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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
No, the flaw in Sanders's character is when he does things like accusing female politicians of running on the "I'm a Woman, Vote for Me" platform.
Or when he says, "When you're white, you don't know what it's like to be living in a ghetto, you don't know what it's like to be poor."
Or when he says he was too busy to notice sexual harassment and pay inequity happening in his campaign.
Or when he says, “I think you know there are a lot of white folks out there who are not necessarily racist who felt uncomfortable for the first time in their lives about whether or not they wanted to vote for an African-American.”
Or when he sponsors a measure to dump nuclear waste on a poor Latino community and refuses to even visit the town because they're outside his jurisdiction and therefore can't vote for him.
Bernie is more than happy to weaponize the image of a civil rights advocate. Supporters talk about how he was arrested at that one rally that one time decades ago. He attacked Clinton for supporting a 1994 tough-on-crime bill that he, Sanders, voted in favor of passing. But he just keeps sticking his foot in his mouth, and it's long stopped feeling like he "just misspoke".
Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 6th 2019 at 8:23:41 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.In fairness, I believe that the crime bill had some kind of anti-violence against women provision attached to it, which is why Sanders voted for it. Still pretty hypocritical to attack Clinton for supporting something he actually voted for.
But yeah, I feel like Sanders and his supporters can't have it both ways. Maybe he has a good history of support for Civil Rights as well as good policy proposals, but he's also the guy who keeps making comments where he presents the Democratic Party's concerns about "identity politics" (a term he himself uses), support for feminism, and diverse pool of candidates as bad things/ evidence of them being evil Neo-liberals. And basically encourages people who don't like those things to vote for him.
Basically, the first time or two it could be excused as speaking poorly, but he keeps saying the same thing often enough that he's clearly gunning for what one might characterize as the "Dixiecrat/ Strasserite" vote.
Edited by Hodor2 on Feb 6th 2019 at 9:32:20 AM
See, I always thought that Bernie Sanders is gunning for voters concerned with their economic well being w/o any consideration for racial/identity issues. That's why we see the juxtaposition between e.g Bernie calling Trump, Bannon etc. racists and his own so-so record on race issues.
It's a strategy with debatable outcome because from what we see identity/race issues are very important drivers of voting behaviour (although claiming that they are the sole driver only works by cherry picking correlations)
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanYes, I agree.
Sanders biggest issue is that he has said he thinks the poverty problem in America should take precedence over racial injustice (a very questionable position I don't support since they're two very related issues) but that's not remotely the same.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Whether you believe Sanders is "tone-deaf" or "racist", isn't it still true that there's no meat to his economic policies, the thing he runs on above all else?
If the man can't even get his own Single-Issue Wonk right, why should we care about anything he does?
Edited by sgamer82 on Feb 6th 2019 at 9:05:34 AM
I pretty much believe Sanders economic policies are the best and the Democrats have since moved closer to them as a whole. By the time Hillary was running, she and he had a lot of similarities even if I felt Sanders would have gone further.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Feb 6th 2019 at 8:07:39 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Yeah, I was probably going too far. I think Sanders is definitely good enough on civil rights and critical of racism to an extent that I can't fairly say that he wants to be the candidate of Dixiecrats and Strasserites.
But I think it's fair and accurate to say that when he makes those comments about identity politics and insinuating that the only appeal of various Democratic candidates is their gender and/or race, he is trying to appeal to people who are left wing on economic issues (and who may or may not oppose those programs when they think of them as being available to non-whites), but don't like the Democratic Party because of things like Me Too and Obama being somewhat condemnatory of racial profiling and race-based police brutality.
And I feel like he's not "quite" there (at least in his public addresses), but he's definitely on the border of using rhetoric that I've encountered from some online leftists in which Democrats are referred to as Identarians, and they basically believe in the right-wing idea of Democrats keeping minorities on the "plantation" and manipulating minorities into voting for them based on race-based appeals.
And I would also note that as most infamously demonstrated during his comment defending voters who were "uncomfortable" about voting for an African American, while he has called Trump and various members of his circle racists, he can't seem to bring himself to call any Trump voters racist. I think it's some combination of pragmatism and Marxist ideas that see racism as a manipulation opposed from above on "innocent" members of the working class.
I also think that a lot of his rhetoric and that of his supporters might also just come down to thinking that anyone who hates Hilary Clinton can't be bad.
As Fighteer noted, and I'm inclined to take his word as he seems to know his stuff economically, Sanders would primarily repeat taking points while dodging or ignoring questions about the specifics of his policies.
As far as race goes, I've started wondering if Sanders hasn't fallen into something we've discussed here a few times: that for all we're willing to call out racist behavior, not enough education goes into teaching what racist behavior is in the first place. As a result, people like Sanders don't have the self awareness to recognize themselves doing it because it's not as blatant as "I hate the color brown, especially as a skin tone".
Either way, to me his record on race is mostly just more grist for the mill given he seemingly can't handle his own central talking point.
Edited by sgamer82 on Feb 6th 2019 at 9:20:25 AM
It is probably most accurate to say that Sanders appeals to the people who believe themselves to be "post-racism": that the fundamental problems of inequality can be solved from an economic perspective, in the "rising tides lift all boats" manner. If everyone has good jobs or at least a basic standard of living, then the competition motive ("Our stuff is going to them.") for racial prejudice will vanish.
