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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
@Capsase: Not contradictory — he can be a Dem outsider while still being a part of the general political establishment (as an Independent).
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home.![]()
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I think it helps that Sanders has long been considered a Single-Issue Wonk when it comes to economic policy - namely, economic policy that focuses on "helping the little guy" and "sticking it to the corporate class". That's a big distinction from the Republican's rhetoric of "Job creators" being the biggest thing for the US.
edited 23rd May '16 1:23:35 PM by ironballs16
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"
I think distinguishing between those two things is futile. And again, 25 years of governing at the federal level. You don't get to play the outsider card at that point. Trump has a better case for being an outsider (not that he is, but he's got a better argument).
edited 23rd May '16 1:27:33 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
The big difference between 08 and now is that Obama and Clinton are far more similar than Clinton and Sanders are., so it was easy for Hillary's supporters to fall in line. Sanders supporters are sounding more and more fanatical the more their guy falls behind, and its getting worrying. I've seen that sort of vote splitting before, it got Canada saddled with almost a decade of Conservative rule (despite said party never getting to 40% support) and those guys are liberal kittens compared to the GOP.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.A few polls have shown that as much as 1/3rd of Sanders supporters won't back Clinton. Now, I'm sure that number will drop once Sanders drops out and endorses Clinton without reservation (and he had better do that...) but its still an issue.
edited 23rd May '16 1:31:08 PM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Liberal kittens.
So cute.
Candidates are built up by their supporters, not just the money put into them. Trump and Clinton and Sanders are all popular to somebody, so it isn't just that the negative things said about them that raise up the others.
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I think it makes all the more sense if one begins with the idea that the Democratic Party Establishment is corrupt. It does not matter that Sanders was a long-serving Senator when he is not part of the Democratic Party Establishment since he has been an Independent for all the time he was a Senator.
edited 23rd May '16 1:32:22 PM by GameGuruGG
Wizard Needs Food Badly
That's the crux of this particular issue; Sanders is absolutely part of the political establishment of Vermont, he's sort of part of the congressional establishment, but he's not part of the establishment of the two major parties, having not been a part of either of them until his current candidacy for President.
Even if you want to use an argument like that it's still disingenuous. Sanders has maintained very close ties to the Democratic establishment in Vermont and in Washington
. They have actively discouraged candidates from running against him, and on at least one occasion, allowed Sanders to run for the Democratic nomination, and then, when he turned it down, did not put anyone else up against him. In Congress and the Senate he's regularly been treated as a Democrat, caucuses with the Democrats, and has been awarded assignments to committees in lieu of actual Democrats, because he is reliably supportive of Democratic Party causes. His voting record and Hillary Clinton's are 93% identical, and I would personally find the notion that a 7% difference makes you "an outsider" to be laughable.
None of this is to suggest, by the way, that Sanders himself is corrupt. I don't think he is. But then again, I don't think being part of "The Establishment" makes you inherently corrupt or evil. I got my "the system is broken, burn it down" phase out of me in high school (when I was an honest-to-god Communist of all things). Being part of an established party or working with said established party is the only way to actually get things done. But for Sanders or his supporters to spin him as some sort of outsider to the Democratic or Washington establishment is disingenuous at best. He's absolutely a part of the system, in Vermont, in Washington, and to a large degree, within the Democratic Party.
When that 7% includes things like the vote for Iraq, and when you're comparing Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton, I'd say it's a big difference. There are very distinct political cliques in Washington, and while Sanders is definitely an insider in a certain sense, he's not part of the party brass, Clinton absolutely is.
edited 23rd May '16 3:04:11 PM by CaptainCapsase
And when it includes things like opposing gun control—including allowing people to sue when regulations are violated—I would say it's not.
Sanders and Clinton have both voted for things I like. They have both voted against things I like. Neither is perfect. But this notion that there's some vast difference between them politically is nonsense. They're both pretty damn far to the left as American politics goes. And they're both a firm part of the political establishment. Which is okay.
Rural states in general, including Vermont, have much fewer issues with their relatively lax gun control; as with many other issues, that's one place where policy desperately needs to be decided on a state to state basis. That the states themselves get to decide rather than the federal government is something that really can't be worked around without radically changing the structure of our government, effectively making it a unitary state.
edited 23rd May '16 3:12:03 PM by CaptainCapsase
At the time this morning's newspaper went to print, Hillary needed only 90 more delegates to win the Democratic nomination, and there were 789 pledged delegates and 150 superdelegates up for grabs. Sorry, Bernie & Bros, I think I hear the proverbial fat lady warming up her singing voice...
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.@Captain Capsase
Sanders voted to make it illegal for people to sue gun manufacturers when said manufacturers break the rules, resulting in deaths. He ignored this despite a series of police investigations that demonstrated serious streaks of corruption in said industry and a total lack of concern on the part of their employers.
We're not talking about telling people what guns they can or cannot buy. We're talking about letting people sue when regulations get ignored and somebody dies as a result of it. Which seems pretty legit. But since Sanders is pretty beholden to the guns-rights crowd in Vermont he voted against it. Which means that entire avenue of approach got more or less thrown out the window.
That is not a state's rights thing.
His campaign is finished, but the general movement around it necessarily isn't; there's already a bunch of candidates for congressional positions parroting his positions. Moreover, his mere presence in the race at this point still warrants discussion.
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It's also not as black and white as you portray it; in theory it was intended to prevent the family of someone killed in a shooting death from sueing the manufacturer/seller of the weapon unless there was evidence that they knowingly allowed the weapon to fall into the hands of someone considered likely to misuse it, or if the death was caused by a defect in the firearm.
edited 23rd May '16 3:24:34 PM by CaptainCapsase
The operative words there being "in theory". In practise it's made it that much harder to deal with a very real problem within the gun industry. And if guys like Sanders are going to harp on Clinton for the results of every vote she's ever made, I reserve the right to criticize Sanders for this one, particularly given how bleedingly obvious the results were going to be.
EDIT: Just saw one of the posts above. As this conversation goes on the definition of "party outsider" is getting more and more specific in order to accommodate Sanders.
edited 23rd May '16 3:57:17 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Sauce for the goose. If Sanders wants to criticize Clinton's past legislative judgment, he must accept that his own will be called into question.
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We're once again at an impasse, so I don't think there's really any point in discussing this further.
True, but I'd argue there's a qualitative and in some cases quantitative difference in the magnitude of the legislative mistakes they've made.
Edit: I'd argue that, as with many things, "establishment" is a relative concept in politics; Sanders is an insider relative to someone like Ben Carson, who had no prior involvement with government beyond that of an average citizen of his demographic. Relative to Donald Trump, who has at times been one of the people pulling the strings of politicians, he's still more of an insider, but both of them are far less involved in the political establishment of their parties than say the Koch Brothers or Hillary Clinton respectively.
edited 23rd May '16 4:02:38 PM by CaptainCapsase

Sitting outside one of the two major parties doesn't stop you from being a part of the establishment. Nor does it, for that matter, prevent you from being a political insider, something which he definitely is in his home state of Vermont.
edited 23rd May '16 1:21:50 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar