely win.

Part of winning a war as an insurgency is choosing your battles wisely.
posted by dersins at 6:22 PM on May 30, 2016 [11 favorites]

Endorsements by Democratic Senators in 2006 Connecticut Senate race
Statement by Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer after Connecticut primary
posted by Huffy Puffy at 6:53 PM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

So you favor lowering taxes on the wealthy (a.k.a "reforming the tax code"), cutting social programs (oops, I mean "entitlement reform"), deregulating the financial and energy sectors ("let the market decide"), and completely eliminating the Department of Education ("leave it up to the states")?

If we’re allowed to point out that Sanders won’t be able to enact his entire agenda, we should be able to argue that Johnson won’t be able to enact much of his agenda either.

All of those things are near and dear to R hearts. In the bizarro universe where Johnson is President, he would be with roughly the same Congress as now.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:54 PM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Anyway, here's a really good long article on Clinton from New York magazine.

Watching her, I wondered if it’s possible, after all these years, once she has slipped the bonds of constrained primary combat, that she could emerge as a better and freer performer. In some ways, it seems necessary — not just to win but to govern. After all, the presidency is a public, performative job. She can’t just suffer through the indignity of campaigning and then hole up with her policy papers. It’s not enough to have a plan; you have to sell it to the country, over and over again. Obama proved to be particularly adept at using the media to disseminate his administration’s messages to the audiences it was trying to reach, but he is a masterful orator. Bill Clinton, too. Even George W. Bush was charismatic in his way.

But if, as in this election, a man who spews hate and vulgarity, with no comprehension of how government works, can become presidentially plausible because he is magnetic while a capable, workaholic woman who knows policy inside and out struggles because she is not magnetic, perhaps we should reevaluate magnetism’s importance. It’s worth asking to what degree charisma, as we have defined it, is a masculine trait. Can a woman appeal to the country in the same way we are used to men doing it? Though those on both the right and the left moan about “woman cards,” it would be impossible, and dishonest, to not recognize gender as a central, defining, complicated, and often invisible force in this election. It is one of the factors that shaped Hillary Clinton, and it is one of the factors that shapes how we respond to her. Whatever your feelings about Clinton herself, this election raises important questions about how we define leadership in this country, how we feel about women who try to claim it, flawed though they may be. ...

posted by maudlin at 7:04 PM on May 30, 2016 [29 favorites]

Going To Maine: "When Dick Lugar got primaried in Indiana for instance,the Ds swiped it with Joe Donnelly."

Only because Richard Mourdock oozed with an oily evil sheen matched only by Emperor Palpatine. Even with that, he still could have won, had he not said, "Life is that gift from God that I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen." That was a too far over the edge, even for Indiana. I'm ashamed to live in the same state as him.
posted by double block and bleed at 7:06 PM on May 30, 2016

The DNC and DSCC did not fund Leiberman in the general election. They supported the winner of the Democratic Primary Ned Lamont. It seems that you are misinformed sotonohito.
posted by humanfont at 7:14 PM on May 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

> "... the DNC and all the elected Democrats declaring that they didn't care who the winner of the Democratic primary had been they were going to support their insider chum Joe Liberman."

But that isn't what happened.

Prominent elected Democrats who endorsed Lieberman: Tom Carper, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor, Ken Salazar, Ed Case, Harold Ford Jr., John Lewis, Brad Sherman

Prominent elected Democrats who endorsed Lamont: Daniel Akaka, Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, Barbara Boxer, Robert Byrd, Maria Cantwell, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mark Dayton, Chris Dodd, Dick Durbin, Russ Feingold, Dianne Feinstein, Tom Harkin, Daniel Inouye, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Herb Kohl, Frank Lautenberg, Patrick Leahy, Patty Murray, Barack Obama, Jack Reed, Harry Reid, Jay Rockefeller, Charles Schumer, Debbie Stabenow, Ron Wyden, Bill Richardson
posted by kyrademon at 7:26 PM on May 30, 2016 [10 favorites]

Hasn't the Democratic party been supporting Sanders himself for years, against potential challengers from within the party?

Yes. They gave Sanders money in 2006 and he basically ran as the Establishment candidate. He ran as a Democrat in the primary and then once he won it he turned down the nomination to remain an Independent. This was done with the full knowledge and cooperation of the Democrats, who saw him as an ally and backed him through the primaries to ensure he wouldn't face any other serious progressive candidates during the general.

In fact, a couple of Bernie's challengers during the primary were more progressive than he was. But the deal he made with the DNC essentially shut them out from any serious possibility of success. Bernie's decades in the House of Representatives meant he was already plugged into the system.

Then in 2012 the Democrats didn't run anybody against him, again, in order to ensure he didn't face any serious progressive challengers. The "Independent" affiliation is a fig leaf, where his own election is concerned.

It is laughable to suggest Sanders can be in Congress for 30 years and not be a member of the establishment. You don't get the committee assignments he's been assigned and the preferential treatment he's been given without being part of the machine. After the DNC has spent 30 years coddling him, now he's claiming everything is rigged and unfair? It's a joke.
posted by Anonymous at 7:50 PM on May 30, 2016

I think this argument is based on mistaken premises.

A persistent inability to distinguish between being participating in our system of governance and the informal networks which make up the establishment (e.g. those who control and exercise decisive power, often via a Thracymachian ethos) has been one of the most disappointing elements of this campaign. I think that if people were more clear on this distinction they would better understand the dynamics at play. And, if we better understand those dynamics, it might open doors to finding some compromises towards genuine forward motion on that which can be agreed upon between competing factions within the Democratic party. Politics isn't a friendly game of badminton so it is to be expected that there will be some sharp disagreements and more than a fair amount of acrimony between contending factions. Nevertheless, I don't think it is too much to suggest that a willingness to actually understand the positions of those in opposing camps would be helpful in developing common ground.

Sanders has been a pretty consistent gadfly throughout his career. It doesn't take too much investigation to demonstrate that. And yet, in many ways he has been functional when it comes to the nitty-gritty of actual administration and governing. But is he a member of the establishment? Of course not. He has been on the periphery of TPTB all along. In a sense, he has been allowed into the church while not being welcome in the inner sanctum. He has been tolerated because we have a system of governance which is designed to be messy and tolerant. But he also has been marginalized on many occasions because he has never been the kind of person to go along to get along. He is useful as a voice and chastiser of those who he thinks are egregiously immoral or amoral. So long as he doesn't bite the hand that feeds him too hard.

It's my belief that he was tolerated as a campaigner early on because of his potential utility as a sheep dog to round up the votes that find his policy approach appealing. Nothing but benefits for the establishment powers of the Democratic party with very little downside--or so it was probably thought at the time. And, as often mentioned in these threads, it does appear that even Sanders himself has been surprised at how his policy-approach has found resonance with a sizable portion of the population. And it is the popularity of his ideas which are seen as threatening by the establishment. Throwing hand grenades at the Republicans is one thing, tossing a few disturbingly close to the DLC crowd which now runs the Democratic party is quite another, indeed.

I think we all know know that as the campaign winds down that Sanders is going to have to throw himself on a grenade to save this electoral cycle for the Democrats. It was part of the bargain in the first place. Fair enough, or at least as fair as politics gets. Still, the rifts remain and the bad blood will endure. And that, too, is politics.

So what are we left with? As a Sanders supporter, I'm all for pushing forward many of the ideas which have motivated his campaign. And just as it took the DLC caucus some time to shift power within the Democratic party, in essence becoming the new establishment in the wake of the older coalition which exercised power, I'm fairly confident that if enough people remain firm on the fundamental ideas at play here, and are able to build deeper and more comprehensive arguments that explain why some of these ideas are good policy, then this perspective will become less marginalized and more commonplace both within the party and with the general population as a whole.

In other words, Sanders is not part of the existing establishment, but he may well be the catalyst of what will become the new Democratic establishment at some time in the near to mid future. Whoever is for that will be for it, and those agin it will be agin it. That's politics.

This is a bit more fighty than I like, but I think substantial parts of this socialist critique are spot on. It does a pretty good job of laying out the lines of demarcation. YMMV.
posted by CincyBlues at 10:42 PM on May 30, 2016 [10 favorites]

All of this might be different if Sanders held any democratic legitimacy—a majority of the popular vote or a pledged delegate lead. But he has neither. Thirteen million people have voted for Clinton to be the Democratic Party’s nominee versus 10 million for Sanders. If he were, somehow, to persuade superdelegates—i.e., elected officials and longtime party activists—to abandon Clinton, he would have negated those voters and their choice, after six months of arguing that the party must respect his supporters. A cynical observer might say that Sanders isn’t angry with the lack of democracy as much as he’s angry at losing. In any case, it’s more than a bad look for his effort—it’s ugly.

When he derides most Democratic primary voters as everything wrong with a party of “limited participation and limited energy,” when he looks for ways to nullify Clinton’s popular vote and pledged delegate majority, when he touts his support among working-class whites and dismisses (predominantly black) Southern Democrats and their votes, Sanders is attacking the coalition that elected Barack Obama—the coalition that arguably made his progressive movement possible—whether he realizes it or not.

This coalition is predominantly nonwhite, centered in black and Latino communities, and it’s the reason Clinton stands as the likely nominee. These voters have enabled liberals to, for the first time, craft a national coalition that doesn’t have to shy from questions of racial justice and gender equality, or—like the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton—acquiesce in the face of white backlash, subsuming nonwhite concerns to the anxieties of white voters. And critically, these voters are among those Americans with the most to lose if Sanders decides that his shot at the nomination—or at changing debate and primary rules—is more important than keeping Donald Trump from the White House.

Bernie. Don’t Do This.
posted by y2karl at 11:07 PM on May 30, 2016 [8 favorites]

maudlin, that really is a good article:

“They’re going to throw everything including the kitchen sink” at me, she told the crowd. “But I have a message for them: They’ve done it for 25 years, and I’m still standing!” The crowd howled its approval. “I am looking forward to debating Donald Trump in the fall,” she hollered, several decibels more loudly than she needed to, into the mike. “Do we have disagreements? Yes,” she said. “That’s healthy! There are lots of different ways to achieve our goals … But you don’t do that by denigrating people, demeaning people. That is not who we are. And it is time we said, ‘Enough!’ ”
posted by bardophile at 11:32 PM on May 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

Why is Sanders requesting a recanvas of Kentucky when the absolute most that could happen is a shift of one delegate and that is unlikely? That's beyond even smacking of desperation. It costs time, money, and effort to do recounts; they don't simply magically happen. Don't get me wrong, there are times it is completely appropriate and even necessary to protect the democratic process to have a recount. Florida in 2000 is one such example (though at that point the error bars are probably higher than the margin of difference, sadly enough). But Kentucky isn't such a case. Nothing is at stake. It will not change a thing. It seems so pointless.
posted by Justinian at 12:53 AM on May 31, 2016 [5 favorites]

Anyway, here's a really good long article on Clinton from New York magazine.

Most of the traveling reporters are too young to remember the way Clinton was barbecued by the media from the beginning, labeled too radical, too feminist, too independent, too influential; dangerous, conniving, ugly and unfuckable. But it’s clear that even today she and her campaign feel that they can’t win with the press, that the story lines about her are already written. Case in point: In early May, the New York Times ran a feature about Clinton’s wooing of Republicans turned off by Donald Trump, which sent supporters of Bernie Sanders into a frenzy of I-told-you-so’s about Clinton’s crypto-Republicanism. The paper barely acknowledged that days later Clinton teed up her plan for subsidized child care and raising the wages of caregivers — proposals that would have been understood not long ago as something out of a ’70s feminist fever dream. There was also little media notice of her declaration, that same week, that she would remove bankers from the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks — an announcement that should have pleased left-leaning champions of financial reform.

This really is great. It contextualizes and analyzes a lot of her campaign behavior, and though the above quote is positive it is not afraid to point out her campaigning weaknesses, either.
posted by Anonymous at 3:00 AM on May 31, 2016

...Then there is the language of the campaign. I’ve watched this campaign, which knows full well how slim the chances of victory are, gleefully exploit 25 years of GOP smears on Hillary Clinton to ensure that a whole new generation of voters who know nothing about the history of that slime machine, swallow that drivel hook, line and sinker with no examination. Because those smears originated when Clinton transgressed historical gender norms by refusing to behave like a traditional First Lady, they cannot be unpacked from gender.

But what turns the campaign’s embrace of the rightwing’s history of character assassination against her from foul to sexist is its use of language like too much “ambition” and “unqualified” and, on Tuesday at the rally in NYC, “Democratic whores.” As every woman over 30 knows, women are routinely criticized as “too ambitious” or “too aggressive”, and face negative consequences, when they act the way any man in their same circumstances would. There is decades of research showing that men are hired and promoted over more qualified women on the basis of the men’s “potential” to achieve what their female competition has actually achieved.

There is also decades of research demonstrating people’s discomfort with women asking for promotions or power. The campaign’s language is either deliberately sexist, or used with unconscious bias, but in either case it’s a dog whistle to and for people who know and for those who don’t even realize their own discomfort with women seeking power. (Perhaps this language would not occur if the top ten staffers on his campaign were not white men.)

