Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules
when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
You know some part of that may be to avoid the elephant in the room: minority support for Hillary in the primaries.
If they actually acknowledge the fact that Sanders appealed mostly to straight white males (sorry, let's call it for what it is.), then not only do they have to accept responsibility of them losing fair and square but they also have to wrestle with the fact that minorities by and large don't like broad populism, and acknowledging that may reveal some racial biases they may have despite being "left".
So, essentially, by repeating the mantra of "She stole it! DNC RIGGED!" they absolve themselves of responsibility, while also continuing to think they're not racist.
For better or for worse.
edited 27th Dec '16 2:11:23 PM by TacticalFox88
New Survey coming this weekend!No, stupid. It's not about the economy
But despite the decisions that the Obama administration made that might have helped Elkhart, many people here have a strong dislike of Obama, who presided over an economic recovery in which the unemployment rate fell nationally to 4.6 percent from a high of 10 percent in October 2009. They say it’s not Obama who is responsible for the city or the country’s economic progress, and furthermore, that the economy won’t truly start to improve until President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
“He didn’t help us here, but he took credit for what happened,” Chris Corbin, 47, who works for a dispatch company in Elkhart, told me. Corbin thinks it will be Trump who improves the economy. “It’s going to take two terms, but he’ll fix things,” he said.
It shows how, in an increasingly polarized country, an improving economy is not enough to get Republicans to vote for Democrats, in part because they don’t give Democrats any credit for fixing the economy. Gallup, for instance, found that while just 16 percent of Republicans said they thought the economy was getting better in the week leading up to the election, 49 percent said they thought it was getting better in the week after the election. And in a Pew poll in 2015, one in three Republicans said the economy wasn’t recovering at all, while just 7 percent of Democrats said that. This bias is true for Democrats, too, of course. Before the election, according to the Gallup poll, 35 percent thought the economy was getting worse, while after the election, 47 percent of Democrats thought that.
These biases are only increasing as the country becomes increasingly polarized. As people become increasingly loyal to their parties, they are unlikely to give leaders from the other party credit for much of anything positive. Both sides are instead more likely to believe narratives that suggest that the other party has only made things worse.
Indeed, as the economy began improving, Elkhart voters grew less likely to support Democratic candidates for president. Obama won 44 percent of the vote in Elkhart County in 2008, 36 percent in 2012, and Clinton received just 31 percent in 2016.
When people hear, for example, that the unemployment rate has fallen, but they don’t want to believe that because they don’t like who is in office, they may seek out information that challenges or resists these facts. They can often find other, alternative, information on the news sites that most closely fit their political beliefs.
Andi Ermes, 39, offered a number of reasons for disliking Obama. She said Obama didn’t attend the Army-Navy football game, even though other presidents had. Obama has actually attended more Army-Navy games than George H.W. Bush. She said that he had taken too many vacations. He has taken fewer vacation days that George W. Bush. She also said that he refused to wear a flag pin on his lapel. While it is true that Obama did not wear a flag on his lapel at points during the 2007 campaign, it was back on his suit by 2008. Ermes told me the news sources she consumes most are Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and a local conservative radio show hosted by Casey Hendrickson.
But if we just reach out to these people..... they'll call lazy moochers trying to take credit for other people's work.
Police evacuating Trump Tower over suspicious package: http://bigstory.ap.org/a00d82d7c0a14ece8520d503a1cd8a21&utm_source=android_app&utm_medium=copy_to_clipboard&utm_campaign=share
Bernie Sanders: I'm not a Fan of Identity Politics
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Obviously, there is great symbolism in that. But to me, to be honest with you, as somebody who is not a great fan of identity politics, I am supporting Keith because he is a strong progressive whose whole life has been about standing up for working families and the middle class and low-income families. But your point cannot be denied. And that is, it will be a statement to the entire country that the leader of the Democratic Party is a Muslim, that we want a party of diversity, that we will not accept for one second the bigotry that Trump has been espousing during his campaign.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: I mean—
AMY GOODMAN: And who do you think he represents?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: That’s a good question, and I don’t know that I can give you a definitive answer, but this is what I think. For a start, in terms of the campaign, what he did is, as I indicated in my remarks, he touched a nerve. And it would be wrong to deny that. There are some people who think that everybody who voted for Donald Trump is a racist, a sexist or a homophobe or a xenophobe. I don’t believe that. Are those people in his camp? Absolutely. But it would be a tragic mistake to believe that everybody who voted for Donald Trump is a "deplorable." They’re not. These are people who are disgusted, and they are angry at the establishment. And the Democratic Party has not been clear enough, in my view, about telling those people, whether they are white, whether they are black, Latino, Asian American or whatever, women, gay, whatever, that we are on their side. And too often what we look at is identity. You’re a woman. Well, that’s good, but we need more women in the political process. We need more African Americans in the political process, more Latinos. No question about that. But we need people who will have the guts to stand up to the billionaire class and corporate America and fight for working families.
