Not referring to you. I apologize for the confusion. Sanders is involved in an extended temper tantrum.
There are certainly extremist actors on both sides. Black Lives Matter did themselves no favors for credibility by ambushing Sanders. But Sanders did himself no favors by referring to southern Democrats, largely African American, as “distotrions.”
People say a lot of things, sometimes deliberately, sometimes inadvertently, in the course of a hotly contested campaign. Smart people acknowledge that, apologize, and try not to do it again. Sanders has been spotty on that score.
As I said before, I support Sanders’ goals, less the gun nuttery. When he becomes destructive of those goals, I won’t support him. At the moment, my best hope is for Elizabeth Warren to be the veep.
And if you aren’t also planning to vote for Clinton, then you’re voting for Trump. You really need to understand that.
Not at all. The principle is not caving when someone claims you have to jump on board or you’re voting for the opposition. I’d be doing it even if it weren’t for Sanders, so cult of personality has nothing to do with it. It is, however that exact sort of condescension where you assume you know why I don’t want to vote for Clinton, that keeps you from being persuasive.
Remember Ralph Nader? Enough people voted for him, saying that Gore was no
different from Bush because they were both corporatists, to bring the 2000
election within stealing distance.
Bush then was able to nominate Alito and Roberts to the Supreme Court. That
led directly to Citizens United, Heller, and the gutting of the Voting
Rights Act.
It led directly to a disastrous land war in the Middle East as well as
ignoring warnings about 9/11.
It led directly to over a decade of inaction on climate change.
It led directly to domestic espionage, assassination of American citizens,
and torture as official policy.
It led directly to calling off regulators and therefore to the recession of
2008.
It led directly to income inequality growing at the fastest rate in history
because of relentless pursuit of tax cuts for the rich.
All of these are things that Nader voters putatively opposed. If they had
voted for Gore, none of them would have happened. Elections have
consequences, and so does your vote. Nader votes insisted on electoral
purity and in the end let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
None of that is condescension. It is a fact. It is more important to me to
take a step in the right direction than to take a giant step backwards. I
would think the same would be true of anyone with half a brain. If you
don’t understand that, you’re pretty sad.
The ships been drifting right for decades, and you repeating threadbare talking points isn’t going to change my thinking on that. I only comment on how you weren’t giving convincing arguments, and being insulting, and now you’re doubling down on the latter. Realize doing that is antithetical to unity, and you might make some progress “convincing” people. I’m done talking with you now. Have a pleasant evening.
I kind of agree with you more or less with qualifications. I wanted Sanders to win but given the reality of the two party system, and the simple fact that Clinton is very flawed, but still so much better than Trump, 2016 is effectively a vote picking between receiving a collective patronizing pat on the shoulder or a collective punch in the face with no other option, with not choosing leaving it to everyone else to decide while a raging band of face-punch supporters are out there who’d love to see us all get that face-punch. I think we’re on the same page more or less on that. Two options left now, and face-punch is way worse.
Still, being belligerent to people who at one point had the option of something better than the shoulder-pat and face-punch, who are rightly pissed at a system that leaves us with two options we don’t really want, and with justifiable suspicions about whether the patronizing shoulder-pat might not wind up being something worse isn’t going to change minds, it’s just going to entrench hostility when we should be trying to build some bridges. At this point instead of snapping at people who you actually want as allies, I’d really recommend seeing if there isn’t some way to build some bridges. There’s a disturbing bridge deficit these days, and we’d all do well to try to do what we can to try to fix that, because in the end, that’s the best way to avoid that face punch.
Convince you of what? That a Trump Supreme Court would be a decades long disaster for progressive causes? I shouldn’t need to convince you of that. Everything I said was simple facts. If you find facts insulting, that’s your problem, not mine.
So what do you plan to do? Vote for the Greens? Please explain how that differs from a vote for Nader.
And while you’re at it, take a whack at explaining how all those principled votes for Nader improved anything at all. Even Bill Maher recognizes that mistake.
Can we stop with this, please, because it really isn’t true:
Can we please stop telling people who were exercising their constitutional right that the Bush years are “their fault” and place the blame where it belongs, with both party establishments?
You realize it is a lie that Nader cost Gore the election and it has been often refuted. The Democrats that crossed party lines and voted, directly, for George Bush, cost Gore Florida, not the handful of Nader voters.