On Becoming Anti-Bernie
posted by y2karl at 5:25 AM on May 31, 2016 [6 favorites]

David Frum not holding back on Trump's rise.

"Trump is running not to be president of all Americans, but to be the clan leader of white Americans."
posted by chris24 at 6:16 AM on May 31, 2016 [7 favorites]

Nor is Michael Gerson. "Some Republicans keep expecting Trump to finally remove the mask of misogyny, prejudice and cruelty and act in a more presidential manner. But it is not a mask. It is his true face."
posted by chris24 at 6:27 AM on May 31, 2016 [8 favorites]

Why is Sanders requesting a recanvas of Kentucky when the absolute most that could happen is a shift of one delegate and that is unlikely?

It's another brick in the wall of "Corrupt Democratic Establishment Stealing Your Votes" that he can sell at the convention.
posted by Etrigan at 6:29 AM on May 31, 2016

Gov. Jerry Brown: An Open Letter to California Democrats and Independents

On Tuesday, June 7, I have decided to cast my vote for Hillary Clinton because I believe this is the only path forward to win the presidency and stop the dangerous candidacy of Donald Trump.

I have closely watched the primaries and am deeply impressed with how well Bernie Sanders has done. He has driven home the message that the top one percent has unfairly captured way too much of America’s wealth, leaving the majority of people far behind. In 1992, I attempted a similar campaign.

For her part, Hillary Clinton has convincingly made the case that she knows how to get things done and has the tenacity and skill to advance the Democratic agenda. Voters have responded by giving her approximately 3 million more votes – and hundreds more delegates – than Sanders. If Clinton were to win only 10 percent of the remaining delegates – wildly improbable – she would still exceed the number needed for the nomination. In other words, Clinton’s lead is insurmountable and Democrats have shown – by millions of votes – that they want her as their nominee.

posted by zombieflanders at 6:48 AM on May 31, 2016 [14 favorites]

And since I seem to be on a roll posting new columns by NeverTrumpers, Rick Wilson thinks Trump's and the RNC's money problems are going to be catastrophic.
posted by chris24 at 6:51 AM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

The definitive list of historic charges the right wing have thrown at Hillary: All the terrible things Hillary Clinton has done — in one big list

"I’m up here in New Hampshire watching her talk to a group of supporters, and I realized that I have been following this woman’s career for more than half my life. No, not just my adult life: the whole shebang. She came onto the national scene when I was a young man.

And for all that time, there has been a deafening chorus of critics telling me that she’s just the most wicked, evil, Machiavellian, nefarious individual in American history. She has “the soul of an East German border guard,” in the words of that nice Grover Norquist. She’s a “bitch,” in the words of that nice Newt Gingrich. She’s a “dragon lady.” She’s “Elena Ceaușescu.” She’s “the Lady Macbeth of Little Rock.”

Long before “Benghazi” and her email server, there was “Whitewater” and “the Rose Law Firm” and “Vince Foster.” For those of us following her, we were promised scandal after scandal after scandal. And if no actual evidence ever turned up, well, that just proved how deviously clever she was.

So today I’m performing a public service on behalf of all the voters. I went back and re-read all the criticisms and attacks and best-selling “exposés” leveled at Hillary Rodham Clinton over the past quarter-century. And I’ve compiled a list of all her High Crimes and Misdemeanors. "
posted by madamjujujive at 6:52 AM on May 31, 2016 [26 favorites]

Countdown to Sanders campaign attacking Brown in three, two...
posted by chris24 at 6:53 AM on May 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

And since I seem to be on a roll posting new columns by NeverTrumpers, Rick Wilson thinks Trump's and the RNC's money problems are going to be catastrophic.

One more reason for an independent run from an establishment Republican, I suppose; the RNC could pull up stakes and put their money and resources into someone else, leaving their actual nominee on the hook for all his own expenses.

Whether they'd actually do this and risk the ire of Trump's brownshirts is another question.
posted by duffell at 7:01 AM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh, forgot to point out my personal favorite damning thing from above list:

Cankles.
posted by madamjujujive at 7:25 AM on May 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

Cankles

Remember the whole 'she wears pantsuits because her legs are hideous' thing? And then was mocked for wearing a pantsuit. I can't imagine the mental energy and styling that she must go thru to keep within the frame of 'acceptable' clothing and hair choices.
posted by readery at 7:31 AM on May 31, 2016 [6 favorites]

2. She drove Vince Foster to commit suicide through her temper tantrums.

3. She was having an affair with Vince Foster.

4. She’s a lesbian.

12. Unnamed and unverifiable sources have told Peggy Noonan things about the Clintons that are simply too terrible to repeat.

32. She’s in the pay of the mafia.

33. She’s in the pay of the Chinese government.

34. She’s in the pay of the Wall Street banks.

38. By cleverly hiding all evidence of her crimes in the Whitewater affair, she caused Congress to waste all that taxpayers’ money.

43. She’s old.

44. She’s really ambitious and calculating, unlike all the other people running for president.

57. She insulted Tammy Wynette.

60. She claimed there was a ''vast right-wing conspiracy'' against her husband, and it turned out there was nothing but a bunch of tycoons financing private investigators, and some fake think tanks and books and news sites and stuff.

posted by y2karl at 7:59 AM on May 31, 2016 [13 favorites]

the RNC could pull up stakes and put their money and resources into someone else, leaving their actual nominee on the hook for all his own expenses.

Based on what pretext? Awful as Trump is, he did win the RNC's own primary system. He's their guy, whether they like it or not. I don't see how they drop financial support for him or shift it to someone else without abandoning any legitimacy for their own process. They'd need to come up with one hell of a good reason to justify it, and so far they've decided to willfully ignore every awful thing he's done.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:01 AM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Daily Beast has published a hit piece on H. A. Goodman: The Poet Laureate of Bernie Porn Does Not Want To Talk To The Beast.
posted by zarq at 8:11 AM on May 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

Sam Wang's first state-by-state snapshot of the polls gives Clinton 336 and Trump 202
posted by octothorpe at 8:12 AM on May 31, 2016 [16 favorites]

Then in 2012 the Democrats didn't run anybody against him, again, in order to ensure he didn't face any serious progressive challengers. The "Independent" affiliation is a fig leaf, where his own election is concerned.

No. It's because in 2006 the R candidate came close to being able to pull off a three way plurality. Why would you risk trading a solid New England leftist who votes with you most of the time for a Rockefeller Republican?
posted by Talez at 8:15 AM on May 31, 2016

Sam Wang's first state-by-state snapshot of the polls gives Clinton 336 and Trump 202

This is soothing.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:28 AM on May 31, 2016 [11 favorites]

Sanders was on Real Time with BIll Maher on Friday, for a one-on-one interview.
posted by zarq at 8:33 AM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Fear of Neoliberal Identity Politics
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:36 AM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

I just asked Trump about Harambe the gorilla. He clearly thought about this issue extensively. Says zoo likely made right choice.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:40 AM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Thanks for that link zarq. A friend on Facebook linked (or liked?) this piece. It's by Goodman and I had no idea who he was but the piece itself is absurd and pretty shading of facts if not outright fact-free in its attempt to make Sanders seem like the obviously best and winningest candidate. I find it kind of reassuring he's been apparently writing pieces like this for a while and thus my friend is probably used to reading them and nodding in agreement. Not sure why that's more comforting.

Fwiw. I don't consider that a hit piece. No doubt Goodman thinks so but I found it surprisingly nice given he wouldn't talk to the journalist and once I realized his was that piece I read. It weirdly made me slightly less annoyed at the piece I read which if it's a hit piece was probably not the intent.
posted by R343L at 8:43 AM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sam Wang's first state-by-state snapshot of the polls gives Clinton 336 and Trump 202

From the link: Donald Trump has not scrambled the electoral map in any meaningful way. The sole exception so far is Utah, where Trump is running over 30 percentage points weaker against Clinton than Barack Obama did against Mitt Romney. However, Utah is so strongly Republican that this is probably not going to change the November outcome.

This is why a Romney run would be so awesome. If he could snatch Utah and no other state out of Trump's hands, regardless of whether it went to Romney or to Clinton, that would be amaaaaaaaazing. Like I might literally donate money to Mitt fucking Romney.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:44 AM on May 31, 2016 [8 favorites]

I wonder how much of that is 2012 being an outlier because Utah turned out in force for the first major-party Mormon candidate.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:53 AM on May 31, 2016

R343L: Fwiw. I don't consider that a hit piece.

My personal rule of thumb is that if the phrase, "His pets and all of their friends think he's a moron, too" could fit into the article and sound totally plausible, it's a hit piece. ;)

But yeah, it definitely wasn't vicious all things considered.
posted by zarq at 8:56 AM on May 31, 2016 [4 favorites]

I don't understand why you wouldn't recognize what is in your own self interest based on the positions of Clinton or Trump and the recent history of their political party's governance. Is it really so difficult?

It has become very difficult, and this is one of the core phenomena in the current U.S. election circus, I think.

To some extent both major parties, though more dramatically the Republican Party, have become expert at mixing abstracted ideologies that appeal to people with specific policies that may not be in their favor. People will be hard-core Republicans because opposing all abortion is part of their platform, even as the tax cuts for the wealthy the party pursues make their day-to-day lives significantly more difficult.

The "granularity" (or limitations thereof) of policy choices for voters in a nation with two major parties, particularly when local and regional (as well as national) candidates are expected to closely follow the lead of the national party, can lead to cognitive dissonance for the thoughtful voter, and to voting against one's own best interest for the less-thoughtful one.
posted by aught at 9:01 AM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

I wonder how much of that is 2012 being an outlier because Utah turned out in force for the first major-party Mormon candidate.

Doesn't look like it. The margin was almost identical in 2004, and it hasn't not been an R blowout in recent history.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:01 AM on May 31, 2016

Mormons are super socially conservative, but they're also surprisingly cosmopolitan (because they send their missionaries all over the world, and many come home with foreign-born spouses). Exposure to other cultures breeds compassion and destroys nationalistic otherizing. They've been in favor of immigration reform and amnesty for a long time.

They also absolutely hate the kind of flashy decadence, casual cruelty, and reality TV culture that Trump embodies (the casinos, his style of doing business, The Apprentice, etc.). I would be unsurprised if Utah went to Clinton (or even if Johnson got a good chunk of votes there).
posted by stolyarova at 9:06 AM on May 31, 2016 [20 favorites]

Why is Sanders requesting a recanvas of Kentucky when the absolute most that could happen is a shift of one delegate and that is unlikely?

It's part of the change in strategy that has left this person who once contributed to his campaign and voted for him disillusioned and alienated. The request implies he has been cheated, that there was impropriety (or at best ineptitude) in the process. It's cynical and very misguided. But then, he lost my support weeks ago. I'm very sad what has happened to the man.
posted by aught at 9:11 AM on May 31, 2016 [12 favorites]

Greg Nog: " The Poet Laureate of Bernie Porn

If anyone else is wondering, this is just about a random unhinged Sanders supporter, not, like, the Chuck-Tingle-of-DeviantArt outsider-art figure I was excitedly expecting when I intially clicked through"

He's not a random supporter, he's the author of a ton a pro-Sanders articles in Salon and Huffington quite a few of which have been linked in one of these threads.
posted by octothorpe at 9:18 AM on May 31, 2016 [4 favorites]

I actually think that an interesting question is why media outlets are giving so much space to a random Bernie supporter whom many random Bernie supporters seem to recognize as being mildly unhinged. There's an issue here, but I'm not sure it's an issue with Sanders or his campaign.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:34 AM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

zarq: fair shorthand. I guess I just look for viciousness and the likely lack of truth.

But the existence of regular writing like this outside Reddit or dailykos diaries (or similar forums) explains to me a lot of (to me) disconnected fervency for Sanders. If an author that you trust (because you've been reading them for months and many of your friends share their pieces) is increasingly far from the facts but always saying your candidate should win, then of course you're going to believe it.
posted by R343L at 9:35 AM on May 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

Awful as Trump is, he did win the RNC's own primary system. He's their guy, whether they like it or not. I don't see how they drop financial support for him or shift it to someone else without abandoning any legitimacy for their own process.

But the evil genius of the Republican/SuperPAC/black money system is that everything is indirect. The money doesn't come from the Republican Party itself. It's just that lots of billionaires suddenly all start funneling millions of dollars (each) to help Republican candidates through the obscuring mechanism of multi-layered PACs, which aren't even required to report who gives them the money.

The R's can declare their support all day, but that will mean very little if those billionaires turn the spigot off. And there are some encouraging reasons to think this might happen with Trump. In some cases because they have already dealt with him in a business setting and hate his guts, probably more often because they've seen him on TV and think he's a bullshit businessman pretending to be as shrewd as them.
posted by msalt at 9:35 AM on May 31, 2016 [8 favorites]

A&C: the salon editor gave a reason - it's part of the spectrum of ideas and emotion and deserves to be heard. I might disagree - that same attitude can lead to publishing anti-vax or anti-gmo pieces that get incredibly basic science wrong while making your readers fear for their lives and children. Editors SHOULD edit. But given the perception that the "mainstream media" won't give "outsiders" a chance, it's not an absurd position for an editor (plus, you know clicks are money.)
posted by R343L at 9:38 AM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

With "Progressives" Like These...

In other words, against Wasserman-Schultz Bernie Sanders is backing a guy who attacks her from the right on one of the most consequential foreign policy issues of the day. I have no love whatsoever for Wasserman-Schultz but this almost makes me want to donate to her campaign. Fucking brilliant.

Of course this isn't really about Canova; it's about Sanders' grudge against Wasserman-Schultz. It isn't about 'principle' any more than his jihad against Barney Frank is; it's about payback. But what's also at work here is his lack of interest in foreign policy--something he might want to get over if he's going to keep endorsing people for Federal office.

posted by tonycpsu at 9:39 AM on May 31, 2016 [9 favorites]

But given the perception that the "mainstream media" won't give "outsiders" a chance, it's not an absurd position for an editor

Yes, that is an absolutely absurd position for an editor. Giving outside voices a chance does not mean legitimizing cranks.

(plus, you know clicks are money.)

That, of course, is the real reason, but he can't admit it.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:03 AM on May 31, 2016 [4 favorites]

Exactly. Salon has sunk to the level of US Uncut and Inquisitr.com -- chasing that young demographic Bernie has captured by any means necessary, whatever the damage to your journalistic credibility.

The only problem is that Facebook does the same thing already, feeding you outrage and good feels in the most pandering way possible. Why even go to a separate website?
posted by msalt at 10:17 AM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

For the record, the only time I ever see the name HA Goodman, it's from someone on Twitter or Facebook expressing exasperation at how completely full of shit he is.
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:19 AM on May 31, 2016

I think they're also chasing people who enjoy being outraged by the way they imagine Bernie supporters to be. People click on things they agree with, but they also click on things that piss them off. It's a stupid, craven twofer.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:22 AM on May 31, 2016 [7 favorites]

Tim Canova attacking DWS for supporting the Iran treaty seems like desperate pandering to me. In some ways, it's not too different from what I said earlier- insurgent leftists are using dirty tactics against the entrenched liberal establishment. Sometimes, especially from the rank and file, these attacks are done out of rage. Sometimes, when it's promoted from the leadership, it's cynical dirtiness for the sake of scrambling for support, any support.

This isn't the first time in American history where leftists appealed to popular bigotry and xenophobia for the sake of support. Or that populism became dependent upon racist pandering to get votes. The moral, I think, is that these leftist groups need to police themselves from falling to these tactics, despite how bitter these campaigns get. And instead of desperate pandering, they need to commit themselves for a long march to change hearts and minds over many elections, not a single one.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:29 AM on May 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think they're also chasing people who enjoy being outraged by the way they imagine Bernie supporters to be.

I'm pretty confident there's some of this dynamic at work, but the very same clickbait economics you cite that create the demand for takedowns of prominent #BernieOrBust-ers in the blogoverse also create the demand for the #BernieOrBust-er pieces in the first place. I've been consistent in saying that I think there's some measure of nutpicking going on with respect to exaggerating the number of Sanders dead-enders as well as their influence, but with the GOP falling in line behind Der Trümper and the Sanders campaign switching from "move the party left and maybe we'll win the nomination" to "burn the party down for a 1000-to-1 shot that we'll win the nomination", I don't think it's wrong to ridicule some of the absurd logic many Sanders supporters are using to justify their actions, which do nothing but increase the chance of a Trump victory in November.

The tactical objectives of the Sanders revolution have become completely unmoored from the issues-focused campaign Bernie told us he was going to run. Highlighting the weakness of the arguments of the remaining dead-enders is a public service, whether the number of people who believe those arguments is in the millions or merely the thousands.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:41 AM on May 31, 2016

North Korean surrogate endorses Trump over "dull Hillary." So there's that.
posted by dw at 11:17 AM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also, Bernie's "15 point lead" over Trump is down to 11. Another sign that Trump wrapping up the nomination is what's pulling his numbers up.
posted by dw at 11:20 AM on May 31, 2016

Sounds like a whole new world, with new friends in Moscow and Pyongyang.
posted by infini at 11:20 AM on May 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

Sounds like a whole new world, with new friends in Moscow and Pyongyang.

A new world Mordor, you might say.
posted by bardophile at 11:46 AM on May 31, 2016 [21 favorites]

Once one gets one's hand on the Ring, one is changed for the worse in that instant -- even the elven are not immune, let alone Senator Gollum.
posted by y2karl at 11:55 AM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Who is Tom Bombadil in this analogy? I'm thinking maybe Ben Carson, whose near brush with power did nothing to alter the fundamental kookiness at the base of his being.

Plus, I can easily picture him shirtless, wearing a crown of fresh-picked flowers and singing cloying little ditties to himself while sitting in the hollowed out trunk of a tree.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:21 PM on May 31, 2016 [4 favorites]

I can't really see Carson as an absent-minded god. Maybe Joe Biden?
posted by Going To Maine at 12:38 PM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Maybe it's Gary Johnson? He posed shirtless for GQ and is pro-pot-legalization...
posted by en forme de poire at 12:44 PM on May 31, 2016

I claim Biden for mortal men, his humanity is what makes him rad
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:44 PM on May 31, 2016 [8 favorites]

tbh though I can totally seen Ben Carson as some exile from Unknown Kadath where stabbing people in their belt buckles is a normal thing to do and giant pyramids really are grain silos
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:54 PM on May 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

With regards to the SF race between Jane Kim and Scott Wiener, the voter guide put out by San Francisco League of Pissed Off Voters endorses Jane for District 11 and goes into more detail about the differences between the 2 candidates. The short version is that she's much more pro-affordable housing than Scott:

Both Jane Kim and Scott Wiener are smart, talented, ambitious politicians that have supported safer streets and building lots of new housing. But as a progressive, Jane Kim led tough negotiations with developers to maximize affordable housing. Meanwhile, Wiener’s neoliberal approach is content to let developers maximize their profits and let the market sort things out.

On public safety, Wiener prioritizes hiring more cops over everything else and sides with the Police Officers Association who think the SFPD is doing a bang-up job. Kim sees the public’s lack of trust in our police department as a threat to our public safety, and knows that reforming SFPD’s culture, along with funding education, job training, and mental health services, is what will make us safer.

posted by kyp at 1:29 PM on May 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

Tom Bombadil is an ancient wizard of sorts who has risen above the petty day-to-day evils of men and their ilk because he's probably just too damned decent for this world to deserve him.

Jimmy Carter, maybe?
posted by duffell at 1:32 PM on May 31, 2016 [4 favorites]

Tom Bombadil is an outsider, not really part of the world, a remnant of a different and lost universe and thus stands not so much aloof but literally mostly unable to interact with the world he finds himself in [1]. I think Ben Carson fits that description pretty well.

As a neurosurgeon he's apparently pretty awesome. But when you take him out of that world and plunge him into the world of politics he's lost, unable to meaningfully interact or connect with the inhabitants of that world, his dialog reduced to nonsense, his meaning distorted, and his intellect seemingly stamped out.

[1] Not to go too much into Tolkien stuff, but Tom Bombadil was a doll Christopher Tolkien owned when he was a child, and JRR Tolkien made up songs and stories about the doll to entertain young Christopher. He put Bombadil, including his home life and songs, into the Lord of the Rings as a reference back to that, and that's why Bombadil always seemed like a weird, sort of bolted on to the side and not really fitting properly, part of the story. Because was a bolted on afterthought and he didn't fit the story.
posted by sotonohito at 1:51 PM on May 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

Of course, there is a fan theory on Bombadil that drastically changes the tone of our search for the modern-day Bombadil in US politics.
posted by duffell at 1:58 PM on May 31, 2016 [8 favorites]

Metafilter: Of course, there is a fan theory on Bombadil that drastically changes the tone of our search for the modern-day Bombadil in US politics
posted by dersins at 2:24 PM on May 31, 2016 [11 favorites]

So Kristol's "impressive candidate" is David French. No, really.

"French is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to the website of National Review, where French is a staff writer, he is a constitutional lawyer, a recipient of the Bronze Star, and an author of several books."
posted by chris24 at 2:32 PM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Between Tom Bombadil and David French, I don't know where this thread is headed. Or this election, for that matter.

("Where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?")
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:36 PM on May 31, 2016 [5 favorites]

David French? He's proposing someone for a third party run who doesn't even rate a Wikipedia page?
posted by readery at 2:39 PM on May 31, 2016 [6 favorites]

At least we know he knows where France is.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 2:45 PM on May 31, 2016 [9 favorites]

More impressive are Halperin's "donut steel" style accreditations at the top.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:03 PM on May 31, 2016

I had a passing thought that Kristol would call for the pundit class to nominate one of their own, since Romney and Ryan can't be persuaded to run. Seems out reality isn't too far from that. The insider's insider. His surname doesn't even sound like it could appeal to the conservative base.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:49 PM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

There's so much to say about Frank's heel turn since joining the board of Signature Bank that could be used to keep the financial industry and campaign finance in the minds of voters but his pointless objections to Frank being on the rules committee is some junior high shit

See, that's the problem with so much of the current Bernie campaign narrative.

Is the Democratic nomination process a byzantine mess? Yes. Is it "rigged?" No.
Is Barney Frank a better spokesperson for the banking industry now than he was in 2008? Yes. Is he a "shill?" No.
Is DWS on the up-and-up in running the DNC? No. Is she this corrupt puppetmaster the campaign makes her out to be? No.

It is very junior high or high school. It's like they're trying to play the Trump game of "wrap a truth in six layers of hyperbolic half-truth and coat it with outright lies." The problem is, it's just not working. But they keep doubling down.

One week to go, though. Hillary only needs 36% of the delegates next week to clinch the pledged delegate majority. We're almost done.

(I really wish the Democrats would make California move their primary up to the 50/50 point. First week of April, perhaps. If they had, this would have been over with the Mid-Atlantic primaries.)
posted by dw at 4:03 PM on May 31, 2016 [13 favorites]

May 9 was Texas's deadline for getting on the November ballot. Without Texas, Kristol&Friends can't even pretend their effort is anything but a spoiler. Without even the pretense, David French, or whoever, isn't going to garner enough support to spoil milk, much less the election.

I really don't understand why the #nevertrumps don't rally behind Gary Johnson. He's a bit of a loon but less of one than Trump or Ron Paul. And he's got some credibility as a former Republican governor. And, most importantly, he's got 50 state ballot access.
posted by honestcoyote at 4:09 PM on May 31, 2016 [5 favorites]

I guess the Rs hate gay people and women too much to support the libertarians wholesale (Bill Weld just said today that he'd sign any bill protecting transgender people, for example).
posted by stolyarova at 4:13 PM on May 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

His surname doesn't even sound like it could appeal to the conservative base.

Shouldn't his name be David Freedom?
posted by kirkaracha at 4:21 PM on May 31, 2016 [9 favorites]

As it turns out, that striptease at the Libertarian National Convention may have been a kamikaze attack to destroy the Libertarian Party in order to save it from Republican entryists. I guess there's a moral here somewhere for the major parties about balancing between ideological purity and admitting new members of different inclinations. And a joke about how every single U.S. party this year is undergoing some form of legitimacy crisis, even third parties.

Though the Libertarians have already nominated Gary Johnson in 2012, and ex-GOP Bob Barr back in 2008, so I don't know why Weeks is freaking out now.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:31 PM on May 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

I was going to suggest his name should be David Freedom Fry for maximum electability. And then remembered we already have a David Fry who we all love. Well, by "we" I mean those brave and patriotic Mefites who occupied a few bird sanctuary threads this winter under our tarp of liberty.

He's too young now, but I'll totally get behind Fry in 2028. Couldn't be worse than Trump.
posted by honestcoyote at 4:31 PM on May 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

As it turns out, that striptease at the Libertarian National Convention may have been a kamikaze attack to destroy the Libertarian Party in order to save it from Republican entryists.

Well sure. They weren't even very enthusiastic about Johnson because he supports things like driver's licenses, and Johnson was outright begging the convention to pick Weld as VP and not screw this up for him. Some people want ideological purity, and others are just drawn to third-party fringe movements because they are third-party fringe movements, and they'll last out at anything that could make them more mainstream.
posted by zachlipton at 4:35 PM on May 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

I still maintain that the long dragged out primary process is not only annoying, but really does keep a lot of people in later voting states from having any say in the affair. Usually the primaries are long over and done by now and the only people who even remember that they exist are those with a state or local official they're trying to primary and that often fails specifically because you've got to be a real wonk to even be aware of the primaries after the Presidential nominee is set.

Couldn't we compress some of this shit? Just have a few months of primary campaigning then all the state primaries in the same week? And just primaries too, none of this caucus shit.