Anyone who truly believes that is ignorant, either willfully or otherwise.
That alone wouldn't be enough to make me dislike him, however. I'd certainly be satisfied if we solved the massive economic inequalities in our nation. I wouldn't be pleased if racial issues got ignored in the process, but it's better to have one problem fixed than none of them.
No, what bothers me most about Sanders is exactly what I said before: he's all talking points. He has grandiose ideas but I have never once seen him buckle down and give a detailed plan for how they would be implemented and how they would work. Hillary Clinton certainly did that: she gave multiple policy speeches with vast amounts of detail, showing that she has extensive knowledge of the topics she's talking about. If Bernie ever did that, I have yet to hear of it.
He's a man with a lot of show and very little substance, and we need better.
Again, if he had won the primary, I'd have voted for him. I'd have voted for any Democrat against the cesspit of hate and ignorance that was the entire GOP field. That doesn't mean I like him.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 6th 2019 at 11:24:39 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"He isnt a racist or a sexist, closet or otherwise. Suggesting otherwise is simple ignorance, or worse. He has proposed and supported human rights legislation longer than most progressives have been alive. He was the only one, in either party, with the courage to stand up for things like desegregation, gay rights, prisoners' rights, and workers in developing countries. He has stood against Republican dogwhistling, so-called "Welfare Reform", and the death penalty. You can read about it here. His voting record speaks for itself.
Yes, he started off congratulating her and then immediately tried to make it about himself.
She's a black woman speaking a response to a white supremacist and Sanders (an old white guy) chose to make it about himself. If you can't see how anyone could see that as problematic then we aren't the ridiculous ones.
This is made worse by the fact that he has an extensive history of tone deafness when it comes to anything that isn't class, such as when he said that people who don't want to vote for Stacey Abrams because of her race aren't necessarily racist
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I get that you don't like that people are angry at your messiah but I don't especially care, the Democratic Party should be a party of intersectionality and Sanders blatant doesn't give a damn about that. He's not a white supremacist but we shouldn't give brownie points for that.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Feb 6th 2019 at 11:27:31 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangThere's a certain arrogance to some of his critics as well. Basically, the assumption that the massive poverty issue in America is one that can't be taken on its own terms. Sanders is wrong that the racism problem in America can be solved by purely economic issues.
However, there is the fact that massive numbers of problems by people who are all races can be solved economically. The poverty problem in America and wealth disparity is a nightmare that needs to be solved.
It's just you can solve both.
Edit:
Obama Care is actually a decent illustration of how Bernie-policies can be a major boon for America while not addressing racial problems. Millions of Americans, bankruptcies, life and death situations were solved by it—however, the racial tensions in America weren't helped one bit.
That doesn't make Obamacare less important.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Feb 6th 2019 at 8:30:49 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Yeah, there's not a lot I can add.
I think a lot of the people who dislike Bernie here don't do it because they're inherently against the man, I think a lot of us (myself, at least) were actually on board with him at one point or another.
And then we just kept... finding out more about him. A gaffe here, a foot-in-mouth there, repeated It's All About Me instances, vague, non-specific policies where he promises the world and glosses over the "how" and we've just gradually soured on him to the point that he's more of a detriment than an asset.
I honestly don't know when this happened for me but it definitely did before the primary.
Edited by Larkmarn on Feb 6th 2019 at 11:31:36 AM
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.I voted for Bernie then Hillary.
I'm not as happy about Bernie as I was before but I still believe the economic situation in America requires his encouragement and more radical change. We need socialism to stop being a dirty word in the country and having Pelosi shout we're not a socialist nation like it's a point of pride doesn't help things.
Dude needs to get his act together on race, though.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Feb 6th 2019 at 8:32:41 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.I agree with the majority of Sander's economic policy, I just strongly believe in intersectionality and time and time again he has failed to properly support it.
Do I think Sanders will throw minorities under the bus? No, I don't. But the situation of racial oppression in the US is serious enough that it needs to be treated seriously in a way that a hypothetical Sanders Presidency might not.
That, and his foreign policy has been non-existence and what I do know about it is worryingly soft on Russia.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang![]()
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This is why I’ve come to view criticisms of the Bernie Sanders and other leftist in the vain of “x policy won’t resolve racismsexismhomophobia etc.” as at least being unintentionally in bad faith.
I say this because A.) the policy is not designed to address that specific issue so why bring it up, B.) In some cases the policy will still have positive knock on effects that will help elucidate those issues, and C.) Addressing those specific racialgender or other issues will likely require even more radical policy that the critic 9 times out of 10 is not willing to entertain themselves.
Edited by Mio on Feb 6th 2019 at 11:40:57 AM

If that really was the reason, then those voter were ignorant, because Sanders is and always was a strong supporter of minority rights. But not having a majority of minority voters support you doesnt make you a bigot, nor does it erase the millions of minority voters who did support him. Sure, most minorities and women decided Clinton better represented their interests and that's perfectly fine, but that doesnt represent a flaw in Sander's character.
Anyway, Trump isn't getting his wall anytime soon, so are we heading back into a shutdown, and will he declare his national non-emergency?
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.