He has fallen increasingly in love with himself during this campaign. It's very clear, and he's believing the whole victim message now. Sigh.
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/boro...n-accuses-sanders-of-trying-to-win-nomination Clinton Campaign Accuses Sanders of Trying to Win Nomination lol. I hope there's a whole bunch of independent campaigns on both sides. People who are fond of reminding everybody of the fact that the Republican primary electorate is not representative of the general electorate should think the same of the Democrat primary electorate.
Hillary, her record and her policy positions deserve to be questioned at every turn. The primaries are supposed to be a contest of ideas, not a coronation.
Not sure who you are disagreeing with, but it's not me. Not sure if Bernie, his record, and his policy position(s) have been questioned at very many turns yet. But I'm all for that too. HRC has been questioned at every turn, outfit and utterance for a couple of decades, FWIW. None of this is relevant to what I and I think others perceive: there has been a gradual shift within Sanders himself, from obsession with advocating for an idea to seeing himself as some sort of white-haired knight to save everyone. Needs to keep stumping for his ideas, now and beyond the primary and election. After the election, I hope he works within the demo party to change it for the better. We will see.
From the immortal words of Chick Hearn...the refrigerator door is closed, the lights are out, the eggs are coolin', the butters getting hard and the jello is jiggling. At this point, his popularity is better served for admitting he can't mathematically win and drive core issues post election that made his campaign popular in the first place. Time for him to pivot.
I hope he runs with Jill Stein or somehow elevates the Green Party's positions, but that's fantasy me. A lot of people talk about global warming and environmental issues then they vote in candidates who do precious little about them because "incrementalism".
You don't need to question Bernie's policy positions: you can release a tax calculator that scares the bejesus out of Middle America, add in a few "socialist" tags, and call it a day. If anything, Bernie hasn't been AS HARD as he could be on Hillbill. 1) Why is Hillary not embracing a carbon tax as Sanders has done? This is something economists on both sides of the aisle vastly agree is the most efficient way to fix the market externality of carbon emissions, none more so than former Bush CEA chair Mankiw. Why posture rather than accepting and leading a solution that is needed. Or is climate change, environmental destruction, and the human-led "Great Extinction" another "incremental" issue? 2) Why is Hillary continuing to embrace the war on drugs by not supporting legalization of mar1juana, in contrast to Bernie who wants to let the states decide? 3) Why does Hillary think Dodd-Frank and its lax enforcement is sufficient to rein in the excesses of big banks? We're talking about a post-2008 recession period that has seen banks caught money laundering, breaking sanctions, participating in tax evasion at scale, fixing energy markets, colluding in the forex market etc. 4) How is Hillary going to enforce her no-fly zone over Syria? The current Obama administration regards her as somebody trying to be the next Golda Meir, is that really what the United States needs right now? To flash into several raging conflicts? These are not like 4 throwaway points, these should be the cornerstone of progressive policy. Sanders has only lightly tapped at #3. As for investigation of Hillary's positions, it's one thing to continually harangue her as members of the American media tend to do on irrelevant fluff, another to ask her where she stands on important planks of any progressive worldview. I'm inclined to say that so long as issues as major as this languish election cycle by election cycle, Sanders is actually better off working OUTSIDE of the D party.
Go write in Rick Perry, Ted Cruz or some other crazy Texan politician for all you like. Nobody is stopping you.
Ok, criticism of Hillary's Clinton's foreign policy has literally been non-existent. Saying that "oh, she has been questioned at every turn throughout her career" is not an excuse for ignoring an extremely hawkish mentality that has led to one disastrous decision after another. -vote for iraq war -pushing obama to intervene in Libya -calling for no more ground troops in Syria while also calling for a no fly zone (which would, surprise surprise, involve more ground troops) -complete agreement with the right-wing government that is currently ruling Israel on virtually every policy position -Approved the sale of huge quantities of arms to a Saudi Arabian government that is currently using them to massacre civilians in Yemen -Encouraged the coup of the democratic government in Honduras -Oversaw the trade deal with panama (need I say more?) - Praise of Henry Kissinger (war criminal IMO) The mainstream media has not critically evaluated MOST of these topics during the course of this primary. Bernie is, at worst, giving Hillary a love tap. Has Bernie's views been very critically evaluated by the MSM? No, they've been too busy obsessing about delegate math, the horserace, and of course "how long should Bernie stay in the race?" Oh, and to all of those telling Bernie to "fall in line" and not become swallowed by his self-importance and hurt Hillary Clinton, he doesn't report to you, the DNC, Hillary Clinton, the main stream media, or to the established Democratic Party. He has 2 million donors that have trusted him to fight on until the end, regardless of whether or not he gets the nomination. Making people understand the record and shortcomings of another candidate who may well be our next president is important. Most Clinton supporters that I have talked to have little knowledge of the specifics of her record, all I hear "she is very experienced and knowledgeable". It's important for them to understand the recklessness of the candidate they support. So in conclusion, Bernie should continue the onslaught as long they are not purely character attacks (he has not used them to this point anyways). As a donor, I would like to see him increase his criticism of Clinton, and in all honesty, he has been extremely soft on a career that has good face value but lacks any real substance in terms of positive accomplishment and good results.