I know the politicians pandering to Iowa and New Hampshire would have a fit, but I think the past few decades of deciding the Presidential nominees for the rest of the nation are enough and everyone else ought to start being able to have a say too.
posted by sotonohito at 5:10 PM on May 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think also that Iowa and New Hampshire would have a fit
posted by zutalors! at 5:42 PM on May 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

Charles Pierce: Donald Trump Spent a Portion of His Day Reading the Mind of a Dead Gorilla

> David Frum not holding back on Trump's rise.

Nor is Michael Gerson.

Why Do So Many Conservative Thought Leaders Claim Trump Appeared from Thin Air? In which Michael Gerson neglects to understand how a modern conservative could indulge conspiracy theories or kick the weak.

> More impressive are Halperin's "donut steel" style accreditations at the top.

Behold: The World's Most Gullible Man. Mark Halperin has reached a new level of Mark Halperin.
posted by homunculus at 5:43 PM on May 31, 2016 [4 favorites]

I still maintain that the long dragged out primary process is not only annoying,.....'

heh...yeah...I am with you on that one. I would add that one should vote, then take a nap!
posted by lampshade at 6:17 PM on May 31, 2016

I think also that Iowa and New Hampshire would have a fit

Definitely, but the only reason that we have any power is that we're first in the nation. Once we've lost that, who cares if we have a fit?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:26 PM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

As it turns out, that striptease at the Libertarian National Convention may have been a kamikaze attack to destroy the Libertarian Party in order to save it from Republican entryists.
As a rule, I discount the reliability of Twitter-based-news by 50% but when the 'authoritative' Tweeter is named "Henchman"... I don't think so.

I still maintain that the long dragged out primary process is not only annoying, but really does keep a lot of people in later voting states from having any say in the affair.
Having spent my entire voting in California, I am only slightly annoyed; seeing the Presidential primary on the same ballot with the primaries for other Federal and State offices just drives home how screwed up the Presidential process is. We tried moving the Presidential primary up once; it didn't become the 'game changer' it was supposed to be and state officials wisely decided that the separate election was a waste of public money (IMO, one of the wiser decisions on that basis I've ever seen).
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:36 PM on May 31, 2016

I think also that Iowa and New Hampshire would have a fit
Definitely, but the only reason that we have any power is that we're first in the nation. Once we've lost that, who cares if we have a fit?

I just think the idea that "politicians pandering" is the only reason we have primaries the way we do is simplistic.
posted by zutalors! at 6:43 PM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Why Do So Many Conservative Thought Leaders Claim Trump Appeared from Thin Air? In which Michael Gerson neglects to understand how a modern conservative could indulge conspiracy theories or kick the weak."

Why Is This Fire We Lit Burning Our Hands OUCH!
posted by klangklangston at 7:00 PM on May 31, 2016 [9 favorites]

I'm not so sure having all the primaries on the same day is a good idea. The candidates are auditioning for one of the most important jobs in the world. It takes a lot of exposure to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates. Consider that it took five months of primaries to finally figure out that Sanders was not the progressive savior everyone thought.

Eliminating caucuses seems like a no-brainer but an extended primary season seems to be a useful way of taking the temperature of the electorate. Shortening from five months to three months might be appropriate, but I don't think a single winner takes all on one day is appropriate. A lesser know candidate like Obama in 2008 wouldn't have even had a chance.
posted by JackFlash at 7:05 PM on May 31, 2016 [9 favorites]

Just wanted to say that Bill Kristol actually is a loser
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:08 PM on May 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

Consider that it took five months of primaries to finally figure out that Sanders was not the progressive savior everyone thought.

There's nothing about holding state primary contests that gives us any significant information about the candidates. If everyone involved knows that it's all over in a single day, weekend, week, or whatever, and if we really think it's important to have a long period of time in which we're engaged in the process of selecting candidates (a claim that I think requires more proof than simply "it helped us figure out that Sanders was kind of a schmuck"), then we can maintain that long calendar while still holding a single national primary.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:13 PM on May 31, 2016

I'm still a fan of rotating primaries. It'd prevent the "No I'm first!" childishness of 2008 and it would retire Iowa and New Hampshire for a few cycles and then they'd have their time in the spotlight again later on. Iowa and New Hampshire are fine states, but their views don't necessarily reflect the views of other states. The parties would do themselves a service to have to focus on other states for a while.
posted by downtohisturtles at 7:16 PM on May 31, 2016 [6 favorites]

Having all the primaries at once would make it substantially harder for anyone but the most establishment and money-backed of candidates to make it through, because candidates would have to rely on expensive nationwide TV buys instead of retail politics state-by-state.

Retail politics state-by-state is quite expensive as well, so I'm going to need some evidence before I accept the truthy-sounding claim you're advancing here. The advertising is also state-by-state (well, media market-by-media market, or email address by email address) so if upstart candidates need to target their message geographically, they have the tools to so whether we have six months of state primaries or not.

An upstart candidate wouldn't be able to perform unexpectedly well in a couple primaries and build support that way.

Momentum artificially created by the fact that states vote in a certain order is a bug, not a feature. The fact that it happened to help the candidate I voted for this year does nothing to change that fact.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:24 PM on May 31, 2016 [4 favorites]

Do the actual people in Iowa and New Hampshire really cherish their first in the nation status, or is it just something the politicians there brag about?
posted by sotonohito at 7:24 PM on May 31, 2016

Having all the primaries at once would make it substantially harder for anyone but the most establishment and money-backed of candidates to make it through, because candidates would have to rely on expensive nationwide TV buys instead of retail politics state-by-state. An upstart candidate wouldn't be able to perform unexpectedly well in a couple primaries and build support that way.

There's a good argument to be made that the whole thing is too darn long, but doing it all in a day or week would have some negative effects, especially on progressive candidates.

The primary process as it stands right now is only is a boon to insurgent candidates that might be able to overcome some polling deficit and the talking heads that need something to talk about with the horse race style mentality.

There's a reason why establishment candidates are establishment candidates. They're experienced politicians with broad support bases. Sanders and Trump's support is a symptom of America's obsession with instant gratification. Nobody wants to do hard work, cultivate a faction, build reliable voter support bases who turn out election after election and become part of the establishment. They want to show up, vote their political revolution and the job's done, let's all go home and sleep through 2018.
posted by Talez at 7:27 PM on May 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

if we really think it's important to have a long period of time in which we're engaged in the process of selecting candidates

The reason is that only established candidates can afford to compete in all 50 states simultaneously. Relatively unknown candidates like Obama could bootstrap enough financial support to compete in a few states. Once you establish some credibility as a valid contender in a few states, you can get more contributions to allow you to continue competing in the rest of the states.

If all the primaries were on one day in 2008, Clinton would have won in a landslide. Obama wouldn't have had the time to put together the financial or logistical support to be a contender. Likewise, Sanders wouldn't have had a chance in 2016.
posted by JackFlash at 7:29 PM on May 31, 2016 [7 favorites]

If all the primaries were on one day in 2008, Clinton would have won in a landslide. Obama wouldn't have had the time to put together the financial or logistical support to be a contender. Likewise, Sanders wouldn't have had a chance in 2016.

No she wouldn't have. The polling in December 2007 was Clinton 40, Barack 30-35 and the rest of the contenders picking up scraps. It would have been an extremely close finish. Hell, with IRV it might even go down to preferences on the final round. Besides, Clinton actually won the popular vote that was counted in 2008 after the slugfest went down. The process was fucked up from many angles and not just the protracted primaries.
posted by Talez at 7:37 PM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Once you establish some credibility as a valid contender in a few states, you can get more contributions to allow you to continue competing in the rest of the states.

If you subtract the cargo cult logic from this, it's pretty clear that there are many other ways to establish credibility as a contender that don't involve winning a bunch of state-level contests. We only think of those as the main way to get a campaign going because that's how the current system works. Absent such a long primary calendar to deal with, the insurgent candidates likely wouldn't need as much money to get going as they do now.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:42 PM on May 31, 2016 [4 favorites]

Do the actual people in Iowa and New Hampshire really cherish their first in the nation status

This particular Iowan fucking hates Iowa's first in the nation status, because it means our Presidential election cycles are 24 months long. It's nice that people care what we think, sure, but we're a swing state: people would care what we thought whether we went first or not. I'd prefer a system where the primary schedule rotated among the states.
posted by Spathe Cadet at 7:45 PM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Five to ten points sounds like a blowout to me. So what then, you go to a contested national convention? That's an improvement? Typically you would expect the delegates to go to the clear leader.
posted by JackFlash at 7:47 PM on May 31, 2016

Our election season, specifically the primary process, has a lot of problems, but I don't think making them more exclusive and less participatory is the solution.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:49 PM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Did I miss a deleted comment or something? Who's advocating making the election more exclusive and less participatory?
posted by tonycpsu at 7:50 PM on May 31, 2016

Do the actual people in Iowa and New Hampshire really cherish their first in the nation status, or is it just something the politicians there brag about?

I definitely know some people in Iowa who are fanatical about first in the nation, and I also know some people who don't care very much.

I think Iowa and New Hampshire are great, but they're not representative of the country, and they're not representative in broadly similar ways. Neither has a big city. They're among the whitest states in the country. About 13% of Americans are immigrants: in both Iowa and New Hampshire, it's about 5%. I like the idea of rotating, although I think the campaigns would hate it, because they'd have to figure out new states every election.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:50 PM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Did I miss a deleted comment or something? Who's advocating making the election more exclusive and less participatory?

I don't see how you compress the primary process without empowering establishment voices, people with a pre-existing media presence and financing organizations. I disagree with the idea that the 2008 campaign was an even contest between Clinton and Obama. Obama's ability to build on primary victories was essential to his success.

Imagine if 2008 had a one-day national primary. We could have ended up with John Edwards.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:05 PM on May 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'd like to see Iowa, NH, Nevada, and SC to be a permanent opening four weeks.

After that, I'd like to see a rotation, perhaps done by drawing. Factors for getting more balls in the hopper would include "Are you a primary or caucus? Is your primary/caucus open or closed? Are you part of a set of neighboring states who've agreed to go at the same time?"

You then draw for the four weeks in March, then have a pause week, do California, then the remaining weeks of April and May.

First state out of a "group" sets the primary for all the states in that group, e.g. Texas goes in with Oklahoma and Arkansas and comes first out of the hopper, then that's the date for all three.

You then also apply the rules for giving bonuses to states that go late vs early.

I think in this system you'd get 3/4 of the delegates settled by mid-April. And in all likelihood you wouldn't see states get buried late (but the extra delegates would be beneficial to them.)

Anyway, I'm a white-ish guy with an opinion, so.
posted by dw at 8:12 PM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't see how you compress the primary process without empowering establishment voices, people with a pre-existing media presence and financing organizations.

No evidence has been provided for the assertion that compressing the duration of the primary election would necessarily compress the length of time during which candidates could raise funds, run ads, or hold rallies across the country leading up to the day or days of the national election.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:13 PM on May 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

Just wanted to say that Bill Kristol actually is a loser
But a very successful loser, a man of high status in spite of his failures... kind of like a minor-league version of Donald Trump.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:35 PM on May 31, 2016

@BernieSanders: I do think that we can fulfill the legacy of presidents F.D.R., Truman, and L.B.J. and guarantee health care for all people as a right.

Notice someone missing from the list?
posted by dw at 9:26 PM on May 31, 2016 [35 favorites]

And people wonder why Sanders has had such a hard time making inroads in the black community.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:41 PM on May 31, 2016 [18 favorites]

Christ what a typical politician after all.
posted by EatTheWeek at 9:47 PM on May 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

I don't know much about the USA electoral system, but I think this might be a useful idea: have the primaries on the same day as elections! Everybody's there, they're registered, and they're excited! You'd have four years to run the election campaigns, which would ensure that all issues get thoroughly covered, and the fact that the President's potential replacement is picked at the same time as their election would be a useful foil to Presidential hubris.

HTH.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:49 PM on May 31, 2016

Among the many practical problems with that plan, we're trying to make the whole damn thing shorter, not ensure that every presidential campaign lasts more than four years. But I'm sure that truly constant election mania would amuse the rest of the world, so I thank you for your suggestion.
posted by zachlipton at 9:58 PM on May 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

"Wouldn't it be great if I could fulfill the legacy of these three legendary white presidents?"
posted by duffell at 10:02 PM on May 31, 2016 [4 favorites]

Is David French's dramatic entry into the race enough to get us a new post?
posted by double block and bleed at 10:04 PM on May 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

In other news, we have new details about the Trump University lawsuits, such as internal sales manuals and depositions from former employees about how they had customers max out their credit cards and lied about Trump's involvement.
posted by zachlipton at 10:24 PM on May 31, 2016

I do think it's time for another post.
posted by dw at 10:27 PM on May 31, 2016 [4 favorites]

Something has to happen for us to deserve another post.
posted by zachlipton at 10:29 PM on May 31, 2016 [4 favorites]

The sole exception so far is Utah, where Trump is running over 30 percentage points weaker against Clinton than Barack Obama did against Mitt Romney.

My friends in Utah who are generally Republican voters are really amazingly antagonistic towards Trump. As near as I can tell, they see him as crude, crass, and non-religious.