Still clueless. SMFH
New Survey coming this weekend!I actually don't think I'd take much issue that statement.
But yeah, there's fundamentally an issue that the same demographic which is (depending on who you ask) sometimes or often bigoted to varying degrees is the one that Sanders considers the Salt of the Earth and excoriates Democrats for abandoning.
Adding to this I think I saw polls linked in here showing he won or tied with young POC too. But TBH I don't think there's a point in the discussion about Bernie-Or-Busters, yeah, the ones still left who're acting smug may probably be racist, sexist, or just simply deluded into buying the right's Hillary-conspiracy theories.
Edit:
Even tough I said I don't care much about it, I do agree with that assessment.
Edit 2: ![]()
You know, the second quote sounds more like he's one of those people who dislike the label "identity politics" but when you talk with him about the goals of what's called identity politics, he agrees with them and knows they are important things. [edited again to explain myself more clearly] when discussing the content of what's identity politics he agrees with most (or even all) of it.
edited 27th Dec '16 2:48:42 PM by IFwanderer
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV![]()
I've taken the somewhat cynical perspective that Sanders and his supporters support the rights of women, African Americans, etc. so long as they don't vote for Hillary Clinton. Or somewhat less cynically, they believe that Democrats aren't sincere when talking about those issues/only think they are sincere when talking about them.
edited 27th Dec '16 2:50:46 PM by Hodor2
So, here's a nightmare scenario for us. (One even worse than the one we're already in.)
Imagine if Trump is assassinated by a Muslim.
The country would, in brief, eat itself alive. And remember, Putin's goal is the destabilization of Western democracies. If he wanted to cause abject chaos in America - that would be one hell of an effective way to do it.
Islamophobia has already been whipped up to a fever pitch, and people are strapping in to fight back against religious registries and bans. If a Muslim kills Trump, he becomes a martyr, his supporters take to the streets howling for revenge, and the GOP take advantage of the whole situation just like they always do.
In that situation, forget registries. We could see the return of internment camps at best. Not to mention war - conceivably even of the civil variety.
This is probably just apocalyptic anxiety on my part, but I've got the flu right now and my brain has been full of nightmare worst-case-scenarios all week.
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."I was figuring to use such a plot in a story of mine. It didn't end this way, largely because the Trump administration there has been such a disaster that even the most hardcore Trumpites had their trust (you can also say "delusions") worn down.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanAlso, Sanders supporters have by far the least
racist stereotypes of supporters of any presidential candidate, including Clinton's. So please, Tactical Fox, stop your hatemongering posts.
Also, the nonsensical media narrative of a fundamental division between an 'economic justice' and a 'social justice' wing of the Democratic party needs to stop. Leading progressive voices such as Sanders, Warren and Ellison, as well as their supporters, also frequently talk about systemic racism, police violence, black incarceration, voter suppression etc. There is no-one saying that the Democratic party should abandon issues of minorities, so anyone who is complaining about this is chasing windmills (if anyone, it is the people who say that the Democrats should move more to the right, since Hillary was too progressive, that we should be worried about).
edited 28th Dec '16 3:01:55 AM by Perian
Also Sanders is perpetuating the Republican lie that Hillary called every Trump supporter "deplorable" (in reality, she gave a rather low ball)
He's not winning favors from this.
And for fuck's sake, the GOP won because of identity politics and Hillary mostly talked about the economy and jobs.
Who exactly is Sanders arguing for?
edited 27th Dec '16 3:14:10 PM by NoName999

Just a meaningless platitude. Easy for everybody to say.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman