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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Bluntly speaking, I think it was a huge waste of time. He's giving Trump extra time to get his stuff together while he faffs about and gives his supporters continuing false hope. He'd lose nothing by coming out, admitting he lost, endorsing Hilary and promoting all his issues. We don't have time for this anymore.
I am also ridiculously and roundly sick of Bernie moaning on about the working class and forgetting that there's a whole class of poor people who work who haven't supported him while he and his campaign have acted like their votes don't really count. Like winning Guam and all.
Then why is his campaign still claiming he's seeking the Presidency?
edited 17th Jun '16 7:48:31 AM by Lightysnake
I am also ridiculously and roundly sick of Bernie moaning on about the working class and forgetting that there's a whole class of poor people who work who haven't supported him while he and his campaign have acted like their votes don't really count. Like winning Guam and all.
That's your opinion, vitriolic and contemptuous though it is, but don't go around propagating falsehoods.
edited 17th Jun '16 7:48:01 AM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Please don't accuse me of propagating falsehoods when I'm commenting on the increasingly toxic nature of Sanders' campaign. IT is a fact that Jeff Weaver has claimed he's still seeking the Presidency. It is a fact Sanders' campaign has consistently discounted the black vote and has claimed they weren't really trying to win the South.
At this point, he's achieving less and less and costing himself the leverage he could have had. Sanders could have had a positive legacy but his once-optimistic 'revolution' has since devolved into a bitter shell of itself.
edited 17th Jun '16 7:51:37 AM by Lightysnake
Jeff Weaver says he's still seeking the presidency, has Sanders said he's still seeking the presidency? Or is Weaver someone in Sanders' campaign and I'm meeting ignorant?
Something I just got in email: Politifact dissects Trump's Post-Orlando speech.
edited 17th Jun '16 7:57:26 AM by sgamer82
If he's still seeking the presidency after the Convention officially declares him a loser, then you may start spewing vitriol.
I don't get the impression that Sanders has gotten any more shrill over time: his speeches are stubbornly consistent. He's perceived that way because Clintonians want him to drop out already, and the more he persists, the more they hate him for it. Shrillness is in the eye of the beholder.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.It's from Washington's Farewell Address: "Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened."
Washington wanted nationally funded universities to educate the next generation because, as Fighteer pointed out, an educated and informed populace is the best protection a democracy can have. He was also really particular about them being national as opposed to state funded because he wanted the young people going in to be shaped, loved, and learn to love the whole country and not just their home state or region. Come in a New Yorker or South Carolinian; Leave united Americans.
It's not in the Constitution because at the time public education just wasn't feasible for everyone. Washington himself didn't have more than a 4th grade education and it always bothered him whenever he had to talk the college graduates among the Founding Fathers.
Yeah, this is probably what I was thinking of. It's one of the basic reasons why we have public education; the other major one is that you need an educated workforce to support an industrial or post-industrial economy.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"@Fighteer: Of those "dumb things the proles believe" you listed earlier, about half of them* very clearly originated from elite interests in modern history as part of organized propaganda campaigns.
* Obama is a Muslim/Kenyan/Socialist, climate change denial, denial of the harmful effects of smoking...
edited 17th Jun '16 8:16:13 AM by CaptainCapsase
You are correct, and the best antidote to them is to have educated citizens who can see through the BS. However, the problem with the "revolutionary" mindset is that it counts on our current crop of ignorant, deluded citizens to put together a better system after they've torn it from the hands of the elites. If some of the dumb things that Bernie and his supporters have said are any indication, I could not say with confidence that we'd be in better shape afterward.
Stated another way, it is not axiomatically true that the proles know what's best for the country any more than the elites. You're just changing one set of masters for another.
Who knows what the historians of 500 years from now will write about us?
- "Democracy turned out to work, after all — the people managed to vote in their best interests despite the attempts of power-hungry maniacs to delude them."
- "Democracy failed its high-minded ideals because the people were, in the end, too gullible and short-sighted to pick a path that would lead to their success."
edited 17th Jun '16 8:26:55 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"@ The Handle:
Here's an important factor: Bernie lost. He lost big. People want him to drop out because he's been increasingly relying on vitriolic attacks and outright lies on Clinton. He went to the point of calling her unqualified over an article he hadn't even fact-checked. He stood on stage next to Paul Song, who called Clinton a 'corporate whore.' He railed against Superdelegates being in opposition to Democracy- until he needed them to win, at which point him overturning the will of the people became fine. He tacitly okayed the chaos in Nevada. His 'demands' to the DNC are nothing resembling real policy platforms, just sore loser demands to change the rules he accepted when he ran as a Democrat.
And yes, his campaign repeatedly derided the Black Vote. "Hilary Clinton won the Confederacy," and "South Carolina is like winning Guam."
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Which is precisely why I don't want a revolution unless all else has failed. That being said, continuous dissent by the left is vital to preventing backslides; as much of the American welfare state has been dismantled in the post new deal era, it would've been far worse without pressure from the left, and that's essentially what I'm saying: it's important to keep the establishment under pressure, it keeps them (relatively) honest, and helps counteract reactionaries.