Crudeness--ie swearing, various types of bad language--is almost his worse sin in their eyes, I think. The sort of mocking of various groups--racism, sexism, and such--is along these lines as well. This is very much *not* the kind of conservative that most religious conservative Utahns identify themselves with.

Pretty much the flip side of Romney, who was in so many ways *exactly* the type of conservative Utah Mormons do identify with.
posted by flug at 10:32 PM on May 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

I wish all the election threads were combined into one.
posted by mazola at 10:35 PM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

It would crash the system, I think. What do people think? Can this one last six more days?
posted by happyroach at 10:49 PM on May 31, 2016

Here's a depressing one. Trump University ranked (page 37) its students by the liquid assets they have available (thankfully not counting retirement accounts). Their top tier is for those with over $35K. Because obviously there's a lot of great real estate investments you can make with $35K. But wait, what does the most expensive Trump U package cost? You guessed it, $35K.
posted by zachlipton at 10:49 PM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Crudeness--ie swearing, various types of bad language--is almost his worse sin in their eyes, I think. The sort of mocking of various groups--racism, sexism, and such--is along these lines as well. This is very much *not* the kind of conservative that most religious conservative Utahns identify themselves with.

I wanted to quote this because I find it interesting.

But also because I have an inexplicable love for the word Utahns. It's one of my favorites, for no real reason except because, as a word, it is totally the best. Utahns. Utahns. Utahns. See? So great.

Utahns
posted by dersins at 10:59 PM on May 31, 2016 [10 favorites]

The Rolling Stone did an interview with Bernie:

To put it in terms that you were talking about tonight at the rally, I think the critique is not blaming Bernie Sanders for thinking too big, but critiquing Bernie Sanders for sweeping the "unpleasant truths" of our political system right now – the way it ties everything up in knots – "under the rug." Many people say you're right as rain on the policy and the objectives, but "Boy, I just don't think he can do it."
Yes ...

So how do you do it? What are the specifics that allow you to—
What are the specifics about how I, personally, all by myself, do what nobody in American history has done? And I'm being criticized? Why don't you do it? Why doesn't the editor of Rolling Stone do it? Look. You know. With all due respect, that's an absurd question.

The question is: Assuming you're president and you're dealing with a Congress that looks like the one we have today...
Let me just comment on that. If I am elected president, the odds of the Senate remaining Republican would be minimal. You'd have very large turnout helping Democrats up and down the line.

[...]

But you'd still likely face Paul Ryan as your negotiating partner. And I'm trying to figure out how you get something like public-college-for-all passed with Paul Ryan as your counterpart. Given that you just said today that they won't play ball.
. . . The strategy – which is unprecedented, and this is where we're talking about thinking outside the box – is to have a president who actually, vigorously goes around the country and rallies the American people, who are in favor of this idea. This is not some sort of fringe idea. The American people want it. And [the president] rallies the American people and makes it clear that people in the Republican Party – or Democratic Party – who are not sympathetic will pay a political price. That changes the dynamics. . . . Now, is it easy to do? No. How do you do it? It's a good question. And the truth is, right now I'm a bit busy running for president to have figured that out, other than to tell you that it requires a mass-based political effort bringing millions of people together to stand up and fight back.

This has been a tough campaign – a good campaign, but tough in many respects. I've heard a number of your supporters, more than I would expect, say that they'd rather vote for Trump than Clinton, or that they'd rather sit out the whole thing. What's your message to those people?
Wrong question. It's not, "What is my message to them?" It's not my job to think that I can reach out and say to millions, "Do what I want you to do." That's not the way it works. The question that should be asked is, "Why?" I think Trump is incredibly irresponsible. And an incredibly dangerous person. A man who is primarily a showman and an opportunist and an egomaniac. A man who has already significantly damaged this country with his attacks on Mexicans and Muslims and women and veterans and African-Americans and so forth. Very dangerous man. And yet, how come you have millions of people who are prepared to vote for him and not Hillary Clinton? [We got] information from West Virginia just a few hours ago. Apparently, a lot of people who voted for me are not prepared to vote for Hillary Clinton. Why is that?

[...]

The answer is not so much what the Republicans are doing. The answer is what the Democrats are not doing. [Taps his finger urgently on the table] They have not convinced the working class of this country that they are prepared to stand up and fight for them. They have convinced African-Americans that they are not a racist party, which is certainly true, as opposed to elements of the Republican Party. That they are prepared to fight for comprehensive immigration reform, which the Republicans certainly will not. They have convinced women that they are prepared to fight for a woman's right to choose. All of that is excellent – and something, needless to say, that I support. But how come Democrats haven't convinced the white working class that they are on their side? That's the very important question that has to be answered.

So in this interview I learned:

It's not Bernie's job to figure out how to get his policies passed because he's busy running for President
If he's elected president the Senate would not be Republican because Reasons.
He'd get his policies passed by having rallies.
It's not his job to convince people to not vote for Trump.
Black people, immigrants, and women are not part of the working class, and we are not paying enough attention to White people.

posted by Anonymous at 11:03 PM on May 31, 2016

Trump University Rules of Engagement (page 72, reads like a lawyer wrote it) "You are urged to use your common sense and business judgement to determine whether the purchase of TU products and/or services is appropriate for the particular customer."

Trump University Sales Manual (page 8): "Money is never a reason for not enrolling in Trump University; if they really believe in you and your product, they will find the money. You are not doing any favor [sic] by letting someone use lack of money as an excuse."

Trump University Sales Manual (page 13):Collect personalized information that you can utilize during closing time. (For example: are they a single parent of three children that may need money for food? Or are they a middle-aged commuter that is tired of traveling for 2 hours to work each day?)" (emphasis added)
posted by zachlipton at 11:17 PM on May 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

Ah yes, why don't I enact all of the sweeping and revolutionary policy reforms in Bernie Sanders' platform? After all, I am less busy than Bernie Sanders, who is running for president! And Bernie is really busy, so busy he doesn't have time to tell me how, exactly, he plans to achieve most of his policy goals, or even if he has a way to achieve them at all. But that's okay, he'll have a lot of rallies when he's president, and it'll all work out. I should just shut my lady mouth about lady issues like my reproductive rights and immigrant issues like immigration reform, because what about the white working class people, I am not paying sufficient attention to the white working class people!

It's been such a long primary season, you guys. I'm so tired. Please, let it end next Tuesday.
posted by yasaman at 11:19 PM on May 31, 2016 [15 favorites]

Trump: Literally The Worst
posted by Anonymous at 11:19 PM on May 31, 2016

So in this interview I learned:

You also learned that Sanders doesn't think of himself as a Democrat at all. Look at that last paragraph you quoted--it's riddled with "they" every time he's talking about the Democratic party, never "we."

Doesn't bode well for his attitude and behavior once he finally admits to himself that he's lost the nomination.
posted by dersins at 11:24 PM on May 31, 2016 [13 favorites]

But how come Democrats haven't convinced the white working class that they are on their side? That's the very important question that has to be answered.

*Twitch*

There's a one word answer Sanders, which you have trouble acknowledging exists.

I mean seriously, I know what he's TRYING to say, but damn, the phrasing came off as incredibly tone deaf.
posted by happyroach at 11:39 PM on May 31, 2016 [6 favorites]

He's hardly the first to critique American liberalism for that.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:50 PM on May 31, 2016

I've been reading all of these election threads on a tablet, and I'm uncloaking to say YES PLEASE A NEW THREAD that won't make this tiny machine choke every time I load it please please
posted by salix at 11:51 PM on May 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

Washington Post: "Who will lead the progressive movement after Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren? Here are 6 who could."
posted by Apocryphon at 11:54 PM on May 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

You're not wrong Bernie, you're just an asshole.
posted by fullerine at 11:54 PM on May 31, 2016 [6 favorites]

But how come Democrats haven't convinced the white working class that they are on their side? That's the very important question that has to be answered.

TRUMP / SANDERS 2016
It'll be huge, believe me!
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:11 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

No new thread until the primaries next Tuesday.

This election season has been shit and it's only proper for us spectators to suffer.
posted by ryanrs at 12:46 AM on June 1, 2016 [7 favorites]

zachlipton, I don't feel right favoriting your dire turd-nuggets from the Trump University manuals for extracting wealth from the deluded poor, but thank you very much for doing all that work and sharing it.
posted by msalt at 1:08 AM on June 1, 2016 [6 favorites]

You're not wrong Bernie, you're just an asshole.
Not an uncommon affliction; sadly, it's the assholes who are also very wrong who are seeing the most success these days.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:15 AM on June 1, 2016

I was a Sanders supporter early on and donated to his campaign, but he lost my support after he was asked multiple times just how, exactly, he'd enact any of his sweeping reforms--and he not only didn't answer the question, but made it clear he thought the question was beneath his contempt, or even constituted an attack. Fuck that. You want the job, this is not a question you get to dodge.
posted by duffell at 1:15 AM on June 1, 2016 [22 favorites]

You want the job, this is not a question you get to dodge.
...unless you're the Donald. (Reason #358 why most left-wingers are just plain smarter than most right-wingers)
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:19 AM on June 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

I've always liked that Bernie acknowledged that enacting any part of his agenda was going to take ongoing hard work from his supporters, that it wouldn't be as simple as voting for him and going home. But he's never had a great answer to that question (and "why isn't the editor of Rolling Stone" off getting legislation through Congress is a particular poor answer), and his efforts to systematically alienate virtually every elected official in his own alleged party have just made his answer even worse. Even if he thinks all his colleagues in Congress are corrupt, he still would need those people on his side as President to pass any of his programs.

And if Sanders truly believes that he can hold rallies and build public support that will move even the most resistant Republican legislature, why not do a test run right now that could actually help some people? How about he use his talents to get some red states to expand Medicaid? Hold the rallies he's talking about and let the voices of the masses be heard. If he somehow succeeded, that would be wonderful; people would get health care, and we'd all see how Sanders really could organize people to deliver meaningful results. And if he failed, well that might give everyone an idea of how difficult even more significant change will be.
posted by zachlipton at 1:43 AM on June 1, 2016 [15 favorites]

I read Sanders's answers in that interview and see a different kind of delusion. He's viewing his campaign largely as a way of shifting the narrative rather than like a standard primary/Presidential campaign, and imagining his election to the Presidency as a symbolic gesture that would mobilize and energize others to run successfully on similar platforms. It's the moment of soft revolution, the surge forward of the vanguard party.

This is why he's convinced that the makeup of the legislature would change almost by default if he were the nominee. And it's also why he's flailing so hard, and doing such scummy things; he really does see this as *the* window in which this victory is possible, and that defeat will likewise have a huge symbolic resonance and, in his worldview, will probably shut out the kind of change he advocates for a generation or more. This also means that he has made himself the protagonist of a historical narrative, which is not something that ever ends well.

What we're seeing in both parties is that a chunk of the base has, in sometimes naive terms and sometimes sophisticated ones, rejected what they see as the "managerial class" theory of credibility in politics. (They would not use these terms, of course; "corruption," "cronyism," "the establishment," and so on are the terms you hear instead.) More broadly, it's a rejection of whatever is left of things like the Washington consensus (at least when applied at home) and of "market liberalism" as a policy. In other words, it's a bunch of people who have just noped out on the governing ideology when it comes to economic policy.

But what happens along with that is that other rising or established ideological elements get thrown out too, because they're all seen as tied in to that. And this is in part because for so long "market liberalism" was the only ideology anyone was allowed to work within, and is to a large extent what most of the people in positions of power seem to believe in. So along with this comes a general rejection of anything anyone perceived as an "elite" or an "insider" has to say.

So things like the language and ideas of the growing social justice movement regarding race get lumped in with managerial speak, in no small part because they are perceived as emanating from elite centers of power. Some of the actual language often is constructed in the realms of higher education; the ideas and basic ethics are really not, but it's the language that the clueless and the privileged first encounter and have been trained to focus on, often the first recognizable signal that penetrates the bubble.

And the biggest competing ideology left is plain old reactionary racism and sexism, which are not seen as something promoted by "establishment" figures, largely because those figures have long adopted a different language and a set of careful dog whistles because plausible deniability is what lets you try to gull or at least placate all those chunk uneasy folks who sympathize with racism and sexism but don't like to admit it, even to themselves. Racism and sexism therefore become even more powerfully attractive to disgruntled, fragile whites, the default thing they move to to signal that you've broken with that other perceived consensus. Thus Trump, and thus some of the garbage emanating from the Sanders diehards.

In a very loose sense, Sanders is not "wrong" to suggest that Democrats have not done a good job figuring out how to bring in white working class voters. But this is largely because white working class voters have bought into lot of garbage ideas for generations, using them as a cheap substitute for dignity and humanity in the face of a loss of economic and political power. Those same garbage ideas are why they were so unprepared for the idea that their own fortunes could wane; after all, they'd been punching down so hard, and that felt like moving upwards or at least like treading water.

But there is a problem: how do you address the problems of the aggrieved white working class? Marginalizing that group doesn't work because they have just enough power left to fuck things up for everyone else who's struggling, often with greater burdens. Telling them they're wrong and need to change intensifies the reactionary turn, or at least ends up being treated as justification for it. And bringing them in on economics means accepting all the other hateful garbage they've welded to their legitimate grievances?
posted by kewb at 3:48 AM on June 1, 2016 [18 favorites]

tl; dr version -- Racism and sexism (and actual opiates) have become the opiates of the white working class now that they're in some real pain, and Sanders is doing a terrible thing for delusional reasons by behaving as if it's understandable that such people need whatever palliatives they can get and should be allowed to keep indulging in them until he can make sweeping changes happen and take away the pain.
posted by kewb at 3:52 AM on June 1, 2016 [16 favorites]

Should he be elected, I have no doubt that Congress and the American public will rally around Bernie if only just to defend our country from the threat of menacing bird-boar hybrids.
posted by humanfont at 4:41 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh, really. Well, here's a thought experiment in two words: Supreme Court. What is so difficult about that ?

y2karl, you've selectively quoted me to completely misrepresent my comment. Please don't do that.
posted by aught at 4:51 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's funny, Sanders did some really good work making allies from marginalized groups. The meetings, videos, ads. He's had some really smart, good people come out and speak for him. But I read that and it's like still, he really sees himself and the leader that white men need. The more sympathetic reading would be that he sees himself as the reader that the rest of us need white men to have, if we're going to prevent that demographic from wreaking havoc. And he will do it by leading big rallies (as a president, with the power of the executive branch behind him). Which... is a little scary sounding for someone (anyone?) with a connection to or background in fascist governments.

I think he made this call after NS. at that point, he could have decided to work to get out the vote for democrats and wield his influence to push the party leftwards (both from the 'top' and from the active volunteer/voter base). Or he could But it looks like he has decided that the only important thing (or, more charitably, the most important thing) about moving leftwards is how working and unemployed white men feel about their lives.

Yes, he's still better than Trump and if by some fluke he won the nomination, I'd stillkty vote for him against Trump. But to undertake that I think he'd have a huge learning curve to actually be an effective president for all (even all progressive) Americans, and my confidence in his ability (or willingness) to do that is lower and lower. He is looking more and more like a lesser of the evils himself.

It also bothers me so much that he seems to be taking himself seriously as democratic nominee while not releasing his tax returns. If he thinks there's something damaging in them, get it out NOW, before the weight of the party is behind him. It reminds me of Edwards arrogance in conducting secret affair while running for president (against a Black man and a woman).
posted by Salamandrous at 5:20 AM on June 1, 2016 [9 favorites]

That Bernie interview makes me miss Paul Wellstone. :( And it makes me feel like I shoud check in on what Wellstone Action events are coming up soon nearby.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:29 AM on June 1, 2016 [10 favorites]

Crudeness--ie swearing, various types of bad language--is almost his worse sin in their eyes, I think.

I feel like even outside Utah theres a significant bloc of conservatives who are seriously anti-Trump along these lines. People who take the "G" and "O" in GOP seriously and want to put the "gentleman" back in "Southern gentleman". Their policies may well be retrogressive, but it's their tradition and they will assert their tradition with dignity and gravitas—two words not particularly attached to the vulgar demagogue they're stuck with as their candidate.
posted by jackbishop at 6:17 AM on June 1, 2016 [5 favorites]

In a very loose sense, Sanders is not "wrong" to suggest that Democrats have not done a good job figuring out how to bring in white working class voters. But this is largely because white working class voters have bought into lot of garbage ideas for generations, using them as a cheap substitute for dignity and humanity in the face of a loss of economic and political power.

1 - a solid employment base, with solid wages
2 - health care for everyone
3 - bail out the common people rather than the elites

this is what needs to be delivered to the "white working class" - (and to everyone else, for that matter)

do this and the garbage ideas will start fading away

fail, and we will be up to our neck in garbage

i wish bernie would be this direct - it's my perception that the democrats have neglected this to the cost of having a strong coalition, where everyone comes to the table and everyone gets something from it

hillary, unfortunately, doesn't seem to see the necessity to be this direct, either

donnie does, but he's vague and he's lying anyway
posted by pyramid termite at 6:38 AM on June 1, 2016 [5 favorites]

Just a little reminder about the problem with early polls.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:41 AM on June 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

1 - a solid employment base, with solid wages
2 - health care for everyone
3 - bail out the common people rather than the elites

this is what needs to be delivered to the "white working class" - (and to everyone else, for that matter)

Unfortunately there's a significant portion of the electorate that doesn't seem to want those things if it means those "other" people get them too.
posted by billyfleetwood at 6:45 AM on June 1, 2016 [25 favorites]

this is what needs to be delivered to the "white working class" - (and to everyone else, for that matter)

do this and the garbage ideas will start fading away

(emphasis mine) You know, I want this to be true. But then I think of the "keep your government hands off my Medicare" people, the same members of the white working class who were afforded a great deal of relief with the passage of the Affordable Care Act (an admittedly piecemeal solution), and who practically burned the president in effigy as thanks.
posted by duffell at 6:48 AM on June 1, 2016 [8 favorites]

The first of those three promises is reeeeeeeeeealy high level. A good desire, but vague as all get out.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:54 AM on June 1, 2016

Also, this thread is running like garbage on mobile. Paging wordshore...
posted by Going To Maine at 6:57 AM on June 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

Unfortunately there's a significant portion of the electorate that doesn't seem to want those things if it means those "other" people get them too.

It's a little more complicated than that.

Our society is currently - there are arguments it should be ordered differently, but currently - very hierarchical. Your socioeconomic status gains you real benefits in how you are treated, the experiences you have, that your children have. It's not really about pure wealth, which has always been relative. By objective standards, even the poorest in the United States would be considered wealthy in certain other places. People always compare themselves to those around them.

What the white working class are suffering from is a lack of money - but more than that, a lack of prestige. Some of it is because through - not elimination of, but modification of - a lack of the level of racism that existed previously, so people on the bottom are rising. Some of it is that as we move to a tech-centered world, 'salt of the earth labor' is no longer socially valued quite as much.

So a lot of programs proposed solve current inequities by flattening the bottom and lifting everyone up - but with that bottom flattened, it means a lot of people who are differentiating near the bottom no longer can tell themselves, "Well I may be poor, but I got a job with BENEFITS. Not like THOSE poor shlubs."

And that's actually a different desire than "I don't want other people to have nice things." It's really a desire to have their socioeconomic status preserved, or returned to what it was - and that is necessarily going to be in conflict with any ideology that supports a flattening of socioeconomic status. Even if the relative difference between them and the top has lessened, it may not feel better to them.

I don't know how to solve this. The world is fundamentally different now. That place in the socioeconomic pecking order is gone and it is not coming back. But people have never really voluntarily suffered their own status removal, so I think we're going to be going through a lot more growing pains before it gets better.
posted by corb at 6:58 AM on June 1, 2016 [24 favorites]

This is why he's convinced that the makeup of the legislature would change almost by default if he were the nominee. And it's also why he's flailing so hard, and doing such scummy things; he really does see this as *the* window in which this victory is possible, and that defeat will likewise have a huge symbolic resonance and, in his worldview, will probably shut out the kind of change he advocates for a generation or more.

While I don't disagree with you on the racism and sexism parts, and I'm horribly disappointed in Sanders there, I think your assessment of his reasoning here both isn't wrong about him and likely isn't wrong about the country.

Right here on metafilter, an oasis of nice reasonable liberal type people, there's always been a sort of simmering hostility towards leftism, and a view of leftists as an unwelcome (if necessary for their votes) group inside he Democratic party. People who preach compromise as a positive virtue when dealing with Republicans and conservatives preach a no compromises, just steamroll them and woe betide them if they don't vote the right way, attitude towards the left.

Not just in these highly emotionally charged primary times, but long before the current primary season got underway.

When it comes to market liberalism, I don't think it's at all a stretch to say that Clinton is a believer in that ideology, and that her presidency will be, in that respect, a continuation of Obama's. That's eight more years of the dominance of market liberalism, and the power structures tolerating absolutely no dissent on the matter.

Half a generation at least, and unless the next Republican candidate for President is a Trump type, it's all but guaranteed that the Republican candidate will be a proponent of market liberalism as well. Just about the only things the Democrats and Republicans agree on is that the market is good, Wall Street is good, market regulations are bad, and socialism is a dirty word. But in those areas they are in full agreement.

I don't think this justifies Sander's actions, but I don't think it is wrong of him (if your analysis is correct and I think it may be) to think that he really does represent the last chance for a long time of getting the utterly necessary changes started.

I've said it before, and I'm sure people are sick of hearing me say it, but I think that market liberalism is leading us (unintentionally to be sure) towards a populist right movement and Fascism.

I don't think we can separate market liberalism from racism and sexism and the other bigotries of the right. They're two sides of the same thing. Market liberalism produces the pain that many white people try to use bigotry to assuage.

Worse, the pain from market liberalism is real, and it is felt by a lot more than just white people. Minorities, women, and so on may not be able to retreat so easily into the bigotries of white people, but they hurt nevertheless and they too will eventually lash out when pushed far enough.

Dr. King spotted the same thing back in the 1960's and addressed it directly many times, I think most eloquently in his address at the conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery march, I'll quote him here:

Our whole campaign in Alabama has been centered around the right to vote. In focusing the attention of the nation and the world today on the flagrant denial of the right to vote, we are exposing the very origin, the root cause, of racial segregation in the Southland. Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the races then. And as the noted historian, C. Vann Woodward, in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land. You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less. Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low.

Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. (Listen to him) That is what was known as the Populist Movement. (Speak, sir) The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses (Yes, sir) and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses (Yeah) into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South.

To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society. (Right) I want you to follow me through here because this is very important to see the roots of racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, (Yes) thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. (Yes, sir) And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century.

If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. (Yes, sir) He gave him Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, (Yes, sir) he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. (Right sir) And he ate Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. (Yes, sir) And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, (Speak) their last outpost of psychological oblivion. (Yes, sir)

Thus, the threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike (Uh huh) resulted in the establishment of a segregated society. They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores from the rich whites; (Yes, sir) they segregated southern churches from Christianity (Yes, sir); they segregated southern minds from honest thinking; (Yes, sir) and they segregated the Negro from everything. (Yes, sir) That’s what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society: a society of justice where none would pray upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the dignity and worth of human personality. (Yes, sir)

I certainly agree that the Democrats shouldn't be rushing to try and embrace racist white voters. But I do think that addressing the actual, real, not imagined, problems created by market liberalism is absolutely essential to our survival as a nation where people are free and where civil rights can continue to expand.

If we don't use leftist ideas to fix the problem that people are getting poorer, then pretty soon the populist right will rise and make things very much worse. Clinton, for all that in pretty much every other way she's a fine candidate, is not merely unwilling to address the core economic problem but is part of it. I'm sure she'll be great, in the short term, for gay rights and black rights and immigration, and women's rights and all manner of other things I care deeply about.

What frightens me, and what makes me not a true Clinton fan despite the fact that I'll work to get her elected, is that I believe all those hard won gains will be swept aside, when (not if, when) the populist right gains sufficient strength from the economic abuse endemic in our nation to rise up and put a Fascist in power.

I don't say we should ignore other problems, but I think that by ignoring (exacerbating really) the economic problems Clinton and the rest of the Democratic establishment are (not deliberately) producing the necessary preconditions for the rise of a populist right and a Fascist government.

And I do think that Sanders was, whether he could have actually stopped it or not, at least from the side that recognized the problem. It's a shame he turned out to be an asshole. But it doesn't make him wrong about the economic problems. And I do hope that Sanders doesn't piss away all of his influence and that the liberals in the Democratic party will give some ground to the left on this absolutely critical and essential issue.

I'm not so hopeful about that last. The liberal faction in the Democratic party has never much liked or tolerated the left, and being right is no guarantee of having people listen to you or implement the needful plans.
posted by sotonohito at 7:00 AM on June 1, 2016 [21 favorites]

What do people think? Can this one last six more days?

The only thing longer than this interminable campaign is the load time for this page. Can we please please please get a new thread?
posted by malocchio at 7:35 AM on June 1, 2016 [5 favorites]

. . . The strategy – which is unprecedented, and this is where we're talking about thinking outside the box – is to have a president who actually, vigorously goes around the country and rallies the American people, who are in favor of this idea.

This strategy is the opposite of unprecedented. Travelling the country selling their policies is something presidents have always done. Sanders doesn't just seem unqualified for the job of president, it appears he's unfamiliar with it.
posted by multics at 7:37 AM on June 1, 2016 [8 favorites]

"This election is no more bizarre than the one in 1800," says Pulitzer Prize winner (Lin-Manuel Miranda). "Jefferson accused Adams of being a hermaphrodite"
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:45 AM on June 1, 2016 [5 favorites]

Rolling Stone's audience is Sanders' bread and butter. These are people who are likely to vote for him once they hear his message and understand his positions. 75% of their readers fall into the 18-49 age range. 50% are in the 18-35 range. Household Income $60K. 75% white. Nearly 90% live in cities. (via) The magazine is relatively progressive and their coverage of the election has consistently been anti-Republican and pro-Democrat. So this was a friendly, softball interview and his answers should have been equally friendly and pushed his narrative hard. For the most part, he did a decent job of that. They gave him a lot of ink to make his case and didn't challenge him too hard on most of the details.