Yeah how dare Bernie think he is in the same league as the annointed Hillary. Bernie may have been in Congress longer and both in the House and Senate, but after all he was not married to a president or been appointed to a cabinet position like Hillary. How dare Bernie complain about any procedures in the various state Democratic Party procedures when poor Hillary has been victimized by Bernie Bro chauvinism in this campaign and as she righteously proclaimed during her previous presidential campaign by Obama Bro chauvinism. Besides her negatives would not be so high if she had not been victimized by GOP attacks. Pointing out her constant changing positions from year to year month to month or audience to audience is just Bernie Broism in its most victimizing. Besides as poor Hillary said a couple of weeks ago she is not a natural politician like Bill or Obama and and it is not fair to hold her to such a standard when she is trying her best.
Huh? I have learned about all of those things in the media, including long form articles in leading periodicals like The Atlantic, etc. I think she deserves lots of criticism for these things; her hawkish mentality is at the top of my many problems with her. Clearly true. We all get that. We also now all get that he will turn back into an independent as soon as he can, and that is sad, because the democratic party needs him, his ideas, his supporters, and all that energy and righteous frustration to push the party back to the left. Oh well. This is America, so we can safely say that about all supporters of all candidates. I find the same thing in Hillary supporters, Bernie supporters, Trump supporters, and so on. People want a comfortable narrative and then only digest information that supports that narrative. I'm just saying "Supporters of X are uninformed" is a dog that just doesn't hunt very well. Finally, you can speak for yourself as a campaign donor, but you can't speak for millions of other campaign donors. I know some Bernie donors who DO wish he would change his angle now. These are, in particular, supporters of women's rights who know what's at stake on the supreme court (just for one example). So do speak for yourself; not trying to discourage that. But there is never group think among millions of supporters, if they are humans anyway.
Right, but has that been a consistently broadcast message across multiple main stream platforms? Are morning shows consistently talking about her foreign policy tendencies? When Bernie called here "unqualified", did anybody pay attention to why he did? The Atlantic is a fairly decent source, I and I am sure there a handful of sources that have discussed her shortcomings. But why is there a narrative that she some kind of god on foreign policy? I'm not sure how you surmised that, a campaign source did report that as of now, he has every intention of remaining a democrat after the primaries. In my opinion, if he doesn't get key initiatives placed into the party's official platform, he needs to establish a third party after the general election. Their primary goal needs to be to get progressives elected into Congress. Right, and a lot of Bernie supporters follow him far more on gut than actual policy substance, but overall, they have a more concrete understanding of their candidate's platform. I'm not saying Bernie Sanders supporters are extremely well informed, but relatively, they have a greater knowledge of policy and record. This has been a pretty softball primary. The MSM has, as usual, tried to overblow and magnify things. Previous primaries have been waaaay harsher and all this talk about "tone" came from a Clinton representative. I understand the concerns that people may have about hurting Clinton, but tbh, she has done most of the damage herself. Her unfavoribilities are shocking, no changing that. There's not much else Bernie could do to make her look worse. And let's face it, most of his criticisms will likely be forgotten and blown over by the time the general election rolls around anyways. Have people on this board forgotten the savagery of the 08 campaign? Also, wtf is "if they are humans anyway"? What are you implying?
oh Bernie <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Bernie is so upset about the drug war that he's going to make criminals out of tens of millions of American smokers <a href="https://t.co/MLIbyWPJYt">https://t.co/MLIbyWPJYt</a></p>— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) <a href="https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/724642425415843840">April 25, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Point is any group of millions of human will have wildly varying outlooks in their population. LESS SUBTLE: there is a variety of opinions among Sanders voters, or any other large group of humans. Wasn't saying anything about Sanders supporters in particular, but it's a good example of internet sensitivity. Not saying you are alone in that, at all, but everyone is ready to be outraged and take things the most negative way possible. Cheers.
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It doesn't matter. Hillary will be the first woman president, and the first woman Republican president.
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/15/11410160/hillary-clinton-media-bernie-sanders "The biggest news outlets have published more negative stories about Hillary Clinton than any other presidential candidate — including Donald Trump — since January 2015, according to a new analysis of hundreds of thousands of online stories published since last year. Clinton has not only been hammered by the most negative coverage but the media also wrote the smallest proportion of positive stories about her, reports*Crimson Hexagon, a social media software analytics company based out of Boston." It's amazing that some Bernie supporters think the media is helping crown Hillary. If they scrutinized him like they scrutinize her, he'd be even further behind. ]