As far as what history will think of us, I'm not sure there'll be such thing as historians in 500 years; either humanity will be extinct by its own actions, or will have wholeheartedly embraced transhumanism and become utterly unrecognizable to modern humans.
If you count the people saying these particular things as "part of the campaign", there's plenty of vocal Clinton supporters who have said things every bit as unpleasant.
edited 17th Jun '16 8:34:14 AM by CaptainCapsase
Paul Song explicitly called Clinton a corporate whore here
.
As for Nevada? I've read his letter. He gives a half-hearted condemnation at best and spends the majority of the letter justifying what happened. You're welcome to think they're 'fishy,' but the Sanders' campaign's consistent shift away from focusing on issues to just bitter lashing out and increasing the vitriol is pretty undeniable at this point. At some point, Sanders needs to be held accountable for his own campaign surrogates.
Which claims are fishy, Septimus? I'd be glad to get in depth here.
edited 17th Jun '16 8:38:01 AM by Lightysnake
It doesn't sound half hearted and at any rate it's not a "tacit OK" not matter how you spin it.
Also:
- He railed against Superdelegates being in opposition to Democracy- until he needed them to win, at which point him overturning the will of the people became fine. 'tis a change of stance?
- His 'demands' to the DNC are nothing resembling real policy platforms, just sore loser demands to change the rules he accepted when he ran as a Democrat. I'd like to see a breakdown on this.
- And yes, his campaign repeatedly derided the Black Vote. These arguments about racial issues must be a figment of my imagination then...
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I strongly beg to differ. I haven't seen them 'debunked' whatsoever. I've asked you before and you refused to answer, Handle:
Did Sanders support using the Superdelegates to overturn the will of the people or didn't he? Did his campaign deride Clinton winning the South or didn't it? Did a campaign surrogate on stage introducing Bernie call Clinton a corporate whore or didn't he? Did Bernie call Clinton unqualified or didn't he?
and no, that's exactly what Sanders did. Refuse to accept responsibility for creating the toxic atmosphere to begin with, attack everyone else and give a half-hearted condemnation with "you made us do this!"
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- A change of stance? He was railing against Super Delegates as undemocratic and against the will of the voters. He then claimed they should support those who won their state. In literally the exact same conversation, he claimed other Super delegates should support him over Clinton even if she did win their state. How is this not hypocrisy?
- His main demands? "Get rid of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Super Delegates and make all primaries open."
- You're mixing up issues. Sanders and his campaign decided the South didn't matter after they lost it. How else do you explain Sanders grousing she won 'real conservative states' to delegitimize those victories? How else do you explain Tim Robbins, as a surrogate, saying at a rally that winning So Cal is meaningless and like 'winning Guam?
edited 17th Jun '16 8:47:11 AM by Lightysnake
Captain Capsase: I have explicitly stated that I agree with the need to pressure the Democratic Party from the left to keep them "honest". What I will not subscribe to is the knee-jerk calling out of Hillary Clinton, et. al., as sell-outs, or corporate whores, or axiomatically corrupt because they accept big money donations.
Aside from being untrue, it creates divisions where they are not needed or wanted. We face a situation in which solidarity on the left is crucial like it has never been before, because the alternative is the total takeover of our government by fanatical right-wing interests, against the will of the general populace.
The only reason we've made any progress at all since 2010 is the fact that we've kept Barack Obama in the White House to veto the idiotic things that the Republican-controlled Congress has passed, and he has otherwise been able to govern through executive orders and through the courts. If Obama had been successfully primaried in 2012, as Bernie Sanders attempted, would Romney have won? Would we now be at war with even more nations, having torn down Obamacare, demolished what remaining financial regulations we have, and abolished LGBT rights?
How far would you go to preserve ideological purity in defiance of political reality?
edited 17th Jun '16 8:47:35 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"- Did Sanders support using the Superdelegates to overturn the will of the people or didn't he? Both stances at once - appealing to them and also complaining about their existence.
- Did his campaign deride Clinton winning the South or didn't it? Dunno about "deride" or whether he stuck to it.
- Did Bernie call Clinton unqualified or didn't he? Yes. No idea why someone would consider that a good idea.
- Did a campaign surrogate on stage introducing Bernie call Clinton a corporate whore or didn't he? Out of how many statements about Hillary?
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Sanders threatened Obama with a primary in 2012 because he was contemplating selling out social security for political capital. He backed down, and so did Sanders. I have no idea if he's working towards a particular goal at this point, or just staying in the race out of principle, but this conversation isn't really about Sanders, for me at least.
edited 17th Jun '16 8:49:24 AM by CaptainCapsase
@ Capsese:
Interestingly enough, I almost thought you said that Keynesianism was one of that things — after all, wasn't Keynes a member of the Elite?
Keep Rolling On

Then, @ightysnake, please don't make things up.
Seriously, this is like the twentieth time people have been trying to present Sanders as a Nader-style spoiler, and, every single time, they had nothing to back what they were saying.
Sanders said what he was going to do very clearly: use every bit of the primary election to stump, to pull Hillary to the left, and to get his message across with as big a megaphone as he can. This includes giving that final speech at the DNC. That's it.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.