And he was amazing to the last moment, did exactly what he promised to do, a model of integrity and honesty.
Hillary has plenty of time to demonstrate she is capable of copying that, and if she does then people will come around. Its on her. But she has a lot of ground to make up.
Granted, she put herself there, when you are starting from Cheating the climb is a lot longer than it needed to be. Admissions help a great deal in that regard, even though they entail risk. But better to come from Hillary now, than Putin later, because there will be no recovery from that for her, or us, if she has set the stage for president trump.
The better way to make the popular vote matter and solve the narrative problem is to reform the broken electoral college system. Winner-take-all should be eliminated in favour of proportional assignment of electors based on (and accountable to) the popular vote.
Add in preference voting for the popular vote and things start getting really interesting (though not in a way the party duopoly would like).
I think people who say “we have to vote for Clinton or we’ll get Trump” don’t really get what’s happened.
Yes Hillary won the nomination, but Sanders won the fight.
And the Left has Clinton by the proverbial lady balls. If she does not play then she will lose, and it will be an ugly end for her and the Democratic party.
And the only reason the Left has such leverage is because winning is, or at least was, so very important to Clinton, much more so than Sanders. Thats why he can stand there and endorse her - he already has his goal in his pocket in spades.
So don’t tell me I have to vote for Clinton. She has to play ball, or else. And if she does not want to play the game this way, then she and Bill can go on vacation - Bernie is ready to lead.
I’ve tried to be consistent on this. Clinton can work for us, but we’re going to have to push for it. So I have no qualms about it, but for this to work we need the energy of the die-hards and they do need to get on board at some point. If not, I predict we’ll lose the leverage we have.
Sanders had said he would endorse the winner of the primaries since day one. He’s been very consistent about this. The DNC and Hillary herself have adopted many of his policy positions, he’s launched a new fundraising and political movement to help her and downticket progressives get elected, and he’s maintaining his message and momentum. So yes, he did a great job of keeping the rally going. He “won”, in that sense. And now he’s doing exactly what he said he’d do: support Hillary. I’m unclear why his supporters are rejecting that simple part.
I’ve explained it here a hundred million times already, but I’ll boil it down (and in the process oversimplify):
His supporters aren’t loyal to him. They’re loyal to platform, and they don’t trust Hillary when she says she’ll adopt any amount of it.
ETA:
Just to emphasize:
They aren’t loyal to Sanders in the way that you think they are. If there’s one thing to understand about this, that’s it.
Loyalism is not a highly rated attribute among them. The reason I feel the need to emphasize the fact that “Sanders supporters” (which is increasingly a misnomer) aren’t loyal to Sanders in a blindly obedient way, is that people expect them to be. They’re simply not. Whatever you think of it, please work with that assumption.
Yes yes yes yes - all of that, thank you. Said much clearer and more rationally than anything I can muster these days.
I have to add, another reason we swallow this pill so reluctantly is because of the inherent risk in Clinton - laid bare by the the current email spill. If it turns out that Clinton has worse in the closet, its likely going to come out. And if her boat sinks, and she has been lying to us - not at all out of the realm of possibility - if she has been harboring some worse transgression on her hubris that she can over come it, if Putin drops a serious exposure then we are ALL SUNK ladies and gentlemen, and Trump will win.
Clinton is a HUGE risk at this juncture. If she blows this, if she has already blown this, she will go down in history not for breaking the glass ceiling but for fucking us over as few have done before.
Well, it is, but that’s another discussion entirely.[quote=“ActionAbe, post:105, topic:82126”]
Clinton can work for us, but we’re going to have to push for it. So I have no qualms about it, but for this to work we need the energy of the die-hards and they do need to get on board at some point. If not, I predict we’ll lose the leverage we have.
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I think Clinton tends to move with the tides. She became pro gay marriage in the same year it broke 50% in the polls. If you think of her as simply the median American on issues, I think it’s less about applying pressure to Clinton herself - she’s actually way too tough to be pressured into much - and more about winning the hearts and minds of the American people broadly.
This, so this. Bernie might not have accomplished any of his goals, had he been elected, but he managed to convince me he’d fight to his last breath for them. I have absolutely zero faith that Hillary will give more than five seconds of effort to those goals after it is politically expedient for her to drop them. And the DNC emails make it so much worse. I keep hearing people say, “it’s no big deal.” Sure, it’s no big deal that the party laying claim to liberal ideology deliberately colluded to subvert the will and silence the voice of the Democratic voter. No big deal at all, right? Especially when the woman in charge of hijacking the process is rewarded with a nice cushy appointment, by the campaign who benefitted from her crimes against the voters, less than 48 hours after her misdeeds were brought to light. I know I’m seeing red, I know I need to calm down, but I tell you, knowing all this I CANNOT just say, okay, I’m with her now. Even if Bernie came to my front door and asked me personally, I cannot so quickly forgive or forget. And I have no idea what I will do in November.
Yes. This expresses the feelings of many, many people I’m sure.
I don’t have a vote (not USian). But I do have a brain, and a family, and an imagination, so I don’t want DT, that’s the 100% worst-case scenario for the world. But it’s hard not to feel like Rorscach in Watchmen about this volte-face the former Sanders supporters are expected to make:
People KNOW it’s the right thing to do. But it’s dirty and it hurts and it sucks, frankly.
I always sympathised with Rorschach in this scene, and I can sympathise with disappointed Sanders voters now.
That’s the perfect comparison. I knew this reminded me of something!
I can sympathize with people who have poured their energy into a cause. However, there’s a time and place to be practical and move on, to consider options, and to look at the bigger picture. It’s bigger than Bernie, bigger than his ideas, and bigger than The Progressive Movement. It’s about protecting what we have and being pragmatic.
But if voting for Jill Stein, writing in Bernie, or staying home lets people feel like they did something productive, that’s a deeply personal decision that nobody can really alter.
That’s a different issue. It is common for politicians to go back on a promise, sometimes because they didn’t mean them but more often as a consequence of the political process. (Is there any evidence that Clinton reneged on more campaign promises when she became Senator than Sanders has?) If for whatever reason you are convinced she is not going to follow through, how does announcing before the election you’re voting 3rd party pressure her to follow through after she wins?
i am suspect of this meme. the result has been people staying away from politics altogether.
it’s a big country, with lots of strong opinions. even after you subtract the corporate influence, no candidate will ever be perfect for everyone. arguably, the best people aren’t even attracted to political office in the first place.
the democrats have had consistently better policies in many areas than the republicans. i can happily vote for them at the presidential level even while recognizing the real and obvious problems they have.
i think so too. the most likely places for this to happen are either within the party nominating process, or locally: for city and county offices. ( ex. oakland )
for the presidential election, it seems the most influence happens before the final candidates are selected. once we are down to “a” vs. “b”, the choice tends to be pretty clear.
You’re doing better than me, then-- I didn’t know either one was dead! I only checked because I remember them both being well into middle age back when I was wearing this pin:
I’m only identifying the psychology and explaining what should be addressed if you’re trying to win over the die-hards. If you think politics is about strictly rational acts with perfect information then I’ve got a hot stock tip for you.
Look, at this point my concern is that it’s going to be hard to push against the emotions currently running high, and when those emotions are grounded in certain actions that were 100% avoidable and unnecessary (like bringing DWS onto the campaign) then it’s hard for me to point the finger at one side and pretend the other isn’t practically goading them. Another thing to consider: If the convention is a process, then it needs to play out. If it’s just a big televised party where none of this is supposed to get hashed out, then we’re in deep shit, because it needs to get hashed out.
It is very early days yet; the convention isn’t even over. You should have seen the emotions back when Bobby Kennedy was shot. His supporters eventually bit the bullet and voted for Humphrey, even though HHH was associated closely with the Vietnam War, a more immediate deal to a cohort that was being rounded up and sent overseas to slaughter and be slaughtered than any of the issues on the left today.
This is very true. Like or dislike Clinton, look at the platforms. It’s not-perfect-but-alright vs. what-the-fucking-fuck.
I think a good case could be made that since Clinton would be president and not in congress, it’s not even necessarily up to her to carry the platform. She could exert more or less pressure for it, but if platform commitments make it through congress - well, even if someone thinks she’s a liar, it’s impossible to think she’d veto them.