But man, when they did, he made himself look terrible. There's no excuse here. The reporter wasn't biased against him. The magazine is in his corner. Jann Wenner has endorsed Clinton, but their most well, known and visible columnist, Matt Taibbi, passionately made a case for Sanders in tv appearances and in print earlier this year and last. Sanders just screwed up, all by himself. " What are the specifics about how I, personally, all by myself, do what nobody in American history has done? And I'm being criticized? Why don't you do it? Why doesn't the editor of Rolling Stone do it? Look. You know. With all due respect, that's an absurd question."
No, it's not. He's been promising that he will change the system. When people ask you "how" they deserve better than vague, defensive antagonism. He's been running for President for a year. That is a question that he should be able to field in his sleep.

These are answers I've been looking for him to answer for the last year and he hasn't done so. When you make big, idealistic promises, you have to be able to provide realistic details when people ask you how you're going to fulfill them.
posted by zarq at 7:47 AM on June 1, 2016 [35 favorites]

Megan McGibney and Laura Italiano at The New York Post: “This bird looks and acts a lot like Donald Trump”
posted by Going To Maine at 7:48 AM on June 1, 2016

They should make it debate that bird that landed on Sanders' podium
posted by prize bull octorok at 7:52 AM on June 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm offended on behalf of bird kind
posted by zutalors! at 7:53 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

That Rolling Stone interview is so disappointing. Aside from absurdities like claiming his favorability ratings are due to him talking about issues (with the implication that Clinton doesn't & that's why she's got high unfavorables), he's still making gaffes that make it clear he doesn't really consider non-white folks to be part of his concept of "working class". And this is a friendly interview where if he backed up and restated, they'd likely edit out the gaffe-ish part.
posted by R343L at 8:19 AM on June 1, 2016 [9 favorites]

malocchio: "Can we please please please get a new thread?"

Be the change you seek and open one.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:52 AM on June 1, 2016

But also because I have an inexplicable love for the word Utahns.

Outside sources--dictionaries, the U.S. govt, NYTimes, and the like--like to claim that the correct usage is "Utahans". But I've yet to meet an actual Utahn who agrees . . .
posted by flug at 9:05 AM on June 1, 2016

zarq, yup very disappointing. If he'd just said "of course I can't do all the things I want to, but we can try to push things in that direction and use Republican intransigence as part of a campaign for the 2018 midterms, and the 2020 elections I am hopeful that we can get a Congress that can make the changes we need."

Of course, Clinton will fare no better. For all her talk about being able to get things done, she has no more of a realistic chance of getting her agenda through than Sanders does, probably less so because I expect that the 2018 midterms will be their usual low turnout Republican victory, I just don't see Clinton trying much harder or succeeding more than Obama did to get her voters turning out in the midterms.

The simple, depressing, fact is that barring a miracle the only thing any Democratic president can realistically hope to do is order a comically large rubber stamp that says "VETO" and use it on the daily bills to repeal Obamacare, abolish same sex marriage, and repeal what's left of the Voting Rights Act. Hell, at this point I'm about halfway convinced that the Senate Republicans will simply refuse to allow any Democratic president to appoint anyone to the Supreme Court and they'll just leave all empty seats unfilled for the next four years if Clinton wins.
posted by sotonohito at 9:15 AM on June 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

msalt: "Well if you want to play that game, Shirley Chisholm ran in 1972. Comedienne Gracie Allen ran as the candidate of the "Suprise Party" in 1940. And suffragist Victoria Woodhull ran in 1872 as leader of the Equal Rights Party, when she couldn't even vote.

But we're talking about candidates who had the slightest chance of winning. And Hillary was the first."

You could make an argument for Margaret Chase Smith in 1964 as the first woman candidate who was taken seriously (with, of course, huge amounts of sexism added). Interesting New Yorker piece on her campaign here.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:21 AM on June 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

The simple, depressing, fact is that barring a miracle the only thing any Democratic president can realistically hope to do is order a comically large rubber stamp that says "VETO" and use it on the daily bills to repeal Obamacare, abolish same sex marriage, and repeal what's left of the Voting Rights Act.

And appoint at least one Supreme Court justice, as Mitch McConnell reminded NPR listeners this morning. Though if the Senate doesn't flip, one wonders if he won't go for broke and simply refuse to consider any Democratic nominee at all; a 5-4 liberal majority will spell doom for much of the Republican/plutocratic agenda.
posted by Gelatin at 9:30 AM on June 1, 2016 [6 favorites]

I just don't see Clinton trying much harder or succeeding more than Obama did to get her voters turning out in the midterms.

Clinton is going to be very busy Presidenting in 2018 (and, pleasepleaseplease 2022) without much time to campaign. Just like Obama was in 2010 and 2014. It's on the DNC to GOTV, and on Clinton and Sanders supporters.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:39 AM on June 1, 2016 [11 favorites]

And appoint at least one Supreme Court justice

And continue to uphold the Paris climate accord
And continue to shield 4 million undocumented immigrants from deportation
And continue to enforce trans-friendly policies through the Dept of Education
etc.

Yeah it's frustrating that we can't really expect any legislative progress, but the executive branch does matter on its own. How Sanders vs. Clinton would use executive actions differently is an interesting question -- anyone know if they've offered public commitments on the subject?
posted by saturday_morning at 9:41 AM on June 1, 2016 [14 favorites]

The simple, depressing, fact is that barring a miracle the only thing any Democratic president can realistically hope to do is order a comically large rubber stamp that says “VETO” and use it on the daily bills to repeal Obamacare, abolish same sex marriage, and repeal what’s left of the Voting Rights Act.

Did Obama really accomplish nothing between 2014 and now?
posted by Going To Maine at 9:45 AM on June 1, 2016 [19 favorites]

The fact that the betting websites still have Hilary as a 2-to-1 favorite gives me hope that we'll see a similar shift in the legislature.

I haven't dug into what the outcomes of those races might look like or even what seats are up for election. Are you trying to imply that the legislature will continue with basically the same mix as it does now after the election?

The likelihood of multiple supreme court nominees over the next four years makes this an especially important election for the president but that doesn't mean it's the only race. Presidential election years have higher voter turn-out than the mid-terms and higher turn-out tends to help the democrats. If enough seats flip, Hilary might have an easier time getting things done than you think.
posted by VTX at 9:48 AM on June 1, 2016

They should make it debate that bird that landed on Sanders' podium

they should feed it to the baby falcons nesting on top of the throgs neck bridge
posted by poffin boffin at 9:51 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

The simple, depressing, fact is that barring a miracle the only thing any Democratic president can realistically hope to do is order a comically large rubber stamp that says “VETO” and use it on the daily bills to repeal Obamacare, abolish same sex marriage, and repeal what’s left of the Voting Rights Act.

There's a reasonable chance that the Senate will tilt Democratic this year but even without that, I'd rather have Clinton vetoing bills than Trump signing them.
posted by octothorpe at 9:54 AM on June 1, 2016 [21 favorites]

octothorpe Of course! I never said or implied otherwise.

I just think all the talk about Clinton being able to get things done is so much nonsense. Of course she won't be able to get things done. No Democratic president can.

The best they can do is hold the line.

And I fear she won't be fully able to do that. The urge to trade away something "minor" in exchange for getting something, **ANYTHING** done, is going to be powerful. I'm sure that if he'd won Sanders would also be out there trading away stuff. People don't run for President so they can sit around holding the line basically by virtue of their party and not any real act of their own and mindlessly veto bills.

Any successful politician is one of those go getter type A personalities, they'll want to do something.

Worse, the R's will be flat out guaranteed to shut down the government again in hopes of extorting something from the Democratic president.

And bills do need to get passed, spending and so on.

So i'm doubtful that any Democrat, Sanders or Clinton, will be all that successful at simply holding the line. They'll make deals, trade away "minor" things in exchange for concessions. Look at how Obama pissed away the sunsetting of the Bush tax cuts in exchange for a temporary extension on unemployment. Yes, we desperately needed an unemployment extension, but giving the R's something permanent in exchange for something temporary is a lousy deal. But it was all he really had and he felt that urge to do something.

I hope that Clinton will be content to wield the comically large Veto stamp and hold the line. I fear that she'll become impatient with that and, as Obama has done, trade away long term wins for short term action.
posted by sotonohito at 10:32 AM on June 1, 2016

Also, this thread is running like garbage on mobile. Paging wordshore...

S/he has disabled their account....
posted by Rumple at 10:44 AM on June 1, 2016

Going To Maine Did Obama really accomplish nothing between 2014 and now?

Maybe my memory is faulty, but I can't remember anything important Obama got passed through Congress since 2014. There were some executive orders and a very big Supreme Court win for same sex marriage [1]. But no wins for the Democrats that got through Congress I can recall.

[1] I was right, marriage **IS** a federal issue and has been since Loving, all the people here who told me I was childish and hurting the cause by claiming that was the case were wrong, hah!
posted by sotonohito at 10:45 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

> "This election is no more bizarre than the one in 1800 ..."

Oh, so it's not any worse than the infamous clusterfuck, legendarily characterized by slander and personal attacks on both sides, which provoked a Constitutional crisis when an accidental tie meant the outgoing House of Representatives, mostly bitter enemies of the party that won, got a final chance to try to screw them over and voted 36 times before finally at the last minute deciding that they would not, after all, hand the country over to a ruthless self-promoter who eventually had to be arrested and tried for treason as a result of his plan to raise an army, invade Mexico, and install himself there as king?

I'm so relieved.
posted by kyrademon at 10:46 AM on June 1, 2016 [13 favorites]

Yeah, Wordshore is taking a break right now, so this is gonna be a little more of an old-fashioned "be the new post you wish to etc etc" situation if folks are feeling the bogginess too much.
posted by cortex at 10:47 AM on June 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

Of course, Clinton will fare no better.

That's not necessarily so. In an adversarial legislative environment, the sort of small-ball incrementalism Clinton preaches seems to stand more chance of succeeding than the swing-for-the-fences revolutionary change Sanders advocates. Contra perceptions, Obama has accomplished quite a lot in the face of Republican intransigence by pursuing administrative action and Clinton can continue on this path.

Further, anything requiring legislative action will need the essentially unanimous assistance of Democrats in congress, as well as at pressure at the state and local level; that Clinton has spent decades cultivating relationships with party members at all levels (and has not spent the last several months vilifying them as a load of shills and sellouts) makes it substantially more likely she will be able to rely on that level of support, and the fact that she's perceived as more centrist and amenable to compromise than Sanders may allow her to pick up the occasional Republican vote (as Obama has).

Of course the victories will be few and far-between, but I don't think they'll be nonexistent.
posted by multics at 10:48 AM on June 1, 2016 [5 favorites]

Going To Maine Did Obama really accomplish nothing between 2014 and now?

Maybe my memory is faulty, but I can't remember anything important Obama got passed through Congress since 2014.

Hence my asking the question, really - it’s something important to consider. However, I think that limiting the definition to legislative power overlooks all of the other tendrils of executive power that spread throughout the bureaucracy and all of its appointments. I mean, one of the reasons that Sanders has taken flack over foreign policy is that that’s an area where a President can exert some influence without going through the Congress.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:57 AM on June 1, 2016

Obama has been able to do some stuff with regulations, which don't require Congressional approval. The one that's gotten the most publicity is the regulation that will extend overtime protection to people making under $47,000 a year, regardless of how their job is classified. Previously, employers have been able to get out of paying overtime to many people making as little as $23,000 a year by claiming that they're managers. I realize that this seems like small potatoes to Bernie's supporters, but it's something, and it's a pretty big thing for a lot of people who qualify.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:57 AM on June 1, 2016 [13 favorites]

this is what needs to be delivered to the "white working class" - (and to everyone else, for that matter)

do this and the garbage ideas will start fading away
---
I don't think we can separate market liberalism from racism and sexism and the other bigotries of the right. They're two sides of the same thing. Market liberalism produces the pain that many white people try to use bigotry to assuage.
----

I used to believe this, but the more familiar I become with the history of racism in the USA the less I buy it. What the "rich landowners versus poor Whites and Blacks" narrative misses is that both anti-populist and populist politicians used racism as part of their platforms. Anti-populists argued against social support programs by emphasizing the need to keep Black people as an underclass lest they revolt. And yeah, populists pointed out that was a lie created to line the pockets of the rich--but they argued the solution was to kick Black people out from the town/state/country entirely. It removes the threat and there would be enough resources left over for the remaining Whites.

See, the divide between Blacks and poor Whites existed long before Reconstruction, and began separate from economic differences. It was inculcated by the institution of slavery itself. It was created because the only way one could justify the brutality and cruelty of the slave trade was to paint the people who were kidnapped and enslaved as subhuman savages who required the grace of White people and Christianity to control and civilize them. The fact it gave poor Whites someone to step on was a bonus.

If it was simply a question of wealth, rich people would be less racist than the poor. Furthermore, the US has had plenty of periods of economic growth and prosperity, and White people didn't get one whit less racist during them. The immediate post-WWII period is a great example. White people were almost exclusively benefiting from the economic boom, yet we still required the National Guard to force us to integrate schools in the South, and we implemented red-lining and escaped to newly-built suburbs the moment we got a whiff of Black people moving into our neighborhoods in the North. You see this pattern repeated over and over now in the intense segregation seen in White communities and social networks and the complete bafflement many White people display about non-White grievances about racism.

A chicken in every pot is not a panacea for centuries of ingrained structural violence. It doesn't overturn a society based on White privilege that teaches White children from the day that they're born that they are entitled to all the things of the world, and non-White people are the Other. Economic instability is only one of a whole host of factors that present a threat to Whiteness and spark White anger. Fixing economic problems doesn't make the bigotry go away. It just subsumes it back underneath the surface, where it can be triggered by immigration, unequal birth rates, agitation by minority groups for civil rights, increasing presence of non-Whites in positions of power and privilege, the rapid proliferation of language and cultural markers outside the White milieu, and who knows what else. Check this out: Trump voters actually tend to be better off than non-Trump voters.

The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data. That’s lower than the $91,000 median for Kasich voters. But it’s well above the national median household income of about $56,000. It’s also higher than the median income for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, which is around $61,000 for both.

What I find exceptionally frustrating is that more often than not, the people trying to write bigotry off as an economic issue are not the ones who are targets for prejudice. They see a decrease in widespread, vocal, overt racism/sexism/-isms, and confuse it for enlightenment because they aren't party to all the insidious, implicit, low-level discrimination still carrying on. The fundamental issues are still there, still perpetuated by the privileged--the difference is the privileged simply don't feel threatened enough yet to up the ante against the out-groups.
posted by Anonymous at 11:00 AM on June 1, 2016

What I find exceptionally frustrating is that more often than not, the people trying to write bigotry off as an economic issue are not the ones who are targets for prejudice.

Yes.
posted by zutalors! at 11:09 AM on June 1, 2016 [11 favorites]

One of the Republican Party's Last Good Men: William Weld is back for one last hurrah.
posted by homunculus at 11:12 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

If it was simply a question of wealth, rich people would be less racist than the poor. Furthermore, the US has had plenty of periods of economic growth and prosperity, and White people didn't get one whit less racist during them.

Even if it began mostly with economics, that doesn’t mean it must therefore have stayed with economics. Instead, it’s in the bones.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:13 AM on June 1, 2016

I mean I've met no small share of people who are well off, work with and even have friends who are PoC, and still manage to be blisteringly racist when they let their guards down
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:24 AM on June 1, 2016 [11 favorites]

I think white people aren't really less racist to Asians, who are overall a wealthy PoC demographic.
posted by zutalors! at 11:25 AM on June 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

"FEC releases damning 639 pages of violations by Bernie Sanders campaign."

Is this really as big a deal as Daily Kos is making it out to be? They're behind on giving refunds, which isn't great but doesn't seem like a huge problem. Can the campaign really be blamed for their supporters making illegal over-payments?
posted by zarq at 11:29 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Incidentally, I mentioned earlier Mitch McConnell's interview with NPR this morning, and he deployed a phrase that it turns out he also used in an interview with USA Today: Referring to the Republicans as "America's right-of-center party." Since he used the same phrase in back-to-back interviews, it would seems he seems a need to buttress the Republican Party's image as moderate and mainstream; ignoring, of course, the march to the far right that began with the so-called "Tea Party" (if not Reagan!) and has continued with Trump.

It'd be an encouraging sign, though, if McConnell feels he needs to counteract a perception of the Republicans as too conservative for America.
posted by Gelatin at 11:31 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Can the campaign really be blamed for their supporters making illegal over-payments?

Yes. This is the sort of thing they should be tracking, and they should be verifying that donations are under the limit before taking them in.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:34 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also it looks like he took foreign donations. And he's the guy running on a campaign finance message.
posted by zutalors! at 11:37 AM on June 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

In the heliocentric model, that's America's right-Oort-cloud party.
posted by y2karl at 11:38 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Donations above the limit, foreign donations, these things happen, especially when you're taking donations from millions of people. But it seems the Sanders campaign is startlingly inept at dealing with these issues, issuing the necessary refunds, and keeping their paperwork in order. I don't think it's a grave sin, especially if they get it cleaned up eventually, but it does speak to the difficulties they are having in running an effective campaign organization, which requires the kind of people who deal with FEC filings and compliance that Clinton locked up years ago.
posted by zachlipton at 11:41 AM on June 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

it means a lot of people who are differentiating near the bottom no longer can tell themselves, 'Well I may be poor, but I got a job with BENEFITS. Not like THOSE poor shlubs.'

This is one of the foundational elements of American institutionalized racism.

By the 1760s the colonial rulers , the wealthy elite , had 150 years of ruling experience, and had formulated different tactics to deal with their different fears. And we have seen that the biggest fear among the wealthy plantation owners was the potential combination of poor whites and black slaves.

In response, over half a century, the elite passed the slavery codes, forcing all blacks to be slaves and all whites to be non-slaves. The elite had discovered that if they constructed a racially-based system of slavery, and gave the white servants just a bit more than the black servants received, they could effectively “buy-off” the Europeans. But they had to create a “white race” in order to achieve this.

Since civilization, there had been slaves. But there were not racially-based systems of slavery, where everyone of a particular race were presumed to be slaves – as was created out of the blood-soaked pages of our colonial history.

posted by kirkaracha at 11:55 AM on June 1, 2016 [10 favorites]

Steve M points out something I've predicted before:

Trump will rubber-stamp whatever his party wants because he just doesn't care. He'll sign boilerplate Republican budgets and boilerplate Republican gun bills and boilerplate Republican abortion bills and boilerplate Republican deregulation bills and boilerplate Republican Obamacare repeal-but-not-replace bills. What does he care about? He cares about being America's alpha male[.]

posted by Gelatin at 11:57 AM on June 1, 2016 [5 favorites]

Maybe Tulsi Gabbard's shouldn't have resigned from her vice chair post. She could be the second female head of the DNC in a row.

Bernie Sanders' Vice President Pick Shouldn't Be Elizabeth Warren. It Should Be This Woman.
posted by homunculus at 12:24 PM on June 1, 2016

If one of people's criticism's of Clinton is she's too hawkish it seems like an extremely questionable thing to support Gabbard? She's a bomb-em-first kill all the Islamists kind of Representative.
posted by Justinian at 12:28 PM on June 1, 2016 [5 favorites]

Bernie Sanders' Vice President Pick Shouldn't Be Elizabeth Warren. It Should Be This Woman.

Carly Fiorina?
posted by Etrigan at 12:35 PM on June 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

By the way, new election thread.
posted by Gelatin at 12:37 PM on June 1, 2016

Or rather, In the heliocentric model, that's America's right-of-Oort-cloud party, to be sure.
posted by y2karl at 12:56 PM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

83 comments in the last hour? I prefer my election threads more buried.
posted by zachlipton at 12:58 PM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

So you're telling me that if we erased the wage disparity due to race so that the racial make-up at all income levels was the same (which I believe makes for a lot more wealthy Blacks and Hispanics) that the country would, as a whole, remain just as racist as it is now?

Like, after generations it would normalize. Currently non-privileged groups would gain more access to the opportunities that would allow themselves to integrate into existing political and economic power structures and slowly change it from within. Of course, there's the caveat that they would still face racism during the process of trying to do this. Having money doesn't erase centuries of your race being painted as hypersexual, lazy, dishonest, unintelligent, violent, etc, and those subconscious biases would be influencing the decisions of the people in charge of evaluating you for access to supposedly merit-based positions. I believe the phrase is "work twice as hard for half as much."

You know, in the post-Civil War period there were plenty of economically healthy Black communities that began to pop up, with successful Black-owned businesses and a growing middle class. Freed Black people were eager to educate themselves and begin building their wealth, and when given the chance they were successful at it. But the reaction of surrounding White communities was not to accept them into the fold and change their own perceptions. Instead they instituted Jim Crow laws. The KKK came back. The resentment exploded again and again into White mobs descending onto those successful Black areas, like, say, the Greenwood District in Tulsa ("the Black Wall Street") and burning them to the ground. Tulsa was not an aberration. There was the Red Summer of 1919, where White mobs in cities across the USA descended on Black communities and lynched their Black neighbors (especially the more successful ones) and destroyed their residences and businesses. There was Atlanta in 1906, Springfield IL in 1908, East St. Louis in 1917, Rosewood FL in 1923 . . . So many more. You see that list? Up until the 1950s, all of those are White people attacking non-White communities. For the most part, they weren't attacking poor areas and hovels.

Later, the response to middle-class and well-to-do Black families moving into White communities was violence, redlining, White flight, and defunding of services to those former White areas to create ghettos and establish the cycle of poverty so many Black and Hispanic families find themselves trapped in now. Shit, the White response to the first Black president--the wealthy, hopelessly square, Ivy League educated, oratorial wonder of a man--was to form the Tea Party and eventually prop up Donald Trump.

Money is not the driver of racism. It is a symptom. Self-imposed segregation and White fragility is the problem. You can give non-White people as much money as you want, but until White people address their own discomfort with non-White people and face their implicit biases then White supremacy will persist as long as it possibly can. It will be fixed by White people being willing to do the hard, uncomfortable work of talking about race and socializing normally with non-White people until they figure out they're human and worthy of respect and life.

Economic equality would produce tremendous quality of life improvements for disadvantaged groups and should be pursued for that reason. But we shouldn't fool ourselves that it's going to resolve anything where racism (and other -isms) are concerned.

anyway, off to the new thread!
posted by Anonymous at 1:02 PM on June 1, 2016

anyway, off to the new thread!

oh but I hope that awesome comment doesn't get buried
posted by zutalors! at 1:27 PM on June 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

Maybe Tulsi Gabbard's shouldn't have resigned from her vice chair post. She could be the second female head of the DNC in a row.

As if.
posted by y2karl at 7:51 AM on June 2, 2016

And yet, the DNC saw fit to make her vice chair prior to her resignation and declaration for Sanders.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:49 AM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

VTX: “So you're telling me that if we erased the wage disparity due to race so that the racial make-up at all income levels was the same (which I believe makes for a lot more wealthy Blacks and Hispanics) that the country would, as a whole, remain just as racist as it is now? I don't buy that. It gets really hard to 'other' people when their your neighbors instead of living in the poorer parts of town.”

With respect, that's exactly how it looked to those who banned slavery: it appeared that the racist edifice that had been built over hundreds of years of oppression was crumbing, to be replaced by equality. But that is emphatically not what happened. Something – some social force – induced those in power to attempt to hold onto the old regime by building institutions which were designed from the beginning to reinforce and even exacerbate inequality. They built voting mechanisms that excluded races they wanted to exclude; they built housing authorities that denied housing to races they wanted to deny housing to; and they built standards of employment that tended to pay races they disliked less money. We call this force white supremacy, and it has become clear after four hundred years that adjusting a few economic parameters will never stop white supremacy from carefully coming up with ways to reinforce and restore inequality and racism.

“If we can accept that economics WAS a prime cause of racism, then I would say that the increasing income disparity since at least 1980 would have reinforced the economy's roll.”

The relationship between racism and economics is unfortunately more complicated than that, I think. Racism influences economics at least as often as economics influences racism. A more precise way to say this would be to say that white supremacy always seeks to foment inequality and racism, and it's much easier to do that in times of great economic inequality. But reducing economic inequality has not always reduced racism and white supremacy.
posted by koeselitz at 11:49 AM on June 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

You've got the order of events reversed though. If the banning of slavery looked like what I'm describing, the slaves would have had to have gotten as wealthy as the slave owners (let's just say that a wizard did it) while they were still slaves. And that's kind of what I'm saying. It would have been impossible to maintain the overtly racist institution of slavery when most of the slaves can afford to buy their own freedom.

Wealth disparity and racism are both causes of and symptoms of each other and completely solving one probably means completely solving both. They're interrelated and each reinforces the other so it makes sense to take whatever steps we can to address either separately as well as both together. But I do think that anything that reduces income inequality will have some positive affect on racism and vice versa.
posted by VTX at 10:59 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

It would have been impossible to maintain the overtly racist institution of slavery when most of the slaves can afford to buy their own freedom.

I am not sure of your argument here. It would be impossible to maintain slavery if enslaved people were . . . not actually enslaved?

It is wholly possible for racism to exist completely separate of economic inequalities. In fact, frequently racism (and other -isms) are simply used by the majority population to justify imposing certain economic inequalities on the minority. See: the Jewish population of Nazi Germany. Middle-class, bog-standard, targeted by maniacs who recognized the power of drawing on historical scapegoats.
posted by Anonymous at 6:09 PM on June 8, 2016

There are probably as many women as men in the upper classes, if only because most upper class men are married? But sexism exists anyway, and always has? Right?
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:15 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

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